The Team House - SAS Operator (Special Air Service) | Simon Leak | Ep. 293

Episode Date: August 25, 2024

Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSimon spent 19 years in the UK 22 SAS. Find Simon here ⬇️https://www.b5p.co.uk—————————————————��———-Today's Sponsors:PIA VPN⬇️https://www.piavpn.com/teamhouseGhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/house____________________________________Pre-order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#sas #22sasBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Welcome to episode 293 of the team house. I'm Jack, here with Dave. Dmitri is pressing buttons in the back over there. And we're very excited to have on the show tonight, Simon Leak. Simon served in the paras and then went to the special air service in 1980. served 19 years in total in the special air service regiment, saw action in the Gulf War, a few other places, and has now parlayed the skill set that he learned in the military to teach counterpoaching to various African park rangers.

We'll talk all about that in a bit. Simon, thank you for joining us tonight. Yes, it's a great pleasure, actually, considering we're 12 hours. ahead here, so it's morning. I had a heavy night in this bar where I am now, because it's a bit of a leaving thing and presentations. So I'm back here with a cup of coffee, but it's great to be here. Simon, can you tell us a little bit about the history behind the bar behind you and the memorabilia? Yeah, this is, I'm in Brunei, Brunei, being an independent country on the island of Borneo. if nobody knows where that is, it's a far east.

Borneo is divided between Malaya, Malaysia and Indonesia. But Brunei, the British army have been based here in Brunei since the 1970s with the Jungle Warfare School. Previous to that, during the Malay emergencies, it was based in Malaya. So there's a deep, deep history, jungle warfare here. Now I was here as the senior military instructor, which is an SAS post, exactly 20 years ago at the Jungle Warfare School. Jungle Warfare Wing, it was known as then, now it's Jungle Warfare Division. But we refurbished this bar actually doing that time, and it's called the Labby Arms. So I gave it that name, so it's great to be back here.

last night I was presented with the modern Labby Arms T-shirt, but it's hallowed ground. It's one of those military bars, I'm sure you know somewhere. It's a very privileged place to be. The Jungle Warfare School here is second to none. And they've been running infantry skills in the jungle and tracking, and tracking has been my main focus. So that's what I'm doing now.

But it all started here with a few beers in this bar probably 20 years ago. Yeah, all this stuff on the back here, I've got a presentation or two that I gave. But all around here, the walls are absolutely crammed with presentations and history and everything else. So it's a fantastic place to be. It's super cool. You can only imagine the personalities that have been through that bar over the years. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So, Simon, let's start at the beginning. Tell us a little bit about what your upbringing was like and sort of how that took you towards military service. Yeah. Okay, so I was actually born in Kuwait, but that was to expat parents there. But I was brought up in Lincolnshire. And Lincolnshire is a real farming, is a real farming county on the east coast of, of England. Very, very basic education gained absolutely nothing from school.

And I did what most of the kids did who had no other option, was to go and work on the land in a land gang doing whatever seasonal jobs there were. So, you know, you get picked up in a van, you drive out to the Fenland Fields. And my first job was what's called Gapping Sugar Beat, you know, with a hoe, going along, taking out the excess sugar beet as it's growing, thinking what the hell was 12 years at school all about, and that's what I did. And eventually I got a job on a farm.

I got married. I lived in a farm cottage tied to the job, and that was going to be me for the rest of my life. And that's what people generally did. You worked on the land, and then you retired at 65 and then died. At 66. Your body was messed up. Yeah.

So I was pretty sorted. I didn't need to have any ambition or career or go to college because I was learning. My trade was farming. How things change. That's, I mean, in what part of England is this, by the way? Lincolnshire. It's one of the biggest counted. It's right on the east coast.

Okay. So between Norfolk and Yorkshire. for anybody knows England. And so you were working as a farm laborer, but you had mentioned to me that, ironically, you were also a poacher in your youth. Yeah, that's right.

To supplement what was a, you know, a wage that wouldn't be allowed now, I was going out, we had a gamekeeper locally who was breeding pheasants for the shoots, for the autumn shoot. so I used to go out at night with an air rifle, you know, a pellet gun and shoot them off the roost at night. And I became very good.

And he had to be a really good shot. Could he have to get a headshot on a bird at night? Fesit is usually hunted with a shotgun, right? Yeah, that's right. You normally blast them to pieces with a shotgun. But a clinical headshot is far better. and I was doing that and I was doing pretty well so we lived off a lot of, lived off a lot of pheasant.

And it stood me in good stead because I became a very good sniper a few years later. But I got compromised. I got found out and I sort of left the farm and therefore had to leave the cottage that I was living in with my wife at the time. And my brother at the time was in the Royal Marines. and it was April

1982 and he was just he just got recalled to go to the Falklands War he took part in the Forklunds War and as he was leaving the door he'd just come to visit me and he said okay well hey have you ever thought about joining the military as an option

because I had no idea what I was going to do other than get another farm job and I thought well what I I'll give that a go before I knew it I was in the recruiting office

and I decided to join the parachute regiment and the next thing I sort of got fast-tracked through because my brother was heading down to the foreclones and I was really keen so later on that year

I was on the train Lincoln Station going to Aldershot the home of the British Army then and the depot for the parachute regiment and everything changed no longer no longer a farm worker.

I took that cassette out and put a new one in and became military. It was a complete, a chance decision. And I thought, I'll give this a go. If I don't make it, I'll go back to farm working.

But obviously, obviously I passed the training. And that led to hear it. It makes you wonder what you would have done, you know, if I hadn't done that, I would be, you know, probably retired and dead farm work about it. So tell us about serving in the Paris and also you were in the Recky platoon in the Paris. This is so we're talking like mid-1980s, I guess, at this point.

Tell us a little bit about what that was like for you. Yeah, well, when you join a parachute regiment, you go into just a rifle company. And after a period of time, you get the option. to do the course to join, you know, a support company. So anti-tanks, mortars, machine guns platoon, signals platoon, if you want to go that way. But one of the options was patrols platoon and patrols is the RECI. And in three-power, the RECI company, patrol company, as it was then, had a really fearsome reputation.

They were the, you know, eventually they took a lot of those. guys and formed the brigade pathfinder unit but those guys were massively experienced and respected and it's a very very difficult selection process you know it's a bit like a mini version of SAS selection so I I had done a sniper course fairly soon did very well on the sniper course because I could hit a pheasant in a tree at night and then so I put myself down for the for the patrols selection And the guys were saying to me, yeah, you won't pass that.

You haven't been in long enough, but you'll be a better soldier when you come back to the rifle company. But I got through. So I stayed with that. I stayed with that Reky Patoon for the six years until I left. I did selection. And then so you went to SAS selection in 1988. Yeah. When did the SAS like as a potential career path for you sort of like come into your mind?

and I mean, how did that come about for you as an individual? Well, you know, it's always something that's in the back of your mind. If you're a serious soldier, no matter what unit you're in, at some stage, you're going to be considering, could I do it? You know, and most people think about it and then they don't even attempt. And what you always find is the guys who go for selection, you either never see them again, or they come back. and they normally come back with one trainer because they've got an injury or whatever. And you only get to hear the stories of the failed guys. So that doesn't help.

But there were two things that pushed me to go that way. One was the battalion was about to go to Northern Ireland for a two-year tour. And I was 27, just going on 28, which would push me into 30, because you couldn't do selection off an operational tour in Northern Ireland. So that was one thing. The other thing was I was getting divorced from the girl I'd met when I was a farm worker. So it sort of suited me as well to get the hell out. So I thought, shit, it's now or never if I'm going to do it.

So I did put my name down. They sort of fast-tracked me through again, because they could see I needed to make a move. So I filled a car with what belongings I had and drove to Hereford, which is the home of the Special Air Service. And tell us about what selection was like for you. I mean, 1988, this is old school. Yeah, it's changed quite a lot since then.

Back then, you just turned up with no prior knowledge other than what, people have told you. So you've got an idea what goes on, but there's no, there's no briefing beforehand. So you turn up and it's just that initial phase, it's just are you fit enough? It's all about fitness, robustness and determination. So the first day it's what we call the CFT, the combat fitness test, which is a standard test to weed out anybody who's, you know, just just not fit enough. And that's running around with, carrying weight for, you know, several miles. The next day, we did what's called the fan dance.

And the fan dance is well-renowned as being a very, very hard test. And that's over the Breck and Beacons, the mountains in Wales that the SES uses their sort of initial selection process. So you're carrying up very, very heavy weight. You're running over some of the tallest mountains, and you have to get round a circuit in a group that's led by a DS and instructor in a time frame. And if you don't make it, it's as simple as that, then you're off. So that was day two. Now they, you know, to get to that stage, you'll have done, attended a briefing course,

a pre-selection before you even get to that part. And then day one, there's a buildup of, you know, maybe a week. week or 10 days before you do that actual test. So it was quite harsh and it was one of the things that the only, I would say, stumbling block that I had because I want really as prepared perhaps that I ought to have been. You get a bit of time off to go and do some pre-training. And in my time off, I'm afraid I didn't do a lot.

I ended up in, you know, with some friends getting very drunk. with the opportunity to do that. So I was a bit laxidical about it. So I suffered on that. I didn't have, my boots didn't fit me properly. I only had one pair of boots. So I wasn't that very well prepared. So it really hurt that one.

But I managed to get over that. And then it's a buildup then to test week, which is just physical tests carrying increasingly heavyweight. individual marches over those mountains and you either make the time or you don't and if you get through that

which obviously I did one of the few who did then you're at the build-up training and then you come out here to Brunei and do your sort of six weeks of jungle training which many

find is the hardest part everybody has their own their own experience and they'll say what they found the artist. But for me, it was that day two. From some of the folks we've talked to on the show before, I mean, the way I understand it is the Brecken Beacons is part of the selection course. And by the time they get to Brunei, that's sort of like where you're learning how to be an operator,

how to run patrols. Yeah, that's right. The first stage, the test week is literally just nobody, you know, the instructors don't give a damn who you are, where you're from, what your level of soldiering is. It's just, can you carry this heavy pack? And you're invited to, you know, get over that hill in the time allocated. When it comes to going to the jungle,

then they're highly focused on your personality, your individual skills level, how adaptable you are and your robustness. The jungle tests everything. about an individual. It takes you to your absolute limit. So those who are bluffers, those who think they're good soldiers, those who are talking to talk,

you know, you get a lot of people who, you know, they assume that they're good soldiers and they're the ones who stand out the most, and they're generally the ones who fall by the wayside. And it's those quiet ones who just keep on going and keep going and get through to the end.

So it's a huge, leveler and it really does sort out you know doesn't matter who you are you've just got to keep going with it you've got to go with the drills if you don't get your administration done properly the jungle will eat you up so it's there's no other place like it to test the the mental strength of individuals as well as their soldering skills and you you have to be a fast learner. Some, you know,

some guys come from a unit in their military where they've done literally no soldiering skills at all. Yet it's still a teaching phase. So you're taught everything before you even get there. You know, it's navigation, map reading, work,

patrolling, shooting and everything else. So everybody has a fair chance. You don't just go straight in there and you can either soldier or you can't. So everybody, everybody's bought up to a level before you go. And you have to play catch-up at time.

Do you feel that having come from like a wrecky element that you had a leg up on some of the guys who came in with no kind of combat training? Yeah, but for definite. I've already done quite a bit of work in the jungle in Central America and Belize, was the other British Army's, base, so I'd been out there a couple of times. And yeah, just the navigation,

navigating in the jungle is a specifically hard thing to do, especially before the days of GPS. So I already had a handle on that. And just living in the jungle, it was something I was used to, the heat, living in hammocks and pole beds and that sort of stuff. So it was definitely an advantage to me. But still at the same time, it's about an individual's, something deep within an individual

that sends you beyond the, you know, where other people, you know, fall by the wayside. There's just something. And it doesn't really matter how much experience you've got or what you've done. It's something that comes from deep within. that keeps you going beyond where others have just sat down and said, no, I can't do this anymore. I don't know what it is. After you graduated from your training, what squadron did you get assigned to?

And could you tell us about what it was like to first land there? Like, what the culture of the squadron was like, your teammates. We don't need to talk names if you don't want to. But I'm just kind of interested in what the culture and the vibe was in the unit at that time. Yeah. So, you know, after the whole selection process, you just get sort of thrown your berry and told that's what you've done now.

Now go to your squadron. And I went to A squadron. I wanted to go to the amphibious troop, boat troop. So you get a choice of three insurgents skills, air troop, mountain troop, mobility, or boat troop. And I chose boat room. You don't always get your choice, so basically you go then to the squadron offices.

You have an interest room. It's a little bit like this behind me, you know, the room where everybody meets in the morning, and it's full of memorabilia. So kind of walk in there as the new guy. There was a couple of others went there. But the culture is a complete, contrast to being in the wider army, you know, where you're constantly looking over your shoulder

for somebody who's going to shout at you, you know, will give you a bollicking for doing something wrong. There is completely relaxed. Everybody is mature enough to go about their business without any of that. Everybody's on first name terms. It doesn't matter whether you're the OC, the officer commanding the unit or the sergeant major, everybody speaks nicely to each other and its first name terms. So that for me, having joined the army quite late, you know, I didn't go straight into the institution, which is the military from school.

I was very sort of comfortable with that because you're just, you know, you're talking to people like they're just, all, everybody's on an equal level. kind of thing, although you respect the fact that, you know, there's experienced people and you're under their management now. But there's a very serious focus. You know damn well that you're never going to stop working and everything you do, you have to perform well.

So it's course after course after course. Because when you arrive as a new trooper, you have no insurgent skills. So, you know, I knew nothing about boating or diving. or anything so I had under my belt. And then an individual skill. What do you bring to the patrol as such? So you have demolitions, medics, signals. You have to have all of those skills

because when you're out on operations, you don't have anybody attached to you. You don't have those experts, so you have to become an expert yourself. So the first thing I was pushed into was the demolitions course. And that was a very, very difficult course. Could it involve lots of calculations and learning lots of rules you had to learn parrot fashion. And for me, with absolutely no education from school, I suffered on that.

And I had to work very, very hard to do that. I have to confess, I cheated a little bit because I knew that there's no way I was going to pass that test. I was very good at the demolition side and I spent a lot of my career doing demolitions, teaching demolitions but all the calculations you do measuring a bridge, the structure of a bridge working out the minimum amount of explosives you need

to cut that particular section of a bridge takes a calculation but we generally use the calculation P equals plenty So just have to think about it. It's funny that that's, we use that too. I mean, it's funny that it's a breacher's motto everywhere, everywhere in the world it seems like. Yeah.

Well, that's because we're all pig thick. Yeah. You don't necessarily take a calculator with you. So you get a good idea of what you need. You know, you look at a piece of metal that you need to cut. or blast your way through and think, yeah, I know what's needed. Simon, excuse me real quick. We just want to give a quick shout out to our sponsors tonight.

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I mean, the beds and the bedding are a godsend. And folks, I just want to tell everyone out there real quick, I have a book coming out in December. We Defy the Lost Chapters of Special Forces History. So this book covers Detachment A, the guys that are undercover in Berlin, Detachment K in Korea, the Greenlight teams that jumped in, trained to jump behind Soviet lines with backpack nuclear weapons. This book's up for pre-water on Amazon right now. The paperback will be out December 9th.

So please check it out. Thank you. Sorry about that, Simon. Back to you. So I'm curious because, you know, you mentioned how everybody, you know, it's a war, casual environment, obviously. Everybody's a high performer. You have to do your job. You go by first names. What happens, though, if a leader, for instance, because you don't have like the military, I don't want to say you don't have the military structure, but things are a bit more relaxed,

but what happens if a leader isn't quite as skilled? Do they lose a lot of respect? And how is that handled when the kind of the conventional sort of military standards and discipline isn't there? If if if it's I mean it's a very rare thing that somebody is found to be you know let's say they've reached their ceiling as such and they're found to be not not leading in the way maybe it's a personality clash maybe they're just not handling things terribly well, then they are just moved aside. They're invited to leave. You know, it's quite, you kind of never stopped being assessed as such. And at any time, you could be sent back to your original unit. So, of course, there's a lot of respect for

the older guys, but it's really once you're out on the ground on operations where, you know, You know yourselves, operations is a great leveller when the shit's going down. And then you get to perhaps observe who perhaps are the natural leaders in those circumstances. So, you know, if you've had a quiet period of operations, and the 1980s was quite a fairly quiet period for the Special Air Service, there was still a lot going along, but no major... conflicts until the first Gulf War. So when we were sort of thrust into that,

those who we looked to for leadership, it was like, okay, here's your opportunity now. We're looking to you for guidance. We're going into some dodgy situations here, and you really do get to see the true manner of individuals. and everybody's been on operations will have had the same experience. Tell us. Who's going to take over.

If you could, Simon, could you tell us a little bit about, you know, your squadron getting spun up for the Gulf War or the deployment and what happened? Yeah. So 1990, everybody was, I think we were on the counter-terrorist team at the time. So you do six months, you know, two-year rotation. Every six months, you're on a different, sort of part of that rotation and part of that is the counter-terrorist team.

So you're based in the camp doing your drills. And then on the news, obviously, we saw the Iraqis rolling into Kuwait. And this was sort of July-August time, 1990, I think. And it was leading up to my 30th birthday. And I remember thinking, shit, at some stage, we're going to end up there. And as I was born in Kuwait,

I thought, here we go. On my 30th birthday, I'm going to be stuck in Q8, and it ain't going to go well. You know, that sort of irony. So we knew, watching that on the TV at some stage, we were going to be involved.

Now, G Squadron, with a standby squadron at the time. So when you're standby squadron, you're ready to move at a moment's notice to wherever's needed. So it was going to be them. But things moved on, and by the time we'd got over Christmas, A squadron had moved into that slot of standby squadron. So while G squadron had been doing all of their sort of preparation and everything, we were then put in the front line.

And we headed off and we left. We had a briefing. We left Hereford at night and a bus, and we went out and, you know, we, We ended up in one of the Middle Eastern countries where we did build-up training, you know, mobility training. It's quite funny because we used to have a bit of banter with the mobility guys saying, you know, this is a – no one's ever going to be driving around the desert again like we're in the Second World War, you know.

And shit, the next thing, we're in Land Rover, you know, the Pink Panthers, land rovers, and we are waiting to drive over the border from Saudi Arabia into Iraq. So it was a quick transition from being in Hereford to getting out to doing focused, concentrated training on all the weapon systems. I was part of a two-man mortar team, and a mortar team is normally four guys, but we'd worked it down into two, so we had mortars at our disposal. all the heavy weapon systems, and we went out in half-squadging groups. We were split down. I think we had five land rover pink panthers and a larger vehicle, an ACMA, which carried a lot of storms. And we drove over the border at night well before the ground war started.

So we were heading over there to just. create havoc behind the lines. So it was great. And, you know, the funny, we were laughing at the time. I wasn't laughing so much. But I was the lead vehicle driving over the border, you know, dark of night, night vision goggles on. And the intelligence we had as to what we would find was fairly scant. You know, it was like, well, we really don't know.

know the border has been mined in places with anti-tank mines, but we're not sure where. So as we were driving over, I was in the lead vehicle with the second in command, and the guy in the back who was manning the armament that we had, the very large grenade launching machine gun. So we had, you know, teams of three on each vehicle. And we were driving across. Literally, we don't know if it's mined or not. So the only drill we had was the vehicle behind, give you a big space

in case you came cartwheeling back because you'd hit a mine. And I remember my mate in the back, he was leaning on the roll cage, watching as well, and a membrane whispering to me, it'll be okay. So if we hit a mine, I'm going to be killed outright. It worked out, but he said you're probably going to be badly mutilated an injury. Ha ha ha. So I had this swimming around in my head as we're driving forwards, wanting to put my fingers in my ears in case we roll over an anti-tank knife.

And as daylight came, you know, I could take the night goggles off. Dawn was coming. And as we were driving across, I looked down, and there were tank tracks everywhere in straight lines leading up to the border. And I'd never really sort of observed tank tracks. and I thought how big they were. And I thought the only reason they would be doing that, there's probably mine-laying tanks, you know,

tracked vehicles that lay the mines. So that focused the mind a little bit, but clearly, well, we didn't hit any anyway. And that was us. The next thing we've rolled over into Iraq, and we just headed closer and closer up towards Baghdad. And the mission was initially,

to just create, you know, find as many targets as we could to create mayhem. But then we got the message that everything had to be related to Scud missiles. Because the danger was that the, they were firing Scud missiles at Israel. And if Israel got drawn into the war, then that would really, that would, that would, that would, the Iraqis and the Iranians would potentially join forces together because at that time they didn't have very good relations. But if the Israelis got involved by retaliating, then it would be a bigger problem.

So our mission was everything now has to be related to scud missiles, etc. So that's what we did. We went around, we were looking for, anything to do with communications, blowing fiber optics, cables, and that sort of thing, and just raiding any installations, anything that we deemed might be related to the firing of scud missiles. So it was quite an interesting time. We were there for about a month and a half, driving behind enemy lines, saying to the mobility guys, yeah, okay, we are.

We're back driving around the desert. Absolutely no different to those guys in North Africa in the Second World War. Yeah. It's quite interesting. Yeah. So it sounds like you guys were fairly successful and like stirring up some trouble behind enemy lines.

Yeah, we were. I mean, we had three squadrons involved in the end, B squadron, you know, the Bravo 2-0, patrol everybody knows about because that was the first of a series of books that came out D squadron were in another corridor nobody knew we didn't know who else was involved we just knew our our role we were split down into half squadron groups so we had no idea what the other half squadron was doing we just had our own corridor to operate in and yeah pleased to say there's There's no books have come out yet regarding what we got up to, which is quite nice.

There's been quite a few books have been written. The guy who wrote Bravo 2-0, Andy McNabb, he was my next-door neighbour in Hereford. So when we all got back, he actually got back before we did. He was doing a series of briefing. to military audiences on their escapades, you know how they got shot up and they had to escape and evade. So it was quite an interesting story.

But he asked me for some photographs, he said, for the briefing, so I posted some through his letterbox next door. And the next thing, I've got pictures of me on the news because his book had come out. So if you look carefully in that book, there's a picture of me in my back garden, fence because he climbed over into my garden and took a picture of his kit in there.

So he, and I never got my photographs back, but he bought me a bottle of whiskey and a, you know, and a thank you card. So, I mean, that's interesting, too, that Andy, I mean, he was taken as a POW and released and all of that happened before you guys even got back to the UK. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, all that was going on. We actually had two guys from my troop who had been sort of back-squadded

because there wasn't enough room on the vehicles to take all of us. And two of those guys ended up in the Bravo 2-0 patrol. Oh, wow. It was a great surprise to us because we had absolutely no idea until everybody got back, the dust settled,

and then all these stories started to come out. Unfortunately, one of those guys was killed out there. Very, very sad. Yeah. And the other guy got shot in the leg. So it didn't go terribly well for them. So you get back to Hereford and then sort of, I mean, tell us what sort of was the next step for you in your career? Well, actually, I was still on leave after that.

And the way it works is you get a message. a phone call to come in, bring your passport. Here we go again. So I ended up out in Africa, in Ethiopia, where there was trouble going on out there with rebels coming into Ethiopia and basically taking over the government. So we were out there to support the embassy and the Ethiopian royal family. And from there, you know, we were just back into the same routine. the sort of two-yearly rotation, counterterrorism, training, standby for operations, etc. And you're doing that and doing more courses.

You know, you're constantly building up more and more experience. So there's never a time that you're not doing anything until the next call. And the next big thing really was the Bosnia. Bosnia came along in the early 90s and we were involved in there I was in one of the first small groups to go out just purely to do some sniffing around see what was going on

and finding an inroad for the regiment to go out there in larger groups so I had to go to and learn Serbo-Croa you know the local language so that was a quick to the language school the british army language school learned the um learned as much as i could of the language and then went out there with a small team um a little bit um undercover so we say right working for the for the UN uh and really getting some ground truth as to what was going on there so that the you know the wider regiment could formulate a plan and get out.

And then I deployed again with one of the squadrons that went out. And then I was due to deploy yet again after that with my own squadron, A squadron. And I sort of said, you know, I've kind of spent a lot of time out there. I could do with the break. And that's when I had the opportunity to go to Training Wing. And Training Wing is the, you know, the organisation, the staff that do all the selection training. So I spent

sort of two and a half years doing that. So, you know, that was a good break for me and a really, really good experience being part of that selection and training process for the SAS. What was that way my career went?

What was like that like bringing all this operational experience you had doing behind enemy lines action, also the sort of like undercover low visibility? reconnaissance and bringing that back to the training environment to teach the next generation. Yeah, well, it's great, you know, it gives you credibility and it makes you feel that you, you know, you've got a good reason to be there doing that job because you've kind of been there

and done it. But your focus is just assessing those individuals. because when you obviously they go through the hills phase that part of the selection you don't give a damn who they are but when it comes to the jungle part of selection you get a five or six

man patrol and you're with them throughout that time in the jungle so you are assessing each one of those characters and it's really down to you whether that individual passes or fails and many will get to the end they'll think they've done really well,

but, you know, it's a sorry, but there's just something about you, that you're not quite the right person. And because you've been there, you know the kind of individual that you want to be serving with, and that's how you look at it. Do I want to be outserving with this individual?

And if the answer's no, then they are told them, very sorry, but you haven't passed. it's quite a responsibility but the selection process is a real level playing field and it's just an awesome process

so I really enjoyed that part and from there you were off to Brunei again to take an instructor position there yeah I did I did a couple of years in what was called then the force projection wing where you are the expert

in your insurgent skill. And your role is to ensure that training is done, it's relevant, and any operations that involve that insurgent skill, you are the sort of lead advisor on that. So you take individuals who have got experience in that, whether it's mountain troop, air troop, etc. And, you know, they're working really hard to set up exercises and training, make sure the operational procedures are updated and correct.

So for me, I was liaising with the Navy, with ships, with submarine commanders, and getting as much time as we could training with those assets to make sure that everybody was absolutely ready to go, should there be a need for it. So I did that for a couple of years. I was the troop staff sergeant, So I was commanding with troop back in the squadron for a couple of years. And then eventually I moved on a training post here in Brunei as a senior military instructor.

And here we are. I'm back here again, advising them on some of the skills that they're doing now, to make sure that they are relevant to other environments other than the jungle. So, you know, if they end up in Africa, and Africa is turning into a cesspit now of religious terrorism. And the Western world, I don't think, has really got a handle on that. It's a very, very serious problem. I want to talk to you more about Africa, but you finished your career as the procurement NCO or in the procurement wing of, the regiment as a sergeant major?

Yeah, that's right. We have a, it's called equipment capability cell where you have a handle on what is required for the squadrons operating. So anything boots, equipment, vehicles, weapons, you've got a team of individuals who are focused on all of those areas. and it's ensuring that the procurement system of the military is focused in the right areas for what you need because the military procurement is a big machine.

It's pretty inefficient. A lot of money wasted. There's been all sorts of stuff, you know, talked about how kit and equipment gets selected and brought in. and money wasted. So it was focused on that to make sure we got what we wanted when we needed it. So quite a busy and quite an important cell. I have to ask, since we're on this topic, any particularly cool pieces of kit that you're able to talk about, things that you thought were pretty interesting?

think. Well, at that time, we were replacing the old desert land rovers that we traditionally had since the beginning of time with a new vehicle. And that vehicle came from a company called Supercat, and it was developed by our own guys. They worked for a number of years to develop that vehicle. And that has now become the standard. desert vehicle now for the British Army. The Americans at the time were interested in it. So it's become a standard sort of desert operations vehicle. So that was pretty good. The rifle, we've been using the M16 as our standard sort of rifle,

and that was getting replaced by a rifle called the DeMarco. And what I think is, They were probably the main things. You know, it's like new helmets, looking at optics, whatever's new on the market, new technology, just working with those organizations to develop stuff that we needed. And so you retire in 2006 and then you go on the circuit. Tell us about post-service life.

Yeah, well, it's, you know, once you finish your, time. I mean, I could have stayed on, but I would have been just going around the sort of the bazaars in camp doing sort of admin stuff, so I thought it was time to leave. And I'd already, you know, you're not really short of work when you leave because there's a lot of your, you know, old colleagues are out and they're working or they've set up businesses. So my first job, there's a sort of a stately home close to Hereford where they were teams of guys that I knew were running close protection courses

and there was a new course they wanted to run and it was training US Special Forces guys in counter IED drills so the idea was if you know if somebody finds an improvised explosive device out in the Middle East for instance instead of just reporting it and blowing it, you stand off and observe,

and it was all about surveillance, following vehicles, following cars, bringing a lot of experience that had come from Northern Ireland during the sort of undercover surveillance units that were working over there. So I was involved in that for a while. We had the different USSF units coming through. And then I got sort of head hunted, a local company, an American company, had a base in Hereford,

and it was to design and develop and sell ruggedized military hardware and software. And I went there as this sort of maritime expert looking at fitting this kit and equipment onto the boats. So this company had a, they had an offices in Fort Bragg in Norfolk, you know, close. close to the Navy Seals and in Hereford and Australia, close to the Australian SAS. So they had all of that expertise, all of those operators working for this company. But it went well for a few years and then they folded for various reasons. And then I was out of a job again, ended up in Slovakia with the team doing close protection for US interests out there.

That folded. You're redundant again. then I ended up in Kurdistan working for a Canadian oil company doing the security. That folded when sort of Islamic terrorism sort of got a little bit of an issue and various other problems. So that folded and that's when I found myself heading out to Botswana with the training team. Again, guys that I mostly knew heading out there to resurrect Botswana and saying. special forces unit. So that was an 18-month contract. And that's how I got a foot in the door in Africa. Could you tell us a little bit about like what that situation was in Botswana and why you had

to, as you say, resurrect the special forces unit. Was it something that had fallen by the wayside? Yeah, it was. And it's typical of foreign, foreign countries and how they look at maintaining skills and standards. You see the same in the Middle East. Now, this unit, it was a special forces unit based in an air base that I think the Americans must have built some years before because it was one of the most amazing. The facilities that they had as a special forces unit would have, you know, as good as I'd seen, you know, I was overworking with Delta in, in, yeah.

Where are they, Fort Bragg, isn't it? Yeah. The Delta got. Yeah. I'd been overworking with this, spent some time, and the facilities these guys had, you know, they had a parachute center, they had an aircraft for doing counter-terrorist drills, a CQB killing house. They had swimming pools and sergeant's messes and everything you could, and everything was going derelict because nothing had been used. Assault courses and ranges were overgrown.

So our team, we went in there and we resurrected all of this. We got bulldozers. We opened up the firing ranges again. And we were recruiting from the Botswana Defense Force. I was running a selection process with another guy and continuation training, you know, bush skills, just general soldiering, a lot of ranges, getting them up, and then handing them over to the other team. and they were doing counter-terrorist type stuff.

So it was good. But during that selection process and training, we introduced the tracking that we had because the other guy was a former instructor here at the Jungle Warfare School and we introduced tracking to them because those guys were also responsible for any anti-poaching that was going on in the country.

So that was then when I thought, shit, this is teaching this now and the bush skills, etc., is exactly what I should be doing. Because I spent all those years, you know, I spent 24 years becoming an expert, and then I spent 10 years on the circuit doing nothing but earning money, doing a job that really anybody, I didn't need all of those skills. So then I thought if for the rest of my time, I could just do this. I can teach anti-poaching rangers or military the skills. I can bring the skills that I've got.

Then I'm going to be happy doing that, even if I take a considerable drop in wages kind of thing. And that's what I've been doing ever since. Yeah. So from after that point, working a lot of training jobs with non-governmental organizations, training these anti-poaching units. Before we get a little bit deeper into that, could you talk to us a bit about poaching in Africa? And I mean, I think a lot of us here in the United States

and probably in the West in general don't really understand how complex that problem is and how difficult it is to counter it. If you could kind of like bring us in big picture to little picture on that. Yeah, right. So we bounce into a lot of different countries. each one has their own, you know, individual problems, but basically you've got sustainability

poaching. This is where the people from the local communities around a protected park come in and they use a whole variety of means, you know, shooting with homemade weapons, snares, traps, poisoning, fishing with nets, and they can devastate those stocks. So they're coming in, they're helping themselves to all the resorts. for their own needs, you know, because they've traditionally hunted those lands. So that's an endemic problem across everywhere. So, you know, that's the first thing. Then you've got the professional hunting gangs.

And they are usually funded backed by, you know, government officials or rich people, armed, dangerous, often ex-military, and they can come in in big units. And thereafter the rhino, the elephant, the horn and tusk and anything else that they can get. And they've been responsible for wiping out the stocks of rhino, for instance, in a lot of countries, where they've had hundreds of thousands of these animals. And throughout the 70s, 80s into the 90s, they were completely cleared out, completely extinct. And some of those governments saw those as the same as they would minerals, you know, as mine. they were happy

that was just a commodity that they had and an open market in China and Vietnam as they still is so now the NGOs have got involved and they're protecting the parks and they're reintroducing them but the other

thing that's perhaps less known about are cattle herds of cattle and the pastoralists the cattle are owned by the rich and influential.

So Kenya is a classic example. So somebody who's rich in Kenya brews their wealth by having thousands of head of cattle. They're not traded for meat, but they're just held. They're traded in marriages and that sort of thing.

But those are traditionally herded by some of the tribal groups. So you've got the Samburu, the Picot, the Turkana, the Maasai. and they feud with each other. They're fighting over the grazing lands. And a lot of those then are going into the parks and conservances.

They've got cattle bombers hidden inside there. They're breeding the cattle. And those pastoralists will kill anything either to eat or anything that might be a predator against their cattle. They fiercely protect them. And they're armed. They're dangerous. And a lot of rangers and park staff are being killed almost on a daily basis out there by these.

So that's a cattle herding. But the big, big threat at the moment is religious terrorism. And, you know, you don't get to hear of it on the news. A lot of it extensional and West Africa, even this year, there's been people I know, people I've worked with, people I've trained. have been sort of slaughtered, you know, by particularly Islamic jihadists. And it's such a big threat now across the whole of Africa. There's not a single country that either doesn't have that within its country or it has a border with a country that does.

What is, if I can ask, Simon, what is this intersection between Poaching and Islamic terrorism in Africa? Like you said a lot of the or some of the people you trained were killed by them. Like how did these two things come together? Well, they, the terrorists will partly fund their terrorism by coming in, killing elephants and rhino for the huge amount of money they make. But also, they're kind of getting the communities on their side by saying, you know, these are your, these are your, your tribal lands, you know, and they're gaining favor by coming in and deliberately targeting the security forces from within. So it's a two-way thing. Partly, they are funding their terrorism through poaching. They're feeding themselves because they have terrorist groups, training

groups, all across Africa. And so, of course, it's part of the, how they feed them. themselves and it's intimidation. They've, there's a, I mean, I can talk about Benin in particular because I've done a lot of training there. Benin is a, you know, a fairly small country over in, over in West Africa, most people have never heard of, but it borders Burkino Faso, Nigeria and Nigeria. And there are two parks there that I've worked in. And the NGO that leases those parks is an organization called African Parks.

Easily the most successful NGO because they've got leases on something like 20 to 25 parks all across Africa doing fantastic work. But in Benin, I went out there in one of the parks, Penjari, and trained their rangers in tracking. the first time they'd had that training now it's a French former French dependency so they speak French a lot of the training they've had is from French special forces

foreign legion that sort of stuff so I gave them training tracking training when I left about two months later the park hit the headlines two French tourists had been taken hostage or they'd gone missing along with the tour guide

and the next headline was that they'd been found now what had happened was the trackers that I'd trained were first in on the scene they'd found the burnt out vehicle they'd found the ambush point worked out how many what kind of weapons and they'd followed those tracks they found the tour guide killed and mutilated and they followed those tracks right up to the northern border which is a river with bikino-faso by that time the

French military were involved. They took over and they eventually found not only those two French tourists but another two hostages that they had, one American, one South Korean that nobody knew were missing. And they found where they were being held. There was a firefight. Two of the French were killed, but they rescued the hostages. So the terrorist plan was to take those into Mali. another hotbed for terrorism and hand them over to another terrorist unit.

So you can only guess what would have happened to those. So it was those trackers who were absolutely key to finding those. That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. So the next story in the neighboring park, the park called W National Park, I was out there again a couple of years ago. Doing tracking training, exactly the same.

Trained several teams as very good trackers. I mean, these guys are awesome, awesome trackers when they get good training. Again, a few months later, that park hit the headlines. And this time, the Rangers were responding to, I believe, a poaching incident in two pickup trucks, and they were hit by IEDs, improvised explosive devices in the park. and I think they were more detonated when more people came up so initially eight ranges were killed in that plus the chief instructor who was a French former special forces guy

and a good friend and he was the one who was arranging for us to come in and do the work so he was killed outright the two days later another vehicle going down another improvised explosive device killed another two. So this is in a conservation park and this shit is going on. And then this year, only in July, the same park, another five Rangers and seven military were killed in the same park, again by terrorists,

absolutely wiped out. So, you know, this is on, going. And what I'm trying to say to the military, you know, if I could reach out to the British army, I'm saying you need to get your shit together because it's not going to be long before this is going to be British hostages are going to be taken, killed, and they need to have a response. And they need to have trackers because, you know, if a tourist vehicle is hit or, you know,

a vehicle of dignitary, royal family, whoever, and those people are taken, there's no technology really that is better than a good tracking team with eyes, ears, senses to follow up those tracks. And at the moment, the British Army doesn't have that. We have the training teams over here. We've got the Gurkirke Regiment over here, based in Brunei as a lead for jungle operations.

but if I what I'm saying to me if I get taken hostage who's going to come and rescue me because there's nobody on a standby with as far as I'm concerned the necessary skills and experience

to do that Simon could you take us a bit deeper on the tracking aspect of it because that's a that's an art and a science of course and I'm just curious to hear I mean I know you're very deep into it and training these guys.

Can you tell us about tracking and like the myths, the misconceptions, what it really is, how it really works? Yeah. Well, you can trace military tracking back to the 1940s and 50s. And what I've been saying to these guys here is the tracking developed, first of all, in Malaya, in 1948, right the way through to the 1970s or 1960s when they're that conflict ended. They realized that trackers were very, very important, and they were used indigenous trackers. At the same time in Africa, in Kenya, we had the Mao Mao uprising where the

British army were involved, and they also saw the need for trackers, and they were using the indigenous trackers there, led by officers, you know, British officers. So that went right the way through. In Africa, we then had the Rhodesian bushwalk. and those guys, a lot of them had been, you know, the Sea Squadron SAS came from Rhodesia. So they already had, they already understood how useful tracking was. Over in Asia, we had the Borneo confrontation then in the sort of 60s into the 70s, well, no, in 1960s that was. And they were using trackers.

So the British Army have been using trackers. since those early days. But there's been two camps, if you like, the jungle style of tracking and the African bush style of tracking. And they're very, very different. In the Rhodesian wars, there was a, the guy who's considered the father of the drills and developing tracking there was a guy called Alan Savory. Very, very interesting guy.

And I met him by chance on a ridge line in Zimbabwe. He is the guy who started training the white soldiers, because he'd realize that a lot of the local indigenous trackers were obviously very good, but if it got very dangerous, then they were inclined to lose the tracks. And they were finding exactly the same, the jungle tracking. They had to start training the British to do that job. and that's how it all started. Alan Savory now, if you look him up, he's now well known for holistic grazing and saving the planet with cows

and very, very credible as well. But now we've got military tracking in the jungle, military tracking in the bush. And because I've got a foot in both camps, when I came from Brunei and went to Africa and teaching tracking, I realize that we've got to change everything. We've got to change the drills,

you know, because it's open territory, we can have two security. I realized we could use two trackers working together, and that has revolutionized the speed that we can pursue the enemy, if you like, whether that's poachers or whether that's insurgents,

whether that's terrorist. And so that's why I'm back here now to give, to give my experience and my advice to the guys who are training here because the jungle tracking is completely different to the bush tracking and I want these guys to be prepared and ready and have the necessary skills and have practiced in the way that we do it out in Africa. How that's my mission? How difficult is it to follow spore in the jungle versus in the Sahel?

What are the differences between those? The actual physically following the tracks is much the same. You're looking for the same characteristics. You know, when an individual has walked across a piece of ground, they make changes to that ground. Some of it's temporary, some of it's more permanent, but you train your eye to pick up the slightest change. You know, it's not footprints.

Forget footprints. It's scuff marks, it's stones that have been turned over, a leaf that's been knocked off the tree. The difference between the jungle and Africa is in Africa, you've got thousands of animals. You've got buffalo, you've got zebra, you've got elephant, you've got hippo, you've got everything. And all of those are trampling over the same area. So you've got to distinguish between a human set of tracks, and that's just the marks. It's the way they've laid the grasses in the grassland, the way they've turned over a stone,

you've got to differentiate between an animal that's done that and a human being. And a lot of it is about working out the time. You know, how long ago did they go, were they here, how many have used this track. Every now and then you will get a little bit of a footprint, whatever footwear they're wearing, and that just confirms to you

that you're still on the right track. There's not much in the jungle, apart from pigs, that's going to interfere with that side. But in the jungle, it's so close, you can't see any further than maybe five to ten meters ahead. And that's why it's slow. Your security is behind you looking over your shoulder

as the tracker, and you are on often a narrow ridge line. So you're kind of walking on top of the track, moving slowly, pushing through the undergrowth as you go. And it has to be a slow, deliberate follow. Whereas in Africa, you know, I've shown videos here of my range is literally running, running along the track because they've got their security out on the flank. And we've got two trackers. They take over from each other. when one slows down, he's lost it, he's not sure, the other one comes up, leaps ahead,

picks it up again, and they're, you know, they're constantly moving. So very, very, very different. But the initial thing is to train those individuals to coach them in exercises that we do to notice very, very small changes in the ground. You know, the grasses, the stones, rocky environments. and it's a skill that they build up. They kind of build up a library in their head of what those changes are. Once you recognize them, it comes what we call their key sign or key sport.

And they then recognize that. And if their eye is looking for that, they pick it out and they can see it. And then they get into a different environment, maybe from hard, rocky, areas to grassland and then they have to pick up what is it i can see now that tells me that my my target has been along here you recognize it then you're looking for it and then you can see it you know it's um that a tracker is somebody who can see see things that a non tracker can't see it's really not about following footprint it's it's fascinating that we're always told the the future of warfare is drones and technology, but there are literally these, this is a form of

intelligence gathering that's ancient. Like it's been with human beings since the Paleolithic times, and it still has a relevancy. It absolutely does. There is nothing that will ever replace that. You know, and if you're in an operation, let's say you've, you know, an enemy has come in, they've hit your unit and they've disappeared. If honestly, if they're tied a piece of string and then reeled it out, you would naturally, you'd think, okay, I'm going to follow that. Well, that's kind of what they've done, but it's the marks they've left on the ground. And most, you know, most military commanders, they don't understand it

because they've never experienced it. So the trackers go back to their units and they never use that skill again because it's not all batted and it's not understood. And it's like, well, where, you know, where will these trackers be in our unit? So it's been a frustration of mine for a long time. But if the focus now is on Africa and being prepared for that time when terrorism takes a hold of, you know, British or American subjects, then somebody has to be prepared and ready to go in there.

and it's a gap at the moment because there's nobody doing that. You know, we've all seen trackers on movies and television. What's the reality of it, though, in terms of can you tell how long it's been since a person's passed through? Can you tell how many people? Can you tell how much weight they were carrying? Like, what are some things that you get other than just like direction? Yeah.

By looking at those tracks, first of all, you have to gauge how long ago did they pass through here. So you're looking at a whole load of things. You're looking at how the weather has affected those tracks. So you need to know, has it been windy, has it rained? You always do a comparison with your own tracks. So you make a mark in the ground the same and you look at how much is that weathered. you you take note of the animals have the animals superimpose their tracks on top or are your tracks on top of those and the insects are really really important if you can see disturbance

of insects still because those you know those people have gone through there that tells you you're very close because you disturb those insects for a while and then they go back into their normal normal pattern of things whenever you get a good air you're a good air where you can actually see the footprints, we call it a trap trap, then there's a method then of estimating the numbers by counting the numbers of heels in a set distance. So now you've got an idea how long ago did they pass through and how many are they? And then you can look at those individual footprints. You can see if somebody is carrying extra weight. You can get an idea how fast are they going

by looking at the footprints, looking at the length of stride. And, you know, is one person, for instance, carrying more weight than another? And that, from a canter poaching, that could tell you that somebody's carrying a tusk, for instance,

or a heavy weight. So you're constantly gaining information as you go. And you're building up a picture of, you know, who it is, you're tracking from the type of footwear they're wearing is one wearing a military style boot, one wearing a sandal or something. Have you got a mix of military styles and indigenous

where you've got the poaching side, you know, the guides, the people carrying, and then you've got the shooters who were your sort of former military? And it's exactly the same in a military context. You know, who is it that's just bumped your position? How many? how fast are they moving and what direction are they going you're trying to get into the minds of those individuals building up a picture who they are where they've gone what are their habits

and routines where did they stop if they if you see they've stopped under a particular tree you can work out what was the position of the sun at that time because they're sitting in the shade if that now is in the sunlight you'll think to yourself well they must have sat here when the sun was in a different quarter. So that might aid you to work out when did they pass through. You had mentioned that there are sort of two different types of trackers, military trackers and indigenous trackers. This is a little bit of an unfair question,

but I'd love to ask you since you have this experience, what are some of the who are the best trackers in the world? Like who are the people that you want to go to to learn from, people that you've been really impressed by. Yeah, I would say the best trackers in the world are the people I've trained. Of course, I would say that. The, let's say the indigenous trackers to their country are probably the best because they've grown up in that country. They understand it.

If you take them to a completely different environment, they would initially strong. struggle. So I've trained trackers in Borneo, in jungle tracking, you know, locals to do that, and obviously a lot of Africans. I would say in a lot of those more indigenous people, they are more attuned to those natural skill. I find that their natural sense of direction is better than somebody who's come from the Western country. And their powers of observation are absolutely phenomenal. They can see, you know, so many times they've pointed out a snake in a bush. And I'm standing there and I just can't see it.

And they're saying, you know, you can see the snake. I can't see the bloody snake until they point it with a stick. So that's why they make, you know, they're trapped. they get to a stage where I don't know now whether they're on the track or not. And that means that I've got them to a level beyond my own. And I'm happy with that. But in the beginning, they're shuffling around. They can't see it.

You know, we slowly build them up. But they're so quick to recognize the characteristics of sport, as we call it. They've quickly overtaken my ability. but I can still get, you know, the army guys that I've trained still get them up to a very, very good level, but it takes a bit longer. And they need to keep at it. You can't just do a course and then say that's it.

You know, it's a skill, it's a perishable skill, but it's a skill that you improve. You've never finished learning as a tracker. Every time you go out, you'll notice something else that you can then use. You know, you can stick that in your library. So you've got to keep going and keep at it. So, yeah, it's a rare skill,

but it's a skill that everybody have. We were, you know, our ancestors were trackers. It was part of everyday life. So we still retain that. It just has to be brought out. And you've got to get guys away from looking at a screen, and that's a big change that I've seen over my time. People are so used to getting their information,

focusing on a small screen, getting everything from there to then get them away from that, stick that phone, leave it back in the, you know, accommodation, and now start focusing your eyes on the terrain, on the, you know, in the real world. I think we're getting further and further away from those instinctive natural, you know, skills. So you are still training rangers in some of these different countries. You're back in Brunei right now. Tell us, like, what's next for you?

Where are you going from here? From here, I get back home. I've got about 10 days, and I'm going out to Malawi. I've got one of my trainers there in one of the parks that we frequent. And he's doing what's called the Basic Field Ranger course. And that's taking individuals, guys, men, and women from, you know, living in the community, three months worth of training to get them to be fully functioning ranges. And part of that is a tracking phase. So I'm heading out there

to run two, two week tracking courses within that. And hopefully my friend, who's a new instructor to us, he's got some experience with tracking, but, you know, I'll be sort of passing that information on to him as well. So I'll be a month in Malawi, back home. I've got some potential in Uganda because there's a training academy out there that was, I believe, built by the Americans. You guys are great at coming in building something. Leaving.

You've changed your mind. And this place is out there apparently. It's got classrooms, generators, accommodation, everything you want. and it's not being used. So I've got my eye on that. USA. USA. Yeah, I tell you,

we're just shuffling around following you guys, taking up what you don't need anymore. So, you know, I want to develop the potential of like an international training school where I can take people who want to get involved in this kind of work,

put them through their paces, but also train at the same, time, you know, African military ranges. We do a lot with the female empowerment and training as well because the women in Africa are absolutely amazing and they're an untouched, you know, an untapped into source out there in all walks of life. If you see, the African women are the ones, you know, they've got a baby on their back. they're out in the fields

they're toiling in the fields they stop to breastfeed and then they're carrying massive heavy weights everywhere they are the backbone of Africa so if you can take that resource we turn them into anti-poaching

rangers they make fantastic trackers you've got a slightly different mindset from the guys perhaps less apt to be corrupt shall we say and more they think further ahead. I think their mindset is that they're bringing up children,

they're thinking about the future and they're thinking less about what can they get for themselves. So if they get a wage, they'll put that wage into putting a new roof on the house or education for their children, whereas the guys, you know what we're like, we'll be down in the bars and getting drunk or buying a motorbike or something like that. Are there any, I mean, first off, I mean,

you're presumably you have a company that you work for now doing these tracking things. Is there like a website or anywhere that you'd like to tell people about? Yeah, exactly. In about 2019, I decided we have to have a company name, a logo, and a website. So that's Big Five protection. So that's www.b5p.com.uk. And that will lead to the website and you know, you're able to have a look at what we're doing, what we've been up to. And we'll have a link down in the description for you guys as well.

Are there any other like NGOs or anything that you'd like to direct people to people who are interested in supporting some of these anti-poaching efforts? Yeah, there's a lot out there, a lot of great causes. Now, you know, if we could get donor funding, we could do a hell of a lot more. I've got to focus at the moment in Sumatra and Indonesia where the last of the rhinos, the last of the tigers, there's literally tens of them. And they're calling for us to go out there and help raise anti-poaching units. And we can't do it because there's no funding. There's absolutely no funding to do that.

When I was working in Sabah in Borneo a couple of years ago, when I was first contracted to do that, there were two or three Bornean versions of the Sumatra and Rhino were left. And they've died out. They're completely extinct now. So my real focus is getting over there, but without some sort of donor funding, without backing, we can't do that. and it's going to take millions of dollars to establish a unit. But NGOs like African parks, for instance, they are doing so much good, and it's a massive battleground out there.

They're battling all sorts of things, including journalists who are trying to expose things that aren't happening. But they're literally saving, you know, loads and loads of parks. turning them around, getting the tourists back, but they're fighting. So that's a really good NGO to look up. And then, you know, there's individual small NGOs who are desperate.

Out in Malawi, there's a wildlife action group, and there's two forest reserves that I, you know, help out as much as I can. And they're run by an Irish lady called Lynn Clifford, hate me for mentioning her name. But she is literally running the training and running these team of rangers and protecting those forest parks.

Nobody's ever heard of her. No one knows, but the Wildlife Action Group. I'm hoping to get back there this year and do some training, but we generally do it for free because there's just no funding. And it's a great cause.

And these are the forgotten areas that nobody's nobody's focused on. Everybody's heard of, you know, Kruger National Park and some of the big parks. But some of these areas, they're fighting to preserve and save, you know,

species that could be wiped out. You know, the rest of the world is so focused on trans rights, Black Lives Matter, climate, you know, catastrophe and everything else that it's like, just open your eyes and see what's going on in the real world. Not only are we destroying the planet,

you know, mining for the technology to make batteries for, you know, for our net zero gains. We're also, you know, we're destroying environments, like the environments out in, I was saying, out in Sumatra and Indonesia. And those species will be gone in my lifetime. And that really bothers me. I mean, we've covered a lot of ground here, but anything else that I failed to ask that you'd really like to talk about before we get going?

No, I think I've managed to squeeze in as much as I can, talking about what I do and what I'm trying to achieve. Well, you know, I'm stepping back a little bit now. I'm doing a bit of the talking circuit. I've been talking on cruise liners. and it's not what I want to do. I want to be at the coal face, but I can only do so much by standing back and trying to talk to people,

organizations, countries and say the wider picture, train other people to do what I'm doing rather than just be there and doing it myself. And we need backing like everybody else needs backing. but, you know, people are giving money, supporting some of the large charities. You've got WWF space for giants and stuff, and that's great. But when you actually out on the ground and you see, you get an idea how a lot of that money is being spent and how it's being channeled. And by the time a charity organization gets so big, it's got executives, it's got massive teams.

they all have to be paid for. And sometimes some of that money doesn't, you know, might not be used in the way that you might imagine. But alternative, there's lots of small organizations, groups, NGOs, who are crying out for some of that. And we have a real effect because we don't have offices. We're not paying for accommodation. We're not paying for business class flights to fly around the world.

We're just getting struck in. You know, we're getting stuck into the problem as and where it is. So that, you know, that's another frustration when you see how much money is filtering in. And, you know, the cause and effect, sometimes it, you know, it doesn't weigh up. Give people your website one more time. Yeah. www.b5p.com.uk. That's big five protection.

And that's who we are. Simon, thank you so much for this interview. Really appreciate you coming on the show. All the way from Brunei. All the way from Brunei and this hallowed, the hallowed turfy of the laby arms. I love it. The drinking establishment of the traditional jungle warfare school. It's a great place to be.

So it's great to have you here. We have one question real quick from M Corbyn, unless there's anything on patron D. What's the most rewarding thing about doing nature, natural conservation work. What's the most worrying thing? Rewarding, the most rewarding. Rewarding thing, okay, the most rewarding thing is training other people to be the protectors.

When you get individuals right from the start and particularly on the tracking training to see how good they are and how proud they are at the end of that is something that will, it just makes me want to come back out and do it again. So it's the training individuals, empowering them with the skills that I've, you know, I've learned over my many, many years in the military,

handing that back over. But there's a hell of a lot more to do, you know. I haven't retired yet. Next week we're going to have Mike West, on the show who served in the Rhodesian White Infantry and then in the South African Defense Force Rekkes. So he'll be on here next Friday. Simon, again, thank you so much for joining us tonight or this morning in your case. Yeah. Can I go and get some breakfast now? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, thank you. We'll let you go. Have a nice evening or morning wherever you

guys are at. Take care out there. Yeah. Yeah. Great to see you guys. And thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.