 Jeff how are you brother? I'm fine Chris how are you sir? Yes absolutely wonderful and great to speak to you on this anniversary 40th anniversary year of the Falklands Jeff. Shocking. Yes I'll just say before we begin friends out there if you know anybody else that would like to come on the on the show and tell their stories individuals that are in the Falklands I think it's really important that we get these documented we're all getting old. Some of these gentlemen won't be around in maybe for the next or the was it sent? What's the 50th? I'm going to say the 50th I'm going to get clever with my Latin but so yes please send us an email and on that note Jeff and I and John Mu who was on the sinking of the Coventry we've got Captain Robert Lawrence MC who many of you will know fought in the Battle of Tumbledown. Nigel Spud Ealy who's been on the show a couple of times Spud was too power at the Battle of Goose Green later went on to become SAS and we've got a couple of to be confirmed so I'll say no more there but just to say we're going to be doing a talk evening in Q&A venues to be confirmed time is going to be the sort of usual probably six till nine p.m so look below the video or stay tuned to my social media for details of how you can get a ticket but what I would say is please don't miss what's going to be an emotional but also a monumental occasion and one in which we can also remember those that didn't come back. So Jeff my gosh we met in a pub on a Barbican in Plymouth didn't we and you you were holding a cardboard man big owl yes big owl Sergeant Al Blackman who was who at that time was in prison for an incident that took place in Afghanistan and when I said to you Jeff Jeff why are you doing this you said and by this folks I mean he was pushing for ours freedom you said because no one else is yeah I think the increase was what I actually said was that if it had happened to me or you I would like to have thought that somebody like me or you would have picked up the bat and then gone with it that wasn't much more initial thoughts and I was just disgraced the way that the call was being portrayed on the television yeah and knowing the guys as I do I thought that it just doesn't doesn't sound right it didn't sit comfortable with me so that's how I got involved to start off with. We won't say two more on this Jeff but just to say off the back of your efforts Al got his freedom and and not not just your efforts but off your initial efforts it then went on to involve a whole host of supporters many of who made several trips at their own expense to London to petition the government as it as it were and yeah good effort mate thanks so but we're not here to talk about that we're here to talk about your Falklands experience Sam how old were you when you when you joined the call? I joined the call at 17 and a bit in 1970 January of 1974 very naive you know it was just when I joined the call it was that I met some big bad people and I thought you know it's quite intimidating when I first joined up if I'm honest but I got through the training which is the key and then when you join the unit it's your first day of the real real job if you like. Back in 74 that's when training was really easy though. Was that Limstone then? Yeah well I went to deal I was a junior Marine and junior Marines used to go to deal for 20 weeks and they were taught how to clean the teeth iron and all the basic stuff a personal hygiene. We obviously didn't learn that lesson mate the ironing one. Well I rub my hair off that was the problem but no it was really tough quite a sharp initiation really I remember arriving at deal day one and it was a bleak old day in January and we got to the gate in our coach and we looked in it like a penal colony all these bulleted lads with no air on whatsoever just sort of staring through the fence at girls and lining up at the bloody telephone box waiting to phone home with a 10p it was it was a bleak old place to start off with to be fair it was a shock I went to the barbers I had long hair believe it or not and he said what do you want I said just a little bit off the sides mate he went gone the lot just fell on the floor there was blokes just looking at the uh it was like a carpet of hair just looking at that hair thinking oh my god what had it done and it was such a mess I went back I said you can do it again and he took it completely really simple as the one it is now. And was 4-2 your first unit? No I went I was really lucky I went straight out to Malta for one commando and that was like that was the plumb draft at the time go out to Malta you know the Sunshine Commandos as they used to call us so I plumbed for did the training went to Limstam for the second part to do the commandos side of it and then when I passed out went straight over to Malta which was again a shock it's another story really but as soon as I arrived the unit had just deployed to the Cyprus war we'll call it a war it was um we went out there to protect the Greeks from the Turks as they come storming across uh so literally went straight into active service. Gosh how well were you then mate? I was 18 then um and I could say fit as a fiddle um but naive really naive um it was a massive shock and um as I looked around at these people who'd been in Malta for years and they were brown as a berry and there was me like a milk bottle. Where were you when you first heard of the Falklands? Right well we'd just come back from Norway you know people from the coral understand it that every January we used to deploy to Norway on the northern flank because there was always two ways that Russians were going to come and get us one was through the Plains of Germany as well there were so many people in Germany but the role of irresponsibility really was Norway um and doing a role in defence from north Norway trying to hold them back until the Americans could mobilise on NATO um and we used to go every year it was tough it was tough environment to fight in as you know minus 20 minus 30 at times unbelievably cold and especially initial ones we went on we weren't particularly well equipped for it we were the first year we went out there we went out with GS general general stuff no arctic stuff whatsoever um but I just come back from that and I was on leave um and I was in a pub in Coventry I went to visit with my brother-in-law I was having a having a point and um I think I had a royal ring t-shirt on or something like that and one of the guys come over and he goes uh you know you're in the Marines I said yeah you said have you seen that people saying what you said the news obviously you know media were completely different then um you had to get your phone with you and all that sort of stuff so I went through into the bar and he was on the telly and he had our guys like surrendering type stuff and for what the freaking hell's going on there so I phoned back the camp and they went we're trying to get older you recall the whole unit's been recalled get your ass back here now well they're not about half dozen points so I thought can't just jump in my car and drive down so it goes home it tells them this is so you stay here I'm going back should not come with you I said no you stay here so um I drank copious amounts of coffee um and jumped in the car I drove straight down the Plymouth I drove through the gates a bit clay and it got a bollocking for being late uh give me a hard time and said right get your kit sorted we're going um so that was the first time I heard about it and again it was really strange because I spoke to a lot of guys about it and they all thought it was a an April 4 bite we just didn't believe they could have done it um but they had so we're all fired up and to go and get it back that was the first time I heard about it and we should point out here um do you know it wasn't a surrender it was a ceasefire no that's true I mean they were told to lie the weapons down um you know the governor said you know there was no point so he ordered us to um or the guys to put the weapons down and they didn't surrender no you're right now he did he Rex Hunt had um negotiated a ceasefire I just um I think that was a surprise a lot of a lot of people a lot of people how we've seen that iconic iconic shot um but yeah so mate you're off to war then basically yeah I was that oh yeah I we traveled down to um we only had a couple of days to get ready and um I remember getting all the kit and kit musters and check anything was right and I said try to my mrs and uh she's come down and um it was tears and all the rest of it went off we went but at 18 when I was 19 I was 24 at the time 82 yeah and um I was a corporal and uh actually what I mentioned is I was uh I wasn't supposed to go to the Falklands um but being that irritating said I am um I went up to the officer um my company commander and said look I want to go he said look you're on a senior command course and that's important in your life I said I don't care I said I gotta go um and if you speak to any of the guys that didn't go you know where I come from it was it was hurtful um and he won't let me go I said well but it's why I ain't doing the seniors then um I've worked with those guys for a long long time getting prepared for something like this and I was gonna miss it I said nah that's not happening so um eventually they got me off the course and I went I got on the coach all excited all you know full of gusto and let's go and get them and we travel down to uh to Southampton we rode the docks at Southampton and there's this bleeding big liner there called the cambra the white thing and they said we thought we were going on a warship some description is it now I get on there mind going down on that what a target I said you know it's don't even come down um there was a couple of guys who got an advanced party they met us one of them was a good friend of mine I don't remember his name though but this time he's a really good mate and and I said to him uh make sure you get me decent grot so accommodation we got marched on to the cambra we've just all like like a big staircase and all that gets the accommodation I had an absolutely busting room it was beautiful it was better than some of the officers don't tell them that I've told them it no it was massive and I I would never let anybody go in that room there was two of us in this room but it was a full man room and it was massive honestly you get up you go to a party in there and uh I saw it I couldn't believe it I thought I ain't going to walk on a bloody cruise you know it was a really strange situation it's surreal really you know I was brought up on second war war movies and stuff you didn't expect to get on a bloody big boat with the liner with carpet and you know it was just an unbelievable beautiful ship as well anyone that's been on it I'll tell you it was absolutely beautiful and they stuck a slot on it and there's some paras on there as well and um next thing you know is we were sailing um and the journey down was against surreal because there was a lot of negotiations going on with Maggie Thatcher's government and it didn't look like at one stage we were going to go in America got involved like we're going to do their bit and um you know we just didn't know where we was but what we did do is we tried every single day we took advantage of that period because you know you know it's like Chris and the core I think you run around about 80 fitness level and then you knock up that extra 20 percent when you go in for conflict because you couldn't stay 100 all the time physically impossible and we just spent 20 that extra 20 percent beasting ourselves we used to run around the deck I think it was a quarter of a mile all the way around we used to do four miles in the morning four miles in the afternoon we used to do bloody fitness tests we do all the drills on all the weapons and everything else we trained really really hard all the way down and I actually again a lot of people don't know this but I injured myself when I was in the South Atlantic we were virtually there and we still carried on training and we were running around the deck I'm running my troop around the deck and unless you've done it it's hard to explain but it's something to be white whiteness as the boat goes up and it comes down it's going through these massive wires up and down and up and down one minute you felt like like you were nothing there's no weight to you whatsoever and then all that pressure come down on your leg and I tweaked a tendon in the side of my knee I thought bloody hell that did not hurt just like a snap and I just left it and I go back to the room this massive room right and I said look to my mate I look at that look that's why I'm on the side of my knee he said oh god I said don't say nothing I want you to go sure I thought god oh I said can't bloody I can't put no way on it so I went to the doctor and he said do you stretch the tendon in the side of your knee he said there ain't no way going ashore with that I said can I go on the leader with more blokes and he went okay he said let's strap it up and see how we get on so I won't I didn't do any any fizz for about the next three or four days and he did calm down but once I started once he once we got ashore he started climbing up again then so I said wrap me used to wrap me knee up in um real tight band they do uh to keep going so that was off that was on the journey down there Chris took me back it was uh it was just different it was only it was only sort of two days out they turned around and said you're going in and then that really that was the business end of it then got really excited um on the deck um am I wind up remember all the guys all sat around in circles TQ come over bunged a lot of 7.62 in the middle of us and said right load your ammo like load your weapons and um I think we used to carry god we used to carry six magazines I think it was wind up on about 10 um and you know it's like filling them bloody magazines with a thumb and no skin on them then with somebody end of it um getting all the uh belt ammunition for the GBMGs uh we came a lot came out with a lot of grenades and I think I took two out two well they're called out two yeah out two grenades um a couple of wipe fast um and a couple of smoke and I mean you know how much kick you carry anyway but by the time I'd put all these bleeding stuff in me in me in me Bergen plus extra stuff I took as the section commander before I knew where I was I had no room absolutely I had a 66 and I had two more we had two more to shells each as well and this is the gospel truth I was a really strong lad I could carry anything I never had any problem with a fizz in the core I couldn't lift my Bergen off the ground that's the gospel truth I couldn't pick it up and everybody was looking at me you know you wimp I went right you can try and lift it then there's some bloody bodybuilders there they could pump a lot of iron they're going freaking out so two guys lifted it off and stuck it on my back and I was just bent forward like that and thought Jesus Christ I'll have to get with us on that um but you know we did all the rehearsals all the like the amphibious stuff this this embarking and it was looking like well when it was war we didn't really fired up with you know we were quite bitter towards the arches by the time we got down there we thought we were out of order and we were going to set the island back one of the most dangerous things I did and the whole thing was climbed down on the day of the race climbed down the side of Canberra sitting in the bleeding open aircraft flying all over the place attacking the bloody warships if they'd hit if they'd hit the camera that a white toe probably about a third of the fighting force would all sit on our Bergens in the in the ballroom waiting to go sure but when we actually though I've just jumped big forward there you mentioned the Coventry earlier on HMS Coventry as we were coming on as we were going off the casualties from that ship were coming on imagine that Chris you know you're all fired up all calmed up ready to go and you're just ready to go down this like rope ladder and they're bringing the casualties on and these guys the burns the COVID in oil big white bloody I remember this one guy come up to me a big white them big white woollies that Matlow used to wear and he was using a right mess and he come up he didn't say to me directly because we were in a group and he just went go get him for us royal and I tell you I could have flown off that ship was that bloody right I'm gonna have here and then trying to get down to the bloody landing craft down this bloody rope ladder with this burger on the back which I could hardly lift up I couldn't lift it up and I'm thinking I'm gonna fall between the two boats there be first casualty before we even get ashore but everybody felt like that was so difficult and we got to when we got down near the landing crafts they're going up and down on a swell like that and you start to catch it right and then just fall into the thing and they're all caught yeah we're all lined up in sticks ready to go ashore and off we go and I've got visions of second world war ramps down oppose landing hit the beach lads so we'll say just dreading that off troops thing and we're going and it's really rough and then we go around the sand and we end up I think we landed in San Carlos T Linley I think was called us about and we go in and I'm come on guys right you make sure your bloody move fast okay because if they're there we want to be getting off there as quickly as possible and all like all the rides are going and stuff but down really low so that you know any rounds are going over the top not hitting there and the wrong way sorry wrong thing got it and then all of a sudden it pulled inside the jetty and we all just got off like it was nothing we're like where's the Argentinians well they were buggered off might see you like coming and they've gone so we were ashore and say the first couple of days then was digging in protecting the bridgehead getting as much kick ashore as we could got everybody ashore fighting patrols and that sorts that fighting patrols patrols going out wrecking see if we could find any enemy it was very little going on the biggest threat was the aircraft again people that didn't people that did I I speak to people that a lot as you know with my mental health stuff and a lot of people talk about Afghanistan because obviously that's a most recent conflict and they never had air raid and they don't understand it you know air raid air raid everyone take cover and then you got some supersonic jet straight past you know Jesus Christ you know you you I remember looking at two aircraft coming in and just like two little dots in the sky and within seconds are over your head going firing at you firing missiles in your direction and that it was quite it's quite um quite interesting but um yeah I said to people about that I think once you're in a war you know initially every shot that's fired every bang makes a jump what was that was that was that but after about a period of about a week or so I don't know how long it was but it is a period where you're sanitised to it same as you speak to the guys in Afghanistan and Iraq you know the initial you know it's like fireworks nights in it bang bang bang bang that's why people suffer with it you know I do myself I don't like I used to love fireworks I don't like them there because I just go instantly back to that situation I say after after a week I mean I remember watching a war movie and I think it was one of the yanks it was McCarthy MacArthur or whatever and he was incoming and he was just stood there and it was like you know these bombs going off all over the place and he's just stood there in front of his men that way men and all that sort of stuff it was like that you know you just get to the situation where as long as you don't hit you know I keep moving and I always explain this to people because they were you really brave so no you're not brave you see how I used to see because I don't know how you did when you're you're your bit but I'm in a film and I'm the film star and the camera's on me and I ain't gonna get it we done happened to the hero don't get shot does he so that's how I used to look at it he won't answer me and that thank god it didn't you know but um we were sure um we we um we dug in and again when you when you're actually digging a trench for real you don't have to get a lot quicker and a lot deeper the only problem with with the ground was what it was so rockily and we used to mind about um anybody we used to do sending bridge on it I think we should do our beginning thing in training nothing I did mind it bloody would be common and uh you don't want to dig too many of them in your life it was tough mate honestly and you know we were we were still under fire um we had a thousand pound bomb was over our head and landed in the ground and typical rawmarines rather than take cover they went and sat on it and took a photograph sitting on top of a thousand bang bomb was just landed and a couple yards from us um so we all dug in um and then we started well I think we got frustrated because we're like come on let's go and get him but we need to get all the kick the shore so all the kick come ashore then um and then I'm all right I'm going on like this Chris because I yeah mate you're doing great I just wanted to give a shout out Jeff because I think it's so only respectful is is to the bloody civvies that were left behind on camera because that was their job their their job was to work on a cruise ship yeah the next I've just finished reading Tony Sicklemore's incredible um right blotone I don't know what say again mate I know Tony really well yeah he's he's put together this amalgamation of stories from Lima company which was my old company seven years after the Falklands um so a lot of the names in it that a lot of the well some of the names in it were still in Lima company when when I I served with Lima company and there's a there's a almost hilarious bit in it where um Cameron March talks about Cameron was the sergeant major of Lima company down there yeah um I'll never forget his famous infamous or famous quote when the camera came back into Southampton and all the you know all the glory and the ribbons and the bands playing and it was all the girls getting their boobs out and everything the interviewer said so uh I'm here with um uh Warren Officer Cameron March who who was the sergeant major of Lima company in the Falklands Cameron what do you have to say he said um he said I've truly truly seen my platoon grow up I took down boys I brought back men and but anyway Cameron writes a bit in this he's done a bit for this um for Tony's book and he said he talked about how is your all scrabbling to get ashore and everyone's grabbing grenades and and all this kind of stuff one of the um stewards come up to him and there's two stewards I don't know that's called him Peter and Paul and Peter and Paul a boyfriend and boyfriend on on the camera and they said so Cameron what do what do we do while you're ashore he said well just man that gpmg oh how do we do that then so he's got it to like show them teaching them weapons and he and they left the crew to defend that ship as severe I mean these guys are they're they they they work on a cruise ship they're supposed to be in Barbados sipping bloody you know rom and coats and yet there they were down there and um there were some ladies on there as well Chris you know they're like a little boutique I remember this really really well when we got down to Ascension it was unbelievably hot and we're all getting to a bit of sun tanning and stuff like that and I went into the bucat boutique thing and they had some sun tan lotion on sale we never used to have a lot of money to be fair but I got this luxurious sun tan cream it was just amazing and everybody kept profiting off me if someone were to grab it somebody else had nicked and when we went ashore in Ascension if you've ever been there some of the people off the ship got to go go ashore as well we went up we went off and did a I think it was a four mile speed march we fall kit it's absolutely knackering because running around the ship's completely different to running with all your kit on in like 90 degrees of heat or wherever it was it was absolutely baking and the Ascension islands is like the moon I reckon if they did a film about the moon they do it down there because it's nothing in the middle this is beautiful like mountain it's all green looks tropical but the main ground ground was really hard volcanic it was horrible and we ran around on that absolutely knackering when we got to the end of it funny story we all took our kit off we had bandanas on and all looking like Rambo and all the rest of it before I kicked down and they said right before you go back on the ship you go for a swim so all the kit come off like 650 marines running towards the water diving the water swimming around all of a sudden I wasn't one of the first guys in they all started running back out again what's going on all these rufty tofty commandos and parrots and stuff so what's the matter I look at this one bloke and on his arse he's got a fish and he's got it bit him and stuck on his backside and what it was when they were going in there's this little black fish are only about that big they weren't piranha or anything I don't know what they are somebody would tell you who comes from ascension but it's big massive pools them though like a cloud in the in the sea and the sea was beautifully clear and these clouds come in and as soon as we ran in they attacked us they were only nipping yeah they weren't like biting chunks out of you or anything we all ran out it was really hard for god if the Argentinians could see this might think they'd be worried about anything are they but that was ascension islands but they were they were very brave um on the way down evolved they they run little um that little area that was theirs and I remember going to the PRI sergeant I can't remember his name I didn't buy them in Clark or something like that another Clark and he'd bought with him believe it or not the videos that you always bought like Rambo and full metal jacket and all that sort of stuff but he'd also bought the unit disco unit and um they were they were they were all talking and I said I am these two civvies talking they say oh we're having a drink tonight we know we're having a break and oh I thought great I said do you want me to bring some music don't we would you I said yeah I think we've got a disco unit so I went to see nobby I said I'm going to borrow the unit disco it's it's yeah it's only a little thing with two turntables on it or whatever um with a lot of records but I think it might be about a uh a cd deck if I remember right like not cd uh cassette deck um so I set this disco up this little room where they had this gathering was the uh where they always went for a drink and applied music for a more night and I'm just trying to think what the what the song was on the way down it was um oh god what was it uh Nick Haywood the the group he used to be in um it was in it was in and I put that on and and every time I hear that no I need to let me transmit it uh transport it back to there but they were great they really were yeah you got you got me thinking now I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna google search it yeah um so there you are you've gone assured because blokes getting their feet wet was a big part the problem was it not going ashore um that and the ground the well I'm not anti-parat all of them I think what they did down there was terrific but I remember we'd only been there about four days and in fact I met a guy the other day it's two stories yeah I I met a guy um when I was ashore uh and I was um unit mbc bloke nuclear module chemical warfare instructor and um I had besides every else in me bergen I had um extra mbc kit and when we got ashore I met his para and he had 20 foot and he was really really shugly his feet was like twice the size he should be they were an absolute mess um and they wanted to cast him back him off and he wouldn't go he said no I'm not going he said I'll I'll I'll stick with pain and he asked me how I was getting on and I said I don't know problems you know we were very keen on foot caring as you know in the court um but what I'd done once we got ashore because it was so wet yeah going ashore we got wet but the ground you dug down a foot it started filling up with water all the trenches had six inches sometimes a foot of water in the bottom of them so the guy's feet was a right mess and I gave this guy my mbc boots because they were walk proof and he was like all over me I thought he was going to start looking me or something he got all excited and we um I said we became friends to the degree before we all moved off into different directions when I was in the isle of white um not even three months ago I was walking randomly I'm a bumped into the isle of white hub they call it which the veterans have set up for talking about things like we're talking today really and I said to this guy I look this guy said come in and I come in he said uh you military I said yeah Jeff Williams uh Royal Marine he goes come in come in for a couple of I said hang on I said I know you I know your face I could never remember a nine or I never forget a faith and I look I look at him I'm going I thought you know you I said did you have trench foot in the Valklands honestly this is true because he probably you can respond to it because he knows me and he goes yeah how did you know I was going to say something so I cast it like you all had bloody trench foot I didn't I thought no I'll be back I said um I gave you my I gave a bloke just like you my um embassy boots he said I can't believe it said uh wasn't you he said he wasn't me he said he's my mate he said I was stood I was stood about a yard from you when you did it he said you got out your pocket and you said you take them they'll sort your feet out I said yeah he said that's amazing so it actually just randomly by chance bumped into this all the white hope which is fantastic we should be one in every city to be there um but they look after the veterans well and this guy I'd actually been there with me so that was amazing absolutely but the fleet was a was a major major problem well we had DMS boots I think we just called them Dunlop molded souls I think they were called they were absolutely rubbish and in one of my videos I did seven videos myself about the folk was recently one of them I talked about the kit because they had better kit than we had all their kit was all all American stuff like the the shirts that we eventually when we got rid of the Angola shirts we got these nice smooth cotton shirt type things they had them and the boots were para boots high length para boots brown very similar to what the guys were now they had them and we had bloody DMS boots and putties you know from the second world war mad absolutely crazy yeah it was insane for friend friends at home you had to buy a lot of your kit if you if you wanted the creature comforts in the marina you had to buy your kit so if you I mean if you went to Norway you bought an Norwegian army shirt yeah you bought as much Gore-Tex stuff as you you could you bought your own cooker it looks quite insane looking back at it how and it's and also to look at what what the guys are issue with today and I'm sure today it's still backward compared to what it could could be definitely yeah I mean chess weapon god that was a god so in Norway when you're carrying your your bergen there wasn't really a comfortable way to have it sit on top of your fight in order it just didn't work because the load carrying principle is you have your buckle around your waist to evenly distribute the weight but when you've got your fighting order on you've already got something around your way so a lot of blokes would just have the bergen straps on here carrying all that weight we did in Norway and the bloody 10 sheet and that 84 millimeter whatever it was um so just something as simple as chess webbing was amazing amazing yeah so where did you progress from there then you've got to show you've got to show it you know we established a bit that beach head and everyone's getting really frustrated now and um certain units had moved forward I think the powers had moved they went down towards goose green um 40 commando moved for five commando moved and we were still we were still everywhere and then um I again a really good story um we got nick volks were getting really really frustrated like I say nick volks was the best ceo I ever worked under and I had some really good ceos but nick volks had the ability to remember every single man in his command virtually he knew him he knew the name and I've never experienced that before and he caught come on you say I caught Williams right yeah fine sir thank you very much uh as you guys have so and so so and so it was just amazing and um it came down the line that we're moving so we've all got very very excited you know one of my many jobs I had loads of jobs I was a well before the fort ones we never used to have what they call a defense troop we used to look after our own defense but somebody caught the idea that we'll have a defense troop for commander HQ to make sure we don't get taken out so I had 16 blokes we used to do a lot on many many different things we used to run the LZM teachers the landing zone marshaling team we used to unload all the helicopters used to prepare all the other LZs and all the rest of it and um they decided that we're moving forward and we're going to move I'll call it a bunny hop it won't a bunny hop it's a massive leap over uncharted ground to Mount Kent um which is the highest peak I believe in the Falklands Islands at four two we're going to establish themselves on top of that so I get the briefing see I'll give everybody a brief and what they've got to do and I've got to prepare the LZ to move K company forward so all the moves as you probably know and all the battles generally speak and we're at night so I get the LZ so what you know and all of a sudden I hear that helicopters in the distance comes over the radio that the helicopters to see kings are coming in to lift the guys and a bloke called Mik Ekkles so he's not very well at the moment um he won the M.M. with Sharky Ward and Stevie Newland not for this particular engagement but the next one and Mik come up now if you know Mik it was an absolute character Yorkshire guy support Sheffield Wednesday always winding you up constantly winding you up this guy was but lovely man great footballer as well and uh it comes over to me and he goes where do you want us I say just stay here Mik um just get your guys briefed as soon as the aircraft comes I'll march you on to the aircraft so we're all come down all lying down really low the helicopters just one light on the bottom but you can hear the rotors going really eerie ready to go very quiet helicopter comes in lands I'm not up to the to the guy on the on the door load master where he's called I said right I said I've got a stick of wrong rings for you right okay no problem go back and bring him in so grab an order of Mik right Mik follow me put them all on the put them all um no bergens just fight in order and they get on they get on the helicopter and the tension you can you know it's just like we're going you know the the end of this journey they're going to be there and we're going to have to fight for our lives so they're all and again you know they're all young kids 18 19 you know the fighting companies are like 18 19 20 year olds Mik was about my Mik was about my age about 24 25 he had a big warous mustache he used to make me laugh especially in the old way he used to freeze it big like white massive thing on his face but he was he was calm down he was really serious and I could I could think I could sense he was really nervous but he was I mean he's a warrior he was a great bloke if you want to fight you want me next year so anyway they get on the helicopter another bloke I want to mention was Jack Pine out so Jack became one of my marines later on in later on in his career and he reminded me of it actually I don't remember but I sort of as I went to close the door feeling really bad I want to go in with him he turned around I'll turn around to them all I went go on lads they can give them one for us go on get in there come on really sort of winding them up and I just slammed the door and after they went that was it and they were on the radio contact contact white out I thought bloody hell something the SAS had gone in before them and they were having a contact on on my my canes so let's turn them around because the helicopter went side to land and bring them back so next thing I'll run back out again brings the helicopter in offloads and more mixed laugh in his head off you can't believe it he said won't let us land so pull them all back off and next thing I know from the co is not from other radio pass bone for 24 hours we'll do it tomorrow so we had 24 hours to sleep on it and then we went to the sign exercise again and the guys moved to that the the the next night they went and they go sure sorry they got on the on the hill there was still so many resistance there was bodies with several bodies from the Argentinians around there was a sniper the guys used to talk about that they took out and they moved up the hill mountain got to the top wow Chris you know I'm not primed to exaggeration but the weather conditions on the top of Matt Kent were the worst I've ever experienced it was peeing down a rain there was sleep mixed in it and it's like 60 70 probably 80 mile an hour wind it was just unbelievable uh and cake company was stuck on the top and uh next day they said right we secured we secured the top we'll bring the rest of the commando forward so they started moving everybody forward when we got there I was greeted with the most shocking sight I've ever seen in my life um I've never seen guys in the core store but they were struggling they'd only been there 24 hours absolutely soaking wet as my dog by the way through freezing to death no kid they're trying to they're trying to get themselves into the crevices of the little rocks the rocks that were at the top of the mountain and just trying to keep warm used to wrap um you remember the old um kagool things used to have uh that was that was your that was your shelter they just mucked that round them and they were just like that shaking like mad freezing to death and I looked at them and they were just like god this is ridiculous anyway because it was so bad the helicopters couldn't fly to the top of the mountain and didn't fly at all um they had no food they had no well we had plenty of water um but they were in a mess so I remember Nick Volks it was famous I've read it somewhere I can't remember already Chris but Nick Volks said get my guys off the top of this mountain or we ain't gonna be in no food state of fight they're freeing to say that that gives you a measure of what it was like it's absolutely horrendous everybody's gone Jeff can we just clarify have have they fought the battle well there wasn't the battle had been taken place really the day before and and the um Argentinians were either dead or bogged out so they've done the sort of follow-up yeah it was all it was all secured you know we we secured the area and then then they moved the rest of the commando forward and they were greeted for this really horrendous weather they stayed on the top there for a couple of days and then a message comes down to me you need to go back why you need to go back at the bv202s which are the other snow vehicles because they were the only kit we had with the radio comms in that wasn't carried or the heavy stuff was in the back of these the sf kits were on the top and all the rest of it so we went back so I had to get my guys together and we had to patrol back to um Teal Inlet and and imagine this right you're going across ground at night it's not been cleared so I'm like what are you not going to fly us back no I'm not going to fly you back you're going to walk back well brilliant so they give me degree of references in the maps and check them all out and they said take we're going to need six guys who can drive a bv to bring the bvs back so um took my briefing both of the guys said right we're going to go back oh you know my four going back at the bv so we patrol back now because I we didn't know if there's any any weak positions there we didn't know we we hadn't got air superiority at the time so we could be hit by aircraft and we could go through minefields we didn't know so imagine that sort of thrown in your plate you've got to get them vehicles back here because we need them vehicles now we are struggling so we went back it took forever every step was a potential disaster and we got back and um we got the bv to 202s they're all ready and they're only the top rack on the bv 202 is only designed for skis we had absolutely tons of stuff on it which actually affected the vehicle's um ability to do its job we had sf kits on the back you know every day are we had ammo we had food we had right but we had um bergens for the guys that were up there we tied them on everywhere I remember seeing this video if you remember it quite well I imagined when they went back to get that guy that was that been left behind with the core and they struck themselves to the um patches it was like that honestly there was not an inch of room on them vehicles even in the cab which used to flip flip open from the top now this guy left tenant I got it wrong in my video I called him spent say his name was left tenant Spicer it was a toy sea I think of somebody or other he he took us back up there and this convoy of vehicles drove the same virtually the same way we walked not quite and we started driving back and again under threat of minefields under the threat of enemy positions under the threat of air crash it hadn't been cleared because we just we just flown straight over the top of it and off we went but this was in the day and we moved very tactically and very very slowly everybody was stood up I was driving it stood up in the driver's seat with a hatch out and really bump jump out should should the worst thing happen left tenant Spicer was doing the same the vehicle behind had a gpmg mounted on the top so he was stood up all the time looking for aircraft and any enemy positions and we moved very very slowly anyway eventually we come to a lake and I couldn't see the other side of it if I remember right there remember I think and I'm a fisherman so I love water and I look at this lake I'm thinking the tracks go in like a ford and right on the other side which I couldn't see they come out and I thought they can't be right it looked about 10 15 feet deep and as you know bv2 or bv2 doesn't float even a couple of marines have tried it and we started going across this lake and to start off with I was arguing with him sir we need to go around this and he said no it definitely says he's a ford you'll be able to go across it and I wasn't convinced and I drive those vehicles a lot I even saw one sink in a field in Norway months Tony Vindler was going across and it went under and they called him captain Nemo after that because he's something he sunk his bv so I didn't want to be called captain Nemo too so I didn't want to go go across him or anything but eventually he said now we're going for it so off we went just a one vehicle and I've never experienced it in my whole life again all the way across Chris it was 18 inches deep maximum every second I kept expecting a ledge and whoosh you're going to go now we went all the way across and then we summoned the other vehicles across and then we made our way to the bottom of my kit well that was horrendous getting up there because got rock runs and the bv2 or two did not go over rock because the sheer pins go and they're useless so I got out there's a bloke in charge really from the from the empty side of things and I met a way up there found my way and come back to what I found away again we've totally exposed the whole time and eventually we drove them to the top of the mountain 19 the relief of the co and everybody was just unbelievable they had some cover they could put the cps the command post together they come to moorl out and they actually had some shelter because again on the bvs with the cps or the tentage that we used to have um and I'm not saying it saved a day of course it never but what a relief and you know the likes of Davey Rubble was one of the youngest marines that was there at the time who I met later on in my life um he's internal he's totally grateful for some food and his burger and he could actually put some sort of shelters up um and that was my own kit so that was horrendous and then eventually the co said get me off here later on we captured an argentinian and when we were debriefing him he said to us he could not believe that a commander unit of 650 men were on the top of Mount Kent because apparently the argentinians tried it the weather conditions were so extreme that they um decided to go into the valleys instead and the argentinians used to bomb artillery rounds nuisance rounds all round the valleys trying to hit us and we were sat on the top of Mount Kent they just didn't believe you could survive up there so again that's a massive accolade to the guys and the quality of the guy for what they did endure up there because it I can tell you now first thing and experience it's absolutely horrendous that was not okay um and then from there um first and foremost the fighting companies moved away um to secure up or getting in a position to be able to take on Mount Harrier which was the major battle for four two to be fair and um once the units move once the the companies move forward commando h crew was really exposed um and I remember going across there with the two I say um and the map kit that the guys had left behind because by that stage there was there was stuff in your bergen which was just weighing you down and all you wanted to carry was ammo that's all you wanted you didn't want all the rest of the luxuries not luxuries are they but there are luxuries when you ain't gone and um it was such a kick lying around I thought god oh my gosh you know you get into another situation where you've got to wait for a while you're going to be knackered but I collected a lot of that stuff put it in bags and stuff and we kept it um and then another interesting story when we were really exposed like I said the guys had gone so we were defending the more team of 16 were defending the commando h crew and again you know the dormant was about to be any sort of hero or anything like that but it was um I'm just not gonna know it was about I don't know what the temperature was but it was it was light at night anyway and a message come from the CEO really he said um copper williams um it's just come out of the radio the sas have just spotted one of their op's have just spotted um argentinian special forces boarding uh and two aircrafts and they're heading in our direction and the guy that come to town they called us argent it was panicking we've got all the guys have gone and there's us and commando hq and a couple of bloody massive mounted and their special forces are going to have a counter attack and they're coming down the valley in the helicopter and you need to get the guys mobilized now so we're right we we'll just get our heads down so what I was going to say to you earlier was we used to work 20 hour days you slept when you could you know sometimes you didn't sleep at all I I even um had the art of sleeping while I was stood up that's how ridiculous it was so every bit of sleep sleep we got was fantastic and um sleeping away and I just got me head down I said he's close I can't come over get the guys mobilized the their sas or whatever they were coming in our direction so imagine the panic so I went around all the guys come on come on get get get get get get get get get what do we need to take no orders no sort of NATO set of order anything like that follow me would I'll talk about as we move grab every bit of ammo you got so anyway what we decided to do was set up a snap ambush because it was only one way that they could come up that mountain um in my humble opinion and that was the opinion held by everybody it was a steep it was a steep bit but a well trained group of men could get up their courtesies so I set the ambush there and um I got them all in position and the guys are like god anyway all of a sudden starts hearing this noise I thought here they come oh god happy days tension was unbelievable it was snowing I looked at the bloke to my right you know I remember she goes you have everyone in straight line and had a gun right by the two PMT right next to me and we all could touch each other and pass the measures down the line whatever so many bloke's that size and so many bloke's that size and uh we hear this noise pitch black just hear this noise and heart starts beating like I said right safety catches off safety catches come off looking down steering can't see can't see him I'm just doing this bloody noise all of a sudden this thing broke broke interview it's a flipping sheep and everybody went oh thank god for that and then we're another noise but this was definitely a human and he was running and it was to our right and slightly slightly down so we all get back into position and uh I yeah copper williams copper williams where are you it's a color sergeant he's got it off the radio that they weren't coming to us now they changed direction and weren't heading towards us but he didn't know where we were so he almost walked right in front of us all and we nearly all shot him and because he went couple rounds so um we all wound him up about that afterwards we all went back relieved and that was that and then before we knew where we were you know we were we were moving again so that's another little story but could have gone terribly wrong terribly wrong it's just insane to think I mean just to be in Norway you're utterly freezing and exhausted and you're not even like wet or anything and you've got those Norway ration packs that got double the calories and there's always plenty of them knocking around and and um you know your color sergeants bringing you out bloody cans of coke and little treats and stuff with the Norwegians are giving you something and and that in itself is still one of the hardest things that I ever did um I can't it's just impossible to imagine what what you guys experienced it it's like the complete opposite of a knife IB for all a day isn't it yeah in every sense of the word I mean the thing Chris even though it was that bad you know when we I call ethos and that you know we talk about smiling in the face of adversity and all the rest of it they did they still took the piss out of each other they still wound each other up bites left right and center you know um just anything to keep in mind of what was going on um you know buddy buddy checking each other over people borrowing people's stuff people who had some food sharing it with other people you know it was just all that the cause about all that the british forces are about was on display there in abundance all the time and you don't realise at the time because it's a viable situation but uh you know you've got to give kudos where it's the uh deserved it was just amazing how they survived that um and then we're fit enough to fight you know before you know we are on the way up mount kens sorry mount harrier um and then and then virtually after that uh the signal came that um the argentinians the old white flags are flying over stanley signal came out and we all looked at each other is that that is it finished but yeah they give up just jeff just come back and mount mount kens so were there argentine bodies lying everywhere right yeah um well there weren't many i mean again i have got massive blanks in my memory i think i i spent i spent a long time suppressing it but there were bodies and i can't remember the iris's name so he's gone to see his face now he um one of the working um tasks working parties that we had um was he wanted um the argentinian bodies collected because there's several of them on still on the slope so we went down and we found him when we found him um we wrapped him up in a like a sheet type thing um we took him up to the top where we were and i remember i i remember three but it was more than that and the other said um barium well all right barium well honestly there was two inches of soil and then it was rock and he wanted them buried so uh started uh i got the guys and said right come let's see what we can do clonk clonk nothing so we took the stops of our life and then i got them to go out and get rocks and and build like rocks all the way around them and then on top of them because at some stage they were going to be removed and i actually i thought about this through the day i don't remember how they were removed they were definitely removed but certainly we never did it um but we put them in a place apologized i said a prayer over them treat them with great respect as warriors do um so we put these stones anyway the arasim come over with his sense of humor and uh he said um i told you to um i want to i want to honor honorable burial he said you call that honorable i said sir we've been eight hours collected every rock off this hill you could go 80 meters that way 80 meters that way and they're in a rock repeat every single one of them what placed them on these on these guys to give them some cover and he said well i said a proper burial and he puts a smirk on his face and he produces this rock from behind his back and he places it on the top and he goes no that's an honorable burial yeah that's just the core in it you know that's what that's what it's all about but there weren't bodies around and i i hadn't um i hadn't seen a dead body um though i can remember previous to that they'd been killed in combat um and this one guy been shot in the neck i think was here and it took you know the 7.62 is like goes in and it just takes everything with it and um he was a mess to be honest with you but he died instantly you could see just that the thing that got me was the shock on his face like and that that haunts me sometimes when i look at that and see it in my head um but um now they were treated with a great respect um gathered them all together and then they were taken away i suppose but uh i never i never saw them again um that was that it was sad yeah i'm just trying to build the picture here for our friends watching or listening as you know there's these young commandos there and that it's not just surviving the elements and the starvation and the and the drinking out of filthy puddles it's you've got bodies lying around you for you and you're not probably either a teenager or not long out your teams it's it's uh it's a big old thing i spoke to people christ and again you know when people think about war we all got different opinions of it and impressions but these 18 19 20 year old guys you know they were involved in hand-to-hand combat when was the last time we were involved in hand-to-hand combat you know you could um the matt harry attack it is again this is my version of it the books are slightly different and everyone's got a different opinion on it but the guys i spoke to i didn't go up matt harry on the actual assault but this is this is my story um the guys we got the briefing then and there's a famous picture of nick volks giving his um commando um set of orders on the top of my tent for the harry attack now oh it was actually there and again i don't know how i didn't get in the photograph because i was there um listening to it and um he briefed he brings the company commanders what he wanted from him and everything else and off off they went and um when the guys got down to the start line they started moving off this mountain it was horrendously high i say it was difficult terrain there was not a lot of cover and the guys just went up in their fighting order and as much ammo as they could possibly carry didn't take anything else with them and he starts crawling up this hill pitch black nothing the only noise there was was the support in gunfire from gunmore and i think it was he was putting a gunfire to the top of the hill but they did that every day so it was no obvious that we were coming because they did every night and that's to soften them up but they were in really well entrenched in good good positions they had all the angles covered and everything and the guys start crawling up it and um this is mckay calls his story because i spoke to mckay about it and he won the mm and they're crawling up and crawling up and crawling up now bear in mind there's a lot of guys moving up that hill and you know what they never spotted them so they were within about 20 meters of their front trenches and imagine they're shocked because they ain't all stood too they're all in their trenches having a cup of tea and all the rest of it and all of a sudden flair went up boom somebody spotted one of the guys and the whole of the mountain was illuminated and there was 600 odd bootnecks calmed out you know you see the films about vietnam when you know loaded groups attacked the wire it was like that that wasn't it um didn't the marine from lima company stand on a two guys stood on a landmine uh two guys lost their legs uh the feet if i remember didn't lose their legs lost their feet because i remember them coming to a parade when we got back but um i say they were almost on top the guys were almost on top of them and then it all held um um broke loose and as i said to you the day there was two anti anti aircraft guns on the top of harrier they switched them around and started firing them at the guys and the amount of volume of fire that came down the whole commando group the whole attack the momentum of the attack stopped it was it buggington okay company commander they said to the guys get you gotta get moving again so mick jumped up stevie newland and sharky ward all three of them and charged their front positions unbelievably brave there was rounds going off everywhere okay it took the machine gun out um mick ran off apparently and all these guys were like where's he going he was he just ran straight towards him unbelievably brave i got him a leptin medal for it and well deserved too and then the fighting continued and it was trench for trench trench for trench now what the argentinians used to do was was the conscripts used to be in the front trenches and they're better troops the the seasoned troops used to be behind them so you think you're through it and then all of a sudden some real good accurate fire coming exactly what happened with the colonel h jones of the paris who got the vc i think that's how they got him was they broke through the lines they were through into their position and then they got hit by his trenches on the side and he was killed sadly uh and that um down to us was rounds going everywhere um but when they surrendered this was really strange because i always talk about you know you know about military tactics chris um we worked with three to one ratio needs to be three to one advantage to us in the book if you follow the book if that had been the case we well one we couldn't have done it because we hadn't got the numbers but when we got to mount harrier when they started surrendering there was more than that there was more of them than there was us and they surrendered and we because it was dark they couldn't tell but if they'd known how many of us there was i reckon they'd have got back in the trench going on fighting um and it's like the para story when you when you talk about goose green they too i see bluffed them into surrendering as you spoke to them and said are you going to surrender guys because you know knowing farewell they're taking a pasty they had a lot casualties but you talked to me into surrendering because the the world wasn't really there i don't think we were just totally insane about it we were going to take the Falklands Islands back whatever cost i think they'd been there and they were what we do in here type mentality um and our professionalism and the standard of troops that we had on the ground so the pirates were fantastic the core you know i don't think the core made enough enough of it to be fair what they did because i know a generation of people joined the raw marines and the british forces because of what happened in the Falklands and i say that was it really Chris it was it was index finished jeff where where were the companies spread out when when um when they took harrier can you just i can't pretty honestly i say there was k company there was our company and there was j company so the three companies moving up the hill if i remember right it was one company in front of two companies side by side and they went up that way i'm not a hundred percent sure and one of them company well weren't they in uh and again i'm showing my ignorance one of the companies went to um south georgia um so they went out to sort that out and we were left one company short but but i'd never this was really strange as well j company didn't i didn't even know who j company were to be fair we never had a j company it was always k l and m um and they formed j j company out of hq ranks um so one of the companies went over to south georgia to live right there and the rest died with the rest of the task force on the on the Falklands wow but it was it was you know the numbers we had it was unbelievable feet it it it shouldn't have been it shouldn't have been possible that i mean they were dug in you know they were they were prepared they had minefields set out they could channel us to where they wanted us to be but so i've never um i've never forgotten it it lives with me on a wouldn't say daily basis but i think about it a lot and i think god you know he's so lucky um to survive it and it could have gone either way i mean if they'd really give us a battery in there um they might have had to bring reinforcements down or whatever from uk who knows but the guys that were there did did a fantastic job yes here here they certainly did i mean it's um it's just there's no words for any of it jeff are there really the the the whole the whole scenario the sailing 8 000 miles with a you know navy that was on its way out and um grabbing the kit the fact that most of the helicopters or the heavy lifting helicopters sunk that there was such terrible you know the welsh guard suffered terribly when get segala had went down and um the terrain in basically world war two kit um it's just it's all it's all so that's just it's beyond belief and i i'm almost feel like i'm privy to some part of it through being in the core if you know what i mean you know i can sense a sense a lot of the stuff um in fact i read a book years ago god i gotta try and not get upset here but it it it was a chap's account i can't remember it's not one of the ones that that sort of springs to everyone's mind but it was chap wrote this book and he said when they he said when they came back into south hampton i'm guessing it might have been another ship but let's just say it was on the camera back into south hampton he said he was on like one of the mess decks having an early morning siggy with with his mate he and he said he couldn't believe it suddenly all these boats started like rocking up and and and and then more and more and more and and it become this extravaganza and then as they got into port there's just the last line of his book is i was there but more importantly than that i was a raw marine yeah it was really emotional chris i mean we you know what it's like when you come back from anything normally it's just get back to camp to get all the kept put away then off on leave it wasn't like that um i didn't expect my family to be there my family was there i was in bits my children were there with two little daughters and um they came up they've been given a rose and she's come up angela she's the oldest one it's only about i think she's about six or something like that and do you know what and this sounds really mean and make but i couldn't think about it and while i was doing it and when i saw him it all come gushing out and she come up daddy and hugging her it was just you know what what's all these people doing here you know get us on the coach isn't just back um and even that you know so my dad was there my dad was just so proud because i did a video the other day as well about the aftermath and and what they went through the families you know they're like now all that information they had was from the news and after that was rubbish because there was no news reporters up with us we wouldn't let them come with us it's too dangerous that's why there's no footage of actual fighting you'd notice there's none there's none that don't exist because we wouldn't let them come with us one because we didn't want the responsibility the two you know it's not for a camera when they're shitting the fan and people are dying and screaming out you know i'll never forget the people that died i'll never forget the people that were injured their lives altered forever and ever let's say you know the drive back from southampton was just it was like i don't know everywhere we went there was people thousands of people lining the roads waving you and jack i was i was there yeah i was just don't ask me how jeff but just for some fluke we were driving back from some family holiday yeah and god i can remember just driving along and we would have been about 12 at the time and in the back of every car back front was a serviceman that the family had been to pick him up and as kids you were just waving yeah and they were waving back these heroes were waving back to you i mean every light every lights return we stopped out people were throwing beer in the crates of beer in it was just incredible another little story because you know i'm very dramatic but i do think deeply and we were i don't know where we were we're on the way back on the something south coast road anyway to blue earth and um we're in the coach and i was about three quarters of a way back something my dad told me about it stuff like i had his arm around me and we stopped at these lights and i looked right i'm believing destiny by the way but i looked to my left literally in lineman bay was an old lady in a wheelchair and her garden was elevated and somebody had pushed her out and sat her there so she could wave to the boys coming back and i looked at her and she had a big smile on her like a nun and uh i've got it i said oh i'll the bus what do you mean i'll the bus i got out the i got out the bus this is gospel truth and if i family around i'll tell you it's true i quiet i am settled up a garden and i give them a greenberry and i still get on her head give her a kiss she said oh you're so wonderful got back in the coach and off i went so that that was my little bit on my own done it got got got through it and there you are love thank you for having the you know because we never got that in the call nobody ever thanks you for the shit the shit that we do it doesn't happen it's just i mean i like people say to me well that's what you paid paid for that's a huge joking mate i think it was 120 pound a week or wherever it was fighting the bloody argentinians because they decided to infiltrate one of our bits of land you know the fault went on and people didn't deserve that um but we got back and say when we got back we're all heroes but i remember um my mom and dad did a dinner for me we were in into the big wild kimono jeff seeing you know we didn't do that sort of stuff in our family but her mom i spoke to her mom about it she said you know the effects of that still live with her today because she didn't know what i was up to and i had two of the brothers that were serving i had two brothers in the light inventory and um they were both in ireland at the same time so they were in ireland i was over in the faultlands and she was scared to enter the door scared to enter the farm she never watched the news because as soon as she went to work everybody she's around me down her throat what's jeff was jeff there was jeff did jeff do this did jeff do that she said she had to hate it um and you know we forget what it does to the families the kids the traumatised the dad you know you've got lovely kids yourself christian hope what what do they feel when daddy goes away to war yeah it makes you look back you know we're pretty selfish won't we as marines you know we we you saw it when you went out on the town i mean fidelity wasn't a you know that wasn't a word oh not not everybody of course there were some guys doted on their bloody wives but it it's just it's just weird to look back and think it's just completely normal to know that like smudges married he's got three kids back at the marie and your areas with some bird at on at linden high range you know when you're doing your shooting or something and it was just that it was just the way it was but you know i'd um i tell this story a lot and i can god i can never get through it without getting emotional i will try but i joined up with cam march's son i call him dan in all my memoirs because we did a lot of stuff as as youngsters we we uh we went on our first holiday together to new york and we got off with these two hairstylists from dallas and took them up on the world trade center for dinner it was just incredible time but and he used to tell me in the falcons and he'd watched like the six o'clock news or whatever it was and it and then he'd have to watch the names of all those that were killed in battle that day or on the ships going up the screen they used to used to it probably sounds a bit strange to young people now probably massively traumatic and yes it was and and um he'd have to watch to see if his dad's name i mean he's a child for crying out loud you know he's a kid he's got to watch bbc news to find out if his dad started that day the content chris there wasn't you know um the old routine was it the par dryer the duty officers to come round knock on your door and say um sorry i've got some bad news for you uh i've got a story about that i've got a few seconds and that was um when tafe evans died he was even my neighbour in deal um very fond of tafe great rugby player um he used to used to run a um a team of bonuses i was one of his bonuses um just go to margate and sort of the odd evening to subsidize our poor pay put our life on the line there as well and um say he he was killed and the duty officer or everyone in the marriott court knew the routine they knew things that happened before anybody else know because the room of control just to fly around the marriott court and i was in uh i think i was living in westfield in plimpton and um duty officer comes up through our house and my missus in in in the house and say knock on the door and uh she looks at the window and she says these two two people so she knows what that means she has dead or seriously injured and uh when he hit me on the set today he put that to the door to him he couldn't do it and uh they opened the letter box and um hello hello we know you're there um can we talk to you wasn't saying nothing i just took two kids with her wouldn't let them um oh come on out the door they were right 15 minutes trying to get in and they said what was nothing to worry about she's gonna speak to you so something in her head said yeah so she went to the door said what's you know uh do you know where next door is you know she's like put herself through all that trauma and all it was to ask where next door was i know there's there's there's almost that identical scene in um once was so once we were warriors once and young it's the story of of colonel howmore who who's won in one of the biggest battles in vietnam one of the early battles he was air cavalry and uh he's mel gibson played him in in that film the book's incredible folks anyone you know um yeah it's got a lot of character names that will be from in a rick riscola who who died in a world trade center when it when it went down he was his um i don't know one of his sergeants or or some such thing but um in that story they had that exact scenario how there was so the the lack of humanness when they were telling these wives that your you know your husband got killed today or yesterday or whatever it might be and in the film the way they portray it is this uh uh this delivery guy rocks up a house he's knocking on the door and the woman's like no you know because he's i don't know he's got a tie on all these she's like no no and and then finally someone's like yeah she's yeah can you tell me where this house is and they're like wow and um from that point on in in that film they they set up this wives union so they could all support each other and and when the telegraph guy came or the telegram guy came um he had to report to them so that then then the wives could then break it to the wife that their husband husband had um been injured or killed so it was the same for the guys on the ground chris um we used to have a sit rep come across in the evening um and they would announce on there and everybody'd be on the radio we never all had radios then but you always listen to one it would say you know um casualties 10 and they'd name them and you know you're listening for one of your mates or god you're in training or you know god he's gone i had to got him and i think i've got some you know coliseum johnson no i can't that's not possible um it was just i don't know i don't know how we did it right my wife's will look back on it now it's a bloody miracle miracle but there we go jeff let's i just want to close with talking about the valuable work you've done with veterans united against suicide yeah um i know our paths have crossed on some of the charity stunts that i've that i've done um and uh you know people do struggle i've tried to get mates well i'm thinking of a particular mate of mine i've tried to get on the podcast who's with four five down there he said chris can't do it so after 40 years i've just been diagnosed with PTSD i thought said can't go to remembrance can't don't don't think don't can't talk about my military medals don't even know where they are um and uh yeah it's a big thing we've also seen 20 years of unpleasant conflict lots of service personnel have been taking their own lives when we'll you know we're all familiar with this scenario and and even the individuals involved and so i i want to talk about the work you've done and then also just send a message um you know a positive message to people out there okay um so can you tell us a bit about veterans united against suicide right okay started veterans united against suicide on the fairing there um i think it's me putting a bit back you know i've bare my soul a little bit today but um i also i'm a cancer survivor and um i was struggling myself um and bloke called big dav died from marine and i looked at the messages of condolence from the court and there were millions of them honestly god it was absolutely thousands of them and he was the world's biggest man he's more of a stunning beautiful children and he killed himself and um it really it just i felt like somebody smacked me in the face i couldn't couldn't get me around it because people all marine's don't commit suicide my 22 years no one i don't know anybody that died of suicide and uh i was i was taken back so i did a bit of research looked around and i found it was happening all over the place and uh so i decided to set a group up um that would build the awareness because people couldn't even say the word suicide mental health you don't talk about it doesn't get said and i said why not there's a lot of people suffering with mental health issues it ain't going to go away we're just ignoring it so i set the group up i challenged the government i wrote to them and i said could you give me the figures for um military serving and veterans deaths this year they said no we can't i said why not they said um we haven't got them don't record them i said what do you mean you don't record them no so before that he insulted my intelligence by saying it's no different to any other group of people in the country so well that can you work that out if you don't even keep the figures you can't you can't say that you it's on par with everybody else the veterans is is um god knows how many veterans are in this country but since i've been recording the figures five veterans die to every one serving and that runs over a six-year period it's almost identical so we're losing that that volume of people and you're doing nothing about it why are you recording veteran suicides because i got the serving to um but they haven't got the veterans and they said oh we've never we've never collated it so why don't you start collating it no i'm not doing that so i said right i challenge you i'll i'll collate it put a team of three people together and we collated it for six years and we've got the figures now we don't get every single figure but we do make sure that that person definitely died of suicide the problem with suicide is it's emotional it's a motive and people don't want to talk about it families don't want to admit that their son daughter passed um because they're struggling with themselves and all that is walk on eggshells for six years i've been criticized for it been murdered for it the emotional pain i've been through my team is unbelievable every day another one and and people i know as well people from the core the arm has been hit the hardy by miles so i kept it in the first year i think we lost this is at the top of my head because i'm not figures in front of me but i've got them um i was running about 86 86 people died government now it's no problem no problem doesn't exist us us guys that serve and have served we all know there's a problem i don't know a bloke now there doesn't know a person that's committed suicide so what's the big what's happened in 20 years 30 years from non to 80 odd and the next next year it was the same virtually about four or five different then then then we noticed something all of a sudden people started getting younger i spoke to someone marrying expert in the field he said jeff ptsd takes about eight years to manifest he said over the last two years it's come down to four um you know people people like me i'll be honest i've been diagnosed ptsd over the last six uh last six months and i've been a serious specialist i've opened my heart out to him and they've told me um that what i've done over the last six years he's opened a can of worms for me because people's sorrow has attached itself to me and he's opened my boxes that were securely secure and now i'm an emotional mess but we've done that over six years voluntary no pay 24 seven helping people people are struggling i get there to be a hundred people respond to this say yeah i was going to do it because the people like veterans united against suicide who are highlighting it a great pain for themselves i feel is really to carry on i've spoke to the families the wives someone were quite bitter and twisted about it all blame themselves kids getting psychiatric help now because daddy's killed himself and all that and the government can't take it seriously you know when john immerse and our john immerse is down your neck of the woods when john immerse became veterans minister i had great hopes that that was going to happen but he found these hands of tide and doors were closed slammed in his face and it never happened and here we are six years later 350 men have died on women and actually not just 350 chris it's their families it's the ripple effect their friends broken and jeff let's remember this this doesn't include the amount of people that have drunk themselves to death so we started to put that on the that bracket chris you know there's loads of done that you know they have drunk themselves stupid because they can't they can't deal with the demons in there unless they're drunk um and we've god we've all been there haven't we i don't think you can serve in the military and not get some sort of residual effect because even when you talk about it if you've been in a battle as soon as you start talking about it you're there the feelings that you had when you were there you can relate to it you can relate to it chris anyone's talking about anything to do with conflict you can relate to that because you know how it feels even if it's only an exercise even when you're on exercise if you're taking it seriously there's trauma because you know i've had people come to me in the middle of an exercise and go you're dead why or you went you went there and they got a machine up there that took you out you lie down you're dead i think bloody hell you know so i i did all that chris um because i don't want thanks for it it's not about that it's not about money it's not about fame it's about saving people and we save lots and that's the thing that i hold on to daily um you know my house not brilliant i've been told to pack it in but i won't the government have promised that next year they're going to start recording figures let me say now if anything that i've seen this government do it will happen but i i would not trust one of those figures because someone's only got to turn around and say oh no i didn't commit serious i got handed got a newsreader's neck but he was only pretending you know accident or death you weren't going to do it clonk the ladder and the ladder slipped that's what you're going to get you're going to get sanitaryce figures figures that don't they don't they don't represent much really happening out there and we are in the middle trust me i know i've lived it every day for six years we're in the middle of suicide epidemic and why we are is because it hasn't been dealt with yes the call is brilliant i think chris to be fair they've spent a lot of money in trying to get to the bottom of it they built a sensor at ctc where the guys can go now but until they have until they change things and these are the things that need to change it's simple but they won't listen to me because i'm a nobody they need to work on the transition of the guys coming out if they threw out thousands of people we in the call we released hundreds of people that were mentally damaged through service with ptsd and other things and when we chucked them out they went out at their most vulnerable they had to find a house a new place to live a job the kids had to find a new school all that while suffering with ptsd and we just thrown them out no wonder people are committing suicide just want to add something my trauma come from childhood i don't really talk about it a lot but i shouldn't have gone through that as a kid i can tell you that and i know i speak for a lot of service personnel we had very damaged upbringings and we saw the military as our you know the way to prove ourselves the way out and of course when you when you're a very damaged person and then in the prime years of your life when you should be making sense of dealing with that trauma but you're not because you're in a career which really protects you it puts a roof over your head it pays you salary it deals with your medicine it feeds you 20 you know 24 seven three six five you don't deal with it and then suddenly when you come out and you lose that protective umbrella and then things don't go you know you know you have to interact with civvy street and that's not easy you you have to learn things like if you have a problem with someone you can't just take them around the back like we used to do and get beaten up in my case but but you know you can't do that and then so what do you do you do what you've been taught for 20 years which is have a drink and then that becomes two drinks and then the missus is like honey the kids can't be seeing this shit um we're going to grandmas so you've lost your family and and this is you know and and all that time you're struggling for that identity which you've which has been put upon you for 20 years 10 years seven years whatever is the identity that this is i used to be somebody and this is it's not even i'm the only person that talks about it jeff i'm literally the only person uh that i'm just trying to raise people's awareness is that it's not just about seeing your mates get battered in a conflict it's that many of us were really damp with the the recruiting ground for the military is from predominantly i would say quite damaged people yeah and um this needs to be recognized and there needs to be more more more more provision jeff what we'll do is we'll put all your links below this video so people can get hold of you um you know don't for god's sake overload yourself because um you you know you starts with looking after our self-life i think you know we if we can't look after a self but i know what you're like and i know what i'm like we do always go that we would always go that bit extra at our own expense um to people out there struggling listen to this especially this this you know memorial anniversary i would say you know we got to live every day for those oppo's of us that aren't here to live right what would they give to be sat here now yeah at drinking a cup of coffee chatting with jeff they'd love it they'd love it you know and we've got to live every day we've got to embrace life you know we we're still here we're still firing and we're still smashing it the other thing is is leave your identity in the past every day is a fresh day it's like a i suck i don't know like a tv screen it just refreshes itself every every split second it's it's a new screen and that's what our life is you know if if we seek our identity in the past then that's where we're gonna live and you you've got to shake shake that off got to live for the present this is what will people bandy turned like mindfulness around and you've got to look after yourself and you've got to recognize of those habits drink drugs whatever it might be ultimately they just it's a downward spiral and um you know we need you to be going up and the final thing i'll say is um you know tough times don't don't last there's always light at the end of the tunnel there's millions upon millions of people that have have have shown that and hang in there and grab someone that you can speak to and just be honest with them tell them everything there's no there's no uh identity in this you know there's no match on this just you know just just start taking charge of it because i wouldn't change anything in my life despite what i've told you i've been through some you know horrendous stuff i honestly wouldn't change a bit i've been through chronic addiction battered mental health so so bad the doctors told my family i'd need to be put in an institution for the rest of my life and i don't jeff i i genuinely i wouldn't change any of it because once you crack it and you realize it's all part of your journey it's all part of your learning curve it it's allowed me to go on and create the best best live ever and if anyone doubts that come and meet my boy and jeff jeff's met my boy at one of our reunions it's like a gift from god for me you know and if anyone ever says i should have changed someone in my i wouldn't have him and i wouldn't change that for the world you know so you know there's always light at the end of the tunnel jeff isn't there yeah absolutely exactly what you said chris i mean what i found is you know seek help don't be afraid to ask for help speak to people that you trust you know i started initially initially recently whatever we should do is find three people that they would want to go to battle with and put their name and their number on the quick reaction force q r f in your phone so when you're feeling the blues are eating you phone one of them and say if you've got five minutes phone also even if you have to and get them to shake you out of it you know um it's so simple to do you know it's not gonna cost anything we're here to help you um we all feel down we have bad days and we have good days and like you said chris you know look at your family don't leave devastation behind when you go you know you surely want to see your kids grow up you want to see a marriage you want to see grandchildren and all the love and affection that family can give and your military family can give don't give up on it it's not the answer never been the answer never will be the answer you know battle on that's it from me chris really good man cheers jeff well it's been an incredible chat um i uh take my hat off to every everybody that um that uh made sacrifices in that conflict um a can't say how proud it makes you to be a raw marine but that's something that we we probably couldn't explain to people jeff no um thanks for coming on the show mate you've been incredible like i said we're friends we're going to put all jeff's links below um don't forget that we're going to have this falklands 40th memorial evening q and a it's going to be i've no doubt it's going to get a bit emotional but it's generally going to be a light hearted setting as possible come we'll all grab a drink we're going to sit there we're going to chat to these guys um we're going to hear their stories and we're not going to let we're not going to get this let this get lost to history so stay tuned to my social media and and jeff as well and we'll update you on how you can get tickets and uh that just leaves me to say massive massive thank you and big love to everybody at home please look after yourselves get out there today smile at the sun and uh remember you know there's there's folks that can't do that anymore and they they did it for all yeah you know they did it for us so thank you chris as well thanks thanks for everything thanks to all the people that are uh not thanks to him but people are struggling you know take some strength from it it's been good topics today you know it helps talking about it 90 ways about it thanks chris