Tell me a little about yourself and what did you do in the military? What was your trade? How long have you served?
I spent my childhood and teens playing in the great outdoors with maps, compasses, traps, dens, and fires. I always had a burning desire to play soldier, like my grandfather who was a Commando during WWII. He led a troop of Commandos onto the beaches of Normandy and wrote a book about it – Swiftly They Struck. The war kicked off in Afghanistan in 2003, and I wanted to be a part of it. Not for the sake of Queen and country, I just really wanted to be a professional soldier and go to war. I joined the beloved Royal Marines Commandos in 2005 at the grand old age of 26, after being a nightclub manager in Bristol.
I look back on the nine months of basic Commando training with only happy memories. I was very well prepared and loved it, mostly. After receiving my green beret, I was drafted to 42 Commando, which is where I managed to remain for the rest of my career, luckily. 42 Commando is one of the three main fighting units within the Corps. To ensure involvement in the action, I joined the heavy weapons branch, who were always in the thick of it. I specialized in machine guns, missiles, and pistols.
I completed two, seven-month frontline tours of duty in Afghanistan, both of which were very lively. Luckily these were before the Taliban fully realized the effectiveness of planting improvised explosive devices everywhere. The vast majority of combat consisted of good old-fashioned firefights, which is the Royal Marines’ bread and butter, so we wiped the floor with them. My weapon of choice was the general purpose machine gun: A little slow to maneuver in close quarters but with slick drills, it’s highly effective at winning firefights.
The two tours included over 14 air assault operations, which involved being dropped by Chinook into bandit country and left there to fend for ourselves for anything from two days to four weeks. The tours also included several long-range vehicle born operations, dug-in defensive operations, observation, and reconnaissance operations and being bombed more times than I care to remember by rockets and mortars. There’s nothing like a cigarette during a mortar attack!
My action-packed career in the Corps ended after just six years when I met my soon-to-be-wife, Casey, while on holiday in NYC.
What was the hardest time of your life? What tools did you use to get through it?
The hardest time of my life was settling into civilian life - trying to build a business as a personal trainer in central London. The first year after leaving the Corps was my hardest working year. I look back on it and just see darkness, anger, and anxiety. I would rather go through Royal Marines recruit training again twice than build a personal training business from scratch in London. My opinion of why service folk struggle so much after leaving is mainly because civilian life is just so much harder. Nobody has your back. You’re not surrounded by all of your best friends, who share the same situation. Monthly beer money won’t just appear in your bank account. Everything costs, a lot, especially in London. Bills, bills, bills and no perceived control over your own life.
People often think that going to war or being in the military is uncontrolled and stressful. On the contrary, dear Watson. A good Marine is well organized and has his shit together, all the time. All admin jobs are completed before going to bed every single day so you can literally wake up and operate, immediately. This is a polar opposite of civilian, self-employed life, where no matter how organized or productive you are, you always go to bed with a mountain of other things to do. A good Marine practices his weapons and combat drills so his brothers can rely on him when the shit hits the fan. Again, a polar opposite from civilian life where nobody has your back and people who call themselves colleagues are mostly just pretending.
The
