The following is a conversation with Kelsey Sharon, Canadian forces veteran, artillery

gunner who served in Afghanistan at 18 years old and came home with severe PTSD.

She went on to found Brass and Unity, which creates unique jewelry, large part of the

proceeds from which go to help rehabilitate the lives, limbs and mental health of veterans

and first responders.

She has a big personality, big heart and an intense passion for life.

So when our paths happened across, I knew we needed to talk.

This is the Lex Friedman podcast.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, here's my conversation with Kelsey Sharon.

You mentioned that studying history had a big impact on you and that your grandfather

was a World War II vet.

So people that have gone through World War II in my family too, they don't seem to talk

about it much.

Like, the worse the tragedy, the less they talk about it.

I mean, it's understandable.

I can respect that, but I don't think people fully understood the value in human stories

over time and sharing that, that certain civilizations don't have written language.

The value in that being passed down is extraordinary, but we didn't really have that with the World

War II vets.

It seems like.

Well, they kind of want to protect you from the pain.

Like my grandfather, my grandmother went through Hollywood, which is the Ukrainian starvation

of millions of people, and then obviously went through World War II with the Nazi occupation

and same in the grandfather side, who on my dad's side, the grandfather fought in World

War II.

They seem to not want to talk about those experiences to protect you from the suffering,

to protect you from the evil that they've experienced, which is sad because the lessons

from that history are not then propagated through you.

And also, there's something about the strength you carry with you knowing that that's in

your blood.

Those great heroes are in your blood and that's suffering, overcoming that suffering is in

your blood.

I would argue that's exactly correct.

If you have someone you know that comes from your lineage that has done something super

gnarly, that's just been a badass in so many different ways, you want to know about that

person.

You have that person's blood in you.

That's important to acknowledge.

And when that isn't shared, I feel like it's just a detriment to that individual.

What do you make of World War II in terms of history?

Do you think about those kinds of wars where two times more civilians died than the number

of military personnel.

So most of the war is basically just the death of civilians and the invasion of homes, the

burning of homes, the bombing of homes, all of that.

World War II, for me, I find that was the first experience where I became just obsessed

with history.

World War II really did it for me.

I'm not sure if it's because of the dramatization of film and in TV and the way that our generation

has looked at it, but for me, it was more than that.

I felt a deep connection to it and I still can't figure out why, like a pull almost.

People joke around about those past lives and those things or those connections and

there's something deeper within me that feels a pull towards that.

And I'm not quite sure if it's because I had family that escaped Hungary once the Soviets

came in, so thanks for that.

Or if it was because my grandfather served in it or for whatever reason, I have this

pull to it.

And so when you think about the mass casualty of the civilian population, that's very difficult

for me to wrap my brain around after being in a war and seeing when you have a small

subset of civilians die, how much of an impact that has on that community right there in

just a tiny area.

So to try to wrap my brain around what happened in Europe and all across and all of that,

I really struggle with that because I don't know that I can comprehend what that would

truly mean to somebody if I didn't experience it or see it for what it is.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

But so first of all, you're right.

A lot of people are drawn to World War II for different reasons.

The one is Hitler and Stalin trying to understand how it's possible to have that scale of evil

in a very different flavors of evil.

It's almost fascinating that human nature can allow for that.

And then also it's fascinating that so many people can follow leaders like that with the

pride and with the love of country.

Yeah.

And it's almost like this weird experiment is like, wow, I wonder if I'm made from the

same cloth as those people.

Would I be a good German if I lived in Germany and was during the time of Hitler?

Would I believe that Germany has been done wrong?

I'm Jewish, by the way, which makes me a little bit more comfortable talking about this.

Would I believe in the dreams sold by a charismatic dictator who says that wrongs have been done

and we need to correct those wrongs?

That to me is the compelling thing that draws me to World War II, the human nature question.

I would agree with you on that.

I think there's a way to look at people like that.

And at that time, there was no real, well, there wasn't a full understanding of the psyche

the way that we're starting to, I mean, we still don't understand any of it.

But it seems like the time gap back then, there was no real understanding of sociopaths

and narcissists and psychopaths and really what those traits were.

And I feel like people will follow blindly if they're given a good enough reason.

Well, if you have an individual who is ranting and screaming at the top of his lungs in the

middle of these town squares and he's getting this attention, it's human nature to want

to understand and be a part of a group mentality.

It's human nature to want to fit in.

And so I don't know if it's more of people were at the beginning were just, this is the

cool thing to do, or if it was, they were genuinely terrified, or if there was an aspect

that was like, this guy is saying something that resonates with me, there could be a lot

of different things.

I think it's unfortunate that we didn't get to or no one got to really examine this individual's

brain and this person and why they thought the way they thought, because that's always

been the biggest thing for me is I'm really curious about why people do what they do.

Like deeply, deeply curious about it.

I'm not sure who's more interesting, the people that follow Hitler or Hitler himself.

So I mean, the question that's coupled with that is, would history roll out in similar

ways even if there wasn't a Hitler?

It's the people that created a Hitler or did create the events of World War II.

I think the people would be more interesting in my opinion.

That seems to be the, that the charismatic leaders are all out there, the failed artists

in the case of Hitler, they're all out there.

And it's just, when there's this environment of anger and fear, charismatic leaders can

take over and it doesn't matter if they're evil or good.

It's like a roll of the dice in terms of history, what, how evil, how truly insane they are.

Like I think Stalin was much more cold than calculating.

He wasn't as insane as Hitler, Hitler was legitimately insane, like especially later

on in the war where he would do irrational actions, I would say.

But that, that's like a weird roll of the dice.

You could have gotten a totally different leader, wanting to take over the entirety

of Europe and then invading Russia.

That's like insanity.

Yeah.

That just even, just the first part of that wanting to take over Europe.

If you really think about the scale, if you really sit down and go, this one individual

was like, I want all of this.

If you really sat down and you were to sit down and put him in his traits that we know

of into any sort of document nowadays that, that deems somebody a psychopath or a narcissist,

this guy would set it on fire.

There's, you know, he himself was so, I think so damaged.

And he reminds me a lot of people now who, who struggle to find their way.

He reminds me a lot of angry individuals who are told no, either by women or by business

or by whatever the sector they're in.

He reminds me very much of that, like, what's the word I'm looking for?

Just that individual who is just like, the world is shit and the world owes me everything.

And just, it's that mentality.

He really came from that, it seems like.

And when you foster that too long, you get that.

There's a book called, what is it, Man From Underground by Dostoyevsky.

I might be misnaming the book, but it's about the bitterness of a man.

It's like, it breeds within his mind and it just grows that bitterness.

I mean, we all have that sort of resenting of the world when you're younger.

You have a choice.

When you fail, do you blame the world or do you hold, it's the jocco thing.

Do you hold, do you carry the responsibility of that and become a better man or woman because

of that?

That's the decision.

And in some sense, I mean, unfortunately, see, that's because he took responsibility

and leadership.

I know you can't, you can't say he wasn't a leader.

So it's not that he's a failure.

He's not a person, not a failure, but it's, you can't say he's powerless, did not take

action.

I think he's just basically embodiment of the anger and the fear of people at the time.

But the insanity of obviously many of my relatives, not just murdering them, but putting them

in camps and torturing them.

But many of those people, Jewish people, were also some of the best scientists.

The insanity of murdering some of the best Germans is, it makes no sense.

And so that's why it's fascinating to kind of look back at that time in history and think,

are these the same humans?

And also, are there echoes of that now?

And are we, is that going to happen again?

Is there going to be a World War III in some other kind of way?

Is there going to be some mass scale injustice in some other kind of way, which we're not

yet, like because of our blindness and maybe not learning the lessons of history will allow

it to happen again.

And then obviously it's a very common thing to whatever political leader you don't like

to call them Hitler.

Of course, which is, that to me, I got to tell you, when somebody calls somebody Hitler,

the weight behind that has been completely lost in this generation.

This generation does not understand what that truly means to call someone Hitler or

a Nazi.

Or Stalin, to be honest, the starvation, as I've just been talking to a lot of folks

recently, especially like North Korea, why you own me Park, starvation.

And I remember from my grandmother, it wasn't any time and time again, not having food to

eat is the thing that people say is the worst, everything.

It's way worse than murder, not having food.

And the places that takes your mind and the actions that forces you to do, that's terrifying.

And all of that seems very distant in our history.

Yeah.

I love her.

I watched that interview with her.

She is, I want to talk to that woman so bad because when she was on Joe and she sat there

and said, Joe's like, do you, have you done any therapy?

And she laughed.

I was like, oh, that's my girl.

It's such a fascinating.

I mean, I would love for you to kind of talk to her and explore her mind because we kind

of explored her story and that's, there's power and the importance of her story.

But it's so difficult to understand, like how does she become healthier and better even

more so than she's already, she's, she's recovered quite a bit.

You know, she's found herself quite a bit, but I wonder is she haunted?

You're saying questions I want to ask, like that's what I mean because after being in

a war, there are certain things, there are certain atrocities that you see that it doesn't

matter the therapy that you do.

And I don't care what all the special ops guys say, like, I know plenty of them that

have a light switch and they turn it off and they can function.

But I also know them when they've been out for 10 years.

There's things that haunt people differently, but there's no way there's not something going

on there deeply.

Yeah, but it's also extra levels of complexity in her case because I mean, this is what just

looking at history about family is she spent much of her early life loving the dictator.

Right?

Yeah.

We like the water or something.

Yeah.

We like water or we like this because there is no like individual, like when they said

there was no love or anything.

But there is a love for the...

Just that individual.

For that individual.

And so, I mean, it's like the ultimate abusive relationship.

Oh, yeah.

And but it's still love, the experience, like you don't know the alternative.

So it's not even, it's complicated because like, I wonder if you truly explored it what

you would find because the trauma, much of her trauma I think comes from when she was

escaping North Korea, treatment by China.

It's like the...

And her mom and when she had to witness within that and being helpless with that on her own.

So it's like evil men essentially abusing her, trading her and doing so nonchalantly.

Like it's part of just the way of life that I wonder if she sees kind of, yeah, it's so

complicated because childhood...

It would be normal to her because she didn't know any different.

Exactly.

And there's...

Like I grew up poor, but I never sensed that because everyone else around was too.

And so you don't notice it.

I mean, it's a cultural thing.

So the way you grew up, you only start to notice it when you compare yourself to others,

when you learn of the alternative.

That's a dark reality when you're abused.

You...I wonder...I mean, you truly begin to suffer in some kind of way when you understand

that you were being abused.

That's a dark kind of thought that I wonder if you live your whole life just in that abuse.

If you don't know better, that that's a safer...that's like, what's a better life?

Suffering and then learning that you are suffering or just suffering until your last days?

There's two ways to look at this.

I'd argue on one side that suffering and suffering till you die, you know no different.

So you can't have hope.

You can't have this idea that there's better.

And sometimes that's...keep that in its box.

But then if you have kind of what you have with Park where she knows now that there's

different, she knows that there's better, then you run into those, what is the damage

that has been done?

What is going to be passed on as intergenerational trauma?

I know she's a mom.

So it's like, now you got to look long term a little bit because now she's an influence

on a child.

And there's a positive to looking at both, I would say.

And I know that sounds horrible for the living and trauma your whole life and just not knowing

any better.

But there's, I don't know if that saves the brain and the body and just that overall or

if it actually would be better because there's no way to really find that out.

I don't think.

Yeah, I think.

But the reality is when you give people hope and you make them realize that they're suffering,

you're putting a burden on them, that's the first step on a long journey.

And obviously she, now that she knows that the suffering she wants to make people in

North Korea currently suffer less and that's the admirable goal.

It's what we do to each other is try to like, when you see suffering in the world, you try

to make it better and unmask that's probably in the long arc of history going to make for

a better world.

I'm hopeful at that idea for North Korea.

I'm hopeful for that because you never want to leave individual suffering when you know

that they're actively suffering while you're just living your day to day life in the Western

world just out grocery shopping and you see all this food and you know in the back of

your mind, like that interview fucked me up a little but I won't lie, like I had some

of the girls in my office listen to it, they're just bawling because there's, we're all parents

and there's this idea that not being able to feed our children, that just the idea of

that damages the psyche.

It brings up the pain in the chest, like just the idea of it and so going to the grocery

store for about a week after that.

I just remember standing there looking and just going, fuck, what are we doing?

But then there's that snap reality that comes into play and goes, so how do we fix that?

You got to take on China.

That's never going to happen.

And the reason that's not going to happen, it's happening again.

So Akani comes down through Afghanistan, Chinese are all through Afghanistan, Iran makes the

deal with China for the roadway to get the oil, well that's done in the blink of an eye

without anyone knowing.

There's no way, there's just so much at play with China, they control such a large aspect

of our world, unfortunately that to take and free North Korea, a drastic action would have

to happen and then your people would come in, it would be a mess.

What do you mean your people?

What do you mean your people?

You're Russians.

Did you hear what she said about Russians?

Did you hear what she said?

Russians?

I love Russians.

You know what I didn't love?

The Russian recruiting video that came out, that shit was terrifying.

Did you watch it?

No.

I told you about it and of course you didn't watch it.

I didn't watch it.

Oh, shocker.

The USA put out a recruiting video and then a day or two later Russia put one out and

the recruiting video in the States was an animation of a female soldier with two moms

and she was going to go change the world, right?

Russia came out with one.

It's the character from Rocky essentially and there are guys in the mud and just in

the rain just fucking do and push, I'm just pushing it out, they're just like, they see

their boot, they're just like crushing things and I'm like, and it's all like, and the deep

Russian voice, I'm like, oh my God.

Which one is better, would you say?

Which bothered you more?

What do you mean by bother, specify?

So deception is a funny thing because when you're young and you're choosing to go to

the military or not, it's not like you know, like none of us know what the best trajectory

for a life is.

Right.

For many people go to the military is it really makes them incredible human beings.

Some of the best people in this world, I know are soldiers.

So it's, I'm not, I don't mean like it's somehow bad to go to the military.

I think it's a great choice, but there is something, the honest truth is I just don't

like marketing people.

And so this is essentially a marketing effort.

Yeah, it is a marketing effort.

And so which one do you like as a marketing effort better?

Russia.

Okay.

Yeah, I do.

There you go.

I do.

Because Canada doesn't, you know what our recruiting videos are?

It's like, I love it.

They're the best.

Sorry, A.

Yeah.

Oh, fuck, here we go.

It's starting.

It's started.

Awesome.

So Canada does these ones where it's like that'll have a bunch of like soldiers doing

movements and then they'll like snip it together really quick.

It'll be like a Navy one and then a guy jumping of a plane and then it'll be like an artillery

and then like an armored and it'll be like, join the Canadian forces today.

And like that's like their, their videos.

So it's like very marketable, very palatable to Canadians who don't really want war and

who don't really acknowledge their military in the first place and do everything they

can to make sure that vets don't get any support when they come home.

So they, I can see why that one is acceptable.

What Russia did was meant to be more of an intimidation tactic, in my opinion.

I like that style better though.

I think we need harder, I think we need people to be harder.

I think it's acceptable and okay to say that our soldiers need to have a harder mindset,

a stronger mindset, a better mentality and mental health support going into the service

and a harder body because I know when you go to the US, I've also encountered plenty

of soldiers that are 600 pounds.

What are you going to do?

So we should say that you, when you joined the military, you were in incredible shape

or not maybe incredible, but very good shape.

No, I was in incredible shape.

It was the best shape in my life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

I'm okay with that.

It's okay.

I, you know what?

I used to do setups.

Yeah.

Like no, I would do setups in the morning when I was little until I could see my, like

I always had a six pack because all I did was train.

But like if I couldn't like see it, I would just sit there in morning cartoons and just

do sit ups.

And my mom and dad thought that was like normal acceptable behavior.

So if you had like Instagram back then you'd be a David Goggins, you would be just like

screaming.

Without the cursing.

That cursing started once the military started.

Okay.

Got it.

So I mean, the people should know, is it probably already know that you also competed

in Taekwondo?

Yeah.

Like you were an athlete of all kinds.

They even saw rugby in there.

Yeah.

I was, I was, I was good at rugby.

I played that for seven, six years, I guess you could say total.

I think the worst injury I ever ended up having was I tore my right eyelid off.

We were doing an exhibition game.

I don't do exhibition games.

Well, I don't do like for fun.

Well, I don't do like very competitive.

No, not me.

So you're being funny.

Ah, there it is.

He gets it.

You see, he's not.

He's not.

What I was saying though to you was that we did an exhibition game and the team ahead

was winning.

The team we were playing was winning, which was annoying.

And so there was an opportunity to take out a girl that was going one end of the field

to the other.

And she just kept hitting tries left, right and center.

She was fast.

So I figured if I just aimed her up, like she's a target and I just run full force at

her because she was really, she was a tall individual, but I just, if I do that, I'll

take her out of the knees.

So I did that.

But what that resulted in was she put her tooth through her mouth guard and knocked

out and didn't just, she just stayed there.

But when I stood up, I tore the right eyelid off and it was hanging from the inner corner.

My mom was there because mom was my mom's my biggest fan and she's supportive of everything.

I shouldn't miss a game.

She didn't miss anything.

And I stood up and I kind of turned around and we had already had a girl break her nose

that day.

So she was on the sideline with her nose sideways and just bloody.

My mom was like, I'll take her to the emergency after once the game's over.

And so I turned around and looked at her and she just, she almost vomited on the spot and

I was like, what's wrong?

She's like, don't move your eyelids off.

I'm like, but I can see like I was trying to blink.

But like it was just down so I could just constantly see.

She's like, we're just, we're just going to go to the emergency.

We're just going to go there now.

Was there blood?

Yeah.

There's lots of it.

But I didn't, I couldn't really tell.

Okay.

Were you okay with blood?

Yeah.

That point.

Yeah.

I guess you did taekwondo and all that.

Yeah.

I didn't get knocked out very often.

I didn't really, when I was younger in taekwondo, I was really good.

I only lost a handful of times.

So when I did lose, that was bad.

But I never had like a broken nose or a lot of blood on my feet, like nothing like that

really.

So nothing freaked me out too much.

Was there aggression there or just purely competition over skill?

A mix of both.

I was, this was right after not too long after my coach went to prison for statutory rape.

And that was like how you talk about Park talking about how that was like, she knew

love because of that person.

That person was like a God to me.

And so when that happened, I was just an angry individual from that point on.

So there was competition and aggression mixed in there.

Oh, like it was betrayal that there's somebody that is, was a symbol of love for you, could

also be a very bad person.

I used to eat, sleep and breathe, whatever that man said from four years old on.

I lived with my coaches at a point.

So I could train that much.

I helped look after their daughter.

I was at the club 24 seven.

It just the idea that somebody could do something like that.

Yeah.

That really messed me up.

Where were you on 9 11?

I was 11 and I was in my parents basement in where Ontario, Ontario, Canada.

What did you think of 9 11 at that age from Canada that have an impact on you in terms

of changing the, the level of evil you thought is there in the world today?

Not initially.

I remember it really vividly.

I have a decent memory for certain things.

It seems like stuff like that I'd stick with really well.

I remember watching and I was sitting in the couch and my mom, my mom called my dad because

my, my parents are truck drivers.

My dad was on the road.

I'm not mistaken.

And he would go in and out of cities all the time.

And I think he was on the East coast.

My mom was like a little panicky.

So she, she tried to get ahold of him on the, I think she, the time it was like beepers

and um, yeah, so he would get a beep, he would go to a payphone to call us and he was fine.

And um, I remember my mom being like really upset and I couldn't quite grasp why she was

so upset.

I knew something really bad had happened.

It's when I then saw the second plane go into the tower and I remember her just like

the stereotypical like hand over her mouth and she just felt sick and she just was so

confused and I knew it was bad, but I didn't fully grasp it.

And we went to school that day and they had talked about it briefly.

You could hear the teachers kind of reminiscing about it.

There was a point the, that week that all of a sudden all of the children who were from

a Middle Eastern family were not the school.

I just remember them saying like a lot of people aren't coming to school, but it was,

it was in particular that I think parents were afraid once it got out that it was of

a certain group, they were afraid for their own kids.

And fair enough, I mean, you never know, you don't know.

And I knew it impacted me enough that I did write, I remember I, the school was doing

a memorial for it and I remember they asked, I wrote a poem and a reporter was there and

I read it on air.

That's like, I remember like, it was, it was like, it was a very short one, but I remember

I wanted to do something, but I didn't know why or for, for what reason, I just, I knew

I wanted to do something to honor it, but I didn't, I couldn't grasp why.

You eventually went to Afghanistan.

Yeah.

Did that begin to plant the seed of thinking about conflict in the world?

It's a good question.

I never thought about it that in depth.

I mean, I've done 12 years of therapy.

You think that would have come up, Dr. Passi, but apparently not.

We'll work on it though.

I mean, when did like, when did the idea of war start entering your mind?

Late high school.

I think it was for me.

Um, I was, I finished high school at 17.

I moved away and went to college and went to Algonquin college because I wasn't smart

enough to get into Ottawa U. So I was like, well, Algonquin, she is, I just wanted to

play sports and frankly, I wanted away from my small town that I was living in.

I went through like a bad high school breakup as a kid and you know, that where you think

that's like the love of your life and you just can't bear to be anywhere near anybody.

And so I, I moved away as fast as I possibly could.

And I didn't grasp it still at that point.

Love and heartbreak.

Okay.

Why did you become a soldier?

Why did you want to become a soldier?

My parents told me from an early age, they always figured I would either be a cop.

I would do, they didn't think military, but they thought it would be like a type A personality,

possibly carry a gun situation.

And um, I had never hunted before.

We never had guns in our house.

I was never exposed to weapons of any kind.

If anything, it was, it was the opposite.

We just, all the hunters on the property, like all the deer would come to our property

and all the hunters would be, no, I'm not, my mom would put salt looks out so that they

wouldn't get killed.

Your property was the safe space for the deer.

Yeah.

So they had guns of forest and they just, we had two turkeys that used to walk up and

down the driveway every day.

We had bears in there and nobody bothered them.

And so there was no aspect of like, I want to go kill shit.

That was not like a thing.

I had no idea.

I wanted to take anybody off the face of the earth or anything.

I went to school and because I'm a history person, I, my parents has always, always made

it really important that remembrance day is the thing in our life.

So that's veterans day for you.

So it's November 11th and it's, you go, you honor.

I don't care if you don't want to go, I don't care if it's raining, you go.

And so I went to the remembrance day ceremony in Ottawa that year, which was, it's our capital,

which is, yeah, it's our capital and it's really small.

And so I went, but I took the bus and I was on the bus back to Algonquin and I met a lady

who was like a World War II vet, really old lady.

She had an Air Force uniform on and just like this row of medals.

And I mean, I think you can tell by our limited to extreme interactions we've had over the

short period of time.

I'm curious and I'll just ask you.

And so I just got up and talked to her and just started talking to her.

And she didn't say like, I don't remember exactly her words, but she'd served.

She was one of the first females to fly and, you know, all, all of these kinds of things

that stuck in my head and we just kind of kept talking and I missed my stop.

And then I finished talking to her and I got back on the bus and went back to the college

and walked into my, uh, my small apartment where I had two roommates, these two guys

I went to high school with one of them I went to high school with one was from out of town

and I just didn't like what I was.

I wasn't happy.

I wasn't doing what I wanted to do.

And I didn't know what I wanted to do truthfully.

Something just said, why don't you join the army?

Like in myself, my, my self talk was like, let's just join the military.

Let's do it.

Are you in general?

Some of me, it just falls the gut.

Like when your heart tells you something, you go with it.

For the most part, because I figured out at least now I figured out what parts I could,

like what feeling I can trust and which one I can't, which ones anxiety versus which ones

my actual intuition talking.

So why did you sign up to be an artillery gunner?

Because they wouldn't let me be infantry.

I mean, why, why would you want to be infantry?

I mean, this, you're, you're, you're, you're naming a lot of dangerous activities.

Yeah.

But that wasn't a thought in my mind at the time.

My idea was if I was going to do this and I was going to put myself through the bullshit

and the training and all of the hell and the pushups and the things I screamed at, I wanted

to do something that I know was actually going to be affecting something.

And what I knew was making change or affecting or on the front lines was infantry, artillery

or armored.

So I was like, one of those.

Can you explain the difference, infantry, artillery and armored?

Do you want like the layman's term or do you want me to actually explain, explain?

Well, listen to your conversation with Jaco, especially I love how you get into details.

Okay.

So let's detail this one.

Okay.

So infantry is your frontline door kicking, you know, blasting the door open, running

and get the fuck on the ground just that they're the guys that, you know, the double tap you

in the face and they show up in the middle of the night and put a barrel in your head.

Like those are the guys that are sleeping in the trenches that are eating MREs who are

being shot at who are being blown up, who are doing the dirty work and not sleeping and

carrying the hundred pound pack and, and are side by side with your buddies in the trenches.

I wanted that, that they said it was too small for that.

You were sorry to interrupt, you were too small under a hundred pounds?

At the time I was about 103 and I'm, I'm five foot like on a, if you roll my back out like

I really try, I'm five foot.

At the time though, I think my, my license said 411.

So you were too small for infantry?

Yeah.

They just like, there was no mandate at which they said, you can't be, but they said, you

know, we don't want to put you through training that you're going to fail out of and then

have to recourse you and then find a new job for you.

And we, they want to try to, if this is what you're going in for, they want to have you

follow through that path.

So then there was armored, which are your tanks.

So that's your movie like fury where your tank battles in, which we don't really do anymore,

but you're rolling around in tanks, you got guys in the back or you're a driver or you're

a turret gunner, which I would have enjoyed, but the idea of being in a closed metal box

or something about it made me panic.

So I was like, maybe not for me.

Oh, there's of course power to that kind of big gun.

Well, that's why I went for the bigger one.

Okay.

By the way, I think Russia leads the world in number of tanks.

They're still, it's very like, what is it, alpha demonstration of like four sick, look,

we have largest number of tanks.

You know what takes tanks out though?

What?

Some gasoline, some old batteries and a wire.

Yeah.

But tanks still look badass.

They look great, but they don't last.

But so much of the military, like we said with the recruiting videos, it's a display

of power versus the actual implementation of power.

Fair.

Okay.

Artillery.

So I'm doing my best here.

Yeah.

I don't even know what double tap means, which you said earlier.

So it's double tap is like two shots to the face.

Why two?

To be sure.

Okay.

All right.

You guys, tax payers pay for the ammo.

It's fine.

So, but you don't want to do three because it's wasting the ammo.

Well, that's now that's a waste.

Okay.

Double tap the face.

There's so much awesome terminology here or gruesome terminology, depending on your

perspective.

Okay.

So artillery.

Yeah.

So that's the hand of God.

Sorry.

No, I, that's, that's intensely romanticized version, but okay, artillery, the hand of

God.

Because it will reach out and touch you from wherever we want.

It's like, it's like F, F 18 pilots or bombers, they'll, you won't know they're there until

they're there.

And so for artillery, I really honestly didn't think artillery would be a fit for me.

I didn't know much about it.

They were just like, these are what you couldn't pick from.

And I was like, I'll go here.

So in World War II, they used much closer artillery.

So it's the, we were called the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery because the queen made us

Royal Canadian artillery.

And we, we shoot these rounds when you're in training, you shoot smaller, smaller ammunition.

They're about 40 pounds.

There they go.

I'm going to get this wrong, 20 K, 20 kilometers, so whatever that is in your mile things.

And they have a casing on them and they're much easier.

They're easier to handle.

The guns are smaller.

You need less people for them.

They're basically what you train on nowadays.

It's not what we use overseas.

What we use overseas, now those things are beautiful.

Those are just a sheer work of the engineering behind them just makes my heart skip a beat.

Yeah.

The engineering of modern guns is amazing.

So are we talking about machine guns here?

So like fully automatic?

No, you're talking about artillery guns.

So what it is, it's a one five five millimeter howitzer that shoots up to up to 40 kilometers

accurately, 45 unrecorded and it shoots a hundred pound round.

Oh, okay.

So that, but there is still precision.

Accurate as hell.

Accurate.

Okay.

So how, at which stage of the warfare do they come in?

Are they saving you?

Like say a bunch of people get rated, a bunch of the infantry get rated and then the artillery

saves them or are they the first line of attack or where are they, where is the artillery

going?

Like the hand of God presumes they're helping.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's it.

So depending on the operation or whomever is running it or how they want it done, sometimes

if they just know there's targets, they'll use us, you know, high value targets.

So we have this round, it's called the X caliber round.

It costs about half a million dollars per round.

It comes in a special tube that is like sealed and locked and you have to get permission

from Ottawa to shoot it and it's only used for VIP targets.

So like we have VIP for everyone and it will, it's GPS guided, it's rocker propelled and

when you fire it, it will, if this is a wall and somebody's standing on this side of it

will hit you right there.

We won't touch that wall.

It will hit you pinpoint.

It'll go right through whatever concrete, whatever and then it will destroy.

So it's basically the same thing as being a sniper, but with a much more damaging weapon.

We don't use that round often.

I think it's only been used a handful of times max in Afghanistan that I'm aware of.

And I haven't, I wasn't there from 2009 until 21, but I know people that still deployed

in that, in those units and I don't know that it was used very often.

But the regular round, so there's HE, there's loom, so HE is high explosive.

There's loom, you shoot that, it explodes in the sky, it lights up the sky for the infantry

below and then there's shrapnel rounds that will explode in the sky and then shrapnel

just rains down hell on you.

HE is what you use normally in my, I'm trying to say this right because I know people squawked

at me about some of the stuff on Jocko, so I'm trying to be very accurate.

In my experience, we used HE rounds to wipe people off the face of the earth when the

infantry needed us.

So we would get a call at any time and there's always two guns together.

So you never, you never go solo gun ever.

If you are, it's sketchy and there's bad shits happening.

Can you explain that so there's two people, two guns?

No, two guns with each gun troop.

So each gun troop has five to seven people running a gun at all times.

Oh wow, okay.

It takes a lot of people to run one of those.

How much electronics is there?

The GPS, like the computer system that's on it itself, I never ran that much, but it

is completely technologically, it's GPS guided.

All you have to do is literally type in the coordinates, then you've got the two big,

there's a technical word for it, but basically wheels.

And one does the trajectory, you know, you do your, and you're just kind of doing this

and you're watching the, watching it.

And once you hit your target, that's, you know, it'll tell you, that's where you need

to hit.

Do you know if there's any like AI stuff, like computer vision, like where there's cameras

and they help you target using like all different kinds of cameras to see through, like the fog,

all those kinds of things.

No, we use the FU, which are forward observation officers, which are an artillery individual,

that is embedded with an infantry unit.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

They call from the front, give us their grid coordinates and basically say, like, don't

drop this on us.

Got it.

So, well, you know what not to shoot, which parts not to shoot.

Correct.

And then there was no one moves.

Don't move.

Stay still.

But you can hear it coming.

Yeah.

But you can't hear it until it's too close.

So like when I went, sorry, go ahead, you were going to say something.

No, I was going to say, what's the experience on the other?

Like what does it feel like to be maybe infantry or underneath it underneath the artillery?

Well, I, I had the rare opportunity to do that and I have a video I'll show you after.

It's terrifying because I know that people that were shooting it and I know them personally

and I know what they're like as humans.

And for the most part, they're dialed, but you get the odd duck where you're like, I've

seen people have an ND, which is a negligent discharge.

You basically get charged for it, you get a lot of trouble because you can blow people

up and it like accidents happen.

And so I know accidents can happen in stressful situations.

And when I was with the Brits, we had to call Danger Close Artillery.

And when it goes over top of you, it sounds like thunder and lightning.

So you fire it and it's not the stereotype that you hear in World War II where it kind

of like that, it's more of like a crackle.

And then you just hear like a whiz and it just goes everywhere.

It's loud.

It shakes the ground.

It shakes you.

You feel it.

Okay.

Okay.

Is there some more words you can put to like the experience of what it's like to be in

the heat of, of, of battle there?

So what is, is there literally, is it hot?

Is it talking about being under it or shooting it?

Under it.

Oh yeah.

It 55 degree heat.

You know that you're waiting for it to be called.

You feel an overwhelming excitement to start because for me, I'd never been under it.

So I was like, okay, I had my camera ready.

Like I was a kid at a candy store and I'm like, I want to watch this happen.

And once you hear the crackle, I got really fearful.

My anxiety kicked up significantly.

I got to the point where I got numb.

Like I was, my nerves were on overdrive so much that like my body would go like numb.

Like I could move, but like my nerves were numb, if that makes sense.

What, what were the nerves like?

And we're talking about fear or is it just anxious, excitement?

Anxious excitement, hopeful that they wouldn't blow it up on us.

And there was this, there was this excitement that's hard to describe because you don't

want to be excited that you're dropping bombs on people, but when you just saw their faces

and they're shooting at you, there's this overwhelming feeling of got you, motherfucker.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we'll talk about that because that's such a difficult thing about wars.

You forget that other human beings, because those other human beings are doing really

bad things to you.

And so the very basic anger takes over, hate can take over, and then also just the excitement

of almost like video game like, you know, aspect of war, like sport, it's like sport

that all of those elements are all baked in and it's, it's hard to be philosophical in

that situation.

It seems like

I've never played video games, so I can't compare it to that, but like from, from like

a sports perspective.

Yeah.

I could, I could argue that.

Like I felt like we won there for a second and it's, it's not just like a heat from

outside, it's like this radiation within you that is something I've never felt since.

You just to take a small step back to the weapons training.

What kind of guns did you train on?

Because you also mentioned a rocket launcher.

I love Carl Grassoff's.

What are those?

What are those?

Carl G.

Carl G's.

What's that?

What's, what's it like?

My only experience with the rocket launch is from the movie Commando with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Oh yeah.

And we've all discussed.

I haven't seen that yet and I've heard about it and people have made me tell, yeah, I know.

I feel like you haven't seen a single movie that's relevant to war military because every

time anyone brings it up, you haven't seen it.

I don't have time to watch movies, Lex.

Platoon.

You haven't seen platoon, which is.

You're the scientist.

How do you have the time?

I'm not a scientist.

I just play one on TV.

Okay.

Sure.

So what, can you talk about the rocket launcher and maybe any other.

Well, both engineering actually, to me, those guns are very interesting from an engineering

perspective too.

Well, they should be.

They're fascinating when you take them apart and you see how small the parts get down to

and how, how necessary every single little piece is to make that thing run.

And even without the tiniest little BB smaller than a piece on there and artillery gun might

not run.

So we were trained on Carl G's and called M72s, which are disposable rocket launchers

all back up.

These are around, I don't know the exact millimeter of the round.

It's been a while since I shot them.

We only did those in training, but essentially it takes, most people, one person can fire

it, you know, effectively hold it and fire it.

It takes another person to load it.

So you put it onto your shoulder and in ways I would, I don't know, 30 pounds, 40 pounds.

Oh wow.

Can't remember.

It's been a minute.

It's been a minute.

One person can carry it.

Oh yeah.

Okay.

So I don't know, it just seems like a rocket launcher is a pretty intense kind of device

that just...

It for sure is.

I mean, it's the diameter, I can't even tell you the diameter, they're about that big.

I mean...

And it goes on your shoulder.

It goes on your shoulder and then it has a little sight that pops out.

That's almost like plastic like, which is kind of funny because it reminds me of like

the little green army men.

I just felt so flimsy to me.

I was like, this is hilarious.

And then another person stands behind you and opens the hatch.

And so there's this, there's these two levers and you just kind of open it.

And then the back end, which is flared, so it's just a tube and then it's flared.

That will open it and drop down and you load around into that and then you load it back

up.

Got it.

And you're never supposed to stand behind it because the blast behind it will kill you.

It's...

Yeah.

But in my case, when I fired it, it was me and another individual, I want to say, it

wasn't Sarah Pellegrine, but it was another girl that was smaller and the person is supposed

to wrap around your waist and tuck low and hold your stability.

And we were just aiming at tanks that day and they were just concrete heads.

So they would just either, they would hit and bounce off or whatever.

And so when my sergeant saw that, he just kind of looked at both of us and was like,

no, I'm just going to... and he got real low and just like wrapped both of us.

And then we'd fire it and it feels like you're getting punched in the side of the head on

repeat by Jocko.

Yeah.

You lose all your hearing, you just like, it's not comes out of your nose and you're

just kind of discombobulated for a minute.

It's a real mind fuck.

Is there any other kind of guns that at that time, because you were new to this, you haven't

shot guns when you were younger that were really impressive to you in the training process?

All of them because I've never fired a weapon.

So we had the C7s, which are like your M16s, I believe, the long barrel.

The cute thing about those is when I have that slung, my barrel drags on the ground.

So that's fun.

And they shoot, you know, your 7, 6, 2 or your 5, 5, 6 round.

I loved that.

I preferred the C8, which was a short barrel, which is what the SF guys use.

Not because it's cooler looking, which it obviously is, but because it was functional

for my body height and it didn't drag on the ground when I ran.

I loved those, they're your personal weapon.

Being an artillery gunner, if you're not an officer, at least in our unit, you didn't

get a side piece.

I didn't have a slide piece, Lex.

So I never had a handgun of any type.

I fired those in training.

You can't get over that side piece comment.

Look at you.

I was going to say, I know what a side piece is.

You don't have to explain to me.

But you're single.

So how do you even have a side piece if you don't have a main piece?

The joke would be the fact that we have a total misunderstanding with side pieces.

Okay, great.

You didn't have a side piece as a non officer.

Right.

So I never fired those much.

We did grenades in training.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, grenades are fun.

I love grenades.

I have a massive one tattooed on me.

I have them all over my office.

How does a grenade work?

There's the spoon and the pin.

So the pin holds the spoon in place.

When you pull that pin, the firing mechanism inside, as long as that the spoon is up against

it, it won't fire.

As soon as that spoon goes, I believe it causes a reaction on the inside and you've got about

five seconds to check it.

You'd be better to ask that question too.

I don't want me to get those off go on.

No, you're not.

But there's something about a grenade because you're essentially committing suicide unless

you get rid of the thing.

There's something like...

Or if you're unlucky and it just goes off when you pull the pin, which has happened to tons

of people.

So it just feels like a very kind of, it's a dangerous leap into the abyss every time

you use the thing because when you shoot a gun, the gun is much less likely to malfunction

in terms of all the possible ways to go wrong.

It just seems like grenade is like...

Primitive almost.

Yeah, it's primitive.

It's also real in the way that a bar fight is being punched in the face is real.

It's like, you're here with a weapon of destruction, it's just you and the thing and you have to

get rid of it.

I don't know.

Is that terrifying to use?

Do people still use grenades in warfare?

Oh yeah.

Yeah, those are fantastic.

The Taliban were throwing them over the wall at the airport in Kabul.

People use them all the time because when you're in Afghanistan, if you're in a rural

area, you're going from village to village and they're mud hut walls.

You're tall, but you're walking through corridors and stuff, all you got to lob one of those.

It's going to take the whole unit out that just walked by.

They're accurate if you're close enough and they're effective if you're close enough.

I love them though.

I think they're fascinating to me because there's such a tiny little thing with such

devastation.

Yeah.

They just can cause such devastation.

But for me, when I had them, some of the Canadians would make fun of me because when

I did go outside the way with the British, I had two right here.

I remember I put a piece of tape over the spoons because in my mind, I could picture

myself searching someone and grabbing me and pulling that.

That would be me.

That would have been like, yep, if anyone that was going to happen to, it was her for

sure.

So you were deployed to Afghanistan in 2009.

Like we said, you were in great, no, perfect physical shape.

Fucking epic shape.

Epic shape six back or I mean, yeah, okay.

So you could do pull a lot of pull ups and push ups and yeah, okay.

And well trained, would you say where you're already what like, no, no, no, I'll argue

that point till I'm blue in the face.

I spoke to recently, I actually spoke to my surgeon.

He's not a surgeon anymore, but Sergeant Mark LeBlanc, he's in Africa right now in a deployment

he gave me a call the other day and I remember talking to him about this and it's frustrating

because we were at an active war.

We were involved in an active war where we, the units that I were in were tagged red,

which meant they needed people.

So when you need people, things go quick.

Whether or not that's right.

I mean, you could argue that's the similar thing to what's happening in the world right

now.

We needed a vaccine.

We got a vaccine.

Is it the best it could be?

Could it be better?

Could it do more things?

Sure, probably, but with the time that we had, we did the best that we could.

That's my logic on that.

For me, I joined the military in November of 2007.

I was in basic training in January of 2008.

I was graduated basic SQ, which is all your weapons training, your DP one, which is your

trade specific training.

So whatever trade you're going to go into, whether it's infantry, armored, artillery,

medic, whatever, that's your DP one.

It's called different things in different units.

And then I got posted to my unit in September.

So January to September, I had done all my training and I'm an English speaking individual.

I got posted to a French unit that only speaks French and had to learn all of the weapon systems.

Everything again that I just learned in that short timeframe in French.

This part of your story that you're telling this to Jaco, one way to say it is very impressive

that you had to learn all of this in French.

So there's also the camaraderie, the social aspect of it, which is difficult probably.

It didn't have any.

Yeah, it didn't have any.

But it also would make you a more effective soldier to be socially for that cohesion

to be there, right?

But also just understanding the basic terminology.

Correct.

The right way to say something on the radio, the right way to run a gun, the right way

to...

Because you got to move with those guns.

If you've got seven people, it's really magical.

I'll send you a video.

When we did some live fire in workup training in Texas before we left, we did a competition

between the other gun to see who could fire 10 rounds faster.

It is truly beautiful to watch an artillery unit fire a gun because it's like a symphony.

And has their parts and everyone knows and everyone's yelling, but they know why they're

yelling and everyone, this guy's got to do this in order for this guy to load the round.

It's just, it's beautiful.

It really is.

It is gorgeous to watch.

I miss it deeply.

Is there, by the way, for a gun, is there like one person responsible for the aim or like

the specification of the location and somebody else that pulls it?

A lanyard?

Is that the lanyard?

Is there a button?

It's better than a button.

You'll like it.

I'll tell you in a second.

There's your sergeant in charge and then they have their two IC and so the comms come in

to the sergeant and the sergeant is the, or your master bombardier, Bombardier chef.

Sorry, what?

Bombardier chef?

Bombardier chef.

Bombardier chef.

Bombardier chef.

Oh, that's a French.

Master bombardier.

Yeah.

So it goes like private, in the north, like in an infantry or in a regular unit, it's like

private corporal, master corporal sergeant.

In artillery, it goes gunner, bombardier, master bombardier, sergeant, and off like that.

So you have two people, but the serge is like, you don't move till he says move, you don't

fire till he says fire, like he's your guy, he'll give you the coordinates, he'll feed

him to the guy that's doing the GPS, that portion, I really never did it much.

I wasn't tall enough to see it.

Like legitimately, the way, how high it is up on the gun, like it was, I couldn't see

clearly enough, it was not good.

So obviously you have a big personality, you're a strong person.

You don't say.

And you have a big hat currently.

I always wear a hat, Lex.

Okay.

It seems like your height and your size was a factor.

Oh, for sure.

How were you able to step up in all those moments and how difficult was it?

I don't know that I'd realize it was difficult while I was doing it because that's just the

way it's been.

I've always been the short person.

That's life, nothing I can do to fix that.

So there was no point, when am I going to whine about it, I'm going to break my femurs

and insert things to make me grow a little bit, maybe, maybe since you're in robotics,

you can figure that out.

That's your task now.

Make me be five foot three, that'd be great.

For artillery, really what it came down to was the unit, when I got there, there was

only a couple people who spoke any sort of English and my sergeant was not one of them.

But once he started to get to know me a little bit, the best that he could, he started to

put effort into making sure I could lift the rounds, make sure my capacity to do my job

was there.

And so he took me under his wing in that aspect.

So he would take me to the gym with him and he would show me exercises that would specifically

help me load the rounds.

So pick the round up from the ground, pick it up like a trick to put your knee under

it, use your legs, instead of just pick it up, use your back, pull your back out.

He would work on that.

And then depending on the position I was running the gun in, if I was running the side that

had the charge bags, I'll explain that in a second.

But if I was running the side that had the charge bags, I could step up onto the gun.

And if I leaned inward enough with my right hand with the charge and I kind of kicked

off, I could kind of jump and shove it up the tube.

Got it.

Almost enough.

Yeah.

If I was running the lanyard, which is the thing that makes it go boom, it's really easy.

It's a long rope.

You hook it on and you put it, your right hand on your hip and on your left and you hold

it there and you just stare at your sergeant like this and you just wait for him to yell

fire.

And he points at you when he does it.

And when you do it, you turn your whole body with it.

And when you do that, it alleviates a misfire, essentially, because if you just pull it sometimes

that's not enough.

You got to really give it your whole body into it.

And so he would train me on how to do things differently so that I could do them effectively.

And I wasn't a ship pump.

A what?

So ship pump is a term that we use in Canada to call somebody useless.

A ship pump is a useless soldier who is just, you're there and that's the ship pump.

And so we all just deal with it, but somehow they're still there.

Yeah.

What were we talking about?

The lanyard?

Okay.

Yeah.

We were talking about the artillery guns.

So those things though, what you would find fascinating is just how they break down when

you have to take one of those apart.

I think your mind would really find it fascinating how a breach comes apart all the way down

to ball bearing size.

And there's a way to just make that gun complete ineffective and all you have to do when you're

on the charge side, there's a magazine that's a long linear magazine and it holds like 15

little rounds.

If you just take that thing out, nothing's not firing.

How many people does it take to move that?

How easy is it just to move that thing?

To move a triple seven?

Triple seven.

I like it.

That's what they're called.

M triple seven.

Is a lot of the terminology crossover the same in English and French?

Okay.

I mean, M triple seven does because it's an obvious, how it's, sir, I'm sure has a separate

word, but like if you're running it, you're running it in French.

So like when I'd be running the, when I'm doing the charge bags and I'm doing, I'm doing,

you know, I'm loading everything and I'm getting that ready and that's my position that day.

I'm also controlling the breach.

So like how it opens, how it closes when it locks.

And so, but you have to yell that as you do it.

So you're yelling like, My Lib, Kolas, Orvet, like you have to yell all these things.

You have to learn them though.

And so for a long time it's, it's, it's, it was a little frustrating.

I won't lie.

It was really exciting.

I took a lot of French, but I forgot all of it, but I think it's a beautiful, romantic

language.

It's a good language.

If it's from Quebec, it's a.

Yeah.

That's true.

It's a good language to fall in love with.

Not as good as Russian, but I mean, English is, all right.

I mean, Russian, really, is that like a love language?

It is to me.

I mean, because you're Russian, but like if somebody walked up to me was like, Hey, Kelsey,

I like you.

I'd be like, Oh God, he's going to put me in a camp.

That's because you don't understand love at Kelsey.

I don't.

We'll talk about that.

Okay.

How many people does it take to move them triple seven?

It depends.

If you're moving it by ground, you're moving it on a truck and when you're moving it on

a truck, you're hooking the back of it onto, you're hooking the front of the barrel onto

one of those big transport looking trucks that has those cargo tents that's got soldiers

in it.

You don't want to ever move an M triple seven by that way if you don't have to the barrels

worth a million dollars.

Wow.

Okay.

So this is like a serious piece of equipment.

You don't want to move them.

Okay.

When we got to Kandahar, we were there for a couple of days.

We got flown out to the fall we were going to be at for an observation base.

Kandahar is the safe space or was the major base in Afghanistan that we were at.

There's things like Tim Hortons there.

There's Canada house, there's a British side, an American side, a Canadian side and that's

where you see all the different countries in the world kind of come together.

You would see Italians, you would see Germans, you would see French, you would see all these

different uniforms and you never know who to salute because you don't know what each

thing means.

It doesn't feel like a war zone.

No.

Oh God, no.

There's a boardwalk.

There's hockey there like floor hockey because Canada had to have that.

There's a Tim Hortons a subway, a Pizza Hut, a PX.

I think there's a restaurant there somewhere, but I never, I didn't get to go, you know,

stuff like that.

There's gyms.

You can run around it.

You feel fairly safe.

You always have a weapon on you, but you can, you know, live your life.

When you get out to the fob, the guns are already there.

So those M777s get lifted by a Chinook.

Normally, if they're going by air, they go by Chinook because they're heavy as hell.

And Chinooks can hook them under the bottom and they fly them and then they'll drop them

down.

They have wheels on them, but you don't need them if you're going to leave it in place.

Got it.

And you're getting information about IEDs.

You're getting a land, a lay of the land as to what's been going on in the country for

the past six months.

And this, you know, nothing, you're just like, this is your first time you're getting deployed.

So what was your deployment like?

Can you tell the story of your deployment to Afghanistan?

Like the whole deployment?

Getting like actual deploying, not the deployment itself.

What's the difference between the two?

Well, actually getting ready to deploy is a little different.

So I mean, the emotional buildup to it and some of the memorable things that kind of,

you remember from that experience, both on the excitement, I get to see battle, I get

to be part of this and the fear and also like being surprised like with the Tim Hortons

and all those kinds of things.

So like the lead up before everything hit the fan.

Okay.

Cool.

So you're such a fascinating person, but yes, something like that.

I've been called many things that start with the letter F.

Yeah.

No, I don't know.

I don't know many words with the F. Okay.

So with the buildup, so the deployment, so for the buildup for the deployment, I was

in Quebec and my unit was deploying from Quebec.

And at that time, you kind of get your marching orders.

You know, you're deploying.

I knew I was deploying before I even graduated.

That's how much they needed people.

So once I did all that training on graduation parade day, a couple men from Quebec in uniforms

came over and said, you, you, you and you are all being posted to back yet today and

you're going to deploy with us in April.

So that's how I found it.

I was deploying.

Why was there such a need for troops in August then is that, is that was a well known thing

that there's a scaling up of troops and 2007 on Canada really started taking a combat

role before it was very much more a UN type deal where we're doing what we normally do

in most wars where we just, we wear blue and we don't shoot anyone.

And so we're there to help.

And so they were really, they were scaling up.

And there wasn't a lot of people in those trades initially, I think when the war kind

of started.

So Canada really started to scale.

And so when I got to Quebec, we've kind of found, oh yeah, we're deploying.

And it was a weird situation because I've never actually been at a unit on a non deployable

unit.

So I don't know what they do day to day.

That's different from what I did.

I just know what I did.

So we would do things like in the morning, we would get up and we would meet for PT at

5am.

And that would include going for a 10k run or playing ball hockey for a few hours in

the gym or lifting weights together or, you know, just going on a Rock March, a long Rock

March should just stuff like that.

You would have a shower, you would meet, and then you would just sit around the regiment.

And you would, if there was busy work, you'd mop the floors, you would clean weapons.

There wasn't a whole lot until there was a whole lot to do.

We did a lot for a while.

And then we went away on workup training to Texas for a week.

We came down here and we did live fire with our other troop that was going to be with

us.

So Alpha had two guns and two guns has two groups of people.

And so we all would go down to Texas and we did live fire here for a week and I ended

up getting gastro, which was awesome.

So thanks for that.

Apparently there was, there were having water problems and sanitary problems.

So everyone was getting it on the base.

Okay.

So it just makes your life way harder.

I didn't get it towards the end till towards the end.

So that was fortunate.

So we would fire live fire.

We would go out to the middle of nowhere.

The guns would be there.

And we would get, offload a truck of rounds and we would do live fire and we would practice,

just constant practice.

What's that saying?

Perfect practice makes perfect.

Yeah.

So this is a sensory, like a shooting range for artillery.

For long range.

So what does practice look like?

So you roll up in your trucks and you're, you know, you've got each group of people.

You've got two trucks and then you've got like a medic vehicle and then you've got like

an officer.

Then you've got like a medic vehicle and then you've got like an officer vehicle and a comms

vehicle and you, you go to your perspective guns and then you offload your ammo and then

you basically wait for them to send you like a, a fire mission.

Wow.

Get that together.

They would call, they would say, and miss yall sit.

So it'd be a fire mission.

So we'd wait for that.

And once we got that, then you all run like a bunch of scattered rats to the gun.

Like it's like the greatest thing you've ever seen.

And then you just wait, you wait for the call for the sergeants to say, and then you'll

hear it.

Cause it's not headphones.

You can hear it on a speaker and it'd be like, I'm not going to do in French.

Don't ask.

It'd be like, um, uh, so and so 10 rounds, um, fire when ready and then you would get

your rounds ready and everyone would have them ready and would be in their perspective,

um, respective positions and then you would wait and then they would say fire when ready

and as soon as they say fire when ready, that means just start going, just start.

And then that's when the magic starts.

You go like the loop, like you shoot one or whatever.

There's a reloading process.

Yeah.

There's a loop.

So what you would do, you get the fire mission and you would find out the rounds.

The two I see would be standing by the rounds and it was his job to make sure the amount

of rounds that was told would be the only rounds that would go down range.

And so he'd stand there and on each round, depending on the type of round is a fuse,

which gets screwed on to the top of the round.

So they're about that big and it's just a point.

And then you would have to put it on, give it a spin.

And depending if it was a time release, you had a little, um, what do you call it?

You get those at Ikea when you have to build everything.

Alan Allen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

But like a big one or something?

No, just a little one because it's a tiny little hole and you just got to click it to

where it's supposed to go.

And it depended on what the call was for and it was a timer.

When you said like wheel, you mean like a little thing then is that, is that what we're

talking about?

No, I'm talking about the round itself.

So you would put a fuse on top of the round.

So you would unload the ammo and then you would put fuses on them and the fuses are

on the top and they're like a little like a ice cream topper kind of thing.

And you would spin those on.

Oh, okay.

And then once they're on, depending if it's a time release or not, you would take this

little thing and you would move it the top and that would, it's almost like a little

timer.

Cool.

Yeah.

Depended.

So you're assembling a bullet?

Essentially.

A very big one that goes up to my waist.

Cool.

Yeah.

This is very cool.

And you're a fascinating person.

Okay.

So just that you still, even years later, have all this in your memory in some way.

It's not all perfectly accurate and that's what irritates me though is because it bothers

me when I can't remember things accurately, but I have a lot of, I've had a lot of memory

issues and problems after like having too many hits to the head and.

This is from earlier in childhood or later?

Both.

Okay.

Both.

The military did not help it.

Where was the hits in the head in the military?

Well, when you have a car, it'll go stuff beside your face like this and it shoots around.

It gives you a concussive blast.

Also there's new research being done.

I'll find out exactly what it is, but there's new research that's being done that shows

that if you're an artillery gunner and you stand within a certain range of that gun,

you get the same amount of concussive blasts and there's a range.

I had no idea, but you feel it when it goes off.

Like it hurt, your whole body feels it.

Your mind is fascinating because it's like literally the opposite of mine.

One you're able to speak very quickly, very clearly, very sharply.

No, what?

I talk too fast and I'm really loud because of my hearing.

No, that's perfect.

I mean, I admire that very much.

I can't do any of that.

And you listen extremely well and you're extremely attentive and you have a good memory.

So anyway, it's just fun, fun to watch you at, I can tell you were a great soldier and

just all different aspects of it.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

But what the heck were we talking about?

Build up to the deployment.

How did we get to Texas?

Because that was part of the build up to my deployment.

And Lifi, you got to, did I feel good?

Oh, yeah.

It's so good.

What's the best part about shooting artillery?

What's the thing that feels good?

Which part?

Power.

Well, the feeling of power.

Gun is the best moment of, the highest moment of the feeling of power.

Is it the whole process that you love or is there like when you actually shoot it?

It's symbiotic.

It's a beautiful thing to watch.

To know that a gun can fire and it takes kind of a dance to make it work.

There's something about that to me that just got my heart racing.

When you actually shoot the round and you see it go and you hear it, it's unlike you

can't describe.

You know, I've never felt another feeling.

I've also never been in like an F18 or an F16 or like any, I've never been in anything

like that.

And I've, you know, I've never, trying to think of something else that'd be comparable.

I've never been in like a Formula One car.

Those are the only things I can picture being that much for me because to shoot one of those

and to know that you've done your job right means that you've helped.

And that to me was really what it did it for me.

When you hear your sergeant say, mission accomplished, target hit, tired, acquired,

then you're like, that's a good feeling.

That's the stuff.

Quick pause.

Take a break, Lex.

Okay.

So live fire in Texas, we're in Texas by the way.

Fort Worth or Fort Hood, one of them.

Okay.

So like it's, what is that close to a big major city?

Do you remember visiting a city?

Oh God, no.

We fly right into the tarmac and they're like, don't touch the snakes.

And then they send you out to the field.

Got it.

Those are the only instructions.

No, really.

We went into a classroom and they're like, these are the animals that are in the wildlife

in Texas.

If you see any of them, do not approach, do not go pee outside.

Do not squat down.

It is snake season people.

And I was like pee and squat down.

Why Texas and from like Canada, is it a simulation of Afghanistan?

Yes.

Okay.

So that's, okay.

So you're getting, and that's the way the live fire was seen in artillery is like you're

trying to simulate certain aspects of what you might actually see in Afghanistan.

I would think so.

I mean, we, it looks like it's hot like it, you're out in the middle of nowhere.

Very similar terrain.

That's the first time we started to get to wear our tan boots and our tan, like our

combat tan stuff before you couldn't wear that.

So it gave us an opportunity to kind of break in, break in how we were going to be doing

this, what it was going to look like, how the guns were going to work and all of those

lovely things.

How do you go from there to being deployed?

What was the next part of the journey?

So then we go to Wainwright, Alberta, often called or referenced as Waincock, because

it sucks so bad.

It is a massive open space in Alberta, which most of Alberta is, and it's outside of a

small town called Wainwright.

And it is a field X training area for all of the Canadian military.

And it's where you do live fire, but you also do workup training.

So you go out there for a month or two, I think it is.

I don't remember the exact time we were there because it was just, you sleep in a tent, you're

in your cot, you're in like full mission mode.

And you go outside and we did this operation called Operation Maple Leaf, I think it was.

And you put on these little suits, they have haptic, you can feel when you're shot.

And then there's a little camera, sorry, screen in the front of it, and it's got button options.

And so it's to mimic if you get shot, it'll say gunshot wound, and then you have to choose,

okay, do I do this or do I do this?

And depending on your response, person dies or lives.

And they have other people who aren't on a rotation for deployment come and act as the

Taliban and attack you in the middle of the night.

Is there a good understanding of the tactics that the Taliban used to attack?

I mean, this may be fast forwards to our conversation a little bit, but is there predictable strategies

on the other side that are being used in Afghanistan?

By the Taliban?

By the Taliban?

Oh, 100%.

Like suicide bombers, vehicle born IEDs, their standard way to hit people really was IEDs

and vehicle born IEDs, suicide bombers, they'd put like backpacks full of an IED and then

put like toys around it and then just be like, so they will conceal it certain ways and probably

use civilians.

Oh, 100%.

Yeah.

And women were a great way to get close to the soldiers because women seem nonthreatening.

When you see a burqa walk up to you, you're not expecting an AK47 to roll out of that

and then, or, you know, but there are great ways to get close.

Okay.

So, Wayne something?

Waincock?

No, that's not how, Wayne Wright, let's go to Alberta.

Okay.

I mean, we don't have to go to Alberta, no one wants to.

No, let's, in our minds, in our imagination, so, okay, so that's getting you closer to

Afghanistan.

Right.

What was that like?

I mean, are you getting anxious at this point?

Is there a buildup?

What are you thinking?

Or is this just all part of the training?

For me, it was more part of the training.

I was excited to go because I did know that we were going to do some live fire.

I did know that we were going to be doing more of the military type job I thought we

were going to be doing because up until that point, I had just done training.

So I was learning how to march and salute and who to salute and not salute.

Like that was the focus of, that was my experience of the military.

And then the next experience was sitting in a regiment, just working out a lot and going

for breakfast a lot and drinking.

Like that was, I was like, this is the army.

So when I actually got to go to Wainwright, I got my first full taste of, okay, well,

there's fire picket duty.

So one person gets picked every night to, you know, do sentry.

There's a little less sleep.

You're eating out of a canteen now.

You're drinking a canteen.

You're when you're kit more, you're in your deployable kit.

Now you're in your, you know, you're wearing your tack vest.

You're getting ready to practice having plates on.

You're having ammunition on you.

You've got your weapon with you all the time.

When you're on base and that kids say in Quebec, you're, you're just like an everyday job.

Maybe you can paint a clear picture to me.

When was there an understanding that you're actually getting deployed?

Was it just a sense that you're getting deployed or was this officially told to you?

I was officially told on graduation day, you're deploying in April with that kids.

Oh, there was.

Okay.

There's a date.

Like they knew.

What happened is the reason that Vecchia unit needed more people.

So they came to that and they picked five people.

There was five English speaking people that went to Vecchia.

It wasn't just myself.

There was a couple other people I knew that were English speaking that got put on other

guns within the regiment.

I wasn't with any of them.

We all kind of got split up.

And so there was an understanding that we were going to always be deploying that next

year.

It was like 2009 and you're deploying.

Whether you left in May or April, we were deploying because that was the rotation time.

So each Canadian unit did between six and nine months.

And then you knew right around that point, another base of individuals would then deploy.

So you would go on these rotations.

And so even when I was on my deployment then I was slated to go again the following year

but towards the end of the year.

So there was always a rotation.

If you were in a combat arms unit and you were in one that was a deployable unit.

So if you were from Edmonton, a PPCLI, which were the Princess Patricia's, which were their

infantry unit.

If you were RCR out of Petawawa, Ontario, you knew you were deploying.

If you were at Vecchia, you knew you were deploying.

There's combat arms bases and then there's like naval bases.

I didn't know their deployment structure.

I didn't know how they worked.

I'm on the ground.

I don't worry about the boats.

So I didn't know how the Air Force deployed.

I knew Vecchia was deploying in April, you were going, get ready.

That was that.

So you show up to Afghanistan.

What is a combat arms unit looks like?

What's the situation look like?

How much chaos is there?

How much clarity about mission is there?

What are your feelings about the whole thing?

So when you leave, the day you leave, we left Quebec, we got driven to the airport and then

we walked on to the tarmac and we load our own bags and we got on a plane and it's just

empty.

It's just, it's our plane, right?

And you don't go right to Afghanistan.

You go to a stopover point, which I don't know if I'm allowed to say where that is,

frankly.

So I just say it's somewhere overseas and you go there and you go there for a couple

of days.

I think it's like a day or two and that's where you get like your kit.

That's where you get your bulletproof plates for the first time and realize how heavy those

fucking things are.

It's where you get your weapon and your ammunition, your first few mags.

It's where you get your helmet and your vests and you get everything that you need.

While you're there, it's pretty nonchalant.

It's hot as hell.

It's your first time being in that kind of heat.

So you just never stop sweating.

The place we were in, it's just the second you got out of the shower, you were still

wet after you got out.

What the hell is happening?

It's so humid.

And I'm like, is this going to be like this in Afghanistan?

I'm like, no, it's not humid there at all.

I'm like, why is this so bad here?

Like, it'll be fine.

Don't worry about it.

So and where we were there, it was kind of cute.

We were like in a base, within a base and they had like turf and we had like ice cream

and fruit and you could go get on a computer.

You could go make calls.

You had showers.

You had a real bed.

It was very kind of okay for that point.

And then you got all your stuff and then okay, we're rolling out, which is about a five hour

flight.

Again, my experience with helicopters is mostly from another Arnold Schwarzenegger movie,

The Predator.