0:00

How did you end up

0:02

spending 20 years in the

0:04

SAS? Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia,

0:06

Bosnia, Latin America, Middle East.

0:10

Firing rocket setters while I was on the

0:12

ground, dropped a bomb near us. The

0:15

tension changed. Third World War could come about.

0:17

Saddam Hussein was on the run, wasn't he?

0:19

He rolled the Middle East. He was the

0:21

big guy on the block with the biggest

0:23

army. He had all the strength and all

0:25

the power. I was actually with the media

0:27

crew that actually found him. We were in

0:29

the vehicles, this is Bravo 3-0, and we

0:32

could see bombing going off in Baghdad. We

0:34

don't do something. A lot of innocent people

0:36

are going to die. Yeah, yeah. So...

0:59

We now had over 100 million views. Des

1:03

Powell is an elite SAS legend and

1:05

author of the number one best-selling book,

1:07

Bravo 3-0. We

1:09

discuss his brutal journey in the forces from

1:11

selection to tours of Iraq and the Gulf

1:13

War. We also delve into Des's

1:16

time in the parachute regiment as a sergeant

1:18

major, going in depth on his first-hand accounts

1:20

of conflict and terror. This

1:22

is the eventful life of Mr. Des Powell.

1:25

Des, welcome to the show, mate. Thank you very

1:27

much. Thanks for having me today. Good, good, good,

1:29

good. Very much looking forward to this one. Let's

1:31

roll all the way back. Where did you grow up

1:33

and how did you end up spending 20 years in

1:35

the SAS? Yeah, I was born

1:38

in Sheffield and I grew up in

1:40

a place in Sheffield called

1:42

Attecliff Dano. And everybody

1:44

ever says to me, they always say, oh, that's a

1:46

rough place in Sheffield. But you

1:48

know, some at Dodge, you know, whatever you come from, you

1:51

don't see it like that, do you? But I

1:53

know how people look at Sheffield

1:55

because it's always had this reputation,

1:57

this kind of hard reputation. Is

2:00

the steel city? On. I was used

2:03

to feel proud of it because. Steel was

2:05

always exports in a way around the world.

2:07

On only travels. Whatever I used to go

2:09

I used to say yeah. Pick. Up

2:11

your knife on folks! Ah can guarantee it

2:13

is Sheffield French I don't I your my

2:15

daughter yeah so always her is so Yes!

2:17

So I was always proud of Sheffield. You

2:19

know. And. Durham that these inner

2:22

cities a real found that guy on

2:24

a thinker. Coming. Up soon we

2:26

school goes. nothing can be some. We did

2:28

a good job. I think it's so easy

2:30

to go to the dark side into. A

2:33

dirt me ma'am get a really good job.

2:35

I think a lot of people when d

2:37

at a bar you've been in the milk

2:40

says specially the Scs. The. Seem

2:42

to think that you're like one of these

2:44

American rapper she been shot about four times

2:46

in the of you've come from the hodes

2:48

I'd underwrite you been in prison on one

2:50

obvious a yet for me I come from

2:52

a really good family development of base and

2:54

that the kept me on the straight and

2:56

narrow not consent know mama doubtful excess you

2:58

mum, that's in their what was that? What

3:01

was the moment In your time as a

3:03

teenager he saw you know, why weren't going

3:05

to the military. And I

3:07

suppose Alice Skyler as gain and ah so

3:09

ridiculous a story than it's you know, And

3:11

I knew nothing And and I realize I

3:13

wasted my time and I mean I have

3:16

problems Reagan writing. But. Are not sign

3:18

people use as a uber good in a militia. I.

3:20

Said get lost on a win in a

3:22

motel not going up People shout at me

3:24

and tell me what to do on what I've

3:26

yeah but I use a thing I don't

3:28

know maybe maybe in the future or mind

3:30

or might want to join but what was

3:32

he may mind at that time was so run

3:35

a wanted to the summer. And Dad

3:37

somewhat to do with Steal Again that I just

3:39

mentioned a steel sits in a fancied work and

3:41

in the steel works at a time when you

3:43

left Sgoil. It was go down.

3:46

the pets know that in a coal,

3:48

what on it on his own and

3:50

darragh all going the steelworks. And.

3:52

Dumb. the first obaid me. Mom got

3:54

me an ass out of stock shelves

3:56

in a supermarket. a mop the floors.

3:58

The. second job in mom me a job being a

4:00

butcher. I thought, oh, I quite like that.

4:03

And then the third job, I liked, you know, I

4:05

was about 16, 16 and a half.

4:08

And I went into Steelworks and I

4:10

was an ammo driver. And what an

4:12

ammo driver is, it's like this big

4:15

kind of construction, like a big ingot

4:18

that goes up and down and

4:20

it bashes these big hot ingots.

4:22

And it makes them into big

4:24

iron girders, which can build buildings

4:27

or smaller things, even as small as knife

4:29

and forks, you know. But

4:31

from there, it was always in my mind thinking,

4:34

oh, in the future, I might want to join

4:36

the military. And so I think the

4:39

plant was seeded when I left Scarlet

4:41

15. But I'd got

4:43

this idea in my mind that I thought,

4:45

you know, I'm going to do what everybody else does, because

4:47

it's kind of in your DNA. I'm going

4:49

to go and join the Steelworks, go down to

4:52

Pitt and do that. And that's what I thought

4:54

I was going to do. But obviously, out

4:57

there, the universe have got other ideas for me,

4:59

you know. What age were you when you went

5:01

into the military? I was 19, but

5:05

I had my 20th birthday going through

5:07

training. In fact, what really put me

5:10

an image, if you like, of the military, I

5:13

come down this part of the world, me

5:15

down to Bournemouth, me mum got a news

5:18

agency business in Sheffield, come and

5:20

got a news agency business in Bournemouth. And

5:23

I come and work down here. And I

5:25

worked as an odd carrier on the building

5:27

sites. And I went down

5:29

pool and I sat there one day,

5:31

helping these brick layers, you know, you know,

5:33

I used to knock up cement and carry

5:36

the bricks and stuff like that. And

5:38

I sat there having sandwiches and all of a sudden

5:40

out in the sea, I

5:42

saw the old ribs, you know, like that, you

5:44

know, I'm looking on I said to my to

5:46

my, what's that? He says, Oh, they're the Marines.

5:49

And I thought, That looks all right. I

5:51

fancy a bit of that, you know. And

5:53

So the first time I saw anything to

5:55

do with military was down here. And then

5:58

when I went back up north. I

6:00

went to the careers officer and I was

6:02

very cage yeah that was about nineteen him

6:04

I under I said look i'm gonna just

6:06

how much How about the military. On

6:09

a Khomenei and and he said coming to sit down you

6:11

know what you wanted to us as well. I've. Seen

6:13

these marines down south are sold out

6:15

of right going to and dumb he

6:17

says okay coming such an innocent you

6:19

want to check a test on? Oh

6:22

and I don't fancy. That. Serve

6:24

as took a test and a failed it you

6:26

know I know I went away so what about

6:28

and said what you come back to the test

6:30

again I think was six months later but why

6:32

don't you think about join in the home and

6:35

because I think that you want to join the

6:37

military state aware can see in yeah but are

6:39

scared to death a movie and also I had

6:41

to go away and think about it. But.

6:44

At nineteen, I went back. To.

6:46

The On a Cruise Office. Had

6:48

a chat with the represented some of

6:50

the army which was no sergeant. And.

6:53

I took a test and around a

6:55

process. And. Or rent was out

6:57

a token. And he

6:59

said doge and will you be gonna He

7:02

says so. Why? Don't you join the

7:04

purists? A. System and.h upon

7:06

Airplanes. Or. Says our sounds a

7:08

bit scared. He says by the time you

7:10

get to jump or not at a place

7:13

after six months he says in or you'll

7:15

be all right on enough and Durham an

7:17

asshole was you know a says or are

7:19

they the best is yet a best You

7:22

get a sosa. The. Maybe someone better

7:24

than not and he says as as a

7:26

whether me says a bunch of guys called

7:28

the Scs. And I said

7:31

with them can I join them It goes

7:33

north a says and you can't join them

7:35

and so you're gonna few years. I'm

7:37

pointing that out because that was the

7:39

first time I heard them. Three letters

7:42

Scs while and it's phony sir. He.

7:44

Commended interest me straight away the way said

7:46

it now and them three letter sound is

7:48

special any I you know. I dare say

7:51

it was kind of so I'm sorta thing

7:53

founder and another pass the tests and he

7:55

said ducts go much out. We mom and

7:57

dad. He says so you can

7:59

sign. Three, six, or nine years. In

8:02

Durham so went back to me mom. And.

8:04

I said there. Are. Ya could join

8:06

to punish you for once of course mean on

8:09

sale Our yeah great bunch of guys military yeah

8:11

this out on the on a com banana stand.

8:13

Signed on for nine years and only reason I

8:15

saw them for nine years costs a threat was

8:17

to do. We know next three years a week

8:20

you got thirty three pounds offing. If you sign

8:22

up for sex you got thirty six pounds. Someone

8:24

to for nine years of got thirty nine pounds

8:26

or yeah so us as a while. sign up

8:29

for nine years. I'll sign up for the Paris

8:31

and Durham as though it yeah now.on a lot

8:33

you know what? what rough year we talking Amazon

8:35

of. The powerfully Okay I signed

8:38

up.was seventy Seven Seventy seven

8:40

Now yeah and will have

8:42

you noticed over the years

8:44

from when the Perez. When.

8:46

You signed up to what they were, then what they

8:48

are now. I. Suppose the main thing

8:51

that us sees that these just the

8:53

more organized the to some not more

8:55

information Now I'm a dude at Me

8:57

Undies so nice Actually starting training next

8:59

year he's followed me forceps he joined

9:01

at Rs and he would just telling

9:03

me the only do in the wiki

9:05

says about i was in know a

9:07

lot more about fitness the know a

9:09

lot more about. And. Know injuring

9:12

yeah far for example the equipment in

9:14

my day would a lot more basic

9:16

and do still use get knocked about

9:18

a lot so you'd enjoy you join

9:20

shootings are you buy yet a bad

9:22

knees accept or sex or any were

9:24

telling me that the the very much

9:26

aware of injuries now to carry already

9:28

the carrying body armor so the day

9:30

and and and you know more about

9:32

strength training in my day was just

9:34

you know if you can't do Mbm

9:36

fags you can't do it you know

9:38

And so in suggests is now thought

9:40

I. Had a set out among the and on

9:42

it wouldn't you know what he saw dodges out

9:45

stoic tight yeah mindset which was are you hard

9:47

as nails you can get a day and was

9:49

no much him the i'm place I saw try

9:51

if he can't drink to pie as an aids

9:53

and you can i get off and awful pocket

9:55

woodbine and he i've you can't run or videos

9:57

you know with fifty pound when you buy. There's

10:00

no a other. Did a lot more organized

10:02

ninety. Just know far more information about the

10:04

body, the weight response and what it does.

10:06

So I think the organization is just better

10:09

now. more info know mean and how long

10:11

you said you sign up for nine years

10:13

how know you in the Paris for before

10:15

you said what? I want a piece of

10:17

Usa as well but I do that to

10:19

get into it. Yeah what a good at

10:22

de dum or years at and on what

10:24

it was a dog shows am eight years

10:26

I didn't see it as a gotta was

10:28

gonna have it's as a career. Or

10:30

get off and on year. So what I

10:32

did I just a lots of courses and

10:35

one of the main courses or to was

10:37

a physical training course of the com a

10:39

pt I physical training he stops and within

10:41

a paris on I've really enjoyed ah that

10:43

was Chinese a guy's second him on run

10:45

second I'm fitness and still fly das I

10:47

did other stuff like upset me class one

10:50

two and three heavy goods driving a truck.

10:52

As many courses as occurred but one atom,

10:54

daisy skirts and the I'll I'll take a

10:56

phrase that were using the power as we

10:58

start to grow up and down. And I

11:00

started to think well chin or summit

11:02

if I do studying at don't think

11:04

I could see myself to enlist said

11:06

another fourteen years because you do at

11:09

twenty two years you don't normally as

11:11

a as a pension or tired but

11:13

I yeah that's what you gotta do

11:15

in a militia and I thought to

11:17

myself it's an awesome if I'm gonna

11:19

check this seriously. I don't think

11:21

communist and a pyro someone into something.

11:23

Also two things are thought about aka

11:25

going to pretty cool because it already

11:27

got his physical training type of fitness

11:29

under my belt and I agree and

11:31

I like to enjoy it. But.

11:34

Ah so if I'm gonna go the soldier

11:36

who wrote this only really one route you

11:38

can go and ducks got to D S

11:41

E S and and and body was answering

11:43

your question dog she's that I think I'm

11:45

always a slow burn our was reluctant soldier

11:47

you know and Durham guys who says sesame?

11:50

do you know those wanting to go to

11:52

be a Cs and I use of on

11:54

Alfonsi.a bunch of widows and inaugurate all Asia

11:56

and I. yeah yeah they're stays and guy

11:59

you don't see him lot you know and

12:01

yes you know these also some rumors about

12:03

him you know the. You. Know they

12:05

don't work that you don't know about and

12:07

you know the the and was in Assassin's

12:10

and they don't The also says no you

12:12

know crazy stuff and damn but what it

12:14

was. one day. I'm. A

12:16

Saudi Sky in in in come on he

12:18

just looked different. you know I've written about

12:21

him, his uniform the way you look to

12:23

the way told channel so the people around

12:25

him treats and him different and a system

12:28

in else is who's that guy over there

12:30

and and he says in an essay a

12:32

Special Air Service and again even no idea

12:34

about some been in battalion. That was the

12:37

first time I've seen one. Is.

12:39

Are so different Everything about him

12:41

ages of really casual is a

12:44

was longer a lot fitter and

12:46

he didn't salute the officers i

12:48

he was just relax and almost

12:50

he did on us to move

12:52

not looks all right now it's

12:54

different a fancy some i now

12:57

and then what happened down nice

12:59

wanna me and of friends in

13:01

or started to say. I'm.

13:04

You know that's the sort of guy

13:06

I think you know you want to

13:08

becoming a future as he says i

13:10

think that would kind of so you

13:12

and and what it was a friend

13:14

said damn. Days I'm.

13:17

I'm gonna go and see a friend

13:19

that cetera, or Paris it because I'm

13:21

thinking of joining the Scs. Why did

13:24

you can women of account winning with

13:26

him live in an Iso? Okay, I'll

13:28

just go along. Election and Durham We

13:30

got chatting with him. And he

13:32

actually said to me of you soda coming up

13:34

to a phenomenon. As as nice as

13:37

I don't fancy, you know, That's.

13:39

Each time and a kind of coming

13:41

contact the exposure to feel like or

13:43

soon and Scs guy or hearing about

13:46

it I just got more and more

13:48

interested so thought to myself a thought.

13:51

I don't think once had a pity cause of good what you

13:53

just won a male was kind of going through the motion the

13:55

i don't you know when a main are like the physical side

13:57

I like the pt on one of your but I didn't see

13:59

as. career. So I

14:01

thought if I'm going to sign on again, you know,

14:04

where I'm going to go is go

14:07

to Ereford. But it's them

14:09

two fears, isn't it, Dodge? It's that fear

14:11

I'm a good enough, or what

14:13

if I fail? And I was talking to myself every

14:15

time I don't think I'm experienced enough, I don't think

14:17

I'm good enough. And you

14:19

did all these rumors about, you

14:21

know, it's 90% failure rate. You

14:23

know, when guys went for it,

14:26

you had to wait for guys to fail to come

14:28

back. So you could talk to them like this, I

14:30

said, right, how did you get on? I thought I

14:32

didn't go, you know, what's it like? Is

14:34

it hard? Is it this? So you had to wait for

14:36

guys to fail before they come back. And the guys that

14:40

went and passed, they never come back, you

14:42

never saw him again. So there

14:44

was this kind of, you

14:47

know, secretive type, you

14:50

know, feeling around the regiment that

14:52

you couldn't get any information even

14:54

if you wanted to. And

14:57

so that made it even more kind

15:00

of, you know, I don't think I can do it. So I was

15:02

just talking to myself, aren't I? When

15:04

I felt I was fitting, I was probably

15:06

fitting off Dodge, but I don't

15:08

think my mind had matured up enough. And

15:11

I think I had to wait right up

15:13

until like the eighth year, I'd done eight

15:15

years in ParaRage. And then that's when I

15:17

kind of volunteered because I thought, well, the

15:19

next year, I'm going to get out anyhow,

15:21

because I'd signed up for nine years. And

15:24

what I did, it's a volunteer basis. I

15:27

volunteered and you volunteered for what?

15:30

Yeah, for the SAS. Okay, so you volunteered?

15:32

Yeah, I fancy this. Yeah, okay. Yeah, you

15:34

have to put pencil paper and you have

15:36

to go see the adjutant. And that's what

15:38

I did. I said, look, you know, I

15:41

fancy going for the college selection. And

15:43

he said, yeah, okay, the problem with that

15:45

is that I'd got a posting down to

15:48

Depo. Depo is where you come through training

15:50

to the Paris. And I got

15:52

a good post in the posting

15:54

to be an instructor as a PTI down

15:56

at parachute regiment in ownership. Okay, the Depo

15:58

we call it. And he said,

16:00

well, look, he said, you've got to post in there.

16:02

He says, can I advise you? He says, go down

16:04

to Depo, do your two years, get

16:06

more experience. And he says, Depo

16:08

is a good springboard for you to go

16:10

forward then. He says, on selection. He says,

16:12

you'll have more exposure. He says, you see

16:14

the guys. He says, they were coming back. He

16:17

says, because he tends to go to Depo,

16:19

then go off to selection, come back or

16:21

whatever training. And I thought,

16:23

yeah, that's a good idea. So you're wanting to

16:25

get information off people before properly committed? Yeah. Right.

16:29

And you know what's up with that? You just come get

16:31

it. Yeah. Guys would come back and it's

16:33

usually a thing, what's your life? Oh, yeah, it's

16:35

not too bad. It's not this, it's not that.

16:38

And but it failed, you know, and

16:40

I go, right. What was it? How

16:42

far did you go? What was it like in

16:44

the jungle? Oh, yeah, no, you can't do this

16:47

and that and the other. I can't find anybody

16:49

that really sit down and tell me the truth,

16:51

you know, and especially guys that have

16:53

gone up there. I thought, well, I need to get

16:55

some of my mates who's gone up there. Of course,

16:57

they never come back. And then one

16:59

day they were a guy that come and knocked

17:01

on me bunk in in camp.

17:05

And I didn't know him and he said, there's a

17:07

virgin you're thinking about selection. I was, yeah, he says,

17:10

come round to our house tomorrow night. And he

17:12

says, I'll tell you all about it. He says,

17:14

because I've just come off it like him. Yeah.

17:16

And that was a game changer for you. And

17:19

what it was, I got someone, Dodge, that spoke

17:21

the truth to me. You know, and

17:23

I went to his a married guy in pads and

17:25

I went down. He goes, right. Sit down.

17:28

I'll tell you exactly as it

17:30

is. He says, I know what guys are like. They

17:33

won't tell you it's hard. And he

17:35

sat down and he says, it's the hardest thing

17:37

I've ever done. He says, I reached

17:39

the jungle first. And he

17:41

says, what I've got here, he

17:43

goes, look, I've got some equipment. I've got a little

17:46

diary. He says, he gives you every step of

17:48

the way. And he says, and plus tonight, he says,

17:50

I'll brief you. And he says, and, you know,

17:52

after you will have a cup of tea. And he

17:54

says, and after I brief you, he says, you'll go away. And

17:56

he says, you'll have all the information I think you need. I

17:58

said, what about you? Are you thinking? going back because

18:00

you have two guzzers. He says,

18:02

yeah I am but I'm going to give you

18:05

the rest. And I had a feeling

18:07

it weren't because he gave me his boots, his

18:09

equipment, his diary and everything but he briefed me,

18:11

he said this is as it is and he

18:13

told me how hard it was, how tough what

18:15

to expect, how to prepare, you know the lot

18:17

and this is what equipment you need and by

18:19

the way prepare for this, do that, do the

18:21

other. So just for the listeners out there, we're

18:23

talking in mid 80s here, late 80s. There was

18:27

no internet, there was no information, there was

18:29

no mobiles, there was no social media, no

18:31

one could pass anything on, no SAS was

18:34

speaking about anything, no paratroopers were speaking about

18:36

anything. Yeah, exactly. The

18:38

only information you could get is

18:40

word of mouth and

18:43

Parras being Parras, they won't come back and say it's the

18:45

hardest thing I've ever done, oh well it's

18:47

not too bad and what have you but

18:51

this guy was truthful and I thought right, this

18:53

is what I want and Dodger

18:55

was in the right place, I was a

18:57

depot and the good thing about depot, you've

18:59

got all the instructors there as far

19:01

as weapon training, map reading, getting fits,

19:04

getting all the information you want as

19:06

preparation for going up there. So what

19:08

I did, I did with two years

19:10

instruction of being an instructor

19:13

as a PTI dander, in other words working

19:15

in the gym, checking the young paratroopers through

19:17

and I really enjoyed that, I enjoyed as

19:19

I call it putting Watterback in the

19:22

well, and I

19:24

was able then to kind

19:26

of prepare myself, fitness, weapon

19:30

wise, map reading wise, all

19:32

the practical skills that a

19:34

soldier needs, what

19:36

I did I was just brushing up and I'd been

19:38

out and sold him for a while because I'd been

19:41

following the PT room, so I

19:43

thought right, I really need to take this serious so

19:46

that's what I did and also

19:49

the guys that were still kind of filtering

19:51

through depot, I was

19:53

able to still get more information up

19:56

to date information and I'm mentioning that

19:58

because there were three guys

20:00

that failed actually came

20:02

back to Depo and said, Des, do you want

20:05

to come back up on the hills with us?

20:07

We'll set you up on the Breton Beacons. We'll

20:09

show you roughly this down in the other. I

20:12

thought, right, that's a good deal. But what I

20:14

had to do, I had to wait for the

20:16

two years at Depo, then

20:18

the patterns don't give you any time off. You've got to do it all

20:20

in your own time. So me and the other

20:22

three guys, we went up to a

20:24

camp up in Wales, had a chat with a SART major

20:26

at one of these camps and says, look, we're going to

20:29

do selection. Could we come up here over the next six

20:31

to eight weeks? We're going to be walking up on the

20:33

hills. And he said, yeah, you can have them

20:35

bunks over there, crack on. So we

20:37

had to take our own leave, do it

20:40

in our own time. And we actually went

20:42

up onto the beacons and actually just practiced

20:45

walking on the hills, map reading,

20:47

and just generally getting the savviness,

20:50

if you like, of being

20:53

up with the SAS trains, which

20:55

is mainly the Breckenbeakers line. Amazing. So you started

20:57

at the age of 19. You did

20:59

eight years in the Purge, two years at Depo. What

21:02

age do you think you were out of those 10 years

21:04

when you actually became a, when you thought, well, I'm a

21:07

real man right now. You're going at

21:09

19, you're still a boy really, right? Yeah, you are.

21:11

Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, I

21:14

joined, I put Pensacepa 19, had my 20th birthday

21:17

going through training in the parachute

21:19

regiment. Okay. So I had eight

21:21

years. And so I was

21:23

28, between time I passed selection

21:25

and then went up to Eriford.

21:27

And yeah, there was this

21:30

thing where you feel you're a man, I

21:32

was fitting off, I think for most things.

21:34

I mean, all paratroopers are fit guys, you

21:36

know. And I was in the

21:39

right place, Dodge, because I think the

21:41

parachute regiments have more exposure to the

21:43

SAS. It's like a sister regiment, where

21:45

airborne, if airborne brotherhood. And that's no

21:48

disrespect to any other regiment, you know,

21:50

the SAS is made up of all

21:52

regiments within the British Armed Forces. But

21:55

the parachute regiment, okay, has more

21:57

exposure, even though we didn't know.

22:00

very much as I explained. And in fact,

22:02

even today, 50% of the regiment

22:04

is made up of paratroopers. And

22:06

that's mainly because of the airborne

22:08

brotherhood. The training is similar. And

22:11

we have more exposure to

22:14

the regiment itself. But

22:17

answering your question, body wise, I

22:19

felt it was strong enough, fit enough, ugly

22:21

enough, fast enough as

22:23

a man. But mentally, when

22:26

I look back, if I had gone any earlier, if I had gone at

22:28

25, 26, I finish up going near

22:31

at 28, I found I was

22:33

mature enough to

22:35

deal with selection itself. And I think

22:37

a lot of guys don't get that.

22:40

They go up and go, well, you

22:42

know, I'm good. I can carry the weight.

22:44

I'm good at math, I'm a good soldier. But

22:46

I call it growing up, this

22:48

mentality that you've got off. And

22:51

I think we're talking about it. Now

22:53

people talk about it all the time,

22:55

this SF mindset, this

22:57

special forces mindset, this, this strength

23:00

of mind. And I think it's,

23:02

you know, it's actually maturing is

23:05

actually growing up. It's actually knowing Yeah,

23:07

I'm savvy enough. I'm streetwise enough. Yes,

23:09

I'm fitting on. Yes, I feel I'm

23:11

a, you know, a good enough soldier.

23:14

But I am I mature enough to

23:16

deal with this sort of stress. What

23:19

was it like for you when you actually put

23:21

pen to paper says, well, I want to do

23:23

selection now. Yeah, moment you said,

23:25

well, I want to do it. And

23:28

now I'm in Wales. And then I'm going to

23:30

the jungle. What was that like that whole period? Yeah,

23:32

this, in fact, it's too challenging.

23:34

But pen to paper is one when you first sign

23:36

up and you say, you know, I

23:38

vowed to fight for Queen and country at

23:40

that time. And then the

23:43

second time I signed is, as

23:46

you said, is when I signed for selection. And

23:49

I remember being called up to

23:51

the office to the adjunants office and say, right,

23:53

does you know, yeah, you can go off and

23:55

you can, you know, join the regiment and but

23:57

you've got to sign you out. Remember, looking

24:00

at it and pausing for a while

24:02

because it, I can't remember

24:04

exactly what it says, but it said something

24:07

about you now and you're

24:09

now in, you know, especially a service

24:11

regiment and you are now

24:13

going on permanent active service. Okay,

24:16

and there was more to it and

24:18

I kind of paused and I was looking at

24:20

it and I remember the adjutant kind

24:22

of looking at me and said, are you okay?

24:25

And I said, no, no, I'm fine. And I

24:28

quickly signed in. And what I

24:30

was doing at that time, I remember just

24:32

looking and thinking, I know my

24:34

life's going to change as soon as I signed this. And

24:38

I kind of had no doubt that I was

24:40

going to pass, which sounds quite big headed. But

24:44

I thought to myself, I'm going to fully commit to

24:46

this and I'm going to

24:48

do everything I possibly can, you know,

24:50

and I'm thinking if everything

24:52

goes the way I visualized, this

24:55

is going to be life changing. This is going

24:57

to be an amazing life, you know, and I

24:59

remember signing it, smiling at him and

25:02

that was it. I was, I then started

25:04

my training. How long did it take from

25:06

start to finish to actually pass the SIS?

25:09

Yes, so just to say, you

25:11

know, I joined, I've done eight

25:13

years para-reg, within eight years, I've

25:15

done two years down at

25:17

Depple. I started that preparation

25:20

down there and then the selection

25:22

itself is a six month period.

25:24

Okay, and I did two selections. I failed the first one.

25:27

And how did you file? Yeah, I

25:29

got thrown to the jungle and

25:34

we did some drills in the jungle, which are

25:36

called contact drills. And

25:38

it's actually firing

25:40

at an imaginary enemy out there and

25:42

you have to kind of pop back

25:45

and the drills is where you're firing

25:47

at the target or the enemy, you'll

25:49

pop back in twos and

25:52

foras. And as I'm rushing

25:54

through, and I started to go through

25:56

some, some bush, I

25:59

felt. The mike gravel numerous. And

26:02

don't any kind of wrapped in this is think

26:04

oh wait a while. And what

26:06

he does expectancy a close in Nc

26:08

a flash and you have to stop.

26:10

Way to wow, undo it and then

26:12

carry on. Well these tells I was

26:14

kind of running. Through. The foliage

26:17

if you like and a

26:19

large stone went to me.

26:22

I'd durham and I'd the many cuts in

26:24

a common are not a look and said

26:26

to ask i see it as an easy

26:29

because because he backed out and do rum

26:31

and I hadn't done in north. Of

26:33

within the Jungle Within the jungle phase

26:36

is about ah thought Five weights and

26:38

I got off way through and i

26:40

got the syndrome me recently as cause

26:43

about me out and. Semitone,

26:45

Hospital I would say in Brunei

26:47

I'd durham and do want I'm

26:50

a comeback in the jungle and

26:52

were.seems unfair and did you see

26:54

as a fail. You know

26:56

you have you failed So I had to

26:59

wait to tell everybody at at at finish

27:01

the jungle face with combat to uk. Ah,

27:03

Yes to go through rights. Sorry about that. Does

27:06

Sam with got another one that you can do?

27:08

You can come back on the second one. I

27:11

didn't us to do this to us to do the

27:13

wealth power that the second one as well as your

27:15

jungles you've got to do it all gets all again

27:17

of mine are all against us some people such I'm

27:19

at a garden and so did you find or was

27:22

it out his own a first one a second one

27:24

I guess got have been a sack more because you

27:26

know was company knows how he I know exactly what's

27:28

going on and and and you know some a dodge

27:30

what what what they do we sits around. The.

27:33

Do you know any such him from says

27:35

it the major lightness ago right? doesn't look

27:38

at you know you got injured done death

27:40

but can come back again you know yet?

27:42

Yeah yeah you second one and and he

27:44

says so what can give it a years

27:47

wrestling and com combined on I said look

27:49

buses of gonna come straight back or says

27:51

if if I. Go. back to power rage

27:53

i'm going to lose momentum it's by the way of

27:56

of the and i've got less than a year to

27:58

go before i get out and durham and

28:00

I know I won't come back. Can I have permission

28:02

to come straight back? And what that means is that

28:04

I just done the winter one, you

28:07

then go away. The one that

28:10

is going to start is the summer one.

28:12

So that's another six months. So I use

28:14

that. And then I have to start the

28:16

following winter. So it's like 18 months all

28:18

in all, Vitalian finished. So when you do

28:20

selection back to back, it's an 18 month

28:23

process. And he

28:25

looked at me and said, are you sure about that?

28:28

I goes, yeah, I says that's what I want to do. So

28:31

he goes, okay, he says that's what you

28:33

want. And they write it up. And, you

28:35

know, and luckily this major that was there,

28:38

he used to be in Para Reg as well. And

28:40

he used to be one of my officers when I was

28:42

so he knew me. And he knew what type of guy

28:44

I were. And I think that helped me not

28:47

that he could do anything to help me

28:49

get through. He just knew that I was

28:51

a determined type of individual. And

28:54

he, you know, I gotta go, okay, yeah,

28:56

you know, and so what he

28:58

did, signed it on. I had to

29:00

go back to Para Reg. And

29:02

it's funny, Dodge, when you get serious,

29:05

things kind of slot into place for

29:07

you, don't you? And I went back

29:09

and I went back and saw

29:12

a Sergeant Major that I know back

29:14

in Para Reg. And he says,

29:16

unlucky Des, you know, he says, tell you what, come

29:18

back to Para Reg, get stuck into things, you know,

29:21

and, and you crack

29:23

on. And he said, you can go back into selection

29:25

in another year. And, and I

29:27

knew this Sergeant Major, I knew

29:29

him when he was a Staff Sergeant. And

29:33

he's passed away now, really nice guy.

29:35

His name is Kev Whittle.

29:38

Kev Whittle, passed away, may rest in peace, a good guy.

29:40

And that's what I mean about things slot into place.

29:42

He knew me as well. As I say, he knew

29:44

me when he was a Staff Sergeant. All

29:46

of a sudden, I go back, I go, he's a Sergeant Major,

29:49

and he's a Sergeant Major up my, couldn't he? So

29:51

I went back. And I says, just

29:53

let in Des, everything will work. And you can go back and sell it

29:56

in a year ago. I go, look Kev, I

29:58

Need a fervor.? Ago some.

30:01

I need to go straight back. And. He

30:03

says on it is going to look in of is

30:05

it what will you mean ago look. I've.

30:08

Got less than a year before I get out. Any only, but

30:10

yeah, you can sign back on again, No promise. And

30:13

us as know I says i'm a need

30:15

to go straight back as goes. You know

30:17

what he signed. A set

30:19

of got a since I may have got to

30:21

go away if I lose momentum I said dare

30:23

and of finish I'm not going on Isis. and

30:26

of itself will cavs are you know I'm burning

30:28

bridges here if last sale celexa I'm gonna get

30:30

out and going to go into semi state and

30:33

i could see kind of look at me like.any

30:35

kind of you know anyone. Or. Can

30:37

I get your now? He could have they've

30:39

been someone else. Yeah, he could have gone

30:41

know yet. Your backend. We need you back

30:43

here. Are we need guys accept or sex?

30:45

Or. I would have said firstly if it

30:47

if I've done the right thing I would have signed

30:49

on. but I'm I would have lost momentum. I

30:52

would probably go out on. What I mean about

30:54

now is when you get serious about some dogs

30:57

all of a sudden, you know we can call

30:59

it you know the universe. A wannabe. A

31:01

slight exciting are you serious about his

31:03

in on people tend to swastika poison

31:05

okay doesn't agree people places opportunities he

31:07

just all seen town.major says okay yeah

31:09

come back on the next on capital

31:11

could have said no you gotta isa

31:13

general okay lot you know I durham

31:15

and what was it was me sign

31:17

on gonna I'm serious about his I

31:19

won't miss this is one a won't

31:21

and and even to on look in

31:23

the jungle awful on a you know

31:25

I know I can do this. How

31:27

our frustrated were you. On that

31:29

first hit when you in the jungle the tickets

31:32

hospital older boys are carrying on another pass on

31:34

the sub Hugo Since I've been. On.

31:36

Us you files because ago injured. while

31:38

I'm italian I'd as started at easier

31:40

to come back and I and I

31:42

it's way to combat will the guys

31:44

coming back from from Brunei? yeah and

31:46

I'm by the way you do stems

31:48

about so forty guys and and you

31:51

can understand now million I'm upset or

31:53

you know a damn what comes back

31:55

in a packer mr Tonight and sing

31:57

the media. and damn and

31:59

one guy said something to me and I finished.

32:02

I said hey, and he goes, hey, sour

32:04

grapes, you didn't get in. You weren't good

32:06

enough sketching, whatever. We had a bit of

32:08

a fracker, and they're

32:10

sort of some punches thrown

32:13

and whatever. I thought, oh,

32:15

this is not good for me. You can't do this on selection.

32:17

You can't go bashing people. And when

32:19

I saw the Major, before

32:22

I left, when he said, yeah, you can

32:24

come back. I then said, I

32:27

just need to tell you something that, by the way,

32:29

I've just had a drying room session. The

32:32

drying room session means that, in the Paris, if

32:34

you have any fracker with anybody, let's get in

32:36

the drying room. And have a tear up. And

32:38

have a tear up as you put it. Yeah.

32:40

So that's what we did. And

32:43

I had to say that to the

32:45

Major, if you like, of Training Squadron

32:47

SAS. And he goes, what do

32:50

you mean you had a drying room? And I told

32:52

him this story. I goes, look, my fault. I

32:54

was just upset about fail selection. I put everything

32:56

on, I've put me bridges and what have you.

32:58

And he kind of looked at me and went,

33:01

yeah, okay, not bad. And he kind of

33:03

did. I kind of shrugged his shoulders and

33:05

go, okay. When you pass selection, where

33:09

was your first tour as

33:13

one of the elite of the elite of the

33:16

1% of the 1% in the

33:18

SAS, where was your first ever tour?

33:20

Okay. Let me tell you, probably answering

33:22

that is better to say the first

33:24

thing I did with the regiment. Yeah.

33:26

Okay. Yeah. Which is like a tour.

33:28

Yeah. The first thing I did with

33:30

the regiment, which worked very, very well

33:32

for me, is that out

33:34

of the guys that passed selection is that

33:37

two of us went to B squadron. Okay,

33:39

B squadron at that time with a squadron

33:41

that had done the Uranium as a siege.

33:44

So yeah, so yeah.

33:46

So they were the ones.

33:49

And so we went there.

33:51

And the very first day

33:53

that I joined the regiment is

33:56

that that day was the

33:58

day that the regiment formed. in

34:02

the SES is that you've got guys all over the world. But

34:04

there's certain times in the regiment they've got to

34:06

do certain things and this one is the six

34:08

month tour of the anti-terrorist team. So

34:11

the squadron has to come back and for six

34:13

months that's their job. Okay, anti-terrorist

34:15

team. So day one, I

34:17

joined, I joined straight in and that was

34:19

good for me because I've got to know

34:22

everybody. Okay. And you're doing the

34:24

thing that you've got in your mind you go,

34:27

that's what I want to do in the SES.

34:29

All of a sudden the black kit on and

34:31

the very first day answering your question George is

34:34

that you said right you're too

34:37

down to such a training area and

34:39

just meet up with Sergeant so and so

34:41

and he'll tell you what to do. So

34:44

the squadrons they're all in black. We

34:46

turns up you can imagine two new guys not

34:48

knowing anything. You know, all of a sudden this

34:51

chopper comes in a big chin up the big

34:53

double blade of course, lungs in front

34:55

of us. All of a sudden all the

34:57

guys just get on. We look at each other get on

34:59

with them and it starts

35:01

text off and starts flying around the

35:03

training area. Nobody tells us what we're

35:05

doing. You know, we just get some

35:07

with you know, there's 30 guys on

35:09

the aircraft and suddenly, you know,

35:12

one guy nudges me at a side of me

35:15

and says right put these gloves on and we

35:17

put these big yellow gloves on and we're in

35:19

you know, the black overalls and gas and stuff

35:21

and what have you. He says right he says

35:23

when the aircraft comes to a hover stops he

35:25

says go out that door just slide down the

35:27

rope just grab it as tight as you can

35:29

and slide down. I've never

35:32

done that before. You know,

35:34

nobody's showing me the answer to it. They call

35:36

it fast rope. Yeah. And all of a sudden,

35:38

you know, you're going around in this chopper and

35:40

it's going all over the place. All of a

35:42

sudden it comes to a hover like that. You

35:45

know, they chug the rope out and I see

35:47

guys grabbing it and sliding down, sliding down. I

35:49

jumps in, slide down and

35:51

there's just a big pile of guys on the

35:53

floor. We're all falling on each other and then

35:55

the chopper pulls away. Everybody starts

35:57

laughing. You know, they laugh at them kids.

36:00

lane and stuff like that and you're looking around and

36:02

thinking, you know, it's just the SES and what have

36:04

you. And the guy who was sat next to me

36:06

telling me about the gloves, you come over to me,

36:08

says, no guys, I go, yeah.

36:10

He goes, what's your name? I says, Des Powell.

36:12

Put his hand down. He says, Andy McNabb. He says,

36:15

yeah. He says, nice to have you aboard lot, you

36:17

know. And I'm thinking, wow, this

36:19

is great. And of course, for six months,

36:21

you do all the black kit. I got

36:23

to know everybody straight away. The squadron were

36:26

together. You did a black kit, so you're

36:28

doing all the things you can imagine. So

36:30

really, that was the first tour, if you

36:32

like, was on the anti terrorist team. When

36:35

you're in there like that, is it like, of

36:38

course, it's like being in a rugby team. You've got brotherhood.

36:41

You know, you're looking around, you know, he's got your

36:43

back. He's got your back. He's got your back. How

36:45

long did it take to get that sort of belief

36:47

that everyone's got your back in once you get into

36:49

the SES? Yeah, it's great. And answering your question, probably

36:51

best way I can put it like this, is

36:54

that suddenly you

36:56

realize you're with a high

36:58

echelon bunch of guys. For

37:01

example, is that there were

37:04

guys that have brought part of the Atlantic

37:07

Ocean, these guys that have climbed Everest,

37:09

these guys that are doing freefall records. There

37:12

were guys that had been on an Arabic call for 18

37:14

months. Been on an?

37:16

Arabic course. Of course. Yeah,

37:19

yeah. And learning Russian. Wow.

37:21

And another guy being out

37:24

to Bavaria and being on

37:26

a mountain leaders course

37:28

for 18 months. You know, and

37:31

you're looking around and all these people

37:33

are at a very high level. And

37:36

you're going, wow. And

37:38

this positivity and the camaraderie,

37:40

if you like, it

37:42

just kind of pulls you along. And what

37:45

I liked about it is that they

37:47

want you to be the best you

37:50

possibly can. They won't hold you down.

37:52

They want you to do the

37:54

best you can to be the best.

37:56

Like there was a guy who'd done a medical course.

37:59

Yeah, yeah. And

38:01

he, on the medical course,

38:04

he felt it was that good that his

38:07

wife was pregnant. And she went into

38:09

labour and delivered a baby. And

38:11

you're hearing stories like this all the

38:13

time. And what you do, you realise

38:16

you go, wow, I'm in the right

38:18

place. One percent of the one percent.

38:20

Did you ever have the feeling that

38:22

you got imposter syndrome at all?

38:26

We never know what imposter syndrome. It's only been a posh

38:28

word for the last couple of years. Yeah,

38:30

are you saying, when you're over there, are you looking around and

38:32

going, am I good enough to be

38:35

in it? Because everyone will be thinking the same. Exactly.

38:37

Yeah, exactly. For example, the way

38:39

I look at it, and even today, I left

38:41

Skyl at 15. I could hardly

38:43

read them right. And

38:46

after 28 years in the

38:48

military, 8 in Para-Redge, 20 in the

38:50

regiment, you've

38:52

travelled the world, you've been involved in just

38:54

about every modern conflict since the Falklands. You

38:58

do medical courses, languages,

39:00

you speak with royalty, you

39:03

speak with politicians, you are doing

39:06

VIP protection around the

39:08

world, and you are doing

39:10

entry skills like freefalling, driving

39:13

across the deserts. You've got boat troop that

39:15

is coming out in the submarines. You've

39:18

got mountain trout which are climbing

39:20

mountains. And you

39:23

are then learning

39:26

most code, you're learning medics,

39:28

you're learning demolitions, you

39:31

are learning languages, and you're

39:33

just, you have to pinch yourself. You

39:35

just go, wow, what has happened here?

39:37

You go, and even today,

39:39

when people, then sometimes

39:41

I get that fear, and I go, oh, I don't

39:43

know whether I can do that. I don't know. And

39:46

you go, so, I've

39:48

done that, but I still feel it today.

39:50

Yeah. And I think that's a good

39:52

thing. I don't know what you think, Doja. Yeah, it is a

39:54

nervous feeling, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I enjoy that. I love

39:56

having a processing job. No, you can't do something because what's the

39:58

space I'm going to do it? Yeah, and you

40:01

know, is that when we've done

40:03

talks around the country, and

40:05

you know, and I talk to people, especially some of the youngsters

40:07

that come up and go on thinking of joining the forces and

40:09

what have you, how did you go about it? And I hear

40:11

him, I can hear him say, but I'm scared to do this

40:14

and what have you. And I sit 15 and I just explained

40:16

the story about it, couldn't read and write and we had problems,

40:18

you know. And I think little old

40:20

me that come from Sheffield, fearing

40:23

everything, if you like, you know, where

40:25

I'm in the steelworks, you know, and

40:27

I'm looking around and thinking, do

40:29

you know, I can see how my life's gonna

40:31

unfold with what everybody else does. He's boy meets

40:34

girl, boy and girl get married, boy and girl

40:36

have kids. And we're just, to

40:40

be truthful, nothing wrong with that. You know, it

40:42

happens to a lot. It's just that I didn't

40:44

want that. I just, I weren't sure what I

40:46

wanted to judge. I just knew what I didn't

40:48

want. And I just thought to myself, I

40:50

want to do something different. And in my

40:52

mind, I just thought, you know, fancy travelling

40:54

and whatever. I didn't realise it was going

40:56

to be the armed forces that were in

40:58

a way were going to educate me. And

41:01

if you like indoctrinate me in a positive

41:03

way, if you like. Do you remember how

41:05

much you got paid being

41:07

in the SAS back in? What is it, 91

41:09

is it or? Yeah,

41:12

I can't remember the exact wage.

41:14

But what I do remember is

41:16

this answering your question, is

41:19

that you go up there and you

41:21

have, you keep

41:23

your normal wage a para-reg, I think I

41:25

was a corporal then. Yeah, when I went

41:27

to a yearly salary of roughly, yes. We're

41:30

talking 30 years ago. Yeah, we are less,

41:32

I don't know, 25 grand.

41:34

So maybe less than Yeah, yeah. And

41:37

then what happens is you go to the

41:39

regiment, and you're on that same

41:41

wage for two years, then all of a sudden,

41:43

jumps up to a captain's wage. I can't remember how

41:45

much it was at that time. But all of a

41:47

sudden, you look at your wage and you go, wow,

41:50

happy days. I remember, I remember being

41:52

up at Stellan lies, which is the

41:54

old camp, which is not there anymore.

41:56

And I went to the pay office

41:58

and I said, says, I think the months

42:01

have been a mistake. And he said, Des,

42:03

how long you been in now? And I says, Oh, such

42:05

a search. They go, No, no, no, that's your wage now.

42:07

It's gonna, and by the way, you have some more money

42:09

because you're going away on a trip. And what I mean

42:11

by that is, is that I remember

42:13

going over to Latin America and going down

42:16

to Africa and whatever. And every so often,

42:18

they pay you some money. And I go,

42:20

What's that for? And they go, Well, you're going on a

42:23

trip soon. And there's some money for you to buy this

42:25

and buy a ticket or whatever. And I

42:27

go, Oh, and I go, Don't you do

42:29

that? No, no, you're doing it. You know, there's not many of

42:31

you going down, you're gonna buy your own ticket, and you're gonna

42:33

do this and on the other. Everything was

42:35

strange. It's, it's hard

42:37

to explain as far as that in the

42:39

normal military, like in the Paris, everything's regimented.

42:42

And you do as you told, and, and

42:44

this is what you do when you tend

42:46

to do it collectively. Soon as you get

42:48

to the regiment, the is you talk to

42:50

everybody first names. It's not like sergeant, you

42:52

know, everything you talk to

42:54

the officers, your boss, you just discuss

42:56

things like this, you're working very

42:59

small teams, you know, no

43:01

bigger than eight, you know, sixes, four,

43:03

sometimes in two, these

43:05

things that you'll go off and do by

43:07

yourself, in that country, this country,

43:10

and it's, it's very grown

43:12

up. And that's what I liked about

43:14

it. It really suited me. If

43:16

you were back in Sheffield, yeah, between 1990 and

43:18

2010, yeah,

43:22

like you did 20 years, yeah, when

43:25

they're back in Sheffield, someone said, What do you do for a living? What were

43:27

you used to say? Oh, yeah, I used

43:29

to, I used to say something really silly, like,

43:31

I'm into insurance, you

43:33

know, yeah, and I know, know about

43:35

it. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know,

43:38

even recently, a joke and I said, Oh, yeah,

43:40

I'm into it. Well, you know, my mate Paul

43:42

will tell you, I'm not going to go to

43:44

an IT or whatever, you know, and

43:46

so yeah, and one of the

43:49

reasons for that was, is

43:52

that a lot of the time, I used

43:54

to say I was still military, but I was back

43:56

in Panarich. And because I know a lot of people

43:59

that know I had physical training side, I

44:01

still used to say I was a PT

44:03

instructor in Paris, okay. And

44:05

people wouldn't know that you were the cut above. Correct, yeah

44:07

because I still used to come and

44:11

go, I'm still traveling and you've got

44:13

a suntan every so often and so

44:15

you've got to stick with a cover

44:17

story that sounds, you know, really. Were

44:19

you married? Did you have a

44:21

Mrs while you were in the essay?

44:23

Yes, yes and I'm divorced now. Well

44:25

when you left the essayist or when

44:28

you're in there? Yes, no, when we're

44:30

left and looking back on it,

44:33

a lot of it did have to

44:35

do with the regiment. I mean when

44:37

we were saying I remember the statistic

44:39

come out that said that the regiment

44:41

had the largest divorce rate in the

44:43

armed forces and I can see why

44:45

that went away all the time. What

44:47

made your relationship not

44:49

work? Did you change as a person

44:52

or did you have to keep secrets away from

44:54

your missus or would you tell your missus everything?

44:56

I think it's quite a few of them put

44:58

together. I think for a start there's the worry

45:00

that when you go in a way that

45:03

your other half knows that there's a very

45:05

good possibility you're dealing with danger and she

45:07

would worry a lot and you

45:10

can't really talk about it very much. The

45:13

other one I think is just the

45:15

basic being apart, you know,

45:17

long distance relationships don't last very long and

45:19

I think there's a third one as well,

45:23

a fourth one is what you said, he

45:25

says that we change and

45:27

I think there's a fourth one

45:30

that your

45:35

job comes first. Yeah, everybody

45:37

thinks that your family comes first. Well,

45:40

in the regiments is that even

45:43

though they are family-oriented, you know,

45:45

when the bell rings the job

45:47

comes first and I

45:49

think your spouse knows

45:51

that and so I think, you

45:54

know, that we

45:57

know they don't come first on the

45:59

list. is that the job come

46:01

first and it does realistically. And did you

46:03

find yourself change personality? Did you become more

46:06

selfish? Yes, I think one

46:08

of my mates put this very nicely and

46:10

he said, Des, we go away and we

46:12

change, but when we come back, the family

46:14

stay exactly the same, don't they? He says,

46:16

we've got to that country, we've got a

46:18

Latin America, Africa, and we're having, he says,

46:21

we have great experiences, don't we? He says,

46:23

that's one of the reasons, you know, we'll

46:25

live the regiment. He says he's just fantastic

46:27

experiences, what we have. So he

46:29

says, that's bound to change us. He says, and when

46:31

we come back, we're coming back to a little old

46:33

elephant, you know, and our families live there,

46:36

and they've made their own life. And he

46:38

says, and we, in a way, can't wait

46:40

to travel again and get another experience. So

46:43

that could be the main one, you know,

46:45

he's that, yes, we definitely do change. So

46:48

in that 20 year period, tell me some

46:50

of the countries you've been to. Yes,

46:53

I've been to a lot of countries,

46:55

but as far as the ones that

46:57

people know about conflict, you

47:00

know, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya,

47:03

Somalia, Bosnia, then

47:07

clandestine operations, that's an old fashioned term

47:09

for kind of secret operations and you

47:11

know, whatever, these kind of clandestine down

47:14

in Africa, Latin America, Middle East.

47:18

But saying that, I think

47:21

a lot of people think about the

47:24

regiment that we are in conflict all

47:26

the time. And I know

47:28

we do have a reputation of getting the job done. So when the

47:30

job has to get done, it has to get done. But

47:33

a lot of the regiment's role is gathering

47:35

all the information. So we may go to

47:37

these countries, you know, in small groups, you

47:39

know, in typical SF, and

47:41

gather information within that country that let's

47:43

say something volatile may be happening in

47:45

the future. We bring that information back,

47:47

it's collated, we've passed on, and we

47:49

can see then if the other organizations

47:51

can go there and maybe police it

47:53

or do something. So it's not always

47:55

full on action, you know, and a

47:57

lot of what the regiment does, class and desktop.

48:00

is quiet. We

48:02

don't want to be seen, we don't want to be known. And

48:04

so we are gathered as a misinformation a lot

48:06

of time and I think a lot of people

48:08

don't realise that. We think it's just getting there,

48:10

you know, flash bang, get a job done and

48:13

but when that has to be done fine, it has

48:15

to be done. But it's not like that all the

48:17

time. How many times if you were to look

48:20

back, how many times have you done jobs

48:22

where you've gone in, flash bang, wallop, out?

48:25

Yes, I would say quite a few.

48:28

It's quite a few. But I think... Are we talking 10, 20? Yes, yes, probably 20

48:36

plus. You know, some of my

48:39

shots, some are long-winded. I

48:42

think some of, let's say, things

48:44

which have happened in, you know,

48:46

Iraq and Afghanistan, which have happened

48:48

over years, you can imagine that

48:51

a lot of the jobs

48:53

that you do are long-term, are

48:56

ongoing all the time. There

48:58

may be something that comes up in a country that

49:00

needs to be dealt with straight away, you know. So,

49:03

but yes, you have these operations that

49:05

go on for months and sometimes years

49:07

and there's others that can go on

49:10

and that happen fairly quick and,

49:13

you know, we have to be attended to straight away.

49:15

And I think the everyone

49:18

looks at the regiment if you like, it

49:20

does have that reputation. That's the sexy bit,

49:22

as a non- SIS man.

49:24

How do you get in there? How do you do that drug

49:26

deal? I didn't say. You've got

49:28

the helicopters in your office. I didn't realize,

49:31

I was talking to him the other day

49:33

and he says, in reality, you don't realize

49:35

that it's hard, hard work. You are cold,

49:37

you are tired, you know, it's

49:39

long hours and a lot of

49:42

the time it may not turn out successful, you

49:45

know, and a lot of the time

49:47

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the ads. ads. Well

51:18

most of the time it's like my mate

51:21

said, he says, when we went in the

51:23

regiment he said but it says on the

51:25

cannon, you know, you know it's going to

51:27

be difficult. And on that one, Dodge, somebody

51:29

was talking to me the other day about

51:32

how kind of we're selected or guys in

51:34

the regiment that are selected. And

51:37

I think it's just simply put is

51:39

that the selection process actually picks

51:41

you. The selection process went

51:43

all the way back to the 1950s

51:45

and they said that if we have

51:48

got certain soldiers and we are

51:50

putting them in difficult, arduous situations,

51:53

we need a certain type of

51:55

individual and it's only a selection

51:57

process that we'll be able to

51:59

do. that and they found that

52:02

odd physical stress with

52:04

hard mental stress mixed

52:06

with sleep deprivation stress. You put

52:08

those three together and it brings

52:10

out the real you. For example,

52:12

the first day I turned up

52:15

on selection, on both selections we

52:17

can say, the instructors do

52:19

a very stressful thing. On the first

52:21

one, there was 275 guys and

52:23

on day one, they said to you,

52:26

right guys, everyone look around at each

52:28

other. So we were looking around, this is 275

52:30

guys and they said to

52:33

you, just to let you know guys,

52:35

within four or five weeks, there's going to be

52:37

less than 40 guys left.

52:40

Wow. Okay. After six

52:42

months, there's going to be less than

52:44

10 guys left and they tell

52:46

you that on day one. Wow. And you know,

52:48

they actually then said to you, by

52:51

the way guys, if you don't want to turn

52:53

up and you don't like it, stay in bed,

52:55

make sure you pack your kit in and

52:57

pack it away and come and see the

52:59

boss before lunchtime, before you go. You

53:02

don't have to turn up if you don't want to. And

53:04

they do that purposely. And

53:06

I remember the very next day, there were five guys

53:09

that didn't turn up, you know, and

53:11

you stood there all looking at each other and

53:13

thinking, oh, you know, and you see

53:16

these big guys and fat guys. And

53:18

I can honestly say, when I went

53:20

through selection, there were guys bigger, stronger,

53:22

faster, arguably better soldiers and what have

53:24

you, but Dodge, you've got

53:26

to be there at the end to pass.

53:28

Yeah. You know, is there one country that

53:30

stands out for you in the 20 years

53:32

you've done that you're like, that

53:34

is the toughest thing that

53:36

I've ever been involved in?

53:40

I don't think I could pick out one, I

53:42

think. They're all

53:45

different in certain ways. Iraq

53:49

has always been a tough one, Afghanistan has. I

53:54

went to, let

53:57

me think, this is

53:59

a strange one. I went to Haiti some

54:02

years ago. Yeah, I remember when they had

54:04

the earthquake over there. What

54:06

year roughly were you talking? Yes,

54:08

I was talking that was, was

54:10

it 2018? I

54:13

don't know, I'm just trying to think. I

54:16

remember going there and I went to,

54:18

it was absolute chaos, you can imagine.

54:21

They had the 82nd Airborne there, they had

54:23

come in on a ship, they had a

54:26

ship like a floating hospital

54:28

and they had American troops there and

54:31

what have you. I remember

54:33

going into a place called Citicelaire,

54:37

this was an awful place. It

54:40

was typical, you'd go into a house and you'd

54:42

have the pig running through your legs, you'd

54:45

have guys that were on drugs and they

54:47

were slapping women and what have you. We

54:50

were in there doing a certain operation and the

54:52

Red Cross with you and what have you. You

54:55

could really feel it, these people did not like

54:57

you. They were doing awful things, they

54:59

would get you and they would pull your arms and legs

55:01

off. I

55:04

can particularly remember being

55:06

there at that time thinking this is

55:08

horrific. I did already have this earthquake,

55:12

you got people, I think it was 80% age

55:14

out there. You

55:17

had, I think 250,000 people had already

55:19

been killed because of the earthquake. There

55:21

were kids just walking about the street that

55:23

had no parents and what have you. This

55:27

sette was known for the criminal

55:29

element running it and to

55:32

get in and out and it was very,

55:34

very volatile. We had some

55:36

incidents here, it was particularly bad

55:39

and that's just one

55:41

I can remember which isn't the run of

55:43

the mill type countries

55:45

that a lot of our guys speak

55:47

about. Why were you there and what

55:50

incident which was not

55:53

a nice incident when you were there? Yes, we

55:55

were doing some protection work. Some people

55:57

had to go in there and do a certain

55:59

job. we were there protecting

56:01

them. And we went under guise

56:04

of being another organization. And

56:08

what happened was that some

56:11

of the individuals there started

56:14

to turn on us and realize that

56:16

we weren't until we said we were.

56:19

Who did you say you were? We were

56:21

saying that we were part of an aid

56:24

organization which we're helping out. And there

56:26

were obviously other things that was going on. People

56:30

started to notice this. These people

56:32

just to set the scene are

56:34

on drugs, they're hallucinating, and as

56:36

I said, they're just punching

56:38

and hitting people and whatever. And an incident

56:41

come about where it looked like they were

56:43

starting to attack. And it got to a

56:45

stage where we had to pull

56:48

away in vehicles and there were people actually

56:50

hanging onto vehicles as we were driving

56:52

away. So it

56:54

got very volatile. And I

56:57

can particularly remember that thinking, wow, what an

56:59

awful part of the

57:02

world. And you had to feel for

57:06

the innocent people there, if you like, that are getting

57:08

dragged up and pulled up in all of this. You

57:10

have this criminal element which are going crazy. You'd

57:13

add this earthquake and

57:16

you'd add people that were just wanting

57:18

to kidnap you and

57:20

then sell you to organizations. It's

57:22

just a world gone wrong. And

57:25

it's very hard to kind of explain

57:27

to people, Dodge, when

57:30

you're in a situation like that, then you come

57:32

back to normality. For example, I was in Iraq

57:34

once and there was a bomb went

57:37

off and 45 people were

57:39

killed. Within 36 hours,

57:42

I was back in UK.

57:45

All of a sudden, I'm holding my two little

57:47

toddlers hands at

57:49

a market eating a sandwich.

57:52

And all of a sudden, my mind's kind of

57:54

going back and I'm thinking, all I could see

57:56

was normality in front of me. Everybody laughing, having

57:58

a cup of tea, vendors. sandwiches and not

58:00

too little boys, I'm holding their hands and when I'm

58:03

in a chat away and yet 36

58:05

hours later, you know, these, it

58:07

was told to me that there were

58:09

three generations killed within that bomb, you

58:11

know, and in sometimes very odd when

58:13

people saw and you know, we've been

58:15

doing sort of things very, it's not

58:17

even talking about it. And what it

58:20

says, it's just to go in. Oh,

58:23

that's not nice. And you kind of just

58:25

have to move on with it. Because, you

58:27

know, a few days later, you're on another

58:29

off. That one in Haiti, I'm really intrigued

58:31

about. Were you carrying then? Yes. Were you

58:33

carrying? Okay. Did you feel that if anything

58:36

kicked off, you could let fire, but if you let fire,

58:38

it would even go even worse. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, I

58:40

mean, yes, you're trying your

58:42

utmost to get the job done without

58:44

it turning loud as we go. And

58:46

so you're

58:48

doing the very best you can. And obviously,

58:51

you don't want loss of life, you know,

58:53

but there's a job that you've got to

58:55

do. And you've just got crazy people that

58:57

are wanting to do crazy things. Have you

58:59

ever been involved in any drug operations in

59:02

England? No, I have

59:04

a wish of no. Okay. What about drug operations

59:06

other countries? We

59:08

got involved some years ago, and this

59:11

was public. In fact, the Prime Minister at

59:13

that time and actually

59:15

said that the British actually,

59:18

yes, was getting involved in

59:20

Columbia. Okay. And, and

59:23

and what it was America was

59:25

involved saying that, you know, social

59:29

standards were dropping in America. And it was

59:31

all to do with drugs and whatever. And

59:33

they were getting involved in the

59:36

dealing with drugs or fighting the

59:38

cartels out in in Columbia. And

59:41

it was well documented. And we thought

59:43

it's quite surprised that the

59:45

government decided to put it in the paper. Yes,

59:47

we went out there, we were training the

59:50

police and, and and doing

59:52

whatever we could to, to

59:55

alleviate the drug problem. And, and

59:57

it was yeah, it was it

59:59

was quite far to cook because

1:00:01

we're thinking, hang on, nobody's supposed

1:00:03

to know about this and John Major come on

1:00:05

the radio or stalk TV and put it in

1:00:07

the press store, I think, with, oh, okay, that's

1:00:09

blown our cover. I

1:00:12

wonder if John Major by doing that has

1:00:14

actually given the SAS more kudos around the

1:00:16

world. Yes,

1:00:18

I realise there's reasons behind it.

1:00:20

I think, well, Britain are getting

1:00:23

involved, they feel it's a problem

1:00:25

as well. There were other

1:00:27

countries involved and stuff and there was

1:00:29

a massive thing going on at that

1:00:31

time anyhow, it was quite a few years

1:00:34

ago, but it

1:00:36

was very public. So,

1:00:39

yes, a

1:00:42

lot of the military organisations can now

1:00:44

get involved in a lot, can be

1:00:46

seen as civilian problems if you like.

1:00:48

Have you seen a lot of cocaine

1:00:50

in your life? No, I

1:00:52

haven't. I must admit, I haven't had much to

1:00:54

do with drugs itself and

1:00:56

I haven't seen

1:00:58

that, but I know, I've

1:01:00

worked with the Met Police and

1:01:03

they say regarding drugs with his weapons,

1:01:05

with his weapons, his drugs and

1:01:07

obviously there's a big problem down in

1:01:10

London and the likes and

1:01:12

I know they were talking about problems

1:01:14

in Manchester, they were saying it's more

1:01:16

to deal with the weapon problem, more

1:01:18

to deal with the drug problem because

1:01:20

a drug problem that can generally, to

1:01:23

a certain extent, get on top of it, but

1:01:25

with weapons, they'll start to

1:01:27

get hurt and die. Tell

1:01:30

me about your experience in Iraq. When

1:01:33

was the toughest year for you out

1:01:35

of your 20 year career in the SS

1:01:37

in Iraq? And

1:01:40

Saddam Hussein. Yeah, that goes

1:01:42

back to

1:01:45

1991. We had

1:01:47

the first Gulf War and what

1:01:49

it was is that Saddam

1:01:52

Hussein, who was the leader of Iraq at

1:01:55

that time, decided that he wanted to invade

1:01:57

Kuwait and what it was then

1:01:59

is that It

1:02:03

was an American led. America said,

1:02:05

no, this can't happen. And

1:02:08

Britain, America and other coalition

1:02:10

forces decided to get

1:02:13

together in Saudi. And

1:02:15

what happened was that

1:02:18

it was the first Gulf

1:02:20

War of 1991. Saddam

1:02:24

invaded Kuwait, I think it's around about

1:02:26

September 1990. They gave him, I think

1:02:29

up until January for him to leave. We knew

1:02:31

that he wasn't going to leave. And

1:02:33

so thousands and thousands of

1:02:35

troops accumulated in

1:02:38

Saudi Arabia on

1:02:40

Gulf War I. And the regiment,

1:02:43

the SES, made it very clear that they

1:02:45

were going to get involved in a big,

1:02:47

big way simply because

1:02:50

that was 91. So 50

1:02:52

years earlier, they were fighting Rommel in

1:02:54

the desert. In fact, it was the birth of the

1:02:56

regiment in 1941, when David Sterling

1:03:01

and Paddy Main formed the regiment

1:03:03

of the SES. And

1:03:05

they saw the Gulf War I in 1991

1:03:10

as being, well, this is the same. This

1:03:12

is our bread and butter. This is shooting

1:03:14

a scoot, disruption, fighting

1:03:18

with vehicles. And

1:03:22

what it was is that the regiment

1:03:24

made it clear that

1:03:27

they were going to get involved in a big

1:03:29

way. And we had three squadrons

1:03:32

get involved. Two squadrons were ready to

1:03:35

cross the border in Saudi and

1:03:38

fight all the way up to Baghdad. And

1:03:41

what happened was is

1:03:43

that Saddam was very

1:03:45

clever, started to fire mobile scud

1:03:48

missiles and fire them into

1:03:50

neighboring countries, one of them being Israel.

1:03:53

And Israel was

1:03:55

ready for coming into the war. And

1:03:58

Britain and America said, please, still come

1:04:00

in, we will find these good missiles

1:04:03

and eliminate them. And

1:04:06

that's how the Bravo

1:04:09

patrols came about. I think most people have heard

1:04:11

about Bravo 20. Yeah. Okay.

1:04:14

And your book, Bravo 30. My book, Bravo 30. And

1:04:17

I think my book explains about

1:04:20

there were three patrols, Bravo 1,

1:04:23

Bravo 2, Bravo 30. And

1:04:25

it tells our stories of how we

1:04:28

had to enter Iraq and try and

1:04:30

find these needles

1:04:32

in a haystack, which was these

1:04:35

scud missiles, which they were firing

1:04:37

on to Israel. And

1:04:40

yeah, and so at

1:04:42

that, I've written

1:04:44

a book about that. And

1:04:47

it explains the actual

1:04:49

story of actually what

1:04:51

happened. And what did happen?

1:04:54

What happened was this, is

1:04:57

that my squadron

1:04:59

at the time, B squadron, we

1:05:02

were only supposed to do

1:05:04

one job. And that one

1:05:06

job was battle casualty replacements.

1:05:09

Battle, say that again. Yes. Battle

1:05:11

casualty replacements. Okay. That's what it

1:05:13

was, is that three squadrons, two of them being

1:05:16

A squadron, a D squadron. They

1:05:18

were already trained up. They'd been training in the Middle

1:05:20

East for quite some months and they

1:05:22

were battle ready. Let's say that's the

1:05:25

terminology. They were battle ready for

1:05:28

crossing the border into Iraq. And

1:05:30

in other words, taking on targets,

1:05:33

the Iraqi army and fighting all the way

1:05:35

up to Baghdad. So they were ready. They

1:05:38

had got their task in their mission, what they're

1:05:40

going to do. We were there just

1:05:43

purely simply, B squadron. We come

1:05:45

in at the end, if you like. And our job was, anyone

1:05:48

that was killed in any of those squadrons,

1:05:51

we'd just changed. So it was a battle

1:05:53

casualty replacement. So if someone died in one

1:05:55

of the squadrons or injured, they would pull

1:05:57

him back, rear echelon. one

1:06:00

of us would go and take that place. But

1:06:02

it changed rapidly. What went

1:06:04

up and was, is about the scud

1:06:06

started firing into Israel, and

1:06:08

they said, oh, we need to get

1:06:10

patrols, okay, and fly

1:06:12

them in there beyond the two squadrons.

1:06:15

I see, okay. To find the scuds,

1:06:17

because if we don't, Israel's gonna come

1:06:19

into the war, okay, and

1:06:21

then all of the Middle East, okay,

1:06:24

will then unite against. Even

1:06:26

though they didn't agree with what Saddam had said,

1:06:28

if Israel had come into the war, it would

1:06:31

change. Is that right? So all the countries, if

1:06:33

Israel got involved, other countries would go against Israel, is

1:06:35

that what you're saying? Correct, yes. Oh,

1:06:37

okay. And so, So

1:06:39

you guys were just like, Israel stayed back, let us

1:06:42

deal with this. Yes, so what it was, is that,

1:06:44

there was just one patrol at first, which was Bravo

1:06:47

20, and then they said, oh, we need

1:06:49

another, and Bravo 100, and then they said, tell

1:06:51

you what, we need three patrols to go out, and

1:06:54

we had Bravo 30. And

1:06:56

what it was, is so that from

1:06:58

Baghdad, leading out

1:07:01

to other countries, like, so up to

1:07:03

Turkey, over to Syria, over to Jordan,

1:07:06

they found that they've got MSRs, main

1:07:08

supply routes, and they find that these

1:07:10

were like arterial roads going straight through

1:07:12

the desert. So they said,

1:07:15

right, if we get three patrols, get

1:07:17

a patrol on each one of these

1:07:20

highways to have a look, maybe we

1:07:22

may be able to see these scuds

1:07:24

being transported, because these scuds,

1:07:26

they were like mobile rockets, they was like

1:07:28

pulling, it was like a big articulated lottery

1:07:30

with a rocket on the back. And

1:07:33

you could drive down the

1:07:35

freeway, stop at any time, raise

1:07:38

it up and fire it, okay, into

1:07:40

the neighboring country. And how far do

1:07:42

these go? Yes, these could do, well,

1:07:44

they would bring them into the desert,

1:07:47

in the Iraqi desert, and they would

1:07:49

fire them over to Jordan or Syria,

1:07:51

and mainly over to Israel. And

1:07:54

I think these things can fly at Mach

1:07:56

2, Mach 3, and

1:07:59

from fire into... actually landing would take three

1:08:01

to four minutes. Wow. And

1:08:03

it was our job to go and find them. So

1:08:05

do you think Saddam was trying to wind up

1:08:07

Israel? Yes. To get them to fight so everyone

1:08:09

would go against Israel? Correct. Yeah. And yeah, he

1:08:11

was very clever doing that. Yeah, he just wanted

1:08:14

to start it all up. And even

1:08:16

though he said, well, no Kuwait belonged to me, America

1:08:20

and the rest of the world said, no, you can't do that.

1:08:23

And we're coming in to show you that you can't. And

1:08:25

what it was then is that the

1:08:28

three patrols were flown in by two

1:08:30

Chinooks, flown beyond. So we

1:08:32

were the fairest patrols beyond. No one

1:08:34

had gone over the border yet. Our

1:08:37

two squadrons were waiting to cross the

1:08:39

border. And we've got the three patrols

1:08:42

on two Chinook helicopters and flew us 200

1:08:45

miles just outside Baghdad,

1:08:47

OK, and put us on the MSRs

1:08:50

to actually look for

1:08:52

these Scud rockets. So they've dropped you in

1:08:54

the mix. Right. And then you've got to

1:08:56

go and find the Scud missiles to stop

1:08:59

this happening. Correct. And just to kind of

1:09:01

give you a feeling of which is very

1:09:03

similar now is that all of

1:09:05

a sudden the tension changed, where

1:09:08

we were just a fairly simple job, not

1:09:10

a good job, but battle casualty replacements. It's

1:09:12

quite a simple job, really. Suddenly,

1:09:15

it turned very complex. We

1:09:18

weren't battle ready. OK, it was one.

1:09:20

OK, we hadn't been out preparing

1:09:23

out in the Middle East, like the

1:09:25

two squadrons I've done, A and D

1:09:27

squadron. And all of a

1:09:29

sudden, they're asking us to do a very,

1:09:32

very complex job. And

1:09:34

we could see that it

1:09:36

was becoming political as well. If Britain

1:09:39

and America, firstly Britain said to America, look, we

1:09:41

want to get the SES in there. And they

1:09:43

go, OK, like, you know. At

1:09:47

that time, Swartzkopf, who was the leader, wasn't

1:09:49

very keen on the SES. But

1:09:51

they managed to persuade him. He says, yes, OK.

1:09:54

What it was, it become political by

1:09:56

telling Israel, saying, well, look, Britain has

1:09:58

got this covered. got three patrols to

1:10:01

go in. We're going

1:10:03

to sort this out. You don't because

1:10:05

he talks about Israel, they've got 500

1:10:07

paratroopers on standby ready to jump into

1:10:09

Baghdad. Well, that obviously would

1:10:12

have changed everything. But as

1:10:14

you could see, three patrols tried to

1:10:16

find as many, they

1:10:18

reckon there was about 45 of

1:10:20

these rockets traveling all over the desert. Well,

1:10:23

it's like trying to find a needle in

1:10:25

a haystack. So from us as soldiers, word

1:10:28

were going around very

1:10:30

kind of dramatic statements saying this is going to be a

1:10:32

one way trip. You know, this

1:10:34

is a suicide mission. And

1:10:37

we kind of, you know, even though we laughed about it,

1:10:39

we're thinking, well, this is not far off. And

1:10:41

then we're going, the chances of us finding

1:10:43

these scuds are quite remote. So we thought,

1:10:45

you know, he's this political. And

1:10:48

then when people started to say, well, if we

1:10:50

don't send these three patrols in, there's

1:10:52

a very good chance of it starting World War Three.

1:10:55

And we're going, don't miss a daft. But

1:10:57

as you can see, what's happening with the you know,

1:10:59

situation at the moment in the world is that at

1:11:03

that time, we're going, yeah,

1:11:05

okay, Third World War could come

1:11:07

about quite easily. So we could

1:11:09

see in a way we were kind of

1:11:11

being like in, you know, political pawns, if

1:11:14

you like. And but we took

1:11:16

the job seriously. And we just says, okay, we've

1:11:18

got to get on with this job and tell

1:11:21

the story in the book, how the

1:11:23

three patrols, ill prepared, as you

1:11:27

know, Bravo 20, you know, I got into

1:11:29

some real problems, a lot of it, because

1:11:31

you know, we didn't have the preparation that

1:11:33

we needed. I also tell in

1:11:35

the book, how a Bravo 10 actually got

1:11:37

out on the ground, realize you were

1:11:39

problems and come back. I

1:11:42

tell the story how we went out on the ground

1:11:46

and actually had problems with radios, we

1:11:48

didn't have the right signals equipment, we

1:11:50

didn't have the right weapons, right ammunition,

1:11:52

we didn't have the cold weather equipment,

1:11:54

because it turned out to be one

1:11:56

of the coolest winters that

1:11:58

Iraq has ever. Absolutely

1:12:00

freezing. You can't

1:12:03

predict the weather,

1:12:05

that's fine. But

1:12:07

weapons and vehicles

1:12:09

and clothing and

1:12:12

ammunition and all that

1:12:14

sort of things you can have

1:12:17

control over. Did you know at the time that

1:12:19

this wasn't good enough or was it only on

1:12:22

reflection? No, we

1:12:24

knew at the time. What

1:12:26

had happened, I suppose in conflict,

1:12:28

what tends to happen is that

1:12:31

there's a chaotic flutter. What I

1:12:33

mean by that is that

1:12:35

we've got to get the guys over there,

1:12:37

let's get equipment over there, we've got to

1:12:39

prepare for this, we've got to have that.

1:12:42

And a lot of the equipment itself doesn't

1:12:44

reach the guys at the time, it should

1:12:46

do. As I've already

1:12:48

said, the two squadrons that were already out

1:12:50

there, they'd already prepared, they'd already got equipment,

1:12:53

they'd already done their training, they'd already

1:12:55

knew what was coming. My

1:12:58

squadron, B squadron, we wasn't going to

1:13:01

go to the Gulf at the first,

1:13:03

it changed at the last minute and

1:13:05

we wasn't prepared. And when

1:13:07

we went out there we find obviously it

1:13:09

was a shortage of equipment because the two

1:13:11

squadrons had it all rightfully so. There's nothing

1:13:13

wrong with that. But then when a

1:13:16

complex task risen

1:13:19

like sending three patrols 200 miles

1:13:22

behind enemy lines to do a

1:13:24

very very complex task, well then

1:13:26

obviously you need specialist equipment. And

1:13:30

none of us were prepared. And especially then

1:13:32

on top of that the weather had

1:13:35

become terribly bad and

1:13:37

in fact so bad that we

1:13:39

had a guy that actually died

1:13:41

with exposure. Yes,

1:13:44

yes. And so

1:13:48

there were so many things that

1:13:50

went wrong out there. Bravo

1:13:54

2-0, I'd contacted our problems and

1:13:57

guys died and were killed. Only

1:14:00

people died in Brawatia. They had, I

1:14:02

believe there was, I think

1:14:04

it was three guys that died on that patrol.

1:14:07

And then we had A squadron

1:14:10

and D squadron, they had contacts and there was

1:14:12

guys killed as well. We

1:14:15

were lucky as far as that, even

1:14:17

though we didn't realise we were the

1:14:19

furthest patrol beyond

1:14:22

anyone else. We didn't

1:14:24

realise this because we wasn't getting the

1:14:26

actual information coming over the radio because

1:14:29

we didn't have the right codes and

1:14:31

the right frequencies. If

1:14:33

you like, we got on with the

1:14:35

task and did the best we possibly

1:14:38

could. We nearly

1:14:40

got shot down going in

1:14:42

on helicopters because a top gun

1:14:44

pilot confused us for enemy

1:14:46

and had a lock on and

1:14:48

was firing rocket setters while we was

1:14:51

on the ground. We had another

1:14:53

top gun aircraft that actually dropped a bomb

1:14:55

near us and simply because they

1:14:57

didn't know we were. Simply

1:15:00

mistaked us for the enemy. How many men in

1:15:02

your squadron, in your Bravo

1:15:04

3-0? Yes, in each patrol

1:15:06

there were eight men. Eight men and you lost

1:15:08

one? No. So we didn't

1:15:11

lose any but Bravo 2-0 lost three men.

1:15:13

Bravo 1-0? No, they'd

1:15:15

come back. So when

1:15:17

you're just so explaining, I'm trying to get my

1:15:19

head round this, you're landing in a chopper, you're

1:15:22

there to do a job for how long? Yes,

1:15:24

we were out on the ground approximately two weeks. What

1:15:28

was going to happen is that if the

1:15:30

job was going to go on

1:15:32

longer, we were going to be resupplied in the

1:15:34

field. It's only there at the

1:15:36

end we got compromised and when our vehicles

1:15:38

broke down, we had to extract

1:15:41

ourselves and actually get out and actually

1:15:43

come back to Saudi Arabia. Bloody

1:15:45

hell. Yeah. So can you

1:15:47

signal for the chopper to come back and pick you up at any time or are

1:15:49

you like right to get out of there? We've got to get in a car to

1:15:51

get over the border? Yes, you

1:15:53

can send signals and there's certain procedures

1:15:56

that you have to follow and because

1:15:58

of the problems

1:16:01

with the radios and the

1:16:03

frequencies, okay, and the locations

1:16:05

and the problems we were having

1:16:07

with the vehicles, it was accumulation

1:16:09

of problems, okay, we

1:16:12

found that we couldn't marry

1:16:15

up, if you like, with the frame,

1:16:17

the helicopter to get us back. And

1:16:19

at the end, I'll say

1:16:21

a story in the book is that when we

1:16:23

all got together and we were in the squadron

1:16:25

talking about this, we have a

1:16:27

behind the doors kind of chat.

1:16:30

In other words, it's chest poking, and

1:16:33

we get the Colonel and the boss and whatever,

1:16:35

and guys actually, you know, and

1:16:37

we said to the Colonel at the end, you

1:16:39

know, I think at one stage, Dodge,

1:16:42

I think there was about 44 guys on

1:16:45

the run at one stage in the regiment. Didn't

1:16:48

know where they were behind, you know,

1:16:50

from, this is from B

1:16:52

squadron, D squadron, and

1:16:55

A squadron. So they were in Iraq, but

1:16:57

they didn't know where they were. Correct, correct.

1:16:59

So and what I'm confused here, how do

1:17:01

they not know where they are? It's because

1:17:04

what happens is that once there's a contact

1:17:07

with the enemy, and rounds

1:17:09

go down and they disperse, okay,

1:17:12

they're actually now on the run. Okay,

1:17:14

we're not sure where they are, because of

1:17:17

radios and the problems and the frequent, sometimes

1:17:19

the radios are not instant radios, you can't

1:17:21

get on the ridge. Sometimes these are coded

1:17:23

radios as well. So a

1:17:25

cost of accumulation of problems. The

1:17:29

we, I believe there was about 40 guys

1:17:32

on the run. And they actually

1:17:34

said to the Colonel is

1:17:36

that, you know, why did we

1:17:38

not have helicopters come back and collect the guys?

1:17:40

He goes, Well, if we had 40 guys

1:17:43

on the run, I wasn't going to get an

1:17:45

helicopter with another 20 or 30 guys on there's

1:17:47

a very good chance we could have lost that

1:17:49

as well. So the guys said,

1:17:51

Okay, maybe in future, we need to have

1:17:54

a more deeper understanding

1:17:57

of whether you're going to send

1:18:00

a rescue team or not. In other

1:18:02

words, we're big guys, we

1:18:05

have a sandwich, big boy rules, we

1:18:08

need to know the right information. And he said,

1:18:11

yeah, we get it. I suppose you

1:18:13

have to look at it as

1:18:15

these difficult decisions have to be

1:18:18

made in war, in conflicts if

1:18:20

you like. And it's a difficult

1:18:22

time. Were

1:18:25

you angry about that when you landed back? The

1:18:28

answer I think that we

1:18:30

all put is that if it happened today,

1:18:33

we'd just still do the same thing. And

1:18:35

I think, yeah, it's because this is our

1:18:37

job, this is what we do. We can't

1:18:39

all of a sudden dodge, say, well, you

1:18:42

know, we've got to have the perfect weather,

1:18:44

it's too cold or whatever. But equipment and

1:18:46

communication surely is not backing old on a

1:18:48

minute. Who sent us in with no communication

1:18:50

and crap equipment? Yeah. And

1:18:54

for example, we took out two vehicles, and

1:18:56

they turned up and they were just, you know,

1:18:59

they went back already, they weren't even painted,

1:19:01

they were just normal, two normal lamb rollers.

1:19:03

You know, one was a long wheelbase one,

1:19:06

and one was a short base one. And

1:19:08

we just had to adapt to them. And

1:19:11

I think that's the good thing

1:19:13

about the regiment is that, okay,

1:19:15

we're not always going to get things ideal, you just got

1:19:17

to get them with a job. That's

1:19:20

what it says on the can, you know, you're in

1:19:22

the SES. And you can't all of a sudden say,

1:19:24

I don't like this situation, I'm not going to do

1:19:26

it. This is what you get paid for. And this

1:19:28

is what you do. Agreed. And you know, some I've

1:19:30

been on other operations where things

1:19:32

go wrong all the time. For the start, you

1:19:35

can never guarantee the weather. That's why I know

1:19:37

that. One guy in the regiment puts it very

1:19:39

nicely is that does we can't guarantee

1:19:42

a lot of things. But one thing we

1:19:44

can guarantee is that things are not always

1:19:46

going to go according to plan. And that's

1:19:48

for sure. And I

1:19:50

think it's, you know, you know, the testament

1:19:52

to the guys, if you like, they're in

1:19:54

difficult situations, let's go on and get it

1:19:57

done. The only problem with something that we talk

1:19:59

about the will you like of equipment or

1:20:01

a lot of information. Like for example,

1:20:03

the intelligence that we had

1:20:05

wasn't correct, you know, when we talk

1:20:07

about the ground and stuff.

1:20:11

The only thing on that is that

1:20:13

some guys paid the ultimate price for

1:20:15

not having the proper equipment or

1:20:18

not having the proper information. That's

1:20:20

why Bravo One Zero that came

1:20:22

back actually made a

1:20:24

very, very gutsy

1:20:27

call. He actually said, I haven't got

1:20:29

the right information. This doesn't look right.

1:20:32

Actually got the helicopter to move into a different

1:20:35

position. Had a look

1:20:37

again. Got off the aircraft said, this is

1:20:39

not the right information. I'm getting this is

1:20:41

the wrong intel and actually brought his patrol

1:20:43

back to camp. And actually, in my opinion,

1:20:46

saved guys. Who's

1:20:49

in charge of Bravo One Zero? That

1:20:52

was, yes,

1:20:55

I can't think of his name at the

1:20:57

moment. Yeah, but he got a lot of

1:21:00

flight. Well,

1:21:02

how will you feed? He got a lot of flight. He got a lot of

1:21:04

flight. Well, you can imagine, well, you should have done this. You should have done

1:21:07

that. You should have done the other. But

1:21:09

his argument is I've saved eight men. Exactly.

1:21:11

Okay. How are you feeling when you landed

1:21:13

and knowing that the equipment's not right? You're

1:21:15

freezing your plums off. It doesn't

1:21:17

feel right. There's not a good vibe. What

1:21:20

was going for you? Yeah, it's the same thing. One

1:21:22

thing you do, you start seeing the funny side of

1:21:24

it. Okay. That's strange, isn't it? You start having a

1:21:26

bit of a giddle about it and all that. And

1:21:30

you know what that is, Dodge? It's really intention,

1:21:32

isn't it? Guys are scared. Guys

1:21:34

crack a joke. It's a way of releasing

1:21:36

tension. And everybody knows that. So everybody jumps

1:21:38

on board with it. We're going to write

1:21:41

pick a layer of guys, aren't we? But

1:21:43

what happens is you get your heads together

1:21:45

and you go, right, this is not good.

1:21:47

But we can deal with this.

1:21:50

So let's just not until done. Let's just do what we've

1:21:52

got to do. And if we

1:21:54

can't do it, well, maybe

1:21:56

we might be able to pull back, re-all, think about it

1:21:58

again and then come back another day. day. Do

1:22:00

you know one evening, I'm answering

1:22:02

your question even further, we

1:22:05

were in the vehicles, this is Bravo 30 and

1:22:07

we could see bombing going off in Baghdad. Baghdad

1:22:10

was taking hell of a pounding, we could see

1:22:12

it and we could see the

1:22:14

aircraft coming in and we could see the bombing,

1:22:16

we could see Baghdad fighting back and

1:22:19

we just sat there in the vehicles

1:22:21

and nobody said a word, we're

1:22:23

just looking. And I remember

1:22:26

the next evening, we had

1:22:28

a bit of a chin wag and saying that

1:22:30

was bad weren't it? And they're going, yeah, and

1:22:32

they go, look, we know things are bad here

1:22:34

but if we don't find these goods or if

1:22:36

we don't do something

1:22:38

that could alleviate what's

1:22:41

happening over in Baghdad, a lot of

1:22:43

innocent people are going to die. So

1:22:45

we had that, we were going, let's do

1:22:48

the best we can. It might

1:22:50

not be the actual mission

1:22:52

that we set out to do, but

1:22:54

simply because we've got restrictions of weapons

1:22:57

and vehicles and we could

1:22:59

see problems with the radio, we couldn't pass

1:23:01

on information, our garbled messages were getting through,

1:23:03

let's just say that. But I tell you

1:23:05

what, we all agreed, we said let's do

1:23:07

the best we can and then when

1:23:09

we do get back, you know, when

1:23:11

we do get back to base, at least we can put us

1:23:13

hands on the chest and say we might not have achieved what

1:23:15

we really wanted to do but

1:23:17

we've done the best that we've come.

1:23:19

And that was our kind

1:23:22

of thing. Why did you

1:23:24

go for the Scuds and not straight in

1:23:26

to take Saddam Hussein out? Yes,

1:23:28

a lot of

1:23:30

people have asked that. I think what it

1:23:32

was, it

1:23:34

was told to us that they wanted to

1:23:37

keep the infrastructure of that country. They

1:23:40

found that in

1:23:43

the past that if they go in and they hit

1:23:45

your country hard and the infrastructure is broken and you

1:23:47

take the leader out and whatever, that

1:23:50

country has to come in and check over the

1:23:52

problems. Yes, what they did,

1:23:54

they kept Saddam in place, they frightened him enough

1:23:56

for him to pull out of Kuwait and

1:23:59

they said if you don't do this, this

1:24:01

is what we're going to do, etc, etc. And

1:24:03

they can't have kept everything

1:24:06

in place, the infrastructure if you like.

1:24:09

And so that was the reason

1:24:11

of finding the Scud missiles, in

1:24:13

other words, to

1:24:15

get Saddam to go back to what he was

1:24:17

doing before. Because Saddam at the time, at the

1:24:20

largest army in the Middle East, he had

1:24:22

over a million troops and he'd been fighting

1:24:24

Iran at the time. So in a way,

1:24:27

that was beneficial to the West, so to speak,

1:24:29

that he was the big guy on the block,

1:24:32

he could fight Iran and he

1:24:34

was doing everything that was asked of

1:24:36

him. He'd gone over and

1:24:39

invaded Kuwait. No one

1:24:41

agreed with that. They said, right, if you pull out

1:24:43

of Kuwait, you can go back to what you're doing.

1:24:46

And that's why we were

1:24:48

told anyhow, that's why they didn't go in

1:24:50

and kind of finish it off altogether. What were you

1:24:53

wearing? What did you have on you? How much ammunition?

1:24:55

What guns did you have on you? What protection did

1:24:57

you have on you? Where were you sleeping? Yeah, so

1:25:00

the weapons that we had

1:25:03

are basically a spinner from the

1:25:05

M16s. And the equipment we

1:25:09

had was quite minimal. What

1:25:12

we were actually wearing to keep warm,

1:25:15

we actually thought that the weather out in

1:25:17

the desert was going to be quite warm.

1:25:19

And it actually turned out to be one

1:25:21

of the coolest on record. So we found

1:25:24

we were wearing our MBC suits on top

1:25:26

in any layer to kind of

1:25:28

keep us warm if you like. Because

1:25:30

when you know it's going to be

1:25:32

cold, guess what? The cold weather equipment

1:25:34

comes out. In other words, bigger

1:25:37

jackets, you know, parkers, etc. and gloves,

1:25:39

hats, we had none of that. So

1:25:41

what we found we had to do,

1:25:43

because it was going quite a bit

1:25:45

with lawyers, that we found that

1:25:47

we had to snuddle together, we had to get

1:25:49

in sleeping bags together. Okay, we had

1:25:51

to be careful not to touch metal on the vehicle

1:25:53

because it would pull your skin off. We had to

1:25:55

get as many layers on as we could. We

1:25:58

have a system called hard routine. don't

1:26:00

cook and you don't drink hot drinks we

1:26:02

realized where to stop that we had to get warm

1:26:05

drinks on where to get warm food

1:26:07

in us because that is heat as

1:26:09

well yeah we had to shelter

1:26:11

ourselves on the wind it was a

1:26:13

cutting when you can get a wind

1:26:15

chill factor okay so the temperature can

1:26:18

come down let's say it can go less at

1:26:20

five or ten degrees lower and the wind chill.

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1:28:15

a fact, I can check it down another five. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As

1:28:18

you know. So a lot of it is common sense.

1:28:20

One of the most important ones Dodge is

1:28:23

actually watching each other. You've got to

1:28:26

make the decision early. And

1:28:28

making that decision early, warm

1:28:30

food, warm drinks, clothing.

1:28:32

If your mind goes fogger, you

1:28:34

don't make common sense decisions. So

1:28:36

you have to make that decision.

1:28:38

So what we do, you

1:28:40

do the buddy buddy system. You pair up like me,

1:28:42

you would pair up. We would watch our

1:28:45

arcs, you know, let's say be on

1:28:47

stag, sitting in our sleeping bags. You know, you

1:28:49

would get on a warm drink and go, there

1:28:51

you go, I would get on some food. We

1:28:53

would share it. We'd talk to each other quietly.

1:28:55

I would keep an eye on you. You would

1:28:57

keep an eye on me. I would do so

1:29:00

many hours sleeping. You would do so many stag

1:29:02

on. We keep an eye on each other. A

1:29:04

lot of that sounds very, very common sense. But

1:29:06

when you're in a very hostile situation where people

1:29:08

are coming to want to get you to maybe

1:29:10

shoot at you and kill you, doing

1:29:14

the most simplest things become

1:29:16

very, very hard in an environment

1:29:18

like that. So it sounds very

1:29:20

simple. Doing it is very,

1:29:23

very hard. I tell you, you

1:29:25

needed back then, you needed a clothing

1:29:27

brand called Threwdalt. Yeah, talking about jackets

1:29:29

and warm and zip up. They've got

1:29:31

a lot. Unbelievable clothing brand. Going

1:29:34

back 1991, when you finished that mission

1:29:37

there, then you landed back. When

1:29:39

was it? What year

1:29:42

was it roughly when someone said, go

1:29:44

and take Sarah Mustaine out of the equation?

1:29:49

Yes. You're talking the second

1:29:51

go for? Yeah. Yes.

1:29:57

The whole build up to that was just

1:29:59

straight wasn't it? And

1:30:02

I know the regiment kind of got

1:30:04

involved in that and I've got to

1:30:06

admit I wasn't involved in that in

1:30:08

a big way at Dodge but it

1:30:11

only lasted about a month or so. And

1:30:14

what I was

1:30:17

involved with is what I can talk

1:30:19

about is that I was actually out

1:30:21

in the Middle East at that time.

1:30:23

I was actually in Iraq and

1:30:25

Saddam Hussein was on the run wasn't he?

1:30:27

If you can remember at that time and

1:30:30

I remember I was with a

1:30:32

media crew okay and

1:30:35

what they'd done if you can

1:30:38

remember they found him in a

1:30:40

hole. I was actually

1:30:42

with the media crew that

1:30:44

actually found him. Is that right?

1:30:47

Correct yeah and one of

1:30:49

the guys actually got

1:30:51

his flip-flop, his

1:30:53

shoe. Okay yeah I

1:30:55

know it sounds funny because

1:30:58

what it was they used to joke

1:31:00

I've got Saddam's flip-flop. Yeah

1:31:03

and what had happened is that again

1:31:06

not all the details but they'd tracked

1:31:08

him to this particular area and then he'd been

1:31:10

living in this particular area and they found him

1:31:12

in like a hole in the ground and of

1:31:15

course the media got on to it and what

1:31:17

have you and eventually got captured into sort of

1:31:19

thing and then he actually went to trial and

1:31:21

went through a very long trial didn't he

1:31:23

and actually went through all that ridiculous nonsense

1:31:26

that went off but that what I was

1:31:28

involved in on that side not the actual

1:31:30

the Gulf War side of it. So that's

1:31:32

funny isn't he went at you went on

1:31:35

trial? Yeah. Surely someone just got bang take

1:31:37

him out? Yeah well there was this thing

1:31:39

weren't they about that they should have done

1:31:41

it properly or trials over at

1:31:43

the Hague and stuff like that. Do you remember all

1:31:46

that? Yeah I do. And because what it was is

1:31:48

that I remember I was in Iraq at the time

1:31:50

and they were going through the trial system which I

1:31:52

think was just going through the motions because right

1:31:54

at the end they handed him over to the

1:31:56

bad guys. Yeah. How did he die on the

1:31:58

end? I

1:32:01

don't know exactly but I know he

1:32:03

got handed over to the wrong or

1:32:06

an organisation which actually and he

1:32:09

got hung. That's right. Yeah,

1:32:12

you know and he all ended wrong.

1:32:15

How would you explain him? How

1:32:19

would you explain Saddam Hussein to the listener?

1:32:22

Yeah, I've

1:32:25

talked with the Iraqi people out there and

1:32:27

I've asked them the same thing, you

1:32:30

know what, how do you see him? A

1:32:32

lot of them talk very favourable about

1:32:34

him. They were saying that he was

1:32:37

able to keep peace in that area.

1:32:39

He knew about keeping war facts and

1:32:41

parties separate. He seemed to

1:32:43

know quite a bit about politics. He

1:32:45

seemed to know this

1:32:47

area was sacred to these

1:32:49

people and that wasn't sacred

1:32:52

to them. He managed to

1:32:54

keep order. Not

1:32:56

a few Iraqis used to say to me, if you

1:32:58

didn't bother Saddam Hussein, he wouldn't bother you. He

1:33:01

had a good infrastructure. There was always, I

1:33:04

think it was Baghdad University, were always

1:33:06

very well known for it being

1:33:08

a great university. So

1:33:12

when I used to ask the same question,

1:33:14

most people used to speak highly on him.

1:33:16

I suppose it's this thing about it's

1:33:19

the devil you know, isn't it? Is that

1:33:21

if he keeps order, you know,

1:33:24

and you know, you stick to the

1:33:26

rules, they used to say you would

1:33:28

have no bother with it. People

1:33:31

say, well, why did you know that country

1:33:33

was it invaded? And there's always a larger

1:33:35

picture, which is probably beyond the scope of

1:33:37

our talk today. Where's

1:33:40

your mate who's got the flip flop?

1:33:43

I don't know. We

1:33:47

used to have jokes all about this, like

1:33:49

you know what I read and you

1:33:51

know, we used to hear about it. But it

1:33:54

just shows you one of the guys says, look

1:33:56

at the height that he was at where

1:33:58

he ruled him. Middle East, you know,

1:34:01

he was the big guy on the block with

1:34:03

the biggest army. He had all the strength and

1:34:05

all the power and in the end they found

1:34:07

him in a hole in the ground. The rung.

1:34:10

Yes. And you know, I suppose

1:34:12

the tyrant will always get

1:34:14

overcome at the end, you know, and, you

1:34:17

know, we talk about the regiment like this

1:34:19

is that, you know, it can get

1:34:21

a bit gooey sometimes, but I

1:34:23

think you've got to feel you're on the right side. These

1:34:25

times you've got to pick sides, isn't there? And

1:34:28

I know I'd be talking to

1:34:30

people and, you know, why did you do this sort of

1:34:32

work and whatever? And you go, well, you've

1:34:34

got to fight Tinneray. You know, you've

1:34:36

got to fight the bad guys. You've got to take a

1:34:38

side. You've got to feel you're the guys in the white

1:34:41

hat. Somebody's got to do it, you

1:34:43

know. And I think when

1:34:45

you're in the armed forces, anyhow, you become

1:34:47

very patriotic, don't you? You become a royalist

1:34:49

and, you know, and, you

1:34:51

know, the link with, you know, the

1:34:53

royals, if you like, and the government

1:34:55

and the army and even the church.

1:34:58

It's always been linked together over

1:35:00

the years, hasn't it? You know,

1:35:02

and you can see as each

1:35:04

of that institution erodes, you know,

1:35:06

it seems to get worse and

1:35:08

worse regarding tyranny, if you

1:35:10

like, and the bad guys. I think

1:35:12

the regiment's very good at going, hang

1:35:15

on, you know, when something difficult needs to be

1:35:17

done, well, we're here to do it. And it

1:35:20

has to be done properly. That's what

1:35:22

I like about the regiment. It is

1:35:25

done properly, it's done logically, it's

1:35:27

done in a very linear fashion.

1:35:30

And because, you

1:35:32

know, a year or some organisations doing this,

1:35:34

doing that and the other, but

1:35:36

if you do it wrong, you become no

1:35:38

better than the bad guy, you know, it's

1:35:40

got to be done under the proper rulings,

1:35:43

if you like. When did

1:35:45

you, and why did you

1:35:47

decide to leave the SAS? Excuse

1:35:50

me. I actually come to the end of

1:35:52

your time. What

1:35:54

it was is that the full term of

1:35:56

service in the British armed forces,

1:35:59

any armed forces. for 22 years. What

1:36:01

they started to do, is that they started to do

1:36:04

if you want to, and if

1:36:06

you think that you're capable of

1:36:08

doing it, is the two year

1:36:10

increments. I finished up all

1:36:13

in all doing, I did 22, and

1:36:15

then I did another two years, but

1:36:17

they offered it to

1:36:20

me. They'll come up and say, right, there's a

1:36:22

job that we'd like you to do in such

1:36:24

a country. It might

1:36:26

be a teaching job. Are you willing to

1:36:29

do that? I go, oh yeah, that sounds

1:36:31

good. We've got a job here in camp

1:36:33

that we'd like you to be a VIP

1:36:36

protection. Can you teach this

1:36:38

and what have you. If it suits

1:36:40

you and it suits them and there's

1:36:42

a job availability, you go, yeah, why

1:36:44

not? I finished up doing one source

1:36:46

pension 22 years. You can leave

1:36:48

anytime you want, but then I finished up

1:36:50

doing another three cents and I have two

1:36:53

years at a time. I really enjoyed it.

1:36:55

Once I come to the end, my

1:36:58

last stint, I thought, that's it. I could just

1:37:00

feel it. When they offered it to me, I

1:37:02

go, yeah, fancy another two years and then another

1:37:04

two years. Once I did

1:37:06

that last stint, I thought, do you know

1:37:08

about it? No, I can be a professional sportsman.

1:37:10

Hold on a minute, I'm feeling my way out.

1:37:12

The time's right. In your

1:37:14

heart of hearts, my time's done now. I

1:37:16

think there's a shelf life in the Dodge.

1:37:20

I think you've got to know how

1:37:22

good you are, how fast you are, how ugly you are.

1:37:25

There's a shelf life. Sometimes you feel, I've

1:37:27

had enough of this. I

1:37:30

finished up from then going onto

1:37:32

the circuit and I finished up

1:37:34

doing the old VIP stuff for

1:37:36

celebrities and footballers and for some

1:37:38

pop stars and what have you. What sort

1:37:41

of footballers or sports

1:37:43

do you do? Jamie Redknapp was a

1:37:45

really nice guy. Jamie was

1:37:47

captain of Spurs at that time. I got introduced

1:37:49

to him and he said, oh, would you like

1:37:51

to do some security for Spurs? I did that

1:37:54

at first. Then he says, oh, Des, I'm going

1:37:56

to do this. Would you mind

1:37:59

doing some security for Spurs? on me. So it

1:38:01

was him. I did some security, Robbie Keane.

1:38:03

Yeah. Okay. You were Spurs and Irish international.

1:38:05

It's actually funny. Remember Robbie Keane used to

1:38:07

score the goal, do the forward roll. Yeah.

1:38:10

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Your book,

1:38:12

where can people find it? Number one, Bravo

1:38:15

3-0. Yeah. And the second part of

1:38:17

the question is, were you

1:38:20

nervous writing the book? Yes.

1:38:22

So the first answer to your first question is

1:38:24

the best place to get it is on Amazon.

1:38:26

Yeah. You know, and if you just go straight

1:38:28

to Amazon and knock up, I did it with

1:38:30

Damian Lewis, by the way. I believe you're going

1:38:32

to have him on a podcast. Yeah. He's gone

1:38:34

tomorrow. Brilliant. He's just a great guy. Yeah. Damian

1:38:36

got in touch with and said, look, I'm fancy

1:38:39

doing a book with you. You know, do you

1:38:41

fancy at first? I said no. But

1:38:43

if people want a book, it's

1:38:45

Despile, Damian Lewis, SES, Bravo 3-0,

1:38:47

Amazon. That's easy, Swae. When

1:38:50

I first got approached, yes, I was

1:38:52

very wary. I'd been living over

1:38:54

in the Middle East. I'd been out in the UAE.

1:38:56