Bez: So today guys, welcome back to another episode of

the Combat Fuel Podcast.

We are joined today by a longstanding friend of the brand Afghanistan,

Iraq veteran Mr. Rick Webb, who hasn't actually lost his leg,

all fake, didn't get blown up.

You made me say that, Rick.

Welcome.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you for your service.

Thank you for coming on, being a part of this Pleasure, mate.

Pleasure.

Who are you?

Rick W: Yeah, I'm Rick.

I'm the dude that apparently bragged my injuries.

None of this really happened and I did it all for money and fame, apparently.

We'll, we'll obviously, we'll, we'll touch on that later.

Bez: Yeah, we'll, we'll touch on that later.

Yeah.

You know, I think it's a, a good introduction as to where

it is, and I've known Rick, I've known you for a long time.

Yeah, yeah.

It's wild.

It's still wild to hear these things from the start, but let's,

let's rewind this whole thing, like where did your life start?

I imagine from your mum, you weren't a test tube baby, were you?

So that Well, no, some, well, I dunno, the size might suggest

otherwise it's very, very small.

Yeah.

It's three story.

Yeah.

Size 54, Barry.

No.

Yeah.

So where childhood was, you know, it's what I'm 38, so born 87.

So I find that we probably had the better end of childhood if you were, we didn't

have the pressures that kids have today with social media and all the rest of

it, but, you know, relatively normal, classic squatty story, broken family,

you join the army as a kid, you know, and then you, you find your family and you

find your, all the, so kind of, kind of that sort of thing where dad thinned out.

When I was six, I joined the, my mom signed me in when I was 17.

And then having to really look back from there.

Nice.

Where, where did you grow up?

Where was home for you growing up with your mom?

So, I was Andover, so literally ran a corner for me.

Really joined the Army to try and say, get away and, you know, go see the world.

And then at the time my unit were in Germany, but then by the time I'd

got through training and all the rest of it, they were back in Tidworth.

So I went 10 miles down the road.

Oh, love it.

Close to home though.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What, so what age were you when you, you joined the military?

I was 17.

So 17.

So mum's permission to correct.

To join.

'cause pre 18 wasn't it?

What was your call though, to join?

Was it because of that broken family looking for something, a part of it?

Did you have a military background within your family at all?

No.

So, my granddad was Army, however, I never met him though.

He died before I was born, so the Army wasn't really on my radar.

Outside of obviously being Andover is a, like a military town, isn't it really?

Yes.

Over spill of London and whatever.

So family from London, but I only know Andover.

I had a full-time job at the time as well.

I was, it was relatively sensible, you know, I was a production

engineer for a mobility firm.

But growing up I had a, a good friend of mine he was going through training.

He or he, he had finished his phase one.

He was going through phase two and his, his dad kind of like my dad in a way.

Yeah.

He was military through and through, and then all one day, Aaron, his

name is, come pick me up from my job and he just, he just said you

ever thought about joining the army?

I went, mm, not really.

You did you fans yet?

I said, yeah, all right.

Why not?

Nice, why not?

That's, that's good.

One day, literally the first I'd ever thought about it was on the

way to Salsbury careers office.

Yeah.

And what, what year was this that you were looking, looking for?

This was this would've been zero four now.

So zero four.

So, you know that the, the atrocities of, of nine 11 have happened.

Yeah.

Is that a motivating, in fact for you at all, or was it very much I'm looking

at the army, it's a job, it might be something for me to do, honestly.

Yeah.

I didn't really know, so.

I was very aware of what was going on in the world at the time.

Obviously we're, we're three years into Afghan at that point.

And then what we a one year then into Iraq, aren't we?

So it's very evident what's going on.

But being so young at the time I was, I was 16, nearly 17, very naive.

Didn't really think about what the bigger picture looked like.

Yeah.

It was only then when I went down to Gray's office, the recruiting

sergeant was K Rh, which is what turned out to be my regimen.

And kind of said, you need to join this regiment.

You need to do this, you need to do that.

This is where you're gonna thrive.

And obviously, you know, it's like when you walk through those

doors, the first person you come to, you think you're a legend.

I need to be you.

Yeah.

'cause you don't know any different, do you?

So that's exactly what I did.

And then once I started going through training, I kind of thought, oh

wow, this is what this is about.

Is it, I now feel like I fit.

So before I went, just rewind slightly.

A lot of my closer friends and family members are like,

you ain't gonna make that.

And that was a big driving factor for me is just to say, even if I

don't wanna do this now, I'm gonna, just to prove you wrong, a little

bit of like disbelief from them.

Yeah.

That was driving, I'm gonna join the Army, I'm gonna do this.

And it had that almost ah, of course you will.

Mm-hmm.

That's the, because that maybe been like your, your not, not a call to surf, but

your reason to make sure you enjoyed training because training isn't easy.

Yeah.

Whatever cat badge you go to be it from infantry powers, Marines or even

RC, you still have to do training.

You, you know, and if you put the average person off the street

that they probably can't do it.

Yeah.

So that, that was a big motivating factor for you to get through, was was that Yeah.

Disbelief others held in in you.

Yeah.

So if, like you say there, you, you, you have to dig deep on you, you have

to go into a dark place in your mind.

And that dark place for me was, was that failure.

I can't fail this, I, I cannot fail this.

And very, very quickly it became apparent to me that this

is where I was supposed to.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I enjoyed the grind, you know, being thrashed, I wanted to, at the time I

was like, I wanna come back here and I want to instruct and I wanna do that.

You know?

And obviously again, you're naive.

You dunno what the, why these guys and girls are down there

doing what they're doing.

For many rea reasons, isn't it?

But very quickly, literally probably two or three weeks in, I'm like,

right, this is what I'm supposed to do for the rest of my life.

This is me.

So then it became, how can I get better at this?

How can I improve?

How can I ensure that I don't fail?

And kind of that dictated how I went about my military career in the, I

needed to be the best I could be.

I needed to succeed or I wanted to succeed.

And I think probably a driving factor was people not believing

in me in the first place.

And I really wanted to prove, prove them wrong.

Nice.

And I just so happened to Buzz.

Was there, was there a highlight of training that you're like, that that's

a standout moment of that knowing that you're gonna get passed out?

W was it your pass off or anything that happened during training for you?

Yeah, I think, no, I haven't really thought about it until you, till you

say, but probably on the pass out parade.

So there's only me and one other carriage guy, so Crimson trousers

or Pink as a lot of people call it, but it's not pink, it's crimson.

Right?

It's it was only me and one other.

So we stood out from the rest anyway, brown berry, bloody pink trousers.

So that, that point there when you do have the family come down and

it's kind of like, you know, I've made it, this is now where it starts.

Yeah, it just, it just rocketed from there.

Nice, nice.

So pretty straightforward for training?

No, no.

Pretty much no adversity, no, no big hidden dramas that happened in there.

Well, I suppose you, you.

Probably for, for me or for, for anybody in that situation.

The, the first nine weeks of training I was light dragon goons cat badge.

So when, when you, when you first go, for those that don't, don't know,

when you get there, you have an idea of what regiment you want to join or

what you'll think you're gonna go and join, and then you get in at the time,

maybe different now, but it's one long line, and you go into a room, they

show you a map, and on the map there's cat badges across where they're based.

Right?

And they say to you, picker, pick a cat badge.

Well that's, that's the one I want right there.

No, there's no room in that.

Pick another one.

I was like, what do you mean there's no room in that?

That's what I'm joining.

I said, no, you can't.

Right.

Okay.

So I chose light Ja goons not having a clue what it was.

I just remember that one.

So then the first nine weeks of my training, I was like trying to find a

way of getting into care h and to go back to my friend Aaron, his dad was

Care h then he transferred to the Army Air Corps as a, as an Apache pilot.

And.

Just alia's balls and was teaching Americans how to, to fly this thing.

So essentially I phoned him and said, this is what's happened.

Is there anything you can do?

And essentially nine weeks later he had managed to make the phone

calls and, and got me into kh.

So I remember being marched into the swan leader's office and he

said to me, I dunno who your friends are, but they've got some pulling

power and Frisbee, this berry at me.

And then said, now get outta my office.

So the last three weeks of training, I was then KRH.

So I had to quickly then change.

I was like, cat badge, nu number twos, bar address, all that.

So ready for the pass parade.

And so, so I suppose those, those friends that helped get your q

what set up the rest of your, your career in the military, didn't they?

So, yeah.

So without, without him and without them, I would've never

have, have gone to where I was.

And you know, I, I owe them a, an an enormous debt for kind

of pulling the strings for me.

'cause.

Again, I, I was prepared to go to larger lagoons and, and, and do that, but I never

once doubted that I would end up careh.

So I don't really know what life would've looked like if I hadn't have gone careh,

but I was so convinced it was gonna, I didn't even think too much about it.

I was like, just, it's gonna happen and just, I kind of willed it into place.

Awesome stuff, man.

Awesome stuff.

So we mentioned then about Germany's where you were going.

You went straight out to Germany 2003?

No, so by the time I'd actually three, by the time you passed straight, it was

somewhere else they went back in Tidworth.

Yeah.

So, I, I wanna say they came back in 2005, so that's when I ended gonna training.

So it was very, it was either just as I was going into training or, or just

before, but when I'd first looked to go in, they were in Germany or the, OR,

or you know, potentially coming back.

But I lived in Germany on and off when I was, when I was a kid,

not because my dad was military.

He he was a Brit layer and went over to Germany in the early nineties to try and

find some work and just never came home.

So that's, I was back and forth to Germany, so I knew Germany and I loved it.

So that's kind of another driving factor as to why to go to that regiment.

But they just happened to come outta Tidworth in the end.

Awesome.

We're at Battalion now 2005 as a, a young trained, eager fighting fit soldier.

Yeah.

What happened?

How was battalion life as soon as you got there?

So this, the first day I got to the regiment I was walking across the

parade square and I got screamed at by by, by, by this dude.

I didn't know who he was at the time.

And he shouted Webb, and I was like, oh shit.

What, what, what have I done here?

You know, day one, I'm in a lot of trouble here.

Anyway, captain Ford, his name was, and he was the manager of the

football team, regiment football team.

He said, I hear you can play football.

I said, yes, sir.

He said, right my office tomorrow morning.

So then kind of.

It was great for me 'cause I've straight into the football and you know, trying

to make a name for myself there.

But equally I'm literally brand new and I'm getting out of shit jobs and whatever

else 'cause I'm now playing football.

So kind of, it went against me a little bit at the same time.

But yeah, I loved it.

It was, it was class, you know, when, when I first got there, the

regiment was still out in Canada.

So it was kind of, it was quite quiet when I got back.

But very quickly, then everyone came back home.

We got put into the squadrons we were gonna go into and whatever else.

So for anybody who doesn't know as well, KRH is a challenger

regimen, challenging tank.

And I never once touched it outside of training.

I got straight into what at the time was called the intermediate armor.

So, CVRT, very much kind of like wrecky vehicles.

And that was, that was, that was me the whole time.

It was reconnaissance vehicles or like a, a warrior or dismounted roles.

I never actually.

Did tank life, if you will.

I've never once been on it and I wouldn't change it for a thing.

Joined a tank regiment, couldn't stand them.

Love it.

That's brilliant.

Couldn't stand things.

Yeah.

Wanted to join the Q rh to not play with tanks.

Correct.

That's a tank regiment.

That makes sense.

Yeah, that's, that's some infantry logic there.

And those, I was infantry as well, so it's fine to say that Iraq happened first.

You didn't it.

Yes.

How long was this until you deployed on tele?

So, quite quick.

Tele 10.

Tele 10 I did.

So it was, I wanna say it was like 18 months before then.

So from joining the Army to then to then deploying, I think it was

about 18 months, something like that.

So quite quick.

But we had done a full TAC package of Predeployment

training for Afghanistan on CVRT.

So literally did the whole thing.

And we were like two weeks away from deploying.

I remember being up the Garrison Theater and getting our briefs ready

to, ready to, to go, and we got pulled in for this emergency meeting.

I remember the s squad leader said, right lads, everything you've learned

over the last what I know, what's it six months or so, is it a pre-op thing?

Forget, we're not gonna Afghan anymore.

We're gonna, we're going to Iraq.

We like, what?

So we had three or four weeks to shove this entire pre-deployment training

package in for Iraq into what we, you know, the timescale to then disappear

and go to go to Iraq on CVRT though.

So it was, it was a pretty wild time in that we just did these back-to-back

pre-deployment training packages and then thinking we're going to Iraq sorry,

thinking we were going to Afghanistan get switched last minute, Iraq.

And then I'm, my first three months of that tour I was on, I was in the desert

then like desert rat stuff in ops.

Just, you know, wasn't necessarily kinetic in the like downtown badra,

but you had, you had a lot of IDF and stuff, but it was just.

So it happened so fast from what we were doing for Afghanistan to

then all of a sudden I'm living in a hole in the desert and I weigh

eight stone because it's just brutal.

It was, it was pretty wild.

But yeah, that all happened very, very quickly.

But I think that's, I wanted it that way.

I wanted to be thick and fast.

Awesome.

So o overall minus a lot of IDF coming in, it was a, a somewhat uneventful tour.

Would it be fair to say?

No.

We, we had a, we had casualties and stuff like that, but it, it, it was, it wasn't

so like downtown badra was, was way more kinetic in that it was IEDs mainly.

We were a lot of small arms as well, but it was predominantly IEDs.

But the rifles lost like nine blokes in one week.

And we are all in that sort of scenario together, especially

where you are living in Basra.

It's, it's every day, sometimes 50 times a day, you're getting Chinese

rockets come in, you're getting mortars.

It was relentless.

And you know, you've gotta try and live your life.

You're sleeping in a Kevlar coffin, you know, that, that, that was normal.

So we didn't, we didn't necessarily lose anybody.

There was a few casualties from the tour from sort of

RTAs couple of adss and stuff.

But in that, in comparison to Afghanistan was, was a, it's a different type

of genetic, if you know what I mean.

Yeah.

Very different war fighting environ, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You couldn't really see what you were fighting most of the time.

I think a lot of, a lot of the min minus the invasion of Iraq that

obviously a few guys done very different to the war fighting that

was done on Herrick in Afghanistan.

Yeah, absolutely.

Which, which will obviously we'll touch on in evidently

some things that happened there.

Yeah.

Was there a defining moment of that tour of when you're like, this really is,

I don't know what I signed up to do.

Anything, anything that was like really stand out for you during that tele 10?

I mean, it, it was, I, I loved it.

I, I thoroughly enjoyed it, you know, being out in ops on the Iranian border,

you know, giving information over to what we would consider to be legends and

sort of rock stars in the SF community.

Yes.

You know what I mean?

I want to be that guy.

So that, that was for me this is pretty cool.

And I was 19 at the time.

He's a wet beyond the ears, not really understanding the bigger picture, but

it's, it was so I think I can remember sitting in this op with my binos,

looking at the border, watching stuff come across, handing over information.

I just, this this is pretty wild.

But I, I, so my best friend at the time is C Guy.

I, I remember what I remember, I got, I got a, I got a mobile phone off of a,

off of a local in what the Camp Charlie.

And I was able to communicate.

Messages and stuff that I remember.

He phoned me when I was back at, back at the cob in, in

Basra, asking me what I'm up to.

I was like, just cleaning my weapon in Iraq, mate.

Why?

What you, what you doing?

He is I'm in Magoo having a party.

And I'm thinking, and it is when I was in that hole and in the desert, I was

thinking he's probably, I don't know, bulls deep doing some crazy shit right

now in Magoo and I'm holding a foil bag for my mate to take a shit in.

Do you know what I mean?

Pissing in a bottle.

'cause we can't be found, we can't be seen where we are so different.

But that's what I didn't wanna be anywhere else.

That's where I wanted to be.

A few things got in my way with, with the rock where it was so

relentless in the desert, like blokes were cooking themselves.

It got, it was getting up to 90 degrees in the, in the cabs, you know, it

was 70 degrees in the, in the heat and you gotta try and live, you know.

So couple of times my kidneys just shut down and I was in hospital

with not heat exhaustion, but quite literally cooking from the inside out.

And a few guys even to this day still have live chi injuries from

having been quite literally boiled.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

So that kind of hampered my progress for that tour.

Just that I wanted to be doing more and I had to be protected a little bit.

I didn't really understand so much at the time I do now.

Certainly from a command standpoint, I understand why certain choices were

made where I didn't necessarily go on that particular op or I had a week out

where I was gonna help him back at the cob rather than going forward and stuff.

So at the time I was pissed off about it, but equally, I, now I understand

that probably would've been a liability for those particular ops just in

how I'd only been outta hospital for a day, two days or whatever.

But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't change a thing, not at all.

Awesome.

Awesome.

So that, that's 10, 10 completed.

Yeah.

Luckily the whole battalion made it back.

Yeah.

Alive, which is awesome.

Yeah.

We're back into Tidworth Camp now with QRHK.

HKH aren't,

yeah, it's all easy mistake to make, mate.

We're there's the same thing, aren't they?

Well, yeah.

So we're back in camp.

Yeah.

And there's a little bit of time between tele 10 and Herx that you deployed on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You obviously, you've cut about, done some bits.

You've been promoted twice during these times.

Yeah, yeah.

A couple of times to Lance Corporal.

Corporal.

Yep.

You wanna talk about those pros and course at all?

Imagine they're quite easy compared to the infantry.

Yeah.

So we, funny, we, we, so we can go and do, we can go and do like

juniors, seniors, all that stuff is still, still readily available to us.

I think that's the beauty of, of the armored core is that you

have access to, to every part of what the army has to offer.

So you can go off and do these courses, but our kind of, if you wanna call 'em

in-house or our version to the, the Junior Command course, it's all infantry based.

And then.

The latter stages for your command aspect goes from the infantry stuff as we know,

to then commanding in various vehicles.

So depending on what cab badge you are, depending on what your main

vehicle is or what you're using.

So I was doing obviously CVRT and then that was the only other

time I'd touched a challenger and I fired one round down range.

And I was like, that was pretty fucking bon.

Can I swear by the way, you can do whatever you want.

That was pretty not the worst.

You really get canceled tour.

No.

So I was like, that's shit, I'm not interested in that.

So I I, I'm sure we do two stages to since to juniors and seniors, but JC one, JCC

two so you, I'd already promoted when I went down to this course, so I had to

hand in my rank slide and you, you hand in your rank slide you hand in your berry

and then you have to earn that back.

So you pass the course, you get given your.

If you do have one and then you bury otherwise, I'm sure I remember rightly

for the first four weeks, you're walking around in webbing in a helmet.

Do you know what I mean?

Just to belittle you a little bit and you kind of go back to

day one, week one, don't you?

I'm sure you know.

But that again is when it sparked something in me.

This is what I wanna be doing.

I wanna be on my feet.

I wanna have best of both worlds where I'm in the wrecky type

vehicles or the smaller vehicles and have the opportunity to do both.

I can fire 30 mil, I can fire a chain gun.

I, you know, I'm on my feet now and I've got my rifle is kind

of ticked all the boxes for me.

And that, that then led into what I did for my tour in Afghanistan.

So, so it's when we get in there to, to command men.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to do.

So war is, it's a very, very elitist group that you.

You've got to be a part of you.

I don't think there's anywhere you can go from there in terms of job satisfaction.

No.

And that's, that's a job satisfaction.

Do you know what I mean?

You know, we all signed up to do it and at the end there, it is a job, but it,

it's not a job is, it's not a real job.

It's a lifestyle, you know, now opportunity to present itself, you know,

when I joined was a lot of people that this is what they'd lived for, you know?

Mm-hmm.

There were, there were sergeants that had been in for years, and this is

towards before mine that were like, our whole careers have built up Yeah.

To this was, it's funny you say that.

Yeah.

Because that can build resentment in people too.

So I, I promoted quite early twice.

You suck the right people off, you get it.

Do you know what I mean?

But no, so I, I picked up, I think I've been in regimental duty

for 18 months before I picked up Lawrence Jack, which is quite quick.

And then from there I was a five year screw.

So I'd, I'd gone quite fast.

Then with the, with the Armor Corps, you have to do eight years of regimented

duty before you can become a senior.

So the plan for me, I was at my eight year point, then after the second tour.

So the plan would've been straight down to then your, your final commander's course

and then you can pick up senior ranks.

So I was already penciled in to pick up sergeant at my eight year point.

I just didn't fucking look where I was going and ended up like this.

So I didn't pick up.

But to be a five year screw and then be in charge of your own multiple at

times, the platoon in the shit doing what some of these blokes before us

20 years deep hadn't done that built a lot of resentment because they were

now in a position of rank where they couldn't go and do what we were doing.

So sometimes I had more experience than somebody that's been in

two, three times longer than me which didn't always sit well.

Do you know what I mean?

Which now if I look back, a lot of these blokes were in places

of power where they could dictate what your career looked like.

And as such, a lot of blokes got shit on.

Do you know what I mean?

Absolutely Unfortunate the way the world, but then we just

have to take those things.

It happens our stride.

It happens job mate.

But it's just on a much bigger scale for us in it.

Yeah.

Unfortunately.

So, so what is the year and what Herrick are you on?

So it is 2012 and it is Herrick 16.

Yeah.

Summer tour.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Yeah.

Same tour as us, but different weren't we?

Yes.

Yeah.

And you're the reason we couldn't use our sat phones to call back

when it happened, but, correct.

Yeah.

The tour.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How, how was the tour overall?

I fucking loved it, man.

It is warm.

Yeah, warm.

It's, you can run the risk of.

Either sounding like a lunatic or selfish or a little bit of both.

But I would go back in a heartbeat and my wife knows that she'll

listen to this and she won't be surprised to hear me say that.

And it's not because I want to get away from her and the kids and life in general.

It's just everything makes sense when you're there.

And it's so simple.

Just don't fucking die and don't, don't do something stupid.

Like it's, I remember coming back and being stood in Tesco and I'd been,

I say ordered, I'd been asked to go get some cereal for the kids, right?

And I stood there thinking and looking at this huge aisle of

all this, all this stuff, and I couldn't, I couldn't figure it out.

Something as simple as go get the cereal.

But there was so much there.

I, I couldn't get my head around what, what I was needed to do 24 hours prior.

I was.

You know, fucking fo a point someone I was, I was running, I, you know,

I was in, I was in the thick of it.

And now something as simple as go and do that didn't make sense to me.

Whereas I think that's why whenever we transition from the military to c

to civilian life, we always struggle because you get told or you are telling

someone exactly where to be, what to have on them, what to wear, you know,

what is gonna be happening, potentially what time it finishes is everything

to the minute is detailed for you, or you are detailing that for someone.

So then all of a sudden when all that's taken away and you just have this freedom,

you go inside out, you dunno what to do with it.

And, and on that, how, how was the tour for you?

Kinetic.

A lot of deliberate ops.

I think you Yeah.

You were on.

Yeah, so it, it was swings around about sometimes I'm sure you know, like you'll

go a long time with, with, with not a lot.

You, you're doing a lot.

You're not necessarily getting the kinetic stuff coming back again because

that just how they, how they operated.

You know, they're there, but then by this point the restrictions

have started to come in for what you, what you can and can't do.

And you kinda, you have to go and poke the hornet's nest and once they then

contact you, you can then contact them.

So it was very much mixed up and down like that, but it was predominantly

IEDs that we were dealing with.

But yeah, we were kind of like an ops multiple in, in a way.

So although we had our own ao, we very, we weren't very often in it.

We were jumping on a chin.

We were going to, where was, where was needed.

Like I remember getting to the, getting to the fob and we were in Illa at the time.

It was kinda like our central hub.

And we would go out for weeks at a time on various hops and what have you.

I remember we got to nilla day one.

Finding our feet.

Feet.

And then I got tasked to basically put a ble together of 10 blokes

and we were just gonna go on this 10 day op throughout Afghanistan,

like starting at various points and then moving north along the way.

So we were kind of here, there and everywhere.

And it was this huge joint op with the Afghan army and the police.

I'm sure the police were there too.

And I remember at this point I'd been in maybe two days, been in country

two days, something like that.

And we went on this strike up this big group of compounds where, you

know, there's someone naugh in there.

Long story short, we need to go in and get this person and then fuck off.

But it must be led by the Afghans at this point.

It was very much joint ops when it must be led by them or despite the

fact that we are the lead vehicle.

So at this point, I'm in a mastiff.

I'm the multiple commander or sorry, I'm the two ic, my multiple commander.

He's a captain.

He's up in the he's top.

We, we get to this, we get to this, we're on a track and we get to this sort

of end point where we can only go one way, but there's very clearly ground

sign in front of us and the driver said oh, there's something out there.

You need to figure this out because we've got this huge convoy behind us.

We need to get in, we need to the strike up in literally 150

meters down to our, to our left.

And no sooner did I step out with my point man with a valon or the horn

at the time, sorry, bang contact.

So to try and cut a long story short, we had to go out and clear

this ground, but every time we stepped in front of the vehicle,

so we would get contacted, couldn't really see where it was coming from.

So first off was contacted a right then it was contacted a left, and

then just all hell broke loose.

And I remember being on taking a knee at the back of the vehicle.

'cause I'm ducking down behind poppy season early and early

in the towards poppy season.

Right?

And I'm ducking down and I remember thinking, this is the Salisbury.

This is insane.

It's just everybody unleashed.

You have 50 cow, and this group of compounds is just flat or being flattened.

I'm thinking, fucking hell.

This happened quick.

That escalated quick.

And then all of a sudden I hear this huge fucking bang next to my head.

And I think, and I looked like that at this guy, his Royal Welsh guy,

Shipley, his name was, good luck.

He looked at me and I looked at him and said to say, did you

just fucking nd what was that?

And he looked like, no.

And I went like that.

And I looked at the side of the vehicle and there's this huge

hole of the side of the mastiff.

And then, then it clicks.

There's a sharp shoe.

So as it clicks, a second bang goes off, and this huge plume of

dust comes up next to my left knee.

And I'm like, oh, he's just bracketed.

But he's, he's gone.

He's overcorrected.

So as that happens, we then realize what's going on.

I jump up, we both run round the back of the wagon as the

third round hits the wagon.

And course, if I hadn't have moved, he, he had me then.

Do you know what I mean?

He'd miss left.

He'd missed.

Right.

He'd overcorrected, bracketing means that third round's gonna hit me.

Right?

So jumped to the back of the wagon, immediately sparked

up a fag welcome to Afghan.

And, and yeah.

And I was like, this is, this is what I wanna be doing.

This is fucking mint.

Let's, you know, let's, let's, let's, let's go sort of thing.

So that was the next 10 days of that op.

Very much just here, there and everywhere.

Stopping at different pb, stopping at different fobs, checkpoints,

whatever, and just kind of bolstering wherever needed bolstering.

And that was really the entire tour.

It was like that, but with a little bit of our own stuff thrown in the mix.

Nice.

Awesome.

Yeah.

I loved it.

Yeah.

A and it is, you, you know, sitting there listening to it, you know, I've known

you for what, the best part of 10 years.

It's, yeah.

Still hearing stories now, it still takes you back reminiscent on sim as you said.

Simpler times though, right?

Yeah.

Best times of our lives.

Best times of our lives.

It is, it is.

Yeah.

And because it is just so simple.

But it's, it's insanely difficult when you think about it, but it's, that's

kind of what we are bred for, isn't it?

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

So, yeah.

I, I had no drums with it.

I loved it.

Brilliant man.

Let's take us forward then.

Mm-hmm.

To the day that you became who you are now.

To start of that, what was the day, how far were you into the tour?

So that was the 6th of June, so literally D-Day, funnily enough.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we're just over halfway through.

I wanna say, I wanna say I flew out there end of March, beginning

of April, quite relatively early.

I'm pretty sure that was it.

So summer may well correct me there, but yeah, we, we've, let's just

say we're halfway through and we've been tasked to essentially clear a

route because at the bottom of this route, there's some bad people that

we need to go and pick up whatever.

To rewind slightly in the, the, the o group, the night before I had expressed

my concern to suggest that this shouldn't be a tasking for me and my blokes.

This should be a, a, a brimstone thing.

So engineers, because of the nature of what we had to clear and to quote the

two IC of the squadron at the time, we are going fucking bomb hunting.

And I was like, nice one That's on your fucking, sorry, that's

on your fucking head now.

That's on your head.

So o obviously I'm a buck sheep screw.

I've got no pulling power.

I do as I'm told.

So I expressed my concern.

My the, the boss, captain Gillespie, he expressed his concern.

And of course we get told, shut the fuck up, get in your box,

go and do what you've been told.

So you do.

And literally, I don't know, 16 minutes into said tasking.

Fucking bang.

Right?

So the nature of what it was.

We would've never found it anyway.

So I remember reading the brimstone or the engineer's report on, on,

on the, on their tasking after.

And the nature of the IEDs were, it's very little to no metal content whatsoever.

So I dunno if you remember, so you, you, so you had the van, which is

literally a metal detector, isn't it?

Yeah.

Or you had the horn and then you had a horn two.

So the, the horns would, they would detect anomalies in the ground, wouldn't they?

So if you bury something inevitably as an air pocket round it, however same as

they were in Iraq, they're very crafty and I have to give them their juice.

They're fucking intelligent.

They understood what the reading on the scale of the horn, and I think it was

like one to 10 or something, wasn't it?

They know that anything underneath like a two or a three, you're just gonna

sack off because if you've stocked for everything, you'd never move.

So that in our ed is.

A water ball or a big rock.

And they knew that.

So the way they buried these devices were to avoid detection

and that's exactly what they did.

'cause the one that we set off was in a safe lane that we had created.

So that's either a fuck up from someone or them being real

crafty or potentially both.

So that plays in my mind a lot because I was the one, so essentially my

point, man, brownie, shout out Brownie.

He had said, Rick, I think I might have something here.

And I was like, let me look.

And I made the command decision of, no, that's, that's nothing Rick,

that's what the book says, right?

Gut feeling at the time.

I don't, I don't think I thought too much about it.

Kind of maybe a bit naive maybe that feeling of in, of Invincibility because

of the stuff we'd already seen and done.

At that point, I was like, I'm fucking untouchable.

Maybe, I don't know, but hindsight's a wonderful thing, right?

So if you look back at the footage, I'm sure that's the eighth time

that one of us had stepped in that particular area before it then went off.

So it really could have been anybody.

It just happened to be me and Brownie that, that were there at the time.

So essentially we'd got to this track that we had to clear, we'd cleared

left, we'd, we'd flipped, right?

And we were starting to move down.

And kind of in the middle of this track was this.

I I always try and describe it as like a, a, a road hump.

So went up, then flattened out, and then went down the other side.

And it turned out that there was nine IEDs in that one area.

And what, what the Taliban had done, literally just the day

before was, was buried all these devices in there for vehicles.

'cause they assumed that we would go down there with vehicles

because it was a bigger route.

And what was at the end of.

The tasking was quite punchy.

So they had on the slope, the up slope, the flat slope, and

the down slope it was 3, 3, 3.

So you add two five kilo charges left and right.

And then you had a big 20 kilo charge in the middle.

And the, the idea was the, the wheel would go over the pressure

plate and then offset was the device to go off underneath the vehicle.

If that didn't work, it would get the driver and the commander as they got out

of the vehicle or people coming to them.

And obviously the failsafe was, if the first three didn't get it, the second

three would, and so on and so on.

Or the hope was that that one 20 kilo charge would daisy chain the rest, which

is the high chance it would happen.

Right?

So we get to this slope.

I say to Brownie, do your thing mate, just be careful.

30 seconds in he is like, fucking confirm.

Found one of these smaller devices right on the flat bit.

So I was like, right.

Okay.

Now we need to start putting in the whole four Cs thing.

You know, you clear it, confirm, clear corner control, don't you?

And then you get the 10 liner coming over thinking right now I need to paint

a picture for the engineers to come in.

Anything we can get now makes their job easier, which makes our job quicker.

We can get the fuck outta it.

Because I know I've been in this position before, I think, fuck,

I've got nine hours Saturday now.

Do you know what I mean?

How can I avoid this but safely?

So essentially it was get the camera, rather than me trying to fucking eat

crayons and draw a picture for him.

Just take pictures, just literally take photos for him.

So I was now stood in the safe lane with Brownie and we are probably 10

feet away from the confirmed device.

And I say to him, clearly, mark that for them, clearly mark

where the safe lane is for them.

He said, oh, I think there's something at the bottom on the right over there,

as in another bit of ground sign.

I said, don't confirm it, mark it, and avoid for now, because they're gonna

come in and let them do their thing.

They're the experts of this, right?

But just make sure we mark it so they know it's there.

So, which we, which we were about to do.

So I said to him, go mark that.

At this point, I had now checked in the safe lane again with the horn,

and I had called, no, it's fine.

As I turned right to go and take a picture of the device from a

distance, brownie turned left to go and mark and avoid the other ground

sign, bang in the middle of us two.

So at this point, we had triggered the pressure plate

with a 20 kilo charge, right?

Not the, not the, not the smaller ones.

Fortunately for us it was a partial debt because the HME

was wet, the explosive was wet.

So he went one way.

I went the other.

I don't really remember if I was on my back, if I was still stood up.

All I remember is kind of, I think maybe on my knees or I kind

of looked up and immediately I thought, who the fuck was that?

I thought, I'm gonna have to dish out a boken.

Someone's like fucking thrown a grenade.

I said, all these crazy things went through my head, right?

Are we being contacted?

What's going on?

I remember looking at the device that Brownie had just confirmed

thinking, fuck me, I'm close to that.

And then the, all the shit clears.

I look up and I see the guys and they look like they're like 200 meters away from me.

They're not, they're within the whole ECM thing.

So they're like 20 meters away from us, I guess.

25 meters, whatever it is.

And then I hear the noise and I, it is, it was like a newborn baby crying and a

pig squealing, but that noise was brownie.

And I was like, he's, now I know what it is.

Click and now I know what it is.

And I can feel like my chest is, it feels like my chest wants to be, be ripped up.

I can feel that something's gone through me at this point, but I

didn't really think too much of it.

I looked up, saw the guys, I shouted, man down, man down.

And obviously this is the classic bit of training where you're

supposed to just stay, aren't you?

Stay still don't fucking move because you, you could potentially

make things much worse.

It's that risk reward, isn't it?

The second I heard him screaming and I shouted man down, I was like,

I'm not fucking standing here.

So I got up and I ran, I ran to Brownie.

I remember I pulled him over and he was kinda like half hanging off of

this like slope I was talking about.

It wasn't a Waddy the other side, but there was some shit down there.

I can't remember what it was, but like some farmer's shit or whatever.

And I dragged him away from it and I rolled him on his back and they,

I can remember seeing like he was as white as what your shoes are.

And I looked at his, what was his right side?

And it looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his hand and his arm

and, and, and he was missing a load of the map pocket and stuff of his leg.

And essentially he had been holding his rifle kind of

like this as he went to move.

So he picked up like this, went to move to, then he could organize his shit,

but 'cause of the way he was holding his rifle, that it turned that into shrapnel.

And that just went along with the blast.

It just ripped him apart.

And I remember looking, thinking I can put my hand through

that through his hand sorting.

I was like, that's, that's really not good.

So I, I, the first thing I did was got his med pack out, started fixing him up.

I'm screaming for the medic because at this point I don't

know if there's further in injury.

I don't know.

Right.

So I do the right thing.

Shout for the, excuse me, shout for the medic.

And this dude just freezes, which is fine.

I don't blame him for it.

At the time I was like, get a fucking grip move as you do though, right?

You do.

Of course you do.

I didn't blame him for that.

Not at all.

So he wasn't coming.

And now I'm very aware now that I'm, it's just me and Brown here.

I'm on my own.

But no sooner did I think that Finn fucking, I love this dude.

He come running up to me and grabbed me on the shoulder and was just

screaming in my face like, are you okay?

What the fuck's going on?

I was like, well, you calm the fuck down.

'Cause he's panicking a bit, right?

But he's trying to help, but he's panicking.

I was like, I need, now I need to get a grip of this dude because he

could potentially be the problem.

Now I know there's more out there 'cause we've just fucking found one.

So that's secondary of it.

That one that Brownie thinks is an id.

I now have to assume that is an IED and I have to assume that

there's more and I have to assume that we're gonna get contacted.

Do you know what I mean?

I have to assume.

Worst case scenario.

So I'm getting a grip of Finn whilst trying to treat Brownie.

So I was like, I need to give him a job.

'cause if I don't give him something to do, he's gonna fucking

panic and start running around.

So I say to him, give brownie morphine.

And he's I don't know how to do it, what I do.

I said, read the fucking instructions.

It's right there.

Just calm down.

So he whips out this coffin and he starts reading the instructions of

how to administer morphine, but at a hundred mile an hour, really loud.

And I was like, dude, just calm the fuck down.

It's all right.

So he stabbed him with the morphine.

I write M 0 9 13 on his cheek.

And then I was like, right, we need to move him.

We need to get him up.

So at this point now, Lomax, the younger lad, he was 18, 18 years old.

He, he come up to us.

He had hoed his way to us very, very sensibly, which is

exactly what he needed to do.

So now we have a route that is deemed safe to get brownie

from where he is to the HLS.

That's already now been marked up in the background.

So makeshift stretcher, I grabbed Brownie and this dude without

Kit on is a fucking 120 kilos.

He's massive, like he's tall, he's built like a brick shit house with his kit on.

He's touching 200 kg. I just fucking whip him up, shoving on this stretcher

and start carrying him with the boys.

I'm running to the HLS.

This has all happened in three minutes, four minutes, and it's only then one of

the other boys, Neil said, WEBY, you okay?

You were on top of that.

And I was like, yeah, I'm fine.

And then I wasn't, I remember I got to the HLS, this is again, this is all in

seconds, gotta, the HLS dropped browning and I just fucking collapsed, like

adrenaline and worn off at this point.

And now I'm a casually right?

But I, I obviously, I wasn't aware that I was, I did, I just went straight

into, I know fall screw dad mode if you will gotta protect the boys.

So once I knew that, that was okay.

Kind of my body went you're on your ass, mate, maybe sit down.

So I had kind of, I hit the deck and I was sort of very much in, in

and out, not of consciousness, but just awareness more than anything.

And I started thinking about my daughter at the time think, fuck, what's going on?

This could have been so much worse.

What's next?

And it all happened very quickly.

And it was only after very recently that I had learned that I was the main

concern as a casualty then, not Brownie, because of things like internal bleeding.

My heart rate was, I don't know, really high or whatever.

So they, they were more concerned.

The Pedro team were more concerned about me when they got there than they were

about Brownie, which to me made no sense.

But from, from that point, I remember the Pedro, I remember laying on the

ground Matt Sumner had my dick in his hand, making sure that was all right.

Finn had sparked me up a fag.

And I was smoking that because we'd already always said boys, if I'm

gonna, if I'm gonna go out, I want a, I want a cigarette in my mouth.

I wanna go out.

I smoked like a chimney back then.

So I remember being annoyed at Finn 'cause he'd given me a more, a light

instead of a Lambert and Butler.

Just random shit like that.

Try and, you know, build the morale a bit.

'cause I know now that I'm, I wanna get on this Pedro, there's

a strong chance I don't come back.

So yeah, I remember the Pedro coming in and the first one like flies over the

the over the top of you clears the route.

Second one lands like on top of you and then you have these US marines

just screaming at you and just do it.

These guys are fucking legends, aren't they?

Like the Pedro team and the MER team.

They're legends and and yeah, I remember being thrown onto

the back of this helicopter at a US Marine screw in my face.

Do you want pain relief?

And I, I don't really remember what I said.

I just remember, I think falling asleep.

So I would assume I got given pain relief.

I can't really remember.

And I'm sure actually Brownie had that drill in his fucking collarbone.

Whatever it is.

He's a kein, like bang.

So he's now out.

And I didn't realize either, but apparently they had

engine failure on the ground.

So what they had to do was that this, I know like an

electromagnetic pulse or something.

And basically what that did was completely fried the ECM for the boys.

So now they're left on the ground, diffy two blokes and fuck a ECM in a

theater that is predominantly IEDs.

So for those who dunno, ECM is the electronic cat measures.

So that stops like radio transmitted IDs being detonated, right?

It's using the, like mobile phones in Iraq was a big one, wasn't it?

So now they're completely pissing in the wind and they've got to wait for someone

from PB four to come down, which was the rifles lot to come down and essentially.

Reload their ECM for them before they can carry on.

I didn't know any of this had happened.

I just thought that we were in transit.

I didn't really know, but from boom to Bastion was, I think someone

told me, I'm sure was 42 minutes.

So, and just to touch on that as well, you, you didn't know at that point

that you were a casualty or the, this ID that got off had had anything to

do with you being No, I had no idea.

I I, you evidently, now you don't have your left leg.

Yeah.

But at this time you still had your leg, didn't you?

Correct.

Yeah.

So, so for, I was very aware that I was, I was in pain, right?

I was very aware that something had happened, but I was also very aware that

if I'd told the, the absolute truth, they were gonna send me back to the, to

England and I would, I would essentially miss out on the rest of the tour.

Some might say selfishly, stupidly for me, it was in my head if it 1% chance.

I can finish this with my men and bring everybody back home.

I was gonna do that.

And I knew that by telling the truth about how much pain I was in, that

that was gonna be taken away from me.

So I made the choice to not say too much.

And I also made the choice to put the pressure on my boss, captain

Gillespie, to allow me to come back out.

So I had, I had to get signatures from, from him.

And the medic who was running the med center at ni, Andrew Turley, his name

is, shout out Andy, absolute legend.

He, he ensured that I was able to carry on being useful.

Two or three times.

They tried to say you've gotta go back 'cause your something's

clearly fucking not right here.

I said, come on, we're nearly it at the end now.

I'll do light duties, just fucking let me finish.

Like I'll run the ops, I'll do something, but of course, you

know, you're lighter on the ground.

I have experience, I'm commanding.

So I was always in the thick of it, even in shit stay.

So essentially I went back to Bastion limped around for a day.

I was in shit, stay managed to get myself back to like the rear echelon lot,

you know, where before you fly out to wherever you go into and bast and you get

given on your kit and shit, don't you?

I can't remember what that place is called.

But essentially I went back there where my regimen was and I said, when

can I get on a flight back to Nilla?

And everyone's what the fuck you talking about?

You've just been spanked.

You need to go back.

I was like, I fucking don't.

I've been cleared and no one could quite believe the fact I've been cleared and

at least of all me, but it's important to note at this point in Bastion, I

didn't have any scans, x-rays, nothing.

I got, I remember being.

Taken off the Hilo onto the ambulance and then the ambulance into the,

I, I think it was the theater room.

'cause I remember all the nurses and stuff standing around you.

And then obviously you got like bright lights and stuff.

I remember that.

So that I'm, I'm sure that was the theater room.

And I was on a spinal board and I remember them going, 1, 2, 3 lifted me off.

And then I don't remember too much other than being in, in a, in a bed still

covered in some blood, mad dust, whatever else, saying like, where's Brownie?

And he was in theater.

And then a very kind nurse said can I get you anything?

He was literally like, I need a brew.

And some and a fag.

Like all my stuff's gone.

Like my map map pocket had gone too.

So I always used to carry a fresh deck of 20 in my map pocket gone.

So she kindly wheeled me outside and, and I had a, I had, I had a smoke and a brew.

But yeah, is at that point you could argue there was some negligence there.

I'm not ever gonna say that because.

All the brilliance that Camp Basian has done and did for all of us.

They don't need this fucking piss flap trying to get some money out of them.

I'm not about that.

But evidently there was some big things that were missed that

made me end up the way I am.

So to touch on your intro about being a blogger and that, because I finished

the tour with a little bit of light duties in the middle to try and recover

as much as I could, I finished the tour.

So then when I came back, I was ordered then to go to the med center

the following morning from there, then I was ordered to go to surgery

hospital and see Colonel done.

How long was this from when you came back from, from Afghanistan?

Did you have to go and like the, the, the, the same day.

So that afternoon I had to go to the MedCenter.

Yeah.

The following morning they say, they said come back the following morning.

So you didn't even get your pothole leave?

No.

This, yes.

Straight down to Med Center?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm not on leave at this point.

I'm still in work.

And essentially there, there's no doubt about it.

I did more damage by by continuing.

Right.

But what transpired next?

I think people struggled to believe or understand.

So from getting to the med center, and they were like, you need to

go and have more investigation.

This scans and whatever else, x-rays and that.

So I went to Salisbury Hospital and they got a war injuries clinic there,

and it was Colonel Dun or Miss Mr.

Dun.

And he was like the, the go-to surgeon along with Miss Crick for war injury

injuries, be it gunshots, IDs, whatever.

And he said like, how did you walk in here this morning?

And I was like, A bit of a limp, you know, whatever, whatever.

I had a crutch at the time.

I think.

He said, no, no, no.

Like how, I said, what the, what do you mean?

He said, did anybody ever told you that you've got a broken hip?

I said, no.

What you, no, I haven't.

I've just fucking walked.

I've just done two and a half months.

In Afghan carrying 78 Qs on my back.

No, I don't.

Did you fucking have?

So I then went to go and have Arthur grounds and scans and yeah,

con con confirmed my left hip.

So essentially that slope I mentioned the id, I was, I was stood on like the

top of it here in Brownie at the bottom.

It hit my left side and shoved my femur up.

So my femur had gone up through my hip, broke my hip, and as it came back down.

So it dragged my sciatic nerve into my hip.

But a very similar thing had happened in my knee with my perineal nerve.

Hence reason I'm now above knee, but I, I'll come to that bit.

So the, the sciatic was stuck in my, in my hip and the, the ball joint of

my hip had a crack through it, along with, I forget what it's called, but

like the, the, the bit that your ball sits in was this bit at the bottom here

would kind of a little bit come away.

So what would happen every now and then was my, the ball joint would slip in and.

Every time I was doing that, it was tugging more on my

sciatic that was stuck in there.

So the pain and numbness and stuff I was feeding was from

the one, the fracture in my hip.

But two more, more so the, the nerve damage I had done from the blast.

So every now and then when I was on patrol or whatever, my leg would either

give way or I couldn't use it properly.

And yes, to look at it now, I probably was a liability, but at the

time I was like, I'm fucking doing this and nobody is gonna stop me.

And I did, I did my job exactly how I needed to.

I was able to run.

I jumped, I carried people.

I was fighting.

I was doing what I needed to do.

And it was that adrenaline that helped push me through, along

with copious fucking drugs that we could get our hands on.

So then from then on it was real quick.

Essentially I was put on the Biff in a way.

Told to use crutches, told to go into light duties, go on your leave.

And then, and then it was very thick and fast with appointments

in Salisbury Hospital, O Street Hospital, where they had a an

orthopedic surgeon there that would took over the care for my, for my hip.

And it was then that I needed a, a cer an operation to take the sciatic

nerve out from the break in my hip.

But the only way to do that was to go in through my left ass cheek.

So I've got this big bacon slice scar on my left ass cheek from where they went in,

and yet at that point, a large chunk of my STIC was removed because it was fucked.

They can't actually do anything for broken hip other than just fucking

leave it to heal, so it isn't great.

But yeah, essentially permanent nerve damage now, you know, satic and peroneal

nerve plus then the break in the hip and it got it escalated quite quickly where.

I dunno if it was after the first surgery or not, but my left leg

essentially started to die away.

So with the nerve damage I had, it was really difficult to, to wear trousers.

It was really difficult to be outside where the wind

would hit my skin and stuff.

'cause it was so sensitive, like hypersensitive with the

nerve damage, it, it felt like prickly heat, but like tenfold.

And then I got drop foot, so my left foot, I, I couldn't lift it up.

I had no plant flexion dorsiflexion, so I had to wear a fucking brace.

And essentially rehab another operation on my STIC and a another

two operations on the perineal nerve in my knee came to nothing that

would make any difference for me.

And it was put to me by Ms. Crick.

Sorry, not Ms. Crick, she was later.

It was put to me by Colonel Phillip at Headley Court for your call life.

It would you probably need to consider amputation.

And at that point I went, okay, you know, not because as people say you wanted the

money, are you fucking mental for one?

What's wrong with you?

Rather have my legs.

Yeah.

Rather my legs mate.

Because at this point I was going back to work.

Yeah.

Nothing's gonna stop me getting back to the regimen and carrying

on and going to seniors.

Correct.

Yeah.

Nothing was gonna stop me doing that.

So in my head, if they said to me, my quality of life is gonna be better

and I'm gonna be able to do more, I can be a fight and fit soldier again.

Whip that fucker off, do it.

So yeah, they did ba below knee initially but I had quite a small residual limb

below the knee, so wearing a socket and stuff like that was quite difficult.

And I still was having issues with the nerves that they'd left in there as well.

So the, the prosthetic I was wearing at the time, I had to have it was

these metal braces come up the sides and I looked like Fort gum.

But it was, it was fucking shit.

I had this old like Victorian corset thing on to try and hold it all together.

It was crap.

So that's when Ms. Cri come in, she was like, who the fuck has done that to you?

That's a mess.

We've gotta go through.

Knee amputate through knee.

And I said, okay, you're the expert.

Do it.

If that's gonna means I'm more mobile, I'm able to do more.

The quality life's better.

There's less pain, there's no meds required.

All this shit, go for it.

So she did it and it was great for about six months until it wasn't.

And then I kept having the same issues with the nerves that was

left in the bottom of my stump.

Kept having issues with sockets.

And then again, the same thing.

She was like, this is the last straw.

We probably should have just done this from the offset.

But you have to, you have to cross every bridge.

'cause one of those other surgeries might have worked.

But anyway, hindsight, you need to go above knee.

So I was like, all right, fucking above it.

It need, it is.

Then, so this is another third.

Amputation surgery.

Go above knee, halfway through my femur, and it's the third surgery.

But how many surgeries are we at?

28 put together now?

28. The, the four of those is on my hand.

Yeah.

But my hand is unrelated from Afghan.

That's fucking that.

That's a funny story.

Someone being a monk completely on that.

Absolutely wrong.

Yeah.

See, 28, I'm on, yeah.

28 surgeries.

24 on Afghan related injuries.

Yeah.

And it's still fake.

You didn't lose your leg from an ID plus.

Yeah.

But apparently, yeah.

So basically people had started to talk about me as though I was this fucking shit

house there to flag it, wanted the money, wanted the sympathy, wanted the attention.

And, and let's be perfectly honest, the money you get from losing the

limb in the military in service of our country isn't a lot.

You can't go and buy a four bed detached house in the area we live in.

With the money you would've had.

No, it, it is not.

I'm gonna be a millionaire and go and have all of this cool stuff.

Is it, it's not, it's not far from it what people may think.

It, it, it could be depending on what the injuries are, it could be

depending on how many policies you have.

You know, some lads I know got millions, but very different scenarios, obviously.

Yes.

So I think everybody assumes that's the standard.

And having people come at you in that way, in directly or indirectly,

was there a bit of a issue?

Did that start your mental health?

Took a a bit of a turn to the worst, didn't, you know, a very proud Yeah.

Commander of men.

Yeah.

To You're faking your leg.

So, oh, it broke me.

What?

Oh, you just called up a surge and were like, can you take my leg off?

Or, yeah, you did, did it with a standing knife in the block.

This is, this is it, mate.

So it's Megan's belief.

Really, honestly, it, it broke me because I, I know and.

The important people know the truth.

But that doesn't stop me worrying what other people are thinking

and other people are saying.

And to hear of people I thought I knew and were friends of mine saying these things,

calling me a fucking faker, a blogger, the, the, the mo, the RMO one of the RMOs

at the time, and I found this out for a good friend of mine that was working in

the welfare for the regiment at the time.

She had said, there's fuck all wrong with me.

Wow.

I'm blagging now.

I'm like, this is coming from the RMO.

Wow.

And I was like, and I, I haven't seen that cunt since, and I'd love to, I'd

fucking love to pull her a new one.

But you know what, fuck you.

Do.

You know what I mean?

If that's how you make yourself feel better about what you do, do you sister?

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean?

So, but yeah, it, it, it broke me, mate, because I felt now like a failure.

I felt like a fraud.

It didn't get ripped off there.

And then, so I should, I'm not deserving of the rehab, I'm not deserving of the

compensation, you know, the marriage at the time was struggling, which was a bit

of a catalyst to my downfall as well, but predominantly going from leading men

doing the best job in the world to then nothing, and not feeling worthy of, of

any of it was a, was a really difficult thing for me to try and navigate at the

same time as the army saying, you are now fucking useless to us off your pop.

Don't worry though, we're gonna give you a pension, so you're fine.

Do you know what I mean?

I was like, what?

I, I don't, I don't wanna leave.

No, you have to this, you don't have any other choice.

I'd heard these stories and seen these stories about other blokes being given us.

Like even amputees still serving one way or another.

I was like, I'll work in the fucking stores.

I just wanna be in rigged.

Don't, don't take it away from me.

I'm not done.

I'm not finished.

I've got so much I need to go and do.

I was, I had visions like me and my, and Finn, especially the guy I spoke about

before, we were gonna go and do selection.

I know we all talk about it, right?

I'm not saying I would have been sf, I'm saying I would have tried.

You don't know.

You dunno what comes off that.

But I would've tried and I would've been a better person at the end of it,

regardless of what that outcome was.

Just for the experience more, right?

So all of this now has been taken away from me.

Double quick as well as the people I look up to, respected, I thought

respected me are are telling telling these fucking stories about me calling,

telling it's fake on my blogger.

None of this really happened.

You didn't even get blown up.

I mean, I'm like, were you on the fucking patrol?

You know, were you there?

And essentially the, I don't know, thank you or the reward I got

for what I thought was doing the honorable thing of going back out and

finishing what we'd fucking started.

I, I got shit on from a great height as a result.

And I was like, how, how can, how can it somebody that has put themselves

so far out of the norm here?

Because I'm not saying I was a fucking super soldier.

Don't get, I'm not trying to say that, but I dunno how many other people

would've done what I did to go back after that had happened for one, dare I

say, they may have been too frightened to go back or they would've gone.

I mean, shit, they, I can't do that.

I don't wanna do that.

Whereas I was like, if you fucking send me home, I'm kick

you, like standby sort of thing.

So I really fought my corner.

The boss fought for me.

The medic at the time fought for me.

And I, I just, I needed to get back to, to the blokes, and this is the

bit that every time sticks with me, is I remember when I got back to

Nidilla on the Chinook and the blokes didn't know what was going on with me.

At this point, they're asking for updates and they don't, they don't have it 'cause

they, no one's got the information.

So they dunno.

I'm coming back and I remember getting off the Chinook and I, I went, Andy,

the, the medic guy, he came and met me off the Chinook, grabbed hold

of my kit, gimme a fucking hug.

And he is dude, what the fuck are you doing here?

What are you doing?

And I explained to him, why please don't say anything to the, to, to hire

like this needs to stay between us.

Please just help me where you can.

And he did and he did help me.

Said that the lads are down there sort of thing.

So.

I remember I walked back into the tent.

First person I saw was Finn.

And he come running up to me, man.

Just grabbed hold of me then.

And I knew that was worth it.

That's why I went back for that.

And I fucking finished it.

Did it.

And the thank you I got at the end was, you're a fucking liar.

Fuck you, fuck you.

Like, how dare you say that?

Yeah.

And it broke me.

It broke me big time, man.

And that's when I just, when I was discharged from the military,

then it was a fucking spiral.

Double fast.

Yeah.

You know, which is amplified by a little bit of money.

Yeah.

And access to alcohol.

Alcohol and drugs.

Drugs, gambling.

You name it.

Yeah.

Marriage had at this point Yeah.

Wasn't great.

No.

So, by the time I come round to being discharged, we had already split.

Yeah.

So it was, I wanna say like May, 2016, the weird split.

So I still had two years of rehab at this point, so I was

back and forth to Headley court.

I was living at Headley court because I didn't have anywhere

else to go at that time.

I managed to get a property to rent I think maybe like way

hill towards somewhere close to where, where, where my kids were.

Right.

And I remember, I remember when I left and I walked out, I saw my

boy was crying, my daughter was crying, and it was all my fault.

She let me know it was all my fault.

I was a burden.

I, I, you know, I was, I was the reason that everything was falling apart.

It was difficult, man.

She, I, I'm, I'm not here to slag, to slag anybody off, but there was a lot of I

alcohol involved from, from that side too.

And I had just had enough of being a fucking shit shield.

I didn't work with my own demons and I couldn't do it there.

I couldn't do that there.

You can't look after anybody else if you can't look after yourself.

I had to get out.

Yeah, I had to get out.

But actually what happened was the freedom that I had been given because

during the week I was at Headley Court and outside of, so for those that dunno,

heady Court is literally full-time rehab.

So you have a, you have a plan, you go off every day, your orders, you're

on first good, first parade, and then throughout the day, then you get.

Your lessons, you go to your sessions, you go to your rehab, whatever it

is, whatever your, whatever has been designed for your rehab specifically.

But at the end of that day, you go get scra and then the time's your own.

So I was boozing, I was gambling.

Drugs wasn't in there then at this point.

But also I had gone on to self-destruct where I thought it'd be a great idea to

start sleeping with one of my therapists.

She took massive advantage of the fact that I had money.

I, she knew the buttons that needed to be pressed to make me act a

particular way and get her particular things blinded by, at the time you

don't really realize what's going on to you, but you know, again,

hindsight's a fucking wonderful thing.

But I thought it was because this point, I was, I was single at this

point and I was like, and you know, I can fucking do what I please.

So someone had showed me some attention that I hadn't maybe got for a long

time, and I was like, all right.

And it was that whole taboo thing of you are my therapist.

This shouldn't be happening.

So that, that I lost a lot of money there because I was just doing

this, spending, spending, spending.

'cause the whole time I was spending too, I wasn't letting

the intrusive thoughts in.

And it was kind of, it was numbing everything.

Do you know what I mean?

That's where our goal came into It was numbing everything as this isn't

something you, it is not new, is it?

We've, we've heard this plenty of times before, but so fast

forward now, I get discharged from Headley Court in the April, 2018.

I'm living in a house to three bedroom house in Amesbury rented.

My ex-wife was in the house that we had together.

She still is in the house that we had together with, with

whenever my kids stay with her.

Every other weekend they go, they're in that same house still.

So, get to September, 2018 and the Army now let me go.

So I'm now fully just on my own.

I had a girlfriend at the time.

I didn't treat her very well.

You know, she had her own problems.

She, she made more problems for me, but ultimately I wasn't a very nice person.

I will hold my hands up.

I wasn't a nice person.

Not all the time.

But I was so, I was just swimming in shit and I couldn't really see a way out.

It got to the point where, so when to rewind a little bit, when,

when we, when I'd split with my wife, I gave her half everything.

I left her the house, I left her everything in the house.

I walked away with my army kit and a fucking car and some money in my pocket.

I think about 60 grand, something like that.

That 60 grand lasted me about a year.

But because I had had that money, my credit was quite good, so I got more money

and I kept just burning it at both ends.

Next thing I know, I'm outta the army.

I, I hate myself.

I, I don't want to be here.

I need a way out.

I'm 45 grand in debt.

I can't pay my rent.

I'm about to lose the house.

There's only one thing left to do and that's to just to fucking end it.

So I tried just alcohol and some drugs, prescription drugs.

I dunno how many it was, it was enough to knock me out.

With vodka, I woke up covered in my own sick on the kitchen floor.

So obviously I'd passed out and fortunately passed out on my front.

My side, whatever.

So I didn't choke and that was the wake up call.

I think I needed to try and pull my shit together.

So I went upstairs, got in the fucking shower, sat on, sat on the

floor in the shower for about two hours, hour and a half, two hours.

Pulled my fucking eyes out clean, cleaned myself up, give my head

a wobble, put my leg on, and then started to try and turn things around.

I phoned, I phoned Safa.

Told 'em what the crack was.

They helped me out.

They, they advised that I get like an IVA bankruptcy thing to help

with the debt that I'd got, but I still didn't have anywhere to live.

So at this point, I had to, I had to go back to my mom and say

can I, can I fucking come home?

And dude, I must have been, oh man,

32 or something.

31. Fair to say.

That was your absolute rock bottom there.

Oh, it gets worse.

There's another bit.

Yeah.

That was what I thought was my rock bottom completely.

I went back to my mom's and at this point as well, when I had the accident

where I'd fucking lost these two fingers.

So, long story short, I love this.

I was hopping through a kitchen with a brew.

I I slipped on the kitchen floor.

I dropped the brew and I put my hand out to try and stop myself.

Yeah.

Landed straight at the cup, smash, cut these two fingers fucking clean off.

They're hanging on by the skin at the back, severed the nerves,

the arteries, everything.

Had to get then rushed to hospital in Cornwall where I was at the time.

They did like this bots job.

And then Miss Creek come in, save the day, four, four surgeries later.

I've got 80% use of this hand, so it's all right.

Yeah.

Hurts a bit, but it's fine.

We touched a little bit there, so at, at the same time, I'd

come out the army with you.

Yeah.

To be honest, we, we, we didn't know each other did, we

didn't know each other existed.

Mm-hmm.

And small world, you know.

Yeah.

Man.

Army, not an army.

It is, there's not a lot of people in it.

Yeah.

So I'd also set Fernando at the same time, hadn't I?

And that's right.

Gone through.

I'd done my recovery events and I'd open up a gym.

And that's where we met, wasn't it?

It was, you know, it was through help for Heroes.

Yep.

Obviously you were an absolute traitor because you went to the leisure center

and you didn't come straight to me.

As a train.

As a pt. As a pt. As a pt. Yeah.

And I was doing my thing there.

And I remember John, John Carpenter from Health for Heroes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Reaching out, being, oh, does this veteran amputee?

He's going, I was like, fuck him.

He's, he's, he's, why's he got, why is he here?

I think that's about when we met, wasn't it?

You know, you then John was like, look, you, obviously you're not in a good place.

You know, all this shit's going on in your life.

Why don't you go and see better combat fuel?

You know, it's like a little veteran home.

We had a really, really nice, neat that was at Base Point, right?

Base point Orlando.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

Fantastic Little Gym, didn't we?

And it was brilliant Matt mate.

And I remember that's, we, we touched it, didn't we?

When I turned up this morning touching it briefly and I was like, that could be

the difference for people, people like me somewhere to go and just, just offload.

'cause the whole time I'm trying to help help someone else.

It's helping me.

Yeah.

Too much time in your own head is a fucking dangerous place to be.

Yep.

So yeah mate, honestly, like without having come in on that

day, I dunno where I would be.

Honestly.

I know.

Shout out to Fraser who's doing all of the camera stuff behind it.

Hey, time.

He come there, you know, we, we had a really nice hub and not just me

there you know, ev the community that we had there was there.

That was ama amazing, wasn't it?

There was, yeah, around 50 odd veterans that, that came there, you

know, didn't charge anybody enough.

But that's never what it was about.

But, you know, it was a wicked, wicked place, wasn't it?

Yeah, mate.

It was, it was min. And to see where it all is now is pretty fucking wild.

Yes.

Yeah.

Sat here on my knockoff Chesterfield sofas.

They're not knock off.

These are legit.

They're quite, arent they?

Those And these are real.

Yeah, they're real.

Yeah.

And they're not robbed from the army either.

No.

You know, but to things still kept getting worse.

You didn't, they Yeah.

You know, so your hand had happened.

The hand had happened.

So the, I'm, I'm recovering from surgeries with that.

Can't really use it properly.

It's, it's in a big fucking brace thing.

So to try and put my prosthetic on was, was pretty gnarly as well.

All the while I'm a piece of shit now, living back at my mom's house, but.

Shit went sideways pretty fucking fast to be in that position.

And you can, you can go one of two ways.

Like really feel sorry for yourself or try and pick yourself up and go again.

So I was doing that.

I was trying.

And I remember whenever I had my kids at the time, and I had them as much as

I could, but obviously I was, I had a bedroom at my mom's house with my, where

my step, my stepdad was still there.

So it was difficult, but we used to have to kind of shut ourselves away.

And my childhood was okay, but my relationship with my stepdad

is very different to my sister's relationship with my stepdad.

So I didn't, I didn't feel comfortable there.

But I remember stood in the kitchen and he had had a few beers at this point, and he

said to me that he doesn't like my kids.

They're not welcome.

They're fucking rude and they're ignorant.

And I was like.

That was the wrong thing to say to me and the mindset I'm in right now.

So I fucking flipped and my mum stepped in and obviously calmed the situation or

whatever else, but it was evident then that I was not welcome and nor my kids.

So I, now, I left, I had nowhere to go.

So I went to Ted with house, which was at the time a Health Heroes Recovery Center.

And I remember meeting with it was either Blemo, Saffer or maybe both explained

the situation and they said, we can give you five days here at the, at the

house in the accommodation with my kids.

So I've got five days in the family room there with my two kids.

And they said, but that's it.

You gotta find, you gotta find somewhere.

And I was like, I don't have any fucking money.

I literally am in debt.

I, I don't, I don't have anywhere, like I can't go anywhere.

Said, you've gotta go and declare yourself homeless.

The council offices and I was like, this is a fucking whole new low.

Okay.

Strapping.

So I remember walking into the council offices and I'm not one for stereotypes

and stuff, but you know, with the job center and stuff that's there, there

are you now are mixing with a particular type of people that you are, you feel

you're a million miles away from.

I've served my country, I've fucking worked hard.

I've put myself second to everything else.

I don't particularly wanna fucking be here.

And I had to say those words.

I've been told to come in here and declare myself homeless.

And as I said those words, I was like, this is fucked.

And my, they let me do that, as in my family, let me do that.

I would never let my kids do that ever.

But it's alright.

So they said.

We'll help, but we can't help you right now.

Long story.

Here's a travel lodge for six weeks with two double beds so

your children can stay with you.

That sound.

So I lived in a fucking travel lodge for six weeks.

There was no restaurant on site.

I had a mini Coke, Coca-Cola fridge under the under the

counter and a PlayStation four.

And that was it.

So for six weeks I lived in there and then eventually they came through the council

and I got a one bedroom flat In Andover.

Andover.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got a one bedroom flat and it was horrendous.

For the first three days I was on my hands and knees with

bleach cleaning this thing up.

Man, it was honking.

I remember coming over and and Ryan Ton being there as well.

Yeah, man.

Coming and helping you out, coming to see you.

That's right.

That was a huge, the ice for anyway, a huge defining moment for you.

It was like, yeah.

Do you know what it, it can't really get any lower than this.

Correct.

And you were like, I'm gonna do this to the flat.

I'm gonna do this.

It's this.

I'm cleaning this.

My kids are gonna stay there and I'm gonna, I'm never gonna be.

I remember you saying to me, stood, stood in that bedroom where you'd

let your kids sleep and you're like, I'll never be in this position again.

Yeah.

Remember it clear as day man coming around.

It wasn't even like car parking out there, was it?

It was just fuck all a free fraud.

It was literally Grenfell tower mate.

But in handover it was, it was not non-optimal.

N no.

And so it was a one bedroom flat.

So, Ryan helped me out, built a stud wall in the bedroom with a doorway,

meaning the children had a bedroom each and I slept in the front room.

COVID is, is happening now too.

So, I've managed to get myself a job as a PE teacher at a primary school.

Didn't last very long because of COVID and all the rest of it.

And the kids' mom was like, you need to have the fucking kids.

Because I've been un furloughed and I've gotta go back to work.

Okay.

I was like, fine, they can come with me.

So they were with me quite a lot anyway, where I, I would do, I would do breakfast,

dinner after school and stuff, and then she would come pick them up for me.

So it was kind of like 50 50, 60 40, whatever.

I was like, no, you're with me full time now.

Come on.

So for two years, mate, they slept in that bedroom and I had a fucking sofa,

sofa bed in the front room, in that flat.

And then we get to 20 20, 20 20.

My wife's gonna fucking tell me off.

I can't remember the year that we met, but whatever year it was.

You say it really quickly.

Sorry.

2020. And then yeah.

So, I've been on my own now for 18 months or whatever in this, in this flat.

Just me and the kids and kind of put myself back together.

I had to then be there and set an example, especially for my lads really and, and

he needed to see how a man should be and he needed to see how a man should

treat a woman and, and all of that.

So I put my head back on and that's when I then managed to

meet Abby, who is now my wife.

I was very lucky and I inherited two more daughters of hers, and

we've got another one together.

So we now live, all of us together full-time.

All five kids, seven of us dogs, cats, all the, all the, all of it

together in a fucking nice house.

Nice.

It's, yeah.

I mean, the story doesn't end there because you've, you know, you've gone

through all of this stuff and it could have been very easy to turn your back on

the world and be like, this is my family.

This is what I'm doing.

I'm, I'm done.

Yeah.

Helping other people, which would be fully understandable.

Yeah.

You know, you've been shit on in life.

You didn't, did you?

No.

Ukraine's happened.

Mm-hmm.

You, you know, it's nothing to do with you politely.

Yeah.

And it was Afghan before that.

That's all about that lot of, a lot of Afghan stuff.

Sorry, I neglected that, you know, touch on it as well.

Afghan, you, you've helped people out there and in Ukraine,

you've helped people out there.

Yeah.

Please do.

Elaborate on on, yeah.

On those things.

So again, I had no plans to go and do this, do this work

for the next three years.

That wasn't my plan.

It kind of happened, but essentially, Finn, there's a, there's, there's a

common denominator and it's Finn, he.

Got hold of me and said so I should touch this point.

He's now badged.

Okay.

And he's operational and he, he, he gave me a call and he said

need some help with just some map wrecky in the north of Afghanistan.

Can you help?

Can you help us out?

And I was actually recovering from a surgery in hospital at the time, so

I was absolutely off my face as well.

And and I said, yeah, man, what do you need?

And he explained, and I, and I, and I did it.

And then literally within two weeks, I had built a team on the

ground in Afghanistan to enable the movement of high value targets for

P-G-H-Q-D-H-U agencies of UK and the us.

And people coming to me to, to try and help get me to help them.

Sorry.

So in Afghan alone, we moved 430.

Personnel and their families out of the taliban's, sort of out

of harm's way of the Taliban.

Which was fucking tricky.

But again, like I felt as though I had a calling for Afghanistan.

Like I don't really believe in coincidences and everything

happens for a reason.

I've been put in that place for a reason.

I should do the right thing and, and help.

And like you say, I could have, I could have just sat there and

gone, nah, I'm all right mate.

I've had enough.

Whereas I, somebody's telling me I need to do that.

So for the next, like three and a half years, I ran an

intelligence and security firm.

Not too long into the Afghan campaign, Ukraine happens.

So me and Ryan, I was, me and Ryan were doing it.

We were like, dude, if we can.

If we're doing that in Afghan, surely we can do the same thing

in Ukraine to go help people.

And at the same time it's helping people.

We can do what's necessary for the UK and the us, M-O-D-D-O-D, et cetera.

Gather intel, bit wrecky, et cetera.

So 10 days after the invasion of Ukraine, we're, we, fuck, we're in country.

We go still with my shorts on, still with my leg hanging out.

And yeah, we're on the ground in Ukraine.

Helping move people, helping 'em get outta harm's way.

But then also we're doing the same thing where we're gathering intelligence,

information intelligence for the MOD to paint a lot, a bigger picture for them.

Sort of, we were very much in and out of Regents Park Barracks in London

where they have representatives from every intelligence agency

there is and special forces groups.

We're now supplying intelligence for them.

We're now supplying intelligence for the MOD and Babcock like a, a

big military contractor for their ops in Poland and in Ukraine.

And it's just a really wild, insane time.

Even to the point where we had the Taliban on FaceTime, ripping

us, telling us we look like terrorists 'cause we have beards.

And I was, I was like, dude, hot or black?

The fuck are you talking about?

But it was just a wild, wild three years of operating in circles

I could only have dreamt of.

And again, it came back to fucking watch me do this, watch me.

So, I had a handshake from the Rasman at Hereford along with some stuff from the

mess and my coin to say, fucking welcome to the club so that my SF coin is up

on the wall with my medals and stuff.

You know, I managed to.

Tick the box I wanted to tick when we were in Afghan and after

Afghan, but in a very different way.

And I kind of crowbarred my way into that community, into that world very quickly.

It became, I became somebody that they would turn to when they needed

help, which kind of rubbed my ego, don't get me wrong, but having your

ego rubs nice, though, is nice.

Every now and then you need it, right?

Yeah.

But it, it was that thing of I am making a difference until I got fucked

over and then the business got pulled out from under my feet overnight.

I remember lost everything.

However, everything happens for a reason.

Happily married.

Happily married.

We now have our five beautiful children.

Correct.

You know, our, our youngest is two.

So had I have still been operational, I would've been away.

I would've been, you know, not really present even if I was at home, just

because of the nature of the work.

If, if the Special forces or you know, CIA or any of those agencies

that we were kind of giving information to call and say jump.

I've got to say how high.

I can't say no.

So actually it was a bit of a blessing in that I was able to champion my wife.

Go and do you go, you need to do what you wanna do and I, I'll stay.

Love it here.

Yeah.

And after that, after that had all gone sideways the door opened for me to be a

full-time golfer, we were gonna touch that saying like, all of this stuff happened.

And Yeah.

And golf a little bit like jiujitsu, it seems to, from my point of view anyway,

it's, both of them have come from nowhere.

Yeah.

I mean, I know golf's always been a big thing, but especially

within the military community.

Yeah.

A lot of people have really started taking up and like, how does

swing a golf club of your leg?

Yeah, I get that question a lot and.

I kind of, I just find a way.

I think what's important to know is I didn't play golf before I was injured,

so I didn't really have a feeling or an understanding of what it should be like.

So kind of, I was at an advantage in a way of I, what I'm gonna find a way that works

for me because it's the only way I know.

Yeah, I've, and I've been fortunate enough to kind of turn it into

a full-time gig where I create content, I play tournaments, I have

sponsorship deals with golf companies club manufacturers and stuff.

I have just lost my main sponsor, if anyone's out there.

No.

So I don't do it for that, really.

It's more, it's more that I enjoy making content and I, I like having a laugh, but

without golf, my head comes clean off.

So you found your, your team.

That is my team to keep you on a straight and narrow.

Yeah.

Man.

It's good that it's not out.

Alcohol drugs be like you introduced you, right?

Correct.

Absolutely.

You know, the last y year or so, I've completely calmed down.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I used to work, it puts you back in your box.

I used to work a hundred hour weeks outwork me.

But yeah.

Fi finding my thing has been jujitsu.

Finding your thing has been been golf.

Yeah.

And to an extent our families, but it's, yeah.

A family could never be able to replace the buzz we got from the military.

Yeah.

And those two things we have.

Yeah.

There are things and I think unless you're in that position,

you'd never truly understand how important these things are to us.

Yeah.

Like you love your wife to Peter, but she'll never be able to offer

you the thing and the feeling that the military gave you.

Yeah.

And 'cause they're different things, right?

Yeah.

Co they're completely different.

And that's what I think golf gives to you.

That Jiujitsu gives to me.

Yeah.

I'm also absolutely awful at Juujitsu.

I'm embarrassingly bad.

I'm just big compared to the 15-year-old kids that go there.

So I just sit on them and make myself feel myself.

And you win Yeah.

With your slab head?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You get called a wanker Fraser, who's doing the podcast, he he did turn

up to a juujitsu session once and he yeah, I heard you got filled in.

He, he got filled in.

The deal was with him.

If I beat him up in sub three seconds, he had to do a podcast for us.

And here we're, yeah.

And so now we're sat here doing a podcast story, so we know how that went.

Yeah.

Very egotistical of me now, but we're obviously, we met through combat fuel.

Yeah.

Can we touch a little bit on that?

You don't need to go into what it means to you and all of that stuff,

you know, you know, we're friends and it's, but the products Yeah.

You know, I pride myself and we make good products.

Our products cannot be beaten by anyone else.

Yep.

You know, and, and this isn't Rick.

The guy that sleep 20 quid later can say that you've bought our products

with your own hard earned money.

That you've what The last.

Seven years.

Mm-hmm.

Really?

Since, since we started in 2018.

You've been buying our stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's important to, to, to show, so anybody watching this that

does know me will know that I have combat fuel stamped on my golf back.

But it's also what you should know is you don't pay me for that and you

don't give me supplements to that.

That's how much I believe in this company is that I want you

to have that space in my bag so that other people get eyes on it.

And when they ask me what it is, I tell them because, and I've, I've kind of,

I've been on the receiving end of this a few times, as you know, with PTN and then

with the intelligence stuff I was doing.

People want something for nothing when even when they're your friends, because

you now own this business, they assume, oh, I don't need to pay for those tablets.

I don't need to pay for that t-shirt.

You should be.

Paying more for those things.

'cause you should be supporting your friend.

We'll pay hundreds of pounds to go and see a celebrity, but we won't like, share,

comment and buy our friend's products.

So if they're crap, then buy them though.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But they're actually good.

Fair enough.

But the fact is I truly believe in you.

This lifestyle is not, it's bigger than a brand.

I feel to see, to see the growth from where I, when me and you first

met and we had these ones down here.

Yeah.

With the, with the boot print.

I'm gonna have to pick one apart.

I put it down so crazy.

Can fill me in on that.

That's when we started.

This was done on paint, correct?

Yeah.

Done on paint.

Yeah.

And I mean, there's like Americans That's right.

But the Google and.

Still and stick on a tub through paint.

Didn't the products were we, did we still good?

You know, we still had a cyclic Dexter in an eea a blend.

Yeah.

You, you, you definitely found your passion with this and that

comes through in abundance.

So yes, you can go and get a tub that size of protein online for a fraction of

the price, but you're gonna need to use five times the amount to get the goodness

from at what you do with one, when, like what the actual protein company Correct.

Is.

Can we run through quickly, like the products that you use from combat fuel?

So big for me on the golf course.

The, the, the, the snacks and the food that you guys do, the protein

backups, they live in my golf bag.

They're so good to have throughout, throughout the round.

Optimize is a big one for me, for concentration.

I need to be, you know, locked in, in, in whatever.

And I find that the optimize, if I have that throughout, that keeps me.

Not a buzz, but it keeps me there ready to, and, and in a clear mind,

hydrate is huge for me as well.

'cause where I am outside, certainly in the summer, a lot, a lot of moving and

I can burn like 5,000 calories in a day.

That hydrate stuff is an absolute game changer for me.

So yeah, it's optimized, hydrate, all of the, all of the butters,

quite literally all the butter cups.

And then I use various protein powders or the pancake mix to make protein

pancakes, protein pancake bowls.

I don't necessarily have a shake necessarily.

I use your stuff for cooking so that then I can have a week's worth

of breakfasts using your proteins.

So I literally shit and piss combat fuel.

I love that.

Quite literally.

You know, we said about stroking our egos earlier.

Yeah.

Stroking our ego.

You're stroke ego.

I like that.

I like that.

We, we gotta finish off though on touching on, you know, you've had the highest

of the highs commanding men mm-hmm.

To war in Afghanistan.

Having to basically sign the do and and say, I'm homeless to the council,

you know, and, and had some money.

Lost the money.

Yeah.

Literally drank it.

Drank it, sniffed it.

What done gambled it?

What's a bit of advice that you could give your younger self before

any of this stuff had happened?

If you are, say, at school age, what's the one bit of advice you could have?

I think

don't wrap your tits in, don't fucking stop, don't there's

always, there's always a way out.

You might not like that way out, but it's the, it's the right thing to do.

So for anybody that's maybe in a similar situation right now to what we've been

in, what I've been in, go and speak to someone because you are worth so

much more here than when you're not.

There's always a way out.

It's, it's easy for me to sit there and say it now, go speak to

someone, but it's because I didn't You've walked the walk though.

Yeah.

You know, you've both lost friends.

Yes.

To suicide.

Yes.

The world's a better place with you in it.

Correct.

A hundred percent correct.

You know, the power to endure the shit.

Mm. And it will always get better grind because it has to grace.

Yeah, it does.

And you are, you are a living proof, you know, that, that, that's been a thing.

And on that, is there any like misconceptions that you

wanted to have a look at?

You know, perhaps it is, don't judge a book by its cover big.

That's a, that's a, that's a really, I mean, it's, it's a

common thing to say, isn't it?

But you're absolutely right.

There's, there's always more to the story.

So before you throw judgment on someone or you listen to the chatter from other

people, find out why they're saying it.

Do you know what I mean?

I, I pride myself on my, my honesty, my integrity, my loyalty.

For anybody out there that hyped off about me, you should have

fucking known better come and speak to me and I'll tell you the truth.

And I hope now that they see it, they've seen this and where you

are in life now and there, they're nothing short of just inspired by you.

No resentment.

No hate.

Just, I've got no, I've got no resentment, man.

I don't hold a grudge.

Yeah.

It's not, I I, it might have sounded like I do hold a grudge there, but

you're, you're absolutely right in just go and speak to that person.

Don't, don't beat a dick there.

So, fucking phone, something Tom Holland said, Mr. Spider-Man.

Yeah.

And it's so outta context, but kind of there, which is if you have a

problem with me, pick up the phone.

Yeah.

If you don't have my number, you don't know me well enough.

To have a problem with me.

Well said.

Yeah.

So it's well said.

That's absolutely true.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is.

That is bang in context, really.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Don't follow the sheet, Rick.

Where can we find you?

Where can people come and support you, chat to you, find you on socials.

You've got a YouTube channel as well.

I do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's just Rick.

We golf on everything across the board.

Rick, we golf predominantly Instagram and YouTube.

Rick, we, and if you just look for like a guy with a tiny head, tiny,

tiny head, it's probably one leg.

You'll probably find me.

I love it.

Yeah.

Awesome stuff, man.

That's powerful.

Thank you, man.

I love it.

Thank you very much for, for being here, taking time out your day, playing golf.