From Kosovo to Macedonia: Building a Better PsyOps Force

Step inside real British Army life as we rebuild Psychological Operations from the ground up. In this chapter we show how Kosovo taught us to embed early, select teams six months out, and turn training into an intelligence-led deployment model. Expect true stories of Royal Anglian/Intelligence Corps teamwork, PsyOps planning, Target Audience Analysis, and the nuts-and-bolts reality of MATTs, BFT/CFT, weapons, NBC, and first aid done properly. We take you from Film City (NATO HQ) to a windswept Guernsey camp (PT, rugby on the beach, and radio/leaflet drills), up to Faslane’s Joint Maritime Course (subs, Marines, and rain), then pivot fast as Macedonia ignites—Whitehall briefs, a Danish 3-star, and a PSE loadout rolling through Marchwood bound for Thessaloniki.

If you love authentic military and life stories, this is for you: camaraderie, black humour, smarter training, and how influence—radio, print, face-to-face—saves soldiers and civilians. Fans of rugby, skiing, travel, and postings across Germany in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s & ’00s will feel right at home.

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Transcript

After our return from Chilwell, it was straight back to business — and this time the task was clear: build a better deployment model. No more muddling through, no more being the oddballs bolted on at the last minute. Around a battered conference table, with mugs of tea multiplying like rabbits, we laid it out. Kosovo had shown the flaw — we’d been too late to the party, sat at the “Who invited them?” table of the Brigade. All the hard work in the world couldn’t fix that.

So the plan was simple: pick the teams six months ahead and embed them early.

Once chosen, each team would roll into a proper pre-deployment package. Nothing revolutionary, just the basics done right — fitness, core soldiering, weapons, first aid, even practising how to shout orders in a storm. Most important of all, they attended every HQ exercise on the calendar. Chilwell still handled the usual admin, but our additions turned “deployable” into “indispensable.”

The proof came quickly. The first team trialling the new system deployed back to Kosovo that spring. From day one they slotted into HQ, part of the fabric, not the afterthought. No odd socks, no side-eyes. It worked so well that before they’d even boarded the plane, the next team was already spinning up in the pipeline. Job done — and done properly.

With the uplift in personnel, our little Intelligence Cell suddenly looked less like a two-woman jazz duet and more like a proper orchestra. Marlin and I, who’d been juggling every instrument ourselves with a mix of military precision and Swedish-Scandi flair, finally had backup.

One solid Sergeant and three eager Junior NCOs joined us — dyed-in-the-wool Int Corps types who genuinely enjoyed sifting through classified documents and colour-coding PowerPoint slides. Bless them. With the grunt work off our plates, we could focus on running the cell like a well-oiled machine: tasking projects, sourcing intel, and occasionally making MI6 look like enthusiastic amateurs.

We built in regular training sessions, kept in touch with our deployed teams like long-distance relationship experts, and always had an eye on global trouble spots. Every Friday morning, just before the CO’s PT session — because nothing says “end of the week” like burpees after a security brief — we delivered our intel update in the briefing room. Think News at Ten, only with more acronyms, fewer adverts, and far worse humour.

The CO, to his credit, took one look at our new mini-empire and didn’t even try to hide his grin. “You two realise you’ve basically created an Intelligence factory, don’t you?” he said one Friday, eyeing our neat rows of charts and the Sergeant happily colour-coding enemy order of battle slides.

We just shrugged in unison — a very Swedish thing to do — and told him we were simply making the place run properly. He laughed, called us “scarily efficient,” and admitted he’d never had a briefing arrive on his desk so polished it could’ve been gift-wrapped. The truth was, Marlin and I weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel. We just made sure it actually turned — and preferably in the right direction.

It worked better than we’d dared hope. With the new blood, the training cell ran like clockwork — and louder clockwork at that, given the Brecon sergeants could bellow a set of orders from one end of the camp to the other without so much as a megaphone. The corporals took to planning like ducks to water, and soon every whiteboard in the building was covered in flow charts, scribbles, and the occasional cartoon of a stickman in a bergan falling off a cliff.

The AGC clerk, meanwhile, remained our quiet saviour — the sort who never raised their voice but could summon an entire JPA file faster than you could say “lost pay chit.” Thanks to them, the Group wasn’t just training hard we were playing hard too.

Adventure training became practically compulsory, and the options read like a holiday brochure written by lunatics: Come ski until your knees explode, dive until you forget which way is up, or climb a mountain just to fall down it. Remarkably, people queued up for more.

It was a full circus, and Stephen and Johan were the reluctant ringmasters. They didn’t just tick boxes — they made MATTs survivable, sometimes even entertaining.

“Entertaining,” of course, if your idea of fun is watching a grown man cry into his bergen straps halfway through a CFT. The BFT became theatre — who could look the most heroic while quietly falling apart. The bleep test was worse: a sadistic disco where the music only stopped when your lungs surrendered.

Weapons handling was calmer, though there was always one poor soul who forgot which way the magazine went in. I tried not to laugh, but Johan never bothered hiding his grin. The gas chamber was the great equaliser — even the hardest lads emerged as snotty, red-eyed toddlers, swearing they’d never complain about NBC kit again.

By the time first aid and map reading were done, half the Group could resuscitate a casualty in the dark… and then lose them on the way to the ambulance.

Still, it worked. The Group stayed sharp, and no one failed a test on our watch. For all their complaining, the lads knew they were in good hands — and I secretly enjoyed watching my husband and Johan run the show like the most unlikely pair of circus masters.

Designing and delivering the Military Psychological Operations Course fell to us. In practice, that meant Johan and Stephen thrashed out the process on whiteboards while Marlin and I made sure it actually worked in the real world.

The M Poc was a two-week baptism into influence. It began with the basics — understanding your target audience — then moved into the seven-question estimate, the Army’s favourite decision-making tool with a PsyOps twist. From there, students learned to choose the right medium: posters, leaflets, radio, or face-to-face engagement. All the tools of the trade, minus the smoke and mirrors people assumed we worked with.

Marlin and I pulled in case studies and intelligence examples to keep things grounded, while the lads stitched the theory into a coherent framework. The students — a mixed bag of UK and international officers and NCO's — arrived expecting hypnosis, magic tricks, or Jedi training.

What they got was hard graft, plenty of syndicate work, and more tea than any of them could handle. By the end, they could build a campaign plan that actually stood a chance outside the classroom. Not glamorous, but effective.

If they left with nothing else, it was this: influence isn’t trickery. It is about knowing your audience better than they know themselves.

We hosted what the brass liked to call the Higher Command Briefing — which, translated into human, meant a very posh PowerPoint party for senior officers. Our task was simple in theory, impossible in practice: convince them PsyOps wasn’t just smoke, mirrors, and funny leaflets, but an actual capability worth paying attention to.

To our amazement, it worked. Nobody nodded off. Nobody sneaked out early. One general even scribbled notes so furiously you’d think he was back at Sandhurst.

“I remember standing there, pointing at a leaflet on the screen, while three generals nodded as if I had just revealed the secret to world peace. Imagine — men who had commanded divisions, leaning forward earnestly to discuss font sizes. It was absurd. And yet… it mattered. If they believed in the small things, maybe they would also believe in the bigger picture — the people we were trying to reach.”

Off that small miracle, we spun up specialist training packages with our Print, Radio, and TV wizards — proper cross-pollination of the dark arts. The principle was simple: redundancy by versatility. Or, to put it less politely, if the graphic designer keeled over with food poisoning, the radio lad had better know his way around Photoshop before the ink dried.

Marlin and I, being constitutionally incapable of sitting still, decided it was high time to add some brains to the brawn. So we cooked up the Target Audience Analyst programme — TAA, because nothing in the Army is real until it has an acronym.

It was tailored for the Int Corps types, the ones who got starry-eyed over population behaviour graphs and could happily lose themselves in a spreadsheet for days. They loved it. At last, here was a course where colour-coded pie charts were not only encouraged but applauded.

We rolled out the Tactical PsyOps Training course — TPT for short — aimed squarely at Battle Groups on the brink of deployment. It was our polite way of saying, “Please stop using our leaflets as kindling.” We laid out what PsyOps actually was, what we needed from them, and what made our day — spoiler: it wasn’t counting stray dogs on patrol. We showed them how to hand out leaflets without looking like dodgy salesmen, and — most importantly — how to bring back real feedback instead of shrugging, “Yeah, the locals seemed… fine.”

“I still remember standing there with a straight face, explaining to a colonel how not to look like he was flogging mascara door-to-door when handing out information sheets. Surreal, yes — but the Army loves nothing more than turning the obvious into doctrine.”

To make it work, we spent half our lives in motion. Sometimes all four of us trundled along in convoy, like a PsyOps boyband with better boots. Other times it was just Stephen and me — the “sensible half,” as we liked to joke — or Johan and Marlin, the so-called “daring duo” (though really their superpower was attracting chaos in motorway service stations). Whoever was free from the admin office got the job. Now and then, we even flew forward to theatre ourselves, scooping up fresh intel to haul back like smugglers carrying contraband acronyms.

Despite all the running about and the usual military chaos, we tried to keep our weekends sacred — or as sacred as they could be when the kids came home from university and only vaguely remembered who we were. Saturdays were for proper catch-ups, Sunday roasts, and, more often than not, an engine rebuild in the garage. Nothing says “family bonding” like swearing at a carburettor while someone else fetches the spanners.

Once a month we surrendered a weekend to the Reserves. They needed the training, the bounty, and occasionally a gentle reminder of which end of the rifle goes bang. It was equal parts coaching, babysitting, and comedy.

Then there was the two-week annual camp: half training exercise, half social club, half free group therapy — which, yes, makes three halves, but that was the way it felt. Busy? Always. Fulfilled? Absolutely. Slightly exhausted? Constantly.

Through it all, though, we were still smiling.

“Our so-called ‘sacred weekends’ always seemed to smell of engine oil, roast beef, and paperwork. Sacred, yes — but never quiet. I think we liked it that way.”

In a moment of logistical genius — or collective madness — we organised a two-week summer camp for the entire Group… on Guernsey. Yes, that Guernsey: cows, hedgerows, and a scattering of Germans who, if the locals were to be believed, never quite got the message in 1945.

The road move alone was an operation worthy of its own medal, ending in a ferry crossing that turned half the Group bilious green. There were more white knuckles on the railings than during a BFT.

Once ashore, we promptly annexed the Royal Engineers’ TA Centre — a tidy little place just about large enough to contain a unit full of specialists, egos, and a small mountain of kit.

As for work, we dreamed up a suitably grand task: supporting a simulated Kosovo operation. Looked very official on paper, even if half the participants were quietly more interested in discovering which pub served the best bitter.

“Official exercise? Perhaps. But I still think more reconnaissance was carried out on the breweries than on the beaches.”

Morning PT quickly became the stuff of legend. Day one, we ran to the beach with all the gravitas of a Royal Marine landing… only to collapse in a soggy, wheezing heap the moment someone suggested “a quick dip.” The Channel was pure Baltic, but with the CO watching, pride left us no choice. We charged in like Vikings storming Lindisfarne — and bolted straight back out ten seconds later, shrieking like schoolkids, trying to pretend our teeth weren’t chattering in Morse code.

By midweek, PT had evolved into something more like organised chaos. “Tackle-the-officer” proved so popular we had to rotate the poor chap just to keep him intact. “Bury the sergeant-major in sand” became another favourite — though he got his revenge the next day by dishing out extra burpees, grinning as we gasped for air and tried to shake half of Guernsey’s beach out of our kit.

The exercise itself was suitably dramatic: a full-blown Kosovo simulation, complete with hastily sketched maps, plastic counters, and the occasional “enemy” role-played by whichever poor sod lost the coin toss. We churned out leaflets, staged radio broadcasts, and ran mock press conferences with all the gravity of a NATO summit — though one bright spark slipped in a weather forecast warning Guernsey residents about “low-flying sheep.”

I’ll admit it — the whole Guernsey summer camp was my idea. “A sunrise beach run,” I called it, with all the gravitas of a Royal Marine landing. What it really was, of course, was thirty half-awake soldiers being dragged from their pits and marched down to the sand under the pretence of fitness. Within minutes we were slogging through dunes like a scene from Lawrence of Arabia — sweating, swearing, and questioning our life choices.

At the top, I tried to rally the lads with a Churchillian speech about grit and determination… only to wobble, collapse in the sand, and mutter, “All part of the training plan.” Nobody believed me, naturally.

If Stephen’s run was comedy, Johan’s contribution was chaos. He somehow unearthed a rugby ball from the stores — nobody ever figured out how — and declared war on the beach. Within minutes half the camp was scrapping like it was Twickenham on tour, locals peering over the hedgerows in disbelief. Johan even launched himself into the surf for a try, skidded face-first, and rose up like some waterlogged god, ball raised high. “Victory is mine!” he bellowed, salt water pouring down his face.

We collapsed in laughter — wheezing harder at Johan’s theatrics than from the run itself. Even the CO, doing his best to look disapproving, was caught grinning. That was the tone of camp: discipline softened by sheer silliness.

The exercise itself gave us plenty of chances for mischief. Marlin stole the show when we were tasked with distributing “psyops leaflets” in enemy-held territory. While the rest of us crawled through hedgerows, sweating and swearing, she wandered up to the role-players with a stash of chocolate bars. Ten minutes later they were happily doing half the work for her. When challenged, she just shrugged and said, “PsyOps is about influence. I influenced them.” No one could argue with that.

My approach was a little louder. One evening I staged an impromptu karaoke night in the TA Centre. The lads smirked at first — until Johan leapt up and launched into Suspicious Minds in his best Elvis impression. That broke the dam. By the time I’d wrangled Marlin into an Abba duet, the whole room was roaring its way through Bohemian Rhapsody. The poor Flight Sergeant on duty nearly cried.

Evenings quickly became legend. Some stayed behind polishing PowerPoints and bickering about briefing slides, but most of us “deployed” to St Peter Port. The pubs soon grew used to an invasion of over-loud soldiers who claimed every round was “for training purposes.” More than one local got roped into a half-cut lesson on the PsyOps estimate process over a pint of Liberation Ale.

To our surprise — and slight relief — the exercise was a success. We proved the Reserves could be more than part-time chaos in green. The teams sharpened up, the work flowed smoother, and even the Regulars admitted it. Some even smiled — which, in Army circles, is practically a medical event.

We wrapped it all up in true Group style: a massive BBQ on the beach. The grills groaned with sausages, the beer flowed, and half the camp sported sunburn in curious shapes where the cam cream hadn’t quite washed off. The karaoke machine was dragged out again, naturally, and before long Queen and Abba were echoing across the sand.

By the end of two weeks, Guernsey felt less like a training camp and more like a comedy sketch on repeat. Beach runs, fake crises, evenings that began with lectures and ended in laughter. Nobody was any wiser about NATO doctrine, but we all agreed on one thing: if influence truly depended on morale, then PsyOps had never been stronger.

“Back on dry land, we didn’t miss a beat. First stop: Shrivenham. They wheeled us in to liven up a Staff College tabletop exercise. You’ve never seen so many shiny boots and future ‘commanders of the universe’ lookin’ baffled in one room. We gave ’em the crash course: how to think like us, why leaflets aren’t just firelighters, and how a well-aimed message can save you having to do the graft with bayonets. Some cottoned on sharpish, others looked like they’d swallowed a thesaurus sideways. Either way, job done — they wouldn’t forget us in a hurry.”

“Oh, and then came the generals. For them, we rolled out the full PSE — our Psychological Support Element. Radios humming, printers spitting, posters stacked like a little shop. We even slipped in slogans at just the right moment, showing how words could ripple further than bullets. Watching their faces was priceless. One general scribbled notes so furiously I thought he’d burn through his notebook. And I remember thinking — here we were, teaching men who had commanded brigades how to use a leaflet. With a straight face. Life can be very absurd.”

“Blue Peter meets black ops, that’s what it was. Should’ve charged admission. Honestly, I was this close to tellin’ him, ‘We do weddings and birthdays as well, sir — special rates for colonels.’”

“The four of us had it down to an art form — less ‘death by PowerPoint,’ more travelling theatre. Johan played the straight man, Stephen the cheeky commentator, Marlin slipped in razor-sharp one-liners, and I… well, I kept the whole circus from going off the rails. We mixed quips, innuendo, and just enough drama to keep even the crustiest staff officer wide awake. Nobody dared nod off — not unless they fancied a spotlight on them and a joke at their expense. By the time we wrapped, instead of polite applause we had hands flying up, questions coming faster than we could answer. It wasn’t a briefing anymore. It was an event.”

“Word got round, too. Suddenly it wasn’t ‘Can you brief the HQ?’ — it was ‘Can you bring your show?’ Like we were some sort of PsyOps boyband with better boots and worse dance moves. But it worked. Commanders stayed awake, staff remembered what we told ’em, and even the brass cracked a smile now and then. What started as us keepin’ ourselves amused turned into the PsyOps Roadshow — informative, cheeky, and just daft enough to be unforgettable.”

“June 2001, and the four of us — plus one of the team bosses — were whisked north to Faslane for the Joint Maritime Course. Big? That don’t cover it. Half the Navy seemed to be bobbin’ about, submarines slid in and out like ghosts, and there were more jets overhead than Heathrow on a bank holiday. Add in the squaddies and it looked like someone was quietly prep­ping for World War Three. Our brief was simple on paper: confuse the enemy, reassure the friendly, and charm anyone with scrambled egg on their cap. The Scots looked after us proper, the scenery was stunning when it wasn’t drowned in sideways rain, and somehow we managed to avoid being mistaken for infiltrators — or sunk by friendly fire. Small victories.”

“Faslane was not just another dockyard. This was submarine country. Everything seemed to hum with quiet menace, steel leviathans lying unseen beneath the Clyde. Over it all, a company of Royal Marines kept watch — sharp-eyed, calm, the guardians of the deep. And then, just beyond the wire, the Peace Camp. A ragtag collection of caravans and tarps, daubed with slogans from ‘No Nukes’ to ‘Hug a Submariner (Carefully).’ Colourful, noisy, and perpetually trying to cause mischief, but in their way, they were part of Faslane itself — as permanent as the drizzle, and just as unavoidable.”

“Inside the wire, it was another world altogether. Our PsyOps brief sounded impressive — confuse the enemy, reassure the friendly, charm anyone with scrambled egg on their cap badge — but the scale of the Joint Maritime Course was staggering. Subs slid in and out of the mist like ghosts, jets roared overhead, and the sideways Scottish rain just added theatre.

The Boss, never one to miss a networking opportunity — or a free lunch — called in a favour from an old oppo who happened to be XO on HMS Splendid. Nuclear-powered, bristling with kit, and shaped like a steel cigar tin. Down the hatch we went, crab-walkin’ through narrow passageways, Johan’s shoulders jammed in every valve, Marlin biting her lip not to laugh.”

“Inside, it was like another planet. A world of recycled air, oil, and stubbornness. The crew were friendly enough, though pale from months without sunlight. We squeezed into the wardroom, served something that might have been stew and mugs of Navy-strength tea strong enough to remove paint.

I watched Stephen poke at his plate and knew we were all thinking the same thing: this was not our world. No fresh air, no daylight, no gossip, no space to breathe. Hats off to the submariners — but for us? We preferred the rain on our faces and even the odd protest banner outside the wire. At least there, you could stretch your legs and laugh.”

“For the first week of JMC, they stuck us in the Maritime Ops Room — wall-to-wall glowing screens, acronyms by the bucketload, and enough half-drunk coffee mugs to float a Type 23 frigate. Just as we’d found our rhythm, week two was meant to ship us onto HMS Illustrious. The jewel of the fleet. Floating city, postcode of its own, gossip chain longer than the M25.

But we never made it. Macedonia chose that very Friday to go up in flames. Typical. One minute we’re polishing our boots for life on a carrier, the next we’re pulled out like spare kit on the wrong lorry. By Sunday evening we were back at Chicksands, blinking in drizzle, wondering if we’d dreamed the whole thing.”

“I will admit, I was disappointed. We had packed, prepared, even practised our best Navy manners. Stephen had spent an evening in front of the mirror rehearsing ‘aye aye, Captain’ with a straight face. Then, instead of the glamour of a carrier deck, we found ourselves back in business suits, not uniform, clutching briefcases instead of bergens.

It was a strange pivot — from the roar of jets and submarines sliding through mist, to offices and conference tables. From sailors’ banter to MOD acronyms. But that was our world now. One crisis closed, another opened. And once again, PsyOps was expected to make sense of the madness.”

“Come Monday morning, there we were — six of us bundled into a hired minibus at little Arlesey station. Not a bergen in sight. Just briefcases, polished shoes, and the faint look of travelling sales reps. From there it was King’s Cross, where we vanished into the tide of commuters like undercover soldiers in a board-room war. It felt strange — sneaking into a crisis dressed as if we were off to sell 

“By mid-morning we’d washed up in Whitehall, frog-marched into a secure briefing room that had all the charm of a broom cupboard. No windows, no air, and tea brewed to Ministry of Defence standard — strong enough to strip paint. In comes this staff officer, starched stiff, no humour about him, and lays it out. Macedonia’s boilin’ over, NATO want a plan, and guess who’s just been volunteered.”

“Maps everywhere, acronyms flying, and a timetable that seemed written more for wishful thinking than reality. They spoke of ‘inter-agency cooperation,’ which in my experience was another way of saying ‘chaos with name badges.’ We sipped the jet-fuel tea, nodded politely, and listened. Inside, though, I think we were all thinking the same thing: ‘Kosovo dust barely brushed off our boots — and already Macedonia.’”

“Back at Chicksands the next mornin’, we brewed enough tea to drown a platoon and locked ourselves in a room with whiteboards, marker pens, and the sort of enthusiasm you only get before common sense kicks in. Smelled more like a school staff meeting than a war briefing. Still, by the time the fumes cleared, we’d hammered out a plan.”

“Our mission, for once, was mercifully simple. Deploy with NATO, help disarm the NLA — the National Liberation Army of Albania. No elaborate cover stories, no disguising leaflets as coupons for sheep dip. Just PsyOps stripped to its core: shape the narrative, calm the fears, and persuade fighters to hand over weapons without making the situation worse. Straightforward on paper. Less so in practice.”

“HQ was a right circus. Every uniform you can think of, every language, and each nation clutchin’ their own acronyms like comfort blankets. The only thing we all agreed on was the coffee — bloody awful. At the top of the pile sat a Danish general, silver hair, calm as a monk in a thunderstorm. Never raised his voice, never looked rattled. Which, I reckon, either meant he was a genius… or he’d gone completely deaf.”

“Our mission was clear enough: deploy as the PSE — the Psychological Support Element. Or, as we preferred to call ourselves, the ‘nudge and wink brigade.’ NATO stamped the orders, set the clock at 90 days, and we, being us, responded with typical restraint… by packing as though we were colonising Mars. The kit list grew like an unruly garden. Inflatable screen? Of course. Three spare printers? Essential. Cables? Enough to wire the Millennium Dome. And 80 rolls of black nasty — because you never know when the world will need holding together with duct tape.”

“By the time we’d finished, it looked less like a PsyOps load out and more like a military car boot sale on steroids. The storemen just stared. One lad muttered, ‘What are you lot, Dixons with rifles?’ Fair point. Still, we got it all signed off — miracle in itself — and hitched it into a convoy bound for Marchwood.”

“At the docks, the dockers took one look at the mountain of crates, printers, and mysterious boxes marked ‘leaflets — probably,’ and shook their heads in disbelief. ‘This is for one team?’ someone asked. We just smiled, nodded, and let them crane it all aboard the ship for Thessaloniki. If nothing else, Macedonia would soon learn one thing about us: when PsyOps arrive, we arrive in style — buried under a ton of our own optimism and spares.”