Irish Ranger | Kevin "Mack" McDonald | Ep. 345

Commandant Kevin McDonald served 7 years with Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil (FCA) and 33 years with the Permanent Defence Forces. He discusses his military career, focusing on his extensive service overseas. Most of his interview relates to his service in Lebanon and he speaks about the 2006 Lebanon War when he was serving with Observer Group Lebanon (OGL). He speaks about the deaths of some of his United Nations Military Observer colleagues at an OGL patrol base at El Khiam during that war. Grab Mack's book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Less-Ordinary-Kevin-Donald/dp/1914596307/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1XKTIGVJZ886B&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.laHCVdJFrHd1NTaBIOdb8g. V-F0eXmZCahCasWyKs_L5b3csXdb0uDFmqPaGoIliXU&dib_tag=se&keywords=9781914596308&qid=1745936886&sprefix=9781914596308%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️ https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.com Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured —————————————————————- Today's Sponsors: GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! ___________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— To help support the show and for all bonus content including: https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [email protected] Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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• 1:32Speaker 03

  Special Operations.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  Coburn Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 1:52Jack Murphy?

  Hey everyone, this is episode 345 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy and I'm here with our guest today, Kevin McDonald. He's the author of A Life Less Ordinary. Kevin served in the Irish Ranger Wing and then continued with his military career, involved in a lot of peacekeeping operations in the Golan Heights, in Lebanon, and then later in places in Africa. And he's joining us tonight from the warm-ish South Sudan.

• 2:26Speaker 05

  Yep, newest country in the world.

• 2:29Jack Murphy?

  Yes. So, you know, thank you for joining us, Kevin. You're the first Irish Ranger we've had on the show and I'm excited to do this interview with you.

• 2:40Speaker 05

  I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for having me.

• 2:43Jack Murphy?

  Kevin, you'd mentioned that you'd like to throw out a little disclaimer before we get started.

• 2:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think it's important by nature, the fact that what we'll probably most likely be discussing is first of all, that I don't want anyone to think that any views I may express can be seen as the views of a retired senior officer in the Irish Defence Forces. They're my personal views. And likewise, any of the views I express cannot be construed or seen as the views of someone who's working in the United Nations. These are entirely my personal views and, you know, please take them at that value.

• 3:22Jack Murphy?

  Thank you, Kevin. So, let's start off talking a little bit about growing up in Ireland. And you had some pretty amusing stories about being a young man and getting into some things, including the military, way younger than you should have. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

• 3:41Speaker 05

  So, yeah, in the Irish Defence Forces, we have a thing called the Army Reserve, which... It's probably not anything like your National Guard, but you would do maybe two or three weekends training a month and then every summer a two or three week military training camp. And the town I grew up in, there was a, I suppose the equivalent of a National Guard barracks, so it wasn't, it wasn't a permanent military post, but, but there was, it was this place for, for our reserve. And one of the units that was in it was a cavalry

• 4:21Speaker 05

  unit. And they had armored cars, motorbikes and all that sort of stuff. And, and to be a trooper in a, in a cavalry unit, you had to be able to operate the radios of an armored car, drive an armored car and operate the guns of an armored car. So when I was in, in school, we, and there was a small range in the barracks and you could hear the gunfire and then during the summer you'd see these guys going out on, on exercises. And it was the only place I wanted to be. So I, let's just say I was creative with my birth certificate because you were supposed to be seventeen before you joined. I think I was just over

• 5:01Speaker 05

  fourteen because I know I had a military licence to drive Land Rovers, trucks and motorbikes before I was legally old enough to drive on, on the, on the road. But it, it was marvelous. And, and, you know, it, it was a great opportunity for, for young people like myself to, to get a sense of, you know, duty, responsibility. Plus, we got paid when we were on, on our two week camp. We got, it was a nice, nice bit of money at, at, at the time. So I, I spent seven years with the reserve before I, I joined the, the permanent Defence Forces.

• 5:39Jack Murphy?

  The, the other thing that you had going on around this timeframe was you worked at a car dealership selling cars before you were old enough to drive.

• 5:50Speaker 05

  Well, I I didn't exactly, I wasn't a salesman. What what I did was, would say if you had bought a new Ford and the shock absorber went, you'd bring it back to the garage. And then I would make a claim on Ford for the for for this Ford garage to recoup the costs. So I I was a warranty assessor in a Ford garage, but um although I did manage to buy a few cars and sell them privately before I was old enough to drive and before I had insurance. But that was that was like a like a nixer, as we'd say in Ireland, that was like something on the side.

• 6:26Jack Murphy?

  And then, I mean, it sounds like you were, you know, getting into the army, having a hell of a lot of fun as a young guy. And you even got to play a soldier in a historical war film that was made. Uh, you want to tell any any amusing stories about that? You had a couple in there that I thought were pretty good.

• 6:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, so so there was um there was a uh a book written about the seventeen ninety eight. Um, I suppose French invasion of Ireland to support the Catholics against the excuse me, against the um the British Army and um they they landed in the west coast of Ireland in a very obscure spot. And um then they were quite successful initially and they were marching on the town where I was born, which is a town called Castlebar. And the British Army had deployed on the route they expected them to take. But the French and the Irish kind of came in from the flank. And uh there was a bit of a rout.

• 7:28Speaker 05

  Uh, and the British soldiers ran away. It became known as the Races of Castlebar. Um, which was the last victory that the French and Irish had because a few weeks later they were destroyed in in the Battle of Ballinamuck. But anyway, our our national TV company decided that they would make a film of this. And uh naturally enough, for all the the military battles, it was much easier to use the likes of us in the reserve that at least knew how to march and carry a weapon and and and that that sort of stuff. But they they they had contacted um a crowd of reenactors from the UK. And we were working with genuine muskets and genuine cannons. Um, but uh the

• 8:12Speaker 05

  Ironically, the British Army unit that my guys, my friends of mine, were tasked with being part of was a unit called Fraser's Fencibles, which was a Scottish regiment. So we had red coats and kilts, and for some reason I was put in charge. So I had a sword. And when we were, when we were filming the scene for the, the races of Castlebar, the idea was that there was like a valley like that. And we would, we're supposed to march down, line up in a straight line. And then over the following hill would come these hordes of Irish peasants and, and, and French soldiers.

• 8:53Speaker 05

  And I was to give the order to fire a volley and then slowly start shooting backwards. And this guy was to die here and this guy was to die here. And, and that was kind of the plan. And it was a small little railway for the TV camera, which would be on my right hand side. So it kind of went to start according to plan, as most things do. But however, the, the Irish peasants and the French soldiers were a bit more enthusiastic in attacking us than, let's say, we were expecting. And one of the key characters in the film, he was a famous Irish actor. Um, and he was playing the poet, the part of an Irish poet who had gathered a load of supporters

• 9:35Speaker 05

  to support the French. And he had a twelve foot pike with a big, sharp, pointy thing at the end. So he was full of the joys of getting into his role. And I'm here with like a three foot sword. And this wasn't scripted, this wasn't supposed to happen. But he started jabbing at me with the sword, with the pike. And I was trying to sword fight

• 9:59Speaker 05

  with the pike with a three foot sword, which wasn't exactly a, a very even contest. But I was conscious of, on my right was the camera on the little railway line filming all of this.

• 10:13Speaker 05

  So every time he jabs at me, I'd kind of put up my sword like that and I'd say, fuck off. Oh, sorry. I don't know if I can use language like that.

• 10:21Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's okay.

• 10:23Speaker 05

  But and and he like this was going on for a good while and eventually I said, will you stop or you'll fucking kill me? So I I had to die before I was actually killed. He was that enthusiastic about it. But that that that was great time because we were called up on military service. So we were getting paid by the army and the film company was paying us as well. So like and and and the catering on the on the site was really good. Plus, it was near an old town that had a few nice bars. So anytime there was a break in filming, you could have a British soldier, a French soldier, an Irish peasant and a Scottish soldier.

• 11:05Speaker 05

  Forcing Guinness into us and eventually the director, come on, quick, you're needed back. But it was great. It was really good.

• 11:13Jack Murphy?

  Then tell us about sort of your first exposure to the Irish Ranger Regiment and and kind of how this idea came to mind for you.

• 11:21Speaker 05

  Okay, so this this was unusual because in in that reserve unit I was in. For a short space of time, our commanding officer.

• 11:32Speaker 05

  He was eventually moved to form the Army Ranger Wing, which is our, for your visitor or for your listeners. This is our soft unit. And this would have been in nineteen eighty-three or eighty-four or something like that. And so the units had just been formed and he decided he'd. He'd run a course of experienced NCOs and officers that would be, after a four-week course, would be judged suitable if they passed. To instruct on selection for special forces.

• 12:09Speaker 05

  So not too far away from from the town where where I was living. Is one of, there's a vast expanse of open moorland and mountains. And it's probably the last place in Ireland that that's still kind of really desolate and and uninhabited.

• 12:27Speaker 05

  So he decided that he would

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• 14:26Speaker 05

  Use us, our unit, as the story, the scenario, was that these would-be Ranger instructors were a sort of a breakaway unit from the Irish Army, and they were operating independently. And we had to go and find them. So we were patrolling by day and we had set up a sort of a base camp in the woods. Now, we hadn't a clue how to set up a proper base camp. But we were looking for them and they were looking for us and this went on for nearly a week. And we'd been kind of briefed that, you know, no, nothing, nothing will happen to you naturally.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  And then one, one afternoon, there was about six stun grenades came flying into our little camp. And we'd never seen or heard stun grenades before. And, you know, they're, they're quite impressive if you haven't experienced them. But I hid under a truck. And all the guys were, were tied up and questioned and, you know. And we were told, you know, give your name, rank and serial number, as usual. But of course, these guys wanted a bit more information as to who we were and who was our boss and all that kind of stuff. So I was trying to figure out the inner patrolling of these guys and how I could make my escape during darkness.

• 15:48Speaker 05

  And the next thing, my two legs were pulled out from under, from behind me, dragged out from under the truck, thrown into a stream. And who are you and what are you doing and blah, blah, blah. And then about maybe twenty minutes later, the commanding officer of the army range, we came in and said, index. And these guys changed from being like raven lunatics to, hey, how's it going? It was, it was amazing. But subsequently, when I joined the unit, I was on my own ranger instructors course. And I remember going through the same forest at night, we were heading for a naval pickup off the coast.

• 16:28Speaker 05

  And I was going, Jesus, only about four years I was here. I wasn't even, I was in the reserve and I'm on the same place, on the same type of course that we were interacting with back then. So, yeah, that, that was, that was a bit, and we were the first Irish army unit, whether, whether permanent or whatever, to, to train with the ARW. So it was, it was, it was a huge honour for us. And obviously, after having experienced that, there was only one place I was going when I got a chance and that was to go for selection.

• 16:59Jack Murphy?

  And, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but before you went to selection, you did, uh, your first trip over to Lebanon, right, in eighty-four?

• 17:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, uh, I.

• 17:10Speaker 05

  You can't sort of enlist in special forces, I'm sure like yourselves, you have to kind of go through regular training and ideally have an overseas trip under your belt.

• 17:22Speaker 05

  So I did, I joined an infantry battalion up on the border and after basic training, which is six weeks, then there's two to three star training, which is like another eight weeks. You're like a fully qualified private.

• 17:37Speaker 05

  And I was assigned to support company. And we had, you know, the fifty cal's and eighty one millimeter mortars. And I remember

• 17:49Speaker 05

  before I get around to going overseas, there's just a funny incident took place. We were training before we fired live rounds from the eighty ones. We were training, there was a big field in front of our base. And we had these inert rounds, but you still put the charges over the fins. So they go about three hundred feet in the air and maybe a hundred and fifty meters out.

• 18:12Speaker 05

  So we'd fire maybe three bombs from two guns. But then you'd spend probably an hour trying to find, because when they hit the ground, they'd go down about a foot.

• 18:23Speaker 05

  So in, at that time in Ireland, there was a sort of a disciplinary action called confined to barracks. So we'll say if you were late for parade or whatever. So this guy was on what we call a CB. So therefore he's liable to be tasked with anything. So one of our instructors, okay, private, come over here. Get a few twigs, stand under that tree. And every time a bomb comes, run out and place the twig, which, you know, sounded great. And of course, this guy started getting brave. And at one stage, just as the bombs went off, he ran out into the field like that.

• 19:03Speaker 05

  The next thing, there's two eighty one millimeter bombs coming down, not like he would have been killed stone dead. Anyway, I digress. But yeah, I went overseas, I was about a year in the army. Uh, went overseas as a private to Lebanon in nineteen eighty four. Um, I was promoted acting corporal after a month. Um, and at that stage, the, the Israelis were, were withdrawing from their siege of Beirut. Um, so it, it was, it was tense enough. There was a lot of stuff happening. Um, and I remember we, we would monitor all their patrols, which we were obliged to do.

• 19:46Speaker 05

  Um, and some of us got the great idea that we would, we would talk in, in Gaelic.

• 19:54Speaker 05

  Like, we, we'd say on, on, on the, on the radio, fakir nesaid, nesaid jori shinn, uh, or tave nebalia. Like, look at those soldiers beside the town. And we, we thought this was great, you know, on, on to the one stage, this, this broad Irish accent came up on the net and I didn't recognize it. And he goes, bukile na bie can't Gaelic, so lads, don't be talking Irish. So it, it was an Irish, an Irish Jew who was doing his national service in Israel, monitoring the, the communications of the Irish. Uh, we, we thought this was, well, could have kind of understand it. But I remember talking to a few Swedes and Finns and they were experiencing the same thing.

• 20:36Speaker 05

  There was Finnish Jews and Norwegian Jews specifically listening on, on the communication chatter. Um, so yeah, that, that was, yeah, that, that was kind of interesting.

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• 23:19Jack Murphy?

  So, talk to us about, you know, getting back home and applying for the Irish Ranger Wing and what the selection process was like.

• 23:28Speaker 05

  Well, actually, I should have said before I went overseas, at that stage, each brigade, although they were known as commands at the time, but each brigade was entitled to run what they call a basic ranger course. So it's four weeks, and if you pass this, you can wear the ranger tab. But we'll say if you're in the unit, there's a ranger tab with a red background. This was just like a standard ranger tab. So I had actually, I had completed that before I went overseas. So I had some idea of A, what to expect, and B, what my capabilities were. So I went down on selection, and at the time, not every

• 24:13Speaker 05

  commanding officer would recommend you for selection, because generally, the guys going for selection were probably some of his best troops, and he was being left with the problem children, shall we say. So the Chief of Staff issued a directive that anyone that applied for selection, their application had to reach the OC Army Arrangement, even if it was a non-recommendation, he still had to get it, and he would just pull them in. So I went down there. We started on a Sunday afternoon with about fifty-eight guys. There

• 24:52Speaker 05

  was eleven gone by the next morning. And four weeks later, we finished with, I think we finished with twelve, of which ten of us were taken in. So fairly high attrition rate. But it was great. I spent four very good, very interesting, very tough years there. And I'm still friends with, you know, the guys that I had trained with, and guys I subsequently trained.

• 25:21Jack Murphy?

  The selection course must have been, and I just imagine the weather in Ireland, especially during the winter, does that have any sort of impact on that attrition rate?

• 25:32Speaker 05

  It does, yeah. And certainly the standard equipment that we were issued with at the time was really bad. Like, you know, the kind of plastic rain gear that squeaks and has no breathability. We had standard issue boots. It wasn't until I got into the unit that I started wearing Gore-Tex rain gear and Gore-Tex boots and stuff like that. But, and plus, we were using at that stage, the, I don't know if you're familiar with the British webbing, but there's a thing called the 58, 1958 pattern webbing. And your pack was about sort of that size by that. And into that you had to put everything in, you know, you'd then pooches for magazines

• 26:17Speaker 05

  and all. But they certainly weren't designed for holding a lot of gear for, let's say, a week out in the mountains or whatever. But I know it was good. It was physically very tough.

• 26:34Speaker 05

  But what I found, and subsequently when I started to instruct on selection courses myself, that if you're not prepared mentally, it doesn't matter how fit you are. If your head starts going, then it's very easy to start coming up with injuries, if you know what I mean. Because I know certainly when subsequently when I used to instruct on courses, I tended to be the guy that didn't shout too much. But when I did, to kind of knew it was serious. But I often found, you know, if you, if there was, would you say there was inspection? And you came up behind someone and you just whispered in his ear, "Should I be seeing this

• 27:15Speaker 05

  shit?" That sometimes had a more devastating effect than if I stood in front of him and did a complete bollocking of him. You know, it, and you know yourself, we play with people's minds when we're testing their suitability for soft. So, yeah, it was good.

• 27:34Jack Murphy?

  And then there was a pretty extensive training course after you finished selection, both doing the subsurface stuff and parachute course, all of that. I mean, can you talk us through a little bit of that?

• 27:49Speaker 05

  Okay, so first of all, everyone in the unit has to be jump qualified, static line qualified. So when the course came up, the next course that came up, which I would have been going on, I was on leave when it was started. It was a three-week course. It was either two weeks or three weeks, relatively short. But I came back and I had already privately done a jump in the UK. So they reckoned I had some experience. So I was brought in for the last week of the course, and you have to have five jumps to get your wings. So I did the first three or

• 28:32Speaker 05

  four jumps, and there was two expressions that the that the jump master could, essentially it was assessed in the plane, and you had to sit in the doorway. And then when the pilot throttled back a bit, you reached out onto the strut and grabbed the handle, and then stood out onto a plate above the wheel, and then off you went. But the jump masters, they had two terms which I became quite familiar with. One was AOT, arse over tit, and the other was BOAS, abolish it. So the wing ceremony was on a Friday at lunchtime, and the winds had picked up. So the chief instructor said to one of the jump masters,

• 29:15Speaker 05

  he said, what's Mac like when he's jumping? And he said, he's either AOT or BOAS exiting the plane. But can he land? Oh, jeez, he can land. No problem. So anyway, the small little military airstrip was not alone beside the main Dublin Belfast railway line, but on the other side of the main Dublin Belfast railway line was the sea.

• 29:43Speaker 05

  Anyway, they took a chance and because I was the only one to get that needed the fifth jump to have the graduation ceremony. So they dropped me, I'm not sure, far over the sea. So I'm sort of running with the wind and then in the middle of this huge grass airfield, there was obviously the the tarmac Adam runway. And the next thing I thought, right, I'm going to hit the runway. So I turned back into the wind, then ran with the wind and ended up on the ground like a bag of cement. And I'm lying on the ground going, yes, yes, I got my wings and the shoes inflated. I'm being pulled down the field.

• 30:25Speaker 05

  I took it up and run around and jump on it, but I didn't mind. I got my wings and never darkened the door of parachuting again because my my speciality was was diving and fast boats and ribs and stuff like that. But it was, well, I didn't have a choice. Everyone had to do it, so I didn't have a choice. But, yeah, my my my home was underwater rather than any place else.

• 30:47Jack Murphy?

  It's the, yeah, the the dive course that you went through sounded pretty hellacious. You're talking about how like you guys had to like pull yourselves over a guide rope at the bottom of the sea.

• 30:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, so what what so the we were trained by the Irish Navy. And they trained their drivers in six weeks and they have to have three and a half thousand minutes down.

• 31:12Speaker 05

  But they decided that they would train us in three weeks, but we still had to have three and a half minutes down. So we we used to start in the morning. There's a an Irish Navy term called an awkward, which essentially is a fast dress. So we'd say if something wraps around the ship's prop and you have to get in the water quickly. So at about seven o'clock on a winter's morning, we'd be in the little dive bait. With just our swimming tops and all your gear laid out and the guy would blow the whistle and we'd two and a half minutes to have everything and this was all like neoprene long johns, neoprene top, neoprene booties, all that kind of stuff. And and there was, I think, eight of us on the course. And invariably, someone would miss the the two and a half minute uh test time.

• 31:58Speaker 05

  So we would have to get out, run to the end of a fifty meter pier, jump into the tide and swim back. Uh, this is like seven thirty on a winter's morning into into the the Irish Sea. Um, or the Atlantic, I should say, but um it it certainly did wonders for your front crawl, I can tell you that. But to to build up what they call your endurance, in other words, the amount of time that you can get from a single, what we used to call a set, but like a a bottle. And we had to do these circuits on what was known as a jack stay, so it's it's a hawser cable. And it might go out for, I don't know, hundred and fifty metres and then it would hit a kind of a weight and then you go this way and then come back.

• 32:44Speaker 05

  And all, at the time, all navy diving. Uh, you weren't just buddied, but you were physically buddied. So on my right arm, I'd have a thing tied on and I'd have a metre of cord with a clip. And my buddy on his left arm would have the same, so that even if you're in black visibility, excuse me, you can send signals through tugs and pulls, giving a rough idea of of um what was going on. And of course, because we were soft, uh, they wouldn't let us wear neoprene gloves. So generally, what had happened is one guy would be on the jack stay and the other guy would be two metres above him,

• 33:28Speaker 05

  still connected, because when you're on the jack stay, you can see nothing because you're you're stirring up all this muck and stuff. And because it's an Ireland hawser cable, there's always bits of wire sticking out, so you'd end up. Now, of course, you wouldn't feel it when you're underwater because your hands are nearly numb. But after one particular storm, we went out and um.

• 33:51Speaker 05

  I was on, I was on the Jackstall, my buddy was, as I said, probably two metres above me. And as I was coming to where the, where I knew there was an anchor to join to the next cable. I noticed the cable started rising, and I thought, that's a bit fucking strange. So the next thing, my cable, my personal cord, got caught in a kink in the, the Irdan cable. And I'm trying to get my knife out of my leg to cut it, even though cutting, cutting your buddy cord is, is very frowned upon in the Navy. So my buddy comes down and he was kind of going, what's going on? And I showed him where the cord was stuck, and I was explaining, I, I can't move my fingers.

• 34:36Speaker 05

  So then, the next thing, he shows me his contents gauge, which was nearly in the red. And I held up mine and I looked at it, and I was in the red, so we had no choice. So he cut the cable. Cut, cut the cord, and, and grabbed me. And he came up and it was like escal, escalibur. The first thing that broke the surface was the hand with, with, with the dagger. Um, needless to say, our Navy instructors weren't too, too impressed. Um, but one of the things that, one of the do or die things that we had to do on that course. Was the, the Navy base is on an island and there's a huge bridge connecting the mainland to the island. So at low tide, you had to jump off this bridge.

• 35:19Speaker 05

  And I remember before I, I started the course, I was talking to a mate of mine who had completed the previous one. And I said, what's the jump off the bridge like? And this guy had a very broad Dublin accent and he goes. Jesus, you'll fucking jump and you'll fucking scream and halfway down you'll take a breath and you'll fucking scream again. And it kind of was like that and it was, it was, I don't know, it was, it was, it was really, really big. And you, you were in your wetsuit and you had your fins tucked under your arm. But you had to kind of enter, enter with your feet tucked together slightly bent, arms in like that.

• 35:59Speaker 05

  And, and more than my exit from, from the sessna, my exit from the top of the bridge wasn't exactly. I invariably had my hands out like that, but at the end of the evening, you had bruises, like through the knee and pain, you'd be all bruised. Well, I would because I, I kind of wasn't doing it technically that right. Um. But it was good and I thoroughly enjoyed and of course we had fast boats as well, which kind of added to the to the to the whole benefit of it. We initially had twin Yamaha 50s and these were 5.4 metre ribs and the Yamahas weren't great. So we decided that

• 36:41Speaker 05

  we would purchase a single 120, Johnson 120 for each boat. And I, the CO was asking me, he said, Mac, how do you want to test these new engines? And I said, let's drive them to the UK. I didn't really know, but I thought it'd be something interesting to do. And of course, he said, do you not think the the British military might have a certain view of Irish Special Forces entering their territorial waters? I said, okay. So we tested them another way. But every year, the unit would have what was known as a summer camp, where we'd kind of go away en masse to some place. And it was like, to be, we say, if you weren't

• 37:25Speaker 05

  a diver, you could you could try out diving, you could try out rock climbing, whatever. But the adjacent to this place are some of the highest sea cliffs in Europe, called the Cliffs of Moher, really, really dramatic. So the CO said, can we go over and drive over and kind of look at the bottom of them? So we had two boats and we had about, I don't know, maybe eight guys in each boat. And the rib I had, it's this kind of a straddle at sea. So you're sitting and the steering wheel is kind of down nearly at your knees. And the CO was sitting behind me. So we drove around and the sea was nice and calm. And I literally popped the

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• 39:34Speaker 05

  Bow of the rib against the base that lifts them over and you could just look off for three or four hundred feet. It's really impressive. But I kind of started feeling the swell building up. So I said to the other cocks, I said, let's, let's go because you could see, like, it wasn't huge waves at that stage, but you could tell by the way they were building, it was going to get worse. So we had started heading back towards where we thought we could recover the boats. And the waves were getting really big at this stage. So I looked to my right and the next thing, he went off a wave, went up and pirouette it. And the boat came down, upside down, and all eight guys into the tide. So

• 40:19Speaker 05

  I decided I wasn't going to try and go for a harbor. I was going to beach it because the next wave was coming from me. So I said to everyone, hold on. And I went gunning for the beach. And we had a tilt mechanism where we could tilt the engine if we're coming into shallow water. So I was getting ready to do that. And there was an almighty crash. And I thought I had flipped the boat as well. There was that much water had come down on us. But the wave had crashed over us. So I, about three seconds, spun the boat around and headed for the sea, shouting at four of the lads to run up onto the bow. So we hit the next wind and the boat went up vertical. So I'm holding the steering wheel this way.

• 41:02Speaker 05

  The commanding officer is holding on to my chest with his legs hanging in the wind. And as it went up, I thought, Jesus, I'm going to kill people here. And then as I'm coming down, I'm thinking, I have a new Johnson one twenty horsepower engine on the back. That's two weeks old. I'm going to bury it into the sand. Um, but I, I, I, I didn't, and I managed to get the boat out. Um, but needless, needless to say, the other cocks got a fair amount of abuse heard at him for having flipped the boat. But we recovered that one as well.

• 41:34Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm amazed you guys all made it out of there alive.

• 41:38Speaker 05

  Oh, well, we did. Yeah, yeah, we did. There was a few cuts and bruises, but you know, you're sort of used to that.

• 41:44Jack Murphy?

  Uh, this would actually be a good time to ask you, you know, what is the, the mission of the Irish Rangers? You're kind of taking us through this training and some of these capabilities. Um, but at this time, what was the unit's actual, uh, purpose?

• 41:58Speaker 05

  Okay, so, um, like, like most SOF units, we had a, a green role and a, and a black role. So black role would be counterterrorism, um, uh, dealing with hijacking of planes and trains and, and, and, and buildings. Um, and then the green role would be your standard military sniping, long range patrols, ambush and that kind of stuff.

• 42:22Speaker 05

  Um, and we,

• 42:26Speaker 05

  because the unit was only founded in, in, in the early eighties, so this, this was still in the eighties. So it, it, we were, in a lot of cases, we were, we were finding our way. Um, like certainly the, the initial instructors had trained in the US. Um, but a lot of the stuff like tech, for instance, we had gas rigs. And we had to develop our own concepts on, um, on how to take a rig. Uh, and certainly, you know, like we say, doing combat swims for a mile out, uh, hitting the. A hitting the rig, which is difficult enough at night, let me tell you, and then setting up a line between two legs.

• 43:06Speaker 05

  So you could hook your stuff on and then go up the legs of the rig and and carry out whatever you're supposed to do. And and in in high seas, you know, like on on the the legs of these rigs, uh, there there was. Uh, like hole holes, I suppose we want to be better word, uh, but sometimes they weren't there. And, you know, you could get hit by a wave and then when the wave recedes, you could be three metres off the tide. And so a lot of the stuff we we had to kind of, I suppose, figure out for ourselves what the the most efficient way of doing it. And and I mean, like the guys there, well, those those two rigs are no longer with us.

• 43:48Speaker 05

  But um, in terms of um, you know, doing assaults on on moving ships and all that kind of stuff, the guys there now are extremely skilled and. You know, they're they're they've gone on to rebreathers and stuff like that, which we never had at the time. Um, but it it it was very much, um, it was the kind of unit, and I'm I'm sure it's the same with you guys as well. That, um, if you had an idea, everyone was open to hearing about it. It wasn't that, you know. You know, if you're a a young corporate, how could you have an idea? Ev- everyone who who had a thought about a particular thing, whether it was a house assault, whether it was a train assault. Whether it was the rigs, whether whatever, um.

• 44:34Speaker 05

  People would listen to you and, you know, if if if people, if everyone thought, well, let's try that. Um, so it it it was, I found it was a very good place where where people could express themselves. Um, and I know, like, at at at one stage. There's a, there's a special rig for the, the HK. Uh, but, uh, I remember like sometimes it, it didn't suit, especially with, with, with assaulting. Uh, it needed to be too loose or, or whatever. But this guy got the bright idea, he dispensed with the official Heckler and Koch rig. And he used a bungee cord on either, either side of the MP5. So when you needed your hands free, it was tight against your chest.

• 45:19Speaker 05

  And when you needed to move it, you just pulled it out and then it came back in again. Uh, and I thought that was completely great innovation, like it was, it, it, it is, it, it, it was amazing. And I know at, at the time, um, we were supposed to be the best in the Irish Defence Forces at navigation. Um, and at the time we were using half inch to one mile maps, which are not the easiest maps to navigate on. Um, and I would say privately, I went off and I did, um, a certificate in adventure, adventure education, because I was, I was passionate about mountaineering and, and stuff like that. Um, and I remember the boss saying to me one day, he said, Mac, what are the, what are the civvies like in the hills?

• 46:02Speaker 05

  And I said, to my opinion, most of the civvies I deal with, uh, their navigation will be at least as good as 50% of this unit and way better than the rest of the army. And, uh, I remember one day I, I was taken in a, a navigation class for our own guys. And we're up in the hills in a, a kind of a long valley with steep sides on either side. And I was saying to the guys, I said, okay, right, we'll just say the, the mist comes down, slash and rain. You know, you're in a valley, but, and you know, you're facing A side.

• 46:39Speaker 05

  How will you figure out which side you're on? Because maybe if you go up the south, southern side, there's crags at the top and you could fall off. And I said, just what basic equipment that you have with you, what, what's, what can you do?

• 46:52Speaker 05

  And they were kind of going, uh, I don't really know. And I said, look, take out your compass, take a bearing up that slope, transfer it to the map. And then that'll tell you whether it's the north, south or east side.

• 47:07Speaker 05

  And these guys, these were hard ranges. They thought I was a god. I was bringing in different techniques from civilian mountaineering and especially with setting up belays and climbing. Like at the time, I don't know if you're familiar with climbing, presumably you are.

• 47:22Jack Murphy?

  Not really.

• 47:23Speaker 05

  At the time, well, so at the time, if you were setting up a three-point belay, you tie a figure of eight in the rope. You'd bring it out, then you'd bring it back to the second point, another figure of eight. Then bring it out, bring it back to the third, another figure of eight. And then a massive big figure of eight to equalize the three points. At which stage your rope was nearly gone. And I was just bringing back in new techniques that just made it much more simpler to to set up belays and be much more efficient. And the unit was very open to that.

• 47:56Speaker 05

  And it was like a lot of guys went off and did kind of did extra free fall in their own time with civilian clubs. And they were bringing back techniques for parachuting as well. So it was very much, you know, if you've got an idea, let's hear it and let's see if it's any good, which was, which was, which was great.

• 48:15Jack Murphy?

  And the other interesting thing before we get into some of the overseas stuff is you guys did operations domestically in Ireland. This was during the troubles. Could you tell us a little bit about that, about the recce missions and counterterrorism missions that you guys did?

• 48:37Speaker 05

  We did, we did a few.

• 48:40Speaker 05

  I know one of them, we, there was fairly credible information that an IRA training camp would be, would take part in a certain part of the wood and a certain part of the northern part of our country, shall we say.

• 48:57Speaker 05

  And I remember doing the initial close target recce on it.

• 49:02Speaker 05

  And finding a few AK-47 casings.

• 49:06Speaker 05

  So we knew this clearing had been used before. I also noted that whenever they had finished firing, they turned around and did a 360 into the woods because I could see where the, where branches had been chipped away. Which tends to focus the brain when you're, when you're putting in a few OPs on that, on that site.

• 49:30Speaker 05

  Now.

• 49:32Speaker 05

  Nothing really happened on that particular one, but there was another case where, again, similar kind of credible information, where a meeting was to take place at a certain track junction in a forest, and from there they would proceed on to do whatever they were going to do. So we had, and if you can imagine, a forest track kind of comes uphill this way and then takes a sharp bend and goes back that way. So we had three teams watching the, this, this place. And eventually after about, I don't know, seven, eight days, we were getting pulled out. Nothing had happened. And on the last day, we were just getting

• 50:13Speaker 05

  ready to sort of pack up, you know, when it was getting dusk. This car comes flying in on the low road, kind of screeches around the corner and goes up, there was two people in it, goes up the top road, disappears around the bend. And then there's doors opening and closing and there's a bit of shouting. And then the car comes slowly back down the way it came. And it was driven by a female. So she came down to the bend, turned around and was going down on the lower road. And the next thing, your man that had been in the car, starts running from, we'll say, the upper road to the low road, through the

• 50:55Speaker 05

  forest. He had stepped on two of our guys. And it was only when he stepped on the balls of the third guy that the forest erupted. You get your fucking hands up. So we called the, the police because they're the ones that have to make arrests and all that kind of stuff. But it, it turned out that this guy was teaching his girlfriend to drive, and he was explaining an emergency stop. And he said, you drive on slowly and at some stage I'll jump out in front of you. He didn't expect a lot of soft guys covered in black and green paint to be. Must have been shit and bricks.

• 51:37Speaker 05

  But yeah, we did, we did a few. And then, then like one of the bigger ones, one of the notorious terrorists at the time. Desi O'Hare. Desi O'Hare. We were involved in, in, in, in, in that. We.

• 52:01Speaker 05

  We're very close in the forest that the, we'd say the beds were still warm when, when we came in, but they had, they had gone out the other side. Um, and he was subsequently caught in a, in a checkpoint down near, near Kenny. Um, so yeah, that, that, that was, that was interesting. Um, and it, you know, it, it, it, it sort of makes you, it makes you think it's, it's certainly, it's, it's unlike, we'd say overseas service when, when, when you're looking at hardened criminals that weren't afraid of shooting at Irish policemen or killing Irish policemen and Irish soldiers.

• 52:38Speaker 05

  Um, it does certainly make you, um, make, make you think all the more about, about your, your, your skills and your drills and, and, and how to react to any, any given situation.

• 52:51Jack Murphy?

  And during that manhunt, uh, if I recall right, um, you guys lost a, a unit member, didn't you?

• 52:58Speaker 05

  We did, yeah, yeah, and that poor Kevin man got rest them. Um, which was like, we were a small unit, uh, and we had never reached, reached, uh, our full effective strength because there's no point in sacrificing quality for quantity. Um, so when this, this was like a nationwide manhunt. So we had, um, basically a platoon plus deployed up towards the border and another platoon plus further south. Um, and yeah, Kevin was killed tragically in a, in an accident, uh, in, in the, the military base in the current. And of course, when we got this news, cause obviously, you know, yourself, it, it, soft units tend to be fairly tight with each other.

• 53:44Speaker 05

  It was a big blow, but we still had to kind of stick with the mission.

• 53:48Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 05

  And, and, and try to, uh, kind of compartmentalize the grief until, uh, there was a time to, to, uh, to do it.

• 53:59Jack Murphy?

  On a letter note, let's talk a little bit about your interest in mountaineering, because your book is not just soldier stories, although there's a lot of those. Also, you talk about your experience in mountaineering, archaeology, and things like that. You mentioned that this was a passion for you. I mean, how did you get into climbing?

• 54:18Speaker 05

  And I suppose when I mentioned earlier that I did this certificate in adventure education, so I ended up spending a lot of time with civilians who were into all sorts of adventure sports, whether it's rock climbing, mountaineering, canoeing, diving, that sort of stuff.

• 54:43Speaker 05

  And, you know, obviously, being in the unit, I had to be very qualified in abseiling and setting up abseils and rope access and that kind of stuff. Climbing, not so much so, but I ended up being extremely passionate, not just about, we'll say, classical mountaineering, but in full-on rock climbing where, and I suppose, maybe for your listeners that maybe don't have never tried rock climbing, the best way I can describe it is if you're, we'll say, playing soccer for your local town team, and you score the winning goal in the local cup, it's a great achievement, but we'll

• 55:28Speaker 05

  say it's not, we'll say, the same as scoring the winning goal in, I suppose, your state championship, and it's certainly not the same as scoring the winning goal for America in the World Cup. You know, there are different levels of kind of achievement, but if you take something like rock climbing, and you have a cliff that's 100 yards wide and 100 feet tall, and on the right-hand side of the cliff is the hardest climb in the world, and on the left-hand side of the cliff is probably the easiest climb in the world, if a beginner starting here, if the best climber in the world is starting there, as they're climbing, they're both placing protection and clipping the rope in, they're both going through the exact same feelings of fear and anxiety, and when the two of them get to the top,

• 56:11Speaker 05

  it's the exact same feeling of exhilaration that you get. So no matter what stage you participate in rock climbing. The thrills and the dangers are the exact same. So therefore, the sense of achievement when you get there, I've always found are the exact same.

• 56:29Jack Murphy?

  That's interesting. I never heard anyone put it that way before.

• 56:33Speaker 05

  It's the Irish way of explaining it.

• 56:35Jack Murphy?

  No, it's a great way to explain it. And you got to, did you get to name a peak or a climb after your, because you were the first one to do it?

• 56:46Speaker 05

  Okay, so in rock climbing, I ended up being quite friendly with one of the best rock climbers at the time, a guy called Tom Ryan, who passed away subsequently, God rest him. But we used to go to the sea cliffs on the west coast of Mayo, which is kind of on the central part of the country.

• 57:08Speaker 05

  So if you find a route and lead it, you decide the grade and you give it a name. And then kind of henceforth, the name would be First Ascend Kevin McDonald with Tom Ryan or vice versa, whatever. And the name is whatever. And when you look at a rock climbing guide, it'll tell you that this climb is graded at this difficulty. First ascent was made by Kevin McDonald and Tom Ryan and the name of it. So yeah, that's kind of another interesting thing about rock climbing. Your name kind of lives on if you're the first person to make that particular climb.

• 57:48Jack Murphy?

  And then you went to the dark side and became an officer?

• 57:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, I did. It's kind of strange. So when I spent five years in the SF, I was getting tired of sort of living out of a bag, essentially. And I didn't want to go to a standard.

• 58:15Speaker 05

  Unit where I knew I'd get flagged because of all the courses I had done. And an opportunity came up in the unit I originally was in as a reserve. There was an opportunity for a training sergeant.

• 58:29Speaker 05

  And I thought, right, I'll apply for that. And that will give me great scope to really get into high level mountaineering. Because I knew I wouldn't be that challenged looking after a bunch of eager reservists. So I did, and I have to say, after about a year, I was beginning to get a bit twitchy. And then the Irish Defence Forces decided that they would run a course to commission suitably qualified NCOs from the ranks. And this doesn't happen that often. So this was in nineteen ninety one.

• 59:05Speaker 05

  And this would have been the seventh potential officer course ran in the Defence Forces since the army was founded in nineteen twenty one. Wow. And the difference for this one, which kind of made it appeal to me, was the previous six was they selected people with skills in A and Q. And they kind of put them in as adjutants and battalion Q M's and stuff like that. And more or less specifically not giving them operational roles where we were told we would be standard platoon commanders.

• 59:39Speaker 05

  So, yeah, yeah, I jumped into the dark side and it was good. It was interesting. I ended up in a lot more places than I would have ended up in as a as an NCO.

• 59:54Speaker 05

  One interesting, sorry, what? No, go ahead, Kevin. Okay, well, I was just just going to tell you the story that just because I went to the dark side, I didn't lose my mad streak.

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  There's a high, there's a high security prison in Ireland called Port Leish. And the inner part of the prison is the old.

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  British prison from when when they were running the country. And and this is where the generally we had two platoons in at the time. So you you would do a three day stint, nine hours, nine hours, nine on, nine off for three days and then go out for three, back in for three. And you would do three months of that. So I was the platoon commander for the the battalion I was in. And normally, I don't know if if you have something similar in in in the the US Army. But before you go on on, let's say, guard duty, you have to be what's known as mounted. So in other words, you line up, the officer checks that there's nothing in the breach and then you you fit a charge magazine.

• 1:00:57Speaker 05

  And it's kind of, it's kind of a bit of an old habit. So anyway, I was waiting for my platoon to form up and I was looking at the at the wall, the the original wall of the of the prison, which was made of of limestone. And I was kind of looking at it, thinking, I wonder, could I could I climb that? So one of the one of the the privates that knew me from my sporting experience with the with the pentathlon team. He said, sir, come away from it, you wouldn't even get off the ground. Because he knew I was a rock climber. And he had the whole platoon listening to him. And I said, that right, would you like to put a little wager on that? He said, I bet you you wouldn't get three metres off the ground.

• 1:01:42Speaker 05

  And the the whole thing was probably, it was at least ten metres, probably twelve metres, was tall one. I said, right, I'll I'll double your bet. And I'll get to within three metres of the top.

• 1:01:57Speaker 05

  So of course he's going, I have him, I have the officer. The next time I came back, I brought in my rock climbing shoes and and chalk. Because when you're when you're climbing on small holes, your your fingers get very sort of sweaty.

• 1:02:11Speaker 05

  So after a nine hour shift, I'd spend about forty minutes on on the wall trying to perfect these little holes where where the mortar had had come away and I'd get my fingers in. And after like forty minutes is about as much as you could do because you're kind of hanging balancing on the tips of your toes and on the tips of your fingers. But I'd always leave a little chalk mark to show that the high point. And of course, the lads would be saying to this guy, he's getting higher, you know, he's getting higher. So anyway, the the I I thought I'd figured out how I could do this kind of rising traverse. And I went past three metres, knew I'd won the bet. I went past two metres.

• 1:02:52Speaker 05

  And I knew I could make a lunge to the top, but I couldn't reverse it. So I'd have to kind of crawl along the top of the the wall to get into one of the guard posts. And everyone was going to know what was going on. So I I had this conversation between the mad side of my brain and and the calm side of my brain, about twenty feet off the ground, hanging like this. So eventually I reversed the climb and and thought no more about it. And about three months later, I was in a different barracks. And I was in the ostrich mess having a beer and a few other other guys come in and I was introduced to myself. And, oh, you're from the west, I said, yeah.

• 1:03:33Speaker 05

  Who's that guy that climbed up the wall in Porkley's prison, climbed down the far side, went into town, bought a pack of cigarettes and came up and reversed it? And I said, but it wasn't quite like that now.

• 1:03:43Jack Murphy?

  See, Kevin, that that's where that's where you screwed up. You were supposed to look them dead in the eye and say, that's exactly how it happened.

• 1:03:49Speaker 05

  But yeah, that was interesting.

• 1:03:56Jack Murphy?

  And then nineteen ninety three, you go back to Lebanon, this time as an officer.

• 1:04:06Speaker 05

  And that was interesting because I was in charge of recu section. So we had, we had two big C zoo armored cars, which I had to be qualified in as well. So I was out and about a lot, but it also coincided with.

• 1:04:24Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:04:39Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:04:50Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:04:55Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:05:01Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:05:21Speaker 11

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• 1:05:51Speaker 05

  A major seven day war between Israel and I suppose the people of Lebanon. At that stage, the Israelis had kind of withdrawn to what they called a security zone, which was essentially a 10 kilometer deep strip inside in Lebanon. And they had fortified positions on all the, on all the high ground. Plus they had the services of what we call the DFF, the de facto forces, and they're called the South Lebanese Army. So these were Lebanese that were armed and uniformed by the Israelis.

• 1:06:25Speaker 05

  And every fortnight, I suppose Hezbollah would attack the Israelis. But they had, they were effective enough, I have to say. And at one case, there was, there was an IDF blue on blue. And I think there was about four people, four IDF killed. So then they launched what they called Operation Accountability, which was a seven day, a seven day war essentially. But it was standoff. It was planes and tanks and artillery and naval gunships and stuff like that. But their stated aim was to create a huge refugee problem that might force the Lebanese government to take on Hezbollah.

• 1:07:11Speaker 05

  And of course, it didn't, it sort of drove people more into the arms of Hezbollah. But I remember at, at one stage, I was on the roof of a three story building, which was our company headquarters. And there was one five five artillery landing all over the place. And of course, each one of them is a violation, just as Katush is going into Israel is a violation. And we had to kind of record the locations of them all. And I saw this shell hit the village about a kilometre away. And it didn't explode, it ricocheted. And I could see it coming in my general direction. So I kind of threw myself down on the roof and then forgot about it because there was shit flying all over the place.

• 1:07:57Speaker 05

  And then we, we used to, for internal communications within, within the camp, we had these old like dial up phones. You know, the field telephone. Yeah, yeah. So I, I go roof. And this guy goes, sir, have you looked at your accommodation? So I looked over the roof and there's a big hole in the roof and the door is blown out. So I thought, okay, that's where the, the shell landed. Thought no more about it. So then five minutes later, roof. Sorry, you better look at the canteen. So I'm looking over and here at the steps to the canteen is an unexploded one five five shell.

• 1:08:33Speaker 05

  So I contacted battalion, they contacted the IDF. There's a liaison branch in, in UNIFIL that kind of does that stuff. So they agreed not to shell the road from battalion headquarters or to where we were for three hours to allow for one of our EOD guys to come out and, and deal with the, with the unexploded shell.

• 1:08:55Speaker 05

  So anyway, the, the, this, this captain rang me and he said, Kev, can you get about twenty or thirty sandbags or as many as you can? Because obviously when I, when I blow this, it'll do a bit of damage. And I have this marvelous picture of about six guys in flat jackets and helmets, ferrying sandbags towards the shell. And then across from them is another six guys with flat jackets and helmets, ferrying all the beer out of the canteen, because the canteen would be destroyed when your man blew the, blew the shell, which, which it kind of was. So we subsequently, when the war was over, we, we renamed it the 155 Club.

• 1:09:34Speaker 05

  And but the, the day after the ceasefire, um, I was going up to the village of, Brashish was the name of the village, to do a sort of a recce. And because there were so many unexploded shells, in fact, it was a policy of the IDF to fire 155 artillery shells without fuses. And they did more damage. So we say if a 155, as you, as you probably know yourself, when a 155 shell goes off, there's a crater, maybe a metre wide and half a metre deep, and loads of shrapnel. But if it doesn't explode, it could, could come down through a three storey concrete house, go into the garden and come up and land in the second story of the house next door. So you've destroyed one house. And if you do what you're supposed

• 1:10:18Speaker 05

  to do, which is blow the shell in situ, you've destroyed a second house. And this particular day, myself and this Swedish leftenant, who was a bomb disposal guy, we carried, I think, ten unexploded 155s out of houses. Yikes. And we had a, a small jeep and a, a trailer. So when we had, I think, 12 shells, we contacted battalion and said, right, we'll go down to this wadi, and we're going to blow them at this time. Because the Israelis had to be informed, because if they heard an explosion, they might think it's a, a breakdown of the ceasefire. So we're rattling

• 1:10:58Speaker 05

  down this narrow lane, and this lady comes screaming out of a house, and on the roof of her house was an unexploded shell, but this one had a fuse on it. And it had bounced from I don't know where and, and kind of landed. So the troops got up and looked at it and... I said, you know what, let's put two loops on a piece of rope, bring them together. We'll go over and get down behind the wall and pull. And so like as it's rolling, if it goes off, it it won't go off near us. So um. As as we're getting ready to pull on the rope, he said, you know, in Sweden, if my commanding officer sees this, I will be a civilian.

• 1:11:42Speaker 05

  I said, if my commanding officer hears of this, I'd be a civilian too. We didn't have a choice. So when when it when it's rolled up to the edge of the roof, and it was only like six feet from us, he goes up and he grabs it. And I I take off my flat jacket and I wrap it around the shell as if that's going, as if that's going to make any fucking difference. It just, it it seemed the right thing to do at the time. Like it's a baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, and so I I was back there in ninety six for another seven day war, um, Operation Graves of Wrath. Uh, and then I was there in two thousand and six with my family as an unarmed military observer. And I was there for thirty four days of complete butchery.

• 1:12:27Speaker 05

  Um, and we we had, uh, our unit of unarmed observers, we had a strength of fifty two. Um, and no, it it it was a family mission at the time. So my wife and kids were with me in in the. In Jerusalem, right? No, we we were in Tehran in Lebanon. We had been living in Tiberias when I was operating on the. Uh, but then I was transferred to Lebanon. Uh, so the kids were five and seven. Wow. Going to a local English speaking school. Everything was great. We had them in Beirut, Damascus, Amman, like Lebanon was hopping at the time and out of the blue. Um, I went off, I used to do a seven day patrol and come back for three or four days.

• 1:13:10Speaker 05

  So I went off on Tuesday morning for a seven day patrol, telling my wife, Claire, I'll, you know, I'll see you in seven days. And the next day the war kicked off and it took the UN, I think, two and a half weeks to evacuate the families. Mm hmm. We had, we had four bases along the frontier with Israel and one day had.

• 1:13:32Speaker 05

  Agreed, they basically hired a cruise liner from Cyprus and got it to come over and just stand offshore and send in lifeboats. So when this was being planned, any of the guys up on the patrol bases that had family, they were trying to prioritize an armored escort to get them down to say goodbye. But we were, I was, we were getting hammered with, with, with tank and artillery fire. Um, not direct, but like within fifteen, twenty metres.

• 1:13:59Jack Murphy?

  That's pretty direct.

• 1:14:02Speaker 05

  Well, for, for tanks it is, yeah.

• 1:14:05Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. Horseshoes and hand grenades, that's pretty close.

• 1:14:08Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, so I couldn't get out. So when my wife and two kids were getting into the lifeboat to bring them out to the cruise ship, I, I rang her on the phone and I said, I'll see you when I see you, which is not a great way now to, to end a family mission to the Middle East, let me tell you.

• 1:14:24Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:26Speaker 05

  The, along with, with Claire, there was a Canadian captain. She had her back broken when her armored car was shelled. And then in the next three days, we lost over ten percent of our strength. We had another captain shot in the back. He's now in a wheelchair. And then the Israelis dropped the JDAM into the post just up from me, killing four very good friends of mine. Um, and when you pick up, as you probably know yourself, when you pick up a friend of yours with no arms, no legs and no head and you're trying to figure out which one it is, it gives you certain feelings about, uh, certain things, I suppose. But, um, yeah.

• 1:15:08Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that'll stick with you.

• 1:15:09Speaker 05

  Two thousand and six was, was a wee bit rough, I have to say. Um, and then actually during the, during the ceasefire, we were out on patrol and, and we were going through this village and I, I, I saw one of the houses had the whole gable wall blown off. So for some reason I stopped and went in. And in the sitting room, there's like a five hundred pound bomb landed against the corner. So it obviously had landed someplace, ricocheted, blew through the wall and it's now in someone's sitting room. Um, so I went in, took out my notebook and I was taking down the serial number of the, uh, of the bomb, American made,

• 1:15:49Speaker 05

  naturally. Uh, and when I was taking it down, the next thing I heard is tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And I went, fuck.

• 1:15:59Speaker 05

  It was the clock that had fallen off the wall, because I know bombs don't take like, but you're breathing.

• 1:16:04Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, you've seen enough cartoons that you can't take the chance.

• 1:16:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was, that was a, yeah, 2006 was interesting.

• 1:16:13Jack Murphy?

  I, I'd like to ask you a little bit more about, you know, the UN, these peacekeeping missions that you were a part of. Not only are you placing yourself between the two belligerents in these conflicts, and you spent time in the Golan Heights also, so between Syria and Israel, or between Lebanon and Israel, or maybe Hezbollah and Israel is more accurately said, but, and then at the same time, you're also in a multinational force. I mean, you talked about there were Chinese soldiers, there were Swedish soldiers, there were New Zealanders, I mean, all these different people, just curious if you could talk about like, sort of how that mission works.

• 1:16:51Speaker 05

  My, my, my four, four friends that were killed in Qiam, one was Canadian, one was Austrian, one was Finnish, and one was Chinese. Which kind of adds to your point of, of, it's a multi, multinational, multicultural organization, but, yeah, so, there's, what people aren't aware of, I suppose, is there's different levels of peacekeeping and peace enforcement. So you take, take reference to the mission in Lebanon, it's peacekeeping, and that's there with the consent of both parties, i.e. the Lebanese government and the Israeli government.

• 1:17:32Speaker 05

  Now, sometimes they don't want you to do things, and sometimes they do, and sometimes they stop you doing things and then blame you for not doing what they're stopping you from doing. But then you go up to peace enforcement, so the, mainly the missions in Africa are, are peace enforcement. So some of the ones I've been in, like,

• 1:17:56Speaker 05

  Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, they're all peace enforcement. And about two years ago, I decided I'd do a master's in peace and conflict studies. And my initial thought was, if you start off with lightly armed peacekeeping, there's a steady progression from peacekeeping to peace enforcement. Yeah. And then you end up with a situation like the mission in the Congo, where they introduced an offensive capability into the mandate of the mission. So they formed this force intervention brigade to after the M twenty three rebels, which are kind of in the news at the moment. Yeah. In the two key, on the eastern part of the D R C.

• 1:18:40Speaker 05

  And I thought, right, if you take that to its next logical step, it's war fighting. Yeah. And I thought this would be a great thing for a thesis, until I started doing a bit of research. And the first year in operation. Korea War. Was war fighting. Yeah. Not many people, not many people mention that one when I bring it up. And then they go to the Congo where it was kind of war, certainly with the Irish. I don't know if you've seen the film The Siege of Jadda. Oh, yeah, that's a great, great movie. That's war fighting as well. Yeah. And then we go to UNIFIL, which is peacekeeping, traditional light armed with the concept of, consent of both parties.

• 1:19:25Speaker 05

  And so the, like, people will talk a lot about UNIFIL being unable to fulfill its mandate. And in certain cases it is. And but UNIFIL is the first and only U N mission that successfully oversaw the maritime agreement of a maritime sea boundary between two countries who were still at war, which is Lebanon and Israel. They're still at war since nineteen forty eight officially. But UNIFIL managed to get both sides to agree on their maritime boundary. Now, they haven't agreed on the land boundary just yet. And but it was significant because of the western coast of northern Israel

• 1:20:07Speaker 05

  and the southwestern coast of Lebanon, so there's huge gas reserves. So I suppose money talks, but, you know, they've certainly been successful in that regard.

• 1:20:21Jack Murphy?

  Were you there in the Golan Heights when, I guess it was like 2014, 2015, there's this incident where ISIS came across the border and the Filipinos blew off that, what they consider an illegal order when the UN commander told them to surrender?

• 1:20:37Speaker 05

  No, I was in Jerusalem at that time. Sorry, that was 2014?

• 1:20:44Jack Murphy?

  It might have been, it had to have been earlier on in the Syria war, like 14, 15.

• 1:20:49Speaker 05

  I went back, so I did two years from 2005 to 2007 and then so on, then another two years from 14 to 15. But no, I'm aware of that incident. And there was a few more, I know the Irish went in and rescued a few UN troops as well.

• 1:21:07Jack Murphy?

  Oh, really?

• 1:21:08Speaker 05

  Yeah. That would have been in, I think, 2012, 2013, or something like that, because the Irish had a unit with UNDAF, which is the UN peacekeeping force between Syria and Israel on the occupied Golan. So, yeah, but that was getting, because I know colleagues of mine that were, as unarmed military observers, on the, would say, I don't know if you're familiar with how things are on the Golan, but there's a buffer zone, and there's the Alpha side on the occupied Israeli side, and there's a Bravo side on Syria proper.

• 1:21:49Speaker 05

  But the OPs on the Bravo side generally aren't in a compound. They're, you know, they might have a fence, but when ISIS was walking around, the guys would often see them walking with heads and pointing up, "You're next." So eventually, they were eventually withdrawn, thanks be to God, because what's an unarmed observer going to do with someone carrying a head, you know?

• 1:22:14Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I heard it from the Filipinos told me about it, and this incident where the ISIS dudes came across the border, and I think they got the Fijians, they captured some Fijian soldiers.

• 1:22:29Speaker 05

  Fijians as well, yeah.

• 1:22:30Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, and then they came to try to surround the Filipino compound and said like, "Hey, surrender your arms and surrender yourself." And they radioed back and the UN commander told them to surrender. And the Filipinos blew off that order and they started talking to Manila instead. They're like, we're putting ourselves back under Filipino military control because this is nuts.

• 1:22:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's, um, I won't go into it too much, but certainly in some missions, the opposite is the effect. When troops are told to do something, sometimes they'll ring home and home will say no. And that unfortunately has, has, um, has occurred. So it can happen both ways.

• 1:23:15Jack Murphy?

  Right. I can see it. Yeah.

• 1:23:19Jack Murphy?

  And I, and I mean, there's also like incentives for some of these militaries to be a part of the UN and their soldiers get paid to go on these missions. So yeah, it goes both ways.

• 1:23:28Speaker 05

  But the, the, the government gets paid as well. Every piece of equipment they bring with them, there's a, a sort of a monetary value attached to it. So when they bring all their armored cars and vehicles and stuff like that, there's, there's a, a set monetary value for each thing, which would say the, the UN rents from, from the, the TCCs, which is the troop contributing countries. And so, yeah, it's for, for a lot, certainly a lot of the poorer countries are a lot of the biggest contributors to UN missions. And that's one of the reasons why.

• 1:24:03Jack Murphy?

  So in the midst of all this, you went back to university and you got a, your degree in archaeology, right?

• 1:24:10Speaker 05

  English and archaeology.

• 1:24:12Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:13Speaker 05

  And it, it's, it's strange because we'll say if, if I had come through, uh, the normal officer school, when you get commissioned, you automatically go to university and you kind of go back to the military during your, your time off from university. So because I came up through the ranks, I decided I'd, I'd look for the same rights and entitlements and it took a bit of a battle, but I had fought my battle on doing, um, a language-based arts degree. Uh, and in the, the main training center in the Curragh, we had a language school and we also had a UN training school.

• 1:24:55Speaker 05

  Excuse me. Um, so in, in Ireland, in, in first year arts, you do four subjects. So I was doing French, English.

• 1:25:09Speaker 05

  Geography and I kind of wanted to do philosophy because it sounded interesting. Because at that stage, I was thirty six, like people were saying that you should do an I T degree. Who's going to hire a thirty six year old married guy with a with a basic I T degree? And but I couldn't do philosophy, but I did archaeology and I kind of fell into archaeology. I never had to study because even to this day, I'd I'd read passionately about archaeology. But the.

• 1:25:37Speaker 05

  When when I was selected for university, I was in Lebanon. And so I think I was three weeks late starting university. And in in the French department, you had to have. A proven knowledge of French before you could be accepted. So I went in in uniform and I met the the two S E of the French department. And I had rehearsed a kind of a small speech in French about Lebanon.

• 1:26:06Speaker 05

  So we spent about ten minutes talking about Lebanon in English. And then he switched to Irish Gaelic to say if I approached a language from a different perspective, it might be easier. And then he said, look, the the assessment for first year French is on in ten minutes. Go down and do it and we'll discuss afterwards.

• 1:26:26Speaker 05

  So I went down and I was hoping it would be a translation from French into English. Where you could make a good guess. But no, it was a translation from English into French and it wasn't just, we'll say, normal English. It was.

• 1:26:38Speaker 05

  J and R, which is sort of, you know, eighteenth century, nineteenth century, kind of stilted English.

• 1:26:46Speaker 05

  And this was a Friday, so I submitted it. And that evening, I I got a message on the phone saying that they'd be delighted to have me in the French department. And I I thought I didn't do that good. So on Monday morning, he was correcting it in the class and I was looking at the corrections thinking. There's no way I could have passed this. And then he handed out our papers with the corrections on it. And I was looking at and he had written a sentence at the end. And I couldn't understand it, so I waited until everyone else went and I said, excuse me, doctor.

• 1:27:20Speaker 05

  I can't understand what you've written there. And he goes, quevin, which is the Irish for Kevin. Quevin, you're a male man and you can't understand your native language. That's that's. Gwarit G A R E, which in Irish is may God help us, because sometimes when I'm correcting, words just fail me. So I I I ended up doing my language based arts degree with a a degree in English and archaeology.

• 1:27:46Jack Murphy?

  And your interest I I kind of took away from the book is primarily like Paleolithic, you know, Stone Age.

• 1:27:55Speaker 05

  Not Paleolithic, um, we'd say Neolithic.

• 1:27:57Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:27:58Speaker 05

  Uh, there's very little evidence for Paleolithic in Ireland, but the Mesolithic, which is the Middle Stone Age, which in Ireland, kind of, you're looking at about just over seven thousand B C. Uh, and then the Neolithic from about four thousand B C. Um, so that that kind of prehistory would be more of what I'm into rather than medieval stuff or anything like that. Um, but Chad, it's it's it's always, since then, it's been a passion and, you know, even when I'm out driving, you know, my wife would hit me because I'd be looking, why, what is that hump doing in that field? And, you know, and I I've been lucky enough, I found loads of stuff, unrecorded stuff in Ireland, in Lebanon, in Israel,

• 1:28:42Speaker 05

  Chad, um, in Mali. Actually, when when I was in Mali with the European Union, there's this place west of the capital, it's a huge natural rock arch called, it's like thirty meters, quite impressive, uh, called the Arch of Cammigen. And at weekends, I became a kind of a subject matter expert on it. So I would bring people out on a Sunday and explain mythology and the archaeology and the geology. But the first day I was there, I was finding these little like balls of metal, which is called slag. So say if you're pouring molten metal into a, um, a thing to make a a blade.

• 1:29:22Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:29:23Speaker 05

  The the the molten metal kind of spills out as balls and it's it's basically it's evidence of metalwork. So I started researching the archaeology of Mali.

• 1:29:33Speaker 05

  And the world expert on the archaeology of Mali is the professor, naturally, Kevin McDonald. And I said, jeez, I don't believe this. So he's he's in the University of Glasgow, I think. So I sent him an email saying, I'm also Kevin McDonald, I'm an archaeologist and and yadda, yadda, yadda. So we ended up meeting in in the capital Bamako, um, about a month later, which was, which was kind of interesting.

• 1:29:59Jack Murphy?

  Well, let's start getting into that a little bit because during the 2000s, you started these deployments to Africa. The first one, you thought you were going to Kosovo, but they sent you to Chad.

• 1:30:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone in HR within the Irish Defence Forces had a maybe a funny sense of humor. Because yeah, I'd been asked whether to take a company to Kosovo. And then Chad had, the guys had been there nearly a year, and it was the third rotation coming up. And it was the Eastern Brigade was the lead brigade, so they were supposed to supply all the main appointments.

• 1:30:38Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:30:53Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:31:04Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:31:09Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:31:15Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:31:35Speaker 12

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• 1:32:05Speaker 05

  For some reason, they couldn't, they couldn't fill in a Reiki company commander. And like normally...

• 1:32:12Speaker 05

  Sort of with, with, at that time in the Irish Defence Forces, to have operational command of a company overseas, especially in a challenging environment like Chad, is seen as a, a, a good tick on the box. But, um, for some reason they didn't, um, or they couldn't. Uh, so I was, instead of going to Kosovo, I ended up going to Chad. And when we were doing our pre, and at that's, when I was selected from my two I C down to number of rifleman out of a hundred and I think twenty troops, I knew one person.

• 1:32:47Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 1:32:49Speaker 05

  Which, which is kind of crazy.

• 1:32:51Jack Murphy?

  Um, because the Irish military, I think you point out, it, it was like three brigades and then it went down to two?

• 1:32:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, then it went down to two, yeah. So like, like even to today, I think it's like eight thousand all in, uh, Army Navy, Air Force. So it's, it's small and generally people would, would know or know of each other. Um, but Chad was, um, I, I have to say, I, I wasn't really looking forward to it. Um, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Like myself and the other operational company commander, one week, once for seven days, one of us would be the, we'd say the guard force for our main camp. And the other company would do all the patrolling, either one day, two day, three day, four day patrols, whatever was required. And we used to rotate it. Um, and it, it was great. Lost a lot of weight

• 1:33:42Speaker 05

  out there, but you know, that was the nature of, of the, the business, I suppose. But, um, at, at one stage on a Friday evening, I was in the camp, uh, in, in our tent. And I, I sort of felt bloated. And, um, I went down to the medical aid post and the medic, he was saying, I, I think your, your appendix is swollen. So he brought the doctor in and to put me on a drip. And about an hour later, we had a big, large tent called a rub hall. And we were getting rugby matches sort of slingshotted from South Africa up to where we were.

• 1:34:23Speaker 05

  So I took my drip and went out the back door and went down to see one of our rugby teams playing against a French team, holding my drip. And like all my troops were from inner city Dublin and they thought I was a looper altogether. But anyway, the next morning, the doc comes in and he said, I think your appendix is going to burst. I'm going to medevac you to level three hospital up in Abetcha. And I said, okay. So at half six, we had an MIA chopper based with us. At half six, he said, fly the chopper.

• 1:35:00Speaker 05

  At half eight, the chief financial officer said, fly the chopper, which kind, which kind of says a lot. But the, the level three hospital, it was a tented hospital. And it was run by Norwegians, so it was like really, really, really good. So I wheeled into the, we'd say the admissions area. And this surgeon comes over and he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going to remove your appendix. And I said, can I get a phone call or a phone and ring my wife? Because she knew I was in the, in the medical aid post in Gazbider. And now I'm up in, in the main hospital. And so I rang her anyway, and she was kind of going, only you.

• 1:35:47Speaker 05

  So while I'm lying on stretcher, the surgeon is behind me talking to the anesthetist, who's Slovakian. And he said, okay, so we're agreed, we're going to carry out this procedure according to the WHO guidelines. And I said, what? And then he comes around, he said, I'm terribly sorry, I shouldn't talk behind your back. I've discussed with my colleague, we're going to carry out this procedure according to the World Health Organisation guidelines. And I said, was there some other way you were thinking of doing it?

• 1:36:18Speaker 05

  Into the operating tent, ten nine eight. Next thing I wake up and the two guys are at the end of the bed. And your man goes, Kevin, how are you feeling? I said, I'm grand. You're Irish, you'll have a beer. Now, we were strictly dry in Chad, you couldn't take alcohol. But of course, I think I'm in La La Land with the anaesthetic. And I think, right, I will have a beer. And he goes back with a can of beer. And of course, I have things up my nose and up my chest and whatever. And I said, look, in my bag there, there's a camera. Would you mind ever taking a picture of me? Because no one in Ireland will ever believe that the minute I came round from surgery in Africa, I was handed a beer. Um, but I have to say, it was quite nice. Um, and then it was the sharsh the next day. So a day in hospital.

• 1:37:01Jack Murphy?

  There's a.

• 1:37:02Speaker 05

  Getting the appendix out.

• 1:37:03Jack Murphy?

  You know, all of this reminded me, I mean, there's a, there's a digression here that I, I forgot about and just, I just remembered that I gotta ask you about because it was such a funny part of your book. Tell us about becoming a care bear.

• 1:37:20Speaker 05

  Okay, so I don't know if you have something similar in, in, in the US. But in the Irish Defence Forces, every barracks has an NCO whose full-time job is to provide counselling, grief counselling, addiction counselling, financial counselling, all that kind of stuff. They're essentially a social worker. Um, and they're affectionately known as the care bears. Um, so anyway, the, the,

• 1:37:52Speaker 05

  the officer in charge of all the care bears in the brigade was retiring. And he approached me and he said, Kevin.

• 1:38:02Speaker 05

  The G O C, the General Officer Commanding Brigade Commander, has asked me, he knows I'm retired, he's asked me to think of someone that might be suitable. And I'm going, you're not thinking of me, are you? Because, you know, S F and all that kind of crazy stuff, I'm not exactly a tree hugger. And he said, yeah, but people might sort of, I suppose, resonate with you. And I said, I don't think so. And he said, well, he said, if there was a league table for the amount of subsistence you can claim, in other words, if you're away for nine hours, you get X amount of euros. He said, if there was a league table, you'd be probably on the top of the league table. Plus, you get paid as a lieutenant colonel.

• 1:38:44Speaker 05

  I said, okay, right, I'll give it a go. And you had to get, you had to have a sort of a diploma to be in this, which meant every month, I think it was two, three days in a university in Dublin. And after my first three days away, I came back and the kids were probably eight and 10 or something like that. And they were beating the head off each other. So I came in with all guns blazing. You, if you ever kicked your sister, and you, if you ever bite your brother, blah, blah, blah. And my, my son said, Dad, that Care Bears course doesn't have much of an effect on you,

• 1:39:27Speaker 05

  which I thought was fairly sharp from him. Yeah, I lasted probably a year before I went overseas again.

• 1:39:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I was, I was laughing reading that part of the book. That was great.

• 1:39:44Speaker 05

  Actually, one of my last, when we were restructuring from three brigades down to two, the Brigade Commander was, was an interesting guy, tough guy. But I got on well with him. But I came up to brief him about something. And he was getting into his best uniform. And he told me he was going over to this barracks that was being closed as part of the restructuring. And he was going to attend the last mass in the Garrison Church.

• 1:40:21Speaker 05

  And without even thinking, I just said.

• 1:40:28Speaker 05

  We can do a lot of things.

• 1:40:33Jack Murphy?

  Well, I think it's audio cut out.

• 1:40:34Speaker 05

  The glasses like that, should a major or a commoner be talking to a GOC like that, ah, he saw the funny side of it.

• 1:40:41Jack Murphy?

  Sorry, your, uh, your audio cut out there for just one second, Kevin. Could, could you just say that part again? Like, uh, he asked about going to last mass?

• 1:40:49Speaker 05

  Yeah. So he was going to the last mass in the Garrison Church in the barracks that was being, was being closed as part of restructuring.

• 1:40:57Speaker 05

  Uh, and that's what he told me. And with, without even thinking, I said to him, I said, sir, in the Care Bears, we can do a lot of things, but saving your soul isn't one of them. And then you could see him looking at me like that over the glasses. And I thought, hmm, have I, have I pushed it too far? But then he, he kind of started laughing a bit. So, um, yeah, it's not exactly how a major should invest a general.

• 1:41:20Jack Murphy?

  Uh, and then you end up in, uh, Western Sahara. This was another interesting sort of like peacekeeping or peace enforcement operation that I've never really thought about.

• 1:41:28Speaker 05

  Neither, neither. Um, the, the mission in Western Sahara is the only UN mission whose sole purpose is to organize a referendum. So a bit of background, Western Sahara.

• 1:41:46Speaker 05

  The Morocco and to the South Mediterranean and to the East Algeria. Um, so when the Spanish withdrew in seventy-eight, something like that.

• 1:41:57Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:58Speaker 05

  The Moroccans invaded from the north and the Mauritanians from the south, and the local Sahrawi people were kind of caught in the middle.

• 1:42:06Speaker 05

  And they developed, um, a sort of a, an insurgent group called the Polisario. And they were extremely effective, uh, hit and run tactics against the Moroccans. They even drove down to Lukashat in, in, in Mauritania and shot up the capital of Mauritania. And after that, the Mauritanians said, right, we're out of here. Um, but so effective they were that the, the Jordanian army started building what is today the most, the most longest modern construction in the world. They built what's known as the Berme. Which kind of starts two hundred miles inside in Morocco and goes diagonally across the country to the southeast, southwestern border with Mauritania, effectively claiming, I suppose, two thirds of the territory.

• 1:42:51Speaker 05

  And it's like something from, you know, First World War. You have these ditches and berms and platoon positions and company positions and. But what was, what was interesting, and of course, biggest fisheries off Western Africa, off the shore, six largest potash deposits in the world. But yeah, the sole purpose was to have a referendum to decide on a nation, I suppose. And of course, the problem is that the Sahrawi people earn that money and it's been colonized by, by people from Morocco.

• 1:43:35Speaker 05

  So I can't see a referendum anytime soon. But from an archaeological point of view, it was like heaven. I could drive for three hours in any direction, stop, get out of the car. And the main, the area that we were mainly operating in is called Hamada, which is like a rocky desert. It's not like all the big sand dunes. But I could stop and pick up flint arrowheads. I was finding prehistoric tombs. Yeah, it was, Western Sahara was a, was a pretty amazing place. And then you also did Mali. I did Mali, yeah. Mali was the only non UN mission I've done, which is, it was the European Union training mission. And I was working in the headquarters.

• 1:44:20Speaker 05

  Actually, an interesting, interesting story. My, my boss was a British left in Ireland and we actually became, we still are very good friends. But he said to me one day.

• 1:44:32Speaker 05

  He said, Mac, dear boy, have you heard I've challenged the Hun to a shooting competition? No, the Hun is a derogatory word for the Germans. And I said, I did jab at the six German officers, there's only four of ye. And he said, oh, dear boy, one will shoot with us, won't one? And I said, I've been oppressed, my country's been oppressed by ye guys for eight hundred years. Do you not think I'd have a subtle interest in seeing you get your arses whooped by the Germans? And he said, there's more. And I said, I know, I know there's more. So when he challenged the German senior officer to a shooting competition, he decided that the outcome of the shooting competition would determine the outcome of World War One,

• 1:45:14Speaker 05

  World War Two, and the nineteen sixty-six World Cup where England bet Germany. Anyway, I decided I'd rejoin the Commonwealth and shot with them. And we won. But this guy was such a character. There was a picture taken afterwards and there's six of us standing like that in uniform. And in front of us, six Germans eating with their hands on their head. You know, can you imagine if that went viral? It didn't, but he was that kind of a guy that people just grabbed. He was like an extremely, extremely great character. And it was also great that this was the first time that the Irish Army and the British Army deployed together.

• 1:45:55Jack Murphy?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:45:57Speaker 05

  And it was really good, I have to say. Great to see that we'd kind of moved past all that sort of stuff.

• 1:46:04Jack Murphy?

  And tell us a little bit about, you know, you retire from the military, you hit like your mandatory retirement age and start working for the UN like as an actual job.

• 1:46:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, so in the Irish Defence Forces as a major, you have to retire at fifty-six. And obviously because I took the senior group to getting commissioned, I didn't really have the opportunity to go much higher. But yeah, I kind of knew I was never going to take up golf. And I eventually, before I finished in Jerusalem, I knew I had an offer of, this would have been in, I, I, I, sorry, I retired officially at the end of November in twenty sixteen. And I had a three-month contract lined up. As chief close protection with the mission in the Central African Republic.

• 1:47:00Speaker 05

  And then I I did about a month of that. I then went in as chief security operations. And I got an extra three month extension and that was going to be it because the UN doesn't like these small contracts. And then actually, an American guy, who was the regional security officer in sector east, went went home and leave and said, thank you, UN, I'm not going back. So I get a phone call to say, well, I'd be interested in going to to Bree as a regional security officer. And I said, look, if it's only for a week or two, I said, I'm not really, because you have to be in a mission thirty days before you you leave. And I paid my thirty days rent in in the capital.

• 1:47:43Speaker 05

  And they said, what about six months? So I went and six months became eighteen months. And two years is the most you can do as a, we say, a temporary full time employee. And so then I I left in twenty nine to seventeen, eighteen, yeah, nineteen. And then a few months later, they rang me and said, would I come back again? And I got another two months, which was, which was, but car was full on, like, oh. I saw more violence in Karen than I did in in nearly any other place. And when I went up as the regional security officer to an area bigger than Ireland, I suppose. But I was there on my own.

• 1:48:29Speaker 05

  And as a, would say, a security advisor, I was responsible for giving security advice to the international civilian staff, the national civilian staff, what we call the MSOs, the military service officers that are working in the headquarters, the UN police, essentially anyone that that you weren't part of the battalions, like the the TCCs.

• 1:48:52Speaker 05

  So in my first week, one ethnic group attacked another ethnic group. And in three hours, there was ninety five people killed, and not just killed.

• 1:49:03Speaker 05

  Um. So, yeah, and and in in the base that that um I was living in.

• 1:49:11Speaker 05

  In in front of the base, we had forty three thousand I T Ps. And sometimes they liked us and sometimes they didn't. Mm hmm. Uh. And if they didn't, you could get grenades coming in, you get bodies coming over the wall. Um. Yeah, the the Brio was was the first two years were were were sort of were interesting. And then when I came back, I was in Sector West, near the Cameroonian border. And for Asian once, it was Sleepy Valley, nothing like crickets sort of thing. Um. And then, as the elections were coming close, uh. A disparate group of rebel groups who normally would be fighting each other kind of came together.

• 1:49:54Speaker 05

  And they started advancing on, let's say, the city that I was. We were just at the edge of it with and this straddles the main highway from Cameroon in into the capital Bangi. And everything that that kind of is sold in Bangi comes along that highway.

• 1:50:14Speaker 05

  Um. And I remember as a as a as a kid, reading the word, yeah, as a kid, I suppose. But reading these sort of news reports, rebels advance on the strategic city of Bla. And I often wondered what it would be like to be in that strategic city when the rebels are advancing.

• 1:50:33Speaker 05

  I found out fairly quickly, not particularly pleasant experience. But um I I know at at one stage, I went in with the.

• 1:50:42Speaker 05

  Uh, the senior civilian administrator for the U N and the senior military officer. And the rebels had taken the city at this stage. So a lot of the the locals were in, uh, there were I T Ps in the schools and hospitals.

• 1:50:59Speaker 05

  So we went in to assess the situation and as we were coming back up this main road, I counted about.

• 1:51:06Speaker 05

  Hundred, hundred and twenty rebels walking out either side of the road with A Ks, M M Gs, R P Gs. And at the end of the, we'd say, the city, our base was on the left and just beyond it was an uh, an army base.

• 1:51:24Speaker 05

  So we swung off into our base. I immediately went to the radio room to tell them to broadcast on the loudspeaker. Everyone go immediately to the bunkers. And sure enough, ten minutes later, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And in the space of about an hour and a half, I counted about thirty five RPGs being fired from both sides. And then, no, we weren't being targeted, we were just getting caught in the crossfire. So we had two attack helicopters. So the decision was made that we'd launch them to push the rebels away from our base, because we were getting the crossfire coming

• 1:52:05Speaker 05

  from the FAKA, from the, from the army. And that, that in itself getting the motor of our base to the helipad was, was kind of, we were interesting. And they fired about twenty rockets. Wow. And also, inside in our base, we had a French army detachment who were with the EU, training parts of the, the government, the, the army. And because there were, there were, no, I had told them privately, if we get attacked, I gladly take your support. But I couldn't, I couldn't officially because they were under our support. Right, right.

• 1:52:48Speaker 05

  And but I was down checking on, on, in the middle of the battle, like, because I kept going around checking the bunkers and checking the main gate and checking this, the usual stuff.

• 1:52:59Speaker 05

  And I was speaking to the French commander and he said, give in, you will hear something in the next few minutes. Within about five minutes, two mirages came from Charlie, shoot, about a hundred feet. The noise was incredible. And I think it was, it was just a show of force to the rebels. Right. I don't think, I don't think it made a blind bit of difference to them. But yeah, and then eventually the Russians got involved, Wagner, and Yep. That kind of pushed them back. Actually, when I was, when I was in Bria.

• 1:53:39Speaker 05

  Wagner arrived and because they were a player, I went out and they were building a, they were building a field hospital, but it wasn't a field hospital with a small military detachment. It was a big military base with a small field hospital. Subtle difference. But I, the, their, their chief security guy in, in Karen was organizing the setup of this. So I rocked up to the gate and had an interpreter there and went in and met him. And he had a big, long Rasputin beard. So, and like, he, he, he was, he was tough

• 1:54:17Speaker 05

  out. So I just said, ah, Spetsnaz. And he kind of went, hmm. So I take out my phone and I show him a picture of me back in the day with the diving gear and, and the HK fifty-three. And I said, I'm ex-Irish Spetsnaz. Then he takes out his phone and he shows me a picture of him in Syria with some of the, like, really incredible stuff. But I, I probably, well, that base was being set up because there's a lot of other rebel groups in the area. So I wanted to kind of make sure I knew who's the players and each one of them. And so I met him anyway. And on my cap, I had the Ranger tab, Fianna O'Gruip,

• 1:55:02Speaker 05

  which is the Irish, means warrior of the Fianna. And I could see him looking at it. And so eventually he takes off his hat and he gives me a Spetsnaz tab. So of course, I had to give him Fianna O'Gruip tab. And he used to wear it on the back of his, of his, of his pcrip. And I, I used to often think that if he's down in Bangi and some of your guys are kind of trying to figure out who's who and, and taking pictures of Wagner guys, and to see an Irish Special Forces tab on his head, there'd be one wonder how it, how it got there. Yeah.

• 1:55:42Jack Murphy?

  The, the, we did an interview a few, like, maybe two months ago now with John Lekner, who just wrote that book, Death is Our Business, about the

• 1:55:51Speaker 05

  I saw it, yeah. I saw it. Really good.

• 1:55:53Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Hope people, if they want to, we talk all about this subject in that interview, of course, if people want to go check that out. And so this brings us sort of like today, you're now in South Sudan. How did you wind up there?

• 1:56:08Speaker 05

  Well, my, my employment in Carr was coming to a close and I had applied for a position here and I managed to get it, but it's kind of strange. For my four years in Carr, I was like at the pointy end of the spear and now I'm, as we say in the Irish, I'm in the rear with the gear. I'm in the headquarters. So it's, it's, uh, it's different. It's different. I haven't, I haven't really heard gunfire in a fair bit, which is no bad thing either. But yeah, I, I retired for the second time in November this year. Wow.

• 1:56:49Speaker 05

  And unless I get some contract work, but my, my fallback is I'm going to start doing archaeological tours. Really? Where, where? Yeah, yeah. Cause in, probably in Ireland, but it depends. Like when, when I was living in, in Tir in Lebanon, I used-

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• 1:58:32Speaker 05

  To give tours nearly every weekend because the second largest hippodrome, a Roman racing, charries racing arena in the world is in Teheran. Actually, that's where the film, the film Ben-Hur. Although you're probably of an age that you probably don't.

• 1:58:48Jack Murphy?

  Oh, I do remember.

• 1:58:52Speaker 05

  But yeah, that's, of course, I might write another book as well, but I don't.

• 1:58:58Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, Kevin, like, you don't really strike me as the type of guy that's a retiree. Like, I don't know if you, I see you settling down. I think you even say in the book, like, I'm not the type of person to just sit on the beach and relax.

• 1:59:10Speaker 05

  No, I never was either. You know, I always had to be doing something. So I definitely, I definitely have to do something because I refuse to take up golf and I'm still of that frame of mind that I don't intend to.

• 1:59:28Jack Murphy?

  I think we have one viewer question for you, Kevin. What do we got, Dee?

• 1:59:35Speaker 10

  From Corbin, did your background make operating for the UN in Central Africa more problematic than it usually is?

• 1:59:44Speaker 05

  No, no, absolutely not. One of the benefits of being Irish is that we have no colonial baggage. And CAR is a, it's a Francophone country. But one of the things I will say, and this is common to a lot of countries in Africa, is that you can't blame colonial baggage for everything. Like, in here, here in South Sudan, there's 64 main ethnic groups all with their own language, customs, and beliefs, and they generally don't like each other. In CAR, it was the same thing. But I also find that.

• 2:00:22Speaker 05

  Not, eh eh, everything is dependent on how you approach people. Like, eh, so when, when I was in Car, as I said, it's a Francophone country. I had to make sure I had sufficient French to at least explain myself. But the main eh other language is Zango. So I felt because I was, regardless of what you think of these countries, if you're a guest in anyone's country. And I did this in Lebanon and in Israel as well. You should be able to say, how are you, please, thank you, where is, goodbye, at, at, at a minimum. Eh, so I, I could do it in Zango. So we'd say in Zango, Tonga na ias is how are you, and the response is yakkidape.

• 2:01:06Speaker 05

  The next ethnic language is Banda, and how are you is ambra tha, and the response is aramani.

• 2:01:14Speaker 05

  So completely different, eh, but we, we used to have local security guards doing kind of access control at the gates. So every morning before I went to the office, I'd go to the gate and I would address security guys. French, Zango and Banda. But if they didn't reply to me in Gaelic, because I taught them how to say hello, how are you, I'm fine, in Gaelic. If they didn't reply, I'd give them ten push-ups. And it was gosh, you'd see like local contractors coming in, like maybe plumbers or something like that. And they'd see this Irish guy, not just talking French, not just talking the main dialect, but talking the second one as well.

• 2:01:56Speaker 05

  And then they'd see their neighbours responding in a language that they hadn't, if they could clue what it was. Which, but it, but it, it's a kind of, it's a mark of respect to them. And, and every place I went, and you know, I've been on patrols to the middle of weird and wonderful places where the locals may not be that eh friendly, or rebel groups as well. But we'd say to address some of the, the, the Arab rebel groups in Arabic, Marhabakifat, and then go into Zango. Suddenly, you, you sort of. You're showing them respect, the villagers can see that I bothered me arse to learn a bit of the local language. And it, I think it's, it can be a game changer.

• 2:02:42Speaker 05

  And it's just a mark of respect. That's it. But to go back to your caller's question. Certainly, I've never found my background being a hindrance.

• 2:02:55Speaker 05

  And your question about the care bears, even though my background is SF, a lot of people sort of figured out that, well, if I said something, it had to be true. And, and he knows what he's talking about, kind of thing.

• 2:03:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, the Irish, the Canadians, few other nationalities are kind of neutral internationally. They don't have the sort of baggage that the United States or Russia or one of these countries might come with.

• 2:03:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, and you know, I've seen it certainly in Lebanon, where often you end up with disputes about who should get into a checkpoint first. And, and, and some nationalities, some armies would say, would immediately go into the defensive position. You know, like, I'm in charge, kind of thing. Whereas the Irish would be kind of going, ah, lads, come on, what are you, what are you doing? That's, you sit there, you sit there and, you know, and, and, you know, take off the sunglasses, take off the helmet and, and look someone straight in the eye.

• 2:03:59Speaker 05

  So, yeah, I think the Irish always had a good reputation for, for peacekeeping. As I said, mainly, we never colonized anyone. Well, we did a bit of England at one stage, but that's a long time ago. We don't talk about that.

• 2:04:13Speaker 05

  But yeah, as I said, and it's, it's, it's human nature as well. It's, it's, if you treat people with respect, you know, you'll get back much more than what you give. And I used to often say to people, it's as easy to be a prick as it is to be a nice guy. It takes the same amount of energy from, from you as a person. But you get so much more back by showing respect and I suppose, you know, no, sometimes you have to be a prick, but not always.

• 2:04:41Jack Murphy?

  The book, I hope people will go and look for it, is A Life Less Ordinary by Kevin McDonald. Kevin, any final thoughts, anything that I didn't cover that you'd like to get out there before we go to that?

• 2:04:52Speaker 05

  Well, one, one big story you didn't cover, I'm surprised you didn't, given things that are going on at the moment. I'm one of the few people that single-handedly stopped an army in its tracks.

• 2:05:03Jack Murphy?

  Oh, in the, the Israel Lebanon war.

• 2:05:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, so if, if you have time, I'll tell it.

• 2:05:09Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, go for, go for it, Kevin.

• 2:05:11Speaker 05

  Okay, so, so during the ceasefire, and as part of the ceasefire, it meant that the Lebanese army had to deploy to the south, which that happened before. So the idea was that as, as the IDF started withdrawing back to the frontier, the Lebanese army would come southwards. But between the Lebanese army and the IDF, there had to be a unithal force. So there'd be, there'd be no kind of engagement. Now, the base I was in was on the top of a hill. And four hundred metres down this side was a temporary IDF base. And everywhere they went in Lebanon, the first vehicle was a D nine bulldozer.

• 2:05:53Speaker 05

  Because that could go over something that would take out a mercantile. And whenever they stopped, it should throw up like four earthen ramparts to stop direct fire.

• 2:06:03Speaker 05

  So every night during the ceasefire, these guys would go out in darkness, they'd kind of come up the hill and they'd pass us. And of course, we'd be looking at them with the night vision.

• 2:06:11Speaker 05

  And the gunner would laser us with the laser rangefinder, which is a weapon in itself.

• 2:06:17Speaker 05

  And in fact, most of our NOD had black spots on them from being laser by, by the Israelis. This particular night, they went out, they came back at first light. So the next morning, myself and this Russian major, we went out and before we picked up our liaison assistant to go patrolling, I said, let's go down and see where the IDF stopped last night. So we're down about two or four hundred metres. And it was a small road junction and they'd set up a position there. We said, okay, went off, did our patrolling. And when we came back, I said to your man, let's just check that, that crossroads.

• 2:06:55Speaker 05

  So the Lebanese army had arrived with a company of MiG one one threes and there's no UNIFIL. So Lebanese are here, we're here and the IDF are here and there's no UNIFIL in between. So I rang our operations and I said, look, you need to get UNIFIL to place themselves between the LAF, the Lebanese Armed Forces and the IDF.

• 2:07:19Speaker 05

  So he said, um, why don't you go down and talk to the IDF? I said, okay, why not? So I asked my Russian colleague, I said, are you okay with this? He said, yeah. So I followed the Mercaville tank tracks up, down the far side. And when I got to the base of their position, there was no one around.

• 2:07:40Speaker 05

  So I thought, hmm, this is a bit dodgy. Oh, dicey. So I slammed the car door shut, shut, shut. And I'm climbing up the rampart, shalom, shalom, mashlamak, mashlamak, mashlamka, sorry, two male. Um, and when I get to the top of the rampart, there's a young IDF guy half asleep and he kind of goes, what? And I said to him, I don't know if you have the same signal, but generally like within the Irish army, if you, if you go like that, you want to see the commander, the guy with the pips.

• 2:08:10Speaker 05

  And I could see, I'm sitting on a Mercaville, there was this young guy kind of look, looking at me. So the, the guy that was beside me goes blah, blah, blah, to obviously the, the platoon commander. And he basically said, tell him to fuck off. I could see his actions.

• 2:08:25Speaker 05

  So I, I let fly on this young soldier. I said, look, I know where you went last night. I don't give a flying fuck where you go tonight. I couldn't give a shit, but I'm telling you officially that the Lebanese army as part of the ceasefire agreement has now deployed to that location. So take that information and do what you want. Stormed off.

• 2:08:48Speaker 05

  So then I rang our operations and they said they were trying to get the liaison officer from UNIFIL to officially inform the Israelis. So I said, okay, it's all out of my hands. But the last thing I wanted was a shooting match with us in the middle.

• 2:09:07Speaker 05

  And so then the chief liaison officer for UNIFIL was French and he rings me and he says, Kevin, you will find the Indian battalion and place. I said, sir, I'm unsullied. I have no command responsibility with you. I can't tell UNIFIL what to do with their troops. It's up to UNIFIL to contact their troops and do it. I'm I've nothing to do with UNIFIL apart from giving advice. So then the Lebanese battalion commander rang me to say, when are the Israelis going to attack? And I said, look, I'm trying to stop all this, but you know, just you can see they were there last night. I spoke with them. I don't know if

• 2:09:49Speaker 05

  they're going there tonight. They wouldn't tell me. So then there was an Irish lieutenant colonel in the liaison branch. And about an hour later, he rang me and he said, he said, Kevin, do you want the good news or the bad news? I said, give me the bad news first. He said, you are probably the most hated UN officer with the Israeli Defence Forces at the moment. And I said, sir, I'll take that as a badge of honour. I said, what's the good news? He said, the divisional commander, because he heard one of his guys wouldn't talk to a UN officer who was trying to de-escalate a situation, cancel all operations for 24 hours until they could sort out things vis-à-vis UNIFIL and the LAF and all that. So that's

• 2:10:34Speaker 05

  my great claim to fame, stopping an army.

• 2:10:36Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I mean, it would have been a mess if the Israelis went up there and, you know, confronted the Israelis.

• 2:10:42Speaker 05

  If there was no UNIFIL there, like they could have engaged in, you know. But yeah, that's how things happen, you know, when, when, when both sides don't have the full picture. But thankfully, it's, yeah, thankfully, it all, it all got sorted out.

• 2:11:00Jack Murphy?

  And guys, we will have some links down in the description of this podcast where you can find Kevin's book. It's a lot of fun, a lot of great stories in there. I hope you guys will go check it out. Kevin, thank you for joining us tonight, especially making the extra effort with the time zone difference and everything. Really appreciate it, man.

• 2:11:18Speaker 05

  Delighted. No, it was, it was a good hour chat because I think us, us all soldiers kind of like to shoot the breeze every now and then.

• 2:11:27Jack Murphy?

  Yes. Well, hopefully we can link up and do it the right way over a beer one day.

• 2:11:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and a cigar as well.

• 2:11:34Jack Murphy?

  Yes, hell yes, absolutely.

• 2:11:36Speaker 05

  So listen, Jack and Dave, thanks, thanks, thanks for having me. And I think I've given you the link for Amazon if you want to include that.

• 2:11:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, we, we got it in there. And so everyone else out there, we will see you guys next week. Thanks for joining us.

• 2:11:50Speaker 05

  Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me.

• 2:11:53Jack Murphy?

  Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com/the team house. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the team house ad free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, McMulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad free. And you support the channel and the show and we really appreciate it. The Patreon members are literally what has helped this company, this small business

• 2:12:36Jack Murphy?

  survive, especially during our early years. And you are what continues to help this thing going even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page. And there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers and we also have patches. And I should mention, if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail you this patch as well. So we really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the merch shop.

• 2:13:15Jack Murphy?

  And additionally, they got T-shirts up there, water bottles, a tote bag, coffee mugs, all that good stuff. So

• 2:13:25Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ushkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:13:40Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:13:51Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:13:56Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:14:02Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

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• 2:14:52Jack Murphy?

  Please go and check them out and support the show. We really appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

• 2:14:59Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ushkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

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• 2:15:35Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

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• 2:16:46Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:16:57Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:17:02Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:17:08Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

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• 2:18:02Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:18:17Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:18:28Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:18:33Speaker 08

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• 2:18:39Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

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• 2:19:35Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:19:49Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:20:00Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:20:05Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:20:11Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

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• 2:21:01Speaker 00

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• 2:21:14Speaker 01

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