267: The Gritty Reality of Canadian Snipers in Afghanistan

This week, Nole sits down with Barry Nisbet, a retired Canadian Army Sniper with 15 years of service and multiple deployments to the Balkans and Afghanistan, and Mir Bahmanyar, an author, historian, and former member of the US Army's 2nd Ranger Battalion.

Together with Gordon Cullen, Barry and Mir co-authored the book Send It: Canada's Snipers at War in Afghanistan. In this episode, we strip away the romanticized Hollywood myth of the lone-wolf sniper to discuss the brutal reality of sniper selection, the agonizing physical toll of stalking exercises, and the heavy weight of operating downrange. Barry shares incredible firsthand stories, including a wild reunion with a US Green Beret he met at Ranger School, the terrifying aftermath of an IED blast, and the absolute relief of having an AC-130 Gunship overhead. Mir also drops some invaluable knowledge on the harsh realities of the publishing world for anyone looking to write a book of their own.

Whether you’re interested in military history, the tactical mindset, or just hearing incredible stories of brotherhood from the Global War on Terror, you won't want to miss this one.

Grab a copy of the book: Send It: Canada's Snipers at War in Afghanistan by Gordon Cullen, Barry Nisbet, and Mir Bahmanyar – available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indigo.

Big thank you to My Epic and Facedown Records for the use of their song "Hail" in our podcast!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz2RZThURTU&ab_channel=FacedownRecords

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Transcript

Nole (00:01.84)
Welcome back to the fire you carry podcast. is Noel today. I'm excited to be joined by Barry and mirror and Barry, we've been trying to make this happen for way too long. You reached out quite a while back and you guys have written a book together and I'm not going to go too deep into it or, or what, but I will say that I've been looking forward to this and this has been a cool thing about running this podcast is just

the conversations that I've had the opportunity to have, Kevin and I, obviously Kevin's not here today, but just with gentlemen like you, who I never would have come in contact with apart from this platform. So it's been super cool. Obviously we're chatting a little bit before. It was super cool to meet both of you. But Barry, let's start off with you. Just give us a quick introduction. Tell us a little bit about who you are, a little bit of your background and where you're at now.

Barry Nisbet (00:54.06)
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Noel. Thanks for having us on. Yeah. I spent 15 years in the Canadian Army. five deployments, Bosnia, Kosovo, and then three to Afghanistan, the last two in Afghanistan, or in Kandahar. I did my I went to US Army Ranger School in

think it was 2003, which was an interesting experience. I did my basic sniper in 2005, deployed as a sniper in 2006. Then I did my sniper deck commander, advanced sniper, another deployment in 2010 to Afghanistan. And then 2012, I retired.

Nole (01:50.44)
That's a good run. Where you at now? What are you doing now?

Barry Nisbet (01:53.571)
I'm just retired now. Nothing in particular.

Nole (01:55.282)
Just retired.

Nole (01:59.09)
That's appropriate. That's appropriate. You still up in, are you up in Canada?

Barry Nisbet (02:03.106)
Yeah, still up in Canada, still in Ontario and know, spare time. like getting outside, just anything outdoors gives me nice bit of calm, nice peace and quiet.

Nole (02:19.942)
I don't want to go too deep into this because we got to get to Mir and introduce him to, but I do have this question. did think of this as a, as a sniper, right? Now that you're retired and moved on, do you still enjoy shooting? Do you still shoot? Is that still a part of your life?

Barry Nisbet (02:39.456)
I personally don't have any guns, but if given the opportunity and I've had the opportunity here and there, yeah, mean, what's not to love about it? mean, being able to get back behind a rifle and a little bit rusty, but just remembering all those skills that I was taught and then trying to apply them again, yeah, it's therapeutic.

Nole (03:09.522)
for sure. There's certain parts of like my job now as a fireman that when I'm done and retire, I won't miss. So let me, we'll say, I'll just use this silly example, like taking a blood pressure. Like once I'm done with that, I'm not going to miss that aspect of my job, but there are other aspects that I might miss. So I figured that that was one that was still good, still a good time. Mir.

Barry Nisbet (03:29.528)
Definitely.

Mir Bahmanyar (03:34.044)
Yes, sir. So what do you want? What should I tell you? Quick background. My father was in the Shah's army in Iran back in the day. My mom is German. I grew up basically in California and joined the second range of battalion in 1986. Got out in 88 to go green to gold ROTC. Got injured being stupid.

Nole (03:35.41)
Tell me about yourself. Yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (04:00.766)
on a weekend and I stayed one year at RTC and then I got a medical discharge and then, you know, I had some jobs here and there, went to Hollywood, worked there for a decade or so, got married to a Canadian, moved to Canada. I live in Ontario, but in Toronto, major city. And I've been writing books pretty much most of the time since then.

I can't even remember how long ago I thought we should do a sniper book. And so I got in touch with Gord, who's not here today, and Gord introduced me to Barry and we took us a few years because we're all busy and eventually we got the book done. So and most of it got done by Barry, actually. So I have to give him a lot of credit and Gord contributed quite a bit. So anyway, that's my rough background. We could spend a couple more hours, but we're pressed for time. So.

Yeah

Nole (04:53.254)
We could, we could. There's already immediately a bunch of questions that I have, but maybe we'll do another episode. Yeah. Before we talk about, cause I am curious about the book writing process for several reasons, but before we get too deep into that side of it, Barry, we were talking beforehand about just some different stories that appear in the book or not that we could talk about. And you had one that was a good example of how small the world is. want to share that with us just to start us off?

Mir Bahmanyar (04:58.683)
Mm.

Barry Nisbet (05:19.982)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, in 2003, I was selected from from my battalion to go down on the Ranger course. And it always been a goal. One of one of the goals once I got into the military was to try to get down. So, you know,

Nole (05:39.26)
Let me hold on. I got to pause you. I'm going to interrupt you. I'm probably too many times. I don't want to you your train of thought, but how difficult, how rare is it to get a slot in Ranger school coming from the Canadian army?

Barry Nisbet (05:54.878)
Well, we had one slot for our battalion. So, and it would not come up every year, but it would come up more years than not. it's, you know, there's a competition process and then, you know, basically whoever's the, whoever the battalion deems is the best fit gets the slot.

Nole (05:58.077)
Yeah, so it's pretty rare.

Nole (06:03.656)
Yeah.

Nole (06:20.402)
So there's not a lot of guys with a Ranger Tab running around in Canada. Yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (06:22.191)
It's like a mini mini pre ranger school.

Barry Nisbet (06:26.452)
No, no, there's maybe maybe like half a dozen in each unit at best. So yeah.

Nole (06:31.366)
Yeah, that's rad. Okay, so you got the slot.

Barry Nisbet (06:35.64)
So got the slot down a Benning, got dressed up in all my woodland camo and we did a couple of weeks with the IST guys just kind of learning a bit of the US military lingo and just, know, squad over section and just different fire teams and such. then, yeah, I mean, into the course for the most part, you're

They don't know you're Canadian other than my name tape said Canada on it and said a US Army. And I said a all the time, which is not a common phrase in Georgia. So that was a dead giveaway. And most times I got the honor of singing my national anthem at certain obstacles.

Nole (07:11.912)
You

Mir Bahmanyar (07:14.653)
you

Nole (07:16.22)
The dead giveaway. Dead giveaway.

Barry Nisbet (07:34.284)
You know, you get to the top of Victory Pond and you're about to take the death slide and it's just, you know what you're sounding off with. So, you know, roster one, five, six, he's like, nah, start singing and I'm going down and I'm singing, Canada on the way down. So, you know, it was, you know, the big thing about Ranger school is, is you meet a lot of really great people. You meet some not so great people too. but you meet some great people and

In my platoon in particular, met a guy, his name was Joe Healy and he was a Green Beret, just finished Q school and then had like, I don't even know, like a month or something, then he's in Ranger school. I don't know how. And we just hit it off. know, we were in the same platoon. We never got recycled. And, you know, when I had a platoon command or like a platoon leader,

task in the patrol base, like he was my two IC. And we just always seemed to sort of find each other. So, know, Ranger School, you it's, you graduate and you're giving everybody addresses and maybe the odd email back then. And, and you just kind of go your separate ways. And I mean, the American military is massive. I mean, back then, I think your, your SF was 50,000 and that was our combined.

Nole (08:49.202)
Hmm.

Barry Nisbet (09:01.046)
Army Navy Air Force. you know, fast forward to 2006, I'm a sniper now. I'm in Afghanistan and we were in Operation Medusa, which was a really large ground combat offensive. think the largest NATO, correct me if I'm wrong here, but largest NATO ground offensive in a long time. So we'd kind of been through the worst of that.

Nole (09:03.09)
Wow.

Barry Nisbet (09:28.018)
and we get told, there's a ODA team coming up and they're gonna come up to your guys spot, then they're gonna move higher up the mountain. I was on shift and kind of just doing Overwatch and here are all these guys behind me and then they drop all their packs and they head back up the mountain. And half hour later, I get relieved. So I kind of come back down and I'm just looking at all the packs and they had all their name tapes.

on their rucksacks and I see a last name and I say Healy and I chuckle and I say to my buddy I said, it's my best friend in ranger school is Healy. I don't think it's him. I'm like, there's no chance. So now we're watching this group, we're watching the O.D. guys come back down the hill and you know, in their gray uniforms and you know, they're getting bigger and they're getting bigger. I see one guy, he's like a big tall guy and I'm like.

Man, I look again and I'm like, and then he gets close and I'm just like, no, I'm just like, no way. can't be him. I kind of pulled my hat down low and then he comes over to his, to his bag and I just look up and I go, Hey, Hoser. And he just looks at me and, then we just, we, we, started hugging, you know, so now there's all these SF guys, there's, you know, a couple other Canadian snipers and we're just, you know, having a, having a good.

Nole (10:38.695)
Thanks

Barry Nisbet (10:52.174)
good old bro hug in Afghanistan. And I mean, it was great because it was kind of like, kind of brought the teams together and just sort of like, you know, hey, this this is Barry, you know, he was a ranger and kind of, we did some good work with them kind of over the whole tour. So yeah, small, small world.

Nole (11:11.408)
Hmm. Yeah, that's so rad. So in that type of context, coming there, being there with the Canadian Army, are you, when you're on that side of the mountain, are you attached to a Canadian unit? Like, what role were you there in?

Barry Nisbet (11:30.06)
Yeah, so at that particular time, we were attached to Charles Company as part of the task force. And we had come in with the main body, we pushed up to the top of the hill, or not to the top of hill, to get some high ground to just get some, do what snipers do, right? Watch, engage, watch some enemy movements, call in some artillery.

know, adjust some air if we could. So that was our role. And just as Medusa sort of expanded, some other units came in and a Canadian SF team had come and gone. And then in comes the ODA team.

Nole (12:18.342)
So you ended up working with them as well while you're there.

Barry Nisbet (12:21.516)
Yeah, we ended up working with them, like almost that whole tour, just with that team and with a few other teams just based on we kind of were continually finding ourselves in the same like tactical infrastructure. And, you know, we had a, you know, I think just knowing Joe and kind of him vouching for me.

It just helped us kind of integrate. if they, did a lot of operations, like just our sniper team or, and the other sniper teams where, you know, the ODA is going out and they're like, Hey, we want your boys to come and you know, off we went with them. So yeah, was, it was great.

Nole (13:05.874)
Yeah. That's interesting to me because in my brief times over there, obviously I was in a Ranger battalion, I was just a brand new Ranger, right? So a lot of the logistical sides of things were just way over my head outside my pay grade. But I did always wonder as I was aware that we were working with other nations' militaries, right? The Canadians were out there, the Australians, like there's all kinds of folks out there.

Like what that's like from, you know, really from your side of it. Cause from, you know, in my mind, it's like the United States military, like you said, were huge, right? So then to have these, those were always smaller groups. And I did wonder and wonder again now is like, what, what was that like working? Was it seamless? Were there issues that you had to overcome or was it just kind of part for the course? Because you guys, obviously you're in, you're in theater, you get it.

They get it, you know the mission, were there any difficulties or?

Barry Nisbet (14:07.886)
mean, certainly at my level, we still had to follow our rules of engagement no matter who we were attached to. But I mean, I think it was pretty seamless. Claymore points this way. We're in a patrol base now and we're in with the SF guys and Claymore's out.

Nole (14:19.281)
That's interesting.

Nole (14:25.586)
Yeah.

Barry Nisbet (14:38.208)
interlocking arcs of fire and you know those kind of soldier basics they're they're they're you know they're just they're global right so in that sense yeah it was it was pretty seamless sometimes i didn't know what the hell they were talking about based on

Nole (14:54.394)
Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I would think the only thing that would be difficult would be potentially comms. And then like you mentioned before, when you were going to Ranger school, just vocabulary being different.

Barry Nisbet (15:05.474)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a bit of lingo. think I might have been a little better at it having gone through Ranger school. understanding the structure a bit. But I mean, you know, honestly, it's, you know, soldiers speak like soldiers speak. it really didn't take long to iron out any meaning we didn't know or anything they didn't know, you know.

Nole (15:18.311)
Mm-hmm.

Barry Nisbet (15:34.222)
We ironed that out pretty quick and honestly we worked well with them for over six months.

Nole (15:42.664)
All right, let's shift gears a little bit before we come back for another story. Mir, what other books have you been a part of or have you written apart from this one? Send it.

Mir Bahmanyar (15:53.468)
two hours later. You know, I've written, I worked in Hollywood for a little while, right? So I was working on Black Hawk Down and it was the movie. the movie. Bowden, the author is a great guy. I met him a couple of times in LA. So he's always treated me and other Rangers really well. But then they made the movie and I got sort of involved early in the early stages of it and liaised a little bit with the.

Nole (15:55.624)
Ooh.

Nole (16:03.26)
The book or the movie? You're talking about the movie. man.

Nole (16:13.596)
Yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (16:21.614)
75th Ranger Regiment Public Affairs Office.

Nole (16:24.328)
That's cool.

Mir Bahmanyar (16:25.031)
And so I did a lot of research there. Eventually they moved on to Morocco. I was not taken along. I got replaced by an actual third bad boy who actually had been in Mogadishu. So I can't complain. But from there, I started writing books. You know, I just reached out to a couple of British publishers. One of them said yes. So I'd written a bunch of books and I started with, you know, Ranger related small books like 100 pages, 80 pages. And then I wrote a couple of big ones, one on Ranger history called

Shadow Warriors. wrote one on a bunch of battles of annihilation called Vanquish. Then I wrote a Navy SEAL book with a Navy SEAL called Chris Osmond. Then I wrote a book on...

Rangers in Iraq and Afghanistan with Nick Moore. And I wrote some other ancient history books. And then my most recent book before this Send It sniper book was World War II Derby's Rangers in the Mediterranean theater. So I've written quite a bit, like 12, 13 books, and I'm writing a couple of novels right now. And when I was writing my Seal book, I always thought,

Nole (17:22.664)
Mmm.

Mir Bahmanyar (17:35.259)
that it would be good to write some kind of international sniping book. I don't know why, just, know, I guess it got popular. I met Chris Kyle. I interviewed him for the book, talked to him a few times. And so I thought we should do a sniper book. I reached out, Isil recommended this Canadian guy, Gordon Cullen, and I reached out to him. I don't even know how long ago that was, 2009 maybe.

And, and through Gordon, met Barry and a bunch of other guys. spent two weeks at Petawawa, which is in Ontario, which is where the Royal Canadian regiment is stationed at. And I attended their sniper program, a small two week course they had there. And I realized immediately, I cannot write this book. I mean, it's like rocket science. Sniping genuinely is rocket science. And I'm not, I'm not equipped for that. I'm good at a 60 gunner thing, you know, basic infantry stuff, ranger stuff.

Nole (18:20.936)
Hmm.

Nole (18:29.778)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (18:31.239)
at that, great at ancient military stuff, but this modern sort of technical sniping stuff, that wasn't for me. So I asked Gordon and Barry if they wanted to write it. We asked some other guys and Barry said yes, was very enthusiastic. Gordon is more of this technical nerd guy. So the technical chapters, you know, tend to be more from Gordon and the real personal emotional

Nole (18:53.223)
Hmm.

Mir Bahmanyar (18:56.267)
I am there kind of stuff came from Barry. And so eventually we got it all together and my agent from New York managed to find an actual Canadian military publisher. So that was also cool. And so we got that book out last year and, and Barry has been doing a good job promoting it. He's been on national TV in Canada. You know, Canadians take great pride in their military and rightly so, because some of the best NCOs I've met and I've, you know, I've met

Nole (19:07.41)
Red.

Nole (19:20.422)
Yeah, yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (19:25.979)
hundreds, you know, from World War II through my time through whatever. And I think the Gordon and Barry and there are a couple others are really exceptional NCOs, like some of the best guys I've ever met. And I'm not saying that because I know him, because if I didn't like him, I would tell him that. But so we did the book. It's great. And I'm happy how it was. And they did most of the work. I have to be very fair on that. So they bailed me out. They bailed me out. So anyway.

Barry Nisbet (19:42.69)
That's true.

Barry Nisbet (19:50.145)
Not true.

Nole (19:54.215)
Yeah, so what's that process like? I'm curious about that. So if you've got Barry and Gordo or Gordon, what do you call

Mir Bahmanyar (20:00.856)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Nole (20:03.152)
If you've got those guys writing, are you just coming in and cleaning it up? you, are you kind of building the structure of the book? Like, are you, are you calling up Barry and telling him Barry, this chapter is trash. You got to rewrite it. Like, how does that go?

Mir Bahmanyar (20:08.835)
No.

Mir Bahmanyar (20:15.77)
No, oddly enough Barry is a natural writer, so I didn't have to browbeat him anything. You know, I don't know, it's... writing has never... it's just work.

Barry Nisbet (20:18.902)
Nailed it.

Mir Bahmanyar (20:28.034)
You know, it's like anything else. You want to be a ranger, you got to put that rock on and you got to hump the miles, you know, and it's like writing. Some people are technically or whatever you want to call it gifted and they have a wonderful language skill. I'm not that guy. I do the grunt work. I write in this case.

I think you guys just basically wrote your own stuff and I may have given a note or two, but in general terms, there was no real interference. We did have an editor eventually once we had all the chapters put together and Barry and Gordon decided mostly how they wanted to structure it. think Barry took the lead actually on most of that. So they structured it, they wrote it, I read it, I gave few notes, then we cut and pasted the whole thing together and I sent it off to a friend of mine.

who was in the Rhodesian army actually back in the Bush Wars in the 70s. Yeah, that's how old we are. But he was he's a he's a 30 year he's a 30 40 year editor, publisher and all that stuff. He went through it, proved it, created indexes, stuff like that. Chris Cox, he'd actually written some great books called Fire Force, which is actually one of the top 10 books ever of all time. And, you know, he did, I think the grunt work and getting the thing in the shape that we

Nole (21:22.866)
What?

Mir Bahmanyar (21:46.719)
wanted in in and then it went to the publisher and then the publisher Phil came back with some notes I think for Barry and Gordon and we made a few adjustments and it was actually mostly pain-free I think unless Barry contradicts me here but for me it was pain-free anyway

Nole (22:06.182)
Yeah, so then the question for you, is after that experience, would you do it again? Like if another opportunity arose, is this something now that you're thinking about doing?

Barry Nisbet (22:15.572)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think obviously, Mir is Mir is has been a great mentor to me is a great friend and just, you know, he just kind of said, Yeah, you know, like, write it how you write it how you want to write it. And, you know, we know one chapter turns into two turns into three turns into four turns into mirror telling me to organize the book and to edit the book and

And I wanted to do that. I wanted to sort of learn and Mir knew that because we discussed that. I kind of wanted to learn how does it all get done and how does it get put together? yeah, and then, we, and I think the important thing is like Mir said, like you met Gordon in 2009. So this had been a really long process. And it wasn't because we didn't have the content, it was just to

Nole (23:08.391)
Mm-hmm.

Barry Nisbet (23:14.062)
to once we finally got it all together and once we understood the direction that the book or the shape that the book was gonna take, then it came together and it was pretty easy. And where I was really surprised was once we did send it to Chris Cox to edit it, I thought it was gonna, in my mind, it's gonna come back all changed. I mean, Chris read it and

and it was very minor, you know, was very minor changes. So, and when I mean minor, mean like some, maybe some spelling, some grammar, some punctuation, but you know, so when you read it, you know, when you read one of my chapters, that's 99%, you know, my words. Other than that, Amir probably had fixed some before that, but, and I think that's really what kind of, kind of what sets this book apart is you read, you read Gorge chapter, you read mine, you read.

Nole (24:05.928)
You

Barry Nisbet (24:12.278)
you know, another guy, Yves Bédard has a chapter like that's our words. And I think that's something we're really proud of in the book.

Mir Bahmanyar (24:18.671)
Yeah.

Yeah. Let me interject there. Gourd, when you read the book, the technical stuff is written by Gourd.

Nole (24:23.015)
Yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (24:29.528)
He's like some bizarro on the spectrum, maybe kind of human computer. I don't know what he is, but he is something and you can read it when you read that. You're like, OK, now what? And then the practical application of it is really in a lot of the other chapters. Right. So you have this technical, not manual, but manual, and it's Gord. And you know that if you know Gord, you know that's what he's that's how he writes. And then from there, you see the practical applications and actual combat.

Barry Nisbet (24:34.094)
Genius.

Nole (24:34.994)
Yeah.

Nole (24:46.32)
Mmm, yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (24:59.502)
missions. Bidard did a great job, Barry did a great job and so you have that transition from this is how you become one to actually doing the job as a sniper in the Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan in combat. So I think the book in that sense was great unlike a lot of the sniper books that are out there where everything is about you know patting yourself on the shoulder and back telling everybody that you're the greatest thing since sliced bread and this book isn't that.

It's just what I think to be an honest account of people doing their job in Afghanistan as snipers. So I'm very happy with the book, ultimately, and I'm happy a Canadian published it as well. And it's done very well in Canada, as far as I know. And like I said, we got national TV coverage on that. So I think it's an important book to preserve the history of the Canadian sniper contribution in the global war on terror, however you want to phrase that.

Nole (25:57.063)
Yeah, which honestly, mean, from the perspective of somebody who, you know, as an American who was over there briefly, wasn't something that I ever would have thought about. And of course, you know, down here in America, we only like to talk about ourselves. So that's not that surprising. But it is really cool. it is, you know, every contribution to those conflicts was just as valuable as any other. So that is important. It is important to preserve. It's super cool.

Mir Bahmanyar (25:57.164)
All night.

Nole (26:24.968)
And I like, I really do like the fact, and you can tell when you're reading it, but I like the fact that it's not, uh, and I don't want to disparage ghost writing because I think there are times and places where it's appropriate or needed because the individual can't write. But you can almost always tell when you're reading a book by, we're just going to keep it really vague. I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but you can tell when you're reading a book by an, by an individual that

Mir Bahmanyar (26:50.486)
You

Nole (26:55.792)
was part of the Spec Ops community somewhere. You're like, this guy didn't write this. There's no way. And those books can be fun and super entertaining and valuable in their own way. But especially if you've been in any kind of role where you're on the ground, you can almost always tell this isn't quite right. So the real stuff from the real guys is cool. I definitely value that as a reader. So I appreciate that a lot.

Mir Bahmanyar (27:00.727)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Mir Bahmanyar (27:21.185)
Yeah, for sure. Hey, let me me throw out some stuff on publishing in case your listeners are interested ever in writing anything. OK. Yes, OK. no, no, no, it's perfect. Well, let me tell you a couple of things. The biggest challenge. Well, that depends. But the biggest challenge is to get an agent.

Nole (27:27.656)
Well, I'm interested. If you can't tell, I'm asking these questions because I will eventually write a book. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. So that's why I'm asking all these questions.

Mir Bahmanyar (27:43.896)
because you need that access. You need an agent who knows what the publishers would buy, what they'd be interested in, the relationships he has, right, or she. You do need an agent and getting an agent is challenging. So we wrote the book completely on spec, meaning we wrote the whole thing from start to finish because my agent didn't think we could sell it.

Nole (28:06.619)
Interesting.

Mir Bahmanyar (28:06.816)
So because it's a Canadian book, right? In the American market and all that, and eventually proved to be right, a Canadian publisher picked it up. But if you're interested in writing, the thing is it's just hard work. You don't need to be some super genius. You don't need to, you just need to do the work. One foot in front of the other, you know, that finger on the keyboard, and you just pound out the words, and then everything is just a rewrite. So if you're nobody,

in at least in the literary world, you need to just write your whole manuscript. You need to write the whole thing. Sometimes you can get away with writing what's known as a book proposal. It's usually 30, 40 pages long. It tells you the table of content. It gives you a paragraph per chapter. Then it is a bio that you have, who's the author? Why is this book important?

are there competitive titles out there? And you put that all together and then you sometimes can send it to an agent and you have to cold call or email them or meet them at festivals or in LA. There are tons of agents who are always happy to see someone and there is a difference of course, but there are many literary agents in LA as well.

But so either you write the whole manuscript and then you cold call, cold email various agents and tell them this is what it's about. Sometimes they'll want to read it and sometimes they'll tell you no or sometimes you don't hear from them. But that's a process. You write the whole thing or you write a book proposal and you're like.

I'm the greatest sniper since, you know, whatever, a half cock. And, you know, and maybe an agent will think, I know this publisher who's looking for military stuff, whatever, whatever. And, but you know, it's nobody knows nothing. It holds true that it doesn't matter what, how great your story is. It doesn't mean somebody is going to buy it. So advice for new people, write your whole manuscript, do a good job on it.

Nole (29:41.672)
Hmm.

Nole (29:57.394)
Mm.

Mir Bahmanyar (30:03.32)
You don't need to hire an editor to go through it. The agent should be able to read it and say, the writing may not be awesome or it may be really great, but this story, I think I can sell it. They're looking at sales. So they'll read the manuscript if they're interested. They'll give you notes. So my first novel that I wrote, my agent sent me way too many notes and it made it better, but it's a pain in the butt.

Nole (30:16.679)
Hmm.

Mir Bahmanyar (30:30.551)
But so you do that and then you get to your agent and the agent may rep you, excuse me, and tell you, I think I can sell this but I need you to do this, that and the other. Like you might have to write the whole book or he'll say, here are my notes to your whole manuscript that you already wrote. And then once you've done that rewriting, which you probably have done 10, 20 times already anyway, then he'll shop it around. And usually that'll take six to eight weeks.

per publisher and usually they don't swamp them. They don't send it out to everyone unless they think they can get a competitive bid going. So usually it'll be the publisher goes, this book on Arranger in Afghanistan, I'm gonna send it to whoever the publisher is. I'll wait six weeks, reach out again and usually you get answers. They usually get them faster than six to eight weeks but you have to be prepared to wait a little bit just because you've written it doesn't mean anything. Let's say you're lucky, a publisher picks it up.

They usually will pay you some kind of upfront fee with some kind of back end for every copy sold. But you don't see that until the book has earned back the advance that they give you. So.

Nole (31:40.46)
interesting. Yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (31:41.291)
Yeah, so you get whatever 500 bucks, 5,000 bucks, 50,000 bucks, whoever, depends how big you are. So you have to earn that back before you see anything else. So your agent will negotiate a deal. That's why you need an agent. You should not negotiate your own deals. Forget that. That's, you might as well just self-publish. That's a better thing, better course of action. Then it goes to the publisher. The publisher will edit it. They'll go through it. Sometimes the commissioning editor, the person who bought the manuscript will

Nole (31:51.922)
Hmm.

Nole (31:57.586)
Yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (32:11.207)
read through it. Lots of notes.

send them back to the agent or sometimes directly back to the author and then you address those. And you don't have to take the notes, by the way. This is not that you must do this. They respect your voice. They'll let you know, hey, I don't like this. You might need to clarify this and you might say, no, that's clear enough to me and I like it I'm not going to change it. They'll not push back. But usually, yeah, it's usually better to address those things because their experience, they know more than you do as a new author, right? So it comes back

Nole (32:25.159)
Hmm.

Nole (32:34.779)
Interesting.

Mir Bahmanyar (32:43.766)
you do rewrite it goes back and then it goes through a whole production process marketing you know it's at least six months before release date they'll start marketing it you have to deal with people coming back and telling you about pictures are these the correct pictures what are the captions so you're really intimately involved in a lot of it you're involved in the cover design and then you have to do all your own marketing so that's that's the thing you got to remember as an author you have to promote your own work

Barry Nisbet (32:59.8)
See you.

Nole (33:02.098)
Yeah.

Nole (33:12.328)
Hmm.

Mir Bahmanyar (33:12.792)
Unless you're, you know, a big wig. So then that's different. But anyway, there's a long process. That's all I'm saying. It's not overnight. Hmm. Yeah, it does. So.

Nole (33:15.601)
Right.

Nole (33:21.096)
That sounds like a heavy lift.

Nole (33:25.416)
I got a question. We'll shift gears a little bit again. And this is for actually either of you, whatever your thoughts are on this, but why is it that the role of a sniper is so appealing? Because it's something that obviously in Hollywood, any kind of media that involves any kind of conflict, like there's going to be a sniper. If you're reading...

Jack Carr's Terminalist series, like of course the protagonist is the best sniper that ever was, right? So it pops up everywhere. Why is that? Why is it such an appealing aspect of just the military?

Barry Nisbet (34:06.872)
I mean, I think it's because in one way it's sort of romanticized, right? It's like this lone guy and he's behind this big gun and he's waiting and it just, know, Hollywood focuses on that just, you know, just that really manly, super cool piece, right? What they don't focus on is how you got there.

Nole (34:28.456)
You

Barry Nisbet (34:34.296)
how you got to that position, how you're gonna leave that position, that maybe you've been laying there for three days in the prone, you've had to go to the bathroom laying down, you've had to eat laying down, your neck is kinked permanently, your elbows are sore, your knees are sore, you're caked in mud, you can't move. If you come under contact, no one's coming to save you quickly, right?

Nole (34:34.311)
Mm-hmm.

Mir Bahmanyar (34:53.322)
You

Nole (35:03.89)
Hmm.

Barry Nisbet (35:04.182)
So, you know, there's just that, that, I got here. There's the guy, I'm going to take the shot. I'm going to save the girl. And it's, it just, if that's the Hollywood version, but that is, you know, the furthest from reality. Ask any sniper.

but it's super cool. It looks super cool.

Mir Bahmanyar (35:24.824)
I don't know. mean, you know, I worked in Hollywood a long time, so over a decade. Most people don't care if it's accurate, first and foremost. think Black Hawk Down was a little exceptional in that the 160th Soar and the third Ranger Battalion supported the movie. So I think that was exceptionally helpful. But I...

Nole (35:36.741)
Now.

Mir Bahmanyar (35:50.987)
You know, I don't know why. think they think it's sexy cool that you can shoot someone at great distance and you're the hero. Right. One shot, one kill, you know, Robin Hood. We've had that since whenever. Right. We can come back to that. I don't know. It's the weirdest thing. But yes, everybody's a sniper. I mean, you hit that right on the the nail there.

I just don't know. I think it's that single individual hero who can change the course of history, who can save that life, you know, like that kind of stuff. So although I don't know, John Wick was pretty cool and he wasn't a sniper. So I don't know. do I know about anything? Anyway, yeah, so.

Nole (36:20.039)
Hmm.

Barry Nisbet (36:29.102)
Yeah.

Nole (36:32.872)
Fair, fair. Maybe in John Wick 7 he'll do the sniping thing.

Mir Bahmanyar (36:37.834)
He'll be the sniper because he'll be too old to move. So you'll have to shoot from great range. So anyway, but yeah, there have been lots of movies like that. You know, you know that you're in L.A. You watch a lot of movies. So it's I find it a bit annoying, quite frankly, because there's so much I mean, when, like I said before, when Barry was on national TV, they set up a range, they took a shot. He had a spotter with them. You know, you need your spotter. That's the guy who is the most important person on that.

Barry Nisbet (36:38.038)
yeah.

That's right.

Mir Bahmanyar (37:07.738)
Not the guy who pulls the trigger, mean also important, you know Hollywood where you sometimes see that but it's always that lone wolf, the hero, you know, so... It should be a machine gunner. It should be a machine gunner like Ventura and Predator, you know, when he's firing the mini gun. That's cool.

Nole (37:16.483)
yeah, yeah, it's more fun if he's by himself.

Barry Nisbet (37:19.658)
Absolutely, yeah.

Nole (37:24.476)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Barry Nisbet (37:24.855)
There you go.

Nole (37:31.27)
Yeah, I was hoping you would kind of go there Barry, because that's where I wanted to go next is the process of getting there, right? Of being down range and doing the job. When I was reading, there was a theme right off the bat that I picked up on and it was just the theme of at every phase of your journey into the Canadian Armed Forces, you were looking for the next thing that was a challenge, the next...

team of guys that looked like they had better gear, they were doing the cooler stuff, they had more knowledge of their craft, like that type of thing. I feel like, I hope that's a fair characterization, but that every step, right? That gets more and more involved, more and more difficult. And when it came to the sniper training, specifically reading about the, the stocking aspect of it, that then suddenly becomes not romantic, right? It's just sounds like a horrible grind.

Mir Bahmanyar (38:04.152)
you

Nole (38:29.32)
And you've got the stress and the pressure of potential failure, right, on top of when you're getting into those phases. And so my thought on that, and I would like to hear your thoughts on this, is that when you get to places like that where you're hot, you're in a ghillie suit, you're moving in the prone slowly for a long period of time, and it's just, it sounds terrible to me. I've never done it.

But no longer, in my opinion, is the cool guy factor, Hollywood factor of the sniper thing gonna motivate you to continue on there. So what do you think that is for you or for others that have completed that and made it through and done it?

put you on the spot with a hard one.

Barry Nisbet (39:16.75)
I mean, I think to get, know, first to get to that point in Canada, to get the opportunity to go on to a sniper course, you need to, you already need to be reconnaissance qualified. So reconnaissance patrolman and that in itself is a difficult course. You need to be, you need to have your comms, your communications, you need to be reconnaissance qualified and you need to be a volunteer.

They don't just grab guys go, oh, you're a constants qualified. You're going on the sniper course. It doesn't work. You need to be a volunteer. And basically your company commander or your Sergeant Major needs to, you know, say, yeah, I think he's good for sniper training. You do like a little, you do a little interview. There's a little, you know, process before you get on the course. On my, we had a pre-course of 24 that went down to 18 for the course.

Nole (39:53.469)
Hmm.

Barry Nisbet (40:17.1)
and we graduated with three. So the norm is failing. The attrition rate is, it's wild. And I mean, and back when I did the course and they've modified it a bit now for the better, stocking was just, stocking was the killer, stocking was where everyone just got chewed up and spit out because

Nole (40:19.036)
Woof.

Nole (40:28.39)
That's high. Yeah.

Barry Nisbet (40:45.138)
you can be doing everything right. And then you just make that one little mistake, that one movement, your colors off on your ghillie. And that's it, you're done, you're caught, you're busted. And I mean, you know, further to your question, I mean, for me, the motivation was just not to fail. Right? I don't want to fail. I don't fail things. I don't want to fail.

Nole (41:05.223)
Yeah.

Barry Nisbet (41:13.164)
So, and really there's just times when you just, know, did I fail stocks? Absolutely, I failed stocks. And I think the thing that I always took from them, I'm like, why did I fail that stock? Okay. Why did I fail? I failed it because I did this. Don't do that again. Right. And there's a million mistakes you can make, but you know, okay, don't do that again. Pass one, fail one, don't do that again. And you just start sort of, you know, you're holding that in your back pocket and don't do it again. And

For me, felt like as the stocks went on and the number of candidates got whittled down to like my second last stock and I needed to pass it, there's three of us on that stock. So stock one, 18 guys stocking. The format of how we're looking, how people are looking for you doesn't change, but now they're looking for three guys. They know there's three guys out there, right?

Nole (42:07.814)
You

Barry Nisbet (42:10.286)
Granted, we've got a bigger area to play with because the area is the same size, there's three of us, right? And I mean, it's just, you know, you just got to apply what you've been taught and you have to adapt to the situation. have to adapt to the ground as it changes. And you need a little bit of luck. Every sniper is going to tell you that on a course. You need to have a little bit of luck.

Mir Bahmanyar (42:39.551)
I want to add something to that. mean, Noel, you were in first battalion. We won't hold that against you. But there is a reason why people, I can't compare myself to Barry, but there's a reason why people join elite units. I'm not belittling anyone who just joins the straight green machine. There's nothing wrong with that. But I'm saying there's always something like...

Barry Nisbet (42:45.742)
Bye.

Nole (42:45.788)
Thank you.

Nole (42:54.834)
Hmm.

Nole (43:01.16)
Of course. Right.

Mir Bahmanyar (43:04.767)
you play competitive sports, is something within you, right? And that's that you can't define it, there's that intangible thing, you're willing to do a lot of things to get to a certain point. Sometimes we're willing to go beyond that, and sometimes we say, you know what, I'm done.

Nole (43:16.572)
Mm-hmm.

Nole (43:21.394)
Yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (43:22.037)
but there's still a reason, there's still something in you that says, I want to try to do this, be that jumping out of airplanes, be that Ranger battalions, SF Delta, SEAL, whatever. So, or para rescue or firemen, right? There are challenges and you're just the kind of person that seeks that challenge, I think, but you can't define it. You either have it or you don't, I think.

Barry Nisbet (43:43.374)
Yeah, I think, too, I think definitely having done Ranger School before I went on my basic sniper, it certainly increased the level that I could operate when I was tired, when I was uncomfortable. Ranger School, it...

Nole (43:45.126)
Yeah, I would agree with that.

Nole (44:05.714)
Hmm.

Barry Nisbet (44:09.773)
I've never known hunger like I knew in Ranger school. I've never known tired or sleep deprivation or just pure exhaustion like I did in Ranger school. So I mean, I, you know, I fall back. think of those times a lot when, when things are tough and there's no doubt that there was times when I was stalking, you know, on my, on my sniper course, thinking about, Hey, remember that time in mountains when I couldn't, I couldn't untie a knot.

Mir Bahmanyar (44:18.967)
Yeah.

Nole (44:36.37)
Yeah.

Barry Nisbet (44:39.156)
off of the off of the tripod for 25 minutes even though it was a bow but I couldn't untie it I physically could not untie it you know so

Nole (44:42.792)
You

Mir Bahmanyar (44:46.679)
Yeah. You know I have...

Nole (44:48.296)
Yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (44:49.219)
I have to tell you a quick story. Actually, when I first got to second battalion, I'd been a rip holdover. I'd broken my ankle in the first class. And I think we graduated. The road march was the killer back. then it was called the Ranger indoctrination program. And it was 12 miles and you had to cross with, I forget now, 52 pounds or something like that. So you always pack a lot more because you're also drinking water. Right. But so whatever, I thought that was hard. thought rip was quite good, actually. It really.

Nole (45:01.564)
Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Mir Bahmanyar (45:19.113)
you for battalions. My first deployment at battalion at Fort Lewis back in the day when it was called that, we climbed this hill and it's pitch black you know it's the Rangers always operate at night.

And we're climbing this mountain and all of us got back to base and we all wanted to quit. we're like, if this what batallion life is like on every deployment, we're all quitting. It was that brutal. But you know, you do learn, like Barry said, you learn your limitations and you learn what you're willing to put up with. And sometimes it's just not for you.

Nole (45:45.36)
I'm out.

Nole (45:52.42)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (45:57.047)
and there's nothing wrong with, there's no shame in not wanting to do it after a while. I always admired the guys who are at battalion in particular, 20 plus years. like, how did you survive? How's your body still in one piece? Because it's brutal. You don't heal at battalion. If you get injured in battalion, I mean, you just gotta suck it up and you'll pay the price eventually down the road. I mean, I Barry can barely walk now, because he thinks he's a tough Canadian sniper, but.

Nole (46:08.352)
yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Barry Nisbet (46:23.672)
Ha ha ha.

Mir Bahmanyar (46:26.932)
But you know, anyway, the thing is you learn your limitations. That's the key thing, I think.

Nole (46:33.0)
Yeah. And I asked that question knowing that it's almost impossible to answer because it is really different. Maybe it's not really that different, but it feels like it is different for different individuals and it's hard to quantify. I think just to simplify it down, it almost feels like you either love the challenge or you learn to love the challenge, right? I don't think anybody goes into it.

Mir Bahmanyar (47:01.375)
you

Nole (47:02.106)
like that, but I think there's something about putting yourself through a challenging course, whether it's sniper school or ranger school or whatever. I'm not going to compare a tower to get into the fire department to those things because that would be an insult. But, but for some people it might rise to that level anyway.

Mir Bahmanyar (47:17.973)
you

Mir Bahmanyar (47:22.502)
Mm-hmm.

Nole (47:24.174)
It's either that or then it's the end goal of getting into that unit that is small and exclusive. It's standing in that group of three guys that are left. And maybe it's both, but go ahead. No, go ahead.

Mir Bahmanyar (47:28.894)
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm sorry. Yeah. No, I want to interrupt on this point also, you know, Barry mentioned it earlier about luck. You also need luck. I mean, I can.

Nole (47:42.876)
Hmm.

Mir Bahmanyar (47:45.234)
Since I was a holdover at a Ranger indoctrination program at Benning, I was working at the head shed back then. because, know, what else are you going to do when you're in a cast, right? They put you to work. And I saw I saw so many guys, excuse me, come and go. And I also saw cadre muck about if they didn't like you, you'd be doing like.

Nole (47:55.112)
Yeah, you gotta work.

Nole (48:07.974)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Mir Bahmanyar (48:09.119)
and you're doing your pushups to qualify and get out and go to battalion and you'll be doing 50 pushups and they count 20. And you can do 50, 52 excellent pushups if they don't like you.

Barry Nisbet (48:11.621)
yeah.

Nole (48:16.2)
Yep. Yep.

Barry Nisbet (48:22.088)
yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (48:22.42)
You're not going to graduate in this class. So these are the kind of things. Or there was a guy I went with and he broke his ankle walking, stepping into some hole in the middle of the night, you know, and boom, and you're gone. And then coming back from that is really hard. So I do think you can be the toughest guy, the best, whatever. But luck definitely is like Barry said, that's that's a key component to surviving, going on to the next stages and whatever. mean.

Nole (48:33.212)
Yep. Yeah. Right.

Mir Bahmanyar (48:51.59)
know and some of us don't have luck that's the other thing so no shame in that either so

Nole (48:56.22)
Yeah, yeah, that's totally fair. All right, Barry, let's go back. Let's go back into the Afghanistan. Go back to the GAN. You got any stories you're willing to share of maybe a time that things kind of went sideways?

Barry Nisbet (49:10.75)
Yeah, you know, and one of the, you know, I mean, things went sideways, you know, regularly. But I mean, you know, one in particular, and it's, it's a chapter in the book. And, you know, we would operate in, you know, depending on what we were doing, we might be in pairs, there might be three, four, six of us at all to dependent on the on the operation.

Nole (49:12.412)
Those are always the funnest stories.

Barry Nisbet (49:40.238)
And the thing with snipers is we're all, you know, we're all trained to shoot, we're all trained to spot. So we can switch in position, whatever job needs to be done. So, you know, and one particular evening we were doing an infill and there was four of us out and my job on that tour in 2006 was I was the point guy.

That was my job, get us from A to B. Obviously we all had input on how we moved and where we went, but ultimately my job was, I was the eyes and ears, hearing and seeing everything first. it was a clear, cool night in Afghanistan and were, the four of us were out on a patrol and we...

we went through a bit of a gap in a wall. was first, second guy came through, third guy came through and fourth guy, boom, ID. And I still remember it like it was yesterday and I'm about 20, 30 feet ahead and that boom goes off. So the instinct is drop to a knee, guns up in the shoulder, what's happening, what's happening. And I remember hearing like,

Nole (50:46.759)
Mm.

Barry Nisbet (51:03.946)
must have been a piece of shrapnel or something going through the tree. And I thought it was a grenade coming in, I thought we were in an ambush. So I was like, okay, I got to like jump into this ditch. So my brain knew it, but my legs didn't answer. So I basically fell flat on my face. And, you know, then it's, you know, then it's things sort of calm and, and, and you have to like, assess kind of what's going on. And, you know,

Nole (51:19.078)
Ha ha!

Barry Nisbet (51:32.49)
unfortunate, but you know, one of our guys, you know, hit an ID. And, you know, after that, you're just into, you know, life saving mode, right for him, you know, the whatever our objective was is is scrubbed. And now it's, you know, we got to react and you know, we've got, you know, one guy on the radio, I'm doing first aid, you know, like one guy's doing security. So, you know, it's sort of those

moments when you kind of realized really how vulnerable you can be out there. You know, you've got minimal medical equipment. And, you know, now you're trying to keep your body alive and you're calling for help. You know, so, you know, that really brings, you know, just the reality of what you're doing. And, you know, to kind of go back to our first question, or the first one we were talking about, you know, the glamour of

of being a sniper, know, well, you know, the part they don't show is, you know, when you're trying to get to your objective, you know, and what you're going through and what the dangers are, you know, and ultimately, you know, he lost both his legs below the knee, but he survives. And I'll say, you know, generally he's, you know, he's, he's thrived and, you know, that was a, you know, a tough

Nole (52:49.576)
Wow.

Barry Nisbet (53:01.72)
Definitely a tough time.

Mir Bahmanyar (53:06.921)
I should add one thing not to this necessarily, having written a book on Rangers doing recovery and all that kind of stuff, search and rescue missions and everything. The advantage we have as Americans is just the hardware. You we spend so much money, a trillion dollars a year. And it actually shows, I think, because everyone I've always spoken to in the...

Global War on Terror has always said how excellent the support is. So when you get compromised, you have all the fixed wing, rotary wings, you've got so many things stacked up high that you can call in that'll bring doom to whomever quickly. I'm not so sure you had that at that particular time. I don't know how much support you had in the Canadian, because the Americans were busy in Iraq, I think, at that time. So I don't know if they provided all the fixed wing, rotary wing that you would need.

Nole (53:37.169)
Hmm.

Mir Bahmanyar (53:58.423)
for a rescue mission. I don't know how that went.

Barry Nisbet (54:00.694)
You know, I remember we had a UAV up, I don't think it was armed, which I mean, gives you, know, whatever their optics are on it, and you know, they can tell us, okay, there's nothing moving around you, but you know, it's still, you you're there, you know, and we had to go to white light just to basically be able to assess the injuries and provide the proper.

Nole (54:24.487)
Hmm.

Barry Nisbet (54:28.386)
first aid. you like I said, you're just, you know, you're, vulnerable at that, at that time.

Nole (54:37.64)
I have a buddy, we've had him on the podcast actually, he spent some time in the Marines in Iraq and he ended up when the Ukrainian war kicked off, he ended up going over there and I feel safe to share this story because he shared it on the podcast. that was kind of his biggest aha moment when he got over there to go help fight. He ended up embedded with the Ukrainian unit and that was the biggest thing was just the difference in the lack of

backup or support, if you will. just that, that changes things a lot. Now, obviously in the moment where the IED is going off, there's, there's no level of backup and support that can do anything about that. But there is a certain level of, know, to your point, Mir, of the knowledge that I can get a gunship overhead or there is already one there. like that's a, you know, I, you know, I've been

Mir Bahmanyar (55:33.107)
Yeah, exactly.

Nole (55:37.256)
in that situation where you're on a target and there is an AC-130 gunship up there circling around. It's just a really good feeling. He can't stop you from getting blown up by an IED, but man, would you say, Meir, he can bring the doom?

Barry Nisbet (55:44.45)
Yeah. No.

Mir Bahmanyar (55:45.491)
Yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (55:51.005)
Yeah, we can bring the doom.

Barry Nisbet (55:52.302)
You know what? I've had that exact same experience, Noel, same tour prior to that where we got to see that. were out with the ODA and the JTAC would always kind of hang out with us because we saw everything. We always watched. And at night they brought in a specter and I slept well that night on that.

Rocky Mountain, just to the drone of those four propellers overhead, know, definitely a good feeling. It is a beautiful sound.

Nole (56:25.18)
beautiful sound. What was your J for the for the listener that hasn't read the book, and just for the fun of it, what was your JTAC like?

Barry Nisbet (56:36.142)
So our JTAC was like, all of those guys are just studs. They're just, I don't know. And I've had this conversation with other guys too. They're just different. Like they're so calm. They're so methodical. They're so just technically competent. And I'll give you the example. was the before.

Nole (56:42.279)
Mm-hmm.

Nole (56:51.741)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Barry Nisbet (57:08.63)
the AC-30 came over as we set up on this GAR and I'm with the ODA and the JTAC Air Force guy Ryan, like I said, he would always kind of just come and sit in our hole and be like, okay boys, what do you see? Because he'd love to do his job. And all of a sudden Taliban like horseshoe ambush, they hit us from both sides as the sun's coming down and RPGs arc across the sky.

Ryan comes running and jumps in our hole and he's just like, where, what, what do you see? And it's just like, you know, target and he's like rounds are flying. And I remember he's just kind of sitting on the rock, kind of hunched over just like he's having a conversation with his mom, you know, like, Hey mom, yeah. So I'm just going to need you to, yeah, this grid here. And we're just going to need you to drop a bomb. And we had like four or five levels of air stacked and he's just like,

Those guys are just amazing at what they do and such an asset.

Nole (58:12.134)
Yeah, they're different. are. They are different. I, I worked around a lot of different groups of guys in the, in the quote unquote community. And there was nothing like our guy's name was Abe, the guy that we were normally out with. And he was exactly like that. He was probably Ryan's brother or something, but they were different. They were so good to have around just such a, such a comforting presence. It is.

Barry Nisbet (58:36.301)
Yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (58:37.844)
I mean, their training is phenomenal. I mean, really they do go through so much training there. Yeah, it's really great. I mean, to be fair, I've met a few when I was at the Pentagon visiting on a writer tour thing and bumped into four of them that were made available for interview. And you could just see the...

Nole (58:42.372)
Yeah, their pipeline is insane. Yeah. Yeah.

Mir Bahmanyar (58:58.846)
professionalism. They didn't even have to open their mouths. You could just see how they carried themselves and you know, no bravado or anything, just hardcore professionals and with all the right badges on their uniform and all that stuff. So yeah, they are truly something.

Nole (59:03.654)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nole (59:10.702)
Mm-hmm. Right, right.

It often seems like the guys who could maybe, I don't really think justifies the right word, but that could justify the, the bravado tough guy. I'm the best around attitude. Those are the humblest guys. It feels like a lot of the time. And usually the guys that are doing that, that are puffing their chests out are a little bit of a paper tiger, but that's probably a whole nother episode. Barry with the, with the complex and just.

Mir Bahmanyar (59:30.952)
Yeah. Yeah.

Barry Nisbet (59:38.798)
Yeah.

Nole (59:47.56)
I mean, I don't really know what to call it, but with his.

with as much as you have to take into consideration when you're taking a long range shot as a sniper, the technical aspect of it, right? There's a lot of parts of that that are personally controllable and trainable by you, your breathing, your trigger pull, all that kind of stuff. But as technology has advanced from what you've seen in your early days to now, do you feel like, well, I'll ask it this way.

It seems clear to me as a non sniper that not everybody can be a sniper. Like it's not something that mentally or physically everybody can do, but do you feel like there ever be a point where technology has gotten so advanced that just anybody can take that long range crazy shot or will you always need a sniper behind that rifle?

Barry Nisbet (01:00:43.724)
Thank

Barry Nisbet (01:00:47.294)
you know, I, and I think it what you're talking about is can anyone be a marksman? Yep. Being a marksman, if you just want someone to lay behind a gun, you're to give them the data and they're going to pull the trigger. That is a that is a very teachable skill. But to be a sniper to to integrate into you know, the stocking, you know, the

the patrolling, the field craft, the camouflage, the concealment, the observation to put that all into one package into a person. No, technology's never going to be able to replace that. Certain aspects, technology is going to help, is going to aid the sniper, but you're still going to need that

highly skilled, highly motivated person to be able to operate that technology, to be able to take that shot, be able to suck it up when it's raining, when it's cold, when you're hungry, when you're tired, and you're gonna need that person. And I think, and I'm still connected to the community

the sniper community and the guys who are still in and even the SF guys, they're like, yeah, the technology is evolving, but so is the individual sniper as well. They have to evolve together.

Nole (01:02:31.004)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. almost seems like from the... That almost sounds like in my asking that question, I'm almost asking the Hollywood version of it, right? Like you just take this hero guy and you put him on the hill and then... But there's a problem, right? You don't just get dropped on the hill. There's all the other stuff that goes into it. So that makes sense. essentially, AI isn't going to take the job. They're not going to take over.

Mir Bahmanyar (01:02:59.068)
As long as you have rules of engagement, you will need people like Barry. Once the rules of engagement go out the window, then you just have B-52s or whatever the equivalent is, just laying everything down, right? So in that sense, who knows?

Barry Nisbet (01:02:59.084)
I don't think it's going to take the job,

Nole (01:03:01.148)
Yeah.

Nole (01:03:04.838)
Hmm.

Nole (01:03:10.76)
Right. Interesting.

Nole (01:03:20.744)
Barry, did you ever have any time over there when you were overseas where you were...

Nole (01:03:29.628)
where you did anything that was maybe didn't seem like it was or let me stop them asking this terribly. Let me start over.

So as a sniper, right, everybody immediately thinks that, you're, you know, if they know a little bit, they know you're getting to whatever your location is and then you're observing, maybe you're making some shots, maybe not. But do you have any stories about other types of things that you did, other actions that you took over there that weren't pulling a trigger on a rifle that were still part of your job that the normal folks wouldn't know about?

Barry Nisbet (01:04:05.519)
Yeah, and you know, great, great question, Noel, because it just sort of talks about the flexibility of of a sniper. So I mean, you know, depending on the weapon system we have, you know, it's it's got a range, you know, it's got a range that, you know, we calculate our hit probabilities at. But, you know, the enemy is doesn't always walk into that effective range of that of that weapon.

Um, you know, and, ultimately, you know, if our job is to, you know, is to take out the enemy, then we need to figure out what else is available to us. And I mean, especially in the 2006 tour, you know, was, it was pretty hectic and, um, we got to be pretty intimate with our artillery. Um, you know, those, those guys were absolute rock stars, uh, incredibly accurate and.

Nole (01:04:53.52)
Hmm.

Barry Nisbet (01:05:01.718)
you know, we learned really quickly if we couldn't do it with the long rifle, we'll call those guys and we use them a lot. They were phenomenal, phenomenal asset for us. know, and you know, also we're also trained to call in like, you know, emergency CAS, so emergency close air support. You know, just the bare bones, you know, know, basics, the target grid, you know,

Nole (01:05:24.167)
Mm-hmm.

Barry Nisbet (01:05:31.276)
we have a little proforma for it. And you know, that's also another option for us too, which we use in a few instances as well. So, you know, just all different tools in the toolbox to use.

Nole (01:05:44.777)
Yeah, I love that. Which speaks to really just the depth of the sniper position because my role was, I was a forward observer. So I was the guy calling for fire support. Now they train you traditionally in the big army in artillery. Reality, when you get to Ranger Battalion is we're not talking to the artillery guys. We have our own mortar team, but even them, they're not really setting up because we're moving so much. So you're talking to air support. So that was like my entire job. That was my training.

But that for you is just like, that's just one corner of your training. Like that's one thing extra that you have to have in your pocket in addition to everything else, whereas that was like my one job. So I like that.

Mir Bahmanyar (01:06:26.547)
Important job.

Nole (01:06:28.648)
Pretty important, yeah, can be.

Barry Nisbet (01:06:28.886)
Yeah, very important job.

Nole (01:06:35.772)
Barry, before we go, you got any more stories that you want to sell? Not sell, that you want to tell to hook the listener a little bit more into getting this book and reading it? I don't want to give the whole thing away, but.

Mir Bahmanyar (01:06:40.371)
You

Barry Nisbet (01:06:48.918)
I mean, honestly, you know, I always have to give mere props because if it wasn't for him, this book never would have happened. He was passionate about it from the get go and he just, you know, hooked me in and hooked Gordon and really pushed us to write the book that we wanted to write as snipers. And it's just, I think...

You know, the book is, just gives you such a, you know, and I know you've read it, Noel, it just, you said it's not, it's not chest pumping. It's not, we did this, you know, it, brings you through, you know, what we learned as through training or weapons and then, you know, very personal stories, you know, into and through deployment.

And know, there's three different, you know, there's three different voices in the book. There's, there's Gord, there's myself. there's Eve Bedard as well. And then, you know, Mir writes chapters, you know, based on some interviews he did with us as well. And I just think it's such a well-rounded book. And I think it demystifies sort of the Hollywood idea of a sniper. And it, it really lets.

the reader know what we do day in and day out. Like every tour that Canadians are on, there's sniper teams and they're out there every single night and every single day doing the things that we've talked about and the things that are in that book. And it's just really, to let the public know it's more than just two pounds of pressure pulling a trigger. It's just so much more than that.

Nole (01:08:15.741)
Mm-hmm.

Mir Bahmanyar (01:08:39.185)
The book does have a couple of very good, I don't want to call them good, but some very detailed descriptions of missions. And I think that's the strength of it. And I also think the strength ultimately is when you read the stalking chapter, and it's a lengthy chapter, but like you read it.

And if you want to be a sniper and you read this, there should be no surprises when you go to sniper school because it's that detailed in it. And it's very emotional. You know, the pain, I mean, you know, anytime you hump a rock like we have in our lives, you just, know, the pain, you know what it, what it feels like. And I can just imagine when I read the stalking chapter, I'm like,

Yeah, this is terrible. I don't really wanna do this. So in that sense, it's very good. But there are some good mission profiles, how they inserted the problems they may have encountered, the shots they take or didn't take, and being the guard dog of the line dogs moving down into a village and stuff like that. I think overall, it gives you a great...

Nole (01:09:25.03)
Yeah.

Barry Nisbet (01:09:29.422)
Yeah, what?

Nole (01:09:41.82)
Mm-hmm.

Mir Bahmanyar (01:09:46.667)
sense of what it takes to be one. You know, like we've said before, the technical stuff, the emotional stuff of going through the training and then the actual execution, the practical application of all that, as well as some emotional things, you know, these guys aren't emotionless robots, you know, so there's a lot of, think that's the strength. It's really just about guys.

Nole (01:10:03.728)
Right, right.

Mir Bahmanyar (01:10:10.971)
writing about their experiences and I like the book very much as I've said before so anyway.

Nole (01:10:15.88)
Yeah, no, I would agree with all that. I would agree with all that. And I was hoping to close exactly there with just like a good pitch as to why I think, why you guys think guys should read this and why they benefit from it. And I think that is, it is a really well-rounded book. it's got, like you said, it's got the technical aspects of it, which I actually personally really enjoy reading, even though there's a lot of it that I might not really understand, but I am picking up some of it, you know?

Mir Bahmanyar (01:10:43.037)
Yeah.

Nole (01:10:45.094)
And then we combine that with really just good, what felt to me like true storytelling of the actual events on the ground and not, again, like back to what I said earlier, not something that was written by a ghostwriter that's going to pump it up and make it exciting. But just like the real world stuff and then, yeah, the decision making processes and the motions and yeah, it was really good.

Mir Bahmanyar (01:11:11.059)
Super.

Nole (01:11:12.572)
Well, I appreciate both of you guys coming on and talking about this. book is Send It, Canada's Snipers at War in Afghanistan. Barry, where's the best place for people to buy this? Is there a place that you guys prefer or does it matter?

Barry Nisbet (01:11:12.824)
Awesome.

Barry Nisbet (01:11:24.597)
I mean, it doesn't matter. You can get it on Amazon. don't know. Is Indigo Canadian? Is that a Canadian company? I mean, & Noble. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no, I mean, we're just, like I said, we're happy to share our stories and we think people will really enjoy it.

Mir Bahmanyar (01:11:30.395)
Yes, Indigo is Canadian. Barnes and Noble should have it and all that.

Nole (01:11:33.005)
It must be. I've never heard of it.

Mir Bahmanyar (01:11:43.817)
hey, hey Barry, one more thing. I should say that although this book is about the Royal Canadian Regiment, you know, these particular, the particular battalion and all that.

It should be a reflection of all the various snipers throughout Canada. So it's not like it's just this unit that is awesome and magnificent. This is really kind of like, I think the generic look, not generic, but a good look at Canadian snipers. So everything that these guys have gone through, other snipers have gone through it with different regiments and all that stuff. So it's not an exclusive Royal Canadian Regiment book. It's not intended to be that.

Barry Nisbet (01:12:02.134)
Absolutely.

Mir Bahmanyar (01:12:26.341)
Let's be fair to all the other Canadian snipers out there.

Barry Nisbet (01:12:29.046)
Absolutely.

Nole (01:12:31.502)
Excellence across the board.

Barry Nisbet (01:12:33.933)
You bet.

Nole (01:12:36.026)
Awesome, gentlemen. Well, thank you for coming on. Really appreciate your time.

Barry Nisbet (01:12:39.822)
Thanks for having us, Noel.

Mir Bahmanyar (01:12:40.061)
Thank you.

Nole (01:12:42.205)
This has been the Fire You Carry podcast.