The Danish Delta Force (Jaeger Corps) | Thomas Rathsack | Ep. 355

Thomas Rathsack is a veteran of the Danish Jaeger Corps, where he served with deployments in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Beyond his combat roles, he contributed to humanitarian efforts in demining and provided VIP security. Rathsack is also an accomplished author, best known for his controversial, best-selling memoir, "Jaeger," and has since expanded his career into writing novels and television production. Find Thomas here: Books https://www.amazon.com/Jaeger-Denmarks-Elite-Special-Forces-ebook/dp/B00UPKQGOY IG https://www.instagram.com/thomas_rathsack/?hl=en Website https://thomasrathsack.dk/ Today's Sponsors: GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% 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" 00:00 Start & Origin Story 05:01 Jaeger Corps Selection & Training 11:10 Mine Clearing in Chechnya & Afghanistan (Pre-9/11) 14:54 9/11 in Afghanistan & Return to Service 20:51 Afghanistan Reconnaissance Missions & Lessons Learned 30:22 Iraq Security & Undercover Operations 51:11 Post-Military Life: Book, Controversy, and TV Projects Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:29Speaker 03

  Special operations.

• 1:33Speaker 03

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

• 1:49Jack Murphy?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 355 of The Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave. And our guest on tonight's show, I'm very excited to have here tonight, Thomas Rathsack. Thomas is the author of Jaeger: At War with the Elite, a book that I helped have translated and brought to English-language readers. So it's out there for you guys if you want to read his book. Memoir, which is super, I mean, obviously I'm biased, but I think it's a great story and I I hope you guys will check it out. Thomas's background is that he served in the Danish Jäger Corps, which is Danish Special Forces with deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. He also served with the Danish D Mining Group before nine eleven even in Chechnya and Afghanistan.

• 2:31Jack Murphy?

  And then afterwards, I mean, he wrote his book. There was some controversy about it back home in Denmark. And he's moved on to writing some novels, some television projects and some other things we'll get into here. So Thomas, thank you for joining us tonight.

• 2:47Speaker 05

  Thank you for having me.

• 2:50Jack Murphy?

  So the first question we always ask is our guest's origin story. Can you tell us a little bit about like how you grew up and you know what your initial interest was in the military as a young guy?

• 3:01Speaker 05

  Yes, well, it started actually because I was a very, what do you call it, insecure young, young child. And I was searching for answers and I remember one day when I was walking with my mother in, in, in the street just close to my, my, my, my, my house. And a new book was released and I just, it caught my attention. On the cover of the, of the book was, was a guy with a cigarette in his mouth. He was dirty and I could just look at that face. That must be something special.

• 3:38Speaker 05

  And it turned out that it was a Danish guy from my special forces unit, the Jäger Corps, and he was just a few years before he attended the Ranger Corps. And he was, his name was Carsten Merk and he became number one at this Ranger Corps. I think it was nineteen seventy eight and my mother gave me that book and that book sort of opened a window to a world that was for me extremely interesting and appealing. So it was not that it was, you know, the military was just a story, a narrative about, you know, a bunch of guys working together in, in the nature and using their, their physics.

• 4:16Speaker 05

  And that was extremely appealing to me and I decided in a very young age that I wanted to be a part of that unit because then I have all the answers in, in my confused head, all the questions in my confused head that, that they would have an answer then. So that was, that was the beginning and so, yeah.

• 4:38Jack Murphy?

  And so you grew up and you joined the military. What year was this?

• 4:43Speaker 05

  I joined the military in 1985. I was 18 years old. I joined the National Guard. And I served there for five years in infantry. And then as 23 years old, I took the

• 5:06Speaker 05

  the selection course to the Jäger Corps.

• 5:09Jack Murphy?

  You had a bit of like a winding path too. Like, was it selection or was it your training course got postponed because of, was it the Gulf War?

• 5:20Speaker 05

  No, actually, it was, I became Jäger in 1990. And as far as I recall, it was 91 or 92, the first Gulf War.

• 5:32Jack Murphy?

  Okay, I might be thinking of something else that I read in your book about how like a course you were going to attend got delayed.

• 5:39Speaker 05

  What I wrote about was that during the first Gulf War, and that's, that's one of the reasons why I left the Jäger Corps in the first place. Anyway, we didn't even consider, you know, preparing our gear. It was the Americans and the British who went to the Gulf War, but nobody in my unit even talked about getting prepared to the first Gulf War. And I just remember it was extremely demotivating for me because, I mean, I joined the army to, you know, to get some missions, not just, you know, running around in my unit and my, and my barracks and just train and train and train. So I was very disappointed in the

• 6:21Speaker 05

  beginning of the 90s, in the first period I was in the Jäger Corps.

• 6:27Jack Murphy?

  Before we talk about, you know, you had a break in service because of that, but before we get there, I mean, tell us a little bit about the selection and the training. And for our American audience, what is the Jäger Corps?

• 6:40Speaker 05

  The Jägerkorps was established in 1961 as a Lerb unit.

• 6:47Speaker 05

  And until mid 90s, it was a Lerb unit. And then in the 90s, it was transformed to a special forces unit. And my selection course, it lasted 16 weeks. It's divided in two parts. The first eight weeks, you have to pass and be among, I don't know the word in English, but you have to get the highest evaluation in order to continue to the last eight weeks.

• 7:22Speaker 05

  And we started, I think it was 98.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  We started and we finished eight, and I was among these eight. And it's classic disciplines. It's a lot of marching. It's a lot of orienteering. It's a lot of swimming, especially in cold water, which I really, really hate. It's a lot of exercises. You know, you have done it. Nothing to eat, nothing to sleep, no restitution. So it's just 16 weeks of pain and misery.

• 8:01Jack Murphy?

  And Denmark's climate is quite harsh, isn't it?

• 8:06Speaker 05

  Well, it's difficult for me to compare with the other unit. I think it's quite strict. It's only these 10% of the students who, you know, fulfilled the course. So I was very prepared because I was training throughout my teen years. I was extremely ambitious. So I was very, very well prepared for the selection. So I normally say that I was a better student than I became a Jäger because I never really had strong difficulties at the selection course because I was so prepared.

• 8:49Speaker 05

  I joined the army, sometimes I was walking, you know, eighty kilometers, hundred kilometers alone and swimming during the winter in the local harbor and all this. So I was very serious about my preparation. So selection course, of course, it was tough, but for me, I was so prepared. So I was never in the extreme red zone. So, yeah.

• 9:15Jack Murphy?

  And after the selection course, what is the training for a Jäger like?

• 9:19Speaker 05

  You have one year, a sort of probation before you are putting into an operational team. So this year, you are being taught the basic skills. It's medic, it's comms, all these things. And then you are getting ready and you're getting your Jäger status after one year. And first after that, you are allowed into the teams.

• 9:51Speaker 05

  It's a very small unit compared at least to American standards. We have always been struggling for selection because the Danish army is so small. So it's very difficult to get enough people into the selection. So it's a very small unit. It's about fifty, max fifty shooters.

• 10:15Speaker 05

  So it's a very small unit and the organization in total is three hundred people. And then the core, the teams is only about these fifty shooters.

• 10:27Jack Murphy?

  And Denmark has Jäger Corps, the Frogman Corps, and then Sirius Patrol is also considered a special op.

• 10:34Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly, yeah. And the Sirius Patrol in Greenland, as you mentioned, is even smaller. I wouldn't say it's a joke because that's not very polite, but it's so small. I mean, they have four sled patrols, patrolling an area of the size of Spain.

• 10:54Speaker 05

  It's the world's biggest national park. The Sirius Patrol is patrolling on the east side of Greenland. But now, because there is this focus on Greenland, quite a lot of resources are being deployed to Greenland now.

• 11:11Jack Murphy?

  And I would recommend for our viewers, we interviewed your buddy Casper Damso on a previous episode of this show. If guys want to go back, Casper was a serious patrol member, super unique mission. I hope you guys will take a look at that. So Thomas, you had a, you know, you were a special forces soldier. You wanted to test yourself and felt like you weren't getting that combat experience that you were looking for at that time in the 1990s. And so you had a break in service. What did you go and do outside of the military at that time?

• 11:45Speaker 05

  Well, I finished in 94 and I really didn't want, I didn't know what to do at all because all my life, it was all about being, being a Jäger. So it was a very frustrating situation, not, you know, not to have any goals. But what I did was I, I went to South America for, for two years, lived in Chile and worked as a photographer for various magazines. I did that for, yeah, almost three years, actually. And then I went back home to Denmark and I worked as a computer salesman for, for three, three, three years. And that was okay, but

• 12:23Speaker 05

  it was very boring. And then I, I, by coincidence, I was offered an EUD course. Some old guys from, from the Jäger Corps, they have made this cooperation with the army and some humanitarian D-MAN organizations. And they hired our recruited old former ex-Jägers and gave them this EUD course, which lasted about four months. And I did that course. It was around 1999. And after that, I had my first, well, you can call it mission. That was to Chechnya, or

• 13:02Speaker 05

  rather, it was the republic just west of, of Chechnya. Because during the 90s, there were some civil wars in Chechnya. The Russians tried to control the, these, these regions. So there was a lot of, lot of refugees in, in the neighboring province, region called Inkosheche. So I I traveled between Chechnya and Ingushetsha to educate the refugees in refugee camps. So when the war was over, they could they could return to their villages and be aware of how it is to live in an area infected by mines. So how how do you choose the path, where can you go, which which uh where is it safe, where is it not safe?

• 13:46Speaker 05

  So I did that for um yeah, for one year. And then I continued in Afghanistan as a program manager and and cleared some huge Russian minefields just around Kabul, the capital in Afghanistan. And I did that for, we are now in two thousand one, uh in two thousand, and I did that for, yeah, a little over over a year.

• 14:10Jack Murphy?

  What was it like interacting with the Taliban at that time as a Danish D minor?

• 14:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, they're just completely assholes. So what we have to do with them. Uh, because we came with with our own money, but we we still had to get their permission to to clear mines in their country for our money in after their wars. Uh, and still we were treated like like shit. Uh, I refused to to to wear a beard, uh, which was, uh, you know, mandatory for all men at that time. But I refused, and I was almost kicked out of Afghanistan because I refused to have this this stupid beard. Um, and we had to deal with them. We had to apply for permissions uh in order to to clear the mines.

• 14:56Speaker 05

  So I had almost on a daily basis, meetings with Taliban in in the ministries in Kabul, where I have to go there and and ask for permission to clear mines. Um, so it was it was surreal to to be in Afghanistan in in its in this uh is this stage. Um, terrible place.

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• 18:42Jack Murphy?

  Were there any close calls? And I remember there's also a funny story about the the street lamp that fell down.

• 18:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right. I forgot that, actually. Yes. I, with my Swedish body, we were called out to the outskirts of Kabul. And a huge amount of people were gathered around this suspicious item on the ground. And my Swedish buddy and I, we made this hook a line, you know, put a very easy, put a hook in the edge of this item, because we believed it was, you know, explosive device. And from a distance, we pulled this, this device, and then approached it, and we discovered it was just, it was just the lamp

• 19:35Speaker 05

  from above, from the land post, which was just, you know, fallen down and then covered in dirt, and it looked like a mine or an explosive device. So, yeah.

• 19:46Jack Murphy?

  And then were you in Afghanistan when nine eleven happened?

• 19:50Speaker 05

  Yes, I was, my, my, my boss from Denmark, he, he came and we were sitting on, on the, in the garden and, and drinking gin and tonic. We smuggled some, some booze in, that was forbidden, of course. And there was a curfew. After eight o'clock in the evening was, it was, was not allowed to, to leave our premises. So we were sitting in the garden and we didn't have any radio, we didn't have any TV because that was also forbidden. But, but the, the satellite phone rang in the basement. And I went, I went downstairs and, and answered and was, it was from the HQ in Copenhagen. And a quite nervous voice said, have you heard about what happened in, in, in, in the

• 20:35Speaker 05

  States? And I didn't know, I don't have a clue because we don't have any access to TV or radio. And then he explained about the, the nine eleven attacks on, on, on, on Windhauer and, and, and Pentagon as well. And soon we just realized that all the fingers were pointing at, at, at, at Afghanistan and al Qaeda. And it didn't, it didn't make any sense to stay in Afghanistan. So three o'clock, three o'clock in the morning, we, we evacuated, me, my Swedish buddy and my Danish boss and, and my dog, by the way, I found, found the dog some, some month earlier. And we

• 21:13Speaker 05

  drove this trip to, to, through the, the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan to Islamabad in Pakistan. It's 12 hours, right? And then we were stand, standing by there for, for, for the, for the coming weeks. And, and, you know, via CNN, I, I got updated on, on what, what was happening in, in, in, in Afghanistan and what the Americans were planning to do and all this, Article Five later and all this.

• 21:41Jack Murphy?

  That's a hair-raising experience, I imagine, to be in Kabul when that happens. And all of a sudden, all of the news is about America wants to bomb this place.

• 21:52Speaker 05

  It was interesting. Yeah, that was why it also did make sense to stay there. Because we knew that the Americans quite promptly would react, which, yeah, you also did. But in Afghanistan, or in Pakistan, my old Jägerkorb spirit woke up. And I called the Jägerkorb and told them about my stay in Afghanistan. And at that time, there was no Danish people in Afghanistan, very few foreigners, some expats, yes, but very, very few D-miners. So I told them, well, I've been here for 10 years, 10 months, and I have some experience with the country. I know about the culture, the geography.

• 22:36Speaker 05

  And I have a database of all the minefields in Afghanistan. Can you use me to some purpose? I asked them. They became quiet and they said, of course we can. So I quit my job and took the first flight back home to Denmark, briefed the Jägerkorb about all my experiences from Afghanistan. Went to the American Embassy in Copenhagen, by the way. They have heard about me as well. And I went there to give them all the information I had, pictures and the database and all this. And then a few months later, a few weeks later, actually, I went back with the Jägerkorb to Afghanistan.

• 23:13Jack Murphy?

  Wow. So that's, I mean, really quick that you went from being a civilian to back in Special Forces? And you were 34 at this time?

• 23:21Speaker 05

  Exactly. Yes. And I had to make some physical tests and had to be updated on all the new equipment. Because, as I mentioned before, the Jägerkorb has been transformed from a LEB unit to a Special Forces unit during the days. So of course, I had to learn fast about the new procedures, about, you know, new weapon systems, comms. Everything was new. So I really had to focus in the next weeks before I could get into a team in Afghanistan.

• 23:55Jack Murphy?

  And when you got to Afghanistan, I mean, where did your team get sent? And what was sort of like the mission that you guys anticipated at that time?

• 24:05Speaker 05

  We were part of Task Force Khabar, which was based in Kandahar. And we are some of the first setting up the camp with the Americans and some other

• 24:17Speaker 05

  and some other units from Task Force Khabar. It was, I think it was some Navy SEALs, I think it was German, Karst Kar, Norwegian Special Forces, New Zealand, Australia.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  Canadians were in this Task Force Khabar. And we were only 100 frogmen and Jägers in our task force, which was a part of Task Force Khabar. And was, as I mentioned, stationed in, located in Kandahar, at the old Taliban Al Qaeda base, actually.

• 24:57Speaker 05

  I don't know whether you have heard about Tarnak Farms.

• 24:59Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:00Speaker 05

  Tarnak Farms, yeah, yeah. It was this, what they call it, compound. And it was probably there where they prepared some of the attacks for 9/11, as far as I understand it.

• 25:16Jack Murphy?

  And it's pretty littered with mines itself, wasn't it?

• 25:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, yes. They had some daisy chains in Tarnak Farms. And it's, I think there was some Americans who were killed because of these mines and these booby traps they have left the place with.

• 25:37Jack Murphy?

  So, one of the things, you know, that your unit was very good at, you mentioned how they started off as a WERP unit and evolved into a SF unit. But what Jäger really seems to bring to the table is like a really strong reconnaissance background. And I was wondering if you could tell us about one of these missions that you went on in Afghanistan where your team was flown in the 160th aircraft and you guys occupied that OP for a couple of weeks, right?

• 26:04Speaker 05

  We're supposed to be there for ten days. Uh, and we were, uh, well, yeah, the infill was a nightmare, by the way. It was almost a completely, uh, what do you call it? Steep cliff and, um, was of course during the night and only monogoggles and though it was my, my, my, my equipment. At that time I weighed eighty-four kilos and my equipment weighed eighty-two kilos. So I had to carry my own weight up these, these damn, uh, cliffs. And, um, our, our LP was, was, uh, on, on, on the cliff actually. And the distance to the village we had to observe on was almost, I think, three kilometers.

• 26:47Speaker 05

  And the mission was to, um, to verify whether the village was to some extent cooperating with Al Qaeda and Taliban. Of course, as you know, they were hiding in, in, in, in Pakistan and doing their, their prepping. And then during the night, they were sneaking over the border into Afghanistan and, uh, conducting their, their missions against the coalition. So we had to see, uh, observe against the village in order to verify whether it was hostile or, or friendly.

• 27:18Jack Murphy?

  So Thomas, just to interrupt for a second, I had to, I was trying to do some math in my head and I'm not very good at it. But, uh, so I looked it up, uh, eighty-four kilograms for our, uh, American listeners. That's a hundred and eighty-five pounds of equipment that you were lugging up the side of this mountain. Um, and once you got up there, you guys had to establish your observation post, right?

• 27:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was very narrow, very small. Uh, was just a little, um, what do you call it? It goes down and then a little bit.

• 27:46Jack Murphy?

  Like a ledge.

• 27:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, yes. Uh, and, and we have our, uh, observation point, uh, just in front of, of, of our, our place or our loop. And, um.

• 28:00Speaker 05

  And it was, it was, it was not a good place to, to, to, to, to be because we haven't, we didn't have any exit. Yeah. I mean, if we were compromised, we had a problem and we were compromised after six days. Yeah, what happened? Well, I was, I was on, I was on the, the OP and I could just sense that there was something wrong and I turned my, my head and I could see two, two guys dressed in black, long black beards with Kalashnikovs, uh, five, six meters, uh, over, uh, the other, over, over the team. And it hadn't, hadn't very quickly. Uh, they, they saw us, we saw them and within one, two seconds, they were just gone.

• 28:45Speaker 05

  And that was nine o'clock in the morning. That was a problem because we could just, we couldn't just pack our gear and, and, and find another place because, I mean, daytime suicide. So we have to stay there and we, we, we packed all essential equipment in, in, in, in our, in our, in our burdens and a guy called Peter and I, we, we crawled after these two men up the cliff. But we've been lying still almost for six, for six days. So it was like my body was, you know, putting, putting, being putting down in cement. I was so heavy, I couldn't move and he couldn't move either. We just came up on the top of the cliff, you know, after half an hour and these two guys, they were long gone.

• 29:26Speaker 05

  But we could see that they had run down to a, a little valley, a little village on the backside of our, uh, this clip, cliff we were, we were, uh, laying, laying on. And they were just communicating with all the other in the village, all the other men, and they were talking in, in, in some radios and made some signals with, with, with the flags. Um, and we just knew, uh, that it was a matter of time because they, before they would, you know, uh, engage us. Um, so.

• 29:56Speaker 05

  That was a shitty situation.

• 30:00Jack Murphy?

  And the patrol leader, right, is calling up higher and like asking for air support and QRF and they're kind of like, yeah, sorry, can't help you.

• 30:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, we asked for some shore force and were told from the AWACS

• 30:17Speaker 05

  that probably a French Mirage could do a low pass later in order to make some shore force. But we never saw any French Mirage at all. I don't know, just drinking red wine or whatever. We never saw some shore force. Of course, we had a QRF, an American platoon-sized QRF in Bagram. But they were labeled to all the teams in this, you know, along the border. So unless it was really critical, we could just ask for a QRF because our situation wasn't critical.

• 30:54Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 30:55Speaker 05

  Of course, we compromised, but we couldn't just, you know, call for the QRF unless it really was necessary. And it was, you know, two hours flight from Bagram. So even if we had the QRF, it will still take two hours for the QRF to come to our location.

• 31:14Jack Murphy?

  And how did you guys end up finally extracting out of that area?

• 31:19Speaker 05

  Well, fortunately, the enemy, the Taliban, I assume they were Taliban's, they just get their reinforcement by late afternoon, around seven o'clock or around five o'clock, rather. It was getting sort of dark and I could see in my, I could see in the village that their reinforcement consisting of thirty, forty warriors probably, they came almost running down to the village. So they came late and had they come, you know, two hours later, they would have time to engage us and the situation could have been completely different. But they came late and that was our luck. So we could just climb down the cliff,

• 32:03Speaker 05

  go down in the opposite valley on the south side. And we had this Chinook from 160 to pick us up just after getting dark. So it was very close before the landing zone could get, you know, could get hot and and we couldn't be picked up, but they managed to get down and we went, we flew back to the base.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  Any other notable operations from that deployment that we should talk about?

• 32:39Speaker 05

  Well, I was, yeah, but it was almost only recon missions.

• 32:46Speaker 05

  So it's, I mean, that was, that was the most, well, can you call sort of dramatic. I was a lot of, some other recon missions, but we weren't compromised there. And one of the biggest lessons learned, by the way, with this mission was that we were too few, too few in the team and too heavy. So next time we were now were eight in the team or 10 in the team and we have a lighter load and, you know, maybe only 50 kilos. That meant that our radius was, was, was, was further and we could find a better place to have the OP. And that was, that was some lesson learned.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  What, what do you think, you know, having done successful recce missions in Afghanistan? Because, you know, we talk a lot and people talk a lot about how Afghanistan was such a hard place to do recce's because, you know, because the villagers knew everything and, you know, you had your goat herds, you know, like wandering everywhere. And it was Red Wings, you know, where we see, you know, a SEAL team get compromised. What, what, what was it that made your recon mission successful where you avoided compromise?

• 34:03Speaker 05

  We're extremely careful about choosing our OP. You probably know this software Falcon View. At that time, we used Falcon View and it was extremely efficient.

• 34:17Speaker 05

  And as I said before, we were lighter. We made this huge mistake being too heavy on the first missions. And the next time, as I mentioned, we were much better prepared due to Falcon View and preparation phase in general.

• 34:33Speaker 05

  And also, we just became better, more experienced. You have to bear in mind that the Jägerkorn was a very inexperienced unit until the end of the 90s. We had been on Balkan, yes, but until that point, the Jägerkorn didn't really, wasn't deployed.

• 34:50Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 05

  So we learned fast during the first months in Afghanistan in 02. We learned fast because we made some mistakes, but we really learned from these mistakes. And at the end of our mission, no teams were compromised because we have learned and we're just being good at this recce mission, type of recce missions.

• 35:16Jack Murphy?

  And so after Afghanistan, if I'm correct, the next trip was doing security for the ambassador in Iraq?

• 35:26Speaker 05

  Yes, I was one year almost in Iraq, four months in the south under the British Brigade, where we did some recce missions, but mostly the eight months was in Baghdad for the Danish ambassador.

• 35:46Speaker 05

  That's correct.

• 35:47Jack Murphy?

  What was it like, you know, operationally different for you doing recce in Iraq versus Afghanistan?

• 35:59Speaker 05

  It was completely different terrain in Iraq. In the southern part of Iraq, it's completely flat and it's even warmer than Afghanistan. So it's extremely difficult to hide in the southern Iraq. And these rec emissions we did was in some sort of, what's it called, swamp areas with a lot of channels cutting in the terrain. And we had to build sort of our OPs to find some palm trees and just build, you know, a sort of wall with these, you know, we cut these palm trees up and then we made a sort of OP there.

• 36:40Speaker 05

  And sometimes we had the local farmer, they passed us 10, 15 meters from our OP. So it's very difficult to hide in the southern part of Iraq.

• 36:55Jack Murphy?

  And then what was it like trying to run security for the ambassador and keeping him safe during this in the middle of a war zone?

• 37:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 05

  Baghdad was a very unpleasant place to be because, obviously, we were located in green zone, a few hundred meters from the American embassy. And we had the ambassador and we had three Talanqusus armored. And we were 10 Jaegars just to take care of one VIP. And Baghdad was a war zone at that time. It was extremely unpleasant place to be because it was so unpredictable. Either you had IEDs, you had roadside bombs, you have suicide bombers.

• 37:42Speaker 05

  I mean, they, you know, a dark line in the street or in the side of the street was just, you know, filled with explosives. And when the column was passing this dead dock, it was just, it was detonated. Family fathers with their wife in the passenger seat and their kids on the backseat,

• 38:08Speaker 05

  blew themselves up, you know, passing some coalition convoys. In other words, it's completely unpredictable and you can't see the enemy when this is their modus.

• 38:25Speaker 05

  And it was, yeah, it was, it was, it was a nasty state, place, place to be.

• 38:31Jack Murphy?

  But you also make, you tend to make friends with the animals wherever you go. Didn't you, you, did you adopt another couple of dogs on that trip?

• 38:41Speaker 05

  Well, actually, the Danish ambassador, he, he saw a dog standing and was tied to a land post. And he, he ordered the three, the column to stop. And he ordered us to take the dog back home to the embassy. And she became a sort of embassy dog, but I, I found her home from, for her in Denmark. And she was called Maggie and she had a long, a long, long, beautiful life in Denmark. Yeah. So I really like dogs.

• 39:12Jack Murphy?

  And what was the, another story I remember from your book? What was the story about sweeping the embassy every time? Was it the ambassador every time you'd get frustrated?

• 39:24Speaker 05

  Um, I don't recall that.

• 39:28Jack Murphy?

  Or was it, was it you? There's something about like sweeping the embassy grounds or something like that when things didn't go right? Or didn't go according to plan?

• 39:38Speaker 05

  Okay, I can't remember that.

• 39:40Jack Murphy?

  Okay, like, like sweeping with a broom, I mean, you know, like sweeping the dirt.

• 39:44Speaker 05

  Ah, okay, yeah, okay.

• 39:47Speaker 05

  No, I, I think was, she was, she was extremely nice, pleasant, VIP, the Danish ambassador. And I don't recall any, you know, any punishment in terms of cleaning or sweeping.

• 40:01Jack Murphy?

  If I recall right from the book, you, you said he got interviewed by some Danish journalist? And he said some things off the record.

• 40:08Speaker 05

  Okay, wow, you, I just forgot all about that. Yeah, was a very left, left wing Danish journalist. Who came and made this interview and he made the angle so far from the point and the actual interview. So when it was broadcast on Danish television, it was a completely other, you know, angle. So that's, that's completely correct. My, my ambassador, the, he was so angry, so frustrated that he swept the, the entrance for, for two hours. That's, that's correct, yeah. I forgot that, yeah.

• 40:46Jack Murphy?

  And then, I think, was it the next trip overseas was interesting, back to Afghanistan, working undercover?

• 40:53Speaker 05

  Yes, for six months. We had this undercover operation. It was with a Danish intelligence service. And, well, our, actually, it was, sounds quite boring, anyway. We had to, in some villages in Afghanistan, we had to escort this field officer from the intelligence services, from, out to these meetings, in order for him to interrogate his sources in the local environment.

• 41:35Speaker 05

  So that could be two, three o'clock in the morning, and we couldn't just, you know, drive around in normal military vehicles. So we bought some old cars, and we made them look like they were, like all the other cars, but actually, they were quite well-maintained. And then we tried our best to blend in, as, to, you know, to look like Afghans. Obviously, we couldn't drive during the day, because it was too risky, and we would also be exposed. So that was another reason why we did it during the night.

• 42:13Speaker 05

  So we painted our faces, and we had beards, and local clothes, and then just a lot of weapons in the car, and completely on our own. We didn't have any backup. If we were compromised there, we would have a very, very big problem, because we couldn't call QIF or anything. We were completely on our own. So that was the risky part of the operation.

• 42:44Speaker 05

  But I mean, no, no, no big drama. Uh, we were almost compromised one time, uh, but that's, that's all. Uh, so it just mattered being extremely low prof profile. That was the most important issue with that operation. But completely another mindset, by the way, to do this, uh, sort of operation. I mean, normally we don't do this was to, to, to do this very, um, uh, quiet, low key, uh, low profile operation was a completely, uh, another mindset. Um, for me, I remember.

• 43:19Jack Murphy?

  It's also like part of the, you know, because the Danish military is small and Danish special operations is even smaller. You guys have to like cover all of these different missions.

• 43:30Speaker 05

  That's right. We don't have resources just, you know, uh, to have one squadron, uh, taking care of, uh, uh, unconventional warfare and, and another.

• 43:38Speaker 07

  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.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  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.

• 44:04Speaker 07

  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.

• 44:35Speaker 05

  Direct action. We, we had to, to, as, as, uh, to the best of our abilities to, to, to do, to do, to do it all. Um, so that's of course, sign consuming, consuming and, and tricky. Um, but that, yeah, that's correct.

• 44:53Jack Murphy?

  So on that note, let's talk about a couple of things back home because you guys also have domestic missions and you know, of course, training missions that you do back home too.

• 45:04Jack Murphy?

  There was one where you guys did security for an, I think it was an economic forum of some sort back in Denmark and trained up and prepared extensively for that.

• 45:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's correct. It was an EU meeting.

• 45:19Speaker 05

  And Copenhagen was hosting this, this, this meeting and all

• 45:24Speaker 05

  military units almost and all police units were, were involved in this, in this project or this, this, this meeting. And we, we had the responsibility for, I think, four hotels in order to make evacuation, evacuation plans for the, for the guests attending the meetings. That means we had to prepare on, on the roof, on, on the hotels for helicopter extraction or rappelling down the sides and fire, fire escape plans and so forth.

• 46:03Speaker 05

  Quite boring actually, but yeah.

• 46:05Jack Murphy?

  Well, I mean, you also prepared base jumping, which I wouldn't consider boring.

• 46:10Speaker 05

  No, no, but that, I mean, we, we, we considered the option, but

• 46:17Speaker 05

  I mean, 150 meters doing base jump, you really had, you know,

• 46:23Speaker 05

  you, you have been free falling and it's, it's not, it's not on, on, it's not on the top of your list doing a base jump.

• 46:30Jack Murphy?

  Definitely not. One of, I, I don't know if it was from the same period of time, but my, like, maybe my favorite picture out of your book is the dude jumping out of the helicopter and tackling the guy on the jet ski.

• 46:44Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Yes, it was just a demo. I think it was the Eger course. Was it 40 years birthday? I think so. And it was a demo in, in, in, in the harbor. So just, just show, yeah. It was a nice picture.

• 47:03Jack Murphy?

  Um, and then tell us about Night Hawk.

• 47:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, Nighthawk is an annual exercise with various foreign units from Scandinavia, the Swedes, Norwegians, the British, some American units has been there as well, Special Forces, Delta was in the 90s and the beginning of the 10s, what they call it in the American.

• 47:36Jack Murphy?

  The 2010s?

• 47:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:38Jack Murphy?

  You mentioned some Jäger Corps guys like jumping into Hawaii with Delta at one point on training, that sounds like a good gig.

• 47:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know a former Sergeant Major in the Jäger Corps, he got personal with some of the people from Delta. And I think this connection is still between these two units. The Jäger Corps don't talk about it, obviously, and it's of course very useful for the Jäger Corps to have these, to have access.

• 48:11Jack Murphy?

  Sure.

• 48:12Speaker 05

  Relations and connections in this unit, because they have training facilities that we only can dream of. And that was, for example, this exercise on Hawaii, where they jumped in and to make an exercise there, yeah, that could be nice.

• 48:27Jack Murphy?

  That's cool. And so Nighthawk, I mean, it's like very like realistic, full mission profile training that you guys do, right?

• 48:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a lot of assets, at least compared to Danish standards, but a lot of aircrafts and a lot of helicopters and it's just preparing during the day and then the missions during the night and then day briefing and then you just go over and over again for eight, 10 days. It's a very good exercise, especially because we have to cooperate with all the other units and that's extremely useful.

• 49:07Jack Murphy?

  And it reminds me that you know, you talk about doing a free fall jump into Nighthawk, or at least one training iterations. Do you want to tell the story about your Haglo jump that got a little iffy?

• 49:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, we were jumping for 13,000, 14,000 feet. It was a dark night in November, cold. And we exited the C-130 over the ocean. And I pulled my chute in around 10,000 feet, and set the course directly east towards the beach. And this landing zone was an unknown landing zone. And I came over the shore, and I had my course. And then I started to make

• 50:03Speaker 05

  my final to the landing zone. But I discovered that I was backing. The weather forecast had been wrong, and the wind appeared to be much stronger than the weather forecast said. So that was obviously a problem for me to back in my chute. So I had a problem. And to make

• 50:25Speaker 05

  to make this situation a little bit more serious, suddenly I heard this sort of whisper. I never forget that sound. I have this. And I pulled my own one handle, so I can see over my shoulder. And I see these three or four big windmills, maybe 300, 400 meters behind me.

• 50:48Jack Murphy?

  Oh, like ocean turbines, the turbines for electric?

• 50:51Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah. And I was backing towards these windmills. So that was obviously a very shitty situation. So the only thing I could do was just to turn 180, and then fly with, you know, full power between these big windmills. And then I landed, you know, way, way, way, way too fast. And, and really, yeah. But I never forget these damn windmills.

• 51:26Jack Murphy?

  And another training mission in your book that's interesting is where you guys have to tackle a cruise liner.

• 51:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was a training exercise.

• 51:38Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 51:38Speaker 05

  As a part of Danish national counterterrorism setup. And we, two, three times a year, we, we train with, with the Danish counterterrorism police. Because the Jäger Corps also is a part of this national setup. And it's just, you know, we, we bought, we bought the ship either on fast roving or rappelling, mostly fast roving, or boarding from, from, from a trip boat and, and with these small ladders. And then we had this hostage situation on, on the ship. Which, by the way, is quite complex because it's quite difficult to get the overview. When, when you had to navigate inside a big ship, it's difficult with the comms because

• 52:22Speaker 05

  they can't always reach through the walls and all this. So, so it can very, very fast get very complex. So it was, but very useful and, and, and exciting exercises.

• 52:35Jack Murphy?

  That's super cool. And then at this point, back to Iraq. Can you tell us the story about, you know, you're, you're back with the Jägers in Iraq? The in-deep shit story, the chapter from your, from your book?

• 52:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:56Speaker 05

  There was a, a, a headquarters from one of these, the local militias. And one of the big problems in the area was that they, they were, were firing these rockets, improvised rockets into the Danish camp and the British camp. So one of our mission was to identify where these weapon cache shares were, where they, where, where they hidden their, all, all their rockets and their ammunition in general. So we got this intel on, on one militia headquarters in, in the outskirts of Basra.

• 53:31Jack Murphy?

  It's a J. Shalmati, right?

• 53:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, and for some reason, they wanted us to go in and look at it. Um, seemed quite clumsy to me, but anyway, that was, that was a mission. So we were dropped off by the helicopter and then had two, three kilometers until this uh forest area consisting of palm trees and a channel um cutting through this, uh, this uh palm, palm uh forest, what do you call it? Around four, four kilometers. And on the, uh, the, the satellite photos, it was just, um, cut through maybe twenty or eighteen, I think it was, of these small channels.

• 54:20Speaker 05

  And on the satellite photos, on the aerial photos, it seemed quite innocent. It didn't seem that tricky to get over these, these eighteen or nineteen channels. But after getting to the first one, we realized that it was, first of all, was, was, uh, it was guarded by barbed wire. So we had to crawl in the barbed wire and then down these channels, which was much broader than we expected. And we discovered after two or three channels that it smelled like terrible smell. And we discovered it was the, the, the, the village's sewage system uh that we had to, you know, pass every time we went down in these eighteen, twenty channels into this actual shit uh from, from the village.

• 55:04Speaker 05

  So it was a very long, it was a very long way with these eighteen, twenty uh channels before we could get to the target. And unfortunately, we had to get another, uh, we, we went another way out and not the same way back uh to the, to the pickup. But it was, was, well, that was not pleasant though.

• 55:22Jack Murphy?

  And I take it you burned to those uniforms when you got back?

• 55:26Speaker 05

  We did, yeah. We got some new one, yeah.

• 55:29Jack Murphy?

  Uh, and then you also had an opportunity to, was there um destruction of a rocket cache?

• 55:40Jack Murphy?

  There's like some rockets you guys blew up.

• 55:43Speaker 05

  So long time ago, I can't really remember.

• 55:45Jack Murphy?

  Oh, it's okay.

• 55:46Speaker 05

  Sorry.

• 55:46Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, no worries. Uh, and there's, there's another mission where you guys were the QRF for the conventional Danish forces, right?

• 55:54Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, actually, we were preparing for, for another mission and our, uh, platoon commander, he came running in, in the tent and said, we have to be QRF, uh, QRF right now. So we just got our weapons and, and boarded the helicopter and were briefed on the way to the, to the area. And, um, it turned out that, that a Danish platoon was, um, was not able to get out of this village. And, uh, from, from our position, we, we tried to, to, um, uh, to caught the attention of, of the Iraqi militia, uh, who had caught this, this, this platoon. And the rest of the battalion was on, on the way. Um, and, uh, and they came and, and, and,

• 56:41Speaker 05

  uh, made, and made this, this, uh, one platoon, um, get out. But one Danish soldier was, was killed in this, in this firefight. Uh, and we, we didn't get any, uh, real action, uh, besides from just being standing by in the area, in, in the perimeter of, of the area. But, but no, no, no, no real drama.

• 57:00Jack Murphy?

  And then something else that happened back home, uh, you know, your unit was awarded the presidential unit citation by President George W. Bush. And, uh, from the way you describe it in the book, it seems like that kind of like went without being recognized, um, back home at Denmark.

• 57:18Speaker 05

  Um, yeah.

• 57:19Jack Murphy?

  You want to talk a little bit about that?

• 57:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I, I'm just getting annoyed by thinking about it so many years after, but it's just so typical Danish. I mean, by coincidence, I was standing in, in, in a conference room, uh, in, we had in 2004, I think, I mean, two years after, uh, we, we came home from Afghanistan. I'm just looking at this photo of our, um, of, uh, of the boss, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Lister. And he was shaking hand with, uh, President George Bush. Um, and I went into the, to the, uh, to the office, uh, to the guys in there and said, what's going on there? Uh, what, what did he do over there? And why, why have we heard anything about that? And it turned out, as you said, that the Jägerkorps and the Frogmankorps, by the way,

• 58:03Speaker 05

  was awarded this presidential unitization. I didn't know what it was, so I had to Google. And it's, well, it's quite, it's quite an achievement. So I was proud to get that, to know that. I think when we got it, it wasn't awarded to any units. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think from since the Vietnam War, I think it hadn't been awarded to that many units. So I, my boss, he then addressed the unit and then he addressed the American Embassy and then two weeks later, the associate from the American Embassy came and we then got this little,

• 58:46Speaker 05

  what do you call it?

• 58:47Jack Murphy?

  A ribbon.

• 58:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, ribbon, yeah. But it's just,

• 58:53Speaker 05

  I mean, it's just typical, being a small army and, you know, not, why not celebrate? Because it's the first time we get this, this award, why not celebrate? I never get it, but it's just so typical Danish.

• 59:10Jack Murphy?

  So tell us a little bit about your exit from the unit. Like, when did that day come that you decided you were ready to get out of the military?

• 59:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was forty-one years old and I knew that that would put me in some section and I was just, you know, pushing paper and I didn't want to do that. I wanted to be in the army in order to be, you know, being in a team, not doing preparation of orders or what do you call it and all this. I didn't, I didn't want to do that. So I left the Jägerkorps as forty-one years old, after eleven years of service.

• 59:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that was. I didn't mind actually, but I, you know, I just drove out of the main gate. I left two cases of beers to the squadron. And we just had a beer and then I drove out with my dog through the main gate. And I don't think you do the same way in the American Army. I think you have an exit which is more celebrated, let me put it that way. I don't think you just leave your unit.

• 1:00:26Jack Murphy?

  Some do and some don't.

• 1:00:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Jack Murphy?

  It really, it really depends. I mean, there are unfortunately stories, you know, a soldier even who loses his leg and kind of they slide his discharge papers across the table like, see ya. But there were other times, you know, I was very fortunate. You know, the guys gave me a plaque and said, thank you and all this stuff. And it was a very nice exit, yes.

• 1:00:48Speaker 05

  Okay, well, it's not because I'm feeling sorry for myself, not at all. I just, I mean, why not, why not, you know?

• 1:00:55Speaker 03

  Celebrate.

• 1:00:56Speaker 05

  It's pretty cool.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 1:00:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, but they don't get it.

• 1:01:03Jack Murphy?

  Um, is that sort of what led to you writing your book, Jagger? Because the people of Denmark just don't really know what you guys do?

• 1:01:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, sort of, sort of, a part of it was. Another part was that I, I really didn't know what to do. I was forty one years old and I didn't have a clue what to do with my life. So why not maybe write a book? And I made, I made a pitch and I believed it could be a nice way to sort of work with these emotional dimension of the job. That could be, I think that could be helpful. And that was, that was another part of the reason. So it was these two main reasons, yeah. And then I pitched for some publishing companies. I got four or five no's and then I got a yes.

• 1:01:59Speaker 05

  And then I started writing the book in two thousand and eight.

• 1:02:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Jack Murphy?

  And tell us about the controversy when the book came out.

• 1:02:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, of course, I've cleared the book. I have some lawyers, two lawyers, to read the book before I went to, before we published. I wrote to the Jägerkorb, listen, I'm ready with my book now, do you want to read it? And it didn't manage to reply on that email. I got some of my teammates to read the book. So I was completely confident and sure that this book didn't breach my confidentiality, uh, what do you call it, agreement? What's the word?

• 1:02:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, like a non-disclosure agreement.

• 1:02:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, but, but, um, and then I just pushed the bottom and it was, was, was printed. And by coincidence, it was discovered by a journalist who interviewed the, um, the Defense Minister. And he called the Jägerkorb, the, the, the, um, military commander, said, what, what is book coming from this Jäger? Do you know about that? Uh, and, uh, and they didn't. So, um, it was, uh, then it became a huge scandal because the military, they believe that I've breached my confidentiality agreement.

• 1:03:26Speaker 05

  Um, and they wanted to put me away for 11 years in, or 12 years actually, in, in prison. Um, and it was a huge scandal in Denmark. Um, so, so, um, I just went under the radar for the, for the next 12 months. During the, this, this period, I was suspended from work. I was interrogated by, by the, the lawyers from, from, uh, from the, from the army. And, um, at the end, they came to the conclusion that they wouldn't do anything further with this book. And, um, and they, they, uh, I was put back into service again.

• 1:04:05Speaker 05

  Uh, and, and doing, uh, my, my, the rest part of my, of my service, uh, in, in the military, outside the Jägerkorb, in, in another unit. Some national guard unit I was, I was doing there. So huge scandal, but, but no, uh, completely stupid, uh.

• 1:04:24Speaker 07

  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. 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. 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.

• 1:05:09Speaker 07

  Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:05:20Speaker 05

  ... embracing the book and making some PR, but that they choose to make this big scandal.

• 1:05:27Jack Murphy?

  I was gonna ask, I mean, did all the controversy actually help sell the book?

• 1:05:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Denmark, I mean, if you sell, if you sell 10,000 books in Denmark, it's a bestseller.

• 1:05:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:41Speaker 05

  I think seven days after my release, I had sold 30,000 books.

• 1:05:46Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 1:05:46Speaker 05

  And now it has sold totally, including the foreign market in Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Bulgaria. It has sold, I think, 450,000 copies now.

• 1:05:58Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that's huge. That's amazing.

• 1:06:00Speaker 05

  Huge, yeah.

• 1:06:01Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:02Speaker 05

  Lot of, lot of books in Sweden and Norway, but of course, obviously, most in Denmark, but it's a lot. It's a... So I didn't complain, but it wasn't my intention to make, to make this controversy. It was not my intention, my intention at all. I just wanted to make, to write a good story about, about, you know, about being a soldier. But it didn't turn out that way, and I made some good money on that book, yeah.

• 1:06:29Jack Murphy?

  I'm biased, of course, as I said earlier on. I mean, I think it's a great book. It's called Jagger: At War With the Elite. You guys can find it now, obviously in Danish, also in English. I hope you guys will check it out. And after Jagger came out, you wrote some novels too, right?

• 1:06:49Speaker 05

  Yes, I've been writing five novels and um and two books. What do you call it? Uh, this motivational type of books.

• 1:06:59Jack Murphy?

  Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like leadership, inspiration, that sort of thing.

• 1:07:03Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah, I I yeah, but five novels um about my my main character, Michael Plesner. And of course, he's of ex ex Jäger. Uh, and they take place different places in Somalia. I went down three times to Somalia to make research in two thousand and twelve to to interview this tribe, uh, which is uh in in in um in my second novel, which is called Black Dawn. Uh, they take place in Greenland. The third uh in in Assyrian is called Dead Man's Bay. It takes place in in Greenland, in the main, in the capital Nuk.

• 1:07:43Speaker 05

  Um, and then uh on the Kula Peninsula, uh, Russian uh former submarine based and just on the border on Finland. And then uh about human trafficking as well. So that's the subjects.

• 1:07:57Jack Murphy?

  Are are those books available in English?

• 1:08:00Speaker 05

  No, I no, I would like to. Yeah, I would like to. Um, but it's difficult as a Dane. I mean, it's very difficult as a Dane, because you have all your your your your one yourself. You're right. I know, Jack. So so it's very difficult for for a tiny uh nation for me to to penetrate the the foreign market is very difficult. But obviously, I would like to.

• 1:08:22Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I I'd love to see it, too. I'd love to read them. Um, and then what are some of you also got involved in a bunch of TV projects, right?

• 1:08:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a British format. It's called uh Corpse, um, The Right Stuff. And it's just some it's it's it's it's basically reality TV, but it's quite fun. And we have these fifteen students and in a period of eight days. Uh, we we we make this condensed uh version of of the selection course. And then, you know, one, two, three, maybe three finish. Um, and it's broadcast on on on Danish television. It's it's good. It's good fun, and it makes makes me a little, you know, uh, exposed. So so I can do some more lectures, make some more money. So that's okay.

• 1:09:12Jack Murphy?

  How how many seasons of the show have you done?

• 1:09:15Speaker 05

  Eight.

• 1:09:15Jack Murphy?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 1:09:16Speaker 06

  That's fantastic.

• 1:09:17Speaker 05

  And I participated in six. I declined the last season because I want to, uh, yeah, we couldn't agree on the contract.

• 1:09:26Jack Murphy?

  And you said there's something else that you're working on with Columbia?

• 1:09:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just mentioned it because it might be interesting, but I mean, it's, it's, it's a Danish series or I, I don't know whether it's interesting for you at all, but I just went to Columbia. I went to Columbia in two twenty twenty-two for, for, for, for one month. And the mission was to, to, um, to show the cartels dominance in Colombia in producing cocaine. They have never been produced so much cocaine globally as there is now. And they've never been consumed so much cocaine as there is now.

• 1:10:08Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 1:10:08Speaker 05

  So I was embedded with, with the Colombian special forces called Columbia, what they called Commander Jungle.

• 1:10:16Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I'll be in Saros.

• 1:10:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, uh, pleasure to be with these, these guys. And, and I went into the jungle with them in their Blackhawks. And we identified cocaine labs and, and blew them up. And I was just with, with, with my camera crew, a cameraman and, and an instructor. And I was in the labs, um, in, in the jungle for this, for this period, period of time. And also lived with a cocaine farmer and his son for four days. And I saw how they, they took the leaves from the, the coca, the coca trees and how they blended them and how they made the coca pasta. And they smuggled the coca pasta out through the jungle to other transit points

• 1:11:00Speaker 05

  where the cartels traded this cocaine pasta to other laboratories, who made the final cocaine as we know it, the white powder. And we just, uh, and what that was, the, the, the, the laboratories we, we demolished. And also had the opportunity to interview some, some people from the, the biggest cartel in Colombia. Uh, called Clan del Golfo. Uh, a hitman from Clan del Golfo, I, I interviewed. Uh, crazy, crazy guy. Uh, his, his, his living was just, his work was get up in the morning and kill people. And he just got, you know, a hit list every day and two, three people he went out just to bang. Uh, to, to, to, to, um, to elimi- eliminate them.

• 1:11:44Speaker 05

  Uh, four weeks because we, I did, uh, four weeks before I made my interview. He had to kill a pregnant woman. He didn't like that. But that was his life. And he was fucked because he couldn't just resign. He was fucked in, in, in, in the cartel. I mean, they just let their people, they don't let them go. So he was in there for life. So it's a crazy, crazy, crazy, uh, country.

• 1:12:07Jack Murphy?

  And, and that's gonna be on Danish television?

• 1:12:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's in Danish television. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:12:15Jack Murphy?

  Uh, any, anything else going on today, Thomas, that you wanna tell people about? Anything going on either in your life or your career, or anything that you want folks to know?

• 1:12:26Speaker 05

  Well, no, not, not, nothing of interest I can, I, I, I, I don't think so.

• 1:12:30Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:12:31Speaker 05

  No, it would, it would be too boring to, to tell. My life is a little bit boring these days, so I, I, hopefully I can find that, that way out. Yeah.

• 1:12:40Jack Murphy?

  Uh, where can people find you on the, on the internet if they wanna reach out to you?

• 1:12:45Speaker 05

  Uh, [email protected].

• 1:12:48Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:12:48Speaker 05

  Uh, I have my, I have my website, ThomasRatsak, uh, dot DK, DK obviously for Denmark. And then I'm on Instagram, Thomas underscore Ratsak as well.

• 1:13:00Jack Murphy?

  And we'll have links down in the description for podcast, uh, listeners or YouTube viewers. You guys will be able to find that stuff down there. Uh, Dee, do we have any questions for Thomas? No, no questions? Okay. Um, so that's it, Thomas. We'll let you go. I know it's quite late where you are in your neck of the woods in Denmark. Um, really appreciate you though, making the effort to, uh, dial in today and do this interview. Thank you.

• 1:13:25Speaker 05

  Awesome. Pleasure to find me. Thank you very much.

• 1:13:28Jack Murphy?

  All right. We will see all you guys next time.

• 1:13:32Jack Murphy?

  Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show. If you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this, you can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com/the Team House. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of The Team House ad-free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast Eyes On with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, Mick Mulroy. 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

• 1:14:12Jack Murphy?

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

• 1:14:53Jack Murphy?

  And additionally, they got t-shirts up there, water bottles, a tote bag, coffee mugs, all that good stuff. So please go and check them out and support the show. We really appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

• 1:15:11Speaker 07

  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. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation.

• 1:15:31Speaker 03

  I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:15:37Speaker 07

  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.

• 1:16:16Speaker 07

  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.

• 1:16:31Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:16:42Speaker 07

  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.

• 1:17:20Speaker 07

  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.

• 1:17:34Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:17:45Speaker 07

  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.

• 1:18:23Speaker 07

  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.

• 1:18:38Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:18:49Speaker 07

  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.

• 1:19:20Speaker 00

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

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  Zolir 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 Zolir, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolir. Zolir 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. Zolir should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolir 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 zolir.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolir.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  This is an advertisement for Zolir, paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 1:20:20Speaker 00

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• 1:20:49Speaker 02

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