Latest / Chris Thrall's Bought the T-Shirt Podcast / Afghanistan Sniper Tells All | Ted Shirley

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Afghanistan Sniper Tells All | Ted Shirley · Chris Thrall's Bought the T-Shirt Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Walking up to graduate, it's a big moment. But if
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  Speaker 1: you're already thinking about the next big thing as you
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  Speaker 1: step off stage, the ESB Graduate program is your launch
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  Speaker 1: Visit ESB do i e slash Graduates.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Hello friends, I'm your host, Chris Throw. I'm a former
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Bromeries commando. I've adventured for better and sometimes worse, across
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: eighty countries on all seven continents. Welcome to the port
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Le t Shirt Podcast. How are you doing mate?
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Absolutely fantastic, Chris. Yeah, thank you very much for having
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: me today.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Not a problem. I saw you was on James's podcast
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: the other day.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: Yes, we had a right good chat.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, he's he's a very nice guy, James.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: He certainly is. Yeah, I can imagine us being friends now.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's He's certainly helped me out back in the day.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I think his James The James English podcast Anything Goes
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: was the second podcast I was ever on next to
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Sean Atwoods. I think was it really Yeah, it's right
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: right right back in the days where we were we
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: were all starting our YouTube careers. Yeah, we're kind of
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: like the old school that. Uh yeah, those guys, those
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: guys are really really flown with it. So congrats on
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: your book, mate. When when does it come out?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah? Thank you. It comes out November thirtieth this year,
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  Speaker 3: which is rapidly approaching. There's sort of been this like
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  Speaker 3: big three or four ofth build up to it coming out,
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  Speaker 3: but we're in the in the home stretch now. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Has everyone been wishing you well with it?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah? Do you know what? The support I've had has
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  Speaker 3: been absolutely incredible. It's blown me away. It's been really
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  Speaker 3: really humbling, to be honest, and sort of quite heartwarming.
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  Speaker 3: I've been having all sorts of messages of you know,
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  Speaker 3: people who who've sort of got a bit of hope
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: out of what I'm having to say and things like that,
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  Speaker 3: you know, which is really nice. It's what it's all about,
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  Speaker 3: to be honest, It's the whole reason of the book.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, good, well, I'm look forward to diving into that.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Did you get people say to you kind of you
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  Speaker 2: know what, you're wasting your time writing a book for,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: or they'll never publish you and all that kind of stuff.
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  Speaker 3: I did, Yeah, I did. I'm I'm quite happy to
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  Speaker 3: be obviously it's worked out the way it is. It's
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  Speaker 3: looking like it's going to be a bit of a success.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: So I'm glad I stuck with it because it was
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  Speaker 3: definitely something that you know, I had to take a
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  Speaker 3: bit of a step back from from working and sort
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: of traditional way of earning money and stuff and kind
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  Speaker 3: of hold my breath a little bit. Took me just
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  Speaker 3: over year to write, so yeah, it's definitely had an
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  Speaker 3: impact on my life, but worth it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely a commit committed did you. I bet
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: you learned a lot in the writing process.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so. I'd never this is this is an
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  Speaker 3: embarrassing thing, but I've never actually read a full book
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: before writing my own one, and it's it's shurret this
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  Speaker 3: thing now when I can't put books down, and it's
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: made me a reader and it also the feelings and
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: emotions that it brought out as well were just incredibly
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: positive in a way of you know, finally realizing that
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  Speaker 3: my problems were gone and I could actually go as
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: deep as possible into these things and it still not
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: affect me.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Good good. So I'm climbing Everest in April. Yes, just
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: going to show friends they are friends. There's my go
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: funder page if you can chip in a fiver and
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: help me shine a light for struggling veterans like I
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: used to be when I was homeless and addicted on
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  Speaker 2: the streets Hong Kong. I will love you forever. There's
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: a link link link below. One of the things that
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  Speaker 2: Ted I want to do, and I think this is
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  Speaker 2: really missing in the whole military stroke veterans community, is
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  Speaker 2: I want to make the link between adverse childhood experiences. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: childhood trauma, abuse, physical, mental, sexual neglect, divorce, separation, all
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  Speaker 2: of this stuff that I know, loads of us that
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  Speaker 2: join the Marines we went through, you know, maybe not
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: all of it, but certainly aspects of it. Right. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: And we've got this situation where we've got this significantly
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  Speaker 2: high suicide rate in both the military and the veterans community,
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  Speaker 2: and I'm trying to help people to start highlighting that
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  Speaker 2: there's I think researchers show there's a link between the two,
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  Speaker 2: but no one's talking about it.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very true. Yeah, for me personally, I didn't
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  Speaker 3: have any of that sort of stuff, which is probably
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  Speaker 3: something that you know, could tie into this topic. But
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  Speaker 3: there's so many lads that I know that came from
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  Speaker 3: your broken homes or they'd had trauma in their childhood
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  Speaker 3: or you know, being not through through fostering or any
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  Speaker 3: of those sort of things. So yeah, I definitely think so,
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  Speaker 3: I think I think there's an element to that as
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  Speaker 3: well that makes a bloody good soldier.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely well. And also it's a good recruiting material,
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  Speaker 2: you know, it's a good recruit recruiting the ball. I
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  Speaker 2: suppose you could say, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, And I'm writ
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  Speaker 2: in thinking Ted, you you did you struggle with PTSD
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  Speaker 2: after you left?
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  Speaker 3: It was so the onset was actually when I was
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  Speaker 3: still in Afghanistan, which which is what sort of made
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  Speaker 3: my case a little bit well complex. To be honest,
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  Speaker 3: I didn't realize what it was, and it was never
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  Speaker 3: called PTSD until probably a year or so after leaving theater.
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  Speaker 3: But yeah, it came on in a very i suppose,
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  Speaker 3: un orthodox way where it was just a rapid onset
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  Speaker 3: of these thoughts and nightmares and things from from you know,
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  Speaker 3: sort of halfway three quarters of the way through through
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  Speaker 3: my last tour.
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  Speaker 2: And how did it on set? What did you experience?
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  Speaker 3: So it started with this sort of this rumination of
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  Speaker 3: constantly going over events that had happened while there, So
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  Speaker 3: for me, that was pulling the trigger as a sniper.
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  Speaker 3: The more I did it, the more frequent these thoughts
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  Speaker 3: were running around in my mind, to the point where
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  Speaker 3: it sort of the noise in my head became really
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  Speaker 3: really loud and at and then distracting. So it was
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  Speaker 3: sort of I was taken away from my reality to
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  Speaker 3: be honest, and then in order to combat that in
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  Speaker 3: a way, it led to me making sort of dangerous
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  Speaker 3: decisions and being extremely aggressive and angry, which was very
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  Speaker 3: sort of out of character for me. And then, you know,
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  Speaker 3: whilst still on tour, I'd be sort of told by
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  Speaker 3: the lads that I'd woke up in the middle of
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  Speaker 3: the night screaming things like this, and the people around
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  Speaker 3: me are the ones who actually noticed that something was wrong.
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  Speaker 3: I'd sort of gone into my shell a little bit
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  Speaker 3: of just quiet anger where it was. It was only
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  Speaker 3: the moments of being in a contact where I really
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: came to life. And it was, like I said, the
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  Speaker 3: other people around me that spotted something was wrong thankfully
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  Speaker 3: and did something about it.
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  Speaker 2: And what was it about? And I'm just going to
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  Speaker 2: put these questions you ted so without trying to get
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  Speaker 2: to like complicated it. So what was it about pulling
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  Speaker 2: the trigger that was coming back to haunt you, so
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  Speaker 2: to speak?
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  Speaker 3: No, it was before deploying on my last tour, during
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  Speaker 3: our sniper course, one of the lads from the other
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  Speaker 3: battalion had deployed before us. He'd been then killed. So
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  Speaker 3: this was something that when I was home, you know,
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  Speaker 3: I I saw his face on the news all the
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: time and all this sort of stuff, and it had
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  Speaker 3: built this almost like a narrative inside my head where
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  Speaker 3: I wanted to almost get revenge and avenge his death.
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  Speaker 3: And when it actually came down to one day in particular,
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  Speaker 3: taking multiple targets out and one day this anger and
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  Speaker 3: revenge almost took over. It was like something that had
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  Speaker 3: woken in me that didn't plan on going anywhere for
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  Speaker 3: a long time. It took me a very long time
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  Speaker 3: to actually figure out what it was on About probably
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  Speaker 3: ten years after the fact, I learned about thing called
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  Speaker 3: a moral injury. I'm not sure if you've ever heard
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  Speaker 3: of that or that, you know, the audience, I've ever
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  Speaker 3: heard of that. It's something where as a child, your
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  Speaker 3: core values are created. What's good, what's bad, what's right,
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  Speaker 3: what's wrong? You know, these sort of things. And it
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  Speaker 3: turned out that taking lives was very, very against my
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  Speaker 3: core values and beliefs. And that was another aspect to
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  Speaker 3: the PTSD symptoms that I was getting, was this absolute
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  Speaker 3: guilt and shame for what I've done.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, I was reading about that the other day. Funnily enough, Also, incidentally,
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  Speaker 2: research has shown that those people with adverse childhood experiences
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  Speaker 2: experience the moral what do we call it, moral injury?
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  Speaker 3: Moral injury?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, they experienced it significantly significantly more.
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  Speaker 3: Really, Yeah, and interesting.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting thing ted childhood trauma because if
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  Speaker 2: you ask one hundred people, ninety nine out of one
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  Speaker 2: hundreds say no, my childhood was perfect. But when you
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  Speaker 2: start digging below the surface, it's like, what is their
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  Speaker 2: definition of a perfect childhood compared to what is the
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  Speaker 2: textbook childhood? And yeah, like people, I'm just putting this
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  Speaker 2: out there, but I get a lot of people from
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  Speaker 2: military families. They think they're the perfect childhood because their
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  Speaker 2: dad was like the sergeant major right when it comes
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  Speaker 2: down to it, like, well, how much time did he
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  Speaker 2: spend with you as a kid, Well none, he was major.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And was he good around that? Well no, he used
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  Speaker 2: to like drink way too. And you know did he
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  Speaker 2: look after you and your sister? Well no, you know
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  Speaker 2: he used to beat us, but we deserved it.
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  Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, okay, kind of flags up a different thing.
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  Speaker 2: This is why I'm sort of keen to, you know,
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  Speaker 2: let people sort of know out there it's it's okay
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  Speaker 2: to not it's okay to talk about your childhood, you.
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  Speaker 3: Know, absolutely yeah, And and something yeah that may not
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: seem relevant to that person could actually be you know,
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: something there was. There was certainly points throughout various parts
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: of my therapy. Where have you heard of em? Dr therapy? Yes?
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  Speaker 3: So during that all all kinds of things would pop up,
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  Speaker 3: like memories of me being a little toddler and things
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  Speaker 3: that I couldn't even remember, you know if I tried to,
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  Speaker 3: But it was all how they sort of correlated in
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: certain sort almost like the neuropathways were filled with various
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: similar feelings or emotions to to what I'd felt pulling
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  Speaker 3: that trigger. It was. It was a very interesting journey.
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  Speaker 2: Could you just briefly for our audience, explain em d R.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So I movement desensitization and reprogramming is a type
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: of talking therapy that you could, I suppose, relate to
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: hypnotism in a way. So there's various ways to do it.
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  Speaker 3: But for me, I'd have a light bar in front
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: of me, and then the light would go from right
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: to left, left to right, and the idea is that
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: you follow this light, or it might be someone tapping
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: left knee, right knee, left red right knee, things that
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  Speaker 3: go left to right. So what this does is it
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: emulates when you're in rem sleep. So when you're in
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: this rapid eye movement sleep, your brain is processing so
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: be that thoughts and things through that day. Memories are
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: emotions from past traumas or what have you, which I
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: can explain a little bit more into briefly. And what
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: happens is these memories and thoughts are passed from left
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: to right, left to right until they reach the back
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  Speaker 3: of the brain and they're then stored away in your
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: long term memory where they belong where they can't do
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: any harm and it's all good. So the idea is
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: that with traumatic memories or experiences, an easy way to
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: explain it would be that you've got an office clerk
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  Speaker 3: that lives in your brain, takes your files from the day,
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: puts them in the relevant filing cabinets, and they're locked away.
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  Speaker 3: So when you've got these traumatic memories, so for me,
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  Speaker 3: for instance, memories of pulling the trigger and the images
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  Speaker 3: and things that I'd see in Afghanistan, that's too traumatic
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: for this clerk in your brain to handle. And so
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: these pieces of paper and documents are left to run
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: wild in your brain because nobody can deal with them.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: So the EMDR therapy has designed them to mimic that
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: rem sleep process, and you talk about these things so
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: that at the forefront of your brain and then the
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: left to right movement moves them to the back. It
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: is a pretty incredible process to go through, and you know,
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  Speaker 3: one that was the very end of my therapy, to
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: be honest, it finished it all off. The idea is
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: that you detach the emotions from the memories, which is
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  Speaker 3: how I'm now able to I was able to write
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: the book and talk in such depth about these kind
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: of things that would have left me shaking in the
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  Speaker 3: boots a few years ago.
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  Speaker 2: Good. Is there anything you don't, don't or can't talk
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: about Ted that is going to re traumatize you? Now?
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  Speaker 3: Now there isn't. I've probably, you know, over the past
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: few weeks of doing so many podcasts and interviews and things.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: Now I've talked about these stories hundreds and hundreds and
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: hundreds and hundreds of times. It's it's a desensitized to it,
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: which is how things should be. Over memories, you know,
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: these traumatic memories can be attached from their emotions. So
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: as as much as I can think about, you know,
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: life ending shots that I've made, I can have compassion
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  Speaker 3: and empathy for what I did, and I can feel
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: the you know, the human emotions to it. But they're
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: never overbearing and they never they never take take me
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: over anymore, which used to happen within milliseconds.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting one. I've got to make. He
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: he suffered terribly after Afghanistan, and I asked him one day.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: You see, I come from a sort of different perspective
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: because I studied all the implications of why did we
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: go into Afghanistan? What was all that about? What happened
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: on nine to eleven. Who had the you know, who
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: had the ability to put together an operation like that,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: And so when my mate was coming out of his PTSD,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: I wrongly assumed that he had this guilt, that he'd
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: been in there and let's just say, been used by
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: the system, the military industrial complex, right, yeah, and that
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: he'd regretted the people that he'd hurt. And to be honest,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: I was given him too much credit. He just turned
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: around and went he didn't really know what I was
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: talking about, and he was like, nah, I just he said,
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: he said it was our lads getting hurt that had
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: upset him, and one of them was his cousin, So like,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: I totally get that, but he just seemed to like
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: not have any idea of any of this other stuff.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: And I just wondered if we could explore that.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, I think it's a I think it's really
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: sort of common thing, thats like, and a lot of
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: people don't have the opportunity as supposed to dive as
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: deeply as you have into it. It's always something that
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: comes up. I personally don't really know why we were there.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: I know what I was doing there. Once I was there,
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: I know my reasons for signing that on the dotted
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: line and going. I know what they were, and they
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: were all they all fit into my core belief sort
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: of system. You know. I was there to help, and
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: I think that's why it sort of took over me
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: a little bit. I sort of felt into the pain
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: of the targets that I neutralized. I started to imagine
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: how scary it must have been of them, how they
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: must be missed, what the effects were on their families.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: It sort of it lent me to become less of
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: that callous mindset that had become being a sniper. It
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: sort of humanized me to the point where I understood
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: that the person I was looking at through my scope
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: had a narrative given to them throughout their lives, just
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: as I did. You know, like you just mentioned nine
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: to eleven there. For me personally, that was a very
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: big factor of me joining the military, and the sort
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: of terrorism was very much the word of the day
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: on the telly and for a young teenage fit, an
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: healthy lad who wanted to help, it's easy to get
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: into those shoes and not really know the actual reasons
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: behind it.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, Yeah, so how can you say? It's an
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: interesting one. I remember when I served in conflict, I
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: really saw that if I could have taken out the
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: quote unquote enemy, Yeah, then I would really have been
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: doing my job. I would have been ultra professional, and
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: I would have got the cuedoss of all the lads
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: and Yeah, but there was always like a little part
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: of my mind ted that was I didn't want to
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: kind of think at the consequences. I just assumed everything
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: would be gravy. I'd be the big hero, and that
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: was kind of probably about as far as my thinking got. Yeah,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: now that I'm old and gray, I'd be completely honest.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: I I don't mean to be offensive, but I'm really glad.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: I'm really glad I never had to take anyone that
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: we never had the opportunity to take anyone out.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a heavy burden to bear, especially one when
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: you don't know if you've done the actor right thing
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: or not. Very difficult, but I understand what your mindset there.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: It was the same for me. It became, you know,
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: I wanted to be good at my job. I work
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: so hard to be on a sniper that you know,
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: it was one of those things where I put pressure
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: on myself to be good. I wanted to I wanted
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: to give people a reason to be proud of me,
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: but I also wanted to be good in my job
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: in the essence that I could keep the lads around
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: me safe if I was on that roof. I put
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: this immense pressure that each of those people's lives was
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: in my hands, although it wasn't. They were all trained
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: infantry soldiers and very good at their jobs. But I
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: put myself in this role. It was partly down to,
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: you know, we'd get into a contact and my name
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: would get shouted to get on the roof and deal
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: with it. And you know, obviously that's going to happen
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: with a weapon system that can reach those kind of
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: ranges and you know, optics that can spot things from
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: that far away. But it gradually became this thing that
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: I took on my own shoulders, and with that weight
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: really did, really did weigh on me to the point
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: where it was almost like every time we got into
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: a contact, like a stop watch had started, and I
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: to deal with that as fast as possible, otherwise I
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: was convinced one of my mates were going to die.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Didn't care so much if I did, which was another
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: state of mind that it's quite weird to sort of
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: come out of, you know where I've mentioned it a
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: few times. I'd be completely I'd be almost submissive and
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: willing to die by going into direct fire on a
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: roof and laying down calm as a sleeping baby to
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: make these shots. But I'd be absolutely positive that I
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: wasn't going to you know, so I think, yeah, I
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: think there was so many layers to why I began
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: to feel the way I did. Things like a moral value,
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: so like you just mentioned, they're quote a target, calling
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: people targets, things like bayonet chaining, these sorts of things,
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: they lower your moral value of a life. That person
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: does become a target and it's not you know, some
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: people can go for an entire career and keep that
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: target mentality. For me, I couldn't. I don't know whether
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: it's because I could see the faces of the people
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: that I was taking out A lot of you know
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: a lot of British troops don't even they didn't see
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: the Taliban. You know that normally hear a crack in
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: the distance and have some income in stuff, but it
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: would be very rare that someone would actually get their
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: eyes on the fighters. And I think that that sort
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: of personalized it a little bit for me, where I
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: was no longer to just be in that target mindset.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: It was these were people. And then I just started
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: to give myself so much grief, you know, thinking what
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: would I do if I was if our country was
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: filled with foreign fighters who were here to do the
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: right thing, how would I be acting? Would I sign up?
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: You know? As soon as they flipped the coin and
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: change the perspective a little bit, it kind of it
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: awoke all these emotions and extremely strong ones of guilt
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: and a shame.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Really, yes, it's like you broke through the programming, isn't it.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah? It was very much that. Yeah, having that mindset
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: of a soul, and you can you know, I'm sure
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: that most veterans can cast their mind back to that
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: mental state where you're almost able to cut off emotions
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: and when you're leaving on tour. I know for me,
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: I was very much able to cut off missing family
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: friends back home, that kind of thing where you just
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: you become callous. It's the switch is on. I flicked
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: that switch off when I was there in the you know,
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: in combat, and it was a rude awakening and a
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: very quick one.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Yes. The reason incidentally, that I said I, looking back,
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad I never killed anyone is simply ted
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: because I ended up so chronically mentally unwell, as I
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: said earlier, on the streets of Hong Kong, miles away
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: from from home, ended up, you know, working for a
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Triad fraternity as one of their nightclub dormans, and really
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: things couldn't have got darker, all more serious. Yeah, I
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: think if I had the additional burden that you've had
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: to work through, that might have been the thing that
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: pushed me over the edge, is what I'm trying to say.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I think it was. For me. It was
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: the thing that wouldn't go away. You know this this
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: one guy in particular whose life I took, where he
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: would haunt me every single night, you know, every night
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: I'd have these nightmares where his mouth was stitch closed
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: and his eyes were stitch closed. I don't know what
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: the relevance of this is. I've been asking everyone I met,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: and he would sort of be ripping me from my
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: bed and I'd wake up in this like the worst
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: panic you could ever imagine, you know, thinking that somebody
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: was about to kill me in my bedroom and this
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: would happen nightly, to the point where the exhaustion of
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: that and not being able to sleep coupled with this
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: thing that's not going away. You know, this guilt isn't
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: going anywhere if I don't speak to anyone, It's absolutely
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: not going to go anywhere. You know, talking to people
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: allowed to to gain perspective, and it was through perspective
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: and context that I was able to sort of be
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: at peace with the things that I'd done. In the end.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: You know, it took me a very long time to
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: get round to that process, but yeah, it was absolutely
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: the one thing. I don't know, I never really thought
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: about it as I was training to become a sniper
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: or even beforehand. You know, it was never something that
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: played on my mind or what you know, is that
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: going to bother me? No, And in all honesty, I
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: think the mentality of that, almost like that pack mentality
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: of soldiers, was we wanted to do that, we wanted
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: to be in contact. You know, there'd be days, I remember,
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: days where we've just been bored and we wish we
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: were getting shot at, you know, and putting together all
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: these many, many complex levels and sort of external and
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: internal influences that was having on myself and people were
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: having on me. It was like a perfect storm, to
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: be honest, and one that at my core I wasn't
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: prepared for.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. How is it then? I mean, I'm sorry if
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: I'm asking a trite question that everyone else has asked
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: you before, But that the first time then that you
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: shot someone? Yeah, can you talk us through it?
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: The feelings that I mean, the scenario, where were you
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: on the ground? How did it come about?
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: Okay? Yeah, So the first the first time I ever
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: really saw someone. The first time it happened was through
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: a wall, which didn't really affect me, to be honest,
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: it was. Yeah, it wasn't really relevant, I think because
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: it wasn't as personal as the next one to come.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: So it was the second time where we deployed art
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: into an area where the Americans actual forces had been
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: and then got into quite a bit of trouble. So
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: it turned down there was more Taliban there than expected,
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: and so four o'clock in the morning, us Welsh ma
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: men we jumped on the choppers and off we went.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: H So, yeah, we were we were sort of greeted
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: by Dushka anti aircraft guns going off at the chin
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: ucks in the air and RPG. So it was a
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: very you know, it was a hot landing first thing
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: in the morning, still in the dark. We then, so
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: our job was to basically go and kick the hornets nest,
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: find out a many Taliban were in the area, and
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: you know, just just gauge really what can be sort
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: of done in the area. So we quickly dealt with
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: with the early morning contact and moved off to free
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: pre designated compounds that are in a sort of triangular formation.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: As we've approached our designated compound, I've jumped up onto
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: the roof and started to scan the area, make a
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: little notes of you know, distant sees that blue door
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: over there is eight hundred and fifty years, you know,
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: the sort of things that i'd do as a sniper
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: to sort of quickly be able to make adjustments to
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: the scope. And as I'm doing this, I've noticed a
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: motorbike going from right to left, left to right, and
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: each time it goes past, there's one person on it,
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: and then there's two, and then there's one and then
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: there's two. So what I realized was someone is getting
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: dropped off here. Something's going on. So as I've just
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: sort of sussed this, I could see a mini bus
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: in the distance with just a driver and it goes
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: past and comes back, and then it's full of fighting
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: age males and it goes off into the distance and
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: comes back again with just the driver. So fighters were
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: getting dropped off into positions, and it turned out that
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: this was happening all around us. Later we found out
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: there was those hundreds of Taliban in the area. So
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: as I'm watching this guy on the motorbike, I've decided
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: that I don't want him to think he's getting away
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: with what he's doing. I want him to know that
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: I've got eyes on him, and if I decided to
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: find my weapon, it's over, you know. I didn't want
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: them to get the confidence that they've got into positions
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: secretly without knowing. So I called down to the boss
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: on the ground. It was just underneath me, and he
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: was like, yeah, give my warning shot. So as I've
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: let loose this round that's landed a couple of meters
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: in front of his mobile front tire, this crescendo of
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: noise from all around us just erupted of machine gunfire
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: and AK forty sevens and rpgens and it had begun.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: This day went for like thirteen hours, this contact in
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: the end, so I'm sort of lay on this roof.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: We've not had any time to really build up any
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: sort of defensive positions or anything. I think I had
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: like one or two sound bags in front of me,
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: just to sort of, you know, get something behind. I've
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: noticed these incoming rounds that are getting very very close,
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: you know, that wiz that's going inches past your head.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: And as I've done this, I've sort of looked to
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: the general direction of wherefore he was coming from, and
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: I saw a fighting age male, same age as me,
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: maybe a couple of years younger, and maybe his you know,
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: at this point, I'm twenty one years old. So I've
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: looked and he's it looks like he's directly aiming at
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: my head and he's trying to take my head off
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: as best as he can. So I've done me appropriate
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: clicks and stuff. And it was at this point then
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: where the thoughts and feelings of revenge and thoughts of
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: my mate that had been killed before we'd got there,
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: and stuff that it was like a floodgate opened. It
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: never happened to me before, and this anger took over,
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: and it was the first time I pulled the trigger
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: with with actual anger in me. No, it didn't feel
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: like a job. It felt personal, almost like a vendetta.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: So I've pulled the trigger and the rounds hit him
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: in the throat. He's gone down. And that is the
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: guy who wanted my dreams. He's the one who had
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: the eyes stitched and the mouth stitched shirt and this
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: gaping hole, and it it felt so many emotions. There
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: was success. I'd made a shot from it, you know,
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: I think it's like seven hundred and fifty meters away
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: or something like that, which is, you know, it's not
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: too much of a difficult shot. But it instigated a
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: whole load of stuff that ended up with me then
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: taking out five Taliban there in the same area as
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: they kept coming to the same fire position. So so
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: it was this day and that one guy in particular,
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: that well, yeah, that upset me, I suppose is the
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: way to go it. I couldn't. I just couldn't get
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: it out of my head. From that day on, it
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: was there daily, the look in his face, the fear,
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: the terror that I could see. So this guy was
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: sort of holding his neck and reaching out another hand
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: to call to someone from behind another building, and that
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: look that was and that was really hard to shake
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: that the yeah, the guilt and the shame and just
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: feeling so sad that it. I don't know, but it
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: ended that way, even though it was my job. There's
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: just a thousand different angles I came at it from.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: But then with that came the sort of bravado of
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: the lads around me and other people hearing about what
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: had happened, and the other snipers in our unit had
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: done the same sort of thing. We'd had a very
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: successful day as a small sniper platoon that day. Pretty
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: soon word around Campastion kind of got around a little bit,
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: and so that fed into this pride ego almost thing
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: that the Jamagas all wanted to want to do it more.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: And it was almost like a train that just that
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: just wasn't going to stop until I was I was
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: willing to go to breaking point and that and that's,
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: you know, that's what happened. I gave everything that I
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: had until I had normal mind.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: It's it's interesting, though, because whatever anyone's thoughts, mine, yours,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: anywhere else's are on this, the rights or wrongs, the
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: egalities of war, et cetera. At the end of the day,
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: you are in a situation where you're getting surrounded. There's
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: going to be no quarter whatsoever if if you get overrun.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: No, it was very close. The lads around me were fighting,
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: and I mean fighting like lions to keep these So
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: there was loads of rap runs and alleyways behind me,
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: and obviously I couldn't be turning around and stuff. I
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: had to have complete trust in them. And you know,
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: there's there's footage of of these these firefights going on
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: that you can just hear it. You can hear the
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: absolute fighting for our lives. Basically it was. It was
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: that strong that the threat of grenades coming over the
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: walls and stuff, as the talbottle getting closer was very
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: very concerning. So, yeah, it was a sort of life
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: or death situation, which, yeah, that did help me. It
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: gave another perspective. I suppose I felt invincible at the time.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: I felt, you know, as nothing could ever happen to
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: me that was wrong.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Do you did you cross the moral I mean, obviously
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: there's the question of morality runs through this whole thing.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: What I mean is in your keenness to get what
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: they call in the military kills. Yes, were you kind
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: of pushing the boundaries a bit, No, I was.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: I was always on the right side of it. It
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: was just the if we were in a contact, I
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: wanted to deal with it. It was almost like, just
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: give me a minute, lads, and now I'll ab a crack,
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: and then if I don't, we can all get involved.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: That's kind of how it felt. And once I started
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: to take that weight on my shoulders and these emotions,
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: it was almost another thing that I don't want these
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: other lads to feel the way that I'm feeling, almost
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: like I'm already damaged goods. I'll take it on the chin.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: And it was. Yeah, it was tricky, I think because
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: it was such a busy tour for us. You know,
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: there was no worries about are we doing the right
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: thing or not. We were. We were in some real
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: good fighting stuff, you know. We were in the thick
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: of it and most of the time on the edge
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: of a stronghold. So it was Yeah, it was. It
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: was a very testing time, but one that yeah, like
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: I said, I wanted to take on my.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Shoulders friends at home. We're purposely not mentioning Ted's regiment
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: because he didn't in the book. So it just seems
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: that we you can probably gather he's from an esteemed
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Welsh one.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: Yes, with three hundred years of his today.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: There we go. Yes. It reminds me of that scene
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: in Zulu where they all start singing the what's that
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: famous song called yes? Yes? Of course. Yeah. I did
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: a bit. I did a bit of internet searching on
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: that and they said that actually the Welsh contingent in
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: that regiment was very small. Yeah, it was wasn't what
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: they made out to be in the in the.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: Film, it was no, but you can always dress the
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: Welshman to sing.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely absolutely, Yeah. I was in Cardiff the other
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: day actually, oh ye, yes, my bloody Matthew Pritchard, formerly
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: of Dirty Sanchez fame, was having his his docco film
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: was premiered. Wow, so I went up, well.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, today was it alas of days? Three years sober
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: for him?
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Yes, three years off the source. It's coming to us
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: all mate, you.
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: Know, yeah, this is it. Yeah. I can certainly be
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: the winding down now. It's not absolutely not a priority
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: of mine.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Anymore, No, no things. You know, it starts to cost
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: you more and more as you get It starts to
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: cost some of us more and more as we get older, obviously. Yeah,
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: So what about the ied situation? Were you were you
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: in fear for your life every time going out or
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: was it just look, we've got to go out there,
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: put it out your mind?
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was it, to be honest, The first week
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: or two was a little bit getting you know, getting
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: the balance out the mind detectors and stuff, and it
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: was something in the end lads were or does that
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: look like an idea and stepping on it just to
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: see if it was? You know, that's it. It kind of
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: grew to that point where, yeah, it just became a
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: kind of a hindrance, I suppose. Yeah, occupational hazard ted.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: How many tools did you do? Two?
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: I did? Yeah, two thousand and eight and then a
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: two nine ten one.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: And did you lose any blokes?
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: We did? Yeah, we lost one from our our battalion. Unfortunately,
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: we had multiple casualties and quite a few sort of
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: catastrophic ones at that which which ADDD it fuel to
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: the fire for me, to be honest, because at this point,
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: once we'd taken casualties. I'd been removed from from the
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: front line. I've been met evacuated once. You know, as
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, the people around me had sort of
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: noticed the change in me. I got brought back to
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: Camp Bastian and signed for a psychiatric nurse. Was told
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: that I have a bit of an addiction to pulling
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: that trigger. I'm tired, so go and get some rest,
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: go and work in the stores for a couple of weeks.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: So that's what I did. And then as I was
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: working in these stores, bloody good mate of mine got
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: hit with catastrophic injuries. Luckily he's still here with us today,
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: but one of the other lads was unfortunately killed on
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: the ground. So that added to this guilt and shame.
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: Even though there's nothing I could have done, it felt
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: I had that internal monologue of if I was there,
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: I could have maybe done something, which is something that
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: is so common, not that sort of survivor's guilt. I
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: suppose you could say it was to a degree.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: Did you enjoy the whole process of becoming a sniper
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: and getting hands on with with the with the weaponry.
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. It sort
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: of It made me feel elevated, you know, I didn't
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: sort of feel like just a sort of a rifleman anymore,
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: which is what I wanted. You know. It was the
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: lessons and the learning curve was so sort of intent
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: that every single day we were learning something and it
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: was great. And once we'd sort of moved to like
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: sort of phase two of the sniper car they in Brecken,
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: that's when it was really good. That was That's what
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: I signed up for. I wanted to be in them.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: I didn't live in in the trees. And you know,
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: it was it was fantastic, It really was. I was
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: I was living the dream, the actual dream that I'd
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: had to being a kid. I was living it. And
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: I was to point out in Afghanistan on that second tour,
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: I wasn't a sniper on my first talk, And yeah,
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: it was I don't know, it was a bit it
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: was a bit gutting to live my dream and actually go, wow,
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: this is so just sucking me up.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, the reason I asked head is obviously when I
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: said we were the first lot to go through with
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: the s a eighty back when it was a bit questionable,
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: you could say, And because I was fortunate to serve
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: on board ship. I got issued a Brownie nine millimeter
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: and an SLR sound Unlike a lot of people who
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: served at my time, I got to experience the old
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: weapon whatever what all the old sweats were talking about
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: and still do to this day, let's be honest, and
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: also pistol SMG. We even fired a self loading or
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: a pump action shotgun at one point on the range.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: But that's when I started to appreciate the difference in ballistics.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: The Yeah, that the SLR down the range was absolutely
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: just a different weapon to the s A eighty. The
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: accuracy with just an iron sight and the SAA obviously
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: has got the optic site you'd think would be you'd
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: be miles off, and it was the complete opposite. You
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: could put that, You could literally lay that slug down
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: and it would bang on target.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: And it's a good feeling, that isn't it.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the the SA eighty, I mean it was
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: a bit of a joke. At three hundred meters with
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: a wind, you're aiming off anything up to fifteen feet
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: three five three five five me you're aiming five meters
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: off the target.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: To get that's insane. But one thing that I noticed
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: that that sort of using the SAA, you'd never learn
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: about like the rifling, how the rifling effects around, you know,
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: sending it to the right and these sort of things.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: So it was learning that, you know, how all the
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: elements affect the temperature or altitude and thing effect around.
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: That was really good. And like you say, now SLR
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: to SA eighty. We started on the L ninety six
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: sniper rifles and then moved onto the three three eighty
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: album five five A three I think it is. That's
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: the top of it. I've not said that combination of
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: their number is in a long time, but yeah, the
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: difference was, wow, this is a weapon system. Obviously, the
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: three three eight was designed for shooting engine box. That's
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: that's what it was originally for, so it had a
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: lot more weight to it, but the accuracy and the
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: distance was it was good, especially that we had a
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: Schmitt schmitten Bender scope on the top of it, and
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: so that that was an incredible piece of kit by itself,
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: let alone the sticks which could be the thermal image
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: in sights that would have attached to them. So it
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: was a whole world of new shiny gadgets that we'd
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: never really seen or heard of before that we were
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: not getting to play with.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: Remind me the name of the former weapon, the L one,
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Was it the L ninety six.
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the first one. Yeah, that was that
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: was a seven six two sniper out on that one.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we got to fire. I think it was either
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: that one or its predecessor in training. And we were
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: just firing off a cliff down at the range into
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: the sea, and one lad stepped up to take his shot,
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: and I just saw the training team, the two corps
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: was just looked at each other and sort of discreetly smiled,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: and they'd realize that he had the scope right up
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: against his note, and of course as soon as he
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: took that shot, it kicked back, and that the edge
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: of the metal scope was like a cutting ring, like
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: what you'd cut you know, pastries out of and it
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: just put this big ding. It was called Murray, that
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: chat was.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: I don't.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think Murray. Murray made it through. I
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: think he was one of the fall by the wayside
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: top guys. But so that was seven point six to two.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: How much bigger in Layman's terms, was is the slug
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: of the the other round.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure if you could see that, but you're
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: talking sort of that much difference, you know, Wow, Yeah,
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: it's it's a it's a hell of a difference, and
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: that you know, the weight of the round and stuff.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: It's it's a force to be reckoned with, for sure.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: Not as big as fifty cow, but not.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: As big as no, so sort of seven six fifty cow.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: This is banging between Yeah.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Friends at home, I'm asking. I just love that all
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: the technical stuff about I like the fact that in America,
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: you know, you can actually own a weapon and go
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: and shoot on the range or whatever whatever it is.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: It's it's all the combats. That's my that was my younger,
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: younger days.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: You could say, yeah, there's there's something calming about shooting
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: on a range. I think, you know, doing for three
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: months every day on a sniper carda you learn to
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: sort of get into this what I call him a
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: walk like the bubble, which is almost like a meditative
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: state and it's calm and it's like fishing, similar similar mindset,
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: I supposeibly, depending what's down on the other end.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: I've heard Robin horse File on the podcast couple of
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: times of the sas who dares wins Iranian embassy siege. Yeah, fame,
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: fame or notoriety, but bit of both.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: And he was saying when he served, the sas would
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: be trained by the Marines, by the Marines snipers. Is
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: that still a thing?
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. Yeah. So for the course that I took, especially,
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: that was a Royal Marine snipe of course. So yeah,
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: there was. There was definitely Royal Marine important and Royal
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: Marine instructors there, and there was a mixture, to be honest.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: We had sort of we had veterans of the the
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: Falcons who were there as well, and we sort of
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: had ballistics experts and things like that. They were a
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: sort of a civilian attachment to the course. It was
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: really sort of it went in depth as well as
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: one of the guys from our unit ourselves, he was
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: our sniper commander. He'd sort of left the military and
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: gone off on a world of training special forces around
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: the world and then came back to join our regiment.
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: So we had this just whole world of information at
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: our fingertips really just just getting cloud into us, which
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: was great because it definitely came in handy. Having sort
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: of listened to the experiences of other snipers who've been
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: there and done it and got the T shirt, and
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: learning little tips. For instance, like one of the tips
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: would be grabbing. As we grabbing the weapon, would squeeze
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: it really tightly and then do the sort of piano
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: playing motion. And that meant that every time we grabbed
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: the weapon and we were about to take a shot,
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: we'd have the same pressure. It was like muscle memory,
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: so we'd hold the weapon exactly the same each and
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: every time. Things like that, those sort of little tipbits
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: that that the maders were good. To be honest, we
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: were wapping tenpence pieces at a thousand thousand.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: Meters wow kilometer. Yeah, that's incredible.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: It was pretty pretty standard for us that to be fair.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: What was it, I know this is one of those
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: cliche questions, but what was your longest shot in Afghanistan?
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: Just under a mile one thousand and five hundred and
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: sixty something meters, so that at that point I wasn't
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: even aiming at the target. I was aiming off at
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: the target, which was that was That was an interesting day.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: That was just a few days before actually getting pulled
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: off the ground. That one. Yeah, but which I'm sort
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: of glad about because you know, obviously what sniper wouldn't
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: want to make a shot from that sort of distance.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: Well it was three shots, so yeah, it was a
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: then of accomplishment. Was pretty cool of it. At the
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: end of once I'd sort of taken out these three
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: targets from that kind of distance and Apatche American Apatche,
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: he sort of came into the area and popped up
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: on the on the radio and sort of commended me
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: on the shooting, which was I don't know. Yeah, it
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: was just a little sort of a little positive to
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: the day.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to think, who is the chat Craig, isn't
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: it Craig Harrison.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, he got the world record for a while,
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: are didn't he?
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah he's He's been on the podcast he went through the.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: Mill, Yes he did. I'm going to be sitting down
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: with Craig, so naturally he started his own podcast. Yeah,
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: I'm really looking forward to that one as well. Yeah,
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: sort of having a sniper chat. Yeah.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: I hope he's doing all right. He's very very honest,
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: you know, up front of the experiences.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he has been. It was something when I was
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: struggling that he was the sort of closest thing that
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: I could sort of relate to, I suppose in the
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: public eye and sort of being able to see him
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: break down on camera and things like that, it was,
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: it was very powerful. You know. Obviously I have not
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: had a chance to sit down and talk with him
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: about it, but yeah, but I think that him knowing
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: that that has helped people is something along the lines
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: of what I'm doing with this book. I kind of
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: want to be able to help people without directly helping people,
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: do you know what I mean. I need to sort
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: of protect my own mental health and my own energy
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: now that I've worked so hard to get it to
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: the place where it is where I'm you know, I'm
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: happy as soon as I wake up in the morning
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: and again, and you know, these sort of things. It's
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: it can take its tong helping others.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll, I've no doubt you'll develop strategies over the
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: coming months, because putting yourself in the public eye comes
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: you know, it's not without yeah, detractors, unfortunate.
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah, I've learned. I've learned that the Internet's got
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: a bit of a sharp tongue every now and then
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: on it.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I think You've got to kind of imagine
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: that there's like a do you imagine like a whirlwind vortex,
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: it's just going on over there. Yeah, when someone starts
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: kicking off, just picture them in that and that's just
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: they're going around in and this is it.
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The sort of stance I've taken is, you know,
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: if it's negative, I'm not getting involved in it. And
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: if it is negative for whatever reason or people have
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: got a negative opinion on these things that I'm talking about,
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: I would suggest that they go and get the context
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: first and realize that, you know, I'm not some person
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: that's going around and promoting warfare or saying that this
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: is a good thing as well. It's quite the opposite,
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: you know. And I'm just in a pretty unique position,
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: I think, to one be able to talk about what
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: it's like at the extreme end of the conflict taking
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: lives and then be on the extreme end of mental
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: health issues, which you know ended with me trying to
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: take my own life multiple times, to them being able
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: to recover completely.
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: So I think context and perspective is good for everybody.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll come on and talk about your battle, your
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: subsequent battle. I had a chat on the podcast very
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: recently Barry Nisbit, who was a Canadian or he's actually
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: born in Britain but born in Scotland. I think that
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: lived most of his life in Canada. And he signed
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: up as a sniper or he signed up and became
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: a sniper, and his stories that he told me it
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: was very different from from yours. He yeah, he was
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: just kind of I kind of got. I had spoke
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: to him an email before him hand, because here's the thing, Ted, right,
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: I I used to do a lot of military podcasts
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: ex military and then when all that medical i'll call
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: it the medical nonsense came along, and I thought that
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: the military let himself down his spectacular style and on
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: all that front, treating their troops like guinea pigs and
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: not not come into the defense of the people that
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: they swore to or you know, I know you don't
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: swear to protect the people. But what I meant is,
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: I think there's much bigger heroes that we should be
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: celebrating in life than and the military come very low
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: on the on the scale. And I had this chat
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: with Barry beforehand, and I could see I don't think
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: he was aware. I think terms like the military industrial
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: complex might have, you know, work, Okay, he just kind
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: of didn't, you know, he sort of like couldn't go
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: there because he just didn't really know anything. When it's fine,
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: but you know, I'm obviously not here to make people
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: feel uncomfortable. At the same time, I always want to
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: do podcast head that on subjects that I have an
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: interest in, and I have an interest in the human
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: experience that you know, everything that we've we've talked about
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: today firing weapons is. I mean, I was very fortunate
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: to beyond the range. I say, fairly recently when we
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: went to Grand can Area in December to start rowing
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: across the Atlantic. Thank you, yes, big up to rowing
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: buddy Louis. But we got taken Dave, I believe if
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: I remember rightly, Hello Dave. Dave took us on the
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: range over there is what I'm trying to say. We
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: went to this very antiquated range on Granken Area. It
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: looked like a throwback to the sort of I don't
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: know when they used to wear red tunics and all that.
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but sorry, I'm waffling folks at home. I'm just
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: trying to get my train of thought. But yeah, we
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: went down on the range. He had a kind of
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: it looked like a you know, M sixteen armor light
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: or whatever, but I think it was converted to two
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: and we popped off a few rounds and yeah, it's
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: it's it's just another thing to learn in life, isn't it.
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: And yeah, it's yeah, it's you know, it can be
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: a great hobby. It's something that I think can teach
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: more than just shooting. I think the ability to control
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: your breath, can control your mind, control your body to
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: a point where you know, which are all aspects that
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: you need to make shots at a decent distances at least. Yeah,
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of lessons that can be
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: learned from it. I was last year sort of doing
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: some little bits and bobs with the scouts, with the
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: Cub scouts, taking them to shooting ranges and giving them
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: little tips and pointers on their shooting, which was such
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: a rewarding thing to see, you know, to see these
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: kids making shots and at the end of the day,
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: they're making really good shots. You know, groupings are tight
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: and they're hitting bull's eyes and it was fantastic and
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: they had a great day.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: I remember when I was in four to two commander.
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: We had a day on the range and a load
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: of rural marines cadets had rocked up, and even though
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: they were sort of in the age of eight eight
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: to twelve, they ended up they ended up on the range.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: This is not I don't think this is uh anyway.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: So this this kid gets up with a nine mil
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: Browning and the marine's kind of behind him, you know,
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: trying to prevent the kickback, and he took the shot
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: and it kicked back so hard or his lack of
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: controlled it, that he hit the wall above the butts,
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: you know, the brick the brick wall above the sand,
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: and the round came back and hit one of the
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: marines like clip clipped him in the head. He was okay,
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: I should say, it literally just kind of pinged off
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: his head. And I remember he put his hand up
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: to to the what do we call the guy that
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: runs the range, the guy that's yeah, not the kind
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: of range warden, but the marine who would have been
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: running the session. We used to have a name for that.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: I can't remember. Anyway, he put his hand out and
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: he said, Corporal, I've just been shot. But you can
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: almost see it happening. And I saw this.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: No more eight year olds with nine mills.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: How much did the army, the military do for you
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: before were you discharged because of this?
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah? It was. Yeah, so I it probably took a year.
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: I'd say beer sweet before I started to get help.
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: I'd come home, come home from theater, and things. Progressively,
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: we're getting worse because I obviously I was able to
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: get alcohol, and obviously a drinking culture in the military
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: is pretty strong, so I'd drink a lot. I'd get angry, violent, fight,
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: and these sorts of things were sort of, oh, you know,
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: maybe I'll I'll get out of it. Is that it's
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: just natural adjusting back to sort of coming home from
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: from conflict and things, and it just didn't. It progressively
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: got worse, and so did my mental health. The depression
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: and the sadness that I felt was unbelievable. I was
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: all I wanted to do was get back to Afghanistan.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: I wanted to get back behind that weapon system and
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: continue to pull the trigger, thinking that if I had
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: that mentality, maybe that angry, aggressive thing that had kept
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: me alive on tour would keep me alive here and
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: maybe you'll sort of be able to get over this,
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: which is that sort of I don't know, that sort
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: of alpha male attitude. I suppose our male bravardo are
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: stiff up a lip. You'll get through this, you know.
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: It was never going to work until the point where
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: I reached breaking point. And breaking point involved me on
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: the floor fighting with my own dad, who we've got
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: a great relationship and always have done. So that was
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: the turning point where I kind of went right. I
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: don't so much mind fighting with strangers in pubs or
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: letting people punch the life out of me because it
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: feels good way, almost like a self harm sort of thing.
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: But once it happened in my own house, on my
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: parents' house, that was it. Then. That was that was
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: time where the following morning I spoke up to my
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: commander and sort of said, look, this is what's happening.
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: I don't know what it is. And at this point
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: I've never heard the term mental health really. I certainly
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: never heard of PTSD, that's for sure. And as I
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: was having this conversation, the team sergeant was like, oh,
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: I'm going to bring the med center now. I think
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: there's someone here. So that got my brain ticking a
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: little bit. It turned out there was a psychiatric nursing camp.
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: So I started thinking, why why is there a psychiatric
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: nursing camp? But who's having who's having psychiatric problems here?
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: That kind of thing that that just be dazzled me.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: To be honest, I was. I was very confused. How
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: did I not know that other people were struggling with
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: this ship? And it was it was secret. It was
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: a secret that I felt. I felt like I was
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: contagious then, and I felt like it was this leprosy
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: sort of thing that you know, you go anywhere hear
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: it and you're going to get it and it'll be
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: the end of your career and it out it was, unfortunately,
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: But I don't think that's the case now, at least
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: i'd hope not. But something I do plan on doing
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: next year will be going on to CAPS and talking
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: to serving soldiers about this kind of thing about you know,
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: looking after your own energy, protecting your mental state, and
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: actually talking, because it does boil down to if you talk,
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: you can you're in with a chance of fixing this.
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: If you don't talk, you've got no chance. You know.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, can I just chip in and say something that, yeah,
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: the problem is because all the charities and the war
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: films like Your Rambo, Your Platoon or all of those
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: films were set up for a specific reason. It was
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: to take the focus off the war because everyone was
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: eventually against the Vietnam War. You know, there's a massive
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: peace movement right so that the kind of you know,
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: the controllers thought, hang on, we've got a load more
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: wars in programmed in. How can we turn the people
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: back you know, pro war? And they did it very cleverly.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: They brought out these Rambo films and Platoon where the
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: focus wasn't on the conflict, it was on the individual story.
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: Ah.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: And you had to love this character. And you know,
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: John Rambo, he's this tortured veteran, he's been behind enemy
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: lines and he comes back from Vietnam and he just
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: gets treated like a piece of shit by some kingshit cup,
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: you know, some ego maniac who doesn't know what he's
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: been through. And off the back of that, off the
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: back of that, you got your you know, thank you
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: for your service, sir. And all of this kind of
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: cring stuff that we know is all really cringey.
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: It's so uncomfortable in it.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, it's it's awful, but civilians have just
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: all been indoctrinating into that.
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: It's the first thing people say when you meet me
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: is hi, Chris, I'm really sorry. I was never in
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: the marine. I'm like, fucking what are you talking about?
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: It was ship most of the time, and you know,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: I could have ended up getting kicked. But I'm digressing
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: a bit. But what I'm getting to ted is the
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: charities then have jumped on this bandwagon with the help
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: for heroes, the walking with a wounded, the you know,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: all of this stuff that's making out that that trauma
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: is only something a military person experiences on the battlefield.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: And what they've done by doing so is all the
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: veterans out there and military personnel that are struggling are saying, well, look,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: I can't come for because I wasn't even in Afghanistan.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: People are going to think I'm an idiot, I'm a sissy. Yeah,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: I'm not worth it. You know, I know something's wrong
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: with me and I'm drinking too much and you know
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: that had the wife last week. But I'm not like
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: one of these heroes that deserves the chat.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's that would have been. I felt I felt
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: like I didn't deserve the help especially, so I ended
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: up spending three months in a psychiatric ward on suicide
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: fifteen minute interval suicide watch and the care and attention
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: that I received it was incredible. It was amazing and
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: I will always always be grateful to those NHSTA that
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: did that for me. It wasn't it wasn't a military thing.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: It was it was NHS and I felt as if
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: I didn't deserve it. I thought I brought this on myself.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: There's other people. And then I see this when I
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: out of conversations with people, it always starts with it's
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: nothing like what you went through, but and I'm like,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: whoa trauma's trauma mate? You know, like whatever is causing
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: you to feel a certain way that is as just
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: as important as anything or you know, anyone else's problems.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: And I think that I think that comes along with
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: stigma as well. I think I feel like the stigma
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: that's attached to a mental health problem as being weak
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: is a part of that where people feel like they
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: have to qualify this threshold of or if I've done
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: something like this or I've gone through this, that's I
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: can't be weak. It's you know, that's really bad. No, made,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: I'm not at all. If you've you know, if you've
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: been jumped in the street and had a kick in,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: the one person might go, oh, it's only a kick in,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: or but the other person might go, I thought they
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: were going to stamp on my head until I died.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: That's traumatic, and so you can't weigh these things up. Yeah,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: it's it's a bit of a tourchy subject for me,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: that one, because it's stopping people getting the help that
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: they need. And it's also feeding into this stigma of
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: people calling people weakened things and anyone watching that is
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: doing that sort of thing or has that mentality fucking
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: packing because you're killing people and it grinds my gears.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the lections community is the most considering. We lose
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: the most blokes to trauma. They're the most ill informed
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: bunch of individuals. They're nasty to each other, a lot
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: of them, you know.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I think there's a define line between that black,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: dark humor and sort of actually saying things that are
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: fucking hurtful to people that are killing people. You know,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: Like I've been in rooms with Special Forces guys in
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: absolute tears over something that you know, could be compared
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: as oh, that's not actually that bad, or you know
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: that these sort of people are saying, it's like fucking hell.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: You know, there's no score chart, there's no there's no
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: tanking system to trauma and this. Yeah, it seems like
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: a lot of the veteran community, especially sort of old
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: school guys, have got that week or you know, stiff
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: up a lip, ignore it, the man up and get
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: through attitude when reality is fucking How many people do
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: they know now that have killed themselves? I certainly know
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: a lot, you know, and it's it needs to change.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: And I think until people can understand this context sort
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: of thing why things are happening, I think, yeah, a lot,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: some drastic needs to happen. It needs to be a
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: big change.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, sadly drastic shit is happening. But there's so
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: many lads have killed themselves recently. Yeah, it's why I
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: keep talking when you mentioned you know, the person in
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: your brain that's supposed to be storing the files and
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: they end up getting left on the floor. With childhood trauma,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: what happens is there isn't that mechanism there in the
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: first place. You're too young, your brain hasn't developed, so
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: these horrific, you know, at times, horrific experiences you go through,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: you don't know. Your brain cannot process them. So they get,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: they say, they get hidden in your body and your
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: physical self, which is why people can go through a
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: whole military career twenty two years or whatever the case
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: may be, and then come out the other side and
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: suddenly all of this trauma that they've had stored up
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: their whole life comes to bear, and then things don't
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: start making sense. They start self medicating or whatever it is,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: and you get this downward spiral. And it's not helpful
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: if people are just showing PTSD PTSD, because it's like,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: hang on, they've had PTSD their whole Yeah.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And physical things as well, you don't like for
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: men in particular hips and lower back store trauma, which
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: is something that I've been going through for years and
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: years and years now, lower back pain and of chronic pain,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: which is a physical reaction to these things. You know,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: just how someone they clench their jaw and stuff our
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: hips and lower back they hold that trauma. And I
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: think this sort of thing led into my spirituality sort
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: of angle. Now I'm not sort of I'm not someone
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: that I'm not a religious person. I'm not someone that
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: is I'm not delusional and thinking that I can make
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: magic happen. What what it did lead me to do, though,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: was find peace and then find a peaceful place in
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: my mind where I could do this work, which is
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: where things like you know, alternative medications came in. Like
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: like I talk about cannabis and psilocybin and dinaphylic, trip
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: demean as well d MT. These are all tools that
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: I'd used, which is a very tight rope subject, especially
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: in the military and veteran community, because it's you know,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: it's drug use.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: I think it's pretty much like openly talked about, and
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people recognize that, Yeah, if
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: you just stick with your A game, you're not going
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: to learn shit, are you. You know you got to
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: you got.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: To be with me. I believe that the reason I
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: was able to sort of conquer my PTSD was because
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: I didn't just go to therapy. I went to therapy
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: and then I had a spiritualist mentor who was helping
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: me guide me with meditations and that sort of thing
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: like in a child, meditations and forgiveness meditations, not sure
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: if you've ever heard of those, but they are wow,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: extremely powerful things that certainly added to my my healing ability,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: let's say. But then using things like cannabis to be
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: able to lower anxieties or to be able to get
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: myself into a calm enough state to actually do the
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: work that I needed to do, to be able to
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: think about these things without becoming overrun by these emotions
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: that were just too much to handle. It allowed me
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: to be able to sort of face them as well
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: as you know, moodlift and be able to get a
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: night's sleep. So the first time I actually tried cannabis,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: a friend of mine said I'll smoke back because nightmares
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: were driving me insaying I couldn't sleep. I was lucky
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: if I got two or three hours in the night.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: So I did. I smoked cannabis for the first time.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: I didn't have a nightmare, and then I was like,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: what the fuck? Try it again. Tried it the next
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: day and I didn't have a nightmare. So that was
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: sort of the initial Okay, there's something to this. I
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: started to then realize that it's been getting used as
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: a medicine for thousands of years all over the place,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: and so of other things, you know, such as DMT
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: and aahuasca, and we hear about all these things quite
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: hot nowadays, you know, things like Joe Roping podcast for instance.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: He's always talking about these kinds of things, isn't he.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I think that being able to have these
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: different angles and having an open mind enough to sort
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: of go, well, I'm going to give that a go.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: I'm not just going to write it off because someone says, oh,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: that's drug use or or you're a druggie, A lot
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: of druggie, a lot of stoner. You know. I've just
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: used these tools that are unconventional. It's not something that
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: I'm promoting saying everyone should do this, saying look at
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: the evidence, which is what I ended up doing. At
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: the time. It was the only evidence I could find
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: was American evidence, you know, the treatment the veterans and
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: people stuff room with PTSD were getting over there, with
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: things like cannabis and these old alternative medicines, let's call it.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: And once I started to do that, I began to learn.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: And then once I began to learn through therapy what
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: was actually happening in my brain, the sort of science
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: behind it. Almost I was I was able to then
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: approach it with a strategy almost and I implemented these
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: various different things at certain times. I planned it all
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: out so when I get to this point, I'm then
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: going to implement this type of meditation or you know
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: what have you.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad you talked about the spiritual angles pretty
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: much all. I sort of talk about these bases on
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: my Yeah, on my show, Ted, I'd love to chat chat,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: but we're running out of time for this one, so
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: you always welcome to come back on.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: I'd love to mate. Yeah, once the book's out and
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: we can have a good chat about it.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. I've been flashing up your book cover as
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: we go.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: I love thank you.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: There we go, friends, There'll be a link. I'll put
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: a link below this podcast folks in the description box
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: so you can you can just run up to day.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: Actually, but there's a special offer and introductory offer on
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: where the book seventeen pound fifty for the next few
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: weeks rather than twenty five pound. So I'll get that
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: link over to you so that people can do that. Yeah,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: absolute good money.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: Awesome. Thank you for being so honest, so candid. Ted
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: really appreciate it. Obviously. You know it's not the easiest
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: thing to talk around. I'm glad that you're on the mend.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the world is a happy, bright place for me
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: once more.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good good, Yeah, that's it.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: Great. Life is good.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: Yes. Well, as I say to everyone, in the past
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: doesn't exist. So you know you were deluding ourselves if
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: we let it define our future.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: You know, absolutely what a great way to put it.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: Ted, just hold on the line so I can thank
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: you properly. But friends at home, if I can just
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: give one last out out for my challenge Everest summiting
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: Everest in April to shine a light for struggling veterans.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: If you can chuck us five quid to support our
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: struggling veterans, that would be absolutely wonderful. If you could
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: please like and subscribe, that would be awesome. And you
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: might want to consider supporting the podcast through YouTube, Patreon
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: locals or buy me a coffee for as little as
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: one ninety nine a month. And there's a load of
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: benefits that you can you can see there. That just
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: leads me to say, Ted, thank you ever so much again. Brother,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: go study it. Let's chat soon. Stay on the line.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: Much love to everyone, out there. See you for the
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: next Thank you.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: Friends, Thank you for listening to the Bought the t
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: Shirt Podcast. Please like, subscribe, and share, and don't get
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: to follow me on social media. Use the name Chris Thrall, Instagram,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: Graham Chris Dotthorn.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: Mm hmm