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- [00:01]
Sean Ryan
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast terms apply. John Truitt, welcome to the show.
- [00:39]
John Truitt
Well, thank you for the invitation.
- [00:41]
Sean Ryan
Hey, you're welcome. You're welcome. We've been wondering if this happened for a long time. So you'll be, you'll be the second SAS guy on the podcast and I'm just infatuated with your guys life stories and career and looking forward to a really good discussion here. So we'll do a life story on you starting at childhood, go through your military career, all 20, just under 23 years. 23 years, 19 deployments.
- [01:11]
John Truitt
That's right.
- [01:12]
Sean Ryan
Wow. Wow. So we got a lot to cover and I want to get into a little bit of the history of what you guys were doing in Ireland back in the day. So because, you know, primarily it's American focused and you know, we're not, we're not as in tune with everything that's happened over there as we probably should be. So I'd love to get a little history lesson on that, but everybody starts off with an introduction. John Truitt, a man forged in the crucible of elite military service with 23 years in the British army, including 19 operational tours across Iraq and beyond. A parachute regiment veteran who volunteered for the grueling SAS selection in 2002. A survivor of profound personal loss, navigating the deaths of your mother in 2004 and father in 2005 while serving in high stakes operations. A pioneer in human performance, dedicated to unlocking the potential, the potential of physiology through innovative technology and expert knowledge. An advocate for rehabilitation. Working on initiatives like amputee foot tournaments to help conflict survivors rebuild stable, meaningful lives. Engaged to be married to your fiance, Ellie. When are you guys getting married?
- [02:36]
John Truitt
Later on this year.
- [02:38]
Sean Ryan
Congratulations, man. Met her at breakfast today. Amazing woman. Amazing woman. And so we have a Patreon account. It's a subscription account and they've been with me since the beginning when I was doing this in my attic. And it turned it into one hell of a community. And so one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. This is from Stephen Casey, what do you see as the boundary between human endeavor and neuro controlled robotics on the battlefield? And if there's no real boundary, does that mean we substitute robots for human wholesale? If we do, what does that mean as to the ultimate human cost of war, which has historically been huge metric, Been a huge metric on warfare?
- [03:31]
John Truitt
Great question.
- [03:33]
Sean Ryan
That's right, yeah.
- [03:34]
John Truitt
And I wish there was only one line because in the middle there's the partnership of robots and human beings in one entity, like exoskeletons. So starting off with human beings, you know, and you look at the ongoing conflicts, right now they're done. Human to human, assisted by drone technologies. Not yet robotics, there are elements of it. And if you go to the other end, having robots just doing conflict, I think to me, I can't envisage what that looks like. I think it's a leap too far. The conflict will be come increasingly machine teaming and increasingly I can't see the sense of humans standing in defending positions where you can put automated machines to do it. And technology certainly allows you to do that in a responsible manner. So I think we can be a lot more judicious about how we put lives at risk. But I just cannot see a future where you will not need the highest trained soldiers. I think soldiers are becoming more and more special and more and more enabled. One of the key points I've been looking at most recently is exoskeletons. It's all about the concept of human augmentation. And my worry with exoskeletons is you start putting robotics around humans to assist them in what they do, you start disadvantaging the human being themselves. And because we have a propensity to push for greater and greater things. So if for instance, certain type of exoskeleton is really, really powerful and it can be used a lot, it'll be overused. And if, you know, take the concept of an arm man suit, if you put a human being in an arm man suit and it's not chiming you to do what you are trained to do, your muscles, you absolutely depend upon your own physiology to drive your health. And an over reliance on something in the middle like an exoskeleton, although it could mean a soldier can march with 130 kilogram pack over 100 miles, I have a problem with that. Because you will disadvantage the human being in making those sorts of choices. So choose where you put robotics in judiciously and save life by doing it. But don't compensate human biology. The art is to shift the human biological limit further to the right.
- [06:05]
Sean Ryan
Yeah, you know, it's, man, warfare is just changing so fast right now and there's all these different companies that I've been diving into, like Anduril, we got this guy coming on that was a former seal, Dino Mavrukas, and he's doing autonomous surface warfare vehicles. And man, it's just, we have unmanned subs, we have unmanned planes, we have unmanned surface warfare vessels. I mean it's going to look, it already does look completely different than when I was in. And I don't know, you know, first I was pretty apprehensive, but that was probably my ego thinking no robot could ever do the fucking job that I did. But, but I mean these things now I kind of change my tune and I mean it does, you know, it does preserve our lives and you know, having kids and you have kids too. I mean I would rather a robot go and do the dirty work than have my kids out there.
- [07:15]
John Truitt
Absolutely. When you're diffusing a five ton sea mine. Yeah, I'd much rather, you know, I'm an absolute supporter and advocate of unmanned systems that can look at threats as well as illegal maritime shipping and fishing. Now this is a real age of dual purpose technology and these unmanned systems are incredibly advantageous for us. You know, we should look to preserve life. We shouldn't try to remove the challenges and hardship from human endeavor. You know, and maybe it's not, maybe not all conflict. And you know, I don't, I can't sort of qualify this statement by saying metrically this happens, but I can't see that all conflict is going to be able to be handed over to robotic systems.
- [08:03]
Sean Ryan
Yeah.
- [08:03]
John Truitt
And I think somewhere in the line human judgment has to come in.
- [08:08]
Sean Ryan
Yeah, I think, I think that's kind of the so far with everybody I've talked to, that's the premise is that is the final decisions will be made by humans. But especially with some of these things like scale AI and Palantir, I mean it's, the interesting thing is it's taking the intel and all the things that go into the decision making process and instead of actually having humans do it where it would take days, sometimes weeks, maybe even months, I mean it's literally displayed all the different outcomes and, and the probability of what could happen and your percentage of winning, I mean it's all handed to you through AI within hours or less.
- [08:56]
John Truitt
Yeah.
- [08:56]
Sean Ryan
And so interesting subject, great question.
- [09:00]
John Truitt
Like to add, I mean I was in a park watching a child play with a drone. One of Those small drones that tethers you, you know, and it can quickly, you know, the future is. It's already there now that drone can recognize a facial feature, capture it, lock it on and tether it. And you know, I was sort of joking in my own head going, I wonder if I can outrun that. Go back and try and have a race of it. Yeah. See if I can. You know, this technology is, is brilliant if you. It's already there and it's, it's on the street, you know, it's like a drone that can tether to you and will follow you around whatever it's there and you can buy it for very small amounts of money off the shelf. I won't say the drone it was in that case.
- [09:44]
Sean Ryan
I mean, some of the ways they're integrating technology is just, I mean, have you heard about the helmets that Palmer Lucky's designed with Angurl?
- [09:55]
John Truitt
I haven't, but.
- [09:56]
Sean Ryan
Oh, man. So he's making. It's like an interface heads up display. And it will replace all, not just special operations, which I love because special operations always gets the cream of the crop. But I think what's really cool is that all military ground units will get this eventually. But it almost looks like a pilot helmet with the visor and he's integrated. I believe it could be wrong, but it's like the next generation of night vision, which integrates color and thermal and all these things. And not only that, it will, there'll be a heads up display of where all your guys are at if you're on the ground until you highlight them in blue or green or whatever color it'll highlight bad guys in red, you'll actually be able to see through walls. So if you have somebody shooting at you from a lip, when they drop back down, you can see exactly where they're at. Wait for them to pop back up and it'll do. I mean, it's just insane. Like the technology, it'll even identify friendly and faux aircraft and by the way that they're maneuvering, tell you what it's about to do. I mean, it's a whole nother. It's a whole nother game out there right now.
- [11:20]
John Truitt
Yeah. And it's really interesting because you confuse all of that incredible technology. And I'm all for it, but we've got to remember it's all going back into a human being, you know, and, you know, and even in 10 years ago, you can get cognitive overload with all of this. Right. And. But I think all of that technology is Good. We just have to be very judicious about how you apply it and what that human being in it can reasonably be expected to apply it for. Because you can get easily get overloaded with everything. And as a change, ATAC and you've got multiple nets going on, all good stuff. Your brain learns how to do it. We call it 4D thinking. Absolutely brilliant. I mean, the power of what's inside there is incredibly powerful as well. You can build pictures and you can always imagine where that aircraft is. To have it in a hood is absolutely brilliant. I remember, I think you have to learn to use it. Remember when you're putting that on, that's remapping your own pathways in your brain. So you're actually pushing the human biological limit along in my eyes as well. You know, your brain will learn very, very quickly to adapt to what that extra coding, what our extra signals are, you know, and it's, it's incredibly powerful and adaptive. So human beings can take this, you know, and, and definitely they can adapt to it. So I'm all for technology. I'd love to. You know, Blue Force tracking is absolutely critical. You know, it's one of the, the hardest things you have to do. Be aware wherever each other are, but also remember the criticality of your own instincts and your own senses and not having an over reliance on technology. And we used to wear a lot less protection because actually we trusted ourselves. You know, the power of sense and instinct is incredibly important to soldiers.
- [13:15]
Sean Ryan
Human intuition.
- [13:16]
John Truitt
Yeah, absolutely. Human intuition, instinct, sixth sense, gut instinct, whatever you want to call it, it's there and it's very real and we need to ensure we keep that at the forefront of the people that's doing it. Empowering with technology. I think Palmer Lucky's Andrew, isn't he? Andrew? Yes. I mean it's super, super exciting where they're going with some of their capabilities and technologies. And I think it's a good time to do it. I think we're looking at really, really interesting turn in our present day. Yeah. You know, we do need those autonomous systems skirting around, you know, in the waters, you know, resources can be finite.
- [14:02]
Sean Ryan
One other thing before we get started. Everybody gets a gift.
- [14:10]
John Truitt
Thank you.
- [14:12]
Sean Ryan
Vigilance League Gummy Bears legal in all 50 states. I don't know if they're legal in UK or not, but you'll have to find that out when you get home.
- [14:19]
John Truitt
I'll do some research. I've got some gifts for you downstairs as well. I haven't got them with me.
- [14:26]
Sean Ryan
Oh, perfect.
- [14:27]
John Truitt
Could I possibly run out and get them and bring them back up.
- [14:30]
Sean Ryan
Sure.
- [14:30]
John Truitt
Perfect. Mini.
- [14:36]
Sean Ryan
What is this?
- [14:37]
John Truitt
It's just some very damn something for the bookshelves.
- [14:43]
Sean Ryan
Thank you.
- [14:44]
John Truitt
And then I've got you some quintessentially British marmalade from a shop called Fornum Mason.
- [14:51]
Sean Ryan
Perfect.
- [14:52]
John Truitt
So I don't know, don't know whether marmalade's the same, but it's like a jam and it's called the Monarch. Thank you. Pleasure.
- [15:02]
Sean Ryan
Oh, that's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. All right, John, you ready?
- [15:09]
John Truitt
Yes.
- [15:10]
Sean Ryan
Where'd you grow up?
- [15:13]
John Truitt
So I grew up in south east of England and really I was born to parents. My dad was from a family in London generations back and they had a small business, it was actually a joinery company and so they came from an area called Thornton Heath in London. That used to be lovely. It's pretty rough now. But before I was born they moved down to the southeast and moved down, they found a little cottage in the country. My mum moved 14 times. I remember he used to say, so she's very mobile. I think it's associated to her father's job. I'm sure he's an architect. I think he's an engineer as well. So essentially when I was born, I was born up into a very small house that was always under construction. My dad was a builder, ran a building, small building company, joining company and you know all. I remember it as being a very happy childhood but we were always outside, always tripping over stuff that building materials. My dad was always sort of building extra bits to the house. So it was quite big at the bottom by the end, really small at the top and essentially it's a very outside life. And sort of growing up, even from a very, very young age, I spent a lot of time with my mother. My father was a competition sailor, so he actually sailed in the Olympics, came second in the World championship.
- [16:47]
Sean Ryan
Oh, wow.
- [16:48]
John Truitt
Built his own boats, one of which went to the Maritime Museum. There was a class called the Flying Dutchman, which I believe was deemed too dangerous. It became Olympic class, but then came too dangerous because fastest of the racing dinghies and it had a habit of going end over end in certain winches, had a spinnaker. So he's very, very strategic and technical person, a really, really brilliant person. But we spent a lot of time with my mother. My mother was an architect, used to get up at 4 o' clock in the morning. She also did something called milk recording, so.
- [17:26]
Sean Ryan
Called what?
- [17:26]
John Truitt
Milk recording. So you go to farms and you record how Much milk you're getting from the cows. So me and my brother would wake up on a mattress in the back of a mini estate. It's a tiny little mini estate, very iconic to the uk and we sort of open the back doors and sort of on a farm and go and find my mother and she's in this sort of cowshed and noting down the volume from each cloud, the milk they were given every day, very fastidious, but I remember very clearly we always used to take silver urn full of milk back to the house. My dad, one of my dad's favorite things was to eat the cream, which is about that thick off the top of the milk. So we had a growing up like that. You know, I was outside a huge amount. We didn't have a tv, in fact, we didn't have a TV till much, much later on. And so my dad read books and listened to the radio. You know, I wish I could meet him at this age again because he's a very, very interesting person. But essentially we spend most of our time with my mum. My dad worked extremely hard. He was commuting a lot into London, running a small business. And in Britain the housing market, sorry, the building market crashed in 90s and essentially the business went with it. So he was always working extremely hard to try and keep this going. He had some employees that he deeply cared about. I remember him talking about it. But, you know, I spent a lot of time with my mum, very, very close to her. I did a lot of hunting when I was younger. Always with dogs, hawks, all sorts of animals. Never guns, ferrets, polecats and you know, more latterly I realized that was all my mum as well. You know, my mum was organizing for me to go out with someone he had, I'm sure it was a red American tailed eagle and a kestrel, I think it was. And we used to go out and the horse, the eagle was actually quite good, but the kestrel was awful. It would basically give up. It wouldn't even try and get mostly rabbits and squirrels that we're after and they would go and sit on a power line and just sit there like that and just look down at us. So we spent most of our time running around, like swinging around the lure to try and get it to come down sort of covered in rabbit pelt. I just remember really young age just looking up at this hawk, just looking down at us, going, yeah, okay, do this all day if you like. And eventually it come back. So all those experiences are, you know, sort of occurred to Me later, they're all through my mum and she's an incredibly strong person, woman. I don't. Everyone faces challenges in their lives. She was holding down two to three jobs at a time. Incredibly supportive of my F, although she didn't always agree. So me and my brother went to boarding school at 7 and I still don't know how much was this design deliberate strategy and how much was it just opportunity at the time light bulbs went off but we had a piano in the house, just like a small baby ground, I think belonged to my grandma and she didn't have space for it, so was in the house and by hook or could by crook, I started playing the piano. Next we started getting lessons and then my brother took up the violin.
- [20:57]
Sean Ryan
Oh, really?
- [20:58]
John Truitt
Yeah. So all of this sort of started happening and as I say, I'd never, never know whether it was by design or actually it was just like, oh, they're starting to play music. We could turn this into something. But me and my brother went to boarding school at 7 years old as Queen's Choristers.
- [21:17]
Sean Ryan
Are you twins?
- [21:18]
John Truitt
No. So he's 15 months older.
- [21:20]
Sean Ryan
15 months.
- [21:22]
John Truitt
So, yeah. So pretty close. A lot of people see lots of similarities. A lot of people see lots of differences. I guess it depends where they look from. We're very, very close as people. He's very, very busy himself. He was in the military himself as a commissioned officer. But when we went to boarding school at 7 and I remember Mum saying, you know, Mum did not support that. She, she wanted us to be at home. But my father saw it as the best opportunity he could give us. And so we very, very funny stories from throughout my schooling. And it started early, so went to a school in London that provides choristers to the Queen's Chapel. And essentially this was a feeder school or a preparatory school for Eton College. So Eton College is a very significant, well known school in England. And so we started singing in the chapel and I found it very hard to concentrate. I wasn't a very good chorister, I'll admit. And we started learning music to a much greater level. I had a very good teacher actually, who's the mother of someone I'm very, very close to still who taught me piano initially. But then we started scaling up the grades and you had to be, and I don't know what grade it was, but seven or eight to sit a scholarship at Eton. But in that period of time, and you know it's a corporal punishment school, I believe there was only three left in the country at the time I went there. And corporal punishment school is where you discipline children using slipper hair, draft. It's a very English thing. Doesn't go on now, quite rightly, I think I've got. And again, you know, it's funny because you pull sort of stuff out of your head. And I do remember on one night in this school under that current management, I think it's a very good school now and very well run. But on a certain night you were allowed a bath. And in these, you had these rows of baths. And in the bottom left, bath was reserved for people who had been misbehaving. And I'd invariably misbehaved at certain points during most days, not even a week. And it's full of cold water. So you get in your cold water bath and I think you had a minute to have your bath. So there's lots of that. And it was, you know, when you look back as a child, when you've got boarding, there's boarding a day, but boarding and you're sleeping in dormitories of 50 children, you know, there's, you know, as a child, you see some quite tough experiences. I was constantly, what they called running away, which wasn't running away. So it was going to get a bit of chocolate out of the chocolate machine at the station. At one point we made it miles away from the school. We were actually going to the cinema, me and my friend. But of course, every time they caught us, they said it was running away. And I was like, no, I'm not running away, I'm going to get chocolate from the chocolate machine. So a trend had started up already. Right. You know, I was boarding school. My behaviour is quite challenging. I didn't get it myself. I don't remember being unhappy. I did miss home a great deal. And that was, you know, they did have very, very strict rules. You weren't allowed to see your parents any more than about three times a term, I think. You weren't allowed any other clothes unless they were school clothes. It was all school food. You weren't allowed any. Any stuff brought in.
- [25:02]
Sean Ryan
No chocolate, huh?
- [25:03]
John Truitt
No chocolate, Nothing. Right. So my dad, you know, this defines who he was, that sort of person. He's very strong and could be quite stern, but he's very kind. And he used to drive after work to the chapel because he could intercept us as we were coming through the cloisters. And he used to have a flute case because I had to take up a second instrument. So I took up the flute, which I used to sort of refer to as a sideways recorder. And I think I took up the flute because it's the most easy instrument to learn to play quickly. And again, looking at it now, it's really quite funny. At the time it was all sort of done and it was. I don't know, it was all perfectly normal. So I ended up getting removed from the school because it had become untenable. But actually the amount I was misbehaving, I was getting beaten a lot. It's not like beaten as in beaten. You can't crush children by hitting them. Right. They actually turn out to be much more resilient than you are. And I think that was part of the problem with the school. They resorted to the corporal punishment far too much, spending a lot of time in detention. And again, I don't remember being unhappy as such, but I don't think I was, you know, I was removed but with the intention mention that it wasn't, you know, let's come up with a different solution for it. That was one year before I had set my exams. Freedom.
- [26:33]
Sean Ryan
So how old were you when you got there?
- [26:36]
John Truitt
So I went there when, I think I was just turning 7 to 8 and I must have come out there about 11 years old because I spent one year at another school much closer to home as a day pupil, which I loved, played lots and lots of rugby. I was very, very sports orientated, loved my sport. Spent a year at another school much closer to home, sat my exams, scraped my entrance exams because that's kind of how I was academic. But I got in with a music award. So it wasn't a full scholarship but it was a pen. It's something called an exhibition that you turn into a scholarship. And I got there on sports awards as well, so a fairly heavy bursary and went to Eton. My brother already there. And see, Eton is that school with the penguin suits.
- [27:28]
Sean Ryan
Oh, good.
- [27:29]
John Truitt
Yeah. So we got obviously secondhand penguin suits and they look very smart if they knew. But I was definitely the scruffiest child in the school. And you know, it's an incredible institution, right. It's one of the oldest institutions in the uk. It's a very, very big landowner, therefore they are wealthy enough to offer the types of bursaries that they do and they. You make a lot of opportunity to people. But there's also hereditary lines that reattend Eton and you know, it's basically a full town. And again, I was already. My mum always used to say when I was young, right, we're just going to leave the keys out for you, Because I had a habit of leaving the house at night and going on walkabouts. I like to walk through the woods at night and everything. And every so often I do remember frightening myself and running home again, there's a larger extent. I had a habit of just getting up, up and just going for a walk, going out in the night. And I continued this tray at school, but I didn't really like it, didn't really understand it. I think a lot of the accusations of running away were just because I got in a habit of picking the locks, taking the window locks off and crawling down drain parts and off I went. So. And, you know, again, I guess, I don't know, we've grown a trend, so I'm still at it, eating. I don't remember being like really badly behaved, but I was always on the tardy book, where you having to run up, had to run very early in the morning and sign a book, do it again at lunch and do it again at night just before bed. So the school, we were all in boarding houses. So I think the nub of this issue was really, I sort of had loggerheads with the boarding house. So certain traditions at Eton, where the older boys come down to the lower floors, where the younger members are and they do certain things like bed posting and, you know, that sort of. Yeah, what do they call it? Initiation things. It's basically another name for bullying. So we were the first year across our board. I can't remember how many in the year, like 10 or 13, but we were sports and music and it traditionally been an academic house. And I think they just weren't expecting what difference. We were like. We were completely different, you know, and actually we ended up going upstairs and kind of sort of trying to dissuade them from coming downstairs a lot, and they just didn't know how to manage this. So essentially, and it's really, really interesting actually, because, you know, Eton's a really special school. You know, they have really amazing people there. They have something called King's College, which Henry viii, I believe, started the school with express intent to kind of shape academics. I think it's got heavy lines into political circles, shaping government, that sort of stuff. So it's got a really amazing history. And I remember there was a guy with, I think it was multiple sclerosis. He's one of the most brilliant mathematicians and not predicted to make it beyond his teens. I think he did, but, you know, he was given that opportunity as one of the most brilliant mathematicians there. So it's a very, very special school. But essentially because I was at loggerheads with my house master, I kept getting in trouble, kept having to sign a tidy book, which was a lot of running, which made me very fit and I didn't mind, but I wasn't getting my homework done, which is again, something that's left to you to be responsible for. When I was getting. When you get punished in Eton, where you have to go and see the lower master, in my case, for the bottom years, it's called the Bill. And I was on it again and again and again. And, you know, they're having to put special reviews in because they've got certain rules for, you're on the Bill this many times, then we have to review you for suspension. And it was really, really interesting because when we were clearing out my dad's desk, we found some letters between him and the lower master. And it exposed and highlighted how to what extent the school and my father were going to try and solve this issue, which is, you know, you could see the intent. And actually the lower master, I think he felt quite sorry for me, not like I was feeling sorry for her. Like I said, I do not have a recollection of somehow having, you know, being sad about this or being unhappy as a child at all. But I was just endlessly in bits of trouble. And essentially I had completely the wrong house master to solve it. And I think it came down. So the lower master started giving me chores by doing his gardening in his house on a Sunday. And so I'll go and do his gardening. And actually what that was was so I could have Sunday dinner with him, so sit down with his family and have Sunday dinner. So that's the sort of kindness they were showing around it, sort of managing it in a very, very interesting way. But essentially, you know, it was going to go to one end or not. And they looked at whether I could move to another boarding house or not and whether that would change the things people believed it did. But essentially it came down to, do we break tradition? This has never been. This never happened before, you know, so, you know, I fully appreciated the levels people had gone to. And, you know, and when I talk about that sort of educational psychology report, that was when it was done. And I found it much more laterally. There was two of them and I found one, and it's really quite interesting. And I believe that was an agreement between my dad and the school that let's, you know, let's have a look and let's see what we can do. To kind of sort of address this because. But in the end I moved on from that school, went to another school on music and sports awards. But given a place and I spent, I think it was less than a year there. Got removed three days after the rugby season was unbeaten. I do suspect it was done. At least we finished the rugby season. But I absolutely love my sport and you know, it used to make me laugh actually at Eton because I said you've given me all these sports awards and Eton's got two incredibly quite contact filled games. One called the wall game, one called the field game and the wall games played in King's College and the field games played by all the others. So the boarding houses. And it's a mixture of football and rugby with some quirky rules in it. And you know, obviously I was kind of breaking my fingers all the time which didn't sit well with keeping my piano scholarship. So I remember like going to piano lessons and you know, musical geniuses of which these teachers were tend to be quite sort of emotionally charged. And so when I turning up in these rooms and not able to play the piano, becoming really, really exasperated with me and I was kind of sort of perplexed by this. I was like, well you know, the house wants me to play all this sport and you were asking me to practice for hours doing this, which I did. You know, I do. I fully, fully realize right from the start I look, looked at the other scholars and I was never going to be absolutely brilliant. I was good. I wouldn't have got a scholarship before. But you know, when you look at sets of people and you see, okay, wow, you know, you, you will be something that is truly special in the future. Whereas for me I could have become good. And your training does a huge amount, but it only takes you so far.
- [35:14]
Sean Ryan
Yeah.
- [35:14]
John Truitt
And there's individual ability that is, is even more important if you want to become part of that last 1%, you know, it's something in there that will do it. I think there's that sort of mode of 10,000 hours of training or whatever. It's absolutely right that final bit. There's something special inside certain people. So yeah, I mean I sort of finished that school. The next school after the rugby season, three days after it, I went for a period of no school. This is just before, just before my exams. Within a year of having to take my national exams called GCSEs I spent some time in Spain, living with a navy family there. Then came back, went to my local state school. Well, I should have Gone.
- [36:03]
Sean Ryan
Holy shit. You went to all kinds of schools.
- [36:05]
John Truitt
Yeah. Yes, I had full range and it was great, amazing experience. But the irony is when you go to sit your scholarship at Eton, they ask you what your second school is and obviously say Eton College. And another very quite sort of. I don't know what you'd term it, but they're special schools, this community college. And I remember them looking at me and just being like, that's pretty extraordinary. So, you know, I sort of ended up back at this school. I did my exams, passed them okay. Particularly strong on languages at that point. I went on to A levels, still playing lots and lots of sport. But within those six form years where I was studying A levels and I did two languages in sociology, I started working for a building company as a labourer, Sat my exams but my attendance levels weren't very good. So my grades certainly didn't reflect what I could have done. But really I didn't feel that those exams were really the key to the next step. And I became building labourer working for a local company. Loved it. There's something called the hod. So the HOD is where you carry the bricks, you stack them up in different levels of brick. I think 8, 16, and I think there was one over 20 and I was quite good at that. And so the bricklayers quite like me being their laborer and I sort of enjoyed it and I enjoyed that at that age. Then I got an offer to become an industrial roofer. So I became an industrial roofer and I absolutely loved that. But it was in the time when you could do roofing by walking the open steels. Really interesting job. I was traveling a lot around the UK and it was quite, you know, as you can imagine, certain people who get involved in roofing as anyone's guess, who would be in our roof roofing gang at any one time. Sometimes you didn't get paid and you have to sort of go and insist that you should be paid. But it was really interesting introduction into working life. Enjoyed it, but started doing jobs in London and I was getting up at like 4 o' clock in the morning. I was playing rugby. I was doing. I used to represent certain people's gyms or used to box. So I was doing those things at night and we were getting really quite small money and we put on day work so we couldn't really work hard. There was no incentive for price work for laying the area. Plus they were bringing in safety systems because there's quite high rate of injuries and death in industrial roofing they're bringing in systems that weren't very well designed at all. So they're arrest systems that would suddenly. You're supposed to clip them onto yourself. You're carrying sharp, cheating and you know, it suddenly stop you and all of a sudden the ship. So all of that factored in, just made me look elsewhere. So, you know, I kind of. So that's what sort of led me through childhood. Very, very different range of schooling. Yeah, I don't think I fitted too well at school. I didn't feel, you know, it's not like I was short of friends, but it didn't have. It's not like I was part of a scene at school at all. Just sort of bimbled about, got a lot of chores. I mean, I used to love my chores at Eton because they were building stages for theatre. I actually sort of spent most of my weekends. You don't get much time off Eton. You have to study hard to stay the grades. But, you know, all my passing time. But I actually quite enjoyed that. And, you know, I don't. Like I say, you know, I don't remember being unhappy as a child and I remember their difficult times. You know, I used to come back. My father was incredibly sort of disappointed and frustrated that these schools weren't working. You know, my mum didn't want us to go to boarding school. That was a very tough time for them. But she was ultimately extremely supportive to my father and recognised how much they were both giving up to offer us the opportunities that we could have been offered. And I did speak letterly with my father about it, you know, actually not long before his death. And I think going into the military was a part of him. He could see that it sort of found some space. But, you know, at the time he kept coming up with these brilliant plans to offer us opportunity and they just weren't working out. That must have been incredibly frustrating. And you can see from the educational psychologist report at. At 14, you know, the effort and energy that was put into trying to get this in some sort of shape, where it would go. Would the outcomes have been any different if I'd stayed at those schools? I don't believe so. You know, I don't think, you know, as a person, they would have been. I don't. I don't. Don't know whether they would or not. Yeah, but that was, you know, again, every time I was at home, I used to have an absolutely brilliant time. And then the period of time when I was in my GCSEs and to my A levels. You know, I spent an amazing amount of time with my mum and that was her back central. You know, she was very, very happy to be able to see us, support us and do things with us, you know. So you know there was balances everywhere.
- [41:38]
Sean Ryan
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- [44:28]
John Truitt
So whilst I was roofing. And again, you know, they're long days in London. I just, like, we're on day work, we're refixing the same panels over and over, and they're condemning the steels below us. And that was nothing to do with this. My brother had become a commissioned officer and he had joined the Parachute Regiment. He deployed to Kosovo. And I was watching in the background him doing all of this interesting stuff, the parachuting, everything else. So when I did look elsewhere from roofing, that became the obvious answer, you know, and I didn't. I had no aspirations of being a commissioned officer as such. But, you know, going into the military and seeing that, you know, that was interesting. It was like the parachuting is involved. You know, you've gone to an interesting place, hadn't traveled a great. I used to travel with my mum a lot. My mum used to drive my dad's boat in a trailer all over, so he could compete sometimes with. And sometimes to travel separately. And they use sleeping tents. He's very famous, actually, for getting up in the night and he'd shave like 2 millimeters off the keel because he believed he'd analyzed the tide right. And actually, he used to say, I'm never going to win every race, only just the occasional one, because I have a nemesis. And I remember him saying this. And I said. He said, my nemesis is a sailor, I believe, called Rodney Patterson, who. I think it's Rodney Patterson, who's one of the world's most famous sailors, and he used to win everything. And I used to hear my dad say it's just because he's got more ability. So my mum used to drive my dad's boats a lot, and we'd go with them if we possibly could. So we'd pop up in places like San Remo, in. In. I think it's Switzerland, San Remo. Beautiful places. We'll be staying outside or whatever. And it was brilliant, really. Lots and lots of fun. And then I did some traveling with my mum to Spain. We went to Holland. My godfather was the person who designed the Flying Dutchman, the boat. Oh, no kidding. Yes, it's called Flying Dutchman. And my godfather, Conrad Gulcher, used to be the designer of that boat. And I remember Visiting him in Holland with my mum in a camper van. And he'd give us. Every time saw him, he'd give us one bag of red licorice bootlaces. So I did quite a lot of getting around and traveling with my mum. But when I saw my brother going off to these places I'd never heard of, I was like, okay, well, this is interesting. So I walked into the recruiting office and said, can I join the Parachute Regiment? And I said, no, you can join the Engineers, but I don't want to join the engineers. Of course, that's when they get an incentive set amount of money to fill gaps in other units for recruiting. So I sort of kept to my guns and I said, I want to join, which said, do you know what you're letting yourself in for? I said, yes, my brother's paratrooper, so, yeah, that's how I ended up in the military.
- [47:45]
Sean Ryan
How old were you when you joined?
- [47:47]
John Truitt
21, actually. That's good. You know, in many aspects, that's a bit later. So people going at 18, that period in roofing gangs, things like that, I think stood me in very, very good stead for going into the military just that slightly bit later, having worked in professional roles like building laborer, roofer, that sort of thing.
- [48:12]
Sean Ryan
What year is this?
- [48:14]
John Truitt
So basically, I enlisted in November 98. In 98, I assume that's when I signed something.
- [48:21]
Sean Ryan
What was going on in the world at the time?
- [48:25]
John Truitt
I think it was relatively. It feels like there's lots more now. Probably didn't feel like that to people. Mainly for the uk, it was Northern Ireland. The last big conflict had been the Falklands, and Parachute Regiment had played a really, really key part in it, alongside the Marines and the Guards and numerous other units. You know, the Falklands War predominated British soldier thinking. Certainly when I joined, and there were still people serving that served and fought in that war. And it's, you know, incredible hearing them. And the Falklands War was genuinely a very, very tough experience for all of them in proper conflict. So really, you know, I think I can't remember two of the battalions had gone to the Falklands and one hadn't. So there was this thing going on in the Parachute Regiment, but I didn't really pay that much attention. So really it was all about sort of Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Accords had happened. So it was really just support to, you know, presence, basically.
- [49:42]
Sean Ryan
Can you describe what was. What was going on in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday?
- [49:47]
John Truitt
So, again, because I was quite young, I can't really explain in massive detail, but, you know, the history of Ireland and Northern Ireland is very, very complicated and you could set communities off against each other a huge amount, you know, and it's got an element in British history where an element want to be apart from Britain and an element want to be part of Britain. And quickly this could turn into a great deal of violence. I don't know a huge amount about the British military history in there, but it goes back a long, long time.
- [50:25]
Sean Ryan
Oh, really?
- [50:26]
John Truitt
When I went there, it was Good Friday Accord, and therefore there wasn't much going on, but there was some really intensive work and effort going on in more clever spaces, more covert operations, that sort of stuff, you know. Whereas when I turned up as a paratrooper, you know, and we. I remember we did lots and lots of public order training because Northern Ireland could conflagrate very, very quickly. And so part of our role was to support the police in trying to prevent public order and protests. Part of our role was patrols, so reassurance patrols, clearance patrols. It was all sort of pretty simple stuff. There was a huge amount of sentry and sort of guard duty. You go around this sort of rotation. And, you know, in my round in Parachute Regiment, I played a lot of sport for them. So I played a lot of rugby, played some of the. Some testing rugby. Like, I remember a particular game against the Marines that was played rugby league against Marines in what I remember to be some concrete stadium. Really, really tough, like competition games. And they sort of were trying to sort of encourage me into the boxing team.
- [51:45]
Sean Ryan
Oh, really?
- [51:46]
John Truitt
So I did a lot of boxing in there. But essentially the two tours of Northern Ireland, they weren't testing and challenging in that sense. You know, the environment you're in, you're in a. What we call the sub. So it's a hardened block. But, you know, I don't remember getting shot at any point. There's a lot of rocks thrown at you, you know, you get spat out a bit, but essentially you're cordoning off areas because you thought someone reported that there was a box that couldn't be trusted and you're waiting until it could get. But I was very, very aware that there was these forces that we didn't necessarily know we would stand up and be curfed to, and they, you know, a lot of the important work was getting done there. So in a sense, it was a very, very good introduction to military service. But when I was with the Parachute Regiment, and I'm not, you know, although I boxed and I was Quite successful boxer. I wasn't necessarily good technically I didn't lose, but it was only a matter of time until I was because, you know, I was winning more by force of will than good boxing technique. And army boxing is very points orientated and I've not done a long pedigree of boxing. I spend a lot of time boxing gyms and I sparring with people who they used to ask me to. So it's not like I wasn't. But I wasn't a boxer as such, you know, I wasn't seeking to be competition boxer and there was sort of a push towards me going into the army boxing team. And again there was the same suggestion for army rugby, but I'd already kind of seen this at county level for rugby is I was good enough to get but I was never going to be good enough to really excel at it. I was the wrong shape and size and wherever I really enjoyed playing they wanted me playing a different position. So I was never really going to enjoy it and I actually never really got. It's the county, it's a privilege to play for it, but not if it means I'm going to be playing on the wing all the time or playing out of position all the time. So same with the boxing, you know, the boxing. Even if I was really keen at boxing, which I wasn't then, you know, the style of boxing just didn't suit me. It was very much straight punching, you know, obviously I'm quite short, my arms are quite short, I'm never gonna really beat on reach. And army boxing was all about. So when they were trying to push me into the army boxing team for trials, you know, I was being held at a very, very low weight and it was seen as a privilege to be on the boxing team. So when I pushed back and said no, I don't want to, it didn't go down very well with certain people. Interesting, you know, and it's brilliant.
- [54:45]
Sean Ryan
What did you want to do?
- [54:46]
John Truitt
So I had already noticed. So on bottom of one of my pay slips was a notice that, you know, it's essentially saying if get paid more. And there was an invite to be considered for special duties. Special Duties is a community, so an SF community as such. So I already got my notice. I'd obviously been to Northern Ireland and saw some of the work that was going on, didn't fully understand it, but I knew there was something else and that's why I ended up how I ended up applying for selection and going on selection. And selection is our name for Entrance into the SAs or the SBS.
- [55:30]
Sean Ryan
Interesting. So they. So they. They put in. They put a notice on your pay slips of who they want to try out.
- [55:37]
John Truitt
Yeah, I'm pulling this out of the back of my. I just remember seeing a comment or a caption saying, you know, it is all about professional development or something like that. And it was something I'd noticed that said, you know, there's something else there now, to that point, remembering that, you know, I joined the Parachute Regiment, really, because it was interesting. I hadn't had a long period of time of knowledge of military. My father was very supportive of both of us going into the military. He was a huge believer in the military as an institution. He himself had served in the military, albeit only for a few years as a bomb disposal person. So mostly he was disposing of World War II munitions, did a tour in Germany, and I remember he had sort of good memories of doing that and he'd learned to ski there and he'd learned to do all sorts of stuff. So I remember my father had a very positive opinion of it. And I don't remember my mum being against it, although my mum was that sort of person. Right. She was so strong, even if she didn't like it, she wouldn't have said, you know, so essentially, whatever decisions we would make, she would quietly culture the way we went about them. Very clever in how she did it. But ultimately she'd support you as long as it wasn't a bad idea. But I don't imagine my mum would have been, you know, brilliant, but not against either. And I know my mum was actually very proud of it as well.
- [57:18]
Sean Ryan
So the caption said, you'd get more pay.
- [57:21]
John Truitt
Something about pay and something about development. I can't remember exactly what it was, but that's what caught my eye and that's what made me start sort of asking questions about, where do you go from here, from the Parachute Regiment. And the Parachute Regiment in particular is very supportive of the units. A lot of other units in the British army don't like losing you, so they try and make it difficult for you to move on. Whereas I was lucky and I got a lot of support. I was asking to go quite early and essentially I was, you know, I'd not spent a lot of time being graded as a soldier, so they could look at me and be like, okay, but obviously my performance was good enough. I did get champion recruit in chaining, which I don't know what that means because I certainly wasn't for drill. So clearly I was Sort of capable. They were seeing that I was able. So when it came to me sort of saying, you know, look, can I get have a go at that? I got the support of the unit. When I was in Parachute regiment, I went to support company, which is the machine gun platoon, it's the anti tank platoon and the mortar platoon. And I remember really as I was passing, they are elite soldiers. The marines in the Parachute Regiment are the elite infantry as such. And the parachute regiment in particular is configured for airborne forces. Not delivery by parachute really so much anymore, but it's kind of airborne delivery. But the mindset is all about, you know, an offensive nature. And we did, you know, platoon attack after platoon attack, company attack, company attack. That's what you excelled at. So I really enjoyed it. It was very, very tough. There's a lot of getting messed about, you know, on a Friday we used to do a 10 mile test and I remember if you didn't pass it, you wouldn't go home. So, you know, it's a good tough existence and I really, really respected it. And some of the soldiers you served alongside are incredible people. You know, you see what real professional soldiering looks like. I remember looking across and in the machine gun platoon we became like any other company in the unit when we went to Northern Ireland because there was no call for any of that. So you'd just become a normal patrols company. When we came back, we got the opportunity to do the course, which is the cada, to join the support company machine guns, which is a tough course in itself. I remember it being a month long carrying tripod mounted guns, learning about gun lines and everything else, you know. But that's also where, you know, I started, you know, getting pretty beaten up by being in gun lines. You know, 50 cows and you're in amongst it, you're lying right next to it and you know, it didn't pick up on it at the time. So it was brilliant. Doing lots of sport, really, really enjoyable. But there are periods of getting back to barracks and you just sort of, you start getting a sense of like how challenging this job can be in certain respects. You know, I remember kind of losing my balance a lot. And this is only retrospective understanding of what was going on at the time. You just all sort of sucked it up as tiredness or whatever. You know, some of the brigade exercises we'd do, we'd have really, really long taps, carrying a tripod mount, carrying tons and tons of ammunition. We knew it was never going to fire because the GPMG doesn't work. Very well on blanks. So it's a bit sort of soul destroyed, you know, so. And it really was very, very hard, professional soldiering. An absolutely fantastic foundation to have built and come from. And the sport, I think, was really, really enjoyable. Although something in me was like, you know, I didn't join this to be all about sport, so, you know, I enjoyed my time there, but it was roughly about three years. You know, I can't pick out the dates exactly from when I entered or asked for selection. You do some preparation, particularly navigation. Selection's very tough for navigation.
- [61:49]
Sean Ryan
So they get you ready for selection.
- [61:51]
John Truitt
Yeah. So the Parachute Regiment are really professional how they do it. Right. Because actually they take a pride in you passing. And so we did some courses, I remember. So when I did drilling duties, which is a lower echelon command course, to become a lance corporal, you had to do it. And I remember on it. And actually that was when I remember 911 happened, and I was on the drill square at the time. I remember becoming aware of this event that had happened. And I can't remember we watched it on tv, but I remember then something sort of occurring to me. This is something really, really important. But I was on a command course at that point. And so they were preparing me to stay in the Parachute Regiment on the expectancy that you would not pass selection, because most people don't. But essentially they're also giving you courses to prepare you for it. And that was just simply how to read a map effectively. You know, selection is the type of course you prepare for it. You should prepare for it.
- [63:04]
Sean Ryan
How much time did you have to prepare for it?
- [63:06]
John Truitt
I can't remember. You know, I think it was about kind of sort of three to five months. You still had to do all your duties, but you got appropriate times. I have two weeks here, have one week here. There's a course teacher, navigation. Go on that. And actually that's really, you know, the units don't have to do that, but I think it's a good level of cooperation because ultimately, you know, people should want their soldiers to go on to the Special Forces community.
- [63:34]
Sean Ryan
Were you aware of what you were getting ready to try out for?
- [63:40]
John Truitt
Yes and no, as in no. I wasn't really aware of these units too much. You know, I hadn't paid too much attention. Some people really are aware of it from a very early, early point and they're working towards it. I wasn't, you know, at each step, I kind of did it and then reviewed what I was, where I was and was like okay, well you know, is there an X bit? Where do I go next? So I hadn't really considered it and I hadn't really considered their role. It changes. Well their role doesn't change but what they're doing a one time doesn't. But I simply just went on selection because it was a progressive step.
- [64:19]
Sean Ryan
Gotcha.
- [64:20]
John Truitt
And it was a, you know, highly, highly, highly respected community. The whole community is within the military so it was a natural place to go. And I didn't necessarily take loads of advice. I think I saw it, you know, just instinct saying it's a good move to make, so go down. Yeah. And yeah, I mean it's.
- [64:47]
Sean Ryan
What was, what was it like checking in for selection?
- [64:53]
John Truitt
Daunting. Cuz you got so many people there.
- [64:56]
Sean Ryan
How many?
- [64:59]
John Truitt
I think on my selection and forgive me for the numbers cuz I really can't remember how to be accurate on these but 24, 240 or something started.
- [65:08]
Sean Ryan
240 people?
- [65:09]
John Truitt
I think so yeah. I mean you get some that 120, some that 160. I think ours was particularly big because of 911 potentially. Yes, yeah, yeah.
- [65:21]
Sean Ryan
What did, what was the, I mean what, what did, what was the pulse of UK when 911 happened?
- [65:33]
John Truitt
So absolute shock as in, you know, I think everyone was universally shocked by it and there was a real feeling that this is something extremely important that's across society and the public. I think there was a real nervousness about. It was just shock. You know, it's like how has this happened? And within the military there was an anticipation of what was to come. We knew it was going to be something, no one was guessing what but we knew that there was going to be an extremely important part to play. And you know, and again thinking about what people were feeling or whatever is a very kind of sort of inaccurate science but it really, really got the sense that people felt threatened themselves by it. You know, why could this not as equally happen in this country? You know. And so I think it was took extremely seriously. I think there was an expectation of what was to come and I think people, everyone was watching it very, very intently to see what was going to be the response. You know, would people capitulate and give the people the response pull up which they didn't.
- [66:49]
Sean Ryan
So you, you joined at 21, spent three years, 911 happens in there and then by the time you're 24 you're trying out for.
- [66:59]
John Truitt
That's right about mid 24 I think it was. And it takes six, six months selection. Yes. Tested every day so by the time I. Probably 25, by the time I went in, I mean, I can't figure if I got a pen and paper, I'll be able to work it out. I was either 24 when I became what's called badged, or I was 25.
- [67:22]
Sean Ryan
Okay, so what is. What does day one look like when you go to selection?
- [67:27]
John Truitt
Just a mass of people, you know, and I can't even remember. It's very, very, very physical, and it's designed to be that way. And I always made a joke, you could turn up as an Olympian and be no better off than the next person in about two weeks, because that's what it's designed to do, is strip you down physically. Because what they're really interested in is what sort of person are you? You know, and how sort of mentally tough and plied can you be? And you can't test that out when there's still such massive individual differences in physicality. So, you know, it's not that you can reduce everyone down to a level platform.
- [68:04]
Sean Ryan
How would they do that?
- [68:05]
John Truitt
Just, you know, there's runs all the time, carries up hills. Almost at every point you're getting run around to do something. There's some. Some tuition in it. So they're teaching you some skills in how to then do test week, and they're building you up and developing. I mean, let's face it, no one's succeeding in their job if everyone fails everything. You need to get people through these. So ultimately, I saw what they were doing as it was helpful and the DS were extremely well trained and they essentially preparing you, although it didn't feel like it. What's interesting about selection is you don't get any encouragement at all. That's one of the tests. It's seeing what's inside you. You know, it's like, you know, you don't get shouted at, play a few games with you, you know, call you a name or two. Right. They're not necessarily trying to be your friend, but they're certainly not giving you any encouragement. And you don't really get shouted at. You know, if you've had enough, you get told to put your bargain down. And that was very, very interesting because I think essentially what they're looking at is each individual to sort of demonstrate who they are themselves. You know, and I tend to see that the people who are there to try and just impress the directing staff, they'd be some of the first to go, really.
- [69:31]
Sean Ryan
Do most people quit or do they fail?
- [69:34]
John Truitt
Most people quit. Well, no, in the first part, which is all physical, it's hills and tests over marches, test marches with weight. People will fail mostly at that point. So that's the big reduction in numbers. But when you go into the jungle, that's when people, more people will fail themselves by withdrawing.
- [69:57]
Sean Ryan
When you go into the jungle.
- [69:58]
John Truitt
Yes.
- [69:59]
Sean Ryan
So this is. This isn't just a selection that takes place in uk.
- [70:04]
John Truitt
No. So you bounce only what that part is. We go into the jungle for a considerable period of time and that's from the history of the unit, having served in the jungle in Malaya and seeing some of the challenges of that environment. So they look at you in the jungle and the jungle is a real great arbiter. Right. You know, you get these people who make a very good play of who they are in the jungle, exposes you straight away. You know, it's very, very tough environment.
- [70:33]
Sean Ryan
Where do you go?
- [70:35]
John Truitt
So over by Malaysia. So it's all over in the Malaya, in the Malaya area.
- [70:41]
Sean Ryan
So is. Is selection broken up into phases or is it.
- [70:45]
John Truitt
Yes, it's.
- [70:45]
Sean Ryan
How long is it?
- [70:46]
John Truitt
Six months? Yes, it's six months. I remember it's 182 tested days. It's actually. It is tested, but at certain stages you then become expected to pass. But essentially you've got your physical part, which is your hills phase. You've got your jungle part, which is when they start being interested in who you are. So they look at you as a character and they start, most importantly, they're looking whether you support one another because you can go into.
- [71:14]
Sean Ryan
They want a team player.
- [71:16]
John Truitt
You can be the biggest superstar, are, you know, the greatest physical. You know, it's best in the world. If you cannot work amongst other people and support one another, you are never going to be good to, in my opinion, any special forces unit. Definitely not that one. And that's a really, really key trait that they're looking for. And they're also looking for that thing in you that says, you know, it's got too tough. I want some respite, I need a moment. And that's called voluntary withdrawal.
- [71:48]
Sean Ryan
What. So the first is all ruck marches and yes, physical test. What are you doing in the jungle?
- [71:55]
John Truitt
Jungle is more operating in the jungle. It's basically used because it's such an amazing environment to see what soldiers are like and characters are like. But you're also starting to learn the SOPs to stand and operate procedures, how to exist in a tough environment. You do a lot of patrolling, you do a small amount of survival, you do other bits, but essentially it's really used as a way of looking at you to see whether you're suitable for service.
- [72:27]
Sean Ryan
What kind of survival.
- [72:29]
John Truitt
I say you just go without food and then it's up to you to kind of survive. You know, they bump you at one point like they used to do, see how you respond to things. You have to go on long, long patrols and, you know, the jungle is a very tough environment to exist in. You know, you only sleep at night. You get up in the morning in the dark, put cold, wet clothes on. You have to work hard to stop your body from rotting, you know, so all of these things are very interesting things to look at. When you're trying to evaluate someone for whether they're going to take the easy way out, you know, whether they're sort of nipping on their administration, you know, and you make mistake in the jungle, you aren't coming back from it. Right. You just aren't.
- [73:15]
Sean Ryan
How long is the jungle phase?
- [73:19]
John Truitt
So six weeks.
- [73:23]
Sean Ryan
Six weeks?
- [73:24]
John Truitt
No, but not all of that's in jungle. Some of it is preparation. I'm sure it's six weeks, Something like six weeks.
- [73:31]
Sean Ryan
Close to six weeks. How long do you go without food?
- [73:34]
John Truitt
Not, not, not long. There just. I think it's. It's just a kind of introduction to. Because I haven't had the chance to train you at this point, you know, I haven't had a chance.
- [73:46]
Sean Ryan
Oh, so this is like light instruction, like very little.
- [73:50]
John Truitt
Yeah. So most of all, they're looking at you. Okay. Learn enough to be quite basic in the jungle patrol, set up your camps, whatever you do, they're really just looking. Yeah. And ranges in the jungle are extremely tough. You know, the environment is really kind of quite oppressive. You can't see far. You know, again, you have to rely on a lot of your instincts to tell you what's going on. You know, it's very noisy, it can be very wet. Everything's trying to eat you. And it's all really small and it can be very, very uncomfortable. If you take shortcuts on your administration, you'll quickly become ill. Your body will start having problems and rotting. So all of these things they can just allow to happen. You do some really, really tough physical tests. Very, very humid. The hills there are very, very steep. So you do some very, very tough physical tests. And they're looking for that moment. Looking for that moment. You say, look, you know, I'm done, I'm done. Or, you know, and vast majority of people who say that, they kind of change their mind quite soon after, but that's what they're looking for.
- [75:05]
Sean Ryan
Where do you go after jungle phase?
- [75:07]
John Truitt
So they do a review everyone and then they pass a fo you afterwards, the ones that have done. And you go and do a series of different courses, sort of tuition courses. So you cover stuff like signals. I think I might be getting the order mixed up here. But, you know, you do your skills and you learn various things, but the significant phases, then you start going into mastering basic op. So living close with people in holes and mastering some sort of elementary elements of surveillance and reconnaissance. Then you, I think do some parachuting for the ones who are not. So for us, I was a trained paratrooper ready, so I didn't have to do the basic part, just had to convert onto different parachutes. There's an element of starting to do sort of multi floor, multi room combat, which is, you know, CQB is very, very tough testing environment. The margins are very small and the arcs are down. So that can be a challenge for certain people. And again, all of these things, if they deem you unsafe, then ultimately they fail you. The last thing people want in these sorts of roles is people who are out of their depth all the time. So that's why it's called pass or fail all the way through. But it's unlikely you're going to start failing after that.
- [76:38]
Sean Ryan
There's a after cqb.
- [76:41]
John Truitt
No. So there's an escape innovation phase. It's quite iconic and it's split up into how to survive out in the wild, out in unsupported environment. And then there's a part where you just get chased around by hunt force. And there's another part where you go and you know, you have your introduction to interrogation phases and things like that. You know, at that point, if you've passed that, you're expected to pass.
- [77:11]
Sean Ryan
Oh, okay.
- [77:12]
John Truitt
But you know, if you get through the jungle people, that's the majority. Yeah, you'd be like, you know, you don't want to lose people after that. You know, I did pick up on it. It's not supposed to be friendly, but you kind of, oh, this is a joint effort. And there was a level of trust in it. You know, the way I went about selection is I was like, I'm just going to be here. I'm never going to question whether I'm good enough or not. Because actually it's up to the DS to tell you that and they will do, you know, and actually if, if you're going to be failed, you know, and I found it was a better way to go about it for me, then I have to keep questioning, am I good enough for this? Have I done well enough? You know, you cannot go through that period of training and have not have a couple of mistakes, you know, you have couple of safety calls, all that sort of stuff, you know, and that can weigh heavily on you if you let it. So you just accept it. It's moved on. Do you know what, it's your decision, you know, at the end of the day, you know, you're either going to get carried off because you're injured or you're going to get fell because you're not good enough. And that's. That was a good enough sort of stage for me, you know, and essentially, you know, it's not comfortable. It's not meant to be comfortable, and parts of it are enjoyable, but only very, very small parts. Parts.
- [78:28]
Sean Ryan
How many people disappeared from the start until after jungle phase?
- [78:36]
John Truitt
How many people disappeared? So if I remember rightly, I think after the jungle, we're down to roughly about 36. Oh, I don't know why. 36 out. Yeah, yeah. So, but the, the main loss of numbers is on the physical phase.
- [78:55]
Sean Ryan
Gotcha.
- [78:55]
John Truitt
At the start, you know, and they, they. I don't think selections change much. You know, it's a tried and tested pathway and it prepares people very well. But they may have adjusted certain parts of it now and the way they do it. But essentially, you know, there's a test at the end of the first week, and if you don't pass that, and a lot of people don't, then. So you lose a lot of numbers in the first week and down. But, you know, it's pointless staying on the course if you're never gonna make it to the end. Right. It's better to sort everyone out quite early, look at things. And I don't know why 36 stands in my head, but it does. I'm Pretty sure it's 36 by the end of that phase. And then we only lost, I think, another 10. Wow. I think so.
- [79:41]
Sean Ryan
Down from about roughly 240 people to 26 by the end.
- [79:46]
John Truitt
I think so, yeah. And they were split between the two units? Units, you know, SAS and sb.
- [79:51]
Sean Ryan
How do you know? Well, we'll get there. So what happens when you pass everything?
- [79:58]
John Truitt
Can't remember. So I think it's. It's work as normal. You get sent to a squadron and.
- [80:04]
Sean Ryan
I think, what do they tell you? I mean, is there a graduation? They tell you, congratulations.
- [80:09]
John Truitt
I don't remember one. I. You get Given you get a visit from the commander who gives you your beret, and it's an enormously proud, like, moment. Hugely proud. You know, I remember passing the jungle and it was just like, wow, you know, and bearing in mind I hadn't gone into this with the sort of knowing a lot about it, you know, so that sense of, like, really valuable will to be part of this was really from. From my first interactions from going on there. And I remember a huge sense of pride from. From getting that beret. And it's given to you, I'm pretty sure, by the commander and the existing Sergeant Major. I can't even remember where it happened. I assume in Hereford somewhere. And I think it's fairly sort of inauspicious, but it's very, very special moment. So it's like, well done. But essentially everyone then joins their squadrons and off they go.
- [81:12]
Sean Ryan
How do you know if you're going.
- [81:13]
John Truitt
SAS or SBS in those days? It was choice.
- [81:17]
Sean Ryan
It was choice, yes.
- [81:18]
John Truitt
Yeah, yeah. And it makes sense for there to be choice. And I have this conversation quite a lot about, you know, par, Paratroopers and Marines, you know, you know, these. They're both elite infantry and they're both incredible professional soldiers. There's something within you that wants to be a paratrooper and an airborne forces, and there's something in you that wants to be a Marine. And I think that is good to have that element of. Still, I want to be that. I think it's that final part of pride, you know, and it's interesting seeing what choices people make. And SBS is a mainly maritime organization. We share all the same roles, missions and tasks, but their emphasis is maritime. The SS emphasis was they sort of air and land. Didn't mean that others didn't support one another in it. But, you know, essentially it made sense that people got to make the choice. But in terms of professionalism as soldiers and in terms of what you're asked to do, they're equals. There isn't a difference. And you do the same selection, you go into the same environment as such, totally different in locations and, you know, a sense. But you have signed up to Special Forces units at that level and that's what you're asked to do.
- [82:43]
Sean Ryan
And you pick sas.
- [82:45]
John Truitt
Yes, yes, at the time. And, you know, if I do it all again, I, I'd pick that again. You know, that was what was within me, you know, and I don't mind maritime environment, but it's, you know, at that time as a paratrooper and this, that and the other you know, and it's important to mention that both those units select, you know, from all over. Many have international people that join from, you know, New Zealand, had a number of friends who are New Zealanders, you know, and that harks back to its heritage in World War II, which is essentially if we understand your background and you share our mission, then you're welcome to come and have a try, you know. So, you know, at the end of the day it's not that you're precluded, but you would expect the SBS to be quite heavily Marine orientated.
- [83:43]
Sean Ryan
Gotcha.
- [83:44]
John Truitt
The parachute regiment used to have a lot of people in, but I think it's more definitely more sort of spread now between people. But let's face it, if you're a really decent professional soldier, you can learn the rest of the skills. And what's beautiful about Special Forces role is it is quite varied and it's multiple skills all applied and most of those can be taught and trained if you've got the right characteristics applied to it.
- [84:13]
Sean Ryan
Yeah, yeah. Well, let's take a quick break and then when we come back we'll talk about how it was to check into the unit.
- [84:20]
John Truitt
Yes, perfect.
- [84:25]
Sean Ryan
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- [87:16]
John Truitt
Yeah, I mean, it's really. You enter an ecosystem that's already running hot and essentially it's a constant process of courses, training and deployments when they happen. And for me, my team was already preparing to go away because Iraq was already in the process. So it just depends on where you, you know, what squadrons you get sent to, what you're likely to then be involved in first. But there's an element of courses. They catch up on your courses very, very quickly. You're meeting soldiers that have had lots and lots of experience in so many ways that you don't recognize in the wider military. So immediately you pick up on there's lots of other skills that you've got to learn and master. So I mean, I don't remember being overwhelmed by it. I remember enjoying it a huge amount.
- [88:16]
Sean Ryan
How do they greet you? Are they welcoming or are they treating you like an fng? You know?
- [88:23]
John Truitt
No, no. So I mean, it's welcoming. Yeah, it is welcome. It's welcoming, but very, very grown up.
- [88:28]
Sean Ryan
That's.
- [88:31]
John Truitt
Let's just call it very grown up. Right. You know, essentially you're on test and trial period anyway. Okay, so you always are.
- [88:40]
Sean Ryan
So you go through. All right, so just walk me through the pipeline. So you go through a six month selection process. Yeah, you do. In there you do cqb, land navigation, escape and evasion, survival, parachuting, pretty much all the stuff that it takes to turn you into a special operator. Correct.
- [89:00]
John Truitt
At the Lowest level.
- [89:01]
Sean Ryan
At the lowest level.
- [89:02]
John Truitt
So these are the very, very. Just the basic, basic skills.
- [89:07]
Sean Ryan
So this is similar. I don't know how familiar you are with our pipelines, but this, this sounds very similar to me. As buds for SEAL training, where we go through the first two months is a kick in the balls where it's just, you're cold, you're wet, you're miserable, it's lots and lots of PT and physical tests, and then you move into a dive phase for two months, then you move into a land warfare phase for two months, and then you go to jump school and then you show up to the unit, which is roughly six months. If you make it in one shot.
- [89:49]
John Truitt
That'S exactly like you turn up having learned rather than really become very good at the bare elements of what you're going to need to do.
- [90:02]
Sean Ryan
So you're a guy that they just. Just like. Very similar to Bud's. You are a nobody when you show up to the unit. And then the unit trains you into what it needs you to become totally.
- [90:17]
John Truitt
And they do it with urgency. So it really depends on what your squadron is next going to be devoted to, committed to that will inform what immediate courses you're doing. But essentially it's, you know, and again, it's a great thing about education, education, education. I did a mortars course very early, but they all up, up, train you immediately join in with squadron training where they are looking at you to see how quickly you fitted and how well you can sink into it. And people spend intensive periods of time training you individually to help you within your own teams. Another thing that they will be under a lot of pressure to do is train you in your specific insertion skills. So each team has a real major in certain types of insertion. So it's air mobility, boat and mountain. So I was mounting. But essentially you may be waiting quite a period of time to do that. And so you don't feel like you're properly accredited until you've sort of done those courses as well. It may depend on what you're doing now. I deployed quite, quite quickly, so how.
- [91:29]
Sean Ryan
Fast did you deploy?
- [91:31]
John Truitt
I cannot remember, but, you know, it's within months, if not weeks.
- [91:35]
Sean Ryan
Within weeks, yeah.
- [91:36]
John Truitt
So.
- [91:37]
Sean Ryan
Holy.
- [91:38]
John Truitt
Basically it was because Iraq was underway already.
- [91:41]
Sean Ryan
What year is this?
- [91:43]
John Truitt
2003.
- [91:46]
Sean Ryan
Oh, so that was the invasion?
- [91:48]
John Truitt
Yes. Yes.
- [91:49]
Sean Ryan
Okay.
- [91:50]
John Truitt
So essentially that informed. Exactly. You're, you know, you basically. Basically they look at where the numbers issues are and they just put numbers against it. You get preferences in what you want to major in. So I picked Air and mountain. That would mean that I'd become very specialist in parachuting. We're all good at parachuting, but just that sort of step up. Whereas mountain. You know, I used to always sort of consider mountain as a bit of an odd one because we do a lot of urban climbing, we do navigating across ridge lines. But, you know, when you're climbing a mountain to get to the top of it, it's not really all about that. Although people do. A lot of people go up Everest and do some amazing expeditions. But it's not really roll operated, it's not really sort of operations orientated. So mountain's quite interesting one to pass. But I was waiting quite a while because I did my first deployment first, I think. Yeah, I'm absolutely sure I did my first. And these are when our deployments were shorter periods of time.
- [93:00]
Sean Ryan
What is the. Sorry, how is SAS broken up?
- [93:06]
John Truitt
So there's four main squadrons and there's elements of departments and wings that provide various functions of support, tuition, instruction. Back in a lot of. And I always used to say, you know, special forces roles. That unit's role probably subdivide it into 70%, 30%, 70% support to other. We support our emergency services, you know, on a national remit. We do a lot of support to other people, we do a lot of training to other people. And it's also important when you're talking about UK Special, Special Forces to recognise that we don't have a tiered system. So we refer to our SS and sbs as tier ones to be comparative levels in communication, knowledge and understanding with US Special Forces. But actually the unit covers multiple tiers of operations and ways to do things. And I think it is part of its strength because everyone is orientated differently, the resources they have are different. And certainly I enjoyed having that range of activity and operations that I took part in. But Tier 1 is a status where you can only be appropriated certain missions. You know, it would be unfair. For instance, take someone who is a reserve and give them a hostage rescue to do. Hostage rescue is an incredibly complex mission to do. You have to train very hard and you have to be assured at so many skills. So, you know, the two units, the SES and sbs, are comparative in that respect, but they will also deliver lots of other activity and support which would be recognized as tier 2, tier 3, tier 4. So the myriad of skills we learn is also reflective of that. Okay, so.
- [94:59]
Sean Ryan
Are you guys foreign and domestic?
- [95:02]
John Truitt
Yes, yeah. Yes, we're global.
- [95:04]
Sean Ryan
What kind of stuff would you do.
- [95:06]
John Truitt
Domestically so we support. So the UK has got an interesting construct that you don't see many where there's something called military assistance that can be given to the emergency services. So this has happened, you saw it in the Iranian embassy siege. The unit has always had a very, very high priority to support our emergency services at times when it's to do with terrorism. So it's never anything to do with the criminal at all, it's always terrorism. And we have a remit to support everyone. So we have to train very, very consciously with that. You know, it's the highest priority we've got actually. And it's conditioned with dedicated teams constantly and it's a role that you go through. So that forms a key part of our training. And every role that we go through, from a global remit to an operations window to a domestic CT remit, we will have a set of preparation exercises and currency exercises we'll do to ensure we've got the skills and we've proved ourselves up to a very, very thorough level to prove that we're good to take over that role and then they'll hand over. And essentially it was a two year cycle. So if you appropriate six months to each and you cycle through that. So it's a pretty relentless operational rotation.
- [96:30]
Sean Ryan
How is the cycle?
- [96:32]
John Truitt
So in what order does it go? Yeah, exactly what order. But it's a tier of domestic ct. So support to our services, think operations window, come back, then you have your global standby remit where you'll go and you'll support anything that happens or there's something that happens they need to deploy teams to. So often there'll be small teams. If there's a hostage rescue to do, then you'll be stood up immediately for that. And then there's a period of training where you'll go away and do some sort of environmental central training. Okay, so you share it and make sure. Because we have to operate in every single environment, so we train and prove in every single environment. So over the years they'll prove desert, they'll prove jungle, they'll prove mountain. So it's always an arrangement. It's got those three pillars in of domestic support, operations, global remit, and then a period of preparation that they sort of meld together inside. But taking over and handing over those different responsibilities is really non conditional. You have to do on a certain date, you have to prove to yourself by a certain time. What that results in is an endless cycle of training and preparation and currencies that's very, very hard and Intensive on the unit to keep up. But essentially as a soldier you're gaining so many skills as you go along and you're taking on more and more. For instance, I became demolitions trained and then emo trained. So as a breacher on certain squadrons, but also jtac, Joint Terminal Air Controller, attack controller. So in our parlance that started off as an fac, which came sub fac, supervisory fac. So you look at all of these ranges of skills and I think that's one of the strengths of the, the members of the unit is they become multiple skilled in lots. But you know, we always used to sort of laugh because it's very, very hard to stay good at these skills and current at these skills because they adapt and change all the time. So within all of that rotation they've built in other courses that you need to do. Every period of time you'll go on a post as well. Like there'll be support externally or to one of the instructor's wings and then you'll take part in obviously instructing and ensuring that squadrons are prepared, selection is delivered, all of those sorts of things.
- [99:14]
Sean Ryan
Okay, interesting. So you go to Baghdad?
- [99:19]
John Truitt
Yeah.
- [99:19]
Sean Ryan
Or you go to Iraq. Did you go to Baghdad?
- [99:22]
John Truitt
Yeah, straight in. Because I arrived just as I was actually doing courses to prepare. So I remember doing a mortars course. I can't remember what other courses but because I was brand new, I was doing these courses all the way through. So I caught everyone up really not long after, you know, Baghdad had, you know, people had got to the center of Baghdad and sort of secured it.
- [99:50]
Sean Ryan
What was that like for you?
- [99:52]
John Truitt
Yeah, I mean it's absolutely huge eye opener. You know, experience had been really quite sort of being a paratrooper, very, very exciting. But to be put into a complex environment like that, following up on something that was a war was really sort of an incredible experience for someone so young. You know, really, really opened my eyes for the first time. I was meeting and often and interlocuting with US forces and then gradually we became part of a comprised task force that was mostly U.S. forces. I don't remember if there's any other nationalities in there, but we were part of it as well. And that was an incredible learning experience. But bearing in mind I had no experience backwards, so I was quite adaptive state I could be quite adaptive, but I was noticing difference in equipment, I was noticing difference in techniques, tactics and procedures and I was noticing very, very big difference in equipment. And at that time Baghdad and Iraq was relatively safe. And I remember there being quite A sense of hope and opportunity there. But then quickly security started breaking down. You know, you were noticing the looting, no one's interfering with us. But quickly there were no go areas springing up. Like I remember Haifa street being one of the notable areas. And you know, you just got a sense that, you know, things were going to turn. But essentially that first tour it was very, very busy. You know, you had that deck of cards, you had the former regime elements. And I remember kind of sort of of coming up against them and most of them were relieved to actually not be tracked down by militias or things, you know. And I remember also, I don't think there were any suicide bombs going off at that period. And there was a sense of hope. But I do have recollections of. I'm sure we went in Sada City and we were kind of. There was something to do with an electricity substation, something that was very critical that someone needed to look at at. And I bumped into, I stand on the corner and again, you know, it was actually quite not relaxed. You're aware that it was all very.
- [102:13]
Sean Ryan
I wouldn't say, I don't know anybody that's been relaxed in Solder City.
- [102:18]
John Truitt
No, no, the. But there was a sense and you know, and I'm sure it was an electricity substation. There was a key of like we can get the electricity stable. And I bumped into a young Iraqi boy coming back. So I was speaking to him and he was speaking English. I was asking him, saying, oh, you know, how are you doing? What are you doing? He said I'm going home to do my French homework. And I was like, okay, well I speak French when I see help you. And essentially I just sort of sat down and helped him do his French homework. And it just struck me that at that time there was actually quite a element of hope amongst the public. However, you didn't have to look too far to see between the seams of these collections of militia type organizations growing up and quickly taking areas of control. And I remember, you know, they called that debartication sort of element quite early. I'm sure it was at that first tour. And it sort of suddenly, suddenly occurring to me that, you know, this is. I don't see how you can remove the whole governance from a country. It's very, very hard to do. It's not just about positions, it's about people's loyalty and who's paying their wages. And you just got a sense that this was going to become very, very complex very, very quickly. And by the second Tour it had already.
- [103:45]
Sean Ryan
Did you go kinetic on your first tour?
- [103:49]
John Truitt
If we did, I can't remember much of it. You know, I think. I don't think it was particularly organized. You know, the main threat is we were driving around in unarmored vehicles. You felt quite exposed and there was a lot of unrest, a lot of movement and everything else. But I can't remember people firing us too much. I definitely noticed no operation sticks out particularly, but you did get that element of this will quickly become coordinated and complex.
- [104:21]
Sean Ryan
Do you remember your first operation where it went kinetic?
- [104:30]
John Truitt
So I can't really pick it out. I think it was on my second tour. I think it was on my second tour. It might have been on the 1st. Right. We did quite a lot of operations up into critical, and I can't pick it out if it was there. And on the second tour, it was more about events that started happening and there were sort of exchanges at breach points and moving to. But we hadn't got particularly coordinated in. We'd been shot at from roofs a lot. You know, it all started. But there was not really any sort of coordinated action against us and the targets. We started on Al Qaeda associated targets in the second tour. And that's not because we. That became our mission and task. It's because we started coming across these. These houses where, you know, they weren't that often armed, but when they were armed, they were heavily armed, you know. And the main thing that happened on the second tour is our own Hercules getting shot down, which we responded to extremely quickly. And that was a very, very significant moment in that tour.
- [105:43]
Sean Ryan
Your own what? Being shot down?
- [105:45]
John Truitt
So our transport Hercules. What is a Hercules transport plane? Okay. We have specifically trained aviation crews because of the complexity of what they're doing. And at that point, we were moving about a lot. I remember there was on the second tour, there was a lot of moving around into different regions, contacting other forces, doing bits with them a lot up to the west, up towards Ramadi, and you could see that funnel and that's where we started coming across these houses. These groups that were dressed similarly. And mainly, I think we were connecting with U.S. forces. I think the most significant thing in that tour, these were short tours, they were about three months at a time. And it was our Hercules. So the Hercules had just dropped off and it took off again, was heading for Balad, and it's the time when they were flying low level and we heard a mayday call because it goes over international channels as well. So unhelpfully sky News reported in and it was a UK badged Hercules that was shot down in the environs of Iraq. So it was off towards the northeast or northwest, heading towards Balad. I don't know the details about how they managed to shoot it down other than it was some sort of rocket pack and the hurt probably was. You know how it's very, very difficult to continue to break up your patterns if you're flying in and out with that density and volume of times. But essentially we got into the Pumas and responded very quickly to this. And as you can imagine, responding to an aircraft crash like that is, it's almost perplexing the scene you come across because there's nothing identical fireball. There was only the tail plane and nothing else that was particularly identifiable about it. It was coming in nice. I remember there was a fire in a ditch because there was a water filled ditch and there was a fire burning on top and essentially we sort of cleared the areas in a very, very difficult area. How did you insert on our helicopters? So had our helicopters right by our house and essentially we could get on them very, very quickly, run them up and we just flew up flight line, found where that accident had happened, that incident. And essentially if the aircraft is flying about 200 foot or below, it gets hit, it goes in head first, right? It just tips forward and essentially it was a very, very complex space. Obviously there's a lot of stuff on the Hercules that needed securing and we had to account for the people on board and that's quite a task. Right. And you know, sadly there's families involved and all those people are related to families. So I won't go into the details about exactly what we had to do in order to account for them, but I remember a US call sign, a CESAR call sign, responding to the call ourselves at that point we'd secured the site, we were just looking at it like, where do we start? You know, and we did locate one person, but the rest, there's really no sign of what we were supposed to do next. It's beyond our remit of like how you do this. When the US call sign, CESAR call sign turned up, you know, it was just, they turned up and said, look, you know, you get on with accounting for your people and securing your equipment and we will get on with working out how we clear this site up. And I remember they turned up with equipment. I've got memories of them putting on, you know like dry suits to get into the water filled ditch even as they're jagged metal in there. And, you know, I do remember some birding and things like that. And, you know, with their help, we got back in front of what was really, really perplexing problem that does stay with you. You know, it's like, so when you. You were picking up, sending off and saying, look how, how much more. You know, that's a really sort of tough experience. Especially, you know, a lot of us were quite young. That's the first time I saw sort of events like that happen.
- [110:21]
Sean Ryan
How many people were on board of that?
- [110:24]
John Truitt
So I think it was 10. I think it was 10. We believed it was more at the time, but it was 10. And as you can imagine, you know, if you're sat near the bulkhead of the aircraft, it's gone straight in in its nose. And in fact, we couldn't find anything that resembled a nose of an aircraft, you know, almost like it buried itself.
- [110:45]
Sean Ryan
So did you find the bodies?
- [110:48]
John Truitt
Only one. We had to account for everyone, which we, you know, so that's a tough experience. But, you know, again, when I'm telling these stories, I'm absolutely, completely conscious that those people were members of families. You know, they're in relationships. That's really. It's something that's always stayed with me as I've gone through this job. The impact is more keenly felt there. And, you know, I always sort of have that consciously in my mindset, you know, and that was a very, very tough night. You know, we were. We came on, I remember we stayed out there for it was into daylight and it became too insecure, too uncertain. So we lifted off. Having accomplished that, we had to account for people, which we did, and we had to secure all of the immediate, very important equipment. We came off and we left lot of the wreckage there. And I think I remember we coming off the ground because it was very likely we were going to start getting mortared at the site. They picked up a lot of activity and comms that they're kind of sort of getting themselves together to make it a real problem for us. And you have sort of options there. You can either call in more air and, you know, so I think the decision was, hey, have we done enough here? You know, do we have to stay here? And the answer was no. So we lifted off and then we did return to the site. I can't remember how much longer it may have been the next day. And by that time they gathered up all of the metal, because it was obviously valuable, and piled it in piles. But at that point, you're looking at sort of useless Metal towards people. So that was kind of the event and that really was the seminal thing of at all. There's lots of other kind of operations and activity we got on. That was a really, really significant one that stuck with me for quite a while. You know, highlights complexity of these jobs. No one expected that bit. And I think as I go through all of this, all of the operations, you just reroll, reroll, reroll. We weren't as busy on that tour as we was on subsequent tours, but the numbers were absolutely huge and you're just re rolling, re rolling, rerolling all the time and hardly any of it is sticking out. You know, it's when something like an aircraft gets shot down and you have to respond to that and you're keenly aware of like those people that were killed were members of people's families. And that really, really highlights it to you that there is a big cost to this. You know, no one expects to lose aircraft, but they do, you know, and we aren't the only ones to do it. And when it happens, it's, you know, large numbers. So, yeah, I mean, that's one of the seminal points in my career was responding to that as quite a young member of Special Forces. And that was what we were asked to do. So we did it, man.
- [113:51]
Sean Ryan
What other kind of operations were you guys doing?
- [113:54]
John Truitt
So as a range, it still really hadn't sort of tied it up into. The first one was former regime elements, none of whom, you know, there was. I don't remember any exchanges afar in all of that. The second one was a greater myriad of operations. Again, none of them particularly stick out, but they were tasked operations against buildings of known people that were started to take part in insurgencies. There was some AQ linked things, but we hadn't really found a proper form and function at that point. And I remember the country being dangerous, but it wasn't. We could go out during the day, you know, and by that time we had got armored vehicles and I think we were, you know, we were using. Yeah, we were using our own helicopters by that point. So we had found form function, but it hadn't really entrenched into a program of operations as such. And the networks weren't clear to us either.
- [115:05]
Sean Ryan
And that was all right around 2003 time frame.
- [115:12]
John Truitt
Yeah. So these tours used to come around quite quickly. The first one would have been 2003, the second one 2004, third one, 2005. Crossing into 6. Was it 06 into 7? No, it's 05 into 06 but that's when we were sharing the theatre between us. So the SS and SBS were re rolling between us and then they started saying, okay, we'll appropriate regions because this is now going to be a task that is going to go on for years. And by that point we made our tours longer, I think, in order to suit the other parts of the operational role, so we weren't taking risks against them. And so they became six month tours by the third tour.
- [116:05]
Sean Ryan
And in 2004 you lost your mother, Michael?
- [116:11]
John Truitt
Yes. So I still try and organize it out in my head and I have to look at the dates on the gravestone to appropriate and again, it's a kind of muddle as to what organization of these tours. I did eight or up Tours, 2003 to 2014, but it happened just before the second Tour. It must have been the second Tour. And I was standing in the camp and I received a phone call to come up to the squadron block headquarters. And I kind of knew that something was up. I was either going to get sent away on something which was exciting, or there was something wrong. And as I walked into the squadron block, I could immediately tell something was was up. So I went into the office and, you know, when you look at someone's face, you can see that it's really whatever you're about to be told is pretty awful. And they said that my mum had been hit by a car in a car accident. She was very, very severely injured. So when someone uses those words, you kind of know what this is leading to. But what happened next? And I can't remember a thing. When you get told news like that, you know, I think your head just goes on fire. Very, very confused. I had a car waiting outside and I was led to the car. I got took down to the HLZ on our camp and I got lifted out on the reserve helicopter for the teams that are on standby to respond. My mum was declared dead. Well, whilst I was in the air and I was kind of phoning my brother and my dad to see they'd already got to the hospital. And I basically got dropped onto a village cricket pitch to a waiting police vehicle with blue lights. And they thought they were going to pick up something really someone really important and got an extremely upset SAS trooper. They raced me to the hospital and I remember saw my brother, my dad on the ramp and I knew that life was not going to be the same again. So I went in, saw my mum's body and you can see exactly what happened. And you know, I actually did A further investigation into her death, because the police kind of sort of got some details wrong. Not that it made any difference, but I remember looking at my dad, I was just like, wow, this is gonna change everything. He was utterly distraught, as you would be. Didn't make any sense to him. The car that hit my mum had about between 7 and 13 seconds to see what was happening. My mum had dropped something in the road and it just hit her and she'd gone underneath the car and I had really, really severe injuries, head injuries, compound fracture of the femur, massive breaks all over. Right. And actually, I'm very, very pleased that there was no hems team, like a special emergency team that could have come to her aid, because her Glasgow coma scale was 4 out of 15. There was a massive, massive head injury around the occipital area. Big pools of blood in the road because it was quite a small car. So she got caught underneath it and rolled under. And the final piece to the actual incident itself is that the lady who had hit her was 80 years old and she knew her and she. My mum used to buy eggs off her. So I know the situation intensely, obviously, because we looked at the police investigation, we looked at how on earth we're going to manage. My father, you know, he was utterly distraught. He just shouted at my mum. They'd been married for decades and decades and decades. And he shouted out the door. She had shouted and said, look, I'm just off to the butcher's. My mum used to run a very, very small beef farm herd. That was her passion, right? And it was all really, really small enterprise. And there was a butcher's in a nearby village that she chose to manage, to meet at. And that's what was happening, what she's doing at the time. She said, I'm just off to see how we're doing with this. She tripped into the road carrying trays and was picking up things to put back in the trays. So, of course, this makes no sense. This is an utterly tragic accident. This isn't a case of whatever the reason, the woman did not see. There is a concept of looking without seeing in there. She may have seen and never took into account what should happen, but to my dad, this was like too much. It's like something he was never going to get over, ever. And at the age that it happened, which I think he was in his 60s, he's quite, really healthy, really good. You know, I remember chatting with my brother and I said, I've got to deploy, so what should we do? Right. We made that decision at the time that we're going to both stay doing our job. Made a decision, a conscious decision, that living with my father during that time was not going to make a difference to the levels of grief he had and the level most of all, why on earth how could this have happened, you know, and you couldn't resolve it for him. And I actually went and investigated my mum's death myself, and I know the details extremely well, in order to try and provide some sort of. Of closure to explain that, you know, there wasn't going to be a prosecution. No one can, you know, and actually it's just a tragic, tragic accident. This lady that hit her, it just destroyed her life, as you can imagine, especially because she knew my mum. So when I was in the hospital, me and my brother had started working out okay, what we got to do. My brother helped my father with adjusting their arrangements. And my father started living alone. He didn't. He lived in the house. We had a couple of dogs. And essentially, I think he went walking, he went traveling quite a bit. And he really was just trying to attend to himself. But we could see that he was just hollowed out. He was going to struggle for the rest of his life. And the physiological impact of that great was really, really dangerous to him. And there was nothing that anyone could do about that. Because if no one can explain why or how that happens, that's unresolvable. So anyway, I deployed. I remember coming back. It's quite a few years actually, and I can't remember. It's that particular tour that I came back with alopecia. And again, it's. Now what I know about this is that regulated stress. But what was interesting, I was working all the way through that tour. I remember talking to my dad on the phone, which was really unusual. My dad didn't do the phone that much, but he did it more after my mum's death. But, you know, it wasn't like routine all the time. It just wasn't like that. But he would check in and I did a lot of, you know, when I came back, I made a point of going to see him. And he used to come and see me at home. And in that period of time, I sort of saw how he was living and he was living, you know, he was just. Is it a generational thing? I don't know. But he could barely use the washing machine, you know, and he used to. To describe his darkest hour. And I remember I'm Special Forces trained medic. And part of what we do Is we learn off the hospital experts. I remember driving home from hospital one morning so he used to describe this moment. So I thought I'll get home early because I was working in London. So I went back home to kind of try and have a cup of tea with him, cheer up with him. I remember walking into the kitchen, it was really quite early. I remember it was just getting like it was about sort of 5:30 or something like that and he was dressed in his pajamas and he was just kind of. I walked into the kitchen and it was almost like I wasn't there. He just turned around and he started talking to me as though he assumed I was going to be there or not, you know, And I was trying to surprise him and he was just kind of just don't understand how this could happen. So he used to describe this period, this darkest hour and it's when he got got up and that's when he used to have a cup of tea with my mum. And one morning in, in this period as well, I think I've got this right. No, that was later. So my father got up one morning, he was due to actually come and see my brother. It was 23rd of December, one year later, so almost one year to a month from when it had happened. And you imagine around Christmas when you're used to being with someone and I think it was just loaded up and loaded up and loaded up on him and he got up one morning at exactly that time when he would be going downstairs to have a cup of tea, he had a massive heart attack and we hadn't spoken to him for two days. So I was at home and I rang my brother and said, hey, have you heard from Dad? I haven't spoke to him for a couple of days but he's due to be coming to see you for Christmas. And he said, I haven't heard from anyway. And a lady who held keys to our house went in and she found him and he'd had a massive heart attack and it fell over his head, had gone through the wall. It's quite a sort of plasterboard wall. And that's exactly what happened, right? Just overcome with physical grief. And I believe what actually killed him was something called Takatsuba cardiomyopathy. When you're in an unrelenting chronic loop of stress, the release of cortisol and epinephrine for some reason, and no one really understands stuns muscles in your heart. And the reason it's called Takotsuba cardiomyopathy, because it was found in the 80s in Japan and someone had died and they'd done a post mortem in time and found that the heart, the left ventricle, had gone out of shape. And Tako tsuba, tsuba means octopus trap. So adopted that. And of course in most cases, you know, when you've got that level of grief, that level of shock that you have central heart pain, I believe that's that thing, that's that adrenaline, epinephrine, whatever it is, it's stunning. Those muscles, one of those or number sets of those 18 autonomic muscles that govern your heart because it goes slightly out of shape, it leaves its, it loses its integrity with blood pressure and other harmonies within your physiology. And in most cases that's not dangerous. Right. So in people that have no heart conditions whatever, it just goes back to a normal shape at the point where the point of chronic stress had gone. But with my dad, he was in his loop every morning, just crushing period of stress that he was undergoing. And because of his age, which I think he was late 60s at the time he died, you know, he was just slightly more vulnerable. And I absolutely believe in the post mortem, you know, toxicology reports, there was nothing that was, could explain for the fact he'd had a massive heart attack. He's very healthy, he's very fit, he's an intelligent man. You know, one of the things I looked at in the fridge, I was seeing what he's eating. He had mackerel and cold fish, tomatoes, sort of various, good diet, but absolute staple and things he didn't need to cook. So I think he was living in this sort of period. And you know, I don't think either me or my brother living with him during that period would have changed that outcome at all. Because nothing anyone could have done for him at that point would have prevented him from having that moment, that extreme moment of vulnerability first thing in the morning. And again, you know, what I'm so involved in now, I'm really, really interested in the physical impact acts of grief, you know, professionally related stress. So that was, you know, how my parents were connected to that. I continued working all along and the people were managing me. You know, first of all, I mean.
- [129:33]
Sean Ryan
Hold on, so you lost your mom and your dad in a span of a year and a month? Yeah, 13 months.
- [129:41]
John Truitt
Yeah.
- [129:46]
Sean Ryan
But if you had anything to say to them right now, what would you say?
- [129:50]
John Truitt
So they left an amazing legacy behind them and, you know, they were proud of what we were both doing at the time. And I don't know what I Would say to them, you know, I'd just say hello. You know, it's like, I look at that period, it's all connected. But it started with an accident like no one could predict and that could happen to anyone. You know, when we're talking, I was sitting down and talking to my dad and trying to explain that there was no closure. There was never going to be an explanation that was going to satisfy him. He was, you know, so I don't know what I would say to them now, but, you know, if I could see them again. A lot of people ask me about, you know, who they were. Very special people then. Most people are special people. But, you know, I don't think I'd tangle over what I'd say to them at all. You know, they were great people and, you know, the last chat I had with my dad was on my sofa at home and very connected to him, but it wasn't like, you know, he didn't lean on people at all. And he was very. He wanted to understand everything. So I think he was always going to struggle with what had happened. I don't know whether he had any regrets over it. I am and I genuinely. I don't know what I would say to them. You know, they're both people I absolutely loved. My mum, I was very close to, just because of the nature of what we did, but equally connected to my dad in a different type of closeness. Hugely admired him. And again, you look at what he did for his life, making the opportunities for me and my brother working extraordinarily hard. You know, he had a business that went bust when the market just, you know, there was no savings. It. I remember him saying. And he was really, really. He really stuck out as someone who was very strong and good and he wasn't necessarily easy to deal with at times, you know, because he was very. He knew exactly what he thought was, you know, right to do. I remember his. His biggest entanglement over the business and the fact that it couldn't be saved is the fact that he had employees, people that have worked in the joinery works for so long. So that was the sort of man he was. I remember, you know, seeing him during that year. He started doing a lot of walking. So he said, oh, what do you think I should get for walking boots? I also remember him having a Nokia 2210 phone. He'd never had a mobile before. And we now said, look, you have to have a mobile. We need to be able to talk to. You would need to understand that you're Right. He wasn't used to taking calls. He didn't, you know, if it wasn't working, he wasn't, you know, making phones, phone calls to people. So trying to impress upon him that he needed to answer this, you know, and it was all those things, I think over the board life was an impossible challenge for him after my mum was killed, man.
- [133:16]
Sean Ryan
How did you overcome that?
- [133:19]
John Truitt
Well, I mean, it's whether those two are linked or not. You know, a lot of other things were happening at the time within my family. Those were absolute seminal points in my life. And I talk about this in a very, very, you know, that's not unusual, actually. There's lots of people that have these tragedies happen to them. Thankfully, that is not frequently the way. But, you know, I look at other people's circumstances and they're caring for elderly parents and some of them, you know, that's very, very tough, period. And I think, you know, intuitively I saw my way through it and you can see the response my body had. I've still got alopecia now and, you know, you can see that I'm under stress now because it comes back and I've just got it in patches here. And as I understand, alopecia is an autoimmune response, response to linked to stress. So you can see that my body was really sort of struggling under the strain to kind of reorientate itself back, but it was doing that and I actually got beyond the trauma of that happening. I don't know when. It definitely had a massive impact on me. Huge impact. And I always say it like, what happened with my mum and subsequently to my dad. But I see the dad. What happened to my dad is less of a shocking trauma because it was almost connected. We didn't expect that to happen. We were shocked when we were told it, but it made sense. And so what happened with my mum was actually, it will always be tragic and arguably it's gonna be sad, but it's not necessarily traumatic for the rest of time. And I think it's the first. And again, I only understand this by looking back on it now. Your body's actually quite powerful in getting yourself through these traumatic periods. And I think, you know, I went back to work and I was given the option not to. You know, everyone managed me. The levels of leadership I saw at that point in the management of me, I'll never forget. And the people I was working to in my squadron, incredible people, right? You know, and they were saying, it's your choice. And I was Saying that this is the grown up world of smart. You know, it's like, you know, you tell us what you need, it's your choice. And I said, no, no, I can't remember it was day one, but it was very soon after if it wasn't day one. But I was on the tour and did the whole tour. But I hugely appreciated how they managed me. Especially, you know, you look at the response that they gave me to get me to that hospital. Actually, everyone knew that those injuries were fatal. She'd already been intubated, you know that there was really no difference other than shaving off tens of minutes by using a helicopter. By a versus, you know, if they'd asked the police, they'd have blue lighted me there. You know, we get tremendous amounts of support from people when we've got times of need. And I've always, someone took a decision to use that helicopter, that was a reserve helicopter. There's an element of risk there. They look to my situation and time of need. And I've always been hugely appreciative ever since. I think it's one of the finest examples of leadership you can ever show.
- [136:31]
Sean Ryan
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- [138:53]
John Truitt
And actually, you know, they know all of us collectively apart from me, knew that wasn't actually going to change the outcome at all. But they got me back to my father and my brother's side the soonest they possibly could and there wasn't ever anything and not a minute could have been shaved off it more, you know, now that really, really stuck with him. And I think how I was managed through that period has been absolutely fundamental to remaining through it, you know. And you know, you come out sort of bruised, of course you do, right. You come out thing. But you know, I didn't see the point of missing work, not when it, you know, I had these chats with my brother. I think that's very, very fundamental. And then more latterly, you know, we look lost more people, you know, so the godfather to my, I was killed and then, you know, over the time and I've always been surprised how few people close to me I've lost. But over the time you realize they have. So a next door neighbour was killed, a godfather was killed. You know, my next door neighbour was very, very badly injured. And you look over the period of time this happened. So yeah, what happened to my parents was it changes forever. There was really, really big, big challenges in it. It was a building company, there were open mesothelioma claims related to use of asbestos. Of course, no one can prove that there was insurance in place and no one can prove the veracity of the claims. And two of the claims, actually, they work days in the company. But one particular very, very sad case, someone had worked there for quite a considerable period of time. And I remember Looking at it because we inherited these cases, me and my brother, because we were de facto now become inheritance of all these complicated businesses around the business. So we had all that going on. Background. I investigated my mum's death myself because the police got it wrong. And it wasn't actually the details of where she had been hit and how far she'd been rolled down the road, but it was enough for my dad to really just go into almost like a grief stricken frenzy over it. They've got it wrong. Why could that, how could they ever. So I went and did it myself. I explained how it happened and I said, look, just because they've marked it here rather than here, just, it doesn't change anything. So we're doing a lot of work around that. I ended up managing one of the mesothelioma cases assessed and it was, you know, an absolutely tragic consequence. Where do you know a lot about asbestos lead? Mesothelioma shards go into the lung and then they activate about sort of 20 years later and they get sharp. It's a really, really horrible, tragic situation. And whether there was safety or not knowing who my dad was now he ran the company, I would almost be certain that there was whatever it was at the time was available to use. But that wasn't the point. They would have always had insurance and that's what insurance was there for. But we could not, could not prove who had the insurance. And I remember dealing with this and we worked out which company it was. It was after 16 buyouts of one particular company. But they were just barnwalling us. They're saying, no, no, you can't prove it, you haven't got a policy document la la. We found scraps and there's a place in Norfolk where they hold miles and miles of old paperwork of insurance. We're getting people to go through this because the levels of money, you know, compensation that was due to this person, 100% and three times that should have been given to his surviving widow because he actually died during that. I remember it was under a year, but it was nearly a year of dealing with this. And I remember at a point where me and my brother had finally kind of just found a portion of the policy number or we found enough to say, we know it's you, right? And they literally over one phone call said, okay, leave this with us, it's no longer your business, you know, and if we had had, if that had gone to arbitrary and it would definitely have been ruled in favor of mesophiliam cases. And I Absolutely. I'm complete supporter of that. Right. You know, what's the point in looking back through time and going, did you have access to safety equipment or not? You know, extraordinary thing to try and address when you're doing that. The concept was we knew insurance was in place if it was a responsible business, you know, so we inherited a lot of that. And it was. I remember at the time it was really, really stressful, really stressful. We're doing all our jobs all the time, but fun, you know, you instinctively pick your way through it, you know, And I do remember at a time chatting with my brother and, you know, if we'd had to kind of sort of find the money for that MOSFET case, we'd both lost our houses and lots of people around us would have been hugely impacted by that. So there were real, real challenges that I even have to just sort of remind myself of now of what was going on and what were the consequences of those untimely deaths. And everyone looks in their lives and they think they can picture when they'll die. They think they can get ready for it and make good plans. And very, very often it doesn't work out like that at all.
- [144:26]
Sean Ryan
Man, what a tough girl, man.
- [144:32]
John Truitt
Yeah. You know, I reflect back on it healthfully now, you know, I understand it as a process, you know, and, you know, I also recognize that this is life and this happens to lots of people in different ways. And I'm deeply thankful for who my parents were. You know, they're incredibly special people. They left an amazing legacy. And, you know, for what we had is more than enough to be grateful for the way it happened. I just simply don't have any regrets over it. It's just that's what happened. And I think, you know, it's such an important aspect of life is this acceptance. These things will happen, you know, and you will go through a period where you'll have to come to terms with it. That's a normal process. But you are really, you know, I think back on how special my mum and my dad were in particular. I spent tons of time with my mum and you can think back, and I read through her post mortem reports. I have to understand it, had to understand it to adequately deal with my dad, you know, and I still look at those reports now, you know, I had to remind myself of that because I'm coming here and it's such a seminal point of my life, you know, my life does not make sense if I can't explain that, you know, and I read through those reports, you know, and you look at it and you just think, oh, my goodness, you know. But then I've worked as a medic and I've seen this happen to people's families, families, and I've seen the consequences of it. And I've, you know, I've got friends who. Emergency responders in the uk. One's a cardiac specialist, you know, CPR and recovery people from heart attacks and it happens in the street, but no one's present to pronounce death. And I can't. I don't understand their particular mechanism. She said one of these sort of quotes with COVID is people go into cardiac arrest. They neither go down or. Nor do they. And, you know, as an expert, they're never coming back. So they're stuck. And, you know, all too often they're surrounded by their families and they're witnessing this tremendously traumatic event and this person is having to manage this and doing it day after day after day, you know, and internally they have to manage the reality. The knowledge that they know this is. Is already a death. Yeah. But these people surrounding them, they are watching it and they are hoping that it's a life. And I think this is an intricate pattern in life, in life that we have to kind of, sort of accept, like these things do happen and we all hope that our loved ones are going to be safe and secure. But, you know, and again, I'll remind it. I had an interesting chat just recently is you could go into any doctors tomorrow and find out about a diagnosis that will bring your life to an end tomorrow. Something's been lurking within, you've not detected. It's not anything you've done wrong and you'll try and make sense of it, but it won't. So my mum very much sits in that bracket. There's actually no reason to try and make sense of it. No, it's a particular story. The fact that, that. That lady knew her, she used to buy eggs from her, you know, that is, if you can't get a story about how life can be, that is as stark as that. And it's really interesting, you know, because when I was speaking to my father about it, you know, I was saying, this lady's 80. I think she was 80 at the time. It has ruined her life irreversibly. This is a tragic, tragic accident. So managing was very, very tough. I came back with alopecia. It's like it's still there. It's never gone. I can see it's like a little radar now. To when life is becoming quite tight and complicated and always it comes back. It doesn't bother me, but it's a mark that you'll wear seemingly for the rest of my life, you know. So, again, when that's put against and overloaded with the related professional stress, I used to call some elements of what we do pager syndrome. You know, you're always on call in some way or form. When you're out in operations, you're constantly re rolling, re rolling, rerolling, re rolling, re rolling, rolling as soon as you're back. And we talked about that story about supporting a team out in Ramadi, immediately backing out again. Now, I don't think that was unique in us. You know, lots of other units did it as well. But the tempo was extraordinary at times. You know, 182 operations on the third tour in six months. It was just extraordinary. In all of these times, they're complex operations. You don't know what you're going on. Half the time. You've got a good idea of the broad structure of the intelligence, but the buildings change. There's aspects that you haven't seen. It's the ultimate in adaptability that you need to have in order to do that. When things aren't going to work out the way you want them, you have to just take a deep breath and accept they aren't the way you want them. When you're sitting on the back end of a charge because you can't get around the corner and. And you've run out of detonators with a particular length, you know, it's that deep breath, you know it's gonna hurt. And in that particular instance, one of my friends got hurt in his groin and had to be cassavacked for that, you know, and you kind of. In that situation, you're just looking at it, you know, you're gonna set that thing off and it's gonna hurt. Right.
- [150:36]
Sean Ryan
So did you go up back to Baghdad after your father passed?
- [150:40]
John Truitt
Yes. So, yes. I mean, it just. And again, I didn't miss any operational days. Maybe five days at the beginning, I cannot remember. But I did not miss an operational tour or consciously any days. Right. But I was being extraordinarily well managed. It wasn't like people were telling me to be there. They were saying, you tell us what you can do. My compass point was, unless I've got an extraordinarily good reason not to be, I will be there.
- [151:15]
Sean Ryan
Do you feel like you went to work early just to put yourself back in that environment? So that you didn't think about the passing.
- [151:24]
John Truitt
I don't think I did that as in I didn't use it in that way. But I didn't see a good enough reason not to be that there. And that was because I was talking to my brother. We believed that there was no changeable outcome for my dad, you know, that it would find its way. Whatever the fact that we could be in the house more. We had made a conscious decision to stay in our jobs, standing out of our job. We couldn't afford to do that. There wasn't a viable alternative to it. And I don't think the support would have made any difference. So it wasn't like our sort of finding solace in work. It'd be an extraordinary place to look for solace in work with that level of overloaded professional stress that comes with it. But I think I was quite young and I was really sort of tuned into the fact that, you know, I looked at each one and I said, you know, do I need to miss it? No, I don't. And so I did. I turned up and continued to do it. And I wasn't wrong. You know, I was reported on all the way through that. You know, I make a comment about decorations and commendations people, you know, I've seen people do extraordinary brave things that they've never been written up for. But in those periods of time you've done 19 operations, obviously you're going to get written up for certain actions. If you haven't come across something extraordinary at certain times time, then you would be in a highly unusual position for that operational exposure. So you do get written up for stuff. And I received commendations for stuff I was doing on those tours, which is all that is to me is a validation that I was doing my job. So it wasn't like I was sort of running at a deficit. But what, you know, I was really, really conscious of is that was building up inside me, right. And that stress was starting to load up and load up and load up and load up. It doesn't necessarily happen when you're there, but it will come in the future.
- [153:23]
Sean Ryan
What are some of the. What are some of the operations that you're a part of that really stick.
- [153:29]
John Truitt
Out in your career? So I mean, it's the stuff on the front line because they were different when we were re rolling and going on to compounds and constantly, kind constantly, constantly. And none of that stuck out as abnormal. You know, every so often there was an engagement here in a corridor, whatever. None of it really, really sort of resonated particularly with me living on a front line in a small team, really, really stuck out. There is a operation I was involved in. I can't say the place of it, but a large device was set off in an engagement in the breach point. Well, they didn't use an explosive charge in the end, but it set off a very large triastone triperoxide device that ended up with a house falling on the injured who'd been used in the engagement. These are, I mean that's a good one to talk about the numbers in that, you know, 28 people went out the door. As I remember it, there were 13 left standing by the end of it. When these special forces operations get complex, they get extremely complicated.
- [154:37]
Sean Ryan
28 of you guys went out and 13 no.
- [154:39]
John Truitt
So this was a partner force that we were supporting. So I was about 25 foot away from the triastone triperoxide device but around two corners and up some stairs. So all I did was get covered in dust. But two people had been shot in the head in the initial engagement and a number had picked up other injuries from the device going off. But essentially we were still trying to work out how we were to extricate them from that breach point position without exposing ourselves to further fire from this building that was two story and they'd survived in the second story because I was 25 foot away, no reason they hadn't. And actually the firing went on for over two hours after that. But essentially four stories of half the house fell on on top of the wounded burying it. And some of the injuries were like earthquake injuries when we did finally recover them. And the trouble is, and I've done a lot of sort of days in urban areas that have been partially destroyed. And what wouldn't be immediately obvious to people is when you're operating in an area where buildings have fall down, it acts like camouflage material. There's nothing ordered or patterned in which your eye can make sense of off. So you don't know where you're going to get shot at from next. And actually when it's a doorway or where it's a window, you can see when something breaks it. And you can take a position or you could be much more safe in how you're going about it. And for the next few hours we had to try and stop these people from breaking out because the situation was going to get a lot lot worse. They're heavily armed with PKM type machine guns, one out of Minimi and they had a large store of explosive devices that we Found out later, but somehow we had to extricate. And another badge member that I was with, he went and rescued someone from the access point at breach point, which is incredibly brave thing to do. And the person they rescued took a bit of frag through, partially severed their spinal column. So he had to learn to walk again. And so the people we could get out, we could get out. There was one personal member. I kept going down and listening over the wall and obviously he'd been buried just right by the breach point and he was screaming, but we couldn't, you know, we were trying to access it together to say, how are we going to get this guy out? You know, he's completely buried without exposing ourselves to the fire that is coming out there. It's pretty random at that point. We weren't for two hours after that and essentially he stopped screaming at a certain point and we made a decision to say, okay, well, you know, this outcome is really, really tough. We don't think it's worth taking the risk anymore. We completely overloaded the medevac chain. People treating themselves in the street. I put out edicts as such, they weren't orders. I wasn't in command list, but we were helping support them in this very, very complex situation. I'd said to them, you're not to take any more casualties. Must, must not take any more casualties. And there are people that are just tremendously brave. Remember one that had been shot in the chest, no one really realized and it was some time later until he just fell over backwards. And you're just like, wow, you didn't. No one even picked up on the fact you'd been shot. And some of the injuries these people would take on incredibly, incredibly brave people. And the people, the person we left buried and we made a conscious decision to not try and get him out because he was completely buried and risk more casualties. He turned out to be alive. You know, it's about three or four hours later and it took 40 minutes to dig him out. But when they did get him out, he was alive. But he had absolutely horrible injuries. Had already had horrible injuries, but you know, they were also quite crush injuries, injuries associated to earthquake type injuries. And it's sort of jobs like that they come up and I remember thinking at the time when the large explosion went on, you're like, okay, we're still in this, but as soon as the house falls down, it's like the aircraft gets shot out of the sky. It's unbelievable. Complexity is attached to it. I think, you know, remembering the center Point of just saying, okay, well, this is going to take a long time to get out of now we have to control the situation. You know, it's not like you can just get up and leave. You have to control it. You have to contain everyone to the house so the threat isn't going to get worse. And bit by bit, I'm unpick it. What you're left with is a ton of decisions you could question afterwards. So should we or shouldn't we? But that's not the right process to go along because how you went about it was bit by bit, step way down the path, finding a way through that complexity. In that particular instance, it's how on earth do we guarantee there's no more threat from that building? By assuring those people they were injured themselves by the explosive blast going off and trying to clear into a destroyed building is very, very difficult. And so we were trying to make good, conscious, professional decisions based upon what we needed to do and trying to implore the people that are injured, trying to employ them, that were close friends of them. These are people that we looked after and mentored incredibly closely in trying to get them not to take massive risks, like stupid risks, in order to do something that we looked at and said, it's not going to be successful, you will not get them out. A testament to when things get that tough, people step up. The training is important, but you see the bravery and the strength that it these people and how they step up. So, you know, it's operations like that that really, really stick with me. And in that particular instance, you know, I came off the ground, it's dark, really early morning, and we'd been there, we'd gone onto the ground about sort of 12 o' clock the previous day, implored for nighttime, but for some reason we weren't given the reasons why they look, please can you do it during the day, you can't wait. Obviously there was ongoing threat from these people. They'd already committed attack against some police. And I remember going home and sitting in my flat and just staring out. Just the exhaustion you feel. And I've felt it so many times. You've been explosive, loads of explosive blasts. You've been run out of water, you know, things that you thought were gonna take a day have took two days. You know, there's all sorts of reasons. You get back here, you feel completely hollowed out. You know, you literally are just sitting there taking it all in. And I always found I just sort of press play on the music in that particular Instance, I had to write someone a letter to explain, don't listen to the noise, this is what happened. And you can be proud of these people. So I did. Unbelievably brave. And then as soon as I had a plan to deliver that letter, I went straight to the hospital and I seen the guys and everyone involved in that would question, what did I do? Did I do the right thing? Could I have done that? As soon as I walked into the hospital and I saw their faces, it was like a friend has come to see them, made the effort to go there. And it is hard when you're facing up with people. You know, you're like, you're looking at them, you're like, wow, you know, you got injured. And now some of them very, very seriously, some of the brakes. There was one guy stood by the wall when the blood, the wall blew out and a block went straight into his lower femur. And the brake was just astonishing. It was like, I remember looking at it and just going, well, when you see these people and they're very, very badly injured, he's never going to walk properly again. There's no way he can fix a fracture that big sensibly, you know, and they're still pleased to see, it's just like, wow, okay, we are in this together, you know, and people won't judge you overly as long as you are all the time putting the effort, the attention and support into people when they need it. And it's exactly what happened to me. If you think about what happened around my mum, people giving me the support and my absolute hour need. I didn't even know how critical that need was in that particular position. You just had to find a way out for these people, which meant handing off that, trying to persuade them that they weren't gonna get the job done at that point, you know, hand it off. And, you know, a lot of the young soldiers, they're very, very much driven by a sense of duty, sense of proof, and trying to sort of really explain to them, you've already done your job here and you've done an immense job. We've suffered and as has happened, these devices do go off. We don't plan to be here when they do. You know, in that respect, our advice has always been do this at night. You know, we always like surprise, we always like to be quiet in what we do. It's inbuilt into us. But when you're forced to go, you're forced to go, right? You know, and you may not know the full picture in which case we didn't. You know, I found out later about that particular issue instant that they had planned to further very, very large attacks, all against kind of sort of key aspects of the institution. And they had large stores of IEDs that were uncovered as well. And so, you know, I come across a lot of these people, and they're very, very dangerous. You know, when they're turned, they're extremely dangerous. And some of those countries in the Middle east have got very, very confident, complex counterterrorism threats domestically. And, you know, you have a certain pride of serving alongside them. Because actually, when I look at people, we're all human beings faced with different but relatively the same aspects of problems. Safety is not the same as security. To keep security, you have to be prepared to leave. And if you hud, you hold on to safety too much, the security goes. You know, these institutions, these units, these services that do this job are extremely important, extremely precious, and they protect security, not safety.
- [166:04]
Sean Ryan
I mean, 19 deployments.
- [166:08]
John Truitt
Yeah.
- [166:09]
Sean Ryan
You saw a lot.
- [166:12]
John Truitt
Yeah, I mean, the exposure is massive, right? And it's hugely varied. I was a breach of three of them, and I used it. Yeah, it's a lot. But that's because of the roles I took. A lot of the time, you know, I got trained as a JTAC early, and a lot of those deployments were training as a JTAC or because I had that specialist specialization in airspace management, understanding of assets and weaponry. I'll go and support other people in what they did, you know. So a lot of the time. And again, it's. What's great about being in the unit is you spend a lot of the time on your own or supporting or going towards a country to kind of try and understand a whole hostage rescue. Some of the key, key areas of what I did were unsupported. And actually we were just sent to understand the situation because lots of people scream genocide very quickly, right? It's one of the fastest ways to attract countries to come and take control. So you have to understand it. And when situations are so, so unsettled, so insecure, you know, often we're asked to go in and understand situation, just to say, look, you know, yes, this is really grievous, or no, you know, the threats to national interests are this. We do not see evidence of there being a genocide or a risk of mass killings of such sorts. And in those particular situations, they've probably been the most risky of all, you know, and in those situations, you're largely unsupported. You're Surrounded by people you don't, you know, don't trust or understand. Particularly you have a huge amount of faith, judgment as well. In that particular instance, we're washing in salt water for about six weeks. Running out of food regularly. You know, open battles were going on constantly. You know, recall this. Rifles like 15 foot away from you, shooting out tank barrels. You know, people weren't even trained to use tanks. Just blasting away with tanks. And it's just massively. You're getting no sleep. It'd be lucky if you got two hours in 24. Racing against margins, sleeping in locked rooms because you fear for everyone around you being warned there's plots to kidnap you. It's really, really very, very tough environment to remain steady and we've got to maintain our position here. We've got to understand what's going on and give an accurate thing so people know what to do in these situations. It's probably those periods of time that have left the biggest mark. My time in the squadron, it was quite comfortable. It's like actually I did a series of years of different operations, connected all up and much of the time spent on my own and much of the time spent in small teams and bringing people together when we needed to do something.
- [169:31]
Sean Ryan
Have you ever done a. Have you ever done a hostage rescue?
- [169:35]
John Truitt
I haven't done a hostage rescue. I've moved forwards to Prepare the ground 4. 1. I've not done one myself. I've probably done some in Iraq, you know, which were kind of sort of. They're not the hostage rescues. I think about the hostage rescues. I think about those really, really highly critical ones done. The insertion is extremely complicated. It's zero sum game. So I've gone forward and prepared the ground for those particular operations. I've took part in planning of numerous. But you know, and again, hostage rescues do not, thankfully, do not happen very often because they're a very, very difficult operation to. To pull off.
- [170:16]
Sean Ryan
Downstairs you had mentioned that you had worked with Delta.
- [170:20]
John Truitt
Yeah.
- [170:21]
Sean Ryan
What were you guys doing?
- [170:23]
John Truitt
So it was essentially, you know, we used to. To share lessons and ttps techniques, tactics and procedures when we were mitigating a risk. So if something had happened on the ground and essentially I was going over to learn an element of how they do their operations. And that particular operation was expected to be a very, very tough operation. What had been seen in the development of the target, multiple weapons, the activities around the target were pretty horrible. And so there was an expectancy, it was going to be hostile, but it ended up with a very large firefight that went on for hours and hours and hours. Five casualties in the first window. Trapped in a street with houses overlooking one another that could fire down onto the roofs and the street. And essentially in the first period, as I remember it, as people are taking positions, an adapted mortar bomb was thrown off the roof and it hit the team forward enough. So essentially then a very, very large weight of fire came down from three wider firing points. Because it was an urban target, it was very, very difficult to deal with. You're not allowed to use the things that you would use if you're deployed into rural areas or in more safe areas. And there were certain sensitivities about the area, people living there, that made it even more difficult to bring to bear the things that you would usually do. And again, you know, I mean, I just tremendously admired the people that I worked alongside. They were really, really professional and I served. I think we were pretty much out for about eight hours. And essentially as we approached this target and remembering this wasn't my target, I don't know the details of it, you know, the development of. I just know we expected it to be complicated and go noisy. But essentially as we come towards the target, about 1k out came through a checkpoint. There was a massive burst of gunfire in the air, which wasn't unusual, let's face it, you expect that. And so everyone was infiltrating on and that was actually a warning to the target that people were coming. So they were waiting in effectively a three lane ambush. And that was problematic. Get out. And that was in 2006, a very, very kinetic tour. And actually about two years after that, I was given accommodation, which I always been hugely grateful for. It takes a lot of time to write people up and for that night. But it was also.
- [173:13]
Sean Ryan
What did you get the accommodation for? Sorry, what did you get the accommodation for?
- [173:17]
John Truitt
It was essentially so approaching and dealing with an armed part of the attack. And I wasn't the one that dealt with it. I was supporting other forces essentially as they saw. I put my face, put myself in direct face of the enemy fire for a period of time to close on the target building. There was also an access point that was overlooked, that was getting shot at. And it was to do with movement across that as well. I've got accommodation which I reread, very simply put. And I just really was thankful that people recognized people in positions. Now, I have never done anything that I think sticks out in an extraordinarily professional way. I've seen people equally across the length of time we've done it on different operations and different nights. Do extraordinarily brave things. Sometimes they have to and sometimes they're rescuing people. It's incredibly brave. Many of the times they're not recognized for a it. You know, I'm not hung up on commendations and recognition at all. But when people do and they make the effort to do it, you know, to me it's notable. They've gone to a lot of effort to do that. But essentially, you know, in particular through Iraq, we're working very closely aligned with US forces. And whilst we're, you know, cultured very differently, we're very much shared this unity in missions and aims. It really, really highlighted the closeness of us all. And I was telling a story before about a really great friend of mine, Duncan Slater. He's a w amputee and he got injured in Afghanistan, but we both used to work for a company, satellite company, actually. We've sat together having a wine at night and we talked about sort of the time there was a breach point. I wasn't on this operation, for instance, but my neighbor was very badly shot, hit three times. 1 When his symphonies and bounced off. Head helmet bounced off. But the other one hit his weapon and tracked up his arm and left him with a really horrible. Everything's locked up. So it's incredibly painful as my neighbor. So when I used to come out, I used to sit down and have a coffee with him. And at the point where he's wounded, he, you know, wanted to walk to the helicopter. He's losing a huge amount of blood. And we were just talking in general about, you know, experiences with Duncan. And I didn't realize, you know, because this. This person, my neighbor was. He didn't want to get on the stretch, but you could see how much blood he was losing. He was not going to make it to the helicopter. So instead of like having a sort of of you must get on the stretcher or trying to force him onto the stretcher, he just gently put underneath his arm and took the weight off him just so he could walk to the helicopter. There's those moments of compassion and understanding and humanity that really sort of sit with me. And Duncan's story is pretty incredible in itself because he's a very special person long before he got injured. Right. And he's an incredible guy. But the point of injury, he got injured in a complex ambush in Afghanistan driving a Jackal. So Jackal, obviously the problem is the wheels are back. So you sit forward of the wheels and a Kamar ad got Set off and essentially his rifle went straight through. The rifle's held right there. Went straight through his arm and his legs took an enormous amount of damage. It got thrown out the vehicle and it was like I say the ambush was still ongoing. There was shooting and you know, had all the, you know, what we called the shooting ports all the way through the compound walls. And essentially they were trying to call a medevac in nine liner and the UK asset couldn't respond for whatever reasons. And a dust off call sign was on its last day of operation of its particular tenor and overheard the nine liner over that. They couldn't respond and they went and picked up Duncan and saved his life. Wow. So Duncan's work come back to the uk. His legs were so badly damaged so they amputated. He's got an incredible story about and I won't talk about it, I saw him just before I came out here actually and he's involved in some of the things I'm involved in now. Essentially he's up at Balmoral a little bit later and he knew he had been evacuated medevaced by one of the dust off call signs. And he was doing a speaking and there was a running event around Balmoral up in Scotland. He saw a lieutenant colonel from the US Air Force. So he went up to him and said look, you know, I got medical, would you find out who it was? And so they swapped details and Duncan thought nothing of it. And then he got an email from the crew chief of one of the dust off crews. They said look, you know, we were dust off about that time one of the dust off call signs, I kept a book of the things we did so we'll know immediately said, so who else was on the helicopter cocktail? And Duncan was like, I was alone. And he was like, oh this can't be, can't be, it can't be, it. And obviously Duncan very horribly injured his incredibly complex injuries that he had. So then it really perplexed Duncan because he knew the exact time, the exact date. So he went back to his unit, which was one of the other special forces units and said look what happened. And while I got medevaced, was there other people on the helicopter? They said, yeah, I think there was two more lesser wounded people. They chose to get them out. And the reason this definitely saved Duncan's lives is to try and move back even by vehicle. Would have took over two hours from where they had the ambush. So he phoned back to the crew chief and said, look, ours role. There were two other people in the. In the cab with me. And what's more, I was singing because he was told why when they put him on a helicopter, they put ketamine into him really quickly. And because he's Scottish, very, very volubly Scottish, he started singing in Scottish apparent. The pilot looked back at this Scottish coming from the back of his cab. It's a relatively mortally wounded person. And it really was really quite sort of, you know, things were very, very complicated. So that was the confirmatory that it was that dust off course. That is, we cannot forget this person who is singing Scottish songs in the back of the thing. And I just thought as an absolute. But point being, it's like Duncan went back and he's met those dust off call signs, you know, and he said to them, you know, he's thanked them. And I think it's a just yet another example of how closely aligned these forces have been and how many lives have been both sides, you know, but, you know, deeply thankful for support like Dustoff when they come and pull you out of a situation like that, which is essentially still an ongoing ambulance ambush. It's an incredibly brave thing to do. And I know what the last day of tour feels like, right? It's like Friday the 13th over and over again. You always think, you know, Christmas is another one. Big things seem to happen at Christmas. And I've always wondered about this, right? You know, we seem to have some of the biggest complex periods of work, loss of helicopters, big problematic problems on target around Christmas time. I thought, well, you know, actually there's a reason for this. There's longer, darker hours, given the heat is complicated for aircraft, but also the winter is very complicated for aircraft as well. And I think the margins for error go up a lot more in those winter tours, and predominantly through the rotation we were doing to winter tours a of lot lot. So, you know, there's rhyme and reason in everything. If you sort of pin it to what is the reason why. Why did this happen more at this point of time? Well, you know, people are in their houses for longer periods of time during those winter months when it's dark and it's wet and the infiltration targets can be very, very complicated. Right. So I guess that sort of defines me as a person. I always sort of wondered why, and I like to make sense of things.
- [182:20]
Sean Ryan
In 19 deployments and 20 years at the unit, have you ever had to kill anybody?
- [182:28]
John Truitt
No, I wouldn't answer that.
- [182:29]
Sean Ryan
You wouldn't answer that? Do you have any idea how many.
- [182:35]
John Truitt
Missions you've been on, well, you know, I cannot add it up, right. So the different variations of types of missions. But on the third Tour, we did 182. That was at a particular time when the governance was really, really contested in Iraq. It was like, you know, I think at the time it was General McChrystal who was leading the task force, and it was absolutely critical. You know, it was at that point where people really believed that country could go into a civil war. There were bombs getting driven into markets that were killing hundreds at the time. You could not go out during the day. The threat was so, so high. And the rotation was just on, on, on circle, circle, circle. And, you know, that's most pronounced on a lot of the others, maybe 30, some 70. So if you add it all up, it's a huge arrest. But I've also spent extended periods on front lines, you know, and that's one. But it's lasted for weeks. Yeah, when I'm on that front line, we are the top target. Yeah, they're trying to. And, you know, we've had some fun and games with particular brilliant snipers and mortar teams before, you know, being pinned down by a very, very good sniper who remained a problem. We never found a solution for him, but he kept on being effective. And another one was a mortar team that seemed specifically to be orientated towards us. And one evening, we're just down there monitoring and seeing where the threat's building up and ensuring that that front line can't be broke. You know, it's like constant, constant. Where's it going to happen next? And we had a particular member in our, in our team who used to be three power mortars. And he used to be like a walking human mortar radar. He could literally. It's absolutely astonishing. And I was sat there and I was on the radio talking to the air and. And we usually. It's that ubiquitous white truck, right. And we could kind of pick it out from its movement. We'd all realize that Morty is out that Mort team. Okay, fine. So anyway, whatever. Didn't really see the truck that time. Perhaps concentrating somewhere else. We heard the mortar report and this member of the team was like that, that's over there. And the round landed about a K short further down the hill. And he turned around and said, that's for us. And we all looked at him a bit like. And I just continued talking on the radio. And the next one landed that 180 foot way further down this ridgeline. We've got like a bung. We've Got like a position that's all pushed up dirt and it's about probably at the base, three to five meters wide. Yeah. And it comes up this, you know, when they push it all up into a berm and it's got like sand, sandbagged positions, but it's all really sort of not very well constructed. The next one landed about 180 foot away. And I remember looking up and looking over at the plume coming out and I just heard down and then nothing. And it was black. And one had landed. They had just done two. Very, very good, very accurate. And one had landed literally coming to the other side of the berm because the mortars are not very well fused. Right. It buried itself in the ground, gone off and just covered us in dirt. I was talking to the air and I remember just sort of coming back into sort of like realization that that was awful. That would have took the whole team out. We were all in a vicinity of the radio, thankfully, most of them up against that side of the berm. I was the only one standing up. And it's just that realization. They'd gone in the other side of the berm. The fusing's really bad in it. That's really what saved us. And it gone and buried itself before it gone off. And I remember looking down at one of our partners, northern Iraqi partners, and he's dusting like dust off all of us. And. And I just remember looking down and we had a house not far back. And I just looked at the team, I was like. And bearing in mind they were still there, we had a choice to try and work out where they were and try and get some air onto it. We're just like, do you want to call it a night? And they're like, yeah, you know. And that was what life was like on the front line. You know, it's kind of stick to how out to me a little bit more, especially when the clouds coming in, right. And you, you know, the air's not going to come and help you then. And there's constant attempts to find out where you were, constant wonder, like, who's up, what's happening, tunneling, whatever it was, there was something going on. And it was a real sort of realization. And when you woke up, you'd see like the sun come up and we had our times and you know, our partner force would run out of food quite often and they come and bring you a dish of fried aubergine, which is not the most nutritious thing I've ever been fed and Often they run out of ammunition. Not often, but worryingly enough, they wouldn't have ammunition. You're just looking at it like, wow, you know, you're just trying to hold it together, ensure that the situation is not going to break. No one's going to come through that front line. Because when they did, the attacks were absolutely awful. You know, the consequences to the villages behind them. And these were Kurdish forces, a lot of them there, you know, different factions of the Kurdish. And, you know, when they managed to infiltrate through, because there was lots and lots of people talking to them on the other side, you know, and they were constantly attempting to do that. And it was quite extraordinary, the level of effect and training some of these people had. You know, I think that's sort of. That's migration. There's always been. It's always struck me when I've been on operations, there's been a certain pattern we've had. There's certain groups that kind of sort of share the ethnic identity, religion, whatever. They're part of the population. And then you've got this element of foreign fighters that come in, and they're either full of fervor, but they've got no baseline support, or they're extremely well trained. And I've always detected the level of state help that these groups have got. So whilst you're operating against known terrorist organizations, they're prescribed organizations, they're recognized, they have always been receiving facilitation support. And people are looking at the whole situation and trying to find gaps in the strategy and go against it and, you know, pick those vulnerabilities. And it's not these people you're facing that are necessarily the people that are orchestrating all the finance and all the facilitation that gives them the ability to operate in the way they do. And that's the enormous complexity of going up against these groups. And almost the front line was quite refreshing because the front line was set and you had this period of ground which everyone was trying to sort of find the gaps in. And you did get infiltration a lot, but when it happened, it was much more understandable. And it wasn't the same as some of the other situations I've been in. So, you know, the front line was really, really interesting, done over ranges and distances, you know, unless they got close. And they rarely, rarely, rarely ever did that. All of the ranges, we had to look at our weapon systems and go, okay, well, these things that we're carrying on aren't much good for this, so let's swap them Out. So I swapped to a 417 is 556 version of HK, isn't it? So I swapped to a 417 with a tripod. And so you saw different choices getting made. But we were sleeping outside on the front line a lot of time, very, very exposed. But it was quite an interesting period of operations for me. Learned a lot about human beings, learned a huge amount about trust, especially with traditional cultures that don't understand about advanced weaponry. And when one fails and you get finlock and trying to explain that, they're just saying, can you make sure it doesn't come near us? And you're like, look, you know, this is not how you think it. And understanding about how you deal with people as well. You know, I always used to carry a covert weapon on me. I used to carry two Glocks because as you're going into meetings, it's a level of trust. A lot of them have very, very traditional cultures, but you can never be 100% sure that you knew who everyone was or what you had. So I'd make a very visible display of putting that weapon down on the table and talking, but I'd always have something on me. And thankfully, I've nearly been caught out once really badly, and that was not trusting my instincts. But otherwise, you know, it's pretty much held up. Reading people judging who they are, what they want has really kind of sort of held up in that respect. When you're dealing with partners and as you know, you're never sure of who is talking to who and who is doing what, you know, there's risk and uncertainty everywhere. But to get the job done, you have to at least look like you're a simple person to deal with. And sometimes you haven't got the resources to check everyone out. You just simply won't be able to. So getting trusted partners who can say, this is my place, people who are fixed as translators, people are able to say to you, look, this doesn't fit. Just invaluable. Yeah.
- [192:39]
Sean Ryan
Well, John, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll get into it. Your retirement and what you're doing now.
- [192:47]
John Truitt
Yeah, perfect.
- [192:51]
Sean Ryan
I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show, and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits, like behind the scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end of the month, live Zoom calls with me, exclusive merch and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com vigilanceleite that's patreon.com VigilanceLeite thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to itunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. All right, John, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into retirement. But before that, you had some. You had some other issues.
- [194:04]
John Truitt
Yeah, These are the things that have dawned on me. You know, the intensive nature of deployments. You know, I've had an intensive operational career, as have others. It's a period of time may or may not be repeated in that same sort of similar vein. But for me, you know, there was two certain points, you know, and again, I didn't flag it or report it. It. You know, I'd noticed it in time. I think it was intuition that told me. But I had two distinct periods in a change of behavior, which is probably the best indicator for me that things were getting very, very tough to hold together now, notably, I never didn't work and I necessarily flagged them up. So I don't think they'd come to a point where they were a particular risk or danger to others, but they were significant. You know, there was those periods of time where you're like, this is not me. Why am I thinking like this? Why am I behaving like this to other team members? It was like, why are you being so hyper security aware? Right. Can you stop going on about a roof door? We don't need to put a guard on it, you know, la, la la. And I think that was like symptomatic of the overloading festival. Stress that's just laid and laid on top the personal aspects of stress, allostatic load as such. And in one particular time, I'd had a really intensive period of operations. Really intensive. And some of them were those unsupported operations that I alluded to earlier. Again, no food, no drink, couldn't trust people around you, you know, running out, washing in salt water. And when I noticed it, I was on a period of domestic support and training. We're running some stuff in London. And I became quite sort of malaligned, quite sort of distrusting and, you know, really kind of quite neurotic about who was watching and, like, paranoia yeah, it's like, you know, that's not me, right. I'm actually really kind of sort of measured, trusting person, you know, and that's a good way to be in like, you know, be advised and be, you know, use your judgment well. But essentially I believe in trusting people and I do believe that people are essentially good. And so I was, you know, it was really, really sort of quite sort of something that caught me. And in a particular time shortly afterwards I was having these sort of mini seizures as well. And I think this is just the nature of the intensive training we're doing around explosives at the time. So if you added all of it up, you know, the uncontrollable spaces where you're very near to Recolus rifles and you know, mortars and everything else and not necessarily with the best equipment. Whatever it was that led to those things, they happened over a concentrated period of time. I never flagged it at the time because they used to go away. Used to happen in the morning a little bit in particular. I was sitting down and it was just sort of like fixed up and my leg used to lift a bit. It.
- [197:08]
Sean Ryan
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- [198:15]
John Truitt
So the changes in behavior, you know, thinking, real negative thought patterns creeping in was enough of an indicator to be like, I've got to get a grip of this somehow, you know, and I've got to. And I did find my way through if I remember and nothing's sort of like oh it was until this day or like I didn't go and see someone about it. But it took a couple of years to re level I was still working. Operationally. The nature of the work changed because I've moved into the wider sphere of operations. So there's a lot of deployed but living and advising and I think that was enough space to sort of take it back under control. But I used to remember, you know, a lot of these space places we go aren't that dangerous, you know, and you can go walking around. And I used to walk around a lot and do a lot of thinking, a lot of wondering. And I think it's that space, plus the training and plus the realization that, you know, these thoughts are not me. You know, they're kind of sort of this paranoia about, you know, who's doing what. And, you know, I sort of make jokes around the Looney Tunes. It's like sort of tweet birds showing what's going on behind me sort of thing. That's just. Just not me. Right. So. And I think this is my first realisation that professionally induced stress and personal. And the bigger, bigger part actually, I believe, is in the personal things that you'll face in your life and the medical pillars of bereavement, financial stress, exposure to trauma and separation. And I like to add separation doesn't mean a divorce necessarily. It can mean separation from your loved ones whilst you're doing a profession where they're wearing even more stress than you. But, you know, when you're not there to support people and help, it comes with those feelings that you should have been. It takes strength on both sides to not have that become a context in relationship. So separation is quite an interesting one. But those are the medical pillars for when you need to be conscious about the levels of stress that can change and physiologically impact you. Physiologically impact you means a change in behavior.
- [200:30]
Sean Ryan
So I'm just curious though. I mean, you're talking about 19 deployments, 20 years with the SAS. I mean, that also builds your psyche, that builds your. I mean, that that's who you are, you know, I mean, it's something you did, but it forms you through the time that you spend in that type of environment. And so, you know, paranoia, wondering what people are doing behind you, always looking in the rearview mirror to see if you're being followed, never sitting with your back against the door or the entrance. I mean, the. That stuff, that stuff that I deal with, that stuff that I think that anybody who's operated at that type of A level experiences that. And it just. Maybe you're Different. But for me and everybody, I know that you will carry that with you likely until. For the rest of your life.
- [201:37]
John Truitt
Yeah.
- [201:39]
Sean Ryan
Have you managed to take that paranoia and.
- [201:43]
John Truitt
Yeah, I have, you know, to a certain extent, but I'm really, really conscious that, you know, I don't want to be that paranoid person. I want to be that trusting person that's deeply me. Right. And so I actively refute it. But what I've noticed, and I think you're absolutely right, is having been exposed in those professional terms and as a consequence of things that can happen in your personal life as well, the move through to normal and stable through to, you know, chaotic and, you know, hyper aware is much, much quicker.
- [202:24]
Sean Ryan
I want to rephrase what I was saying too. I mean, because I think that there is a. I don't think. I know there's an element that comes from operating in a level like that where your ego gets involved and that becomes who you are. And that's not what I'm talking about, you know, being an SAS operative or operator, you know, that's not who you are today. And a lot of people can't set that down and move on and find the next thing. I think that's a. It's a very challenging time in our lives is to. Is to find your new identity. But what I'm. What I'm talking about is the experiences that you amass through your lifetime and the, in the experiences that you've. That you've had in that type of an occupation form, who you are. Does that make sense?
- [203:22]
John Truitt
Yes, it does.
- [203:23]
Sean Ryan
Because you've experienced things, a lot of things that 99% of the population will never even come close to those type of experiences.
- [203:38]
John Truitt
Yeah, absolutely right. So this is a job, a profession.
- [203:42]
Sean Ryan
And so what I'm saying is for Those people that 99 percentile that never experience what you've experienced or what I've experienced, or a lot of other people that sit across from me in this room, experiences, I mean, they just. People that have not experienced that, they don't. It doesn't register what could happen. It doesn't register. They have not. They have no, they have no database to understand the potential threats, to formulate a new way of thinking, which I'm not saying it's a better way. I'm just saying that I don't necessarily know if it's from trauma. I think it's just from experiencing threats that most people never have to experience. Does that make any sense? Sense?
- [204:43]
John Truitt
It makes absolute sense. Right, so. And I deeply feel that it's not trauma that leads to these, these issues, you know, and this is a job, remember, where you will go back and sit in your location covered in someone else's blood. Like it is tough, tough times. Sometimes you go back so tired your brain doesn't function. It's like an out of body experience and you wake up the next morning, but your body's actually very resilient in recuperating from that and the exposures to trauma. And I've always reminded myself that, you know, these are volunteers, they're professional soldiers that do this. And they live in an extraordinary environment where threat is all around them all the time. You know, you have to make judgments and calculations all the time. I used to call like pager syndrome, operator syndrome is something different. Plagia syndrome is always on call, always on call. And if you don't turn up, you haven't done your job and rightly you should be disciplined or get sacked. You know, these are pager syndrome. Got to be there on time. All of that loads and loads up on you. And I think you're conditioned to deal with it almost throughout. I don't think trauma is responsible for the neurological deficit that builds up. You know, that's the thing I'm talking about out. You know, I'm really, really conscious. The outcome for me has been pretty good. I do feel stable, happy. I know in my relationships with people, they're fulfilled and good, you know, and I, I don't struggle in that sense, but I'm very, very conscious how quickly things can change. And I think a deficit is built up and I think it's your exposure to extraordinary conditions builds up over time. Your physiology isn't set, it learns and it can go way out of cue. And if you've got problems within your physiology, you will become paranoid, anxious, the whole thing is out of cue. And it will change your behaviors and all the things they give a PTSD diagnosis for. I believe that a lot of people are given PTSD diagnosis. Diagnosis is, it's an entirely subjective diagnosis in my eyes. And actually they're more down to the physical conditions that these people have been enduring that ultimately challenge human biology. Right. And ultimately over the years, you will go out of queue. It's like getting a weapon sight, moving it through a different temperature, banging it around in a box in transit. You know, you need to go back and re0 it. And then of course, if you're not re zeroed, the thing will slide. And that's what I put my changes of behavior down to. I put like the mini events I was having, whatever it was, down to intensive periods, explosives, that's when they happened. So I look for the simplest causes every single time. And for periods of time I was getting no sleep, I was just intensively involved in operations. And I think that has resulted in that period of change in behavior. But more significantly, and something I'm really sort of grateful for is through, I think, intuition because I never sat down when I left the army, I did something else. And that was for different reasons, but I never sat down with any experts, said, what's going on? And I deliberately didn't declare losses of balance lost, you know, certain seizure type event, I can't even describe them. I described to a neurologist like a transient ischema. And she said, no, it can't be because that's like blood going wrong. So I don't know what they were, but they were happening and I know when they were happening and they were happening because it was very, very close and intensively training on explosive devices time and time and time again. And you know, and that's what's led to my fascination in not just, you know, the consequences Operator syndrome, which I think to a relative degree, everyone will end up with in some degree. And this is a job that leaves a legacy, right? It does leave a legacy. And I think, you know, I used to say it to everyone, no one wins if you break. Like you really, really got to stay on top of this. If you're seeing indications in behavior, defensiveness, all of this sort of stuff, these are the first indications. These people are very, very well trained. They're volunteers doing something that they have given up so much to do. It takes more than just trauma to get these people completely out of queue. The normal response to trauma is two weeks to four weeks. Suffer an acute stressor, you process it through and it will really just start fading in two to four weeks. The trouble is, and again, if you've got people who are demonstrating really concerning behaviors internally to themselves, someone sits inside them and recalls the last thing that may have happened. There's this kind of self expectation of trauma now, not just in these really hard professions. I think in wider society now is becoming unhelpful in working out the real problems. I'm not saying people don't get pt, ptsd, but it's not always the reason. And when you're looking at these people that have been using explosives, they've been in conditions where they don't get fed properly for a while, they don't sleep or they've lacked a pattern of sleep. Then for me, they're much more compelling reasons for your body to be completely out of cue. I mean, I sit here with alopecia. It happened after my mum's death. That's an information autoimmune response response for me. That's simple. Yeah, yeah, it's directly due to that. Doesn't surprise me now. Partly art, I think of this and coming out of this. And again, you know, I left in 21 and that was a part of a 40, 45, 50 year professional career, a very, very formative part, a part I was extremely proud of. Now I'm proud of my service. It's one of the, you know, I served for 23 years. You know, we sign an oath, you know, it's. That's something I'm incredibly proud of. But it doesn't have to be my defining thing for the rest of my career. And I've actively sort of switched and moved on. And you're right, the transition period. Right, is, you know, from. For my own belief, it's. If you hold on too much to that, it actually makes making the step more complicated. But this step is years. I think the first step is four years to even start shaping your behaviors. You know, when I went to go and speak to people about what made me valuable for them for employment, I used to say, oh, you know, I can be at an airport within three hours notice you don't have to tell me when I'm coming back. I'm not asking for like months away, but if you have weeks and you have a problem that needs solving, I could do it. It sounds mad, right? And these people don't need people like that. But, you know, that was the way I was sort of hardwired to think. You know, that's what, you know, on a call, I can go somewhere. And you know, gradually I've sort of learned to sort of talk a different language, a more recognizable language for me, you know, because the further away you get from it, the more you, you deal. But, you know, there's some real challenges in transition and I think they're further, further complicated with these unhelpful diagnoses in people, you know, and there's an over reliance on medication and very simple approaches to complex problems, complex diagnoses. But you can actually see the risk factors, the exposures there within the profession. And I've noted a lot, you know, I take a lot of notice about the SEAL teams, you know, and, you know, water, for instance, when you're traveling Fast in a boat and it's constantly, constantly banging. And you know, professional boat drivers in the Marines, really interesting group to look at. There's all sorts of mechanisms through that profession that are very, very challenging for you. And a significant minority. And I make the really important point right, because service is really great and service doesn't mean your outcomes are going to be bad. The majority emergency and find a space to be happy and successful later on in a second career. But it doesn't happen by magic. It's very, very tough getting there. There is a very significant minority where the outcomes are really, really tough and they're tough for them but they're also difficult to watch because for me there must be solutions to it. It's not good enough to be like you're traumatized. The risk life, yeah, go back to my mum. I'm sad about it. It's tragic. It's not like it's traumatized. I probably wasn't traumatized after about two years from that, you know. And that's something that's really, really, really significant because it impacts you so much. You know, when you're kind of sort of desperately thinking. I've got some really interesting stories about looking after cows, a small herd but they're woodland cattle, so quite spirited. We had a bull called Formidable. I made the mistake of not feeding them so before we could get a farmer in to look and he had, he just added that small contingent of cattle to his herd. I didn't feed them, fed them too late. And one had, the cow had stuck their head through to try and get one of the big half ton hay bales and it was laid there and because of its heavy head it was, was stuck it through the, the, the metal gates that they were had and as it got more tired it's pressing down on its windpipe and I don't know what, you know, this is post my mum, I don't know what told me check on the cattle but I went in there and it's pandemonium. As they're not they. I think I've given them too little food so it stayed hungry and they're trying to get this head. I don't know how the head, the cow managed to get its head through this, this really small space in the first place but it did and, and it was incredibly difficult pushing this cow's head back through and you know those sorts of experiences you can easily turn around and be like how on earth did I get here? This is just in that case I ended up covered in the cow's blood because they're all dehorned, they're all de polled cattle. But I don't know how it wiggled its head through. But in the end the solution was to kind of sort of just flatten out the pole of the cattle to just change because it's fibrous the horn of the cow. And somehow. And the cow was sort of quite furious at me because I was kind of sort of flattening out its horn so I could just wiggle its head through and it actually sort of pushed against the gate and it just had enough perch just pushing me up again. This half ton bale it was, you know, you could hear your ribs like. But eventually the cow seemed to just figure out I was trying to help it and then wiggled its head back through itself. Oh, here we go. Brilliant. But anyway, you know, and it said those periods of time when you've been exposed to these really, really impactful events when you could be like, do you know what, why, why am I in this situation? And I've really kind of sort of been disciplined to not go that way. There's no solution there, there's no recourse. What's the use in it? I think that's a very good indication of whether you're traumatized by something further, is how much you can just center yourself back to what's important. And you know, to a great extent, people I served alongside, they're remarkable people. They've all passed the same course I did. You know, they're volunteers, they're very duty led, you know and you know, I'd expect them to not be so susceptible to trauma. Although the exposure is massive. Right. You do turn up at events and see a lot of trauma. You know, it's like in certain circumstances it can be overwhelming, like plane crashes, but you quickly move on and you recourse and you know, in some of the most recent work I'm doing with experts say that's right, you know, your physiology is actually more powerful you'd ever believe in ensuring that your, yourself, your body makes it through.
- [217:18]
Sean Ryan
And this led into what you're doing now today.
- [217:21]
John Truitt
Yeah, so I mean I've got lots of interesting experiences. Is mostly funny about how I. So I left the military very quickly. We do have a certain way of going and I left in three months, which is not necessarily what. But essentially I separated from the children to my mum, which was all done without lawyers. It was all done very well in that, you know, the whole thing is very uncertain for both. It costs a lot of money to do it to try and find individual decision making positions. But essentially we never had to resort to a contest. We never had to use legal people which cost a lot of money, money we did not have. And so we used the money to kind of shore up everyone's existence. And the biggest thing was ensure that people didn't leave that with a ton of regret they weren't going to come back from. So that's one of the reasons I kind of left the military quite quickly. I'd come to the end of my career, contractors on extension. Essentially. I knew I wasn't going to be operational anymore, so I chose to move on. Before I went, I sat down with the psychiatric nurse. It's no harm to check inside. Right. I thought, you know, I know, you know, in the course of my career, I know the things that have challenged me, plane crashes, being in situations where you had no control whatsoever. Right. And those are the things that I've remarked upon and I've largely dealt with them. I had my change in behavior around 2014, so I'm not. But it was a good thing to do to sit down and do the seven hour course. The other two reasons I did that is to reassure the people I've been working with for so long that when I was going I was in a fairly stable state. Because obviously people worry about you, not me personally, but generally, you know, they worry about. You're just about to go into a sea of change, really fast moving change and people don't realize the challenges that are presented personally, the sleepless nights you'll have and that can quickly revert you back into something somebody that's concerning. Right. Your behavior is testing, whatever. So I did it to reassure people and I did it it. So when I go and sit in front of these same people, I promise to be at the airport within three hours if they needed me to. I was perfectly fine. Right. And I, yeah, I'm going to say, look, you're never going to get to see it. But I've done that file. I am not that stereotype. I've not got PTSD and I'm not also not making that up because you'll also think I'm just saying that. No, I absolutely haven't. I've just checked. I'm good. Just need to work out work which is going to be messy. I get. So I did that and then I left. And in the course of doing that I thought I could set. It was at the back end of COVID and obviously everyone had been sort of Confined to their houses and moving out a lot less. So I made an assessment that everyone would want to train outside in the parks. And this was still in the course of me leaving in. So I set up three areas that I could sort of train people. And the assessment couldn't have been more wrong. People have been confined to their houses, tested mentally to a severe degree, and the last thing they wanted to do was go and do physical training in parks. So okay, I was wrong. I detected I was wrong. But when I was, I was running free areas, I was getting up at like 5 o' clock in the morning and doing these physical training sessions for what should have been 20 in a class. And it was like ones and twos if anyone turned up at all. And so I was having a ferocious schedule of honoring my things. I didn't have any money to bring on further instructors. The end game with that was like to set up something that was fairly stable that I could get local management to overlook so I could then quickly move on. And again, this is part of the naivety of kind of, you know, I've got no pedigree in business, I don't understand how marketing works. And so I've kind of sort of bumped off all the things. But quite hilariously I was messing around doing. I trained calisthenics quite a bit, or at least in a very amateurish way, right. And something called plants that you do. And I sort of binding my time waiting for these people to turn up that probably wouldn't anyway. And I saw like a beam in a car park park. So I was like, I'll just try planche on that if that was a really good idea. And the beam wasn't fixed, right. So it tipped forward. As it tipped forward, I had to quickly kick my legs through. And as I did the old crisp packet sheet white, I was with a friend actually who's coming to help me out. I know I broke my arm and I was waiting to have a medical discharge, right. And I desperate to move on. And so I was like in the way I was thinking at the time based in the mind that I was in the middle of a separation, I was leaving the army. So probably my decision making probably looked very, very different from what you would naturally be doing if you're sitting around the kitchen table after dinner and going, you know, it's like go on holiday. So when I broke my arm, my first thought is I can't get plaster because then they won't give me a medical discharge because they'll see that I'M injured and I suspect militaries won't let you go until you're absolutely fully fit. So I decided not to have a cast. I was fairly happy, it was stable and I've got pictures on my phone of what this looked like. And it was like a spiral fracture of the outer layer of the arm. And at this point I was sleeping on a camp cock, the metal frame camp cot. Right. So again, you know, I was implored to go and get a plaster on it, you know, so now. So what's the point? It's stable. You can see it's stable, right. You know, it'll heal quick enough. It was really disgusting color. And I was doing fitness training sessions and I think it was like the next day I was like throwing up in bushes because every time it sort of climbs. Clacked again, obviously I have this sort of immediate shock response, like for up in a bush. Utterly mad. Right. If you look back on it, it's like, what did they think, the people that I was taking for fitness? So anyway, I've sort of. In the end, I. I found something on the Internet. You know, the buckets, gravity that pushed their ice water into. I bought one of those and that acted as a really, really good cast. So I used to sort of. Of obviously going around with my bucket. So anyway, I turn up to do my final discharge stuff and you go around and they say, where's this jacket? You give back the jacket and all that sort of stuff. The last thing is this medical discharge and I walk into the medical unit and who are all amazingly lovely people, brilliant people as well, you know, it's all. But no. And I've said, oh, coming from a discharge. And the lady at the desk is like that, oh, no. They go on. On the phone since COVID So I'd gone to these extreme limits to not have a cast on my. On my arm in order to be present. A discharge that I never needed to be present for. So there was plenty of those sorts of experience that it would just pick you pick yourself up, up and find the next problem. Don't try and find it, you'll trip over it anyway and. But that all healed nicely. I was absolutely right, you know, actually there was no reason for a cast. Once I'd worked out that thing, it was brilliant, you know, it was just like, funny. But if you just picture sleeping on a camp cot with its metal frame, waking up in the night, you've rolled onto it and it's extraordinarily painful. So that was the immediate Process of sort of, of breaking free as such. And then I did some work as a sort of consultant but it's really, really low pay, right. And you know, I've got sort of fairly. It was never going to be enough and also it wasn't the right type of work but it was in performance. Then I got offered a job as a CPO in a fully employed role and it was extremely well placed. It was actually working in a pretty decent rotation. It came with full medical package. It's working for someone who did a huge amount of travel. So the days you were on, you know, very, very, very long days, like 18, 20 hour days but essentially the atmosphere was not good. I just wasn't in tune with it and I knew I wasn't in tune with it. And then I got offered a job by a company, Satellite Connectivity and I worked for them for a period of time and they wanted to break into new markets and they're assessing Ukraine for its, you know, its needs for energy, resilience, that sort of stuff. So building up connectivity. So I went through a period of that and actually it was quite enjoyable. I was in and out Ukraine, Ukraine quite a lot and very visibly connected with the business. But actually, you know, you could see beyond the valuable work I got done, which was the forward led work of that. But it was nothing to do with business, right. And when it comes to the business piece, it was all too uncertain. And through that period that's when the kind of the reflection came on me as like, hang on a minute, you know, in these employed roles people are having to justify my existence, existence and when they can justify the existence, it's all for these exceptional move into a new market. It's not for the normal everyday functioning of the business and that's where people sit comfortably. If you try and move into the new market with a business, it happens very rarely. People will usually test it and then come back. So I think the employment opportunities that people from special forces background need to be really, really carefully looked at because it's not about getting support, it's not getting people to bring into companies and employed having felt that they want to give you a chance because you're on a ticking clock. Actually the skills that you have are very, very effective. I've proved that, that I'm very, very supportive person and I love doing it. I love seeing something, I sort of call myself a very effective minion, you know, so I get involved in people where things are going on and I'm very, very happy to do it. Just because of time, just because I believe in it. I've got lots of examples coming up, but essentially if it's an employed role, people are struggling to explain what your role is in certain sectors and in the security sector from my brief interluding there. And I do draw a distinction between the US market and the UK market. Very, very, very different. You know, the US market has got a massive area where people from ex military backgrounds and it's especially pronounced in SF backgrounds, actually military, slightly better, whereas you don't have that in the uk. So I bumped through, I got made redundant in May last year and I was expecting contract work to come in in the background. I've been trained as a speaker, so that's led to sort of two things. One, I did a, you know, define it as professional speaking, although that sounds sort of quite sort of sort of high up there. But it's speaking where you've studied it for a course. And I did a course called with the Bespoke Elite Speaking Training. It's an ex professional rugby player called Leon Lloyd who's actually very. He's quite involved in transition veterans. And so from having done that course I thought I would get enough of a program, a speaking event, events to be able to kind of stay positioned, ready to take this contract work and ready to be where the main things I was involved in do break. But actually that's again, it's quite naive, you know, if you think about how I do my speaking and I love doing it, I'm really, really passionate about it. I just did one for the London Fire Brigade, eight different sessions and it was absolutely brilliant. You know, not an easy set of people to talk to as well. It's really great. You know, I like being on my toes sometimes. Right. And it's, it really develops you as well. You have to study what does the audience need. And there's absolutely got to be an element of performance in there, which is where this course came very important. You're working with professional comedians, you're working with people who worked in sort of stage shows in this course. So the course itself was very valuable to do, but it didn't necessarily lead to more work work. And the speaking I do is always in person, you know, it's always going to be specifically impactful. I can do behavioural adaptation, I've got a program for that. You know, I can do any type of speaking and I've proved that, you know, from speaking at cadets dinners, which I absolutely love, through to speaking to defence primes. And actually the thing I've probably cherished the most is I did one for a scaffolding company, which is absolutely brilliant. Big scaffolding company in Wales and a roofing company. So it's almost sort of going back to my heart. But they were brilliant and, you know, doing something for the services like London Fire Brigade and sort of getting across those experiences. But again, it's just reassuring people that you, like, sometimes ignore the clamor and the noise. Society has become very noisy and it's got real high expectations and actually concentrate on what you've delivered, because every single time you turn up and you are doing your job to exceptional standards and just focus on that, you know. And some of it, I know it was quite interesting because I asked some people, you know, what do you worry about? They would say, oh, you know, it's the opinion of this or this, you know, has been seen as an instant where it should have been betterly managed. You go, but really, is that your job to worry about that? Actually, there's a person over there who's paid to deal with that. And again, it's all around this sort of slight sort of shouldering of stress and responsibility. It all comes from listening to the noise, right? And I say, say to people, protect and preserve your own perspective, your own perspective. You own that, right? Doesn't matter how hard. You've got to sort of close off the clamor. Sometimes you've got to get into that, you know, in their case, their fire engines, and go and respond to a job. You turn up and you do it every time. And it's remarkable the standards expected of all of these things. So I really enjoyed that bit of work. Work. The other, I'm ambassador to a performance company. So this is a company called Planet K2. This is quite new. So one of the first things I did, I was put in touch with a guy called Keith Hatter and goodness knows what I sounded like when I had my first conversation with him, because I was still speaking in a language that people really didn't understand. You know, I was struggling to explain my skills and in sort of words where they're just like, well, okay, but so they slightly after that, you know, Keith Hatter asked me to do they have something called Performance Fest and it's run out of Soho Hotel. And he asked me to be a speaker as a number of four, and the title was Using Data for High Performance. And, you know, I said, I'm not a nominal data expert. I've got a lot of experience with data and everything else. And the other people on the course was a very high up person in IBM for energy, the head of EMEA marketing possibly for Meta, and the chief analyst at Gusto, chief analyst Distribution at Gusto. So it's quite a sort of considerable kind of professional experience there. So it was one of the first sort of speaking events where I sat down, really tried to apply myself and it seemed to go very, very well and it proved I could do it alongside and more latterly and a few years went by and I talked to Keith every so often. He's an extremely experienced person and sometimes just talking to people you get the best bit of advice that they never intended to give. And some of my interactions are very lucky. I've got really great friends when I talk to them. It just sort of reminds you keep on your centre point, things are good, they're held in together. They may not look pretty, pretty but Keith in the end has asked me to come ambassador to planet K2 and there's a different type of performance we're talking about. I've done a couple of speaking events for him and I think they're sort of increasingly looking at hopefully a growing relationship where I'm included in their offers and they do performance as a culture. So they have 21 rules that they stick by. And so it's not immediately something I have something to add to their offer, but I also have to learn their offer and their culture. And they've got two decades of experience of delivering this. So through these types of interactions I've learned a great deal and develop, developed very fast. Right, because if someone asks you to sit on a stage, you take it seriously, you go and learn, you educate, you develop. That's been absolutely fundamental to keeping my progress going. But the speaking is really yet to take shape and I've got a strong suspicion that speaking comes from doing, becoming involved in other very important things. So I hope that in time, but the last thing you want to do is rely on people unnecessarily. It's their pattern of business that allows you the opportunity to join in. You can't immediately sort of turn and say things are getting really, really tough. I really, really need more work. You know, you've got to let them develop at their own pace and it may not necessarily suit you. So I've had other, you know, extraordinary asks. You know, I tend to like to support people and, you know, friends. A friend's father came to me and said a very, very high net worth person was getting threatened. You know, I went and sat for quite A long time with her, looked at the messages they were receiving. Essentially it was down to what do these threats constitute? Are they real or perceived? I said, well, you know, written that in my view it's perceived, but you can never rule out real. But instead of hiring huge arrays of security just because of the possibility of real, you just need to understand how to control the communication, the means of communication, these threats and understand where that is located. And in my view that's a threat that you can report. So it was actually a no money solution and it was worthwhile in terms of, of one, you know, one of the key ones is, you know, reassuring these people so they're not walking around feeling threatened by everything and everyone. But essentially, again, it's taught to me when I look at the solutions to things, they don't fit what people want to say. You know, it's like these days when you say I need a, you know, what should I do about my cctv? We're like, well, get a machine learning program. These two people don't need to be sat here, right? So it's a lot necessary the solutions that other people want to see as well. But I have had sort of interesting interactions. There's a company called Cocoon, excellent digital privacy. I hope that this sort of grows, but who knows where it will, you know, consultancy I think is going to be something I'm going to have to push really, really hard for when I get home. Speaking is definitely not something I can massively rely on, but I absolutely love and I think it will become big. But quite early on and I was looking to get on a course at Imperial College, bearing on my last time I did proper study. I do have a certificate in International Relationships international security, so PG7 as such qualification fell short of a Master's, but otherwise it's A levels and you know, I went to Imperial College to try and understand whether there was a course in coding I could do or some element around sort of cyber or, or that side of things. They did in the end offer me a place on a Master's in resilience and Security. But on our walk around a guy called Professor Deep Channer, who's the head of the Institute of Security Science and Technology at the Imperial College. So really, really significant. Imperial College is an incredible institution. In the walk round of the Innovation Hub I was introduced, introduced to a guy called Richard Statham and he eight years ago met, I don't know how long he'd known Vincent Tellenbach, who's an engineer before, but Vincent Tellenbach had been writing waveforms and he did it in cooperation coordination with John Hopkins and Kennedy Krieger Institute, John Hopkins University. So medical grade waveforms, when they were written to deal with pediatrics with neurological conditions, very, very challenging ones and in some cases, sort of nothing to lose type stuff to sort of affect neurology. So Richard Statham started a company called what's now called NMES Group, so neuromuscular electrostimulation group. And over the next eight years, through a process of engineering. So none of this is brand new in terms of it's a trusted technology, it's an EMS background, but they've found a way of making a superconductive membrane that can be rendered into cloves and therefore the platforms you can put it in are endless. And these are trusted technologies that have already been used, same as tens, although TENS is just for pain reduction.
- [240:13]
Sean Ryan
Is that what you have here?
- [240:15]
John Truitt
Yes.
- [240:15]
Sean Ryan
Let's see it.
- [240:16]
John Truitt
This one's the suit. You can make it into bands or anything you want. I mean, the key thing and the really, really clever thing that's happened here is its innovative applications of trusted technologies. These technologies are very, very safe, but they can be made to be very effective and quite powerful. And essentially there's a membrane in here. This is brand new and it just got arrived from Taiwan. And this is a next generation suit. I've got my generation one suit down here that I used this morning and this membrane is even more effective than that one. So you've got the membrane, you've got the waveforms that are medically grade authored and that's really, really important. You know, it's all about the person that creates these waveforms that signal into your motor neurone points. Then you've got something called a stimulus which is a gateway. It just clicks on and you press that button and it connects to an app on my phone. There's banks of programs of waveforms in my phone, they're all different and they all communicate into that motor neurone point in the neuromuscular junction and they get the action potential in the muscle to contract. So it's 100% recruitment of the muscle, but a key point in this. And again, when Richard said, why don't you come in for a demonstration? I said immediately, yes, because they knew my provenance as a SAS trooper, clearly they turned it all up to about 70 and had me running through like samurai things. And I think one of them, the sort of gaming side of things, I was sort of making my way to a nuclear core and it's just getting hit and hit further and further and essentially then you've got outward looking sensors that can simulate gunshot so it can contract the muscles. Wow. So it's really cool, right? It's like the key point is your neuromuscular junction.
- [242:13]
Sean Ryan
So what is this doing?
- [242:15]
John Truitt
So this is affecting sending a signal into your neuromuscular junction in any different muscle group. And if you look, you know, in, in the suit I was wearing this morning, there was no. So lower back panel, whereas in this there's a lower back panel. Now, I've only got three stims in me, I should have four. I usually use four because I picked up the heart rate, one that I don't use instead of the fourth. And I left a little bit chaotically from the uk. But essentially, you know, you just adapt your stimming to the muscle groups that you want to have an effect over that and you can put as many on as you like. So I generally they use 4, the stims can go up, 6, 8, whatever. But this suit, and it's absolutely unique, right? There is nothing in the world. Other suits have got straps on, they're wireless. Sorry. They've got wires, they've got program stations. Generally gel pads are used to communicate the waveform. There's three different membranes already tested that are even more stretchy and conductive. So when you take this to a racing driver and say, look, you know, we can give a beneficial waveform into your physiology that not only conditions you to be stronger, fit faster in your performance, but we can actually generate beneficial enhancements in your overall physiology. And I'll come into some of the. I'll come into some of the case studies you know, I've been involved in. But the art is not to say that really, really expensive racing suit you've got. Well, you got to wear that underneath. No, it's to engineer it into that suit. And that's what's quite incredible. So the adaptability of this platform and the applicability to all of the different. So the segments would be specialist professions. And I define specialist fascist professions by any profession that challenges human biology, right? And the astronauts are the epitome of it. The special forces community is a really interesting set of people that have got explosive blasts going on everything. But the astronauts go into an atmosphere with no gravity. So immediately it's compromising your ability to regenerate all of your physiological functions, your neuroendocrine functions, like your brain, healthy is immediately affected neurology across your body and your System is you're getting interference from radiation at a cellular level and you're in a confined environment where you can't move properly. It's an absolute. Now, it's well known in space travel, but there's so many other ones. You know, you look at fire, fire brigade, they're using breathing apparatus, that's changing you, you're overheating a lot of the time. Lots and lots of exposure to toxicology. It's very, very demanding. You have to use the stairs and carry, you know, so there's all of those performance related things that challenge human biology over time. These are what leading to the behavioral changes, they're leading to predispications to certain diseases later on in life and neurological conditions. Right. And so that's specialist professions. You've got what we call recreational fitness and sport. So elite sport is in specialist professions, right. So it's a real key definition to have rugby players, boxers, NFL players are quite interested.
- [245:51]
Sean Ryan
So high performance type occupation, high performance.
- [245:53]
John Truitt
You'Re getting paid, right? Totally different approach. It's not healthy. You know, you're trying to protect health, you're trying to condition. Whereas in recreational sports and fitness a lot of it might be aesthetics but essentially it's underpinning health. So recreational sports and fitness, you know, I can see this belonging to health clubs on subscriptions and we've been talked to quite a few already. These are sorts of things that will enhance. Gaming is a really, really interesting one, right. You know, like FIFA 24, I, I name it making gaming healthy. So you're a teenager and you're playing your FIFA 24 and I'm a big advocate of gaming. Gaming's brilliant, right? It improves security. It's like they've found the beneficial mental aspects to gaming. Like Zelda is a lost world. You know, the children can get lost in this world and it's actually not that bad for them. Now the aspects around social media are totally different from what gaming is. Gaming communities are pretty decent communities to be involved in. But you imagine if you're playing FIFA 24, the soccer game, someone sort of comes in, tackles you from the right and you get a beneficial stimulus into your quad and my neuro and you're actually generating a physiological function that's benefiting interesting your brain health. Right. So and I'll go into the mechanics of how this works in a minute and the key aspect of neuromuscular junctions in a minute. But essentially if you think that you can make sleeves, you can make bands, really, really cheap bands, you can adapt it to all the different markets. And the last one is medical therapeutic. And this is. I've got great friends who've got Parkinson's and I always have wondered what led to these neurological conditions. At some point there was inflammation caused by stress or caused by some environmental factor you're exposed to. Genetic preconditions are different. I mean, let's face it, they're only percentage points subjective. Whether that was ever, you know, people who end up with cancer, a lot of it is down to pure bad luck. But you can adjust the probabilities of your exposure but doesn't precondition you not to get it. This is really fascinating in biology because I think if you look at pharmaceuticals, they cannot. You know, I believe in the power of pharmaceuticals and what they're doing. And in interesting. A lot of the new drugs are communicating into your own systems to say go and tell the T cells to do this. You know, the car T therapies, you know, get that receptor to go and enhance that, inhibit that, express that rather than interfering in the way they have done before. But what I've always remarked about pharmaceuticals is actually because we're individualized in our whole physiology and biology, we can never be sure what that that drug is doing to you. You can't be sure. You're basically looking at what comes out on a conscious side. There are some tests probably you can do. Whereas if you look at your own physiology and see where that can be empowered and you use applied. There's a family of technologies and I've not come across a lot that apply in a non invasive way. Essentially it's like cleaning a spot spark plug, it's like enhancing, putting better fuel in. And what they're doing is in this particular technology, it's enhancing your motor neurone points. It is at a local level contracting the muscle. You will see if you want 20% better cross sectional muscle mass, you'll get that. You know, and I'll remark on it is big muscles don't mean strong muscles. They certainly don't mean healthy muscles. What healthy muscles are is the interaction between muscle, your neuron point and the motor point. And this is what is absolutely critical to your nervous system and the neuronal pathways that are created. And I've always thought, and again it's a confusing concept for me. I've sat down with a piece of paper and gone go back to the work I do with the breathing physiology. It's probably the last aspect I'll come onto is how do you get people to understand that the power of your conscious mind is in no way anywhere near the power of your physiology itself and your brain and your brain stem, because it takes over and it's trying to protect you. You're built for survival, right? So when you have a shock, you're actually better off handing control back to your kind of sort of unconscious. Through human evolutionary biology, it's become highly, highly tuned and your brain is locked up in a dark cavern and it's receiving senses and signals that build up neuronal pathways and patterns that become preferential. Right. So when you looking at what's important, when you get under stress, so what is the fractions? How would you put this in figures? Your conscious mind, everything that we spend so much time concentrating on, affirmations, whatever, you know, and your unconscious area that is driving your physiology and ensuring it remains harmonious. Right. And the figures might as well not worth be quoting, apart from the size of them, because I came across it quite recently in a, in a news article and it gave, gave the answer, right. Is the thought that the level of information you can process per Second consciously is 10 bits per second. I've seen the highest level of estimation, of processing thought consciously. That ability to pick up that, you know, I want to do that, it's become important, is 40 to 50 bits per second. The level of sensing of information that is going into your brain, that is getting processed and either being flagged up as priority or not at all is 100 million bits per second.
- [252:03]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [252:03]
John Truitt
And to describe what that I know, you know, I've wondered about it and I've gone, how would you describe this to people? How you know, by doing the wrong breathing technique, you are undermining your physiology. And if it's so long as it's zeroed and it's functioning properly, you're far better off handing control to that. Right. And to describe what that means, you know, that I don't know, it's an air conditioner, isn't it? Has been going on all along. I've taken that in. Every different texture and every pattern in this room I've taken in. My brain has been processing information on a subconscious level in a massive volume. But consciously I've been doing an umpteenth amount. I thought in visual terms, what does this look like? Is this the surface ocean via the volume of it? I mean it's an absolutely extraordinary refraction to look, look at. Yeah, absolutely extraordinary. And this is where I've become absolutely sort of firmly planted in non invasive technologies and technologies aren't involved in this is really two. I'm a data subject for one and highly involved in this one is because I believe they can be used very effectively.
- [253:16]
Sean Ryan
So what, what does it do? What does the suit do?
- [253:20]
John Truitt
So if you put the suit on, you know and again it depends what you want to do with it. So are you training for, you know, performance related thing the suit. You, you put the stims onto the necessary muscle point. Put the suit on. As I say this is brand new sent over from Taiwan by a company called maclot who are leading investors in EMS technology and making conductive membranes. The company has had a relationship. Sit with them very, very whole on. Yeah. And they have, you know they're really. They're quite remarkable people actually.
- [253:56]
Sean Ryan
You isolate muscles.
- [253:59]
John Truitt
Yeah. So in each which is each point in your muscle. So say for instance that's your chest. So you put a stim on there, turn it on, there's the other stim and connect it, turn both on, connect it through and it goes into your motor neurone points of that muscle mouse and communicates a signal. It looks like a signal all the way through the membrane that releases the action potential down the muscle fiber. The bits that I'm not interested in stronger fit faster. So when I had my demonstration I was immediately I conscious. That neurological deficit that is there, I'm never complacent about. I don't know what my outcome is at the moment. I've got a lot to be thankful for. But that doesn't mean it's good in the future. I know people with like neurological conditions that are very, very complicated for the people around them. Right. I'm not complacent about this. Doesn't mean that I believe that the outcome. So when I put this suit on I was like this is a key like driver of your physiology or neuromuscular junction are the most powerful element I know of that can drive brain derived neurotrophic factors. There's another family called glial cell lined neurotrophic factors. There's one I've even just learned about that was only found in 2010 I think called cerebral dopaminergic neurotrophic factors. And all of these factors are responsible for removing proteins and macrophage in your brain. Brain.
- [255:37]
Sean Ryan
Okay.
- [255:37]
John Truitt
So what happens is when that stimulus goes off your neuromuscular junction prompts your muscles to release these factors into your blood and obviously through your blood brain barrier. That's the individualized bit that lets the pharmaceutical in or not. And we have very individualized Biology, including our blood brain barriers, it can be very fussy. So the original principle I'm looking at, all of this technology is being able to press on the factors within your own system.
- [256:10]
Sean Ryan
Okay.
- [256:10]
John Truitt
Your body will work out the harmony they need to happen, but whatever's gonna be happening is gonna be beneficial. Now we can't say to what extent we'll be successful in treating a condition, but say for instance, stroke. Stroke is a brilliant example of how incredibly resilient human beings beings are, can have people with critical strokes. So Ellie's stepfather had a very bad stroke, had to learn to write again, had to learn to read again. Now lives a happy life and all that he has is a slight deficit movement down his right hand side. That's an incredible example of what your body comes back from. And someone approached the company and the neurologist, physiotherapist at the time, she's currently stepped away from the company and studying Extreme Med, which is again very exciting area. Worked with the engineer Vincent Tellenbach, who's the original author of the medical grade waveforms, and they were approached by someone who had a very, very bad stroke and had dropped foot. So drop foot is when you don't get clearance off the floor very well. And of course the key risk is not, not necessarily anything other than fault. So what follows not being able to clear things off the foot is you have really bad falls and you injure yourself. So the, the neuron point that fires the foot and I'll show you the video on my phone of this actually happening in purpose. So the company put motion detecting sensors around the gate and pressure sensors to analyze the gate and then worked out out the timing on which to fire the neuron using a stim and a band of membrane. No one quite knew what would happen and it came back to a 90% reaction. And that's purely because the signal reminded the peripheral nervous system and rebuilt the neuronal pathway and the central nervous system. Say this must happen and it's happening now. And incredibly, only took a few weeks of using that stimulus. A very simple thing, it's just sort of signaling in saying far now.
- [258:23]
Sean Ryan
Interesting.
- [258:24]
John Truitt
Yeah. So it works both ways. There isn't like a link between your brain, your body, your endocrine function and your nervous system. And it works in unison and harmony. Right. And what's more, they're safe because when you're pressing from the outside, everything's harmonizing on orange side. If your blood pressure has to change, we'll come on to breathing physiology in a minute. But remember the tacho tsubercardiomyopathy. Slight change in the integrity of the heart, changes elements of your blood pressure, changes all sorts of things, heart rate variables, changes, all sorts of factors that have to remain in harmony within your physiology for things to remain stable and set. It's absolutely in tune with one another. And when something changes, like there's a factor that comes in, it rebalances really, really effectively and really well. And when those factors are going and going up into your brain and clearing out synucline proteins and beta amyloid. So beta amyloid being Alzheimer's, synucline being Parkinson's. I'm not sitting here and saying this is solution to Parkinson's, right? But I do know putting deep implants into the brain, whilst it's absolutely exceptionally brilliant work, it's still like playing the piano with a mallet, right? You're introducing a foreign body into it. When you have to do that, you must. But my key question is how much more could we be doing a lot, lot earlier? 20 years usually is the lead time. There's a ton of people out there that exhibiting operator syndrome type symptoms that have neurological elements to what they're doing. And what would happen if we can boost their physiological functions not only whilst they're serving, but you encourage it. And to put this in words, I was getting on a train to London and I bumped into someone I knew well because he was quite a famous rugby player, but he didn't know me. I was just himself from a local club. And I didn't say hello to him because I just was like, he gets it all the time. But then I saw the train was delayed and I was walking past the window and saw him sitting down. I said, okay, well, being stupid, let's at least go and say good morning. And I got chatting to him and he started talking about his sister. His sister had a syndrome called Gwillom Barry Syndrome. It's where no one really knows what kicks it off, but the immune system starts kind of interfering with the peripheral nervous system and it starts resulting in a breakdown in motor control. This syndrome can end up in locked in syndrome, full paralysis, Right. At its worst, sometimes it reverses itself and sometimes it ends with lasting consequences. Deficits in motor. It's usually treated because it's essentially an autoimmune system, first by blood transfusion. But as it happened, his sister was pretty much immobile on the sofa and losing mobility fast. She's presenting to her neurological consultant in a wheelchair. And that was on about September 23rd. I heard of it and phoned Mmes the company and said, hey, could we provide some products to this? It happened. There were a load of prototypes lying about on the neurologist physiotherapist floor. So I said, can you send them over to me? I can drive around this person's house, we can give her a quick coaching course in the simplicity of using this, which is put it on, press the button, trust in it and you can do an assessment on where she sits. And, you know, I drove around the house, took round, so took round to the property prototypes, took round, download the app and explained exactly how the technology works. It communicates waveforms into your motor neuroend points. It cannot do any harm, the risks are very well defined and it can only do benefit then Vicki. So Dr. Victoria Sparkson, neurologist, physiotherapist at the time, did a connected on signal and did a full assessment of her and then the prognosis was really cool, quite sort of really, you know, it's like the. Her own neurological consultant was saying, this is really, really concerning. And we left her to it, said, look, you know, you can contact us anytime but get on with it. And she started using it and within a week she get up off the sofa unassisted. Wow. And within two weeks she was sending videos of her walking to the pub with her family. I think significantly, in four weeks, her neurological consultant and her neurophysio team signed her off to drive and go back to work. Now, roughly at the time when we introduced the technology to try and help, she had a second blood transfusion. The first blood transfusion hadn't worked for whatever reasons, whatever. It was a combination of the blood transfusion and the helpful beneficial stimulation, us acting as a catalyst or a solution, we're not sure. Right. Her neurological consultant and your physio was off to meet us. They've described their recovery, which was a month, so a month to get signed off, back to work. Wow, she's an incredible woman.
- [263:43]
Sean Ryan
How often did she have to.
- [263:44]
John Truitt
How long did she have to, you know, so this lady is. And this is an important point as well, so I think she was using it every day and just went for it. Right. And every day for how long? We gave her bands and, you know, for a month and she kept on using it. And she describes herself as back to 95.
- [264:01]
Sean Ryan
What I'm asking is how many, how long does she work? Does she wear it all day? Does she wear it for an hour in the morning?
- [264:07]
John Truitt
I'd have to explore that. I think she Wore it for hours at the time, like one hour at a time. When she was immobile on the sofa, she really had nothing else to do. And so constantly, constantly waking it all back up, reminding me, how long do you wear for? So it interchanges the beauty of technology at work with you. Right. So it's just going to do whatever you do. We have experts. So Owen Laces is the program development expert. He's a leading coach in the Iris Sports Institute. Quite a famous sports performance, well, performance expert. He's got his own sort of, sort of studies and casework. So he formats, formulates the program development. So you can just do programs. So I've got 80 minute programs, 35 minute programs, all different waveforms. This morning I was on Capillariz because it's quite nice massaging. I didn't want to absolutely wear myself out for this. So I'll come on to how I've sort of lined up for this as well because this is part, a very, very important part is. So it really kind of sort of just works with you. And interestingly I'm testing hypothesis in my head because your body only regenerates and repairs when you're asleep. So is there a waveform we can write where you just wear a set of pajamas and just buzzes away very, very nicely for you? Because if it's generating beneficial factors, you know, is there a further repair element? I have to talk to Vincent. You know, I'm not a biologist.
- [265:29]
Sean Ryan
Very interesting.
- [265:30]
John Truitt
I'm just quite perceptive and I've done all this by reading books.
- [265:34]
Sean Ryan
What have you noticed?
- [265:36]
John Truitt
So I mean I've. And I don't use it all the time. I have weeks off without using it and then I use it for concentrated period. And I've used it in the days I've arrived since now Nashville, because I don't want to, I don't want to tune out of the weariness of travel. I've also tested it very, very hard because I'm very, very interested. And as I say, I'm like this really the way I am valuable is by supporting other people's casework. And I'm a good minion to use. I've got an understandable about history that comes with some exposure. Well, irrefutable exposure and expected challenges. And this is why the people I'm coming on to are coming come to. So the, the day is quite precious. But I've gone out myself. You know, I'll go running in it and I just tune it in. And a lot of time I just Leave it off. You know, this suit has just arrived from Taiwan, as I've said, made handmade by maclot's team. And you know they, they're an incredible team. They're experts in conducting membranes and they've made this beautifully. One, this is an next generation up from one. So I'm super excited to turn it on. I reckon this is like a bit of a sewing machine. You imagine if this, if you made this all informed and you say gave it to people exposed to certain environmental factors that are going to challenge them. You just have beneficial stimulus as keying off outward looking sensors. You imagine the benefit of training simulation proximity were to a blast and you get a contract in. You know the applications are really very, very broad if you think about them. They're applicable to all human beings, but particularly ones who are immobile. So if you've got people who are mobile and waiting for an operation, you need to drop their weight, you need to do whatever. Okay, what's the way form for that? I'm not saying this technology is a panacea but you start combining these families of technologies up, they start becoming in unison quite powerful. And the casework we've got and I can go into lots. There's a NASCAR racing driver who's still racing because of the use of the technology.
- [267:43]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [267:44]
John Truitt
And she is offered to do a like she, she's done like a run of a recording of her particular case. You know, there's lots and lots of casework.
- [267:52]
Sean Ryan
Now what's the name of the company?
- [267:54]
John Truitt
So MMES Group AB is this company now they're a Swedish company by heart but they're kind of from mixed in everywhere. Vincent Tellenbach is an amazing engineer. Incredible. He's got 30 years, just under 30 years experience writing these waveforms and works incredibly closely with Imperial College. So these waveforms alongside other types of signaling because your body's all told electric. Right. And so these waveforms, if you pick the right ones, you can initiate some really, really clever changes. How powerful they'll be are actually up to your individualised biology. It's guesswork from the outside, but it's going to be beneficial. My original hypothesis, and it probably starts with the fact that I've got close friends with Parkinson's and you see conditions that they face on bad days, days when the weather's not good and somehow finding something that can happen before you have to resort to the invasive procedures is only going to be good and it has to be, you know, for me as technology has to be accessible in order to be accessible. It has to be affordable and it needs to be made available to those that will benefit from it. Talk about this technology. This will be quite expensive, but it's the preserve of specialists and people who want to spend a lot of money on their sports records, spatial fitness.
- [269:19]
Sean Ryan
How much does one of those cost?
- [269:21]
John Truitt
Well, it's previously on the market and you remember that you've got this that can actually be made for. You've upscale the production of this. This actually can be made extremely cheaply. But the overall product involves an app, involves potentially a subscription. It depends what you're asking for. Is it a bank of programs or expertly written. But when it comes down to providing it for medical use case or therapeutic cases, it can be made to be really cheap. Now once you get into the scaling up of this, you can make accessories, the box of accessories I've used and I'll show you some videos afterwards of some of the stuff we've took into Ukraine to help with the war injured there. And they're just simple pads, they're not unique to the company. There's only a few companies that do do it, but I've got an app on my phone, they've got back banks of programs. So is it a licensing fee for some customers? You know, the good thing about the product is it's built up over, you know, you look at the, the number of touch points, right. If you just need the membrane because you want to do an incredible line in sports, but it's a little bit more expensive, an elite running range. Just need the membrane. Yeah, put it in your own, you know. And you know, I have not yet come, come across a garment that has an active technology in it. There's lots that inform, you know, I've done biofeedback assessments now with various bits that get pinned onto you. I have not yet come across a viable garment that has an active technology in it that can act on you, you know. So I think this is very much the start of looking at these non invasive technologies all of which, which risks can be defined. They're really quite, they're very safe and they're born out of medical markets with the EMS family tens now actually they shouldn't be like put under the same sort of discretions under sort of FDA certification as other things because they are enacting on your own biology and physiology. And I noted in one of the previous podcasts I think is an executive order or something about make your own mind up, you know, it's about medical things that people can opt For I might be getting this slightly wrong but you know, it's people's own choice to get involved with certain technologies. Now if you've got Will and Barry syndrome, got a neurological condition where you think, you know what, there's nothing to lose in getting on with this. Go ahead with it, go ahead with it. Because it's non invasive and the risk can be very, very well defined, you know and if it does, does small amounts of good, so be it.
- [272:05]
Sean Ryan
Yeah.
- [272:05]
John Truitt
But in the cases we've used and we can see it actually is quite powerful and especially in combination with other things as well.
- [272:14]
Sean Ryan
Very interesting.
- [272:15]
John Truitt
Yeah. And it's that key thing. Right.
- [272:17]
Sean Ryan
So how do people find it?
- [272:19]
John Truitt
So at the moment the, the gen one that I've got here, we've taken that off and we're consolidating that and we're making it as a preserve to support war injured. At the moment the garment itself is nowhere near as good as this one. So I think at the moment the strategy will be to work business to business and work with special specific.
- [272:42]
Sean Ryan
Okay, so this would go to. This would go. An individual cannot purchase us. This would go to.
- [272:50]
John Truitt
Not right now. They could have done the older one but actually we're in a much, much better, better spot. So this company, I've been, you know, I've been involved in the company on paper for three years. Absolutely loved it. Right. You know, at the end of the day I really, really believe in this human performance. Health and technology is something I would be a pleasure to be involved in it for the next 10, 20 years. Right. It could be that thing, you know, it comes with a risk. These sorts of companies do sell through but in this particular case I've witnessed what they're prepared to do over the last eight years, years and all of the finance has gone back into development of the product and they're actually in a really, really prime position to enact this on certain markets. And the more difficult markets like specialist professions and medical therapeutic, they're going to take more time. You need certifications for medical therapeutic to use it to its sort of more heightened abilities. Principles of. It couldn't be more simple. As we've talked about, it's a. Acting on your innovative muscle and it's promoting physiological harmony as well as helping you train and be strong or whatever you want to do. Create lean muscle mass, lose, improve cardio, respiratory, whatever it is. There's a program that can be formed with waveform where that can play a part.
- [274:06]
Sean Ryan
So is there any for somebody that wants to Use this? How would they get their hands on one?
- [274:13]
John Truitt
So I think that comes quite quickly. Hopefully in the next few months the company is in a position where it can scale up. A new set of these have been made for trials and testing certain sort of people. At the moment we're talking to a company about potentially an agreement where, you know, this would be made available to their customers. Because what you're looking at is the first instance, I mean integration groove technology being part of a garment, which is quite an exciting thing. And you can see where this can sort of really be very, very effective.
- [274:47]
Sean Ryan
Very interesting.
- [274:48]
John Truitt
You know, when it comes to sports, recreational fitness, you can sell it to individuals, but actually it's probably better bun through professional sports and health clubs, you know, first as a subscription model, whatever. Then there'll be some instruction. You know, you don't need instruction, you can just put this on and use it. And the programs are set with protocols in it which ensure that you can't really mess it up. Although guess what, your body does a really good job of protecting itself anyway. So if you choose to kind of sort of choose to sort of really sort of go offline with it, you can't really do it because your body will say no, no, I don't really like that. But you know, some education and some built in protocols are necessary in any technology, especially when you can never compensate for, you know, the random choices that people can make. But essentially the risks are rhabdomyolysis. And I've looked in all of these different cases and you can give it from training so you can do it from negative risk. It's not very often at all. It's certainly in my view, not made more likely because of the use of technology. You but it's a declared use. So if you do incredibly hard negative reps in crossfit movements, for instance, you can overwork your muscles. So all of those protocols are built into the programs already introductory use. But that's actually, you know, for programs like this that once, you know, and this is what we hope to do is transform it into a number of markets. But really the true value is in the medical and therapeutic world. And that is going to be a longer piece of work. But it's already been happening already. Vincent Tellenbach is the incredible person really behind the design and engineering of all of this. The company has now taken it on to make it something that can be made accessible and available to people. Incredible companies like Macalot are able to make garments like this. This, the next one is incredibly well engineered it's got like glymphatic drainage built into textiles and stuff. I mean it's almost unnecessarily over engine. I think it's going to be to kind of, kind of prove a point. This is the generation that could, you know, fly. It's got a more conductive membrane than the one I use and I haven't used this yet. So I'm going to enjoy seeing what that, that feels like and looks like. But again, you know, the key one is technology is useful if it's available to people and in order to do that you have to be an adaptable product that can be made affordable to people in whatever markets you're moving into. And you can have a massively engineered thing because your needs and requirements around a profession. You can have a very, very simple thing that has a membrane that delivers something much less complicated in terms of waveform but it's generating what you need. Yeah, underpinning health man. This is hand in hand. Then with so on a I went down to Snowdonia. There's an ex former colleague is actually from, from the SBS called Gary Bamford and he formed a company called Gerardus and he asked me to come speak to him. The people that were on a walk around Snowdonia and during that walk around I met a gentleman called Dylan Mackay. Now Dylan Mackay is an ex performance expert from New Zealand but at heart he's army technicians officer arms weapons technicians officer EOD disposal and he's become central in breathing physiology and when I met him immediately, you know, when you can tell that someone's really, really interesting and not only really well centered but there's expert knowledge there. And I started talking to him, he said, you know, are you willing to become a data subject for us? And I said well you know, why were you interested? And he said because we know your background but you present very normally and so we wouldn't mind seeing your physiologist, you know, through breathing capnography, which measures the acidosis, the chemical axis levels in your tissues. Through breathing it checks whether you're Hypercapnic, so low CO2 levels so it affects your oxygen uptake or not. So I obviously willingly agreed. Sounds like an amazing opportunity to me. One thing I've learned in this transition process is size up opportunity as in my arm being asked but it makes sense, take it. And it's by having that attitude towards these, I've become involved in these technologies. So I started building up a baseline in technology in understanding of my own breathing physiology. With Dylan Mackay he looks at all my data and goes, you know. And I started then finding out what resonance breathing frequency is. And are you aware of resonance breathing frequency? So resonance breathing frequency is essential, essentially what people are trying to achieve by box breathing.
- [279:52]
Sean Ryan
Okay.
- [279:53]
John Truitt
But it's very individualized to you. So. And that's a point where you can get amplitude in the harmony of your physiological function so you can empower it. So when people are doing these breathing techniques, they're doing quite an inaccurate way of what this capnography will do, which will show you. Mine, for instance, is four and the bracket is 4.5 to six breaths per minute. So that shows you how individualised it is. But it took an expert to look in and say, actually yours is full. But once you get it right, your physiology becomes very, very powerful and recenters itself. So feelings of anxiety dissipate. And the scientist behind all of this is a guy called Dr. Peter Litchfield, who invented this, which is the capnograph. And it's a clever box that again I used this morning and I don't do, you know, I'm basically getting enough sessions to inform Dylan Mackay's work. But also I'm benefiting from all the expert knowledge that is coming back. Essentially it's. You wear a heart rate monitor, you put the nasal cannula in and this clever box here, here measures the acidosis levels and your breathing rates to see what your end tidal CO2 is. And obviously if it's too low, then you will be out of kilter. And this is where some of the behaviors they're very involved with operator syndrome, I think they've been quite involved with. I think it's Dr. Chris Frooze work and they're quite well advanced balanced and breathing physiology. Anyone who uses breathing apparatus, like some divers bar brigade should, this, this should be absolutely baked into their sort of re key process. Yeah. But actually it's very fundamental to a lot of other people as well. So again, I'm working very hard with them and through that process and Dylan Mackay is utterly fascinating. It's almost like my therapy going on to session and that's where we worked out. Right, look at that. Yeah, yeah. So please, there's the nasal canyon, the pulsar that we had and I never realized the complication of each breath processes and you get a graph. So I plug this in and put that little.
- [282:19]
Sean Ryan
Thumb drive.
- [282:20]
John Truitt
Yeah, thumb drive into your laptop. You know, I was doing it this morning in the gym because I did one of Scott Sonnen's regimes in order to prepare Myself, you know, I'm interested in seeing, you know, certain different types of workouts. Prepare yourself in certain ways. And I had quite an interesting experience doing this. But in all of this, I'm measuring my previous physiology and giving Dylan that data. And he's able to see one. He's said, right, you know, your physiology is centered. Right. So you're not traumatized by anything. We know that. That, you know, although you're laden with the normal stresses of life, you're not out of kilter. Right. So that's an important thing to know, because if people are, and I think this originally started a long, long time ago with Dr. Peter Litchfield identifying that dysfunctional breathing behaviors had an association to epilepsy.
- [283:13]
Sean Ryan
Yeah.
- [283:14]
John Truitt
And it's like, so unregulated neurotransmission. So, again, it all has relevance in any of those environmental factors. Explosive blast exposure, stress loads. Absolute direct relevance to all of this. To re zero. It's like, again, that analogy with the sight. Your body physiology is your most powerful aspect of how you remain good and centered, affects all of your behaviors. But essentially, martial artists used to do meditation, and that was their way of studying it and getting this centrality around physiology. Well, now we have a technology and plug it into a laptop. You can see, like, last night, I went on my breathing resonance frequency, which have made amplitude for my physiology. So if I was going to sleep well, I definitely hear it was there. No, I didn't sleep well. I did sleep well. I just didn't sleep very long, which happens. So. But you know that. That in itself is a reassurance. You know, I'm in tune, right? I'm in tune. So ready for this? What becomes even more exciting is, you know, I've just done their biofeedback. They use something called Splendo Health, which is a platform for testing your cardio. Cardio respiratory fitness, but also your cognitive abilities. And so I. I drove down to Dylan's house and we went on the assault. Bite did a series of cognitive tests. Don't take very long. But I was fitted with monitors to measure oxidation in my tissues. So my quad and in my prefrontal cortex, I measured the heart rate variables, measure all sorts of stuff in biofeedback. And I've got a report back. And remembering this is not to prove I'm some sort of superhuman athlete, because I'm not. And, you know, I live life in a very kind of balanced and natural way. I don't make deliberately unhealthy choices. But I think part of life is making realistic propositions to people that can fit around how they need to lead. No one could be in the gym at 4:00 every morning. And if you do, you're probably canceling out relationship you really cared about as well. And there's nothing more annoying. You know, one of the speaking things I do is like high performance, not high maintenance. No one wants to know you've had a nice bath like this morning or if you didn't sleep well, how you won't be able to work effectively. You know, it's like you become awful. And I go on to ice baths. Cold water therapy works, right? Initiates metabolic change. This all stands up. People live in thermal neutral environments too much. But why you need to go out and buy a $400 ice bath. And I implore people not to jump in. Ice baths, you know, it shocks your system. 18 autonomic sets of muscles around your heart. Now if you want to have cold water therapy, best way to do it is one, you have a bath in your house usually, but even in the shower, have a normal shower and then just gently turn the cold water down. And that's why you're not setting your sympathetic nervous system off against your parasympathetic. It's quite a dangerous thing to do because your physiology is trying to take over if you dunk yourself into very cold ice water. Elite athletes do this to do something else with their muscles. Unless you're training for an elite competition, you just want to initiate healthy metabolic change at a cellular level. So all of these sort of lifestyle theories that are pushed and all become almost cult like in their kind of sort of way of commercialization. You must be one of these and this is the result. No, it's a mixture and they don't have to be severe. And some of the advice that's given down at sort of local level, local gym level in small towns is really quite sort of horribly inaccurate. I don't think it's intentional. So these breathing techniques, the first thing to ask in the breathing technique is how do you know if it's in tune with your individualized breathing? You don't know your resonance breathing frequency. These days you can plug yourself into a technology and have an expert look at it over the cloud. And they say, yeah, you're in tune. I reckon it's 4.5. Tweak it, tweak it, tweak it. So it's a fascinating area of work. Now, Dylan Mackay. So going back to what I'm really, really interested in is how do I Now train and activate my physiology to protect myself from neurological deficit that may or may not be there. Probably is there. Right. You've had lots of exposure. So Dylan Mackay works very closely with Scott Sonnen. And I didn't know much about Scott Sonnen first, but I've looked a little bit into his history, which is utterly incredible, to be honest. You know, he's got a lifetime history that people understand. You know, he's been a professional fighter, he's a master of sport, but he works closely with Dr. Peter Litchfield on breathing physiology also and works in close partnership with Dylan McCarthy. Actually been invited to be a demonstration model on one of their webinars. So I looked in. The first thing Dylan Mackay sent me was a program of Scott Sonnen's theory on how to adapt exercise to tune yourself in, for instance, creative thinking and thought, but gives the reasons why. And this is exactly. You know, when you come across someone who's an expert and all of a sudden the jigsaw puzzle keeps coming, starts patterning together. So a lot of the research work I've done has been AI models asking them more and more precise search words to paint dots together. But essentially you're sort of patching it together with interaction with experts, books and online learning. Because I can't go to university, Ash, I don't think I'd have this approach if I did. And Scott Sonnen's work really, really underpinned it. Because what Scott Sonnen's work is, is how to modulate exercise. First of all, address exercise. Exercise is actually some sort of proxy in human evolutionary biology for exertion. You need to exert yourself in one way or another, challenge and perform movements for your neuromuscular junctions that keep your body, your brain being part of your body, healthy and safe. And your physiology is intuitive and adapts to that. And what Scott Sonnen's programs is looking directly at that. And it's fascinating. And there's something called the Goldilocks zone of moderate to high intensity sessions. So some are 20 minutes, some are 10 minutes. So Dylan's been setting me at ease because I'm actually really interested, like how creative am I?
- [289:55]
Sean Ryan
Yeah.
- [289:55]
John Truitt
So I've been tuning in for this. I don't know how great. Waiting for some, I don't know, some, some. Some confirmation or not. Right. I did three sessions running up to this and I got one completely wrong. And I overexerted and went into stress and I could feel my body is kind of quite stressed. I added weight into it, which they're Usually body weight. But the core concept is complex movement. So movement is described as complex if it moves through four sets of different muscles, neuromuscular junctions, and your central nervous system will then recognize this as a pattern that is beneficial and generate these factors that I've alluded to, these family of glial cells that will move through your vascular system up into your blood brain and activate in order to, to create stronger neuronal pathways. And your brain is. Everyone talks about brain plasticity, you've got neurology plasticity throughout your system and it consciously adapts and changes to everything you've done. So you can programmatically strengthen pathways in a conscious way. And this really, really started interesting me because you end up asking any question, you go back to the original solutions with your physiology, right. You need to just need to know how to empower it. Scott Sonnen's work does this. And if you do patterns of complex movement, so I do every minute on the minute sessions for 20 minutes, I did one of those today. And it's just a complex movement that enacts those systems, then not only is your brain far more creative for periods of time and the benefits of doing it are huge, huge. But the family of glial cells is astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and glial cells themselves, of which then they're further defined and they all have slightly different roles. So astrocytes do lots of stuff, but essentially keep the dendritic, the forest of sort of dendritic connections that can form up into new neural connections. Axons are what join those synapsis, those dendritic ends together. What happens in Scott Sonnen's particular regime for Goldilocks Zone, for instance, is it keyly activates oligodendrocytes that create myelineation of the axon. So when you talk about myelinear axon, it's conductive wrapping around the axon that strengthens the signal, so it strengthens the neuronal pathway. So when you're looking at these experts, and again, the academic mix have probably been sitting on these answers for ages, but they haven't put the dots together in terms of application. But this is where experts like Scott Sonnen, Dylan can make a huge amount of difference. And you know, the work is already there, so using. And again, it struck me that people struggle to compensate for the challenges of their professions, challenges of their lives. The rates of Parkinson's are flying up, right. So we can't say do better either. Lifestyle doesn't allow you to the commitments you have done do not allow you to exert yourself to a relevant level or there's preconditions in which you can't. Whatever it is, these non invasive technologies can pick up a lot of the slack and they can perform a lot of the mitigation for it. And this is I think quite important because I always work on, off the premise. And again, going back to Gwillim Barry syndrome, there's a certain factor, an element of factors that have to be involved which is expert knowledge, willing patient or subject mindset and applied technology. And it doesn't. We don't know what that applied technology is until we know the problem. But there's a set of them and they all signal in and key off your own bottom neurological function. So go back to the lady who had Guillain Barry syndrome. Expert knowledge is fundamental. And key came from the neurologist, consultant, neurophysio team and Victoria Sparks. She did the assessment, said this is how you use technology. But I would suggest that the most powerful element of that was that willing mindset and that enacted on her system itself. And the applied technology gave it a real kickstart, like a jump start. And once it gets that message, it re patterns that neuronal pathway very, very quick. So going back to Duncan Slater, right, Duncan Slater, the WMT I met, I mentioned earlier, he's had some problems with his injuries previously and he's got some vascular shutdown that's happening. So I introduced Duncan to EMES Group as a company and really just to, you know, see if technology, the complexities around the injuries are really quite considerable and you know, and I'll come on to the unbroken foundation in a minute. Once people become, have limbs amputated, you know, the trauma around the thing I think we've covered, right, that's gonna be a deeply traumatic experience. But humans will get beyond that, right? The complexities around the injury are far more consequential because you're at biomechanical disadvantage driving your own physiology. And if you think if it's one leg, the amount of movement you depend upon and how much that's enacting on your overall system. So you have to find mitigations. So Duncan Slater is an incredible person. He's a speaker as well. Huge, huge character. And he's the only amputee to ever done marathon Des Arbles. And he's done it three times and he finished it once and yeah, exactly. He's absolutely brilliant. And he got his stumps made. Sorry, his prosthetics made for himself because the ones he got given, melted and debrided his whole area of his stumps on the first attempt because of the heat. Right. And I won't speak too much on behalf of him. He is just an incredible person. So he's now getting a bespoke suit made for him by the same people that have made this.
- [296:13]
Sean Ryan
Oh, cool.
- [296:15]
John Truitt
Because in the use of the technology we've seen his vascular system open back up. But also, if you think about phantom pain in that cavern that's in there, getting fed 100 million people bits of information per second. When something crisis happens, your consciousness isn't powerful enough to get that to make sense. Yeah, Right. If you put signals through neuronal pathways in a localized area, it remaps them.
- [296:44]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [296:45]
John Truitt
Therefore you can deal with phantom pain. Wow.
- [296:48]
Sean Ryan
Has he tried this yet?
- [296:50]
John Truitt
So he's got, at the moment he's got pad still straps. He's used it quite a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, at the end of the day he's got this problem because they went to see a consultant about this vascular shutdown and you know, these consultants used to dealing with people, 88 year old hearts, he said, well, it sounds like we're gonna have to cut more off. And Duncan was like, you may as well throw the prosthetics in the bin. You know, Duncan's a single gentleman in an Italian shed, made his six, which he then went and completed the marathon des Arblon. So we're going to do a lot of casework now around Duncan to ensure the technology will make a massive amount remap pathways, building vascular access back. Already doing a really good job in a very simplified form. So if you make it powerful as this sort of thing, you know, the coverage of the membrane is much, much bigger. And because it's so effective, the membrane, the waveforms are so intuitive, it's like a sewing machine. You know, if you compare some of the EMS products, they're like come through gel pads. It's like getting like a hip van. Yeah. You know, you know, again, that's how some of them being built, you know, they're like suits of armor with big straps and all the rest of it. This thing is much, much more intuitive. And the aim is to get this sewing machine to turn into a 3D printer at some point. Right. In concert with all of the other. So what we're excited about with Dylan Mackay is I'm going to start introducing other technologies. Ms. Being very central one because I'm very, very familiar with it, but not ruling out others and going and doing these biofeedback platforms and mapping the physiological adaptations. You know, this is really exciting case studies that we can do. We can do them quite simply. It's got willing human beings that want to be involved. There's plenty of research that shows neuromuscular electro stimulation builds back axonal regeneration. Some of the consequences being too near to explosive blast of which the mechanism is. There's lots of water. Water in your head. And as the wave hits your skull and goes through, the water cannot move out of the way and it creates a turbulence, it makes a shearing mechanism between the gray and white matters. Right. And it creates axonal lesioning amongst other things. Right. And your brain is extremely good at regenerating itself. And I think when the winds are fair, people keep up with that deficit. It. But when they're not so fair so they do less exertion, they in a worse place. It can cat. It's like a bowel wave catching up.
- [299:37]
Sean Ryan
Yeah.
- [299:38]
John Truitt
And it's not a precondition. Right. So there's plenty of research, mainly from the medical world that shows that neuromuscular electrostimulation. Electrostimulation around the base of your CNS can reverse an episode of depression on the dot. Wow. Because it just promotes factors. Right. That you. You rely on every day. And this is, you know, these simple things can act in concert with all of the incredible. The advanced things that are happening on. Yeah. So, you know, and so I'll come on to Ukraine, you know. So again, I was introduced to a person called Liam Sullivan. He has a. A ch chariot page called Tackling Matters. It's quite a new one. Essentially he's been going in and out Ukraine for a long period of time. He's quite famous for providing 140 pairs of socks to a frontline unit during winter. I mean, it's pretty tough for him. And I got just a call because people knew that I was in and out of Kyiv quite a lot saying, you know, if this guy needs help or would you be welcome to meet. Since meeting him, I realized he's very involved with putting in football pitch and creating a football tournament in concert with Champions League clubs and Premiership clubs. Because a lot of the Premiership clubs have amputee teams and Parkinson's teams as well. You know, they have community hubs that are very, very powerful. So I came into contact with him and obviously as you look at this, the relevant technologies. This is extremely important when you're. This type of technology is extremely important when you're rehabilitating Conflict, injured. And Ukraine has a problem. It has a problem in complexity of its injuries and volume of its injuries. Right. A lot of them are amputations and almost all have some sort of neurological conditions. So when we last visited Unbroken foundation, we took them some bare elements, you know, and obviously a lot of these people were amputees and we're turning up with suits with arms and legs on them. You know, they're kind of sort of looked at us quite quizzically.
- [301:42]
Sean Ryan
Yeah.
- [301:43]
John Truitt
We gave them accessories instead. And they're using the accessories. And again, I'll share some videos with you. The accessories are incredibly good and powerful because, again, at the end of these traumatic amputation sites, they are using them to reactivate muscles. And, you know, again, a lot of these people have got some very, very.
- [302:03]
Sean Ryan
This is working for them.
- [302:05]
John Truitt
Sorry, this is. Yes. Yeah. So the initial sort of feedback we had is really, really overwhelming. I think it's probably because it's so accessible, it's very, very easy to use, not complicated. And they're treating, like. I forget the numbers, but they're treating a huge volume of patients. This also has an association. They're using a lot of. You know, I saw some of the pictures, they call it bringing it back to colour. And get these people, some have been held captive, a lot of them traumatically injured, and they do this exercise of getting them to do art and it's been incredible insight into how they treat these people, try them, get them back to a stable life. And, you know, for instance, in week one, they'll only use red and black and that's a picture into how your mind's working. But when they start using color, you're seeing things. So they're very, very developed in how they're kind of sort of treating therapeutically and injury wise, these people, and sport is a key part art to it. So Liam has started up this amputee football tournament. The first one was in Arsenal training facilities. The second one has just happened and it's in. It's been. It was held at Sandhurst. Oh, cool. Yeah, it was very cool. And we had some quite sort of. I. I've got to emphasize I'm a friend of Liam's. Right. You know, I support him wherever I possibly can, but it's his thing, the. The football tournaments is him. And he does some other incredible work in particular with associations like unbroken. That's really cool. Yeah. So. And it's. It's a powerful message. Right. You know, it's like conflict is an inevitability in life. It's gonna happen.
- [303:45]
Sean Ryan
Yeah.
- [303:46]
John Truitt
And in some cases the outcomes are pretty testing.
- [303:49]
Sean Ryan
Yeah.
- [303:49]
John Truitt
But watching these amputees and they are athletes, right. They're. They're treated as athletes playing football tournaments, you know, looking at some of the prosthesis that they're having and some of the innovative machine learning that's happening around. I saw, you know, a person picking up a paper cup and teaching.
- [304:08]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [304:09]
John Truitt
It's absolutely brilliant. You know, you're looking at these people and there's no element of feeling sorry. You know, you're like, wow, you know, you need some support.
- [304:17]
Sean Ryan
Yeah.
- [304:17]
John Truitt
You need. If you can get made available technologies and a digital platform for support, you can go take this home. You're already just, you know, the powerful messages getting these people, regardless of the consequences of the participation, the conflict is incredibly important and it should be celebrated as well when it's successful. And these are complicated programs, but they're all important ones and accessible. So the role these types of technologies will play in that, that are very fundamental and key, especially when paucity around treatment and resources are very. They're quite a few.
- [304:56]
Sean Ryan
Yeah.
- [304:56]
John Truitt
And I can't remember the figures that Ukraine are looking at. They've got a big volume of war injured, but I think, you know, it's something like, you know, in a developed nation you've got 15 per 100,000 physios, whereas they have less than 0.8. Wow. So. But what they are, is, is gaining an extremely advanced insight into how to treat these. Treat these things.
- [305:21]
Sean Ryan
That's really cool.
- [305:22]
John Truitt
Yeah. And I just hope that, you know, that comes to a close and people can concentrate on football tournaments and building these pitches. I think Liam's putting 47 AstroTurf pitches into the country since that football tournament. But I really did sort of take note like that. An incredible role that technology can play with applied applications. So I hope that this all transforms into something that moves, you know, we've locked into it. I've looked how the company behaves. They, you know, spending money on, back into the development. They're in an absolutely superb position and I have every faith that we'll kind of see this through. I think the next few months are going to be pretty, pretty already sort of tight and testing, but it is definitely an area of considerable value and purpose. And so in the central point in where I got involved in this, it sort of made its way through to making some sense. And that's been participating alongside people like Dylan Mackay and it's been good for me. I've learned a huge amount and, you know, go back to what's a successful transition look like? Well, I'm definitely not an example of it right now, but if you learn, you develop, and essentially you support other people's really credible work, I think there's pathways there at least.
- [306:45]
Sean Ryan
Well, John, I love what you're doing, man. And this has been a fascinating conversation. And where can people find you?
- [306:53]
John Truitt
So I have a LinkedIn site, which is my main site from previous profession. There's not much before that. I also have an Instagram site and I'll be very, very happy to share and, you know, I'll be contactable through those mediums and very, very happy to help anyone.
- [307:13]
Sean Ryan
Well, we'll link those below. And I just want to say thank you again for coming and thank you.
- [307:19]
John Truitt
Thank you.
- [307:33]
Sean Ryan
Former MLB all star Sean Casey, AKA.
- [307:36]
John Truitt
The Mayor, keeps hitting it out of the park.
- [307:39]
Sean Ryan
Take my 30 years of experience. Take the wisdom and knowledge I've learned from the failures when I got sent down my rookie year, all the injuries I had to overcome. Your mind is the most important tool.
- [307:47]
John Truitt
You have in life. Life, be relentless. Keep charging.
- [307:50]
Sean Ryan
It matters how you talk to yourself.
- [307:52]
John Truitt
How you look at the world. That matters. We talk about that. I don't know. I'm fired up.
- [307:55]
Sean Ryan
Baseball's back and it's going to be incredible.
- [307:57]
John Truitt
I love it.
- [307:57]
Sean Ryan
The mayor's office with Sean Casey from Believe, Follow and listen on your favorite platform.