 There were Muslims who executed Croats and Serbs. There were Croats who executed Muslims and Serbs. The level of technical sophistication that the Iraqi insurgents achieved superseded 30 years of insurgency in Northern Ireland. And you'll go down there with your snips and basically, you know, take your balls in your hand. And on my side there were just bullets coming through. One went through the side of my helmet and hit to the gun as, you know, shell by shell. Yes, Chris, sorry, we were saying Sandhurst, when you join the Marines, you just join the Marines. And I think the unique thing about the Marines is both the officers and men do their training at the same establishment. Of course, in the Army, we have the... Is it famous or infamous Sandhurst? That's right, yeah, a bit of each, yeah. I mean, obviously, because the Army is a bigger organisation, you need a gargantuan sight if you were to train everybody together anyway, you know, in the same way that the Royal Marines do. But the way Sandhurst works, I mean, I was slightly different because I spent a few years in the ranks first anyway. But you either go in as a direct entrant, so you're doing a three and a half day pre-selection if you like, and then you go and do your 12 months at Sandhurst. You do what I did, which was an ex-ranker, where you spend a couple of years as a non-commissioned officer. So in my case, I sort of reached my ceiling at Lance Corporal. Sandhurst was the only way after that I wanted to carry on a career. Or you can go right the way through the ranks, which we call a late-entry commission, and those guys just do a couple of weeks, obviously, because they don't need to do much longer. There's not much they need to be trained in. But in terms of when you get there, you're sponsored by a corps, one of the regiments or the corps if you like. And then as you get through to the second term, once they sort of get to give you a better idea, so there's three terms in total, it definitely want to take you. And the idea is that when you get to the end of your final term, you're then, that's you selected, and you go and join your regiment or your corps. But obviously in some cases, there's been in the news this week, a young lady who's been successfully sponsored by the Parachute Regiment, she'll be the first-ever female officer to join the Parachute Regiment. But even in those cases, if you don't sort of come up to the required standard, then basically you've got to go to another regiment anyway if they'll take you. So in her case, she would have to pass P company to stay on the Parachute Regiment. And certainly when I joined up, there were a couple of guys joined, went through Sandhurst through the 12 months, fit guys, capable guys, and they didn't have the required sort of metal to go on and serve with the Parachute Regiment. They didn't pass the P company, so they had to go and join another regiment. So she's, it's almost as if she's got the hard part yet to come. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I mean, you know, Sandhurst is, it's a unique place. You know, what they've got to do, not dissimilar, of course, to the, to the Royal Marines selection and training and for the officers. You know, as you know, Chris, it's very, very hard to simulate the pressures of combat and conflict and warfare. And as an officer, as an NCO, as a leader, you know, you've got to be able to make decisions, you know, very, very demanding environments. And, you know, even with the military, the way it is, you know, health and safety won't allow you to recreate those conditions, those environments, realistically, you know, no one's ever going to be firing RPGs at you and putting heavy machine gun fire down on you and that sort of stuff. So the way they do it, of course, is sleep deprivation and, and, you know, maximum sort of mental pressure as well. So, you know, they make sure that you're physically beasted. You don't get a lot of sleep. And then they give you a lot of, you know, physical, sorry, a lot of psychological and mental problems to her to solve as well. And just to see what you like under pressure, because if you can't handle that, there's no way you're going to be able to handle it for real, is there, you know? And just throwing this out there, of course, you don't have to deal with loss. Do you in training? Well, unless there's a training accident, that's a whole, another part of warfare that you can't really recreate. That's right. I mean, I think, you know, the British armed forces now has moved forward leaps and bounds in terms of dealing with, you know, mental trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, things like that. And of course, loss is a massive part of that. I think the, you know, the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines that have served in Afghanistan and Iraq in particular over the last couple of decades, there's not a single one that hasn't experienced that loss. And even if you sort of experienced extreme pressure, extreme trauma, there are those people that are survived and get that survivor guilt as well. And it's very, very difficult, you know. There are certain specializations, certainly with the UK special forces with bomb disposal, you do psychometric testing, psychiatric evaluations. And those to a degree can identify if you've got a predisposition, if you like, towards dealing with stress and pressure. But I think it's something that you, you know, you know better than anybody, you learn as you go along, you're with some of our experiences, aren't we? And, you know, I certainly, when I was a young officer in the Balkans in the early 90s, I witnessed some things that were pretty grim, but I got post-traumatic stress disorder from it. Obviously, you know, as we all do, you never get over it fully, but you learn to deal with it. You learn to accept it. You learn to rationalize it and you move on and you become more resilient as you go through. And the things I witnessed later in my career were far, far more traumatic. But of course, you know, we've built up our maturity, our experience, our resilience. And so it's much, much easier to deal with. And it certainly affects you less, I think, later on in life. Is Sandhurst's set programmed? Because for the career you're going into, it's obviously quite independent, aren't you? You're not having to deal with 30 men on a battlefield. It's very, very specialist. I think in the same way that as an illicit soldier, you're a soldier first and a tradesman second, for example, if you join one of the course, it's exactly the same with the officer corps. And whether that's the Royal Marines, whether it's the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force even, and the Army. The idea is that with the Army, you're a soldier first. So every officer is trained effectively as an infantry officer. And the program is exactly the same. It's 12 months. And you start off effectively with basic training, if you like, for the first term, the first three and a half months. Then it goes into the more military and leadership type training. And then the final term is the more specialist stuff, a lot of counterinsurgency. The nuances, if you like, that you're going to see in military service and conflict. So yeah, it prepares you for it. And then depending on who you join, you go off and do your special to arm training after that. In the case of officers, they're young officers training. And in the case of being an ammunition technical officer like myself, your training never really stops. It takes six years to become a high threat operator, including your military training, your basic training. And I think it's the same with any organization, and certainly the Royal Marines included. Every day is a school day, isn't it? You never ever stop learning. You're constantly... And even if you get skill-fated, you're still trying to revise and reacquaint yourself with your skills, aren't you? Yes, I would say you probably stop learning when you leave the job, but even then I'm probably learning stuff now, aren't I? Of all these people, wonderful people I get to speak to. Well, and all the wonderful experiences you've had, I mean, all the things you've done since leaving the military, it's phenomenal, isn't it? I was going to say you could write a book about it, but you have obviously, so there we go, yeah. Don't make me write another one. I've written six already, I think. Yeah, mad, mad. Well, take my health to you. It's hard-graft as well, isn't it? It's hard to dig deep and have those dark nights of the soul when you're rewriting your memoirs. Yes, well, as you know, you've got several books out as well. We'll come on and talk about them. I think for me, the... Is your mental health is everything. How you are in this moment right now, that's all it's about. Are you balanced? Are you happy? Are you achieving or are you in the deficit? Yeah, massive area of... I think I learn more every two weeks now that goes by than I did in the previous six months and certainly in the previous years. That's the massive achievement in itself, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you. People sort of talk about, you know, once they go down the wrong road, that's it. But the point is you take a wrong turn, then you turn back, don't you? And we all have a chapter of our lives, I think, that we don't want to sort of read out aloud. But you can always rewrite your history. You always rewrite your future, can't you? You can't rewrite your history, so... Yeah, you... I suppose you learn to interpret it, don't you? And make sense of it and use it to the positive. And I guess the guys that don't make it through this awful suicide wave that we've seen are... You get hung up somewhere in that process and it's a shame, isn't it? We are just a product of our thoughts. Yeah. And the right person may be saying the right thing or the right time could just be a game changer. Yeah, something that you connect with, exactly. Yeah, it's incredible how, you know, when I talk about fear and danger, and people always associate, you know, for some reason, bomb disposal as, you know, being able to overcome your fears. And there's a degree of that. But it's quite interesting how, you know, danger is real, isn't it? It's physical. It's tangible. But fear is just an emotion. You know, it's a response to that potential danger. And yet it's something that absolutely can cripple us, can curtail every decision we make, all our future. And it's the same way, of course, you know, it leads on to trauma and certainly affects our mental health, doesn't it? And, you know, it is ultimately just emotions. But it's such a powerful, powerful part of our success or our failure, I think, our mental health and the way we think about things. You're absolutely right, yeah. I think in your profession, a generous element of fear is probably a good... I mean, the opposite is being blasé, I suppose, and that's not something that you want. Yeah, it's right. It's, you know, certainly, interestingly, the greatest number of deaths and the number of bomb disposal operators when they're actually deployed in the field is usually complacency, you know? And it's almost always the very beginning of an operational tour when they're just sort of, you know, still getting their heads around what the threat environment is, if you like, and the atmospherics. Or it's those last couple of weeks when they start to just let their guard down a little bit. And I think it's the same across the sort of, you know, the spectrum of conflicts with all of the British Armed Forces, really, and the contractors that work in that environment it certainly does. But when it comes to fear, you know, I've always, and my colleagues as well, always maintained that you need to have a healthy level of paranoia, but you've also got to, you know, rationalize that fear and look at what is danger, what is tangible, what is real and what is just that sort of emotional product, if you like, that I could do something about. And when you realize it's just an emotion, then, of course, you can overcome it and, you know, find a route through. Did you face any sort of prejudice at Sandhurst? Chris, coming from the ranks? It was interesting. I mean, Sandhurst is an unusual place because you've got foreign students there. You've got, you know, what we call the Guards and Cavalry Club. You know, the posh guys who, as it happens, are all absolute gentlemen in the real deal, you know. You've got those guys that try to want to be guards and cavalry, if you like. They're the difficult ones. They're the tricky ones, you know. As an ex-ranker, and usually when you get there, you're still beasted the same way by the color sergeants and the direction staff, but you're normally assigned a foreign student to look after. So you go through basic training, but you're also starting out someone else's basic training for them as well and doing all their bed blocks and making sure their boots are polished and, you know, you don't do it for them, but you're certainly doing it with them, you know. So you're given a little bit of leeway, but when you mess up, of course, you're, you know, usually significantly more disciplined than the others because you're expected to know better. But no, it's just, you know, it is what it is. It's ultimately, you know, any form of basic training is designed to break us down a bit, rebuild us, and make sure, you know, we become team players and team members, and in the case of officer training and, you know, senior NCO training to make sure we're leaders as well. So, you know, it certainly wasn't too bad. It was when I think, when I was in the ranks, I was a Lance corporal and decided to apply for it, you know, to go to Sandus. I was worried then that, you know, everyone was going to assume that I thought I was better than everybody else. That wasn't my reason for doing it, you know. I had some really good officers, but I also had some really bad ones. And I thought, you know, well, maybe I could go and do this and do it a bit differently. And I was worried what my colleagues, what my peers would think, you know. And it was amazing because they were so, so supportive. And then when I, you know, when I got my commission, you know, we're still lifelong friends. And in fact, most of them now, you know, commissioned or have left anyway, you know. So it is one of these, you know. It's just another route, isn't it? It's another, you know, another strand of our service, of our careers, of our life story. Yes, it's much more relaxed now from when I have my contact with Marines. Several of the guys I joined up with went on to be majors. This sort of thing. A couple of weeks ago when we did our charity speed march, Colonel Gaz V. Popped along and supported us. And he was from the ranks. And back in my day, there's no way you'd call a Colonel mate. But now everything's, I don't know if the reality of war just is sort of, or whether it's just the nature that society's kind of changing in that respect. I honestly think it's the nature of conflict, definitely. You know, when I joined up in 1989, and, you know, the instructors, the directing staff, when I was a young 16-year-old, I joined as an Army apprentice. And, you know, even the old sweats sort of had their Falklands medal, their Northern Ireland medal, and possibly some sort of gallantry medal or an MB or something like that. When I went to Sandwich, it was the same. You know, these super-duper instructors had a couple of gongs. And then by the time I left in 2006, you know, you had young soldiers, sailors, Marines, with a chest full of ribbons on, you know. And the nature of conflict, there were so many different conflicts taking place. And I think that experience took us from an armed forces where some were super-professional and certainly, you know, the parachute regiment, the Royal Marines, they were, you know, put into that category. There were others that weren't so, you know. Some of the Army, I'm sad to say, and the armed forces were very much a drinking club. But over those years of different conflicts, I think it became a really professional, unified organization. And I think certainly there was a much, much greater deal of respect between the ranks, across all ranks, and indeed across the, you know, all of the arms and services as well, because we all saw each other doing their jobs, and we all relied on each other to do those jobs. So I think it made a big difference, definitely, yeah. And also, like, say, you know, the nonsensical rules, the, you know, what can I say, bullshit on here, you know, what we call the bullshit. I think that kind of was curtailed quite a lot as well. So, yeah. And where did you go from Sandhurst? From there, I went to, so I wanted to become an ammunition technical officer, bomb disposal operator. You couldn't go straight in to do that. You had to join, they became the Royal Logistic Corps, the really large Corps, several different Corpses sort of subsumed into that. So I went there first and went to the Pioneer Regiments, because that was the closest thing you could do to the infantry, because you had to do a couple of years as a young officer first. And then with them, I went out to the Balkans, went into the Arctic Warfare Training in Norway, Jungle Warfare Training in Kenya, and then we did another tour in Northern Ireland. And that was fantastic, you know, having the same 45 blokes for the entire period. You know, we're still lifelong buddies to this day. Many of them still call me boss to this day, you know, they've been civvists for 20 years. And then from there, I went off and did the ammunition technical officers course, which is our sort of the British Army's counter-terrorist bomb disposal operators, if you like. The Royal Navy have them, the Royal Air Force have them. Other members of the Army have them as well, but the ATOs and the ATEs, they're the sort of counter-terrorist guys, what I would call the specialists. So I went off and did the 14 months course for that, and then got posted to 11 EOD Regiment, went out and did my high threat tour. You had to do a sort of, what we call a high threat tour during the day, which was Northern Ireland back in those days, did a couple of tours out there, and then got in mark to go and work with these special forces. So I did a couple of years with the SAS, couple of years with the SBS, and then finished off working in intelligence. And over that period, did all the sort of war zones of the day, Iraq, Afghanistan, and out to Columbia, and several other places as well. So it was a fascinating career, certainly, and working with some amazing people, as you can imagine. Gosh. Because I mean, you're an elite special force in yourself in that role. Well, it's very kind of you, Chris. Yeah, we wouldn't consider ourselves that by any standard. But if you said to me when I was 16, right, to get to where you are, you're going to need to do this, this, this, this, this, this. I'd have said, well, there's no way I could ever achieve that. But as you know yourself, you sort of, you don't forest-gump your way through, but you achieve each goal, don't you? And it seems out of the time, and there are other people that big it up, there are other people that play it down. And when you get to there, you find a way. You overcome it, you deal with it, you achieve it. You move on to the next one, you move on to the next one. And then before, you know, you've had a career in it. It seems on paper, you know, you've achieved quite a lot. But, you know, as you know, well, we look at our colleagues, you know, and, you know, there's always someone else who's achieved a lot more. And I've certainly, I'm not a competitive type of person. You know, it's not really in my nature, but the competition's always been with myself, you know. Am I a better man than I was yesterday? If the answer's no, then I need to pull my socks up. If the answer's yes, then, you know, try and keep doing what I'm doing. But, yeah, I've made terrible, terrible mistakes in my life and things that I'm truly ashamed of and done things that I'm, you know, I'm proud of as well. So that's real life stuff, isn't it? That's what we are. Yes. I guess the big difference, Chris, is if you're a soldier or a Marine or whatever and you're one of the lower ranks, you can kind of cruise on by with not maybe a massive interest in the job. You're just doing it to get paid and you can't wait to get home at the weekend. And certainly my last four years was a lot of guard duty and it really wouldn't, I mean, no one wants to do guard duty. You really just could not wait to get off that shift and get on your mountain bike or go to the pub or whatever it was. But in your role in the Special Forces role, you're there because you're a professional and you have to be. You can't take, you can't, you know, muddle on through it. You can't take your foot off the accelerator, can you? It's obviously, it's a massive honour when you're invited to go and work with them. You know, I went to the SAS to start with and they notoriously dislike Rupert's, you know, they dislike officers. It's not as bad as it's made out to be, but you know, the idea is that, you know, within the elite, within the parachute regiment, within the Marines, within their support networks, within the Special Forces, the guys know what they're doing, you know, they're super elite switched on soldiers. They can run the show themselves, you know, they've got tons of experience and there's an argument, you know, they don't really need officers. Obviously, that's not the case, you know, the officers play a vital, vital function in many cases. But when you go in as an attached arm as an outsider, you know, it could be quite hard, especially if you're an officer. So, you know, you've got to know your onions. And when I went to the SAS, it was good because I bought something to the party. It's the same with the doctors, you know, in the medical center, it's the same with the pilots from the Air Corps, you know, all the sort of specialist support arms, they all bring something to the party. And certainly you're expected to be at the top of your game, you know, for sure. And then, of course, you know, if you do okay, if you don't mess up and they like you, then you're invited to stay within the network, you know. And work with the Royal Marines in special boat service. And, you know, that was an amazing experience again. And interestingly, you know, slightly different psyche as well, but equally as elite and professional. And certainly, you know, you're very much, once you've proved yourself and you showed that you know what you're doing and you're bringing something to the party, then you accept it as an equal. And it's, yeah, it's a great environment to belong to. Is there a, in a nutshell, can you sum up the difference between the SAS and the Marines? Is there a certain... Gotta be careful what I say here, aren't I? Yeah, I think the... Back then, this is sort of early 2000s, I think the SAS were a lot more serious, you know. The special boat service were a lot more chilled. They were both equally as professional. So, you know, does one work, does the other one not work? They both worked. But I think the SAS was more serious. The SPS were more chilled. They both got the job done really professionally, you know. If you were to say to me what's the difference between the special forces and the regular army and the regular armed forces, I would say the one difference I noticed, you know, having been attached to them, was resilience. You know, every single... The guys are all different. They're a group of misfits that fit together. And it's very much the same in the Royal Marines, I know. You know, but the one thing that they've all got is that absolute drive, absolute mission focus and this resilience where they just, you know, will keep going when the ships are down. They don't give up. And I think, you know, that's something that, when you're parachuted into that environment, then, you know, it's very contagious. You know, it's very inspirational. It's very motivating. And it makes you a better soldier yourself as well. Yes. These guys are in situations, aren't they, where you're going in and you might not necessarily come out with anything you can do to up those odds of being the best you can be. It's going to be welcomed in that kind of troop, isn't it? Can you explain the Balkans and what the British military's role was there? Yeah, absolutely. So the Balkans, and it was also known as the Bosnia war, it was in the early 90s. Basically, Yugoslavia had been a part of the Soviet Union, but it had been independent. And it was controlled by General Tito. And you had all sorts of different sort of nationalities and cultures there that were basically controlled, inspired, motivated, brought together by this, you know, amazing leader. And when he died, the place started to fragments. And there were centuries old sort of issues and conflicts that resurfaced. And suddenly there was a massive civil war. And there was ethnic cleansing, you know, genocide on a scale that we'd never seen before in history. And it was in Europe, effectively, you know, it was on our sort of borders. So it really sort of shocked the world. So the United Nations sent a force in there as peacekeepers. It was a largely ineffective force. You know, they literally, in many cases, stood by and watched genocide take place. I deployed there with the British Army, but the entire armed forces deployed there in their various different roles. And I was very lucky to have extended my tour. And when the United Nations switched to NATO, when they actually, you know, had an offensive role, if you like, did something, peace enforcement, I got to stay there with my troop as well. So we went from this sort of largely, you know, incapable force, watching on the sidelines as these terrible things took place. So then being able to actually do something about it and, you know, help to create peace as well. So I went to Sanders when I was 21, graduated at 22, went straight out to the Balkans as a young 22-year-old troop commander. And we all have those sort of, those epiphany moments in our lives, don't we? That moment where you go from being a boy to a man. And I think that was, you know, for me, that was where I went away as a boy and came back as a man, you know, learned an awful lot about myself, you know, about humanity, about human nature. And it's interesting as well because if you say to me, you know, what's the one thing you sort of take away from warfare and conflict and from a life in conflict? I think the one thing that I've taken away is that people are fundamentally good. In warfare, you see the very, very best in humanity and you see the very, very worst in humanity, of course. But what it does do is it reaffirms, I think, that people are fundamentally good. And I think that's what sort of keeps you going. And certainly what keeps people that are in the military, you know, what keeps them motivated because we talk about Queen and country and that sort of stuff, you know, nobody really joins for Queen and country. But I think a lot of people stay for it once they've experienced, you know, what we're all about, what we stand for. And, you know, the general level of decency, I think, of the British fighting man and woman. And ethnic cleansing, it's just God's two words that just bring horrors into your mind, isn't it? Did you... I mean, you obviously don't upset yourself, but can you give us an idea of the sort of things you have to witness in that theatre? Yeah, I mean, you basically, you know, in Srebrenica, which is one of the areas that the United Nations was responsible for, you know, there was over a thousand... I can't even remember the exact number, but well over a thousand, excuse me, Muslims, executed by Serbs. There were Muslims who executed Croats and Serbs. There were Croats who executed Muslims and Serbs. And, you know, once it starts, once that chain of events starts and the retribution kicks in, you see people becoming very, very base, you know, they suddenly... the things that we would consider right and wrong as human beings are suddenly no longer quite as sort of clear. You know, there's a very, very blurred area in between. And then some of them, as they start to commit those atrocities, it becomes almost normal. So, you know, you either met people, you met an elderly couple, and, you know, the wife would tell you what happened to her husband when he was taken prisoner as an OAP, and what he was forced to do to another man's genitalia was just like horrendous when you see these, you know, these two old deers basically. And then you see young people scarred for life. You know, I've got friends nowadays who, you know, during one of the Kosovo, during the Kosovo War, she didn't see her family for six years. And eventually, you know, one of the brothers turned up, the parents turned up, and one of the brothers was dead, you know, but living in a refugee camp, not knowing what's going on. And it's quite interesting when we're back in our own country, back in our own civilization, back in our own reality, as it's called nowadays, and you see people complaining about their lots. And you think, yeah, of course, you know, you're right to feel some sort of injustice here, but it really isn't as bad. There's always someone better off, sorry, there's someone far, far worse off as well in this case. And, you know, in the case of these guys over in the Balkans, that was the first time I'd really experienced that, just talking to everyday people who had witnessed horrendous things or experienced, you know, significant, significant loss. And yeah, you'd be inhuman for it not to affect you for sure. What kind of jobs did you have to do over there? My particular job was running the troops, so 45 guys. And our main job was to look after the divisional supply area, so providing the security for it. And then we used to do the escorts of all the artillery ammunition going up to Mount Igman, which was then used from the artillery points to fire down onto the enemy positions or the competent positions. And basically, because those convoys were attractive targets, they used to get attacked. So my troop and I, we used to go along and provide the security for them and obviously engage anybody if necessary. And then when we got up to the business end, you know, it was usually, I remember one day in particular, there were Serbs shelling civilians in Sarajevo with tanks and artillery and snipers there shooting them. So we were with the United Nations, sorry, with NATO at that point. And we got the call to, you know, go and put down some fire on them. So we were basically unpacking all this ammunition and literally handing it to the gunners, you know, shell by shell. They were whacking it in the guns, firing it down on the enemy. And then there'd be a sort of a quick lull and then a couple of F-16s would fly in and mallet the enemy positions as well. And, you know, it wasn't hard, hard soldiering by any means. We were very much, you know, facilitating, supporting, but it did make you feel good to be a part of something that was actually saving people's lives, you know. So, you know, as a 22-year-old, you're actually still a kid. You are. And, you know, you feel all grown up and important. I've been, you know, in the Army for six years by that point, I'd done, you know, basic training as a soldier, experience as a soldier, sandwich training. But you are still a baby, really, you know. So it's interesting how it affects you. Could you see indicators of PTSD then in your men? Well, I mean, back when I served in Belfast, it was almost like we just hit it and we just kept hitting it. And we had a KIA very, very soon after we were there. And for me, it was just, okay, let's get back on the street as soon as possible and continue our role. And it wasn't till adult... I'm saying it now, adult... We're grown-ups, you know. We want to become an old bastard that you get chatting with the guys and see how much it can really have affected them their whole lives. I'm just wondering if, in a more intense conflict like that, whether you could see... I mean, were people coming to you and saying, boss, I don't feel right about this or...? It was with Bosnia. It was definitely afterwards, you know. I mean, I can talk about my first Iraq tour and that was totally different again, you know. That was right at the end of my career as well. And I was a lot more experienced and could see the signs as well. But it's interesting, you know, Lord Moran, who was Winston Churchill's physician during the war. And, you know, Winston Churchill was famous for having the black dog as he called it, his deep dark depression. And Lord Moran talked about soldiers and fighting men, having what he called the stock of courage, the sort of level of resilience that we all have. You and I, Chris, could literally look identical physiologically. We could be identical in terms of our mental brain power, our IQ, our physical ability. But although we look and behave identically, one or the other of us could respond completely differently to trauma. And this is what Lord Moran talked about. And the idea was that you could be exposed to trauma, to stress, to, you know, massive drama, to fear, to terror, whatever it might be. And your levels of resilience start to deplete. What he calls your stock of courage starts to deplete. And the idea is that as it depletes and it gets to lower, lower levels, it starts to deplete more quickly as well to get to real danger levels, you know. And the idea is if you can extract someone from that environment or change the environment, then you can allow those levels to replenish and you can get effectively stronger again, you know. But if you don't recognize it and you stay there, it gets to the dangerously low levels and then basically it can become, you know, absolutely critical. Okay. So I think he was absolutely right with that. You know, I could completely relate to that. And that's why I think, you know, our members of our armed forces nowadays, they have what they call trim training. They have people, you know, specifically trained to identify the symptoms. And certainly when they come home from, you know, from a conflict zone nowadays, they tend to do what they call decompression where they all go, you know, they have some debriefing, have a few beers, you know, spend some time together recounting their dits, their stories. And, you know, that's all part of the healing process, I think. What was quite interesting for me was when I was in Iraq with my team, I had an eight man team doing a counter terrorist bomb disposal out there in 2004. And literally four days into the tour, we were ambushed and it was quite rock and roll there. You know, the IRA were the world's leaders in making terrorist bombs up until that point. And the level of technical sophistication that they achieved over 30 years. And, you know, you know all about this because you were in Northern Ireland yourself during the Troubles. You know, they were really, really good at what they did. You know, horrendous evil rascals, but very, very good at what they did. And within 18 months of the insurgency in Iraq taking place, the level of technical sophistication that the Iraqi insurgents achieved superseded 30 years of insurgency in Northern Ireland. You know, that's a rapid, rapid rate of advancement. So, you know, we were basically, I wouldn't say we were caught off guard, but it was quite cheeky. There was quite a lot to deal with, quite a lot to take on board. And we certainly, you know, as the world's leading counter insurgency force, the British armed forces, we couldn't go in there rested on our laurels. You know, we had to literally be prepared to pull our socks up and start learning again, you know, not become complacent. And four days into it, you know, we've been doing several, I think we did three devices, three IEDs that day as a team. And it's quite, you know, it's quite tiring as well, 50 degrees Celsius in the midday sun. And driving back about 11 o'clock at night and we were ambushed, you know, eight of us in three vehicles and, you know, it's horrendous. An ambush is designed to kill everybody. And it was rocket propelled grenades. It was medium machine guns. It was Kalishnikovs. It was hand grenade, you know, about 45 insurgents it was estimated at the side of the road. And it was terrifying. You know, I got shot in the leg. My number two was driving, got shot in his shoulder. So number two, by the way, is the bomb disposal number two in the team. And then, you know, other guys were injured as well. But we managed to get out of it all alive. And the next day, we had to drive back into the, along the same route that we got ambushed. It was the only possible route to get to this device. And that was quite cheeky. And interestingly, when we got back, because I had sort of witnessed PTSD before, experienced it myself, seen it in other soldiers, this was back in 2004. It was no longer a taboo, but there wasn't really the sort of, not the procedures, the interventions in place, if you like, on a large scale. So I contacted the theater psychiatric nurse in Iraq. And I said to all the boys, I'm going to order you, and it's probably the only time I've ever ordered anyone to do anything in my life actually as an officer, I'm going to order you all to sit down and we're going to have a big group hug, group therapy session and talk about this ambush. And then each of us, I'm ordering you all to have a 30 minute session with the theater psychiatric nurse, the shrink, the trick cyclist. And that really, really worked well. You know, it gave everyone a chance to actually, you know, unload, to talk about it, to put it into perspective. And most importantly, to realize that what they were experiencing, you know, was normal. It was, you know, he gave some examples and he talked about, you know, he said, you know, did you feel this overwhelming paralyzing fear? Did you feel the, you know, you couldn't think straight, you know, were you scared? Yadi, yadi, yadi, yadi. And he went through all these sort of symptoms and we sort of all tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And he was like, right, pretty much since the first world war, that is the experience of every single soldier in this particular type of content, this type of conflict, you know, in an ambush. And it made you realize that, you know, it's a normal response to an abnormal situation. You know, and I think that helped a lot. And of course, nowadays, you know, it's part of the course for our soldiers. When they're out on the ground, if there's a conflict or something particularly cheeky, then, you know, they tend to get some sort of support usually. How's it getting shot in the leg about that painful? I've got to tell you, it's the best sort of grandad war wounds you could ever hope for. I remember at the time, so we were driving, the bomb disposal vehicles were German, so they were left-hand drive. So I was sitting on the right-hand side, the driver, my number two was on the left-hand side, Dan. And I remember, they had, do you remember in Northern Ireland, you had the grills down the front of the vehicles to stop bricks and stuff being thrown through. So we had these grills down the side windows of the cabin, the front, which are absolutely no use to anybody really, and that sort of environment. They were completely unarmored and it was an IED threat and provided explosive device threat. So, you know, they weren't in any way, bomb-proof. And just remember, all these bullets whizzing through the window, it was, you know, ambushed from the right flank. And I remember turning to Dan, my number two, and he's driving like this, one-handed, with his hand on his shoulder. And I'm thinking, you know, this guy's just called as a cucumber here. It turned out that a grenade detonated on his side of the vehicle and a fragment had gone into his shoulder. So that's why he was holding it. And on my side, there were just bullets coming through. One went through the side of my helmet. The other one went through a sort of gap in my trousers, if you like. And then as we were driving along, I had to turn and place a bum cheek on the dashboard in order to fire out of the right-hand side of the vehicle because I was concerned about shooting through these grills. And so I was sort of engaging, you know, from the right-hand side, facing backwards, if you like, to the direction of travel. It was very, very, very surreal, you know. And then I remember as we got out of the ambush, for the first time ever, we'd been issued these personal roll radios. So before it used to be a section commander, you know, the head of an eight-man section and a section 2IC, the head of a sort of four-man section. And by this point, everybody had their own radio. And I think that's what saved our lives, the ability to communicate with every single man in the team. And we got out of the ambush, checked that everyone was there and that we were all right. And then I remember him saying, you know, we'll put into this ERV, emergency rendezvous, so basically a safe lay-by, if you like, out of the ambush. And that's where we checked that everyone was okay. And I remember him saying to me, do you mind if I have a FAC boss? And I was about to say, you know, we'll wind down the windows at least because we're not supposed to smoke in military vehicles. And then I realised how ridiculously stupid that was. And then I went to wind down the window and decided I was going to smoke at that point as well because it was a bit cheeky, you know. And then realised there was no window left, you know, they were all being shot to pieces. And then I could feel this burning in my leg. And I looked down and lifted up my combat trousers, you know, and stole a little hole in the front of the boots. And then as I peeled the boot forward, saw the bullet just wedged in the front of my shin. And it was only the burning that I could feel. And that's because obviously, you know, you've got adrenaline coursing through your veins that you just, you know, unless it hits a vital organ or something, or something really painful, you don't necessarily feel it. So it was just burning. What was funny was that when we got back to the medical centre, I made sure all the blokes were okay. One of my pals, he was a major there in the intelligence corps, but he'd been an ammunition technic officer at Bomb Tech. I said, can you go and sit with the blokes and there's a bottle of whiskey in the safe? You know, make sure they have a drink and they can chill out. I'm just going to go down to the med centre. And when I got there, there was a medic from Ereford from the SAS there. And of course, I walked in and he was sort of busy chatting to people, organising stuff. And he was like, Grace, how's it going? You know, so is it the old sort of, you know, catching up, high fives, you know, what you've been up to. And he was like, anyway, what can I do for you? I was like, oh, I've been shot, you know. And at that point, he sort of threw me on a stretcher and he took me through and all these medics came up. But it was absolutely, you know, literally just a flesh wound. And it caught a rise as it went in there, you know. So the best sort of Grand Abwound you could get. But I just remember a real burning sensation and a nice little scar nowadays as well to show my grandchildren. God, it's there by the grace of God, isn't it? 100%. Yeah. Absolutely. Let's talk about a reading part of your book earlier. And you open up by talking about the weight that you're carrying when you're disposing a bomb. And it's bloody phenomenal. Yeah. One second. Yeah, so the weight of the bomb suit, when you go down and do an approach to a device, the philosophy we use is remote, semi-remote manual. And what that means is if you can send a robot down there, then you always send a robot down there. If you can't, or even if you set it down there and shot a bomb and potentially neutralized it, you've still got to go down manually and confirm it. So we do what's called a semi-remote. Then we put the bomb suit on. We walk down there and we take some hooks and lines with us, ropes, and attach them to anything that needs to be moved. Then we go back to the safety of our incident control point and give them a tug or we'll take another weapon down there and shoot it if necessary if we don't have a full vehicle disruption. And then the final thing is the manual. And that's where you go down there in the bomb suit and do some jiggery pokery with your hands if necessary. The exception to that is what we call a category A, which is when there's an imminent threat to life and a probable large-scale loss of life. In that case, you dispense with the bomb suit and you dispense with a bomb disposal weapon and you'll go down there with your snips and basically take your balls in your hand and get your gallantry awards afterwards, basically. But you've always got to do a manual approach pretty much after you send the robot down there. When you do that, you're wearing the bomb disposal suit, which is at least 85 pounds in weight. And then you're usually carrying a big sort of EOD weapon, a bomb disposal weapon, and it's a big sort of cannon, if you like, electrically fired that contains a jet of water and a propulsion charge in the end and a big metal frame as well, because it's got to be really sturdy to be able to position it against the device you've had it falling over. So you're carrying that as well, you know, and that's tens of kilos as well. And then usually a tool bag with all your bomb disposal tools because you never really know what you've got until you're down there at the business end. And you do what's called the long walk. You leave the safety of your incident control point with all your team and you go down there because it's always a single man risk and you're carrying all this kit. Now the good thing about it is, you know, where you're yomping and you're carrying all this kit on your back in a bargain, the bomb suit is distributed over your entire body. So although it's 85 pounds in weight, it doesn't feel like 85 pounds. You know, the real weight is on your arms when you're like an orangutan when you come back because you've got an extra two inches of length on each of them from carrying the equipment in your arms. But what is very difficult and constricting about the bomb disposal suit is that nowadays you're operating in the Middle East, you know, or back then in the Middle East predominantly, and the weather, you know, 52 degrees heat in the midday sun, you know, you're going to overheat in that bomb disposal suit. So, you know, my very first job, I went down with heat exhaustion, you know, day one, week one schoolboy era. The worst thing about it was waking up in the medical centre and getting the humiliation from the team prodding me and calling me weak, you know, for going down with heat exhaustion. So after that in Iraq, you know, I think we did 45 tasks. I didn't do a single one in the bomb suit after that. I just wore the same combat body armour that every other serviceman and woman wore out in Iraq at the time. And you just, you know, it's all about calculating risk, mitigating risk, you know, there's no point in wearing a big bomb suit if you're going to fall unconscious on the bomb and blow yourself to pieces anyway, you know. So you try and do the common sense thing. What precautions do you take then in case the device itself is a decoy and there's a device next to it or I guess you call that a secondary device? Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, you know, the terrorist tactic is quite often they'll put a main charge and they'll put a secondary charge where they think you're going to site your team, you know, your control point if you like. And quite often there'll be dummy charges, decoy charges, you know, elaborate hoaxes we call them and there'll be a, you know, bomb basically and there'll be a second charge around there or even a tertiary charge as well. So bomb disposal is all about your threat assessment. You've got to think like a terrorist and, you know, you do these rapid fire questions, you know, almost like an interrogator does and you're asking people, you know, what is it? Where is it? When was it laid? When was it found? When was the area secured? What else was seen and heard there? Is there any evidence of ground sign? You know, all sorts of whole rafter questions and as you're doing this, of course, we've experienced you're used to this anyway like any other form of military service or activity, but you're continually building up and refining your threat assessment in your head. I guess what makes it different to other tasks in the military is that you can never have a 100% plan. You know, every single step you take towards that bomb, you're continually refining your plan as you're becoming more attuned to the environment. You know, you might see a bit of ground sign, disturbance of the earth. You might see a component in the ground that reminds you of another device that you saw some time back where you know that was, you know, multi-switch device or whatever it could be. So, you know, you can't just sit in the control point and say, oh, I'm not going to do this because I don't have all the information to make a plan. Nor can you just go forward, you know, with a blank canvas and say, I'm just going to wing it. You have to make the best plan you can, but, you know, it's that decision action cycle. You've still got to go and commit and you've got to go and face the task in hand, but you're continually refining it all the way along there. And what's interesting is, you know, it's never over until you've done that final cut of the wire, remove the detonator out of the circuit and giving it a good hook and line to make sure there's nothing else cheeky underneath there, you know, and it's quite interesting because once you've done that, it's not a particularly physical activity, but it's like you've run a marathon at the end of it, you know, because that mental exertion, coupled with the physical exertion, coupled with the environment, the heat and all that sort of stuff, you know, it really is, you know, by the end of the day, you're just like absolutely wax and, you know, ready for a brew and a cigarette and getting your head down. Do many operators get sniped at while they're trying to defuse a bomb? Yeah, I mean, certainly, we got sniped at in the incident control points. I always used to carry a firearm down with me from Iraq onwards, basically. Certainly one of my colleagues, probably the least, I'm not going to say his name in case you watched it, but one of the least military ATOs, he was a warrant officer, you could ever imagine, you know, a vertically challenged little dumpy chap, you know, and he was down at the business end, manually neutralizing a device and came under sniper fire and apparently a warrior on a vehicle came down and he jumped in the back and he was putting rounds down, shooting at the terrorists from the back of this warrior as they were driving away, you know, and got a gallantry medal for it as well. Literally the least military combat type bloke you'd ever imagine. So, yeah, I was never sniped at specifically, you know, not close contact. There's always rounds in the area and there's certainly usually indirect fire as well, mortar or a rocket fire. There's never usually that accurate, but of course, you know, you can't stay there forever, you know, the longer you stay there, then there's going to be some form of counterattack and you're going to be targeted because there's only a finite number of on-makers, these highly skilled, you know, ingenious psychopaths with the requisite level of skill set, ability, knowledge to design and manufacture these devices on mass scales, you know. And in the same way, there's only a, you know, a comparatively small number of trained bomb technicians who can go in there and counter that threat if you like. So, and also we, you know, we do the bomb scene investigation as well. We get the forensics, the DNA, build up that picture, what we call the bomb maker's signature and then feed that into the law enforcement or to our, you know, intelligence community. They put together targeting packs and they usually catch these guys, you know. So they don't like us very much. So we quite often become targets as well. So one way or the other, whether you're ambushed on the way to a job, on the way back from a job or it's sniper or indirect fire, you know, you're going to keep your wits about you for sure. When they're doing the forensics, are they, I guess there must be so many things they're trying to ascertain what, who made the bomb, where it was made, are they going to be more like this made? But then also, I guess the factor is who's paid for it? You know, has it come from another? I don't want to say any names of countries because I don't want to unfairly name someone. You know, there's, I mean, well, I mean, Sweden is one of the biggest arms traders in the world, aren't they? France is and well, and obviously Great Britain. Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, for conventional weapons, absolutely. Improvising explosive devices, they either use modified conventional munitions. So, you know, the general arms trade that you talk about, or there'll be off-the-shelf electronic components and everyday items that are basically, you know, improvised, built in a fashion that turn them into lethal weapons of war. And absolutely, I mean, what we did, we looked for forensics, DNA biometrics to identify who the bomb maker is because there's only a few of these people that do it. But in addition to that, we want to find out where the components come from. Is there, you know, a, you know, is it state-sponsored terrorism? Is there, you know, one of the axes of evil countries providing the components? And we've certainly found that in many cases as well. So, you know, you want to know not just how it's made and who made it, but you want to know what it actually does, how many more have been made, and how to protect against it for the force protection, if you like, of, you know, your own law enforcement, military, and the civilians on the ground as well. And of course, you want to be able to almost reverse engineer it so that you can get the information out to the other bomb technicians on the ground and the other search teams on the ground so that they know how to find it and how to neutralize it safely. Because invariably, you know, these things become more and more technology advance, not less and less. So, you know, you may be lucky or incredibly gifted at one aspect of it and be able to, you know, overmatch it, you know, neutralize it, render it safe, disarm it. Whereas the next person may not have all the information and it may just, you know, be the difference between that person living or dying if you can get the information to them. How do you record all that information? Is that computerized? Yeah, I mean, basically, you know, good old fashioned notebook and pen when you're on the ground, photographs, and then of course like any other aspect of, you know, military activity, you've got to go back and then do the report writing. And, you know, there'll be weapons intelligence reports that go out to the entire community, you know, every military unit on the ground, intelligence organization on the ground, and, you know, around the world in many cases. And then there'll be the technical report which goes out to the bomb technicians. And that talks about your actual render safe procedure as well, which is very, very closely guarded. Because obviously, if the bad guys knew exactly what procedures were used, you know, every single one is recorded, then they would know how to potentially, you know, target us in a very sort of culling way. So when we fill out those reports, it's always encoded as well. We use special codes to, you know, to basically correspond with each procedure that we use just in case it was to, you know, fall into the wrong hands. Yeah, so that's the way it's done. Do you ever get, I don't know if I've watched too many films here, but do the bomb makers ever leave their signature in it? Yeah, excuse me, sorry, Chris. When it comes to the bomb makers signature, it's a sort of metaphorical word that we use really, you know, what you'll find is that if there was a hundred different ways to configure a certain type of device, a bomb maker would use exactly, you know, one of those ways every single time. It may be that, you know, there's literally some blood in there which leaves their DNA behind, you know, that's technically a signature. But usually it's the way that it's manufactured. And I remember in Iraq in 2004, they were using these keyless car entry systems. You know the little key fobs you use to open and close your car door. And you could go and buy those down in the suit in the local market for about $10. You could buy a piece of plastic explosive of a detonator for about $1 because they used to use them in locals for fishing. And then you could walk about a mile outside any town or village Saddam Hussein had over 250,000 tons of ordnance stockpiled because he was expected an invasion, you know. So you could walk a mile outside any town or village and you would find a stockpile of ordnance, you know, artillery shells, mines, that sort of stuff. So the insurgents would literally go and buy a bit of plastic explosion with a detonator, one of these key fobs, and then just walk and find an artillery shell, put the explosive in the end and they've got a ready to go radio controlled IED. But obviously you have to put certain codes in and they're encoded, otherwise anybody opening their car door would set up all these bombs by accident. And there was a number of different ways you could wire them. And I remember we tracked down a bomb maker and I was what we call interrogating and it's not like the movies as you know, you know, you don't go in there and do torture and waterboarding and all that sort of stuff. You know, it is an interview and it's done within the rule of law as well, certainly by the British forces, you know. So he'd already been tortured by the Iraqi police. So it was like a breath of fresh air when we turned up. And the military police from Britain went and spoke to him, you know, born into death, he wasn't talking. The intelligence corps guys came in, you know, and he sort of spoke a little bit after they did their Jedi mind tricks. And then I was asked to go in and speak to him. And I decided, you know, I'm just going to speak to him geek to geek here. So I told him he was the best bomb maker I'd ever seen in my career. And he was very much, they've got massive egos, his bomb makers as well, unusually. And as soon as I told him he was the best bomb maker, he sang like a canary. And he drew a little circuit diagram of the circuitry, the components. And I could see that this was exactly the same as all the devices that had been used in the north of the city. Because we literally, you know, we investigate every single one. So I was like, well, that's amazing, you know. So I knew he was the man in the north of the city. Then I told him that actually he wasn't the best. There was a guy in the south of Bajra who was even better than he was. And this really, you know, offended him and insulted his ego. So he sang like a canary and told us where this guy in the south lived. So he went and put in an arrest operation and got this other bomb maker as well. All that from, you know, from a circuit diagram. And did it go wrong for your team? Often did you suffer fatalities? I mean, not your team, but your, you know, your unit, I should say. Yeah, I mean, you know, certainly in Iraq, sorry, in Afghanistan, like everybody else, we got really hit, hit really hard early on. We lost numerous operators there. I think we work in teams, you know, usually an eight-man team. Man and woman. You'll have a Royal Signals electronic warfare specialist, basically, you know, who's, you know, does all this sort of magic and jiggery, pokery, jamming the airwaves with radio control devices and identifying if there's radio control devices there. You've got your infantry escorts as well, you know, providing that integrity and security for the team when you're on your ground. You've got the number two, who's basically, you know, almost a prodigy. He's learning and going through the ropes to eventually become a number one operator and walk down to the bombs himself. He's the guy that sets all the equipment up that you bounce off all the technical ideas and information with. And everyone has a vital function, you know, you're a very, very close-knit team in this environment. And quite often, the guys that come from the infantry to become members of the team, they'll go and volunteer to do the same on subsequent opt-toes as well. Because it is, you know, a really, really important function, but you're treated like a grown-up, you know, it's first-name terms usually. Some of the guys weren't comfortable calling me Chris, so they'd call me boss, you know, but very, very close-knit team. And I remember when I came back from Iraq, I had to go to staff college. Officers have to go and continually do their sort of, you know, their officer education for the next rank up. So I was doing my junior generals course. And I remember being told that one of the teams had been hit in Iraq. And as it turned out, it was three of the guys that were in my team had come back on another tour with another team, you know, whatever it was a year later. And they'd been hit by a suicide car bomb. And two of them lost both their legs and got blown into the vehicle that they were, you know, the Warrior Armoured Vehicle that they were packing up. Both went on to become Olympians, as it happens, Paralympians. And then the other guy, my number two, you know, one of my best friends, he'd been standing between the car bomb and the Warrior Armoured Vehicle a meter away from it. And, you know, an absolute miracle. He got blown across the Warrior Armoured Vehicle 30 feet into a field behind. And the force of a car bomb is phenomenal, you know, it would drop an entire apartment block. And he landed in the field with literally, you know, cuts and grayses, but no significant damage. Whereas the laws of physics would suggest he would be vaporised in something like that, you know. And interestingly, you know, when we were talking about PTSD and that sort of stuff, he ended up getting horrendous PTSD as a result of that, you know, because of survivor guilt. So, yeah, I mean, were there any fatalities? There were guys that died. There were those guys that lost both legs and guys that were severely affected, you know, by mental trauma. And I think, you know, sometimes it's the guys that survive. You could almost argue are worse off, you know. And I don't mean that to decry those poor people that have lost loved ones, you know. I don't mean that as a flippant comment. What I mean is those guys that survive, you know, sometimes, you know, many of them do actually wish they'd lost their lives. Yes, and I think we always have to remember here that not one of our oppos that dies would ever want us to feel bad, would they? You know. It's very, very true, yeah. And yet we always do. And were you a family man when you were doing this job? Yeah, I mean, it's a good question, actually. I mean, EOD is known as Explosive Ordinance Disposal. And within our profession at the time, EOD was known as Everyone's Divorced. And yeah, I was married, had two young girls, literally, you know, a baby and a toddler. And, you know, that's always very, very hard as well. I mean, not only did we eventually end up divorced, but you're constantly sort of in this conflict. You know, what makes you a better father and husband also makes you a better soldier and a better leader, a better officer, a better NCO, you know. But it also makes you a worse husband and wife, sorry, you know, husband or wife as well, because what you're doing is you're putting something before your family, you know. And as a serviceman, we're always fighting for a greater good. We all know that there's something more important than ourselves. And the team is everything as well, isn't it? And it's very, very hard when you've got that in a battle and you're deliberately putting someone else before your own family, which kind of goes against the laws of nature sometimes, you know. But would we do it all again? You know, the answer is yes in a heartbeat, you know. But it's very, very hard, I think, for families. And when they stay together, you know, it's remarkable. They're amazing, amazing people, the partners of those. Yes, when you're in that role on active service, I mean, you have to put that stuff out your mind because you can't be distracted, can you? I mean, you can't be thinking that you're running down the road on their way to school while you're walking towards the device or you're on patrol on the streets of Basra or somewhere. You just can't have it, yeah. It's full off, isn't it? And you've got to be, you know, for the sake of your own team, you've got to be committed to the task. And yeah, exactly right. You just can't have distractions. And, you know, maybe it's, you know, when you get back to your crew room at the end of the day, you know, get back to your digs, then you sort of have a bit of time to reflect, you know, or you make your calls home, which I remember in the Balkans, you know, you used to have to queue up for, you know, for hours and hours and hours with your little phone card to get the call home. And your phone, I mean, you know, your Mrs. wasn't home. And nowadays, of course, you know, it's all done online in Skype and it's dead easy to do, you know. But that was always very, very difficult as well, not being able to communicate the silence. We used to have... Every time there was a contact, especially the kind of, on the size that made the news, they blocked the phone off for 24 hours, I guess, for intelligence, you know, security. And I remember chatting to my mum one time, she said, oh, when are you home? I said, um, my birthday plus three days, mum. She went, oh, 24th of September. Such a mum thing to do, yeah. Mum did love it, yeah. Yes, yes. We did, we went out and patrol one time and we stopped to play, probably up in the Ardoin, and I was with Jock. And I do remember just slipping into conversation. Well, we'll be out of here in three weeks' time and then you fuckers can do what you want. It's something along those lines. But of course, we will leave in the next day. Because everything, yeah. Everything was from the IRA, was passed back to their hierarchy, obviously. You never know, I might say someone's life there. I might have saved a few. 100%, yeah. They were very, very good at what they did. And God forbid it ever kicks off again there, really. Oh, gosh, I'm just all for peace these days, Chris. Yeah, same here, mate. It's silly, we're all one humanity and to keep... Let's talk about writing, because that's a massive achievement in itself. It's something I think many people want to do is write a book and it's another thing to actually see it through and write one. How did that your writing career come about? I think basically, well, it started off, as soon as I became an officer, writing reports, then I worked in intelligence for a bit and wrote a lot of reports, but they had to actually be interesting and informative, because you've got to basically tell it as it is and put it into context. And then also, they say we've all got a story, don't they? And my story had been no more or less remarkable than the next person. When I went to Iraq in 2004, it was rock and roll. I'd been tested as a bomb tech in the most technically advanced bomb disposal arena, if you like, at the time. I'd been tested as an officer, leading the best fighting men on the planet in a conflict zone. And on a personal level, I was tested as a soldier in my first proper time in combat during the ambush. I'd been in the Balkans on the receiving end of sniper fire and as we all had indirect fire, mortars and rockets and stuff. But that was my first time in combat. So for me, being tested as a bomb tech, as an officer, as a leader, and as a soldier, it was that sort of pinnacle moment for me, if you like, on a personal level. And I just thought it would make an interesting story. And then like most other people never did anything about it. And then when I was in London doing an intelligence job at the end of my career, I contacted a very famous literary agent. And you're supposed to send three sample chapters to agents. You never send it direct to a publisher, because it just gets thrown in the bin. And sent it to a few, and they read it, and they came back and said, it's not really our genre. We're not really into this sort of thing. And I got so fed up with the rejection. I'd only sent it to three people, which by the way, for the budding authors out there, expect to be rejected hundreds of times, but don't give up. But I got so fed up with this, that I sent a one-page synopsis to this quite famous literary agent, Mark Lucas, who's had a lot of military authors and wasn't expecting any response. And then got a phone call from him saying, I want to talk a bit more. And then we went and met for lunch, and he said, right, I think it's an interesting story. I want you to write what they call a proposal, which is sort of sample chapters with a few lines explaining what happens in between those chapters. And he said, you can write, but you need to learn to write like a writer. So he just gave me some tips, and I listened to what he had to say, played around with it, and then eventually got the book off the ground. And then wrote another one, which I'd obviously learned the first time around. So yeah, it was really good. It was good to learn from somebody, but I wrote the books myself as well, which some people have ghost writers because they could tell their story, but not necessarily put it on the page. Other people are good at writing, but they don't necessarily have a story to tell. But it's definitely hard work. All the bombs and bullets and fun and action and all that sort of stuff and craziness, it's definitely one of the hardest things I've ever done for sure. And yeah, you'll know all about it as well. Yeah, it's the whole writing journey. It's fascinating itself. I taught myself English in the Marines, having pretty much failed everything at school, did a correspondence course, and the first assignment was right about a so-and-so. And my friend had done the course before me. He went back into training to become an officer. So rather than go SD, he left the Royal Marines, which you have to do, and then rejoined as an officer. And he said, Chris, it's just bullshit. English is bullshit. He said, instead of writing Prisoner Sat in his cell, you write the incarcerated man sat there in the gloom, beams of sunshine shot through the bars of his solitary confinement, rickering, shelling around the cell and filling his heart with freedom and his life with love. And I'm like, oh, it's bullshit. And he said, yes. No problemo. So I sent this assignment off with that philosophy in my mind, and it just came back. Chris, your English is excellent. Don't wait a year. Take the exam next month than I did and got my English GCSE as it was then. Yeah, it's fun. It's like anything, isn't it? People always make things out to be more difficult than they are. They find, you know. But when you actually go and do it, you either, you know, I believe we are honestly the best, most honest critics of ourselves, you know. When somebody, you know, blows smoke up your arse and tells you you're fantastic, you know that you're not fantastic, you know. We know what we are. When someone criticizes you and makes an unfair judgment, then equally, you know, it doesn't matter how big, strong, and tough we are, we're still all sensitive, aren't we? And when there's that injustice, then we feel that as well, you know. But when it comes to our abilities, I think, you know, people always make things out to be a lot more difficult. And when you actually start that journey, that classic, you know, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Actually, each of those steps takes you, you know, closer to that completion, doesn't it? And I think writing is exactly the same. And I think you have to write as well, yeah, about the use of English and the bullshit. Yeah, I got myself, Chris, to the point where I'm completely self-taught and having a GCSE in English really doesn't mean anything when you start writing a book. But I got myself to the point where I didn't want to send off to a publisher as something that I hadn't done every single thing I could on. So through that process, it was a lot of search engines. I mean, I didn't even know what a comma did. And it's for people listening, I'm not being thick. It's what they teach you at school about a commas when you breathe. Yeah. Loosely, but really a comma, there's, I think, was it five rules for a comma? And there's different kinds of commas. And when you get clever, you know when you can actually just delete the commas, which is kind of where my writing is now. Yeah. But through that process, I got to the point where I just, I can edit all my books now. Certainly there might be a few typos in at the end, but certainly to the point where they're, they're passable, passable. That's amazing. I find actually reading out loud as well. Because when you read it out loud, you realise, you know, where you need that comma or, you know, whatever it might be. Or you realise that just, you know, it's too waffly. It just doesn't make sense. You know, it's not captivating. I'm too lazy, Chris. It's like an effort to read something. I'm just, yeah. It's funny though, again, because a lot of Marines write books, a lot of servicemen and women write books now. And many of them were not officers. But back when I was served, I mean, I can give an example. One of my buddy's officer mates, he was coming back from, oh, there was a draft. It was in the middle of the Bloomin Pacific Ocean or somewhere. And he had a few fumarite, Diego Garcia. Diego Garcia, yeah, yeah. I think it's Pacific. It might not be, but anyway. And somehow he made his way to India instead of coming straight back to Blighty. He bought an Enfield bullet or an Enfield rifle rather, an auction in Delhi, and then burned it back to England across the deserts. And he wrote this story and he said, he said, of course, there are many types of rifles, some that fire, some that misfire, some that misfire some that don't fire at all. Unfortunately, I had bought the latter. But I remember funny enough, he wrote this piece for the Globe and Laurel for the Marines magazine. It was so incredibly funny. But the guy who edited it was one of my marine mates. So he was just a corporal or whatever. And he had the skills to edit this piece. But I think then I missed out on all this knowledge. I didn't really know how to write. I wasn't clever. I didn't know the famous people from history or philosophy or sociology or all this sort of stuff that people that have been through uni just seem to know. Yeah, yeah, don't you say? Well, what would say, if I could just interrupt you there, because for your viewers, if you're doing yourself a disservice and you're being humble, for the benefit of your viewers, the Royal Marines are known as the thinking man's infantry. And I guess, you know, the difference between officers and other ranks is usually only that they've been to university in most cases. That's probably the only difference. It's not about intelligence. And the Royal Marines are known as the thinking man's infantry and across the armed forces. I was another rank. I was an enlisted soldier. I was a Lance Corporal. There's a lot of very, very, very intelligent soldier sailors and airmen. I think to say you were very bright is probably a massive disservice and that's you being very humble, because you can't be a Royal Marine and not be very bright. But of course, the education is a different side of it, isn't it? Many of us missed out on education. Yeah, so as a Royal Marine, I'd prefer to think of myself as the thinking woman's James Bond. Something like that. Whatever. The other thing I did, Chris, I realised how many people were trying to get publishing deals and I could see that most of the work was just thrown in the bin, not always because of its merit, but often just because I think some interns sitting in an office who's 21 years or 22 years old just come out. How are they going to recognise the beauty or the value in a piece of work? They haven't got the mental anchors from experience to go bloody hell. So I did it the other way. I started approaching authors, published authors and saying, hey, would you be kind enough to read a page of my book? I only asked them to do a page because I knew any more they're just going to think it's a workload. And I think the fourth one, the first couple of our approach really gave me brilliant feedback that helped me shape my author's mind. The biggest thing in writing is less is more and that's really hard to understand until you start to see it. But the fourth guy didn't get back to me for months because he was travelling in India and when he got back to me, so Chris spoke to my publisher already, he's going to call you and I'm like, yes. Well, I always look for the back door, Chris, I just got to find a way. The response though is something, isn't it? When you've had that breakthrough, even if it doesn't come good, I think you were giving the examples there, less is more certainly. I think the other one is show me, don't just tell me, that's really, really important as well. I remember talking to my agent's assistant and she said, because he is quite a famous guy, she said he receives over a thousand manuscripts a month from writing authors and he reads three pages at random. So I thought if I'd have known that at the time I would never have submitted a manuscript to him. And I think your point there that you brought up, Chris, about absolutely check it, check it, check it, go through it again and again, as perfect as it physically can be before you submit it. That's well worth doing, because if you really use that one page where you're having a bad day, then potentially you've lost out on another brilliant piece of work. The problem there is the time. And I was lucky, I'd left a job, I'd left on pretty bad terms so I was quite angry and I think they had to pay me off. So I had a bit of money to sort of buffer me for a while. And I knuckled down and I focused. To be honest, it was the first time I'd ever tried writing without having a drink in my hand, which was the... And it was like cup of tea, rolled a cigarette and I wrote 3,000 words in one day and I thought, I can do this. And that was it. The trip thing had been lit, the fuse had been lit and I was away. But when you hear people say, J.K. Rowling was unemployed when she wrote Harry Potter, I'm like, yes, because you can only be unemployed to write a book, it takes bloody ages and so many hours a day. Yeah, it's really, really, it is hard. And my agent also says, always stick it in a drawer for a couple of weeks before you send it to anybody. Stick it in a drawer, couple of weeks, take it out, have another read through it, and then send it off. Because you'll always find something to make it better as well. So yeah, certainly good luck to anybody doing it. It's hard work, but it's also very rewarding, isn't it? And for me, that catharsis, that ability to go through my own demons and confront them and think about them and pick them apart, it's a massive healing process as well. I learned a lot about the media arts in themselves. So when I watch a film now, I'm thinking a bit from a writer's perspective and I can see the bits in the film where they've stitched together a scene and I can see how cleverly they've done it that you just wouldn't have noticed that before. Yeah, you do absolutely, don't you, when you're watching a good movie, yeah. The narrative thread, they call it, don't they? And I bore my wife all the time now because I'm constantly like, oh, yeah, well, they're doing this and you're going to see this in a minute. Or that box of oranges, it's on the screen. It's got to be there for a reason. They're not going to waste editorial time on it. Do you see that spade leaning against him? He's going to pick it up and hit that guy. How do you know that? Why else is there a rally? Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. And your books, Chris, we've got eight lives down. Would you want to read this? I mean, that's very kind of you to give me a chance to promote them. They were done a long time ago. One's called Eight Lives Down. And the other one's called Extreme Risk. So Eight Lives Down was very much about that story in Iraq that we've talked about during this conversation. And Extreme Risk was a bit before, you know, and then life afterwards till I came out and then decided to become an adventurer and go out to Afghanistan and carry on working in war zones. And we'll put links to your book below the podcast. I suggest everybody, I can tell from our conversation they're going to be riveting reeds or get stuck in, folks. What's the future going to hold for you then, Chris? Well, I'm going back out to Iraq in three days' time. I'm working for an NGO out there, a Swiss charity. So ISIS or Daesh, they've littered the Middle East with millions of improvised explosive devices. There are refugee camps with tens of thousands of people in them because they can't go into their homes because they're littered with booby traps and IEDs. And there are loads of farmers who can't farm and provide for the populations because their farms are littered with IEDs. So I'm going out to Iraq to work with a charity out there with many sort of Western bomb technicians, all left the armed forces, and we're pitting out where it's against the ISIS and Daesh devices. And given the people in the refugee camps a chance to get back into their homes and the farmers a chance to get back onto their land. So I was out in Libya last year, Syria the year before that, and I'm going back to Iraq now to work with some great friends out there. Do you get all this same equipment because obviously you need all the same equipment? Sadly we don't. The charity sector doesn't have the money, the funding, so you don't have robots and things like that. But what we have is very, very highly experienced operators, all of us with 20-plus years of experience now. And the local national searches that we have are amazing. In some cases, some of them even former enemies that we've now become friends and have a combined, unified mission and a shared understanding as well. Enemies becoming friends and it's great. It's one of the most enjoyable, rewarding, gratifying jobs I've ever done. Can't wait to get back out there. Yeah, please be careful. That's kind, thank you mate, I'll work for sure. Chris, stay on the line so I can thank you properly, but massive, massive thank you. Well, fascinating story. I'm just honoured because if you'd asked me two years ago, would I be sat here talking to a bomb disposal expert? You know, I'd probably be writing some boring book or something. I'm very happy you shouldn't be. It's definitely, likewise mate, it's reciprocated. It's an absolute delight to chat with you. Yeah, and a massive honour to be invited onto your show mate. Oh, the honour's all ours. And please come back and tell us how you get on over that. Definitely. Friends at home, massive love to you all as always. Think from what we've heard makes us all appreciate the safety in our own lives, doesn't it? And what we've all got to live for. We're not getting our legs blown off in some village in Afghanistan or something. If you could like and subscribe, that would really be very kind of you. And we'll see you next time.