Episode 375 - Joel Struthers

Summary

Cleared Hot - Episode 375: Joel Struthers

Release Date: February 24, 2025

Hosts & Guests:

• Andy Stumpf: Host of Cleared Hot, a podcast exploring diverse experiences and challenging discussions.
• Joel Struthers: Guest, author of the book Appel, former member of the French Foreign Legion, and current helicopter pilot.

---

1. Introduction & Joel's Background

Andy Stumpf introduces Joel Struthers, highlighting Joel's diverse background, including his military service in the French Foreign Legion, experience as a helicopter pilot, and authorship of Appel. Joel brings firsthand insights into the selection and life within the Foreign Legion.

Notable Quote:

• Andy (00:00): “First person I've ever actually sat down with with individual, firsthand experience in the Foreign Legion.”

2. Understanding the French Foreign Legion

Joel provides an overview of the French Foreign Legion, its history, and its role within the French military. He explains the Legion's origins as a unit that allows foreigners to serve in the French military, offering them a chance at redemption and a new start.

Notable Quote:

• Joel (90:00): “Initially it was designed back in the 1800s by the king for... a chance to pay their penance.”

3. Life and Selection in the Legion

Joel recounts his journey into the Legion, detailing the rigorous selection process, training regimens, and the multicultural environment within the Legion. He emphasizes the discipline, physical challenges, and the emphasis on teamwork.

Notable Quotes:

• Joel (92:24): “There's the option to go out after four months, you know?”
• Andy (93:29): “That one there. No, down, down.”

4. Transition to Civilian Life and Aviation

After six years in the Legion, Joel decided to transition back to civilian life to pursue his passion for aviation. He discusses the challenges of moving from a structured military environment to the dynamic and demanding field of helicopter piloting.

Notable Quote:

• Joel (26:08): “I was married and didn't have a son yet. And my wife at the time was supportive of the whole idea.”

5. Helicopter Piloting: Challenges and Experiences

Joel delves into his experiences as a helicopter pilot, covering various aspects such as firefighting, heli-skiing, and the technical skills required. He shares anecdotes about the dangers of helicopter flying, the importance of discipline, and the continuous learning curve pilots face.

Notable Quotes:

• Joel (58:37): “But what you learn from obviously, and I think, I think attitude is a huge part...”
• Andy (60:42): “That was my first me inadvertent IMC.”

6. Reflections on Military and Civilian Overlap

The conversation shifts to comparing military operations with civilian aviation roles. Joel reflects on the similarities in discipline and decision-making required in both fields, highlighting how his military background has influenced his civilian career.

Notable Quote:

• Andy (102:22): “They are angrily saying, 'They're fucking spectacular operators.'”

7. Writing Appel and Public Perception

Joel discusses his motivation behind writing Appel, aiming to provide an authentic portrayal of his experiences in the Legion. He touches on the misconceptions surrounding the Legion and the importance of sharing truthful narratives to educate and inform others.

Notable Quotes:

• Joel (117:24): “Appel... it's a roll call. Every morning, the Legion, the whistle goes off and you, you count out.”
• Andy (141:15): “It's a weird relationship, having a podcast. People know more about you than you know about them.”

8. Future Aspirations and Closing Thoughts

Joel shares his future plans, including continuing his career in firefighting aviation and possibly retiring in northern France. He emphasizes the value of honesty, continuous improvement, and the lessons learned from both his military and civilian experiences.

Notable Quotes:

• Andy (147:34): “I have a Realtor looking, you know, Normandy area.”
• Joel (79:18): “It's a challenge, but it makes you a better pilot.”

9. Sponsor Message & Final Remarks

The episode briefly returns to sponsor messages, promoting BetterHelp as a resource for mental health support. Andy encourages listeners to invest in themselves and seek help when needed.

Notable Quote:

• Andy (74:23): “Visit betterhelp.com/clearedhot today and you're going to get 10% off your first month.”

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Conclusion: In this episode of Cleared Hot, Joel Struthers provides an in-depth look into his experiences with the French Foreign Legion and his transition into helicopter piloting. The conversation offers valuable insights into the challenges of military life, the discipline required in aviation, and the importance of honest storytelling. Joel's reflections serve as a guide for those considering similar paths, emphasizing the need for preparation, resilience, and continuous learning.

Website and Further Resources:

• Joel Struthers' Book: Appel available on Amazon and Audible.
• Website: legionengineer.com for more information about Joel and his works.

Transcript

[Andy Stumpf]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome back. How many of you have heard about the French Foreign Legion? Now, second question. How many of you, even though you know what the French Foreign Legion is, or I should say, what it stands for, really have no idea what they do, and the individuals that encompass the French Foreign Legion? I fall into the latter category. I knew what the acronym was. I understood it had something to do with the French military, but I really didn't know anything about the individuals that comprise it. The beauty of the Internet that allows people to reach out. My guest today is Joel Strothers. He is the author of the book Appel, which chronicles his experience in the French Foreign Legion. He's Canadian, probably French Canadian. He speaks a little parlez vous Francais, if you will. And more importantly than all of this, he's now a helicopter pilot, which anybody following kind of my journey through aviation knows. That's probably what I really wanted to talk about. And we talked about it a good amount. But what a cool way to understand why somebody would want to join the Foreign Legion. What they do, what the process entails. Once you make it through selection, what are you able to do? What are you expected to do? What does your life look like? What are the benefits of serving in the Foreign Legion? Really cool. First person I've ever actually sat down with with individual, firsthand experience in the Foreign Legion. So that would be my guest today. Before we get to my guest, stay with me. Give me 90 seconds. Let's pay the bills. Let's keep bringing the podcast, everybody, for free. Thank you. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. We're diving straight into the website right now. For those of you who are listening, you can just listen and follow along. For those of you on a video format, you can see what I'm looking at. Focusing on their DTC direct to consumer offerings. Looks like there's a Valentine's Day sale, which is should be ended because this is the end of February. But hey, maybe it's still going on. And then there's a 30% off President's Day steal instead of sale. I see what they did there. You can shop coffee, you can shop apparel, you can shop gear, and you can shop energy. Now, energy. Over here on the right is the newest of offerings, but I've covered that twice. Let's go back over here to shop coffee and just see where this takes us. You can look at their roasts. All right, this is scrolling us through, and this is again, depending on what the person likes, there are dark roasts, medium Roasts, there are coffee rounds, there are instant coffee, I mean you name it, this is everything. Coffee related coffee grinds. This is something I've never understood, mostly because I've never been a dipper, but people who dip, essentially coffee a little bit wild to me. It goes on and it goes on and it goes on. Now you could go just click on the coffee up top and actually it's bringing us right back where we were. So you know what, we're going to go one more over actually we're going to go to gear because this is what I'm looking for. This is things that you can drink coffee out of. You got mugs, you got thermoses, dog belts, yetis, Chemex, you name it. So if you love coffee, if you love brands that were founded by veterans, that exist to support veterans, I highly recommend that you check out Black Rifle Coffee. They, they have some great offerings. You can get things delivered to your house on the frequency that you want. They make great gifts. They do gift cards. Fill in the blank. If you're coffee curious, give it a try. Head on over to black riflecoffee.com and see what they have to offer. Let's get into the episode.

[Joel Strothers]

Okay, got the red smoke. Sun runs north or south, west of the smoke, west of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm looking at danger close now.

[Joel Strothers]

Come on with it, baby. Give it to me, I need it. You're playing hot, dude.

[Andy Stumpf]

This is the only reason I like social media is that you and I were able to connect and then here we are. Yeah, that's I think the only useful purpose of social media because without it, I don't know how we would have linked up.

[Joel Strothers]

And I suck at social media. So it, I'm glad to know there's, there's some positives come from it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, you can just use it for communication if you want. True, so true.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, and proper ball of French red. Considering I'd be, I believe, the first ex former legionnaire, you're actually the only.

[Andy Stumpf]

One I've ever met.

[Joel Strothers]

Oh, there you go.

[Andy Stumpf]

Which isn't that surprising actually. There's not that many of you.

[Joel Strothers]

No.

[Andy Stumpf]

From what I have heard. Here's a question for you. Where do we start? Do we start early life into the legionnaire, into now, or do we go backwards and we talk about what you're up to now and work our way to the legionnaire part? I want to leave it up to you.

[Joel Strothers]

Fair. Yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

What revs your engine these days? Pun intended, I guess.

[Joel Strothers]

Well, currently I'm Canadian. Until you guys roll into our part of the world, we'll see what happens. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

What are your thoughts on that? Trump's a little. Just floating this idea of maybe you guys should become the 51st state. Unless Greenland hops on first.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, I mean, clearly Canada's not for sale. You can imagine. I would agree. Now, could we do anything if you rolled in. No. You know, and annexed us? I'd get to. I could go Red dawn finally and go into the hills and.

[Andy Stumpf]

But that movie doesn't end well, though.

[Joel Strothers]

No, it doesn't. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

At all.

[Joel Strothers]

Especially with. Yeah, yeah. Consistent. Considering it's not the Russians, it's you guys. You know, I think the rhetoric. I think I appreciate what Trump's doing. Canada certainly has its issues and he's thrown us into a bit of a melee, unfortunately politically.

[Andy Stumpf]

Talk closer to that, Mike. Try to keep it about a fist away.

[Joel Strothers]

I think politically Canada has its issues currently and it's working in my or in our favor. I think the fact that we have a. Canada's gone through, you know, a period of eight years of a demise in our country politically. And unfortunately right now we don't have a Prime minister that will be able to deal with Trump in this discussion.

[Andy Stumpf]

The voting populace in Canada, you know, if you talk about the US you have the LA Basin, which is. I'm going to roll San Diego into that. 30 plus million people. New York, a massive voting bloc. It carries a lot of weight for Canada. I know enough Canadians to know that just like the US political beliefs vary a lot, especially in geography. A little bit more towards Vancouver, left or leaving for sure due north of US Alberta, they're pretty hard on the right. You get back over towards Toronto. But are Vancouver and Toronto, is that enough to pretty much win the day from a voting population.

[Joel Strothers]

It's east coast majority have the voting power in Canada. Obviously we don't have the political. Same political system as you when it comes to, you know, electoral college and such. But the Canadian, like if you look at the, the numbers right now, Canadians want to change. Trudeau's out. Unfortunately, he's pro not to bore the. The listeners on Canadian politics. Politics because it is boring. But we're waiting for them to get their shit dialed, find a new leader. So we would in theory have a new prime minister that wasn't chosen for by the population. And the problem is there's no one right now to deal with Trump and these potential trade and tariff that are coming in. Right. And the issue on that, the thing for Me is, you know, I mean, Trump mentioned there's a, you know, you guys are subsidizing Canada. Now, the fact is kind of the wrong word. We're a tenth of your economy. I believe you guys are at what, 350 million? We're 41.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think we're into the mid-60s, if not high 60s.

[Joel Strothers]

I mean, we can't afford to buy the same amount of products from you as you do from us. And I think. I don't know the numbers. They can factor me, but I think about 60% of that is crude oil and electricity. And I know for a fact that all your refineries are designed to take either crude oil from Canada or Venezuela. I believe if not, they'd have to refurbish them all. So it's kind of unfair for him to say that you guys are subsidizing Canada. It's just we're not at the same level. We can't afford to buy what you guys buy from us.

[Andy Stumpf]

What comes out of his mouth, I think, is showmanship. If you look at the deals that he actually does or the things that he actually has done, and I'm basing that off of the last presidency, three days in, at this point, people are like, eggs still cost the same. Like, yeah, that might take a bit. But I think. I mean, here's the reality, because he said a lot of things about south of the border, too. Mexico. They're not necessarily stoked, I think, about the renaming of the Gulf of America.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, yeah. He's effective at what he does, and I think he does it purposely. Right. He throws the spanner into the bridge.

[Andy Stumpf]

I do too much.

[Joel Strothers]

And then when it comes to negotiations, he gets, you know, half of what he'd been talking about. But that's what he wanted.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. If you take your fishing rod and you go 400 yards past where you actually want to land, you're going to look. Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

My issue is, as a Canadian, it's embarrassing to watch how we're reacting. And we don't have, you know, a leader that has the mandate for the next four years to deal with it effectively. That's what's embarrassing. The, you know, Alberta, their minister, has gone down. Ms. Smith, she's gone and talked to them. I think she's the sole, you know, one to do so. Meanwhile, the others just kind of argue between themselves on how we're going to react. But I think it looks poorly in, you know, the way I see things. Canada can do better. I don't know. I don't Think, you know, I think Trump gets kind of said that his big push is obviously for the cost of living for Americans. Right. To improve things. Throwing terrorists on is going to cost, you know, a lot of the products come from Canada. So that's going to cost your average consumer more money anyway. So I don't think he'd like to start his, his mandate that way. I'm hoping, you know, for our sake and I mean, we're at the end of the day, all his points are valid, especially the, our, you know, our spending on, on defense. You know, I think as a NATO, NATO member, I think it's minimum 2% if I'm not mistaken.

[Andy Stumpf]

GDP, right?

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. And we're at 1.3.

[Andy Stumpf]

And most countries that have agreed are. They're well below their commitment.

[Joel Strothers]

And I, you know, I get, I mean, obviously there's the, you know, each country has its debt. The United States has been the, you know, the police force of the world for a long time. But, you know, at a certain point that costs money and you see the results in a way, if Canada can pull up their socks and be a, you know, a better member to NATO. Our military has been decimated for the last eight years, that's for sure. You know, obviously we, we have the borders with, with Russia. There's nothing we could do. So we count on you guys. And he's, he's, he's correct in that, you know, if something happens, we're counting on Big Brother to, to help. So I think your average Canadian would like to see Steve better. I certainly would. Coming from, you know, a military background, I. It's disappointing. So we should see.

[Andy Stumpf]

It'll sort of.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Where in Canada are you from?

[Joel Strothers]

Vancouver. So west Canada, the Couv. But I was born born out east. My dad was ex air force, so. Born out east, grew up in Germany and then I finished high school up in Colt Lake, Alberta.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And you're flying up there as well too. Let's just go backwards in time. How'd you get into rotarying? Flying?

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. So time. So I spent six years in the. The airborne with the Legion.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

With the Duisimont. I got it in 2000.

[Andy Stumpf]

But that's not upfront flying, right?

[Joel Strothers]

No.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

Exactly, exactly. But to answer your question, it's like me.

[Andy Stumpf]

I have thousands of hours in helicopters and not that many up flying.

[Joel Strothers]

Lots of takeoffs. So we're always in the back of the Pumas. Okay. And the Super Fairlongs.

[Andy Stumpf]

Will you pull up Puma helicopter?

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Can you pull that up, Michael.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, 355.

[Andy Stumpf]

I get really lost as we get into especially other country helicopters and the super Freon. God damn it, Michael. A monkey could do this. This computer kicks our ass every time.

[Joel Strothers]

Let it go, let it go. Three, three, two. Sorry.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay, I've seen those.

[Joel Strothers]

And then the Super Puma was coming into effect when I. When I left. So we would do the halos out of those and then they had the Super Frelon. How did you bring that one?

[Andy Stumpf]

How did you sell that?

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, so super is super. And the Phalan was Fox, Romeo, Echo, F R E L O N. I.

[Andy Stumpf]

Understood what you were saying. Michael's over there.

[Joel Strothers]

And I think, I think one of the original Rambo movies, they used that as a. A hind.

[Andy Stumpf]

I actually could see why that, that has.

[Joel Strothers]

But it's. It's like a single, single rotor system shook really size wise. It's got the ramp in the back. They don't use them anymore. I think the French are the only ones, or, sorry, the Chinese are the only ones that still fly them.

[Andy Stumpf]

Reminds me a little bit of an American. 53.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, yeah. Fair one. Y. Yeah, jolly.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. So that, you know, being in the back watching the guys all the time. Yeah, I just, it was neat. And then I came after six years, I was 29. And it was either in the Legion, you can do eight years or you can do 15 and get a small pension. At 15, nothing.

[Andy Stumpf]

After eight, though.

[Joel Strothers]

At eight you get, you actually get everything back that you put into the social system, like your taxes. So you get a chunk of change back.

[Andy Stumpf]

Interesting.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, because you're not going to be using it. Right. So they, they got back to it. And the Legion, we can come back to it later on. But Legion is a part of the French military, so you're paying into the French tax system. So at 29, I was kind of looking at my peers, seeing what was happening. This is all pre 9 11. So the global war on terror was not happening yet. And things were becoming somewhat repetitive. And I was always a guest in their army. I was always Canadian. I didn't get my French citizenship I could have. And I decided to come home. Knew nothing about helicopters, especially on the commercial side. I had saved up enough money, sent it home and invested it over those six years that I had enough to pay for my license, which was. I think it wasn't far off of 70 grand at the time. Let me just tell you, had I invested that in.

[Andy Stumpf]

At 29, you were better with money than I was. I was investing Heavily in Jack Daniels Fair.

[Joel Strothers]

One red wine. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Deeply into Jack Daniels. Probably at that phase of my life, I might have been entering my vodka Red Bull era Fair. So it was more of a liquid invest. I was very liquid.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I just didn't have a lot of capital.

[Joel Strothers]

The wrong. Yeah, not the wrong liquid, but the one that didn't.

[Andy Stumpf]

My, my timeline on trajectory of investments was two weeks.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Now coming, you know, to that point, I can't take all the credit for that. I'd help. People said, hey, you got money, you know, they'll invest for me. That was actually my.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I had people telling me that too in my family. And I said, absolutely not. I get paid every two weeks and I'm going to spend every penny.

[Joel Strothers]

But the difference I think in the. When we come back to it, the Legion, the style of life, we didn't really have a lot of free time to spend that money on.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, that makes more sense.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. So you kind of ended up with this chunk of change. So I knew nothing about it. But I got into the flight school with Vancouver island helicopters on the island. It was funny because I did my. Submitted my application, told the Legion, my commanding officer that I wasn't gonna re sign. I was heading off and they understood. But I had my interview from the phone booth on the parade square. The parade square in our company. There was like phone booth in the corner. And so I was talking to the guy, the chief pilot at the training school and there was a bit of a delay and he's like, where are you calling from? And I remember saying, well, actually the parades. Gur in the French Foreign Legion and the island of Corsica. You know, he was like. There's a noticeable pause, an additional. So got out in 2000 straight into school. Within a month or two it was a six month program. I think there was a dozen of us. And it was 90 hours on the 22 and then 10 hours on the 206, the R22.

[Andy Stumpf]

So Robinson 22.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And 206. Is that basically like the news chopper I get lost in?

[Joel Strothers]

That's your Kiowa, but not. Oh, so it's your built Vietnam for the training pre 205 bell and a nice machine, you know, the R22. As you know, it's a bit finicky and it is what it is small. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You're not putting rocket.

[Joel Strothers]

I struggled. I did not trust the R22. Took me a long time. I didn't come out of there with flying. Flying colors by any means. You know, I was not A natural. I could say that the VIH program, VIH is a big. A big company. And the idea was that they could, you know, offer positions to those that shined. I did not get offered a position. But hey, you know, sometimes they say that, you know, those that don't really shine early on, they can long term become a better pilot than the ones that are. I'm not saying that I did, but yeah, it wasn't. I wasn't a natural. And then I started for a company up in northern B.C. initially on the 206, just doing like seismic oil and gas stuff. And then I got surveying.

[Andy Stumpf]

You mean?

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, and then, then what happened is obviously in the wintertime, so there's not a lot of flying. So there was a company called Armor Group in London that would take on Ex Legionnaires Anglophone with English and French. And they had the relationship with Haliburton Oil in Algeria. So I had two friends that had gotten out earlier and they said, you know, if you're looking for money, because obviously pay flying helicopters at the beginning is fuck all. So I went over to Algeria and sat on a oil rig for three months. Pay was good. And in fact, that's where I wrote Pell, the book.

[Andy Stumpf]

What kind of airframe were you flying there?

[Joel Strothers]

No, I wasn't flying. It was just. So you're. Oh, gotcha.

[Andy Stumpf]

Sorry.

[Joel Strothers]

The position was you called Operations Liaison Coordinator OLC and Halliburton was down there drilling. Essentially they were teaching Sonatrek, which is the Algerian Oil Gas national company, how to do things. And Algeria had a terrorism issue, so they had hired an OLC would sit on the rig which were protected by the Algerian army or the police. And you were the liaison between the drillers. Okay. It was easy money. You didn't. You hardly left the rig. You sat around. It was.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, it's a good way to replenish your savings.

[Joel Strothers]

Well, yeah, exactly. So I do that and then I'd come back and then at 800 hours, he gave me the endorsement on the A star Flat B with a mountain course in Penticton. And then I could. In Canada, you can have. You need minimum 500 hours pic to fight fires. So I started fighting fires with the A star. And then 2003, Iraq kicks off. I'm up in Fort Nelson doing seismic or something at the end, coming towards the end of the season. And Armor Group says, would you be interested in going over to Iraq? And this was early October, so I think you guys rolled into Baghdad March, March, April. Yeah. Okay. And because of the relationship they had with Hallie Burton and Hallie Burton was Caleb Brown Root at one point Cheney. They split pre the war. KBR was given the DOD log cap contract to build all the bases or the camps staff, all the chow halls.

[Andy Stumpf]

All sorts of stuff. They were all over.

[Joel Strothers]

So initially they reached out to Armor Group Kello Brown Root and it was to man up a couple PSD teams using Iraqi nationals so that when their executives flew into country they could go from A to B and check out these sites. So it was. It was an ex SAS guy, Brit intel, his Armor Group's ex Brit mill officers that created two RMPs, which is our British Royal Military Police. And they had all the. They had the course from. I think it was the ronin course that they did pre. Going into back in the Ireland days for. Because the. The SAS were doing a lot of the close protection and stuff. Anyway, I was a lone Legionnaire. I think the reason she had asked I. I dealt with a nice. Carolina Root with her name. She was the operations manager for Armor Group. I had a crush on her. She was her. Her twin sister used to model with Kate Moss. So if that.

[Andy Stumpf]

I get it.

[Joel Strothers]

Do you remember? Yeah. Anyway, so I always had.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm of the era where I remember Kate Moss. Yes.

[Joel Strothers]

She called. I remember he said my boss, we're in the crew house and my boss, it's like early in the morning, he's like Joel someone, the lady, a lady on the phone from London. And she, she gave me the whole spiel. But all I remember hearing is, you know, Iraq, would you like to go? I was like, I love you. Yes. Let me, let me go. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

But this was. Again, so you were kind of departing from.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. So this is the season. The season's over.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, okay.

[Joel Strothers]

Again, you know, I'm getting experience but you know, not a ton of money. Yeah. Having spent. So my, my, my interests are kind of truncated in that I'm learning my trade as a pilot. But having spent those six years in the, in the military, in the Legion, albeit you know, we had our, our overseas experiences up, but I didn't really get the. The experience of a soldier that I was looking for. And the opportunity to go and see what was happening elsewhere interests me. So. Yeah, so I went over, we flew over and KBR had two floor levels at the Charton Hotel. Remember it's just outside the Green Zone, south side across the river. And we flew in initially into Kuwait. We sat at that base in Kuwait. And then it was a US Mill Herc into the Bay App. Yep. And that was October. So we flew in, you know, the old straight down and I remember we sat on the tarmac with, you know, the big green machine was doing its thing. I know you were, you were there at time but you know, for me coming from the Legion, which is, you know, part of the French army, which is quite small in comparison. It was interesting just to see the, the big machine work. You know, it is huge. Yeah. And I remember. So we, we had our kit, I think there's five of us at the time. And we were just on the tarmac. There's going to be a couple hours delay before we had our ride to the, the hotel. And there was all the. It was the army at the time, but other sections. And I just remember watching and listening to the. The army way. Right. Just that, you know, hey, Corporal, get the, you know, whatever, you know, that kind of, you know and just the similarities that. It's like controlled chaos and anxiety or whatever the word is. You know, you just get the, the private writing. Oh yes, Sergeant. You know, just what the. You doing? It was just interesting to see the.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's impossible to be right, whatever you're doing is wrong.

[Joel Strothers]

But it was more like, you know, it was the, the similarities but, you know, the differences but so it's neat. And then so we, we, we started training between ourselves. You know, this is a long time ago, so I don't remember the duration, but we. They taught the sbs and the SS guys taught us the, the techniques that were needed and we were issued right off the bat. When we got to the Sheridan was The Iraqi built MP5.

[Andy Stumpf]

Iraqi built MP5.

[Joel Strothers]

So they had. Yeah. So these were all taken. You guys had obviously, you know, cleared some of these bunkers and there was these Iraqi stamped MP5. So they had the ability to I guess make them themselves, but they were not your HK built.

[Andy Stumpf]

Still 9 mil though.

[Joel Strothers]

Yes. So anyway.

[Andy Stumpf]

Which is a good round for a rodent.

[Joel Strothers]

So we. I just remember we're up on the third floor. We got there or whatever the second floor that we had and we're cleaning them, stripping them. And the head SAS guy, his name was TAF while he was Welsh. Right. Big fucker. And in fact he was, he wrote, he wrote a book. It wasn't. He was in the other detachment, not Bravo 20, but he was the one that they went on wheels over the border. Nice guy, big guy, gentle giant. But I could just see him watching us, right. Trying to figure out who these. And I'm sure me because, you know, the CVs would come through. Right. And they're all expert mills. So he understands that they have a level of training. But he was like watching Joel. Right. Because the Legionnaire. What does that mean? And then we went downstairs and the KBR security was run. They had their own little security run. And it was a gentleman named John Jones. He was exactly. Delta had been on the failed Iranian rescue attempt.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, Desert One.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, big guy.

[Andy Stumpf]

Which is actually why Delta was created. Actually. That's why JSOC had had its origin, because of the catastrophe there. That was the beginning of it all.

[Joel Strothers]

And I'll certainly have. I'm interested in your experience with them in Iraq, you know, being attached to the. That's. Anyway, so we got them all cleaned up. We go downstairs, they had a barrel of, you know, full of dirt just to a. A shot to just make sure that it worked. And we one round into the, into the bucket or where, then they were fine. So then a week later we had a soft skin Ford Excursion. So we'd go to the Green Zone to get our admin work done because they were getting issued the DoD badges and this is obviously early days. So I mean the east side was that Assassin's Gate would become Assassin's Gate.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh yeah, man. But it was just, it's been a piece since I've been there.

[Joel Strothers]

It was just an American soldier checking, you know. Yeah, it was pretty, pretty laid back. You know, VBAWads hadn't IDs. Hadn't really. Yeah. And then we go up to the, you know, the lakes up by Fallujah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes.

[Joel Strothers]

And we use that as a, like a training area, the ranges. And so our very first shot, double tap. And the second round actually fell out of the front of the barrel. Yeah. So there we, yes, there we are with. Because obviously they issued us. Then I milled it which was like in these cases, in these bunkers, probably for years. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

What I get out of that story is you better make the first round count.

[Joel Strothers]

Yes, exactly. So it was a nervous drive, but albeit things really hadn't kicked off and we had, you know, but the Americans issued us the M4s after, but they were the, the single, single shot, not.

[Andy Stumpf]

Automatic, which I think you're.

[Joel Strothers]

Same diff. But anyway, this early early days. So anyway, I, I did that and you know, we, we, we got these Iraqis that were apparently vetted by the Green Zone. And you know, before you know it, it's time to go back to flying. I went back to flying, started doing fires, enjoying the, the job itself. But Also it was that break was always a challenge. And I think when I fly into Calgary airport all the time, I still get this feeling of anxiety because it'd be like fucking, you're coming back. You haven't flown for a while and it's like, you know, check flight. You're like, fuck, can I have her still? You know, after a couple months. But you know, it is what it is, right? That was. Was the time.

[Andy Stumpf]

Were you married at this time? What was your personal life?

[Joel Strothers]

I was married and didn't have a son yet. And my wife at the time was supportive of the whole idea. She knew that, you know, it's flying's not easy. She knew that I was interested in seeing these areas. But obviously the time away and the environment hat we get into that. But yeah. And then I went back and so 2004 things are a little more aggressive and we were doing a low profile psd so we had a little compound. What was the west gate that goes into the up to the biop. Irish just, just on the wall. Armor Group had bought I think five or six villas and we would. We bought. That was kind of when the boys started going off the PSD teams because there was a lot of people out there that were fucking around. That was disgusting in my, in my memory. In other words a lot of these guys that were working for these PSD teams had not experienced much in the military and it. I got the impression they felt they had free reins to you know, to. So there was make certain choices that were in my regards. Yeah, I don't.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm not questionable. Yeah. What I'm about to say, I'm not saying with judgment. It's kind of just the world that I saw it, there was a void or a gap in capability and there was a rush to fill it. And based off of. I was never a part of government contracting like that or private security entities or organizations, but I had friends that were proximal to it or involved what they told me. So people can take it for what it is. Which would be fuck third hand at this point, if not fourth, is that the vetting process probably didn't live up to what people would have wanted it to be at least earlier on. Which leads to people who, yeah if they join the military, say for whatever reason but they didn't scratch an itch, they have another ability to do so. And I. That world I think can lend itself to people thinking that there is no oversight and there are no rules which can lead to substantial and severe problems overseas.

[Joel Strothers]

Agreed 100%. And you know, I can't say for armor this is early days Armor Group previously they were called dsl like London, there was Control Risk Group and DSL Armor Group. My boss though at that time in Iraq he was the ex CEO of the New Zealand sas. Nice man. There was good vetting. The legionnaires that had supported Armor Group in Algeria that were capable and able and willing. I had obviously because I did, we can come back to it. But I did in my six years with the Legion I did four with the gcp which is the Goupe Commandant Paris Churtis. So it's similar to the Pathfinders in the British system or the Canadian system. But each regiment in the French military there's nine right now, one of them is Legion, the rest is regular French. Each regiment has a GCP team or two and combined they form the GCP group which are attached to the French cos which is their special Operations command. So you can act as pathfinders for your regiment or you could work as the group and be second tier attached to the cus.

[Andy Stumpf]

Got you.

[Joel Strothers]

So at least I had a bit of, you know, that side of stuff we can come to it. But anyway we started doing low profile psg so we bought, we armored group bought, you know, used Mercedes armored. We put the run flats on them, two vehicle moves and the idea was to just fly under the radar. We were not over or you know, low profile. And it would be two expats, you know, Brett, myself and Iraqis and we had AKs at that point PKM we had the, I think we, we had the SIG at that or not or we still had the Russian, was it Makarov? What's the. Anyway, so we would. The Americans let us use the range. Remember when you came into the buy up just off to the left there, there was a range I think. So we go there and we train the Iraqis up on firearm safety was the big one for me and I was too IC initially. So the TL would be in the front, rocky driver, two shooters or no sorry, the guest in the back and one shooter. And what we were doing is we were driving around, you know, the Bechtel guys that were looking at, you know, Fleur usaid. So they're going through these different areas trying to look at, you know, the electrical grid or the water system, trying to repair the stuff. So they'd have their appointments and we just take them from A to B. So we trained our guys up and then, you know, we didn't Have a lot of time, but we do the best we could so that they were safe, efficient contact drills, debussing and busing, all that kind of stuff.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, you're going to do the best.

[Joel Strothers]

You can, but then you just go out there and you learn your trade. And in time we learned that, you know, they were playing both sides initially. And the setup was interesting because we had, I remember the armor was ex para reg, British para regular. So the Iraqis would show up in the morning, they would go home at night. Obviously they show up in the morning. We would do a quick briefing. The vehicles would be fueled the night before, but check that they were fueled. We'd go to the armor, they'd get their weapons, their grab bags, their mags, comms, med kit. We'd load up the vehicles. And we had, on top of the vehicles we had like, it was like a dish. It was basically a contact pad on the dash. We were in a contact, we hit it. And we had an armor group had a signaler in with the QRF in the green zone. So if we did get hit and the QRF were able from the mill, they would come to our assistance. If not, other arm group call signs could if they're in the area. But that was the idea. So we do a comms check with our comms guy, check the old red button, and off we go. And I just remember the concerns are more leaving the camp and coming into our little camp, because that's the obvious go to is right. But early on we were briefing the guys before we, we left the day before of our potential destination. And then team started to get hit more and more. So in the end, probably with surprising accuracy. Yeah, shocking.

[Andy Stumpf]

Shocking. So almost as if they were waiting.

[Joel Strothers]

For you pretty quick. Yeah. Learning curve.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Joel Strothers]

So then we changed it up. And then one day, you know, Mohammed doesn't, my driver doesn't show up. So I'm just saying to the other guys, hey, where's Mohammed? Oh, we don't know. And about three days later, the mill, a mill call sign shows up with his DOD badge saying we shot him in a, in an ambush or what have you. Right. So they, so then I'm like, fuck you guys, man. You guys are, you know, a handful. I don't trust you. And that was my concern. And yeah, I mean, I just remember, you know, our concern too was so you're trying to teach these Iraqis how to drive two vehicle moves efficiently tactically, you know, not jamming right up behind the next car in front of you. So if Something happens, you're fucked. If you come up, God forbid, on an American checkpoint that has stopped the road and they're checking whatever that you. You know, you're like, stop. Right? And they don't. You get that 50 cal over the. And you'd be like, you know, what the fuck you doing? They'd be like, no, no, fuck, fuck. And I just remember these arguments back. I was like, God, what am I doing? You know, I. I miss. No, fuck, fuck. No, fuck, fuck. I miss. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

A year later, in that moment, you're like, God damn it, can I get back in a helicopter right now?

[Joel Strothers]

Well, anyway, so one day, you know, at the end of the tasking, you get back to our compound, you make sure that the drivers fill up the vehicles, you get the med pack the weapons, you go down the armor. He inspects them. A lot of times he's like, nope, go do it again. You know, it's fucking shit. Whatever. You know, they have their standards, but we hand everything in, and I come out and there's both vehicles, one vehicle parked where we had gotten out, doors open. I'm like, where the. You know, Ishmael, the driver, whatever. Oh, he went home. So I'm like, mother. You know, at this point, I'm getting short, you know, and he came in the morning, and I made a comment. He got lippy. And I ended up filling him in. Not. Not full on. But I gave him a pretty good. Pretty good dig, right? And then I said to my boss, you know, I'm. I'm done working with Iraqis. And then not. Not short after, I got an email from London saying, looks like Joel's needs some time off. Right? Yeah. I was like, indeed I do. So then, yeah, I went up to Crete, and we were supporting the US Corps of Engineers looking for weapons of mass destruction.

[Andy Stumpf]

They find any?

[Joel Strothers]

No. Shock. Lean. Yeah, we did.

[Andy Stumpf]

I hit the number one chem bio target in Iraq. By me, I mean, I was a part of a. I was a fly on the ass of a donkey that went up there among many other flies, and we did not find anything.

[Joel Strothers]

Surprised. Yeah, we. Yeah, I had. It was. I was teal. It was all expat team and our. We were mobile psd. So the idea was that when these corps of Engineering guys, we were just outside. It was Camp Buckmaster, not far from Stryker.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

Was the F18 pilot that was shot down? I believe so. Yeah. I think you guys went looking for the. Or. One of your teams. The Navy went looking for his remains.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, I do remember being briefed on that. Yeah, that came up. Oh, my God, that is a blast from the past. We would hear that name every couple years.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, because I think when they took over the second Gulf, when they took over one of the camps. Yeah. In one of the cells they found his initials or his name, something like that.

[Andy Stumpf]

But that, God damn, that is a legit blast from the past. We would get briefed on that almost every rotation over there. Interesting.

[Joel Strothers]

So anyways, you know, and this team was all Brits, Kiwis, Aussies. I was a lone legionnaire and it was just, you know, it was. Yeah, it was just easy, right. The guys were all switched on and. But we got. They're hitting us quite a bit. And at that point I was like, you know, I've had my, I've had my, my, my share of this shit.

[Andy Stumpf]

Show your cup of war.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. And then at that point, to answer your question, my son was born and I was like, yeah, I'm fucking pushing it. You know, I've seen what I need to see. But that being said, I do have some fond memories. You know, there's some good guys. Armor Group lost, I think, because they also got, at the same time they got the contract to move all the fuel up and down the msrs. And so all their big convoy teams were rampy. I want nothing to do with that. But I think between, you know, they lost almost 90 guys just on, so. And I remember poor back to Port Caroline, because I thought she was a nice lady. Her HR department that was kind of amped up for like, hey, you know, here's your, here's your ticket to whatever they became. Calling families and advising, you know, I can't imagine. Right. I've never had to. But anyway, so things. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So did you just dive back into flying?

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, so I would go back every, you know, I'd fly and then I'm flying. And at that point, Armor Group had gotten the Foreign Commonwealth Office, British Foreign Commonwealth Office contract to support the. Their efforts down in Helmand in Afghanistan. And that was initially they were looking after the Brick police that were doing the mentorship for the counter narcotics stuff. And then they had the efforts down in Lashkarga, the capital. And I had been interested in it because being a soldier, I'd read all the books and watched some of the docs on the Russians in Afghanistan. So I was keen on seeing that. But initially they would only take Brits. But then it opened up to the Commonwealth. So Caroline called again and said, would you, would you like to go? But you have to commit for a year. So I said, you know, 100%, I'd love to go.

[Andy Stumpf]

And did you ask your wife before you answered that?

[Joel Strothers]

Ex wife. I think you know my. Yeah, I get along, I get along with my wife. We have obviously two kids. We co parent well, we've, you know, we've done. We're divorced, but I think we did well in divorce. But it's.

[Andy Stumpf]

The reason I asked is it's an odd occupation and if, if you are anything like myself or the people that I worked with, if somebody were to ask you that question, you almost answer and then you work your way back into explaining it to your wife. The reason for that is you're committed to what you do. Yeah, you love what you do. Even though it's to other people, it's an absolutely psychotic job and the job suffers last. So you would. And that's why I asked if you asked her first. Because I can 100% imagine a scenario where you're like, yes, I'm in. And then you hang up the phone and the wife's standing behind you going, who are you talking to? You're like, well, long story.

[Joel Strothers]

But to that point, you know, I think knowing, thinking back to our relationship, the communication was pretty open. But the shit show was actually the aviation, not the security work for Armor Group. Because at least with Armor Group you knew you're two month on, one month off. The money was fair, maybe not worth the risk reward, but at the time it was certainly a lot better than flying. Flying. It was like, I'm going up north for, you know, I don't know. And the money shit, right? So, you know, Vancouver's not cheap. Obviously it was a lot cheaper back then. But I think the monetary side of stuff helped the time away. She was used to it. It obviously had its results. But you know, it was actually, and even for myself is like I was more comfortable knowing, hey, okay, I'm gone for two months at least I know I'm coming home. I got a month off where I can chill. It's not aviation where I don't know when I'm coming home. When I do, it's like they call me halfway through, oh, we got a fastball. Can you. You know, I was like, and that is hard on family is when they have these, this idea of your home for a certain amount of time they plan things or, you know, holiday or what have you. Then the plan changes birthdays and yeah, as you know, your business, it's. Yeah, the, obviously the, the divorce rate is staggering and aids, Right. Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome. It's a real thing.

[Andy Stumpf]

First time I've heard that term, but I understand.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, yeah. So I go over to Afghanistan and it was nice because it was an MC contract, Foreign Commonwealth. We had the nicest kit. We had the HK360, we had the Mini me's, we had Sigs, we had brand new Toyota armoreds with the latest ECM. Because it was a civilian contract, they could go onto the market and basically UCM was like a disco ball that.

[Andy Stumpf]

Put out a jammer.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, exactly. But it was the latest and greatest. Not. You know, the military is always 10 years behind with. And they had. I don't remember if you. You were what, this is 2006, 2007, were you?

[Andy Stumpf]

I had just rotated in 2006 to being a buds instructor, so I was not. And then I went back to Afghanistan in 2010.

[Joel Strothers]

I was wondering if you remember there was a Herc that was in white and blue colors. It looked un, but it wasn't. It was South African company and they armored.

[Andy Stumpf]

Definitely never saw one of those that would stand out.

[Joel Strothers]

And that was the embassy they hired or the foreign. They hired it. And we put the armoreds in there with the police and we fly it up to what are some of the. It's up north. Trying to think of the place like along the border.

[Andy Stumpf]

Abad J Bad.

[Joel Strothers]

No, the fuck? Anyway, I just remember all the runways off the old Russian aircraft off the side of the Runway. It'll come to you. There's an SF base, American SF base there up by the pass. Anyway, it doesn't matter, but we fly up there with the armoreds. We put the armoreds in the back of the Herc and we'd fly there and the guys would go out and train up the Afghan police on checkpoints outside the city looking for narcotics. And it was mind boggling stuff. It was interesting to see the countryside, certainly from the Hurricane and driving around and then getting to see the American efforts and what the guys are doing. I just remember being to a certain extent, you know, envious. You know, I didn't have that opportunity as a soldier to kind of do what these, these guys were doing. But at the same time what we were doing was new and interesting. But then they're looking for guys to go down to Lashkaga and that's the capital of the Helmand Province. And the governor had a FCO advisor and his name was Tom Crum and he was obviously Foreign Commonwealth Office, but he was an ex reservist SBS officer. Politician now but in fact he was in the previous election he was one of the guys that was up up for the Prime Minister Smart man But anyway he you know brought up in proper British schools. His mum or yeah his mom was Parisian French so he spoke you know, posh British his French because he'd speak to me in French this was better than my French Pushtun. And he spoke Italian.

[Andy Stumpf]

Jesus.

[Joel Strothers]

I know and that's when I kind of thought you know we're not all born equal clearly. No, there's the. Anyway so we were down. We were embedded with the. So I was volunteer so I had. There was two teams and then three teams later on but I was teal for team two and I had a young British officer just came out of the Brit infantry he's a doctor now Nice guy, smart guy, switched on but union was tired of he had done Iraq and was looking at other things. The money was the attraction. I had two ex Royal Marine guys that were switched on as fuck One guy that was par and then you know as TL it was okay I you know had that responsibility but we just. It was a four man team we all, we all got a job but our job was typically to. We were embedded with the para reg for six months and then the Royal Marines for six months and they had the little. The British system was the prts right in the center of town the little reconstruction teams and it was basically you know this compound but maybe the size of a football field, American football field and we would drive Tom the governor to Hellman had a compound just outside of town and most of the time we would you know, throw him in the armored. We drive to their facility and they had a two story building. Tom had enough office downstairs and the governor had his office upstairs. At times we'd jump in with him and we'd jump in the Chinooks and we'd go to Musakala, Gareshk, Sangin and this is full on when the Brits were struggling I think they eventually one of the teams went out into the middle of Nowhere where the FCO the Brit 2 star and the boys had a little parlay and it was agreed that the Brits would give. I think it was Gareshk or Sangin they retreated. Really? Yeah and they hired. I remember they hired all these local. They didn't have enough vehicles to get the Paraguays out so it was interesting time and again you know flying into some of these fire bases man I would 2007, I'm you know 52 now so whatever the math is I can't do that quick on the fly. But I was.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, in your 30s.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. So mid, early 30s. Yeah. I just remember seeing these. We land and, you know, some of the guys, they would do the switches out a couple times. They would bring a body bag on. And I just, you look at the face in these guys and they just fucking, you know, had their, their asses handed them or they'd been up all night. I just thought, fuck, good on you, man. Like, yeah, yeah, like, you know, respect. So that was interesting and a good experience that I got to, got to, to see, see that side. But I also saw the struggles that the west were having. And I, you know, I wasn't questioning it, but I thought, why didn't you guys hire some of these ex Russian generals that spent 10 years there and ask them some questions? And a perfect example is, and I made reference to, you know, the Russian aircraft at the end of the end of the runways. You know, the Mujahideen would drive trucks in front of vehicles all the time or mine them. And in Lashkaga, they had a dirt Runway outside of town. And the idea was that anytime the Herc, they had this beautiful brand new J model C130. And whenever he was supposed to come in, the. The boys would go out, they would clear the. The Runway, try to de mine it, secure the perimeter, and she would come in and. And one day, sure enough, there was a nice little mine there and it hit the wheel and that thing was off at the end of the Runway. Emergency stop. I think within two minutes, there's just a tail left. Everyone got out, but she, she burnt. And that was like. I don't know what a J model goes for, but the taxpayer, you know what I mean?

[Andy Stumpf]

This is what we have. Michael, please look up the acquisition cost of a C130J model. Let's play a guessing game.

[Joel Strothers]

I'm going to 300 mil. No, no, no.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm going to say. You might be right. I was going to say 90. Now I feel like I'm not confident in my guess.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, and this is going to say.

[Andy Stumpf]

97, but what do you got, Michael?

[Joel Strothers]

C130. It's coming up with model airplanes in the back.

[Andy Stumpf]

How much are those?

[Joel Strothers]

100. Oh, $380.

[Andy Stumpf]

Pull up the old J model on the screen here. I want to see. The HERCS are an amazing aircraft.

[Joel Strothers]

They are.

[Andy Stumpf]

The AC130 version is my favorite, but I bet you.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, I never. We didn't have the. I heard them doing their thing 2.2.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, I was close. Go. Scroll up, Michael. 114.2 million.

[Joel Strothers]

That's close. Yep. Fair one. All right, nice one. They're not cheap.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, scroll down. I'm curious what that 2.2 million was. Scroll down. Keep going. There we go. Related equipment could be sold to Egypt. Oh, that's a contract to Egypt for 2.2 billion. Now we're talking about bigger numbers. Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

So anyway, one day we were sitting, I've been there about a year and we also had a house on the outside of the governor's compound. It was like a four story typical Afghan house. And we had the hesco around it and we hired a local Afghan company to guard it. And the brick mill gave us a signaler, one of their GPMGs so we could have a little more. And we lived in that sometimes and two teams and it was, it was, yeah, it was neat. It was, it was neat times. And I remember in the back of that Herc that burnt was pal millions of dollars and that was being given to the cash money, cash money which was going to the, the warlords to you know, just do their thing, grow their opium. Don't get involved in the, in the war because some of these guys had, you know, serious, serious stuff after the, the Soviets had pulled out, you know, and I always, I found that strange and that was the juxtaposition. It's kind of watching the news and seeing what was happening. I don't want to get into that, but yeah, it was just interesting that, you know, it seemed like the war wasn't really going well at that time. And that's 2007 in result. Look what happened. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't know if it ever actually went. Yeah, yeah it went, but I don't know if it went well.

[Joel Strothers]

And I remember one day we were told, you know, Sigler, the message came in from the prt, there's no movement today. And we had built this little half assed gym up on the roof which is like an open, open floor. We'd stolen some shit from the camp and all of a sudden we heard this rhyme. We weren't far from the main avenue and it was like a dozen tractors trailers tarped up with the black turbine guys on top of their AKs. And that was opium going to the, going to the market and off it's gonna go, right? And I thought, you know, that's us, you know, whatever. It's not. But it was just an interesting like what the fuck, you know, what's going on anyway Week later or so we're sitting outside the armors and we as I said, we take Tom to his office most of the time. And it's two armoreds. It was a building, two story, typical, you know, Soviet built thing. And it was glass windows and we'd sit like this outside the building. The BG would sit in Tom's office just at the front door. Just make sure people come in. There was a cement stairway and on the other side was the Afghans. Afghan army security team with their like Toyota Hiluxes and that kind of stuff. And the Brit mill intel after laid us. No, but it was a 17 year old Pakistani boy. They had brought him in from Pakistan, got him an Afghan army suit, the vest, did the whole thing. And he got himself through two checkpoints and he'd walked up the stairs, he was trying to get to the governor. The guard at the door said, you know, fuck off, you don't need to be here, I don't know you. And so he just walked down, walked into the, the Afghan guys that were doing the thing. And anyway that blast obviously the, the stairway protected our, our vehicles, but it blew the ECM off all the windows. You know, everyone was munging it, you know, watching movies. I just what. Anyway hit the old fucking panic button. We pull up, I know the BG comes on the radio, he's like what the. You know, I was like, we're out front and because I'm lead vehicle, I pull forward and then so that the vehicle will be right at the stairs. So I'm basically right where the guy did his thing, you know. And I just remember I could smell like burnt hair. The vehicles were like basically crumpled in and there was anyway. And I thought learning after that I was a 17 year old boy. I just thought, man, when I was 17 all I thought about was Stephanie Constable's boobs. You know, not doing yourself in. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's a different ideology. They get those kids, if they brought them in from Pakistan like you're saying they would have those madrasas on the border area like in Waziristan.

[Joel Strothers]

Exactly.

[Andy Stumpf]

And they, those people didn't have time to think about titties and ass.

[Joel Strothers]

I know, but how do you fight that? That was my thing. Right. Like how do you. What do we you.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean I'm really restricted their time and only give them the information that you want. It's like radicalization 101.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. So after that I was like, you know what, maybe I've had my time. Let's go back to. I want to go back to flying.

[Andy Stumpf]

I love how flying is always. You're like this, let's go.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, exactly. Might not pay as much, but this is.

[Andy Stumpf]

This guy just exploded from top to bottom. Maybe let's go back and fight fires a little bit.

[Joel Strothers]

And I certainly don't want to sound Jade. I enjoyed my time as I got to see the young men and women that were doing their thing. I saw, you know, the. The big army doing it, saying it was interesting seeing the Germans there, all the different militaries, you know, kind of looking around and seeing what. What was out there. So it was a good experience. But then went back to flying and then, yeah, I've been, you know, I moved up to the. The mediums, got into heli skiing and.

[Andy Stumpf]

What'S considered a medium.

[Joel Strothers]

So It's a Bell 205. So I went Bell 205.

[Andy Stumpf]

Pull up a Bell 205, Michael.

[Joel Strothers]

Just like.

[Andy Stumpf]

I just want to make sure.

[Joel Strothers]

So, yeah, we can get away from the.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, we don't have to at all.

[Joel Strothers]

But yeah, it's.

[Andy Stumpf]

I just want to make sure I know what I'm looking at.

[Joel Strothers]

Yep. So 205 is your Huey.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, okay.

[Joel Strothers]

So basically, you know, Vietnam. Yep. Nice ship.

[Andy Stumpf]

What do they call it when it has two more blades?

[Joel Strothers]

412.

[Andy Stumpf]

412.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And this is why I get lost in this because it looks exactly the same.

[Joel Strothers]

There's just more room. It's the same. It's the same body. But if you go bell212, that is your. So that's your twin engine. Yeah, it's got the point of your nose. That is the 412 with a four bladed system.

[Andy Stumpf]

Gotcha.

[Joel Strothers]

Different, different transmission. And then today I'm flying the Bell 214.

[Andy Stumpf]

Good God. Bell.

[Joel Strothers]

And that is. So there's McDermott on the left. That's a company of fly for. So that was built for the Shah of Iran. So before the.

[Andy Stumpf]

Is that what the dude crashed in?

[Joel Strothers]

No, it was a 212.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. But before the revolution, it was a Shah, you know. So before the Ayatollah came in, their military needed a machine that could fly high and hot. So they. Bell agreed to design this. And then the st, which is the one just to the right of it, that's the twin engine version.

[Andy Stumpf]

That one looks.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, I'm doing my training on that when I go back to Australia now.

[Andy Stumpf]

That one looks pretty that.

[Joel Strothers]

You would have seen that in Afghanistan maybe.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't think so because, I mean, I definitely saw Hueys, but that One right there, that 214st deviates from what the Huey traditionally looks like.

[Joel Strothers]

Yes, it does. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

That one's looking a little bit more Airwolfish and I am here for it.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Remember the. Which was the bell 22. 222. Right. Which was Airwolf.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did you watch that show?

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, of course.

[Andy Stumpf]

It was fucking awesome.

[Joel Strothers]

I think there was some. There's some stuff taken from it. I might be talking about my ass.

[Andy Stumpf]

But do you even know what Airwolf is, Michael?

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, Airwolf.

[Andy Stumpf]

You don't even know. Do you even know who Jan. Michael Vincent is?

[Joel Strothers]

Oh, I have heard that.

[Andy Stumpf]

And you look back at it, they were clearly wearing a motorcycle helmet with the visor taken out. That's one of those that didn't age incredibly.

[Joel Strothers]

But if you look at the size of the blades on the thing, they're massive. They are not far from the size of your. Your table, I would say probably right there. Really? Yeah. So there's. So it was built. So. So Bell agreed to build it for the Shah, and they were going to build a plant in Iran so that they could manufacture themselves. And then the revolution happened. I think they had taken position or possession of a certain amount, but they had the factory set up and built. And that's why you see the Iranian Air force, which is down there on the right. Yeah, that's an Iranian 214. Just to the left there. Down.

[Andy Stumpf]

Scroll down.

[Joel Strothers]

Right down. Yeah, right there. You're on it. That's Iranian Air force right there. So they have. They're still flying them because they can build them. Yeah. And then they got the ST2 and the 212, which the President crashed in not too long ago.

[Andy Stumpf]

So how did you start flying in Australia? Coming back? Is this just kind of. Once you get enough hours and experience, people, there's a community you can kind of.

[Joel Strothers]

Well, it's a small. Yeah, it's a pretty small, small industry. So, McDermott, in fact, that machine, that picture used to be a Mustang machine. That's the one I actually flew. Did my training on here. Just not too long on the left. Yeah, left. So that's Mustang owned a214. There are 70. Built originally by Bell. I think there's. I should know the number. Less than 20 left. They. They abuse the shit on there. There's just a torque machine. Right. And they. They've crashed a lot of them. McDermott owns all them. I think there's three in Canada right now, one in the US and I think north, or it's North Korea. South Korea has, has two. But anyway, Mustang owned that one and sold it to McDermott and that was kind of. I didn't have the experience or the ability to get to it yet, but when I did, I was, yeah, you know, I reached out to McDermott and a lot of Canadians do fly for the, the Australians because at a certain point and it's, it's relevant right now, there's a lack of experience.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I've heard this, yeah, essentially not only a pilot shortage. Well, I've heard it two ways. I've heard that there's a pilot shortage and then I've heard that there's not a pilot shortage. There's an experience shortage. Like there's enough pilots but the experience level is lower than what you would want it to be.

[Joel Strothers]

Yes, it's a tricky industry because it's a lot of investment in money and time.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh yeah. It's not cheap.

[Joel Strothers]

And then It's a catch 22. When you come out of your, your flight school, it's not like you get into a flying position. It's. Companies will take advantage of that. They'll bring you on as, you know, sweeping the hangars, driving fuel. They'll make sure that you're not a, you know, a nitwit and you're going to run their vehicles before they let you get in the machine. But the problem these days is a lot of, there's a lot of minimums attached to certain tasking, especially oil and gas. Back in the day that was a bread and butter seismic exploration. But now that it's all HSC based, they have, you know, safety factors. You need a minimum 1500 hours. How do you fucking get there? And back in the day when the economy was good, there was lots of flying for these kids to get there. Right. So yeah, it's tough. And then, you know, she's, it's the biggest. It's considered a heavy. It's got the same, it's got the T55. So that's the same turbine as the Chinook. Okay. And it's.

[Andy Stumpf]

Damn.

[Joel Strothers]

It's the, the most powerful single engine twin bladed helicopter. And we tank. That's got the tank on there 3,000 liters.

[Andy Stumpf]

So that's a firefighter.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So we're.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, we're tanking. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So you went from firefighting in Canada to firefighting in Australia and I was.

[Joel Strothers]

On the 212 before and it's, it's basically, it's the exact same size. The tail boom is a bit thicker because obviously the size of the tail rotor, the tank is bigger, more robust. But when you're in there and on the 214, I fly left seat tanking. You're by yourself. You got the bubble window. 212 was on the right, but that doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't really affect anything, but you're always at limits anyway, so, you know, it's either you're full water or full fuel. It's a give and take. So the machine's always at its fullest and you actually kind of don't notice the difference after a while. But, yeah, she's a neat machine. And that's why I went to Australia, because I wanted the 214. But that being said, have you been to Australia?

[Andy Stumpf]

I have many.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. It's neat.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, my sister was born in Melbourne.

[Joel Strothers]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

I've been to Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, and I haven't been able to spend an immense amount of time there.

[Joel Strothers]

I love it.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think it's super cool.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. And then, you know, flying down. I'm based out of Perth, so we have four machines, right? Downtown Perth. And we're attached basically to the fire department, so we can find ourselves if there's a fire. Downtown Perth.

[Andy Stumpf]

No way.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. We're tanking Canada. You never knew. Now, the tricky part is that you're right. There's the big international airport, so you're inside the control zone. They treat us like aircraft in Canada. You're always. You're fucking on your own, right? So then they're talking to you like an aircraft. You have your ifier and your fixing, so it'd probably be easier for you to understand that. But when you're not used to it and they start talking like airplane. You're like, what base? They're like, what? Like, yeah, you know, clear to approach. Can I just go land at my. Anyway, so that was the biggest. The biggest challenge for me. It was just getting used to that side of stuff. And then their accents, man, because they'll come up on the radio with their. Their, you know, Australian accent. You're like, excuse me. Some of it's a little thick, but yeah, it's. It's neat.

[Andy Stumpf]

Now, what's the closest you've ever gotten to killing yourself in a helicopter?

[Joel Strothers]

Well, we can get into heli skiing if you want. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I always ask helicopter pilots, like, A, what's the worst mechanical issue you had to deal with? And B, what's the closest you've got to killing yourself in a fully functioning aircraft?

[Joel Strothers]

And you said it right yourself, right? It's always pilot Error. You know, there's how good you think.

[Andy Stumpf]

You are and then there's how good you are.

[Joel Strothers]

100 and that's the beauty of the bells. You know, they've been wrong so long, those machines are dulled when it comes to the engineer. They'll start to tell you if there's a problem. So usually if you're gonna scare yourself or kill yourself, it's you fucked up. Yeah, I've had, you know, you know, touch wood, a lot of fuck me, holy fuck moments. But what you learn from obviously, and I think, I think attitude is a huge part and a lot of like, especially for low time guys coming into like flight programs or companies taking you on, you're putting a lot of responsibility in someone's hand. It's kind of crazy, to be honest with you, the lack of time and experience that they let somebody fly people around, right. So I think they like to see a bit of life experience, a little bit of maturity because you're being, you'll be less, less pushy. And the old thing was at 500 hours, you know, you're, you're probably the most dangerous because you think, you think you know the machine or you know how to fly, but you don't necessarily have the skills to get yourself out of trouble when you do get. Once you hit 1500 hours and you haven't killed yourself, you're probably, you're probably okay because you've, you've done it where you're like, holy fuck, I'm not doing that again. Right. My, my thing early on, it's weird. And that was the struggle for me. And obviously I didn't fly in the military, but you know, in the military. And you could equate to this more than I. But you know, there, there's, there's strict rules and regulations and there's training and it's not rushed. It's done properly for a good reason. Civil world, it's not taxpayers paying for the, the cost. Right. So everything's somewhat rushed and you're kind of thrown to the wolves and like off you go, you know, and that will vet or call the herd pretty quickly. But then a certain point it's whether or not you kill yourself or wreck a machine because the next company's not going to give you a chance if you've wrecked a machine, you know, and then you just kind of learn. And the big one is, you know, weather. I think that was my early experiences I slinging. That's a big one in Canada too. We're on the long Line a lot. Right. That's a big part of the bread and butter. And I flew into, into fog slinging once and yeah. Scared the.

[Andy Stumpf]

That was my first me inadvertent imc.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Yeah. Which is as, you know, a killer. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think the survival rate, the stats are. Yeah, 90 seconds.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, yeah, it's. We don't, you know, an IFR guy might be able to get that 180 done and not descend. Yeah, we don't do that. We're not scanning. It'd be a fight, be a panic and that and that. And that's heli skiing in a nutshell. So I flew, you know, up until recently. I was at Mustang for eight years. And then we had the, the heli ski tenure up in Revelstoke with Selkirk Tangiers up until last year. And it was four B2A stars and four 205s. And typically what they do is within the company, they'll have guys that they, you know, say, hey, do you interested in heli skiing? Or you'll have guys that are interested in it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Joel Strothers]

And they're pretty, they're, you know, respect to them. The way they set up their system is we'd go up early season, you know, late November when the snow starts to kind of pack and you'd have your guys that have been doing it, but everyone has to go through recurrent training. Um, so yeah, I think you needed a minimum an hour. Um, obviously every year you're doing your recurrent training, your PPC or your check rides. But for heli skiing, it was a minimum of our recurrent. And then the new guys, they'd go out with a training pilot. And it's interesting because you'd get experienced guys, low time guys, and really, as I'm sure you can wait is typically Those guys around 3,000 hours would kind of show up to try it. But a guy with 6,000 hours could be, you know, shittier than a 3,000 hour guy. Right. It's not really a barium, but it's interesting. It was interesting that you'd have guys that you would think they go out for the first day and they go for an hour training and they come back, they're like, I'm good. I don't, I don't want to do this, you know, respectable. Right. You can respect that. If a guy calls it or you've had the other guys that will go out and the training pilots find it's like, dude, man, this, you know, you're not, you're not dialed, you're not getting it right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Not what we're looking for here.

[Joel Strothers]

And that might be, you know, a guy that's experienced, he's been, I don't know, logging, doing other stuff. And the ego. It's hard in the ego, but it's done for a good reason. Right. And the. The environment itself is. Is, you know, I mean, those big Alpines can be. What's the word? You know, it's not scary, but, you know, if you're Intimidating. Intimidating, yeah, exactly. So a lot of guys that have experience, you know, we've had guys that did, you know, search and rescue type stuff, like singing guys off the side of the hill. A lot of ex skiers, guys that, you know, been in the mountains before. I think my time in the mountains, in the Alps, with the. With the rep, you know, doing our stuff was helpful, just for understanding avalanche winds and stuff. But so what they do is you go out and the big thing. I'm sure you'll be interested in this for the flying side of it. They're really focused on the approach. And anytime you're heli skiing up there, certainly in our company and in Canada, it's pretty much across the board. The same is you have a minimum of two flags, and those are stuck into the snow or into the rocks or whatever.

[Andy Stumpf]

So for your visual.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, so it's got a flag on it. And initially that will give you your wind direction, because, as you know, obviously in the Alpine, it could be changing as long as you're not frozen in one direction from a storm that came through. But you've kind of judged, you're flown over your spot, you see the flags are flying. You've kind of figured out on your own what downwind is. You set up and then. And that's why they. They start you off in the B2, the SRS, because you're a little more. Less committed. You have that power, and you can kind of abort closer. And the two or five and the medium, you're committed way back. And if really something goes wrong, you're just fucking going for those flags. So the flags are there as your reference, but the snowball is what can be your, you know, to your detriment. And we get some big snowfalls in that part of the world. And if, let's say, if, you know, it's been a. It's been snowing all day, you come into that first landing, a lot of times, you'll fly over it slow the first time. If you can just. But you come in, there's A massive. So if you stick to those two flags, the idea is that first one's there, you get an idea of your rate of closure. It's like a walking pace as you get close. And then when you land, that flag is right beside you. So when it whites out, you're just like fucking looking right at. Right. Yeah. Or if you lose. And that's where the focus is on that approach. If you lose those flags because, you know, let's say you've been a bit too slow or you were downwind or you were in a wind, it changed and that snowball now is in front of you because that's what it would do. The wind will push it, you lost it. As long as you don't change anything. Theoretically you should come to your spot.

[Andy Stumpf]

So.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, big.

[Andy Stumpf]

Theoretically.

[Joel Strothers]

So they go out there and they just like to see the guys just consistent. Yeah. You know, and then it's a massive tenure too. So you get out there and then they just kind of again throw you to the wolves. So you, you know, once the, the training pilots, like happy with your, your abilities, you do a checkride with another guy and then you're skiing. And like they say, they just say, take it slow. And the interesting part of heli skiing is it's obviously the heli skiing company is, you know, it's trying to make a buck. So you're out there, everyone's got a mountain course, but you do not fly skiing like you, you do in a mountain course, right. You would, you'd go broke or they would kick you out.

[Andy Stumpf]

Take it slow. But also remember the cash register so.

[Joel Strothers]

It'S efficient and safe. Right. And every year that you fly, you get better because you, you have that, that gut feel, right? And that first year, and I remember I slept well, I got weird, died out, be back at the hotel, like, fuck it out, you know, from the stress. Right. But you don't have that, you don't have that gut feel to say this is. And we have some super experienced guides and they're looking at you and they're, they're good enough where they'll say, yeah, no, this is in Flat Lakes. We can come back to it. Flat Light is the killer, man. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Depth perception.

[Joel Strothers]

No, it's just a nightmare, right? And they'll be quick to say, hey, this, you know, this is not good for me. They don't like it. But you might get the guy that doesn't. He's pushing, he's trying to get good snow. And a lot of times, you know, that's He's. If his clients are happy, he's getting a nice bonus, you know, nice tip at the end of the day. And you don't have that experience to say, yeah, this is fucking shit. Right? Whereas you get those seasons behind. You're like, fuck that, man. I'm getting paid. You know, this is not worth it. We'll go somewhere else. So some guys will. Will make the cut. At the end of every day, the guys have their meeting, and they'll come back and say, hey, you know, fucking. We had a couple landings there with, you know, Joel that were spicy, like fucking. And then, you know. You know, for example, which is. Which is good, right? And so they should. And as a group of pilots, if there's an incident or concern, the lead pilot would say, hey, Joel. Like, this is what the guys were saying, you know? Do you agree? You got any concerns? You want to go out? And. And then the environment I liked, because on the fires, every pilot's a hero. And no one's gonna say, oh, I fucked up today, or I missed that drop. Everyone's like, the skiing environment, it was like, we got some experienced guys, we got some new guys, and if you come back and they say, how was your day? And the guy says, oh, it was. This is easy. Like, you're full of, man, because it's not easy. Right? And you'd have. You could listen to an experienced guy come back and say, hey, man, I lost my ass on that landing today. And it was. It was close, you know, and young guys can can soak that up, and then they're not afraid to come back. Say, hey, man, I had a hard time, because there's certain landings that are conducive to challenging landings, and it is gonna. It is gonna catch you at some point. Right? And then. Yeah. As you get used to the terrain. Because we're flying in shitty weather, man.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, well, good snow is generally going to be, you know, Bluebird days are going to be rare. I've only been. I went heli boarding one time.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And it was. It was definitely VFR conditions, but there was powder falling all around.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So, yeah, you wish it's the Bluebird, because that looks great on the GoPro. But if you want great snow, you go out when it's snowing, and the blue.

[Joel Strothers]

I mean, the Bluebird, it's, as you say, it's Bluebird. But then you're. You're going high, and that machine's at limits anyway. So you're. And the. You know, and certainly in the company I was skiing with. We have a Jenkins box. So if you. You have a. You an exceedance, basically, if you over torque, over temp and G or rpm, an email goes, dude, straight to the office, right?

[Andy Stumpf]

You need to unplug that thing.

[Joel Strothers]

So. Well, yeah, exactly. And we have a sat phone. There's been many times where I'm. I've landed after I drop my guests off and I'm waiting and I call my. My boss on the sat phone. He's like, hey, you know, did you get an email? And they're like, no, disregard.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's the box you find and you put your coffee down next to it every morning. You're just like, oops.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, but it keeps you. It keeps you honest. And those, you know, the guys have been using. But yeah, so you got the Bluebird days. You're. You're high and heavy and you're always maximizing fuel for cost, right? Because we have, like, in our 10 years. It's huge. I think, you know, there's a massive. At the time, it's like they could. There's a choice. There's obviously not 500 runs that are flagged, but they have that. That option. And we have little fuel caches everywhere. And you're working with your guide to maximize a day. So, for example, I don't know if you're interested in how it works, but in the morning and we show up at the. At the hangar, all the pilots are there. We'll get a text from dispatch with the group weights and your lead guide, and then he'll text you, say, hey, Joel, what's going. So I'm thinking of going to this run first, and this is my plan for the day. I was like, all right, cool. I look at my weights, you know, I fucking. I get my org chart or my. You have a chart for like the 205 where you can put in the numbers and it gives you the parameters. So I got this first runs up at fucking 8,000. My group weighs, you know, 2200 pounds. I can take, you know, 70% fuel. And the charts say that the helicopter should land at that altitude exactly as long as you got the wind on the nose and you didn't fuck it up.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, the old chart.

[Joel Strothers]

So then you. Yeah, you plan accordingly, right? And then he's in it. That communication. I mean, it's dual. It's Crew Resource Management 100, right. He's not saying you just come back full of fuel and say, oh, I want to go on this run now. Up at nine. You're like, we ain't.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, it doesn't work.

[Joel Strothers]

We ain't doing that. And then you work the program around so they can have lunch somewhere nice and then you can go for fuel. And it's just efficient, right? So you learn to be, you know, efficient that way and your flying gets more aggressive but. But safe because you understand the. The terrain and the machine and the hills, right? So it's. It's nice to get those, those, those years behind you. But you always have those days where you're fucking, you're committed, you're just going for those flags and it's like, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And you're just like, ah, got a long girl. And the people in the back are just fucking, you know, like, woo. Having a great time. I had. It's interesting. We had some interesting guests and there's always the. The briefs, you know, beforehand, because they show up. And Selkirk had this program where you have. You have everything. I had SpaceX guys that fucking right before they launched the rocket, I think the first time or what it was. They had like a group where they go out and fucking ski together, have a good time. They bought this. There's a ski chalet right on the hill at Revelstoke. It's got a nice helipad. And these guys, you know, they're mostly Brits, a lot of them, they've just built like the most advanced rocket in the world, you know. And I land in front of them in this clapped out 205 with rivets and steam fucking gauges. And I could just see them just like what? You know what I mean? Like, look at. They couldn't ski worse. One guy had to pick up about 200 meters down the hill, you know, from anyway. But they have another program where it's day skiers, right, where people have saved up. It's about 1500 bucks a day to. It's not cheapest, you know. And this gentleman comes over after the brief and he's got a heavy set. And he was ex Marine, US Marine, Cobra pilot. I think he did the Jolly Greens and they flew for, I think Air Force One for Obama of the White House. He's like, oh, I'm trying to talk. My wife in the. I'd love to come up and do heli skiing. And you know, I was like, I was like, good on you, man. Well, I hope you have a good day. And it was a flat, light day, you know, and he was in the penalty box, which is the side one there where the. You know, designed for the M60 gunner back in the day. And we were flying and that flat, light stuff like he would be sitting facing. You know, some of the landings would be like right on the side of a mountain. Right. Yeah. So you'd have rock going like this. Then you'd hear the. And then me fucking me powering up and then coming into the flags and then snow. You wouldn't see anything. The end of the day, he just came over to the window and he was like, I'm out. You know, I mean, it's.

[Andy Stumpf]

Stay in the back. I will get out of this thing.

[Joel Strothers]

And that's not to say that he couldn't. It was just. It's a. It's a different. I don't think people kind of realize the most.

[Andy Stumpf]

The accidents happen on landing.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. And that's. Yeah. White out rolling machines. Every year, typically we hitting.

[Andy Stumpf]

And then dynamic.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, yeah. The dynamic world's a big one. Last year they had a koala. Went and killed, I think three guys. Not. Not our. It was up in Terrace. But typically every year there's a machine that's. That's wrecked.

[Andy Stumpf]

Today's episode is sponsored by Better Help. I have tried to be as open and honest about my own journey when it comes to sitting down and talking with somebody with the sole intent of. In those conversations, working through the variety of problems that I've dealt with in my life. And I know that we all deal with a variety of different things, but more importantly, in my hopes that it reduces some of the stigma. So if people are struggling and they don't know what to do and they don't know who to talk to, they can at least consider counseling of some kind. It has had tremendous impact on my personal life. It's not magic. What it leaves you with is a lot of work that you're gonna have to do yourself. But if you don't know the road or the roadmap to take, it's really easy to get lost. Now some people will say, I don't really live in a place where there are counseling or therapy assets available for me. Today's sponsor, BetterHelp, can help you solve that problem. It is fully online, it makes therapy affordable, and it's convenient. Serving over 5 million people worldwide, it will give you access to a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties. And it's easy to switch therapists anytime at no extra cost. I hear this often, people do not connect or click with the person that they first talked to and they give up on the therapy. Its please don't do that. Talk to somebody else. Keep talking to somebody until it clicks for you. I promise you that it is worth it. Visit betterhelp.com clearedhop today and you're going to get 10% off your first month. That is better.

[Joel Strothers]

Help.

[Andy Stumpf]

H E L P hotelecholemapapa.com Cleared Hot. Invest in yourself, people. It's worth it. Back to the show.

[Joel Strothers]

It's. Yeah, it's challenging flying, but it makes you a better pilot. Like if you have bad habits, they get nipped in the butt real quick. Oh, yeah. And then come fire season, it's like you're dialed right, you're good to go. And that's, that's what I liked about the skiing is it made you and it was, you know, the people in the back are great. The tenure, it's beautiful. You have some good days where it's like, holy me, look up and like, Jesus. You know, there's other days you're like, what the.

[Andy Stumpf]

Why am I doing? Yeah, but you've been flying in Australia now.

[Joel Strothers]

This was my first tour, so I did seven weeks.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

So I go back on the seventh year, they'll do the st and then that's the end of their fire season. Then I'm Greece for their fire season in Greece. Next.

[Andy Stumpf]

Nice.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

How many hours you up to now?

[Joel Strothers]

Just short of six.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's awesome.

[Joel Strothers]

I'm short too. I started, you know, I started late. Most of my colleagues at my age are 10 plus minimum. My chief pilot at Mustang has 20,000 hours accident free. Imagine.

[Andy Stumpf]

No.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, I'm shocked I got through 20 hours accident free, but.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. So what are your. Enough about me on the flying side, what are your thoughts? I mean, I think I texted you once asking you I'd be keen to know you're coming from the fixed wing background. What you thought once you get jumped in a helicopter, the difference.

[Andy Stumpf]

So the best way I've ever had it described is flying. Fixed wing is like a marble in a bowl and you're just trying to hold it in the middle of the bot in the bottom of the bowl. Flying helicopters, flipping the bowl upside down and trying to hold the marble on top of it while you're moving it around. I'm really glad that I learned a all of my basic aviation and knowledge tests. I'm glad that I did all that because I could just focus on flying the helicopter, which is. I try to tell people it's not being honest. Being honest about it. It's not hard, but it's not easy.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, like at first, yeah, it's really, really hard. But then you kind of get a feel for it.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And then it's not that it's easy, but it's not the hardest thing in the world ever. It's challenging at the very least.

[Joel Strothers]

You started on the R22. No, 44. 44.

[Andy Stumpf]

First flight I ever did was in a Schweitzer.

[Joel Strothers]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

Which is basically a bumblebee and.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Then went right from there into a 44.

[Joel Strothers]

That's my. Yeah, yeah. Because it's got the weird collective. The cyclic. Sorry. It's got that. You know, it's got that.

[Andy Stumpf]

It is.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I have a few hours in an A star. Those things are reactive to the control inputs. The Robinson, I would say, prepared me for that pretty well. But it's. It's amazing and I think this is probably true of everybody. You want to overreact. Whereas you just need to take a breath and be a little bit more smooth.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. They're humbling. Yeah. I mean, helicopters are humbling as man. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You have some really good days and then you'll have a day where you consider whether or not you want to continue doing this.

[Joel Strothers]

I don't think that'll ever stop. Yeah. But you're. It's too late right now you're chasing the dragon. That's the thing. You'll never master the trade, but you're. Yeah, it's.

[Andy Stumpf]

But those are the things I like the most. That's why I like Jiu Jitsu, is you can't master it. You can get better at it, but it is a puzzle or a language that you're never going to. You're never going to master that. And to me, that's intimately fascinating. I love that type of.

[Joel Strothers]

What's. What's your objective with flying helicopters? At this point?

[Andy Stumpf]

I just want to explore Montana. It's literally what I want to do. I want to be able to load up a helicopter with a three day weekend worth of stuff and go somewhere in a state that most people don't get to experience fully anyway and get even farther off the beaten path. And don't worry, everybody, I'm not going to land in a fucking national park because that does happen up here, dudes.

[Joel Strothers]

Somebody was telling me it's a hefty fine too, right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, somebody was telling me, I think it was today some dude rented out an A star, landed it in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, which the regs are really clear on. Whether or not you're able to do that. Spoiler alert. You're not. Went fly fishing, got caught. And I think the fine was 800 bucks. Which if you got the economic ability to rent out an A star for the day, $800 isn't going to stop you. I just want to. It's another thing. I just want to live my life to the fullest. I guess would be the best.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. No, cool.

[Andy Stumpf]

Explore Montana and not die. I mean I'm gonna die at some point. We all are. But not in helicopter.

[Joel Strothers]

Would you take family?

[Andy Stumpf]

For sure.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Because if I'm gonna go, they're coming too.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Death wise. So if we're gonna. If we're gonna die covered in aviation gasoline on fire, they're fucking coming with me.

[Joel Strothers]

My kids actually came up to one of the. I was in Cache Creek this summer on a fire and I was like, fuck, come up. You know, it might be A and 212, you know, tank. And we went flying. And I'll admit I was. I was happy when we were on the ground. I think it would be the scenario where if something went wrong today, flying helicopter. It's self preservation. I'm saving my own ass before the people in the back.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

But as soon as I have.

[Andy Stumpf]

Don't make that part of your brief.

[Joel Strothers]

As a suggestion. Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, the morning brief. Like listen, if something goes wrong, I'm gonna be fine. You guys might be fucked.

[Joel Strothers]

But if you had your. God forbid, you know, you fucking love.

[Andy Stumpf]

Religious, but yeah, I get it.

[Joel Strothers]

You'd be worried.

[Andy Stumpf]

You think about it more. For sure. I mean, honestly, I think about that sometimes more when I'm doing a road trip.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know what's. What's the worst mechanical issue you've ever had to deal with? It's funny, you hear about people 25000 hours who've never had an issue. I know guys with far less than that. And sometimes I think this is pilot induced. But you know, engine failures. Because that was tainted fuel though, you.

[Joel Strothers]

Know, like y. Yeah. A lot of times is. I've. Honestly, I've never had a. Never had an engine failure. Governor failure.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes.

[Joel Strothers]

It's tricky on the. You know, it's manageable but depends where you are.

[Andy Stumpf]

And for people listening it makes it really hard to control the RPMs of the engine.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. And you can switch out to the automatic mode, but it's. Yeah. Honestly, I've been lucky. All my scares have been just self induced.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's what I'm talking about.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a neat. They're neat machines, but they have to be.

[Andy Stumpf]

You gotta perspective.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. And, you know, we work with firefighters all the times. We got the smoke jumpers in the. In B.C. in fact, I got, you know, a nice black rifle coffee story I could share just a shout out to them. I know you're a sponsor and stuff, but they're. They certainly helped us out with some coffee for the.

[Andy Stumpf]

They send a tremendous amount of product to places that people never hear about.

[Joel Strothers]

Exactly. Yeah. So I wouldn't mind. But a lot of times, you know, they'll ask. You know, we're typically on a fire, you're, you know, you're flying crews to the fire in the morning and bring them back at night. And then during the day you're slinging gear or slinging water, you know, or tanking, whatever. But they're always like, let's do the, you know, northern. Northern Canada especially. A lot of times it's up in Fort Nelson where the fires start in the season. And some of those valleys are like the Naysha Valley in Vietnam, you know, and they're. I'm getting flashbacks, you know, I'm like my Huey. Right. But they're in the back. And so every once in a while you take a river low and you're banking and they're like, let's. Can we take the. The river back? You're like, you know, it's fun, but that engine quits. I mean, at 212, you got two. But it's. It's just, you know, you're still pushing your Easy. Yeah. And I kind of. I actually goes back to the Iraq stuff. When you're driving around, especially the ID days, man, is, you know, if you're cutting corners and going close to the world, you know, the. They've dug under the road, you know, the culverts and stuff. At a certain point, if you're pushing things, that your luck's gonna catch up to you. Right. So if you're flying like a hot dogger.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Joel Strothers]

One day, Murphy's Law, you're gonna be in the wrong. You're gonna be in the wrong place. You know, it's important for people to.

[Andy Stumpf]

Remember, regardless of what you're doing, if you're constantly seeking your limits, one day you're going to find them.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, exactly.

[Andy Stumpf]

And you may not. Like, you might. You may want to just test your limits, but your limits might want to provide for you a little bit bigger of a Test than you're ready for. Yeah, it's important to read.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Yeah. So it's. I think that comes with, you know, as you get older too, you're a little more. Less willing to push the limits. You got more to think about. But it's, It's. It's tempting, for sure. Yeah. No, I, I have a love, love, hate relationship with helicopters, but love wins your way a lot. You know, it's. It has its pros and cons, but at the end of the day, when you're your own boss in the cockpit and. Yeah, it's. It's good stuff, man. Yeah. Yeah, I like it.

[Andy Stumpf]

What led you to the Legion growing up in, In Canada? I mean, obviously Canada has its own military. There's a, you know, JTF2, which is not talked about much, but they are. They're doing a better job of telling their own story, which is for people who don't know, a counterterrorism organization. And it's actually really interesting because they. In. I'm sure you know this, but maybe a lot of people in the US don't, or globally. US military is external. Owning Passacomitatus prevents them from being used in a policing capability. I think they might be able to be used in a. In like a natural disaster. I think the guard can help, but I think there's a mechanism, but Nothing internal. Whereas JTF2 is a very interesting organization. They can do counterterrorism exterior and interior. So you had options right there. There is a army, there's a navy, there's an air force. How'd you hear about the Legion? And why'd you go that route?

[Joel Strothers]

No fair. Fair question. That's why I wrote a pill. Yeah, I answered all the questions, but you know what's better to hear? Yeah, I don't know for sure exactly, because I suck at explaining things. That's why I. But so my, as I said, you know, military background in my family is pretty, Pretty in depth. And when I remember being around the Airborne, I was always kind of enamored with the jumpers. And it's just a cool.

[Andy Stumpf]

I know it defies gravity. As a young man, you sit there and you watch it.

[Joel Strothers]

Dude. I had like, huh.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think I need to do that.

[Joel Strothers]

The vhs, Remember Hamburger Hill? I had that vhs. Anyway, I watched the shit. I don't know if they were what, 82nd hundred first.

[Andy Stumpf]

But anyway, one of the two.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. So I was playing hockey. That came to an end. I wanted to join the military. I wanted to jump. This would have been early 90s I went to the recruiter in Vancouver and there was no Reg Force infantry positions available. You could go navy and all that kind of stuff. I was like, fuck that shit. But what they did suggest is. And the military was starting to go through a change where Canada was kind of. They were going to make a third of their Force Primary Reserve. So they had reserve regiments where you would go through the courses that were designed to be similar to the Reg Force courses. And if there was any overseas tours like Bosnia, that kind of stuff, a third of the men and women would be reservists. So I joined a regiment, the Royal Residential Regiment just outside of Vancouver, and they were attached to the ppcli, so they were jump tasks. So you do your basic, your battle school in Wainwright and then you go to Edmonton and do your jump course. And I was in Wainwright doing my battle school. And word came down that the Canadian military was being restructured. This would have been 92 and that we were no longer going to be jump test. We were going to be anti tank tow.

[Andy Stumpf]

Not what you said.

[Joel Strothers]

No, exactly. And so One of our NCOs on the, on the, the course said, hey, there's a guy. And he knew that I was keen on jumping, right. He said, one of these guys just came back from France and he jumped with the rep in the Legion. I was like, what the fuck? I didn't know anything about those. So I looked into it. I actually called, I think I called the operator and they gave me a. I said, I would like to talk to the U.S. army. Do you have a number over the border? And she gave me to his Marine Corps. So I talked to the Marine Corps and they had said it would take you a couple years to get a green. A green card. That I don't have any family that's American. So I looked at that option. I wrote the Legion. They wrote me back with a breakdown of the different regiments, the recruiting depots, pay grade. At this point, I'm 21. And I said, ah, fuck it, I'm out. You know, I'd gotten myself into some trouble. I was kind of lacking direction as young men as you do. Yeah. And that's, you know, and we can get into that because I've had quite a few Americans reach out to me asking me questions about the Legion based on the. Because I, you know, for those, I.

[Andy Stumpf]

Mean, for those reasons, they, they. The desire to serve doesn't change when you make a mistake as a young man.

[Joel Strothers]

Exactly. It's a shame. But.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, how did you even so you even know what address to write a letter to?

[Joel Strothers]

I went to the French Consulate in Vancouver and they really. Yeah, yeah, okay. Because this is pre, you know, this pre Internet kind of stuff. So it was.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, it's just not a well advertised organization.

[Joel Strothers]

I went to the library, I found there's some old pictures, history books of the REP in Indochina because obviously, you know, the French lost the battle of Dan Bin Fu. I was kind of where the Americans got drawn into the war and then Algeria. So they wrote me back. And I read the book by Simon Murray called Legionnaire, which is kind of the staple book on, on legionnaires. And he had served, he was a, a British gentleman, served in the Franco Algerian war with the rep. That would have been the late 60s. And I was like, you know what? I'm going. At the time, my dad was flying for an airline called Canada 3000, jump seat to Dusseldorf, got on a train, went to Strasbourg and I knocked on the door and I had no plan B.

[Andy Stumpf]

And do they tell you, hey, come here and knock on this door?

[Joel Strothers]

No, in that letter. There was a different depots at the time. I think now it's only Paris and the Fortune. But back in the day there was quite a few. And all you needed was a valid.

[Andy Stumpf]

Passport from any country.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, any country. So I knocked. They take your passport and they ask you, you know, it's, it's, you know, this is going back a long time, but some basic questions, you know, why you're here, what are you interested in? Why do you want to join the Legion? They look at your passport, take your stuff, and then you're kind of held there for. They do a, a rudimentary medical exam with the doctor within the couple days. And then they just put you to, you know, work sweeping, cleaning toilets, that kind of. And then once enough people show up, you head, they put you on a train, you go down to Aubang, which is just outside of Marseille, southern France, and that's where the Legion headquarters is, the premiere. And there you're thrown into the recruiting depot. And typically you're there for about a month. And they. It all depends on the geopolitical situation in the world, but they can take about 1 in 15, so they have the ability to pick and choose what they like. And I have a buddy that's. We did selection together as corporal. He's now a captain, he's French, but he's still in, in the Legion. He's got to be nine. And after almost 30 years now, because I left 25 years ago, right. But anyway. But he keeps me up to speed on, you know, how the Legion has changed, like all militaries, you know, in today's day and age. But they pick and choose what they want. Typically, they like a young man in his early 20s, so you have a bit of life experience. You're not too young. They want you to understand what you're getting into because they got you initially for five years. You can have, like, we were talking about them, you can have some issues with the law previously, but they will do an Interpol background check. They're pretty effective. They have a department called the B2. And they will. They will grill you and they'll go, you know, in this day and age, they'll go into your phones, all kinds of stuff in social media. But, you know, if you had fights, DUI or whatever, fine. But no, like the sexual type stuff, no drugs, no, that's. They're not interested in that. And they'll pick and choose the guys they want. Prior military history is not necessarily something they live for because their system is very different. So they don't want to teach an old dog new tricks. And then once you're chosen, they. They have some now because I was actually back at the training regiment two years ago and visited. Now right away you go onto computers. They have a classroom full of computers and it's IQ tests and psychological evaluation right there they can really. And there it was interesting because they. Right away they picked up on two guys that were lying and they were. They got nabbed a year later in France for the terrorism attacks on one of the. The military bases.

[Andy Stumpf]

No shit.

[Joel Strothers]

And they. They do have, you know, French jazz. Are trying to get in and learn their. Their skills. Right. Because obviously, as you know, France had their. Yeah. Their issues there not too long ago, so they're getting very good at. Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Before you go further into the selection aspect of it. Yeah, go for it. What is the actual role of the Legion? Why was it created? What does it do?

[Joel Strothers]

So, yeah, I'm by no means a historian, so I know, and typically in my experience, you know, I stick to things that I find interesting, but initially it was designed back in the 1800s by the king for. It would allow them to use foreigners or Frenchmen that were supposed to go to prison to have a chance to pay their penance, but also they wouldn't have to send Frenchmen to do their. Withdraw their war, do their battles, you know, so it was interesting. It was like a penal.

[Andy Stumpf]

Almost like a redemption arc.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And so, and by design, even in the beginning it was for foreigners as well.

[Joel Strothers]

So all the officer corps are French. French officer corps, Odyssen, typically about a third of the ranks are Frenchmen, but the rest are foreigners.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

Everything's done in French.

[Andy Stumpf]

So then that had to been a benefit to you.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, I was lucky.

[Andy Stumpf]

Parlez vous francais?

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, exactly. And that's the one thing I say to guys when they ask is, you know, know some French before you go. But. So, yeah, you go to basic and it's four months in Castel, which is just not far from Toulouse, where they build the Airbus. And that first month you go to a farm. So you got. There's about 50 guys. And you know, during my time the wall would come down. So in my section there was a lot of Russians, Polaks, Czechs, Slavs, you know, that kind of stuff. There were some Brits, Kiwis, Spaniards. Belgium. That changes, obviously, as the world changes. Right. But you go to a farm and basically what is. There's four training regiments in the training company or training or sorry, four training companies in the regiment and they all have an old farm that they've bought, refurbished to make it, you know, like a barracks, I guess. And you spend a month there and you get beasted. And that's where you kind of learn. You actually spend most of your time learning how to fucking sing. As a collective, it's insane, but it's effective. So they, they, they keep you up all night, you do the ruck marches. There's a lack of food, there's a lot of, you know, discipline. And it's.

[Andy Stumpf]

Is this a quit whenever you want to type affairs?

[Joel Strothers]

No, you can dessert and we had desserts. But at the end of basic training. Yeah, yeah. At the end of your four months, you have a chance to go civilian or stick it out for the five years. So they give you a chance. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's an interesting off ramp they give you or a choice, as you say.

[Joel Strothers]

So it really weeds out because they're aware, they're, you know, they've been doing this a long time. They're aware of. There's certain people that join for the right reasons and wrong. And it'd be like for yourself, guys that go and come to buds, right. It's a mental thing. Right. They might have a, an envision of what they're getting into, but then they realize this is not for me.

[Andy Stumpf]

We'll let you quit day one.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, yeah, fair enough.

[Andy Stumpf]

So we'll let you quit minute one if you want to after and to.

[Joel Strothers]

My point is where they're effective is after a month, you march into the. Back into the regiment with your white kepi because you're issued that at the end, singing the regiment song in tune. And the legion march is the slowest marching military in the world. It's 88 steps per minute. I don't know what the. I think The Canadians are 120 or something. I might be wrong, but it's like. It's slow, right. And the song is slow. Like it. And it's. It's actually pretty impressive. That low, deep kind of.

[Andy Stumpf]

What do they call this? Because we're pulling this up right now.

[Joel Strothers]

I know. You could probably.

[Andy Stumpf]

What would you.

[Joel Strothers]

Marching. Yeah. Singing. I. It drove me nuts. Right. Coming from the Canadian. My small experience, the Canadian military. That's just the band. But if you put Legion marching. Yeah, but the fact that they're able to do that in a month. We had. We had Koreans. No, that's the. The band. But if you stop looking at the band.

[Andy Stumpf]

Michael, you weirdo. The hell march.

[Joel Strothers]

Keep going. First world French Foreign Legion marching. There you go. That one there. No, down, down.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, that's in Corsica. And that's where the regiment's based in Calvi. Corsica.

[Andy Stumpf]

You can do it, Michael. You can find it. Oh, that is a slow pace. That is painfully slow pace.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. You get there last. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm gonna be honest, this is the pace Leah walks at. But she tells me I'm a fast walker, and I look back and I'm like, have you considered that you might be slow?

[Joel Strothers]

But, you know, after four weeks, that's pretty impressive. You can take, you know, individuals from every different background, like the Russians. Their Alphabet's different, so.

[Andy Stumpf]

To learn Cyrillic. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. That sounds. It looks badass.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, it's. It's impressive. I mean, it's. And they don't change it because if it ain't broke, why fix it, you know?

[Andy Stumpf]

What does that black hat mean?

[Joel Strothers]

So those would be sergeants.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

They're NCOs. So you have a block as with the officers. But their ranks there. Those are probably sergeants.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Anyway, Michael, I have an idea.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I would like to sponsor you going to France and joining the League.

[Joel Strothers]

For some reason, I knew that that was going to be your.

[Andy Stumpf]

Can we make this happen? He's first off. You used a deter. A term earlier called deserter, which is what we can expect, but I think it would be cool to, like, try.

[Joel Strothers]

Well, because there's the option to go out after Four months, right? Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Can we be really honest about the fact you're not going to make it to four months?

[Joel Strothers]

Is it illegal to be a deserter? Because in that case I think I would. No, I mean if they catch you, they throw you in jail for. And then they're like, at the end of the day, if you don't want to be there, they don't want you. So. And there's the administrative ways of getting it right. It's effective. Right. I mean they're doing it for a reason. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

You'll get home at some point. I'll help.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, thank you.

[Andy Stumpf]

But let's get you there. I need you to research what door you need to knock on and we're doing this.

[Joel Strothers]

Okay, perfect. So I mean, yeah, it's very different and I found that, you know, challenging, but it, there's a reason for it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay, so you do the march after a month, then what comes?

[Joel Strothers]

Then you have your three months, you're back at the regiment and then they get into the firearms, you know, the exercises and you learn. Basically the idea is that every legionnaire that departs the training regiment, when it gets to their differing regiments, they have the base of a legion like the Marine Corps. Actually the legion is probably, if anything it's similar to any arm the military, it's probably the marines.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

You know, everyone's a rifleman. And then they, and then based on the four months, there's how you finish in your course. The top ones, they let you choose and then obviously towards the bottom they start to send you where you won't go on to go. You have to be a volunteer to go to the rep, which is the airborne regiment and then off you go. And every, every regiment differs anyway. So I went to the, to the rep and I joined the first company which is fighting in Fibia. There are special others, there's five regiments or, sorry, five companies and there are ones amphibious, there's the mountain, there's the first which is fighting in built up areas. And then the other one, the fourth which was, I mean they had mortars, snipers, all that kind of stuff. And so I got there in, what was it I did six years. So I was in the GCP for four years, so that was 94. And then I did selection for the GCP. So, and that's where, you know, I think I sent you that, that clip once. But the difference in, in their system is it's not necessarily that you volunteer. They'll say, hey Joel, are you interested in going gcp? Because you need to be signed gcp. So that's the group going to a parshatist. So that's like the pathfinders for the, for the regiments guys can be volunteer but you need to be signed off by your lieutenant and then the company captain. And typically, you know, it's a small, a regiment's 1500 strong, so it's a captain that runs the GCB team and they're all obviously a small community. They're talking so they're going to say to their comrades or the company captains, don't send me retards, you know, just send me. So that being said, if there's problem childs in a company, they might say, all right, off you go. Right. Because as you know, sometimes problem childs make good, good soldiers too. Right. But anyway, so I did, I did the selection for the GCP and you had to be a minimum of a corporal and I was a private Plumie first class at the time. And yeah, it was, you know, the process is somewhat different is it was a three week selection process and it was a group of, I think we were 20 odd from the different companies, a mix of corporals and first class. They put you through the original, you know, the, the typical, the big, the big staple for the, the French Military Legion is the, you do a 1500 minor 1500 meter ruck run in a certain amount of time and then you get I think five minutes and then you do 8K run. That's their big one. Then there's the, the assault, combat assault course. And then for the GCP it's a 35k run. So they do that in the first week and then they have their, you know, you go to the range, they do their assessment and it depends on what they want. They have different cells so if they're looking for a signaler they're going to be kind of pinpointing towards if they're looking for sniper guys. But in the end you go out and you spend a couple weeks working with the rep. There's two GCP teams. So they introduce you into the teams and you'll go do exercise with them. And the big one for them is they're looking to see and it would be similar to your background in the SEAL team is a guy that's able to fit within a team environment and willing to learn because at the end of the day they're going to teach you how to do your thing. So they want to see the guys, they're a good mix, they fit the fit and they have the right Attitude, So you might not be the best runner or whatever, but you, you fit there. So I was, as I said, I was first. I remember they took us to an old prison up in the back of Calvi. There's an old Spanish fort that they was a prison back in the day. But we were out there and then the captain showed up in his jeep and he said, all right, put together a plan how you would assault this and you could use, you know, any weapons that the regiment has and you could, you know, put together your plan and I'll go over it. And so we all did. I was thinking about this actually driving up and I think I was like, fucking old school. It's like France trenches. You know, the whistle will go. We were just gonna fucking, you know, over the breaches, you know, I bet you some of the guys were like, well, we'll HALO in and, you know, use all. But anyway, so at the end of it, we'd have to sit in front of the captain and you look at your plan and he probably just shook his head. But I remember he said to me, you know, how do you feel you're doing, Joel? And I was like, ah, you know, here we go. Right, Question. Yes. I said, well, you know, sir, you know, I'm giving it all I can. I'm doing my best. Obviously there's a lot to learn, but, you know, I can honestly say no regrets. I don't feel. He said, all right, we'll, you know, we'll, we'll take you on, but we had a slot for you in the corporate course. You're gonna have to go tomorrow. And then. So I missed the rest of. So I was, I was fortunate to get on. And I think that had a big part to do with, you know, I'm Canadian, so there's that historical connection between France and I had a decent level of French and then I was, you know, I was, I was, you know, I was young, I was fit, I was, I was driven. And I think, you know, I was lucky. But the reason I say that is, not to blow smoke up my ass, is that I was fortunate in my time in the Legion. So I went off, I did my corpus course. It's a fucking shit show. And I remember you go back to Castell where you do your basic and it's a three month course and we had an adjutant, which would be like, sergeant Major, I guess, who was running the course. He was known for. He was Portuguese, he'd done the commander course down in Mount House in Brazil. Anyway, when you Showed up to the course, you had to, you're in uniform and you had to knock on the door, going to his office, it was him. And then the two senior NCOs that would have the two different platoons and you had to do your typical presentation. And I fucked up my first. It was like, you know, your rank, all that stuff and it up and did it fucked up again. And I remember he kind of looked at his, the two beside me and he looked at me and said, you know, in French he's like, are you retarded? I was like, good start.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, sometimes.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, exactly. Anyway, so I did my, my corpus course and I came back to the, the regiment and when I got to the company and checked in with the duty sergeant, he said, you're pack your bags, you're going to Central Africa. And the, the team, this is 1996 Alban 2. The team had gone to Bungay, Central Africa, where there was civil war going on. But they were short one guy. So when you get in the gcpd, you have to do your commando course, which is on Montlouy in the Pyrenees mountains. And then you go to po, which is the French parabase just outside of Toulouse. And then that's where you do your HALO free fall course. And then once you've completed those and that, you know, once you wait for your spots, it could take over a year, year and a half and then you typically, you wouldn't join the team, you just be, you know, to the side waiting for your, your courses. And then once you were, you know, you had the wings, the free fall wings and your command of course, and you would jump, join the team and. But they're short. So they sent me and I flew into, I was on a DC9 a couple days later via Chad and we landed at Bungay, Central Africa. And my captain came in the front. Everyone else in the plane, they're all French military, they were going to. I don't know where they're going. But anyway, said Joel, I got out and that, that night I was kitted up with my Famas. It was the first time I left, I left the, the gates with a weapon off on, you know, loaded on safe. And it was for me, you know, that that was less than. That was about two years in the Legion. So, you know, being an officer's kid, Canadian, from a world where we're pretty fortunate, all of a sudden here I'm in downtown Mungi, you know, with the gcp and I'm not yet a team you know, I'm not fully qualified yet. I'm just like head on a swivel man. It was, it was, it was a neat and as I said, a lucky introduction into the, into the, into the, into the Legion and the regiment itself. So then I did that, you know, obviously did my commander course offer, did my free fall course and then the free fall course it was, I was the only legionnaire in the course. They broke it up into three branches. But you, you go, they teach you how to jump. We had the big old GQ rigs, I think the Brits use them to the FCS big blue square. The French came out with their G9 later on, but they would teach you with a platus how to, how to jump. And then you'd move to the, the Herc or the Transal, which was smaller. Yeah, and then you'd work up on that and you'd have one instructor and you, you know, you'd. Obviously your background's in that, you know, you'd make sure there was no lateral movement. You could do all your stuff. And then once they're, they're, they're happy with your control, they say go get. And then you, they would try, they would add you up. And the Idea was those 10 men and then you did the night jumps and, and I was there for three months. But I had one guy, he actually taught the course. He was ex Jin, so the French anti terrorist team. And interestingly enough, he was switched on guy. He had joined the Jaegen as a young gendarme, as you do, to join that. And in their, in their system they attach a new guy to a more experienced guy. And he was. Remember the. When they raided the Airbus in Marseille?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes.

[Joel Strothers]

He was I think number four in the door because you want to talk.

[Andy Stumpf]

About a mission I would never want to do.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like, hey, let's steal from you every tactical advantage known to man. You may be able to approach this unseen, but at some point you're going to go through a porthole and they're going to be waiting for you.

[Joel Strothers]

I know. Hard pass balls. You know, we actually visited their compound and I saw the helmet, where the, the mask. They got those thick fucking helmet. He took the round, the AK around in the. Knocked him out, but it saved his life. Anyway, he was switched on. And I remember one of the entry exams was you had to do laps in the pool. Certain amount of lapse in time. So here's Xia Zhengai. And then you got the Legionnaire Joel and he's supposed to stop you. When you're done and you just let me go, I'm like, Like, you know, like, it's very like fucking legionnaires, man. What the fuck? You know?

[Andy Stumpf]

Did you guys wear different uniforms? How were they able to identify you as a legionnaire?

[Joel Strothers]

I'd have the white kepi.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay, so you always wore that?

[Joel Strothers]

Yes. Yeah. Okay, well, no, we had the Green Beret.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

So that's more parade wear. But yeah, when we'd be in comments and like, jumping, it would be Green Beret. But when I would, like, leave Garrison and I'm traveling back forth, it would be the white cat.

[Andy Stumpf]

So visually distinct. Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, yeah. And I remember we finally, you know, and I enjoyed. I liked my big thing. I couldn't wait to get out of the Herc and going out the side door, the ramp. Cool and whatever. But it was, you know, that side where you. You pull yourself into the. Yeah, I just. For whatever reason, that's what I wanted. Right. And I'm not. I wasn't into the civilian skydive. I was more like. I. What interested me is the operational side of it. But, yeah, I enjoyed it. I think I was lucky. You know, I got the long arms, long legs, and so I was able to, you know, I was a stable. Stable jumper and. And did okay. But I remember at the end there was two. We had two teams of ten, and they. The final jump in the ceremony to get our wings was on right field, and that's where the Wright brothers had flown the. The planes to introduce them to the French. And the. The regiment CO was there and all these guests, and we. We landed about a mile short. We had. We had to walk back with our rock, you know, our rigs on and our guns on our shoulders. Like, I thought that was pretty. Pretty funny, but, yeah, you know, it was, you know, but again, there. I'm the only legionnaire. The other ones were. We had the. The. The French equivalent to the. The SEAL SEAL programs. We had a couple Air Force, you know, the JTAC types. They had the other gcp. Obviously, Regiment had their guys. Friends. So I was. I was the sole legionnaire. So it was interesting to kind of see the. The French army for what it was. And then I think it was interesting them for them to see. To see, you know, what a legionnaire was all about. It was a good time. And at the end, I went back to. I drove back down to Toulon where the. The guys had their base there. The Uber is the name of the. The. The guys. And One of your U.S. marine submarines was there and a SEAL team was. Was there cross training. Interesting. Yeah. And that's too long. That's their big naval base. And at that point, that's when I was kind of like, man. And then I just remember the thinking is I got to go back to Calvi and the regiment and the Legion. It's old school and just gateau, which is a French translation for gateau is cake. But it's just like very like hard headed and strict. So I had to get my hair, I had to let my hair go. And I was having this, you know, good time and I think it wasn't the albeit I was new, but I could kind of see that, you know, this is kind of what the real military experience should be, where you have a life. Whereas the Legion, it's very kind of. And for the first five years you can't wear civilian clothes. You know, why is that? They've changed that rule since. But it's, it's just the way. I don't know why a discipline thing. It just. But they did and it's, you know, it's. I used to hate that you go into town Calviz and in the summer, of course, because, you know, it's beautiful and you got a lot of tourists, but you have to walk around. The mps would be trolling around and if you're out of sorts, you know, if you got a stain on your, on your uniform or your kepi's dirty or it's, you know, it's the end of the back of the jeep and you're in jail. So it was really, it was tough that way. But whatever, it is what it is, right? I was fortunate. And then, yeah, after six years, I just decided it was time to do something different. I was young enough where I could make a change.

[Andy Stumpf]

Is it true that in the Legion if you continue on at some point they will issue a French passport? You can get a new name and all that stuff.

[Joel Strothers]

That's changed. So in my time, after five years, as long as you had a good service record, typically you would get it. I didn't go after it. Retrospect, I wish I had, but as I said, I was always a proud Canadian. I just felt like I was a guest. They were giving me this opportunity. Unfortunately, you know, the Canadian military wasn't. But I always had plans to go home. It's changed since. Now you have to, I think, do more time. And it's a case by case basis. Unless you're injured. If you're injured, they give you the passport.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do they also allow you to change your name? I've heard people talking about that.

[Joel Strothers]

They do. I didn't.

[Andy Stumpf]

Is that like a fresh start?

[Joel Strothers]

Essentially, it's more a protection for yourself and the Legion. So a lot of countries, especially the Eastern Bloc countries, it's illegal to serve in a foreign military. So what they do is they would give you a false name. And if someone calls saying, we're looking for, you know, Andy Stumpf, well, you don't exist anymore. You're Bob, whatever, you know, they used. Yeah, exactly. Pierre. Pierre Le Pew. Yeah, there you go. Perfect. But I didn't.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't know what any of that means.

[Joel Strothers]

And you can go through a system, it's called rectangle notification, where you get your name back and your passport. But, yeah, you know, for me, as I said, I had a good experience. I respect France and the Legion for what they did. And that's why I think I. My efforts, you know, writing the book at Bell and then at least talking about when I can, is. That's not my place necessarily. I'm not a recruiter. I'm not, you know, done. But there is a lot of misconceptions. And out there.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, there's a ton.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. And it's. I find it frustrating.

[Andy Stumpf]

How do they feel? How does. How do other legionnaires, or how does a legion feel about people speaking publicly about it?

[Joel Strothers]

So good. Actually a good question. It depends how you're speaking about it. Yeah. So, for example, Appel, and that's where I kind of ran into you, as I was the guest on Jocko 209 podcast, and he had me on because.

[Andy Stumpf]

I wrote Appel, which is Interrogation Chamber Studio.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. My very first podcast. My very first podcast.

[Andy Stumpf]

Light bulb and padded walls. You're like, are we talking? Are you beating the living shit out of me?

[Joel Strothers]

I think I was just as bad as I am now. But this would be my third. Anyway. Third and last. But yeah, so Appel to date is I sent a. A copy of the final draft to, as I said, my buddy Dimitri was working. I sent it, and he sent it up to the general. Not that the general would read it, but I said, this is what I'm planning to publish, you know, if you have any concerns or issues. And basically a no response is a positive response. Right. They didn't say cease and assist. They didn't say. And then my Captain Demun at the time at gcp, he went on to be the CEO of the regiment, and he actually jumped with the regiment in Nagoa in Mali. Went on to take over the French Airborne division, and now he's a general at the NATO headquarters in. In Brussels. So he wrote the Ford and then Wilfrid Laurier, which is, you know, it's a university press, but they're somewhat reputable. They publish it. So that was, you know, three things that I wanted. The narrative was approved by the Legion. There was a forward from an acting officer and then a reputable publisher. So, you know, the story doesn't have, you know, spelling mistakes and. Yeah, and then it's legit, right? It's. It's factual. So they've appreciated that. I think that's why they invited me to the regiment and we sat down and they've. They. They used it on some of their social media stuff. It's a positive betrayal. By no means is it. You know, as you know, in the military, it's not all action and it's. It's, you know, it's almost.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, it's almost never action.

[Joel Strothers]

And it's. It's, you know, it's a different. It's a different type of military, and it's. Be careful what you. What you expect. You know, I was fortunate, but it's. It can be tough, especially if you're there for the wrong reasons. Now, unfortunately, a lot of times the people that talk about Legion are deserters. And I'll be straight up. Any current Legion, or certainly any previous Legion, I can talk for them. The one thing we dislike the most is deserters that talk about the Legion. If it has any disparaging side to.

[Andy Stumpf]

It, for clarity, by that definition, you mean anybody that didn't meet the contractual obligation.

[Joel Strothers]

You left, okay? You just. You didn't come back. Now, whatever, you. You make your call, you do what you want to do, but if you start shit talking Legion or sharing your narrative, why you left, you're full of shit. You know, the fact is, you left, so it's. It is what it is, right? Just. Just take it on the chin and. And leave it be. You know, you'll. Some people will call bullshit, others will just let it be because it's. It's transparent as it is on my side. You know, it's been. I haven't. To be honest, I haven't had any negative feedback, but, you know, my story isn't. It's a positive portrayal.

[Andy Stumpf]

Why did you decide to write it? What were you trying to achieve with the book?

[Joel Strothers]

I think it was. It was that I certainly never envisioned writing a book. I'm not a writer. It's not something I Thought I would doing.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't think you can say that with a book being published, you know.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. It's not something I.

[Andy Stumpf]

Not a rider by trade.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Yeah. When I came back from the the Legion my mom's father retired as a two star and he was doing his. He actually was awarded the DSO by Montgomery on the field. So he. He was my hero as a young man. And he had his reservations when he. When I said I was going to the. The Legion. He had run into the. He actually flew into Dien Bin fu and Indochina 10 days after the French capitulated with the the UN. It was the early days of the UN but he was the 2 IC because the UN was there to be watch the gradual withdrawal of the French and he. He had some concerns about the Legion albeit it's changed. So I would write to him when I was in the Legion, I'd say hey grandmother, this is what we're doing. And I think he kind of learned that it wasn't necessarily what he thought it was. And then when I came back he was, you know he would talk to me a lot more open about certain things that he experienced obviously the second World War and he was not that I experienced anything but I think you can attest to this is people that have experienced maybe a small bit of comet or a lot they'll be more open to talking to it about someone that has than another person. They won't necessarily grasp what they're getting at. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I think there's a shared vernacular.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Or just.

[Joel Strothers]

And it's humbling. Right. Like you.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's humbling. There's a shared experience you can. There's references that you would being able to talk about and connect over even if combat or no combat. Yeah. Exposure and being ingrained in the military environment gives you. Well fuck if it's anything like the US military. It's a completely different language and by.

[Joel Strothers]

No means that I have anywhere near what. But I think he gave me that respect I guess would be the word.

[Andy Stumpf]

To common connection point.

[Joel Strothers]

He was doing his. His degree at university at the time at 80 whatever it was. And he hadn't kept a journal during the war so he was writing his memoirs and you regret it. So he said hey Joel, if I have any advice for you if you didn't write it all down now because when you're my age you'll regret it, you know. So on that rig in Algeria that first time I put you know, 150,000 words of fucking exclamation marks fucking no, like caps. And it sat for 10 years.

[Andy Stumpf]

Wow.

[Joel Strothers]

And then no books kind of came out. You know, there's one that's. There's a couple there. There's one in particular guys always referenced called a Mouthful of Rocks. And it's a British guy from the Rep, but he was a deserter and, you know, result his narrative, you know. So after a certain amount of time, I was like, you know what? And then I. I enjoyed reading those. That genre, you know, I'd, you know, Bravo two Zero kind of stuff I was always just interested in. And a lot of times I'd read them and I think, you know, I can tell that guy was a ghostwriter because I don't think a soldier would. Would explain something that way or use that or wordage, you know. And then you'd read some that was. I'm not saying Bravo two Zero, but you read and actually, I think good job. It sounded like a soldier would say that. So at a certain point in time, I was like, yeah, maybe it's on me. You know, I was fortunate to hit the gcp, which is kind of the tip of the spear for a legionnaire in the. In that system. There's that historical coincidences, the fact that I learned that and I learned in my research and just in time talking to my family, that I had a lot of French connections. And that kind of led to the two books that followed. So anyway, I. I did what it could. I had some friends kind of fucking go through it because you, you know, you lose your memories and they might have some memories. Then I hired a lady and she was an editor, and we worked on it for a year and a half and. And the deal with her was, you can't. We can't change what I. The way I. I say something. We'll make it grammar grammatically correct and not a run on sentence and the spelling be right, but you can say, hey, you got to tell me. You can't write a book as a sociopath, right? You got to tell me a little bit more about yourself, Joel. You know, for the reader, I'll probably.

[Andy Stumpf]

Read a book written by a sociopath.

[Joel Strothers]

You know what I mean?

[Andy Stumpf]

But you gotta tell me more about this book.

[Joel Strothers]

A pel. You know, I'm trying, man. Anyway, so we did that and spent a year and a half. And then I was lucky. I knew nothing about fucking writing, about publishing. One of my dad's friends from the 104 days was at. Working at the Canadian Military College, and he was respons. He had written A book on the fighter pilots during the second War. And he said, hey, you know, my dad had mentioned to him that I was working. I said, he said to my dad, asked Joel if I can read it. So I sent him a copy. Say, hey, Joel, I think you got something here. If you're interested, I'll show it to my publisher. And I was like, yeah, man, I don't know what, what to do next. Right? And they were, they actually were. They were. It wasn't typically the type of stuff that they would publish, but they put them on, put me on to Wilfrid Laurie and they, they took it on and they took it for a year and they do the, the editing. They don't. They didn't change anything at all, actually, but they, they just make sure that everything's done right, like the rank structure's done, dates and everything. And they came up with the name, actually, the title, and then the, the COVID page.

[Andy Stumpf]

What does the title mean?

[Joel Strothers]

Appel. So that's a roll call.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

So every morning, the Legion, the whistle goes off and you, you count out. And it's. They're looking for deserters, right? They want. They want the effect of. So it's kind of a, A double play on the word. It's appel. But it's also, you know, I'm showing factual story of the county if you're interested in Legion. Well, here's a shadow. You know, it's. Maybe it's for you. But so they, they published it and. Yeah. Result. And then the Jocko thing. One of my engineers actually was heli skiing.

[Andy Stumpf]

He's a mechanic, right? Aircraft engineer.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

India.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like, was he up there with a slide rule doing math?

[Joel Strothers]

He was, he was a fan of Jocko. I didn't. And he said, hey, you should send your book to. I was like, what? And so I did Hail Mary. And then in the mail, there was a nice little card a couple months later saying, hey, we come down. And that led to, you know, me learning about, you know, running, you know, to your side side of stuff and that whole kind of yes side of the book world and the ex military stuff. Anyway, so that's, that's that. And then the feedback was, you know, pretty good. I mean, it's not, you know, I haven't had anybody come back, say, I don't think they can, because that was taken care of. In my efforts, I've had a lot of Americans, young men reach out, say, hey, I can't. I can't. More so soon after the podcast, but I would give them respect. And a lot of them, it was on Instagram back at the time. I deleted that one a long time ago. But I would typically say, hey, listen, you know, I mean, if you're interested in. Fuck, yeah, just be careful. It's not necessarily think. If you think you're jumping into an African country and saving gold mines and you know, it's, it's not that. It's, you know, and then learn some fucking French before you go. It's a huge, huge difference. Enjoy running and just be prepared for fucking shit. You know, it's not, it's not fun. And then the big one was typically guys don't ask questions about. They just say, I'm fuck, I'm going. And they deal with it. You know, it's. But in this day and age, the Legion has a website. Yeah, it's pretty intuitive and they will answer questions. It takes a bit of time, but they're pretty, they're pretty. They've come a long way too. They have their social media side of stuff.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did you ever think you'd see a day when the French Foreign Legion has a social media or Twitter or whatever?

[Joel Strothers]

I know they've come and that, but.

[Andy Stumpf]

You got to play in that. You got to play on the chessboard that presents itself to you.

[Joel Strothers]

But they really like when I went, when I went and I actually sat with the officer that was in charge of recruiting and they were. Because they were getting, they were new to that kind of side world and they, they really do push a narrative where it's a second chance. And I, it kind of bugs me because I wasn't there for a second chance. I was there for a first chance. And I like the fact of knowing that the guys beside me and the guys in the GCB were all. I don't think any of them there were for a second chance. A lot of them were, a handful of them were ex French para and they were like, fuck, I want to join. You know, the rep, you know, that's the guy you want beside you, not the second chance. But I thought also like, why are you, why are you trying to attract not fuck ups, but seconds? I just say, hey, if, if your country, that was my, my point of this. If your country unfortunately won't give you the, the opportunity to soldier and you're interested in soldiering, you know, we will. It might be a different way of doing it, but you have, you know, I thought, I think, I thought that would work. But they can do what they want to do. But yeah, it's just so my answer always with the guys is, hey, you know, just. Just be careful what you wish for. I actually had a. It was a young Navy officer. He come out. Out of the academy and I think obviously you could tell me you're on. But I think before they send them to SEALS program, they do like a pre course to devet.

[Andy Stumpf]

Is that not incredible? Well, I can tell you what I've heard, but I've never gone through the program and it shifts, of course, over time. My understanding at the academy is that there are always more people who want to go to buds than slots available. So it's very competitive. And I do believe. I think they call it plebes summer. And I think more than once they will go through like a microbuds or a mini buds.

[Joel Strothers]

Gotcha.

[Andy Stumpf]

That does happen in there somewhere.

[Joel Strothers]

So that sounds.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's. That tracks.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't know exactly what it looks like, but that tracks.

[Joel Strothers]

I think he's a rugby player. Anyway, he went through. He got injured. I think first phase is that. First phase.

[Andy Stumpf]

First phase would be actual buds itself.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay. So he was probably in training. Training at that point.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. And then. So he injured himself, obviously recovered, came back. And then in the diving phase, where he said he got through quite a bit and they were. They're doing dive training, whatever, and he had an incident where something happened and blood work was done and they noted elevated level of testosterone. And he admitted to taking TRT at the time. Yeah. So he was out. So he reached out. He's actually the only guy I talked to on the phone. Not that I wouldn't, but it just. I was like, dude, I feel free. That's. That sucks. And he said, listen, I'm young, I'm keen, I want to fight. And then this one, the Ukraine was kicking off. He said, I'm considering going over there. I was like, oh, fuck, man. It's not my place to say. Anyway, do you really want to put your ass on the line for. That's a whole other. But I said, listen, you know, Legion, sure. And then he, you know, he kind of had some questions about the lifestyle. And I was like, honestly, dude, I think if you're asking about those kind of questions, you're in the wrong place because don't. You don't have a life for.

[Andy Stumpf]

For a long time.

[Joel Strothers]

You know? But again, back to the old point. It's like, here you got a young. Yeah. Keen guy. Like, come on, man. But whatever. It's not my.

[Andy Stumpf]

Probably reclassify his elevated testosterone as A young man, he was doing what's called steroids. He was on the non therapeutic doses of trt.

[Joel Strothers]

Yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, which. This is a subject that comes up often. Maybe there were people who were on that when I went through. I was a scrawny 150, 155 pound kid, terrified of needles. Wouldn't have been my jam anyway. But I can tell you, having been as a student and an instructor, I don't think it would help you. Yeah, fair, I really don't. Especially if you're adding body mass, man, that is the exact opposite of what you need in that program.

[Joel Strothers]

I think he mentioned those to help him recover, but whatever, I don't know. Yeah, but I didn't spend too much time.

[Andy Stumpf]

But you know what can help you recover? Manage your time well, rest when you can and focus on your nutrition. Because it's. People think that SEAL training is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You have Monday through Friday weekends off except for hell week. Like you can make it through. Also, why destroy your body up front? All of the choices have consequences. You make those choices early, you might have long term consequences you can't work your way out of.

[Joel Strothers]

So yeah, those kind of dug up. A couple guys actually got in. One of the guys, I think I sent Jocko a picture. One of the guys got to the rep and he said, you know, I'd listen to the Jocko episode and he's not the rep. I sent that to Jocko and I said, that's pretty fucking cool. I mean you're doing your part, but whatever. If anything, my only thing is, if people are thinking about it, just be careful. It's not necessarily. It's an option, but it's not a fun one for a while.

[Andy Stumpf]

I say the same thing about the US military, specifically the SEAL community. It's amazing, but it comes at a cost. And it's certainly not like playing Call of Duty if you think you're going to hop off some swivel chair like we're sitting in right now and just jump through the screen.

[Joel Strothers]

And the language thing is huge. You know, it's different food. You're not, you're not going home for Christmas. You don't have your. The girlfriend thing is tough. I mean you're, you're locked down for a while, so you just gotta, mentally, you gotta just push through it and get her done. But yeah, you know, it's, it's, it is what it is. Yeah. I have no regrets. Would I want my, you know, my son, who he met To. That's not something I wish on anyone, to be honest with you.

[Andy Stumpf]

What would you say if he said, I want to. What would you do? Yeah, it's a tough one because he's smart.

[Joel Strothers]

He wouldn't. But if he did know it's a.

[Andy Stumpf]

Thing, thank God none of my children have cause. Here's the deal. My dad was the son of a World War II military member, Navy side, and actually kind of his whole family. My mom army as well. Nurse corps for my grandmother. I want to say administrative for my grandfather. But both of those experiences were not really net positive. A lot of alcohol use on my mom's side and a lot of post traumatic stress on my dad. And then my dad went to Vietnam.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, I enjoy your dad's episodes. He's a quite the man.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, he's. Michael, can you make sure we cut that. What he just said out. Do you understand?

[Joel Strothers]

Shout out to.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do you understand? The animal that I've created? Somebody made the mistake of telling him that I should make shirts with just his face and beard. Let me tell you how many times I've heard about that.

[Joel Strothers]

I'll buy one. Let me know when it's now.

[Andy Stumpf]

So now what he does is he tells my sister to pitch me those ideas. Hey, don't you think it'd be a good idea of Andy? Because he knows I will fucking jump down his. And I actually don't even jump down the throat. I just look at him. I go, no, I've created a fucking monster.

[Joel Strothers]

That's funny.

[Andy Stumpf]

He's Santa Claus in December. He loves that. I made sure the shoes are too tight. So he's lost toenails both years. Like, I get my.

[Joel Strothers]

I get my dick here when I can throw one up.

[Andy Stumpf]

But he, man, I was really young, but he. You want to talk about working through some physical and mental consequences of war. My mom basically said to him, again paraphrasing, you either work your shit out or I'm taking the kids and you'll never see him again. And so we actually moved. Yeah, we moved to Missoula. And I was way too young to understand what was going on, but I do have memories of my dad. Like in tighty whities in the backyard in snow, barefoot, screaming. I remember a door that had. He punched. He had punched it. I didn't see that, but there was still blood on it. I had no recollection of what that meant. And then imagine that man have a son at 11. Goes, yeah, not only do I want to join, but I want to be a seal.

[Joel Strothers]

Exactly.

[Andy Stumpf]

Not a single time did he or my mom ever try to talk me out.

[Joel Strothers]

Really interesting.

[Andy Stumpf]

Not once. They certainly did.

[Joel Strothers]

They know it was pointless just based on knowing you as a. Oh, that's a good question.

[Andy Stumpf]

That is actually probably why my dad would. My dad says I'm intense. I'm like, I'm the most normal person I know. I don't feel like I'm intense. It certainly was what I wanted to do, but they. And they asked questions. Why questions? Why do you want to do this? Have you thought about this? But goddamn. Not a single time.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Which. Which, thankfully, none of my kids have wanted to join the military, but I would have had to pay forward what my parents did for me. That's why I asked. What do you think you would do if your son is like, dad, the Legion is actually for me.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Well, yeah, I know.

[Andy Stumpf]

At least you could prep them with information.

[Joel Strothers]

They watched Das Boot at a age that's way too young to be watching Das Boot. We still talk about it. I traumatized him trying to get him watch Band of Brothers with me when he was. He's like, dad, this is boring. I was like, what are you talking about? Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

This is twitch warfare. This is not boring, by the way.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, he's not. Yeah, he's more. He's just actually applied to an aviation program.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, nice. Fixed.

[Joel Strothers]

Fixed wing. Fixed wing. Oh, yeah. I wouldn't.

[Andy Stumpf]

Fixed.

[Joel Strothers]

You might as well go lifestyle, right? He's lifestyle. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

He's got the solid girlfriend. It is hilarious to me how fixed wing people talk on rotary and rotary talks.

[Joel Strothers]

I love it. Yeah. Yeah. And they are so different. Right? Yeah, I. It's a different type of person, too, that gets into the. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

What does that mean? I'm fluid. I'm just back and forth.

[Joel Strothers]

You're bi.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm like a French door. I'm swinging both directions.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Yeah. No, but I think I don't. Have you noticed that, like, from your experience in the fixed wing to the rotary, like, it seems like a different.

[Andy Stumpf]

Type of person, to be honest, outside of the schoolhouse and the few people that I've worked and trained with. Well, I've never been around the pilots in a commercial setting. Like, I've never sat down with a group of firefighter pilots all together and listened to them. An interactor skier. You know what I mean? Like, it's. I just haven't had that experience.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Fair one. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I actually. There's kind of a lifestyle vibe, I guess, on the fixed wing. You're rolling around in your Uniform, big suitcase. I saw that a lot when I was flying jets.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. And you're, you're a lot more involved on the helicopter side stuff. I mean, those landings, I mean, it's, there's a lot more decision making.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Joel Strothers]

Short bursts of. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Fear.

[Joel Strothers]

Yes. Gripping terror. Exactly. Am I doing the right thing? But, yeah, he's going, he's going that route, so I didn't even come up. But what do you think you would have done, though? I mean, at the end of the day, I would respect his choice. I would. Yeah. That's a good question. I actually don't have a good answer for you. I think it'd be a tough one. It would.

[Andy Stumpf]

As a parent as well.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Now, that being said, if he did, he went over. I know he's being looked after. You know, they're. It's not a shit show, man. It's, you know, it's, it's a legit, well machine. It's been done the same way for a long time because it's effective.

[Andy Stumpf]

My hesitation was always around, especially if they wanted to follow my path. There's one thing for me personally, suffering and going through pain, but having again been through there as a student and an instructor, I would struggle as a parent knowing that they were going through that much suffering and pain. That would be the hardest part for me.

[Joel Strothers]

Or if you got that letter or email saying, I'm in hell, be like, it's too late. You're in, like, you know, and you can't do anything about it. Yeah. The heartbreaking event.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Joel Strothers]

No, luckily, you know, I don't, I don't have to worry about that. Yeah. And my daughter, it's not going to happen for me. She can't join the legion as a.

[Andy Stumpf]

Legion is male only.

[Joel Strothers]

Only.

[Andy Stumpf]

What a bunch of chauvinist pigs.

[Joel Strothers]

I know. You know, I did.

[Andy Stumpf]

Sexist even.

[Joel Strothers]

It is. I got. Here's a story. I'm not sure if I should share this, but I don't have to mention the name, but there was any story.

[Andy Stumpf]

That starts with that. You immediately better tell me the story.

[Joel Strothers]

After the Jocko podcast, there was this marketing company that had a podcast and they definitely lean left. I looked at the website and they had supported, you know, the Biden foundation, all that kind of stuff, but whatever. I didn't, I'm not. But they, they said they'd seen the, the episode. Would I be interested in doing their, their podcast. But it was virtual whatever, you know, so I had to do a, a pre screening and it was these four Nice ladies. And I think they were just vetting me and they were kind of asking some questions and trying to, you know, get a feel of how the, how it would go. And then the day of the podcast came and it was the CEO and the cfo, you know, male and female, and they must, I think they were probably in their early 60s. And I could tell from the get go that he hadn't, wasn't really aware of what the book was. And some of the questions were like, I guess just tell. This is not, this is not a jocko podcast.

[Andy Stumpf]

Not well researched.

[Joel Strothers]

But it came up, the subject came up about, you know, it's only males in the legion. And, and she said, why? And I hadn't prepared my answer for that. And I said, that's a good question. I paused and I said, you know, not that a, a female couldn't, but I said, you know, the legion is very old school. It would take a lot to change things so that women could be introduced. I mean, all the obvious things. We don't watch it. And I said, that being said, if you got sent over with a combat company from the rep into Central Africa for four months with some Polax, Czechs, Russians, it wouldn't go well. And I said, if you get my drift. And her, her facial expression was like, like she could tell what I was trying to get through. Like that poor lady would. Yeah, you don't have to say it. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Which is the truth.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. And that they never, they never aired it. That was, they never aired. Yeah, and I think that was. Yeah, that was why. Yeah, so I don't have that. I never thought of it, but I think, to answer your question, it's just, there's no, there's no, there's no need. So why. You know, and that, yeah, that's not.

[Andy Stumpf]

That'S a tough pill for some people to swallow and I'm totally comfortable with that because the, in my experience, the people that have the most difficult time swallowing that pill are the ones who are never going to be put into that position in the first place. So it's an academic exercise and feel free to toil with those for the.

[Joel Strothers]

Rest of your life. And I know you guys are dealing with that right now in your Senate hearings for hecyth. Right. That's kind of something that he's brought up and. Yeah, kind of all over that.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, they opened SEAL training up to women and there have been some people who have attempted the entry into the pipeline. There might have been somebody who made it to the first Day, but not even remotely close to completion.

[Joel Strothers]

I think the Israelis did some pretty in depth research into it, and guess what it found.

[Andy Stumpf]

Guys and girls, when they're in close proximity, do guys and girls.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. But also how it affects a small unit team. If she's injured, it could ruin the dynamic.

[Andy Stumpf]

It takes the, I don't want to say combat effectiveness, but it will take the attention away because we are, we are ingrained at a genetic level to try to assist in that situation, which.

[Joel Strothers]

I mean, yeah, makes sense again.

[Andy Stumpf]

And the people who struggle with it the deepest are the ones who are not going to live in that environment. So I'm okay with them spinning out into orbit to try to figure that out for themselves.

[Joel Strothers]

Women are a lot better than us males, a lot of things. So it's not a, it's not a sexist thing, but anyways, it's just, you know, it's a time and place and. Yeah, yeah, before I forget, when you went over to Iraq and you were attached to the keg there, what was that? Were you the only seal? No.

[Andy Stumpf]

So we sent an entire team. And so for two teams, two fire teams would make up a team, two teams would make up a troop. Just to give you an idea of the structure, there was a time and again, this is me looking in the rear view about 20 years almost at this point, so people can forgive me if I don't get the specific details. There was a time, I think it was around 2003, 2004, where somebody made the decision that let's let development group focus on Afghanistan and let's let CAG focus on Iraq, which at a, again, academic level could make sense unless for whatever reason you needed to cross pollinate in some way. So I think at the tactical level, like at the command level itself, the decision was made that they were going to at least start cross training and then actually start cross deploying. So they sent our squadron a team. We sent a squadron a team to their squadron.

[Joel Strothers]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

And dude, at the tactical level, they're such awesome people. I have listened. One of the things that bothers me about the veteran culture, specifically inside of Special Operations, there is a large segment that has. They want to degrade, they want to tear down, they want to, you know, literally titles of YouTube videos, you know, are the SEALS the most useless? Special Operations for SEALs versus Ranger Delta. And there's videos where Delta guys saying, oh, you know, SEALS suck. And this, that the other. And my response to all that is, whatever, man, you're entitled to your opinion. What people are Never going to get me to do is talk shit about cag. Some of those guys were awesome. Some of those guys were less awesome. I don't mean at a tactical level. I mean, just not all personalities. I still talk to some of the guys that I was on the deployment with. They were fucking fantastic operators. They were just the same guys as us. They wore a different uniform.

[Joel Strothers]

Tactically similar, like was there.

[Andy Stumpf]

Incredibly similar. There were some differences.

[Joel Strothers]

Cause that's early days where you guys are learning your trade. Yeah, somewhat.

[Andy Stumpf]

There was. I went to play with them in 2005.

[Joel Strothers]

Okay, so you've been doing it for a couple years.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, but you know, the tactics shift over time too, as your enemy evolves. But there were some differences in how they cleared internal structures. But honestly, there's only so many ways to shave a cat.

[Joel Strothers]

Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I thought they were fantastic. So I'm going to leave it to everybody else that wants to sit there and make YouTube snappy videos. My response is always, they're fucking fantastic. They're spectacular operators. And like I said, I'm still friends with some of the people I deployed with, so.

[Joel Strothers]

No need. No, I mean, you got to be proud of your, Your, Your, Your pastime. It's. It's pretty neat, man.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's. I have moments now where I was doing a podcast with Evan for Black Rifle and we were talking about injuries. I forgot that I got shot.

[Joel Strothers]

I saw that clip.

[Andy Stumpf]

I legitimately.

[Joel Strothers]

He asked you what you're. Yeah, yeah. And he was like, you got shot, didn't you? Yeah, I clearly did.

[Andy Stumpf]

And it definitely sucked in the moment, but I mean, I'm past it now. I've been out of the military for. I got out in 2013, so I'm coming up on 12 years. There'll be a point where I've been out longer than I was in and I. I don't think about it much. I will be the first to admit it formed me into the person that I am, which has allowed me to do the things that I have done. But I mean, I don't even. I don't have a single ribbon or medal. I don't think I own a Trident anymore. I think I found my uniforms only because they were in one of the boxes that I got sent to me from my ex wife. I mean, I'm proud of it, but doesn't.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, it sits.

[Andy Stumpf]

It sits on a bookshelf somewhere, you know.

[Joel Strothers]

Did someone say, you're writing, you're writing?

[Andy Stumpf]

I did write a book.

[Joel Strothers]

You did?

[Andy Stumpf]

I did write a book.

[Joel Strothers]

Interesting.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Joel Strothers]

And how'd you find that?

[Andy Stumpf]

I got fucking tricked into it by Mike Glover. Have I talked about this, Michael?

[Joel Strothers]

Well, you've mentioned it, but not mentioned it. I don't think you've told the full story. So what's the objective?

[Andy Stumpf]

Strap in, Mike.

[Joel Strothers]

Of the book, Bastard.

[Andy Stumpf]

The objective of the book, if I were to describe it, would be the experiences and mistakes of my own life, hopefully imparted in a way that can help shorten the learning curve for other people. So it is through the lens of what I used to do for a living. But it's not. There's zero war stories in it. You know, my valorous combat story is telling the story of getting shot and laying flat on my back. But like, sweet, there was people. Sorry, not a Hollywood movie with smoke and shit going off. But I mean, I've made some galactic mistakes in my life and I was exposed to some really interesting situations. And the job can be really challenging. And there's some things they teach you. You along the way that have such broad applicability in the outside world. And if you. If you wrap your head around those concepts, it'll. It can not a guarantee, but it can allow you to do things that people start scratching their head. Like how the. Does this person do this? They're not hard, but they have to be taught.

[Joel Strothers]

But how long did that take you to write?

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, so Glover, Mike Glover hits me up. He goes, hey, let's write a book together. And I said, no, that sounds gay. So he kept at it. I think those were my exact words, kept at it. He kept at. He's like, listen, we'll each only write half. And what we can do is we could look at like leaderships or lessons learned, and we'll pick a topic. I'll write a section from my side, and then you write a section from your side. So it could be two different people, almost like having a conversation. We could italicize one or whatever so you could know whose language it is. So we set a date that we were gonna have our sections done. We got to that date, only one of us had actually written anything. Yes. And it was actually really easy to write. I found it to be an enjoyable process.

[Joel Strothers]

Did it take you back?

[Andy Stumpf]

Not really, no. I guess, you know, maybe in some respects what it took me back, what it has taken me back to is I am in awe of how stupid I was when I was younger and how I am so fortunate to be alive still. Oh my God. And have not killed anybody that I worked with by accident. I look Back at the young man that I have been in so many times in my life. And I just. It's like, why did you do that? Why did you make that choice?

[Joel Strothers]

What about. Was there any struggle in being honest?

[Andy Stumpf]

No.

[Joel Strothers]

Because you can easily change an area where, like, I'm embarrassed about my.

[Andy Stumpf]

Nope. The first story in the book is how I lost my trident the first time. And I have been. One of my guiding principles, and I do my best on this is with guests or with anyone on the podcast. I just tell the truth. It's shocking how much easier it is to keep track of sick when you just tell the truth.

[Joel Strothers]

Called out. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I've probably failed more times than I've succeeded in my life. And I don't have any issue talking about that because I'm just a human being.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's a weird relationship, having a podcast. People know more about you than you know about them. But they also. And this is a mistake people make for anybody that you have a relationship like that with, meaning you don't really know them, but you. But you have a connection to them in any way, shape, or form. Don't forget that. They're just human at the end of the day.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think it's essential to maintain your humanity and be honest about your mistakes. So it was an interesting journey of just kind of looking back at my own errors. But I had about 30,000 words, I think, and we had found somebody who was going to craft the pitch. There's people that you can give the information to, and they'll craft it. And I was talking to the guy, and I'm like, well, I guess this was a waste of time, man.

[Joel Strothers]

Sorry.

[Andy Stumpf]

He goes, hey, well, just send me what you have. I'm like, fuck it.

[Joel Strothers]

I already wrote it.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I did. I sent it to him. He got back to me. He's like, hey, man, there might be something here, so can I put this into. And we already paid him, and Mike paid for half of it. So just so you know, Mike, you paid for half my pitch. It's a couple thousand bucks. It wasn't crazy. Let him do it. And with that, there was an. There was a book agent associated with that. And the pitch went to the agent, agent went to the publishers, and there was actually a good amount of interest. So I, you know, had to obviously finish writing and then forward and some blurbs and stuff like that. But I think the final draft will be slap the table sent off February 1st, so we're about two weeks away, and then it'll come out in January of 2026.

[Joel Strothers]

Audiobook.

[Andy Stumpf]

I remember. That's hard, man. I remember somewhere in the contract there was a mention of an audiobook. I'm going to need to go back and review that because honestly, if there is going to be one, I can do that right here. And I would rather be the one to at least give it a shot.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So unless James Earl Jones would agree to do so because he. Darth Vader.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean. Or Harrison Ford.

[Joel Strothers]

True.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, so those two would be the only acceptable alternatives.

[Joel Strothers]

Oh, neat. That's. Yeah. And then you got the perfect platform. That's where I. I mean, if you're gonna write a book, you got to market it. That's where I struggled.

[Andy Stumpf]

I am not gonna be great at that part either.

[Joel Strothers]

Well, I mean, you have everything. You got the platform.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean. Well, the thing is, I can talk about it. I'm no problem talking about it casually. I'm gonna have a real hard time is you have to like pedal on the gas marketing and everything. You know what I mean? Like, I'll struggle with that. I can talk about why I wanted to do it, what the book is and what I hope from it.

[Joel Strothers]

But that's, you know, I hear you. That's something I wasn't prepared for and didn't really realize. But you know, with publisher, it's all on the author to get out there and. And then. Yeah, I struggled with that for sure. It's not something I'm. I think it depends on the individual too. I mean, if you're comfortable with certain things, but if you're putting yourself out there. Sometimes I'm more introvert than the opposite side. I delete shit all the fucking time, you know, just for that I'll post something and I'm like, up, delete. Don't want it out there.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. But that's the beauty of that delete button.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Many people have forgotten that that's there.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Many people also forget that it's optional. The amount of outrage that I've seen that originated on social media is unbelievable. People forget it's optional to actually click on the app to participate in that.

[Joel Strothers]

No fair one. Yeah, yeah. I don't get sucked into the.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I do sometimes.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Sometimes I get on some heated on.

[Joel Strothers]

X. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, well, it's cool. Good for you. I mean it's. Yeah, it's. It's certainly been something that's been. Yeah. A different experience doing it. I did like appel. They did the. The POD or the the audiobook. And they reached out and said, hey, we're going to do the audiobook. And I said, okay. You know, typically in that genre, they like to hear the. The author, you know, but if you don't, you know, just. If you could use anyone, they use a professional. And he did a good job. He reached out and, you know, there's some things, but whatever, nothing's perfect. But when I wrote the second one, we did it on our own terms and we had budgeted a certain amount of money. I reached out to a studio, I said, Listen, 60,000 words. And they're like, typically that'll take this long and cost this much. And I went in and I fucking busted the budget out because it's. You mumble, you don't say it properly, you stutter. And yeah, I think we have to sell a million books to audiobooks to pay for it. It was. It's not easy. Yes. And that's. And that's why they, that's why they're being facetious. But that's why they use professional a lot of times because they, they roll in, they got. They just knocked out of the park.

[Andy Stumpf]

But yeah, what do you got planned for the rest of your life, man? You got any goals hanging out in front of you that you can see?

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, I could see myself fighting fire till I'm 65. All going well, we have to do.

[Andy Stumpf]

Obviously like a hard stop age.

[Joel Strothers]

Well, I think at that point you don't want to be rolling barrels or working like that in Canada. You have to actually the machines in Australia are unregistered, so it's every year. But in Canada, for Your license over 40, it's every six months. Your medical. So as long as you keep your medical, 65 would be a nice number. I seriously see myself finding a nice old farmhouse in northern France and fixing that up and the barn too. And then the kids have a place to stay when they come visiting. I like it. Some nice red wine, cheese and baguettes and just chill out. My lady friends, my late friends are French speaker. Croissant, A little cognac. But yeah, I think I could, you know, fix it up, get some help. But, you know, spend. Keep yourself busy. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Can you imagine a more beautiful place to retire?

[Joel Strothers]

I mean. Yeah. And then. Yeah, we'll see. Nothing ever pans out the way your plan does it.

[Andy Stumpf]

But yeah, but at least, I mean, at least with a plan you can orient in a general direction. You might end up doing a J turn, but at least you have.

[Joel Strothers]

I do have a Realtor looking, you know, Normandy area.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh yeah, that's Normandy was amazing.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. I'm jealous of DC3, dude.

[Andy Stumpf]

We went out, I got a story.

[Joel Strothers]

I gotta.

[Andy Stumpf]

It was the same static line that was used on D day.

[Joel Strothers]

Neat.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I will be honest, I visually inspected the living out of that.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, yeah, what a cool jump.

[Joel Strothers]

And that was the 80th, right? Yeah, yeah, Neve. Yeah, yeah. No, good for you guys. I would. Jumping on the DC3 would be. They use them for the smoke jumpers. In fact, that's where a couple years ago I was, up in Fort Nelson. DC3 comes in, the jumpers get out.

[Andy Stumpf]

Is Fort Nelson anywhere near Nelson, BC?

[Joel Strothers]

No.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Joel Strothers]

No, it's northern BC. It's halfway up the Alaska, Iowa. Got you going up. And so I go over and I was taking. I know one of the jumpers. Hey, Julie, you want to look inside? So we go inside and he's showing me the door and the cable stuff and I look out on the tarmac and there's this guy looking into space with like, the way the world is on his shoulders. And I say to Axel, the guy knows, like, man, your teammate is a spitting image of David Goggins. And he laughs and he's like, well, it's, it's because it's him. I was like, what? Off? And he said, yeah, it's. So he said, do you want to meet him? I said, sure, if that doesn't bug him, whatever. So we went over and met David Goggins and I was like, dude, like, what the you doing here? You know?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, what was he doing there?

[Joel Strothers]

He. He just said he, he likes, you know, I think he used to smoke jump in. In Florida.

[Andy Stumpf]

They even have smoke jumpers.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, I believe so. They used to, they do in Boise because they're the ones that came up two years ago.

[Andy Stumpf]

Static line jumping anywhere there's fucking alligators across.

[Joel Strothers]

But anyway, so I was in a.

[Andy Stumpf]

Bad spot on that one. And you can watch. Can you imagine coming down under a goddamn static line canopy that has the controllability of this fucking bottle of water and you're over a swamp and you see like.

[Joel Strothers]

No.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do you discharge your pistol in your mouth before you get to the ground or do you try to fight?

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, but you know, short and sweet. I just said, hey man, appreciate you guys coming up about why. And you said, oh, I just like the low key side of it, you know, I think his knees are, are. So he hasn't been back, but it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Might have something to do with running hundreds.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah, no doubt. Right. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm not a doctor.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. So. But yeah, that's a neat job. You know, those guys do a. Do a neat job. And as I said, you know, Black Rifle sent them because the guys, the smokejumpers from Boise came up, and we used to. We used to stay in the same hotel, and we'd be drinking shit 711 coffee. And I reached out and no, Timmy's. No, there's not in. It was in Mackenzie. Okay, there might have been. But honestly, Timmy's is just as bad.

[Andy Stumpf]

Timmy's is the Canadian Starbucks.

[Joel Strothers]

So I emailed Evan, I said, you know, if you're willing, sir, because we were busy and we're drinking shit coffee. Would you. Would Black Rifle send up a couple hundred bucks worth of coffee?

[Andy Stumpf]

And I'll probably send you a pallet.

[Joel Strothers]

I'll pay, you know. Anyway, he responded with his. One of his colleagues at that, saying, action, you know, and then I got a PO invoice, whatever, and there's like 2500 bucks worth of coffee tumblers. And I was like, oh. But then it said owing zero, you know. Yeah. And it showed up, and the guys. The guys appreciate it, so shout out to Black Rifle. And I went for that. It was.

[Andy Stumpf]

They get a lot, and they have. People have no idea what they do behind the scenes. The stuff that never hits social media that I never know about. And I've just kind of given up arguing with people on that. Where. Where can people find your book? Where can they get a hold of you?

[Joel Strothers]

So the book, they're. Well, legionengineer.com is the website. They're all there, but they're all on Amazon. Okay, yeah, audible, whatever. I'm on Instagram. That's really my only social media. Jolly Struthers. That's about it, man.

[Andy Stumpf]

What do you want to leave people with? What do you want to close it out with?

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. Appreciate the opportunity.

[Andy Stumpf]

Thank you for reaching.

[Joel Strothers]

Hopefully it wasn't too, too frustrating. As I said, I think this is kind of the end. I've written the three books. You know, they're all mostly family history, military history. The last two are about, you know, guys out there, people that have done some things that I find super, super humbling and respectful. And that's the end of my writing project for now.

[Andy Stumpf]

You never know.

[Joel Strothers]

No, it's fine. It's good to stay focused on certain things. And I've hit the limit. You know, there's. As I said, this would. You know, this. I think this is a fitting. This would be my third kind of sit down podcast with three books. This is nice. I appreciate your platform. I like your style of. You know, I wouldn't do this if it was all up to me to have the conversation because it would be pretty quiet. I like the guests you had and I think it's cool that you, you know, you gave an opportunity to a legionnaire because hopefully we. We answered some. Our former legionnaire some questions and if people do have questions and by all means they could ask. But as I said, you know, there's a website that has more up to date, you know, my experiences is period. And if you dig the books and you appreciate them, let me know. That's about it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Cool. Let's get you back to your son, man.

[Joel Strothers]

Thank you.

[Andy Stumpf]

Thank you for the bottle of wine. Again, enjoy it. Share that with my wife, who again, walks at the pace of your marching. I understand where she gets it from. Now I'm gonna have to ask her if she's French in any way because I've never seen anybody else walk at that pace. Fortunately, she doesn't listen, so she'll never know until Michael tells her that. Turn coat.

[Joel Strothers]

We done?

[Andy Stumpf]

We're done.

[Joel Strothers]

Yeah. I hate that.