 Well, I think we're going to die, so we may as well enjoy what we've got left. But I've dangled my hand down, it would have taken my fingers off. How far away were you from a bomb? Bright green sea, cascading it through these great big holes, like horizontal waves coming in. I hit a car, I hit a pub sign, and it shot a banana around it. Wills, how are you, shipmate? I'm all right, Royal, how are you? Yeah, surviving, mate. I'm surviving this, surviving the apocalypse. Yeah, I feel like that film, The Seven Samurai, I think there's only two left at the end. And yeah, I feel like I'm making it, I'm making it through. Yeah, you and the rest of the country and the rest of the world, I suppose. Yes, yes. Wills, tell me, how far away were you from a bomb when it hit your ship? Oh, if I could have reached out, I would have touched it. Wow. It was below me, you went below me, I was on the deck above. But if I could have reached through the deck, I was sitting on, I was lying on. If I'd have dangled my hand down, it would have taken my fingers off. So just to set the scene here then, so it's the Falklands conflict, the Falklands war. Yeah. You're on HMS Glasgow, a Type 42 frigate. Destroyer. Destroyer, sorry. We have to remember that the sister ships Sheffield and Coventry get sunk in this conflict. So it's, your two sister ships go down. We've actually had John Mu, the wonderful John Mu on the podcast. He was on the Coventry when it sank. He was the PTI. He walked around the ship as it rolled over. Yeah. I've spoken to John before, nice guy. Yes, yes, very nice man. And someone who's overcome a lot of trauma in his life and that's something that we're going to come on and speak about. But so how old were you in the Falklands? It was 1982. So I would have been with me coming up to my 19th birthday. I think I was 18. God, bloody teenager in a war. I know, yeah. It's outrageous, isn't it? But it was great fun, I've got to say. For me personally. Yes. Well, I mean, there must be a massive funnel. It mustn't there because people, we have these wars and then people still keep joining up. Well, they do, but you're sort of doing what you've been trying to do. I can't say, I can't say like the going there on the way there. It was for me. It was worrying because we didn't pay. But during the thick of the action, we just took it as well. I think we're going to die. So I may as well enjoy what we've got left as it turns out we survived. Yes. And I guess it's interesting for you because traditionally the footage we see, we saw on the television is in Balmali, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. There's lots of that. Yeah. That was quite severe because you could be on one ship looking across. You know, you might be looking at the Galahad and next thing, you know, bang, it's up in flames and it's sinking and there's bloody thousands of men going to their deaths or getting horrifically injured. But you're out there, you know, sailing around. I mean, I guess you're not really going to see other ships on that frequent basis. And you don't know for any time what, you know, the jets could come over and bang, you're sunk and you're kind of way out there on your own. Yeah. We were out there with the two other Type 42s, the Coventry and the Sheffield and we was on point protecting the rest of the fleet from the air attacks. So we were relatively close to them and we could see the Sheffield burning on the horizon after it had been hit. And of course, when we went in to do the Naval Gunfire support, which is like the close up to the Falklands and then bombard the mountains and the Argentinian dugouts wherever, we used to go in with another ship. So it was relatively close to ships, but most of our war wasn't fought in Bombali. In fact, I'm not even sure we went in Bombali. Wow. And so there you are on board one day. Obviously on board, otherwise you'd be a bit wet. And what kind of bomb was it? Was it obviously from one of the jets? Yeah, it was one of the fast jets. We'd sailed it. Askipper wanted to entice the jets over. So when we closed up with the Falklands to do some bombardment, we went in during day-light hours because they can't fly during the night. So we went in on purpose to try and entice some of their jets over. And unfortunately, some of our main guns and weapons jammed. So they came across. There was three waves of four jets dropping bombs on us. We got hit once. But that was particularly frightening because they were all over us. And we were firing. There was a huge amount of noise. The machine guns and the earlickens and the main guns going off, trying to protect us. We were swarming around us, to be honest. We were very lucky. We were very lucky. We only got hit once. Nobody got injured. It was amazing. The bomb went straight through without exploding. Straight through? Straight through. Yeah, right just below me. Just within touching distance below where I was taking cover on the deck. Because we knew that they were there. We knew it was going off. And we knew that the main missile system had failed. And so it was just a case of trying to make yourself small. And I was right in the middle of the ship, like the very widest part. Probably where you'd aim for if you was a jet pilot, to be honest with you. The biggest, fattest part, get the most damage. And that's what happened. There was men that I know who were in. I think there were three. Three men were in actually, after engine room underneath where I was. And it missed all of them. It came very close, even closer than me probably, over the top of the heads of some of them. They survived, obviously. And I was part of mobile damage repair. So I got dragged down into the engine room by the Chief Stoker, along with some other mates. And we set about repairing the two huge holes that were on the water line. It was amazing. Going down the ladder and seeing daylight in the engine room, it just blew me away. Bright green sea, cascading it through these great big holes, like horizontal waves coming in. And within a relatively short amount of time, we were shipping a huge amount of water. And we set about fixing it. It took days. We were freezing. We didn't have a chance to put our once only, no, the orange survival suits that you can put on. Well, we didn't have a chance to get those on. So it was stubborn cotton overalls. And we were going into hypothermia. We were getting electric shocks from all the damage wiring that was dangling down on us. Because we literally, we were way below the, once we got into the engine room, it was way below the water line. So we was having to scramble up the equipment and the machinery to get to where the hole was. So they could start trying to do something about it. And then we were covered in diesel. It was, it was hell on earth to be honest with you, but like the armed forces sense of humor, it was just nonstop. We were laughing and giggling. If you'd imagine a pyramid, like you would do three blokes at the bottom, two blokes on the next level, a bloke on the next level and one at the top. We were like that trying to hold the guy at the top up so he could let go with his hands and do the work above him on the hole that was there. And as he got an electric shock from the dangling wires, we all got it. And so it was painful, but it was really funny. We just, we found the funny side in everything, although it was a really scary. And at this, at this moment, the jets are still coming in on us. They're still firing at us. And they were still under attack. And was it reminiscent of the Drew unit, the damage repair unit at rally? You had, had you done that? Yeah, I've done that. Absolutely. And I have done it not very long before either, because I've only sort of been in about a year and a half, something along those lines. Yeah, it was very much like that freezing cold, but the holes were much, the hole was much bigger. So it became more of a problem. Where before the damage control unit, you're making repairs on little splinter holes in pipes or on the side of the ship that you can use wedges and things for, had pieces on this. It was a large, a large diameter hole. Directly on the side of the ship. So every time a wave hit the side of the ship, which was like every 10 seconds, a huge amount of water would just push in and sort of knock us off balance and we'd have to start all over again. It was knocking all the materials away that we were using to sort of fill the gap. It took days, it took about three days before we got the flooding under control. It was, it was. Could you have not dropped someone down the outside and put a patch over it? I don't think so. So you need, this is it, this is the thing about the Royal Marines in the Navy. You need us to bloody show you what to do. Well, listen mate, do you know if you'd have been there, I'm sure we would have thought about it. In fact, if we could have lashed a few Royal Marines together, we could have used them as pieces on the outside. They wouldn't have minded. That's a great use of manpower. That is, yeah, where there's no brains, there's no feeling. When we did the damage repair unit at Raleigh before I went to sea, the Chief Petty Officer, I think it was, lead in the course or might have been a PO, he said, right, right fellas, this is a wedge. Anybody know what it's used for? And Rich puts this out and that went, wedging. Got your numbers on John. Oh, it was a funny guy, Rich. There's another thing at Raleigh, isn't there that they, they don't let you call it a hard hat. It's a safety helmet. And one thing on our courses, right fellas, this is not a hard hat. You will refer to this as a safety helmet. So on our, when we went to the, I think we went to the damage repair unit or something, that the PO said, right folks, what's this? And he helped, he holds one up and Rich says, it's a hard hat. Yes. And there's a PO that's just, you know, he could tell that there was some joke going on, but he just clearly, he wasn't getting it. Yes, so my God, so you're a teenager, you're in the Falklands. What was it like coming home? Did you come back to Plymouth or Southampton? We came back to Portsmouth. Why am I saying Southampton? That's a civilian port. Some of the civilians ships left from Southampton, I believe, like maybe the Canberra or something, probably was involved. The port was probably involved, but we came back to Portsmouth. The Glasgow was the first ship into the total exclusion zone, and it was the first ship back home again because of the damage that we'd received. So when we got back, there was no other ships in the dockyard. We got the whole of the dockyard to ourselves. So we had a few weeks fixing up the equipment and the engine stuff in the engine room. It was just so surreal. It was surreal. The very first moment I got off the ship, there was a huge party of family and friends and the Royal Marines were marching up and down with playing the trumpet. What instrument did you play, Chris? Me, you may. I played lying on my bed. Is that an instrument? A triangle. I was expecting a triangle. People joke, right? A bloody wish I did learn an instrument because at least I'd have had a skill when I left the forces. And not just a skill, but a bloody admirable one that I'm still crap at a guitar. Bloody hours into trying to learn that thing. So I think the musicians, they've got the best job in the Marines. Yeah, I think you're right. It's interesting. They have to do the actual, the commando course, don't they, to be able to do like the stretcher bearer and play an instrument and stuff? No, that's not right. Is it not? Absolutely. I'm sure they'd probably take him up to the woods and teach him how to make a fire or something, but no, no infantry training. Not with it. Okay, let's start again. So absolutely nothing to do with Limstone. The only band members at Limstone are when they come down for the pass out parades. And then they're just spectacular. They all wear these animal skins. I'm surprised they're still allowed to do it these days. I'm guessing they're probably synthetic or something, but they work, you know, some guy comes out dressed as a tiger and banging a drum and next guy comes out dressed as a giraffe and he's got a trombone. It's all pretty mental. But no, they're based in deal, aren't they? And that's where the bomb went off, wasn't it back in the day? Yes, yes, yes. And they are trained medics. So yes, they would be stretcher bearers. I did another fascinating podcast. I'll try to remember there. I'll see if I can find it while I talk. But back to your story. Will, did you get any reception committee when you came back? Yeah, all the family came down to Portsmouth into the dockyard. It was absolutely awesome, but it was just so surreal. So I immediately got off the ship. I wasn't required straight away to do any more duty. So I was one of the lucky ones that got off and managed to find my family in the crowd. And we went into Southsea. We went to the walk into Southsea and I was stumbling around. I got my sea legs and I couldn't get them. So I've been sort of walking down the road and then suddenly start leaning to one side and I couldn't quite work out what was happening. I've lost a huge amount of weight as well because we started to run out of food and all the basics on board because we weren't expecting to be there. So I was hankering after fresh fruit, stopping at all the shops and it was too late to go to the shop by the time we got in. So I was looking through all the windows and thinking, oh, my mouth was dribbling and all I had to do was drink beer. It was awful. So let's come on to your time in a fire service. Yes, because, well, let's be honest here, you're accumulating quite a lot of trauma, aren't you, as you're going? I mean, you've already been to war. You've already had a bomb go right past you. Did you have, would you say you had one of these challenging childhoods? No. Okay. No, not at all. No, no, my childhood was fairly standard, just an average kid. Sorry, for our friends at home that might be wondering what a random question. No, it's just that Wills is a trauma specialist and we're going to come on to that and I was just trying to do the background bit. Also, can I just say, folks, this isn't a new look. This is, I've just been for a run and I didn't have time to, I literally didn't have time to get changed. So yes, this is how I look when I run. Sorry, Wills, I should have made more of a tension. I'd be honest, I did, I got back from my run and I had a video that I've just been meaning to do for ages and ages and I thought, right, I can squeeze it in. I can squeeze it in and then I ran over time and so, yes, that's why I'm wearing my Rocky, Rocky Balboa gear. Yes, so fire service, tell us about it, mate. I left the Navy in 86 and joined the fire service in 1990. So I had a bit of a gap, but it wasn't a bomb. And it was like the busiest time that has ever been in the fire service. My service caught straight through that time where it was just a fire call after fire call or road traffic crash after road traffic crash. And it was like boys' own stuff, very much like being in the Falklands all over again. It sort of, it didn't hit me as a shock because I sort of expected it when I joined up and it didn't disappoint. Let's put it that way. There was plenty going on. Let's just take it one step at a time. So one of the things that we do before we go on ship, which is fascinating, is the firefighting course, isn't it? Yes, H-Mesh Phoenix, I think it is. And it's the full, for people that haven't done it, it's the full Monty, it's all the breathing apparatus, the asbestos, or not asbestos, but the fireproof suits, first rule, aim at the base of the fire, all this kind of stuff. And on your training, you go into this burning building and you have to find your way around in this thick black smoke and they're throwing on, I don't know what they put on, this diesel or something. Diesel, it was diesel. And make it just black and you've got to have your hand on the guy in front. And I'll be honest, I absolutely loved it. There wasn't any, I'm guessing in reality, to be on a burning ship or whatever, would be bloody frightening. But in training, it was just great, great, great fun. But did that stand you in any kind of stead to get in the fire service? No, not at all. No, I mean, to be honest with you, trying to get in the fire service back in the day was like trying to get in the SAS. You had to be a bit of a freak and fit their exact requirements. And to do that, there's not many people can fit their exact requirements. And they've gotten rid of, they've gotten rid of a lot of them because they were excluding certain sections of the community. So it was a bit of a surprise to be able to get in, just being able to, like a penny going through a machine, it's got to be the right size, the right weight, the right everything. And if you manage to drop through all the way, then you're in. And if you don't, you're rejected. It was quite a harsh selection process for one to the better word. Yeah. So it was difficult to get in. And what was the boredom factor like because obviously when we're in a military, we do lots of guard shifts and you do obviously watches in the Navy and probably not so bad for you guys, but when we're standing on a main gate or something for four hours in the freezing cold at midnight and then you get, you go back to a picket room and you sleep for four hours and then someone wakes you up and you're like, oh, God, that four hours went quick. And then you're back on the gate again. And in between when you're not sleeping or on the gate, you watch just endless videos that you've seen 30 times already, drink endless cups of tea. What's that aspect like in the fire service? To be honest with you, I don't think there was a really huge amount of time to get bored. I mean, we could sleep on nights. There's a lot of fire services don't allow it anymore, but we could sleep on nights. But to be honest with you, we did need it. We was doing a lot of training. And if it wasn't physical training, it was like touching the equipment and getting it out and drilling because you need to be able to speed with it. If you think about somebody rings 999, the fire service turn out every single time and you're the last port to call. If you can't do it, we're really in the shit. So you need to know what you're doing with the equipment and have ideas and alternative plans to be able to do stuff. And you can't pull those things out of thin air. You've got to practice. And it is practice, practice, practice. So there is downtime. I mean, you can sit around and have a cup of tea. We do lots and lots of lectures. It's obviously the ability to game with Paul or Ping Pong. But in the main, we're doing some really good work. Some really hard work that touches your brain and your body. Yeah, it's quite good. So I never found myself getting bored, really. OK. And so what's it work then? Does a siren go off or does a bell go off? And you've got to run for you. What do you call it, a unit or something? Oh, right. Yeah. So you're applying. So you're applying. Sorry. Yeah. They applied. Well, they didn't have a fire engine for what it was. So in the whole time, in the full-time fire brigade, which I was, you have a watch. We had red, white, blue and green. I was on white and you're a shift. So you all go together. So in my station, we had two fire engines. One was part-time. They used to run in from home. And we were the full-time as the professionals. So you slide down. The pips have come on. The lights have come on to tell you which fire engine was going. And then you slide down the pole, jump on the fire engine, blue lights on, and away you go. All the exciting stuff the moment you tip out the station. Yeah. So I was at my main station. I was at station 26. I was there for about 16 years. So I got to know the place fairly well. And it was the area where I worked as well, which was always a bit disconcerting in case you came across something where you knew the people. You know, casualties in car. I mean, which has happened casualties in car crashes, house fires and stuff where you've stumbled into people that, you know, but it's also helpful because you know the area. So you can be there double quick time. All right. So talk us through some of this stuff because I've spoken to police officers in the rapid response units. First on the scene of, you know, horrific crashes. And they, they, from what I gathered, I'm guessing not everybody does, but the certainly the chap I spoke to compartmentalized it really well. Can you describe, can you describe what you've been doing Can you describe the scenes? You know, what's the worst thing you've had to turn up to? That's a really obvious question. And it's one that I've asked in a lot of times. And of course being, being the fire service, we all go, oh, we don't talk about those sort of things. I suppose the biggest loss of life. I think they were in one area of my brigade, which I was neighbouring to. We turned up to a car that had hit a pub sign sideways. It skidded down the road. They've been, they've been racing. And these guys were all big, heavy sportsmen. I'm not going to say what sport they played because it would be obvious who they are. And they hit this car, their car had hit a pub sign and it sort of bananaed around it and it crushed. I think in all, there were five casualties. There were five fatalities. And these guys were six foot plus. They were big, heavy dudes. And it was just amazing that as we got them out one by one, there was one left that was still alive in the back. And so we laid them out on the pavement and we were sort of covering them up with blankets and things like that. But the blankets weren't, these are man mountains. The blankets weren't big enough to cover them. So like the legs and knees would still be hanging out at the end. And the huge, great, big size 22 boots or something. These guys were super human guys. There was one still trapped in the car and my friend was tending to him with taking the boot off the car, so he crawled inside and he sat in the boot of the car and lent forward and put his arms around the guy who was in there. This guy was trapped by the car. The car had crushed in onto him so he couldn't move, but he was conscious. So when you're trapped by your injuries, if you release the car, quite often you can bleed out into your body and die. And that's exactly what happened. My friend, my colleague had been talking to him probably for about three quarters of an hour, keeping him conscious, reassuring him, his arms around him, talking very quietly. This is one of the things we do, people think, I don't know what people think, but quite often, the person who climbs into the car to assist the casualties, the best thing they can do is give them a hug, put their arms around them and speak quietly into the ear, explain what's going on, you're going to be okay, the doctor's on his way. This is what my friend was doing to this guy in the back and as we slowly peeled the car away from him, he lapsed into unconsciousness and died in my friend's arms. That was one of the most traumatic things that I saw and it was based on just the amount of casualties that we had to remove from the car and then the only one that survived for a short period died and we sort of knew it was coming as well. Taking messages is anything you want to tell anybody and things like that and that is fairly traumatic. When you get a relationship, you turn up to a dead body and the body's dead. You nurse somebody and get your arms around him in the most traumatic incident and they're dying. That touches your soul a little bit, that can be upsetting. We've got in the fight, so we used to have a great way of dealing with that sort of trauma. We'd go back onto the station without finding all the fun and picking the dark humour. Let's put it that way. The dark humour where we would find something to laugh and giggle about, talk about the incident until everybody sort of got bored of it and then that was our therapy and it worked. The police used to go out one at a time patrolling. If they came across something, they used to be really upset and go off sick. The fire brigade were a unit and we expected it and we weren't alone and then when we got back to the station, we spoke about it at a company and dealt with it that way and it was really, really effective. Things have changed and so for that reason, people don't feel they can talk anymore in the fire service like we used to do. I think people get more traumatic reactions because they're not as open and they can't say the things that they want to say and have that dark sense of humour for fear of being disciplined. There's a lot of that. That's what holds the trauma in people not being able to talk about it whereas we had nobody to pick us up on it. We just said what we wanted and laughed and cried if we needed to. So it was just one of those things. Big thing, talking. Talking your trauma through. Yeah. I'm guessing also I think people are quite shielded from death so when it happens it's quite shocking for them. Whereas I mean... Some of the worst things are the worst incidents not necessarily because of what's happened but it's at night time. I think incidents are worse at night time because you can never quite see what you're walking into and we have these great big flashlights. So you walk up to two cars in collision you can see some casualties in there but it's not until you open the door and shine your torch in that the blood has just become bright, crimson everywhere whereas during the day light it doesn't seem quite as black and bright red at night time it's black and bright red in the daytime it's all the colours of the rainbow it's not quite as shocking. So I always felt that the night time fires and the night time road traffic crashes were probably worse because of the visual effect of it being dark and then shining a light through and bam! You know, these limbs hanging off and cut heads and blood everywhere. So that can be quite Halloween. If you don't talk it through and get it off your chest in a way that you feel you can say what you want to like we used to do in the old days I suppose if you don't feel like you can do that and you sort of package it up and keep it in that's where all the bother starts in a nutshell that's where all the bother starts. Is it a lot more shocking to see someone that's I don't know they've been decapitated or they've been really badly smashed up as opposed to I mean many people I don't know sit with a loved one when they die I think we've a lot of us have done that right or my mate Lee drowned drowned in a lake so I was kind of sat on the shore of the lake with my mate's dead body right next to me but that it's just like their time had gone their time has gone it must be a different thing when someone's been like bloody ripped apart I mean I'm asking you because I haven't experienced that well is it something you can get used to is it utterly horrific when you first see someone that's in a bad way on a personal level I didn't find that it affected me deeply I didn't because I didn't have a personal relationship with these people I found that the ones who you managed to speak to and then died have played on my mind for a couple of days but like I said just slightly before it's that ability to go back onto the station and talk about it and even laugh about it there's always humour in something even the worst case scenarios being bombed and being electrocuted in the engine room there's always something to find funny or something to find upsetting and talk it out and have a cry and move on when I joined the fire service I fully expected to be doing it so it didn't really come as a shock and I think sometimes maybe I'm being disrespectful to the younger generation but I'll say it anyway I don't think the younger generation are quite as robust as this so some people are a bit eerie theory they come into the job and then they're upset when they see dead people it's like what did you expect to be honest with you I mean surely you've steeled yourself for this and you thought about what might happen it doesn't mean you won't be upset but people do get some quite strong reactions from seeing dead people I'm like well it's sort of what we do and there is nobody else to do it so when you join and sign up you sort of know that you're going to do that surely but my robustness I was able to use it to a later date just before I retired anyway by doing some training for once in a better word I did some training that showed all the people it's not the end of the world not only is it not that upsetting you were there to help and you've done a good job so if you can take that and apply it every time something bad happens I was here to help it's not my fault, it was my mantra it's not my fault I didn't drive the car I was here to help I'm not upset, I'm not taking it home and that was my mantra and I think it's a really resilient, it's resilient I was accused of being callous I've been to people that have hung themselves and we've had to wait a considerable amount of time for the police to turn up because it was in a wooded area and so we took the mickey out of the casualty we just sat on the floor and looked at him, he was spinning round and round in the wind and we were counting how many times he's been one way then how many times he's been the other way you can do, you can sit there and cry or you can find something you don't get any bloody brownie points for traumatising yourself do you? I made a video about that I think it was today actually my mother was poisoned it's fucking tough shit you've got to pick yourself up and life goes on it's what you the way you talk to yourself is so powerful oh gosh it is the most powerful thing the most powerful thing you can do we have a conversation we need to remember that most people's the way they talk to themselves is really rubbish people who love to dine out on things and make me so much more we've all got to die haven't we there's one thing that we is guaranteed and I always say we can't die we're just as carbon molecules we change form and we become something else that's probably a bit more beautiful than this ugly face we'll be a little bit in the ocean a bit in the clouds, a bit in the birds this is what my son I was out with my little boy doing a bit of gardening the other day or a bit of concrete or something and a leaf blew by and he went oh granddad that to me is so beautiful that he sees it that his granddad has just changed form now he hasn't gone anywhere because we can't this physically cannot go anywhere these molecules cannot go anywhere I'm really hot on that talk to yourself positively shit happens alright fine move on go on with your life don't wallow in that trauma because you're creating memory files then that have such a powerful effect on the rest of your life I think as well if you can have a conversation with yourself and allow yourself to be upset if it is upsetting and that's okay but within a relatively short amount of time you need to be moving on and accepting it as something that's happened I agree with it virtually with everything you've just said it is about things that happened but you can gray them out they can become black and white and unimportant that when you don't deal with the thing that's upset in it stays bright red and hot and live inside you and your emotions are still attached to it you need to talk it through to the point where virtually you board with it and shove it to one side so the people that hold it in and won't talk to it they're the ones that become damaged and in the real incident it's there to be talked about don't talk about it and you're hanging on to a hot penny and all it's going to do is burn you yeah I think if you don't talk about it because of some preconceived ideas of how I don't know life is or what stiff up a little I think that could be quite that's a hot potato that's like a bubble waiting to burn but on the other hand my sort of way I just go on and I just don't think about it again it's a different thing I'm not holding anything in I get life I think when you're 19 years old on the streets of Belfast and one of your brothers has just been shot dead on the road you know that road over what can you do you just got to go on and things I think you learn from a young age that I mean God my primary school when we must have been 7 one of the lads accidentally hung himself it's awful Timmy's name was Timmy so yeah I don't know I don't really know what I'm talking about Will's to be honest because it's such a it's a massive massive subject but I just think you've got to get a realistic idea of what life is and then it's a lot less to deal with when shit does go wrong I think you've hit the nail on the head by examining by thinking about what's just happened to you maybe just been involved in a smash or broke my arm by giving it some real deep thought and working it through it allows you to put it to put it to bed but by turning away from it and pretending that it hasn't happened you're just storing moral and the more you store it has to come out at some point it's better that it comes out at the moment that you do it or that you're involved because it can it can be stored in the file under cold not bothered doesn't bother me anymore but if you hang on to it and turn away from it I don't want to know I can't think about that and suppress it then he's going to come back and bite you on the bump yeah that's where the talking comes in even if it's not structured even if it's not in a structured way with a counsellor or a facilitator of some sort just talking with your friends and your family which is what we used to do like I say in the fire service just rip the shit out of the incident as much as we could or a cry and then put it to bed and it just went away whereas the policeman walking around on his own he didn't have that and that's why they used to end up sick yeah it's got you it's a bit like a rally driver you know what they can crash a car 140 mile an hour and it spins over and over and crashes through they get out and laugh and the difference between them and if that happened to a non rally driving counterpart is that the rally driver's expecting it it's part of the thing he knows if he just holds on it's going to spin a few times then they're going to get out and then they'll fix the car and bang off all the new car and sort of off they go again it's expected it's compartmentalised it's made sense of and move on whereas if someone crashed a car I don't know it's 60 mile an hour and they haven't put themselves through this mental process of knowing what's happening then it could be potentially the worst thing that's ever happened to them it could haunt them to the end of their days even though they both both drivers walked away is what I'm trying to say yeah but even the worst I deal with people with PTSD and we can generally fix it within two to three hours by just reliving the whole issue over and over and over again until it's gone cold and they can deal with it without crying or the bottom lip quivering or it just goes away you can still remember what happened but it hasn't got the emotion and the fire and the red hot heat attached to it like it does when you're about to burst into tears down the pub you make that something that you weren't expecting and it's triggered you that's bad that's when you know you need to do something if that makes sense we're going to come on to this Will's and I'm fascinated already but let's just talk about so I've got written down a London bridge Grenfell and Westminster three pretty bloody nasty incidents I mean Grenfell just awful the numbers of people that must have I don't think they actually ever really knew the real number did they do you know it was a lot we actually it's difficult it's difficult for me to say and remain respectful of the people at Grenfell we actually visited Grenfell with the police officers that dealt with the incident on the night and just so that you could walk around and sort of re sort of live what had gone off and there was only there for maybe three quarters of an hour and that they we took them down in buses that were supplied by the police we walked around the site we didn't go into the building but we left them to it we let them walk around in the little groups and it was very quiet you could hear a pin drop they were talking in very very quiet tones and then after a short while they began to lighten up and you could hear people having a joke and nudging each other and it was that moment that you could tell the tide had turned and it sort of come to terms with it and at that moment it's time to walk away where you've still got a good feeling and we took them and if we went and had something to eat which would be part of one of the processes that we that we use so that we'd get them extra information by going and looking at the incident bring them away give them something to drink and eat and let them talk amongst themselves whilst we monitor what we're saying when we were looking for people that were triggered and I've got to say there weren't many there weren't many at all they'd come to terms with it just by revisiting now if they had to revisit it who knows they might never have come to terms with it but by being there with the mates and doing that doing that thing that we used to do in the fire brigade to sit around and have a talk about it coming to terms with it then I think there were around about 90 officers that we we spoke to in that year through the three incidents and everybody that was physically capable of returning to work returned to work after we'd seen them it was a huge turnaround and unexpected from the Met as well they were taken aback by the fact that there was expecting a huge percentage of them to go off-state with psychological issues but because they've spoken it through and dealt with it they managed I think there's a couple of people that were physically injured that couldn't that one of them had been stabbed another lady had got psychological issues but we spoke to her and it resolved but it's just this act of doing and reliving it and talking about it again it's just the same story it seems to melt away and takes all the steam and the sting out of the situation and it's not medical either it's not done by the NHS you don't have to have a degree to do this stuff you have to have some solid training and it is the best I'm just interested in these events so we can help our friends listening to put into context the sort of stuff that people experience and then struggle with after so my memories hazy on these events I don't watch the mainstream media anyway but London Bridge was something about stabbings and Westminster people allegedly got going well I'm not going to use the T word but allegedly committing attacks on the the public I'm saying allegedly I find this notion that people just randomly pick up a bloody carving knife and something about it we're not being told but that's a story for another day what was the scene on the ground here then what was your experience because you actually were there pretty much straight after is that correct yeah well it was within a few weeks after the three incidents that happened the team was assembled they've been trained in Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service so the team was assembled by our trainer Dr John Durkin and we were taken down there it was down there for 12 days in all we did some group crisis interventions and then we did some one on one stuff so the group crisis it was things like I have to be careful about not to sort of identify the people that I'm going to speak about because it would be wrong of me but there was one particular incident where the team that were the normal police officers were on the ground on London Bridge and they were dealing with the multiple casualties that had severe stab wounds and one of the policemen was actually in fear of his life and he explained it as I had a casualty I was on the bridge I got a casualty and he had so many stab wounds that I'd run out of hands and elbows and knees to put pressure onto his body I'd run out of bandages he said the only bandages that I've got left was in my pouch and I pulled it out and my hands were so full of blood every time I tried to hold the bandage it slipped out and I had to bite the bandage open with my teeth and I got the blood in my mouth and he said I knew at that moment that I was going to die that they were going to come and get me they were going to stab me also because it was still active he said that I couldn't walk away from my casualty I had to try and save them but there was so many stab wounds in this individual that he couldn't plug all of them and he was explaining how he was like kneeling and doing this and putting his knee on the chest and holding onto another part with another hand and it was just a hopeless situation all in the knowledge that it was his last day on earth as it turns out it wasn't but that was his thought pattern and he'd held that in and he wasn't particularly explained he wasn't particularly liked on the shift but by the time he'd finished telling his story I can't imagine I can't imagine anybody on that shift who didn't used to like him wouldn't hold him in the highest regard because he said it humbly he wasn't bragging he just explained what happened to him and each person in that group went round and told similar stories and it flipped my it flipped my perception I didn't used to have a great perception of the police I'd got no problem with them with regards to being in trouble never been in trouble I'd used to think there was a bit bossy when you're young you don't always get a great impression of the police by the way you treated and that was the case for me but by the time we'd finished working with these 90 or so officers I just held them in the highest regard I could he just flipped my thoughts about them flipped it was just the things that they'd done and the way they tried to help and the danger they put themselves on behalf of everybody else it blew me away honestly it did I know some police are bad and some police are good but I struggle with the police being piled together and they're all bad and finger pointing because there were some immensely brave people, men and women the women did equally as good as the men if not better and every story was the same every story I thought I was going to die on earth and to sit and listen to that he's very very humbling thinking that I'm a really brave fireman and the things I do I'm immense you know the public love me and all that sort of thing that's my perception that people think about those as firefighters well if you then think well who do the firefighters have as heroes and you normally say well just another firefighter well in this case in my case those police officers are real heroes as well they were absolutely immense yes I bet and also the realisation you're going to die and then actually living through it is worse than if you die because if you die it's good night Vienna you haven't got no worries anymore but to have that intense experience and the fear that builds up to it it's yeah it's like it's an experience that very few other people on this planet are ever going where they won't experience it they're never going to understand it's a very bizarre it's such a unique place to be to think you're going to die to be fairly sure you're going to die I mean I've had that a couple of times I had it in the Fortlands and I had it actually I had it once at a fire that I was in I jumped onto the fire engine early I'd come down done my work out for the morning jumped onto the fire engine of the other shift because somebody wanted to get off early and as it turned out I had to be a breathing apparatus so it's a house fire not very far away from the station and as we turned we jumped off the fire engine BA set on, walked across the policemen now this is one of those houses I think it's called Amazingette where you open the front door and you go straight up the stairs there's no downstairs and it's like a house upstairs does that make sense? Amazingette so we said to the police what's happening it's smoke issuing from all over and he says it's okay he's in there at the moment and he's got an axe, we said right out yeah no problem right so get the set on we do the calculations and I went running up the stairs all excited and wanted to get stuck in and then my mate followed me up and we have to lie on the floor and went in a fire if you can get right down on the very lowest part of the deck and look on the side you can generally see an area of clear air so you can see if this casualties laying anywhere or feet or whatever you can see there's a clear panel right next to the floor and so I did that and I couldn't see anything so we started to move away, we were doing the leopard crawl starting to move away through the fire because it's too hot to lift your head up you definitely can't stand up you cook yourself so you have to leopard crawl like the Royal Marines do through the jungles or whatever so my mate took the right you're not supposed to split up but we always do so my mate took the right hand room which was the kitchen went in there looking for this guy I took the left hand room which was a bedroom and when you're going into a building that's on fire you have to search everything because you can't see so everything's done by hand you're looking on beds, under beds opening cupboards, opening wardrobes because children and adults hide in them because they think they can be safe because if it's full of smoke they're trying to get away so I'm going all round I went round the other side of the bed and I went down towards the headboard and then I started and I thought that copper said he got an axe and I just ran upstairs really listening to what he was saying I realised and I got this picture in my head that there was a guy with a big long handle axe stood over me and he absolutely scared the crap out of me that was one of the only times I've ever had a nightmare about the stuff I've seen and I just blundered into this incident without properly stopping and thinking it was probably a bit younger in my career and I was eager to get stuck in like the fire and be the hero and rescue the person as he turned out he left before the police had turned up he set fire to the upstairs using petrol and then exited and so we came out I came out the bedroom Oppo came out the kitchen and we met up in the hallway and then went forward into the main living room which was the only other room and the windows had gone in the room so all the smoke had cleared but it was like a huge relief because I just got this idea that somebody was about to hit me on the back with a huge one of those sort of huge fell tree felling axes and that actually gave me a nightmare that made me lose sleep really the only time in the fire service despite everything that I saw I see anything that really touched me to the point where it made my bottom lip go a bit ooh and I was a little bit more attentive after that you know you start you learn by these things yes there is no way anybody could have stood over me with an axe but the picture in my head as I was laying on the floor crawling down the side of the bed was just this person's waiting for me and I just thought shit that copper said there's a guy up here with an axe and I just completely ignored everything he said we shouldn't have even been in there really but we were and as it turned out it turned out alright on the day let's put it that way yes good yes a mind can run away with us can't it and in that moment when it runs away it can be quite create a lot of panic I think it was for me there was a feeling of lack of control I think it was that oh my god there's nothing I can do he's going to hit me and I have no idea why I suddenly got this thought with an axe it just hit me and it was this a feeling of helplessness and a lack of control that I've not really felt before even through the Falklands stuff I always felt you know I probably won't live but there's all an element of control but when you're lying on the floor and you're front we're in a breathing apparatus set it's pitch black, it's boiling hot and you've got the idea that someone is about to launch your head off with an axe it really is very sobering and that's one of the like that that's one of the only times but it must be the same those police officers on London Bridge the one that was telling me about he knew it was his last day on Earth he knew he was going to die but he decided he made the decision he was going to stick with his casualty and do his best at least his casualty might survive that he knew he was going to die we've established trauma now let's talk about TIR which is Trauma Traumatic Incident Reduction Traumatic Incident Reduction where did it first come around it came about in the States through a doctor called Sarge Gabboud who was a psychiatrist and he started to practice psychiatry in his early years he realised that it wasn't really it didn't do what it said on the tin he quite often ended up being placed on drugs or in mental institutions without actually solving the problem so he started to do his own look into his own philosophy and reaching out and finding all the different things and he came up with a system of working with people that is non-medical it doesn't diagnose I don't diagnose people in fact for the most I actually ignore people's diagnosis they come to me and say well I've got PTSD I say right I don't like using PTSD can we just say you're pissed off and angry yeah that'll do it just gives it a different name without the feeling that you're some sort of victim because anybody can be pissed off and angry but not everybody has PTSD and a collection of signs and symptoms and if you can get rid of the signs and symptoms you haven't got anything you just pissed off and angry so it's a really effective method and it permanently resolves past traumas so once you've done a session a person might have 10 incidents that they want to talk about and we'll pick one at a time and we'll do that incident to death in one session and we won't finish until it's resolved and by resolved I mean it's no longer an issue in your life and it is unlikely to become an issue in the future completely permanently resolved without the need for anybody in the medical word even knowing you don't need any of that they claim to be the leading experts but this does it without any of their intervention yeah I'm guessing this is adult trauma trauma though isn't it this is for people that don't deal with children I don't deal with anybody under the age of 16 there is some additional training I can do if I want to and sort of ramp it down a little bit but I choose not to I've had two kids of my own I've got a grandson and I don't want to go in that space in my head I'm not quite sure how I'd sit with that I struggle slightly with sexual stuff I do a lot of that with other girls and although I'll do it and I'll do it willingly I do reflect on that more heavily than other stuff so I pick and choose I don't do the kids stuff the reason I mention it is when you experience trauma at a very young age like many of us have you physically your mind doesn't have the ability to make sense of it because you you put through this you have some horrendous experiences and then you're left on your own you don't have anyone to talk to about there's not like you can go this just happens to me so what happens is at that young age your mind again compartmentalize it you're a damaged person there's something you do that's not right this is why it's so catastrophic in later life when this starts to come to the surface for example when people leave the forces people really start to have a wobble because it's this internalized trauma that you physically don't have the ability to make sense of because you're not an adult you're a kiddie whereas adult trauma is different when you push your car into the water yes it's not nice no one's ever going to pretend it is however you're an adult you can get out that car someone can sit you down and go calm down deep breaths it's just a bit of metal it's smashed up you're okay you've lost an arm but prosthetics are good do you know what I mean yeah okay the childish stuff because you can't do that at a young age you get stored in like a I don't know it gets stored somewhere in a kind of I don't physically cannot deal with this and as such it's not something then that you can just like you know have therapeutics you come up with strategies to cope with it is what I'm saying as opposed to being able to I just wanted to ascertain this sounds like it's something that's probably really good for one of the things that you can do is I don't work directly with children but the adults I do work regress right all the way back some of their incidents I talk about from the age of 2 or 3 I'm happy to do that I'm not trained to work directly with children but I could do it if I wanted to by the by it's called suppression when you push it away and you don't want to think about it and you compartmentalize it into your mind it's called suppression I just want to say for the sake of people that's a different thing again suppression is when I can't be dealing with that therefore I won't deal with it I won't think about it what I'm saying is when you can't deal with your child you haven't got the cognition yet in which to make sense of life it's still suppression it still comes down to the same thing the child doesn't have to deal so they'll probably stop thinking about it and then hopefully pretend it never happened but it'll always come out at a later date and then we'll deal with it then but suppression is quite a it's like putting all your dark thoughts and put them into a black cupboard on the side of the wall there and lock in the key now I've got the key and I've got to remember not to go in that black cupboard because that's where all the nasty things are so I'll put this key in my pocket but I know I've got the key and I also now I've got to think don't put my right hand in my right pocket because that's where the key is that holds all the dark thoughts in the corner over there so it's actually harder work to suppress something than it is that in one go cry about it fall out with yourself for five minutes and then move on you can spend your whole life trying to pretend not to go in this pocket where the key is to the cupboard and that takes a huge amount of energy and it will always come out it'll come out unexpectedly you'll be triggered by something down the pub even though you've left the key in your pocket you think you're safe somebody will say something one of your mates in the pub will say something and this has happened to me about the Falklands people have asked me stuff so I went quite unexpectedly but my bottom lip started to go a little bit and I have to like stutter and go I didn't really talk about this because I can feel myself going and so it wasn't until I got rid of that until I put onto the letter word unsuppressed myself and faced my fears and faced the fact that I might get upset that it went great and went away and I can talk about it any amount of time now as you've heard I can talk about it all day but until I until I came to terms with it and spoke about it openly and repeatedly over and over again to make it go away and that's all it was just boring yourself with it to the point where I'm not really interested if you're bored with something how can you be traumatised by it if you think about that and if you think about any situation where you've been traumatised and you've spoken about it enough times where you're bored by the sound of your own voice it's not traumatic anymore is it it's that simple how could it possibly be traumatic if it makes you yawn Yeah I think we need to point out that not all therapies work every time for every body for example talking therapy it can be great but also in certain I don't know let's call it arenas helping people relive through something which is actually reinstating the fear then it's telling the brains like it's like rewarding the brain for fear saying you're right to be to feel it's a very probably a hard concept for people listening that have no idea of this area but what I'm saying is the reason people getting such hyper-vigilant high anxiety states where it can result in panic attacks or the point we can't go at the house is what they're doing is every time they sort of shy away from the fear rather than bang facing it head on it tells the brain that oh you did well there in the wild come into attack you that was a a bloody rhinoceros gory you did well it was like an aversion to dealing with reality but our brain is so clever I told the brain oh he did well there, you just escaped a rhino you just escaped a spear you just escaped a deadly bloody shark where in the actual fact you kinda didn't it does is it reinforces your flight or flight mechanism, that little bit more, and eventually by this constant moving away from the thing, rather than acknowledging it, you build yourself into such a hyper-anxious state. I just wanted to mention that because I just don't want people out there who've tried this form of intervention or they try this and it doesn't work to think that they're a broken machine that nothing's going to waste. No, it's a complicated area and it's complicated in some respects, but to me it's really simple. For me actually, the people that are the worst affected by trauma are the easiest, because I can see where it is and I can see what I'm doing. It's like shining a big light on it, so somebody comes to me massively upset. I've got all these signs and symptoms, things like PTSD, anxiety, depression, flashbacks, hypervigilance, all those things. If I can see that, I know exactly where we're going to go with it, so I would sit them down, opposite them like we're sat with you, and I would go through a series of questioning over and over again and get them to relive it to the point where it's it goes away. It's quite an astonishing thing to watch and you can see it happening. You can see the penny dropping. That's not effective anymore. Why do I need to do that? Do you know what, I'm all right. That's quite often and another common thing they say to me when they get to their, what we call an endpoint, when they get to their endpoint is, what the hell have you just done to me? I feel completely different. That's really weird. Why am I not scared anymore? I get those sorts of reactions. I've been doing it for six years and I haven't not got a good endpoint for somebody. I haven't had like a something where somebody's gone, well, that lady worked. It just works. It works. It works every time. I can't promise anything because I'm not superhuman, but I haven't had somebody and I've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours doing this. The worst possible things you can think of, rapes, assaults, IEDs, firefights, you name it. I've done it. Or not I've done it. I've assisted people to work through it and it just works. It's amazing. What I'd love to do is to do it for somebody and then they come on your show and go, you know, something that was just amazing. I am completely back to normal. I don't even want to say the word cured or treated because that sounds like some sort of medical person and I'm not. We just follow a set of rules and regulations, rules of facilitation it's called and it works. It's absolutely bang on. We would stop a lot of suicides within the forces if we could get it recognised in the UK. It's only recognised in the States at the moment that the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices. It's like an evidence-based practice in the States that's nice, won't accept it in this country, which is a shame because people are topping themselves and it can be stopped. It can very relatively easily. It's not easy for the person to work through, so they're going to have three hours maybe of being upset and crying, but at the end of it, they are going to get to the point where it's gone grey. Do you know what? I remember it happening. I can see how it would be upsetting, but it doesn't affect me anymore. There's no need to be this upset. It was 20 years ago or it was, in my case, 40 years ago. Why would I be crying about the Fortlands? It's 40 years ago. We lead you to that point. You do it for yourself. So that's literally how it works. You just do it over and over again. But there's a skill to it, obviously. We'd all be doing it. It can't be that straightforward, though, because I mean, it's a typical person I speak to with what you'd think was military trauma. Whenever you dig a bit, it just turns out it's not. It's childhood trauma. Yes, and it does in this case. And so we go from one technique called basic traumatic incident reduction, and we slip into another one called thematic traumatic incident reduction. And what that does, that searches backwards. It goes through time of incidents where you felt like that. When we go back to what's called the root cause and the root cause, 99% of the time is in childhood. So that's my bread and butter. The one where I was talking about where you got blown up on a train or something like that, that is basic TIR where it's a known incident is one thing that's bothering you, and we can go straight there and deal with it. With thematic, there's a theme to it, and you can go backwards and backwards and backwards in time through reliving past experiences where you've had that feeling and get to the root cause. And once you know what caused it initially, you can then decide whether your reaction is still appropriate nowadays. And then you can choose what people just literally choose. This is silly, why am I still acting like this? I'm not going to do it anymore because they understand it in its entirety. So I've sort of skimmed over it because it's a dry subject. Talking about this sort of stuff is a dry subject. I think you've done really well, and you've certainly said enough to get people interested. Friends at home, if you're listening, if you want to get in touch with Wills, he's going to put his details below. If you think this could be an area you'd like to check out, obviously in all this kind of thing, I'm sure Wills is just available for a chat, just a kind of exploratory or a discovery chat to see if this stuff could help you out. But I mean, it's that thing, isn't it? It's just great when someone finds that thing that's been holding them back. Oh, it's amazing. It's amazing. I do sort of three quarters of the stuff I do I get paid for because I've got to make a living. And then for some of the military stuff, particularly depending upon what they've been through, I would just do it for free because it's the right thing to do, and we're all brothers and sisters. And if someone's about to talk to themselves and we can just have a conversation for two hours and stop that from happening, what a gift. Who cares about money in that situation? Yeah, do you find, I think we was probably all like it back in the day when we were struggling. But when I speak to people, it's, yeah, it's that thing, isn't it? It's hard to gauge how much like we come on as individuals and how much we learn. And we forget that we were probably a bit Yeah, yeah, sorry, I'm sorry, friends. I'm not making sense. I get it a lot. Some things in life are just not easy to explain. I just think when you're in that the throes of that kind of trauma thing, and you're drinking too much or drugs or, you know, you can't work because you're a mess or your family don't want to speak all that kind of But it's it's all about understanding, isn't it? It's all about, you know, understanding in your actions and even like the worst awful city that you think a few little tweaks here and there and it just reframes it completely differently. Yeah, absolutely. I think the biggest, the biggest worry for people is what am I going to get into if I go and do this? And I'm not going to pretend it's easy for people to do that they're not going to get emotional and upset. But compared to spending your whole life hiding it away or being triggered in certain circumstances, two or three hours of doing this has got to be better than the whole life of being frightened of what might come out accidentally. Sorry, how do people fund this? Do they pay for out their own pocket? Do you get any kind of support? No, I don't get any support from anybody. I do charge people because I have to because it's my job. I just want to chip in there. If folks don't want to pay for their own future, they're going to be bloody hard to work with. Yeah, I mean, not everybody's got the money to do it, though. And that's one of the things. So if I can do first aid on something and get a major issue sorted out and there are a brother or sister from the forces, then I'd like to be able to help. But I can't be swamped with a whole of the British forces contacting me personally, because there's only one of me and I've got a life outside of doing this. If I could aim my offer, my aim would be towards the more specialist role, the special forces that the intelligence people who struggle to talk because of the type of work that they do. So they're reticent to go and see the doc because they might end up losing their job or going, you know, put onto medication and that will affect their job, firearms, police and things like that. But that's what I would do. I'd go to the people at the tip of the spear who are likely to lose their work and say to them, if you could find a way of talking with me, I won't identify you. You can give me a pseudonym. You don't have to tell me what unit you're in. If just by having an open conversation, I don't take notes, I don't report to anybody, I don't talk to people about what's happened. It's not my business. I'm here to help. I'm not here to collect stories and more stories. It's not my, I'm not writing a book, but don't record anything. And the only time I would have to, I'd be legally bound to speak to somebody. If somebody said, I've got this bomb here, look, Andy, I'm going down this, I'm going down the road. I'm going to go and blow up Buckingham Palace. I might have to go shit. Is this real? I better ring the police. Or if somebody was telling me there was a paedophile and they'd done something and it was serious, I might have to do that. But that's never happened. Who's going to go and admit those things to me online? It's just not going to happen. Well, it's a bit like in the social field in general, isn't it? If you've got concerns for the safety of anybody, you're duty bound to report that to the relevant authorities. If I think about the amount of times I've said, you know what, my mission is I'm going to bloody kill her when I get home. It doesn't mean I'm going to go home and kill it. So you have, sometimes, when people say things, you have to take it in context and sometimes with a pinch of salt. So I wouldn't take notice of things like that. It might be people who are threatening to kill themselves as well, right? Yeah. And I do have people that are suicidal and saying they don't say, right, I'm going to go and kill myself right now. They'll be telling me about their suicidal thoughts. And I say, have you got any plans to do it? How are you going to do it? Have you got the means? And if they say yes, well, say, right, before you did decide to do that, let's go through this process. What's the worst that can happen? You might end up being happy. Okay. And then we'll go through the process. And then they come out to the side. This is what happens all the time. They come out to the side and say, do you know what? I want to give it a go. I feel different. What have you done to me? That's nearly always, that's one of the most, the most used phrases is what have you done to me? And then my reply is, I haven't done anything. You've done all the work. I've sitting listened, but you've done the work because the work goes off in their own head. Yes. Wills, I'm going to thank you there. Thank you massively for all of your service going back to your teenage years. Yes, it's when you need a fireman, you need a bloody fireman, don't you? Let's be honest. And they are literally prepared to put their life on the line for you and your children. And that is just, gosh, makes me feel emotional. Just thinking about it. So massive thank you on behalf of the podcast, but also for what you're doing now, clearly putting out some good into the world at a time where a lot of damaged individuals, when people talk about PTSD and they make out, it's this thing that only military guys get if they get blown up. And I don't just enlighten to the fact that, no, actually, most of the military is get it in childhood. I then enlighten them to the fact that everyone's got PTSD. We live in a society that traumatizes us from birth, tells us we're not good enough. My generation, we were beaten at school, we were whipped. We were stripped off in front of the class, we were put in cupboards, we had stuff thrown at us, we were spanked and caned in front of the class. And that's just school, right? Imagine this, high and closed doors, right? But even to modern kids that, to what I've just said, they'd find abhorrent, what people were allowed to hit you. Yeah, any adult could hit you when I was good, any adult, right? Didn't even have to have a reason. But to youngsters now that find that abhorrent, thinking of damage you're going through when you spend all your day on this, which is a device that essentially destroys your identity, who you really are in your community and you're bombarded by this false, this celebrity culture, which is just utter nonsense because all the time. Garbage. All the time. I rant about this stuff all the time to my wife and to my daughter because they follow things online and I just said, what are you listening to? Why are you concerned for these multi-millionaires? These multi-millionaire football is boo-hooing on the floor. It drives me insane, honestly. What's up with you? Get up. So we've all been traumatized. We've all got to rise above all this nonsense and demand a better future. So there you go, folks. Brought it all home to everyone, haven't I? We've all been traumatized. Stop labelling each other. Stop telling each other we've got this, that and the other. Just think about it in a different way. Yeah, exactly. A lot of people don't call it PTSD anymore. Do they? They don't call it disorder. They just call it post-traumatic stress and it's a completely normal thing, which it is. It's your body's natural reaction to being in a dodgy situation. Will's massive, massive thanks to you, mate. I'm going to put your details below. Just stay, hold the line for a minute so I can thank you properly and see if I can borrow some money off you after this. Of course. And to our friends at home, I hope you've got as much out of that as I had. What a ride. We started off in the Falklands and we've ended up in the social field. If you could like and subscribe, that will be wonderful and we'll see you next time. Love you. Thank you very much for asking, Chris.