Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stories of Special Forces Operators Podcast. Listen to
some of the bravest and toughest people on the planet
share their stories, Sit back and enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Come back everyone Today we have a great guest, Mark Wales.
Who is he? We're gonna find out before we do.
Make sure to share, subscribe and hit that like button.
Mark Wales grew up in the red dirt of Western
Australian mining towns in the Pilbara. While still in high school,
he decided you wanted to join Australia's elite military unit,
the Special Air Service Regiment commonly known as the SAS,
(00:50):
and embarked on a career that would eventually lead into
the battlefields of Afghanistan. There is a true commander in
charge of thirty elite soldiers. Mark led combat missions deep
behind enemy lines. Like men who survived this unique and
harsh environment, Mark's experience has made a seering impression, allowing
him the chance to forge greater resilience and undergo personal growth.
That's what we're going to be learning about him today.
(01:11):
About those He's an accomplished corporate speaker, reality TV stars
CEO and a founder of a tough luxury fashion label.
I have to hear about that before we get started, too.
Let's look at the book. He's got a great book,
a highly recommend it called Survivor Life in the Sas.
Mark Wals thought his life would end in a chord
and fill this with the kind of the beginning of
the book. In Afghanistan, Mark and hiss sas where it
(01:34):
can't get this right, troops emerged from that scorch battlefield.
Twelve hours later, his mentor gunned down his dream career.
Now at nightmare over four deployments of intense warfighting, Mark
watched the line between right and wrong and become blurred.
When he left the Sas, he was adrift, crippled by guilt.
On a mission to rebuild himself, Mark turned his life around,
(01:54):
which is what we're going to be talking about today
as well. He fought his way into the gates of
a US Ivy League business school and into the board
room the top tier international corporations. There's a whole lot more.
We don't have all the time today to read about
it all. That's why I highly recommend you get the
book Survivor Life in the Sas, so it's not wasting
no more time. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Mister Mark Wales, welcome, say thank you. How you doing great?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Thank you doing really well? How are you my friend?
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yep, good, We're good in Australia. We're doing okay.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
By the way, folks, he is in Australia right now.
It's like a seventeen hour difference.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
He is the alvas in the world. Ride down the bottom.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
That's right, that's right. So this is an amazing story. Mark.
We say it here in the US and again some
of the things that I may not be as privy to,
but thank you for your service, even if it's for Australia.
We thank you very much for the commitment you made
to the military.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
No thanks, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
You know, well, I guess my first question I always
ask anybody in spec ops is what motivated you to
become a soldier in the Special Operations.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I had seen photographs of the British sas rescuing hostages
in the streets of London in nineteen eighty It was
Operation Nimrod and fairly well known, highly televised incident where
they went and rescued these hostages. And when I saw
that unfolding sort of the pictures of it. I thought, wow,
that'd be a really good, really good job. And I
(03:21):
heard that Australia had our own SAS unit. I thought, wow,
that's what I want to do. I want to try
and join them.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
That was an amazing operation. That was intense.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah, yeah, and obviously very secretive unit. No one had
really heard from the SAS for many years, and yet
here they were in this count of terrorism role. You know,
it's pretty pretty spectacular stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Now, how is it over there? And I guess over
there in Australia, there's so many different things between the
US and Australia. Here we have Green Beret movies. Every
time I spoke to a Green Beret, I'd say eight
out of ten. I always said it was a John
Wayne movie about Green Berets and motivated them. What did
you guys have that there? Do you have SAS movies
or anything?
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Nothing? There was one m No, there wasn't. There was
one film which was like Vietnam era called The Odd
Angry Shot about the Australian says, but there was no
real film industry built around it. And the culture around
(04:22):
the military Australia is a little bit different to the US.
You know, the US was founded basically from the from
the kind of the ashes of a war and that
you guys had to fight for your independence, and we
didn't really have that in Australia. So they do feel
different places in each nation's kind of culture. But no,
there weren't. There weren't movies, kind of like the Hollywood
(04:43):
has a lot of films and a good relationship with
the military, and yeah, we didn't really have that in Australia.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I guess Rambos for you, huh.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I was a Rainbow fan.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
That's funny, as I always ask for one of my
other special life gays that there. How real? Was it
not that movie? Other movies, I guess, but not that one.
So let's tell me tell me this. I know here
green Berets they have sear training and Navy seals, they
have buds training. What do you have there?
Speaker 3 (05:12):
For the s We have selection, skilled selection essays, selection
or the carta course, cardre course, and that's it's about
roughly three weeks long. That's the first part which is
hard to get through. It's got maybe ten to twenty
percent past right, and then if you're accepted in that phase,
you men go on to complete the kind of it's
(05:34):
called the reinforcement cycle, but it's about eighteen months roughly
of all the skills training you need to be a
special force the soldier, so all the dance stuff. And
I think I believe the Delta model there kind of
selection and reinforcement cycle off the British and we did
the same thing. We kind of copied the British model
of how they train their soldiers. But you know, it's effective,
(05:55):
it works.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Anything that you're I don't know what you can share,
what you can can't here the Buds training, the worst
thing they said it was the water, the cool ice water.
The green Berees don't share much about them. What was
the worst thing you had about the training?
Speaker 3 (06:09):
I think the big one with us is you're expected
to be able to work on your own for long
periods of time with no feedback of any kind. So
we'd be out on our own trying to do a
force endurance march with navigation and you know, in five
days you're covering really long ranges and you're carrying maybe
you know, one hundred plus pounds in your pack and
(06:29):
it's just very arduous to the Australian outbacks. You know,
it's tough on the body. So that that was one
of the things I noticed about ours. You had to
be comfortable on your own, providing your own feedback and motivation. Yeah,
it's just hard. You've got it in any of these courses.
You've got to be able to wake up and put
yourself through more punishment every day.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
And that's a tough one. That's gonna be really hard.
So on your first deployment, you were was was your
first deployment at that? Wasn't afghanstannd?
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Was it? I had done some peacekeeping missions to ease teams,
which is like a small had been annexed by Indonesia
in the seventies, and we went there on peacekeeping mission
in the late nineties and early two thousands, and then
when I joined Special Forces that was two thousand and four.
So my first missions were in Iraq, but my first
combat mission was in Afghanistan two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
That was a messy place too.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, it was interesting to see it. It was you know,
it was a it was a real, real feast. And
what's surprising when I first saw Iraq in two thousand
and six was that the US military did not have
control over Baghdad. It was a real mess and that
kind of rattled me. I was like, wow, how can
this city not not be pacified? Then? But it was.
(07:45):
It was true. There were insurgents everywhere and attacks everywhere.
It was. It was a tough time.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
How big was your unit that went over there?
Speaker 3 (07:53):
So we were only tiny. We were just doing some
security detachment basically for some visiting politicians in generals, So
we would go around and secure the area and taken
through different different cities. So I wasn't a combat role,
but I definitely got to see a lot of the
country and I was I was amazed at the condition
it was in. It was.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
It was rough, oh man, they had some times. It's
a very complex nation because there's just so many ethnicities
in that group. And got the Curtis, you got the Iraqis,
you got the you got all kinds of groups in there.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
It's very complicated, very ancient part of the world. And
there was a big difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq
I had basic infrastructure. It had like it was kind
of a modernizing country. It had universities, and the cities
were well built and it was well administered. Afghanistan was
biblical it was Mudhat's, you know, no governance of any kind,
(08:47):
just tribal governance. Yeah, was a very very different place,
very big, no literacy or almost no literacy, very ancient,
tribally led to tribally governed.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
What area were you in.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
The austraining province was oras Gone, which is in the south,
kind of near Kandahar. Yeah, near Kandahar, near Helman to
those southern provinces near helm ordered the Helmet River ran
through a part of Oresgun.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Oh Man, you were right in the thick of things.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah. I think initially they're expecting it to be quiet,
and it kind of was, and then over time it
became a real thoroughfare for the Taliban heading south. So
it was actually an important province in strategically. Yeah, let
me ask you this.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So you went to Iraq, then you went to Afghanistan.
I'm trying to think which is more similar to the
terrain in Australia to that to the training you had
in the outback.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Yeah, either one or both questions. I think Afghanistan was
closer because of the just how kind of spartan it was,
was real kind of mountainous and desert and so probably
similar to Australia in that sense. Australia is not as mountainous,
but it is quite stark and rugged in parts. So yeah,
I mean then the green Belt, so the actual lush
(10:16):
areas of Afghanistan that was that was pretty amazing. The
way they run the water into their valleys and do
all their farming irrigation. They've been doing that thousands of years.
It works. The low lying areas are actually quite rich
with water and vegetation.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
It's amazing. How is it working with other teams, I
mean we're from different countries, is it you did you
see a good seamless kind of coordination going on in
communication or was that really more complicated you imagined?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
There are a lot of national boundaries, So Australia would
control our part of Orisgoonne Province and we had Dutch
there and the British and American forces came in later.
The Americans actually you guys bought in order enabling forces,
so a lot of helicopters and drones and that came
later in the war. But for the most part there
(11:06):
was some mitigration, but countries very much had national objectives
there as well, so it is difficult to run a
war like that. You got a lot of allies, different
rules of engagement, different objectives. So that was hard and
they tried to grip that up in kind of two
thousand and nine twenty ten, and by then it was
probably too late.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Oh man, Yeah, that would be complicated now. And your
story in your book again, folks, the book is called
Survivor Life in the Sas you mentioned this story, were
you run the battlefield for twelve hours and your mentor
was going down. Can you take us a little bit
through our story.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yeah, we had been tasked to clear an important valley
in Oroscoon Province. We'd been controlled by the Taliban for
a while and that had a lot of trouble clearing it.
And my team made a team of thirty guys. We're
going to be the advance force excuse me, So we're
going to do all the reconnaissance and lead the forces
in to do the clearance. And so we were doing
(12:07):
recon work behind enemy lines, walking at night, walking up
to their positions and finding out where they were not fighting,
just remaining concealed the whole time. And then during the
day we would watch them from observation posts. This is
kind of tough unglamorous work, and we're trying to collect intelligence, right,
(12:27):
so that's what we're doing. And so that all happened.
And then on the day of the clearance, we went
in receive the forces and we all fanned out through
the valley to clear it. And I picked my team
up and we headed kind of south to move away
from the clearance force, and we ran into what was
a Taliban bunker position hidden in corn and so it
(12:49):
was the first battle of the day, really, yeah, and
we were right up against them. It was hard to
use air strikes because we were so close to them.
We're kind of getting our flanks exposed, try and move
around that flank, and we had our own snipers firing
and support and along the river to try and hit
the taliband or moving around us. And one of my
team leaders was shot early in the battle and badly wounded,
(13:12):
so we had to evacuate him in the first kind
of thirty forty minutes of the battle. So there was
a lot going on. It was a lot going on,
and that was my first kind of real experience of combat.
And yeah, I mean we took us a long time
to get out of there, and I knew after that
if I said I survived this, I'll be you know,
(13:32):
I'll make sure I go and live a good life after.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Let me ask you this. I've heard a couple of interviews.
I'll be interviewing these gentlemen in the next few weeks.
There were we called mac v SAgs, so one of
the earlier Yeah, special forces.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Yeah, they were good, good soldiers.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Amazing guys, Vietnam War stuff. And here in the very
first time they got shot at. I found that amazing people,
don't they have a really weird sense. When you see
the movies, people get shot at and they just keep
going right like nothing's happening or whatever. Do you remember
the first time you were shot at or do you
(14:10):
sorry you heard bullets coming at you?
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Oh? Yeah, I remember. And the guys shooting ants weren't
far away that maybe, you know, twenty to thirty minutes
away in the corn and we're trained to respond to
close up fighting like that. So I remember hearing the
shots going, holy shit, that's someone actually shooting out. I said.
I jumped in a ditch and it just took a
(14:33):
few minutes to kind of get my bearings. Then we
started shooting back. And then when I started shooting back.
I wasn't so scared anymore. I was like, Oh, this
feels familiar, like I've done this before. And I think
that training is so important. You've got to be able
to do this stuff without thinking about it, because there's
nothing else you can think about when your life's at
risk like that. You can only fall back to your training.
(14:56):
So I think that that was important for us. We're
well trained. Was used live, amma, and it was Yeah.
I mean we made the best of a bad situation
and we managed to get this guy evacuated. He died
during the battle, but we didn't lose anyone else and
we're in a bad spot.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
That was your mentor.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yeah, Well, he was a he was a senior guy.
He'd been fighting that same valley the year before and
had been given a Gallantry award for it. He was
a really, really respected fighter. So you know, when you
see someone like that who's respected and experienced get get hit,
it's quite a shock.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah, my condolences to you for that. No thanks, And
it was twelve hours.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, the opening battle that was probably about ninety minutes,
and then we spend the next twelve hours trying to
get out of the valley in the middle of the battle.
So it was it was a long day.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
That's a very long twelve hours, because I'm sure kind
of fight it's gonna seem like days.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Yeah, Now that was just.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
One deployment you had. According to your book, there was
four deployments where there was intense what was going on there?
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Yeah, probably, So I went back pretty much every year
from two thousand and seven. Yeah. Yeah, and our deployments
are a bit shorter, like we do maybe six months.
I know, the US forces were doing kind of twelve
I think seals and now I think about pretty much
the same as Special forces guys to do a shorter trip.
(16:25):
But yeah, every year I went back, the fighting got
in some ways, it got worse. You know. There was
more Taliban and more experience, more weapons, and more IDs.
So yeah, it got And some of those rotations I
did were not always combat rotations, somewhere intelligence collection. But
the last one I did was a combat rotation, and yeah,
it was it was getting even worse by the end.
(16:47):
I was surprised.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
That was intense stuff. Then let me ask you this
are your are your teams? Do you guys have medics?
I'm assuming as well someone who's assigned to be a medic,
somebod who's assigned to calm all that stuff as well.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, yeah we have there's always battlefield trained medics in
the teams. Definitely.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Okay, I'm trying to trying to compare it to the
Green Berets here. Some of the guys that I know,
I think they call them in Team Delta's here, they're like,
there are guys who will get a little extra training
for their medic.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
And then they got signed that it's important.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
What kind of guns do you guys do?
Speaker 3 (17:24):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
The standard?
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Pretty similar? Yeah, similar to what your Special Force teams carry.
We would order be M fours or seventy six to
two rifles and machine guns twenty five you know, all
the snipper heavy sniffer weapons up to fifty cow So
I carry USP tactical pistol. So yeah, pretty pretty standard
(17:46):
loadouts and then you change them for the different missions. Right.
Excuse me?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
How about our knife? People always curious about what kind
of names? Yeah, cups carry? What do you carry?
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yeah? Everyone carried a fixed blade, Yeah, fixed blade seal
pup and that's like you know, emergency stuff. I had
it on my chest, but that was like you type
you would never have to use that, but you never
you might have use to cut someone out something or
you know, use it for as a tool. You never
know a students exactly. Yeah, under siege. Yeah, but I
(18:24):
carried like a like a leatherm and like a multi
tool as well.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Now, how did you get there? Did you get there
by air or by sea?
Speaker 3 (18:34):
We go by We'd fly from Australia.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
So you just got dropped off. Would you land on
a base there we go.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Yeah, we'd fly into Dubai on commercial air and then
we'd fly military aircraft out of Dubai to q Wait
and then out of Yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Was a long long trip, I was gonna say, because
Australia was fire.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Now, and during this time, obviously after the four deployments
you mentioned it. You mentioned something watching the line between
right and wrong became blurred and this is when you
left the essays. What did you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Well, I think by the time we were by the
time it was twenty ten, we've been deployed there on
and off for nine years really, and then before that
we had even more deployments, So there was a people
were starting what was normal behavior in war fighting Star
Wars to shift, we got more vicious, and I was
the same too, Like by the end, I was like,
(19:38):
I'll do whatever it takes to survive. So I think
that there was a there was a there was this
understanding that we'd been there for a long time, there
was no end in sight, and we were going to
do whatever we had to do to survive. And I
think one of the problems with leaving troops in a
country that long is those types of mindset will start
(20:00):
to take hold, and I can feel it in myself.
So yeah, I left. I left in twenty ten. I
was pretty tired by then, so I was happy to
move on.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Do you feel like you're getting resemful that you have
to keep going, that this wasn't already solved and you
wanted to move on?
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Not resentful. I was happy to keep going back because
it was important work. He felt like you were doing
important work. But looking back now, I'm resentful that they weren't.
The strategy was weak. It was it was weak. Its
vaccillated and shifted a lot, and you can't have that
(20:36):
in a war. You've only got the clock sticking. When
you start a war. You can only do it for
so long when you're a free country before people think
the cost is too high. And so I think that's
a mistake we made as an allied coalition. We weren't.
We should have had much narrow at goals. I think
we should have probably finished once we'd ousted our tarder
and you know, installed a reasonably competent Afghan government.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
It's amazing we're just finally getting out of there.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Incredible. Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
It's been almost forty years as the Mujahadeen in nineteen eighties,
I think it was when the Russians went in. Yep,
that's insane. How much history background did you guys get
and in regards to that, did you guys get prep
prepped on that or not at all?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Oh? You do a bit. I mean I was a
history undergrad, so I knew Aquitt a bit about the
region and the military history, and I knew the Soviets
had had there their asses handed to them in that
in that country just because they had tough fought is
and it's very tough to rain. So you know, we
thought we could do better, but the result is going
(21:43):
to be pretty similar to what the Soviets. Yeah, what
the Soviets got so, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Didn't look like anything happened. Right now we're losing territory
left by line, left a.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Bit more powerful than when we got there. So it's crazy,
it really is.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I'm really curious, and I guess I don't know. I've
been talking to other people about I'm just really curious
if anybody else is going to try it next, you know,
once we get out, are we going to see Russia?
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Go?
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Okay, maybe it's our turn again? Yeah I think so,
but hopefully not.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Yeah, yeah, definitely not.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
This is amazing because one of the things is always
I found really fascinating with people in special ops is
the level of resilience, the level of the ability to
handle stress right, more than so than any individual who's
not part of that. But then you change complete gears
and you went into over here. You left Australia, came
(22:38):
to the US, you went to Ivy League, which is
another type of environment that can be stressed. You went
to business school. How was that? What happened there? What
was the transition?
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Oh? It was a crazy thing to do. I think
when you build a career in special forces to kind
of do a complete one hundred ninety return and kind
of throw the career wise, a pretty big moved to
make right like it's a I had the foundation of
a really good military career, but I saw an opportunity
(23:09):
to go to the US. I'd always wanted to go
to the US. I was excited by the spirit of
the country and how ambitious the US is. I've always
loved the US for that, like you took us to
the moon. You're the leaders in most industries, and you're
not perfect like any country, but I think aspirationally you
(23:31):
are an exciting place to be. And so I wanted
to go to the US. I wanted to go to
one of the top school yeah. Yeah, And so I
applied to a bunch of the U S schools in
the Northeast, and I ended up getting accepted into Warden,
which was a great school. And then yeah, and then
(23:52):
I left. It was an easy choice I was. I said,
you know, it's worth leaving the military if you're going
to go somewhere as good as that, and they'll be
opportunities after. I wasn't sure exactly what I was going
to do, but I knew i'd kind of figure it
out over a couple of years. There. So I packed
up and left and went to the US. It was
the best two years I've spent probably ever.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
You went to the business school and then you went
into the boardrooms of top tier international corporations. As the
book mentions, what did you want to do when you
got out of Wharton?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
I wanted to lead a startup. I wanted to run
my own business. I wanted to build a clothing and
apparel brand which was kind of built on the foundation
of Special Forces values, because there's nothing really like that
in the market. So I built the start of at school.
But I said, you know, this isn't going to pay
the bill. So I joined a consulting firm. I applied
(24:44):
for McKinsey and Company and joined them. It's been about
it's spent about three years working, yeah, with McKinsey company. Why.
I tried to build this startup on the side, and yeah,
I mean that was my introduction to the corporate sector,
and it was it was bloody hard. It was really
hard work. But a great company, you know, like I
learned a lot.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
That's one of the top companies around. That's incredible. It
went to Warden and then you went to Mackenzie it's
a heck of a background. I guess one of my
questions would be apparel. That's interesting, But what was there?
Was there something that appealed to you. Did you see
the industry just didn't work or you just wanted to
create better clothes? What was the motivation for apparel?
Speaker 3 (25:26):
It was kind of an emerging of a number of
different interests for me. I kind of liked fashion a lot.
I really wanted to tell the story of what it
was like to be in a military unit, to be
in Afghanistan. And I think through a brand you can
do that. There's there's video, there's products, there's all sorts
of ways you can communicate that story. And so and
I wanted to run my own kind of business. I
(25:47):
thought I was excited by a small startup, you know,
working in small teams, like being in special forces. So
I kind of built the prototypes for the business. I
called it kill Capture, which is named after the kind
of mission profiles, which is a super different name, like
you're not going to appeal to. It's very niche, kind
of based. And yeah, built at a business school and
(26:09):
I'm still working. I still run it today. It's expanded
our operations.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
It's called kill Capture.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
And got an element in the US, but everything's manufactured
in New York City and it's yeah, we've got greater power.
That's what we do.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
What's the what's the website for it?
Speaker 3 (26:28):
If I can ask, what's the name of the site?
Speaker 2 (26:32):
I know the website?
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Yeah, sorry, you you want to know what it's for?
Speaker 2 (26:38):
No, No, what's the website name for kill Capture? The
clothing name?
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Okay, it's kill Capture Capture with a K, so k
I l l K A P t U r E
dot com.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Okay, kill Capture, gotcha. I'm looking it up right now
so we can make sure we have it for our
audience out there. So kill capture dot com.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
You said, Yeah, there it is.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
I think I got it up there. It is so
k I L l K A P t U r E. Folks,
tough luxury clothing brand, which you don't usually see those
two names together like that. You can see it over
there at kill capture dot com. So you got some
really cool stuff. Definitely check it out, folks. So Mark
you went on that. It's interesting because every time I
(27:21):
talk to anybody who's been in Special Forces. One of
the things I keep picking up over and over again
is how much it helped them. And I'm not sure
how much are you. I don't know if you're a
fan of Joseph Campbell, if you ever read any of
his stuff in mythology, but he's got one book on
the hero's journey, and a lot of times we take
that right and it sounds like a lot of you
(27:41):
got all of you have to be you're all heroes.
So you're coming out of this one place, you get
placed in another area, which is the training, the deployments,
and you're like, why did I do this? And then
you get out and you're totally you were You're not
the same mark you were prior to that? Is that
fair to say? And how do you think it improved you?
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah? I think it's I think for me, I got out,
I had I had confidence in myself to handle situations
that I wasn't comfortable in because you do so much
of that in special Forces training. So going into a
new field having to learn again and having the I guess,
the humility to start from scratching to train yourself. Yeah,
(28:32):
and just having that humility to kind of stop from
the bottom again and train yourself in a new field.
I think that's an important skill to have it. If
you can do that, you can always kind of start
over again in a new field and build yourself up.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Now, the camaraderie, maybe I got a misunderstood, but I
know when you were saying the talking about the training
the sas over there in Australia. You're one of the
hardest things you said, was bring by yourself out there
for like five days or WHATNT. But do you develop
a comrade with your other members?
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah, it's all small team based skills, right, So we
work in patrols of five to six people and a
troop which is like platoon sized, so yeah, you get it.
You build a strong bomber. These two you train so
hard together and you share a lot of risk.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
So it's good excellent folks. Again, it's Mark Wales w A.
L Es Survivor Life in the s A S. Also,
if you're interested in clothing, you can check out kill
Capture withthek dot com some cool stuff. I have to
So now you've done all that, you've got all that
under your belt. You haven't accomplished much Mark, What are
(29:41):
you doing? So he's got all that done? What's next?
What are you going for now? I'm sure you're not
stopping here. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
So I was in I was in New York working
with McKenzie and I had seen an advertisement in Australia
for a reality show Survivor, which is obviously huge in
the US, and I'd heard about him watching it a
bit and I thought, oh, wow, I should. I'd totally
love to do that just because of my background, and
you know, I thought I'd be able to do the
(30:09):
show and do it well. And then I applied to
the training season and you know, quit my job in
New York and went and went and joined the show
and it was actually really fun experience, and I met
my wife. She was we're in the same tribe, so
we ended up striking out for a relationship after and
you know, four years later we married, we got a
little boy, so it was it was it was a
(30:31):
great turn of events.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Congratulations. Yeah, that's interesting. So you went from fighting and
working alongside some good tribes over there in Afghanistan against
bad ones and then meet your wife in a tribe
and Survivors. Did you end up winning that one? No?
Speaker 3 (30:50):
No, I got out before the halfway point, So it's
it's pretty hard Actually it's much harder the looks when
you're sitting on the couch watching yeah to the TV.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Hey, sitting on the counch is tough business. So I guess,
as you're wrapping up now in the last few minutes together,
what are some of the advice you would want to
give people in regards to life's challenges Because you've been
through a lot, obviously you've seen a lot. Some of
the stuff you've seen a lot of people will never
(31:22):
see in their life, and some people can overcome it.
We've seen before it too, unfortunately with some soldiers who
develop PTSD and other things and can overcome it. But
what would be your advice to the people out there?
Speaker 3 (31:34):
I think that be careful about getting trapped in a
career or a life that you know is probably not
the best thing for you or for what you believe in.
I think it's important that you, you know, take a
few risks and maybe pursue something that you're not sure
about how the outcome is going to go, but you
feel like it's the right thing to do. And I
(31:57):
think the times that I've had the best time in
life life and I've done my best is when i've
taken that risk. I've chased something which was a little
bit out there, a little bit crazy, but I was
excited about it. And I think that the times that
I've done my worst is when I've been doing something
that I thought other people would want me to do,
and because I wasn't that interested, I did a terrible
(32:17):
job at it. So I guess long story short is
just you know, take those risks that you're not going
to be regretting later in your life.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
You're definitely a testament to that. I mean, you're in Australia,
you became with the Special Force, as you traveled, you deployed,
you fought, then you went over with all the way
over to the US, a whole different country to start
one of the finest schools around for business. You succeeded there,
then you went to one of the higher respective companies
in the country. It's an amazing story, it really is. Now,
were your parents ever in the.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Military, No, No, they weren't. My grandfather had fought against
the Japanese in the Pacific. I remember him. I remember
him talking about that. Yeah, but no, not a military family.
I think. Actually, just to add on that, the other
point outside is that you're going to face. Yeah, you're
(33:13):
going to face obstacles no matter what path you choose
in life, So you know, don't be too afraid of
those things. They're going to come no matter what. So
just take the path that you're most excited about.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Absolutely, great advice, great advice. Amazing Again, folks, Mark Wales,
Australian Sas. You can find this book Survivor Life in
the Sas. If you've been a fan of this show
so far, this will definitely appeal to you because I
don't know if you're like me or not. It's information
that I've never learned much about. I don't know about
special forces around the world that much. This way, I'm
(33:47):
so thankful for Mark to join us, and we know
we're going to have the British coming along. We're going
to get their says over here. The French are a
little hard to get. We'll get one sooner earlier. But
so we're gonna learn more about the mindset of these
individuals that can teach us so much about our lives
and how to be much more resilient and tough. Again
the book Survivor Life in the Sas. You can also
(34:08):
go to kill, Capture, with the k dot com Mark,
thank you so much for taking the time to be
with us.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
We just want to say thanks to you for getting
these stories and sharing with people. I think it's a
great thing. So I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Absolutely an amazing team, and I think people need to
see those stories and hear about them because we don't. Yeah,
we don't see much. Whether we do see is so
far from reality. As much as Rambo is entertaining, it's
not a good depiction of it. Are there any American movies? Actually,
my last question, any American movies that you really liked,
(34:43):
either because they're entertaining or just what was the most
realistic for you? You think anything stood out for you?
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Definitely Aliens by James Cameron. No. I think my favorite,
I'm trying to think my favorite kind of military film
from the US would have to be Kubrick's Full Mantle Jacket, Like,
oh wow, the green, the greedness of and just how
bad that type of fighting is. I think he captured
(35:12):
that quite well. There's nothing glamorous about that film, and
I felt that was pretty pretty good.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
That was a movie too, man, That one an Apocalypse Now.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Yeah, pops, Now that was a bit out man. And
the funny thing is people think apocalypse now would be
an exaggeration. It's actually not like things get pretty weird
out in the Yeah, in the battlefield. So yeah, it's
surprising how life imitates art and vice versa.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah, that might be for another show, how weird things
got out there. Yeah, that's interesting. I can't wait to
when I talk to the Macapie sad guys and find
out what they thought about that.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Yeah, better stories of me?
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Well, hopefully we can bring you back one time. We'll
do an international panel. You guys can swap stories. I
think that'd be kind of fun to do.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, i'd be honest.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Thank you very much, Mark, Thank you everyone. Make sure
to share, subscribe, hit that like button.
Welcome to Stories of Special Forces Operators Podcast. Listen to
some of the bravest and toughest people on the planet
share their stories, Sit back and enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Come back everyone Today we have a great guest, Mark Wales.
Who is he? We're gonna find out before we do.
Make sure to share, subscribe and hit that like button.
Mark Wales grew up in the red dirt of Western
Australian mining towns in the Pilbara. While still in high school,
he decided you wanted to join Australia's elite military unit,
the Special Air Service Regiment commonly known as the SAS,
(00:50):
and embarked on a career that would eventually lead into
the battlefields of Afghanistan. There is a true commander in
charge of thirty elite soldiers. Mark led combat missions deep
behind enemy lines. Like men who survived this unique and
harsh environment, Mark's experience has made a seering impression, allowing
him the chance to forge greater resilience and undergo personal growth.
That's what we're going to be learning about him today.
(01:11):
About those He's an accomplished corporate speaker, reality TV stars
CEO and a founder of a tough luxury fashion label.
I have to hear about that before we get started, too.
Let's look at the book. He's got a great book,
a highly recommend it called Survivor Life in the Sas.
Mark Wals thought his life would end in a chord
and fill this with the kind of the beginning of
the book. In Afghanistan, Mark and hiss sas where it
(01:34):
can't get this right, troops emerged from that scorch battlefield.
Twelve hours later, his mentor gunned down his dream career.
Now at nightmare over four deployments of intense warfighting, Mark
watched the line between right and wrong and become blurred.
When he left the Sas, he was adrift, crippled by guilt.
On a mission to rebuild himself, Mark turned his life around,
(01:54):
which is what we're going to be talking about today
as well. He fought his way into the gates of
a US Ivy League business school and into the board
room the top tier international corporations. There's a whole lot more.
We don't have all the time today to read about
it all. That's why I highly recommend you get the
book Survivor Life in the Sas, so it's not wasting
no more time. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Mister Mark Wales, welcome, say thank you. How you doing great?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Thank you doing really well? How are you my friend?
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yep, good, We're good in Australia. We're doing okay.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
By the way, folks, he is in Australia right now.
It's like a seventeen hour difference.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
He is the alvas in the world. Ride down the bottom.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
That's right, that's right. So this is an amazing story. Mark.
We say it here in the US and again some
of the things that I may not be as privy to,
but thank you for your service, even if it's for Australia.
We thank you very much for the commitment you made
to the military.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
No thanks, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
You know, well, I guess my first question I always
ask anybody in spec ops is what motivated you to
become a soldier in the Special Operations.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I had seen photographs of the British sas rescuing hostages
in the streets of London in nineteen eighty It was
Operation Nimrod and fairly well known, highly televised incident where
they went and rescued these hostages. And when I saw
that unfolding sort of the pictures of it. I thought, wow,
that'd be a really good, really good job. And I
(03:21):
heard that Australia had our own SAS unit. I thought, wow,
that's what I want to do. I want to try
and join them.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
That was an amazing operation. That was intense.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah, yeah, and obviously very secretive unit. No one had
really heard from the SAS for many years, and yet
here they were in this count of terrorism role. You know,
it's pretty pretty spectacular stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Now, how is it over there? And I guess over
there in Australia, there's so many different things between the
US and Australia. Here we have Green Beret movies. Every
time I spoke to a Green Beret, I'd say eight
out of ten. I always said it was a John
Wayne movie about Green Berets and motivated them. What did
you guys have that there? Do you have SAS movies
or anything?
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Nothing? There was one m No, there wasn't. There was
one film which was like Vietnam era called The Odd
Angry Shot about the Australian says, but there was no
real film industry built around it. And the culture around
(04:22):
the military Australia is a little bit different to the US.
You know, the US was founded basically from the from
the kind of the ashes of a war and that
you guys had to fight for your independence, and we
didn't really have that in Australia. So they do feel
different places in each nation's kind of culture. But no,
there weren't. There weren't movies, kind of like the Hollywood
(04:43):
has a lot of films and a good relationship with
the military, and yeah, we didn't really have that in Australia.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I guess Rambos for you, huh.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I was a Rainbow fan.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
That's funny, as I always ask for one of my
other special life gays that there. How real? Was it
not that movie? Other movies, I guess, but not that one.
So let's tell me tell me this. I know here
green Berets they have sear training and Navy seals, they
have buds training. What do you have there?
Speaker 3 (05:12):
For the s We have selection, skilled selection essays, selection
or the carta course, cardre course, and that's it's about
roughly three weeks long. That's the first part which is
hard to get through. It's got maybe ten to twenty
percent past right, and then if you're accepted in that phase,
you men go on to complete the kind of it's
(05:34):
called the reinforcement cycle, but it's about eighteen months roughly
of all the skills training you need to be a
special force the soldier, so all the dance stuff. And
I think I believe the Delta model there kind of
selection and reinforcement cycle off the British and we did
the same thing. We kind of copied the British model
of how they train their soldiers. But you know, it's effective,
(05:55):
it works.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Anything that you're I don't know what you can share,
what you can can't here the Buds training, the worst
thing they said it was the water, the cool ice water.
The green Berees don't share much about them. What was
the worst thing you had about the training?
Speaker 3 (06:09):
I think the big one with us is you're expected
to be able to work on your own for long
periods of time with no feedback of any kind. So
we'd be out on our own trying to do a
force endurance march with navigation and you know, in five
days you're covering really long ranges and you're carrying maybe
you know, one hundred plus pounds in your pack and
(06:29):
it's just very arduous to the Australian outbacks. You know,
it's tough on the body. So that that was one
of the things I noticed about ours. You had to
be comfortable on your own, providing your own feedback and motivation. Yeah,
it's just hard. You've got it in any of these courses.
You've got to be able to wake up and put
yourself through more punishment every day.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
And that's a tough one. That's gonna be really hard.
So on your first deployment, you were was was your
first deployment at that? Wasn't afghanstannd?
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Was it? I had done some peacekeeping missions to ease teams,
which is like a small had been annexed by Indonesia
in the seventies, and we went there on peacekeeping mission
in the late nineties and early two thousands, and then
when I joined Special Forces that was two thousand and four.
So my first missions were in Iraq, but my first
combat mission was in Afghanistan two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
That was a messy place too.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, it was interesting to see it. It was you know,
it was a it was a real, real feast. And
what's surprising when I first saw Iraq in two thousand
and six was that the US military did not have
control over Baghdad. It was a real mess and that
kind of rattled me. I was like, wow, how can
this city not not be pacified? Then? But it was.
(07:45):
It was true. There were insurgents everywhere and attacks everywhere.
It was. It was a tough time.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
How big was your unit that went over there?
Speaker 3 (07:53):
So we were only tiny. We were just doing some
security detachment basically for some visiting politicians in generals, So
we would go around and secure the area and taken
through different different cities. So I wasn't a combat role,
but I definitely got to see a lot of the
country and I was I was amazed at the condition
it was in. It was.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
It was rough, oh man, they had some times. It's
a very complex nation because there's just so many ethnicities
in that group. And got the Curtis, you got the Iraqis,
you got the you got all kinds of groups in there.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
It's very complicated, very ancient part of the world. And
there was a big difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq
I had basic infrastructure. It had like it was kind
of a modernizing country. It had universities, and the cities
were well built and it was well administered. Afghanistan was
biblical it was Mudhat's, you know, no governance of any kind,
(08:47):
just tribal governance. Yeah, was a very very different place,
very big, no literacy or almost no literacy, very ancient,
tribally led to tribally governed.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
What area were you in.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
The austraining province was oras Gone, which is in the south,
kind of near Kandahar. Yeah, near Kandahar, near Helman to
those southern provinces near helm ordered the Helmet River ran
through a part of Oresgun.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Oh Man, you were right in the thick of things.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah. I think initially they're expecting it to be quiet,
and it kind of was, and then over time it
became a real thoroughfare for the Taliban heading south. So
it was actually an important province in strategically. Yeah, let
me ask you this.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So you went to Iraq, then you went to Afghanistan.
I'm trying to think which is more similar to the
terrain in Australia to that to the training you had
in the outback.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Yeah, either one or both questions. I think Afghanistan was
closer because of the just how kind of spartan it was,
was real kind of mountainous and desert and so probably
similar to Australia in that sense. Australia is not as mountainous,
but it is quite stark and rugged in parts. So yeah,
I mean then the green Belt, so the actual lush
(10:16):
areas of Afghanistan that was that was pretty amazing. The
way they run the water into their valleys and do
all their farming irrigation. They've been doing that thousands of years.
It works. The low lying areas are actually quite rich
with water and vegetation.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
It's amazing. How is it working with other teams, I
mean we're from different countries, is it you did you
see a good seamless kind of coordination going on in
communication or was that really more complicated you imagined?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
There are a lot of national boundaries, So Australia would
control our part of Orisgoonne Province and we had Dutch
there and the British and American forces came in later.
The Americans actually you guys bought in order enabling forces,
so a lot of helicopters and drones and that came
later in the war. But for the most part there
(11:06):
was some mitigration, but countries very much had national objectives
there as well, so it is difficult to run a
war like that. You got a lot of allies, different
rules of engagement, different objectives. So that was hard and
they tried to grip that up in kind of two
thousand and nine twenty ten, and by then it was
probably too late.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Oh man, Yeah, that would be complicated now. And your
story in your book again, folks, the book is called
Survivor Life in the Sas you mentioned this story, were
you run the battlefield for twelve hours and your mentor
was going down. Can you take us a little bit
through our story.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yeah, we had been tasked to clear an important valley
in Oroscoon Province. We'd been controlled by the Taliban for
a while and that had a lot of trouble clearing it.
And my team made a team of thirty guys. We're
going to be the advance force excuse me, So we're
going to do all the reconnaissance and lead the forces
in to do the clearance. And so we were doing
(12:07):
recon work behind enemy lines, walking at night, walking up
to their positions and finding out where they were not fighting,
just remaining concealed the whole time. And then during the
day we would watch them from observation posts. This is
kind of tough unglamorous work, and we're trying to collect intelligence, right,
(12:27):
so that's what we're doing. And so that all happened.
And then on the day of the clearance, we went
in receive the forces and we all fanned out through
the valley to clear it. And I picked my team
up and we headed kind of south to move away
from the clearance force, and we ran into what was
a Taliban bunker position hidden in corn and so it
(12:49):
was the first battle of the day, really, yeah, and
we were right up against them. It was hard to
use air strikes because we were so close to them.
We're kind of getting our flanks exposed, try and move
around that flank, and we had our own snipers firing
and support and along the river to try and hit
the taliband or moving around us. And one of my
team leaders was shot early in the battle and badly wounded,
(13:12):
so we had to evacuate him in the first kind
of thirty forty minutes of the battle. So there was
a lot going on. It was a lot going on,
and that was my first kind of real experience of combat.
And yeah, I mean we took us a long time
to get out of there, and I knew after that
if I said I survived this, I'll be you know,
(13:32):
I'll make sure I go and live a good life after.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Let me ask you this. I've heard a couple of interviews.
I'll be interviewing these gentlemen in the next few weeks.
There were we called mac v SAgs, so one of
the earlier Yeah, special forces.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Yeah, they were good, good soldiers.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Amazing guys, Vietnam War stuff. And here in the very
first time they got shot at. I found that amazing people,
don't they have a really weird sense. When you see
the movies, people get shot at and they just keep
going right like nothing's happening or whatever. Do you remember
the first time you were shot at or do you
(14:10):
sorry you heard bullets coming at you?
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Oh? Yeah, I remember. And the guys shooting ants weren't
far away that maybe, you know, twenty to thirty minutes
away in the corn and we're trained to respond to
close up fighting like that. So I remember hearing the
shots going, holy shit, that's someone actually shooting out. I said.
I jumped in a ditch and it just took a
(14:33):
few minutes to kind of get my bearings. Then we
started shooting back. And then when I started shooting back.
I wasn't so scared anymore. I was like, Oh, this
feels familiar, like I've done this before. And I think
that training is so important. You've got to be able
to do this stuff without thinking about it, because there's
nothing else you can think about when your life's at
risk like that. You can only fall back to your training.
(14:56):
So I think that that was important for us. We're
well trained. Was used live, amma, and it was Yeah.
I mean we made the best of a bad situation
and we managed to get this guy evacuated. He died
during the battle, but we didn't lose anyone else and
we're in a bad spot.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
That was your mentor.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yeah, Well, he was a he was a senior guy.
He'd been fighting that same valley the year before and
had been given a Gallantry award for it. He was
a really, really respected fighter. So you know, when you
see someone like that who's respected and experienced get get hit,
it's quite a shock.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah, my condolences to you for that. No thanks, And
it was twelve hours.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, the opening battle that was probably about ninety minutes,
and then we spend the next twelve hours trying to
get out of the valley in the middle of the battle.
So it was it was a long day.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
That's a very long twelve hours, because I'm sure kind
of fight it's gonna seem like days.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Yeah, Now that was just.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
One deployment you had. According to your book, there was
four deployments where there was intense what was going on there?
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Yeah, probably, So I went back pretty much every year
from two thousand and seven. Yeah. Yeah, and our deployments
are a bit shorter, like we do maybe six months.
I know, the US forces were doing kind of twelve
I think seals and now I think about pretty much
the same as Special forces guys to do a shorter trip.
(16:25):
But yeah, every year I went back, the fighting got
in some ways, it got worse. You know. There was
more Taliban and more experience, more weapons, and more IDs.
So yeah, it got And some of those rotations I
did were not always combat rotations, somewhere intelligence collection. But
the last one I did was a combat rotation, and yeah,
it was it was getting even worse by the end.
(16:47):
I was surprised.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
That was intense stuff. Then let me ask you this
are your are your teams? Do you guys have medics?
I'm assuming as well someone who's assigned to be a medic,
somebod who's assigned to calm all that stuff as well.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, yeah we have there's always battlefield trained medics in
the teams. Definitely.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Okay, I'm trying to trying to compare it to the
Green Berets here. Some of the guys that I know,
I think they call them in Team Delta's here, they're like,
there are guys who will get a little extra training
for their medic.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
And then they got signed that it's important.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
What kind of guns do you guys do?
Speaker 3 (17:24):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
The standard?
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Pretty similar? Yeah, similar to what your Special Force teams carry.
We would order be M fours or seventy six to
two rifles and machine guns twenty five you know, all
the snipper heavy sniffer weapons up to fifty cow So
I carry USP tactical pistol. So yeah, pretty pretty standard
(17:46):
loadouts and then you change them for the different missions. Right.
Excuse me?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
How about our knife? People always curious about what kind
of names? Yeah, cups carry? What do you carry?
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yeah? Everyone carried a fixed blade, Yeah, fixed blade seal
pup and that's like you know, emergency stuff. I had
it on my chest, but that was like you type
you would never have to use that, but you never
you might have use to cut someone out something or
you know, use it for as a tool. You never
know a students exactly. Yeah, under siege. Yeah, but I
(18:24):
carried like a like a leatherm and like a multi
tool as well.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Now, how did you get there? Did you get there
by air or by sea?
Speaker 3 (18:34):
We go by We'd fly from Australia.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
So you just got dropped off. Would you land on
a base there we go.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Yeah, we'd fly into Dubai on commercial air and then
we'd fly military aircraft out of Dubai to q Wait
and then out of Yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Was a long long trip, I was gonna say, because
Australia was fire.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Now, and during this time, obviously after the four deployments
you mentioned it. You mentioned something watching the line between
right and wrong became blurred and this is when you
left the essays. What did you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Well, I think by the time we were by the
time it was twenty ten, we've been deployed there on
and off for nine years really, and then before that
we had even more deployments, So there was a people
were starting what was normal behavior in war fighting Star
Wars to shift, we got more vicious, and I was
the same too, Like by the end, I was like,
(19:38):
I'll do whatever it takes to survive. So I think
that there was a there was a there was this
understanding that we'd been there for a long time, there
was no end in sight, and we were going to
do whatever we had to do to survive. And I
think one of the problems with leaving troops in a
country that long is those types of mindset will start
(20:00):
to take hold, and I can feel it in myself.
So yeah, I left. I left in twenty ten. I
was pretty tired by then, so I was happy to
move on.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Do you feel like you're getting resemful that you have
to keep going, that this wasn't already solved and you
wanted to move on?
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Not resentful. I was happy to keep going back because
it was important work. He felt like you were doing
important work. But looking back now, I'm resentful that they weren't.
The strategy was weak. It was it was weak. Its
vaccillated and shifted a lot, and you can't have that
(20:36):
in a war. You've only got the clock sticking. When
you start a war. You can only do it for
so long when you're a free country before people think
the cost is too high. And so I think that's
a mistake we made as an allied coalition. We weren't.
We should have had much narrow at goals. I think
we should have probably finished once we'd ousted our tarder
and you know, installed a reasonably competent Afghan government.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
It's amazing we're just finally getting out of there.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Incredible. Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
It's been almost forty years as the Mujahadeen in nineteen eighties,
I think it was when the Russians went in. Yep,
that's insane. How much history background did you guys get
and in regards to that, did you guys get prep
prepped on that or not at all?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Oh? You do a bit. I mean I was a
history undergrad, so I knew Aquitt a bit about the
region and the military history, and I knew the Soviets
had had there their asses handed to them in that
in that country just because they had tough fought is
and it's very tough to rain. So you know, we
thought we could do better, but the result is going
(21:43):
to be pretty similar to what the Soviets. Yeah, what
the Soviets got so, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Didn't look like anything happened. Right now we're losing territory
left by line, left a.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Bit more powerful than when we got there. So it's crazy,
it really is.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I'm really curious, and I guess I don't know. I've
been talking to other people about I'm just really curious
if anybody else is going to try it next, you know,
once we get out, are we going to see Russia?
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Go?
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Okay, maybe it's our turn again? Yeah I think so,
but hopefully not.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Yeah, yeah, definitely not.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
This is amazing because one of the things is always
I found really fascinating with people in special ops is
the level of resilience, the level of the ability to
handle stress right, more than so than any individual who's
not part of that. But then you change complete gears
and you went into over here. You left Australia, came
(22:38):
to the US, you went to Ivy League, which is
another type of environment that can be stressed. You went
to business school. How was that? What happened there? What
was the transition?
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Oh? It was a crazy thing to do. I think
when you build a career in special forces to kind
of do a complete one hundred ninety return and kind
of throw the career wise, a pretty big moved to
make right like it's a I had the foundation of
a really good military career, but I saw an opportunity
(23:09):
to go to the US. I'd always wanted to go
to the US. I was excited by the spirit of
the country and how ambitious the US is. I've always
loved the US for that, like you took us to
the moon. You're the leaders in most industries, and you're
not perfect like any country, but I think aspirationally you
(23:31):
are an exciting place to be. And so I wanted
to go to the US. I wanted to go to
one of the top school yeah. Yeah, And so I
applied to a bunch of the U S schools in
the Northeast, and I ended up getting accepted into Warden,
which was a great school. And then yeah, and then
(23:52):
I left. It was an easy choice I was. I said,
you know, it's worth leaving the military if you're going
to go somewhere as good as that, and they'll be
opportunities after. I wasn't sure exactly what I was going
to do, but I knew i'd kind of figure it
out over a couple of years. There. So I packed
up and left and went to the US. It was
the best two years I've spent probably ever.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
You went to the business school and then you went
into the boardrooms of top tier international corporations. As the
book mentions, what did you want to do when you
got out of Wharton?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
I wanted to lead a startup. I wanted to run
my own business. I wanted to build a clothing and
apparel brand which was kind of built on the foundation
of Special Forces values, because there's nothing really like that
in the market. So I built the start of at school.
But I said, you know, this isn't going to pay
the bill. So I joined a consulting firm. I applied
(24:44):
for McKinsey and Company and joined them. It's been about
it's spent about three years working, yeah, with McKinsey company. Why.
I tried to build this startup on the side, and yeah,
I mean that was my introduction to the corporate sector,
and it was it was bloody hard. It was really
hard work. But a great company, you know, like I
learned a lot.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
That's one of the top companies around. That's incredible. It
went to Warden and then you went to Mackenzie it's
a heck of a background. I guess one of my
questions would be apparel. That's interesting, But what was there?
Was there something that appealed to you. Did you see
the industry just didn't work or you just wanted to
create better clothes? What was the motivation for apparel?
Speaker 3 (25:26):
It was kind of an emerging of a number of
different interests for me. I kind of liked fashion a lot.
I really wanted to tell the story of what it
was like to be in a military unit, to be
in Afghanistan. And I think through a brand you can
do that. There's there's video, there's products, there's all sorts
of ways you can communicate that story. And so and
I wanted to run my own kind of business. I
(25:47):
thought I was excited by a small startup, you know,
working in small teams, like being in special forces. So
I kind of built the prototypes for the business. I
called it kill Capture, which is named after the kind
of mission profiles, which is a super different name, like
you're not going to appeal to. It's very niche, kind
of based. And yeah, built at a business school and
(26:09):
I'm still working. I still run it today. It's expanded
our operations.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
It's called kill Capture.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
And got an element in the US, but everything's manufactured
in New York City and it's yeah, we've got greater power.
That's what we do.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
What's the what's the website for it?
Speaker 3 (26:28):
If I can ask, what's the name of the site?
Speaker 2 (26:32):
I know the website?
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Yeah, sorry, you you want to know what it's for?
Speaker 2 (26:38):
No, No, what's the website name for kill Capture? The
clothing name?
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Okay, it's kill Capture Capture with a K, so k
I l l K A P t U r E
dot com.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Okay, kill Capture, gotcha. I'm looking it up right now
so we can make sure we have it for our
audience out there. So kill capture dot com.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
You said, Yeah, there it is.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
I think I got it up there. It is so
k I L l K A P t U r E. Folks,
tough luxury clothing brand, which you don't usually see those
two names together like that. You can see it over
there at kill capture dot com. So you got some
really cool stuff. Definitely check it out, folks. So Mark
you went on that. It's interesting because every time I
(27:21):
talk to anybody who's been in Special Forces. One of
the things I keep picking up over and over again
is how much it helped them. And I'm not sure
how much are you. I don't know if you're a
fan of Joseph Campbell, if you ever read any of
his stuff in mythology, but he's got one book on
the hero's journey, and a lot of times we take
that right and it sounds like a lot of you
(27:41):
got all of you have to be you're all heroes.
So you're coming out of this one place, you get
placed in another area, which is the training, the deployments,
and you're like, why did I do this? And then
you get out and you're totally you were You're not
the same mark you were prior to that? Is that
fair to say? And how do you think it improved you?
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah? I think it's I think for me, I got out,
I had I had confidence in myself to handle situations
that I wasn't comfortable in because you do so much
of that in special Forces training. So going into a
new field having to learn again and having the I guess,
the humility to start from scratching to train yourself. Yeah,
(28:32):
and just having that humility to kind of stop from
the bottom again and train yourself in a new field.
I think that's an important skill to have it. If
you can do that, you can always kind of start
over again in a new field and build yourself up.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Now, the camaraderie, maybe I got a misunderstood, but I
know when you were saying the talking about the training
the sas over there in Australia. You're one of the
hardest things you said, was bring by yourself out there
for like five days or WHATNT. But do you develop
a comrade with your other members?
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah, it's all small team based skills, right, So we
work in patrols of five to six people and a
troop which is like platoon sized, so yeah, you get it.
You build a strong bomber. These two you train so
hard together and you share a lot of risk.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
So it's good excellent folks. Again, it's Mark Wales w A.
L Es Survivor Life in the s A S. Also,
if you're interested in clothing, you can check out kill
Capture withthek dot com some cool stuff. I have to
So now you've done all that, you've got all that
under your belt. You haven't accomplished much Mark, What are
(29:41):
you doing? So he's got all that done? What's next?
What are you going for now? I'm sure you're not
stopping here. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
So I was in I was in New York working
with McKenzie and I had seen an advertisement in Australia
for a reality show Survivor, which is obviously huge in
the US, and I'd heard about him watching it a
bit and I thought, oh, wow, I should. I'd totally
love to do that just because of my background, and
you know, I thought I'd be able to do the
(30:09):
show and do it well. And then I applied to
the training season and you know, quit my job in
New York and went and went and joined the show
and it was actually really fun experience, and I met
my wife. She was we're in the same tribe, so
we ended up striking out for a relationship after and
you know, four years later we married, we got a
little boy, so it was it was it was a
(30:31):
great turn of events.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Congratulations. Yeah, that's interesting. So you went from fighting and
working alongside some good tribes over there in Afghanistan against
bad ones and then meet your wife in a tribe
and Survivors. Did you end up winning that one? No?
Speaker 3 (30:50):
No, I got out before the halfway point, So it's
it's pretty hard Actually it's much harder the looks when
you're sitting on the couch watching yeah to the TV.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Hey, sitting on the counch is tough business. So I guess,
as you're wrapping up now in the last few minutes together,
what are some of the advice you would want to
give people in regards to life's challenges Because you've been
through a lot, obviously you've seen a lot. Some of
the stuff you've seen a lot of people will never
(31:22):
see in their life, and some people can overcome it.
We've seen before it too, unfortunately with some soldiers who
develop PTSD and other things and can overcome it. But
what would be your advice to the people out there?
Speaker 3 (31:34):
I think that be careful about getting trapped in a
career or a life that you know is probably not
the best thing for you or for what you believe in.
I think it's important that you, you know, take a
few risks and maybe pursue something that you're not sure
about how the outcome is going to go, but you
feel like it's the right thing to do. And I
(31:57):
think the times that I've had the best time in
life life and I've done my best is when i've
taken that risk. I've chased something which was a little
bit out there, a little bit crazy, but I was
excited about it. And I think that the times that
I've done my worst is when I've been doing something
that I thought other people would want me to do,
and because I wasn't that interested, I did a terrible
(32:17):
job at it. So I guess long story short is
just you know, take those risks that you're not going
to be regretting later in your life.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
You're definitely a testament to that. I mean, you're in Australia,
you became with the Special Force, as you traveled, you deployed,
you fought, then you went over with all the way
over to the US, a whole different country to start
one of the finest schools around for business. You succeeded there,
then you went to one of the higher respective companies
in the country. It's an amazing story, it really is. Now,
were your parents ever in the.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Military, No, No, they weren't. My grandfather had fought against
the Japanese in the Pacific. I remember him. I remember
him talking about that. Yeah, but no, not a military family.
I think. Actually, just to add on that, the other
point outside is that you're going to face. Yeah, you're
(33:13):
going to face obstacles no matter what path you choose
in life, So you know, don't be too afraid of
those things. They're going to come no matter what. So
just take the path that you're most excited about.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Absolutely, great advice, great advice. Amazing Again, folks, Mark Wales,
Australian Sas. You can find this book Survivor Life in
the Sas. If you've been a fan of this show
so far, this will definitely appeal to you because I
don't know if you're like me or not. It's information
that I've never learned much about. I don't know about
special forces around the world that much. This way, I'm
(33:47):
so thankful for Mark to join us, and we know
we're going to have the British coming along. We're going
to get their says over here. The French are a
little hard to get. We'll get one sooner earlier. But
so we're gonna learn more about the mindset of these
individuals that can teach us so much about our lives
and how to be much more resilient and tough. Again
the book Survivor Life in the Sas. You can also
(34:08):
go to kill, Capture, with the k dot com Mark,
thank you so much for taking the time to be
with us.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
We just want to say thanks to you for getting
these stories and sharing with people. I think it's a
great thing. So I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Absolutely an amazing team, and I think people need to
see those stories and hear about them because we don't. Yeah,
we don't see much. Whether we do see is so
far from reality. As much as Rambo is entertaining, it's
not a good depiction of it. Are there any American movies? Actually,
my last question, any American movies that you really liked,
(34:43):
either because they're entertaining or just what was the most
realistic for you? You think anything stood out for you?
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Definitely Aliens by James Cameron. No. I think my favorite,
I'm trying to think my favorite kind of military film
from the US would have to be Kubrick's Full Mantle Jacket, Like,
oh wow, the green, the greedness of and just how
bad that type of fighting is. I think he captured
(35:12):
that quite well. There's nothing glamorous about that film, and
I felt that was pretty pretty good.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
That was a movie too, man, That one an Apocalypse Now.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Yeah, pops, Now that was a bit out man. And
the funny thing is people think apocalypse now would be
an exaggeration. It's actually not like things get pretty weird
out in the Yeah, in the battlefield. So yeah, it's
surprising how life imitates art and vice versa.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah, that might be for another show, how weird things
got out there. Yeah, that's interesting. I can't wait to
when I talk to the Macapie sad guys and find
out what they thought about that.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Yeah, better stories of me?
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Well, hopefully we can bring you back one time. We'll
do an international panel. You guys can swap stories. I
think that'd be kind of fun to do.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, i'd be honest.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Thank you very much, Mark, Thank you everyone. Make sure
to share, subscribe, hit that like button.
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