Ep 07 Op Telic 8 20 years on: Maj Stu Nicholson

Maj Stu Nicholson talks to us about being a Company Commander in Combat. 

Stu was my Boss for a period of time during one of the most memorable times of my career. It was clear to me then how passionate he was about his people.

Stu is a man who is a fantastic leader. During Telic 8 he was a Company commander who took his men on a very kinetic and history generating journey.

Some great stories about great men doing a great job.

Thanks Stu.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:15

We discuss not many of the lessons they learned and also share advice and experience. So this is part two of a series of Operation Telecate podcasts that we're doing focusing on uh the Second Battalion War Angular uh efforts in Iraq in 2006. Again, a very benchmark and kinetic tour. A lot of lessons were learned and a lot of very good soldiering was taking place. Um I'm very lucky today to be sat in front of a guy called Stu Nicholson. Uh I know Stu from he used to be my boss at the infantry battle school in Brecon on senior division. Um two of the best years of my life, I think, operations aside. Uh Stu was a company commander on that tour uh within the poachers. Uh and he's just gonna sort of run us through his um career in the British Army uh and then we'll pick up from there. Stuart's great to see you. If you could just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, that'd be great. Uh, and and sort of finish on where you were on telecate, that'd be fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 1:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So um, so I'm a bit of a bit of an odd case, and that I wasn't commissioned Royal Anglians, so I was um I was fusiliers, so I'd I'd always wanted to join the army. Um I think a lot of people, it was never a conscious decision, it was just a thing I was always gonna do and I I drifted into. And um I sort of thought, you know, if you're gonna be a bear, you've got to be a grizzly. So if you're gonna join the army, you join the infantry, don't you? And I um I found myself doing A-levels in uni, so it became apparent that the officer path was probably where I was going. And I was actually sponsored through university. I did my officer selection before uni, was sponsored through university, then Sandhurst after uni, and then I was commissioned into the Royal Regent Fuseliers. I did first Bosnia tour, then joined the 2nd Battalion in Germany as they converted to armour, did another Bosnia tour there. Then oddly, I never went back to the fuseliers again. All of the jobs I did after that were at E. So I was instructional war division, I was brigade staff in Northern Ireland, then I did staff college. And when I was at staff college, the job I was meant to be doing next was some god-awful procurement job. And while I was on the course, that job was disestablished. And at the time, Alistair Wilde, yeah, full he was a full colonel then in the in the regiment, and he was the divisional director of the bit of staff college I was in. And unbeknownst to me, the Royal Anglians or the poachers were diffier rifle company commander. Their succession planning wasn't fitting together. So he sort of said, Well, this guy's on the course, he's okay. And I found myself being told I wasn't going to that job I was going to go to, I was going to company command with two Royal Anglian. And so I um finished staff college and then took over a company in Northern Ireland in uh in Badikelli.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:47

Um which was, I think that had been a like the later Northern Ireland tours hadn't been a great time for the battalion. It was fairly dull. Um the devil will find work for idle hands to do that. The troops were, you know, there wasn't a lot to focus on, but it was a good time to take over. And while we were on that tour, we were warned off that we were going to deploy on telecate. Um, and so a brilliant thing for the company was because when you're in a residential Northern Ireland tour, because of the way the op cycle works, rarely are you all together, you know, you've got someone different notes to move, QRFs and things. But we got pulled out of Northern Ireland and sent on Excised Saffron Sands in Jordan, and we did six weeks in Jordan, and that was absolutely formative for the company because we even in the first bit where you did sort of organise training through the day, live firing and stuff, and you could travel back to the tented camp at night, but we opted to stay out in the desert, just non-tack. And my CQMS would bring out food all an evening, and we just sat out in the desert. Um, and I think a really, really important thing for getting a company to where it was was that it wasn't even the soldiering, it was the sat around together, having a laugh, and becoming a coherent group where everyone knew each other. You know, by the end of that, I knew all of my soldiers' names, I knew what their aspirations were, where they came from, when they're married, did they have a girlfriend, you know, what the character was like, and we all got to know each other and um and came back, I would say a different company, you know, and and we got quite good. And we started taking a bit of pride in being quite good, yeah, which got us in a good place for pre-diplomat training for telecom.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

Yeah, I think um, yeah, the cohesion piece is there is nothing like it because I think the tool that it then gives you is you say knowing your people, you also then know when there's presence of the abnormal, when the blokes aren't right, or the men and women aren't right. Um, yes, that's great. What what an experience and what a nice way to grow. And so Saffron Sands, how long was that before you went out the door onto Telek?

SPEAKER_03 4:40

So that was that was towards the end of 2000 and let me get it right. That was end of 2005. We came back from there to Northern Ireland, then we arms plotted back to the UK to Turn Hill, had leave, and then we started pre-deployment training in the January and deployed in the April. So it'll be about four or five months before we deployed. But from then it was pretty much literally came back from that move back and then just straight into pre-deployment training. Yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Um, and your pre-deployment training in hindsight, was it worth its value? Was it good? Was it relevant?

SPEAKER_03 5:12

Do you know what it was? It was. I think a couple of things. One is it's just time spent working together, yeah, getting to know, yeah, and as we'll come on to the odd sort of up type day where they just throw everything at you and you think, oh, what's this made-up shit? And then it happens to you on ops. And I would genuinely say as well that some of the things we bumped up against in operations we'd done in training. And so I had like, or we had an already in place template of what to do when that happened. But I think it was, I mean, it's hard because every telic tool was different, yeah, and you were kind of training for the last one to some extent. Yeah. And certainly when we deployed, the poachers had an odd role when we first went out there in that we weren't a groundholding battle group, each company had a different task. So my company was theoretically doing liaison with the um Iraqi army. B company was doing liaison with Iraqi police, C Company were Brigade Reserve, and D Company were doing kind of convoy ups and stuff. Yeah. So we trained to do a fairly pedestrian thing, really. Although we had trained for every adventure activity, but we went out there thinking we're going to do something fairly. This wasn't like omelette stuff, this was just going to talk to the Iraqi army and things, and that's what we did for the first couple of months, which was relatively tedious. And at that point, the tour was quite quiet. I mean, all things are relative, yeah. You know, battlegroups were taking the odd casualty from IEDs, but things hadn't ramped up as much as they did later on in the tour. Yeah. And what was um geographically, where were you? So so my company were in Basra Palace, in um in the southern part of Basra. Sweatbox. Yeah, yeah. And when we arrived, there was one battlegroup covering Basra Palace, and we were just sorry, covering all of Basra, which was the um light infantry, to LI. They were covering all of Basra, and we were just like a resident company in one of their locations, as we did liaison and stuff. But a few months into the tour, the situation was deteriorating to the point where what was happening in the city was pretty much beyond the span of command of one battle group. And then the decision was taken to form a second battle group in the city, and that was the Poachers Battle Group. So the light infantry retained the north of the city, and the poachers took over the south, so we became um City South Battle Group. Now, weirdly, of the subunits that were in the battle group, it was it was two Roll Engine headquarters, a company touralangion, which was my company, but then there was um a company of LI or Armoured Infantry, we were light rolling snatch. There was a battery of artillery, but they were doing pseudo-infantry. Um, and then later on in the tour, we got when they shut Kampapu Nanji up north, we got an additional company of PWRR. So oddly, we were the only poachers company in the poachers battle group, everyone else was battlegrouped to other battle groups.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Yeah, right. So that's um and would you say I know that about a month into that tour there was uh the unfortunate incident where a helicopter was shot down. And I know I know the LI were involved in that. We were on the ground on that. Yeah, did it was that the turning point?

SPEAKER_03 8:11

Yeah, yeah, definitely. It was palpable. And uh it um I was sat in, I was sat in my office in one of the buildings at Passworth Palace, which is just next to the HLS, and it heard a helicopter landing on and then lifting, and then a bit of a kerfuffle, and someone came in and said, I think someone's just shot a helicopter down, it's just gone down. Yeah, and when I went out, you could still see. I mean, I think they ultimately decided it had been a SAM that hit it. You could still see a trail from what looked like a SAM and then a big cloud where it hit the helicopter, and that that dropped. Now it was the LI did the cordon, but um one of my multiples who was attached to someone else was crashed out onto the cordon, and then subsequently I was sent up with another multiple to do liaison with the Iraqi army on the cordon, um, and I think it was about a three-day job because it was quite complex. Um but what I would say though was I think you're right, I what I detected there was there was a ton of public order on the cordon um and and the locals, I think they'd seen that we weren't invulnerable, but they'd seen us looking weak. Yeah, and and I think as well, also we were approaching um elections and things, and I think there were people who insurgent groups, political groups who wanted to sow a bit of um uh instability, and then they saw their sort of window that we were on the back foot a bit. And and it wasn't yeah, I would say that was a noticeable change. After that, the atmosphere in the city was different, and then that became we were s we weren't a groundholding battle group then, but I think it was largely not solely, but that was one of the instances where they went, This is too big for yeah, the city's too big for one battlegroup, and they formed us up.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

So, with the change of the atmospherics in the city, obviously the roles changed slightly. When did you start what what the sort of daily task you were getting as a company?

SPEAKER_03 9:56

Right, yeah. So once the battle group was formed, I mean Basra was a big city, yeah. You know, it was a million odd people with two battlegroups covering it. But the reality is you say a battle group, our battle group had two big locations. So we had Basra Palace, and then we had the old state building where the LI company were. Yeah. That LI company had to guard itself and have a QRF. Straight away, they're not a company on the ground. Yeah, within the city within the palace, we had two companies at any one time. You've got a platoon on guard, you've got a QRF um multiple, and stuff just and and also we also had to provide a multiple to a thing called the Provisional Joint Operations Centre, which was like the Iraqi Emergency and Security Forces Coordination Centre, and it was the Wild West in there. They they're all in there with a pistol on, and you went in there and you thought, this feels more dangerous than when I didn't come in. But we also had a multiple living up there. So by the time you've got all these multiples tied down, the reality is we could put out as a battle group a normal jogging of platoon to cover half a city of a of a couple of million people. And um, so what the routine would normally be was. We had a lot of LECs, locally employed contractors, work, so cleaners, interpreters, and the threat against them was enormous, and quite a lot of them disappeared quite often. And so around about the time there was a shift change, we'd surge in the local area to try and deter anything, say surge, you know, with a platoon. Yeah. Then through the day there would be framework patrolling, just trying to dominate the ground, have a bit of presence. And then at night, there was framework patrolling and trying to dominate the ground. And in fact, the night stuff tended to take over because we were getting an all a lot and an increasing amount of indirect fire, so mortars and rockets into the into the palace. In fact, by the end of the tour, I think it was the most indirect-fired place in the world. Um and so, to in an effort to deter that, we were on the ground a lot at night. Um so the thing that I remember about that sort of period of a tour was there was no day and night. You slept in between things, yeah, and we did almost more at night than at day. And so you were sort of semi-nocturnal, but actually just being on the ground all the time got us a really knowing our patch. Yeah. You know, you knew the rat runs, you knew how the box, you could, you could see when things didn't look right. Yeah. And we just got good at moving together, you know, and and it's the things of you know, so I would rarely did we employ as a company, but if we had two multiples out, often I would take tack out as well. Um to sort of control the movement of the two multiples, so the multiple commanders could control just their multiple, the platoon commander could just make his multiple. And a lot of that was we just got good at you've got to go through a choke point, a bridge, wow, you know what you're gonna do when it's a deal, you know. So moving people, it was like chess moving people around all the time. But what I really noticed as well was I'll keep coming back to that, my company was an incredibly easy company to command because the initiative that people showed all the time and the fact that they were happy to speak up, a lot of the time it wasn't me making the decision, it was a platoon commander, a platoon sergeant, or a full screw going, should I? You go, Yeah, that's a really good idea. I would have thought of that, I didn't have my head buried in that in this, you know what I mean? And so it became almost like organic how we moved around the city. Um so we were tired a lot, and and one thing was we were a snatch, sorry, in the armored land rover. Say armoured, you know, at best. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the rules were because of the ID threat, all moves of snatch to be led by a warrior. So my company got given two warrior, which were like they scraped the barrel of the British Army because we weren't armored infantry. So it's these two warrior battery pallets we took over. They didn't have comms, didn't have radios fitted, so we had to talk to them on PRR, and then we were talking on other stuff. One of them, it's power traverse was knackered, so it traversed on hand gears only. Um, and I had, well, I started off with three warrior crew, the idea being you could cycle them through. But for various reasons, you have people disappear on courses, you have people posted and things, you have people get hurt, not by enemy action, but just get ill or whatever. And then it rapidly became I essentially had two warrior crew, but they had to go out on every patrol. So whilst the rifle platooners were cycling through, the warrior crews were out to the extent that and they were phenomenal. There's a guy called Danny Young ended up commanding them, and he had been my um, I don't know if you know Danny Young, I think he's he's a major in three-roll engine now, I think. Maybe, yeah, maybe. He'd been my company stalleman. So you have a certain idea of what a company stallman is, do you know what I mean? Maybe not at the front of the queue when we're trying to find people for a BFT and stuff. But I couldn't, when we had to knock up the warrior crews, we couldn't, I couldn't take someone out of my rifle platoons. So I looked at who I had and I had a full screen stores, and I went, okay, Danny, you're you're gonna be one of the warrior commanders.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Was he part of the legacy when the poachers were warrior? And he seriously.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

He had done it a long time ago, but he had been like a private soldier or something, you know what I mean? But he was phenomenal for a couple of reasons. A, he had like a massive tactical head on him, in that it was like, and we'll come on to some of the times where we needed to abuse the warriors for the punchy purposes, and as I thought it, they did it. Do you know it just? But the other thing was just an example of leadership. Danny was just a funny guy, and nothing ever appeared to stress him or anything, and his crews were working. There was one time when there was a patrol getting ready to go out, and I went to see him, and I said, When was the last time your crew slept? And it was 30 hours ago. And I said, You don't have to, you know. And I and I went and said to Battalion, we could this is this is not safe now. But his crews were all still happy, he just kept them, you know. There was no that's great, you know, and he just had them, and they he had them enjoying what they were doing and feeling bought in, and he could read them and he could pick them up when they were down and stuff, and these guys would have happily worked themselves into the deck without complaining. It was up to me to realise, oh my god, you know, yeah, we can't keep doing this, but but so yeah. So the warrior crews, I would say, had an almost atypical experience. Everyone else worked hard, you know. Don't underestimate, you know, even when they weren't patrolled, they were working, they were staggered on, you know, so they were doing gate guard and that sort of shit, where you don't get a full run at sleep, and then you'd roll off that and you go into orders and then you're out the gate.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

I you I'm thinking back now, so we were out a very, very different tour, but we were out there the summer before. Um, and I seem to remember because again, we had snatch for the whole thing. Um, and I seem to remember having we had to meet the warrior on the ground, so we I don't think we had to leave of it and go, it wasn't with us entirely, but there were certain areas where we'd meet it before we went into like a sheer flats or places like that, yeah. Which to be fair is a good thing because that was a bit sketchy. Yes, but um, yeah, and there seemed to be plenty of them then for for whatever reason. I can't remember the battlegroup that was warrior, but I didn't know that. I didn't know everything you did had to be yeah, had to be warrior-led. And and I guess the thinking behind that is to give you firepower extraction.

SPEAKER_03 17:15

Do you know what the main thing was? It was sandbagging. If someone's gonna hit the IED, yeah, the warrior would hit it. Yeah, and that's which and then you think back to F4 what Danny Young's crews were doing. Yeah, they were essentially magnets. They were IED. Yeah. Pigeons, do you know what I mean? It's crazy. Um, you know, and a warrior would potentially take the knock, but you don't want to be in it. But then we did later on, as it got punchier, yeah, they became more than just sandbag, and they were yeah, and and you're right, we used them for Kazovac and things. When I say Kazovac, again, we were very fortunate, it was never enemy, yeah. Sometimes it was a heater.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:50

Um, so the warriors were, I mean, they they just had presents as well. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, you know, if you come around the corner and snatch, you're not gonna frighten anyone. Yeah, but if you follow by a warrior, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

I always think about the warrior. You know how that misses done does that thing where she moves her head then moves her eyes and looks at you? Yes, when the warrior does that. Glorious.

SPEAKER_03 18:07

Glorious, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then so that was the routiney stuff, but then we would get, and we increasingly did strike ups, so raids on places, and um, and that that felt like you were doing something, you know. The um framework patrols largely felt like you were tempting fate. Yeah, yeah, you know, bingo. Yeah, yeah, it was hard to make yourself feel like the the risk was always worth the outcome. But the strike-ups, you felt like you were doing something.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Yeah, I spoke to uh Tom Poe on a previous podcast about his um, I think he was in C Company.

SPEAKER_03 18:39

Who were the brigade reserving strike-ups?

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Yeah, yeah. Um and I always sort of wonder, you know, the word strike is quite ambiguous as to what you know, what's the mission statement? Kill, capture, destroy, clear, whatever it might be. Um, so you're working to target packs alongside special forces.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

Well, not always special forces, um, so there's different, like, so it happened in lots of different ways. Essentially it was striking a building either because they thought there was stuff in it, or there were people in it that they wanted. Yeah. Um and it largely depended on how high priority it was. So the highest priority SF would do it. Yeah. But SF, there was only a very small SF team in Basra, who didn't have because essentially when you did a strike, the element of it was you had the actual striking team who would go into the building, you had an inner cordon who were around the target but facing in to stop anyone coming out. Then you had an outer cordon who were outside that who were looking out to stop anyone interfering with you while you were doing it. And the SF team had the capacity to do the striking, and all and sometimes not all of the striking. And so frequently we would do all of the rap around what they did. Yeah. But but quite often there were strike-ups where uh it wasn't as high priority and resources were, you know. So we we frequently did strike-ops, which was just us, yeah. And I think sometimes it was a question of what they expected to find on the target as an resistance or whatever as well. Yeah. But we we uh increasingly were doing strike-ops, I would say we were doing at the height of it one a week, one a four night or something, and um and they would be I mean that would be a whole night.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

Yeah. And and what was your sort of planning cycle for that? Were you were a lot of them quite hot and you were out that night, or were you? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:26

Because normally it was it was done on intelligence, which someone had got somewhere somehow. I never knew what the sources were. But frequently they wanted to hit it while it was still a thing. You know, it might be, you know, they were always relatively time sensitive. Yeah. So we would often get around about lunchtime afternoon, we're doing it. And a few things that happened then was um things like that the troops weren't allowed to go into the the little local shop and stuff because they'd been instantly going there talking about stuff, and you think it's like I'll go in the camp then. Yeah, as in there's a little shop in the camp. So far, right, we're we're quiet now. Um, finding where all the troops were, because it was a big sprawling camp, and then starting the battle procedure. Um the more you did it, the more of a not quite a drill, but a lot of it was clear. You know, we did, you know, there's there's no future in set of pattern and always doing it the same. But the big moving parts were largely the same. Yeah, you know, um the way we would get there, the way we moved across ground, we'd rehearse so much. Yeah. Normally the orders were actually on the target, you know, what we do when we get there. Um and again, you you know, you are either you know, the strike my my company had been both striking call sign and and calling. Yeah, you know. Um and so it was a very rapid turnaround. Um you I'll be honest, it was a little bit exciting when you got warned off. You know, here we go, we're gonna we're gonna do something now. Yeah, and you know you're raiding somewhere, yeah. That's kind of Ali, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. You know, you want to be a soldier, yeah, and that's what you want to do. Yeah, you want to kick in doors and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Did you um did you tend to To try and keep the same people in the same role. So you effectively had a product in a box on a shelf that if you're gonna well, we're gonna do a raid, everyone owed their job, so it watered down your.

SPEAKER_03 22:09

It wasn't always like that because very rarely they'd have all of the company available. So there'd be people who were on guard, there'd be multiple a multiple up in the PJOC. Yeah. They'd always do a multiple on leave. Or multiples worth on leave. You know, that's the re that's something you forget. It's on paper, I had six multiples. One of them had been cut to SF jobs, supporting SF, so I had five multiples at any one time. You've got essentially a multiples worth on leave. Yeah. So you know you're rapidly down there. I mean, we'll come on to it. One of the big strike-ups we did, what we actually had to do was to scrape enough troops together, get the QM's department and take over Stag to get my troops off stag, so I could have something approaching a platoon plus.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Yeah, it's crazy. Is that Harlequin? Is that Harlequin? Yeah, we'll talk. I'm looking forward to talking about that. But um yeah, um, so we um my my company's role on Telec 6 the year before was the strike company. Um we were based out of the Shiber log base, but we're like similar to you. We were getting out everywhere, it was great.

SPEAKER_03 23:09

I said that's that's what our C company were doing. So they did a lot of strike-ups, and they were in a position where they could really formalise who did what, so they could have like a template because they could go really quick when they were warned off.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

Yeah, one of one of my fondest memories is doing a strike up one night, and um I won't name him, but Mark Taylor. He's a great, fantastic young officer. He's he's out in the army now, but um, through no not his fault to be fair, we were given the wrong uh location, wrong house. We had a quick nav check, we'd all got out carrying all the heavy kit and everything that we needed to do to raid, and then um it turned out we were about four doors down, we were going over these walls, and it was just it was hilarious. Chickens dogs barking. There was absolutely no silent approach, it's like doing a platoon song course, it was hilarious.

SPEAKER_03 23:52

I I reckon the most stressy bit of a strike up was finding the target. Yeah, yeah, you know no street names or officer with map here, but yeah, no street names, slums, yeah, yeah. Where people have built houses out of breeze blocks. Yeah, really tin. Yeah, what's this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely cracking. You get somewhere and it's the wrong side of a very wide, deep open sewer. Yeah, well, we're not going that way now then.

SPEAKER_02 24:14

Yeah, that that yeah, that brings back a lot of fun in these complete fun, but at the same time, it's trying to remain sort of tactical on the silent approach, and then yeah, with dogs going yeah, and snatch doing three-point turns because I've taken the wrong train. Yeah, at one rate, my job was to get to the top of this building where there was uh UAS watching the bloke asleep. Got up there, I snuck through the house, got to the roof, put my laser on his chest, and he looked at me and went, Oh, he was drunk. They were completely the wrong people. Great. I mean having a bit of a laugh at the people. Thanks for waiting for six hours. But yeah, um, yeah, met a good man nonetheless. That's great. Um, okay, let's move on to uh the next thing. So quite a famous uh event that I know your company was involved in was Operation Harlequin. Uh and I know this through having friends in the battalion. I'm talking about people like Dave O now and all of them great guys. It's always come up after a beer and um they talk so fondly of it. Can you run us through what Operation Harlequin was? And when was this in the tour? What sort of time period are we?

SPEAKER_03 25:22

So that was July 20 years ago. So yeah, wow. Round about now, yeah. 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

So what midway through the tour? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Over two, I'm really keen to see it.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

Yeah, what so essentially the night before, C Company had done a strike up, and during that strike, intelligence had been collected, which gave a suggestion of where the J Shal Mahdi were the main militia we were dealing with. Yes, where one of the J Shal Mahdi's main weapons caches was in the city, and so we were warned off for a battlegroup strike-up to go and hit that cache. And essentially the way it worked was a company were gonna we were gonna be the striking call sign um and in a cordon. There was a battery of artillery, they were going to be the outer cordon, and then um the LI company, who were warrior, who were based in the old state building, they were gonna be kind of like satelliting around. Um the target was on, and I was trying to describe this, the Chatel Arab waterway is a very wide waterway, a couple hundred metres across, which which means that that runs north-south, which means that Front Passer is inland, it's a port. And most of the city is on the, I'm pointing here, that doesn't help when a podcast is most of the city is on the west side. There's an area called Taminya, which was the docks. Yeah. So there's a whole series of like harbours cut in, which meant between those were like peninsulas, and it was also a fairly ropey end of town. So a lot of those peninsulas were slums. Um, the target was towards the end of one of those peninsulas. Um, so we got warned off to do it. We moved to the old state building, which was close to the LI company location. On the way there, someone had a pop at us. We had not yet had a contact. A guy came round a corner with a weapon, shouldered his weapon. Private Hughes returned, well, fired before he got a chance to. The multiple stopped, did the old hard, fast, and aggressive thing, but they didn't catch him. We mounted up and headed on to the old state building. And there was a thing called Broadsword, which was seeking helicopter with fantastic thermal imagery. That's right. And the imagery was so good that this thing could be high enough that no one could hear it, but it was really high-resolution imagery. And there was a down station in the old state building. What became apparent was people were moving stuff from the cache. So what they did was they held us because they wanted to then track those through the city, see where they were going, generate other striking call signs, and hit everywhere where there was something. But what that did mean was we held in the old state old state building for a while and we'd be dicked going in. They knew we were in there, they knew there was a lot of troops in there, so it started getting quite heavily mortared. Um, we were in the building, and actually, hardcover, you're fine. Yeah, you know, it was it was an odd few hours sat in there, and army chefs being army chefs, did the default thing and started making egg banjos. So I sat in there eating egg banjos, waiting to go, with mortar rams landing everywhere. Then we got warned off to move, and um we went out and my snatch were all knackered with mortar fire, um, tires torn, windscreens not penetrated, but so badly damaged you couldn't see out of them. Now the LI company were um armored infantry, so worried, but they did have some snatch. So we had then had to have a very nervous five minutes of running with our UCM and COMs from our knackered wagons into their fixed wagons, um, hoping it didn't happen again. And there was a blind sticking out of the vehicle park, just a tail fin, so they just parked a 432 over it. So if it went off, it would at least take some of it. And um, I mean this all felt fairly surreal. And we drove out, and the battery were leading, they were gonna go in, slap in the cord, and we were gonna go through and hit the target, and they missed the turn-off, which as a discussion is actually really easy to do in the dark when you're flapping and and and and the road was not a road, it was a shitty little back alley. They missed it, but we got it. I say we, I think Sant Greenhill was leading then. He he he actually came up and said, I think this is a turn, but I think they've missed it. And I said, Well, what do you think? He went, I think this is a turn. Okay, then. Well, I'm not having it that Jay Greenhill's navigation was on point. It was still the best at the time, you know. So we got in, sorry, Jay, and we approached the uh the target building, and um it was a proper breeze block in Wrigley Tin shithole. And we had a Risa with us, Rural Engineer Search Advisor, and they'd said beforehand the door might be booby-trapped, and if there were people in there, they may well fight. So Johnny Lannham's multiple were going in, and there was an aircon unit on this wall of this building, because even though these things were shitholes, it's somehow got like an old aircon unit. I don't think anyone was paying electricity builds in Bowser, it's just like cables coming off cables, coming off cables.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Basic chain.

SPEAKER_03 30:05

And so we got the got the interpreter to knock on the door, sort of says who went in there, and there was light coming out through gaps in the wall and stuff. So you thought there was something in there, yeah, but no answer. So we um a few of the guys got sledgehammers and knocked the aircon unit off the wall, so there was a hole. And I remember Johnny had said to me before he went, he'd said, Stu, if I take fire from it, I'm gonna put a grenade in. It's like okay, no, yeah, Johnny, yeah, that's that's what we do. But didn't take any fire. And what I would say is well is I spoke to Johnny years later having a beer with him, and he said, You know who went through the hole first? I said, go on then. And it was Private Staines and Private Hughes, Stainsy and Hughesy, who are certainly were the most archetypal private soldiers. Yeah, as in they were spindly little guys with shaved heads, yeah, who were just turned 18. When they joined us in Northern Land, they couldn't go out because they were 17, and they giggled and they asked about and they got in minor trouble on the piss and things, but they sucked it up and they did what they were told, and they were just soldiers. Do you know what I mean? And I thought, of course they went through first, and they would have been giggling about it, they would have gone in and they would have done it well. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, because I do think we do do good soldiers. Yeah, we do. You know, they were they were they were weapons to chuck through that hole, and they went in, and then Johnny came up there and he said, You've got to see this stew, and I went through the hole, and I stepped down through the hole onto a pile of rockets, and this building, it was like something on Optag. There were piles of 107 mil rockets, there were piles of RPGs, mortar barrels, mountains of mortar rounds. There was a at one end, there was an ID factory, so it was literally piles of explosive, sheets of metal, then there was a lathe, then there were some, because they were making um EFPs, you know, those four projectiles, some of them made, then there were some of them covered in expanding foam, some of them covered in expanding foam rolled in concrete, so they look like concrete. And there was the whole production line there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this was a you thought, wow, we've uh we then started having ATO came in to clear everything, and then we started formed a chain and started getting it all out, which took two hours. And while we were there, we heard a big contact in the city, and it transpires that was C Company, who'd been sent to one of the other locations that they tracked. Yeah. And they got contacted on the way in. And you could tell it was the British Army because there was gunfire, and there was sometimes gunfire in the town, which was um local sorting stuff out, but you thought that sounds a bit and then you heard a chain gun, yeah, like obvious chain, then you heard 30 mil, and you saw Schmoolies going up, and you thought, oh Christ, someone's and and I was keenly aware that uh they know where we are now, you know, and we are on a peninsula and there's one road off it. I thought I don't this doesn't feel great. And there was two ATO wagons there, and both of them were filled with stuff, but they then pulled up a warrior from another call sign, filled the back of that, and then strapped rockets to the top of it. But when we went in, there was even like there were bowls of food on the floor and stuff. So we think they'd been in there minutes before we got there. But like those RMP forensics people got like bowls and bags and stuff, so they could do forensics on them and things. So by the time we finished getting all of that, the sun was coming up. And we were on the target, and I'll try and explain the geography here, is the road on this peninsula went along the southern end of the road of the peninsula, heading out into the Shat. And then we then turned left and north, and the target was in that alleyway. Yeah. So to get out we had to go south down that road, then west along this road, which ran on the bottom. But as we were formed up, getting ready to leave, I heard a crack. And my immediate thought was I thought, I didn't think we were being shot at. I've not been shot at, I don't know what it sounded like. I mean, I've been in the butts, but I didn't put two together. But um, I thought someone stepped on a detonator in the target, and I thought, oh no, someone's lost a toe or something. Then I heard crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, and I thought, you know what this is. And I remember running in my wagon to take my CWS off and put my Susat back on. I thought, wait, we need for a coming toward you. I need to sort this out. Um, so we mounted up and we drove to the end of the alley. But as we got towards the end of the alley, there was tracer coming across the bottom of the alley, but big tracer. Transfer was a dushkin. They were firing up the road that we had to go down. Yeah, so we stopped. Green, green tracer. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but it was big. You know, looked at you, you thought, well, it's not big when it's intended for you. I thought this, I thought there's no way we're going down there and turning right in snatch. You know what I mean? We get unzipped. And so we parked up in this alley, we stopped. And the CO a real thing in Basura was comms not working. Um, I think probably some of our ECM, the frequencies we've been given, and the fact that the city was just dirty, there was all sorts of things emitting. And so frequently, none of the comms was working. So we were doing this on PRR, and the CO was saying to me, you need to get going. And he couldn't see what I could see. And I thought, I'm not sure that is the right idea, but I don't want to say on the radio. Yeah. So I ran back to the CO and I explained, and he said, Yeah, okay, got you, got you. He said, Pull in, we'll get a warrior down, go up there and clear it. And then I had this moment where there was a lot more firing going on then. From when I remember running to the CO, and I looked back down the alley, and it was a narrow alley, and it had like little, little, little alleys. Do you want those rounds coming down there? Yeah. And I could see further down Kev Donovan. You know, Kev Donovan, who was my CQMS, but JP, my salt major, was on leave then. So Donnie was acting start major, and I could see him looking out from the snatch like a concerned parent. And I and I ran back, like bent double, just like a baseball target. And I got back and said, We're not going, we're not going. And um, they got this warrior down past us, and that turned right, and we didn't know what was going on, we just up this alley. And me and Donny were at the back of my snatch when someone by this stage, there was people appearing on the rooftops, firing down flat, flat roof buildings down into the alley. I mean, it was it was quite blackhawk down, yeah. And then someone got a gun on a roof, them firing the length of the alley. So me and Donny ran to the front of my snatch, and literally, as we dived in, there was a zip of fire up the road, and I thought, oh my god, half a second, we would have lost our legs there. And um I was really frightened for a bit, and I I'll be honest, I sort of thought I felt I felt very scared, and I thought, I can't I can't see how we're gonna get out of this now. We're up this alley, there's people everywhere flying down in the alley, and we're gonna take a casualty, we're gonna I don't know how we're gonna get out of this. And um my wife was pregnant at the time, and our first kid was June the next month, and I had this really I was not like scared, but I felt sad. I thought, oh, I'm gonna get killed and it's gonna leave my wife and a daughter as a transpires who wouldn't know her dad and stuff. And um but then I thought, and then I felt a bit quite angry with myself, and I thought, come on, mate, you're putting in infantry, this is what this is what you're for. If this is what you've got to do, this is what you've got to do. And I've talked about people this before. It's something that struck me then, and I think it was one of the biggest lessons I learned about the army, about being in contact and about what it means to be in a cohesive group was I then was more afraid of looking shit in front of my soldiers than I was of being hurt. The idea of them thinking I couldn't do my job properly and that I wasn't a good soldier, and I wasn't a capable company commander, the idea of that, I thought I I I can't I can't I'm gonna have to bury it, Stu, and try and be the man that they want you to be. Do you know what I mean? That's wonderful. And I think that's and I think a lot of people felt the same. Yeah. And I think if if I'd been in that situation with people whose opinion of me I didn't value, I think I would have behaved very differently. And I think everyone was the same, and I think that was sitting in the desert in Jordan, going on a piss in Akiba, company smoker. Yeah, that that that as much as anything else was what made all of that work then, you know.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Yeah, I can really see that, I can really relate to that. That's um you've just painted a fantastic picture of the importance of cohesion and how arguably quite simple it is to do. Yeah, you know, and the end state for cohesion is ultimately knowing your people.

SPEAKER_03 38:33

Yeah, and then the resilience that it gives the company. I just thought that this is a scaffolding that's holding us together. And I've said this before as well. I would go so far, say it's almost like love.

SPEAKER_02 38:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:41

Do you know what I mean? I I think everyone there cared more about everyone else than themselves, yeah, you know, and would do things to keep each other safe. And then so then I snapped out of it, you know. That was probably like 30 seconds, but there was a lot of thinking happened in that time. I thought, right, come on then. And I stuck my head out and looked down the alley, and there were all my troops. I had a really young company, you know. Lots of my private soldiers were 18, 19, um, and now I'm 53. You know, they were the age of my eldest daughter. Yeah, do you know what I mean? You think they're young, young guys. And the baddies were on the roofs, and my guys were taking fire positions at the bottom of this alley and getting them, you know, because we also did marksmanship principles and they didn't. And um, and I took I thought, oh, look at what we've got here, you know, we can do this. And I said to Donny, because my main concern was if we took a casualty, treating a casualty would suck people in and expose people. How would we do that? And and the radios weren't working, so we couldn't really tell anyone where we were. So I said to Donny, there was one bigger building, and I said, if we take a casualty, we'll take that building and we'll just hold up in that building because we'll be able to treat casualties, we can hold out there and hopefully someone will come. But we didn't know what had happened with this um this warrior clearing the gun. Yeah, right. So Andy Rainey was RSM, yeah, yeah, and he came down and he the CEO had asked him to see what was happening at the end. So he came down and said, There's anyone coming with me, and Ollie Hartshorn caught Hartshorn. Uh maybe, yeah. He was one of my Lance Jacks then. Yeah. He said, Yeah, I'll go with you. So they as they got down the front, um, Andy Rainey, who got an MC in Bosnia, as he got closer on, he said, I've got my MC. But as they got to the end of the road, the road faced the docks, and on the other side of this harbour, there was more enemy firing back up the road.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

Right.

SPEAKER_03 40:24

So they got to the end, and Oli Hartzorn stuck his head around the corner to see what had happened up towards the mainland, and they were shooting at him, not hitting him, but it was like they were shooting the wall down next to him. But it would appear that the warrior had got to the end and that and this dusker was neutralised. So he sort of came up and went, Well, it's as good as it's gonna get. So we mounted up, and um, and there's a few other things. I mean, other things that top out there was um guy called Joe Martin, he was an 18-year-old soldier, still in the top cover hatch with an LMG, and three guys popped up on a roof, and he was almost level with them, and we're talking about 10 feet between them, and they engaged him, and like the guy in uh Pulp Fiction, yeah, there was splash on the roof of the snatch around him, and they didn't hit him, yeah, and he and he got them. Yeah, um, I had a multiple that wasn't with me, it was cut to the battery and they were and they entered a building. So um called Cripps and a few other guys, I think Max um Max Parmas and Ticarlo and Max Aegean. Palmer is a man you want an eating. Yeah, yeah. And and Ticala, who was on Mafogene, so a method of entry, he put the door in and they entered this building because there's a guy on the roof. And this, I mean, this is hard because it's not like coat build down, grenade in every room, hose it down because there's people living in this building. Yeah. So they had to go through, entering a room, not being able to initiate, but wait to see what happened. And as they got to the roof, the guy on the roof realised we were coming for him, and he jumped from one flat roof building to the other. And as he was halfway across when my top cover got him, like uh it was like Clay Pigeon shooting. And he dropped down the gap in between. Play city games, win city prizes. Yeah, we didn't go looking for it, but we were going home. Someone's going home, and it was us. So we mounted up, drove to the bottom of the alley. I said to my top cover, just get down because we're going to drive fast and we're going to be attracting fire. And you're not going to hit anything when you're up. So we just got down, hammered down at the end of the alleyway, turned right, just started hammering up. So one side of us was the docks, and we've been engaged from the far side of the harbour all the way along. I just thought if they hit a wagon and it goes into the water, that's like the worst situation. Because there'll be a vehicle in the water with people in body armor and helmets, and those of us who've got to get them out are exposed to the fire from the other side. Incredibly. Yeah. I mean, I know I know um Private Burchett, who was Johnny Lannham's driver. Johnny was one of the Mumble commanders, he lost a friend left tire. He drove that entire rope fast on full right-hand log to go straight. And we got to the end where you hit like the mainland and we turned left over this little bridge, and Kev Donovan was sat at the back and I said, Donny, are we are we all through? And he went, Yeah, they're all through. I thought, ha.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:58

Mad. Ha! How? So then we said, Okay, slow down, top cover up. As we came out there, there was ally warriors, chain gun and rooftops and stuff, mate back on the mainland. I mean, the city had gone completely peat tall, but we slowed down. I said the top cover, top cover up again. You know, let's let's do this proper again. Cons were all over the place, couldn't talk to the other sub-inuts, couldn't talk to TAC, couldn't talk to Maine. And as we're approaching Batra Palace, there was a bridge, um, Pink 19 it was, yeah, which headed straight to the US gate. As we were approaching that, what became apparent was we were okay, we were out of it. A company, job done. But this was a thing that went back to some training where you think we're okay, but is everyone else okay? And therefore, what do I do to make it all okay? So as we approached the bridge, I thought if I was a call sign in the shit and I was trying to get back to the palace, I'd quite like to see a bridge being held by a rifle company. So I could break contact, and you go, There you are, lad. Yeah. So as we approached the bridge, I said, Right, we're gonna we're gonna secure the bridge. And I I did sort of say, this isn't up. This is Brecken now. We know we'll do this. Yeah. Key point defense. It's proper. You know, we're gonna we're gonna take this bridge. You know, on them. So we we stopped short, debussed, secured the area, and then I asked Jay Greenhill to cross the bridge to secure the far side, and he pinged Davo, called Davidson, and another private soldier, I don't know who that was, I can't remember now. And they started crossing the bridge, and halfway across they came under fire from on the south side of the bridge. It was like a building site. So they were sort of pinned down. And um I remember Davo started giving a target indication, and he was giving it a pile of bricks, quarter left. And I did say, I think in the circumstances watch my trousers, do you guys actually have it? But some I I had the fortune of not being shot at so I could think a bit more clearly. Do you know what I mean? We'd had a call sign passed through us, which had a warrior, and we didn't have a warrior then. Ours had been cut elsewhere, it was a bit odd, so we just bagged this warrior. I said, You're staying with us till index. Dave will indicate the target. The warrior drove on the bridge and started chain gunning where he'd indicate, but they'd gone into cover. The warrior backed off again. Um, and then this guy, one of the guys poked the setup and one of Dave other practice got him, um, and the rest of them fucked off. And in fact, I'd said to Dave while they're in cover, he I'd said, Can you get a clear shot? He said they're in in cover, and I said, Well, put a 40 mil behind it. And he said, I'm not sure, I don't know who else is out there. Yeah, so fair, you know, good shout. Again, the I think people underestimate how much people or not think about that sort of thing. You know, people have this idea we're just we don't give a shit, we're just you know, we're all potential war criminals. But a young Lance Corporal who was being shot at, yeah, would still not do the right thing or do the easy thing, yeah, yeah, which could have got him out of it, but could have had an implication which it would have been entirely justified deal at the time, but he would have had to live it. Yeah, you know. So we then by then pushed across that bridge and got I managed to start talking to Maine again. I mean, God, we could see Maine, but it'd last like I talked to it, and they said, Okay, everyone's in.

SPEAKER_02 46:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:07

A few of the core sounds had collapsed through us by then. So we mounted up and started driving towards it was two gates. There was the what they call the US gate and the and the brick gate. We were heading towards the US gate. Halfway down there, we got ambushed again. Um I suspect it was some of the people we discarded from the last thing from some wasteland just to our side, and um Jay Greenhill's multiple were in the lead then. Um I don't think it was a textbook reaction to an ambush, but it did the job where all the snaps stopped and everyone got out, even the drivers, and absolutely fucking plastered them. There was a lot of rounds, as in I think by that stage our thinking was we can see the gate. We're trying to go, just fuck off. I decided not to keep going down that road, and then we turn and go in the brick gate. Halfway along there, someone came up and said, We'd had a few atts on the strike, we'd had RMP and stuff, and um someone said I had an R RMP caught in my wagon at the bridge, and he's not there now. Oh and I thought, I bet in the confusion he's just jumping in the wrong wagon. Yeah, but the idea of leaving someone out there, yeah. That's stuff of nightmares, yeah. So we stopped again, and Donnie got out and ran around and did a head check. And I found that quite scary. Not scary, it was it was I felt that was like a different type of courage required. I would say it's the type of courage that people used to require to stand in a square. We weren't doing anything, you just have to stay put. Yeah, I could have just said, well, just drive, it'll probably be fine, but you that's not the right thing to do. We're just gonna have to stop and I'm gonna have to sit here. The troops debussed and secured the area, but we're just gonna have to sit here, and I don't want to sit here, but until the job's done, yeah, and they came back and he's in the wrong wagon. Great. And then we hammered. Yeah, of course he is. And then we we hammered back in the camp. Um, and again, I've said this before, but I have to say, as we drove in, and we were all caked in dust, we'd been out for you know, 15 hours, caked in dust, drenched in sweat, wagons had strike, tires out, and as we drove back in past the QM's team, who I did sort of think, we must look fucking out of here. Yeah, we must look like soldiers. Yeah, and we and we got back in and their thing was if you'd done a strike up they dick jam. As soon as everyone knew you got blastered, so we didn't do the debrief then. We just parked up quick as we couldn't ran into our cover and we got mortared for quite some time. Um, and then we got together and did a did a debrief. But um I mentioned before about like optag days, yeah. It was like that. Everything from the blind in the vehicle park in the old state building to someone missing a turn off to trying to find a target on the ground to oh, we're being shot at, yeah, comms aren't working, we're being ambushed again. Yeah, you just you're just thinking this another thing.

SPEAKER_02 48:55

Yeah, so your first run-out or gunfight as a company is an omnidirectional multi-story. Yeah, gangment three 3D, 360 degree, which involved all munitions, it involved a support of warrior, yeah, it supported extraction ambushes, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:13

Yeah, a fighting withdrawal, yeah, ambushes, yeah, and no comms.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:18

So it was a that is the optag final exercise. But do you know what John I'd say again though? Uh I keep I keep alluding to this. It didn't matter that we didn't have comms because people knew how we worked, and they knew what the right thing was to do. And people just and I would say, I would say, if there were some things I got right on leadership, I think, and I'm not blowing my own trumpet here, but this is rather enable, it's enabling the good people you've got. If you can set a situation where they're comfortable, they know if they try and make the right call, even if it wasn't right, but they made it for the right reason, they're not in the shit. Yeah, that they are free to do what they think is right, and that they know how we work, they know what a company does, yeah, you know, they know the risks we'll take, they know that we're the goodies, that we'll not do that with cities there and that sort of thing. Is it it all it if you're a control freak? This is a really hard job. Yeah, yeah. Because if you think my ability to control what was happening up that alley was nil. I could go to one person and talk to them. I couldn't even talk, yeah, other than face-to-face, can't PRR in and out. That was all done on stuff we'd done previously in training and people understanding what they had to do. Yeah, and that then gives you this resilience though, that as the wheels keep coming off, and so that I said as well, is I I and I've said this in other uh areas, but time and time again, what I found was as a company commander, it dawned on me that I wasn't the closest to the problem, and I had to use that because where the problem was, there were private soldiers trying to do the right thing as a lance jack trying to dig it out as a platoon sergeant, a platoon commander trying to dig it out before it even becomes my problem. Yeah, and they're dealing with that problem, which gives me time to think about the next step or the other problem. You know, it bought me time to try and add some value. Yeah, but they I think back that when I think about all of Harlequin now, I don't know how many orders given. I don't think I've spoken to many people that often, other than face to face with certain individuals. To me, that screams out you can.

SPEAKER_02 51:24

I mean, so let's say I parachute into the middle of Harlequin, or don't hear from the company commander, there's one or two things going on. He's either incompetent or he's very fortunate to have a company that is swept up, and it's very clear that's what this what this is.

SPEAKER_03 51:38

Well, they were they they I I I so I always say as a company were a phenomenally easy company to command because every time I was approaching fucking up, they pulled me out of it. Yeah, and they and everyone added value at every level. If I said X, the platoon commander would do X plus, yeah, and the screen would do X plus plus, write down the private soldier, add in a bit, you know, and they all up, you know, even on the drive up there, that initial contact, you know, all that time ago before we got the upstate building with private Hughes, yeah doing the right thing, yeah, yeah. Not being nervous to do the right thing, you're just doing the right thing.

SPEAKER_02 52:11

Yeah, he sounds to me like Hughes, and he was one of the man on the match.

SPEAKER_03 52:15

Well, you know, they all were, but he he just happened to be the bloke at a couple of points where things happened.

SPEAKER_02 52:21

I find it really fascinating now, and I used to try and push this when I was under your command at Brecon. You know, I'd always say to my students that everything when you think about it, you mentioned the QM's department, you know, you mention uh let's talk about the jocks that are all over Iraq, all over Afghanistan, they're all there to support Hughesy and the other lad going through that hole in the wall. You know, they are the bayonet there, they are the tip of the spear. And it just sounds to me like you had the dear solution of a company that allows you to sit there looking at a map, thinking the next stages, you know, how's this game of chess going to pan out?

SPEAKER_03 52:55

I was I I've always been I've always been really lucky with my commands, yeah. And and I would say with a company, I was so lucky. And it was like a proper to my mind, to my eyes, and I you know, I see still see a lot of the guys, I think a lot of people say the same. It was a kind of stars aligned thing. Yeah, you know, my platoon commanders were good, my platoon sergeants were brilliant, yeah. My junior NCOs were absolutely brilliant. My private soldiers were just in weapons, you know, and and you know John Phillips, my um Company Sergeant Major, Kevin Donovan, my CQMS were absolutely and we were all of the same mind. We knew how we wanted to do stuff, how we wanted we learned that in in Jordan. Yeah, we knew that we had the same standards, we had an expectation, we knew how he wanted to run the company. And once you've got that, you've got that, and so we all just got it. Yeah, we all thought the same. I come back to let me come on to another contact later, but the likes of um Danny Young in the Warrior crew who seemed to work without a radio at all, just being where you needed it to be when he was needed to be there. Yeah, you know, they and they never, ever, ever, ever let me down. It was always. I look back to, and it's probably the period of my life where there's been at least cock-ups that I've been involved in. They all just pulled it out of the bag all the time. And like I say, if there's one thing I think I got right, the leadership was enabling them to do that. Yeah, it was cutting loose the qualities that I had. Yeah, that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 54:22

I think that's the Royal Anglian way, you know, and I know I know you started life as a fusilier, but ultimately social osmosis.

SPEAKER_03 54:29

Do you know what I would say? I would say absolutely is on the one hand, you know, we worked at Brecon where you see a cross-section of the infantry, yeah, and the foundations are the same. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And infantry is, but then there is a thing. Regiments do have different feels. So, you know, when I was um commissioning the fusiliers, and that was mid-90s, and you know, we recruited from Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham, so it was an inner city regiment. Everyone thought they were an oasis. Yeah you know, everyone was a bit gobby. Yeah, you know, they were still soldiers, but they were a bit more gobby and a bit more confrontational. Well, I was a fan of the Rolandians, the thing that I think characterised the guys that I worked with was their ability to suck it up and just keep sucking it up and not being flashy and not being gobby about it. And so, like I say, sometimes I have to step back and go, like like I talked about Danny Young's warrior crew, it's gone, they've done 30-odd hours on the ground and they've not they've not wobbled, they've not even stopped smiling.

SPEAKER_02 55:26

Yeah, well, I mean, and this is like the point I made to you before we turned the the microphones on. I said to Stuart about um it's not a problem with the regiment, but the Royal Anglian Regiment is very, very humble. So to get people on a microphone and talk about what they've done, they quite often not only find it uncomfortable, but it's just quite alien to us. We just don't do that, you know, we never have done it. It's part of our DNA. And and when you go into Kendrew Barracks now, where both the first and second battalion are based, it's just this superpower of one organization that is like that, and it's it's fantastic, it's working fantastically well. Um that's a really interesting baptism of fire, and you know, what a way for your company to sort of go for the final exercise on optatic battery. But I really appreciate you running us through that. Um so Harley Quinn, like we said there, was uh clearly a baptism of fire for the company, uh, and albeit a huge success, and you know, all those bits of kit that you've taken off the ground is fantastic. Um, and I know there's another op I'd like to talk about, which is Operation Shadow. Um, and I think that was November time on a tour. So, what was the pattern of life like between sort of July and November for the company then? What was it? Were there any days that was aesthetic, or was it yeah?

SPEAKER_03 56:46

So it got back to this sort of endless not day and night. A lot more strike ops, but a lot of them, yeah, nothing bad happened. Dry bowls. But I think the really important thing is is after Harlequin, I didn't enjoy it, and I thought, right, what do we do? What lessons do we take from it? And so I spent a lot of time talking to people, especially JP, when he came back from leave. I mean he was pissed he missed it, obviously, but just talking about what we would do and talking to actually um Andy Rainey, who was the RSM, talked about some of the strike-ups and stuff, and so what we did do was we did an awful lot of analysing so that we would do things differently on future strike-ups. So things we learned was one of the really difficult things about extracting on Harlecon is we had all our snatch up this back alley, and we're doing an Austin Powers 20-point turn in contact, isn't funny. If we'd been on foot, because we were an infantry company, yeah, we could have got out over walls. So one thing we decided to do was in the future we would leave wagons on the MSR and go in by foot so we could then fight properly and get out. We had also learned you had to have people on roofs, we hadn't really realised it until Harlequin, but it was all the flat roof houses was like a second level of the city, and we we hadn't put a foot on it. Yeah, so we thought, okay, we've got to be 3D, we've got to get in roofs. Um we identified that command and control was really difficult once you're on the ground. And so what I took to doing on Future Strike ops was taking a lot of quality with me. What I mean by that was on Harlequin, JP was on leave, so I took Donny as CQ, my company um 2IC, Andy Wilson home. Do you know Andy Wilson home? Oh no, certainly. He was back in the palace. What we did on Future Ones was took out me, company to IC, company Sart Major, CQMS. And frequently what would happen was the company to company to IC and CQMS would stay with the vehicles, so that when comms in Nevitably didn't work at a particularly difficult time, there was like a there was another headquarters over there to deal with that shit. Do you know what I mean? And if that felt the bits, there's still be someone, you know, just this is all gonna fault the bits. Yeah, let's just put people on the ground who are good and who can you know give people a chance.

SPEAKER_02 58:58

Well, so what was your sort of manpower deficit for maintain looking after the vehicles? How many people would you have?

SPEAKER_03 59:05

So we would when we when we zoomed, we would have the drivers stay with the wagon, yeah. My signaller, yeah, my CQMS. I mean, it was it was tight, but yeah, if we didn't do that, yeah, I couldn't put anyone on the ground. Yeah, you know, because frequently in reality, we were operating as a platoon plus a company TAC. And you'd obviously get as close as you could. Yes, yes. I mean, when I said when I said going in, yeah, I mean we are talking 100 metres, 200 metres, you know, it wasn't, you know, it was it was straight in like that. And the other thing we learned as well was we've got night vision, and they didn't. So you thought, okay, we need to think about how we're gonna stitch that up. So we did a few other strike-ops and we did all sorts of stuff like we did some strike-ops where they told us one of these buildings we know a player lives in. That's not the target, but we know something there's a baddie. So when we got there, we put red silooms all around the house to mark it. So we knew, but so he knew we knew. Yeah, do you know what I mean? Yeah, good move. When we occupied rooftops, they would put out IR silooms because it's just someone on a roof. And you think, Who's the just someone on a roof? But what you also said is if it if it went live, they would just crack blue siloons because actually the enemy can't shoot, and they were almost at more risk from us. Yeah. Now that never happened, but we really polished all of this stuff and we got good. And the battle group started to do strike-ops whereby what would happen is the striking company would lead, and they often would drop their vehicles and go in on foot. The cordon company would follow them in on foot after them, but just take one road into from the MSR to the target, yeah. Secure that road, strike company would do the thing, then it collapsed back through it, back to the MSR, and then the company holding the road open would collapse back through it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:45

It's a mirror image of how you win in.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:48

Yeah, and and so or shadow was a strike operated towards the end where we were by then we'd polished it all, but it it went lively again. But it's a really interesting contrast with Shadow, you know, of what we learned. And my company was holding the road open. So it was C Company did the strike, yeah, but we zooed most of my wagons on the MSR. It was an area called Jumariah. And um it was north-south MSR. Jumariah was a grid, literally gridded, and we went along an MSR, a road in the grid running east-west, following secretly. We secured it, they hit the target at the end of that road, and um so all my wagons were Zelou Mustard on the main road, and my warrior were there. And by that stage we scraped enough people together, I had a multiple in the back of the warrior. Steve Batti, James. Steve Batti. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you want to have something in your back pocket, yeah, Steve Batti. Yeah. So he was his multiple, his mortar's multiple, who were heavy treaders. Yeah, play with a reserve in the back of the warrior. Um, so I've managed to generate reserve because also I felt often in this stuff if it all goes wrong, the one influence I can have is chuck a reserve at it. But if I didn't have a reserve, I couldn't. So we were holding the road open, and we start coming into contact. So I had a platoon right in, then a platoon close to the MSR, and then I had a multiple and the vehicle crews with the um with the Snatch out and the MSR, and they started coming into contact in a couple of places. And the first one was come back to the names again. There was lots of other people there, but Court Davidson, so Devo and Private Stains, the aforementioned Stainsey, were covering down this one road, and Davo started coming under fire. Now these roads were very narrow with quite tall buildings, flat roof buildings, and these guys appeared. If you look down the road, Davo was on the right hand side of the road, and these guys appeared on the roof on the left, and the buildings were high, and it was now as they couldn't see Stainsy to the bottom of the thing, but they could see Daivo, Devo, and started engaging him. Now, straight away, where I was, I was not far from the end of that road, and this is how difficult it was was I could hear gunfire, but it echoes because you're in it. And he's thinking, Where's that? Yeah, yeah. And I remember the first thing was shouting to Johnny Lannon, who was on the other side. Johnny, what have you got? And he went, Nothing. What the fuck's that then? But it was actually their contact bouncing off that wall. Yeah. Nightmare. But then I got ready to run over to them, and JP something got a hold of my arm and he said, Give him, give him a minute. But yeah, you're right, you're right. So left it for a bit, then dashed back. And what happened was Davo was under fire from these three guys on the roof, and he shouted to Stainsy, get back to the road that we're covering. Stain, I'll come back to you again, value add, 18-year-old private soldier. He could have extracted and not been seen. But what he did was he ran in the middle of the road, knelt down, and started engaging them with his LMG to cover Davo getting in. Work the angle to get a shoot onto. He ran out until he could get them, and he and he got them. Yeah, he got one or two of them. Yeah, then Devo was out the road, stainty lobbed a FOSS grenade, which became something of our signature phosphenade, good for a withdrawal. Yeah, but it hit a co-wind screen and bounced back at him. So he came, he came out of that alley pretty schnell. Yeah, and they started covering that road. And I thought we've got to hold this road up because C Company is still up there. And this I've been alluding this before, but I thought we need to shut this road here to show them that we're not fucking about. I need a warrior to block this road, and I looked left, and there's Danny Young hanging out top of a warrior like Rommel, smiling, giving me a thumbs up. How did you know? And they just pulled up the road and blocked it, and then a wagon was getting a strike on it. Remember that's Homery and Jordan. Brilliant! And um, and we had um, but then my um one platoon who were forward, Bjorn Rose was the commander when they take off and Ben Horse. Yeah, they were covering there, and I mean this was how good we got was they start coming into contact, and we talked about how we've got a night vision advantage. So the first thing they did was shot the street lights out, yeah. And I remember seeing um Gav Williams, who's Lance Chapman, stood in the doorway, and there's a light bulb at top the door, and as the fire started just fucked it with his rifle, just rifled buttons. We made it dark, yeah. At which point they're trying to come up an alley, they can't see. We've got two LMGs covering it with CWS on, and we we squared that C company collapsed back through us, and again, this was then one platoon collapsed past me and JP, and like Brecken, last mansar major, as the last guy I went past, you know, genuinely and that then left me me and JP at the front, and um there was someone ticking around at a street corner, so I put a few rounds down, not at him, just at the corner of the wall, just like just fuck off, just stay there. JP loved a floss grenade down, and we then collapsed back and took um two platoon with us, and we got and again, this is the guys I've got and the confidence you give you. We got back, Danny Young reversed out and stayed covering that alley, like the the main alley, as we mounted up in the snatch. But I remember as we got there, some of the snatch were south of the road we were coming out of, some of them were north. You didn't want to dick around in the space between. But Donnie was with the ones north, and me and JP were the ones south. I remember JP shouted with Donnie, Kev, have you got everyone? And Kev gone, yeah, we're okay, JP. I just remember thinking, oh fucking hell. Yeah. These two absolute rocks of the company, proper old soldiers who have just been there and just filled you with confidence. You know, this is again, this is the sort of NTOM Warrant Officer Carter that held the square, you know, that took over in you know, in Kiplings, Afghanistan, where all the officers were dead. You know, these guys thought, oh, oh, come on, look at what we've got here. And we mounted up, fucked off. Um, the LI company covered us out with just knocking people off roofs. Then we pulled up dry just short just around the corner and stopped. And I got out and sort of jogged down all the wagons, just taking the top cover guys. Just saying everyone okay, and just saying, well done, guys, brilliant. Just to let them know that they were legends. And they, I mean, again, we were like clockwork in that thing. It was to the extent that we'd have people on roofs. I mean, God, I watched these guys getting on the roofs, and you know, hospital was 20 kilos, your rifle's 10 kilos, these guys all up were probably carrying 40 kilos, 50 kilos, climbing up this external ladder that was wobbling off the wall, thinking, Oh god, alright. But they got on the roofs, and we didn't get engaged from roofs till I had to get them down early because to extract with them is still being hard. Once they were off the roof, we started getting engaged from roofs, but until then we we'd lock that down, yeah, and it just worked by clockwork. And everyone, like I say, smashing out lights, covering each other out, the warrior arriving when you needed it. How quick we were in the Zulu Muster with a head check and just getting out clean and in good order, yeah, and and and and Harlequin, they were good, but here we also were experienced as well, and everyone just man, it was it just flowed. And again, my control. I think the only things I did was I got to Daivo and said, anything else down there? And he went, I don't, I don't think and I told one platoon the move, and that was it. Yeah, then that was us, yeah, and um and that was felt very different at heart. I never felt scared. I felt we were just on it, and it was interesting. Um Andy Rainey, the RSM, had said to me after Harlequin, and it all stuck with me, it became a bit of a company saying, was you said you've got to remember there's two types of contact, there's a fuck me and a fuck you. In a fuck me contact, you're going, oh fuck me. In a fuck you contact, you're going, ha, fuck you. Yeah. Harlequin was a fuck me contact, which we regained control of. Shadow was a fuck you contact from beginning to end. You know, they just threw themselves against us and we absolutely handed them their arse. Yeah. And I tell you what I would say, as well as in all of that, some things, you know, the army says what the army says for very good reasons. And the idea of winning a firefight, and when you're dry training and you think, what does winning the firefight mean? Yeah, you fucking know if you've not won it, and you know if you've won it. Yeah. Yeah. And Harlequin, we weren't winning it, and then we won it. And Shadow, we never didn't win it. And it just gives you the freedom to do what you need to do. It does.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:46

It's um, I used to, again, under your tenure when I was at senior div, I'd learnt it the summer or two summers before in Afghanistan. But suppression allows you the freedom of manoeuvre. So the days of crawling through rivers because the DS want to see you get wet or long on. If you are firing, I think it's one round every six seconds within a metre of the enemy, he's not. You own the battle. You can pirouette up to him like Wayne Sleep if you want to and do the business.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:11

But um what you need though is when it's hanging in the balance, is the people who will get the rounds close enough and keep their head up longer. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah, and that was what we had in Shadow. Yeah, glorious. That they could shoot and that they didn't want to look shit in front of each other.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:27

Yeah, but yeah, and it goes back to your point. That's that's a great, you know. I've yeah, I've got a job, I've got a small part to play here, but the part that I'm playing is actually dominating this whole thing, it's dictating the way this all pans out, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:39

And you know what I think now when I I you know when people talk about the first world war, you know, how could people go over the top? I know how people could go over the top now because you're with your mates, yeah. And what happens if you don't do it and they do, you know that it you'd be getting queened, that's for sure. But you know, it's like I genuinely think when people go, I couldn't do that, yeah. You would, yeah, because you couldn't not.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:57

I'm gonna kick myself for doing this, but it's um might be a bit cheesy, but Black Hawk down, there's a character called Who, who's a bit of a loose Delta Force guy, he's based on a real guy, um, who is I think is currently writing a book, but there's a wonderful part in that film where he says um when I go home and people say why you do it, he's some sort of war junkie. He said, You'll never understand that it's about the men that are left and right of you, yeah. And they they they make you feel invincible, don't they? Yeah, and I've got I was one di, if I may, about um we say about the cohesive team and and generating a you know, if you're gonna be a grizzly, if you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly. I'd I I always try and tell this story whenever I can. I'd I had a soldier in my platoon called Ken Facal, five foot four, lad from the Philippines, and he was always lead scout when we were in Kajaki, Kajaki South, which was very close, urban, very green zone. It was like fighting in sort of Malaya, if you like. You know, it was quite a tricky environment to be in. And we had a very punchy contact one day. We went around a corner. There was a guy, a Taliban guy, washing his clothes, and that turned into a gunfight. He lost and we won. Um, I remember Ken Facal running up to me saying, I think I've shot a Civy. Well, no, you haven't. Went around the corner. We were searching the body, found a weapon, you'd done exactly the right thing. And I said to Ken about a week later, I said, mate, I need to swap you around because you're always the lead man. And he said to me, Sarge, with respect, that's bollocks. He says, I'm small, I'm hard to hit, and I know every lip of the ground, I'll be able to tell. And I just remember thinking, it's very dusty round here all of a sudden. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Off you go, God's right. And you know, I remember thinking we're getting this right here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:35

I I'll say people is yeah, we did a seven-month tour because you know, we're trying to get an offset between Tennelling and Herrick then for the RF.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:42

That's a really annoying amount of time, isn't it? I always think we should have done longer. Yeah, I don't think we should have had an RR. You know, I always think we should have committed to you know, a year tour. I can hear the wife and everything throwing the pottery around the house at the moment, but because sorry, and I'm I'm butting in here, but you were your most slick by the sounds of it at the end on shadow, yeah, you know, and then you're getting ready to hand over. Yeah, and someone else is gonna go for that whole cycle again. It's yeah, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:07

Yeah, I remember seeing when we handed up the green jackets who were good, they were up for it, but they hadn't got the time under the belt that we did. And the one thing we had was when we first got out there, the situation wasn't too bad. It was really bad when we left, but we'd been allowed to up our game with it. Yeah, no. They hit the ground when it was really and they took quite a few casualties in the first half, yeah, and they were good, you know. That's just not a slur on them, it's rather they didn't have any space to learn, yeah, like we had done. Yeah, do you know what I mean? Yeah, but what I was gonna say though is is that I still think those seven months there were possibly the best seven months of my life, yeah. And I know that sounds bananas, but it is I think I've talked about this elsewhere before, but it's the fact that for seven months life was kind of easy, in that all you had to worry about was the next patrol, the next tricot, the next thing, you know. The the the general niph-nathing trivia of normal life wasn't snapping at my heels, you know. I don't think I ever looked at the bank statement. Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, none of that mattered. But also it was just the fact that everyone so there's this old saying there's no such thing as a bad soldier, there's just bad leaders. Some soldiers are worse than others, but they're always better than you think. Yeah, yeah. And everyone was the best they could be, yeah. And even guys you would have considered a bit of a biff that did the right thing and dug out and did their best. And it was seeing 90-odd guys for seven months acting as selflessly as they could, you know, doing the right thing by their mates all the time. And when you're in a thing where you know people will die to keep you safe, and you've all made that agreement, yeah. Even if you've not said it, but you know that's the case. And it was just little things about jackness or not. Like those guys coming and going at all hours, so people would be sleeping when other people weren't, and the guys were in like big like dorm type things, they kept the fucking noise down, so the guys who were back in could sleep because if they were tired and they went out and they missed a combat indicator, someone gets hurt. Yeah, do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It was just stuff like that. Or people being and I always remember like an example I'll give is D and V was always a risk because the streets were copy, but you have to do your proper VP checks as you're rooting around and shit. Yeah. So D and V frequently struck places. So the rules were when you ate, you washed your hands, there was like sinks, lines of sinks outside, then you um alcohol gelled them, and then you went in. It just ain't the guys. You wash your hands, because if you don't wash your hands, someone gets the shits. Someone gets their shits, they can't go out, they can't go out, other people have to go out more, go out more, they get tired, they get tired, they miss a combat indicator, they miss a combat indicator, someone dies. Yeah, wash your hands, yeah, no DV for seven months. Yeah, you know, just a little thing that and that's not like glamorous, that's not charging a machine gun nest. That's when you're really tired and you're really hungry, but you wash your hands because you owe it to everyone else.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:45

Yeah, that's a that's a really good analogy, you know. That that's a fantastic analogy. No one ever got an MC for washing the hands. No, no, you mentioned dispatches. But but it's um something I used to do when I when I was the RSM of the first battalion, we'd have new lads turn up and I'd always get them as a collective and say, Right, meet me at the regiment and memorial, and I'd stand there with a tin of brass over them and we'd clean it, you know, and I'd say, Do you want you know the reason we're doing this is because I want you to have a look at these names and understand the importance of you know your actions. And so when you go out downtown and get in a fight and get arrested, and you think it's all right just to tell me that they were bad mouth in the regiment, and I'll buy that. Everything you're doing is a slur against these people that would love to be here, you know, cleaning this memorial. Um, and I used to sort of weaponise that a bit and try and set that standard there, you know, similar to the to the piece that you just said there about washing the hands, something so simple, you know, cleaning your weapon. You know, why would you want that weapon to fail you at that last safe moment?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:42

It's it's it's that it's the keeping up, you know. We always said it brecking, you know, it's the basic, simple things done well. Yeah, it is yeah, yeah, repetition is key. The army, I come back to you know, all dawned on me. It does things like it does for a reason. Yeah, you know, doctrine is the accumulation of experience. Yeah, stand two. There's me at Harlequin having to desperately change my night type for my day side, yeah. You know, yeah, simple day, night, night, day, yeah, yeah, the cleaning your weapon when you get a chance before you sort yourself out, yeah, all that sort of shit. Yeah, they're doing it for a reason. They are hard, hard earned reasons. Someone else learnt why to pay attention, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:20

That's quality. Um, I'd like to move on now to talk about some of the leadership challenges. I mean, it sounds like you were in the you were in the company of wonderful people, but I mean, I've picked out so in fact. Let me ask you a question to lead us into this. With Harlequin being your opening gambit with a company and your first kinetic action, did that make you was that a leadership challenge and expectation management? I guess is where I'm going with this. Was it hard to try and sell to the guys that not every day was going to be like Harlequin?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:56

Um that mine is that I had two two private soldiers, Private Frodsham and um come to me. I saw them that's Remembrance Day. Um anyway, two guys joined the company that day. The first thing they did with a company. I hadn't even met them. Yeah. Ben Goodman. Ben Goodman and um and Private Frodsham. In fact, it was Ben Goodman who knocked the um aircon unit off the wall. It was his first day with them, the battalion. Yeah, they literally came in on a helicopter that day and joined us from training. And um, I hadn't even had a chance to interview them, and I interviewed them the next day. And I remember Private Frodsham saying, Is it like that every night? I don't fucking know. No, I think the troops, I think it was unpleasant enough that they weren't thinking, way, they will have more of that. Yeah, so got them thinking. They were professional enough that they thought, well, this might happen again and it's what we do. Yeah. So I don't think there was there was that. I would say a few times I had sort of and I come back to very minor leadership challenges. You know, they were um they were easy to lead. Once early on, when we first became the groundholding company, and my warrior crews were late joining us because they, by the time they got them to training courses, we'd already we deployed, so I went now that so I got cut a couple of warriors in the PWRR, and they were great, they were really good guys, really, really good. But they had done Telic 4 and were quite tired. And I know this is a year and a bit, two years after, but they were and Telic 4 was hard for PWRR. Yeah, definitely. And they were out again, so they were going to the same places where things had happened and stuff. But there was a period of time where in the city there was there weren't many um Sunni Muslims left in Basra, and the Shia were trying to drive them out. So a lot of Shia mosques were getting um sorry, Sunni mosques were getting blown up and stuff. So we found ourselves having to do patrols in in sunny areas to protect them from the Shia. And the problem was a lot of these areas, there'd only so many ways into them. And there'd be another couldn't be doing it, they'd go, right, you and I'll go in that area, and they go, Well, you know, setting patterns get to your knackered. So I was trying to do everything possible to do it differently, you know, we'll walk on this one, we'll and come in from there, we'll not actually go into it, we'll satellite around it, but it nonetheless was getting quite repetitive. But we were still being told to go out and do it. And I did hear some muttering from a couple of P dub guys, but with some of my guys saying, Fuck 'em, why are we taking this risk? Fuck 'em. So I said in a company O Group, which we did every night, you know, company press, and I didn't single anyone out. I just sort of said, you know, I've heard some muttering about it. I said, yeah, it's hard, isn't it? But look what we're wearing, and think about all the courses we've done, and think about the adventure training they're paid for, and think about the mess dos, you get all of that for a reason. That's because sometimes they're going to ask people like us to do these sort of things. And I said them as well as look at our battle honours. Because they were saying it's not worth it. I said, we've got the Taku forts, which was fighting to make the Chinese buy our heroine, our opium. So let's not get too wrapped up in the reasons. Yeah. You know, we made the decision in the recruiting office. Yeah. And here we are now. And as long as it's a lawful order, we're doing it, guys. Yeah. That's what because that's what we're for. Yeah. You know, we're not going over the top here. And afterwards, actually, the P dub Sergeant said, Was that aimed at me? And I said, Oh no, he said, he said, I'm really sorry, you're right. And that that was it, really, with that one. And then um there was another time where there was an incident with two platoon again, which is Johnny Lannham and Jay Greenhill's um platoon, where they had to do they had to go back to Shaiba Log Base, which was out in the desert west of Basra. And it was always difficult going to Shaiba and the air station because there's only about three roads through the desert, which right. Yeah. And so you were canalised. And there was also a canal, a big canal running north-south between Basra City and out the desert in the west, the um log base and the air station. And my troops had found a little road that led to a lock that across the canal. So they started using that because not many people used it. So Tupatoon had I can't remember what they were going to shy better to do. But they were driving on this minor road, and as they were approaching the lock, John Lennon said, We'll VP check it this time. So they stopped and started debussing. And as they did that, two Danish vehicles drove through them across the lock, and it's like got hit by an IED. Which A, I can help. You know, if you hadn't mentally tossed the coin then and gone, this time we'll VP check it, that would have been them. But the road was slightly raised in the desert, and the desert was actually like salt flat, it wasn't like Lawrence of Arabia desert, it was like shitty. And um this Danish wagon had been hit front left wheel and it had dropped nose first off the road, and the wheel would have gone, it set a light to the engine block, and there was two guys in the front of the wagon, it was like an armoured four-wheel drive. And they got one guy out, but the other guy's legs were entangled in the dashboard. The dashboard was bent, his legs were bent. Yeah. But the engine block was on fire, and the flames were coming up because it was on its nose. And so Court Davidson and um Court Wilkinson kept trying to get him out. Every time they opened the door, oxygen got to the flames, and the flames went up. Every time I shut it, it was filled with smoke, but the flames went down, and they used all of the fire extinguishers from all of the snatch. And I was back in the ops room and we just heard a garbled contact report because cons were shit. And it's like the fog of war thing for a period of time, thinking something's happening. I conget what it is. And eventually what had happened was Johnny had St. Greenhill go further up the road, and Johnny was relaying through St. Greenhill, like who could get us? But you know, you're still in Chinese whispers land. It took us a while to get the zaps, and you went, Who are they? It's not us, it's not us. Who are what's happened? And um, it's bad, isn't it, when you think it's not us, my thought was thank fuck. Yeah, it's someone else. Yeah, it's a very natural, but it's not us. But um, so they used all the fire extinguishers, they used all the bottled water, and and at the end, this guy was wearing an assault vest and his ammunition started cooking off. And Johnny had to say to them, come out, leave it, leave it, and he died. But um, and then they were on the ground coordinating it for fucking ages. They weren't in our battlegroup area, they're in someone else's AO, and it took ages for them to coordinate because it was like some people from one battlegroup with people from a different battlegroup, being the Danes, in someone else's battlegroup area, trying to coordinate brigade assets in Gazavak and things, and it was it was a long old day with them on the ground, and uh they had to coordinate, they're out of water because they'd used their water to put the fires out, trying to put the fire out. So they were on the ground for an awfully long time in shit order, having seen a pretty stinking thing. And I was keenly aware when they came back that they may well not be in good nick. And they got back in and they looked absolutely fucked. But me and JP got them up into like the accommodation and sat them down, and this is before Trim, you know, Trim was introduced, and Trim hadn't been introduced, but we just thought I come back to, you know, people who don't know the army think it's all like rah and weights and being hard, but there's an awful lot of care. Yeah, it was more than people realising. Yeah, and and you know, me and JP were like the worried parents, and and we sat them down and just said, and I mean, Dave O and Wilko, they'd lost their eyebrows, the hair at the front was burnt, their combats were covered in melted plastic and shit, and just saying to them, guys, you've done it, you've done a good job. You know, what you did today, we know it's fucking hard, but you dug out and you can be really proud. And if anyone's if anyone's to blame for the death of that guy, it's the fucker who put the ID there, it's not you. Yeah, you know, and talking to Johnny and him saying, Fuck, if I should have stopped them when they drove through, Johnny, their shout, but you decided to do a VP check, yeah, and all of your troops are still here, yeah, because you did a VP check. Yeah, you know, and it was just uh that was just a thing, and and they and I still speak to a lot of these guys, yeah, and as far as I'm aware, there's no yeah, you know, there's no dramas. Yeah. And um, because they just needed and do you know what?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:57

They did something rather than nothing. Yeah, you know, and there you go, they did what you're meant to do. They did everything they could, and sometimes, you know, I mean that that's incredible. And and they did more, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:07

Wilco got a medal for it. Yeah, um, that was funny because when I had to write people up, yeah, him and Dave were both doing exactly the same thing. Yeah, and that's how I said, Can I write that no, you've got to write one person up? And I said to Johnny, who do I write up? And he went, Well, Wilco's actually just an at from D Company, yeah. So I suppose it was slightly harder for him. Yeah, so I wrote him up, and Dave Ross used to say to him, How's our medal doing? Yeah, but Dave had got an MID for clearing that bridge on Harlequin.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:32

So, you know, yeah, there you go. But knowing Dave O, you know, I mean, that won't bother him, you know, it'll be um, yeah. I mean, that's a really humbling story, and and I can only imagine, and and that's the thing I think we do something rather than nothing, because then later on in life when you're saying I didn't help, that's a completely different journey.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:51

Do you know another thing I would say is just I think another thing I think is a really important leadership thing is the power of thank you or well done. Oh huge. Because the amount of effort that people make all the time, and it's really easy. If you're a company commander who's a prick, you've got a hundred shaven-headed blokes who are just interchangeable things. Yeah. And you give them tasks and they do the tasks and you manage them. But I was always keenly aware that every one of them was someone's son and someone's brother and someone's boyfriend and someone's best mate, and everyone's just as round and important a person. But equally, if someone did a good thing, I know what I'm like. If someone says to me, Well done, Stu, I'm buzzing for two days. So just to be able to say to a private soldier now and then on exercise, that was good. Well done. I saw that, that was good. You know, but coming in, having had that awful day, just saying to them, Yeah, that you know, you did well, yeah, yeah, you know, and they did, they did a phenomenal job. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:44

I think the last hour, 40, 45 minutes have been entirely fruitful to those listening. Not only does it I can see you're very passionate about telling the stories about your soldiers, and I'm I'm a big Afghot of that. You've got to keep saying these people's names because the things they've done in modern recent history is incredible, you know. Um I think I said it might have been off the mic yesterday. Uh, when I think back to my platoon on Herit 6, there aren't many of them that I can't think that did something that deserves a military cross in my mind, but you know, but where do you draw the line? Um, I'd just like to sort of aim, switch our guns now onto the people that are maybe in training, looking to join, looking to be they want to become a leader and and have the privilege of leading soldiers in the in the British Army, the British infantry, wherever it might be. Reflect on your time as a company commander. Can you give me three pillars of advice that you think people would benefit from?

SPEAKER_03 1:27:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I I I can I can sort of frame it all around a period in time as well as when I took over the company in Northern Ireland. So when I took them over, it was towards the end of a two and a bit year residential tour, a quiet, boring residential tour, and that can lead to going to seed a bit. And when I arrived, a company. Had also been gapped a bit for a company commander and a company sound major. And um when I took over, I think I think 60% of all outstanding discipline issues across the whole battalion were A company, and 40% of those in A Company were junior NCOs, which is not where you need to be. And part of it was well, so I arrived and I thought this isn't right, you know. And um one of the sensible things I did was I actually went and spoke to the QM Felix. Felix Ralph. Yeah, yeah. I thought, oldest soldier, let's go and see him. Also, as well, getting early with the QM as a wise move. But um, so I spoke to him a bit about A Company and things, but what became apparent to me hanging around them was was two big things that had gone wrong. One was they started taking pride in being the naughty company, they thought it was funny and cool, and the junior NCOs had not been empowered. So, what that meant was what they became was private soldiers, they didn't have to do areas. I was very lucky when I arrived, Donnie had only just arrived, JP arrived about a week after me. And I had a sit down with JP, and I said, you know, it's a bit wonky, isn't it? Yeah, it's a bit wonky. And I said to him, and this is a great moment with JP, I said, the way I see it is we've got to set a standard. And if we're above that standard, a company's gotta be the best place in the army to be. It's gonna be good fun, rewarding, good crack. We cannot go below that standard. If they go below it, they have to know and they have to be corrected. And he and he said, So fuck the PHG said, we're on it here. Next thing was a few days later, we were gonna get MCCP for Garney Jordan, so they choose around the night before, and they told them we're ending and got pissed and came today. And so we finished MCCP and instead of going back the lines, I tell you around the back, and JP showed them the logs and they picked up the logs and they were running around the airfield, and then JP read them their oath of allegiance and reminded them what they did. But what we started doing was, and I think this this was the real and there's a few things about this that were the corrective, made it clear to the troops that this is the standard, but you cannot if you're below that, that is not good enough. That is the standard. From now on, you do not cross that line, and it was up to us to enforce that standard. If you're above it, this is gonna be a great place to be, you know. The next thing we did though was that the junior NCOs, that was the problem, was that they hadn't been given. So what we did was we gave them quite stretched tasks that said you're organizing this, then fucking what? But yeah, you as a Lance Jack are organizing that. But if it's getting difficult, come and ask us. If it's not a fucking, come and ask us. If it goes wrong, but you try it for the right reasons, don't worry, we'll fix it. And we started giving them stuff to do, and they started doing it well, and they learned to take pride in doing a good job. And what we did was we would say the RSM, I don't know if you heard about court so-and-so and nailed that. And then suddenly court so-and-so's been told by the RSM, he did a good job, and he's getting a bit of a buzz from it. It also meant they were then on side, and once your junior NCOs are part of the solution, private soldiers can't go wrong because every third per every fourth person has a junior NCO. Yeah, yeah. And and so empowering them and setting this thing whereby we will trust you, but giving them the confidence. If it's going wrong, don't worry. We'll get I've delegated the task, I've not delegated the responsibility. If this goes wrong, it's me, it's on me. But and if if it goes wrong for the right reasons, we'll sort it. Yeah, just come and ask. And then we took that to Jordan, and the big thing I said before with Jordan was the time spent not doing anything, but together, which built the cohesion.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:38

And I think having and then flowing down that idea to the private soldiers of as long as you were doing the right thing, you did something, but you try to do the right thing. And if you fuck it up, don't worry, you're not in the shit, try it. And I think by setting and rigorously maintaining the standard, I'll come back on that in a bit, but set setting and maintaining a standard, empowering people, because then they take ownership and they feel valued, and you give them the confidence to do stuff, and setting the conditions where a well-intended fuck up is a lesson. You know, it's not a it's not a but the one thing I have seen throughout the army is there's like a pendulum of standards in a company. If the OC and the companies aren't major, swing a little bit of what's acceptable. The platoon commanders and platoon sergeants will swing a little bit further because everyone tries the boundaries, and if they swing a bit further, the junior NGOs swing a bit further, and then the private and the private soldiers swing a bit further, and they're swinging quite a long way by then. Yeah, exactly that. So you get so you have to be, you've got to be the very best you can be all the time, even if it's knackering and you can't be arsed or whatever. So it's little things like in Iraq, I was always keen. So I did a tour two years before Touch the Americans in Baghdad, and I saw some brilliant blokes. I saw some blokes I thought fucking happens. That's not how we do this. That's not, you know, you've got to live with yourself. We're the British army, we're the goodies, we're not the Waffen SS, we're the goodies. You know what I mean? People should go, thank God, here's the British Army. Yeah, yeah. And then and so setting standards in a situation whereby, and on a box, people can do things, people can do bad things. Absolutely setting the standard, you know, saying no, we don't talk about them like that, we don't do that. It was even little things like we're out there when there was I don't follow football, there was some football thing, I think it's a European Cup or something, and a couple of troops had put St. George's flags on their antenna. And I said, we can't do that, boys. Round here, that looks like a crusader flag. You know, I get it, we don't do that, because that's starting to slip. It's starting to slip. And there was units out there, sub-units, not poachers subunits, who are in armoured vehicles, who had put SS decals on their back bins because they thought it was cool and alley, and you think that's where that that's the rot. That's the rot. And so it's actually it's things like I come back to there's bullshit, but the standards. And it's you know, today we're not wearing the shitty clothes, today we're trying to look the CO's doing a room inspection, all right then, we're gonna have to lean into it because it's the army and that's how we do it. And you just maintain because it's a slight, you know, it's a long way to go, but from too long sideburns to war crimes, but there's a path.

unknown 1:34:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:14

Do you know what I mean? And you just maintain because that's a standard boys. And I talked to a really impressive display I saw was talking about my friend Neil Reeder, who was one of my patin sergeants. And when we arrived, we had to cut a multiple in support of the SF debt that were down there, who did whatever they did. And we sent Neil Reeder, and Neil Reeder, as we talked about before, was absolutely straight laser-focused trend. There was absolutely no flex in how you wanted stuff to do, and he was absolutely the right man because people can go to the SF and take on the affectations of SF without having earned the right to have those affectations, and also were line infantry, were not the special, we do a different thing. But people could start, a lot of people who went to them started wearing slightly odd stuff and thinking the rules didn't apply to them, and yada yada yada, and getting a bit too first names he went, it's not appropriate and stuff. And Neil Reader for seven months kept them, and they were good. They were, and there were times where they, I know for a fact, private soldiers refused to do things that an SAS bloke asked me to do. He said, No, we don't do that. Yeah. Because Neil Reeder had got them absolutely, absolutely on track. I mean, one of my first experiences of Neil Reader was on Exercise in Jordan doing a company snake overnight, and we'd stopped, and I'd taken the knee, but I hadn't taken the belt buckle, and he gripped me in the dark. Who's that the OC? Sorry, sir, no, fair cop. But that was setting the standards and maintaining them stops it going wrong. Yeah, that's great. Discipline's there for a reason. Yeah, yeah. You know, it just stops it going wrong. Yeah, and I think that's a really important thing. But that sounds like the hard end, but the other end is they're getting to know the blokes, and there's a quote, I'll never remember it. There's a guy called Ian Gardner, who's a company commander in the Fortlands with a four or two commando, who ended up with brigadier, who's a bit of a legend, isn't it? He wrote a book called The Yompus, which is if you want to study in leadership, if him taking his guys across the Fortlands, and it's absolutely fantastic. But something he says in there, and they fought in the two sisters, and he says something about he says um men don't fight for democracy or queen and country, but they fight for the man to the left and the man to the right. And then he said he says he says um teach the men to love each other and they'll fight till ten past twelve, but don't and they'll run away. And that's the great you've got to make it a place to be, and you've got to make blokes like each other, yeah, and you've got to make it stick together because it will get tested. Yeah, and and that's the difference. Yeah, that's the difference between professional soldiers and a rabble. Yeah, yeah. And that's you know, with my company, I was so confident you could have thrown so much at them and they would have just kept on trucking. That's brilliant, you know, and that's what you so that's the that's the other side, that's like the soft, cuddly side, but really important. Even if blokes don't like each other, they can kind of love each other, respect each other. Yeah, do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:54

Yeah, that's quite a common thing. There's quite people that really do rub each other the wrong way, but they make it work.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:00

Oh, and I find that you know I still see a ton of guys are in my company. You talk to people actually, they've got oh him, yeah. What? Eh? But so on the one hand, and I did I, you know, where I was, I sort with a bit of roast tendon glasses as OC. But on the other hand, but they still were invested in each other on a deeper level.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:14

When you're sharing a bunk bed with them or a you know, a hot bed in a cot bed or whatever it might be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, uh and I I um I might have spoken about this before, but I read an amazing book about the Maxov in uh Vietnam. Yes, yeah, yeah. And the guy says everything is the equivalent to falling asleep in an ambush. So if that bloke hasn't got the discipline to do that, he's the sort of bloke that's gonna fall asleep in an ambush. Yeah, you know, if he can't turn up on time sober, then he's the sort of bloke's gonna fall asleep in an ambush.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:41

He's let you down, he's crossed the line, you know, it's the line.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:43

Yeah, that is the line, yeah. That's that's a really good analogy. Yeah, um, that's great. Any other leadership pearls that you want to no?

SPEAKER_03 1:37:51

I think I just think the empowering people to be good, yeah, because they are, yeah, and they'll always rise to the occasion, it's just setting the conditions they can be good, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:00

I agree. Social smosis, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that them two lads that turned up on day one and went out on Harlequin.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:07

Well, I remember talking to Goodyear, Ben Goodman, yeah. Uh I see quite a few of the guys in remembrance today now, and I sat, I would say 10 pikes to eat with him, talking about the old days, but you get to the point where you go, and of course we were legends, yeah. But him saying, he said he couldn't believe the quality he saw you right, and that's really nice to hear because we'd got where we'd got, and he said he looked at it, he said, I felt like a crow. Yeah, he said, I just watched this bunch of people all know what we're doing, yeah, but really confident across it. He was just thinking, I what am I doing here? Yeah, by the end of the tour, of course, yeah, he's part of the machine. Yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:42

I heard a uh so the last podcast I did with Tom Po, he told me a great story about the fact that he went back on a later telek tour, and a local went up to him, saw his beds and hearts flash, went, Oh, ladder men, really, which I loved, you know. The poachers went about the business by and to be honest, you probably pioneered that because you know, certainly in the Herrick days, um, we were laddering over everything because it then they started putting IDs in the walls and all that stuff, but ultimately, yeah, he went back on a later uh a racket tour, and one of the locals went, Oh, you all have men that have a ladders on the case, which I love, you know, such a good so yeah, I I love that. Um I think we'll um we'll start to close then. I've just got one last question for you, and and again, it goes back to the point I made about keeping people on the radar, I think on the believer in saying names, you know. Uh, and obviously that tour, there were two poachers lost their lives, Private Louacy and Private Morris. Um, I know Tom Poe's experience with this was slightly different to yours, I think. But although not directly involved, what was the impact of being a leader and telling your soldiers about the loss of two?

SPEAKER_03 1:39:50

Yeah, so I think that and that was relatively early on in the tour as well. And I think it never seems real until something happens. Do you know what I mean? And I remember hearing, so a few things happened. That was still before we were the ground holding panel group. So we were just a company living in Basra Palace, but weirdly, co-located with us was the REP and the Padre, and we heard that there'd been an incident, but we didn't have DL on it. Then the Padre was picked up by a helicopter, and you thought, ah, you know. Then I had to go up to Basra in the Northwest Station was sorry, the Chateau Arape Hotel, which was where the light infantry battlegroup headquarters was. I can't remember I had to go up there, I don't know with Donny. I can't remember what we're going up for. But C Company were in there just after the incident. I met Mark Newman, he was a company commander, to mate of mine, and um sat and had a chat with him and saw um Louis Art Major cutting around. And um and he was still bloodstained and stuff from digging out the back of the wagon. And um, hey, it's it's they weren't my soldiers, it's not me to grief vampire at all. But they the company was clearly hit. Yeah, you know, they were they were hit by it, and Mark was upset. You know, yeah, any rights singer person would be. And I got back to the palace, and then we heard that um two people had died and and um one guy was seriously injured. And um I thought you've got to face this, you can't you've got you've got to lean into it, you can't just let it let it go. Yeah, you know, it has to be recognised, or else people are just gonna fill it with their own thoughts and things. But I was also aware that we were working still funny hours and I didn't want to fuck with the guys. There was a Devin and Dorset's company in there, and one of the Putin's sergeants was the um drum major. And I said to him, I'm gonna invite the guys if they want to come along. And I'll say a few words, would you play the last post? So he rocked up with his um bugle and we got the word out to the guys that um if they had time, if they want to come along. And um and I was sat in the office, and at the back of our office there's like some stairs, and and and I was watching it about time to go out, and I thought I'd get a couple of guys, and they all all of the company turned up, and they were all wearing umberry and belt, you know, they they made an effort, and no one had and the thing that really no one had told them to. You know, they didn't have to be there, and they all roped up, which I thought was a class act on everybody's behalf, and I sort of thought, you know, shit, I've got to say something here. And funny, I I'm not religious, but the padre had uh given us all these cards with a prayer on them, which it was written for a soldier. So I sort of read that because that's your operating system, you know. I'm not religious, but how do you deal with this shit? And then I told the guys the news I knew, um and it was really hard looking at them, looking at me. And some of those guys, you know, I I didn't know that the two guys are in question, but a lot of my soldiers did. And and and they were sort of you know, and you thought shit. And so then I just sort of I said to them, I said, you know, it's it's it's it's awful and it's sad. And I said, but I've already seen C Company, and they've picked themselves up and they go in again. And you know, this is what we do as soldiers, and this happens, and what we do is we don't forget them, but we've got a job, yeah, and we're here now, and we and we crack on, yeah, and um and and fen them out, and there was no um there was no wobble from the troops at all. They just I think it was just nice that we had a because I think it's important that people know that if something happens, yeah, it won't just be passed by, yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, um, but also I think it was important that we addressed it, acknowledged it was a thing. I could have just left it, it wasn't my company, but I felt it it it needed something and it needed the guys aligning again. Yeah, do you know what I mean? Yeah, okay. So you know, yeah, yeah, it's hard. This we do a hard job, and this is what happens. And weirdly, you know, I don't know, I can't remember if I spoke to it explicitly then, or I've talked to people later. Is it's you're looking at all the history stuff, that is kind of important because you go, This is weird for now. I am me in the in the 2000s, and people are getting killed around me. This is mad, but then you think, but it's not mad for a soldier. Our forebears in in um Malaya and Korea, yeah, and in First World War, Second World War, Napoleonic War, yeah, that that's what we do, yeah, and that's what happens, and it isn't normal now, but in our heritage, yeah, this is what happens with soldiers.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:19

It is, and it's it goes back to your first point about just constantly being the best you can, because what you're doing then is you're doing you're achieving a damage limitation as best you can. You could if you're if unfortunately, if that day comes and that bullet is travelling at the speed of light towards you, speed of sound, and it's got your name on it, there's not a great deal that can be done about that. But the journey to get you there, as long as you're doing the best you can, you're just gonna mitigate you as best you can.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:47

So I think I yeah, I think on the professionalism thing is there's a lot of luck involved, but you make your own luck. Yeah, you know, you do, yeah. And and I I sort of think you know, the best person in the world can just kind of get evaporated by a motor end or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:00

But if you try and do everything right, or analogy I use with people is if you want to get somewhere and you're in a bit of a rush and you speed, you probably won't get nicked, but you might get nicked. If you never speed, you won't get nicked. Yeah. And it's like checking your ECM kit, yeah, yeah, checking your everything. Oh, it's boring and I'm tired. Yeah, you're right, but we don't want to get it. It should be all right. It should be alright, and that's not good enough if your legs are gonna come off if you haven't got this right. And um, yeah, and it but but then I I and I think again the cohesion of and the poachers were increasing. You know, I know C company were joined up punch as well, is that the ability to absorb that and crack on, yeah, you know, without people feeling cut adrift. Yeah, you've got to weaponise it, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:45

You've got to bottle it up, bottle it up and and weaponise it, not bottle it up and not you know, and struggle with it, but you've got to turn it around and say, well, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:53

But also also what you can't do is mope. Yeah, yeah. You can't you can't you go right, that's it, done. Yeah, right, flags back up full mass, we get on with it. Because if every time you mope and then nothing happens and you mope further, you stop. And I come back to like I was saying to the guys when they had were saying, Is this worth it? With a we're in the fucking army. That's why we're wearing this kit. None of us were conscripted, yeah. And that's why we're here. Yeah. Because what we do. Well there's a step forward. Yeah, yeah. And I remember like the day after Harlequin, the city had gone really peat long, and um no non-armoured movement was allowed in the city. So we had four four warrior all up in Badra Palace. There was my two, there was an artillery one, which was an OPV, so the gun wasn't real, yeah, and an LI one, which is part of CO's TAC. And the CEO got those four wagons together and he said to me, It used to be armored infantry. I went, well, yeah, about 10 minutes ago. So I write them, you're commanding that. And I thought, great. My two wagons didn't have radios, one of the wagons had bow, the other wagons had bowmen, one had clansmen, so it was hand signals and PRR. And then and we were then warned off to go out to do something. I can't remember what it was, but I remember thinking at the time, this is a shit idea. The thing we're doing, I don't think it's worth it. And the city had gone. And slowly through the day and through the night, Broadsword was up, and they were seeing more and more ambushes being put in around the city. But I had to give orders to go out. And I'm thinking then, I I don't want to do this. I really, really, really don't want to do this. But then I thought, and I had like this is a formative moment for me as a soldier. I thought, but I'm gonna do it because I've got because that's what we're for. Yeah, yeah. Soldiers can't say I don't fancy it, yeah, because it's a legal order, and I've been told to do it, and we're here at the behest of a democratically elected government. So there you go. I've got to do it, and I gave orders, yeah. And I remember my troops, so my two vehicle crew sort of trusted me and were quite happy. The um LI guys were armoured infantry, so they were quite comfortable wagons. The gunner, the captain who was uh commander of that wagon, I saw him walking out looking a bit nervous, and I followed him out. Everyone else was just on the kit, and he went around the back and he started trying to lay out the fag, and he was shaking, he couldn't light the fag, and he started throwing up because he was so so scared. And um, I think largely because he could see what a shit idea this was. But I did say to him, I get it, mate, I get it, but not in front of the truth. You know, that's another thing we've got to do at the moment. You know, if the if the boss looks like he's flapping, yeah, then it's time to flap. My job, our job now is to look sanguine, yeah. You know, let's not even run anywhere, let's just be as calm as you can be. Because people are, and since we're talking quotes from books and things, have you ever read Quartered Safe Out Here? Michael George MacDonald Fraser, who was a private soldier and lance jack in the Borderers in um in the Eighth Army and Second World Warfight in the Japanese, and he's got a brilliant line where he's talking about being in one of his first contacts, and he said, if you want to know how much right you've got to be to be afraid, look at the man to your left and the man to your right. And if they look okay, then you're not allowed to be afraid. Yeah. And you've got to set the but but that was a really important thing I realised then was when you've got to go, yeah. Now actually they cancelled that up because it came to a point where there were so many ambushes in the city that went, Well, this is a non-starter, isn't it? By then I'd signed it, I'd got I got from the top major a tin of grenades, and I thought my solution is going to be a torture of wild phantoms gonna start jumping. But but um yeah, you've you've got to go when you've got to go. Yeah, you have, yeah, yeah. It's um and it's too late then to lay the foundations to make people want to go with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:24

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. I remember uh I remember being in a a maze field that had just been ploughed annoying in Helmand. And I was platoon sergeant at the rear, and we got fairly heavily ambushed, very heavily, accurately ambushed. Uh, and I remember laying in this field thinking, I can't do a thing about this. I've just got to run, I've got a the blokes have got to get me out of this. It was I need suppression, I need coordination of fires, and it was it was a company thing. I remember I used to sew a pocket on my shirt sleeve so I could put my compass in there so I can use it on my belt buckle. I've done it for years. I remember laying there cleaning my compass. I was just thinking, I'll just wait for this to blow over until someone tells me to get up and go.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:09

I've had a few times. I just used to talk about, I remember again, Johnny Lannham used this phrase, and him and Ben Hawes, and the between commanders, and listening to jazz music in your head. There sometimes comes a point where you've got to go, can I jump? All right, then I'm just gonna disassociate, I'm just gonna sit here. And it was like when you you approach a VP, do we do a VP check? But what they'd take into doing sometimes was initially putting out EFPs to target the vehicles, yeah. So we do VP checks, which would negate them. So what they started doing now is putting out essentially homemade claymores. So if you got out your wagons in Bang you, yeah. So it came to a point then where you're essentially just doing a mental toy call, coin toss. Yeah, and Johnny's saying that sometimes you said you approach a VP and you say we'll just keep driving, I'm just gonna sit here listen to Jazz music in my head because there's no I can do. Yeah, yeah. So actually just got to disassociate, haven't you?

SPEAKER_02 1:50:55

Yeah, yeah. So that was amazing. I think um we're gonna close now, and I think this has been very fruitful and very interesting. And thank you for firstly, thank you for the part you've played in generating a DNA in the Royal Angling Regiment. You know, you were one of many, one of the few company commanders on on that tour 20 years ago that have given experience to our men and women. Uh, and I love hearing you passionately talk about your soldiers and the things that you achieved on that tour. Uh, and I know for a fact you've got a good group of people now that are all veteran, and maybe some are still serving that you still talk to. I think we're very lucky in our regiment where we've got this bloodline of experience. I look at both sergeants' messes now, and it is a fierce place, you know. Um, and I think there's a lot so much experience there, and everyone else is keen to be part of that. So thanks for the part you played. Thanks for so passionately talking about your men. Um it's fantastic, and you know, even though it's 20 years ago, I'm sure to you it feels like a few weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, um, we'll never find a reason for why that feeling exists. But yeah, um, thanks for everything. Thanks for coming on today, and thanks for telling stories about the amazing money of your company. It's been brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:10

Well, I just that's set at the end as well, it is, and hopefully some of my guys will hear this. Yeah, is I just I'd like them to know how remarkably proud I've used them over that tour. They were to a man, yeah, legendary. Not one bloke let us down at all. That's awesome. They were absolutely fantastic. Yeah, that's brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:25

Uh it's very clear now some of those names that were mentioned are still about doing very well, you know. Um unsurprising, but yeah, thanks for your time, mate, and it's great to see you again. You too, mate. You too. Cheers, too. Thanks. By the way.