World Traveller & 21 SAS - U.K. Special Forces Veteran

[Music] welcome to episode 12 of military veterans podcast where we talk to veterans to learn about their stories and experiences and today we're joined by jamie hull hey jamie hey how are you i'm doing good thank you how are you today i'm good i'm good um a bit of a drive to get down from bedfordshire but lovely sunny day and um yeah it's good to see a different part of country down here in sort of southeast territory uh moderate traffic coming down but all is well all good fantastic well thanks so much for for coming on the show and uh yeah letting us hear your experiences um now as previous episodes we are doing a kind of four questions summary about this episode and what we might dive into in a little bit so um these four questions um i'm gonna do them one by one with yourself so uh the first question is uh when did you join that would have been in um in 2000 so some 21 years ago now all together time has flown by as indeed the second question is what service and branch did you join so initially i joined cambridge university officer training corps and then i did a few years with them and then i moved on um following a selection program with uk special forces and then i served for a period with 21 sas nice okay and and how long did you serve four in total all together about seven and a half years um from from the beginning from the from when i initially joined the otc awesome and the last question is what rank did you get to uh so through the otc i grew to sort of like the dizzy height as from you know from officer cadet to um a second lieutenant actually following the commissioning process as a reservist and then um i transferred and effectively served as a trooper up until the point of my injury in the summer of 2007. okay okay well i'm really excited to hear uh the in-depth part of all of that so let's go back to the beginning let's start with uh where was you born and where did you grow up so i was actually born in luton in bedfordshire um some might fear sort of luton for my for my sins as it were but actually uh you know i've got some some good experiences of being a a younger lad in luton with my grandparents and visiting uh you know luton airport and looking at all the big planes taking off and stuff like that but yeah i was born and bred initially in luton but then we moved as a family we moved to um to layton buzzard and linslayed specifically layton buzzard in bedfordshire um just a little bit across the other side of the county effectively and that's where i was sort of schooled and really yeah that's where i grew up and i guess was the the making of me okay um anything stand out from from childhood or any funny stories yeah um childhood for me was was a on the whole it was a positive it was a good experience i would say but probably like i'm you know not dissimilar to many youngsters growing up you know i was from a broken home you know so my parents did actually separate uh for their own reasons when i was quite young i was only about 12 at the time so that did give me a period of um sort of waywardness is probably the best way to describe it i was i probably lacked uh to a large extent a certain uh level of supervision that perhaps should have had more supervision uh than i perhaps did because you know father was away working and a lot of the time this was and um and and my mom my parents had separated my mother had actually moved away at the time so yeah i was pretty much uh you know it felt like i was like the boss just kind of getting on with it and that's good and bad because it certainly promoted i would suggest independence in my young age and and probably can help to develop skill sets in their own right but a lack of supervision um in youngsters i would argue is all is not always a purely positive thing so for example i i just uh you know i'm not proud to admit but i i kind of got up to a little bit of mischief you know i'd be you know sitting in the back of the class kind of messing around that was just you know the start of it really um i was a young herbert as my my late grandmother would say you know and but i i i basically had a lot of time and then i would sort of escapade outdoors and yeah i'd be into all sorts kind of picture the scene you know 12 13 year old lad cruising around on his bmx not being dictated to my parents as in when to come home so you know through the seasons you know into the winter those dark winter nights i'd be all over the place and i'd be just kind of um you know exploring and and getting out there in the world and and and um sort of some of the time up to no good and that kind of developed um so yeah i was uh um you know doing a little bit of uh tea leafing you know i'd get into a bit of shoplifting here and there nothing major but nevertheless it wasn't right and then unfortunately i got picked up by the law on a couple of occasions so i remember getting arrested for for stealing i think it was a packet of sweets and a can of lager shandy from the local news agents and i was really quite young i mean i'm literally talking yeah i'm talking sort of uh 12 and a half years of age and then probably six months or so on from there i got arrested again for causing criminal damage oh so one was theft and one was criminal damage and i think that stage the penny sort of started to drop really um yeah and and i started to think well if this keeps up you know i'm probably going to get on the wrong side of everything completely and and i have to say i did watch some of my peers uh kind of go down a bit of a slippery slope in life and uh and perhaps uh uh you know they kind of graduated in the negative sense and they got involved in perhaps things they really shouldn't have been doing and a couple of them actually went to prison okay this was much later on in life but yeah i'm thankful to say that i did kind of get a grip of uh my childhood and if you like the freedoms that i had and i learned that yes you could exploit that but you couldn't overstep the mark and that i needed to i needed to pay homage and i needed to um basically toe the party line that's what i'm trying to say if indeed i wanted to to try and to get on in life and have opportunities as it were fair enough well you sound like a very outdoorsy uh youngster and uh yeah testing the the boundaries yeah that that definitely came from a young age definitely yeah i mean i was like i said i was out on the bike you know um i was pushing it on the bike i was cycling to here there and everywhere i'd cycle to next villages and even to the next city i'd cycle from layton buzzard to milton keynes like when i was 13 years old wow and it was like 12 we're talking 12 13 miles yeah you know on a little bmx bike yeah one way you know and and then i'd maybe i don't know typically at that stage of my life i'd i'd sort of buy a packet of sweets and perhaps steal another packet for energy cycle home and you know that i was getting up to the these kind of um sort of um insulin sort of practices you know as a young boy in in a way i was really developing and in a way you know i was self-navigating from through the streets from you know across bedfordshire into buckinghamshire and sort of in a way really developing a kind of a useful skill set yeah and that real independence it's got to be said but you know but also if if i wasn't careful like i mentioned i was potentially shooting myself in the foot yeah not not a good thing no not at all well that then leads us into uh slightly later in life um now the next part of this podcast is talking about kind of transition into military life but how does that look for you going from childhood into that transition where did you go what kind of enticed you to join up um if you could share that area sure so i think it's probably worth mentioning that you know i finished school i actually finished my schooling and like i said i got a grip of my younger years and i did try to make the best of my education there was a year that i kind of i i failed at really in terms of like you know final years or gcc examinations i i remember being really disappointed and not least because i knew my grandfather would be pretty pretty annoyed at me because he was uh he was quite the mathematician so he valued like the mathematics as a subject and when i failed my gcse at the time i think i got literally an f grade air foxtrot grade in maths for gcse and he was like not acceptable you know not good enough he said i think you can do better than that and i remember having a conversation with him and he kind of basically encouraged me to to retake to repeat so i retook that whole year actually and that first year i don't think i actually got um i think i picked up about four gcses um but it you know his view it wasn't good enough because you know i didn't have the math and english in there um so he encouraged me and i went back retook the year and i think i then got seven gcse grades but now including the uh the english and the maths which you know as he sort of mentioned way back you know it was very important to have that and these were like the old o level equivalents so i got those grades as like seeing above in like the math in english on top of the other kind of uh gcses and that then i guess then i felt somewhat encouraged personally teachers would perhaps then say actually you have got some potential you know you're not just this young herbert that we thought you were so um they would sort of equally encourage me and then i think that's all i needed you know the teachers give me some encouragement uh perhaps a grandfather in my case kind of you know making it be known that you know the value of mathematics and and once i got that i thought well maybe i can do the a level and before i i never thought i'd sort of entertain that um so i stayed on the sixth form and not everybody did in those days you know that was an absolute you know choice you didn't have to stay i mean just now is a choice but i think a lot of people do more so and perhaps there's a lot more perhaps family pressure or peer pressure to do the a levels if you've got a level of acumen about you but i did stay on and um i remember did the a levels in i think business studies uh physical education and i did uh did one in um like a food science and a bit random but you know they were the sort of interest that i had at the time and yeah to my sort of uh to my kind of astonishment i dug deep you know i worked hard with the a level and sort of followed some interest there particularly with the the the physical education the pe side of it and i actually i actually ended up with like bbc grades in in a level so then i thought wow you know like you know that that shows yeah it's testimony to now my background was a little bit unsteady like i mentioned um but with the right attitude and the right sort of determination albeit you know still at a relatively young age i could turn it around and pull it out the back and that's effectively what i tried to do and to a certain extent i felt like i'd achieved that by sort of 18 19 years of age nice nice so then beyond that did you continue education after those well i could have done obviously with those grades you know they're not the best but they're sort of modest grades and they could have got me into a reasonable sort of um perhaps like intermediate level university but the truth is at that stage um i was quite fixated on on where where i was and perhaps where i wanted to go at that time and and i chose actually my goal was to go traveling to go traveling around the world but that doesn't happen overnight you don't just think i'm going to go around the world and then i'm going to go you've actually got to work towards it because obviously it takes money that in itself takes commitment so remember being you know in all sincerity you know 17 18 19 i was working i was grafting so this is another side of my story i always did paper rounds and stuff like that or went out knocked on doors washed people's cars for a couple of quid you know and i did a lot of paper rounds you know again i would do six or seven days a week doing the paper rounds work for several different paper shops and it was a way to earn a little bit of income and that would encourage me because you know i would only get x amount of pocket money perhaps from my father for helping to you know clean the house and hoover and dust and that kind of thing which was great you know i like i commend i commend my dad for you know kind of helping to teach me the value of money and stuff like that give me a bit of pocket money to do a few chores around the house but of course when you're a kid you always want more and i couldn't keep nagging you know a parent for money so i knew that you know in order to generate a little bit of cash i've got to go out there and help myself i've got to go i've got to work for it so these jobs that i described they were they'd coincide with perhaps my studies you know perhaps latter the retake on the gcses like the a levels i would do some paper rounds i'd i'd work on the market so layton buzzer is a market town in bedfordshire right they had these market stores here in a high street and i remember uh going down asking for some jobs yeah and basically like 10 guys gave him the knock back and said no mate we're not interested you know we don't need you but i kept persevering and that was typical of me and i wouldn't take no for an answer until one guy gave me a job on a market store okay and it was um he um he sold like these massive rolls of material they were fabric so people who wanted to make a pair of curtains at home or whatever or they wanted to produce a skirt or a blouse or you know make some slacks for their husband or something like that yeah yeah he would sell these big rolls of material and perhaps we don't see that so much in the market towns but yeah these big like um almost like wholesale rolls of fabric he would sell it so basically he had a van full of these heavy rolls of fabric he needed the young lad that would do a bit of graft for him yeah you know this guy i remember he was getting on a bit he said yeah no worries he said i can pay you a few quid if you come down in the mornings help me unload this kind of like old school ford transit van and it was a beating up old rusty thing help me unload these big rolls of fabric set the market stall up you know put the tarp over the top of the uh the sort of steel fabrication for the for the market stool and help me set that up and then and then obviously you're gonna have to go on to school and i'll sort of wave toodle-oo you know and then and then you come back at like 3 30 or as near as damn it you know and then help me take it all down again and so i'm like okay cool i'm up for that so basically i ended up working on this market in in leighton buzzard and but it's you know it was time keeping it was graft and as a result the reward for me was you know i don't know what it was three or four quid a week for doing that and then he would maybe buy me a couple of donuts in the evening can of can of fizzy fizzy drink just to sort of uh sort of congratulate me and round off the day and i felt like a million dollars i mean i was like 16 17 years of age you know one of my first kind of kind of regular jobs you know to earn a few quid and it sowed some seeds about the value of kind of and the ethic of hard work you know hard work can pay off and so it's little things like that i remember growing up that's cool and um and i guess um and i guess i've probably graduated with a few more perhaps uh you know jobs of of perhaps uh more you know more earnest perhaps capacity yeah way to describe it but uh so i worked for a guy i remember this he was an irishman and self-made sort of multi-millionaire and i never forget this guy his name was his name was barry and he started up a company called um originally it was wolf race and they dealt with like you know specialist parts for for vehicles for cars and um and he may you know he made a killing he sold like cobra bucket seats and maybe some of the some of the listeners out there will remember some of this some of the older generation listeners but he sold all these quirky parts you know for people that had like you know um xr3 eyes and cosworth and all the rest of it he had all these like quirky car parts with the name wolf race well this company was a relative success now i didn't work for wolf race but he then turned it around he started up another company in later buzzards on the back of that early success with car flow and actually if you do it backwards wolf race is essentially uh i think it's car flow backwards something like that from what i remember yeah don't quote me on that but i think that's the that's the gen and um so he started off this company called car flow later and they did so he did locking wheel nuts he did like um i think some alarm systems for like hgv and stuff like that but his big thing was locking wheel nuts and the strong arm and the long arm without these lockable devices so i'm going into detail here because this is what i did and it would develop this steering device for the car so it used to hook around the brake pedal or the clutch used to fold out and then the lock two prongs and a big abyss lock would go on top and that would hook around your steering wheel yeah yeah and they were like big things in the 90s this guy was very successful this guy barry the irishman with carflo and myself and like a dozen other lads or so we worked for him in late and buzzard now we would graft we would go down after school we'd be packing these locking nuts like there was steam coming off the plastic trays because our fingers were like working tenth of a dozen we're trying to pack these boxes as quick as we could because it was all about productivity and with productivity like barry would basically reward us and if we were dragging our heels you know if we were dragging our feet or if he felt we weren't being productive he would literally come down he was like and he would be like literally metaphorically cracking the whip but what you think you're doing what you think you're doing come on get a move on get a move on come on speed up speed up get this line moving get this line moving and that listen this resonated in my head and it kind of it would probably haunt a lot of kids that worked for him but i actually learned to respect the guy because he was pushing us for his own productivity and the cut the productivity of the company you know pack these wheel nuts let's get them out on the order let's get them out on the shipment then the van or the truck would come and pick them up and they were away you know in distribution they were going out to the halfords all over the country or whatever it was but i learned you know in business i learned about the value of you know the team and the productivity and and then in return on a saturday morning we'd finish the shift eight till twelve and then by you know half an hour or so and one o'clock you know we'd do a big old sweep up so we'd spend a half an hour to an hour sweeping up afterwards and the the workshop would be immaculate because you know that's what barry wanted and and then he would reward us you know we'd sit and do the tally of all the hours we'd done and it would be on a trust basis you know you worked like two or three hours you know monday night through to perhaps i don't know friday evening you know so there's like 15 hours in the bank plus the four hours on a saturday morning and then he'd tally it all up and then he would pay us cash nice and then if we were really lucky and if he was in a great mood we'd get a bag of donuts from tesco and maybe a slab of of coca-cola and of course we'd have the cash we'd have the donuts and the coca-cola and we'd feel like a million dollars one o'clock on a saturday afternoon we'd leave and we'd enjoy the rest of the weekend you see what i'm saying yeah but we worked for it we grafted for it and i want to say something else here because i feel that to a certain degree perhaps some of these opportunities are missing now for the younger generation and thereby perhaps um you know maybe they're not developing that same kind of natural work ethic because they're not getting the opportunities to work i mean i know for a fact you know i've got a couple of young nephews you know they're growing up i think they're like um sort of nine and about 14 years of age now well like i said by that age i was already grafted in doing paper rounds and stuff by 14. but i'm not sure the opportunities are there and and all i'm trying to say here is that as a result of some of these quirky um eras that i went through in my own life in my own younger years of development as a younger adult that really helped to shape me i would suggest as an adult going forwards yeah and that's that's my take on it that's how i look at life really you know yeah so there's there's merit in having some of these opportunities in in the younger years there really is yeah interesting that's that's a cool share um i mean i did a paper round but it wasn't that uh hard of a graft it was just a quiet village um but yeah definitely gave you that kind of mindset about doing work getting rewarded with money or time off um so that takes you through um a bit of your childhood um and then and then is it close to you looking at potentially the military then are you starting to to think about that um or are you are you looking at something else beforehand um i had considered the military yeah that's a good question i it's relevant to me for sure because i did serve later on but um so at that stage in the younger years um you know i i'd actually um you know um with sincerity i'd looked into the royal marines okay i was always thinking you know i'll um i'd like to do something you know where there's a real challenge i always knew that i was physical i mean remember that story you know the bmx from layton buzzer to milton keynes yeah when i was just a young kid you know and that was you know that kind of all that kind of athleticism sort of developed really you know i was a strong athlete in school um and and i just thought you know maybe the marines would suit me and i think i knew a couple i heard the story of a couple of other you know younger kids perhaps a year older they'd gone for marines and they'd been successful so perhaps there was a bit of inspiration i thought i might have a stab at that but then like i said i did the a levels and and and after kind of all those years of academia i just i just figured actually there's something else i want to do for myself first and so this was the truth so this is when i decided that um rather than go straight for the marines um because i looked into it and um you could still do the selection for the marines at the time down in limstone and you could potentially defer it for a year so i looked at doing that process i didn't actually do it at the time but that was an option uh but the actual real goal that i that i had was to um to to actually travel i wanted to do a bit of global travel that was still your kind of mindset yeah i just you know the independence was there from a young age and i guess i really wanted to exploit that and i just felt like i was ready somehow and of course i'd been grafting remember the jobs i've been earning a few quid and tucking a little bit away being quite sort of um sort of careful in that sense and i just thought i had a little bit of monies behind me and i thought i can utilize that and if i work a bit more if i make a plan if i work a bit more i can generate perhaps the funds that i need so yeah long and the short of it was um i finished my studies because i'd really taken a year i was about a year behind so i was now about sort of pushing 19 in that particular summer and then i set my goal on really um departing the uk to do my kind of global travel plan so i wanted to do a backpacking round-the-world trip that's what i wanted to do and it was quite popular plans were starting to come into place for sure yeah so at that age i mean not many people did it you know i mean more people were starting to generate the idea but it wasn't anywhere near as popular as like backpacking became okay yeah i'm talking mid-90s right so i made this this idea this seed like really started to develop around about 93 94 with me and um of course i needed some some hard cash to be able to pull that off so again the work and everything kicked in and i was working and i was studying i finished my studies i worked for about another year i did some full-time jobs i think i worked for a company called connells uh in an office doing sort of administrative work supporting some of the uh the senior guys in the office that were doing all the kind of brokering and negotiating but i did uh corporate sales in the office so um administration behind that sort of files and paperwork for for the uh seniors and you know i sort of you know he was kind of you know kind of using the gray matter a little bit more within the office and sort of developing some skills in that sense um i did that for a period i worked in a pub it was a beefeater steakhouse in in a small village uh just outside late and buzzard so i was developing some skills and then i was kind of working sort of managing the bar and managing you know the stock take and dealing with all the cash nice and then customer service you know because obviously i'm dealing with customers all day long and into the evenings so i learned about you know um developing a strong a good approach with with customers and and that was important because um that would sort of stand me in good stead for some of the stuff that i did sort of later on and it would uh help me with some some newfound sort of skill sets so long in the short i also worked for a supermarket as well in the town so again in late and buzzard there's the old uh safeway supermarket a big safeway yeah which as you know later became i think you've got uh there was a buy out and it became morrison's yes um but yeah so i worked in that that uh supermarket and i was very enthusiastic i was always keen as mustard you know if someone needed something i'd be the first guy to sort of to say i'll get it and sort of put my hand in the air and i'd be sprinting around the store so with this smooth sort of leather soles and i'd skid to a halt and pick up the jar of i don't know marmite or heinz baked beans or whatever um and then i'd sprint back to the uh you know the front end where the customer was in the cashier so i hand it over with a you know veritable sort of smile on my face a wag a wag in my tail so to speak but you know that enthusiasm paid off because like the managers would notice that i was like a keen worker and they would kind of give me bigger jobs in the supermarket so i end up becoming like a supervisor in the latter stages on the front end so i was managing like the um sometimes you know the the uh returns or replacements for the customers yeah and dealing with some of those customer service queries and you know if it was perhaps a bit more uh you know pressing i'd be a linkman between the customer and the management and so um again it was all part of the customer service kind of acumen that i was developing which would prove perhaps more useful later on in life um so yeah i did all these quirky little jobs growing up as a youngster i saved up some cash that was the bottom line i think i had ended up with about for the record and it was quite a lot of cash back then about five and a half thousand quid wow yeah by 1995 in my bank account um and that was all that was after buying the flight ticket from trail finders in london i remember the flight ticket was 1086 quid wow a lot of money i went on the train i went down to london i think it was a shop in knightsbridge or something i went in they said can we help you sir i was just a young guy you know i'm interested in around the world ticket thanks very much and so they sat me down we talked about itineraries you know perhaps where the the safer places to go were on planet earth because there was always i don't know techy zones or war zones or whatever yeah so i figured out this like plan and then by the time i walked out of there i don't know like four o'clock in the afternoon i had a plan you know i'd bought my ticket and that was i had it you know i had that little paper ticket in my bed i feel good did you feel good well that was hard work yeah yeah so like give you the itinerary that i chose i'll never forget it but it was basically london heathrow to johannesburg don't ask me why but maybe they talked me into it johannesburg and then i was going to spend some time in southern africa then i was going to go joburg to fly into perth so western australia then i was going to overland it then later on after some time in australia i was going to fly to sydney from sydney rather to to christchurch so south island new zealand then i was going to hop up to auckland north island new zealand then nadi fiji capital then up to honolulu in hawaii then to lax so los angeles then i was going to overland it across the states and spend some time in in north america then from miami fly to paris and then back to london there you go that was my round-the-world ticket yeah that was my plan with some consultation with those guys you know i could see why buzzing from that would be uh would be very high for sure and like that was the plan that was my goal and i was like 19 years of age and i think the you know perhaps the the interesting thing was that looking back you know it's quite something i think it's quite an achievement in my mind that i was actually quite comfortable to do all of that you know that was the plan to do that at the age of 19. solo as you know absolutely yeah yeah so did you do it i did it yeah i did it yeah i actually left with a with a really good friend of mine um and you know we had some good times down in south africa but we both had very strong you know we're both strong-minded we had different agenda and we didn't we didn't fall out or there wasn't anything right we just basically chose this was down in cape town in the end after a few months on the road together we basically chose to kind of segregate ourselves you know as kind of like um as men as young men and say so you want to do what you want to do and you've got your agenda and i want to do what i want to do that's no big deal so we kind of amicably agreed to separate and go around ways yeah which is exactly what we did and it was you know we still kept in touch no no sort of uh there was no damage done you know and um but we went our own ways and we did our own thing and yeah i traveled the rest of the world solo you know jamie jamie 1920 going around the whole world that's cool and i ended up spending longer than intended in um in a lot of places like i spent a lot longer on the ground in south africa so i worked in um on a market in camps bay in cape town um south africa and i was a salesman believe it or not don't ask me how i blagged that job it's a long story but long in the short of it was i'd been traveling in the north i met some guy who was the director of this um kind of african curio furniture company and he had sites in um you know johannesburg in cape town in durban and he basically offered me this job uh he said if you're gonna go back down to to south africa because this was in vic falls by the way sorry in zimbabwe where i met this guy and he said if you're gonna go back down to south africa he said i can offer you a job he gave me a business card and that's how it was in those days like pre-internet yeah you didn't have the internet so it wasn't easy to communicate you know and um you know it was snail mail it was like write a letter and you know but in africa come on how long are you going to wait yeah response what what year is this what year have you seen yeah this was literally in 1995 yeah for sure so you know in fact for the benefit you know for your benefit um and the guys listening i will take you back actually because it's quite an interesting story and it kind of does resonate with me and um if just sometimes you just get lucky and i got lucky so the story goes i traveled as a young backpacker from joburg you know where i flew in from london i spent some time on the ground i end up hitchhiking i hitchhiked some i don't know it's a long way down like 800 miles or something somewhat maybe that's that's incorrect but it's a long way down okay and i hitchhiked all the way down there and several like good people you know truckers bmw business guys pick me up okay and i hitchhiked all the way down to cape town because i was trying to preserve pennies because remember i'm on the road for a year so i'm conscious of you know i need to watch my expenditure like day by day week by week month by month i've got to live for a year right and i didn't know whether i was going to get work or at least not easily so i got to use my my kind of intelligence i've got to be street savvy and kind of preserve things and i hitchhiked i got all the way down to cape town i met up with some fellow backpackers and i kind of befriended some people and one guy i remember he was he was an older guy american guy and he had he actually had a vehicle she had a beating up old vw um you know one of these uh camper vans like old school you know the type that in the uk people pay a lot of money for now like collector's items so he had one of those and this was in cape town right in 95 and he said look i'm going to go north and i said well where are you going to go north and he said i'm going to vintuck and vintuck where the hell is that he said we'll see that map on the on the wall in the backpackers and he pointed up there because they had this massive mural of like the whole of africa and he said it's there and he's like he basically got this little stick this little bamboo cane and pointed to the vintage on the map it's like namibia that's that's a different country mate i said are you for real and um and and basically he talked me into it and some fellow backpackers next thing i know we're like leaving like within 48 hours we were leaving it i don't know in the evening we were going to travel through the night up the n1 the november one between um south africa and cape town yeah so we're cruising up this um [Music] this this kind of like i say motorway but it was quiet i mean that you know there wasn't a lot of traffic once you got out of the cities and into the wilderness in in southern africa there was nothing going on and we cruised all the way up there and loads of things happened you know and and i kind of fast forward this bit because i spent some time in namibia and with some of the backpackers then i was kind of separated and i did some safari stuff and finally um i finally got dropped off again and i was now solo so jamie solo again and i'm now across the caprivi strip into uh and a bit across the uh across that you have to cross the border from there from namibia into um into botswana so you know little sort of a little kind of the edge of the ocavango delta basically and then you're into uh from botswana you're into the border for um into like that that uh that zambezi border i think i'm right on saying this yeah the zambezi river and the border from botswana into into zimbabwe and so it was victoria falls that was the town that i was heading for i was gunning for to get to victoria falls yeah young backpacker remember 19 years old 20 years old and and i was honestly this is what happened so i got there and i'm solo and and i kind of mistimed it so it was a saturday morning in in victoria falls in the mid-90s in zimbabwe don't get me wrong it was it was okay but nothing was open so there was no supermarkets open at that stage um the banks were closed definitely the banks were shot and all that i could find was the local campsite and i needed to get i need to pitch my little tiny little tent which was just a joke this little thing i had it was like i think i bought it from a toy shop in somewhere in johannesburg or whatever and it was more like kid's tent you know it was absolutely dreadful and so i got to the campsite i pitched my tent in like the dusty base of the campsite and and i was absolutely dehydrated i was so dehydrated i remember this and i remember going on the bed literally because i couldn't get to the bank couldn't get monies couldn't there's the atm wasn't really firing out you know paper money or there was an issue or something and a supermarket it wasn't happening so what do you do you're desperate right this was a survival story so it's quite interesting um especially for all the uh you know the uh sort of you know the ex-military listening in so it's a proper survival story you know one of the first i ever encountered this scenario and i get to um the campsite so dehydrated so i go to the gents toilet okay this like you know communal gentleman's toilet it was a freaking disgusting hell hole so i walk in there there's like two inches of water so i think i i turned back to get my my little flip-flops because i'm not wearing my walking boots in there because it's gopping yeah you know like literally it's like just the floor was filth so it was almost flooded so i went back got my flip-flops kind of waded through turned the tap on i kid you not it was like brown stinking water coming out of the tap on the campsite this was in vic falls 1995. so i was desperate i was a man desperate this was the situation yeah i i basically walked down the back of the campsite i'm basically kind of tapping on tents and saying excuse me excuse me but uh i said my name's jamie so i'm desperate for some fluid here i'm definitely some water this is survival situation i've just traveled all the way across the caprivi from namibia today you know last kind of 24 hours here i am i i messed up couldn't get to the supermarket couldn't get to the bank can you help me out and most people were like basically turning their back on me i remember one guy he from the out of the back of his like four by four he gave me like this kind of like um it's almost like this uh camel pouch or whatever with like water but he'd added like salt tablets because he'd been in the desert this guy and i was almost gagging on the water i'm not i couldn't drink that i was like you know so i carried on down the back of the campsite in victoria falls zimbabwe and there's all these little shallow bungalows okay and then i was knocking on doors no response or perhaps some people were ignoring me whatever fair enough and then there was another bungalow and the door was wide open right so i basically shouted at the threshold like hello hello is anybody here is anybody here said i've just uh i just need some help please i just need some water no response so i walk in like tentatively walk over the the opening for this bungalow through the the porch way and i'm going through i look left i look right and i'm confronted right with these massive like wooden carvings some were like big hippos like four foot high huge great big lumps in like the finest mahogany or whatever it was you know african hardwoods or there's like in the next room there's literally like a six foot high to the ceiling six foot whatever giraffe wow yeah carving beautiful yeah and i'm like taking her back and i'm like this is weird and i'm walking through but i'm so dehydrated remember my situation and then i get through and i'm just about to like get towards the sink because i'm thinking they gotta have better water plumbed into this bungalow right yeah and i'm just about to lean towards the sink and this booming like voice in the afrikaans what the bloody hell are you doing what are you doing in my bungalow mate like this and i'm like forgive me that's probably not the best accent but this guy sort of stopped me in my tracks and i'm sort of turned round and i apologize like apologize absolutely profusely i was kind of like mortified you know that i'd been caught you know in this guy's house and uh listen i very tentatively you know uh carefully explained my situation but kind of rapidly so he didn't you know shoot me or whatever and this he was an old old like afrikaans guy um white white guy lovely guy um once we kind of once i explained my situation um he basically sat me down he said uh no problem why didn't why didn't you say you know it's not a problem you know and he sort of sat me down and he opened this fridge and maybe it was like something out do you remember those like our whites uh lemonade adverts on the tv it was like the fridge when he opened the door like the fridge was backlit you with me yeah yeah yeah and like all the all the all the soft drinks that he had in there were like kind of backlit and it was just amazing you know i just saw all these like it was like bottles of fanta bottles of seven up but it was a coca-cola and the listeners are thinking why is he going on about this but this was like a life-saving moment i'm a young backpacker i'm in like deepest southern africa with nowhere to turn basically and this guy saved my bacon he saved my life and we sat down long and short was i drank about 12 bottles of pop god over the course of the evening and we we became best buddies over the course of the week the first thing i did monday morning first thing i did was i went back down i went down to the bank the local branch i had to go in the bank show my passport get some money is exchanged over the counter you know from zimbabwe and local currency you know um go straight to the supermarket the big local supermarket i bought a great big crate of like fanta or whatever it was big crate and i walked i might i frog march myself with the big crate back to the bungalow and i wanted to say to this guy his name was mike i wanted to say mate i said i had to say thanks i said you've done me a massive favor over the weekend i said if it wasn't for you i'd probably be like six feet under with dehydration seriously so i want to say thanks and you've been a true friend and i think this guy was like well you know like totally taken aback because he was a businessman you know he had his own business he was quite affluent um the director of that that said sort of um african sort of arts business and he was so taken aback by my gesture of sort of repayment so to speak there's the least i could do to show my gratitude because it's tit for tat it might it might in my view yeah you know yeah and um and so we developed a genuine friendship then over the course of about the next week or ten days he introduced me to his young assistant and then and then he said look if you're leaving if you were if you're going to travel on and go back to south africa at all he said i want to offer you a job and i was well i didn't even ask him i was taken aback so basically you know i think i guess the moral of the story is you know it's kind of sometimes it's our behavior and sometimes it's our attitude that can kind of equally um you know our perhaps fellow um respect for for you know fellow human beings that can perhaps get us places yeah you know it can be a two-way street in that in that sense so i learned you know i learned some of these lessons in in early life and um yeah i ended up doing that job um so because i took that opportunity so i went back down to to on the train to to um sorry johannesburg like 40 hours on the train or something ridiculous from from i think i went from vic falls harare bulawayo all the way down on the train 40 hours back in joburg i did an overnight i thought i don't want to stay in joburg lovely city but not a lot going on for a long a young backpacker and it can be a little bit sort of you know tough and hostile in places so i went i wanted to go back to cape town so i hitchhiked because remember i'm thinking about the pennies and i still wasn't working so months had rolled by so i hitchhiked again because i knew i could get by and do it and it's a mission but i got back down there and then i approached the one of the managers that worked for mike you know the older gentleman that i'd met in victorian falls i got the job i was a salesman nice i mean i'm not saying i was a good salesman you know um you know i i had to sort of develop um shall we say the gift of the gab you know develop that true rapport and you've got to know your product right if you're going to be a salesman you need to know your product so at first i didn't have a scooby what you know what that giraffe or that hippo was truly made out of you know or some of the smaller items or soapstone carvings or they sold everything it was a great big market and and i actually worked believe it or not i actually worked not just with some fellow white afrikaans down there in camps bay in cape town but i actually worked with some of the black guys down there they employed and i was actually tasked because i had a driving license i was actually tasked with um to go and pick some of these black guys up in the morning um from so i stayed with one of the the local families uh you know the guy in the north mike he'd set me up with one of the families and i stayed with them and they gave me the the van and my duty was to drive this big old beaten up vw panel van out to a petrol station to rendezvous to the rv and collect some of these black guys and they were coming in on the train from a local township about 10 kilometers out so i'll pick up some of these black guys and i would drive them back to uh to the point in camps bay up on the peninsula road where the market stalls were and we do all of us as a team blacks whites whatever we we we'd work as a team we'd set up the big market stalls and then the tourists would come every day you know we hope for the blue bird you know the sunshine and sometimes it rains of course but you know hopefully the good weather and then they come the tourists come and then we hopefully get out there and we sell the we talk to the tourists we sell to americans and chinese and japanese all the tourists basically were going down to cape town and that's what i was doing and don't get me wrong you know the first weeks i was you know i was i didn't know what i was doing i was i was trying to learn off my of my uh of my my colleagues and i'm trying to i'm trying to pick it up and i'm i'm trying to i'm trying to use my um use my instinct and be guided by you know what the team is doing and how it's all how it's all functioning yeah there was no sort of formal training as such for that kind of work but literally within a few months you know i was kind of developing and i was selling you know i i could be i could i could actually pretty much guarantee that if i went up to somebody and sort of talked the talk to a degree and and and sort of sold the product as it were i could i could surprise myself and you know i was getting a few round in the till for the sake of the business nice but in return again i was earning a little pay packet at the end of the week and it was all good yeah so in my younger years you know completely random really when you think about my younger years in terms of the journey and the path that i took a lot of different quirky things came out of it i would suggest and and this was just still the very early days this was backpacking and um and uh yeah a lot of cool things happened a lot of ups and downs but a lot of cool things happened you know but yeah hard work and perseverance really it sounds like you learn an awful lot um from your early days of of working young and then starting you're backpacking across the world but uh yeah just that one consonant obviously sounds like it taught you an awful lot um so i'd love to just fast forward obviously you complete that world tour uh travel the world uh that's a year later um that takes us to the late 90s um so what's the kind of next step for jamie after you've done this incredible trip around the world learned probably a lot about yourself and uh probably day-to-day kind of um well skills and and talent um so what do you think what's your kind of like next mindset you you and and lastly you just mentioned earlier that you were thinking about the marines so is that kind of your next next kind of point of call or what do you feel when you get home yeah so the marines thing had definitely been in the back of my mind um i just just the very end of the trip is probably worth mentioning because yeah a lot of backpacking stories but i can't you know there's just too much to sort of go over it all but some really important things that happened but but probably the biggest thing of all was that i end up in australia and um and i volunteered initially and then later i was employed but i worked in the industry uh as a diving instructor on the barrier reef oh no that shaped um to a large degree it shaped my outlook and it shapes the horizon if you like in the in the in the manner that i now looked at life okay and and so i guess it gave me real ideology about where i wanted to go and what i wanted out of life and some of the adventures that i could have so as you mentioned you know moving on um i did think about the marines and and it's um it's relevant because you know obviously the marines are infamous for their their work um as soldiers but kind of you know with the water in mind so they're they're kind of amphibious soldiers with that skill set and i thought yeah that's for me that's what i want to do and the diving and and the fact that i'd done all of that and it took to a high level it will be in the civilian world i thought perhaps you know the glove could really fit here and i could you know fulfill my earlier dream and join the marines but strangely enough i decided that i wanted to keep my work more localized just at that stage of my life right so and like i'm more local so i actually um i was probably influenced by a couple of friends at the time as well um and we are you know especially when we're quite young peers influence us and um i don't know for all i know perhaps television programs or whatever like the sweet the sweeney and mike play in my case right or um who knows maybe the bill or something because it's you know it's a bit of a hint to what happened next but um so i ended up applying for um you know the selection process to join the police force so specifically because where i grew up i remember making a call to bed's police and i immediately got the knock back because they simply weren't recruiting but i remember sort of saying oh that's a real shame because i'm really interested and a couple of my friends are in bed's police and you know i'm um you know they've been telling me a lot about it and i've just been backpacking i'm trying to sell myself on the phone yeah trying to do the salesman bit but the guy on the end of the recruitment for bed space is like yeah sorry mate it's um it's not that we wouldn't want you it's just that we haven't got the budget to recruit right now and i'm like oh right whatever so um he said if i tell you what he goes i'll give you the give you the nod here basically what i can tell you is that from my understanding ten valley are currently recruiting so i'm like really he said yeah i can give you the number if you like so he obviously added his little black book over the phone so he gave me the number i then promptly came off that call dialed thames valley recruitment in uh i think it was kiddington in oxfordshire and uh they picked up and they were like yeah actually uh we are we are recruiting right now would you like us to send you an application pack and my ears kind of picked up and i'm like yeah for sure you know i'm interested you know because i was interested in doing something you know i guess mobile and i guess physical to an extent but also you know the customer service aspect because i've been doing a lot of that remember doing with the backpacking stuff from you know working on markets selling in as a salesman in south africa to to you know leading you know clients on the great barrier reef and boats and then some you know um and so i figured you know i wanted to do something surrounding people i i classed myself as a people person and you know the interests were there and that i wanted to develop so i joined the police uh with thames valley at least i did that selection process and i don't know eight nine months later i was in the door initially i did my training down at um sol hampstead a little village outside of reading just down the m4 corridor and then i did something what they then sent me to do say my area that i chose to work and i think perhaps where they decided that i'd be suited was milton keynes um which was quite ironic and uncanny really because remember i said i actually got nicked in milton keynes yeah as a very young kid yeah for stealing a packet of uh sweeties or whatever and a packet of kia ora or five or live cartons of drink or something stupid like that from boots the chemist five alive but like lesson learned and i'm only like 14 on the bmx or whatever yeah but so yeah i end up working in the same for the same uh literally for the same mainstream uk uh police force uh nick or station as it were um for thames valley police um what year is this then is it so this was yeah this was i i i joined in 97. okay yeah so that that's uh that's that's when it happened and um and i ended up so my initial training uh in-house in force that is was down in near reading and then i moved on to uh so what they call npt or national police training down in ashford in kent they used to run it down there got it and um and i spent i don't know maybe six months of my life back and forward going down to ashford and uh and that was interesting because i'm mixing with people from all over like the national kind of domain so forces from sussex and surrey and i think uh perhaps uh some of the some of the met or city of london certainly were down there um and and perhaps beds and so forces and and guys and girls from all over were going down to get their national input for policing and um you know we did the classroom stuff the academia you know the law we did a lot of like physical uh unarmed defensive tactics and cuffs and baton and cs and god knows what else and and it you know a lot of really comprehensive training um again i was being taught how to kind of handle you know people and situations because i'm now looking at sort of venturing into live policing work as an officer and it's a bit different from just being a salesman it's not quite the same you know and you don't know what you're going to be dealing with from one day to the next but an interesting um certainly a massive education for me you know as a younger man and and i was still very young you know when i when i joined i was only just just 22 years of age yeah in fact you know yeah when i when i when i physically started that role and um and uh and you're dealing with an awful lot on a day-to-day basis you know respect to a lot of a lot of police officers out there that do the job day in day out and um and i did um a number of years with as uk police officer frontline and say front line i was predominantly responding to you know the 999s so the calls coming in via control so over the airwaves i'd receive it on the radio flying around from job to job to job you know screaming around in my little marked panda car with a blue light on and like one of those annoying guys you know would have the sirens going on and i'm trying to get from job to job as quick as you know as quick as i could possibly muster basically and and it was stressful but it was you know if you worked hard you know the shift would fly and you know you you kind of get more out of it so yeah i'd like to think that i was very enthusiastic officer and by virtue of the effort that i put in you know as the old saying goes you get out what you put in and and that was certainly my experience from from being a from being a cop yeah you know you work hard and it's very rewarding job but it's not an easy job it's not an easy job and no doubt you would have learned an awful lot more skills there so with the car did you have to do like the blue light course and things like that of course yeah you do the advanced driver training and and that was uh that was pretty intense and and then you don't have to do courses in sort of unarmed defensive technicians you have to refresh with that regularly you know batten cuffs cs gas you have to expose to the cs gas the same way to like the soldiers do in the army yeah you know if you're going to carry if you're going to perhaps carry cs or launch it you know against your you know your your adversary or your your enemy or in this case perhaps public or rioting in in policing sort of terms for sure you have to you have to expose you have to know what that feels like yeah um it's just a good job that you know perhaps firearm police they don't have to get shot but you get what i'm saying you know with cs you know you do the training you have the exposure and it's quite unpleasant yeah um you do a lot of constant refresher training it's a it's a very professional organization in my in my my humble sort of memoir and experience um i i it can be extremely stressful and you're up against it day and night you know some days some shifts for me you know once the routine and of everything set in some days were could be quite dull you know dull as dishwater you feel like you're chasing the same petty criminals you know thinking back to perhaps how i was when i was a kid i ended up dealing with that you know youngsters but at least i understood you could connect i did i was able to engage i was able to connect but on the but on the other hand you know it can be a lot more serious so you know we're talking sort of violent offenders more serious offenders and of course um you know the police do a very very valuable service in that respect in terms of keeping us all safe and well so it's it's noble it's commendable work so you do that for a few years i did it for a few years and then i decided that um i guess the underlying you know the inner torch within me was burning away and i and i just needed to kind of explore that still and i needed to get out there in the world what i wasn't necessarily prepared to do was commit to say another 25 years in policing okay so um i decided to to at that stage to fulfill a different path and and um and i actually went to my my superiors so i went to like in my case like the station commander you know for the area or area commander in milton keynes at the time he would have been a chief super i remember having a conversation with chief superintendent and saying look um i i've heard that you can take a sabbatical you know as a front line you know um um uh you know sort of badged and um established police officer which i now was you know and i was well well settled and well established on my shift and i was um i was a popular shift member and i you know i could get results i would i was i could be independent i could go out there and produce results for for the area as as a coffer so they didn't really want to let me go they didn't really want to release me and and i guess at that stage you know you're an asset so i managed to sort of i guess talk my way around to to getting a sabbatical use your sales skills i guess i guess use the sales skills they understood they weren't happy but they do allow it and i'm not sure it would be so easy nowadays honestly but back then remember this was only still kind of like you know millennium yeah so back then they were you know they were a lot more agreeable if you could justify okay and and and i believed i could justify so my justification at the time was that i actually wanted to do some travel i know i'd already done that but i wanted to do some big things so in my mind i didn't want to just go and backpack again i wanted to actually go and use some other qualification that i actually possessed so i was a um i i was a qualified scuba instructor with the uh the paddy diving organization which is a big global uh biggest diving organization in the world yep i was always a a great fan of of the organization and a very enthusiastic and committed paddy instructor so when i wasn't you know policing at home in the uk i was up at stony cove and i was taking friends and you know associates or colleagues in some cases taking them up to stoney doing tri-dives teaching them in the uk cold dark quarries nice you know as a scuba diver yeah and and and i was keeping my hand in yeah that's what i was doing with the qualification so i dreaming i was dreaming naturally of getting out in the big wide blue ocean tropical world warmer waters for sure that's what i wanted yeah and it was cooling it was called you know i've got the ticket you remember i was a young guy with the ticket so that that dream was calling if you understand you're an instructor it's not easy to oh sorry it's not difficult to perhaps fathom you know it's a no-brainer yeah a young guy with a ticket you know that that was still for all intents and purposes you know a free agent and you know um you know the bachelor as it were so i was you know that's what i wanted so i persuaded the chief superintendent he kind of uh reluctantly agreed and sort of signed the papers i got a five-year sabbatical can you believe wow okay so that was an open door to go back at any time okay okay and um and i had to pinch myself um i went to i ended up i think it was a dive show in london i went to and um had a good look around met a lot of people and it you know kind of sold myself as an instructor the next thing i know literally the turn of the millennium i was um on a flight as a volunteer flying out to um a very very very remote location so london dubai manila then drop down to palawan in the philippines wow then take a an unsteady bus ride up into the north through the jungle to a place called taitai bay and then chug chug chug chug chug on a filipino banker and three hours north to a tiny little island called uh kagda now island in the philippines and it was an extremely remote location i mean we are talking proper i mean this was 20 years ago 21 years ago in fact in in the south china sea middle of the south china sea so i was employed as a as an expedition lead for um for coral key and it was an expedition company based in london and yeah i'm leading the expedition party and i'm teaching divers and i'm certifying divers you know left right and center so i did about five months on expedition in the philippines wow in the millennium wow completely voluntarily and you know there was no you know actual monetary remuneration whatsoever so i think that was quite commendable that was hard graft and uh and i certified well over 100 divers in that time the demographic for the the expedition company if you will was predominantly young um you know committed in driven sort of backpackers or or perhaps better better still they were young um gap year students predominantly or perhaps young city types you know they wanted to take a year out or so however many months and so they found themselves on expedition they signed up to the expedition program it was all about learning to dive and then a massive commitment to to eco tourism and uh it's probably the best word and the environment it's a environmental kind of conservation work within the uh the recreational scuba diving community i can only imagine what five months of doing that's like because a two-week exped is bad not bad but it's tiring really so yeah i mean you had to it's a really good uh point just to kind of give i guess the listener uh to take you there so yeah i lived like robinson crusoe it was i lived in stilted cabanas for those five months okay um we had a film crew come out and they we got a radio patch message through to the island the film crew was was ray mears extreme survival in fact my interest in my one up in the company was quite a well-known figure that's often done a lot of programs with the bbc and independently a guy called uh monty halls yeah so he was ex-royal marine he was actually my one-up i believe at the time so he was not with me on the island but he was like the operation manager sort of worldwide at the time doing that little role so he came out to kind of oversee and and check up and make sure that uh that that the my expert you know that that we had what i needed to kind of uh fulfill the requirements of the expedition and keep the function moving and then he would i don't know scoot off to honduras or whatever but i can remember you know monty and i we'd literally be you know with some of the others we'd be like working out on the beach and some of the memories that i've got you know press up sit-ups doing a bit of sprinting along the sandy beach yeah keep the fitness levels up because you've got to do that right absolutely when you live for five months in the tropics it's not like five-star hotel living on a little island we didn't even have running water so this from a survival perspective was epic yeah i mean we had to bust in you know we had to send those filipino bankers chug chug chug chug chug three hours from uh cagnano island where i was based on exped all the way back to the mainland palawan the province of the southwest um philippines to collect the big blue barrels times 20 barrels or whatever they would basically look like blue oil drums but it was water yeah ship them back over because we were 50 bodies at any one time bodies could come and go depending on what point on the exped they were but 50 people at any one time to survive on that island as you know the fundamental you know source for human survival is water without water remember my story in in yeah on the campsite in victoria falls without water you're close to being you know on the edge yeah so um it's very interesting you know so we were you know literally shipping in all the water but it wouldn't last long you'd think 20 great big barrels literally we'd have to make sure those boats were going back and forth twice a week yeah and we would be very very strict and vigilant on on on washing and showering yeah i was gonna say absolutely limited yeah you know they would literally shower in and and soap off in in salt water with a bucket from the ocean and quick rinse off in like half a bucket of fresh yeah that was it and we were very strict um i had a doctor um i had i had a couple of expedition scientists you know like a um a marine biologist a project scientist uh perhaps a scuba technician who kind of looked after my my scuba equipment on the technical side you know valves and regulators and so on uh bcds and they would also look after the marine boat engines to keep things hunky-dory to keep things kind of well oiled and slick keep keep the exped party moving basically um but yeah so that was i i managed that process for about five months with the uh the marine research like conservation expedition and but above all that was like a massive kind of like a process of like human survival above all that was yeah from you know what i remember most puts into perspective that you can just pop into the other room turn the tap and you've got fresh water pop down the street you've got a supermarket you can just grab some food we're lucky we're so we we've got it all yeah we're very lucky we take it for granted the developing world they have it a lot harder than that yeah especially in you know in places like that which is you know beyond developed even yeah you know but just a quick one on that like a very quick uh quirky sort of thing i remember i mean we had you know ray mears who'll remember you know he did he came in and filmed extreme survival and um interestingly this is so uncanny they approached me and they said to me you know you look remarkably like somebody that we want to cover we want to do a reenactment for one of the actors on the bbc so they did and i agreed to do it and um so they were filming for a couple of weeks on the little island this was bbc film crew ramirez extreme survival the program and it's kind of been immortalized on youtube it's still there and um and it was all about desert island survival and ray interesting was covering uh the story about um uh one american pilot in particular called bill coughin and there was another japanese like prisoner of war survivor uh on the island but the pilot in sp specifically that was the part that i reenacted on for the bbc okay and actually seven years later you know an aviation incident should happen to me but of course we'll come on to that but um i was just going to say about the island you know um that story from the second world war you know many pilots you know would servicemen would would get trapped in the tropics you know fighting and the level of survival that they went through it gave me a real tremendous understanding of what the suffering was yeah yeah you know in for those those members of the the allied forces during the second world war and um and i just just quickly from my experience on that island you know i told you about the water situation nightmare always perpetual nightmare trying to keep up with water what happens when the boats can't get off the island you can't fill up those blue drums that happened that happened numerous times so how do you get how do you bust the water back in and ship it in you can't so then the doctor and i would consult we'd start having to add not you know high levels of chlorine even iodine to the water now that can be dangerous and too much of that can like screw up the liver with the enzymes and stuff so um we had to be very careful about how we navigated that and and managed that process for the sake of the the health and the survival of the expedition members and then you know apart from that we're just kind of like you know trying to stay cool like living with the literally living with the pythons in the rafters and the snakes and all the other creepy crawlies but and big rats a lot of big rats so it was a very interesting few months of my life even more skills learned no doubt a few a few skills but but just it gave me a massive appreciation right of what we have yeah you know and what we i guess what we utilize um you know as human beings and we consume it ultimately i realized coming back home to the uk you know highly developed nation how much we consume and how fortunate all of us are and yet you know it feels like to me having traveled a lot it feels like to me like two-thirds of planet earth are like living on a shoestring you know by comparison so yeah we're the lucky ones i have to say yeah well so i mean that's uh mentioned five months of you uh being out there so you then come back to the uk um and then what's i mean do you have plans when you come back or do you get back and then start thinking about the next the next journey that you go on to so initially i was thinking okay do i just think do i just uh go back into policing straight away um i think the you know that option was there for me like i said i was on sabbatical the i think the thought process then was actually to exploit a little bit more about what i was doing at the time so the diving was a big pull massive put in fact so i ended up doing some work um uh i went to work in egypt for a big commercial company called emperor emperor divers they're still there uh very successful and they've sort of grown up their sort of business enterprise around the world and and that really inspired me you know i did some work in that sense uh and then i then chose to um actually go back to academia strangely enough okay so you'd think why would he do that after all of that but so at that stage i was very much a mature student in every sense of the world i was now mid-twenties um so yeah i found myself you know sort of doing this kind of ucas application process very late in life um but it was something that i always considered uh even from way back you know having done the a levels and surprised myself that i did reasonably well and um and i guess that yeah um that was the next step in my mind at that stage so i came back from philippines and diving etc and and i went off to university east anglia so uea in norwich over in norfolk and a strong university and i actually signed up to do a languages program i was interested to do something a bit different whereby i might get the opportunity to travel once again by virtue of the language and on my mum's side of the family there is some some norwegian influence okay so uh so i've i've actually got an uncle that's in that's in oslo in norway that's based out there and so um i'd we'd we'd visited and i'd i'd met him a couple of times and i really like norway it was a small country in terms of population um i felt that it would be a tremendous opportunity to perhaps uh to perhaps have the op have to have the chance to go there and then so when i saw this degree sort of flash up at uea in terms of what i was looking for something a bit different something a bit quirky and i was all about doing different and actually um that is actually the university's mantra is there to do different which is right right so um yeah so interestingly i signed up at the time i don't think it's a it's a program that they run anymore perhaps due to demand or perhaps the the funding or whatever in that department but the the uh department of uh language and linguistic studies specifically for the language and i did a ba honours in in scandinavian languages wow um completely random when you think about the background and everything um but it was an amazing i i feel it was an amazing decision because of just how it shaped my life going forwards and it's just so random i i have to you know put my hands up and admit to that it's like after all of that yeah the guy did scandinavian language but i think that's a measure of the quirky nature of my sort of outlook and my my personality so is that a year-long thing or um so actually the degree program was four years wow okay ba honours you know it's typically three or four years but because it's a language it's there by you know a year overseas because you have to expose you have to thereby to learn the language and the only way to properly expose with languages as any linguist will know is to go to that country if you know the spanish speakers they go to to madrid or you know indeed you know those those guys and girls that were doing the the french degree kind of sat next to me in in the in the in the linguistics laboratory at uea you know they would be going to paris or nice or wherever to do their year out you know and in my so first year uea and uh that's when i incidentally joined the otc second year i did in in norway and in years three and four back back at uea in norwich to conclude but in my second year i found myself on the on the plane going out to um to oslo from from london and then i took the uh lengthy uh public uh transport uh bus rides up to pretty much central norway and the yacht and hyman so very special area so this was the norwegian alps and um uh and i went there i don't know late in the summer it was probably late august i think it was that i pitched up and i found myself as kind of a as a kind of academic school it was kind of an interim school for for a younger kind of generation and students and it's what they call a folker hugh schuler in norwegian or a folk high school and it was it was sort of an intermediate year for like beyond high school but to towards kind of uh you know um vocational perhaps trades qualifications or the indeed those that want to go college or the university routine in in norway so i'd already been in my university time in uea in england this was my second year at this particular specialist school and within the school i specialized because you could you could sort of denote which way which path you wanted to take and i specifically did a year in um something called thrillerslive in the norwegian language which kind of directly translates to kind of like the outdoor pursuits okay um or in a nutshell it was kind of like mountaineering and it was kind of like mount skiing mountaineering and the outdoor world within norway so they these guys these instructors and these uh my my fellow comrades within the school so they gave they took me under their wing i mean some of these norwegian guys that i met were absolutely like [ __ ] hot you know they were amazing skiers and they used to take me under their wing and we'd as mates we'd go off into the wilderness so i bought my first pair of skis and like walking skis you know these these uh these sort of lang laugh yeah and um and i'm heading off into the yacht and i'm sort of there's goody goody good off into the mountain and everybody's kind of like chatting amongst each other and we're cruising up into the norwegian mountains you know with our ration packs of stowed in the bag in a hot flask or whatever and it was absolutely first class so i learned i learned from the norwegians and i learned firsthand you know about the ski the skiing into the mountains deep into the mountains and survival and um because that is a different environment completely i mean i forget the tropics you know the heat and the humidity and the snakes and spiders and the you know the lack of running water this was um this when the winter came boy did the winter come i mean in every sense of you know you know the arctic wilderness yeah so this was like you know yay deep snow and then some and and you know you had to you had to kind of you know think on your feet arguably the most hostile environment on the planet is the uh is the arctic environment in my in all my experience and i did more a lot more experience later on with the military but um yeah i mean these were the foundation for me going to norway is effectively a young student still and they took me under their wing i learned skiing to a high level so i was doing um you know they taught me how to to ski conventionally but we were soon you know having to learn like telemark because the only way you can survive practically speaking coming down a mountain you know to sort of drop a knee and sort of break the falls properly on on making those turns so i did telemark um and i did the uh the telemark classic i did the uh i i did the um you know as in the uh i'm sort of forgetting the terminology now but basically i learned uh sort of all of the telemark techniques to sort of a comprehensive level and then i learned sort of mountaineering skills as well you know rope work you know uh working with like the safety equipment you know the bee laying and the uh and the uh and the climbing equipment as it were and i took my dive kit out there as well i think i got my brother to come out and carry some dive kit out in a in a backpack or a bergen for me i said i need this this and this a checklist because i had a fjord right next to the school right so a deep fjord i mean this thing was like deep like i'm talking thousand meters deep there's no way you can exploit that but you know i could shave off the surface right as a as a as a recreational scuba diver so i'm doing i'm doing some crazy sort of solo dives in the fjord sort of you know 50 60 meters um what temperatures are you looking at three four degrees celsius yeah i had my dry skin i was gonna say did you have a dry suit on i had my dry suit uh which was got a bit leaky actually towards the end of the season that i was out there but i was able to teach some of the uh some of the colleagues some of some of my contemporaries within the school yeah some of my fellow students and even some of the staff they wanted some of that so i took them in for to vary it for some training and i remember certifying them some of them that wanted to go the distance and do the full courses had you done skiing before going out skiing um i think i'd done like one trip with the otc to like uh three valleys in france okay um yeah valdez air or or something like that it was like it was you know it was the conventional stuff that most of the europeans do you know they're kind of they're very basic and then they're not and yeah you know slide you know the conventional kind of like you're trying to you're trying to grasp the parallel turns um i did one trip and thought i was kind of like double 07. but in all honesty i was pretty crap yeah you know i hadn't mastered parallel turns and i'm trying to kind of hold my own and do my best but um yeah so the real um skiing education effectively didn't come until i was in norway and that was for me that was pretty special looking back and then you were given back by giving them diving instructions uh yeah yeah if you like yeah yeah but cliche as it sounds like you know but i yeah it was kind of giving something back i was in a small little rural community and for the norwegians out there i was in a place called songdal in the song of fjordan or community a song of jordan community or county and um and it was very special you know these i mean these people were i'm talking about the community members they were they were humble they were they were good people in fact there was an expat guy i remember a guy called paul hoff british guy who was one of my main instructors and i looked up to this guy i mean at the time i think he celebrated his 40th so he was a bit older than me i was a slightly older student granted but paul was that bit older and you know he had a great deal of life experience he had a great deal of like um you know real uh sort of essence at what he did in the mountains with the mountaineering and his his his uh credibility as an instructor i got a lot out of paul and he was an expat so it was easy for me to there wasn't a great language barrier at first because with a lot of the other instructors we had another instructor who was brilliant but he was from denmark so it wasn't so easy for me to understand and and several others so with paul uh from england expat you know he moved out there and that was his thing that was what he did he he settled down and married etc but i i learned a lot from people like paul and and you know other contemporaries and i was able to give back like paul ended up becoming one of my dive students towards the end of the year and and some of the some of the other students so it was a bit of a two-way street because remember i was a mature student so i had something to bring to the party as well nice but great life experience yes yeah more more to your more strings to your bow as such um so you mentioned earlier about otc sure uh so what made you join that and and how does that look because i've obviously regular i'm not i'm not otc didn't go down that route yeah but um yeah explain that because that'd be interesting i will so with the otc um so that goes back a year remember to the first year of university for me so um you know it was back in you know in the millennium sort of albeit the latter stages of of 2000 because i'd been remember i've been doing expedition work in philippines and diving et cetera so i joined that academic year at otc in the in the new millennium so still we're still talking you know night on 21 years ago and and people will pooh-pooh maybe the idea you know maybe some of the military listeners who don't necessarily fully understand or weren't privileged to serve with the otc but from my own experience um i think it was a very unique privilege to be a part of that and it was certainly something that for young people certainly listening it was certainly something that i would definitely encourage them to pursue if they had the opportunity um from memory i think there's about 18 university officer training course around the country throughout the three main ones are cambridge oxford and london i was very fortunate so i was very privileged that because i was a student at uea in norwich i was um i was able to tap into potentially um the recruitment at cambridge university otc so that's how it happened for me in the first year of going to uni so how was that just like on a bulletin board or did someone come in they do these things like at freshers fair you go to university like any young student okay fresh is fair i rock up you know what can i do there's jobs on offer there's like volunteering work or there's sports and social clubs at uni and then there was like raf you could like learn to fly and stuff like that there was um you know what are they so the air cadets or there was the uh the royal naval squadron you know for the for the boats or whatever and then there was the otc what's that what about i was curious like basically effectively it was the army you know the boys in green stood there in like combat 95 yeah and like um and and i started talking to these guys and i just remember there was one guy who just cracked it for me i'm talking to a lot of other fresh as fair kind of reps as it were as a young student but remember i guess i wasn't so young i wasn't like the beery 18 19 year old that wanted to hang out in the student union 24 7. but there was this one guy that kind of really grabbed my attention he was brilliant so he was a bit of a cockney um and he was kind of um i think he'd been royal anglian regiment in the past and his name so his name was was rob hill and he was a young so he was at the time he was a relatively young permanent staff instructor or psi that had come from his unit and he'd basically seconded for say a couple of years to cambridge otc well obviously working under the command of of one of the commanding officers or the commanding officer at the time so i remember rob hill uh in his combat 95 and he said how are you doing mate how are you doing and he was really friendly he was really chirpy and straight away he got my attention you know i thought i'm good you know you know that's how we respond you know we respond to effectively to to kind of kind and and and so rob caught my attention and he kind of told me a bit about the otc he gave me a leaflet and he sort of said you know so what are you interested in i said well you know i'm interested in this and that i mean i'm quite athletic and i said like i love scuba diving and i do a bit oh we can do scuba diving you know we could organize that you'd be brilliant if you're an instructor and i'm telling him what my past was and my background says if you're an instructor he said you could maybe lead one of those trips perhaps next summer and that was what sold it to me okay i'm like are you serious he goes yeah for sure he said we've got budget for that kind of thing nice and that sold it to me he said you know you've got to do some army stuff you've got to do some mean and green and that's why i'm here and i'm like okay cool but i'd love to and he said and we pay you as well i'm like really you pay so this wasn't like army cadets you know as in as a member you get paid in the otc and i'm like i was blown away i'm like come on you actually pay i've got to do some green army stuff at the weekend and run around and i don't know weapons or whatever and then you you're going to pay me and then at the end of the summer you know because you've got some budget in the bank i can basically on behalf of the commanding officer i can run a dive exped somewhere tropical he said yeah for sure and it and that's what sold it basically so i'm signed up i'm like there and then so i'm signed up to like a selection program for the otc and give them their due you know they do things by the book yeah so i got invited to this big selection process and there was probably about 150 people rocked up because they probably set the numbers okay okay and the truth is they probably know what the fallout's going to be okay yeah i mean this isn't like marines or p company you know paras or sf this is like but they still expect a bit of a fallout so they probably set the numbers and about 150 people rocked up on the selection probe and it was like it was either i think it was like water beach or bassingborn or somewhere like that somewhere cambridge way okay yeah so all of us we rock up you know and we're like shirt and tie you know officer cadets and and we have to do medical that's a big thing obviously you need to be medically fit and and and kind of all singing all dancing you know and i guess they're not looking for like a1 fitness but they're looking for a degree of of medical conformity and so that was the first thing and then we you know fill out all the paperwork more reams and reams of paperwork some liability stuff and blah blah blah and then we do some fitness tests but they're nothing major you know press up sit-ups maybe do a bleep test or something like that and then we have a little interview at the end of the day and that was the selection and actually yeah it sounds quite ominous perhaps daunting for the young aspiring officer cadet but it was quite enjoyable and you meet a lot of fellow comrades i think the idea for that is it weeds out those that aren't so interested and indeed there was a bit of fallout because you could say something like 150 one of these and perhaps they took on about 120 or 130 right so that was pretty much the deal yeah so yeah i was keen i was enthusiastic i guess i was medically fit at the time and so i was in the door i was otc and then i did my drill nights at uh in norwich uh which was great because i'd go down every wednesday night i'd sort of cycle down on my mountain bike upgrade from that bmx yeah for sure yeah and and and i'd go in and and we'd do drill and we'd we'd learn how to do drill in the parade ground outside and i had this brilliant um um like old school i think he was an ex-guardsman yeah his name i remember his sight your name was site major science major um science major uh bill tufts i think it was brilliant guy so so enthusiastic again it's little characters like this in my mind that really stick out and so their bill was bill would be barking at us and we'd get us in the parade ground and we'd be like literally the tempo would be like you know ten of the dozen and we'd be we'd be marching up and down we'd be properly barking at us until he basically until we were drilled and that's what drill is all about right they get you drilled drilled within an inch of perfection yeah that's what it's all about and everyone that's been in the forces they know about drill so this was quite cool and but we did all sorts of stuff for the otc from learning about first aid to like basic weapons handling to patrolling to kind of like you know fire and movement on the ground you know kind of basic sort of enemy contact drills um and then they would progress you so the first year mtq1 military training qualification one and that that first year is is really dedicated you know uh to to learning how to be a basic soldier similar to what um you know a basic soldier gets upon joining the green army basic training for sure and then the second year um you sort of bump up and it's now there's a bit more kind of it feels quite heavy going because the the s the the uh the onus then turns around and the focus is on you and more as an individual not just to be part of the team and basic soldiering but to to learn about leadership so it's mtq2 military training qualification too and um so for memory we were doing um we were learning about the the orders process predominantly and the sort of the the estimate and the orders process which later became something called the seven questions so a lot of the sort of officers out there will understand all of this and perhaps the ncos uh the juniors don't really get introduced this until perhaps a bit later on down in their careers but in otc is kind of they throw at you quite quickly because that's what it's about is officer training and so with mtq2 and then mtq3 is like a precursor if you want to go on and do a high level and perhaps look at a more developed um leadership training towards uh indeed commissioning as a reservist or a regular or regular army okay full time yeah and so i went through all of these processes and i was keen i was enthusiastic i loved the otc not least because i think i was buoyed up mostly by the characters that that were behind me so not i had some great um um you know contemporaries so colleagues like other fellow students you know some of the guys were were magic you know from both uea and and from cambridge some some great guys some great girls and you could tell there were some that were more serious and the ones that were more serious you know you get out what you what you put in that's they would get more out and and so for us in the sort of clan as it were or that clique within that were more serious we'd end up going on to do things like cambrian patrols and we would do we'd get opportunities to do uh development courses so i had an extremely enthusiastic commanding officer in fact several in in tenure in the course of their careers and these commanding officers were were brilliant very encouraging and for me that was what it was all about if they encouraged me sometimes that was all of the seed or all of the light that i needed to go on yeah and and that's the essence of what i'm trying to say you know with the right encouragement in life all of us can can make steps and go forward and um and so i was encouraged and um and i then found myself because i'd been in norway my co at the time basically said oh you've been in norway fantastic he said i need a skiing instructor so i'm sending you straight back to norway he said little do you realize we have a joint services uh mountain training center in shushun or whatever it was called near lillehammer said you're on the next flight over the easter break and i'm like okay sir right on you kind of thing of course who's going to say no to that yeah you know a young aspiring officer cadet who is going to say no to that kind of opportunity so literally i'm straight out to to lillyhammer and that norwegian slash british instructors were teaching us and i'm getting drilled back in on the norwegian turf as it were albeit with like six feet of snow on top and i'm doing you know i'm doing norwegian uh classic i'm doing uh you know uh the norwegian telemark i'm doing um you know doing bivvy whacking in the snow and learning about again some of these like army survival tactics training really absolutely yeah fully full sort of arctic warfare stuff and and that led me towards effectively so i did a sort of a foundation then went back for what they called jssi which is joint services skiing instructor they went back to do joint services ski tour leader wow which is quite a big qual yeah yeah and then i went i got sent to uh indefatigable this is all ceo's intent believe me not mine i just showed enthusiasm so they pushed me that's all it was so ceo's intent um then sent me towards uh indiff also at the time the joint services mountain training center in north wales up near anglesey and i did uh the joint services um jezebel joint services mountain expedition leader up there which basically ml in the mountain or mountain lead and um i had other opportunities like i did get to lead a dive exped to egypt one year and sort of you know helped to put that together and run it and i was teaching and honestly the list was i did an htv class one course i mean wow could you believe that there's another story there that was uh probably care not to add but i got myself into a bit of hot water because i went out on the lash one night and um oh okay i ended up in the uh i ended up sort of uh making a bit of a mess of the the officer's mess uh i think i inadvertently pulled down a curtain and uh perhaps uh excuse me but swamped all over the uh the bathroom floor inadvertently so i ended up getting a right dressing down from the uh the uh the the the driver sorry the master driver who was like running the show yeah and um and the uh it would have been the camp commandant and the mess manager s so i promptly got rtude not proud so i didn't actually get my hgv1 courtesy of the army it's something i did for shits and giggles later on to sort of uh to kind of fulfill that uh failure so to speak but um yeah i mean it was a it was it was a massive opportunity for me the otc and that's why it lives quite prominently within my memory with stuff like cambrian and p company and then some and giving you all those uh qualifications and and and more more skills to learn sounds sure yeah yeah not everybody gets the opportunity no huge opportunities and and things like you know if i could just touch on probably the biggest highlight so you think oh it wasn't really just about commissioning towards the end of it okay the commissioning is a great process fine and yeah you get you get the pip on your shoulder proud moment you know to to march off the the square in front of old college um but it's it was more than that for me it was more to do with the the pragmatic um skill sets that i kind of learnt so the real world sort of soul dream and we got to do um cambrian patrol uh twice over in my time so i did with one team the first team we had a bit of anomaly where we we lost a guy uh through injury during the patrol so but we still pulled out our level best and we we um we meddled with the bronze wow in that in that first cameroon that i did and in the second uh cameron patrol um and you've got to bear in mind this is a 50-hour patrolling competition over the course of well i was weekend i was going to ask if you can explain what that actually is because there's probably a lot of people that don't know what that is um so talking about getting a bronze i know that's incredible yeah but if you could just explain it a bit more to people that don't know what it is so the following year we got silver but so for the record cambrian happens to be the british army a lot of people don't know about this even serving soldiers don't know about it because they don't all get this opportunity but cambrian happens to be the army's premier patrolling competition held within the uk every single year and it takes place in cambrian and the black mountain within within the heart of uh wales and everybody can tell you that wales throws some pretty pretty awful weather in terms of the meteorology and the environment and it makes life very challenging and so that's like a 50-hour competition you're on you're on the hoof the whole time you get very little sleep it's a graded competition so you're going from effectively stand to stand and what that means is you're you go to a point where you rendezvous with assessors and these guys will look at you to do it could be a stand for first aid but it'll be like a mock scenario so you get there and there's blatantly been like a road traffic accident and you then have to pull out all the stops as a patrol to deal with the casualties of that road traffic accident get on the radio call in the relevant support make sure that you manage all the casualties with the first aid skills in the appropriate way so using your kind of medic prowess and really try to do your level best as a soldier in the field to prove that you've got the skill set and it's um it's a it's a very intensive competition and and and obviously points and medals are at stake and there's a lot of incentive and and not only that but it gives it gives teams a great deal of confidence and self-esteem and and traditionally they'll go on to be very much commended with their home units having completed cambrian it's a big deal within british armed forces and indeed foreign forces because another thing is we invite units from all over the world so we have airborne troops and marine troops from all over europe from poland from germany from france uh from the netherlands they all come in and some of those eastern european countries to to to work on cambrian and to see if they can cut the mustard and many of them don't make it many of them don't finish the patrols many of them lose guys you know through injury uh or they they literally just just just quit because you know they it it's a difficult competition you know so to be part of a process with cambridge otc specifically where on one year i did bronze on the second year i did silver it was um for me it was fantastic self-esteem and um it kind of put the spotlight on on a few of us yeah and um and from there on i guess there was a seed within that i realized that potentially i could uh can go and do do more here and perhaps what could i what could i achieve so so sometime thereafter an opportunity came up for me to to put myself forward for a pee company which is the parachute regimental selection process for the paris essentially with the british army and um so i i got uh i spoke about my intention the ceo at the time was all for sending me on the marines process uh for limpster because he had a i think uh he was formerly you know all arms qualified as a marine this this particular commanding officer i couldn't quite get the time that i needed because remember i was a student foremost academia uea in norwich doing my languages degree i couldn't get that time i needed to um to get the permission they said no on account of the um the all-arms um commando course was that little bit longer and so i had to eat humble pie and say to my co not happening yeah and then he said oh perhaps we could get you on pee company i'm like well okay well how long is that and it was slightly shorter so this is what happened and i basically could get away with it because for about a month i couldn't take take longer so um i just got in by the skin of my teeth in fact i had to lie through my back teeth with the uh the dean of the faculty right at uea to kind of get some time out and i think i took about a week longer than i should have done naughty naughty slap on the wrist i basically had to infill with lectures or or it was uh you know kind of apologize profusely when i went back and sort of make up the work but um yeah i went away on pee company so katric north yorkshire from memory and yeah it was uh it was an absolute beast and and for anyone out there that's done p company you know i literally take my my beret off to you uh i i didn't i didn't personally go on to serve with the powers because i chose to to take a different track but um i did get a stand-up pass at p-company first time around and for the powers out there hats off to you i won't do the kind of like the banter thing here and like start slating the marines out there because i'm sure that all arms commando course is absolutely nails and i have every respect for those guys and i did want to do that course but i didn't quite get the opportunity in the end but yeah from my memory of p company it was properly nails and i have every respect for for every single paratrooper and x paratrooper out there because it is um it's a mega ordeal it's balls to the wall from the moment that whistle blows on pre-power so the pre-parachute regimental selection which leads that's a one-week basically pre-selection that weeds out the non you know the non-perhaps uh uh sort of uh eligible should we say or or serious that first week pre-power yeah then you go straight into p company proper and then that's another week or so and then you go pee company test week it is just non-stop and i literally i mean i'm a skinny guy i've always been like that kind of um sort of i'm what they call an ecto-mesomorphic body type so skinny muscular basically yeah and that was me all along but i was like like this ripped ecto kind of like thing when i finished pee company because you burn every single ounce of body fat and then some and i've never been so more ripped in all my born days coming off the back of pee company they push me to within an inch of my life every single event yeah it is properly nailed it takes you to the edge on everything you ever do and so you have to want it you have to be super hungry yeah and i and i and i i like what was i 27 or so when i did it and um and you know i did the all-arms p company course for the record and i was doing it with some you know some younger guys you know so we were kind of segregated into uh white t-shirts for the juniors sorry sorry green t-shirts for the juniors you know the privates and then the red t-shirts were all the ncos basically i think greens were from memory privates and perhaps lance lance corporals i think and then above that it was red t-shirts all the ncos and the white t-shirts were kind of um the uh the uh the officers and at that stage um i it was just pre-commissioned for me so i just pre pre uh santa so i was in the white t-shirt and of course you get that little bit extra kind of focus and attention from the instructors because they want to basically see that you suffer they want to see that you hit the mark yeah otherwise they're not going to they're not going to entertain you make sure you can see simple as that you're not going to get the stand up pass on the grading on on the conclusion it's not going to happen so i got a hard time on p company i really did and um and i think i got a mediocre write-up back to my commanding officer the feedback within the otc but you know they're not going to give you a glowing write-up the idea is a pass or fail they basically they kind of give you a write-up if you pass happy days yeah you know the right that was basically yeah okay but he needs a lot of development right right you know and and um but hey i'd passed yeah that's what it's all about you know effectively then all i had to do was at that point go on and and do the jumps course for para and i would have been i would have been badged um as a paratrooper as it were and that was that filled me with a huge sense of joy achievement um self-esteem because then i was i felt like i was in the club you know i was in an age-old club that dates back to the second world war and all those brave souls that uh that that passed the selection process with p company then threw themselves out of perfectly serviceable aircraft into enemy territory as it were so i you know i you know it meant a lot to me to to to uh to to hit the mark on p company that's good well awesome that you passed it that's uh anyone that's ever been on it knows how difficult it is but uh yeah my friends that have yeah it just it sounds very grueling and uh test you to your your limits so um yeah that's awesome so then what happens after that you you go back to otc and then so yeah in terms of my sort of military journey i mean um i so i went yeah i did obviously i went back to the otc and the next thing as i mentioned was the commissioning process i mean it was relatively short and sweet it was just a short course at santos that i did how long is that course it sounded like um it was some like three week duration yeah yeah yeah it was a pretty pretty nails pretty full on again you know it's a lot of intensive sort of leadership training they really push you they really sort of work the gray matter yeah that's more leadership yeah leadership absolutely that's what sandhurst is all about that's pretty much what the label kind of you know uh um alludes to you know royal military academy um but um you know i learned a lot i learned a lot about myself i learned you know about the um you know the essence of of sort of integrity as it were with the leadership you know there's no point sort of bullshitting your your contemporaries and your sort of team members you know if you're not sure then say you're not sure if you're if you've got a question and you need to know ask damn well learn because you can make mistakes at santos and and if if you're not sure or if you're you're trying to blag it yeah you'll get you you you know they'll spot you a mile off not not just your fellows but uh but the um the instructors there are absolutely first class they're world class again and um and and they taught me a lot about myself and they taught me a lot about perhaps uh perhaps where i was in the whole sort of leadership game and you really only had a junior you're just starting out in leadership but um i remember i remember for example doing my first um like tactical exercise where i was giving her giving a giving a tasking and and i was kind of [ __ ] as it were and i was given that that tasking and i was given my orders so my one-up orders from above as it were i had to kind of uh sort of translate those orders then i had to redistribute those orders to my platoon and that's the essence of what sanders is all about so take what receive my orders then then take my orders write them up as such and give give them to my 30-man platoon as it were and um and and i gave in fact the first exercise we did so i did exactly that and gave my briefing then we were out on the ground doing the doing the live sort of task and i made an absolute hash of it i mean there was enem you know there was basically an enemy uh you know from a bunker that we were going to attack and of course i i had it regimented in my head i had uh i had my firebase you know for attacking you know sort of responding to that contact i had my fire support off to one of the flanks and i had my reserve my reserve section as part of the platoon i had my runners you know i had my sort of who was in command of each section i had my my two i see et cetera et cetera you know the basic sort of format of the two and from a leadership perspective and um and i remember you know they started you know the enemy started giving it pop pop pop and we've got to respond to that so straight away you know i issue the command you know base of fire down you know you know kind of uh fire at will and then they're they're responding and then straight away you know i'm putting i'm sort of barking the orders you know thinking i've got everything under wraps everything i'm going to control so you know base of fire main point my fire support bringing up my reserve moving everything about quite nicely all of a sudden i've got the classic in-depth in-depth point of fire so another enemy basically from a different point on the ground and it all of a sudden became like this fog it's like oh my god how am i going to handle this how am i going to segregate everything and i'm trying to deal with the first point and you know you don't you don't sort of think about oh well i could actually split up my my reserve you're not thinking about the sort of finer points okay you all you're so regimented and they they they're quite clever they kind of catch you out so so um i made a complete hash i was basically focusing on my on my main enemy point the bunker that one key bunker call it bunker alpha but let's just say bunker bravo sort of opened up and started firing upon us all and then they were starting to then run around like lunatics and they were all over the place like i don't know sort of viet cong or whatever in the jungle yeah and and suddenly i was overwhelmed i'd lost the plot and so then it was pretty obvious that i'd made a complete hash of it from a command perspective so the um uh you know i'm not afraid to admit it um you know on record that the uh the training captain then from my my my santosh training captain that was kind of took probably great delight in running in and like basically blowing his whistle stop and gave me a right royal dressing down pretty much in front of the whole no and that was it that that's sanders you know that's a raw military academy but you learn you learn i mean you're on the back foot and you learn you learn fast they put you under a great deal of pressure and you learn and i have to respect the the process for that um you know admittedly i did not go on you know hands up i did not go on to sort of dizzy heights within the army as a whole but um but i but i learned a great deal about what it is to be a leader you know like british army style from you know from that from that early sort of intervention and that process at um at santa so it's a fantastic process for for anyone that is aspiring to go down that road or um or perhaps for anyone that that's that's there you know because it's a long process for the regulars so as a reservist you know it's nigh on a month or you know some of the professionals um they do um you know professionals as the medics the doctors the physios um indeed some of the religious clergy as well because they have all of that yeah um the um the padres as it were um so they have the sideline professionals as well within the reserve component too and indeed regular um and they also of course have the regulars and i think that's about about an 11 month or a year-long process virtually and yeah so hats off it's a it's a difficult process and it definitely shapes up individual characters ready ready for that uh that next next aspect of that their career be it indeed reserve or regular yeah so you get your commission i did yeah i got the commission at the moment and then that was me sort of in the otc there's not an awful lot you can do in the otc at that stage so that was kind of um more or less the the end of uh an era there was a bit more kind of uh giving something back and like instructing the sort of the juniors and uh kind of sharing your experiences and maybe doing a few talks and stuff for the otc but yeah that was pretty much the process for me at that stage and then what was your next step beyond that so really it was a case of okay the question was what was i going to do was i going to um consider a reserve unit or was i going to consider a regular commission and going on uh to full-time service and based on a number of factors at that stage in my life so i was quite older by this stage i didn't actually graduate until i was on the nose of at 29 years of age now considering a regular commission that would that would have been quite old for me so and my opportunities would have been somewhat reduced and restricted and limited in terms of where i could go with a career uh and perhaps the offerings that would have been on the table so i chose to to take a route as a reservist and it was something that i was interested to sort of maybe keep my hand in with and because i had a at that stage probably a real interest that developed you know uh all in all with all the courses and everything that i'd done and i felt like i had something to offer the armed forces going forwards that that is um but um i didn't i did not choose to go regular i chose to contin actually go back into uk policing and that kind of line of work okay yeah yeah uh but hold my my uh my my position as as you will as a reservist and and see where the road could take me with that so i went back and basically had that conversation with my commanding officer otc at the time uh expressed my intent and he told me okay what was potentially on the table and and i had some several conversations it was all good and at that stage i chose to fulfill a different opportunity so they then basically gave me a recommendation at that point i guess based on all of the above that i've mentioned with things like the p company the kind of all of the sort of i guess the the opportunities and perhaps the successes that i'd had through the otc we including commission and they they um they pointed me down the road and said we would give we would we could recommend you for this process if you want it to have a think about it so that was an opportunity to do selection as a reservist for uksf or uk special forces so that was actually something that i'd not really considered in all honesty by myself although hands up i'd read a few books you know some fantastic books out there that document some of this um very comprehensively comprehensively and very nicely you know like andy mcnab's written about it since way back you know with with bravo 2-0 and i remember reading um other other other members other other books from i think it was chris ryan and and various other other members you know former former members and you know aside from from from all of the bits and pieces that you can learn from reading all of those books the truth of the matter is you can never really fully understand unless you decide to sign up for the process yourself and walk the walk as it were so i was always of the opinion as a character that for me life wasn't about you know being down the pubs or talking the talk i had to if i had an idea and if i had an ambition that was i had to try to fulfill that myself if i if indeed i was serious so the serious nature with with myself with jamie hall was that i was going to really give that a go the recommendation was coming for uksf and the siege was perhaps was there and as i said i'd read a few books but that doesn't mean anything it's a case of you have to step up and you have to volunteer for that process and it was very much a voluntary process so i then found myself you know basically transferring with the unit to to to join a selection process and i'd and that's exactly what i did i started a selection process that was about 13 months long uh it's like a two-phase process and extremely comprehensive extremely long-winded i'm not going to say too much about that but other than then i i surprised myself i actually completed the selection process first time around which wasn't an easy process and many people don't uh roughly speaking there's about five percent uh probability of success for both reserves and regular and um i did the same test week with everybody else at the end of the first phase and i got through that and then i went on to do like a continuation phase um with sort of weapons and tactics and so on and and i and i and i was fortunate you know i i dug very deep and i got through it it was very much i felt it was a different animal it was a different sort of uh process to to what i experienced with p company yeah the company was by no means easy but p company was i i felt was far more physical okay far more to the edge it really was um like for example if you don't pass p company you're probably not going to pass selection it's probably it's probably one of those but selection with with uksf uh was a different animal it was extremely physical but that wasn't there was to it there was very much uh a thinking man's game so you had to think one step ahead and and you had to be very much looking out for your own welfare and um and sort of planning ahead and taking good advice from all the instructors and then putting that into good practice but you're very much a lot of it's sort of individual solo effort long before you come together as a team right so they look at you very much as a soloist as an individual on the kind of classic sort of hills phase selection most people know about that or read about it and um so yeah it's very much as an individual and then they will bring you together after in my case about six months um and then yeah you'll start looking at the team side of it and then if you cut the mustard in that respect then yeah you're in you're batched so that that's that was that was the journey that i took and i fortunately surprised myself and i and i got in the door and i was very lucky i then went on to serve several years with the um with the squadron with with 2-1 and and i i went around the world and i had lots of fantastic sort of operational training experiences in lots of different countries lots of different um uh should we say environment so yeah sort of meteorological environment so i trained um i did some some fantastic training within temperate locations also within the arctic also within sort of jungle environment and i i was i felt i was extremely privileged and i undoubtedly developed skills and assets that uh as a soldier were tremendously useful and and and would have been useful to effectively to the british army in the operational sense had i had that opportunity and and i'm quite prepared to admit that i didn't have that opportunity so i got cut off absolutely in my prime and and that happened because of an incident in the summer of 2007 and my life ended up taking a massive unexpected turn and so everything i just aforementioned and described effectively you might as well say it felt like it got written off in an instant in one moment and as a result of this particular incident and so my days with 2-1 sas and or uk special forces numbered okay and i never got to i never got to serve in the operational sense so i i never got to go to i was on the cusp of going to afghanistan later in on the year on in the year in in 2007 and i'd been um sort of given the nod about tasking we'd built up and we'd trained and trained and worked towards that but for me it never happened i never i never had that opportunity and my comrades and fellows went on to sort of serve nobly and and yeah the rug got pulled from underneath my feet as it were and my life took a massive turn well um we'll get into that in a bit hopefully uh if you're willing to share um but i just want to say everything that you've done up until 2007 sounds immense incredible everything you've done is super impressive and i'd say even before you you touched on military stuff everything that you did building up to that sounded like it seemed to prepare you ready to take on those challenges that the military were going to throw at you and no doubt what the sf training sf challenges and tests also chucked at you um but it sounds like that when you put your mind to it um being so physically fit back then you just you nailed it you you passed it and that's really impressive i think in my case i mean concerning my my story as an individual um it is it's a bit different and um it's undoubtedly you know quirky by nature with the background and everything that i described but in my in my humble sort of um you know conclusion of all of that thus far in the story was that yeah it that was great in all in all respects but in all in all sincerity it feels like all it did was set me up for what came next okay and actually for me you know what came next you of course you know i'm happy to to to uh to talk about that so it's a simple case of i had an alternative ambition outside of the forces right and you know bearing in mind i'd been doing all of this different stuff so i've done uk policing i'd done soldiering at that level um and so on and so forth and all the other life experiences that i'd had up until that time and so at that time for the record i just turned 32 in the summer of 2007 and i had an alternative ambition actually to learn to fly um a light aircraft so i again i didn't want to just walk sorry talk the talk over this i wanted to walk the walk in other words do something about it fulfill that that ambition it doesn't just happen if you're you know just you know chatting about it you've got to make it happen [Music] you

Channel: Military Veterans Podcast

Views: 2,171

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Military, Veterans, Podcast, Mil, Vet, Listen, Learn, Stories, Experiences, UK, Special Forces, Veteran, Jamie Hull, Jamie, Hull, 21, SAS, 21 SAS, World Traveller, U.K., UK Special Forces

Id: t8FFehSfJFY

Length: 129min 29sec (7769 seconds)

Published: Sun May 09 2021