back to indexKelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love | Lex Fridman Podcast #230
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The following is a conversation with Kelsey Sharon, Canadian Forces veteran, artillery
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gunner who served in Afghanistan at 18 years old and came home with severe PTSD.
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She went on to found Brass in Unity which creates unique jewellery, large part of the
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proceeds from which go to help rehabilitate the lives, limbs and mental health of veterans
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and first responders.
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She has a big personality, big heart and an intense passion for life.
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So when our paths happened to cross, I knew we needed to talk.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast, to support it please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now here's my conversation with Kelsey Sharon.
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You mentioned that studying history had a big impact on you and that your grandfather
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was a World War II vet.
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So people that have gone through World War II, in my family too, they don't seem to talk
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Like the worse the tragedy, the less they talk about it.
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I mean it's understandable, I can respect that, but I don't think people fully understood
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the value in human stories over time and sharing that, that certain civilizations don't have
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The value in that being passed down is extraordinary, but we didn't really have that with the World
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War II vets it seems like.
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Well, they kind of want to protect you from the pain.
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My grandmother went through Holland and Moore, which is the Ukrainian starvation of millions
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of people, and then obviously went through World War II with the Nazi occupation.
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And same on the grandfather's side who, on my dad's side, grandfather fought in World
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So they seem to not want to talk about those experiences to protect you from the suffering,
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to protect you from the evil that they've experienced, which is sad because the lessons
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from that history are not then propagated through you.
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And also there's something about the strength you carry with you knowing that that's in
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Those great heroes are in your blood and that's suffering, overcoming that suffering is in
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I would argue that's exactly correct.
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If you have someone you know that comes from your lineage that has done something super
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gnarly, that's just been a badass and in so many different ways, you want to know about
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You have that person's blood in you.
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That's important to acknowledge and when that isn't shared, I feel like it's just a detriment
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to that individual.
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What do you make of World War II?
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In terms of history, do you think about those kinds of wars where two times more civilians
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died than the number of military personnel?
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So most of the war is basically just the death of civilians and the invasion of homes, the
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burning of homes, the bombing of homes, all of that.
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World War II for me, I find that was the first experience where I became just obsessed with
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World War II really did it for me.
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I'm not sure if it's because of the dramatization of film and TV and the way that our generation
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has looked at it, but for me, it was more than that.
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I felt a deep connection to it and I still can't figure out why, like a pull almost.
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People joke around about those past lives and those things or those connections and
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there's something deeper within me that feels a pull towards that and I'm not quite sure
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if it's because I had family that escaped Hungary once the Soviets came in, so thanks
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for that, or if it was because my grandfather served in it or for whatever reason, I have
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And so when you think about the mass casualty of the civilian population, that's very difficult
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for me to wrap my brain around after being in a war and seeing when you have a small
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subset of civilians die, how much of an impact that has on that community right there in
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So to try to wrap my brain around what happened in Europe and all across and all of that,
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I really struggle with that because I don't know that I can comprehend what that would
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truly mean to somebody if I didn't experience it or see it for what it is.
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Does that make sense?
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So first of all, you're right, a lot of people are drawn to World War II for different reasons.
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The one is Hitler and Stalin trying to understand how it's possible to have that scale of evil
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in very different flavors of evil.
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It's almost fascinating that human nature can allow for that.
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And then also it's fascinating that so many people can follow leaders like that with a
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pride and with a love of country.
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And that's like, it's almost like this weird experiment, it's like, wow, I wonder if I'm
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made from the same cloth as those people.
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Like would I be a good German if I lived in Germany and was, you know, during the time
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Would I believe that Germany has been done wrong, I'm Jewish by the way, which makes
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me a little bit more comfortable talking about this, is would I believe in the dream sold
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by a charismatic dictator who says that wrongs have been done and we need to correct those
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That to me, this is the compelling thing that draws me to World War II, the human nature
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I would agree with you on that.
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I think there's a way to look at people like that.
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And at that time there was no real, well, there wasn't a full understanding of the psyche
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the way that we're starting to, I mean, we still don't understand any of it, but it seems
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like the time gap back then, there was no real understanding of sociopaths and narcissists
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and psychopaths and really what those traits were.
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And I feel like people will follow blindly if they're given a good enough reason.
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Well, if you have an individual who is ranting and screaming at the top of his lungs in the
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middle of these town squares and he's getting this attention, it's human nature to want
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to understand and be a part of a group mentality.
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It's human nature to want to fit in.
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And so I don't know if it's more of people were at the beginning were just, this is the
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Or if it was, they were genuinely terrified.
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Or if there was an aspect that was like, this guy is saying something that resonates with
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There could be a lot of different things.
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I think it's unfortunate that we didn't get to, or no one got to really examine this individual's
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brain and this person and why they thought the way they thought.
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Because that's always been the biggest thing for me is I'm really curious about why people
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do what they do, like deeply, deeply curious about it.
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I'm not sure who's more interesting, the people that follow Hitler or Hitler himself.
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So I mean, the question that's coupled with that is, would history roll out in similar
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ways even if there wasn't a Hitler?
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It's the people that created Hitler or did Hitler create the events of World War II?
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I think the people would be more interesting in my opinion.
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That seems to be the, that the charismatic leaders are all out there.
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The failed artists in the case of Hitler, they're all out there and it's just when there's
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this environment of anger and fear, charismatic leaders can take over and it doesn't matter
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if they're evil or good.
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It's like a roll of the dice in terms of history, how evil, how truly insane they are.
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I think Stalin was much more cold in calculating.
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He wasn't as insane as Hitler.
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Hitler was legitimately insane, like especially later on in the war where he would do irrational
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actions I would say.
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But that's like a weird roll of the dice.
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You could have gotten a totally different leader.
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Wanting to take over the entirety of Europe and then invading Russia, that's like insanity.
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Yeah, just even, just the first part of that wanting to take over Europe, if you really
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think about the scale, if you really sit down and go, this one individual was like, I want
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If you really sat down and you were to sit down and put him in his traits that we know
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of into any sort of document nowadays that deems somebody a psychopath or a narcissist,
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this guy would set it on fire.
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He himself was so, I think so damaged and he reminds me a lot of people now who struggle
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to find their way.
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He reminds me a lot of angry individuals who are told no, either by women or by business
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or by whatever the sector they're in.
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He reminds me very much of that like, what's the word I'm looking for?
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Just that individual who's just like, the world is shit and the world owes me everything.
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It's that mentality.
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He really came from that it seems like.
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And when you foster that too long, you get that.
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There's a book called, what is it, Man From Underground by Dostoevsky, I might be misnaming
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the book, but it's about the bitterness of a man.
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It breeds within his mind and it just grows, that bitterness.
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I mean, we all have that sort of resenting of the world when you're younger, when you
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When you fail, do you blame the world or do you hold, it's the Jaco thing, do you carry
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the responsibility of that and become a better man or woman because of that?
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That's the decision.
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And in some sense, I mean, unfortunately, see that's because he took responsibility
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I know you can't say he wasn't a leader.
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So it's not that he's a failure.
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He's not a failure, but you can't say he's powerless, did not take action.
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I think he's just basically a embodiment of the anger and the fear of people at the time.
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But the insanity of, obviously, many of my relatives, not just murdering them, but putting
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them in camps and torturing them, but many of those people, Jewish people, were also
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some of the best scientists.
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The insanity of murdering some of the best Germans, it makes no sense.
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So that's why it's fascinating to kind of look back at that time in history and think,
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are these the same humans?
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And also, are there echoes of that now?
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And is that going to happen again?
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Is there going to be a World War III in some other kind of way?
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Is there going to be some mass scale injustice in some other kind of way, which we're not
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yet, because of our blindness and maybe not learning the lessons of history, will allow
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it to happen again?
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And then obviously, it's a very common thing to whatever political leader you don't like,
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to call them Hitler.
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Which is, that to me, I got to tell you, when somebody calls somebody Hitler, the weight
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behind that has been completely lost in this generation.
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This generation does not understand what that truly means to call someone Hitler or a Nazi.
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To be honest, the starvation, I've just been talking to a lot of folks recently, especially
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like North Korea, with Wyoming Park, starvation.
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And I remember from my grandmother, it wasn't, time and time again, not having food to eat
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is the thing that people say is the worst, everything.
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It's way worse than murder, not having food, and the places that takes your mind and the
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actions that forces you to do, that's terrifying.
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And all of that seems very distant in our history.
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I watched that interview with her.
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She is, I want to talk to that woman so bad, because when she was on Joe and she sat there
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and said, Joe's like, do you, have you done any therapy?
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I was like, oh, that's my girl.
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It's such a fascinating, I mean, I would love for you to kind of talk to her and explore
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her mind, because we kind of explored her story and that's, there's power and importance
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to her story, but it's so difficult to understand, like, how does she become healthier and better?
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Even more so than she's already, she's, she's recovered quite a bit, you know, she's found
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herself quite a bit, but I wonder, is she haunted?
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You're saying questions I want to ask.
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Like, that's what I mean, because after being in a war, there are certain things, there
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are certain atrocities that you see that, it doesn't matter the therapy that you do.
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And I don't care what all the special ops guys say, like, I know plenty of them that
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have a light switch and they turn it off and they can function, but I also know them when
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they've been out for 10 years.
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There's things that haunt people differently, but there's no way, there's not something
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going on there deeply.
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Yeah, but there's also extra levels of complexity in her case because, I mean, this is what,
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just looking at history about family, is she spent much of her early life loving the dictator,
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We like the water or something.
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We like water or we like this because there is no, like, individual, like, when they said
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there was no love or anything.
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But there is a love for the...
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Just that individual.
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For that individual.
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And so, I mean, it's like the ultimate abusive relationship.
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But it's still love, like you don't know the alternative.
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So it's not even, it's complicated because, like, I wonder if she truly explored it what
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you would find because the trauma, much of her trauma, I think comes from when she was
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escaping North Korea, treatment by China.
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And her mom and what she had to witness within that and being helpless with that on her own.
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So it's like evil men essentially abusing her, trading her, you know, and doing so nonchalantly,
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like it's part of just the way of life that I wonder if she sees kind of, yeah, it's so
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complicated because childhood...
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It would be normal to her because she didn't know any different.
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Like I grew up poor, but I never sensed that.
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Because your parents didn't make you.
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Well, and everyone else around was too.
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And so you don't notice it.
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I mean, it's a cultural thing.
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So the way you grow up, you only start to notice it when you compare yourself to others,
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when you learn of the alternative.
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That's the dark reality when you're abused.
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You truly begin to suffer in some kind of way when you understand that you were being
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That's a dark kind of thought that I wonder if you live your whole life just in that abuse,
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if you don't know better, that that's a safer...
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That's like, what's a better life, suffering and then learning that you were suffering
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or just suffering until your last days.
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There's two ways to look at this.
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I'd argue on one side that suffering and suffering until you die, you know no different.
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So you can't have hope.
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You can't have this idea that there's better.
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And sometimes that's...
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Keep that in its box.
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But then if you have kind of what you have with Park where she knows now that there's
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different, she knows that there's better, then you run into those.
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What is the damage that has been done?
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What is going to be passed on as intergenerational trauma?
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I know she's a mom.
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So it's like, now you got to look long term a little bit because now she's an influence
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And there's a positive to looking at both, I would say.
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And I know that sounds horrible for the living in trauma your whole life and just not knowing
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I don't know if that saves the brain and the body and just that overall or if it actually
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would be better because there's no way to really find that out.
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But the reality is when you give people hope and you make them realize that they're suffering,
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you're putting a burden on them.
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That's the first step on a long journey.
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And so, and obviously now that she knows that the suffering she wants to make people in
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North Korea currently suffer less.
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And that's an admirable goal.
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It's what we do to each other is try to like, when you see suffering in the world, you try
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to make it better and unmask that's probably in a long arc of history going to make for
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I'm hopeful at that idea for North Korea.
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I'm hopeful for that because you never want to leave individuals suffering when you know
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that they're actively suffering while you're just living your day to day life in the Western
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world just out grocery shopping and you see all this food and you know in the back of
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Like that interview fucked me up a little bit, I won't lie.
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And I had some of the girls in my office listen to it, they're just bawling.
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Because we're all parents and there's this idea that not being able to feed our children,
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just the idea of that damages the psyche.
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It brings up the pain in the chest, just the idea of it.
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And so going to the grocery store for about a week after that, I just remember standing
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there looking and just going, fuck are we doing?
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But then there's that snap reality that comes into play and goes, so how do we fix that?
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You got to take on China, that's never going to happen.
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And the reason that's not going to happen, it's happening again.
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So Akhani comes down through Afghanistan, Chinese are all through Afghanistan, Iran
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makes the deal with China for the roadway to get the oil, well that's done in the blink
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of an eye without anyone knowing.
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There's just so much at play with China, they control such a large aspect of our world,
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unfortunately that to take and free North Korea, a drastic action would have to happen.
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And then your people would come in, it would be a mess.
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What do you mean your people?
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What do you mean your people?
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Did you hear what she said about Russians?
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Did you hear what she says?
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You know what I didn't love?
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The Russian recruiting video that came out, that shit was terrifying.
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I told you about it and of course you didn't watch it.
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I didn't watch it, I'm sorry.
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The USA put out a recruiting video and then like a day or two later Russia put one out.
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And the recruiting video in the States was an animation of a female soldier with two
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moms and she was going to go change the world, right?
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Russia came out with one.
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It's like, it's the character from like Rocky essentially and they're guys in the mud and
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just in the rain just fucking doing pushups, just pushing it out.
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They're just like, they see their boot, they're just like crushing things and I'm like, and
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it's all like, and the deep Russian voice, I'm like, oh my God.
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Which one is better would you say?
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Which bothered you more?
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What do you mean by bother, specify.
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So deception is a funny thing because when you're young and you're choosing to go to
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the military or not, it's not like you know, like none of us know what the best trajectory
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For many people going to the military is a really, makes them incredible human beings.
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Some of the best people in this world I know are soldiers.
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So it's, I'm not, I don't mean like it's somehow bad to go to the military.
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I think it's a great choice, but there is something, the honest truth is I just don't
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like marketing people.
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And so this is essentially a marketing effort.
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Yeah, it is a marketing effort.
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So which one do you like as a marketing effort better?
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Cause Canada doesn't, you know what our recruiting videos are?
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It's like, I love it.
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So Canada does these ones where it's like, it'll have a bunch of like soldiers doing
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movements and then they'll like snip it together really quick.
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It'll be like a Navy one and a guy jumping out of a plane and then it'll be like an artillery
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and then like an armored and it'd be like, join the Canadian forces today.
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And like, that's like their, their videos.
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So it's like very marketable, very palatable to Canadians who don't really want war and
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who don't really acknowledge their military in the first place and do everything they
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can to make sure that vets don't get any support when they come home.
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So they, I can see why that one is acceptable.
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What Russia did was meant to be more of an intimidation tactic in my opinion.
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I like that style better though.
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I think we need harder, I think we need people to be harder.
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I think it's acceptable and okay to say that our soldiers need to have a harder mindset,
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a stronger mindset, a better mentality and mental health support going into the service
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and a harder body because I know when you go to the US, I've also encountered plenty
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of soldiers that are 600 pounds.
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What are you going to do?
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So we should say that you, when you joined the military, you were in incredible shape
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or not maybe incredible, but very good shape.
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No, I was in incredible shape.
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It was the best shape of my life.
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I'm okay with that.
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I used to do sit ups.
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Like no, I would do sit ups in the morning when I was little until I could see my six.
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Like I always had a six pack because all I did was train.
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But like if I couldn't like see it, I would just sit there in morning cartoons and just
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And my mom and dad thought that was like normal acceptable behavior.
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So if you had like Instagram back then, you'd be a David Goggins, you would be just like
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Without the cursing.
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That cursing started once the military started.
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So I mean, the people should know, is it probably already know that you also competed in Taekwondo,
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like you were an athlete of all kinds.
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They even saw rugby in there.
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I was, I was, I was good at rugby.
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I played that for seven, six years, I guess you could say total.
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I think the worst injury I ever ended up having was I tore my right eyelid off.
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We were doing an exhibition game.
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I don't do exhibition games well.
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I don't do like for fun well.
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So you're very competitive.
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So you're being funny.
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You see, he's not, he's not a robot.
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What I was saying though to you was that we did an exhibition game and the team ahead
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The team we were playing was winning, which was annoying.
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And so there was an opportunity to take out a girl that was going one end of the field
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to the other and she just kept hitting tries left, right and center.
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So I figured if I just aimed her up, like she's a target and I just run full force at
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her because she was really, she was a tall individual, but I just, if I do that, I'll
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take her out of the knees.
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But that, what that resulted in was she put her tooth through her mouth guard and knocked
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out and didn't just, she just stayed there.
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But when I stood up, I tore the right eyelid off and it was hanging from the inner corner.
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My mom was there cause mom was my mom's, my biggest fan and she's supportive of everything
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and she didn't miss a game.
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She didn't miss an anything.
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And um, I stood up and I kind of turned around and we already had a girl break her nose that
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So she was on the sideline with her nose sideways and just bloody.
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My mom was like, I'll take her to the emergency after once the game's over.
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And so I turned around and looked at her and she just, she almost vomited on the spot and
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I was like, what's wrong?
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She's like, don't move your eyelids off.
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I'm like, but I can see like I was trying to blink, but like it was just down so I could
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just constantly see.
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She's like, we're just, we're just going to go to the emergency.
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We're just going to go there now.
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There's lots of it, but I couldn't really tell.
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Were you okay with blood at that point?
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I mean, I guess you did taekwondo and all that.
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I didn't get knocked out very often.
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Like when I was younger in taekwondo, I was really good.
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I only lost a handful of times.
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So when I did lose, that was bad.
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But I never had like a broken nose or a lot of blood on my face, like nothing like that
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So nothing freaked me out too much.
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Was there aggression there or just purely competition over skill?
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I was, this was right after, not too long after my coach went to prison for statutory
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rape and that was like how you talk about Park talking about how that was like she knew
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love because of that person.
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That person was like a God to me.
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And so when that happened, I was just an angry individual from that point on.
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So there was competition and aggression mixed in there.
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Oh, like it was betrayal that there's just somebody that is, was a symbol of love for
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you, could also be a very bad person.
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I used to eat, sleep, and breathe whatever that man said from four years old on.
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I lived with my coaches at a point so I could train that much.
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I helped look after their daughter.
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I was at the club 24 seven.
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It just the idea that somebody could do something like that, yeah, that really messed me up.
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Where were you on 9 11?
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I was 11 and I was in my parents basement.
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What did you think of 9 11 at that age from Canada that have an impact on you in terms
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of changing the level of evil you thought is there in the world today?
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I remember it really vividly.
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I have a decent memory for certain things.
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It seems like stuff like that I stick with really well.
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I remember watching it.
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I was sitting on the couch and my mom called my dad because my parents are truck drivers.
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My dad was on the road, if I'm not mistaken, and he would go in and out of cities all the
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I think he was on the East Coast.
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My mom was a little panicky.
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She tried to get a hold of him.
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I think at the time it was beepers and yeah, so he would get a beep, he would go to a payphone
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I remember my mom being really upset and I couldn't quite grasp why she was so upset.
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I knew something really bad had happened.
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It's when I then saw the second plane go into the tower and I remember her just like the
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stereotypical like hand over her mouth and she just felt sick and she just was so confused
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and I knew it was bad, but I didn't fully grasp it.
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We went to school that day and they had talked about it briefly.
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You could hear the teachers kind of reminiscing about it.
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There was a point that week that all of a sudden all of the children who were from a
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Middle Eastern family were not at school.
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I just remember them saying like a lot of people aren't coming to school, but it was
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I think parents were afraid once it got out that it was of a certain group.
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They were afraid for their own kids and fair enough, I mean, you never know.
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You don't know and I knew it impacted me enough that I did write.
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I remember the school was doing a memorial for it and I remember they asked, I wrote
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a poem and a reporter was there and I read it on air.
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I remember it was a very short one, but I remember I wanted to do something, but I didn't
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know why or for what reason.
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I knew I wanted to do something to honor it, but I couldn't grasp why.
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You eventually went to Afghanistan.
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Did that begin to plant the seed of thinking about conflict in the world?
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It's a good question.
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I never thought about it that in depth.
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I mean, I've done 12 years of therapy.
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You think that would have come up, Dr. Passi, but apparently not.
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We'll work on it though.
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I mean, when did the idea of war start entering your mind?
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Late high school, I think it was for me.
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I finished high school at 17.
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I moved away and went to college, I went to Algonquin College because I wasn't smart enough
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to get into Ottawa U. I was like, well, Algonquin, cheers.
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I just wanted to play sports and frankly, I wanted away from my small town that I was
link |
I went through a bad high school breakup as a kid and you know that where you think that's
link |
like the love of your life and you just can't bear to be anywhere near anybody.
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I moved away as fast as I possibly could.
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I didn't grasp it still at that point.
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Love and heartbreak.
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Why did you become a soldier?
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Why did you want to become a soldier?
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My parents told me from an early age, they always figured I would either be a cop.
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I would do, they didn't think military, but they thought it would be like a type A personality,
link |
possibly carry a gun situation and I'd never hunted before.
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We never had guns in our house.
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I was never exposed to weapons of any kind.
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If anything, it was the opposite.
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All the hunters on the property, like all the deer would come to our property and all
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the hunters would be, no, I'm not, my mom would put salt licks out so that they wouldn't
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Your property was the safe space for the deer.
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It was 17 acres of forest and they just, we had two turkeys that used to walk up and down
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the driveway every day.
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We had bears in there and nobody bothered them.
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And so there was no aspect of like, I want to go kill shit, that was not like a thing.
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I had no idea I wanted to take anybody off the face of the earth or any thing.
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I went to school and because I'm a history person, my parents has always made it really
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important that Remembrance Day is the thing in our life.
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So that's Veterans Day for you.
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So it's November 11th and it's, you go, you honor.
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I don't care if you don't want to go, I don't care if it's raining, you go.
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And so I went to the Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa that year, which was, it's our capital,
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which is, yeah, it's our capital and it's really small.
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And so I went, but I took the bus and I was on the bus back to Algonquin.
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And I met a lady who was like a World War II vet, really old lady, she had an Air Force
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uniform on and just like this row of medals.
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And I mean, I think you can tell by our limited to extreme interactions we've had over the
link |
short period of time, I'm curious and I'll just ask you.
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And so I just got up and talked to her and just started talking to her.
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And she didn't say like, I don't remember exactly her words, but she served, she was
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one of the first females to fly and all of these kinds of things that stuck in my head.
link |
And we just kind of kept talking and I missed my stop.
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And then I finished talking to her and I got back on the bus and went back to the college
link |
and walked into my small apartment where I had two roommates, these two guys I went to
link |
high school with, one of them I went to high school with, one was from out of town.
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And I just didn't like what I was, I wasn't happy, I wasn't doing what I wanted to do.
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And I didn't know what I wanted to do truthfully.
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Something just said, why don't you join the army?
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Like in myself, my self talk was like, let's just join the military, let's do it.
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Are you in general somebody that just follows the gut, like when your heart tells you something,
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For the most part, because I figured out, at least now I figured out what parts I could,
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like what feeling I can trust and which one I can't.
link |
Which one's anxiety versus which one's my actual intuition talking.
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So why did you sign up to be an artillery gunner?
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Because they wouldn't let me be infantry.
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I mean, why would you want to be infantry?
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I mean, you're naming a lot of dangerous activities.
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Yeah, but that wasn't a thought in my mind at the time.
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My idea was if I was going to do this and I was going to put myself through the bullshit
link |
and the training and all of the hell and the pushups and the screaming dad, I wanted to
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do something that I know was actually going to be affecting something.
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And what I knew was making change or affecting or on the front lines was infantry, artillery
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So I was like, one of those.
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Can you explain the difference, infantry, artillery and armored?
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Do you want like the layman's term or do you want me to actually explain, explain?
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Well, listening to your conversation with Jaco, especially, I love how you get into
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Okay, so let's detail this then.
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So infantry is your frontline door kicking, you know, blasting the door open, running
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and get the fuck on the ground, just that, that, that, that, that.
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They're the guys that, you know, double tap you in the face and they show up in the middle
link |
of the night and put a barrel in your head.
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Like those are the guys that are sleeping in the trenches, that are eating MREs, who
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are being shot at, who are being blown up, who are doing the dirty work and not sleeping
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and carrying the a hundred pound pack and, and are side by side with your buddies in
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They said it was too small for that.
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You were, sorry to interrupt, you were too small under a hundred pounds?
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At the time I was about 103 and I'm, I'm five foot, like on a, if you roll my back out,
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like I really try, I'm five foot.
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At the time though, I think my, my license said 411, so.
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So you were too small for infantry.
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They just, like, there was no mandate at which they said you can't be, but they said, you
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know, we don't want to put you through training that you're going to fail out of and then
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have to recourse you and then find a new job for you.
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And they want to try to, this is what you're going in for.
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They want to have you follow through that path.
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So then there was armored, which are your tanks.
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So that's your movie like Fury where your tank battles and, which we don't really do
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anymore, but you're rolling around in tanks, you've got guys in the back or you're a driver,
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you're a turret gunner, which I would have enjoyed, but the idea of being in a closed
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metal box, something about it made me panic.
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So I was like, maybe not for me.
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There's of course power to that kind of a big gun.
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Well, that's why I went for the bigger one.
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By the way, think of Russia leads the world in number of tanks.
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We're still, it's very like, what is it, alpha demonstration of like, look, we have largest
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You know what takes tanks out though?
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Some gasoline, some old batteries and a wire.
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Yeah, but tanks still look badass.
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They look great, but they don't last.
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But so much of the military, like we said with the recruiting videos, it's a display
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of power versus the actual implementation of power.
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So I'm doing my best here.
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I don't know what double tap means, which you said earlier, it means two shots to the
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You guys, taxpayers pay for the ammo.
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So, but you don't want to do three because that's wasting the ammo.
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Well, that's now that's a waste.
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Double tap to the face.
link |
There's so much awesome terminology here or gruesome terminology, depending on your
link |
So that's the hand of God.
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No, that's intensely a romanticized version, but okay, artillery, the hand of God.
link |
So it will reach out and touch you from wherever we want.
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It's like F18 pilots or bombers.
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You won't know they're there until they're there.
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And so for artillery, I really honestly didn't think artillery would be a fit for me.
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I didn't know much about it.
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They were just like, these are what you can pick from.
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And I was like, I'll go here.
link |
So in World War II, they used much closer artillery.
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So we're called the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery because the Queen made us Royal Canadian Artillery.
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And we shoot these rounds.
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When you're in training, you shoot smaller, smaller ammunition.
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They're about 40 pounds.
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They go, I'm going to get this wrong, 20 K, 20 kilometers.
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So whatever that is in your mile things.
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And they have a casing on them and they're much easier.
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They're easier to handle.
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The guns are smaller.
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You need less people for them.
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They're basically what you train on nowadays.
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It's not what we use overseas.
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What we use overseas, now those things are beautiful.
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Those are just a sheer work of the engineering behind them just makes my heart skip a beat.
link |
Yeah, the engineering on modern guns is amazing.
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So are we talking about machine guns here?
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So fully automatic?
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No, you're talking about an artillery gun.
link |
So what it is, it's a 155 millimeter howitzer that shoots up to up to 40 kilometers accurately,
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45 unrecorded and it shoots a hundred pound round.
link |
So that, but there is still precision.
link |
Accurate if the people behind it that are shooting it and aiming it are accurate.
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So how, at which stage of the warfare do they come in?
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Are they saving you?
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Like say a bunch of people get raided, a bunch of the sole infantry get raided and then the
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artillery saves them or are they the first line of attack or what are they, where does
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Like the hand of God presumes they're helping.
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That's, well, that's it.
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So depending on the operation or whomever is running it or how they want it done, sometimes
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if they just know there's targets, they'll use us, you know, high value targets.
link |
So we have this round, it's called the Excalibur round.
link |
It costs about half a million dollars per round.
link |
It comes in a special tube that is like sealed and locked and you have to get permission
link |
from Ottawa to shoot it and it's only used for VIP targets.
link |
So like we have VIP for everyone and it will, it's GPS guided, it's rocket propelled and
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when you fire it, it will, if this is a wall and somebody's standing on this side of it,
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we'll hit you right there.
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We won't touch that wall, it will hit you pinpoint.
link |
It'll go right through whatever concrete, whatever and it will destroy.
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So it's basically the same thing as being a sniper, but with a much more damaging weapon.
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We don't use that round often.
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I think it's only been used a handful of times max in Afghanistan that I'm aware of.
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Again, I haven't, I wasn't there from 2009 until 21, but I, I know people that still
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deployed in that, in those units and I don't know that it was used very often, but the
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regular rounds, so there's HE, there's loom, so HE is high explosive, there's loom.
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You shoot that, it explodes in the sky, it lights up the sky for the infantry below and
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then there's shrapnel rounds that will explode in the sky and then shrapnel just rains down
link |
HE is what you use normally in my, I'm trying to say this right because I know people squawked
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at me about some of the stuff on Jocko, so I'm trying to be very accurate.
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In my experience, we used HE rounds to wipe people off the face of the earth when the
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infantry needed us.
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So we would get a call at any time and there's always two guns together.
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So you never, you never go solo gun ever.
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If you are, it's, there's, it's sketchy and there's bad shits happening.
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Can you explain that?
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So there's two gun, two people, two guns?
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No, two guns with each gun troop.
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So each gun troop has five to seven people running a gun at all times.
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It takes a lot of people to run one of those.
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How much electronics is there?
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The GPS, like the computer system that's on it itself, I never ran that much, but it is
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completely technologically, it's GPS guided.
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All you have to do is literally type in the coordinates.
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Then you've got the two big, um, there's a, there's a technical word, word for it, but
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basically wheels and one does the trajectory, you know, you do your, and you're just kind
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of doing this and you're watching the watch in it.
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And once you hit your target, that's, you know, it'll tell you that's where you need
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Do you know if there's any like AI stuff like computer vision, like where there's cameras
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and they help you target using like all different kinds of cameras to see through like the fog,
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all those kinds of things.
link |
We use, um, the FOO, which are Forward Observation Officers, which are an artillery individual
link |
that is embedded with an infantry unit.
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They call from the front, give us their grid coordinates and basically say like, don't
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So, well, you know what not to shoot, which parts not to shoot.
link |
As long as no one moves.
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But you can hear it coming, but you can't hear it until it's too close.
link |
So like when I went, sorry, go ahead, you were going to say something.
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No, I was going to say, what's the experience on the other, like, what does it feel like
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to be maybe infantry or underneath it, underneath the artillery?
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Well, I, I had the rare opportunity to do that and I have a video I'll show you after.
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It's terrifying because I know the people that are shooting it and I know them personally
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and I know what they're like as humans and for the most part they're dialed.
link |
Well, you get the odd duck where you're like, I've seen people have an ND, which is a negligent
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You basically get charged for it.
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You get in a lot of trouble because you can blow people up and it like accidents happen.
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And so I know accidents can happen in stressful situations.
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And when I was with the Brits, we had to call danger, close artillery.
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And when it goes over top of you, it sounds like thunder and lightning.
link |
So you fire it and it's not the stereotype that you hear in World War II where it kind
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of like that, it's more of like a crackle.
link |
And then you just hear like a whiz and it shit just goes everywhere.
link |
It shakes the ground.
link |
Is there some more words you can put to like the experience of what it's like to be in
link |
the heat of, of, of battle there?
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So what is, is there literally, is it hot?
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like being under it or shooting it?
link |
It, 55 degree heat.
link |
You're, you know that you're waiting for it to be called.
link |
You feel an overwhelming excitement to start because for me, I'd never been under it.
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So I was like, okay, I had my camera ready.
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Like I was a kid at a candy store and I'm like, I want to watch this happen.
link |
And once you hear the crackle, I got really fearful.
link |
My anxiety kicked up significantly.
link |
I got to the point where I got numb.
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Like I was, my nerves were on overdrive so much that like my body would go like numb.
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Like I couldn't move, but like my nerves were numb.
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If that makes sense.
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What, what were the nerves like and we're talking about fear or is it just anxious excitement?
link |
Anxious excitement, hopeful that they wouldn't blow it up on us.
link |
And there was this, there was this excitement that's hard to describe because you don't
link |
want to be excited that you're dropping bombs on people.
link |
But when you just saw their faces and they're shooting at you, there's this overwhelming
link |
feeling of got you motherfucker.
link |
Well, we'll talk about that because that's such a difficult thing about wars.
link |
You forget that it's other human beings because those other human beings are doing really
link |
bad things to you.
link |
And so the very basic anger takes over, hate can take over.
link |
And then also just the excitement of almost like video game like, you know, aspect of
link |
war, like sport, it's like sport that all of those elements are all baked in and it's
link |
hard to be philosophical in that situation it seems like.
link |
I've never played video games so I can't compare it to that.
link |
But like from, from like a sports perspective, yeah, I could, I could argue that.
link |
Like I felt like we won there for a second and it's, it's not just like a heat from outside.
link |
It's like this radiation within you that is something I've never felt since.
link |
You just to take a small step back to the weapons training, what, what kind of guns
link |
Because you also mentioned a rocket launcher.
link |
I love Carl Grossoff's.
link |
What's it like, my only experience with the rocket launchers is from the movie Commando
link |
with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
link |
And we've all discussed.
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I haven't seen that yet.
link |
And I've heard about it and people have made me tell.
link |
I feel like you haven't seen a single movie that's relevant to war military because every
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time anyone brings it up, you say you haven't seen it.
link |
I don't have time to watch movies, Lex.
link |
You haven't seen Platoon, which is, you're the scientist.
link |
How do you have the time?
link |
I'm not a scientist.
link |
I just play one on TV.
link |
So what, can you talk about the rocket launcher and maybe any other, for both engineering
link |
actually, to me, those guns are very interesting from an engineering perspective too.
link |
Well, they should be.
link |
They're fascinating when you take them apart and you see how small the parts get down to
link |
and how necessary every single little piece is to make that thing run.
link |
And even without the tiniest little BB smaller than a piece on there, an artillery gun might
link |
So we were trained on Carl G's, I think called M72s, which are disposable rocket launchers.
link |
Carl G's are around, I don't know the exact millimeter of the round.
link |
It's been a while since I shot them.
link |
We only did those in training.
link |
But essentially it takes, most people, one person can fire it, effectively hold it and
link |
It takes another person to load it.
link |
So you put it onto your shoulder and it weighs, I would, I don't know, 30 pounds, 40 pounds.
link |
It's been a minute.
link |
It's been a minute.
link |
But one person can carry it.
link |
It just seems like a rocket launcher is a pretty intense kind of device that just.
link |
I mean, it's the diameter, I can't even tell you the diameter, they're about that big.
link |
And it goes on your shoulder.
link |
It goes on your shoulder and then it has a little sight that pops out.
link |
That's almost like plastic like, which is kind of funny because it reminds me of like
link |
the little green army men.
link |
I just felt so flimsy to me.
link |
I was like, this is hilarious.
link |
And then another person stands behind you and opens the hatch.
link |
And so there's this, there's these two levers and you just kind of open it.
link |
And then the back end, which is flared, so it's just a tube and then it's flared.
link |
That will open it and drop down and you load a round into that and then you load it back
link |
And you're never supposed to stand behind it because the blast behind it will kill you.
link |
But in my case, when I fired it, it was me and another individual, I want to say it wasn't
link |
Sarah Pellegrin, but it was another girl that was smaller.
link |
And the person is supposed to wrap around your waist and tuck low and hold your stability.
link |
And we were just aiming at tanks that day and they were just concrete heads.
link |
So they would just either, they would hit and bounce off or whatever.
link |
And so when my sergeant saw that, he just kind of looked at both of us and was like,
link |
no, I'm just going to.
link |
And he got real low and just like wrapped both of us and then we'd fire it.
link |
And it feels like you're getting punched in the side of the head on repeat by Jocko.
link |
You lose all your hearing, like just, snot comes out of your nose and you're just kind
link |
of discombobulated for a minute.
link |
It's a real mind fuck.
link |
Is there any other kind of guns that at that time, because you were new to this, you haven't
link |
shot guns when you were younger that were really impressive to you in the training process?
link |
All of them, because I've never fired a weapon.
link |
So we had the C7s, which are like your M16s, I believe, the long barrel.
link |
The cute thing about those is when I have that slung, my barrel drags on the ground.
link |
And they shoot your 7.62 or your 5.56 round.
link |
I preferred the C8, which was a short barrel, which is what the SF guys use.
link |
Not because it's cooler looking, which it obviously is, but because it was functional
link |
for my body height and it didn't drag on the ground when I ran.
link |
They're your personal weapon.
link |
Being an artillery gunner, if you're not an officer, at least in our unit, you didn't
link |
I didn't have a slide piece, Lex.
link |
So I never had a handgun of any type.
link |
I fired those in training.
link |
You can't get over that side piece comment.
link |
I was going to say, I know what a side piece is.
link |
You don't have to explain to me.
link |
But you're single.
link |
So how do you even have a side piece if you don't have a main piece?
link |
The joke would be the fact that we have a total misunderstanding what side piece is.
link |
So you didn't have a side piece as a non officer.
link |
So I never fired those much.
link |
We did grenades in training.
link |
Yeah, grenades are fun.
link |
I have a massive one tattooed on me.
link |
I have them all over my office.
link |
How does a grenade work?
link |
There's the spoon and the pin.
link |
So this the pin holds the spoon in place when you pull that pin, the firing mechanism inside
link |
as long as that the spoon is up against it, it won't fire as soon as that spoon goes.
link |
I believe it causes a reaction on the inside.
link |
And you've got about five seconds to check it.
link |
You'd be better to ask that question too.
link |
I don't mean to get philosophical on this.
link |
There's something about a grenade, because you're essentially committing suicide.
link |
Unless you get rid of the thing.
link |
There's something like
link |
or if you're unlucky, and it just goes off when you pull the pin, which has happened
link |
to tons of people.
link |
So it just feels like a very kind of leap.
link |
It's a dangerous leap into the abyss every time you use the thing.
link |
Because when you shoot a gun, like the gun is much less likely to malfunction in terms
link |
of like all the possible ways to go wrong.
link |
It just seems like grenade is like
link |
Yeah, it's primitive.
link |
It's also real, like in a way that like a bar fight is like being punched in the face
link |
It's like you're here with a weapon of destruction.
link |
It's just you and the thing.
link |
Yeah, you have to get rid of it.
link |
Is that is that terrifying to you?
link |
Like do people still use grenades in warfare?
link |
Yeah, those are fantastic.
link |
The Taliban were throwing them over the wall at the airport in Kabul.
link |
People use them all the time because when you're in Afghanistan, if you're in a rural
link |
area, you're going from village to village and they're, they're, you know, they're mud
link |
hot walls, like they're tall, but you're walking through corridors and stuff, all you got to
link |
lob one of those is going to take the whole unit out that just walked by like it's, they're
link |
accurate if you're close enough and they're effective if you're close enough.
link |
I love them though.
link |
I think they're fascinating to me because they're such a tiny little thing with such
link |
Yeah, they just can cause such devastation.
link |
But for me, when I had them, the some of the Canadians would make fun of me because when
link |
I did go outside the wire with the British, I had two right here.
link |
And I remember I put a piece of tape over the spoons because in my mind, I could picture
link |
myself searching someone and grabbing me and pulling that and that would be me that that
link |
would have been like, yep, that if anyone that was going to happen to was her for sure.
link |
So you were deployed to Afghanistan in 2009, okay.
link |
And like we said, you were in great, no, perfect physical shape.
link |
Fucking epic shape.
link |
Epic shape, six pack or, I mean, yeah, okay.
link |
So you could do pull up, a lot of pull ups and push ups and yeah, okay.
link |
And well trained, would you say, were you already what like, no, no, no, I'll argue
link |
that point till I'm blue in the face.
link |
I spoke to recently, I actually spoke to my sergeant.
link |
He's not a sergeant anymore.
link |
But Sergeant Mark LeBlanc, he's in Africa right now on a deployment.
link |
He gave me a call the other day.
link |
And I remember talking to him about this.
link |
And it's frustrating because we were at an active war.
link |
We were sorry, we were involved in an active war where we the units that I were in were
link |
tagged red, which meant they needed people.
link |
So when you need people, things go quick, whether or not that's right.
link |
I mean, you could argue that's the similar thing to what's happening in the world right
link |
We needed a vaccine.
link |
Is it the best it could be?
link |
Could it be better?
link |
Could it do more things?
link |
But with the time that we had, we did the best that we could.
link |
That's my logic on that.
link |
For me, I joined the military in November of 2007.
link |
I was in basic training in January of 2008.
link |
I was graduated basic SQ, which is all your weapons training.
link |
Your DP1, which is your trade specific training.
link |
So whatever trade you're going to go into, whether it's infantry, armored, artillery,
link |
medic, whatever, that's your DP1.
link |
It's called different things in different units.
link |
And then I got posted to my unit in September.
link |
So January to September, I had done all my training.
link |
And I'm an English speaking individual.
link |
I got posted to a French unit that only speaks French and had to learn all of the weapons
link |
systems, everything, again, that I just learned in that short time frame in French.
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This part of your story that you're telling this to Jaco is one way to say it is very
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impressive that you had to learn all of this in French.
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So there's also the camaraderie, the social aspect of it, which is difficult, probably.
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I didn't have any.
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Yeah, I didn't have any.
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But it also would make you a more effective soldier to be socially, for that cohesion
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to be there, right?
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But also just understanding the basic terminology.
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The right way to say something on the radio, the right way to run a gun, the right way
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to, because you got to move with those guns, you got seven people.
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It's really magical.
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I'll send you a video.
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When we did some live fire in workup training in Texas before we left, we did a competition
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between the other gun to see who could fire 10 rounds faster.
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It is truly beautiful to watch an artillery unit fire a gun because it's like a symphony.
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Everyone has their parts and everyone knows and everyone's yelling, but they know why
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they're yelling and everyone, this guy's got to do this in order for this guy to load the
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It's just, it's beautiful.
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It is gorgeous to watch.
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Is there, by the way, for a gun, is there like one person responsible for the, for
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the aim and the, or like the specification of the location and somebody else that pulls
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it, presses the button?
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Is that the lanyard?
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Is there a button?
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It's better than a button.
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I'll tell you in a second.
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There's your Sergeant in charge and then they have their two IC and so the comms come in
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to the Sergeant and the Sergeant is the, or your Master Bombardier, Bombardier Chef.
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Oh, that's the French.
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Master Bombardier.
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So it goes like private in the North, like in an infantry or in a regular unit, it's
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like private corporal, Master Corporal Sergeant.
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In artillery, it goes Gunner, Bombardier, Master Bombardier, Sergeant and off like that.
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So you have two people, but the Sarge is like, you don't move till he says move.
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You don't fire till he says fire.
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Like he's your guy.
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He'll give you the coordinates.
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He'll feed them to the guy that's doing the GPS, that portion.
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I really never did it much.
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I wasn't tall enough to see it.
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Like legitimately the way, how high it is up on the gun.
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Like it was, I couldn't see clearly enough.
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So obviously you have a big personality, you're a strong person.
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And you have a big hat currently.
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I always wear a hat, Lex.
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It seems like your height and your size was a factor.
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How were you able to step up in all those moments and how difficult was it?
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I don't know that I realized it was difficult while I was doing it because that's just the
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I've always been the short person.
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Nothing I can do to fix that.
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So there was no point.
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Am I going to whine about it?
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I'm going to break my femurs and insert things to make me grow a little bit.
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Maybe, maybe since you're in robotics, you can figure that out.
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That's your task now.
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Make me be five foot three, that'd be great.
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For artillery, really what it came down to was the unit when I got there, there was only
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a couple of people who spoke any sort of English and my Sergeant was not one of them.
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But once he kind of started to get to know me a little bit, the best that he could, he
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started to put effort into making sure I could lift the rounds, make sure my capacity to
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do my job was there.
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And so he took me under his wing in that aspect.
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So he would take me to the gym with him and he would show me exercises that would specifically
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help me load the round.
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So pick the round up from the ground, pick it up like a trick to put your knee under
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it, use your legs instead of just pick it up, use your back, pull your back out.
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He would work on that.
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And then depending on the position I was running the gun in, if I was running the side that
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had the charge bags, I'll explain that in a second, but if I was running the side that
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had the charge bags, I could step up onto the gun and if I leaned inward enough with
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my right hand with the charge and I kind of kicked off, I could kind of jump and shove
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If I was running the lanyard, which is the thing that makes it go boom, it's really easy.
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You hook it on and you put your right hand on your hip and on your left and you hold
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it there and you just stare at your Sergeant like this and you just wait for him to yell
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fire and he points at you when he does it.
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And when you do it, you turn your whole body with it.
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And when you do that, it alleviates a misfire essentially because if you just pull it sometimes
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that's not enough.
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You got to really give it your whole body into it.
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And so he would train me on how to do things differently so that I could do them effectively
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and I wasn't a shit pump.
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So shit pump is a term that we use in Canada to call somebody useless.
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A shit pump is a useless soldier who is just, you're there and that's the shit pump and
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so we all just deal with it.
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But somehow they're still there.
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What were we talking about?
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We were talking about the artillery guns.
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So those things though, what you would find fascinating is just how they break down when
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you have to take one of those apart.
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I think your mind would really find it fascinating how a breach comes apart all the way down
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to like ball bearing size and the only, and there's a way to just make that gun complete
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ineffective and all you have to do when you're on the charge side, there's a magazine that's
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a long linear magazine and it holds like 15 little rounds.
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If you just take that thing out, that thing's not firing.
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How many people does it take to move that?
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Like how easy is it to move that thing?
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To move a triple seven?
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Well that's what they're called.
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Is a lot of the terminology crossover the same in English and French?
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I mean, M triple seven does cause it's an obvious how it's, or I'm sure it has a separate
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word, but like if you're running it, you're running it in French.
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So like when I'd be running the, when I'm doing the charge bags and I'm doing, I'm doing,
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you know, I'm loading everything and I'm getting that ready and that's my position that day,
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I'm also controlling the breach.
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So like how it opens, how it closes when it locks.
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And so, but you have to yell that as you do it.
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So you're yelling like, like you have to yell all these things.
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You have to learn them though.
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And so for a long time, it's, it's, it's, it was a little frustrating.
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It's really exciting.
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I took a lot of French, but I forgot all of it, but I think it's a beautiful romantic
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It's a good language.
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If it's from Quebec, it's a, yeah, that's true.
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It's a good language to fall in love with.
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Not as good as Russian, but I mean, English is, all right.
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I mean, Russian, are we really, is that like a love language?
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I mean, because you're Russian, but like if somebody walked up to me, it was like, Hey,
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Kelsey, I like you, I'd be like, Oh God, he's going to put me in a camp.
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That's because you don't understand love, Kelsey.
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We'll talk about that.
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How many people does it take to move the M777?
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If you're moving it by ground, you're moving it on a truck and when you're moving it on
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a truck, you're hooking the back of it onto, you're hooking the front of the barrel onto
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one of those big transport looking trucks that has those cargo tents that's got soldiers
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You don't want to ever move an M777 by that way, if you don't have to.
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The barrel is worth a million dollars.
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So this is like a serious piece of equipment.
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You don't want to move them.
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When we got to Kandahar, we were there for a couple of days.
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We got flown out to the FOB we were going to be at, forward observation base.
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Kandahar is the safe space or was the major base in Afghanistan that we were at.
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There's things like Tim Hortons there.
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There's Canada house.
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There's a British side, an American side, a Canadian side, and that's where you see
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all the different countries in the world kind of come together.
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You would see Italians, you would see Germans, you would see French, you would see all these
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different uniforms and you never know who to salute because you don't know what each
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It doesn't feel like a war zone.
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There's a boardwalk.
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There's hockey there, like floor hockey because Canada had to have that.
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There's a Tim Hortons, a Subway, a Pizza Hut, a PX.
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I think there's a restaurant there somewhere, but I didn't get to go.
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You can run around it.
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You feel fairly safe.
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You always have a weapon on you, but you can live your life.
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When you get out to the FOB, the guns are already there.
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Those M777s get lifted by a Chinook.
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Normally if they're going by air, they go by Chinook because they're heavy as hell.
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And Chinooks can hook them under the bottom and they fly them and then they'll drop them
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They have wheels on them, but you don't need them if you're going to leave it in place.
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And you're getting information about IEDs.
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You're getting a lay of the land as to what's been going on in the country for the past
link |
And this, you know nothing, you're just like, this is your first time you're getting deployed.
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So what was your deployment like?
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Can you tell the story of your deployment to Afghanistan?
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Like the whole deployment?
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Getting like actual deploying, not the deployment itself.
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What's the difference between the two?
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Well actually getting ready to deploy is a little different.
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So I mean the emotional buildup to it and some of the memorable things that kind of
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you remember from that experience, both on the excitement, I get to see battle, I get
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to be part of this and the fear and also like being surprised like with the Tim Hortons
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and all those kinds of things.
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So like the lead up before everything like shit hit the fan, okay cool.
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You're such a fascinating person, but yes, yes.
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Something like that.
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I've been called...
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Yeah, fascinating.
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That start with the letter F.
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I don't know many words with F. Okay, so the buildup to the deployment.
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So for the buildup for the deployment, I was in Quebec and my unit was deploying from Quebec.
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And at that time you kind of get your marching orders, you know you're deploying.
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I knew I was deploying before I even graduated.
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That's how much they needed people.
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So once I did all that training, on graduation parade day, a couple men from Quebec in uniforms
link |
came over and said, you, you, you and you are all being posted back here today and you're
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going to deploy with us in April.
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So that's how I found out I was deploying.
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Why was there such a need for troops in Afghanistan?
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That was a well known thing that there's a scaling up of troops.
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2007 on, Canada really started taking a combat role.
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Before it was very much more a UN type deal where doing what we normally do in most wars
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where we just, we wear blue and we don't shoot anyone.
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And so we're there to help.
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And so they were really, they were scaling up and there wasn't a lot of people in those
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trades initially, I think when the war kind of started.
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So Canada really started to scale.
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And so when I got to Quebec, we've kind of found, oh yeah, we're deploying.
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And it was a weird situation because I've never actually been at a unit on a non deployable
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I don't know what they do day to day.
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That's different from what I did.
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I just know what I did.
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So we would do things like in the morning we would get up and we would meet for PT at
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5 a.m. and that would include going for a 10k run or playing ball hockey for a few hours
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in the gym or lifting weights together or just going on a rock march, a long rock march.
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Just stuff like that.
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You would have a shower, you would meet and then you would just sit around the regiment.
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You would just sit around the regiment and you would, if there was busy work, you'd mop
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the floors, you would clean weapons.
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There wasn't a whole lot until there was a whole lot to do.
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We did a lot for a while and then we went away on workup training to Texas for a week.
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We came down here and we did live fire with our other troop that was gonna be with us.
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So Alpha had two guns and two guns has two groups of people and so we all would go down
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to Texas and we did live fire here for a week and I ended up getting gastro which was awesome.
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So thanks for that.
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Oh apparently there was, they were having water problems and sanitary problems so everyone
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was getting it on the base.
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Okay so it just makes your life way harder.
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I didn't get it towards the end, till towards the end so that was fortunate.
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So we would fire live fire, we would go out to the middle of nowhere, the guns would be
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there and we would get offloaded truck of rounds and we would do live fire and we would
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practice, just constant practice.
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What's that saying?
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Perfect practice makes perfect.
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Yeah so this is a sensory, like a shooting range for artillery, for long range.
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So what does practice look like?
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So you roll up in your trucks and you're, you know, you've got each group of people.
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You've got two trucks and then you've got like a medic vehicle and then you've got like
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an officer vehicle and a comms vehicle and you go to your perspective guns and then you
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offload your ammo and then you basically wait for them to send you like a fire mission.
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Wow, get that together.
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They would call, they would say a mission, so it would be a fire mission.
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So we'd wait for that and once we got that then you all run like a bunch of scattered
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rats to the gun like it's like the greatest thing you've ever seen and then you just wait,
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you wait for the call for the sergeants to say and then you'll hear it because it's not
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You can hear it on a speaker and it'd be like, I'm not going to do it in French, don't ask.
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It'd be like so and so, 10 rounds, fire when ready and then you would get your rounds ready
link |
and everyone would have them ready and would be in their respective positions and then
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you would wait and then they would say fire when ready and as soon as they say fire when
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ready that means just start going.
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Just start and then that's when the magic starts.
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You go like the loop, like you shoot one or whatever, there's a reloading process.
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Yeah, there's a loop.
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So what you would do, you get the fire mission, you would find out the rounds, the 2IC would
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be standing by the rounds and it was his job to make sure the amount of rounds that was
link |
told would be the only rounds that would go downrange and so he'd stand there and on each
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round depending on the type of round is a fuse which gets screwed onto the top of the round.
link |
So they're about that big and it's just a point and then you would have to put it on,
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give it a spin and depending if it was a time release, you had a little, what do you call
link |
You get those at IKEA when you have to build everything.
link |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Allen wrench.
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Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
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But like a big one or something?
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No, just a little one because it's a tiny little hole and you just got to click it to
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where it's supposed to go and it depended on what the call was for and it was a timer.
link |
When you said like wheel, you mean like a little thing then?
link |
Is that what we're talking about?
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I'm talking about the round itself.
link |
So you would put a fuse on top of the round.
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So you would unload the ammo and then you would put fuses on them and the fuses are
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on the top and they're like a little ice cream topper kind of thing and you would spin those
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And then once they're on, depending if it's a time release or not, you would take this
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little thing and you would move it the top and that would, it's almost like a little
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That's what I did.
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So you're assembling a bullet.
link |
A very big one that goes up to my waist.
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This is very cool.
link |
And you're a fascinating person.
link |
So just that you still even years later have all this in your memory.
link |
It's not all perfectly accurate and that's what irritates me though is because it bothers
link |
me when I can't remember things accurately but I have a lot of, I've had a lot of memory
link |
issues and problems after like having too many hits to the head and...
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This is from earlier in childhood or later?
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The military did not help it.
link |
Where was the hits in the head in the military?
link |
Well when you have a Carl Gustav beside your face like this and it shoots around, it gives
link |
you a concussive blast.
link |
Also there's new research being done, I'll find out exactly what it is, but there's new
link |
research that's being done that shows that if you're an artillery gunner and you stand
link |
within a certain range of that gun, you get the same amount of concussive blasts and there's
link |
I had no idea but you feel it when it goes off, like it hurt, your whole body feels it.
link |
Your mind is fascinating because it's like literally the opposite of mine.
link |
One you're able to speak very quickly, very clearly, very sharply.
link |
I talk too fast and I'm pretty loud.
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No that's perfect.
link |
Because of my hearing.
link |
I admire, I mean I admire that very much.
link |
I can't do any of that and you listen extremely well and you're extremely attentive and you
link |
have a good memory.
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Anyway, it's just fun to watch you and I can tell you're a great soldier in just all different
link |
Thank you, I appreciate it.
link |
But what the heck we're talking about?
link |
Oh, build up to the deployment.
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How did we get to Texas?
link |
Because that was part of the build up to my deployment.
link |
And live fire you got to, did that feel good?
link |
What's the favorite, what's the best part about like shooting artillery?
link |
Like what's the thing that feels good?
link |
Well the feeling of power.
link |
When is the best moment of, the highest moment of the feeling of power?
link |
Is it the whole process that you love or is there like when you actually shoot it?
link |
It's a beautiful thing to watch.
link |
To know that a gun can fire and it takes kind of a dance to make it work.
link |
There's something about that to me that just got my heart racing.
link |
When you actually shoot the round and you see it go and you hear it, it's unlike, you
link |
There's no, I've never felt another feeling.
link |
I've also never been in like an F18 or an F like 16 or like any, I've never been in
link |
anything like that.
link |
And I've, you know, I've never, trying to think of something else that'd be comparable.
link |
I've never been in like a Formula One car.
link |
Those are the only things I can picture being that much for me because to shoot one of those
link |
and to know that you've done your job right means that you've helped.
link |
And that to me was really what did it for me.
link |
When you hear your sergeant say, mission accomplished, target hit, tired acquired, then you're like,
link |
that's a good feeling, that's the stuff.
link |
Okay, so live fire in Texas, we're in Texas by the way.
link |
Fort Worth or Fort Hood, one of them.
link |
Well, okay, so like it's what, is that close to a big major city?
link |
Do you remember visiting a city?
link |
Oh God, no, we fly right into the tarmac and they're like, don't touch the snakes.
link |
And then they send you out to the field.
link |
Let's see the instructions.
link |
No, really, we went into a classroom and they're like, these are the animals that are in the
link |
wildlife in Texas.
link |
If you see any of them, do not approach.
link |
Do not go pee outside.
link |
Do not squat down.
link |
It is snake season people.
link |
And I was like, I have to pee and squat down.
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Why Texas and from like Canada, is it a simulation of Afghanistan?
link |
Okay, so that's, okay, so you're getting, and that's the way the live fire was seen
link |
in artilleries, like you're trying to simulate certain aspects of what you might actually
link |
see in Afghanistan.
link |
I mean, we, it, it looks like it's hot, like it, you're out in the middle of nowhere.
link |
Very similar terrain.
link |
That's the first time we started to get to wear our tan boots and our tan, like our combat
link |
tan stuff before you couldn't wear that.
link |
So it gave us an opportunity to kind of break in, break in how we were going to be doing
link |
this, what it was going to look like, how the guns were going to work and all of those
link |
How do you go from there to being deployed?
link |
What was the next part of the journey?
link |
So then we go to Wainwright, Alberta, often called or referenced as Waincock because it
link |
It is a massive open space in Alberta, which most of Alberta is, and it's outside of a
link |
small town called Wainwright.
link |
And it is a field X training area for all of the Canadian military.
link |
And it's where you do live fire, but you also do workup training.
link |
So you go out there for a month or two, I think it is.
link |
I don't remember the exact time we were there because it was just, you sleep in a tent,
link |
you're in your cot, you're in like full mission mode.
link |
And you go outside and we did this operation called Operation Maple Leaf, I think it was.
link |
And you put on these little suits, they have haptic, you can feel when you're shot.
link |
And then there's a little camera, sorry, screen in the front of it, and it's got button options.
link |
And so it's to mimic if you get shot, it'll say gunshot wound.
link |
And then you have to choose, okay, do I do this or do I do this?
link |
And depending on your response, person dies or lives.
link |
And they have other people who aren't on a rotation for deployment come and act as the
link |
Taliban and attack you in the middle of the night.
link |
Is there a good understanding of the tactics that the Taliban used to attack?
link |
I mean, this may be fast forwards to our conversation a little bit, but is there predictable strategies
link |
on the other side that are being used in Afghanistan?
link |
They had suicide bombers, vehicle born IEDs.
link |
Their standard way to hit people really was IEDs and vehicle born IEDs, suicide bombers.
link |
They'd put like backpacks full of an IED and then put like toys around it and then just
link |
So they will conceal it certain ways and probably use civilians.
link |
And women were a great way to get close to the soldiers because women seem nonthreatening.
link |
When you see a burqa walk up to you, you're not expecting an AK 47 to roll out of that
link |
and then, or, you know, but there are great ways to get close.
link |
So what is it, Wayne something?
link |
No, that's not how, Wayne Wright.
link |
Let's go to Alberta.
link |
I mean, we don't have to go to Alberta.
link |
No, let's, in our minds, in our imagination.
link |
So that's getting you closer to Afghanistan.
link |
What was that like?
link |
I mean, are you getting anxious at this point?
link |
Is there a buildup?
link |
What are you thinking?
link |
Or is this just all part of the training?
link |
For me, it was more part of the training.
link |
I was excited to go because I did know that we were going to do some live fire.
link |
I did know that we were going to be doing more of the military type job I thought we
link |
were going to be doing because up until that point, I had just done training.
link |
So I was learning how to march and salute and who to salute and not salute.
link |
Like that was the focus of, that was my experience of the military.
link |
And then the next experience was sitting in a regiment, just working out a lot and going
link |
for breakfast a lot and drinking.
link |
Like that was, I was like, this is the army.
link |
So when I actually got to go to Wainwright, I got my first full taste of, okay, well,
link |
there's fire picket duty.
link |
So one person gets picked every night to do sentry.
link |
There's a little less sleep.
link |
You're eating out of a canteen now.
link |
You're drinking out of canteen.
link |
You're in your kit more.
link |
You're in your deployable kit.
link |
Now you're in your, you know, you're wearing your tack vest.
link |
You're getting ready to practice having plates on.
link |
You're having ammunition on you.
link |
You've got your weapon with you all the time.
link |
When you're on base in Quebec, you're, you're just like an everyday job.
link |
Maybe you can paint a clearer picture to me.
link |
When was there an understanding that you're actually getting deployed?
link |
Was it just a sense that you're getting deployed or was this officially told to you?
link |
I was officially told on graduation day, you're deploying in April with Vac Hits.
link |
Like they, they knew, so what had happened is the reason that Vac Hits unit needed more
link |
So they came to that and they picked five people.
link |
There was five English speaking people that went to Vac Hits.
link |
It wasn't just myself.
link |
There was a couple other people I knew that were English speaking that got put on other
link |
guns within the regiment.
link |
I wasn't with any of them.
link |
We all kind of got split up.
link |
And so there was an understanding that we were going to always be deploying.
link |
Next year, it was like 2009, you're deploying.
link |
Whether you left in May or April, we were deploying because that was the rotation time.
link |
So each Canadian unit did between six and nine months.
link |
And then you knew right around that point, another base of individuals would then deploy.
link |
So you would go on these rotations.
link |
And so even when I was on my deployment then, I was slated to go again the following year,
link |
but towards the end of the year.
link |
So there was always a rotation.
link |
If you were in a combat arms unit and you were in one that was a deployable unit.
link |
So if you were from Edmonton, a PPCLI, which were the Princess Patricia's, which were their
link |
If you were RCR out of Petawawa, Ontario, you knew you were deploying.
link |
If you were at Vac Hits, you knew you were deploying.
link |
There's combat arms bases, and then there's like naval bases.
link |
I didn't know their deployment structure.
link |
I didn't know how they worked.
link |
I'm on the ground.
link |
Don't worry about the boats.
link |
So I didn't know how the Air Force deployed.
link |
I knew Vac Hits was deploying in April.
link |
You were going, get ready.
link |
So you show up to Afghanistan.
link |
What is a combat arms unit look like?
link |
What's the situation look like?
link |
How much chaos is there?
link |
How much clarity about mission is there?
link |
What are your feelings about the whole thing?
link |
So when you leave, the day you leave, we left Quebec, we got driven to the airport and then
link |
we walked onto the tarmac and we load our own bags and we got on a plane and it's just
link |
It's just, it's our plane.
link |
And you don't go right to Afghanistan.
link |
You go to a stopover point, which I don't know if I'm allowed to say where that is frankly.
link |
So I just say it's somewhere overseas.
link |
And you go there and you go there for a couple of days, I think it's like a day or two.
link |
And that's where you get like your kit.
link |
That's where you get your bulletproof plates for the first time and realize how heavy those
link |
fucking things are.
link |
It's where you get your weapon and your ammunition, your first few mags.
link |
It's where you get your helmet and your vests and you get everything that you need.
link |
While you're there, it's pretty nonchalant.
link |
It's your first time being in that kind of heat.
link |
So you just never stop sweating.
link |
The place we were in, it's just the second you got out of the shower, you were still
link |
wet after you got out.
link |
What the hell is happening?
link |
And I'm like, is this going to be like this in Afghanistan?
link |
They're like, no, it's not humid there at all.
link |
I'm like, why is it so bad here?
link |
They're like, it'll be fine.
link |
Don't worry about it.
link |
So and where we were there, it was kind of cute.
link |
We were like in a base, within a base and they had like turf and we had like ice cream
link |
and fruit and you could go get on a computer, you could go make calls, you had showers,
link |
you had a real bed.
link |
It was very kind of okay for that point.
link |
And then you got all your stuff and then okay, we're rolling out, which is about a five hour
link |
Again, my experience with helicopters is mostly from another Arnold Schwarzenegger movie,
link |
I'm not, do you want me to say I've never seen it?
link |
I've never seen it.
link |
Lex, do you feel better about yourself?
link |
No, you want to tell the audience the, all the excellent shows that you mentioned me
link |
offline that you watch instead, instead of Platoon.
link |
Yeah, this, nine is Sex and the City.
link |
Was that more important than Platoon?
link |
Oh no, I've never seen that.
link |
Don't, don't put me in that category.
link |
Did you just put me in a box?
link |
I watch like Homeland.
link |
I watch, no, I watch like, I watch a lot of documentaries.
link |
I watch, I like to watch real, real things more than, than, than just film.
link |
I did a little bit of film stuff when I got back into Canada and I was like, once you're,
link |
once you've seen how it's made, I'm like, I don't want to do that.
link |
I mean, I'm the same way as superhero movies.
link |
It doesn't, I want, I want, I want something closer to reality, but then movies like Platoon
link |
reveal some deep aspect of reality without it.
link |
I did Superman Man of Steel.
link |
Wait, you, sorry, you, you were, what do you mean you did?
link |
I was not a military expert, but I was a stunt expert, even though I didn't actually have
link |
It's just because I had previous military experience and they were going to have me
link |
as an extra as a military person.
link |
But if you have previous experience, they have to make it as like a stunt role, like
link |
so you get paid more.
link |
So I got to sit at a desk and I was in that, I was in that like, you'd see me like, whew,
link |
for like two seconds.
link |
So what you're saying is you were the mastermind behind that movie.
link |
For the entire thing.
link |
You're so accurate.
link |
Your representation of me is just fantastic.
link |
The combat arms unit of Afghanistan, the ice cream machine.
link |
What like when you actually get closer and closer to the mission, what, when does that
link |
When I, you know, got to where we were before we were leaving to get on the plane, I don't
link |
really, I don't think I realized what the hell I was doing.
link |
Truthfully, like you're asking me all these, like, what did you feel, how did you, like
link |
when I really think about it, if I sit there and really think about it, I was deploying.
link |
I knew what I was going to do.
link |
I knew my job, but once we actually stepped onto that Herc to leave, to get into the Afghan
link |
airspace, I think that's when it hit me.
link |
I think it smacked me in the face so hard.
link |
And that's when the overwhelming just reality was that, oh fuck, oh, oh, oh.
link |
When they said, make weapons ready, put the barrel to the ground, put your helmets on.
link |
That's when they start flying tactically, which means they're going between the mountains.
link |
That means we're going to land soon.
link |
Which means if you're flying like this, it's because RPGs can hit you.
link |
So that was my first moment of, oh, I could like just be shot down right now.
link |
Like I, I couldn't, I didn't grasp it.
link |
I was, how old was I?
link |
So I'm trying to explain to you cause it's hard because I don't know that I actually
link |
did grasp it until I was in the air getting ready to land in Kandahar.
link |
When was the first time you heard bullets, enemy, enemy bullets or enemy explosions?
link |
Well, when you're in Kandahar, when you're in Kandahar, when you're at CAF, there's a,
link |
you're fairly insulated away from the main walls.
link |
You would hear stuff go off or you would hear the rocket sirens would go off.
link |
So you would hear the, and everyone just kind of got down on the ground and just waited
link |
for the all clear.
link |
And then we got back up.
link |
I didn't hear any actual live fire until I got to the FOB.
link |
It was more just a lot of noise.
link |
You would hear a lot of helicopters, a lot of planes going in and out of the base.
link |
So there was that sense you could feel the ground shake when they took off, but there
link |
was that sense, you know, things were going around, things were happening.
link |
You just weren't far enough.
link |
You were not close enough to the edges of CAF to see it.
link |
So what's the FOB?
link |
FOB is a Forward Observation Base, which is a small little base out in the middle of wherever.
link |
And that's, that's specific to artillery?
link |
That's in general, just an observation base from which combat.
link |
For infantry to go in and out of, for armor to go in and out of, special ops go in and
link |
They fly, they'll stop there.
link |
They'll pick people up or do whatever, then they'll go out.
link |
So it's, a Forward Observation Base is used essentially to have eyes in that area without
link |
having to be doing patrols every five seconds.
link |
But there's not, is it like, is there like medics there?
link |
I was, it's a, I don't call it an actual base.
link |
You sleep in tents and cots.
link |
And it is, the walls are this mesh material that are filled with gravel.
link |
And that's the walls.
link |
And then you have towers.
link |
You had five, I think we had five towers because the Americans ran four and we ran one.
link |
And so it was an American FOB.
link |
It's called FOB Ramrod.
link |
And there was a, were there Marines?
link |
No, I think they were the 101st.
link |
They were out of there.
link |
This is where I get dicey because I was moved a lot.
link |
So when people are like, who are you with?
link |
I'm like, I know what their patches looked like.
link |
I don't know the full ins and outs.
link |
So I'm working on getting that back so that I can tell it accurately because I believe
link |
it deserves that type of respect.
link |
But that being said, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around all of this.
link |
You almost have to go back and do like research to understand the full details of all the
link |
things you were experiencing.
link |
And so I reached out to actually a bunch of people even before I wrote the book and I
link |
didn't get a lot of answers.
link |
Well, once I did Jocko, all the people have reached out to me and were like, hey, and
link |
I'm like, called you.
link |
So now I'm working, that's why I'm doing the rewrite is I'm working on making sure that
link |
And so there was infantry units going in at that FOB and it was a really tiny FOB.
link |
It was run by the Americans and then there was a tiny little corner that was the Canadian
link |
And the Americans, normally it's Americans shooting for Americans, Canadians shooting
link |
The rest of the regiment that deployed, so Bravo and Charlie, they were at Canadian FOBs,
link |
Massom Guard and another one and these were huge FOBs.
link |
Ours was this tiny like three kilometer around place and we had this tiny little subsection
link |
of it and the rest was so it was like this and then all American here.
link |
And when we got there, we landed, the guns were already there.
link |
So you ripped out the unit before you.
link |
So those guys were just leaving and we were just replacing them.
link |
So that we knew the guns, they were Canadian guns, we understood, you know, how to run
link |
When we got there, though, we had come in on Chinook and Chinooks are super loud and
link |
they're like, we're hearing protection.
link |
They don't, you're not, no, this is not reality.
link |
Like this is why I'm partially deaf now.
link |
Like it's not reality.
link |
So sorry to take a tangent, but do you usually wear ear protection in any aspects of warfare
link |
of this whole process?
link |
You wear comms, like you have a comm on like in a radio if you're outside the wire.
link |
So comms, is that like a Bluetooth headset?
link |
Yes, it's a Bluetooth headset.
link |
Like from Nike or like?
link |
I was gonna say Adidas.
link |
I don't know if anyone was involved at some point.
link |
This equipment looked like it was from World War II.
link |
So it's comms, but is that having ear protection?
link |
And I didn't wear them.
link |
That's just what some people wore.
link |
People when you were as low as me, like we weren't privy to conversate.
link |
Like we were just told what to do and you do it.
link |
So when you're doing like on the OP tower, you have a radio, you pick up and you call
link |
in and then you put the radio down.
link |
But for hearing protection, I mean, I would put in earplugs, but those things are so violently
link |
loud that earplugs, they don't do it justice.
link |
I feel like when you go shooting, there's a certain kinds of earplugs that you, it blocks
link |
out the gut, like certain kinds of sounds associated with guns and you can still hear
link |
other types of stuff.
link |
So the ones they issued us were these big things that had like a headpiece like here,
link |
but you have to wear your helmet when you're firing.
link |
So you can't have both on.
link |
So how much are you aware of the logistics of the whole thing?
link |
That's always fascinating with warfare.
link |
Like in terms of setting up, you mentioned gravel and the fobs, like setting all those
link |
Were you seeing any of this or again, it's a 19 year old kind of just.
link |
Well, it's not that I was oblivious.
link |
That's the one thing I would say I wasn't.
link |
I was, I'm very aware of my surroundings.
link |
That's something that's always been taught to me from a very early age because I travel
link |
a lot with my dad in the truck.
link |
And so my dad would be like, you're going to go into that bathroom and I'm going to
link |
watch you come out and you're going to watch everyone around you because people get kidnapped.
link |
Like that's just the reality.
link |
I was always very paranoid.
link |
So you were paying attention to surroundings.
link |
But the fob was already built up when we got there.
link |
This is already like well established bases already.
link |
Established enough.
link |
And that is one of the first times you've heard actual fire.
link |
That was like the, I mean, I'd heard it on the, when we, when we shoot and when we zero
link |
in weapons and we do all that stuff.
link |
But I had never heard it, heard it like that before.
link |
And then you would see the, the, the guys, the Americans would roll out every day and
link |
go on patrol and come back, back, back.
link |
And so you would see them, you would hear them, they would tell the stories, those types
link |
But I never experienced it because we never, we never got attacked.
link |
Like our base never got hit.
link |
We were really lucky that way.
link |
There were other ones around us that were getting hit, but we weren't, we weren't getting
link |
We were very fortunate.
link |
At least we didn't get hit when I was there.
link |
I believe the entry got, there was an attempt.
link |
There was an attempt at some point in a past, but I wasn't privy to that.
link |
But we were in the OP tower, so we had to do our own security.
link |
But because we were such a small subset of Canadians and we always had to have people
link |
running the guns and ready to run the guns at all times.
link |
We only had to man one tower.
link |
So you would do four hour shifts with a fire team partner in the tower, depending on whatever,
link |
but you would do it every day.
link |
So I would look out into the rest of Afghanistan at that opportunity.
link |
Otherwise it was just like your walls.
link |
What did it look like?
link |
Just the full landscape?
link |
Where I was, there was mountains in the distance.
link |
It was just very sandy, very flat.
link |
And there was a couple of small compounds on the outside.
link |
It wasn't a lot to look at.
link |
There was a long road that you knew that got hit all the time.
link |
There wasn't a lot to look at.
link |
Such a strange place to be the center of superpowers over the decades.
link |
And the fact that the populace, the civilians are almost completely clueless to the full
link |
history of things in terms of globally, the geopolitics of it all.
link |
Well, if you look at the location of it, right, on a map, it makes more sense.
link |
You can wrap your brain around it.
link |
But I met plenty of people who had never even seen a picture of themselves when I was in
link |
I mean, how much more are they going to understand if they don't know what even exists outside?
link |
You tell a small story of taking a picture of a girl and showing it to her, an Afghani
link |
We were, I was with the British at that time, and we were on that operation that gets highlighted
link |
And we had stopped and the ICOM radios were pinging.
link |
And ICOM radios are a radio that we have an interpreter on that the Taliban, basically
link |
we can hear what they're saying.
link |
It's us tapped in.
link |
When it's really clear, they're close.
link |
When it's scatty and they're far enough away, normally they're not planning an attack, although
link |
you never know, really.
link |
And we were going door to door, kind of like what they're doing now.
link |
And we were pulling people out of their houses.
link |
And we knew there were, there was people in there that were active Taliban and we knew
link |
the ICOMs were pinging.
link |
When we got in there, they had hidden all the women and kids and locked them inside
link |
the house because often nowadays women, the women, they would hide things on them that
link |
they shouldn't have because no one would be ever there to search them because there isn't
link |
a lot of women on the front lines.
link |
But I got borrowed to go specifically search women and children.
link |
So they had me and one of the little girls kind of snuck out and was kind of sitting
link |
near me and I was eating something and I had these little candies, I think they're called
link |
The British have them in the ration packs.
link |
They're good though.
link |
And she saw me eating them and so I gave them to her and then her brother came over and
link |
slapped her upside the head and took them from her.
link |
So then I just went over and slapped him upside the head and just pointed my gun at her while
link |
she ate them all because I was like, no, you can have these.
link |
I'm going to stand here and make sure you do.
link |
And I remember asking, can I take a picture with her?
link |
I asked the trip, can you ask her, can I take a picture with her?
link |
And she was very confused and when you look at the photo, you see her face, she's very
link |
She's very stunned.
link |
And it wasn't my camera.
link |
It was my officer's camera.
link |
It was a hot pink, like fluorescent pink camera.
link |
So I pulled this like a huge pink thing and I'm like, let's take a picture.
link |
And so she stood there and took a picture, but then she grabbed the camera because I
link |
flipped it and showed it to her and her eyes got huge and she grabbed it and she ran inside
link |
and they're like, oh, that's gone forever.
link |
Like that's, it's over for you.
link |
And then she came out and she kind of snuck out and I went in and grabbed it and the mom
link |
lifted up her burqa and was showing me that she like shaved her legs to be more Western.
link |
And I was just, at that moment, I don't know that I could have realized how much that moment
link |
affected me, how much that moment would affect me later on in my life until it's been later
link |
There's little like glimmers like that in parts of the world that are basically you're
link |
taking away everything from the populace, like freedoms and so on.
link |
And when they, when you see that glimmer of humanity, like yeah, shaved legs or like using
link |
technology for the first time, it's magic or like food being presented with certain
link |
kinds of foods that you've never tried.
link |
I mean, you want to see true, like joy of discovery is you bring basically the American
link |
supermarket, anything from it to most parts of the world.
link |
And they, I just, I mean, I remember even, I mean, we weren't like in poverty in Russia,
link |
just poor, but just the supermarket was full of joy.
link |
I thought I could just die happy in an American supermarket when I first saw it.
link |
And how old were you when you came here?
link |
Did you speak English?
link |
Not well, I thought I was, I never was good at languages.
link |
So I, it was very much like why would I need to learn another language?
link |
It was that attitude is very like, doesn't, I don't, well, no, I think culturally in,
link |
not only in America, but everywhere else in the world, it's constantly kind of seen, it's
link |
a good thing to do to learn other languages, especially English, because it's like, that's
link |
the language of the world.
link |
And I just thought like, I don't need English to discover the beauty of the world.
link |
Like this doesn't like, I enjoy life.
link |
I enjoy, I don't remember what else I enjoyed in life, but math, like why do I need English
link |
So that kind of attitude got me in a lot of trouble when I came here because I couldn't.
link |
You were reluctant?
link |
But also just couldn't speak well.
link |
And when you move 13 years old, it's middle school, you get made fun of a lot.
link |
You get bullied and all those kinds of things, which in retrospect is a very positive thing
link |
because it makes you harder.
link |
I thought being Russian would be like hard enough.
link |
No, well, me, everyone is different.
link |
I mean, the part of the Russian thing is kind of, I'm joking because if you know me, I admire
link |
I admire fighting and these kinds of things, these, what would you call them?
link |
Struggle in all of its forms, martial arts, wrestling, all those kinds of things.
link |
But I'm ultimately like, I'm so much about love.
link |
Like I'm clearly sensitive to the world in some weird genetic way that it was important
link |
for me to harden up when I came here and I was in love with people and everybody's being
link |
And it's like, what, that, it's a little like slap, like, oh, okay, life is not often fair.
link |
And then that's when for me personally, everybody has different journeys of hardship that are
link |
much, much more difficult, like your story is much more difficult.
link |
I started to read a lot.
link |
Something happens, some kind of challenge where you start to think about the world,
link |
start to think about yourself, that can ultimately create really interesting minds.
link |
It can break some people.
link |
It can create interesting minds.
link |
And it's ultimately your choice.
link |
But those people are weak and then they just need to be weeded out.
link |
I thought we talked about this, you know, the strong will survive, the weak will die
link |
Now you're talking Russian to me.
link |
I'm not speaking Russian.
link |
I'm just giving solid life advice.
link |
Just be harder and then everyone will be fine.
link |
That's your inner David Goggins coming out real quick here.
link |
And then I was just explaining to you that the way it is run, you're going to love this.
link |
When we walked up to those tents for the first time, the people that were there before us
link |
I have a photo of it, like hanging from the tent, like at the front of the tent, like
link |
So you were also mentioning like the dark humor of it is a basically a funny joke.
link |
It was funny at first.
link |
That's pretty funny.
link |
It was funny during the time.
link |
Now when I look back at it, I was like, come on.
link |
I mean, I get it because they had already been there.
link |
And like, so afterwards I can see how it's funny.
link |
Now with like the suicide epidemic in the veteran community, now I'm like, oh, I don't
link |
Doesn't that dark humor still somehow help even when you're considering suicide?
link |
It makes it copable.
link |
It's like you're not hiding it.
link |
It's like humor is one of the ways to reveal the reality of abuse, of suffering.
link |
If you look at, there's this photo that generates right around suicide prevention month, which
link |
And it's always like a photo of like Robin Williams and Bourdain and all of these other
link |
individuals who were comedians who all took their lives and they're all smiling.
link |
And they're like, this is the face of depression.
link |
There's a way our brains work where humor is a necessary part of survival, whether it's
link |
used for joyous things or it's used for ways to cope through life.
link |
For me in the military, humor was one of the things that helped get me through.
link |
And it still does to this day, frankly, because humor, humor makes some of the horrific things
link |
I say not seem so horrific.
link |
And people can digest it rather than being like, you need to be locked up somewhere.
link |
That's why, I mean, one of the aspects of Russian humor, there's a darkness to it because
link |
through it reverberates all the millions of people who died.
link |
And it seems like the only way to make sense of it is to joke about it.
link |
Because if you don't, it'll break you.
link |
Something like that.
link |
Or also humor just seems to be the highest form of us humans and the human experience.
link |
It just seems, it seems to somehow accumulate the full thing, the absurdity of it, the unfairness
link |
of it, because like ultimately all the suffering is like, it's all just apes fighting for power
link |
and love and somehow torturing each other in the process.
link |
Hello podcast listener, Lex here.
link |
Quick intermission to say that some of the names in the following story have been silenced
link |
out to protect their privacy.
link |
The story of, and witnessing, I think your first, somebody you met, somebody you saw,
link |
somebody you began to be close with, his life, him dying, can you tell the story of him dying?
link |
That's no problem.
link |
I will tell you that I am going to leave some of the names out of the people because they
link |
have reached out and asked that I do such.
link |
I've also been informed of other things I forgot that happened during the thing that
link |
were way worse than I thought.
link |
So I'll try to add those in because that's new information to me because my brain has
link |
But I've been told, which is good because it's better detail.
link |
So we were doing a movement that morning and we were going from compound to compound.
link |
I was never told what we were doing.
link |
I knew what my job was.
link |
I didn't know the operational overview.
link |
I didn't know who we were looking for.
link |
I wasn't there for that.
link |
My job was specifically to look after the women and children and to provide support
link |
And when you have certain people, so i.e. the bomb dog handler and the bomb dog, and
link |
then you have the medics and then you have a female searcher, there's only one of those
link |
in each unit or if there's even one in each unit.
link |
I got passed between units so that they could have access to me for both.
link |
And we were kind of sitting and we were waiting for the all clear to move.
link |
And at that time, the compound wall I was leaning up against, I had my back up against.
link |
I wasn't facing the direct direction where it actually blew up.
link |
I had my back to it and I had happened to turn and look to the left.
link |
And on the right hand side across the road of where we were leaned up against was another
link |
compound two stories high, people inside, a sniper on the roof and a spotter.
link |
There was a handful of us on this wall and in front of me, there was a road.
link |
The road went straight.
link |
That compounds here.
link |
There's another road here on the right hand side in front of it.
link |
And then this road went along here and this was a wide open space.
link |
You hate those because it's too much space.
link |
It's like fish in a barrel.
link |
You don't want to be in that field.
link |
Because there's too much line of sight line of sight.
link |
It could be anything.
link |
And so when I was leaning up against the wall, we had sent a couple of people ahead to go
link |
and clear the road so that we could all go along it and then clear the gray pup off to
link |
the left hand side.
link |
We are doing that because they use those locations to put IEDs so that when you're going to search
link |
it, it's just it's a better chance of you blowing into a million pieces, essentially
link |
why they love that.
link |
Put bombs in small places, send people into small places.
link |
Small places go boom, they paint the walls.
link |
So we were just kind of sitting and waiting.
link |
And then I turned, I happened to turn, I was looking in that direction and I heard the
link |
ground shake before I even realized what I was seeing with my own eyes.
link |
The ground shook and I saw a big piece of a body, I think it was the torso, just kind
link |
of fly through the air and land into the field.
link |
And as soon as that happened, all hell broke loose.
link |
It was like the, they were sitting and watching and waiting and they do that.
link |
And I say they, I mean the Taliban, they do that.
link |
They love that because then they can record it for propaganda and they can use it against
link |
us and they just love being able to take our people out.
link |
And we had the interpreter sitting beside me and he had the ICOM radio on.
link |
And as soon as the blast went off, I heard just the scream of, I heard it.
link |
And I knew what that meant, but I couldn't, I didn't understand what was about to happen.
link |
I couldn't, I couldn't wrap my brain around what was about to happen because I had never
link |
been outside the wire.
link |
And people are like, people say to me now, they're like, no, no, there's no way that
link |
There's no way that she was involved in that and then that, and then in that, and then
link |
Well, let me explain.
link |
I was being passed around to units.
link |
I was with a ton of different people.
link |
I had no comms and I was just being told where to go.
link |
And I just happened to be like a shit hit the fan magnet, it felt like.
link |
And then I found out later it was not just me, it was all of us were getting it.
link |
So that made me feel better because then I was like, well, I have a lot of survivor's
link |
That's like a thing that's still stuck with me.
link |
I've worked through a lot of shit, but survivor's guilt, that's a big one for me.
link |
And food is a big one for me and my food skin on food.
link |
So like chicken with skin on it, just because of the biology of death, just when you hold
link |
people's bodies in your hands with no gloves on, you know what that feels like when you
link |
touch raw meat again, it's the same thing.
link |
That's what that feels like when, when it's a dying or dead body.
link |
Well, my friend was blown into a million pieces, so I just had pieces of him.
link |
So there was no, there was no differentiator of like, this was his thigh, or this was his
link |
torso, or there was like, there was none of that.
link |
There's only one instance with the boot, but at that point we had been in some firefights,
link |
and we had been taking some rounds, but it was more like take around, you know, get hit
link |
and then we duck into a compound and we would set up and then we'd be firing.
link |
I wasn't, I wasn't really involved in a lot of the firefights until after this.
link |
After that, the rest of the week, I was like, I was angry and I wanted them all to go.
link |
And I wanted to be in every position to take them out myself.
link |
So I put myself in every position.
link |
So I made sure I was on the roof.
link |
I made sure I was there.
link |
I made sure, Hey, you need something, I'll fucking run it.
link |
I don't care if I die anymore, because as soon as that happened, my light switch went
link |
It didn't matter anymore to me.
link |
Can you go through what happens?
link |
So are you hearing the, these screams?
link |
So the ID went off and what had happened was they put an ID inside of a grape hut and the
link |
grape hut has rectangular wall, rectangular holes in the wall.
link |
And there's just like one door and it's this tall mud hut with just all these like holes
link |
And they had put an ID underneath a pile of sticks and had a metal detector, the Brits
link |
I've never seen, I think other countries have them, but I've only ever seen them use it.
link |
And that's how we were kind of detecting if there was an ID, we must've hit it, the sticks
link |
or something and it set it off.
link |
And it just, it was over.
link |
There's no way he felt anything.
link |
And then there was another guy at the door bent down on one knee and he was facing and
link |
kind of watching for, and then a blast hit him on this side.
link |
And so it took him out and pulled his kid off, pulled his helmet off, pulled everything
link |
off, fucked him all up.
link |
But it was in a contained area and he was in the doorway, up and out.
link |
Can you explain what an ID is and how does it work?
link |
They're improvised explosive devices.
link |
They can be used pretty much out of anything to make anything.
link |
So garbage, when we got to Afghanistan, they did the ID meeting with us.
link |
They're like, these are what we're finding that they would show us diffused IDs.
link |
So they would see those big blue drums filled with gasoline buried in the ground.
link |
You would see a wire, it would go to a pressure plate.
link |
You hit the pressure plate, that would hit that and it would go.
link |
You would see IDs.
link |
Some of them were ridiculous.
link |
The engineering that went into some of these was hilarious because they were thinking,
link |
they were thinking to use everything they could.
link |
There was a cigarette pack they had used.
link |
They lined the inside with tinfoil and when you stepped on the tinfoil, it had a piece
link |
of wire and it was enough of a spark to set off a line of batteries that we had thrown
link |
out that were all dead.
link |
When you fuse them all together, there was enough juice to make it go.
link |
Then they would attach that to like, like phosphorus or gasoline or whatever they could
link |
that would make a big boom.
link |
They would use, yeah, that's why you never kick garbage on the ground.
link |
You'll never see me kick something on the ground.
link |
You'll see me walk around it always.
link |
If I ever see a pile of rocks or something that looks like it shouldn't be there, I won't
link |
Even now, because they use that pile of rocks to remind people there's something there.
link |
We don't know what that means, but we know that something's there.
link |
And very often they would use anything, garbage, wires.
link |
We were very, we had to burn everything for a reason.
link |
It's so terrifying to not, for the source of death to be like little parts of the environment
link |
and then people that don't look like that.
link |
They're not dressed as soldiers, like civilians and like regular, because then you, when you
link |
have to come back or even there is you're just surrounded by danger and then you distrust
link |
everything essentially.
link |
That's the problem and that's why you have such PTSD issues with the soldiers we have
link |
now because you're in the environment in which it's very similar.
link |
So there's this one IED.
link |
So this one IED, I still don't know what it was, went off, body flew, the guy at the door,
link |
He was all broken and bleeding and a mess.
link |
At that point, the radio started going crazy.
link |
I could hear the guys yelling and screaming, trying to figure it out and then you could
link |
hear the numbers being called.
link |
KIA number, number, number, number.
link |
I don't know anybody's service number.
link |
I don't know what's going on.
link |
Next thing you know, mortar rounds start coming down and live fire starts happening and I'm
link |
like, holy fuck, things are popping off.
link |
And I remember just looking at and being like, we need to go, we need to go now.
link |
And I just got this like, I was like, we're going and they're like, hold on Burns and
link |
I'm like, we're fucking going.
link |
I wasn't dealing with it well and they're like, all right, all right, go, go, go, go.
link |
So we went and I helped out with that other individual, kind of held him down, started
link |
doing medic work on him and he just kept saying, where's, where's, where's, he was in such
link |
I've seen somebody's eyeballs so big in my life.
link |
She's like, where's, where's, where's, he's good buddy, he's good, he's good.
link |
Picture like a super thick Scottish accent though, because these guys were just, and
link |
when they talk fast, it's even worse.
link |
And then so I ran over and we jumped down into the ditch along the side of the road
link |
because the road hadn't been cleared and we're running through these tall, they look like
link |
cannabis plants, but they're not, but it just very thick bush and I felt like I was running
link |
So if you picture one of your video games where like the tunnel vision and you're just,
link |
you can hear your breathing is like that and you're running and you can't move fast enough
link |
and you're like trying to get there and we hit the road and the rounds are coming down
link |
and mortars are coming down and they're like, okay, on three run.
link |
So we run on three and we run into the compound, I mean, into the great putt.
link |
And I remember looking around and very seriously going, where is he?
link |
Just genuinely asking, I think it was been messaging me and he's been incredible.
link |
He's one of the best soldiers I've ever served with.
link |
He was a higher up, so he was running part of this.
link |
He's messaged me and he was giving me some information and he's like, I was in there
link |
with you and he goes, I remember cause you handed me the boot and cause I walked over
link |
and I, all the rounds were like, we were being shot at, mortars were coming down, but it
link |
was this slow motion and I remember walking over to the hole in the ground and seeing
link |
his boot in the ground, but it was, his leg was still hanging, like just below his knee
link |
was still in it, but the boot was perfectly laced up, like the boot was fine.
link |
And I just, I held it and I turned and I looked at the guys and I was like, we could reuse
link |
Now that wasn't even, what is, what is that?
link |
Was that, was that actually an intelligent attempt at humor or was it some kind of deeply
link |
Like you were completely just lost.
link |
I think my brain broke.
link |
I think my, that's the moment I call my light switch went off.
link |
Did you understand that he was dead at that point?
link |
Like intellectually, you were just something, it just broke.
link |
Like it just broke.
link |
It just shattered.
link |
I didn't feel, I didn't feel anything.
link |
And at that moment, because later there's some anger almost at that moment, none of
link |
I couldn't comprehend what happened.
link |
I knew he wasn't there anymore because they looked at me and said, what's here is here.
link |
Start grabbing pieces.
link |
We need to fucking move.
link |
And so I handed the boot over, they took it and then I started just grabbing anything
link |
out of the walls because those little rectangular just had flesh hanging from it.
link |
And I didn't have my gloves on because I only used them to search.
link |
So you want to bring everything back.
link |
This is what, even if they're dead, do you want to save, save those you served with?
link |
Because they deserve that.
link |
They don't deserve to have a piece of them drug behind a truck for propaganda.
link |
It's not, it's not fair.
link |
What are the others?
link |
I mean, was there just a focus on mission or was there a panic?
link |
No panic with these guys.
link |
These guys were the most switched on motherfuckers I've ever seen in my life.
link |
They, we started grabbing and remind me, he said, you know, you, uh, that's not, he goes,
link |
when people say that's the worst part of your day, that wasn't even the worst part of your
link |
Do you remember when you handed me the bag of intestines?
link |
Thank you for that.
link |
So there's parts you don't even, they're just not.
link |
They don't register.
link |
Because I had some people contact me and be like, you didn't tell it right.
link |
And war is subjective and war is from your perspective and war is messy and horrific
link |
and war is graphic and violent and painful.
link |
Your brain remembers what it wants to remember and your brain allows you to remember what
link |
it allows you to remember and there's reasons that you don't remember everything.
link |
And so we were getting, we were really getting hit.
link |
We were getting, it was bad.
link |
And some of the guys, machine gunners had come up to do cover fire and I know, uh, we
link |
were calling in for air support to come pick up the guys, uh, because they had to go.
link |
And we, we just collected everything we could, but I did remember screaming like, we didn't
link |
We didn't get them all.
link |
There's no way we got them all.
link |
We did not fucking get them all.
link |
And I remember one of the guys looking at me being like, we got them, we got them.
link |
I'm like, we didn't fucking get them.
link |
We didn't get them.
link |
Like, no, we got them.
link |
And I couldn't say it enough.
link |
And so I grabbed as much as I could.
link |
I, I, I, um, I slung one of their weapons and it was just a twisted heap and I had his
link |
helmet and someone else's helmet in my arm.
link |
And then I had, um, my weapon in front of me and I was carrying it.
link |
And then we, we piled everything we had onto a stretcher.
link |
Those things are super fucking flimsy anyway.
link |
And there was a couple of guys in front of us and there were a couple behind me and I
link |
was kind of in the middle and we, we said, okay, we're just gonna have to run.
link |
We're gonna have to fucking run the road.
link |
We're gonna have to have to run it.
link |
We ran it and that was the closest, well, that was I guess not the closest, but it felt
link |
like it was the closest I could hear the, the whiz of the rounds going by me.
link |
It's a weird noise when they're coming at you than when you're, they're leaving you.
link |
And so they, that slowed everything down for me.
link |
And then one of the guys accidentally dropped the edge of the stretcher and everything fell
link |
off into the ditch and then we had to go back down and get it back up.
link |
And then so we kept running and we finally got back into the compound that that sniper
link |
was sitting off on the right hand side and we got all in there.
link |
And I know the, I think said there was two flights.
link |
I only thought there was one, but apparently there was two flights.
link |
So went on one, his body went on one.
link |
And then I think, I think he said went on the other and and then they took off.
link |
And then when they leave though, they rain hell down on anything they can see on the
link |
And that is a beautiful sight because they had mortar rounds coming down and it just,
link |
it was getting really, really bad.
link |
And then as soon as the black ox took off, all of a sudden it just stopped and went quiet,
link |
like deafening quiet.
link |
And we were sitting inside the compound and I, one of the medics looked at me and you
link |
could see, and I still do it now and I, I'm working on not doing it, but I do it when
link |
I get really overwhelmed.
link |
Because I didn't have any gloves on, I had blood all over my hands and just like body
link |
So he came over and he just gave me like sanitizer and I started rubbing.
link |
And so I rub, I do this when I'm stressed, I'll rub my hands.
link |
And I still can't, I still can't do, I still can't eat food with skin on it.
link |
And I can't like, like salmon and stuff, like I can't, anything with skin, I can't touch
link |
And I'm making meat at home, like for my husband and my son, like I have like meat gloves and
link |
then I have like a fork and a knife and I'm like cutting it.
link |
Like I never touch it, I can't touch it.
link |
So there's something almost like the texture of the biology of a human flesh that just,
link |
that's at the level of, that's the level of your trauma.
link |
And it's been, I mean, it's 2021, this was in 09.
link |
And I've worked on this, like, and I mean, I've been in like treatment religiously,
link |
just to be able to keep me alive for this decade.
link |
And so it's not like, it's like, oh, I've never, you never even tried to get better.
link |
It's like, I never really used to leave my house.
link |
I used to call people that looked like that horrific names in public.
link |
I used to want to kill people on a regular basis.
link |
I'm a fairly happy individual now.
link |
What about, so you're, you're talking about sort of skin and parts and, but there's also
link |
just the fact that we're mortal and there's somebody close to you who dies.
link |
So you watch, walk up and then never come back out again?
link |
It's like you're facing mortality in a very real way.
link |
And if, in a, in a way that's not the same as somebody dying from cancer in a hospital,
link |
so it has echoes of that because that's also absurd.
link |
And like, it doesn't feel like there's justice to it in any kind of way, but it's so sudden.
link |
Like, have you been able to make sense of that, of your feelings about it?
link |
Like how do you feel about it or, or is everything just shrouded in this like trauma that you're
link |
not able to just feel for the loss of a human being, like mourn the loss of a human being?
link |
I think I had, when he, when I realized he wasn't there, when I realized that he, um,
link |
that was the, I, that was what was left of him, I found out afterwards there was other
link |
parts that were outside and went back.
link |
I think, I think he said went back and they got, they ended up getting the rest of him.
link |
So that made me happy because I just found this out this week.
link |
Uh, so that, that means, so that means you have a feeling like you still feel like parts
link |
of them were left behind.
link |
On the ramp ceremony, when I lost my mind, literally I, I lost my mind and I was screaming
link |
that he wasn't all in there.
link |
I'm happy now knowing that he was, but I held onto that for 10 years.
link |
This, um, yeah, the sandbags, like, like it's the bulk of the weight is, is not from human
link |
He was a young kid too.
link |
It was, I think it was his first deployment as well.
link |
Like he was, he was a young kid and he was just, just going to clear the road for the
link |
Like not like, you know, you're in war and you know that you're outside the wire and
link |
you know, things could happen.
link |
You understand that to the extent you can understand that when it's happening, it's
link |
something very different.
link |
Also maybe you can correct me, but, um, there's something much more like brutal about an IED.
link |
Versus like a bullet, cause a bullet, you still watching somebody close to you die from
link |
a bullet, you still get to the basic humanity.
link |
Like so IED basically converted a human being into sort of parts by biological parts.
link |
Versus, yeah, I mean, I don't, that's, that's tough.
link |
That's tough because that's like, um, because it's hard for you to remember them as a human.
link |
You remember them as parts.
link |
For me, that's how I remember him.
link |
I would like to, I have a picture that I post every year about him.
link |
I see that, but I don't put two and two together.
link |
Does that make sense?
link |
Yeah, no, it does.
link |
So I, even I listening to your story and, you know, um, thank you for sharing it first
link |
of all, but, um, it's not my, it's, well, I'm just the one to tell it.
link |
I was just involved one, one set of eyes on this particular human being.
link |
But even I get angry.
link |
I can't tell if it's exhaustion or anger.
link |
I look always exhausted.
link |
You're, you're into robotics.
link |
Isn't that like your guys's thing?
link |
You guys are just always working on, I think because I feel so much for the world.
link |
I just don't do, we were talking about resting bitch face earlier.
link |
I just don't feel the need to maintain, um, all the effort of the musculature for presenting
link |
myself to you visually.
link |
So I just focus on the feeling.
link |
Face show, whatever the hell it shows.
link |
Can you just talk to your feelings of what you remember?
link |
So after that operation with the British, I went back to the Canadians and I didn't
link |
go back as even remotely close to who I was when I left.
link |
And that was really troublesome for a lot of people around me because the level of anger
link |
and hate that came out of me was palpable when I just walked by, um, I got shockingly
link |
quiet and you understand how you're learning how to be terrified if you are quiet.
link |
And I don't know if hate and anger do that justice.
link |
I don't know another word, but I don't think those two words do it justice to the extent
link |
that I was feeling like I got to a point when I got attacked by a woman, um, with some scissors,
link |
like the idea crossed my mind, like I could boot stomp her to death and not feel anything
link |
about it in front of her, all of her family and her kids.
link |
Was it more like just not recognizing the basic humanity or was it legit hatred?
link |
No, it was legit hatred, but also I no longer saw those people as humans.
link |
It took one event.
link |
And when that happened, the rest of the operation that was echoed in my, in the way I was to
link |
But to what level can you see those people as human?
link |
So this is where, well, like this is where Jaco shut down, um, I still think I'm right.
link |
Um, there's a dire straight song called, uh, brothers in arms and, um, actually anyway,
link |
we're fools to make war on our brothers in arms.
link |
And I brought that up to Jaco because it's humans on both sides, but he said, not in
link |
Iraq like to him, he's like, no, that's the enemy.
link |
These are people who use the civilians.
link |
They rape, they torture, they they'll do anything.
link |
And they put evil onto the world.
link |
And then it's like, so they're, they're stood on at that moment.
link |
Like the, these two were humans and it's politicians waging war and it's, it's kids on both sides.
link |
But then Jaco was like, no, he's not wrong.
link |
So which can you carry both things with you as a soldier?
link |
I think when I was a soldier, I could only carry one thing with me.
link |
I think my perspective has changed drastically, but not because I've lost the reality that
link |
they are the enemy, but I've, I've gained my humanity back again.
link |
And that's what I lost when I was there.
link |
I lost all humanity.
link |
I lost all hope for humanity.
link |
He's not wrong when he says the Taliban or like when he was in Iraq, but for me, the
link |
I still hold a spot of hatred for them that could set this building on fire.
link |
You don't, I don't know that anybody can fully understand that when you watch what they do
link |
to women and do kids and they do it in the name of God, they are the enemy.
link |
They are less than, they don't exist.
link |
They're barely worth the bullets we put into them.
link |
But then because they use civilians, so like then everybody becomes the enemy.
link |
And how are you supposed to make sense of that?
link |
Like what you get, but here, Lex, you can't make sense of it.
link |
This is why they've done a really good job of blending into the civilian population.
link |
They've done it intentionally.
link |
They've done it on purpose.
link |
So they're brilliant.
link |
This is why you guys couldn't beat them.
link |
This is why we couldn't fucking beat them.
link |
They use their people so effectively.
link |
They have no shame in that.
link |
They have no issue with that.
link |
They take no qualms with wiping a kid off the face of the earth.
link |
If it means they can get close enough to a soldier to throw a fucking bomb into their
link |
This is why they're affected.
link |
How do you beat them then?
link |
There's this, there's no winning that you just basically do policeman type work or you
link |
I mean, that's one way.
link |
So the other is you come from an artillery background.
link |
A fucking hellfire missile hit the whole place off the face of the earth.
link |
You can't beat radicalism like that right now.
link |
The problem is, is we've, we've let it go unchecked.
link |
We had it kind of in check for 20 years.
link |
We just shot ourselves in the foot, the chest and the face.
link |
So the problem with force is it creates longterm hate because young kids and propaganda and
link |
like propaganda works.
link |
So you, you see your father, your brother die because of a bomb.
link |
It's very easy to convince that person that they died because of evil Americans and tell
link |
whatever story you want about America or Canada, Russia.
link |
That's the biggest problem.
link |
So it seems like there gotta be better solutions because I mean, I talk about love, but it's,
link |
it's honestly basically figuring out sneaky ways of empowering women, of educating people
link |
of like, and like, and not in a cheesy way, but like in the same level of like mass warfare,
link |
You're talking about DARPA budgets, DOD budgets, but like do that where you educate and empower
link |
And it, you know, they want to learn, right?
link |
I mean, you're not like forcing anybody, you're setting them free.
link |
That's exactly it.
link |
Like combat flip flops does this.
link |
They give literacy.
link |
They teach girls to read nothing else to read because as soon as you can read, you know
link |
what that happens.
link |
You know what happens then.
link |
What's combat flip flops?
link |
That's the scarf right there.
link |
That's made in Afghanistan.
link |
So when you buy something from them, the proceeds go to literacy in Afghanistan for girls.
link |
They've given literacy to 800 girls over there.
link |
They're really cool.
link |
Uh, Griff owns the one, he was an army ranger and his buddy, but Lee, I think is his name.
link |
They were on Shark Tank a long time ago, but they, um, they do shoes and I think they're
link |
I don't know how to say it properly.
link |
Built in Afghanistan.
link |
And then the proceeds go back there.
link |
They do great work for literacy and you know, as well as anyone, if you can teach someone
link |
to read good color, dark, like your soul lacks matches on the inside, just on the inside.
link |
The outside is just the, it's just the suit.
link |
I feel like you think that's your suit of armor, but I feel like it's, it's there.
link |
See what were you saying?
link |
Sorry, what were you saying?
link |
I was saying go on.
link |
I will allow this.
link |
All right, I think there is room if you teach education.
link |
The problem is we've taken a massive step backwards.
link |
I know that the Taliban have just instituted, uh, this week honor killings will be back.
link |
Stonings are back and, um, uh, dismemberment as well.
link |
Holly McKay is the reporter that's been reporting that from the ground.
link |
She's still there.
link |
The way to pull people, in my opinion, out of something like that is through education.
link |
Well we just took all of that away, which is pretty horrific in my opinion because you've
link |
taught over 20 years.
link |
You're perfectly right, Lex.
link |
When you say that hate and violence won't work, it won't because you see dad get killed
link |
on the battlefield.
link |
Well that 14 year old little boy is going to pick up an AK 47 and go avenge dad's death.
link |
That's just the way it's going to be.
link |
Well, we think about it, you were there for 20 years.
link |
There's a couple of generations in there.
link |
There's another generation that's either grown up in this or has seen enough of this.
link |
So there are always going to be a subset that think that we're the enemy and fair.
link |
We haven't done always the greatest things, but the one thing that we have done that I
link |
did participate in was giving literacy, giving girls an opportunity, letting them know that
link |
you aren't second class citizens.
link |
You can do things too.
link |
And that's why we have to look at war differently.
link |
There's times for violence.
link |
Oh, there is time for violence and there is time for missiles and there is time for detainees
link |
and there's times for bagging tags and double tops of the fucking face.
link |
There's times for all of that, but there needs to be more time to educate.
link |
The problem is you can't educate if you're in a country where their culture doesn't believe
link |
There's so many different things that you, it's an almost an impossible situation.
link |
When you look at the 20 years in Afghanistan and we just pulled out, there's a sudden pull
link |
What do you think about those 20 years?
link |
Let me ask hard question, which is, was it worth it going into Afghanistan?
link |
And you're sort of, you're one person.
link |
My limited capacity.
link |
You have experienced specific set of extremely difficult things.
link |
You've met a lot of humans.
link |
You understand certain aspects of the way this war is carried out.
link |
But if you zoomed out at the big story, like you're, you like history too.
link |
When you think of the history, a hundred years from now, we look at the invasion of Afghanistan.
link |
I don't even think you need to go far that back to know that it was, we went in on false
link |
That's not, that's not a good start.
link |
What's that saying?
link |
Future behavior is a good, was it past behavior is a good indicator of future behavior.
link |
So I struggle with that because when I first found out that the pullout was going to happen,
link |
I got really angry because my government skated the whole situation because he's having a
link |
He's having a snap election.
link |
It's happening on the 20th.
link |
So that was beautifully planned by my government to hold no accountability, zero accountability.
link |
And the media won't talk about it.
link |
They reached out to me to do an interview about Afghanistan.
link |
And then I told them what was going on after I talked to my people that were on the ground
link |
and then they canceled the interview.
link |
When you say my government, is America any better at this, like it feels like there's
link |
no accountability.
link |
The government, no, no, the American government is a dumpster fire.
link |
I'm not saying, I'm not saying that, but what I am saying is at least they sent people to
link |
pull people or pull some people.
link |
We sent no one to pull anyone.
link |
And I know for a fact, because I helped move a family, I was fortunate enough to be given
link |
an opportunity to help move a high value nine person family out of that country that worked
link |
in the government, that worked in prosecuting the Taliban, that were on the top of the list.
link |
I learned really quickly the ins and outs of things and I'm really disgusted by it.
link |
I learned that Canada had the one email address that all Canadian Afghani visa holders were
link |
supposed to email, Ottawa put two people on that email address.
link |
Canada put no more than 70 people on the ground for that pullout and they were not allowed
link |
to leave the airport and they left well before the pullout date.
link |
They left on the Thursday before the Tuesday that was the 31st.
link |
There were high value Canadian visa holders that are still in that country that are on
link |
the top of the kill list.
link |
Canada's not doing anything about it.
link |
I'm disgusted in the way my government has acted because number one, there's an active
link |
lawsuit with veterans against the Supreme Court of Canada right now.
link |
We are leaving our vets and our Canadians stranded over there and we are leaving the
link |
vets that have been maimed by this war in Canada.
link |
They're turned down for everything.
link |
I've been turned down for hearing loss.
link |
They're saying it's not military related.
link |
They have PIs follow me.
link |
This is normal behavior.
link |
There's a veteran named Brock who was told by Trudeau in a meeting that after he lost
link |
his leg, he was just trying to get a new prosthetic because it was just killing him.
link |
Trudeau stood up in a meeting and said, you're just asking for too much.
link |
Less than six months later, he gave $10.4 million to an Afghan terrorist that was in
link |
the Canadian prison system.
link |
He won and got 10.4 of our million taxpayer dollars.
link |
I don't know that American government's any better, but what I do know is that the absolute
link |
fucking machines of human beings that stepped outside of the chain of command to pull my
link |
family out for me, I know they were there.
link |
The British that stayed on the ground that I contacted to literally confirm my biometric
link |
data and passports to get that family moved, they weren't there.
link |
That family would still be there.
link |
That three year old that got the shit kicked out of him by the Taliban that I was trying
link |
to exfil, Canada left him.
link |
What is it about politicians and governments not willing to do their job?
link |
Well, not willing to do a big part of the job, which is you send people to war, these
link |
are heroes, and then you should spend most of the time repaying the debts to those, right?
link |
What is it about, why can't we?
link |
Because we're disposable numbers, and we hire them out of high school when they're stupid
link |
enough to not understand what they're going to get themselves into, and then we blame
link |
it on themselves for making that decision by volunteering.
link |
Yeah, but I mean, this still doesn't make sense to me.
link |
No, it's a cop out.
link |
I mean, Trudeau, I feel like he is a good human being that wants to do good for, I mean,
link |
I tend to, I want to believe that leaders want to do good by the heroes of this world,
link |
and it doesn't, like, I don't understand the system of delusion you have to live in to
link |
not understand who the heroes are.
link |
Like, I refuse to believe Trudeau is somehow a bad person.
link |
You haven't met him though, have you?
link |
I don't, actually.
link |
I'm speaking about Trudeau without knowing, but I mean, in general, think that way about
link |
Like, they surround themselves by people who delude them, who like, they're yes people,
link |
yes people that lead them into a kind of reality that becomes detached from actual reality.
link |
And so they misunderstand the priorities of this world.
link |
They think maybe some kind of special interest, they focus on that versus like the humans.
link |
If you look back, was there a way we could have done something better in Afghanistan,
link |
assuming we do the invasion?
link |
Also, is it ultimately about taking care of the veterans, like, investing more money in
link |
the education of women and liberating people who are suffering injustice in those parts
link |
Like, what's a better way to do it?
link |
And one other aspect is, on the US side, paid over $6 trillion for the wars in the Middle
link |
East since 9 11, so the financial side as well.
link |
Is there something you can comment on things we could have done better?
link |
That's a loaded question because you're talking to someone who had no hand in what happened
link |
other than do this and do that.
link |
So I can go from my perspective, which is there was probably plenty of things that we
link |
could have been doing better.
link |
I think there was a lack of leadership from the get go.
link |
I think the preparation that the Canadian military gave me was nowhere sufficient for
link |
a deployment of that level.
link |
Mind you, things happen.
link |
They didn't realize things would happen, but yet they happen.
link |
With little to absolutely no cultural idea was that I was walking into.
link |
Like when the one male in the family grabbed the back of my vest because my hair was tucked
link |
and he thought it was a man going into a room with a bunch of women, I couldn't understand
link |
why he was attacking me.
link |
There was no real breakdown of this is what you're going into, this is the culture, this
link |
is why they do what they do, this is how they do it, this is how you should handle a situation
link |
There was none of that.
link |
Something I speak about frequently and I think it's important to acknowledge is when you're
link |
doing any of that training, we are giving none of our soldiers proper mental health
link |
training, tools in that fucking toolbox or ways or things to look for on their buddy
link |
because we've created a system and a problem where if you say that you're ill or that you're
link |
struggling with PTSD, you're done.
link |
No one's going to say that, they're going to keep struggling with it and that's when
link |
you get loose cannons, when you get problems happen, so you get fractures start to happen
link |
in leadership and that's being seen and has been seen now for a while.
link |
In terms of what we could have done, say for a better way to go into the country, a better
link |
way to help the country, I can't speak to that as much as I wish I could because I don't
link |
know that I would have all the answers.
link |
What about withdrawal?
link |
Do you think more gradual, you think it's better to maintain presence there for indefinitely?
link |
I don't know about that, but I do know we have bases, I say weeks, I serve with them,
link |
Americans have bases in Japan, Americans have bases in Korea, Americans have bases in Germany.
link |
There's reasons there's bases everywhere.
link |
There's a smart, there's an intellectual way to look at this.
link |
You want to be able to have eyes and ears, can't have eyes and ears when you do things
link |
like you just did.
link |
The way that we pulled out of that country, that's right, the way that, I hate saying
link |
American British because it puts like a blame on them.
link |
I say we because I'm a soldier, I'm a NATO soldier.
link |
The way we pulled out of that country, my five year old could have done it better.
link |
He could have said, mommy, why are we not keeping that Bagram base?
link |
Mommy, why are we not keeping that base just until we get everyone else that we need?
link |
Why are we going to a civilian airport that we don't control, that we don't understand?
link |
Mommy, why are we doing this when there's only one road to it?
link |
My five year old would have that conversation with me.
link |
It was so poorly done.
link |
It was so poorly executed and no fault of the soldiers on the ground on their own.
link |
My God, I can tell you there's operators, I just call them A, I don't say who he is
link |
because he's told me not to.
link |
There's a guy named A and there's another guy named R and there's a few other named
link |
D and these guys, they gave everything to try to pull my family when no one else would
link |
pull my family for me.
link |
They just got me on the phone and said, I don't know who the fuck you're talking to.
link |
I don't know how many people you're trying to get ahold of here, but you've got everyone
link |
looking for your family.
link |
Six, I've gone to everyone I know.
link |
I've done stuff on Instagram.
link |
I've got a contact.
link |
The contact called me.
link |
I was handling this family and when they call you and say, we can't go back to the gate,
link |
my three year old just got beat up by the Taliban and they say, what do we do now?
link |
Why am I being left to deal with this?
link |
Why is the civilian and ex military population being left to deal with this?
link |
Why was this not thought out?
link |
We knew this was coming.
link |
We knew the timeframe.
link |
Yeah, I ultimately blame, it almost starts at the top always at the leadership, sorry,
link |
this is the civilian leadership.
link |
I think probably the generals know the right thing to do here.
link |
Even if they're sometimes overzealous in terms of being, wanting to increase, I think the
link |
great generals understand what's needed.
link |
And then it takes great leadership on the civilian side to listen to the generals and
link |
understand that war is not just about like.
link |
Yeah, and it's not about the invasion and saying mission accomplished.
link |
It's not about the PR.
link |
It's about the full complexity of geopolitics.
link |
Can I ask you this?
link |
You can ask me whatever you want.
link |
I'm looking at a book that you gave me, Do the Fucking Work.
link |
It's very motivating.
link |
Good Fucking Design Advice.
link |
That's their company called Good Fucking Design Advice.
link |
I know, they're great.
link |
What's the website?
link |
Okay, so the F is for friendship.
link |
Something like that.
link |
They are a design company.
link |
They've worked with Apple and Nike, and this is their book.
link |
It's been published by HarperCollins.
link |
And it is really just, it's an incredible, they're an incredible company.
link |
They're artistically, like they're a design company, so you can see that.
link |
You can see it's a design company.
link |
Oh yeah, they signed it for you.
link |
And the pages are beautiful, but they have a saying and then a paragraph about each saying.
link |
Get fucking started, obstacles are fucking opportunities, fail, fail, and fucking fail
link |
Ask for fucking help, show some fucking passion, finish the fucking job.
link |
So we should send that to Biden.
link |
She said it, I didn't say it.
link |
I should also send it to Trudeau as well.
link |
So, but I mean, he probably won't know how to read it.
link |
He just taught drama instead.
link |
So I'll send it to the previous four presidents.
link |
We can also send it to them too.
link |
Cause they're all just as much at fault.
link |
So, and they, most of them have all the same last names, but okay.
link |
Let me tell you about them quickly.
link |
Cause we did a mug with them and I was really excited about it.
link |
Not because it was a mug.
link |
I'm a mug person, but you are, that's your mug obsessive.
link |
I'm obsessive about my mugs.
link |
What's your favorite mug?
link |
Currently it's mine right now.
link |
The one that I have with them.
link |
What does it say on it?
link |
Can I, do you want me to read what it says on it?
link |
Cause I'm really happy about it because we created this with them, with GFDA.
link |
I found out about them because my husband's office, Atlas Neck Brace, he had his very
link |
first office, he had one of their prints done and it was their original, like do the fucking
link |
And I was really excited about them once I found out because I'm like, well, fuck is
link |
And I want to make sure that I am going to, whoever I work with, I want to make sure that
link |
I'm working with people that I believe in, that I believe what they stand for and I just
link |
think they're brilliant.
link |
So I got on the phone with them and I said, hi, I would like you to sponsor my podcast.
link |
And they said, cool.
link |
What's your podcast?
link |
And I was like, it's called Brass in Unity podcast and I want to work with you guys somewhere.
link |
And they're like, okay, so like, what are you thinking?
link |
And I said, you know, I'm looking to do, I would love one day to do something with you.
link |
I don't know what it would be, but I would like it to be something.
link |
And they said, you know, we do like, we have this book, but we also have like shirts and
link |
mugs with our sayings on them and prints.
link |
And so I was thinking to myself, I was like, well, if I just did like a mug with them,
link |
well then I could, you know, that could work for what my company does, which is it's a
link |
jewelry company and sunglass company, but it could be like an add on kind of deal.
link |
These guys are really good designers.
link |
I can already tell.
link |
I knew you would like this.
link |
That's why I brought it.
link |
So I'm like, certain people would appreciate this.
link |
And so my whole thing, my, my like hashtag is work hard, help harder.
link |
And that's the whole concept of what I do now.
link |
And so we did a mug and it's called fucking help somebody.
link |
That's their like first tag.
link |
And then the rest is kindness is a wealth that increases as it is given away.
link |
What you get in return isn't passed between hands, but felt between hearts.
link |
It's precisely because you've been at the bottom that you can raise others up.
link |
It's because you've, sorry, I'm reading a photo here.
link |
You've been lost in the dark.
link |
You can lead others to the light.
link |
It's because you fought with yourself that you can bring peace to someone else.
link |
You now have the strength because you've once struggled the best you have to come, the best
link |
you have to come from the fucking worst you've had to take.
link |
So it's, this is the mug there and we're sold out of them.
link |
We just got a bunch of.
link |
Fucking help somebody.
link |
Fucking help somebody.
link |
And so we did, they were so gracious enough to sit with me and be like, what do you want
link |
the copy to be like?
link |
And I said, what do you think I want it to be like?
link |
What would you, if you could write one for me, what it'd be?
link |
And they're like, it's going to be around lifting people up.
link |
And I was like, okay, cool.
link |
And they're like, do you want fuck in the title?
link |
And I was like, every other word, if we can have it.
link |
And they said, we'll just do once.
link |
And I was like, okay, I compromise.
link |
And so we came up with that copy and we put it on a mug and we're going to be doing a
link |
But the, the whole thing to me was that, that embodied what I stand for now and the healing
link |
I've gotten to now and the point I've gotten to now in my life, because that fucking sand
link |
pit almost broke me, like off the face of the earth broke me.
link |
First of all, can we go through the full journey of that in terms of your psychological development?
link |
Who were you before?
link |
Who were you after?
link |
Can you think about that?
link |
Like what was your, if you had to put a brain on the table before and after and try to analyze
link |
Well, they both have CTE.
link |
So we know that they're both bruised and gray matter is a little dicey on them.
link |
And it may sound the same and it's, it's not, so I'll try to explain it to you.
link |
Before that, don't you laugh because I can, I know it's coming.
link |
I was even louder, even more obnoxious, even more outgoing.
link |
I know it's hard to believe.
link |
This is you humble and quiet right now.
link |
This is normal me now.
link |
This is who I am now.
link |
But who I was before I was, you know, motocross, taekwondo, tomboy.
link |
I didn't know how to dress.
link |
I thought that if you just wore like the same jeans and t shirt all the time, that was like
link |
acceptable behavior as a woman.
link |
I wore skate shoes.
link |
I went to a Catholic school that I refused to wear skirt at.
link |
I played hacky sack.
link |
I was so into sports, I cut and split wood with my dad on weekends.
link |
We heated our house that way.
link |
I would go on the transport.
link |
I stayed out of trouble for the most part.
link |
I think I was a fairly good kid.
link |
I was pretty angry though for most of my teenage life after my coach.
link |
I lost my way a little bit there.
link |
I was just crazier.
link |
I don't know if I was happy.
link |
I'm realizing that now.
link |
I think I was, I think anger overtook who I was, and I think that's why I was such an
link |
angry individual towards my parents when I was in high school.
link |
So parents, was it a little rough relationship with parents?
link |
I mean, my dad was gone a couple of weeks at a time.
link |
So my mom, stay at home mom, had to handle me and my brother, who were both competitive
link |
athletes at the time, by herself.
link |
And when you come home and you have a daughter that just calls you like a bitch to your face
link |
because she can't, she's being bullied so bad that she can't understand why, but also
link |
doesn't know how to fix it, but has no other outlet anymore to kind of get rid of it.
link |
I was a really mean person.
link |
I remember the day she stopped yelling.
link |
That's the day I know I broke her.
link |
Did you have a source of discipline in your life?
link |
Like, what, like maybe like your dad, somebody who says you're being a bitch.
link |
Oh, like who would call me like that?
link |
Oh no, no, no, no.
link |
My parents were incredible.
link |
And my dad came from like a family of like a bajillion kids who lived in a farm with
link |
no running water with like super, my dad was brash and abrupt.
link |
So like I've caught myself doing that once in a while.
link |
So like if I did one thing wrong, if he was just in a mood, I would know it.
link |
So you weren't, okay.
link |
So that anger just took different forms.
link |
It took different forms, but it mostly would be directed at my mom because I know she would
link |
take it and that was who I had.
link |
And I feel bad about it to the day.
link |
Like I still, she listened to the Jocko podcast and so did my dad.
link |
And my mom promised me she would never read my book because there's certain parts.
link |
I just, my dad on my deployment, when I called him and told him some of the stuff, he started
link |
My dad doesn't cry.
link |
And he just said, please never tell your mother this.
link |
Don't do that to your mom.
link |
My mom, like my grandfather came from Hungary.
link |
He escaped when the Nazis left, when the Soviets came in.
link |
He wasn't great as a dad.
link |
My mom went through a lot as a kid and that was because her dad was in the war.
link |
That was because her dad didn't know any better and she knew she couldn't be like that.
link |
So her way would be yelling.
link |
And then I hit about 16 and I wore her down and I broke her, shattered her ability to
link |
think that she could have any sort of relationship with me.
link |
You wouldn't want to have had a relationship with me.
link |
But the funny thing is you've rediscovered that now.
link |
So she, is she, are you guys close now?
link |
She's, she's so funny.
link |
She's coming out to help out again.
link |
She comes out to help out with Jack all the time and my dad, they're still, they're still
link |
They're still on the road.
link |
They have their little dogs and they go and they do their thing.
link |
And I've had that relationship now it's, it's, it's still strenuous.
link |
Like I still, when I'm having a hard time, she'll be the person I'll take it out on because
link |
I know she can take it.
link |
Even though I know I shouldn't, it's like, she's my safe space to be like, blah, about
link |
And she'll just be like, well, that's not nice.
link |
I'm like, well, you're not, fuck it.
link |
Like I, and I'll take it out on her.
link |
She knows I don't mean it and I try, um, but for whatever reason, she just, she takes it
link |
And it brings it out of you.
link |
Can you describe sort of the various characteristics, the, the shape of your PTSD, the trauma, how
link |
the anger and hate took shape in you in the, in the seconds, minutes, hours, months, years
link |
after and after the, the full trauma of all the things you've experienced in Afghanistan.
link |
So it's funny because Jocko asked me something and it made me, it's made me, I've really
link |
been thinking a lot about it and he's like, do you think if somebody of the leadership
link |
would have just sat you down and said, Hey, Burns, what you're feeling is okay, what you're
link |
feeling is normal, what you're feeling is what happens when you're in something like
link |
Do you think you would be where you are?
link |
And I said, well, I thought about it and I'm like, you know, I don't think I would
link |
be because I wouldn't have been medicated out of my mind.
link |
I wasn't able to process anything because I was just given medication right from the
link |
And for me, what happened was once that light switch was off, um, I was sent back to Kandahar
link |
to what I, once the operation was over, we, we flew back to Kandahar, like with the Brits.
link |
And then because there was deaths and we lost people on that operation, I had to go to the
link |
British side for the next, I think three or four days and recant word for word why, what
link |
happened to a British MP who hand wrote statements, but we had to do that on repeat to make sure
link |
we all had the same story and so nobody shot anybody in the back.
link |
And so that I don't think is a great way to do that after an after action, after action
link |
reports happen, but I don't think beating a dead horse and having somebody repeat, repeat,
link |
repeat, and then just imprint more and more and more.
link |
I don't, I don't know that that is a great way of doing that.
link |
And especially from a perspective of what are they, uh, liability almost like legal,
link |
that kind of that perspective as opposed to the full perspective.
link |
I mean, so, so for people who don't know, uh, one is the, the, the overmedication and
link |
that you had to undergo.
link |
And then the other is the social isolation in terms of, I mean, more than what Jaco,
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what you just mentioned, you also kind of, uh, mentioned that just being with, um, with
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other soldiers you're close with, just sitting there in silence and, um, just sitting in
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that shared understanding, even that in itself communicates like these feelings are normal.
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Like you don't have to talk and you were robbed of that as well, essentially.
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Because I was, because I was borrowed, I think Jaco had a name for us when we get borrowed.
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It was like, there was like a, I don't know what they call us, but it's like when you
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take a person and you put them in another unit, there's a name for it.
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I don't remember what it was.
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You never see those people again.
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But because I was in Kanderhart, the doctors gave me the medication because I, I think
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I was the one who said, I don't, this isn't right.
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I don't feel right.
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Cause when I got back that night, there was supposed to be somebody there to pick me up,
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to take me to the other side of the base and no one showed.
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So I, I humped on my kit back to the Canada house and I remember getting in the shower
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and the rule was quick fucking showers, no water.
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I must've sat on that floor, that shower for half an hour, 45 minutes.
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I just held myself and cried and didn't even know why I was crying.
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I just knew I needed to cry and I still this day, I, and when they sent me back to the
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FOB, they sent me back with all this medication after spending that time with the Brits and
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they put me back on the guns, medicated out of my fucking tree.
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I almost shot someone, but they didn't tell my staff that I was on meds.
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So when the artillery gun was going off and I didn't run to the gun and I was still asleep
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inside the tent with the gun beside my head, they didn't know I was just drugged.
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They just thought I was fucking off somewhere, hanging out with some Americans.
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They just thought I wasn't doing any of what I should be doing.
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And then I remember the moment my Sergeant, we did a night shoot and he, he's so funny
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because he called me and goes, ah, fuck, Burns, I remember this, yes, you were standing there
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with me and I look at you and go, hey, Burns, are you okay?
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Because your eyes are all fucked.
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And I, I looked at Sergeant LeBlanc and I just remember going, yeah, I'm good.
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He's like, I still remember that.
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And I'm like, I know.
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And he goes, they never tell me anything, fuck, Burns, I did not know the drugs you
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And as I was on all of them, he goes, I know I walk in, you show me the bottles, ah, fuck,
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Burns, you shouldn't have been there.
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I guarantee he sounds just like that.
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Yeah, so what, I mean, I suppose this is a lazy way of dealing with trauma and it's for
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the military in some sense.
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If you don't have a good program in place, this makes sense, but you should have a good
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Just like you said, on the prep, on the mental prep side, like just any prep, like training
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people, training people on the, I suppose to, I guess train the fact that you're going
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to have somebody close to you blow up, like you have to probably visualize that.
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You have to think through that.
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You have to have a process of how to deal with something like that, with that kind of
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And then that's it.
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Tools in the toolbox is what the doctors call it.
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I mean, and it's not like weakness, it's actually strength.
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It's like you have to be mentally strong enough to process that.
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That probably takes a lot of training, but it's a great training, right?
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Well worth it to protect your investment training.
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That's a very cold, but correct way to put it.
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I mean, it's cold.
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I thought you would appreciate the coldness of the way I articulated that.
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I mean, I'm of two minds in this.
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I don't, I sometimes wonder like what I would be like as a soldier, actually.
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I don't know, because I love country and I love all the things you're mentioning.
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Like I could see myself probably dying for my country and also enjoying the skill of
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The very like OCD, like very proficient.
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But then also the human side, I fall in love with people.
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I fall in love with everything.
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So I don't know, I suppose you have to shut off the part of your brain when you're executing
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a mission that cares about other humans outside your close knit group.
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Like there's no time for philosophical thinking.
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I suppose that's why it's better to be young.
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You're not necessarily dumb.
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It's just like you were over that energy of excitement of proficiency and excellence is
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just higher than it is later in life.
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I was not dumb, but I was naive, uneducated, not well trained and had an arrogance because
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we were told we were the fucking shit.
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So I wonder, do they think if we do mental training?
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That makes you weak.
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Do you think the military thinks that makes you weak?
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And the reason I can say that is because it's obvious in the way that they handle it now.
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So like if a soldier says, hey, I'm really struggling with that last op we were on, man,