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Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love | Lex Fridman Podcast #230
4 hours 6 minutes 5 seconds
🇬🇧 English
Speaker 1
00:00
The following is a conversation with Kelsey Sharon, Canadian Forces veteran, artillery gunner, who served in Afghanistan at 18 years old and came home with severe PTSD. She went on to found Brass and Unity, which creates unique jewelry, large part of the proceeds from which go to help rehabilitate the lives, limbs, and mental health of veterans and first responders. She has a big personality, big heart, and an intense passion for life. So when our paths happened to cross, I knew we needed to talk.
Speaker 1
00:35
This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, here's my conversation with Kelsey Sharon.
Speaker 2
00:45
You mentioned that studying history had a big impact on you and that your grandfather was a World War II vet. So people that have gone through World War II, in my family too, they don't seem to talk about it much. Like the worse the tragedy, the less they talk about it.
Speaker 3
01:00
I mean, it's understandable, I can respect that. But I don't think people fully understood the value in human stories over time and sharing that, that certain civilizations don't have written language. The value in that being passed down is extraordinary, but we didn't really have that with the World War II vets, it seems like.
Speaker 2
01:23
Well, they kind of want to protect you from the pain. Like my grandmother went through Holodomor, which is the Ukrainian starvation of millions of people. And then obviously went through World War II with the Nazi occupation.
Speaker 2
01:39
And same on the grandfather's side who, on my dad's side, grandfather fought in World War II. And they seem to not want to talk about those experiences to protect you from the suffering, to protect you from the evil that they've experienced, which is sad because the lessons from that history are not then propagated through you. And also there's something about the strength you carry with you knowing that that's in your blood. Those great heroes are in your blood.
Speaker 2
02:09
And that's suffering, overcoming that suffering is in your blood.
Speaker 3
02:12
I would argue that's exactly correct. If you have someone you know that comes from your lineage that has done something super gnarly, that's just been a badass in so many different ways, you wanna know about that person, you have that person's blood in you, that's important to acknowledge. And when that isn't shared, I feel like it's just a detriment to that individual.
Speaker 2
02:35
What do you make of World War II in terms of history? Do you think about those kinds of wars where 2 times more civilians died than the number of military personnel? So most of the war is basically just the death of civilians and the invasion of homes, the burning of homes, the bombing of homes, all of that.
Speaker 3
02:56
World War II for me, I find that was the first experience where I became just obsessed with history. World War II really did it for me. I'm not sure if it's because of the dramatization of film and TV and the way that our generation has looked at it.
Speaker 3
03:19
But for me, it was more than that. I felt a deep connection to it and I still can't figure out why. Like a pole almost. People joke around about those past lives and those things or those connections.
Speaker 3
03:32
And there's something deeper within me that feels a pull towards that. And I'm not quite sure if it's because I had family that, you know, escaped Hungary once the Soviets came in. So thanks for that. Or if it was because my grandfather served in it, or for whatever reason, I just, I have this pull to it.
Speaker 3
03:52
And so, when you think about the mass casualty of the civilian population, that's very difficult for me to wrap my brain around after being in a war and seeing when you have a small subset of civilians die, how much of an impact that has on that community right there in just a tiny area. So to try to wrap my brain around what happened in Europe and all across and all that. I really struggle with that because I don't know that I can comprehend what that would truly mean to somebody if I didn't experience it or see it for what it is. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2
04:28
Yeah, But so first of all, you're right. A lot of people are drawn to World War II for different reasons. So 1 is Hitler and Stalin trying to understand how it's possible to have that scale of evil in very different flavors of evil.
Speaker 2
04:45
It's almost fascinating that human nature can allow for that. And then also it's fascinating that so many people can follow leaders like that with the pride and with the love of country. Yeah. And that's like, it's almost like this weird experiment is like, wow, I wonder if I'm the same, I'm made from the same cloth as those people.
Speaker 2
05:07
Like, would I be a good German if I lived in Germany and was, you know, during the time of Hitler, would I believe that Germany has been done wrong? I'm Jewish by the way, which makes me a little bit more comfortable talking about this. Is what I believe in the dreams sold by charismatic dictator who says that wrongs have been done and we need to correct those wrongs. That to me is the compelling thing that draws me to World War II, the human nature question.
Speaker 3
05:41
I would agree with you on that. I think there's a way to look at people like that. And at that time, there was no real, well, there wasn't a full understanding of the psyche the way that we're starting to.
Speaker 3
05:52
I mean, we still don't understand any of it, but it seems like the time gap back then, there was no real understanding of sociopaths and narcissists and, you know, psychopaths and really what those traits were. And I feel like you, you know, people will follow blindly if they're given a good enough reason. Well, if you have an individual who is ranting and screaming at the top of his lungs in the middle of these town squares, and he's getting this attention, it's human nature to want to understand and be a part of a group mentality. It's human nature to want to fit in.
Speaker 3
06:29
And so, I don't know if it's more of people were at the beginning were just this is the cool thing to do Or if it was they were genuinely terrified Or if there was an aspect that was like this guy is saying something that resonates with me there could be a lot of different things. I think it's unfortunate that we didn't get to, or no 1 got to really, you know, examine this individual's brain and this person and why they thought the way they thought. Cause that's always been the biggest thing for me is I'm really curious about why people do what they do. Like deeply, deeply curious about it.
Speaker 2
07:06
I'm not sure who's more interesting, the people that follow Hitler or Hitler himself. So I mean, the question that's coupled with that is would history roll out in similar ways even if there wasn't a Hitler? You know, it's the people that created Hitler or did Hitler create the events of World War II.
Speaker 3
07:26
I think the people would be more interesting in my opinion.
Speaker 2
07:29
That seems to be the, that the charismatic leaders are all out there. The failed artists in the case of Hitler, they're all out there. And it's just when there's this environment of anger and fear, charismatic leaders can take over.
Speaker 2
07:44
And it doesn't matter if they're evil or good. It's like a roll of the dice in terms of history. What, how evil, how truly insane they are. Like I think Stalin was much more cold and calculating.
Speaker 2
08:00
He wasn't as insane as Hitler. Hitler was legitimately insane, like especially later on in the war where he would do irrational actions, I would say. But that's like a weird roll of the dice. You could have gotten a totally different leader.
Speaker 2
08:16
Wanting to take over the entirety of Europe and then invading Russia, that's like insanity.
Speaker 3
08:23
Yeah, just even just the first part of that, wanting to take over Europe, if you really think about the scale, If you really sit down and go he want this 1 individual was like I want all of this if you really sat down and You were to sit down and put him in his traits that we know of into any sort of Document nowadays that that deems somebody a psychopath or a narcissist this guy would set it on fire. He himself was so, I think, so damaged. And he reminds me a lot of people now who struggle to find their way.
Speaker 3
09:00
He reminds me a lot of angry individuals who are told no, either by women or by business or by whatever the sector they're in. He reminds me very much of that like, what's the word I'm looking for? Just that individual who is just like, the world is shit and the world owes me everything. And just it's that mentality.
Speaker 3
09:22
He really came from that it seems like. And when you foster that too long, you get that.
Speaker 2
09:28
There's a book called, what is it? Man from Underground by Dostoevsky. I might be misnaming the book, but it's about the bitterness of a man.
Speaker 2
09:37
It's like, it breeds within his mind and it just grows, that bitterness. I mean, we all have that sort of resenting of the world when you're younger, when you have a choice, when you fail, do you blame the world or do you hold, it's the Jocko thing, do you hold, do you carry the responsibility of that and become a better man or woman because of that? That's the decision. And in some sense, I mean, unfortunately, see that's because he took responsibility and leadership,
Speaker 3
10:10
he's just insane. You can't say he wasn't a leader. Yeah,
Speaker 2
10:15
So it's not that he's a failure. He's not a person, not a failure, but you can't say he's powerless, did not take action. I think he's just basically a embodiment of the anger and the fear of people at the time.
Speaker 2
10:29
But the insanity of obviously many of my relatives, not just murdering them, but putting them in camps and torturing them. But many of those people, Jewish people, were also some of the best scientists. The insanity of murdering some of the best Germans, it makes no sense. But so that's why it's fascinating to kind of look back at that time in history is like, and think, are these the same humans?
Speaker 2
10:57
And also, are there echoes of that now? Yes. And are we, is that going to happen again? Is there going to be a World War III in some other kind of way?
Speaker 2
11:08
Is there going to be some mass scale injustice in some other kind of way which we're not yet, Like because of our blindness and maybe not learning the lessons of history will allow it to happen again. And then obviously it's a very common thing to whatever political leader you don't like to call them Hitler. Of course,
Speaker 3
11:30
which is, that to me, I gotta tell you, when somebody calls somebody Hitler, the weight behind that has been completely lost in this generation. This generation does not understand what that truly means to call someone Hitler or a Nazi.
Speaker 2
11:47
Or Stalin, to be honest, the starvation, I've just been talking to a lot of folks recently, especially like North Korea, with
Speaker 3
11:55
the Hawaii
Speaker 2
11:56
Onmi Park, starvation. And I remember from my grandmother, it wasn't, I mean, time and time again, not having food to eat is the thing that people say is the worst, everything. It's way worse than murder, not having food, and the places that takes your mind and the actions that forces you to do.
Speaker 2
12:18
That's terrifying. And all of that seems very distant in our history.
Speaker 3
12:22
Yeah, I love her. I watched that interview with her. She is, I wanna talk to that woman so bad because when she was on Joe and she sat there and said, Joe's like, do you, have you done any therapy?
Speaker 3
12:33
And she laughed. I was like, oh, that's my girl.
Speaker 2
12:36
It's such a fascinating, I mean, I would love for you to kind of talk to her and explore her mind because we kind of explored her story.
Speaker 3
12:43
Right.
Speaker 2
12:44
And that's, there's power and importance to her story, but it's so difficult to understand, like how does she become healthier and better even more so than she's already? She's recovered quite a bit. She's found herself quite a bit, but I wonder, is she haunted?
Speaker 3
13:05
You're saying questions I wanna ask, like that's what I mean, because after being in a war, there are certain things, there are certain atrocities that you see that it doesn't matter the therapy that you do, and I don't care what all the special ops guys say, like I know plenty of them that have a light switch and they turn it off and they can function, but I also know them when they've been out for 10 years. There's things that haunt people differently, but there's no way there's not something going on there deeply.
Speaker 2
13:35
Yeah, but it's also extra levels of complexity in her case because I mean, this is what just looking at history about family is she spent much of her early life loving the dictator. Right?
Speaker 3
13:53
Yeah, we like the water or something. We like water or we like this because there is no like individual, like when they said there was no love or anything.
Speaker 2
14:01
But there is a love for the-
Speaker 3
14:03
Just that individual.
Speaker 2
14:04
For that individual. And so, I mean, it's like the ultimate abusive relationship.
Speaker 3
14:09
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2
14:11
But it's still love. Like you don't know the alternative. So it's not even, it's complicated because like, I wonder if she truly explored it, what you would find, because the trauma, much of her trauma, I think comes from when she was escaping North Korea, went and treatment by China.
Speaker 2
14:33
It's like the-
Speaker 3
14:34
And her mom,
Speaker 2
14:35
and when
Speaker 3
14:35
she had to witness within that and being helpless with that on
Speaker 2
14:39
her own. So it's like evil men essentially abusing her, trading her, you know, and doing so nonchalantly, like it's part of just the way of life. That I wonder if she sees kind of, yeah, it's so complicated because childhood.
Speaker 3
14:54
It would be normal to her because she didn't know any different.
Speaker 2
14:57
Exactly. And there's like, I grew up poor, but I never sensed that because. Because your
Speaker 3
15:04
parents didn't make you.
Speaker 2
15:05
Well, and everyone else around was too. And so you don't notice it. I mean, it's a cultural thing.
Speaker 2
15:11
So the way you grow up, you only start to notice it when you compare yourself to others, when you learn of the alternative. That's a dark reality when you're abused. I wonder, I mean, you truly begin to suffer in some kind of way when you understand that you were being abused. That's a dark kind of thought That I wonder if you live your whole life just in that abuse, if you don't know better, that that's a safer, that's like, what's a better life?
Speaker 2
15:45
Suffering and then learning that you are suffering or just suffering until your last days.
Speaker 3
15:50
There's 2 ways to look at this. I'd argue on 1 side that suffering and suffering till you die, you know no difference. So you can't have hope, you can't have this idea that there's better.
Speaker 3
16:03
And sometimes that's, keep that in its box. But then if you have kind of what you have with Park, where she knows now that there's different, she knows that there's better, then you run into those, what is the damage that has been done, what is gonna be passed on as intergenerational trauma. I know she's a mom. So it's like, now you gotta look long-term a little bit because now she's an influence on a child.
Speaker 3
16:26
And there's a positive to looking at both, I would say, and I know that sounds horrible for the living in trauma your whole life and just not knowing any better, but there's, I don't know if that saves the brain and the body and just that overall, or if it actually would be better. Cause there's no way to really find that out. I don't think.
Speaker 2
16:50
Yeah, I think, but the reality is when you give people hope and you make them realize that they're suffering, you're putting a burden on them. That's the first step on a long journey. And so, and obviously she, now that she knows that the suffering she wants to make people in North Korea currently suffer less.
Speaker 2
17:08
And that's the admirable goal. It's what we do to each other is try to like, when you see suffering in the world, you try to make it better. And unmasked, that's probably in a long arc of history going to make for a better world.
Speaker 3
17:25
I'm hopeful at that idea for North Korea. I'm hopeful for that because You never want to leave individuals suffering when you know that they're actively suffering while you're just living your day-to-day life in the Western world, just out grocery shopping and you see all this food and you know in the back of your mind, like that interview fucked me up a little bit, I won't lie. Like, And I had some of the girls in my office listen to it.
Speaker 3
17:47
They're just bawling because we're all parents and there's this idea that not being able to feed our children, just the idea of that damages the psyche. It brings up the pain in the chest, like just the idea of it. And so going to the grocery store for about a week after that, I just remember standing there looking and just going, what the fuck are we doing? But then there's that snap reality that comes into play and goes, So how do we fix that?
Speaker 3
18:17
You gotta take on China. That's never gonna happen. And the reason that's not gonna happen, it's happening again. So Akani comes down through Afghanistan, Chinese are all through Afghanistan.
Speaker 3
18:28
Iran makes the deal with China for her, the roadway to get the oil. Well, that's done in the blink of an eye without anyone knowing. There's no way. There's just so much at play with China.
Speaker 3
18:39
They control such a large aspect of our world. Unfortunately, that to take and free North Korea, a drastic action would have to happen. And then your people would come in. It would be a mess.
Speaker 2
18:54
What do you mean your people? What do you mean your people?
Speaker 3
18:56
Your Russians.
Speaker 2
18:58
Did you hear what she said about Russians?
Speaker 3
19:00
Did you hear what she said? Russians? I love Russians.
Speaker 3
19:02
You know what I didn't love? The Russian recruiting video that came out. That shit was terrifying. Did you watch it?
Speaker 3
19:08
I told you about it, and of course you didn't watch it.
Speaker 2
19:10
I didn't watch it.
Speaker 3
19:10
Oh, shocker. The USA put out a recruiting video. And then like a day or 2 later Russia put 1 out and the recruiting for video in the States was a animation of a Female soldier.
Speaker 3
19:26
Yeah with 2 moms and she was gonna go change the world Right Russia came out with It's like it's the the character from like Rocky Essentially and they're guys in the mud and just in the rain, just fucking doing pushups, just pushing it out. They're just like, they see their boot, they're just like crushing things. And I'm like, and it's all like, and the deep Russian voice, I'm like, oh my God.
Speaker 2
19:51
Which 1 is better? Would you say, which bothered you more?
Speaker 3
19:55
What do you mean by bother? Specify.
Speaker 2
19:58
So deception is a funny thing. Cause when you're young and you're choosing to go to the military or not, it's not like you know, like none of us know what the best trajectory for a life is. For many people, going to the military is a really, makes them incredible human beings.
Speaker 2
20:13
Some of the best people in this world I know are soldiers. So it's, I'm not, I don't mean like it's somehow bad to go to the military. I think it's a great choice. But there is something, the honest truth is I just don't like marketing people.
Speaker 2
20:28
And so this is essentially a marketing effort.
Speaker 3
20:30
Yeah, it is a marketing effort.
Speaker 2
20:31
So which 1 do you like as a marketing effort better?
Speaker 3
20:34
Russia. Yeah, I do.
Speaker 2
20:37
There you go.
Speaker 3
20:38
I do. Because Canada doesn't you know what our recruiting videos are? It's like, I love it.
Speaker 3
20:44
They're the best.
Speaker 2
20:45
Sorry,
Speaker 3
20:46
Yeah. Oh, fuck. Here we go. It's starting.
Speaker 3
20:48
It started. Awesome. So, Canada does these ones where it's like, it'll have a bunch of like soldiers doing movements and then they'll like snip it together really quick. It'll be like a Navy 1 and then a guy jumping out of a plane, and then it'll be like an artillery, and then like an armored, and it'll be like, join the Canadian forces today.
Speaker 3
21:07
And like that's like their videos. So it's like very marketable, very palatable to Canadians who don't really want war and who don't really acknowledge their military in the first place and do everything they can to make sure that vets don't get any support when they come home. So I can see why that 1 is acceptable. What Russia did was meant to be more of an intimidation tactic in my opinion.
Speaker 3
21:32
I like that style better though. I think we need harder, I think we need people to be harder. I think it's acceptable and okay to say that our soldiers need to have a harder mindset, a stronger mindset, a better mentality and mental health support going into the service and a harder body because I know when you go to the US, I've also encountered plenty of soldiers that are 600 pounds. What are you gonna do?
Speaker 2
21:59
So we should say that you, when you join the military, you're in incredible shape or not maybe incredible, but
Speaker 3
22:05
very good shape. No, I was in incredible shape. It was the best shape of my life.
Speaker 3
22:07
Yeah. Yeah. So. I'm okay with that.
Speaker 3
22:10
It's okay. You know what? I used to do sit-ups. Yeah.
Speaker 3
22:14
No, I would do sit-ups in the morning when I was little until I could see my, like I always had a 6 pack because all I did was train. But like if I couldn't like see it, I would just sit there in morning cartoons and just do sit-ups. And my mom and dad thought that was like normal acceptable behavior.
Speaker 2
22:30
So if you had like Instagram back then, you'd be a David Goggins. You would be just like screaming.
Speaker 3
22:33
Without the cursing, that cursing started once the military started.
Speaker 2
22:36
Okay, got it. So, I mean, the people should know, is it probably already know that you also competed in Taekwondo, like you were an athlete of all kinds. They even saw rugby in there.
Speaker 3
22:47
Yeah, I was good at rugby. I played that for 7, 6 years, I guess you could say, total. I think the worst injury I ever ended up having was I tore my right eyelid off.
Speaker 3
23:00
We were doing an exhibition game. I don't do exhibition games well. I don't do like for fun well. I don't do like.
Speaker 2
23:06
So you're very competitive.
Speaker 3
23:07
No, not me.
Speaker 2
23:09
So you're being funny.
Speaker 3
23:10
Ah, there it is. He gets it. You see, he's not a robot.
Speaker 3
23:15
What I was saying though to you was that we did an exhibition game and the team ahead was winning. The team we were playing was winning, which was annoying. And so there was an opportunity to take out a girl that was going 1 end of the field to the other and she just kept hitting tries left, right and center. She was fast.
Speaker 3
23:37
So I figured if I just aimed her up, like she's a target and I just run full force at her cause she was really, she was a tall individual. If I just, If I do that, I'll take her out of the knees. So I did that. But what that resulted in was she put her tooth through her mouth guard and knocked out and didn't, she just stayed there.
Speaker 3
23:55
But when I stood up, I tore the right eyelid off and it was hanging from the inner corner. My mom was there because mom was my, mom's my biggest fan.
Speaker 2
24:05
She was supportive of this?
Speaker 3
24:06
Oh, she's supportive of everything. She didn't miss a game. She didn't miss in anything.
Speaker 3
24:10
And I stood up and I kind of turned around and we already had a girl break her nose that day. So she was on the sideline with her nose sideways and just bloody. My mom was like, I'll take her to the emergency after once the game's over. And so I turned around and looked at her and she just, she almost vomited on the spot.
Speaker 3
24:26
And I was like, what's wrong? She's like, don't move your eyelids off. I'm like, but I can see, like I was trying to blink, but like it was just down, so I could just constantly see. She's like, we're just gonna go to the emergency.
Speaker 3
24:38
We're just gonna go there now.
Speaker 2
24:39
Was there blood?
Speaker 3
24:40
Yeah, there's lots of it, but I couldn't really tell.
Speaker 2
24:43
Okay, were you okay with blood at that point?
Speaker 3
24:46
Yeah, I've always been okay
Speaker 2
24:47
with blood. I mean, I
Speaker 3
24:47
guess you did Tae Kwon
Speaker 2
24:47
Do and all that, yeah.
Speaker 3
24:49
I didn't get knocked out very often. I didn't really, when I was younger in Tae Kwon Do, I was really good. I only lost a handful of times.
Speaker 3
24:56
So when I did lose, that was bad. But I never had like a broken nose or a lot of blood on my face, like nothing like that really. So nothing freaked me out too much.
Speaker 2
25:07
Was there aggression there or just purely competition over skill?
Speaker 3
25:12
A mix of both. I was, This was right after, not too long after my coach went to prison for statutory rape. And that was like, how you talk about Park talking about how that was like, she knew love because of that person.
Speaker 3
25:30
That person was like a God to me. And so when that happened, I was just an angry individual from that point on. So there was competition and aggression mixed in there.
Speaker 2
25:38
Oh, like it was betrayal, that there's just somebody that was a symbol of love for you could also be a very bad person.
Speaker 3
25:46
I used to eat, sleep, and breathe, whatever that man said from 4 years old on. I lived with my coaches at a point, so I could train that much. I helped look after their daughter.
Speaker 3
25:58
I was at the club 24-7. It's just the idea that somebody could do something like that, yeah, that really messed me up.
Speaker 2
26:05
Where were you on 9-11?
Speaker 3
26:10
I was 11, and I was in my parents' basement.
Speaker 2
26:15
In where?
Speaker 3
26:16
Ontario.
Speaker 2
26:17
In Ontario, Canada. Ontario, Canada. What did you think of 9-11 at that age from Canada?
Speaker 2
26:24
Did it have an impact on you in terms of changing the level of evil you thought is there in the world today?
Speaker 3
26:35
Not initially. I remember it really vividly. I have a decent memory for certain things, it seems like.
Speaker 3
26:42
Stuff like that I stick with really well. I remember watching, I was sitting on the couch and my mom called my dad because my parents are truck drivers. My dad was on the road, if I'm not mistaken, and he would go in and out of cities all the time. And I think he was on the East Coast.
Speaker 3
26:57
My mom was like a little panicky. So she tried to get ahold of him on, I think she, at the time it was like beepers. And yeah, so he would get a beep, he would go to a payphone and call us. And he was fine.
Speaker 3
27:09
And I remember my mom being like really upset and I couldn't quite grasp why she was so upset. I knew something really bad had happened. It's when I then saw the second plane go into the tower. And I remember her just like the stereotypical, like hand over her mouth and she just felt sick.
Speaker 3
27:27
And she just was so confused and I knew it was bad, but I didn't fully grasp it. We went to school that day and they had talked about it briefly. You could hear the teachers kind of reminiscing about it. There was a point that week that all of a sudden, all of the children who were from a Middle Eastern family were not at school.
Speaker 3
27:50
I just remember them saying like, a lot of people aren't coming to school. But it was in particular. I think parents were afraid once it got out that it was of a certain group. They were afraid for their own kids.
Speaker 3
28:03
And fair enough, I mean, you never know, you don't know. And I knew it impacted me enough that I did write, I remember, the school was doing a memorial for it. And I remember they asked, I wrote a poem and a reporter was there and I read it on air. That's like, I remember, like it was like, it was a very short 1, but I remember I wanted to do something, but I didn't know why or for what reason.
Speaker 3
28:30
I just, I knew I wanted to do something to honor it, but I couldn't grasp why.
Speaker 2
28:34
You eventually went to Afghanistan. Yeah. Did that begin to plant the seed of thinking about conflict in the world?
Speaker 3
28:44
It's a good question. I've never thought about it that in depth. I mean, I've done 12 years of therapy.
Speaker 3
28:48
You think that would have come up, Dr. Posse, but apparently not. We'll work on it though.
Speaker 2
28:53
I mean, when did the idea of war start entering your mind?
Speaker 3
28:58
Late high school, I think it was for me. I was, I finished high school at 17. I moved away and went to college.
Speaker 3
29:06
I went to Algonquin College because I wasn't smart enough to get into Ottawa U. So I was like, well, Algonquin she is. I just wanted to play sports. And frankly, I wanted away from my small town that I was living in.
Speaker 3
29:18
I went through like a bad high school breakup as a kid and you know that where you think that's like the love of your life and you just can't bear to be anywhere near anybody. And so I moved away as fast as I possibly could. And I didn't grasp it still at that point.
Speaker 2
29:36
Love and heartbreak. Okay, why did you become a soldier? Why did you want to become a soldier?
Speaker 3
29:45
My parents told me from an early age, they always figured I would either be a cop, I would do... They didn't think military, but they thought it would be like a type A personality, possibly carry a gun situation. And I'd never hunted before, we never had guns in our house, I was never exposed to weapons of any kind.
Speaker 3
30:03
If anything, it was the opposite. We just, all the hunters on the property, like all the deer would come to our property and all the hunters would be, no, I'm not, my mom would put salt licks out so that they wouldn't get killed.
Speaker 2
30:14
Your property was the safe space for the deer.
Speaker 3
30:16
Yeah, it was 17 acres of forest and they just, we had 2 turkeys that used to walk up and down the driveway every day. We had bears in there and nobody bothered them. And so there was no aspect of like, I wanna go kill shit.
Speaker 3
30:30
That was not like a thing. I had no idea I wanted to take anybody off the face of the earth or anything. I went to school and because I'm a history person, my parents has always made it really important that Remembrance Day is the thing in our life. So that's Veterans Day for you, so it's November 11th.
Speaker 3
30:48
And it's you go, you honor. I don't care if you don't want to go, I don't care if it's raining, you go. And so I went to the Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa that year, which was, it's our capital, which is, yeah, it's our capital and it's really small. And so I went, but I took the bus and I was on the bus back to Algonquin and I met a lady who was like a World War II vet, really old lady.
Speaker 3
31:15
She had an Air Force uniform on and just like this row of medals. And I mean, I think you can tell by our limited to extreme interactions we've had over the short period of time. I'm curious and I'll just ask you. And so I just got up and talked to her and just started talking to her.
Speaker 3
31:32
And she didn't say like, I don't remember exactly her words, but she'd served. She was 1 of the first females to fly. And all of these kinds of things that stuck in my head. And we just kind of kept talking and I missed my stop.
Speaker 3
31:47
And then I finished talking to her and I got back on the bus and went back to the college and walked into my small apartment where I had 2 roommates. These 2 guys I went to high school with, 1 of them I went to high school with, 1 was from out of town. And I just didn't like what I was, I wasn't happy, I wasn't doing what I wanted to do and I didn't know what I wanted to do truthfully. Something just said, why don't you join the army?
Speaker 3
32:14
Like in myself, my self-talk was like, let's just join the military, let's do it.
Speaker 2
32:19
Are you in general somebody that just follows the gut? Like when your heart tells you something, you go with it?
Speaker 3
32:25
For the most part, because I figured out, at least now I figured out what parts I could, like what feeling I can trust and which 1 I can't. Which one's anxiety versus which one's my actual intuition talking.
Speaker 2
32:36
So why did you sign up to be an artillery gunner?
Speaker 3
32:39
Because they wouldn't let me be infantry.
Speaker 2
32:42
I mean, why would you wanna be infantry? I mean, you're naming a lot of dangerous activities.
Speaker 3
32:53
Yeah, but that wasn't a thought in my mind at the time. My idea was if I was gonna do this and I was gonna put myself through the bullshit and the training and all of the hell and the pushups and the getting blah, blah, blah, scream dad. I wanted to do something that I know was actually gonna be affecting something.
Speaker 3
33:06
And what I knew was making change or affecting or on the front lines was infantry, artillery or armored. So I was like, 1 of those.
Speaker 2
33:13
Can you explain the difference infantry, artillery and armored? Do you
Speaker 3
33:17
want like the layman's term or do you want me to actually explain, explain?
Speaker 2
33:20
Well, listen to your conversation with Jaco, especially I love how you get into details.
Speaker 3
33:24
Okay, so let's detail this then. Okay. So infantry is your frontline door kicking, you know, blasting the door open, running, and, get the fuck on the ground, just that, that, that, that, that.
Speaker 3
33:36
They're the guys that, you know, double tap you in the face and they show up in the middle of the night and put a barrel in your head. Like, those are the guys that are sleeping in the trenches, that are eating MREs, who are being shot at, who are being blown up, who are doing the dirty work and not sleeping and carrying the a hundred pound pack and are side by side with your buddies in the trenches. I wanted that, that. They said I was too small for that.
Speaker 3
34:01
So then- You
Speaker 2
34:01
were, sorry to interrupt, you were too small under 100 pounds?
Speaker 3
34:05
At the time I was about 103 and I'm 5 foot like on a, if you roll my back out like I really try, I'm 5 foot. At the time though I think my license said 411. So...
Speaker 2
34:19
So you were too small... Too small. For infantry.
Speaker 3
34:23
Yeah, they just, there was no mandate at which they said you can't be, but they said, you know, we don't want to put you through training that you're going to fail out of and then have to recourse you and then find a new job for you. And they wanna try to, if this is what you're going in for, they wanna have you follow through that path. So then there was Armored, which are your tanks.
Speaker 3
34:42
So that's your movie like Fury, where your tank battles in, which we don't really do anymore, but you're rolling around in tanks You got guys in the back or you're a driver. You're a turret gunner, which I would have enjoyed But the idea of being in a closed metal box Something about it made me panic. So I was like maybe not for me
Speaker 2
35:02
There's of course power to that kind of a big gun.
Speaker 3
35:07
Well, that's why I went for the bigger 1.
Speaker 2
35:08
Okay, by the way, I think Russia leads the world in number of tanks. They're still, it's very like, what is it? Alpha demonstration of like force.
Speaker 2
35:18
Look, we have largest number of tanks.
Speaker 3
35:20
You know what takes tanks out though?
Speaker 2
35:22
What?
Speaker 3
35:22
Some gasoline, some old batteries and a wire.
Speaker 2
35:25
Yeah, but tanks still look badass.
Speaker 3
35:27
They look great, but they don't last.
Speaker 2
35:29
But so much of the military, like we said with the recruiting videos, it's a display of power versus the actual implementation of power.
Speaker 3
35:36
Fair.
Speaker 2
35:37
Okay, artillery, so I'm doing my best here. I don't even know what double tap means, which you said earlier.
Speaker 3
35:43
It means 2 shots to the face. Double tap is like 2 shots to the face.
Speaker 2
35:45
Why 2?
Speaker 3
35:46
To be sure. Okay,
Speaker 2
35:49
all right.
Speaker 3
35:49
You guys, taxpayers pay for the ammo, it's fine.
Speaker 2
35:51
But you don't wanna do 3, because it's wasting the ammo.
Speaker 3
35:53
Well, now that's a waste.
Speaker 2
35:55
Okay, double tap to the face. There's so much awesome terminology here, or gruesome terminology, depending on your perspective. Okay, so artillery.
Speaker 2
36:03
Yeah,
Speaker 3
36:04
so that's the hand of God.
Speaker 2
36:08
Sorry. No, I. That's intensely romanticized version, but okay, artillery, the hand of God. So.
Speaker 3
36:16
Is it will reach out and touch you from wherever we want. It's like F-18 pilots or bombers. They'll, you won't know they're there until they're there.
Speaker 3
36:27
And so for artillery, I really honestly didn't think artillery would be a fit for me. I didn't know much about it. They were just like, these are what you can pick from. And I was like, I'll go here.
Speaker 3
36:40
So in World War II, they used much closer artillery. So it's the, we're called the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery because the Queen made us Royal Canadian Artillery. And we shoot these rounds. When you're in training, you shoot smaller ammunition.
Speaker 3
36:54
They're about 40 pounds. They go, I'm gonna get this wrong, 20K, 20 kilometers, so whatever that is in your mile things. And they have a casing on them, and they're much easier, they're easier to handle. The guns are smaller, you need less people for them.
Speaker 3
37:12
They're basically what you train on nowadays, it's not what we use overseas. What we use overseas, now those things are beautiful. Those are just a sheer work of, the engineering behind them just makes my heart skip a beat. Yeah,
Speaker 2
37:25
the engineering on modern guns is amazing. So are
Speaker 1
37:27
we talking about machine guns here?
Speaker 3
37:29
So like fully automatic?
Speaker 2
37:30
No,
Speaker 3
37:30
you're talking about an artillery gun. So what it is, it's a 155 millimeter howitzer that shoots up to 40 kilometers accurately, 45 unrecorded, and it shoots a hundred pound round.
Speaker 2
37:44
Oh, okay. So that, but there is still precision.
Speaker 3
37:50
Accurate as hell.
Speaker 2
37:51
Accurate, okay.
Speaker 3
37:52
Accurate if the people behind it that are shooting it and aiming it are accurate.
Speaker 2
37:56
Okay, so how, at which stage of the warfare do they come in? Are they saving you? Like say a bunch of people get raided, a bunch of the sole infantry get raided and then the artillery saves them or are they the first line of attack or where does the artillery go?
Speaker 2
38:14
Like the hand of God presumes they're helping.
Speaker 3
38:17
Yeah, yeah, well that's it. So depending on the operation or whomever is running it or how they want it done, sometimes if they just know there's targets, they'll use us, you know, high value targets. So we have this round, It's called the Excalibur round.
Speaker 3
38:32
It costs about half a million dollars per round. It comes in a special tube that is like sealed and locked and you have to get permission from Ottawa to shoot it. And it's only used for VIP targets. So like we have VIP for everyone And it will, it's GPS guided, it's rocker propelled, and when you fire it, it will, if this is a wall and somebody's standing on this side of it, will hit you right there.
Speaker 3
38:57
We won't touch that wall, it will hit you pinpoint. It'll go right through whatever concrete, whatever, and it will destroy.
Speaker 2
39:06
So it's basically the same thing as being a sniper, but with a much more damaging weapon.
Speaker 3
39:12
We don't use that round often. I think it's only been used a handful of times, max in Afghanistan that I'm aware of. Again, I wasn't there from 2009 until 21, but I know people that still deployed in those units and I don't know that it was used very often.
Speaker 3
39:27
But the regular rounds, so there's HE, there's loom. So HE is high explosive. There's loom, you shoot that, it explodes in the sky, it lights up the sky for the infantry below. And then there's shrapnel rounds that will explode in the sky and then shrapnel just rains down hell on you.
Speaker 3
39:43
HE is what you use normally. In my, I'm trying to say this right because I know people squawked at me about some of the stuff on Jocko, so I'm trying to be very accurate. In my experience, we used HE rounds to wipe people off the face of the earth when the infantry needed us. So we would get a call at any time, and there's always 2 guns together.
Speaker 3
40:05
So you never go solo gun ever. If you are, it's sketchy and bad shit's happening. Can you
Speaker 2
40:12
explain that? So there's 2 people, 2 guns?
Speaker 3
40:15
No, 2 guns with each gun troop. So each gun troop has 5 to 7 people running a gun at all times.
Speaker 2
40:20
Oh, wow.
Speaker 3
40:20
It takes a lot of people to run 1 of those.
Speaker 2
40:22
How much electronics is there?
Speaker 3
40:24
The GPS, like the computer system that's on it itself, I never ran that much, but it is completely technologically, it's GPS guided. All you have to do is literally type in the coordinates, then you've got the 2 big, there's a technical word for it, but basically wheels. And 1 does the trajectory, you know, you do your,
Speaker 2
40:43
and
Speaker 3
40:43
you're just kind of doing this, and you're watching the watch in it. And once you hit your target, that's, you know, it'll tell you that's where you need to hit.
Speaker 2
40:50
Do you know if there's any like AI stuff, like computer vision, like where there's cameras and they help you target using like all different kinds of cameras to see through, like the fog, all those kinds of things.
Speaker 3
41:03
No, we use the FU, which are forward observation officers, which are an artillery individual that is embedded with an infantry unit.
Speaker 2
41:14
Oh, wow, okay.
Speaker 3
41:15
They call from the front, give us their grid coordinates and basically say like, don't drop this on us.
Speaker 2
41:20
Got it. So, well, you know what not to shoot, which parts not to shoot. Correct.
Speaker 2
41:24
And then- As long as
Speaker 3
41:25
no 1 moves. Don't move, stay still. But you can hear it coming.
Speaker 2
41:30
Yeah.
Speaker 3
41:31
But you can't hear it until it's too close. So like when I went, sorry, go ahead. You were gonna say something.
Speaker 2
41:34
No, I was gonna say, what's the experience on the other? Like, what does it feel like to be maybe infantry or-
Speaker 3
41:42
Underneath it?
Speaker 2
41:42
Underneath the artillery?
Speaker 3
41:44
Well, I had the rare opportunity to do that and I have a video I'll show you after. It's terrifying because I know the people that are shooting it and I know them personally and I know what they're like as humans and for the most part they're dialed. But you get the odd duck where you're like, I've seen people have an ND, which is a negligent discharge.
Speaker 3
42:06
You basically get charged for it. You get in a lot of trouble because you can blow people up. And like accidents happen. And so I know accidents can happen in stressful situations.
Speaker 3
42:15
And when I was with the Brits, we had to call danger close artillery. And when it goes over top of you, it sounds like thunder and lightning. So you fire it, and it's not the stereotype that you hear in World War II, where it kind
Speaker 2
42:30
of like
Speaker 3
42:30
that... It's more of like a crackle. And then you just hear like a whiz and it just goes everywhere. It's loud, it shakes the ground, it shakes you, you feel it.
Speaker 3
42:45
Okay,
Speaker 2
42:46
is there some more words you can put to like the experience of what it's like to be in the heat of battle there? So what is there literally, is it hot? Are you
Speaker 3
42:57
talking about being under it or shooting it?
Speaker 2
42:59
Under it.
Speaker 3
43:00
Oh yeah, 55 degree heat, you know that you're waiting for it to be called. You feel an overwhelming excitement to start because for me, I'd never been under it. So I was like, okay, I had my camera ready like I was a kid at a candy store and I'm like I want to watch this happen.
Speaker 3
43:16
And once you hear the crackle, I got really fearful, my anxiety kicked up significantly. I got to the point where I got numb. Like I was, my nerves were on overdrive so much that like my body would go like numb. Like I could move but like my nerves were numb, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2
43:36
What were the nerves like? We're talking about fear or is it just anxious excitement?
Speaker 3
43:41
Anxious excitement, hopeful that they wouldn't blow it up on us. And there was this excitement that's hard to describe because you don't wanna be excited that you're dropping bombs on people, but when you just saw their faces and they're shooting at you, there's this overwhelming feeling of got you, motherfucker.
Speaker 2
44:02
Yeah.
Speaker 3
44:03
Yeah.
Speaker 2
44:04
Well, we'll talk about that because that's such a difficult thing about wars. You forget that it's other human beings. Yeah, you do.
Speaker 2
44:12
Because those other human beings are doing really bad things to you. And so the very basic anger takes over, hate can take over. And then also just the excitement of almost like video game like, aspect of war, like sport. It's like sport that all of those elements are all baked in.
Speaker 2
44:35
And it's hard to be philosophical in that situation, it seems like.
Speaker 3
44:39
I've never played video games, so I can't compare it to that. But like from like a sports perspective, yeah, I could argue that. Like I felt like we won there for a second.
Speaker 3
44:50
And it's not just like a heat from outside, it's like this radiation within you that is something I've never felt since.
Speaker 2
44:59
You, just to take a small step back to the weapons training, what kind of guns did you train on? Because you also mentioned a rocket launcher.
Speaker 3
45:08
I love Karl Grustafs.
Speaker 2
45:10
What are those, what are those Karl G's?
Speaker 3
45:12
Karl G's?
Speaker 2
45:13
What's that? What's a, what's a like, my only experience with the rocket launchers is from the movie Commando with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3
45:20
and we've all discussed, I haven't seen that yet, and I've heard about it, and people have made me tell, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2
45:24
I feel like you haven't seen a single movie that's relevant to war or military, because every time anyone brings it up, you say you haven't seen it.
Speaker 3
45:33
I don't have time to watch movies, Lex.
Speaker 2
45:34
Platoon, you haven't seen Platoon, which is-
Speaker 3
45:37
You're the scientist. How do you have the time?
Speaker 2
45:39
I'm not a scientist. I just play 1 on TV.
Speaker 3
45:43
Okay. Sure.
Speaker 2
45:45
So what, can you talk about the rocket launcher and maybe any other, for both engineering actually, to me, those guns are very interesting from an engineering perspective too.
Speaker 3
45:54
Well, they should be, they're fascinating when you take them apart and you see how small the parts get down to and how necessary every single little piece is to make that thing run. And even without the tiniest little BB, smaller than a piece on there, an artillery gun might not run. So we were trained on Carl G's, I think called M72s, which are disposable rocket launchers.
Speaker 3
46:17
I'll back up. Karl G's are around, I don't know the exact millimeter of the round. It's been a while since I shot them. We only did those in training.
Speaker 3
46:26
But essentially it takes, most people, 1 person can fire it, you know, effectively hold it and fire it, it takes another person to load it. So you put it onto your shoulder and it weighs, I would, I don't know, 30 pounds, 40 pounds.
Speaker 2
46:39
I can't
Speaker 3
46:40
remember, it's been a minute. It's been a minute.
Speaker 2
46:41
But 1
Speaker 1
46:42
person can carry it.
Speaker 3
46:43
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2
46:45
Okay. I don't know, it just seems like a rocket launcher's pretty intense kind of device. It
Speaker 3
46:53
for sure is, I mean, it's the diameter, I can't even tell you the diameter, they're about that big, I mean.
Speaker 2
46:59
And it Goes on your shoulder.
Speaker 3
47:00
Goes on your shoulder, and then it has a little sight that pops out that's almost like plastic-like, which is kind of funny, because it reminds me of like the little Green Army man. I just felt so flimsy to me. I was like, this is hilarious.
Speaker 3
47:15
And then another person stands behind you and opens the hatch. And so there's this, there's these 2 levers and you just kind of open it. And then the back end, which is flared, so it's just a tube and then it's flared, that will open it and drop down and you load a round into that. And then you load it back up.
Speaker 3
47:33
And you're never supposed to stand behind it because the blast behind it will kill you. But in my case, when I fired it, it was me and another individual. It wasn't Sarah Pellegrin, but it was another girl that was smaller. And the person is supposed to wrap around your waist and tuck low and hold your stability.
Speaker 3
47:53
And we were just aiming at tanks that day and they were just concrete heads. So they would just either they would hit and bounce off or whatever. And so when my sergeant saw that, he just kind of looked at both of us and was like, no, I'm just going to... And he got real low and just like wrapped both of us.
Speaker 3
48:12
And then we'd fire it. And It feels like you're getting punched in the side of the head on repeat by Jocko.
Speaker 2
48:19
Yeah.
Speaker 3
48:20
It, you lose all your hearing. Like just, snot comes out of your nose and you're just kind of discombobulated for a minute. It's a real mind fuck.
Speaker 2
48:32
Is there other, any other kind of guns that, at that time, because you were new to this, you haven't shot guns when you were younger, that were really impressive to you in the training process?
Speaker 3
48:44
All of them, because I've never fired a weapon. So we had the C7s, which are like your M16s, I believe, the long barrel. The cute thing about those is when I have that slung, my barrel drags on the ground.
Speaker 3
48:57
So that's fun. And they shoot your 7.62 or your 5.56 round. I loved that. I preferred the C8, which was a short barrel, which is what the SF guys use.
Speaker 3
49:08
Not because it's cooler looking, which it obviously is, but because it was functional for my body height and it didn't drag on the ground when I ran. I loved those, they're your personal weapon. Being an artillery gunner, if you're not an officer, at least in our unit, you didn't get a side piece. I didn't have a side piece, Lex.
Speaker 3
49:27
So I never had a handgun of any type. I fired those in training. You can't get over that side piece comment, look at you.
Speaker 2
49:34
I was gonna say, I know what a side piece is, you don't have to explain to me.
Speaker 3
49:37
But you're single, so how do you even have a side piece if you don't have a main piece?
Speaker 2
49:41
The joke would be the fact that we have a total misunderstanding what side piece is. Okay, great, so you didn't have a side piece as a non-officer.
Speaker 3
49:48
Right, so I never fired those much. We did grenades in training.
Speaker 2
49:52
Oh, cool.
Speaker 3
49:53
Yeah, grenades are fun. I love grenades. I have a massive 1 tattooed on me.
Speaker 3
49:56
I have them all over my office.
Speaker 2
49:58
How does a grenade work?
Speaker 3
50:00
There's the spoon and the pin. So the pin holds the spoon in place. When you pull that pin, the firing mechanism inside, as long as the spoon is up against it, it won't fire.
Speaker 3
50:11
As soon as that spoon goes, I believe it causes a reaction on the inside and you've got about 5 seconds to check it. You'd be better to ask that question too.
Speaker 2
50:20
I don't mean to get philosophical on this.
Speaker 3
50:22
No, you're not.
Speaker 2
50:22
But there's something about a grenade, because you're essentially committing suicide, unless you get rid of the thing. There's something like- Or if
Speaker 3
50:33
you're unlucky and it just goes off when you pull the pin, which has happened to tons of people.
Speaker 2
50:37
So it just feels like a very kind of, it's a dangerous leap into the abyss every time you use the thing. Because when you shoot a gun, like the gun is much less likely to malfunction
Speaker 3
50:49
in
Speaker 2
50:49
terms of like all the possible ways it can go wrong. It just seems like grenade is like.
Speaker 3
50:54
Primitive almost.
Speaker 2
50:55
Yeah, it's primitive. It's also real, like in a way that like a bar fight is like being punched in the face is real. It's like, you're here with a weapon of destruction.
Speaker 2
51:05
It's just you and the thing.
Speaker 3
51:07
You have
Speaker 2
51:07
to get rid of it. I don't know. Is that terrifying to you?
Speaker 2
51:11
Like, do people still use grenades in warfare?
Speaker 3
51:13
Oh yeah. Yeah, those are fantastic. The Taliban were throwing them over the wall at the airport in Kabul.
Speaker 3
51:19
People use them all the time. Because when you're in Afghanistan, if you're in a rural area, you're going from village to village and they're mud hut walls, like they're tall, but you're walking through corridors and stuff. All you gotta lob 1 of those, it's gonna take the whole unit out that just walked by. Like it's, they're accurate if you're close enough and they're effective if you're close enough.
Speaker 3
51:39
I love them though. I think they're fascinating to me because they're such a tiny little thing with such devastation. They just can cause such devastation. But for me, when I had them, some of the Canadians would make fun of me because when I did go outside the wire with the British, I had 2 right here.
Speaker 3
51:58
And I remember I put a piece of tape over the spoons. Because in my mind, I could picture myself searching someone and grabbing me and pulling that. And that would be me. That would have been like, yep, if anyone that was gonna happen to, it was her for sure.
Speaker 2
52:15
So you were deployed to Afghanistan in 2009. And like we said, you were in great, no, perfect physical shape.
Speaker 3
52:25
Fucking epic shape.
Speaker 2
52:27
Epic shape, 6 pack or I mean. Yeah. Okay, so you could do a lot of pull-ups and push-ups.
Speaker 2
52:34
Yes. And, okay. And well-trained, would you say? Were you already what like?
Speaker 2
52:40
No. No. No.
Speaker 3
52:43
I'll argue that point till I'm blue in the face. I spoke to, recently, I actually spoke to my sergeant. He's not a sergeant anymore, but Sergeant Mark LeBlanc, he's in Africa right now on a deployment.
Speaker 3
52:51
He gave me a call the other day and I remember talking to him about this. And it's frustrating because we were at an active war. We were involved in an active war where we, the units that I were in were dagged red, which meant they needed people. So when you need people, things go quick.
Speaker 3
53:10
Whether or not that's right, I mean, you could argue that's the similar thing to what's happening in the world right now. We needed a vaccine. We got a vaccine. Is it the best it could be?
Speaker 3
53:21
Could it be better? Could it do more things? Sure, probably. But with the time that we had, we did the best that we could.
Speaker 3
53:28
That's my logic on that. For me, I joined the military in November of 2007. I was in basic training in January of 2008. I was graduated basic SQ, which is all your weapons training, your DP1, which is your trade-specific training.
Speaker 3
53:47
So whatever trade you're going to go into, whether it's infantry, armored, artillery, medic, whatever, that's your DP1. It's called different things in different units. And then I got posted to my unit in September. So January to September, I had done all my training and I'm an English speaking individual.
Speaker 3
54:05
I got posted to a French unit that only speaks French and had to learn all of the weapon systems, everything again that I just learned in that short timeframe in French.
Speaker 2
54:15
This part of your story that you're telling this to Jaco is 1 way to say it is very impressive that you had to learn all of this in French. So there's also the camaraderie, the social aspect of it, which is difficult probably.
Speaker 3
54:28
I didn't have any, that's, yeah, I didn't have any.
Speaker 2
54:31
But it's also make you a more effective soldier to be socially for that cohesion to be there, right? But also just understanding the basic terminology.
Speaker 3
54:43
Correct. And- The right way to say something on the radio, the right way to run a gun, the right way to, cause you got to move with those guns, you got 7 people, it's really magical. I'll send you a video. When we did some live fire in workup training in Texas before we left, we did a competition between the other gun to see who could fire 10 rounds faster.
Speaker 3
55:03
Wow. It is truly beautiful to watch an artillery unit fire a gun because it's like a symphony. Everyone has their parts and everyone knows and Everyone's yelling, but they know why they're yelling and everyone, this guy's got to do this in order for this guy to load the round. It's just, it's beautiful.
Speaker 3
55:22
It really is. It is gorgeous to watch. I miss it deeply.
Speaker 2
55:26
Is there, by the way, for a gun, is there like 1 person responsible for the aim and the, or like the specification of the location and somebody else that pulls it, presses the-
Speaker 3
55:37
The lanyard.
Speaker 2
55:38
Is that the lanyard? The button. Is there a button?
Speaker 3
55:40
It's better than a button. You'll like it, I'll tell you in a second. Okay.
Speaker 3
55:45
There's your sergeant in charge, and then they have their 2 IC. And so the comms come in to the sergeant, and the sergeant is the, or your master bombardier, bombardier chef. Yeah.
Speaker 2
55:58
Sorry, what? Bombardier chef, what?
Speaker 3
56:01
Bombardier chef.
Speaker 2
56:02
Bombardier chef, oh, that's a French.
Speaker 3
56:04
Master bombardier. So it goes like private in the north, like an infantry or in a regular unit, it's like private corporal, master corporal sergeant. In artillery, it goes gunner, bombardier, master bombardier, sergeant, and off like that.
Speaker 3
56:23
So you have 2 people, but the serge is like, you don't move till he says move. You don't fire till he says fire. Like he's your guy. He'll give you the coordinates.
Speaker 3
56:30
He'll feed them to the guy that's doing the GPS, that portion, I really never did it much. I wasn't tall enough to see it. Like legitimately, the way, how high it is up on the gun, like it was, I couldn't see clearly enough, it was not good. So.
Speaker 1
56:45
Obviously you have a big personality, you're a
Speaker 2
56:46
strong person. You don't say. And you have a big hat currently.
Speaker 3
56:51
I always wear a hat, Lex.
Speaker 2
56:53
Okay, it seems like your height and your size was a factor.
Speaker 3
56:57
Oh, for sure. How
Speaker 2
56:58
were you able to step up in all those moments? And how difficult was it?
Speaker 3
57:04
I don't know that I'd realized it was difficult while I was doing it, because that's just the way it's been. I've always been the short person, that's life. Nothing I can do to fix that.
Speaker 3
57:12
So there was no point, what am I gonna whine about it? I'm gonna break my femurs and insert things to make me grow a little bit. Maybe, maybe since you're in robotics, you can figure that out.
Speaker 2
57:21
Okay.
Speaker 3
57:22
That's your task now. Make me be 5 foot 3. That'd be great.
Speaker 3
57:28
For artillery, really what it came down to was the unit when I got there, there was only a couple people who spoke any sort of English and my sergeant was not 1 of them. But once he kind of started to get to know me a little bit the best that he could, he started to put effort into making sure I could lift the rounds, train, make sure my capacity to do my job was there. And so he took me under his wing in that aspect. So he would take me to the gym with him and he would show me exercises that would specifically help me load the round.
Speaker 3
58:03
So pick the round up from the ground, pick it up like a trick to put your knee under it, use your legs. Instead of just pick it up, use your back, pull your back out. He would work on that. And then depending on the position I was running the gun in, if I was running the side that had the charge bags, I'll explain that in a second.
Speaker 3
58:21
But if I was running the side that had the charge bags, I could step up onto the gun. And if I leaned inward enough with my right hand with the charge, and I kind of kicked off, I could kind of jump and shove it up the tube.
Speaker 2
58:40
Got it.
Speaker 3
58:41
Almost enough, yeah. If I was running the lanyard, which is the thing that makes it go boom, it's really easy, It's a long rope. You hook it on and you put it, your right hand on your hip and on your left, and you hold it there and you just stare at your sergeant like this.
Speaker 3
58:56
And you just wait for him to yell fire. And he points at you when he does it. And when you do it, you turn your whole body with it. And when you do that, it alleviates the, a misfire essentially, because if you just pull it sometimes that's not enough, you got to really give it your whole body into it.
Speaker 3
59:12
And so he would train me on how to do things differently so that I could do them effectively. And I wasn't a shit pump.
Speaker 2
59:20
A what?
Speaker 3
59:21
So shit pump is a term that we use in Canada to call somebody useless. A shit pump is a useless soldier who is just, you're there and that's the shit pump. And so we all just deal with it, but somehow they're still there.
Speaker 2
59:35
Yeah, what were we talking about? The lanyard, okay.
Speaker 3
59:38
Yeah, we were talking about the artillery guns. So those things though, what you would find fascinating is just how they break down when you have to take 1 of those apart. I think your mind would really find it fascinating how a breach comes apart all the way down to like ball bearing size.
Speaker 3
59:57
And the only and there's a way to just make that gun complete.
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