Speaker 1: We'd like to acknowledge that traditional custodians of the land
Speaker 1: on which this podcast was produced the Gadigel people of
Speaker 1: the orination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.
Speaker 1: This episode contains discussion of suicide. If this raises any
Speaker 1: issues for you, support is available through the links and
Speaker 1: phone numbers in the show notes.
Speaker 2: It's April two thousand and nine and we're in southern Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: Twenty eight year old Damien Tomlinson is here with the
Speaker 2: Australian Defense Force.
Speaker 3: He's here.
Speaker 4: He's made it, just four.
Speaker 2: Years after ticking off his goal becoming a commando. This
Speaker 2: elite group is tasked with the most physically demanding, mentally
Speaker 2: challenging and dangerous roles in the armed forces. He's working
Speaker 2: a night patrol when his unit drive over a Taliban
Speaker 2: ied The bomb explodes, leaving Damien fighting for his life.
Speaker 2: He loses both of his legs and doctors say it's
Speaker 2: a miracle he wasn't killed. I'm Ad Middleton and this
Speaker 2: is head Game today, Damian Tomlinson with his extraordinary story
Speaker 2: of reclaiming his life on his own terms. Damian Tomlinson,
Speaker 2: it's an absolute pleasure to have you on my podcast
Speaker 2: head Game. It's an honor to speak with one of
Speaker 2: my own former Australian Defense Force two commando an elite
Speaker 2: soldier tours of Afghanistan right up my street. I know
Speaker 2: that we're going to get on like a house on fire.
Speaker 2: Talk to me about your childhood and your upbringing. Were
Speaker 2: there any military roots for you to be pushed down
Speaker 2: when you were young or did you just decide right,
Speaker 2: I'm going to join the military at a young age
Speaker 2: and you just cracked on or was there an influence
Speaker 2: in your life?
Speaker 4: Where did that all start?
Speaker 5: Well? So I grew up a an hour and a
Speaker 5: half Sydney, a place in the central Coast called terrible
Speaker 5: for those that are in Australia, those that aren't lovely
Speaker 5: place to visit, not to stuff out. And I don't know,
Speaker 5: I didn't feel like there was a lot of opportunity.
Speaker 5: I didn't feel to inspire. But also sort of I
Speaker 5: like got confused a little bit between my passion and
Speaker 5: my hobby. You know, sport was a hobby as opposed
Speaker 5: to being like a passion or something that I should
Speaker 5: find to really work towards and in strive at. And
Speaker 5: I just had the moment I think where I'd gone through,
Speaker 5: made a couple of bad decisions. You know, I had
Speaker 5: a good group of friends, I had really support a
Speaker 5: group of people around me, but I sort of just
Speaker 5: made choices that I think, you know, you get, you know,
Speaker 5: you kind of want to go against the grain a
Speaker 5: little when you're young, kind of like I'm going to
Speaker 5: do my own thing, and then realize that the further
Speaker 5: on you get, you know, you make the people around
Speaker 5: you that have got you know, sixty plus years experience
Speaker 5: a right and that's.
Speaker 2: That rebellious side that we all have until it's not down. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's got to get now to you somehow.
Speaker 3: And the really good influence in my life's always been
Speaker 3: my dad.
Speaker 5: You know, He's always been great for me. But here
Speaker 5: are growing up, but we're very different people. You know,
Speaker 5: we got totally different skill sets. Like the things that
Speaker 5: I go really well out at school and saw as
Speaker 5: really easy things to do, you know, I saw him
Speaker 5: as simple. He then saw like they were to him,
Speaker 5: they were the bits that took a lot of effort.
Speaker 5: So he'd gone through getting his masters in applied science,
Speaker 5: and to me, I was making physics feel easy. So
Speaker 5: it was that that sort of thing, but then not
Speaker 5: putting the effort. I just didn't apply myself to anything,
Speaker 5: which I mean now I look back at kind of
Speaker 5: it frustrates me because that's the only like sort of
Speaker 5: what if, Like it was in me that I wanted.
Speaker 3: Something that was bigger, you know, like I thought I could.
Speaker 5: I don't know, I always thought, like I've I you
Speaker 5: can call the delusion to grandeur, but it doesn't matter
Speaker 5: what room I walk into a way as shoom I can.
Speaker 3: Belong there, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: And let's face it, a majority of the rooms that
Speaker 5: you walk into, as long as you look like you
Speaker 5: should be there and have an attitude like you should
Speaker 5: be there, no one's going to ask you a way.
Speaker 4: There, so it could meet in effect, right, Yeah, it's just.
Speaker 5: Like just just walk into it with a quiet confidence
Speaker 5: that if the guy asks you a question about why
Speaker 5: you're there, he's going to get escorted out. And I'd
Speaker 5: always I always got to add that, but it was
Speaker 5: it was more and more it was getting reinforced that
Speaker 5: it was totally unjustified, you know, like I just hadn't
Speaker 5: proven it. I hadn't proven I didn't have the runs
Speaker 5: on the board, and I remember going to him after
Speaker 5: like him a few of his prophecies about me being
Speaker 5: a laborer and doing whatever coming true.
Speaker 3: I remember going and speaking to.
Speaker 5: Him about it and tell me your story about wanting
Speaker 5: to be an architect and that he didn't have the
Speaker 5: right mass scores and you know you master's degree and
Speaker 5: applied science.
Speaker 3: There's mass involved, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: So and then he sort of finished it by going
Speaker 5: and see, no one can tell you what you want
Speaker 5: to do. I was like, okay, so what what should
Speaker 5: I do? Just absolute crickets. There was nothing in the room.
Speaker 5: You know, we had just at this moment of like
Speaker 5: looking at each other. You know, when you've known something
Speaker 5: all along, you just haven't wanted to face it. I
Speaker 5: think that was the moment where I decided, right now
Speaker 5: is my time to to really like to face this one,
Speaker 5: you know, to make some form of difference.
Speaker 4: And step up or to step forward, Yeah.
Speaker 3: To give to you to really do it.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I like, I look at who I
Speaker 5: was before this next moment, and you know, it was
Speaker 5: really easy to it was. It was easy for me
Speaker 5: to go, oh, that's just not for me, you know,
Speaker 5: you know, it's just not my thing. Well, I'll find
Speaker 5: something else, like all just a quita's mentality. And I
Speaker 5: remember when I went into the computer, I was too
Speaker 5: ashamed of use dad, so I used mums in the
Speaker 5: study and went in and sat down at it. And
Speaker 5: there's this really cool picture of my granddad eighty three
Speaker 5: rats that are Brooks thing with his rack of metals.
Speaker 5: It's a little grin on his face. And I just
Speaker 5: looked at it and I was so proud, And then
Speaker 5: in the next second I was just super ashamed, you know,
Speaker 5: like I had done nothing that was even remotely close
Speaker 5: to being worthy. You know those people who they go
Speaker 5: who would you speak to if you had the chance
Speaker 5: that was two thousand and one had happened.
Speaker 3: This is in two.
Speaker 5: Thousand and three, I think late two thousand and three,
Speaker 5: And I thought, like, if I had the chance to
Speaker 5: talk to him, what am I going to talk about?
Speaker 5: You know, like, what am I gonna? I can't really
Speaker 5: impress him with scoring at first grade hundred. I mean,
Speaker 5: like that's not it really doesn't make it, you know,
Speaker 5: it's not the type of I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just felt like, sosh.
Speaker 4: You feel feel a bit worthless?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I think so like, and I think it
Speaker 5: was sort of like as well, you know, I'd like
Speaker 5: to believe I'm pretty overwhelmingly positive person, you know, like
Speaker 5: I tend to believe the positive thing regardless of how
Speaker 5: bad the circumstances in front of me is. And there
Speaker 5: was more and more evidence that it was mounting that
Speaker 5: I was really wrong, you know, like that I was, yeah,
Speaker 5: that I was the person who And this is the
Speaker 5: funny thing, like it took what happened later for me
Speaker 5: to understand that all of that was happening inside my head.
Speaker 3: None of it reflected reality, you know, like I don't
Speaker 3: know what someone's.
Speaker 5: Opinion of me is and I don't care, and I
Speaker 5: shouldn't have then, you know, like I was premeditating what
Speaker 5: strangers I was working for thought or something of the sort.
Speaker 5: When it was, you know, all of it was just
Speaker 5: happening internally. So I looked at the looked at the computer.
Speaker 5: There was a Special Forces direct recruiting scheme and at
Speaker 5: that thing, I literally remember looking at the screen. Four
Speaker 5: guys they're on rotation wonder Afghanistan, I find out later,
Speaker 5: just walking away from the screen, like just picture of
Speaker 5: their backs, and I was like that's it. That will
Speaker 5: prove everyone who's said the thing like this. Not everyone
Speaker 5: can do that. But I'm going to keep going until
Speaker 5: it's done.
Speaker 2: See that's what I love about you, Damen, is that
Speaker 2: you looked at that and you didn't choose just an option.
Speaker 2: You chose the hardest option, the most elite option, and
Speaker 2: you just decided to jump in the deep end. How
Speaker 2: did you get on? Did you did you struggle? Were
Speaker 2: you treading water? Or did you thrive in that environment?
Speaker 5: I quite liked it, Like, I mean, part of it
Speaker 5: was me. You know, you're kind of like, you know,
Speaker 5: it's going to be hard, like it belt everyone. If
Speaker 5: anyone ever says, oh, special Forces, the selection didn't belt me,
Speaker 5: you're like, cool, I've never done it.
Speaker 3: It's it's just one of those things.
Speaker 5: But I think just like accepting the fact that it's
Speaker 5: going to be really difficult and it's going to stretch,
Speaker 5: Like I enjoyed the fact that every single thing that
Speaker 5: I did was something that you can be proud of,
Speaker 5: you know, like I wasn't and if you didn't, like
Speaker 5: it's one of those no lose situations because if you're
Speaker 5: not perfect that at the first time, it's harder than
Speaker 5: anything else you've ever done in your life.
Speaker 3: You don't have to be perfect that at first go.
Speaker 3: It's the effort of trying to like maintain, like build
Speaker 3: and maintain those standards the entire way through your career,
Speaker 3: which makes the difference, you know, when you start seeing
Speaker 3: those small bits of progress. And I just learned it
Speaker 3: was just this like positive reinforcing style thing. And I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's obviously it's passable. It's doable, you know, and.
Speaker 5: They're looking for for attributes, which I think Team Sport
Speaker 5: sets you up for, you know. I mean part of
Speaker 5: it is like just for me, there was no way
Speaker 5: that I was ever no matter.
Speaker 3: How much it hurt. That's what a special force to
Speaker 3: soldier has to go through. To me, that was it.
Speaker 2: That's like it's turning up every day committing every day
Speaker 2: I sacrifice. People don't realize the sacrifice. And when I
Speaker 2: say sacrifice, I mean personal sacrifice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I mean the reality of that, the realities
Speaker 5: that you faced during it. Like it's I remember I
Speaker 5: was pretty like lucky when I did it. The only
Speaker 5: person who you know, I was looking out for this
Speaker 5: stage was me, So like I can't I still blows
Speaker 5: my mind now because I've got a family now and
Speaker 5: I love them more than anything. But I didn't have
Speaker 5: at that stage. I didn't have a girlfriend, I didn't
Speaker 5: have kids. There was just me in this battle of
Speaker 5: going okay, cool, I've got it, like I got to
Speaker 5: turn up here, and like some of the things are
Speaker 5: such like gifts to the way that you handle adversity
Speaker 5: because you've got no choice at the time. It's a
Speaker 5: controlled environment, right, so you know you're not to like die.
Speaker 5: If you do, you're pretty unlucky. But I remember like
Speaker 5: doing things like on our hands. Of course we did
Speaker 5: it and it was freezing cold. We've done this mud
Speaker 5: run at five in the morning. Everyone had steam off them,
Speaker 5: like mud and steam. It was down in Melbourne, which
Speaker 5: is like Australia cold. It's not UK cold, but it's
Speaker 5: you know, so sort of cold. We're getting closest to
Speaker 5: the zeros and the water just oh god. I remember
Speaker 5: the dad has jumping the water. Straight after it, we
Speaker 5: get out and they go all right, go draw yourself off.
Speaker 5: You know, you've got an unachievable time to get back
Speaker 5: in that room ready to.
Speaker 3: Start your lessons.
Speaker 5: So everyone's like, ah, you know, you're run it, you're
Speaker 5: doing all your different stuff and you're standing out there
Speaker 5: and you're ready to go in and they.
Speaker 3: Said, why are you guys dry? Get in the water.
Speaker 5: And you're like, all right, bag there's and then back
Speaker 5: out of the water, straight into the license trying to
Speaker 5: like write what you yeah, just everything wet, going oh
Speaker 5: my god, like why trying.
Speaker 3: To retain the information that you've you thought it and
Speaker 3: out in it.
Speaker 5: Like you don't get those sort of chances to stretch
Speaker 5: yourself in many places, you.
Speaker 4: Know what I mean, normal walks of life.
Speaker 2: There's no way in a million years you get pushed
Speaker 2: outside of your comfort zone like that not a chance.
Speaker 2: And how did you feel when you passed selection? What
Speaker 2: was your moment like when you got when you passed
Speaker 2: your selection process?
Speaker 5: It was this was like probably the most relief I've
Speaker 5: felt in ages.
Speaker 3: Now you're sitting in this.
Speaker 5: Room and you know, part of building tension is, you know,
Speaker 5: sensory deprivation, you know what I mean. So it's just
Speaker 5: sitting in silence while something you feel like it should
Speaker 5: be happening. You learn that should is a word that
Speaker 5: you can leave.
Speaker 3: Out of your vocabulary. It's pointless.
Speaker 5: But I remember sitting in there and they're counting names
Speaker 5: off and there's good operators standing up, walking out of
Speaker 5: the room, and then you're sort of looking back at
Speaker 5: who's left, going ah, he fell asleep doing this. I
Speaker 5: made a mistake on that this guy did this. That
Speaker 5: guy was awesome, but could complain a bit like you know,
Speaker 5: you had all these little bits that you sort of
Speaker 5: looking at it, and you didn't you genuinely didn't know.
Speaker 5: I remember Hans Fleer, he's a legend of the Australian
Speaker 5: Special Forces, was doing his reading is what we've done,
Speaker 5: and this is the you know, as we know the
Speaker 5: Special Force selection course and blah blah blah, and this
Speaker 5: is that went through it and then go and it's
Speaker 5: my pleasure to say that the attributes that I've just
Speaker 5: listed all of your men possess. Congratulations blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: And I remember like, ah.
Speaker 5: It's it's indescribable, I think, because and that's at that
Speaker 5: mean that moment, it wasn't about everyone else. It was
Speaker 5: just like to me, it was me getting across the
Speaker 5: line for me a bit, if that makes sense. And
Speaker 5: I started to realize like, okay, so you've now proven
Speaker 5: yourself because you start to this task, you stayed with it,
Speaker 5: and now you know you've come out the other end.
Speaker 5: And I remember ringing, Mum, she was just over the moon.
Speaker 5: You know, both the folks were. They thought it was great.
Speaker 5: Like every time that's me, you could see that was
Speaker 5: so proud and it meant something. And the more the
Speaker 5: further I went through my career, you learn just wearing
Speaker 5: the flag is such an honor, you know. Like then
Speaker 5: like everyone's just walking the same direction, you know, for
Speaker 5: the same goal. And for you to achieve that goal,
Speaker 5: everyone around you has to be good. Does that saying
Speaker 5: you know your can or doesn't burn brighter if you
Speaker 5: burn the blow the one next to you out. The
Speaker 5: military's job is to light up a room. So if
Speaker 5: you're the type of character that blows a candle out,
Speaker 5: you're not wanted, you know what I mean, Like pack
Speaker 5: your bags and go home. So and like I remember
Speaker 5: like having my expectations changed, I think because you don't
Speaker 5: know what to expect. You know, you've got guys all
Speaker 5: shape sizes, building, we got guys with degrees, and you
Speaker 5: know you've got guys who were tradesmen. You've guys who've
Speaker 5: just chosen that path, you know, and then you've got
Speaker 5: guys like me who sort of thought it was their
Speaker 5: last chance, which now I look back, it's wild because
Speaker 5: I was like twenty four.
Speaker 2: It is insane right now You've got that pros and
Speaker 2: that mindset, and but ultimately, is that mindset that pushed
Speaker 2: you into something as extreme and as elite as the Commandos?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Well I think it, and it almost it had to be,
Speaker 5: I think, you know, I just don't think it would
Speaker 5: have been fulfilling if it wasn't, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 5: it's you get that I've noticed this, and would you
Speaker 5: would have noticed this? With as your career progressed as well,
Speaker 5: you meet a lot of people that have achieved enormous amounts,
Speaker 5: are wildly successful, amazing what they do, and they're all
Speaker 5: really cool.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, Like none of them.
Speaker 5: You just like, how is this guy doing everything so
Speaker 5: amazingly effortlessly? And the only thing I can put it
Speaker 5: down to is because they found something that is their
Speaker 5: passion that they've got nothing to prove.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: They have scored the runs. They don't have to worry
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: And I don't know what it's like for the Aussie
Speaker 2: Defense Force, but where I stepped up from the Marines
Speaker 2: into a special Forces role, it's like, wow, the responsibility
Speaker 2: you're taking on different roles and you know, more responsible
Speaker 2: roles and roles that are just like giving you to
Speaker 2: go right, We don't want to know what goes on,
Speaker 2: just go get the job done.
Speaker 4: You just do it.
Speaker 5: Have to be able to do it unsupervised, and you
Speaker 5: don't need orders to do it like you kind of
Speaker 5: expected to know what to do with it or to
Speaker 5: work it out, you know what I mean, And to
Speaker 5: do it in a way where it's you could have
Speaker 5: the highest ranking official in the military watching you the
Speaker 5: whole time, you.
Speaker 3: Know what I mean. That's the level of trust.
Speaker 5: And I found that like really empowering when we're going
Speaker 5: through the cycles.
Speaker 3: But also it lifts your game, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: You hang out with people who have similar interests and
Speaker 3: who are all striving to be better, your game just lifts,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Your attitude changes. It's something
Speaker 3: that you know it's and that's one of the things
Speaker 3: that that world sort of does. But when I first
Speaker 3: got there was just too I was I'm still young.
Speaker 3: You know, I still had plenty of.
Speaker 4: Young naive keen. You know, yeah, you.
Speaker 5: Think you think it's the toughest guy. You know, you're
Speaker 5: in a thing that's going to ask a lot of
Speaker 5: you when it comes to combat. So I've got to
Speaker 5: be ready to We've all got to be ready type thing.
Speaker 5: And you're like, it's not that, It's like EQ is
Speaker 5: the new tough. You've now got to know how to
Speaker 5: control your emotions and use them effectively in each environment,
Speaker 5: which I think is that alpha plus mindset is like,
Speaker 5: you know, you've got to be willing to go there,
Speaker 5: but you've also got to have the intelligence to know
Speaker 5: when you have to go there, because like most people
Speaker 5: that you can see that will go there, there's like
Speaker 5: one time in a thousand that you might need to.
Speaker 2: And also I think what's super powerful about you know,
Speaker 2: emotional intelligence is when positive people around you take charge
Speaker 2: of your emotions, you know, to push you through that
Speaker 2: door to get you, you know, the other side of
Speaker 2: where you need to be. But also being emotionally intelligent
Speaker 2: enough to realize when someone else is struggling emotionally and
Speaker 2: you come along and you you you help them, you know,
Speaker 2: Harness that emotion to achieve whatever's in front of you. God,
Speaker 2: that's when trust. That's when a bond takes place. That's when,
Speaker 2: I truly believe when emotional intelligence is fused, that's when
Speaker 2: you start you can really trust that person. Well, I've
Speaker 2: let that person or that person's taking control of my emotions.
Speaker 2: There's that bond, there's that trust bang is sealed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they're in there.
Speaker 5: And I mean, like I think a big hurdle for
Speaker 5: me when it came to that was it's almost like
Speaker 5: as a person, I'd changed before I was going in,
Speaker 5: and I'd accepted that change.
Speaker 3: I was now going to be Damian the soldier, you know.
Speaker 5: And then and that guy had to be tough, you know,
Speaker 5: he had to have all these different attribu We had
Speaker 5: to do all the things that made that which just
Speaker 5: you know, it's you're just kind of wearing a mask
Speaker 5: the whole time.
Speaker 4: And I think it was a defense mechanism, isn't it?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Essentially? And I was I mean, the fans is probably.
Speaker 4: Putting on your body armor, You're putting on your mask.
Speaker 3: You yeah, ready to go.
Speaker 5: But like I learned when we were we were on
Speaker 5: my first apply, second deployment. We've done a little to Fiji,
Speaker 5: but I was on my deployment to each team or
Speaker 5: and I just kind of got tired of the tough thing,
Speaker 5: you know. When we It's ease team was gorgeous. It's
Speaker 5: in Indonesian Island, just north of Australia, coral refall around it.
Speaker 5: We were doing a pretty pedestrian like peacekeeping, tight style job,
Speaker 5: so we're just working out a lot. It was near
Speaker 5: a beach, and I kind of I slipped back into
Speaker 5: just being the surfer from the Central Coast. Like that's
Speaker 5: I stopped talking in a military way. I started just
Speaker 5: unless I needed to. You know, you obviously got to
Speaker 5: know when to need it to. And I found then
Speaker 5: like people gravitated to the freedom of that, and I
Speaker 5: found it got the best out of me because I
Speaker 5: was just being me.
Speaker 4: It's refreshing late.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, like that's the thing. You don't have to
Speaker 5: add anything, you don't have to change anything. If somebody
Speaker 5: doesn't like European, that's cool. If you don't like someone
Speaker 5: else's that's cool as well.
Speaker 2: So you've got all your life in order, everything's going
Speaker 2: to plan.
Speaker 4: You're you're happy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you found your belonging, and then you deployed to
Speaker 2: Afghanistan and in April of two thousand and nine, boom bam.
Speaker 2: Your whole world is literally flipped upside down along with yourself.
Speaker 2: Can you take us back to that ied strike and
Speaker 2: what you can remember from that blast?
Speaker 3: I can. I can remember as much as you can
Speaker 3: and nothing. Well, yeah, really you're on it.
Speaker 5: Like I've read, I've read the reports of the days before.
Speaker 5: We were in a like an nine hour firefight the
Speaker 5: day of.
Speaker 3: I can't remember any of it.
Speaker 5: I can't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got I've got little bits.
Speaker 5: Of parts that like, I can remember different contacts that
Speaker 5: we had and a couple of different spots, like you know,
Speaker 5: overwatched positions and some small conversations, but not not the
Speaker 5: group orders. Like I remember an orders group that we
Speaker 5: had getting shot up that I thought was the day of,
Speaker 5: but it was nearly a week earlier.
Speaker 2: So yeah, But well, essentially, what's the first memory that
Speaker 2: you that you have as in Germany, I was you've been,
Speaker 2: You've been the incident that happened, You're on a patrol, bang,
Speaker 2: you get blown up, and the next memory after that
Speaker 2: is you're in Germany. Yeah, hospital in Germany and like
Speaker 2: the for a bit of content. So I got hit
Speaker 2: at about ten o'clock ten thirty. My vehicle jump did
Speaker 2: like a ninety degree turn. Guy next to me blew
Speaker 2: his ear drum out. Kidd in the back was knocked
Speaker 2: out as well.
Speaker 3: Woke up. They came.
Speaker 5: My right leg was gone. Left was broken, like really badly.
Speaker 5: It's the coolest X ray and I can't find it now.
Speaker 5: I don't know where it's gone, but it's it looks bad.
Speaker 3: My right elbow was hanging out somewhere around here.
Speaker 5: The bones were broken, the hand was busted, this arm,
Speaker 5: that thumb like my nose was shattered, cut a little
Speaker 5: bit of cosmetic damage.
Speaker 4: Where were you when when the straps happened?
Speaker 3: So I was driving, Yes, I was driving.
Speaker 4: So you were in the driver so you you you
Speaker 4: got the full front of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it went off on the front right wheel.
Speaker 5: And I mean that's something that took me like a
Speaker 5: while to actually ask. You know what I mean, just
Speaker 5: because you do what you can to minimize risk, you
Speaker 5: know you're fighting, you find the wall. That's the best
Speaker 5: thing you can do is make sure that you know
Speaker 5: you're doing as much as you can to minimize the
Speaker 5: risk of something like that happening.
Speaker 3: So we were driving in.
Speaker 5: Each other's wheel tracks, no light, everyone on, everyone wearing
Speaker 5: night vision, Like obviously you can hear the cars, but
Speaker 5: if you're on the side of a mountain, it's hard
Speaker 5: to still hard to shoot at we're traveling in a
Speaker 5: period of darkness as well. So yeah, I was looking
Speaker 5: through and I had to say, like, eventually to one
Speaker 5: of the guys who the guy was next to me,
Speaker 5: who with this is wild. We grew up three suburbs
Speaker 5: away from each other. He's a year younger than me,
Speaker 5: and we'd never met, and we now are both out
Speaker 5: of the army. We live two suburbs away from each other,
Speaker 5: and every now and then we had beers. But yeah,
Speaker 5: he's I remember saying to him and just going, look,
Speaker 5: all right, I need you, need you to tell me
Speaker 5: the truth about this.
Speaker 3: Did I fall asleep like we've been up the day
Speaker 3: we ten days earlier.
Speaker 2: Beating your self up automatically, You're beating yourself up, like
Speaker 2: how did I do? You're not fucking a sleep mate,
Speaker 2: You're fucking driving vehicle. You're probably like on a hyper alert,
Speaker 2: which I know that you do. And I don't get
Speaker 2: food fatigue. You're you're you're there right, You're present, especially
Speaker 2: through the green light, you know, through the way that
Speaker 2: you fell asleep.
Speaker 4: Bro, you're on.
Speaker 5: So that was that was what I was thinking. I
Speaker 5: was like, how And that's also like if if that
Speaker 5: was the case. All I was thinking was, that's the
Speaker 5: biggest that fuck I could have cost someone Like I'm
Speaker 5: cool with me, Like, I'm one hundred percent cool with
Speaker 5: me getting hit, But if that was to cost one
Speaker 5: of the other guys, and it had fallen, and he
Speaker 5: just goes, no, we just were driving in the tracks,
Speaker 5: but where we were and then there was little like
Speaker 5: sort of like little boulders and we were kind of
Speaker 5: getting bottlenecked through. So and you kind of because you
Speaker 5: can only you can see the tracks and go as
Speaker 5: close as possible to it. And he just goes, well,
Speaker 5: because we were like fifth or sixth car in the
Speaker 5: convoy moving up, there'd been ATV's go up and one
Speaker 5: of the boys was like he was literally kneeling down
Speaker 5: looking back at it. After it's tough to say into
Speaker 5: the boss, I think we should sweep this hill before
Speaker 5: we go up, And the boss apparently said, look, mate,
Speaker 5: what's your fascination with sweeping hills. But this is also
Speaker 5: like I don't remember being in the middle of like
Speaker 5: the first massive contact.
Speaker 3: That we had.
Speaker 5: We're behind an embankment and he was holding his rifle
Speaker 5: in the middle of the rifle, just casually ambling over
Speaker 5: to our car, like literally as if he was about
Speaker 5: to give us a sandwich. All right, boys, So you
Speaker 5: know he's a Welsh bloke, really cool guy, and he's oh,
Speaker 5: you know, there's some blah blah blah blah blah, then
Speaker 5: just wanders on back like as if he was out
Speaker 5: in the park, And I thought, this guy's all right,
Speaker 5: So that's how cool you have to be when you're
Speaker 5: in like a high level of combat.
Speaker 3: All right, sweet, we've got the bar. But yeah, so
Speaker 3: the poor thing.
Speaker 5: I feel worse for that guy because it was his
Speaker 5: first appointment doing that role and he didn't know whether
Speaker 5: he should push back. And at that stage, in our
Speaker 5: units involved in Afghanistan, the offshore of command would say
Speaker 5: we need troops here here, here on a mat and
Speaker 5: then go reec on a sniper group. Yeah, form a path,
Speaker 5: whereas then it went, we need this objective. You know,
Speaker 5: we've got these two buildings, how can we get there safely?
Speaker 5: So it sort of flipped after mine. But yeah, so
Speaker 5: I was I was pretty messed up. But I remember asking,
Speaker 5: like you ask everyone, and I left.
Speaker 3: I left time. This is the weirdest thing. And I
Speaker 3: mean one of the yeah, one of the boys is passed.
Speaker 5: He he committed suicide years later, and he was sort
Speaker 5: of on the way to that, but he was one
Speaker 5: of the ones that I went on. I said, look,
Speaker 5: I I just I wanted to talk to you about it,
Speaker 5: but I didn't want you to have to go back there,
Speaker 5: you know, like and like I was on the around
Speaker 5: for fifty six minutes. Boil accounts he woke up the
Speaker 5: next day just blood all over his cams. You know,
Speaker 5: he couldn't even take his cams off because he just
Speaker 5: he tapped me on the shoulder.
Speaker 3: They had to because both arms were broken so badly.
Speaker 5: They wouldn't let me on the helo without arms folded
Speaker 5: across my chest. And his name's Aian Turner, and Turns
Speaker 5: just goes all right, it's like you got an elbow
Speaker 5: hanging out, and he's like, apparently I didn't take that
Speaker 5: as well as some of the other stuff. But you know,
Speaker 5: he kind of tapped me and just said goodbye because
Speaker 5: he thought it was too far gone.
Speaker 3: There's enough fluid had gone through me.
Speaker 5: Like it was sort of just he was emotionally processing
Speaker 5: the fact that, you know, I wasn't gonna make it.
Speaker 5: And I remember talking to him about it, and I
Speaker 5: had to ask this because he's just one of those
Speaker 5: guys who would just tell you straight out.
Speaker 3: So I was like, all right, turns, So did I
Speaker 3: cry like a bitch? But what was it?
Speaker 5: Because you never know, you never know what anyone's going
Speaker 5: to be like in a situation until we're in it.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, brod, did I? And he's like, nah, man,
Speaker 5: you actually like took it pretty well, Like I mean really,
Speaker 5: like was I conscious? And then once it had opened,
Speaker 5: it turned out that we were waiting for it was
Speaker 5: eight years at that stage to talk to each other
Speaker 5: about something, you know, and both of us wanted to
Speaker 5: talk to the other person about it, but we're thinking
Speaker 5: that we were protecting that person from having.
Speaker 3: To live it.
Speaker 2: And did that help you through your recovery talking to
Speaker 2: these people? Did that come later on down the line?
Speaker 5: I mean, to be honest, I think that guilt was
Speaker 5: probably the most important part of my recovery, they.
Speaker 4: Did guilt was the most important.
Speaker 5: I would I would I mean, looking back, I would
Speaker 5: say so that and just the mindset of I'm making
Speaker 5: progress if it hurts, you know what I mean, like
Speaker 5: it's And then you've got doctors who are just used
Speaker 5: to dealing with punters who go in with a saw.
Speaker 3: Knee or whatever.
Speaker 5: And then I'm like, I don't really care what what
Speaker 5: you guys have got to do.
Speaker 3: I'm going to be doing this.
Speaker 5: You're either going to be someone who's on the journey
Speaker 5: with me to do this, or I'm going to find
Speaker 5: someone who is you know what i mean.
Speaker 3: Like and that.
Speaker 5: So I never really looked at a lot of the
Speaker 5: because to me, I was still me, you know. But
Speaker 5: I definitely knew that everyone on that night saw something
Speaker 5: they were never going to unsee. And apparently the time
Speaker 5: where every now and then because they had moved to
Speaker 5: white light to save me, you know, they've done everything
Speaker 5: they could turn the caves and stuff like that, but
Speaker 5: the village because you can hear what they're saying on
Speaker 5: their icon radios. There was a huge, huge conference, like
Speaker 5: there was way more of them than we originally thought.
Speaker 5: But we're basically saying, let's light them up, so everyone's
Speaker 5: posturing and getting ready. If one shot got fired, the
Speaker 5: US chopper wouldn't have got me out and I'd be dead.
Speaker 5: Well at the minute of the troops in contact would
Speaker 5: have happened.
Speaker 3: That rings through. I'm a flag on my parents' mantle piece.
Speaker 4: And what did you manage to keep?
Speaker 3: Then?
Speaker 2: What did you lose? And what did you manage to keep?
Speaker 2: Because I was looking pretty grim at one moment that
Speaker 2: you're going to lose your arms.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So when my parents found out, the word was
Speaker 5: he's really low single digit percentage chance of living and
Speaker 5: if he does, it's going to be a triple ampeteue like.
Speaker 3: And at that stage I was in.
Speaker 5: At Camp Bastion, which is the UK base, with the
Speaker 5: trauma team, under a space blanket and if I couldn't
Speaker 5: hold my body heat, I was I was gone. So
Speaker 5: that was that was when they found out. And I mean,
Speaker 5: it's so disjointed when you get back, but to me,
Speaker 5: I woke up and I was still mate.
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 3: I got to dark places through it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I definitely did, but not in the initial phases
Speaker 5: for me were like, I remember having this comment with
Speaker 5: my dad because he's always said, you've never used your brain.
Speaker 5: It's just disappointing. He walked in with his great, big
Speaker 5: grin on his face. I'm like smiling at him, were
Speaker 5: having a laugh, like in a hospital, and he goes, well,
Speaker 5: you got to use your.
Speaker 3: Brain now, don't you.
Speaker 4: Good old dad, you got me TV.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna now, and then you know he's sort of
Speaker 5: mapping out her up. We've got to change, we've got
Speaker 5: to do different things. But to me, the most important
Speaker 5: thing was there's a group of guys who have gone
Speaker 5: through something that I can't imagine seeing, let alone it
Speaker 5: being something you care about, and they have somehow kept
Speaker 5: me alive.
Speaker 3: So the mess that I could see, I saw was.
Speaker 5: The result of people's effort on the ground, you know,
Speaker 5: which I still see it as that.
Speaker 3: It's what it is.
Speaker 5: So I've got to try and do something that then
Speaker 5: has them know how good of a job they've done.
Speaker 5: So to me, I then had a finite online of
Speaker 5: when they were flying home and I had to be
Speaker 5: up walking standing in a pair of jeans so you
Speaker 5: couldn't see prosthetic legs, and it didn't matter what it took.
Speaker 5: And then like there were bits where like it it
Speaker 5: 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 5: Yeah, And I mean I was like, by all accounts,
Speaker 5: I was probably one of the worst patients in the
Speaker 5: history of North Shore Private Hospital because I was just
Speaker 5: done compromising with it. You know, if I didn't think
Speaker 5: and right or wrong, didn't think that someone was aligned
Speaker 5: with my goals, I would like remove them from the
Speaker 5: process or ignore their advice. You know, I just go
Speaker 5: all right, I've been through enough to know where I'm
Speaker 5: going with this, Like I know my limits. You don't
Speaker 5: like there's a picture of me like five weeks after
Speaker 5: on a prosthetic that you're not really supposed to wait
Speaker 5: bear through. But I was like, I'm going down the
Speaker 5: hall on this because we've got so I'm on one
Speaker 5: of those walking is pushing it along with the thing
Speaker 5: like and there's just concerned face.
Speaker 4: Tracking his prosthetic leg along.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well and I'm just like, okay, cool, well, this is
Speaker 5: what we've got to do this. I'm still played it
Speaker 5: at the time like there's a lot of stuff going
Speaker 5: wrong with it. But i was like, I'm not going
Speaker 5: to heal laying down and they're like you just you
Speaker 5: just you got to rest, you gotta rest. And I'm
Speaker 5: like everyone tells me to rest, like go home, you rest, Like,
Speaker 5: get it up. I've got stuff to do.
Speaker 2: Talk about using rehab and you know, reshaping your life
Speaker 2: and coming out the other side with a positive mindset
Speaker 2: that you have.
Speaker 4: You went, I'm looking at my notes in front of me.
Speaker 2: You got a golfing career and a snowboarding career. Where
Speaker 2: the hell did that come from? Where the hell did
Speaker 2: you just think yourself right? Because you're actually extremely good
Speaker 2: with both, aren't you. It says here that you are
Speaker 2: deferred multi emputy golfer, thirdinked, multi ampity golfer in the world.
Speaker 2: Just to walk again and live your life and try
Speaker 2: and be normal wasn't enough for you. You then had
Speaker 2: to go on and do these amazing things. And we
Speaker 2: can talk about the Evictors Games, but just that rehab,
Speaker 2: really you use that to your advantage.
Speaker 3: I mean I had that's the thing.
Speaker 5: I had the tools, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 5: that's one thing that special Forces does. It just prepares
Speaker 5: you for stuff like that, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: Like hard then just becomes part of the process.
Speaker 3: Then people are going on and it was a consistent thing.
Speaker 5: But guys from our unit that got the medical staff
Speaker 5: after a few years got used to the fact that
Speaker 5: would heal quickly. You know, they'd be doing things at
Speaker 5: crazy paces and I mean, I just need something to
Speaker 5: keep me going.
Speaker 2: Actor as well, Actor, you've got your how do you
Speaker 2: get into a tour of this and then become again
Speaker 2: the best at what you do with no legs.
Speaker 3: I left the Army.
Speaker 5: I had done a a winter sports camp and snowboarding
Speaker 5: was the closest thing I could get to surfing. I
Speaker 5: went too hard on my second tour to Utah. I
Speaker 5: was riding with Team Utah's Adaptive snowboarding team, and I
Speaker 5: compression fraction.
Speaker 3: Of my back my OL two, which I mean now.
Speaker 5: It fractioned something on everything, so kind of completed a picture.
Speaker 5: Then I came back and I you know, I was
Speaker 5: doing well the motivational speaking. I feel that like it's
Speaker 5: my responsibility, after being through something that's that complex, to
Speaker 5: share what it looks like from the inside of the bottle,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Everyone can read the.
Speaker 5: Outside, so it's my job to tell them what's on
Speaker 5: the inside. And I find that inner vulnerability is a
Speaker 5: really important part of that, you know, people seeing the
Speaker 5: true you, which is when I really feel like the
Speaker 5: last bits of armor came off. You know, I can't
Speaker 5: control what's you know, of all things that come into fashion,
Speaker 5: skinny jeans, when you're wearing prosthetics that are tiny, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. Like then you start going, well,
Speaker 5: I can't care about what people think now, you know,
Speaker 5: it's now well, just I've got to do things for
Speaker 5: the right reason. And at the end, when I was young,
Speaker 5: I probably would have wanted to be an actor, you know,
Speaker 5: I loved I love performing, except it was never something
Speaker 5: that you know, my dad was bigger than numbers. And
Speaker 5: you know in the US, people who are who are
Speaker 5: on SAG, there's how many of them there's three percent
Speaker 5: of them that are making enough money to provide an income,
Speaker 5: and then the top hundred thousand, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Like it's wild.
Speaker 5: But yeah, when I was but I went to an
Speaker 5: acting school just going I just want to do it
Speaker 5: because no one thinks I can. And I'm all right,
Speaker 5: I'm going to give you the secret to it. With
Speaker 5: any of these things, no one expects a disabled guy.
Speaker 5: So it was just funny. It's ironic that I've said
Speaker 5: I don't care what anyone thinks, and now now I've
Speaker 5: started that with what people think. No one expects it
Speaker 5: disable guy to do it anyway. So you do it,
Speaker 5: you win, you don't do it, you haven't disappointed any one.
Speaker 5: Like I played golf now with guys who like I
Speaker 5: hit the ball a long way. I've just always had
Speaker 5: the talent to hit a big ball, and now it's
Speaker 5: just controlling that. That's been the fun. Build a set
Speaker 5: a prosthetics around it. But like, so I play other
Speaker 5: guys who are big hitters. If we both get one
Speaker 5: and I turned to you and we're kind of nodding,
Speaker 5: and we know it's on.
Speaker 3: This guy.
Speaker 5: This guy's got two options, right, one, I drove him,
Speaker 5: and you got out driven by a double amputee. The
Speaker 5: other option is.
Speaker 3: You out drove a handicap guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what I mean, like you want to
Speaker 4: lose loose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're just always fighting a lose loose, so it is.
Speaker 3: And then the hatsort, the hat sort of thing was
Speaker 3: like this a similar sort of thing.
Speaker 5: I mean, I learned that, you know, I wasn't as
Speaker 5: good an actor as I thought I would have been
Speaker 5: growing up. It's been two years at school and then
Speaker 5: one of my teachers was auditioning for it, and then
Speaker 5: I just gone on the set and I don't know
Speaker 5: if you might have come across John Ales. He Yeah,
Speaker 5: he's one of our one of our ex sas plugs
Speaker 5: who works in that sort of industry, and so he
Speaker 5: was the weapons tech we turn up for a week.
Speaker 5: I've got Vince Vaughn, Sam Worthington. I'm literally thinking I've
Speaker 5: died and just gone to this Hollywood and then you know,
Speaker 5: like Spider Man standing over there, who you can't say
Speaker 5: Spider Man you're in but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then I know the weapons tech.
Speaker 5: Hey, John, here you going man, like you know, and
Speaker 5: then all of a sudden I felt comfortable in that
Speaker 5: world and yeah, it's a it's a cool story to
Speaker 5: be a part of.
Speaker 2: So you know what your story is written in your book,
Speaker 2: and you know if people want to continue with knowing
Speaker 2: the full story and your your amazing mindset. Because we
Speaker 2: are running out of time here, unfortunately. But you wrote
Speaker 2: an autobiography which I would hugely recommend to everyone because
Speaker 2: I could speak to you for hours, mate, and we
Speaker 2: still wouldn't have enough time. It's called Without Warning? When
Speaker 2: did you write that? And what can we expect?
Speaker 3: In the book run.
Speaker 5: In twenty twelve, and it focuses primarily like on the
Speaker 5: how I got to the space that I was in,
Speaker 5: and then I wanted to take everyone again. I saw
Speaker 5: it as my responsibility. I wanted everyone who's reading the
Speaker 5: book to understand the spaces. So there's some language in
Speaker 5: it that is quite colorful. There are some opinions that
Speaker 5: I don't think I would agree with, Like if I
Speaker 5: was to rewrite the story now, it would be a
Speaker 5: completely different looking book.
Speaker 3: But just unapologetically take someone into the.
Speaker 5: Spot, because you know, I don't if I'm reading a
Speaker 5: book about someone who's been through something that's difficult, you know,
Speaker 5: I don't want to know what the colorful roses look
Speaker 5: like or something of that sort, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 5: I want to know the bits that you can't see,
Speaker 5: you know, So I really tried to sort of communicate
Speaker 5: that when I when I was writing it. So there's
Speaker 5: there's bits of it that I just think, Oh my god,
Speaker 5: it you Why pick it up?
Speaker 4: That's what I say to everyone. Pick it up. Damon.
Speaker 2: It's been an absolute pleasure, mate. Talking with you, Like
Speaker 2: I said, I could chat with you for hours is
Speaker 2: such an honor and I love It's refreshing for me
Speaker 2: to speak with one of my own as well, and
Speaker 2: to have you on here.
Speaker 4: Mate, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Damon. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Bud, thanks so much for joining me on Headgame. If
Speaker 2: you enjoyed this episode, make sure you're subscribed so you
Speaker 2: don't miss any of our incredible stories, and leave me
Speaker 2: a review wherever you're listening.
Speaker 4: I'm Aunt Middleton. Catch you again next time.