Bez: Guys, welcome back to another episode of the Combat Fuel podcast.

We are today joined and we use the word around legend a lot.

But this guy is an actual living legend.

He had the first very unenviable title of the first triple amputee

in the Afghanistan conflict, former Royal Royal Royal Marine Commando.

Mark Ormrod.

Welcome Mark and thank you for your service.

Thank you for your sacrifice for the country.

So pleasure to have you on here.

Mark O: Great to be here, mate.

Thank you for inviting me up to the Combat Fuel Headquarters.

You're very welcome.

You're very welcome.

So I think today what we'll do, we're just gonna dissect your life.

Bez: Have a look at where we've been, what's happened.

So growing up as a kid, tell us a little bit about your life.

Where, where you were, how's home life?

Fill us in, tell us about you.

Mark O: So I grew up in a, a lovely little city in the southwest called

Plymouth, spelt with two F's, um, to a Plymouth, Plymouth to a

regular, uh, working class family.

Uh, I've got a twin sister and we were born in, in the

eighties, raised in the nineties.

Very lucky growing up.

Never needed anything, never wanted anything, you know, everything was there.

Never.

I didn't.

Good.

Wasn't, uh, I didn't have any happy relationship.

Mom and dad, both parents.

Yep.

Never had any adversity growing up.

I

was very well taken care of, very well.

Looked after, very average.

Yep.

At everything.

Um, not particularly good at anything.

They didn't stand out, uh, in any areas.

Um, but had a great time, you know, like I said, born in the eighties,

raised in the nineties before smartphones, before the internet.

When you could go out and, you know, you came home when the street

came home, the best time, isn't it?

You know, go, going down the park with a football.

Yeah.

Come back before the street lights get on, running home, sprinting to

make sure mom and dad are happy.

We're not gonna be grounded.

Exactly.

Coming home like itchy from the grass and mud that you've

been rolling around in all day.

Having a shower and then getting ready for school.

Bez: You know, just good times, good memories.

Um, very, very lucky, fortunate.

Um, not particularly sporty, uh, as a kid, I, was there anything that you

did at school where you were like, this, this is gonna be my thing?

Or was it just sort of, was school more of a attendance thing for you?

You know, rock up, do the stuff you gotta do, do your learning, do your

homework, sort of, would it be fair to say coasting through life at that point?

Very young age.

I wouldn't say coasting.

I, I would say I was struggling to coast 'cause I'm not academic and, uh,

school didn't come that easily to me.

But I, I mean, I played.

It was crap.

I played rugby and that was crap.

Um, I didn't even know the rules.

I played rugby for an entire year at school and I couldn't

tell you one single rule.

Now get ball run.

That's pretty much what they said.

Yeah.

Get the ball run.

They said you can't punch people in the face, but you can palm them in the face.

And the position I played, uh, was a flanker.

Yeah.

At least that's what I thought.

The PE teacher called me.

Um, we might have said something different.

I think that might have given him a w Yeah, it wasn't anchor and

I had no clue what I was doing.

Um, and I had no passion for any of those sports either.

But kinda around the age of 13, maybe 14, um, I had put in a bit of weight from,

I guess not excelling at sport and, and spending more time indoors than outdoors.

I've got a Sega Mega Drive in the household.

Yeah.

You know, playing Sonic the Hedgehog golden ax and Streets of Rage.

Nice.

Um, golden eye.

No, that was Nintendo.

I was se that was Nintendo was Team Sega mate, team Seger.

Insane.

And uh, I was in school one day and this guy, it was like

the, the Midmorning break.

We had like stand easy if you like, and I had a routine where I would

tuck into this pink sliced button.

Yeah.

Follow cream.

And I never thought anything of it, you know, it was just, that was my morning

routine, uh, when I was at school.

And then one day this guy walked past who was, uh, apparently a friend of

mine and he kind of looked into the, you know, when you, you do buttons

up on a shirt and you, you can see through the, the, the side of it.

And he looked through my shirt and just looked at me and

said, your body's disgusting.

And I'm like, what?

This was a time though when it was okay to tell the truth and not be

offended by absolutely everything.

Yeah, exactly.

So, um, and I'm pretty chilled out, mate.

Yeah.

And, and most things don't bother me, but I, uh.

Of took that to heart.

Yeah.

And how old were you at this time?

I think I was 13.

13? So year nine, nine, I think in school.

Um, it might have been younger than that actually looking back.

But anyway, I threw this bun in the bin and the break is only about

25 minutes in the mid morning one.

And I went off to the gym at school and it was tiny mate.

It, it was like a broom closet and I think it had a treadmill in it, a

packed deck, a lap hole down, and then a row of freeways and that was it.

And just a bunch of mirrors.

Yeah.

And, and I walked in there and I kind of, I locked the door.

There was no one in there, no one ever trained in there.

And I, I took my shirt off and I looked in the mirror and I was like, you know what?

It was kind of harsh what he said, but it was fair.

And I had gone from being like a quite a slim, lean, athletic kid out all the

time to like this pudgy puppy dog fat.

Flabby kid, and I didn't like it.

Uh, so I, all I did in that moment, I kind of put my shirt half on, half

off, picked up some free weights.

I had no clue what I was doing.

I just thought all you do when you're lifting weights is like bicep car, right?

Yeah.

So I just bicep car a couple wrecks, just fuck the rest.

Exactly.

The, the, uh, alarm went off to say, back to lessons bottom, my shirt up legged.

It went back to my class and, uh, I had a little bit of a pump.

I was like, oh, I kind of like that.

And then I went back the next day and, uh, locked the door again.

Took some actual kick this time, and I had lunchtime, I hadn entire hour to play

around and I didn't know what I was doing.

Like there was no internet.

This is like, must have been 93, 94 maybe.

Um, but just started lifting weights, trying to figure out how to change.

Yeah.

You know what?

I had kind of, we reversed back to say that that teacher was, was

a role model or a wake up call.

How would you define him to, because it sounds like that may have been

like a bit of a pivotal moment for yourself where you were like, I need

to do something with my carcass.

'cause I'm, I'm not in the body that I want to be in.

Yeah.

It was definitely a wake up call.

Yeah.

You know, and I, I dunno, when you're like 12, 13, 14, back when

we grew up, I don't think we were really body conscious, if you like.

No.

Um, I just, I didn't, there was no social media Right.

So no one could like, give you shit and you know, only people

you had to compare yourself to were like Arnie and Stallone Yes.

From those movies.

So I just kind of, it just kind of crept up on me I think.

I didn't really realize.

So him telling me that was a wake up call and then I just

decided to do something about it.

I didn't know what to do about it.

I was too embarrassed to go to like the PE teachers or anything like that.

Like I said, we didn't have the internet and what I ended up doing

was, was taking a portion of my dinner money every day and saving it up.

And then at the end of the month, getting like a bodybuilding

magazine and just reading.

From cover to cover, like numerous times.

Um, and just trying to figure out what a Latissimous dorsa was or a quadricep

was and taking these big fancy words and matching 'em up with the pictures

and going, okay, that's what that means.

Nice.

And then trying to train that.

And it was kind of cool because bit by bit over the weeks and the

months, some of the other lads, they're like, where the hell's mark?

Why is he not out just pissing around at lunchtime.

Yeah.

And I ended up telling them and they, they tag along as well and it was great

'cause none of us knew what we were doing and we were all trying to like coach each

other and we just kind of created this little group of, of lads that were going

lock the doors at lunchtime and just lift weights and just try and figure out no.

So, but through your own, through this teacher giving you this wake up call,

you inherently then became a set a role model already for your peers, for,

for the guys you're at school with.

'cause they've then followed you to where's Mark?

I mean, they could have.

Dare I say nowadays.

Oh, what's he doing?

How, how, why is he bettering himself?

And yeah.

But then they, there they are now, like following you, coming to the gym

at 13 years old on your school break and I mean, it was very much spit and

sawdust style gyms, you know, when I was at school again, the gym was

like, that's like a big scary place.

Like the school kids didn't go there.

Right.

You know, it was the PE teacher's thing that they got to go and do.

Mm-hmm.

And, and people were often very scared.

So I think that's fair play that you, you got there.

Yeah.

So body building, could we call it that?

Or just general fitness, that, that started like shaping

your life a little bit.

Um, and obviously being in Plymouth, a very big military town, was it already a

call, call to serve, a call to action, to thinking, I want to do something military?

Or what was your, your goals upon leaving school?

It's funny, it, it was nothing to do with like where I lived, like when I started

getting into training and weightlifting, obviously being an eighties baby.

And you know, being a fan of Stallone and Arne, you sure?

These guys were muscles that were action heroes and a lot of the rows

they played were Rambo command.

Yeah.

All these military action heroes.

And outside of school?

Well, inside school and outside of school.

But where I grew up, all my friends were older than I was.

So when I got to about 15, they had already left school and gone to either

university or into the real world.

And a couple of the guys had left and joined the military.

Yep.

Um, some in the Army, some in the Navy, uh, some in the Air Force.

And I remember like, you know, I'm kind of feeling comfortable now in this

world of lifting weights and getting fit and thinking about the next step.

And I'd probably been told by teachers and people before, you know,

you gotta start thinking about a career, but you don't listen, do you?

No.

And I looked at my friends and they were out doing all this cool

stuff and they were coming home on leave and talking about these four

or five mile runs and playing with machine guns and driving tanks.

And I was like.

Maybe with this new love of fitness, I found that I could do that

because it sounds kind of cool.

And yeah, I watch these movies and maybe I get to live like that.

The university route was not even a consideration then for you?

No.

I mean, eventually when I, when I did my exams, I did all right.

I got, you could do 10 GCSEs at school and I did them.

Yeah.

I got all 10.

Nine of them were a Cs and I got a D Nice.

In geography, so I could have went to college, university,

but it was just hard work man.

Like studying.

Yeah.

And maybe it was because the subjects that you do at GCSE level aren't always

the ones that you're interested in.

And at uni you could pick a subject, what you're Yes.

Passionate about.

I don't know.

Yeah.

But it was just like, ugh, I can't really be in this environment anymore.

I want to be out doing something and I wanna be earning money.

Yes.

And and advancing as a person, and I know you can do that university, but that just

didn't feel like the natural route for me.

So yeah, I looked at these guys and thought, you know what?

I'm gonna be a soldier.

Yeah.

I wanna join the army.

I'm gonna be a soldier.

I'm gonna be like these action movie stars.

Yep.

And I'm gonna tell my own stories about these fitness tests and these

machine guns and driving these tanks.

Yep.

So my friend in the army took me to the career center and got the

paperwork that I needed to join.

I was only 15 and a half.

Um, so I had to get my parents' permission.

Yeah.

So I took it home, told 'em what I wanted to do, showed him the paperwork, and

then my dad told me that I had an uncle who was a retired rural marine now he

lived like 25 minutes from my house.

Yeah.

Um, he had served for 22 years as he did a full career.

Yep.

I didn't know that much about him at that young age.

Um, but he had joined as a marine, so as a private and left as a captain.

So we So that's later entry.

Yeah.

So we organized a trip to go see him.

Um, and he talked to me about his life and his career and the things

he'd done, seen and experienced.

He told me a little bit about the Raw Marines because bizarrely, even though

I lived in Plymouth, even though Raw Marines headquarters are there, even

though four two command was there, I didn't know who these people were.

I just thought, if you wanna be a soldier, you join the Army, which is what I did.

Yeah.

What, why I attempted to do, and then he told me about that the Raw Marines.

So I, this was like 90, 99 and dial up internet.

Yeah.

Came in and I had this big box of computer at my house where it used

to screech every time you log online.

Yeah.

And you can't use the phone at the same time.

Exactly.

If you're trying to get on the internet.

Yeah.

So I did some research, um, on the Raw Marines to find out a bit more about them.

Went back to the career center, spoke to the Royal Maroon recruiter,

and when he put the, the recruiting video in, I remember just watching

this thing like, holy shit.

Like who are these people?

This is, and this was back when they, they made really cool recruiting videos.

When recruitment was, recruitment are not woke and we won't go down that.

Yeah.

But it a avenue, but But it made you wanna join?

Yeah.

Like blokes assaulting beaches and raiding crafts fast open at

helicopters skiing in Norway.

No, patrolling through the jungle.

No.

Covered in cam cream.

I'm like, damn.

These like the guys in the video.

And that, and that video is what made you ultimately think alongside your uncle

being like, actually the Royal Marines route is gonna be me over say the Army.

Yes.

Ab, absolutely.

So I got the paperwork from him, took it home, got it signed, sent it off,

went back to school, did the GCSEs, like I explained, and then just waited.

Yeah.

And I just thought I'll wait until, 'cause there was no, there was email, but

no one was using it in like 99, was it?

Yeah.

And so it was all snail mail.

Yeah.

So I sent it all off.

It took a lot longer than it would nowadays.

Um, finished school and then just waited for the lab.

This is 2000, 2001, just creeping into 2000.

I, I remember I had a friend actually who had finished training and at midnight on

the millennium, he was up in Scotland.

Uh, I think four five Commander on the gate while I was out partying.

Um, just waiting for this letter.

Yeah.

To turn up to start recruit training or to see if they had the three day potential

World Marine Corps to see if I could pass that and then start recruit training.

Awesome.

And what date did you walk through those gates at Ton To start

training the 21st of February, 2001.

Awesome.

So obviously 2001 was a, a big year for yourself, but not

just yourself for the world.

Evidently, what happened in September the, the most atrocious terror attack mm-hmm.

In, in our living history.

And I think now we see guys joining that haven't heard of that, so

we'll get into that in a bit.

But going through training you, you've turned up, how was it, how

was your first experience of like, I've, I've done this, I'm about to

go through Royal Marines training.

What was your initial thoughts of like, the road ahead, what's it gonna be like?

How was it.

It was shit.

Was it raining?

I hated it.

No, I mean, like I was 17.

Yeah.

And the first two weeks you're just thrown in this giant room

with like 60 plus other people.

Yeah.

I was the second youngest there and I only lived like 45 minutes away from where

we go through training, but I felt like I was in the other side of the world.

Yeah.

And it was scary and intimidating and overwhelming and every time I

looked around, everyone seemed to know what they were doing except for me.

I didn't have a clue.

I couldn't take in the information at the pace it was being thrown at me.

Yeah.

I would get into bed at night exhausted and just be like, no, I wanna go home.

I was trying to go on that train and go back to my bed.

Yeah.

In my house where life's a bit more normal than this and just managed to grizz it

through each day in that first two week period and just bumble my way through.

Barely.

Um, so you get out of that foundation period and then go into.

Six man rooms.

Yeah.

And then start doing more.

So obviously at that, at that time, again, not the phones were allowed in training

anyway, but no phones, no outside contact.

That that's two, two solid weeks of just this is what you're doing.

Yeah.

And I suppose for, for a young guy that's come up from being dead set a bit shy, a

little bit, getting there was, it can be absolutely overwhelming and just pampered

me like with your, your family, your parents around, around before you around.

Yeah, absolutely.

And all of a sudden you're getting screamed at, shouted out.

And like I said, EV everyone's older, everyone seems to know what they're

doing and I'm just looking around pretending I know what I'm doing.

What I think it's brilliant about that though, is it

makes you evolve as a person.

You develop into yourself.

You know, you can sit there and that's, that's me.

See you later.

Mm. But you didn't, you know?

Mm-hmm.

And a lot of guys do, don't they, um, try service.

They, they get into basic training.

They're like, wow, this is intense.

This is not what I expected it to be.

Yeah.

I just thought I'd be doing the cool stuff in the videos.

Mm-hmm.

Like, I didn't realize we had to.

To learn and enjoy what we have to, to get there.

So it's, so we've got to that first part.

Mm-hmm.

Um, is it like a little mini pass out pray that you have, like at that time

where your family get to come and see you?

No, I think that's probably about week 10.

Maybe its much later.

A family day were, I think we were week five in the Army family get

to come down to see where you are.

Um, still kind of out of our, our crap hats.

Yeah.

Um, now they, they, they do, I can't remember which week it was,

but Yeah, they come along see a little bit about what you do.

Yeah.

Uh, which is cool.

And it's a milestone, you know, 'cause you have to break this extremely long

period of training down into like chunks.

Right?

Yes.

So that was one of the milestones for me.

And by that time, you know, you're out of that initial, uh, foundation phase into

more of the, the military style stuff.

Yeah.

Um, had you thought at that point, like, this is still for me?

Or is it crossing your mind?

Actually, I think I'm gotta every, every day I just wanted to go.

It was just shit.

I just, I just struggled with everything.

Same as school, just average at everything.

But the difference in military training was, I think a lot of the guys,

they recognized it and, 'cause I was young, they took me under their wing.

Yes.

And then they helped me and mentored me and got me through it.

Nice.

And I started to discover what cheerfulness in the face of varsity meant.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like if you could just take this shit.

Absolutely.

And that's makes it funny.

True leadership as well, rather than having a boss that's people,

men that are leading men, you know?

Mm-hmm.

The guys there that they could have just whatever.

Fucking, but they didn't, they, they took you under their wing and they,

they helped you out when I said that's, that's an important part of

how the military breeds their leaders.

Right.

You know, and that's, that's absolutely phenomenal.

Mm-hmm.

That they, they did that rather than, you know, having disregard for the guy that's

there, they're putting the effort into the guys that may have needed it more

than others to help bring everyone up to that, that same standard that's required.

'cause everyone's got the potential, right?

Yes, absolutely.

You know, you only go as fast as the slowest man.

Yep.

And people just need coaching and, and mentoring and, and, and training.

Absolute to get that.

And if you've got the patience to do that, then you can develop.

Great.

I was gonna say a, a great product.

Yeah.

I guess you are a product really as a are soldier.

You are absolutely.

Um, you need great leaders to develop great products.

'cause some Yep.

Are impatient.

Some will just get rid of you 'cause they haven't got the time.

Yep.

Um, but luckily that wasn't the case for me.

You know, I had people that would, that would develop me and awesome.

Coach me and mentor me.

Awesome.

Mm-hmm.

So we're, we're going through training.

Did anything else happen?

It's like a standout moment.

It was like either ongoing, any injuries or anything.

Were you back squatted at all?

I never got back squatted, never got injured, never failed anything,

which I was, it's quite rare as well, isn't it, for a war Marine

to pass out as an original?

Yeah.

There were, the 64 of us started and I think 16 of us managed that.

Wow.

Um.

I think, you know, being so young, you're quite lucky in that you're

durable, you don't get injured.

Yeah.

If, if you do, you can bounce back quickly.

Like I said, I, I, I scraped through everything, but that's all you need to do.

Right?

I, I hit the mark, scraped through everything.

Didn't excel at at anything.

Um, but managed to get through in one hit.

Um, which was great.

I mean, you said there that like you scraped through however scraping through,

like from those that started to 16, I don't think that's scraping through.

That's the top percent of the guys that have started and be

it through non fighter own.

Either they've, they've discharged themselves, it wasn't for them

or they've been injured Mm. Uh, illness, anything like that.

Um, but to pass out 16 of you, I think that's, that's the top percent though.

And you're not giving yourself a whole heap of credit there

to pass raw marine training.

It's, it's not easy.

It's not a attendance course by any means, is it?

You know?

No, the end of it, for those that dunno, it is a 30 mile

tab or Yom you guys call it.

Um, and that's, you're then awarded your green lit, isn't it?

Your raw Marines, kawano berry.

Yeah.

That's pretty gruesome.

Like 30 miles is, and it's not on a, a metal road.

It's across dartmore.

So you aren't undulating terrain.

Yeah.

You're constantly rolling your ankles, you're going from sprinting

to walking and you've got weight with you and you know, you've got

a, things like staying in, in step.

Yeah.

Just make it so much harder because I used to be six foot two.

Yep.

So when you do all these things, I used to get thrown at the back and if the guy at

the front comes out stabbing concertinas always, and by the time it gets to you,

you're like, ah, you're having ah, double the effort just to keep up with the pack.

I just to keep up.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, and it was brutal.

And I wasn't particularly fit fast or strong either.

I just had the ability to laugh internally, go, this is shit, but I

just don't wanna, I'm not gonna stop.

Yeah.

I'm never gonna stop.

Yeah.

Like I'll, I'll crawl over the finish line, roll over it.

Yeah.

Drag myself by my teeth if I have to.

I'm just not, because I ne I never wanna do anything twice.

It was so God in the first time.

I like that.

Absolutely.

I'm like, there's no way I'm gonna, yeah.

Why, why have a plan B though?

Yeah.

Why have a plan?

You shouldn't need a plan B. You should have a plan A and that is your plan.

Yeah.

And you do everything you can.

Mm-hmm.

You know, if, if it doesn't work, we'll address that when you come to it.

Yeah.

But it's um, 30 miles, you know, if I was in the military

US it's raw marine 30 miler.

Mm-hmm.

It doesn't mean a lot like army side.

I was an eight miler.

I don't think people quite comprehend how far 30 miles actually is.

My commute to work to here takes me about 45 minutes and it's 25 miles.

It's not an easy feet.

Is it on your legs with kit?

It's um, did anybody drop out on that 30 miler or did everyone start and finish?

No, no, of course.

Yeah.

People dropped out for sure.

Um, but again, you know, if you've got that ability, I think just to go in

inside your head and just block out all the noise and the crap and, and

this might sound a bit sadistic, but.

Not just do the physical stuff, but at any point in training, when

it got rough and people started dropping out inside, I used to smile.

Yeah.

And it was like, I, I stole a bit of their soul as they quit.

Yeah.

I did.

I'd stood there as well.

I still, I'm still going.

Yeah.

I'd stood there like, I'm done.

I'm gonna quit.

Yeah.

And then I would just wait and I fit.

If someone puts their hand up and quit, then I won't quit.

And I would just have a, a chat with myself.

Yeah.

And then someone would eventually put their hand up and I'm like,

right, I've gotta stay now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then I, that, that really stupid like, technique me free.

He's gonna say that.

But yeah.

Do you know what, I think we we're all very similar.

I mean, I remember it being absolutely pissed out.

We were up in Galock head, um, Scotland doing one of our final exes.

And I'm thinking we were trying to like, dig in harbor up and we were

like getting washed down the hill.

They then shut the roads.

The rain was that bad.

I mean, it was awful.

Mm-hmm.

And like, guys wrapping in, I mean, it was so bad that in the end they, and this

is a time when like exercise wasn't just bend off 'cause it was a little bit cold.

You know, blokes had to enjoy it and it was.

I mean, they, they, they pulled the exercise.

It was that bad.

I mean, you, you couldn't bash up or do anything.

Mm. That there, it was proper stormy.

So it's, and I remember the same mindset of know someone's gonna go

and when he goes, I ain't going.

Yeah.

He's still here.

Yeah.

And having that internal battle to, if he can do it, I can do it.

I think it's, do you, do you remember that movie Highlander?

Yes.

You remember every time they cut someone's head off, they went through

that lightning process, the quickening and they, they stole their strength.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what it felt like to me.

Every time someone laughed.

Absolutely.

I was like, absolutely.

Con McLeod stealing their strength Brilliant.

And carrying on.

Brilliant.

So we're, we're now at the end of your raw Marines training.

Yes.

You know, it's not a quick walk in the park.

You've come into the parade square.

You've finished that, that 30 miler who was there for you

at the end of the 30 miler.

Yeah.

When you got your, when you got your green lid.

So all the training team Yep.

Commanding officer.

Yeah.

Some VIPs.

And it is great 'cause, um, you absolutely.

Exhausted.

But at the same time, you're so relieved that it's over and, and elated that

you've done it, that you, you've got no energy, but you're still standing.

It's, it's, it's bizarre.

Um, and then they hand you this like, piece of cloth, this green beret and,

you know, it's not the physical thing.

It's, it's the journey.

It's that, that point is to say like, and it's the journey that you've been

on to get to that position, isn't it?

Is what I think a lot could find quite emotional, isn't it?

But it's just like, like no one can ever take that off you.

No.

And everyone who knows anything about the rumors knows what

you've had to do to achieve that.

And that's what I remember thinking.

It's like I, I've done this now and I remember the conversation I had with

my uncle, the guys in the recruiting video, and I'm like, I'm one of them now.

Yeah.

Like, I'm one of these men Yeah.

That I've got.

I dunno what maths, it's over, over 350 years of history now.

Yeah.

But I'm part of that and no one can ever ever take that from me.

And that was enough for me in life.

I'm like, I'm, I'm done.

Like this is the biggest achievement I'll ever get and I'm happy with that.

Awesome.

So raw rings lid earned pass off, prayed bus.

Come next then.

Yep.

How long did you have to wait until you had your official pass off?

Uh, I think it was like three weeks.

Yep.

You do a bunch of drill, which is pretty gross because your feet are

covered in blisters and sores and then you gotta put them stupid drill

boots on and then march around.

But at the same time, you know, your ego takes this massive boost 'cause

you're walking around camp as a senior troop and everyone knows that

you've done it, that you've done it, you've passed out and everyone out,

and everyone's looking up to you.

And so all you're doing really is, is marching and, and eating burgers.

Yeah.

And just chilling.

Um, just waiting for that day and, and that day comes around and it's, it's

pretty phenomenal, um, having all your friends there and your family there.

Or then people that you've been through all that stuff with

to, to get where you're at.

And then, you know, I think the, the piece of music we had

was from the last Mohicans.

Yeah.

I got it on my phone.

And you just, it gives you chills love, you know, and that's forever attached

to that memory now of just like, marching in front of those people and

they know what you've been through.

Nice.

And mom and dad, twin sister, everyone there to support you.

Yeah.

Everyone was there, uncle.

Awesome.

Everyone was there.

Which was, which was a highlight more if you had to pick being

given your green lid passing off

For me, I think it was be getting given my green lid.

Nice.

I'm, I'm not, it sounds bizarre and people that know me now think

that I'm just talking shit, but I'm not very like a, a public person.

I prefer private, more intimate things.

So when you're in that car park and the state that you're in

and the pain that you're in.

Just to have that little lin the ceremony.

Yeah.

You stood in free ranks and they give you it.

Like that was huge to me.

The whole fanfare is, is nice, but it's just not me.

Nice.

I prefer the bit more intimate stuff.

Yeah, absolutely.

And on that then, let's just pick one point from you for

your own Marines training.

What was one defining moment you had and a lesson that you took away from that?

So like I said earlier, I wasn't, the fittest wasn't the

fastest, wasn't the strongest.

Probably the most average bloke that you'll ever meet.

And on some of these runs that we used to do, I would always be in the

back 10% with snot coming out my nose.

I'd be crying.

And I'm the one who loses his temper really quickly when he is tired.

And we were on one run and one of the training team this, this is like the

power of someone coaching you rather than just bawling at you and streaming.

Yeah.

And I was in a particularly bad state this day and he said to me, and he knew

where my my head was at, he said, when that little voice in your head is saying.

I'm done.

I'm quitting.

I'm in too much pain.

You are only actually 40% of the way physically to being done.

Yeah.

And first of all, I thought, bullshit.

You are lying.

You just, and then I carried on anyway.

'cause I had that ability just to, to plot and plot.

And then I felt like the second wing come.

Yeah.

And I'm, and I was thinking about what he was saying.

There's lots of conversations in my mind.

I'm like, damn, this dude's right.

Yeah.

And then every time I felt that way from then on, I remember what he said and

it, and it was like a, a superpower.

Like, I'm like, no one else knows this.

Yeah.

This is my secret weapon.

Now when anyone's tired, I'm not telling anybody this secret.

Like I know that when the, my, my voice in my head is saying, quit,

I've still got like 60% left.

And that, that carried me through.

Yeah.

Well it's carried me up to now.

Yeah.

Like, I still think, I love that.

That's brilliant.

Mm-hmm.

Training's done.

Where did you go?

Which unit, um, were you put at?

So initially I stayed at CTC, the Commando Train Center because.

The NPGS weren't a thing then.

Yeah.

So you have to stand on the gate and Yeah.

And do that routine.

Um, then I went to pool Yeah.

And did a similar thing at Pool for a couple months.

Then I was sent to Raw Marines headquarters in Plymouth.

Yeah.

Which was great.

'cause I was back in my home city.

Yeah.

But now as a, as a 18-year-old raw Marines commando.

Yeah.

Everyone knew me there, knew my friends, family, people went school and it was So

you were part of a commando troop then.

So Raw Marines headquarters is different to like a fighting unit.

Yeah.

Um, so I, I got attached to, uh, empty.

Yeah.

Um, which was garbage.

Yeah.

Um, I tried very hard to get out of it.

I tried to go back to pool.

Yeah.

Um, I tried to go to, um, I think ML training.

Um, I eventually got to get attached to Air Defense Troop.

Yeah.

The problem was back then, this is 2001 two.

The 2002, nothing was on computers.

It was all paper.

So you had to write out a chair, give it to your chain of commands.

We, we've got to a point there, um, in time, so September, 2001

and the attack on the Twin Towers.

So we wanted to get to, so you, you are floating about between,

um, Plymouth HQ and Paul.

Mm-hmm.

Was there a part of you that had seen that, did that insert anything into

you where you, like, the inner Patriot within me is like, I want to be at

Raw Marine's Commando fighting unit.

'cause obviously you can be specialized.

I'd love to be a chef, be anything else.

Was that a part of you that's like, I want to go and do that and I want to, I want to

fight for our beliefs and, and obviously the fallout and the, the Declaration of

War on Terror that superseded that attack.

Yeah.

I mean, everyone who joins the Rome Marines I think wants to do that.

Yeah.

In 2002, um, shortly after passed out training, I was sent

on Predeployment training to go to Afghanistan on Op Chiana.

Yep.

Didn't do that.

That's when I went to Stonehouse and what I ended up doing was burying people.

Yeah.

From Plymouth to South San Plymouth to Bri Norton.

Dropping 'em off.

Picking them up, yeah.

And then driving that four hour drive, listening to 'em, talking

about what they've been doing.

Yeah.

And it was so, shit, thinking you've gone through this, like some of the hardest

training in the world and like a glorified taxi driver and Yeah, you're a taxi driver

and these guys, and obviously because you're so young as well, and these are

like sergeants colors, that you just keep your mouth shut and you just drive them.

And I'm listening to 'em and I'm like, I, I didn't understand how anything worked.

And I'm like, why am I sat here driving these people battles and forths?

Why am I not, I've been trained to do it.

Yeah.

Why am I not, you know, why, why understand Being able to go out and do it.

Yeah, absolutely.

It just didn't happen.

But then 2003 rolled around and then Iraq became the focus and I went through

another pre-deployment training cycle and then ended up deploying on tele

one in, uh, I think it was March, 2003.

So I got, got to go out and, and experience.

A little bit of it, which was nice.

It was good.

Um, and how was that tour for you?

Was it very much a war fighting tour?

For those that don't, under Soic is the war in Iraq.

And you hear, also hear us talking about Op Herrick later,

which was the war in Afghanistan.

So how was that tour for you?

Was it kinetic?

No, so it was, I spent about six weeks sat in KU eight.

Yeah.

Um, and it was wild because I, I'd never worked with Americans before and I think

it was Thursday nights we used to just jump in these military LA routes, drive

to a place called Doha to American base.

We were having burgers and watching movies and I'm like, what is this?

Like, this is mental.

One of the lads, I don't think he should have done it, he took a lamb rover,

drove him to Kuwait and went to the mall.

He came back with some DJ speakers and a gold necklace and like,

oh, probably, what the hell?

Then eventually we went over the line.

So I was in, I was involved in that initial push over the line.

Yeah.

So the, the invasion of rack, correct?

Yeah.

You were there.

Yeah.

Like leading, leading at the front.

Right.

And I went to a place called Azer Bay Naval Base.

Yep.

Uh, some guys went to the palace, something, the oil fields.

We went into the naval base, kicked everyone out, set up a HQ there, and

still just like not much going on.

So I volunteered to be attached to an Army Medical unit.

Yeah.

As QRF.

Yeah.

Our ambulances thinking.

Right.

I've gotta, I've get involved in something here now if I'm protecting medics.

Still nothing.

Um, never, you know, I was around things.

Yeah.

But I never fired a single round.

Yeah.

In three and a half months came home.

And just settle back into unit life.

Yep.

And this is you down at Stonehouse, back to Stonehouse at that point?

Yeah.

Um, this is, I think this was mid 2003.

Um, then ended up going to Eder Fence, which is still part of Stonehouse.

Yeah.

Um, but out of the, the main MT pool and then just started doing stuff with

those boys, just regular unit life.

We went to Norway, um, America on an exercise.

Aurora, I think it was called.

Yeah.

2004. And you are, you are.

How was Norway again for those?

That Norway's a big part of Aurora in training, isn't it?

You know, did you do the, getting yourself into the ice?

Yeah.

Norway into the water character building.

It's a shock when you first go there.

Yeah.

Um, you know, doing survival exercise in the UK is miserable, but doing it

in the snow, it's even more miserable.

And just spooning six blokes or however many blokes you've got, you know,

and rotating through the night, just waiting for that center position.

You know, doing the rabbit and the chicken thing.

Yeah.

Um, skiing for miles and, you know, I was quite good at skiing,

well, military skiing, so, you know, just walking with skis on.

But it was, it was an eye-opener, but it, it was great at the same time, just trying

to see can I survive in this environment?

Have I got what it takes to, and it's like you just, things like that

are just, it's another level up.

Yeah.

You know, and another level up.

And it was fun as well, you know, towards the end of that fast trip, um, the lads,

they entered me into a 15 K ski race.

Yeah.

I didn't wanna do it.

I was packing my kit ready to go about three days away from going home.

And I just heard my name announced on its, and everyone's getting

ready for this, um, this event.

And I ran out.

I'm like, what's going on?

They're like, you are in the race mate.

You got like three minutes to get to the start line.

That's brilliant.

So you are, you are thinking you are going home.

You are done.

I was packing my kit in, in the nice, warm gr Brilliant.

And you keep all your skis outside.

So I'm like, where, where's my skis?

Where's 'cause again, young la I didn't wanna get in trouble.

And do you know what ER is?

So er is like glue for skis and if the snow's wet, you apply more.

And if it's not so wet, you apply it, but it helps give

you a little bit of stickiness.

Yeah.

And they had dumped an entire tube Alister on my skis, then put my skis

together and glued them together.

So I'm panicking.

And then, 'cause I'm young and I'm dumb, everyone's laughing.

And one of 'em says, oh, if you set the cluster on fire, if you put a lighter

on it, it will melt all of the glue off.

So I, they gave me the lighter and I went and set my skis on fire and, and all this

black smoke came out and everyone's just rolling around in the snow laughing at me.

They're like, look at this idiot.

What was that like a a minute like, put your hand up if you want

your motorbike license moment.

Exactly.

It was just another like, let's see if this idiot falls for it.

But I was, 'cause I was panicking so much, it's like two minutes

to get to the start line.

Yeah.

Anyway, I eventually put the skis on, kind of waddle to the start line.

At the beginning of this race, you've gotta go up this massive hill.

Yeah.

So I'm like powering ahead of people thinking this is great.

Like I've got this glue on my skis.

Yeah.

This is gonna be a great race.

I'm gonna do really well.

Got to the top, put my poles in, and then just pushed and just stuck to

the floor and rode like a cartoon, head over, heels down this hill.

I ran the entire 15 k with skis on.

Like, you know when you run into the ocean and you get to a bit and you gotta

like circum your legs, like flick 'em up to the side 15 k of doing that because

I, there was so much glue on my skis, I couldn't move and I didn't even come last.

That was the weird thing.

Like people that was skiing came after me, but it was brutal.

Um, but it's, that's what I love about the military.

They just saw me off.

Yeah.

And you just do it anyway.

Yeah.

You could've just threw my, my dummy out and went, no, I'm not doing it.

No, I'm not doing it.

Which.

We won't get a ton of bits, but yeah, you, you know, like, I think that's a big test

of character and that is a big part of what the military is, you know, and it,

that kind of stuff is character building.

You know, it, if you can endure that, the flip side of it is you can endure a

firefight, you know, obviously Afghanistan stuff will, will get on onto, but yeah,

those bits I think are, they're essential.

They're essential for military life and being a, a soldier first and foremost

in whatever we do, you know, we, we need that lifestyle in the military.

It works and it serves a purpose other than it just being

funny and it's a good memory.

It's a great memory.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, it's a great memory.

It's a good di isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a good dip while we're having a brood.

So what happened next?

And are we nearing on the inevitable?

Well, actually left the military after that, um, which

I don't think many guys know.

Do they?

That you No time out?

No.

My partner at the time, uh, was pregnant with my eldest daughter Ke and so I, I

looked at my life and I thought, okay.

I was quite lucky what I crammed into that five years.

I'd got my green beret, I'd been out to Iraq, been to Norway.

Um, I never went to the jungle.

That was the only thing I missed out on.

But I looked at it and thought, okay, cool.

I think I was 21 maybe coming up to 22.

I thought I've done a lot.

It's a lot of life experience for Yeah, I thought so.

Happy.

A large young in his twenties.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought I'd crammed it in, so I thought I'd leave and join the police or the

fire brigade or think, 'cause you know, my daughter, she to be born, so I left.

Um, I ended up separating from my daughter's mom about two

months before I actually left.

But in my mind, I was already a civilian.

So I took the money that you get for reeducation in the

military a bit that I'd saved.

And I just, I went to South Africa and I retrained as a bodyguard,

uh, for six weeks with the hope of working in the close protection world.

Not the, not the one back out in, in Iraq or anywhere, but like around London

doing the kind of commercial stuff.

Um, but I couldn't get a job.

I don't know why.

Um, there was plenty around.

I didn't know anyone in that world.

And I think, 'cause I was so young, there's a world of of very much

who you know as well, isn't it?

Yeah.

And I didn't know anybody.

Um, and I was so young.

I just, you know, I applied for stuff Yeah.

Um, the way I thought I was supposed to, but nothing came off.

So I ended up rejoining in 2007.

Yep.

So you're a couple of years outta service?

Just one.

Just one year.

Just one year.

So no need to go through training again.

Just you, just A-W-T-B-F-T, um,

what do you call it?

CS Gas.

Yep.

And then the swimming test.

And that was it.

And I was back in uniform.

Nice.

Uh, ready to pick up my career.

Nice.

Yeah.

Cool.

So where, that's when, that's Afghanistan.

That's Afghanistan.

I know, I'm sure a lot of people are eagerly awaiting because it's

a, obviously if you, if nothing had happened, you'd just be, I'd say

just you'd be still be raw Marine.

Rod possibly still serving mm-hmm.

Near the end of your career by now, but it didn't so Mm. Deployed on Herrick.

Yeah.

I, I rejoined the military.

Afghanistan was the focus, went straight, uh, into pre-deployment training with my

unit at the time, 40 Commander Operation Herrick seven, and then deployed on

what should have been a six month tour.

Yeah.

Which I was looking forward to and to bit of just what we touched on

earlier, which is it's hard to get into a fighting unit in the core, you know?

So you are, would you say lucky to be, I mean, it's not hard to get

into a unit, um, as such, but you know, everyone wants to be in a unit.

Yes.

Everyone wants to be in a fighting unit doing war soldier stuff.

Yeah.

Um, so I was quite lucky.

The only other option was the commando training center.

Yeah.

Which is nondeployable.

But again, recruitment video.

There was a reason you joined that made you be like, this is what I want to do.

Yes.

So it's so joined the unit.

Um.

I got straight into training and I, I did what I always do.

I just keep my mouth shut.

I'm the gray man for the majority of the time.

Learn what I can learn.

Um, don't particularly shine in any areas.

Yeah.

Which has been quite useful for me.

Yeah.

You know, just to be that gray man.

Yeah.

And then 7th of September, 2007 deployed.

Yep.

Um, as part of the advanced party.

Yep.

Talk us about your tour.

So, pu should have been six months with a r and r for 10 days, two weeks,

somewhere in the middle of that.

How was it boots on the ground at the start?

I, I loved it.

It, it was very different to Iraq.

We were getting rounds down like every day.

Yeah.

Um, multiple times a day.

All hours of the day.

Yeah.

You know, having firefights in your underwear at like

two o'clock in the morning.

Yeah.

It, it was awesome.

Um, this is stuff that, that is.

Why a lot of us joined, wasn't it?

'cause that's what the lads wanted to experience.

It sounds, yeah.

It sounds odd, right?

It's, I don't want to downplay it massively, but it's like a

big bucket list thing, right?

It's like, yes.

Yeah.

Being a firefight with someone that wants to kill you.

It's um, it's one of those like, if, you know, you know, and if

you've done it, you've done it.

Yeah.

You know, and we, we look at someone like it te and operates like, that's so cool.

Mm. But like most of the, the war fight with no disrespect meant was

done by the guys on the ground.

The infantry and the Royal Marines obviously powered.

Um, so yeah, it's just cool.

Like you're going out on these patrols.

Yeah.

I didn't do any of that in Iraq.

It was all vehicle based stuff.

And I'm going out on foot patrols, engaging with civilians, you know, getting

given a bit of responsibility as well.

Yes.

You know, becoming two IC from time to time in these patrols, um, trying

to lead and do that kind of stuff.

And, you know, conducting missions.

It is kind of in the beginning, it feels a bit like a game.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like you like a giant kid and then the rounds start coming.

You're like, oh shit, this is a game.

And like this is actually like, oh yeah, this is real.

And, and I was very lucky in that I, I, no one that I deployed

with was hurt or killed Yeah.

Around me.

Yeah.

Um, or on any of my patrol.

So I didn't, I didn't have to witness any of that.

So it was quite cool.

And we just going out doing some cool stuff, um, helping, I believe.

Yeah.

You know, the people that we were there to help.

We did.

I, I think so.

Whatever anyone says, like fact speak to themselves.

When we were there, the country and the civilian populace benefited from us.

NATO being there.

Yeah.

You know, I don't think people understand like how different

that country in the Middle East is compared to our way of life.

No.

You know, we'd see girls going to school, women walking, and it was.

It's easier for us to say like, that's a, something that was very, very different

because that didn't happen, did it?

Girls didn't go to school.

Women, they got to experience a little bit of it, a little bit of

life while, while we were there.

Yeah.

We absolutely, categorically back speaking made a difference.

Mm-hmm.

At least for the time that we were there.

Mm-hmm.

So it's what happened, happened after, um,

and then Christmas Eve happened.

Christmas Eve happened, you know, normally a, a pretty nice day.

You know, we'd dress up, um, the lads that have done tours before when I was in,

it was always a, a little bit of a lull in, in the heat of what they would be.

But Christmas Eve happened and I suppose, I mean, your life

changed forever then, didn't it?

Do you want to talk us through that day?

Yes, it did.

What happened?

You, you woke up from stag?

Mm-hmm.

Probably having a couple of hours, uh, in your bed space.

Yeah.

I mean this is the thing as well, when you, when you're not doing

anything, even if you're in a war zone, then you're not doing anything.

Yeah.

You are either like writing home or working out.

Yeah.

Or you know, sitting around chatting with the lads and we got caught

up to the headquarters compound.

We were given a brief and told we'd gone on a foot patrol.

Yeah.

We'd done hundreds of them before.

Yeah.

Um, and the funny thing is this was like a really, really basic one.

There, there was no mission.

Yeah.

If you like, it wasn't like there's a weapon cache there, go destroy it.

It was just go out the back gate, go for a bimbo and come in the front gate.

You know, I want two sections.

Yeah.

Just like a, a way to maintain momentum.

'cause there wasn't anything for us to do, but it was important that we were

actually out camp on, on the ground.

Yeah.

Um, so go out the back gate two sections, one go north, one go south,

come in the front gate, finish up.

Yeah.

And then we had, I think the ERs were making us some curried goat for

Christmas and we had a bag of, just don't dunno what the curried goat

gir because, and a curried goat is.

So something to look forward to come back to.

Still look forward to, mate.

Yeah.

And um.

We were just finishing up, I was second in command of this, this group, and

we were on the high ground giving Overwatch for this other section.

All the lads had had taken their far positions.

Um, I was the last man in my half for the section to do that.

And as I walked over towards the position that I selected for myself, I, I put

my right knee on the ground as I went to get on my belly and knelt on and

detonated an improvised explosive device.

Yeah.

So it was, you literally just no cool sign, no ground sign.

Sorry.

That was there.

You just knelt down and, and what, what, what happened from there?

Was there a moment when you were like, I know what I've done.

Did your world slow down or what, what happened next?

So, I didn't know what I'd done.

I, I thought we were under attack.

Yeah.

Um, you know, this thing exploded 'cause of the terrain we were working in.

It's very dusty and sandy, as you know.

It created this huge dust close.

You couldn't see anything.

Yeah.

I could hear everyone, all the lads like shouting, trying to

figure out what had gone on.

Yeah.

And where my adrenaline had spiked, I thought, okay, we're in a firefight now.

Id the enemy.

Yeah.

So at this point you didn't know that it was you that had been hit?

No, not at all.

Um, and behind me, about 600 meters behind me, down on the low ground

was like a, a small group of trees, like a rectangular forestry block.

And everything else around the area was just fields like flat mud fields.

Yeah.

And so in all that chaos, you know, common sense tells you like, if

anyone's gonna launch a rocket or a mortar bias, they're gonna do it

from there because they've got cover.

Yeah.

So, in my mind, through all the chaos and the overwhelm and not

being able to see anything, I, I was saying to myself like, turn around,

ID the enemy and start shooting.

Yes.

When you start shooting, the lads would start shooting.

We had a big HMG about 200 meters away in camp.

That would've torn the entire forest in half.

After a couple of times in my mind of saying turn around, even though I couldn't

see anything, I knew that my body wasn't doing what my brain was telling to do.

Yeah.

And I couldn't figure out why.

So, so, and even at this point then you're like, something isn't working, but you

still didn't know anything was wrong.

Yeah.

Or it happened, or, no, it's, it's, it's very odd.

Like everything goes at like a thousand mile an hour on the, on

the inside, but on the outside it kind of goes into slow motion.

And it seemed like it was taking forever.

It was probably seconds, but it felt on the outside, like it was

going on for ages, but on the inside everything was rushing around.

I'm like, where did the attack come from?

I've gotta do this.

I've gotta do that.

Why am I not moving?

I'm, I thought I was telling myself to move, but I'm not, thousands

and thousands of things going on.

And then I realized that I wasn't moving.

So I thought, okay, what, what do I do?

And there's nothing I could do except for wait for this dust cloud to

settle and then see what was going on and then make some calls and.

Eventually hit the ground disappeared.

I looked down to where my legs should have been.

I, I was sat on the floor.

Yeah.

And they'd just both been completely ripped off from the knees down.

That's a very surreal experience.

Yeah.

It's very hard to explain it if you've not been in like a traumatic

accident, like what I just said about everything outside's a thousand mile an

hour, everything inside or everything inside's a thousand mile hour.

Everything outside is slow motion.

You look at, at this, you know, horrendous site and your brain can't process it.

Everything feels really surreal.

You don't feel any pain, which just adds to the confusion and

the overwhelm of what's going on.

Like, and I'm like, I don't understand.

It doesn't make any sense.

Yeah.

You are like, I, I don't know what I'm looking at.

What, what is going on?

Then I thought about the rest of the section, so, and again, it's

like a second, maybe two seconds.

Yeah.

I was just staring.

Snapped out of it, looked around, saw the section commander face was gray.

Eyes were huge.

And then I'm trying to figure out why he looks like that.

Yeah.

And I, I, and he had him just confused, put two and two together that Yeah.

My legs had gone.

And at this point, had you been like, my right arms also not, so as I went

to look back to my legs to try and make sense of what I was looking at.

Yeah.

I saw my arm.

Yeah.

That was just laying in the sand, you know, still attached.

So being complete.

So still attached, just not just everything ripped open in the,

in the bicep and in the forearm.

Um, just this like mess of like dramatically removed limbs.

Yeah.

And none of it made sense.

It was just bizarre.

And 'cause I wasn't in any pain again, it didn't feel like it was real.

And then again, I, it's hard to comprehend time, but seconds, it, it probably was

seconds that I realized what had gone on.

'cause I, I remember thinking there's no follow up attack.

Yeah, what's going on?

What's going on?

So then I'm like, as you said, this was just a, a standard patrol.

It Yeah.

It wasn't, you weren't expecting a, a kinetic firefight.

It was No, but because that wasn't one, I'm like, this is, I sense

remember sitting together thinking, okay, we're not under attack.

You're at a dickhead that stood on the ID Yeah.

Um, and what a, what a mindset to have under the dickhead that stood

in the IED, but we talked about it.

Um, you know, they allowed, you should talk about it, you know,

and we, we drill it, don't we?

Actions on Mm. If you do, like, so it's ingrained into us what to do.

Like, you know, the, the first point of it, it isn't, if anyone's

watching, it doesn't understand like the military, what we do.

Fortunately it, you are hit by an IED.

You are not the priority.

The priority is to win the firefight.

Right.

And obviously that was what was ingrained into you saying I had to turn around

PID to position and start engaging it.

Mm-hmm.

And you know that, and that is how important military training is, isn't it?

You know, you, it was ingrained into you that you performed like a

robot of how you should have done.

Mm. And you do, you, you have to do that.

Do and as you said, yeah, you absolutely did.

Mm-hmm.

So we're now looking at ourselves, your section commander looking

at you very like, mm, fuck this guy's not in a good place.

Mm-hmm.

But in your head you're like, ah, it's just a bit, well, it kind of

started kicking in at that point.

Yeah.

But I realized what I'd done.

Yeah.

And what you're saying about, you know, drills and, and you know,

I don't know if this was the case for everybody in the military.

I don't know if this still happens now, but for us, we were

trained at not to run in Yes.

To help the casualty.

Yeah.

Because you need to check for secondaries, don't you?

Right.

And there were six.

Yeah.

There were six other IEDs around me, and so straight away my mind's like, oh shit,

no one's running in to help me here.

Yeah.

Like, and you know, I've read the report that was written from

the guys that cleared the area.

Yeah.

This, we were in a 12 foot by 15 foot crater at this point on high ground.

So I literally at like at lightning speed, I'm running through the scenario like.

This, this sucks.

I'm on high ground.

That's hard enough.

I'm in a crater.

That's hard enough.

I've got six IDs around me.

That's hard enough.

And no one's allowed to run in to help me.

Yeah.

I'm like, I'm nev.

There's no way I can survive this.

I Is that a point then where you were like, my life's done?

Yeah.

I, I, I took my helmet off at that point and threw it over to

the side, and I actually asked, um, Sean, the guy in charge Yeah.

To, to shoot me.

And I, I just waited.

I thought it would be like getting punched in the back of the head.

Yeah.

And then my lights would just go out.

Yeah.

Um, obviously he didn't do that.

And all of the lads in the section and it is just phenomenal what,

what people do when they need to.

Everyone had their own job to do.

Yeah.

And everyone did it perfectly.

So I had like a guy who was 19 on his belly with a bayonet clearing a safe

route for when the medic, it got to me.

Yeah.

I had another guy calling in a cai vac giving a nine liner.

Another guy coordinating or on defense in case there was a small arm

attack, a small un follow up attack.

Another guy talking to me constantly.

'cause again, I dunno what the time was exactly, maybe a minute

had gone and I'm in and outta consciousness and just groaning

at this point with my eyes closed.

Yeah.

And they just did it all perfectly.

Yeah.

And the minute it got to me started to kick in then Say again.

Pain started to kick in then It was hardening at that point.

Yeah.

And then the medic got to me very, very quickly 'cause we were so close to camp.

Gave me pain relief, tourniquet my legs.

Um, got me to tourniquet my arm, scooped up the bits that were still kind of semi

attached, put me on a stretcher, got me out of there, threw me in a vehicle.

The vehicle drove me back to camp, got me to the HLS and the last thing I

remember is the, the chin note landing.

Um, and as it, as it got to the ground, I, I blacked out.

That was it.

I was out and I was told later, clinically declared dead.

Yeah.

Mm. Which is, yeah.

Merry Christmas.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Merry Christmas.

Yeah.

Merry Christmas.

You blacked out and that was, you know, you, you had died then.

Mm-hmm.

What is the next thing you remember?

The next thing I remember is waking up, choking on a feeding tube.

I didn't know it was a feeding tube at the time.

Uh, being absolutely exhausted to the point where I couldn't even open my eyes.

Yeah.

I remember just laying, I, I, I can't, I came around, it was like three days later,

so I think it was the 20th of December.

Yeah.

And all I could make out was like lights from a ceiling.

Yeah.

You even missed Christmas day.

I missed it all, mate.

Ridiculous.

I know.

I remember the lights from the ceiling and just ratting and I could feel I

had like some sort of mask on my face.

I didn't.

Feel any, I wasn't scared.

I kind of knew I was safe somehow.

Um, and I was trying to open my eyes and it was like I met, it felt like someone

had put fishing hooks in my eyelids and then dangled weights off of them.

I, I, and I remember I was laying there once they pulled the tubes out and

I could breathe focusing like all of my energy to my eyelids, like laying

there, just trying to channel it all.

And I couldn't even open my eyes.

I was so exhausted.

Um, I think obviously there was a lot of pain relief as well.

Um, but I could hear people around me and I think that's why I knew I was safe.

Um, and I could hear family and friends, all medical professionals at this point.

All of them.

Uh, both.

And I, I could hear Becky, she was my girlfriend at the time now, my wife.

Um, and everything, everything was echoing.

I remember like someone would say something once and I could hear

it three or four times echoing.

I was just super confused, but not scared.

Um, and I actually, that, that's when I actually proposed to Becky.

'cause I could recognize her voice, couldn't see her 'cause

I couldn't open my eyes.

And she, she was leaning in really close and I couldn't even speak.

I, I was mumbling and I don't even know where it came from.

Um, but I just kind of asked her to marry me and she eventually

heard what I was saying.

She said yes.

And then I just passed out.

I was, I was, I can't explain how exhausting.

Yeah.

Exhausted.

I was.

It was just unreal.

I mean, your body's just been through a triple traumatic amputation and surgery,

you know, it's, and you've been in a coma, a ally induced coma for three days mm-hmm.

Before you've come round.

I mean, I don't think many people would be waking up, no, let's go, let's go for

a walk and, and propose to my girlfriend.

You know, and it's, you know, you were thousands of miles away when you died.

Mm-hmm.

In Afghanistan.

Mm-hmm.

So you would've been taken back to camp bas.

Where they would've brought you back.

That's where they did the, in initial tidy up surgery.

Yeah.

Saved your life, induced you into a coma, flown you back to Birmingham and Cell Oak.

Was that you were at Cell Oak?

Yeah.

So it's where Cell oak, where injured soldiers, um, from the UK come.

Yeah.

Once they've been stabilized in Camp Bastion.

Mm-hmm.

Like the, the main base in, in Afghanistan.

So fell back asleep and then woke up the next day.

Yeah.

I think, I think what they did was reduced my medication Yeah.

To gradually bring me outta that coma.

Yeah.

And for the next week I was on the intensive care ward and they reduced it

bit by bit every day so I could be awake for longer and try and, but didn't you

have you on any breathing apparatus?

No.

Or anything you were No.

The tubes were just feeding, you'd just gone by and you, you know,

you, you died three days in a coma.

Mm-hmm.

And then, I mean, evidently there's a lot of physical trauma, but.

You are okay.

Mm-hmm.

In your head.

Mm-hmm.

You can breathe by yourself.

Mm-hmm.

And you propose to your girlfriend.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, who does that?

How, how do you think your body managed to endure that?

Did you have a reason why?

Being I've gone to pull through this.

'cause I mean, to be there after three days, having some

long naps, we'll call them.

Mm. But to be there is pretty damn impressive.

Fuck.

I mean, I was on autopilot.

I didn't have a clue what was going on.

I think,

I mean, I like to, I like to think this, like when you, you put yourself

in situations through life, adverse situations like raw Marines training.

You know, prior to that, I won't bore you with my, my fight stories about being a

competitive kickboxer, but as a teenager I was fighting men and, and winning.

Yeah.

And I think you just develop this subconscious attitude.

You don't even think about it.

Yeah.

So maybe.

In that scenario, while I'm unconscious, my subconscious is like me.

It's just another challenge and you'll get over it.

And like, so, which is some mi some mindset, you know, it's one of the most

horrific injuries to, to anyone that's, that that's served in Afghanistan.

And you are like on the surfaces.

It is another, another challenge.

Yeah.

But I mean, so on the surface, yes.

Two legs, dominant arm, but that's it.

But I don't have, you know, I've got friends who had shrapnel tear their

intestines up and they have, you know, shot through the lung or through the neck.

Yeah.

Or they've got traumatic brain injuries and I don't have any of that stuff.

Yeah.

Super lucky.

And you obviously you, you've lost both your legs.

Yeah.

And an arm.

Right.

Anything else?

Manhood.

All good mate.

All good.

All good.

It's the first time in my life I've been glad that I've got a small penis.

'cause the shrapnel in my left leg, I've seen it and it is tidy.

If, if you look at my left leg, like the, the flesh that was ripped from

the inside of my thigh literally stops where my man had begin, uh, end.

Sorry.

So the very, if it was any bigger, it would've took the end off.

So nice.

You know, it was a blessing there.

Win for small dips.

Um, but yeah, still there still works.

Nice.

Two more kids followed after, um, on audio old fashion way.

So yeah, very lucky.

Love that old fashion way.

Very lucky.

So you've gone through this traumatic experience.

How is your, your head, your mental health, like immediately after in

like the superseding weeks and months?

Um, so I was 24 years old at this point.

The first week or two,

it was just bullshit.

Like, I was trying to pretend that I was Okay.

Yeah.

Because I was thinking about all the people around me and

I wanted them to feel okay.

And I think they were doing the same.

They weren't okay, but they were bullshitting me that they were, and

we just, we just bullshitted our way through the first couple weeks.

Yeah.

Uh, then I got the, the talk from the doctor saying, you'll never walk again.

And for those watching, they need to keep a hold of that point, don't they?

And that, that conversation, no, that sentence, you'll never walk again.

I mean, it was a bit more in depth than that.

He explained to me that, 'cause I'd lost both my legs above the knee.

Yeah.

I'd have no chance of walking.

Yeah.

And in his dark plus years experience of working with amputees, he'd never met

anyone with one leg above the knee that had success with prosthetics because

it was so difficult, painful, and, and hard to use that they didn't bother.

So that hit me pretty hard, you know?

'cause when you're in hospital, you.

You're on all this medication and it messes up all your sleep routines.

You're up at like two, three in the morning and it's very lonely

and all you can do is think.

And he, he told me that, and I didn't really sleep that night and

I just was going over and over and over again what he was telling me.

And it's the only time in my life when I wanted to commit suicide

because, and you know, you can probably see the scar on my hand.

I only had the use of two fingers at the time.

Uh, it was getting fed for a tube, 24 years old, no legs, one arm.

And everything was just like horrendously difficult, even sitting up in bed.

So I'm like, okay, cool.

Time to, to bow out.

Um, but then I got visited by another amputee about five days after that, and he

was missing both his legs above the knee and almost like what my uncle did when

he told me about his experiences in the Marines, this dude told me his experiences

as a bilateral above knee amputee.

And that kind of gave me a bit of hope.

Then I got a laptop brought in my room with, uh, a dongle to

get connected to the internet and then started doing some research.

I'm like, okay, what could my life look like?

I've just met this guy who's got injuries similar to mine.

They're not quite the same, but they're similar.

What other people around the world have injuries like mine that

are out there doing cool shit?

And had you almost at that point been like, I've forgotten

what this doctor said.

I'm you now focused back in that military mindset of like,

what can I do with my life?

Yeah.

I mean, I wasn't disregarding his comments or being disrespectful to him,

but I've always just thought, you know, if I've seen something in my own eyes.

Yeah.

And I seen this guy come in my room.

He sat with me for like six hours and I'm like, well, okay, this guy's done it.

Like the doctor is just telling me his experiences.

He wasn't an amputee, he just worked with 'em extensively.

Yeah.

And I'm like, well this guy's done it.

Yeah.

You know, it's like the Roger Banister effect.

Right.

Like no one thought you could break a four minute mile until he did it.

Then everyone did it.

Yep.

Eddie Hall's deadlift.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly that mate.

So I'm like, okay, well this dude's done it, so what's stopping me doing it?

Alright.

It'd be a bit more challenging 'cause I've got my dominant

arm missing, but he can walk.

I can walk.

And then that was it.

Like just six weeks in hospital, straight to rehab.

Head in the game.

Yeah.

Gimme the legs, let's go.

Which is incredible, you know?

You know, I said six weeks in hospital and then you are, you're starting rehab.

Yeah, well I was, I started it in hospital.

Yeah.

Which is, I was standing under my bed with a, a table tennis paddle and a balloon.

Yeah.

Like my physio like, gave me to tap it and stretch my body to wipe my core.

Yeah.

Um, I, you could have just sat there feeling sorry for yourself,

which would've, you know, and I think sometimes, and that would've

been absolutely understandable after what's happened mm-hmm.

And just been like, no.

Gone, sunk into a hole.

Yeah.

But you didn't, no.

It's just not really kind of, it's not my default setting.

No.

So then I, I got out there and I was just like, right, gimme the legs.

Let's, let's do the physical part.

'cause I thought, wow, I'm pretty fit.

It can't be that hard.

I know you've told me before where you were like, you knew you were gonna get

your medal from Afghanistan, from fighting when the guys came back and presented Des

and that was a bit, and please correct me if I'm wrong, where you're like, I will

be standing when I'm giving my medal.

Yes.

I ain't doing that in a wheelchair.

Yeah.

Because I already knew from a young age, and I learned, I taught

myself this in military training that you have to have goals.

To, to motivate you and to, you know, get you outta your

pit every day to do something.

So I in my mind said, right, that's what I'm gonna do.

When they get back from Afghan and we do the medals prayed, I'm gonna be at a

level with these legs where I can stand.

Um, even if it's only for like five minutes.

And, and the medals prayed just to make it clear.

So you were injured in a, a few months of deploying mm-hmm.

Meadows parades normally like a few months after the guys come back.

So it is not like, this is like years later.

This is still, we're talking months.

It was a couple, yeah.

Like six months maybe.

Post, post-injury.

Yeah.

And it was brutal.

It was unbelievably painful.

Yeah.

I had to stand there for like 45 minutes.

Yep.

Um, with a lot of pain going through your, your stumps.

It's, it wasn't even just the pain, you know, I, when the whole unit

was formed up, I walked on the prey ground and, and I had a stick 'cause

I couldn't balance at the time.

And, uh, every tiny little gust of wind.

I felt like I was stood on top of Everest and I was gonna, and I was shitting

myself that I was gonna stack it in front of all these people and embarrass

myself and embarrass the Royal Marines.

So I was just like rigid.

Like I, I remember my, like, I remember, I remember the photos.

I remember them.

Yeah, just sweat dripping down my back.

And the way you kind of operate prosthetics when you've got, uh,

when you're a bilateral above amputees through your glutes.

So just tense in my ass cheeks, like nonstop for 45 minutes.

Sweating, swaying, you know, lightheaded and dizzy because my, my body hadn't

adjusted, my blood pressure hadn't adjusted to, you know, being laying down

for weeks on end then to being stood up.

And it was, it was rough, mate, and it doesn't, it was

a lot harder than it looked.

Um, but I managed to kind of grizz it out for that time, get the medal,

and then got back in my wheelchair and went home, which is wild.

Mm. Absolutely wild.

Mm. You were told, I'm proud of that.

You were told a few months ago you were never gonna walk again.

Mm-hmm.

And there, there you are.

Mm. Stood and prayed for 45 minutes.

Yeah.

And it, and it wasn't pretty, like I didn't, I didn't mince onto the

play ground like I would nowadays.

Yeah.

Like I said, I had the stick, I couldn't activate the legs properly.

They were like stiff and Yeah.

I had all the settings so that they were as, um, safe as they could be.

Yeah.

And yeah.

So it didn't look pretty when I was walking, but I didn't care.

It, you know, my objective was to be stood.

You set yourself a goal and you achieved it.

Yeah.

And I'll figured that stuff out after.

Yeah.

You know, I'll make it look pretty later.

Yeah, absolutely.

But yeah, I got the medal.

And how was it when you were presenting your medal?

Yeah, it was cool because my sergeant major was there to give it to me.

Yeah.

And he was one of the people that ca acted me.

Yeah.

So that was kind of cool.

I thought we'd been through together.

I, I felt proud that.

What I wanted to do was kind of show 'cause the media are there, aren't they?

Yeah.

And the fam family and friends.

I wanted to show them what being a Royal Marine is about.

Yeah.

Because everyone talks about it, you know, this mindset and being

physically strong and able and, and overcoming adversity and, and

cheerfulness in the face of adversity.

And I thought, well, this is an opportunity kind to show the world.

Yeah.

And I put a lot of pressure on myself.

Yeah.

Which is why I think I was so nervous about falling over and things, but

I just, I wanted to show everyone, like, this is what it means.

Like you can talk about it, you can make recruiting videos and posters about it.

Yeah.

But this is what we do.

And, and again, for nothing selfishly more even for showing other guys, like,

doesn't matter, whatever's thrown at you.

Yeah.

You've got it.

Yeah.

It is.

It's just, it is what's instilled in us and it's, this is the way we

think, this is the way we're trained.

This is what we do.

Absolutely.

This is what it means.

So we're now around six months post Afghan post-injury.

You've been given your medal.

Mm-hmm.

How was your mental health?

Do you, did you, are you comfortable, did you have PTSD?

No.

Which I think I, I had what they called back then.

This was, this is now like been scientifically tested and

they've written papers on it.

I had what they called post-traumatic growth.

Yeah.

Where you go into a traumatic event when you come out the other side

stronger than when you went in.

Yeah.

And I bumped into my physio years later.

I was speaking in, I think it was the O2 arena and an event.

And I bumped into him there and he was explaining this concept to me.

I didn't know what it was at the time.

And he said trauma is like alcohol and it just amplifies more of who you are.

So you know, when you go out drinking, if you are the guy that hugs everyone

and tells 'em you love them, alcohol will make you be more of that person.

Yes.

If you're an asshole, you are gonna be the rude, aggressive

guy who's like, yeah, scraping.

Exactly.

And he said like, traumas the same.

It just amplifies more of who you are naturally.

And because that's, I guess, a testament to you as a, as

an individual then as well.

You, you know, this has happened and it's, it's amplified who you

are, which is, is evidently no homo, um, full-time good bloke.

So it's, yeah.

But yeah, I mean, also being so young, you sit there and you

go, well, what's my alternative?

Like, sit in a wheelchair for the rest of my life where people, ab

abs and what a mindset that is.

You know, you know, sit in a wheelchair, have my benefits of which you, you

would be given to be, you know?

Mm-hmm.

You, you can't stay in the raw rings and, and work as a raw marine.

Mm-hmm.

You, you, most jobs are probably off the cards do at this point.

Yes.

You know, but you didn't just sit there, have your, your bits of money that you get

from, from the injuries you've sustained.

Did you, you, you went and worked for a charity again

as, say, worked for a charity.

You went and volunteered for a charity.

No, no.

I did work for 'em.

And you did work for him as well?

I was, I was very lucky.

I was discharged eventually in 2010.

Yep.

Um.

And it was quite funny 'cause I was going through these, um,

these organizations where you call 'em up and you have like a 45

minute interview and they ask you all these things about your, your

hobbies and what you're interested in and what your qualifications are.

And they knew my situation.

Like, and this was prior to leaving, I think I haven't used the wheelchair

since the 9th of June, 2009.

So it was prior to that because I remember I was in a wheelchair.

I remember you saying to me that at that point you were like,

I will not use a wheelchair.

Yeah, no, I, I got rid of it at the beginning of June, 2009.

So this interview I had was before June, 2009.

'cause I was a part-time wheelchair user.

Yeah.

And I went through this interview and they said, we think you'd be very well suited

to being a laborer on a building site.

And I'm like, what?

Like a human wheelbarrow like allowed to just stack bricks on me in a wheelchair

and push me around a building site.

Oh, that's brilliant.

And I was, I was so angry.

Oh, I didn't.

I wasn't rude to anyone on the phone, but I was just like, what the fuck?

Yeah.

Like, are you not insane?

Me and I, I left in 2010 in July and I was really lucky.

I was just about to set out on a trip where me and some guys were running

across America from New York to la Yeah.

And I got a phone call off a retired brigadier and we had met

at some of the lads funerals.

Yeah.

But we didn't really know each other.

And he was the chief executive of the, what was then the

Royal Marines Association.

Yeah.

And he rang me up and offered me a job and I was like, this is brilliant.

Like I don't have to leave the Royal Marines technically.

Yeah.

Because I'll still be around it and I can earn an income and I'm not

on a building site as a laborer.

And I said, sir, I would love that.

Thank you so much.

What would you like me to do?

He went, I dunno yet.

We'll make something up.

And then I went off and ran across America.

Um, and I had, it was a fundraising event.

I'd made them.

Uh, one of the benefactors.

So I'm like, brilliant.

I'm actually working.

Yeah.

And then I remember thinking, I'm running across America.

This is my job as a triple amputee.

Yeah.

But I, and three months before you were struggling to stand for

45 minutes on a parade square.

No, no.

It was like a year before that.

Year before that was doing that.

But um, I remember thinking, wow, this is a job.

Yeah.

I get to like do cooler ventures raise money and they pay me.

Yeah.

This is awesome.

Yeah.

And that, that was my life for 10 years.

Yeah.

After that 2010 to 2020.

And how much money did you raise for the Royal Marines Association

For Royal Marines charity whilst you were doing this job?

It's really difficult to, I never tracked it and then, you

know, you raise money directly.

Yeah.

But then you also assist people, you know, in their fundraisers and then

sometimes you get other people going, I'm doing this 'cause I saw you do that.

So you're like, well I dunno what to attribute to it.

But I think it is around is a couple million.

It's a good couple million.

Phenomenal.

Um, over those 10 years.

And obviously the the lads lives that, that's helped.

Impact is, is phenomenal.

You, you know, firsthand from, from having support from the community

that you come from, how much that money's done to, to support the guys.

And it's not just guys that have been physically injured,

guys that may have mental health issues, guys that have had mm-hmm.

Welfare issues, you know, you know, it goes to supporting

the community you come from.

So it's, and, and their families.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

You know, some guys, you know, as you know, didn't make it back.

Yeah.

So they've got widows and, and children without, without dads.

So that goes to support them in, in many different ways as well.

So, and it, it is crazy mate, like what a, what better job is there?

And you ego selfishly, you know, like the run and, and all the other

things that I've been involved in.

I did that for my ego.

It's like, can I do these physical things?

Let me see what I'm capable of.

But then the other side of it is, oh, if I can do this selfish thing, but raise

money at the same time, it's a good thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, you know, it was kind of a, from these two worlds they met and

it was like the perfect sport, sport.

And then everybody, everybody ultimately wins off everyone of the back.

I got to, you know, scratch my ego.

Yeah.

And, you know, do these things that I, I wanted to challenge myself to do,

and then people got to benefit from it.

Yeah.

Which is great.

It's perfect.

10 years have passed.

You are now married.

Yes.

Two beautiful kids.

Three or together.

Becky three or together.

Three of 'em.

Yeah.

Two of Becky.

Yeah.

Um, life's doing all right after what could have been a very different outcome.

Um, happy at this point in your life.

I'm saying like, you're not happy now, but at this point in your

life it's, it's, it's brilliant.

You know, it's, you've, you've gotta make the most of, of what you've got, right?

Yeah.

And you can be a victim or you can be a victim, and I just don't

see the benefit in being a victim.

No.

For anybody.

No.

Like, nobody wins off of you being a victim.

No.

You don't win.

You don't help anybody.

You don't help yourself.

No.

So it's, you don't, and you don't set an example either?

No.

You know, I've got three children.

Yeah.

In my mind, and over the years I've sat there and thought about this a lot.

You know, I could have sat there in a wheelchair and I'm not, I'm

not disrespecting anybody that, that takes a different path for me.

Right.

No, this is a, your point of view, but I was imagining myself sat there in a

wheelchair and, and maybe not working.

Yeah.

And wanting my kids to grow up to be decent people.

And, and, and, you know, the way I grew up, like meritocracy hard work.

That's how you earn your way in life.

Yes.

And me telling them these things, but not showing them, like

them seeing me in a wheelchair.

And then eventually they see someone in prosthetics and think, well,

why isn't daddy wearing those legs?

And so I thought I've, I've gotta.

Live my life to the limit, but I've gotta get up at the same time every day.

Hourly, work hard, dominate prosthetics, do these cool fundraising things,

help people that need help and, and show them as well as tell them.

And, uh, try and be a role model.

Yeah.

You know, to, to them.

And that's a big driver, you know, it's a big driver for me.

And now, you know, growing up as, as they've grown up, my

daughter's gonna be 21 in January.

She's got her own business.

Yep.

She's been working since she was like 13 years old.

She's been through some severe advice at herself.

Now she's got her own salon with six people working for her.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

I, I just went, I dropped in and saw her yesterday.

My boy, he's 14.

He plays rugby and football much better than I did when I was at school.

But then yesterday, I, you know, I dropped him and his two mates down to the

gym and I'm driving them to the gym and they're, they're all like, they got their

protein shakes and they're ready to go.

And they're jacking weights as well.

And I'm like, this is cool.

And then my little girl, Evie last night, you know, she's 12.

We're up, she's got a school play coming up Jane Air and we're, we're wrapping

out all her lines and she's, she's done it, she's like, mastered them already.

Nice.

And I'm like, this is cool.

You know what I mean?

It's like together, you know, me and Becky and, and other influencers in their life

of kind of raised them in a way where, you know, you have to read those lines even.

Yeah.

You're not gonna remember on the night you wanna get good at football

and, and rugby mason, you gotta do it in the rain, in the sun, whatever.

And he does it.

You wanna, a successful business cares.

Yeah.

You gotta pay these taxes and figure out how to do this yourself.

You've gotta employ people and deal with any bullshit that comes along with that.

With management.

You've gotta work 12 hours a day in the beginning, you know this stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

And they've done it all, mate.

Yeah.

They've done it all.

Brilliant.

I'm so proud of them.

Like the way they just grizz stuff out and they're resilient as hell.

Nice.

Inspiring.

Yeah.

If I look after that at the end of your story, that'd be a pretty mega story.

Mm. But that's.

We're living close to the end of it, are we?

No.

You left the Royal Marines charity.

I did.

And you've gone to a thing called Reg.

I don't work for reorg.

I I'm a trustee.

Yes.

You're a trustee for real.

A trustee.

Yeah.

You do a lot of stuff with Reg Mm. And Juujitsu.

Yes.

How did you Brazilian Juujitsu get about doing Brazilian jujitsu?

So when I was working for the Raw Marines charity, I was at Raw Means headquarters.

I was in the sergeant's mess at a function and I met a guy called Sam Sheriff.

Yep.

Sam was a physical training instructor, color sergeant at the time.

He was the head of Rome Marines Armed Combat.

And I think he was a purple belt.

Yeah.

In Jiujitsu.

And we didn't know each other.

And he introduced himself to me, uh, in the sergeant's mess.

Started talking to me about Brazilian jiujitsu and asked if I'd ever tried it.

I hadn't.

I didn't even know what it was.

I had tried Japanese Jiujitsu when I was a kid.

Yeah.

I had competed in mu Thai kickboxing and boxing as a teenager

before joining the military.

Um, and he invited me to what he called the combat room to

see if I would enjoy doing it.

He explained it.

He explained what it was to me, took me down to this converted s squash court,

took my legs off, I put a GI on, and then he explained that it was a ground-based

grappling system, like a combat system.

I thought, well, okay, I'm sat on the floor, so I'm already halfway there.

Then he started explaining to me the objectives, you know, choke

somebody, submit them with an arm bar or, or whatever you do.

And then he started showing me techniques.

Yeah.

And then we started figuring out how to adapt them.

And what I loved about it, first of all, was that after he'd spent an hour

beating the shit outta me, I. I had that feeling again, you know when your lungs

are burning and your heart's beating and you, you've just been in a fight.

Yeah.

Even though it's a controlled one and it's safe like that combat

again with, with a, with a guy.

And I, I didn't think I'd feel that again.

And the fact that all this stuff was adaptable and that I could do

it on merit rather than sympathy and pity was quite appealing to me.

And that was in 2017.

And I just started training and learning and adapting and,

and trying to figure stuff out.

I've never really been to a, a regular class 'cause a lot

of it doesn't apply to me.

Um, don't really watch tutorials 'cause a lot of it doesn't apply to me.

Yeah.

I just try to understand the concepts of, of certain parts of it and what my

objective is and, and marry the two up and then just figure stuff out on my own.

And in the beginning it was hard.

'cause you have that mindset of this is how it must be done.

Yeah.

But then you, you speak to people over the years and you watch

people and you learn more and more.

And you realize that everybody, whether they've got all their

fingers and all their toes or not, everyone does it to their own style.

Yes.

And ability and body type and strengths.

So I felt a lot more comfortable doing it that way then.

And it's just a lot of fun too.

You know, there's an, there's a really cool community wrapped

up around Brazilian jiujitsu.

It's very similar to the military, I find in that you all start

on day one as a white belt.

Yeah.

Then there was nothing, you all go through this journey, um, of adversity

and success and failure and confusion and overwhelm and a steep learning curve.

And then, you know, if you all stick out, you all end up as,

as black belts at the same time.

I think that shared adversity is where strong bonds are formed.

That's why so many people in the military, you can not see 'em for years.

And then we don't even know them.

I've bumped into people that I didn't even know Yeah.

From the Royal Marines and met em on holiday.

But you pick up a conversation like, and you, you've known

em your whole life, don't you?

Exactly.

Yeah.

And it's similar in Juujitsu.

You know, you look at someone on a, on the tube and they got cauliflower ear

straight away you're leave a K rugby.

Yeah.

Or they do juujitsu and then you kind of like nod at 'em.

Right mate.

Oh mate.

Yeah.

And give them little cauliflower ear wink.

Yeah.

Um, and then you're not obviously a white belt anymore.

No.

You are a purple belt.

Yes.

Third or fourth stripe.

Fourth stripe.

So you a, a brown belt is inevitable to some point.

Yeah.

Soon.

Um, I dunno, not, not too soon.

I wanna, I didn't do it this year 'cause I just got too overwhelming work.

Yeah.

But I'd like to go to the power juujitsu championships.

Yeah.

In Abu Dhabi.

Ju just to state on that as well.

I didn't do juujitsu that much this year.

Still competed.

Pressured him a lot of peer pressure, mark.

Mm-hmm.

Why aren't you competing?

This is like on the day of the real go, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, and it's not, not today, pussy.

You didn't just go and compete though, did you?

No, I, yeah, no, I won a, a gold and a silver.

The silver still annoys me because I only lost by two advantage points.

Um, which is brilliant.

You know, you, you've gone from there, from the morning of, you know, we,

we went and we were sat down having breakfast, giving you a bit of shit

as we do just good military banter.

Mm-hmm.

And a couple hours later on the mat and, and again, some of the guys

you fought had all their limbs.

Mm-hmm.

And you didn't just win by points, you won some of them by submission as well.

Yeah.

The, the, the power of sports are difficult.

Um, to match people up.

Yeah.

So you kind of don't know what you're getting.

And in normal jujitsu ass, you know, they'll do it by your weight.

Yeah.

Your grade.

Yeah.

But in power Jiujitsu, it's just a, a giant absolute where

you just, it's a free for Yeah.

Any belt, any weight, isn't it?

It's just, yeah.

And you gotta suck it up and, and just embrace the, accept

that, that that is what it is.

Yeah.

Um, so it's, but yeah, sometimes I perform battle like that.

Yeah.

Like you don't have the, the weeks of anxiety leading up to it.

Yeah.

You just turn up on a day, you went, you're feeling good.

You're like, yeah, I'll give it a shot.

Yeah.

And in your mind I convinced myself, I'm like, well, if I

lose, I got a built an excuse.

'cause I'm like, yeah, well I didn't change, I won't compete anyway.

Yeah.

I wasn't gonna win, was I?

But then when you win you're like, haha.

Yeah, I won.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Sometimes I perform better like that.

Yeah.

But yeah, not always, but sometimes.

Yeah.

Love it.

Um, and let's touch on reel a little bit.

So you became a trustee, uh, of Reg, which was predominantly in its

infancy through Sam when I met Sam.

For giving Jiujitsu to the guys and girls that have struggled mm-hmm.

And giving them a purpose to carry on.

Yeah.

S evidently exploded now.

Yeah.

Um, it is huge.

It's not just jujitsu, it's CrossFit gym and they support the guys

and girls at are you suffering?

Are you in a safe place?

Yes.

You're supported.

Yeah.

You know, and now they can't be enough money raised for it to

help fund the guys that need it.

And you've raised a little bit of money for real as well, haven't you?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I think the just given page is, is at like 700,000.

So that's like the online, but then we do a lot outside of that as well.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Hopefully that's close enough.

Close to a mill.

Um, but there, we, I mean we've got a backlog of people.

Yeah.

You know, there is, there is a, and there's around a thousand pound per

person on average help support them.

Yeah.

We two program, we have 700 individuals that you've helped

given them per a reason.

It's not through, through the challenges that.

You've done as well.

You know, you've done a bike ride of, it was 90, we call it a

hundred, a hundred mile bike ride.

Mm-hmm.

You went for a pretty phenomenal run as well.

And a swim.

Yeah.

Um, I mean, how do you even swim?

You've got one arm just cuff it.

It's everything.

This is what I was just gonna say, that this is like the, the jujitsu

tournament you just talked about.

I, I love, I love like in the military, how you can just cuff things.

So like the run, you know, I, that was a complete, all of it was an accident.

I was out just running with my coach and I fell over in the

park and I uploaded the video.

I remember seeing a video.

Yeah.

Because I hit the ground.

Yeah.

You're on your blades, weren't you?

Yeah.

And the media picked it up and I was just talking about reorg.

It wasn't even anything to do with that.

I was just doing some fizz.

Yeah.

And then I said, look, if I can raise 5K for this charity, I've just become

a trustee of, I'll do a a 5K run.

Yeah.

And I've got an office at home in my like converted garage.

And it was live on the BB, C. And by the time I'd walked from my garage

to my front room, I had 68 grand.

So I'm like, shit, this is now I need to run now I've gotta do it.

And I hate running.

And it was between Lockdowns and I hadn't worn my running

prosthetics for like four years.

None.

They weren't aligned.

All the solar had been, uh, like worn off.

Yeah.

So when the tar, when the carbon fiber hits the tarmac, it's like ice skating.

Yeah.

Which is why I fell over and I'm like, no, I've gotta do this.

And I thought I'd have like six weeks to train.

I had one other running session and then we did it and it was so ugly.

Like it WI wouldn't call it running, it was just like hopping with style.

And my back was in pieces 'cause the legs weren't aligned, but we did it.

And then as far as I was concerned, that was it.

And then my coach was like, why don't we do a swim?

'cause he liked open what?

Sea swimming.

Yeah.

I had swam before.

I like the Invictus games and I had kind of got a technique,

but I hadn't swam in the ocean.

Yeah.

It was in like a pool.

And we went out and we started swimming and I started trying to figure it out

and eventually figured out a stroke and, uh, a rhythm, like a breath into

stroke ratio that, that worked for me.

So we just went out and did a, a one K swim, which ended up being

a wild record, which was cool.

And that brought the, the total up even further.

And then at this time, reorg just started going.

It had gone from the server military and the veteran world to also the

emergency services, which is why I did a 99.9 mile bike ride, like 9, 9, 9.

I thought it was great marketing but no one else did.

No.

Um, and I instantly regretted it.

I should have done 99.9 kilometers, but.

That was like a, and again, this is completely my fault, but I left all the

planning to like my coach and the team.

Yeah.

And we started an Elfa crew and it's a 6.6 mile climb and I've only got one hand.

The prosthetic doesn't provide any power.

Yeah.

'cause I haven't got an elbow.

It's just steering.

Yeah.

So that was a 24 and a half hour bike ride, which I'm not, I'm

not good at endurance events.

I'm more like in out job done.

That's when I'm at my worst when I'm like snappy and angry.

And when it's at two in the morning and you've got a dude in front of

you on a regular bike and he farts and the fart comes down, hits you

in the face when you are angry and tired, you're like, I snapped.

Um, but we managed to do it.

Yeah.

And then, yeah, like in total we got up to about 700,000.

Yeah.

For that.

Series of events and it, it still didn't stop there since that

we've done a truck pull as well.

Oh yeah, I did that.

That was January this year, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I tried to break a world record by pulling this Ford truck and I mean, on,

on that, let's just touch on a little bit.

Like, 'cause social media, like back then wasn't a thing, you know, when we

started this conversation as a kid, right.

Doing orange now it's a thing.

Mm-hmm.

You know, social media's huge, how people can give you a bit

of abuse is, is beyond me.

But you, you've had a, a bit of trolling going as well, haven't you?

I like it.

You know, like I, I like it when people troll me.

It kind of, I genuinely do.

I think it's hilarious.

But yeah, I'm pulling that truck and I did it on my, what they

called stubbies, my short legs.

Yeah.

So this truck's 2.3 tons.

Yeah.

This is a big Ford Ranger truck Ford Ranger.

I only had to pull a hundred meters, but.

All I have to power with is, is my ass muscles.

Yeah.

I don't have ankles, toes, calfs.

Quads don't work.

Hams don't work.

Like none of it's connected.

It's just literally my ass.

And I failed the first two attempts, got the third attempt.

They wouldn't gimme a wild record because they said I stopped.

I'm like, okay, cool.

I don't even care at this point.

I'm like, you can Yeah.

Whatever.

Take your certificate.

I don't care.

And uh, yeah, put it online and Eddie Hall put it on.

Yeah.

And the amount of abuse that it was, it was just comical.

'cause people, it just shows their ignorance that they don't understand.

Yeah.

They're like, well that's not fair.

You, you don't have to, you don't get sore legs and all this kinda stuff.

I'm like, no, but my ass hearts like hell and every other part

of my body hearts like hell.

And yeah.

You know, it's 2.3 tons and, and Okay, like when did you last pull a truck then?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Let alone.

Missing limbs.

Yeah.

I'm tired of the truck, so I, I just laugh about it, mate.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Does does it affect you in any way seeing any of the hate?

Because there's also equally a hell of a lot of support for you out there as well.

Exactly.

It's like 3% hate, you know?

And, and the rest is all support.

And it's, I mean, even yesterday, you know, like, and this is not,

this wasn't directed at me, but it just highlights how many ignorant

morons there are on the internet.

I, I tweeted about how proud I was dropping my son and

his friends to the gym.

Yeah.

That their, their mindset.

They were just talking about sports and, you know, doing well in school as

I was driving 'em down there, and then what they were gonna work at in the gym.

And I'm like, this is cool.

I like this.

Nice.

And then I woke up this morning and it's like, your son's in

for a life of steroid abuse.

And I'm like, what?

Where do you get that from?

I know.

I'm, and I'm like, said, oh, I know what I'm talking about.

I've dealt with loads of kids that I'm like, cool, but you,

you've not dealt with mine.

Yeah.

Cheers.

Take your toxic attitude and you stupid opinion and keep it,

lock yourself and your mom's.

And people pretend like this amount of hate.

Into something positive they could achieve so much more.

It's t get wrong.

Like I have that in a bit and I'm sure you've got that in a bit as well.

Like if I see people making supplements that are just so absolutely abysmal,

I have this like rage inside me that, how can you make that, how can you

go to bed at night knowing that you are, you are just stealing money from

people, which I think is a little bit different, dare I say it to me

to just hate it on someone because of something that's been perceived compared

to what I can see that is factually correct, which supplements we can join.

So you were, you weren't obviously always combat fuel.

Um, you have Grenade for a long time as well.

Yep.

Um, and again, kudos to Al if you, if you don't know Grenade and a lot of

people know Grenade now is like the big brand, but Al made Grenade a household

name, so Yeah, he's a geez mate.

He's a cool guy.

Absolutely.

He's done a lot to support the community as well.

You know, we make better supplements.

He does, he does make some pretty damn good protein bars though, you know that.

I think that's unarguable.

He changed the industry.

Yeah.

Um.

Through, through what he did.

And it, it, it was brilliant.

But you were grenade for a long time.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and you know, we never pressured you to say, mark, leave grenade,

come towards we are better.

It was just always a, you know, seen you a lot of stuff with reorg.

We, I think it was then we were a real, uh, it wasn't, it, it

was a, the Arnold wasn't it?

And I always said, look, if you ever wanna do anything with us, there's an open door.

I don't see you doing a lot with Grenade.

If you wanna do some stuff with us, then, you know, would you

like to try some of our products?

Mm. Um, being a raw marine, it's not the first time you've

tasted piss unicorn piss.

Yeah.

That's what else did I mean?

Yeah.

Oh.

Um, where did we go from there?

You know, you tried some products.

Yeah.

What did you think to them?

I'm massively like setting this up for you to blow my trumpet now.

No, no.

I think the first thing I'd say is like, Al and Grenade

took really good care of me.

Yes.

But I, I, I can't sit still mate.

Like I have to be doing stuff all the time.

And you know, as, as you were growing.

You know, you look on your ambassador board.

There's a lot of my friends are on there.

Yeah.

And, you know, you're doing things like this and creating,

and I've done hours podcast.

I went to his house.

Yeah.

He, he let me and Mason stay at his house and we did that.

But I, I need, I need to feel like I'm contributing.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Feel like I, he was giving me loads of free stuff and I'm like, I'm not

doing anything in return for it.

Yeah.

And I wanna get stuck in.

And so, you know, this came up and it was, as you can imagine, quite an

awkward for me to be like, I've got this opportunity, do you mind if I do it?

And he was lovely.

Yeah.

He said absolutely.

There was no animosity or was that No, he's not like that.

He's great.

He al sent me a photo on a couple years ago on Christmas

day of him and Richard Branson.

Yeah.

Both flipping me off on, on one of their islands.

I was like, that's pretty cool.

That's pretty cool.

But he looked after me and he, he completely got it.

And, and he wished me well and we're friends.

Yeah.

But yeah, I, I want to get stuck in and, you know, I, I'm 42 and

I still feel like a kid, like I wanna hang around with my mates.

Yeah.

And just do fun shit all the time.

Do you know what I mean?

I love it.

Back to your original question.

I love what you do here.

I love the fact that you're a veteran.

I love that you're successful.

I love, and I'm not saying this both smoke at your ass.

I love the way you treat your athletes.

You know, you could treat your staff better.

You don't treat Leah very well.

You know she, she's behind the camera like, no, he doesn't.

He does.

He does.

He does.

How's really?

She's a woman.

It's fine.

Just for clarity.

He does.

He looks after everyone.

No.

Where's my favorite one?

Well, I think you've got, this is my favorite one, right?

White chocolate and white chocolate peanut butter cups, which you're always

sold out of, which is very disappointing.

As an athlete, I have some really bad news for you as well.

Like by the time this goes out, it might be a thing We're

actually discontinuing them.

So Sorry.

Please don't leave.

Cut the interview.

Cut the interview.

We're done Here, Al, take you back.

Take me back.

Are you really?

We are.

Wow.

So we've got, we got a couple of, we got just some feedback from

the general because, and white chocolate's so hard to procure.

Oh, okay.

Now, because we use actual Belgian chocolate in our bits, we use way

in them to make them protein cups.

We don't add.

Crazy to make our products bad, as you know, um, all of our powdered

supplements, you know, and our capsules are very, very good.

Um, I think it'd be hard pressed to be beaten on formulations

by anyone in the world.

Like anyone pre-workouts.

We can talk about efficacious and what's a gray area not, but the stuff that's

our core, like our multivitamin mm-hmm.

Doing our Omega-3 with the EPA and DHA levels that are where they should be.

The thing that does the thing, our joint product, that's very good.

Our hydrate, everything we do is done to the highest possible standard we can do.

Um, which is really bad because we have no margin in anything

we do, but it's, it's good.

It's good as a, from a customer's point of view, it, it is because we care.

Right.

You know, we don't have to do loads of fancy marketing.

We are just us.

We're combat fuel.

Mm-hmm.

A lot of banner up there, um, says that we are combat fuel.

Combat fuel is you, it is me.

It isly.

Everybody who works for the brand pushes the brand to customers.

And it's just a community of like-minded individuals, I suppose, isn't it?

Yeah, no, it is.

You've got some real cool people.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Welcome.

Working with you here.

How do supplements fit into your day-to-day routine then?

And what do you currently use from us?

So protein obviously.

Yep.

Amino acids.

'cause I get so bored of just drinking regular water.

Yep.

I, I'm a bit, I like putting them, mixing it all up, the amino

acids and like having ice in it.

It's like a, a little bit of a little cocktail, isn't it?

Yeah.

Like a, it's like, I was gonna say a Poundland cocktail.

I didn't mean that before I get in something, but like,

I'm not a fancy person.

So like an amino acid cocktail is like as fancy as I get.

And then you know, these the as ganda.

Yeah.

Very.

That's great.

Good.

I love that stuff.

Multiverse.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The thing about me is I think my body's adjusted now, but for a bilateral

above knee amputee to do anything, for me to walk around every day, it

takes me between 300 and 500% more energy than an able-bodied person.

Yeah.

So I have to live like an athlete.

Yeah.

I have to and I have to supplement like an athlete, even when I'm not doing

jujitsu or swimming or any of that.

Just daily.

You know, I've driven up here from Plymouth, I'm going to London after this.

Yeah.

I'm going out in my bay after that, and I'm coming back.

My schedule's busy.

Rammed.

Yeah.

And busy.

I have to, I have to be constantly optimized.

Yeah.

You know?

Absolutely.

So that's where this all, all works into my life.

Well, I don't overdo it.

I've got a, my own routine, my own favorites that just get me through life.

And then if I'm doing an event, I'll, I'll up it and if I'm

not, I'll bring it back down.

Love it.

Yeah.

I've got a couple of questions for you.

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?

What's the advice to aimed at?

Could be anything.

Absolutely anything.

So I think I would say,

I'd go back to when I was like 12, 13.

Yeah.

And I would say that life's gonna get pretty shit at multiple points,

but you can, you can do sounds corny.

You're stronger than you think you are.

You don't have to be talented.

You don't have to be particularly gifted.

You've got this, you do have a gift.

And it's like the gift of stubbornness if you like.

Just like hard work.

Yeah.

Just no matter what, what's in in front of you.

Like you're not particularly skilled, but you'll just keep going.

You're not particularly talented, but you'll just keep going.

Focusing on that.

Don't worry about all the shit going on around you, just focusing on your

ability to just keep putting one prosthetic foot in front of the other.

Nice.

And we're gonna ask you a separate question, which was, any advice for

somebody, veteran civilian that's been through the suck, perhaps

doesn't want to be here anymore?

What bit of advice would you give to them?

What, what's the a reason for them to carry on?

That's quite a, a deep question, isn't it?

But, you know, you've, you've been there, you've said yourself, you at one point

you were like, I've gotta commit suicide.

I've got, I've got nothing.

What's the point?

Mm-hmm.

This is just my opinion, but life isn't supposed to be easy.

I can get all philosophical and spiritual on you about, you know,

what we're here on the planet for.

But yeah, my honest belief is that we are here to push ourselves to

become the best version of ourselves.

And you can't do that if you live an easy life.

Yeah.

And human beings, this is, this really pisses me off.

Like, like we forgot.

What we're capable of.

We're like the most adaptable creatures on the planet.

And we can, we can do a lot, but we put people on pedestals.

Yeah.

We look at like world class footballers and we're like,

oh, I could never be like that.

Well, you could.

Yeah.

If you started, when they started sacrificed, what they

sacrificed, wiped this holiday wax had that leg up that they had.

You could do all that stuff, but we kind of, we beat ourselves up

and go, I'm not capable of that.

Yeah.

You know, look what you built here.

There's probably a point where you looked at maybe someone like Al and

went, oh my God, that's amazing.

I could never do that.

And now you're doing it.

Absolutely.

I mean, it's when, when I started, if I looked at this and I'd be like, ah.

Exactly.

No way.

Like it's not, it just takes hard work and, and discipline and it always just

try and live in a Now put one foot in front of the other, as you said.

Yeah.

And you know, you, you can't fail if you never give up, can you?

No, exactly.

But also like, don't be, don't be dumb and, and not

ask for help when you need it.

This is a big thing for, for blokes, right.

Huge.

And I've, I've never ever, ever been able to get my head around this.

I'm like, well, if I was a kid at school and I couldn't understand

a math problem, guess what I'd do?

Yeah.

That ask enough asking the teacher.

Yeah.

If I don't know how to change a wheel on my bike when I'm a teenager, what do I do?

I ask for help.

Yeah.

I, I've, I've always done it and I've never understood

why people struggle with it.

Yeah.

Like, I'll ask for help for anything.

So, and I was gonna say a final touching point.

Is there any misconceptions that you'd like to address while we have you here,

we could perhaps elaborate on that about blokes not asking for help or it's a bit,

or you're not manly if you ask for help.

I don't, so.

Right.

It doesn't make any

sense in my mind.

If you think about it like this, if something's hard to do, it

takes courage to do it right?

Yeah.

So how if asking for help.

It's something you find hard to do.

How can you be weak?

Yeah.

You have to have courage.

Yeah.

To overcome the thing that you're finding difficult to do.

It doesn't make any sense for people to go, oh, if you ask for help, you're weak.

That it, that melts my brain how that even people think that way.

If it's hard to do, it takes courage to ask for help.

So you can't, therefore I love that.

Be a weak person.

Love it.

And thank you very much for coming on, mark.

Like your story is incredible.

Thank you.

You know, I don't wanna put you on a pedestal 'cause you said not to.

Um, but it is, you know, you're an inspiration to me and to many

other guys and girls out there.

Um, and to enjoy and embrace the suck.

Where can people find you?

Um, and I mean, to be fair, we could just say, just Google his

name because he'll come hover.

But is there any platforms that you push harder than others?

Where can people find you, reach out to you, connect with you?

So one of the ways that earn a living now is through social media.

I hate it.

I can't stand, not not, I don't hate social media.

I hate that.

I have to be on it so much.

Yeah.

Um.

But it is what it is.

So, you know, if I can get my Instagram up and all that lot Yeah.

Then it enables me to carry on doing what I do.

So if you are, if you're on the gram, yeah.

Hold on moment.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for making let grab some of those white chocolate things

before they get discontinued.

Thank you.