SAS Soldier - The Longest Escape - Chris Ryan Tells His Story

you can now follow me and all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live first night on the run we did 70 kilometers about 50 miles and we were carrying our bell kids which was about 50 pounds i burnt my feet because we were really hammering it so the blisters then got infected and i was losing weight rapidly every day you're lying there just freaking freezing and no sleep and then at night i could start moving and two guys marched me out into a car they didn't tell me where they were taking me or anything and they took me out to the middle of the desert and there was a pre-arranged rv with the secret police and that's when this guy put the put the gun to my head i ended up in a hospital in london and because i drank some chemicals and they think um the chemicals have done something to me because i get this patch and it used to come up on my forehead but it travels around my body and the people that did the tests on me typical of the army they said we didn't find anything and as i was leaving they said do you have any family i went yeah i've got a daughter and he said are you thinking about having any other children and i went here he went i wouldn't and then i was like why not he went we don't know what you've got my daughter was targeted she had two policemen on a doorstep for two years i there was a there was a team of guys that were gonna come along you know on video and probably uh take a head off and that was that was that was um scotland yard anti-terror branch that that cracked it got it in i was in america in my house in america and i got a phone call and i thought they were going to tell me that there's another you know following me and it wasn't it said your daughter's being green lit boomerang and today's guest will get sas soldier and alpha chris ryan how are you doing boy how are you not too bad after that walk from the wrong station first and foremost thanks for coming on the show no no we'll promote your your new book straight away but you're an offer of 74 books so i would be here all day if i was to promote all them but yeah chris ryan man hunter this is a new one what's this about chris well it's basically um last year uh when when i started to ride it um you know as you've said 74 um books i wanted to do something that was different and i just felt you know i thought back to when i was a kid in the spaghetti movies and they you know the concept of that and i just thought right i'm going to write a book but it's going to have the best battle scene ever at the end where it's right down to the last bullet and uh some of my friends up in newcastle you know they're they're you know high level organized crime so you know you see it you know that side of life um and how they become legitimized and then become property dealers have businesses and stuff like that so it all starts off say modern day in london and then moves moves into africa and as the story pans out and the british government has um interest in a fictitious um part of the continent and basically it's mineral rights and now this is very close to fact and at the end there's a massive fire fight and like say i won awards through the the writing world for that fire fight and it came down to a few firefights that actually happened one being in tora bora where the guys were like fixing bayonets um i've been in quite a few fire fights where yeah you know you're down your last magazine and you think we're gonna be [ __ ] here and um just something about the regiment that seemed to pull that like rabbit out the hat at the last minute and there is you know there's countless other um actions that they they carried out the probably the most famous one was in murbat where there was a bunch of guys that have fought and um they were fighting off uh 250 um rebels there's only about eight of them um one guy manned a 25 pounder which usually takes five guys to um to operate he was doing it by himself he got his jaw shot off he wrapped you know a rag around his face carried on firing it the other guys were getting shot and wounded and they overcame um you know 250 50 guys so it it's in that spirit um this this story where can people buy your books first of all um well obviously they can order it from any good independent or amazon um any bookseller will hold it but amazon's the quickest way but um i would say support your um your independence every every every town village should have one um and then uh yeah online good i've watched many videos some [ __ ] fascinating stories and they're like um you're the you break the world record for it was not even a world record it's just a mad record actually too you are the longest escape in history you walked nearly 200 miles seven days eight nights kind of thing yeah through the desert and you survive like that's a my story but we'll touch on all that but first of all i'll but firstly i always like to go back to start with my guests where you grew up how it all began well my i was born in a place called concert which um my parents they were in my father was in the um building trade uh we we didn't have a pot piss in um you know i would say we we were we're in a loving environment but very poor you know no holidays or anything like that clothes were always like hand downs but back in them days you know it was before computers the internet or anything so you know i'd spend my time outside my father showed me how to catch say rabbits birds and stuff like that to eat um and stuff so i spent a lot of time just running around the moors around the northeast um i've got two brothers one he didn't want anything to do with the army he's got a garage he does his own thing another brother who's still in the parachute regiment uh he got commissioned and you know he's quite high up in in the rank side all i wanted to do was um was travel and i squandered my school life i i was a a product of when schools went from grammar from secondary schools to grammar schools into comprehensive and it was a bad period of time because the grammar school teachers hated the second secondary modern teachers and they just didn't didn't get on well i i used that discord so i could sit in a class of 30 keep my head down and nobody would ask me a question and i was just happy and i'd be looking out thinking the best way for me to do anything or to fulfill my dreams was to join the army and in them days we had bases in you know germany all around the world and i thought i'd get the same places now i left joined the army and the first thing i realized is i'd squandered my education and within the army to get rank you have to you have to go through the educational process so again the difference being in the army you can't just [ __ ] somebody off and if you if you don't work you're not going to get promoted and chances are being in the ses you're going to get kicked out now several things happened i'd been in the in the sas for um i think two or three years and um i was picked to be sent off to go to germany to do the german alpine guides course which is a it's a two-year course and you have to you have to be able to speak german write german uh read german uh you're gonna wear a german uniform and everything is in german so they sent me down to beckinsfield uh which has a the british army language lab i was put into a class with colonels and other high-ranking officers who were getting ready to go to germany to take over their regiments and they'd spent loads of time in germany so their german was really you know at a high level i got in there and i was like i can't keep up so i phoned my sergeant major up in hereford and i said yeah listen it might be better if you um send somebody else up to do this course because um i i'm finding this language really hard and he went if you don't pass don't come back and just put the phone down on me how's that [ __ ] also thankfully the educational officer he being an ex-teacher i said what you i'm having problems here he said yes because your english grammar isn't is you know that of a three-year-old so he said if you want he said it's not going to be easy um you can after six o'clock after after work you can come to the house my wife and i will run you through english grammar um it'll be up to about 11 12 o'clock we'll set you um you know homework so i was living in the block in beckham's field and i think i was running on about two or three hours per day it was the hardest i've ever worked mentally but i passed that language course then i went on to go over to germany and pass the the alpine guides course which again is is the it's the highest level of any mountaineering course because again you're you're a guide um you have to know the makeup of weather the makeup of snow prediction everything else that's before you even strap a set of skis on or you know a climbing harness rescues working with helicopters in the mountains uh everything so it was a very fulfilling course um but from a mental side i knew if i set my mind to something i could do it i just been a lazy bastard when i was at school and and the teachers didn't give a [ __ ] so this is something we can go on to later on i've got a passion about my children's books and whenever i go into a school and i meet a kid 14 to 16. i basically see myself when he when he says he's never read a book and he can't read and i i you know i'm in a privileged position so i try to focus that and promote reading within you know the age groups of say 12 to 16 um and push kids because when they come out now if they can't read them with a captain house chance you know unless they've got a silver spoon sticking out you know the mouth um so all of this this writing melody and my background in the ses changed my life and changed my thought process you know it wasn't just about you know bringing out best sellers that have been made into tv long-running tv series it's deeper than that you can actually help young kids from deprived areas and get them to focus because a lot of young kids when they're in the classroom and if they come from a really shitty area people are looking down at them you know they they know that yet you know you haven't got any money and and this in the stigmatized they know there's no books in the house and they can just cast them off and it's like no screw that you know every kid deserves a chance yeah definitely so you joined dan mate 16 i joined what happened was um i i was going to join as a junior soldier and i got jaundice so my entry into the um into the military was um halted for a year and once i got over that well during that period my cousin he was in the territorial ses and he said to me just come up there and he said you know you can um you can do selection when you're old enough um and and crack on now this is before the embassy anything nobody really knew we had an sas unless you were in the military so i i joined that and it was a probably a mistake i spent too long there i was there for four years and then what i had to do is apply to join the parachute regiment and then from the parachute regiment join two to ses and how long did it take to join it yes yes well it's a six month process and i'm lucky because my last two years spent in the regiment after spending 10 i was an instructor running um sas selection so i've seen selection from both sides of the fence like i said it's a six month process it's broken down into segments and it's nothing like that shite that's on tv i can tell you know during that six six months process you'll never get an instructor scream at you shout at you or try to motivate you the first phase is what they call the hills phase this is where we take the soldiers up as individuals onto the brecon beacons and um they're they're set marches like walks they get longer they have the weight the carrying gets heavier but they're always by themselves and there's loads of different routes so they can't follow one another so after that period there's test week which is a set of set marches ending in a 65k march called long drag the successful guys after that have proven that they can push themselves under audio's conditions the next thing is we then take them to the jungle for five to six weeks but this time we put them into patrols and we're looking at them as are they a team player can they mix with five of the strangers and come to this unit and this as an instructor this is where you start seeing to guys souls because the jungle is actually harder than the hills phase because it's a hostile environment as soon as you get under the canopy it's a it's a a primary jungle it's hot you're either walking up uphill or downhill you're always soaking whether it's crossing rivers or just sweating um you're carrying heavy loads you're under a lot of pressure and everything in there wants to either bury its head into you bite you or scratch you so a lot of guys get in there and they become claustrophobic and they can't think about the tasks at hand they just see this green curtain in front of them so you could be here just looks exactly the same you walk all day and you get maybe four or five k's over there you're knackered and it looks exactly the same and everything is twice as hard in the jungle you have to be very careful with your own personal admin if you don't look at yourself look after yourself your body starts falling to pieces so during that period we've only probably gone into the jungle with 45 guys and we started on the hills with 200. you know half of these half of these guys are going to stick their hand up and say it's not from not for me some of them that don't you know they're not going to pass so you know you're always making notes and i used to be fair as an instructor in the in under the trees if i had a certain individual and i wasn't sure what i would do is get them moved into another patrol so somebody else could look at him just to make sure it wasn't a personality um you know problem because we all have friends or we all know people but you don't like them and there's you you know for no reason and you just think i'll just check double check on this kid the next phase after that is combat survival again we get the guys and we teach them all the things they need to know in terms of survival and how to conduct conduct themselves after capture that's resistance to interrogation and various things next phase after that is um continuation training so this is where now we've got to teach soldiers who are used to carrying a weapon in a uniform how to carry a weapon in civic clothes and then say walk in your neighborhood or my neighborhood and not stand out how to blend in and to be a grey man whilst you know they're on the radio they're following somebody um and that came from say like a northern ireland type of scenario now they do other scenarios that are more fitting like working in london maybe following a terror cell to know that they've got to get in close to you know put one into their head um other technical equipment now listening devices drones or the various or the various kit so at the end you know it's six months and uh you're usually left with anything from five to twelve guys and uh they're then sent off to one of the four squadrons and basically you you're the new guy in the squadron but you have to be capable enough to fit in as in you know what the score is um a good friend of mine brothers he passed into the regiment and b squadron was up in afghanistan but up country and this lad he was flown out um to join the squadron but he was at basra then he had a a two-day road journey to get to the squadron and he had a bunch of afghan soldiers well on the first day he was ambushed and he was in an ambush for two days conducting like this operation where he's having to call in fast air to to drop audience ordnance bring in other troops to to orchestrate this whole attack so the guys have to be top notch once they pass selection do you know also when you're giving them the course and putting them through their paces do you know from day one who's got a good chance of passing in the jungle i know within i would say a week of how they conduct themselves and there's a couple of little tests i would do with them that i wouldn't you know it's not rocket science there's an exercise the hardest thing in the jungle is navigating to know where you are because you can't see nothing so everything's done by pacing and it's ridge lines and river junctions and things like that so there's a certain skill to it so what i would do is take the guys out and we'd do it tactically so we're moving slowly er you know everybody getting into fire positions stuff like that get into a lying up position and they run through all the drills and then i would say right fellas tomorrow we're going to just do some semi-tack stuff um and i will give you start giving your tips and stuff like that but but i want you up at 3 o'clock in the morning on the track now when you're in the jungle in the in the in the light goes down it's like being locked in a room without any windows and somebody puts a blanket over your head now the guys have to then put the hammock up they have to put the poncho up they have to sort the food out and everything else so that means they're emptying their rucksack and various other things so it would get get them up at three o'clock pitch black pack the kit get them on the track i would walk them for about 200 meters then just stop them and say right use lots sit down get yourself a brew on get something to eat and then i'd walk down to the basha site so this used to crack me up you get to see one batch of sight so you find a pair of socks you get over here you find some paper you find something else you'll find a bit of equipment you'll find maybe a map like a a rifle magazine so then i go back and i'm like whose is this you know that's him so there's a lot of bollockings and then it's like you then get to see how a guy takes a bollocking because nobody likes being told you know that they're an idiot and that their their shit's not together and it's how they affect them and whether they can get over it but then you look at their attitude the way they start looking at you and then the other thing that i forgot to say as well what i do is when i get them in to that lup point i will just say i'm going back to base for an hour and i'll be back now that patrol are supposed to work together and that means if you're the radio operator you've got to set up your radio get your antenna out and and then come like write a message out and stuff like that so what should be happening is your one of the lads on patrol should be coming to you asking you to give give you his hammock in his poncho so as you're working on the radio he's putting your bedding up another guy should be coming in saying give us your score from really together so he's cooking tea as you're sending that message so the patrol's working but you can all i guarantee you'll always get one guy who will slope off and he just gets his hammock up gets his scoff on and he thinks he's in bed now for an extra hours kip because he's just looked after himself then as soon as i identify that person when you watch them as a patrol working he'll always stand out like a dog like a dog's bollock and you know he's not working with it and the more you watch the more things you see and then at the end you know you're making notes and stuff like that and during the period of time they'll come up to you and they'll just say you know i'm gonna rap the funniest one was we went out on a three-day um it was actually a three-day turnaround navics so we walked for three days just directly out into the middle of the jungle and i could see this kid he was gonna rap and uh sure enough the end of the day came up and he went uh stuff i've had enough i want just sit over there and take five minutes i'll give you five minutes to think about it and uh came back you went no i want to rap i went okay break your weapon unload your weapon and uh break it up because this [ __ ] now he's got a live round up the spout like you know and he could get pissed off with me so just break your weapon down pack it up in your bag and then he said well what happens now um i said you you're off and he went well how am i getting back you know the same way you got here mate you're going to walk and then he realized and it's happened a couple of times they realized then they'd walked out thinking they're going to rap but never thinking i'll still have to walk back so if he kept his mouth shut and just walked back you'd have still been in you know so from a mental point of view you see guys make some really stupid decisions especially when they're exhausted and tired and they think a spider's around the corner or snakes around the corner so the jungle is a great place to be i love it because as soon as i get in the jungle i know i can step two meters away from you and you wouldn't be able to see me and i can hide and and when you consider my escape invasion was on a flat [ __ ] desert floor flat as this thing where there was no [ __ ] hiding the jungle to me is heaven i don't give a [ __ ] i don't give a [ __ ] i don't give a monkeys if i've got um ticks on me bites leeches whatever they can chew away as much as they want i know i'm safe um whereas in the desert there's no way to hide is that what a lot of people break in the jungle yeah is that the main yeah when you consider these guys are the fittest from the course because they've passed the first phase they get in the jungle and they just rap and they let themselves and it shows mental weakness that they're you know they're not focused and you know certain in all shapes and sizes you know you can't just say he's a big lad like yourself he's a big unit he'll be fine it's all shapes and sizes now another one and on my selection which was unusual during the resistance to interrogation now you've had a hard week on the run no food and living in just your clothes piss wet through and sometimes it's all around scotland and further down to northumberland so yeah you're knackered and then you go into a resistance to interrogation for 30 36 hours and you get in you get it's it's very realistic you also you're subjected to sleep deprivation which really screws your mind up but you're interviewed by different people and you'll usually get a guy who looks decent he'll ask you nice questions and he'll say if you're saying this piece of paper i'll give you this bar of chocolate you get a right nasty looking guy who's going to threaten you you know he's going to knock your head in you'll get an old guy who will just keep asking you the same question and he it's a false he puts you in a false sense of security because you think he's a dithering old guy and then you get a woman and i'll tell you what you go into a room as big as this table and behind you and the woman's there there's two guards behind you and there's cameras and what it is is all the other interrogators are watching your reaction and she's listening to them and they do an analysis on you so first thing she does is uh get your overalls off so you're freezing cold so your dick's disappeared and she laughs like that she's like that is that what's that what are you going to do with that well i mean to me i'm just like just blank it zone it out and you're there because you can't talk can't you you can only say your name rank and number that's it and i'm thinking they can punch the [ __ ] out of me because they can't kill me because it's an exercise but your head starts to get twisted and these guys are in foreign uniforms and stuff and you're thinking is this real and you start questioning yourself well these lads one lad he was a big old paratrooper being down south he launched himself over the table to knock this bird's head in and obviously the guards pulled him down he was off selection and he'd done all the work on the hills done all the work in the jungle and then another guy did it and she had seven guys crack under an interrogation and it's it is it's a it's a mental state and it's it's hard to tell you i mean if you if you were doing something psychedelic you know there isn't uh like saying gnomes running around the floor but they're there that's like not being on drugs but it's like being on drugs because you haven't slept for maybe three or four days and then they when you're in the when you're in the bag in the pen you're in stress positions with being subject to white noise and it really like screws your head um in a big way and that's the easiest way to interrogate anybody is first of all keep them up for a week and then they'll start seeing things they'll hear voices and then you throw a bit of waterboarding and they'll be [ __ ] singing like a budgie i don't know if this is true but i used to watch them i don't know what film it was but these i think they used to put the soldiers under the water but it used to just tap on the top of their head like that yeah it's just to make your own [ __ ] yeah you can it's making anybody uncomfortable because the white noise it's it's a like non-evasive in terms of it's not being hit with a stick because the good thing is somebody's hitting hitting you with a stick and i'm sure you've had a fair few beatens when they're hitting you you grit your teeth and say go on your bastard you know and it it it gets your adrenaline up it gets everything up and you you're getting ready to go back when nobody's touching you and your your back's breaking your arms are breaking or you're in a sitting position with your hands and your head and then somebody's pouring water over you just to make you cold and you're freezing and that it just it it wears you away so that's the mental torture not the physical yeah and it's it's you're kept in a room under their control all i did was 36 hours you know i know it's 36 hours you don't know how far in you are how far you know you've got to go in fact you're that screwed before you go in on the exercise because it's a week on the run and being chased by say infantry units with dog teams so you might have had about three or four beatens during that period um they said you when you finish um it'll be the sergeant major of training when you'll have a white armband on and he'll he'll get you out the room and sure enough this guy don came and he went jordy that's it i didn't believe him i'm like this is a [ __ ] trick and i sat outside on the floor and he said are you all right yet and i was like wouldn't speak to him and it took me about three hours until other guys were coming out of the pen and we're all sat together because you're that aware that this could be a setup but it wasn't you know but that's how much it screws your head yeah how important is that going through that training and those exercises for if you ever do get captured well it is important but um the guys that were captured when i was on the run another element came in and it was down to the telephone now what you've got to do is or what we know is you've got to hold out for a minimum of 12 hours and the information that you have will be rendered useless so it means you're going to take a beating you know for a good period of time the the way of soldiering now is has changed quite a lot because they have tracking devices on them so everybody knows oh they're being captured you've got like clear comms you've got this and that but some of my friends the iraqis who were in interrogating them and like beating them had been to sandhurst and they had friends who were in the british army so one guy's in front of an iraqi interrogator and he said so what's your regiment and he went parachute regiment he knew he was sas but he just said you know parachute regiment and he went right okay who's your uh company commander and you remember you don't know if you're going to get around in the back of your head and stuff like that so it was you know it's tense uh but then the iraqi to turn around and go yeah you your company commander said josh josh thomas i was in sandisk with a man i know his wife julie and they've got two kids and it's nearly bringing in that relationship that he knows people that you know and you think where is this leaving me so the dynamics of interrogation have changed waterboarding's a very good tool um because not many people will get through that so no it's just you've got to hold out for basically when you get caught you've just got to remember i'll hold out for as long as i can and you know that back at base they're wiping the slate clean of anything that you were doing or any codes you may have any locations um because they're going to get they're going to get that information the job these are the tough bastards the job there's kind of job these are the other in the [ __ ] and the glass regions are quite i know a lot of scottish past scs course why is that always well i think with my my best friend i was out with him the other day um he came from a tenement in in edinburgh and all he single parent just wanted to get out get out because it was in a really rough end of edinburgh he wanted to get out my mates uh one of the lads i mean he was verging on like a psycho he his dad ran a um an abattoir in glasgow and he wanted to you know just get away from the place um a lot of lads didn't have a pot to piss in you know they come from very similar backgrounds and this is why the army has a problem when lads were leaving the army over the last 20 years because of the stresses that they were under you know because we're embedded in iraq and afghanistan and it went on for a hell of a lot long time a lot of them don't have any families and you know they either some of them were orphans some of them single parents they can't go back or whatever and they end up on the on the streets homeless because they don't have that network plus the fact some of them were going home and they their mates didn't understand you know what that what they've been through or what they've seen i mean there's a lot of bluffing as well going on and [ __ ] but um on the whole yeah guys come from checkered backgrounds i mean i can remember and this is i swear to god this is true it was a guy i'm not saying the village up in in scotland but he came from scotland sat round and somebody started on about why you know we joined and i said to travel one me mate he said he wanted to get out the tenement because it was shite somebody else said [ __ ] um there was no prospects and one of the lads said my dad used to shag me and the conversation stopped and i was waiting for like the punch line is it like like a joke and he went his next thing was he went and me mother knew and she didn't stop him so he said i left at 16 to join the marines and that was like that's the end of that conversation but we all probably know people who's been abused or whether it's just physically or you know like the other side and they want to get into an organization that's got a family and then all their mates are there but some of these young kids you know that were subject to that sort of thing they joined the army at a time where you were going to be in iraq or afghanistan you're going to see your mates getting slaughtered and all the rest of it and not all of them could you know endure that that type of pressure and then they're caught between you know the devil in the deep blue sea do they go back to that you know shite that drove them away there or or what do they do and and another thing with soldiers you're very you're very much protected being in that organization your wage is paid into the bank somebody gives you a uniform wednesday is like fizz day the doctor's there the dentist is there whenever you want you've got a bunk you've got a room you get help you get fed everything's done for you all of a sudden when you're pushed out into severe street it's not so easy as being in the military and you've got to fight you know and it's it's really hard to do anything and then they've left an organization because they've left an organization where they think they're at the top of the game and all of a sudden they get out and they haven't got it they haven't got a job and they're not at the top of the game and it's it's it's difficult it's challenging because there's no structure involved yes the people stopped back in the old habits but do you tend to see a lot of people who pass the toughest courses are the ones who've come from trauma and get nothing to lose yeah a lot of them um i would say all my mates came from um very similar backgrounds um in fact it was just the officers who had privileged backgrounds all the guys just came usually council houses um and you know certainly not wealthy or anything like that and and that shows um it shows a lot with the guys butt them guys when you when you work in a team there's something in you'll you'll understand this it's being street wise it's street savvy you can walk into a bar and a [ __ ] guy is looking at you you know it's either going to kick off and you'll probably have a number of things you're going to do is what's around there's either a bottle layer there's a chair there or there's an escape route there like say an officer that's been to a privileged background he'll wander in there and he'll not recognize that this guy's clocked him for whatever reason or something's not right or that person shouldn't be in here for whatever reason it's like being on a street you walk down a street and you're making assumptions without you even knowing you're making assumptions you know when sadly when them attacks happened on london bridge people have got their heads down they're walking on the wrong side of the road first of all because the cars coming from behind them they're on they've got their ear plugs in they're reading emails and then they get they get flattened or when the attacks were going on and people were stabbing and people's running towards them not knowing who the attackers are i think when you've come from a certain type of background you read the streets and you can read where it could all go wrong and we used to do that you know across the water you can walk around and you just look at somebody the way he's dressed and i can't i can't say exactly what it is but you just know something's wrong i look at people and if they're looking at you it could just be somebody like looks and then looks away but if you if he's still looking at you immediately look at his hands and then how he's dressed and you know what what interest has he got with me now i went through a period of time where i was doing lots of tv work but i never felt you know i was i was known so i was in a bar with my brother in newcastle and two guys looking at you yeah and i felt eternally shamed your mother was in hospital she was going down with cancer so it wasn't the best it wasn't the best times for me that's the only thing and uh these two guys and i said that my brother uh keith i went it's going to kick off in a minute mate and he's a handy fog and he went who i said there's two across there um and um it's going to [ __ ] go and i said here here we go and they started walking over so i just went straight over i went what the [ __ ] you looking at like that and before i was there [ __ ] these two guys they were lovely and they said oh we thought you were that guy chris ryan off tv uh we've been watching we've been we've just been thinking uh would it be all right to come over and talk here i said yeah listen i'm sorry and i'm like my mother's in hospital then i'm talking to these guys about my mother in hospital and i didn't want to so there's that that sort of thing but usually walking around you get that you get that skill set and all my mates i know they've all got it see when you pass this course did you see a change in your straight away do you not notice those changes yourself um no i mean because i was big into my fizz then um you think you know the world's at your feet um and probably do a few stupid things it probably wasn't until i had my daughter um i was you know i was i wasn't as carefree um in terms of looking after myself whether diving out of a helicopter you know free falling or fast roping you would you would look at life slightly different but i knew um i wouldn't be one of these old guys hanging on in there swinging the lamp and hanging on to dear life you've definitely got a shelf life to do that job and it's it's around 35 to 40 and you should be like you should be leaving yeah what was your first mission once you became a sss well we would do cover um when um there was an operation in northern ireland we were when we were on the anti-terrorist team we'd head over and to do that and we were mobilized to uh go there uh mobilized to go to uh in then the gulf kicked off um to go out there and then after the gulf they sent me out to zaire to evacuate the british embassy and i think that's when i probably had some like say mental problems what we're um well obviously that thing in iraq it had taken its toll but there was no no no such thing as ptsd or you know anything like that and i just thought you know i didn't really see see a problem because when you've got mental illness you're looking through the same set of eyes but it's your friends who say something something's changed with you and usually it's it's down to violence wanting a scrap just being a moody bastard um not having not tolerating fools and also being driven so we're pushing yourself to stupid limits so you know if if we were doing anything physical i'd i'd want to you know be the the guy at the top if it was something mental then i had to do that and it manifests itself in in different ways some guys used to get divorced straight away um some guys would be you know take the bottle drinking um and then others would just you know sit on it there was a lot of suicides went through a patch of quite a few suicides guy killing killing themselves um and then other guys get become like junkies and my mate from edinburgh he started after he left the regiment he started his own private military contracting company made millions you know lots of money but again he was also on the ground he'd phone us up and i doesn't matter where i was in the world he's like he's laughing at the other end of the phone they're in say his last phone call was he was in a police station and he said oh we're brassing these uh these guys up and you could hear the machine guns firing the um firing fire orders coming out you know and i'm like that john you're going to be the you know the richest man in the graveyard you need to [ __ ] get out of there but he was he was addicted to it the adrenaline that's just the mad thing though that you're training these people to be the toughest people on the planet the fittest the strongest but yeah the brain's a powerful thing that if it sees trauma it doesn't matter how hard you train like it once it goes it goes and you've seen that with like i say these guys who are the elite of the elite who are willing to go anywhere in the world to die for a cause to try and save lives but as soon as they see trauma because it's not a humane thing to see no you get well you get um you get over it um and you become gay over that though or the forgetta forget it you put it in a box yeah you desensitize from it and i suppose i was really desensitized to the point where if a guy was my age when i say maybe 30 32 said oh me um feeling a bit chipped me mother died or my dad died you know and i'm like okay well they're going to die anyway and that's not that's yeah but and that's you know that's after seeing people dead i mean i was in zaire watching kids starve to death didn't give up monkeys you know it's that's it so you get that desensitization which isn't nice and it's it's it's not good um so you have that and like i went to 18 funerals in my 10 years in the ses 18 guys and uh hot like three of them i i was on selection with passed into the regiment with another gun a bunch of them used to drink with them all the time you'd feel sad for the the day when you found out that they died you're like ah you know down out you have your funeral and then it's back to work and that's it but what happened with me the first guy i passed into the regiment was a lad called fergus rennie and he was a very professional soldier he was the first ses soldier to be killed in bosnia and um i was sat in the house and uh the guard when i came through the guard room one of the lads phoned us up and said just to let you know fergus is um has been killed and that had a different effect it was nearly like losing a child not that i have but the only way i can explain it and it had a profound effect on me because i knew that kid inside out from being his instructor throughout selection and a couple of other things i could have sacked him he did a couple of things that if i'd been harsh i could have sacked him and he wouldn't have been in the ses and i was wrapped with guilt for many years thinking that kid would still be alive he wouldn't have been a happy one for not passing selection but yeah he had a different different effect on me and he was part of the reason i left the regiment um and then subsequently over the years five other guys died that i took through selection but i mean that's where you've got to grip yourself and think well wait a minute they were chasing their dreams you were just a conduit that you know facilitate them into the regiment you know their lives aren't on you know my responsibility but when you know them that well and you've seen them on their knees you know [ __ ] breaking and then you realize that they're just you know they've been killed it's it's not a good feeling yeah how does that affect relationships and stuff then becoming cold or do you still have some emotion towards try to build a relationship with people or do you just become so cold that you don't sometimes it's like my mates you know um when we get together we're fine um other like outside friendships if it's like you know with a you know like they say a female or whatever it's it takes a long time before you start trusting them or trusting somebody and uh but the other thing as well with with the likes of me and it's the same as um some of the guys i know if somebody tries to screw you like as in you know rip you off or do anything first thing is i'm gonna [ __ ] do them and you can't go through life like that um so you've got to tail back a bit i mean i was terrible for like say road rage for a while now i'm like hook is a [ __ ] type of thing um but it's it's it's sometimes your reaction can cannot fit the the the your reaction cannot fit the action that's just say happened and you know sometimes i could be too quick to to bark i could probably be too uniformed my daughter i mean she's got a master's in english literature she's got more more letters behind her name than than anything um and then she decided she wanted to be an artist i'm like well what's that about like you know um and we used to log heads because i was like no this is what you're gonna do you're leaving school you're going to university you're doing this you're getting that job and she's like yeah screw you this is what i'm doing and really you know it was her choice and i shouldn't it i could have saved a lot of heartache if i just went yeah that's up to you do whatever you want is that the old sergeant came that cat then yeah i think it is you know only because it's all right i guess it's it's easy enough for her but when you've been brought up you know with nothing and you've seen people with nothing you don't want to go back to like that but then it's as tough because as everybody's got their own choices but you're just used to seeing kids maybe not ruining my life you've seen kids lose their life as well so you just want to try to bring the best out for out of it even though you're probably pushing it away because you're being too strict yeah too strict in my mate john um he's done exactly the same to his son and he we were just talking about it on sunday night and um you know it's nearly like the bank of mum and dad and he's like that now you've got your job you've you've beat because his son went he sent us some fetish up there and then you know all the best schools um but then john expects him to be like him which he never will be like him you know my daughter will never be like me because it was the upbringing and maybe if i'd like said yeah right you're going to live in this rough area to teach you a lesson you should be like say a bit like me but she's not so you can't it's very difficult the parenting first of all ain't a novel a sorry or a like a guideline um to to read um but also you you're usually giving the best you can to your children which is quite the opposite than say what we were probably getting as children so you create a different model can your daughter understand what you've been through and what you've seen as well you know what she would say i don't give a [ __ ] really do you actually see a lot of yourself on your daughter oh yeah i'll tell you what yeah because we've got to watch it because she when we start having an argument i know there's a nut coming in somewhere along the line because she'll get physical or she'll get a bit feisty but uh no it's yeah it's it's just life i mean you bring your family up the best you can and um you know you just hope for the best yeah see when you get the longest uh like what's the longest escaping event escaping yesterday about 200 miles that was eight kids it was iraqis went yes it was in iraq um we went in to iraq um to look for skud missiles but we broke every standing operating procedure going now the sas have what they call sops and it's uh it's how we put like um it's how we conduct operations well we our maps dated back to 1945 we didn't have the right clothing we didn't have the right radios um we didn't have the right intel and we were going in to basically dig in underground um to an area that overlooked a main supply route and when we got there we found that the main supply route wasn't like a tarmac road it was just a series of tracks well the the missile the scout can't drive down them tracks it needs to be on like a proper road so we knew were in the wrong place and whether the weather was a big factor it was the worst winter iraq was having for 30 years and uh it was within a short period of time we were compromised and we tried to establish communications back to base couldn't get through i eventually got through by tapping out morse code to some guy in cyprus who then relayed a message back but by that time it was too late we ended up in a contact and then iraqis tracking us down over the period of say two or three days um well the first day i was split up from the group with two of the lads um sadly um in in the early hours of the next well next day it started snowing and uh vince died of hypothermia right next to us and we had the same clothes so i watched i watched a man die uh freezing to death then the other lad he went off with a goat herder and then i was entered by myself and um basically yes seven days eight nights to hit the syrian border um and the cold was the the hardest thing during the day i couldn't move um i would try and find a hollow somewhere to hide desert floor there's nothing there and this just this wind cutting through um had cold injuries and all the rest and then the first night on the run we did 70 kilometers about 50 miles and we were carrying our bell kids which was about 50 pounds i burnt my feet because we were really hammering it so the blisters then got infected and i was losing weight rapidly every day you're lying there just freaking freezing and no sleep um and then at night i could start moving and um you know you keep bumping into iraqis and and various others then eventually got to the border and when i got across the border i got to a syrian like for like bedouin and they got me into a town but then there was a lynch mob trying to like get me back into iraq then the police held a mock execution for me and where blindfolded me put a pistol to my head and eventually got back to damascus um where i was handed over the secret police and during that first over i was allowed to use like a bathroom to clean myself up because obviously i hadn't washed or anything and shave um but i'd lost 36 pound in body weight in seven days or lost all my toenails all the blisters had turned septic there was pus coming out of them i had what nose bed sores on the sides of my leg my back arms elbow and then if i squeeze my fingernails there was pus coming out of them um if i sucked in my mouth blood i had a blood disorder damaged liver damaged kidneys um i drank some water that had come from a chemical plant and that was full of effluent that'd burn my mouth um and then it took three days to get out of out of damascus got into riyadh and then a flight back to the base in saudi where my squadron was and then it transpired for the guys had been captured two had died of of hypothermia froze to death legs had tried to swim the euphrates and he died immediately on the other side um and one guy was shot and killed so um two guys died of of of coal which is criminal uh because we didn't have the right kit right um right radios and um and also we've been told that if we were contacted they would send in a helicopter to pick us up but when we did get contacted uh they changed their mind and um and said now let them let them write them off suicide mission yeah that was it that you're gone i mean it's it's no big deal because that's what you've got the sas for and what the other thing up to be fair when they sent that if they sent a helicopter in to get us they would have probably had to send two or three and we only had two to the regiment and if the risks were if we'd been caught by the iraqis it could have been a come on so when the helicopters came in they'd have been blown out the sky or you're risking having maybe 60 guys in that helicopter to come and rescue eight and if it went down got hit you've lost all of them guys and remember you know the ses are trained in escaping invasion um but i mean yeah that was it so yeah it was 200 miles um to the syrian border uh it was the longest seven days of my life does that not make you angry though to is that just part of passage you gotta accept it i mean i didn't have any food and very little water in fact at the end i was hallucinating because of the the lack of water my brain had like shrunk um but you just got accepted it was just one of them things from the point when we were compromised everything was going to go downhill because i ca again i can remember when i was getting on the helicopter to fly in um one of the lads was standing there and he was like this is not right i want i know i said it's a one-way ticket but we're still [ __ ] going and um and that was it you know you i guess the regiment when i say the use the word gamblers they'll take risks you know to pull something off but you know if it goes wrong it's gonna go catastrophically wrong and it'll just the dominoes will fall um because again you know you're out there by yourself and so assuming you'd you're going through that for the seven days what's going through your mind then did you any point did you think i'm am i going over every did you keep believing to yourself no no no every day there's one attempt it's going to sound really pathetic but there was the first day i was by myself um i made the euphrates and i had to crawl into the euphrates to get to a depth to fill my water bottle because i didn't have any water and i left it was still dark and i started to push back into the what they call the wadi systems these dried river beds and i found one and it was on a north facing slope so i got into a hollow and lay there i was [ __ ] freezing like because i was wet again and the temperatures are blue below zero and i'm like [ __ ] i knew i was by myself now and i knew i probably had five or six days of walking and uh i don't know what it was but this thing popped up in my head and uh it was me mother talking to us going as a kid you should say things get on top of you just have a good cry just uh just cry and you'll get over it so i'm sat there and i can look around and make sure nobody's looking and then i went i couldn't cry but what it did is i started laughing and i laughed i was just like laughing and it actually cleared my mind and i was like right yeah you are by yourself you got five days walking you've got no food you've got water everything's okay at the minute and it was just boom and then i could plan but having said all of that every night after that there'd be times where i was walking and i was that knackered i would get like you know i'd end up on my knees feeling sorry for myself and then you start shivering and then you're like come on you try get moving and there was there was it got to the point where my feet were that bad with it when when they were infected that the pain was too much to i would sit down and then the the pain would like move from my feet and i'd be like that but when it came to move which was which was in probably a couple of minutes because it was freezing cold and having to stand on them i had to shuffle like just shuffle a couple of steps and it must have looked [ __ ] pathetic really until my feet were numb again and then i could start walking and then it got to the point where i would rest on my rifle and i would keep the pressure on my feet and then carry on moving and then at the seven day point it was more through the lack of water um i started collapsing but i was hallucinating and one day one night my daughter came in front of us and i was trying to grab a hold of her hand and like i could see her feet moving rocks moving and i was just following it i don't know what i passed on the left or right of me and then what would happen is the first time it happened it was like a static when when you hear like electricity going like that and then i got punched in the back of the head it was this big bang and it was that realistic when i went down on my knees i turned around to see who'd punched me and obviously there was nobody there so i got myself up it happened again and when i came to i was flat out on the desert floor shaking i'm like that that's a stupid place to to fall asleep then it did it again um i was i was across the border it did happened again and i'd fallen against a small like wall broke my nose and then at first light i could see a house and that was the syrians that gave me the water and tea but i was [ __ ] now a human body a human usually can go 10 days without food but water you'll get three days maximum maximum before you go and what what them bangs were that was my my brain shorting out it was my brain was shrinking and the messages that go around your brain were just [ __ ] colliding and it was like you just your body's closing down but it's your brain that's closing your body down and i knew i was knackered and when i came to i could see the small house with smoke coming coming from it and i thought you know what if it's if it's a rack i'm taking water and i'll kill them i don't give a [ __ ] now if it's syria then they should help me and i got there it was a a young lass with like a look upturned walk making a bread on a fire an old boy was leaving the like mud hut with some goats and then this young lad came out and i just said water water and then i was saying iraq iraq and he didn't i said city a city and he went ah cydia syria and then he was like yaki aki and then i could see the border so i knew i was in syria and then he went straight and give us this pool of water drank it and then in in the room um he gives a small glass of sweet tea and it was like being on chemicals it was just like both and that was just a bit of sugar and it was like woof and i said right i need to get to a police station um i packed my rifle up my bell kit i'll be give us a bag i wanted to see what my feet were in what state they were in pulled them off he he then quest he pulled he requested his sister i think she then disappeared with my socks and i mean they were minging those puss and everything in them so like washed the clean mush like feet off she brought the socks back put them on and then i drew like a diagram on a piece of paper like newspaper with a crayon and said i need a policeman so as we were walking into town there was this syrian coming out and he'd been buying um stuff for his camels here and he could speak a bit of english and he said what do you want and i was like i need to get to a police station and to him i was saying i'm pilot uh i crashed my aircraft and went in through a series of things that happened he got to a garage and pulled into the garage and he'd been saying to me i should take you back to iraq because my cousins are from iraq i'm like not i ain't going back to iraq and i need to see the police he kept touching the bag to see if i had a weapon in there well those two two guys filling d's a little bit of pump like that they came straight up the window didn't look at me look down at the bag and then run off to the back of the the garage so i was like it's kicking off so i grabbed my bag and as i was like getting out of the vehicle he grabbed my arm so i dragged the [ __ ] over the chairs and like started slamming his head on the door then i was running down the street and i would have said i was i was sprinting and i turned around there's about two 70 year old guys just like this behind me but them young lads had come out and they had like you know the sticks and stuff and i just just kept on running and came around this corner and there was a guy with an ak-47 and he just had wait it was a police station he grabbed me otherwise they would have had me and they would have been i would have been over the thing he grabbed me took me into a courtyard and then held the crowd outside and then over a few few hours um of like sending a couple of code words hoping that would get to the coalition give me this dish dash to put on and a shimago over my face and two guys marched me out into a car they didn't tell me where they were taking me or anything and they took me out to the middle of the desert and there was a pre-arranged rv with a secret police and that's when this guy put the put the gun to my head and then the next minute i was in damascus handed over i mean the gun thing they were just pulling the piss they were just having a laugh but i'd lost my sense of humor at that point but anyway i got into syria [ __ ] me they couldn't have done enough for me they sent me out they sent a young lad out took my measurements like got me a a suit shirt socks underpants and shoes but my feet weren't that bad estate i couldn't get the shoes on and then they got me around to the british embassy where i was there for two days and i had to wait to get a passport made and then then the syrians wouldn't let me leave the country because i didn't have the incoming visa so i had to go back to the secret police and they got the visa stamped and then i got back to the regiment um but i was i was in a bad way for for a good six weeks um it took about probably six weeks for all the scarring to heal up my feet heal up um and like i was just like an old man walking um my fingernails came back my gums had re reseeded so i was getting terrible toothache my gums are trunk both up and below and like i say the weight it took about three months for the weight to get back on but your body's got that muscle memory so it came on but then i ended up in a hospital in london and because i drank some chemicals and they think um the chemicals have done something to me because i get this patch and it used to come up on my forehead but it travels around my body and um the people that did the tests on me typical of the army they said we didn't find anything and as i was leaving they said do you have any family i want yeah i've got a daughter and he said are you thinking about having any other children and i went here you went i wouldn't and then i was like why not he went we don't know what you've got but they that's that chemical plant was where saddam hussein was trying to make yellow cake and it was bombed by the americans and then delta guys from delta force whom i know they flew in right into this compound where i had been because when i got out i had i had to brief them of of the layout of this place and then one of their lads got compromised and he was shot and killed killed in action he got took a direct round in his head right right where i where i've been sitting but yeah you don't glow up in the dark or anything do you know i'll tell you what the the looming city on my watches is always all right see when so why do you think you survived that what does that come down to just mental toughness i read something that there was a man who get locked himself in the freezer and he he said i'm going to die he kept repeating himself that he was going to die or actually down that he was going to die there was it was cold there but it wasn't the the freezer was actually broke yeah and then when they came in and got his body he was it did freeze to death but the the frieza wasn't even working he killed himself by putting an existing it's i've got to be careful on here because guy this is real and as in guys did die but it's definitely mental mental strength and um i would say first of all i'd been through sa selection i'd been trained on the scale of innovation for like sops in terms of the procedures however you know like always a north-facing slope so the sun's not on you it's always in shadow to hide and um things like that and keep away from the population you don't you don't go and try and hire a vehicle or get a vehicle or try anything funny because obviously i didn't have any food you don't try and break into houses like that because it's you're signaling yourself you're flagging yourself and again i think it's that northern northern thought process you get down but you're like well [ __ ] i'm going to get back up and i'm going to push what's the you know my choices were um i either hand myself over to them or i die so it's like i thought i ain't handing them over to like get killed and and just push yourself on and you do it wasn't like a big streak of glory because there was them times where i sat down and thought i can't do go on you get over it and you just keep pushing off yeah see the three kids that gets they get captured why did they kill one um they well what happened was um they were in a fire fight and uh there was uh four of them it was five of them sorry five and um a lot called bob consiglio he was in my troop he's the bravest man that i know of and this guy should have had a vc when they got contacted and the iraqis were coming at them bob went down because he had the minimum machine gun and when you fire an enemy you do it uniformly it's like bursts not like like that it's aimed shots so he's getting three bursts out now when they split up the group split up bob went down these two guys thought bob was with these two these two thought bob was with them so these these four were captured and when they came out they thought they basically said exactly what had gone on so the conclusion was bob got down on his gun to give these guys enough time to escape and it was 40 minutes he he kept firing his weapon for 40 minutes and then his weapon ceased firing and he was his body was returned back to the uk he'd been shot through the head but the angle of the round entering and and exiting meant he was behind the gun firing when the round went through and also around it hit his hip which had detonated a phosphorus grenade and that's how he was killed uh one of them lads was um shot in in the ankle um and the other two managed to escape and swim the euphrates but then one of them died swimming the euphrates um so no i mean bob he uh he gave his life um to save them four guys um and that that's how he was killed how far would they have had to have swim to make sure well the euphrates is like um it's like a big city river you know it's probably about because i looked at it i i looked at getting across and i was like not a chance you know when you see it um you like a hundred meters type of thing and it was the middle of winter and i was like not a chance i didn't think they had one i don't know we're snowed um on on the day i was laid up with vince and uh stan i was lying there waiting for the light to come up and um i think i was like lying in a ditch in a in um where it was at what they call a tank berm it has earth on three sides and the tracks had um subsided and uh we're lying there and i got pins and needles in my face i woke up and covered in snow and i'm like and we didn't have any kit and we lay there the next thing we saw because the light came up it was an iraqi position right next to us and uh we couldn't move so we had to lie there that ditch filled with water it rained snowed rain snowed it was like being well it's like being on say the scottish mountains you know when you get that snow mixed with rain sleep yeah and it's it's gonna soak you and you're lying in mud and the wind is sucking the life out of you it was the longest day of my life and i mean as i said the beginning i'm an alpine guide i've been in siberia i've been in some of the coldest places on earth that was the coldest day i've ever spent because you've got the the killer elements of being wet the wind and then more rain and snow coming down so what happens when you get home then do you get discharged or they get treatment and straight back in for another mission oh no well they wouldn't let me go home when i got out and got back to saudi they went right there nobody knows that the guys are missing because nobody knew what had happened to them said you've got to stay here for uh another two months and the boss said we'll get you back over the border you know you can get back on ops i'm like i can't even walk 100 meters like you know i'm out of breath um so i just hung around i got back to hereford about two months after the event um then i ended up being on the standby squadron and then there was a big problem inside here where a team of guys had to go in and it was going to get sporty um so i was the first person they picked because i'm a communicator in terms of like sat sats in the in the other type of radios i'm also a trained medic patrol medic um and um so and then i was the right rank to take on that job so when they picked me i'm not [ __ ] off and i had to put an indent in for kits so i'm like yeah jimpi machine guns grenades 66 rockets clear more mines this foreign office came back and said no you can take an mp5 in a pistol and then this is probably un unbeknown to me this is where the ptsd started coming out because i thought this is another [ __ ] operation that's going to go wrong and you're going to be under-equipped then the upped the team to four so it's gonna be four man and then they upped it to eight men but still mp5s and maybe um a couple of um m16s or two or threes and i got across there and then the job kept going on and on and on and we saw some awful things of like kids starving a lot of murders like infighting within their community because the country was being run by president mabutu and he was he the country was in [ __ ] state and the economy was through the floor so he was allowing um the his army officers to loot houses and then the soldiers could go in to have the pickings and then the civilian people could go in and pick over that so then you can imagine how much fighting was going on there was a bit of like machete wielding and uh you know i saw quite a few young young black lads with the old machete um marks on them and then having to sew them up giving them a bit of like you know hearts and minds and that so you're working straight and do you ever question it like [ __ ] me like i'm just a number here they're just throwing me in and saying you know what leave them no i was [ __ ] mentally i was [ __ ] i know yeah unbelievable story he's on the edge he was a trained killer sniper done what he had to do but he just struggles now to get by and did you ever think that okay i'm going to he was 23 years before he was discharged well i'll tell what had happened what had happened was um it i didn't go that way i was like going the other way getting really [ __ ] dark you know this story i i i am eternally um ashamed of it um i was having to wreck your route for the ambassador he was going to the to see the portuguese ambassador and um mean another lad another jock lad um decided he duncan would drive for us so we're driving the route and as we're driving we're carrying weapons overtly like as in on show and all the rest of it and we're coming into the town and people are starving but there was a stall like a stall and people are just trying to get money for some reason i went yeah just stop here started walking up the stalls and there was this carving and it looks like a guy sitting on a trunk or on a toilet with a spear [ __ ] knows what it was but how as soon as i saw it i was like i want that i need it i've got to have it something magical about that and i still don't get it today had to have it so it said the guy how much and it was like ten dollars and a half paying ten dollars ended up five dollars and i said right i'll be back because i didn't have my wallet i said i'll be back here don't go this young lad said no no please he said uh the money will feed my family i come with you and i went well i'm not driving you back from the embassy back here and he went no no i'll walk walk it's about 15 miles so anyway dives in the back of the car dunk's driving i'm sat here he's over there and we're going up at the time the the river's the river congo and it was when mabudu took over it was called the river zarya it's the fastest flooring river in africa and there's a bank side running down to it you've got um you've got crocodiles and all sorts in it uh as i'm driving no i'm like i'm looking at this guy and i'm like [ __ ] this that said the duncan and i'm unclipping my pistol said i'm just gonna [ __ ] shoot this [ __ ] i'm not gonna give him the money and then had the pistol ready to turn around and shoot him and duncan said if you shoot him you're gonna have to clean the mess up because he said i know i'm not cleaning that stuff up well at the time i was that mad i was seeing people with bullet holes in their heads and their arms like visions and i thought it was a gift from god and he was showing me how people were gonna die so as i looked around at him again i could see his brains up the side of the car and i looked i'm like nah [ __ ] that i said i'm gonna clean that [ __ ] up and i thought that was normal so anyway pulled into the embassy got the five dollars walked out there's the black lad standing there and went over to him give him the five dollars and he just [ __ ] ran like mad the poor kid obviously knew english he knew he knew exactly what i'd been saying and i thought that was normal it was [ __ ] crazy and i was off the charts another thing that happened was um i'd i'd i ended up getting some broken ribs and the lads had gone out on the piss and i was upstairs and this is in the compound of the embassy and i could hear like uh women's voices i'm like that [ __ ] hell don't tell me brought birds back well i had two girls in there they're trying to get them to do the act on the floor and i went like [ __ ] this i lost the plot because it wasn't professional and this is a secure unit i want get these [ __ ] out and the guys are all like [ __ ] [ __ ] up and i said right and these girls then started saying we want a thousand dollars each and the embassy staff are over there so i'm trying to crying everything down i want just wait to wait i'll get the money well i had the i had the wedge so i went upstairs got a couple of thousand dollars each handed the two girls i said right get in the car we're off and then they totted into the car really quietly got outside of the embassy it was a loud drive and i went just up the car so he stopped the car my my 9 million out straight into the mouth of the other one and when it gives me thousand dollars she gives the thousand dollars back stuck in the other one got the thousand dollars back get out the car you're walking not a ship this guy's going oh that's not very nice like uh jordy that's not a nice thing to do put the pistol to him and i said if you [ __ ] mention that i've got the money i'll [ __ ] do you which is out of character so gets back in next morning set the guys right get round said we're two thousand uh dollars show from them who is that you had in here so it's all gonna cost you 400 each and all the lads just coughed up wouldn't be [ __ ] like [ __ ] cheers and that's not me just losing your [ __ ] taking money willing to kill people yeah and it just that wasn't me though and then when i think back i'm like what the hell was i on and and that is you know that's just damage from that one week of being on the run and i always think of what about these kids or these guys who have done like you know long long tours under fire in afghanistan being attacked every day what are they doing now what's all about them brother i don't know but i mean having said that i did have an exceedingly good time do you know what i mean i understand it and i says this to a craig's podcast that um the world would be a great place if there was no conflict where there was no greed or whatever it is but there is somebody needs to do it like but everybody who i speak to there's the same patterns of that kind of when you start on your look kit you look brand new you like you look sane other people i speak to you can tell they're borderline you can tell they're [ __ ] good people and if i was to get into battle these are the guys have one standing with me like i mind you i i was very fortunate when i left the regiment i set up um two big body card teams so i was actually walk working um with excessive guys but in a civilian job so my trajectory into becoming a civilian was tapered because we still had the black humor although we're dressed like this or in suits we still had the black humor and then come in and then i started writing so it wasn't as if i didn't have a job i was being well paid as a bodyguard traveling all over the world same crack as it was when i was in the regiment and then that tape it off and then i went to the books so what i wasn't like it wasn't a big jolt for me to back to earth so i i was very very fortunate um there was no worries you know i didn't have any worries um and then i moved into that that and that come that brings its own its own problems the the the writing why in terms of like stories and things that come out and it makes you think of things um i never find it like a cathartic um process it's if i'm talking about a firefight it's like i know what them what it's like them rounds coming over your head and it ain't funny um so putting that down on paper you can bring it out but also it's alien now i'm not a big one for like celebritism or like hitting the red carpet or anything like that i'd rather just be like a grim a grey man um but it book signings when i'm sat there my head's down i'm writing a name i can't see who's the left and right of me and that's alien to me i like to be the guy standing in the corner who's got the nine milli that you don't even look at and it's it's quite different being on a stage doing a talk it's all right because you can control say the audience but the book signings never been comfortable with them you know from the start are you still always on guard they're still always wary of well my daughter well yeah i am my daughter was targeted she had two policemen on a doorstep for two years well there was a there was a team of guys that were going to come along you know on video and probably uh take a head off and that was that was that was um scotland yard anti-terror branch that that cracked it got it in i was in america in my house in america and i got a phone call and i thought they were going to tell me that there's another you know following me and it wasn't it said you know your daughter's being green lit how do you feel when you get that phone call it's the most frightening thing i've ever experienced because my ass went through the floor when i was on the phone to that guy and he he he said you know what they're gonna do you know who they are he said i can't tell you anything he said but it's it's on and he said we've got policemen going to her house now and then i'm on the house phone phoning her on my mobile phone she's looking it's dad she's just going to speak to that [ __ ] later and i'm trying to get through so i left some choice uh voicemails with her and uh yeah so she ended up in that position so you can't you've just got to and the thing is you're always going to get nut cases everywhere but when you know you get the wrong type of nutcase because i mean i've had my stalkers and stuff like that which you know touchwood they you know they didn't do much but you've just got to be aware because you can never underestimate how how many nut cases are out there you know and it's when they come after your family or want to do something your family that's what [ __ ] got my boulder you know yeah assuming you started the writing once you came out was that is that do you think that's what kept you sane it probably it's it's a it's a driving force you know and it's something to look forward to because it's usually the process is a good six months for an adult novel and but then like i was saying when i do my kids books i got access to schools and i can't you know i could i couldn't say to you like go out and buy manhunter and read the [ __ ] because you'll be like that you know whatever but if i'm writing children's novels and it's there an hour they're in their class and they have to read it then i've got a captured audience and all you've got to do is capture a kid early and get him to read and once he gets over that sense of it's only a book and i can i can read a book they will read when they're adults and and it's the educational benefits of just reading that you don't know you're getting you know just the structure of a sentence words that you wouldn't probably know how to spell but you've seen it you've read it and and then you've been entertained we could all read manhunter here now we would see different colors diff when i describe a guy you would see somebody different on a scene you'd see some different that's what makes reading books way better than being belt fed a movie because that's somebody else's vision but when you read something it's your brain setting up the information that you're reading on that page and what you see is slightly different to whatever your own vision obviously chris wrying your name and all your books is that one of the reasons why you changed your name well no because when i when i came out um what happened was there was a movie made called the one that got away and that was of the my book but they made it very controversial and i i only wanted to set a couple of things straight uh with that book i wasn't interested in doing novels or anything like that and so i just said right i want a pen name because obviously i'm not i'm not fussed about the colin armstrong thing but it's um basically it was the fact was i was doing one book then the one that got away was number one for 16 weeks and i had a huge readership my editors then said would you be interested in going into fiction and i was like not really i just wanted that one story um but then after a few there was a few things that had happened um i then said you know what yeah i will do fiction well it started off as what called faction so they were based on on real events that happened in the regiment but i'd bring fictional characters in so i could tell that story and then it went from strength to strength and then the kids a lot of kids were coming to book shops saying my dad won't let me read your adult book be rightly so because of the language and things so then started doing um junior fiction then i discovered this new world of something and a world where i could make a difference and a good difference from all the [ __ ] i've been doing in the sas i could make a difference in a good way and that that means a lot to me and you're putting something back into society i get letters now from kids who are now adults because i've been doing kids books for maybe 20 or 20 years and they'll say no i'm reading this book now i'm reading that this was the first book i've ever read you know douche and that means a hell of a lot to me yeah is he talking about your story now how much does it play our effect on you is it just normal now well um well i can keep it it can bring emotions but i try to keep them uh you know keep on top of it i did a program for national geographic about five years ago and i was debriefed by a team and it was in in france at my place in france and i swear i would never do it again because it was eight i was talking about you know each day individual day so when i was getting back it started opening up other things and i'd be lying in bed thinking well i've never thought of that i must remember them remember to tell them that so it was just exhausting everything and it was nearly like a minute-by-minute account and i felt shy at the end of it and i said never again because it's you know there's bad memories i've lost good friends and you know i can't remember anything nice on that walk yeah it's always nasty and you know how i felt yeah that's pain and suffering yeah what was the thing you've done with donald mcintyre oh that was that was hilarious in the jungle and joe pasquale what happened he's a funny boy he's funny he's a good friend of mine he was actually on the phone he he but not he had an ailment um and he's been lucky they've getting on top of it but know what it was um freddie flintoff had gone to africa with two girls and they were doing a alone in the wild now i knew the producer who produced it so freddie was off by himself but the two girls wanted to be together so to balance it out dick phoned us up and he said we're going to uh french guy owner um he said we've got joke pasquale donald mcintyre but to balance off would you go with donald mcintyre and i was like yeah okay yeah i'm not bothered a week in the jungle no food no computer that's great for you yeah yeah totally heaven so anyway we got in there went in and set up the camp showed them how to do it but they were having the worst rain that ever had so it was flooding everywhere and then i was like this is getting hard work with donald's like uh because he had to have a raid you want to listen and stuff like that so i said right it's time i should go and i'll set my cam up he'll be there he was by himself for 24 hours and he had a breakdown and then nelly took him out of the jungle because they said we're really worried about him they had a psychiatrist watching him and they got on the phone to me i'd set up my old basher had a massive fire going i'm like that great there was there and they went will you go back to donald i went no i'm not going i've got a fire going i'm like not doing it but yeah he was in he was in [ __ ] state but yeah that was funny and joe pasquale when he went in i was watching him um because we would have uh cameras we would video ourselves and then that would be picked up by local trackers and then go in so i'm like watching like do a joke joe pasquale going and he's chatting away he puts his rucksack down but he just starts walking videoing himself and i said to the producer i went [ __ ] it now he's never going to find his rucksack again so he's walking and where this is after the fact because we're watching the footage and he gets there and he's like oh god where's my rucksack like this and then he's walking all around it so we send trackers in to get his rucksack to him but then joe would just come he said i'm really hungry one day he said i'm i'm really hungry he said i'm i'm thinking of a birthday party i went to uh she was a nana wreck no she was a bulimic and he said [ __ ] me the cake jumped out of her [ __ ] i'm just like where'd you get them like but no he's he's a lovely lovely lad um but yeah with that sort of stuff that's second nature to me but again they did not uh donald did not like being in the jungle yeah just before the funny shot brother one last story what was the story about the embassy in london when they get um they took hostages oh well when the the regiment was called in it was the iranian embassy and um there was a policeman journalists and other members of the staff so it went on for you know quite a while and then they they knew there was going to be a military intervention so it was my old squadron b squadron were sent down and it was the the first of its kind well when when it all went bang the guys went in killed all the terrorists bar won um and all the hostages were saved the funniest thing that happened there was um you put a cordon in whenever you do an operation like that after as soon as the the rounds have stopped firing um the house the building was on fire by the way as well they said right we need about half an hour um before we start sending body bags in and what what it was the body bags was for all the kit that these lads were pilfering like paintings off the wall these like arabic jokes and other stuff and like get these big chinese um like vases which were all expensive but no that was iconic and all of them guys were in the in the squadron when i joined and it was the first of their kind because it what what you call it is a a multi-floor um entry where they're going in from different floors and then usually meeting up on on the stairwell so they go in clear a room kill the terrorist get the hostages secured they then keep the hostages in one safe space and then when you evacuate the building their hostages are passed down uh by other guys who are in there but yeah it was um it was classic and that was a message to the rest of the world about if you come here this is what you'll get and the ses were the leaders of of that type and it's um you know close quarter battle you know with the from the anti-terrorist team half bastards but i mean they will go whether you think of the the courses now do you know about the courses now oh yeah yeah yes a lot more high-tech because again they've got gps's you know that'll tell you you're you're you're on the spot like an inch off the spot you've got satellites you've got now these nano drones guys have got like cameras and they can just send it out the window around this building and say yeah it's secure when the big thing for us when my day in the desert to find a place to lie up you'd you just couldn't now the lads would get a a reaper drone at you know eleven thousand twelve thousand feet switch on thermal and then i would pick the say eight guys up and then that would be on post for eight hours and they're talking to it and said fellas sleep well you don't even have to stag on and there you've got you've got eyes on you and basically you've got your head set so if anybody's coming out of the darkness you they'll just say you've got guys coming in at 200 if it's a big bunch of guys they'll say we'll send some down for them you know and you're taken out so the technology they have is phenomenal but it's it's the the jobs that they're doing keep moving away and changing and obviously the threat levels of different places i mean we saw that guy in kenya he's a good friend of mine he went into that shopping center and he cleared the [ __ ] old place out like you know um he he killed he killed four straight away terrorists and then he orchestrated and led the charge on a 17-hour siege and and did that so yeah the guys when it comes down to the basics they can still do them but now they've got the technical stuff uh going on as well which makes them even better makes that a lot easier yes it can make it easier but the thing to they have to remember is in war everything can get shut down and if it goes bad you still need them basic skills of knowing how to hide how to live off the land all the basic stuff because you the americans went down the route of [ __ ] it we're flying in on a helicopter there'll be a there'll be a blackhawk on the top of this building we'll have two mini birds coming down the street they'll drop you off at the door you run in the door you do the killing you're out onto the helicopter but if what happens if that helicopter crashes or that helicopter has to pull off and you're on on your foot you you maybe lose your tracker and now you've got to survive like i did so they still need them them basic skills yeah one last question brother do you miss that of course i do [Laughter] it's [ __ ] not it's not i'm not like the madness and yeah because i mean i'm 60 and my head still says i'm 30. you look great though but um but it's like physically you couldn't do it but yeah you missed it because it's the excitement and it's a bit of that adrenaline you know from that side yeah brother i'm coming on in telling you story you're a great storyteller um where can people buy all your books just one more time yeah amazon or any independent and if if they give manhunter a read it's got the best um like final attack in their best best shootout ever thank you for coming on i look forward to getting on for a part two because i could have spoke there for four hours but thank you for coming on and i wish you all the best for the future thanks very much

Channel: Anything Goes With James English

Views: 655,381

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Id: 3plyf23huto

Length: 96min 39sec (5799 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2021