The Tim Heale Podcasts S3 E30 Mike Shrives Pt 2

This is a three part episode in which I chat with Mike Shrives who has had a brilliant career in the Royal Navy going from a Midshipman sea goer to submarines then as a pilot before serving in NATO Headquarters in Norway and ending up as the General Secretary to RNSA and President of TS Hornet.

Discover The Parallel Six series, Letters from Afghanistan and The Empty Return at https://timheale.uk.

Discover Tim Heale’s books—including The Parallel Six series, Letters from Afghanistan and The Empty Return—along with his films and broadcasts. Visit https://timheale.uk and join Tim’s Despatch to keep in touch.https://timheale.uk

Transcript

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0 (1s):
Tim Heale podcasts, ordinary people's extraordinary stories. <inaudible>

1 (15s):
Welcome to share his three Tim Heale podcasts in the last two shares. I've told you about my life. I've met many interesting people along the way who have become my friends and what they all have in common is they all have fascinating stories of their own, which they're happy to share with you. Now, if you're finished, welcome back to the Tim hill podcast. And again, this time we've got Mike, Mike's going to go on from where he left off, he had just been promoted to commander and he was going back to the staff college at Dartmouth.

1 (55s):
So Mike,

2 (58s):
Yeah, actually he was the staff college at the, at the time at Bracknell. So it was called the advance commanders staff college. It was the same package that I had done at Greenwich, which was a Naval staff course. But at the time they were bringing all the staff courses together. So we then ended up with a tri service organization and I was very fortunate to be a directing staff on what they call ACS C one. So the first of the course is where we all came together with the air force, the Navy and the army, the army, of course, where 50% of the students and then the Navy and the air force is 25% each.

2 (1m 44s):
So that was the balance 400 students all in first different divisions, four divisions. I just happened to be in a division. And then our bosses were at captain level or Colonel level. My boss was a Colonel para, you know, really, really good chap. And it was run at the time by a chap called general criminal Chapman Grenville. Chapman is known by lots of army people, but we used to know him as dip and dazzle because he had one eye that went up and one eye that went down and sat out with these nickname amongst the staff.

2 (2m 29s):
So it was really good period. And it was very interesting because in, in bringing all the courses together, clearly there was some things that were good and some things that were not quite so good. So we were, some of the staff were literally just ahead of the students. And sometimes we felt we were a little bit behind them, but we were forming the course as we did it. And so we did ACS one C one once that'd finish. Obviously we went into the next year, which was two. And then I was also part of the beginning of ACS three. And by that stage, things had started to bed down. People were getting used to delivering the course and what the content of the course would be because the academics also who were this, all the professors, they also had to change the way that they did their business in order to accommodate having all the staff courses or everybody together.

2 (3m 25s):
And during ACS three, we also moved to Shrivenham. So there was a, a staff colleagues that was built a bespoke staff college for that very purpose, which was built on the site at Shrivenham. So we were important cabins of actually, although there was a beautiful building as well at Brighton hall, which was there, the RAs staff calls. And yeah, so that was, that was a good time. And, and then after that, I then went into the director of Naval recruiting and an assistant director's job, which was looking after the, to bring in 5,000 people a year of all ranks and rates in order to feed the training machine for the Royal Navy.

2 (4m 18s):
And it was a fascinating job because that involved also going to visit many of the AFCOLS, which we were responsible for the armed forces, careers officers. And as you can imagine, they were everywhere. We had offices in Northern Ireland, obviously in London, Scotland down to the west country. And so it was a very good job, but I was doing the policy and plans effectively for recruiting. So it was a full on job. It was done in Portsmouth. And again, it was something that, that, that really was, was, was a job that was full on, but also a lot of fun.

2 (5m 4s):
And the fact that you were developing these policies and clear this success was getting all these people and fitting in. And, and the difficulty of course at the time where certain branches, which needed people, but we weren't getting the throughput including raw Marines. Interesting enough. And the other problem we were all in range was fact that even once they joined the down in <inaudible>, some of them were failing within a very short period. And so the

1 (5m 39s):
Dropout rate down there is quite high. I know they have a core style every two weeks about how to do it. And they end up with, if they're lucky, they end up with about a dozen

2 (5m 49s):
Indeed. And that was the same. But one of the, one of the factors of that job was it was also good news for the future. It was, we'd had to do a lot of study into the basically social background of the individuals that we were bringing in. And one of the interesting things that happened with the Royal Marines was we found that a number of the, of the young people had never worn a pair of proper shoes. They'd always wore trainers, you know, to school and all, very soft shoes. So suddenly you bring them into the military, you issue them a set of boots, you issue them a set of combats and you stick them in the cold and the wet and they just can't hack it.

2 (6m 39s):
So, yeah,

1 (6m 42s):
I know exactly what you're talking about. You've got the, they call it the PlayStation generation and I've seen it a few times in my last job. I was a welfare officer for the guards and we have one particular guy it controlled and signed in and everything like that. And he came down to us and he was suffering effectively from PTSD. And on further looking into this, it transpired that on the final exercise, it, that, that scene about blood, stuff like that. But this guy spent all his life playing on a PlayStation or war game. And when he got so final reality, it's sort of sending well, do do Lally.

2 (7m 27s):
Oh, too much of them. Indeed. And the other thing we found is that there were a number of, of the youth who had never been fully wet because they'd been taken to school by car or bus. They, if they went shopping, they went into a shopping center with a roof. And if they didn't have any external interest of camping or walking or sailing or anything whereby they're out in the environment, we discovered by again, analyzing why people were not making it through the initial stages of training that they had never been soaked to the skin and cold.

2 (8m 11s):
So you put them into that environment to begin with, and it really is alien to them. So what we did is because we had a first week, it literally a commoditization of people wearing boots for the first time of getting wet for the first time and allowing a period of time before they started the proper trading so that they still there so that people would stand a fighting chance of realizing what they signed up for. So that was, so it was very interesting on the policy side to look at all those elements. And the other thing we had was to bring in a number of ethnic minorities, because the said that proportionally, there were 2%, I think we were told to bring in, but we were looking at the fact that there should be 2% of the military trainees coming in, should be from nothing minority backgrounds.

2 (9m 16s):
So we went to all the policy to, to gain, to get, you know, to, to encourage them to join the Navy. That was, that was also very interesting because what we did is we got a number of people who were from an ethnic minority background into DNR in order to do the recruiting. But the fascinating thing about that was if we sent say somebody who would come from an Indian descent, they would go out to do the recruiting, but other ethnic minorities from a different background, wouldn't listen to them. So if they came from Pakistan or if they came from Africa, you know, all their families had in the past, then you would suddenly find this barrier.

2 (9m 60s):
So I find that quite often, I will be the one as just a white, Caucasian male, because going out to do the recruiting and doing the lectures because they would listen to me funnily enough, but they wouldn't listen to somebody who was from a different ethnic minority background. So there were all those little elements that came into thinking, how are we going to track people? How are we going to get people to come and join us? And so, as I say, it, it was a full on, but very interesting job and also an interesting job to look at how all the civilians recruited.

2 (10m 40s):
And one of the things that we did from the aviation point of view, as I went up to British airways and to their HR department, and they just introduced a scheme whereby they realized they had to train their own pilots, whereas before a lot of the pilots were just ex-military and they'd just pull them out of the military, fully trained, effectively, train them on the different type in the way they go there. But they realized that that stream was running out. So they'd have to train individuals right from the very beginning. And they had 12 places on their first course and they got 5,000 applications. And I said, well, how do you sort it out?

2 (11m 22s):
And the lady who was in charge of it, and there was, there were only a small group. She said, well, first of all, we said that in order to put the application in, it had to be in black ink. So any other color ink, anybody who typed it, no matter what they all were just thrown in the bin because they hadn't obeyed the first rule. And then what they did is they took the fact that out of all the applicants, there would be a large percentage who would pass muster to be, to come into training. And so effectively they picked out a hundred envelopes and all the ones put the other ones too aside, they went to all those hundred applications.

2 (12m 9s):
And then from that chose the 12 who eventually turned up on the first course. So that in itself was quite a, an interesting process that they, you know, they explained to me of how they, how they, in that situation went about selecting 12 people from an absolute, the sift, you know, very difficult. So it was, it was a, yeah, so that was, that was a, that was a good use.

1 (12m 37s):
So I think the guys that were weren't in the hundred, and it just got pushed to one side favor, found out it'd be quite disgruntled, I guess.

2 (12m 49s):
Well, yeah, but, you know, luckily it was a long time ago, but however, you know, again, it was, they, they had British, they always had a relatively small human resources department. And so it was the only way they could go about business. You know, they, they couldn't sit there and read every single application of every single one of the 5,000. They just didn't have the time or the capacity, you know, to do that. So, well,

1 (13m 15s):
I suppose it's about time. They started sorting out their own house other than poaching off the military

2 (13m 21s):
Indeed, indeed. With that was that job. And then at the time as well, I got into skiing. I was 40 years old. I'd never, I'd never skied. And a young enough tenant banged on my door and said, boss, can I go to the Navy ski championships? And I said to him, well, of course I said, but I'm also, I said, I've almost apologized to you. Cause I didn't realize that you were a Navy scare. And he said, well, I'm not. And I said, well, how can you go to the Navy ski championships? He said, anybody can go, they start from basic beginners, right.

2 (14m 2s):
The way through to those or in the Navy team. And he said, and I'm somewhere in the middle, you know, I enjoy skiing. And so I'm able to go, yeah, that's right. It was absolutely and layman where we were Lez arcs at the time, but then went to Lehman where, and, and so, and then he said, well, actually we bought a spare bed in the chalet that we've hi, would you like to come along? And, and so I did. And it was absolutely wonderful. You know, I went out there and there was a chap called Tommy Wallace who was a retired chief petty officer, still in the RNR.

2 (14m 43s):
And he was one of our instructors. And I said to him, right, I'm an old dog learning new tricks. So whatever you tell me to do, I will do it. And for three years, each year, and I got better and better at skiing, literally because this chap, Tommy Wallace was guiding me into how to ski and getting more and more difficult than biggest slopes all the rest of it. It was absolutely wonderful, a real Phillip of that job. So, so that was, that was good news. And then, and the reason I say that is that we were at the top of a mountain looking at Montblanc.

2 (15m 27s):
So I think we'd gone to Le plan or somewhere like that was you were able to do from the 12 valley. There was other places to ski. And I was with a chap called Richard Cunningham, who was a great mate of mine and a fellow commander and a fellow aviator as well, who had also done the same job that I did a while back, which was the aviation standards officer for flaggers, the Naval aviation. He relieved me in that case. And we were talking about what jobs to do next. And he S he S and I said, well, what are you doing at the moment? He was at maritime warfare center. And I said, well, what's the job involve? And he described what the job was Vaughn.

2 (16m 8s):
And I said, well, I fancy doing that job. He wanted to go down to cold rose to be the commander, the commander at called rose. We knew as well. And he wanted to go to sea as a, as a wings of a carrier. And there were other people in this loop. So effectively, we were there at the top of this mountain, discussing it. And by that stage, we had mobile telephones. You know, they, they, they, that would be an issue with them. And, and Richard had one. So we rang up our appointor and said, we've got a little plan for you. How about if Mike leaves DNR and comes to me in the maritime warfare center, I go down to cold rose.

2 (16m 53s):
Richard Brooks bank had cold, rose goes off to be wings as C the chaplaincy goes off to do this, this a staff job was sure. And we said, well, what do you think? And bless him. He turned around and said, and Chuck called Chris Palmer. And he said, ah, yeah, that'll work. Well. I went to see him later on, he had a photograph on his desk because he said it was the highest level appointment that he had ever made as in the highest level. Cause we were up at about a three and a half thousand feet rather than you do it. Right. So, so that was, that was good news.

2 (17m 33s):
And then that was, that was a really good job because we were right at the cutting edge of technology in, in every aspect,

1 (17m 44s):
But an army team to take on the, Navy's tell him, I'll say, oh, I was on the first ever army Telemark team. And we, we, we came out and we had sorta two weeks down at men were taken on the Navy and Marines. So we actually won the competition, but they didn't let us have the prize when they fiddled it slightly cause their money on me. So, but it was a great, great place to be. And it was a great time to be involved at that level. And then the following year, it went to, to around us in Austria and as a Telemark competition in its own.

1 (18m 30s):
Right. Yeah. That's good news. And that involved the, the, the Royal Navy and the army and civilian. So it was a British Telemark championships that developed from there, which was a great time.

2 (18m 43s):
Yeah, no, it was good. Wasn't it? And, and it, I think at one stage it became the largest participant sport of all the sports that the services did. Cause we used to get about 1800 people out at layman where, yeah,

1 (19m 1s):
Amazing. I used to get that many posts at one time.

2 (19m 4s):
It was staggering. And, and also the, the way that it worked and the fact you, you had all these beginners who just came out and they would teach them how to do it. But also as I say, the, the sort of high level racing teams, but within that, we also could race, even though we were not very good scares, then we all formed into teams and we could do things like the slalom and various other things. I mean, obviously they didn't let you do the really long ones, which how you'd be ultra fit, but it was that wonderful opportunity that was given to, you know, all the sailors of all ranks.

2 (19m 44s):
And so it became a, you know, a marvelous thing to partake in. So yeah, it was an annual event. Yeah. Very much so. And all the things behind it, including driving down there, getting the, vittles finding the accommodation, having the praise ski, which was

1 (20m 4s):
Well yeah. That they occasionally got out of hand. It certainly did. And the Marines were always, always dressed in female clothing. Yeah. Or

2 (20m 14s):
I remember one of the Rome Marines sitting in an outside jacuzzi still in his full skiing gear. So yeah. So again, anyway, so that was, that was that, that was a good, good element of age. So you finished

1 (20m 32s):
Up, the men were speaking to your pointer and you had a four way move or

2 (20m 39s):
Yeah. Four or five wide move. And ended up at the, as I say, that's how I ended up at the maritime warfare center, which was again, as I said, a wonderful job because we were right at the head of technology and I had 16 people working for me and I left 10 commander that was responsible for every single air frame that was currently in service with the Royal Navy. So I had to buy legs, man. I had to seek him out, Forman, Harrier, et cetera. And, and it worked very well because if there was a problem with one of those aircraft, we did a lot of obviously tactical work.

2 (21m 21s):
We were working out the tactics of these aircraft, but also the equipment that then went with it, then you, you could pin somebody down to say, right, there's a problem with this aircraft. You've got to sort it out. And they worked with analysts. So there was an analyst for every single tactical developer. And so it was an incredible place to work because of the fact that we were dealing with the cutting edge of the next generation equipment that was coming online and the tactics that will then go with it in order to utilize those aircraft to the best of their ability.

2 (22m 6s):
And unsurprisingly, the majority of the left-handed commanders who were working in that environment then were promoted, promoted, not necessarily from that job a little bit later on. And some of them are now, you know, captains, Commodores and even higher. So, so a very, very good job, nice place to work. And also I had a lovely boss called D twitching and Dick twitching was our Commodore and he loved sailing. And quite often he would ring me up and say, what are you doing to Mike? And I said, well, I'm preparing a paper on whatever it might be, you know, for you to, to have a lookout before we send it off, down to fleet.

2 (22m 50s):
And he was saying, no, you're not. I want to see on the jetty and a half an hour and off we go. So that worked out very well. And, and so from that job, as I was coming into my final job in the Navy, and that was decided to go to the joint warfare center in Stavanger for NATO job, to be fair. The reason that I was pushed hard to go abroad was that the time the boarding school allowance rules were changing and I had effectively had two jobs back to back pulse was based.

2 (23m 30s):
And so therefore by the rules, I would have had to take all my children out of their boarding schools because I was no longer entitled to draw a boarding school allowance. And as we've seen over the last couple of years, there's been a number of high profile cases of individuals who have continued to draw that boarding school allowance. And they've had their collar felt and all the ramifications that went with that. But also I was attracted to the job. And, and so Sarah and I and family, or went off to a Stavanger in Norway and it was part of the joint force training as they call it and became part of that environment.

2 (24m 17s):
And we did a lot of the training for the headquarters staff go to Afghanistan and, and then various other elements of, of work working out how NATO would go to war and lots of big war games, you know, clearly that we're demonstrating that and how the whole process worked.

1 (24m 46s):
What year was this?

2 (24m 47s):
So this is not too then five. Yeah, 2005, because to 2007. And I can remember people like general Richards coming through David Richards, because one of the elements that we did with every single headquarter staff that came through, we would take out the boss and some of his senior advisors to see what would happen if that happened. In reality, we also use the sent people into theater in order to pick up some of the scenarios for the exercises.

2 (25m 27s):
And interestingly enough, during that time, in fact, it was David Richards. I remember at the end of the exercise turned round and he said, we've had a great exercise. We've learned a lot, has been good to work as a headquarters team. He said, but some of your scenarios, aren't very realistic. And it's, for instance, he said, you know, bird flu, a Nimrod trashing, an earthquake. He said, really, you know, are we going to face this? Once he'd been in theater for a three or four months, he rang up my boss and who's chap called Peter Walker. Who's senior Refn officer.

2 (26m 7s):
And he said, regardless of those scenarios, he said, actually, I think you've prepaid us jolly. Well, because all of the things that were in there that he had mentioned had happened in theater, which

1 (26m 21s):
Was quite and Nepal, didn't they? Yeah. Then they went in and to help out with

2 (26m 28s):
Absolutely. So, so that's so interesting times. And then living in Norway was, was good news. It's a lovely country and obviously the chance to explore it. And, and then from, I started focusing in clearly on what I would do after leaving the Navy, because those days what happened is that if you a leftenant commander, you left at the age of 50, if you're a commander you left at the age of 53 as I was. And if you're a captain, you left at the age of 55. And so my time was running out, I knew I had to work or I wanted to work as well.

2 (27m 10s):
And having three children still in those different stages of education to a university and one still at boarding school. And so started looking around for jobs and just

1 (27m 24s):
Step back to explore the job is to Vanguard and a bit more detail, of course. So, so you're working at a day-to headquarters that was burdensome.

2 (27m 34s):
No, no, no, no, no. We, we, we were in Stavanger and used to be an Oslo and it was the effectively, the Northern headquarters for, for, for, for NATO and his time. But it will be moved from Oslo to Stavanger when there was this big change into allied command transformation and allied command operations. So ACO act, we were part of act so effectively. Our, our bosses were in Norfolk, Virginia, all the big bosses, but we were the training element for NATO.

2 (28m 17s):
That was, that was previously the NATO headquarters in Oslo. So we all moved over to us to Wagga.

1 (28m 25s):
Okay. And then there was south as well, which was at Naples, is it? That was a mirror

2 (28m 32s):
We had, well, there was Naples, which was south. We also had another part of act, which was in near Lisbon. So their headquarters in Portugal. And then of course there were the, as you said, a number of bases in Germany, more on the air side, but sometimes they used to, we used to go down for the exercises. And so yes, we did quite a lot of traveling and, and, and unknowns that we used to go to Brussels quite a lot as well to the main NATO headquarters shape. So it was all part of that network. And the other fascinating thing about that job was that there were 24 nations that were represented on the staff.

2 (29m 16s):
So we had about 250 staff and my job was the chief of staff. So we had, the boss has said, Jack called Peter Walker, who was a air vice Marshall. And then we had a Commodore Commodore who is a United, you know, United States officer. And then me. And so I was the chief of staff. Boss was the director. Obviously the Commodore was the assistant director and we were the little triumphant at the top. So, and then we had 250 people to look after from, from 24 nations, three of which were partner partnership for peace.

1 (30m 0s):
So they were Romanians.

2 (30m 3s):
Yeah. We have the Estonians Swedish. And I say Romanians. So as, as the PFP nations, but all the other nations were the main NATO, you know, the main NATO nations. So we had quite a number of Polish. We had Danish, we had Dutch Americans of course, a number of British and, and

1 (30m 27s):
It must've been a nightmare to group people. It was

2 (30m 30s):
Well, what the interesting thing caused is that I had direct authority over all the staff, but if it became to a punishment situation, which luckily was very, very rare because the majority of the staff officers were at either <inaudible> level, then the British officers was not an issue, no matter whether they were army air force or, or, or Navy that because it was just a standard UK discipline and procedures, all the other nations, what you had to do is go back to their own nation.

2 (31m 15s):
If you were going to have a disciplinary procedure. Now, the great thing about it, and that's the same with all of the NATO staff. If you ever got to that stage, that would be a slight on their country. And so the staff officers who would look after that in the, in their own nation states would think very dimly of anybody who got themselves in that situation, because actually they are there representing their nation on the NATO staff. And there was only one officer that I had a bit of a problem was, and it surprised me cause he was a Dutchman. And this, this individual, I felt sorry for him.

2 (31m 58s):
When I found out the fact that basically he wasn't pulling his weight. So I called him in and said, Hey son, John, you know, I, from here, I know full well that you're not doing the job that we want you to do. And he explained that his nation had changed the retirement age from 55 to 58. And he was in a situation. He married very young. He had a beautiful house in Holland. He had his boat, he had all his money sorted out. All his children were off his hands. And he was looking forward to retiring at 55 and just living the good life. And then suddenly his government said 58 and not the, you can stay where you are for another three years.

2 (32m 42s):
And so basically it became a bit romped, you know, but he did say the list anyway, it all worked out because I said to him, as they were look, you know, if it continues like this, I'm going to have to go back to your nation. And I, although I have sympathy for you, you are being paid to do a job, and you've got to do that job because you're an intrical part of this team. And, and luckily he pulled his socks up, not to his full capacity, but enough. So actually he was doing the job that we needed him to do, but quite interesting from that side. And so therefore part of the job was understanding other nations, military, and how they employed their people and their terms and conditions of service.

2 (33m 35s):
The other ones that we had fun enough where the fact of, and some of the partnership for peace and other nations are the Polish who really weren't paid very much. And so they were living in Norway and we knew full well that their terms and conditions were not good. So what we used to do when we were having the exercises well, while we were away, quite often, we would subtly supplement them, you know, in order to allow them, you know, to, to, to, to live. So that was an interesting side of it as well. So, but, but yeah, w it was good. The other thing that came about, which I find interesting is that we used to have shareholders every morning where we just meet in the big amphitheater and a told through the day and the, and, and what we were doing and obviously for the program, but when a nation had their national day, then they would talk about their own nation and why the national day was important to them and how it had come about, and the history of that nation, which as you can imagine, you know, with 24 nations being representative was quite a regular occurrence.

2 (34m 47s):
And they used to dress up in their national dress. They used to bring their wives in as well. And their families, sometimes they used to bring in the food as well to say, well, these are all national dishes. That was absolutely tremendous. But the interesting thing is we, as Brits, don't have a national day, well, they've got some Georges St. George's is the,

1 (35m 14s):
Well, let you go though, is that if you bring along four goes,

2 (35m 18s):
But there is no. But when you think about it, there is no actual one day. Whereas the majority of the European nations have a specific day. That is their national day when whatever happened in their history, you know, they suddenly became a state in their own. Right?

1 (35m 34s):
Yeah. So, so north Norway on 17th of, I mean, Norway on the 17th of May is a mad day. It's fantastic. They all get dressed up and they're all drunk by about 11 o'clock in the morning

2 (35m 48s):
Clearly, but you're absolutely right. It is a wonderful day and, and they do celebrate it. But I mean, we naturally, you would use St George's day, but, but even then it wasn't really representative of the entire nation of great Britain, but, but there we go. But, but listening to all the other nation states talking about their own countries was a fascinating part of, of that, you know, that job and then better understanding of, of the officers that we had.

1 (36m 22s):
Yeah. So we were talking earlier that you went down to aroma gal and did the, the NATO Sox course down there, which on roundabout, I saw period, there was guys from 15 UK Sox group do, were actually delivering on that course. Did you have guys from uni down there too?

2 (36m 44s):
Yeah, we did. I mean, because as you know, with that, cause Oberammergau, then it is factory a series of lectures with a very small war game at the end of it. And I think we were there for either a month or two months. It was quite a long course, but we lived in Abra and hotels. And then we went into obviously the staff college and the NATO staff college each day, and PSYOPs was very much part of the training and also the legal aspects as well of a NATO force and rules of engagement, very important because obviously every nation have their own rules of engagement.

2 (37m 31s):
So all those elements were very much a part of the, of the NATO, you know, the NATO way of going about warfare and, and, you know, so very privileged. So, and there were quite a number of Brits that came. So as say, including giving us the lectures

1 (37m 55s):
And was it just Afghanistan you were concentrating on because there were other nighttime missions. And I said, I think they're still going on in Kosovo. And I think still some trucks in Bosnia. So we involved with those operations at all, or is it just concentrating on

2 (38m 13s):
Canon was the major one while I was there. And that period you're right. That we did have interests in, in, in fact, in all the NATO missions, including Cyprus, which was the original, the original, you know, green line and Tosca. Yeah, indeed. So, so every NATO mission that was still extant were very much part of the training, but clearly the hard fighting side of it, I've kind of stamped became the major, the training vehicle because of the fact that we were sending headquarters staff as a whole staff into theater in a highly complex environment.

2 (38m 60s):
Whereas a number of the other missions Cypress for instance, was so established. I mean, it started in 1966. And even though it's still going, then you had to understand why it was there and why the Turks and the Greeks ended up fighting and why there was the green line and the differential between north Cyprus and Southern Cyprus, but effectively it was a very benign environment. And, and, and from that side training staff to go down, there was, you didn't really have to explain too much because they could learn once, once they were there. Yeah.

1 (39m 37s):
Once I get down there, don't hand over take over that. I replace him. They would give him a far less pay on

2 (39m 42s):
It, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. Because we also had interest in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya. So there were other, other little theaters going on with some of our staff officers who were involved in those missions and those campaigns in order to do training, but they, they tended to be very small teams. So for instance, we did it and also the level of training would be very small. So Ethiopia, for instance, we just had, we, we, we went down to and just did a map X.

2 (40m 25s):
And so that would be three staff officers going down to help their own military, even though it's under the NATO umbrella and then doing something relatively simple to show presence and to show that the fact that, you know, NATO is an organization we're still interested in and, and concerned with what was happening in the internal politics of their country.

1 (40m 50s):
Yeah. So where were they based in Afghanistan? Because I didn't see nights throughout the rest of the country, particularly I was down in element. It was all <inaudible>. It was all linkable. Was it? Yeah. The main

2 (41m 5s):
Headquarters. Yeah. People used to fly into couple and then obviously take the risk of getting in the transport in order to go to the main camping Qubole and then the headquarters staff literally would stay there, although some would go out into the field, but really the, the NATO element of it was very much based in Qubole and, and, and it was the nations who were then providing as you know, and like Hellman, for instance, you know, it was

1 (41m 40s):
Put all Brits. Yeah. Well, we had more of a bunch down there. There was tidy standing there. What could we have done? There were some senior Latvians doing camp, garden bastion, and there was a few other nations down there. Yeah. There was some noises down there as well at a time and a few other nations, but predominantly breaths and helmet. And it was, it was a pre touchy place in 2005 shakes when I was there. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's brilliant. Okay. Whoa, wait, hold it there. And then we'll come back for part three of four. You did one should move it on from there.

1 (42m 22s):
Lovely. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for listening to my podcasts. If you have enjoyed them and your podcast app allows, please leave a comment and share it with your friends. The reason I got into this podcast malarkey is so I could leave a legacy for my children and my grandchildren in the years to come. So they will know what I did with my life. I wish my grandparents had done the same for me. Unfortunately, they didn't in my latest series on giving people the opportunity to leave their own legacy for their children and families for the future.

1 (43m 8s):
If you have any criticism, positive or negative, and you wish to get in touch with me direct, you can email me timheale@hotmail.com. That's timheale@hotmail.com. I thank you for your time and thank you for listening.