 Hi there, Matt Jonah-Jones here. Many thanks for all your views and shares of my channel. I recently had the opportunity of chatting with an old Royal Marine friend, Chris Thrall, quite well renowned in the YouTube world and well worth a watch if you get the chance. I was specifically intrigued with his piece on being called out as a water mitty. Most of us former servicemen are not really bothered by those who dress up and pretend, so long as they are not causing any bother, not capitalising for financial gain and not dishonouring the memories of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice. If someone does look out of place, then we may have a quiet word in their ear. For all we know, they could be a bona fide veteran that's just having a bad day. We've all had one of those. Back to Chris Thrall. I wanted to prove him as the real deal in a swift and humorous manner. The approach I might use for any water mitty suspect. I decided to create 10 questions that, in my view, only a Royal Marine could answer. No trick questions. Just simple poses that no one could possibly know, research or Google. If you're a former or serving bootneck then let me know in the comments below as to how long it took you to get the answers. Diversely, if you have never served as a bootneck and can answer all the questions then I'd be curious to know what sort of warped mind you have. Anyway, this is how the interview went. Chris Thrall, how are you doing? Fifty-fifty. I'm hoofing Jonah. How are you coping in COVID-19 world? I work from home and I haven't watched the news for 20 years. So nothing has changed except the traffic noise has gone, which has just been absolutely heaven and the birds have started singing again. So, yeah, can't complain. I was intrigued when I saw the video saying that you've been called out. What was all that about? I wanted to make a video because I'm all I'm passionate about young people, Jonah. I like I think all adults should be, but I'm actually a youth worker. That's my degree. And I always want to pass the information I know to young people, whether they want to use it or not, because I came from a time in life where your parents' generation didn't really teach you much of any use. All the stuff they should have been talking about was kind of taboo back then and lots of stuff was brushed under the carpet. What I wanted to do in this video was trying to get the point across to young people that look up to me. They hear the Marine moniker and that's something that they aspire to in some way. And I wanted to say, fellas, look, if you have an issue with someone, the way to go about that is not to take to the internet and make all that public. And I highlighted this guy that had come out and accused me of not serving a former Matloso sailor, our brother, right? Yeah. And I just wanted to say to people, this is not how you do things in life. If you want to find out about someone, first thing, just type their name into an internet search engine. Before you go and attack a veteran who's clearly overcome a lot of trauma in my life, what does it matter to you? How does that affect in any way your life? Yeah. If I have served or not, my point is it genuinely doesn't bother me whether people think I've been in the Boy Scouts, the Girl Guides, you know, the Naval Reserve, the commando parachute underwater knife fight in dagger regiment. Why would I care? My life's perfect and I've got a gorgeous family and I love what I do, you know? If I was to challenge someone, I wouldn't do it in an overt or aggressive manner. I would just chat to them and you normally know and if they aren't, you just turn around and, OK, I have no issue that you're the real deal. But what I've done just for you, Chris, I thought, well, let's put it to the test. We talk in a particular way and we know just from meeting somebody. For the viewers of this little podcast here, I'll give you 10 questions. And if there's bootnecks on there, I'm pretty sure they'll answer them straight away, as will you. You haven't got a clue what these questions are. We'll have it as a little bit of fun. So are you ready for the questions? I'm excited. I feel like I'm on a bloody generation game or something. Do you know what? All right, my love. You did it. You did the chin. Hey, mate, that's... Anyway, nice to see you. To see you nice. So first question for you. What does KFS stand for? That's Kentucky Fried. Knife, fork and spoon. Knife, fork and spoon. We got those. Do you remember the little brown pouch they came in? So we didn't hurt ourselves. But here's the thing I'm having to think now because obviously I've been on lots of expeditions and I've bought myself a KFS and they come in a little clear, translucent or transparent plastic pouch, right? And little rivets in the spoon so they all slide in together. All right, so we'll stick to the theme of food then. What's the name of the burger caravan on camp? That's Dutchies. But it's now renamed as Dutchie the gas thief, apparently. Is it? What is that? Did you hear about that? No. OK, first off, if I've got this story wrong, Mr. Dutchie, I'm really sorry, but nobody knew. They were tapped into the gas line, mixed from gas supply. Right. They were getting all their cooking gas for free. But you do the endurance course. What's the name of the road just before you hit the footbridge into camp? The last road with its only pain sign on it. So is that heartbreak lane? Heartbreak lane, you got it. Oh, it is a good one for you and I'll be interested if anyone that hasn't served knows what this is. What is a luminod? Is that related to the tabs that we wore on our shoulders? Yeah. To indicate how long, when you were in the induction phase, you wore these, was it orange tabs? Orange tabs, yeah. And that was so nobody ripped your head off if you didn't march properly or you didn't, if you called someone sir when they were a NCO or something. One of my funny anecdotes for training, we'd been on the parade square and we'd talked marching and we'd talked saluting. And this one particular three-hour session on the drill square, we had the salute into the right, salute into the front, salute into the left. And we finished and we were then marching back to our accommodation to get changed for the afternoon's lectures. One of the guys from our troupe was in front of us marching ahead. And as he walked up, two officers came down either side and you could just see the dilemma, what do I do? And as he walked in between these two officers, it was... I hope they'd asked about that because it was funny, people did take stuff far too fricking seriously, didn't they at times? They did. Okay, so what are the two brass objects that sit outside the garden and that you get to polish if you've been naughty? Monkeys, brass monkeys. They are cannons, mate. Yeah. Where does the 30-mileer begin, normally, for most... Mile one. What location? O-Counts and Battle Camp. That's correct. If a boot-neck is offered a bag-off, what is he likely to expect? What... Is there an age rating on your show, mate? Keep it to me. Don't we've blown that out of the wall already, haven't we? A bag-off is... certainly refers to having sex with a female, a woman. That'll do. I think we're going to get ourselves into trouble if we elaborate it further. Yeah, I'm just... Well, mate, because a very different place now you and I served in, you know? Yes, but the words are still the same. So if a marine says... hands you a drink and says sandy bottoms, what would you do? Drink it right down. Yeah, you finish it, you get the last drop, don't you? Yeah. On the bottom field, you've got the Assault Course, you've got the Tarzan Assault Course, but the far end, there's a building which we did CQB with, but we named it. It had a name. What do we call it? Oh, it was something house, wasn't it? Yeah. Am I thinking of... I'm going to... I think this is one where when you say it, I will actually know this one. I'll give you the first letter. It's F. Not Fibia House. Yeah, Fibia House, yeah. Fibia, fighting in a built-up area, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I thought you were going to say some comedy sort of name. No, no, no, no. I'm not here to trick or anything. The main building where we did the lectures, do you remember they did them always in the afternoon after Scrant? So you always fell asleep in lectures. What do we refer to that building as? That's the Puzzle Palace. Puzzle Palace. Bang on. So... There you go. There's 10 random boot net-to-boot net questions. How do you think you did? Yeah. Um... It's like I said, you know, people love living cliches, don't they? And it's a ask-in-the-service number. Who's their troops driving training? And here's the thing. Some of us have suffered brain damage in our lives. Some of us have suffered trauma. So these kind of clear-cut interrogations that people like to employ, they're not fail-safe. As I said earlier, mental health is utterly misunderstood in this country. It might seem all right challenging these people, but they've got to wake up the next day and look in the mirror and possibly acknowledge the fact they're mentally unwell. Chris Threl. Thank you very much for the chat. Maybe we can do a few more in the future. Yeah, that would be good. That would be good, Jonah. What have you got coming up? Well, I've got a spontaneous place on the Marathon of Basan, so Marathon Disabler, but I think it's something like the 250-kilometre red-leafed across the Sahara Desert. Carrying your own equipment, be running that. I haven't gone firm on the charity yet, but obviously I'm going to be considering the veteran's angle again. Yeah. Well, listen, thanks very much. And Godspeed to you this week, and we'll catch up maybe, share a beer when the lockdown is lifted. Yeah, that would be good, mate. That would be good. Thanks for doing this. So to reiterate, as former servicemen, we are not too bothered about water mitis. As one comment recently suggested, it is rather flattering that someone would want to pretend to be one of us. This short interview is just a demonstration of how well we know our brothers from the Corps, and that we do display empathy towards those with mental illness. My thanks to Chris Thrall for participating in the film, and many thanks again to you for viewing, and please remember to subscribe, like and share.