BATTLEFIELD TO BOARDROOM | THE DEBRIEF | Former QARANC David Dent MBE

In this episode of The Debrief, former 22 SAS Trooper Big Phil Campion speaks to David Dent MBE.

In this episode of The Debrief, former 22 SAS Trooper Big Phil Campion speaks to David Dent MBE. Born into a family steeped in military heritage, David initially broke the mould and began his career with the NHS. He soon realised his role wasn’t challenging enough, so he joined the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps, before specialising in Battlefield Trauma. David deployed overseas numerous times, unfortunately picking up injuries that would develop over time, resulting in him becoming a wheelchair user. Since leaving the Army, David has continued in the medical field, with clinical trials & biotech consulting. Outside of work, David has gone on to achieve sporting world records, and is a highly respected figure in the business & start-up space

Support The Wounded Highlanders here: https://woundedhighlanders.co.uk/ & https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/david-dent-4?utm_term=N44a5P2Yv

David is also an advisor, spokesman and ambassador for the following organisations:
https://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/

About

And works in academia as and Honorary Professor and Entrepreneur in Residence for
https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/faculties/stirling-management-school/
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/

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You know and you would kind of fly into the point of injury resuscitate do whatever’s needed fly them back out again we essentially put up tents in an old tanning Factory your theater bed was a stretcher on a wheelbarrow we were getting hit so often when Martin Bell

And Kate ad turn up then you know it’s a bit dodgy so I then specialized in blast and Ballistic injury there’s a long-term effect to trauma that people don’t really get Bosnia was a Sam 2 missile that was fired into our camp so I got strap in my back big gust of wind

Shifted the helicopter and I got the tail in my neck and the skid in my lumber spine but I enjoyed my sport thought that was all gone ended up on the par Olympic development kind of squad I went over to the states with a warrior games and then more recently

Highland Games so I think I’m only one of two people to successfully toss a cber from a wheelchair I Mentor startup companies I teach at a couple of universities you know with my physical injuries psychological injuries you know you could easily give up and and have a rubbish life the only person that’s

Going to affect is you this week’s guest on the debrief then is a former member of the que I I can never get this quank I call it but Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army nursing core there you go that’s a mouthful half for you David Dent MBE how are you buddy

You’re right I’m very good yeah yeah right let’s get I’m going to take you straight into this and what I’m going to do is I’m going try I’m going to try and sort of like unpick who you are right and we’re going we’re going to start

With David then when he was small where where you from and what what what did he do when you was little yeah um so yeah I always kind of think nor normal childhood you know but then you you talk to other people it’s it there such a

Thing as a normal childhood not that normal so uh yeah well lucky enough to still have my parents around in their 80s but um kind a bit of a military tradition in the family um so my dad was uh in the Raw Scots for 30 odd years W what rank

Did he get to uh major oh wow okay so he went all the way through so he started off as as a as a b and then well he started off fly national service um and then that’s topical at the moment as well yeah yeah exactly exactly and I

Think he got he got promoted to Lance Jack and then um left and because he finished his national service bit and then decided he really enjoyed it so signed up and uh and then went to Sandhurst and uh so you was you was a pad brat then really yeah yeah yeah so

All all over the place all over the place and uh my both his dad and my mom’s dad as as well were Second World War veterans so w okay who do you know who weed did like it was um my mom’s dad was P um and he was during the second

World war he was like over in North Africa um wow and then he might have paid someone mild Lo David Sterling on his pay David Sterling on your pay quite probably yeah yeah so uh um yeah and then I can’t remember which it was one of the county regiments because there

There used to be so many during the second world war um yeah my um dad’s dad uh he also got injured in Belgium um and then you know kind of shra injury got bought back home and he went back to farming which is kind of what he did

Before okay um so uh yeah so I kind of was born over in Jamaica so my dad was posted over there justst that’s a post Jamaica I never got nothing like that I know but it was it was uh yeah because it was 66 so um uh Jamaica just getting Independence

And so basically they needed somebody to train the newly formed Jamaica Defense Force oh wow um so that was his job job to go over there and set it up yeah that’s quite a cool job yeah it was really good and then and the Prime Minister Jamaica died at the time so he

Ended up doing his ceremonial Duty with this guy lying in state on a train being taken round the coast of Jamaica in the boiling temperatures and he got a fair shift then they he did he did and the queen came to visit that year as well so

There was there was quite a lot going on um so yeah so just in Kingston so uh um which is where we lived yeah um just kind of on the Hills up towards the mountains um and then I wasn’t I didn’t get to the UK till I was about 7 so we

Were posted to Germany from there so that was a bit of a culture shock going into the freezing German weather um and uh and then it was because it was raw Scott so it was either Edinburgh or somewhere else um and then Cyprus when that happened in 74 Back In The Sun M

Archbishop macarius got assassinated and yeah we were living out in a he do this on purpose he I know I know just cherry picking yeah yeah well it was there was a big there was a good stint in kind of B felt and uh monster and British Army

Of the Ry that kind of stuff that’s right um but yeah Edinburgh was the other kind of bit so on and off um growing up you know in that but but you know we were the regiment and the families were all evacuated from Cyprus yeah so that was an interesting kind of

As a young lad um yeah that must be quite a thing because that’s that’s an upheaval for an adult but when you’re a kid and you’re like you know that’s your school and your mates the whole lot just off you go well you were kind of going

To Army schol a lot of the time anyway and then but yeah we we were in Convoy getting evacuated out we kind of locked in the houses for like 3 weeks when it all kicked off cuz we weren’t in a base did you understand the gravity of it as

A kid like this is a laugh yeah yeah it was just like why are people wandering around with guns you know that kind of stuff why do we you know somebody’s delivering the food and it’s compo rations basically and tins to the door because you couldn’t go out the shops

And then uh and then Convoy back to episcopy okay um and they had a they had a lone pipe on on on the road piping all the trucks coming in the families always always R Al yeah yeah Turkish jets flying over the top and then I yeah and

Then 7h hour Hercules flight back to back to the UK yeah that’s pretty which was not yet wasn’t very pleasant so uh yeah and then it was kind of a bit more normal so uh but yeah sort of yeah Army brat so how did you do at school cuz you

Presumably you went to quite a few schools didn’t you yeah and in the end I I mean I was full behind with school to be honest and going to the Army schools just cuz we were being posted so much yeah so um back then you could get like

A boarding school allowance so I you know you you could send your kids to a boarding school and they thought I’ll get a more stable education so I did all right for the kind of O Lev stuff and then rugby girls the usual kind of distractions and didn’t do so well in

The in the next bit so although I got further like academic qualifications I didn’t do that till I was later in life and had to what what first got you thinking I’m going to sign up here I’m going to do something I mean obviously You’ got your family steeped in military

History but what was it for you that said well I’ll tell you what I’m going to have I’m going to have a pop at this well it was funny because like like most young kind of men I didn’t want to do what my dad did you know it was it was

Going to be a bit obvious to to do that so I I wasn’t going to join the Army um and then I went to work in the hell service um and um started my nurse training and um I just like the interesting challenging bits of that so

I ended up doing Bon Mar transplantation in the early days stem cell transplants that kind of stuff and then intensive care yeah and then I just kind of thought this is not challenging enough you just rock up for your shift and then go on and then thought okay well I can

Go straight into the Army Medical Services without qualification and get to do that stuff in more interesting kind of challenging circumstances so it’s always been I’m always kind of faced you Jo up as an officer to do yeah yeah and do you have to go to Sanders to

Become well you know you do the what was called the Vickers and Tarts course so it was uh cuz you’re not just learn how to use your knife and for yeah exactly but a lot a lot of the trades um you know because you’re not soldiering soldiering you know you’ve obviously got

To be you’re a soldier first but you’re there for your whatever your other skills are um so it’s a shorten course basically um but you still do all the kind of the basic infantry stuff SE and all that sort of stuff yeah yeah so the Padres are quite funny cuz they

Give them a pickaxe handle rather than a weapon but they gave me a pickax when I went to Kenya weapon over there yeah so then it was the kind of Aram faram Crook and Fleet rotation for a bit so OT and uh we used to have military hospital so Cambridge military

Hospital was in ERS shot um did you specialize in anything in particular once you became a nurs to Y you yeah so intensive care so okay and then and then later on um I did war surgery um we also did this thing where you could train people who had intensive care

Qualifications or theaters or A&E that kind of stuff you could do a shortened course to become a GP basically so but just for the military yeah so they used to call him regimental medical officer assistant but you got an extra six months of prescribing diagnosis but your

War role was Battlefield trauma so I then specialized in blast and ballistic injury okay um and then that was a lot of my war role was um resuscitation and B were you what what years were you through the ’90s basically yeah I kind of came out in 2000 yeah April 2000 so

Did you get any tours under your belt in that yeah yeah yeah yeah so so um Bosnia was my first one um so the Year my son was born um so we were up in uh Bono okay um so we had a kind of Brigade headquarters at goury vou and then we

Had a kind of company location it was a different to how traditional fighting had been because you had these little enclaves and everybody was everybody and you all around you so we had a yeah we had a location there where we had a small surgical facility but

Still nothing like you had in in um Afghan you know they started to bring in por cabins but we essentially put up tents in an old tanning Factory um and uh you know your your theater bed was a stretcher on a wheelbarrow yeah you know

Put a bit of plywood in to stop it bouncing about the place and uh you ventilated was a gas was it fairly busy to people through it was I mean there was a time that um you kind of always knew that there was one bit where he got

Really kind of busy and we had to thin out basically because we were getting hit so often yeah um and uh yeah when Martin Bell and Kate a turn up and Malcolm riffkin was the defense secretary when they all start turning up then you know it’s a bit dodgy so so

Yeah that was quite quite interesting cuz we had like a science officer’s mess which was a porter cabin basically with a few slabs of beer um and and those folks came to visit but uh Martin Bell with his white suit and his little suitcase he was quite funny because he

Used to take his little suitcase to the toilet with him cuz he said like one time he didn’t and basically half the building got blown up and he didn’t have anything to report his report his stuff you mean k did you yeah yeah I’ve met

Kate she’s all aren spoke to her a few times she was my wedding actually funny enough yeah yeah no they I mean they’re really nice yeah easy going is they yeah yeah and and they got they were in a position to kind of tell a bit more of

The real story cuz the conditions weren’t great you know the boys were sleeping on cardboard on concrete floors and paraffin heaters and all that kind of stuff so yeah it wasn’t and it was kind of minus 30 um going over the winter so it was uh so outside of Bosnia

Where else did you go did you did you get so Northern Ireland the other kind of big tours were Northern Ireland did uh armar and T I in Belfast gwood and White Rock um they busy places as well aren’t they yeah and my last one was 99

Where I was you ended up doing more than one job so armar was more looking after the towers looking after your kind of medical facility but you’re also doing you know trauma cover um and Belfast was Med cover for bomb disposal um and which was interesting as well um because we

Didn’t have green troops on the ground at that point but still you know it with ATO was quite busy yeah yeah yeah stuff turning up so what prompt did you leave in the military basically injury so okay so so tell us a little bit about how how and when

Why so the first one and and I I think it’s one of the things why you know I talk about these things because there’s a long there’s a long-term effect to trauma that people don’t really get you know and I’m lucky enough to be in that position where I’ve done the soldiering

Bit I’ve done the the medical bit you know you’ve got you’ve got a kind of 360 degree perspective but Bosnia was a Sam 2 missile that was basically fired into our into our camp and kind of took out half the building so you you presum CAU

Took a little bit of a slap from that so I got stra in my back I got kind of concussed and what were you doing at the time when it went off just just we were just doing our stuff yeah yeah basically basically all of a sudden yeah yeah it

Comes and I mean you don’t I mean that you did had no notice of that you know all no of course not no you know there was some folks on the roof and the qrf were out and about but there was people who used to kind of snipe into the camp

Anyway and and and they had this sort of strange habit of if things were getting um hairy on the kind of front line they would lob mortars in or they would do something with the camp because we could then call up down to the Adriatic and

Say can we have air cover okay and then everything died down a little bit you know but they used to use it as like it’s getting a bit difficult for us let’s more to the more okay so you’re taking out but his thing you’re the medical Geer and you’re now the one

Who’s been taken out how did how did that fair how did that pan out yeah well I mean it was just I don’t remember a lot of it to be honest I mean they just kind of took the big bits of metal out and scrubbed your back down with

Betadine and things like that and then I thought I’d recovered um and it wasn’t until kind of seven eight years later I started getting like couldn’t feel my fingers properly I got kind of numb patch on my abdomen started tripping up this kind of stuff and and it turns out

That um what happens with blast injury particularly um is it’s like a shock wave that goes through your body and if you’re in a building it does it multiple times and depending on the density of the tissue it causes damage in different ways so your lungs are fill of air so

You can get blast lung other tissues are a bit more fluid but with your brain the middle of your brain the gray matter is more jelly like yeah the white matter which is your nerves conducting is a bit more tough and what happened is that basically this micro te teing of these

Nerves ended up with just like Fray wires essentially and then as you get bit older but you just everybody loses a bit as they get older that that’s really interesting as far as right now it m included has been exposed to a number of lasts yeah you know yet there’s no

Obviously signs with with myself at the moment touchwood you know what I mean but there must be a whole generation of soldiers now who have been exposed to yeah Limitless amounts of blast you know some have picked up shrapnel some haven’t picked up shrapnel some have

Sort of like you know but it is even even uh I mean even the small ones so even if you’ve stepped on an IED you know that’s not a big explosion because it’s designed to take your leg off and clog up the you know the logistics affect

Morale and things like that and that’s why that pardon me some of that kind of warfare bit is it’s they’re not designed to kill you basically yeah but they’ve done some studies where even those smaller blast injuries I think youve got double the likelihood of PTSD um later on in life early onsets

Alzheimer’s early onset Parkinson’s disease is that the effect it’s having on the brain is it yeah and the nervous system obious they’re finding out stuff about Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s all the time aren’t they yeah yeah and it a lot of it has to do with inflammation

But also you kind of see the stuff that’s happened in football and American football um as well with this traumatic brain inj obvious in boxers isn’t it you know what I mean you see you see people like Muhammad Ali and you could see you know he got Parkinson’s you know you see

Some of these rugby players who have motor neuron disease you know all of this stuff is connected but but there have been studies that show that you get you you got much higher likelihood of getting this stuff if you’ve been exposed to kind of explosions so it’s the long-term consequence and I think

When young Lads if you’re 22 and you’ve stepped on something in Afghan you know you’re not thinking about that you’re thinking about your prosthetic and you’re thinking about that you’re not thinking about when you’re 50 um or when you’re 60 but also Health Service planners you know all these kind of folk

That they you know we concentrated on that older World War II generation but actually there’s a cohort of people like you and me that are coming through that are going to lightly need some extra support as a result of their service yeah yeah yeah that’s so you said the

First time yeah what was the second time so yeah the second time was um so there was just some little scrapes and things like that you know um um but um the the second one that really kind of finished me off was it was actually in Northern Ireland and we’re evacuating a casualty

Up to the hospital um cuz I was down in the sticks and uh we kind of had the helicopters that we could transport people in anyway it was really bad weather a bit like we’ve been having the last few days just getting the casualty out of the uh out of the helicopter what

Kind of helicopter was it it was I think it was a pummer okay yeah yeah yeah yeah so we had gazelle we had the little gazel and then hum and links lynxes were out there yeah yeah um anyway big gust of wind basically shifted the helicopter

Just as we were at the kind of side gate and I got the tail in my neck and the skid in my lumber spine and I fractured like three vertebrae here and you realize did you realize straight away I’m I’m in the yeah yeah yeah I mean it

Didn’t do my cord or anything but I basically got these transverse fractures so the discs are gone in my neck and my lumber spine and when I saw a spinal surgeon later on they was basically saying because the way these are angled normally they would Jack open your

Vertebrae and put a bit of concrete or some artificial disc in yeah but basically it would just slip and cut your cord so I end up with I now have permanent kind of nerve pain as a result of that so I have this kind of chronic

Pain all the time yeah um and there’s not a lot you can do about it so that was kind of endex really yeah yeah so the realization hits that you you’re not going to your career’s over basically what happens then what what what’s what’s your mindset what what do

You what do you think how can I get around this now mean you obviously you got to keep going somewhere yeah and and I think I think this is not different for any Soldier becoming a civvy you know I mean there is that kind of you’ve had everything there served up on a

Plate for you to a large extent what rank were you by the way I didn’t touch on I was a I was a captain then I was that kind of acting major in Northern irland okay um but um mainly CU for the marching stuff and the at stuff um but the

Um that kind of my perception of what civvy street was like was probably quite strange so I kind of saw the commercial world as this big scary place that was Cutthroat and all the rest of it and I thought but yeah but I could do that you

Know I got my management skills and yeah and then thought um well they won’t let me practice the medical bit anymore because basically because of my brain injury it’s probably not that safe um and then the physical side of life was getting worse um so again you can’t

Really do your when you got out could you walk then so you could you could still cut about yeah yeah yeah and I think the thing is Phil that um a lot of people use wheelchairs more for kind of getting about so I don’t have a spinal

Cord injury so the legs kind of work but what happens is because of that nerve damage you get inflammation and and like I was saying to you before you know I got pain all the time so Pain’s not an indicator for me cuz it’s it’s there as

A constant but find is like the hands swell up or you know I start to get like spasticity where my fingers kind of curl in or really painful one is getting spasm in your intercostal muscles where basically the kind of ribs just Bunch up together and and that kind of stuff

Cramp yeah and then choking because I lost my ability to swallow properly so I had to get retrained in terms of swallowing and you know but I would choke and pass out and but the more you use your limbs um the more it sets up the inflammation and then there’s this inflammatory Cascade

That then causes effects on your brain on other parts of your body there’s almost an argument to be had to say right just leave that alone yeah exactly exactly so um so apart from you know falling over but I mean 70% of people that use wheelchairs don’t can get out

Their wheelchair yeah you know so I think there’s a bit of a misperception with you know with that anyway you know you see kind of the the perception isn’t really more with people that are able bodies that look in cuz I’m I’m I literally literally assumed you can’t

Walk that’s why you’re stuck in that but it’s not yeah you you you shouldn’t be walking because it’s going to make the whole thing worse yeah exactly yeah that’s quite I’ve learned something there already yeah but the inflammation is is damaging in itself yeah so you

Don’t want to have all those you know inflammatory markers running around in your body um because it just continues it worsens the damage so yeah it’s a little bit preventative but then I would would get exhaust if if I was trying to cut about with crutches or whatever I

I’d be exhausted by about an hour I wouldn’t be able to speak properly I would be able to swallow just that whole thing just happen so quickly so if I need to do whatever I’m doing on my job or sport or whatever I got to kind of

Tone it down a little bit okay which goes against the mentality of just so workwise how did you find that you inated that you were going to struggle now cuz you couldn’t you weren’t be allowed to do that you can’t be allowed to do that so now you you’re trying to get

Square I went into pharmaceutical so you know cuz I thought well I’ve got a clinical knowledge yeah um and uh went into the kind of commercial world of that and and I think the the difficult thing was you come out of the military nobody understands what what a soldier’s

Rank is when you hit civvy Street no civies don’t care they genely don’t care so you know and I was having a chat with a with a full Colonel that left recently and and trying to help him get a job basically um and he was like Yeah but I

Tell them I’m a colonel and and they’re like yeah so what I have no idea what you’re talking about so it doesn’t matter whether you’re private Soldier or whatever they yeah everybody has the same struggles yeah no one cares yeah so and they don’t you have to translate

That kind of skill set into civy language essentially but all that leadership management organizational skills a lot of that does just doesn’t happen so just showing up with that right mindset actually puts you A Cut Above the Rest anyway yeah I think the the challenge for me was you had to go

Right back to the bottom and every time I’ve changed role I’ve kind of gone back down to the bottom again and worked my way up so you don’t have any Equity that you can translate across through things um but yeah I mean it was interesting I

And and it was still the first bit of my career in the heal service was looking after patients you know in the military I was doing the same just soldiers that were injured you know and you would kind of fly into the point of injury resuscitate do whatever’s needed fly

Them back out again um and uh and then Pharmaceuticals was providing the treatments and now I work in clinical research so we’re developing the new drugs and treatments to the Future that will come 10 years down the line so all it’s all been so centered around kind of

Patient care at the end of the day okay yeah in your in in your normal every daytoday life now you you do you do a few other things you do a bit of sport don’t you yeah yeah okay so tell us a little bit about that well yeah it was

Funny cuz I I I had to go into like spent a month in rehab um uh for physical you know injury and um I kind of thought I was quite we’re all fit in the Army right you know so so um but I enjoyed my Sport and and did some

Martial arts played rugby this kind of stuff thought that was all gone thought that was all finished you know I was like bloody wheelchair now you know um and then somebody said oh why don’t you try disability Sports so I live in Scotland so I went to Scottish

Disability sport ended up on the par Olympic development kind of squad and that was was quite interesting because you know I thought what what sport do I want to do and they’re like no no no no what we do is we measure you get you to

Do a whole load of drills and then we’ll say you’re not going to be a rower because you’re only 5 fo8 and you’re not going to be a whatever because you’re only this so they literally kind of measure your whole they tell you what you’re going to do tell you what you’re

Going to do um so I got onto the development pathway for archery for GB to go to Tokyo um but again that was another decision I had to make that I had to give up my job basically if wanted to do that okay fulltime and I wasn’t kind of prepared to do that

Because still I’ve got three kids well you got to look out yourself you got you got to earn a wage yeah of course yeah so uh so I then kind of did more of that recreational stuff um you know competed SC Scottish disability sport that was at

Archery yeah so that’s no I mean that was like I did everything from wheelchair racing to field Athletics to that kind of stuff um then went with some of the veteran sports stuff I went over to the states with the Warrior games um uh over at Quantico where the

Marines are based um and um yeah came back with a bronze medal for the for the um shop putut oh okay so that was really pleased with that and we got we were The Americans really look after their their veterans I think better than we do to be

Fair they on another level aren’t they and everybody you know lots of people know that have been over there see civies funny enough see as well do you know what I mean I speak to civies and they go they don’t look after you like they look after there all the time yeah

Cuz we got invited up to the capital building um you know guest to the speaker of the house had a little kind of show around that kind of stuff and then more recently I was competing over in Israel with uh Israeli Defense Force folks there’s a charity called beet holam um

And they have these great rehab centers I think they got four in Israel and Israel is only the size of Wales you know yeah but all all their veterans because they all do national service obviously um all their veterans can kind of use the facilities as swimming pools

As gyms all that kind of stuff so so we had a week of sport and they coincided it with a mental health conference as well okay uh around BTSD and Veterans mental health so it was a nice kind of thing that we were all together but they

Were doing something good with that as well um and then more recently Highland Games so yeah that’s interesting yeah yeah it’s it’s it’s something so yeah the team I compete with is called the wounded Highlanders um Jim hurn who’s a you know another Exar guy really good

Lad um he kind of helped set that up and initially the perception of Highland Games competitors was like we don’t want a bunch of disabled people cuz you know we all look strong and tough and all that kind of box yeah so there was a bit of kind of

Resistance and then we found some friends up up in the north up by Jonah groz who wanted to have us there um and then 2019 it officially became a Paris sport in the Highland gamees so what sort of things do you do so so I do um

They do this thing called wait for distance so it’s like a kind of weight on a chain and you swing it around your head and you Chuck it shot put or Scottish shot yeah um and I don’t know whether it’s just because it’s a new sport or I’m half decent but anyway I

Got the world record for the shot wow so but I think it’s pick a sport where not lots of people compete but um but it is it is competed I mean it’s big in America big in Canada you know various places in the world so uh and then I

Think the PE the one that people are most shocked at is tossing the cabber so I think I’m only one of two people to successfully toss a cber from a wheelchair um you know getting it the full yeah yeah yeah go and it’s it’s got down the other side yeah cuz normally

People are kind of running at it or they’re walking towards the thing moving forwards and then you flip it whereas I get somebody to put it in my hands and I’m just sitting there and I have to do it all from shoulder and you know toss

It up so so I’m quite proud of that bit yeah I bet yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah is it is it the same similar sort of cber as as what it’s it’s well they they have a like a women’s cber as well as a men’s cber so it’s it’s still about 2

And a half MERS 80 kg they’re lumps they they still a big lump of wood it would still take 10 paratroopers to carry exactly it’s funny we were competing up at the end of last year with um with three Scots yeah um up at Fort George and uh um some of the young

Soldiers couldn’t do it basically um so the PTI basically was like Dave would you come along you know so I then tossed the cber some of these lads who were active service were like oh we better up our game yeah you better you better get on that thing you are remedial cab

Tossing that’s doing yeah it was a bit unfortunate cuz two of them ended up in remedial PT cuz I did the shot put from a throwing frame further than they did stood up wow you know so so you could imagine PG wouldn’t happy yeah absolutely so you you done Invictus

Games and all that sort of stuff no no I’ve never I’ve never kind of it’s always been a combination of i’ I’ve been for the tryouts quite a few times but never kind of got through really okay um or I ended up being busy doing something else on a couple of you got

You got your family in that to consider as how old are your kids so callum’s 28 uh Rachel’s 26 and Becca’s 21 okay yeah so they’re all one one at home callum’s married so uh they all kind of live live nearby yeah um so yeah doing very Ser

Your mental health have you ever suffered with your mental health yeah I mean I I think so yeah I do suffer with PTSD and and I think this is it it took me a long time to kind of get get to grits with that and I think

That that is is more challenging than um than the physical stuff to be honest with you and and I think it’s what your like signs and symptoms of that do you know does it come and go is it so I never I never knew that I had so a lot

Of people first of all they’re diagnosed late um because they don’t realize so sometimes this doesn’t kick in for like five 10 years yeah um for me I was just getting really angry with stuff um so short temper shouting at the kids slamming doors that kind of stuff I mean

Other people end up you know getting into fights and things like that luckily for me I didn’t kind of take it that far um but things like um not really having any regard for yourself and your personal safety you know doing stupid stuff like driving too fast or you know

Arguing with people for the sake of arguing picking a fight that kind of stuff um and um but but it was interesting so I I went to see the psychiatrist who was a really nice guy and and I hadn’t had it really explained to me very well before and you know he

Was saying you know your job as a medical person you know when you’re when you’re flown out to somewhere where you know there’s a firefight going on and you’re resuscitating somebody you’re concentrating so hard on your clinical job because that Soldier needs you um but at the same time people are sh

Shooting at you and you’re relying on all the other people around you to you know keep you alive basically um your fight or flight response is saying get the hell out of here you know but your kind of mental capacity is overriding that and saying no I’m here to do a job

And basically the two act in opposition and and you know something snapped somewhere there’s a there’s a guy called um Professor Steve Peters um who’s written a book called The chimp Paradox which is fantastic he’s a forensic psychiatrist consultant and uh he coached um Chris Hoy the cycle British

Cycling team Manchester United Football Club and it’s all about how this kind of fight ORF flight response comes from somewhere called the migdala um and and it’s so hardwired into your basic survival safety stuff it acts quicker than your thinking brain yeah that’s an in that’s an animal Instinct a fight or

Flight is something that would been programmed into every animal on the planet isn’t it is one of the basic the the sort of basic ingredients of of an existence yeah so you think about your job you know and and you know you overcome that by just training the hell

Out of it yeah and and and so then that becomes instinctive behavior and and the same thing is it’s just it’s it’s training it’s muscle memory it’s you know just doing your skills and drills time and time again um but still there’s a consequence of you not running away

Because that’s your job um and then that kind of features and then obviously you know sometimes sadly trauma is so bad that people don’t survive you know I mean even a civy health health care System 30% of people that go into intensive care don’t live you know

They’ve had a fatal event that we’re just keeping them alive well in the military that’s similar if someone’s been shot in the head your survivability is not kind of High um and and um you you’ve got a kind of um you you you’ve got to deal with that and and and the

Difference as well is you’ve been eating three Square meals a day with these people you’re bunked up with these people they’re not some stranger that’s coming through an A&E Department you know them you know yeah they’re your friends um that then takes a higher kind of toll you know you put

An emotional spin on it as well yeah yeah you’re right and the emotional bit drives a lot of our kind of feelings and yeah and things like that so I think for me that well the other thing I think about soldiers particularly men um with PTSD

And Trauma is that there is that they’re not having a good time they don’t see the future they see themselves as a burden you know particularly to their families and I I was there you know it’s like you know you’d be better off if it wasn’t here type of conversation and and

Then they say no we wouldn’t you know I’m like yeah but if you’re gone then people be sad for a little while and they get over it and move on and you know life’s all a bit bloody difficult um but you need somebody outside of that to say no you’re talking

Nonsense um but but people who don’t have that and then and people isolate themselves and and you can see that you know I think a lot of suicide veteran suicide is is really driven by um people thinking that they’re doing a good thing by not being there anymore it’s not I’m

So sad um it’s just like I can’t put up with this um you know let’s you a quick exit and it is a huge problem it’s massive it’s massive I mean I think you know whether it’s you know double the population in prisons you know a much higher suicide rate you know

Homelessness you know a lot of that is driven by isolation mental health you know substance abuse kind of comes into play for some people yeah I mean a lot of people medicate with alcohol drugs that sort of stuff yeah yeah and it and it’s brutal a short-term fix and a

Feeling of you know who’s great but then it’s actually not is it and it’s just forgetting about stuff it’s just taking yourself out of that world so I think for me treatment wise was I didn’t like the medication because it kind of makes you all drowsy and all the rest of it so

Um it was couple of things that’s a problem in itself isn’t it the medication is going to make you feel feel under the weather why would you want to take it you know what I mean because you actually again it’s it’s having an adverse effect on you but some

People some people need it right you know so there’s in in clinical terms like depression can be a what’s called effective caused by circumstances some can be your brain chemistry you know with a lot of psychiatric diseases um and and the trouble is once you get into a mindset of depression you know

Whether that’s a clinical depression or an effective depression you actually change your brain chemistry so you start to be and behave chemically in a depressive State and so you’ve almost got to kind of work your way out of that to change the physiology of your of your

Brain to get better and that takes a kind of lot of hard work so there’s this kind of stuff of of fake it till you make it so so the psychiatric folks would say um stop running away from stuff they call them move away behaviors and start moving towards things so what

Are the things in your life that you want to be positive about and whether you can’t be bothered don’t feel like it don’t whatever just do it and keep doing it and then eventually you’ll kind of realize actually that’s a good thing yeah and then the other thing is just

Stop reacting to stuff you know because one of the things that I found with the pain side of life was um I use this kind of mindfulness techniques to help manage that because I have pain so just put that to one side what does that pain do

So for most people it drives their behaviors it drives their thinking it drives their emotions so instead of being sad about it you make a mental choice to choose yeah I’ve got this but I’m still going to get up and I’m still going to do my day and I’m still going

To do whatever and it’s just saw or like a sports competition this is really important I know I’m going to be absolutely buggered for 3 Days afterwards because I’m going to really push it um but that’s a consequence I’m prepared to take for a positive reason

To do something so you know you do find you know people find emotions well up and you start to just notice you know somebody says something you get annoyed like oh I can notice that now why why am I going to get annoyed about that just let it settle down make a conscious

Choice so it’s putting a conscious step in there and that kind of stuff I mean it’s all mind games but it it works you know do you think having a medical background has helped you of a lot of this stuff yeah massively because I think a lot of guys and girls that get

These sorts of problems and have no medical training whatsoever per se it’s daunting to them yeah well you don’t know what’s happening uh is the first thing so it’s scary and and you don’t have the perspective of you know what does the future kind of things change

Nothing is there forever even the bad things are never there forever even if you lose somebody you know you’ll still be sad about it but you will get on with life and and there will still be good things that you can enjoy and you don’t have to feel bad about enjoying them

Because that person’s not here anymore and that’s that’s kind of quite a tough thing I think it gives you that perspective um but also I’ve always been somebody that likes to kind of understand the the physiology of what happens and it kind of helped in the military cuz you know it’s it’s silly

Stuff tricks that you pick up over the years it’s like if if there’s a big explosion you know first thing we would go do is you know you’re marking people up with Airway breathing circulation are they priority one priority two um but then you look in their ears you know

Because the same pressure that ruptures an ear drum is the same pressure that causes blast lung yeah so if I go around check everybody’s ears and I see somebody’s got ruptured ear drum I’m going to intubate them and ventilate them fairly quickly because if I leave

It another hour I’m not going to be able to ventilate there’s a good chance that they’ve done or you’re out in the cold you know you’re trying to put a venflon in somebody’s vein it’s all shut down you know being able to kind of put a

Tour on just so the pulse comes through all all of that kind of carbon dioxide is a vasodilator so the vessels just open up so you can easily canate somebody so you just end up picking up these little bits and and because you understand how things work so I’ve

Always been somebody that wants to understand lift the Bonnet on it and see how it works and then I think talking to other people people about that then helps them cuz then they kind of trust you a little bit because you sound like you know what you’re talking about

Whether you do or not is but I think my my advice to people who think that they’re going under with mental health is to talk about it to someone anyone just get it out there start talking about it yeah you massively Keen to encourage people to say something about what’s going on to

Someone I see it I see it’s changing because it used to be you’re not tough if you’ve got a problem weak mind type stuff you know and that goes back to kind of World War II um but but now that people realize that it’s a courageous

Step to be able to do that and also put yourself in somebody else’s shoes so you know if I saw you were suffering you know I’d turn around to you and say Phil come on I’ll tell you you need to have a chat with somebody talk to one of your

Mates talk to me talk to a doctor whatever yeah um just be that friend to yourself because we treat other people you know the concern we have for other people and if you say that to somebody who’s suffering with their mental health okay if it was your mate that was in the

Position that you’re in saying what you’re saying what would you say to them and then sudden they go I’ll tell them to get some help like well get off your whats it and yeah yeah yeah take take your own advice yeah but I think people are now people are talking about it you

Know male suicide is a huge killer you know not just and and it’s worse in the veteran community so the more we talk about it the more people realize that a there’s light at the end of the tunnel because I think you know reasons I come and talk about things is because you

Know with my physical injuries psychological injuries you know you could easily give up and and have a rubbish life the only person that’s going to affect is you you know so yeah you can get through that you can get through blast injury you can get through traumatic injury you can even you know

Do a successful job using a wheelchair doesn’t mean it’s easy um no and and I think you know having a disability um there was some interesting work done recently where they did a confidential interview and a third of people that were offered a job in the UK when they

Found out they had a disability um they withdrew the job offer um without telling the person so it’s it’s more difficult to get a job you know if you have a disability so the more people see people being successful doing stuff contributing and say well that it’s not

A problem so maybe I’ll give that person who uses a wheelchair with a prosthetic job an interesting yeah it be interesting it’ be interesting to go back and ask some of these people why didn’t you give them the yeah yeah you know what I mean yeah

But I mean it’s just I I think the thing that worries me Phil is a but that bigotry has always been there you know yeah I think I said at the beginning I was born in Jamaica I remember meeting somebody I didn’t get a job and I’d put

Jamaica on my CV place of birth you know because he used to have to put that stuff down this guy came up to me later met him at something a couple of years later and he said oh if I knew you were white I would have given you a job yes

And I’m like okay I’m glad I dodged that one right but I think the I realize you was how you was I wouldn’t have applied for you donut yeah exactly but but I think people are wise enough to not say those things in public but there’s still a proportion of the

Population I think you’re 100% right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but you can’t eventually you can’t Bluff the bluffers anymore you don’t yeah but there’s a whole thing they call it virtue no one’s ever going to admit to that but there is there’s

Definitely a it I I remember trying to talk about um meet a veterans um champion at one of the councils yeah I said oh well yeah but we can’t speak to you in person because um that would discriminate against people who are not veterans it’s like have you read that thing yeah

So so um but yeah I mean I think they’re trying to look at what I mean it’s meant to be you know to stop the disadvantage so if you’re posted back from wherever and you’re trying to get your kids in school or you’re trying to get a dentist

Or you’re trying to get a whatever you know that stuff people are still being disadvantaged but you know I don’t get any kind of priority treatment or anything like that and and it’s all assessed on clinical need um but they’ve got this system where you can say I’m a

Veteran and you know I need physio because I you know bust my back at part of my job um and they’re like yeah but you still can’t get it so yeah so you’re right it doesn’t actually SE to make same as the PTSD thing as soon as you

Mentioned PTSD the a number of civilian types they’ll just go n you know what I mean and even if they don’t say it as blatantly as that they’re thinking is he going to smash my head in yeah do you know what I mean that’s what I think the

Other thing about PTSD is is you know and and I talked about this not so long ago because there was a bit of a campaign on it when um you see a veteran on a TV show you know be that Shetland or whatever it happens to be um they’re

All xses they’re all PTSD and they’ve all got a weapon that they’re going around causing merry hell with the more they see people like you and me who are living constructive lives helping other people you know who also happen to have had this in their background then you’re

Not all mad or bad um and dangerous yeah the me the media never helped with any of this stuff they never help when they portray a completely different image because it fits the narrative that they want you know what I mean but this is why your stuff is brilliant because you

Know people see normal people you know just been through some difficult stuff but still a living good lives one want to progress with life yeah which I’ve always you know the majority 99.999% of people that served up did enough to get through basic training and actually wanted to progress in their

Life so they’ve got that in them you know what I mean that’s an indicator from the back that you’ve done probably anywhere from six to six months to a year of hard graft to get where you wanted to yeah so that means that that person is capable person yeah and also a

Lot of people you take your average Soldier you know I mean a lot of them have come from more difficult circumstances and an average population elsewhere so they had that get up and go at 16 to become a Boy Soldier or whatever it happened to be come out of

That difficult circumstance and and go do something um and then the armies help them or whichever arm of the servic has helped them kind of get there yeah and you know that’s been gamechanging I had a nephew who just retired as a as a sorry cousin paully just retired as a W2

Um helicopter kind of engineer yeah um I remember sitting him down at 15 he was in and out of trouble he was getting lifted by the cops and I’m like you either go down this rout or join the bloody Army yeah this is why organizations like the nptc are so good

Because they’re sort like they’re saying right all right you might have achieved nothing in school for a number of different reasons not necessarily even because you’re thick you know what I mean because you just didn’t fit in with their narrative at school so but now we

Can say right come with us do this yeah have a look at that do you know what I mean and then some of these some of these kids are going on to do really really great things you know yeah and and it’s just given that mindset to

Excel yeah and and you know it’s not popular but training hard you know do do doing the right things in the right way being being respectful you know just battering on through and keeping your head down you know that that you don’t see replicated in lots of other

Organizations it’s not on the it’s not on the curriculum at school is it anymore do you know I mean they do enough to survive enough to get by there’s no discipline there’s no there’s nothing there yeah you know what I mean they’re not allowed to discipline for a

Start so it’s a completely different deal and so when they turn out the kid at the end he’s either he’s either fit for purpose or he’s not and if he’s not fit for purpose it may his fault yeah but he’s just off you go in I mean and

Then you wonder why they get in trouble yeah so I mean for me you know I think the military’s it it obviously does what it’s meant to do you know protect the country um but it does so much more for society and and I think the more Society

Is divorced from that military ethos and we have that risk now because you know apart from you know battalions over in Estonia with the RAF and you know when Afghans quiet you know you have these kind of lws and and things and it goes out the public Consciousness and then

That’s when the defense Cuts come in and nobody understands it Grant shaps is saying we don’t we don’t we don’t need these marines we don’t need these ships you do you absolutely do mean we’re down to 75,000 people as it is yeah I mean and then well I was talking to somebody

They’re even one of the regiment’s jobs is to supervise and train foreign soldiers so they’re not even boots on the ground that their whole role is supervisory you know that’s just saying we don’t have enough people um so yeah I mean I’m worried about that’s what these

Ranger battalions are doing B you know they’re disappearing into places like Marley and all these all these West African hotpots and training yeah cuz they can’t deploy with them along it can’t even go alongside them they they haven’t got the manpow to do it so they’ve just got to keep a repetition of

People going out into the field and training other people so but we don’t learn the lessons I mean the Army Medical Services got screwed over with options for change in the ’90s because that’s right we we stopped training doctors in the military so because we stopped treating um p uh soldiers

Families basically because it was to save money so you can’t train a doctor without doing Pediatrics and and maternity so they then all disappeared into the hell service for two years to finish their training and then half of them didn’t want to come back no of

Course not um you know and then you know even for me when you think what the what the military have brought in terms to the medical world the advances that have been made through the military absolutely phenomenal aren they you know you speak to some of these to

These Crews on ambulances now going we’re actually keeping people alive who technically should have died about half an hour ago but I mean that over in Bastion that um using fresh frozen plasma um for trauma instead of bags of red blood cells um massively help

Because you get if you give too much red blood you you know it causes other kind of toxic problems to the body what you actually needed is the clotting factors and all the other bits that are inas keep it as opposed it keep it in yeah

Exactly and now that’s being used in the Health Service all those advances have been made through yeah but in the Faulkland you know there’s a guy called Jim Ryan who was professor of military surgery um and uh you know when you when you get shot there’s a difference

Between high velocity and low velocity so you get shot by a pistol it’s not as much of a problem with a high velocity injury what happens is the round goes through and it causes a vacuum behind it so the tissue gets sucked in um but what

Then that causes is this micro tears um for tissue about various distances apart so I remember treating a guy who was in Africa who got shot in the abdomen and it it ruptured his diaphragm and his liver um which was 10 cm away you know had seen somebody shot through the leg

Um didn’t hit the bone but it fractured their femur um so this force is really big now you go back to like Crimea all these people are dying a gang green it’s cuz somebody got shot we used to just Stitch it up you know whereas what what

Jim and others found the Faulkland was don’t stitch up because it all looks like pink bleeding tissue 5 days down the road that’s black and debt um you just can’t see it yet so you out the wound you’re sewing in you’re sewing in the Badness yeah all that necrotic

Tissue and then people are dying from it so so you pack it look at it in three days pack it look at it in 5 days scrape all the rubbish out and then survivability is massively improved so you know I think yeah we got a lot to

Owe that those advances in certainly in trauma care um because you don’t you don’t get to see it when I was training in Battlefield trauma you know we got sent to Afghan with the Red Cross before Afghan started um and then over to the US because a US ER was having about four

Or five gunshot wounds a day you know we we weren’t seeing any of that you know so we had to go and get that experience because you need to kind of understand um same as the lads used to do the is Man TT and that they were getting so

Many complete you know trauma cases over there it was worthwhile sending them over there was it oh definitely yeah definitely and and and I think it makes a big difference and you know the other thing is that you know kids I mean I’ve treated kids in a in a battlefield

Situation you know like Bosnia for example where you know somebody lobs a hand grenade into a Town Square you know I remember this one three-year-old who had a throughand through chest wound and and um you know she didn’t stand a cat and hell’s chance now the lad that was a

Full screw was you know on the section that was was out on the ground just scooped her up chucked her in the back of a Saxon with her mom who’ also had a shrapnel injury and her sister was also injured um and just brought them back

And and um but we we were scaled for adults we were scaled for soldiers so we didn’t have any kit to treat a three-year-old yeah I mean that’s that’s a canula size the theway so I ended up getting like a nasal tube taking a portex connector off putting black and

Nasty around it so we could intubate this child because we didn’t have the right kit so you end up that adap ability and you know things that you but you need to know how to treat kids cuz kids are really difficult for trauma because they even smaller for us stuff

Well they’re smaller then and they’re not just little adults their whole physiology is different and the other thing is that they decompensate really quickly so you you’ll see this if you know suddenly like moms or dads at home with a small child that’s got a viral infection then suddenly they become

Unresponsive so they like keep a plateau there and then suddenly they go down well this kid basically was the blood that was in her chest was splinting this artery that was bleeding so as soon as we cracked her chest open the splint was off and she just bled out um and and it

Happened in like two minutes um because she didn’t look as sick as she was so if you don’t have that experience of treating Pediatrics even as a military person you’re going to end up with these negative consequences you know and I mean she would not have survived that in

The end but still it’s it’s always difficult to see when it’s right in front of you and you’re the one who’s trying to do something about it absolutely horrible so right now what what are your plans now what what you up to now what are your plans for the

Future so I don’t know I’m I’m I’m I’m getting older so I’m kind of retirement not too far 57 oh okay well couple years older than me yeah so uh um no I mean I’m enjoying what I’m doing so I I I I never want to kind of stop doing

Whatever I do a lot of stuff outside of work just because I find it interesting and and and the things like the sport you know I’m Mentor startup companies um I teach at a couple of universities um business and and you know other bits and pieces um that I

Really enjoy because it’s kind of helping um after covid the government put this thing in called help to grow um and it they basically paid 90% of the fees for businesses to start and grow back after covid and then they had University lecturers and then people like me

Um who mentored these people and helped advise them on their growth plans you know that that for me is really interesting helping and Advising businesses contribute to the economy you know I do this thing in Scotland called the global Scot Network where for free we just Mentor these businesses um and

And help them hopefully help them succeed so continuing doing that kind of stuff I I I do some stuff with the veterans Charities and couple of board advisory type things cuz it’s just getting that real life experience cuz you got a lot of good folk but if you

Don’t have that that experience um and you can’t give a perspective then yeah maybe not always going to make the right decisions no you’re right and a lot of people need need to be pointed in the right direction don’t they yeah and they need to be told bluntly sometimes and

There’s nothing better than a bunch of soldiers to say it as it is well listen it’s been great having you on uh we we we’ll keep a breast of what you’re doing um hopefully you’ll become a friend of the show and the community defin we’re trying to build

Doing thanks for coming up yeah thanks a lot Phil brilliant