Hey guys, welcome to episode 405 of The TeamHouse. I'm Jack Murphy here with our guest today, Dan Mealy. Dan served in the British military and he then went on and served as a volunteer with the YPG, the People's Protection Units, the Kurdish militia in northwest Syria who were at that time were heavily engaged in fighting ISIS. And today he is a brewmaster.
Not quite. No.
So, Dan, welcome to the show, man. Thank you for doing this.
Yeah, no worries, man. Yeah, this is the first time I've ever spoken about this. So yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a relatively small group of people, of Westerners that went over there and did what you did. But not, not microscopic either, you know, considering the totality of the war.
Yeah, I mean, there was a pretty solid turnaround of guys, so guys are constantly rotating in and out. And then you have people like me that sort of just dipped in. But yeah, what was strange is the amount of like celebrities that I was out there with, like guys who ended up on the news all the time. It was, yeah, it was quite odd. I'm quite glad that I didn't slip into that group. I like having my anonymity for a while.
So yeah, you mean like people who are Instagram famous?
I didn't want to be controversial, but yeah. Okay.
Yeah, I hear you. All right. So, Dan, let's start off at the beginning, man. You know, we're talking a little bit before the show. You and I are roughly the same age, roughly, probably similar experiences in a lot of ways. But tell us about how you grew up and how that took you to the military in those early years. What was it, 2003 you enlisted, right?
Yeah, it's kind of— didn't have a happy childhood. Kind of had that military interest, but from a historical point of view. But yeah, long story short, my dad had set me up like a savings account. Um, I'm from an Irish Catholic family, uh, so it's quite normal to do that because at a christening money's usually given and that goes into like a savings account. You get that when you're, um— so yeah, long story short, I was about 15 and my mom told me she'd stolen it. So that was like, right, I'm gonna do anything to get the fuck out of home. Um, so yeah, I ended up joining joining the Army. So yeah, it was a weird— it's a weird sort of way, but it was like, it was my escape, if that makes sense.
No, it makes perfect sense. And what did the British— like, in the United States, is there some sort of deal where if you serve in the military, you can go to college, you get college tuition paid for, anything like that?
Yeah, absolutely not, man. Once you— once they put you through That's— yeah, you're on your own. It's quite a brutal transition. And I had a really good setup because I took redundancy in 2012. My last gig was at the Olympics, was doing security there.
That's awesome.
Which G4S— well, G4S still haven't paid me for it, so I'm still waiting for that check along with the rest of the British Army. But yeah.
So 2003, you joined the military to get away. What did you— not MOS, that's what we call it in the United States, but what job did you enlist for?
Okay, well, this is kind of funny. So I'm red-green colorblind, so I should never have got in. So what happens, I don't know if you remember the colorblind test, it's like a circle with these dots and there'll be like a number in the middle.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'm going through and I already knew I was red-green colorblind, so I'm like, 6, 7, smiley face, 8, cabbage. They're like, okay, you need to come with us. So this nurse took me into this room, it's like a darkened room, there's this box with, it's like an LED light but it was just like one singular light and that would just change between like orange, red, green, and I had to say what it was. And I just sort of blagged it, and they were like, okay, um, that's good enough. I had 3 options. Um, my first choice was the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers, uh, because I thought, obviously, when you— people tell you about the military, they always say get a trade. Um, second choice was the Royal Engineers, and then my final choice was my local infantry regiment. Um, so the first two options were gone, uh, but it gets better because my age and, uh, because of the arm that I was selected to go for, um, on the fitness test I had an insane amount of time to do the mile and a half run, like something like 14 minutes. I could have stopped and had a cigarette halfway around.
Yeah, but because I then lost that option, I had to do the infantry, had to pass the infantry standards. I really hadn't been training a huge amount, um, but there was these two, uh, there's these two paratroopers or guys wanting to join the paras, um, so I was like, well, I'm just going to stick with them thinking that's a good idea, uh, and then I'll pass the, pass the mile and a half run. Uh, came to the mile and a half run, set off, these powers were gone in a couple of seconds. But I actually did quite well on it, um, like smashed it. Um, and then yeah, they were still quite worried about colorblindness. Um, and then this, uh, color sergeant, I think from, um, it was an infantry regiment, he just basically pointed at this, uh, jerry can, just won't pick that up. They go over there.
Yeah, you're in.
And that was it. But I actually started my basic training on my 17th birthday. So yeah, that was a—
that was, that was controversial in the UK at the time, as I recall, because, you know, boy soldiers, they were deploying to Iraq, I believe, in the early years.
Yes and no. 18, yes. Um, there was an incident, I think it was 1972, where two 17-year-old soldiers were kidnapped and murdered by the IRA. Um, and that was huge at the time. Uh, three Scottish soldiers. Um, but yeah, and after that they stopped the 17 thing though. I've heard rumors, I don't know how true it is, but guys, I don't know how you would do it because you have to give so much documentation when you join up. I've heard rumors that some guys were able to slip through somehow, but I've got no idea how true that is. I'm aware of the rumor. I've never met someone that did it, if you know what I mean.
So, I mean, the, the rule is that you can enlist but you can't deploy. You're going to be in training until you're 18.
Yeah, that— well, in theory, yeah.
Um, no, they do, they do the same here.
Yeah, yeah. So it was— you got to remember that. So this was 2003. No one was— everyone had taken their eyes off of Afghanistan. It was all Iraq. But I joined, like, it was a very experienced battalion, but it was a very, shall I say, peacetime. They'd just come back from Northern Ireland after I finished basic training. They'd done the final tour of South Omagh. They'd had their leave, company's come back, I've joined the company, um, and yeah, it was, it's more like a Young Offenders Institute. Um, I joined, it was 3 Platoon, A Company, um, and within the first few months of being there, the company was known as Class A Company because that's how it runs, uh, because, uh, basically every CDT we lose 2 or 3 guys and we had a CDT every month at one point. Um, it was not a healthy environment for a young man, put it that way. Um, so yeah, it was an interesting, interesting experience.
Like a lot of hazing and things like that?
Well, yeah, I mean, it was— you got to remember as well, the Iraq War was very unpopular with British public, but it was also massively unpopular in the services. Like, people did not see anything there worth dying for. Um, and failing it, popping a hot one on a drug test is a really quick way of getting out. If you've had, you know, you've done a couple of years, pensions aren't going to be great anyway, you're not really losing anything. So a lot of guys use that, particularly when, when they knew, obviously you'd have payday Friday, you knew you were getting drug tested Monday morning, and yeah, guys, you know, had to play the system, got themselves out. So, like, my platoon, we had a platoon sergeant platoon commander. They hated each other. We had 2 lance corporals and we had 1 corporal who had failed juniors the first time around and had to do it again and was sort of grudgingly given it a few years later. So he was no one's choice to be a section commander. So yeah, we were horrendously undermanned.
Wow. And I mean, did you guys end up making it over to Iraq eventually?
No. Well, I did Belize the first time around with them, um, which was— yeah, that was rough.
Jungle warfare training.
Yeah, man. Um, and what happened was before, before we deployed, my platoon sergeant at, um, identified the fact that I could like read and write to a sort of competent level, so I was going to be like the assistant signaler. Um, the two guys who were signals trained, um, like a week before we deployed, they'd come in on a Monday morning. One of the guys that I lived with, he'd just done a line of coke to wake himself up on the drive in, and as he driven into camp the drug— the gates were shut and the drug team were on camp. So he, he didn't just pop a hot one, he popped a hot one while obviously at Songkhoe, um, but he didn't say anything and they ended up deploying him anyway. We just got out into the field and that's when even the British Army thought it's a bit fucked up to send two guys that we know who've just popped a hot one through the jungle for a month. So they pulled them away and I was just given took the entire platoon's worth of signals kit, which, yeah, yeah, it was fucked up, man, because I ended up having to manpack most of it because the sergeant, like, we weren't allowed to backfill it.
So yeah, I had a rough jungle exercise, man. Like, it was so bad because, like, the equipment we were using was so antiquated. We were using the Klansman radio, which you had to, like, tune in and shit. But there was no encryption, so you had like the back codebook, so you had to encrypt your message first. Dude, I just literally just come out of training, I'd learned how to turn the fucking thing on, I didn't know how to be a signaler. So we're doing like CTR recces and I'm like whispering into the radio and I'm saying there's like a column, well, there's a brigade of T-72s lined up in the middle of the fucking jungle. I just completely screwed up the bat code. I mean, yeah, it was wrong. Um, yeah, welcome to the jungle.
Yeah, man. Uh, yeah, Belize is fun. Uh, and then you guys did, uh, did they kind of leave you in that position as the signaler?
The—
we'd call it the RTO, I guess.
No, I ended up like pretty much going down with heat. Um, We were doing a— we were just moving to a different harbor location, and because I had— because we weren't allowed to backfill the kit and I was the new guy, I was carrying everything pretty much. I fell into a— like, we were going up a stream, I'd fallen into it, and I put my hands down and it was, call it limestone, and it was completely smooth. So I put my hands down and my arms slid. I'm like, fuck, I'm gonna have to sit this all night till someone grabs me, which was a fucking horrible experience. They pulled me up, rolled me over, picked up the Bergen, like, what the fuck are you carrying? Um, to top it off, uh, we didn't have the SA-80A1 at this point. We'd already gone to the A2. But what sort of snuck under the mythology of the A1 is a piece of shit called the LSW, which is basically an SA-80 more metal welded to it, and they called it— so they pretended it was a support weapon, and some fucking inbred from the Ministry of Defense bought it.
Um, so I had like ammo for my support weapon as well, like a sandbag full of blanks. Um, platoon sergeant, to be fair to him, went absolutely ballistic and made sure that like all the guys started carrying some of the kit. But I was like so degraded. This was like the first week of being in the jungle. My body just couldn't catch up. And, um, yeah, man, uh, yeah, grew up quick.
So, uh, and then where did you, uh, end up getting sent after Belize? You guys returned home?
Yeah, so, um, got back, um, at this point my fitness is pretty good as well, which to be fair does obviously put you into good stead. Obviously having just come back from training, also just finishing training, the guys had like 6 weeks off. I think it was 6 weeks leave, so they came back with beer bellies, so it was easy to sort of keep up with the phys, shall we say. So yeah, I really got into that. Our next deployment was to— I turned 18, we went to Northern Ireland for marching season. But this was going to be the first year it was just going to be the PSNI on the streets. We were going to do a month of public order riot training, and the people who were playing the enemy, the civ-pol, were our sister regiment, they were all Green Jackets. I don't know how much people know about the tribal nature of regular British infantry. It gets quite heated, like, dude lost an ear I remember coming around the corner and my platoon sergeant has got a guy on the floor, he's got the shield on his throat, he's hitting him and he's just going, "Run, keep going, keep going," as he's hitting this dude.
Yeah, it got pretty wild. Yeah, at one point I got separated, I completely red misted. That was going to become a feature of my military career. Uh, got separated from my callsign. Um, there was DS with me, and I remember him looking at me. I can barely see through the visor because they're all fucked up with potatoes and cracks and stuff. You can barely see anything. This was at night.
They're throwing potatoes at you? That's racist.
He just looks at me like, yeah, dude, you just fucked up, and, um, let the crowd sort of go for me. And I just knuckled up, man. So I just threw my weapon— it slung, so I just threw it to my back and just started swinging. And he pulled me out, and I was like, like, this is the early 2000s, so I knew I was in trouble. Um, I'm either gonna get chewed out or I'm gonna be on the floor winded in a minute. Um, so took me to the sim bin and, uh, it's like 50 blazers, and then gave me like probably the highest praise I'd ever received up until that point, setting into, setting into these guys. My platoon sergeant came to pick me up and this guy was like, yeah, you got a good one here. And I did like a double take, like, what, him?
Because you were wailing on somebody from the rival, uh, rival unit.
Yeah, man. Hey, I got stuck in. Uh, well, the thing was, so the school that I went to, um, uh, where I finally ended up growing up, they had a really big playing field. So if you got into a fight at school, you had to wait for one of the teachers to run from one of the buildings to come break it up. So you have to hold your own. Um, so yeah, uh, I was quite cool with that, if you know what I mean. Like, I wasn't— I wasn't— I didn't have a problem. Um, so yeah, that was— that definitely put me in good step for a bit. But, um, then the opportunity for a tour in Iraq was coming up. Uh, one of the regiments that we would be amalgamating into the Rifles, um, was preparing to go, and they were very short boards, as everyone was. Um, and yeah, so I put my name down. Basically, I knew if I wanted to have a military career, um, I needed to know how I was in the, in the ship. Yeah, yeah. Um, and go. So I just wanted to get myself out there as quickly as possible, um, naive and ignorant as I was.
Um, but yeah, yeah. So, and that as well. We, after Northern Ireland, we went on something called Spearhead, um, like lead element. So wherever we get involved, we would have been the first unit to go. We all knew we were going to Iraq, we just didn't know when. At least this way I knew when I was going, I had a date to work off of. Um, so yeah, that was the sort of thinking behind that.
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After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please show support for the show and tell them that The Team House sent you. Thank you, everyone. So what part of Iraq were they deploying you to and what was going to be your unit's mission?
So Basra, mainly in the southern parts of the suburbs. But main job was MLTT with the police, which got abandoned within weeks.
Was that local or national training?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know shit about police, and I don't know why we got sent to do that job in the first place, to be honest. Um, but yeah, basically because the, because the police were so corrupt, um, we just couldn't work with them. We couldn't trust them enough to just turn up to their bases. Uh, so we got re-rolled. We ended up kind of doing force protection, but we didn't have any sort of like we were using stripped-down Land Rovers still, and this is like 2006. Um, this is well into the EFPs and the passive infrared. Yeah, yeah. And we were still in— when, when I said how antiquated the British Army was back then, it actually takes the breath away to think how shit we were equipped. Um, yeah, that was a rough— we were quite lucky. My call sign, my company, um, we were either just before an incident or just after. Um, we did initiate one of the largest ambushes of British forces up until that point.
No shit.
Um, yeah, man, we, uh, we did an operation to relieve, uh, the base Abanaji, I think it was, in Alomara. Um, it's called Operation Oyster, where we basically drove to and back 3 times in a massive convoy using exactly the same route, um, because that's how imaginative the command we had was. Um, um, I mean, for me, looking back now, particularly having gone to university and stuff and sort of actually studied— I don't consider myself an intellectual, but, um, looking at how much damage 30 years of Northern Ireland have done to the British Army's intellect, um, was absolutely highlighted in the debacle of rock.
Could you explain that a little bit? I mean, what do you think it was about Northern Ireland and all those years deployed there that kind of like shaped the mentality of the British officers and NCOs?
I mean, it wasn't their fault. You only know the language that you know. Yeah. It's a tricky, it's a tricky one. I don't, at the intellectual, at the academic level, because you have 30 years of any sort of ideas that deviate from government policy during the '70s, '80s, and '90s was sort of deemed sort of lefty, pro-IRA stuff, even though it had a valid point in its counterinsurgency sort of assessments. So the Army sort of cauterized itself from academia in that sense. And again, it became almost like an incestuous approach to sort of modernizing what they'd learned rather than just trying to blueprint it into another environment. The amount of times people would make the comparison of Sunnis and Shias as Catholics and Protestants, even though that really doesn't fit. It's far more fractured and completely at odds with reality. I mean, I used to sit in briefs, and again, this is no offense to the unit I was with. They hadn't done a tour other than Northern Ireland for 10 years. This was their first tour since Bosnia in 1995— 1996, sorry. I would sit in briefs and look at my watch and wait until someone said, 'In Northern Ireland,' And it was usually around the 7 to 5 minute mark.
And yeah, I just wanted to take my helmet off. Yeah, the way Iraq deteriorated on that tour as well, because Telecate was the sort of beginning of the siege of bases. I didn't see it at the time, but a Lynx was shot down over the city. I remember the aftermath of that. That was a big deal for us. You had guys going out, there was public order situations. So in Northern Ireland, when there's a riot, the rioters know when the police and the army turn up, whether they can see it or not, there's a helicopter watching them, and the helicopter will follow them and find out where they live, and then they'll get lifted in the early hours. That wasn't happening in Iraq because they didn't give a shit. And there was too many of them. So when the army would turn up with their shields and their batons, the Iraqis would just shoot at them and throw hand grenades. So very quickly, the Northern Ireland game would end, um, to the point where riots would happen and we would just say, right, we're staying in. It's their fucking streets. They want to burn them, let them.
We're not— we can't affect anything. Um, probably the best thing we did that I believe that we did while we were there was we ensured that the Basra Police Department got paid because a lot of them were having to moonlight as taxi drivers and they were very busy in that city. If there's any takeaway from that tour that I feel contributed, that would be it.
Yeah, yeah. Going through the locals.
Yeah, I mean, it was— yeah, I mean, it's wild, man, seeing bodies in the shadow of the road. Because this is when the sectarian shit started going off. RAO just emptied of Sunnis within 2 or 3 months.
Tell us about the— you said that the largest ambush, you know, when you guys were doing that convoy back and forth. What happened that day or night?
Oh man. Yeah, it was a night. So I think the bridge is called the Qarmarali Bridge. It's a bridge north of Basra, just over where I think the Shatt separates over an island or something. It was at night and we had loads of locally employed, uh, HET drivers, um, and we were going over the bridge in packets. Um, across from the bridge is basically a huge housing estate. Um, I was on the third packet getting ready to cross and it was the packet that was going across, um, yeah, got opened up at and honestly it looked like every window in this place had a fucking AK sticking out of it and shooting at us. While this— while we were waiting, a crowd of people had cut the fuel lines on the trucks, so our drivers were having to get out. Yeah, yeah, man. Oh shit. Yeah, man, this was really well thought out. Um, luckily we had Warriors on, on call and a couple of Charlie 2s, so the moment they turned up, the crowd started to back off.
But yeah, um, those are, those are helicopters.
Uh, sorry, the Warrior, um, IFV, um, Challenger 2 tanks.
Oh, gotcha.
Um, we had on call. Yeah, yeah. So they rolled up and just sort of—
they fucked off once they saw that.
Yeah. Um, one of the enduring images I have though was the company sergeant major sort of lit up, um, with headlights facing a crowd by himself with just two batons. And I happened to go up and go, yeah, we're about to move off, sir, come on. Yeah, he was, yeah, he was an outstanding dude. Yeah, so yeah, one of the guys got shot in the head on the second packet. He survived, as in, it's kind of funny, So they're firing back. He's, um, the rounds hit his helmet, it's passed under his scalp and popped out the other side. But he thought the guy behind him, who was also firing, punched him in the back of the head. So he turned around and punched him. Um, the guy's like, what the fuck are you doing? He's like, you just hit me. He's like, no, I didn't. And then you can see all the blood coming down the back.
Oh man. So yeah, it kind of crossed across his scalp and took a His—
yeah, just opened up the back of his skull.
Yeah, yeah.
And the dude sold it all. Like, I'd have gone home personally, but yeah.
Um, hardcore.
Uh, yeah, yeah, man. Yeah. Um, I think we lost one guy from the battalion. Um, it was a blue on blue, but it was kind of one of those unfortunates. He, um, he's with the brigade recce force and they're doing a strike on the house. Uh, the Bravo's come running out firing a weapon and guys had fired at him, crossfire, and, uh, crossfire, um, which was, yeah, obviously really shit. Um, I wasn't from that unit, so I obviously didn't have that level of, um, connects, as it were. But yeah, it's always shit when it happens, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
To be honest, other than that, compared to other units, we actually had a pretty pretty good tool in terms of injuries and death. So as bad as it was, it could have been a lot worse.
And so what are you thinking sort of on a personal level and a professional level now that, you know, you thought, I got to get into the shit, I want to be a, you know, combat veteran. Now you've experienced it. Are you thinking like, I want to stay in the military, I want to continue doing this? Or you're like, I want to go to college and get me the hell out of here?
No, I can't— I got bored of Iraq. Um, I didn't see us doing any good. Um, and there was a lot of, uh, spin on how things were going. Like, yeah, I mean, that was across the board, but the British were uniquely bad at that. Um, and it was just the— I mean, we were the smallest armed gang in a city full of massive armed gangs. And it was just a— yeah, like I said as well, seeing the damage that Northern Ireland had done as well, it was like, right, we really need to learn from this. Also, because my contract, I had another 2 years, I think, to do. But to be fair, because we were reforming into the Rifles, we'd been slated to be a commando regiment. Or commando-compatible regiment. So I thought, well, that's going to be worth sort of sticking around for. And to be fair, how I described the unit that I joined, A Company, 2LI, 2nd Battalion, Light Infantry, that was a time and period a lot of those issues had been sort of dealt with before I'd left. We had like new command, more professionalism in the NCOs. And things had already massively improved, so I don't want to sound like I'm a crutching about that unit, but I ended up finishing in what I believe to be the best you could get an infantry unit tuned up to after we re-rolled to a commando regiment— or battalion, sorry.
Other than the command handover, what were some of the big changes that you guys made as you became a commando?
Um, well, a lot of it, to be honest. We, we had a lot more interaction with the, the Royal Marines for a start, um, which is a good thing, which meant, uh, because the rifles in regular battalions— there's 5, um, 1 Rifles that I was in was the Commando Royal 1. Um, we were kind of hermetically sealed from the rest of the big army, if that makes sense, and we were certainly cut away from the rest of big rifles. Um, they were sort of forming their traditions, sort of. The rifles is very uniquely corporate, um, within the British military. They've got a very corporate outlook. Um, we were able to keep the fuck away from that. Um, like, a big part of that was, um, after Iraq, um, I, I joined a bugle platoon, which is the machine gun platoon of, uh, in an infantry battalion. Uh, it's the Corps of Drums for the rest of the infantry, but it's Bugles for the Rifles. Um, went away and did my Bugle course, came back. Um, the Rifles would give the Guards a run for their money when it comes to, like, tradition and sort of etiquette.
And Bugle Platoon, which every battalion has, they're sort of like the custodians of the traditions and history of the regiment. We fucked off having a vehicle platoon. We were like, no, no, we're a fighting battalion, we have a machine gun platoon and it's machine guns first, which sounds really petty, but this was a huge deal within the Rifles. The fact that we had this sort of amount of leeway and the fact that all our commanding officers were SAS massively meant that we, you know, so General Sir Nick Parker, I was attending an event he was at And he said, even one rifleman is not an elite and that we need to get it out of our heads that we are. The Royal Marines felt otherwise, and effectively they said, you know, if you want to be part of 3 Commando Brigade, you have to meet at least a standard if you're not going to do the commando course, because it just wasn't feasible to get an entire battalion through AAC. You at least, yeah, have to meet a standard, and the Army in their wisdom to be fair, started giving us SAS or Wessex commanding officers, and that really— I mean, just the level of training we started getting was, compared to what I'd received previously, was just through the roof.
And like I said, I would say obviously the Paras are their own thing, and I'm not going to, you know, and everyone with a brain knows that, but we really were the best you could get, a regular infantry regiment, tune up to. I've got no problem saying that.
Yeah, that's pretty cool. You got to see the whole transformation.
Oh, completely. Well, we'll do that, right?
So what was next for you as you go through this transition process? What's the next tour for the Commando?
Yeah. We had Heric 9, uh, 2009. I got given local, uh, promotion. Um, yeah, in their wisdom they gave me that call. Um, so we deployed. I was in like a weird multiple, which is roughly half a platoon. I don't know, that's how all that went. Um, again, a legacy from Northern Ireland. We were going to get broken off and we were going to be working with the TA, the reservists, at Camp Bastion, which is obviously a massive kick in the teeth when you've sort of slopped your guts out thinking you're going to be in green zone. The battalion had been given the role of OMLT, which was Operational Monitoring Liaison Teams, so small team of Brits with an Afghan platoon company, Kandak I think it was, um, which was basically— that was the coolest job for us in Afghan at the time. Um, but yeah, we got to Camp Bastion. Uh, we then were told that we were going to break off, um, like Michael's sign. We're going to go off to, uh, FOB Keenan, which is in Garish, um, and we're going to be relieving— it's the Royal— one of the Royal Scots Regiments.
Um, so yeah. So we've had the massive deflation of Bastion, and then we got the— yes, we're going out into the field and into the green zone as well. So yeah, we get to Fort Keenan. Um, Keenan had a small outpost, uh, that guarded a bridge that the Taliban had previously blown up, and it was the only way in and out. Uh, so it was like 4 Brits and about a platoon's worth of Afghans in this little checkpoint. It was a great little place to to sort of get them trained up, as it were. So this is my introduction to the ANA. Um, we've landed in Keenan, got our kit, we've had a walk around, and then we've gone straight out to relieve the guys that were already up there. So we were going to be, uh, I think it was a week or 5 days we're up there. So we go get in, meet the guys we're going to be with for the next few days. I've been based in Edinburgh, um, so I can understand Scottish people, but majority of the guys from my regiment are from the Southwest and the Southeast. A lot of them don't understand like that region, so I was like the taggy man because they all sound like Sean Connery, mate.
Like, no, I think—
I know, even thicker.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, that was great. Those guys, but yeah, that was the first time I'd worked the ANA. And my God, you know, you hear stories, but until you see it— I mean, I know you guys are working like with the commandos and the triples. We had the other guys. We had the bulk of the Afghan National Army.
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We must have been in that base, I mean, not even 2 hours, and an Afghan ANA guy come off guard. Another guy's gone to relieve him. The guy that's just come off guard has gone through this guy's kit and stolen like a cassette tape. The guy on guard's come down, he's picked up a metal picket smacked the guy across the arm and broke his arm. The guy with a broken arm then picks up his weapon, tries to copy it, tries to shoot him. So we've all had a Mexican standoff in the middle of this camp. I've, I had the Sig 226 on me at all times. Um, so we've had this Mexican standoff, we've managed to calm things down, we told the commander that he like needs to deal with this. So he wanted to take the guy around the back and execute him. We've been in the field hours You're kind of having to defuse this whole situation, like, yeah guys, we can't do that, uh, trying to be a diplomat because you don't want them to slit you through, right, right, right, um, yeah, I mean, I was 21 years old.
Did you guys have problems with, uh, them smoking opium and things like that?
No, the smack they weren't so heavy on, that was police. Um, I mean, they were stoned all the time though. I mean, I went to Amsterdam when my redundancy money came through. I took my girlfriend to Amsterdam. I smoked it up like a motherfucker the moment I was out of the army. I didn't have anything on these dudes. Like, these guys, and like, they would have give like Keith Richards, the heyday of the Rolling Stones, a run for his money, man, because it is unreal. It is a constant fog, but your clothes stink of it and you're outside constantly. Um, yeah, and they would just do shit that I never thought possible. Um, like, so this was in that area, the IED threat wasn't that big, so we were still doing like staggered fighting patrols. Um, I was lead man a lot of the time for our call sign. So we had like the ANA in the middle and we had a dog bark, but it like came into the middle of the patrol as we were staggered along the file, and the guy at the back fired the shot through the middle of the call sign.
Oh shit, get the dog! Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And this was like not a one-off. Um, it's kind of like, I don't— I know a lot of them died trying to protect their country, but It was infuriating working with them. At times, I know a lot of people have had good experiences, but I'm afraid I didn't. And the police were worse.
Did you feel that by the time, the end of your time working with them, do you think they made any progress? Or was it still like day one?
Yeah, I mean, the moment they get into contact, they just rattle full of ammo. And head back in and start telling more stories about how many people they killed. And it was almost like war as performance, if you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the only other guys that actually wanted to win were the guys on the other side. They actually wanted to win. I mean, again, we didn't do this job for that long. Danes ended up taking it off of us and we ended up going back to Bastion. And I ended up doing force protection on the helicopter, which, fuck me, that was an experience. Uh, yeah, um, yeah, that was a rough tour for that, uh, because we were with 1 Rifles. They were one of, you know, 4, uh, 42 Commando, 40 Commando, and 1 Rifles. So if you went out on flight, it was a 1 in 3 chance it was going to be someone that you knew. So it wasn't like it's a guy with a leg missing. It's— oh, I see. From— yeah, yeah, I mean, um, yeah, it was— that was rough. I'm amazed we actually were allowed to do that job.
But yeah, uh, yeah, it was pretty rough.
And so you guys were sort of like the security element for the medevac?
Yeah, uh, we'd hold height where we could if it was needed, um, but our primary job really was force protection on the ground, and we could get dropped off if necessary. 3, so it was like a 4-man fire team if required for whoever was on the ground. That didn't really get necessary though, pretty much every time I jumped off I was like, you sure? You sure you don't want to keep us? Yeah, but I mean, it was just a while to see that much of the war, if that makes sense. It's quite unique. Like, we got— we had one call, like, it was a Turk that had a heart attack in the middle of a firefight. And I remember that blowing my mind. Obviously, you train to treat a heart attack, but you never actually expect you're actually gonna do it.
Yeah, because they're all 18-year-old soldiers. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Um, that was pretty wild. Um, but one of the most, like, one of the worst was there was a blue on blue with a Javelin. Um, I think it was 3 guys were killed. The one survivor was an MFC from Sport Company, my company, and I knew him. And it was just that, like, obviously he was blasted. I didn't, like, we weren't friends, but I knew him to say hello to him. And he was just completely shell-shocked, man. So I'm sat across from him in the chute. I remember, like, I didn't know what to do. So I knew he smoked, so I just gave him a pack of cigarettes, like a whole pack. I remember the loadmasters, like, looked and, like, thought we were about to spark up. Like, no, no, it's cool, I know him. He's like, what? What? No, no, I know him. He's like, it's cool, it's cool. Um, like, you got it then. Like, just let me sort of— you're gonna be all right, dude, sort of thing. Um, but yeah, that was, that was fun. Um, burned through quite a few uniforms on that.
Yeah, man. Yeah, no, that's, that's tough. Um, did you have problems transitioning back to the UK after these, you know, especially that experience?
Oh man, yeah, I had to go in for like alcoholism. Um, yeah, I really had to pull myself back together. Um, I basically, coming back from Iraq, I pretty much started partying and didn't stop for like a year and a half. Um, and it got pretty sort of like my fitness went to shit. My attitude was horrendous. I mean, I was not— I wasn't a model soldier, but I was a good soldier, if that makes sense. Um, I'm just really good fighting squad. Um, but yeah, I did have to sort myself out. And to be fair to the Army, they really allowed me to do that. Um, they, uh, yeah, they gave me the space to do that. I was given the rope to hang myself, and I used it to pull myself up. So yeah, um, yeah, I definitely owe them for that. Uh, when we got back from that tour, uh, they put me on a promotional course. Which was fucking a mistake because I was arrogant as shit because I'd been— I hadn't just been doing stuff, I've been taking patrols out. So in my head, I'm Mr. Fucking Awesome because everyone's telling me how great of a job it is.
Um, I hadn't set up an ambush in years, I hadn't done a recce patrol in years, I hadn't like done some guard, sort of a proper guard in the field in years. Um, I didn't practice anything. The only thing I was really good at, map reading. Um, just before the final exercise as well, my girlfriend was taken into hospital, and that was obviously a massive, like, fuck. Um, like, I was given the opportunity to go, but family said, look, we've got him, she's fine, we're going to take care of her, crack on. But it was not— my head was not in the right space as well. Um, completed the final exercise, uh, came off, had the debriefs afterwards, and was told that I was under no certain doubt the worst, the biggest disappointment on the entire course, were the exact words he used. And they were right. I don't— yeah, they were absolutely right. However, I did come off a better rifle. Absolutely, yeah. I learned a lot from that. Went back to my platoon. There's, uh, within the Rifles there's like a posting to go to the band that obviously the Army had. The regiment has a band and buglers from the platoons can go for like a 2-year posting.
And they were like, look, you need some time out, you need to go to— we're going to send you to the band to do some ceremonial for a few years. You know when you're too stupid to see when someone's doing you a favor?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so obviously took that really well. Um, so I've gone down to Winchester, the camp, uh, where the band's based, which is— it's actually a really nice camp. Um, like, it looks nice, which is unique for MOD sort of property. Um, and it's in a beautiful part of the country. Um, so I was arrested for drunken disorder within a couple of weeks. Uh, at the time, I was the first guy from the band to have done so in about 12 years, I think it was. It got even worse because I was arrested outside a bank. I got taken to Maidstone, which is nowhere near where I'd actually been arrested. I was released the next morning. I was given a £120 fine. So I've got onto a train, I'm heading back to camp, done the phone call of doom. Yeah, I've just been released because I knew they knew. And the guy that I spoke to said, what, you've been released? Like, yeah, yeah. £120 fine. He's like, what, for robbing a bank? Somewhere along the road someone said I tried to rob a fucking bank, like, 3 in the morning on my own. Yeah. Um, but then something kind of strange happened.
I met a girl. And, um, so you know that one girl that civilizes you? It happens to the best of us. Yeah. Um, so I met her and thought, actually, I quite like this girl, so maybe I should like lay off the drink for a bit so I can do stuff with her. And, um, yeah, I started training again, um, while I was down there. Uh, really got into my phys again because I didn't want to be there, um, but I knew which side my bread was buttered, if you know what I mean. We were posted to Sandhurst as the band there, which was amazing. Um, I'd do like 2 duties a day and had the rest day off. And so the girl, this girl, um, she'd gone to the best girls' schools in Surrey. Um, her stepdad had been the head of mergers and acquisitions for a major chemicals company called ICI back in the day and had lived in Japan for 8 years. So I was literally commuting to work from this beautiful, like, picturesque cottage in Surrey to work half a day in Sandhurst and back. For about half a year, which was pretty cool.
It was, yeah, like I said, I was too stupid to not realize people were doing me a favor. However, it is the kind of posting where you can go to rust really quickly, and people do. And there was no way I was going to be sat around getting excited about going to Australia to do a ceremonial job when my friends are getting shit blown out of them. Right, right. I'm not that dude. There were guys there that, um, I know felt that way. Um, but yeah, I was very adamant I was going on our next tour. Um, I don't know whose strings were pulled because I know I was constantly told there's no way they're gonna let you go, you haven't even done a year yet. Um, I tried to be like Billy Big Balls, so I was like, yeah, my CO's SAS, who the fuck's gonna tell him who's going to be on his all-back? And they were like, no, no, you don't understand, they never let anyone go. Mate, I was gone within a weekend. Like, yeah, I'm done. Um, went back to the platoon, picked up where I left off, was back in machine guns.
Um, we were going to be the fire support group for the Harrier team, uh, buzzing around in Jackals. Uh, so we were all trained up for that, and then at the last minute, uh, 42 Commando decided they'd rather do that job. We had it taken off of us, which was a massive fucking kick in the teeth. I mean, like, it was a kick in the teeth for us, but our platoon commander had literally had his command taken off him, and he was in tears when he gave us the news that we weren't doing that job anymore and that we were going to be split up. That was an emotional day. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we Got broken down as machine gun sections to various multiples within the rifle companies. And to be fair, as bad as that was, I did end up in a multiple of the most unassuming badasses you've ever seen. Um, the guys I was with were outstanding, um, considering like most of them, it's their first time out of the country. Yeah, yeah, they were pretty good, man.
Where did, uh, where did you guys get sent this time?
Uh, so we went to Nari Sarai, um, so just outside of Muscala on the road up to Guresh. Okay. Um, it was one of the most dangerous— I know everywhere's one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan, so I don't know what that's worth, but yeah, it was pretty fucking hairy. Um, yeah, we had a rough tour on that. Um, my multiple commander Kev, who was also my machine gun platoon commander, was killed within a few days. Um, a few weeks. And then a few days later, um, one of the guys stepped on a device, cut in half. We lost two guys to injuries as well with him. Um, we were attached to 42 Commando, Kilo Company. Um, I don't know, uh, yeah, so we've been sent to a certain area to check it out. The IEDs happened. We then had to wait for engineers to clear IEDs to be combat ineffective. We then embarked on vehicles that 42 Commando had sent to pick us up. Obviously, when you get in vehicles— so obviously, for the uninitiated, you turn all your radios off. As soon as we were on the vehicles, the HQ didn't know that in the Royal Marine vehicles were radio speakers so we could hear everything that was being said on the net.
Uh, I'm going to be diplomatic and say the decision was clearly being made. If there was any repercussions, it was going to be our commander that was going to wear it, um, while bits of our friend is still falling out the air, which was shit because the guys that we were attached to were really sound. Um, once we got back to the CP that we'd started off out of, multiple commanders out of the first vehicle. He's just looked at us all and put his arms up because we've all heard it straight away. And I couldn't have been prouder of them for it. The guys basically mutinied and were like, fuck him, fuck your company, fuck the Marines. Yeah, we absolutely lost our shit. The Marine boss that was with us, because we had a platoon of them with us, I mean, again, I don't want to I'm telling you now, if you're in the most dangerous country in the world having a room full of Royal Marine Commandos next to you, you fucking sleep safer. All right, I'm telling you, you sleep a lot better. So I mean, there's no disrespect, um, but he was Icelandic, uh, and he said, look, I've got to get on the net and say that heavily armed poolside got broke, um, and it's like the senior body was down to me to like explain the facts of life that like, this is, this is mutiny.
Like, we're gonna get fucked. But you can't just say I'm not working for you anymore. Um, but the main sell was we thought we were helping our commander out and actually we just made a massive world of hurt for him on top of a really shit day already. Um, so yeah, uh, we got ripped out of there the next day. Uh, wow. Went back to one rifles. Wow.
A real, a real mutiny in wartime.
Yeah, um, I say it was a mutiny. It was like, it's not like anything was planned. It's the moment we got out of the vehicle, everyone started swearing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I get it. There's an uprising, there's insurrection in the ranks.
Well, we were fucking fuming, man. I get it. Yeah, I mean, again, I don't want to— 42 Commando are an amazing unit. The guys who were with were outstanding. But yeah, I haven't been half as derogatory about their officer commanding as their own blokes were about it.
I'll leave it at that. Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. I mean, the bodies are still warm and they're already trying to pin the blame. Who are we going to blame? Like, wow, that's what you're worried about right now? Really?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, yeah, shit happens in war. I mean, it is what it is. But yeah, we luckily, like I said, we went back to A Company, 1 Rifles, which was our parent unit, and we had an amazing tour after that. I mean, we really— I mean, this was supposed to be courageous restraint, but I mean, that shit wasn't going on. We'd had a Scottish soldier go missing and he'd been captured and tortured. And we had the pleasure of finding his body. Well, not my company, but the company.
He was kidnapped by the Taliban? Yeah, it was really weird, man.
He basically got out of— well, I know what I think. He woke up in the middle of the night, went out, walked out of his camp on his own, and walked to an area where he had allegedly lost a piece of equipment. We think— well, the inquiry said that they're not sure about his state of mind when he was picked up. But yeah, it's just such a weird thing.
It is weird because the Taliban normally, you know, as bad as they are, the Taliban usually isn't about like torturing or beheading people. That's more of an al-Qaeda thing.
Yeah, I mean, these guys went to town on it. I don't want to I mean, they made a display of it. Jesus. Um, yeah, and it— what it's that thing, as particularly in Helmand, like, current research shows it's very debatable to what extent it was actually the Taliban who we were fighting. Um, you had various criminal groups and stuff like that. So I mean, and you always hear the rumors of the Chechens that are running, you know, the other AO, you know what I mean? So you don't know who really out and about. But yeah, that was— we searched that village the next day as well where he was found, and there was a guy, there was a guy we'd previously arrested after he was caught in a VCP for blowing up another guy. So that's the Afghan justice for real. So yeah, courageous restraint was well out the window after that. Yeah. There was no fucking way I was going to let one of them get a second chance.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, is that sort of like set the tone for the rest of that deployment, I guess?
Yeah, pretty much for me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when I say that, I mean like the right people have got no interest in shooting the wrong people. Yeah. It was weird as well because we had a BBC documentary team with us. That was filming one of the guys. They filmed him all the way through training, it's called Young Soldiers. And yeah, you actually catch an ambush, you can hear me firing the GPMG in the ambush in it, which was a, yeah, that was a crazy day. But yeah, that was, that pretty much set the tone. But to be fair, the company actually did, it's going to sound really bad, we did a lot of good work. Um, like, one of the checkpoints, the locals wanted to rename their village after the commander there. They wanted to— Commander Pete Clay. Um, they got on with him so well. Um, yeah, it was, it was annoying for a lot of the riflemen because the AOs were very quiet, and it's hard to explain to them that's because you're actually doing quite a good job, right? Right. If it's kicking off, do you know what I mean? It's a hard sell to a young rifleman.
And super keen to get stuck in. But it was weird, that transition, because you go from that AO and like dudes are fixing what we call them swords but bayonets. The moment you're getting into, you know, you cross that invisible line on the map and then you're in Bandit country again and something's going to happen. But yeah, I had some good moments there. I got, yeah, Um, but I mean, one of the craziest moments was finding out that Bin Laden had been taken out. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, well, we got it through on the radio, and as we're hearing it, you could just see the guys just quietly like getting close to their kit and checking their magazines and making their way towards the walls just in case, because we thought we were going to be like— we thought this was going to be World War III. Um, yeah, no, there was nothing. I mean, the Afghans didn't give a shit.
Um, Yeah, yeah. By that point, he was just some Arab dude living in seclusion in Pakistan.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's so odd. I should have been some of the guys going, was that it? We're going home now?
Yeah, yeah. War's over. Yeah, yeah.
You can't blame them. Yeah, that was a— yeah, that was an odd moment.
Looking back on it, of course, I mean, they were kind of having the right idea there that that would have been a natural place for us to leave Afghanistan, and instead we stayed there almost an additional, what, 10 years? I mean, it's kind of crazy.
I mean, yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, I have stronger feelings about the Afghan security forces than I do Taliban. Um, to me, being angry at the Taliban is like being angry at quasar, the rain. It just doesn't— yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a force of nature. I'll put it to you this way. Um, so we had an Afghan police checkpoint down the road from us. Uh, we had an elder one day, he turned up to our front gate saying that they've taken my son, or they've taken my grandson, this child boy. Can you please go and get him? And we were like, fuck, because you know how these situations can go. So what we were going to do was check them all for ID cards and take away anyone that didn't have an ID card. So we've walked down and it's only about— it was about a getting a bit away from our CP. Um, we got the kid away, obviously passed it up that they're assaulting, sexually abusing kids. I don't know how many— I would love to know how ISAF has not been investigated by the ICC being complicit in the exploitation of children, given how many times we warned them what was going on.
Yeah, yeah, they were training. Um, it astounds me that there's never been an investigation. Um, yeah, we got the kid away, handed him back to the elder. We've gone back to our place. The next day he's come back, they've taken him. Um, oh, sorry, no, sorry, he didn't come then. Um, a couple of days later there's a massive firefight at the police checkpoint because they were out cleaning their car and the Taliban just rolled them up, killed 7 of them. I think there's like 3 left and we were watching this from RCP. And I remember then realizing that in terms of counterinsurgency, the only people who would objectively improve the lives of people in where we were was the Taliban. Right. And like, what the fuck are we doing here?
Yeah. Local commanders kidnapping kids and shit. Yeah.
I mean, there's a British politician I actually quite respect. Called Rory Stewart. He, like, he walked across Afghanistan and stuff, wrote books about it. He's an academic dude.
Oh, I know who you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, the Afghan he talks about, I don't know. I didn't see it. I don't know about you. Maybe in Kabul. But yeah, the Afghan I saw was fucking horrendous.
Yeah, I had to read one of his books in, in college. The professor alleged that he was actually a British intelligence guy. Yeah. I mean, there's a whole— I mean, it's a very odd book that he wrote about how, like, he goes and he has his walking stick made and he's walking across. It's like, it's very— it has a sort of Lord of the Rings sort of vibe to it.
Well, I was going to say Lawrence of Arabia cosplay, but yeah, I'll meet you halfway on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't doubt for a second as an individual, very principled man. But yeah, that sort of Kabulitis that seemed to affect so many people. I mean, the fact that people were surprised at how quickly the country fell. Right, right. As if there was this ever-decreasing front line. And that was never the case. The Taliban basically stopped using the bush, started using the roads, and that was it. I mean, that, that was the front line.
Yeah, it is one of those things where, you know, like a private in your unit could have made a better prediction about what would have become of Afghanistan than academics and people who actually— people I respect a lot and are very well educated and they know a lot about the country. But there's some sort of like strange separation that happened there that they were seeing all this capacity building in Kabul and things like this, and they just did not understand what you guys were experiencing, I don't think.
Well, they just didn't want to hear it. That's a problem. That's a problem too. Like for me, the best piece of journalism, I mean, for the British forces, two massive things, well, one massive thing helps was a TV series called a guy called Ross Kemp started going out with forces and filming what was going on. Which garnered a huge amount of sympathy from the public, and stuff like pay started to improve, like rations, interesting body armor. Yeah, it took that to spur it on, but it was all quite— it was not objective reporting, if that makes sense. Um, you then contrast that with— do you remember Ben Anderson? He did a documentary called What Winning Looks Like. I don't think I saw it. 'Oh mate, there's a Marine major in that, Bill Stuber, and the situation he's in, and he absolutely gets into the triboys.' And you— it's the only time you see on camera what a commander at that level is having to deal with. Um, and that was the experience I had. Um, and that was the experience that the majority of units had. Um, but that's the one documentary that shows that.
That's interesting.
Okay, I'll look for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so then what was next for you guys after that deployment?
Well, for me, not much. We were slated to go on the next Afghan tour. We found out that we probably weren't going to— it wasn't going to be a warfighting tour. So I already switched off. Then we found out we wouldn't be leaving Bastion. So I was like doubly switched off. Um, I'm not into a peacetime army.
Yeah, who gives a shit? Yeah, I'm—
yeah, I was there for the fight. Um, so I was done. I was looking at a career, right? Obviously I settled down with this girl. She was— she is amazing, was amazing. Um, so yeah, so I got ready to get out. Uh, then we were told that redundancies were going to come up, um, and that I was eligible because of I'd stayed in support company, I hadn't promoted. Um, I was up for a pretty good redundancy package, so I was going to wait that one out. I was kind of on the fence. Um, on my first tour of Afghan, I used the time that I was in Bastion, I started doing an MLAT language courses. Okay. Um, I got 87%. So an MLAT test, you have like 20 minutes to learn a fake language and then you test it all on it and I did it and I got like 87%. So I constantly kept asking to be put on a language, Russian language course, and it kept getting, you know, when they dangle that carrot. So I decided to teach myself. My girlfriend got me Rosetta Stone, so I started to teach myself Russian in Afghanistan because of the Syfy set here had kicked off.
I'm like, no, no, I don't want to sound like one of them, but I was definitely saying we're gonna need to get an eye on these fuckers. Um, so yeah, from that point on up until the second tour, obviously had this carrot dangled, but yeah, yeah, we'll sort that out, we'll sort that out. And I just wanted to know, what, what things do I have to do to impress upon you I am an ideal candidate to come on this course? To at least give me something to work with, do you know what I mean? Right. That day just never came. There was always one more exercise, there's one more, oh, we've got to do this, oh yeah, once we've Yeah, so when the redundancy packages came up and then we got fucking— we had our summer leave taken off of us to go and do the Olympics, um, I'm like, yeah, where's that paperwork? Pretty much all of us that was eligible, like, you know, get us out of here. We've gone down to London, um, it was actually quite good if I'm honest. It's quite fun, uh, when London's that full of tourists and you've got nothing but free time and money, like Yeah, it was a great place to be at the time.
Um, yeah, it was what I would say Britain at its best. Um, I know some GB News people probably hate that, but yeah, um, it really was a good time. Uh, and then, yeah, that was me. I got— basically, we were all told that we had to take all the leave that we were accrued before we left the Army. I had 6 months of accrued leave that I was owed, so I spent the last 6 months in the Army just playing Skyrim in the flat, um, my new flat, uh, where I was going to be living. Uh, that and Deus Ex as well. Yeah.
Oh my God, two outstanding games that, uh, actually the best. Oh my gosh. Did, did you beat the main quest in Skyrim, or are you one of those guys that just like wants to go and do everything else?
I've never did it in Oblivion. It took me years before I did it first time in Oblivion, man. Yeah. Uh, I do every side mission Everything. Yeah. I'm that dude. Yeah.
You're the 100% completionist guy. No, I, a few years back, I finally got back into PC gaming. Like I was big into it when I was a kid in high school. Just a few years ago, got a new PC, gaming PC. And I played like the super modded Skyrim. You know, I played that freaking game off and on for probably like 3 years.
Is it just me or is it still beautiful?
It is. With all the updates that they've made to it, you know, it still looks very modern.
Yeah, it's such an impressive game. Like, you know, when you can tell that genuine heart went into it. The other game I'd say for that was Red Dead 2, hands down the greatest game ever made. Yeah, Dimitri has played that one.
I have it but I haven't played it yet. But the Deus Ex games also were like— I played the first one when I was in high school. And yeah, the newer ones I love too. They were great.
Yeah, no, I really enjoyed them. Even the ones that are considered a bit ropey, I still really enjoy. What's weird now, the game I'm playing at the moment, I first played in 2009. It's called Battlestation Pacific. I'm just giving it a shout out because it's such a good game. Cool. It's a strategy game set in the Pacific War. But you can control individual units and it's great. It's just a really fun little game done really well. Sounds cool. So yeah.
So 6 months of paradise playing Deus Ex and Skyrim. And are you, in the midst of all of this, are you having any thoughts about your future? Perhaps what's coming next for Dan?
Yeah, well, I— really struggled at this time. It was difficult to find work. Um, I qualified to do all the maritime security because that was what was in vogue. Uh, I just find it so hard to get on the ladder if I never really got started. Uh, went to a few interviews. Some of the guys that I'd known from the Army had gone on to do that as team leaders. Um, this was when the companies stopped using fully Western teams and then that used like Sri Lankan guys to save money. So I, I just— my friends no longer had the leverage, if that makes sense, to get on board. Um, and every time you'd apply for a maritime job, there was like more and more of these courses, qualifications you needed to get, and they're like 3, 4 grand apiece. Um, and you know, every few months there's just more and more that you need to get. Um, so I basically just started doing bouncing in South London and I took to it like fish to water, man. I really enjoyed it.
You were doing what?
I was a doorman, a bouncer. Oh, really? For 2 years inside. Yeah, yeah. I ended up running 3 doors, man.
Parlaying your military experiences. Yeah.
Yeah, I was— I had some fun nights, man. Like, yeah, I nearly got stabbed on my second shift. Um, yeah, some of the clubs that I worked at were unbelievable. Um, but I met, I met Fatman Scoop, Leicester Square, if you remember him. Um, he was an absolute gentleman. Yeah, now he was like a hip-hop sort of DJ, uh, back in the day. Um, but yeah, I was running a— yeah, on and off running the door in Leicester Square. Um, but then ended up working at a bank doing security there, which was like infinitely better paid, much more high level as well, because you're doing kind of, um, counter-penetration. Um, you've got to be aware of industrial espionage, uh, insider trading, that kind of stuff. So it was a lot more— very different.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Clearing, you know. Um, but yeah, it meant I could get a lot— I had a lot of, um— I'll put it to you this way, the first people who ever said, yeah, we think you might, you might need to talk to someone, Dan, was other bouncers. Because I've become somewhat overzealous in my role.
And around this timeframe, I imagine this is sort of like, like 2014, all this stuff with ISIS is starting to kick up. And how is that sort of playing in the back of your mind?
That sinking feeling of— because you know what's coming.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know what I mean? For the people that that wave— that wave was going to hit, you knew what was coming. And it wasn't that you knew no one in the West wanted to get the fucking involved with nothing. There was no help coming. Um, yeah, after all the adventures, understandably, people were sick to death of burying their fucking sons over shit in the Middle East. Sons and daughters, sorry. And yeah, understandably, the thought of getting involved. I mean, ISIS weren't stupid. They knew the West was wary. Yeah, I mean, it was what we knew was coming. I think anybody that had an eye on the Middle East, this was clearly what was going to come. It was like a slow drumbeat, wasn't it? Just every day there was like a new— they're taking this territory, they're taking this time, they've done this, did you know what I mean? It was— and this pink block was just getting bigger and bigger. Um, but yeah, uh, obviously had a massive interest in what was going on, uh, started to look into who was fighting who. Um, and then they hit the news that YPG had specifically said they were looking for GWOP guys to go out there with them.
They would accept anyone, but yeah, it was the GWOP guys that they first invited. So yeah, I thought, fuck it, my life really wasn't going anywhere. My relationship had come to an impasse. Yeah, we were out of sync in in where we wanted to be in our lives. I wanted to go to university. She wanted to start a family. So yeah, how that had gone. Yeah, I wasn't that man. And to be perfectly honest, I was making her miserable. The relationship had really deteriorated and it's horrible watching someone you love, you know, the effect you're having on them. So yeah. Thought it was time to go. Contacted— this was through Lions of Rajabah Facebook group, like, yeah, the first Facebook wall. Showed them my certificates or copies of my certificates, explained, like, this is my history, this is the unit I was in, this is where I finished. And yeah, they took me on, booked my flights. I gave myself about 2 or 3 months learn language, to get the basics of the culture, where places were. I wanted to prep for going alone. I wanted to have a cover story, so I basically bought like a journalist, a Vice News journalist outfit, grew my hair out, bought a camera with a stupid lens.
I deliberately chose a route through Istanbul because I knew that was the route that security companies used. So a single fighting age man going there on his own, uh, it wasn't that unusual. So I knew I wasn't gonna get stopped, or there's less chance of being stopped on that route through Turkey on the way. Um, yeah, I bought a load of— so you used to be able to get the old US Army manuals on Amazon for like 99 cents and had all of that on my Kindle. So everything's like an SPG-9 AGF-17, uh, just— yeah, yeah, all that shit. Um, then wiped it. So all I had to do was the moment I got it online, again on the other side, I just had to get Wi-Fi and I could get all the books back on. Um, meant if I got stopped, it would have been empty other than a few books. So yeah, just little things like that. Um, bought two burner phones, one with my contact once I got there, um, one that had, uh, Red Cross, Red Crescent, British Consulate in Iraq, which British Consulate in Turkey, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, basically anyone.
But if I got lifted, just to get the message out that I was alive somewhere, and then obviously your chances of survival tend to increase from what I've been told. Um, made sure I had like a pretty decent first aid kit. I still had like Celox and shit like that from Afghan, loads of CAT tourniquets, FFDs. I mean, I'm left with like half a rucksack full of that shit, so that wasn't unusual. And then, yeah, pretty much just had like warm kit, hill walking kit, basically nothing that looked too military. I wish I had taken stuff because guys were flying in with fucking body armor plates and shit by the end of it. I don't know, like weapon mods and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, language was a big one. It's just weird, isn't it? It's amazing how easy it is. People warm to you if you can just say, "Hello, how are you?" Do you know what I mean? It's that simple question can win you so many smiles. So yeah, I wanted to make sure that I had, as well as like a working— I've obviously lost most of this commando now, but like, enemy 200 meters left, you know, behind hill, you know, be able to give fire control orders, that kind of thing.
Or at least shout where I'm seeing some. But yeah, yeah, pretty uneventful flight out other than I bumped into one of my old platoon sergeants in Gatwick. We were on the same flight, like completely by random. Told him what I was doing. He was like, you fucking feeling all right? So yeah, I had a last Guinness in Stansted, uh, got on the flight, and I remember landing in, uh, Istanbul thinking, what the fuck have I done? Because obviously Midnight Express, I did not want to go into a Turkish nick. Uh, so yeah, uh, the whole time I was in there, you know, you got a feeling like a hand's gonna go on your shoulder at any time. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, look, I'm looking at my perfume, like just anything to try and look normal, which obviously makes probably stand out like shit. Um, so yeah, some top ex-Infantry tradecraft going on. Um, so yeah, I got onto the flight to Iraq, which was the worst bit because I thought if they're going to nick me, it's going to be on the flight because that shows intent. Oh, that tends to be how it is in the UK.
Um, didn't happen. Flight took off, no problem. Landed in Iraq, uh, well, sorry, in the KRG at Sulaymaniyah. Um, I don't know how many people have mentioned this. It smells completely different to Iraq, doesn't it? Yes, it does. The KRG. It's like, it's noticeable.
The, the, the grass is literally greener when you cross the border.
Yeah. I mean, it's fresh mountain air. It's stunning. Amazing part of the world. Yeah. So got off the flight. Gone through customs. They were— I hadn't completely forgotten that obviously having two mobile phones in Iraq is a bit of a, it's a bit of a problem. So yeah, they were quite suspicious of that. But then when I showed them there was like five numbers, none of them were bad, they were cool with that. Yeah, phoned my contact, didn't pick up. So it's 3 o'clock in the morning, I'm outside Suleimaniyah Airport. I'm absolutely shattered. It's been an emotional— I've literally just broken up with my girlfriend that morning. It was horrendous. Biggest thing, like, of all the fucked up shit I've done, that is by far the most painful. Like, the thing that I regret the most was in causing pain. Yeah. And I was pretty pissed off. So, yeah, I went into a hotel, went into a hotel, sat in the lobby, ordered some coffees. And just, yeah, tried to contact the contact that I'd used in Europe before going to see if they could give the guy a kick up the ass to come and pick me up.
Because obviously you've got a thousand and one— I'm on my own as well, I was the only person there at that time. Guy comes into the hotel, says hello, shake hands, we go outside, it's a Toyota Hilux, and he gives me the passenger seat and he was going to sit behind me and I'm like, nah. And they both burst out laughing, the two guys. So I was like, okay, so yeah, um, threw my kit on the back, um, and then we started driving through Sully and then you hit— it kind of reminds me, you know when you see footage of like the suburbs of Lebanon? Yeah, yeah, you've got all the flags. Yeah, yeah, do you know what I mean? Like, you know, you're in the ghetto kind of thing.
They drove you onto the military base?
No, no, no. Um, this was through, uh, through Sully, around the sort of the main— that sort of circular road, isn't it? The circular highway, and then into one of the suburbs, into a safe house. Um, gotcha. Yeah, to this day, it was on the— definitely on the western side.
I, I may have been in that same place at one point, actually.
Okay. Uh, so you walk in, it's a big open room. There's like a sideways door that led out to an outer sort of courtyard. Um, then there's a—
uh, no, this, this was, this was, this was like 5th floor up in an apartment structure.
I stayed there on the way out. Yeah, yeah, I know that one. Okay, load of bunk beds.
Uh, they were sleeping on the floor when I was there. Um, they had like— yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there weren't actually any other fighters coming through. I was there as a journalist. And that's kind of how I interacted with that. There's another time, 2015, I went back again as a journalist and I was on that base in Soleimaniyah and I walked on, you know, you need to get permission to come on the base and everything. And so I'm talking to the guards at the little station there and they're like, okay, so you're, they take my passport, Okay, so you're an American, you're here to fight ISIS. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second, buddy. Let's talk about this for a second.
No, I mean, my intro was pretty cool, man. We got to the safe house. There was a Swiss dude from the Syria Military Council who was here. No shit. Yeah, yeah. So we got chatting. Um, then the next few volunteers started coming in, um, until obviously we formed a packet to send off to the mountains. Um, so yeah, that was an interesting ride up. Um, so for the people who don't know, uh, the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq, there are two armies and two police forces, and they're both politically affiliated. So one is sort— one is more tolerant of the YPG, PYD, PKK than the other. You have to run a gauntlet of checkpoints because different— yes, I use different police units— will man different checkpoints. So it's kind of like a maze/labyrinth to get through, to get up unimpeded. Yeah, they're, they're called—
they're all called Peshmerga, but Americans sometimes don't understand that. It's almost as if, you know, like in our party, if the Democrats had their own army and the Republicans had their own army in the American political system. That's sort of what it's like in Kurdistan, where you have the Talibanis and the Barzanis, and each one has their own military.
It's wild. I'm amazed it works.
Well, they did have a civil war in the '90s, I'll point out. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, yeah. I mean, No, I couldn't imagine that.
Yeah, our political system is already fucked up as it is. I don't think we need that. Yeah, I don't think—
yeah, the Republicans kind of do have the monopoly on violence at the moment. So yeah, I don't think it would go well with the Democrats.
So what was your— what was your— yeah, please continue, you know, your journey making it through that gauntlet.
Yeah, I mean, it was pretty uneventful. We did— we had this guy from Texas who was known as Hevel Cowboy. Um, he was a lovely guy. He was very keen to remind people he was from Texas. Yeah, we're trying to pass up incognito, and when we're getting stopped at checkpoints, he's pulling out his Dallas Cowboys, uh, like, membership lifetime card thing, and he's like Yeah, like literally sticking it in their faces as they're— so we had to like politely say, look, we'd like to get there without being arrested, so you chill out with that shit. I mean, I'm not trying to— he's a really nice dude, but he did also have an encyclopedic knowledge of the American Civil War. Like, I've never met someone who was able to recite like how many cigars Robert E. Lee smoked and shit. It was insane. Um, like textbook. Ken Burns should have done a documentary on him. It would have just been 10 episodes. Um, so yeah, uh, we traveled up. Um, I mean, the mountains up there, I mean, yeah, if you're into hill walking, that'd be an amazing place. The Candle Mountains are— oh yeah, yeah, uh, cold as shit.
Definitely didn't bring enough warm gear. Um, so yeah, we then went up to a guerrilla camp, should we say. Uh, yeah, um, got introduced to some other volunteers who were waiting to go across. Same sort of thing, we were waiting to get trafficked, uh, once we were in a large enough group.
Was this the guerrilla camp that's sort of on the side of a mountain and the, the structures are sort of built into side of the— Yeah, OK.
Be the one, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I remember waking up one morning and seeing a Turkish drawing and shitting myself. And the— Because it looks like exactly what it is.
The toilet is a little bit further uphill and it's sort of a porcelain bowl cemented into the ground?
OK. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one. And you've got the female, the YPG camps, just— YPJ, sorry, just down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's the one.
I kept pointing out because there was like this— there was a farm building in the valley that wasn't being used, and I was trying to say like, you guys up here from a drone, you look like exactly what this is. It looks like a guerrilla camp. You go down there, you're itinerant workers. Like, think— and this became a running theme for my 4 or 5 months, whatever we were out there for.
Like trying to like, you know, that base got, that base got bombed in like 2015 or 2016. Yeah, it got fucking flattened, mate.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't like they were even trying to hide it, were they? Not really. So obvious. I mean, I saw checkpoints near Dehook guarded by PKK guys in PKK uniforms. Yeah, they weren't hiding it. Yeah, we, um, we formed up a big enough group to get trafficked across. Um, we didn't have to do the crazy jungle gym through the bushes and shit green zone. Um, we did on the way out, but, uh, yeah, we just went straight down to, um Euphrates or Tigris.
Yeah, you did the river crossing in the little rubber boat. Yeah.
Oh yeah, on the rib, which, you know, God. Um, yeah, it's kind of like my first— I'd spent like the majority of 8 years in an amphibious unit, and this was my first like hot, uh, landing, if you know what I mean. Well, I say hot, um, into a conflict. Um, yeah, we Oh shit, sorry, I forgot as well. Yeah, um, before we went, we had the final group of Westerners turn up, um, and one of them was a guy called Tim. And, uh, Tim was a British guy who seemed a bit unhinged at the time. Um, he claimed to have been in one of the former regiments that made up the Rifles, who I was in. Um, so I could work out whether he was or not about 10 seconds of meeting them. Um, I wasn't entirely convinced, but people do— they do go through basic training, do 3 months, and then leave. Um, sure. And acquire some knowledge. So I'm not trying to downplay what he may or may not have done. Um, I just wasn't convinced that he'd done the tours that he'd done. Um, as well as, uh, Brandon Glossop, Canadian guy who ended up spending the entire time with and then a British soldier who'd gone AWOL, who was known as Soldier D in the press, who I think has gone on to run some sort of like demining medic operation in Ukraine, last time I heard.
So yeah, that was good for him. Yeah, we crossed over, got picked up in cattle trucks, got taken up this massive hill. Is it Derek?
Yeah, Derek.
Yeah. So we're in these like old bombed out, um, like this amount of all sort of construction buildings, um, freezing our bollocks off. Um, so me and Brandon ended up spooning to stay warm that night because it was so cold. And like, if you spoon in someone within 24 hours of meeting them, you're gonna be friends.
Um, yeah, you can work together closer as a team after that.
Yeah, definitely. There is something in that, uh, shape of the I mean, it's hard to explain how fucking cold northern Syria is in the winter. So this, yeah, this thing was, yeah, it was around January, February, just before the eastern, the al-Haqqa offensive had already gone, Hasakah offensive, sorry, had already just come in or was going in. Obviously, we didn't know any of this because obviously we're not getting newspapers and there's no internet. We haven't got a fucking clue what's going on. While we're waiting at Derek's, we're being processed through their paperwork and stuff. We pick up weapons and ammo. Um, I had a— I went for an AK because the ammo is ubiquitous. Um, all 3 serial numbers matched up, which I was quite happy with. Uh, but it was made in 1974, so it was a good year, good vintage. Uh, it worked absolutely fine.
Hey, listen, listen, Dan, a classic never dies.
Oh, exactly. Yeah. Um, but what was crazy was, uh, so like a lot of the guys that come from M16s, understandably go what you know. Um, but they still had the packing grease in. So you've got to think that went from Colombia to Iraq— oh, sorry, to a U.S. serviceman, then to an Iraqi, then stolen by ISIS, then back into it— well, then stolen by YPG, and then back in the hands of like an American. Every Canadian. Like, just the logistics involved in that, it's crazy, is phenomenal when you think about it. Yeah, and no one bothered to clean the packing grease off at any point along this stage.
I, I remember we, uh, we had a guy who was, um, uh, like a, a, a one of the JTAC or call for fire guys, worked in the strike cell. And during this, this war, this conflict, he was having to call in airstrikes on American-made Humvees. That ISIS had obviously commandeered. And he was like, that was the creepiest thing of my life because you're so scared of blue on blue all the time. And he's like, calling in an airstrike on a Humvee was like, freaked me out like nothing else.
I'd never considered that. Yeah, that must have been sketchy, man. Yeah, I mean, for me, it was also, it's the first time I've been shot at with NATO weapons. Yeah, 240s, because that's what they had on the other side. Um, yeah, that was— that is an odd experience. But yeah, I can't imagine— fuck yeah, yeah, being a pilot as well. Are you sure? Are you sure? Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's definitely the right one. Yeah, yeah, I mean, uh, yeah, yeah, that was great. I mean, I think one of the oddest experiences for me was, um, yeah, after we, we went to Derek got processed there, and then we went down to the academy, um, but they had already split us off. So GWAT veterans who didn't want to stay at the academy would do like a cut-down version of the course, i.e., propaganda, and then you get moved on. So we did that, um, which was wild, man. Like, some of the stuff they believe— the indoctrination— yeah, um, I know you mentioned about the claim that the Civil War was—
it, that was, that was one of the, one of the guys that went to the academy told me something about that, that they thought like the South won the American Civil War. Um, yeah, there's a lot of things I admire about the, the Kurdish philosophy and democratic confederalism. Um, jives with me in a lot of ways, but they have some skewed views about history in some places.
Yeah, I think I know what that is though. I think what they did— that's a mistranslation or not well described.
Oh, it's a translation issue.
Yeah, I think what they were getting at with that is basically if you're a black dude in 1905 getting lynched, um, how well the Union stood at Cemetery Ridge really didn't do you any favors. So it's the materialist conception of history, the outcome of the American Civil War. Okay. Wasn't— the promise wasn't kept. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, that, that makes a lot more sense if that's philosophically what they're, what they're going at, because that's Marxist way of looking at history.
And I think that's what they were using. Right, right, right. Um, uh, yeah, I mean, it's a mix of Maoism as well. Um, so you have, uh, something called like a technial wit, which is self-criticism where you literally stand up in a room and other people get strips off you, um, which is really— I mean, that's a cult dynamic, um, that's a well-trodden path, um. If you look at like the Maoist sort of groups in the '60s and '70s around like LA and Berkeley and that, um, my favorite terrorist group of all time, the Symbionese Liberation Army, um, we're big into that, uh. Yeah, so anyone at home, look them up. Imagine what Rachel Dolezal and Robin DiAngelo started.
Yeah, that was Patty Hearst, you know, Patty Hearst supposedly getting brainwashed. Yeah. And brought into them. But the— I mean, they also believe in like, I believe social ecology is another part of what they believe. I mean, it's sort of— it really is an amalgamation of different beliefs that they kind of brought together because To their credit, they realized that Marxism didn't really work and they realized that the party had to evolve and find new ways of living and new ways of governing. So I do admire that about them.
Yeah, no, well, Marxism wouldn't fit because it's based on industry. So social ecology by definition is anti-Marxist in the sense of the primacy of industry was a key part of Marxism. Um, shifting that is a huge part of the ideology to social ecology. So yeah, um, I'm sorry, as in like the, the, um, the way, uh, cultures and societies naturally evolve, if you want to use that term. Um, which is I think why they lost a lot of their anti-capitalist, uh, for many of them in some regards, their sort of anti-capitalist beliefs. Um, by simple dint of the fact that throughout history there's always been someone with more of something that needed something else, and there was someone with more of something else who needed something more, and they started talking. That's always been the case. Um, so that's why I think they were a lot more accommodating of sort of free enterprise to an extent. Um, so yeah, that side of things was fascinating.
Um, I, I think when I came back I was just gonna say, I think politically, it was also very interesting that they kind of, like in the West, we have this either a cynicism about politics or we're dismissive, it's all fake, our elections aren't real. It's like the joke about at the streetlight, you wanna cross the street and you press the button for the red light and it doesn't change anything. We have these criticisms about democracy, the Kurds and specifically the PKK and their offshoot groups kind of, I think, understand like, no, politics isn't evil. It's just something that you use to accomplish specific goals for the society. It's a vehicle that you use to get to somewhere else rather than something that you should just dismiss and pretend isn't there.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, a huge part of where I would say certainly in my own country, uh, we're going wrong is the level of apathy. Yeah. And it's not from nowhere, you know. There's a very good reason why people are apathetic towards politics when you've got, um, the threat they were against in terms of not just ISIS, obviously Turkey as well. Syrian regime, the politics becomes more important, you know, when you can see that need to be, you know what I mean? It becomes a real thing. It stops being something that other people do for you and it's something—
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean, it's crazy though, um, because I've seen people try and transplant aspects of it in the UK There's, um, a recent political party was set up called Your Party, um, which they hit literally every tripwire that a left-wing group can hit. They hit within the first like 3 weeks, um, the infighting, factionalism. Google these people. Um, it's led by a guy called Jeremy Corbyn who used to run the Labor Party. Yeah, yeah, this gives you an idea, right? Yeah, so Jeremy Corbyn was fined to have run a political party so racist against Jews it broke the law. In this new party he started, he's been called a Zionist as an insult, um, at conferences. Like, that's how left-wing these people are.
Like, that's how much cooler it is. Oh my God.
Um, yeah, and they, they talk— one of the guys was interviewed and he's talking about they're going to have 20 leaders and they're going to operate different cantons. And it straight up reminded me again of the '60s Maoist thing. Like Maoism was a political and military strategy that fit China at a particular period because of geographical reasons. The same with the Cantons and Rajabha and that, because they were in three separate areas and they had to be—
the Cantons comes from Switzerland though. Well, that's right.
Yeah, originally. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, this— I think this guy— yeah, I'm pretty sure that he was on the Rajavan sort of model, as it were. Agrarian society. Yeah, yeah. I mean, these— yeah, um, these people are a parody, but yeah, they're worth, yeah, 10 minutes.
So your, your experience at the academy— was this at the base where there's the rail line tracks that go across the entrance, and there's the, the empty box trucks, uh, boxcars are just kind of dead right there on the tracks.
I know where that was. We went there for a few weeks— I know, a few days before going to the front. Oh, okay. The academy, we— yeah, this was, uh, like a two-story building. It had like— it faced down a hill. There were ranges set up. There were like accommodation buildings and a shitload of child soldiers. Yeah. So if you've gone there as a journalist, I'm not surprised they kept you away.
Well, two things. Well, I researched and later I found out that those rail lines, the rail line that was built by you guys back in the old days from Turkey all the way down to Basra, that was a huge rail line that went down there. But the child soldiers, yes, I did run into that numerous times while I was there and even having conversations with like the YPJ girls. And if it ever came up, you know, how old are you? And they'd be like, 16. And then they'd think about it for a minute. No, no, no, no, I'm 18. I'm 18. I'm 18. And they're like, okay, okay. Got it. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, yeah. I can't make excuses for using child soldiers. The biggest— the YPG was used— well, I say used, it kind of became like an unofficial orphanage for a lot of children whose parents and families have been killed. And so when it's referred to child soldiers, it's a tricky one, man, because—
It's different than when you enlisted as a 17-year-old. It's also different than what you saw in West Africa, where these militias would come into a village and they'd literally, they would force the young kids to rape the oldest woman in the village so that they were ostracized and they could never come back. That's not what was happening with the Kurds in Syria. It really was an act of desperation. And I mean, I respect the fact that these young people were willing to fight and die for freedom. But it's still horrifying to me, like, especially as a father, that so many of these young people died.
I mean, for me, it's almost like, you know, that question of like there's 5 guys on the track and things coming down.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you do?
ISIS are 10 miles down the road, 10K down the road. They come in this way. You've got a box full of AKs, you know what's going to happen to everyone when they get here. Are you going to be that selective one who gets to defend themselves? Do you know what I mean? It's a— yeah, um, yeah, it was a tricky one, um, with that. I mean, obviously I was used to like military discipline, uh, you never keep your finger on the trigger, you know what I mean? Just those tiny little things that you just don't even realize you do without thinking. That stop you from accidentally shooting people. That shit wasn't happening.
Yeah, yeah, I know.
A lot of these kids, like, they were, they were a menace. And like, one of the guys that I crossed with got shot through the car and had to like wait 3 weeks to get, to get out by it, by one of these kids fucking about with a PKM. I mean, they used to do the thing of, um, they clear the AK, put the magazine back on— sorry, clear the AK, fire off the action, cock it again, put the magazine on and then point it and go to fire off the action as a joke.
You don't do that in— yeah, no, no, no.
Even the British Army, as fucked up as it is or was, you don't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so yeah, that— I mean, I've got to be honest, I think the units I was actually with, there weren't that many. I think there was like 2 15-year-olds. In the 2 or 3 units I was with, uh, the 2, uh, 2 or 3 squads. Um, so yeah, I didn't see a huge amount of them on the front line, but they definitely were in uniform and they definitely had weapons. So yeah, yeah, it's one of them.
And where did, uh, they push you out to on the front eventually once you finished your, uh, time there?
Yeah, so we literally ended up, uh, we got bounced through a couple of camps hit a long road, um, and then, yeah, heard the airstrikes going in as we're getting closer. And then we pulled up to Tel Hammis, um, which was a big offensive. Yeah, that was rough. Um, I think they took a lot of casualties on that. But that's when I first met the bulk of the Westerners. Um, the support we got put in was with a guy called Jack Holmes, who was like a young British guy. He was quite famous back home. Um, I didn't see Jordan Mattson, but he was definitely about. Um, there was quite a few Westerners with the fire support group on the Dushka trucks, like a flatbed with, um, the, the two 23mm anti-aircraft guns. I wanted to get on with that shit because my whole career had been fire support, so that's— yeah, yeah, that's where I wanted to go, but that wasn't happening. Um, so yeah, we got put into it, uh, onto the command of, uh, Sarim, uh, she was a geneticist, PhD from Rome. Uh, yeah, um, she would have had an outstanding career in any military if she had the luxury of being able to go to a staff college, or like, she absolutely had that command presence.
Um, she was later killed, not, not long after. Um, there's a lot of I mean, the attrition rate in that conflict was unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. Uh, but yeah, we, as the main attack was going into Tel Qarmis, we were cleaning up the villages around, but most of the fighting was done. Um, quite a few bodies, uh, from the airstrikes. Um, you know when they've been hit by the concussion, so the bodies are all together but you can see all the bones in the chest cavity in that bus because they're starting to puff out. Yeah. Obviously we weren't burying them because we didn't have time. So yeah, we just sort of bounced from village to village. And so yeah, we just pile in on the trucks, head towards a village. If there was fighters in there, they'd literally do the Mad Max thing of drive round, firing into it while a Hilux with, you know, those 16-barrel 107 launchers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they just DF'd that straight into the fuckers. It was great. Yeah, um, really effective. Um, having experienced like counterinsurgency, to be in a battlefield where you're moving that rapidly was unreal to me.
Like, covering the kilometers that we couldn't fathom in Afghan, you know, where 100 meters is a— can change the world you're in. Um, yeah, I mean the whole time we were there, because we, uh, we used to use Wimmicks, which were like Land Rover Defenders that got a V8 engine with roll cages, 50, with a GPMG on the commander side. Like, 6 of them could have just torn through their logistics lines. Like, they— we— yeah, it could have been so easily wrapped up, that conflict, so early on. Um, but yeah, so we were The main, from what I was to understand later, the main point what we were doing was cutting off their logistics points. So, uh, Sinjar was going to be isolated, which meant that their logistics lines then had to run through Iraq, which opened them up to the coalition airstrikes that were a little more squeamish about flying into Syrian airspace. Um, but yeah, it was a weird time for air cover because, uh, we've done one attack, we've come over a hill just taking this time of the village, and there was a Russian— the Sukhoi bomber, fighter bomber thing, um, was in the air ahead of us.
It's the first time I've ever been in a non-deconflict airspace, and the Russian plane was on our side, which is a whole— that was a weird— yeah, um, and I, um, SF guys were obviously about— I didn't see them speak to— obviously they weren't going to come speak to us, understandably. But having so much air power going on around, it's like— I saw a lot of ordnance get dropped in Afghan, but the amount that was dropped on ISIS was on a different level. You almost started to feel sorry for them.
On the American side, did you guys have like A-10s coming in? I remember some guys telling me about that? I didn't see A-10s.
It was mainly, uh, Specter, so C-130, whatever variant, um, drones, fast air, um, didn't identify a lot of fast air because it was just so high. Um, the C-130s had the night and the drones had the day. Um, but it was weird. You'd wake up one morning and you'd see, you know, the, um, the contrail from the drone you'd see that and then you wake up the next morning and you'd have no cover. Something else was going on somewhere else. So yeah, but on a night you'd see the C-130 guys, they must have had them have a little— because yeah, I don't think any of them flew back with ammo. I think all rations got expended from what I saw. Yeah, they really went to town on them. We got dropped off with the unit. The squad that we were originally with drove off. We later find out they were supposed to come back and pick us up, but it never happened. They got caught up in another scrap, and that's where Sarim had been killed. So obviously they had much more things to worry about than us. The first Westerner had been killed before we'd gone on that offensive.
An Australian guy, Ashley, I think his name was, but he was the first Westerner that I'm aware of that was killed. So we were kind of concerned that they weren't going to send us to the front depending on how the media— because obviously the YPG were very media savvy, they knew how to try and play the Western media. But to be fair, it didn't hold them back at all. They didn't hold us back, sorry. Um, we were straight in on attacks, uh, doing offensive ops. Nothing too heavy, if I'm honest. It wasn't a huge amount of fighting at that point. Most of the places we took were abandoned. Um, the big difference between the G-WAT guys and the more sort of political guys, or guys who not had any experience but wanted to get involved, was their approach to like clearing rooms and searching buildings, because we were obviously super paranoid about IEDs and these guys just kicking doors through, walking through doorways, tearing stuff open.
Are you talking— are you talking about the Kurds or are you talking about more like the European anarchists that showed up?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The anarchists. Well, not just them, actually. There were these guys because we had a mix. You had like red-blooded Republicans out there.
Yeah, the guy from Texas. And yeah.
Yeah, well, yeah, um, so there was a big, uh, like fracture between the YPG and the Syrian Military Council. There's a lot of guys who come to join the YPG, didn't do their homework before going and didn't realize they were a very left-wing group, and they started to jump ship to the Syrian Military Council. And the YPG became paranoid that they were going to become too large and powerful and sort of trying to exert their own and become sort of a threat or a political faction that became more muscular than they felt it should be. Um, so yeah, there was a big tension there. Um, so the, the Syrian guys got majority of like the ex-bikers and shit and born again sort of. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, there was guys that turned up, they had no military experience. Um, kind of the attitude with some of them, and not all of them, uh, was, if you knew, if you guys knew what you were doing, we wouldn't have to be here. Um, again, not all of them. I have to be honest, some of the European anarchists that I work with were some of the most disciplined people I've ever met.
Um, that was a big experience for a lot of veterans because you've got to remember, you have two groups of people who on any given day would never talk to each other. Living together, shitting together, cleaning together, you know what I mean? So it was really interesting to see that dynamic grow over time and watching, you know, a former US Marine corporal sit down and say, yeah, that fucking Swiss, yeah, he's a— he would have been a really good Marine. I mean, like, that's an unusual thing. Yeah. Um, yeah, uh, because we kind of took a lot those guys under our wing, as you'd expect, because they're watching my back, so I want them to know what they're doing. Like, not once did you have to remind someone, it'd probably be a good time to clean your weapon, bud, uh, or any— yeah, you might want to pack your shit away before we settle. You know, I mean, there was none of that. I think it was a huge surprise, the dedication that a lot of these activists had. Um, but yeah, it was a big eye-opener for for a lot of people.
Yeah. I mean, the situation you're describing, I mean, is so surreal. It's almost impossible to imagine, but it's surreal in a sense that it's also surreal in the sense that during the Spanish Civil War, Spanish anarchists controlled cities for a brief period of time. It's like this sort of, unfortunately, a brief moment in time where you're seeing something happen where the war is bringing these different people together. But I mean, I don't follow the war as closely as I used to, but I think the writing is on the wall what's gonna happen in Northwest Syria. And it's heartbreaking, honestly.
Yeah, I mean, I've got to be honest, I thought— I thought the writing was on the wall pretty early on. Yeah. When I got back to the UK, I mean, I was at a transition point myself because I knew I was on a railroad that was going to lead me to dying in a ditch somewhere, um, in a probably a really cool way, but dead is dead, do you know what I mean? Right. Um, so I was seriously thinking about, you know, what do I want to do? And that's when I started redoing my education and I prefer to go to university. Um, so being able to sort of watch the war from the outside but knowing the internal aspects, um, what was crazy because I heard about Till, uh, oh yeah, major issue. Yeah, yeah, I'd never met him. He was out there after me and he did way longer than me. Um, I was told that there was some crazy German academic going around punching YPG commanders. And I was like, that's my soul brother, um, because many a time it could have gone— yeah, um, the only reason it didn't happen was we were told that there was like a series of like secret prisons that YPG was running.
There was. Yes, there was.
Yeah, I didn't meet anyone who got locked up. I didn't meet anyone who knew someone that got locked up, but everyone knew about it, if that makes sense.
There were some guys that got so PTSD'd that they had to lock them up for a period of time. And there were also bad guys in those prisons too. And I think now that I'm thinking about it, I think one of those prisons was down in Tel Hamis. Okay. Was there a compound with apartment buildings and there's a huge water tower that had been shot Shut the fuck up.
Ah, I think I know what that is. Is that closer to Sinjar?
Uh, yes, it's close to the Iraqi border.
I took that time.
Yo, you were there for that?
Yeah, yeah, I was on that one. Yeah, so I know what you mean.
Um, yeah, so tell us about that, because that water tower, I climbed to the top of it, it was totally riddled with bullet holes and RPG rounds. Every— it was destroyed.
Yeah, no, that place was fucked up. Um, to be fair, a lot of the air power had gone in, had cleared the way. Um, like, me at one point, me and two people cleared like a whole hamlet by ourselves because we got so used to clearing buildings in small numbers. Um, but yeah, the unit that I got to, the first unit I'd got to, um, the day before, they'd taken a village and they hadn't searched it properly, and they've set up to set up tri and then an ISIS Dushka truck just burst out of the garage and like just the guy on the gun was just blasting as guys are like setting up tea. They've panicked, grabbed their rifles, everyone's missing, tracers going everywhere, and these guys got away and just drove off into the distance. So they got really good at like making sure they were going to check every building this time, so that was reassuring. But yeah, like that happened a lot. Finding like ISIS hideaways and shit, like in the apartment buildings and stuff. Now and again, yeah. They'd usually leave like a few idiots in like a village and, um, sorry, I'm having to— they'd usually leave like a couple of idiots in the village to sort of just give us a problem.
But like I said, with the F-107 straight into the building, that usually ended it pretty quick. So yeah. Having been on the receiving end of that, I can assure you it works. So yeah.
And was your team more— like, what was the composition? Was it mostly Western, or was it a mix of Kurdish and foreigners?
So it was about 50/50 Western. No, no, sorry, about, about one-third Western, two-thirds Kurds. But they made a point that a lot of the Kurds in that school could speak English or had grown up in more cosmopolitan areas.
Yeah, they came from Europe. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, um, I speak passable French. Um, my ex-girlfriend, the one that went to the good school, was half French. So yeah, um, I can get by in Paris basically. So that was good for me because I was able to talk to— because my commando was shit, there was still another language that I could use if necessary with a couple of Kurds because some of them had grown up in Belgium, a couple in France. There was actually a general who spent a lot of time with us, General Chia, and he'd grown up, or he'd spent a lot of time in Montpellier. So yeah, we would chat quite a bit about his time in France in French, or try to. Bilal's terrible French, I'm like, but his was spectacular. So yeah, that was, that was quite common. I refer to the Westerners in our group as Colonial Club because it was Brits, Aussies, Canadians, and Americans. So as a piss-take, I just call them Colonials. I'd just like to say that my family is predominantly Irish and I don't buy into flag-shagging. I'm a Republican. I don't believe not my key. So just gonna put that there, uh, don't want any comebacks, uh, but yeah, it was a really good group of guys actually.
For the most part, most of them switched on, decent, like not fucked up, do you know what I mean? Um, there was a lot of scope for, uh, messed up shit, uh, the the guy that brought us together, as it were. Tim ended up with quite a reputation.
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Yeah, so Tim Tim came to us the night before we were going to cross over. Um, he was erratic. Um, however, some of the guys that I'd met, I felt were putting on— they were playing up to a part, if that makes sense. Um, some guys were trying to portray themselves as like adventurers and that kind of thing, and I just think he was playing up as like the crazy man. Um, I mean, there was a lot of that. Uh, so I didn't take it too seriously. It was only once he was— he'd been given his weapons and he's got like 3 hand grenades and a few magazines, you think, shit. Um, he'd opted to go for an M16, which is obviously an unusual choice for a Brit. Um, I'm familiar with it, but it if I had the choice between that and an AK, I'm going for the AK. It's a simpler weapon. Um, so yeah, I had to show him how to use it, like the base, like literally how to— where the charging handle is, not a cocking handle. Um, like down to the point of how a gas-operated weapon cycles. Um, which for someone that claimed that he'd been in the military unusual.
Um, he then got separated off to a different group when we got to Tel Hamis. Um, and every now and again we'd bump into other people and they would be like, oh, have you heard about Tim? Have you heard about Tim? And someone eventually said, yeah, so Tim had, uh, they're doing an attack. Um, there was a wounded ISIS guy, um, in a position they'd just taken. So they're setting up the fence, and while everyone's setting up fence, Tim's like looking at this guy and starts like eating bits of him, uh, started pulling like bits of his liver out apparently. Um, again, I didn't see this. Um, I spoke to someone who claims they saw it, but again, that's questionable in a place with a lot of questionable characters. Uh, the YPG thought it was hilarious. Uh, the YPJ was super freaked out and did not like being around it. Um, so I tend to go with the YPJ, uh, view on world in that regards. Um, they did eventually remove him. Um, I don't know what happened to him afterwards. The next time I heard about him, he was in the press, in the Daily Mail, where he pretty much— whether, how reliable of a narrator of his own history he is, is debatable.
Um, but yeah, he pretty much told the Daily Mail everything I've just said. Um, yeah, it was, uh, it was odd because you'd hear Tim stories everywhere you went. Um, and again, it's, you know, rumors work in the military. You don't discount all of it, you know. It's not, yeah, it's not always, always bullshit. Uh, I mean, he wasn't the only one. There was a dude who was caught, uh, he stripping the finger bones out of the guy's hand, um, that he wanted to keep as souvenirs. Uh, he got sent back. Yeah.
Um, the stories I heard about Tim was that he would like come up on dead ISIS guys who had been killed in airstrikes and their bodies are charred, and he'd like pull the ear off and just start chewing on it and that kind of thing.
And then, yeah, apparently he got Yeah, sorry, I remember we got to tell Hamis, and when Tim got separated from— that was it. Sorry, I've completely forgot about this. It's in my diary as well. He, um, yeah, there was already a pile of dead ISIS guys being piled up along the sand berm, and we'd stopped, and Tim just ran over to go and have a look at them. Um, he wasn't playing about with bodies, but he did just go over just to like dead bodies. I mean, once you've seen that shit, you've seen it a million times. Yeah, yeah. Again, I put it down to inexperience. Um, but yeah, I didn't see him fuck about with anybody personally, but this was early on, and then all this other stuff came out subsequently. So it's a—
yeah, uh, uh, the, the incident, the, the incident that, again, that I've been told secondhand, you know, that instigated him being kicked out was that he ate a piece of a wounded YPG fighter that they were working on. And, uh, there's a joke that somebody made, some gallows humor, that there's a joke there about leftists eating their own.
Uh, Tim was not a leftist, I can tell you that. We had plenty of time to talk about politics and He was very much on the other side of the aisle.
Well, that's the follow-up is my understanding was that the next time the guys kind of caught up with him, he was living as like a homeless vagabond in Europe. And in his rucksack, he only had two things, a bottle of whiskey and a copy of Mein Kampf.
I mean, that's a party there. You know what I mean? That's a good night. Yeah, he told me he traveled to the Holy Land, um, he traveled through Jordan, Israel, um, and when he was there, he passed under a, like, a highway bridge, and a falcon came down, and blinding light came out the falcon's eyes, and it was God. God had sent him on a mission to, to fight ISIS. Ineed people. And clearly, yeah, um, I mean, hey, God has a plan. Yeah, um, I've done communion, you know, uh, he just took it a bit more seriously, I think. Um, yeah, uh, I heard rumors more once I was back in the UK, um, because I'd check in all the time, um, To be fair, it was at this point was when Manbij, I think it was, and the build-up to that, and that's when all the Westerners started getting hit. Jack, Jamie Bright, an Aussie guy who was one of the— he was an absolute gentleman, like one of the sweetest people I've ever met in the army, in a military environment, a genuine humanitarian. Yeah. There was— oh God, yeah, did I tell you about the actor Michael Enright?
No, no. So Jordan Mattson put on Facebook that if the British government didn't remove Michael Enright, he was going to end up being killed by other volunteers. I've never met— like, this dude could start a fight with a lamppost. He was so abrasive. Um, he was from Manchester originally. He'd been an extra in a few films like Pirates of the Caribbean. Um, the YPJ kept using him as like propaganda, so they'd like drive him out to the front. He'd have an AK, fire a few rounds at an empty building, then they'd move into a different place with other Westerners. He'd fire a few rounds there, so they'd build up like a, uh, yeah, yeah. And then sort of send that out like Hollywood actor fighting ISIS kind of thing. But yeah, it was odd. Like, you'd be talking to him, having a conversation, and then someone else would walk into the room. And like, as I'm talking to you now, I hear the fucking prick. No, I mean, like, he sounded like a Game of Thrones character. Yeah, I've never met a more abrasive man. Not to the point where I was considering killing him or anything.
But apparently people were. So yeah, last time I heard, he was stuck in Belize, actually, at the British consulate trying to get back into the US because he's technically a US citizen. But they weren't having any of it. So I don't know what's happened to him. I don't know if Britain took him back or what.
I met Jordan Madsen when I was in Syria.
What did you think of him? I only got to say hello a couple of times.
I did meet him and Derek. He seemed like a nice enough guy. You know?
Yeah, yeah, I didn't hear anything bad about him. Um, the first Westerner I met was crossing that river and they were coming the other way, and he was complaining that he'd been kept at the front, and the only way you get to the front was if you were friends with Jordan Mattson. That just simply wasn't true. Um, I never met him and I was on the front within days.
But, but it did have so much to do with like who you interfaced with and, and who you knew, you know, that, that did have a lot to do with it.
Yeah, no, networking was vital. I made sure there was certain people that I made sure I stayed in their good graces for the event of like, oh yeah, this other unit might be— do you know what I mean? Um, because there was so much variation in the tours. Um, and I, again, with the British Army, I'd I saw the best and the worst. Um, but first of all, as we've, like I said, very cosmopolitan, highly educated, um, lots of people, well, mix of politics, G-WOP guys. Um, the next of all were what we refer to as Gundis, which is the Khmer for villager. These are guys that have grown up in the mountains, had a PK education, weren't particularly worldly, were very into what we call that magic, which was, oh, we'll use revolutionary spirit to get through. Like, no, no, you're going to need ammo, trust me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, uh, so we would, like, before we do an attack, when I said we were in this stage where we just taking towns and villages and shit, um, when we get the brief, right, we're going to take this place tomorrow, blah blah, and then, um, yeah, medical cover is going to be Apo magic, uh, hopefully we'll pray to him and he'll come in and save everyone.
For the viewers who are listening to this, Apo, it means, I believe it means uncle. And it's a reference to Abdullah Öcalan, who is sort of the spiritual and for a long time, the literal leader of the PKK.
Yeah, I mean, the uncle fit, it's so close to big brother.
It's a little weird. I've seen young YPJ and YPG fighter— YPG fighter, correction— young guy actually kissing his picture.
Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, there will be people, the only books they've ever read will be of the Outlander. Yeah, yeah.
That guy, he had a little knapsack, a little backpack with all of his possessions in it, and most of it was Apo's writings, and nearly all of them had a picture of him on them as well.
Um, yeah, yeah. Uh, some of the guys in the second table we were in, they fought in Kobani. Um, the big fight. Yeah, yeah. Uh, I mean, don't— what those guys have gone through, I can't imagine. They used to have like night terrors. Um, some of the YPJ fighters as well were escaped slaves, and they would have night terrors, and we would like go in and try and hold them down. Um, pretty early on, like, one of our squads, a dude hung himself. Me and Brandon had to like declare him dead. Um, he had— you could see he'd been self-harming for years because they don't roll their sleeves up. Um, or they were funny about you showing skin, exposed skin. Yeah, yeah. You wouldn't, you wouldn't have known it. First time I've ever seen that in the Middle East. I've never known someone take their own life. I know it sounds like an odd thing to say, but I've never heard of it or seen it in that culture. Um, so that was a shock, and I hadn't realized just how traumatized a lot of these people were. Yes, yeah, yeah. And yeah, um, that was a big part in the reason to come home.
Was like, my belief was they didn't need more angry young men with guns. What they needed was nurses, doctors, architects, educators, you do, I mean, engineers, civil servants, you know. But also with the politics of the region, there was no way, there's no way Turkey is going to allow a Kurdish state on the border. There's no way the United States and NATO is going to lose Turkey. Yeah, absolutely. That was always going to be the outcome. I also, if I'm honest, fully sympathize and understand Syria's and Syrians' right to want to secure their borders, all of it, and have equal access to their natural resources under a new government after years and years of conflict.
I think the Kurds would be perfectly willing to accept, you know, because this idea of cantons that we've talked about before. I think they, as long as Kurdish rights are recognized, I think they would be at least somewhat receptive to that. Because during the Syrian, during Assad's regime, the Kurds could not legally have a job. They couldn't get a passport. They were not allowed to speak their own language. I mean, it was very oppressive. Yeah.
I mean, I can't imagine what it's like if you're a YPJ fighter fighter and you fought through that period and managed to survive, to then have to bend the knee to an Islamist regime. Yeah, what the hell. Yeah, that— I can't begin to imagine what that's like. Um, they said they're going to integrate the YPJ into the new Syrian army, but we'll see how that goes.
Yeah, hard to believe.
If I was a— I wouldn't share a barracks with Islamists. If I was a YPJ fighter, you know what I mean? Like, that's— no. Um, there's obviously certain personalities, uh, Rostov, I know, earned a huge amount of respect. Um, individuals like that may be able to, uh, but I— yeah, I think—
yeah, Rajda led like battalions of Arab men, which is again so surreal to even contemplate plate in that part of the world.
It's phenomenal, man. I mean, a lot of people got very excited about the YPJ. They became quite fetishized, I think. Yes. And not just by Western men, but Western female outlets.
Yeah, Western feminists. Yeah.
And it was like, oh, this is a— I mean, it is a new mode. I think they thought that was going to spread. And I don't think it was, if I'm honest.
Yeah, there was a certain amount of conflation taking place that people in the West thought like, yeah, this is this expression of socialism and feminism that's global, but really it was a fight about Kurdish independence and Kurdish freedom. And I think that kind of got lost somewhere in the mix.
Yeah, and in a fucked up way. Needed ISIS as the engine to power that. Yeah. If that makes sense. They needed the conflict to put the spotlight. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was the opportunity that was needed for those, for that to happen at that time in the chaos of the Syrian civil war. Um, so yeah, it was, I mean, to be fair, and they were very diplomatic. I mean, there was a Syrian outpost in Qamishlo pretty much the entire time. They had a working relationship, um, so they weren't stupid, do you know what I mean? Like, they knew when to negotiate, they knew when to say the right things in front of the right people. Um, but again, the group itself was heavily factional. You had the old-school PKK guys, you had the new breed, we had, you know, the people that grown up that were more sort of in tune with what was coming out of Berkeley and, uh, NYU than anything coming out of Istanbul. Um, so yeah, it was a real mix of, like, yeah, any military is factional. They just pretend and work hard to not allow it to impede.
But, uh, it was because of the nature of the politics like the level of, the level of leadership at like the level was huge. So you then times that by company, battalion, brigade, it— the, the types of leadership you can be under vary massively. And, and that's, that's what me and Brandon experienced. Um, they thought we were CIA spies, of course, at one point. Of course. Yeah, the Gundis— Brandon had an iPhone and I had a cat tourniquet and it was sticking out of the twist arm, was sticking out the top of my webbing, and they thought that was a radio antenna, and I had to get it out and show them it was a cat tourniquet, and I called the commander a fucking idiot, and then we left and went to another spool that was just down the road.
So yeah, second meeting. There was a conspiracy or a Kurd-spiracy that they were spreading out the Westerners because they were afraid to put you guys into one unit and it might be like a revolt or something like that? Yeah, a lot of—
I mean, I'll put it to you this way. When I got there, I genuinely thought I was going to be the least militarily accomplished person there. I thought I was going to have like ex-SEALS, ex-Green Berets going, how the fuck did you do 8 years and never promote? You know what I mean? No, uh, similar sort of thing with the Kurds in terms of, um, you tell the people that cut their teeth fighting Turkey because it was a much more advanced military than the Syrian regime, uh, had. And, um, I mean, the Syrian military— Syrian Arab Army, sorry— was primarily designed to terrorize its own people. And though they tend to be quite poor at actual conflict. Um, so yeah, that, that, that variation in terms of command, you could tell the people that cut their teeth and where.
Um, so yeah, yeah, the, the hardcore like PKK guys and women are no joke.
No. Um, yeah, that You're going to end up dead or in prison if you join the PKK.
And they know that. They totally know that. Yeah. That doesn't stop them.
The shaheed thing was difficult the way that—
The martyr stuff. Yeah.
Because you don't want to get caught in a fucking suicide charge. I mean, I'm not doing a Banzai charge for anyone. You know what I mean? Um, but yeah, so you'd have these infuriating conversations with my— the Gundi commander that had a guy called, um, who we fell out with. Right, so how are we going to take this village? How are we going to do it? It's like, right, we're going to get in a line and then we're going to run. Like, no, no, no, you've got a base of fire on the high ground there, dead ground there, like, come on. Like, and then you try and explain it. Look, 'You want to take Raka?' 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' 'And then you want to go on to, uh, all the way through? You want to hook up to, um, uh, the Kabani Canton and all that? You're going to fight with—' 'Yeah, yeah.' 'How are you going to do that if you die tomorrow?' Do you know what I mean? And you try and— 'Yeah, yeah.' 'If you want to win this war, you can do more with alive soldiers than you can dead ones.' And try and, like, I mean, trying to give them Oh, go ahead, Friedman.
Well, I was just going to say my impression is that that was kind of a theme, at least in the early years of the war. Maybe it changed that some of these guerrilla fighters came down out of the mountains and they had extensive experience with guerrilla warfare in the mountain environment. But now, you know, this part of Syria we're talking about is absolutely flat. It's like a pancake. And the fight was very conventional. Was a very conventional infantry sort of fight. And, um, a lot of the guys told me that just trying to like talk to them about the concept of fire and maneuver, laying down a base of fire and coming flanking around from this, was something that was very like lost on them.
Yeah, um, I think they saw it as overcomplicating a simple task, um, and they quite simply were prepared to take a level of casualties that we we wouldn't— true, we wouldn't use to. Um, it came across as like a certain amount of callousness on behalf of the command, but then again, you've got to factor in the fact these were kids. They're not— yeah, you know, they've never been to a training establishment, they've never sat in a staff college, some of them never sat in a classroom. Um, so yeah, you can't expect West Point in northern Syria, you know. I mean, it's just not gonna happen. Um, I think it was a bit unfair. Some of the guys came back who did do the long haul, um, said that a lot of the G-Watch guys were— so couldn't handle the fact that they didn't have a petrol on call. And it's like, no, a lot of the guys knew, like, they were fully aware that there was no CAS coming in together, uh, but they didn't want to die on a suicide charge either, right? Um, do you know what I mean? And yeah, it was, I mean, yeah, like I said, it's hard, like the fighting afterwards, taking Raqqa, and then of course you had the Iraqi army in Mosul, which must have been unbelievable.
I mean, you're talking like Philippines, Stalingrad type, you know, Fallujah type shit. It's got to be up there and barely anyone remembers it. you know, it's a footnote in history now.
Um, what was, what was sort of the, the rest of your run like with the YPG that you got with this Gundy commander? Um, and what was, what was sort of the, the, the next steps for you?
Uh, so yeah, we had a massive fallout with them. We left, went to literally the building a few hundred meters away, and then we ended up with— it was a mix of— they were all older, all guys in their like late 20s, early 30s, which was great. Um, Iraqi Christians, uh, atheists, uh, a couple of Sunnis, mix of Kurds, mainly Arab, um, or Assyrian. Um, and we spent the rest of the time with them. Uh, we had a massive BB-IED hit the base just down the road from us, which was fucking huge. It looked To me it looked like a BMP variant. Um, there was some sort of turret on the top. It looked from the top— I didn't see the road wheel, so I can't confirm if I'm honest, but it had the look of BMP. Um, machine gunner was firing the whole way up, RPGs were bouncing off it, and we just stood there and watched because we had nothing to answer it to. Um, we didn't have air cover all the time. Like I said, you'd wake up one morning, there'd be drones up, and then the next day there wouldn't. Because they were needed elsewhere.
Um, so yeah, sometimes the drones would get them early and sometimes they just couldn't. Um, but yeah, later on— so we'd actually asked to go back, and it was usually around a 3-day period to find out whether you got the yay or the nay. Um, we'd asked, and then 2 days later ISIS tried to overrun our position. Um, because we'd been sniping them for a good few weeks. Um, we had a Dragonhawk me and Brandon had basically the same foresight. Um, obviously the Dragunov's a shit rifle, really. Um, yes, it's a marksman rifle, it's not a sniper rifle, and I'm not a sniper. Um, after 8 years I can shoot marksman level, as I should be able to as a rifleman. Um, so it didn't take long. You just fire, you're dropping rounds in. I mean, we were just doing that from sunup till sundown. For weeks just taking pot shots. And obviously you get lucky sometimes, most of the times you don't. But yeah, um, yeah, so before the attack, what it was, we'd, uh, been given a load of ammo and we had, uh, the Russian 7.62 or something. Um, it was armor-piercing incendiary tracer, I think.
You're talking, uh, are you talking about 70 7.62x54 rimmed? That's the one, sorry. Yeah.
Um, it was either incendiary tracer or AP incendiary tracer. It's the— we started whacking that.
The— it threw the dragon off? Yeah. Was it the silver— the silver tip bullet?
Silver tip, red with a black tip, if that makes sense.
Okay, so the silver tip is, is white ball and you're probably right that that's API. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did the job.
What we would do with that, if we saw vehicles, we'd stick— try and stick them in the engine block. We did that, set one on fire. They didn't like that. And then we— Brandon, this was his idea, and I'm going to steal his idea— started firing them into the roof of the building that we'd identified they were staying in. So we set fire to building. And then when they tried running out with all this shit, the other Kurds who had better arcs to fire just opened up with machine guns on them. That was really effective. Yeah, we became like celebrities after a while for this. We had a funny one. I dropped a guy and they started hitting us with mortars because every now and again they'd always respond if we hit one of them. And they started hitting us with mortars. They'd already— it was an 82, uh, they'd already bracketed the base, so we knew that the next time they hit us, they were going to be pretty bang on. And yeah, the first couple of rounds, they didn't land within the compound but just outside, uh, and then the third round exploded in the barrel.
So yeah, they had it cook off, and so they had lost at least one guy, uh, from that as well. So yeah, that was, that was a good day. But yeah, they tried to overrun us on the night. It was quite funny. We're settling in, just got to last light, and then we're just chatting shit and just heard, 'Tapir, Allah akbar!' And then they fired a volley of RPGs into the wall behind us. There's like a big big sand berm that built up, but it was like sand berm and then the wall. So we got the concussion from these, from these RPG rounds. Um, our stand-to position was actually by the front door, the only way in and out. Um, naturally all these guys just got up on the one side of the berm, started firing at the incoming. Um, but I was determined to stay on the door because I was like If one suicide bomber gets in, we are all fucked. Yeah, yeah. There's no way we're gonna— yeah. Um, and the only reason— I mean, that story is all because you hit from one side and attack from the other. You don't— you know, to me it was pretty obvious what they were trying to do.
Um, they kept machine guns on us for 9 hours. Like, they kept a constant rate of machine gun fire on us for 9 hours from sundown till sunup. And I mean, having been most of my career a machine gun platoon, that is an incredible amount of logistical capability. Yeah. And it was a mix of 240s to 14.5, uh, cut down anti-aircraft guns. Um, but yeah, luckily they were firing high and it was going over our— over the camp. But like, you'd hear the rounds in low, like you didn't want to stand up too long. Um, in response to that, the YPG sent us a T-55, uh, but at no point had anyone ever serviced the tracks, so it just squeaked the whole way, but it sounded like it was like 2 meters away even though it was like a mile away. Um, so yeah, that turned up and just started blasting the shit out of the village across from us. Um, and yeah, until morning did the ammo count, re-spread ammo, did breakfast, said our goodbyes. Pretty emotional. It's like some of the guys, like one of the guys, Baguz, has to be one of the funniest people I've ever met.
Like, he could have been a stand-up comedian. He was kind of like a Charlie Chaplin because obviously he didn't speak English, but like, he could have, he'd have blown Saturday Night Live out the park, you know what I mean? So yeah, saying goodbye to them. Was pretty, was pretty hard. Um, and like I said though, I mean, my Biden opinion was that there was clear— the amount of air power that was going up, they were going to be fine. Like, as bad as the fighting got in the urban locations, it was as good as it was going to get for them. But they needed hospitals. They need like one field hospital in that place could have saved so many lives that you've been dropped off in. You do, I mean, like, by a huge amount. Um, yeah, and then that was my view. Uh, yeah, I mean, again, it was nice to be on the morally right side. Uh, never heard of a single kind of rape the whole time I was out there.
That's because you have men and females soldiers integrated on the— in the field.
Yeah, yeah, I, I'll be honest, I was never one of those dinosaurs that were like, women should stay off the battlefield. Um, I've spent enough time with the Afghan National Army to know that one person that wants to fight is worth 100 that don't. Um, so yeah, I've got nothing but respect for the YPJ. Um, I mean, I saw them do shit that would have won any number of honors in a Western military. Um, I mean, one of the craziest— we had this RPG, uh, YPJ RPG gunner, no, Bisving gunner. Um, and that night that we got attacked, the YPJ set up a sort of swift ambush to hit ISIS as they retreated. We fought them off. Um, and we have one thermal imaging, uh, set, and the commander passed it to me so I could see what was going on. And luckily, as I put it to my eye. She fired the RPG and it hit the dude straight in the chest at about 200 meters. And you know when you see through thermal the bits, like the white bits, the—
because it's white hot?
Yeah, yeah. Um, the bug splat. And I saw that. I couldn't believe— but yeah, and that was firing at a muzzle flash. She did that. That's insane. Yeah, I mean, to be fair though, I noticed every Afghan military unit had the one guy who could knock the wings off the fly with an RPG. Everyone else that fired it would go somewhere else.
Yeah, yeah, there's a rocket man.
Yeah, every unit has one. She was clearly it. So yeah, yeah, Heaven's Delight, her name was. She was amazing.
And so Yeah, what was next with, with this, this adventure in Syria?
Uh, to be honest, after that I ripped out fairly quickly. Uh, it was a really quick process to get out. Um, so I left everything. Um, so I was trying to arrange like a couch surfing circuit, um, for when I got back.
But you said you went, you went like the crazy overland route to get back to— oh yeah, shit.
Oh man, yeah. Um, so we did some like— yeah, I'm not— I'm pretty sure we passed into Turkey at some point. Um, but yeah, we went over this like— it was like being in the Green Zone, like for real. It was long, some, some— not like a river delta, but you know where the islands in Oxbow Lake start to breakup. And yeah, like, it was, um, we set off in the evening and we were like jumping in ditches. There was like Peshmerga patrols awesome within meters of us on the road as we're like laid on the floor. Um, searchlights as we— it was insane. It was like something off film, like a prison escape film. Um, And then, yeah, we did that. Had no idea we were back in Iraq. And then we just came around this— into this field between these two hills, and there was, um, a PKK guy with a vehicle waiting for us. Um, and yeah, we started a slow drive back then to the camp that we started off in. Um, and that's where I met Aidan Aslin. Uh, he was a British guy who was captured in Ukraine, tortured by the Russians.
Oh shit, I know who you're talking about.
I think I may have spoken to him once, actually.
Yeah, I mean, we only spent like, I think, a day and a night there. Um, what I met of him was a really nice dude, a bit naive at that time. Uh, he certainly wasn't after— um, but yeah, um, like I said, yeah, it was, it was weird. Some of the people that I met, I didn't realize back in the UK or in the US had become sort of like minor celebrities, you know what I mean? Um, But yeah, I was quite happy to lay low and focus on education.
Yes. So, so tell us about coming home and reintegrating.
Yeah, it was odd. I definitely— I think it helped coming back with a good feeling. Like, I felt like I'd done something good, which was unusual for my military experience. Experience. Um, yeah, I mean, to be honest, it was more like— it was quite a clarifying thing. Um, like I said, I knew if I carried on the path I was going— because I had no interest in like the, um, legit private security thing. I, I said, because my experience trying to get on the maritime security stuff, I kind of saw it as a scam when— yeah, oh yeah, you need to have these courses, oh, which we offer, by the way. For blah blah blah, you know what I mean? So I was done with that, but because of like the kind of people that you meet out there, I was getting offers for jobs in like Sudan, Niger, like yeah, there was again, but half of it you don't know if it's bullshit, you know, a lot of it's bullshit for anyone, but I was definitely on the cusp of that. You have like the professional private military shit, like suits, ties, certification. Yeah, yeah, licenses.
And then you've got the other side, um, the other side interested me way more. Yeah, exactly. To me, I mean, if you're guarding an oil outpost somewhere, for me it was the offensive operations aspect. That's what I missed. Um, I wasn't gonna I wasn't going to enjoy being on guard in Iraq any more than I was in Central London.
That's exactly the same thought I had, you know, that it's like, yeah, you can go in and become like even like most of the paramilitary contractors, not all of them, but most of them were essentially bodyguards. And most of the private security stuff was like that. It was doing security. It's like, well, if that's what, you know, yeah, you're making better money, but as far as job satisfaction, I might as well just stay in the Army, right?
Yeah, I know it was really hard for a lot of like former platoon sergeants, um, who'd got out and they hadn't done a guard since they were like privates, and then being put in a watchtower for 12 hours. Yeah, do you know what I mean? It's a big culture shock. Um, so yeah, I mean, again, I'm not shitting on private contracts. I know I was in Iraq when like, Route Irish was really— I mean, like, um, and yeah, but for me, the, the buzz was the offensive operations. Um, I'd been lucky in my military career. I've done some pretty cool shit. Um, yeah, like a good few, like, heli airborne raids, like massive kickoffs. Um, yeah, that was the thing that I missed, but at eventually that is going to hit the bill.
Yeah. So you were like cutting yourself off at this point in life.
Yeah. I mean, I bet you're wise. I grew up. It was time to grow up. I've had fun, seen some shit, done some shit. I've survived a lot. I wasn't going to survive it forever. And I saw education as like a new challenge, if that makes sense. Yeah. But I knew I wasn't a muppet. I was uneducated and I was ignorant, but I sure as shit wasn't stupid. So, um, yeah, I got back, uh, had to use a charity to— because I wanted to go my own way, if that made sense. I didn't want to rely on people, so I did go for a charity. Ended up in like a veterans home in a city called Plymouth, um, which was a great, um— it was, yeah, it was a great place, to be honest. Really good. Veterans home sounds like I was there with loads of guys like that, so it wasn't that. It was like younger veterans, do you know what I mean, of the G wars, um, just trying to get back on the ladder kind of thing. Divorce, the shit that fucks you up, you know what I mean. Sure. Um, yeah, uh, they, they helped you with that.
You had a roof over your head somewhere to chill out. Um, So yeah, I started doing an Access to Higher Education course, um, spent like 2 years, a year and a half, I think, college, um, which was great. I actually did better than I thought I was gonna do, um, and then applied for— I think it was, well, at the time it was ranked like, I think, the third UK's best, um, university, and it was the best for history, um, Russian history was my jazz. That's Everyone who has history, for some reason, there's just something that sticks its hooks in you that other subjects don't, and mine was Russian history. So yeah, but yeah, it was great. You don't just focus on that, you do like medieval in your first year and that. Your first year is pretty much about examination of text and that kind of stuff, and historiography is more important then. History at that point. Um, and then, yeah, uh, yeah, carried on with that. And then obviously COVID hit, and then the fucking world changed. Um, uh, and yeah, sort of bounced around from a few different jobs. Um, wasn't really satisfied, but to be honest, where I'm at now, um, can't grumble.
The money's pretty good, people I work with are great, um, and yeah, it's a good, um, yeah, they've been really understanding of my part. Like, this will be the first time a lot of them have heard this, um, they've heard bits but not, not to this extent, um. Naturally, people have said like, yeah, when you've done the interview, pass me on the link. So yeah, um, but yeah, it I think I was lucky in regards that I was given the opportunity of redundancy, which meant I couldn't get back into the Army. So the option of fucking up the first couple of years and going, I'll join back up, was just never there. That was never an option. Again, I'm not looking down on people who do that. I fully understand why they do it. Um, go back to what you know, where you feel safe. Um, but because that wasn't an option I kind of had to get my shit together myself, and that was a good impetus. You know, it's either that or being homeless. So yeah, um, but in regards to your question on education and stuff, you don't get any grants. You could probably— there probably are some out there to apply, um, but like I said, I spent 2 years trying to get on a language course after performing unusually high on the language course for a hostile nation that had already like poisoned one guy in the UK and invaded South Ossetia.
Um, having that carrot dangled for 2 years and then having it brought back out when done, see you back in the office. Oh yeah, we see you. No, I'm done. I am done.
Did you get to learn Russian in college?
No, I didn't. I was trying to teach myself. I mean, I've lost most of it. Um, I— it's like a muscle. You you pick it up easy, sure, but you lose it quick as well. Um, there was bits that I had to— for, um, I didn't have to, but it helped. Um, the Russian course that I focused on, the history course that I focused on, was mainly, um, Russian expansionism in Central Asia. So it spans, um, from Catherine the Great right up until 1945 and the Allied victory in Europe, um, which it's a fascinating, like a really fascinating subject, was like the early Cheka, Ogpu counterinsurgencies in Central Asia, like how they adopted or conducted their own counterinsurgency operations in like the 1920s, um, against the group called— well, they were collectively known as the Basmatshi, um, who were— it was a mix of Islamist nationalists that just didn't want to be occupied by the Russians, um, but they were collectively known as bandits, naturally. Um, and just the crazy lengths that throughout sort of Soviet history they went to to try and sort of keep those areas under wraps. Um, again, yeah, just a sort of an interesting, uh, obscure case study that I'm sure, uh, anyone with an interest in the subject would enjoy.
Yeah, no, I, I would, I would read it. This was, this was focused on Central Asia?
Yeah, yeah. So, uh, Uzbekistan— Uzbekistan— well, basically, um, I'm gonna butcher this— the Fergana Valley. Yeah, basically there's a massive valley through Central Asia, very fertile, um, was used by the locals to grow food. The Russians insisted they grew cotton instead to try and rival the United States and the UK and India, with hilarious consequences. So yeah, that's the crux mainly of it.
Yeah, I was in, I was in Central Asia a little, maybe a year and a half ago. And one of the museums, I think it was in Almaty, they had a placard talking about the transition into their Soviet era. And I swear there's one sentence in the museum, just one sentence It says like the transition from an agrarian nomadic culture to the Soviet system was quite challenging. That's it. That is such a good—
that is such a good quote for the Soviet Union. My favorite, I forget who it was who said it. Basically, it was about when it got to the collapse, when they could no longer keep the pretense up. I think it was a former Soviet diplomat. Matt, who said, um, they forgot nothing and they'd learned nothing. Uh, yeah, I think it's a great, great line. Um, yeah, yeah, the education was great. Um, it was the first time for me that I've really had time to sit down and think. It was the first time I'd really looked at my sort of mark on the world. Um, the good and the bad. Uh, yeah, I mean, all in all, like I said, done some shit, seen some shit. Um, some of the proudest moments I've had was on some of the worst days. Uh, I was incredibly, incredibly fortunate to have been around the caliber of people that I was. Um, the NCOs that I was fortunate to have outstanding. I think the junior officers that were produced from Sandhurst, particularly after 2007 and '08, around that kind of period when Afghan really started to kick off for us, probably the best generation have ever been produced by this country.
Um, I don't know about you, you can tell when someone doesn't know what they're talking about when they start bashing. Um, as a practice, I mean, there's always an individual that we test strips off. But until you've been in command, if you think commanding war is easy, you're a fucking idiot. Yeah, um, I don't know what you're talking about. Um, so yeah, I mean, all in all, yeah, you do that kind of private accounting of, um, what you— well, yeah, how you've affected the world and how it's affected you.
Yeah. Now that your life has slowed down a little bit, there's an opportunity for some reflection.
Well, yeah. And to be perfectly frank, I didn't think I was going to see 30. Right. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I'm a few weeks away from 40. It's magical to me. This is amazing. Yeah. I am sure you've had this. You know those days where you think, yeah, for sure, there's a good chance I'm not. You know what I mean? There's a good chance this is going to be the day. And it's weird because once you've opened that, it's quite liberating. I find it really— like, I'm actually really glad that I was able to face my mortality at a young age because it is quite liberating.
It does something— it does something both positive and negative because, like, my sense of danger is, like, much lower, I guess, than an average person. Like, I don't— like I'll put myself into dangerous situations, like the stupid stuff I did running around Syria, and it doesn't feel that dangerous to me in the time. Like, like, I, I don't have that sense that like a normal person would have, um, which is something I came to recognize eventually.
Yeah, that's a massive symptom. Yeah, yeah. Uh, it's weird. Well, I've always described combat as the ultimate extreme sport. Yeah. And I think that's what's addictive about it because it's like the ultimate gambling. It's the ultimate MMA. It's the ultimate, you know what I mean? It's for keeps. I mean, another sort of moment that sort of brought it home, a friend of mine was killed by Israel a couple of years back today. A guy called James Kirby, he was with the World Central Kitchen. He got killed in Gaza? Yeah, he was one of the security guys. Yeah. Was with him. We're trying to— well, I said we— my friends are trying to petition the government to try and get the footage released. But I think we both know how Israel's going to— yeah, going to handle that. Though I did send the Israeli embassy an email to explain that James was definitely not jihadi. But yeah, no reply. Shocking. Yeah. Uh, yeah, but like I said, it's moments like that you think, yeah, I probably made the right decision.
Uh, yeah, yeah, being in retirement, I, I know I definitely hit that. It was a weird sensation, actually. I remember specifically waking up one morning, and I think I was having dreams or something. This is around like 2017. I remember just waking up in the morning and like this feeling of relief washing over for me. And I realized like, I don't have anything to prove to anyone anymore, including myself. Like, that doesn't exist anymore. Like, I'm an adult now. I'm a grownup. Like, that coming of age story is over and moving on to the next thing. And it was a very, just such an incredible feeling to have in that moment, you know, which I think you experienced, you know, probably maybe came to you in a little bit of a different experience or a different way, but very similar.
I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm not religious at all, but I'm certainly thankful. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, um, yeah, I'm very much aware that I'm the product of the hard work of lots of other people who also risked themselves to ensure that I'm here. Um, I mean, if anything, look, I'd love to give a massive shout out to anybody who took part in the air campaign against ISIS. Thank you for keeping my ass alive. Um, I don't care if you're a pilot or drove a forklift truck on an airbase. Thank you. Um, but yeah, no, it's weird. I definitely feel it. Just going to a tap— I mean, there were days in Syria we had no water, do you know what I mean? And like, that's a hot place to not drink. Um, but every now and again I'll go for like a fine glass of water and think, fuck, that's magic.
You always had cigarettes though?
Oh yeah, Arden's.
Yeah, yeah. And what's the other? Is Gauloise?
Uh, Galois, the French. Well, they're not— they're— yeah, Turkish. They're allegedly French. Yeah, yeah. Um, there were some Turkish ones as well with like, um, charcoal filters.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. Remember them?
Yeah, yeah, they were so— because they were— there was a hierarchy, wasn't there, of like what cigarettes, if you couldn't get, then you went for the next one. So I think it was Galois was the top, Ardens were always the bottom. Um, because yeah, it reminded me of, um, Homage to Catalonia when Orwell talks about getting the Soviet cigarettes and all the tobacco falls out, because that's, that's what happens with Ardens. You wrap them about enough, or this— well, they call it tobacco, I have no idea what it is. Ball falls out and you just end up with an empty paper tube. That's a— yeah, it's been a while because it's been 9 years since I've been to Iraq.
I've forgotten that experience. So what are you up to nowadays?
So I mean, yeah, I've just started— not long started this work at the brewery. It's been great at the moment. I mean, I did try doing the podcast thing during lockdown. Did a few interviews with some of the guys I was with. That's cool. You should do more of that. Yeah, yeah, actually, yeah. Um, I definitely need— I need a project. Um, I did have something else possibly cooking. Um, so one of my instructors when I was in training ended up on the front page of The Sun newspaper because he was abusing recruits. Um, So I'm fascinated by how, like, the British military deals with that because I've seen it firsthand. Um, and I'd love, you know, I'd love to, I'd love to interview him, uh, to find out what, how that was investigated, how that was dealt with, and then I compare that with some of the other stuff that's happened over the years. I mean, I told you about the, um, the rape and murder of Kenyan woman, Agnes Wanjiru, in Kenya.
Oh, no, I, yes, I do remember hearing about this. Yeah.
Yeah. These are the raw lengths. The Kenyan government's released the name of the guy when the British government wouldn't. It's been a real weird diplomatic incident, to put it mildly. I mean, it's the horrendous rape and murder of a young woman. In terms of the bigger repercussions, it's been quite embarrassing basically for the Ministry of Defense. Um, and of course we've got the Dublin SAS murders that have been investigated, uh, and how that was, um, covered up basically. Uh, so it's a weird thing at the moment. The British military is not, um, Well, I wouldn't say it's in a good place. It's been chronically underfunded for far too long. Um, for some reason we've had a series of politicians who seem to think that budgets are like hedges— you can just trim them over time and they grow back. Uh, right. And that's just not how it works. Um, so yeah, I, I wouldn't— I wouldn't want to be in that. Um, it would be a imagine an easy time to be in any European military at the moment.
Yeah, I can see that. The post-GWAT drawdown and all the repercussions of that, and now they're trying to retool for other forms of warfare. I'm sure it's a painful process.
Oh, it's huge. I mean, it's like trying to shift your industry, do you know what I mean?
It's literally—
yeah, well, yeah, I mean, it was like Like, for me, I actually think it was important that my generation was given the opportunity to take redundancy when we did. Um, again, in the same way that I said that Northern Ireland done a lot of damage intellectually to the British military, I think we would have— if we'd have stayed in, we would have carried over bad habits that wouldn't have reflected the modern environment, if that makes sense. Uh, so I actually felt that As well, I don't know if you know this, you know when you just had that feeling that you've done? Yeah, you've had enough, then you know it's time. Um, part of that was almost like handing over the torch to, to younger guys, um, which felt right. Um, but I don't— again, I don't know how you guys feel about this, but it's so weird, some of the guys that I knew like as young riflemen that have gone on to have like stellar careers way beyond anything I have fucking achieved, um, And like the pride you get from that, oh God, he used to be my machine gunner, um, that's my driver, or, you know, um, that's been pretty cool.
Yeah, um, like I said, guys you take the piss out of and you find out that they're just finished, they're just wrapping up a 15-year SF career, um, you know, that's awesome. Um, yeah, no, that's a good feeling, man. That's definitely when you reflect on back on that and you see that it is, yeah, it's a nice feeling. Not that I claim to have any influence on them, but yeah, still good to see. It's good to see people succeed, you know.
Have you ever thought about writing about any of your experiences? I mean, I think you mentioned that you kept a diary. You have a lot of insights about, you know, these conflicts.
I've had people offer, yeah, I've had someone offer as a ghostwriter. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I suppose there's no reason I shouldn't. Um, I don't know, the thing that put me off— I don't know if it's like a British military thing, but you ended up this, um, the 6-month tour book novel that would come out every single tour. Yeah. And it became like this weird military culture thing that at the end of every— I mean, the 6-month tour thing was fucking stupid. And should never have continued. And it created this environment of— I felt it diminished what military writing could be, if that makes sense. I mean, the best example of this for me, one of the best books about conflict I've ever read was Matterhorn by Karl Malandrus. I don't know if you're familiar with it.
I haven't read it.
For me, it's the— something is the quintessential book on conflict. It's set in Vietnam. He was a platoon commander in Vietnam, um, in '69, I think. Not a great time to be, um, and— but it's, you know, you've got these different, uh, viewpoints from various parts of the company, um, but it just hits those little things that you're like, oh God, yeah, that used to piss me off when people did that. Yeah, you know, those little things you get that there were— there are similarities between every conflict. Um, getting woken up for guard felt just as shit for me as it did for some Roman legionnaire in Scotland, you know what I mean? It's— you pick that up when you study history as well, though, you know, those sort of through notes.
Oh, 100%, absolutely. Yeah, I, I mean, one of my favorite books is, uh, War Story by Jim Morris, which was about a special forces team in Vietnam pretty early on, maybe like '67-ish. And when I read that book, like the parallels between that and what I experienced with Special Forces in Iraq was like almost identical. Almost identical, really. There are a few differences, but as far as like the bureaucracy and how things work, I mean, it was very, very similar. As we like wrap this thing up, uh, is there anywhere like you want to direct people to, uh, Dan, whether they be like a, uh, you know, the company that you work for now or a charity that you support or anything, anything else?
I don't know how the company I work for now would feel about that. That's fine. I didn't check this with them. Um, I mean, the podcast I did, it's not me talking really, it's me interviewing the guys are with. It's only like 5 or 6 episodes. It's called Project Eric. If anyone's got any interest in the sort of stuff I've touched on today, by all means give it a look. It should be on Spotify. And again, like I said, a massive thank you to everyone that kept me alive in Syria. I'm fully aware that I would have been fucked without that air cover. So yeah, it would be childish not to I think to the United States Air Force for their contribution to my long-term prospects.
We will pull up the link to your podcast and we'll put some links down in the description. So people who want to explore this topic a little bit more in depth can go and check that out.
No worries, man. It's raw as shit. I mean, there's no editing.
That's all good.
That's the way we like it. Yeah, no, totally. Did you watch? Did you see the, um, They Shall Not Grow Old that Peter Jackson did about the First World War?
What was the name of it?
It's called They Shall Not Grow Old, and what he did— No, no, I didn't. Color, it's phenomenal. Um, but the soundtrack is just guys that were interviewed in like the 1940s. Oh wow. And it's, yeah, just hearing all they've done the tape recorder on, let them talk. And that was kind of what I was trying to do. So yeah, it's pretty cool. It's your quality, but it's certainly— I said it's other people's stories. But yeah, certainly if you have an interest in that time and space, it's worth a listen.
Well, Dan, thank you so much for doing this interview tonight. I know it's late for you over there in the UK at this point. And this interview was a long time coming, I feel like, but I'm glad we got it done. Uh, and I, I really enjoyed hearing your story.
Oh, thank you. Uh, yeah, anytime, man. And yeah, like I said, I've been a fan for quite a while, um, and I didn't join the Patreon, so it is the least I could do is give you an interview. You don't have to.
We do appreciate all the people that support us on Patreon.
Cool, man. Well, I'm gonna shoot off. It's like half midnight now.
Yeah, yeah, got it, got it.
Um, so Absolute pleasure, and thank you for everyone, and thank you for your patience with my stupid dildo fingers turning off my phone.
So yeah, no, all good, man. It was great. And, um, everyone else out there listening, thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time. Hey guys, I want to take a moment to tell you about the TeamHouse Podcast newsletter. If you go and subscribe, it's totally free, and what it will do is aggregate all of our data, all of our content that we put out, the things that are on the team house, on our geopolitics podcast Eyes On, things that I write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the High Side, anything else that we have going on, books we recommend, upcoming guests that we have coming on the show, and also filtering in some fun stuff in there as well. If you'll go and check it out, we send it out just once a week. We don't want to spam you guys. It's just a kind of roll-up of all of our content on a weekly basis. You can find our newsletter at teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. Again, the website for that is teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. So we hope to see you there. The link will be down in the description.
Dan Meally shares his journey from a chaotic early career in the British Army to deploying in Iraq, where tactical successes often clashed with strategic failure. He later recounts fighting ISIS alongside Kurdish forces in Syria, offering a raw look at modern combat, unit culture, and the realities on the ground. The conversation also explores the long-term impact of war and the challenges of coming home.Today's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! Blue Chew ⬇️https://bluechew.com/Get 1 month free when you buy 2 of BlueChew Gold with code "HOUSECALL"Mars Men⬇️For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at https://mengotomars.com/-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________PRE ORDER JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 — Start00:30 — Dan Meally Intro (British Army → YPG → Syria)02:00 — Rough Childhood & Joining the Army04:30 — Color Blindness & Infantry Entry Story07:00 — Basic Training & Early Army Culture10:00 — Drugs, Discipline & Dysfunctional Unit13:00 — Belize Jungle Deployment & Signals Chaos17:00 — Heat Casualty & Carrying Full Kit Load21:00 — Northern Ireland Riot Training Gets Violent25:00 — Volunteering for Iraq28:00 — Basra Deployment & Equipment Failures32:00 — Massive Ambush on British Convoy36:00 — Casualties & Friendly Fire Incident42:00 — Why Iraq Was a Strategic Failure55:00 — Afghanistan Deployment & ANA Chaos01:20:00 — Transition Out & Decision to Go to Syria01:35:00 — Joining the YPG & Foreign Fighters01:50:00 — Combat Against ISIS & Frontline Reality02:05:00 — Airpower, Drones & Fighting ISIS02:25:00 — ISIS Assault & Holding the Line Overnight02:40:00 — Sniping, Firefights & Killing ISIS Fighters02:55:00 — End of Tour & Reflections on WarBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.