The Team House - Australian SAS Operator | Mark Direen | Ep. 348

Episode Date: May 24, 2025

Mark Direen is a former Australian Special Forces (SASR) soldier with a 20-year military career, including five deployments to Afghanistan. Wounded in an IED attack in 2007, he returned to duty just six months later. After leaving the Army in 2009, he worked in security at the Australian Embassy in Kabul before moving into expedition guiding across remote regions including Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and Tasmania. His post-service life reflects his operational mindset: adapt, improve, and keep moving forward.Find Mark here:https://markdireen.com/https://pointassist.com.au/Mark's book:https://pointassist.com.au/product/whats-the-point/Bravery and Betrayal documentary :https://wanderingwarriors.org/bravery-betrayal-the-documentary/entary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3rS0h-pjqc---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Today's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! The Perfect Jean ⬇️http://theperfectjean.nyc/HOUSE15for 15% off!!For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial 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/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hi, folks. I'm Jack Murphy. This is the Team House, episode 348.

And our guest on tonight's show is Mark Doreen. He served in the Australian military, including the Australian Special Air Service, multiple deployments to Afghanistan and a couple other places. A lot to talk about here, actually, from his time in the conventional infantry all the way to today, where he is a expedition and adventure travel guide. So, Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a huge honor and pleasure. You've had some phenomenal guests on this podcast. But I don't think we have had an Australian SAS guy on the show, unfortunately. until now. So I'm glad we can make up for that. Jeez. So, Mark, tell us a little bit about your upbringing and how you grew up and sort of how that eventually took you towards military service.

Yeah, I grew up in Tasmania, the little island right down the bottom of Australia. And I've moved back to live here now. But, yeah, Tazzi was a pretty small place growing up here in the 80s. and I didn't leave. Dad was a truck driver and sort of mum worked night shifts stacking supermarket shelves and I didn't leave Tassie at all I don't think until I was almost ready to join the army. I think I went to Melbourne one weekend to watch the footy. But yeah, growing up, Dad was a big fisherman.

We used to go hunting a fair bit, you know, a lot of time out bush going camping and things like that. So I think looking back now that I'm older, a lot of adventure in my youth, motorbike riding and stuff like that. I don't know if this reference means anything to you, but is Tasmania sort of like the West Virginia of Australia? It's like a very remote out-of-the-way place?

Yeah, we've got some, it is out of the way. I mean, I'm an hour plane flight to Melbourne, which is sort of one of the biggest cities in Australia. but I think it's a third of our island is uninhabited. It's like National Park and it's a long way out there. We get some wild weather, especially in our south and southwest coast. So a bit of snow on the mountains. We're a fair way south from the equator.

So it gets some wild weather and there's a lot of remote areas and the vast majority of our population sits along the Hobart and the east coast. the north coast of Tazzi. So yeah, it's pretty, pretty rugged in spots. So military service, like what was it as like a young guy you said you hadn't even, you know, left the home island until just before you joined? I mean, what was it that kind of took you out into the world like that? Yeah, I think I had a little bit of an interest in the military growing up. I used to read a few Vietnam novels, if you like, and watched a few Vietnam movies. But I actually wanted to be a motor mechanic because I love, I suppose, probably dad being a truck driver

and I love motorbikes and things like that. I wanted to be a mechanic when I left school. But unemployment was pretty high in Tazzy in the late 80s and early 90s. And so I actually struggled to get a job. And eventually I applied to the military to go in and be a motor mechanic in the military. And even though I sort of read a few Vietnam novels, I think I was pretty naive about what joining the military entail. And so when I went into recruiting to join up, that was then when I started watching the recruiting videos for the Australian military.

And I think infantry just looked a lot more exciting than fixing motors in tanks and stuff like that. So I sort of changed my enlistment stream at the last minute and just went general enlistment to go in and do recruit training and basic infantry training, yeah. That was 93, I think. I joined the Army Reserve for six months, which is like our National Service, I think, sort of part-time.

I did that for only about six months. But then when I enlisted into the regular Army, they took me right back to the start to do the full basic training and full infantry IAT training. You know, the way it's been described to me is that the Australian military has like a, a small but very professional military that it's actually very hard to qualify just to get into

the military in general I've had people tell me. Yeah, I don't know so much about today. I do read in the papers that recruiting levels are low, so I'm not sure whether it's easier to get in or not. Yeah, back then, as I said, the reason I joined the Army Reserve in 92 was because they weren't taking regular Army infantry. They were full up and they were only taking reservists and another scheme that they had called the Ready Reserve, which was 12 months full time.

And I didn't want to do that. I just wanted to enlist into the regular army and sign up for my four years service. So, yeah, there was a lot of testing. We did a lot of aptitude testing and psych testing and things like that. Yeah, as you said, pretty small military and even today pretty highly trained, I think, being small. And so how did infantry training treat you as a young man? Oh, I loved it. Yeah, it was great. It was hard work. I mean, the recruit training wasn't really a shock because I'd done the little Army Reserve bit. You know, you got tortured a bit, but that was fine. Infantry training, I really enjoyed.

because we didn't, we no longer had to sort of march around the parade ground and, and do what we call drill. Less theory and more just going out bush and practicing our patrolling and ambushing and defensive operations, lots of weaponry, you know, you know, learning machine guns and claymowers and, yeah, it was hard work. They tortured us as they do with PT and stuff, but I enjoyed it, yeah. And as I said, I hadn't left Tassie before I joined the Army. So all of a sudden, I'm up in New South Wales.

We could go down to Sydney or Newcastle for the weekend. And it was the big city and pretty foreign to me after a sheltered childhood. And what was the first unit you got assigned to? I was the first battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment, we call it. A few of the instructors I had on my eye to. on my initial employment training or my basic infantry training were from different infantry battalion, regular army infantry battalions in Australia. At the time we had the first and the second battalion.

Three RAR was our para battalion and five seven was our mechanised battalion. But one of our instructors had deployed to Somalia with the first battalion in 93. And, yeah, I just, he had a lot of good stories, you know. he had a lot to teach just from his operational service. And so we got to put down our choices of which battalion to go to. I put the first battalion and got that. It's a light infantry battalion. I think it still is today.

But because our Black Hawk helicopters and Chinook helicopters were based in Townsville in the 90s, they did a lot more of the air mobile operations, which sort of appealed to me. So, yeah, it went off to Townsville. In North Queensland, it is. And so tell us a little bit about like kind of proceeding through the ranks. Like you served in a rifle platoon, a recon platoon, a sniper platoon. It sounds like you were kind of enjoying what you were doing and wanted more and more of it.

Yeah, when I first got to the, to the battalion, I mean, promotion was pretty slow in the 90s. People didn't really get out too quickly. A lot of guys, I think, stayed in after their Somali deployment. They enjoyed that operational service, you know, doing. the doing the job overseas. And so not a lot of people got out. Promotion was slow. When I got to the battalion,

it was just as they changed over from a, what we call MAG 58 machine gun, a 762 machine gun, they changed over at the time when I got there to a 5.56 machine gun and minima. And we had two machine guns per section. So I carried a machine gun for my first 12 months,

the number two gun we could. called it. But my my second year in the army, I was the lead scout of my 10-man section. I think we had about eight in our section at the time. And it was, I suppose, doing that scouting job for 12 months. It's where I started to get a little bit of passion for leading the way, I suppose, like being the guy at the front. And from being a scout, that's where I did our reconcours. which was a pretty tough course they ran in the battalion back then i'm sure it still is today um it was a six week course they punished you with pt there wasn't really a high dropout um maybe one or two out of a course of about 25 about platoon size would sort of drop out um but it was pretty tough

we did uh maybe two or three weeks in townsville where they did a lot of the reconnaissance theory and smashed us with heavy PT. And then we went up to Tully for a few weeks, which is one of our jungle training areas in North Queensland. And we just lived in the jungle, I can't remember, for maybe about three weeks or so, and really focused on, you know, getting good in the jungle. And they used to say back then,

if you can be a soldier in the jungle, you can be a soldier anywhere, I suppose, survive that rain and work. in that close country. We still didn't have night vision goggles and things like that then. So a lot of the tactics in the mid-90s sort of pre-the-advancement of equipment, thermal images and NVGs.

The tactics were probably still pretty similar to what they used in Vietnam, I suppose. So I really enjoyed that training. And also we're in the 1990s here. So I'm wondering, you know, what you guys were training for. I understand you're doing basic infantry and, I guess, advanced infantry training here. But was there like a mission set or a particular Australian national security threat that you were training for at that time? Yeah, well, I mean, we trained for war, I think a lot more than specifically.

But the battalion I was in was what they called the ODF battalion. And every 12 months we swapped with two RRR. And one of our tasks was to go overseas and help do services assisted evacuation. So if there was a South Pacific nation, for example, that had a lot of Australian expats living there and civil unrest occurred, we would be tasked with going over to perhaps secure an airfield so that they could help evacuate Australian citizens. That was one of the sort of specific jobs we trained for, I suppose. But now mostly just, you know, what we call war roles, I suppose, defending the nation. Was this around the same timeframe when you went to East Timor?

Yeah, so I moved to the SAS by the time East Timor kicked off. Well, let's talk about, before we get into Timor then, let's talk a little bit about, you know, how you made the jump over. You know, what inspired you to do that? So I want to take a minute today to tell you guys about the perfect gene. I've been wearing them for a few weeks now and really enjoy them. And I just want to share it with our audience. You know, sometimes genes have this problem where, you know, you guys all have seen these skinny jeans that they like crush your balls and, you know, it's just not comfortable to wear. Or the other way around, jeans are like too baggy.

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For a limited time, our listeners get 15% off their first order plus free shipping at the perfect gene. Or Google the perfect gene and use the code house 15 for 15% off. That's 15% off for new customers at the perfect gene. the perfect gene dot nyc with promo code house 15 after you purchase they'll ask you where you heard about them please support our show and tell them we sent you so fuck your khakis and get the perfect gene yeah i did the um reconnaissance course as i said spent 12 months there really enjoyed that and uh and i think going to the battalion sniper cell was kind of this to me seemed like this

natural progression. I'd gone from working in a platoon strength sort of environment down to a four or five man recon patrol. And then I just wanted to move into that sort of one to two person sniper pair operating. And yeah, I hadn't been on operations yet. I think I went to Hawaii once with the battalion on a training activity with the Marines there.

And I just, it was like a natural progression. Guys and the battalion that I was from, when they went to recon or went to snipers at some point in their career, everyone just gave this thing called the SAS selection a crack. They just, they'd give it a go. At the time, the SAS was the only full-time Special Forces unit in the Australian Army. And, yeah, again, probably naive, but I didn't know a lot about the SAS. I just signed up to do the selection course because it sounded challenging.

And it would seem like a natural progression. and all the people that I'd looked up to in the battalion had to had a go at some stage. Some came back because they weren't selected. And then there were these other guys that you never heard from again. They just went off to the SAS and you didn't know what they were doing now.

So, yeah, just gave it a crap. What was the hardest part of selection for you? Yeah, it was just generally hard, I suppose. Towards the end, it runs over several weeks It's sort of ebbs and flows by a day here or there, but normally about three weeks. And it's running into the last week that they sort of really lift the work rate. They stop feeding you.

They start the sleep deprivation and things like that. So it's not like one event. I don't think for me that was super difficult. It was just like the further you got into the course, the more drained you were of, you know, the more exhausted you became. The less food and sleep they gave you, the harder it got. There are a few events that were a bit like a rest for me, I suppose.

Coming from that recon and sniper background, I was pretty good with my navigation. And we did a couple of solo navigation exercises on selection. It ran for two or three days. I think one ran for three days, had to navigate around a field training area. I did about 110 kilometres or so in full gear. But I kind of enjoyed that one because I had no directing staff barking down,

you know, giving me push-ups for not having more water bottles full or something like that, you know, like that was the bit where I got left alone, even though they had to do a lot of walking. So they were good, but yeah, it just got hard towards the end for me, as it does for most people. I do recall it must have been like maybe within the last five days or so, they gave us a two-hour period to sleep one night. And so within our little team, there was probably about five of us or so left in our little patrol. And we just divvied up whatever the amount of time was.

I can't remember, maybe 20 minutes pick it. And you could sleep for the rest of the two hours. And I hit my 20-minute picket, and I actually couldn't physically stay awake. I can remember. And one of the guys that was in my team was from the sniper section in Townsville with me. It was just sheer coincidence that we both applied for selection, both got as far as we did in it. And to that point, we were both in the same team. It was just like fluke.

but I was comfortable enough to wake him up and go, hey, mate, like, I'm going to fall asleep here, and it's not going to be good for the lot of us. And so he just did my picket for me, which was awesome. But the next day, I sort of spotted for him as well. He was struggling after an ob's course, and I helped him out. So then talk to us a little bit about after selection and going into SAS training. What was that pipeline like? Yeah, so our selection course is exactly that. It's the only course in the Australian military at the time and for a long time after. I mean, I'm not current now, but it's the only course in the Australian military where it was

that was not designed to teach you anything. It was purely designed to test you. So they ran that three-week course, break you down, find out who you are, and just decide whether they want you in the unit. And so if you got selected from the selection course, it was that they deemed you suitable for training. We then went into a, for me it was a bit over 12 months, about 12 month period where we did all our courses to go to an operational squadron. And that was phenomenal. I'd come from a military in Townsville where there was always, you know, you were counting the number of blank rounds that you had for training.

or you know you'd go away to do a training activity and there was one set of cam creams per two people or something like that. You know, everything was very budget restricted. And we got to the SAS and it was kind of like here you can shoot as much as you need to. Just you've got to pass these shoots. The training was excellent and we just did lots of it. for over 12 months, whether the course ran for five days or whether it ran for two or three, five weeks, you'd finish course, one course on a Friday and you'd start your next one on the Monday, as long as you passed.

Most guys, I mean, my selection course, we had, I think about a thousand or 1,200 or something apply. we had about 120 or 30 start the actual selection course. We had 28 finish and I think we had about we had 25 selected. So there's only about three or so that didn't get selected off the course. And then out of that 25 or so, we only had one or two fail training in the reinforcement cycle. And one of the toughest courses to pass in that reinforcement. cycle would generally be what they are calling now, I think, is our target prosecution course.

It was, for me, what we called our basic close quarter battle course where you'd do room entry and you had to get good with a whole suite of weapons. I mean, they trained us on the M4 because the Australian Army used the Ostai. But, yeah, not only the M4, you'd be, I mean, it was my introduction to pistol shooting. I hadn't done pistol shooting before that. And that was pretty difficult to pass. You only had a few weeks to get up to speed to pass the qualification shoot. We did the H&K weapon systems and things like that.

Yeah, but the actual reinforcement cycle, a lot of courses. One of the first ones was an actual reconnaissance course. In the SAS, they called it the patrol course. It was a bit similar to the reconnaissance course I've done. It was out in the field. in the bush environment, five-man patrols, close target reconnaissance, things like that. But it was a lot more special operations focused than I'd done in one hour. In one hour we had three methods of insertion.

We either walked in, got a truck, or we were, which we thought was quite special, qualified to repel out of helicopters. So we did a lot of black hawk rappelling into the jungle and things like that. even on my basic patrol course in the SAS, the half a dozen training patrols, I think we had to swim in on one from the ocean. We walked in on one. We had a light aircraft insertion on another one, sort of an agent sort of insertion, things like that.

So a lot more special operations focused. You had to pass that one. nice, different patrol members in the SAS will specialise in different areas. We have both medics and six for our basic patrol qualification. I qualified as a medic, which at the time was a six-week advance first aid course, if you like, but you could canulate and do trackies and a few more sort of advanced medical things. And then you would do some ride-alongs with the local paramedics in Western Australia or

Sydney or something like that. So I specialised as a medic, which was good. And then we have different insertion skills, all we did. We had different insertion skills then whether you were a diver, a free fall or a mobility operator. And going back to my love of vehicles as a kid and motorbike riding and things, like that, I requested and got to specialize as a vehicle operator. So we did truck courses, driving courses, full-wheel driving courses. At the time, we had our six-wheel patrol vehicles.

We did a motorbike course and we did a quad course and things like that. And then the whole suite of the courses that everyone else does. Close quarter battle, as I said, which was encompassed hostage rescue. we did a basic and advanced course of that. Did demolitions as well as method of entry. Did a parachute course, a standard static line parachute course, more boat handling. Yeah, I can't remember them all.

Survival course was a good one. I've done a few survival courses already, but they dumped us in the jungle in North Queensland again for a few weeks. A lot of training over the 12 months. It was great. And just to speak for a moment about the mission of the SAS, like, correct me if I'm wrong, I've heard that the core mission of the SAS is strategic reconnaissance and unconventional warfare. Is that?

Yeah, that's pretty accurate when you sort of say a core mission. It was definitely sort of our core mission was that long-range strategic reconnaissance. when I joined. In saying that, though, Australia, as we always already said, is a small military, and the SAS at the time would do whatever the conventional military wouldn't do. So even in training quite a lot, they'd come up with scenarios. We need this effect, how are we going to do it? And it was up to the squadron commander and the patrol commander to come up with some ideas

on how they might achieve this goal or achieve this effect in the battle space. One of the things you had mentioned to me is, of course, the Australian military and Australian Defence Forces being small, you guys also have the domestic counterterrorism mission. And you said you worked security for the Olympics in 2000? Yeah, so because I was a sniper in the infantry battalion,

as soon as I finished my reinforcement cycle, our sniper training within the SAS was more of an advanced skill set. And so when you came and we also rotated through a system we used to, they don't do it anymore, where we had three operational Sabre squadrons, as we called them, and they would rotate through a three-year cycle. The first year would be a lot of training so that the guys that had just finished a three-year cycle could, do things like promotion courses and they would be the blokes that would drag back to instruct the new guys in the training squadron and different things like that.

The second year, they did what was called war rolls. You were the one that was ready to go overseas on a moment's notice if that's what was required. And then the third year, you did the domestic counterterrorism, which was something that the SAS developed before my time. probably in the late 70s and through the period of the 80s, they really developed the domestic counterterrorism themselves a lot because they didn't have much capability

sort of pre-1980s. But for me, because I was a sniper in the battalion, they had a shortage in sniper troop for the Sydney Olympic Games and they recognised this by the start of 1999, the Olympic Games were in mid-2000, I think. And so I got sent to do the SAS sniper courses shortly after I got to my operational squadron so that I could go into sniper troop

for the Sydney Olympic Games. That was good. That was pretty long. You did a sniper course, which was kind of six weeks, similar to the standard military one. It was fieldcraft and navigation and, you know, getting good at your basic base. war rolls sniping tasks, learning how to stalk and all that sort of stuff.

Again, not a lot of laser rain finders and stuff around in those days. So you're doing judging distance activities and you finish that. And then I, after the six-week sniper course went on, basic sniper course for the SAS, went on to a counter-terrorism sniper course, which was a lot more urban containing a stronghold where the terrorists were and things like that. And so doing security for the Olympics was that, were you in sort of like a counter-sniper role in this particular case? Yeah, we did a lot of training in the lead up to the Olympics.

In sort of late 99, we were spending time in Sydney, conducting a lot of mission rehearsals. And we had a few other roles within the sniper troop, obviously to support the assault troops. We had a couple of assault troops, and we would support them, so they would quite often maybe want to approach shooters for leading into a target or different bits and pieces.

I used to do a lot of liaison with military, with civilian assets, emergency services and things like that. But then once the sort of Olympic Games rolled around, We were just on standby. In the back of a truck waiting? No, I suppose funnily and quite good for us was we would go to the venues, basically. And what was a bit of a dead giveaway for the security guys at the Olympics was we had these Olympic passes that would let us go anywhere.

No one else had them. And so we had every letter of the alphabet and every symbol you could get, on your pass and quite often you'd go into watch a sport. I mean, I've got to, fortunately, got to see every event, I think, every international sport at the Olympics. But quite often would get stopped by the security guard at the entrance because he thought my pass was fake because it just had too many, too much access on it.

But we'd go and go and watch the events and remain on call. And we'd have to supply guys to the duly. A's on with just the security control centers and things like that. Just be ready to go. And then tell us a little bit about East Timor. This is, I take it pre-9-11 or right around that time frame. This was sort of the thing that Australia had going on at the time. Yeah, and while the Sydney Olympic Games seemed like a huge blessing,

when I got sent to that squadron in 99, It was pretty shortly after that we were in training for the Olympics in Sydney and East Timor kicked off. So a different squadron was the first one to deploy to East Timor in 1999. East Timor for the Australian military went on for a long time. I had a great trip. So I finished the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, got a bit of Christmas leave, I think,

and then deployed to East Timor very early in 2001. which was a great time to be there in the fact that I was there maybe February, I think, and stayed until about September when they had their actual very first independent democratic election. So it was great to be there in the lead up to the election, to go and see the rallies for voting and things like that. Yeah, really enjoyed my time in Timor. and a classic, I suppose, SF role that we had for the six or seven months. I was there, my team.

We did that basic sort of field reconnaissance, conduct OPs, ground-truthing. We would roll through a QRF where every now and then if there were militia coming across the border, we'd get a call out to go down and rope in and conduct a tracking task. to try and chase up the militia. I did VIP protection for some of the Australian diplomats that wanted to come to East Timor to visit the troops. So we did some humanitarian a patrols which were hugely rewarding,

where we would just go out to remote villages, just to sort of do that classic sort of ground-truthing and collecting of information. But at the same time, we would do medical clinics for people that, Right. Didn't really have access to any health care or anything like that. Some really interesting situations where you would come across people with dislocated shoulders

and they'd been dislocated for five years from when they fell out of a tree once or the tropical ulcers were always a classic. You would come across locales that had some sort of tropical ulcer or skin infection. And it had grown over months to be almost, you know, taking over. a lower limb or something like that. And you'd give them some oral antibiotics and it'd be gone in days. Because they didn't really have access to antibiotics or anything like that. It was amazing to sort of see some of those things from a medical perspective. So, yeah, big variety in roles we did.

No real kinetic, no contacts for me. I mean, I tracked down a few militia. and things like that, a lot of small-star scuff. But there was a bit of fighting in East Timor with militia, but it all occurred before I got there. So my six-month deployment was pretty quiet. But super interesting. I mean, it was the first time I'd been overseas

and carrying live rounds and operations. And I was, yeah, I was out there in the bush with militia. So they would have had a crack if they thought they could have got away with it. And then 9-11 happens. And I mean, I want to ask you, like, did the Australian S-A-S think that they were going to be a part of this war on terror immediately? I mean, what was sort of the thought process for you guys? Yeah, for me, actually, September 11, I was in East Timor. And I was cleaning my gear to return back to Australia.

It was the end of my deployment. And we were based at a place outside Dilley in the hills. And the next morning I was scheduled to wake up, drive back to Dilley, and jump on a plane back to Australia. And someone came actually running into my tent. I was sleeping in a tent in our little compound. And sort of said, hey, man, you've got to come and watch the news. There's some crazy stuff going on in the States.

and at the time I was pretty tired. I knew I had to get up early and I'd only just finish cleaning my gear. I said, I'll check it out in the morning, thanks. And he sort of ran off, I suppose, to the next tent to tell the next guy. And I didn't think much of it. I went to sleep and when I woke up the next day and started getting that news coming through,

I knew it was a big deal, as I think everyone did. But because I'd just finished a six-month deployment overseas, I knew I wouldn't be in the first group to go away if blakes went away. I think it was pretty shortly, though, after I got back to Perth, that, maybe days. It's hard to remember, but it was pretty shortly after I got back to Perth that I spoke to a few of my friends, a few of my good mates, some that I'd done selection with or served in the battalion with but they are in a different squadron to me and they were like hey

the whole squadron's going to Afghan so that would yeah and you know shortly after late 2001 um yeah they knew it was a big deal and Australia was pretty keen to support

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I love Ghostbed. Thanks, guys. And at what point did your squadron get brought into it? Yeah, we did that first 12 months. We did four-month deployments. And my squadron was the last one to go. So I think my deployment was around mid-2002 until December. We got home just before Christmas in 2002.

But, yeah, again, I can sum up the deployment with, it was for me at the time, it was pretty epic. Again, didn't get into any big battles or anything like that, arrested a few militia. But by the time I got there in mid-2002, it had quietened down a fair bit. I suppose the Taliban that could get across the border into Pakistan had done so. and they were sort of lying low to see how things were going to play out. And so there was still a few criminals about,

we drove through one too many minefields by accident, but not, yeah, we didn't get into any shootouts. What part of the country were you in? Where in Afghanistan were you that time? The first squadron, first SAA squadron that went, I'm pretty sure, based out of Candahar, but the second two based out of Bagram. Bagram was sort of up and running by then.

But in saying that, I mean, the deployment for me wasn't spent in Bagram. We flew into Bagram. We got the vehicles. We had our six-wheel long-range patrol vehicles in country. The squadron, the mobility troop that was there before mine handed the vehicles over to us. We spent a week in Bagram doing some servicing and mechanical repairs and, and went out to the range and test fired our heavy weapons and all that sort of stuff. And we rolled them onto a hirk and flew down to Jalalabad, rolled off the hirk,

and then drove the border between Afghanistan's back. Pakistan, I think our first patrol in country was in vicinity of about 50 days or so. It was a pretty long patrol. Did you get a resupplied? Yeah, it was a big patrol. We got resupped in the field. So every few weeks or so, well, we needed it because we needed fuel and food. But every few weeks, a US Chinook had come in and bring us fuel and food.

And we'd set out again on another two weeks. So my four-month deployment, I actually only did three patrols or only did three jobs. The first one was that long-range patrol down the border. We rolled the cars off a Herc in in Jalalabad and just patrol talking to the locals, ground-truthing and it was pretty amazing. Down through Koust, which had obviously had been a bit of a hub for the Taliban through the 80s and 90s, I think. Visited some really interesting spots that had been,

bombed sort of straight after 9-11. At the end of that trip, we came back to Bagram and we flew out and did, I think, it was about a six-day OP. They just dropped our patrol back in the field after we spent a day or two in base, having a hot feed. And it was actually an American, I think, I can't remember. It might have been 10th Mountain. We're doing this sweep down the valley and clearing some villages.

And so we just dropped on the hill for the five days pre that operation and just sort of, you know, fed in back to headquarters before the actual job. And then while they did the sweep, that was pretty good. But some of the most horrendous walking I'd done, I mean, from SAS selection and even East Timor, there's plenty of hules to walk up and down in East Timor, which we did. but to get from our insertion point about 20Ks or something, I think it was to our OPE point for that task was some of the most horrendous walking I think I've ever done. And you needed to carry the water because we couldn't get water locally. So that was good.

We went back to base after that and then went back out on another vehicle patrol, which that second one I remember was I think 69 days. So we just, yeah. Oh my God. I trolled around drinking chai with the locals. And I feel hugely fortunate to have done that patrol. Yeah. After everything else that came, at the time, I probably didn't appreciate it.

I thought it was going to be the norm. But to my last deployment where I don't think I stayed in the field overnight because we were just flying in and out targeting, we lived with the locals. We would actually quite often be driving around. We'd hide in the field a lot, you know, going to a layup point and run pickets. But then often we'd talk to locals in a village and they'd say,

hey, come stay with us. And they'd have chai and they'd give us dinner. That's amazing. It's probably the one deployment where I learnt the most about the real Afghan culture, I think. which was really good. And so, yeah, we just going to. I've heard that some of the American commanders really loved you guys.

And I think maybe the Danish and maybe the Norwegians also, because your Reki guys can stay out in the field for so long. When the Danes are like, yeah, we can occupy that O.P. for 20 days. And they're like, whoa, our teams can only do it for like four days. Like, what the hell? And you're talking about 50, 60-day patrols. I mean, that's pretty hardcore. Yeah, I mean, we had our vehicles and we, and that was my bread and butter.

Yeah. We could live out of our vehicles. I mean, we, we would, we changed the gearbox and we had a gearbox go in a car. And so we, you guys loaded the new gearbox in and sent it out to the field and we changed it out. You guys are the descendants of, you know, the long range desert patrol, right, from World War II. Yeah, yeah, well, we like to think so, I suppose. that was certainly pretty epic those blokes, hardcore. But yeah, we just stayed in the field.

I mean, we initially got that job. This is my understanding, and it's a story that was told to me. I wasn't there, obviously. But when our sort of our second squadron was in country, I think the first squadron, that was, you know, Torabora, and they did a lot of OPs. And we had an American, we didn't have. have our own J-Tax back in 2001.

So it was around that Torrebao, time, we realized, hey, we need this skill set inherent in our patrols. And so we'd take American J-Tax, but they did a lot of APing. They did a lot of cert. They were still looking for the Taliban a lot. I mean, one of my major jobs in 2002 was still ask the locals where Osama bin Laden is, which we did. We drove around the border looking, asking the locals.

Yeah, he's over that way. they were telling us then. But by the time our second squadron got there, I suppose the fighting had died down a fair bit, America said to us, what can you do? How can you help us? What capabilities can you provide?

And whoever our CA was at the time sort of just went, well, my guys are pretty good with strategic reconnaissance. We'll send them out in the field and they can drive around in their cars and talk to the locals. And I think whoever was in charge back then sort of went, okay, it sounds good and just let us do our thing. But it was then just hugely impressed that, yeah,

we went out into the field for 69 days and didn't come back and just kept punching in report after report after report, just been to this village. They haven't, they thought we were Russian, they haven't seen anyone here since the Russians were here type thing. There was a lot of that, yeah. Yeah, it's a difficult job, but, you know, you guys being so mobile and being out there for so long, you got a lot done. And like you said, delivering ground truth to the commanders.

There's a lot of that. Yeah. And if we had a... No, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say, if we could have, if it had a state sort of that, I mean, my longer opinions of the whole thing was a smaller force would probably be better. and if we had have kept doing what we were doing back then, it might have worked out a bit better for us,

but we were trying to keep people safe too. What was the second deployment to Afghanistan? How was it different than the first? I didn't go back until 2007. The SAS sort of went back 12 months before that. So my second deployment was 2007. And by that time, the Australian military,

had been given the province of Urasgarn to help with. I mean, there was Americans obviously there, the Dutch were there, but yeah, I arrived back, landed on the dirt strip in Tarancourt and got off the plane to still just kind of do the same motor operandi where we jump in our cars and go out, but we were no longer doing reconnae. of this sort of environment, we were doing reconnaissance to push the Taliban back out of TK because they were trying to come back and impose their dominance.

They'd definitely, they'd come back in force to sort of take back over. And so we were literally trying to push the Taliban back out of TK as far as we could so that the reconstruction effort could get in there so that the newly, flagelling Afghan military could get in there and provide the security. And it was the full SOTG task force now with an S. It was no longer an SAS squadron that I deployed within 2002. It was just an SAS troop and a commando company. So it was a pretty combat capable unit, the old SOTG in Afghanistan,

right back from 2006. How was that relationship, that working relationship like with the commandos? Like I know there historically there's been some rivalries, but I also would like to ask you, like how do they work together? Like how did that work out for you guys? Because there's a lot of capability there too. Yeah. And it's obviously well documented that it was pretty strained over the years.

We did some joint operations. I mean, I did some support tasks for commando sweeps where, you know, that classic SAS patrol we can hold a put in an AP on a mountain 24 hours before the commandos came in for a sweep we did that a couple of times um i think i think it's some of the inter-unit rivalry um and i sort of in my opinion inter-unit rivalry can be good um we definitely had it when i was in an infantry battalion our our our brother of battalion two r hour across the road we used to get stuck into each other all the time. Perhaps over the years, the Commando SAS inter-unit rivalry went a bit far, as in there was

a bit of dislike on some people, but I will clarify with some people. So I never really had it. I had mates in commandos. And I think regardless of Commando or S-A-S, a lot of the guys, most guys, were focused on their job were getting as good at their job as they could get. And a few blokes that were worried about what the other guy was doing. I think they were a minority personally. I mean, I didn't ever experience any of the inter-unit rivalry much.

Yeah, but, you know, it probably could have been all helped a lot by that sort of Colonel, Brigadier General rank level giving a bit more direction on roles and tasks. Right, right. There was a bit of blurring of roles and tasks there. The two units are competing for the same mission. Yeah, if they wanted us to do the same task, we'll come out and say that. They kind of never really did want us to do the same task, I don't think, but it was a huge grey space and soldiers don't work well in that gray space.

they need their missions given to them. You know, we want to know what the strategic intent is so we can help achieve it. Right, right, right. Yeah, I think the unit rival was blown out of proportion by the media, trying to, you know, trying to find a story that was going to get lots of clicks. It was never as bad as it did exist, but it was probably mostly existing by people that were more worried about

what the other person was doing and less about what they were doing. Yeah, it sounds like it's more a few individuals in each unit rather than an actual unit rivalry. Yeah, it would probably come and go on a particular deployment. Who were the big personalities on that deployment on both sides? And they'd clash a bit. And around this time frame, you also did a trip over to Iraq? Yeah, well, I was in Afghan in 2007. which I openly say to most people now, 2007 was my introduction to war.

We got shot out a lot. We got into quite a few ticks. Fortunately for me, no big battles, but we got into quite a few skirmishes, I suppose. We caught and killed a few bad guys. But it was mid that 2007 trip that I think it was the defence minister from Australia was doing a trip to. the what we call the MEEAO, the Middle East area of operations.

And so they sent two of the teams we had to meeting in the Middle East, flying to Baghdad so he could visit the troops, Aussie troops that were there, and then flying into Kabul, into Afghan to visit the Aussie troops there, taking back to the Middle East and then get back into Afghanistan and recontin operations. So I focus my time for the protective duty in Iraq. But it was pretty simple.

It was kind of just a bit of an eye opener for me. I mean, I landed at the biapocat. I think it was the rhino. They had this armored bus that would drive you from the airport into the green zone. Oh, yeah. We were just talking about this, like maybe on the last episode, uparmored bus. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, we're our Aussies and they're like, oh, we need you to go and do some recies of the locations that the minister wants to visit the U.S. Embassy and all this.

And it's like, oh, yeah, well, how do we get in there? I'll just catch the bus. So we got on the bus and, you know, good old Aussie military, drove into town. We got off the bus at the bus terminal, which I, from memory, was just nearby. The U.S. Embassy was up the road or something and got mortared, which I'd been mortared a few times in, in Afghan but not standing in the middle of a city. Like that was the bit that I was like, this joins a bit of a spin out.

And there were some contacts nearby or whatever. And more did as in we, my medic who was with me, I actually had to give first aid to someone, I think, who got hit by shrapnel. We got more than the bus stop. We did that job. We had Aussie trainers out on a few little,

fobs around Baghdad. So we literally went obviously had Helo's when the minister came in to flying around and were there for a few weeks and then headed back to Afghan to get back into the war fighting again. Well, tell us about going back to Afghanistan. Ah, yeah, we were doing, still doing vehicle operations, but obviously a lot more kinetic. Everywhere we went, someone to chew out of us, spotters watching us all the time. Because you're in cars, it's pretty hard to hide, especially in Urzgan. I mean, you're driving around deserts. And so we would drive down valleys, basically, put in a vehicle layout point sort of in

the desert. And back then we could still operate at night. So we do night patrols through the green zone, have a lot of good effect doing that, catch lots of bad guys moving around at night. But yeah, we'd sort of, that was how we operated. We'd drive down valleys, you know, from point to point, try and. and be as stealthy as we could. It's pretty hard to do because they just,

as soon as they knew we were leaving TK, the spotters would just follow you, whichever direction you went. Try and catch a few spotters here and there. Try and catch the more enemy combat teams, I suppose. Any coalition militia, I think we called them at the time. We're really trying to catch those combat teams

that were operating in those valleys. Yeah. Any success doing that? Was it pretty difficult? to corner them? No, absolutely. Some of the best success, I suppose, were we'd be moving in valleys and the enemy would think that we were still out with our vehicles, basically camped out for the night.

And so they would be starting to move around between villages or visit the villages to ask them, you know, this is what I think they were doing. So we could literally just go down, fully nodded up. patrol around. They had no night fighting capability. I remember on one occasion we were putting a blocking position in for a commande sweep actually, which was meant to come early the next day. And moving into position that night, we were literally walking past fully tooled up bad guys. I mean, they had chest rigs and AKs and they were standing around. And later that night, we got into a good stouch.

But we were literally trying to move past them to get to our blocking position. And it wasn't that far into our trip or either to be that real kick in the guts that, holy cow, there's a lot of bad guys out here. And this stuff is actually really serious. Yeah, and you must have had some sense that it was obviously getting more intense with each deployment. Yeah, that was, and that was east of Taryn Cot in a place called the Mirambad Valley. There was a lot of fighting out that way. That sort of ran from the eastern side of Afghan, ran into the Urasgarn province. Came down past, pardon me, the valley sort of started out near Kazarizgan, which was near a fog called Anaconda,

which saw a lot of fighting. had an American ODA team there for a while. And it was coming back from there that I got myself blown up, drove over an IED. And the next year it was where Mark Donaldson, the Australian SAS guy, won his Victoria Cross, in the ambush where he rescued the interpreter. So there was a lot of enemy movement around that valley.

The Dutch used to get hit out there a lot and badly. They lost a few blokes out there on that deployment I was on in 2007. So a lot of our fighting sort of east of TK and north around Shora. We got into a few fights north of TK. And actually just after my deployment, I think about a month after, that was where a good mate of mine, Matt Locke got killed in a shootout. I think that was about October 07. Wow.

And yeah, lots of fighting. We were, we were catching baggoy. I mean, there was one occasion where we literally pulled up in our cars. We'd drive off the road. This looks like an area we can defend if we need to. We'll stop here and have lunch. And typical Aussies, we're pretty security conscious, I suppose. We thought to us as, oh, we'll do a patrol.

around our cars once we've we've stopped here. And we the road we were on sort of ran down towards a river and then did a hard left turn and drove sort of along the side of the river. So we stopped on the approach to this river and got out and thought we'd do this bit of patrol. But once we walked sort of 50 to 100 metres away from the car, my lead, I was the two I see of the patrol in for the majority of my 2007 trip the second in charge we had a six man patrol ran out of two vehicles to long range patrol vehicles so we had three guys in each and as the

two I see you normal foot movements you you stay at the back of the trial um cover the rear and make sure no one gets left behind and from the back the lead scout opened fire across the river But as soon as he did, I could then look up because it was pretty open until you got to the other side of the river and then it was kind of classic Afghan orchards and trees and compounds. And I could see the two guys sort of returning fire, but making a run for it mostly just to sort of get away. We cleared across the river and what we found when we got to the other side was a massive trench system that they dug. It was kind of pretty epic. There was three big, you know, heavy weapons pits, if you like. They've fully overhead protected, sandbagged.

Holy shit. Big logs covering them up. And we part, it was basically like a perfect entrenched ambush position facing where we'd exactly stopped. So if they'd had the fighters on the day, we would have got our asses handed to us. but fortunately for us they didn't know we were coming and unfortunately for those two guys they didn't expect us to get out of our cars

and clear across the river. But yeah, all of a sudden, you're staying one step ahead of them because you're doing everything right. But you're doing night patrols and you're passing the tooled up bad guys. You're catching blokes off guard at night because, you know, your technology is just better and your tactics are just better.

You're better trained. You've got better gear. And then during the daytime, you're clearing through entrenched areas. I mean, it's from before that, from sort of my East Timor time and a lot of training in an infantry battalion. You get to the point where you're like, holy cow, this is actually really serious. And even if you do everything right, you can still come unstuck one day. through sheer bad luck. Yeah.

And that's the life we chose to live, I suppose. And it sounds like after that you guys were filling more of kind of like a straight counterterrorism role. Yeah, that was a weird blend between still sort of doing reconnaissance a fair bit, but trying to be as kinetic as we can. We're still trying to degrade the anti-colleition militia's capability. We're really trying to put the pressure on them so that the military behind us can get in and fixed stuff.

That my deployment ended when I drove over an IED and it was up at that FOB Anaconda. So the American team that was based there literally, I don't know how they word got through, but they sent word down to the Aussies. Hey, can anyone come up and give us a hand? We're having a really tough month. And they were basically just getting shot at every second day. whether it was sort of direct weapons, rockets, machine guns. They actually, on I think a couple of occasions,

the enemy put in frontal assaults on their compound, which was a bit of, you go from that mindset where we're chasing one and two bad guys around a paddock to getting towards the end of your trip and the enemy are actually massing in numbers to overrun outposts. It's like, yeah, this is, it's not getting, it's not getting better. So we actually went up to do some, you know, disruption operations around Kazurzgan

and the valleys around it. A lot of bad guys up there. We drove ran in our cars, which they literally couldn't do six months later. Pushed the enemy back. Commandos came up and did a massive sweep through, and they got into a few big gun shootouts as well. up there. But it was on the way back from that operation that I drove over the ID.

And it was really, again, trying to maneuver around the battlefield with cars in an environment that's super difficult to maneuver around. When we left, I'll tell the story, if you like. Yeah, please. quickly. We left the fob after a couple of weeks to head back to Tarrin County. The only way we could get back is drive our cars back. And there's actually only two roads back.

One, you drive straight down the valley to TK, down that Mirambade Valley to get back, or you drive sort of north, go over the mountain range into the Chora area and then come back into TK from the north. We had two call signs up there. The commandos had their company up there as well. And obviously they'd been doing a fair bit of fighting over the last few days as well. And they got into a few ticks on the way back also. But as the SAS troop, we went, well, we'll take the northern route, go over the mountains. I didn't want to just drive out of the fob noting that they could be putting IEDs in the road.

we had to go through the town centre. That's pretty dangerous. So we patrolled on foot for about 12 hours prior, through the night. Just my team. And by this stage as well, my team leader had injured his back. And so he'd been, he'd gone out of the field. And I just basically got a field promotion to team leader. Got another guy to fill in.

So he still had a six-man team. But got a field promotion and I've been the team leader, I suppose, for maybe three or four weeks. We did our, we patrolled through that town that night, seemed all pretty clear. The vehicles drove down and married up with us the next morning. And our major tactic for the day, I suppose,

was just go as quick as we can. If we can get over the mountain range before the enemy can know which way we're going and react, we've got our best chance of getting, back into the next valley where you don't need to drive on roads any longer. Well, that sort of mid that morning, we got a message from headquarters saying that there was an enemy commander in a particular village that we were going to be driving past. And so we stopped nearby, put our fire support teams on the high ground,

and one of the patrols went down into that village to try and locate this, target that was down there. They messed around for a few hours, couldn't find him. But we kind of knew that, you know, something was up because there were spotters everywhere. You could see them. They might be sort of out of range of your, even your heavy weapons, but you could see them. But then by the time we jumped back in our cars to drive over the mountain range, it was now running into early afternoon.

So we kind of shot ourselves in the foot for the, let's get out as quick as we can. And to compound our problems that day, we actually blew some CV joints in our vehicles. So we had two vehicles break down, which we had to fix on top of the mountain. We could fix them by either replacing the CV or just taking it out and not using six-wheel drive anymore,

but it's obviously time-consuming to do it. When we're on top of the mountain fixing the cars, I said to the boss, the troop commander of the troop, I'll take my team forward and I'll try and clear down this valley, this really thin valley we've got to drive through because that'll deny the enemy the use of the ground. Obviously, we want to get to the next valley where we can manoeuvre and not take that predictable route. I drove down the valley as far as I could sort of go. The boss had given me a bit of a control measure in the fact that he sort of said, don't go any further than this grid point. And so I got to what I thought was that grid point. And there's sort of high ground both sides.

I was on a bit of a flat bit with a creek and it was only about 100 metres wide, I think. And we waited there for a few minutes. But what happened was a guy came walking out of dead ground on the road. road we were on, walking towards us. And straight away, he looked really, really suss. He's actually carrying, like, this box, looked like a cardboard box, maybe twice the size of a shoe box, and he's walking right towards us. And we're sitting there quietly, watching him, and then he sort of gets to sort of about that 40 or 50 metres away, and he looks up and it was amusing in the fact that he was so surprised to see us.

he sort of put the box on the ground and looked to me like he was pretending to do his shoes up, but that was weird because they don't wear laces in their shoes. They all have slip on shoes. He then picked that box back up, did a left turn, and tried to hightail it out of there, just get away. And so I turned to the driver and said, let's drive over there and pick him up. He was still on sort of the flat ground, and we started the car up and went to drive forward. and that's where the next thing I remember was just being engulfed by the dust.

Don't remember the bang. I suppose, you know, your senses are all shutting down, but I didn't go unconscious at any point and I can still like really imprinted on my mind the moment of the everything was great. And then the next thing I can remember is I was looking back at and I could see the vehicle and because we didn't have roofs on our LRP,

so I'd been ejected out and thrown. And I think I was still airborne. And our cars way fully loaded with ammo and water and everything. They were about 7 ton, a bit over 7 ton probably. And I can remember seeing it off the ground, a couple of meters off the ground. So that was a bit of a bit of a spin-out. I landed maybe 10 or 15 metres from the car.

I went to get up and I couldn't fill my legs. My first thought, and lots of people probably have had it in the, been in the same situation, is I need a gun. I need my gun to defend myself. And I look back at the LRP, which was now sort of resting on the road, all the fuels, you know, emptying out of it down the hill towards me. It's a bit of a mess. But my M4 was sort of on the ground near the car. I could see it. But I couldn't get up to get it.

And it was kind of at that point, I remember my teammates from the vehicle behind. running past they were putting out security on the hills and medic come and got me and the driver and I were flown out back to tk first but then down to kandahar I made a pretty good recovery after it all the doctors the american doctors in candahar told me that it's just the shockwave passing through your body causes a lot of swelling yeah um and it's It's that swelling that was restricting sort of movement a lot. And so, you know, 36 hours later I was hobbling out of the hospital on crutches, I suppose, to start the rehab.

Wow. Yeah, but we, it wasn't the only IED you had in the road that day. We lost an explosive detection dog or the troop as they continued down the valley, lost the explosive detection dog shortly after that as well, Raz that was killed in, uh, you know, September 07, yeah. I mean, it's pretty incredible that you got blown out of the vehicle like that, but we're more or less okay. I mean, obviously not uninjured, but I mean, when you described it,

I was like, it sounds like you lost your legs or something, I mean. Yeah, no, I'm pretty good now. I mean, I've still got a few injuries. Well, I've got a few injuries that have troubled me since. Like discs and stuff and the vertebrae. dodgy back and knees. I have trouble with my joints, I think, and more than a 50-year-old should. And I think it's probably from that big shockwave, you know,

it's just degrading your body faster than it should be. But, yeah, it was probably that IAD was pretty big. Could have been the years of MLE as well. Could have been all the Barrett 50-calified. Who knows? So rehab, I mean, you're still a part of the SAS going through this rehab process? Yeah, they flew me back to Australia. I think I had maybe two months of full sick leave, stay home and rest up.

I mean, my body was purple, which was, I had no shrapnel injuries, which was great, but my body was purple just from that. Like bruised all the way around. Oh, no, it was more internal bleeding. Oh, wow. superficial. Yeah. It was just bruising. And, you know, once that went down, I mean, I laid it on the couch for two weeks. I couldn't do anything. But I just literally went home. So I didn't go back to the unit at all much. It was maybe about two months. I then reported

back to the docks. They took more morphine tablets off me. And I hit the gym and, oh, the pool, and went to the pool, went to the physio, told everyone, I was good to go and redeployed back to Afghanistan, I think about four months later. Wow. Four or five months later. I mean, to be honest, I wasn't good to go. But, you know, I wanted to get back into the fight. I'd go back and help my mates out.

My squadron was going back the next year. And the next year I didn't do a kinetic warfighting deployment. I did a deployment that was a lot more orientated around intelligence and reconnaissance work. and stuff like that. So it was kind of a job that I thought, yeah, I can do this. Yeah, no, that's pretty cool that they helped you facilitate that. Tell us, let's get into, like, it sounds like maybe the, you know, final deployments you had in Afghanistan, it was more doing high-value target strikes.

Yeah, yeah. And hugely different, too, I mean, from 2002 driving around in California. with not much action. 2007, lots of action driving around in cars. It evolved a lot while I wasn't there. The Americans basically said, hey, we'll put on heloes for you to really target the enemy leadership, which was what we did.

A lot more of the rules that crept in as well. You know, you couldn't do night operations or you needed super high level approvals to do them. They were almost impossible. Partnering force ratios were quite high. But we had Heloes and we would literally, we also had here, we had heloes. We also had a lot of other assets that we can have in 2007 as well.

So we were able to use a lot of the ISNR platforms to do our targeting, which made it a lot more effective to watch. areas before we launched on them and things like that. Nine times out of ten, we were able to go, yeah, that's abnormal activity. There's too many guys in that town with guns at the moment. We'll launch on that and try and catch objective, whoever. We had a few full SAS teams there, which was hugely important. But with the high partnering ratio, we had a couple of different partnering forces.

that we would work with, depending on what locations the target was in. And it was my job on that trip to mentor the partnering forces. That's cool. As it turned out, I spent the majority of my trip working with one as much as I could. But, yeah, didn't stay in the field overnight, I don't think. We would have the heloes on. We would launch, you know, develop in the morning, respectable times. Jump out of bed at Ravalli at 6 o'clock and grab a feed and take it to the ops room

and start watching the feeds and see what targets are in the area. Maybe there was one that was hot. You might launch at 8, 7 or 8 in the morning, or maybe you might watch one for a while and launch about 10. get into a shootout, catch a bad guy, and generally be home by four or five. So it was very respectable. What was the partner force that you worked with most of the time?

The one that I liked working with were the NDS guys from up north. Yeah. They were, I found the ones that I worked with were hugely courageous. They were pretty well disciplined. and they were hugely open to train as well so we could do a lot of, you know, compound clearance rehearsals and we had a training facility within the wire at TK near the range and so we could go out there and rehearse and train

and they were good, they were great to work with to the point where I'd go with them by myself. I mean, it's really weird to get into a shootout with guys you can't talk to because the turps that I used were literally civilian contractors. Yeah, yeah. And so they'd come on the hits with us, but they wouldn't be keen to be up the front with me. But I'd be up the front with the guys. A lot of the target buildings, we'd send the teams in to sort of try and find the HVT that we're after.

So a lot of the time when I was hitting the target, I'd be assisting with cordons or sweeping less priority areas. But I suppose we found, or I found even just with the Afghans that I was working with, especially the ones that I trusted that I'd go by myself with, there'd be always, if there's a HVT there, there's always security with him and they're never in the same building. They're always out and around in those other buildings or creek lines or or something like that. So, yeah, a lot of the shootouts, skirmishes that we had were around those target buildings, whereas the actual teams of operators that were clearing those, well, got into the bulk of the combat. Are there any particular operations from that last deployment that kind of stand out for you? I had an interesting little day. I wrote a short book and I had an interesting little day,

one in particular where we landed and there was a bit of random sporadic shooting from sort of the centre of the assault force moving into the target area. I didn't think much of it. It was literally a couple of rounds. But then after we cleared our sort of non-priority area, one of my Afghans come and grabbed me. Mark, Mark, come with me, which I was happy to do.

I mean, I trusted the guy. He was a good little operator. But he then dragged me a long way away from the troop to the point where I was sort of starting to get nervous, mate, we need to cut this here and head back. We're getting too far away. And then all of a sudden I arrived at a compound and I would normally operate with about 10,

10 guys got to that compound and there was a couple of other guys standing out the front and they're like, go in, go in. And so I'm like, oh, righty, so I'm now in clearing this compound by myself with one Afghan but what occurred was I got in there and there was a Civcas in there who was actually still, no one had done any first aid on him. He was actually still bleeding out. and I actually reckon it was probably an AK that he'd been hit by because there was a massive hole in his leg

but who knows could have been a ricochet, could have been anything. I patched him up and got the medic over sort of thinking to myself this is like a bit of a big day already and it's not even a big day. We then got into another small show shoot out again just after that where we lost FACS, one of our attack dogs. The handler and the handler's offside I had to assault the creek line and FACS got killed as well. So that one stood out to me as well.

I mean, some guys talk about post-traumatic stress a lot. And I've shared that story a bit. I mean, I don't think I suffer hugely from PTSD, but I actually had a reoccurring dream after that job that when I went into that room, it was my son that had been hit. They were about the same age. I mean, I don't know. That warfare it says you have some big days that you take a while to get over.

That one took me a while to get over. Yeah, oh, understandable. So let's start to talk a little bit about sort of your exit from the Australian military. You continued working for the Australian government for a while. But was this just your natural retirement point? What was kind of the auspices under which you got out? Yeah, I'm really odd in this respect. Even amongst SAS guys, I'm a bit of a rarity.

So I actually discharged from the regular army in 2000. 2009. After I, I did that one deployment after I got blown up. And I was sort of in that mid-2009, I was going, I'm not really healing up real quick, my back's still dodgy. I might get out and, and do something else. Maybe my time's up. And so I kind of discharged, but in hindsight,

I wasn't ready to get out mentally, I don't think. Like, as soon as I discharged from the rest, regular military, but stayed in our Army Reserve. And because I had a lot of instructor qualifications, the SAS would keep me as an Army Reserve just to go back and help on the selection course or help on a demolitions course or a shooting course or something like that. So they just kept me in their pool of reserve guys. And I went to the Australian Embassy in Kabul and worked as a security contractor at the

embassy, which had a hugely interesting 18 months. I loved it. I love the difference from military to contracting in the fact that you now have got, you've no longer got this rule book to keep you safe. You can make as many bad decisions as you like as a civilian contractor, and you're the person that's going to suffer if you get it wrong. And you have also then, obviously, the added pressure that this, person that you're looking after nine times out of ten has no idea the dangers that they're in

day-to-day wandering the streets of Kabul. So you have this challenge of reeling them in whilst letting them do as much as they want to but keeping them safe while they do it. So I definitely enjoyed that to begin with, but it was sort of that 2011, 12, 13 period, our small little SAS unit was sort of starting to run dry. I've got mates that by that time frame had done 10, you know, eight deployments was not uncommon. Ten deployments was still quite common.

So all my best mates were still over there. I was still going back every now and then to help with training. And one day someone said, oh, what are you doing for the next six months? Do you want to deploy? back to Afghan in the military. So they re-enlist you back into the full-time military. You go on a deployment and then you come back and they discharge you again. And I did that twice.

And so I say to most people, while I did discharge from the military, I really didn't discharge in my head until around about 2015. Sort of that 2014, 15, 16 period, the bulk of my work was back at the time. the embassy, driving the ambassador around town and doing that diplomatic protection. A few odd trips around Afghanistan, but mostly in Kabul. And it wasn't until sort of that 2016 period where in my head, I kind of went, I'm okay with my life experienced in the military to this point. I'm going to get out.

And I kind of did a few resists. training things in Australia after that. But sort of by 2016, 17, 18 onwards, I was like fully out. I don't think I'm fully discharged now. I'm not even in the Army Reserve anymore. And I haven't really done anything since 2018, I don't think. I mean, how many years total in the Australian military from, it was the late 80s when you first went in, right?

Yeah, not quite 20, a bit under 20. Yeah. Not a bad hit out, though. No, hell no. It's a great run that you had. And I mean, I'm glad that you weren't injured worse than you were, considering what you went through. I mean, it's a lot. I want to talk about the things you're doing today as an expedition and adventure travel guy.

But one of the things we had talked about earlier that I want to make sure we touch upon and ask you about, is that the SAS has kind of had a pretty difficult run the last five years, six years maybe. A lot of newspaper stories about war crimes, the Barrington report that came out from the Australian government that covered this subject. Yeah. The ongoing defamation suit with, is it Robert Ben Smith? Yep, yep. IRS is still in the courts.

And so this is still kind of like unfold. in the public sphere in Australia. And I just wanted to ask you, you know, if you have any comments about it or thoughts about it that you wanted to share with people. Yeah, not heaps. It is certainly still heavy in the press in Australia. It's not resolved, which is a huge shame in itself.

I think myself and myself, and all my colleagues that I've ever spoken with, none of us were against an inquiry. And you don't even need to call it an inquiry, a post-operation review on what do we do well, obviously what could we have done better, how could we improve, how can we make tomorrow's warfighter better than we were,

all hugely in believing of that, I was bitterly disappointed, I suppose, to say mildly how they conducted the review, how they did the investigation. There was a massive trial by media. The money that's been spent trying to find people guilty by our own country, I personally, my personal view is pretty sickening. when you think that the guys we captured have now been let out of prison in Kabul, literal murderers that green on blue murdered Australian soldiers have been let out of prison and we're still going through the courts. It kind of seems a bit rough.

I mean, I wasn't present for any of the things that they're investigating. I didn't see any more crimes. I'm sure they can conduct inquiries and do their best, but it just seems a bit over the top. And a lot of the stuff that's been in the press, I know because I read it, has actually been untrue. There's been stuff published in the media. That's not correct. And so that's sad.

You sort of think to yourself, are these guys actually investigative journalists or are they just trying to prove their narrative to sell their story? There was the one defamation case with the commander. Is it Russell Heston that I think he won his lawsuit? Yeah. good because hopefully in the future that'll make them do a bit more due diligence before they start publishing their news articles. Yeah, I'm all for the public being informed to an extent.

I think in hindsight we should have shared a lot more of the good work we did in Afghanistan. Our SOTG especially just had this blanket, no media, no stories policy. And what then inevitably resulted was the only stories that ever came out were bad ones. Bad ones, yeah. And so we're at this point now where there's no, no one knows about the amazing work we did for 20 years. The fact that all the Afghan lives we saved, to be honest, you don't have to look too deep on the internet to find all the suicide bombings that all. I witnessed in Kabul. I mean, in that 2009-10 period, the guest, I lived in Kabul City and that guest house behind

us that got hit, there was the UN guest house and I think an ex-N Navy seal and another UN contractor that was in there, got killed. Those attacks happened commonly. If one hadn't happened for a month or so, if a truck bomb or a car bomb hadn't gone off killing another 50 or 60 civilians in Kabul, you were waiting for it to happen. I mean, that stuff wasn't okay. And I still today, I'm comfortable with everything I did because that's what we were there trying to prevent.

Tell us about this. It's hard to see the finish. This documentary you mentioned to me, bravery and betrayal that just came out. Yeah. And I'm hugely supportive of it. So I've seen it. And it's, in my opinion,

it's not a huge rebuttal of the war crime. That's one of the reasons I like it so much is that it's actually some SAS guys going, hey, you know what, I'm just going to tell some of my story. That's good. And show they're getting interviewed and just sharing their experiences pretty much like you've given me the opportunity to do today. But to put, it puts war fighting in a little bit of context, I think, in the fact that bravery and betrayal is not only interviewing a few ex-SAS guys, It also is interviewing a few of our prime ministers.

It interviews a few of the US pilots that were dropping us off and picking us up on these kill capture missions. I think there's about three of the minute, which is terrific to get someone else's perspective again. And it actually also interviews a few of the widows who I know personally. And it must have been really difficult for them to get on camera and to be interviewed and talk about Matt Locke and Blaine Diddams, but they did, which I think puts a lot of what we were doing and what we believed in so much into a bit more perspective than just the negative news

articles that have been out there. The betrayal part that's in the name, obviously, I think really focuses on the one hugely disappointing incident was at the end of that report where the Australian military felt the need to apologise to the Afghan people. And I personally, my personal belief is that that was just insulting to us and everything we sacrifice for over that whole time. So, yeah, I hugely promote the documentary. I think they're working to get it on a streaming service at the moment.

It's just travelling Australia. so get in and see it wherever it pops up. I can flick you some one or two. I think there's three previews online. Yeah, we can put some links in the description of this podcast and people can check it out. I'd love to send you those. But yeah, I hope that gets out there a few bit.

And I've spoken to the producers as well. They're hoping that in the future they can do the same thing. Make a similar doco for the commandos, make a similar doco for some of the infantry battalions that did deployments. to Afghan and share some more of that broader Australian military story because it's, apart from people's pod that have done podcasts and there's a few podcasts in Australia, apart from people that have gone out of their way to share their own stories and a book are on a podcast,

there's really not much covered yet in Australia as in people's personal experiences. I think it sort of speaks to the double-edged sort of secrecy, right? that in one hand, the military secrecy around these missions is paramount in one sense. But after it happens, if, you know, as we talked about, if you don't publicize it in some way, if you don't allow your soldiers to be interviewed by the press, then what leaks out is going to be the negative stuff. You know, the guys were rightly or wrongly disgruntled and angry about what they experienced. And you're not going to kind of get the other side. So, yeah, I can see it both ways.

and while I think from what I've read anyway, it sounds like some guys did step out of line and do things that were wrong, but that doesn't speak for the majority of the force and most of these guys who went over and over and over again and did really professional work over there. As I said, everyone I worked with and saw, and the vast majority, as in within my team, and the vast majority of, if not everyone,

and I don't know. But yeah, there's so much good was done and so much hard work and sacrifice by good people. It is, as you say, though, a hugely difficult situation. One I don't have the answers for, but as you just said, if you look today in the Ukraine or Israel, to think that more and more information from a battle space is not going to be shared, you're crazy.

So to think that you can shut, down. Yeah. Everything is a little bit naive, I think. A little bit out of touch with the times. Absolutely. So we need our military, the Australian military. I'm sure they're doing it today.

They need to get smarter at that. It exactly that. What do we share and what don't we? Yeah. Yeah. So talk to us a little bit about your post-service career and what you've gotten into since then. And it sounds like it's a lot of fun, actually. Yeah, I'm pretty fortunate today.

I'm living the dream. I mean, after I finished up working at the Australian embassy in Kabul, I didn't really know what I mean, I didn't know what I was going to do when I got out of military. That's why I ended up contracting. And finishing the contracting, I didn't really finish it. I just sort of thought I'd move into something a bit more fun and interesting. How can I, I love to travel.

I love visiting foreign cultures and doing weird and wonderful things. How can I keep doing that but get shot at less? And I suppose I thought, well, I can do expedition sort of guiding. While I was at the embassy, I started a small hiking business in Tazzi. And it was literally just to fill in my rotations off, take people hiking in the mountains and out into the remote wilderness. But then that kind of led to running expeditions. I worked with some universities that wanted to do research overseas.

And I worked with some green energy companies that wanted to conduct feasibility studies or community liaison in different areas where they wanted to do projects. And that led me to places like Cambodia, Vietnam in remote areas of Indonesia, I went to Africa and started doing these sort of cool, pretty. cool trips that I really enjoyed. At the same time, I was like, how can I keep doing this but actually not really have

a job to do? And I sort of off the back of my hiking up mountains in Tazzi came to that sort of tourism piece. Well, if someone wants to go and see this place, I'll take them and keep them safe. And so, and I still

love my motorbike riding. So that led me and another exquisite mate to do a motorbike ride through Mongolia, which was pretty epic, about 3,500 Ks or something around the country. That's awesome. I did a hike through Israel back in 2019, I think, the National Trail there, the Israel National Trail. So walk from north to south. That was pretty epic.

And then just did some motorbike rides in Vietnam and sort of random stuff. And still heaps in Australia. I mean, I'm off to the Simpson Desert next. week to do some photography and do write and document an adventure ride that some blokes are doing out there. So you still love remote places and still love to travel and the more adventurous the better, I think. Now I love my photography. I saw something I learned way back or started learning back in one hour when I did my sniper training. Obviously I was a recon soldier in the SAS so, a lot of photography training involved in that.

So now I enjoy my travel and wilderness photography and, as I said, I wrote a book, so I do a little bit of writing. And my other funsy that I have now to give back to the veteran community a little bit, I suppose, is I've got a veteran whiskey brand called Dog Tag Whiskey. Cool. So it's not a big business, but we sell a few bottles, and it's Tasmania where I live, where I came from. is becoming more and more well known for phenomenal whiskey.

They produce some really, really high-quality whiskey. Is that because the climate is somewhat similar to Scotland? They say, I'm not a stiller, but they say the climate is perfect. And we have everything in Tasmania to make the white spirit, the new make spirit. So we do import our barrels, both from the US. So does Ireland, I mean everyone, I think does. Yeah. So it's either from North America or.

or Europe. I've got some French eight barrels, but mostly American eight. I've got some old... In America, your whiskey, I think they can only use the barrels once or something. There's some law there. Which is why we get a lot of American barrels here.

That might be bourbon. Oh, okay, yeah. Yeah. So we put out, I've got whiskey in bourbon barrels. I've got some buffalo trace barrels. Yep, yep. And, yeah. That's super cool.

Makes good whiskey. And what's your... You mentioned, do you have a book app? what's the point that's called? And it's not an autobiography. It's really just, I self-wrote it, my wife edited it, went to the printers down the road and printed my own copies. So I just sell them on my own website for an assist.

And it's just, I wrote, because I kept traveling through COVID, but we had our mad lockdowns in Australia. So every time I'd returned from overseas back to Australia, half a dozen times during COVID, I'd get locked in a hotel in Sydney for two weeks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I started just writing some of my stories while I was locked in the hotel rooms. And then that eventually, my wife said, what are you going to do with these mad stories? You've written about Afghanistan and adventure travel and stuff.

And I was, to begin with, I was like, I don't know, we're SF guys, we don't write books. But I think over time, I was like, well, there's nothing wrong with sharing some of these. stories, you know, I talked about getting blown up, which I share on podcasts and things like that. So eventually, yeah, I just thought, oh, well, I'll share it, but I haven't got time to sit down and write about my life. So I've just, it's a bit of a, here's a few experiences that I've had in life, and here's what I learned from them. So I always like to have the, that's cool, the positive outcome, what I got out of it.

We try to do a bit of keynote speaking, and that's my main topic, really. Okay. What do we learn from these experiences? We might consider the experience, you know, positive or negative. It might be a really crappy experience. But did we get anything out of it? How did we improve as a person? Are we more adaptive?

Are we more resilient? Are we better leader? Will we make the same mistake again? And you can pick those lessons up from lots of different places, whether it's, you know, business or adventure or your time in the military. Where can people find you? What's your website? Mark Doreen is the best place to find me online.

Okay. I'm on tinkering and playing with all social media. X for if you're in America, but I'm on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. And I've got a Mark Doreen website. But Point Assist is my business that I work through, and that also has its own website. Okay. And they can buy your book through your website. Yeah, I've shipped, not many.

I've shipped maybe a dozen or two to a couple of dozen to the U.S., which I'm always like, I hope it gets there. Yeah, I've ordered. I don't know how they found me just randomly. I've ordered things from Australia before it gets interesting. Not as interesting as when you order things from South Africa, but Australia is, yeah, you never know where it's going to, or when it's going to show up.

Yeah, I'm not sure even legally if I can, think I can even legally send my alcohol to America. Probably not. Probably not. But the book you should be okay. I'd love to send you a copy. I'll send you a copy over. I would love that.

Yeah, thank you. Especially the booze is going to get tariffed now too, so you're screwed. Yeah. But I would love to try that. Mark, I mean, thanks for joining us on the show. Really appreciate it. We'll have, for listeners or viewers, we'll have links down the description for people who are interested in checking out these websites or buying the book.

We have some questions. Oh, we got a couple viewer questions for you, Mark. Oh, yeah, shoot. From Matt, being a big fan of Aussie pop culture from Dundee to Mr. Inbetween, can you tell us about some real-life Aussie heroes you've served with? Good question. Oh, yeah. That's a pretty hard question, actually, off the cup.

Well, the bravery in patrol, I suppose, is one to mention again. There's a bloke in that called Mort. And to be brutally honest, when I first heard that the guys were making a doco, I was a little bit, oh, what's going to be in this? But it was Mort's and another ex-RSM of the regiment actually, Wayne Weeks that were a big part of making it. And as soon as I knew that they were involved, I was keen to see it and I was kind of happy to support it.

And I'm helping with some of the touring of it. So Morts, the guy that's a big inspiration of the doco, when I got to one hour, he was there. And he was a recon sniper guy that I had been or that I wanted to be. He did selection for me. But when I got to the SAS, he was in the squadron that I was in, in two squadron. And he was one of those guys that was an excellent soldier, hugely professional, always trying to improve. And I think so.

I modeled a lot of my thought process of that continuous self-improvement. How can I learn more? How can I get better at what I do? I think I got that off more. When my patrol commander heard his back and got taken out of the field and I got promoted, a couple of weeks before I blew myself up. Morts was the sixth guy to come back into my, to fill in in my patrol, which I at the time thought was hugely difficult because I've got this guy that should

be my patrol commander, is just going to fill in for a few weeks as Tail and Charlie. But, yeah, someone I hugely look up to, and for probably that reason, hugely professional, he's an excellent soldier, and had that mindset of always improving. How can we get better at what we do? Crocodile Dundee, I think, is back out at the moment. Senators in Australia, he's making a comeback to the big guy. We have a couple more. Did you deploy for the Pong Sioux or Tampa operations?

No, they weren't my squadron. Yeah. All right, we got one more. Interesting jobs at the time. And I think that we were. at that time we really were the force of choice in the fact that we were the cheapest to send anywhere and the most likely to get positive results, whatever that might be, whether it was supporting America somewhere or catching a drug boat or some illegal fishermen or whatever it might be. Maybe a few lessons there that there's jobs that we did that probably weren't necessarily us.

I did chase a few people smugglers around here and there. But, no, I wasn't on those ones. V, what was the weirdest thing you saw in Afghanistan? The weirdest. Not my go-to guys that I used to Afghans that I used to like to partner with, but partnering with the other blokes. They had a few other different local police forces and things like that.

And there was always weird stuff happening there. you'd be arresting someone who's clearly a J-Peld high-level target, and they're trying to talk you out of it. Like, that was weird, without going into any stories that are too crazy. Last one. Did you ever work with J-Sach in Afghanistan or Iraq? No, I didn't. What I did do and what I loved was the Americans that used to come to the SAS on exchange.

So we did get a couple of Greenberries come over on the odd occasion, and I worked with a couple of Navy Seals over time. Ken, I'm trying to think of his last name. Actually, you've caught me off guard. I worked with, he came on that 2007 deployment with us. I wish I could remember his last name, and he actually got killed on a separate deployment in Iraq later on. A great guy, yeah. And he was super stoked when he got to Australia. He'd love to come out and have a beer with us.

We'd drag him out because a pretty senior guy in the U.S. In the unity he was from. Well, Mark, thank you for this interview and sharing your perspectives and experiences with us. Again, we'll have links down the description for you for folks out there who want to go check out the website, check out the book, check out maybe one of these crazy adventure trips that he's going on. And for everyone else out there, any final thoughts before we roll out tonight, Mark?

Oh, no, my only final thought is thanks for what you do. Helping Blacks share their stories. It's, I think it's hugely important, especially when someone's done a lot in their life. And it hasn't always been easy. It's good to be able to be able to share. It's not only good for the person, but it's actually good for the community. I'm a big believer of that. I think so, too.

We mature as a nation when we can share some of these stories and talk about the realisms of life. Yeah, absolutely. So thank you. We could have do it without you, Mark. Thank you. And everyone else will see you next week. Actually, no, there will be two episodes this week. So we'll see you on Wednesday and then on Friday.

Two for the price of one. Good work. All right. Take care, everyone. Cheers. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this.

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