 So I took him up to the hospital, passed him over to McJoy and his team, his trauma team, and they took him into the dressing station and began to treat him. I would love to say thank you because he saved my life or he helped all the surgeons who worked on all of us. Last night we came up as a company, take this position here. And we were very reluctant to use Morphy. As we came up about 200 metres, we came under fire from up here and also further down as well. But with the SMG, you can physically feel the mechanism coming back. My respect and my gratitude to the doctors who saved my life. Paul, how are you, dear brother? I'm very well, thank you. Yes, mate, I'm utterly delighted that you've joined us on the podcast, Paul. Friends at home, Paul and I have known each other a number of years now. We do like to go out. We've been out in the town a bit in Plymouth a few times with, I don't know, gosh, up to 300 other other commandos, which we do once a year. Friends at home, Paul, absolutely lovely man. If you go online and check out anything about Paul, it's it's just beyond belief. I couldn't do Paul justice with not with my memory. But what I can tell you is Paul joined the Royal Navy. As a as a rating and left as a Lieutenant Commander. He served in Northern Ireland, the Folklens War, Gulf War One, Gulf War Two, Cambodia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Obviously, this year is quite poignant because it's the fortieth anniversary of the Folklens. And Paul was a medic down there attached to four five commando. Paul was good friends with the late Rick Jolly. What what rank was Rick, Paul? It was a surgeon captain when he left. Yes. Again, another incredible gentleman who was the think one of the only or the only person to be decorated by both sides during the conflict. For their insistence on treating the Argentine casualties exactly the same as that as as they did the British casualties, which I believe is Geneva Convention. But I've read a lot of books on the Folklens and. I think a lot of these young Argentines were quite surprised that upon capture, they weren't. Can I say taken out and that they were actually treated with all all the respect as a soldier should extend to to another soldier. So yes, I'm I'm very, very proud of that. And of course, Rick died. Was it about three or four years ago now? It is. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And there's some so much history with with respect to the Folklens. But Paul, so I don't talk any more. Let's let's just go back to your story. What what what was your sort of upbringing and what was it that led you to to join in the mob? And well, my dad was a sergeant in the Royal Army Medical Corps. And when he left, he remained in the what they call the T.A. Terrestrial Army or the Terriers, they call it. We used to go away at weekends. I used to go away with him. And he did a lot of casualty simulation during exercises. And I got really interested in this. He used to make wounds out of plasticine and stuff like that. But when I sort of I sort of started my military career at about age 11. I came from the inner city of Manchester. I was born in a place called Cheetah Mill. And then when I was 11. I passed my 11 plus exam. And I honestly think that that's where my military career started. And I came from a rough area of Manchester, but I went to school, went to a grammar school because I passed my 11 plus, which meant I had to walk through the streets of what was similar to Beirut, I suppose, on a daily basis in order to get to this grammar school, wearing a uniform, blazer and a cap. And it was hard work, I must admit. And I did struggle daily to get on two buses to get to this special grammar school. I was possibly I'm an educator now. And I'm an education officer in the Navy. But I do feel then that the 11 plus for me wasn't a good move. I must admit I was taken out of my comfort zone. I was put in an area where I didn't want to be. And all I didn't concentrate on academics. I concentrated on sport and survival, really. And I was a good rugby player at age 16. Didn't get any qualifications, which well, I did. I think I got Arts, English and Pottery with the three GCSEs I got. So I obviously wasn't going to set the wheel down fire. But I decided then that I would join the Navy. So I went down the careers office. I went to be a firefighter and they were recruiting firefighters at the time. So I like loads of others. I ended up joining the Seaman branch. My parents were really pleased. They were quite a bit apprehensive, interesting that I never gave the army a look at all the Royal Marines in fact. Because actually it wasn't like that in 1975. It was you went into the careers office, into the Royal Navy, spoke to a sailor, joined the Navy. Didn't join as a firefighter, joined as a Seaman, got to rally. Playing rugby for the first 15 at 16 as a trainee. So I got time off from training to go and play rugby. Finished my part one as a class leader, which was a great achievement, really, I think, probably because I was a large goby mancunian, I suppose. Started my Seaman training, got a windy hammer out and thought, do you know what, I ain't doing this. I've got all levels. So I then spoke to my D.O. and said, you know, my dad was in the Army Medical Corps, I think I might like to give it a try. So I then transferred to the medical branches, a recategorised medical system. That was all good. I should point out that I've been through rally, not a lot of people would probably think that of a Royal Marine. But yes, I went through rally and I did my Seaman ship training. In fact, we went all around the South West, Pompey, etc, etc. Did you ever do? I mean, I'm guessing you must have done the damage repair unit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Can you tell I do it now? I don't do it. I organise for students to go and do it. So I've been in there quite recently and it still is grim and cold and wet and miserable, as it always was. Yeah, I took a lot of former young offenders there one time. And they're very generous in, you know, who they offer this experience to. And all these youngsters that when they're in prison wanted to be the hardest guy on the wing. Soon as there's a jet of water pouring out of a gash in a ship into into their face at 30 mile an hour. I think that was the expression sorts the men, men from the boys or the women from the girls. Certainly it does. Yes, so you become a medic. Yeah. And and I brought this. I suppose I did have a bit of an attitude. So I brought this attitude with me to the medical branch. And my at the 18 week point, the big classes, you know, there's 30 all in the class. And at the 18 week point, we had to do exams. And I think there's something like nine or 10 subjects who have to do exams. And I was unsuccessful in one of my exams, which was I think it was medical store keeping. And I got back classed. And in those days, what happened was one, one class went to Hasla to do their part three training. And the other class went to Plinner to the hospital, the Stonehouse. So I was due to stay at Portsmouth, but I failed my exam. So they sent me down to Plinner, joined a new class in Portsmouth. But that was absolutely fantastic. You know, the guys in Portsmouth did submarines surface for the tiller and tended to stay in that part of the world. I came to Portsmouth where we had the Royal Marines and surface ships. Well, I didn't really fancy surface ship. Rally wasn't too much of a challenge, to be honest. A couple of assault courses and a bit of running. But, you know, I was a pretty good standard rugby player. So I did fancy a bit of a challenge and I was put in exactly the right place to be. And I must admit my I've never failed another exam since. Oh, actually, I failed my driving test the first time. But yeah, no, I haven't failed another exam since. But life was just laid on a plate for me, really. It's perfect. Oh, so qualified, went to my all arms. As soon as I qualified as an MA, I took a volunteer post and went to Stonehouse Ballots to start my beat up. And on the All Arms Command, of course, and that was about November 77. So I must have qualified about August 77. No, I'm lying. Sorry, I must have qualified about as a medic about July 78. And I was on my all arms in November. About 35 of us joined and that was that was a good laugh. The Royal Marines don't have their own medical assistants because they were they're too busy concentrating on being the the GD and specialist Royal Marine and professionals that they are. And there was some reluctance to take marines out of their core duties for over a year to train as a medic. So they found it easier to take trained medics and put them through the All Arms Command, of course. And that worked. It doesn't work the same now, but it certainly works in those days. But numbers was always an issue. About 30 of us joined from different establishments. Big ones, little ones, fat ones, thin ones. No idea how to wear boots and putties. On the opening three mile BFT. And some guys didn't have laces or they didn't have putties on. And they tried to keep the boots on with putties, you know, and there was like putties and boots all over the road. And I think after the first run, we'd lost about a dozen people. Couple ended up in prison at the main gate because they didn't want to do this soldier in rubbish. But we stayed on six of us finished. And the course was stopped. It was a bad winter. We had the summer of 76, which was really hot. And we had the winter of 77, 78, which was really, really cold. I mean, I spent most of my commando course over the Christmas period digging sheep out on Dartmoor, because that's, you know, the big trucks that we use, the MKs, they all had skis on them, you know, and there was people skiing on Dartmoor that winter. And we were trying to do the all arms, but it got better. And in the March, we fit six of us finished in the March. How is it for them doing the all arms command, of course? When you're already full time in the military, because it's the same causes, it not that the territorial's do that the reservists do. But they've got to do it like in spare time. No, the all arms command, of course, very different. The aim is for us to complete the eight week commando course at Limbson, which is the final phase that you would have done. So you do 30 weeks training. And so 22 weeks is the buildup. And then on the final eight weeks, you do your commando pass out tests. We do something very similar, but because we're trained ranks and we take the navy, the army, and we take the gunners and the engineers from two nine and from five nine. Two nine and five nine did their own beat up. But for the navy, the Royal Marines did the beat up. We did it at Stonehouse. The engineers did it at Crown of Four and the gunners did it at the Citadel. And it was a single service choice. How big the beat up was. And I think we did. I think we did three weeks or two weeks. No, no, it's longer than that. It must have been three weeks or so. But for us, for the for the medics, we were basically we needed to learn military skills, because although we all know the say in a Matlow with a gun and that basically that's how we joined. It was a Matlow that had held and fired a gun. But we needed to know those intricate skills of weapon handling. So we had a lot to learn and unlike the gunners and the sappers who that was their career. So they concentrated on fitness. We concentrated on everything. So by the time we got to limestone, we were able to embark on that eight week commando course and the pass out. So it was quite difficult for Matlows. And that's why the pass rate was so low, I think, was we didn't have the field skills. We didn't have the weapon skills, marching and clothing and uniform didn't matter. But we did need those core skills. Now, I got probably with it with a signaler. It wasn't just gunners and engineers. You know, we had signalers as well and Remy RAF, even we had doctors and Padres. You know, it was a bit of a bit of a conflagration there on the all arms. But I was clever. So I got myself a corporal signaler to Bivi with called James Beverly. And it was a corporal. And he was in the Army. I knew everything about everything. Also, I thought. So I used to do all the basic skills of living in the field, the cooking, the cleaning and sort of husbandry. And change would clean the weapons and make sure everything was fine. Or should I say, clean his own weapon because I spent the rest of my life doing press ups for having a monkey weapon, as you can imagine. So didn't do me any favours having James Beverly as a buddy, but I must admit he was a great bloke. Give us loads of laughs. Can I spin you my dick about? MMA, is it Medical Assistant? That's correct, yeah. Yeah. Paul, when we went to Norway with 4-2, we had this MA attached to the unit, right? So. I don't know which way round to tell to spin this dick, but but but basically. There was one time we were skiing along in Norway and it was a big ski. It was something like 12 miles or something. And you know, the old company snake and everyone's exhausted and it's every 10 minutes. You sit down and wait. And then it's five minutes. Smoke break turns into a four hour smoke break. And and the we had this medic attached to us, but people started to notice it was something like not quite right within, you know, what we call a bit of a bit, you know, bit bit sort of useless, right? And so the message went up the snake and it was. Man down. Get the medic up here now, right? Then the message comes back down the snake. Oh, it is the medic. That's right, right? No, it gets worse. It gets worse, right? Turns out this chap had rocked up to four to to be attached to four to just just as an M.A. Not command or anything. And he thought, oh, I'm with the Marines now. I'd better go to the store and get myself one of those green green berries. I'm a do not poor kid. You're not right. So he just he just didn't know. So he went to the store and he got himself a green layer done, you know, he put his naval insignia on it. Went out to Norway because everyone just thought, well, the guy's commander trained friends at home. The reason Paul's done this all arms commander course is if you're attached to free commander bread, you you've got to keep up with a brigade. So if you've got a bunch of Marines that are really good at yomping, carrying lots of weight, you've got to be able to keep up with them. That's that's that's why Paul did the commander course. This chap done none of that. But it happens. It still happens today, you know, it's when I was Brigade branch advisor for the for the medical branch. It's very difficult. People don't understand. People serving don't understand. And they say, well, why do you have to be commander trained? Well, I used to explain to people, the reason we're commander trained is that the commanding officer has got enough on his plate already. And he has to know that his every man in his unit is capable of doing a river crossing, doing a yomp, marching at speed, climbing a cliff, up sailing off a cliff. You know, we've got to be able to do these skills, particularly the river crossings and stuff at night in the cold. It's not easy. So as long as we've qualified to have done and have run 30 mile carrying weight and have done a nine mile speed march, you know, these things are key so that the colonel knows that when he's got that obstacle, every man can get over it. What he doesn't want is a matlow that has just joined for a couple of weeks, who now is lagging behind it. And of course he's the guy that's got to keep everybody going. So it is absolutely imperative that guys in commando units, medics in commando units, are commander trained. And I've done in excess of 20 winters, you know. And it is a skill, living in the cold and living in the field is an absolute skill. And also I knew where to be, i.e. at the back. So if there was an injury forward, I could at least move forward and conserve energy rather than be at the front and have to move back to treat somebody. So there's a lot of skills in there, not least cooking a 24 hour rat pack in the middle of Norway at minus 30. So yeah, it's important. Yeah, the SAS found out this to their cost. They've got a rule in the SAS, unless you're a trooper, you can't go on patrol with them. Yeah. But there was a situation down there that I believe his name is Sir Cedric Dells. He tells in his book, Across an Angry Sea, where they just didn't have a certain person for the patrol. I think it might have been radio operators. So they just, this guy sort of stepped forward and volunteered and they put their heads together and went, okay, yeah, he's a big lad. He looks like he talks a talk. And of course, it ended up with Sir Cedric literally having to drag this man from the enemy across the Falklands. And it turned into a bit of a nightmare. Yeah, absolutely. So Paul, tell us more. Where did you move on to then? What happened then? I stayed in Plymouth. I've incomplete my all arms. I then stayed in Plymouth. I'm 21 now, I think. Yeah, finished my all arms and I think I was 21 about two days later, something like that. Went to log regiment and then, would you believe, I fell off a wall and we'd had a few beers and I took a shortcut, fell off a wall, three, four position and everything, but damaged my ankle, what broke my ankle, in fact. And I was due to join 4-5 in the August. And so I went up to 4-5, joined them in the August with a plaster Parison. And I tell you what, within two days, I think I was doing helicopter drills with a put on. And I said, I can't do this. I got this put on and they're like, no, no, you're a liability if you don't need these helicopter drills. So until now that was our, that's our life was. You just got on with it. And I did. So I still had a broken leg in the December when I got married and I got my mate, he was also a medic to chop my plaster off. So we cut my plaster off so I could walk down the aisle. And then shortly after that, we gladed, I mean, Norway, skiing. But yeah, fabulous. So straight into 4-5. How did you find Norway, honestly? Hated it. And I learned the Norwegian language because I thought I'm not going to make a habit of coming here. But I must admit, my first winter was 79. And then I must have done every winter, then for about 12 winters. And then kept going back with different units. I did two great winters with five nine. Of course, what I think the thing about, I alluded to earlier, if you can cook a rat pack and you can use snow and you can look after your gear, i.e. if you're not using it, it goes back in your pocket or back in your burger. And you can get a good night's kip. You can do amazing things in Norway. And there's no midges. And it got to the point that I absolutely loved it because I was, I'm a routine, process driven person. So it was easy for me. I knew what to do when I got in my tent. And I knew I needed to get in my bag, get my cooker on, get my snow melted, get my scran, get my wet, get my scran cooked, eat my scran, go for the pee, get in my bag, get my head done. It was a sin for that. Did you have to change lingo when you're working with the army? I'd seen what, oh, scran and stuff like that. Yeah, you just said wet and scran and they say, well, it's scoff and a brew. No, I didn't have to change, mate. I changed them. And it wasn't just me, but I am friendly with a lot of guys from five nine and two nine. I'm in the, I'm the treasurer for the Commander Association. So the predominantly army because they're the biggest, but they secretly take some pride in using our lingo, believe me. It's all scran, wet, yomps. Yes, I bet, I bet. And great guys too. I did my paracourse with a couple of two nine guys. They were freaking hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. Yes. They do want to be part of brigade, don't they? They want to be a part of us rather. They're the elite of the army. Take the SAS guys and head off it out of it. But, you know, these guys won't get any higher. And there's a lot to do para reg and then commando or commando para. You know, so there's a lot of para commandos around. And I think Rusty Furman was, I think he was two nine. Right. And he did the all arms commander course. And then obviously famously joined the SAS. So I might have that wrong, folks, but I spoke to a lot of a lot of guests. It is a route to Hereford. Through the palace. So so, for example, there might go nine para royal engineers, then five nine, which is now two four regiment and then two to SAS. And that is that is the normal route. I think it's unusual to go straight to Hereford, having not done one of those two two things. I tried to go to Hereford, but they said it's too handsome. Yeah. Yeah, I was just saying I got on the wrong bus. They said I'd never be able to blend in undercover. So forget it, mate. These are the breaks. These are the breaks, Paul. You know? Yeah, absolutely. What was your first knowledge of the Falklands? Oh, well, if I could, if you don't mind, I'll go back a little bit further. Oh, please do. So we did Norway, did a summer exercise. Then we did the mountain phase, mountain training. And every year we used to do Norway mountain training. And so winter Norway, summer Scandinavia or somewhere. Autumn, winter in the Highlands of Scotland, Cairngorms, then Sky. That was getting that was doing black shot training. So that's the mountain training. And then in the winter we go to Norway do Arctic training. So we were mountain and that's warfare troops. So we spent all our time mountains, fly, busting, climbing, heavy weights, living in the rain and the cold, and then living in the cold and the dry. But then in 81, we went to Ireland because we still have to do our island tour. So we went to West Belfast. And we had the tour from June to December. Great. What was that? Did you say 89? 81. 81. Sorry. Yeah. And the hunger strike has just died. Bobby Sands I think had been, Bobby Sands has been dead. I think Bobby Sands had been dead about six weeks when we got there. Turf Lodge had been barricaded in. There was no patrols on the streets. The IRA were running riot or the pirate were running riot. Inla were shooting people left, right and centre. And so we went and I'll never forget we got off the plane. We got in the back of an MK. We drove into, I was in Fort White Rock on the Bala Murphy. And we got off the back of the trucks. We put on body armour, got our, well we had our weapons already, drew our ammo, got in a truck and went straight into the Bala Murphy. I've got a good friend engineer, Mike Adams. He finishes W01, Mike Adams, MBE. He was the first sort of engineer I'd sort of met really, driving a big dumper truck. And he drove this dumper truck in it. We didn't know if they were armed or if you're going to be exploding or whatever. And he drove straight into it, cleared the barricade, and we went into the Bala Murphy. And there was the start of six months intensive. There I say, enjoyable because I was doing my job. I'd been well trained to do my job. I'd spent the previous three months in Strathlow Hospital in Scotland, putting in drips, treating injuries, working in A&E, working in the operating theatre, tubing people, doing really a lot of extensive medical training for this four and a half months closer to Northern Ireland. And it was absolutely, just got on the ground, just really ready for it. You know, and it was really, really good. Well, our casualties, we had our injuries. But I'm giving this background because by December 81, you know, we were up for it. Because we'd been in Ireland, we weren't doing mountain training and we weren't doing Norway in 82. So we were having this really big, good tour. And then we were having sort of a quiet year. Well, I had a young daughter at this point. So it was nice to spend that quiet year with her. So in the January, I went then from Yankee Company. I was Yankee Company's grav medic for three years here. And I just sort of been moved into support company. So wow, this is great. I'm now support companies medic. And that's what you would aim to do. This was like, this was your opportunity to get on a paracourse and then to go down to work at pool or work with a carter or something like that. So suddenly I was one of these guys that were chatting to recetry blocks and having a cup of beers, you know, because they were the ones to be with it in the evening. So we didn't do Norway. We went up to North of Scotland doing mountain training in cities because believe that, fantastic. No weapons allowed. We stayed in Cameron Barracks up in, I think, is it Aberdeen? No, not Aberdeen. The one further north anyway. We went up there in cities, no weapons, carrying a Bergen, just having a great time, raining a bit and a bit windy, but we had a great time. So the year started off really well. We got up to Easter. We had the sick babe running short. I'd been drafted. So I was going down to the log regiment after leave, summer of 82. So me and my wife had been packed up the house. The house was all in boxes. She'd just found out she was pregnant with our second child, which happened to be twins. And that was it. We'd been on the lash, going on leave tomorrow, went home, went to bed, and then on the door at five o'clock in the morning, the child said to me, what is that about? I said, well, I said, do you know, I've heard that the Arches have landed on the Fultons and I bet it's about this. And she went, I can't be. Anyway, I went down and they said, right. And I mean, young man, you need it on board. The transport will be back in 20 minutes. You need to be on that transport. So we went into work and, you know, I think I got home on the Sunday afternoon. This was like Friday. Got home Sunday afternoon. Just to pack the last bits of my kit. Say cheerio to Janet, who has now got an out full of boxes ready to move to Plymouth. And she's moving to Plymouth in like two weeks time and she's like three months pregnant. And or more four months, maybe. And that was it. Went into work and away we went. And it was literally that quick. So, Paul, just so we understand, you were on your way to LOGS, which is Commando Logistics in Plymouth, but you're still with 4.5 and you've deployed with 4.5? I didn't. I wasn't leaving 4.5 until like the next day. And my relief wasn't in until after leave. So I'm leaving on a Friday. We're going on two weeks leave. And then my relief will join on Monday, two weeks time. So my relief hadn't joined. I was still there. So because I was still in the unit and we were deploying away, I went. Draft canceled. Wife in Plymouth. Relief went somewhere else. But I don't even know who my relief was, to be honest. Can't even remember now. It's just a life changing event. Just everything that I'm just so quick. I wonder if your relief appreciated that? Well, he would have gone. But it depends who he went with. And then he didn't relieve me then until probably the September. So this would have been, this was early April. So it was an extra three months where I spent. But it did make a lot of difference, to be honest. Because if I would have gone down to Plymouth, I would have gone down south anyway, because I would have gone with Med Squadron of Commando Log Regiment. There's still a bit of confusion these days of where it was served with. And I often have to tell people, I was in 4-5. I wasn't in logs at that time. I wasn't even 4-2 either, just because I looked like Sean O'Callaghan. So, yeah, the way we went. Yeah. How did 4-5, if it's not a stupid question, or for our friends at home at least, how did they get to the Falklands? We went down. Well, Yankee Company were in Belize. Oh, was it Belize or Brunei? They were doing jungle training anyway. Because it was quite a year, so we were going to do all this stuff that we wouldn't normally do. So they were in, I think it was Brunei, they were in. So Yankee Company, we went minus Yankee Company. I think we took their stores, but we went without them. We went down to Portsmouth by coach, which is about a 12-14 hour trek. And we got on board the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Stromness. And we went back on that. And the engineers had been on there, the dockies had been on there, and they turned all the store holds into beds, and they'd put bunks in there. And they'd put about, you wouldn't do it today, because of health and safety, but I think we must have put about 240 pits in this one storage area, three or four high, just enough to slide in there. And they packed us all down there, took one route in, one route out. This is the sort of thing that we took down the Falklands. And, you know, we look at Galahad as a Tristram when they got hit, and the devastation that caused, could you just imagine what the devastation would have been on Stromness if we would have been hit with all of those people, with no escape? Yeah, so we all were loaded onto the Stromness, our unit, and various other units. And we, you know, the task force then sailed. And I think it was about the 2nd of April, 1982. We left Bootsmouth. We'd all always deployed together before. There was nothing really new, isn't that? What was new was to ship with used LSLs before and DFDS seaways to get to Norway, but we hadn't been on anything like the Stromness before. There wasn't a lot of space on there, obviously. There was a lot of storage kit for our personal kit. And of course, we had these tiny little sleeping areas. But you know, one thing Royal does is he makes it work, and we made it work. And away we went. We weren't really, I think, not thinking too much was going to happen, as was the rest of the country. So we were on board. We were on our way. We didn't have comms like they do today. We didn't have internet. The news was broadcasted by the First Lieutenant on a daily basis. So any information we got, we depended on the hierarchy. We didn't have mobile phones. We didn't have anything. We wrote bluies and we wrote letters. May was dropped. May was picked up. Yeah, and away we went down the South Atlantic to Sentin Island. We did a lot of kit maintenance. We used it as an important period of life in the unit. We were able to catch up with all our training, all our basic training that we needed to do. A lot of fizz because there wasn't any space. But certainly we could do all our lectures. We could do our Arctic lectures and stuff like that. We did a lot of first aid training. We were able to do. We got everything up to scratch. So by the time we got to Ascension, we were just zeroing weapons, doing a bit of big body fizz, a bit of running, speed marching, getting used again to getting the limbs moving over long distances, stuff like that. And some strength training. Went for the swim, got a bit of sun. So yeah, it was all great. So the first part, phase one, well phase two rather, getting down to Ascension was all good. We had a good rapport going with the ship's company. Everybody was getting on well with each other. Food was all right. Yeah, it was good. Paul, what weapon does a medic get issued with in the Falklands conflict? Well, we felt, and that's a good story, weapons, because it got a little bit confusing later on. We had a personal weapon, which was a sub-machine gun, a sterling nine mil sub-machine gun, bit shaped like a crossbow, but with only one arm on it, you know, where the magazine sticks out. Pretty good weapon. Nowhere near as good as the 762 SLR. Not as powerful, but for us, it was light. It was accurate. I have 30 bullets in a magazine, 30 rounds. So, and I was pretty good with it. It was easy to use, and I could get shots on a target. But it was cumbersome without a shadow of it out. Getting down a scandal net with an SMG was no fun, particularly if you had a magazine on. Because by the time you got down, the magazine was released by a little button on the top, and anything could catch that, and the magazine would pop out. But that, and everybody's wish, everybody's special forces wish, would be to have a nine mil pistol, which is the ultimate. And we were promised it. We never got it. So, SMG was what we had. But then later, we did get a shore, obviously, when we were ashore, things changed, rules and what you can and can't do. A lot of it goes by the by. So, somebody had asked me, they were going on a wrecky or something, and they would rather have an SMG than have an SLR. So, they asked me if they could use my weapon. So, we swapped weapons. So, I then ended up with an SLR. Well, a bit late, I'm going to move right forward now to two sisters. The other medic up there, or Zulu's medic, was a guy called Mick Nicely. When we were treating casualties on two sisters, and getting rid of them, and throwing them on the rearward transport, Mick Nicely lost his weapon. It didn't know where it was, and we felt it had been moved back with the equipment belonging to casualties. Because obviously, he's these two hands, he's put his SLR down with other equipment. Guys have picked it up and moved it rearward. So, Mick's now not got a weapon. So, I gave Mick my SLR, which I had cut off someone else, and said, did you take that? So, I'm now not got a weapon. So, they had SMG to me. Oh, young man, where's your weapon? And I was like, well, it's just a long story. He went right, well, grab one of those. So, I ended up with an Argentinian FN weapon in the end. So, yeah, started off with an SMG, ended up with it. With an Argentinian FN. Paul, did the FN fire the same ammo as the SLR? Seven, six, three, yeah. Yeah. So, it was interchanged in... Just had to fold in. Pretty much the same, just had to fold in stock. Yeah, I did often wondered about that. It was cumbersome for a medic. We all want to go down there and we all want to warfight. But, you know, Matt, I did a season with field gun, and wanted to run field gun at number 18. But I was a medic. And you end up doing so much medicine. There's not a lot else you can do. So, we all want to go down and we all want to warfight. But in the first seconds of a warfight, you've got casualties. You know, my weapon becomes redundant. Pain in the arse, I would imagine. Yeah, yeah. Geneva Convention says medics should carry the golden 9-0 pistol for protection of himself or his casualties. And that would be the only reason you don't have a non-combatant with the Royal Marines. But basically, a medic, like a project, would be non-combatant unless protecting themself or their casualties. It tends not to be the case. Not if you're in a fighting company and there's lots of incoming. But that will change when you take your first casualty. And, you know, on the big battles, we had casualties all the time. So, the medics were really busy. Allowing Royal to get on and do what he does best, which is warfighting. So, that's the weapons story, yeah. Incidentally, I loved the submachine gun. Yeah, I did. What was it called? Was it Sterling? Wasn't it Sterling? It was a Sterling, yeah, a Sterling 9-0. The thing I loved about it was, unlike we joined up with the SE-80, high-velocity, as soon as you fire it, that mechanism has gone faster than the speed of the eye. But with the SMG, you can physically feel the mechanism coming back, collecting the next shell, shoving it into the chamber. But they did say that... It's a chunk. It's a chunk, he goes, chunk, chunk, chunk. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I loved it. I loved it. I reckon the stoppages must have been huge, because it was pretty outdated. And they did say a wet blanket would stop one of those rounds. Yeah. The fire is pretty straight. You can hit a barn door with one, I must admit. And you can get a good grouping on it, but what the damage would cause it, I don't know. You'd probably hit harder with a catapult and a ball bearing than you would with a 9-0 pistol, with a Sterling submachine gun. I had a 9-0 for a year as well when I did security work on a invincible. As a pain in the ass, you literally had to sleep with it under your pillow. Because you were more worried about losing the bloody thing, getting charged than you were about having to use it. Yes. Good. When you become a ship's marine, you get to use all the weapons. We had SLRs, and it was great to have that experience, because I imagine a lot of Marines subsequently will never get to fire the SLR, and it's absolutely, that is a weapon. It really is. Awesome. I carried a pistol on there. I was added extra aircrew on 846 Naval Air Commandos Squadron during the Gulf War, the first Gulf War. And so I had a sidearm then, obviously, because I was in the back of a cab. I was a medic. Again, I was a medic. Well, no, I wasn't. I was number two on the GPMG. I was number two to the gunner until we got casualties, and then I was a medic. So if we had casualties in a cab, I was a medic, and if we didn't, I was a number two on the gun. So I had an interesting life for a medic. It's been really great. Well, I can see that. And like I said, friends at home, just do an internet search on Paul, and you're going to see some, yeah, some, well, an amazing, amazing career. It's funny, really, when I get the whole SA-80 thing, or whatever it's become now, and I get the, was it the M16 that the Americans had, and the lightweight ammunition, and et cetera, et cetera. But when you fired the SA-80 at 300 meters, and there's even the slightest wind, you literally got to like fire off, off the target, which all snipers are going, well, yeah, that's like normal, Chris. Well, yeah, I get that. But with the SLR, even with the iron sights, you didn't have an optical sight. Over 300 meters, you just, it was just amazing. It really was amazing. And I do wonder, wouldn't it be, well, stupid boy's own question, but like, how would the Falklands have panned out had they had SA-80s? I'm not saying it would have been worse. One of the, sorry to interrupt, there's special forces down there, and the mountain and Arctic warfare carter, who did a fantastic job, without doubt, down there, as you know, as the advanced sort of recce troop. They were carrying AR-15s, M16s, and SLRs, and it was the, they were Gucci, weren't they, an M16 is a Gucci weapon, it's a bit smaller than an SLR, and some of them had them. But do you know, from what I hear, it just doesn't have the stopping power that a 7.62 had. And if you got it with an SLR, you weren't going anywhere else. Whereas with an M16, people could continue to act, to perform actions, even though they've been hit. A 7.62, if it's in the arm, it's at the arm off. Whereas a 5.56 and probably go through it. Well, that's why the SFSG, Special Forces Support Group, switched to 7.62 in Afghanistan, did they not? Yeah, I don't know about that, but I do know that it's the favoured weapon, 7.62. Yeah, they got this, shouldn't call weapons wicked, but for the purposes of ballistics, I'll say it's wicked, it's a shorter, you know, shorter than the SLRs. Friends at home, put it in the comments, you know the weapon I'm talking about. But I think they thought that when you add an enemy charging towards you, particularly if they're off their head on some substance, that the 5.65, 5.56 just wasn't going to stop and come in forward. So they went to the heavy around. Yeah. What's next, Paul? Well, we landed, I think. When did the war start? Well, for us, I think the war started when Sheffield was hit. We started off pretty relaxed, it built up, so we got to Ascension, built up a bit more, and we still weren't sure what was going to happen. And then I think when Sheffield went, there was no stopping us. Somebody just flicked the switch and it was all systems go. And that was it. And the MLs, we talked about them out in Leeds earlier. They hand made assault nets, scrambled nets. They built them by hand using all the rope that was on board to throw over the side of the strongness so that we could get down onto the landing craft. We practiced that at Ascension. We juggled people around, so we got most of our unit together. Yankee Company that had been in Brunei joined us in Ascension. So I think they might have gone off fearless, but anyway, the units were all together. So we proceeded south, we lost Sheffield, and then that was it. And we went down and we landed. We got off strongness using scrambled nets, which was lots of fun, as you can well imagine. There was one or two people stuck upside down with a foot stuck in the net, you know, just so much kit and equipment, you know, and the cumbersome SNTs round your neck and fighting orders and everything. Because we didn't know what... We had our basic kit, we had all our active kit as well. We had loads of it. We had NBC kit as well, would you believe? We had absolutely everything, but we did the landing unopposed, although we didn't know it was going to be unopposed. We were a bit late, we were ready to go by, so we've been up all night, ready to go first light, things that I remember sailing around a bit in a LCVP, and then eventually landing on the Fultons dry, I got sure dry. And then some Argentine aircraft came across, so we took, like, let's find the first river and get in it. So I've got a sure dry, aircraft comes, jumps in the first river, absolutely salt. And that was the way my feet were going to stay for at least the next sort of six weeks, or certainly not my feet, but my boots were going to stay wet for the next six weeks. I was in, because I was in 4-5, because I was in support company, we were using the Hawkins Mountain Boot. There's all sorts of boots down there, Northern Island Patrol boots, people add, which is a very soft pigskin, beautiful, comfortable boot, but for sprinting around the streets of West Belfast, not for mountain training. Hawkins Mountain Boots, DMS boots, DMS boots adapted to become a high leg boot, so they didn't have to wear putties. Greenlanders, which was a mountain leader's specialist boot, which was a mountain boot that you could affix a ski to. So off the top of my head, that's five different types of footwear that people were wearing. I had a Hawkins Mountain Boot, which was a trialed boot. And I'd been trialling it for about a year, and then we could keep it. So I just wore my mountain boots and host tops, which are a bit easier to manage than putties. So lots of dubbing on them, lots of polish, lots of wax, but do you know what? Still wet when I jumped in that river. And that was it? We were sure? I'll just say something, Paul. This is going to sound a bit like out of field, but when I've been trekking, and I didn't know this, I went trekking. I took an old army truck to Iceland one time from Sweden. It was an old Volvo Viking military truck. It was an incredible trip. We traveled all around Iceland, and we did a bit of a yomp one time. I think we yomped about 70km over two or three days. And what I didn't know, all the other guys I was with, when we got to a river, and you're going to get this a lot when you're trekking, then it crosses your path and you've got to get wet, wet. They all had like Tiva sandals, you know, strap sandals on the side of their rucksacks. And it was just a case of trousers down, sandals on, weighed across, sandals off, trousers back on, put your walking boots dry. I mean, hey, military strategists, if you're watching, I do want some money for this, for this tip, but I know it sounds a bit silly going ashore in the Falklands in sandals and new boxer shorts, but bloody hell, it would have saved, would have saved a lot of casualties, I reckon. It's a worth, it is worth a sort, particularly with sort of changed foot and people with soggy feet, but you know, we were going to be wet anyway with the terrain, particularly at that time of year. The terrain is pretty much like Dartmoor in the boggy season, Dartmoor in November, you know, those big clumpy bits of grass, the ankle breakers, that's really what it is. Yes, it seemed a lot of people fared well down there with welly boots. It was an option, yeah, because remember, you did have arctic overboots, you had NBC overboots, and people that were like in the rear echelon, they were ankle boots with a zip, but they were huge rubbered wellies, and you could leave your normal boots on and just slip them on over their overboots, basically. And I did notice a lot of people there, certainly in the rear, were wearing them sort of that sort of stuff, and they were absolute feet savers. So how do things progress, Paul, after you landed? Well, we had my first aid teams that were made up from the chefs and people, and we got sure the unit, we set up the RAP, the Regimental Aid Post in Ajax Bay, and the guys went up into the mountains, and they dug their trenches, and they got dug in, and then we were now waiting, securing Ajax Bay, so that we could bring the loggies in, and the field hospital, and Rich Olly's Red and Green Life Machine moved in. We must have been the first medics on there, I think, as the Regimental Aid Post, not many of us, Dr Dentist, Padre, POMA, me, 5MAs, number of bootnecks. My leading hand, Fred Jake's, had been injured on the way down to the Falklands. He'd slipped and got quite a nasty knee injury, and then I think he got a back injury, and he got sent back to UK. Well, no, he didn't. They sent him on Canberra to be reviewed by a doctor, thinking that it was going to be, dare I say, a favour, because I'm in the medical branch. So, boss, can you have a look at my knee? I think it's quite nasty. So he said, yeah, come across. So we went across to Canberra, looked at his knee and said, yeah, this is the problem, take these pills. And he said, I'm off back. And he said, no, you're not, because you've now entered the Kazovac chain. The Kazovac chain ends in the UK. So poor Fred ended up back in the UK. Of course, we're now a leading handshort, Achillic. So I was a Mocsenia guy, being in support company. So I then became the local acting LMA for 4-5 Commando. So I left support company. We got a battle causative replacement, Chris Penny, into support company. I went to HQ as Achillic. So my role changed now. I now left support company. I've gone into the headquarters. So we set up the RAP, just off Ajax Bay. The guys were up in the mountains. And we set up, and we set up stuff like you do. We set our, we were in a little hut. And we set it up as best we could, like a mini stick bay, come from a unit, which was great. And our trench outside, thought we might just keep in this little hut, which was a good idea till it got dark. And then there was aircraft flying around. And we thought, you know what, we're probably not in a good place here. So we then moved out of there and did the best we could, but without using the building, because it was obviously a target for any Argentine aircraft. But yeah, we were there, we were there, we were all set up, we were ready to go. So 4-5 Commando was now ready to go, sure, armed, ready, ready to go. My first casualty was a, the anti-loop was out in Frigate Alley, or Bomb Alley, as they called it. And the anti-loop had been hit with a, it had two unexploded bombs on there. And the 002 from the Army Bomb Disposal had gone on there, two of them had gone on. One had been killed, the other one had been, he'd lost his right arm, I think. So because I was working closely with Med Squadron, because we were co-located, I said I would go down on the beach and bring the casualty up. And he was the first casualty that I brought up. And he was minus, his arm was still in the sleeve. But he was in quite a bad way, obviously he was deeply in shock. So I took him up to the hospital, passed him over to Joey, and his team, his trauma team, and they took him into the dressing station and began to treat him. And the things we can say now, 40 years later, I don't know if he was the first casualty, but I think he was the first major casualty that they'd taken in there. One officer, John Prescott, he got quite a high award for it, Queen's Galanty Medal or something, I think. If you have a look, it tells you all about John Prescott. And then stood on the beach and watched Antelope blow up and eventually sink. And for me, that is the reality of war. And I talk to students these days in colleges and I say, you know, there are not many people alive that have watched warships sink. And on the 25th of May, I stood on the beach with a lot of, with some ships coming from Antelope as well. You just watched their whole house, their belongings, everything just sink to the bottom of Fulton Sound. And it was spectacular. And I mean that as descriptive to watch the, the photographs you see of those explosions going off midships of Antelope were just unbelievable. And also what was unbelievable was the heat and the noise, you know, boiling, burning, melting metal going into the freezing South Atlantic. You would just, you can't describe it. You really can't describe it. It is just, it's in there forever. For me, it's like a silhouette. It's all dark. And then right in the middle is the ship with all the, the explosion going on all around it. And then eventually it just broke in half and sank. That was it, end of Antelope. How many fatalities were there following that? Do you know, you've caught me out there. I really, I really don't know. I'd have to research. I'm just thinking like, you know, no matter how many there were, it's obviously starting to sink home to you guys that this is, this is war. This is what we train for. And this is why, why we're here. I think we were a little bit naive that we never expected it. I never expected a ship war. It was always going to be a land war. I never really gave a lot of consideration until of course the Sheffield went. But I didn't give it a lot of thought. I thought a lot at that time about those. I mean, I was a sailor, a shore who could dig a hole. And if I was uncomfortable, I could dig my hole even deeper. If you're a Matlow on board a ship, there is absolutely nowhere you can go. It must be. I was on Albion on Friday with a bunch of visitors, cadets. And we were talking there about the emergency stations and, you know, the damage repair units, the damage repair section on board a warship. And one of the officers was saying that his role was sat in there, just waiting for it to happen. So could you imagine the apprehension of you can hear the aircraft and you're, you're just waiting for the bank. And when you hear that bank, you're the person that's got to go and take that damage repair equipment and begin to repair that ship that is now in the damage repair instructional unit with water flying in like we spoke about an hour ago, water flying in at 30 miles an hour and have casualties around. It's horrendous to even think about it. Yes, we, we, I don't know if, if you saw Paul, but recently we had Mick Fellows on the show. Mick was, uh, Oh yeah. I know the diver. Yeah. Ordinant Royal Navy, you know, yeah, clearance, clearance diver, bomb disposal. And he talked, um, he talked about the two, the, um, sorry, was it, was it John Phillips and John Prescott? Uh, oh, sorry, it is John Phillips. Yeah, not John Prescott. John Phillips was the, the, the, John Phillips was the guy that lost his arm, wasn't it? Yes. I think it was, um, uh, John, John Phillips lost his arm. I think his star sergeant was John, John, uh, Jim, sorry, Jim, Jim Prescott. Right. He's the one that was killed. Yeah. But I mean, you know, the door, the door blew off. Just unreal. And how well were you pulled again? Remind us. 23. So just a lad, you know. Yeah. But I, I, I had had some excellent, uh, I had 30 weeks, really good medical training in Stonehouse. I'd done my old arms commando course. I'd done what we call a combat casualty care course where I went off into hospitals and was putting drips in people's necks and their arms and the legs and, uh, intubating them whilst they were asleep in the operating theater. I was practicing putting IV fluid in, working casualty. Um, uh, I think that was a, it could have been a two week course, the advanced casualty care course. And then of course all of my Northern Ireland training, then my time in Ireland. So I was, I was for the first time, well, second time, I was doing what I was being paid to do. I'd seen dead people. I'd seen severely injured people. I'd seen how people react when they've been given drugs. Um, John Phillips had had morphine. Um, that's interesting. We talk about when you give morphine, write an M on the forehead so everybody can see it and the time and people think, ah, that's just, it happens. And when you see somebody with an M on the forehead and the time you think, ah, right, you know, it does, the system does work. And, and he did have an M on his forehead. And I don't know if I had the time on there. I can't, can't quite remember now. Yeah. I've never really, um, understood that people have different tolerances, don't they? You know, one dose of morphine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One dose to a big lad. He might be like, ooh, one to another guy could be off his head borderlining on, um, on, uh, you know, stopping breathing. Uh, yeah. Things were very different then though as well. We were very, um, there was a fear of controlled drugs and we were very reluctant to use morphine, uh, because of the addictive qualities. Uh, the way that morphine works, it suppresses the brain or it suppresses pain. Uh, it has an effect on the brain. It affects shallows breathing. It's highly addictive. So we've got this fantastic drug as a painkiller that people are really reluctant to use because everybody says, don't use it if they've had a snake bite or if they've got a head injury or if they've got an abdominal injury. And guys are going, well, what's the point of carrying it to be honest, but it's a really, really effective drug today. They'll, they'll give it first. You know, they'll use morphine rather than use an aspirin or something because maybe not an aspirin, but because it's a really powerful drug. And I don't think, and you will know more about this than me, but if you're in pain and you take morphine, um, it's hardly social. You know, you're not going to get that addictive element because you've used it for painkilling because it's associated with something not very good. Um, and the other thing that we had down there, morphine was the cold, uh, and it being absorbed. So casualty, get some morphine. Somebody else is still in pain. Somebody else gives him a morphine. Somebody else gives him a morphine. So he's now, somebody said to me, doc, he's had three morphines. And I said, in what time? And they said, Oh, five minutes apart. I was like, you didn't know that could, that could kill him. But yeah, but it's still in pain, which was fine because he was still cold. But when he starts to get warm and it all begins to circulate, suddenly we've got a massive impact of, of three vials of morphine that has been given for pain relief. So it does cause problems for the, and of course it also makes you, uh, can make you feel quite nauseous. And if somebody's injured, uh, we don't want them being sick if they're like not able to manage their airway. So there's a lot, lots of reasons why there was a reluctance to use it. Yeah. Now, the other thing, it was in a little tiny little toothpaste tube with a pinning it in a, in a glass vial. And then we said, we'll wear it on your dog tags. And they put it on a dog tags with black masking tape. So I'm trying to treat a casualty, asking him for his morphine. And I can't get his morphine off because he's got three foot of the masking tape wrapped around it. And, and these were the sort of problems where people were losing them. They were cumbersome. There's got to be a better, well, an EpiPen has got to be the answer of morphine EpiPen in your, on your sleeve here of your combat jacket, so that everybody can get access to it and just take the lid off and do it. But we were using toothpaste tubes because I suppose it was maybe left over from the War of Summer from the war. I'm talking about 3945, which is where a lot of our dressings and equipment came from. So that's our sort of backward we were in coming forward in 82. In one of the books I read recently, Paul, I've read some fascinating books on the folk. Well, yeah, fascinating books on the Falklands. A couple written by Paris who, who we've had on the show. I can't remember which one it was. I'm not sure if it's Nidespud, Eli's, but the battle for Goose Green. But in the end, they got some of the guys were in such a bad way with the, with cold injuries that they were just prick, pricking themselves with their own morphine. And if you think that's what some people will do for a night out, then you can, it's, it's, you know, you can see where that, you can see where that, why, why people would do that. Just instant euphoria, you know, take, takes you out the battlefield, takes you above all your problems. It's the first instant pain release. First I've heard, I must admit. The issue we, we, I had was getting people to use it. Fit, Romarine, injured, in pain. I'll give you the morphine. They go, no, thanks. I want to know what's going on. So, so a lot of them wouldn't use it. Yeah, but interesting. So there's the, there's my first casualty. Took him from the landing craft into the back of the ambulance and took him up and passed him across to Rick Jolly. No, no blood. He said to me, interesting story. He said to me, I'll talk to him this year about this, this event, put him in the back of the ambulance. He won't remember any of it because obviously he was, he was out on morphine. But I said to him, what injuries have you got? And he said, my arm is off. And I said, okay, which one? And he said, the one you're leaning on. Because remember, he's still in his combat jacket and he's still got two hands. And I'm leaning, as I'm leaning across, he said to me, the one you're leaning on. So he's obviously felt me leaning against his chest. But, and I said, oh, what, this one? He said, yeah, yeah. He said, it's off at the shoulder. I said, is it really? What, what did I say to him next? Can you move your fingers? He said, no, my arm is off. And I said, okay, fine. And he said, he was right. His arm was off, but it was still in the jacket. There was no blood. There was no, it's not like in a film where there's blood bushing everywhere. But no, he was a very relaxed, pleasant, polite man, pale, big-head money for it with a, with a severe arm injury. Beyond words, beyond words. It is, and lots of things I saw were, were strange that we brought up with this image that you're going to see made by Hollywood or by the BBC. And a lot of the time you don't see that at all. It's unexpected. A friend of mine, I later in the war, I'd gone, they said, Paul, can you go get a casualty? There's one coming in by Helo. And so I went home to meet the Helo and my mate jumped off. So I went, oh, hello, Phil. Shuck his hand and that. We had a quick chat. And he said, so what are you doing here? I said, oh, there's a casualty coming in. He said, oh, that'll be me. I said, what do you mean? He went, oh, someone's cleaning LMG and a rang went off and it's gone through my bicep and it went through his bicep and out the other side. And he was, it wasn't bleeding. He was just stood there. He had it all in his combat jacket and you could, you could have probably put your finger right the way through. But he was, he was, he was a mountain leader. And he was like, not a big issue. Just, you know, put bandits on it takes a little bit more than that when you get a 762 round through because it destroys all the internal muscle, et cetera. But yeah, they're the sort of things that you see. So it's the reality is very different from, from the norm. Well, if I can ask you, Paul, when you, the famous thing that's always said is surgeon captain Rick didn't lose a single person Argentine or, or, or British. That, that almost seems like hard. I'm not saying it's not true, but that seems really hard to believe, doesn't it? And the guys that were coming to you were just some of them must have been so torn up. Yeah, they, this was in the red and green life machine. This was in the complex itself. Yeah. That nobody died in that complex. And this wasn't an old, what was it? Like an old sheep shed with a, with a, yeah. It's a refrigeration plant. Okay. It was just a big empty refrigeration plant. Very dusty. I remember helping Metacord going down to help Metacord them and they landed and sweeping it out and just dust everywhere. You know, you just couldn't shit the dust just wouldn't sell. But it was ideal. It was dry and it was big. And it certainly saved putting the tentage up on rough grounds, you know, so it was an ideal situation for them to be in. And they could screen areas off and they had operating theaters and all this sort of stuff. Well, that, that story leads us on then to the 27th of May, when the, when the hospital complex was bombed. Now, earlier, I alluded to training first 18s and first do first day training. Well, I had a first 18 that were made up of chefs and those four people were Corporal Sticks Evans, chef, Marine Paul Callan, Marine Tug Wilson, and a guy called Tony Owen. And these were my four medics, my sort of stretcher bearers. These are the guys who are going to help me on the ground with the casualties. So my biggest, well, not my biggest concern, one of my concerns was what if I get hit? So if I get hit, I need these guys to be able to do the business correctly and to a great level. And, and so you can imagine the level to which we've trained them. These guys could put drips up and they could do all sorts of stuff. And we've really got to know each other during that trick down. So on the 27th of May, we, four or five commander, we're going to move out of the beach head to Tlingit. So the unit went, but I'm now the LMA in charge of the medical stores of the regimental aid posts. We can't move on foot because I've got tentage and medical stores. So we were going to move later. So the unit went, and we've stayed. And I, that day, I, we were communal eating. That meant that all my, by four chefs that I've just mentioned, were working in the main galley complex, helping out command or log regiment. And to save on rations, there was communal food. So we went down, we split our team up our RAP team, the chefs were working in the galley. We split up the RAP team. So I went for scran first. I went down for scran. Actually, I did last night chicken curry and rice. Funny how you remember what you eat on certain days, isn't it? But that day was chicken, curry and rice and upside down pineapple cake and custard and a mug of tea and had gone down there and I had had my scran and chatting away like you do. I thought, shit, Colin Jones needs to get down for the scran. So Colin Jones was the PO. So I ran up to the RAP about 150 yards away. I said to Colin, Colin, you go and get your scran and I'll stay here. So I was, I was a smoker at the time. I was having a smoke. I think Colin had had his scran and come back. That's right. So Colin and I was now back RAP stuff. I was having a smoke stood in the doorway and I saw four sky, four, I don't know my numbers. I saw skyhawks flying over 40 commandos position on the other side of the sound. I said to Colin, look at that. They're going to get a battering. And so I saw these aircraft go and then I tell you what, mate, within seconds, those skyhawks were over us and they dropped their payload and I was just having a smoke and I thought I can't believe this. They flew straight over the dressing station, the field hospital, where all the ammunition was stored around there as well. That's why there was no red crosses on it because we were in a stores compound and there was ammunition there and they dropped their payload on the thing. And well, we, we dive straight into our trenches, waited for the first few bangs and explosions and then ventured up to have a look what was going on. And I remember seeing bombs with parachutes on floating down, landing on the ground. There was little, going on all around us and this was these retard bombs dropping into the ground. There was fires, there was explosions and it had blown mortar bombs. So mortar bombs are in their cases, had been blown and the mortar bombs are now flying through the air and landed in the peak and that was this noise we could hear of not going off. They've just been scattered by the various explosions. So when it was reasonably safe and the aircraft had gone, we thought we'd get out and have a look. So the doctor in the PL stayed, it was a massive trench as you can imagine, the dock in the PL stayed in the trench and I climbed out to see what was going on. And first person saw was one of my first dating, Tony Owen, come running towards him covered in blood, sort of quite a bit of shouting going on. Obviously couldn't hear anything because he's been caught, he's dazed, he's caught in the explosion, dragged him out, put him in the trench with the doctor in there and the PO. And I went down to the dressing station to see if there was any casualties there that I could treat. Absolute mayhem as you can imagine. The hospital is trying to function while it's just been bombed. There's medics and marines doing first aid all over the place and yeah, really quite a serious situation here. Again, so we've just, the day before we've watched, the day before we watched antelope sink, now the arches have just bombed our dressing station. A number of people killed, people killed their corporal Sticks Evans, was killed out of my team, my team of four. Tony Owen's already wrote off with a head injury, Sticks is dead, Chuck Wilson is dead, Paul Callan has got a really nasty abdominal injury. Paul Callan was a sailor before he became a marine, so he couldn't get in the marines, joined the Navy, qualified as a sailor, and then went back to Limbson, did the commando course, and then became a chef, came to 4-5, came down as part of my first aid team. Paul Callan's now got a big injury in his belly. Paul was on the chef's team that made the Queen Diana's birthday, the wedding cake. The cake, yeah. Yeah, that's right, yeah. So it was a really good looking fella, blondie sort of curly hair, really scouser, mancunian, you know, we had a great rapport, me and Paul, anyway. He was looked after by the medics, because he had this big hole. I remember seeing the casualties laid up, Jim Stalabras was there, he's a cliff lead, you know the ML, that you hate when you're mountain trading, throwing you off cliffs, he had a big piece of metal stuck in his arse. Yeah, that made me smile, I must admit, it serves you right. But he was fine. My sergeant major, James Gibson, he had a hole in his chest, either I just took shrapnel in his chest. Next thing was Paul with the belly wings, he said he'd be fine with us, we'll look after him. And then there was Spot Watson, our friend of mine, sergeant, head injury, I treated him, remember the explosion, because if people go deaf, they can't hear anything, and they can't see anything, and they're terrified, and they're trying to scream, but they can't hear anything. So it's really quite frightening. And Spot was a little bit like that, we had to really just calm him down, and really deal with him by touch, things you don't think about as a medic, but if you could touch him, and it could feel you, he felt safer than he did in this black world where he can't hear or see anything. So anyway, Paul was Paul, so I've lost one seriously injured, two dead, and Paul has got this belly wing. Well, they took Paul then, cheated him, took him on to Canberra, where he was obviously extremely ill, to give him lots of, you know this story, I think, giving lots and lots of blood became the idol for all the nurses, you know, they all had a crush on him and everything, he was just a great bloke. And then sadly, he passed away on Canberra, and they were going to bury him at sea. Was it Canberra, or did? What's the other? Uganda, wasn't it? Uganda, he died on, yeah. They were going to bury him at sea, but they said, we didn't want that, we don't want that to happen. So Rick Jolly organised for him to be taken ashore, I knew, so they took him ashore and buried him ashore, this is me. So there's an example of one guy who didn't die in the Red and Green Life machine, but did die later, but in, on a onboarder ship, who ended up back in, in the same location as his mates. Excuse me, I'm sorry. Okay. Friends, I should just say here that someone that was very close to Paul, I'm not going to give their details out, because I don't know if they'd want me to or not, but they contacted me. And this is how I became familiar with this story, just all my love and respect to you, you know who you are. Yeah. Yeah, it was really sad for everybody. They were all really sad. Paul Cullen was a, it was a particular one that stays, I met, I spoke to Paul's brother and his nephew this year, actually in 4-5 at the, at the reunion. So yeah, so now I've spent six weeks training my medical team and now I've not got any, because obviously Tony Owen was, I met him again this year, first time in 40 years at a 4-5 reunion, which was amazing. So I've now got to find me some medics, some, some raw marine medics that's going to, going to help me. So we flew off and joined the unit at Teal, when I had to then manage to get all of a load of some empty guys and some chefs and, and begin to train them. But there was some concern that they lacked a little bit of the experience that, that we really needed, that I needed, because I need people, if I asked for something, that person got to be able to identify it and give it me or put a tourniquet on without my direction and stuff. So, but I'll tell you what, the guys that I got with were absolutely fantastic. We've got Marine Duggy Duggan from Led Squadron. He got mentioned in dispatch, he's Duggy for the, some of the medical work that he did. And another fella called Cavs, Kavana, the driver. And I said to Cavs, Cavs, all I want you to do is stay next to me and have handy appearances. And that's what you did. And on two sisters, he was able to run drips through, he was able to do everything for me and even set up a drip himself if needed. And these guys were fantastic. Can I explain how great these fellas were? Calm, professional, and they just did everything that was asked of them. They were, they were fabulous. So, away we went. And it was just sort of routine stuff then. It was then right there, Paul, get all your kit on and your medical kit, polish your boots and on your way. And so I joined them. I didn't, I probably one of only about eight people that didn't complete the whole jump across the Fultons because I had to go in a halo from Ajax Bay to Teal. And I joined them at Teal, but I did the rest. I don't think you missed much, mate. What, on that first bit? Don't feel you missed something there. Yeah, I was a little bit busy where I stayed with what I was doing. But yeah, away we went. And then I sort of spent the time just looking after people with bad feet, twisted ankles, all that sort of stuff. When I think of Binnie Teal about, I remember that getting there. I think the pressure might be given is that suddenly life becomes what, at home, if there's an incident, it is everything. But for us, there now in the thick of it, just normal, it's a normal day at the office. You know, oh, some sort of broke his ankle. All right. Well, if it happened at home, you're dialing 999 and you're stopping all the transport and you're getting the ambulance through to the hospital in a blue light. But when you're there, it's just a normal day at the office. Well, because like, all right, we'll sort that out. And if people injured themselves, cut themselves, or if people were injured, we would just deal with it. And they would, nine times out of 10, they'd just get on with it. And they'd go, yeah, cheers, thought on a way to go. Didn't have any niceties with us. We weren't able to carry niceties. You know, if they had a cold or they were feeling bad, I don't remember a lot of people sort of being, even though it was cold, I don't think we have the viruses and the bacteria and stuff down there that would make us feel unwell. So I think people generally were fine. Hungry because we didn't have a lot of food. I can't remember what we drank. I think melted snow some of the time. Didn't have a lot of food. And we were moving in the end on bare essentials. And we left our large packs to be brought forward by heroes. Atlantic conveyor got hit. We needed the guns forward. And so our low priority. So we're now, we've got a fighting order. And whatever's in that fighting order to keep us going. So, you know, it was a bit of a struggle. I think they should make a rule in the commandos. Never get sleep separated from your sleeping bag and bivvy bag. We have that rule, don't we? And they say that never get separated from your kit. But we had it in Norway, though, poor in Norway, you sit down for a five minute smoke break that would suddenly turn into hours on hours. And you didn't have your bourbon because it was on the back of a bloody BV. And you didn't see it again for another. This was very rare, folks. I'm not trying to say that the military is that unprofessional. But in the Falklands, if they said, right, lads, ditch your kit, you know, chuck it on this beat, I'll be at nigh. I'm keeping my sleeping bag and bivvy bag because to try to sleep out what's essentially an Antarctic night or pretty bloody close to the Antarctic circle. And the parrots, well, no, I mean, the parrots for two commando, they all slept on those mountains without a very minimal kit pool. Some of them for like three nights, just hugging your bloody oppo to stay alive. It really is beyond belief, just beyond belief. Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, it happened, didn't it? It was just the way, it was just the way that it was. Can you talk in terms of that two sisters and where were you when this attack was being put in? But, well, the lead up to that, again, they sent wrecking patrols out and I was involved with the blue on blue. And I know that you spoke to Andy Shaw, haven't you, on a podcast? Yes, wonderful gentleman. Yeah, yeah. I went out to the aftermath of that blue on blue. Probably the scariest part of the war for me, purely because we were trapped in order to go and get the casualties and the repatriation of the bodies. It was very difficult because we went through so many different unit lines. And my four friends of mine in the back of a BV that were being repatriated. And I didn't particularly want to sit in the back of the BV with four bodies of my mates. So I travelled on the roof on a cloudless starlit freezing cold night. I sat on the top of the BV, which is a common thing to do. It wasn't anything special. It's a common thing that we do. But I was very scared that night, going through the Paris lines and different unit lines, thinking that if we were mistaken for Argentinians, particularly as we were in a vehicle, it was dodgy. So I was very thankful to get back, I must have meant. And that was the night before that was like the 10th. And then this, so the assault went in the morning of the 11th. I now have got my new medical team with my sergeant, Sergeant Taft Cornish, a mountain leader. And the other team had Sergeant Sandy Kingston. He was a sergeant chef in charge of their medical section. It's interesting for watchers, although we say a sergeant chef, Roe Marines, Roe Marines first. So he's got all his patrolling skills and all his weapon skills and everything, because he's Roe Marine first, and then obviously he's a chef second. So he's perfectly capable of managing that section. And so they got on the start line, they started the battle. And me and my team, I went with the RSM. And when we hit the ground, there was already casualties on the ground. Therefore, there was no requirement for me to use my weapon at this point. So I was straight in finding casualties, treating casualties, identifying dead, and making sure we knew where those dead personnel were. And we went up on to two sisters. And the first person I met was Mick Nicely. He was the medical assistant of the Zulu company, who just said, you can imagine what he said to me, but there's all sorts of shit going on here, Paul. I've got casualties there, there, there, there. So we looked at his casualties, prioritized his casualties. I'd already identified some dead and wounded on the way. And then we, we got a message out that if that we could get casualties in one place where we could treat them, then that is what we do. So we got as many casualties down as we could. Got them together, treated them. And then when that was all done, we went and we repatriated the dead and brought all the dead to what I say, all the dead. There was four, there was four dead from the unit that we had to repatriate and bring back and put together. I had, there was a particularly bad injury that Mick was dealing with, involving a head injury where, remember, we spoke about intubating earlier. We were considering whether we should need it to intubate. I put a tracheotomy into this, this fellow, sorry, we had to consider intubating, putting a tube down his throat into his lungs or whether we needed to put a trachea in. But there were reasonable signs of life and it appeared he could maintain his own airway. So I then called in a Charlie Charlie call sign of an aircraft and a scout, Army scout came in and said, what do you want? And we said, we've got to get these casualties away. And he asked me to prioritize it. And I said, if this one goes, I need to go with him. If you, if I don't go, then these, these will need to go, but I need to come back. And they said, okay, fine, we will take this more serious injured. And so we loaded him onto the back of the aircraft. I got in because I was like maintaining the airway and looking after the injury and, and managing the IV bottles and stuff. And there's no, no roof for the air crew. What's he going to do? He stood on the skids and clipped on. I've never seen this before. And it clipped on either side. So he flew on the skids and I was sort of at the head level. And because of the wind and stuff, he opened his jacket and put the guy's head inside his jacket. As we were, as I was sort of working on his airway and on his head. He just brought my family back from Disney World. And I went on all the rides there at Disney World, you know, and I never had a ride that similar that I could even describe as flying on that scout from two sisters mountain down to the RAP. You know, just above ground level, mountain flying, doing all sorts of with, with a guy stood on the skids. Me thinking I'm going to fall out because the doors are open. I'm thinking I'm going to fall out. And if I fall out and, you know, because it's coming with me, but yeah, no, we managed, we managed to getting back. I jumped out through as much med kit in the back of the, the aircraft as I could and went back out onto the back on two sisters where, and there's all hell shit going on, you know, the bullets and bombs and shit flying everywhere. Rounds coming from us, rounds coming from them. But do you know, these pilots, they get in there and they do the business. It's unbelievable. It sounds like you were all doing the business, Paul. It's just... Well, we have a saying that they say the team works and, you know, the team does work because it all comes together. And, you know, a lot of the casualties were already treated because their buddies would treat them as best they could. And so we also, because of the cold, the intervenes fluids that, you know, obviously they would freeze in a med pack. So we asked the guys to carry them. We asked them to carry them inside the jackets, which is a big ask when they're going into war, but they did have them and they did have giving sets somewhere in their burglary on their fighting order, or in this case, in a pooch, because we couldn't carry them out of the kit we needed. So guys would say, or they would treat their oppo and leave the stuff there by the side of them. So I could get there and then put the needle in and then put the giving set up and then attach the fluid, which they left for me. It just worked. It weren't like absolute clockwork. So there wasn't a lot, the serious casualties, you know, we have to deal with and the unfortunate job of dealing with those that had been killed. And then it happens and we've got the casualties way, and we've got the dead away, and then we regroup and we thought about some food and getting warm and some sleep. And then we got ready just then for the next phase. My mate took two sisters. H, the stuff he told me is just, and he didn't tell me very much. But he said when he moved off to start line, he says there's a big row of fucking helmets. He said, where everyone had just been in their helmet and put their green lids on. Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, this is something else that people aren't fully aware of. And a Royal Marine Berry is very distinctive. And as a silhouette, it's very distinctive. And it's important that people wear it because they can identify each other. You can't identify an individual in a helmet from a regiment, but you can with a Royal Marine and his green berry on. And so I think it's important. I can't remember. I think one of the photographs I sent you, I'm stuck in the middle with it with a tin hat on. I think that was purely for the photograph because I don't think I wore a tin hat after that. I think I wore my berry all the time. The guys involved in the blue and blue, you might not know this, but they actually, I think they took the berries off and put beanies on. So the silhouette when they were seen was people wearing beanies. And at the start of all of the conflicts when the Argentinians first caught the Royal Marines at Middlebrook, they were wearing beanies and it became obvious that the Argentines were wearing beanies. So I do wonder, and I've never spoke to Andy Shaw about it or whatever, but I do wonder that if them guys that night would have had green berries on, maybe there might have been a different outcome. I don't know because it was dark. So you can't tell. But Yes. Yes, it is what it is, mate. Isn't it war? Let's not pretend that war just isn't utterly, utterly, utterly hideous and there's no bloody, whether there are some rules, but it's brutal, absolute brutal. But you know, 25 years later, I was in Afghanistan with 42 commando. People said to me, you know, what was it like compared the Fultons compared to Afghan? You can't compare. There's no comparison. We had different systems. We had different war fighting techniques. We had different equipment, but Afghan was brutal, absolutely brutal. We knew the enemy were in the Fultons. You know, it was conventional warfare. But yeah, Afghan was very different. Would you say, Paul, I'm not talking about the casualty right now, but I'm talking about the fact that you have a patrol base that you patrol out of, you don't want to get blown up and you don't want to get sniped at and you're doing the Civ Pop thing, you know, hearts and minds. That to me seemed very similar to Northern Ireland. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but conditions obviously very different. Weapon systems are a lot different and the enemy are a lot different. You alluded to really, you know, when you've got guys at high on all sorts of sort of stuff, you know, that really don't know what they're doing. And I've got to say air cover. So I sound like I know what I'm talking about. So big air cover in the Middle East didn't have that so much in, was it Goodwood Park? Yeah, Goodwood was one. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we didn't have any in White Rock either. Oh, we might have had a couple of helicopters. Yeah, we patrolled out of White Rock. That was our first post in over there, because we were called the Commando Reserve. So we I'll never forget that first patrol at dawn out of White Rock. I don't know. I couldn't tell you what that road is because we moved about two weeks later. But you just is a mono bypass. Yeah, mono bypass. We just bomb burst out of there. Everyone zigzagging broke into patrol formation. Then I can we had what can only be described as a week, possibly two of the most boring patrols. I think you could ever go on. I mean, they were long and it was a really hot summer 89. It was they called it the long hot summer patrolling from RUC station to RUC. And they used to give you that you could just go out to their machine and get milk and juice and and stop in the odd player and, you know, giving them a bit of a grilling, can we say, or at least a bit of a chat. And I tell you what complacency is the word that comes into my mind, right? Because you've done all this training, this absolutely, you know, high adrenaline training to get to there where things you're actually training with live ammunition and shooting. We were shooting moving targets on the range, everything. And then, of course, you get over there. And for two weeks, it was like nothing, like nothing. Honestly, it was like, have we are we like wasting our time? Is this something people aren't telling us? Bang, that second week. It just we've got we got moved to good what good word for one token patrol. It changed everything, changed everything. Everything started going bang, round started coming down. Yeah, sorry, I'm not sure how we got into Northern Ireland. But but no, when you mentioned earlier that you were at White Rock, that that I was thinking, oh, so glad that we went to get we stayed the rest of our time there at Good Rock. And I'm so glad we did patrols were shorter. There were sometimes like two hours, maybe at long length for possibly six. But White Rock, that was long, all day long patrols go out in the morning, come back in the evening. Yes, that's what life's about. Yes. Yes. Time has really moved on. And I've I am thoroughly aware that we have covered just a tiny bit of your career, mate, your life, your your your career. It's been absolutely fascinating. I think our friends at home are just going to appreciate you so much coming on the on on on the show. I don't really know how to close other than what I always say, which is just massive respect for thank you for, you know, for all your service, mate, and the lives that you must have saved extend that respect, obviously, to everybody that went went down south. And we and Paul, you're very humble, but you were mentioned in dispatches. I happen to know you have a rack of medals that that go from here to eternity. So you're a very humble man here, folks. And should we give the should we just say something about Rick Jolly before we before we finish, because he was he certainly touched a lot of hearts, didn't he? Yeah, I mean, absolute great bloke. Rick Jolly did so much for the brand for the medical branch for the commando medical branch, because he was a commando trained surgeon lieutenant in 42 commando, did a lot of Northern Ireland tours. He used to he used to have some photographs that he would indoctrinate as before our tours where it would be the the Rick Jolly happy horror show where he would show his photographs and explain how best to deal with situations out there. And he really became the man of the commando medical branch without choice. He was the guy that was going to leaders down there. And I say lead. And he did lead. And he did pull those of the redberry and those of the greenberry together and said, you know what, fellas, if this is going to work, you need to cut out this shit and we need to work together. And and and that's the bit of Rick Jolly that I've been said that he was six foot four solid, a huge rugby player. Do you know what I mean? He wasn't he wasn't no weakling, but he got them all together and he sorted them out and and he led from the front. And he was absolutely great bloke. And I used to see him regularly with other being with and we talk about old times and that, but yeah, what a great bloke and what a sad loss. And is the only sailor I know that when at his funeral, he was carried by four Royal Marines that were Marines of his in Ajax Bay. And anybody would have wanted to do that. You know, some of what is to do it, the Navy wanted to do it is the doctors. Everybody wanted to be poor bearers. But do you know what four Royal Marines, did it? And that's the respect he had for the Royal Marines. And it was the respect that he had for the for the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines as well. So yeah, fabulous bloke sorely missed. I was with his wife. He was doing very well at the Falklands Memorial Service earlier this year in in Plymouth, Susie. Yeah, she's doing well. Good, good. Great. Paul, listen, let's let's get you on the show again, because I know we've got a million more days. There we go. You can spin us just just one last question. How have you cope with all the trauma? Paul, have you always, you know, have you have you have you struggled at all? Did you hit the bottle at any point or? When I first got back, I used to like to listen to Royal Marine band music late into the night. Maybe have a couple of whiskies. But that was that. But no, because because to me, the at the moment, I've got 11 medals. The Falklands is the second one. So there are a series of things after that. So I was never able to dwell on it. I was like, those that served them left, maybe have one or two issues. I stayed in and because I stayed in, my experiences have changed over the years. The most, the one that set me the most, I think, was in Afghanistan with 42. Possibly because I'm a lot older and because of the people that were dying were a lot younger. I suffered a little bit with that. I worked closely with the with the Colonel with fatalities. So I was involved a little bit more with the aftermath of fatalities. But other than that, you know, enjoy a good bit and a good beer and a good room now and again. Yes. Well, let's have a room together soon, mate. Definitely. Thank you. Great chance here. Yeah, stay on the line just so I can say goodbye to you properly. But thank you so much, Paul, friends at home. If you could like and subscribe and support the channel, that'd be really kind of you. Folks, if you like these stories, like we can't do them for free, it'd be really kind if you could support the Patreon. There's a link below where you can support us on locals. There's a link below. We only asked for 199 a month, friends. It's not a fortune, but it just helps us to bring you these stories that you're never going to hear again. And if we didn't tell them, they would disappear. They would disappear from the history books. So once again, massive thank you, Paul. Big love to everybody at home. That's great. We're going to see you all again soon. Thank you. Cheers, Chris.