The Team House - 10 Hour Firefight w/ the NZ SAS | Jamie Pennell | Ep. 301

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseJamie Pennell has had an esteemed eighteen-year career as a soldier and leader inside the New Zealand SAS. He was sent on multiple combat operations in Afghanistan to assist other nations and the Afghan special forces in the war on terror. After leaving the Defence Force, Jamie worked with high performance athletes where he helped them achieve their sporting goals. Jamie now works as the Head of Mangatāwhiri Campus, Dilworth School, delivering their Learning in the Outdoors Programme, Te Haerenga (The Journey), training young men in skills for life.Grab Jamie’s book here ⬇️Serviceman J: The Untold Story of an NZSAS Soldier https://a.co/d/e9wBlSg—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:Diet Smoke ⬇️https://www.dietsmoke.comUse the code “HOUSE” for 20% off!Fabric Gerber Life Insurance ⬇️https://meetfabric.com/teamhouse ____________________________________Pre-order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#sas #nzsasBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House. channel and podcast if you'd like to, and we really appreciate that. So go and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. Special operations. Covert ops. Espionage. The Team House with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, guys. This is episode 300 and one of the Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave, and our guest on tonight's show is Jamie Pinell. He is a veteran of New Zealand's Special Air Service, the SAS. I had a long military career.

He is also the author of the book Serviceman Jay, which we'll talk about. We're really happy to have you here today, Jamie, and you are also the first New Zealand SAS member we've had on the show. We've talked to guys Australian SAS, British SAS, even. even Rhodesian S-A-S-S, but you're the first from New Zealand, so we're excited to have you on the show. I really appreciate you joining us from the other side of the world. Yeah, awesome, man. I appreciate you guys having me on. So quickly, I've got to tell our listeners about the sponsor for tonight's show. Diet Smoke wants to know if you've ever been too high. Well, they have. They have created

a company dedicated to finding the perfect balance, whether you want to replace alcohol, sleeping pills or find a reliable, relaxing experience, diet smoke has got you covered. They make premium infused edibles and deliver right to your door in as little as 48 hours. Imagine sleeping better, waking up or fresh, and enjoying your nights without anxiety or having a dreaded hangover. This is exactly why Diet Smoke was created. They offer nationwide two-day delivery to ensure you get your products no matter where you are. So how do you get the these. Oh, and also your happiness is guaranteed. If you don't love it, they'll replace it. If you don't want a replacement, you'll get your money back. So if you're interested in checking out Diet Smoke,

you can go to Dietsmoke.com and use the promo code house to get 20% off your entire order. That's www.com and use the promo code house to get 20% off your order. So thanks for sponsoring the show. you go and check them out. The question, have you ever been too high? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I should believe in at that.

I recall a time when a young Jack Murphy. You're talking about when a guest on the show brought a little something special and... I was thinking about Las Vegas, actually, DefCon. Oh, shit. I totally forgot about that. Anyway, thank you so much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it. appreciated you. Yeah, reminiscing. So yeah, Jamie, let's start at the beginning, man. Tell us a little bit about, you know, what your upbringing was like and how that kind of like propelled you towards the military.

What I was doing before that, my background. All the way back to like your childhood, like how you grew up and how that kind of propelled you towards military service. yeah i mean i used to um i was brought up in a place called massey and uh where we were we sort of lived in a cul-de-sac if you guys know that means you guys have that name cul-de-sac in the states where all your houses are sort of around like a bag you know like the end of it um and down there we had a whole lot of kids that are all the same age um so we're pretty lucky you know um and behind that behind that cul-de-sac we had quite a big bush area and an estuary and bits and pieces. So all the kids, you know, after school and in the weekends, we used to get together. And I don't know if it was like this in the States, but you kind of have breakfast and come

back for dinner at the end of the night. You know, and your parents didn't really have to worry about you too much. These days, not so much. Yeah. Hey? When the street lights come on, it's time to go home. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, they'll be yelling at you from their houses and telling you to get home. So, yeah, we used to go down the bush and make huts and play war and, you know, climb trees and you know there's no real health and safety rules back then you can pretty much do whatever you wanted cruising up the road going up to the dairy that was a you know two or three

three kilometers up the road crossing main roads and bits and pieces so um yeah i mean we did we played a lot of war games back then and um you know uh i remember a photo that i pulled out in my um my my box of artifacts if you like from my historical artifacts and you know i was always wearing like a army uniform. My mum was seamstress and she could make a whole of stuff and I was always in my army uniform. So even from a young age, I think I had that in me.

But, you know, I went through school and then got through to high school. My parents divorced. I ended up living with my mum at the time and, you know, went through, I'm not too sure what you guys call it, high school or college. High school.

I think college proceeds high school, proceeds sort of getting into the working environment. So, you know, about 17 you leave. Is that about right? Yeah. So for us, it's a formal system. Junior high or middle school. High school is like 16 to 18, roughly 16 to 18 years old.

And then college is your 18 to 22, which is optional where high school is mandatory. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it went into high school. And I put in my application for the Army very, very early. I think right on the line which is 17.5, I'm not too sure the youngest age you can apply for in the US, but yeah, 17 and a half

was it. And so I did all my tests, you know, they checked for your English and your maths and see how intelligent you are and then you put down the, you know, the, what trade you wanted to go into. And fast-forting, you know, to 2016, when I left

the regiment after a long career, you know, 20-odd years. I remember looking back at my file My file was like this You know 20 KGs had to haul it out You know the admin office here And I thought I'd go right back to the beginning To that point you know

Of my application and what I wrote in my application And you know I went through the application And looked at my answers And the last question that they asked was You know this is a 17 and a half What are your aspirations if you join the army And I said four words to join the SAS Now I don't know

You know I was like why I didn't even remember saying, putting that in there. But for some reason, you know, innately, that was my focus. We lived out in West Auckland, like I said, out of Massey. And near where we lived was whether the New Zealand SAS was based at the time at Hobbesenburg. So it was only about, you know, 20, 30 minutes from my house. So in my mind, you know, I knew they were out there, but I only had a real, you know, small understanding of what they're all about. just knew they were a special unit that did, you know, secretive stuff. And, yeah, and yeah,

it was just a, yeah, definitely took me a surprise that that's at 17 and a half, that that's where my focus sort of, um, was orientated. So what did you go into the army to do initially at 17 and a half? Yeah, 17 though, you got rejected though, right, for your age? I was 17 and a half, but what happened was, um, so I was right on the line. So I made sure I was, you know, within the rules, I guess, rule set. But they didn't get back to me until I was 19. Right. Now, the normal process to get into the army is that you, you know, if you'll get

selected, get told that you're being selected, and then you'll go through a process of doing your fitness testing, and then you'll do some, you know, you might go for some, I don't know, some induction evenings, you know, they'll sort of prepare you for what's ahead, but I didn't get any of that. I got a phone call on a weekday at 7 o'clock, and the recruiter, said, hey, this is a recruiter. Basically, we've had 30 people come off the current basic that's going on at the moment, and we're trying to make up those numbers.

So I'll give you an hour to think about whether or not you want to join the rest of that basic training that's going on now. And then if you accept, then in two days, you're going to be starting your basic training. And I was, you know, like a bit of shocker capture, got off the phone. And, you know, I was looking for my mum at the time. I was still 19-year-old. So as you do, you know, as a little baby, you ring up. you ring up mum and say, oh, you know, what do you think I should do? But she laid, she put that,

you know, that question back to me and said, well, you know, it's up to you to make this decision. This is a massive life decision. And so, you know, I sat on the couch for a bit. He called me back and I just said, yeah, let's go. And, you know, two days later, I'm being yelled at, you know, by the instructors at snowing, middle of winter down in worry. We do it down the central plateau of the North Island. So it's right up in the mountains and bits and pieces. And one of the highest points in the North Island and yeah it was a hell of a ride

from that point but yeah I had done no training oh you know no preparation no prep it was either single swim you know there's still physical punishment back in those days you know you're getting punched in the guts

you know to toughen you up and you know we had a bit of a fight club on Sunday for the guys in the barracks I don't know if the same thing sort of happened in the US but it was that toughening up process And yes, I was a 19 year old, that was my introduction to, you know, the New Zealand Army. And, you know, obviously you couldn't come into the Army as to become, you know, straight into the SAS. What was your initial job when you came into the military?

Yeah, so, yeah, basic training was in 94. And then I had three options. I put down to be a chef first. The second one was to be an engineer and then the last one was to be in the infantry. And that was, infantry was the one that I got. You put down infantry, you're getting infantry. And so I didn't realize that.

But, you know, that was part of, you know, developing me for what's ahead. So, yeah, I went into First Battalion, the Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment. And yeah, I was the best, best sort of decision I ever made. I had a great, great time down there, as you guys know, you know, living in the barracks of light-minded individuals, mischief, you know,

and all the time, you know, work hard, play hard. It was that sort of time. And, yeah, you grew up quick around those sort of hard men. And so this was the mid-1990s at this point? Yeah, yeah, so I did basic training. Like I said, 94. I did my core training. I don't know what you guys call it.

So it just gives you those basic skills to get into the infantry. Yeah, in 1995. And then in 1996, I did my first summer selection. So a year later, about a year and a half later, I did my first SSA selection. And again, you know what I mean? Like, even looking back now, I'm not too sure why that was. But again, I think it's just driven towards that goal.

Didn't bake it because unfortunately, you weren't allowed to drink in the barracks back in the infantry there and I made the mistake of drinking in the barracks with a couple of my mates and getting caught about, you know, six weeks prior to selection starting. And so, yeah, we got charged, confined to barracks,

which means that you basically, all your free time is, you know, the armies. And it was all those, you know, menial tasks like you run up to the regimental police post there that get you to unpack your full-service marching order into its singular components and then you'd have to run one of those components at a time back to the barracks.

Once you got there, they'd check it off again and then you run it back again. You know, that's a good four hours' worth of running that gear backwards and forwards. So yeah, that was very interesting. But I didn't really get much preparation time going into the selection course, but I wasn't going to not turn up. I'd already put in my application, so kind of the two weeks leading up to it,

I got as much PT done as I possibly could, and then turned up, but I only made it halfway through, and I guess we'll go through the selection process, but I made it halfway through the barrier test, which is not too bad, given I had, yeah, not a hell of a lot of preparations time. Jamie, how large is the New Zealand military? Do you know, like the size of how many people are in it, roughly? Oh, very small, 10 to 15,000, probably across all three services. So the pool is very small that you're drawing off and therefore, you know, in direct comparison to that pool are our numbers, and obviously we're not going to talk about numbers. But yeah, and then economically, you know what I mean? We've only got so many taxpayers in New Zealand. So,

Yeah. Yeah, it all sort of, it's relative, you know, whereas in the US you guys have got, you know, 380 million. Yeah. And then therefore you have enough money to sort of, you know, be who you are. Yeah. So there's a, there's a massive difference between what you guys are doing, what we're doing. But again, you know, I've worked with, you know, with U.S. Special Forces and man for man,

we're the same person. Sure. I mean, culturally, and that kind of thing. And it's just the numbers are different. And, you know, in comparison to, you know, Delta and C-L Team 6, you know, you're not going to come down to New Zealand and see a couple of C-17s parked on the airfield ready to rock and roll for, you know, global operations right off the bat, you know, so there's a difference. Well, what was going on in the 90s for New Zealand?

Like, what world, like, what interests do New Zealand have? Were you guys engaged with East Timor and things like that? What was going on for the New Zealand military? And what's important to the New Zealand military? Yeah, when I came in, obviously, into the battalion, we had, was it Bosnia? Yeah, Bosnia was going on. So we had a contingent going to Bosnia for the battalions. And the New Zealand SEs had a part to play in that, but it was more close-person protection

of the senior national officer, I think it was at the time. Then we had Kuwait as well. We had a New Zealand SEs contingent that went there that was responsible for rescuing down pilots. This was at a time, though, when the government kind of didn't know what we really, they knew what we did, but I'm not too sure how, you know, whether they thought we were good or bad or, you know what I mean?

So we didn't get much, you know, We had a budget, but I don't think it was enough to, you know, in comparison to what we're getting now. So it took us a bit of time to sort of show our stuff to everyone and get that feedback in the, I guess, at the high political level before they trusted us. But, yeah, so it was Kuwait. And then obviously Timor kicked off. So we had a significant contribution to that. We're doing direct action, you know, special reconnaissance, some close protection work, you know, long range of reconnaissance. ambushing as well and tracking the tracking patrols and then obviously afghan kicked off and that was

basically our main focus for the next 20 odd years yeah we didn't go to iraq um the government decided that wasn't um what they wanted to be a part of however we did have a um small contingent of engineers that were just doing rebuilding at the time so uh i'd really love to hear a little bit about your selection experience the second time around. If you can tell us a little bit about that. We've talked to a lot of guys who went to SBS or 2-2SAS talking about the Brecken Beacons. I'm interested to hear, you know, how it works for you guys. Yeah, so I've had the luxury. Well, I don't know if I've had the luxury. I've had the pain and suffering of doing New Zealand SAA selection and part of the UK

selection. I've done endurance, which is similar to what our nine-day selection is like. the hills phase. But for New Zealand, you know, it's a, you know, as you know, selection, the selection course is just a foot in the door. And for, you know, us, we're just seeing you operate at the highest function of NSA soldier, just covering a heavy weight on your back, checkpoint to checkpoint by day and night, food and sleep deprived, you know, under time pressure. There's no positive or negative motivation. So it's not like we're yelling at you because that can motivate people. And I'm not saying to, yeah, keep going. mate and all that kind of stuff just doesn't work.

We tell you where to go, where you need to be, and you're either going to turn up there or not, because on operations, you know, you're sort of with your own thoughts, and you need to manage yourself, whether it's in smaller teams or larger teams, you've got to control yourself and get yourself to where you need to go. So we need to see that because, you know, obviously having done selection, it is perfectly aligned to what I've experienced on operations. So ours is nine days long, the first day is,

like a conditioning phase. We do all the army fitness tests all in one day and that is anything from running, you know, pack walking, swimming, doing swim test and also we do like a boot run with webbing and rifle, which ends the day. By the end of the day you're pretty much depleted and then you get like your meager rations

because we obviously control your food and those dinner looks like a watered down soup, probably half a cup of that, and a couple of pieces of bread. That's your dinner. You get about six hours sleep. If you're lucky, back in my day, there was no real framework around how much sleep the selection candidates would get. So it was up to the instructors, so sometimes you get six, sometimes you get four, and then you get woken up in the morning for breakfast. and breakfast consisted of one sausage, a tablespoon of baked beans, one egg, a piece of bread, and if you're lucky, you'll get a cup of tea, no sugar.

Wow. Or milk. So, and then it just rinses and repeats for the next four days. So, yeah, so that conditioning phase is really good just to prepare you for what's ahead, to put you on the back foot for what's ahead. And then you've got three days of open country navigation. that's roughly between anything between sort of 30 to 50K depending on how good your navigation is.

If you get past that point, then you'll carry on to the barrier test. And I'm not too sure if you have this sort of thing within your special forces. I'm sure there's something there, but our barrier test is basically you're divided into a number of groups, depending on how many of the candidates are left. And they give you six full jerry cans.

between five people and you're wearing webbing, your pack and your rifle and that weighs about, you know, 35 KG and, you know, between the five of you, one person's carrying two at the front, everyone else is carrying

a single and you've got to walk with these cherry cans for 20 hours and it's either in sand dunes or in the swamp and both have their advantages and disadvantages but it's a mind-bending experience

and, you know, this is where we're really seeing the grip and how much you can take. And, yeah, so that's by day and night. Basically, you know, by the time you get into the night, you're starting to hallucinate, you know, it's starting to break you down and we're really starting to see warts and all. There is not one person that I know

that we wouldn't see the real, you know, that real person. Yeah. In that particular experience, because it's just, you can't hide it. You know what I mean? You can't hold up that act or whatever. I was just going to say you can't hold up that act or whatever front you're putting up

when you're under that much stress. Yeah, and that's right. And yeah, we need to see that because we're trying to get the right people in the door, you know. Yeah. Warts and all, that's what we want to see. So you get to the end of that. For me, you know, like I said, when I did it the first time in 1996, so I got halfway through, so I got through 10 hours.

but I just didn't have the, I just wasn't physically able to carry on. But I was lucky enough to get another opportunity to come back in, you know, obviously in 1997 and do the full experience, if you like. Got to the end of that sort of bit the old, the elephant off in small chunks on that one. You've got to kind of got to count down the hours, you know, as the sun comes up. and then when you start seeing the sun come up you start feeling good you're wrecked completely wrecked

but you start feeling like the end is near and then suddenly you're on the trucks and going to another checkpoint ready for the next activity which is basically lying on the road or lying to the side of the road and then a truck will come down slowly and you have to be awake

to get on the truck so you're doing a rolling embass to get on this truck after 20 hours carrying jury cans, eh? And everyone's got to help each other out. And if you miss a truck, guess what? Walking home. You fail selection.

Oh. Yeah. Yeah, they're not going to help you. So, yeah, it's all about self-motivation and looking after your team and making sure everyone's awake and everyone gets on that truck. Yeah. So we do that. And then the next two days after that, a close country navigation,

sort of similar different distances. and that's very interesting. And then the final activity is a 60 kilometre route march out on the road, no map, no watch. So they just point you in a direction and you just keep going until you stop. And, you know, sort of starts it. You've got 20 hours to finish it. Starts at 8 o'clock in the morning and you might get in it.

I don't know, depending on how you go, maybe 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock in the morning. And that's your foot in the door. that's sort of the, you know, the sort of the check, check of the grip, and then the resilience, seeing if you can operate at that highest function. Then we know you can work hard and you'll be there regardless and finish the mission, regardless of the conditions of what's happening around you or to you. And then you start going on to your cycler training. And is your training very, is it similar to like the British and S or Australian or,

Are there very specific things for New Zealand that kind of stand out to you? Yeah, I'm not too sure what the Aussies do. I think the Aussies are similar to us where they pretty much train everything and then put you into the squadrons. But I think the Brits, and I don't want to talk for them because they talk for themselves, but I think they do a lot of on-the-job training. Could have, you know, this could have changed. but for us we make sure

our operators come out with at a basic level enough skills that we can deploy them straight away so for our cycle of training you know halfway through you are pretty much put on the manning for a particular capability and then the same occurs in the second

half of the year so you know that gives us the number straight away Yeah, I was wondering because, I mean, I think Australia was too, but I know you guys were very involved like East Tomorrow. And like you said, a lot of tracking, a lot of, you know, the kind of jungle style warfare, which, you know, a lot of people, like Americans kind of ignore that now. In fact, I think we shut down our, our. They reopened it in Hawaii. Oh, did they? Okay.

But, you know, it was, it wasn't something that was on in the American, like, mission set for quite a while. So how many different types of missions sets did you guys train for and how long was that training for you guys? So we do direct action, counterterrorism, special reconnaissance or long range reconnaissance if you like, both on foot and mobile. And then you do, you know, support influence, which is essentially, you know, training foreign forces if they need it. In terms of the time, they're all different. Like, I'm not too sure what they're doing at the moment. Our training cycle is 12 months. So it kind of gives you an understanding of how long it takes.

The Green Roll stuff takes a long time. You know, that's maybe five months worth of training because you've got to build in every single sort of skill set within it. You know, communications, the first aid piece, patrolling, live firing, all of it. You know what I mean? Working with helicopters and infiltration and stuff like that, so it takes a lot of time. And then the same with the counterterrorism stuff as well, which is kind of interlinked with direct action, I guess,

and, yeah, and then the, yeah, so special reconnaissance, counterterrorism, direct action, and then the support and influence he sort of learn on the job, although you'll touch it. But, yeah, yeah, it's a long, it's a long period of time, but, yeah, we believe it's a good thing. And, you know, we did start out like that, you know, we're doing more, as was the Aussies and the Brits, a lot more jungle sort of warfare focused.

Yeah. And, you know, that was, we're doing a lot of our, you know, our historical operations alongside our counterparts here, I think maybe, I can't remember what it was, Thailand, I think it was the only time we, the low ocean crisis was the only time we sort of worked alongside U.S. Special Forces back in the days

as kind of the communist era days, you know, Malaysia, Thailand, in Borneo, you know, defeating sort of defeating the communists and that was going on around the world. And then, obviously, once we got into Vietnam and Kuwait, I think maybe we're getting in front of the US at that particular point in time. And then, obviously, Afghanistan, most definitely. And now we've got a pretty strong relationship with your tier 1 special forces. Yeah. Real quick, I need to give a shout out to our second sponsor. I'm really sorry to interrupt the interview, Jamie, but thank you to fabric life insurance. You know, Jack and I know a lot of people who have passed, unfortunately. And in the military, they'd always have the SGLI,

the service group, service members group life insurance, which I think was like $300,000. And we can tell you that, you know, it's not a lot of money when you're taught, when you have kids and when, you know, you want a future for those kids and everything. And for, and for, you know, and for, For civilians, there obviously aren't always great options. Fabric by Gerber life is term life insurance. You can get done right here, right now. You could be covered right from your couch and under 10 minutes with no health exam. If you've got kids, especially if you're young and healthy, now is the time to lock in

your low rates before you get like me. Even if you have life insurance for your employer, it may not offer enough protection for your family and it may not follow you if you leave your job. Fabric has flexible, high-quality policies that fit your family and your budget, like a million dollars in coverage for less than a dollar a day. They have over 1,900 five-star reviews on Trust Pilot with a rating of excellent. And Fabric has more life insurance, more than life insurance. They have free digital wills, and you should have a will if you have children, investment accounts to invest for your kids' future, and more. And you can manage it all right from your phone.

Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com slash team house. That's MeetFabric, M-E-E-T-Fabric.com slash team house. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company, not available in certain states, and prices subject to underwriting and health questions. A question that I had, Jamie, as we were having to, conversation. Did your unit also have a domestic mission like some of the Australian, I believe they call it the tag TAG? Yeah. Yeah, so we had a counterterrorist assault

group or the Commando squadron that we had working alongside us and they just, their mandate was anything national counterterrorism-wise. So I'll take care of that. And then we'd back them up, obviously, if we needed to. But essentially it was just they had a national response for that over and above what our local sort of police special tactics group we call it, which is the high-end sort of armed component of the police. And then there'd be the C-tag if they couldn't sort of deal with that themselves. And then for us as badge members as ESM members, we had, you know, our mandate was national, regional and global. Are there other I guess we would call them special operations

capable or qualified elements in Did you have like commandos or Royal Marines Or like was there anything else that maybe was like a tier below you guys Or that worked in support of you guys? Not really no It was basically at our commandos squadron Obviously we'd get support from the battalions if we needed to for whatever the missions looked like.

But essentially, we just basically had enablers and support functions to be able to complete our mission set, COD, and other support functions. So you talked a bit about the training aspect of it. I'd like to ask you what it was like to arrive in the unit as a badged member, showing up at your troop that first day. I mean, what was that experience like? I think for all of us coming off that cycle of training,

we knew that, you know, we're still being selected. So getting badged is only, you know, it's easy getting badge, staying in is the hardest part, as everyone knows. But, yeah, we just wanted to make sure that, you know, we appeared capable in front of, of the other squadron members that have been around for a while

and these were hard men that were walking into it in this squadron. They had been trained by the Vietnam era guys at the tops that are pretty hard and that kind of thing.

All our training was hard all the time. High standards, high expectations as is always the case in the T1 Special Forces Unit so yeah, it was slightly daunting but we definitely had the motivation to prove ourselves in front of these guys and learn, you know, as much as we

possibly could off them. How did they treat you in terms of, was there a bit of hazing? Was there, did they just kind of accept you and just take you under the wing and train you? Was it a little bit of both? Yeah, like we had a, we had like a little ceremony that we'd do, which was not, not much of anything, really. It was just welcoming us in and having a few beers. It was anything too, harsh. But yeah, the expectation started right from that point. Some guys were pretty good, pretty approachable. Others didn't really care to know you until you proved yourself, which is fair enough.

That's part of the trust building exercise. And, you know, depending on your mindset, you know, that kind of fear of failure, you know, you're either going to rise or fall. So you do make some errors when you're in there getting into the squadrons, given that they're operating at a high level and they're trying to bring you up to that level from where you've just come from. And so, yeah, there's a little bit of, you know, getting beaten about a bit. And I'm not saying physically just, you know, with the feedback, very direct,

can't make the same mistakes twice. And, you know, you know, shooting in close proximity, whether it's, you know, in the bush or in the killhouse, you know, use of explosives and bits and pieces because we're doing that sort of stuff daily. And yeah, yeah, it was very, very interesting, but necessary. And then if you can talk about this, great, if not, we totally understand. But are the teams, however they're set up, and I don't know what the, you know, how the naming conventions are. But are they set up for like, is there a jungle team and a mountain team and a DA team and things like that?

Or does everybody, like both teams or does everybody master everything? Yeah, everyone can do everything. Okay. We're squadrons. So we kind of, you know, all of the, I don't know if you guys know this, but, you know, the T1 Special Force is a model against the British SAS model. So everyone, I think it's the same as CEL Team 6, they call them squadrons. Delta, I think they call them squadrons and troops.

So do we, so do we, so do the Aussies, so to the Brits. I mean, the Brits sort of came up with that sort of concept of squadrons and troops and different environmental skill sets to be able to operate anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat. So that's how it's sort of, you know, arranged or organised. But, yeah, I mean, you, everyone knows how to do all the basic skill sets at a basic level, having gone through the cycler training. And then we specialize in particular environments as subject matter experts to be able to, you know, operate in the different environments, depending on what it is, whether it's, you know, amphibious, you know, boats diving or you know mobility operations or you know jumping you know hey-ho halo um and mountain

operations as well so we're exactly the same in that respect um and you know i think the best thing about new zealand is we've got all those environments here yeah and a lot of lot of your guys i mean we've had your guys come down as well just because we've got that that type of um environment to operate in something different um yeah so so everyone has that that basic knowledge and then we have our subject matter expertise, and then within that we can just go anywhere and do anything. As you know, with missions, leadership changes hands, depending on what phase you're in

and what environment you're crossing and what you're doing. So it's a very dynamic, fluid, sort of, you know, movement to achieve your objective. You know, as we're talking, Jamie, this reminds me. I read an article, maybe it was just a couple of, years ago about a volcano that erupted in New Zealand and the SAS was sent in to recover some remains of people who had perished during that eruption. And it sounded like it was a very difficult recovery getting through all the mud and everything. But I guess it's another example of, you know,

these guys can operate in any environment, right? Yeah. So our EOD guys operated, I think it was all EOD that went in there, which is part of the regiment anyway. Okay, I know. But funnily enough, the interesting thing, though, is that when that first went off, we had a ex-Badge member who was a helicopter pilot, and he heard that something had happened.

And I think I can't remember if he was flying as Black Hawk or was another type of helicopter, but they think it really matters anyway in this conversation. but basically he flew there straight away with another guy. They landed, tried to grab as many people as they possibly could. They got told not to go in there. He went in there anyway. Went in there, got out.

They had some gas masks that gave them limited sort of ability to operate in that environment if they needed to. Grabbed as many people as they could, living in dead, dumped them on the helicopter, and then started flying them back and evacuating them back out to the hospital. and he got sort of a he got a sort of like a bravery medal like the highest award you can get on the civilian side in New Zealand I think for that so he was the first guy on the deck

believe it or not and then obviously OEOD guys went in there because they had the equipment to operate in that environment to pull them out but I mean you wouldn't really see the blades doing that kind of thing the shooters unless they really needed to but we can flex and operate within those environments

and we would kind of help out in a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief capacity, you know, sort of regionally in our backyard. If we needed to help people out, it just depends on what capability people don't have that need to be able to do what you need to do in that particular area, post a cyclone or an earthquake or tsunami and that type of thing you might have

an advanced medic that has those skill sets and they need a number of medics and need to go to a particular place I mean you look at the tsunami in Japan I think it was or was it in Indonesia or Japan I know we've seen a few guys over there to help a few it's there as well because of the mass casualty event that happened So for you

getting to your squadron Now we're talking about kind of getting into the late 1990s. I'm just curious, like, was there a deployment on the horizon for you? Was there a mission you were training for? I mean, you had mentioned Bosnia, East Timor, were some of these things on your horizon? Yeah, so we came into the squadron in 1998. Sorry, yeah, into 1999. And then in 1999, East Timor kicked off. But the other squadron got to go to Timor. So they deployed within about 24 hours And they were gone indefinitely

And, you know, their families got called into the Into the unit After they'd left And because back in those days we'd saying anything about anything And they deployed and basically we had to tell the families That, you know, we're too sure when they're coming back And they didn't come back for nine months Wow

And by then, yeah, and then by then by then There was not a, there wasn't going to be a second deployment because there was no requirement everything had been sort of stabilized you know to a to a point and then past that point you know we got our we sort of re-rolled and started deploying tracking teams with the battalion so we could find fix and finish militias that were crossing the borner so that was very interesting so that pissed me off and you know because i came to the regiment for operations and so when i'm out on that young brain, you know what I mean? Suck it up boy. But, you know, I decided that

you know, I wanted to look elsewhere. And so that's when I went out to the, I'd left the unit in 2000 and joined 2-1S, the British SAS in preparation to do their selection course. Did the selection course, did endurance, went to the jungle, had a few issues back home with my partner and decided to make a moral decision and go, come back to New Zealand. And then I rejoined the regiment. And then from that point, I think Afghan had kicked off. And, you know, I ended up deploying to Afghanistan in 2002. That's a pretty, like, incredible journey.

And is it easy for members of the Australian or New Zealand SAS to kind of, like, filter right into the UK system? Yeah, it was back in the day. now I think there's some caveats around how long you have to be a British citizen for which I find, oh, it might have changed but for us you know I still had to do the selection course

regardless, they don't care if you've done your own selection course, they still want to see you for who you are and see if you're capable enough to join their ranks and that selection course was completely different but again it was similar there's definitely some similarities and yeah tough very tough fast you know they're very quick the Brits they I guess it's the way they're

brought up through their recruit system but they move they can advance to contact very very quickly yeah it was a bit of an eye but it was good is there a couple questions one was were the other guys doing that was there any heartache at the New Zealand SAS we when you wanted to do that. And then two, was there a lot going on for the British SAS where, you know, maybe New Zealand wasn't involved as much stuff, but the Brits were and you were like, oh, well, those guys were operating, so I want to go there.

Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah, I think the Brits will get involved in a lot more depending on what their political ambitions are or strategic outcomes. And, you know, you'll see them in a lot more war zones than you would in New Zealand. We're slightly, I guess we're not always centre left, but I noticed, I've noticed over the years that the government will definitely do their due diligence in terms of where they want to send us

and, you know, whatever objectives they're trying to achieve within their own party lines. We have a Labour government, which I think is your Democrats, Democrat sort of centre left and then we have our national government which is sort of centre-right and with you guys it's the same thing you know it's either one or the other for a period of time and we I guess we suffer slightly under the Labour government maybe depending on who's sort of leading it but yeah that is what it is but yeah definitely definitely the reason why I went over there because I could see the Brits were definitely flexing

into quite a few areas and that's what I wanted to be a part of but yeah it just wasn't meant to be and then the idea of going and then not just going but coming back you know were they upset that you left and then how were you received when you came back yeah so when I came back well when I left my um OC at the time thought that I hadn't been around long enough to go over there to represent the regiment well um and I had other ideas um and I had other ideas um And so we sort of knocked heads and on the way up. So when I came back, it wasn't an easy transition back. In fact, he said to me that you're going to spend another year in the battalion

to have a think about, you know, your actions before you left. You know, I mean, I was only, you know, 23, 24, still a young fellow, you know. And so I was going to leave. I was going to just not pursue the military anymore and join the police or do something else. But I had one of the... the badge members, a senior guy, called me up one day, which is very odd, and

he said, hey, come around to my house, we'll ever chat about your future. And so I went around there, and he sort of turned my head around and said, hey, listen, what are you going to do? And I said, I think I might just leave it. And he said, why? And I said, oh, I just, yeah, I just, do you sure if I want to do another year in the battalion and I, like being in the regiment was sort of everything

for me. And he said, just have a think about it because the battalion's going to his team on next year. So you'll spend, you know, six months doing pre-deployment training and then you'll go to Timor for six months and then you'll come back, just keep your nose clean and then, you know, we don't know what's on the radar, you know, coming up past that point. So think about it. So I decided to take that hard road. And I actually enjoyed myself, to be honest, once I've gone down there. It's interesting, A, when you go back to that brotherhood, you know, with your, I don't know

where you guys came up through, but for me with Battalion, it was like I'd never left. Yeah. You know, with the boys and that. kind of thing and they made a actually made it really easy deployed to timor it's pretty benign we're doing a lot of patrols on the border um and that kind of thing um yeah basically supporting uh the sas uh with their tracking patrols as well so i was actually uh sort of in the same area as the guys that i've done my cycler training with so that wasn't too bad as well so i sort of had a had a light connection there um doing recon patrols and bits and pieces but um yeah i actually found it quite good And then, yeah, once I came back, Afghanistan kicked off.

And away we went. Was there, when you went back to the battalion, was there, did you have a sort of like mystique? Did everybody want to kind of know what it was like on the other side of the fence? And were you consulted a lot by like senior leaders about how they do things and things like that? Yeah, kind of. I mean, everyone's got an interest in how we do things and how they differ. and yeah there's a lot of conversations around you know how we did things at the

basically at the soldier level probably you know went up to maybe the section commander patrol commander level we talk about differences the way we operated and it's only for the better a you know like that didn't take on everything because not everything fits right but but yeah it was good to have those conversations because yeah there's a lot of respect for guys that leave and and uh go up to the regiment and if they sort of appear back down in the in the in the infantry as long as you're not a dick you know what I mean if you're if you come back

arrogant and stuff like that you're going to get you're going to get pulled around the corner and sort it out it doesn't matter who you are you know what I mean we've got some big boys in there they don't care

just be humble you know be humble and respectful and and you'll get the same stuff back so yeah I just keep my mouth shut and just got on with the business and yeah yeah and I enjoyed it

I enjoyed it so you know you would mention that you joined the military that you joined the SAS for operations, a little peeved that you missed out on a few. Then 2002 that deployment to Afghanistan comes around. Tell us about, you know, finally getting what you asked for. Yeah, so I, we turned up to get the, so we, two patrol, two sort of rotations, or there was one rotation had already gone through right in the early days in 2001, so we're based in Kandahar with the rest of everyone else. And the second rotation was, was currently

underway and they called us in for the for the for the to name the third rotation and I only just come back in of course and so uh you know I was hoping that I was going to have a crack you know I was going to be able to go to Afghan because you know there wasn't that many people left and they needed everyone they could and um so they called out all the names but they left mine out and and I was and I was sitting there at the back of the room was like what I couldn't believe it so I got up and and walked out I was pissed off I man I need a reality check you know and I walk back to the barracks

and I was like oh man you know like this is the whole reason why I came here still hadn't washed that off hey I still had a bit of growing to do and I sat down there contemplating my options anyway one of the one of the boys came down they went hey Sam wants to see you he was the training officer at the time he was going to be the the troop commander for our operation and I said what do you want to see me for

he said I just wants to have a chat to you And so I walked up there and I went up and saw him. He goes, where were you? And I said, well, I just went back to the barracks because if I'm not going, then I need to contemplate my options. And he goes, yeah, I can see the trench you dug with your bottom lip dragging on the ground all the way to the barracks, you know? And he said you're going and it's, you know, and then he laughed. And it's part of that. We've got four tenants, say, and one of them is humor and humility.

you know what I mean so he's just he's pulling that on me and he taught me a lesson that day and I went all right then he's just keeping just keeping me in my place

you know but yeah I was pretty stoked to get on that trip and yeah again I had a lot to prove because of how I sort of exited and I had you know I had pissed a few people off so yeah again

I just had to zip my mouth up and get on with the work and that was a pretty good there's a pretty good operation that we went on. We're doing long-range patrols on mobility vehicles, so it was pretty significant. Yeah.

Yeah, so any like significant operations from that deployment that stand out in your mind, you know, your first experience going on actual operations, well, other than East Timor. Yeah, so we, yeah, so the first patrols that went in there, sorry, the first rotations that went in there, they're doing a lot of reconnoisseance and watching lines of movement, lines of communications and bits and pieces. And they were there when, you know, Torabora was kicking off and that kind of thing. But then it slowly went from foot

mounted to vehicle mounted. And so when I turned up, we had a bunch of dumb bees that have been fitted out for fighting and long-range patrols. So we fell on those, did a couple of sort of shake out patrols and then, you know, the rotation before us left and we took full control. Probably the big operation that Curdeer was kind of towards the end of the tour. So we're going out for anywhere between two to three weeks. And this patrol, we were going out for about a month. And we're going into areas that hadn't been seen before. So we're going from Herat south out to Farah.

and I don't think anyone had been down there at that particular point in time. So we mounted on about four or five talons out of Kandahar at night, flew out to Herat, landed at an airfield to the south that was being secured by, I think it was a green berets, which is sure there was operating in her at a time, but they had a partner force with them as well, so they secured the airfield. We got off. They escorted us up the road. we were sort of in the middle of their convoy then we turned our lights off and went into the

um went into the darkness and started our infill um it was about a three-day infiltration into the into our a-o which was right down south um and you know you kind of want to do it without being seen if you can but it doesn't always sort of work out like that so the first contact we got into heading south while we're infilling was on our way in. I think it might have been on the second night. The terrain was such that we just, we couldn't avoid going through a populated area sort of drew us into that,

into that, drew us in that way. So we started moving into it reluctantly and then we started getting, you know, tracer going up in lines around us and basically, you know, just start to pinpoint our position. So we just took a note of that. Anyway, at the time I was on the motorpikes, I was an outrider, so we sort of, you know, sat, you know, however many kilometres ahead we needed to, depending on the terrain and the visibility. And, you know, we're giving early warning and just basically keeping the convoy moving.

Keeping them aware of what was happening up front. So we went through, we were about 500 metres ahead of the, head of the convoy. and we were just watching them come past the village and out the other side it was kind of like a little gradual piece of ground that went up and we were just sitting there I was sitting there on the bikes

just having a chitchat to my to my mate watching the vehicles come up and then all of a sudden we heard boom boom boom boom boom like a heavy machine gun about 800 metres to the whatever it was to the south or east or our position

and so I called it I just said I was shots fired to the east and then these rounds just came straight over the top of us They were well on for line, you know, but they just didn't have the elevation. If they had the elevation, I wouldn't be speaking to you today, but there are big rounds. And then they exploded sort of over the top of us or just behind us. And I didn't realize that at the time, but we were being contacted by an anti-aircraft gun.

They had two mounted on this compound wall, and they sort of had them pitched downwards, you know, so they could get some, you know, some horizontal fire going. And then they had another crack at us. and I just said, I think they're shooting at us. And I didn't even have the brain to call contact left or anything like that. It was just like, yeah, I think they're shooting at us. And then they just, and then we started, you know, getting back at speed, back to the convoy. And as we're riding, they were just, they up their rate big time.

And they're well on for line, eh, it was amazing. But they just couldn't get it. They just couldn't get it down. And we basically, I don't know what it looked like back from the convoy, but they're probably like, no, no, no. and we just brought this fire all the way into the convoy and yeah and then we just started getting into it with these two anti-aircraft guns and managed to silence them. We had a few sort of, you know, light rounds coming from the village as well, but we decided

not to worry about that too much. It was basically that main gun, the two main guns that we needed to figure out and then it appeared like we're being watered, so we ended up breaking out of there and getting clear of the village and then we had an STS operator with us. In fact, we had two of them within our convoy that was starting to get air overhead, but because they're so close to the village,

you know what I mean? Like unless you had, you know, identified targets, you know, you're going to do more harm than good and we went out there to do a whole lot of collateral damage, you know what I mean? We'd silence the guns that we needed to. got out of there and then we just

boosted off into the night um sort of the repercussions that was uh that there was two warlords in the local area um that kind of didn't like each other and they had a line of demarcation and that kind of thing I think it was still back in the days where they still you know they had tanks and bits and pieces so yeah they um they wanted to come down and um

meet with us you know um to discuss you know what had happened but the Americans said, hey, if you go anywhere past this easting, then we're going to start bombing you. So basically just shutting the door on them and protecting us. So we just kept moving south while these negotiations were coming on. But what we didn't realize is there's already, you know, a force on the other side.

And they were starting to track us south. So we went all the way south, got down there, al-U-Ped in a bit of a mountain range. that forded us a bit of high ground as well and so yeah this a couple of vehicles sort of appeared out in the desert in front of us and they started like trying to marry up where our tracks were and you could see one vehicle stop and another stop

and they must have been communicating with each other and then they came together, drove up a little bit sort of stayed out of range and then a couple of guys got out of the vehicles unarmed and walked and then sat down in the deer ground and then they sort of waved out to us So the troop commander went down there with a couple of the boys And they had a bit of a discussion

And then he came back and he said hey The commander wants to talk to us out in the desert there So we came up with a plan Made sure we had watched some fire support bits and pieces I mean all our vehicles had heavy weapons You know we had Mark 19s and 50 cows You know backed up with Jimpe's So we had the range

And we had the firepower if we needed to need to. to but um so we sort of split the call sign one stayed up high the other one uh went down got down there and um we got down there and the guy was the commander was had like uh um like a peak cap you know like a russian cap and had these big epilepsy like he looked like a and he was standing up on this um i don't know like it looked like an old russian jeep and you were standing there just staring at us it was just him and then he had it had another vehicle, and there's only like four or five people, and we're like, what was this guy up to? And he's just standing there and we're sort of, we had this space of about a 50 metres between us.

Anyway, I was looking around, because I was down there with sort of a meeting group. And I looked around, I could see some dust plumes on the horizon. And I said, oh, I can see a couple of dust poons on the horizon starting to move in our direction. And it went from two to four to ten, 15. And I lost count at 24, the dust plumes from the vehicles coming in. So they're coming in towards us I say man there's 24 these 24 odd dust blooms

coming in you know what are we going to do anyway all these vehicles started turning up and there are all these it was about I don't know 20 odd technicals with their 12.7s they had a couple of flatbed trucks

with anti-aircraft guns there's about 100 guys you know all geared up you know they had RPGs all of it but they all turned up and they're all on the other side behind this commander and then they sort of all got off the vehicles and they're sort of just having you know

just smoke and, you know, drinking chai and that kind of thing. Like, it was not really relaxed, eh? Yeah. No, I was saying they sit down and they actually make tea. They just, like, yeah, they just, it's weird. It was weird. It was like, it was all this firepower.

Yeah. Yeah, it was all this firepower and we're sitting there. It was only like, oh, man, there would have been 10 of us four vehicles. And so our troop commander gave us a quick, you know, set of orders. And who was going to hit what if it kicked off. Like, it was going to be a blood bath. You know, it would be a bit of a massacre if it kicked off. we're all ready to rock and roll.

And all I had was my motorbike for cover. I was trying to think about how I was going to shoot around the motorbike and how many rounds my, you know, the engine casing would take, you know, with the 760, which wouldn't be anything. Anyway, the commander gets off the Jeep, and our troop commander goes into the middle, and then they sort of come together, and then, you know, the Afghan commander just comes in.

He's starting to bump our troop commander in the chest, like sort of banging him. and what he was what are you guys doing here? And were you the guys that contacted our men, you know, two nights ago back up and back up and wherever we were in that village, around that village.

And the true commander said, just was quite calm and said, hey, listen, if you don't calm down, I'm going to get a big bird that will come over top of us and shit on your head. And what he was referring to was getting air cover.

you know, to come across and, you know, and take them out. And so he calmed down a little bit and then they started to get into a rational discussion. Then all of a sudden, we heard a massive explosion to our left. And I turned around and our fire support team had decided to come down a little bit closer after they'd seen all these vehicles turn up. And they'd hit a mine. And so one of our vehicles was out. So there was a minefield on our maps, but it was quite further up the hill.

But what had happened over 20 years is that it obviously, you know, they'd moved down. the mines had moved down and they'd hit a anti-personnel mine. And so we had two casualties. One guy had lost half his leg. And then the other two casualties had basically catapulted out of the vehicle as well. So as that happened, I turned around, saw the vehicle strike. And then I was registering that.

And then all of a sudden I thought, that's the trigger. That's the trigger for the, they're going to start opening up on us. You know what I mean? I thought the guys that have walked in initially to get us to come. come down to the desert, had placed like an IAD or an improvised device, and that was a trigger for them to kick off. And so I turned around, took up the pressure on my trigger. But as I came round, like, I was ready to go, they were all just looking as well,

as I was as confused as I was. At the same time, a AC130 comes down, comes down from behind them, flies over them at low altitude. It never happens. You know, you've never seen AC 130 during the day doing a low pass, but it decided to come down here do a show of force flew straight over the top of them and then they basically got on their vehicles and the commander said to my commander hey man i think you guys got enough uh to worry about we're going to get out of here and so they just disappeared and then we had to deal with um the vehicle

strike um and the casualty that we had there and yeah because we're so far south um the guy that lost half his leg uh he's actually lucky to be alive um we kept him we kept him alive for that long two hours took two hours for the medibak to occur because we're so far south, you know, they had to come from Eurat, we're miles away, so we had to sustain life over that period of time. But unfortunately, he lost half his leg, but he made it. He didn't die. But that was sort of the intro to me to, you know, combat operations in Afghanistan. That was only like, you know, that was a week into it.

There are three weeks that were there. There was a whole lot of other stuff that happened. yeah very very very interesting um uh yeah introduction to afghanistan and um yeah yeah what uh you you mentioned having a mark 19s on your vehicles what what personal weapons were you guys carrying at the time what what was the uh new zealand s using i think we're using car 15s i think we had car 15s back in the back in the day. And we had P226s and that

and I think, yeah, I don't know what they're using at the moment. I think they might have ESR. 15s. I think they've got the night salamint variant and glocks. But yeah, so we're using back in the day. We had Jimpe's as our sort of secondary vehicle

weapons. We were using accuracy international A-dubs bolt action, 760. two for our sniper rifles SR-25s didn't exist back then you know the combat one yeah um we had uh

I think accuracy international had a 50 cow bolt action 50 cow as well we had one of those um and some laws and a few other bits and pieces Carl Gustav and that kind of thing but um yeah I mean we had enough you know we had enough ammunition to look after ourselves that far down yeah um yeah that was uh yeah if anyone wanted to have a crack

they were going to get a good way to fire back on them but um and then were you were you primarily riding your motorbike or was did you have like a like a mount system where you could just pull it down when when you wanted to get out ahead of of the element no all the time hey oh it's um yeah it's uh probably the best position in the convoy depending on who you talk to because uh i mean you're riding three times the distance of the vehicles. Yeah. But you're really getting out and around the place, you know what I mean?

You're heading up into the mountains and you see everything. And I mean, you get a few stray rounds coming back at you. When you turn up in villages where people don't even know who you are and what you're doing, I mean, you know, when we're that far south, we're down there, they wondered, they're wondering who we were. Right. I didn't even know the country was at war, you know, in some of these areas because they're so deep in the rural areas.

So that was very, very interesting. Yeah, I mean, in general, you know, the interactions with the public down there with the locals was positive for us. Not always, you know. But, you know, when we went to Farah in particular, Farah was a thriving town at the time. And, you know, we just rolled straight in there, had a meeting with the governor, sat down, had food and chai and that kind of thing. He gave us use of his airfield. We did a resup. We got picked up out of there as well.

But I'm not too sure what happened after that. So, but that was an epic patrol, you know, like I said, it was, it was a month long. And, yeah, a lot happened, you know, it was, yeah, it was pretty, pretty good. Was that exhausting for you, though, being on a motorbike for a full month in that terrain, riding more than everybody else? And you can't, you can't, like, obviously you're not supposed to turn it off when you're on patrol anyway, because you should be paying attention, but you can't pay attention all the time. But on a bike, you have to.

so we just kind of smote a lot you know tired yeah we're tired hey yeah and I mean but you know you're working and again you know selection selection prepares you for this stuff you know sometimes you're on sometimes you're in the set I mean the minimum you're in the saddle is like 12 hours a day

and that and then and then and then you know depending on what's going on and where you need to go and where you need to be and in the situation sometimes we're on the we're on track for 36 hours do you know I mean like it's just you need to do what you've got to do. You know, sometimes we had to move quickly through a particular area because we're being

followed up. So, yeah, again, you know, as I said, this is where the selection course, this is the realization that the selection course is designed for a purpose. And, you know, even though it appears like it's designed more for the jungle environment, you do well in that, in that jungle warfare environment, everything else, the skill sets emanate out into all the other capabilities. Right. So from this point, are you kind of getting into that what became a deployment cycle, you know, doing these pumps overseas, coming back, spending a little time with the family and then doing it all over again?

Yeah, so we did. The first two tours were the long-range patrols and vehicles. So that first tour, that was, that was, you know, one of the contacts who were in. The second tool, the main contact that we got in there was the contact that one of our members got the Victoria Cross, we earned him the Victoria Cross, which is the same as you all Medal of Honor. So, yeah, that was pretty similar. I remember seeing a news special about him. What was that gentleman's name again?

Willie Appiata. That's right. BC. Yeah. So, yeah, that was a big night as well. And then, you know, past that point, it went from. on, you know, because essentially in the early days it was, you know, obviously going out there to find fix and finish, but also it was to, you know, look for areas where future FOPBs and

airfields could be placed, blinds communication, whether, you know, where the surfaces are in the gaps, you know, that's all we're doing, providing that information back to the coalition commander and then they could make their future plans from that point. You know, and that went on for a few years and then obviously things changed and then we had a bit of a break and then we re-rolled into doing partner force operations in Kabul so we went from you know long-range reconnaissance patrols and long-range engagements to now in the city in Kabul in the middle of Kabul and responding to spectacular attacks and conducting high-risk arrests within Kabul and at South Lowing provinces.

So as time went on in the war, as I recall in Kabul, they tried to stand up like it's sort of like an Afghan national mission force at one point. CRU, right? CRU. I had a couple, yeah, a couple different names. I mean, were those the guys who were working with? Yeah, so we took over the CIAU, the crisis response unit from the Norwegians. Gotcha.

They had them for a couple of years. and then we came in and on that first tour, we're there for seven months, and I was part of the training team to train them up to be, you know, fully capable of taking over security in Kabul and, you know, conducting operations in the outlying provinces and responding to spectacular attacks effectively. And that took a long period of time. That was very hard because you're living in, you know, their camp, Camp Olympus, which is in the middle of Kabul.

So you're right in there, you know, with living amongst your partner force, eating with them, operating with them, talking with them, having chai. You know, that's, you know, you're the face of the task force. And then we had the rest of the task force that were out to the east of the city in Camp Warehouse. And they were there specifically to enable us to go out in operations and provide those specialist skill sets. while we're still, you know, developing their basic skills to make them more effective. So, you know, explosive method of entry, sniping and some other bits and pieces to allow them to do what they needed to do. So that was really interesting times. What was your experience like working with him?

Yeah, really good, eh? I mean, a bit rough around the edges at the start. I mean, it took a bit of time, but we got into the flow of things. So we had, you know, our operational squadrons that were in a, Camp Olympus and then we had sort of rotations where the squadrons were rotating onto a training area for a couple of weeks upskill and then come back in and they all got the same training over a different you know over a similar period of time they didn't get toward anything different or more than the other squadrons so they all progressed together but they're a good bunch

very yeah you sort yeah they got some of them got balls they know they got big balls but the biggest thing that we had to prove was that, you know, we could do the business alongside it, alongside them. So, you know, initially in the early years, it wasn't leading from the back. It was, it was being the first man. And so, yeah, it was very interesting. And, you know, right back at the beginning, you know, we just had to be ready at a moment's notice because I'd just deploy any manner of the day and night to go out and do operations until we got a better sort of system of communication. And, you know, again, we're going out there just to watch them on target, see how they

operate, enable them with specialist skills, and make sure that what we're doing in training was replicated on operations as well. So it gave us the ability to debrief and say, well, hey, listen, hold them to account. And they got quite good over time. It just took a long period because of a whole lot of other things had to happen. you know they needed upgrades of equipment and then refreshing the vehicles and you know building um infrastructure you know within their camp and um yeah there's a whole lot of stuff that needed to happen that was kind of a you know it was coalition-wide synchronization of

of how we're doing business but um yeah now there's some good guys in there and you know it was good for me to get that opportunity to be a trainer first and then when I came in on the second rotation I became the ground commander due to the you know I was only a sergeant at the time due to the fact that we had reduced numbers because of where the CIA you were at the time but yeah there's some pretty significant spectacular attacks that we attended which obviously is in the book as well over that time And I think the biggest one we attended, well, I think, you know, the biggest one we attended was the Intercontinental Hotel in the 28th of June in 2011. Yeah.

And so that was, that was, yeah, that was the peak kind of experience for me in the regiment and on operations. So I don't think it'd be hard to get. Can you tell us about that, how that transpired, how that operation came about for you guys and how you responded? Yeah, so I got woken up on the 28th of June about 1030 by one of the in tops and he said, oh, hey, you need to come into the office room and something's going on in the city. And I was like, oh, yeah, cool. So went in there, sat at the back of the room with a senior national officer and I said, oh, what's going on? And you know what it's like in the top?

You know, you've got some screens up, you know, had the ISR platform up. We could see what was going on on top of the roof. There was communications with our mentors who were with the CIA at the time. and they're traveling towards the intercontinental because obviously I was a ground commander at the time and then we're looking at CNN and you know I don't know if you guys have been part of that

but you know the the reporting comes quicker through the news channels than they do through the military channels because they've got guys in the city they're ready to go so you know within 10 20 minutes you're getting optics I'm not really listening to what they're saying because they're trying to make sense the situation as well but it's just good to see the optics so we're watching the optics i could see

things happening on the roof on the hotel there's a two-way exchange of gun and rocket fire between the um the inner cordon the a and the afghan national police had ring the uh the hotel at the time and they're at a gun battle then and um i guess the background information just so that uh i guess your your viewers understand uh what it happened is basically we had nine insurgents that made their way into the hotel from the north, killed a number of guests. I can't remember what the final numbers was anywhere between 17 and 20 odd, and then took up positions within the hotel, particularly on the roof, and waited for security forces to arrive. So that's what I was watching, you know, the aftermath, you know, the kill quite a few staff. Was this the, was the intent behind it?

Was it the Taliban trying to rise their national profile with a Kabul government and make them appear relevant or I'm just kind of curious what the motivation for the attack was. Yeah, it always is. They had a cany handlers and they're trained across the border in Pakistan and the Fata. And yeah, it's always a way with terrorist groups, say, they're trying to justify their existence, kept funding, helps us recruitment. And, you know, they're just trying to show that the, you know, destabilize the government essentially, you know, just showing you, showing the world how incompetent they are and how

incompetent the security forces are. So you've got to, but by the time they got in there, they've, they've been, she's their goal, you know, past that point, it's just how quickly we can resolve the situation. So, so yeah, anyway, sitting in the back and he said, hey, I think you guys should go down there, you know, just to give them that capability, just in case they need it. And I said, oh, how many squadrons are down there? And he said, oh, man, they'll have that done by the time I turn up, you know, knowing the SCI and, you know, the time that I spent with them in a previous tour, you know,

in the training team, it's like, oh, man, they'll be done by the time we get down there. And he said, oh, I just, just, you know, get down there anyway and, and back them up. And if it so happens that they don't need you, then they'd turn around and come back. And so this was at 10.30 at night, so it all kicked off. And so I got the boys together and, you know, gave them a brief and started heading down there. And in Kabul, you know, after 10 o'clock, there's a curfew. So it's like a racetrack down there, you know, you can go quite quick. We had armored land cruisers, and so we geared up.

and got on land cruises and cruised down there pretty quickly, slowed down for the checkpoints. Got all the way down there and at that time the outer cordon was about 400 metres away from the hotel. So we debussed out of our vehicles at that point and left a couple of our support staff with our vehicles and just use them as a sort of a communications conduit back to headquarters if we needed it. Made our way up on foot because we're sort of fully exposed to the hotel and we didn't want to sort of drive up there and start taking fire rather just sort of get in there by foot and sort of move through the shadows and get up to the incident control point at the incident control point we had the minister of interior and then he was in control of those national special mission units at the

cio co there as well so i had to chat to him and the minister of interior and basically they just wanted resolution straight away started going up towards the hotel with the team and as we're We got up close to where the inner cordon was a gun battle started cracking off. Again, quite a heavy gun battle between the Afghan National Police and the terrorists up on the roof. And we couldn't see them, but I wasn't really interested in that. I just wanted to get inside the hotel and start our work. They can deal with all the carnage on the outside. So I crept up this berm with one of my other operators and we're sort of looking across the car park

and I was trying to get comms with our mentors inside because by that time the squadrons were inside the hotel and they were just waiting for us. in the lobby. So I'd been in that hotel before in 2002 on a previous operation. We've done a closed protection task and I thought I knew where the main entrance was and I was actually just going to go straight to it but I'm glad I got cons because they're actually doing renovations on the old entrance and they're in a different area so they flashed their lights and said hey we're over here and I said all right cool. So we made a plan one by one sort of hard target our way across the car park, making sure that the, in a corner could see us, and then got into the lobby. Got into the lobby, all the lights were out in the hotel. I could see a dead insurgent

on the floor, and, you know, he had a suicide vest on, he had an AK-47, he had a bag full of grenades. They had a 40-milled grenade orchard on their AK-47 as well. I can't remember what you call that. Energy drinks, new shoes, so it looked really cleanly well-dressed. you know, they'll be given clean, you know, good, nice clothes and shoes and bits and pieces. So they're ready, you know, when I looked at him, I had to assume that the rest of them were like that. So they're ready for a fight, you know, quite a bit of ammunition and bits and pieces really to stay the course. Can I ask you a quick question is when they took over the hotel, and for people who don't know, like, it wasn't a tourist destination. So you had a lot of journalists and NGOs who are like running large blocks of those hotels, right?

When they took over the hotel, did people evacuate or did they, without no, knowing where the insurgents were, did they like barricade themselves in their rooms? Like what was going on inside the hotel? Yeah, so yeah, the majority of people, some people try to get out, like jumping out their windows and carrying, you know, tiny sheets together and stuff, but the majority stayed in their rooms and barricaded themselves in their rooms. And this hotel had 150 rooms, you know, so you could, you think about that and the amount of people that you have to look at sort of rescuing out of there.

Yeah. The comms were getting initially was that they were going to start pulling the guests out of their rooms and, you know, cutting their bloody heads off or shooting them and throwing them off the roof, you know. So they're going to do some pretty, you know, barbaric medieval style executions on top of the roof. So we had to get up there as quickly as possible. Now, you know, if we're doing this as a squadron, you know, we would have done a little bit differently. but at this particular point in time, because of the reduction in our numbers, and the smaller numbers, we had only a handful of operators, and we didn't know how many terrorists were in there,

so only had a handful of operators, and I had two squadrons of CIA. But the CIA had never done anything like this before. We didn't do any option training. We weren't at a stage where they could do a hotel, no lights, under NVG, and gone through the drills and stuff like that. So it was, you know, the best we'd done is sort of compounds, and maybe multiple-story compounds, mainly in rural areas and in the city,

but nothing as big as this. So they were a little underdone. So we had to get them in behind us, and we had to take the lead. So, yeah, so we took note of that insurgent in what he's wearing and what we're up against. And, you know, when they're carrying, you know, when they're wearing suicide vests,

I don't run to my death, and I'm not going to do a CT-style clearance of the hotel where we were making, you know, dynamic entry into rooms and stuff like that. we'll take our time. You know what I mean? And if this takes all night, it takes all night. And funny enough, it did take all night.

It took 10 hours, you know. So we started making our way down this corridor. And the first thing we encountered was the internet room. And one of the guests was dead at his at the computer. So I went around just to check, make sure he wasn't, you know, still alive for whatever reason. And so I could, you know, pull him back to our medic at the back of the line. he was dead gone started making a way around

the corridor again we sort of naturally just moved around to the left didn't have schematics or anything like that it was too dynamic we just had to get in there and then we found ourselves in the main kitchen and at the back of the main kitchen luckily we found the fire stairs

and the fire stairs go straight up the northern fire stairs they go straight up to the roof so I said okay cool right let's we'll start going floor by floor start clearing the floors one, two, three, four, five, and then we'll hit the roof. We started going to the first floor, but then we realized pretty quickly that we needed to get up to the roof.

Yeah. Mainly, you know, because obviously they're still in a gun battle with the Afghan National Police, but as is always the case, the rounds were going quite high, so the rockets and the small arms fire was hitting the compounds where families, you know, hunkered down, you know, and they've got kids and bits and pieces. So I was like, let's just go straight to the threat. We'll sort that out, and then retrospect.

effectively will come back down through the rooms. So we'll agree on that and we just made sure that we had CAU up behind us holding the stairwells and come out of the floors and surprise us. So my lead assa, Steve Askin, I'll say his name because he's no longer with us. He died in the Port-Hul fires a few years back. Killer, you know, the best man you want on your team, just a hunter. He was leading. he was going up the stairwell.

It was a U-shaped stairwell. It was quite open. So we started making a way up. The CIA you were making a lot of noise. As I said, they've never done any sort of clearances where you have to stay nice and silent. So he started making a way up. And as he came round one edge of the one side of the stairwell,

he came face to face with the first insurgent about a metre. And they both fired at the same time. Steve hit the mark, got him a couple of times in the chest, but he just got up straight away and started running to the top. And, you know, he must have been full of adrenaline when that happened. So what had happened was, as we're coming up the stairwell, basically they sent one person down to meet us, and he was being covered by another guy that was right at the top of the stairs there on the fifth floor.

So this guy dropped, ran up to the top of the stairs, got to the top, flopped out, and we saw the ISR footage later. He lay on the roof for a while. One of his mates came over and talked to him and there must have had a chat about a few things about the fact that he's going to detonate himself because he didn't have much time to live. So his mate said, yep, we're right.

I don't know this for sure, but I'm sure this is a conversation they were having, you know? And then he sort of moved around the side of the exit point where the elevator, the stairs were, the fire stairs for the northern stairway out onto the roof, walked around, and he detonated at the exact same time that his mate was in line with him, so he took him out. So he took two people out for one, you know,

and so that was good for us, right? So like big win. But so as he got to the top and he passed his mate, then we started receiving a heavy weight of fire, and then we started throwing grenades down. So we still were in this, you know, gun battle in the stairwell, which is not ideal, you know? Yeah.

So the first grenade that landed at Steve Askin's feet, and then, say, called grenade and started running out, towards the four floor, the door was open out into the four floor, started running towards it. But like the grenade was attached to him by a string, it followed him all the way out to the four floor. And he turned around to the left and it sort of bounced into the hallway and then exploded. And so it's semi-concussed him and sort of sent shrapnel up his back arms and legs. So we're in a gun battle. Steve's out on the uncleared floor.

I was yelling out to him. We're trying to get a bead on the guy on the top of the stairs. and we're taking heavy weight of fire and grenades and bits and pieces. So I'm not too sure how long we're in there for and how long that gun battle went on for. But eventually we managed to get the guy at the top and then I was calling out for Steve

and finally he came out. So I said, hey man, come to us because I don't want to cross this open space because he can probably still see us if he's up there. So we just gave him a bit of covering fire, got him back to the team, went down one floor and then we sort of reorientated ourselves.

So we got ourselves onto the floor. I decided that I'd have a team that would go down the southern stairwell and we'd do a sort of a silent ascent to the southern stairwell, getting behind them, and, you know, keep the the CIAU and the northern stairwell and keep them making noise so there was a bit of a distraction over in one area. And then at the same time, you know, starting to knock on the doors

and starting to push some of the guests down into the kitchen and secure them down in the kitchen, just doing a few things at once. It wasn't by any means anything that we've ever trained before. It was fly by the seat of your pants, do what you have to do right now with the numbers that you have and just get things moving, you know, instead of being, you know, methodical and process driven, there was a lot to consider it all at the same time. But as I said before, a number of times when I was on that third floor, I realize now, I realized it and realized it back then that I was in a complete state of flow.

So I was completely calm. It was like I was sitting on the couch, having a Coke watching, you know, top gun on TV on a Saturday. And I could see everything in my mind in three dimensions. So I could see everything that had happened, you know, where we'd come from. I could see the floors like I was looking at a care drawing. And then I could hear and see things that were above me as well. And it gave me a real clear understanding of what we had to do.

and I made my decision-making very, very easy. So we're standing on the third floor, and, you know, all of that had happened, and at the same time, while we're ascending the stairs, we'd got a Black Hawk on station, and the Black Hawk had picked up a couple of our Helo snipers from Camp Warehouse, so they are over the top engaging the terrorists on the roof as well. So there's a lot of fire going backwards and forwards off the roof, and fortunately there was no moon out that night.

So, yeah, they were able to stay in the darkness. And so I could hear a lot of fire coming off the roof towards them. The old insurgents were trying to knock them out of the sky. And I actually thought I was going to see or hear about a black hawk style incident, you know, with the black hawk spinning out of control and landing in the bloody car park. And so I was preparing myself for that and what needed to happen to affect a rescue because obviously something that big, we have to reorientate ourselves. I was with the numbers we had, you know, so it was all these things were going through my mind.

So, yeah, took a team across to the sudden stairwell, quietly made our way up. All this was happening. Got to the top and checked the door. The door had a metal bar across it with a lock. So we had explosive charges, placed an explosive charge on the door, and went down one flight. And then I basically called into, back to headquarters and said we're in position to assault the roof. they said that they're going to call the helicopter off only because we had

we had done no coordinated training with the pilots and the gun and the guvern was shooting as well and we just didn't want any blue and blue incidents so we decided to get the helicopter off into a wider orbit and we were just going to take control straight away as soon as we made entry

so he said yep make entry when you're ready and I just you know, I dispense with a, you know, a detailed battle brief about what we're going to do. The boys are just said, Hey,erson, everyone that's up there is a terrorist. And so whoever's up there just tipped them over because the information we're getting was everyone was armed on top of the roof. We didn't know the numbers.

We didn't have verified numbers. I'm moving in and out of the elevator mechanism room. So we didn't quite know what we're going to go up against. How many guys did you have? How many guys did you have, roughly? Do you remember? We had six. All New Zealand.

then I tried to get a couple of the COU guys up but we only got two at the end but they didn't they didn't really do anything they stayed they stayed in the stairwell so I mean again you know we know the ratios that will you know determine a successful outcome and six and six although we're force multiplies you know what I mean these guys were we were heavily armed and prepared. So anyway, we shelved those thoughts. I just said, hey, boys, just tip them over and I'll see you on the other side. And we just shelved those thoughts of what was going to happen.

And, yeah, blew the door off his hinges through a couple of grenades out to clear space. And then we moved out and started getting into extended line and started making a way forward. In front of us, we had like these satellite dishes. They're on these concrete platforms. And then beyond that was the elevator mechanism room. It was quite a big shed of corrugated iron and inside that was the elevator mechanism. You know, obviously the machinery that puts the, you know, gets the elevators going up and down. And then past that was the northern stairwell entry out onto the roof.

So we started moving and started firing into likely areas where they could have been in cover. There was an insurgent underneath the satellite dish. He got engaged and we sort of broke into two teams. I could see a leg sticking out from behind one of the satellite dishes. So I started shooting at that. And we started moving and maintaining dominance on the roof, got up to the leg, and it was just a leg. So it was one of the legs that had blown off one of the terrorists

when they'd get anade their suicide vest. And as we got closer to the elevator mechanism room, because a couple of the insurgents that got shot by the helo snipers had detonated themselves as well. So the whole roof was heads, arms, legs, towards those, you know, like just blood guts. It was just like a butcher shop, you know what I mean? So we started moving through, made our way around,

and then the left-hand team started getting into a gun battle with one of the final resurgence, where they didn't know it at the time. So me and another guy started moving around. We're like, oh, yeah, cool, should be able to keep him distracted and we'll put him the cutie gras, you know, coming around. but he must have started engaging with these guys, got around the corner, saw that we're coming as well,

and then he just stepped back, waited, and then just detonated himself. So there's a massive explosion. And then we both came around, cleared the northern stairwell, made sure the guy that was shooting us in the stairwell was neutralised as well. And then we started moving back and sort of taking stock of what had happened. at the same time a fire was lit in the fifth floor function room which was directly below us and the flames were sort of lapping over the top of the over the top of the sort of the parapet where the roof was and so I said hey man we're going to have to do a hasty evacuation of the hotel because I don't know how quickly this is going to spread I don't know the layer of the hotel

you know whether it was made of concrete or how it was built you know I had to expect the worst So we started making a way back down the southern stairwell, punched a couple of fire alarms, nothing worked, which was no surprise, no other sprinters worked or anything like that. And so we sort of got into all of the floors, spread out the CAU with our team, and just started pushing all the guests out from south to north. They weren't really responding to the CIAU,

but they're responding to the English speakers. So we managed to get everyone out of the rooms. It took a while down to the... the kitchen where we searched them, cleared them and contain them in the kitchen. But, you know, looking back at now, just to give you an understanding of time, it took roughly four to five hours to get from the car park to clear the roof. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Yeah. But I talked about that in about 50 minutes. Yeah. But, and this is why I don't know how long it took for each of the, these experiences to, you know, these main components, like the gun battle. I'm not too sure how we're long in there. It probably felt like two minutes, but it could have been longer, I'm not too sure.

Clearing the roof could have taken a lot longer. I'm not too sure, you know. So, yeah, it was pretty significant. So, yeah, got everyone down, cleared them. We got the Afghan police to hold them in the kitchen, and then we decided to go back up and try and make entry onto the fifth floor so we could clear it because that was the only uncleared floor,

but we just couldn't make entry. It was fully, you know, black smoke coming out. and yeah, you'd need a breathing apparatus to even survive getting out of your room if you were in there. But what we didn't know is there was one more terrorist on that fifth floor that was in one of the rooms. And he was talking back to his hander in Pakistan. So, you know, we decided to sort of wait. Some Afghan firemen, four of them, I think, came up hoses and they had AK-47s. You'll never see that anywhere in the world.

mostly making sure they're protected you know of course you're going to be like that so they went out there starting to put their fire out and we headed straight up to the roof to do a battle damage assessment so it was pretty hard to count the bodies you know because they're all in I was trying to count their heads and the legs

and you know it was very difficult but we cleared the suicide vest with our EOD operators took stock of the weapons and you know the information that they had on them as well and started sending that information back We're up there for a while and then sort of, you know, mucking around waiting for this fire to go down. And then all of a sudden some automatic fire came out from the side of the hotel and we're up on the roof.

And then all of a sudden we started taking a heavy weight of fire on the roof. So we got down, ducked down, got low on the deck. And I actually thought it was phase two of their plan. I thought they waited for us to get onto the top and draw us to the top. they're going to start shooting us from the higher ground around the hotel. So I was sort of looking up as like, man, where's it coming from? But there's no, we couldn't see anything that was happening around us in the hills. And so we sort of crept to the edge of the parapet there where the roof was,

poked our heads over, and it was the inner cord and firing at us. Because they must have, they must have, when we got to the top of the hotel, when they heard that we're up there, they're probably just relaxed. And we're having, you know, having a bit of a smoke and some chai. And then as soon as the firing started again, they just turned around, saw our heads and started having a crack. And so they're like, yeah, waving at us and we're waving back. I was like, man, we dodged a bullet there, literally. So I said, oh, we're the CIA.

And they'd left. They just decided to leave and not tell us they were going back to care. They'd been given their orders, basically, to go back to Camp Olympus, restock their ammunition, and get ready for. for further attacks in the city, which is part of their operating procedures anyway. So I said, all right, then, we're going to have to go on there and sort this guy up. So grab the small team, went downstairs, you know, the fifth floor function room still had a lot of smoke in, that kind of thing, but was partially out. And then as we're sort of standing around there, these three Russian pilots, two or three row,

might be the navigator as well. They came out with their white short sleeve, you know, uniforms with their rank and stuff like that and their hats and their little travel bags, their little carry-on bags. And they walked over the rubble past us and sort of wave. And I said, are you guys are right? He goes, yes, good. And went downstairs and obviously went to Kaya and bought their aircraft. It was weird.

You know what I mean? Like it just didn't make any sense. And so anyway, we got into action, got through the and through the function room, and decided to make our way around the side of the hotel and get into the fifth floor from that angle. So we started making our way across the balcony. In front of us, we could see some air conditioning ducting. We didn't know at the time, but it had been rigged with. a sort of rudimentary improvised explosive device, a grenade on a trip wire, and then past that we could see some expended cartridges from the AK-47. So we knew, you know, that's we had come

out of. So we decided we're like, hey man, should we throw a grenade or a flashbang, you know, I'll throw a flashbang just in case someone else comes out of their rooms, so it won't do as much damage. So we threw the flashbang, went off, was a nine-banger, went off, and then and then all of a sudden we started taking a heavy way to fire again. So we all ducked down on the balcony and started pushing against the balcony panels. And there were these, I don't know, not even a metre long panels. They were about yay thick. They must have been reinforced.

But we started taking a heavy weight of fire from the in accordion again. And we just had to ride it out, basically. We sat by these panels, started taking rounds. I could see a lot of chips coming off the wall, and I was just hoping I wasn't going to see bigger chunks coming off the wall from their 12.7s. You know what I mean? Otherwise, that would be all she wrote. So we sort of rode that out. I don't know how long we're there.

I was yelling on my radio to get them to stop. I turned around. There was an Afghan policeman who was sort of just behind us about five meters back from where the balcony was, and he was sort of looking around the corner at us getting shot at, but not doing anything about it, just watching us. taking rounds and I was just saying hey guys you need to tell these guys to stop because I'm not too sure how long we're going to last here and then the firing stopped and I'm not too sure how long we're there for but I said oh is everyone okay and Steve was in front of me and goes I think I've been

shot and I said oh we're about he goes oh through the head so I got him just spin around and he'd been shot through the side of his head like it's skimmed you know through his ear cross his skull and then out so sort of zeal was hanging off and I looked at it and I said I think it's gone in and out man I think you're right and then and again this goes back to human humility and I looked him in the eyes and I said

have you had enough yet? Have you had enough? Because he had you know obviously you had taken a hit in the bloody four floor you know shot through the side of the head and he's still ready to go he goes no no man I'm good I'll keep going to go and I said no you're going back to hospital

brother you're going to hospital now it's too much and we had a laugh hey you know and just to take huge off, but it was at that point that I decided that, you know, we'd taken, we're taken a, you know, we've been being shot at from all angles, you know, by the terrorist, by the inner cord, and there's no coordination.

Without the CIA there, we couldn't coordinate our operations, you know, and someone was going to get killed at some point. So we pulled back on the vehicle, started driving back, but this isn't, I'm nearly at the end of the story. I know this is quite long, and I hope I'm not waffling. Oh, no, that's great. Jamie, who was the inner court? Was that ANP?

Who was the intercordin? A&P. Okay. Yeah, so, I'm not expecting anything more. You know, they're doing what they can do, you know, and that kind of thing. But, yeah, it's because we didn't have that coordination. The city we were there to coordinate things. And at that point, there was no, you know, there was no, like,

common comms channel between the coalition and, the AP we needed to be talking through our partner forces. But as I said, CIA, you had taken off. Anyway, we left, and I gave a handover brief to the ground commander on the bottom floor, Afghan Ground Commander. I said, ah, that's a boys, man. We're not going to, I'm not going to, I don't want any way else to get killed. I don't know what's going to happen to you, Steve.

You know, I've got to think about how many people I actually have. We had jobs to attend to, you know, two or three days' time. We're going on another mission. So, started making our way out. And then as we're going through the city, the CIAU started making their way back. and so wherever they go we go you know so we uh started making a way back and got into the car bark and i grabbed the squadron command i said hey listen man don't leave without telling me because we're just like i got killed a couple of times up there you know like make sure you tell me when you're leaving

is the only way i can get comms with the amp and he goes oh yeah sorry man sorry no they're all right they're good with it and i said hey listen let's break the squadron down into assault groups and just clear every single floor again methodically um just take note that someone's probably going to be on the fifth floor and if you guys get into trouble then you know we'll be downstairs and we'll come up and help you anyway started making a way they started making their way up and started clearing and um as well as the case because we'd already cleared the the the floors one to four but essentially just doing a fight back then they started making the way across the the balcony where we got shot and they crossed over the air conditioning duct that we didn't know was uh you know had a

improvised sort of explosive device in there So a couple of them got over the top and then one person triggered a, boom, heard a big, big explosion upstairs. One of the COU guys comes running down. He's got a big chunk out of his arm, you know, so we started patching him up and sending them off. So we made our way up there and, you know, I said, oh, what happened? They said, oh, the, went over the air conditioning ducting and it exploded.

And so we got our EOD guys to pull it anyway, just pull all that gear clear. And what we didn't know is pretty much rigged up quite a few of these throughout the hotel. Yeah. And so yeah, they've done a lot of work in a short amount of time. I know that was pretty good, pretty impressive. So we got up there and I said, all right, we'll take a couple of these CIA guys. We'll clear the fifth floor until we make contact with this dude. And then that'll be it.

You know what I mean? And so we've got the CIA out in front of us. Now, you know, when you're doing these types of operations, then you're going to be prepared with the right tools and equipment. and because we've been doing a lot of stuff, sort of, you know, residential style, high-risk arrests and in the rural areas, we didn't need to have, you know,

all the explosives that you'd take with us, take with you on these types of operations, you know, particularly if you've got a large force. But we weren't a large force, you know, we're a small force, so we only had sort of a couple of entry charges. We didn't have, you know, 20-odd, you know, locked charges and that kind of thing so you can make entry without, you know, you know, and during people in rooms and bits and pieces.

So it had to be manual entry. So we got the CAU into it. They blew out pretty quick. And so we took over and started making manual entry into these rooms. Some of the doors are open, some not, and we had to kick them. Anyway, we got to this one room. And whenever our operators started sort of giving the door a bit of a kick, kicked it a couple of times.

And then it sort of came free. And then as it came free, I was standing on a sort of a right angle, covering the corridor just went bang there was a massive explosion and um everything um basically slowed down for me at that point never had it before never had it again you know that slow motion reel everything just slowed down um everything just went into black dust um and um and then that sort of went away after a while and then i could see the couple of c r u guys just crawling out of the rubble so i grabbed them pulled them past me and then all of a sudden I heard someone yell out man down and the slow motion we all sort of sped up after that and I could see the guy that made entry lying up against the wall

he was pretty much slumped up against the wall so we'd in grabbed him and he was a big guy and you know you know I don't know if you guys do this in training but whenever we're doing training we make sure we pick the heaviest guy to do it to be the casualty yeah you know what I mean so they test you every single time. This was, this was that. So this guy's like a hundred kegs without his, uh, gear on, you know, it's another like 20 KG, he said he's carrying. So I went in there, picked him up, uh, done a hell, um, and, and sort of pulled him into the room next door, checked him and I said, hey man, you're right. And, um, he was sort of, he was conscious, but not responsive. Um, he was going into shock and, um, or he's already in shock. And so we, I sort of got him

and I sort of, you know, got my arm underneath him, pulled him down to the back of the back end of the corridor where we would sort of come out, put him in a chair, and then started working on him. He was a big man, as lucky as a big man, because he took the full brunt of the explosion, and I'll tell you what that was shortly, but he started to go into unconsciousness, so just yelled in his ear. Not a technique I've ever seen used before, but I thought of work, and it did, sort of yelled in his ear to stay awake. he had a few bulk bearings in him and what we didn't know is that he

had one that had gone into the plural space of his chest and yeah obviously that'll go from bad to worse from that point if we don't do something about it so they started working on him and then I found myself in that space of you know zeroing in on the on the casualty where I should be sort of making him while

you know having an overwatch so I moved for let boys deal with that moved up the corridor and I said and I said is everyone okay and you know a couple of the guys was still you know not a good shape had been wounded in various forms and I said man what was it I saw the boys what it was and he said oh it's say um it was one of the guys wearing a suicide vest and I said how do you know that he goes his head's at the door and this guy's head was lying in the door and popped off obviously

and the room was just completely destroyed you know what I mean like the water pipes were pissing out water and that kind of thing um the whole room was destroyed so um yeah we were very lucky and then that was it for me that was the last of it you know like we were going down a road where I was starting to lose guys like at that point it would have been two and I had to think about

and that's you know that's two guys with capabilities that aren't hard that are, sorry, are quite difficult to just you know appear out of thin air and then I had to think about how long it was going to take to get some some replacements from New Zealand you know and we had another job like I said

within a week that we had to affect and it required the guys on the ground. So, yeah, decided that that was it. I'd leave it up to the Afghan National Police and Army to clear that last floor and we'll leave them to it. And by that time anyway, they'd sort of descended on the hotel, so the whole hotel was full of security forces and it was just a case of clearing that last floor.

And, you know, the fall out of that that was the last guy anyway. So, yeah, went back, did a debrief, you know, had a shower how to feed, and it's all she wrote. Yeah, during that operation, or like prior to an after, they got pictures of you guys, right? The media, was there something like that in your book? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I know. the last thing we got our RSM came over and he um he goes a kick in the ass because he said

he should have been masked up but when we'd come in that night the night prior the um the outer quorum was about 400 meters away as I said but then overnight it had shifted so they hadn't held that out of cordon they decided that they would shift it up a lot closer once they thought they knew that the hotel was clear and so the media had got right in close so as we came around the corner and over the berm there, they just started shooting on burst mode. And, you know, it's kind of the last thing on our mind. We've been in there for 10 hours.

Right. A lot had happened. And we had other things on our mind, like getting the boys back to hospital. And, yeah, so we got a bit of a butt up the ass. But, I mean, yeah, we sent two guys to hospital. Steve was one. We had another guy, he was the other,

and he went straight back to Germany because of his injuries. so we saw him off. Steve lived to fight another day. And yeah, so, yeah, it is what it is. Past that point, my days were numbered, given my people could recognize my face. So before we get to some questions, I just want to give you the opportunity

and I want to ask you about your book, Serviceman Jay. Who is Serviceman Jay? Tell us what your book is about. Yeah, so Serviceman Jay, that's that there is basically the, I guess the name they gave me when my identity wasn't known. So in Wikipedia, if you look up the Gallantry Star recipients, one of them servicemen Jay and that's me now, obviously. The book's about my life, basically, from selection, operations and training in the regiment,

and then the transition out of the regiment. And some of the things that are sort of, you know, I had to realize, you know, re-identifying who I was, some of the tools and techniques I used to gain more self-awareness and, you know, get my head away from the combat mindset and the pager mentality and, you know, dark thoughts and sort of dwelling in the aim about things that happened in the past. and sort of orientating in a different direction professionally.

So for me, with the transition, it was moving away from the military altogether. And I found myself working within professional sports teams in New Zealand at the sort of provincial and national level and international level. And then, you know, now I'm the head of a campus for a school here in New Zealand, a private school here in New Zealand. So I've been very fortunate with that. So, yeah, there's a lot in that book. Yeah, we have some questions.

I have a question that there was, so there was an urban myth that there was, I believe, it might have been Australian recoup, or Australian SAS, but I always heard it was New Zealand SAS that there was a very professionally done reconnaissance report sent up about a farmer and his goat. And it was done by somebody from New Zealand. Did you ever hear about that? What was the story? It was a... Oh, right, a farmer in his goat.

Yes. Yeah, it would be. Yes. Highly likely. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We won't go too far with that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that would have been in the early days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I heard it way back when.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that'd be right. But it went like it went up the chain. It was like this is what we saw on this reconnaissance. Yeah. Hey, accurate reporting, mate.

They've got to have trust that you're reporting accurately on what's happening on the ground. Whatever it looks like. All right. Okay. Joe, thank you very much. How different would you say the New Zealand, Aussie and UK SAS are from one another, culturally and operationally? and how easy is it working with the UK and Aussie SAS?

I think the New Zealand, Australian and British SAS do interpret the, you know, the tenants of the regiment of the regiment slightly differently, although we are similar. There are some differences culturally, I believe, from what I've seen and experienced. But, you know, essentially we're all the same in terms of capability. But again, it comes down to numbers and equipment and, you know, and where your government allows you to operate. So although with Australia, New Zealand and British SAS, you know, we are only related by name, you know, we're all coming from different countries.

So we do have a long-standing operational history with the British and the Australians, right back, you know, when I was talking about Malaya and Borneo in particular and Vietnam. And, you know, it goes on. But, yeah, I just think that, yeah, just culturally it is slightly different. Yeah. Do you guys do a lot of exchanges with them? Yeah, we do. Not so much.

I'm not too sure what we're doing with the Aussies at the moment, but we didn't really do much with the Australian SACS. We did a lot with, we had a strong. working relationship with 2-2-SAS for a long period of time. We did like exchanges, you know, a guy would come down from there

from 2-2-SAS or ESPS and we'd, you know, have a guy go back the other way. Sometimes every now and again we'd send someone over to Australian SSR but yeah, it was more the Brits and now obviously with the Americans as well. We do a lot of, I don't do a lot

more exchanges and bits and pieces and and I guess you know, with the U.S. pivoting more into the Pacific, you know, there's a lot more going on with other units and... Talism and Sabre exercises. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, yeah, there's been some really awesome exercises that I've been a part of in planning that are, yeah, just amazing for everyone, really.

Yeah. Joe, thank you very much. Which unit impressed you most? and why? Yeah, the Brits have always impressed us. I just, they're, yeah, they're quite mischief, eh, you know? Like, they impress me with their mischief. They're quite mischief out on the source and that kind of thing.

But they've definitely got that Who Deers wins attitude, man. You know, they come up with ingenious ways of doing different things. But also I went and saw the dev group. on a training exercise on the East Coast one year for a couple of weeks and that just impressed me with again the amount of hardware that they have and the speed at which they operate

I took quite a bit out of that trip without going into too much detail but yeah I mean we're just here just observing but yeah just the the helicopter packages that they have and yeah it was just different It was just different and it definitely was impressive. Andrew Dunbar, thank you very much.

With the growth of the New Zealand film industry, do you know of any New Zealand veterans working as military consultants in film? Yeah, I think there's one guy that I know of who works as a consultant who was one of our assault sergeants way back in the day. His nicknames bomber. I won't reveal his real name. on live, but yeah, he's, I think he's done a lot of consulting work. There's another guy, Barry Rice, who I think might have done consulting work as well. His name's out there. He's written a book, but that's all I know at the moment. Yeah. Do you're, I know that your privacy laws and

non-disclosure stuff is, is, I think it tends to be more stringent than the United States. Is it hard to market yourself after regiment? Not really, because I'm not, really talking about anything. It sounds like I'm talking about a lot, but I'm not really. Yeah. I mean, you know, me, me, me running through the intercom was not anything I've ever trained before in any way, shape, or form. So I'm not discussing anything that I've ever been. Right. Right. Right. It is any part of ESOPs or tactics, techniques, or procedures. It appears that way, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's giving enough detail without giving away the playbook. Yeah. And that wasn't just for you, but I just meant for, like, former regiment guys and

general, but you guys are free to say that you were regiment, you know, in a public manner or whatever? When you're an operator? Yeah, when you get out, when you're done. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's up to you. Okay. You choose whether or not you want to. A lot of guys won't do that. Obviously, when you're operating, you know, you keep it as far removed as possible, but, yeah, I don't.

It's up to you, you know. And Corbyn, thank you very much. Are there any likes, differences, culturally, between, and we've talked about this. So, New Zealand, Aussie, and UK, and you've already covered that. Osteer Roberto, thank you very much. Got to know, would you rather do dunes or swamp? Bro, I did the sand dunes. I'd probably do the swamp if I had to do it this time around, although they wouldn't last long.

But, yeah, I don't know. I just think with the swamp, you'll be taking the load off the jerry cans. but then, you know, you're kind of walking through hip-deep, swamp, and, yeah, I don't know. Probably the sand-june's, eh? You know, sand-jones would probably be the easiest. Yeah. I can't speak from experience, though. M. Corby, thank you very much.

How much more outside the box thinking does the New Zealand SAS have to have to make use of limited resources? 100%. Yeah. Yeah, you've got a, you know, we've sort of got that number eight-y mentality. anyway in New Zealand, I'm sure it's fading away a little bit these days, but that who dares wins attitude where you do something that you wouldn't even think we'd do still run strong. You know what I mean? It's just up to your imagination.

Obviously, you've got to do your risk mitigation. You've got to make sure that the chance of success as high as you can possibly get it. So, yeah, I've been in some planning sessions. We've come up with some really crazy odd ideas, but it works. Andrew, thank you very much. What is the funniest story about your military service that you're able to share, like an inept soldier or overbearing officer? And I guess that's your whole service, not just the regiment.

Yeah, I mean, there's, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of stuff that goes on. I know one of my, one of the, one of my, I don't know, troop sergeants, he was a pretty, pretty strict man. pretty squared away like he's always squared away all the time couldn't could never put a foot wrong yeah and uh we're in candahar and they had to do a close protection task for um i think it was a cheaper defense force at the time so he was one of i think he was his pPO anyway i just so happened to be walking back through camp when he was running like sprinting sprinting as fast as he possibly could

back to the uh back to the tent and then he ran in there was running what he's doing ran in there and he came running out with his uh his m4 because he had left it behind. He was at the airport just about to board the aircraft to do this job because they had to go into Dubai and grab him and come out. And I caught him.

I was the only one that caught him, so I saved that for our job session and yeah, he didn't like that. You didn't like that at all. You put that in your back. Especially when you're a perfectionist. Yeah. Especially when you're a perfectionist, hey, you know. Yeah, you just put it in your back pocket for a...

Yeah, yeah. So what are you doing, Shane? The humor and humility Yeah Yeah 100% Yeah Sean, thank you very much

With the New Zealand Bucks donation Did you help Steve Absell into the mess hall And steal a cake back in the day Much respect from 021 badgey No We know who that was

I just say his name, Eel It was Eil I'm sure Yeah Everyone knows who I'm talking about who'd been in the regiment at the time. And there's one more, there's one more person that they will never, they'll never say was there. And we're not too sure who that was.

They protected one person. So I'd love to know who that was. So they repelled into the, into the, the broken, I assume, repelled down and stole a cake. Yeah, they saw it. They had a look through the kitchen window. They could see a cake.

Couldn't get in there. So they went up the top. They were from Mountain Troop. So they took off the top. the skylight took that off, grabbed some ropes, and then repelled in to eat the cake. And then, unfortunately, they did some time in military prison after that. Oh, my gosh. I hope that cake was worth it.

Oh, shit. Yeah, yeah. How did they get caught? Like, they held formation. These guys had frosting in their beards or what? Nah, they just owned up. The CO came out on all channels and just said, hey, this happened in the week. weekend front up or else we're going to go on a witch hunt. And they did the right thing, front

it up, but they still had to do the time. But, you know, you do the crime, you do the time. So at least they front it up. And yeah, they did really well down there anyway. You know, they up the standard. So, Jamie, is there anything that we, that we missed? Any major highlight that you want to talk about that didn't get a chance to? Not really, eh. Probably the biggest thing for me is, you know, it was the best time of my life going through the regiment, my military career, and I can't say anything about it, you know, but as you guys know, as, you know, even current serving people or veterans know that we come out the other side with a lot of character traits that sort of no longer suit the, whatever the normal environment looks like. And, you know, I talk about

a lot but the only thing that I can say is that increasing your self-awareness and identifying some of your character traits that no longer fit in the real world like for example coming from a special forces unit you know mine was high expectations of myself although I still got there but you know high expectations of others like expecting my family to you know be at the same sort of level that I am or other people and just sort of tempering that a little bit and being more realistic about the people that you're sitting with. And it does take a lot of time and a lot of soul searching.

And if you find yourself sort of dwelling in those dark spaces and thinking about some of the people that are passed by or things that you've seen, you know, you need to start using some of the tools and techniques that I've used that are in my book as well at the back there to sort of get you back on the right path. for me it was completely orientating away from the military environment. I think, you know, we talked about it before we came on,

about, you know, the natural progression would be just to go into the private security industry. Yeah. And that's fine, but for me, I knew that I had to just break free from that and reorientated into professional sport. And now, you know, as a head of campus for a school, which is, you know, if you asked me 10 years ago, would you be doing that? that I'd be a big question mark would go over my head, but it's taken a long time for me to re-create,

reform Jamie Pinell from, you know, Jamie Pinell, you know, the SA's soldier to Jamie Pinell, the, you know, the principal of a school or the head of a campus. That takes, it took, it's taken a lot of hard work. I've still got stuff to work on. But it's the self-awareness is the, biggest one. And what I mean by that is, you know, I can basically trap my emotional state in the background at any point in time, whether I'm, you know, sitting here in a podcast with you guys or in a

meeting where, you know, people are saying things that sort of get me up. If I feel like the dragon wants to come out, I just, you know, maintain calm and patience and sort of react in the appropriate manner for the situation, not overreacting or, you know, having that zero to hero response that's drummed into us, you know what I mean? Contact front, contact front, contact front, you know, going from, you know, completely relaxed to bam, you know, hitting with high-water violence, you know, I mean, that trickles into your other emotional, other situations,

and it is inappropriate. And in the early days, I'd catch myself on that. But I had to come to the realization that, you know, number one, you know, the, my family wasn't taking me away from my perceived high strategic purpose in the regiment. You know what I mean? I had to figure that out. Yeah.

That I needed to change the way I thought and felt about things in particular situations that my wife, you know, has a life too. You know, she's not going to just sit at home with my son. You know, she's highly ambitious and I need to support her in her endeavors. And, yeah, just identifying some of those dark thoughts. Yeah. I was having, particularly when I was running, you know, I'd run and be thinking about things that have happened in the past or, you know, formulating scenarios of my head that were,

that potentially could happen on the next operation and how I was going to get myself out of it. Basically just, you know, that survival on the battlefield mentality, you know what I mean, making sure you're going to survive in, but it trickles into the civilian environment, you know, if something happens when I run around the corner, you know, if there's a couple of guys, then how am I going to deal with them. I don't know if you guys had that. Maybe just me I'm crazy, but no, no, no, you know, I had to, you know, I had to, yeah, I had to change that.

And every time, I recognise that. And so every time that would happen, I would overlay that with things that I wanted to do positively in the future. And it took about, you know, six weeks to two months. And then suddenly when I'd go out for a run, I'd think like that. You know, I mean, I'd re, re sort of pruned away the old neural pathways, if you like, if you want to get people about it and regrow on the new ones. And, you know, now I was thinking more positively when I was out there running,

not, you know, getting into those dark spaces. and using that as energy to, you know, to train hard. Right. There's a lot. There's so much. There's so much. It's interesting because on our, because I don't know how it is in New Zealand, but in the United States, the language is that you transition from the military to the civilian world.

But we've talked with other guests and, you know, there's no, there's no transition. It's a reinvention. You can't be, you know, you don't transition from, you know, this person that you were into, you know, and then into something else, you have to actually reinvent yourself and kind of, I don't want to say put that on a shelf, but, but, you know, be somebody new with new motivations, you know, with new purpose, new, you know, not necessarily new connections, you have your buddies, but like a new life, not, you know, completely, I think sometimes. Yeah, 100%.

I mean, the military are bloody awesome at creating civilians into military personnel. Right. not so great back the other way they probably could if they tried but it's going to take a period of time they'd have to add that to the time that you've decided you wanted to leave you know what I mean so it's that

integration to the military and then then back into integrating back into civilian life but yeah there's just so much to it and it's identifying what doesn't fit anymore you know and in the meantime like an absence of having anyone to guide you you just got to figure

out what does that pattern a life look like that is similar to the military and what do you need to dial back and what do you want to keep keep with you because there's really good things that you can take you know particularly organisation stuff around leadership um you know strategic planning and planning and achieving the vision like you're in the civilian sector you don't there's not many people that do that well you know so um and i'm not talking about anyone in particular but but we bring some strong skill sets and then getting away that zero-de-hero response. You know, you don't need to train in the gym

like you're trying to stay operational all the time, you know what I mean? Like I had to tear everything away like I was doing Brazilian jutsu and MMA and I wanted to, you know, get a rifle and go down the shooting club and stuff like that. Now that this is not everyone, but for me, I just decided that I wasn't going to do that. And maybe I'll pick it up in the future

because I do like shooting, you know? But at the time, it just needed to be parked and just move away and create some space and then maybe I'll start going back into that again. Yeah, makes sense. Jamie, thank you so much for joining us tonight and sharing your story with us. I mean, I think it's a rare opportunity

to get to hear someone from the New Zealand Special Air Service. As you point out, there's not many of you, and fewer of you who have written a book like Serviceman Jay. So it's a really unique experience for us even to be able to hear this story straight from one of the guys who lived it. Yeah, I appreciate it, guys. I really appreciate the opportunity to come on here and tell my story and, yeah, give people an understanding of who we are and what we do. Hopefully I've achieved that. You're welcome back any time. And oh, and one other thing I remembered, correct me if I'm wrong, the New Zealand SAS has the motto, first among equals?

Nah, who dares wins is our motto. Same with the Australia's Australians and the British. The first amongst equals. is the documentary that we may, probably over a decade now, that probably your viewers would be interested in watching. I think it's on all the episodes are on YouTube, and it goes through the selection training operations, and all that, so it gives you sort of, you know, a little bit of a look in through the crack of the door.

Awesome. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Jamie. And on next Friday, we'll be back with Patrick Wenner. He was senior CIA officer. I'm going to plug a book real quick, too. Oh, yeah. So I'm going to plug this book from this.

Obscure author. Obscure author, Jack Murphy. We Defy. It goes into debt A, debt K. You know, history of special forces a lot of people don't know about. Detachment A in Germany, Detachment K in Korea, kind of Cold War type of strategies.

The nuclear program, Greenlight. What else? Blue light. Blue light. And the commander's in extremist force is all in there. This is. Yeah.

So this comes out when? December 9th. December 9th. And maybe if, you know, the author could be a little, you know, standoffish times. But maybe if I can convince him, we'll do an interview about the book. Yeah, no, I heard it's a good book, even if the author's a bit of a prick. I actually, I wrote five more pages in the manuscript. stuff new information that came to me just in the last week.

So it's still being updated as more things come to light. But it's up for pre-order on Amazon now. And the e-book is up for pre-order. The paperback will be available on the release date on December 9th. And Jamie's book, it's Serviceman J, Jamie Penel, P-E-N-N-E-L. For those of you who are listening, you can get it on Amazon. and you can get it on Kindle from Amazon. Thanks, guys.

Thank you, Jamie. Have a nice night, everyone.