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#202 Barry Zworestine: A Rhodesian War Veteran's Journey
Join us as Rhodesian war veteran and Psychologist Barry Zworestine shares his gripping journey from university corridors to the unforgiving battlefields of the Rhodesian Bush War. He recounts his rigorous physical and psychological training, the unexpected injuries that altered his career path, and the complex emotions stirred by the dual nature of combat. Through his vivid storytelling, we get a rare glimpse into the life of a medic in this tumultuous period, including a mysterious UFO sighting that left an indelible mark.
Our conversation paints a nuanced picture of the moral dichotomies soldiers face, illustrated by tales of camaraderie and the haunting confessions of a soldier who misses the hunt. We explore the deep psychological impact of reconciling the capacity for violence with being a loving father and responsible individual. This episode offers a profound exploration of the duality of human nature shaped by warfare, shedding light on the long-lasting emotional and psychological scars that veterans carry.
As we navigate the emotional terrain of post-service life, our guest opens up about the sense of inadequacy, identity struggles, and grief that many veterans experience. He shares his reflections on aging and the disciplined practices that help manage stress and maintain a sense of purpose. Highlighting the importance of supportive networks and advocacy, we emphasize the need for understanding trauma and the powerful role of shared experiences in promoting healing and preventing suicide among veterans. Tune in for a heartfelt tribute to the resilience of those who've served and a call to acknowledge their ongoing journey toward healing.
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LinkedIn: Barry Zworestine
Book: Which way is your warrior facing
Produced by Security Halt Media
security hot podcast let's go with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best? With guns with knives with his bare hands, a man who's been trained to ignore, ignore weather to live off the land job was disposed of enemy personnel to kill period, with my attrition soon, that's uh you just got to watch moderation.
Speaker 2:Then you know I was. I was running stupid, you know at my age running. You know my heartbeat, I was kicking it up to 200 beats a minute. It was just. In fact it got to a point where I'm grateful because I would have killed myself for my runs.
Speaker 1:I would have yeah, there's something to that. Anything that you take to that addictive like it's, you love it, you love doing it, but then it becomes that thing that you got to do and you got to just and it's a little bit of control, didn't?
Speaker 2:have that.
Speaker 1:All of us are. We all have it. I mean people right now are so crazy for David Goggins. I mean just but it's like man, like how many of those guys have I've seen in my career Like they're out there, those machines are out there.
Speaker 2:I have a theory about David. I think he's still trying to run ahead of the fat boy.
Speaker 1:That's my that's my feeling, there's a reason why you're a psychologist not really.
Speaker 2:I was trying to run ahead of my wall and it took a bloke to say to me hey, what are you running away from? And I went okay. So yeah, anyway, you know, life teaches you what you need to learn it does, barry.
Speaker 1:Uh, thank you so much for being here today, man. Um, you have not only an impactful story, but you, your life intersects in this part of history that, for a vast majority of the world, uh, they've forgotten. But to warriors, we, we look to that generation of young men that went out into the bush and fought in the rhodesian war. I remember when we talked last uh, we're part of this amazing project, um, wounds to wisdom. But throughout that interview I just remember thinking, like I hope he understands, that modern warriors look up to all those young boys, young men that fought in that war. Everything you guys did was, I mean, it's so influential and, like I said, there's a culture within our soft community that looks up to you guys and it's so weird that we I, from the uniform, the, the, everything it's.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of videos and a lot of footage that just gets passed around. Hey, you know anything about the bush war? Oh, you got to check this out. Man, look at these guys. They're rolling around in flip flops and short shorts and just taking it to the enemy and, uh, it's, it's a pleasure to have you on here today, to not just talk about that and it not just relive those moments, but to talk about what it was really like in that moment as a young man and then afterwards, because that's something that relates to every veteran. War ends at some point and more often than not it's not in a way where we get to close that chapter and close that book and say, well, that's done For a vast majority of us. That chapter gets closed for us and we don't have a say in how it ends.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, and I think the ripples of the war carry through the lives afterwards, as mine certainly did, in endless challenges. But I mean, I got called up, I'd done four years of university, so I was 23 years old, so I was comparatively old to the boys who were the young boys that were 18. So I turned up because if I did not come back to Rhodesia I would not have been allowed back in. And I mean I love my country. So I went back in, did the training for six months and then I attempted an officer's course, so it was a three-day initial selection and I made it through to the third day and then I was coming off a high wall and I had not disclosed that I was a gymnast at school and I dislocated my shoulder. So next thing.
Speaker 2:I know I'm off that wall, I'm lying on my back and my shoulder's dislocated, and that was me off the officer's course. So then I thought you know what now? So I thought I'd go back and do, I'd continue and do the three-month medical training which was, I think, if I remember was, based on the Israeli training. So at the end of that you could do any level of drips, cut downs, you could operate in the bush. There was nothing we couldn't do. So it was all drips, drugs, evacuation drips before the choppers came down to pick them up. So I did that and then I got posted up to Inyanga, which is on the eastern border by Mozambique. So for those that don't know, rhodesia, we're surrounded by three black countries on left, top and right, and at the bottom is South Africa. We were on the right-hand side, on the eastern side, and arrived at the company, most of the medics of my training were placed in MI rooms, but the medics there were five of us and we were placed in four-man sticks.
Speaker 2:So I joined an intake called 147, and there's actually two books written on that group. One was called Holes in Our Lives Forever, a beautiful book, a very powerful book, reading it many, many years afterwards. It had impact, impact. I was irritable for days and then a second book was written on the 147. So I worked with the 147 for seven months. Um, yeah, it was a strange war. Hey, denny, I mean, as you said, um short shorts, brown t-shirt, um, my running shoes. All I did was paint the stripes off the running shoes.
Speaker 1:No socks.
Speaker 2:No camo, no cream on the face until about, I think, 1977, towards the end, they made putting back on your lungs and your camo shirt and painting your face black. They made that compulsory. Then we'd have the camo scarves just wrapped around our heads for the sweat and off we went. I mean, I as the medic, you know, at the usual, as you know, we carried the fn 7.62, either the plastic stock or the wooden stock I think they were south african or belgian stocks and um, then we had, what do we have? We each, we each had an HE grenade, a FOSS grenade, a smoke grenade and an Icarus flare spare ammunition and then draped you know, there were no such thing as efficient packs so draped around me in all parts were drips, drugs, medical kits. So I was just walking around with all the stuff draped on me.
Speaker 2:Patrols would be seven to ten days and you wouldn't get resupplied. So you'd would be um, seven to ten days, um, and you wouldn't. You wouldn't get resupplied. So you'd carry food for seven to ten days and, yeah, water. We had those pills in the good old days. You'd go to a stream and then drop the pills in and drink it. I managed to get my intake down to one tin of beans a day. So they were man and they were really good beans. But what was interesting was the boys ate the bully beef and the sausages were the baked beans.
Speaker 2:And because we were filthy, so you slept in your clothes, you slept in your shoes, because you were so dirty, you were getting what was called felt sores, which was a kind of circular raised sore on your body. I never got that and all I can think was my diet was pretty clean and minimal, but you'd literally stay at night. You'd kind of maybe put your lungs on your camo jacket. We'd either just we'd move into a sleeping position at night, cook and then walk away and double back into a sleeping position. We'd either sleep out in the open, um, or we would put our buvies down and I mean I remember sleeping and howling thunderstorms, you know, under, under those things, you know just a sheet of plastic draped four corners and, um, I think we got pretty slack.
Speaker 2:I mean we, we were walking in territory where um terrorists walked in groups of 30 to 300. And one of our sticks, when I went on R&R from the 147, walked into 300 terrorists in three long rows. One guy was killed, one guy, I think, was shot in the buttocks and two were okay. But they scattered and ran. But at the end of the day we just used to go to sleep at night. It was ridiculous. How we weren't killed was unbelievable. And you just get up the next day.
Speaker 2:We do OPs, depending on what we were asked to do Ambushes, you know the usual, put out your claymores and just line up the four of us and just four people. And it didn't seem odd, it didn't seem small, it was standard operational technique for the Rhodesian army. And where we were they were HDF operations, which were the high-density force operations. So there were small man sticks operating in very small tight areas, sticks operating in very small tight areas. Look, my war was very easy compared to the RLI, the SAS and the Salute Scouts. You know, the RLI were jumping in from 500 feet off the choppers straight in but straight in.
Speaker 2:They'd open and hit the ground and as they hit, as they landed, they would run straight in, but literally straight into contacts. That was their way of managing contacts and there were some times these guys were going into five contacts a day, you know, from 20, 30 meters away. So I didn't have that kind of a war. The 147 didn't do any cross-border stuff. I mean, there's a very famous story around the RLI and, I think, rar, which were the Rhodesian African rifles. They decked out a number of 4.5 vehicles, so they looked like Frelimo vehicles and they mounted MAGs on the corners and they drove in. And the story goes that the terrorists saw the Frelimo coming in, were celebrating, calling out to them and surrounding them. So there were thousands of these guys surrounding the four fives and then at one point one of the terrorists looked through the slits in the vehicle and saw blue eyes which you know you don't have if you're a black person. So all hell broke loose and the guys opened up on with four fives, on with the 7.62s. They just opened up and I think they killed two and a half thousand terrorists in that raid. So you know, those boys had a different war.
Speaker 2:Um salutes scouts had a different war. You know as cons trips. Yeah, we walked in four man sticks we patrolled, um, there were contacts, um, but it was a different war. So, yeah, you know, I would always describe myself as a very ordinary soldier. I mean, I I got to do some great stuff. I mean, one hilarious story is, um, the four of us were in the area of a contact so we were called in and we moved in and there was a bloke in a thorn, bush, and he was bleeding out big time. So I got in the bush with him and his veins were collapsed. So I pulled out my drips and needles and I couldn't get a drip in and I turned around and I had about five cannulas around me and one of the cannulas had stuck in my leg with his blood, which is not a good idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not good.
Speaker 2:So I had to pull out. So the boys are watching me and I pull out a vial of antihistamine and the needles in those days were about that long and I threw it into my leg and then wriggled the rest in, pumped in the antihistamine and then I said to the boy, before I got groggy. I said to him hey, listen, that was antibiotics. Sorry, I put in the antibiotic. I said to the guy Matt, I can't get a vein, so I'm going to put it up your backside. And the guys are going you what?
Speaker 2:An SAS guy who trained me taught me this trick. So I pulled his trousers off, took the needle off and parted his cheeks, rammed it up and squeezed in about two liters of ringers lactate. I mean it saved the guy's life. But, um, it was certainly something that was talked about for a while. Oh yeah, so you know, it went on. We operated, I operated for about seven months. So you know, it went on. We operated, I operated for about seven months. At the end of that I just I had enough. It was, you know, I wasn't, I was constricted and I just needed to get out of life happened.
Speaker 2:But you know there were some good times, denny. I mean on my first night in we were on it's called a gormor, which is a small hill, a rocky outcrop, camped out with another platoon, and I woke up at about 2 o'clock in the morning with a guy going Jesus Christ and there had been rounds flying around because one platoon had got spooked and they were fast rounds so you could see them zipping overhead and I thought, oh man, this is my first night, this is not looking good. But then I get up and I go, what's the problem? And the guy goes and I look up and there is a round circle of cloud about 300 feet across no wind, no clouds. Then another circle within that which was semi-see-through, and then a major with binoculars could see a cigar-shaped object in the middle of this and this thing rises up, then it disappears.
Speaker 2:When I got back to camp I said to the guys on R&R, I said to the guys looknr. I said to the guys, look, I saw this and they go big deal. We see them all the time in the war, all the time. So fascinating man, yeah, yeah. So I mean yeah we had amazing times.
Speaker 2:I, denny, I mean yeah, I remember.
Speaker 1:I mean, war is one thing, when you see something you cannot explain.
Speaker 2:You know, it's like I was working because for the last 22 years I was working with military and veterans in Australia and a sniper came in and he said to me he said, yeah, I've never said this to anyone, but he said, with your history I need to say it. And I said go for it. And he said the thing I miss most is hunting men. And he looked at me and I said to him I understand, because I remember to this day just tracking prints. I remember probably the thing that really made a huge imprint on me was the four of us were on an OP and we saw what looked like about 200 meters away in the bush and it was very much Savannah type in that area we were working on and they were wearing overalls, which was a sign, and they were carrying objects over their shoulders. So the stick leader was a tracker and the two of us decided we were going to go after them and if they were terrorists we'd do what we needed to do. So he circled around the hill and I went on top and I lined up on the guy and he said just wait Now. You know I was a vegan. The army couldn't quite get over the fact that this vegetarian vegan arrived. So you know what are you going to do with rat bags? But I can tell you, as a vegan, denny, I lined up on this guy and all I could think was, yeah, and for me, that was like something in me changed at that point. Um, it, there was no horror, there was no apprehension. There was no apprehension, there was no, this is wrong. It was yep, let's go for it. And from that day onto the present and I've worked with the guys because I track this in myself is how do you work with the fact that a part of you now can kill without any hesitation and deal with it, but yet you are also a loving father, a good person, um, and a responsible mate? And how do you reconcile, um, the two parts? And that was, and that left me with quite an imprint that helped me work with the people I work for, because I've supported, because how do you combine the two?
Speaker 2:The other one, you know, denny, was we have in Sydney a march called the Anzac March, which is from World War II vets in jeeps, because they're too old to the present, including the Rhodesians. We march and it's amazing, thousands of people just thanking you for your service, as you do a brief sort of 10 minute march, people just thanking you for your service, as you do a brief sort of 10-minute march. And I remember being surrounded by a couple of SAS, a couple of Sulu scouts and quite a large group of RLI, and I remember feeling quite inadequate. It was almost as if I didn't deserve to be in this lot and it was a very uncomfortable feeling.
Speaker 2:And as I worked with the guys, I'd ask them you know, how do you feel about wearing your medals, how do you feel about marching? And there was always and 90% of the people I sat with there was always a flicker and that sense of shame and not being good enough. And I've learned, even with you guys and the Navy SEALs. I've spoken to people who went we didn't see enough action. I don't feel good enough. So you know, my service in many ways set me up for understanding the stuff that's never talked about. You know, when I wrote my book, the book brought to light the things that will never be raised and would not be seen by anyone who's either had the experience or tracked that experience within themselves. So yeah, denny, it was an extraordinary thing. You know, when I look back on my photograph and there I am with these tiny black shorts.
Speaker 1:This young man, just tiny, wet behind the ears, young man, and just the entire world is just going on around them. But in that one moment in that picture is just, you see, just a youth. You're able to capture, just a young man serving, yeah, and it. And I want to go back to something you just talked about that so many of us don't reflect on that we're. We're a human being tasked to do something that's nearly impossible to remove your humanity for however long you're in combat, and to execute with precision and without any sort of remorse. And a lot of people don't understand that it's.
Speaker 1:It's important for us, as men, to talk about this, because there's a lot of guys that feel that they're inferior or they're not good enough because they didn't have this epic war experience. Well, I didn't go to selection, I wasn't a Ranger, I wasn't a Navy SEAL. I didn't. I didn't get this action moment. It's like, dude, you went to war Like it. Be grateful that you were there to answer the call, be grateful for all the great that came from it, but don't be upset that you missed out on certain aspects of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct. And I mean, I think the thing to realize is the minute you put on uniform, you've earned the right to call yourself a veteran, to call yourself a veteran. The depth to which you explore that uniform is unpredictable. Whether they're people in the early days who never had a chance SAS, who've never had a chance to operate SEALs in the very early days, who didn't have a chance to do much Green Berets, I'm sure as well, and so it's how we define who we are.
Speaker 2:The other thing I think, as I've often said and I track this in myself and then I track it in the guys is when I stripped away everything, what was left inside me was grief, and the grief could have been for the things I've seen, for the people that were lost, even for the parts of me that changed when the rest of life followed and disasters happened, because my war didn't end after the Rhodesian Bush War. I mean, I came out and within three days I was back at university, waking up maybe 20, 30 times a night. I had severe headaches and body aches and pains which I don't normally have. I had severe headaches and body aches and pains which I don't normally have. I think I was just de-stressing from being almost. I don't think I had many R&Rs, so you're out a lot of the time and just trying to adjust.
Speaker 2:And then from there I mean, I scooted through five immigrations, two failed marriages, one of which was extremely stressful because it involved a lot of complications, and I often said that my war really only stopped when I turned 60, because at 60 I kind of settled. I met my current wife, an extraordinary woman from Brazil, and so for the last 11 years I've had peace, but until 60, you know, I was living on just high levels of stress and, to the extent that you know, I had adrenal burnout, which has its impact on a whole lot of stuff. So the war didn't stop. The war, in fact, really only began properly and intensely when I left at a non-military level. And I often say the war wasn't my biggest stress, because if it got in the way, you knew how to deal with it. But the things that can happen in civilian life that almost feel out of your control, and I know that in the transition process for the guys and the girls, it's, it's an I call it, it's another operational arena, and it's so.
Speaker 1:You're so right on that. It is one of the the hardest things anybody will ever do when they're coming off, and if you don't do right, if you don't have the right guidance or even just a book I found one book to be so helpful, but if you don't have that and you don't have somebody to talk to that's gone through it themselves, you're potentially going to suffer the same thing, the same outcome that so many veterans have gone through, and what I've found is there's a multiple of things that occur, but the identity piece, that's the one that's so hard for so many. Yeah, yeah, and I have to imagine that that was probably one of the factors that you dealt with for a long time.
Speaker 2:Huge, denny. I mean, think about it. You guys come from war but you've got your country and there's a pride Outside the Vietnam era, there's a pride in serving my country. You know, we went from southern Rhodesia as a British colony. Then they declared independence. We went to Rhodesia. After Rhodesia we went to Zimbabwe, rhodesia. Then we went to Zimbabwe. After Rhodesia it went to Zimbabwe, rhodesia. Then it went to Zimbabwe. I left when it turned into Zimbabwe, rhodesia, I left in 1977. I never got my passport, a new passport. I was stateless in Australia 1980 to 82.
Speaker 2:And so where does my generation belong? Rhodesians don't exist anymore. The country that we belong to we don't have a right of entry into and in fact, I'm not sure how well we'd be received. I don't know about now, and the country that was described as the breadbasket of Africa is now the dust bowl of Africa. The human rights violations that happened under Mugabe not towards whites, but towards blacks, you know it. Just where we were born is now an ongoing nightmare, and I think that's part of the grief is where do we belong?
Speaker 2:And if it weren't for the internet emerging, we would never have had a tribe, unless we happened to bump into people. The interesting thing as well for us is that, black and white, we didn't have apartheid like South Africa had. We had a white government, a white minority ruling, a black majority, which probably was. It was not a good idea at all, but there was always an amazing relationship between white and black. Today, zimbabweans or Rhodesians in my time, and even today, when I meet and work with a Zimbabwean person, the bond between us, irrespective of color, is incredibly close. But you know, when you lose tribe to the extent that we lost it finding out and recovering who you are is is extremely difficult.
Speaker 1:It's not easy at all, denny no, I, I can't even imagine that. You're right like when we came back at, regardless of the way that things developed in Afghanistan. You still have a country, you still have a nation you belong to, you still have that flag you look to. But in your case, when everything is gone, how do you ground? Who do you connect with? And it's just, it's almost like a sci-fi novel to think of it. A man with no nation, now a warrior with no nation. Where do you go? And knowing your story, knowing that you began to travel and adventure, seek and do these adventure races and go everywhere, and that speaks to me as somebody that is looking for a home, homesick, completely.
Speaker 2:I mean, I always said that when I run I'm deeply connected to everything around me, because I run in nature. I feel the trees, I feel the ground beneath my feet and sometimes it was almost as if I felt that point in time as a soldier walking through the bush, that sense of attunement, you know, and I really belonged and I just chased that and chased it and pushed the kilometers up and you know, eventually it just there's no solution in that. I was never going to really find healing in that. I was never going to really find healing in that. And you know, my last run was an 89-kilometer uphill run called the Comrades Ultramarathon in South Africa and you know I'd run about three months before that, I ran my first ultra.
Speaker 2:It was like 64, 31, 32 down, 32 up, and I flew away. Denny, I was running like five and a half k's a minute.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was flat out, and so I hit this marathon and a mate of mine was with me.
Speaker 1:That's a man possessed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was a lot of demons whispering in my ear and my mate said to me do you see down there in the mists? And I said yep. He said me, do you see down there in the mists? And I said yep. He said that's not even halfway and I remember having this sense of impending panic and about 64Ks I blew my iliotibial and I thumped my way through to the because I was going to finish it whether it killed me or not.
Speaker 2:But that was my greatest run because I had to battle with the voices of my ancestors. I always say I love hills because I talk to my ancestors on a hill, they whisper in my ears. But then after that, you know, my back blew all sorts of stress from life situations, but always thinking I could keep pushing against my body, aging in nature and still find my healing within that. And I was never going to do that, you know, but I didn't get it. You know it was just eight out of 10 of my runs had to be beyond hard, whereas it should have been the other way around. But I didn't understand moderation and that's a lesson to this day that I take to the people I work with and I go. You know, it took me until I had no knee lift and I could no longer run to understand what I was doing. Don't wait for that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a hard thing to do, being able to slow down. We always gravitate to the physical. That's everybody's first thing. I'm going through something. I'm going's first thing. I'm going through something I'm going to work out. I'm going through something, I'm going to run it out. I'm going to get over this mental anguish, this pain, by just working myself to the point where I am just done. But it never works. It's still there, it feels good, you'll look good in the mirror, but it's still there.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, we're never going to run ahead of our grief, because that's all it is. It's grief. And the image that came to me on a run one day was it's like you're running but behind you are a pack of wolves, and they're your grief, they're everything that sits in your heart and in your body, and they maintain a distance of 200 meters and it doesn't matter how fast you run, the 200 meters they keep. And one day, when you stop because you have to, they surround you. And then the conversation begins. And I've said to guys have that conversation earlier on, because it poisons your relationship, it poisons your life and it poisons how you journey into your future. And it did for me.
Speaker 2:And I suppose, from an honest point of view, even today I'm not comfortable with grief. I mean, we as Rhodesians, we never really talk too much about feelings and nobody ever told us about war. We fought a war and lived, and so you know, we could be watching a movie and my wife will watch me and go, are you okay? And I go, yep, and she goes, are you sure you're okay? And I go, yep, and I'm self-reflecting, thinking I'm a psychologist and you know, really should I be doing this job and then, of of course, the next thing I'm in tears and that grief. I don't know. I think I can't say we ever get rid of the grief, but I think as we work with the grief, it becomes our source of compassion and service. So it's productive and fertile.
Speaker 1:But you have to be able to embrace it and befriend it, and that's painful yeah holding the grief is terribly uncomfortable it is and as men, we don't like to talk about it or embrace the idea of it's okay to cry, but it has to come out. You have to do something with that emotion and one of the greatest things you can do is give yourself the grace and the freedom to cry. When you're going through something, and whether it's a funeral, the loss of a friend, the memory of a friend comes through. Give yourself time and space to really feel it, or you're going to be fighting that and you're going to be seeking other things to try to numb out and try to kill it. All you need to do is it's perfectly fine to go somewhere private, to be around people that can support you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, then vent that emotion, be willing to cry around the people that because nobody wants to cry openly in a grocery store no no, no or a movie theater, and it's completely fine to go home and and and have your spouse or have your, for your close friends, hold space for you. It's okay to have that moment with trusted individuals, um, but it's so often.
Speaker 2:We so often do that through alcohol or drugs, spot on and and it's it's like it's killing us, like no, you're, you, don't need alcohol to cry no, no, you don't need and it's, you know, the alcohol, the drugs, the extreme sports, they all, none of none of that is going to create the healing that we all need. Yeah, and, and the problem is, and, and you know, I find my new transition, I'd almost my new operational territory is aging. I really am facing parts now where you know what does this look like for me in the time I've got left. I mean, I'm 71 this year and I don't know what's left. I know my knee's gone and I've got blown discs, I've got pins in my shoulder.
Speaker 2:You know, I was at the specialist yesterday looking at my spine because the MRI report, this bulges, this bulges, this is narrowing. And he said to me no, you're right. He said, for your age, you're right. But I feel restriction and it creates a lot of stress for me because at the moment my wife and I walk and I've got my cross trainer with the iFit software. But what happens when I don't even have that? And so what happens when our physicality is taken away? What's left in the corners of our room, in those dark, dusty little spaces? You know what? That's the spot that scares the hell out of me sometimes, that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny we're talking about this because that's something that all of us need to put a pin on and explore now, when we have to be willing to understand that age is a process. You're going to lose that muscle tone. You're going to lose the ability to run those five-mile runs.
Speaker 1:It's okay, we're human beings, but it's important for us to have a multitude of things that we can fall back on, and when we don't have those resources, we don't have that that multitude of habits and productive workouts that we do, or things like meditation. You're going to be constantly raging out the world for the things that we don't have and we're completely missing the things that we do have. We always have this, always have this.
Speaker 1:That's a beautiful thing about meditation that I realized when I found it. You know, I was still recovering from surgeries and I couldn't do all those wonderful things that all Green Berets do. You can't run, you can't work out like you're 22 again, so it's like berets do. You can't run, you can't work out like you're 22 again, so it's like no.
Speaker 2:But you can breathe, you can walk and you can meditate and you can realize that hey, all things come and go, and that includes physical, they do, and I think what I'm grateful for is one I'm really disciplined. So you know, for the majority of my life I do things called the tibetan five exercises, which is 21 repetitions of five exercises. It's eight minutes. You've done 100 and something repetitions. I've got some yin yoga stretches, I've got other stuff, so I've got about 40 minutes that I do seven days a week, month after year after year. I also meditate. I started meditating 47 years ago and now, being on holiday, I sit, but I sit for two and a half hours and I sit every single day and I said to my wife only yesterday it's like when I meditate the world makes sense to me, it just does. And so you know, as you say, you need to look at the strategies that you can use through your aging that actually work on your body yoga, tai Chi, stretching, meditation, breath work, cold water.
Speaker 2:I was a great component, you know, for three years I have a theory that we must never lose moments of discomfort. Yes, absolutely discomfort. And so push it, find it, but in incremental doses. And so my moments of discomfort where I made a commitment I was going to have cold showers for a couple of years, and so that's what I did cold showers and I'd look at it and there'd be a fight internally. But I had my cold showers. I was doing the Wim Hof breath work and only now, because the cold's on the back and the spine, it needs more heat. Only about two weeks ago I started going back into hot showers. But those three years, every time I come out of a cold shower, every time I meditate, every time I do my series of exercises, even when I don't want to do it, I'm still in the race. That fire inside me is still burning. We never need to lose that fire. We never need to lose our warrior to use that Absolutely.
Speaker 2:But if we don't look at how we do it properly then, yeah, we are damaged in alcohol issues, drug issues, overweight issues, and I see the weight issue on a lot of veterans. They crank on the weight the minute we do that. You know your body is what you operate with in civilian life and military life. It's a thing that carries everything and we need to look after it. So, yeah, a lot of lessons. I wish I was around earlier on to tell me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the beauty of this platform and it's understanding that, no matter how many times, if reincarnation is a thing, no matter how many times we relive this life, we're never going to get it 100%.
Speaker 2:No, we're not.
Speaker 1:If that's the way it works, we're never going to get it perfect. So why stress about getting it perfect this time around? And the reality is we stay connected, we become mentors, we gain new insight to our life, into our process, and then we share it with the younger generation. And that's the beauty of it, because then we're not really losing out, we're passing off all that knowledge and lived experience.
Speaker 2:The next guy you know, which is why you know, for example, the book that we were involved in with Sarah Correll is a collection of those stories that I think are really healing.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And I think we need to gather these stories now. We need to be able to share conversations. I was looking up it's funny when I was getting ready just to have this conversation. I looked at some of the stats about our war which I've never really thought about, and the stats indicate somewhere around 2,500 people at service, of which 1,900 were security, lost their lives. These are people whose generation should exist to this day. These are people that should be men in their 70s enjoying their grandchildren, but are no longer with us. You know, and for what you know, we don't have any. It's a bit like Afghanistan, I guess you know for what?
Speaker 2:On a more positive note, though, 22,000 terrorists did lose their lives. Yes, so they say it's for everyone, every one of us they killed. We killed a lot more of them 80, 90, 100 of them, which is a harsh thing to say, but one should never take pleasure in death. But a war is war.
Speaker 1:And that's a reality. There are bad people in the world and without good guys, bad guys prevail, and that's the truth, and that's that's a beauty of reconciling that aspect of of ourselves, like it's okay to embrace that part of you that was of service up to and including executing that very harsh and extreme justice yeah, I think, and you know I mean our tragedy is that we had about 500 civilians killed and 200 of those denny terrorists took um.
Speaker 2:I think they were sam 7, and they knocked down a Viscount and I think the other one. I can't remember the plane, but on the Viscount disaster there were, I think there were a hundred civilians on that plane.
Speaker 2:The terrorists came on the plane and they bayoneted and killed the babies and the mothers, and you know that reminds me a lot about what's happening in the Middle East at the moment, but I'm not going to go there. Yeah, with, you know, 1,200 or 1,500 people slaughtered, but that kind of stuff for me is evil. Oh yeah, and you know evil does not deserve to exist on this earth. You know war is war, but women and children, uh-uh. You know war is war, but women and children, uh-uh.
Speaker 2:So I think, rhodesians, we all carry an individual grief and we carry a collective grief and I'm sure in many ways it's the same with your generation as well. The challenge is how we carry, how we transform the grief and how we carry the wisdom of that and the finding of tribe into our present and do something good. There's a song, I think, from the 70s, and the song is what are you going to leave behind? What song will you leave behind when you are no longer around? And that's like the stuff you share, the books we write, the books we are in. These are the songs we leave behind, the service that we do, every one person's life that we touch by being there and having their sex. These are the things we need to be focused on and, you know, it's not just about healing, it's not just about belonging to tribe, it's also about the quality of service, and I think when we commit to some level of service, that has the most powerful component of healing as well. So those are all. You know. When you want a 360 of everything, these are the things we need to pay attention to. These are the things we need to pay attention to, you know.
Speaker 2:What I also wanted to say was you know, when I work with guys now because they help me to understand an operational, veteran-friendly way of working, you know, it's like I sit with the guys and one when they finish the sessions, it's I love you, brother. Now, normal therapy doesn't have that, and it's love. And we are brothers and we hug, and I don't do the therapy stuff. I'd be saying to the guys okay, would you leave a bloke behind? No, never.
Speaker 2:And I go how come you've left yourself behind? So I go okay, we're going to form a rescue mission. You're going to go back. We're going to formulate some SOPs. You're going to go back. We're going to rescue that part of you. We're going to bring it forward. We're going to re-identify your map of your territory. We're going to reorientate your compass. We're going to do a 360 around you and look at where your gaps are in your perimeters. We're going to look at your arcs of fire and formulate direction. That makes sense. We're going to look at your arcs of fire and formulate direction. That makes sense. It's not. We're now going to do some cognitive stuff and explore your negative thinking. Guys are going. What so you?
Speaker 2:know, a big thing for me today, in this time is there needs to be a change in how we work with this tribe and you know, in my book there are 10 or 11 things for therapists working with veterans and for veterans who are entering therapy. And the things like for the therapist is you are more than your certificates on the wall. Don't define who you are. You need to earn the right to enter their territory. A veteran can sit where he wants. You need to earn the right to enter their territory. A veteran can sit where he wants. You need to earn the right for trust and acceptance. For veterans it's be critical If he only comes in with two modalities ask questions. Do we go to war with one weapon? No, we don't. So it's the same with therapy. So there needs to be a better attunement with regards to how helping allied health professionals are working with veterans Because, frankly, I don't think they get it enough.
Speaker 2:You know, I always say the one person in America that does get it is old Doc Shauna Springer, because she nails it. She says are you going to be a doc or a doctor? Doctor certificates on the wall. I've got my table. I've got my table. I've got my chair. You sit there. The doc is man. I love you. Let's do this journey together. And that territory is as yet not well-defined, which means that our veterans come back, try to transition and end up in a mess with people that don't understand them and haven't earned the right to sit opposite them. So you know I'm a bit hot under the collar with that one, but I think I've got a right to be hot under the collar with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I've experienced it myself, but I've been fortunate enough that I've experienced the positive as well. I've had some remarkable, wonderful practitioners and the key to it was people that have that lived experience. Correct, the loss doesn't have to be the same no, it doesn't have to be the same but it certainly helps when they can build the rapport. They're being able to explain and have some of that self identity. Like be able to identify what they've been through, what they've gone through, and share. Like. That's been a huge factor in my healing being able to sit down with somebody that holds space for me, that I can trust because they've been through something similar. Correct, and it's you're right, barry. Like we need more docs, not doctors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the one thing I guess I pushed really hard against. That was the reason I wrote. 50% of the reason I wrote that book was doctors need to read it. Then the second part was you know, it gives veterans a guided territory to operate through. But there needs to be a change. We should not settle for second best. We should not settle for modalities that don't understand that trauma lives in the body.
Speaker 1:Yep the body keeps a score.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the body keeps a score. And yet so many modalities of frontal cortex space and the guys go yep, I understand everything, but I'm still stuck in the emotion.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think we're not there yet. I mean, there are good people, as you've experienced, but there are also a lot of people who have zero experience, taking their tools and thinking that they can do everything they want. It's just unacceptable. You know, these people have had enough. They've gone to the edge of darkness, they're trying to get back into who they are and they can't be surrounded by people that impede their progress. So I always ask have a critical look and think about whether you're part of the solution or part of the problem.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Barry. What's the name of the book again?
Speaker 2:Which Way Is your Warrior Facing? Yeah, you can stick a link on it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Amazon have it, there'll be the absolute description.
Speaker 2:That's not my book. That book is 22 years of sitting with the most extraordinary men from Vietnam to the present. Where it wasn't me that came up with it, it was between the two of us. I discovered oh, I've got this language that you know pull throughs, telling, getting a guy in a pull through, you know, an AD is uncontrollable. Anger, a stoppage is anxiety and depression and a runaway gun is man your wife's going to throw you out any second.
Speaker 1:And so what?
Speaker 2:are your pull-throughs? Every day, it could be getting out of bed. For those that are struggling, just get out of bed, make your bed, go to the post box, go for a walk. For others, it could be fitness, nutrition, sleep, teaching, gratitude, meditation. But what are your pull-throughs? Without your pull-throughs, you're going to have a dirty barrel and we know veterans know what happens when your barrel's dirty. So if you can maintain that discipline in operations, you can maintain the same discipline. Incremental changes. That you do every single day is a pull-through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely changes. That you do every single day is a pull through.
Speaker 2:So you know I don't know, danny the more we do this and these conversations around these kinds of topics, maybe somebody listening to that today can go ah, I get it. And maybe one leaf on a forest of people that are wounded and traumatized can change, one leaf at a time oh yeah, I know it does and it already has an impact and it's it's a growing movement.
Speaker 1:More and more people are starting the conversation in their own shows, their own podcasts, youtube series, uh, and it's wonderful and we already see that.
Speaker 1:The outpouring of emails, uh, even now in spotify you can, yeah, if you go to Spotify right now, you can actually text message the show and uh send information.
Speaker 1:And I've got that for several uh episodes where people reach out while they're listening, saying like man like this helped me today. So there's more of us are becoming more advocate, you know, having that ability to advocate for change, because I'm tired of seeing people dying, I'm tired of seeing people resort to suicide and not pause and reflect that maybe there's another answer, maybe there's a different way, and it does take work. It's, at the end of the day, when you're able to walk back off that ledge, walk back from that making that horrible mistake. You have to look at life as something that is worth living and you have to look at healing as something that you're willing to work at and strive for. Because I wish it was a magic wand, I really wish it was a magic pill, but the reality is it is a journey. It is simply learning to live better and loving all aspects of it the good, the bad, the ugly, the not so awesome.
Speaker 1:And then understanding that that's life. That's life. All the great stuff, the knee aches, the back breaking the issues, all that stuff it's not fun. But when you can take a moment and reflect and see, like, holy shit, I'm still here, I'm still fucking in this thing, like that's beautiful yeah.
Speaker 2:With gratitude. Yes, you know I, almost unconsciously, I often say to my wife I will wake up, maybe, like most of us do, at two o'clock in the morning, and I will think about you know, someday. I, I love a roof over my head. I'm still working full time. There is gratitude is the one thing that helps us transition through the darkness. It's that light, and the more we repeat it, the more it gets wide into the brain, the more it becomes real. But, denny, I also wanted to say that your contribution to words for words for wisdom, right words, the wounds to wisdom wounds to wisdom.
Speaker 2:I also want to personally thank you for say that your contribution to words for wisdom, right Wounds to wisdom, wounds to wisdom. I also want to personally thank you for all the time and the effort you put in with the videos, and not just your contribution, but what you and Sarah have done is extraordinary and seriously. I would strongly. Not because individual stories are in it, but the collection of those stories is a guiding light into healing and when you share the shared experiences you identify the parts of yourself that may have shame, that may have moral injury, that may have guilt, that may have trauma, and the very act of sharing that book will help people to disembed from what they stuck in. Then with that you're ready to move on to other modalities and a lot of the guys have written books and there's a lot of help out there. But that book, I believe, is going to be a guiding light into helping people navigate into a better life and really Danny, thanks man, your dedication.
Speaker 1:it means an incredible lot in terms of what you've put in it's my pleasure, brother, thank you, and it's something that I intimately just have this connection. It's absolutely everything. That's part of my mission and my purpose, and it's once I only took that first email hearing about why don't we branch off and do a limited, serious podcast? Because people need to hear the voice of the individual sharing their life, their lived experience and sharing some of their. And then just how it was so impactful listening to your episode as we're recording and just like you broke it down earlier, like veterans know, veterans, we sit down, we can, we, we are a tribe.
Speaker 1:But what a lot of us don't understand is that understanding of you are now a man without a nation. You are now somebody without a home. Where do you go? And you have to build that and you can build it and you found your way in Australia, you found your home. You have an amazing life and it's hard earned. But it's that initial understanding that it came with a lot of work because when we came home from Afghanistan, we were able able to go right back into our nine to five, be able to fall back in line and navigate all that, knowing we had a nation, we had a country. And your story hit me like a bag of bricks knowing that, holy shit, one day you were there. Next, everything changes.
Speaker 2:Nothing. I mean the sense of dislocation is profound, but also, you know, finding the power of our story and meeting you guys and Sarah and the guys and the girls, I mean you know I always say what we do is, when we return to tribe, it implants inside us. Yes, and in the moments between the meetings we live in each other and those are the things we draw on when things get tough, because we are no longer alone absolutely, yeah, barry.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for being here with me, thanks my friend hanging tough. It's a pleasure having you. I can't wait to dig into more of your story and I think you've got to have you come back to talk about the adventure, racing and some of your travels, because we didn't even touch that.
Speaker 1:You've done so much and been in all over the world, and that's something that I think all of us as men have lived and fought. There's a part of us that wants to continue. That's one of the things I loved about special operations was the travel, being able to feel like I was just always gone, and even though I don't want to travel anymore these days, there's still a little bit of me that's looking forward to that next adventure. But that's more than enough for us to talk about next time. Barry, thank you for being here. The name of the book is which Way Is your Warrior Facing? Go to the episode description the link will be there or go to Amazon there's a link for it there too and please go get the book and support our man, barry, barry. Thank you again, brother, and we'll see you all next time, till then take care.
Speaker 2:Thanks, denny, and anyone's free to contact me on LinkedIn. Happy to contribute, but thanks, brother, I value you man.
Speaker 1:Heck yeah, brother. Likewise, if you like what we're doing and you're enjoying the show, don't forget to share us. Like us, subscribe and head on over to our Patreon, where you can be part of our community and get access to all of our episodes as soon as they drop. And remember we get through this together, take care.
