22 SAS Operator | Phil Campion (throwback ep)

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0:21 Hey, guys.

0:22 Welcome to episode 263 of the Teamhouse. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park, and our guest on tonight's show is Phil Campion. Phil is a former SAS operator, and now he runs Forces Radio. Has a big project going on there that we'll talk about. He's done like 70 episodes so far. You guys will want to check it out.

0:41 But Phil, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us this evening.

0:44 Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure to be here.

0:47 Absolutely, man. And like I was saying, you and I worked previously, so it's great to reconnect with you. And the last time we saw each other in person was actually when we were both coming out of Syria. We had a beer in Kurdistan. But as you said, it feels like it was a lifetime ago.

1:05 It does. But you know what?

1:06 Bringing it up again now makes it feel like it was yesterday in a strange way. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, just go back and have another couple of pints. Yeah.

1:17 So, Phil, I'll start off, you know, asking you, you know, the question we ask most of our guests is about sort of what their upbringing was like and how that kind of took them towards military service. I was wondering if you could tell us, you know, how you grew up and what that journey was like for you.

1:34 Okay, so I was born in London.

1:37 The rumour goes that the doctor slapped me mother, do you know what I mean? I got adopted straight from birth, so I went to a family that had been vetted supposedly to bring me up, but that family failed as well and they were quite violent and my adopted father was extremely violent. I mean, he would literally punch my head in as young as I can remember, I can remember violence and I can remember being hurt and punched. And, you know, I learned some really sort.

2:08 Of early on in life. I learned some quite harsh lessons.

2:10 And I always say to people now, one of the lessons I learned very early in life was that if you can stay calm whilst all this stuff's going on around you, and I say this because he used to sit on top of my chest and beat me. And if I thrashed, And if I sort of like fought back, he'd hit me even more. But if I went limp and I remained calm, it was almost like he lost interest and he would stop hitting me. And that, That is actually, we'll probably talk about a couple of instances later on in my life, where that has actually had to come into play, where I thought, right, hang on, calm down, right, now I can think, now I can see, now I can hear.

2:41 Now I'm in control.

2:42 And the other thing I learned from that was, it was a tiny win, because it was like I was controlling the situation against this great big man. And I was thinking to myself, well, you know, it's not the greatest win in the world, but it is a win. And so one of the things I've tried to bring with me throughout my whole life is to always look for a positive where there's a negative. And if you can do that, your life will be a lot happier. So, yeah, going back to where we were, my childhood was pretty horrific.

3:06 My adopted parents split up. My behavior at school was atrocious, and that's probably not impacted too much by it.

3:15 My parents.

3:16 I was just a naughty kid. I was a naughty kid. I couldn't concentrate. I didn't like the school subjects. I didn't like being in school. I would much rather be out playing soccer or, or climbing trees or fighting with somebody.

3:28 So my behavior was appalling.

3:31 So eventually, eventually I ended up in a, in a children's home about the age of 12 years old where they controlled my schooling and they control this, that, and the other. But it was there that I got exposed to predatory paedophiles. It took me a long time in my life to talk about that. And I held it in for years and years and years. It all came out a few years ago when I was deciding to write another book. Anyway, I was groomed by these people to the point that it became very uncomfortable. And when I think back at it now, when I joined the army...

4:11 And I did join the army almost from the children's home as soon as I could. I couldn't join at 16 because I had some violent crime, which stopped me from joining. But as soon as I was 18, I joined up. And it was actually the first time in my life I actually felt safe.

4:24 Wow.

4:25 And that's a bit strange. But, you know, when I went through that camp gate, I realised that nobody... especially not these, these adults who've been sort of like wrecking my life on the outside. They couldn't, they couldn't get me being on the camp. Do you know what I mean? They didn't have an ID card. They couldn't, they couldn't come on that camp. And I did actually feel safe.

4:42 I felt safe once I joined the, once I joined the forces. So yeah, but yeah, the question was about my childhood. Yeah, it was, it wasn't a great childhood. I've drawn so many positive lessons from being a child that I think, it probably gave me the foundation to deal with a lot of the stuff that I've dealt with in my life since. Dealing with hardship to me as a child has teed me up to be able to deal with hardship as an adult, as it were.

5:12 It sounds like the British military was absolutely a much-needed escape for you from a really terrible upbringing.

5:19 Yeah, absolutely.

5:20 And I think it would have been that or it would have been prison because the road I was going down, I was going to be violent. I was going to be loud. I was going to be poorly behaved. And the army sort of like put a cocoon around that as well. The army sort of like, they didn't completely stop my behavior because I still got in quite a bit of trouble when I was in the army. But it kept me on the straight and narrow long enough that I didn't get a serious criminal record for violent crime.

5:46 Did you.

5:47 When did you start thinking about the military and did you go to the military because you wanted to be in the military because you thought the military, you know, would be cool?

5:56 Or did you go to the military only because it was like a way out?

6:02 No. Right.

6:02 So I went on one of the, one of the schools I went to, we had like an army cadet thing going on a CCF, they call it a wild cadet force. And I had a little bit of exposure to the military there. And anyway, when I left the children's home, I left early and, And it was to be part of this scheme called the YTS, which was a youth training scheme. It was a government thing whereby you had to work for your dole money, basically. So you could join this thing. And I got a job as a skiing instructor.

6:30 Ridiculous. It was unheard of.

6:32 I got a job as a skiing instructor on a dry slope and as a maintenance man on the skis and teaching skiing.

6:39 So....

6:40 I was there for two years and I thought, no, no, no, I've definitely got a job. And at the end of it, I went in to see the boss and he was an ex-admiral from the Navy. And he looked at me and he's a really posh man. And he said, oh, yeah. And he said, oh, what are your plans in life, Campion?

6:55 And I said, well, I'll be working here when I, sir. This is, this is, I've got a nice job. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You won't be staying here. You've got no qualifications. You're not what we're looking for. And you've kept you out for two years, but now it's time you need to go and find something on your own feet. And I was, I looked at him as if to say, Jesus, I didn't expect that coming. And he looked at me really hard and he went, have you ever thought about joining the army? Well, I just thought right then, that's where I'm going. I'll think about it right now. And I went, yes, yes, of course I have.

7:22 I said, And looking back on it, when I've been in the CCF, that had been the only time I'd ever been happy in school. And that was because it was, you know, once you had that green uniform on, you were all the same.

7:34 And I thought, no, no, I enjoy that. So I said to him, yes.

7:37 And he literally picked the phone straight up and phoned the careers office and was.

7:41 Like, I've got a young man here. He'll be coming down this afternoon. You need to test him and get him out from under my feet as quick as you can. I went, I'm off. Cheers, boss. So yeah, that was it.

7:53 Literally, I went to the careers office. There was a big old guard bloke behind the thing and he's like... At first, I'd only ever heard of, really, the Parachute Regiment and this big guardsman.

8:03 He said, all right, sonny, he says, what do you want to... I said, what do you want to do? He said, yes, yes, yes, I know that. He said, what do you want to do? I said, I want to be a paratrooper. He said, no, you don't. He said, you want to be a guardsman. He said, you want to do drill and salute the Queen. No, no, no, I don't. I want to do that. Anyway, they did all the tests on me, and at the end of those tests, they say what you're clever enough to be, basically.

8:23 And mine said infantry, infantry, infantry, infantry. And that was it.

8:31 It was then I said to them, I asked them, I said, what's the quickest I can be in? And they said, well, if you join your county regiment, which was the Royal Hampshire Regiment, he said, if you join them, he said, we can literally have you out the traps and through the door in about six weeks' time. I was like, right, now I saw the parachute regimen, I'm going there. Do you know what I mean? I'm like, I'll have that. I'll have some of that. So I literally, six weeks later, I've done all the tests. I've been up to a place called Sutton Coalfield. I'd had my teeth pulled. I'd had my nuts in someone's hand and they'd done the cough and tickle and, you know, all the medical stuff. And before you knew it, I was

9:04 on the bus and I was going off for me training. Do you know what I mean? And I was chuffed to pieces with it.

9:09 Are you tall?

9:11 No.

9:12 I'm asking because he mentioned the Queen's Garden, and I wonder if there's a height thing.

9:16 No, no, no, no. I'm still, I don't know, 5'10, in effect, but I suppose, you know what I mean?

9:20 I'm not tall at all.

9:22 I think he just, he was a guardsman and couldn't see anybody else be anything but a guardsman.

9:26 You know what I mean? He was barking. He was like, guards, guards, guards, guards, guards. You know what I mean? No, no, no. I don't want to be that. Yeah. Okay. I don't want to stand outside the Queen's house. That's not fun for me. You know what I mean?

9:35 It doesn't seem fun at all. Yeah. I mean, a lot of prestige with it. Yeah. A lot of prestige. It's sort of like being a.

9:43 Honor Guard.

9:44 Yeah. Like Honor Guard. Yeah.

9:46 Yeah.

9:46 I mean, to be fair, I'm not going to knock the guards. The guards do have an infantry side to their life. You know, they have a parachute. They have a parachute platoon as well. So they do some tremendous soldiering. But my only image of guardsmen at that time. was them in their red tunics with their great big hats on stood outside the castle with people looking at him like, and I thought, no, no, that's not a bit of me.

10:07 That's not, you know, I want to be running around. I want to be poking people like, you know, I do not want to be stood outside like that. I want to be in the field covered in dirt, shooting at things and rolling about and maybe having a fight with someone like, you know, that's what I wanted.

10:19 Yeah.

10:19 So tell us about, you know, your induct into, into the military and the infantry life.

10:25 So, yeah, I went to, I went to, I went to depot Litchfield, which had, Like I think there was about eight different infantry battalions. That was the adult training station for them. And I started basic training and I loved it. Everything to do with it, whether square bashing, the making your bed.

10:40 I just loved it.

10:41 I just loved being pitching in, getting involved. And I'll say this to young people now. I was fit then because I just spent two years skiing. I was, you know, I was, I don't know what you measuring over there, but I was, I was light.

10:53 You know what I mean?

10:54 I was sort of like, 80 kilos wet through, like, do you know what I mean? And that was light then for me, do you know what I mean? So, I was absolutely... I loved it. And I was fit as a butcher's dog as well, do you know what I mean? I could run all day. So, you know, you'd get some lads there when they said, right, we're going out to do some fitness today. They'd be dreading it.

11:10 I'd absolutely love it. I'd be, right, yeah, come on, let's go, get your kit on, give me a log if you like. I don't care, do you know what I mean?

11:15 I loved it. So... Yeah, training was brilliant.

11:17 And the other thing was, I was learning something every day and something that I enjoyed and could see the value of.

11:23 Do you know what I mean?

11:23 When they were teaching me about weapons, I thought, well, if I need my weapon one day, I better learn this lesson. So I implied myself. Whereas, you know, in school, if you taught me about maths, I'd be like, where the bloody hell am I going to use this rubbish?

11:34 Do you know what I mean? I don't need to know multiplication. How am I going to use that? But here I could actually see I'm going to pick this weapon up. I'm going to learn how to use it. I'm going to learn how to strip it down. I'm going to learn how to clean it. I'm going to learn everything I can.

11:46 I'm going to be the best I can with that weapon because one day it might save my life.

11:50 Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It was purpose for what I was doing. Do you know what I mean? And I enjoyed it.

11:54 Yeah.

11:54 And I remember even in the early days, I remember someone saying to me, if you find a job that you enjoy, you'll never, ever go to work. And if this for me wasn't work, I enjoyed it.

12:02 It was fun. I loved it.

12:04 You know, we were doing, we were doing cool stuff all the time and I loved it. So, um, It took about six months, I suppose, before you were trained and were going to get sent and deployed out to your battalion as it was. And in that time, you'd done everything you needed to do. Your fitness was up to scratch. All your shooting tests had been passed. You'd been on a few exercises. And I remember I got best improved recruits. Because you have a passing out parade at the end, and I've got best improved recruit. And I remember it was only about a year ago, somebody turned around to me and they said, you do know that best improved recruit means you was an absolute idiot when you turned around.

12:45 I'll have it. I'll have that one.

12:48 Bill, I want to continue, but I've got to do an ad read real quick.

12:52 Hey, Jack.

12:54 What's going on?

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15:59 Go check them out. Appreciate it. Phil, if you're going to jump back in after that amazing live read to your own story.

16:10 Okay, I've got a bit of a boner, actually.

16:12 No, I'm joking. Just thinking about it, right?

16:17 Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So jumping in, where were we?

16:22 You graduate, you're passing out ceremony, best improved recruit.

16:25 I've got best improved recruit. I've told you what that means now.

16:28 And I went to my unit and they were based in Tibworth, which is, it's in the South of England. It wasn't too far from where, you know, family and friends were. If I had family and friends, I didn't, but most people in that unit did have family from around. It was a Royal Hampshire regiment. So it was a County regiment and we were based sort of on the border of Hampshire as it were. So most lads there, came from Portsmouth, Southampton and had family down that way.

16:52 In those days, there wasn't loads going on, but they'd just come back from a tour of Northern Ireland. So they'd just done six months in a place called South Armagh. And so it was a funny time to join because they were all sort of like, they'd all been bashing through the fields and had a couple of small incidents against the IRA. So they'd all sort of like cut their teeth on their first major operation and And then I turn up and it's like, oh, yeah, he'll do that.

17:14 He'll do that. He'll do that.

17:16 You know, it was like, yeah, it was a humbling experience because you go from sort of being the top of the pile. You know, when you pass out from the depot, your platoon is the best platoon. And then, you know, and then all of a sudden you're at the bottom of the pile again. And it's quite a wake up call. And I remember.

17:31 The first ever.

17:32 Operation I did was an operation. The fire brigade went on strike. And we got called up to man these old fire engines and go down to Wales in these fire engines. Now, these fire engines were horrendous. They were like, they would muster about 10, 15 miles an hour.

17:49 And that was downhill. Do you know what I mean? Empty.

17:51 Do you know what I mean? Stick 10 blokes on it, fill it up with water. It would do about five miles an hour. And that was it, that bus. So we went down there.

17:58 And I remember... we didn't get called out at all.

18:01 We didn't get, we just saw like every time we went to get called out, the fire brigade miraculously beat us there and put the fire out. So this one time we got called out and, uh, it was to a horse that was on the mud flats, uh, in, in, in this little bay.

18:15 That they had.

18:15 And there was a, someone had phoned up and said, there's a horse in the mud flat. Can we get, can we get down there and get this horse? So we all jump on the back of this fire engine. There's two of us go down there. We got overtaken by push bikes on the way down there. Like it was completely embarrassing.

18:28 We got there.

18:29 And, um, I think all you could see after this horse was its two nostrils that were still poking out the water, but they were still moving slightly. And there's all these people going, go and get the horse. And we're like, well, what are we supposed to do with that? We dragged the rope out, but by the time we got the rope to the horse, it had gone. There's no horse there anymore. It's completely gone under. So we're like, right, we'll sack that. We went back to the old... We went back to the fire engine. We're like, right, there's no horse, lads. Right, let's go. So we went back to thingy.

18:57 Anyway... I tell you that story not because, you know, any other reason. About a month later.

19:04 We had this parade through the streets of Winchester, and it was called a freedom parade. And you get handed the freedom of the town of Winchester. And Princess Diana was coming to this parade, all right? So we've done this parade in Hampshire. We've marched up and down. And afterwards, she said, look, I'd like to meet some of the soldiers.

19:23 So we've all been asked into the town hall. And we stood there. And you're supposed to be at it. And the CO brings her around. And if she stops, you have to talk to her. So she stops by me.

19:33 Hello.

19:34 Yeah, I'm Private Campion. Hello, ma'am. How are you?

19:36 Oh, tell us about your firefighting experience down in Wales, she says. So I recount the story of the horse. I mean, you can see the CO stood behind him.

19:46 He's boiling.

19:47 His head's gone red. The RSM stood there. He's steaming off as well. They're livid that I've told her this story. Anyway, when I get back to camp, I'll get, I'll get, Campion, get up here. So I'll get called in and I have to go to the guard. Yeah, I've got, I've got to go. But the CO says to me, he says, why did you tell her that story? I said, well, what story? I said, it's the only story I have.

20:11 I said, what do you want me to do, stand there and lie to the woman?

20:13 Yeah, it was great. Yeah, we put out fires there front and center.

20:16 I said, well, we didn't. I said, we didn't do anything of the sort. I said, we went to rescue a horse. We didn't even get that right. Yeah, and I didn't like it. But there you go.

20:24 That horse's name wasn't Artax by any chance, was it?

20:32 Yeah red one.

20:35 Yeah so that was it so that was my first ever operation in the army that was all like that was my and i came back and i actually felt quite chuffed about that because at least i'd been out the door on something like right and then it was about six months later i think we got deployed over to northern ireland for the first time and i did a two-year tour of londonderry so yeah that was where i really now you had to switch on this wasn't you know this wasn't rolling about with hoses and putting fires out.

21:00 This was, this was, this was proper.

21:02 This was like, you know, there was people over there wanting you dead and were prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to, to try and help you get there. Like, you know what I mean? So yeah, that was, that was my first real operational experience with Northern Ireland. What, what, uh, what, can you.

21:16 Tell us what year that was and sort of like what the situation was like, you know, politically or from your point of view, militarily?

21:23 Okay, so listen, I'm going to be honest with you, right? I never massively... It was 1989, by the way. I never massively got into the politics of it purely because I thought you needed to take a balanced perspective from both sides to understand what was going on.

21:38 So I read.

21:40 Loads of books before I went out there, loads of books on both sides of how this thing had manifested itself and why there was so much trouble out there. And in a nutshell, the thing had been going on for years and years and years. You know, the English had been over to Ireland. They'd been, you know, they'd done some poor things down the South, I'm going to tell you, right? So it wasn't all as it might seem.

22:00 So basically, I understood when I went out there on both sides of the argument that how things worked, like, do you know what I mean? Now, I'm not ever going to condone terrorism because it's wrong, and it is wrong, but there was terrorists on both sides of the wire over there, and both of them, from my perspective, would be treated with the same contempt. I had no time for either of them, like, do you know what I mean?

22:25 There's no beating around the bush for that, do you know what I mean? But the same reason that, you know, the same thing, if you supported either of these terrorist groups, well, then I'm afraid I'll lump you in on the same category, do you know what I mean? So if you, it's basically Protestant or Nationalist, you know, if you decided that you were going to back a Protestant terrorist organisation, well, I don't want to know about you the same as I don't want to know about anybody who wants to back a Catholic organisation, terrorist organisation either.

22:52 Do you know what I mean?

22:54 So, yeah, I had a pretty balanced understanding of what was going on out there to the point that I actually openly have said before that if I'd have been a young man growing up on some of these estates, I might have leaned one way or the other.

23:05 Do you know what I mean?

23:06 I can't say that I wouldn't have got involved in terrorism myself because... You know, when you get pressed into a corner, sometimes it is the only way. So, you know, as wrong as it is, I've never got everything right in my life.

23:19 Do you know what I mean?

23:19 And I think if you'd have come into my house in a state where I lived as a kid and you'd have been sort of like an unwanted presence and, you know, there'd have been enough peer group pressure from the rest of the council estate to get involved, I would have got involved.

23:31 Do you know what I mean?

23:32 Because that's almost a natural thing to do, isn't it? So, yeah, I probably didn't think the way a lot of soldiers do, which was, you know, Obviously, you know, one-sided, you know, we're this side, you're that side.

23:43 No, no, no, no, no, no. I tried to pick out every level of the argument.

23:48 And like I said, I have no time for anybody who wants to try and settle arguments or scores by using means of terrorism.

23:56 I've got no time for it. Do you know what I mean? You can all have the red carpet treatment from me as far as I'm concerned. Do you know what I mean? And I'm better off, this planet's better off without you, to be honest. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

24:05 And what was your personal experience like over there patrolling or doing essentially counterinsurgency work, right?

24:14 Yeah. So we spent a lot of time, a lot of time.

24:16 In the first couple of years I was there, I was in a normal rifle company and we spent a lot of time patrolling, reacting to incidents.

24:25 There wasn't loads and loads of incidents.

24:27 I mean, in the time I was there in two years, I probably got blown up once. and it was in the vicinity of a shooting maybe twice, do you know what I mean? But I never actually got shot at. So, you know, it's not like you're Iraq and Afghanistan where it's kinetic, it's full on, it's fighting all the time.

24:43 I mean, the IRA once said a very, a very, true thing to say they said you know the British soldiers have got to be lucky all the time we've only got to be lucky once do you know what I mean and that was very true you know that was I think it was Martin McGuinness said that and it was true you know you had to pound those streets you had to patrol them you know for long periods of time all around the clock, every day of the year, and you had to mind what you did, do you know what I mean? Because if you set patterns, if you presented yourself as a target, or if somebody thought they could take you on, they would take you on, do you know what I mean? So you had to ride it the whole time you were there, do you

25:21 know what I mean? So I'm probably sure, and you would never notice figures on this for a fact, but the way that we did things and the way that we switched on probably saved our lives more than we will ever understand, do you.

25:33 Know what I mean?

25:34 So, I mean, two years is a pretty long pump, too. I mean, so by the time you're out of there, it's 91. You did rotations.

25:40 So you did, I mean, you did six, I think you did something like six weeks on guard, which was absolutely monotonous. It was brain crushing. It was like you were in those towers, you were looking out, you were doing rotations of four on, four off.

25:53 So you do about six weeks of that.

25:55 And then you do what was called a waterside tour, which was like a patrolling tour, but of a, of a, a softer area. And then you'd go into a city tour for six weeks. So they were sort of like, and then you'd have, you'd have about four or five weeks off. So they were sort of like six week cycles. And the reason you only got four or five weeks off because either end of that time off, you did a bit of training to top up in case there was skill fade and all that sort of stuff. So it was, Yeah, it was full on. It was two years and that two years went by, boom, do you know what I mean?

26:21 It was gone. It was quick.

26:23 And like I say, you spent a lot of time having to switch on when, you know, they.

26:29 Were difficult times.

26:30 And I'll say when something did happen, you could end up on the ground for, you know, 48 hours without coming in, you know, and that would be tough.

26:39 You know, guys would be absolutely hanging out out there. Do you know what I mean? It was hard work.

26:43 And at the same time, I mean, you are cutting your teeth. You're getting a lot of experience as a soldier, presumably making what, corporal and then sergeant?

26:51 No right so Jesus Christ I probably made Lance Corporal by the end of that in fact I don't even think I made Lance Corporal by the end of that tour I probably onto my carder to get the Lance Corporal but didn't get my Lance Corporal I don't think by the end of that tour now I wasn't getting promoted anytime soon because every time they gave me more than five minutes off I went and had a fight in the pub or something like that I was an absolute nightmare I couldn't I couldn't keep myself out of trouble for more than five minutes I mean I did 21 days in the nick over there for a fight I'd had in a bar in Northern Ireland itself. Do you know what I mean? I've got 21 days.

27:25 Me and a good friend of mine, Hammy, he's actually involved with this with me now. We've been friends. You'll never amount to nothing, they said. That's what I said.

27:33 Do you know what I mean?

27:37 So, yeah, yeah, we got 21 days. And I remember they locked us up for 21 days. But locking up in the military, Nick, they tried to make an example of us. So they gave us loads of fitness to do. We'd pull this fire cart around the camp, and we were always on display being beasted like that.

27:51 I mean, I loved that. I was like, yeah, I'm fine. I'm happy with that.

27:53 I mean, I was fit as a butcher's dog when I really was proper fit. So none of that bothered me whatsoever.

27:58 Do you know what I mean? I'll say, right, yeah, just keep it coming, fellas. Do you know what I mean? I'm all right with that. 21 days in Nick, I'll come out even fitter than what I went in. I thought it was great.

28:09 So what was the next stop for you after Northern Ireland?

28:13 Back to the UK. Literally, the time I was in... So you did the.

28:17 Odd exercise overseas. I mean, we did Kenya. That was quite good fun. We did Denmark.

28:24 But we didn't really do anything other than if you weren't in Northern Ireland, you were getting ready to go to Northern Ireland.

28:28 It really was like that. In the first 10 years I was in the military... I've spent five of them in Northern Ireland, at least probably six. So it was like, it was just, it was Northern Ireland all the time. And like I say, you did the odd overseas exercise, Kenya, Kenya springs to mind. That was, I mean, it was fun, but you only did, you only did about six or eight weeks out there.

28:51 Do you know what I mean?

28:52 It was, yeah, it was, it was, it wasn't, it probably wasn't the best time to be there because, because of this Northern Ireland thing going on all the time. Do you know what I mean? If you were lucky, you might get to Bosnia. You might get, you know, later on in sort of like that 10 years I was in the Green Army. But it wasn't the Iraq and Afghanistan era. And even now, I mean, they're running around all over the world, aren't they? Do you know what I mean? But yeah, it wasn't that when I was in. It was Northern Ireland or it was Northern Ireland, really.

29:20 Do you know what I mean? And that was one of the reasons I decided to go Special Forces because, you know, in my time, Gulf War I... You know, I was in Northern Ireland during Gulf War I. I sat watching all these people going to war and I sat in Northern Ireland with my thumb up being obvious.

29:38 Do you know what I mean? I'm like... I mean? I'm like, I want to go to war.

29:42 And then I read all the books that came out after Gulf War I. Andy McNabb's Bravo 2-0. Chris Ryan's the one that got away. And I'm thinking, hang on a minute. These people are doing some proper work here. And I'm still, you know, I did some decent jobs in Northern Ireland. I did a couple of long-air jobs over there where we used to hide in bushes and take photos and all that sort of stuff.

30:01 But it still wasn't special forces.

30:05 It wasn't, you know, doing what these other guys were doing, which was, you know, actually getting involved, getting your hands dirty and ultimately getting out and flat-packing a few people.

30:14 Do you know what I mean?

30:16 Sure.

30:17 Go ahead.

30:17 Phil, I just, I wanted to ask because 1989, like it's, it's late, it's late into the troubles, right?

30:25 It's, it's been going on for decades now.

30:29 And, you know, so you had like the IRA and the, what, UVF and UVA.

30:35 And all of them. But then you also had like these loyal to loyalist groups.

30:40 Uh, it's a UVF loyalist. So you've got the UVF, the UVJ. Okay.

30:43 Yeah.

30:44 The old defense. There was loads of that. And there was loads of them on the other side as well. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

30:48 And then you also had like the, um, like anarchists, like, you know, just people coming in to stir shit up, I guess.

30:56 How, like, what was your role? What was, when you went over.

31:00 There, you know, I, I think that the image, at least in American minds, we're not really well read on that, on that era.

31:06 It's like, okay, you're going over there. Stop the RA.

31:08 Okay.

31:09 But are you basically trying to keep peace amongst them all?

31:14 It was very much a peacekeeping thing. You weren't going over there to go after the IRA.

31:18 You were going over there to keep two communities at bay and from each other's throats, basically. And don't forget, when they first went out there, when they very, very first went out there, they had what was called the honeymoon period, where the Catholic community absolutely welcomed Because, you know, they were keeping the other side at bay, you know, and they were actually sort of like, right, something's going to get done here. Well, nothing did get done and things turned sour and it came the other way. So, yeah, it was very much a peacekeeping thing. It was very much, you know, patrolling the streets, trying to avoid... normal folk from getting sucked into something that they didn't want to

31:51 be sucked into and i'll tell you for now you know if you walked around those estates you would probably find you know say for instance some of the women might might spit at you or you know call you a name or something like that but they would have to do that because if they were seen doing anything else once you weren't there somebody would be pulling her hair setting her on fire beating her up do you know i mean so You knew what the score was deep down.

32:13 You knew who the scumbags were. You knew where they lived.

32:16 You just weren't allowed to do anything about them unless you caught the red-handed. And that was always a difficult bit for us, catching the red-handed. But, you know, when they went back, I did chuckle because when they went back to all these historical cases and they've tried to do people who've shot people and all that sort of stuff.

32:31 And they said, well, you know, we're going to arrest all these people for historical crimes. In essence, you could arrest me for attempted murder because I did try me hard. It's not just never got nobody.

32:44 Phil, tell us about, uh, you know, you, you mentioned how special forces came into your mind. Talk to us about like when you made that decision to go to selection and how that all came about.

32:55 Okay. So, right.

32:57 It is, it is a bit of a story as everything is with me. Um, So I'd seen the Special Forces. They'd accompanied us on a trip we did to Kenya. So they'd been to the jungle with us and there were two of them there, ran a small school. And that was when I first saw them cutting about different weapons, different gear. And I thought, yeah, that's a bit of me that is.

33:14 And then.

33:15 We saw them in Northern Ireland. So the job I was doing was called COP, close observation platoons. And they were trained by, used to have a couple of SAS guys on the course training you to do that.

33:24 And they were really good guys. And you can see they knew what they were doing. And they, you know, they, they had all the gear, they had long hair. They just, you know, they just reeked of being professional. And you looked at them and you thought, I want to be like that. Do you know what I mean? Anyway, I did P company.

33:38 I'd done my commander course and I did P company, which is the parachute regiments course.

33:43 And I went behind.

33:44 My commanding officers back and I asked the brigade commander if I could join three para who were based in Dover. Now that's sort of like unheard of. You don't, I'm supposed to ask my platoon sergeant, let alone the SCO, do you know what I mean? But I've gone completely above everybody in my unit and gone to the brigade commander, a guy called Johnny Holmes.

34:01 Brigadier Johnny Holmes.

34:02 Well, I picked up the phone to Johnny when I was on duty one day, and I said, Johnny, can I go to the.

34:07 Well, I didn't say Johnny.

34:08 I said, sir, it's Lance Corporal Campion here from the 2nd Battalion, the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, and I'd like to join the Parachute Regiment.

34:15 And he sort of like... He got... He sort of like went to me and went, Lance Corporal?

34:20 Lance Corporal?

34:21 Who was it? Campion? Yes, yes, yes, yes. I can sort that out for you. And he like hung up. And about two seconds later, as I'm walking back to the guard room, I can hear... Campion! Campion! Campion! Get here, Campion! So I've called it. It's the RSM.

34:37 The brigade commander's got off the phone to me.

34:39 He must have gone, I'm cheeky. He's just phoned me up. I've phoned up our CO. He's stuck his head out the door going, RSM! Campion's causing trouble with the brigade commander. Do you know what I mean? I'm in the shit now. I'm proper in the shit. I get, I come back.

34:52 The RSM's yelling at me. The adjutant's yelling at me. And they go, right, you've got to go in and see the CO. And I go in to see the commanding officer and he starts yelling at me. And I just, I did something I've never done before. I just lost it a little bit with rank. And I told him to F off. I was like, no, I'm not having an F off.

35:09 I'm doing that.

35:09 That's what I want to do. And he stood there and he looked at me and he went, Lance Corporal Campion, you have just reached your ceiling in an afternoon. You will be going no further in your career here. So I suggest you go somewhere else. Anyway, at this point, there was a guy called Major Henry Egan. And Major Henry Egan was the regiment's 2IC. He's screaming, Campion, get in here, get in here. Now, I knew he was a half-decent bloke. He'd done pea company, had his wings, nice geezer. And I get us in and he shuts the door behind me and he goes, he goes, Campion, he goes, you've really messed it up this time. He goes, you've probably got two options. I said, what are they then, sir?

35:47 He says, well, he says, civilian street.

35:50 He said, you can get out. He said, because.

35:51 You're not going to get any grace around here anymore. He said, you could try special forces selection. He said, and I think you'd be suited to special forces selection.

35:59 He says, yeah, fit, yeah. You know, you obviously like, you know, you're not scared of a bit of work. He says, have a go at that. Come out of there. All right.

36:07 Went down, spoke to my platoon sergeant, put my paperwork in. Can I do special forces selection? He sort of like laughed at me because no one had ever seen me in that light before, really. So he's gone, yeah, all right, whatever. Put the paperwork in. That's gone to the boss. That's gone to the CO. CO said no.

36:23 I'm not letting him go. I'm like, why not?

36:26 He said, well, I wanted to do two years in Northern Ireland as one of my cop platoon patrol commanders. So we went to Northern Ireland. Sure enough, I was a cop patrol commander. Halfway through that tour, there was a ceasefire. And I got the message from the commanding officer, if you can get yourself ready, you can go on the next selection. And that was when I got let go.

36:48 And I did get on the next selection, like, you know, so... Yeah, but it was, people always joke, people always say to me, what was the hardest part of selection? And it's very tongue in cheek, but I always say getting on it was the hardest part. I mean, because once I was on it again, I loved it. Like, you know what I mean? It's extremely hard. It's a tough course and I'm sure we'll talk about it in a minute, but actually getting on it took me nearly two years. Deciding I wanted to go, I got messed about all over the place. People, you know, this, that and the other.

37:16 And before I know it, you know, it took a long time getting on it.

37:19 Why was there a specific reason you called your brigade commander instead of going like up your chain of command? Like, did you think they would turn you down or did you just kind of, huh?

37:30 Right.

37:30 So I knew that Johnny Holmes loved the parachute regiment because we were in the airborne brigade and we weren't an airborne battalion. So bearing in mind, I just met him on a course. He'd come to see us.

37:41 He knew who I was.

37:41 I thought I'll try me luck. I thought he loves the parachute regiment that much. If he thinks I'm sort of wanting to transfer across, he might just go for it.

37:50 You know what I mean? How wrong could I have been? He must have just looked at his phone as if to go, I can't believe this lunatic.

37:58 And the American military would say a good initiative, poor judgment.

38:04 Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, there's been plenty of that in my life, I can tell you that.

38:11 Right, right. So you get the selection. You said you actually kind of enjoyed it, like it was soldiering stuff.

38:17 Yeah. I'll say that, right.

38:19 So the first four weeks of selection is known as the hills phase, and that is extremely arduous. It's on the hills every day. Your pack gets progressively larger. The distances get longer. And before you know it, you're on what's called test week. And it's a tough week. And by then, you've probably got no skin left on your heels.

38:39 You'll have toenails missing. You'll have lost a bit of weight. You'll be feeling it by then. Do you know what I mean? So it's tough. That first four weeks is tough. And they don't care if you fail. In fact, they actually encourage you to fail. Do you know what I mean? That's called aptitude. And it's aptitude to see if you're good enough to go to the jungle and if you've got the sort of material that will keep you going in the jungle.

39:01 Do you know what I mean?

39:02 Because it's going to get tougher in the jungle. And so Aptitude is designed. They don't even know your name by the end of Aptitude, really. They just want to know how many bods they've got on the coach going to the airport to take to Brunei.

39:14 That's it. They're not interested in anything other than that. Do you know what I mean? They really don't care.

39:20 So obviously you made it through that portion, and then you guys go on to your jungle phase.

39:27 That's right. yeah. So you move on.

39:29 You go back to Hereford for a couple of weeks, which is to learn a few bits and pieces so you've not got to learn it all under the canopy. It's also to give your body a chance to recuperate a little bit from the hills phase. So, you know, I've spent any spare time I had, I've spent stuffing pizzas into my face and eating, do you know what I mean? Because I'd lost so much weight. I was emaciated. So, yeah, I just basically ate and munched and trained again. And like I say, by the end of that two weeks, we deployed over to Brunei.

39:55 And then....

39:57 You sort of like, you have another couple of weeks there where you're acclimatized to the heat because it's proper hot over in Brunei. And then you go under the canopy and then you start your jungle training proper. And it's about six weeks. It's probably split into two phases. The first phase is where you learn all the stuff.

40:12 The second phase is where they test that you've taken it in. So it's, I always say about it, it's monkey see, monkey do. And if monkey stops doing, monkey goes home.

40:22 And that's it. That's what selection is. Do you know what I mean? It's tough. It's hard.

40:27 The jungle is an environment where it rains relentlessly two or three times a day.

40:32 You're going to get wet. You're going to get sticky. You're going to get tired. If you thought the.

40:36 Hills in Wales were bad, well, the hills in the jungle are 10 times worse. They're steeper, they're longer, they're harder. You've got a canopy that restricts your sight, your movement. You've got creepy crawlies that want you dead. You've got bushes and sticky out things out of the floor that.

40:51 Want you dead. The staff probably want you dead in truth as well. Do you know what I mean? So, everyone's dead in the jungle.

40:58 You've got the sword of Damocles which hangs over your head for the whole time. You can be sacked at any point. And you don't know when people are watching this. So, you all get found out in the jungle. If you try and bluff it, if you try and sort of cut corners, if you do something you shouldn't be doing, you will get caught in the jungle and you will get found out and you will get sent off the course.

41:16 So with that in mind, you are under the, you are under the hammer from the time you go in there to the time you get out.

41:22 There's no relentless, it's relentless.

41:25 It's, it's, it's slog, it's hard work, it's gruff, but, On the plus side of things, you're now using proper gear. You've now got all the tools to do the job. You're being taught cool stuff. You'll be doing cool things. You're doing what you set out to do in your military career. You're learning everything you need to know to become one of these people that you've seen kicking around and you think, right, I want to be like these people.

41:47 Do you know what I mean?

41:48 And that's a real factor in it for me because, you know, you can think to yourself, if I fail this course, I'm going back to where I was. If I pass this course, I'm going to be one of them.

41:56 You know what I mean? And I wanted to be one of them.

41:58 And so, you know, the fact that I also enjoyed what I was doing over, overwrote the, it's sort of like canceled out the hardship.

42:06 Right.

42:08 Yeah.

42:09 You're learning how to do special operations.

42:11 Yeah.

42:12 So, you know, yes, it's hard and it's going to get harder when you get out of there and do it for real, because, you know, there's going to be an enemy on top of that.

42:18 It is going to want you dead properly. Do you know what I mean?

42:20 So, you know, I just thoroughly enjoyed the jungle. You know, we learned everything we needed to know. We were shown everything properly. We rehearsed everything. We practiced everything. The final exercise was tough.

42:33 It was hard. It was unrelenting, but it was brilliant. It really was.

42:37 And I remember when I finished, finally finished in the jungle, you know, we got picked up on a little sort of like Bell Huey helicopter, sat on the skids. The loadmaster passed me a can of beer and he's like that. And I remember sitting there thinking, well, I've done my best. It's either pass or fail from now, but, you know, at least I've made it this far. I was really proper chuffed with myself, like, you know what I mean?

43:00 Yeah, yeah.

43:01 I mean, it is a big accomplishment, and I can see how you'd, like, feel proud of yourself after getting that far. And so what was the next phase after jungle training?

43:10 Okay, so you go back, you do a bit of heavy weapons training, you learn some of the bigger weapons, you know, the. 50 cals and probably some of the gear that you haven't touched before. Have a look at some of the vehicles and that that you might be using, do a bit of training on those. Um, that's really another sort of like to recoup your.

43:26 Body a bit.

43:27 Cause by the time you come out of the jungle again, like when you came out of the trees, but I had fawns coming out of my hands for, for weeks afterwards.

43:34 You know what I mean? It starts off with a little pimple, then you squeeze it.

43:36 And then sort of like a half inch fawn comes out your finger or your ass.

43:40 It's just horrendous in it. Do you know what I mean?

43:42 So there was a bit of recovery time there. We then, you then go on your SEER training. Now, the SEER training, I can't really talk too much about because that's obviously one of the things that is, you know, you could potentially be giving stuff away on. But the SEER training, I really enjoyed that. You started off, you did some survival training. So you had all sorts of stuff going on, learning about the principles of survival, fire, water, shelter, all that sort of stuff, all the good stuff, navigation, all the bits and pieces. I really enjoyed that. And then, You had a few people came in. We had some fighter pilot, John Nickel, came in. He'd been behind enemy lines and taken down when his airframe came out of

44:21 the sky. So he talked to us about conduct after capture and all that sort of stuff. So we had some really cool visitors in.

44:29 We met them.

44:29 We spoke to them. And then you get taken from there and you basically... You end up going on the run and, you know, you get captured eventually and you get interrogated for 36 hours, something like that. And then that's, you know, you come to the end of that phase. And again, it's a pass or fail at the end of that. So, yeah, I can't go into the specifics of that. But yeah, again, it's tough.

44:51 It is tough.

44:51 And a lot of guys psychologically gave up on that point.

44:55 They just had enough. Just, I'm not doing this anymore. Do you know what I mean? I remember two or three guys just sat there going, no, I've had enough. I can't do this. And my attitude was the whole time I was there, I thought to myself, yeah, this is tough. But it's not real. It's not real.

45:09 You might be interrogating. You might be doing all sorts of stuff to me. But at the end of the day, you're not going to make me pregnant and you're not going to kill me. So actually, with those two things out of the equation.

45:18 Do what you like. I don't care. Do you know what I mean? I can take the rest. I've seen it. I've had it in the kid zones, mate. Don't worry about that. Do you know what I mean? So I don't care. There's nothing you can do to me. You can have me naked.

45:30 I don't care.

45:30 Do you know what I mean? Crack on. Do your worst.

45:34 And so what comes after steer? Do you start doing like the counterterrorism portion?

45:39 No, you do your jumps course. So if you haven't done it, I was already jump trained on the round parachutes. And then you do a thing called a 22-foot steerable, which is another round parachute. I'll tell you a story about that in a sec. And then you do your squares. You do your squares. So you don't do hey-ho, but you do the hop and pop squares. You do the ones that open as you come out, the static line squares.

45:57 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

45:58 So I remember, so you got a week off if you'd done your round parachutes.

46:04 So I obviously took that week off.

46:05 You got an extra weekend off if you'd done the 22-foot steerables. Now, I thought to myself, well, look, it's a round chute. How different can it be? So when they come around, I went, yeah, I've done a 22-foot steerable. On the Monday morning, they says, right, go down to Bryce Norton and your chutes were on the floor. uh these 22 foot steerable chutes were on the floor and we were going to do what we were going to do a water jump we were jumping in the water off brown sea island and i i remember getting down there thinking oh i didn't think we was going to get tested on this like you know i mean i'm thinking it can't be that hard so i've got down i've seen this shoot on the floor and i'm like

46:39 what is that it was totally different to anything i'd ever seen before the class that went on so i'm thinking to myself how am i going to get away with this because it's going to be so obvious i've never jumped this before and they're going to realize i just took the weekend off And so I'm looking at this thing, and I think, and my brain went, I'll tell.

46:53 You what, lie.

46:54 So I've looked at the loadie, and I've gone, mate, I said, at the weekend, I said, I hurt my shoulder. I said, you wouldn't do me a favour and help me put that shoot on, would you? Oh, of course I will, son, he says. So he puts it on for me. So now that's part of the battle done. I thought, at least I've got it on. So at least I've got it on.

47:11 I'm there. I'm in the line.

47:13 I end up number two in the stack. So I think, well, I've got one bloke in front of me. I'll just watch what he does and then I'll copy what he does. So as we get into the sky, I'm expecting the side doors to open because we're on rounds. No, the back door comes down. So I'm thinking I've never jumped out the back door. I've got no clue what is going on. So I thought, right, I can't say anything to anybody. All my mates know what I've done. All the blokes that are around me are going, you twat.

47:38 Now you've been caught out. And they're laughing at me.

47:40 They're going, you idiot. You know what I mean? I'm going, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm looking at my mate and he's going, tell me, what have I got to do? And he's looking at me and he's going, you're a twat, mate. You are a twat. The red light comes on and we.

47:53 shuffled out to the back of the plane and I think right I've got one guy in front of me to see what he does and I'm just going to copy what he does so he jumps out in this lovely sort of like position and I try to emulate it but I really push myself into this sort of like flopping into the slipstream I push myself into it I end up spinning around I go all over the place When I look up in the sky, right, I feel my parachute tug a little bit, right?

48:19 And I look up and it's got a hole in it, right? It's got a hole in it. And I'm like, no, no.

48:24 So I start screaming, oh, it's got a hole in it. We'd only jumped from 400 meters because it was a wet drop and they don't give you a reserve. And I'm looking, I'm screaming now. I didn't realize that these 22 foot steerables have all got holes in them because that's how you steer the bloody things, you know what I mean?

48:37 Right, right, right.

48:39 Screaming at this chute thinking I'm going to die. The guys are waiting for us in boats at the bottom, these parachute jump instructors, thinking there's.

48:46 One that lied.

48:49 I hit the water. I haven't managed to slow it down. So you're supposed to turn them into wind, but I don't know how to do that, obviously. So I've hit the water doing a tremendous speed.

48:57 I've bounced.

48:58 I've come through my chute. I've landed in the middle of my chute. The thing's sinking. I've got my knife out. I'm cutting it to ribbons to get out of it. Do you know what I mean?

49:08 Wow. I remember this bloke looking down at me, goes, you haven't got a clue what you're doing. I went, I went, I went, I just didn't listen properly. I'm sorry. I didn't listen properly. And I go, with it. Yeah, I got away with it. Holy shit.

49:22 You're a fucking wild man, Phil.

49:28 So we done the squares course after that fine, fun, fast parachute and put the bed for a bit. Then you did two weeks counter-terrorism where you put all the black gear on. dangle off ropes under helicopters, jump through windows, kick doors down.

49:42 MP5s. Yeah, all that sort of stuff. All the gear, all the clobber, all the stuff you've seen on the Iranian embassy. You know, this is now, now you're in dream town. Like now you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. After that, you get badged. I remember, you know, no big ceremony.

49:56 There was what, probably 10 of us left at the end of it from 350 odd.

49:59 Wow.

50:00 And we're in the regimental theater and the CO comes in And I remember he gave us this speech about going, some of you have only just passed this by the skin of your teeth. So don't think that you're any good here. And I'm picking myself, that's me. That's definitely me.

50:16 I'm picking myself, that's definitely me. He's going, anyway, he says, and he walked past us.

50:20 He literally had our berries in a pile in his hand. And he literally like threw it at you, flicked it at you like a Frisbee and walked out. And I remember thinking to myself, yeah, that was worth it.

50:34 They don't have a ceremony where you guys don the beret and everything?

50:37 No, no, no.

50:40 Wow. He tells you how close to failure you've been and gives you a massive speech about you're nothing around here until you've cut your teeth properly.

50:49 And out he goes.

50:51 And it's like, you are full on back down to earth with an absolute splash.

50:55 Right.

50:55 I remember I hadn't had time.

50:57 None of us had shaped our berries, so I didn't want to put it on my head because it looked like a helipad.

51:00 Do you know what I mean? So we sort of sloped off back to the block. I actually ran back. I wouldn't put mine on my head because it looked so poor. So I literally ran behind the block and ran down the back of the block and went into the block through the back way so I didn't have to get seen by anybody without my berrie on.

51:15 And then obviously went and shaped it up before we had our next parade. But yeah, it was a completely... No ceremony, literally, not even a well done, not even a well done. Like, you know, I think they gave you the five minute thing, you had to sign a thing to say that you were now going to subscribe to the Regimental Association charity and all that sort of stuff and buy you raffle tickets every year.

51:37 And then you literally, you literally were sort of like told, you're lucky to still be here, right? Now crack on you idiots, you know what I mean? You've got to go and start earning a living now. I mean, that was it. And that was it.

51:49 And I went to the squadron at a time where we were going straight onto the counterterrorism team. So I literally sort of like went straight into black kit. Um, and they were just starting their training for the handover. So I went straight to the squadron and we were training to take over the counterterrorism team.

52:04 That's like a, that, that, that mission kind of like rotates between the squadrons, right?

52:08 Yeah.

52:08 I'm not sure what they do now because obviously things have changed there, especially with the amount of work that's been going on and all the stuff that they do now, which of course I'm not privy to, but, in those days you were you were like a standby squadron a counter-terrorism squadron and a training and reserve type squadron thing which and you all rotated around these things i kind of yeah you all rotated around and so you all got a fair sort of like shout at each one so you spent sort of like six months to a year on each one and the handovers were all overlapped so that you could get your training in and all that so yeah it was you were always busy and if you weren't if you weren't on an operation or

52:44 if you weren't training, you were sent away to do various courses, you know, your bodyguarding course. I got spent, sent to Spain to learn Spanish. And yeah, it's just, yeah, it's just one thing after another there. So you were extremely busy. Do you know what I mean? And we were in and out of Bosnia all the time. You know, it was a few bits and pieces beginning to start elsewhere in the world. So yeah, we were quite busy in, you know, yeah. So, you know, Sierra Leone was going on and, you know, obviously I've, I've spoke openly about doing a large hostage rescue job there, which was, probably the pinnacle of what I did at the time I was in Hereford.

53:16 So yeah, it was a, it was an interesting time to be there.

53:19 Not probably as kinetic as what guys had it for the, for the years after I left, but certainly, you know, we got our hands dirty and we, we, we went out the door plenty enough.

53:28 I'll ask you about all of that for sure, Phil. Um, but, uh, What was it like as a young buck? This is before you were Big Phil. You were like Skinny Phil back in those days.

53:37 There was nothing big about me apart from you two.

53:41 Showing up at your squadron, meeting your team sergeant or troop sergeant. I mean, what was that experience like?

53:50 I remember I went to what we called the interest room, and there were loads of guys there, and they all looked older. to me.

53:57 And I was like, wow, this is like, there's like, there's like old men here. I'm like, this is, and I remember my troops, I won't say his name because he probably wouldn't thank me for it. But my troop staff sergeant had basically been in the Gulf, Gulf war one. He'd done a little bit, um, And he just sort of like, right, what's your name?

54:14 Blah, blah, blah. We went back, we sat down.

54:16 He read us sort of like, not the riot act, but he said, you know, this is what's expected of you.

54:20 You know, you're expected to parade at all times. You know, you've got to do this. You've got to do that.

54:24 You know, make sure you read your orders. Make sure you carry your pager when you're on a page, all that sort of stuff. And then it was very much just fitting in with the course timing. So we were straight onto a course and, you know, the rest of the lads were good. There was a couple of sort of like older lads there. I remember there was one in particular, again, I won't say his name, but He was a bit older and he looked down on young lads.

54:44 Do you know what I mean?

54:45 So you almost have to prove yourself a little bit to him, let alone having passed the election. So there was a little bit of that, but not too much. Most guys in the squadron, it was very relaxed. It was very handshaky, very, you know, welcome to the squadron. Let's get on with this. Let's get it done.

55:02 Do you know what I mean? Because.

55:03 To be fair, you've put a lot of effort into selection, so you've earned your right to be there. You've now just got to fit in and get on with it. Do you know what I mean?

55:13 Did you go back to your old unit after you passed selection to dance naked in the quad or something?

55:21 Yeah, I did.

55:22 I ran a jungle school, well, a bush school for them in Botswana, which was quite funny. That's another story altogether. But the very first time I went back, I found out, because I had to go back to get my kit. They had a load of kit of mine and I had to give them a load of kit of theirs back and all that sort of stuff.

55:38 And I remember there was a guy.

55:39 There who was a SART major who was an absolute bully and he had been running a sweepstake on what they are to fail selection.

55:45 Do you know what I mean? Anyway, I hadn't failed selection. I was going back and I had to go and see him.

55:49 And I remember walking in to see him and he sort of stood up and went, well done. And I was like, well done for what? And I didn't call him sir. And he went to say, you can call me sir if you like. And I looked at him as if to go, no, I'm not going to call you sir either. So it's your move. So he got the right ump. He went, oh, your gear's over there.

56:07 I went, cheers, mate.

56:08 And I walked off and got me deliberately being rude to him because I hated him, right? So I went over and got me gear. And I shouldn't have done it, really. It was against the ethos, really. It was a bit much. But I didn't like the bloke. He didn't like me. And I thought, I'm going to put it over you.

56:22 So anyway, I remember walking out of his office. And there was a female clerk in the office, and she laughed. And I remember he absolutely tore a strip off of her. So where he couldn't have a go at me, he had to go at her. And I actually found her later on, and I apologized to her because she basically got the wrath of me being a twat to that bloke.

56:39 Do you know what I mean? So, yeah.

56:41 But, yeah, I mean, my genuine friends were really chuffed with me. And actually, the commanding officer wrote me a handwritten note, letter sent to my house. saying, you know, we might not have always seen eye to eye, but he respected what I'd done. And, you know, actually he was one of the ones that thought that I would pass if I went and he didn't want to lose me.

56:59 So I've got a really nice letter of command.

57:01 That was a stand up thing for him to do.

57:04 Yeah. You know what, right?

57:05 He left, he left the military a lot, a lot longer after me. He left as a major general or something. So he actually left as a general and I found out he was leaving and I sent him a, I sent him a handwritten letter back to basically say to him, you know, We might not have seen eye to eye, but actually, you know, I'd have been stood up with the rest of them and marched you out of camp.

57:23 Do you know what I mean? And I'd have thrown a salute up because you actually weren't a bad boss. Do you know what I mean?

57:27 So, yeah. Yeah, the thing was reciprocated.

57:29 But, yeah, he would stand up for doing that because he could have just been like the others and written it off.

57:34 Yeah, yeah, yeah. He didn't, no. So, yeah, that was nice.

57:37 So let's hear about, like, getting operational in the unit. You said you were going back and forth to the Balkans.

57:45 Yeah, so we did quite a few things over in the Balkans, and it was, I mean, I can't go into the details and specifics of a lot of this again, because a lot of it's not in the public domain, but basically we were going after there, looking and arresting, and these persons wanted indicted for what Piffwicks used to call it, for Sponsored and dieted for war crimes. So war criminals. So that was a job that I thought was a really cool job. I mean, because we were going over there. Guys were doing the surveillance. They were teeing these things up. And we were literally going over there. Well, you might spend a few days undercover, like, do you know what I mean? But then you'd break cover. You'd snatch these people in an amazing array of different... And

58:22 I wish I could tell you all the different ways we did it, but... we did some amazing stuff there. So we, we, we, we would grab these fellas and we, we would take them to, to, to a, to a drop off. The Americans would pick them up and they'd be taken off to the Hague. And, you know, they stand trial for, for whatever it was they'd done. And some of these people had done some heinous stuff, you know, they, you know, they were guilty of some really atrocious, some real atrocities. So we, you know, I was glad to be helping clean the place up, like, do you know what I mean? I thought it was a really worthwhile, good tasking, do you know what I mean? So, you know, they might not have been the longest, they might not

58:52 have always, you know, a couple of them ended up in guns fires, being shot and that sort of stuff. But nine times out of 10, we were that swift and we just have them out wherever they were and gone before they even realized what was going on, like, you know I mean so yeah it was cool it was good and it was good we had um what else did we have we had that I can talk about the Stansted plane that came from Afghanistan that time I was on that job that was quite a funny job that was uh yeah way that was Although it was resolved peacefully, we went through the whole thing with it.

59:24 For all intents and purposes, if it had gone noisy, we would have actually got amongst that and absolutely beaten them to pieces.

59:34 What was that incident?

59:35 What happened?

59:37 Basically, asylum seekers jumped on a plane from Afghanistan, hijacked it, Uh, there's two or three of the sort of like main guys were acted as the hijackers. Uh, they flew it. I think they flew it to Russia originally. Russia didn't want it. So they flew it to Germany. Germany didn't want it. So they, they fueled it up and the UK said, we'll have it. So it flew over to the UK, um, landed at Stansted airport and basically negotiations went on to get, to get their hostages out. Cause you know, we believe there was hostages on there. It turns out they're all asylum seekers, but, um, it sat on the pan for quite a few days. You know, we went out with the recce's on it. We had to refuel it, not refuel it, but we had to,

1:00:21 we had to, we had to put the food out for them and all that sort of stuff.

1:00:24 Had the snipers to play. It was a good little job. It was all right.

1:00:26 It was, it gave us a good insight into the counter-terrorism role for real.

1:00:31 Like, you know what I mean?

1:00:31 It was like, you know, we'd done plenty of exercises, but this was now, this was real. This was, There was a plane. It had terrorists on it and it had hostages in the back.

1:00:39 Do you know what I mean?

1:00:40 And it was sat on our patch with us working it. Do you know what I mean?

1:00:43 So yeah, but that sort of thing, it was good luck. Do you know what I mean?

1:00:46 And it was one of those deals where, you know, like operation Nimrod, like you were probably like jocked up, ready to go.

1:00:52 Oh mate, mate, I was so, I couldn't sleep, I was wired up, I was like, yeah, this is on, and I had a really good job, so I was going to be basically placing the charge over the front door, and I managed to wangle it to say, look, let me go in at least second, so you've got, because I was the method of entry specialist on that job, so basically there was two of us there, there was me and another lad, and we teed it up so that basically we got into that plane proper early, so if the cockpit was locked, we'd be the ones that did the cockpit door as well, so Yeah, we were proper jacked up.

1:01:22 I'm like, yeah, this is happening. This is on, like Don Juan.

1:01:24 I'm thinking to myself, I'd even gone out and done one of the food drops and one of the terrorists had come down the stairs and taken the food box off me. So I've been face to face with a terrorist. you know, with a gun in his hand for the first time in my life and I'm there face to face giving him his food and I'm looking at him in the eye going, go on, do it, go on, fucking do it. Have it, because I'm going to be on that plane quicker than you can get down it.

1:01:45 I'm going to drop you like a bad habit, son, do you know what I mean? And we're coming on. Yeah, it was a great little job that was and it's just, It never ended in the way that we'd planned, but they walked off and the authorities would be happy that nobody got killed, but actually there was quite a few and they deserved to be killed as far as I was concerned.

1:02:05 Yeah, there was a negotiated end to that.

1:02:08 Yeah, it was a negotiated end.

1:02:10 They had a guy, this was funny, they saw that they did a mock execution and they threw this guy off the back of the, the steps used to come from the bottom of the starts. And so they threw this geezer down the stairs, and he hit the floor. And the thing was, if he was dead, we were going on.

1:02:28 And that was it. We were going on. So we were stood to. They said this was happening.

1:02:30 That was happening.

1:02:31 Boom, next minute, doors open. Out he comes.

1:02:34 As we're mounting the wagons to get ready to go, one of the snipers turned around and said, the body on the thing sat up, so he wasn't dead. So they rushed out a wagon. They picked up this guy.

1:02:44 And... Their plan had always been to get off the plane.

1:02:47 They never thought that anybody was going to come on that plane and do anything untoward to them. They just thought they'd turn up and eventually they'd get off the plane. So that was their plan. And they literally, they put this guy in a police Land Rover. They brought him back round and the whole squadron were there.

1:03:02 They had all the vehicles lined up, all the ladders, all the guys were in black kit, all gunned up, all ready to go. It's an impressive sight. It really is. Do you know what I mean?

1:03:09 So he comes round the corner, this little Afghan fella, sat in the front of the vehicle and he like sees the squadron and thinks, geez, what is going on here? He's like, oh my God, they're going to jump on there and kill everybody. So he's screaming, can I have a phone? Phone's up the plane, you better get off there because these guys are going to kick your heads in like, do you know what I mean? And that was enough to get him off. He phones up and says, look, there's a serious, there's a serious, around here and they are coming on.

1:03:33 Do you know what I mean? They're not bothered.

1:03:35 And so next minute, it's sort of like a call and a bit of a kerfuffle when it's sort of like, can we get off now, please?

1:03:40 So the negotiators gave him a phone as like a psychological tactic.

1:03:44 Yeah, that's right. Yeah, go on, phone him up. Tell him what you've just seen. And he must have had his family on that plane and he's thinking, excuse me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of them. There's not going to be a single body left by the time this lot are finished. Wow. You know what I mean? Wow. Any....

1:04:01 I mean, any other like particular incidents that kind of like, uh, I'll ask you about Sierra Leone, but before that, I mean, anything that kind of like jumps out, uh, to your mind?

1:04:11 Not really. Not that, not, not, no, not, no.

1:04:15 Just like I say, the, the, the Bosnia stuff, we can't really go too far deep into cause there's nothing out there about it really. And the, you know, the stance and stuff is funny. I only really talk about that cause the TV covered it all anyway.

1:04:28 Do you know what I mean? So there's no secret what happened there really. Do you know what I mean? Um, there was a couple of funny little stories actually. So on that one in particular, we.

1:04:37 Had a, we had a, we had a, we had a guy and he hadn't been all about it onto anything in particular for the, for the prelims when we're, when we're all getting ready. So I was, I was building charges and I've been out on a couple of the food drops and this guy hadn't done anything. So he's, he's itching to do something. And I remember I was sat in outside the boss's office and I hear the boss talking about the fact that this plane's been on the pan for nearly six days. It's been in the sky for free. Um, And the shit tank needs empty.

1:05:03 And so I'm like, hang on, I'll listen to what's going on here. So they've said, well, look, they can't send anybody from the airlines out there because it's too dangerous. So they're going to have to train one of our guys up and he's going to have to get on this machine thing that is going to have to go out and suck the crap out of this plane. I suddenly thought about this lad that didn't have a job.

1:05:25 So I'm like, all right, all right, there's a job going. He comes running, doesn't he?

1:05:29 Of course, he comes running. He goes, yeah, I'll do it. Right, good.

1:05:32 Down you go. You're going to learn how to use that. He clicks straight away that he's going to be emptying the shit out of this thing.

1:05:36 He's not happy. But anyway.

1:05:37 He learns how to do it. He goes and practices on a couple of other planes. And then he drives the squadron stand too, so we can see him on the television screens. All right, we're stood too in case it all goes wrong and we've got to go and rescue him. The snipers are all watching him and he's proud. He's got a job now. So he's going out there on his own with the ship reaper, right? And he's going to go and empty the plane, right?

1:06:00 So he drives out, he gets this thing and he's looking around to make sure we're all watching him. And he couples this thing up onto the bottom of the plane And he steps back, and he hits this button, and you see it going, the old pipe's going, boom, boom, boom, boom, like this. And then all of a sudden it goes, boom, boom, and half of it comes off, and shit comes in.

1:06:21 And he is covered from head to toe in shit. He comes back in, he looks like a melted bar of chocolate when he comes back in. And no one's going to go near him because he stinks. He proper stinks like that.

1:06:36 Anyway, I'm not sure, but I think they might have almost set him home because he had to have about a million jabs after that as well.

1:06:42 Yeah, yeah. I mean, you must have had hepatitis A through Z after that.

1:06:46 He had the whole suite, you know what I mean? If he didn't get AIDS as well, you know?

1:06:52 Yeah, honking.

1:06:53 That springs to mind. So that was quite funny. I do know the fella now. He still smells a bit, you know what I mean?

1:06:58 But he's all right. So.

1:07:03 Tell us about when Sierra Leone first comes up on your unit's periphery, like this is something that might be going down and how that starts to come about for you.

1:07:15 Okay, so we were out in Africa on an exercise and we were at a phase in the exercise where we were doing a bit of adventure training. And it wasn't like your normal adventure training, it was like adventure training. So I was a mountain trooper, which meant my insertion skill was based around the mountains. So we were going to go and climb mount kenya we were going to go and do the two points there batty and anelian and we're going to go and try and do them both and we had a bit of time and boat troop were down doing some stuff down in mombasa and then uh mobility troop were driving about in the desert and air troop were jumping out of planes so but it was all being done without any weapons it was

1:07:48 all being done very sort of like just casually but just building your skills up basically so we were just about to deploy. And every, every night at about six o'clock, 1800, you had to phone in and just do a quick comms scan and just make sure everything was right. And we phoned in and they said, what you need to get yourself back to camp. So we're like, Oh gosh, should you just give us a clue what's going on?

1:08:11 Because it was a long way for us. It was even further for boat troop. And it was just, it was a, so anyway, they say, no, no, no, look, there's a bit of a thing going on in West Africa. You're going to have to come in.

1:08:21 Trust us.

1:08:21 You're gonna have to come in. So we drove back in, um, It took us about eight hours, I think, to get back. And when we got there, we were greeted by the SART major who said, look, there is a, there is, the hostages have been taken in West Africa. They give us a bit of a background on it and said, look, go and sit in your kit for now. And I remember we were sitting on a kit and boat troop were driving back all the way from Mombasa to a place called Nanuki. It was a long old drive. It was probably a 16 hour drive. And at about three o'clock in the morning, we all got woken up and told that basically they've been involved in a road traffic accident and two of the guys were dead.

1:08:55 So they were dead.

1:08:56 So we saw like this thing had already cost us two lives because two of ours were on... the side of the road dead and we're like oh so now the focus for us really changed let's get packed up let's get these let's repatriate these bodies let's give them the send-off that they deserve let's get around the families and let's make sure that this one's sorted You know, before we even start thinking about anything in West Africa, because actually right now, I don't give a shit about West Africa.

1:09:20 Do you know what I mean?

1:09:21 I couldn't care less. It's about the two guys. So, you know, we went back. I remember the two bodies went back on British Airways flight. There were six of us went on that flight with them. We got back to the UK. They were obviously lifted off. They were taken to a morgue in Hereford and the rest of the squadron flew back. Squadron reunited back in Hereford. We had the funeral. And at the funeral, the SART major said, right, no one's to drink this afternoon at the funeral. And that's like SAS funerals are quite known for being quite heavy drinking affairs. Guys used to really, you know, drink all afternoon and, you know, that's the way they were.

1:10:00 So to be asked not to drink was a bit of a sort of like, nah, that's, yeah, that's okay, whatever. Do you know what I mean? You got to do what you're told. So, We went to the funeral, the family and all that sort of stuff are there. We have the funeral and we're in the science mess afterwards and nobody's drinking. And at about six o'clock, about tea time-ish, in comes the RS7 and says, right, all serving men, all blades, that's what they used to call us, blades.

1:10:27 All blades need to get into the ante room now. I need to give you a quick brief of what's going on. And we went into the ante room and he said, right, you are deploying, you are going to West Africa. And if anyone's going to sort this out, if it does come to that, then you're going to be the troops they're going to use. So actually, we were quite glad about that because in our own minds, this had already cost us dearly in our squadron. So rightly so was our squadron's job to go and sort this one out. Do you know what I mean? Not so much revenge, although at the time when I was a young lad, I'm going to be honest, I saw that as revenge.

1:10:54 I thought, right, if I can get my hands on a few of you, I certainly will do. Do you know what I mean?

1:10:58 It's like you want to make that loss mean something.

1:11:01 Yeah, absolutely.

1:11:02 You know, I wanted, not even, you know, one of them was a really good friend of mine and I wanted to avenge that friend.

1:11:07 Do you know what I mean? I really did. I genuinely did want to go in there and avenge my friend. Do you know what I mean?

1:11:10 Because I thought, you know, that's an absolute waste of a good man for you doing something that you shouldn't be doing. Do you know what I mean? So I thought, right, this is ours, rightfully so. So we went, we deployed down to Dakar. We sort of like grouped in Dakar. Six of us went on the advance party. Again, I was lucky enough to be on that. So, We went to Dakar. We then deployed down to Sierra Leone. And we were lifted onto the back. So straight out of the plane, we went onto the back of these trucks that reversed right up to the plane. So it didn't look, it looked more like a ration run than a troop deployment because normally the troops would get out and walk to the terminal.

1:11:49 But we didn't.

1:11:49 We got straight onto the back of lorries, which then drove out of the airport at a different gate and went down towards.

1:11:54 So they took us out to a camp.

1:11:56 And from there on in, we were deployed and we started gaining information and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, it was intelligence led and there was, you know, there was some good intelligence coming out of the village where they'd been taken to. There was, you know, proof of life's going on where one of the guys managed to hand over a message. So we were pretty at our fingers on the pulse. We knew that we had We didn't have limitless time on this because if they did get wind of a rescue attempt, A, they might move somewhere else and then it's a search and rescue as opposed to just a rescue. But B, worse than that, they might just decide to kill them.

1:12:31 Who were the hostages? How did this scenario come about?

1:12:38 Let's rewind slightly on this one. The hostages were from a unit called the Royal Irish. They were out there on a peacekeeping tour. And basically, there was a road which used to run out of Freetown and used to go around a big area. They used to call it the Horseshoe. And there were some checkpoints on this road.

1:12:54 And I think the Jordanians were on there and the Nigerians at a checkpoint. And there were different countries, UN, on these checkpoints. And inside of this great big vast area, there were the remnants of. A group called the West Side Boys, who were the remnants of the rebel group that had taken over or opposed the government. They then swapped sides and been trained by the British to go up against the remainder of the rebels. But then some of them didn't know where to go after that. So they formed their own little group called the West Side Boys. And they didn't want to answer to the government because they'd probably done too much and they couldn't answer to the rebels or go and join them because they'd fought against them. So they

1:13:38 were pretty much contained in this one area and the deal was really leave them alone and they'll leave.

1:13:45 You alone, really. That's what it was. That's how I read the situation anyway.

1:13:49 And monitoring the roads to make sure that these people didn't come out and start causing trouble in the local villages. There was various checkpoints that you had to go through and The Royal Irish's job was basically to just, man, go and have a look at these checkpoints and make sure they were doing their job properly. That's how I understood it. So I don't, like I say, I wasn't on the tour, but that's how I understood it. I might have been slightly wrong, but that's how I understood it.

1:14:14 This one patrol decided, or the officer on this patrol decided, that he would go down towards this village called Macbenny, which was well inside the horseshoe, which was known to be occupied by the Westside Boys. The whys and wherefores of him doing that still to this day aren't really known why he did it, but he did do it.

1:14:35 He took the troops down the track and as they drove down the track, they were obviously seen coming and they blocked the track off. And as they tried to turn around, they blocked him in from the back as well. And then 11 of them plus their interpreter, a guy called Musa, were all taken hostage there and then literally taken off the truck.

1:14:55 There was a bit of a stand too. The guys cocked their weapons.

1:14:57 And actually, to be fair, the young lads on that patrol went straight to their weapons and the officer on the patrol who'd made the mistake by going down there called them off and said, no, no, no, drop your weapons. And I do believe as hard as that would have been for any soldier to drop his weapon, that was probably in the light of hindsight now the best thing he did because Yeah, they would have probably taken a few with them, but there was that many rebels down there.

1:15:24 Everybody would have ended up dead and none of them would have come home at all. I'm absolutely sure of that. Do you know what I mean? So, yeah. Anyway, they end up in the village. They go straight over there. And then the rest of it is us being deployed. Luckily, there was two guys from the regiment actually in Sierra Leone doing something else. And one of them just happened to be a hostage negotiator, I believe. And he went to the negotiations team and started asking for proof of life and for these people to start doing and throwing.

1:15:52 And so the negotiations were up and running from literally a few hours after they'd been taken.

1:15:58 So what was that decision point where they decided that negotiations are not going to work? We're going to have to send the boys in to take care of this.

1:16:07 I think the decision for us to go was made pretty early on. The actual decision for us to go live on this took a few days to get to that. I think the incident happened on the 25th. They were taken on the 25th of.

1:16:25 The 25th of... What's before September? Sorry, I don't even know my month.

1:16:31 Whatever it was before September, they were taking them on the 10th of September and was when the operation actually went in.

1:16:37 So.

1:16:38 You're talking best part of two weeks for this thing to pan out and actually get to that stage where it went noisy. So a fair old time. And in that time, we did everything we could. There was two observation teams were deployed to look at both sides of the river. Parachute regiment joined us for the first time because we realized there was that many people there. We were going to need backup if it all went wrong on the other side of the river while we were fighting on the other side. So yeah, there was a lot of decisions made and a lot of stuff done for the first time, which hadn't been done before.

1:17:05 So it was quite... In terms of operation, it was quite a groundbreaking operation.

1:17:10 And you guys were... You said you flew into Dakar and Senegal, but then you were based out of Freetown when the op happened?

1:17:17 No. We flew into Freetown, into Lungi Airport.

1:17:20 We then drove from Lungi Airport out into a place called Waterloo. There was a camp called Waterloo. It was like a jungle, like an FOB jungle type place. It was all a tented camp, basically.

1:17:31 Right, right.

1:17:32 So.

1:17:34 Tell us about the planning for this operation and getting ready to that launch point.

1:17:41 Right.

1:17:41 So, yeah. We acted on every last piece of intelligence we could get our hands on. So, we obviously had, at some stage throughout there, they let five.

1:17:52 Of the soldiers go. They got thoroughly debriefed. We had.

1:17:59 The observation teams went in after about four or five days there. The observation teams went in, so they had eyes on the village. They could tell us things like build-up of troops, routines, all that sort of stuff. Permanently, we were asking to see proof of life, so we would see the condition of people coming in and out.

1:18:14 So every last thing we could get, we got.

1:18:17 Do you know what I mean? We had.

1:18:19 The guys gave them a sat phone. You know, that was obviously being used all the time to talk to them. You know, they were asking for all sorts of crazy stuff. Helicopters and, you know, your normal West African will have 20 million and some rough diamonds and all that sort of stuff.

1:18:31 Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Do you know what I mean?

1:18:33 So, you know, they were spinning this game the whole time of keeping it going. But, you know, ultimately... We were trying to make a plan to get in there and get this sorted. Now, the three plans we came up with, we were asked for three plans. and the first plan was to take boats all the way up the river from Freetown up to the Rockhall Creek all the way up to the village and do a dawn raid now when they deployed the teams that went up there to do the observation stuff They had all sorts of trouble with these things. And we just thought, right, we're now going to try and take, you know, the best part of 150 people up there in boats. We'll get herd coming. And then again, you know, they could possibly execute these people before we get there. And we

1:19:13 just turn up to a village with some dead bodies in it.

1:19:15 That's no good.

1:19:16 So that was written off pretty early. We then decided that we might be able to walk all the way, but it was, it was dense jungle. You can't walk in dense jungle at night.

1:19:24 It's not going to happen. Do you know what I mean?

1:19:25 So it'd be day moves again, the chances of not being seen or heard or, something going wrong and then the village knowing about you again and you turning up to a pile of dead bodies that wasn't on and then somebody came up with this idea that we'd just take two helicopters and we'd fly in someone you know team would rope into the building straight away the rest of us would get down and fight the rest of the village while this was going on and it was like it was like right okay that is the only option we've got that is feasible and that would probably work if it works and so that's where the nickname came operation certain death because it was like This is absolutely crazy. We're going to take two of the largest

1:20:00 helicopters in the world, we're going to fly them into an enemy stronghold, which is outnumbering us, and we're going to rope down out of one, we're going to try and land the other one, and we're going to fight out from the middle as opposed to fighting from the outside in. So it was like, if you would have presented that plan on a promotion course... you'd have been sent home and probably demoted rather than promoted.

1:20:21 Do you know what I mean? It was incredible.

1:20:24 It was just like, this is mad. This is absolute madness. And I remember when we had the final set of orders, I'm still thinking to myself, they ain't going to let us do that.

1:20:32 How are they going to let us do that? This is crazy. This is madness.

1:20:37 We're going to lose at least a helicopter here. Do you know what I mean? And it was like, no, no, no, you are going, you are going, you are going. And those helicopters had to return and pick up the parachute regiment and then deliver them on the other side in case there was a follow-up. I mean, that in some respects, if we'd have been beaten on the other side, they'd have got mullet as well. So you could have then lost four helicopters full of blokes like that.

1:20:56 You know what I mean? Insane.

1:20:58 So we're thinking to ourselves, well, let's have the orders and let's see what it is. And I remember we had the orders and some of the older blokes were a bit more experienced. They actually went to bed. And I'm thinking to myself, no, no, no, I'm wide-eyed, I'm bushy-tailed. I was in the cookhouse, I was eating, thinking, right, you know, there was a breakfast at three o'clock in the morning. I thought it'd be a shame if I didn't fill myself up, do you know what I mean?

1:21:19 So I literally had a great big scoff, full English breakfast, bacon, sausages, the whole lot, do you know what I mean? And then we're ready to get on the choppers and we fly out over Freetown and we fly out to sea because what we've got to do is make sure that The guys who are on the ground are going to give us the nod to say, right, it's dark enough that you're not going to get seen coming in, but light enough that you can actually do something when you get here. Because in those days, we didn't have all these nods and all this stuff that they're wearing now.

1:21:49 We didn't have none of that. It was like, you know, you had your mark one eyeball and that was it. You know what I mean? So, you know, make sure that when you did finally get there, you could, you know, it wasn't too light that they were shooting at the helicopters from the off. And so it was very finely balanced.

1:22:02 And I remember we went into a holding pattern outside of Freetown. And it was pretty crazy. It was like a figure of eight type thing. And we're going round and round and round. And then the loadie starts yelling at people, we're off, we're off, we're going, we're going. And then on the earpieces comes a zero alpha, I have control, stand by, we're off. And I remember the helicopters dropped out of the sky. We left after we breakfast up there. I suspect there's still a couple of sausages floating about somewhere.

1:22:25 Do you know what I mean? We dropped out of the sky. We went down, you know, sort of like a few meters from the sea, and we literally went tearing off up the creek towards target. And this was it. I remember yelling at me, mate, come on, we're gearing each other up. And then I remember we get sort of like two minutes out, and we get the two minutes from the loadie. Two minutes, and then we get 30 seconds, and then the red light comes on. And before you know it, as we're turning the last corner, the minnie guns are going. you can see now out the window there's stuff going on already and it's like, as the back of the helicopter came down, we're straight out, we're straight into it, there's rounds going everywhere, we're engaging

1:23:02 from behind, we actually end up facing the wrong way. We have to do this bizarre move where once we've dealt with what's behind us, we have to turn around and we're end up fighting across the village. Meanwhile, the team, I mean, in the scheme of things, I'm probably number eight on the wire cutters. I'm nothing, but I'm in one of the teams that's fighting in the village. Other end of the village, you've got the teams coming down the ropes. They're securing the hostages. They've got the hostages.

1:23:26 They're moving out. They're fanning out. They're fighting out. The whole thing was going off like Chinese New Year, to be honest.

1:23:30 It was, it was exciting. It was, uh, it was a full on job. Like, you know what I mean?

1:23:36 It sounds like you guys, uh, you know, accomplished secure, you know, uh, seizing the element of surprise, getting.

1:23:42 The drop on them. I think that's what it was. All right.

1:23:45 So here's, here's something I'll tell you this, right? So the night before there was a negotiation team went down there to speak to the West side boys. And they said, look, can you come up and, you know, is there anything you really want? And they said, can we have two boat engines? So we had two boat engines because of the older we'd done the drop. So we said, Someone says, just give them the boat engines. We're getting back tomorrow night.

1:24:04 Do you know what I mean?

1:24:06 So they give them these two boat engines and then some bright spot come out with the idea.

1:24:11 I'll tell you what we'll do.

1:24:11 We'll give them about 50 cases of local beer as well. So we give them a load of beer as if to say, look, thank you very much. You can have the beer as well. We wish you no harm.

1:24:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:24:20 So they would have gone home, they would have drunk that beer and then got bang on the old drugs and they'd have had a wild night. So by the time we're coming, they've all got hangovers. That's all I get, getting a knock on the door to get out of bed and fight. And they're like, oh my God, oh God, hang on.

1:24:35 No, too late, sorry.

1:24:38 That was pretty slick.

1:24:39 Yeah. Yeah, so that was it.

1:24:41 So that was, you know, that played a big part. The element of surprise. And to be fair, those two teams that we had on the ground, They were proper. They'd been there for a long time, hiding in the bushes, do you know what I mean, in an enemy camp, hiding in the bushes, and they crawled onto the edge of that on the day, and as people were getting out of bed and the helicopters were coming in, they were already smacking people all over the place. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that's old school, close, Racky.

1:25:05 He won a conspicuous gallantry cross, and he earned that as well, do you know? He proper earned that cross. So, yeah, there was some proper soldiering going on there that really was, do you know what I mean?

1:25:14 Yeah. Yeah. Wow, man.

1:25:17 So secure the hostages. And, uh, from there, what was it, what was the extraction like?

1:25:23 So, yeah, so we went into like a real, and I was on the real, I was carrying a little mini me, so I've got my bipod. So I ended up sort of like, they've said to me, right, you take from 12 through 10 or whatever, and I'm facing out in this direction. And, uh, I remember there's a few things on fire and bits and pieces. And I thought to myself, I'll have a cup of tea now.

1:25:40 Do you know what I mean? The old salt major come around and he kicked the back of my foot. He goes, you can have a brew if you want. And I had this thing where I was sort of like laid in a depression in the floor. And I could make it. I had the gun in my shoulder here and I'm holding on like that and I can see in front of me and I'm sort of over my other hand. I've got me sort of like vest on.

1:25:57 I'll get me water bottle out. I'll get me mug out. I'll get the stove out. Light the stove with me lighter. Put the mug on it. Fill the mug.

1:26:03 Put the water away. Stick everything away. The water's boiling away nicely.

1:26:06 And then you know those sachets you get the three in ones. I'll tip that in and I'm stirring it away. And before you know it, I've got a lovely cup of tea. So I put everything away and I'm sat there with me cup of tea behind me gun and I'm drinking away. And my mate kicks me foot. He's taking sort of 11 through 9 because we're overlapping and he's kicked me on the foot.

1:26:25 And I look round and I'm like, fuck off, make your own tea. Do you know what I mean? And he's like, no, no, no.

1:26:33 Then he starts pointing his thumb down like that, frantically going like that. So as I look up, where we've gone completely silent in the village while people are cutting around doing their bits and pieces, he's basically... the enemy have decided, what's left of the enemy have decided, well, they've gone, so they're coming back into the village. There's a few of them coming, you know what I mean? So, on the guys next to me lead, we've literally sort of like waited for them to get within proper range that we're not going to miss. And we've opened up on them. And we've given, we've proper sent them back into the village, like sent them back out into the bushes.

1:27:10 You know, there's a lot of gunfire going on now because everyone's seen what's going on. You know, there's a bit more exchange in Anyway, I've done all this left-handed. I've not put my cup of tea down once. So I've actually been holding a cup of tea while I'm fighting. And I'm understood about spilling my tea. And I was never going to say anything about this at all. But they made a TV program on Channel 5. And one of the lads, Colin, I can say Colin's name because he was on that program. Colin told them about it.

1:27:40 Colin told the TV people about it. I was never going to say nothing because it was a bit sort of like, I shouldn't have been having a cup of tea anyway, to be honest.

1:27:46 Although, why not? I don't know, because I knew we were there. Do you know what I mean?

1:27:49 But yeah, to still carry on in the fight and not drop any, not spill any. I was quite proud of that, to be honest, but I shouldn't have been doing it.

1:27:55 But there you go.

1:27:57 Yeah, it's a true testament to the cultural differences between our militaries. Because for US forces, it would have just been a tin of Copenhagen and a big fatty in the lip.

1:28:11 Yeah, no, no, no.

1:28:13 A cup of tea for me. I even had my little finger poked. Yeah, nice.

1:28:16 It was proper.

1:28:17 Was it.

1:28:21 One lump or two?

1:28:21 It was three in one sachet, so it would have been one lump.

1:28:26 Oh, so it's like the creamer, the... Yeah.

1:28:30 The creamer, the tea. They had a tea powder and not sugar in the same thing. So it tasted like tea. I'll tell you what, after having a bit of a punch up, it was better than nothing. I'm gonna tell you that you know i mean that's.

1:28:39 Amazing do you mind telling us a little bit in um you know speak to this to your level of comfort obviously but um yeah you're what kind of weapon systems were you guys on and obviously like we all see the mp5s for like the cqb or the old school For more of these village clearing ops or things like this, did you guys have a.

1:29:02 In my day, the guys, I had a Minimi, which was, you know, it was a short, it was an airborne Minimi, so I had the folding stock and a short barrel. So it was more than maneuverable in a village. The guys had M4s, just M4s, just short stubby M4s with normal mags on them. And, you know, some would have the undersling 203s on them.

1:29:22 You'd have.

1:29:23 you know, all manner of grenades, stun grenades, smoke grenades, you know, the full suite.

1:29:27 There were 66s, you know, the old pull out, stick on the shoulder, pop the nose. 66s were being launched in there. Yeah, I mean, we went heavy handed because, you know, A, we knew we were likely to be outnumbered, but B, you know, we didn't know if this thing was going to go on for a while. We could have ended up having to, you know, clear in one village and then get an attack by another.

1:29:47 Do you know what I mean? So you could have ended up fighting. So, you know, I took a lot of ammunition on that job. I took probably, Probably six bags of Minami, a full complement of magazines. I had my pistol with me, which had a full complement of magazines.

1:30:02 I had a 66.

1:30:02 I had a few grenades. I didn't have no room for no warm kit. I mean, how I got my cup of tea in there was a miracle. Do you know what I mean? So we went ammunition heavy as opposed to, because we knew if we did get stuck overnight, they could always overfly it and drop us a load of stuff if we needed it.

1:30:18 Do you know what I mean?

1:30:18 So the priority was to be on the ground with enough ammunition to fight for as long as it took.

1:30:23 Do you know what I mean? So yeah, that's what we did.

1:30:26 What kind of pistols were you guys using at that time?

1:30:28 Uh, the SIGs.

1:30:29 The SIGs.

1:30:30 Oh, you said the SIGs. The two SIGs, yeah. So I actually prefer them to the Glocks, to be honest. But, you know, they ran with the Glocks in the end as the Army ran with the Glocks. But I think they might still use the SIG.

1:30:40 I don't know.

1:30:41 I'm not there anymore. But the SIG was a nice pistol, the SIG. It felt, you know, it was easy to use. It was safe. It was a great piece of kit.

1:30:48 Yeah.

1:30:49 Yeah, it's interesting. Now, did you guys, you know, obviously....

1:30:54 You know, this is a large operation for a small unit. And, you know, I don't know if you're partnering with the paras. Did you guys also carry on occasion like squad weapons or did you rely more on like the paras?

1:31:05 Yeah, we took a mortar base plate in with us. So at the very end, I remember one of the last things we did, we mortared like 360 around the place just to try and deter anybody else coming into the village. I mean, that mortar guy, he must have killed more people than COVID because he just mortared everywhere he went.

1:31:20 Do you know what I mean? Yeah. He was just, mortars out for about an hour. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Out he was going. He sent loads out. Yeah. So, yeah. So we had, yeah, we could call on anything. I mean, if you needed 50 cal, you'd get 50 cal. If you needed a grenade thrower, you'd get a grenade thrower.

1:31:36 If you needed, you know, something bigger, if you needed a javelin, if you needed a Milan, it was in my day. If you needed something big, you'd get something big. It wasn't, You know, and if you needed, if there was something out there that you wanted, you'd get trained up on it. You go and get it. Like, you know what I mean? So, you know, if you needed a Sam or a, or a whatever, you know what I mean? You'd get it.

1:31:51 So it wasn't, there was no restrictions on that sort of stuff. If it warranted it, it would be got and you'd use it and you'd learn how to use it. If you didn't know how to use it, you know what I mean?

1:31:59 Yeah.

1:32:00 So Phil, let's hear, what was the rest of your career like in the SAS and the army?

1:32:06 Right.

1:32:06 So that was pretty much, that was sort of like me swan song. I remember the next thing I did after that was an exercise somewhere where we.

1:32:13 Did a host.

1:32:13 And I just, I fell out of love with it a little bit because that was such an intense operation. And at that time, I mean, that was 2000, um, obviously, you know, 2001 in September things changed, but after that operation in particular, that was September. That was a year before the twin towers fell. I just, Two things happened.

1:32:35 A friend of mine got killed. A very good friend of mine who was actually in the village with me. He was killed in a way. I don't want to harp on about this because it might upset people that still know him. He was killed in a road traffic accident. It was completely unnecessary and it really, really upset me.

1:32:51 I can deal with... We lost Brad in the village. He died fighting. When they recovered his weapon, there was an empty 203 smoking shell and half a magazine. He went out doing the.

1:33:00 Job he loved. He went out trooping his fight and he was a warrior. The man was a... Absolute legend.

1:33:05 You know, my other mate died in the centre console of a car by someone who was driving it too fast who shouldn't have been driving it how he was driving it.

1:33:12 It just, it really messed me up a little bit. It hurt me. It hurt me.

1:33:17 And I took to the drink and then, you know, I probably punched a few too many people and got in a few too many rows and I started falling out with the authorities a little bit on camp and, you know, it got to the stage where the start major, you know, wasn't going to stand up for me anymore. And he offered me, you know, he said, look, you can go back to your unit or, you know, you can get out. Or he said, there's not many options here for you at the moment. So I said, well, I'll just get out. And I bit my bullet. I said, look, I'll pay my way out. I'll get out this week if I can. And I put my paperwork in and I paid my money and I got out. And that was me, really. And I remember on my final interview,

1:33:53 the CO at the time was away and the two ICs, Didn't know really the full picture of what was going on. And he said, did I fancy going to the reserve battalion, uh, the reserve regiment for, for, for a call off period.

1:34:06 And I just said, no point blank. I didn't want to do that. I said, no, because at the.

1:34:09 Time, you know, you were, you was, you really were. And it sounds a bit corny. And it's in that film who does it. You were SAS or nothing. That's all I wanted to be. And if I couldn't be that, I didn't want to be anything else. Do you know what I mean? And I didn't want to be a reservist. I didn't want to do anything else. I just wanted to get out. And I got out.

1:34:24 Um, I got out on the 1st of September, uh, 2001.

1:34:27 And on the 9th, I was driving down to where I was living, and I heard on the radio what happened, and I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ, you know, I mean, and I couldn't even go straight back in, because I'd paid my way out, those were the rules, I think, you couldn't just go straight back in, so I'm thinking to myself, right, what am I going to do, like, do you know what I mean, so, you know, my first port of call was to make a few phone calls, and before I knew it, I was in Afghanistan myself anyway, working on the, on the civvy contracting circuit, so, Yeah, flash to bang time, turnaround time for me.

1:34:57 I run out of money.

1:34:58 I run out of money and I went down to the, I went down to the job center to get a loan. I had no money coming in at all. There was no work for me in the UK. And I remember I had to fill a form out for this money and I had to get a job interview. They had no job interviews for me. And the only thing I was qualified, I remember I had no qualifications at school.

1:35:13 None of the stuff I did in the military had any qualifications that were relevant to civvies. And they told me I had to go for a job interview as like a traffic marshal for schools, a lollipop man, we called him. that was going to be my life. I'm like, I can't have this. And so I'm going to be really sort of like nine 11, although it didn't do the world a favor, actually at that time done me a massive favor because it meant that there was somewhere I could go and go and find some work.

1:35:39 And that's really awful. It's all that bad.

1:35:41 And I, I realized that, but you know, when you're pushed against, when your back's pushed against the wall, you've got to earn your money where you can. Do you know what I mean? So, you know, for me, it was a no brainer. I had to get out there and I, I actually wanted to go out there because, you know, I believe strongly I was sickened by what I saw in America. I wanted to go and do something against it. I knew I couldn't probably join up straight away again. So I thought, right, the best thing I can do is get myself out there as a contractor and actually start trying to do some good and aid the people that are in a fighting position. Do you know what I mean? So my mind was made up.

1:36:14 I was going. And that was it simple.

1:36:18 Tell us about the contractor circuit then, what that was like going back and forth to Afghanistan in those early years.

1:36:24 Well, when I first started it, it wasn't really an entity. There'd been a few sort of like mercenary type jobs in and out of Africa where guys had gone and sort of like tipped over Angola and places like that. And the circuit as it was, you know, there was bodyguarding jobs. There was, you know, there was a few Arabs being looked after and a few Arabs families. There was a big job in America. The Aga Khan used to get looked after. You had, you know, various people being looked after. But the circuit, as I knew it and as you know it, hadn't really taken off. We were sort of like pioneering. So I literally turned up in Afghanistan on a training job and a CP job for a European embassy, the European Commission's embassy, who didn't

1:37:10 have the capability of a CP team and couldn't get one because everybody else was deployed.

1:37:13 So.

1:37:15 it soon became clear that there was going to be loads of work for people if they could get out there. And so in the very early days, the money was terrific. Um, the jobs were secure because they wasn't the manpower to fill the jobs. And so in the very early days, it was great. We were earning massive coin. We were traveling in and out. We were doing heavy rotations. So we were doing sort of like we were doing, you know, six to nine months on and then, you know, a few weeks off and then coming back in again. But, You Americans are used to that anyway, aren't you? You work long old shifts, don't you? But we were doing some long old shifts then and it was great. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was, you know, I was making

1:37:52 good money. I was living like a rock star on leave because I had plenty of money in my pocket and I'd never had money in my pocket when I was serving. I always owed this or owed that or had spent it or borrowed it. Now I was earning, I was earning proper dollar and I was going home and living like a rock star. I was like, yeah, this is great. You know what I mean?

1:38:10 Did that ever hit like sort of like a dead end for you where you start feeling like I can't live this life anymore? Because I mean, I have talked to a lot of guys that there's like a culture around contracting and it catches up with guys.

1:38:22 It does. Yeah.

1:38:23 And it caught up with me when I got too sort of like far into the rock star stuff that's on like the work was getting less people were getting out the military the prices were getting pushed down you weren't earning the money you were in the day the jobs in some respects were getting more dangerous which i didn't mind but you know you just weren't making the money anymore and it was like you would come out and you know i was still earning good money and I started drinking far too much. And, you know, I started, I probably had a few mental health things going on and what have you. And I, I medicated myself with beer and became a bit of a menace. And I, you know, I got in a bit of trouble. I ended up on an attempted murder charge and actually remanded

1:39:03 in a prison in England. So yeah, I, it, it did have an impact with me and it just, it was, it was, it was a product of not knowing how to handle that sort of money and, living a lifestyle whereby you were permanently in the glad to be alive club when you weren't in country and, but knowing you had to go back. So you didn't really, I didn't really give a shit how I behaved at home because I was like, well, when I go back, it might be my last trip anyway, because I'm taking some insane risks.

1:39:27 I remember someone asking me once. I phoned up my missus and said to her, look, I'm going to be in such and such a town. And my mate went to me and went, what are you telling your missus for? And I said, look, mate, I'm telling my missus because she's the only one who cares. I said, do you think anyone's going to care if you go missing? I said, she's the only one who's going to put the shout out if I don't come back tonight.

1:39:47 Do you know what I mean? That's the only one who cares. Because no one did tell the contractors, did they? They didn't. You know, you were out there.

1:39:54 The whole thing really was people viewed you as you're making the money, you're taking the chance. If it goes wrong, well, that's your problem. You know what I mean?

1:40:01 I don't have an issue with that.

1:40:02 I understood that, but I think there's plenty of those people that went out there that didn't understand that. Do you know what I'm saying? So it was, yeah, it was, like I say, I just, I had a few issues myself and I... You know, one of my issues, actually, if I think about it, was I desperately wanted to sign back up again and, you know, do the soldiering stuff. Yeah, yeah.

1:40:22 And I realised that, you know, this is what I was good for at the moment. Do you know what I mean? So I just had to stick at what I was doing. And, you know, I did end up coming away from Iraq and Afghanistan and going to places like Gaza and the West Bank. And, you know, I ended up in West Africa doing a load of stuff there.

1:40:37 And then, of course, the anti-piracy stuff kicked off. So I did absolutely bundles of that as well.

1:40:42 So.

1:40:42 Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was. You ended up just chasing the dollar. You know, I mean, it was it was.

1:40:51 Some of it was fun, some of it was good while it lasted, but some of it was absolutely terrible. Some of it was just completely dire working with people you didn't really want to work with.

1:41:00 Yeah. What jobs?

1:41:02 Which jobs did you like? Which did you not like?

1:41:05 Um, you know, I did, I did some really good stuff in Gaza on a training team, uh, teaching the Palestinian guard and then subsequently moving, you know, when they, when they got moved on, we, we, we did a job in there looking after a power station. That was, that was really good. It was active. That was, we got a bit connected a couple of times on that. Um, I quite enjoyed West Africa. I loved doing the gold mines, you know, traveling up and down, moving from site to site, moving people about, evacuating people, all that sort of stuff.

1:41:35 That was fun.

1:41:35 Uh, so there were some good jobs to be had. The anti-piracy could be, could be all right, you know, but again, it was long hours at sea. You know, sometimes you could be three or four months at sea. I never, I never saw a pirate from, from start to finish.

1:41:54 I used to come back.

1:41:55 With a lovely suntan, do you know what I mean? But other than that, I mean, it was rubbish. And so, you know, The jobs I didn't like were I ended up on an oil rig once in.

1:42:10 Iraq. And I was like the security guy for the oil rig.

1:42:13 But then I'd have people from the oil company who were also doing the same sort of thing as me coming and checking on me.

1:42:19 And I'm like, well, why are you checking on me? It was awful.

1:42:22 And it was long, boring hours. I was there on my own. I was on an Iraqi oil field on my own on a rig. with just Iraqis. You know, it was horrendous. I did some great jobs in Sudan. I went down to South of Sudan.

1:42:36 That was fun.

1:42:36 That was great. Again, you know, you're interacting with the locals. It was hearts and minds. You were building up public confidence and all that sort of stuff.

1:42:43 Brilliant.

1:42:44 Using all the skills I'd learned in SF, employing them, you know, loads of scope for doing things my way.

1:42:50 Do you know what I mean? Brilliant. But yeah. So I was lucky and I did make some good money and I had a bit of fun as well. Do you know what I mean?

1:42:55 But like I say eventually things at home started being impacted by what I was doing and then I did end up in trouble so you know it was going to happen one day do you know what I mean as it happened it all you know it got proved there was nothing to be answered for but To be fair, I've done plenty wrong. I'll probably deserve my little stint on remarks. I'm not going to moan about it.

1:43:20 What was the transition process like for you? Because it sounds like you didn't really transition out of the military. You pretty much jumped right into contracting. But then when you reached the end of your rope there, what was it like becoming a proper civilian, right?

1:43:37 Horrendous.

1:43:37 I still don't class myself as a proper civilian. Now I just, I'm a veteran. I just, um, I just, the first I got exposed to it really was in the media industry. Cause when I, when I came out of, when I came out of Winchester prison, um, I literally had nowhere to go. All my licenses have been revoked.

1:44:01 So I couldn't work on the security service circuit. Everybody knew cause it was only a small circuit. I couldn't get any work. I'd written my book, Born Fearless. It had done quite well. But I ended up in a position where I had nowhere to live. And so basically what I'd done was I phoned a friend of mine, Tom.

1:44:20 In fact, Tom was on one of our podcasts that week, Tom Blakey. He lent me a caravan. I took this caravan to London and I put it on a building site. And I used to be security for the building site. And during the day, I used to fill skips up and sweep the floor. And my cousin used to pay me £ 50 a day. I used to give £ 25 to my missus and the other £ 25 I used to use to feed myself. And what I did was I got a couple of copies of my book and I went down to the local sort of like thrift shop, the charity shop, the secondhand shop, and I bought myself a suit.

1:44:51 And whenever I had a couple of hours spare, I used to go into London and I would go walking around all these bars where I knew that there was TV producers drinking and all that sort of stuff. And as soon as I heard them say something about Iraq or Afghanistan, oh, oh, I've been there.

1:45:04 Oh, and I've got a book. Oh, and by the way, that's exactly what you're looking for. Do you know what I mean?

1:45:08 And before I knew it, we had those incidents in the UK, didn't we, with the bombings on the bridge and all that sort of stuff. And I became like the main voice on Sky TV.

1:45:17 I was on there all the time. You couldn't get me on.

1:45:18 More than Kay Burley do you know what I mean every time something happened it was like Phil get yourself on telly I'd be like here I am again I'd turn up on scene I'd be sort of like right give me that mic I'll tell you what's going on here I was making a bit of a name for myself so you know I was working with some of the Sky News in particular to be fair there were some people there who just were out for themselves there was no team playing in them you know and when I eventually left Sky it wasn't they behaved awfully towards me, do you know what I mean? And bearing in mind, you know, when I made that documentary in Syria, I took some insane risks to get them some of the best footage they've ever seen.

1:45:58 I remember you telling me, like, they're sending me back in because they want a punch-up for the documentary.

1:46:03 I was like, hey, you're... I went there to send you, and I made sure they got everything they needed and some, do you know what I mean? And then they were pretty awful the way they put me on a debating program which was political.

1:46:14 I don't know nothing about politics. I just call a square a square, like, do you know what I mean?

1:46:17 So.

1:46:18 Um, yeah, I didn't do any favors. So I thought like, but it was the media world.

1:46:22 And that was the first time I'd been surrounded by purely civilians. So everywhere I went, you know, apart from that documentary, actually where the cameraman was an ex Marine and the, uh, the security guy was SBS.

1:46:33 Great guys.

1:46:34 Um, everyone else was city and not just city. They just were unreliable honking, pat you on the back, but stick a knife in it at the same time. And I suddenly began to realize that, you know, no one's on your side out there. No one actually cares. You know what I mean? And you say to people, yeah, I used to be in the SAS. They look at you and they have to go, yeah, so what?

1:46:55 Who cares? They don't care. They don't even understand. Do you know what I mean? They don't begin to understand. They don't even want to understand. Do you know what I mean? They understand their own life and they do their own thing. Do you know what I mean?

1:47:05 That's not everybody. That would be unfair of me to say that that's everybody, but I saw a lot of it. And I suddenly realized I was in a world where I'm going to have to do something about absolutely everything because nobody's ever going to spoon feed me.

1:47:15 They're not going to do it. Do you know what I mean? It's not going to happen. Yeah, yeah. And they would tee you up to fail.

1:47:20 You know, they sort of like, they put me on a TV program which they almost put me across as being a bit of a bigot. And I'm not bigoted at all. Do you know what I mean? In fact, I'm far from that. I like to think I'm very central and straight with what I do. Do you know what I mean? And they teed me up as being sort of like almost ultra right wing.

1:47:39 I'm not like that.

1:47:40 Right, like you're a caricature.

1:47:42 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

1:47:43 You know, and that was, you know, I found that a bit upsetting to be honest. And, You know, it did follow me around a little bit, you know. Luckily, you know, when I started doing stuff with people like Bear Grylls, who's a very good friend of mine, do you know what I mean? People saw through that and, you know, I started to get a lot more work in that. But there was a stage where people were sort of like labelling me, he's just a thug.

1:48:04 Right.

1:48:04 I have been a fuckboy. I have been a fuckboy. I'm not, you know, that's not the way I am. You pay me to be a fuckboy. Don't forget that.

1:48:11 Right. Right.

1:48:14 And it was a different kind of fuck, right? It was like a, it was a rabble rouser.

1:48:18 I never, I never.

1:48:20 Ever fight in a pub do you know i mean and i've been i've been no you know but i would not go and bully someone in the pub i won't go and pick on a fight with someone if you look at me funny in a pub and you come and you come in front of me wanting trouble i'm more than happy to give it to you that's how i was in the day do you know i mean yeah And I'm not particularly proud of that. It's just the way I was. I mean, I was highly strung, you know, and that's the way things panned out sometimes.

1:48:45 You know what I mean?

1:48:45 And I don't think, you know, there's probably loads of soldiers like that. And those are soldiers will be like that in the future as well. Do you know what I mean? If you train somebody, if you repeatedly put them, you know, take some aggression and all the rest of it, eventually when they've had a drink and the chips are down, if you push them in the wrong way, they're going to push you back and they're going to push you back as hard as they want.

1:49:03 Do you know what I mean? And that's, that's, that's.

1:49:05 Yeah. Yeah.

1:49:06 Yeah, you know, it's interesting that you say how they set you up and how it was every person for themselves, because we interviewed Tonto, Chris Peranto from Benghazi a while, you know, a couple of years ago. And he talked about when he came out, he was trying to speak his truth. And like the right wing media latched on to him. And he thought he thought they were like doing him a favor. But then they just started trying.

1:49:34 To use him.

1:49:36 It's not like there's a left and right media. It's just they're all trying to make money and they're going to use you however they can.

1:49:42 Of course they are.

1:49:45 People from the right did put clips of me up through some of the stuff that I said. And it probably might have fitted their agenda. But it wasn't said derogatory against the others. It was said because I can't help saying what I see. I probably said lots of other things that people probably wouldn't expect me to say.

1:50:00 Right.

1:50:00 You know, I would stand up for people's rights. I would stand up for people's religions. I would stand up for the way people are.

1:50:06 Right.

1:50:06 I don't curse anybody for being anything other than a human being. And that's the way I am. Right.

1:50:11 You know what I mean? And I think the military teaches you that. You know, I look at someone as a soldier. I don't care if you're black, white, yellow, pink, brown, green. What way you swing in the bedroom or what religion you are.

1:50:24 I couldn't care. You're either a good soldier, a bad soldier, or you're not a soldier. Do you know what I mean? Right. Right. So that's, you know, I've got no bias at all against anybody. Right.

1:50:32 Yeah.

1:50:33 So how did, how did you deal with that when, when you started realizing that, you know, at first you think I'm, you know, I'm a veteran, a special force veteran.

1:50:45 I have something to say.

1:50:46 These people seem interested in it.

1:50:48 Then as time goes on, you realize that this is a very like, you know, dog eat dog world. Like how did you kind of remedy that in your mind?

1:50:58 But it's upsetting. It's upsetting at first. You look at it and you think, you've used me there. You've used me there.

1:51:03 So my rule of thumb now is I do things that I want to do. Yeah.

1:51:06 So I did things maybe that weren't even paid, but I wanted to do.

1:51:11 So, you know, I became the.

1:51:13 I became an ambassador for various different things. I started doing stuff that promoted things in a good light. I started doing things that, you know, made me feel happy as opposed to just chasing the dollar and going on your program because you want me to.

1:51:27 Say this, that or the other.

1:51:28 And that's how this radio station was born, you know, because, you know, we were stuck with Scott and Johnny and, you know, we sat around the table and we decided we wanted to do something ourselves. And, you know, at the time, I don't want to have me hand out and be asking everybody for work all the time.

1:51:42 I'll find me own work. Thank you very much.

1:51:44 And you know, when it's, when it's ours and we do what we, we can say what we want, you know what I mean? And then you'll find out who the real, who the real Phil is because you'll see the real Phil because you're, I'm not going to, I'm not going to put myself on my own channel and, and, and try and bend what I'm saying. Am I, I'm going to, I'm going to put myself on my own channel as me and tell you what I want to say.

1:52:02 Do you know what I'm saying?

1:52:04 So tell, tell us about force radio, like how that came about and what it is, what you guys are doing.

1:52:09 So Force Radio. Yeah, so lockdown happened. Not a lot going on, was there? And towards the end of lockdown, I was an ambassador for a T-shirt company called Forcewear that do really well. They're really good. They do Forces skewed T-shirts. They've got a great range, over 500 designs. check them out on forcewear.com.

1:52:26 All right. So they're, they're, they're a great bunch of guys and they're, they're veteran owned and veteran run and they make some really cool stuff. And the guy that run that, a guy called Scott, you know, I've been, I'd reached out to him and they made me an ambassador.

1:52:38 And so I used to do a fair, a fair few bits with them. And I used to do a bit of a live feed and a few bits and pieces of some advertising and where their gear and all that sort of stuff. And we just got talking me, Johnny and Johnny's what works for them as well. Works for Scott's done a lot. I've been with Scott for years.

1:52:55 And I think it was Scott was moaning about having his adverts turned off on Facebook. And one of us, and I can't remember if it was Johnny or me, turned around and said something to the effect of, well, why don't we make our own station and then we can advertise what the hell we want, when we want, and nobody can turn us off. And that was, is that pretty fair? Johnny's looking at me. Pretty much how it was born. Do you know what I mean? And then after that, you know, Scott being Scott and Johnny being Johnny. They're like a couple of rats up a drainpipe.

1:53:24 They don't let anything go. And we didn't know nothing about this industry whatsoever. So we're like thinking to ourselves, it's either going to be extremely difficult or it's going to be extremely hard. And we've worked extremely hard and we've made it look extremely easy. And I think, you know, we've done a great job of what we've done.

1:53:39 And I don't, you know... I don't like to blow our trumpet, but I think we've done an absolutely outstanding job of what we've done. We've built something worth having. Our radio station is superb. We get lots of listening all over the world. Funny enough, loads of listeners in America.

1:53:53 Force Radio, it's a thing of beauty.

1:53:58 That's how I'd describe it, a thing of beauty. What is it that you guys do? I mean, you said you're like 70-something episodes in. I mean, what is the mission?

1:54:07 Once we set the radio station up, and the radio station plays over three channels online daily, so we've got a 24-hour radio station, all right? So you can listen to false radio 24 hours a day online, okay? And we've got three different stations on that. We've got a sort of generic music one. We've got an anthems one.

1:54:26 And we've got a dance music one. And they run concurrently together all the time. So that's 24-7 force radios running. And then we looked at it and thought, right, we need to do a little bit more than this because the radio station isn't just going to be the only thing we can possibly get out of this. So we decided we'd start podcasting. We came up with a debrief podcast, which is mine. And I've interviewed loads of really cool people, Billy Billingham, lots of SF guests.

1:54:47 We just had Mandy, who was a... It was a fighter pilot. Superb. What a story she has. Do you know what I mean? What a woman that woman is. Do you know what I mean? She's really, really great. So we've been blessed. We've had some really good.

1:54:56 And so now we're about sort of like, we're just about, we're just about creating cool content, keeping the radio station going. And who knows if we could expand it, maybe doing other things, you know, perhaps making a documentary one day or something like that.

1:55:09 Then let's see where it goes. You know what I mean?

1:55:10 But for now, you know, we're going to, we're going to try and build something that's absolutely worth having a community based type radio station for people who are like-minded, and get on with each other and all that sort of stuff.

1:55:20 Do you know what I mean? So that's what we want.

1:55:22 And, uh, that's a force radio dot force radio.

1:55:26 Yeah.

1:55:27 Force radio dot live.

1:55:29 Live. Yeah. Right on that. Yeah.

1:55:33 That's fantastic.

1:55:34 I mean, you like, you're going all out, like not only with the podcast, um, but you've got mute.

1:55:41 I'm going to have to.

1:55:43 I think if you met, if you met Scott and you met Johnny, uh, If, and I've said this in my first book, so I'm going to paraphrase a little bit from my first book. If you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly.

1:55:52 Yeah.

1:55:52 You know what I mean?

1:55:53 Don't, don't hit this thing. If you, if somebody gives you a backside to kick, make sure you put your biggest boots on and kick it as hard as you can. Like, do you know what I mean?

1:55:59 So we are in the process of kicking the media backside.

1:56:03 Was that, was that a cannonball run where that, if you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly bear?

1:56:08 I'm not sure, but I did. I paraphrase it because I used it in one of my books.

1:56:12 Yeah.

1:56:13 It might be. I might have robbed it inadvertently from somebody else.

1:56:18 No, I'm trying to remember. Anyway, it doesn't matter. So on your just out of curiosity.

1:56:22 I'm going to get sued.

1:56:24 No, no, no, no, no.

1:56:28 On your dance channel, are we talking about EDM? Are we talking about disco? Like what kind of tunes are we going to hear?

1:56:33 Yeah. Johnny, Garage, yeah, everything you described there and a bit more.

1:56:39 I'm in it.

1:56:40 Awesome. If you want to have your lights bouncing around the room and move your hands funny and concentrate.

1:56:46 The glow sticks and everything, yeah.

1:56:47 Oh, we do. That's where you need to be, my friend.

1:56:49 That's where you need to be. And actually, we've got some really cool DJs working for us. We've got a guy called Danny Rampling who was an IB for DJ in the day. He is proper. Google Danny Rampling. You will not be disappointed. He's our Saturday Night Act host. We've got G Geddes on who does puts a show together for us on a, on a Friday night. He's up and coming. He's a Danny Rampling in the making.

1:57:08 We've got a girl called So Duncan, amazing girl. So we've got some, we've got some really good talent. And again, you know, we're recruiting from, from a forces background where we can. I mean, so, you know, Danny was 10 para G Geddes.

1:57:20 What was he? He's going to kill me now if I get it wrong.

1:57:24 But anyway, yeah, Jake Ennis, all serving members, all, all, all our proud careers and all doing something completely different out of the comfort zone and doing it well.

1:57:32 Yeah, that's fantastic.

1:57:34 Um, yeah.

1:57:34 So check out force radio dot live and, uh, there'll be a link down in the description and also shout out to our friends at Casa Caribeo cigars. Check them out at Casa Caribeo.com. Awesome cigar company. Um, Phil, any final thoughts? Anything else you want to get out there? We really appreciate you sharing your story with us, man.

1:57:55 It's been real fun being on the show. If you are watching this, give us a follow on Instagram.

1:58:02 Go on.

1:58:02 You might just find it a bit of fun. I try to be fairly relaxed on my social media channels. you know I mean to have a bit of fun bit of motivation everything's positive on my media channels so like I say give us a follow on here as well and hopefully maybe one day I'll get myself over to you or you'll get yourself over to me we can press some flesh drink some beer and have another good laugh and put another episode together for someone.

1:58:23 That'd be awesome that sounds like a great time where can people find you on Instagram what's the Instagram handle at.

1:58:29 At Big Phil Campion.

1:58:33 At Big Phil Campion.

1:58:33 Okay.

1:58:34 Everything's at Big Phil Campion with me. So if you Google Big Phil Campion or at Big Phil Campion on Instagram. Funnily enough, TikTok actually. Big Phil Campion. Zero one, I think I am on there because I couldn't. There's about 10 Phil Campions on TikTok and there's only one that's me and I haven't managed to get verified yet.

1:58:50 So yeah.

1:58:52 Do you do all the TikTok challenges that they do?

1:58:56 The dances and all that? I haven't done any. I've done a few. I've done a few of the press-up challenges.

1:59:03 I've eaten a couple of hot chilies and all that sort of stuff.

1:59:08 I'll get on there with my granddaughter sometimes. That's awesome.

1:59:15 Phil, this has been a lot of fun, man. I haven't laughed this hard in a while. Next Friday, we're going to have a retired CIA officer on the show, served in Ground Branch. served as a chief of station in Europe, did a lot of really interesting stuff. We're going to have him in studio. I'm excited about that. Phil, again, thank you so much for joining us tonight. It's great to reconnect with you.

1:59:39 Yeah, my pleasure, buddy.

1:59:41 Phil, before we go, I know we mentioned them passing, but I just want to say these out loud for people listening on the podcast.

1:59:48 You have two books out.

1:59:49 One is Born Fearless, Commando Paramercenary SAS Pirate Hunter.

1:59:55 And I forgot, do we have questions for Phil?

1:59:57 Oh, we do.

1:59:59 And then the second one is Big Phil Campion's Real World SAS Survival Guide. So, guys, check those out. Yeah, your survival guide just came. Oh, no, 2014.

2:00:12 2014.

2:00:13 And then 2011.

2:00:15 I wrote Who Dares Wins as well, which is another book. It's the second part to my life story.

2:00:19 Oh, I see it. I'm sorry about that.

2:00:23 We may have some viewer questions for you if you've got a moment.

2:00:26 Yeah, sorry about that.

2:00:31 I almost forgot about it too.

2:00:33 That's all right.

2:00:34 Don't worry too much about plugging me book. They'll find me book if they want to have a look for it. Do you know what I mean?

2:00:39 Okay. You don't like the publisher, Rich, anyway.

2:00:44 Let me get to the questions.

2:00:54 Are these coming live nowadays?

2:00:56 Yeah, they come in on the live stream.

2:00:57 They've been coming in during the discussion. We used to.

2:01:01 Sort of ask them during the show as they would come up so that they could be, because a lot of times they were matched to what the person was talking about. But we just kept on interrupting people to ask the questions. So now we let you tell your story, and then we go to all the.

2:01:19 Questions that people have sent in.

2:01:24 So we have three right now. McIntyre83, thank you very much. Did you know or ever meet Cameron Spence?

2:01:32 If so, what was he like?

2:01:34 No, I didn't. No, I don't know. Yeah, sorry. M.

2:01:40 Corbin, thank you very much.

2:01:42 If Phil has one, what is his favorite operation the SAS pulled off in World War II?

2:01:51 Do you know what?

2:01:53 Probably my favorite story, actually, is not even an operation. It's when they were first setting up. They raided the Kiwis camp and nicked a piano.

2:02:01 LAUGHTER And so that's a bit of me, that. That's a bit of me.

2:02:06 That's sort of like, I'm setting up a special forces, a special forces regiment, but I'm not doing anything until I've sorted me naffy out with a piano and a few beers.

2:02:13 Yeah.

2:02:14 It's a bit of me, that. But there was some tremendous operations and there's too many to sort of like even, even think about going down. All of which were, you know, tremendous guys at that time doing, doing extremely cool stuff. So, yeah, I think the piano story always sticks out for me, but the rest of them, absolutely phenomenal. phenomenal times I've been in the regiment.

2:02:36 Um, Scott G, thank you very much. What photos did you take in Northern Ireland and why?

2:02:43 I don't know. Okay.

2:02:45 Yeah.

2:02:45 So we would basically, we would get tasked. We wouldn't always know why we were taking the photographs. You might just get a front door and get told, we want to know everyone who's been in and out of that door. You'd then go and find somewhere you can see that front door from, whether it be a bush, a derelict or somewhere you could hide up and you'd literally stay there sometimes in excess of three or four weeks and and take photographs of that said door. And you wouldn't even know why or who it was. Sometimes it was coming in and out of there. You'd pass it on up the chain and they'd do what they needed to do.

2:03:12 And that would be it. Like, you know what I mean? So it could be a door. It could be, it could be anything.

2:03:16 You know, they could just ask you, you know, can you go and take a photograph of, you know, can you wait on this thing and see if you see this car? We're looking for a car with this wedge plate and this, it could be anything.

2:03:25 Yeah.

2:03:25 So You very often didn't know. In fact, 99% of the time, I would not know why or what it was or even sometimes who it was that I was taking photographs of. And that's done just to keep– it's a need-to-know basis. You know what I mean? And you just need to know what you need to do. And they do what they've got to do with what you found out for them.

2:03:44 You know, out of curiosity, you did that while you were with the– is it the.

2:03:50 Hampshire– Yeah, the Royal infantry regiment and the Princess of Wales' Royal regiment. So, yeah, both infantry units, and I did it with both of them.

2:03:58 So, would I be wrong in saying that those are classically sort of conventional infantry units?

2:04:06 Yes, yep, conventional infantry units.

2:04:07 But what it was, SF isn't the hugest in the world.

2:04:14 And, you know, they didn't have... enough guys.

2:04:17 Right with everything going on to do everything they needed to do so they had to farm some of it out so they would they set up every battalion that went to northern ireland had a cop platoon and those cop platoons would pick up some of the stuff that special forces couldn't do or didn't have time to do or needed done in a hurry.

2:04:33 So did then did they for that cop platoon did they send you to like or did they teach you how to you know, photographed, you know, like do.

2:04:41 Oh yeah. Yeah.

2:04:42 You did a photo, a photography course and you had to do this thing called up rating, which basically meant that you had to sort of like trick the film, the camera, it was all done with like normal, normal film in my day. So it wasn't, there was no digital. So you had to learn how to uprate and stop the film from getting grainy. It was, it was an absolute nightmare. It really was. And you could go out and you could end up taking photographs for a week, come back in and the whole thing. If you've got this, if you've got these numbers wrong or the, or the settings wrong, You could mess the whole thing up, come back in and have your photos developed and go, right, we can't read any of that or see it.

2:05:15 And he'd be like, no.

2:05:17 So yeah, there was a lot riding on it. It was really difficult work. And then just towards the end of the time I was doing it, you know, video cameras were coming out and it was getting a little bit easier. But even then, you know, we were talking, we were taking lenses in there sometimes that were as big as me. We had this lens from Celestron. It was absolutely huge. You'd be trying to hide this thing in a bush like, you know, ridiculous. Yeah, it was fun.

2:05:41 Yeah. That's awesome.

2:05:42 And that's why I was wondering because, you know, you have this, you know, conventional infantry unit and you guys are out there doing really a kind of recce sneak and peek, you know, sneak and peek type stuff.

2:05:52 Yeah.

2:05:53 So, yeah.

2:05:54 It gives you an insight and it gives you, you know, if you're that way inclined or you're in an infantry unit and you want to take it to the next level, it gives you a great insight into what the other guys are doing.

2:06:04 Right. Right.

2:06:07 Oh, Phil, thank you so much for joining us, man. People out there, go check out ForcedRadio.live. Really appreciate this interview. Thank you for sharing your life story with us, Phil. And we'd love to have you back on the show sometime you want to share the next chapter.

2:06:24 Yeah, love to come over. Love to come over and see you. Yeah. I'll keep myself on the sofa next time.

2:06:29 You let us know next time you come up. If you can make.

2:06:33 Our Christmas party this year, we'll make sure we have figgy puddings.

2:06:37 I mean, I mean, I mean, I put it once to me. I'm telling you.

2:06:43 All right, guys, we'll see all of you on Friday.

2:06:45 Hello, everyone.

2:06:47 If you're hearing this, you are not a member of the Patreon. You can get your hands on ad free episodes that come out early and you can ask us questions. Maybe we'll answer them. You can also watch the team house podcast completely ad free and early, and you can also watch it live as we interview our guests. and it's the best way to support the channel. So if you can, if you're open to it, you can go to patreon.com slash the team house. That link is in the description. We appreciate the supporters, and we hope you would consider being one. So it's patreon.com slash the team house.

2:07:23 Thanks, guys.