The Team House - Sniper with Longest Kill in History | Dallas Alexander | Ep. 198

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

Dallas Alexander served as a sniper in Canada's elite JTF-2 and took the worlds record breaking longest precision rifle shot. Find Dallas here:⬇️ https://www.dallasalexander.ca/ Today's Sponsors: Groove Life ⬇️ https://GROOVELIFE.com/TEAMHOUSE It's time to bring your wallet & belt game into the 21st century.  Head to https://GROOVELIFE.com/TEAMHOUSE for 20% off ALL Groovelife products! Ten Thousand Apparel ⬇️ https://www.TENTHOUSAND.cc/TEAM The brand believes in being Better Than Yesterday, a stoic dedication to continuous improvement, not overnight success. GO TO : https://www.TENTHOUSAND.cc/TEAM for 15% OFF YOUR PURCHASE! Thank you for supporting the companies that support the show ! To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #jtf2 #specialoperations #tier1Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, covert ops, espionage, the team house, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park. Hey, folks, welcome to episode 198 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with David Park. And our guest tonight on the show

is Dallas Alexander, who is a former JTF2 operator, and now country music musician. Yeah. We'll hear all about it. Dallas, thank you for joining us tonight, man. Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely, dude. So, you know, as per SOP on this I'm going to kind of start at the beginning and I'll ask you, you know, tell us about your upbringing in Canada and sort of what that path was that took you towards military service. Yeah, all right. So from Canada, I grew up in a very, very small place. I think while I was there, population max at like maybe 350, 400 people.

It's a what we call a Métis settlement. So it's like a small kind of indigenous community in the middle of nowhere. I spent a lot of time outside in the woods and a lot of time playing hockey. It's like two things. That's it for like the first 18 years of my life. That's like the very like as Americans, that's sort of the cliche that we believe about Canadians that you all play hockey and are outdoorsmen, you know. That's right. I've seen Letterkenny, so I know the truth.

You know exactly what Canada's all about then. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, what was it about that upbringing that kind of like, if it did predispose you towards the military? Yeah, I was thinking about this after I was done in the military. And I was like my family didn't serve in the military. But I think it was just like kind of the draw to adventure and, you know, the outdoors and stuff like that. And you go, you hear about the stuff, the different jobs in the military.

And you're like, oh, yeah, you're going to be outside a lot. And I could dig that. They don't explain it all, obviously, into the recruiting center. But it's like you get to spend a lot of time outside. I like that. And it was, I think it was almost like having hockey growing up, being a team sport and competitive and a place to be an outlet for, you know, aggression and all these different things. When I heard about Canada having this unit, JTF2, which is our counterterrorism unit,

as soon as I heard about, I was working on the oil field in between a hockey center. season and kind of training for the next one and just putting in some summer work. This guy told me about this unit and I was just like hooked. I was kind of, that was a summer. I was deciding if I was going to keep playing hockey or I was going to do something else. And when I heard about this unit, I was like, that's the job for me right there. I was instantly hooked. That's awesome.

So what was, what was that pathway? I mean, you walk into a recruiting center. Obviously, you can't enlist as an operator. Yeah. What was that pathway? like for you? Yeah, I just did a little bit of research on the dial-up internet and it said that the infantry is probably the best way, best start point. And you have to do two years in the reg force before you can try out, again, our regular force military. So it's like, let's get it started.

I went to the recruiting center and said I want to join the infantry and then I want to go to JTF too. They're like, yeah, okay, kid. So, but it just seemed like, like the best start point for me. They told me it was full. I was like, all right, well, call me when there's a spot. And it was like a week or two later. I was on my way to basic training. Or I had my message to be a basic training later on in the year. But I'm pretty fast, actually. Cool. So you enlisted as an infantryman. And we want to tell us about like what that first unit was like, how you took the military life. Yeah. So I trained really hard because I knew what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to go do the selection for JTFDU. So when I got to basic training,

it was a little underwhelming physically. It was more an adjustment of like the, you know, these people yelling at me for no reason and like, you know, just being dicks for seemingly no reason. Getting through all that stuff, the infantry courses got more interesting, like when she kind of specialized into that little bit of war fighting tactics and stuff. And then I, uh, the summer of 2006, I ended up in three PPCLI, which is a light infantry battalion in Edmonton. And it was really cool. I enjoyed it. It was, you know, everyone was kind of hard charging soldiers.

And that's where I found out that we had like a recie platoon or sniper debt there. And I really, as soon as I saw that, I was like, well, if I'm going to be here for two years, that's what I want to do. And I asked at the chain of command. And I just kind of luckily got onto a course after course. like a sniper by the next summer, my first year being there. It was kind of luck in the situation and just continually bugging my platoon warrant. Because we had, the company I went to just got back from overseas and a bunch of guys had left. So there's space and numbers just kind of the right time, the right place.

So I got to do my reconnaissance course and like Base Parra and my sniper course all before kind of going on selection for our special operations. Could you unpack a little bit about how, the sniper debt works in Canada because I know the system that snipers operate in the Canadian military actually American snipers are quite envious of how you guys operate and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that and how it works yeah so at this point I was just in our light infantry battalion but there you would have a reconnaissance platoon and then a debt of snipers within that so they're tasked with whatever the job of the day would be or for the

exercise or whatever, lots of it, most of it being surveillance or watching. And then it's a tiny kinetic portion is mostly long range precision shooting. But it was cool to just have that, that little tiny cell of stipers and train together and bounce ideas off of each other. And then you go do the task, whatever it is you're given, come back and you can, you know, disseminate that information. And everyone kind of gets better and better that way, I think. How long is, like the the conventional Army is a sniper course and like what do you guys do like high angle in it or is it because because you're uh yeah please go ahead no i was just going to say like this was a long time ago now so it's sort of been 20 or sorry 2007 so cave per saying it could have changed but i think

it was like we did a selection for it a sniper course selection because there's a lot of people that wanted to do it um so it was like a two-week selection um and then the course, I believe it was about two months, two and a half months. And there was no high angle. It covered the main, like it covered shooting, which is a big one, obviously. There's observation, exercise, judging distance, stalking, and then kind of putting it all together. Those are like the main things. And I think that's pretty similar to you guys are rolling down there.

Yeah. For the basic, yeah, for the basic sniper, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the things I was told about the Canadian military, you can tell me if this is true or not, is that sniper teams get to stay together a lot longer than in the American military and that it results in, you know, obviously the longer a spot or sniper works together, the more effective they are. Yeah, we definitely tried to keep it that way. The numbers and the tasks and all that stuff, and I'm kind of jumping ahead to like our unit. It just made it hard. But you definitely tried because you're right, the more you work with a spotter shooter team and switching the conversation, everything you do, it becomes so slick and consistent. And like, you definitely notice when someone's been working together for a long time versus, like,

hey, let's shoot today. But that being said, a lot of the training, we try to keep it the same and the conversation and the words back and forth between a spotter and shooter, let's say, and all the calls, to be like keywords that are the same. so it wouldn't be such a big issue, you know, working with a new shooter or a new spotter. And while you were in the infantry, I mean, Canada does a lot of deployments. I think a lot of people here in America also don't understand how often the Canadian military gets deployed. Was your unit in the shoot for a deployment?

Kind of where were you at that point in time? Yeah, so when I first got to 3VP or Light Infantry, the company I got to just got back from Afghanistan. So I wasn't really in the hopper, but there was a task going out that was like with the Afghan police. So it was like kind of a mentoring, a little bit of reconnaissance, a bunch of different things. But they were going out and I was, I was supposed to be a spare, or I was a spare, sorry for that to her. So they say, okay, if someone that's going gets injured or whatever, can't go, you're up. And I was excited about that. And then I also was offered a spot on our reconnaissance course.

And I was like, okay, well, I'll take it. Only if, like, you promised me that if the spare position becomes available, you know, you're going to give it to me. And I was like, yeah, for sure. And then it never happened. I went on course, the spare spot became available. And they're like, wow, we're not going to send you. You're on course.

Somebody else goes. And I was like, fuck you. That's how it always works. Yeah. I'm like, oh, learned a valuable lesson right there about the Army. But yeah, so no, I didn't, I didn't even deploy until I was in our unit at Tuario. Okay. So you always had in your mind that you wanted to go to, you know, Canada's most elite unit and obviously jumped on that chance as soon as it came.

Talk to us about like going to selection and kind of what that experience was like trying to bump up to the next level. Yeah, it was interesting and intimidating. like it because in our unit being light infantry and kind of the type of soldiers that were there, there's insanely fit, driven, hardworking, smart dudes. Like, and you'd see every year, like, I mean, the two years that I was there prior to going on selection, like, guys would go and they'd come back a couple days later. Guys would go on selection, come back a few days later. I'm like, what the fuck happened?

Like, these would be like the fittest people you know, the fittest people in battalion. So it's very intimidating. and we are disconnected, kind of by distance, our unit being out in the east, and the battalion I was in, there's an Alberta in the West. So it's just like you didn't really hear much. We never saw them training anywhere, anything like that. So it was all just a big mystery when we were just trying to prepare as best we could. Like, okay, let's be as fit as we can.

Let's get swimming and let's try and have some kind of mental game going in. And that was about it. And it went to selection. And it's a seven-day selection. The initial part is seven days. So like, sorry, back up, you have to do two years in. You do a physical assessment, psychological evaluation. And if those are both good and your chain of command supports it,

then you can go do the seven-day selection. So they run a handful of cereals depending on the year and how many applicants they get. But you just go and you fly out. east here to Ottawa and then it's like game on with a bunch of craziness. You tell us about, you know, the craziness? Yeah. So it's just, it's seven days of testing a lot of different things. You know, phobias and your psychological state and teamwork and if you prepared physically.

But most of it, it almost. all comes down to just kind of your mental strength, how you can resist or push through adversity kind of thing. Because no matter how much you prepare, you know, you're going to have to do more physically. It just doesn't stop. Let's say you do 250 pushups in training. You're going to be required to do 260 and then see how you act and see how you respond, see how you work with a team. problem solving and a bunch of things that might seem impossible, but like, you know, how can you get it done? Just so many things coming at you all at once and all while you're physically tired

and while you're, you know, sleep deprived, obviously and all the other good things that come with doing it in Canada in the fall or early winter. So it's like, you know, snow and ice and rain sometimes and all that. Good fun. But it's, yeah, just seven days. And then when you finish, if you finish the seven days, you have to wait a period where they kind of go through all the different. They assess everything you did. And then if you like fit fit the mark or whatever score for going on course, you get loaded on what we call our Assaulter course.

And what was there anything? And you don't have to get into specifics because I know every unit likes to keep a selection process secret. it, but are there, were there, did you face any specific challenges during that course, where you're like, where you thought, wow, like, I don't know, or were you just there, I'm going to do it and just drive on? Oh, no, I thought I was fucking, even when I finished, I was like, there's no way they're going to pick me up. Like, I fucked up so many things.

There's zero chance that they're going to want this guy. I got like a knee injury through part of it. And I was really sore. And one of my strengths going in is, like, I'm a tall, lanky guy, and I trained a lot running. So I was like, I was pretty decent runner. And then with my knee, it's not tough. It's like, oh, no, it's like my only strength. And I remember some of the runs.

It was like at the back in the dark on some road. And they're just like, the ambulance is right behind me. And they're like, you just have a number. And I was number 10. But they're just like, just quit. You know, what are you doing here? Do you think we want to be on your team? Just call it.

Hop in the truck. Go home. You can come back next. Just all of this mental game. the whole time. No, but luckily, we were exposed to some cold, and it actually helped my knee out a lot.

And it was like back in the game. So you finished the seven days, to your surprise, you get picked up to go on the Assulter course. And now what, I mean, you're like, this is living the dream,

right, that you had from the day you enlisted. Oh, yeah, this is really cool. And to see, like, the collection of dudes

that they selected from kind of all over the place, how smart and driven and fit everybody was and it was and everyone was already a great shot for some reason this part i didn't understand because i'm just learning how to shoot a pistol for the first time but we went and i think it was uh i think at the time it was about eight month eight month course and you're just learning all the assault or skills like you know you start off with the basics of shooting pistol and a long gun and then you're like how to move while you're doing that and then into basic CQB, into advanced CQB with all the different crazy explosive entries and approaches and Hilo and fast roping and repelling and all that stuff. And there's a big green portion where you're out in the forest for a long period of time and, you know, walking lots of miles and doing lots of kind of like more green military weapons or mobility stuff, you know, with heavies on humvees and stuff.

stuff like that and then just a lot of sleeping in the woods, sleeping in the rain. So all of that, they, I can't remember what the, it's like phase four or something, selection they call it, where it's just like you're still being, you know, watched and selected for the whole time. So there's a decently high attrition rate with that course as well, the length and the difficulty, but also like you're being assessed the whole time. So, you know, if there's a concern that you might be unsafe, you know, shooting right besides somebody. You're not making good decisions. Like, that can catch up to you and you get tossed from

course. And you came right from the conventional infantry. Were there another, and forgive my memory lapse here, but there's another Can Softcom unit. Yeah. What's the name of the unit? Csore. Thank you. Csore. Did you get a lot of guys coming through selection from there as well? There was a few. There was a handful on my year. I think there's a lot more now. from my understanding. It's almost like it's a good kind of stepping stone to prepare guys. And you notice a big difference. Like on my course,

those guys are all rock stars already with pistols and the tactics. And I had gear that looked really cool already and all that shit. I was like, oh, man. What is the military tradition for special operations in Canada like? Because for, and I'll say this because like in the United States, when we think of the OSS, we think that goes directly to like the CIA. We don't really look at it, you know, like Special Forces as a child of that. But in Canada during World War II, you had Camp X, right?

You had the OSS and the SOE train there. Do you guys carry that heritage at all, or did that more go to like your intelligence services also? Yeah, I don't even know if they held on to it. Okay. But not to chirp them too much. But we definitely have, there was some people very interested in that history and trying to see what we could take from it in terms of lessons. And they had a pretty interesting fight program in my understanding.

And just so we implemented that stuff. But ours was like a mix of like guys from the airborne regiment once they got shut down. And then the RCMP, hostage rescue kind of, it was like time to turn it into a military thing. So we got a lot of assistance and guidance from like the SAS in the UK. So it was like a cultural mix of all those. things sort of. Okay. Interesting. And again, correct me if I'm wrong, but the unit also has a domestic

mission too, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so we're like, if like, you know, shit really hits the fan here, we train a lot for mainly hostage rescue stuff. Yeah. And so you're going through the Assaulter course.

What was the most challenging part of the course for you? For me, I would say, if you were to look at my record after, it would be basic CQB, was where I skated the line the closest to being tossed from course a few times. I really liked and enjoyed CQB and the training of it and the challenge and like getting faster, trying to get faster and faster and more precise with shooting and stuff. Sometimes that brought me like a little too close to the line of whatever would be some kind of safety. thing and stuff. So yeah, I got I got dangerously close to getting tossed on basic CQB. For for guys who do like get tossed during the selection, are they invited to go back if it's not like a major violation? Yeah, it depends. There's different criteria like and I do I don't

even know what it is. I've never like worked on that particular course. But yeah, you can you can get like Because guys have to start over again all the time for injuries, for one. And if there's just something you're just not quite picking up, you could be invited back. If it's something major or like attitude's a big one, if it's just you're absolutely a shithead to everyone, you'll probably get kicked off and not get invited back. But then sometimes that's also just the guy needs time to mature a little bit. And you eventually obviously graduate the course in making. get to the unit.

You know, take us through a little bit of what it's like showing up your first day and, you know, Canada's most elite unit as the new guy. Yeah, it's intimidating. You know, you're on a high because you finish a course and something you've wanted for so long and now you're like in, but there's like not even a second to breathe because you need to really, that's when you have to get to work. Like as soon as you go to the CQB after course with like the guys in the squadrons, you realize like, oh my God. I thought I was getting so good at this.

And I am an absolute plug. Like they're just so fast making like the calls and decisions and the breaching. And like just everything was like their brains are working like a million miles a minute. And I felt like I was way behind. So it was cool. It was cool to see the level that the guys were working at, but it was also intimidating and inspiring, I guess. It was like time to get to work and see if we can catch up for these fellows.

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So I hope you guys will go and check out these companies that help support the show and keep us going. And with that, we'll jump back to you, Dallas. You know, showing up in those team rooms is the new guy. I mean, you explained it a little bit. What was what was sort of like going through your mind? What was sort of the vibe in the unit at that time? Like right now at this point, what we're talking like 2007, 2008, the word or act? Yeah, it would have been 2000.

Sorry, I did selection in 2008. So I got to the unit into like the stalls in 2009. Gotcha. Okay. And the war on terror is still going pretty hard over in Iraq and picking up in Afghanistan. What was sort of the vibe of the unit? What was it like kind of working with some of these guys? It was great because it was a very, it was a time of a lot of like operational focus, you know?

So there wasn't a ton of worry or focus on bullshit that didn't matter. It was like we're deploying, we're fighting, come back, recover, get ready to fight again. you're going back over and that is the type of unit for me right and that's that's how it was when i got there and it was pretty cool to jump in and be uh get to be a part of that and try and catch up to where the guys were at and i mean i take it that like most of these units you weren't able to become a sniper uh initially you had to serve some time in the in the line uh on a team yeah yeah and i wanted to uh like i was a sniper in the reg force coming there so you know it was of I put it out there that eventually I would like to go to snipers, but I wanted to learn

what it was in the squadrons first and get my CQB up to where it should be and learn the breaching and all that different stuff. And then eventually go to snipers when I was like, okay, I'm happy where it is here. I had no interest really in climbing, like the chain of command in the squadron. I just wanted to learn the skills I thought, you know, I wanted. And then go to snipers after that. And so what was your first deployment? My first deployment was a weird one. Again, I was offered a spare spot with a squadron troop that was deploying.

And I was like, okay. And then my sergeant major came to me and was like, hey, there's this other team going. It's a little bit different. It's a mix of guys from a few different squadrons. But it's a sure thing. You'll be going for sure if you take this position. I was like, all right, let's go with that. one. Spare game has not paid off for me prior. So I took that to her and it was in Kabul and it was

like doing like the source handling operation stuff in support of our intelligence agency. So it was different but it was really cool, really cool to see. It wasn't a lot of stuff I touched on on course and it wasn't a lot of skills really touched on in the squadron. So it was cool to learn a bunch of new things and and do that. Was that mostly OJT for you then? Oh, yeah. Yeah, all of it. We did it. We did a quick like, uh, work up with guys who were kind of versed on the stuff,

uh, pickups and drop Bob and debrief areas and all these different things. Um, and then we did like a motorcycle course because I'd never ridden a motorbike before. And I guess that was a big part of it. And then we were like right into it. And it was awesome. Like I, I really enjoyed it. It was such in the, it was different than what I expected, but it was like, it was so adventurous I found. You know, like, I'm in this new world, this new environment.

And I'm just like getting to do all this crazy shit. I'd only seen in movies. Like driving around like Loviz vehicles and civilian. Yeah, like Loviz vehicles are in a motorbike just dressed like my best version of whatever, you know, trying to blend in with whoever's local and stuff like that. And, you know, it's just be like a pistol and a radio. and you're just like going to do your job and it it was really cool i was like i didn't expect this but i'm doing it yeah i mean it must be exciting like as a new guy to jump right into that and do something that is like you feel like there's such a purpose to it and that it's you're directly

uh working on behalf of your country's national defense yeah yeah and it was like the responsibility given was just the same as anyone else didn't matter that i was just new there they're like this is your operation to run go play play planet do the recies brief us everyone's going to be in and then we'd rotate through guys doing it so it was like you know it wasn't like getting coddled as a new guy right right no you go do the fucking same job as everyone do you recall any like dicey situations on on that deployment yeah there's there's a few because kable at that time this is 2010 I think 2010 into 11 it ended up being like an eight or nine months when it but it was so weird because there was like green zone and

and there's embassies and there's like restaurants and shit that you know NGOs are going to and it's like a nightlife sort of but it's sort of illegal so some of them are getting raided and then there's still a terrorist attacks all over the city so there'd be like a bb iED in one part and you got to change where our operation was and there was one time this this gross so we do we're doing like a barbecue and we like go get stuff at the grocery store or whatever and the one we always went to for for some reason we're like, oh, let's go to this other one and grab. I don't know. It was like some burger buns we wanted.

Came back and we're barbecuing. And the one that we always went to and we're going to go to got hit. I can't remember if there was a suicide vest. There's two guys. They had a shitload of like hand grenade. So they went in and shot everybody up and blew the building up. But a guy we knew was in there shopping. And it was like a guy who had a business.

It was kind of a safe house and a restaurant. So he like calls us. And he's like, you got to come get me. And it's just like we can hear it because it's only blocks away, but we didn't know what was connected because you hear shit all over that city all the time. And so we're like, oh my God, like it was a very confusing call at first. And someone took him and we didn't know if he was at his house and his compound or what. And then he told us he was at that grocery store. So we like jet down there running all over the streets trying to find this guy with just like a med kid and a pistol.

And I'm like, this is madness. I went into the store. And it's just like freshly exploded and there's people still on the ground. blood and soot everywhere. I'm just trying to find like our buddy. And he ended up getting, it was weird because there was another Canadian that was there with like NATO or something.

Ended up like finding him and he went off in the ambulance to like a local hospital and eventually ended up being okay. He took like a few rounds and got fragged. Jesus. Fucking gangster that guy. But yeah, it was crazy just to see like how fast it spooled up and then what we were doing trying to search

and find this guy. It wasn't anything we, like that exact scenario we didn't really rehearse that you know so right how do we do it now it's like the best search protocols so you're safe maybe with a fire team partner but you're not wasting time and like you know all of those different factors did you did you find the guy you were looking for well so yeah we narrowed him down but he had already been found by this other dude it's a Canadian dude and he was like being hooked up with an ambulance got that he wasn't sketched out about that they were like taking him off to somewhere so yeah he ended up

healing up. I think he flew to Germany at some point and got surgery and got sorted out. And he's still kicking. Also, maybe we should like, now that we're talking about JTO, we should kind of say that dear Canadian military, we love you, like your amazing allies, but also please read the First Amendment. And we didn't really care what King Charles or George thought. We don't care what King Charles thinks. Bugger off. Yeah. You and me both.

Yeah. We fought a couple wars with Canada back in the, with the fur traders back in the day. So we don't have to, we don't have to abide by those laws. Yeah, I mean, we love the military. Like they've always, you know, one of the things about, no matter what jokes are between, like, the United States and Canada, I'll say that the Canadian military has always been respected by the American military. And that particularly, that particularly, like, kicked up in the war on terror. Like the only thing you would ever hear about Canadians, the Canadian military.

Even before the war on terror, like a lot of people don't realize like Canada goes on like every peacekeeping deployment ever. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot that the Canadian military has done to help with the NATO alliance and even with UN peacekeeping. So yeah, a lot of our countrymen down here don't necessarily understand that or don't think about that. But it's true. but currently some of them have lost their minds a little bit sure sure i apparently that's because it's peacetime and we don't have a war and soldier and yeah generals get bored i don't know i don't know i'm just kidding they must be really bored right now yeah yeah yeah so so you you you wrap up that first appointment and then like head back home and like what's uh

what's the story what's the next step for you So I went back and I was back in the squadron. So this would have been in 2010 into 11. And we did a bunch of, I think this was the time. We were doing a lot of like maritime counterterrorism stuff and city like subway and tall buildings and trains and all of that stuff. And I might either have it. That was either before that two or after I'd have to double check Google this. But whenever the Vancouver Olympics were on, there's a period that we were really getting ready.

for that and it was just to kind of be on standby if anything happened because of the domestic stuff that we had responsibility for and then in 2012 so I'd been in the squadron for a couple years now I asked to go on the sniper course like our units specific sniper course out of curiosity I know with our special operations units like during the wars like they pretty much got road hard and put away wet right it's like constant deployment cycle was Was the Canadian military better about sort of the care of the soldiers and the psychological toll it was taken on? Did they give you guys time to DEPRA?

Because you're a much smaller. Not really. Yeah. Yeah, not really. No. Because it's always numbers, right? So, like, there's always way more ask and tasks than there are guys. And, you know, soft truths.

You can't mass produce. So it was like the recruiting and, you know, the guys, the attention. I guess. It's just it was always always a numbers thing. So there was, you know, sometimes back to back. It was like for over a decade. So it ended up being in the unit for just about like 13 and a half years. And for a majority of that time, like probably 11 years of it, I was gone or deployed six to eight months a year every single year. So yeah. And it's yeah. So it would be sometimes training like we'd go down the state's train, go overseas train, go here and there. And then sometimes it was deployments. But it was. the mix of all of it was you're gone a lot. And so when you got to your units sniper school, I mean, how did that differ than the conventional military sniper school you had already graduated from? Oh, there's, it was hugely different.

For one, it was very much a course where you had snipers wanting to teach you to be a sniper so that they would have good teammates. instead of like, you know, conventionals a bit of like, like, a smoke vest. The right word. Yeah, exactly. It's just like, let's see if you can make it. And then we'll work together. This one was like, okay, you're already in the unit, you've done selection.

You're already all assaulters. We want good snipers here. So let's give you like the best weapon systems, the best support and the best training we can. So it was very like a gentlemanly type of course for the most part. And I mean, I take it that the skills. are also much more advanced from what you would. Oh, yeah. Well, just like gear is already makes a huge different guns and ammo and optics.

And then like the level that the snipers were at already, and this was in 2012, was just like phenomenal. Like the precision shooting, the how they called wins, like all of this stuff was just, it was like next level from what I'd learned before. and just kind of kept building on that for, I think, the course around two months, two and a half months, something like that, around the same, roughly the same length. Part of it in Canada, and we'd always go down and finish off the training in Texas with accuracy first and Todd, Todd down there. I don't know any of it all, but no, no, no, I don't. Crazy good sniper program, like in the shooting, it would just all culminate down there. And that's really where we started learning how to shoot, you know, really far. Yeah.

And so for you, I don't know if you told us, but had you, do you have, did you grow up hunting and stuff? Was that part of your childhood? Not a lot. No, like I spent a lot of time outdoors. I think my dad had like a 22 and shoot cans and stuff every once in a while, but I wasn't a big hunter. I hunt more now than I've grown up and like through my adult life.

but no not not really it's funny when I was younger my older brother and my cousin who used to like have these pellet gun wars very safe uh and uh I remember I always had like the crack barrel like one shot yeah and they had like these semi auto pistols but they had good camphill so I just lay in the grass and like slowly like take a shot and lay back down and they'd spray their like semi auto pistols into the forest I was like oh yeah when I look back now. I was like, I'm sort of getting ready to be a sniper. Yeah. And how, but that like, how did you perform in your first sniper course? I mean, were you a good sniper? Were you a great sniper? Were you, you know, I was like decent, I guess. I don't know. I did all right. Um, there's like a placement. I think I was in the top third, but not the top dude.

Um, my, I really picked up, uh, stalking. Uh, I could, I think, you know, know, just spending so much time outdoors growing up, the stocking, I really enjoyed. And I found like I picked it up quite well. Shooting was more of a challenge. And then just all the other stuff would be sometimes hit, sometimes, miss, like, I don't know, like the judging distance stuff with the scope reticles. I'd be like some days I was on, some days I was not. And then when you were in, you know, the special operations sniper course, how, how were you? Because I'm leading up to, you know, one of the things that you're known for,

aside from your, you know, music, of course. But, you know, this longer shot you took, were you the guy that was like consistently deeming those, you know, 600, 1,200, you know, meter targets or? Yeah, like, I was always pretty good. I went into that sniper course with sniper training already. So that helped a lot. um but like i was by no means the best there's some really phenomenal shooters uh i would always just be like middle of the road challenging myself to get as good as the best guys in the troop um

but it was such a cool place for that just like that everyone was always pushing the limit um and just like in the battalion i was in you know you'd go off tasks with somebody and you'd bring that information back to like the sniper troop and it's like guys would just keep learning and and someone would learn about a new piece of kit or a way of doing something. We try it out and see if it made us better. It was such a cool environment for that. We're just like professionally always pushing and pushing and pushing to get to the next level. I imagine you worked with a variety of weapons.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So it would be all the way, you know, from a pistol to a 50-calf, kind of everything in between. What was with in the sniper train, though, like what was your favorite type of long gun? I think mine was just like in terms of training stuff, like the 338 is pretty badass because it makes wind calls a lot easier than the 762. But I still think 762 or 308 is like my favorite. It doesn't kick as much and I've had enough concussions that I don't necessarily need that.

And you have to be good with your wind calls to make those shots. It's a little more challenging. I think that's like my favorite, nice little caliber. How were you at reading Wynn? because it's a crazy art form depends if I was on or not. It's really something I found like you have to just keep doing and doing and doing and doing. And if you don't do it for a while, you start to lose it. Everything else I found you can keep pretty consistent.

You know, like once you know how to squeeze a trigger and have a stable platform and your gun maintenance and your ammo, all the stuff like you can control, once you got that down, it's always wind. It's always wind. And some days I was on. killing it in some days the fuck am i doing for people in our audience who may not have heard this kind of talk before can you tell them a little bit about like reading wind about mirage there there there are some folks out there who don't understand that a wind affects a bullet

i'm sorry that wind affects a bullet's trajectory or or know what traces right right that you know what that is yeah so i guess to explain it like from the from the basics you have a you have a gun and it shoots bullets and you have a scope on that gun so you can see far now Now, provided all of that is dialed in, you have a really good gun, you have good ammo, you have a good scope, and you know how to shoot it. And we have, you know, ballistic calculators that are weather, we'll take in all the environmental stuff, you know, so like humidity and density altitude and all this different stuff. So you have all of this information. And it's pretty easy, not easy, but like anyone can do it, just become a good, stable shooter and taking all the information from the environment. The art form of it,

the thing that will make you miss the most is wind because when it's not consistent, it gusts, it's not the same at your position as it is 1,000 meters from where you are. There's different winds in between. It changes direction without telling you, like all kinds of stuff. So it really becomes an art form and learning how to read it with the tools you have,

but then see kind of the ground. And it's weird. It's like the one thing, that isn't really sciencey, in my opinion. Yeah, right. It's like a feeling almost. Yeah, you can, you use a catch troll and get a wind reading where you are, but that doesn't tell you what the wind is where the bullet is going to impact.

Exactly. And through its entire flight path as well, like you can literally have winds in different directions depending on how far you're shooting. And, you know, if there's valleys and things in the city, like you have wind going down one street this way and wind going down one street this way. And it doesn't make any sense. so so you have you know your shooter and his gun is laid out and it's good and you have your spotter and they're reading the wind and what like can you sort of walk us through the process for the people

who haven't yeah so uh we work in teams of two or four sort of which i can explain after um but a shooter is on the gun and he's he's either dialing or holding what the spotter's telling him so we have a target at 600 your hold is whatever it would be 3.5. Either dial it on your scope or you're going to hold it and tells you what the wind call is. With an experienced team, you can have a little bit, and this is time dependent. If you have a lot of time to prep for a shot, you know, it's a certain doorway you're waiting for or whatever. You can kind of go back and forth on the wind. Like, you know, I think it might be like an eight mile an hour, this direction, whatever it is.

You're like, uh, what about this? Okay. And you can, you can chat a bit. But when things are happening fast, it's just the shooter listens to the, spotter. And you'll say like range and what the what your hold is going to be. You give a wind call and the shooter will say standby. That means he's ready to shoot. Spotter says send it. That means he's ready to watch and he shoots the round. And the spotter's looking for a few things. So like the trace you mentioned, you can you can see the bullet travel through the air once you, once you kind of get

trained to look for it at certain ranges. Sometimes the culmination point is just too high that you'll lose it. But then at that point, you're looking for splash. So you're looking for an effect on the target or you're looking for something around it that tells you like, oh, shit, you missed and it was over here. And you can give a correction based on measurements in your scope to that shooter right away. So you can give a subsequent round. And so that's where the communication, if it's really slick, a sniper team can be very deadly or efficient. That is fascinating. Yeah, and a good spotter is, like you say, they're an artist. Yeah, it's cool.

And I mean, everyone that I got to work with were phenomenal shooters and phenomenal spotters. We just switch around all the time. And if you work with guys long enough, like that communication becomes so slick that, like, you can really do some good things. And when you graduate the sniper course, I mean, how does it work? Is there like a sniper element attached to each squadron or is it more centralized and they kind of farm you guys out? Yeah, so we used to. I mean, I won't speak to what they're up to now because I'm not there. Sure.

But we had a troop, like a collection of dudes. We just like all the snipers would be hanging out all the time together and we get tasked to go to different squadrons or for different deployments. and it was cool because you would come back to a central spot and disseminate that information. You'd talk about lessons learned and what works for gear and what could have been nice to have. And it just was always elevating the entire sniper program because of that. Was there ever a time, whether it was after selection or after sniper score, was there ever a time when you remembered back when you were a kid on the oil fields, I think? And that's what I want to do. And you're like, I can't believe I'm here.

Oh, all the time. All the time. I still do that now. right. I'm like, it's crazy. And then, yeah, and then into music. I'm like, that's what I want to do. And I'm going to go do it. Yeah, I think about it all the time.

Yeah. So what was the next deployment after you finished sniper school? Yeah, so I finished sniper school and I went to, I went to the sniper house, like our sniper team immediately. That would have been end of 2012 and the 13. There's a bit of a break. Just did a bunch of training.

Helped on sniper course. I think I might have even. went and done my mountaineering, like, climber course. And then I deployed to Iraq in 2014, I believe. Yeah, I think so. And 14 or 15 somewhere in there. By now, from when you enlisted in the military to the time that you get deployed to Iraq, I mean, that country's gone through some big changes.

We withdrew out of the country. ISIS happened. We went back into the country. So what was sort of like the enemy disposition in the area that you got and what was the mission? Yeah, it was a crazy vibe. ISIS was like really trying to steamroll through Iraq and into Kurdistan. And they were just holding a defensive line.

And they're like, you know, they're going back and forth, like trying to push them this way and push them this way and not let them into Kurdistan. And so we were there just helping the Kurds like push back ISIS and at very least hold the line so they couldn't push them. push into Kurdistan. So it was great deployment for a sniper because it was very much like a defense line, some no man's land, and then little places where ISIS was fighting from. It would be, you know, with optics and airstrikes and then along, like the 50 Cal stuff, it was, it was a great tour to be a sniper. And, okay, so this is 2015.

I think it was like, I think the tour was, I can't. can't remember the months exactly. It was either 2014 into 15 or something like that. Yeah, no, that makes sense of what you're saying. And I remember around that time, Csor had a soldier lost and really unfortunate circumstance going through his checkpoint. That was right before our tour. So it was like sadly out of that, other than sad about the loss, there was a bunch of kind of restrictions that came down on our movement and what we could be doing in the battlefield. because it was, you know, we wanted to help and we wanted everyone to know who we were helping,

but Canada wasn't too interested in having a bunch of casualties in that fight, that's for sure. So you were advising and calling in airstrikes and trying to just help the Peshmerga as much as possible? Yeah, yeah, we figured out ways to get into the fight. So it was good. It was just, you know, there's some gray space that has worked in sometimes. and it ended up being really good. It was just, you know, there's a bit of time that it was more challenging to get out and do what you wanted to do, that's for sure. Right, right.

And was this the time frame when you took this record-breaking shot as well? No, that wasn't until one or two deployments later in 2017. Gotcha. Okay. All right. I'm starting to place this in my mind. Yeah, me too. So you come back home and say same thing, refit, retrain and get ready to go back out the door?

Yeah, we were really kind of ripping through them. I ended up teaching again, I think, on a sniper course. Where did we go after that? I did also like our assault diver dive course thing. And then we got ready and I went back in 20, I think it was 2016. into 17. I'm sure that a salt diver course in Canada was loads of fun. Well, we actually came to Key West for like a month. So yes, it was very much. Yeah. All right. So are you trying to like roll back, like get a recycle for whatever. Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking about dry suits in the Great Lakes or something.

I'm like, oh boy. No, well, we did end like on the West coast. Cold as fuck. But it was worth it for the month in Key West. Yeah. No, that's awesome. Yeah. So it ruled back in 2017. And how had the war kind of evolved and changed since the last time you were there? Yeah, so it was cool to see because the first time I was there, we were on like hilltops and mountainsides on a defensive line. And way off in the distance, you can see the city of Mosul. And when I went back, we had pushed ISIS, we, not me, but, you know, everyone had pushed ISIS into Mosul now.

So the fight was in the city of Mosul. and it was cool because, you know, first tour I was like, oh, someday I want to be in that city down there. But I came back and that was the next deployment is we were trying to, you know, push them out of Mosul now. And so a lot of that tour was focused on trying to get, they had mostly been pushed from, always mess up direction now, from east into West Mosul. So there's a river that on the other side of the river. The other side of the river. So the river now was kind of like the. the boundary.

And there was a big hotel on the water. It was like nine stories. And it was right on the river. And we had our eye on that for a sniper O.P. And it was my, our TL, a buddy of mine, especially was like,

we need to get to that building right there. Is that the mission? I was there in, in 05 and 09. And I'm trying to remember, is this the hotel that's like sort of like pyramid shaped a little bit? Yeah. Yeah,

that's the one. Okay. I, we used to drive by that one. all the time. It's like across like, what is it, Bridge 4 or Bridge 5? Yeah, in between. Yeah.

There's not a bridge right in front of it, but yeah, it's like just north of, I think, Bridge 4. Right, right, right, right. I think it was like a Ramada or something, like way back when. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, if you see the pictures of like when it was like working, running hotel, it was super nice. Yeah. I mean, it had been bombed hundreds of times when by time we got in there, but it used to be really nice.

So your team's sniper mind, the gears are already turning. You're like, that's where we want to put guys. Oh, yeah. Well, that was our TL. Like that was our team leader. He just like was looking ahead. He's like, look, if we're going to be anywhere, this big fucking building is where I want to be. Because there's a, and like, you don't always want to be in the biggest, most obvious, you know, bell tower or whatever.

But like, or clock tower. But like, because it was, there was so much standoff. between that building and where, you know, ISIS, where we had seen them and like all the ground, it was the perfect position. And there was already Iraqis in it on the fourth, the fifth floor. So they were used to just, you know,

taking random rounds from that building. And they knew stuff was in there so we could kind of hide in that noise a little bit. Uh-huh. And what time frame did you guys get in there and start occupying that hide site? Oh, man. So we, I want to say we ended, that deployment in May. We're probably in there like March, March, April, something like that.

It started getting super hot at the end in May. But we had done, I think it was 52 or 54 days total. And it would just sometimes there'd be a week at a time and go back and resupply. And like, we're just waiting for the Iraqis to push from the north and push ISIS kind of into the downtown city center or out the ass end of the city on the south. and we were waiting kind of perpendicular to support that push. So we'd be like, oh, we're going. Oh, we're not going. Oh, we're going. No, we're going.

I just constantly 24 hours a day watching, watching, watching. Yeah, it's really, I mean, I've privileged really to talk to you, Dallas, because they, I don't know if you knew this or not, but I wrote an article about what you did in that building, like maybe a couple months after it happened. Oh, no. Yeah, I had a source in Canada. I'll just leave it at that who kind of like laid on the basics of it to me. But now to talk to the guy himself and hear directly from you is really awesome.

Well, I was very much a team effort. But yeah. I believe it. I know, I know. It was a cool thing to be a part of for sure. How long when you guys got into the hotel and like claimed your room or you're claimed your room in the hotel? How long when you got your key card? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How long did it take you to like build your hot? to what you wanted? Quite a while. It didn't even stop, really. So, like, fine, you know, you get into a place

and you're just constantly out of either boredom or, you know, survival, just always trying to improve it. Yeah. So, you know, you get in and it's more hasty. You just want to cover the arcs to make sure you have your immediate, you know, your actual defensive plan is good to go. And then you start building it up more and more and more. Yeah.

getting better observation loopholes and stuff like that and, you know, protection from overhead or mortars and just like looking every day like, okay, here's where we're at. How can we make it better today kind of thing? So we did that throughout. And so it was, you know, 50 some days in and we're just constantly trying to improve it. And then were you guys able? Because I mean, I'm sure you brought a lot of materials with you. But were you guys able to get like materials back from Canada or whatever, you know, like

sheer, you know, things to help you. Well, there was a lot there in a hotel already, really. We put some holes and some walls. Yeah, that was our loopholes. We, you know, there's just, there's a lot of material in a bombed out hotel that you can use already. Yeah. We had stuff for OP kits and hides, but really we didn't have to use too, too much of it, honestly. Yeah.

Well, that's awesome. Yeah, because I think that when you say you moved into a hotel that maybe people think, oh, because they're like standing up and looking out of wind. you know, you know, sort of like a movie thing, right? They're aiming their guns out of the window, but that's not exactly how it's going down. No, you always want to be as far back as you possibly can inside of the building. For the most part. So like for 99% of that, we were sucked back.

We were actually a couple rooms deep observing. But when the push finally happened, we moved like not sticking out of the window. but we were definitely upfront to open up our arcs and open up everything because at this point we weren't concerned about being necessarily a target because there was there was a battle happening in the streets that we were supporting and because it was so far away you know three kilometers away yeah it just it became like okay the risk and reward thing how was your coordination done with the iraqis was it through them or through their military partners you know, so that you knew when they were pushing, like, what their forward line advance was,

things like that. Yeah, it would just be like through that chain of whatever, whoever was talking, whoever would get into our OPE. And they're like, and there was a bunch of false starts, like a fucking million. They're going. And we're just like, laser being on the scope. We're like, uh, when? Right.

Like, oh, no, hold on. And then you wait and like some general said something and turn it off and turn it back on. So there's a bunch of that. But, yeah, it just came through. I don't even know. Iraqis, to Americans, probably over,

someone else, sent over to us. Were you ever worried that you were going to spend 60 days in that hide and the push wouldn't happen? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Big time. Like the week that we supported the push, I didn't think it ended up being like five or six days, was like right at the tail end of our rotation. So we are ready to rip out with the next team in like three or four days. So like just after that, and the fight was carrying on. to the south, we ripped out of that position and left the country.

So it was like, yeah, real close to not have fuck all happen. Do you want to like tear down the high to make the next guy is like rebuild it? Yeah, you guys could start the way we started. So how did you know when the push actually started? Also, for one, we got word first. It's going to happen now. And then we finally saw, you know, Humvee starting to roll into Timby. tanks and all the different things and just like slowly because it's they're fighting in a city right so

it's like block by block it's very slow um but you saw it and you heard it and like that's when i just started launching like big vb iads and they shake the entire earth when those fuckers go off there's any air strike more than anything they shake the whole city um so yeah you would see and you'd hear it but it's weird because the fighting would be like four five a m to like lunchtime and then everyone would stop wait until the next day. Because it gets you hot? I don't know why.

It's so weird. It was just like everyone had an agreement. So prior to that, prior to the push, were you guys hitting targets of opportunity or were you guys maintain like this tactical? This one like we don't want to give away our presence until the push. No, most of it was air strikes. Yeah, most of it.

There's some night ops. with some sniper engagement. That's when people, you know, try to penetrate a little bit closer here and there. But majority, it was just watching, learning the ground, getting distances and ranges and holds to all these different places, grids,

and then calling in airstrikes when, when required. How many shots do you think you had fired from that hide site up until the push began? Oh, not many. Most of them we had moved to the roof at night anyway, so it wasn't a lot from in that hide. I don't recall, but it wasn't many until that push started. And then it was like a lot of rounds.

So you had a little bit of data in your dope book, but not a ton. Yeah. Yeah. And then what was the average distance of the engagements that you were taking guys were taken at that time? So the fight started like pretty far. away. It was like three, just over 3K to 4K, somewhere in that range. And each day, it's sort of angled a little bit to our left and a little bit closer. So it would be between like 2000 and, like 2,000 meters or two kilometers and four kilometers. It was like the range most of the days of that

push for us. That's a, those are long shots. I mean, did you ask, you know, Do we get into like what type of firearms that you were? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, from that distance, are you guys, are you guys still using 308? Is that a, no.

This is all 50 Cal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. From what platform and what optics? I mean, I'm going to like nerd out a little bit. Yeah.

We had a Schmidt and Mender's scope. That was a 35 power, I believe. And then we had a bolt action 50 Cal. McMill and McMill and, attack 50. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and our gun guys back at home and even with us or they were like phenomenal. So if anything happened, they were like, they're essentially custom guns by time we're using them every time and just passing them on to each sniper team. Yeah. Um, yeah. So it was a big gun and it kicks, kicks, kicks like a motherfucker. And yeah, I'm happy that

I hopefully will never have to shoot it again. Yeah, it's, it's not fun for the spotter either because are a little bit off. Oh, yeah. Just all of it. You see it so much. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a kick in the nuts every time somebody shoots a 50-Cal.

Yeah. I wanted to ask, too, did you see any, as far as like collecting your data on trajectories and Kong Trace, did you see any difference as the day went on as the temperature rose in the city? Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. And especially there where it's like, you know, it's cooler at night and it's like 20, 30 degrees hotter in the day. We're just always keeping like our orchestral ballistic calculator up to date with like current environment and it would kind of give you the holes. And then you get used to it anyway

when you're just like, okay, we got to adjust this way. Yeah. And then you would get, you know, you'd see where it's like mornings were more calm in terms of wind and then it would pick up also. So there's like in the mornings were the best because it's clear, easier to see. You know, it's not as hot and the winds are not as crazy. I love the idea of a kestrel ballistic calculator because not to date myself. But I remember when just a kestrel winnometer, you know, was really cool because you didn't have to throw grass. Yeah, have it come right back in your feet. Yeah.

Yeah. No, they're great. They're great leases of gear, that's for sure. That's amazing. And you're able to use, you know, like vipers or laser rangefinders to, for your charts. Yeah. Yeah. And you can use, you know, lasers, you can use maps or you can use, like, mapping programs and stuff like that.

So you can confirm a few different ways if your lasers a little wonky or, like, you know, out at 4K, you need a pretty strong laser. But, you know, we had some good lasers. Yeah. And you were up there for so long. I mean, you really knew the terrain in your field of view. And, yeah, and that's the thing. Like, we knew, like, every building that we were looking at. So, and when the push started and the fighting.

happened, it was like, that's what made it so slick. We're just like, over this building, here's your call, here's your wind call. Stand by, send it. Yeah. Wait. Here's your correction. And like, it just, yeah, it was a very slick operation because of the legwork that went in prior. So walk us through that a little bit. Like when the push kicks off and now like you guys are no longer really a reconnaissance element, but an actual sniper element. Yeah. It was pretty cool. we had chatted the night before the push it was like it was starting we could see some movement it was still a little bit far away 4k and stuff and we're like okay i think tomorrow morning is the day that it's like this is within our range band we can start giving her and and we were just like

we were we were using the rounds like obviously we wanted to hit guys and to back up while we were doing the workup training in texas i had told the guys we were training with and our sergeant major I was like, I promise you on this tour, we're going to break the world record. So we wanted to. But when it started, we were shooting to try and disrupt ISIS from, because we could see it, right? So like Iraq is pushing and they have a shooting position here, let's say. So we would shoot to try and like disrupt them from having the advantageous position and retreat back. And we were trying to just kind of wrangle them around the battlefield that way with sniper fire until we got to a place where we could call on air.

strike if it was safe and you know there wasn't any other people kicking around but so we were doing it that way at first and so there was four of us in this room two shooters two spotters and you just kept switching around and my buddy uh shot around and a ricochet hit a guy in the leg and we're like wow man you just fucking hit a guy it was like 3,500 meters or something like you can't just like that's a long ways and you just hit this dude and you got picked up there this little motorbike that went around the battle for like picking up guys and bringing them to wherever we're like wow that's pretty cool and and we ended up i think it was that same day just later on that we made uh the 35 40 shot um and it was like oh wow it's like this is really working from this range like it was it was

fairly consistent and like to get into that shot you know there's a lot of talk after like there's no way it was a first round hit it can't be it's too far it's impossible all these different things but we had been firing already. So we, like, we knew what the wind was doing. Right. Ballistically, we knew what was happening with the rounds. We had a hit. I mean, it was a ricochet at the feet,

but it was good for line and hit the dude. So when this guy was like, a guy was coming out of a building, so he'd retreated back to this building. We tried to call an airstrike on it. It was like a dud, whatever you call those in the J-TAC world, because nothing happened.

So the guy was coming out the rear end of the building. He was lowering his, like, his vest. and his AK. So he's coming from like the second story down. And I was one of the spotters. Another buddy of mine was spotter. We had two shooters. And I got my shooter.

I'm like, the corner of this building, here's your, here's your dope. Here's your wind call. And he's like on. Stand by. He said, send it. They did the same thing at the same time. So it was like, so we had two rounds in the air.

One of them hit the guy and one of them missed by. We looked at it after. It was probably like a quarter of a mill to the left. so we don't know whose round it was because the trace is like way the culmination points way too high to trace it so one of the rounds hit the guy he rolled down the hill and died and that's where he stayed for weeks and weeks and we're like holy fuck and we're like well that was us and they're like that was on yeah i can imagine how that went down it was just almost like a sniper simo which is a beautiful thing like a simultaneous shot um and then we just kept giving it to him and the fight was slightly getting closer and

closer and closer. I said this before and like we didn't really keep count after, but I bet you we broke the previous record a few times at least, if not a handful in that like that week, that week to come. But after that long one, we're like, okay,

that's, that's really long. And it just kept getting closer so we didn't really like take too much interest in like, you know, the range and those, oh, that would have been good for second place.

But it was cool. It was definitely a cool experience. So, I mean, one thing you mentioned was that you looked at it later. So, I mean, this was recorded. You were videotaping this stuff through a scope camera? It was recorded. So we were in that O.P. With a bunch of other dudes from squadron.

So in order to watch 24 hours a day, we'd rotate through on the scope and on the night vision stuff. So there was a bunch of other guys also watching. We just had four snipers. So they were recording, actually, and we didn't even know. Oh, okay. until after yeah wow that's amazing and what's crazy about you know about like what you know your long distance shot is that you know you had carlos hathcock in Vietnam right and then you had a series of people i mean two canadian at least two Canadians right yeah um and then a brit and an

australia like you had a series of people like just barely beat each you know beat him and then beat each other after that. And then, and then all of a sudden, you, like, you blow it out of the water by, like, another thousand. Yeah. Like over a kilometer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We wanted to make sure it's going to be hard to beat that one. Yeah, right. Right. So, yeah, 3,540 meters. That's, for us Yankees, that is 3,871 yards. And Carlos was, I think, like, 2,500 yards or something like that. Still far. She's. Yeah, especially considering the technology at the time. Oh, yeah. Right?

And I'm looking at the Wikipedia. It was a two-commando guy from Australia, has two, and a Ukrainian National Guard is claiming number three from last year. Oh, I heard about that one, actually, yeah. And then Craig Harrison, number four. I think that story's been told pretty well from the UK. And Rob Furlong was another Canadian, that he has number five.

And yeah, then we get down here. And actually, I wrote another article about number nine, who was a South African sniper in the Congo. So, I mean, damn. I mean, this story's crazy, man. Yeah. I hope, I agree. So, you know, I mean, also,

I don't know what the record is for confirmed, but I know that Carlos had like 90 confirmed or 90, something like that. but were you you guys said that you were laying some pretty good hate from there too right oh yeah yeah I don't think we're there's no one

really keep account of anything especially after that long shot because sometimes it'd be a combination of like sniper fire than air strike or sometimes it's like you don't know if it worked but there's no more gunfire coming from that window and the confirmed and unconfirmed thing is an interesting thing

if I understand it correctly in history you know like on officers or something. But in this case, the Canadian government actually has it on video, apparently. Well,

that's the thing. Yeah. So it's on video. And we had an officer coming and was like, check it out. I found it so fucking weird. But just like,

yep, he's dead. But we actually had the next team. They went over, and this is actually my brother-in-law's team, they went over, because they were on the,

I guess it would have been, the west side a couple weeks later. And he was like, yeah, your buddy's still on the ground. Okay, double confirmed. So, yeah, so how did the rest of that battle go on throughout the push and you guys supporting it? You said that they started getting closer and closer?

Yeah, it started getting a little bit closer and kind of off to our left flank. We just supported it as much as we could until it was out of view. We handed over that position to the next team and the government of Canada. with all of their brilliant ideas. Put the story out while we still had guys in that O.P. And they ended up getting attacked and they had to like pull out of that position because of that stupid good news newspaper article. Wow.

Yeah. And they moved to another position that we had receded that tour. And they did also to support the fight from another spot. But the rest of that week, it was pretty cool because it just got closer and closer. So it got more deadly. It's an amazing case study in how snipers can be effective on the battlefield between the reconnaissance, calling in air strikes, and then direct sniper support for a ground element. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

It was really cool. It was cool to be a part of, like the team there. But it was just cool to see how the sniper group, the troop and everything in the unit had grown and was just getting better and better every year because of guys that had been there before and guys that we went to see and train with like in Texas Todd for instance at accuracy first and like it just it was it was really fucking it was it was a really cool place to work and see just get better and better and better and better right group of guys at the right time at the right place yeah that's what it was so I mean

I got to ask I mean you guys get back home and I mean beers celebrating I mean there must have been something for a shot like that yeah we definitely had no shortage of beers we found a lot of different time and ways to celebrate yeah it was cool and it I think one thing that it did what that was great is it brought light to kind of the way that we were doing it and how valuable it was least for a little while. And, you know, it's a lot easier to sell certain things in a capability or why we need to go

do certain things or train certain places or get certain gear or try certain gear after something like that because it was a pretty proud moment for anyone who took part in it. And I don't mean us for. I mean, everyone that just like had built that program to what it was before we went over. Yeah, I mean, it sounds weird when you say it out loud, maybe on a podcast, but I understand what you mean that it's like you, you kind of have to sell the unit and sell the capability to the policy, the policymakers and the military brass. Like, hey, we're here and use us. Yeah, yeah, you're always selling yourself. Yeah. Trying to sell yourself. Yeah. Even in the unit, because I'm sure, I'm sure that there were guys in the unit that are like, we're assaulters, like this stuff. Like, yeah, we have like support capability. cypress support capabilities but you guys are really showing the force multiplier effect that you bring to the battle

yeah yeah totally and you know obviously this is a biased opinion but it's just you can be very effective when you have snipers yeah yeah yeah and i mean because the united states military and well the coalition i should say limited itself in a lot of ways that you know we're not going to have big troop formations we're not bringing in the whole military the battle against ISIS, I mean, I saw it with the Kurds too. I mean, there's a heavy reliance on snipers. Oh, yeah. Across this entire front.

Just like, I mean, today we're seeing in Ukraine the use of trench warfare. It's like things that, you know, we probably grew up thinking we will never see this form of warfare again. Well, here we are. Yeah. Yeah, and it's kind of anerving, too, when we have people who like see this. next war and say, well, what we used in the last war, because, you know, we've talked about this, would say AC130s, how the government had tried to get rid of them after, like several times. And they became, and then with A10s, now they're going to, like, A10s have been on the chopping block

before. And now they're on the chopping block again. It's like, oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah. And it's like, well, just because you don't see them valuable against China doesn't mean that they don't have a purpose. Oh, yeah. Well, talk to any guy that's been deployed and loves the sound of an A-10 or, you know, inspector gunship. And then, like, also people that try to predict the next war and you see, like, it's a very unpredictable thing.

Right, right. Yeah. It's funny because, you know, they always say we train for the last war, but we also, I think it's because of the money involved, you know, and the generals want those board positions and whatnot when they get, when they, finish active duty that we're always training for the last war but also like always saying that oh whatever we used in last war there's no good anymore let's get this let's get rid of it even if we don't have like a something that will do the same job yeah we we always think there's a

technological solution to every problem and it's not necessarily true no yeah uh so dallas do a uh another trip back back to iraq after that one Yeah, I did one or two more, shorter ones. I want to say they were like, oh, man, I have to check my calendar stuff. At least one or two more. I think my last one was in 2018. And it was like, I think it was three or four months. Nothing too exciting.

It was starting to really died down. We were doing some targeting and some fellows in the city and stuff that were lagging behind. but it uh you know i was like the pinnacle was the road on for that's for sniping anyway so you were trying to find like uh ice as sleeper cells and stuff like that yeah yeah and just doing like you know plastic knock knock at night um see what we could find around but i mean for the most part it was pretty uneventful you said yeah it was like very uneventful like maybe a few shots fired here and there, but nothing like super kinetic, nothing crazy. It's still, like, you know, it's a great time.

It's adventures. It's fun. You're doing your job. But it wasn't like nothing to write home about. Well, I mean, no, it's important. And it must have been somewhat gratifying, too, to see like you were part of something that was successful. The good guys were winning.

Yeah. Yeah. It at least seemed that way to us. And like, you know, I don't know how winning and losing ever goes in these things because it's almost a matter of opinion. But I know that we took care of a lot of fucking really shitty people. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the city, yeah, I get what you're saying.

I mean, the city's rubble and mass graves and just terrible stuff. Yeah. So then after all this, I mean, what's kind of going through your head? Like you mentioned earlier in the interview, like you weren't really interested in like climbing through the chain of command of the unit. But you are becoming a more. senior guy. I mean, are you looking at promotions? Are you thinking about maybe leaving the military? Kind of like, where is your head at around this time? Yeah, in 2018, it was kind of like I was deciding, you know, where I never wanted to get above like a TL and deck commander

position. I didn't like, you know, when you're overseas, you know, troop warrant or whatever is like, have a good one, boys. Like, you know, taps the truck on the ass and closes the gate as you go out to do an operation. I never wanted to do that. I always wanted to be going out the door. So my whole plan was to kind of max out at deck commander because that's where I saw it being, you know, a gratifying position, but you're still, you're still kind of just a true. But the military was starting to change and our unit was starting to change anyway. And I was like, you know, it might not be changing in the direction that I think is good for me or the type of soldier that I am, I guess.

So I was starting to, you know, peak elsewhere for sure. And did you start to like put together like a plan of like how you were going to retire from the military? Not really. It was more like I'd always told myself as soon as I don't absolutely love this job. I'm going to stop doing it because it's a big sacrifice like for time and, you know, time away, time with your family and on your body physically, mentally, all that stuff. I just always had a plan that if I don't love it, I'm not going to do it anymore. And it was, the tides were starting to change, like I said. And there was a few things that collided at once.

But I started getting into songwriting. And then I was really ready to get out when it was time to get out and just get on with my next passion. Was there like a moment where like mentally, physically, spiritually, you're like, I've had enough like, I'm done. well i got tomm camp and my past didn't work anymore so that was a pretty clear moment that i was done but i had been writing songs and playing music now for a couple years at this point and i was ready to cut away anyway do you want to talk about that at all you don't have to but you're also free to yeah yeah let's talk about it uh so we had uh COVID happened in Canada here I don't

if you guys heard of it down there. I heard about it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I think it was on the news. Did you see it on the news? I think it's on CNN.

Yeah. Yeah. So we had it. And it started to change a lot of things. The just, I saw common sense go out the window a lot from my own perspective of things. And then, you know, everyone was kind of racing for a fix. And we ended up mandating. I can't remember which, if there was any particular one,

but it was mandated that you're going to get this vaccination for COVID-19. And I was kind of like, okay, well, let me see. What is it? I'm looking at reading stuff. And I've just over the last decade of slowly become more and more interested in health and ingredients and like we read what's in our food and it's in our water, just all this stuff, house cleaning products and everything. So I'm like, okay, this thing's coming out.

What is it? Let me see. How's it being received by the world? am I necessarily at high risk of dying from this this COVID thing like at demographics and comorbidities and all that stuff was like now I feel like I'm probably going to be pretty okay so I was like I'm just going to pass on this particular needle just like I do like when the flu shot comes around I do my assessment like yeah I don't need those particular ingredients because I don't mind getting flu and normally doesn't hit me very hard so I kind of did the same thing and

we were ordered to go to the appointment and I was like okay I'll go and I just told the guy like yeah I'm just going to wait and kind of see what happens. Because at this point, there's a bunch of information coming out every single week. You know, like this one's good. This one's not good. Don't take that one. If you took that one, don't worry, but just don't take it again and maybe move to this one. Right.

Everything was just changing really fast. Yeah. Okay. It didn't seem like a big deal. I was like, okay, I'm just going to wait a little bit. If fucking went crazy. So I said that on Friday. And by Monday, my sergeant major was just like threatening that I was going to be kicked out of our troop by the end of the week.

posted out of JTF2, like, fired for this decision. And it was super weird to me because I wasn't thinking a big deal of anything. And like, I used this analogy. Like, I could have got wasted, drove my trunk right through the front gate, just crashed through. And the response would not have been the same. You know what I mean? Yeah.

They would have been like, oh, are you okay, bro? Yeah. At least previously. And in this little thing seemingly to me where I'm just like, oh, it makes sense that, like, I just want to wait for more information. They're just like, no. It's like this hammer came. down. This is after 13 years in the unit. I was like, this is really weird, guys. And at the same time,

we started doing this mask charade where it would be like, because in Canada, there's kind of masks required wherever you went into stores and restaurants and stuff. And on camp, I was like, okay, at least here, we're just doing our thing. And we'd be having a brief, you know, two, three of us, four of us in a room, all good. If someone from the chain of command was coming that really liked masks, then everyone would have to put on masks. And right there, I was like, I'm not playing this game. I'm definitely not playing this game. And I just started getting in like administrative trouble for the first time in my career.

They're just like put on a mask. Like, no. Because like five minutes ago, I didn't need one. Five minutes from now I do because some person's coming. Like, fuck you guys. Here's your paper. You're in trouble. I throw it in the garbage.

And it just like, I come. couple of these added up and the final day I was going to a meeting with our CO and RSM and just like you got to put a mask on this meeting so I'm not doing it and it ended in a not a physical alteration concert whatever that would be called a fight it didn't quite get there but I got ejected from camp forever it's the last day we're not putting out a mask in this this gigantic charade that everybody was playing were there other guys that were also sort of hesitant about the vaccine and oh yeah there's lots of people and there's guys that kind of went about everything their own way a ton of people i know just took it

because they didn't want to be fired right you know mortgages to pay and stuff like that and there's a bunch of threats going around like i experienced and on your career like you know you're going to be fired you're going to be kicked out so go ahead and make your decision uh It's just I didn't agree with it. I think like something like that and all the parameters around it and the, I knew it was and just all of this stuff, you know, there's got to be a place where like you get to decide what goes into your body. Right.

And I don't know. That's just the way I saw it. I mean, showed the door. Did it affect the type of discharge that you received for the military? It would have. So I ended up getting medically released anyway. Okay. Well, all of this craziness.

was going on. I was looking at my medical file with some professionals and the amount of injuries and concussions I've had and all this different stuff. They're like, yeah, you're, good to medically release fucking right now. And the thing about the unit is there's a lot of guys that if they just went, that route should be probably medically released. But, you know, they're just, they're fighting through stuff. They're still deploying. They still want to, you know, it's a job that's taxing. Like I said, physically and mentally. It's just a lot of guys. guys just fight through it as long as they can now has for for for people who got discharged from the Canadian military because of it and I know you went through

medical retirement anyway has like the latest news about natural immunity like the NBC you came out and said that the natural immunity is as good than the shot have they like yeah so no one really goes back and is like oh shit sorry you know we were really wrong about that. Yeah, it's the mandates got lifted to my understanding. Last I heard, they were still attempting to release people because at the time, they didn't follow an order. Some bullshit like that, but I don't know where it stands in terms of everyone's, you know, releases and stuff. I know that they were really trying to expediate them while it was in place. I don't know how many people got released. But yeah, I just took a different exit ramp.

Yeah. Yeah. So then how did the rest of your transition? I mean, obviously career was kind of abruptly cut short the way that you didn't want. But what was that transition like the civilian life being medically retired? Yeah, it's definitely not the way I expected to leave. But I just found it almost comical. I'm like there's just so much common sense that was not being practiced.

I could only kind of laugh at it all. And I was really excited to get into playing music anyway. So I was more like pulling until the leash was cut. It was an interesting transition because I couldn't go to camp. I couldn't go to my stall where I'd, you know, had my gear for years and years and years and years to turn stuff in to get stuff back. Like all of that was really weird. It was all kind of a remote release from the military.

Like they couldn't even bring me on camp to charge. me when I got charged on the way out because I wouldn't put a mask on. So they're like, fuck, how are we going to do this? I did it like this, like over fucking VTC. It was all just comical. So the transition was interesting. It was a little bit funny. But I was ready to go with a new passion anyway.

So I was like, see ya. And I mean, what has been like getting into music, though? I mean, that's kind of like been like you've taken all this passion and determination that you had in the military and kind of poured it into into this art form. Yeah, it's it's been great. I highly recommend when I talk to people getting out, especially of a job like ours where it's a big part of your identity or can be if you let it be. Move forward with something you're passionate about. Don't like sit around at home and look for something once you're out. I've seen people have a really hard time with it just because, you know,

It's like a sense of purpose that is almost taken away. Where's your music career at right now? Like you mentioned before we did the show, you were talking about going down to Nashville and playing gigs and stuff like this. Yes, I've been playing a lot of gigs, and I've been booking some that are a little more. So I played a lot of bar shows for, you know, the last few years,

just as many as I could play three to five nights a week and just for hours and hours and hours to try and hone some things and get used to some things and playing live in front of people and connecting with audiences. I'm trying to book a little bit different shows now that are ticketed events and music, like original music specific, and it's a lot of fun. I've been down to Nashville now a couple times to write with some kind of professional songwriters, do some co-writes, and we're looking at doing my first studio album probably in May. So we've got all the songs right now lined up.

We're going to hit the studio and have that come out. Do you have a band that you play with? Yeah, so I play with a trio right now for most of our shows, and it's just drums, myself, I play guitar and sing, and a fiddle player. And it's such a good time. And what's the name of the band? Well, it's just, they all play under my name is Dallas Alexander. Okay, okay.

It would be like our trio is coming to town. And it's, I'm going to link to size, Dallas-Alexander.ca.ca. right? Yeah, dotCA. If you go to dot com, someone's got that handle and it's not me. They'll get a good laugh, actually. Oh, yeah? This isn't one of those, like, Google this is funny.

I wish it was that. But no, someone has it, so I had to go with the canadian.ca. So you're about to record an album? Yeah, yeah. We've got all the songs lined up. Some came from Co-Writes. Some I've written by myself. And it's all stuff I'm,

excited to turn into an album. And it's kind of like my guiding light for music, because I just want to learn to write the best I can and then play songs that I love to people that want to hear them and have that be the only metric. It guides all of it. What led you into songwriting? Like, what, did you do that as a kid?

Were you into music? Or did you just one day go, I like this song. I think I can do this. Well, it was actually, like I grew up. not my family's not super musical a really good friend of mine growing up his family was very musical and be like campfire singing and stuff like that so i got a guitar i like 18 or 19 just to try and learn a couple songs for the campfire but what really sparked it you know like i had a guitar and sit in the corner of my room for a year or whatever then i'd come around to play a few chords

again and there's more of a decorative piece in my house but i it really got sparked by kind of a tragedy. Like my brother passed away when he was 39, so my age now. And this was like four years ago now. And that, he had a studio in his basement and we had talked about like maybe getting a song together at some point, recording something. And we never got around to it. And so when he passed away, it was like, I was saying all these things collided. Like the unit was starting to go to a place I didn't want to be. He had just died. I actually had been noticing live music a lot. more for some reason, just like I thought it was really cool. So I found songwriting specifically just like extremely therapeutic for that part of my life. And I started writing songs that weren't

necessarily for anyone, just like for me as I was practicing music. And so it kind of all came together at the same time. That's what really like set me down this path. Super cool, man. Is any of your music out there? I mean, even though you haven't done an album yet, I mean, can you be found out like band camp or any of these types of websites? Yeah, a band camp, actually Spotify and Apple. Okay. So I recorded, I did a set in a bar here, just all original music, and we recorded it. And I had a fiddle and lap steel guitar player with me.

So he had some pretty cool sounds. And you got a decent enough recording out of that show that I put it up as a live album on Spotify and Apple and anywhere you listen to music. And really why I did it is, as I was trying to book shows, People are just like, where can we hear your music? Where can we hear your music? So I was like, shit, I got to get something out there. Yeah. So that was just a collection of songs I had written and put it out.

And we're going to do some in the studio, actually, a couple of those songs. And a bunch of new ones that have been written between then and now. And what, what, do you have a particular inspiration for your songs? I've got a lot. like if you mean musical inspirations there's there's a ton well you we can talk about that also but i meant for you are a lot of these based off your life experiences um yeah yeah for sure most almost well everything is is personal in a way that something sparks inspiration and then i write it but it's it's i just think that music is so good for all parts of life you know whether it's heartbreak or

loss or it's a party and it's a good time like there's a soundtrack to that And it's such a way, it's such a cool way to connect with people. So I just write, you know, personal things. I am learning more about, it's pretty interesting to write a song that's a story that's not about you. And that isn't even like a factual story. Do you know what I mean? Like make something up. It's like writing a novel, but in like a couple of minutes and a few verses and a chorus,

I find that really interesting songwriters. I can just tell a story about some person or thing. they've never done or haven't ever met and still connect with people that way. Like Stan Ridgeway's camouflage? I don't know. There you go. I don't know. I think that's San Rugee.

So it's about a Vietnam veteran. I think it was Stan Ridgeway. Anyway, or a Vietnam Marine. Mythical. Oh, mythical. Yeah. See, those are so cool. Like, I think it's cool.

Now, obviously, I like putting, like, with the songs that I've written that were, you know, close to me for therapeutic reasons for myself. I find people find value in those as well connecting with songs that just say something or hit home the right way also. If you don't mind and if you don't want to talk about

this or if you don't feel anything about it, like that's all fine. But one of the things about a sniper, I think, is that you're looking through a high power scope at your target, at the bad guy. You see, you generally see it effects on target, right?

You saw a lot of combat. Is that anything that you personally have had to deal with? Not a lot, to be honest. I think I'm lucky in that way. So there's things that come with training and deployments that I think are almost unavoidable. Like, you know, we call it like hypervigilance. You know, I just call it paying attention. And like that stuff, you have it.

It's probably not ever going anywhere. I don't know if I would trade it away anyway. But in terms of like coming to terms with killing people, because that's what it is, you're killing people. I tried to do a lot prior when I realized the severity of the job I was getting into. And I wasn't super young either. This was after junior hockey. It was probably 25 years old when I first deployment, something like that.

but I'd like read books like on combat and on killing and I just like okay you know he talks about dehumanizing your enemy so that it's easier to do in the moment but I think that leads to processing problems later yeah when you realize like oh shit you got to unwrap it at some point you know what I mean you got to like you got to pay up you got a cash out so I was just trying to be cognizant of that going in and I was really like okay like we're going to hunt and kill people. Now, what is your reason? Why do you want to do it?

This is kind of self-talk stuff. And then looking at, I just looked at what they were doing. They were posting a lot of things online, videos and stuff of things that they were up to. And I was like, okay, I'm good with my reason for going and my reason for doing this job. And as of now, I feel like I don't really have any settling to do.

Like, you still, you'll have crazy dreams here and there, but they don't, you know, rattle me and, It's just like to wake up. Holy shit, that was intense. Yeah. But like, so there's residual things, I think. But in terms of dealing with it, like I've seen some people have a really, really hard time. And again, I think music's very therapeutic.

Yeah. You can write a song and it's like you're writing it in a journal or you're telling someone and you're putting it out there so you can kind of get rid of it. Yeah. I think that's very common, right? Is it, you know, we're engaging consensual combat. They're there to do their thing. and we're there to do our thing and we both agree to be there.

And generally, I think a lot of people are fine, especially in the special operations community, we're fine with that. But it's like you say, a lot of the issues that guys have, I think, are the hypervigilance, the lack of purpose, the going from 60 to zero. If they don't find a new purpose, find a new passion. Totally. Have you, like, you know, your story's very important. inspirational in that way that you found a passion to move directly into it.

Have you found other guys having difficulty doing that and help them or tried to help them find? Yeah, I definitely, I mean, one of the beautiful things about social media, there's a bunch of bullshit about it, but there are some good things. And you can connect with people, like real people on the other side of that screen. And people have reached out, you know, a lot of different times. I try to get back as many as I can to messages and stuff, but just, you hear, yeah, people, people having a hard time. And I think that it's something you don't necessarily realize how big of a part of your

identity you can let a job like serving, you know, military, police, special operations. It doesn't matter if you're serving. You can really let that become a huge part of your identity. And when it's gone, you know. you know, there's potential for you to feel like your identity is gone, or at least a big part of it and feel a little bit lost. So, yeah, I definitely chat with a lot of people about that. And, you know, just try to pass on what's worked for me or seems to be working for me and hope it, you know, helps a little bit. Well, dude, I mean, thank you so much for talking to us tonight.

And I really wish you the best with your music. Like I said, man, I think it's awesome. you found something to kind of pour yourself into after the military. Yeah. And I hope it goes great for you. Good luck with the album, man. Thank you. I'm excited. We have a few questions.

If you don't mind. Eric, thank you very much for the donation. Ian, thank you very much. Best and worth CFBs to work at. CF. Oh, bases? I guess Canadian forces bases. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. I think the best and worst are the same fucking place. I think it's Dundurin, Saskatchewan. It's a Scatchewan. Yeah, so it's like a prairie province. It's where I did my Canadian forces,

sniper course. And it's like this, everything's run down, desert terrain, kind of just like very somber old place. Maybe it used to be happening. I don't know, but it was just like the worst place.

But it was also, we were secluded and we're close to a town called Saskatoon that had great country bars. It was like all. also one of the best places. Dundurne, Dundurin gets best and worse. That's funny. And I will say, like,

Ford deployed, Tim Horton speaks green beans every day of the week. I never had a deployed Tim Hortons, but I've had some green beans in the day. There was a Tim Horton. First time I ever seen it was in Kandahar. The Canadian forces there.

They had a nice boardwalk where the Tim Hortons was like, oh, Canada's not. so bad. So Canadian. Samuel Clatworthy, thank you very much. From UK, from UK, love the show. First time I have managed to catch it live,

keep up the great work. Thanks very much, Samuel. You picked a great show to catch live. Ian, thank you very much with your Canadian dollars, always. I mean, like, I feel like he's given us 20 cents. It's monopoly money. It's monopoly.

It's true. I'm just kidding. Thanks, Ian. We deeply appreciate you, man. Green Army sniper training was with a C3A1. If so, was it shot out. They seemed to be pretty thrashed by the end. Oh, yeah.

They were all junk. If you got lucky enough to have a good one for a little while, if you did, then the scope would be shit. The wax reticles were falling down and stuff in the hot sun. It was crazy. Hassan, 166, thank you very much. What's the difference between your Pathfinder course and your Rucky course? Canada's Pathfinder course is very different from ours for the Americans.

Thanks. Yeah, so I didn't do Pathfinder. It was something I wanted to do. But from my understanding, it was like just like the Reky course, but more advanced in all kind of ways. And there was a lot more jumping. So I think they did a bunch of different para insertion stuff that we did. do on our reccy course. Do Pathfinders or Pathfinder qualified soldiers in the Canadian Army have the best badges?

Because they do in the American Army. They got pretty sweet badges, yeah. There's like this torch thing. Yeah. Yeah. I want one of those. Yeah. No, they look good.

I never got one. Yeah, they look good. Yeah. Jesus. Thank you very much, Jesus. For the very generous nation. How much of the wars you worked with around 2010 and 2012 were there because they wanted service those that joined because limited options from the 2008 bank shenanigans.

Oh, I didn't really have any of that. Like by time 2010, I was in the unit already. So if you don't want to be there, you're not going to be there. You've got to put in a lot of effort to get there. So I don't think anyone was really doing it just for a paycheck. And I just happen to see this the very bottom. Baron von Turet's said he lost his virginity in Cranbrook. Well, I say he because it's Baron, but lost my virginity in Cranbrook.

So, wow. In Cranbrook, BC. Congratulations. Dee, do we have anything from Patreon? Nah, nada. All right, guys. So next Friday coming up, we have Alan Mack coming on the show. One 60th Nightstalker pilot flew, I think he flew 47s.

Yeah, 47s. Yeah, 40. Yeah, so we'll have him here in studio next Friday. And Dallas, thank you, man. Again, I really appreciate it. It's been awesome talking to you. Yeah, thanks for having me, and we'll have a beer next time. I'm in New York.

Absolutely. Please give us a ring. Make sure you like, share and subscribe to the channel. Link to our patrons down the description. And Dallas-Alexander.com. Go to one of his shows. Also down in the description. down in the thing and in the yeah also down in the description but do yourself a favor and go to one of

the shows yeah all right guys we'll see you next friday take care everyone okay that's it dude how was that man that was awesome it's just like a hangout yeah yeah that's what we try to do oh i lost your audio i am not here