Royal Marine Gun Battle: Face to Face with the Taliban | TEA & MEDALS

i get back into my vehicle i clip my radio back on i lighten up a cigarette and it's just really really really quiet and i turn to my driver and i say it's about to kick off we all turned and started engaging this ambush site rpg's aks you name it what they had was there god knows how we didn't get hit because we were so close there's oil all over your hands are greased up your windproof trousers are just soaked through with oil because you've got to keep these guns singing with the food that they need to continue a war all the while this gun's just bang bang it feels like it's hitting on the head what is it that drives people to be brave to commit acts of heroism often in the face of the enemy i'm darren coventry former soldier and now video and podcast producer at bfbs i've been talking to men and women who've received the uk's highest military honours we talk about what happened what they thought at the time and how they feel about it now this is team medals [Music] i want to thank you for coming um w02 john thompson uh the 24th recipient of the conspicuous gallantry cross um and that was awarded for your actions on operations in afghanistan during operation herrick um but that's not all you also mentioned in dispatches for your actions during the second gulf war um one that everyone would know as operation telic one was the initial invasion and are you john ortomo john now i'm about to say civilians so yeah that's exactly what i do i was daz and now i'm darren absolutely i think i guess you have to clean up your act before you leave yeah trying to be swearing in conversation um so the first question is always how do you take your wet hot with one sugar unless some hanging out and then it's loads of sugars great so tomorrow you clearly weren't just signed out the court master stores at 16 reading your kind of biography you do come across as that kind of guy you know you've had a career full of operations action and being in the thick of it really but you know there was obviously a story before that tell us about the early years what inspired you to join the royal marines well my father was in the royal navy and my mother was in royal navy and they met whilst they were in the navy traveled around the world my mother had my sister in hong kong and then eventually they settled back in the united kingdom so i was born in the firmament recifer in the naval town and then we moved to plymouth another naval town and i didn't know what the royal marines were um until i was about four years old all i knew up until then was star wars and action figures and legos and you know things like that but i was a boy a boy's boy and uh i remember vaguely and my my memories are fractured uh because i very much live in the moment rather than dwell in the past or try and make up a future is um taking a trip to visit my father on his ship and my mum my sister and i flew by a wessex helicopter an old helicopter onto a ship i don't know what the ship was but it had a landing pad and uh when we touched down doors opened and the first person that i saw there who was a significant memory burned on my mind was a giant of a man the biggest man i'd ever seen in my life with a huge mustache a huge mustache that is to be envied was stood in front of us and i got off and i was wearing just a young boy with a hand-knitted brown cardigan the same as my sister and i was clutching up my mum's hands on that windy flight deck and uh as we were ushered off the flight deck into some into some cover i asked about who's that who's that who's that big man and uh because i'd never seen my dad very much she was away at sea all the time so it was just my mum and nurse um and as a boy and man is significant so uh she said oh that's a warmer in commando son and i said wow i want to be like him i want to be like him and then the memory fades and i always wanted i was always really interested in being a soldier and playing guns and playing war and getting wet mud and putting on my face but but nothing really specific and what were your what was your first kind of years in the marines like what was your well i passed out as the first time which is a big deal in the mill in the marines i passed out as a diamond i got the pt medal i've got the infantry support weapon medal got accelerated promotion because it for me training was it was easy it was it fitted me all i had to do was get up early work hard iron stuff march when i needed march shoot stuff when i needed to shoot stuff do exactly what they said do as best as i possibly could and run as fast as i possibly could and never give up so for me it was great and there was also no going back i had no contingency plan when i came to the end of training i chose to join heavy weapons anti-tank branch and become a heavy weapons specialist which was anti-tank weapons milan in those days uh gpm gsf and it was becoming the introduction of 50 cows that were coming into the troops and i joined forty commando anti-tank troop which was the biggest troupon camp in something called support company when we had the principle of three in all bat prior to moving to the the newer um maneuver support sort of direction that uh principle of four comes uh which comes from world war ii with weapon systems being spread equally so you can fight better and i i joined as a a sprog so that's what we call them or young tom i suppose what you guys call them and uh i joined forty commando and i lived on a windowsill for the first six weeks and i had to have all my [ __ ] packed up by the time the sweats came in well the screws as far as what they'd say in the army um and then they would come back get mega pissed throw kfc everywhere pull the tv into their grotts to watch the video and then we would have to clean up so it was that was the initial stage but i also learned from experienced people and i had to win their respect rather than just straight away will respect you as you first come in there are places for that but in this organization we all know what the person coming in can do and we respect that but i have to enter their organization after training and it was filled with uh deployment in northern ireland um doing intelligence in groving road police station in the belfast runway battalion um exercises through the mediterranean into america and in slow time which is the best way to do it and then developed as a marine you're not a marine when you first pass out we mark a time of about four years and then actually you're right because it takes time to develop the skills yeah and make mistakes because you can't learn anything unless you make mistakes that's the only way to learn and then i guess you your career you know a time of world turmoil really your your career came into that fruition at the same time as the world kind of yeah joined the marines at the best time possible uh so it was a slow start where i learned how to be a commando i did a deployment to northern ireland like i said um so i got a gong my first goal northern ireland um and i thought that was going to be the only one and then it wasn't um and then kosovo kicked off and the conga was a thing i never didn't go to those but i then deployed to um telic one with delta company forty commando so you're on um art royal for that hms arc royal yeah yeah which was fantastic i've been on ocean and i've been on galahad and some other ships it's very comfortable living on an aircraft carrier and you then became the weapon system for the ship's captain and it's a different type of shipping in comparison to the troop carrier ones uh and a different type of matlow as well so it's a real it was a real team environment there it was great and obviously the gulf war is going on now troops are massing on the border and you're off the coast tell us about your foray into the into the gulf war then this is war this is really it so i'd say what safe and private ryan and train in the foot oh my god so i was always really concerned of how i was going to react in war because you've never ever been in that situation it's a really niche position to be in and i'm in my mess deck with the rest of delta company in my um fire support group i was called a combat team then and i was watching patriot missiles hit back dad and thinking this is it this is it and everybody really wants to go more than anything else but it still has trepidations about what does that actually mean all the battle prep's done you've been doing loads of fears you've been customizing vehicles the kit's laid out ammunition's been drawn and you're just waiting this was big war against a big enemy you know iraq had the fourth largest land army on the planet and the weapons systems like zetas john can talk all day about this stuff needless to say the royal marines did form part of the invasion of iraq in 2003. not long after that in a vicious fire fight with iraqi soldiers john displayed immense bravery when he rescued fellow marines from delta company they've been surrounded by enemy forces at aluda in iraq in recognition of his gallantry during that battle he was later mentioned in dispatches too much for us to talk about here but that doesn't mean it's not worth listening to you can hear the story of this six hour long firefight in our bonus audio podcast series more tea now back to the story of why john was awarded the conspicuous gallantry cross uh so fallen off the back of italic there was a lot of anxiety from within me i won't say ptsd ptsd is a very specific thing probably too much drinking and working things out in your head about your actions and whether everything you did was moral and correct or not you eventually get to the stage where you're like yes you're all right and that that happened when uh i deployed onto i don't even know what it was it's like herrick ii or herrick three it was before bastion had been built bastion was two burn walls muddy walls of 100 meters and one's 400 meters and yeah tombstone next to that which was a an afghan kandak location with an omelette team which is a military liaison team from the british that would then go with the uh the afghans on patrol so we were given like a 4k by 4k area i went outside that 4k by 4k area a couple of times one of the times was we approached a vehicle which then just put his foot down and then cracked on and we you know we tried to chase after it but with the the weight of the weapon systems we couldn't carry on and that lasted for a couple of months came back after that john completed a jungle warfare instructor course he also took part in arctic trials for the grenade machine gun and the 50 cow the 50 cow is the uk forces biggest machine gun by the time john returned to afghanistan as part of op herrick 5 in 2006 the rules of engagement had changed from card alpha to rule 429 offensive rather than defensive rules of engagement in other words things had got much more aggressive and the royal marines were ordered to take the fight to the taliban john deployed with j company 42 commando to forward operating base price just outside the town of gresk about 50 kilometers east of camp bastian and it was at fob price where john was reunited with an old friend after italic i got drafted to 4-2 commando and we were in the same company together we were a 4-2 commander in m company and that's basically how i met him and i i do remember the first time i met him along with everybody else because they'd just come back from there and i was like you know the new guy that just rocked up to the unit and they'd all they still had this you know unit bond from being away he's like oh who's this new guy he hasn't done anything and you know tomorrow's quite a brush loud character or almost like larger than life and i remember him bowling in and you know shouting at some of the lads or like trying to get him to do something i was like who is this bloke and that was kind of my my first experiences of him yeah the two marines were reunited or not perrick five when ads joined j company at frog price where things were getting busy we were a vehicle-mounted company so we had viking armored fighting vehicles and we had the fsg the fire support group that i was in um was mounted in wimmick so stripped down land rover weapons platforms with gpmgsf for the commander it was 762. javelin missile systems 84 um light anti-tank weapons a grenade machine gun by heckler and clark and we were doing mogs so mobile operations groups so we had a free reign of a lot of our tactical area of operations and we we would go as far south as la sugar we would go as far east as kandahar province we would go far west is bastion and we go as far north as a place called disney which is even further north than mussokai where many people had been we effectively terraformed ground that hadn't been moved across since the russians were there and it was beautiful and barren thought provoking and deadly at the same time so hellman province one of the most beautiful places i've ever been in the world as a surfer i've traveled the globe you know looking for waves outside of the military you know in our r and r periods and stuff but it's rugged it's sharp the people are really interesting it's a culture that you would never really understand unless you're embedded in it you've got this big helmet river that goes right down the middle of the main province and it's lush it's green there's lots of farmland it would remind me a little bit of a scene out of vietnam where you've got all these mountain areas and then you come down into these valleys and you've got these paddy fields that are all laid out by the farmers and it's really diverse it's a beautiful country it's such a shame that it's been war-torn for the last you know 50 to 60 years in early 2007 intelligence reports came in from the area of habibullah just outside the town of grisk there was a 82mm water specialist and a number of bomb makers and in that area there were supposed to be bomb factories so i plan to come up to construct a an operation for a 10-day patrol and we prepared to go out vehicles were loaded up so the whole idea for the first day was to go down into this village we'd secure the area the ground troops would go out and we'd go and speak to the locals but we also knew that it was a bit of no man's land where the taliban were as well to the north of grass there was probably about two to three kilometers of of this no-man's land where there was constant fighting so if we ever came there they'd come down the river the taliban had come down the river and you know you'd be in a firefight so the whole idea was to go down there and see what was going on in the middle of the green belt on the 10th of january 2007 jay company 4-2 commando set off for habibullah in typical commando style they wanted to arrive early while it was still dark i remember we left me and tommo were at the front of the convoy so the way that we we used to work we used to have two wim x so armored uh land rovers with heavy machine guns two at the front two at the rear me and tom were at the front and then you'd have the main body which at the time was vikings which were the the ground troops and so so all the close combat troops a viking is an armored vehicle with rubber tracks which is sort of made of two cabs joined in the middle and as ads explains a wimmick is a stripped-down land rover fully loaded with weapons it had no side armor had no doors had no windscreens been given a little bit of ballistic matting that we'd basically put on the vehicles ourselves with a bit of bungee is like a bit of protection but if he got hit with some 762 or a bigger caliber round it would have gone they would just shattered so the idea was to move into the habitable clay area in the cover of darkness and create the element of surprise which is kind of difficult when you're a mobile operations group because you've got vehicles that literally sound like mythical creatures growling through the night and like discipline you you can close that down but you're making so much of a noise they're going to see you and hear you coming what happened myself and one of my really really good friends a guy called adlyson we were leading the main body of the company which included oc and maine which is a sergeant major and one troop and three troop and two troopers moved away and moved to the south havibolo clay to dominate high ground to provide overwatch and fire support should be needed so it all went to plan until the point we got to the sluice gate and when we got there one of the vikings threw a track we then spent subsequently the next hour and a half two hours waiting for the track to get refitted to the viking to then move on which as anyone will know the element of surprise is completely gone i had this little inkling in my head that something was going to happen now whether it was there or on the way in i don't know i didn't know at the time and in that we lost the element of surprise because the cover of darkness then began to fade you know in the dark dark blues of the beginning of the mornings the sun's coming out comes up and people in rural areas in the middle east wake up very early it's not like us seven o'clock kind of snooze for another hour they're up early when the crow calls and news travels fast oh does it have that does it ever um so either people running to tell somebody else or it's a handheld radio um and you know there'll be sentries out so the the track got fitted we got back onto the road and we were driving up this track now i painted an image these tracks aren't like roads it was like a single dirt track in either side it was angled down to a drainage ditch because we were going down through into farmers fields and this was the only road into this village called halabala clay just on the outskirts as we were coming into it there was a an embankment to our left-hand side and i was thinking in my head this is a perfect place for an ambush as we're moving down the northern canal road i notice a shadow in the darkness on the side so i hold my vehicle got out unattached my radio uh because i had a day sat with the radio swung my gpmg forward so i could get out and then uh approach the uh the shadow which just happened to be um a murdered civilian contractor who'd been working for isaf who'd had his eyes cut out and shot in the in the body and we knew that because he had a little note attached to him by the taliban so our interpreter came forward and then you know said that this person had been executed as a traitor to the people of afghanistan or something along those lines and this is what happens when you collude with isaf i get back into my vehicle i clip my radio back on i lighten up a cigarette and it's just really quiet really really really quiet and i turned to my driver um biggs and i said it's about to kick off and then it just go [ __ ] because of the hewish blue of the sky which is still dark tracer just lights up they initiated the contact we all turned and started engaging this ambush site and god knows how we didn't get hit because we were so close rpgs aks you name it what they had was there say again myself and the other women commanded by my start to engage straight away because we're the primary combat power for the company um there's nothing better than a 50 cal on the battlefield it will shake your world if it's firing at you and it will shake your world if it's firing next year and being a commander so you've got a driver sat here and then your commander you're slightly raised so you can engage with your gpmg but where we were and where the fire was coming from which was um a 270 degree arc so everything off to the north everything off to the east and we were getting combat um engagements from the south as well as well as combat team two started getting engaged from the same rpgs ak-47s uh pkms and 82 mil mortars just all coming in and the whole of the darkness of the night just sort of lighted up and then we started engaging straight away there was up to 14 or 15 different engagement sites all around to our frontage and yeah the world's just erupted my sop anytime somebody fires around at me is to identify a target and just unload a box of 200 rounds straight in that general direction what that does is immediately gets whatever that firing point is to put its head down you're not going to get up from a 200 round burst what that also provides is the time in which it takes for the main weapon system to identify that point of contact that i've hopefully identified correctly because i'm firing that general direction what i believe the point of the target is or we may be able to see other ones and then they'll start opening up and it is just it's very very loud and um it becomes part of your body as it starts to fire now i'm slightly higher so the 50 cal machine gun barrel is here above my head and when a 50 count machine gun barrel fires above your head it's like somebody hitting you on the head with a sledgehammer it is horrible you know i'm engaging the enemy changing boxes putting on link backing bringing out [ __ ] bottles of engine oil to keep these weapons going there's oil all over your hands are greased up your trap your windproof trousers are just soaked through with oil because you've got to keep these these guns singing with the the food that they need to continue a war or this and to save people's lives all the while that this gun's just bang bang um feels like it's hitting me on the head now you know yourself what's your first thing you're taught when you get into an ambush get out of the car get out the killing area 50 cars were going gpmgs were going the drivers had lmgs so they were putting the rounds down could not hear anything through the comms i know tomo had problems with his i try to um provide information back to the company saying contact weighed out but i'm not hearing anything back straight away i know that we've got to provide a safe window for the rest of the riflemen that are embarked in the viking vehicles and the only way you can do that is by pushing further and closer to the enemy which is something i don't need tried to do in every single engagement i was involved in afghanistan even one way like i've lost all the drive to my vehicle i've got them to pull me in on the back of her viking and then i let the handbrake off and we rolled down into closer to the area to my driver's shock and horror it's a tough tough job being a driver for somebody like me in afghanistan because you've literally got a steering wheel it's a tough job anyway it is it is because you've got to concentrate on your driving massively remember i said at the start we had embankments either side we had wimmicks that were top heavy so if we drove down there they would have rolled over i couldn't get any comes back to the lads behind us so i had to get out my vehicle in the middle of this firefight i ran all the way back to the first vehicle and tried to get somebody to open the door to speak to him to tell them we need to get out the killing area i got told we need to maintain our ground and i was like that what like are you smoking crack or what end up running back don't know how i didn't get shot because the rounds were landing all over the floor i didn't have my personal rifle with me because i literally ran back to say something to come back jump back in the vehicle told tommy or try to try to shout to him you know we we can't turn around and we ended up sitting in this killing area and the top covers from all the vehicles were starting to be engaged and and here's one of the things is go back to what i believe is the greatest accumulation of people in any one time is like my relationship with my driver was almost psychic i could just use my hands and you'd know exactly what i meant and he would i would know what he meant and we could talk freely and my gunner knew everything our sops were so slick that we could just fight battles and we knew that every other vehicle could do that as well every other every other team so uh i was like we've got to get closer into it or shout it in or whatever i said to him but we just went straight into the ambush area probably about 150 meters into the ambush area which created a huge amount of space for combat team one to dismount which they did they got out the armored vehicles because there's rpgs flying around and moved down into cover in the ditches whilst we attracted all of the fire from all the firing points so two vehicles with an hour's worth of heavy weapons munitions and small arms munitions just started engaging multiple targets and it was assessed to be 58 different multiple target positions in that battle um continually i'm trying to send messages back to zero continually as a commander i'm like what's yama kaz ammo cass ammo cass and amikaze what's the ammunition state of the weapon how much ammo have we got and i'm in in my mind i'm doing a a resource time equation of how many minutes worth of fire we've got do i need to start controlling the fire because i was the senior the senior commander i would then dictate the controlling the fire from other vehicles unless they then had targets which were exploiting them in which case their commanders would carry on so i'm trying to work this out and i want to know if there's casualties or not i can't hear most of this stuff but what the information i'm getting back from my my brother vehicle my brother wimmick and my gunner and what i'm firing myself i know that we're rapidly going through ammunition in about 10 minutes we use 50 of our combined ammunition 10 days worth 10 days worth of ammunition so we had an hour's worth of fire and we would get an eagle resupply at any one point but now it was worth a fire from 250 50 cal a grenade machine gun two gpmgs two minimize uh six rifles six pistols two milan and loads of loads of grenades um and lightning attack weapons is enough to really really fight a battle especially when you've got the rest of the company which has got extra ammunition as well so within 10 minutes we've gone down to 50 and there's there's multiple targets everywhere my machine gun broke was firing so at such a rate that the rivets literally came out of the the housing for the gun it's fine and automatic and i'm not even pressing the trigger so the handle the firing handle just completely come off so i managed to fix my gun and continue fighting all the barrels of white heart you can effectively see the rounds coming outside the barrel like birds are flying out um getting hit and dying straight in the sky because this wall of steel that's invisible to them um is just taking everything alive out in between the spaces it's going the other way as well it's coming the other way there's dust everywhere it's hitting the vehicles rpgs are exploding either because they've they've reached the 900 meters of their flight path and just detonated or they've been set to detonate as air burst so that you know you've got shrapnel flying all around the air and then rpg's actually hitting the vehicles and something i'd experienced before was when an rpg has exploded close to my radio system it would knock it out so here's me trying to get comms back to zero and trying to get some information and tell them our mistakes and not hearing anything back and i'm thinking oh this is just not my radio out it's not the fill um anyway i get out my vehicle tell the guys i've got to go and get tell speak to zero and get an ammo resupply and then run back along that five meter high duct shoot effectively driver's gotta say with the vehicle primary weapon system operator's gotta stay with the vehicle because that's how it defends itself so they're they're good run to the next vehicle speak to um my brother adds uh and his team and uh tell him i'm going back for a resupply uh this is where my memory sort of sorts of fragments is because i'm literally focused and it becomes this one person this first person sort of position and then just start running back to the company along the road see bullets ricocheting off me hear the zip as they go past you know if you've heard that zip you know what it's like um it's shocking uh and i can hear the experience no it's like you know how close they are oh yeah yeah yeah because you don't hear that when when they're kind of five ten meters away you don't hear that yeah yeah and it's a horrible sound as well it's a it's a it's a horrible sound and also worth pointing out how much how much weight do you carry in oh i don't know a number i should know i just know it's hideous yeah it's hideous so you've got full plate body armor front and back and the sides everybody should wear their sides you've got your helmet which isn't the new lighter kevlar ones it's a an older a mark vi helmet you've got well we were wearing windproof so they're slightly heavier than normal combat order you've got 10 magazines fully bombed up um you've got a rifle you've got another 300 rounds in bandeliers you've got two he grenades and you've got a foss grenade and then i've got my radio i mean so you're talking it's about 50 kilos yeah yeah i imagine maybe a bit more and then as soon as the battle starts your body will just go into uh maximum use of water food adrenaline kicks off so you become hungry thirsty and tired potentially straight away luckily that adrenaline keeps kicking in and you just keep plowing on plus it's all been trained you've been put through stress you've had this before it's not a new thing for your body you're not going to start panicking you're going to keep producing the goods because you know why you're going to keep producing the goods because that battle's got to be fought these have got to be made secure and now my key is to get back to my team that's running low over life safe and resource which is ammunition so you ran back run back and got ma got ammo um and is this when you kind of realized that was working fine so i came back and i started some majors there guy called marty palin big tash very tall uh very stout stoic guy um and he started talking i can't really hear him i'm shouting and i need ammo i need ammo i see all the guys down in the bun line and i'm just stood there and they're like take cover and i'm like [ __ ] just give me the [ __ ] ammo i've already been in this contact it's either gonna hit me or it's not i'm a great believer in destiny and i'm not destined to ever die in war i absolutely believe that so rounds are going down i may have had a cigarette i'm trying to tell them that the radios are out and they're telling me that they've got the messages and then somebody noticed there's blood coming out of my ear and what had happened is the the percussion and force of the ejecting rounds from a 50 car would burst both my eardrums so i couldn't hear anything but the radio was working fine the radio's working fine my whole theory about rpgs taking out of the net was wrong so i've picked up three containers of 50 cal ammunition each um which is like the limit of what can go in each hand they're 16 kilograms each had some belts put over my my neck and then off back back to back into the killing area there must have been other people come with me i don't reck i don't remember who they are but whatever they did was gallant and courageous and what their actions allowed us to fight longer and save other people's lives so um legends as far as i'm concerned straight in dropped the ammunition off and then uh the second vehicle told me that the grenade machine gun had broken because i'd done the trials with heckler and [ __ ] and i taught everyone in the company the gmg i i was the best person to fix the the gun so i jumped up on the onto the second wagon spoke to the gunner what's happening tells me i'm cocking it and it's not firing off and i was like get out the way then so he climbs out and then i get behind the gun so you've got this burn bun line of the canal road that's 500 meter uh sorry five meters above um the irrigation ditches and then you've got a two and a half meter wimmick and then you've got a gmg on top of that which is about a meter a meter and a half maybe so you're exposed so top gunners are brave brave people they've got face plates they can easily get shot in the face and then they just become a distant memory in people's lives so i i test the weapon it doesn't work i strip it down and then one of the recoil springs a little pin that holds these big powerful springs had snapped i was like oh my god where am i going to get that from because it's hard steel so i get this 14 gauge out feed it through wrap it round put it in load a belt top cover down [ __ ] it doesn't fire off [ __ ] it again doesn't fire off strip the weapon down again the 14 gauge hadn't stuck do the same thing again my my hands are just full of omd 90 engine oil really really thick engine all the kind that you put in your car so everything's slipping i'm trying i've got the the guts here i'm pushing on [ __ ] bullets flying everywhere rpg is exploding 50 cows going off gpmg's firing the nets going somewhere that i can't hear crazy there's 80 more 82mm waters coming in and i try and feed it to fix it again put it in no do it a third time and it fixes and we can continue firing and then i get back out and get into my vehicle that that lasts for four hours it's just find an enemy shoot it find an enemy shoot him find an enemy shoot him find enemy shooting move move move as much as you can we're we're effectively stuck there and all we'll have to do is just get another ammunition resupply and do you think there's um wall marines in particular you have this commando spirit i mean i've worked with lots of different members of the armed forces but the commando spirit always seems to be something a little bit extra a little add-on i think there's very many similarities between lots of different organizations and armed armed i think our sense of humor is a similar that dark sense humor which is key to the function of of us in these conflict areas but what we do is we practice and train practice and train practice and training practice and training and i was talking to one of my friends about this it's because i'm leaving soon i'm leaving the military i've got a month left and you take this you take this civilian oh i'm a civilian and then you then you put them through commander training and six months of intense command of training you fundamentally change who that person is and how they act and they become altruistic and they want to please everybody around them in that organization who want to please them and then you continue that excellence integrity honesty self-discipline these are our commando values and we stick to them yeah you might get drunk and you might mess you might maybe shy away from them but when things get serious that's what we stick to and i guess that's what when it matters absolutely everyone can have fun and joke around but you put your serious head on when things get serious you be a grown-up you take the responsibility of yourself and everybody else around you that's the only way that you'll ever make a difference in the world is by taking responsibility for everybody so at the end of your four hours how did that kind of situation wrap so we won the fire fight hooray we won the fire fight um 58 um separate um contact locations either killed kazivac by their own forces or extracted under an overwhelming weight of fire from from us uh but we won the battle what that allowed is allowed the members of one troop rifleman to get out d-bus and to do what we were going to do at night which was to exploit and secure that area of habibal accolade bombs found bombs made of nails and pressure cookers multiple ones multiple munitions mortars radios icom scanners icon scanner brilliant get the frequency of them you start getting information in you'll start to understand the pattern of life and that would get fed back through the intelligence chain and the rnp chain so that you start to build up a picture of who they're essentially as far as your things the criminal so you ended up um having to withdraw back to price after that because you'd used to your ammo yep so we'd used ten days worth of supplies um in in a written a four hour period uh the company decided can we come out and decide that we were going to reconstitute back to full price um and bomb up refuel up shake out and then then go again and we got back to price and just went through the same process that we would always go through i went to see the the medical officer about my ears because they were ringing out just a massive headache and i couldn't hear much and he told me that i'd burst my eardrums or perfectly remembering to my eardrums and that i wasn't to go back out on patrol which was like a really hard part of the day because but it wasn't the end of your tour i guess no i guess it could have been no it could have been the end there but it wasn't you got so so i mean i stayed back and they went on patrol which was heartbreaking um but then we can we just continued yeah um and ultimately you were later informed you're going to be awarded the conspicuous gallantry cross i said at the start you're the 24th recipient of that medal it's actually one of the rarest medals that we have as a nation it's also the second highest award for gallantry the victoria cross being the highest the 23rd award is a unit award i don't know if you know that which makes you actually the 23rd individual recipient i think it was a royal irish or awarded it as a unit again for actions in afghanistan how does that feel when you kind of get given that news well i've had it before we've been called to a parade at stonehouse which is our hq and then somebody came up and said oh the rsm wants to see you you're in loads of trouble and i was like well i'll cheat no we're not um and then we we moved into the officer's mess and then i saw the blue envelopes that you get when you get told that you're going to be given a guarantee award and that and i thought oh my god because it was a primed time for gallantry and marines don't really pick each other up and not a lot of wars get given out to marines so they make that makes it extra special just like when i opened my letter for mentioned dispatches i opened this letter with no expectation i have to smile because it's like yeah it's a big deal it is a big deal a big little kid from a council estate could have gone my life could have gone so many different ways opened up and it was like boom conspicuous gallantry costs geez wow uh more so was the best part was taking my mom to buckingham palace where she sat down with lords and ladies and applaud her son who was so when what happens in an investiture is you have nights and dames and people giving awards for mbes and obs and they all go through and then they sit down and then they they sit down in recognition of those who have won awards for military action so you line up and when you go through with military action it's the highest receiving award that goes first so i was the first person in the line and um my mum got to sit next to the great and the good of this nation and watch her little boy uh stand in front of him i see the queen elizabeth ii and have a great award pinned to his chest for being part of a a fantastic group of brave men who stood in the face of chaos and darkness and said that we will bring light in a sort of narrative way we'll we will protect the people around us and we won't won't let you conquer us so john thompson is a extrovert character larger than life but very humble with it as well he's courageous but he's also the type of person that if you get on the wrong side of him he'll tell you about it as well which i think is a really good character trait especially when you're in an environment that we've been involved in afghanistan and iraq it's kind of like the evolution of of of how your personality develops out of you know ten years of fought in different different conflicts um he's also a family man now um he's his entire concept of the way that he was as a as a commander on the ground to where he is now has has developed significantly um and his and his focus in life has changed as well he's always had the respect of the lads he's always led from the front as well so whether he has taken control as a point man to set an example to the rest of his lads section troop or whatever he's been involved in to also being really confident when you're in o groups before you go out on a mission to say actually no we can't do that or yes we can do that and speaking up for for the lads as well which which makes him a really strong bold character in my opinion thomas citation is an extraordinary read here's an extra this contact was the fiercest the company had endured during the six-month tour that mission success was achieved and no friendly casualties were sustained was attributable to the fortitude bravery and level-headedness of thompson in the face of overwhelming enemy fire he displayed gallantry determination outstanding professionalism and exceptional leadership skills far beyond anything expected or imagined throughout the entire operation [Music] this particular act of bravery led to the defeat of an overwhelming number of taliban and was executed without any thought for his own safety universally respected and revered he has been key to the success and morale of his company through his actions many lives have been saved the sum of all thompson's repeated bravery and selflessness in the face of the enemy is extraordinary and worthy of the highest public recognition [Music] [Music] what's next i want a job i want somebody to give me a job um my my main aim now is um i don't want to go anywhere i don't want to do anything apart from hug and love my children and watch them grow i also want to take all of my experience and what i've been told is inspirational leadership and understanding me and taking myself from the darkest parts of my life and the lessons that i use in order to bring myself away from the abyss to a happy balanced man to help other people [Music] you

Channel: BFBS Creative

Views: 257,834

Keywords: tea and medals, tea & medals, royal marines, Royal Navy Royal Marines, marines, afghan, afghanistan, taliban, john thompson, darren coventry, bfbs, bfbs creative, cgc, conspicuous gallantry cross

Id: BOt9wKRF564

Length: 45min 34sec (2734 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 24 2022