Australian SAS Operator | Mark Direen | Ep. 348

Mark Direen is a former Australian Special Forces (SASR) soldier with a 20-year military career, including five deployments to Afghanistan. Wounded in an IED attack in 2007, he returned to duty just six months later. After leaving the Army in 2009, he worked in security at the Australian Embassy in Kabul before moving into expedition guiding across remote regions including Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and Tasmania. His post-service life reflects his operational mindset: adapt, improve, and keep moving forward. Find Mark here: https://markdireen.com/ https://pointassist.com.au/ Mark's book: https://pointassist.com.au/product/whats-the-point/ Bravery and Betrayal documentary : https://wanderingwarriors.org/bravery-betrayal-the-documentary/entary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3rS0h-pjqc --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's Sponsors: GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! The Perfect Jean ⬇️ http://theperfectjean.nyc/HOUSE15 for 15% off!! 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 New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️ https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.com Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ 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" 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.

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• 1:33Speaker 05

  Special Operations.

• 1:37Speaker 05

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

• 1:53Jack Murphy?

  Hi, folks. I'm Jack Murphy. This is The Team House, episode 348. And our guest on tonight's show is Mark Direen. He served in the Australian military, including the Australian Special Air Service, multiple deployments to Afghanistan and a couple other places. A lot to talk about here, actually, from his time in the conventional infantry all the way to today, where he is an expedition and adventure travel guide. So, Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us.

• 2:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a huge honour and pleasure. You've had some phenomenal guests on this podcast.

• 2:30Jack Murphy?

  But I don't think we have had a Australian SAS guy on the show, unfortunately, until now. So I'm glad we can make up for that.

• 2:38Speaker 07

  Cheers.

• 2:41Jack Murphy?

  So Mark, tell us a little bit about, you know, your upbringing and how you grew up and sort of how that eventually took you towards military service.

• 2:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, I grew up in Tasmania, the little island right down the bottom of Australia, and I've moved back to live here now. But yeah, Tassie was a pretty small place growing up here in the eighties.

• 3:06Speaker 07

  And I didn't leave. Dad was a truck driver and sort of mum worked night shifts stacking supermarket shelves and we didn't, I didn't leave Tassie at all, I don't think, until I was almost ready to join the army. I think I went to Melbourne one weekend to watch the footy.

• 3:24Speaker 07

  But yeah, growing up,

• 3:27Speaker 07

  dad was a big fisherman. We used to go hunting a fair bit, you know, a lot of time out bush going camping and

• 3:34Speaker 07

  and things like that. So I think, looking back now that I'm older, a lot of adventure in my youth, motorbike riding and stuff like that.

• 3:41Jack Murphy?

  I don't know if this reference means anything to you, but is Tasmania sort of like the West Virginia of Australia? It's like, like a very remote, out of the way place.

• 3:51Speaker 07

  Yeah, we've got, it is out of the way. I mean, I'm an hour plane flight to Melbourne, which is sort of one of the biggest cities in Australia. But I think it's a third of our island is uninhabited. It's like National Park and it's a long way out there. We get some wild weather, especially in our south and southwest coast. So a bit of snow on the mountains. We're a fair way south from the equator. So it gets some wild weather and there's a lot of remote areas and the vast majority of our population sits along the Hobart and the east coast and the north coast of Tassie. So yeah, it's pretty rugged in spots.

• 4:35Jack Murphy?

  So military service, like what was it as like a young guy, you said you hadn't even, you know, left the the home island until just before you joined. I mean, what was it that kind of took you out into the world like that?

• 4:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, I I think I had a little bit of an interest in the military growing up. I used to read a few Vietnam novels, if you like, and and watched a few Vietnam movies. But I actually wanted to be a motor mechanic because I love, I suppose, probably dad being a truck driver, and I love motorbikes and things like that. I wanted to be a mechanic when I left school. But unemployment was pretty high in in Tassie in the late eighties and early nineties. And so I actually struggled to get a job. And eventually, I applied to the military to go in and be a motor mechanic in the military. And even though I'd sort of read a few Vietnam novels, I think I was pretty naive about what joining the military entailed.

• 5:33Speaker 07

  And so when I went into recruiting to to join up, that was then when I started watching the recruiting videos for the Australian military. And I think infantry just looked a lot more exciting than fixing motors in tanks and stuff like that. So I sort of changed my enlistment stream at the last minute and just went general enlistment to to go in and do recruit training and and basic infantry training. Yeah, that was ninety three, I think. I joined the Army Reserve for six months, and which is like our national service, I think, sort of part time. I did that for only about six months. But then when I enlisted

• 6:14Speaker 07

  into the regular army, they took me right back to the start to do the full basic training and full infantry I E T training.

• 6:23Jack Murphy?

  You know, the way it's been described to me is that the Australian military has like a a small but very professional military that it like it's actually very hard to qualify just to get into the military in general. I've had people tell me.

• 6:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, I don't know so much about today. I do read in the papers that.

• 6:45Speaker 07

  Recruiting levels are low, so I'm not sure whether it's easier to get in or not. Um, yeah, back then, as I said, the reason I joined the armour reserves in ninety two was because they weren't taking regular army infantry, they were, they were full up. Um, and they were only taking reservists and, and another scheme that they had called the Ready Reserve, which was twelve months full time. And I didn't want to do that, I just wanted to enlist into the regular army and sign up for my four, four years service. Um, so yeah, there was a lot of testing, I did a lot of aptitude testing and psych testing and, and things like that.

• 7:23Speaker 07

  Um, yeah, as you said, pretty small military and, and, and even today, pretty highly trained, I think, um, being small.

• 7:33Jack Murphy?

  And so how did infantry training treat you as a young man?

• 7:37Speaker 07

  Oh, I loved it. Yeah, it was, it was great. It was hard work. I mean, um, the recruit training wasn't really a shock because I'd done the little army reserve bit. Um, you know, it was, you got tortured a bit, but that was fine. Um, infantry training I really enjoyed because we didn't, we no longer had to sort of march around the parade ground and, and do what we call drill. Um, less theory and more just going out bush and practising our patrolling and ambushing and defensive and offensive operations, lots of weaponry, you know, learning machine guns and claymores and. Um, yeah, I, it was hard work. They, they tortured us as they do with, um, with P T and stuff, but I enjoyed it, yeah.

• 8:23Speaker 07

  And it was, and as I said, I hadn't left Tassie before I joined the army, so all of a sudden I'm up in, uh, New South Wales, we could go down to Sydney or Newcastle for the weekend and it was the big city and pretty foreign to me, yeah, after a sheltered childhood.

• 8:38Jack Murphy?

  And, uh, what was the first unit you got assigned to?

• 8:43Speaker 07

  I was the first battalion, um, the Royal Australian Regiment, we call it. Uh, a few of the instructors I had on my I E T, on my initial employment training or my basic infantry training were from different infantry battalion, regular army infantry battalions in Australia. At the time, we had, uh, the first and the second battalion, three R R was our parabattalion and five seven was our mechanized battalion. Um, but one of our instructors had deployed to Somalia with the first battalion in ninety three. Um, and, uh, yeah, I just, he, he had a lot of good stories, you know, he had a lot to teach just from his operational service. And so I, we got to put down our choices of which battalion to go to. I put the first battalion and got that.

• 9:28Speaker 07

  It was, uh, it's a light infantry battalion. I think it still is today, but, um, because our Black Hawk helicopters and Chinook helicopters were based in Townsville in the nineties, um, they did a lot more of the air mobile operations, which sort of appealed to me. So, yeah, went off to Townsville, um, in North Queensland it is.

• 9:51Jack Murphy?

  And so tell us a little bit about like kind of proceeding through the ranks. Like you served in a rifle platoon, a recon platoon, a sniper platoon. It sounds like you were kind of enjoying what you were doing and wanted more and more of it.

• 10:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, when I first got to the, to the battalion, I mean, promotion was pretty slow uh, in the nineties, people didn't really get out too quickly. A lot of guys, I think, stayed in after their Somalia deployment. Um, they enjoyed that operational service, you know, doing, doing the job overseas. Uh, and so not a lot of people get out, got out, promotion was slow. When I got to the battalion, um, it was just as they changed over from a, uh, what we call a mag fifty eight.

• 10:34Speaker 07

  Machine gun, a 7.62 machine gun, they changed over at the time when I got there to a 5.56 machine gun, a Minimi. And we had two machine guns per section. So I carried a machine gun for my first 12 months, the number two gun, we called it. But my, my second year in the army, I was the lead scout of my 10 man section. I think we had about eight in our section at the time. And it was, I suppose, doing that scouting job for 12 months, it's where I started to get a little bit of passion for leading the way, I suppose, like being.

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• 13:12Speaker 07

  The guy at the front, and from being a scout, that's where I did our recon course, which was a pretty tough course they ran in the battalion back then. I'm sure it still is today. It was a six-week course. They punished you with PT. There wasn't really a high dropout, maybe one or two out of a course of about 25, about platoon size would sort of drop out. But it was pretty tough. We did maybe two or three weeks in Townsville where they did a lot of the reconnaissance theory and smashed us with heavy PT. And then we went up to Tully for a few weeks, which is our jungle, one of our jungle training areas in North Queensland.

• 13:57Speaker 07

  And we just lived in the jungle, I can't remember, for about maybe about three weeks or so. And really focused on, you know, getting good in the jungle. And they used to say back then, if you can be a soldier in the jungle, you can be a soldier anywhere, I suppose. Survive that rain and work in that close country. We still didn't have night vision goggles and things like that then. So a lot of the tactics in the mid 90s, sort of pre the advancement of equipment, thermal images and NVGs, the tactics were probably still pretty similar to what they used in Vietnam, I suppose. So I really enjoyed that training.

• 14:44Jack Murphy?

  Um, no, and also we're in the 1990s here. So I I'm wondering, you know, what you guys were training for. I understand you're doing basic infantry and I guess advanced infantry training here. But was there like a mission set or a particular Australian national security threat that you were training for at that time?

• 15:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, I mean, we trained for war, I think, a lot more than specifically. But the battalion I was in was what they called the ODF Battalion. And every 12 months, we swapped with two RAR. And one of our tasks was to go overseas and help do services, assisted evacuation. So if there was a South Pacific nation, for example, that had a lot of Australian expats living there and civil unrest occurred, we would be tasked with going over to perhaps secure an airfield so that they could help evacuate Australian citizens. That was one

• 15:46Speaker 07

  of the sort of specific jobs we trained for, I suppose. But no, mostly just, you know, what we call war roles, I suppose, defending the nation.

• 15:58Jack Murphy?

  Was this around the same timeframe when you went to East Timor?

• 16:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I moved to the SAS by the time East Timor kicked off.

• 16:08Jack Murphy?

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• 18:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, I did the reconnaissance course, as I said, spent 12 months there, really enjoyed that. And, and I think going to the battalion sniper cell was kind of this, to me seemed like this natural progression. I'd gone from working in a platoon strength sort of environment down to a four or five man recon patrol. And then I just wanted to move into that sort of one to two person sniper pair.

• 18:55Speaker 07

  Operating and yeah, I hadn't been on operations yet. I think I went to Hawaii once with the battalion on a.

• 19:02Speaker 07

  On a training activity with the Marines there, um, and I just, it was like a natural progression. Guys in the battalion that I was from, when they went to recon or went to snipers at some point in their career, everyone just gave this thing called the SAS um, selection a crack. They just, they give it a go. At the time, the SAS was the only full-time special forces unit in the Australian Army.

• 19:28Speaker 07

  And yeah, again, probably naive, but I didn't know a lot about the SAS. I just signed up to do the selection course because it sounded challenging.

• 19:37Speaker 07

  And it would seem like a natural progression. All the people that I'd looked up to in the battalion had to had a go at some stage. Some came back because they didn't, weren't selected.

• 19:47Speaker 07

  And then there were these other guys that you never heard from again. They just went off to the SAS and you didn't know what they were doing now. So yeah, just gave it a crack.

• 19:56Jack Murphy?

  What was the hardest part of selection for you?

• 20:04Speaker 07

  I think, yeah, it was just generally hard, I suppose. Towards the end, it runs over several weeks. It sort of ebbs and flows by a day here or there, but um, normally about three weeks. And it's running into the last week that they sort of really lift the work rate. They stop feeding you, they start the sleep deprivation and things like that. So it's, it's not like one event. I don't think for me that was super difficult. It was just like the further you got into the course, the more drained you were of, you know, the, the more exhausted you became, the less food and sleep they gave you, the harder it got. Um, there were a few events that were a bit like a rest for me, I suppose.

• 20:50Speaker 07

  Um, coming from that recon and sniper background, I was pretty good with my navigation. And we did a couple of solo navigation exercises on selection that ran for um,

• 21:03Speaker 07

  two or three days. I think one ran for three days. Uh, had to navigate around a field training area. Uh, did about a hundred and ten kilometers or so in, in full gear. Um, but I kind of enjoyed that one because I had no um, directing staff barking down, you know, giving me push-ups for.

• 21:24Speaker 07

  Not having my water bottles full or something like that, you know, like that was the bit where I got left alone. Um, even though you had to do a lot of walking. Um, so that they were good, but yeah, it just got hard towards the end for me. Um, as it does for most people, I, I do recall. Um, it must have been like maybe within the last five days or so. They gave us a two hour period to sleep one night. Um, and so within our little team, there was probably about five of us or so left in our little patrol. And, um, we just divvied up whatever, whatever the amount of time was, I can't remember, maybe 20 minutes.

• 22:03Speaker 07

  Uh, picket and you could sleep for the rest of the two hours. And I hit my 20 minute picket and I actually couldn't physically stay awake. Um, I can remember and I, and I, one of the guys that was in my team was from the sniper section. In Townsville with me, it was just sheer coincidence. Um, that we both applied for selection, both got as far as we did in it. And, um, and to that point, we were both in the same team. It was just like fluke. Um, but I was comfortable enough to wake him up and go, hey, mate, like, I'm going to fall asleep here and it's not going to be good for a lot of us. Um, and so he just did my picket for me, which was, uh, awesome.

• 22:47Speaker 07

  But the next day I sort of spotted for him as well. He was struggling after an obscurs and I helped him out.

• 22:55Jack Murphy?

  Um, so then talk to us a little bit about after selection and going into SAS training. What was that pipeline like?

• 23:04Speaker 07

  Yeah. So our selection course is exactly that. It's, um, the only course in the Australian military. Uh, at the time and for a long time after, I mean, I'm not current now, but, um, it's the only course in the Australian military, or it was. That was not designed to teach you anything. It was purely designed to test you. So they ran that three week course, break you down, find out who you are and just decide whether they want you in the unit. Um, and so if you got selected from the selection course. It was that they deemed you suitable for training. We then went into a. For me, it was a bit over twelve months, about twelve month period where we did all our courses to go to an operational squadron.

• 23:50Speaker 07

  And that was phenomenal. I'd come from a military in Townsville where there was always, you know, you were counting the number of blank rounds that you had for training. Or, you know, you'd go away to do a training activity and there was one set of cam creams for two people or something like that. You know, everything was very budget restricted. And we got to the SAS and it was kind of like, here you can shoot as much as you need to, just you've got to pass these shoots. The training was excellent and we just did lots of it for over twelve months.

• 24:30Speaker 07

  Whether the course ran for five days or whether it ran for two or three, five weeks, you'd finish course, one course on a Friday and you'd start your next one on the Monday, as long as you passed.

• 24:44Speaker 07

  Most guys, I mean, my selection course, we had, I think about a thousand or twelve hundred or something apply. We had about a hundred and twenty or thirty start the actual selection course. We had twenty eight finish and I think we had about, we had twenty five selected. So there's only about three or so that didn't get selected off the course.

• 25:10Speaker 07

  And then out of that twenty five or so, we only had one or two fail training in the reinforcement cycle. And one of the toughest courses to pass in that reinforcement cycle would generally be what they are calling now, I think, is our target prosecution course. It was, for me, what we called our basic close quarter battle course, where you'd do room entry and you had to get good with a whole suite of weapons. I mean, they trained us on the M4 because the Australian Army used the Austair. But.

• 25:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, not only the M4, you'd be, I mean, it was my introduction to pistol shooting. I hadn't done pistol shooting before that. Uh, and that was pretty difficult to pass. You only had a few weeks to get up to speed to, to pass the qualification shoot. Um, we did the H and K weapon systems and, and things like that. Yeah, but the actual reinforcement cycle.

• 26:11Speaker 07

  A lot of courses, uh, one of the first ones was an actual reconnaissance course that in the SAS, they called it the patrol course. Um, it was a bit similar to our, to the reconnaissance course I'd done. It was out in the field, in the bush environment. Um, five man patrols, close target reconnaissance, things like that. Um, but it was a lot more special operations focused than I'd done in one hour. In one hour, we had three methods of insertion. We either walked in, got a truck, or we were, um, which we thought was quite special. Qualified to repel out of helicopters. So we did a lot of Black Hawk repelling into the jungle and things like that.

• 26:54Speaker 07

  E- even on my basic patrol course in the SAS, um, the half a dozen training patrols, I think they, we had to swim in on one from the ocean. Um, we walked in on one, we had a, a, a light aircraft insertion on another one, sort of an agent sort of insertion. Things like that. So a lot more special operations focused. Um.

• 27:19Speaker 07

  You had to pass that one. I, different patrol members in the SAS will qual- will specialize in different areas. We have both medics and six, um, for our basic, um, patrol qualification. I qualified as a medic. Which at the time was a six week, um, advanced first aid course, if you like, but you could canulate and do, um.

• 27:47Speaker 07

  Trackies and a few more sort of advanced medical things. Um. And then you would do some ride alongs with the local paramedics in uh Western Australia or Sydney or something like that. So I specialised as a medic, which was good. Um. And then we have in different insertion skills or we did. We had different insertion skills then, whether you were a diver, a free fall or a mobility operator. And going back to my love of vehicles as a kid and motorbike riding and things like that. I um requested and got to specialise as a vehicle um operator. So we did um truck courses, driving courses, four wheel driving courses.

• 28:31Speaker 07

  At the time, we had our six wheel patrol vehicles. Um. We did a motorbike course and we did a quad course and things like that. Uh. And then the the whole suite of the courses that everyone else does. Close quarter battle, as I said, which was encompassed hostage rescue. Um. We did a basic and advanced course of that, did demolitions. Um. As well as method of entry. Um. Did a parachute course, a a standard static line parachute course, small boat handling. Uh. Yeah, I can't remember them all. Surviv- a survival course was a good one. Um. I'd done a few survival courses already, but they dumped us in the jungle in North Queensland again for a few weeks.

• 29:16Speaker 07

  A lot of training over the 12 months, it was great.

• 29:20Jack Murphy?

  Um. And just to speak for a moment about the the mission of the SAS. Like, correct me if I'm wrong, I I've heard that the core mission of the SAS is uh strategic reconnaissance and unconventional warfare. Is that?

• 29:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's that's pretty accurate when you sort of say um a core mission. It was definitely sort of our core mission was that um long range strategic reconnaissance. Um. When I joined. In saying that though, Australia, as we always already said, is a small military. And the SAS at the time would do whatever the conventional military wouldn't do. So even in training quite a lot, they'd come up with scenarios. We need this effect, how are we going to do it? And it was up to the squadron commander and the patrol commander to come up with

• 30:17Speaker 07

  some ideas on how they might achieve this goal or achieve this effect in the battle space.

• 30:23Jack Murphy?

  One of the things you had mentioned to me is, you know, of course, the Australian military and Australian Defence Forces being small, you guys also have the domestic counter-terrorism mission. And you said you worked security for the Olympics in 2000?

• 30:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, so because I was a sniper in the infantry battalion, as soon as I finished my reinforcement cycle, our sniper training within the SAS was more of an advanced skill set. And so when you came, and we also rotated through a system we used to, they don't do it anymore, where we had three operational Sabre squadrons, as we called them, and they would rotate through a three-year cycle. The first year would be a lot of training, so that the guys that had just finished a three-year cycle could do things like promotion courses and they would be the blokes that would drag back

• 31:23Speaker 07

  to instruct the new guys in the training squadron and different things like that. The second year, they did what was called war roles. You were the one that was ready to go overseas on a moment's notice if that's what was required. And then the third year, you did the domestic counter-terrorism, which was something that the SAS developed before my time. Probably in the late 70s and through the period of the 80s, they really developed the domestic counter-terrorism themselves a lot because they didn't have much capability sort of pre 1980s.

• 32:02Speaker 07

  Um. But for me, because I was a sniper in the battalion, they had a shortage in sniper troop for the Sydney Olympic Games and they recognized this by the start of um nineteen ninety nine, the the Olympic Games were in mid two thousand, I think. And uh and so I got sent to do the SAS sniper courses shortly after I got to my operational squadron so that I could go into sniper troop um for the Sydney Olympic Games.

• 32:32Speaker 07

  That was good. That was pretty long. You did a sniper course, which was kind of six weeks, similar to the to the standard military one. It was field craft and navigation and, you know, getting good at your basic war roles, sniping tasks, um learning how to stalk and and and all that sort of stuff. Again, not a lot of laser rangefinders and and stuff around in those days. So you were doing judging distance activities and um and you finished that. And then I, after the six week um sniper course went on, basic sniper course for the SAS, went on to a counterterrorism sniper course, which was a lot more urban,

• 33:13Speaker 07

  containing a stronghold where the terrorists were and things like that.

• 33:17Jack Murphy?

  And and so doing security for the Olympics was that, were you in sort of like a counter-sniper role in this particular case?

• 33:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, we did a, we did a lot of training in the lead up to the Olympics in sort of late ninety nine, we were spending time in Sydney, um conducting a lot of mission rehearsals and and um. We had a few other roles within um the sniper troop, obviously to support um the assault troops. We had a couple of assault troops and um we would support them. So they would quite often maybe want to approach shooters for um leading into a target or um different bits and pieces. We used, I used to do a lot of liaison with military, um with civilian assets, emergency services and things like that. Hmm. But then, once the sort of Olympic

• 34:10Speaker 07

  Games rolled around, um we were just on standby.

• 34:14Jack Murphy?

  In the back of a truck waiting.

• 34:17Speaker 07

  Oh, nah, I suppose, um, funnily and and quite good for us was, um, we would go to the venues, basically. And what was a bit of a dead giveaway for the security guys at the Olympics was we had these Olympic passes that would let us go anywhere. No one else had them. And so we had every letter of the alphabet and every symbol you could get on your on your pass. And quite often you'd go in to watch, um, a sport. I mean, I got to fortunately got to see every event, I think, every international sport at the Olympics. Um, but quite often would get stopped by the security guard at the entrance because he thought my pass was fake because it just had too many, too much access on it.

• 35:03Speaker 07

  But we'd go and go and watch the events and remain on call and, um, we'd have to supply guys to the, um, do liaison with just the

• 35:14Speaker 07

  security control centers and things like that, um, just be ready to go.

• 35:20Jack Murphy?

  Uh, and then tell us a little bit about East Timor. This is, uh, I take it pre nine eleven or right around that timeframe. This was sort of the thing that Australia had going on at the time.

• 35:31Speaker 07

  Yeah. And while the Sydney Olympic Games seemed like a huge blessing, um, when I got sent to that squadron in, uh, in ninety nine, it was pretty shortly after that we were in train, you know, training for the Olympics in Sydney and East Timor kicked off. So a different squadron was the first one to deploy to East Timor in, uh, nineteen ninety nine. Uh, East Timor for the Australian military went on for a long time.

• 35:59Speaker 07

  I had a great trip. So I finished the Sydney Olympic Games in two thousand, got a bit of Christmas leave, I think, and, uh, and then deployed to East Timor very early in in two thousand and one, um, which was a great time to be there, in the fact that, um, I was there maybe February, I think, and stayed.

• 36:21Speaker 07

  Until about September, when they had their actual very first independent democratic election. So it was great to be there in the lead up to the election, to go and see the rallies for voting and things like that. Yeah, really enjoyed my own time in Timor. And in, and a classic, I suppose, SF role that we had for the six or seven months I was there, my team, we did that basic sort of field reconnaissance, conduct O Ps, ground truthing. We would roll through a QRF where every now and then if there were militia

• 37:02Speaker 07

  coming across the border, we'd get a call out to go down and rope in and conduct a tracking task to try and chase up the militia. I did VIP protection for some of the Australian diplomats that wanted to come to East Timor to visit the troops. So it was a, we did some humanitarian A patrols, which were hugely rewarding, where we would just go out to remote villages, just to sort of do that classic sort of ground truthing and collecting of information. But at the same time, we would do medical clinics for people that didn't really have access to any healthcare or anything like that. Some really interesting

• 37:45Speaker 07

  situations where you would come across people with dislocated shoulders and they'd been dislocated for five years, from when they fell out of a tree once. Or the tropical ulcers were always a classic. You would come across locals that had, you know, some sort of tropical ulcer or skin infection. And it had grown over months to be almost, you know, taking over a lower limb or something like that. And you'd give them some oral antibiotics and it'd be gone in days, like, because they didn't really have access to antibiotics or anything like that. It was amazing to sort of see some of those things from a medical perspective. So, yeah, big variety in roles we did. No real.

• 38:32Speaker 07

  Kinetic, um, no contacts for me. I mean, I tracked down a few militia um and things like that, a lot of small star scuff. But um, there was a bit of fighting in East Timor with militia, but it all occurred before I got there. So my, my six month deployment was pretty quiet. Um, but super interesting. I mean, it was the first time I'd been overseas and carrying live rounds and operations and um, and I was, yeah, I was, I was out there in the bush with militia. So they, they would have had a crack if they could have got, if they thought they could have got away with it.

• 39:09Jack Murphy?

  Uh, and then nine eleven happens and I, I mean, I want to ask you, like, did the Australian SAS think that they were going to be a part of this war on terror immediately? I mean, what, what was sort of the thought process for you guys?

• 39:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, for me, actually, September eleven, I was in East Timor uh, and I was cleaning my gear to return back to Australia. It was the, it was the end of my deployment. Um, and we were based at a place outside Dilly in the hills. And uh, the next morning I was scheduled to wake up, drive back to Dilly uh, and jump on a plane back to Australia. And uh, someone came actually running into my tent. I was sleeping in a, in a, in a tent in our little compound and um, sort of said, hey, man, you got to come and watch the news. There's some crazy stuff going on in the States. And at the time, I was pretty tired. I knew I had to get up early and I'd only just

• 40:10Speaker 07

  finished cleaning my gear. I said, ah, I'll check it out in the morning. Thanks. And he sort of ran off, I suppose, to the next tent to tell the next guy. And I didn't think much of it. I, I went to sleep and when I woke up the next day uh, and started getting that. Um, news coming through you. I knew it was a big deal. Um, as I think everyone did. Uh, but because I'd just finished a six month deployment overseas, I knew I wouldn't be uh, in, in the first group to go away if blokes went away. I think it was pretty shortly though, after I got back to Perth that, um, I, I don't maybe days, I could, it's hard to remember, but it was pretty shortly after I got back to Perth that,

• 40:53Speaker 07

  um, I spoke to a few of my friends, a few of my good mates, some that I'd done selection with or served in the battalion with, but they were in a different squadron to me. And they were like, hey, the, the whole squadron's going to Afghan. Um, so that were, yeah, and I, you know, shortly after late two thousand and one, um, it was, yeah, they knew it was a big deal and, um, Australia was pretty keen to support, um, you guys, support our American allies.

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• 45:53Jack Murphy?

  And at what point did your squadron get brought into it?

• 45:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, we did that first 12 months. We did four-month deployments. And my squadron was the last one to go. So I think my deployment was around mid 2002 until December. We got home just before Christmas in 2002. But yeah, again, I can sum up the deployment with, it was for me at the time, it was pretty epic. Again, didn't get into any big battles or anything like that. Arrested a few militia. But by the time I got there in mid 2002, it

• 46:41Speaker 07

  had quietened down a fair bit, I suppose.

• 46:46Speaker 07

  The Taliban that could get across the border into Pakistan had done so and they were sort of lying low to see how things were going to play out. So there were still a few criminals about. Um, we drove through one too many minefields by accident, but um, not uh, yeah, we didn't get into any shootouts.

• 47:06Jack Murphy?

  What part of the country were you in? Where in Afghanistan were you that that time?

• 47:12Speaker 07

  Um, the first squadron, first SA squadron that went, um, I'm pretty sure based out of Kandahar, but the second two based out of Bagram. Um, Bagram was sort of up and running by then. Uh, but in saying that, I mean, the deployment for me, uh, wasn't spent in Bagram. I, we flew into Bagram, we got the vehicles, we had our six-wheel long-range patrol vehicles in country. The squadron, the mobility troop that was there, um, before mine, handed the vehicles over to us. Uh, we spent a week in Bagram, doing some servicing and mechanical repairs and, and went out to the range and testified our heavy weapons and all that sort of stuff.

• 47:54Speaker 07

  And, uh, and we rolled them onto a, a Herc and flew down to Jalalabad, rolled off the Herc and then drove the border between Afghan and Pakistan. I think our first, our first patrol in country was in vicinity of about 50 days or so. It was a pretty long patrol.

• 48:15Jack Murphy?

  Did you get a resupply?

• 48:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was a big patrol. We, um, we got resupped in the field. So, um, every few, every few weeks we'd say, well, we needed it because we needed fuel and food. Um, but every few weeks a, a US Chinook had come in and, and bring us fuel and food and, and we'd set out again on another two-week stint. And so my four-month deployment, um, I actually only did three patr- three patrols or only did three jobs. The first one was that, uh, long-range patrol down the border. We, um, yeah, we rolled the cars off a Herc in, uh, in Jalalabad and just patrolled, talking to the locals, ground truthing and, um, it was pretty amazing. Down through Khaust, which had obviously, um,

• 49:07Speaker 07

  Had been a bit of a hub for the Taliban through the eighties and nineties, I think. Visited some really interesting spots that had been bombed sort of straight after nine eleven.

• 49:24Speaker 07

  At the end of that trip, we came back to Bagram and we flew out and did, I think it was about a six day OP.

• 49:35Speaker 07

  They just dropped our patrol back in the field after we spent a day, a day or two in base, having a hot feed and and it was actually an American, I think, I can't remember, might have been Tenth Mountain. We're doing this sweep down a valley and clearing some villages. And so we just dropped on the hill for the five days pre, pre that operation and, and just sort of, you know, fed back to headquarters before the, the actual job and then while they did the sweep. That was pretty good, but some of the most horrendous walking I've done, I mean, from SAS selection and even East Timor, there's plenty of hills to walk up and down in East Timor, which we did.

• 50:18Speaker 07

  But to get from our insertion point, about twenty Ks or something, I think it was, to our OP point for that,

• 50:27Speaker 07

  for that task was some of the most horrendous walking I think I've ever done. And you needed to carry the water because you couldn't, we couldn't get water locally.

• 50:39Speaker 07

  So that was good. We went back to base after that and then went back out on another vehicle patrol, which, that second one I remember was, I think, sixty nine days. So we just, yeah.

• 50:50Jack Murphy?

  Oh my god.

• 50:50Speaker 07

  Patrold around drinking chai with the locals and

• 50:55Speaker 07

  I feel hugely fortunate to have, have done that patrol.

• 50:58Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 50:59Speaker 07

  After everything else that came. At the time, I probably didn't appreciate it. I thought it was going to be the norm, but.

• 51:07Speaker 07

  To my last deployment where I don't think I stayed in the field overnight. Um, cause we were just flying in and out targeting. Um, we lived with the locals. We, we, we would actually quite often be driving around. We, you know, we'd hide in the, in the field a lot. Um, you know, go into a, a, a layup point and, and run pickets, but then often, um, we'd talk to locals in a village and they'd say, hey, come stay with us. And they, we'd have chai and they'd give us dinner and.

• 51:37Jack Murphy?

  It's amazing.

• 51:39Speaker 07

  We, it's probably the one deployment where I learned the most about the real Afghan culture, I think, um, which was really good.

• 51:49Speaker 07

  And so, yeah, we.

• 51:50Jack Murphy?

  I, I've heard that, uh, some of the American commanders really loved you guys. Um, and I think maybe the Danish and maybe the Norwegians also. Um, because your recce guys can stay out in the field for so long. When the, the Danes are like, yeah, we can occupy that OP for 20 days. And they're like, whoa, our, our teams can only do it for like four days. Like what the hell? And you're talking about 50, 60 day patrols. I mean, that's pretty hardcore.

• 52:16Speaker 07

  Yeah. I, I mean, we had our vehicles and we, and that, that was my bread and butter. Um, we could live out of our vehicles. I mean, we, we would, we changed the gearbox and we had a gearbox go in a car. And so, um, we.

• 52:30Jack Murphy?

  You guys.

• 52:31Speaker 07

  New gearbox in and send it out to the field. We changed it out.

• 52:34Jack Murphy?

  You guys are the descendants of, uh, you know, the long range desert patrol, right? From World War Two.

• 52:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. Well, we like to think so, I suppose.

• 52:45Speaker 07

  That was certainly pretty epic, those blokes, um, hardcore. But, um, yeah, we just, we stayed in the field. They, I mean, we initially got that job. My, this is my understanding and it's, um, a story that was told to me. I wasn't there obviously, but, um, when our, sort of our second squadron was in country, I think the first squadron, that was, you know, Tora Bora and they did a lot of OPs and, um, we had an American, we didn't have our own JTACs back in 2001. So, um,

• 53:18Speaker 07

  it was around that Tora Bora time, we realized, hey, we need this skillset, um, inherent in our patrols. And so we'd take American JTAC, but they did a lot of AP. Um, they did a lot of search. They were still looking for the Taliban a lot. I mean, one of my major jobs in two thousand and two was still ask the locals where Osama bin Laden is. Um, which we did. We drove around the border looking, asking the locals. Yeah, he's over that way. Um, they were telling us then.

• 53:45Speaker 07

  But, um,

• 53:47Speaker 07

  by the time our second squadron got there, um, I suppose the fighting had died down a fair bit. America said to us, what, what can you do? How can you help us? What capabilities can you provide? And whoever our C A was at the time sort of just went, well, my guys are pretty good with strategic reconnaissance. Um, we'll send them out in the field and they can drive around in their cars and, and talk to the locals. And I think the whoever was in charge at back then sort of went, uh, okay, it sounds good. Um, and just let us do our thing. But there was then just hugely impressed that, yeah, we went out into the field for sixty nine days and didn't come back and

• 54:29Speaker 07

  it's just kept punching in report after report after report. Just been to this village. They haven't, they thought we were Russian. They haven't seen anyone here since the Russians were here. Type thing. There was a lot of that. Yeah.

• 54:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's a, a difficult job, but you know, you guys being so mobile and being out there for so long, you got a lot done. And like you said, delivering ground truth to the commanders. Um, there's a lot of that.

• 54:52Speaker 07

  Yeah. Uh, so. And if we had have.

• 54:56Jack Murphy?

  Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

• 54:58Speaker 07

  I was gonna say, if we could have, if it had a state sort of that, I, I mean, my longer opinions of the whole thing was a smaller force would probably been better. Um, and if we had have kept doing what we were doing back then, it might have worked out a bit better for us, but we were trying to keep people safe too.

• 55:16Jack Murphy?

  What was, uh, the second deployment to Afghanistan? How is it different than the first?

• 55:22Speaker 07

  I didn't go back until 2007, the SAS sort of went back 12 months before that. So my second deployment was 2007 and by that time

• 55:36Speaker 07

  the Australian military had been given the province of Urizgan to help with. I mean, there was Americans, obviously there, the Dutch were there, but yeah, well, I arrived back, landed on the dirt strip in Tarran Cott and got off the plane to

• 55:55Speaker 07

  still just kind of do the same

• 55:59Speaker 07

  modus operandi where we jump in our cars and go out. But we were no longer doing reconnaissance of this sort of environment. We were doing reconnaissance to push the Taliban back out of TK because they were trying to come back and impose their dominance. They'd definitely, they'd come back in force

• 56:24Speaker 07

  to sort of take back over. And so we were literally trying to push the Taliban back out of TK as far as we could so that the reconstruction effort could get in there, so that the newly flageling Afghan military could get in there and provide the security.

• 56:44Speaker 07

  And it was the full SOTG task force now with an S, it was no longer an SAS squadron that I deployed within 2002. It was just an SAS troop and a commando company. So it was a pretty

• 56:59Speaker 07

  combat capable

• 57:02Speaker 07

  unit, the old SOTG in Afghanistan, right back from 2006.

• 57:07Jack Murphy?

  How, how was that, that relationship, that working relationship like with the commandos? Like, I know there historically, there's been some rivalries, but I also would like to ask you, like, how did they work together? Like, how, how did that work out for you guys? Because there's a lot of capabilities there too.

• 57:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, and it's obviously well documented that it was pretty strained over the years.

• 57:30Speaker 07

  We did some joint operations. I mean, I did some, um, I did some support tasks for Commando sweeps where, you know, that classic SAS patrol, we can hold a, put in an OP on a mountain 24 hours before the Commandos came in for a sweep. We did that a couple of times. Um, I think, I think it's some of the inter-unit rivalry. Um, and I sort of, in my opinion, inter-unit rivalry can be good. Um, we definitely had it when I was in an infantry battalion. Our, our, our brother battalion, two hour across the road, we used to get stuck into each other all the time. Um, perhaps over

• 58:10Speaker 07

  the years, the Commando SAS inter-unit rivalry went a bit far, uh, as in there was a bit of dislike on some people, but I will clarify with some people. So I never really had it. I had mates in Commandos and, um, and I think regardless of Commando or SAS, um, a lot of the guys, most guys were focused on their job, were getting as good at their job as they could get. Um, and a few blokes that were worried about what the other guy was doing, um, that, I think they were

• 58:50Speaker 07

  a minority personally. I mean, I didn't ever experience any of the, any of the inter-unit rivalry much. Um, yeah, but you know, it probably could have been all helped a lot, um, by that sort of Colonel Brigadier General rank, um, level, giving a bit more direction on roles and tasks.

• 59:16Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 59:16Speaker 07

  There was a bit of blurring of roles and tasks there.

• 59:20Jack Murphy?

  And the two units are competing for the same mission.

• 59:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, if they wanted us to do the same task, we'll come out and say that. Um, they kind of never really did want us to do the same task, I don't think, but it was a huge grey space and soldiers don't work well in that grey space. They, they need, um, they need their missions given to them, you know, you know, we want to know what the strategic intent is so we can help achieve it.

• 59:46Jack Murphy?

  Right, right, right.

• 59:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, the, I think the, the unit rivalry was blown out of proportion by the media, um, trying to You know, trying to find a story that was going to get lots of clicks. Um, it was never as bad as it did exist. Um, but it was probably mostly existing by people that were more worried about what the other person was doing and and less about what they were doing.

• 1:00:11Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it sounds like it's more a few individuals in each unit rather than an actual unit rivalry.

• 1:00:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, it would probably come and go on a particular deployment. Um, who were the per- who were the the big personalities on that deployment on both sides? And they'd clash a bit, yeah.

• 1:00:28Jack Murphy?

  And around this timeframe, you also did a trip over to Iraq.

• 1:00:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, I was in Afghan in two thousand and seven. Um, which I openly say to most people now, two thousand and seven was my introduction to war. We we got shot at a lot, we got into quite a few um ticks. Um, fortunately for me, no big battles, but we got into quite a few skirmishes, I suppose. We we we caught and killed a few bad guys. Um, but it was mid that two thousand and seven trip that um I think it was the Defence Minister from Australia was doing a trip to the, what we call the MEAO, the Middle East Area of Operations. Um, and so they sent two of the teams we had to meeting uh in the Middle East,

• 1:01:18Speaker 07

  fly him to uh Baghdad so he could visit the troops, Aussie troops that were there, and then fly him into Kabuk, into Afghan to visit the Aussie troops there, take him back to the Middle East, and then uh get back into Afghanistan and could recontinue um operations. So I I focused my time for the protective duty in Iraq. Um, but it was pretty simple. It was kind of just a bit of an eye opener for me. I mean, I landed it. The Biapakot, I think it was the Rhino, they had this armored bus that would drive you from the airport into the green zone.

• 1:01:57Jack Murphy?

  Oh yeah, we were just talking about this, like, maybe on the last episode. An up armored bus.

• 1:02:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, we're Aussies and they're like, oh, we need you to go and do some recce's of the, of the locations that the minister wants to visit, the US Embassy and, and all this. And it's like, oh yeah, well, how do we get in there? Oh, just catch the bus. So we got on the bus and, you know, good old Aussie military, drove into, into town. We got off the bus at the bus terminal, which I, from memory, was just nearby. The US Embassy was up the road or something and got mortared, which I'd been mortared a few times in, um, in Afghan, but not standing in the middle of a city. Like, that was the bit that I was like, this joins a bit of a spin out. Um, and there were some contacts nearby or whatever.

• 1:02:44Speaker 07

  And like mo- mortared as in, we, my medic who was with me, um, a- actually had to give first aid to someone, I think, who got hit by shrapnel. Um, we got mortared in the bus stop. Um, we did that job. We had Aussie trainers out on a few little fobs around Baghdad. So we literally went, obviously had helos when the minister came in to fly them around and there for a few weeks and then headed back to Afghan to get back into the warfighting again.

• 1:03:14Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, well, tell us about going back to Afghanistan.

• 1:03:19Speaker 07

  Ah, yeah, we, we, we were doing, um, still doing vehicle operations, um,

• 1:03:26Speaker 07

  but obviously a lot more kinetic. Everywhere we went, someone would shoot at us, spiders watching us all the time. Because you're in cars, it's pretty hard to hide, especially in Urizgar. I mean, you're driving around deserts. And so we would drive down valleys, basically, put in a, a vehicle layup point, sort of in the desert. Uh, and back then we could still operate at night. So we, we do night patrols through the green zone.

• 1:03:51Speaker 07

  Had a lot of good effect doing that, catch lots of bad guys moving around at night.

• 1:03:58Speaker 07

  But yeah, we'd sort of, that was our, how we operated. We'd drive down valleys, you know, from point to point, try and be as stealthy as we could. It's pretty hard to do because they just, soon as they knew we were leaving TK, the spotters would just follow you, whichever direction you went. Try and catch a few spotters here and there, try and catch the more combat, enemy combat teams, I suppose, any coalition militia, I think we called them at the time. We were really trying to catch those combat teams that were operating in those valleys. Yeah.

• 1:04:34Jack Murphy?

  Any success doing that? Was it pretty difficult to corner them?

• 1:04:38Speaker 07

  No, absolutely. Some of the best success, I suppose, were,

• 1:04:44Speaker 07

  we'd be moving in valleys and, and the enemy would think that we were still out with our vehicles, basically camped out for the night. And so they would be starting to move around

• 1:04:57Speaker 07

  between villages or, or visit the villages to ask them, you know, this is what I think they were doing. So we could literally just go down, fully knotted up, patrol around. They had no night fighting capability. I remember on one occasion, we were putting a blocking position in for a commando sweep, actually, which was meant to come early the next day. And moving into position that night, we were literally walking past, fully pulled up bad guys. I mean, they had chest rigs and AKs and they were standing around and, and later that night, we got into a good stoush.

• 1:05:38Speaker 07

  But we were literally trying to move past them to get to our blocking position and it wasn't that far into our trip either to, to be that real kick in the guts that, holy cow, there's like, there's a lot of bad guys out here.

• 1:05:55Speaker 07

  And this, this stuff is actually really serious.

• 1:05:59Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, you must have had some sense that it was obviously getting more intense with each deployment.

• 1:06:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, that was, and that was east of Taran Cote, in a place called the Merembad Valley. There was a lot of fighting out that way. That sort of ran from the eastern side of Afghan, ran into the Urizgan province, came down past.

• 1:06:24Speaker 07

  Pardon me, the valley sort of started out near Kazirazgan, which was near a fob called Anaconda, which saw a lot of fighting, had an American O D A team there.

• 1:06:37Speaker 07

  For a while and it was coming back from there that I got myself blown up, drove over an I D.

• 1:06:44Speaker 07

  And the next year it was where.

• 1:06:48Speaker 07

  Mark Donaldson, the Australian SAS guy, won his Victoria Cross in the in the ambush where he rescued the interpreter. So there was a lot of enemy movement around that that valley. The Dutch used to get hit out there a lot and and badly. They lost a few blokes out there on on that deployment I was on in two thousand and seven. So a lot of our fighting sort of east of TK and north around Shora.

• 1:07:16Speaker 07

  We got into a few fights north of TK. And actually, just after my deployment, I think about a month after, that was where. Good mate of mine, Matt Locke, got killed in a shootout. I think that was about October oh seven.

• 1:07:35Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 1:07:37Jack Murphy?

  And.

• 1:07:38Speaker 07

  Yeah, lots of fighting. We were we were catching bagos. I mean, there was one occasion. Where we literally pulled up in our cars, would drive off the road. This looks like an area we can defend if we need to. We'll stop here and have lunch.

• 1:07:54Speaker 07

  And typical Aussies, we're pretty security conscious, I suppose. We thought to ourselves, oh, we'll do a patrol. Around our cars once we we've stopped here.

• 1:08:05Speaker 07

  And we, the road we were on sort of ran down towards a river.

• 1:08:11Speaker 07

  And then did a hard left turn and drove sort of along the along the side of the river. So we stopped on the approach to this river and got out and thought we'd do this bit of patrol. But once we walked. Sort of fifty to a hundred metres away from the car.

• 1:08:28Speaker 07

  My lead, I was the two I see of the patrol in for the majority of my two thousand and seven trip, the second in charge. We had a six man patrol, ran out of two vehicles, two long range patrol vehicles. So we had three guys in each.

• 1:08:43Speaker 07

  And as the tour, I see you, normal foot movements, you, you stay at the back of the trail, um, cover the rear and make sure no one gets left behind. And from the back, the lead scout opened fire across the river. And as soon as he did, I could then look up because it was pretty open until you got to the other side of the river. And then it was kind of classic Afghan orchards and trees and compounds. And I could see the two guys sort of returning fire, but making a run for it mostly just to sort of get away. We cleared across the river and, and what we found when we got to the other side was

• 1:09:23Speaker 07

  a massive trench system that they dug. It was kind of pretty epic. There was, um, three big, you know, heavy weapons pits, if you like, they're fully overhead protected, sandbagged.

• 1:09:36Jack Murphy?

  Holy shit.

• 1:09:37Speaker 07

  Big, big logs covering them up. And we were part, it was basically like a perfect.

• 1:09:44Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:09:58Speaker 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.

• 1:10:09Speaker 03

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• 1:11:10Speaker 07

  entrenched ambush position facing where we'd exactly stopped. So if they'd had the fighters on the day, we would have got our asses handed to us. But fortunately for us, they didn't know we were coming. And unfortunately for those two guys, they didn't expect us to get out of our cars and clear across the river. But yeah, all of a sudden, you're staying one step ahead of them because you're doing everything right. But you're doing night patrols and you're passing the toed-up bad guys. You're catching blokes off-guard at night because, you know, your technology's just better and your tactics

• 1:11:54Speaker 07

  are just better. You're better trained, you've got better gear. And then during the daytime, you're clearing through entrenched areas. I mean, it's from before that, from sort of my East Timor time and a lot of training in an infantry battalion, you get to the point where you're like, holy cow, this is actually really serious. And even if you do everything right, you can still come unstuck one day just through sheer bad luck. Yeah. And that's, that's the life we chose to live, I suppose.

• 1:12:27Jack Murphy?

  And it sounds like after that, you guys were filling more of kind of like a straight counterterrorism role.

• 1:12:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, that was a weird blend between still sort of doing reconnaissance a fair bit, but trying to be as kinetic as we can. We're still trying to degrade the anti-coalition militia's capability. We're really trying to put the pressure on them so that the military behind us can get in and fix stuff. That, my deployment ended when I drove over an IED and it was up at that FOB Anaconda. So the American team that was based there, literally, I don't know how the word got through, but they sent word down to the Aussies, "Hey, can anyone come up and give

• 1:13:13Speaker 07

  us a hand? We're having a really tough month." And they were basically just getting shot at every second day, whether it was sort of direct weapons, rockets, machine guns. They actually, on I think a couple of occasions, the enemy put in frontal assaults on their, on their compound, which was a bit of, you go from that mindset where we're chasing one and two bad guys around a paddock to getting to the end of your, towards the end of your trip, and the enemy are actually massing in, in numbers to overrun outposts. It's like, yeah,

• 1:13:54Speaker 07

  this is, it's not getting, it's not getting better. So we actually went up to do some, you know, disruption operations around Kazirazgan and the valleys around it. A lot of bad guys up there. We drove around in our cars, which they literally couldn't do six months later. Pushed the enemy back. Commandos came up and did a massive sweep through and they got into a few big gun shootouts as well up there. But it was on the way back from that operation that, that I drove over the IED. And it was really, again...

• 1:14:36Speaker 07

  Trying to manoeuvre around the battlefield with cars in an environment that's super difficult to manoeuvre around. Um, when we left, I'll, I'll tell the story if you like. Yeah, please. Quickly, we left um the FOB after a couple of weeks to head back to Tarran Count. The only way we could get back is drive our cars back. Uh, and there's actually only two roads back. One, you drive straight down the valley to TK, down that Mirrenbad Valley to get back, or you drive sort of north, go over the mountain range into the Chora area and then come back into TK from the north.

• 1:15:20Speaker 07

  Um, we had two call signs up there. Um, the commandos had their company up there as well. And obviously they'd been doing a fair bit of fighting over the last day, few days as well. And they got into a few ticks on the way back also. But as the SAS troop, we went, well, we'll take them, we'll take the northern route, go over the mountains.

• 1:15:40Speaker 07

  I didn't want to just drive out of the FOB. Um, not noting that they could be putting IDs in the road. We had to go through the town centre. That's pretty dangerous. So we patrolled on foot for twenty, for about twelve hours prior through the night. Uh, just my team. And by this stage as well, my team leader had injured his back. And so he'd been, he'd gone out of the field and I just basically got a full promotion to, to team leader, got a, another guy to, to fill in. So I still had a six man team, but got a full promotion and I've been the team leader, I suppose, for maybe three or four weeks.

• 1:16:21Speaker 07

  We did our, we patrolled through that town that night, seemed all pretty clear. The vehicles drove down and married up with us the um, the next morning and.

• 1:16:33Speaker 07

  Our major tactic for the day, I suppose, was just go as quick as we can. If we can get over the mountain range before the enemy can know which way we're going and react, we've got our best chance of getting back into the next valley where you don't need to drive on roads any longer. Well, that's sort of mid that morning, we got a message from headquarters saying that there was an enemy commander in a particular village that we were going to be driving past. And so we stopped nearby, put our fire support teams on the high ground. And one of the patrols went down into that village to try and locate this target that was down there.

• 1:17:19Speaker 07

  They messed around for a few hours, couldn't find him. But we kind of knew that, you know, something was up because there were spotters everywhere. You could see them, they might be sort of out of range of your, even your heavy weapons, but you could see them. But then by the time we jumped back in our cars to drive over the mountain range, it was now running into early afternoon. So we kind of shot ourselves in the foot for the, let's get out as quick as we can.

• 1:17:52Speaker 07

  And to compound our problems that day, we actually blew some CV joints in our vehicles. So we had two vehicles break down, which we had to fix on top of the mountain. We could fix them by either replacing the CV or just taking it out and not using six-wheel drive anymore. But it's obviously time consuming to do it. When we're on top of the mountain fixing the cars, I said to the boss, the troop commander of the troop,

• 1:18:23Speaker 07

  I'll take my team forward and I'll try and clear down this valley, this really thin valley we've got to drive through. Because that'll deny the enemy the use of the ground. Obviously, we want to get to the next valley where we can maneuver and not take that predictable route.

• 1:18:42Speaker 07

  I drove down the valley, uh, as far as I could sort of go, the boss had given me a bit of a control measure in the fact that he sort of said, um, don't go any further than than this grid point. And so I got to what I thought was that grid point. And, um, the sort of high ground both sides, I was on a bit of a flat bit with a creek and it was only about a hundred metres wide, I think. And we waited there for a few minutes. Um, but what happened was a guy came walking out of dead ground on the road we were on, uh, walking towards us. And straight away, he looked really, really sus. He's actually carrying, um, like this box, looked like a

• 1:19:23Speaker 07

  cardboard box, maybe twice the size of a shoebox, and he's walking right towards us. Um, and we were sitting there quietly watching him. And then he sort of gets to sort of about that forty or fifty metres away and he looks up and it was amusing in the fact that he was so surprised to see us. Um, he sort of put the box on the ground and looked to me like he was pretending to do his shoes up, but that was weird because they don't wear laces in their shoes, they all have slip-on shoes. He then, um, he then picked that box back up, did a left turn and tried to high tail it out of there, um, just get away. And so I turned to the driver and said, let's drive over there and pick him up. He was still on sort of the flat ground and we started the

• 1:20:08Speaker 07

  car up and, and went to drive forward. And that's where, um, the next thing I remember was just the being engulfed by the dust. Um, don't remember the bang. Um, I suppose, you know, your senses are all shutting down, but I didn't go unconscious at any point. And I can, um, still like, really imprinted on my mind, um, the moment of the, everything was grey. Uh, and then the next thing I can remember is I was looking back at, and I could see the vehicle. And because we didn't have roofs on our LRPV, so I'd been ejected out and thrown. And I think I was still airborne. And our cars weigh, fully loaded with ammo and water and everything, they

• 1:20:53Speaker 07

  were about seven ton, bit over seven ton probably. And I can remember seeing it, um,

• 1:20:59Speaker 07

  Off the ground, a couple of metres off the ground. So that was a bit of a, bit of a spin out. I landed maybe ten or fifteen metres from the car. I went to get up and I couldn't feel my legs. Um, my first thought, and lots of people probably have had it in the, been in the same situation, is I need a gun. I need my gun to defend myself. And I look back at the LRPV, which was now sort of resting on the road, all the fuels, you know, emptying out of it down the hill towards me. Um, it's a bit of a mess, but my M4 was sort of on the ground near the car. I could see it, but I couldn't get up to get it. And it was kind of at that point, I remember my teammates from the vehicle behind, running past, they

• 1:21:42Speaker 07

  were putting out, um, security on the hills and made it come and got me and, um, the driver and I were flown out, um, back to TK first, but then down to Kandahar. I, I made a pretty good recovery after it all. Um, the doc, the doctors, the American doctors in Kandahar told me that it's just the shockwave passing through your body causes a lot of swelling.

• 1:22:09Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:09Speaker 07

  Um, and it's that swelling that was restricting sort of movement a lot. Um, and so, yeah, I don't know, thirty six hours later, I was hobbling out of the hospital on crutches, I suppose, to, um, to start the rehab. Yeah, but we, it wasn't the only ID you had in the road that day. We lost an explosive detection dog, or the, the troop, as they continued down the valley, lost an explosive detection dog, uh, shortly after that as well, Raz that was killed in, uh, September O seven. Yeah.

• 1:22:44Jack Murphy?

  Uh, I mean, it's pretty incredible that you got blown out of the vehicle like that, but we're more or less okay. I mean, I wouldn't, obviously not uninjured, but I mean, when you described it, I was like, uh, it sounds like you lost your legs or something. I mean.

• 1:22:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, no, I'm pretty good now. I mean, I've still got a few injuries. I've got a few injuries that, um. Have troubled me since.

• 1:23:07Jack Murphy?

  Like like discs and stuff and the vertebrae.

• 1:23:10Speaker 07

  Dodgy dodgy back and knees. I have joint trouble with my joints, I think, and um more than a fifty year old should. Um. And I think it's probably from that

• 1:23:20Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20Speaker 07

  shock, big shockwave, you know, it's just degrading your body faster than it should be. But um yeah, it was, yeah, it was probably that IED was pretty big. Um. Could have been the years of M L E as well. Could have been could have been all the Barrett fifty cow fired, who knows?

• 1:23:39Jack Murphy?

  So um rehab, I mean, you're you're still a part of the S A S going through this rehab process?

• 1:23:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, they flew me back to Australia. I think I had maybe two months of full sick leave, stay home and rest up. I mean, my body was purple, which was, I had no shrapnel injuries, which was great, but my body was purple.

• 1:24:00Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Like bruised all the way around.

• 1:24:03Speaker 07

  Oh, no, it was um more internal bleeding.

• 1:24:06Jack Murphy?

  Oh, oh, wow.

• 1:24:07Speaker 07

  Superficial.

• 1:24:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was just bruising. Um. And, you know, once that went down, I mean, I laid on the couch for two weeks, I couldn't do anything. Um. But I just literally went home. So I didn't go back to the unit at all much. It was maybe about two months. I then reported back to the docs. They took more um morphine tablets off me and uh I hit the gym and or the pool on the went to the pool, went to the physio. Um. Told everyone I was good to go and um re redeployed back to Afghanistan, I think about four months later.

• 1:24:42Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 1:24:43Speaker 07

  Four or five months later. I mean, to be honest, I wasn't good to go. Uh. But um you know, I I wanted to get back into the fight, want to go back and help my mates out. My squadron was going back the next year. Uh. And the next year I didn't do a kinetic warfighting deployment. I did a deployment that was a lot more orientated around intelligence and and reconnaissance work and and stuff like that. So uh it was kind of a job that I thought, yeah, I can, I can do this.

• 1:25:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, no, that's that's pretty cool that they uh they helped you facilitate that. Um. Tell us, let's get into like, I it sounds like maybe the the, you know, final deployments you had in Afghanistan. It was more doing high value target strikes.

• 1:25:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, yep. And hugely different too, I mean, from two thousand and two, driving around in cars with not much, not much action. Two thousand and seven, lots of action driving around in cars. Um, it evolved a lot while I wasn't there. The Americans basically said, hey, we'll put on helos for you, um, to, to really target the, the enemy leadership.

• 1:25:58Speaker 07

  Which was what we did. Um.

• 1:26:01Speaker 07

  A lot more of the rules had crept in as well. You know, you couldn't do night operations or you needed super high level approvals to do them. They were almost impossible. Um.

• 1:26:14Speaker 07

  Partnering force ratios were quite high, um, but we had helos and we would literally. We, we also had here, we had helos. We also had a lot of other assets that we didn't have in two thousand and seven as well. So we were able to use a lot of the ISNR platforms to do our targeting, which made it a, a lot more effective to, um, to watch areas before we launched on them and, and things like that. Nine times out of ten, um, we were able to go, yeah, that's, that's abnormal activity. There's too many guys in that town with guns at the moment. We'll, we'll launch on that and try and catch objective whoever. Um, we had a few

• 1:26:57Speaker 07

  full SAS teams there, which was hugely important, but with the high partnering ratio, um, we had a couple of different partnering forces that we would work with, depending on what locations the target was in. Uh, and it was my job on that trip to mentor the partnering forces.

• 1:27:15Jack Murphy?

  That's cool.

• 1:27:16Speaker 07

  Um, as it turned out, I spent the majority of my trip, um, working with one as much as I could. Um, but yeah, didn't stay in the field overnight. I don't think we would, um, have the helos on, we would launch, you know, develop the in, in the morning type respectable times, jump out of bed at, uh, Rivali at six o'clock and grab a feed and take it to the ops room and start watching the feeds and see what targets are in the area and, um.

• 1:27:56Speaker 07

  Maybe there was one that was hot, you might launch at eight, seven or eight in the morning, or maybe you might watch one for a while and launch about ten.

• 1:28:05Speaker 07

  Get into a shootout, catch a bad guy, um, and generally be home by four or five. So it was very respectable.

• 1:28:10Jack Murphy?

  What was the, uh, partner force that you worked with most of the time?

• 1:28:16Speaker 07

  Um, the one that I liked working with were the NDS guys from, from up north. Yeah, they were, I, I found the ones that I worked with were hugely courageous. Um, they were pretty well disciplined and they were hugely open to train as well. So we could do a lot of, you know, compound clearance rehearsals. And we had a, a training facility within the wire at TK, um, near the range. And so we could go out there and, and rehearse and train and, um. They were good, they were great to work with to the point where I'd go with them by myself. I mean, it's, it's really weird to get into a shootout with guys you can't talk to.

• 1:28:57Speaker 07

  Um, cause the TERPs that we, that I used were literally civilian contractors.

• 1:29:02Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:03Speaker 07

  Um, and so they'd come on the hits with us, but, um, they wouldn't be keen to be up the front with me. Um, but I'd be up the front with, uh, with the guys. A lot of the, um, a lot of the target buildings, we'd send the, the teams in to, to sort of try and find the HVT that we're after. Um, so a lot of the time when I was hitting the target, I'd be assisting with cordons or sweeping less priority areas. But, um, I suppose we found, or I found even just with, uh, the Afghans that I was working with,

• 1:29:44Speaker 07

  uh, especially the ones that I trusted, that I'd go by myself with, they'd be, um, they'd be always, if there's a HVT there, there's always security with him and they're never in the same building. They're always out and around in those other buildings or creek lines or, or, or something like that. So, yeah, a lot of the shootouts, skirmishes that we had were, um, around those, um, target buildings, whereas the actual teams of operators that were clearing those were got into the bulk of the, the combat.

• 1:30:17Jack Murphy?

  Are there any particular operations from that last deployment that kind of stand out for you?

• 1:30:24Speaker 07

  Um.

• 1:30:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, I had an interesting little day. I I wrote a short book and I had an interesting little day. One in particular where um we landed and there was a bit of random sporadic shooting from sort of the centre of the assault force moving into the target area. Um, I didn't think much of it. It was literally a couple of rounds. Um, but then after we cleared our sort of non priority area, one of my Afghans come and grabbed me.

• 1:31:00Speaker 07

  Mark, Mark, come with me, uh, which I was happy to do. I mean, I trusted the guy. He was a a good little operator, but he then dragged me a long way away from the troop to the point where I was sort of starting to get nervous, mate. We need to cut this here and and head back. We're getting too far away. And then all of a sudden I arrived at the compound and I would normally operate with about ten. Um, ten guys got to that compound and there was a couple of other guys standing at the front. And they're like, go in, go in. And so I'm like, all righty, eh? So I'm now in clearing this compound by myself with one Afghan.

• 1:31:39Speaker 07

  But I, what occurred was I got in there and there was a Civcas in there who was actually still, um. No one had done any first aid on him. He was actually still bleeding out. And I actually reckon it was probably an AK that he'd been hit by because it was a massive hole in his leg. Um, but who knows? Could have been a ricochet, could have been anything. I patched him up and got the medic over. Um.

• 1:32:10Speaker 07

  Sort of thinking to myself, this is like a bit of a big day already and it's not even a big day. Um.

• 1:32:19Speaker 07

  We then got into another uh small shootout again. Just after that, where we lost um Fax, one of our attack dogs. Uh, the handler and the handler's offside. I had to assault the creek line. Uh, and and Fax got killed as well. So that one stood out to me as well. I mean, some guys talk about post-traumatic traumatic stress a lot. Um. And I've shared that story a bit. I mean, I don't think I suffer hugely from

• 1:32:53Speaker 07

  PTSD, but I actually had a reoccurring dream after that job. That when I went into that room, it was my son that had been hit. Oh, wow. They were about the same. They were about the same age. Um.

• 1:33:05Speaker 03

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

• 1:33:20Speaker 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.

• 1:33:31Speaker 03

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. 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.

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  Hanging out at the pool is great, relaxing and playing Vegas-style games on my phone at the same time. Drinking one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at Spinquest. Over a thousand games, including. Your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10 at spinquest.com.

• 1:34:25Speaker 04

  Spinquest is a free to play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:34:34Speaker 07

  I mean, I don't know. It's that warfare, it's those, you have some big days that you take a while to get over. That one took me a while to get over.

• 1:34:42Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, understandable. Um, so let's start to talk a little bit about sort of your exit from the Australian military. You continued working for the Australian government for a while, but was this just your natural retirement point? Um, what was kind of the auspices under which you got out?

• 1:35:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm really odd in this respect. Um, even amongst SAS guys, I'm a bit of a rarity. So I actually discharged from the regular army in 2009.

• 1:35:16Speaker 07

  After I, I did that one deployment after I got blown up. And I was sort of in that mid 2009, I was going, I'm not really healing up real quick. My back's still dodgy. I might get out and, uh, and do something else. Maybe my time's up. And, uh, so I kind of discharged, but I, in hindsight, I wasn't ready to get out mentally, I don't think. Like soon as I discharged from the regular military, but stayed in our army reserve. And, uh, and because I had a lot of instructor qualifications, the SAS would keep me as an army reserve just to go back and, and help on the selection course or help on a

• 1:35:57Jack Murphy?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:35:58Speaker 07

  A demolitions course or a shooting course or something like that. So they just kept me in their pool of reserve guys. And that's, I went to the Australian Embassy in Kabul and worked as a security contractor at the embassy, which Had a hugely interesting eighteen months. I loved it. Um, I love the difference from military to contracting in the fact that you now have got, you've no longer got this rulebook to keep you safe. Um, you can make as many bad decisions as you like as a civilian contractor and, um, you're the person that's going to suffer if you get it wrong. And you have also then obviously the added pressure that this

• 1:36:41Speaker 07

  person that you're looking after nine times out of ten has no idea the dangers that they're in day to day wandering the streets of Kabul. Um, so you have this challenge of reeling them in whilst letting them do as much as they want to, but keeping them safe while they do it. Um, so I definitely enjoyed that to begin with, but it was sort of that two thousand and eleven, twelve, thirteen period, um, our small little SAS unit was sort of starting to run dry. I've, I've got mates that by that timeframe had done ten, you know, eight deployments was not uncommon, ten deployments was, um, was still quite common. So

• 1:37:26Speaker 07

  and I, all my best mates were still over there. I was still going back every now and then to help with training. And one day someone said, oh, what are you doing for the next six months? Do you want to deploy, um, back to Afghan in the military? So they re-enlist you

• 1:37:43Speaker 07

  um, back into the full-time military. You go on a deployment and then you come back and they discharge you again. And I did that twice. And so I say to most people, while I did discharge from the military, I really didn't discharge in my head until around about two thousand and fifteen.

• 1:38:01Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:38:02Speaker 07

  Sort of that two thousand and fourteen, fifteen, sixteen period, the bulk of my work was back at the embassy. Um, driving the ambassador around town and doing that diplomatic protection. Um, few odd trips around Afghanistan, but mostly in Kabul.

• 1:38:21Speaker 07

  And um it wasn't till sort of that two thousand and sixteen period where in my head, I kind of went, I'm I'm okay with my life experienced in the military to this point.

• 1:38:34Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:38:35Speaker 07

  I'm gonna get out. And I kind of did a few reserve training things in Australia after that. But sort of by two thousand and sixteen, seventeen, eighteen onwards, I was like fully out. I don't think I've I'm fully discharged now. I'm not even in the Armour Reserve anymore. Um, and I haven't really done anything since two thousand and eighteen, I don't think.

• 1:38:57Jack Murphy?

  I mean, how many years total in the Australian military from, well, it was the late eighties when you first went in, right?

• 1:39:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, not quite twenty, bit under twenty.

• 1:39:07Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm. Um.

• 1:39:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:39:11Jack Murphy?

  So.

• 1:39:11Speaker 07

  Not a bad hit out, though.

• 1:39:12Jack Murphy?

  No, hell, no. It's a great run that you had. And I I mean, you're I'm glad that you weren't injured worse than you were, considering what you went through. I mean, it's a lot. Um, I want to talk about the things you're doing today as an expedition and adventure travel guy. But one of the things we had talked about earlier that I want to make sure we touch upon and ask you about is that the SAS has kind of had a pretty difficult run the last five years, six years, maybe. A lot of news story, newspaper stories about war crimes, the Barrington Report that came out from the Australian government that covered this subject.

• 1:39:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:39:53Jack Murphy?

  The the ongoing defamation suit with, is it Robert Ben Smith?

• 1:40:00Speaker 07

  Yep, yep. IRS is still in the courts.

• 1:40:03Jack Murphy?

  And it's and so this is still kind of like unfolding in the public sphere in Australia. Um, and I just wanted to ask you, you know, if you have any comments about it or thoughts about it that you wanted to share with people.

• 1:40:18Speaker 07

  Yeah, not heaps. The, um, it is certainly still heavy in the press in Australia. Um, it's, it's not resolved, which is a huge shame in itself. I think, um, myself and, and

• 1:40:37Speaker 07

  all my colleagues that I've ever spoken with, none of us were against, uh, an inquiry, uh, and not even, you don't even need to call it an inquiry, a post-operation review on, um, what did we do well? Obviously, what could we have done better? How could we improve? How can we make tomorrow's warfighter better than we were? Um, all hugely

• 1:41:04Speaker 07

  in believing of that. Um, I was bitterly disappointed, I suppose, to say mildly, um, how they conducted the review, how they did the investigation. Um, there was a massive trial by media, uh, the, the money that's been spent trying to find people guilty by our own country. I personally, my personal view is pretty sickening. Um, when you think that the guys we captured have now been let out of prison in Kabul, um, literal murderers that green on blue murdered Australian soldiers have been let out of prison and, and, uh, and we're still going through the courts. It's, it kind of

• 1:41:47Speaker 07

  seems a bit rough. I mean, I wasn't present for any of the things that they're investigating. I didn't see any war crimes. Um,

• 1:41:57Speaker 07

  I'm sure they can, uh, conduct inquiries and, and, and do their best, but it just seems a bit over the top. And a lot of the stuff that's been in the press, I know, because I, I read it, has actually been untrue. There's been stuff published in the media that's not correct. Um, and so that's sad. You sort of think to yourself, are these guys actually, um, investigative journalists? Or are they just trying to, um, prove their narrative to sell their story?

• 1:42:24Jack Murphy?

  There, there was the one defamation case with the commando. Is it Russell Heston? That I think he won his lawsuit.

• 1:42:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, and and good because hopefully in the future that'll make them do a bit more due diligence before they um start publishing their news articles. Yeah, I'm all for the public being informed to an extent. Um I think in hindsight, we should have shared a lot more of the good work we did in Afghanistan. Um our S O T G especially um just had this blanket, no media, no stories policy. And I and what then inevitably resulted was the only stories that ever came out were bad ones.

• 1:43:10Jack Murphy?

  Bad ones, yeah.

• 1:43:11Speaker 07

  Um. And so we're at this point now where there's no, no one knows about the amazing work we did for twenty years. Um the fact that all the Afghan lives we saved, to be honest, um you don't have to look too deep on the internet to find all the suicide bombings that I witnessed in Kabul. Um I mean, in that two thousand and nine, ten period, the guest, I lived in Kabul City and that guest house behind us that got hit, there was the UN guest house and I think an ex navy seal and another UN contractor that was in there got killed. Um those attacks happen commonly. If one hadn't happened for a month or so,

• 1:43:53Speaker 07

  if a truck bomb or a car bomb hadn't gone off, killing another fifty or sixty civilians in Kabul, you were waiting for it to happen. I mean, that that stuff wasn't okay. And I still today I'm comfortable with everything I did because that's what we were there trying to prevent.

• 1:44:09Jack Murphy?

  Tell us about this.

• 1:44:10Speaker 07

  It's hard to see the finish.

• 1:44:12Jack Murphy?

  This uh this documentary you mentioned to me, Bravery and Betrayal, that just came out?

• 1:44:17Speaker 07

  Yeah. And I'm I'm hugely supportive of it. So I've I've seen it. Um.

• 1:44:24Speaker 07

  And it's, in my opinion, it's not a huge rebuttal of um the war crime stuff. That's one of the reasons I like it so much, is that it's actually some SAS guys going, hey, you know what, I'm just gonna tell some of my story.

• 1:44:41Jack Murphy?

  That's good.

• 1:44:42Speaker 07

  And so they're getting interviewed and just sharing their experiences, pretty much like you've given me the opportunity to do today. Um but to put, it puts warfighting in a little bit of context, I think, um in the fact that Bravery and Betrayal is not only interviewing a few ex-SAS guys, um it also is interviewing a few of our prime ministers. It interviews a few of the US pilots that were dropping us off and picking us up on these kill capture missions, I think there's about three of them in it. Um which is terrific to get someone else's perspective again. And it actually also um interviews a few of the widows who I know personally.

• 1:45:25Speaker 07

  And it must have been really difficult for them to to get on camera and to be interviewed um and talk about um Matt Locke and Blaine Didhams, but um and they did, which I think puts a lot of what we were doing and what we believed in so much into a bit more perspective than just the negative news articles that have been out there. The betrayal part, that's in the name, obviously. I think really focuses on the one hugely disappointing uh incident was at the end of that Brereton report, where the Australian military felt the need to apologize to the Afghan people.

• 1:46:09Speaker 07

  Um and I personally, my personal belief is that that was just insulting to us and everything we we sacrificed for. Over that whole time. So, um, yeah, I hugely promote the documentary. I think they're working to get it on a streaming service. At the moment, it's just traveling Australia. Um, so get in and see it wherever it pops up. Um, I can flick you some one or two. I think there's three previews.

• 1:46:36Jack Murphy?

  Okay. Yeah, we can put some links in the description of this podcast and people can check it out.

• 1:46:41Speaker 07

  I'd love to send you those, but, um, yeah, I, I hope that, um, gets out there a few bit. And I've spoken to the producers as well. They're hoping that in the future they can do the same thing. Make a, a similar doco for the commandos, make a similar doco for some of the infantry battalions that did deployments to Afghan, um, and share some more of that broader Australian military story because it's, um, apart from people's pod that have done podcasts, and there's a few podcasts in Australia. Apart from people that have gone out of their way to share their own stories in a book or on a podcast, there's really not much covered yet in Australia, as in people's personal experiences.

• 1:47:20Jack Murphy?

  I, I think it sort of speaks to the double edged sword of secrecy, right? Uh, in one hand, the military secrecy around these missions is paramount in one sense. But after it happens, if, you know, as we talked about, if you don't publicize it in some way, if you don't allow your soldiers to be interviewed by the press, then what leaks out is going to be the negative stuff, you know, the guys who are rightly or wrongly disgruntled and angry about what they experienced. Um, and you're not going to kind of get the other side. So, yeah, I, I can see it both ways. And while I, I think from what I've read anyway, it sounds like some guys did step out of line and do things that were wrong. But that doesn't speak for the majority of the force and most of these guys who went

• 1:48:05Jack Murphy?

  over and over and over again and did really professional work over there.

• 1:48:10Speaker 07

  Uh, as I said, everyone I've worked with and saw and the vast majority, um, as in within my team and the vast majority.

• 1:48:21Speaker 07

  If not everyone, I don't know. But um yeah, there's so much good was done and so much hard work and sacrifice by good people. Um it's a it is, as you say, a hugely difficult situation, one I don't have the answers for. But as you just said, if you look today in the Ukraine or or Israel, to think that more and more information from a battle space is not going to be shared, you're crazy. So to think that you can shut down

• 1:48:53Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:53Speaker 07

  Um, everything is um a little bit naive, I think.

• 1:48:59Jack Murphy?

  A little bit of out of touch with the times.

• 1:49:02Speaker 07

  Absolutely. So we need um our military, the Australian military, I'm sure they're doing it today. They need to get smarter at that, in exactly that. What we what do we share and what don't we?

• 1:49:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. So talk to us a little bit about your post-service career and what you've gotten into since then. It sounds like it's a lot of fun, actually.

• 1:49:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm pretty fortunate today. I'm living the dream. I mean, after I finished up um working at the Australian Embassy in Kabul, I didn't really know what I mean, I didn't know what I was going to do when I got into the military. That's why I ended up contracting. Um and finishing the contracting, I didn't really finish it. I just sort of thought I'd move into something a bit more fun and interesting. How can I, I love to travel. I love visiting foreign cultures and doing weird and wonderful things. How can I keep doing that but get shot at less? And um I suppose I was, I thought, well, I can do expedition sort of sort of guiding. While I was at the embassy, I started a small hiking

• 1:50:07Speaker 07

  business in Tassie, and it was literally just to fill in my rotations off, take people hiking in the mountains and out into the remote wilderness. But then that kind of led to running expeditions. I worked with some universities that wanted to do research overseas. Um, and I worked with some green energy companies that wanted to conduct feasibility studies or

• 1:50:33Speaker 07

  Community liaison in different areas where they wanted to do projects. And that led me to places like Cambodia, in remote areas of Indonesia. I went to Africa and started doing these sort of cool, pretty cool trips that I really enjoyed.

• 1:50:53Speaker 07

  At the same time, I was like, how can I keep doing this, but actually not really have a job to do? And I sort of, off the back of my hiking up mountains in Tassie, came to that sort of tourism piece. Well, if someone wants to go and see this place, I'll take them and keep them safe. And so, and I still love my motorbike riding. So that led me and another Excessit mate to do a motorbike ride through Mongolia, which was pretty epic, about 3,500 Ks or something around the country. That's awesome.

• 1:51:27Speaker 07

  We, I did a hike through Israel back in 2019, I think, the National Trail there, the Israel National Trail.

• 1:51:35Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:51:49Speaker 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.

• 1:52:00Speaker 03

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. 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.

• 1:52:32Speaker 04

  Hanging out at the pool is great, relaxing and playing Vegas-style games on my phone at the same time. Drinking one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at Spinquest.

• 1:52:44Speaker 02

  Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10 at spinquest.com.

• 1:52:55Speaker 04

  Spinquest is a free to play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:53:02Speaker 07

  From north to south.

• 1:53:05Speaker 07

  That was pretty epic. And then just did some motorbike rides in Vietnam and sort of random stuff. And still heaps in Australia. I mean, I'm off to the Simpson Desert next week to do some photography and do, write and document an adventure ride that some blokes are doing out there.

• 1:53:28Speaker 07

  So you still love remote places and still love to travel. And the more adventurous, the better, I think. Now I love my photography. I saw something I learned way back or started learning back in one R R. When I did my sniper training. Obviously, I was a recon soldier in the SAS. So a lot of photography training involved in that. So now I enjoy my travel and wilderness photography. And as I sort of wrote a book, so I do a little bit of writing. And my other funsie that I have now to give back to the veteran community a little bit, I suppose, is I've got a veteran whiskey brand called Dog Tag Whiskey.

• 1:54:07Jack Murphy?

  Cool.

• 1:54:08Speaker 07

  So it's not, not a big business, but we sell a few, few bottles. And it's Tasmania where I live, where I came from. Is becoming more and more well known for phenomenal whiskey. They produce some really, really high quality whiskey.

• 1:54:23Jack Murphy?

  Is that because the climate is somewhat similar to Scotland?

• 1:54:27Speaker 07

  They, they say, I'm not a distiller, but they say the climate is perfect. And we have everything in Tasmania to make the white spirit, the new make spirit. So we do import our barrels, both from the U S.

• 1:54:41Jack Murphy?

  So does, so does Ireland. I mean, everyone I think does.

• 1:54:44Speaker 07

  Yes. So it's either from North America or, or Europe. I've got some French oak barrels, but mostly American oak. Got some old, in America, your whiskey, I think they can only use the barrels once or something. There's some law there. Which is why we get a lot of American barrels here.

• 1:55:01Jack Murphy?

  That, that might be bourbon.

• 1:55:03Speaker 07

  Ah, okay, yeah.

• 1:55:05Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:05Speaker 07

  So we put out, I've got whiskey in bourbon barrels. I've got some Buffalo Trace barrels and.

• 1:55:09Jack Murphy?

  Yup, yup.

• 1:55:09Speaker 07

  And, yeah.

• 1:55:11Jack Murphy?

  That's super cool.

• 1:55:13Speaker 07

  Makes good whiskey.

• 1:55:14Jack Murphy?

  And what's your, you mentioned you have a, a book out?

• 1:55:17Speaker 07

  Uh, what's the point? It's cool. And it's not an autobiography. It's really just, um, I'm, I self wrote it. My wife edited it. Um, went to the printers down the road and, and printed my own copies. So I just sell them on my own website.

• 1:55:32Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:55:33Speaker 07

  On Assist. And, um, it's just, I write, because I kept traveling through COVID. Um, but we had our mad lockdowns in Australia. So every time I'd return from overseas back to Australia, half a dozen times during COVID. I'd get locked in a hotel in Sydney for two weeks.

• 1:55:50Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:52Speaker 07

  And so I started just writing some of my stories while I was, I was locked in the, in the hotel rooms. And, uh, and then that eventually, my wife said, what are you gonna do with these mad stories you've written about Afghanistan and adventure travel and stuff? And I was, to begin with, I was like, I don't know, we're SF guys, we don't write books. Um, but I think over time, I was like, well, there's nothing wrong with sharing some of these stories. You know, I talked about getting blown up, which I share on podcasts and things like that. Um, so eventually, yeah, I just thought, oh, well, I'll share it. But I'm, I haven't got time to sit down and write about my life. So I've just, it's a bit of a, here's a few experiences that I've had in life. And here's what I learned from them. So I always like to have the.

• 1:56:35Jack Murphy?

  That's cool.

• 1:56:36Speaker 07

  The positive outcome, what I got out of it.

• 1:56:39Jack Murphy?

  And.

• 1:56:40Speaker 07

  We try to do a bit of keynote speaking and that's my main topic really.

• 1:56:43Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:56:43Speaker 07

  Um, what do we learn from, from these experiences? We might consider the experience, um, you know, positive or negative. It might be a really crappy experience, but did we get anything out of it? How did we improve as a person? Are we more adaptive? Are we more resilient? Are we more, are we a better leader? Will we make the same mistake again? And, uh, you can pick those lessons up from lots of different places, whether it's, you know, business or adventure or, or your time in the military.

• 1:57:14Jack Murphy?

  Where can people find you? What's your website?

• 1:57:17Speaker 07

  Um, Mark Direen is the best place to find me online.

• 1:57:22Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:57:22Speaker 07

  Um, I'm on, I'm tinkering and playing with all the social media. Um, X for if you're in America, but I'm on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Um, and I've got a Mark Direen website, but Point Assist is my business that I work through, and that also has its own website. Yeah.

• 1:57:42Jack Murphy?

  Okay. And they can buy your book through, through your website?

• 1:57:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, I've shipped, um, not many. I've shipped maybe a dozen or two to, a couple of dozen to the US, which I'm always like, I hope it gets there.

• 1:57:54Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, I, I've.

• 1:57:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, I don't know how they found me, just randomly.

• 1:57:57Jack Murphy?

  I've ordered things from Australia before it gets interesting. Not, not as interesting as when you order things from South Africa, but, uh, Australia is, yeah, you never know where it's gonna, or, or when it's gonna show up.

• 1:58:10Speaker 07

  Um, yeah, I'm not sure even legally if I can, I don't think I can even legally send my alcohol to America.

• 1:58:16Jack Murphy?

  Uh, probably not, probably not, but the, but the book, the book you should be okay.

• 1:58:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'd, I'd love to send you a copy. I'll send you a copy over.

• 1:58:24Jack Murphy?

  Uh, I, I would love that. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, especially the booze is gonna get tariffed now too, so you're, you're screwed.

• 1:58:30Speaker 07

  Um, yeah.

• 1:58:31Jack Murphy?

  But I, I would love to try that. Um, Mark, I mean, thanks for joining us on the show. Um, really appreciate it. We'll have, for listeners or viewers, we'll have links down in the description. Um, for people who are interested in checking out these websites or buying the book.

• 1:58:45Speaker 02

  Got some questions.

• 1:58:46Jack Murphy?

  Oh, we got a couple, uh, we got a couple of viewer questions for you, Mark.

• 1:58:50Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 1:58:51Speaker 02

  Uh, from Matt, uh, being a big fan of Aussie pop culture from Dundee to Mr. Inbetween, can you tell us about some real life Aussie heroes you've served with?

• 1:59:02Jack Murphy?

  Good question.

• 1:59:05Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:08Speaker 07

  That's a pretty hard question, actually, off the cuff. Well, the bravery in patrol, I suppose, is one to mention again. There's a bloke in that called Mort. And to be brutally honest, when I first heard that the guys were making a doco,

• 1:59:29Speaker 07

  I was a little bit, ooh, what's going to be in this?

• 1:59:34Speaker 07

  But it was Mortz and another ex-RSM of the regiment, actually, Wayne Weeks, that were a big part of making it. And soon as I knew that they were involved,

• 1:59:47Speaker 07

  I was keen to see it and I was kind of happy to support it. And I'm helping with some of the touring of it. So Mortz, the guy that's a big inspiration of the doco, when I got to 1RR, he was there. And he was a recon sniper guy that I had been, or that I wanted to be. He did selection for me. But when I got to the SAS, he was in the squadron that I was in, in two squadron.

• 2:00:16Speaker 07

  And he's one of those guys that was an excellent soldier, hugely professional, always trying to improve. And I think so, I modeled a lot of my thought process off that continuous self-improvement. How can I learn more? How can I get better at what I do? I think I got that off Mort. When my patrol commander hurt his back and got taken out of the field and I got promoted a couple of weeks before I blew myself up,

• 2:00:43Speaker 07

  Mortz was the sixth guy to come back into my, to fill in in my patrol, which I, at the time, thought was hugely difficult. Because I've got this guy that should be my patrol commander. He's just going to fill in for a few weeks as a tail end Charlie. But yeah, someone I hugely look up to. And for probably that reason, hugely professional, he's an excellent soldier. And had that mindset of always improving. How can we get better at what we do?

• 2:01:14Speaker 07

  Crocodile Dundee, I think, is back out at the moment in Senators in Australia. He's making a comeback, the big guy.

• 2:01:23Speaker 02

  A couple more. Uh, did you deploy for the Pung Su or Tampa operations?

• 2:01:29Speaker 07

  No, they they weren't my squadron, yeah.

• 2:01:33Speaker 02

  All right, we got one more.

• 2:01:34Speaker 07

  Interesting jobs are at the time and uh and I think that we were, we became at that time. We really were the force of choice in the fact that we were the cheapest to send anywhere and the most likely to get positive results, whatever that might be, whether it was supporting America somewhere or or or catching a drug boat or some illegal fishermen or whatever it might be. Um, maybe a few lessons there that there's jobs that we did that probably weren't necessarily us. I did chase a few people smugglers around here and there, but um, no, I wasn't on those ones.

• 2:02:12Speaker 02

  Uh, V, what was the weirdest thing you saw in Afghanistan?

• 2:02:23Speaker 07

  The weirdest.

• 2:02:26Speaker 07

  Uh, not my go-to guys that I used Afghans that I used to like to partner with, but partnering with the other the other blokes and a few other different local police forces and things like that. Uh, and there was always weird stuff stuff happening there. You'd be uh arresting someone who's clearly uh a J-pelt high-level target and they're trying to talk you out of it. Like there was so that was weird, um, without going into any stories that are too crazy.

• 2:02:54Speaker 02

  Last one, um, did you ever work with JSOC in Afghanistan or Iraq?

• 2:03:01Speaker 07

  No, I I didn't, um. What what I did do and what I loved was the Americans that used to come to the SAS on exchange. Um, so we did get a couple of green berets come over on the odd occasion and uh and I worked with a couple of of Navy SEALs over time. Um. Ken, I'm trying to think of his last name. Actually, you've caught me off guard. Was uh, I worked with on the came on that two thousand and seven deployment with us. Um.

• 2:03:33Speaker 07

  I wish I could remember his last name and he actually got killed on a, on a separate deployment in Iraq later on. Um, a great guy. Yeah. And he, he was super stoked when he got to Australia. He'd love to come out and have a beer with us. We'd drag him out. Um, cause a pretty senior guy in the, in the U S. Um, in the unit he was from.

• 2:03:56Jack Murphy?

  Well, Mark, thank you for this interview and sharing your perspectives and experiences with us. Um, again, we'll have links down in the description for you, uh, for folks out there who want to go check out the website, check out the book, check out maybe one of these crazy adventure, uh, trips that he's going on. Um, and for everyone else out there, any, any final thoughts before we roll out tonight, Mark?

• 2:04:19Speaker 07

  Oh, no, my, my only final thought is thanks for what you do. Um, helping blacks share their stories. It's, it's, I think it's hugely important, especially when someone's, um, done a lot in their life and, and it hasn't always been easy. It's good to be able to, be able to share. It's not only good for, for the person, but it's actually good for the community. I'm a big believer of that.

• 2:04:41Jack Murphy?

  I think so too.

• 2:04:42Speaker 07

  We mature as, as a nation when we can, uh, share some of these stories and, and talk about the realisms of life.

• 2:04:49Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:04:51Speaker 07

  So thank you.

• 2:04:52Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, we couldn't do it without you, Mark. Thank you. Um, and everyone else will see you next week. Uh, actually, no, there'll be two episodes this week. So we'll see you on Wednesday and then on Friday. Two for the price of one.

• 2:05:05Speaker 07

  Good work.

• 2:05:06Jack Murphy?

  All right. Take care, everyone.

• 2:05:08Speaker 07

  Cheers.

• 2:05:10Jack Murphy?

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

• 2:05:55Jack Murphy?

  And you are what continues to help this thing going even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page. And there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers and we also have patches. And I should mention, if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail you this patch as well. So we really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the merch shop. And additionally, they got T-shirts up there, water bottles, tote bag.

• 2:06:38Speaker 03

  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.

• 2:06:52Speaker 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.

• 2:07:03Speaker 03

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

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• 2:08:04Jack Murphy?

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  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.

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  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.

• 2:10:02Speaker 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.

• 2:10:13Speaker 03

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

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• 2:11:35Speaker 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.

• 2:11:46Speaker 03

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

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• 2:13:10Speaker 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.

• 2:13:21Speaker 03

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. 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.

• 2:13:53Speaker 04

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• 2:14:23Speaker 00

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• 2:14:36Speaker 01

  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 heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair,

• 2:15:20Speaker 01

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