 Where are you going to take him out with a sniper rifle or something like this? Oh, we're just going to go in there and do a house clearing attack on it, fighting in a boat up here if you want to call it that. With a gunship covering it, we had a whole place colour coded. Peter, how are you sir? Good, thank you very much yourself. Yes, what? Oh, sorry, we've got smoke, we've got smoke. First time that's happened in a podcast. Yes, I'm wonderful. Just thinking it's our mutual friend, Alison, we've got to thank for putting us in touch. So thank you. Thank you, Alison. She's been very helpful. Yeah. Yes, and after she gave me a few of your details, Peter, I did a bit of research and yes, you've lived an interesting life, should we say? Well, it depends. To me, it was just something that rolled out in front of me as I went along, you know. Yeah, I'm the same mate. We just live our lives, don't we? Yeah. I think if we condensed everything that we've done, it wouldn't be that much. I mean, if our life is this big, all our action stuff is probably squeezing to about that much of it. The rest is sat around watching telly or eating or sleeping or doing a boring job to get money for the next adventure. And you were born in Glasgow, Peter? Yes. And joined the Parachute Regiment? I joined the Parachute Regiment when I was 17 and a half, yes. Yeah, how did that come around? Well, I ran away from home and I was living in Aberdeen. I was working on the docks and one of the chapters working had been an XRSM in the artillery. And he sort of encouraged me and I asked him about the army. But I'd always thought about joining it anyway. So I joined the army in Market Street in Aberdeen. And the chap tried to get me to get into the Gordon Highlanders, which is the local regiment. I opted for the Parachute Regiment. Are you a proud para then because they've got some history, those boys, haven't they? Part of the maroon machine. What was the jumps course like back then? Was it the same one I would have done when I was in the Marines? Yeah, the same one. I don't know if you'd done the balloon jump, but we did two balloon jumps and they followed by aircraft jumps. Yeah, that balloon jump is a bit of a bottle test, eh? Did you ever see anybody refuse to do it? I never actually witnessed a person, but there was a person on my course refused and he was gone. I mean, before, you know, there was an embarrassment factor. By the time he got back to camp, he was on his way. I never actually witnessed that. We'd moved away somewhere. We'd done two jumps for that morning and we'd moved off. Yeah, I remember one of the girkers didn't want to jump out the Hercules. And he was like a cat in the doorway at his arms and legs out straight on the door. And the PJIs just had to peel his grip off and then just throw him out. I think the good thing about the parachute measurement is guys join it to parachute. You know, they know it's part of the job, so you normally get a good bunch of guys who are up for it. Yes, did you? Yeah, I mean, of course, and it's after you've done that first one, it's quite like there's no nerves or fear anyway, is there? You just crack on with it. I found the whole thing exciting. You know, I was obsessed with parachuting since I was a kid. I knew I was getting a chance to do it for free. Yes. Where did you serve with the Paris Peter? Cyprus, Aden. I was at Cyprus and Aden. And Barine, sorry, Barine as well. Yeah. Can you give us an idea of what conflicts you're involved in and why and what happened? I was involved in Borneo, I was involved in Aden, I was involved with the United Nations in Cyprus. But Cyprus was the first time I'd ever been shot at. But it was an effective fire, you know? It was a half-assed ambush and we just drove through it. Yeah. No one got hit. No one at all. Effective enemy fire, isn't it, when someone gets hit? Other than that, it's just, it's nothing. Yeah. And what was the conflict about there? Can you explain for our friends at home that might not know? Well, when I went to Cyprus, the Turks and the Greeks were fighting each other over. It was historical, who owned part of the island and what not. And eventually, I was there at the very beginning of it. And it was there for six months and then we left and then after we left, the Turks invaded the island, you know? Peter, can I just say, I think you're tapping on your device. Ah, yes, sorry. It's coming across on that quite loud. Are you able to put it down on something or is that going to be difficult? No, OK. I've got the message. You'll be OK. Yeah. OK. Brilliant. Yes, in Aden, what can you explain for us? What was Aden around? You hear this from the older veterans a lot about Aden. For our younger friends, it's going to be all forgotten, isn't it? Yeah, the group out there, the terrorist group, the dissident group was a federation for the liberation of southern Yemen. It was called and they were trained by the Egyptians up in North Yemen. And they came into the south and there was a bit of an insurrection around the Radfan area. And they brought the paris in the SES and one of the Anglian battalions. I think there were some Marines involved as well and they sorted the initial situation out, but it carried on for up until 1967. And did you see much action there? There were some issues in the long distance firing. I had one close-up contact and when I say close-up, the guy was about four or five feet away. Wow. Did you have to shoot him? Yes, I did. Basically, the troop sergeant was up front and I was the interpreter at the time. And he called me forward and said there were some shepherds there. And I noticed there was a sort of line and a straight row and I became fairly suspicious. And this guy woke up and shot the troop sergeant and then I shot him and then it just kicked off. We had two guys wounded and we killed five of them. How old were you then? 22. That's quite a young age, isn't it, to be involved in something so serious? I just wish I'd been involved earlier on because I feel the Army's sometimes not worth being in. If you're not fighting in that, you know, you get back to the UK and you get these maniacs looking for things to paint and places to do drill. It was never my 40. A big part of soldiering, but I didn't see it that way. Yeah, they call it active service for a reason, don't they? Because you are pretty active. We used to call it the guys. It was funny because the guys used to go abroad and then people left behind and there seemed to be a type of man. You'd go away, get yourself involved in a skirmish or whatever it was. You'd come back and this guy had been promoted one line cop ready to whip you back into shape. And with a piece that really rattled you up and down the square. And Peter, how did you, how did the SAS come around? Was that something you'd always wanted to do? No, I was in the depot. And I looked out the window and there was a guy standing there. And his face looked as if it was, you know, made out of leather, very deeply tanned. And he was awful, awful. To me he was an old man. He met the guy later on, but he was initially, an old man to me then was anybody who was over 30. I mean, I'm only 17. And but he was a troupey. And I couldn't understand this because anybody who was old in the parishion regiment were sergeants and sergeant majors. And I seen this guy and I said, who are they? And the chap says, oh, they're the SAS. And I found out a bit about them and I eventually asked for the transfer there. And was the selection back then the same as it is now this kind of grueling? It was, it was hard. I by no means shone on the selection. I mean, I did it and I passed it. But it'd be wrong to say I'd done it with flying colours. You know, I got through it. That's what counted to me. And did you see much action with the SAS? Yeah, we were doing an awful lot of need and at that time. And we were doing another lot of reconnaissance in Borneo. So you had a fairly exciting turn around. You did a trip to Aden, a trip to Borneo, a trip to the UK to for retraining. And you were on the go the whole time. Aden, we were getting fairly involved with skirmishes there. It'd be wrong to say there were pitch battles. It was sort of long distance shooting. And, you know, we'd return fire and we'd go and see if there was anybody and you'd find the odd one here and there. Did you, did you, did you have many casualties yourself? Well, I was there. There was two dead and I made a couple of wounded. We always had the upper hand. Don't forget, we had the assets to go with it. You know, if things get too heavy, just called in the choppers. And I mean, the gunships were in their infancy then, but they could give you some support. But, you know, we got to know the terrain just as well as the people who lived there because we were working there all the time. We knew where water was. You know, there'd be water catchment pools at places. So you weren't carrying gallons of water with you like it was in the early days. Yes. That water's heavy, isn't it? Yeah. Well, the first stop I did, we were carrying two gallons of water each and there were one gallon containers. And it was heavy. You know, it was, you know, we've all, all your ammunition, you have rations and it was a fairly heavy pack. So what is it then that sets the, the SCS trooper apart from the regular forces? Well, I'd like to say something here. The good guys in the SCS are no better than the good guys, anywhere else in the army or in the forces. It's just that through a selection process, the shooting theory be less bad guys. So you've got a lot of people there who, who are, who want to do it, they want to be involved in it. And consequently, they, they finish up getting roped in and doing the business. Yes. It seems to appeal to people that love to be a professional soldier. Is that fair to say? Yeah. Well, it's a pinnacle, isn't it? As I said, the good guys there are no better than the good guys somewhere else. I met an awful, awful lot of professional soldiers when I was stationed at Breckin. A good, solid infantryman who knew the trade all the way through. But you know, the SCS sometimes attracted the better elements of the army. Yes. Yes. Was it, could any, could all the other forces, all the other services apply for the SCS back then? Is that a modern thing? It started, it was mainly army. Then there was a couple of guys who came from the RAF regiment. And then later on the nautical types came along, you know, and then we guys should, it was hard to come from the Marines to the part of, so what the average Marine did at that time is come out the army and rejoin the SCS. Yeah. Yes, come out the Navy if you're a Marine and then reapply. And they assign you a sort of tokenistic regiment, don't they? Yeah. So if you're a Marine, you generally assign, your army regiment becomes the parrots then. Yeah. Yeah. What's the, I don't know if I'm touching on dodgy ground here, mate, but on your Wikipedia pages, says some stuff about disciplinary? I think I've got a chance to put that straight. I wasn't a bad soldier. I was a badly behaved soldier. You get some people feel they can take your right to be called a soldier away from you because you were badly behaved. My problem leaving a mixed alcohol with myself and I didn't agree. Consequently, I get into more than a share of fights. I was never disciplined in the army for army reasons. It was always for what happened outside the camp. Yeah, I can believe it. Is it fair to say a lot of people growing up in Glasgow have a very tough upbringing and alcohol becomes quite a major factor later in. Well, I can only speak for the area I came from. And most disputes and you don't, I never found this out to later in life. Most disputes there were solved through fighting. If you fell out each other, you get two guys fought it out. If you weren't happy with the result on a Saturday night, it was normally a Saturday, you know, after the football and stuff like that. And if they weren't happy with the result, they'd have what was called a comeback. What is in meat each other the next morning or the next week and settle the difference. But the great thing about it was when it was settled, it was settled. There was no animosity held after it. There was no grudges, you know, and everything just carried on. What's it like if I may ask then because I've very probably narrowly avoided prison myself in this lifetime. I think anyone who's a bit of a boy who's lived a bit is walk, walk that sort of line at one point or another. But I've often wondered what's it like for a serviceman when you come from this sort of disciplined environment. And then if you find yourself in prison. Yes. Is that an easy, easy is probably not the right word, but is it, is that an easy transfer for a service person to make or is it absolutely horrible? I found it. I just like to place the discipline within the prison I could take. It was the depth that some of the guys had sank to in there. You know, you had all types, all various types of there. And some of them were professional at their own game. You know, there were professional con men, professional antique thieves. And then you got the, you know, the lesser elements who had always been grashed or something as they put it. And a lot of them were role playing. You know, they'd get there and play the hard man because they weren't scared of losing their mission. Whereas the average person that went in there. He was, he just wanted to get out. Can you see it? But you got the, there was that element there who to them prison was status. I don't know. One day, one chap tried to bully me. And I pulled him into the, I was in charge of the bike show. I pulled him and hit him a few slaps in the Iran. And in front of the actual warder who was there, he started going, come on, come on. Let's see how hard you are now. And the warder just looked and he could see me and he walked off to the toilet. The left one was a guy on my own. So I, I just finished up battering him and left at that, you know, what I did find that a lot of the guys let themselves down in there. You know, they, you know, there's your self esteem. You know, you mustn't let it go. And you're in there for a reason. And as often say, if you can't pay the price, don't roll the dice. So I finished up there. I accepted it. It was a learning process for me. If I could, could meet the judge who actually sent me away. I think it's shaky hand. I don't think it was any, do we get the snog off the streets? I think it was this idea needs some breathing space, you know. Yeah, it can be. It can be a bit of a wake up call, can't it? Yeah. Being suddenly being in that environment and thinking, oh dear, I'm going to lose my liberty here. Yeah. I guess when it becomes just an occupational hazard and you accept it, that's where the lifetime of criminality comes in. Isn't it? You know, as I say, there were some, I met some decent people and decent people, but you know, they've been deemed by society to be criminals. But some of them were for various reasons. And you had that element. All they wanted to do is do the time, get out and get on with life. Yeah, the other element, as I say, they were a bit unlivable with, you know. I found them hard to be with, you know. This is not putting myself above them. I can only speak for myself, but I just found them hard to live with. Yes. I spent a weekend there, listening to a guy who'd come into myself and he'd been in the Paras and he must have killed more Indians than John Wayne over the weekend. And he'd never been in the Paras. He'd invented the background for himself. Can you see it? Yeah, when people chat like that with me, I just smile and listen and I feel really, I feel for them. A lot of people get really upset about it, don't they? But I don't. I just think, I had a guy once, I was on a night out, and I jumped in a taxi with this boat and he turned me, yeah, I was in the Marines. I was like, all right. I didn't mention my military history. He went, yeah, served at the Citadel, right? Well, anyone that knows, and our friend Rusty knows this, the Citadel is two nine commando, they're gunners. Okay, a part of three commando brigade, fair enough, but it was just a bit sad the way this guy was, he thought that if he said he was a Marine, that was more queued off than saying he was a gunner and of course it all gets a bit silly. I laugh at some of these guys. We call them Walter Mitties, or Walters for short. And you know, there was one cat, Champ the Cotton, Birmingham, here. He'd meddles, he looked like a South American general, he'd meddles for officers and men's meddles, because the officers used to get the MC and their meddle system was different at that time. And he'd two rows of them, wearing an SES berry, and he'd eventually get pulled in under some act. And the guy was in his probably early 60s, late 50s, and what he was trying to do was impress his girlfriend. And you know, I refuse to get upset about it, because I actually find them funny, you know. You get guys that are really upset about it, I don't see it, you know, there's stolen honour and whatnot. You're going to get them, whether you have the law, whether you don't have it, you're still going to have these chaps dressing up, you know. Yeah. The way I see it, it's a mental illness, and if you're going to attack these people, then you're the kind of person that attacks disabled people. And that doesn't mean that you've got a very balanced balance. It's different, these lads that dress up and they go and collect money with a tin. That's a different thing, you know. I challenge them in the high straight and gone, you haven't served. Oh yeah, what it is, a quid from this magazine goes to military, it's like does it bugger, you know. That's a different thing, you know, pretending to be a serviceman to commit a crime. But if you pretend to be a serviceman because you're mentally unwell, you need help and support. You don't need big, tough military thugs like threatening to kill you. I mean, I've got medals from three different armies and I stopped wearing them because I'd go and, you know, go to the odd parade and that and guys would be pointing them. What's that and they're twisting the medal around to see if your names are there. And I started feeling a wee bit embarrassed, you know. Hey, they'd have a job with me, Peter, because I bought mine off eBay and I'm not joking. Seriously, my Northern Island medal, I think it's in my last bedroom somewhere. But when I went to one of these, I think it was some reunion or it might have been the Sergeant Blackman protests or whatever we were calling them marches and suddenly I had to get a medal and you can buy the Northern Island one on eBay. So I just bought one of them. I didn't want to wear it, but I didn't know whether like I had to wear it. So I had it just tucked in my pocket. I never wore it, but yes, interesting. So can we, oh, what I wanted to ask is when you're in the prison, are sort of the other prisoners gone? That guy, S.A.S., will leave him and don't mess with this guy? I didn't have any of that. I was very fortunate. I met an ex-Marine in there and he was into the weights. He was really into weight training and I sort of teamed up with him and he used to... I did all freestanding training up till then and he introduced me to the weights, you know. And that was my sort of buddy the whole time I was in there. But mainly I was on my own, you know. Yes, like maybe like getting through selection, was it? Keep your head down and be the grey man. I just got on with it, you know. And the guys used to come up and see me, you know, some of my mates, you know, the old warders would say, who are those guys? You know, a couple of them are fairly heavy built, you know, the lute to part, you know. And at one stage, you know, some of the parrots come up to see me as well. It was people I hadn't seen for years, but they thought he's got himself locked up there. I think he'll go and see how he is, you know. Yes. Moving on, I'm just making a couple of notes here as we go, mate. What was it like when you saw the Iranian embassy siege and the hostage rescue on the television? Did it all sort of come flooding back to you? Did you wish you were still serving? No, I was in the South African Army when that happened. At the top of Nangola. And we got a couple of newspaper articles through. And I was with the South African Army. And, you know, I looked at it, and then I managed to get some stuff on it. And, you know, to me it was a very clinical thing. We all carried out and we all executed you. Did you know any of the guys that were on that operation? Well, I knew quite a few of them, yeah. Are we allowed to say any names that are in the public? Well, I knew Rusty. I met him a few times. And some of the guys on the balcony, I knew them. To talk to you in the pub, you know, just say hello and move on, you know. Rusty's always trying to borrow a pair of gloves off people, isn't he? Rusty's a man with no gloves, I'm the man with no hair. No comment. Nangola, my gosh, what a country that has seen utter bloodshed for so many years. Currently in peace, but it's all looking like it's kicking off down there in Africa again. Yeah. I think the Portuguese had 13 years of insurgency there. And the Mozambique and Nangola are two of the few colonies that the mother country just went, you've got it, you've got your freedom, you know, we're out of it. And they pulled out and it just kicked off a civil war, which in actual fact was fairly brutal. Then the South Africans came in and tried to sort a few things out to get the people in power that would be friendly to them. And Russia was heavily involved, weren't they? Russia, Chinese, you know. It was just a wake-up call to me. I mean, I've never seen things like that in my life, you know, there was just, there was a bridge there underneath the bridge. There was just piles of dead bodies where people had been, they seemed to take them to this bridge, shoot them in the back of the head and throw them over the bridge. You know, and it was a shallow pool underneath and there was just line there rotting, you know. It was a funny, funny situation. You know, you'd the MP LA, which was the Communist side, you'd the FN LA and you had UNITA. The FN LA was very influential in the North. And eventually the Cubans came in, either the MP LA and started pushing everybody back. So that's where the South Africans then came into it. I worked in Mozambique, so I was there, I suppose you say picking up the pieces after the civil war. I worked with street children. Yeah. In a school in a place called Nacala. Yeah. And of course the whole country's riddled with land mines. When the Portuguese pulled out, they filled all the sewers with concrete just to spite, to spite the locals because they, the Portuguese were obviously losing their, their place in paradise and they didn't like it. They blocked up all the sewers. So everywhere you went, it just stunk because there weren't, you know, there weren't any toilets. Quite funny. I think I was saying this to somebody the other day. It was a shame because both Angola and the Mozambique were beautiful countries. I mean, I was flying along the Rhodesian Mozambique border one day. And Rhodesia was just, as it was then, it then became Zimbabwe after it, but it was flying along the border. And you could see that Rhodesia was totally green and there was the border fence there. And the other side, it was just ed. It was, you know, independence has a price. And I think probably some of the colonial powers made a bit of a mistake. They should have been getting these people ready for independence. Before they actually seized it. So they, um, so normally what happens, you get the people who've got the guns are getting in power. And the people who have any experience of politics, we can find ourselves getting shot. Yeah, it's been bloody, isn't it? I mean, the Congo comes to mind for just utter, utterly horrific violence for years and years. Yeah. And, um, yeah, it's. Africa is an exciting place. It is. It's also a beautiful place. And, you know, South Africa, for its many faults, has managed to keep an element of stability. May have been, may have not been down the right road and holding that, keeping it that way. But she lasted longer than anybody else. And what's it like being a mercenary? Then, Peter, what there's a bit of, there's a lot of kind of mystique about that, isn't there? Maybe that's not, not the right word. But to be honest, I think there's a lot of bullshit myself, you know, they, you get guys there who are, you know, a security guard somewhere. They're mercs, not mercenaries, mercs, you know. The last mercenary operation that I knew was we make hold in the Congo. I'm not hoping any more of it, but, you know, it's a team, it's a term that's bandied about by the press. You know what I mean? It either glamourizes the people or demonizes them, you know, depending on what paper it is, you know. Yeah, of course, I bet you get some right knob-eds, don't you? You know, like when I was nine-gold, I was a kid there, turned up, and he wasn't a bad kid, I mean. But whoever sent him out there, you know, and I said, why are you here, son? He was 17 years old. He said, I want to get my mother on television. Don't forget the season 76. And I just looked on, but you know, as long as he was with people that mattered, he would take instruction and go along and do his bit. He didn't lack enthusiasm, but it was just that it was a strange excuse to get yourself involved in a civil war, you know. I want to invite my mummy on television. Is there, when you're fighting in these sort of conflicts as a mercenary, is there a general lack of rules, like you can do what you want, or is it just run along the same lines as the military, and how do the people behave? A lot of them get very taken in with the movie image, you know, what you should be in that. Dressing upside down, on the weapon and whatnot. The only way you run a mercenary operation is run it like the people who've got the experience at it. And that's the army or the military. There's no quick way around it. You don't get helicopters all flying in from different directions. Swaz and Hager gets out of one, Stallone gets the other. Some other guy comes out there, shaving himself with a blue razor blade and they get together and they just gel into the jungle and wipe out half of humanity. You know, it's not like that. I mean, I found myself doing, you know, a bit of social work, you know, like I got landed in a town there and it was, people were starving. It was because the army was taking the food off of them. Yeah, I can believe that. Was this in Angola? Yes. Yeah, I think people over here wouldn't understand the level of poverty there, would they? No, you've got to say it to believe it. You know, the thing that Africa has got going for it is the weather. So you can, you know, it's not hard to sleep in the ground outside and whatnot. But you know, the average Angolan there, they were struggling along. And actual fact, they were a decent race of people, you know. And, you know, they needed leadership and it wasn't there. You know, the whole system had collapsed during the Civil War and it was, you know, whoever was carrying the gun called the tune. What weapons did you favor then as a mercenary? What, is there a particular assault rifle that people want to get their hands on and do you just get what you've given? No, I've always liked to get my hands on an AK. And Africa is riddled with almost, there's plenty of ammunition about for them. And it's a steady old, it's a solid old weapon. And that was the reason I favored it when it was in the Redesion Army and we were doing cross-border operations. In one case there, I came out with more ammunition than I jumped in with. Because, you know, it was lying all over the place where guys just drop it and run. Does it fire, is it called a short round, the Kalashnikov? It's a 7-6-2 round. But the FN, which was the British Army weapon at the time, or the SLR, was 7-6-2-5-9 or 5-5 something. And the Kalashnikov was more along the lines of a M16 round, can you see it? I mean, the thing is with the FN round, when you hit somebody with one of them, you went down, you know. I think it was 7-6-2-5-9 I think. It was a hefty weapon. The only thing is, with both the AK and the M16, you could carry a greater battle load than you could with the FN. Because the FN ammunition was fairly heavy compared with the lighter versions of the armour light and whatnot. Peter, can you tell us any episodes from, I'm going to move on to Rhodesia in a moment, but from your mercenary work, what were the kind of hot moments? I was driving along the road and I noticed there was a heart lying on the road. There was post-war combat hats and I stopped next to it. And I went to pick up the hat and I went, I was right on the edge of an ambush. I wasn't in it, I was on the edge here. So I just behaved normally. I got in the truck. I've never seen a Land Rover reversing as fast as that. I must have been doing about 60 miles an hour. Anyway, I got myself a little bit. Yes, good. So Rhodesia then, which is now latter days in Bobway, was Ian Smith was the president back then, wasn't he? Back in the 70s and he said, one of the last countries to relinquish its colonialism. And Ian Smith said, if we give this country back, it will just go to bloodshed or greed or corruption, et cetera, et cetera. And then of course, Mugabe took over, didn't he? Yes. So they had a puppet or a very, can we say a suspicious leader for the next God knows how many years until Mugabe, he's dead now, isn't he? Yeah. So were you there under Ian Smith? Yes, I was. I was there when it was Rhodesia. And then for a while, it became Zimbabwe Rhodesia. And then was another transformation period where it became Southern Rhodesia again, which was the original colony. And then it became Zimbabwe. Wow. And a lot of Rhodesians couldn't recognize the Southern Rhodesian flag up and up for a couple of months, you know, and then the elections took place and Mugabe got in power. The Rhodesians tried in their own way to get a balance. But by then the damage had been done. It had been 15 years of war. The Nationalist got in power. And that was the end of it. It went not to, well, I say it's not the end of it, it went not too bad for a few years now, it just slid downhill. And Peter, you were in the Rhodesian special air service. Yes. The South African Police Special Branch. Yeah. And the South African Defense Force 44 Parachute Brigade. Yeah. This is a very colorful military career, isn't it? Well, as I say, it just happened. That just, this thing was changing. I just moved on. I was off of the job with a working working with I was never in the special branch. I was working with the special Brian swing of the Salute scouts. I was neither a scout nor in a special branch. But I was just a contractor who worked for them. And how does the Rhodesian SS compare to its English counterpart? Is it very similar or is it? They had all the same aims. It's just that the guys there were younger. They were a lot younger. And you know, there were, I mean, people said I didn't like Rhodesians. It's not true. I just didn't understand them. It was the schooling system. You know, everybody was very proud of the schools. I went to Guinea Fool. I went to Plum Tree, you know, and they did. And they had this habit of wearing their school socks with a underneath a camouflage. I don't know where it came from, but you know, you get the odd guy. He's just he's camouflage. You slip back. You see a Guinea Fool or Plum Tree hose top, you know, I think a lot of that. Come in. Sorry, I've just seen someone come into the work. Chris. That's fine. Yeah. See you later. Sorry about that. Not a problem. Yeah. They, as I say, they were a lot younger. But Rhodesia, what they actually did. They were taking men from the underlying different units. And there was not SES thought pattern as they saw it. So they do a selection course and then come into it into the squadrons and learning the squadrons. And then they adopted this right. Let's get them from the start. From school. And let's get them thinking like SES men from the beginning. And I was used to SES guys being older. And like in the British SES, but it worked there. And those kids, they really picked it and they were intelligent as well. I mean, they were good at picking up things like morson. You know, all the other skills like demolitions, mortars, machine guns. They were very fast on the uptake. On the whole, it was a good genoc. And what I was trying to think of a question that our friends at home would be wanting me to ask. So what, can you give us an idea of what action you saw, you saw with them? What were the fights about? Are you talking about in the bush? Yes. I think about the religion army, which had something over most other armies. You grew comfortable with combat. Most of the times you went out, you were in action. And it was some of it was heavy. Some of it was skirmishes. Some of it was camp attacks. And the, you just grew comfortable with combat. Whereas when I was in the British army, I found that all I got was a serious breach, you know. Okay, you're going to such and such a place. And you'd have to, you know, your Batman would come to terms with it because you've just been told and you were thinking about, you know, how you're going to go and meet your girlfriend in Glasgow in excellent weeks time. And so there was that. Whereas the religion is the one at it the whole time. And they put their heart and soul into it. They believed in what they were doing. And as I say, the world's politics, politicians put pressure on them. And then they had to hand over because there was pressure putting South Africa who put pressure on Rhodesia. And at one stage we were down to, I think it was 18 days ammunition. And it says, we better come to a solution. We'll try and get a solution. And like all other wars, the only thing that solves them is politicians getting together and sorting the thing out. Yeah, it's a bit hard of that, isn't it? When most politicians are just cowards and those that aren't cowards that their hands are tied to do anything. Oh, the religious is the only country where I've been in where the politicians let the army get on with it. You know, no doubt there was a liaison between the generals and the politicians, but they left you to get on with it. They weren't worried about what so-and-so thought because it didn't matter to them anymore. So you had this aggression to try and bring the thing to the water halt and they put everything they had into it. Was it? Was it? It's a bit of a stupid question, but obviously it was gutting for the people when they had to relinquish control. Did they? They were, but an awful lot of the regions were sort of second generation. They'd come out there after the war. You know, there were Brits who just emigrated there. The least they were was phenomenal. I mean, it was fantastic, you know. I mean, food was cheap, meat was cheap. The only thing, you couldn't get an awful lot of it was fish, you know, and they started making their own booze. And I remember they made this booze called, I think it was called the whiskey. It was called the Barton or something. And you get one bottle, you could drink a bottle of it and not feel anything. And the other one, if you took a little sip of it, you were on your back. They started trying to do it themselves and to be independent of other people, you know. Peter, what's the connection with Pablo Escobar? Did I get that right? There was a connection in that I tried to kill him and I wasn't successful at it. I was confident that we'd trained enough that we had the right caliber of person to do it. And as it happens, a mountain got in the way of my helicopter. How did it come about? How did you set out to kill Pablo Escobar? Why? And who was funding you? Yeah. Dave Tomkins, a friend of mine, came to me. I'd met Dave in Angola and he was wounded there. I'd gone to see him in hospital a few times and we sort of became friends. And Dave approached me and says, how do you feel about going to Columbia? I says, oh, what's the job? He says, to kill Pablo Escobar. I said, OK. And we went out there and we met two businessmen. I say again, two businessmen. And the answer is if we could kill Pablo Escobar. And I said, at the moment, I feel we can. And I'd like to have a look at the place and see what we're going to attack. And they were very, very helpful. Anything we asked them for, helicopters, weapons, they gave it to us. We had a liaison officer with us called Jorge Salcedo who was in the intelligence side of the army and he handled everything for us. So that's how I became involved there. And then we said, can you do it? We said, yes. He says, OK, what do you need? Go on. We will fund you. In reality, we had been talking to members of the Calais Cartel who Pablo Escobar had tried to kill. They tried to kill him. And it looked like a war was kicking off. And they reckoned it was bad for business. So the army was involved in it as well. And they just wanted the problem solved. They couldn't get it solved militarily wise because enough of what the people in the military were on the payroll of Pablo Escobar. For example, if you flew anywhere near Pablo Escobar's ranch, the people on the radar would report to him that there was aircraft about. So what we decided was to get up as high as we could on that and we flew over these premises a few times. So when the radar people reported to them, it just looked like an aircraft passing over. But I was taking photographs all the time. How would you have killed him? What was the plan? It wasn't, you know, a lot of people, you know, you'd left wing newspapers and whatnot. See, you know, it was just a bunch of guys who got together. The guys I had there had all been in action before. There wasn't one of them who had never been on the trigger. They'd all done it before and they'd all been used to fighting against superior numbers to their self. We got there and we trained for 11 weeks. Now, when I was in the army, at no time did I ever get 11 weeks to train for a job. And for that 11 weeks we trained. Every scenario that we thought was going to happen, we cared for it. We rehearsed it, we practiced it. We did a full dress rehearsal where we attacked a piece of ground that we'd marked to in the shape of Pablo's ranch. And, you know, so we went through all the motions of that. It wasn't some half-ass thing that was thrown together. And all the guys I had, they were all professionals. Yes. Did they come from all around the world? Did you recruit them from your previous adventures? Yeah, well, a lot of them had been in the Radesian army, the South African army. And we had a couple of guys from the territorial SES and a couple of Australians. And were you going to take him out with a sniper rifle or something like this? No, we were just going in there to do a house-clearing attack on it, fighting in a built-up area, if you want to call it that, with a gunship covering it. We had a whole place colour-coded. Each room in the place was colour-coded and numbered. So everybody as we go along and say, what is that? That's white one. That's white two. What's the back of it called? That's black one, black two. It wasn't just thrown together. A load of guys chancing it out. We had Chinese parliaments there, where everybody had input. And what if this happens and somebody would come up with an idea and we'd take it. And it wasn't just me being the boss and telling the guys what to do and them following it. They had an awful lot of input to it. How much were you going to get paid for doing this? One of the movies that came out, that documents that came out said we're getting five thousand pound a month. I'm sorry it wasn't that. That was a down payment they got for coming out there. The salary was something like seven thousand dollars a month at that time, with a twelve thousand dollar bonus if we attacked a place. Or twelve thousand dollars if we took off to attack a place. So it was fairly well paid. Don't forget this was many years ago. Was this round about the time Escobar, he went a bit mental for a stage, didn't he? He was just blowing up everybody. He went on the rampage. He actually, he tried to get into politics and rejected and I think there was an awful lot of DEA out there at the time. And I think they just wanted them out of the way. And we came along as part of their solution. As Dave Tomkins often says, they let us get on with it. And they said we'll suck it and see. At least if something happens to them, it's not happening to us. So they knew about it. It was a, Pablo had to go, it was outside the city of Medellin. He was a sort of maniac, you know. But he did an awful lot for the people of Medellin, financed by the money he made from cocaine. He built football pitches at schools for kids, put the lights so they could play football at nighttime. There was that social scene. But then again, as somebody said, the kids used to give money to charity as well. It was just the way he was. And he had to go. And how long after was it that he was shot dead on that rooftop? The following year, I think, yeah. Gosh. What was your plan then, Peter? In all of your skirmishes, if you'd ever got caught, because some of these people, it wouldn't have been, I'm guessing it wouldn't have been a very nice ending for you. Well, out of all the guys, that was the only one that landed in that actual position. And as I see a crash in the helicopter, and I was left up in 9,000 feet up in the mountain. And by this time, Pablo had picked up there was something afoot, and he was sending parties out, and they were killing people for no reason at all. And I said, if they got a hold of me, I'm going to give a horrible death. And my third day when I was up in the mountain, after the crash, I could hear Spanish voices. I said to myself, well, here we go. It's time. And I thought it was Pablo's voice. So I just took a grenade, I pulled the pin out, and I had a little inter-dynamic submachine gun. And I said, well, if I go, take a few with me. And that's how I genuinely thought, it's not moving material. I said, because if these guys get me, I'm going to take one hell of a death. So, you know, that was the decision I made. And as the guys came upon me, I never noticed me. I was lying tucked in under a bush, and I just stuck with the submachine gun in his stomach, and he started screaming, Ricardo, Ricardo, which was one of the guys' codename. And I then realized I was fairly safe hands. Yeah. So, sorry, just to clarify, who was Ricardo? Ricardo was the army liaison officer that we had with us. His name was Jorge Salcedo, his codename was Ricardo. Ah, okay. And they'd come to rescue you? Yeah. That was a relief, I'm guessing. It was a relief, but I was in immense pain. And what they did is they chopped down a tree. And by the time they were very, very efficient, they chopped down this tree, and before I knew it was, it looked like a telegraph pole that cut the branches off everything. They strapped me on it, and they lowered me down, slid me down the tree trunk, and then moved on, and they kept slid me down, all the re-entrant, all the way down to the bottom. It was terribly painful. What was actually painful? Were you broken bones and such? I didn't find out till later. I was four ribs smashed at the front, four at the back. All men's sides. I'd given the, you know, my heart and lungs and what not, a terrible bashing as well. It never, it wasn't stove chest, but it was possibly as near as you could get to it. And it was just, it was painful. But as I say, those guys got me down, and it was reassuring to know that I was going to get somewhere, but they were, I said, how long is it going to be? Eight hours, right? How long is it going to be? Eight hours. You know, as we've been down then, we camped tonight in a riverbed, and it started raining very heavily, the river flooded, so we were lining water most of the night. And then there was a little bank where they sat on the bank, and I could, I had escaped money with me, and they robbed it off me. They were counting the, you know, split off as I was there. But I was just, I was just glad to be out of it. I bet. Peter, can you give your books a shout out before we say goodbye? Yeah, see, it's a reprint of the original book No Mean Soldier. The cover is there. It's a new cover it's on in, and we had it reprinted because it was starting to sell an awful lot again, and it came into demand quite a bit. It was, a lot of people have helped me with that book, and in actual fact, some people that helped me, they came from Workington Town rugby club, and they said, look, we can line up atop for you here, and we'll help you to sell your book. So they've been extremely helpful to me as well. Good. For friends at home, we'll put a link below this video for Peter's book. So I don't need to encourage you to read it. Do I have to hear in this story? It's one like no other. What, have you any social media that you want people to follow you on, Peter? www.PeterMichaelEase.com Okay, I'll put, again, we'll put a link under the video folks. Peter, it's just been amazing, not just to meet you, but to hear your story, and I hope we can stay friends for a very long time. And have you back on the show at some point? Because I reckon our viewers will have a few questions that they'd like to put to you. Well, you know, firstly, thanks very much for talking to me, and I'd be glad to come back on again. If anything, it may help to sell some copies of my book. Yeah, that's what we're all about. Yeah. So, Peter, just stay on the line so I can thank you properly when I've hit the record button off. But massive thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing your life with us. Yeah. To everybody at home, could you please like and subscribe so we can bring you more good content like this and click the notifications bell. That would be wonderful. And to everyone that supported us on Patreon, massive thank you. To those at Hunter level and above, you're going to see your name in the credits now. So thank you to you. And we'll see you next time.