From Iraq’s Chaos to the Frontlines Against ISIS with the YPG | Dan Meally | Ep. 405

Dan Meally shares his journey from a chaotic early career in the British Army to deploying in Iraq, where tactical successes often clashed with strategic failure. He later recounts fighting ISIS alongside Kurdish forces in Syria, offering a raw look at modern combat, unit culture, and the realities on the ground. The conversation also explores the long-term impact of war and the challenges of coming home. Today's Sponsors: GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Blue Chew ⬇️ https://bluechew.com/ Get 1 month free when you buy 2 of BlueChew Gold with code "HOUSECALL" Mars Men⬇️ For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at https://mengotomars.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics... JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ PRE ORDER JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ 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/ —————————————————————— 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" 00:00 — Start 00:30 — Dan Meally Intro (British Army → YPG → Syria) 02:00 — Rough Childhood & Joining the Army 04:30 — Color Blindness & Infantry Entry Story 07:00 — Basic Training & Early Army Culture 10:00 — Drugs, Discipline & Dysfunctional Unit 13:00 — Belize Jungle Deployment & Signals Chaos 17:00 — Heat Casualty & Carrying Full Kit Load 21:00 — Northern Ireland Riot Training Gets Violent 25:00 — Volunteering for Iraq 28:00 — Basra Deployment & Equipment Failures 32:00 — Massive Ambush on British Convoy 36:00 — Casualties & Friendly Fire Incident 42:00 — Why Iraq Was a Strategic Failure 55:00 — Afghanistan Deployment & ANA Chaos 01:20:00 — Transition Out & Decision to Go to Syria 01:35:00 — Joining the YPG & Foreign Fighters 01:50:00 — Combat Against ISIS & Frontline Reality 02:05:00 — Airpower, Drones & Fighting ISIS 02:25:00 — ISIS Assault & Holding the Line Overnight 02:40:00 — Sniping, Firefights & Killing ISIS Fighters 02:55:00 — End of Tour & Reflections on War 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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:57Jack Murphy?

  Hey guys, welcome to episode 405 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with our guest today, Dan Mealy. Dan served in the British military, and he then went on and served as a volunteer with the YPG, the People's Protection Units, the Kurdish militia in northwest Syria, who at that time were heavily engaged in fighting ISIS. And today, he is a brewmaster?

• 1:23Speaker 03

  Not quite, no. But Dan, uh...

• 1:29Jack Murphy?

  So, Dan, welcome to the show, man. Thank you for doing this.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, no worries, man. Yeah, this is the first time I've ever spoken by this, so yeah.

• 1:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a relatively small group of people, of Westerners that went over there and did what you did, but not microscopic either, you know, considering the totality of the war.

• 1:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, there was a pretty solid turnaround of guys, the guys are constantly rotating in and out.

• 2:06Speaker 03

  And then you have people like me that sort of just dipped in. But yeah, what was strange is the amount of celebrities that I was out there with. Like guys who ended up on the news all the time. It was, yeah, it was quite odd. I'm quite glad that I didn't slip into that group. Quite like having my anonymity for a while. So, yeah.

• 2:25Jack Murphy?

  You mean like people who are Instagram famous?

• 2:29Speaker 03

  Uh, well, I didn't want to be controversial, but yeah.

• 2:33Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 2:35Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I hear you. All right. So Dan, let's start off at the beginning, man. You know, we're talking a little bit before the show. You and I are roughly the same age, roughly, probably similar experiences in a lot of ways. But tell us about how you grew up and how that took you to the military in those early years. What was it? 2003 you enlisted, right?

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's kind of, um.

• 3:00Speaker 03

  Didn't have a happy childhood.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  Kind of had that military interest, but from a historical point of view.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  But yeah, long story short, my dad had set me up like a savings account. I'm from an Irish Catholic family. Uh, so it's quite normal to do that because of christening. Money's usually given and that goes into like savings account. You get that when you, um, so yeah, long story short, I was like 15 and my mom told me she stolen it.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  So that was like, right, I'm gonna do anything to get the fuck out of home. Um, so yeah, I ended up joining, um, joining the army. So, yeah. It was a weird, um, it's a weird sort of way, but it was like, it was my escape, if that makes sense.

• 3:51Jack Murphy?

  No, it makes perfect sense. And what did the British, like in the United States, is there some sort of deal where you serve in the military? You can go to college, um, you get college tuition paid for, anything like that?

• 4:03Speaker 03

  Absolutely not, man. Once you lose, that's, yeah, you're on your own. Um, it's quite a, it's quite a brutal transition. And I had a really good setup. Um, so I took redundancy in 2012. Um, my last gig was, uh, the Olympics, was doing security there.

• 4:24Jack Murphy?

  That's awesome.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Was G4S. Well, G4S still haven't paid me for it. Um, so I'm still waiting for that check.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Along with the rest of the British Army, but yeah.

• 4:36Jack Murphy?

  So 2003, you joined the military to get away. Um, what, what did you, uh, not MOS, that's what we call it in the United States. But what, what job did you enlist for?

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Okay. Well, this is kind of funny. So I'm red rink colorblind. So I should never have got in. Um, so what happens? I don't know if you remember the colorblind test, it's like a circle with these dots and then like a number in the middle.

• 5:00Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  So I'm going through and I already knew I was red rink colorblind. Um, so I'm like, uh, six, seven, smiley face, eight, cabbage. Yeah. They're like, okay, you need to come with us. Um, so this nurse fit me into this room. It's like a dark room. It's just a box with, um, it's like an LED light, but it was just like one singular light. And that would just change between like orange, red, green. And I had to say what it was. And I just sort of flagged it and they were like, okay, um, that's good enough. I had three options. Um, my first choice was the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. Uh, cause I thought, obviously when you, people tell me about the military, they always say get trade.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Um, second choice was the Royal Engineers. And then my final choice was my local infantry regiment. Um, so the first two options were gone.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  I'm trying to narrate things somehow. Uh, but it gets better because of my age and, uh, because of the arm that I was selected to go for.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  On the fitness test, I had an insane amount of time to do the mile and a half run. Like something like fourteen minutes, I could have stopped and had a cigarette halfway around.

• 6:21Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  But because I then lost that option, I had to do the infantry, had to pass the infantry standards. I really hadn't been training a huge amount, um. But there's these two, uh, there's these two paratroop little guys wanting to join the paras. Um, so I was like, right, I'm just gonna stick with that, thinking that's a good idea. Uh, and then I passed the, passed the mile and a half run. Uh, came to the mile and a half run, set off, these paras were gone. In a couple of seconds.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  But I actually did quite well on it, um, like smashed it. Um, and then, yeah, they were still quite worried about, uh, color blindness. Um, and then this, uh, color sergeant thing from, um. It was an infantry regiment, he just basically pointed at this, uh, Jerry Ham, just went and picked that up. Take you over there, yeah, you're in. And that was it. Um, but I actually started my basic training on my seventeenth birthday. Um, sorry, yeah, that was a.

• 7:24Jack Murphy?

  And that, that was, that was controversial in the UK at the time, as I recall, because, uh, you know, boy soldiers, they were deploying to Iraq, I believe, in the early years.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  Um.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  Yes and no, eighteen, yes. Um, there was an incident, I think it's nineteen seventy-two, where two seventeen-year-old soldiers were kidnapped and murdered by the IRA. Um, and that was huge at the time, uh, three Scottish soldiers, um. But yeah, that, and after that, they, they stopped the seventeen thing though. I've heard rumors, I don't know how true it is, that guys. I don't know how you would do it, because you have to give so much documentation when you join up. But I've heard rumors that some guys were able to slip through somehow, but I've got no idea how true that is. I'm aware of the rumor, I've never met someone that did it, if you know what I mean.

• 8:15Jack Murphy?

  So, I mean, the, the rule is that you can enlist, but you can't deploy, you're gonna be in training until you're eighteen.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, that well, in theory, yeah.

• 8:25Jack Murphy?

  Um. No, they do. They do the same here.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it was, you've got to remember that. So this was two thousand and three, um. No one was, everyone had taken their eyes off back then. It was all Iraq, um. But I joined like.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  It was a very experienced battalion, but it was a very, um, so I say peacetime.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Uh, they'd just come back from Northern Ireland after I finished basic training. Um, they'd done the final tour of Saint Martin. Uh, they'd had their leave, companies come back. I joined the company, um. And yeah, it was more like a Young Offenders Institute, um. I joined, it was, it was three platoon, A company. Um, and when they've been the first few months being there, the company was known as Class A company, because that's how it was. Because basically every CDT, you lose two or three guys. And we had a CDT every month at one point, um. It was not a healthy environment for a young man, but that way, um. So, yeah, it was an interesting, interesting experience.

• 9:35Jack Murphy?

  Like a lot of hazing and things like that.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, I mean, it was. You've got to remember as well, the Iraq war was very unpopular with the British public, but it was also massively unpopular. In the services, like people did not see anything they were dying for, um. And failing in popping a hot one on a drug test is a really quick way of getting out. Um, if you've, you know, you've done a couple of years, pension's not going to be great anyway. You're not really losing anything. Um, so a lot of guys used that, particularly when, when they knew. Also, you'd have payday Friday, you knew you were getting drug tested Monday morning, and yeah, guys knew how to play the system, got themselves out, so. Um, like my platoon, we had a platoon sergeant, um. A platoon commander, they hated each other, um.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Had two Lance Corporals and we had one Corporal who had failed juniors, juniors the first time around and had to do it again and was still grudgingly given it a few years later. So he was no one's choice. To be a section commander. Um. So yeah, we were horrendously undermanned.

• 10:42Jack Murphy?

  Wow. Um. And I mean, did you guys end up making it over to Iraq eventually?

• 10:50Speaker 03

  No, well, I did Belize the first time around with them. Um. Which was, yeah, that was rough.

• 10:57Jack Murphy?

  Jungle warfare training.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, man. Um. And what happened was.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Before, before we deployed, my platoon sergeant had, um. Had identified the fact that I could like read and write to a sort of competent level. So I was going to be like the assistant signaler. Um. The two guys who were signals trained. Um, like a week before we deployed. They'd come in on a Monday morning. One of the guys that I lived with. He'd just done a line of code to wake himself up on the drive in and as he'd driven into camp, the drug, the gates were shut and the drug team were on camp. So he, he didn't just pop a hot one, he popped a hot one while obviously it's on code. Um. But he didn't say anything and they ended up deploying him anyway. We just got out into the field.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  And that's when even the British Army thought it's a bit fucked up to send two guys that we know who have just popped a hot one through the jungle for, for a month. So they pulled them away and I was just given an entire platoon's work with signals kit. Which, yeah, yeah, it was fucked up, man. Um. Cause I ended up having to manpack most of it. Uh, cause the sergeant, like we weren't allowed to back, backfill it. Um. So yeah, I had a rough jungle exercise, man.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  Like it was so bad because like the equipment we were using was so antiquated. We were using the Klansman radio, which you had to like tune in and shit. But there was no encryption. So you had like the back code book. So you had to encrypt your message first. Dude, I just literally just come out of training. I'd learned how to turn the fucking thing on. I didn't know how to be a signaler. So we're doing like CTR recs and I'm like whispering into the radio. And I'm saying there's like a column, well, there's a brigade of T72s lined up in the middle of the fucking jungle. Um, completely screwed up the back code. I mean, yeah, it was rough. Um, yeah. Welcome to the jungle.

• 13:05Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, man. Uh, yeah, Belize is fun. Uh, and then you guys.

• 13:13Jack Murphy?

  Did, uh, did they kind of leave you in that position as the signaler? The, we call it the RTO, I guess.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  No, but I ended up like pretty much going down with heat. Um, we were doing, um, we were just moving to a different harbor location and because I had, because we weren't allowed to backfill the kit and I was the new guy, I was carrying everything pretty much. Um,

• 13:36Speaker 03

  I fell into a, like, we were going up a stream. I fell into it. And I put my hands down and it was, uh, all lit limestone and it was completely smooth. So I put my hands down and my arms slid. I'm like, fuck, I'm gonna have to sit this one out till someone grabs me, which was a fucking horrible experience. They pulled me up, rolled me over, picked up the Bergen and like fucking carrying. Um, to top it off, uh, we didn't have the SA81 at this point. We'd already gone to the A2. But what sort of snuck under the mythology of the A1 is a piece of shit called the LSW. Which is basically an SA80 with more metal welded to it and they call it, so they pretended it was a support weapon.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  And some fucking inbred from Ministry of Defence bought it. Um, so I had like ammo for my support weapon as well, like a sandbag full of blanks. Um, platoon sergeant, to be fair to him, went absolutely ballistic and made sure that like all the guys started carrying some of the kit, but I was like so degraded. This was like the first week of being in the jungle. Like my body just couldn't catch up and, um, Yeah, man. Uh.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, grew up quick.

• 14:53Jack Murphy?

  So, uh, and where did you end up getting sent after Belize? You guys returned home?

• 14:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, um, got back, um, at this point my fitness is pretty good as well, which, to be fair, does obviously put you into good stead. Um, obviously, having just come back from training, oh, sorry, just finishing training. The guys had like six weeks off, I think it was six weeks lead, so they came back with beer belly, so it was easy to sort of keep up with the fizz, shall we say? Um.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  So, yeah, I really got into that. Um, our next deployment was to, I turned eighteen. We went to Northern Ireland for the marching season, um, but this was gonna be the first year, it was just gonna be the PSNI on, on the streets. And we were gonna do a month of, um, public order riot training. And the people who were playing the enemy, uh, the, uh, our sister regiment, they're all green jackets. Um, I don't know how much people know about the tribal nature of regular British infantry, um. It gets quite heated. I do lost an ear, um, I remember coming around a corner.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  And my platoon sergeant has got a guy on the floor, he's got the shield on his throat, and he's hitting him, and he's just going, run, keep going, keep going, as he's hitting this dude.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, it got pretty wild. Um. Yeah, I had one, one point, I got separated, I completely red misted, um. That was gonna become a feature of my military career.

• 16:30Speaker 03

  Uh, got separated from my callsign. Um, there was DS with me, and I remember him looking at me, I can barely see through the eyes, because they're all fucked up, potatoes and cracks and stuff, you can barely see anything, this was at night.

• 16:44Jack Murphy?

  He's throwing potatoes at you? That's racist.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  He just looked at me like, yeah dude, you just walk up and um let the crowd sort of go for me and I just nothing up man, so I just threw my weapon, it slumped, so I just threw it to my back and just started swinging. And he pulled me out and I was like, like this is the early 2000s, so I knew I was in trouble, um I'm either gonna get chewed out or I'm gonna be on the full winded in a minute, um so took me to the sim bin and uh like lifted blazer and then gave me like probably the highest praise I'd ever received up until that point.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  Setting into the, setting into these guys, my platoon sergeant came to pick me up and this guy was like, yeah, you got a good one here. And I'm super like, did like a double take, I bought him.

• 17:37Jack Murphy?

  Because you were welling on somebody from the rival uh rival unit.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, man, yeah, I got stuck in, uh well, the thing was, the school I went to, um

• 17:49Speaker 03

  uh where, where I finally ended up uh growing up, they had a really big playing field, so if you got into a fight at school, you had to wait for one of the teachers to run from one of the buildings to come and break it up, so you had to hold your own. Um, so yeah, uh I was quite cool with that, do you know what I mean? Like I wasn't, I wasn't, I didn't have a problem with that. Um, so yeah, that was, that definitely put me in good stead for a bit, but um then the opportunity for a tour for Iraq was coming up. Uh, one of the regiments that we would be amalgamating to the right was um was preparing to go and they, they were very short of all tasks, everyone was, um and yeah, so I put my name down, I basically, I knew

• 18:34Speaker 03

  if I wanted to have a military career, um I needed to know how I was in the, in the ship.

• 18:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  And go, so I just wanted. Get myself out of there as quickly as possible. Um, not even ignorant as I was. Um, but yeah, yeah. So, and that as well, we after Northern Ireland, we went on something spearhead. Um, like lead element. So wherever we get involved, we would have been the first unit to go. We all knew going to Iraq, we just didn't know when, at least this way. I knew when I was going, I had a date to work off of. Um, so yeah, that was the sort of thinking behind that.

• 19:08Jack Murphy?

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• 22:54Speaker 00

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• 23:50Jack Murphy?

  Cool. So what part of Iraq were they deploying you to and what was gonna be your unit's mission?

• 23:57Speaker 03

  So, Basra, mainly in the southern parts of the suburbs. My main job was MLTT with the police, which got abandoned within weeks.

• 24:12Jack Murphy?

  Was that local and national training?

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know shit about police and I don't know why we got sent to do that job in the first place, to be honest. But, yeah, basically because the police were so corrupt, we just couldn't work with them. We couldn't trust them enough to just turn up to their bases. So we got rerolled. We ended up doing forced protection, but we didn't have any sort of, like, we were using stripped-down Land Rovers still, and this is like 2006. This is well into the EFPs and the passive information, and we were still in, when I say antiquated, the British Army was back then, it actually takes the breath away to think how shit we were equipped. Yeah, that was a rough, we were

• 24:59Speaker 03

  quite lucky. My call sign, my company.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  We were either just before an incident or just after, um, we did initiate one of the largest ambushes of British forces up until that point.

• 25:11Jack Murphy?

  No shit.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, man, we, uh, we did an operation to relieve, uh, the base Abernagie, I think it was in Alamar. Um, it's called Operation Oyster, where we basically drove to and back three times in a massive convoy using exactly the same route. Um, cause that's how imaginative the command we had was. Um. Um, I mean, for me, looking back now, particularly having gone to university and stuff and sort of, I mean, I say studied, I don't consider myself an intellectual, but, um. Looking at how much damage thirty years of Northern Ireland have done to the British Army's intellect, um, was absolutely highlighted in the debacle of Iraq.

• 25:57Jack Murphy?

  Could, could you explain that a little bit? I mean, what do you think it was about Northern Ireland and all those years deployed there that kind of like shaped the mentality of the British officers and NCOs?

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Um, I mean, it wasn't their fault. You already know the language that you know, do you know what I mean?

• 26:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  It's a tricky, it's a tricky one. I don't, um.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  At the intellectual, at the academic level, because you have thirty years of.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Any sort of, um, ideas that deviate from government policy during the seventies, eighties and nineties was sort of being sort of lefty, pro IRA stuff, even though it had. A valid point in its, uh, counterinsurgency sort of assessments. So. The army sort of courtized itself from academia in that sense. Um. And it, yeah, and it became almost like a, like in, incestuous, um, approach to, to, um.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  To sort of modernizing what, what they learned rather than just try and blueprint it into another environment. Um. The amount of times people would make it that um. The comparison of Sunnis and Sheers as Catholics and Quoristers, even though that really doesn't fit. Um. It's far more fractured and completely at odds with with reality. I mean, I used to sit in briefs, um. And again, this is no, no offence to the unit I was with, they hadn't done a tour other than Northern Ireland in ten years. This was their first tour since Paul's near in nineteen ninety five. Ninety nine six, sorry. Um. I would sit in briefs and look at my watch and wait until someone said, in Northern Ireland.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  Um. And it was usually around the seven to five minute mark. Uh. And yeah, I just wanted to take my helmet off. Um. Yeah, the the the way Iraq deteriorated on that tour as well, because um Telekate was the sort of beginning of the siege of the bases. Um, we, uh, I didn't see it at the time, but Lynx was shot down over the city, remember, at the aftermath of that. Uh. That was a big deal for us. Um. You had guys going out, um. There was public order situations, so in Northern Ireland, when there's a riot. The rioters know when the police and the army turn up, whether they can see it or not, there's a helicopter watching them.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  And the helicopter will follow them and find out where they live, and then they will get lifted in the early hours. That wasn't happening in Iraq because they didn't give a shit and there was too many of them. So when the army would turn up with their shields and their batons, the Iraqis would just shoot at them and probably hang grenades. So very quickly, the Northern Ireland game would end, um. It's to the point where riots would happen and we would just say, right, we're staying in, it's their fucking street, they want to burn them, let them. We're not, we can't affect anything. Um. Probably the best thing we did, I believe that we did while we were there, was we ensured that the Basra Police Department brought aid. Because a lot of them were having to moonlight taxi drivers and they were very busy in that city.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  Um. If there's any takeaway from that tour, that I feel contributed that would be it.

• 29:14Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, going through the locals.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it was, yeah, I mean, it's wild, man. Um, seeing bodies in the Shalhara. Um, because this is when the, the sex harrying shit started going off. Um, R A O just emptied of cities within two or three months.

• 29:33Jack Murphy?

  Tell us about the, you said that the, the war just ambush, you know, when you guys were doing that convoy back and forth. What, what happened that day or night?

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Oh, man. Yeah, it was a night. So, uh, I think the bridge is called the Carmarthen Bridge. It's a bridge north of Basra. Um, just over where I think the shat separates over an island or something. It was at night. We had loads of locally employed, uh, head drivers. Um, and we were going over the bridge in packets. Um, across from the bridge is basically a huge housing estate. Um, I was on the third packet getting ready to cross and it was the packet that was going across. Um, yeah. Got opened up that and honestly, it looked like every window in this place had a fucking A K sticking out of it and shooting at us.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  While this, while we were waiting, a crowd of people had cut the fuel lines on the trucks. So our drivers were having to get out and yeah, yeah, man.

• 30:29Jack Murphy?

  Holy shit.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Probably called a situation. Yeah, man. This was really well thought out. Um, luckily we had warriors on, on call and a couple of Charlie twos. So the moment they turned up, the crowd started to back up. But yeah, um.

• 30:45Jack Murphy?

  Those are, those are helicopters?

• 30:49Speaker 03

  Uh, sorry, the warrior, um, I F E, um, Challenger two tanks.

• 30:54Jack Murphy?

  Oh, gotcha.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  We had on call. Yeah, yeah. So they rolled up and just sort of.

• 30:57Jack Murphy?

  They fucked off once they saw that.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, one of the enduring images I have though is the army sergeant major sort of lit up.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  Um, with headlights facing a crowd by himself with just two buttons.

• 31:15Speaker 03

  Happened to go up and go, yeah, we were about to move off, so come on. Uh, yeah.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  Um, he was, yeah, he was an outstanding dude. Uh, yeah. Um. So yeah, one of the guys got shot in the head on the second packet. He survived, um, as in it's kind of funny. So they're firing back. He's, um, the rounds hit his helmet. It's passed under his scalp and popped out the other side. But he thought the guy behind him, who was also firing it, punched him in the back of the head. So he turned around and punched him. Um, so the guy's like, what the fuck are you doing? He's like, you just hit me. He's like, no, I didn't. And then you could see all the blood coming down his back.

• 31:56Jack Murphy?

  Oh, man. So yeah, it it it it kind of crossed across his scalp and took him.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, it just opened up the back of his.

• 32:05Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  And they do sort of, like, I'd have gone home personally, but yeah, um.

• 32:10Jack Murphy?

  Hardcore.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah. Um. I think I we lost one guy from the battalion. Um, it was a blue on blue, but it was kind of one of those unfortunates. He, um. He's with a brigade recce force and they're doing a strike up in the house. Uh, the bravos come running out, firing a weapon and guys are fired at him, crossfire and. Uh, Crosby, yeah, went across, crossfire, um, which was, yeah, obviously really shit. Um, I wasn't from that unit, so I obviously didn't have that level of, um.

• 32:46Speaker 03

  To connect, as it were, but yeah, it's always shit when that happens, you know?

• 32:50Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  To be honest, other than that, compared to our units, we actually had a pretty, pretty good tour, uh, in seven centuries' time. So, uh, as bad as it was, it could have been a lot worse.

• 33:01Jack Murphy?

  And so what are you thinking sort of on a personal level, in a professional level now? Um, that, you know, you thought, I got to get into the shit. I want to be a, you know, combat veteran. Now you've experienced it. Are you thinking like, I want to stay in the military? I want to continue doing this? Or you're like, I want to go to college and get me the hell out of here?

• 33:19Speaker 03

  No, I was.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  I can't, I got bored of Iraq. Um. I didn't see us doing any good. Um. And there was a lot of, uh, spin on how things were going, like.

• 33:33Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 33:34Speaker 03

  I mean, that that was across the board, but the British were uniquely bad at that. Um. And it was just a. I mean, we were the smallest armed gang in a city full of massive armed gangs. Um.

• 33:49Speaker 03

  And it was just a.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, like I said as well, seeing the damage that Northern Ireland had done as well. Um, it was like, right, we really need to learn from this. Um.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Also, because my contract, I had another two years thing to do. Um, but to be fair, because we were reforming into the rifles, um, we'd been slated to be a commando regiment or commando compatible regiment. So I thought, well, that's gonna be worth sort of sticking around for. Um, and to be fair, uh, yeah, but as how I described the unit that I joined, uh, A Company to a line, uh, second battalion line of retreat, that was a time and period, a lot of those issues had been sort of dealt with before I'd left. Um, we had like new command, um.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  More professionalism in the N C Os. Um, and things had already massively improved, so I don't want it to sound like I'm a creation of that, um, that unit, but I ended up finishing in I, what I believe to be the best you could get an infantry unit tuned up to, um, absolutely re-roll to a commando, uh, commando role regiment.

• 34:58Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm, mm hmm.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  Or battalion, sorry.

• 35:01Jack Murphy?

  Uh, other than the, uh, command handover, what were some of the big changes that you guys made as you became a commando?

• 35:10Speaker 03

  Um.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  Well, a lot of it, to be honest, we, we had a lot more interaction with the, the Royal Marines for a start, um, which is a good thing, which meant, uh, because rifles in regular Italians, there's five, um, one rifle, so I was in the commando role one. Um, we were kind of hermetically sealed from the rest of the big army, if that makes sense, and we were certainly cut away from the rest of the big rifles. Um, they were sort of forming their tradition, sort of the, uh, the rifles is very uniquely corporate. Um, within the British military, they've got a very corporate outlook.

• 35:48Speaker 03

  We were able to keep the fuck away from that. Um, like a big part of that was, um, after Iraq. Um, I, I joined a bugle platoon, which is the machine gun platoon of, uh, in an infantry battalion. Uh, it's the corps of drums, the rest of the infantry, but it's bugles for the rifles. Um, when I went and did my bugle course, came back, um, the rifles would give the guards a run for their money when it comes to like tradition and sort of etiquette. And bugle platoon, which every battalion has, they're sort of like the custodians of the traditions and history of the regiment. Um, we fucked off having a bugle platoon. We were like, no, no, we're a fighting battalion. We have a machine gun platoon and it's machine guns first.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  Which sounds really petty, but this was a huge deal within the rifles. Um, the fact that we had this sort of mountain leeway, um, and the fact that all our commanding officers were SAS, um, massively meant that. We, you know, um, so General Sir Nick Parker, I was, um, attended an event he was at. And he said, even one rifles is not an elite and that we need to get it out of our heads if we are. Um, the Royal Marines felt otherwise and effectively said, you know, if you want to be part of three command brigade, you have to meet at least a standard. You're not going to do the command of course, um, because it just wasn't feasible to get an entire battalion through, um, AAC.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  Um, you at least, yeah, have to meet a standard and the army and their wisdom, to be fair, started giving us, um, SAS or WESF, um, commanding officers. And that really, I mean, the, just the level of training we started getting was, compared to what I'd received. Uh, previously was just through the roof. Um, and like I said, I, I would say, obviously the powers that are in, I'm not going to, you know, and everyone with a brain knows that. Um, but we really were the best you could get a regular infantry regiment tuned up to. Um, I've got no problem saying that.

• 37:46Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that's pretty cool. Um, you got to see the whole transformation.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  Oh, completely. Um.

• 37:52Jack Murphy?

  Or we'll do that, right?

• 37:57Jack Murphy?

  Uh, so what was, uh, what was next for you as, as you go through this transition process? What, what's the next, uh, tour for, uh, for the commando?

• 38:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, so um we had Herrick, was it Herrick nine, uh two thousand and nine. I got given local uh promotion, um yeah, in their wisdom they gave me that tour. Um so we deployed, I was in like a weird multiple, which is roughly half two, uh I don't know. But that's how all that went, um again, a legacy from Northern Ireland. Um we were going to get broken off and we were going to be working with the TA, the reservist, at Camp Bastion. Which is obviously a massive kick in the teeth, um when you sort of slot your guts, I think you're going to be in green zone.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  Um the battalion had been given the role of OMLT, which was uh operational monitoring liaison team, so small team of Brits with a Afghan platoon or company, Kandak I think it was. Um which was, basically that was the coolest job for us in Afghan at the time. Um but yeah, we got to Camp Bastion. Uh we then were told that we were going to break off, um like my call sign, we're going to go off to uh Fob Keenan, which is in Gresh, um and we're going to be relieving, uh it's the Royal, one of the Royal Scots, Richmond's. Um so yeah, so we've had the massive deflation of Bastion. And then we got the, yes, we're going out into the field and into the green zone as well.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  So yeah, we get to Fob Keenan, um Keenan had a small outpost uh that guarded a bridge that the Taliban had previously blown up and it was the only way in at night. Uh so it was like four Brits and about a platoon's worth of Afghans in this little checkpoint. It was a great little place to sort of get them trained up, as it were. So this was my introduction to the ANA. Um we've landed in Keenan, got our kit, we've had a war round and then we've gone straight out to relieve the guys that were already up there to, because we were going to be, uh I think it was a week or five days, we're up there.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  So we go get in, meet the guys we're gonna be with for the next few days. I've been based in Edinburgh, um, so I can understand Scottish people, but the majority of the guys in my regiment are from the South West and the South East. A lot of them don't understand my class region. So I was like the Tajima.

• 40:27Jack Murphy?

  Cause they all sound like Sean Connery.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  Mate, like, uh, no, I think.

• 40:33Jack Murphy?

  I know, even thicker, yeah.

• 40:36Speaker 03

  Transporting.

• 40:37Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, but yeah, that was great. Those guys, but yeah, that was the first time I'd worked the A and A and my God. You know, you hear the stories, but until you see it, I mean, I know you guys are working like with the commandos and the triples. We were, we had the other guys, we had the, the, the bulk of the Afghan National Army, um.

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• 42:38Jack Murphy?

  Bye.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  We must have been in that base, I mean, not even two hours and an Afghan A and A guy come off guard, another guy's gone to relieve him, guy that's just come off guard, has gone through this guy's kit and stolen like a cassette tape. The guy on guard's come down, he's picked up a metal picket, smacked the guy across the arm and broke his arm. The guy with a broken arm then picks up his weapon, tries to pull up here, tries to shoot him. So we've all had a Mexican standoff in the middle of this camp. I had the Sig 226 on me all the time. So we've had this Mexican standoff, we've managed to calm things down, we told the commander that he like needs to deal with this. So he wanted to take the guy around the back and execute him.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  We've been in the field hours.

• 43:27Jack Murphy?

  You're kind of having to diffuse this whole situation like, yeah, guys, we can't do that.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  Trying to be a diplomat because you don't want them slitting you through any stuff.

• 43:37Jack Murphy?

  Right, right, right.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, I mean, I was 21 years old as well.

• 43:47Jack Murphy?

  Did you guys? Did you guys have problems with a lot of them smoking opium and things like that?

• 43:56Speaker 03

  No, the smack thing wasn't heavy on that police. Um, I mean, they were stoned all the time though. I mean,

• 44:03Speaker 03

  I went to Amsterdam when my redundancy money came through, I took my girlfriend to Amsterdam, I smoked up like a motherfucker. At the moment I was at the army, I didn't have anything on these dudes. Like these guys, and like, they were to give like Keith Richards the A day of the Rolling Stones a run for his money, man, because it is unreal, it is a constant fun. Like your clothes stink of it and you're outside constantly. Um, yeah. And they would just do shit that I'd never thought possible. Um, like, so this was in that area, the ID threat wasn't that big, so we were still doing like staggered fighting patrols. Um, I was lead man a lot of the time for our call sign, so we had like the A and A in the middle. And we had a dog bark.

• 44:48Speaker 03

  And it like came into the middle of the patrol as we were staggered along the file and the guy at the back fired the shot through the middle of the call sign.

• 44:57Jack Murphy?

  Oh shit.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Get the dog. And oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And this was like not a one off. Um. It's kind of like, I don't, I know a lot of them died trying to protect their country, but. It was infuriating working with them, um. At times, uh, I know a lot of people have had good experiences, but I'm afraid I didn't, um, and the police were worse.

• 45:23Jack Murphy?

  Did you feel that by the time, uh, uh, the end of your time working with them, do you, had they made any progress or was it still like day one?

• 45:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the, the moment they get into contact, they just wrap the whole ground, um, and head back in and start telling more stories about how many people they killed. And it, it was almost like war as performance, if you know what I mean. And the only other guys that actually wanted to win were the guys on the other side. They actually wanted to win. Um, you know what I mean? It was, I, I mean, again, uh, we, we didn't do this job for that long. Danes ended up taking our office. Um, and we ended up going back to Bastion, um, and ended up doing force protection on the helicopter, um, which fuck me, that was an experience. Uh, yeah, um, yeah, that was a rough tour for that, uh.

• 46:15Speaker 03

  Cause we were with one rifles. They were one of, you have four, uh, forty commando, forty commando and one rifle. So if you went out on the flight, it was a one in three chance. It was gonna be someone that you knew. So it wasn't like. It's okay with a leg missing.

• 46:30Jack Murphy?

  Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  I mean, um, yeah, it was, that was rough. Cause I'm amazed we actually liked to do that job, but yeah, uh. Yeah, it was pretty rough.

• 46:41Jack Murphy?

  And, and you, so you guys were sort of like the security element for the medevac?

• 46:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh, we'd help out where we could if, if it was needed, um. But our primary job really was force protection on the ground and we, we could get dropped off if necessary. So it was like a full man by a team if. If required, um, whoever was on the ground. That didn't really get necessary though, pretty much every time I jumped off. I was like, you sure? You sure you don't want to give us? Uh, yeah, um, but I mean, it's, it was just a wild, um.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  To see that much of the war, that makes sense.

• 47:18Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:18Speaker 03

  Quite unique, um. Like. We got, we had one call, I think it was a turd, had a heart attack in the middle of a firefight. And I remember that blowing my mind, obviously you train to treat a heart attack, you never actually expect you're going to have to do it.

• 47:36Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, because they're all eighteen year old soldiers.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah, yeah, um, that was pretty wild, um, but one of the most, like. One of the worst was there was a blue on blue with a javelin, um.

• 47:49Jack Murphy?

  Oh.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  I think it was three guys were killed, but one survivor was an M F C from a sport company, my company. And I knew him. And it was just that, like. Obviously he was. Blas, I didn't like, we weren't friends, but I knew him to say hello to him, um, he was just completely shell shocked, man, so I'm sat across from him, I shouldn't. I remember like. I didn't know what to do, so I knew he smoked, so I just gave him a pack of cigarettes, like the whole bag. I remember the load masters like looked and like, oh, we're about to spark up, like, no, no, no, it's cool, I know him, he's like, oh, oh, and I'm like, no, no, I know him. He's like, it's, it's, it's cool, it's cool. And like, you got it then, like, just let me sort of. You're gonna be all right, dude, sort of thing, um. But yeah, that was, that's, um, burned through quite a few uniforms on that.

• 48:33Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, man, yeah, no, that's, that's tough. Um, did, did you have problems transitioning back to the U K after these, you know, especially that experience?

• 48:44Speaker 03

  Well, yeah. Oh, man, yeah, I had to go for like alcoholism, um, yeah, I really had to pull myself back together, um. I basically, coming back from Iraq, I pretty much started partying and didn't stop for like a year and a half. Um, and it got pretty sort of like my fitness went to shit, my attitude was horrendous, I mean, I was not. I, I wasn't a model soldier when I was a good soldier, if that makes sense, um, I'm just really good at fighting crap. Um. But yeah, I, I did have to sort myself out, and to be fair to the army, they really allowed me to do that, um. They, uh, yeah, they gave me the space to do that, I was given the rope to hang myself and I used it to pull myself up, so, yeah, um. Yeah, definitely owe them to that.

• 49:30Speaker 03

  Uh, when we got back from that tour, uh, they put me on a promotional course, which was fucking a mistake because I was arrogant as shit because I'd been, I hadn't just been doing stuff, I'd been taking patrols out. So in my head, I'm Mr. Fucking Awesome because everyone's telling me how great of a job I did. Um, I hadn't set up an ambush in years. I hadn't done a recce patrol in years. I hadn't like, set up, done some guard, sort of a proper guard in the field in years. Um, I didn't practise anything. The only thing I was really good at was map reading. Um, just before the final exercise as well, my girlfriend was taken into hospital.

• 50:11Speaker 03

  And that was obviously a massive, like, fuck. Um, like, I was given the opportunity to go, but family said, look, we've got, and she's fine. We're going to take care of her. Crack on. But it was not, my head was not in the right space as well. Um, completed the final exercise, uh, came off, had the debriefs afterwards and was told that I was under no certain doubts, the worst, um, the biggest disappointment on the entire course with the exact words you used. Um, and they were right. Uh, I don't, yeah, they were absolutely right. Um, however, I did come off a better rifle. Um, absolutely. Yeah, I, um,

• 50:51Speaker 03

  yeah, I learned a lot from that. Um, went back to my platoon. There's, uh, within the rifles, there's like a posting to go to the band that obviously the army had, the regiment has a band and viewers from the plumes can go for like a two-year posting. And they were like, look, you need some time out. You need to go to, we're going to send you to the bands to do some ceremonial three years. You know, when you're too stupid to see when someone's doing you a favour?

• 51:18Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 51:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I obviously took that really well. Um, so I've gone down to Winchester, the camp uh with Band Space, which is, it's actually a really nice camp, um like it looks nice, which is unique for MOD sort of property, um. And it's a beautiful part of the country. Um, so I was arrested for drunken assault leave within a couple of weeks uh in the time. I was the first guy from the band to have done so in about twelve years, I think it was. It got even worse because I was arrested outside a bank. Uh, I got taken to Maidstone, which is nowhere near where I'd actually been arrested. I was released the next morning. I was given a hundred and twenty pound fine.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  So I've gone to a train, I'm heading back to camp, done the phone call to Doom, yeah, I've just been released because I knew that you. And the guy that I spoke to said, well, you've been released. I'm like, yeah, a hundred and twenty pound fine. He's like, for robbing a bank? Somewhere along the road, someone said I'd tried to rob a fucking bank, like, for my own.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, um. But then something kind of strange happened. I met a girl and um. So you know that one girl that civilizes you?

• 52:36Jack Murphy?

  It happens to the best of us.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, so I met her and thought, I actually quite like this girl, so maybe I should like lay off the drink for a bit. So I can do stuff with her. And um, yeah, I started training again, um. While I was down there, uh, really going to my best again. Because I didn't want to be there, um, but I knew which side my bread was buttered, if you know what I mean. We were posted Sandhurst as the band there, which was amazing. Um, I'd do like two duties a day and had the rest of the day off. And. So the girl, this girl, um, she'd gone to the best girl schools in Surrey, um, her. Stepdad had been the head of mergers and acquisitions for a major chemicals company called I C I back in the day.

• 53:23Speaker 03

  And had lived in Japan for eight years, so I was literally commuting to work from this beautiful, like picturesque cottage in Surrey to. Worked half a day in Sandhurst and back for about half a year, um, which was pretty cool. Um, it was, yeah, like I said, I was too stupid to not realise people would do me a favour. Um, however, it is the kind of posting where you can go to Rust really quickly, um, and people do. And there was no way I was gonna be sat around getting excited about going to Australia to do a ceremonial job when my friends are getting shit blown out.

• 53:58Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 53:59Speaker 03

  Um, I'm not that dude. There were guys there that.

• 54:04Speaker 03

  Um, I know it felt that way, um, but yeah, I was very adamant I was going on our next tour. Um, I don't know whose strings were pulled because I know I was constantly told there's no way they're gonna let you go. You haven't done it yet, uh, yet. Um, I tried to be like Billy Big Paul, so I was like, yeah, my COs, so yes, who the fuck's gonna tell them who's gonna be on is all that. And they were like, no, no, you don't understand. They'd never let anyone go. Mate, I was gone within a weekend.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  Like, yeah, I'm done. Um, went back to the platoon, picked up where I left off, was back in machine guns. Um, we were gonna be the fire support group, the Hercule team, uh, buzzing around in jackals.

• 54:47Speaker 03

  Uh, so we were all trained up for that. And then at the last minute, uh, four two commander decided they'd rather do that job. Um, we had it taken off of us, um, which was a massive fucking kick in the teeth. I mean, like, it was a kick in the teeth for us, but our platoon commander had literally had his command taken off them. And he was in tears when he gave us the news that we weren't doing that job anymore and that we were gonna be split up. Um, that was an emotional day.

• 55:16Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, so, yeah, we, uh, got broken down as the machine gun sections to various multiples within the rifle companies. And to be fair, as bad as that was, I did end up in a multiple of the most unassuming badasses you've ever seen. Um, the guys I worked with were outstanding, um, considering like most of them, it's their first time out in country.

• 55:40Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:41Speaker 03

  They were, yeah, they were pretty good, man.

• 55:43Jack Murphy?

  Where did, uh, where'd you guys get sent this time?

• 55:48Speaker 03

  So we went to Nari Saraj side. Um, so just outside of Muscat on the road up to Gresh.

• 55:56Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 55:57Speaker 03

  Um, it was one of the most dangerous. I know everywhere's one of the most dangerous areas out of that countryside. I know what that's worth, but yeah, it was pretty fucking hairy. Um. Yeah, we had a rough tour on that. Um, my multiple commander Kev, who was also my machine gun platoon commander, was killed within a few days, um, well, a few weeks. And then a few days later, um, one of the guys stepped on a device, kind of. We lost two guys to injuries as well with him. Um. We were attached to four two commando kilo company. Um.

• 56:32Speaker 03

  I don't want to talk about this. Uh.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. So we'd been sent to a certain area to check it out. The IDs happened. Um, we then had to wait for engineers to clear actually combat ineffective. Um. We then embarked on vehicles that four two commander had sent to pick us up. Obviously, when you get in vehicles, so obviously, um, for the uninitiated, you turn all your radios off. Um, as soon as we were on the vehicles, um. The HQ didn't know that in the Royal Marine vehicles were radio speakers, so we could hear everything that was being said on the net. Uh, I'm going to be diplomatic and say that decision was clearly being made. If there was any repercussions, it was going to be our commander that's going to wear it. Um, while bits of our friend are still falling out here.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  Which was shit because the guys that we were attached to were really signed. Um. Once we got back to the CP that we'd started off at.

• 57:32Speaker 03

  Multiple commanders out of the first vehicle, he's just looked at us all and put his arms up because we've all heard it. Um, straight away and I couldn't have been prided of them for it. Um, the guys basically knew need. I'm like, fuck him, fuck your company, fucking Marines. Yeah, we absolutely lost our shit. Um. The Marine boss that was with us, because we had a platoon of them with us. I mean, again, I don't want to. I'm telling you now, if you're in the most dangerous country in the world, having a room full of Royal Marine commandos next to you, you fucking sleep safer. All right, I'm telling you, you sleep a lot better. So I mean, there's no disrespect. Um, but he was Icelanding. Uh. And he said, look. I've got to get on the net and say that heavily armed all sides got broke.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  Um, and it's like the senior body was dying to me to like, explain the facts of life that like this is this is mutiny like we're gonna get fucked. But you can't just say I'm not working for you anymore. Um, but the main sell was we thought we were helping our commander out and actually we just made a massive world of hurt for him. On top of the really shit day already. Um.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  So yeah, uh, we got ripped out there the next day.

• 58:44Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 58:46Speaker 03

  Went back to one rifles.

• 58:47Jack Murphy?

  Wow, a real, a real mutiny in wartime.

• 58:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, I say it was a mutiny. It was like, it's not like it was anything was planned. It's the moment we got out of bed, everyone started swearing.

• 59:00Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get it. There's an uprising. There's insurrection in the ranks.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  Well, we were fucking human, man.

• 59:07Jack Murphy?

  I get it. Yeah.

• 59:10Speaker 03

  I mean, again, I don't wanna.

• 59:14Speaker 03

  Four two commando are an amazing unit. The guys who were outstanding, but yeah, um. I haven't been half as derogatory about their ops commanding as their own blokes were about it. I'll leave it at that.

• 59:26Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. I mean, the bodies are still warm and they're already trying to pin the blame. Who are we gonna blame? Like, wow, that's what you're worried about right now, really?

• 59:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Um, I mean, again, yeah, uh, shit happens in war. Do you know what I mean? It is what it is. Um, but yeah, we, uh. Luckily, like I said, we, we went back to A Company, uh, one rifles, which was our parent unit. Um. And we had an amazing tour after that. I mean, we really, I mean, this was supposed to be courageous restraint, but I mean, that shit wasn't going on. Um. We'd had a.

• 1:00:05Speaker 03

  We'd had a Scottish soldier go missing and he'd been captured and tortured and we had the pleasure of finding his body. Um, well, not mine, not. With the company.

• 1:00:14Jack Murphy?

  He was kidnapped by the Taliban?

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was really weird, man. He basically got out of, well, I know what I think. Um, he woke up in the middle of the night, went out, walked out of his camp on his own and walked to an area where he had allegedly lost a piece of equipment. Um, we think, well, the inquiry said that, um, they're not sure about his state of mind when he was picked up, but yeah, um, it was just such a weird thing.

• 1:00:45Jack Murphy?

  It is weird because the Taliban normally, you know, as bad as they are, the Taliban usually isn't about like torturing or beheading people. That's more of an Al Qaeda thing.

• 1:00:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, and these guys went to Thailand. I don't want to, um, I mean, they made a display of it.

• 1:01:02Jack Murphy?

  Jesus.

• 1:01:03Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, and it what, it's that thing, particularly in Helmand, like current research shows it's very debatable to what extent it was actually the Taliban who we were fighting. Um, you had various criminal groups and stuff like that. So, I mean, and you always hear the rumors of the Chechens that ran away, you know, the other A O M, so you don't know who's really lying about. Um, but yeah, that was, we searched that village the next day as well, um, where he was found. And there was a guy, there was a guy we'd previously arrested after he was caught in a B C P for blowing up another guy. So that's the Afghan justice we work. Um, so yeah,

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  courageous restraint was, uh, well out the window after that. Um, um, yeah, there was no fucking way I was gonna let one of them get a second chance.

• 1:01:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's that sort of like set the tone for the rest of that deployment, I guess.

• 1:02:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, pretty much for me, yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, when I say, I mean, like the right people have got no interest in shooting the wrong people. Um, yeah, uh.

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  It was weird as well because we had a BBC documentary with us.

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  They was filming one of the guys, they filmed him all the way through training, it was called Young Soldiers.

• 1:02:25Speaker 03

  And yeah, you actually catch an ambush, you can hear him firing the GPMG in the ambush in it.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  Which was, yeah, that was a crazy day.

• 1:02:35Speaker 03

  But yeah, that was. That pretty much set the tone. To be fair, the company actually did, I was just gonna say something really bad, we did a lot of good work.

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  Like, one of the checkpoints, the locals wanted to rename their village after the commander there, they wanted to say Commander Pete Clay.

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  They got on with him so well.

• 1:02:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  It was annoying for a lot of the riflemen because the AOs were very quiet. And it's hard to explain to them that's because you're actually doing quite a good job.

• 1:03:05Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 1:03:06Speaker 03

  If it's kicking off. Do you know what I mean? It's a hard sell to a young rifleman who's super keen to get stuff in.

• 1:03:14Speaker 03

  But it was weird, that transition, because you go from that AO and like dudes are fixing what we call them swords, the bayonets.

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  The moment you're getting into, you know, you cross that invisible line on the map and then you're in bandit country again. And something's gonna happen.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  But yeah, no, I had some good moments there. I've got, yeah. But I mean, one of the craziest moments was finding out that Bin Laden had been taken out.

• 1:03:40Jack Murphy?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, well, we got it through on the radio. And as we're hearing it, you could just see the guys just quietly like getting closer to their kit and checking their magazines and making their way towards the walls just in case. Because we thought we were gonna be like, we thought this was gonna be World War Three. Yeah, no, there was nothing, I mean. The Afghans couldn't give a shit.

• 1:04:03Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, by that point, he was just some Arab dude living in seclusion in Pakistan.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, man, I mean. Yes, it's so odd.

• 1:04:15Speaker 03

  I should have said something to the guys going, was that it? We're going home now.

• 1:04:19Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, war is over.

• 1:04:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, you can't blame them. Yeah, that was a, yeah, that was an old moment.

• 1:04:27Jack Murphy?

  Looking back on it, of course, I mean, they were kind of having the right idea there that that would have been a natural place for us to leave Afghanistan. And instead, we stayed there almost an additional, what, 10 years? I mean, it's kind of crazy.

• 1:04:40Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, I mean.

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  I'll be honest, I have stronger feelings about the Afghan security forces than I do the Taliban.

• 1:04:51Speaker 03

  To me, being angry at the Taliban is like being angry at Quasar, the reign, it just doesn't.

• 1:04:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:56Speaker 03

  It's a false name.

• 1:05:00Speaker 03

  I'll put it to you this way. So we had an Afghan police checkpoint down the road from us. We had an elder one day, he turned up to our front day saying that they've taken my son, or they've taken my grandson as a child. Can you please go and get him? And we were like, fuck, you know how these situations can go. So what we were going to do was check them all for ID cards and take away anyone that didn't have an ID card. So we walked down and it's only about, it was like, hey, hey, a bit away from our CP. We got the kid away. Obviously, passed it up that there were sexually abusing kids.

• 1:05:35Speaker 03

  I don't know how many, I would love to know how ISAF has not been investigated by the ICC, been complicit in the exploitation of children, given how many times we warned them what was going on.

• 1:05:45Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:46Speaker 03

  With the people they were training.

• 1:05:49Speaker 03

  It astounds me that there's never been an investigation.

• 1:05:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, we got the kid away, handed him back to the elder, we've gone back to our place. The next day, he's come back, they've taken him.

• 1:06:02Speaker 03

  Oh, sorry, no, sorry. He didn't come then. A couple of days later, there's a massive firefight at the police checkpoint. They were out cleaning their car and the Taliban just rolled them up, killed seven of them. I think there's like three left. And we were watching this from our CP.

• 1:06:19Speaker 03

  And I remember then realizing that in terms of counterinsurgency, the only people who had objectively improved the lives of people within where we were was the Taliban.

• 1:06:31Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:06:32Speaker 03

  And like, what the fuck are we doing here, man?

• 1:06:35Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  Um.

• 1:06:36Jack Murphy?

  Local commanders kidnapping kids and shit.

• 1:06:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, there is, there's a British politician I actually quite respect, uh, called Rory Stewart. He like, he walked across Afghanistan and stuff, wrote books about it. He's, he's an academic dude, um.

• 1:06:52Jack Murphy?

  Oh, I know who you're talking about. Yeah.

• 1:06:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, the Afghan he talks about, I don't know. I didn't see it. I don't know about you. Um,

• 1:07:02Speaker 03

  uh, maybe in Kabul, but yeah, the Afghan ISIL was fucking horrendous.

• 1:07:05Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I had, I had to read one of his books in, uh, in college. The professor alleged that he was actually a British intelligence guy. Um, yeah, I mean, there, there's a, there's a whole, uh, I mean, it's a very odd book that he wrote about how like he goes and he has his walking stick made and he's walking across. It's like, it's very, it has a sort of Lord of the Rings sort of vibe to it.

• 1:07:30Speaker 03

  Well, I was gonna say Lawrence Arabia cosplay, but yeah, I'll let me you halfway on that.

• 1:07:34Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, I mean, I, I don't doubt for a second as an individual, very principled man, but, um,

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  yeah, I,

• 1:07:49Speaker 03

  that, that took Kabulites that seemed to affect so many people. I mean, the fact that people were surprised at how quickly the country fell.

• 1:07:56Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  Um, as if there was this ever decrease in frontline. And that was never the case. The Taliban basically stopped using the bush, started using the roads and that was it.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? That, that was the frontline.

• 1:08:10Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it, it is one of those things where, you know, like a private in your unit could have made a better prediction about what would have become of Afghanistan than academics and people who, actually people I respect a lot and are very well educated and they know a lot about the country. But there's some sort of like strange separation that happened there, that they were seeing all this capacity building in, in Kabul and things like this. And they just did not understand what you guys were experiencing, I don't think.

• 1:08:39Speaker 03

  Well, they just didn't want to hear it.

• 1:08:40Jack Murphy?

  That, yeah, that's a problem. That's a problem, too.

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• 1:10:38Speaker 03

  Like, for me, the best piece of journalism, I mean, for the British forces, two massive things, well, one massive thing helps, was a TV series called, a guy called Ross Kemp, started going out with forces and filming what was going on, which garnered a huge amount of sympathy from the public and stuff like pay started to improve, like rations. Interesting. Body armor. Yeah, it took that to spur it on, but it was all quite. It was not objective reporting, if that makes sense.

• 1:11:10Speaker 03

  You then contrast that with, do you remember Ben Anderson? He did a documentary called What Winning Looks Like.

• 1:11:16Jack Murphy?

  I don't think I saw it.

• 1:11:18Speaker 03

  And so, oh mate, there's a marine major in that called Bill Stubbe. And the situation he's in, and he absolutely gets into the tri-boys. It's the only time you see on camera what a commander at that level is having to deal with. And that was the experience I had. And that was the experience that the majority of units had.

• 1:11:40Speaker 03

  But that's the one documentary that shows it.

• 1:11:42Jack Murphy?

  That's interesting. Okay, I'll look for it. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:47Jack Murphy?

  And so then what was next for you guys after that deployment?

• 1:11:53Speaker 03

  Well, for me, not much.

• 1:11:56Speaker 03

  We were slated to go on the next Afghan tour. We find out that

• 1:12:03Speaker 03

  we probably weren't going to, it wasn't going to be a warfighting tour. So I'd already switched off. Then we find out we wouldn't leave Bastion, so I was doubly switched off. I'm not into a peacetime army.

• 1:12:16Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, who gives a shit?

• 1:12:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was there for the fight. So I was done, I was looking at a career, I obviously had settled down with this girl. She was, she is amazing, was amazing. So yeah, so I got ready to get out. Then we were told that redundancies were going to come up. And that I was eligible because I'd stayed in support company, I hadn't promoted. I was up for a pretty good redundancy package. So I was going to wait that one out. I was kind of on the fence. On my first tour of Afghan, I'd used the time that I was in Bastion. I'd started doing MLAT language courses.

• 1:12:58Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:13:00Speaker 03

  Got eighty-seven percent. So in MLAT test, you have like twenty minutes to learn a vague language in any test. And I did it and I got like eighty-seven percent. So I constantly kept asking to enroll in a language, Russian language course. And it kept getting, you know, when they dangle that carrot. So I'd started to teach myself, my girlfriend had got me Rosetta Stone, so I started to teach myself Russian

• 1:13:22Speaker 03

  in Afghan because a cipher set here had kicked off. I'm like, no, I don't want to sound like one of them, but I was definitely saying, we're going to need to get an army, suckers.

• 1:13:34Speaker 03

  So yeah, from that point on, up until the second tour, I've honestly had this carrot angle. But yeah, yeah, we'll sort that out. Yeah, we'll sort that out. Yeah. And I just wanted to know, what, what things do I have to do to impress upon you? I am an ideal candidate to come on this course to at least give me something to work with. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:13:53Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  That day just never came. There was always one more exercise. There's one more, I'll do this. Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:01Speaker 03

  So when the redundancy packages came up and then we got, we had our summer leave taken off of us to go do the Olympics. Um, I'm like, yeah, where's that paid work? Pretty much all of us at this age were like, yeah, yes, I am here. We've gone down to London. Um.

• 1:14:18Speaker 03

  It was actually quite good, if I'm honest. It's quite fun. Uh, when London's that full of tourists and you've got nothing but free time and money, like, yeah, it was a great place at the time. Um, yeah, it was, it was what I would say Britain at its best. Um, I know some GB news people probably hate that, but yeah. Um, it really was a good time. Uh. And then, yeah, that was me. I got, basically, we were all told that we had to take all the leave that we were accrued. We'd probably left the army. I had six months of accrued leave that I was owed. So I spent the last six months in the army just playing Skyrim in a flat. Um, my new flat, uh, where I was going to do it then. Uh, and that and Deus Ex as well, yeah.

• 1:15:01Jack Murphy?

  Oh, my God, two outstanding games that, uh.

• 1:15:05Speaker 03

  Actually, the best, yeah.

• 1:15:06Jack Murphy?

  Oh, my gosh. Did, did you beat the main quest in Skyrim? Or are you one of those guys that just like wants to go and do everything else?

• 1:15:14Speaker 03

  I've never did it in Oblivion. It took me years before I did it first time in Oblivion, man. Yeah, uh, I do every side mission, everything. Yeah. Um, I'm that dude.

• 1:15:24Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, you're the one, one hundred percent completionist guy. No. I, uh, I, a few years back, I finally got back into PC gaming. Like, I was big into it when I was a kid in high school. Just a few years ago, got a, a new PC, gaming PC, and I played like the super modded Skyrim. You know, I played that freaking game off and on for probably like three years.

• 1:15:48Speaker 03

  Is it just me or is it still beautiful?

• 1:15:49Jack Murphy?

  It is. With all the with all the updates that they've made to it, you know, it still looks very modern. Yeah.

• 1:15:57Speaker 03

  It's such an impressive game. Like, like, you know, when you can tell that genuine heart went into it. The other game I'd say for that was Red Dead 2. Hands down the greatest game ever made.

• 1:16:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, Dimitri has played that one. I I I have it, but I haven't played it yet. But and and the day the Deus Ex games also were like, I played the first one when I was in high school. And yeah, the newer the newer ones I love too. They were they were great.

• 1:16:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I really enjoyed them. Even the ones that are considered a bit ropey, I still really enjoy. What's what's weird now, the game I'm playing at the moment, I first played in 2009. It's called Battle Station Pacific. I'm just giving it a shot at it because it's such a good game.

• 1:16:38Jack Murphy?

  Cool.

• 1:16:39Speaker 03

  It's a strategy game set in Pacific War, but you can control individual units. And it's great. It's just a really fun game done really well.

• 1:16:47Jack Murphy?

  Sounds cool.

• 1:16:48Speaker 03

  So, yeah.

• 1:16:50Jack Murphy?

  So, so six, six months of paradise playing Deus Ex and Skyrim and are are you are you in the midst of all this? Are you having any thoughts about your future? Perhaps what what's coming next for Dan?

• 1:17:04Speaker 03

  You know, well, I really struggled. At this time, it was difficult to find work. I qualified to do all the maritime security because that was what was in vogue.

• 1:17:16Speaker 03

  I just find it so hard to get on the ladder. I never really got started. Went to a few interviews. Some of the guys that I'd known from the army had gone on to do that as team leaders. This was when the companies stopped using fully Western teams and then they'd use like Sri Lankan guys to save money. So I I my friends no longer had the leverage, if that makes sense, to get me on board. And at the time, you'd apply for a maritime job. There was like more and more of these courses, qualifications you needed to get. And they're like three or four grand a piece. And, you know, every few months, there's just more and more that you need to get. So I basically just started doing bouncing in South London.

• 1:18:00Speaker 03

  I talked to like to a fish to water man. I really enjoyed it.

• 1:18:03Jack Murphy?

  You were doing you were doing what?

• 1:18:06Speaker 03

  I was a dormant and a bouncer.

• 1:18:08Jack Murphy?

  Oh, really?

• 1:18:08Speaker 03

  For two years. It's like, yeah, yeah, I ended up running three doors, man.

• 1:18:12Jack Murphy?

  Parlaying your military experiences. Yeah.

• 1:18:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was um, I had some fun nights, man, like, yeah, um, I nearly got stabbed on my second shift.

• 1:18:27Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, some of the clubs that I worked at were unbelievable. Um, but I met, I, I met Fat Man Scoop Leicester Square. If you remember him, um, he was an absolute gentleman. Yeah, no, he was like a hip hop sort of DJ, uh, back in the day. Um, but yeah, uh, I was running a, it was, yeah, on and off running at Leicester Square, um. But then ended up working at a bank, doing security there, which was like infinitely better paid, uh, much more high level as well because you're doing kind of, um, counter penetration, um, you've got to be aware of industrial espionage, uh, insider trading, that kind of stuff. So it was a lot more, very different.

• 1:19:05Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:06Speaker 03

  Clearing, you know, um, but yeah, it meant I could get a lot, I had a lot of, um, I'll put it to you this way, the first people who ever said, yeah, if you think you might, you might need to talk to someone, Dan, was other bankers.

• 1:19:20Speaker 03

  Um, so I was, uh, I've become somewhat overzealous in my role, um.

• 1:19:29Jack Murphy?

  Uh, in around this timeframe, I imagine this is sort of like, like 2014, all this stuff with ISIS is starting to kick up. And how, how is that sort of playing in the back of your mind?

• 1:19:44Speaker 03

  I, I just remember having that sinking feeling of, because you know what's coming.

• 1:19:49Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? For the people that that wave, that wave was going to hit, you knew what was coming and it wasn't that, you knew no one in the West wanted to get the fuck involved with it. There was no help coming, um.

• 1:20:05Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, after all the adventures, understandably, people were sick to death burying their fucking sons over shit in the Middle East.

• 1:20:11Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:12Speaker 03

  Sons of the, sorry, um, and yeah, uh, understandably, the thought of getting involved. I mean, ISIS weren't stupid, they knew the West was weary.

• 1:20:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:20:29Speaker 03

  It it was what we knew was coming, I think. Anybody that had an eye on the least, this it was clearly what was gonna come. Uh. It was like a slow zombie, wasn't it? Just every day there was like a new, they're taking this territory, they're taking this time, they've done this, do you know what I mean? It was every, and this ink block was just getting bigger and bigger. Um. But yeah, uh.

• 1:20:52Speaker 03

  Obviously, I had a massive interest in what was going on, uh, started to look into. Who was fighting who, um, and then it hit the news that the Y D G had specifically said they were looking to. Uh, for G what guys to to go out, they would accept, um, they would accept anyone, but yeah. It was the G what guys that, um, they first invited, um, so yeah, I thought, fuck it. My life really wasn't going anywhere. Uh, my relationship had come to an impasse, um. Yeah, we, how can I say, we were out of sync in where we wanted to be in our lives. Sure. I wanted to go to university, she wanted to start a family. Um.

• 1:21:37Speaker 03

  So, yeah, but how that had gone, um. Yeah, I wasn't that man, and to be perfectly honest, I was making a miserable, um, relationship, it really deteriorated and it's horrible watching someone you love.

• 1:21:51Speaker 03

  You know the effect you're having on them. Um, so, yeah. Thought it was time to, time to go, uh, contacted, this was through lines of Rajah, um, Facebook group, like, yeah, the first Facebook war. Um. Showed them my certificates or copies of my certificates, um. Explained like this is my history, this is the unit I was in, this is where I finished, um. And, yeah, they, yeah, took me on, um, put my flights, I gave myself about two or three months, um. To learn language, to get the cult, the basics of the culture, where places were, um, I wanted to prep further.

• 1:22:32Speaker 03

  Going alone, I wanted to have a cover story, so I basically bought like a journalist, a vice used journalist outfit, blew my hair out, pulled a camera with a stupid lens. Uh, I deliberately chose a route through Istanbul because I knew that was the route that um, security companies used. So a single, fine aged man going there on his own, uh, wasn't that unusual. So I knew I wasn't gonna get stopped, or there was less chance of being stopped on that route through Turkey on the way. Um.

• 1:23:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, bought a load of, so you used to be able to get the old US Army manuals on Amazon for like ninety nine cents. And had all of that on my Kindle, so everything from like an SPG nine, uh, AGF seventeen, uh, Dushku.

• 1:23:16Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:17Speaker 03

  All that shit, um. Then wiped it, so all I had to do was the moment I got it online, like again on the other side, I just had to get wifi and I could get all the books back on. Um, meant if I got stopped, it would have been empty, or other than a few books. So yeah, just little things like that, um, bought two burner phones, one with my contacts once I got there. Um, one that had uh, Red Cross, Red President, British Consulate in Iraq, British Consulate in Turkey, uh, Amnesty International. Human rights watch, basically anyone, if I got lifted, just to get a message out that I was alive somewhere. Um, and then obviously your chances of survival tend to increase from what I've been told. Um.

• 1:23:58Speaker 03

  Made sure I had like a pretty decent first aid kit, I still had like cellos and shit like that from Afghan, loads of cat tornakes, F F Ds. I mean, I'm left with like a half a rug for that shit, so um, that wasn't unusual. Um, and then yeah, pretty much just had like warm kit, hill walking kit, basically, nothing that looked too military. Um, I wish I had taken stuff, because guys were flying in with fucking body armor plates and shit by the end of it, I don't know.

• 1:24:22Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:22Speaker 03

  Weapon mods and all kinds of stuff. Um.

• 1:24:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh. Language was a big one, um.

• 1:24:35Speaker 03

  It's just weird and it's amazing how easy it's people warm to you if you can just say hello, how are you? Do you know what I mean? It's that simple question can win you so many smiles. Um, so yeah, I wanted to make sure that I had as well as like a work in.

• 1:24:50Speaker 03

  I've obviously lost most of this command, you know, but like enemy two hundred meters left, you know, behind hill, you know, be able to give fire control orders, that kind of thing. Um, or at least shout where I'm seeing some. Um, but yeah, uh.

• 1:25:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, pretty uneventful flight out, other than I bumped into one of my old platoon sergeants in Gatwick. We were on the same flight. Um, like completely by random. Uh, told him what I was doing. He was like, you fucking feeling all right?

• 1:25:23Speaker 03

  So yeah, I had a last Guinness in, um, Stansted, uh. Got on the flight and I remember landing in, uh, Istanbul.

• 1:25:33Speaker 03

  Exhausting, um, midnight express. I did not want to go into a Turkish nick. Uh, so yeah, uh. The whole time I was in there, you know, you got a feeling like a hand's gonna go on your shoulder at any time.

• 1:25:46Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:47Speaker 03

  So I'm like looking, I'm looking at my perfume, like just anything's trying to look normal, which obviously may probably stand out like shit. Um. So yeah, some top ex infantry tradecraft going on. Um.

• 1:26:00Speaker 03

  So yeah, I got onto the flight to Iraq, which was the worst bit. So I thought if they're gonna nick me, it's gonna be on the flight. Cause that shows intent, or that's tends to be how it is in the UK. Um. Didn't happen. Flight took off, no problem. Landed in Iraq. Uh, well, sorry, in the K R G at Salomonaya. Um.

• 1:26:21Speaker 03

  I don't know how many people have mentioned this. It smells completely different to Iraq, doesn't it?

• 1:26:24Jack Murphy?

  Yes, it does.

• 1:26:25Speaker 03

  The K R G. It's like, it's noticeable.

• 1:26:29Jack Murphy?

  The, the, the grass is literally greener when you cross the border.

• 1:26:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it's fresh mountain air. It's stunning. Um, amazing part of the world. Um. Yeah. So got off the flight. Gone through customs. They were, I hadn't, I'd completely forgotten that obviously having two mobile phones in Iraq is a bit of a. It's a bit of a problem. Um, so yeah, they were quite suspicious of that. Um, but then when I showed them, there was like five numbers, none of them bad. They were cool with that. Um. Yeah, phoned my contact. Didn't pick up, um. So it's three o'clock in the morning, I'm outside Salomon Air Airport, I'm absolutely shattered. It's been an emotional, I've literally just broken up my girlfriend that morning, it was horrendous.

• 1:27:19Speaker 03

  Biggest thing, like of all the fucked up shit I've done, that is by far the most painful, like the thing that I regret the most. Um, was in causing pain, um.

• 1:27:31Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, and I was pretty pissed off, um. So, yeah, I went into a hotel, so went into a hotel, sat in the lobby, ordered some coffees. And just, yeah, um, tried to contact the contact that I'd used in Europe before going to see if they could give. Give the guy a kick up the arse to come and pick me up, um. Cause obviously you've got a thousand and one, I'm on my own as well, I was the only person there at that time. Um, guy comes into the hotel, says hello, shake hands, we go outside, uh, it's Toyota Hilux and, um. He gives me the passenger seat and he was gonna sit behind me and I'm like, nah. And they both burst that laugh in the two guys, so I was like, okay, I'm in.

• 1:28:14Speaker 03

  So, yeah, um, we make it on the back, um, and then we started driving through Salih and then you hit. It kind of reminds me, you know, when you see footage of like the suburbs of Lebanon?

• 1:28:24Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:25Speaker 03

  You've got all the flags, yeah, do you know what I mean? Like, you know you're in the go.

• 1:28:28Jack Murphy?

  They, they drove you onto the military base?

• 1:28:32Speaker 03

  No, no, no, um, this was through, uh, through Salih, round the sort of the mains, that sort of circular road, isn't it? The circular highway and then into one of the suburbs into a safe house, um.

• 1:28:44Jack Murphy?

  Gotcha.

• 1:28:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, so this, it was on the, definitely on the western side.

• 1:28:49Jack Murphy?

  I, I may have been in that same place at one point, actually.

• 1:28:54Speaker 03

  Okay, uh, so you walk in, it's a big open room, it's like sideways door that led out to an sort of courtyard, um, that is a

• 1:29:03Jack Murphy?

  Uh, no, this, this was, this was, this was like fifth floor up in an apartment structure.

• 1:29:09Speaker 03

  I stayed there on the way out. Yeah, I know that one.

• 1:29:14Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:29:14Speaker 03

  A load of bunk beds.

• 1:29:16Jack Murphy?

  Uh, they were sleeping on the floor when I was there. Um, they had like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there weren't actually any other, um, fighters coming through. I was there as a journalist. Um, and that's, that's kind of how I interacted with that. There's another time, uh, 2015, I went back again as a journalist and I was on that base in Soleimaniya and, uh, I walked on, you know, you, you know, you need to get permission to come on the base and everything. And, and so I'm talking to the, the guards at a little station there and they're like, okay, so you're, they take my passport. Okay. So you're an American, you're here to fight ISIS. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second, buddy. Look, let's, let's talk about this for a second.

• 1:30:00Speaker 03

  Uh, no, I mean, my, my intro was pretty cool, man. We, um, got to the safe eyes. There was a Swiss dude from the Syrian Military Council who was written out. Um, yeah, yeah. Um, so we got chatting. Um, then the next few volunteers started coming in, um, until obviously we formed a packet to send off to the mountains. Um, so yeah, that was an interesting ride up. Um, so for people who don't know, uh, the Kurdish Regional Government in Northern Iraq, there are two armies and two police forces and they're both politically affiliated. So one is sort, one is more tolerant of the YPG, PYD, PIP, and the other.

• 1:30:44Speaker 03

  You have to run a gauntlet of checkpoints because different, the ASI, each different police units will man different checkpoints. So it's kind of like a maze. Labyrinths to get through to get on.

• 1:30:56Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, they're they're they're called they're all called Peshmerga. But Americans sometimes don't understand that it's almost as if, you know, like in our party, if the Democrats had their own army and the Republicans had their own army in the American political system, that's sort of what it's like in Kurdistan, where you have the Talibanis and the the Barzanis and each one has their own military.

• 1:31:20Speaker 03

  It's wild. I'm amazed it works.

• 1:31:25Jack Murphy?

  Well, they they did have a civil war in the 90s, I'll point out.

• 1:31:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, no, I couldn't imagine that.

• 1:31:36Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, our our political system is already fucked up as it is. I don't think we need that. Yeah, I don't think.

• 1:31:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, as I was saying, well, the Republicans kind of do have the not being violence at the moment. So, yeah, I don't think it'd go well with the Democrats.

• 1:31:53Jack Murphy?

  So what was your what was your yeah, please continue, you know, your your journey making it through that gauntlet?

• 1:32:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it was pretty uneventful. We did. We had this guy from Texas who was known as Heavil Cowboy. He was a lovely guy. He was very keen to remind people he was from Texas. Yeah, we're trying to pass on incognito. And when we get in stop to checkpoints, he's pulling out his Dallas, I've always like membership lifetime card thing. Yeah, like literally sticking it in their faces as they're. So we had to politely say, look, we'd like to get there without being arrested. So you chill out with that shit. I mean, I'm not trying to he he's a really nice dude. But he did also have an insycophitic knowledge

• 1:32:44Speaker 03

  of the American Civil War. Like, I've never met someone who was able to recite, like, how many cigars Robert E. Lee smoked. It was insane. Like textbook Ken Burns should have done a documentary on him. It would have just been 10 episodes.

• 1:33:05Speaker 03

  Um. So yeah, uh, we traveled up, um, I mean, the mountains up there, I mean, yeah, if you're into hill, then that'd be an amazing place. The Candle, Candle Mountains are

• 1:33:15Jack Murphy?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:18Speaker 03

  Uh, cold as shit. Uh, definitely didn't bring enough warm up. Um, so yeah, we then went up to a

• 1:33:30Speaker 03

  gorilla camp, shall we say? Uh, yeah, um, got to introduce some other volunteers who were waiting to go across the same sort of thing. We were waiting to get traffics, uh, once we were in the large

• 1:33:42Jack Murphy?

  Was this the gorilla camp that's sort of on the side of a mountain and the, the structures are sort of built into the side of the, yeah, okay.

• 1:33:50Speaker 03

  Either one, yeah.

• 1:33:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I remember waking up one morning and seeing a circus drawing and shitting myself. Um.

• 1:33:58Jack Murphy?

  And, and the, the

• 1:33:59Speaker 03

  It looks like exactly what it is.

• 1:34:01Jack Murphy?

  The, the toilet is a little bit further uphill and it's sort of a porcelain bowl cemented into the ground? Okay.

• 1:34:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the one. And you got the female YPG camps, just YPJ, sorry, just down.

• 1:34:14Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:18Speaker 03

  I kept pointing at it because there was like this, there was a farm building in the valley that wasn't being used. And I was trying to say, like, you guys up here from a drone, you look like exactly what this is. It looks like a gorilla camp. You go down there, you're itinerant workers. Like, think, but do you know what I mean? And this became a running theme my four, five months where we were at that for, um, like trying to like

• 1:34:43Jack Murphy?

  You know that base got, that, that base got bombed in like 2015 or 2016?

• 1:34:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it got fucking flattened, mate. Yeah. Uh, um, yeah, it got, I mean, it wasn't like they were even trying to hide it, were they?

• 1:34:58Jack Murphy?

  Not really.

• 1:34:58Speaker 03

  It was so obvious. Um, I mean, I saw checkpoints near the hook guarded by PKK guys in PKK uniforms.

• 1:35:08Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:09Speaker 03

  They, they weren't hiding it.

• 1:35:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, we um formed up a big enough group to get traffic to cross. Um we didn't have to do the crazy jungle gym through the bushes and shit, green zone. Um we did on the way out, but uh yeah, we just went straight down to um the Euphrates or Tigris.

• 1:35:35Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, you did the river crossing in the little rubber boat.

• 1:35:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:38Jack Murphy?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:39Speaker 03

  On the rib, which, you know, it was awesome. Um yeah, it's kind of like my first, I've spent like the majority of eight years in an amphibious unit and this was my first like hop, uh landing, if you know what I mean. Well, I say hop, um into a conflict. Um yeah, we, oh shit, sorry, I forgot as well. Yeah. Um before we went, we had the final group of Westerners turn up. Um and one of them was a guy called Tim. And uh Tim was a British guy who seemed a bit unhinged at the time. Um he claimed to have been in one of the former regiments that made up the rifles who I

• 1:36:21Speaker 03

  was in. Um so I could work out wherever he was or not within about 10 seconds of meeting him. Um I wasn't entirely convinced, but people do, they do go through basic training, do three months and then leave. Um and acquire some knowledge. So I'm not trying to downplay what he may or may not have done. Um I just wasn't convinced that he'd done the tours that he'd done. Um as well as uh Brandon Glossop, Canadian guy who ended up spending the entire time with. Um and then a British soldier who'd gone AWOL, uh who was known as Soldier D in the press, um who I think has gone on to run some sort of like B-mining medic operation in Ukraine, um last time I heard. So yeah, that was good for

• 1:37:06Speaker 03

  him. Um yeah, we crossed over, uh got picked up in cattle trucks, got taken up this massive hill. Uh is it Derek?

• 1:37:15Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, Derek. Yeah.

• 1:37:18Speaker 03

  So we're in these like old bombed out, um, like this demountable sort of construction buildings, um, freezing our bollocks off. Um, so me and Brandon ended up spooning to stay warm that night. Cause it was so cold and like, if you spoon in someone within 24 hours of meeting, they're going to freeze.

• 1:37:37Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, you can work together closer as a team after that.

• 1:37:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, definitely. There is something in that sheds something. Um, I mean, it's hard to explain how fucking cold North Syria is in the winter. Um, so this, yeah, this thing's, yeah, it was around January, February, just before the Eastern, uh, the Al Saka offensive already go, uh, Passover offensive, sorry, it already just come in, uh, was going in. Obviously we didn't know any of this, um, cause obviously we're not getting newspapers and there's no internet. We haven't got a fucking clue what's going on. Um, while we're waiting at Derek's, we're being processed through their paperwork and stuff. Uh, we pick up weapons and ammo. Um, I had a, I went for an AK because the ammo is ubiquitous. Um,

• 1:38:23Speaker 03

  all three serial numbers matched up, which I was quite happy with, uh, but it was made in 1974. Uh, so it was a good year, good vintage. Uh, it worked absolutely fine.

• 1:38:32Jack Murphy?

  Hey, listen, listen, Dan, a classic never dies.

• 1:38:36Speaker 03

  Oh, exactly. Yeah. Um, but what was crazy was, uh, so like a lot of the guys have gone for M16s, understandably, you know? Um, but they still had the packing grease in. So you've got to think that went from Columbia

• 1:38:52Speaker 03

  to Iraq, oh, sorry, to a US serviceman, then to Iraq, then stolen by ISIS, then back into, well, then stolen by YPG and then back in hands, like an American or a Canadian.

• 1:39:06Speaker 03

  Like just the logistics involved in that.

• 1:39:08Jack Murphy?

  It's crazy.

• 1:39:08Speaker 03

  It's phenomenal. Yeah. And no one has bothered to clean the packing grease off at any point along this stage.

• 1:39:15Jack Murphy?

  I, I remember we, uh, we had a guy who was, um, uh, like a, a, a, one of the JTAC or call for fire guys worked in the strike cell. And during this, this war, this conflict, he was having to call in airstrikes on American made Humvees. That ISIS had obviously commandeered and he was like, that was the creepiest thing of my life because you're so scared of blue on blue all the time. And he's like calling in an airstrike on a Humvee was like the, like freaked me out like nothing else.

• 1:39:45Speaker 03

  I'd never considered that. Yeah, that must have been sketchy, man. Um. Yeah, I mean, for me, it was also, it's the first time I've been shot at with NATO weapons, you know what I mean?

• 1:39:56Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:57Speaker 03

  The two forty's, because that's what they had on the other side. Um. Yeah, that was, that is an odd experience, but yeah, I can't imagine. Fuck, yeah, that must have, yeah, being a pilot as well. Are you sure? Are you sure?

• 1:40:09Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 1:40:10Speaker 03

  That's definitely the right one, yeah. You know what I mean? Uh, yeah.

• 1:40:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was creative. I mean, I think one of the oddest experiences for me was, um, yeah, after we, we went to Derek, what process there and then we went down to the academy. Um, but they'd already split us off. So do you want veterans who didn't want to stay at the academy would do like a cut down version of the course, i.e. propaganda, and then you'd get moved on. So we did that, um, which was wild, man, like

• 1:40:42Speaker 03

  some of the stuff they believe.

• 1:40:43Jack Murphy?

  The indoctrination.

• 1:40:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, um.

• 1:40:49Speaker 03

  I know you mentioned about the, the claim that the civil war, was it?

• 1:40:53Jack Murphy?

  That was, that was one of the, one of the guys that went to the academy told me something about that, that they thought like the South won the American Civil War. Um, yeah, there's a lot of things I admire about the, the Kurdish philosophy and democratic confederalism, um, jives with me in a lot of ways. But they have some skewed views about history in some places.

• 1:41:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I know what that is, though. I think what they did,

• 1:41:20Speaker 03

  that's a mistranslation or not well descri- uh, well described.

• 1:41:24Jack Murphy?

  Oh, it's a translation issue.

• 1:41:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think what they were getting at with that is basically if you're a black dude in nineteen oh five getting lynched, um, how well the Union stood at Cemetery Ridge really didn't do you any favors. So it's the materialist conception of history, the outcome of the American Civil War.

• 1:41:41Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:41:44Speaker 03

  Wasn't, the promise wasn't kept.

• 1:41:47Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:49Jack Murphy?

  That, that makes a lot more sense if that's philosophically what they're, what they're going at.

• 1:41:55Speaker 03

  But because that's Marxist way of looking at history. And I think that's what they were using it as an example.

• 1:41:59Jack Murphy?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:42:02Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I mean, it's a mix of Maoism as well. Um, so you have something called like a technique where which is self criticism where you literally stand up in a room and up the strips off you. Um, which is really, I mean, that's a cult dynamic. Um, that's a well trodden path. Um, if you look at like the Maoist sort of groups in the sixties and seventies around like LA, Berkeley and that. Um, my favorite terrorist group of all time, Siboney's Lagration Army, um, would be into that. Uh, yeah, so anyone at home, look them up. Imagine what Rachel Dolezal and Robin DiAngelo started at.

• 1:42:42Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that that was that was Patty Hearst, uh, you know, Patty Hearst supposedly getting brainwashed. Yeah, and brought into them. But the, um, yeah, I mean, they also believe in like, I believe, uh, social ecology is another part of of what they believe. I mean, it's it's sort, it really is an amalgamation of different beliefs that they kind of brought together because to their credit, they realized that Marxism didn't really work. Um, and they realized that the party had to evolve and find new ways of living and new ways of governing. So I I do admire that about them.

• 1:43:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, um, Marxism wouldn't fit because it's based on industry. Um, so social ecology, by definition, is anti Marxist in the sense of the primacy of industry was a key part of Marxism. Um, shifting that is a huge part of the ideology to social ecology. So, yeah, um, uh, I'm sorry, as in like the, um, way, uh, sort of cultures and societies naturally evolved, if you want to use that term, um, which is, I think, why they lost a lot of their anti capitalist. Uh, for many of them in some regards, they're sort of anti-capitalist beliefs.

• 1:43:57Speaker 03

  Um, by simple dint of the fact that throughout history, there's always been someone with more of something that needed something else. And then some with more of something else who needed something more. And they started talking. That's always been the case. Um, so that's why I think they were a lot more accommodating of sort of free enterprise to an extent. Um, so yeah, that side of things was fascinating. Um.

• 1:44:22Jack Murphy?

  I, I think.

• 1:44:22Speaker 03

  City when it came back.

• 1:44:24Jack Murphy?

  I, I was just gonna say, I think, I think politically, um, it was also very interesting that that they kind of, you know, like in the West, we have this either a cynicism about politics or we're dismissive. It's all fake. Our elections aren't real. You know, it's like the joke about, uh, you know, at the street light, you want to cross the street. You press the button for the red light and it doesn't change anything. Uh, we have these criticisms about democracy. The, the Kurds and specifically the PKK and, and their offshoot groups kind of, um, I think, understand like, no, politics isn't evil. It's just something that you use to accomplish specific goals for the society.

• 1:45:07Jack Murphy?

  Um, it's a vehicle that you use to get to somewhere else, um, rather than something that you should just dismiss and pretend isn't there.

• 1:45:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, a huge part of where I would say certainly in my own country, uh, we're going wrong is the, the level of apathy. And it's not from the, you know, there's, there's a very good reason why people are affected with politics. When you've got, um,

• 1:45:37Speaker 03

  the threat they were against in terms of not just ISIS, obviously Turkey as well, the Syrian regime.

• 1:45:46Speaker 03

  The politics becomes more, more important, you know, when you see, when you can see that need to be, do you know what I mean? It becomes a real thing. It stops being something that other people do for you.

• 1:45:56Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

• 1:46:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's it's crazy, though, um, because I've seen people try and transplant aspects of it in the UK. There's um, a recent political party was set up called Your Party,

• 1:46:15Speaker 03

  which they hit literally every tripwire that a left wing group can hit, they hit within the first like three weeks. Um, the infighting, factionism, the wrongness of man. Google these people. Um, it's led by a guy, Jeremy Corbyn, who used to run the Labour Party.

• 1:46:32Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:33Speaker 03

  This gives you an idea, right? Yeah. So Jeremy Corbyn was found to have run a political party so racist against Jews, it broke the law. In this new party he started, he's been called a Zionist as an insult. Um, in conferences, like, that's how left wing these people are. Like, that's how much coal they've had.

• 1:46:53Jack Murphy?

  Oh, my god.

• 1:46:54Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, and they they talk, one of the guys was interviewed, and he's talking about they're gonna have twenty leaders, and they're gonna operate different cantons. And it's straight up reminded me again of the sixties Maoist thing. Like Maoism was a political and uh, military strategy that fit China at a particular period because of geographical reasons. The same with the cantons in Rajava and that, because they were in three separate areas and they had to be.

• 1:47:21Jack Murphy?

  The the the cant- the cantons comes from Switzerland, though. Where.

• 1:47:26Speaker 03

  Well, that's right. Yeah, originally, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, this, I think this guy, yeah, I'm pretty sure that he was on the Rajavan sort of model, as it were.

• 1:47:39Jack Murphy?

  Agrarian society, yeah.

• 1:47:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it it these, yeah, um, uh, these people are a parody, but yeah, they're worth, yeah, ten minutes.

• 1:47:51Jack Murphy?

  So you're you're.

• 1:47:53Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:48:07Speaker 05

  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.

• 1:48:18Speaker 04

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

• 1:48:23Speaker 06

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

• 1:48:29Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:48:49Speaker 00

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• 1:49:17Speaker 09

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• 1:49:47Jack Murphy?

  Your experience at the academy, was this at the base where there's the rail line tracks that go across the entrance and there's the empty box trucks, box cars are just kind of dead right there on the tracks?

• 1:50:00Speaker 03

  I know where that was. We went there for a few weeks, no, a few days before going to the front.

• 1:50:04Jack Murphy?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:50:05Speaker 03

  The academy, we, yeah, this was like a two-story building, had like, it faced down a hill, there were ranges set up, there were like accommodation buildings and a shitload of child soldiers.

• 1:50:19Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:19Speaker 03

  So if you've gone there as a journalist, I'm not surprised they kept you away.

• 1:50:24Jack Murphy?

  Well, two things. Well, I researched and later I found out that those rail lines, the rail line that was built by you guys back in the old days, from Turkey all the way, all the way down to Basra. That was a, that was a real line that went down there. Um, but the child soldiers, yes, I did run into that numerous times while I was there and even having conversations with like the YPJ girls. And if it ever came up, you know, how old are you? And they'd be like 16. And then they'd think about it for a minute. No, no, no, no, I'm 18. I'm 18. I'm 18. And they're like, okay, okay. Uh, got it. Yeah.

• 1:51:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean,

• 1:51:07Speaker 03

  yeah, I'm, I can't make excuses for using child soldiers. Um, the biggest,

• 1:51:16Speaker 03

  the YPG was used, well, I say used, it kind of became like an unofficial orphanage for a lot of children whose parents and families have been killed.

• 1:51:25Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:25Speaker 03

  Uh, and so when it's referred to child soldiers,

• 1:51:30Speaker 03

  it's a tricky one, man.

• 1:51:31Jack Murphy?

  It's, it's different, it's different than when you enlisted as a 17 year old. It's also different than when you, what you saw in like West Africa, where these militias would come into a village and they'd literally, they would force the young kids to rape the oldest woman in the village. So that they were ostracized and they could never come back. That, that, that's not what was happening with the Kurds in Syria. It was really, it really was an act of desperation. And I mean, I respect the fact that these young people were willing to fight and die for freedom. But it's still horrifying to me, like especially as a father, that so many of these young people died.

• 1:52:13Speaker 03

  I mean,

• 1:52:15Speaker 03

  for me, it's almost like, you know, that question of like, there's five guys on the track and things coming down.

• 1:52:19Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. What do you do?

• 1:52:24Speaker 03

  ISIS are 10 miles down the road, 10K down the road, they're coming this way. You've got a box full of AKs. You know what's going to happen to every woman they get here. Are you going to be that selective one who gets to defend themselves? Do you know what I mean? It's a,

• 1:52:37Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a tricky one. Um, with that, I mean,

• 1:52:47Speaker 03

  So I was used to like military discipline. Uh. You never keep your finger on the, you know, on the treaty, do you know what I mean? Just those tiny little things that you just don't even realise you do without thinking. They stop you from accidentally shooting people. That shit wasn't happening.

• 1:53:02Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, I know.

• 1:53:03Speaker 03

  A lot of these kids, like, they were, they were a menace. And like, one of the guys I crossed with got shot through the car and had to like wait three weeks to get, to get out. By it, by one of these kids fucking about with a, a PKM. I mean, they used to do the thing of, um. They'd clear the AK, put the magazine back on, sorry, clear the AK, fire off the action, pop it again. Put the magazine on and then point it and go, fire off the action as a joke. You don't do that in.

• 1:53:31Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, no, no, no.

• 1:53:32Speaker 03

  Even the British army, as fucked up as it what is and was, you don't do that.

• 1:53:36Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:36Speaker 03

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:53:37Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um. So, yeah, that, I mean, I've got to be honest, I think that the units I was actually with, there weren't that many. I mean, there was like two fifteen year olds. In the two or three units I was with, uh, the two, uh, two or three tours, um. So, yeah. I didn't see a huge amount of them on the front line, but they definitely were in uniform and they definitely had weapons, so.

• 1:54:04Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's one of them.

• 1:54:06Jack Murphy?

  Hmm. And where did, uh, they push you out to on the front eventually, once you finished your, uh, time there?

• 1:54:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we literally ended up, uh, we got bounced through a couple of camps, hit a long road, um. And then, yeah, heard the airstrikes going in as we were getting closer and then we pulled up to Tell Ha'nas, um.

• 1:54:25Jack Murphy?

  Yep.

• 1:54:26Speaker 03

  Which was a big offensive. Yeah, that was rough, um. I think it took a lot of casualties on that, um, but that's when I first met the bulk of the Westerners, um. The tour we got put in was with a guy called Jack Holmes, who was like a young British guy, he was quite famous back home. Um, I didn't see Jordan Matson, but he was definitely a bag. Um, there was quite a few Westerners with the fire support group on the Dushka trucks, like a flatbed with um, the uh, two twenty-three millimeter anti-aircraft guns. I wanted to get on my last ship because my whole career had been fire support, so that's

• 1:55:02Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:02Speaker 03

  That's where I wanted to go, but that wasn't happening. Um, so yeah, we got put into a war, uh, onto the command of a wife, Jay Saram. Uh, she was a geneticist, PhD from Rome, uh, Kurdish.

• 1:55:15Jack Murphy?

  Unreal.

• 1:55:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, um.

• 1:55:21Speaker 03

  She would have had an outstanding career in any military if she had the luxury of being able to go to a staff college or, like, she absolutely had that command presence. Um. She was later killed not, not long after. Um, it's a lot of, I mean, the attrition rate in that conflict was unbelievable. Um, yeah. Uh, but yeah, we, as the main attack was going into Tel Haris, we were cleaning up the villages around, but most of the fighting was done. Um. Quite a few bodies, uh, from the airstrikes. Um. You know, when they've been hit by the concussion, so the bodies are all together, but you can see all the bones in the chest cavity in that bus because they're starting to puff out and yeah. Um.

• 1:56:06Speaker 03

  Obviously, we weren't burying them because we didn't have time. Um, so yeah, we each sort of bounced from village to village and so yeah, we just piled in on the trucks. Head towards a village. If there was fighters in there, they'd literally do the like the Mad Max thing of drive around, firing into it while, um. While a Hilux with, you know, there's sixteen barrel one O seven launchers.

• 1:56:27Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, they just DF that straight into the fuckers. It was great. Yeah. Um, really effective. Um. Having experienced like anti-consurgency, to be in a battlefield where you're moving that rapidly. Was unreal to me, like covering the kilometres that we couldn't fathom in Afghan, you know, where a hundred metres is a, can change the world you're in. Um, yeah, I mean.

• 1:56:57Speaker 03

  The whole time we were there.

• 1:57:00Speaker 03

  We uh we used to use Wimix, which were like Land Rover defenders that got a V eight engine with roll cage fifty with a GPMG on the commander's side. Like six of them could have just torn through their logistics lines like they we yeah, it could have been so easily wrapped up that conflict so early on. Um, but yeah, so we were the main from what I was to understand later that the main point what we were doing was cutting off their logistics points, so. Uh, Sinjar was going to be isolated, which meant that their logistics lines then had to run through Iraq, um, which opened them up to the coalition airstrikes that were a little more squeamish about flying into Syrian airspace. Um, but yeah, it was a weird time for air cops.

• 1:57:45Speaker 03

  Uh, we done one attack, we come over a hill, just taking this time of the village. And there was a Russian, uh, the Sequoia bomber, fighter bomber thing, um, was in the air ahead of us. It's the first time I've ever been in a non-deconflicting airspace. And the Russian plane was on our side, which is a whole, that was a weird. Yeah, um, and. I um, SF guys were obviously about, I didn't see them speak to, obviously they weren't going to come speak to us, um, understandably. Um, but being having so much air power going around is like, I saw a lot of ordnance get

• 1:58:27Speaker 03

  dropped in Afghanistan, but it came out that was dropped on ISIS, it was on a different level, like you almost started to feel sorry for them.

• 1:58:34Jack Murphy?

  On on on the American side, did you guys have like A tens coming in? I remember some guys telling me about that.

• 1:58:41Speaker 03

  I didn't see A tens, it was mainly uh Spectre, so C one thirty, whatever variant, um, drones, fast air, um, didn't identify a lot of fast air.

• 1:58:53Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:54Speaker 03

  So I, um, this C one thirty. Had the night and the drones had the day, um, but it was weird. You'd wake up one morning and you'd see, you know, the, um, the contrail from the drone. You'd see that and then you'd wake up the next morning and you'd have no cover. Um, something else was going on somewhere else. Uh. So, yeah, but on a night you'd see the C one thirty guys, they must have had one headless tool. Um, yeah, I don't think any of them would be back with ammo.

• 1:59:26Speaker 03

  I think all brands got expended, um, from what I saw, um, yeah, they, they really went to time on them, um. We, we got dropped off with the unit, the sport that we originally with drove off, um. We're late to find out they were supposed to come back and pick us up, but it never happened. Um, they got caught up in another scrap and that's where Saran had been killed. So obviously, yeah, much more. Things to worry about than than us, um.

• 1:59:55Speaker 03

  The first Westerner had been killed before we'd gone on that offensive, um, Australian guy, Ashley, I think his name was, um. But he was the first Westerner that I'm aware of that was that was killed, um.

• 2:00:08Speaker 03

  So we were kind of concerned that they weren't going to send us to the front, depending on how the media, because obviously the YPG were very media savvy. They, they knew how to. Try and play, play the Western media, um, but to be fair, it didn't hold them back at all. Uh, they didn't hold us back, sorry. Um. We were straight in on the tax, uh, doing offensive ops. Nothing too heavy from honest. It wasn't a huge amount of fighting at that point. Uh, most of the places we took were abandoned, um. The big difference between the GWOT guys and the more sort of political guys or guys that. Not had any experience but wanted to get involved was their approach to like.

• 2:00:46Speaker 03

  Clearing rooms and searching buildings because we were obviously super paranoid about IDs and these guys were just kicking doors through and walking through doorways. Tearing stuff open.

• 2:00:55Jack Murphy?

  Are, are you talking, are you talking about the Kurds or are you talking about more like the European anarchists that showed up?

• 2:01:02Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the anarchists. Well, not just them, actually, there was guys.

• 2:01:08Speaker 03

  Um, because we had a mix, you had like red-blooded Republicans either.

• 2:01:12Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, the guy from Texas and yeah.

• 2:01:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. Um, so there was a big, uh, like fracture between the YPG and the Syrian Military Council. There's a lot of guys who've come to join the YPG, didn't do their homework before going and didn't realise they were a very left-wing group. And they started to jump ship to the Syrian Military Council and the YPG became paranoid that they were going to become too large and powerful and sort of trying to exert their own and become sort of a threat or a, a political faction that became more muscular than they felt it should be. Um, so yeah, there was a big tension there. Um, so the, the Syrian guys got the majority of like the ex-bikers and shit and

• 2:01:58Speaker 03

  born again, sort of, yeah. Uh.

• 2:02:04Speaker 03

  But yeah, there was guys that had turned up, they had no military experience. Um, kind of the attitude with some of them, not all of them. Uh, was if you knew, if you guys knew what you were doing, we wouldn't have to be here. Um.

• 2:02:19Speaker 03

  Again, not all of them. I have to be honest, some of the European anarchists that I worked with were some of the most disciplined people I've ever met. Um, that was a big experience for a lot of veterans because you've got to remember, you have two groups of people who on any given day would never talk to each other. Living together, shitting together, cleaning, do you know what I mean? So it was really interesting to see that dynamic grow over time. And watching, you know, a former US Marine, uh, Corporal. Sit down and say, yeah, that fucking Swiss, yeah, he's a, he would have been a really good Marine. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's an unusual thing.

• 2:02:54Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:54Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, uh.

• 2:02:59Speaker 03

  Because we kind of took a lot of those guys under our wing, as you'd expect, because they're watching my back. So I want them to know what they're doing. Like not once did you have to remind someone, it'd probably be a good time to clean your weapon bud. Uh, or any, yeah. You might want to pack your shit away before we sell, you know what I mean? There was none of that. I think it was a huge surprise, the dedication that a lot of these activists had. Um, but yeah, it was a big eye opener for, for a lot of people.

• 2:03:28Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I mean, it, it's, um, the situation you're describing, I mean, is so surreal. It's almost impossible to, to imagine. Um, but it's surreal in a sense that, you know, it's also surreal in the sense that during the Spanish Civil War, Spanish anarchists controlled cities for a brief period of time. Uh, it, it's, it's like this, it's this sort of, unfortunately, you know, a brief moment in time. Um, where you're seeing something happen, where the war is bringing these different people together. Um, but I mean, I don't follow the war as closely as I used to, but what I, I can, I think the writing is on the wall.

• 2:04:12Jack Murphy?

  What's going to happen in Northwest Syria and it's, it's heartbreaking, honestly.

• 2:04:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I've got to be honest, I thought, I thought the writing was on the wall pretty early on. Um, when I got back to the UK, I mean, I was at a transition point myself because

• 2:04:32Speaker 03

  I knew I was on a railroad that was going to lead me to dying in a ditch somewhere. Um, in a probably a really cool way, but dead is dead. Do you know what I mean?

• 2:04:41Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:04:42Speaker 03

  Um, so I was seriously thinking, like, you know, what do I want to do? And that's when I started redoing my education and, uh, preference to go to university. Um, so being able to sort of watch the war from the outside, but knowing the internal aspects. Um, what was crazy is I heard about TIL.

• 2:04:59Jack Murphy?

  Uh, oh, yeah.

• 2:05:00Speaker 03

  I had a major issue. Yeah, yeah, I'd never met him and he was out there after me and he did way longer than me. Um.

• 2:05:09Speaker 03

  I was told that there was some crazy German academic going around punching shit YPG commanders. And I was like, that's my soul brother. Um, because many a time it could have gone. Yeah. Um, the only reason it didn't happen was we were told that there was like a series of like secret prisons that YPG was running.

• 2:05:30Jack Murphy?

  There was. Yes, there was.

• 2:05:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I didn't meet anyone who got locked up. I didn't meet anyone who knew someone that got locked up. But everyone knew about it, if that makes sense.

• 2:05:42Jack Murphy?

  There were, there were some guys that got so PTSD that they had to lock them up for a period of time.

• 2:05:48Speaker 03

  You sure.

• 2:05:48Jack Murphy?

  And there were also bad guys in those prisons too. And I think now that I'm thinking about it, I think one of those prisons was down in Tel Hamis.

• 2:05:58Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:05:59Jack Murphy?

  Was, was, was there, um, a compound with apartment buildings? And there's a huge water tower that had been shot, the, shot the fuck up.

• 2:06:08Speaker 03

  Ah, I think I know what that is. Was that closer to Sinja?

• 2:06:12Jack Murphy?

  Uh, yes, it's close to the Iraqi border.

• 2:06:16Speaker 03

  I took that time.

• 2:06:18Jack Murphy?

  Yo, you were there for that?

• 2:06:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was on that one.

• 2:06:22Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know what you mean. Um.

• 2:06:24Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. So tell us about that. Cause that water tower, I climbed to the top of it. It was totally riddled with bullet holes and RPG rounds. Every, it was destroyed.

• 2:06:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, that place was fucked up. Um, to be fair, a lot of the air power had gone in. Uh, cleared the way. Um, like me, at one point, me and two people cleared like a whole hamlet by ourselves. Cause we've got so used to clearing buildings in small numbers. Um.

• 2:06:51Speaker 03

  But yeah, the unit that I got to, the first unit I got to, um, the day before, they'd taken a village and they hadn't searched it properly and they'd set up to set up chai. And then an ISIS Duska truck just burst out of a garage and like, just the guy on the gun was just blasting. As guys were like setting up team, they panicked, grabbed their rifles, everyone's missing, trace was going everywhere. And these guys got away and just drove off into the distance. Um, so they, they got really good at like making sure they were going to check every building this time. Uh, so that was reassuring. Um, but yeah, that like, that happened a lot. Finding like ISIS hideaways and shit like.

• 2:07:29Jack Murphy?

  In the, in the apartment buildings and stuff.

• 2:07:33Speaker 03

  Now and again, yeah, they'd usually leave like a few idiots in like a village and um so I'm

• 2:07:41Speaker 03

  uh they'd usually leave leave like a couple of idiots in the village to sort of just give us a problem. Uh but like I said, with DF uh one oh seven straight into the building, that usually ended it pretty quick. So yeah, um. Having been on the receiving end of that, uh I can assure you it works. So yeah.

• 2:08:01Jack Murphy?

  And what's your

• 2:08:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean.

• 2:08:03Jack Murphy?

  Well, mo- like, what was the composition? Was it mostly Western or was it a mix of of Kurdish and foreigners?

• 2:08:11Speaker 03

  So it was uh about fifty fifty Western. No, no, sorry, about about one third Western, two thirds Kurds, but uh they made a point that a lot of the Kurds in that or could speak English or had grown up in more cosmopolitan areas.

• 2:08:26Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, they ca- they came from Europe. Yeah.

• 2:08:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, um, I speak half full French. Um, my ex-girlfriend that that one that went to the good school was half French. So yeah, um, I can get by in Paris, basically. So that was good for me because I was able to talk to, because my commagiarie was shit, but there was still another language that I could use if necessary, um, with a couple of Kurds, because some of them had grown up in Belgium, um, a couple in France. Um. There was actually a a general who spent a lot of time with us, um. And General Chia, and he'd grown up, he'd we'd spent a lot of time in Montpellier. Um, so yeah, we would chat quite a bit about his time in France in French, um, or try to. Billings are terrible in French, I'm like, but his was spectacular. Um.

• 2:09:15Speaker 03

  So yeah, that was that was quite common. Um. I refer I refer to the Westerners in our group Colonial Club because it was Brits, Aussies, uh Canadians and Americans. So as a his stay, I call them Colonials. Um. I'd just like to say that my family's predominantly Irish and I don't buy into flag shagging. I'm a Republican. I don't believe in monarchy. So just go for that there. Uh.

• 2:09:43Speaker 03

  Don't want any comebacks. Uh, but yeah, it it it was a really good group of guys, actually. For the most part, most of them switched on decent, like not fucked up. Do you know what I mean? Um. There was a lot of scope for uh.

• 2:10:01Speaker 03

  Messed up shit. The guy that brought us together, as it were. Tim ended up with quite a reputation.

• 2:10:09Jack Murphy?

  The cannibal?

• 2:10:12Jack Murphy?

  Hey, everyone. I want to tell you about my new novel, The Most Dangerous Man, out in June. It is a novel about a regimental reconnaissance company soldier who gets kidnapped while he's on a mission to West Africa. And when he wakes up, he finds that he is now being hunted for sport by a group of tech billionaires through the wilds of West Africa. This book is based on stories that I heard over the years about safari guides taking wealthy clients hunting for poachers on game reserves in Africa. I took that and I took a century old short story, The Most Dangerous Game, and modernized it. And the product is this book, which I think will feel contemporary and resonate with audiences today.

• 2:10:56Jack Murphy?

  Thank you, and please check it out.

• 2:11:11Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:11:26Speaker 05

  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.

• 2:11:37Speaker 04

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

• 2:11:42Speaker 06

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

• 2:11:48Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:12:08Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 2:12:35Speaker 01

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• 2:13:06Jack Murphy?

  So pick it up. Tell us, tell me about the Cannibal, how you came across that dude.

• 2:13:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Tim, Tim came to us the night before we were gonna cross over. He was erratic. However, some of the guys that I'd met, I felt were putting on, they were playing up to a part, if that makes sense. Some guys were trying to portray themselves as adventurers and that kind of thing. And I just thought he was playing up as like the crazy man. I mean, there was a lot of that. So I didn't take it too seriously. It was only once he was, he'd been given his weapons, and he's got like three hand grenades and a few magazines.

• 2:13:56Speaker 03

  You think, shit. He'd opted to go for an M16, which is obviously an unusual choice for a Brit. I'm familiar with it, but if I had the choice between that and an AK, I'm going for the AK. It's a simpler weapon. So yeah, I had to show him how to use it, like the base, like literally how to, where the charging handle is, not a cocking handle. Like down to the point of how a gas-operated weapon cycles, which for someone that claimed that he'd been in the military is unusual.

• 2:14:35Speaker 03

  He then got separated off to a different group when we got to Tell Ha'Anas. Um, and every now and again, we'd bump into other people. Never be like, have you heard about Tim? Have you heard about Tim? And someone eventually said, yeah, so Tim had, uh, they're doing an attack. Um, there was a wounded ISIS guy and in a position they'd just taken. So they're setting up the fence and while everyone's setting up the fence, Tim's like looking at this guy and starts like eating bits of them. Uh, started putting my bits of his liver out apparently. Um, again, I didn't see this. Um, I spoke to someone who claims they saw it, but again, that's questionable in a place with a lot of questionable characters.

• 2:15:18Speaker 03

  Uh, the YPG thought it was hilarious. Uh, the YPJ was super freaky and did not like being around it. Um, so I tend to go with the YPJ, uh, view and world in that regards. Um, they did eventually remove him. Um.

• 2:15:35Speaker 03

  I, I don't know what happened to him afterwards. The next time I heard about him, he was in the press in the Daily Mail, uh, where he pretty much.

• 2:15:44Speaker 03

  Whether, uh, how reliable of a narrator of his own history is is debatable. Um, but yeah, he pretty much told the Daily Mail everything I've just said. Um, yeah, it was a, it was odd because you'd hear Tim's stories everywhere you went. Um, and again, it's, you know how rumors work in the military, you're.

• 2:16:06Speaker 03

  You don't discount all of it. You know, it's not, it's not always all with bullshit. Uh. I mean, he wasn't the only one. There was a dude who was caught, uh, he was stripping the finger bones out of the guy's hand. Um, but he wanted to keep his souvenirs. Uh, he got sent back. Yeah. Um.

• 2:16:23Jack Murphy?

  The stories I heard about Tim was that he would like come up on dead ISIS guys who had been killed in airstrikes and their bodies are charred. And he'd like pulled the ear off and just start chewing on it and that kind of thing. And then.

• 2:16:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:40Speaker 03

  He got to, yeah, sorry, I remember we got to tell Hamas, um, and when Tim got separated from, that was, sorry, I've completely forgot like this, it's in my diary as well. He, um, yeah, there was already a pile of dead ISIS guys being piled up along a sand burn and we'd stopped and Tim just ran over to go and have a look at them. Um, he, he wasn't playing about with bodies, but he did just go over just to like, oh wow, there's dead bodies. I mean, once you've seen that shit, you've seen it a million times.

• 2:17:11Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:17:12Speaker 03

  Again, I put it down to inexperience. Um, but yeah, I didn't see him fuck about with any bodies personally, but this was early on and then all this other stuff came out subsequently. So it's a, yeah.

• 2:17:27Jack Murphy?

  Uh, the, the incident, the, the incident that, again, that I've been told secondhand, you know, that instigated him being kicked out was that he ate a piece of a wounded YPG fighter that they were working on. And, uh, there's a joke that somebody made, some gallows humor, that there's a joke there about leftists eating their own.

• 2:17:53Speaker 03

  Uh, Tim was not a leftist, I can tell you that. We had plenty of times to talk about politics and he was very much on the other side of the aisle.

• 2:18:00Jack Murphy?

  Well, that's, that's the fa- the follow-up is my understanding was that, uh, the next time the guys kind of caught up with him, he was living as like a homeless vagabond in Europe and in his rucksack, he only had two things, a bottle of whiskey and a copy of Mein Kampf.

• 2:18:19Speaker 03

  I mean, that's a party though. Do you know what I mean? That's a good night. Um, yeah. He told me he traveled to the Holy Land, um, he traveled through Jordan, Israel, um, and when he was there, he passed under a, like a highway bridge, um, a falcon came down and blinding light came out of the falcon's eyes and it was God. And God had sent him on a mission to, to fight ISIS.

• 2:18:49Jack Murphy?

  In need people.

• 2:18:51Speaker 03

  And he then clearly, yeah, um, I mean, hey. God has a plan. Yeah. Um, I've done communion, you know, uh. He just took it a bit more seriously, I think, um, yeah, uh. Heard rumors more once I was back in the UK, um, cause I'd check in all the time, um. To be fair, it was this point was when, uh, Mambish, I think it was. Yeah.

• 2:19:19Speaker 03

  And that's when the Westerners started getting, getting hit. Um, Jack, um, Jamie Bright, an Aussie guy who was, uh, one of the, he was an absolute gentleman, um. Like one of the sweetest people that I've met in the army, in, in a military environment, um, a genuine humanitarian, um.

• 2:19:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, there was, oh God, yeah. Did I tell you about the, the actor, Michael Enright? No, no. So Jordan Mattson put on Facebook that the British government didn't remove Michael Enright. He was gonna end up being killed by other volunteers I've never met. Like this dude could start a fight with a lamppost. He was so abrasive. Um, he was from Manchester originally. He'd been an extra in a few films like Pirates of the Caribbean, um. The YPJ kept using him as like propaganda. So they'd like drive him out to the front. He'd have an AK, fire a few rounds at an empty building. Then they'd move into a different place with other Westerners. He'd fire a few rounds there. So they'd build up like a, a.

• 2:20:27Speaker 03

  Archive. A legend for him. Yeah. Yeah. And then sort of send that out like Hollywood actor, um. Fighting ISIS kind of thing, um, but yeah. It was odd. Like you'd be talking to him, having a conversation and then someone else would walk into the room. And like, as I'm talking to you now, he's like, I am the fucking great. You know what I mean? Like he sounded like a Game of Thrones character. Um. Yeah, I've never met a more abrasive man, um, not to the point where like I was considering killing him or anything, but apparently people were, so yeah. Um. Last time I heard, he was stuck in Belize, actually at the British consulate, trying to get back into the US.

• 2:21:06Speaker 03

  Cause he's technically a US citizen, um, but they weren't having any of it. So I, I don't know what's happened to them. I don't know if Britain's gonna be back or what.

• 2:21:14Jack Murphy?

  I I met uh Jordan Madsen when I was in Syria um.

• 2:21:19Speaker 03

  What did you think of him? I only got to say a lot of.

• 2:21:21Jack Murphy?

  I I did meet him in Derek. Um. He seemed like a nice enough guy, you know?

• 2:21:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:21:25Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:26Speaker 03

  I I didn't hear anything bad about him. Um. The first Westerner I met was crossing that river. And they were coming the other way. And he was complaining that he'd been kept at the front. And the only way you get to the front was if you were friends with Jordan Madsen. That just simply wasn't true. Um. I never met him and I was on the front for days.

• 2:21:47Jack Murphy?

  But but but it did have so much to do with like who you interfaced with and and who you knew, you know, that that did have a lot to do with it.

• 2:21:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, networking was vital. I made sure there were certain people that I made sure I stayed in their good graces. For the event of like, oh, yeah, this other unit might be, do you know what I mean? Um, because there was so much variation in the tools. Um. And I again, with the British Army, I'd say it's all best and worst. Um. The first of all, I was with, like I said, very cosmopolitan, highly educated. Um, lots of people, well, mix of politics, GWOP guys. Um. But next of all were what we refer to as Gundies, uh, which is the command chief of villager.

• 2:22:34Speaker 03

  These are guys that had grown up in the Manions, had a PK education, weren't particularly worldly, were very into what we called Apo Magic, which was our Apo. We'll just, we'll use revolutionary spirit to get through. Like, no, no, you're gonna need ammo. Trust me.

• 2:22:49Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:22:50Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, uh, so we would like, before we do an attack, when I said we were in this stage where we're just taking tines and villagers and shit, um. When we get the brief, right, we're gonna take this place tomorrow, but blah. And then, um, yeah, medical cover's gonna be Apo Magic. Uh, hopefully we'll pray to him and then he'll uh come in and save everyone.

• 2:23:11Jack Murphy?

  For the for the viewers who are listening to this, Apo, it means, I believe it means uncle. And there and it's a it's a reference to Abdullah Ojalan, who is sort of the spiritual and for a long time, the literal leader of the PKK.

• 2:23:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, uh.

• 2:23:30Speaker 03

  The uncle fit, it's so close to Big Brother.

• 2:23:32Jack Murphy?

  It's a little weird. I, I've seen, I've seen young YPJ and YPG fighter, uh, uh, YPG fighter, correction. Young guy actually kissing his picture.

• 2:23:44Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Um, I mean, there will be people, the only books they've ever read will be.

• 2:23:52Speaker 03

  Obdo, Ojlan's writings.

• 2:23:53Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, that guy, he, he had a little knapsack, a little backpack with all of his possessions in it. And most of it was Apo's writings.

• 2:24:02Speaker 03

  And nearly all of them had a picture of him on them as well. Um, yeah, yeah. Uh. Some of the guys in the second table we were in, they fought in Kabani, um, the, the big fight.

• 2:24:17Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:24:19Speaker 03

  I mean, don't, don't, what those guys have gone through, I can't imagine. They used to have like night terrors. Um, some of the YPJ fighters as well were escaped slaves and they would have night terrors and we would like. Uh, go in and try and hold them down. Um, pretty early on, but like one of our tours, a dude hung himself, me and Brandon had to like declare him dead. Um, he had, you'd see he'd been self harming for years because they don't pull their sleeves up. Um, or they, they were funny about you showing.

• 2:24:49Jack Murphy?

  Skin.

• 2:24:50Speaker 03

  Exposed skin.

• 2:24:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:24:51Speaker 03

  You wouldn't, you wouldn't have known it. First time I've ever seen that in the Middle East. I've never known someone take their own life. And it sounds like an odd thing to say, but I've never heard of it or seen it in that culture. Um. So that was a shock and I hadn't realised just how traumatised a lot of these people were.

• 2:25:09Jack Murphy?

  Yes, yeah, yeah.

• 2:25:12Speaker 03

  And yeah, um, that was a big part in the reason to come home, um, was. Like my belief was they didn't need more angry young men with guns. What they needed was nurses, doctors, architects. Educators, you know, I mean, engineers, civil servants, you know.

• 2:25:31Speaker 03

  But also with the politics of the region, there was no way, there's no way Turkey's gonna allow a Kurdish state on the border. There's no way the United States and NATO is gonna lose Turkey.

• 2:25:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

• 2:25:43Speaker 03

  That was always gonna be the outcome. Um, I also, if I'm honest, fully sympathize and understand Syria's and Syrians' right to wanna secure their borders, all of it, and have equal access to their natural resources under the new government. After years and years of conflict.

• 2:26:00Jack Murphy?

  I, I think, I think the Kurds would be perfectly willing to accept, you know, because they, this idea of cantons that we've talked about before. Um, I think they, as long as like Kurdish rights are recognized, I think they would be at least somewhat receptive to that. Um, because during the Syrian, during Assad's regime, uh, the Kurds could not legally have a job. They couldn't get a passport. They were not allowed to speak their own language. I mean, it was very oppressive.

• 2:26:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean,

• 2:26:31Speaker 03

  I, I can't imagine what it's like if you're a YPJ fighter and you fought through that period and managed to survive to then have to bend the knee to an Islamist regime.

• 2:26:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, what the hell?

• 2:26:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, that, I can't begin to imagine what that's like. Um, they said they're gonna integrate the YPJ into the new Syrian army, but we'll see how that goes.

• 2:26:52Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, hard to believe.

• 2:26:55Speaker 03

  If I was away, I wouldn't share a barracks with Islamists if I was a YPJ fighter, you know what I mean? Like, that's, no. Um, there's obviously certain personalities, uh, Rashida for a lot, I know, earned a huge amount of respect. Um, individuals like that may be able to, uh, but I, yeah, I, I think.

• 2:27:17Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, Ra- Rashida led like battalions of Arab men, which is, again, so surreal to even contemplate that in that part of the world.

• 2:27:28Speaker 03

  It's phenomenal, man. Um, I mean, a lot of people got very excited about the YPJ, like they came quite fetishized, I think.

• 2:27:36Jack Murphy?

  Yes.

• 2:27:36Speaker 03

  And not just in by Western men, but Western female outlets.

• 2:27:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, Western feminists, yeah.

• 2:27:44Speaker 03

  Um, and it was like, oh, this is a, I mean, it is a new mode. I think they thought that was going to spread.

• 2:27:51Jack Murphy?

  Um. Yeah.

• 2:27:53Speaker 03

  I don't think it was, if I'm honest.

• 2:27:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, there, there was, there was a certain amount of conflation taking place that like, um, people in the West thought like, yeah, this is this expression of socialism, uh, and feminism that's global. But really it was a fight about Kurdish independence and Kurdish freedom. And I, I think that kind of got lost somewhere, somewhere in the mix.

• 2:28:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, and in a fucked up way, it needed ISIS as the engine to power that.

• 2:28:22Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:22Speaker 03

  If that makes sense, it needed the conflict to.

• 2:28:26Jack Murphy?

  Put the, put the spotlight, yeah.

• 2:28:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it, it was, it was the opportunity that was needed for those, for that to happen at that time in the chaos of the Syrian civil war. Um.

• 2:28:40Speaker 03

  So, yeah, it was, I mean, to be fair, and they were very diplomatic. I mean, there was a Syrian outpost in Karmishload pretty much the entire time. They had a working relationship with the regime. Um. So they weren't stupid. Do you know what I mean? Like they knew when to negotiate, they knew when to say the right things in front of the right people. Um, but again, the group itself was heavily factional. You had the old tool PKK guys, you had the new agree, you had, you know, the people that had grown up that were more sort of in tune with what was coming out of Berkeley and, uh, NYU than anything coming out of Istanbul. Um.

• 2:29:22Speaker 03

  So, yeah, it was a real mix of, like, yeah, any military is factional. Um, they just pretend and work hard to not allow it to impede, but uh, it was because of the nature of the politics, like the level of.

• 2:29:38Speaker 03

  The level of leadership at like the Tabor level was huge. So you then times that by company battalion brigade. It the the types of leadership you can be under vary massively. And and that's that's what me and Brandon experienced. Um, so they thought we were CIA spies.

• 2:29:56Jack Murphy?

  Of course.

• 2:29:57Speaker 03

  At one point.

• 2:29:57Jack Murphy?

  Of course.

• 2:29:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Gundies, Brandon had an iPhone. Um, and I had a cat tornique and it was sticking out of the the twist arm was sticking out the top of my webbing. And they thought that was a radio antenna and I had to get it out and show them it's a cat tornique and I called the commander a fucking idiot. Um, then we left and went to another school that was just down the road. So yeah, second meeting.

• 2:30:21Jack Murphy?

  There there was a a conspiracy or a curd-spiracy. That um they were spreading out the Westerners because they were afraid to put you guys into one unit and it might be like a revolt or something like that.

• 2:30:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot of. I mean, I'll put it to you this way. When I got there, I genuinely thought I was going to be the least militarily accomplished person then. I thought I was going to have like ex-Seals, ex-Green Berets going, I don't know, you do eight years in every moment. You know what I mean? Um. No, uh.

• 2:30:55Speaker 03

  Similar sort of thing.

• 2:30:58Speaker 03

  With the Kurds in terms of um.

• 2:31:02Speaker 03

  You you tell the people that cut their teeth fighting Turkey because it was a much more advanced military than the Syrian regime had. And um. I mean, the Syrian military, uh Syrian Arab Army, sorry, was primarily designed to terrorize its own people. And though they tend to be quite poor at actual conflict. Um, so yeah, that that that variation in in terms of commands, you could tell the people that cut their teeth. And where, um, so yeah.

• 2:31:30Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, the the hardcore like PKK guys and women are no joke.

• 2:31:38Speaker 03

  No, um. Yeah, the.

• 2:31:44Speaker 03

  You're gonna end up dead or in prison if you join the PKK.

• 2:31:48Jack Murphy?

  And they they know that. They totally know that. Yeah.

• 2:31:51Speaker 03

  That doesn't stop them. Um.

• 2:31:55Speaker 03

  The Shaheed thing was difficult, the way that.

• 2:31:59Jack Murphy?

  The martyr stuff.

• 2:32:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, um. Because you don't want to get caught in a fucking suicide charge. Do you know what I mean? I'm not doing a banzai charge for anyone. You know what I mean? Um. But yeah, so you'd have these infuriating conversations with my the Gundy commander that had a guy called Wala, um, who we fell out with. Right. So how are we going to take this village? How are we going to do it? It's like, right, we're going to get in a line and then we're going to run. Like, no, no, no. You've got a base of fire on the high ground. They've got their ground there. Like, come on. Right. And then you try and explain it. Look, do you want to take Rakkam? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And then you want to go on to this, uh, all the way through. You want to hook up to, um.

• 2:32:44Speaker 03

  Uh, the Kavani Kansan and all that you're going to fight with. Yeah. How are you going to do that if you die tomorrow?

• 2:32:50Speaker 03

  Do you know what I mean? And you try and.

• 2:32:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:32:52Speaker 03

  If you want to win this war, you can do more with alive soldiers than you can dead ones and try and like. I mean, trying to give them. Oh, go for it, man.

• 2:33:02Jack Murphy?

  Well, I was just gonna say, my my impression is that that that was kind of, um. A a theme, at least in the early years of the war. Maybe it changed that. Some of these guerrilla fighters came down out of the mountains and they had extensive experience with guerrilla warfare in the mountain environment. But now, you know, this part of Syria we're talking about is absolutely flat. It's like a pancake. And the fight was very conventional. It was a very conventional infantry sort of fight. And, um, a lot of the guys told me that just trying to like talk to them about the concept of firing maneuver, laying down a base of fire and coming or flanking around from this was something that was very like lost on them.

• 2:33:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, I think they saw it as overcomplicating a simple task. Um, and they quite simply were prepared to take a level of casualties that we wouldn't. True. We wouldn't use to. Um, it came across as like a certain amount of callousness on behalf of the command. But then again, you've got to factor in the fact these were kids, but not. Yeah. You know, they've never been to a training establishment. They've never sat in a staff college. Some of them have never sat in a classroom. Um, so yeah, you can't expect West Point in northern Syria. You know, I mean, it's just not gonna happen.

• 2:34:21Speaker 03

  Um, I think it was a bit unfair. Some of the guys who came back who did do the long haul, um, said that a lot of the GWOT guys were sort of couldn't handle the fact that they didn't have a Pedro on call. And it's like, no, a lot of the guys knew, like, they were fully aware that there was no cats coming in together. Uh, but they didn't want to die on a suicide charge either. Right. Um, do you know what I mean? Um, and yeah, it was, it, I mean, yeah, like I said, it's hard, like the, the fighting afterwards, taking Raka, and then of course you had the Iraqi army in Mosul, which must have been unbelievable. I mean, you're talking like Philippines, sort of Stalingrad type. Yeah. You know, uh, loser type shit.

• 2:35:06Speaker 03

  Um, it's got to be up there and barely anyone remembers.

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• 2:37:05Speaker 03

  It's a footnote in history, no?

• 2:37:07Jack Murphy?

  What was, what was sort of the, the rest of your run like with the YPG that you got with this Gundy commander? And what was, what was sort of the, the next steps for you?

• 2:37:19Speaker 03

  So yeah, we had a massive fallout with them. We left, went to literally the building a few hundred meters away, and then we ended up with, it was a mix of, they were all older, all guys in their like late twenties, early thirties, which was great. Iraqi Christians, atheists, a couple of Sunnis, mix of Kurds, mainly Arab or Assyrian, and we spent the rest of the time with them. We had a massive BBID hit the base just down the road from us, which was fucking huge. It looked, to me, it looked like a BMP variant. There was

• 2:38:01Speaker 03

  some sort of turret on the top. It looked from the top, I didn't see the road wheel, so I can't confirm, but it had the look of BMP. Machine gunner was firing the whole way, RPGs were bouncing off it, and we just stood there and watched because we had nothing to answer it to. We didn't have air cover all the time. Like I said, you'd wake up one morning, there'd be- Drones up and then the next day they wouldn't because they were needed elsewhere. Um, so yeah, sometimes the drones would get them early and sometimes they just couldn't, um. But yeah, later on, so we'd actually asked to go back and it was usually around a three day period to find out where you got the A or the N. Um, we'd asked and then two days later ISIS tried to overrun our position.

• 2:38:44Speaker 03

  Um, because we'd been sniping them for a good few weeks. Um, we had a Dragonoff. Me and Brandon had basically the same foresight. Um, obviously the Dragonoff is a shit rifle really, um.

• 2:38:58Jack Murphy?

  Yes.

• 2:38:59Speaker 03

  It's a marksman rifle. It's not a sniper rifle and I'm not a sniper. Um, after eight years I can shoot marksman level as I should be able to as a, as a riflemen. Um, so it didn't take long. You just fired and you're dropping rounds in. I mean, we were just doing that from sunup till sundown. For weeks, just taking pot shots and obviously you get lucky sometimes and most of the times you don't, but yeah. Um, at one point, yeah, so before the attack, what it was, we'd uh, been given a load of ammo. And we had uh, the Russian seven six nine two or something. Um. It was armor piercing incendiary tracer, I think.

• 2:39:39Jack Murphy?

  You're talking, uh, are you talking about seventy, uh, seven six two by fifty four brand?

• 2:39:44Speaker 03

  That's the one, sorry. Yeah. Um. It was either incendiary tracer or A P incendiary tracer.

• 2:39:52Jack Murphy?

  It's the, the, uh, through the Dragonoff.

• 2:39:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:39:57Jack Murphy?

  Uh, was it the silver, the silver tip bullet?

• 2:40:01Speaker 03

  Silver tip, red with a black.

• 2:40:03Jack Murphy?

  Okay. Okay. So the silver tip is, is light ball. Um, and you're, you're probably right that that's uh, A P I.

• 2:40:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh.

• 2:40:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:40:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, we did the job. What we would do with that, if we saw vehicles, we'd stick, try and stick in the engine block. Um, we did that, set the water on fire. Um, they didn't like that. Um. And then we, Brandon, this was his idea, and I'm gonna steal his idea, uh, started firing them into the roof of the building that we'd identified they were staying in. So we set fire to the building and then when they tried running out with all their shit, we, the other Kurds, who had better arks, they were like, just throw them machine guns on them. Um, that was really effective. Yeah, um, we became like celebrities after a while for this, um. We had a funny one, I dropped a guy and, um, they started hitting us with mortars, cause every now and again, they, they'd already responded if we hit one of them.

• 2:40:57Speaker 03

  Um, and they started hitting us with war, mortars, they'd already, it was an eighty-two, uh, they'd already bracketed the base, so we knew that the next time they hit us, they were gonna be pretty bang on. And yeah, the first couple of rounds, they didn't land within the compound, but just outside. Uh, and then the third round exploded in the barrel. So yeah, they had it to cook off and so they lost at least one guy, uh, from that as well. So yeah, that was, that was a good day. Uh.

• 2:41:27Speaker 03

  But yeah, um, they tried to over us and overrun us on a night. Uh, it was quite funny. We're settling in, um. Just got to last light and then I'd be chatting shit and just heard Tapia, Allah Akbar. And then they fired a volley of, um, RPGs into the wall behind us. There's like a big sand burn that blew up, but it was like sand burn and then the wall, so we got concussion from these, from these RPG rounds. Um, our stand to position was actually by the front door, the only way in and out. Um. Naturally, all these guys just got up on the one side, um, started firing at, at the incoming. Um.

• 2:42:12Speaker 03

  But I was determined to stay on the door, cause I was like, if one suicide bomber gets in, we are all fucked.

• 2:42:18Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:42:18Speaker 03

  There's no way we're gonna, yeah, um. And the only reason, I mean, that story is all, you hit from one side and attack from the other, you don't, you know, to me, it was pretty obvious what they were trying to do. Um. They kept machine guns on us for nine hours, like they kept a constant rate of machine gun fire on us for nine hours from sundown till sunup. And, I mean, having been most of my career in machine guns, that is an incredible amount of logistical.

• 2:42:48Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:49Speaker 03

  Um, and it was a mix of uh two foureys to uh fourteen point five uh cap down on the aircraft guns. Um, but yeah, luckily they were firing high and it was going over our, over the camp, but like you'd hear the ratings coming in low. Like you didn't want to stand up too long. Um, in response to that, the YPG sent us a T fifty five. Uh, but at no point did anyone ever service the tracks. So it just squeaked the whole way, but it sounded like it was like two meters away, even though it was like a mile away. Um, so yeah, that turned up and just started blasting shit out of

• 2:43:28Speaker 03

  uh uh the village across from us. Um, and yeah, until morning, uh did the ammo kind, re- respread ammo, did breakfast, said goodbye. Pretty emotional. Um, it's like some of the, like one of the guys who's um has to be one of the funniest people I've ever met. Like he could have been a stand up comedian. He was kind of like a Charlie Chaplin because obviously he didn't speak English, but like he he could have, he'd have blown Saturday night like like apart, you know what I mean? Um, so yeah, saying goodbye to them was was pretty was pretty hard. Um, and like I said, though, I mean, my abiding

• 2:44:07Speaker 03

  opinion was that there was clear, like the amount of air power that was going up, they were going to be fine. Like as bad as the fighting got in the urban locations, it was as good as it was going to get for them.

• 2:44:19Speaker 03

  But they needed hospitals, they need like one field hospital in that place could have saved so many lives that had been dropped off in you do what I mean? Like by a huge amount. Um, yeah, and then that was my view.

• 2:44:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, again, it was nice to be on the morally right side. Uh, never heard of a single kangaroo rape the whole time I was out there.

• 2:44:47Jack Murphy?

  That that's because you have men and females soldiers integrated on the in the field. Yeah.

• 2:44:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I I I'll be honest, I was never one of those dinosaurs that like women should stay off the battlefield. Um, I've spent enough time with the Afghan National Army to know that one person that wants to fight is worth a hundred that don't. Um, so, yeah, I've got nothing but respect for the Y P J. Um, I mean, I saw them do shit that would have won any number of honors in a western military. Um, I mean, one of the craziest, we had this R P J, uh, Y P J R P G gunner. No, Visving gunner. Um, and that night that we got attacked, the Y P J set up a sort of swift ambush to uh, hit ISIS that they retrieved, we fought them off. Um, and we have one thermal imaging uh, set and I

• 2:45:38Speaker 03

  the commander passed it to me so I could see what was going on. And luckily, as I put it to my eye, she fired the R P G and it hit him straight in the chest at about two hundred meters.

• 2:45:49Speaker 03

  And you know, when you see through thermal, the bits like

• 2:45:52Jack Murphy?

  The white bits, the because it's white hot?

• 2:45:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, like the, yeah, um, the sort of bug splat, uh, and I saw that.

• 2:46:02Speaker 03

  I couldn't believe, yeah, and that was firing at a muzzle flash. She did that.

• 2:46:07Jack Murphy?

  That's insane.

• 2:46:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, to be fair, though, I noticed every Afghan military unit had the one guy who knocked the wings off the fly with an R P G. Everyone else that fired it goes somewhere else.

• 2:46:17Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, there's there's a there's a rocket man.

• 2:46:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, every unit has one. Um, she was clearly it. Yeah.

• 2:46:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, Havel Zilan, her name, well, she was amazing.

• 2:46:32Jack Murphy?

  Um, and so, yeah, what was next with with this this adventure in Syria?

• 2:46:40Speaker 03

  Uh, to be honest, after that, I ripped it out fairly quickly. Uh, it was a really quick process to get out. Um.

• 2:46:48Speaker 03

  So. So I left everything. Um, so I was trying to arrange like a couch surfing circuit um for when I got back.

• 2:46:58Jack Murphy?

  But you said you went you went like the crazy overland route to get back to.

• 2:47:03Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, shit. Oh, man. Yeah. Um, so we did some like.

• 2:47:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'm not, I'm pretty sure we passed into Turkey at some point. Um.

• 2:47:16Speaker 03

  But yeah, we went over this like, it was like being in the green zone, like for real. It was long and some. Some not like a river delta, but you know where the islands in Oxbow Lake start to break up and yeah, like it was um. We set off in the evening and we were like jumping in ditches. There was like Peshmerga patrols. Awesome within meters of us on the road as we're laid on the floor. Um. Searchlights as we, it was insane. It was like something off film, like a prison escape film. Um.

• 2:47:52Speaker 03

  And then, yeah, we did that. Had no idea we were back in Iraq. And then we just came around this into this field between these two hills. And there was a BKK guy. With a vehicle waiting for us. Um, and yeah, we started a slow drive back then to the camp that we started off in. Um. And that's where I met Aiden Naslin. Uh, he was a British guy who was captured in Ukraine, tortured by the Russians.

• 2:48:16Jack Murphy?

  Oh, shit, I know who you're talking about. I think I may have spoken to him once, actually.

• 2:48:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, we only spent like, I think, a day and a night there. Um, what I met of him was a really nice dude, a bit naive at that time. Uh, he certainly wasn't after. Um, but yeah. Um, like I said, yeah, it was weird. Some of the people that I met, I didn't realize. Back in the UK or in the US and become sort of like minor celebrities, you know what I mean? Um.

• 2:48:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was quite happy to sort of lay low and focus on education.

• 2:48:51Jack Murphy?

  Yes, so so tell us about coming home and reintegrating.

• 2:48:56Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, it was odd.

• 2:49:01Speaker 03

  I definitely, I think it helped coming back with a good feeling, like I felt like I'd done something good.

• 2:49:07Jack Murphy?

  Hmm.

• 2:49:07Speaker 03

  Which was unusual for for my military experience. Um.

• 2:49:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, to be honest, it was more like it was quite a clarifying thing. Um.

• 2:49:20Speaker 03

  Like I said, I knew that if I carried on the path I was going, because I had no interest in like the um legit private security thing. I I said, because my experience trying to get on the maritime security stuff, I kind of saw it as a scam when. So, oh, yeah, you need to have these courses, which we offer, by the way, for blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? Um.

• 2:49:40Speaker 03

  So I was done with that, but because of like the kind of people that you meet out there, I was getting offers for jobs in like Sudan. Uh, and I just like, yeah, there was, again, the half of it, you don't bullshit, you know, a lot of it's bullshit. Um, for anyone, but I was definitely on the cusp of that. Um. You have like the professional private military shit, like suits, ties, certification.

• 2:50:06Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:50:06Speaker 03

  Licenses, and then you've got the other side, um.

• 2:50:11Speaker 03

  The other side interested me way more, to be honest.

• 2:50:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:50:15Speaker 03

  To to me, I mean, if you're guarding an oil outpost somewhere, that's. For me, it was the offensive operations aspect. That's what I missed. Um, I wasn't gonna.

• 2:50:28Speaker 03

  I wasn't gonna enjoy being on guard in Iraq any more than I was in central London.

• 2:50:32Jack Murphy?

  That that's exactly, that's exactly the same thought I had, you know, that it's like, yeah, you can go in and become like even like a. Most of the paramilitary contractors, not all of them, but most of them were essentially bodyguards. Um, and most of the private security stuff was like that. It was doing security. It's like, well, if that's what. You know, yeah, you're making better money, but as far as job satisfaction, I might as well just stay in the army, right?

• 2:50:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I I know it was really hard for a lot of like former platoon sergeants um who'd got out. And they hadn't done a guard since they were like private and then being put in a watchtower for 12 hours.

• 2:51:10Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:10Speaker 03

  Do you know what I mean? It's it's a big culture shock. Um.

• 2:51:16Speaker 03

  So yeah, I mean, I again, I'm not shitting on private contracts. I know I was in Iraq when like Ru Irish was.

• 2:51:21Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:51:24Speaker 03

  Um.

• 2:51:26Speaker 03

  And yeah, but for me, the the buzz was the offensive operations. Um, I've been lucky in my military career. I've done some pretty cool shit. Um. Yeah, like a good few like heli airborne raids, like massive kickoffs. Um. Yeah, uh, that was the thing that I missed, but eventually that is gonna get.

• 2:51:48Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, so so you were you were like you were like cutting yourself off at this point in life.

• 2:51:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I bet why I grew up, uh. Uh, it's time to grow up. Um, having fun, seen some shit, done some shit. I've survived a lot. I wasn't gonna slide it forever. Um.

• 2:52:08Speaker 03

  And I saw education as like a new challenge, if that makes sense.

• 2:52:11Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:13Speaker 03

  But I knew I wasn't a muppet. I was uneducated and I was ignorant, but sure shit wasn't stupid, so. Um. Yeah, I got back. Uh, had to use a charity to, because I wanted to go my own way, if that makes sense. I didn't want to rely on people, so I did go for a charity. Ended up in like a veterans home in a city called Plymouth, um, which was a great, um, yeah, it was a great place to be honest. It was really good. Veterans home sounds like I was there with loads of guys and that, so it wasn't that. It was like younger veterans, do you know what I mean? The G what was, um. Just trying to get back on the ladder kind of thing, divorce. The shit that fucks you up, you know what I mean?

• 2:52:53Jack Murphy?

  Sure.

• 2:52:53Speaker 03

  Um. Yeah, uh, they they held you with that. You had a roof over your head somewhere, July. Um.

• 2:53:03Speaker 03

  So yeah, I started doing an access to higher education course. Um, spent like two years, a year and a half in college, um, which was great. I actually did better than I thought I was gonna, um, and then. Applied for, I think it was, well. At the time it was ranked like, I think, third UK's best, um. University and it was the best for history, um. Russian history was. My jazz, that's, but everyone who. Has history for some reason, there's just something that sticks its hooks in you. Uh that other subjects don't, mine was uh Russian history, so yeah. Um but yeah, it was great. Uh you you don't just focus on that. What do you like many evil when you uh you you first year in that um.

• 2:53:49Speaker 03

  Your first year is pretty much by examination of text and that kind of stuff. And historical pretty is more important than the history at at that point. Um and then, yeah, uh.

• 2:54:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, carried on with that and then obviously Covid hit and then the fucking world changed. Um uh.

• 2:54:12Speaker 03

  And yeah, sort of bounced around from a few different jobs. Um wasn't really satisfied. But to be honest, where I'm at now, um can't grumble, the money's pretty good. People I work with are great. Um and yeah, it it's a good. Um yeah, they've they've been really understanding of my part. Like, this will be the first time a lot of them have heard this. Um they've heard bits, but not not to this extent. Um naturally, people have said, like, yeah, when you've done the interview, pass me the link. So, yeah. Um but yeah, it. I think I was lucky in regards that I was given the opportunity of redundancy, which meant I couldn't get back into the the army.

• 2:54:55Speaker 03

  So the option of fucking up the first couple of years and going, oh, join that up was just never there. That was never an option. Again, I'm not looking down on people who do do that, do that. I fully understand why they do it. Um go back to what you know, where you feel safe. Um. But because that wasn't an option, I kind of had to get my shit together myself. And that was a good impetus. You know, it's either that or being homeless. So, yeah. Um but in regards to your question on education and stuff, you don't get any glance. You could prob- there'd probably be some out there to apply. Um. But like I said, I spent two years trying to get on a language course after performing unusually high on a language course.

• 2:55:36Speaker 03

  A hostile nation that had already like poisoned one guy in the UK and invaded, so to say.

• 2:55:44Speaker 03

  Having that carrot dangled for two years and then having it brought back out when done. Oh yeah, we see you. No, I'm done. I am done.

• 2:55:53Jack Murphy?

  Did you get to learn Russian in college?

• 2:55:57Speaker 03

  No, I didn't. I was trying to teach myself. I mean, I've lost most of it. Um, I'm. It's like a muscle. You you pick it up easy.

• 2:56:05Jack Murphy?

  Sure.

• 2:56:05Speaker 03

  But you lose it quick as well. Um, there was bits that I had to for, um, but I didn't have to, but it helps. Um. The Russian course that I focused on, the history course that I focused on was mainly, um, Russian expansionism in Central Asia. So it stands, um, from. So Catherine the Great right up until nineteen forty five and the Allied victory in Europe, um. Which was it's a fascinating, like a really fascinating subject was like the early Cheka Okpu counter insurgencies in Central. Asia like how they adopted, they all conducted their own counter insurgency operations like the nineteen twenties. Um, against the group called, well, they were collectively known as the last marche, um.

• 2:56:49Speaker 03

  Who were, it was a mix of Islamist nationalists that just didn't want to be occupied by Russians. Um, but they were collectively known as bandits naturally, um. And just the crazy lengths that throughout Soviet history they went to to try and keep those areas under wraps. Um, again, yeah, just a sort of an interesting, uh, obscure case study that I'm sure, uh, anyone with. With an interest in the subject would enjoy.

• 2:57:17Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, no, I I would, I would read it. This was, this is focused on Central Asia.

• 2:57:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So, uh, Uzbekistan, Uzbekistan, well, basically, um.

• 2:57:29Speaker 03

  I'm gonna butcher this, the Baganah Valley, yeah, basically it's a massive valley through Central Asia, very fertile, um, was used by the locals to grow food, the Russians insisted they grew cotton instead to try and rival the United States and the UK and India with hilarious consequences, um, so yeah, that's the crux mainly of it, um.

• 2:57:54Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I was in, um, I, I was in Central Asia a little, maybe a year and a half ago, and in one of the museums, uh, I think it was in, in Almaty, they had a placard talking about the transition into their Soviet era, and I swear, there's one sentence in the museum, just one sentence that says, like, the transition from an agrarian nomadic culture to the Soviet system was quite challenging.

• 2:58:20Speaker 03

  That's it. That is such a good, that is such a good quote for the Soviet Union, um, my favorite, I forget who it was who said it, and basically it was about when it got to the collapse, when they could no longer keep pretense up, and I think it was a former Soviet diplomat who said, um, they forgot nothing and they'd learn nothing.

• 2:58:46Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I think it's a great, great line, um, yeah.

• 2:58:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, the education was great, um, it was the first time for me that I'd really had time to sit down and think, it was the first time I'd really looked at my sort of mark on the world, um, the good and the bad, uh.

• 2:59:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, all in, like I said, I've done some shit, seen some shit, um, some of the proudest moments I've had was on some of the worst days, uh, I was incredibly, incredibly fortunate to have been around the caliber of people that I was, um, the NCOs that I was fortunate to have were outstanding, I think the junior officers that were produced from Sandhurst, particularly after sort of 2007 and eight, around that kind of period when Afghanistan really started to kick off for us, probably the best generation that have ever been produced by this country, um, I don't know about you. You can tell when someone doesn't know what they're talking about when they start off a session.

• 2:59:52Speaker 03

  Um, there's a, there's a practice. I mean, there's always an individual that we can tear strips off, but until you've been in command, if you think commanding war is easy, you're a fucking idiot.

• 3:00:03Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:04Speaker 03

  Um, I don't know what you're talking about. Um, so yeah, I mean, all in all, it's, yeah, you, you do that kind of private account of, um,

• 3:00:19Speaker 03

  what you, well, yeah, how you've affected the world now is affecting you.

• 3:00:22Jack Murphy?

  Um, yeah, now that your life has slowed down a little bit, there's a opportunity for some reflection.

• 3:00:29Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, and to be perfectly frank, dude, I didn't think I was going to see thirty.

• 3:00:32Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 3:00:33Speaker 03

  Do you know what I mean?

• 3:00:33Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:00:35Speaker 03

  Back from a few weeks away from four weeks. Magical to me. This is amazing. Um, yeah, I am sure you've had this. You know, those days where you think, oh,

• 3:00:42Jack Murphy?

  For sure.

• 3:00:43Speaker 03

  There's a good, you know what I mean? There's a good chance this is going to be the day. Um, and it's weird because once you've opened that, it's quite liberating. I find it really, like, I'm actually really glad that I was able to face my mortality at a young age. Um, because it is quite liberating.

• 3:00:59Jack Murphy?

  It does something. It does something both, both positive and negative because like my, my sense of-

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• 3:02:57Jack Murphy?

  Danger is like much lower, I guess, than an average person. Like, I don't, like, I'll put myself into dangerous situations, like the stupid stuff I did running around Syria, and it doesn't feel that dangerous to me in the ti- like, like, I don't have that sense that like a normal person would have, which is something I came to recognize eventually.

• 3:03:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a massive symptom.

• 3:03:23Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's weird, but I've always described combat as the ultimate extreme sport.

• 3:03:30Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:31Speaker 03

  And I think that's what's addictive about it, because it's like the ultimate gambling, it's the ultimate MMA, it's the ultimate, do you know what I mean? It's, it's for keeps. I mean, another sort of moment that sort of brought it home, a friend of mine was killed by Israel a couple of years back today. A guy called James Kirby, he was with the World Senate Kitchen.

• 3:03:52Jack Murphy?

  He got killed in Gaza?

• 3:03:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was one of the security guys, yeah, that was with him. We're trying to, well, I said, we, my friends are trying to petition the government to try and get the footage released, but I think we both know how Israel's gonna.

• 3:04:06Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:06Speaker 03

  Gonna handle that. Though I did send the Israeli MC an email to explain that James was definitely not a jihadi. But yeah, no reply.

• 3:04:17Jack Murphy?

  Shocking.

• 3:04:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:04:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, but like I said, it's moments like that, you think, yeah, I probably made the right decision.

• 3:04:30Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Been in retirement.

• 3:04:34Jack Murphy?

  I, I know, I definitely hit that. It was a weird sensation, actually. I remember specifically waking up one morning and I think I was having dreams or something. This is around like 2017. I remember just waking up in the morning and like this feeling of relief washing over me. And I realized like, I don't have anything to prove to anyone anymore, including myself. Like that doesn't exist anymore. Like I'm, I'm a, I'm an adult now. I'm a grown up. Like that coming of age story is over. And moving on to the next thing. And it was a very, just such a, an incredible feeling to have in that moment. You know, and which I think you experienced, you know, probably maybe came to you in a little bit of a different experience or a different way, but very similar.

• 3:05:20Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm not religious at all, but I'm certainly thankful.

• 3:05:24Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:25Speaker 03

  You know what I mean?

• 3:05:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm very much aware that I'm the product of the hard work of lots of other people who also risked themselves to ensure that I'm here. I mean, if anything, I'd love to give a massive shout out to anybody who took part in the air campaign against ISIS. Thank you for keeping my house alive. I don't care if you were a pilot or drove a forklift truck on an airbase. Thank you. But yeah, no, it's weird. I definitely feel it.

• 3:05:56Speaker 03

  Just going to attack. I mean, there were days in Syria we had no water. Do you know what I mean? And like, that's a hot place to not drink.

• 3:06:04Speaker 03

  Like every now and again, I'll go for like a pint glass of water and think, fuck, that's magic.

• 3:06:09Jack Murphy?

  You always had cigarettes though.

• 3:06:12Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Arden's. Yeah. Yeah.

• 3:06:14Jack Murphy?

  And what's the other is Gallois?

• 3:06:17Speaker 03

  Uh, Galwa, the French, well, they're not, they're, yeah.

• 3:06:20Jack Murphy?

  Turkish.

• 3:06:21Speaker 03

  They're allegedly French.

• 3:06:22Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:06:24Speaker 03

  There were some Turkish ones as well with like charcoal filters.

• 3:06:29Jack Murphy?

  I forgot about that.

• 3:06:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. They were so, because they were, there was a hierarchy, wasn't there of like, what cigarettes if you couldn't get, then you went for the next one. So I think it was Galwa with the top. Arden's were always the bottom.

• 3:06:46Speaker 03

  Because yeah, it reminded me of Homage to Catalonia when Orwell talks about getting the Soviet cigarettes and all the tobacco falls out. Because that's what happens with alms. You rattle them about enough, all this, well, they call it tobacco. I have no idea what it is. Um, all falls out and you just end up with an empty paper tube. Uh, that's a, yeah. Been a while because it's been nine years since I've been to Iraq. I've forgotten that experience.

• 3:07:12Jack Murphy?

  So, uh, what are you up to nowadays?

• 3:07:17Speaker 03

  So, I mean, yeah, I've just started, not long since I started this work, um, at the very, uh, big rate, um, at the moment. I mean, I did try doing the podcast thing during lockdown, did a few interviews with some of the guys I was with.

• 3:07:30Jack Murphy?

  That's cool. You should do more of that.

• 3:07:35Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, yeah, actually, yeah. Um, I definitely need a project. Um, I did have something else possibly cooking. Um. So one of my instructors, when I was in training, ended up on the front page of the Sun newspaper because he was abusing recruits. Um, so I'm fascinated by how like the British military deals with that because I've seen it firsthand. Um, and I'd love. Yeah, no, I'd love to.

• 3:08:06Speaker 03

  I'd love to interview him, uh, to find out what.

• 3:08:11Speaker 03

  How that was investigated, how that was dealt with, and then like compare that with some of the other stuff that's happened over the years. They told you about the, um, rape and murder of a Kenyan woman, Agnes Wanjiru in Kenya.

• 3:08:23Jack Murphy?

  No, no, actually. Oh, no. I, yes, I, I do remember hearing about this. Yeah.

• 3:08:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, these are all angst. The, the Kenyan government's released the name of the guy, um, when the British government wouldn't. Uh, it's been a real weird diplomatic incident, uh, to put it mildly. I mean, it's the horrendous rape and murder of a young woman. Um, in terms of the bigger repercussions, it's been quite, um, embarrassing basically for the Ministry of Defence. Um, and of course we've got the Dublin SAS murders that have been investigated, uh, and how that was, um. Recovered up basically. Uh, so it's a weird thing at the moment. The British military is not, um.

• 3:09:13Speaker 03

  Well, I wouldn't say it's in a good place. It's been chronically underfunded for far too long. Um, for some reason, we've had a series of politicians who seem to think that budgets are like hedges. You can just trim them over time and they grow back.

• 3:09:27Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 3:09:28Speaker 03

  And that's just not how it works. Um, so yeah, I, I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to be in that. Um, it would be, I should imagine, an uneasy time to be in any European military at the moment.

• 3:09:40Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I can see that the post-Giwat drawdown and all the repercussions of that. And now they're trying to retool for other forms of warfare. I'm sure it's a painful process.

• 3:09:52Speaker 03

  Oh, it's huge. I mean, it's like trying to shift your industry. Do you know what I mean? It's.

• 3:09:58Jack Murphy?

  Literally. Yeah.

• 3:10:02Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, I mean, it was like, um, like for me, I actually think it was important that my generation was given the opportunity to take redundancy when we did. Um, again, in the same way that I said that Northern Ireland done a lot of damage intellectually to the British military. I think we would have, if we'd have stayed in, we would have carried over bad habits that wouldn't have reflected the modern fighting environment, if that makes sense. Uh, so I, I actually felt that as well, I, I don't know if you know this, you know, when you just have that feeling that you've done.

• 3:10:34Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:34Speaker 03

  You've had enough and you know it's time. Um, part of that was almost like handing over the torch to, to younger guys, um, which felt right. Um, but I don't, again, I don't know how you guys feel about this, but it's so weird. Some of the guys that I knew, like as young riflemen that have gone on to have like stellar careers, way beyond anything I have fucking achieved. Um, and like the pride you get from that, oh God, he used to be my machine gunner. Um, oh, that's my driver, you know, um, that's been pretty cool, if I'm honest. Um. Guys that sort of, you know, guys you take the piss out of and you find out that they're just finished, they're just wrapping up a fifteen year SF career.

• 3:11:15Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's awesome.

• 3:11:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, that's a good feeling, man. That's definitely, when you reflect on, back on that, and you see that, it is, yeah, it's a nice feeling. Um, not that I claim to have any influence on them, but yeah, it's still good to see, it's good to see people succeed, you know?

• 3:11:31Jack Murphy?

  Have, uh, you ever thought about writing about any of your experiences? I mean, I think you mentioned that you kept a diary. Um, you have a lot of insights about, uh, you know, the, these conflicts.

• 3:11:43Speaker 03

  I've had people off, yeah. Uh, I've had, uh, someone for, as a ghostwriter, uh.

• 3:11:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I suppose there's no reason I shouldn't, um. I don't know, the thing that put me off, I don't know, it's like a British military thing, but you ended up, this, um.

• 3:12:03Speaker 03

  The six month tour book novel that would come out every single tour.

• 3:12:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:08Speaker 03

  And it became like a, this weird military culture thing that. At the end of every, I mean, the six month tour thing was fucking stupid and should never have continued.

• 3:12:22Speaker 03

  And it created this environment of.

• 3:12:28Speaker 03

  I forgot, I felt it diminished what military writing could be, if that makes sense, um. I mean, the best example of this, for me, one of the best books like conflict I've ever read was Matterhorn by Karl Malantas, if you're familiar with it.

• 3:12:41Jack Murphy?

  I haven't read it.

• 3:12:43Speaker 03

  Uh, for me, it's the, something is the quintessential book on conflict. It's set in Vietnam, he was a platoon commander in Vietnam. Um, in, uh, sixty nine, I think, not a great time to be, um, and, but it's, you know, you've got these different. Uh, viewpoints from various parts of the company. Um, but it just hits those little things that are on the eye that used to piss me off when people did that.

• 3:13:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:13:08Speaker 03

  You know, those little things you get that there were, there are similarities between every conflict, um. Getting woken up for God felt just as shit for me as it did for some legionnaire in Scotland, you know what I mean?

• 3:13:23Speaker 03

  You pick that up when you study history as well, though, you know, there's sort of three, three notes.

• 3:13:27Jack Murphy?

  Oh, 100%, absolutely. Yeah, I, I mean, one of my favorite books is War Story by Jim Morris, which was about a special forces team in Vietnam, pretty early on, maybe like 67 ish.

• 3:13:42Jack Murphy?

  And when I read that book, like the parallels between that and what I experienced with special forces in Iraq was like almost identical. I'm almost identical, really.

• 3:13:54Jack Murphy?

  There are a few differences, but as far as like the bureaucracy and how things work, I mean, it's very, very similar.

• 3:14:02Jack Murphy?

  You know, as we like wrap this thing up, is there anywhere like you want to direct people to, Dan, whether they be like a, you know, the company that you work for now, or a charity that you support, or anything, anything else?

• 3:14:18Speaker 03

  I don't know how the company I work for now would feel about that.

• 3:14:20Jack Murphy?

  That's fine.

• 3:14:21Speaker 03

  I didn't check this with them. I mean, the podcast I did, it's not me talking really, it's me interviewing the guys who live, it's only like five or six episodes, it's called Project Eric. If anyone's got any interest in the sort of stuff I've touched on today, by all means, give it a look, it should be on Spotify. And again, like I said, a massive thank you to everyone that kept me alive in Syria. I'm fully aware that I would have been fucked with that, I egg-balled, so yeah. It would be childish not to thank the United States Air Force for the contributions to my long-term prospects.

• 3:15:01Jack Murphy?

  And we will pull up the link to your podcast and we'll put some links down in the description. So people who want to explore this topic a little bit more in depth can go and check that out.

• 3:15:12Speaker 03

  No worries, man. It's raw as shit. I mean, there's no, it's like.

• 3:15:15Jack Murphy?

  That's all good. That's the way, that's the way we like it.

• 3:15:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, totally. Did you watch, did you see the They Shall Not Grow Old that Peter Jackson did about the First World War?

• 3:15:28Jack Murphy?

  What, what was the name of it?

• 3:15:31Speaker 03

  It's called They Shall Not Grow Old and what he did is use AI.

• 3:15:33Jack Murphy?

  No, no, I didn't.

• 3:15:35Speaker 03

  Color, it's phenomenal. But the soundtrack is just guys that were interviewed in like the nineteen forty's.

• 3:15:41Jack Murphy?

  Oh, wow.

• 3:15:44Speaker 03

  And it's, yeah, just hearing it, all they've done for the tape recorder on, let it talk. And that was kind of what I was trying to do. So, yeah.

• 3:15:52Jack Murphy?

  That's pretty cool.

• 3:15:53Speaker 03

  Your quality, but it's certainly, like I said, it's other people's stories, but yeah, certainly if you have an interest in that time and space, it's worth listening.

• 3:16:03Jack Murphy?

  Well, Dan, thank you so much for doing this interview tonight. I know it's late for you over there in the UK at this point. And this interview was a long time coming, I feel like, but I'm glad we got it done. And I really enjoyed hearing your story.

• 3:16:18Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you. Yeah, anytime, man. And yeah, like I said, I've been a fan for quite a while and I didn't join the Patreon, so the least I could do is.

• 3:16:28Jack Murphy?

  You don't have to. We do appreciate all of the people that support us on Patreon.

• 3:16:34Speaker 03

  Cool, man. Well, I'm gonna shoot off. It's like half midnight now.

• 3:16:38Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, got it. Got it. So.

• 3:16:41Speaker 03

  Absolute pleasure and thank you for everyone and thank you for your patience with my stupid dildo fingers turning off my phone. So, yeah.

• 3:16:48Jack Murphy?

  Nah, all good, man. It was great. And everyone else out there listening, thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time.

• 3:16:56Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ashkowitz. 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.

• 3:17:11Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:17:22Speaker 04

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

• 3:17:27Speaker 06

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

• 3:17:33Speaker 04

  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 iHeartRadio app today.

• 3:17:53Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:18:20Speaker 07

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:18:50Jack Murphy?

  Hey guys, I want to take a moment to tell you about the Team House Podcast newsletter. If you go and subscribe, it's totally free. And what it will do is aggregate all of our data, all of our content that we put out, the things that are on the Team House, on our geopolitics podcast, Eyes On, things that I write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the high side, anything else that we have going on, books we recommend, upcoming guests that we have coming on the show, and also filtering in some fun stuff in there as well. If you go and check it out, we send it out just once a week. We don't want to spam you guys. It's just a kind of roll up of all of our content on a weekly basis. You can find

• 3:19:35Jack Murphy?

  our newsletter at TeamHousePod.

• 3:19:37Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:19:52Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:20:03Speaker 04

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

• 3:20:08Speaker 06

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

• 3:20:14Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:20:34Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, Study Mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:21:01Speaker 09

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:21:32Jack Murphy?

  Podcast-kit.com/join. Again, the website for that is TeamHousePodcast.

• 3:21:38Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:21:53Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:22:04Speaker 04

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

• 3:22:09Speaker 06

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

• 3:22:15Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:22:35Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:23:03Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:23:32Jack Murphy?

  OnDeck.com/join. So we hope to see you there. The link will be down in the description.

• 3:23:40Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:23:55Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:24:06Speaker 04

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

• 3:24:11Speaker 06

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

• 3:24:17Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:24:37Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:25:04Speaker 09

  Cash Flow Crunch on Deck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:25:40Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:25:55Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:26:06Speaker 04

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

• 3:26:11Speaker 06

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

• 3:26:17Speaker 04

  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 iHeartRadio app today.

• 3:26:37Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:27:04Speaker 01

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's Small Business Line of Credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:27:42Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:27:56Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:28:07Speaker 04

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

• 3:28:13Speaker 06

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

• 3:28:18Speaker 04

  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 iHeartRadio app today.

• 3:28:38Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:29:06Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:29:42Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:29:57Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:30:08Speaker 04

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

• 3:30:13Speaker 06

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

• 3:30:19Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:30:39Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:31:06Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:31:42Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:31:56Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:32:07Speaker 04

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

• 3:32:12Speaker 06

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

• 3:32:18Speaker 04

  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 iHeartRadio app today.

• 3:32:38Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:33:06Speaker 09

  Cash Flow Crunch on Deck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:33:44Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:33:59Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:34:10Speaker 04

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

• 3:34:15Speaker 06

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

• 3:34:21Speaker 04

  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 iHeartRadio app today.

• 3:34:41Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:35:08Speaker 09

  Cash Flow Crunch on Deck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:35:45Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:36:00Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:36:11Speaker 04

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

• 3:36:16Speaker 06

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

• 3:36:22Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:36:42Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:37:09Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:37:45Speaker 04

  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.

• 3:38:00Speaker 05

  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.

• 3:38:11Speaker 04

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

• 3:38:16Speaker 06

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

• 3:38:22Speaker 04

  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 iHeartRadio app today.

• 3:38:42Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:39:09Speaker 07

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• 3:39:40Speaker 10

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 3:39:53Speaker 11

  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or hardened circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair.

• 3:40:36Speaker 11

  This is an advertisement for Zolair paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 3:40:40Speaker 00

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 3:41:07Speaker 01

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