 You're like a standby commando, so your kit was all packed, three hours and hours to move, kind of thing. If you see an IRA patrol, take them out. If you see a lawyer list, it's up to you. It's in a 100% Republican area. James, how are you, brother? Good, Chris. Yeah, very good. So, James, I'm going to read off your Amazon page because it will do you more credit than my bad memory will do. But James E. Mac, born in Scotland, spent much of his time, much of his childhood abroad, gaining a love of nature, the outdoors and wildlife. He become a commando in the late 80s. It's the same as me. And a member of a special operations unit with a 22 year career serving in many of the world's troubled hotspots. James subsequently specialized as a counterterrorism advisor and assisted in capacity building operations in support of UK and US government initiatives. His passion for wildlife led James to assist in the development of counterpoaching programs in Africa. This passion remains, and James spends much of his leisure time photographing the very animals he strives to protect. Wow, great stuff, mate. It's not too shabby when you hear it read out by someone else. Yes. Should we start at the beginning? When did you join the Marines? So, I joined in 1988, October 1988, Chris. I think I did my PRC, the potential recruits course in the summer. So, I'd had a couple of months to wait really before joining up. What was, that sounds right about my time. What I joined in June, I think it was June 88. Okay. I was 558. Were you around that? 563, mate. Oh, a bit before me. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. What would be a few trips apart then, really, yeah. You guys had it quite tough, didn't you? I don't know. I think I had a really good training team. I'll say that from the off. I did hear some horror stories about training teams and probably like yourself. When you're at, you know, CTC at Limestone, you'll see other troops getting absolutely thrashed or fracked. Yeah, it sucks to be those guys. Yeah, I mean, we got all the thrashing, but our training team, you could just say they were quite nice. They wanted the best for us, because they saw some of the other troops and they were getting smashed down to like six originals from 55, you know, 55 recruits. And, God, you just felt, you just, you just felt sorry for me. I think I always remember, and it's an example I've just carried with the rest of my life, but there was a team, a troop in the accommodation block across from us. And I can remember one day, two of their guys being like 30 seconds late to fall in and their troops sergeant put them in a crash superman position. So leg spread, hands behind the back and then leaning on their foreheads and the concrete for the remainder of the 45 minutes to the late. And of course, when they stood up to try and run, they just fainted and collapsed. You know, where they were like 20 press ups, that's fine. Yeah. Yes, yes. Funny times, funny times. What was your, did you have a nemesis in training? Mine was probably endurance course. Um, not so much. I think I found training pretty easy early on, but as it went on, I think because I was a skinny little runt. I, you know, I find it really hard. The speed marches, the weights, everything like that. I just, you know, I got through it, but I scraped through the weights about that. Yeah, I think you and me both, mate. But then again, they say it's not meant to be easy for anyone, is it? Yeah, yeah. It's going to find your weak point. Yes. Um, went to a unit. Yeah. So my first unit was up here in Scotland, four, five commando. Um, and even before I arrived, you know, my, my PTI, my DL, you know, good guys that were saying, oh, you love it out there. It's wild. You know, when you're recruiting, what does wild mean? Geez. But yeah, I came up in, I had a daughter. Love the unit for an amazing place. Yeah. And you're closer to home for you, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but for me, I think, um, I arrived, what did I arrive in the summer? So back then, what did they used to call it? You were like a standby commando. So your kit was all packed, three hours, notes to move kind of thing. And Tiananmen Square kicked off and we were convinced we were going to go there, you know, and a few other things. But yeah, we went straight into like, you know, also for the mountain training, then to Norway, and then the beat up for Northern Ireland, then out to South Armagh. So it was a terrific time to, to join the unit as well. I heard his story once. I don't know if they were nods in training. I think that's what I was told, but they had their, it was something like they've got their Arctic thermals and they painted tank tracks over them. And they, they'd gone ashore as a, as a, as a Tiananmen Square and ashore. And apparently it was the first time in history. They had to get the MPs on the military police to go and rescue them. I wouldn't, I wouldn't name the individual on camera mate. I know the guy who did it at four or five commander. Yeah. He basically got a BV, you know, the track vehicle to run over some white cotton pajamas he'd found from somewhere and, you know, had some little broken glasses he'd put on. And yeah, I know the guy very well, lives in Spain at the moment. But yeah, he did that when ashore and it wasn't well received. No, no. No, I remember we, we went ashore one night in Pompey and two of the lads dressed up as Hitler. And people were like literally chasing you down. It was actually a German tourist guy. This is very wrong. Yeah, you know, you're going to find them. Yeah, that's probably my best Austrian accent there. But hey, actually probably more appropriate being Austrian. Yes. Did you go over the water with four or five? Yes, I did mate. It was a very good tour. And I was quite fortunate to go. We'd been all warned off all as sproggs as younger guys that the CEO, he really wanted an experienced, you know, unit to go out. So we were pretty much told the sproggs forget it. You'll be re-apart. You'll stay back at base and look after camp. And as you know, Chris, I was heartbreaking. That is just not what you want. So we just beg, borrowed. We'd go with anyone. So I was ex company at the time. And I had a really, really terrific troop sergeant. And he made sure I got in the all bat and got to go out. So very, very fortunate. Because, you know, a lot of us were split up and some of us didn't get the goal. But it was a terrific tour, really busy. Trying to think now, there was sort of two or three main incidents where the guys, you know, acquitted themselves really, really well. And of course, we came back without a fatality, which as our CEO always said, you know, that is the benchmark of a successful tour. Yes. I can speak from experience. Things get very, very real when you, one of your mates gets shot dead in the first bloody month. Yeah. Yes. I think at that moment, you, you make sure you realize what you signed up for. I think it was a, I mean, you can look back with hindsight, but I mean, I remember even at the time being slightly surprised by it all that we were soldiers doing in effect a policeman's job. But in a war that wasn't a war, it was just the oddest thing ever. And I also didn't, even as a young Marine, didn't appreciate this kind of slope shoulders of guys, if you shoot something, it's up to you, you know, that whole backup of your chain of command kind of saying, well, you've got your yellow card, your white card or whatever, shoot something that's up to you. And I remember a lot of the older guys being really reluctant to fire the weapons because of that. They'd say, you know, take it on your own shoulders, but it was an odd, an odd time. Great tour, great guys, but just an odd situation, if that makes sense. I'd say it was pretty, pretty loaded on one side. Can we say that? Yeah, a hundred percent. You know, I remember going out on patrol one, that we'd gone to a new area and it was a little bit rural. And I remember the brief we got was, right, folks, if you see an IRA patrol, take them out. If you see a lawyer list, it's up to you. I'm just saying it because I'm all for peace and love and kindness and empathy these days, James, and what do you call it, reconciliation, you know? But, you know, some things that went on over there were, yeah, best left in the past, I think. I think so, my friend. I think it was a very, very strange, strange time. And I think the legacy of it proves that, you know, the fact you were like 70-year-old veterans being recalled to answer the crimes that were investigated before and no new evidence has arrived. It's just a real shitty situation. Yeah, that's a tough one. That I spoke with Robin Horsefell about that because he's obviously been quite galvanizing in leading the campaign against the Northern Ireland prosecutions. And he just said, because my thing was, if someone shot my kid unfairly, I'd fucking hunt them down for the rest of my life. Never let it lie, yeah. But Robin said, well, a lot of these cases have all been to court. Does make your question, you know, the fairness of the, do we call it the judicial? Yeah. You know, because it was a, you know, it was, moving on. So were you in South Amar? I was in South Amar, yeah. Yeah, what they called that bandic country, didn't they? Yeah, and it was very well named. I mean, the South Amar IRA battalion, they had a very, very well-owned reputation for effective operations, you know. And I think in later years, even a lot of the, which you call international operations, where it was mainland targets, were outsourced to South Amar provisional IRA. So it shows you the effect and the capability they had, not just within Northern Ireland, though they were all tough, but actually exporting it to other areas. And I think in our time, there was the, the famous gun team was out about the, the big Dushka 12.7 running around you that would take down helicopters. And I think they did shoot down a links at some point. And they had the armored car, they would sort of pop across the border and attack the vehicle checkpoints and stuff like that. So there was quite a lot going on, yeah. Yeah. One of my opposers telling me that, he said, when you're on patrol down there, you'd look at road, road signs. And he said they had a massive, he said they had a massive hole through them where the, was it a Garant? Am I remembering that right? Garant, yeah, the big rifle, yeah. Garant, like a long, really heavy caliber sniper rifle. And that, there was a guy running loose with one of those. Oh yeah. Yeah. I think that was the Barrett, the big 50 cal Barrett. Yeah. Oh, okay. I think the troop, I think they grabbed him late nineties. Was it something like that? They got him. Yeah. And again, that was another member of the South Armour team. They, they had a sniper team trained and pretty effective on that weapon. So that was another thing everybody was hunting for was this big 50 caliber. And you're plotting around in your Gore-Tex and, you know, your helmet sort of wobbling up and down everywhere. And you're thinking about these big weapons out there, yeah. Yeah. Can you give us an idea, James, of any incidents you're involved in, just for our friends at home? Yeah. So I mean, we had quite a few, but I suppose the one people would know more about was, I, I wasn't on the ground when the guys did it, but we went out straight away to support. And it was the, the Karaher brothers. So there were IRA members, one, I believe at the time was on the run. And just by sheer chance, our guys stopped them at a VCP, saw weapons in the car, car took off, guys chased after it. One of our guys ended up on the bonnet, hanging off the windscreen, like something like a Liam Neeson movie as it went along. But as the vehicle went through the gears, gathered speed, it was inevitable he was going to be seriously hurt or killed. So the section commander gave a proper fire control order, him and a Marine open fire and brought it to a halt sort of thing. And I think one of the brothers was killed outright. The other one was seriously injured. So as a result of that, on the ground, we were sort of putting up the, the cordons and stuff. So the mood's very high. It's very tense. It's in a hundred percent Republican area. So that night, we're all sort of securing the scene for Soco, seeing the crimes and that to investigate. And the sentry position I was looking at was looking over a graveyard at the time. And it was like, it's like something from a movie. The fog had rolled in on your 20 year old young Marine and lying on the stomach. And I just see just movement between the gravestones. I'm kind of looking and I, you know, get my suicide site up and I look again. And this time I can see someone carrying and ducking behind it. So I click on the radio and I can get headquarters. And I'm saying, look, I think I've got a gunman. And you can, I can imagine the chaos back at headquarters. And I keep seeing this guy dodging between gravestones. And he's, you know, I can see he's carrying. So I'm trying to wake the guys behind me to let them know, but he's close enough. I don't want him to hear me. And as a young Marine is the first time I'd experienced this where, okay, you're on your own now. You need to decide to shoot or not shoot. And of course, and in the, you know, the ear, the headset, I've got HQ, and I just came out and said, okay, standby for contact. I thought, I've got to take this guy out. I don't know how many more there are. So, you know, lifted up the weapon and it's your training kicks in. Even with the adrenaline and fear I had, click the safe to catch up looked up. And I just gave pause. I could see sort of the top half of him as he came between a couple of the tombstones. And then as he staggered out, I just put the safety on a swore because he was drunk and he had two rows of wallpaper. And he was cutting a shortcut. I must have been taking a shortcut. There was a bar from the bar to wherever the hell he lived. And now he was maybe 20 feet from me. So out of the mist and the dark, and I could see him clearly. And, you know, I get up, shout, I'm nearly fainted in here. I nearly, you know, wrenched his head off. But, you know, but now the guys are up. But I always remember that when people talk about, you know, squaudy shoot to kill and everything. And I thought, well, you know, there, there was a chance I had. And it was a very, for a young Marina, a big decision to make. But all the tensions of the day, the adrenaline, what the guys had just gone through. But yeah, just some drunk guy trying to stagger home with two rows of wallpaper in his hand. A funny story more than anything else. That reminds me so much. We stopped to go. I can't even remember what road it was. New Lodge Road or something. And I said to him, could you get out of the van, sir? And open the back for me, please. And he, he, he, you could see he didn't want to do it. And so I asked him again. And he, he just got, he just, like you could just see something was wrong. And he opened the back and there was a, there was a sheet, like a bed sheet over something in the back. And I said, could you take the sheet off, sir, please? And, and he just looked at me and he pulled a sheet. There was a mortar base plate there. All right. You know, the homemade mortar tubes, right? And so I caught my weapon and asked it and, and, and I can't, I can't remember, you know, whatever it was, get down. And he gets down and he says, I can explain, I can explain. And I shouted over to the, I shouted over to our, our brick commander. And I won't say his name, but, you know, Smudge, get over here. And he was, he was chatting to another player or a player at this time. And he looked over the shoulder and went, Oh yeah, why? Have you found a mortar base plate? I went, yeah. And his face dropped and he come running over. And the guy went, I'm a firework display guy. And it was his, honestly, it's fireworks. And it, and it was true. It was fire, you know, sorry, I'm misleading people, but on purpose, because that's what it looked like. It was his black tubes, everything that you've been trained. Gosh. Yes. Yes. The guy must have been absolutely brick in it. Yeah. He had some paperwork on it. You know, he had some paperwork about his business and it was fine. It was absolutely fine, but it was, yes. So James, how did you move on? What else did you do in the Corps before you went on to special operations? Northern Iraq. Went out there with Bob Haven, pretty much straight from South Armagh, actually. I think a friend of mine, we were just bumming around Kenya for a bit. And we got to the airport in London when we landed. And there was a blackboard there just said, any raw Marines, please report to this desk and like, what's that about? And just all got recalled to, you know, but that was pretty good. You know, we kind of very quickly calmed and bombed at four fire then down on the aircraft out to Northern Iraq and on the ground within days. And I think, if I remember correctly, the prime minister wasn't even aware that we were boots on ground until someone asked the question in the House of Commons. But that was a good experience on a few months. But yeah, just up in the mountains of Northern Iraq and hooking up with the Peshmerga and getting them to come down and get their people back. But yeah, terrific time. Really good. And that mission was to protect the Kurds, was it? Was it not? Yeah, that's right. They kind of all, you know, they've been massacres under the Saddam Hussein regime. So they don't do what they always do. They go to the mountains and they hide. So we come into, I think the first place we come into was called Zak or kind of a decent sized town. And we just, yeah, we kicked the secret police out. We kicked the Iraqi army out and stuff. And then we started getting these people back down from the hills. And I mean, yeah, they're living up in mountains above the snowline and all kind of stuff, you know, just tough, hardy people, but starting a death and suffering. So yeah, we'd go up, we'd link up with the Peshmerga, the local militia, and then it's sort of a joint up. We'd bring these people back down and back into their homes. But some of it's pretty haunting. You know, we come into villages, maybe the size of the village I live in now, which might have like 900, 1,000 people in the area. And it'd be dessert, you know, like a real Murray Celeste, you know, we'd go from house to house, you know, clean for booby traps. But it's like people that just drop cups and sauces and disappear. And they'd only be like dogs walking the street. And we'd say, where do these people go? And then, you know, when you were talking to them, they'd say, well, you know, the Iraqis came, took all the men over the age of 12 and buried them alive in the desert. And you say, you're dealing with a complete different level of barbarism than you've ever encountered in your life. Yeah, the poor old Kurds, because their territory spreads across different countries, doesn't it? So they're not, this is why they're never recognized. And they get bashed by, I mean, Turkey's saying their youngsters, their young military out to give them a bit, you know, I say a hiding is probably an understatement. But they are, they're very kind people from what, you know, I've spent a bit of time in Kurdistan. Did you get the distant tree when you were out there? I heard that distant tree was very bad. No, I had one little boat for a night. And that was about it, really. But yeah, I was in loads of boats. My mate just said it, he said it killed him. But yeah. The funny thing is, Chris, I was in, we were in the field the whole time. But like about halfway through the headquarters said, are we taking over one of the hotels in the mountains? We're going to get you up there for a night, you'll eat proper food and have a proper bed. And that's the only time I got the squirts was from Royal Marine Chefs. Yes, I got distant tree on the way, drove to India once. And I think going through that, it's when we start to eat the darling, I think in Pakistan, you're fine up until Iran's all quite sort of fairly modern or probably more modern than most people would feel. And I think the first time we ate Dow off the side of the road, it just started and then it just become a thing. You had this and it just stayed with me for weeks. My stomach wasn't right. Yes. So how does one go? I mean, feel free to say what you're allowed to say, James, but how did you enter special operations? I'd actually had a bit of an interest in it from the Northern Island tour of the Marines, Chris, because maybe like yourself, when we were over there, these two kind of long haired bearded guys came to a location and gave us a very vague brief on who they were. But basically they were saying, if you see anything interesting or when you stop someone and fill out the Charlie One vehicle report form, forward it to us if they're chatty or anything like that. Now, the two guys didn't cover themselves in glory with our location. Actually, there were a couple of cowboys, which we became very apparent, but I never forgot that. I thought, I'm cutting about Northern Ireland and a helicopter because it's unsafe to move in the roads multiples of the ECM to jam signals for bombs. And he is John and Charlie with Beards and Fort Sierra. And I remember it all stuck in my head. And what do you do here? You know, who are you guys? And some years later, I got a brief 4-5 commando. You get the special forces brief there and these guys. And when they were speaking about what they did, I remember thinking, that's pretty freaking hardcore and sounds interesting. And so I think I started looking into it seriously around 97. And like anything, there's a whole routine for it. You know, you go to your troop sergeant and say, I'm interested in it. He talks to the company commander. He finds the dusty file and sort of blows it off and says, right, you've got to be fit. You can't be a numpty, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so from there, I chose to go and apply for. We had to go and do about a five day kind of pre-assessment. There's a lot of fizz that you do fizz a couple of times a day. But in that five days, there was something like 70 or 80 tests, all sorts of physical, mental, all of this kind of stuff. But I remember even going through, I thought this is one of the most interesting things I've done. There's so many weird shit, it's really flicking my switch 100%. And I think on my, that pre-selection, because it was a tri-service, so there was a couple of Marines that ours infantry all sorts. I think we had about 35 or 40, and I think four of us kind of got through it. And then they loaded us onto the courses. So my course was in 99. That's when I did my course and passed it from there. That's changed a little bit now, but back then I think it was about three and a half months worth of it. And it started with, as you'd expect, a lot of range work, a lot of unarmed combat. And it was all because when you do deploying, you do work. You're a two-man team, three-man team, separate different cars, whatever, but you'll never have the big green machine with you. You've got to learn how to be capable and helping your teammates out of really sticky situations when there's only two or three of you on the ground. So I passed the course and when I finished it, I think we were supposed to have a couple of weeks leave or something and I just got a phone call the next day saying, can you go out early? I was like, okay. So me and my friend went out to replace a couple of guys who had an altercation when they were drinking and unfortunately got sacked by the unit. So we got thrown in pretty much at the deep end, but I kind of think sometimes that's the best way in a lot of things is you're in your feet away and you're running before you know it. I think I know that story. I think we've had someone else on the podcast that told us that one. And is it, it's kind of, I don't know if it's appropriate asking this question now because as you get older, you second guess things a lot more than when you're young, don't you? When we were young, we were a bit mental. We would have done anything that we were asked to do, wouldn't we? You know, that's what we signed up for, but when I look back now and think, when you hear about, was it Captain Nairak? His legacy and his demise kind of haunts the whole Special Operations community over there because he was one of the first kind of guys. But yeah, but when you look at what he was doing and how he was doing it, you just say insanity, how did he expect to ever carry that off for any length of time? But he did, to be fair, but you know, he was always going to pay the paper at some point. Yeah, I mean, unless you're born over there and you've got connections and you can carry, obviously you've got the accent and even the look I'm guessing, on a dodgy wicket, aren't you? Massively, mate. You can't pretend to that depth. It's impossible. Your cover story just wouldn't have enough depth. I mean, that's probably what undid him in the end. I'm not really sure, but I think he probably got away with a lot of it because he was a bit of an unknown entity. They weren't quite sure who is this guy. What exactly is he? I think, what did he say? He was Danny from Belfast and he would sing in the local bars around Drum and Tea and stuff in South Arman. I think he was just, they didn't quite know what box to put him in, but eventually, I think they just made the decision that he's a bad and let's grab him and see what he's got to say. Yeah, I was in a, when I was working the door in Hong Kong, some, I got in a conversation with one chap and he said, he said, you've been in the military. I went, yeah. I fucking hate the British military. I said, well, I'm not in the military now, but you're still in the IRA though, obviously. So what's your fucking problem? He went, oh, yeah, you want a beer? We went to a smashing party. I'll never forget it, but yeah, funny times and then other guys would come in and they just fucking hated you. Absolutely. Just wouldn't even, just fuck off me. Just like wouldn't even, and you're the bloody doorman. It was a funny situation to, I think it was because the work on the new airport over there attracted Irish traditionally being good at building stuff. Yes, what do you do with your night? You carry an e-mail, I'm guessing, or I suppose you carry a whole range of stuff in the boot of the car, do you? Well, yeah, yeah, certainly didn't, I don't think too much has changed there, but as you can imagine, you've got all plethora of stuff because you want close range weapons, you want for a bit of standoff because again, in any eventuality, you've got to allow for the fact your car might be immobilized, or crashed or whatever, you have to leave it. So you've got to have enough stuff to keep yourself alive and support your teammates as well, or until another car or another person can sort of come in and get you. So it goes back to that whole thing about self-reliance, you've got to be, whatever the threat is, take it on, be comfortable with it and have enough arms and ammunition just to deal with it until you can get some support. I mean, it can become very rare. We had a chat that I worked with in, I won't say where, but worked with him in Plymouth, and I have no idea why he was undercover over there, but he was and he drove into an IRA checkpoint. What do they call him? Like illegal checkpoints? It's IVCP, yeah. Yeah. And he realized there's no going back. So he just pulled up, pulled his 9mm out, stepped out of the car and just shot three of them dead. It's just, it really is like the stuff of films, isn't it? I think that, obviously, fairly cautious is what I said, but the training itself really prepares you for it. So our training instructors were SES, it was always an SES training guy, and then you passed their fees to allow you to progress in the course. And I think that helped because they gave you that decision-making process for exactly that thing. It's like any kind of training, when you're exposed to it more and more and more, it becomes reaction rather than, oh my gosh, what do I do? Hang on, I know I can do this. Obviously, you're in a situation and it says, bang, I know what I do now. And there's that just confidence, and it becomes a reaction rather than, you know, you're looking through courses of action as the situation kind of escalates and stuff. But yeah, the training absolutely prepared us for it 100%. Can we ask what your hairiest moment was doing this, James? I suppose over there, not... I wouldn't say over there was too bad. I had a few things, there's a couple I can't talk about to be honest, but I certainly won where we had a guy, we were on a job, we were in a very, very tough area, and he was injured really, really bad. And there was only a couple of us on the ground to deal with that when a crowed sort of started forming, and he had to be cast about to hospital, all sorts of stuff. And I think the thing for me is everybody, every soldier of that era remembers the Woods and Howes case, you know, where these two hapless signalers got caught and ripped and then killed by the mob. And so in any crowd situation, mob situation, that is just right in the back of the head there, you know, and being sort of one guy, two guys, yeah. Yeah, but again, it was dealt, we didn't have to shoot anyone, it was a projection of strength and a projection of aggression until we got some support and got out, can I think? Yeah, because I guess you'd call up the local Green Army QRF, would you? Unfortunately, again, they're always some distance away, that's the issue. But then that's how a training works, it's like you will protect, fight, take over hard cover until they can get to you. So it's that self-reliance again. And again, it's quite unique because you work in the Green Army, like I did as a Marine, you're part of a fire team, you're part of this, that you're always part of something. So this was a big sea change to be, you know, one or two guys, three guys, whatever. Yes, and when you're dealing, I guess, with the Green Army, Green Army friends at home is what I believe special ops refer to, the regular army on the ground as opposed to the undercover. And you're relying on their commander then, aren't you? And he's not on your level, because he's probably some toffee officer that's being, you know, stick, because we didn't that, was it, was it our, was it our Slater, wasn't it, was killed? SAS trooper. I think he was over there, he was over there with Andy McNabb, and they were all over there at this, well, those two were over there at the same time, I know, because I've read, I've read a few books on it and they called up the QRF and they refused to come out, even though it was kind of like, you know, we need you guys now and ended up with, with Al being killed. Yes, it's beyond. Yeah, I think, like anything, a QRF is only as good as the people running it kind of thing. Have a good and bad at an incident in Afghanistan where, again, the QRF just lifted off the ground without, you know, because they're going to miss a meal. Despite the fact that they were in Kandahar, they could have had, you know, a boardwalk open nearly 18 hours a day for pizza, hot chicken wings or whatever. Yeah, so, yeah, that showed me, you know, very, we were quite exposed to where we were. The reliance on the QRF is, yeah, it's not a given. And can you tell us other areas of operation? Yeah, and again, obviously, I'll be cautious because there's a lot of stuff I can talk about in general. So I went to Iraq, I went as part of Task Force Black. Don't, don't mention Cornwall. Up against the Cornwall Liberation Army, right? Mum's the word. We'll keep that one still. Sorry, go on, James. Yeah, I went out to Iraq, I was part of Task Force Black out there, so that was the Special Air Force's mission in Baghdad in the area there. Basically, that was to, you know, this was kind of the rise of al Qaeda, you know, there were car bombing everywhere in the city, killing just hundreds of people every week. So I went out as part of that. Terrific, just the first time I'd worked with a Special Forces Squadron, and just seeing the energy and the drive of these guys was just absolute, yeah, a joy. I even, even after my six months, I tried to extend and stay on. It was just about great to be part of something where you were just wrapping up bad guys day after day after day, really rewarding. And that was in conjunction with the Americans, was it not, Project Black? So yeah, I think the Americans next is, well, that's open source now, and it was Task Force Green, so that was Delta Force. And it did a couple of things with them too, because sometimes stuff I'd be doing wouldn't be our target set. We had a very focused target set. And, you know, if I'd pick up something else, I'd be like, well, we wouldn't use that, but I'd pop next door to Delta, have a word, one of their team leaders, their team commanders, and they'd sometimes run with it and go and take it from there. And we should say a big shout to Bernie, shouldn't we? He's a good lad. Yes. We just referred to him as Operator Bernie on this show. He's massively popular, the chats that we've, like I said, said to early gents, you know, a lot of people, this is the first they're ever going to get to learn of this, this unique and obviously secretive world. So, Bernie, thank you, mate. Bernie's going to come back on the, come back on the show soon. Very good lad. Very good lad. Good name. Is there, what's it like working with the Americans? Are they consummate professionals or are they a bit gung-ho? Yeah, I think from my experience, they have got so much better. In the last decade, because they've just been exposed to constant war, they really have been exposed to constant war. And like you know, they don't do anything small, they do everything on an industrial level. So, for example, that support I gave to Task Force Black, it was me, one, two, two or three others. The equivalent for the Americans was like six, seven times that easy. And that's just them, they do everything on an industrial scale. They're special forces, JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command. I think the SF guys refer to it as the Death Star because it's just this huge machine that kind of fuses all the technology for hoovering up intelligence and then the action on the ground as well. So some were good, some were bad. I remember, again, I'd work with CIA, people like that as well. And I remember being a little bit operationally embarrassed because I've been chasing this target very close to getting them. And the CIA guy kind of walked in and just said, yeah, if you guys are interested in Abu, whatever, I've got him, he's here, and this guy, I mean, the car, the timings, the bodyguards, everything you'd need to do a strike on him. And I remember thinking, you know, I've been chasing this guy for ages, how have you got him? But what he did allow me to do was sit with his asset, his source, so I could debrief him. And debrief this asset, you know, saying, okay, where does he do, what does he drive, how many bodyguards, what do they carry, and then just that one question where I said, so when was the last time you saw him? Oh, well, he was there. But he would never say I saw him. And I had to keep asking, keep asking. And it was the typical Middle Eastern African thing. Oh, I haven't seen him, but my mayors. But he's relayed this whole thing over two days about this target, as if he's eyes on the ground. And a long story short, it was all bullshit. It was a cousin of a friend, and he'd come in the Americans. I don't know why they hadn't done the due diligence. So digging into it, get me some photos, do anything else. Yeah, but what was funny was the squadron commander at the time, he got that from CI and he came in. James, yeah, you're lagging a bit, mate, yanks are all over this. And you feel professionally, you know, but of course, then I got to go back up, look at nothing. And we we wrapped up our target later on. So it was nice. But yeah, that showed me that you can be, you know, top tier level and still be crap at your job. But I've also worked with other yanks in CIA and FBI, who have been phenomenal, absolutely on their game. How many rounds have you fired in your life, do you think? Well, in anger, I was good, I actually meant in training because I'll bet it's a fair few. It's a lot in training. I mean, I think that's that's the thing I noticed when I went to this, you know, the special duty special operations unit was ammo was unlimited. And it was there because they just want, you know, those weapons, those gels just to be there. Probably like you when I was coming up in the court was exotic to fire a nine mil and 13 rounds. And then again, you'd go to America, I'd go America with the Marines for an exchange. And they're, you know, shared loads of ammo, they just put it down the range nonstop. So yeah, that was quite good when I went to special duties was the fact that tons of ammo, tons of training, lots of it. You do realise under the way the government's going, you're going to get a bill for all of this ammo. Pollution. Yeah. And did you, one of my favourite weapons ever was the SMG, the Stirling submachine. I just loved it. The reason I loved it is you feel the working parts coming back. Okay. And it was really quite, you know, there wasn't a huge kickback. I love the SLR as well. Over 300 meters was just incredible, especially as it didn't have an optical sight. It's way more accurate than the SA80, which did have an optical sight. Nine mil was a pain in the ass because I carried one on ship for a year and you literally had to sleep with it under your pillow because you knew what would happen if you lost it. I remember once we had the ship's Christmas piss up and you remember how much we used to drink. It was just a criminal man. And I got up on stage with Edwin Starr, soul sensation. And he said, war, and then he handed me the microphone and I said, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Just, but the next day, the next day we had we had some, we were doing some drills, you know, I don't know, imagine that, you know, some terrorists has breached the gangway on the ship and he's coming down and we had, we had some, let's say some special things on invincible. And as we were standing and getting briefed by our corporal, I fucking dropped my nine mil on the deck. You can imagine the weight of a nine mil clattering on a steel deck. It and everyone just turned like that. So yeah, all right, all right, all right. I was fucking shit faced. Yes. I remember that I think I was a sick actually a nine mil again. But we were on the range in Northern Ireland and our CEO when that would come down and he's a really good kind of cracking guy. And he liked coming down with the guys having a shoot and talking to you individually and stuff. So again, you know, we finished the shoot, we're all lined up, you know, for inspection, poor arms, Cleary Springs, boom, big bang. And when we all looked and everybody does what you said, wherever the bang is, the crowd goes, woof, and just leaves us alone individual. And here's the CEO with a puff of smoke between his feet. And this operator going, I'm really sorry. I mean, the worst place, worst time ever in the we had loads in Belfast. Not I mean, as a not not just the Marines, but all the people coming in and out of the of the base. One chap, some army guy undercover, he driven in in his car. He went into the naffy and thought he was clearing his nine mil before he went in and obviously forgot to take the magazine off. Drilled a hole in a tarmac, looked around, thought no one had saw him. So he just went went went in and got a pint. And of course, that caught up with him. But yeah, for me, it was a religious thing. You took the magazine off. You took it off and you check your chamber. And then okay, then, you know, East Springs or whatever that that that was just it. But people would go up to the loading bay and go. And it's like, where is your head to do? But you're paranoid about it utterly paranoid about it. We had one on the I think it was up the bottom of the yard over the crumbling road. I can't remember. Again, someone shot the bloody a few days earlier, someone in the back of one of the it was a it was an army guy again that was on patrol with us in one of the jeeps come up, we call it not a pig, but the the Land Rover type thing. Or was it? No, was it a pig? I might have been a pig anyway. And he ended in the back. And the only reason he didn't kill the driver is there was a was it PRC radio? We used to call them. There was a radio behind us. We took the radio out. And then one of one of my mates ended on the crumbling road. And it was funny because you obviously didn't we thought it was a contact. And I remember seeing like grow men panic. I just took took up a fire position. I'm looking around. There's guys like you could see that they were just panicking. It was yeah, quite quite interesting to see how highly trained individuals can can react when they're not expecting something. Yes. So let's talk about Africa because you've got quite a connection with do you know James Glancy? I know the name. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. James was a I'll just say he was a Royal Marines officer and we'll leave it there. But he's he's done a lot of wildlife programs and all a lot of a lot of conservation work as well. He came on he came on the show. Africa's an amazing an amazing place for full stop when you're there and you think mother Africa and you can see why. Hey. Yeah. I when I was a kid, you know, I used to odd jobs and stuff. I grew up in Australia when I was younger. So I used to odd jobs for like neighbors and stuff to their gardens. And this one old couple I was remember they had like rows of National Geographics and I'd sort of pick one up and when they saw me they encouraged me just to take a home reader. And of course National Geographics from the 60s and 70s were all about Africa. And I swore myself that I'm going to go there one day. I'm going to see this. I'm going to see gorillas and lions and everything else. So yeah, the first opportunity I had it I did. I started out in East Africa and Kenya, Tanzania and then over the years down to Morocco and I used to do a lot of surfing as well. Still do but not so much. So surfing Morocco and just living a bit hand to mouth on the coast just terrific. Absolutely terrific. Did you see any sharks when you were surfing there? No, not there. Saw some in South Africa but not up in the Moroccan coast now. Where I taught I taught street kids in Mozambique, a place called Nicala Porto. It was actually a by-road village outside of Nicala. And just before I got there one of the kids we used to go swimming every day if we could. There was a reef there and it was just incredible. We'd go fishing and there were guys there, fishermen, spear fishermen and all their kit was homemade. Even their mask they made it out of like an old car tire wrapped around a piece of glass. And I remember the guy he let me have a go of his spear gun one day. And as I went to jump and he went no. And he threw the spear gun in first. He said you always let it sink to the bottom and then you swim down and pick it just so you don't shoot yourself. It was just incredible but one of the kids got taken by a shark just before I got there. Yeah, so you know Palma up in northern Mozambique. I was kind of, I did an oil and gas project where they basically went into the jungle and built a city and an international airport and everything else. But it was based just south of Palma. So I was based up there for a bit. Then I went down to Pemba and lived the life of Riley out in a hotel and stuff like that. But yeah, as you say there, I couldn't, every morning at dawn you'd see the locals walk to the beach with a homemade mask. And it was kind of like a tiered system. You know the most of the load in the amount of a mask, you'd have a net and you'd just swim out, take big breaths and collect shellfish. And the guy above him had a homemade mask and the guy above him, it was a bit wealthier. He'd a homemade mask and a spear gun. And then the rich guy had a dugout. But they would come back like tuna and these giant fish. That was just amazed. Yeah, we could walk along the beach in the afternoon and they'd have their catch laid out on the beach. Sometimes they got lucky. These little dugout canoes with a single line and they'd catch a whole show of tuna or a good good part of a show. Crazy minute. Yes. It was so simple. I mean, for friends at home, when you, I don't know what it's like now. I would imagine Mozambique should be one of the hottest tourist spots on the planet because it was stunningly beautiful. It was stunning. The only drawback there, if you're a Westerner, was there were no toilets. So everybody nipped behind a tree. So there was a permanent like whiff of Chima was the, it's like this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Samalina that the Americans obviously had some deal, they'd supply and all the kids ate was Chima with a tiny dribble of like goat broth on top and they had one, one wheel a day and that was it. And I remember when we got off the plane and then we got a lift in a Land Rover by someone who dropped us at a bus stop and we got this chicken bus to Nicaragua. And as you left the kind of urban area of the airport is just nothing. Just bush and scrub and Savannah. And then suddenly you see mud huts with people walking with a pot. Yeah. It was just beyond belief James, you know, just it was just like when you watch Tarzan as a kid. Just absolutely incredible. One of the best. Yeah, it is almost like time travel because you're hitting these places where there's no development. There's no electricity. There's no water other than what's in a stream and people still live a various subsistence level existence doing it, you know. Yes. And have you, have you done anti-poaching stuff? I did make, yeah. I went out to West Africa to work there for conservation charities. So I was doing counterterrorism work and we were approached by a conservation charity who said, look, we think you could take that model and apply it in a training mentoring capacity to local rangers because these national parks in Cameroon and Benin are getting absolutely destroyed by poaching. So I went out to Benin first and had a look and just terrific work with a couple of French zoologists. And again, you know, when I, you know, we're not really doing this for money. I'm getting paid to do it, but you know, you take a big chunk away because you think, well, this is more for helping rather than anything else. But you know, you say to these zoologists and say, so what about accommodation? They're going, oh, we've got a really good hotel. Now I'd never worked with zoologists before. So to me, a hotel is a hotel. So we end up in very North of Benin, you know, quite a rough rural area. But initially the hotel looks like a hotel. There's all these white rendezvous with a thatch. But as I'm walking towards it, I look at it, okay, so my door is about this much off the floor. You just push it and it opens, isn't it a lock? It's still got the shape of the person before me in it on the yellow sheets and the home suite is just a pipe, but it's like, hey, it's, you know, it's absolutely fine. But again, for me, the reward was just being among wildlife. I love wildlife. So we get in this national park and out of the fruit and we track the lion or, you know, with elephant charges and stuff. It's just every boy's dream. Absolutely amazing. And it's a sad situation, James, isn't it? Because the Chinese obviously will pour an awful lot of money into buying these animal parts. And it's no, there's no like, I mean, it's different. I mean, even when I've lived in China, I've lived in Hong Kong. It's very different. I mean, but my business partner in Hong Kong is a Hong Kong Chinese guy and he lifted up the newspaper one day and on the front page was a picture of someone getting pulled out the surf with all their legs ripped to ribbons by shark. And me coming from conservative England, even though obviously, you know, we had traveled quite a bit by that stage, but I just, my jaw dropped and I said, is that kind of picture just normal here? And oh, yeah, Hong Kong people, very animal. Like that, right? And the point I'm getting, the point I'm getting to, James, is that, you know, we've got all our morals and our etiquette and our codes of conduct here and we don't hurt animals. But it's a different part of the world. And I'd imagine they have no qualms. You know, taking a bit of rhino, horn, aphrodisiac and not it, you know, but that was, that was the main difficulty I had is because, you know, you can, you know, you can do all the kind of approaching programs you want at the grassroots level to catch these guys. But at the top international level, you know, you got these Chinese officials bribing. I mean, the top level of government to assist. We, I mean, we did some good work and we stopped quite a lot, we caught quite a lot. But I can also remember getting a call one night from one of the rangers I was mentoring with. And he said, you need to come quick, you need to come quick. And I said, I won't mention his position, but a minister, a government minister, drove into the National Park at night with a couple of people with him and just going to go kill elephants, get the tusks, get them out. And these guys aren't going to fight against that level of corruption. They can't, you know, they just don't have the the power. They're not empowered enough to do it. They're just low level rangers, you know, running around with a pair of trainers and five bullets and a gun and, you know, a national level minister and his goons turn up to go and slot elephants. So we did, we linked up with Interpol and a lot of those agencies to again, just kind of, you know, front end, back end, try and smash the two of them. But it's almost impossible for the Chinese that they've been doing this for so long. They're very, very good at what they do. Yeah, I bet they can pay for some expensive helicopter operations and stuff. Can't they? And they're going to, as you said, they're going to qualms. There's no moral red line that they will stop at. It's just business. That's it. Yeah. I mean, when I was in Guangzhou, I think it was, and walking through the city and these women were just running up to you with these babies. And the babies were all like on Valium and they borrow the babies. The babies get like rent, you know, you hire a baby for the day, give it a Valium switch and then you just run up to any body you think's going to sort of give you money. And I thought that was bad. I was doing a business presentation one night and I happened to mention that I'd been in Hong Kong and I was going back there for business. And to an elderly couple, or I'll say probably my age now, but when I was young, they were older and they come up to me after my president said, you just said you had a great time in China. And I was, yeah, they said we, we saw kids like crippled and chained to railings with begging but and folks were not having a go at the Chinese. It would just highlight in the, you know, the just and obviously this isn't everyone in China. I'm sure I'm sure the majority of Chinese people are loving and caring, but this was a, you know, this was a phenomenon. You just think those poor animals don't, I mean, how many species are extinct now? And, you know, it's, you kind of would have thought that in the day and age of science proving, you know, that that rhinohorns essentially keratin, which is essentially fingernails, you know, if you want to boil it down to its basic will have no effect whatsoever in your virility or your libido or anything, but that, that kind of folk medicine superstition still persists, doesn't it? Yeah, it's a shame because, you know, when we were poaching, as much of it was about recognising, you can't just like arrest and lock everybody up with poachers because some of these people poached me, they live on bushmeat as locals. So, you know, what we did was implement a buy-in. So like come and work with us, get a small salary for working with us rather than going out and shooting chimpanzees or some of the rare animals. And again, that was good. But at the top end, you were still getting, you know, why aren't we getting elephant tusk out? Why are we getting rhino horn out? And a lot of the guys over there, they're French, you know, because Benji and Cameron from French colonies, and these old French guys stayed on, you know, and they love living there. And they almost self-protect the areas just because, I mean, I don't know, I guess it's like an English expat living somewhere he adores. And he'd just say, oh, this is my home, I'll protect it. So these French guys were actually doing a pretty good job, crazy. You know, they'd be shot at, you know, when I'm at a grenade thrown out at some point, but still, you know, goes out, does a little patrol on his little land rover. Yeah, amazing. It's funny in Mozambique, occasionally you'd meet someone of Portuguese origin that had obviously stayed behind after the civil wars and the colonial wars and all the horrors they've been through. And you'd think this person was European. So you'd sort of, you know, and then when they spoke, the way they spoke, all their math, they spoke obviously fluent macaw, the mannerisms were just like a, it was, it is just that whole colonial thing is fascinating, fascinating in itself. James, I heard that for a while they were, they were chopping the right, they were chainsawing off the rhino's horn in an attempt to protect it by taking the horn off it. And then the poachers were just killing it anyway, because they didn't want to waste time tracking an animal only to find that it didn't have a horn. That's 100% right, mate. They were doing that. And again, it was, you see it everywhere, don't you? Law enforcement or something comes up with a mitigation measure and the bad guys find something else. Yeah, that's really sad, but that happened. They were taking the horns off them. And again, the poachers, initially we thought it was bad temper. You know, you find a carcass of an animal that was killed. You think it was frustration, but you were right. We got the intelligence back and said, no, there's like, we'll kill it. It was what's the point of tracking it and then finding that. So you're like, did we stop that now? Because you know, and what was the other thing they didn't do in my area, I think it was East Africa. They started dying the horns, this purple. And I can't remember what they died with, but it was pretty permanent. And the hope was, nobody's going to want a purple horn. I don't really know how far along they got with that one. But yeah, crazy the lens, people have to go just to protect someone like a rhino or an elephant. Did you have any hairy moments doing this work? Yeah, mostly from animals. But I had two amazing zoologists. So one of the women, she's like the preeminent elephant expert. And I'd been in South Africa with elephants, where they'll walk past you. But when I was in West Africa, a lot of the times they charge us if they seen as they would just charge. So she explained to me how you can differentiate between a fake and mock charge and a real charge. And with a bull, a lot of the times a bull charger, it's a mock charge. He knows who he is, he knows what he is. And it's quite easy to tell when they get to a certain distance. But it's that bolty moment of holding your grimace and not running. Carves, sorry, carves, the females, they, yeah, they'll pretty much keep coming. And I saw that in West Africa a lot would go, no, that's a mock, it's a mock, it's a real and off you go. But as she said, because they have poached so bad, their mentality with humans is just get them because they're here to kill us. In the reserves in South Africa, where I was, they weren't poached. So we're just part of the landscape. So it was absolutely fine. Yeah. Yeah, I was in Kruger National Park, in about 30 elephant, just walk right past. Did you have you, did you see many puff adders and black manbers? Yeah, I've seen puff adders. I'm not sure I was in a black man or something similar. But yeah, puff adders. And I mean, they're, that's something you do not want to be messing about with at all. Yeah, you saw a lot of people in Mozambique with one leg, and that was from the puff out of my roommate, Joe Hungarian chap. He come out of our building one night, and he come running back in Chris quick, quick, and we went out and just right at the bottom of the step was a puff adder. And the reason they're so dangerous is not just the poison, but they don't move away. Yeah, that you know, they just, they just stay there. And the Africans, of course, just want to kill. I'll say, of course. But, you know, they it's in their culture to hate these hate any form of snakes or any time a snake appeared that the Mozambican just look for a stick immediately to and the funny thing is the black man was not black, it's green, green, green brown. Yeah. And they can rear up like a cobra, they can really rear up and look around, bang, then they're off again. And they're aggressive, too. You know, I mean, I grew up in Australia, I was pretty comfortable with snakes. We didn't catch them sometimes. But yeah, there's some species you don't mess about with them. Yeah, the man doesn't the puff out as and as you say, puff out as most most snakes, if you're walking in the vibration, the ground, they'll just go away. The puff out is done. And that's the problem. You know, your boots on it before you know, and then it's biting. I had a guide I worked with. Terrific guide was hugely knowledgeable. We'd come back. We've been on most of the day, so we got back at dark. And he was knackered, he'd been out since like four in the morning guiding. So he went in his room. He'd foolishly left his top window open in his little sort of cabin he had. Quick shower, lay in his bed, was asleep. And he woke up, you know, abruptly that he had a dream that a snake had gone between his belly and his mattress. And as he lay there, he couldn't feel anything. He went, it just felt so real. So he got up, put the light on, lifted his mattress, a good seven foot cobra, spitting cobra under his bed. And of course, the minute he lifted the mattress, this thing's up, spitting out. I mean, he's in this tiny sort of confined space. Just like, oh, horrendous. Yes. Oh, James, let's talk about your writing, because that for all your adventures that you've told us, I know from experience writing is like the toughest. You know, it's kind of funny. It's easier to get a green berry with the Royal Marines commandos than it is to write a book. I mean, statistically, because it's a process, isn't it? Well, you like me, I actually did English GCSE in the Marines, had to teach myself. I did a correspondence course rather. So when I write my first book, I kind of had a knack for the writing, the kind of way it, the way it flowed and the description and being a bit, I like to be a bit sort of, you know, a bit quirky with my writing, probably having read on the road by Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson and this sort of thing. I like my writing to represent me is what I'm trying to say, you know. But my God took me five months to write 240,000 words, which is basically two books, if not three. And then it took me 18 more months to learn how to edit. I didn't know what a comma was, believe it or not. Everyone at home is going, or a comma is when you know it's not when you pause. I mean, it can be, but you know, there's six, was it five rules for a comma? Six rules for a comma. And you have to learn them. And it's only when you've learned them, then you can decide, actually, my last, I mean, for example, my last book, State of Mind, the story of when I ran the length of the UK, I went for minimal punctuation. I just looked at all this traditional colons and I thought, no, if I don't need it, and it doesn't look stupid, and that in itself, you have to learn. So how was your writing journey, James? I always read, which is quite unique for guys. I mean, a lot of men blogged, we don't read as a rule, but I did ever since I was a kid, bit of escapism, I think. And I think, you know, reading everything, but when I was getting sort of my theories and stuff, you'd read a book and you'd literally go, I could do better than that and throw it away. And I think one day, I just kind of thought, you know, well, yeah, maybe I could do better than that, but I'll never know unless I try. So like you said, it's like, well, how do you start? I mean, I just start writing a book when you make the decision. Well, okay, I'll just I'll just start writing in a Word document and see where it goes. So I had a story, it's sort of in my head. And I worked with an American guy, a Western Oaks cracking guy, worked with him in America in Europe doing stuff. And he was a published author in the States, and he won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror. So he's a really qualified guy to speak to. So I gave him my story, so would you mind looking at it? And the one thing I like about Western, he is brutally honest. I mean, it doesn't matter if you're his friend, he'll tell you, because he said that's how it should be. So I kind of weighed the weight he came back, he went, mate, you can really write, he said, I will give this to my agent, because I think she needs first by the bar. And at that point, you just say, oh, that's cool. I'll just wait for Hollywood to knock on the door. Me and Tom Cruise will be out for cigars and brandies. And it didn't take off at all. It just didn't work. So I kind of, speaking to this agent, so what's wrong with it? There's nothing wrong with it. It's just nobody really wants it, because they get this, they want to buy, they get crime, they want to buy our thrillers. It's not really fitting it. So again, I was like, right, okay, well, I've got a guy, an expert who tells me I can write. I've got an agent who tells me it's a book it can sell, but it's not. So I kind of fell back to what I know, which is, you know, military thriller kind of things. And so my first novel, I'd had this idea for quite a while, and it comes back to our backgrounds where you deploy to foreign theaters in conflict of war. And the other side don't use the rules. And this was about using kids as suicide bombers. And certainly with four or five command, there was a really terrible sad story where they couldn't shoot a child who was bringing a suicide bomb, and some guys died. And I always remember that thinking, you know, how that messes with people's heads. So my first novel I wrote with a kind of marine suffering from PTSD, then off to the west coast of Scotland, but of course the MPs are looking for them. So a good kind of survival recovery and the redemption of nature kind of story did really well. I thought, right, okay, I know what to write about now, and what sells. And this is what people want to read from me, rather than what I tried before. So I'm now six novels in. Yeah, six novels in. And the last novel I've done a day ahead of the devil that focuses pretty much on the debacle of the evacuation of Afghanistan and Kabul. And again, I've written it from different perspectives where, you know, I've got an SES team out there trying to recover MI6 assets to get them out. I've got a Taliban commander who's absolutely appalled that the Americans are holding the airport when they've taken the city and Afghan special forces team. Yeah, so for a couple of years I was mentoring Afghan special forces and it was two. So you had Afghan commandos and another unit called the Karihas, which is their tier one kind of unit. And they were a dream to work with. You know, these guys were out doing the job day in day out. They were terrific. And they were kind of ring fence from all the corruption and, you know, the waste of money that was the rest of the Afghan military because the American JSOC just held these guys. But even two months ago, I was still getting messages from some of these guys in Afghanistan trapped under the Taliban regime, trying to escape with their families. So this novel really was about, you know, that kind of thing in my head of, you know, tell these guys story, look at what they're going through and put it from there. But yeah, so I released that a month ago, I think, and that's doing cracking really well, some brilliant reviews for that coming in as well. And James, sorry to clarify, is this all fiction? I know it's, I know it's, yeah, yeah, it's the old fiction. We came to writing, didn't we, just as writing when as reading went like that, because everyone, you know, everyone's lost their attention span now. And people, I like you, I used to escape into a book. I used to make myself a glass of hot orange squash, right? That's because, you know, probably a bit young to start on the beer at seven. But that was my thing, hot orange squash, I'd climb into bed, and I'd get my ene blighting out or whatever. And I, and then I progressed on to the Willard Price Adventure series, which was just incredible, all about Africa and South Sea adventure and Amazon. And it's why I've loved traveling so much. But of course, it's a very different market now. You were probably like me. And like most people I speak to, you think if you write a book, I'll say you're a millionaire. You get a publishing deal. And I found the whole publishing thing really hard because, you know, your books are very personal to you. I don't mind a good editor. That's not an issue. But one editor, he wanted to cut all my boot net humor out. And I'm like, no, that's, that's funny to it. Oh, is it? And in the end, I started my own publishing company. And I just took control of all of it because I'm, I don't want to refer to publishing houses as criminals, but bloody hell. In the end, I was getting like 25 quid every six months. Yeah. And they want to sit on your Kindle rights. You know, Kindle, they don't have to do anything. There's not, not even a physical copy to warehouse or anything. And they, they want to give you like, I don't know, 10% or something. And they're going to sit on that for the rest of your arm. Like, no, no, not doing. Well, that's interesting. We've got exactly the same model, Chris. I did exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason when I was picked up by a publisher. Again, it was, yeah, we'll give you this, we'll give you that. The editing, like, it wasn't too fast about it. It was okay. It was the, the royalties and the, the rights and everything else. And again, I think they were offering like, I don't know, 15 people, a book sold or something and everything else. And they said, you'll still have to do the marketing and the advertising. I thought, well, what do you do? And they said, well, we build the book. And that is a big thing. Don't get me wrong, cover art, formatting, everything else. But the same as you, I was like, there must be another way. And yeah, I did exactly the same thing for the same reasons and the control because there's, I've got a couple of author mates who are in traditional publishing houses. And I mean, they're waiting roughly two years from when they submit a manuscript to when that book comes to market. And the book is not getting any better in those two years. It's just in a queue because there's other, you know, the publishing house has other authors in front of it. Yes, I learned, I learned everything, James. I've become a really good editor, believe it or not. I just, just, I can just look at what, and I know what needs to be taken out or what unnecessary part I just, just, I think if you've got that knack from the start, you improve upon it. But if you haven't got the skill from the start, you're only ever going to be a mediocre sort of my first fiction. If I've got a copy of some, well, there'll be a, oh no, in fact, there won't, there won't be. My first book of fiction was called The Drift. It's about a former, former Navy SEAL called Hans Larsen. And it's, it's something like five stories intertwined. But I did it so well. A lot of people aren't smart enough to get it. So they read it and they're like, it's like five stories that went nowhere. It's like, no, this, it's each one resolves into, you know, like the mainstream narrative, if you know what I mean, each, each one comes back to it in such a clever way. But the, the interesting was, I wrote the second book, it's called The Trade. And oh my gosh, I'll admit the first one is a bit quirky. I mean, I didn't, I didn't want this macho hero. I wanted a dad that loved his daughter. I wanted a, they're going through grief. And how does that affect, you know, loss of their mother? And I wanted a hard drinker because I was a hard, you know, drinker back in the day. And I wanted a hard man as well. Because we've met hard men, haven't we? You know, there's some people that are just fearlessness is just, I wanted a man's man. You know what I mean? Someone that will do anything for his little girl. So it, but the second one I called the trade, it's all about the trade in children, but it's not, you know, that's the theme, theme anyway. But oh my God, James, it was, it's so much better. You can see from the reviews, because it's more of a linear, you know, it's one, I think, I think there might be a couple of backstory things going on in it, but it's just, it reads so well. I mean, I should read it myself because it's so good. I think as well, Chris, I think I find that readers, they're kind of like a very, well, not everybody, but the bulk of my readers is kind of like a start, middle and end, and they want everything wrapped up and they want that resolution. So like you, my main characters, they're never superheroes because I think I, I don't like it. If I'm reading a book about, I don't know, an ex special forces guy, and, you know, he shot seven times, but still, you know, runs 10 miles and you know, like, come on, you know, I can suspend belief to a degree. So like you, I tend to put a lot more human failings and characteristics in the guys or the girls are right about, but I make sure, you know, by the end, all these little narratives are wrapped or, you know, the bad guys have got their comeuppance, but not again, in an obvious way. I like to, you know, draw it out and have a bit of what would you call it, karmic kind of interventions. Yeah, stuff like that. But readers, I think they like that. I think they, if they start investing in a story at the end of the story, they want that resolution. Oh, brilliant. Yeah, that's great. Got him. Thank goodness. The thing I was really proud of myself about is a couple of things really. First off, I had to create a lot of stuff because I may I'm not like you, James. I haven't been in that field. I know my marine stuff, obviously. So I had to, you know, how would a Navy SEAL be in this situation? What is CI? You know, how and the second thing, oh, for example, I thought, right, software, if you wanted to infiltrate someone's computer, what do you call it? Like a, you know, like malware, but from an intelligence perspective, I thought, right, well, if you sent an email and there's an attachment in the email and if they click on it, it downloads something you don't know to your computer, and then it tracks your keyboard. So everything that you type is then all, you know, go into it. Well, bloody hell, that's I read the other day, that's quite an, I invented that folks. I want paying, right? And the other thing is, is my twists are, you're never going to get it. You're never going to get it. The twist. Oh, it's got to be a twist. At the end, the person that you think is like the enemy, they was undercover all along. Yeah, you know, this sort of, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. But that, I think readers love that stuff, they love being wrong footed and like, oh, I thought I had him there. But yeah, they do really enjoy it, man. Yeah. I'd like to get back to it. I mean, some people are just happy to write fiction, aren't they? And I think I could write 500 words in the morning and then then, you know, take the rest of the day off quite, quite happily. James, we'll put all your book links below. So I appreciate that. Yeah. And Friends at Home, I was reading one of James' books earlier. Is it The Sins of the Father? Yeah. James, it's good. Just right from the start, you can see this is someone that's been on the inside because you would never, the opening chapter, you'd never think that is how the intelligence community could operate. It's just mind blown. So yeah, treat yourselves. The link is below. James, is there anything else you'd like to say before we wrap this one up? No, I'm really, really grateful for the opportunity, Chris, how really good and enjoyed that. I've not done many podcasts, but I've enjoyed this. It's been more like a conversation than that. Now, it's been good fun. I really appreciate it. Yes, absolutely. No problem. I hope this is the start of your podcast journey. Did a podcast recently with Toby Guthridge, I think I pronounced his surname right? He was an SBS operator and he got shot through the spine. Yeah. And it's just great to see that after he came on the show, it's like he's just taken off. And yes, it's good to be able to help in some way. And let's just say another thank you to Bernie again. Thank you, Bernie, really, really kind for putting James and I in touch. James, you're welcome back anytime. It's been a great chat. Absolutely loved it. I feel like I could... Roy and Chris, really appreciate it. I feel like I could be an operator now and I could protect animals. And now my writing is going to be even better. Great stuff, mate. James, stay on the line. But to everyone at home, thank you to James, to all of you at home. Big, big love to you all. Please look after yourselves. 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