The Team House - Irish Ranger | Kevin "Mack" McDonald | Ep. 345

Episode Date: May 10, 2025

Commandant Kevin McDonald served 7 years with Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil (FCA) and 33 years with the Permanent Defence Forces. He discusses his military career, focusing on his extensive service overseas. Most of his interview relates to his service in Lebanon and he speaks about the 2006 Lebanon War when he was serving with Observer Group Lebanon (OGL). He speaks about the deaths of some of his United Nations Military Observer colleagues at an OGL patrol base at El Khiam during that war.Grab Mack's book here:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Less-Ordinary-Kevin-Donald/dp/1914596307/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1XKTIGVJZ886B&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.laHCVdJFrHd1NTaBIOdb8g.V-F0eXmZCahCasWyKs_L5b3csXdb0uDFmqPaGoIliXU&dib_tag=se&keywords=9781914596308&qid=1745936886&sprefix=9781914596308%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------New 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—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! ___________________________________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/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/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"Want to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special operations. Cobert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone. This is episode 345 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy.

And I'm here with our guest today. Kevin McDonald. He's the author of A Life Less Ordinary. Kevin served in the Irish Ranger Wing. and then continued with his military career involved in a lot of peacekeeping operations in the Golan Heights, in Lebanon, and then later in places in Africa. And he's joining us tonight from the warm-ish, South Sudan. Yeah. New country in the world.

Yes. So, you know, thank you for joining us, Kevin. you're the first Irish Ranger we've had on the show and I'm excited to do this interview with you. I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for having me. Kevin, you'd mention that you'd like to throw out a little disclaimer before we get started.

Yeah, I think it's important by nature the fact that what we'll probably most like to be discussing is first of all that I don't want anyone to think that any views I may express can be seen as the views of a retired senior officer in the Irish Defence Forces. They're my personal views. And likewise, any of the views I express cannot be construed or seen as the views of someone

who's working in the United Nations. These are entirely my personal views. And, you know, please take them at that value. Thank you, Kevin. So let's start off talking a little bit about growing up in Ireland. And you had some pretty amusing stories about being a young man. getting into some things, including the military, way younger than you should have. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

So, yeah, in the Irish Defence Forces, we have a thing called the Army Reserve, which it's probably not anything like your National Guard, but you would do maybe two or three weekends training a month and then every summer a two or three week military training camp and the town i grew up in there was a i suppose the equivalent of a national guard barracks so it wasn't a it wasn't a permanent military post but but there was it was this place for for our reserve and one of the units that was in it was a cavalry unit and um they had armored cars motorbikes and all that sort of stuff and and to be in it was a cavalry unit and and they had armored cars, motorbikes and all that sort of stuff. And to be a trooper in a cavalry unit,

you had to be able to operate the radios of an armored car, drive an armored car, and operate the guns of an armored car. So when I was in school, there was a small range in the barracks, and you could hear the gunfire, and then during the summer you'd see these guys going out on exercises. and it was the only place I wanted to be. So I, let's just say I was creative with my birth certificate because you were supposed to be 17 before you joined.

I think I was just over 14 because I know I had a military license to drive land rovers, trucks and motorbikes before I was legally old enough to drive on the road. But it was marvelous. And, you know, it was a great, opportunity for for young people like myself to to get a sense of you know duty responsibility plus we got paid when we're on on our two-week camp we got it was a nice

a nice bit of money at that at the time so I spent seven years with the reserve before I joined the permanent defense forces the other thing that you had going on around this time frame was you worked at a car dealership selling cars before you were old enough to drive well i i didn't exactly i wasn't a salesman what what i did was would say if you had bought a new and the shock absorber went you'd bring it back to the garage and then i would make a claim on for for for this for garage to recoup the costs so i was a warranty assessor in a fort garry but um although i didn't manage to buy a few cars and sell them privately before i was old enough to drive and before I had insurance.

But that was, that was like a, like a Knickser, as we'd say in Ireland. That was like something on the side. And then, I mean, it sounds like you were, you know, getting into the army, having a hell of a lot of fun as a young guy. And you even got to play a soldier in a historical war film that was made. You want to tell any amusing stories about that? You had a couple in there that I thought were pretty good. Yeah.

So there was a book written about the 1798, I suppose, French invasion of Ireland to support the Catholics against the, excuse me, against the British Army. And they landed in the west coast of Ireland at a very obscure spot. And then they were quite successful initially. and they were marching on the town where I was born, which is a town called Castle Bar. And the British Army had deployed on the route they expected them to take. But the French and the Irish kind of came in from the flank. And there was a bit of a route.

And the British soldiers ran away. It became known as the races of Castle Barre, which was the last victory that the French and Irish had because a few weeks later they were destroyed in the Battle of Balanamuk. But anyway, our national TV company, decided that they would make a film of this. And naturally enough for all the military battles, it was much easier to use the likes of us in the reserve

that at least knew how to march and carry a weapon and that sort of stuff. But they had contacted a crowd of reenactors from the UK. And we were working with genuine muskets and genuine cannons. But ironically, the British army unit that my guys, my friends of mine were tasked with being part of, was a unit called Fraser's Fensibles, which was a Scottish regent. So we had red coats and kits. And for some reason, I was put in charge. So I had a sword. And when we were filming the scene for the races of Castle Bar,

The idea was that there was like a valley like that. And we would, we're supposed to march down, line up in a straight line, and then over the following hill would come these hordes of Irish peasants and French soldiers. And I was to give the order to fire a volley. And then slowly started to cheating backwards. And this guy was to die here and this guy was to die here. And that was kind of the plan. And it was a small little railway for the TV camera,

which would be on my right-hand side. So it kind of went to start according to plan as most things do. But however, the Irish peasants and the French soldiers were a bit more enthusiastic in attacking us than let's say we were expecting. And one of the key characters in the film, it was a famous Irish actor. And he was playing the part of an Irish poet

who had gathered a lot of supporters to support the French. and he had a 12-foot pike with a big sharp, pointing thing at the end. So he was full of the joys of getting into his role. And I'm here with like a three-foot sword. And this wasn't scripted, this wasn't supposed to happen. But he started jabbing at me with the pike.

And I was trying to sword fight with the pike with a three-foot sword, which wasn't exactly a very even contest. But I was conscious of, of on my right was the camera on the little railroad line, fill him in all of this. So every time he jabs me, I'd kind of put up my sword like that and I'd say,

fuck off. Sorry, I don't know if I can use language like that. Yeah, it's okay. But, and he, like, just was going on for a good while. And eventually, will you stop or you'll fucking kill me? So I had to die before I was actually killed. He was that entooly about it. That was great time because we were called up on military service,

so we were getting paid by the army, and the film company was paying us as well. So, like, and the catering on the site was really good. Plus, it was near an old town that had a few nice bars. So any time there was a break in filming, you could have a British soldier, a French soldier, an Irish peasant and a Scottish soldier, forcing Guinness into us and eventually the director,

come on quick, you're needed back our skin. But it was great. It was really good. Then tell us about sort of your first exposure to the Irish Ranger Regiment and kind of how this idea came to mind for you. Okay, so this was unusual because in that reserve unit I was in, for a short space of time, our commanding officer, he was eventually moved to form the Army Range Wing, which is our, for your visitor or for your listeners,

this is our soft unit. And this would have been in 1983 or 84 or something like that. So the unit had just been formed and he decided he'd run a course of experienced NCOs and officers that would be, after a four-week course, would be judged suitable if they passed, to instruct on selection for special forces. So not too far away from the town where I was living is one of, there's a vast expanse of open moorland and mountains. It's probably the last place in Ireland that's still kind of really desolate and uninhabited.

So he decided that he would use us or our unit as the story that the scenario was that these would be range of instructors were a sort of a breakaway unit from the Irish Army and they were operating independently and we had to go and find them. So we were patrolling by day and we had set up a sort of a base camp in the woods. no we hadn't a clue how to set up a proper base camp but we were looking for them and they were looking for us and this went on for nearly a week and we've been kind of briefed that you know nothing will happen to you naturally and then one afternoon

there was about six stun grenades came flying into our little camp and we'd never seen our hard stun grenades before and you know they're quite impressive if you haven't experienced them But I hit under a truck and all the guys were tied up and questioned and, you know, and we were told, you know, give your name, rank and Syria number as usual. But of course, these guys wanted a bit more information as to who we were and who was our boss and all that kind of stuff. So I was trying to figure out the inner patrolling of these guys and how I could make my escape during darkness.

and the next thing my two legs were pulled out from one from behind me, dragged out from one of the truck, thrown into a stream. And who are you and what are you doing and blah, blah, blah. And then about maybe 20 minutes later, the commanding officer of the army range, we came in and said, Endex. And these guys changed from being like raven lunatics to, hey, how's it going? It was amazing.

But subsequent to when I joined the unit, I was on my own Ranger Instructors course. And I remember going through the same forest at night. We were heading for a naval pickup off the coast. And I was going, Jesus, it's only about four years I was here. I wasn't even, I was in the reserve. And I'm on the same place, on the same type of course that we were interacting with back then. So yeah, that was a bit.

And we were the first Irish Army unit, whether permanent or whatever. to train with the ARW. So it was a huge honour for us. Obviously, after I haven't experienced that, there was only moment I was gone when I got a chance, and that was to go for selection. And correct me if I'm wrong, but before you went to selection,

you did your first trip over to Lebanon, right, in 84? Yeah, so I... You can't sort of enlist in special forces, I'm sure, like yourselves. You have to kind of go through regular training and ideally have an overseas trip under your belt. So I did, I joined an infantry battalion up on the border and after basic training, which is six weeks,

then there's two to three start training, which is like another eight weeks. You're like a fully qualified private. And I was assigned to support company. And we had, you know, the 50 calves and 81mm mortars. and I remember before I get around to go overseas it was just a funny incident took place

we were training before we fired live rounds from the 81s we were training there was a big field in front of our base and we had these inert rounds but you still put the charges over the fins so they go about 300 feet in the air and maybe 150 metres out

and so we'd fire maybe three bombs from two guns but then you'd spend probably an hour trying to find, because when they hit the ground they'd go down about a foot. So at that time in Ireland there was a sort of a disciplinary action called

confined to barracks. So we'll say if you were late for parade or whatever. So this guy was on what we call a CB. So therefore he's liable to be tasked with anything. So one of our instructors okay private come over here. get a few twigs and stand under that tree. And every time a bomb goes, run out and place a twig,

which, you know, sounded great. And of course, this guy started getting brave. And at one stage, just as the bombs went off, he ran out into the field like that. The next thing, there's 281 millimeter bombs coming down. Not like he would have been killstone dead. Oh, yeah. Anyway, I digress.

But yeah, I went overseas. I was about a year in the army. Went overseas as a private to Lebanon in 1984. I was promoted acting corporal after a month. And at that stage, the Israelis were withdrawing from their siege of Beirut. So it was tense enough. There was a lot of stuff happening. And I remember we would monitor all their patrols.

which we were obliged to do. And some of us got the great idea that we would talk in Gaelic. Like, we'd say on the radio, Fekker Nisaijori Shinn, or Tev Nabilia, like, look at those soldiers beside the town. And we thought this was great, you know. Until one stage, this broad Irish accent came up on the net and I didn't recognize it. And he goes, Bukleinawia, conch, Gilke, so lads, don't be talking Irish. So it was an Irish Jew who was doing his national service in Israel,

monitoring the communications of the Irish. We thought this was, well, I could kind of understand it. But I remember talking to a few Swedes and Finns, and they were experiencing the same thing. There was Finnish Jews and Norwegian Jews specifically listening on the communication chatter. So yeah, that was That was kind of interesting Hey guys

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that help support the show. ghostbed.com slash house for 10% off. made in the U.S., made in Canada. Shout out to our brothers in Canada. They rock. Check them out. I love Ghostbed. Thanks, guys. So talk to us about, you know, getting back home and applying for the Irish Ranger wing and what the selection process was like.

Well, actually, I should have said before I went to overseas, at that stage, each brigade, although they were known as commands at the time, but each brigade was entitled to run what they call a basic Ranger course. So it's four weeks. And if you pass it, you can wear the Ranger tab. But we'll say if you're in the unit, there's a Ranger tab with a red background. This was just like a standard Ranger tab. So I had actually completed that before I went overseas.

So I had some idea of A, what to expect and B, what my capabilities were. So I went down on selection and at the time, not every commanding officer would recommend you for selection because generally the guys going for selection were probably some of his best troops and he was being left with the problem, children, shall we say. So the chief of staff issued a directive that anyone that applied for selection, their application had to reach the, OC Army Range Wing. Even if it was a non-recommendation, he still had to get it and he would just pull them in. So I went down, yeah, we started on a Sunday afternoon with about 58 guys.

It was 11 gone by the next morning. And four weeks later, we finished with, I think we finished with 12, of which 10 of us were taken in. So fairly high attrition rate. But it was great. I spent four very good, very interesting, very tough years there. And I'm still friends with the guys that I had trained with and guys I subsequently trained. The selection course must have been, and I just imagine the weather in Ireland, especially during the winter.

Does that have any sort of impact on that attrition rate? It does, yeah. And certainly the standard equipment that we were issued with at the time was really bad. Like you know, the kind of plastic rain gear that squeaks and has no breathability. We'd standard issue boots. It wasn't until I got into the unit that I started wearing Gortex rain gear and Gortex boots and stuff like that. And plus, we were using at that stage the, I don't know if you're familiar with the British webbing, but there's a thing called the 58, 1958 patterned I mean, and your pack was about sort of that size by that. And into that you had to put everything in, you know, you'd be it then poaches from magazines

and all. But there certainly weren't designed for, for holding a lot of gear for, we'll say a week out in the mountains or whatever. But I know it was good. It was physically very tough. But what I found, and subsequent when I started, to instruct on selection courses myself. That if you're not prepared mentally,

it doesn't matter how fit you are. If your head starts going, then it's very easy to start coming up with injuries, if you know what I mean. Because I know certainly when subsequently, when I used to instruct on courses, I tended to be the guy that didn't shout too much. But when I did, the kind of knew it was serious.

But I often found, you know, if you, if there was, we'll just say there was an inspection and you came up behind someone and you just whispered in his ear, should I be seeing this shit? That sometimes had a more devastating effect than if I stood in front of him and did a complete bollicon of him. You know, it, and you know yourself, we play with people's minds when we're testing

their suitability for soft. So, yeah, it was good. And then there was a pretty extensive, a training course after you finish selection, both doing the subsurface stuff, a parachute course, all of that. I mean, can you talk us through a little bit of that? Okay, so first of all,

everyone in the unit has to be jump qualified, static line qualified. So when the course came up, the next course that came up, which I would have been going on, I was on leave when it was started it was a three-week course or either two-week or three-ways,

it was relatively short. But I came back and I had already privately done a jump in the UK so I reckon I had some experience. So I was brought in for the last week of the course and you have to five jumps to get your wings. So I did the first

three or four jumps and there was two expressions that the jump master essentially was an assess in the plane and you had to sit in the doorway and then when the pilot throttle back a bit

you reached out onto the strut and grabbed a handle and then stood out onto a plate above the wheel and then off you went but the jump masters they had two terms which I became quite familiar with one was AOT Ars Over Tit and the other

was BOS a bottle shite So the wing ceremony was on a Friday at lunchtime And the winds had picked up So the chief instructor said to one of the jump masters He said, what's Mac like when he's jumping? And he said he's either AOT or BOS exit in the plane But can he land? Oh geez, he can land? No problem So anyway, the small little military airstrip

Was not alone beside the main Dublin-Belfast Railway line but on the other side of the main Dublin-Belfast railway line was the sea. Anyway, they took a chance because I was the only one that needed the fifth jump to have the graduation ceremony. So they dropped me, I'm not sure,

I'll far over the sea. So I'm sort of running with the wind and then in the middle of this huge grass airfield there was obviously the Tarmacadam runway. and the next thing I thought right I'm going to hit the runway so I turned back into the wind then ran with the wind

and ended up on the ground like a bag of cement and I'm lying on the ground going yes yes I got my wings the shoe inflated and I've been pulled down the field I had to get up and run around and jump on it but I didn't mind I got my wings

and never darkened the door of parachuting again because my speciality was diving and fast boats and ribs and stuff like that. But it was, well, I didn't have a choice. Everyone had to do it, so I didn't have a choice. But yeah, my home was underwater rather than any place else. The dive course that you went through sounded pretty halacious. You were talking about how like you guys had to like pull yourselves over a guide rope at the bottom of the sea.

Yeah, so we were trained by the Irish Navy. and they train their divers in six weeks and they have to have three and a half thousand minutes down but they decided that they would train us in three weeks but we still have to have three and a half minutes down. So we used to start in the morning. There's an Irish Navy term called An awkward which essentially is a fast dress.

So we'd say if something wraps around the ship's prop and you have to get into the water quickly. So at about seven o'clock on the winter's morning and we'd be in the little dive bed with just our swimming talks and all your gear laid out. And the guy would blow the whistle and we'd two and a half minutes to have everything.

And this was all like neoprene, long jean's neoprene top, neoprene booties, all that kind of stuff. And there was, I think, eight of us on the course. And invariably someone would miss the two and a half minute test time. So we would have to get out, run to the end of a 50 metre pier. jump into the tide and swim back.

This is like 7.30 on the winter's morning into the Irish sea or the Atlantic I should say. But it certainly did wonders for your front crawl. I can tell you that. But to build up what they call your endurance, in other words, the amount of time that you can get from a single, what we was to call a set, like a bottle. and we had to do these circuits of what was known as a jack state so it's it's a hauser cable and it might go out for I don't know 150 meters and then it would hit a kind of a weight and then you go this way and then come back and all at the time all navy diving you weren't just budded but you're physically budded so on my right arm I'd have a thing tied on and I'd have a meter of cord with a clip and my buddy on his left arm would have the same so that even if you're in black visibility

excuse me you can send signals through tugs and pulls given a rough idea of what was going on and and of course because we were soft they wouldn't let us wear neoprene gloves so generally what had happened is one guy would be on the jack stay and the other guy would be two meters above him still connected because when you're on the jack stay, you can see nothing because you're, you're stirring up all this muck and stuff. And because it's an iron hazer cable, there's always bits of wire sticking out, so you'd end up. Now, of course, you wouldn't feel it when you're under the water because your hands are nearly numb. But after one particular storm, we went out, and I was on the jacks there, my buddy was, as I said, probably two meters above me. And as I was

coming to where the, where I knew there was an anchor, to join to the next cable. I noticed the cable started rising, and I thought that's a bit thick and strange. So the next thing, my cable, my personal cord got caught in a kink in the Arden cable. And I'm trying to get my knife out of my leg to cut it, even though cutting your buddy card is very frowned upon in the Navy.

So my buddy comes down and he was kind of going, what's going on? and I showed him where the card was stuck and I was explaining I can't move my fingers so then the next thing he shows me his contents gauge which was nearly in the red and I held up mine and I looked at it

and I was in the red so we had no choice so he cut the cable cut the cord and grabbed me and he came up and it was like Excalibur the first thing that broke to surface was a hand with with the dagger

needless to say our naval structures weren't too impressed but one of the things that one of the do or die things that we had to do in that course was the naval base is on an island and there's a huge bridge connecting the mainland to the island so at low tide you had to jump off this bridge and I remember before I started the course I was talking to a mate of mine who had completed the previous one. And I said, what's the jump off the bridge like? And this guy had a very broad Dublin accent and he goes, Jesus, you'll fucking jump and you'll fucking scream and halfway down, you'll take a breath and you'll fucking scream again. And it kind of was like that. It was, I don't know, it was, it was really, really big. And you were in your wetsuit and your fins tucked

under your arm. But you had to kind of enter, enter with your feet, tucked together, slightly bent, arms in like that. And no more than my exit from the Cessna, my exit from the top of the bridge wasn't exactly core. I invariably had my hands out like that. But at the end of the evening, you'd have bruises, like through the neoprene, you'd be all bruised. Well, I would because I kind of wasn't doing it technically that right. But it was good. And I thought,

fairly enjoy and of course we fast boats as well which kind of added to the to the to the to the whole benefit of it we we initially had twin um ha fifties and these were five point four metre ribs and and the yamah's wording great so we decided that we would purchase a single 120 johnson 120 for each boat and i the ceo was asking me he said mac how do you want to test these new engines? And I said, let's try them to the UK. I didn't really know, but I thought it'd be something interesting to do. And of course, he said, do you not think the British military might have a certain view of

Irish Special Forces entering their territorial waters? I said, okay, so we tested them another way. But every year, the units would have what was known as a summer camp where we'd kind of go away mass to some place and it was like um to be we say if you weren't a diver you could you could try out diving you could try out rock climbing whatever but the adjacent to this place are some of the highest highest sea cliffs in europe called the cliffs of moor really really dramatic so the CEO said can we go over and drive over and kind of look at the bottom of them so we had two boats and we had about i don't know maybe eight guys in each boat and there were

rib I had, it's just kind of a straddle sea, so you're sitting and the steered wheel is kind of down nearly at your knees and the sea always sitting behind me. So we drove around and the sea was nice and calm and I literally popped the bow of the rib against the base that lifts them over and you could just look up for three or four hundred feet. It's really impressive. But I kind of started feeling the swell building up. So I said to the other cocks, I said, let's let's go. because you could see, like, it wasn't huge waves at that stage, but you could tell by the way they were building that was going to get worse. So we had started heading back towards where we thought we could recover the boats.

And the waves were getting really big at this stage. So I looked to my right, and the next thing, he went off a wave, went up and pirouetted, and fell, and the boat came down upside down, and all eight guys into the tide. So I decided I wasn't going to try and go for a harbour. I was going to beach it because the next wave was coming for me. So I said to everyone, hold on. And I went gunning for the beach.

And we had a tilt mechanism where we could tilt the engine if we're coming into shallow water. So I was getting ready to do that. And there was an almighty crash. And I thought I had flipped the boat as well. There was that much water had come down on us. But the wave had crashed over us. So I, about three seconds, spun the boat around and headed for the sea,

shouting it for the lads to run up onto the bow. So we hit the next way and the boat went up vertical. So I'm holding the steering wheel this way. The commanding officer is holding onto my chest with his legs hanging in the wind. And as I went up, I thought, Jesus, I'm going to kill people here. And then as I'm coming down, I'm thinking, I have a new Johnson 120 horsepower engine on the back.

That's two weeks old. I'm going to bury it into the sand. But I didn't and I managed to get the boat out. But needless to say, the other Cox got a fair amount of abuse heard at him for having flipped the boat. But we were coming to that one as well.

Yeah, I mean, I'm amazed you guys all made it out of that alive. Oh, well, we did. Yeah, yeah, we did. There was a few cuts and bruises, but you know, you were sort of used to that. This would actually be a good time to ask you, you know, what is the mission of the Irish Rangers? You're kind of taking us through this training and some of these capabilities. But at this time, what was the unit's actual purpose?

Okay, so like most soft units, we had a green role and a black role. So black role would be counterterrorism, dealing with hijacking of planes and trains and buildings. And then the green role would be your standard military, sniping, long-range patrols, ambush and that kind of stuff. And we, because the unit was only founded in the early 80s, so this was still in the 80s. So we were, in a lot of cases, we were finding our way. Like certainly the initial instructors had trained in the US. But a lot of the stuff like tech, for instance, we had gas rigs. And we had to develop our own concepts on how to take a rig.

And certainly, you know, like I would say, doing combat swims from a mile out, hitting the rig, which is difficult enough at night, let me tell you. And then setting up a line between two legs so you could hook your stuff on and then go up the legs of the rig and carry out whatever you're supposed to do. And in high seas, you know, like on the legs of these rigs, there was like holes, I suppose were wanted a better word.

But sometimes the word in there. And, you know, you could get hit by a wave and then when the wave recedes, you could be three metres off the tide. So a lot of the stuff we had to kind of, I suppose, figure out for ourselves the most efficient way of doing it. And I think like the guys,

Well, those two rigs are no longer with us. But in terms of, you know, doing assaults on moving ships and all the kind of stuff, the guys there now are extremely skilled. And, you know, they've gone on to rebreathers and stuff like that, which we never had at the time. But it was very much, it was the kind of unit, and I'm sure it's the same with you guys as well, that if you had an idea, everyone was always. open to hearing about it. It wasn't that, you know, you know, if you're a young corporal, how could you have an idea? Everyone who had a thought about a particular thing, whether it was

a house assault, whether it was a train assault, whether it was the rigs, whether whatever, people would listen to you and, you know, if everyone thought, well, let's try that. So it was a, I found it was a very good place where people could express themselves. And I know, like at one stage, there's a special rig for the HK. But I remember like sometimes it didn't suit, especially with assaulting. It'd either be too loose or whatever. But this guy got the bright idea. He dispensed with the official heckler and cock rig.

And he used the bungee card on either side of the MP5. So when you needed your hands free, it was tight against your chest. And when you needed to move it, you just pulled it out and then it came back in again. And I thought that was completely great innovation. Like it was, it was amazing. And I know at the time, we were supposed to be the best in the Irish Defence Forces at navigation. And at the time we were using half inch to one mile maps, which are not the easiest maps to navigate.

on. And I would say privately, I went off and I did a certificate in an adventure education because I was passionate about mountaineering and stuff like that. And I remember the boss saying to me one day, he said, Mack, what are the, what are the civvies like in the hills? And I said, my opinion, most of the civvies I deal with their navigation will be at least as good as 50% of this unit and way better than the rest of the army. And, uh, I remember one day I was taking a navigation class for our own guys and we're out in the hills in a kind of a long valley with steep sides on either side.

And I was saying to the guys, I said, okay, right, we'll just say the mist comes down, slashing rain. You know you're in a valley, and you know you're facing a side. How will you figure out which side you're on? Because maybe if you go up to southern side, there's crags at the top and you could fall off. And I said, just with basic equipment that you have with you, what can you do? And they were kind of going, I don't really know.

And I said, look, take out your compass. Take it bearing up that slope. Transfer it to the map. And then that will tell you whether it's the north, south or east side. And these guys thought these are hard ranges. They thought I was a god. I was bringing in different techniques from civilian mountaineering. And especially with setting up belays and climbing.

at the time, I don't know if you're familiar with climbing, I presume you are. Not really. At the time, well, so at the time, if you were set up with three-point belay, you'd tie a figure of eight in the rope, you'd bring it out, then you'd bring it back to the second point, another figure of eight, then bring it out, bring it back to the third,

another figure of eight, and then a massive big figure of eight to equalize the three points, at which stage your rope was nearly gone. And I was just bringing back in new techniques that just made it much more simpler to set up Belize and be much more efficient. And the unit was very open to that. And it was like a lot of guys went off

and did extra freefall in their own time with civilian clubs. And they were bringing back techniques for parachuting as well. So it was very much, you know, if you've got an idea, let's hear us and let's see if it's any good, which was great. And the other, interesting thing before we get into some of the overseas stuff is you guys did operations domestically

in Ireland this was during the troubles could tell us a little bit about that about the recqy missions and counterterrorism missions that you guys did um we did we did a few um i know one of them we there was fairly credible information that um an IRA training camp would be would take part in a certain part of a wood in a certain part of the northern part of our country shall we say and I remember doing the initial close target Rekiyan it and finding a few AK 47 casings and So we knew it had this clearing had been used before I also noted that whenever they had finished firing they turned around to the 360 into the woods because I could see where the

where branches had been shipped away, which tends to focus the brain when you're putting in a few OPs on that site. Now, nothing really happened on that particular one, but there was another case where, again, similar kind of credible information, where a meeting was to take place at a certain track junction in a forest,

and from there they would proceed on to do whatever they were going to do. So we had, and if you can imagine, a forest track kind of comes uphill this way, and then takes a shark bend and goes back that way. So we had three teams watching this place. And eventually after about, I know, seven, eight days, we were getting pulled out. Nothing had happened. And on the last day, we were just getting ready to sort of pack up, you know, when it was getting dusk. this car comes flying in on the low road

kind of screeches around the corner and goes up, those two people in it, goes up the top road, disappears around the bend and then there's doors opening and closing and there's a bit of shouting. And then the car comes slowly back down the way to Ken. And it was driven by a female.

So she came down to the bend, turned around and was going down. down on the lower road. And the next thing, your man, that had been in the car, starts running from, we'll say, the upper road to the low road, through the forest. He had stepped on two of our guys. And it was only when he stepped on the balls of the third guy that the forest erupted. You'll get your fucking hands up.

So we called the police because they're the ones to have to make arrests and all that kind of stuff. But it turned out that. this guy was teaching his girlfriend to drive and he was explaining an emergency stop. And he said, you drive down slowly and at some stage I'll jump out in front of you. He didn't expect a lot of soft guys covered in black and green paint to be

or up and bricks. But yeah, we did a few. And then, like one of the bigger ones, one of the notorious terrorists at the time, Desi O'Hare. Desio here. We were involved in that.

We were very close in a forest that the would say the beds were still warm when we came in, but they had gone out the other side. And he was subsequently caught in a checkpoint down near Keckney. So yeah, that was that was interesting

and it it sort of makes you it makes you think it's certainly it's unlike I would say overseas service when when you're looking at hardened criminals that weren't afraid of shooting at Irish policemen

or killing Irish policemen and Irish soldiers it does certainly make you make you think all the more about your skills and your drills and how to react to any any given situation. During that manhunt, if I recall right, you guys lost a unit member, didn't you?

We did, yeah, yeah, poor old Kevin Mayn, God rest of them. Which was, like, we were a small unit, and we had never reached our full effective strength because there's no point in sacrificing quality for quantity. So when this, this was like a nationwide manhunt. so we had basically a platoon plus deployed up towards the border and another platoon plus further south and yeah kevin was killed tragically in an accident in the military base in the kara and of course when we got this news because obviously you know yourself sophunas tend to be fairly tight with each other

it was a big blow, but we still had to kind of stick with the mission and try and kind of compartmentalize the grief until there was a time to do it. On a letter note, let's talk a little bit about your interest in mountaineering, because your book is not just soldier stories, although there's a lot of those. Also, you talk about your experience in mountaineering, archaeology, and things like that. You mentioned that this was a passion for you? I mean, how did you get into climbing? I suppose when I mentioned earlier that I did this certificate

in adventure education. So I under spend a lot of time with civilians who were into all sorts of adventure sports, whether it's rat climbing, mountaineering, canoeing, diving, that sort of stuff. And obviously,

been in the unit I had to be very qualified in abseiling and setting up abseils and rope access and that kind of stuff. Climbing not so much so, but I ended up being extremely passionate, not just about, we'll say, classical mountaineering, but in full-on rock climbing where, and I suppose maybe for your listeners that maybe don't have never tried rock climbing. The best way I can describe it is if you're, we'll say, playing soccer for your local town team and you score the winning goal in the local cup, it's a great achievement. But we'll say it's not, we'll say the same as scoring the winning goal in, I suppose, your state championship.

And it's certainly not the same as scoring the winning goal for America in the World Cup. You know, there are different levels of kind of achievement. But if you take something like Rock Clemmon, and you have a cliff that's 100 yards wide and are 100 feet tall. And on the right side of the cliff is the hardest climb in the world and on the left side of the cliff

is probably the easiest climb in the world. If a beginner's starting here, if the best climber in the world starting there. As they're climbing, they're both placing protection and clipping the rope in. They're both going through the exact same feelings of fear and anxiety.

And when the two of them get to the top, it's the exact same feeling of exhilaration that you get. So no matter what stage you participate in rock climbing, the thrills and the dangers are the exact same. So therefore the sense of achievement when you get there, I've always found are the exact same. That's interesting. I never heard anyone put it that way before. It's the Irish way of explaining it. No, it's a great way to explain it.

And you got to, did you get to name a peak or a climb after your, because you were the first. one to do it. Okay, so in rock climbing, I ended up being quite friendly with one of the best rock climbers at the time, a guy called Tom Ryan who passed away subsequently got rest of him. But we used to go to the sea cliffs on the west coast of Mayo, which is kind of on the central part of the country. So if you find a route and lead it, you decide. You decide. the grade and you give it a name and then kind of henceforth it the name would be first ascent Kevin McDonald with Tom Ryan or vice versa whatever and the name is whatever and when you look at a rock climbing guide it'll tell you that this climb but is graded at this difficulty

first descent was made by Kevin McDonald and Tom Ryan and the name of of it so yeah that's that's kind of another interesting about rock climbing your name kind of lives on if you're the first person to make that particular claim. And then you went to the dark side and became an officer. Yeah, I did. It's it's it's it's kind of strange. So when I spent five years in the SF, I was getting tired of sort of living out of a bag, essentially.

And I didn't want to go to a standard. unit where I knew I'd get flared because of all the courses I had done. And an opportunity came up in the unit I originally was in as a reserve. There was an opportunity for a training sergeant. And I thought, right, I'll apply for that. And that will give me great scope to really get into high-level mountaineering. Because I knew I wouldn't be that challenged looking after a bunch of eager reservists. So I did, and I have to say after about a year,

I was beginning to get a bit twitchy. And then the Irish Defence Forces decided that they would run a course to commission suitably qualified NCOs from the ranks. And this doesn't happen that often. So this was in 1991. And this would have been the seventh potential officer course ran in the Defence Forces since the Army was founded in 1920. Wow.

And the difference for this one, which kind of made it appeal to me, was the previous six, was they selected people with skills in A&Q, and they kind of put them in as adjudice and battalion QMs and stuff like that. And more or less specifically not giving them operational roles, where we were told we would be standard platoon commanders. So, yeah, yeah, I just. jumped into the dark side and it was good. It was interesting. I ended up in a lot more places than I would have ended up in as an NCO. One interesting, sorry, one? No, go ahead, Kevin.

Okay, well, I was just going to tell the story that just because I went to the dark side, I didn't lose my mad streak. There's a high security prison in Ireland called Port Leish. And the inner part of the, you know, prison is the old British prison from when they were running the country. And this is where the, generally we had two patoons in at the time. So you would do a three-day stint, nine hours, nine on, nine off for three days and then go out for three, back in for three. And you would do three months of that. So I was the platoon commander for the battalion I was in. And normally, I don't know if something similar in the US Army. But before you go on, I would say, guard duty,

you have to be what's known as mounted. So in other words, you line up the officer checks that there's nothing in the breach and then you fit a charge magazine. It's kind of a bit of an old habit. So anyway, I was waiting for my platoon to form up and I was looking at the wall, the original wall of the prison,

which was made of limestone. And I was kind of looking at it thinking, I wonder, could I climb that? So one of the privates that knew me from my sporting experience with the pentathlon team, he said, Sir, come away from it. You wouldn't even get off the ground because he knew I was a rock climber. And he had the whole platoon listening to him. And I said, that's right. Would you like to put a little wager on that?

He said, I bet you wouldn't get three meters off the ground. And the whole thing was probably, it was at least 10 metres, probably 12 meters. It was tall. I said, right, I'll double your bit. And I'll get to within three meters of the top. So, of course, he's gone, I have him. I have the officer. The next time I came back, I brought in my rock climbing shoes and chalk,

because when you're climbing on small holes, your fingers get very sort of sweaty. So after a nine-hour shift, I'd spend about 40 minutes on the wall trying to perfect these little bowls where the mortar had come away and I'd get my fingers in. And after like 40 minutes is about as much as you could do because you're kind of hanging, balancing on the tips of your toes and on the tips of your fingers. But I'd always leave a little shock mark to show that the high point. And of course, the lads would be saying to this guy, he's getting higher, you know, he's getting higher. So anyway, I thought I'd figured out how I could do this kind of rising traverse. And I went past three meters, knew I'd won the bet. I went past two meters.

And I knew I could make a lunge to the top, but I couldn't reverse it. So I'd have to kind of crawl along the top of the wall to get into one of the guard posts. And everyone was going to know about what was going on. So I had this conversation between the mad side of my brain and the, the campsite of my brain about 20 feet off the ground hanging like this. So eventually I reversed the climb and thought no more about it. And about three months later I was in a different barracks and I was in the ostrich's mess having a beer and a few other

other guys come in and I was introduced to myself. Or you're from the west and said, yeah, who's that guy that climbed up the wall in Portleach Prison, climbed down the far side, went into town, bought a pack of cigarettes and came up and reversed it? And I said, but it wasn't quite like that now. See, Kevin, that's where you screwed up. You were supposed to look them dead in the eye and say, that's exactly how it happened. But yeah, that was interesting.

And then 1993, you go back to Lebanon, this time as an officer. And that was interesting because I was in charge of recic section. So we had two big Cizu Armoured cars which I had to be qualified in as well. So I was out and about a lot but it also coincided with a major seven-day war

between Israel and I suppose the people of Lebanon. At that stage the Israelis had kind of withdrawn to what they call the security zone which was essentially a 10 kilometre deep strip inside in Lebanon and they had fortified positions

on all the high ground plus they had the services of what we call the DFF the de facto forces and they called the South Lebanese army so these were Lebanese that were armed in uniform by the Israelis and every fortnight I suppose

Hezbollah would attack the Israelis but they had effective enough I have to say and at one case there was an IDF blue on blue and I think there was about four people for IDF killed

so then they launched what they called Operation Accountability which was a seven day a seven day war essentially but it was standoff it was planes and tanks and artillery and naval gunships and stuff like that but their stated aim was to create a huge refugee problem

that might force the Lebanese government to take on Hezbollah and of course it didn't it starts to drove people more into the arms of the extreme as well but um i remember at at one stage i was on the roof of a three-story building which was our company and quarters and there was one-five artillery landing all over the place and of course each one of them is a violation just as katush has gone into israel as a violation and we had to kind of record the locations of them all and I saw this shell hit the village about a kilometer away

and it didn't explode it, it ricocheted and I could see it coming in my general direction so I can throw myself down on the roof and then forgot about it because there was shit flying all over the place and then we used to for internal communications within the camp we had these old like dial-up phones

So, you know, the field telephone, where you... Yeah, yeah. So I go, roof. And this guy goes, sir, have you looked at your accommodation? So I looked over the roof and there's a big hole in the roof. And the door is blown out. So I thought, okay, that's where the shell landed. Thought no more about it.

So then five minutes later, roof. Sir, you better look at the canteen. So I'm looking over. And here at the steps of the canteen is an unexploded 155 shell. So I contacted battalion. they contacted the IDF. There's a liaison branch in Unifil that kind of does that stuff. So they agreed not to shell the road from the battalion headquarters

or to where we were for three hours to allow for one of our EOD guys to come out and deal with the unexploded shell. Anyway, this captain rang me and he said, Kev, can you get about 20 or 30 sandbags or as many as you can? Because obviously when I blow this, that could do a bit of damage. And I have this marvelous picture of about six guys in flack jackets and helmets, ferry in sandbags towards the shell.

And then across from them is another six guys with flat jackets and helmets, ferrying all the beer out of the canteen, because the canteen will be destroyed when your man blew the shell, which it kind of was. So subsequently when the war was over, we renamed it the 155 club. but the day after the ceasefire I was going up to the village Brashit was the name of the village to do a sort of a wrecky

and because there was so many unexploded shells in fact it was a policy of the IDF to fire 155 artillery shells without fuses and they did more damage so we say if I 1555 as you probably know yourself when a 1-55 shell goes off there's a creator maybe a meter wide and half a meter deep and loads of shrapnel.

But if it doesn't explode, it could come down through a three-story concrete house, went to the garden and come up and land in the second story of the house next door. So you've destroyed one house and if you do what you're supposed to do which is blow the shell in situ, you've destroyed a second house.

And this particular day myself and this Swedish left hand who was a bombous Basel guy, we carried I think 10 unexploded 155s out of houses and we had a small Jeep

and a trailer so when we had I think 12 shells we contacted battalion and said right we'll go down to this wadi and we're going to blow them at this time because the Israelis had to be informed because if they heard an explosion they might think it's a

break down of the ceasefire so we're rattling down this narrow lane and this lady he comes screaming out of a house and on the roof of her house was an unexploded shell but this one had a fuse on it and it had bounced from I don't know where and kind of landed so the tools got up and looked at it and I said you know what let's put two loops on a piece of rope bring them together we go over and get down behind the wall and pull and so like as it's rolling if it goes off it won't go off near us.

So as we're getting ready to pull on the rope, he said, you know, in Sweden, if my commanding officer sees this, I will be a civilian. I said, if my commanding officer hears of this, I'd be a civilian too. But we didn't have a choice. So when it rolled up to the edge of the roof, and it was only like six feet from us, he goes up and he grabs it. And I take off my flat jacket and I wrap it around the shell, as if that's going to me, make a difference. It just, it seems the right thing to do at the time. Like it's a baby.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was back there in 96 for another seven-day war operation Graves of Rath. And then I was there in 2006 with my family as an unarmed diminutive observer. And I was there for 34 days of complete butchery. And we had our unit of unarmed observer. was we had a strength of 52. And no, it was a family mission at the time. So my wife and kids were with me in the In Jerusalem, right? No.

We were in tiered in Lebanon. We had been living in Tiberius when I was operating on the October Colan. But then I was transferred to Lebanon. So the kids were five and seven. Wow. Going to a local, English-speaking school. Everything was great. We had them in

Baruch, Damascus, a man. Lebanon was hopping at the time and out of the blue. I went off, I used to do a seven-day patrol and come back for three or four days. So I went off and Tuesday morning for a seven-day patrol telling my wife, Claire, I'll see in seven days, and the next day the war kicked off.

And it took the UN, I think, two and a half weeks to evacuate the families. We had four bases along the frontier with Israel. And one day had agreed, they basically hired a cruise liner from Cyprus and got it to come over and just stand offshore and send in lifeboats. So when this was being planned, any of the guys up on the patrol bases that had family,

they were trying to prioritize an armored escort to get them down to say goodbye. But we were getting hammered with tank and artillery fire. Not direct, but within 15, 20 meters. That's pretty direct. Well, for tanks it is, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Horsesuits and hand grenades, that's pretty close. Yeah.

So I couldn't get out. So when my wife and two kids were getting into the lifeboat to bring them out to the cruise ship, I rang around the phone and I said, I'll see you and I see you, which is not the great way now to end the family mission to the Middle East, let me tell you. Yeah. Along with Claire, there was a Canadian captain.

She had her back broken when her armored car was shelled. And then in the next three days, we lost over 10% of her strength. We had another captain shot in the back. He's now in a wheelchair. And then the Israelis dropped the J-DAM into the post just up for me, killing four very good friends of mine. and when you pick up, as you probably know yourself, when you pick up a friend of yours with no arms, no legs,

and no head, and you're trying to figure out which one it is, it gives you certain feelings about certain things, I suppose. But, yeah. Yeah, that'll stick with you. 2006 was a wee bit rough, I have to say. And then actually, during the ceasefire, we were out in patrol and we're going through this, village and I saw one of the houses had the whole gable wall blown off.

So for some reason I stopped and went in and in the sitting room, there's like a 500 pound bomb landed against the corner. So it obviously had landed someplace, ricocheted, blew through the wall and it's now in someone's sitting room. So I went in, took up my notebook and I was taking down the serial number of the bomb, American made naturally. And when I was taking it down, the next thing I heard is, tick, tick, tick, tick.

And I went, fuck. It was the clock that had fallen off the wall. Because I know bombs don't tick, like, but your brain is so react. You've seen enough cartoons that you can't take the chance. But, yeah, that was, that was a, yeah, 2006 was interesting. I'd like to ask you a little bit more about, you know, the UN, these peacekeeping missions that you were a part of. not only are you placing yourself between the two belligerents in these conflicts,

and you spent time in the Golan Heights also. So between Syria and Israel or between Lebanon and Israel, or maybe Hezbollah and Israel is more accurately said. And then at the same time, you're also in a multinational force. I mean, you talked about there were Chinese soldiers, there were Swedish soldiers, there were New Zealanders. I mean, all these different people, I'm just curious if you could talk about like sort of how that mission works.

My four friends that were killed in Kiev, one was Canadian, one was Austrian, one was Finnish, and one was Chinese. Which kind of adds to your point of it's a multinational, multicultural organization. But yeah, so there's what people aren't aware of, I suppose, is there's different levels of peacekeeping and peace and force. So you take for instance the mission in Lebanon is peacekeeping. And that's there with the consent of both parties, i.e. the Lebanese government and the Israeli government. Now sometimes did I want you to do things and sometimes they do and sometimes they'll stop you doing things and then blame you for not doing what they're stopping you from doing. But then you go up to peace enforcement. So the, mainly the missions in Africa are peace enforcement.

So some of the ones I've been in like Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, they're all peace enforcement. And about two years ago, I decided I do a master's in peace and conflict studies. And my initial thought was if you start off with lightly armed peacekeeping, there's a steady progression from peacekeeping to peace enforcement. Yeah. And then you end up with a situation like mission in the Congo where they introduced an offensive capability into the mandate of the mission. So they formed this force intervention brigade to go after the M23 rebels, which are kind of in the news at the moment in the two keyos on the eastern part of the DRC.

And I thought, right, if you take that to its next logical step, it's war fighting. Yeah. And I thought this would be a great thing for a thesis until I started doing a bit of research. And the first you in operation Korea War was war fighting. Not many people not many people mentioned that one

when I bring it up. And then they go to the Congo where it was kind of war certain with the Irish. I don't know if you've seen the film The Siege of Jetters. Oh yeah, that's a great, great movie. That's war fighting as well. Yeah. And then we go to Unifil, which is peacekeeping traditional light armed with the concept of,

consent of both parties. So the, like people will talk a lot about Unifil being unable to fulfill its mandate. And in certain cases it is. But Unifil is the first and only UN mission that successfully oversaw the maritime agreement of a maritime sea boundary between two countries who were still at war, which is Lebanon and Israel. They're still at war since 1948, officially.

But Unifle managed to get both sides to agree on their maritime boundary. Now, they haven't agreed on the land boundary just yet, but it was significant because of the western coast of northern Israel and the southwestern coast of Lebanon, so there's huge gas reserves. So, I suppose, money talks, but they've certainly been successful in, in that regard.

Were you there in the Golan Heights when, I guess it was like 2014, 2015, there's this incident where ISIS came across the border, and the Filipinos blew off what they consider in a legal order when the UN commander told them their surrender? No, I was in Jerusalem at that time. Sorry, that was 2014? It had to have been earlier on in the Syria war like 14. 14, 15.

I went back. So I did two years from 2005 to 2007 and then so on, then another two years from 14 to 15. But no, I'm aware of that incident. And there was a few more. I know the Irish went in and rescued a few UN troops as well. Oh, really? Yeah.

That would have been in, I think, 2012, 2013 or something like that. because the Irish had a unit with UNDOP, which is the UN peacekeeping force between Syria and Israel on the Occupy Goeland. So yeah, but that was getting, because I know colleagues of mine that were, as unarmed military observers, on the, we'll say,

I don't know if you're familiar with how things are on the Golden, but there's a buffer zone. And there's the alpha side on the occupied Israeli side. There's a bravo side on the, it's a Syria proper. But the OPs on the bravo side generally aren't in a compound. They're, you know, they might have a fence, but when ISIS was walking around, the guys would often see them walking with heads and pointed up, you're next. So eventually they were eventually with drunk, thanks be to God,

because what's an unarmed observer going to do with someone with carrying a head, you know? Yeah, I heard it from the, from the Filipinos told me about it. And this incident where the ISIS dudes came across the border. And I think they got the Fijians. They captured some Fijian soldiers. Fijians as well, yeah. Yeah. And then they came and tried to surround the Filipino compound and said like, hey,

surrender your arms and surrender yourself. And they radioed back and the UN commander told them to surrender. and the Filipinos blew off that order and they started talking to Manila instead they're like we're putting ourselves back under Filipino military control because this is nuts I won't go into it too much but certainly in some missions

the opposite is the effect when troops are told to do something sometimes they'll ring home and home will say no and that unfortunately has occurred. So it can happen both ways. Right. I can see it, yeah.

And I mean, there's also like incentives for some of these militaries to be a part of the UN and their soldiers get paid to go on these missions. So yeah, it goes both ways. The government gets paid as well. Every piece of equipment they bring with them, there's a sort of a monetary value attached to it. So when they bring all their armor cars and vehicles and stuff like that, does a set monetary value for each thing, which would say the UN rents from the TCCs, which is the troop-contribun countries.

So, yeah, for a lot of, certainly a lot of the poorer countries are a lot of the biggest contributors to UN missions. And that's one of the reasons why. So in the midst of all this, you went back to university, and you got your degree in archaeology, right? English in archaeology. Yeah. And it's strange because we'll say if I'd come through the normal officer school, when you get commissioned, you automatically go to university.

And you kind of go back to the military during your time off from university. So because I came up through the ranks, I decided I'd look for the same rights and entitlements. And it took a bit of a battle. but I had fought my battle on doing a language-based arts degree. And in the main training centre in the Currah, we had a language school, and we also had a UN training school. Excuse me. So in Ireland, in first year arts, you do four subjects.

So I was doing French, English geography. And I kind of wanted to do philosophy because it sounded interesting. Because at that stage, I was 36. People were saying, you should do an IT degree. Who's going to hire a 36-year-old married guy with a basic IT degree? But I couldn't do philosophy, but I did archaeology. I kind of fell into archaeology. I never had to study because even to this day, I'd read passionately about archaeology.

But when I was selected for university, I was in Lebanon. And so I think it was three weeks late, starting university. And in the French department, you had to have a proven knowledge of French before you could be accepted. So I went in in uniform and I met the two I see of the French department. And I had rehearsed a kind of a small speech in French about Lebanon. So we spent about 10 minutes talking about Lebanon in English. And then he switched to Irish, Gaelic. to say if I approached a language from a different perspective it might be easier.

And then he said, look, the assessment for first year French is on in 10 minutes. Go down and do it and we'll discuss afterwards. So I went down and I was hoping to be a translation from French into English where you could make a good guess. But no, it was a translation from English into French and it wasn't just, I would say normal English, it was Jane Eyre, which is sort of, you know, 18-70s, century, 19th century kind of stilted English. This was a Friday, so I submitted it. And that evening I got a message on the phone saying that they'd be delighted to have me in the French department.

I thought, I didn't do that good. So on Monday morning he was correcting it in the class and I was looking at the corrections thinking, there's no way I could have passed this. And then he handed out our papers with the corrections on it. And I was looking at it. He had written a sentence at the end, and I couldn't understand it. So I waited until everyone else went, and I said, excuse me, doctor, I can't understand what you've written there.

And he goes, queving, which is the Irish for Kevin, Quivin, you're a meo man and you can't understand your native language. That's Gawarra Gia Arin, which in Irish is, may God help us, because sometimes when I'm correcting, words just fail me. So I ended up doing my language-based arts degree with a degree in English in archaeology. And your interest I kind of took away from the book is primarily like Paleolithic, you know, Stone Age. Not Paleolithic, would say Neolithic. Okay.

There's very little evidence for Paleolithic in Ireland. But the Mesolithic, which is the Middle Stone Age, which in Ireland, kind of, you're looking at it about, just over 7,000 BC and then the Neolithic from about 4,000 BC. So that kind of prehistory would be more of what I'm into rather than medieval stuff or anything like that. But yeah, it's always since then it's been a passion and, you know, even when I'm out driving, you know, my wife would hit me because I'd be looking, why, what is that hump doing in that field and, you know? And I've been lucky enough, I found loads of stuff. unrecorded stuff in Ireland, in Lebanon, in Israel, Chad, in Mali.

Actually, when I was in Mali with the European Union, there's this place west of the capital, it's a huge natural rock arch called, it's like 30 metres, it's quite impressive, called the Arch of Camaghan. And at weekends, I became a kind of a subject matter expert on it. So I would bring people out on a Sunday and explained mythology and the archaeology and the geology. But the first day I was there, I was finding these little

balls of metal, which is called slag. So I'd say if you're pouring molten metal into a thing to make a blade, right. The molten metal kind of spills out as balls. And it's basically it's evidence of metalwork. So I started researching

the archaeology of Malley. And the world expert on the archaeology of Mali is a professor, naturally, Kevin MacDonald. And I said, geez, I don't believe this. So he's in the University of Glasgow, I think. So I sent him an email saying, I'm also Kevin McDonald,

I'm an archaeologist and yada, yada, yada. So we ended up meeting in the capital Bamako about a month later, which was kind of interesting. Well, let's start getting into that a little bit because during the 2000s, you started these deployments to Africa, The first one, you thought you were going to Kosovo, but they sent you to Chad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone in HR within the Irish Defence Forces had maybe a funny sense of human. Because, yeah, I'd been asked when I take a company to Kosovo. And then Chad had, the guys had been there nearly a year, and it was the third rotation coming up. And it was the Eastern Brigade was the lead brigade. supposed to supply all the main appointments. And for some reason, they couldn't fill in a recce company commander.

And like normally, certainly with at that time in the Irish Defence Forces, to have operational command of a company overseas, especially in a challenging environment like Chad, is seen as a good tick on the box. But for some reason, they didn't or they couldn't. So I was, instead of, going to Kosovo, I ended up going to Chad. And when we were doing our pre-de- and when I was selected,

from my 2 I see down to number eight rifleman out of a hundred and I think 20 troops, I knew one person. Wow. Which is kind of crazy. Because the Irish military, I think you point out, it was like three brigades and then it went down to two.

Yeah, then it went down to two, yeah. So like even to today, I think it's like $8,000 all in. Army Navy Air Force so it's small and generally people would know or know of each other but Chad was I have to say I wasn't really looking forward to it

but I thoroughly enjoyed it like myself and the other operational company commander one week for seven days one of us would be the we'll say the Guard force for our main camp and the other company would do all the patrol either one day, two day, three day, four day patrols, whatever it was required. And we used to rotate it.

And it was great. Lossed a lot of weight out there, but that was the nature of the business, I suppose. But at one stage, on a Friday evening, I was in the camp in our tent. And I sort of felt bloated. And I went down to the medical aid post and the medic, he was saying, I think your appendix is swollen. So he brought the doctor in and they put me on a drip. And about an hour later, we had a big large tent called a rubhole.

And we were getting rugby matches sort of slingshotted from South Africa up to where we were. So I took my drip and went out the back door and went down to see one of our rugby teams playing against the French team. holding my drip. All my troops were from inner city Dublin and they thought I was a looper altogether. But anyway, the next morning

the doc comes in and he said, I think your appendix is going to burst. I'm going to medivacue to level three hospital up in Aveche. And I said, okay. So at half six, we had an MIA chopper based with us. At half six, he said,

fly the chopper. at half eight the chief financial officer said fly the chopper which kind which kind of says a lot but the level three hospital it was a tented hospital

but it was ran by Norwegian so it was like really really really good so I'm wheeled into the we'll say the admissions area and this surgeon comes over and he goes yeah yeah we're going to remove your appendix and I said

can I get a phone call or a phone and ringed my wife because she knew I was in the medical aid post in Gazvida and now I'm up in the main hospital so I rang her anyway and she was kind of going only you so while I'm lying on the stretcher

the surgeon is behind me talking to the anaesthetist who's Slovakian and he said okay so we're agreed we're going to carry out this procedure according to the WHO guidelines. And I said, what? And then he comes around. He said, I'm terribly sorry, I shouldn't talk behind your back.

I've discussed with my colleague will go to carry out this procedure according to the World Health Organization guidelines. And I said, was there some other way you were thinking of doing? Into the operating tent, 10-98. Next thing I wake up, and the two guys are at the end of the bed.

And your man goes, Kevin, how are you feeling? I said, I'm Cran. You're Irish, you'll have a beer. Now, we were strictly dry in Chad. He couldn't take alcohol. But of course, I think I'm in Lala Land with the anesthetic. And I think, yeah, if I can, right, we'll have a beer.

And he comes back with a can of beer. And, of course, I have things up my nose and up my chest and whatever. And I said, look, in my bag there's a camera. Would you mind ever taking a picture of me? Because no one in Ireland will ever believe that the minute I came wrong from surgery in Africa, I was handed a beer. But I have to say, it was quite nice. And then it was the showers the next day.

So a day in hospital. There's a... There's a... Getting me appendix of it. You know, all of this reminded me, I mean, there's a digression here that I forgot about and just remembered that I got to ask you about because it was such a funny part of your book. Tell us about becoming a care bear. Okay, so I don't know if you have something similar in the US, but it's... the Irish Defence Forces, every barracks has an NCO whose full-time job is to provide

counselling, grief counselling, addiction counselling, financial counselling, all that kind of stuff. They're essentially a social worker and they're affectionately known as the care bears. So anyway, the officer in charge of all the care bears in the brigade was retiring. And he approached me and he said, Kevin, the GOC, the general officer commanding brigade commander, has asked me, he knows I'm retired, he's asked me to think of someone that might be suitable. And I'm going, you're not thinking of me, are you? Because, you know, SF and all that kind of crazy stuff, I'm not exactly a tree hugger. And he said, yeah, but people might sort of, I suppose, resonate with you.

And I said, I don't think so. And he said, well, He said if there was a league table for the amount of subsistence you can claim. In other words, if you're away for nine hours, you get X amount of euros. He said, if there was a league table, you'd be probably on the top of the league table. Plus, you'll get paid as a left and colonel. I said, okay, right, I'll give it a go. And you had to have a sort of diploma to be in this,

which meant every month, I think it was two, three days in a university in Dublin. after my first three days away I came back and the kids were probably eight and ten or something like that and they were baiting the head off each other

so I came in with all guns blazing you if you ever kicked your sister and you if you ever bite your brother blah blah blah and my son said dad that care bears course doesn't have much of an effect on you

which I thought was fairly sharp from him. Yeah, I last it probably a year before I went overseas again. Yeah, I was laughing reading that part of the book. That was great. Actually, one of my last

when we were restructioned from three brigades down to two, the brigade commander was an interesting guy, tough guy. I got on well with him. But I came up to brief him about something. And he was getting into his best uniform. And he told me he was going over to this barracks

that was being closed as part of the restructuring. And he was going to attend the last mass in the Garrison Church. And without even thinking, I just said, we can do a lot of things. The thing is audio. The glasses like that. Should a major are coming to be talking to a GEOC?

like that. Ah, he saw the funny side of it. Sorry, your audio cut out there for just one second, Kevin. Could you just say that part again? He asked about going to last mass. Yeah, so he was going to the last mass in the Garrison Church in the barracks that was being closed as part of restructuring. And that's what he told me. And without even thinking, I said to him, I said, sir, in the care bears, we can do a lot

of things. But saving your soul isn't one of them. And then you could see him looking at me like that over the glasses. And I thought, have I pushed it too far? But then he kind of started laughing a bit. So, yeah, it's not exactly how a major should address a general. And then you end up in Western Sahara. This was another interesting sort of like peacekeeping or peace enforcement operation that I'd never really thought about.

Neither. The mission in Western Sahara is the only UN mission who sole purpose. is to organize a referendum. So a bit of background Western Sahara, the Morocco and to the South Mauritania and to the East Algeria. So when the Spanish withdrew in the 78, something like that,

the Moroccans invaded from the north and the Mauritanians from the south and the local Satrawi people were kind of caught in the middle. And they developed a sort of a sort of a, an insurgent group called a Polisario. And they were extremely effective, hit and run tactics against the Moroccans. They even drove down to Lukashat in Mauritania,

shot up the capital of Mauritania. And after that, the Mauritanians said, like, we're out of here. But so effective they were that the Jordanian army started building what is today the most, the most longest modern construction in the world. They built what's known as the berm, which kind of starts 200 miles inside in Moro. Morocco and goes diagonally across the country to the south east southwestern border with Mauritania effectively claiming I suppose two-thirds of the territory and it's like something

from you know first real war you these ditches and berms and and platoon positions and company positions and what was what was interesting and of course biggest fisheries off western Africa off the shore, six largest potash deposits in the world. But yeah, the sole purpose was to have a referendum to decide on nationhood, I suppose. And of course, the problem is that the Sartorawi people aren't that many and it's been colonised by people from Morocco. So I can't see a referendum any time soon. But from an archaeological point of view, it was like heaven. I could drive for three hours in any direction, stop, get out of the car. And the area that we were mainly operating is called Hamada, which is like a rocky desert. It's not like all the big sand dunes.

But I could stop and pick up Flint Arrowheads. I was finding prehistoric tombs. Yeah, it was Western Sahara was a pretty amazing place. And then you also did Mali. I did Mali, yeah. Mali was the only non-U.N. mission I've done, which is, it was the European Union training mission. And I was working in the headquarters. Actually, an interesting story. My boss was a British left in Karnel.

And we actually became, we said, they are very good friends. But he said to me one day, he said, Mac, dear boy, have you heard, I've challenged the hunt. to a shooting competition. No, the hunt is a derogatory word for the Germans. And I said, I did, yeah, but there's six German officers. There's only four of ye. And he said, oh, dear boy, one with, we'll shoot with us, won't one? And I said, I've been oppressed, my country's been oppressed by ye guys for 800 years.

Do you not think I'd have a subtle interest in seeing you get your arse as whipped by the Germans? And he said, there's more. And I said, I know, I know there's more. So when he challenged the Germans. year officer to a shooting competition, he decided that the outcome of the shooting competition would determine the outcome of World War I, World War II, and the 1966 World Cup were England bet Germany. Anyway, I decided I'd rejoined the Commonwealth and shot with him. And we won. But this guy was such a character. There was a picture taken afterwards, and there's six of us

standing like that in uniform and in front of us ex-German's seen with their hands on their head. Can you imagine if that went viral? It didn't, but he was that kind of a guy that people just grab him. He was like an extremely, extremely great character.

And it was also great that this was the first time that the Irish Army and the British Army deployed together. Oh, interesting. And it was really good. I have to say, great to see that we kind of move past all that sort of stuff.

And tell us a little bit about, you know, you retire from the military, you hit like your mandatory retirement age and start working for the UN like as an actual job. Yeah. So in the Irish Defence Forces as a major, you have to retire at 56. And obviously because I took the Seney group to getting commissioned, I didn't really have the opportunity to go much higher. but yeah I kind of knew I was never going to take up golf and I eventually before I finished in Jerusalem I knew I had an offer of them this would have been in I sorry I retired officially at the end of November in 2016 and I had a three-month contract lined up as chief close protection with the mission in the Central African Republic And then I did about a month of that. Then I went in as chief security operations.

And I got an extra three-month extension, and that was going to be it because the UN doesn't like these small contracts. And then actually an American guy, who was the regional security officer in sector east, went home and leave and said, thank you, UN. I'm not coming back. So I get a phone call to say,

would I be interested in going to Brea as a regional security officer? And I said, look, if it's only for a week or two, I said, I'm not really, because you have to be in a mission 30 days before you leave. And I paid my 30 days rent in the capital. And I said, what about six months? So I went and six months became 18 months.

And two years is the most you can do as a, we say a temporary full-time employee. so then I left in 29 to 718 yeah 19 and then a few months later they rang me and said would I come back again and I got another two months which was which was but car was full on

like I saw more violence in car than I did in nearly any other place when I went up as the regional security officer to an area bigger than Ireland I suppose but I was there on my own. And as I would say a security advisor, I was responsible for giving security advice to the international civilian staff,

the national civilian staff, what we call the MSOs, the military service officers that are working in the headquarters, the UN police, essentially anyone that you weren't part of the battalions, like the TCCs. So in my first week, one ethnic group attack, to another ethnic group and in three hours those 95 people killed and not just killed the world so yeah and in the base that that i was living in front of the base we had 43 000

80s and sometimes they liked us and sometimes they didn't and if they didn't you could get grenades coming in you get bodies coming over the wall um Yeah, the first two years were sort of interesting. And then when I came back, I was in sector west near the Cameroonian border. And for 18 months, it was Sleepy Valley, nothing, like crickets sort of thing. And then as the elections were coming close, a disparate group of rebel groups who normally would be fighting each other kind of came together. and they started advancing on, I would say, the city that I was, we were just at the edge of it. And this straddled the main highway from Cameroon into the capital Bangi.

And everything that kind of is sold in Bangi comes along that highway. And I remember as a kid reading the, yeah, as a kid I suppose, but reading these sort of news reports, rebels advance on the strategic city of blah. And I often wonder what it would be like to be in that strategic city when the rebels are advancing. I found out fairly quickly. It's not particularly pleasant experience. But I know at one stage I went in with the senior civilian administrator for the UN and the senior military officer.

And the rebels had taken the city. stage. So a lot of the locals were in, there were ITPs in the schools and hospitals. So we went in to assess the situation and as we're coming back out this main road, I counted about 100, 120 rebels walking out either side of the road with AKAs, MMGs, RPGs. And at the end of the, we'd say the city, our base was on the left and just beyond it was a an army base so we swung off into our base I immediately went to the radio room to tell them to

broadcast on the loudspeaker everyone go immediately to the bunkers and sure enough ten minutes later boom boom boom boom and in the space of about an hour and a half I counted about 35 RPGs

being fired from both sides and then no we weren't being targeted we were just getting called from the crossfire. So we had two attack helicopters. So the decision was made that we launched them to push the rebels away from our base because we were getting the crossfire coming from the FACA from the army. That in itself getting the most of our base to the helipad was kind of a really interesting. And they fired about 12,000. 20 rockets. Wow. And also inside in our base, we had a French army detachment who were with the EU

training parts of the government, the army. And because there were the, no, I had told them privately, if we get attacked, I gladly take your support. But I couldn't, I couldn't officially because they were under our support. Right. Right. But I was down checking on. in the middle of the battle, like. Because I kept going around checking the bunkers and checking the main gate and checking this, the usual stuff. And I was speaking to the French commander and he said,

give in, you will hear something in the next few minutes. Within about five minutes, two mirages came from Chad, about 100 feet. The noise was incredible. And I think it was just a show of force to the rebels. Right. I don't think I don't think he made it blind. a difference to them.

Yeah, and then eventually the Russians got involved Wagner and that kind of pushed them back. Actually, when I was in Brea, Wagner arrived

and because they were a player, I went out and they were building a field hospital. But it wasn't a field hospital with a small men. military detachment. There's a big military base with a small field hospital. So subtle difference. But I, the, their chief security guy in Carr was organizing the

setup of this. So I rocked up to the gate and had an interpreter there and went in and I met him. And he had a big long, rasputin beard. So, and like he was, he was tough out. So I just said, a spedsnats. And he kind of go, so I take out my phone and I show him a picture of me back in the day with the diving gear and the HK53 and I said I'm ex-Irish Spetsnetsnets.

Then he takes out his phone and he shows me a picture of him in Syria with some of the really incredible stuff. But I probably, well that base was being set up because there's a lot of of other rebel groups in the area, so I wanted to kind of make sure I knew who was the players in each one of them. So I met him anyway, and on my cap I had the Ranger tab, Fianoglip, which is the

Irish, it means warrior of the Fina. And I could see him looking at it. And so eventually he takes off his hat and he gives me a Spetsnance tab. So of course, I had to give him Fianoglop tab. and he used to wear it on the back of his of his paker and I just often think that if he's down in Bangi and some of your guys are kind of trying to figure who's who and taking pictures of Wagner guys and to see an Irish special forces tab on his head to be wondering how it got there

yeah we did an interview maybe two months ago now with John Lekner who just wrote that book, Death is Our Business about the best. I saw it. Yeah. Really good.

Yeah, people, if they want to, we talk all about this subject in that interview, of course, if people want to go check that out. And so this brings us sort of like today, you're now in South Sudan. How did you wind up there? Well, my employment in car was coming to a close, and I had applied for a position here and managed to get it.

But it's kind of strange. for my four years in car I was like at the pointy end of the spear and now I'm as we'd say in the Irish arm I'm in the rear with the gear I'm in the headquarters so it's it's different

I haven't I haven't really heard gunfire in a fair bit which is no bad thing either but yeah I'll retire for the second time in November of this year. Wow. And unless I get some contract work,

but my fallback is I'm going to start doing archaeological tours. Really? Where? Yeah, yeah, because probably in Ireland, but it depends. Like, when I was living in Tier in Lebanon, I used to give tours nearly every weekend because the second largest hippodrome,

a Roman racing, cherished racing arena in the world, is in Tier. Actually, that's where the film, the film Ben Hur. Well, you're probably of an age that you probably don't. Oh, I do remember. But, yeah, that's, of course, I might write another book as well. Yeah, I was going to say, Kevin, like, you don't really strike me as the type of guy that's a retiree. Like, I don't know if I see you settling down.

I think you even say in the book, like, I'm not the type of person to just sit on the beach and relax. No, I never was. either. You know, I always had to be doing something, so I'll definitely I'll definitely have to do something because I've refused to take up golf and I'm still of that frame of mind

that I don't intend to. I think we have one viewer question for you, Kevin. What do we got, Dee? From Corbyn, did your background make operating for the UN in Central Africa more problematic than it usually is? No.

No, absolutely not. One of the benefits about being Irish is that we have no colonial baggage. And Carr is a, it's a francophone country. But one of the things I will say, and this is common to a lot of countries in Africa, is that you can't blame colonial baggage for everything. Like here in South Sudan, there's 64 main ethnic groups all with their own language, customs and beliefs, and they generally don't like each other. In Carr, it was the same thing. But I also find that everything is dependent on how you approach people. So when I was in Carr, as I said, it's a Francophone country. I had to make sure I had sufficient French to at least explain myself.

But the main other language is Zongo. So I felt because I was, regardless of what you think of these countries, If you're a guest in anyone's country, and I did this in Lebanon and in Israel as well, you should be able to say, how are you, please thank you, where is goodbye, at a minimum. So I could do it in Zongo. So we'll say in Zongo, tongue in I yeah is how are you and the response is Yacadap. The next ethnic language is Banda and how are you is Ambrata and the response is Aramani. so completely different

but we used to have local security guards doing kind of access control at the gates so every morning before I went to the office I'd go to the gate and I would address security guys French, Zango and Banda but if they didn't reply to me in Gaelic

because I taught them how to say hello how are you, I'm fine in Gaelic if they didn't reply I'd give them 10 push-ups. And it was gasped. You'd see like local contractors coming in, like maybe plumbers or something like that. And they'd see this Irish guy, not just talking French, not just talking the main dialect, but talking the second one as well. And then they'd see their neighbours responding in a language that they hadn't effect in clue what it was. But it's a kind of, it's a mark of respect to them. And every place I went, and you know, I've been on patrols into the middle of weird

and wonderful places where the locals may not be that friendly or rebel groups as well. But we'd say to address some of the Arab rebel groups in Arabic, Mahabai Kifilhal, and then going to Zongo, suddenly you're showing them respect. The villagers can see that I bothered my arts to learn a bit of the local language. And I think it can be a game changer. and it's just a mark of respect. But to go back to your caller's question, certainly I've never found my background being a hindrance to my thing.

And your question about the care bears, even though my background is SF, a lot of people sort of figured out, well, if I said something, it had to be true and he knows what he's talking about kind of thing. Yeah, the Irish, the Canadians, a few other nations, few other nationalities or kind of neutral internationally, they don't have the sort of baggage that the United States or Russia

or one of these countries might come with. Yeah, so, and you know, I've seen it certainly in Lebanon where often you end up with disputes about who should get into a checkpoint first and some nationalities, some armies would say, would immediately go into the defensive position. you know, like I'm in charge kind of thing whereas the Irish would be kind of going oh lads, come on, what are you doing?

You sit there, you sit there and you know, take off the sunglasses, take off the helmet and look someone straight in the eye. So, yeah, I think the Irish always had a good reputation for peacekeeping. As I said, mainly we never colonized anyone. Well, we did a bit of England at one stage but that's a long time ago.

We don't talk about that. But yeah, as I said, and it's human nature as well. It's if you treat people respect, you know, you'll get back much more than what you give. And I just often say to people, it's as easy to be a prick as it is to be a nice guy. It takes the same amount of energy from you as a person. But you get so much more back by showing respect and I suppose, you know, no, sometimes you have to be a prick, but not always. the book i hope people will go and look for it is a life less ordinary by kevin mcdonald kevin any final thoughts or anything that i didn't cover that you'd like to get out there before we go

today one one big story you didn't cover i'm surprised you didn't given things that were going on at the moment i'm one of the few people that single-handedly stopped an army in its tracks oh in the the israel lebanon war yeah yeah so if you have time i'll tell you Yeah, go for it, Kevin. Okay, so during the ceasefire, and as part of the ceasefire, it meant that the Lebanese army had to deploy to the south, which happened before. So the idea was that as the IDF started with drawn back to the frontier, the Lebanese army would come southwards.

But between the Lebanese army and the IDF, there had to be a unithil force. So there'd be no kind of engagement. Now the base I was in was on the top of a hill and 400 metres down this side was a temporary IDF base and everywhere they went in Lebanon the first vehicle was a D9 bulldozer because that could go over something

that would take out in our cabin and whenever they stopped it should throw up like four earth and ramp parts to stop direct fire. So every night during the ceasefire these guys would go out in darkness that kind of come up the hill and that and they pass us and of course we'd be looking at them with the night vision

and the gunner would laise us with the laser rangefinder which is a weapon in itself and in fact most of our NOD had black spots on them from being lazed by the Israelis this particular night they went out they came back at first light so the next morning myself and this Russian major we went out and before we picked up our liaison assistant to go patrolling

I said let's go down and see where the IDF stopped last night so we're down about two or four hundred metres and there was a small road junction and they had set up a position there. We thought, okay, went off, did her patrolling and when we came back, I said to you, man, let's just check that crossroads. So the Lebanese army had arrived

with a company of Mike 1-13s and there's no unifil. So Lebanese are here, we're here and the IDF are here and there's no unifil in between. So I rang. our operations and I said, look, you need to get Unifil to place themselves between the Laf, the Lebanese Armed Forces and the IDF. So he said, why don't you go down and talk to the IDF? I said, okay, why not? So I asked my Russian colleague, I said, are you okay with this?

He said, yeah. So I followed the Markava tank tracks up, down the far side. And when I got to the base of their position, there was no one around. So I thought, this is a bit dodgy. So I slammed the car door, I thought, shut, shut. And I'm climbing up the rampart. Shalom, shalom, shalom, mach la mach la macha.

Sorry, to a male. And when I get to the top of the rampart, there's a young IDF guy half asleep. And he kind of goes, what? And I said to him, I don't know if you have the same signal, but generally, like, we see in the Irish army, if you go like that, you want to see the command. the guy with the Pips.

And I could see on sitting on a Marcaver, there's this young guy kind of looking at me. So the guy that was beside me goes, blah, blah, blah, to obviously the platoon commander. And he basically said, tell him to fuck off. I could see his actions. So I let fly on this young soldier. I said, look, I know where he went last night.

I don't give a flying fuck where you go tonight. I couldn't give a shit. but I'm telling you officially that the Lebanese army as part of the ceasefire agreement has now deployed to that location. So take that information and do what you want with it. Stormed off. So then I rang our operations

and they said they were trying to get the liaison officer from UNIFIL to officially inform the Israelis. So I said, okay, it's out of my hands. But the last thing I wanted was a shooting match with us in the middle. So then the chief liaison officer for Unifil was French and he rings me. And he says, Kevin, you will find the Indian battalion and place.

I said, sir, I'm also. I have no command responsibility with you. I can't tell Unifil what to do with their troops. It's up to Unifil to contact their troops and do. I've nothing to do with Unifil apart from giving me advice. So then the Lebanese battalion commander rang me to say when of the Israelis going to attack. And I said, look, I'm trying to stop all this. But you know, you can see they were there last night.

I spoke with them. I don't know if they're going there tonight. They wouldn't tell me. So then there was an Irish left and colonel in the liaison branch. And about an hour later, he rang me and he said, he said, Kevin, do you want the good news or the bad news? I said, give me the bad news first. He said, you are probably the most hated UN officer with the Israeli Defence Forces at the moment. And I said, sir, I'll take that as a badge of honour.

I said, what's the good news? He said, the divisional commander, because he heard one of his guys wouldn't talk to a UN officer who was trying to de-escalate a situation, cancel all operations for 24 hours, until they could sort out things vis-vis Unifil and the laugh and all that. That's my great claim to fame, stop in an army. Yeah, I mean, it would have been a mess if the Israelis went up there

and, you know, confront the... If there was no unifil there, like, they could have engaged in, you know... But, yeah, that's how things happen, you know, when... When both sides don't have the full picture. But thankfully, it's... Yeah, thankfully it all...

It all got sorted out. And guys, we will have some links found the description of this podcast where you can find Kevin's book. It's a lot of fun, a lot of great stories in there. I hope you guys will go check it out. Kevin, thank you for joining us tonight, especially making the extra effort with the time zone difference and everything. Really appreciate it, man. Deloices. No, it was a good out shot because I think us old soldiers kind of like to shoot the breeze every now. Yes. Well, hopefully we can link up and do it the right way over a beer

one day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and a cigar as well. Yes. Hell yes. Absolutely. So listen, Jack and Dave, thanks for having me. And I think I've given you the link for Amazon if you want to include that. Yeah, we got it in there. And so everyone else out there, we will see you guys next week. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. 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.

You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the Teamhouse. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the Team House ad-free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, McMulroy.

That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free. and you support the channel and the show and we really appreciate it. The Patreon members are literally what has helped this company, this small business, survive, especially during our early years. And you are what continues to help this thing going even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page.

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