The Team House - Danish Sirius Patrol with Kasper Damsø, Ep. 79

Episode Date: February 6, 2021

Kasper served in one of the most unique Special Operations unit's in the world: Sirius Patrol. After extensive training, they deploy in pairs on a two year tour to Greenland where they patrol largely with dog sleds. Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: 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/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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the team house with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park. All right, here we are. are episode 79. I'm Jack Murphy, here with co-host Dave Park. This is the team house. Episode, yeah, I think it's episode 79. And we're here with our guest tonight. Casper, Casper, pronounce your name for me, your last name before I screw it up, please. Damsau. Casper Damsa. Okay, so it's just like it looks. So Casper is joining us from Denmark tonight. He is a veteran of the Danish military. He served in one of the most, unique special operations units in the world called Sirius Patrol.

And I will hand it off to Casper. He has a whole presentation for us tonight. But I'll say these guys work with dog slides patrolling the Arctic tundra of Greenland. Do we want to get his origin story real quick? Yeah, yeah. Let our viewers get to know you real quick. Yeah, please. So Casper, if you can just start off telling us a little bit about your upbringing and how you ended up

joining the Danish military. Yes, thank you very much and thank you for letting me on the show tonight and I'll try to enlighten you a bit about the serious patrol. We operate in northeast Greenland

and Greenland is the big white country on top of the globe, so it's part of the deception by layout COVID operation, so we name Greenland because it's completely white. And it's a part of Denmark, even though it's

several thousand kilometers away from Denmark. So the reason why I got interested in Greenland was when I lived in Denmark, I always knew I was going to join the military. But then my father went to Greenland to work as a police officer in Greenland. So when I was like 15 years old, I thought there's a great opportunity to combine being a soldier and joining the military in Greenland. But first of all, I have to go back to Denmark. And then I did my selection program in Denmark and joined the special forces.

And then I came back to Greenland to join the Sirius Patrol. Did you already know about the Sirius Patrol? Or like, did you have an awareness of all the different things going on in the military? No. It was like I was like 14 years old when my dad came into my room and said, Hey, son, come out here. There's a great show on TV tonight. I think that's something just about right for you.

And so I don't know whether it's because my father was so untutious or whatever, but that TV show just got into me. And I knew that that's what I'm going to do when I grow up. So you actually grew up in some of your teenagers in Greenland then when your father was stationed over there. Yeah, we went up there when I was like 12 and I stayed there for almost four years. And then I came back and went to high school in Denmark and then joined the military. went to Officers Academy and then after that selection program for Serious Patrol and then to Greenland. So if you could just a little bit tell us just as far as civilian life is concerned,

what was it like living on Greenland? How was that life a little bit different than Denmark or New York? It was very different. The whole area of Greenland is the biggest island in the world. That's also why it's so big on the globe and on every major. map you will see, but it's only a little like 50,000 people there in the total of Greenland. So the city I grew up in was like 3,000 people. And Sirius operates in northeast Greenland where there's no local inhabitants.

There's only 27 people live in northeast Greenland. It's 160,000 square kilometers. I'll get back to that a bit in the presentation, but it was completely different from anything else. You might find a remote area in Alaska, and it's a bit similar to that. It's a long way from everything. You can't drive from one city to another in Greenland, so you're absolutely remotely. Does the temperature fluctuate throughout the island,

or is it pretty constant everywhere? Oh, it's absolutely coldest in the middle of the country, and then along the coast you'll have more heat due to the sea that's hot, but it's down to minus 50. 50 degrees centigrade. So it's like a super cold. And if you have a blizzard, you get down to minus 80 or 90. So it's really tough conditions.

Oh, my goodness. So your dad was a police officer in a small town. What small town like life like in Greenland? I mean, from our perspective, it's like, why do people even live there? You're out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, it's basically what you see in the documentaries and movies. It's a very, very small town. Everybody knows everybody.

So it's a quite easy job being a policeman, because if someone commits a crime, you are most certainly sure that someone knows who it was because it's not anyone from outside. There has to be one from the inside. So it's, yeah, it was kind of, I also used to live in New York, and we had burgers there, Jack,

so you can't get any further away from New York City than a small town in Greenland. It seems like it would be too cold to commit crime. Like it wouldn't be worth going outside to commit crime because it's just too cold. Exactly. How did you entertain yourself? I mean, this is before... And then you know it's exciting, so you get a bit heated up.

You get what? Oh, yeah. Right. Well, I was, how did you, as a, you know, teenager, how did you entertain yourself, considering there was no Netflix at the time or, you know, online video games or anything like that? But there's a lot of nature. I mean, that's why also I got the hooked on nature, being outside,

you know, going hunting, going fishing, do all the kinds of stuff, go skiing, everything that you can do outside. I mean, I was kind of happy that there was no Netflix, no mobile phones and stuff like that at the time because you had to go outside and play outside. Yeah, that's super cool. So do you want to talk about your entry into the military

then, Casper, up until the point that you're ready to give your presentation, and then we can turn the slides on? Yeah, I joined the Wickey Battalion in Denmark, so doing a long-range reconnaissance to start and went to get my sergeant, to Sergeant School, and came back and worked as a battalion in the Rookie platoon,

and then after that, I joined the selection program for the Serious Patrol. Okay. Well, actually, before we get into like what the selection process with like things like that, Casper has actually a presentation for us because almost all of us are unfamiliar with the Danish military and whatnot. And so we can start that. Jack's going to go ahead and blow your screen up so that you can share your slides. Okay. There we go. So yeah, so if you want to go ahead and share those, I'll put those up on the screen up. screen, Casper?

Yes. You can go ahead, Casper. I'm just going to format it here for you so that people can see. Yes, exactly. Thank you very much. There's the picture of regular patrol here. I'll start by showing where Greenland is actually located, as I just mentioned. Before, you see you have Russia on the right side of the screen, and then you have United States

on the other side, so Greenland is right in the middle. I'll get back to that strategic position in the... in a minute. The three key takeaway from my time in this unit, you can say that the pain is temporary, glory is forever. You use also that in many of your units. And I guess that's also one of the things, one of the reasons why we're still sitting here talking. If you can keep yourself together and go through with this a rather young age, then you can enjoy the fruit and the triumph of this. for many years to come afterwards. The second thing,

it's always good to remember. If it was easy, they would send to someone else. I mean, everybody likes to see action movies and everything, and you talk to a lot of people that would like to try this. But when it gets really shitty out there, you have to remember that if it was easy, everybody else was doing it. And the third thing is that the heart of the struggle,

the greater the fun afterwards. It's not really fun while it's. ongoing but afterwards while you sit here in your sofa and have a beer then it's a really fun to talk about a bit about myself i spent like 14 years in the special forces in denmark i did a tour in greenland of course and then also in kosovo india pakistan afghanistan and africa and after quitting the military i took a master's degree in psychology and now after that I was working with the Volkswagen and became a management consultant and now today I work as a managing director making bricks so in construction business a bit about the Danish special forces

as you mentioned before we have the serious patrol which is unlike any other special forces we call it the most special special forces in the world that we know of and then we also have some more regular special operation forces like the frogman it's equivalent to the american navy seals and we have the yeagers which is equivalent to the american delta force but in fact the the history of the series patrol goes way back many in this special forces community would think of the s as some of the founding fathers of the special forces community but we are proud of proud to say that while the SAS was created on July 1st in 1941, the Serious Patrol was actually created already in April 9th, 1941.

So we're actually a bit older than the SAS. And both the Serious Patrol and the SAS was discontinued in October, 1945, because after the Second World War, everybody was thinking that now. there will be no more wars, there will be no more need for military in the world. But as we all know, we got a bit wiser during time. So they restored the SAS in 1947 and the serious patrol in 1950. So while you may not have heard so much about the Sirius Patrol, you'll definitely hear about the Rolex.

They made some commercials with our unit. Since the 80s, there's some different commercials. they did together with Rolex in the National Geographic magazine. A bit about the series patrol, as I said, the world's most special forces. It consists of only six teams of two men and 11 dogs. We cover 160,000 square kilometers of ice and snow. You run a marathon every day on your skis like 45 kilometers. Temperatures down to minus 50 degrees centigrade.

You have a continuous service for two years and two months with no holidays. You get no visits and you don't get to see your family. And of course, without the Internet and cell phones. So it's a quite nature adventure. Again, our position right between Russia and America, and that's, of course, why it has such an important strategic position. And that's also why Mr. Donald Trump tried to buy Greenland from Denmark just two years ago. Maybe you heard about that.

But he was unsuccessful in doing that. So we still got to keep Greenland. And here you see a map of Greenland, only 56,000 people in total. And the total area of Greenland is 2.1 million square kilometers. And the national park, the total area of the national park is 900. 72,000 kilometers and only 27 men is living here. So there's no Greenlanders in this whole area. But we don't patrol the middle.

We only patrol the coastline. There's 16,000 kilometers of coastline around Greenland. The story about northeast Greenland is that in the early days, in the beginning of last century, there was a lot of Danish and Norwegian trappers. hunters in Greenland. And at some point, some of the Norwegians planted a Norwegian flag and said that now this area is Norwegian. And Denmark complained about this to the International Court of Justice in Haig.

And in 1933, it was decided that all of Greenland was Danish. But then Denmark has to commit to put some people up there to wave the Danish flag. And then we know we had the second World War and that was actually quite important in Greenland because if you know the weather in northeast Greenland you know the weather one day later in the Atlantic Ocean and of course as you know it was a very important Submarine War going on in the Atlantic

the so-called Battle of the Atlantic So therefore the Germans launched some weather station in the northeast Greenland. And that's why they created the serious patrol in 1941 to go on their dog sleds to try and find these German weather station and then radio signal to the Americans that would come and bump these weather stations away. So there was some small battle going on, some small guerrilla fighting in northeast Greenland, And there are some of the first guys in the serious patrol were actually killed during that the Second World War in Greenland. As mentioned before, after the Second World War, we had the Cold War.

I have to say that also the Second World War was very cold in Northeast Greenland. But during the Cold War, this strategic position came up again. And therefore, they launched the Serious Patrol again. And in the top left corner of Greenland, you have Tully Air Base that you might heard of. And back in the 1950s, when they started Tully Air Base, there was only like 25,000 people living in Greenland. And when Tully Air Base was at its highest, there was more than 13,000 people in the Tully Air Base, Americans. They had the only one job, and that was to launch all these, B-52 bombers launched with nuclear weapons.

And they would fly this route you see down there on the slide in the bottom left corner. So they would fly from the north-west corner of Greenland over to Russia. And before the B-52 would turn around and go back to Greenland, another B-52 was already launched and on its way to Russia, just in case they would start a nuclear fight. So it was quite an operation. they had over there in the Tule Air Base. What you see on the top right corner is part of the distant early warning system

where the Americans put these big radar stations all the way down through Greenland to be able to detect if the Russians would shoot nuclear missiles from Russia to the United States. They would have to fly right over Greenland. So that's why again Greenland had this important strategic position. And then on the right, bottom you see Camp Century great idea that

the that the Americans had to build a city under the ice you have the ice cape on Greenland where it's the ice is thickest, it's more than

3,000 meters thick so the idea was to steve your way under the ice cape and build a city and have a nuclear reactor within the ice cape and then you could have ballistic missile systems and you could just open the ice roof and you could fire missiles

towards the Russians. They actually built this camp under the ice and they stayed there for a while until they realized that the ice is constantly moving and it's not so cool to living in a house that's moving when you have a nuclear reactor next door. So the project was abandoned but it was actually quite impressive. But that's a whole difference. you can talk for hours about all the crazy stuff that you guys did in in korean so denmark they launched a serious patrol again in 1950 and you can apply if you are about 20 to 30 years old you have a good military record all the famous thing you know if you want to join your special forces just in this case you're not allowed to be married and you're

not allowed to have kids because you're away for more than two years in a row with no chance of getting in touch with your wife and kids. So that's quite unique. You're not allowed to be married. But I also realized that it's quite unique when I talk to guys from other countries, special forces, is that you don't get to have any vacation. You don't get to have any days off. You don't get to go to the bar on Friday night and tell stories about what you did last week.

So that's also quite unique. And because you're only with one guy for more than six months of the year, you have a quite intense psychological evaluation to see that you are fit for these hard mental conditions. It's, of course, a very hard physical conditions as every special forces selection is, but also it's very tough mentally because you're only with this one guy for more than six months a year. the training program is you have to earn a two-year service before you can two-year regular service you have to at least be a sergeant of rank before you can apply and then you undergo this seven-month training program where you have to aside from all the military skills you also have to learn everything else because you're the only guys there so you have to learn everything from being a a fireman to hunting, to flying, communicating, cooking skills.

You even have to be able to through your own clothes. You have to know how to make electricity, how to make fresh water, you know, to be a veterinarian so you can fix the dog and everything. And of course, you also need to get the big doctor's degree so you can also do surgery on your apartment. Because, for example, when we operate, in Afghanistan with you guys, you need to operate with this golden hour.

You need to be in the hospital within this golden hour. In northeast Greenland, if you have an accident, you have to stay alive yourself for maybe up to a week before someone can come and rescue you because it's not possible to fly up there with helicopters. You can only fly there with fixed wing airplanes. And usually when you have an action,

it's nowhere near an airspace. So that's why you need to get this advanced medical surgery training. And of course you have some Arctic survival training. When we do the Arctic survival training in Greenland, there's no really chance of failing out because you still have to survive. You can quit, but you still have to survive to get back to base. So it's quite good. It's a quite good test whether people have what it takes or not. them. And the Arctic survival is a five-week course. All the other courses, the seven-months program, takes place

mostly in Denmark. And then we have this five to six-week course in Greenland. And the end test of this is that after these five weeks of training, you have to do a hundred kilometers test on skis. And you start by taking your skis and your equipment everything and then you go through the ice maybe it's a minor 35 and then you you make a hole in the ice and you jump the student in the water so he's completely cold he has to take off all his clothes and then take his emergency kit back and put on his emergency clothes and then he has to walk

a hundred kilometers and it's not like when you see cross-country skiing on tv he has to make the tracks himself and he has to to complete this 100 kilometers within within 24 hours. And normally you don't compete if it's less than minus 25, but

in the series patrol we have to be able to compete even if it's down to minus 50. So it's a rather tough test. So after completing that test, it's a kind of walk in the park to do a regular marathon. We do the

Copenhagen marathon in the streets of Copenhagen is just like the New York Marathon, just that we run in complete Arctic gear in jackets and trousers and boots and then we pull the sleds which is around a hundred kilos. So there's six people taking turns on pulling and pushing the sled. But this is a this is good fun. There's several hundred thousand spectators along the route. So it's a really motivating. Then when you get back to Greenland in August, it looks like this because this summer in North East Greenland is about one month. So in July, you will have ice on the water, you'll have snow on the mountains, and then in August, everything is gone, and then in September it starts to snow again. And this is a picture of the serious patrol base called Danibor.

We only get supplies once a year because it's not able to sail the waters when they are frozen over. So you have to go to the grocery shop one time every year and get all your supplies for one year. And there's no PX or whatever you guys are used to. So one time per year. We also have a summer headquarter where we put out all the supplies and provisions that we need for the Sleds patrol. in the winters. And some of these old trappers, cabins and huts, we use them for depots to stash our food for the Stets Patrol in the winters.

In the northern part of Greenland, there's no animals, there's no nothing. It actually has the status of a desert because there's nothing living up there. So therefore, there's no trappers, huts or cabins or anything. so we build them ourselves. There's a big landing strip in the northeast corner of Greenland also, so in case when you're flying across the Atlantic, you can have the chance of have an emergency landing on top of Greenland. In August, it already starts to snow in the late of August,

and then we start patrolling in the 1st of November. And first of November, when you're this high up on the... on the globe, you are above the Arctic Circle. Then 1st of November is also the last day you'll see the sun above the horizon. So day after, 1st of November. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them on their parenting journey.

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and you won't see the sun for more than three months. So this is also one of the reasons why you have to have this extensively psychological evaluation, because when you don't see the sun for three months, then you can tend to be kind of depressed. But this is a picture taken in December when you have the full moon. So it's not the sun shining, it's actually the moon. So we will change. the rhythm of the day, so we would be awake at night and sleep during day because you have almost like daylight when you have clear skies and the full moon.

On the other hand, when it's December and it's overcast and there's no moon, it's just completely blackout. So it's also kind of an experience to go on skis and drive a dog slits in completely blackout. And of course you have to get back for Christmas and a new year. Usually January is really, really bad weather. It's like a lot of snow and blizzards, storms like up to speeds up to 200 kilometers an hour, under than 30 to 40 miles per hour. It's a really, really tough weather. So in January for most parts, we are staying at the station and preparing the station for the winter season. And we also prepare the dogs, of course, make sure that they get the right amount of food. and we weigh them and we give them a bit of a pedicure so they are ready to rock again when we go on the

spring patrol when we start on the spring patrol we fly all the way up to two air base it's almost next to canada on the top of greenland and we go there by this twin other airplane that the americans invented in the in the vietnam war it's a super nice short take off and landing needs only to go up to like 50 miles power before it's airborne and it can land everywhere. And you see here that it has, instead of wheels, it has skis. So we put the dogs and all our equipment inside this twin order. And then we fly for two days over to Canada. And then we land and you sit in the airplane.

You have like 25 degrees centigrade inside the cabin and it's super nice. And then the airplane is landing and it's minus. 48 degrees centigrade outside. So the airplane can only stop for a few minutes. It cannot shut down its engines because otherwise it would freeze and get stuck in the snow. So just get out with the people, get out with the dogs. And then the airplane takes off. And then you have 3,500 kilometers back to base.

And it's four and a half months of patrolling just with your one colleague. So it's a rather tough moment when you see the airplane just lifting off and it's completely silent. And then you know you won't see any other people for the next four months. So you start to think whether this is a really good idea or not. But fortunately, it's so cold that you don't have time to stand there because you start to freeze. So it's get up and get your gear going and then you're on your own. you're on your way already. This is a standard series campsite.

We use the prairie wagon tent model because it's been tested for 80 years, and it's the best tent for these harsh conditions. So we put the tent up against the wind, and you can see the dogs lying there on the right side. And on the inside, we have a small apartment with the kitchen in the middle, and then you have each side of your tent. And you take turns every day. One day you're the outside guy

and next day you are the inside guy. So the eye's out guy take care of the dogs and feed them and the inside guy take care of feeding the two guys. And the food is just free sprite. So it's not a place to go where if you're really hooked on tasting different kinds of food. it all tastes the same but we need to have a

serious amount of calories you know in the USA you have on everything you buy it says on the backside everything is based on a 2,000 calorie diet in northeast greenland you have to have 10,000 calories every day because it's so physically

hard because you have to walk 45 blums and skis and you have to keep warm at degrees down to minus 50 so 10,000 calories per day, so you have to eat a lot of chocolate. And this picture, we are at the Cap Moist Jesup, the world's most northern position. And we have the Danish flag, is standing on this position, and we, of course, change the flag

every time we get by there. On the other side is just me freezing my butt off. And this year is a set of toes. is not mine, but from some guy who was also freezing his toes. And you can see on the left side, it's a frostbite. How it looks after eight hours getting a frostbite, it's similar to get burned. And after two weeks, you can get unlucky. But you got completely frostbite.

That means that your skin and your flesh will turn black and it's completely dead. And you look at the amputee. Luckily for this guy, he got to keep his toes. but this is really serious business also because the danger of freezing your feet is that you'll tend you'll feel that it's very very cold and then suddenly you won't feel it anymore then you have two chances either that you got your warmth again and everything is good otherwise that it looks like in this picture the dogs they are super cool and extremely tough there's a dog underneath this snow so if you have a blizzard up to a hundred miles power the dogs would just lay like this with their nose under their tail and wait for good weather to come.

And of course, the serious, you say that a dog is a man's best friend and of course in the serious patrol it's even better. But make no mistake, they are related to the wolf. So if you have a female dog that's ready to get pregnant, then everybody is bleeding. Every dog, they will fight to their death to be able to be father of some nice new puppies. And that's one of the good things about the job you get to hang around with these small guys. Otherwise, if you like to get out in nature, if you like, really tough working conditions, if you like to be in a really good shape, this is a place to be. And then, of course, you have a lot of wildlife. This is musk ox. We have walrus. This is 1,500 kilos of pure flesh. It's kind of an amazing animal. And of course, we also have the polar bear, the king of the Arctic.

And northern light, I mean, it's a great adventure. We only see pictures of all the nice things. It's not really, there's not so much time to take pictures. when everything is going awire. So that's more or less very quick. One year tour, and then the next year you will do the same thing. So it gives you a bit of an eye-opener to what the Serious Patrol is. So now we can have all the questions that you would like to ask. Dave, would you like to go through the questions?

why? Yeah, so we have some, I mean, there's so much I want to ask you, but we have some Casper, if you can just unshare the screen, so it goes back to normal.

You can ask the questions. Let's see here. We have some questions from our viewers. Let me see. Richard Bowen, thank you very much for the donation. Alejandro Esteban, thank you. What is the

relationship like between members of the patrol and the dogs. When a dog retires, can veterans adopt them? And he said, talk, scone. Tak skol? Skoll. Yeah, school. Skow.

Yeah. Cheers. Yeah. You cannot adapt the dogs. The dogs, they will run for five years. They will have five seasons. And then, of course, the best dogs, they will labor, prolonged so maybe take a sixth season and then they'll get the best dog will get

pension there are two more stations the airfield that I mentioned on the top east side of Greenland then we position five to six dogs so we have spare parts in case we lose a dog and then they can stay there till they're like seven or eight years old but the reason why how they retire is that the guy who who owns the dog, he is also responsible for putting them away. So that's kind of a tough decision because these dogs, they are like your best friends. It's the same if you have an EOD dog or whatever working dog you have. You get a really, real close relationship. Also, when you only have one colleague at a certain point in time, you don't want to talk more to this guy. So you

only have the dog to talk to and you can. So when a dog essentially reaches the end of its career, there's not much that can be done with it. I mean, you can't have feral dogs running around. You can't have a big ranch full of dogs. So there's nothing much that can be done with it, correct? Exactly. No, you have to take his life

And it's kind of a It's kind of like a noble ceremony It's like I think some Indians will do the same thing But you have a really, really strong relationship With you animals But it's kind of a strong thing When you have to take

A really good friend And you have to take him out They have to go to rest But so So that's a story that very serious guy can tell about how how we have to do that. So it's part of training. It's part of the

the job. Sounds, I mean, it sounds challenging. I mean, I understand the logistics side of it. And you know, it also sounds very challenging. Thank you, Andrew. We're going to have to, oh, he said, we're going to have to go get some nuclear waste from Camp Century,

aren't we? Yeah. Actually, some of the some of the the leftovers from this camp is actually trying, is actually going to surface now because the glacier has moved so far that some of this debris from that city

is actually going to get the visible within the next years. And Andrew also asked is it possible to fail the sewing course? Can you get washed out of service patrol because you can't sew? No, you just have to wear some really, really ugly clothes.

Thank you, Alejandro. With the remote location and the wildlife, have you or other patrol members ever had encounters with polar bears? And did one ever try to give you a Coca-Cola? A Coke. I definitely had encounters. I think I have seen around 20 polar bears. No one that tried to give me a Coke, but a polar bear, they don't have any natural enemies. So they're super curious, and they will try and come and see whatever you have.

reached some bedposts where polar bear had eaten everything. You know, we have maybe been your sledding for two weeks and you are really looking forward to get resupplied. Then this polar bear had just eaten everything. So I haven't got them coke from anyone, but I have put one on fire. Because you can't scare a polar bear away by making noise or giving a warning shot. So we use a flare gun and then you put this, try to put the flare between you and the polar bear. But if you shoot it up in the air and the flare goes behind the polar bear, then you are in risk of threatening towards you.

So this polar bear got really close and he got on his back legs and he stood up. He's like four meters tall. So we shot him right in the belly with this flare gun. And then his fur caught on fire and then he ran away. So no coke, but burning polar bear. What's your plans, aside from the flare gun, I mean, obviously you have plans for dealing with polar bears and you're not going to outrun one. So, like, we can shoot them, but it's not legal to, in the earlier days, it was legal to shoot polar bears and the serious patrol would shoot them and eat them. But now today, it's a national park, so all animals.

you're not allowed to kill them, but you can eventually have to kill an polar bear or muscocks if they will attack you. So of course, in that case, you will kill it. Are muscox fairly aggressive, or is it only during certain mating season, or how does that work with muscox? Well, they can get really, really aggressive.

And the fun part is that the sled dog is made for, it's a hunting dog. So, the way the Eskimos would hunt polar bears and muskogs and everything else is that they would drive around with the dogs left until the dogs would get the scent

of the polar bear. And then the Eskimo would just release the dogs and all the dogs would attack the polar bear or the muskogs. And while the polar bear and the muskogs is fighting these dogs, then the hunter could run up there

with his spear and kill it. So you can imagine if you have to kill a polar bear with just a spear and that's two meters long, you have to get really close. So even though we have the rifles today, the dogs, they will attack. If they see a polar bear or a moscogs, they will just go crazy and attack.

And that's also what we saw on this, on the picture, that the dogs think it's really, really funny. And the moscogs, they will turn like with the back to back, and then they will attack outside. and they are pretty furious. And if you have an attack and you shoot it, it will keep running and it's like 400 kilos and it's really a hard forehead.

So don't mess with those guys. Casper, what is this? I heard a story. I can't remember if this was something you told me or I read somewhere that the Sirius Patrol carries a rifle of a special caliber to shoot the polar bear if need be. Yeah, the caliber is, 7.62, but it's an old

rimmington from 1917 because it's the only reliable rifle when it's down to minus 50. So we never oil it. We never agree to anything, but you can't shoot an automatic. We also use the Glock 20 millimeter

pistol for closed protection. But in the minus 50, even though it's a 10 millimeter, you can risk that when you shoot it, you can't reload because it's so cold. And this old Remington rifle, it will always work the old mouse and lock. That works anytime.

So we still use that. Is it a bolt action? Yes. Wow. That works. Old reliable. Yeah, exactly. Jake, thank you very much.

And Jake again, hey guys, thank you for all your podcast. I listen to Joel Struthers. Oh, French Foreign League. Yeah. And have decided I'm going in December of this year. for everything. Jake, good luck, man. And please keep us updated. Andrew, so we talked about your weaponry. He said what kind of weaponry were used? In addition to the Remington and the Glock, did you guys carry anything else in flare guns? No, we don't carry anything else on the patrols

as of now, but we have depots with also light machine guns and stuff like that. But it's it's mainly for for patrolling that's that's the armor that we carry you know being that it's two men out there with so remotely is

is there I mean you don't have like a hatchet force or a quick response force or any kind even a long response force if you were to say encounter a hostile force setting up on your shores or if you guys were under duress

what's the plan for retrieving you, for rescuing you, for, you know, engaging the enemy, things like that? The first plan is to observe and report, and the next plan is to try and stay alive. In the old days, of course, they would hope that you would get to send some message home before you would get killed or whatever. If you could escape, fine, if you couldn't. Too bad. Today, when you also have a satellite, coverage and everything, but you always need boots on ground to check out what's going on. So that's the main purpose because a two-man army can't do much when it comes to direct action, but they can observe and report. And that's also why we are patrolling all the time to be able to distinguish between

if something is going on, because when nothing is supposed to be going on, you get a quite good sentence if something is happening. Interesting. And maybe there are things you can't talk about, but have there been incidents over the years that you didn't mention in your slide presentation that were notable for your unit? Yeah, there's been some things along the way also.

You know, the Russians had the nuclear submarines that can go in under the ice and all this. So, of course, there has been activities and also because of all of the wealth of the goal, and diamonds and all kinds of minerals there are in Greenland and everything. You talk about the geological surroundings of Greenland, everything that's going under the ice cape. So, of course, there's a lot of things going on there.

Interesting. Interesting. So, I mean, some of your job may be, may apply to like pirate civilian organizations or looters as much as foreign countries at times. Yeah, exactly. We also have the police authority in the area, so in case anyone should come up there. But it's mostly scientists and mining companies. And, of course, some tourists in the summertime will come with an special Arctic cruise ship that we also have to engage and make sure that they follow the rules. Interesting.

Ian, thank you very much. I understand that the topography of Greenland is essentially a bull. Is that correct? If so, does it affect mobility in that you have to climb out? Yeah, we mainly patrol around the fjords on the coastline of Greenland. As I said before, the ice cave is up to three kilometers thick. So at some places we have to go on the ice cape to cross from one fjord to the other, but that's really dangerous.

You have a lot of crevasses and you can fall down between in these glacier crevasses. So it's super dangerous to go up on the ice cape. So we are mostly on the ice on the shores. But that can also be dangerous because you can have what we call this bad ice. And even though it's minus 35 or minus 40, the current in the ocean can make sure that the ice is rotten and you'll go through the ice. so and it's a really it's a really cold adventure to go down there and we have lost colleagues on that account kester the job is extremely dangerous and it's it's 12 men correct

12 men yes and the the tour is about two years just a little over two years how often do they run selections and then how do they manage when a man does get injured or or you killed, how do they handle his replacement if selections are on a cycle to match people's tours? It's a, you have six teams of two men, one old guy and one new guy. So you turn every year, you turn six people. So there's always one old guy and one new guy coming. So we have selection running every year. And so we keep continuing this loop.

So the old man teaches the new guy. and next year he's the new guy, the old guy teaching a new guy. So you have a continuous production of new people. And whenever someone get injured or even get killed, you will take someone from the year before or longer before and replace him with that guy. So they might call somebody back to service after they've done their two years, two months? Yes.

Okay. Yes, we also have a reserve unit where guys that are coming home, they're still serving in the serious reserve unit. So you always have extra guys to take in. Okay. And how do those guys adapt, if they have to, how do they adapt back into Syria service after having the soft life of a civilian and a reserve unit?

Yeah, it's a, I mean, it's such a strong experience. You can talk to these guys, and they will say they are the best years in their life and everyone would more or less give their right arm to have the chance to go back there. So it's never a problem to find people to go back there. Okay, because I could never go back to being a... Like, I'm too soft. I would just, I would fold instantly.

Well, on that note, I'd be interested to ask you, what is it like integrating back into Danish society after being out in the middle of nowhere with nobody except your one partner and a dozen dogs? I mean, what's it like coming back home? Yeah, it's a question we always get. And one way of answering the question is if you live 25 years in New York City and you go away for two years and you come back, then it's easy to go back to the things you've done for 25 years.

But there's a lot of things going on in your mind. For example, when you're out there, everything is about surviving. and it means when you can't not do anything. It's not like I'm too lazy today. I don't want to fix my dogs. I don't want to fix my equipment. I don't want to make sure my rifle is working because everything is about life and death. So you never don't do anything. So we have the best conscience ever. You never have bad conscience

because there's nothing that you can't do. So when you're lying and you're sleeping back at night, you have the best conscience ever. I never felt so good in my life because when you're in normal society, you can always, you know, go online, you can always write your mother, you can always call your children, you can always do something. That's always something you can do up there. There's nothing you can do because all the things you have to do, you have to do. And there's nothing beside of that.

Right. So that's really great. I mean, it's really, really basic man stuff. you need to eat, sleep, and survive. That's all the earth. That's fascinating. Yeah, it's really nice. It's really fun to kind of be, you know, be wanting that.

You think you have everything in society. We have heat. We have food. We have everything. But, I mean, being out there where the only thing that matters is that you actually survive and make it to the next day, that's kind of fascinating. I kind of miss that, even though I like it with hot and nice. Right.

Hot shower, yeah. Yeah. With that, even though it's easy to go back to society because you've, you're just returning to something, no. Is there a transition period for you where you're so used to the silence, the solitude with just one other person, things like that, and then you go back to noisy, bustling, loud people and things like that? Being a parent can be really challenging.

Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant. parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting visit child and family resource network.org today being a parent can be really challenging child and family resource network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey everyone is there of someone they can turn to for help with parenting visit child and family resource network.org today Yeah, I think that's a very good question because even though the guys in the series patrol, they're very much alike on some of the personal skills.

But on the other, they are very different. I mean, when my wife sees us guys together, she's like, did you serve with this guy and this guy, you're a buyer, an ice piece of land out in the middle of nowhere and they will live there. I live in the middle of the city and transition completely into a different life. So that's very different. That's actually quite funny to see that, but it's also, I guess, your experience with your units that you have something that's in common, but then you're completely different on all kinds of mental issues.

Right. Fascinating. Thank you, Andrew. Is the dog population for the Sirius Patrol self-sustaining? or does Denmark have veterinarians seeking out breeding dogs? Yeah, actually both. We were self-sustaining up to the point where we could get the serious dog to be its own race.

But then some veterinarians and mathematicians were doing the math and saying that that would not be good in about 25 years or something. So then they decided not to make it a race and to start a breeding program to make a breeding program to make sure that you'll have all the right skills and abilities in the dogs. So, yeah, we're self-sustainable now, but we get, eventually we get dogs from Greenland. We have someone from Canada. We have some dogs from Alaska, and that's all put into place so that we'll have the best

possible breed of dogs. So the serious dog was pretty much its own breed, but because of inbreeding, it would have caused the genetic issues. What was the serious dog originally or what breeds? It was a mix of the Alaska Malamut, the big dog and the Siberian husk. So the Greenlandic sled dog is somewhere in between. But in the earlier days, like say from the 90s and back, they would like to have really, really big dogs.

Whereas today in 2020, they would like to. have more but smaller dogs. So the biggest dog I had in my time was also the biggest dog that's been there was 63 kilos. So it's pretty massive. But today I think a male dog would be around 40, 45 kilos. Well, somebody do the man. And female around. Yeah.

So what dogs do they bring in now to breed with those to keep the line going but to also keep the traits you want? Do they bring in the Siberian huskies and the Maloos still, or do they add things to it? Yeah. Yeah, no, only like sled dogs, but from different kennels, depending on what kind of skills or abilities they would like. That's a very important part of the sort of the logistics set up around the Sirius Patrol. They take very good care of that with the dogs. Fascinating. And, Andrew, thank you.

Are there soldiers who just seem like... Oh, are there soldiers who just seem to like the life up there and keep signing up for it? Do they allow you to stay on for more than the two-year, two-month tour? No. There are some positions where you can get an extra year or an extra two years and you can come home and become... Be the commander of the unit that will train you.

serious guys. I did that myself. So that's an additional few years, but that's it. And then it's out again also to make sure that we still keep getting new guys. But some of them will move into similar positions, join the different, like the Navy SEALs or the Delta Force, they will join these units

where they can stay on for more of the years. But they will go on or start a civilian life like this in the wilderness and hunt polar bears and stuff like that or go completely civilian and have a completely normal life do is there a I mean do the majority of the guys

tend to get out of the military when they once they've done this tour or do the majority tend to stay in and pursue careers in the military no no the majority leave because this is nothing like regular military service so it's

kind of you make all the decisions to yourself so it's a if you want to continue it will be in another special forces unit it's not possible to go back into the regular military because it's too regulated when when you're used to this so this of course there's a few now and then who who stays in the military but but not in they say regular positions yeah that's fascinating I stayed on for more years because I also liked the more direct action side of it, the tourists in Afghanistan and Pakistan and all this. So that's a completely different ballgame. So it's still within the special forces community and you very much making decisions yourself. It's not like a big unit where you have to do what everybody else is telling you.

So of course there's someone who's staying in, but most will leave after. after this and get a civilian career. Could you tell us about that then, leaving Sirius patrol and deploying to the Middle East? Yeah, you said from minus 50 to a plus 50. So, special operation forces between 100 degrees centigrade. So yeah, but I think I kind of guess it's more or less the same as everyone, the special atmosphere in the military and in the special forces community. And I just like that and I like going abroad.

like to get new adventures. And then, of course, join the military, see the world. And you always get to go places where you wouldn't go, like, on a holiday and stuff like that. So I find that really interesting. And you get to meet a lot of cool people from around the world or all the coalition forces that you get to meet. And, yeah, I find that really exciting. So you went from Sirius Patrol to the training school for a while, right? Did you go to the training?

Did you say? Yes. And then you went, which special operations unit did you go into from there? I went to the Jekker Corps as an intelligence officer in that intelligence branch. And then I went also with the mission in Pakistan for gathering intelligence with the United Nations also. So they have India and Pakistan is still at war in the Kashmir region. And that was also fantastic scenery. And yeah, the northern part of Pakistan is a quite interesting place also.

Yes, it is. And I imagine your background in Sirius Patrol must have played some, it must have helped you, even though it's a very different environment, that the mission was reconnaissance. Exactly. And actually in in Kashmir on the border between India and Pakistan They have the world's highest trenches

They are at war in the seas and glaciers Which is the 4,000 meters above sea level The cargo conflict Yeah exactly So yeah Of course that experience came in handy In those harsh conditions up there as well So

Anybody who's been in the military In the American military understand this but when you were in the serious patrol and then you move to another unit do you get some sort of badge or tab that says that you're in the serious patrol so you get to carry that around with you when you go other places yes yes you get that so you can flash that on your uniform here very nice but but the problem with that but that is that that no one has ever seen it before because there's so few of us so so it's it's very unlikely that someone will see it and know what it actually means so So they will have to ask you, what the fuck is that?

You're wearing that. So, yeah, but you get to work. That's awesome. That's very cool. And were, what were the, was the leadership of most of the units, though, like, aware of what it was and your background and your skill set and things like that? Yeah, we have, we have like this, this poster that goes around in every military unit. It shows the great, you know, a general has so many stars and the colonel has so many and blah, blah, blah. and there's also a picture of this mark,

but no one has more likely to have seen a four-star general than to have seen a guy with this mark on his uniform because there's so few of us who've been doing service in this unit and even few of them has continued their service in the military. So it's... Yeah, essentially six men a year. Right, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's incredible.

So do you want to tell us about... You can tell us about any of the deployments you want if, you know, anything notable, and then we'll move on to Afghanistan because we'd love to hear about that. Yeah. Yeah, but you can just ask whatever questions one. I'll feel free to ask. What were your favorite deployments with the Jekers? It depends on how you look at it.

But I like Afghanistan because we were in this soft fusion cell, part of the Aysaf Soff in, I was posted in Kabul and the rest of my unit was down in the southern part of Helmand. Okay. But also what was in this community, you can say fun or cool about it, is that everybody else is seeing the news on TV. They hear about Afghanistan, but they don't know anything about it. You're actually there and you know what it's like in the middle of it. So that was kind of very interesting to get behind the scenes and see what's actually going on. Yeah, and did you find that your experience in Afghanistan lined up with the way the media was reporting it in Denmark?

No, not at all. And it's like you get some information, but you can really use it in the sense of that no one understands. we can talk about it because we understand it, but you can't come home from a deployment and try to tell you to your family or to your friends and anything, and you can't go and say, I'll tell you what it's really like, but they can't comprehend with it.

So it's like you have a lot of knowledge, but you can't use it because no one is actually able of understanding it. So it's kind of frustrating, actually. See, if you were in America, you could make a living off of telling people what it was like. Say again. I said if you lived in America, you could make a living off telling people what it was like.

He's making a Navy SEAL joke. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. See, in America, it's the same in Denmark, it's the same in Australia, it's the same in Italy. There's this tension between Army Special Operations and Navy Special Operations. Every single country has it. It's just good fun. Yeah. Exactly.

So what was, how was it different? Like, how was the media portraying Afghanistan? And then how did you experience? What was the difference in that? I think the way the media portrays it's like, when you talk about in Denmark, when you talk about military operation, everybody thinks that the war is something like this. They thought in the first World War or the Second World War,

like, you know, dropping bombs in cities, shooting women and children. And you have to explain in that. a war in this century is like doing police business. You don't just shoot people. You fight the criminals and then you arrest them. That's what you're doing.

And that's really impossible to try and get people to understand. So it's yeah, it's kind of I think it's really strange that the politicians, the government

does, try to do more to tell people what's actually going on. Something like, you know, there's no reason for you to go over there. No, not unless you want them to sit there and make terrorist bombs and then come and shoot them at you while you're sleeping. Right. So it's, I think that's also a part of the, when we go into this talk about the Red Rums.

I mean, you guys and me, we can sit here and talk about it, but, but you also have these guys that are not so well outspoken. They can't, they can't tell this to anyone. and they don't know how to express itself. So they can hear themselves sounding really stupid when they tried to explain what they were doing over there. And I feel kind of sorry for them.

I think they deserve better than that. Sure, sure. I think that a lot of times our media presents it the same way. And without the idea that, you know, some Americans think that, you know, and probably you're over there waging war against the local populace

and it's like, well, we're really not, we're actually in partnership with the local populace and the local government. And that was just... I think that European countries, and I'm interested to hear your thoughts, Casper, I think European countries also have a very different view of their militaries because of history, because of what...

I mean, we can go on and on, but there's this long history of warfare in Europe that has, in many ways, you know, left a mark on the population. Exactly. And at least in Denmark, we don't have this team America, world police. It's like in America, it's like you have to sort of whatever problem there is around the globe. In Denmark, it's just like we can just stay home and have fun and let someone else do it. And that's also, I mean, it's like people, they tend to forget that freedom is not free.

Someone has to fight for freedom. And if you have a nice little paradise, I mean, someone else will come and take it if you don't defend it. So, but it's, it's kind of difficult to explain to the regular Danish population. It is. And I mean, it's hard, it's hard to understand because at least in America's, you know, it's like, we haven't always made the best case for why we are somewhere. Yeah. You know, the idea of, yes, you know, a bunch of barrel chested freedom fighters protecting everybody's freedoms. but sometimes it's fair to ask from whom

because it... Exactly. But there are ramifications like you said. In Afghanistan, they were building, you know, they were creating terrorists. You know, and things get murky as time goes on. In a counterinsurgency.

Yeah. How long were you there for? How long was it tour for you when you were with Yeagers? It was just five months, I think, in Afghanistan now. Okay. That would the longest.

Yeah. And speaking of which, since we're on the topic, I should plug for Thomas. Yeah. You guys should go out and take a look. It's available in English and Danish Thomas Rathsack's book, Yeager, which is all about Danish Army Special Operations. And really good book, really nice guy. You guys should take a look for that if you want to know more about Danish soft.

Now, when you said that you can't write. really explain to people. How is like in how is the Danish, the general population, the attitude towards the military, towards you as a veteran? I always say I never used the phrase a veteran Denmark because I think it's a it's a wrong phrase when you have a guy that's 22 years old. He comes back from Iraq or from Afghanistan and he's ready to go do whatever and then people call him a veteran. And I like he's a 22 year old warrior. He's not a, veteran, he's an ex-military guy. So we kind of get this picture that veterans is like, it's almost like Tom Cruise,

Fourth of July, it's like someone you should feel sorry for. Interesting. And I try to tell a story that, of course, there's this 1% or 2 that it's, that didn't come out so well, but the 98% others, they get, they come out much stronger. They get a lot of experience. They get a lot of new skills that they can use. they are an asset for society, but we always keep hearing about this one or two percent. That's a problem.

So it's, at least in Denmark, it's very divided. I mean, in business life, you have a high standard. If you're an ex-military or an officer, you're really valuable. But in the other part of society, I mean, people will not almost talk to you if you're a soldier because, oh, this is too bad and you must be sick. how are you up? So I think that's it's very diversified.

Interesting. And is there medical care for former soldiers in, in Denmark? Is there like a system or a process for that? Yeah,

and you can say in Denmark there's a system for everybody. For everybody. We're a socialist, democratic country. So we don't have the problems you have in the U.S. So we don't have

not a special thing for veterans because we have the same security net for everybody. So that's some guys will look at Americans say, oh, they have these special programs for veterans, everything. Yes, but you don't have special programs for anyone. Right. We have that in Denmark. So that's very different. But on the other hand, you don't have anyone in Denmark coming up and say,

thank you for your service. Right. You can't get a free dinner at Applebee's on Veterans Day? No, no, no, we don't get free parking. When I was in Hawaii, and we went to Pearl Harbor, and this is, you know, a free parking for veterans in this area. We don't have any of that in there. Did you park there, Casper?

No, no. I parked next to you to see you who is parking. That's very interesting. Yeah, and I guess that makes sense. You don't need a VA if you have, you know, medicine that covers everybody. So what did you decide to do after your military career? I mean, you had this really, honestly, an amazing career for such a small, unique unit and serious patrol, then moving on to being their head trainer, then getting to go and serve as an intelligence officer with the Yager Corps. That's super cool. what came next for you? What does Casper decide to do after the military? I was doing some leadership program, you know, training civilian leaders, all the skills and most importantly the mindset.

And while doing that, I was doing that for the biggest medical company we have in Denmark, Novo. And I was sitting with this rich scientist unit. There were 12 scientists, super clever, everybody. And I was talking about, you know, mindset and skills and everybody. And they were feeling, where do you know this from? Who taught you this? I say, you know, life talk with this.

Hey, they gave me a flying talk about that. They needed some professors, you know. We don't trust you if you don't go to universe. And then I realized they had a point because everything I said was, of course, right. But it was just something that I said. I need to get it verified. So I decided, okay, I need to go to university. I need to get a degree.

And then actually my plan was to go to Harvard to get an MBA because I thought that was kind of, you know, something that everybody would know of. But by coincidence, I ended up studying psychology in the most left-wing university we have in Denmark. If you have Harvard on this side and then you have this university as far as way as you can come.

But it was the best thing ever because it's actually really super easy to be a leader or be a manager in a special forces unit because the level of motivation

is super high. I mean, almost everybody can do that because if you're a manager in a basic training or selection program, you say, get down there and give me 1,000 push-ups, they will do it. Because they are motivated from within.

But when you need to go out and motivate people, regular people, you know, the guy with the copying machine or the women and Applebee's, what's motivating them? That's a completely different mind game. So I really learned a lot from that psychology study, also because there was a lot of training exercises where we have to do it with each other. and there was a lot of women in this class and that's the only thing there wasn't in any of my units. So they have a completely different mindset. So that was a very important lesson for me.

So it kind of completed the circle for me. And also when I work as a management consultant, if you come out to a business with your military background, instantly someone would sit like this and say, I don't care about the military. This is not the military. It does work here. But if you come out and you present yourself as a psychologist,

then someone will say, oh, this is very interesting. Then some of the guys would say, I don't want this crap. And then you can pull out the military story. So you can direct to everybody. So it's super useful. Did you, did they,

maybe you didn't even tell them, but did people treat, because it was a left-wing university, did they treat you differently because you had been in the military? military? No, the professors thought it was super fun because they, on all these classes, they always tried to get some with military background because it would give some very good discussion in these exercises where you were supposed to have discussions. Because you come in with a

completely different background, you would completely different approach. And that was very good for the learning for the whole group. Yeah, it's great. I mean, real diversity of thought. I have a question that comes to mind now, knowing that you know, you have a degree in psychology and also served in Yeager Patrol. Or, you know, during this time frame, this period in history where people are socially isolated, how did you deal with that psychologically? Yeah, there's no problem. I mean, we're not really isolated when you compare. When I was in Pakistan, it was in 2005. It was. In the, it was in 2005. It was during the Muhammad crisis, you know, where they were burning the Danish flag in the Middle East, not least.

I was living in the most Islamic part of the world. And there you were isolated because right outside the door, they were shouting death over Denmark and burning the flag and everything. There was an actual threat if you would go outside. I mean, here you're isolated, but you can walk down the store and you can buy whatever you want. you can sit and watch Netflix and there's no real threat. So, of course, like you're also experienced when people are talking about tough times and when things really, really go Hey, Walt, you said like, oh, hey, come on. I mean, it's not really that bad.

And that's also when I coach, you know, professional sports people, they always, you know, oh, this is so tough, this is so hard. and you have to put that into perspective. Right. I was training some athletes for the Olympics in Riyu. And they were like, Ah, Casper, it's not so easy. You know, you have to travel all the way to Brazil,

and you have to train for this for four years, and maybe you are out in the first round, and this is really, really, really tough. And I was like, so the shittiest thing in your life is you have to go to Riyu in Brazil, and you have to do whatever sport you're doing for five minutes, And then you can kick out and then you can sit for two weeks, the sip drinks with straw in the sun.

That's your worst case scenario. Let me show your worst case scenario. And then they will be kind of embarrassed because, you know, you'll show them a coffin with a flag on top of it. This is how it looks when you lose in my sport. Right. So it's not, there's nothing coming back next four years or anything. It's just over.

That is shitty. sitting on the beach in Rio, sipping drinks, that's not really chilly. Right. Yeah. So you can work with the mindset. And the mindset of regular people, normal people is completely different from the mindset that we know of. I call it the special forces mindset, you know. And how like going through, you know, becoming a psychologist at this university,

how did you, how did you, I? Obviously, you have to have some empathy for people, right? You can't just be like a drill sergeant, like, ah, you know, you don't know what suffering is. How do you empathize with them? And then how do you sort of reframe their sense of suffering? Well, actually, it's a very good question because one of the things that really inspired me to go into the military in the first base was the movie Officer and Gentleman from the 70s with Richard Gere. Yeah. Number winger.

But the drill sergeant actually has a lot of empathy in that movie. You know, he starts by lining them up and being a real asshole, but he still has empathy in the end. And that's one of the most misunderstood thing about the military. People think that it's just a drill sergeant, you know, shouting at someone. They don't see the side with the empathy. You need really to take care of your soldiers. Because if you don't have your soldiers, you don't have anything.

You can't win a war on your own. You really need to take care of your men, but you also need to make sure that your men perform at the best level possible. And that's what people, they tend to misunderstand. When I get new guys into my unit, they would not love me when they were under my command in the beginning. But afterwards, I always say, if I write on Facebook today, I need to go to Afghanistan on Tuesday,

I need 10 people. the salary is shitty. You might not come home, everybody. Anyone want to come? And I have several hundred people saying, sign me up. Right. But they didn't like me when they first met me.

They thought I was a psychopath or asshole or whatever. But they survived. So, I mean, now they're happy. And when you stand with the parents of these young kids and you're taking them to Greenland or wherever you're taking them, and you look in the mother's eyes and say, I'll take good care of your son. Right.

This means that I have to train him so hard. that it's most likely that he'll get out of this alive. So that's actually a very important aspect that I spend a lot of time trying to tell people that the military is not about breaking people down. It's about building them up. But from an outsider, it can look like you'll break them down because they're crying and they're sweating, but you have to find out where the limits are.

And then you show them that even though they met their limits, you still love them, you show empathy for them. They still have a place in the group in your unit. That's really strong. And I think that's some of the things that we miss. A really interesting documentary that I saw, I think it was on Netflix. I think it's called Armadillo about a Danish infantry platoon. Yeah.

It's really good, really interesting. I mean, Denmark, of course, is a very small country, very small military, but a very professionalized military also. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we're completely different from your huge military machine. But we have a super cool military also because in Denmark education is for free. So the level of education for privates in the Danish army is really, really high. I mean, the guy with the lowest rank, the minimum education, military-wise,

he's still kind of clever and able to make his own decisions. and that makes a very unique unit. Is, what's the average age of somebody who enters service in Denmark? Are they, because like in the U.S. tends to be around 18. Yeah. But do people in Denmark tend to go to college first and then into the military? No, it's mostly like in 1920 years of age when they join the military. Okay. Okay.

out of curiosity because you know we've talked about isolation and we've talked about psychology in that seven-month training that you did uh for serious patrol did they did they teach you things like conflict resolution or you know you're going to be out with one person for four months and nobody else did they teach you how do you not kill your sleep body yeah yeah did they teach you interpersonal skills or conflict resolution or anything like that yeah there's a lot of a lot of training in that. First of all, there's also, it's a major part of the selection program.

You get a really thorough psychoanalysis to make sure that your level in the beginning is very high, and then of course you get the training on top of that. Wow. And did you have to use any of those conflict resolution

skills when you were in Sirius Patrol? Yeah, I developed what I call the serious program for cooperation. It's like, we call actually the nuclear model.

It was inspired me when I was in India and Pakistan. You know, they both have nuclear weapons. Because it's like if you can always use it in a relationship with your wife or anybody else, if you say that

the total amount of decision that has to be made is 100%. In 95% of the times, you just do whatever he wants or she wants. Then in 4% of the times, you have to say, I want to do this, or we could also do that. We have to tell what's on your mind. But only in 1% of the time, you can have your way. But this is like

having a nuclear bomb. If you fire yours, they will fire it back. Because in that one time, you can make the decision saying, I want to move to California. That's your decision. Then your wife can say, okay, if that's what you want, I want to move back. So now you both spend your one time off. This means that there is no way of having your way. There is only one way of negotiation. And you have to be really, really apparent if there's something that's really important for you. Because if it's not important for you, don't say it.

If it's really important, you have to say it. Because otherwise your friend or your colleague or wife, they can't know that it's important for you. I had the one time with my colleague, you know, when he was staring in his pot, his mother taught him to do it in the numbers of eight. So he would turn like an eight and he would hack the spoon on the side of the pot like, shh, and it was like driving me mad after like two months. And then I said, you know, after spending two weeks trying to know, should I tell it or should not tell it? Because if I told him this, he would definitely tell me something that he would. And so then I manned up one night and said, hey, Henley, could you please stop doing that? Yes, of course.

And I said, really? Yes. Why did you just say that before? Right. I thought it was important for you. Oh, no, no. I just had to do it like whatever. So it's kind of funny how your brain messes around with you.

Sure. And those are probably really important lessons just to carry on with life that you have to ask for what you want. Otherwise, there's no way you're going to get it. Exactly. But at the same time, you know, be aware of, is it always your way or should maybe go somewhere else's way? So, so, but that's, that's all about the leadership. It's not having your way. It's about reaching whatever goal.

And if the goal is cooperation or the goal is to get safe to base, then it's what you do. Right, yeah. And it's a team effort too. Exactly. And the context of, you know, military context. extra in Serious Patrol. It's like, you know, if your buddy wants to go in the wrong direction, you're like, hey, we're going to ride right down a crevasse and die, like, you have to speak up. You have to say something. Exactly.

Out of curiosity, the time frame that you were in Serious Patrol, I don't know if you guys were using GPSs, if you have that technology. I don't know the time frame, but how are you navigating point to point over such long periods of time in the dark? No real landmarks. Yeah, that was a good question because at that time it was in the beginning of the GPS, you know, the really, really big one with the antennae are on top of the U.S. military spec model. And then we had some old aeronautical charts, but there could be up to 40 miles difference. If you took a waypoint to a known decision and the waypoint to another known location, there could be up to 40 kilometers difference between these two. So of course the GPS was right, but the charts, the maps were not GPS through. I'll just get a charge for my computer.

One second. Guys, this is a good time to like, share, and subscribe to the channel. And check us out on Patreon. Also, the link is down in the description if you want to get access to the bonus segments. $1 a month will get you access to a. amazing content in the bonus sections. If you want to get more, if you have it, we welcome it. We pay our rent.

We do all the stuff. But thanks for joining us. Yeah. And there's also the merch down the description. I'm looking for the coffee mugs. I think I'm remiss in that I don't have them here, but that's okay. All right. So what's up, Casper?

What do you got for us? Whatever you want. You said you have the chart. Yeah. At that time, the charts were not. GPS through, it was just some old photos, some aeronautical charts. So you could have to make the decision to go on the eastern side of an island or on the western side of the island.

That would be a 40 kilometers difference between those. So that was kind of very interesting at those times. But today, of course, every map is GPS through and you can pinpoint exactly where you are. But at that times, it was kind of difficult. And also when you were sledding in a blizzard, you wouldn't even be able to see your own skis. It was a clip completely white out. And then it would also be very exciting to see where you ended up. And we have examples of people going to a hut and they would put up the tent.

And when they woke up the next morning, they would see that they attended like two meters from the hut. But it's completely impossible to see. But also just a thing like going on a toilet in a... I mean, you can't go anywhere. You have to hold on to the sleds because if you go away just one meter and you think you're going straight line this way and it goes straight line back, but you deviate just a few degrees, then you'll never hit it and you'll be lost. Before we, the chart, when you showed us that picture of total blackout conditions,

like in December, when the sun would not rise. But you guys still had to move, right? You still had to navigate. How did you navigate in pitch black, again, with no real landmarks? You'll make a course on your compass, and you'll decide to go like 40 degrees or like 120 degrees, and then you'll hold the compass course, and just kind of every hour, make sure,

try to take a GPS position to wait. you ended up. So yeah, it was a tough navigating in the good old days. Are the dogs pretty, you know, sense aware where if you point them in a cardinal direction, or in a compass direction, that they will kind of stay online? Yeah, the good dogs would do that, but in, in, in tough conditions, we would walk in front. So, so one guy would be walking next to the slits, and one guy would be walking. Okay. So in front. So he will, he, he will, he, he would, He'll be leading the way and the dogs will follow his tracks. Also, if we have, like, very soft snow, if we have really deep snow,

then you have to walk to make a path for the dogs because they could almost be swimming. You can have so much snow that the dogs would almost be swimming in the snow. So we have to make a path for them to walk in. Did you guys, because you were moving so much at skiing, and you guys weren't riding the sled. That was more for supplies, right? You were. Yes.

you were on cross-country skis did you at that point did you ever get tired or were you just such a like physical machine at that point in time where moving you know I don't know how many kilometers a day

was just what you did yeah you get in really really good physical conditions but I mean it was not the distance it was conditions I mean you could you could really really struggle for 12 hours and have only moved like 800 meters.

The worst conditions ever is if you have, you have the ice is like maybe three meters thick, but then you'll have like one meter of powder snow on top. And that's very warm because there's so much air covered in the snow. So some of the water on the top of the ice will melt. So this will mean you have one meter of snow, then you have 10 centimeters of water, and then you'll have the ice. so you'll get completely wet feet

and when you lift your skis up against all the snow that will freeze onto this wet ski and you'll have like your skis will weigh like five kilos and your toes are completely wet and frosty and it's I mean that is psychopath's conditions I mean you are ready to shoot your dogs and everybody else and you struggle for 12 hours and you can turn around and you can see where you camp last night

and that that I mean In days like this, you think we're going to get killed out here because we can absolutely not survive in this. Or on the top of Greenland, just I showed you the flag on the northern, most northern part of the world in Kappanosiers. We had minus 50 for like five days. We were moving like 12 hours of struggle would take us one to two kilometers. And we had ate all our food. We had ate everything. there was not anything we could do

and we tried to call for help but the weather was so bad that no airplane could drop us any supplies and then of course we will cut down on supplies but if you don't get enough calories you don't have any energy you have to cut supplies for the dog then they don't have any energy

and you can just say that with the less energy you go even short of distance and then it takes you even longer to get to your supplies so that was a mental tough. Did you guys just have to wait it out until you could get supplies or how did that sit? Yeah, but the problem about waiting is even weighting costs you energy.

So you only have this amount of supplies. So if you take a day in your sleeping back, you still need to eat and then you have even less calories to get moving. We always have like 50% extra on the sled. But if you come across, you know, tough conditions. tough weather, then you start to cut your rations and eventually you run out. But it turned out luckily, I'm still here. Yeah. Just to give viewers some perspective in terms of when we're talking about land navigation

and no terrain features, do you know what an average leg is on a star course? I mean, it depends on which course, but I mean, like when me and you went through ranger selection, 800 to 1,000 meters. Okay, and you know about like SF? Six kilometers. Okay, so, okay. So, just under four miles, right? Six kilometers.

So in a lot of special operations selections, land navigation is part of the selection, and you have to run a star course or a land navigation course moving from point to point, but you're usually in an area that has terrain features that you can identify on a map, and you're moving maybe four or five miles and there's a time limit.

Now, you're talking about day after day after day of no terrain features because you use terrain features on a map to helping 800 meters a day to the point where like Casper just said, you can look backwards and see your campsite that you just left. Yeah. And even on a good day if the weather is good, about how far could you guys move on a good day. A good day would be like 45 kilometers. So, what is that? 27 miles, 27 miles on a good day. 8, 800 meters on a bad day. Yeah, navigating with no, it's just amazing to me that every day was like a selection for you guys, but that was your normal means of living. Yeah, that's, that's, that's that's also what's kind of difference

between the serious patrol and all other units. I mean, you know, other units, when you went, if you go through selection, then it starts to be much nicer on the other side. You get your vehicles, you get your air lift, you get, it's so much nice. Everything is good. So if you can see

it through selection, then you are home free, more or less. In serious, it's the same. I mean, yeah, you pass selection, but you still have to survive. I mean, it's not going to be any easier. Right.

I mean, when it's a blizzard and it's minus 50, it's just as cold if you're in a selection program or if you pass. So it's very different. Let's round it out with one last question before we go into the bonus segment here. Alex wants to ask, what was the coldest that ever got in Greenland, and why does Greenland hold for geo, or what is it Greenland hold for geopolitics in the near future? what can the US military learn from Denmark? Oh yeah, that's a lot of good questions.

The colder thing we had was minus 50 degrees centigrade, and that was because our term meter couldn't go below that. I mean, that is really, really shitty cold. It's so cold that if you touch anything with your bare hands, it will stick to the moist on your hands, and you can barely breathe because the air is so cold that your body needs to use a lot of energy before I can send it out in the lungs.

Everything is kind of moving in slow motion when it's so cold. Then we come to the part with Greenland, where it should be geopolitical. As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Trump wanted to buy Greenland because it was a nice defense line for America. And of course, the Russians think the same. There's a lot of minerals and stuff in Greenland. So, of course, they will have a big importance. I try to tell the Danish politicians they should be better at doing the marketing within NATO,

saying that we command this big white thing on top of the world. So this should give us some credit down in NATO because if we do this right, it's much more important than all the other military units combined because you can't barely see Denmark on a globe, but you can definitely see Greenland. So it is a very important part in the future. I would just add to that, Casper, point out that they're, from an American perspective, part of the geopolitical relevance of Greenland and also Alaska and the Aleutian Islands is, you know, I think we've talked about the due line, the early detection systems, having a reconnaissance rule,

keeping tabs on what the Russians are up to in that area. But also, in the outbreak of an outright war, there would be the concern that a foreign power would seize Greenland, could seize Alaska, and use those as staging grounds to then come down into the continental United States and use that to a podcast. So that's really, if you come down to like a World War III type scenario, that's the geopolitical relevance of Greenland. On top of, like you said, there's rare earth minerals there and everything else, I mean, it's, it is an important spot on the map. Exactly. That's, that's, that's, that's some high grounds you want to conquer if you're planning on your third World War.

Sure. We actually have a couple other questions up top that you kind of sec by. Ian, thank you. Any foreign nationals ever joined Syria, Norwegians or Finns maybe? Yeah, we have Norwegians and people from Iceland and from the Faroe Islands have joined also. But they, of course, have some kind of relation to Denmark and also, people from Greenland has joined the military.

Actually, there was in the first patrol back in 1941, it consists of people from Norway, Denmark, and Greenland. Oh, cool. So it was kind of one of the first multinational brigades. Interesting. Interesting.

T. Barr, thank you. Did Casper ever fight or train with the Danish Air Force? I worked with them deployed and they were exceptionally skilled in professional. Yes. We work a lot with them also because we get

supply drops if possible both from the C-130 and but also from other types of aircraft. So yeah, we work together with them.

BPA Izzy, thank you very much. We really appreciate it. Alex, thank you. What was the coldest? Oh, you got that one. Okay. Okay. Cool. Yeah, that's it.

Casper, any final thoughts? Anything to round this out before we go into the bonus segment that you'd like to put it out there? No, I can't really think of it. I think we got all the way around it. You know, I just want to say, Casper, thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us. This is such a unique, kind of like once-in-a-lifetime type of view to have the opportunity to talk somebody who served in this unit and to hear about these experiences. I'm not kidding when I think this is maybe the most unique special operations unit out there. Yeah, we've been trying to set up some corporations with some of the guys from America

and also from England and Germany and some of the other countries because they tend to think the same. And as you said, if there should be some kind of conflict in the future, Greenland is so big that we need more guys there. So more guys need to be prepared for this kind of, yeah, environment. And the United States is trying to, because we understand the importance of the Arctic, or finally we have come to understand the importance of the Arctic. We're trying to train our soldiers to better fight there. And America is never going to really be the experts on Arctic warfare.

We need to go, we need to look at the Danes, we need to look at the Norwegians, we need to look at the Canadians. Those are the guys who really know what they're doing. So it's just, again, the importance of a unit like Sirius Patrol. And, you know, we have a lot we can learn from them. Yeah. One big difference from Syrius and the Canadians and the Swedish and the Norwegians is that there are no trees in Greenland. Yeah.

So that's a really, really huge difference because when we go on exercises in Norway, trees play a really important role in terms of, you know, getting firewood and all kinds of things. You can build a cabin out of wood. You can do all kinds of shit with wood. But when you don't have any trees, it's a completely different ballgame. Yeah. Kessler, are you working on any kind? Do you have a book in the works at all about your military experience or your leadership?

Anything you want to direct people to? Yeah. Not at the moment, but when I write my book, I will come back to you and ask for a, five minutes combustion. Please do. We'll give you another whole show to plug your book. This is fascinating. We'd be happy to.

So guys, please make sure that you like the video, leave us a comment, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, hit that bell icon and select all notifications. So you get notified the next time we go live. Next episode, next Friday, we are going to have Chris Hore on the show. He is the son of Mad Mike Horror, the infamous Congo mercenary Five Commando way back in the 1960s,

and he wrote a biography about his dad. I'm actually reading it right now. We're going to have him on the show next Friday to talk about it. It's going to be super cool. So hope you'll join us then. Casper, thank you again. We really appreciate it.

We appreciate you taking this time with us and our audience. Thank you, guys. All right. See you next time. That's you. Okay. That's it. We're out.