The Hard Road Will Take You Home

Introduction

ENDEAVOUR THROUGH ADVERSITY

Here we go. I'm in The Badlands now.

I was part of an elite military group operating in the desert under the cover of darkness, preparing to engage a group of militia leaders. My heart was pounding. This would be my first gunfight as a tier one operator having worked through Selection, the gruelling 'job interview' required to thrive within the UK's specialized fighting forces - a squadron of expert operators that served in the world's most hostile environments - where I'd shown that I was in possession of the physical and psychological grit needed to excel under pressure. While training had provided a taster for the intense, against-all-odds operations I'd be expected to complete, the action when it arrived was an eye-opener.

The battle had been planned to the nth degree; no detail had been spared and my role in the mission was to operate as a sniper. Moving purposefully but quietly somewhere near the front of the group, my adrenaline spiked. I was fired up, I knew exactly where I had to be when the shooting kicked off and what I had to do, as did everyone else in the team. Meanwhile, the enemy was none the wiser. This was it: Everything you've trained for, Staz. Just focus. I listened to the radio chatter through my comms and every now and then an eerie whoomph trembled in the darkness around us - the dull echo of an explosion rippling somewhere else in the valley.

When the scrapping broke out for real, the group around me seemed to move as a fluid unit, taking up their pre-arranged positions and picking off the enemy one-by-one. I saw hostile gunmen crumpling to the floor in the chaos. Shocked awake in the darkness, they had taken up defensive positions and were fighting back aggressively, but their bullets seemed to whistle away into the shadows. Close, but not close enough. When an explosion ripped through the air near my position, I watched as a mud and stone wall collapsed and every sense seemed to malfunction at once - I couldn't see, hear, speak, or even smell. I'd gone numb too. My mouth had been open at the time of the blast. Had I been clenching my jaw, there's every chance both eardrums would have been ruptured by the intense overpressure. Later, when the operation was concluded, we returned to base to discuss what had happened in a 'hot debrief'. By the sounds of it, the mission had been a massive success.

'Fucking hell, that was amazing,' I thought. 'That's the Call of Duty shit I'd had in mind when I signed up for this.'

Interestingly, nobody else seemed to care about the excitement and pride I was experiencing in the aftermath; nobody knew that in the controlled chaos, I'd experienced a powerful increase in confidence at being able to stick to the battle plan that had been laid out. Or, as the battle rocked and convulsed around me, how I'd successfully leant upon several key techniques, tactics and procedures picked up from combat training. I'd also felt a huge sense of purpose by fighting alongside a group of expert operators, and our bond, established through teamwork and camaraderie, had kept everyone in the group alive. Finally, I'd recalled several hard lessons from my military career - phrases, ideas and reminders picked up from senior operators, or the Directing Staff (DS) overseeing the brutal Selection process. In the scrap, these cues had boosted my confidence. They'd told me I could survive in a situation where the odds were most definitely stacked against me.

Ego is the enemy.

How we do anything is how we do everything.

Endeavour through adversity.

These realizations were pivotal. I now knew from first-hand experience that:

1. When an operator was exposed to a full-on operation, the values of battle prep would deliver success.

2. The techniques, tactics and procedures learned in training would keep me going, especially when the physical and emotional suffering felt overwhelming, or when self-discipline became a life-or-death requirement.

3. When the rockets and rounds tore through the air, and my brothers scrapped around me, the power of teamwork was brought to bear.

4. The theories and concepts that had been screamed at me during training drills could be sharpened into something more tangible.

When brought together, these lessons and skills allowed me to thrive under pressure, innovate in terrifying situations and achieve during chaotic events where many other men and women would have crumbled and died.

But this was only just the beginning.

Fast-forward to 2018. I was leaving the military and launching the technical clothing start-up, ThruDark, with my friend and fellow elite operator, Louis Tinsley. This was a field in which I possessed zero experience and yet the same principles I'd used in elite service would weirdly help me to develop and grow until ThruDark was regarded a massive success. Skills and know-how that had once steadied me during gunfights and extreme survival events proved equally applicable to business, innovation and enterprise when the pressure was on. I used them as motivational ideas and practical jumping-off points in an environment that, at times, felt as daunting and unsettling as my early days in the war business.

Let me explain how I got there in the first place. In 2005, I joined the Royal Marines Commandos where I later went on to pass the Royal Marines Sniper Course. Nobody in my family had served in the military before, so this was something I felt particularly proud of. Then in 2008, I signed up for Selection with the military elite and for the next ten years I served at the sharpest end of combat as a sergeant, sniper and demolitions expert, and later a multi-skilled sniper instructor. Due to my involvement in a number of risky operations in battle, I was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for combat. However, once my time with the squadron was done, I decided to explore my options beyond the military. Getting a job in personal security - a logical vocation for many former operators - seemed too safe, too boring. (By the way, I'm not knocking those individuals that have gone into that line of work. It's a solid gig.) But testing myself in an area where the creative risks and emotional rewards felt potentially bigger, next level, seemed like a step in line with my military career. I wanted to push myself beyond what might have been reasonably expected of me and was ready to turn the page.

This was the first time I'd ever been required to consider my life beyond active service and it felt like a minefield. Up until that moment, my work-life balance had been intense, but rewarding, though the effort required to survive had taken its toll. I'd lost friends to IED blasts. I'd even seen the gruesome result of an explosion when a dog picked through the gore-splattered aftermath and emerged with a victim's dick in its mouth. Still, none of these incidents compared to the time I'd slipped on a clump of slimy goo during a night operation. In the dark, it was impossible to discern exactly what I'd walked into. Then, once the building had been cleared, I went back to check on the mess with a torch and discovered to my horror that I'd stepped through what was left of an enemy gunman's brain.

As I looked to the future, I knew a change was needed. At the time I was thirty-three years old. My first marriage had failed and I was two years into a new relationship. I didn't want to make the same mistakes twice.

'Mate, you've still got plenty of gas in the tank,' I thought. 'What do you want to do?'

Around the same time, Louis was standing at the very same crossroads. After scrapping as an operator for eight years, his back wasn't great and he'd been forced to retire through injury. I'd first met Louis having joined the Royal Marines with 40 Commando, Bravo Company, and the pair of us became close friends, though we never actually fought alongside one another. Like me, Louis was ready for a new challenge and we had plenty in common. Both of us had taken a great deal of pride in our appearance and personal admin as operators - looking 'the part' was a big deal. Both of us appreciated the value of functional kit, tech and safety, which was vital when operating in extreme environments, such as the desert, where temperatures could reach 50 degrees Celsius, or the mountains, where a ripped glove, damaged boot or inappropriate clothing could lead to frostbite and death.

Meanwhile, I'd heard from a number of former operators working in the extreme adventure business that a lot of the kit being used wasn't exactly bombproof. That's when Louis and I stumbled across an idea. Could we deliver something different to the market - the type of clothing suitable for both elite adventurers and casual explorers? We undoubtedly had the credibility to front such a project. But did we have the business acumen? We also had the expertise to appreciate the value of functional clothing because in war our lives and the survival of everybody around us had depended upon it. Was it possible to translate those high standards into fully developed and marketable products?

The answer was very much yes, and together we established ThruDark - a clothing company that enmeshed the military elite's ethos into a line of...