Speaker 1: We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land
Speaker 1: on which this podcast was produced, the Galligall people of
Speaker 1: the orination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.
Speaker 2: Hi and here, I'm taking a short break, but I'll
Speaker 2: be back with more interviews from January twenty second. Military
Speaker 2: and army personnel are regularly pushed to the limits of
Speaker 2: the human body and mind. From my time in the military,
Speaker 2: I know firsthand what told this can take on your
Speaker 2: physical and mental health. In this special episode, I'm revisiting
Speaker 2: some of these powerful conversations I've had in the last year.
Speaker 2: Today you're here from Oliolaton, Damion, Tomlinson, and Brian Udell,
Speaker 2: who have each had to endure hardships and learned lessons
Speaker 2: as a result. First up, my brother in the ds
Speaker 2: odioloton Oli, spoke to me about his military career and
Speaker 2: the moment he realized that the war he was fighting
Speaker 2: was within himself.
Speaker 3: I just think a big problem with me. I don't
Speaker 3: know if anything ex doing world have satisfied what I
Speaker 3: needed to solve inside, you know, and I need to
Speaker 3: learn that the hard way. I finally left after six
Speaker 3: years said I was never going back to a war
Speaker 3: zone three months later, I'm in the war zone as
Speaker 3: a contractor.
Speaker 2: So you never got back to a war zone and
Speaker 2: then someone comes along and back in that day. Though
Speaker 2: when the year ractif as a private contractor, it was
Speaker 2: you were owning a ridiculous amounts of money. What it
Speaker 2: was about the money, it wasn't really about going into
Speaker 2: and having job satisfaction. Is like I've got the s
Speaker 2: F stamp. Yeah yeah, Now as a private contractor, you're
Speaker 2: getting paid ridiculous amounts of money. You're going from your
Speaker 2: fifty quid a day to your five it was, and
Speaker 2: all of a suddenly living you know, yeah, you just
Speaker 2: living in the process, but you're living like a pop star, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent, which was was a blessing
Speaker 3: and a curse.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well for me it was like I got out there exactly.
Speaker 3: I now call it fools gold because I've never compromised
Speaker 3: my mental and physical state to do any job. You
Speaker 3: know what I mean, we are the most important project
Speaker 3: is that this fact. So for me out there, you're
Speaker 3: obviously compromising everything, the safety and everything that I don't
Speaker 3: talk about safety because health and safety wasn't something that
Speaker 3: we was a part of our life anyway. But the
Speaker 3: thing is you're out there doing jobs that you would
Speaker 3: never do in the military, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: and you're like doing You're risking things like you know,
Speaker 3: I've got twelve people, I'm looking there's two of us
Speaker 3: looking after twelve people on a convoy. You will do
Speaker 3: that top cover as well, no top cover, no nothing.
Speaker 3: So you know that if you get whack, when you
Speaker 3: get whacked, it is probably highly likely you're not coming out.
Speaker 3: So that's happening on a far too regular basis, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, and you haven't. And for the
Speaker 3: first time I can remember that first attack. I talk
Speaker 3: about it a lot because I learned a lot about
Speaker 3: myself in that, you know, one hundred and forty k's
Speaker 3: one hundred and forty kilometers driving down the road in
Speaker 3: the convoy got whacked by the militia two car attack
Speaker 3: on tours from behind and mate, in that moment, it
Speaker 3: was like, I absolutely shit myself, not literally, but you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. When that attack came in, was like,
Speaker 3: and I'm driving a car and I'm like realizing what's
Speaker 3: going on?
Speaker 2: A big cover. You've got nowhere assets, you've got a weapon,
Speaker 2: a couple of mans, two of you against a whole army.
Speaker 3: Base exactly who don't give?
Speaker 2: Don't give? Who don't And you've got no yea, there's
Speaker 2: no fire and maneuver out there.
Speaker 3: And no no no safety covering, no nothing. And then
Speaker 3: you realize in that moment that how you know, back
Speaker 3: in the day when that happened, when you're in s F,
Speaker 3: you would like, bring it.
Speaker 2: On, yeah, bring it on. Yeah you got.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, everyone's best weapon system in
Speaker 3: the world, you know what I mean, And you just
Speaker 3: want that to happen. You're gagging for it to happen.
Speaker 3: But in that moment and I started thinking, this is
Speaker 3: you know, I've analyzed this time and time again about
Speaker 3: what happened in that moment, because it was almost like
Speaker 3: I'd stop breathing for a minute, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And that's what happens when we get into stressful situations.
Speaker 3: You're you, you start to shallow breathe, yeah, of course.
Speaker 3: And then once you start to do that, Cortersole starts
Speaker 3: to increase chemical reaction, which is the fight or flight
Speaker 3: or freeze. I'm driving a car, it's not the best
Speaker 3: thing to happen. You know what I mean. I start
Speaker 3: thinking about all the things that could go wrong, So
Speaker 3: you then start to build into that fear. Fear is
Speaker 3: a mental and emotional rehearsal for something you don't want
Speaker 3: to happen, you know what I mean. You can't allow
Speaker 3: it to dominate. It's contagious, isn't It doesn't mean to
Speaker 3: turning back on it, but you And in that moment,
Speaker 3: it wasn't until I actually they started shooting at it,
Speaker 3: you know, the intimidating sound of that orchestra of hell,
Speaker 3: of all those AK forty sevens going off, that it
Speaker 3: snapped me out and it was like bang. Nothing more
Speaker 3: was Everything was subconscious from that moment and the training
Speaker 3: kit back in, thank god. And I took a breath
Speaker 3: in that moment, almost like I'm not breathed for the
Speaker 3: last minute and a half or whatever. And in that moment,
Speaker 3: breathing just adding clarity, which which dropped the quartersole. Give
Speaker 3: me a mindset of clarity and not confusion. What do
Speaker 3: I need to focus on? Not the people in front,
Speaker 3: not the things, all the things that could go wrong,
Speaker 3: the people that are shooting at me. Nothing else matters
Speaker 3: apart from that you know, and in that moment that
Speaker 3: that's why I learned so much. And I'll talk about
Speaker 3: that breathe we calibrate delivery.
Speaker 2: Alery that would gives you that calvity of mind exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and as you know it, and I talked
Speaker 3: about that a lot with people afterwards, and it was like,
Speaker 3: you know, that's the one thing that got me out
Speaker 3: that situation. We got back and it was incredible. Although
Speaker 3: in that you know, I learned so much from that,
Speaker 3: so much from that, And that's the fact that you know,
Speaker 3: and you can use that adapt that in every situation
Speaker 3: because you get to a stressful situation, whether you're asking
Speaker 3: for a pay rise of whatever you're doing, or any
Speaker 3: situation that is uncomfortable. Unless you get control of your faculties,
Speaker 3: you're going to make a decision. The heightened sense of emotion,
Speaker 3: which is then going to create a negative situation that
Speaker 3: you know, you're pushing yourself in your mind just goes,
Speaker 3: get me out whatever wherever you want to take me.
Speaker 2: Get the first thing that pops up, you action it
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's desperate, and.
Speaker 3: It's desperate and it's in the wrong direction, you you know,
Speaker 3: And that's obviously quite an extreme but people could. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but people, you know, there's a lot of stuff now
Speaker 3: out there about breath work, which is so powerful, you know,
Speaker 3: starting to control your breathing everything else, which is incredible.
Speaker 3: So but that moment taught me so much about that situation,
Speaker 3: about about myself. But the thing is, the negative side
Speaker 3: is that that was the fact that I thought that
Speaker 3: was early on in the days of getting there as
Speaker 3: a contractor, you know what I mean. And then from
Speaker 3: that moment on, I was like, I ain't coming back
Speaker 3: from here. But I kind of giving up by that time. Anyway,
Speaker 3: I was drinking too much a lot, you know. We
Speaker 3: went back to the village, I was drinking. Everyone was drinking.
Speaker 3: When the tools went down, everyone was drinking, but I
Speaker 3: think I was drinking more, you know. I was like,
Speaker 3: I made sure in my room I had a stash,
Speaker 3: so I knocked myself out, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I used to sleep with a pistol under my pillow,
Speaker 3: not knowing if the door was going to be bashed
Speaker 3: in by the militia. And I lived like that for
Speaker 3: four years. Started taking Valley in the day after just
Speaker 3: to handle the anxiety of the hangovers and this living
Speaker 3: in back Dad in the Red Zone, and it was
Speaker 3: it was a horrible It was absolutely horrible. I look
Speaker 3: back now and that really did cay me in mentally.
Speaker 3: You know, I had to get out of there. Four
Speaker 3: years later, I just said, I plucked up the courage
Speaker 3: to leave. And it's so hard when you're being paid
Speaker 3: that much money, you know what I mean. And that's
Speaker 3: why I call it fool's gold now, yeah, because we're
Speaker 3: quite happy to compromise everything for the dollar.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and nine, Commando Damon Tomlinson was serving
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan when one night changed everything. He was working
Speaker 2: a night patrol when his unit drove over a Taliban
Speaker 2: ied Damien lost both of his legs in the explosion
Speaker 2: and was left fighting for his life. He was determined
Speaker 2: to reclaim his life on his own terms, and he
Speaker 2: spoke to me about the mindset that enabled him to
Speaker 2: do so.
Speaker 4: I'm making progress. If it hurts, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: it's and then you've got doctors who are just used
Speaker 4: to dealing with punters who go in with a sawnee
Speaker 4: or whatever. And then I'm like, I don't really care
Speaker 4: what what you guys have got to do. I'm going
Speaker 4: to be doing this. You're either going to be someone
Speaker 4: who's on the journey with me to do this, or
Speaker 4: I'm going to find someone who is you know what
Speaker 4: I mean like and that. So I never really looked
Speaker 4: at a lot of the because to me, I was
Speaker 4: still me, you know. But I definitely knew that everyone
Speaker 4: on that night saw something though were never going to unsee.
Speaker 4: And apparently the time where every now and then because
Speaker 4: they had moved to white light to save me. You know,
Speaker 4: they've done everything they could turn the caves and stuff
Speaker 4: like that, but the village because you can hear what
Speaker 4: they're saying on their icon radios. There was a huge,
Speaker 4: huge conference, like there was way more of them than
Speaker 4: we originally thought. But we're basically saying, let's light them up.
Speaker 4: So everyone's posturing and getting ready. If one shot got fired,
Speaker 4: the US chopper wouldn't have got me out and I'd
Speaker 4: be dead wall at the minute of the troops in
Speaker 4: contact would have happened, that rings through. I'm a flag
Speaker 4: on my parents' mantlepiece.
Speaker 2: And what did you manage to keep? Then? What did
Speaker 2: you lose? And what did you manage to keep? Because
Speaker 2: I was looking pretty grim at one moment that you're
Speaker 2: going to these arms.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So when my parents found out, the word was
Speaker 4: he's really low single digit percentage chance of living and
Speaker 4: if he does, it's going to be a triple ampeteue
Speaker 4: like And at that stage, I was in at Camp Bastion,
Speaker 4: which is the UK base, with the trauma team, under
Speaker 4: a space blanket and if I couldn't hold my body heat,
Speaker 4: I was I was gone. So that was that was
Speaker 4: when they found out. And I mean, it's so disjointed
Speaker 4: when you get back, but to me, I woke up
Speaker 4: and I was still meet.
Speaker 2: You seem to have tackled it with a super positive mindset.
Speaker 2: Do you think if you hadn't, do you think there's
Speaker 2: any gray areas herel do you think you go to
Speaker 2: you stoop to the lowest of the lows where you
Speaker 2: don't want to be here anymore? And did that mindset
Speaker 2: ever take charge?
Speaker 4: I got to dark places through it. Yeah, I definitely did,
Speaker 4: but not in the initial phases for me were like,
Speaker 4: I remember having this comment with my dad because he's
Speaker 4: always said, you've never used your brain. It's disappointing. He
Speaker 4: walked in with his great big grin on his face.
Speaker 4: I'm like smiling on him. We're having a laugh like
Speaker 4: in a hospital, and he goes, well, you got to
Speaker 4: use your brain now, don't you.
Speaker 2: Good old dad, you got me TV.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna now, and then you know he's sort of
Speaker 4: mapping out or up. We've got to change, We've got
Speaker 4: to do different things. But to me, the most important
Speaker 4: thing was there's a group of guys who have gone
Speaker 4: through something that I can't imagine seeing, let alone it
Speaker 4: being something you care about, and they have somehow kept
Speaker 4: me alive. So the mess that I could see, I
Speaker 4: saw was the result of people's effort on the ground,
Speaker 4: you know, which I still see it as that it's
Speaker 4: what it is. So I've got to try and do
Speaker 4: something that then has them know how good of a
Speaker 4: job they've done. So to me, I then had a
Speaker 4: finite timeline of when they were flying home and I
Speaker 4: had to be up walking standing in a pair of
Speaker 4: jeans so you couldn't see prosthetic legs, and it didn't
Speaker 4: matter what it took. And then like there were bits
Speaker 4: where like it it hurts a lot.
Speaker 2: That was your goal, that was your next objective, that
Speaker 2: was your next mission, which again we talk about purposes
Speaker 2: like and you've done everything that you can to make
Speaker 2: sure that you've done that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean I was like, by all accounts,
Speaker 4: I was probably one of the worst patients in the
Speaker 4: history of north Shore Private Hospital because I was just
Speaker 4: done compromising with it. You know, if I didn't think
Speaker 4: and right or wrong, didn't think that someone was aligned
Speaker 4: with my goals, I would like remove them from the
Speaker 4: process or ignore their advice. You know, I just go
Speaker 4: all right, I've been through enough to know where I'm
Speaker 4: going with this, Like, I know my limits. You don't,
Speaker 4: like there's a picture of me like five weeks after
Speaker 4: on a prosthetic that you're not really supposed to wait
Speaker 4: bear through. But I was like, I'm going down the
Speaker 4: hall on this because we've got so I'm on one
Speaker 4: of those walkers pushing it along with the thing, like
Speaker 4: and there's just concerned face drack.
Speaker 2: In his prosthetic leg along. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, and I'm just like, okay, cool, Well, this is
Speaker 4: what we've got to do this. I'm still played it
Speaker 4: at the time, like there's a lot of stuff I'm
Speaker 4: wrong with it, but I was like, I'm not gonna
Speaker 4: heal laying down and they're like you just you just
Speaker 4: you gotta rest, you gotta rest. And I'm like, everyone
Speaker 4: tells me to rest, like go home, you rest, Like
Speaker 4: get it up. I've got stuff to do.
Speaker 2: My final guest today is Captain Brian Yudell. In the
Speaker 2: middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Brian was fighting for his life.
Speaker 2: He just survived the highest speed ejection from a US
Speaker 2: fighter aircraft at nearly thirteen hundred kilometers per hour. Just
Speaker 2: as he started to think I'm going to die out
Speaker 2: here tonight, his resilient mindset took over.
Speaker 5: My grandmother was an incredibly strong woman, and she always
Speaker 5: taught me that we don't get to choose the day
Speaker 5: we're going to have. We get to choose how we're
Speaker 5: going to deal with it, and we should be prepared
Speaker 5: for whatever the day brings physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Speaker 5: And she says, if you're in a prop and a
Speaker 5: situation that you have no control over and you need help,
Speaker 5: you pray for what you need, not for what you want.
Speaker 5: And so I put my head down on the raft
Speaker 5: and I say, God, I can't die to I I've
Speaker 5: got too much to do. I've got My wife was
Speaker 5: four months pregnant with our first child, And I thought
Speaker 5: to myself, how selfish of it would be for me
Speaker 5: to not be there and for her to get that
Speaker 5: knock on the door. I did not want her to
Speaker 5: get that knock on the door.
Speaker 2: Your wife was four months pregnant at this time?
Speaker 5: Exactly?
Speaker 2: Did that thought process went through your head? Just as
Speaker 2: I suppose you're going to give up, It's like, I
Speaker 2: can't give up. I've got to stay alive. My wife
Speaker 2: is pregnant, I've got a child on the way. And
Speaker 2: was it that for that ultimately switched things up?
Speaker 5: It'll give you superhuman strength, Yeah, absolutely, because I took
Speaker 5: that raft. I took that raft and I shoved it
Speaker 5: down into the base between my legs like this. I
Speaker 5: threw my shoulder into it like like that, and I
Speaker 5: rode the wave up And when I crested the top
Speaker 5: of the wave and went down the backside, my body
Speaker 5: flipped her into the raft. And I was sitting there perfectly,
Speaker 5: and my leg from the knee down was hanging ninety
Speaker 5: to the right over the side. My foot was turned
Speaker 5: around backwards and folded up underneath me, and this arm
Speaker 5: was bit back like that. And I'm looking at this
Speaker 5: and I'm thinking to myself. You can't live out here
Speaker 5: looking like this. You're going to be out here a
Speaker 5: long time. You can't sit here and be looking at
Speaker 5: yourself like this. So you got to straighten yourself out.
Speaker 5: This is one of those times where it's better to
Speaker 5: look good than to feel good. And so I I
Speaker 5: grabbed my leg and I heaved it in and it
Speaker 5: went from ninety right to ninety left. It's now rustling
Speaker 5: across the top of my other leg, and I'm thinking, oh,
Speaker 5: that doesn't look right either, So I shoved it down
Speaker 5: into the base of the raft. I pulled my foot
Speaker 5: out from underneath me and got it pointed in the
Speaker 5: right direction. Brought my arm around and immobilized it into
Speaker 5: my harness. And now I know I didn't structurally fix anything,
Speaker 5: but I'm if I'm going to be out here, I
Speaker 5: want everything pointed in the right direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So now I'm starting to go into shock. I'm shaking uncontrollably.
Speaker 5: I know that if I don't stop and treat myself
Speaker 5: for the shock, that I'm going to go unconscious. And
Speaker 5: at that point, I reached down to my g suit pocket.
Speaker 5: We have these pockets on the legs, and I opened
Speaker 5: the zipper where I always kept a water bottle. I
Speaker 5: stuck my hand down into that pocket to retrieve that
Speaker 5: water bottle, and the water bottle had been blown right
Speaker 5: through the bottom of the pocket and was gone. Well,
Speaker 5: I was kept my wallet in the other pocket. I
Speaker 5: wanted to see if it was there, opened the zipper
Speaker 5: and stuck my hand down in there, and my wallet
Speaker 5: was also blown through the bottom of the pocket and
Speaker 5: it was gone. And then I started thinking, crap. I
Speaker 5: got to cancel credit cards, I got to go get
Speaker 5: a new driver's license, so I lost.
Speaker 2: Tell me that that didn't go through your head.
Speaker 5: That is exactly what went through my head. I'm thinking,
Speaker 5: somebody is good, that's the wallet's gonna wash up, and
Speaker 5: somebody is gonna get twenty bucks. And that was a
Speaker 5: lot of money back in the day.
Speaker 2: But Brian, do you think do you think that way
Speaker 2: of thinking just just strats the mind from the bigger issues?
Speaker 2: You know, it keeps you alive on to me, doesn't it,
Speaker 2: because you know you're just trying to keep the mind
Speaker 2: active if you're trying not to, like you said, go
Speaker 2: into shock. So I suppose all these little things that
Speaker 2: you're thinking about a positive distraction from not actually looking
Speaker 2: at the bigger problem, which is you can't move. You're
Speaker 2: now floating in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with
Speaker 2: one arm ultimately, and God, you're probably not going to
Speaker 2: make it out there.
Speaker 4: I have.
Speaker 5: Had the privilege of meeting and speaking to numerous Vietnam
Speaker 5: POWs and people that have gone through just incredibly insane things,
Speaker 5: and there's one common denominator that I have found in
Speaker 5: all of those people. The events are different, there's a
Speaker 5: lot of similar already between the events, but the one
Speaker 5: common denominator I have found is a sense of humor.
Speaker 2: Of adversity.
Speaker 5: That's exactly right to be able to find humor in
Speaker 5: the darkest places. If you can laugh at yourself and
Speaker 5: the situation that you're in, that's half the battle right there.
Speaker 2: I was hoping you're going to say that, because that's
Speaker 2: one of the War Marine core values is humor in
Speaker 2: the face of adversity. And it's so true. It works.
Speaker 5: Live it, love it, laughing man, Just freaking deal with
Speaker 5: what you got in front of you and and trudge
Speaker 5: on through. And things can always get worse. I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, I picture where you're at, where I'm at
Speaker 5: in the situation that I'm at. But you know what,
Speaker 5: I'm still alive. I'm still bringing in and out. And
Speaker 5: the other thing that I tell people, I said, is
Speaker 5: we all set these goals, right, Well, every goal has
Speaker 5: a set of sub goals. You'd go trying to attack
Speaker 5: this goal. It's overwhelming, but you attack each sub goal,
Speaker 5: and each sub goal that's successful gives you confidence to
Speaker 5: keep going. And that's what that night was all about.
Speaker 2: It was a.
Speaker 5: Little victories exactly. That then leads to the ultimate of
Speaker 5: surviving the situation.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to hear the full interviews with Ollie Olaton,
Speaker 2: Damion Tomlinson, and Brian Newdell, on linked them in the
Speaker 2: show notes. Thanks so much for listening to this episode
Speaker 2: of Headgame. I'll be back January twenty second with more
Speaker 2: powerful stories like the ones you've heard today. Until then,
Speaker 2: I'm at Middleton. Catch you again next time.