We were in severe danger. We had organised an emergency RV away from the village, but it was too late. There were torches everywhere and if I’d tried to make a run for it, I would have been seen for sure. The alternative was maybe being caught and executed. I drew my knife and hid in the darkest place in the room, behind the door. Had I been hunting for me, it was the first place I would have looked, but it was all I had. The door flew open and nearly hit me in the face. Luckily, it didn’t swing back on its hinges, so I remained hidden from view.
A man wielding an AK47 walked into the middle of the room. Sweat was streaming into my eyes and my heart was beating so hard I worried he might be able to hear it. Just as I thought he was going to look behind the door, his mobile pinged. He fished it from his pocket and looked at it for a couple of seconds, before screeching something in Thai – I assume along the lines of ‘room clear’ – and marching towards the exit. As he left, he looked to his right, and I felt certain he saw me through a gap in the door. I tightened the grip on my knife. But I never had to use it. The man swept back into the village and I made the immediate decision to make my escape under the cover of darkness.
Two of the guys were waiting for me at the RV and we soon found Mickey as well. It transpired that the cartels had discovered that Westerners were in the area and suspected we were working for the DEA, exactly the situation we were keenest to avoid. We didn’t sleep that night and at first light slipped out of the village and headed south for our next mission. The journey to safety seemed to go on forever, and we were terrified that danger lurked around every corner. But eventually we made it to safety.
We’d been tipped off about a bar that was run by a Westerner and renowned for using minors for sex, so three of us – me and two Aussies called Tim and Paul – decided to go in undercover. We thought that if we went in separately and pretended not to know each other, we’d be able to spread our net wider. The brief was to keep a low profile and get as much information as we could, including details about the owner and footage of the rooms upstairs, where sex with children was alleged to take place.
It was all going to plan. I’d identified the owner, who was a cockney, and was minding my own business in the corner of the bar. But I soon got chatting to the owner, one drink turned into a few, which turned into a few more. Before I knew it, I was being ‘introduced’ to my two mates and I was part of the gang. By the end of the night, I’d got involved in a one-armed press-up competition in the middle of the bar, Tim was playing the drums, Paul was on the mic singing karaoke and we were best mates with everyone.
As mad as it sounds, that was the best way to do it, rather than skulking in the corner nursing a glass of lemonade, peering over the top of a book. Everyone was pissed, so we had to get pissed too. ‘Lemonade?! This is a Thai sex bar!’ We managed to create enough of a smokescreen that Paul was able to get upstairs and look at the rooms, which contained no kids, but did have CCTV connected to a central control room full of TV screens.
Then The Grey Man made a wrong move. While we were still in Thailand, they told the media that we’d just rescued 22 kids from being trafficked. By that time, The Grey Man had done 140-odd such rescues in south-east Asia, but to get 22 kids out in one hit was a big deal. The story spread like wildfire, and I think the US State Department got hold of the story, contacted the Thai government and said something along the lines of, ‘What the hell is going on? We give you millions of dollars a year to prevent the trafficking of children, and we’re reading that a four-man team has done more than you’ve ever done.’ The Thais immediately went on the defence, which quickly turned into attack.
They savaged our credibility. They claimed that The Grey Man was a crooked organisation, conning donors out of money, which was then lining our pockets. They also claimed that the 22 kids hadn’t been sold into slavery at all. That story quickly became accepted fact and suddenly we were being hunted down. We were ignorant of all the controversy, so headed off to do another operation. But had we been seen by the wrong people, we would have been arrested.
Shortly afterwards, news reached us that the Thai police were hunting us down and we needed to get out of Dodge, quickly. A disgruntled former Grey Man operative had started working for the AHTD, so we were concerned that he might have passed on our names, and if they had caught us and asked for papers, we would have been in the shit. But we managed to escape over the border and into Burma, before flying back to Australia.
Not long after that, and against my better judgement, I got back together with Sarah. I was staying on the Gold Coast with her family when my phone started pinging with text messages from people telling me to buy a newspaper. The first thing I saw when I walked into the newsagent was a picture of me, my Grey Man colleagues and the 22 kids we’d rescued, on the front page of The Australian. Luckily, our eyes were blacked out. Not so luckily, the story contained more claims that The Grey Man was a bogus charity. And the story wasn’t just in The Australian, it was in every major newspaper in the country, as well as being all over the TV news.
I immediately knew that The Grey Man would soon be no more. I knew that the majority of the donations went straight to the kids and that none of us took a salary. But the stories claimed that money was being misused. They also claimed that the kids we had rescued were living perfectly normal lives with their families. What else were they going to say to journalists who stuck recorders under their noses? They relied on the Thai authorities for financial and medical support. Everything was being denied at every level. Even other charities waded in, backing up the Thai government’s claims.
It was devastating on a personal level. I’d got my teeth into something that really mattered to me and now it was being rubbished in a very public way. I’d also spent all my savings on The Grey Man, so my whole world dropped away beneath me in a heartbeat. But it was also gut-wrenching to know that with The Grey Man gone, so many kids would suffer as a result.
Whatever mistakes John Curtis made – and it was him that came in for most of the flak – I knew his organisation had done a lot of good things for a lot of people. But the culture of child prostitution was just so ingrained, which meant any charity trying to do anything about it was swimming against a very strong tide. You can try to be a superhero, fly in and try to change things, but only the Thais themselves have the power to change their own culture.
17
HAPPY NOW?
I thought Sarah and I could make things work, but the old issues soon reappeared. As soon as she saw stories about The Grey Man she said, ‘I knew what you were doing out there was a load of shit.’ She’d take great pleasure in letting me know that anything that meant a lot to me meant nothing to her. She just wanted me to get a bog-standard job and be at home the rest of the time. And whenever someone says to you, ‘Why don’t you just grow up and get a proper job, like a normal man would do?’ you know that comes from jealousy. That’s them trying to drag you down into their own unfulfilling lives.
For a while when I was living with Sarah, I worked in a laundrette. There’s nothing wrong with working in a laundrette, it’s just not my scene. But that’s how under pressure I was to live this ‘normal’ life. And the pressure didn’t just come from Sarah. After returning from Thailand, I kept telling myself that I needed to keep myself safe. And part of that was having an everyday job. Eventually Sarah and I parted for good, I started putting myself out there and landed a job with a large oil and gas company.
I moved into a beautiful bachelor pad in an old wharf on the Brisbane River and it was the first time I’d ever really been single. It was the best thing I ever did and for a while life seemed like absolute bliss. I should have tried it more often.
Too often, people look externally for purpose and contentment. I learned that I didn’t need anyone else in my life, that my purpose and contentment came from within. I think that dependence on other people stemmed from my time in the military. But even in the military, you need to make sure your own shit is together befor
e worrying about other people. Because if you have your own shit together, you’re in a better position to look after other people anyway. No one can rely on you if you’re broken.
I was a project manager for all the wells across Queensland. It paid good money, it gave me a certain amount of autonomy and, from the outside looking in, it seemed like a dream gig. But I couldn’t stand it. Spending so much time in an office was a nightmare, to the extent that I was in the gym three times a day. I don’t think I’d ever been fitter. Working in an office, doing mundane work for a company I cared nothing for, wasn’t where I was destined to be. It had no meaningful purpose, just as being a mercenary in Iraq – which is exactly what I was – had no meaningful purpose.
However, that period did help me get back on track, because it gave me a routine and some stability, for maybe the first time ever. I started thinking about how I’d managed to change my life in the past. I thought about joining the Royal Marines, Special Forces Selection and about the attack in Fallujah, when I was able to change my situation through the power of positive thinking. I used to say to myself every day: ‘I am willing to accept change, and as difficult as it may seem, I know it will lead to bigger and better things.’ It was difficult at times, because I was still drinking to excess, but I could feel change coming, even if I didn’t know where that change would take me. It was around that time that I finally worked out that I wasn’t the problem. So many people must think that way: if I’m not happy working in an office and doing a boring job that pays me the money to support my family and pay my bills, then there must be something wrong with me. I’d almost resigned myself to believing I’d just have to deal with being discontent for the rest of my life. But I simply hadn’t found my calling. There was something out there that would satisfy me and give me purpose. I didn’t have to sit behind a desk, wearing a suit and pushing paper for the rest of my working days.
I kind of wanted another girlfriend, but the fact I couldn’t find one was maybe another sign that major change was afoot. I had a number of female friends and was seeing a 24-year-old at one point, whose dad was the same age as me. Holly was nice, but nothing serious. My contract with the oil and gas company was coming to an end and there was nothing on the horizon, so it was almost as if I was being forced out of the country. But despite all this, I kept clinging on like a limpet.
One night, I had an argument with Holly and went down the gym to let off some steam. After the session, I was heading home on my bike when I reached a junction just outside the gym and a car smashed straight into me. I was splattered on the deck, my handlebars were all twisted and my knee was in agony. The guy jumped out of the car and was very apologetic, but it turned out he only had one eye, so that when he turned right he didn’t see me. That was another nudge towards the exit, although the universe wanted me to go out in an even greater blaze of ignominy.
I had some time off work but a few weeks later was ready to go back to the gym. I used to do these workout routines and my favourite was called Murph, which was named after a Navy SEAL called Michael Murphy, who received the Medal of Honor for his actions in Afghanistan. Murph consisted of a mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 press-ups, 300 squats and another mile at the end, all while wearing a 20-pound weight vest. There’d be a few of us tackling Murph at any one time and we’d race each other.
My first time back at the gym, I headed out the door for my second mile run and went screaming down the road, because I was desperate to beat my personal best. I could feel a rival breathing down my neck, and I was muttering, ‘I must win this’ over and over again. About 100 metres from the finish, I ducked down the pavement side of a rubbish truck and the bin-collecting sidearm punched out and knocked me straight through a garden fence, on exactly the same spot I’d been hit by the one-eyed dude. There was a bit of damage – and I didn’t win the bloody race! – but I was more in shock. I could have pressed charges against the one-eyed dude and the owner of the dustcart but decided not to. They didn’t do it on purpose, and they might have lost their jobs, been unable to provide for their families and it would have been a lot of hassle for me. And that was the moment it finally sunk in: ‘Ollie, you idiot, how many hints do you want? Get it into your thick skull that you need to fucking leave…’
People always used to laugh at the fact that I’d get myself into loads of shit and come up smelling of roses. I even managed to find the positives in being run over twice in the same place in the space of a few weeks. Instead of thinking, ‘What a pain in the arse’, I thought, ‘It could have been so much worse.’ Not only that, I thought, ‘Why has this happened? Is this a sign that I need to make changes?’ I do believe in fate, but I also believe we define our own destinies. Everything is there for us, we just have to line ourselves up for the opportunities.
The company I was working for had some former fighter pilots in for a corporate training day, which was actually pretty useful. But I was also sitting there thinking, ‘These people worked in jet planes up at 12,000 feet. Maybe they can teach CEOs a thing or two, but how relatable is this to real life? Imagine if you tried to teach people from the corporate world Special Forces skills. That makes far more sense.’ Then one day, I was flying across an oil field, staring out of the window at this great expanse below, and the solution opened up before me. I imagined a load of civilians from the corporate world doing a simulated escape and evasion exercise across the terrain. I imagined veterans, guys suffering with PTSD, working as instructors, teaching Special Forces lessons – both physical and mental – to people wanting to better themselves. It seemed almost real.
I’d got so much satisfaction from helping people through The Grey Man organisation, and that had created a spark, a passion to improve people’s lives. It’s an innate thing in most humans to want to help others. And I realised that helping other people was my therapy and my forte. For the first time in my life I had a clear idea about who I was and what I wanted, and that was something I stumbled upon in the wilds of Thailand. It was suddenly all so clear in my mind. That moment on the plane was a daydream but also the skeleton of a business plan. It was a moment of great clarity, an epiphany of sorts.
One thing I said I’d never do was go back to the UK, where there were too many bad memories and there was too much upset and trauma. But one Thursday morning, I suddenly woke up at 3am and thought, ‘Why don’t I go home?’ And as soon as I opened the doors of possibility, everything started flowing. It was like an energy came flooding in and suddenly I had answers. I put almost everything I owned on Gumtree, cleared the flat and was gone in a couple of weeks, flying out on 11 July 2014.
My brother had landed a job as a helicopter pilot for Shell in Malaysia, which meant we’d miss each other again. Because we’d both been in the military and off here, there and everywhere, we’d hardly seen each other for 20-odd years, so him clearing off just as I was coming home was a blow. But, once again, there was a silver lining. Mum was moving into his house in Cornwall, which meant there was a spare house for me to live in.
When I arrived back in the UK, all I could think about was my business plan, day and night, to the extent that I was even dreaming about it. But I needed money, so I soon got sucked back onto the circuit. A guy I was in the military with got me a job in surveillance, chasing Russian crooks around London. They were businessmen, worth billions, involved in corruption. We’d follow them everywhere, spying on who they were meeting, taking photographs, even following them to airports and then to Switzerland, where we’d continue operations. The intelligence was fed back to the company, which was then fed back to solicitors, who were working on behalf of clients. I had a job and I had money, but it wasn’t my passion and it did nothing for me.
It was about this time that I told my brother about my business plans, which he fully supported. Justin also loaned me some money. He said to me, ‘You’re like that bloke Bourne – except you’re Broke Bourne.’ On 11 October 2014, I quit the surveillance job. And on my way down to Cornwall, I met up with Foxy at
a service station on the M40. We’d served together in the Marines, but he was only a support rank at the time, nothing more than a bit of skin. Still, he was one of my best mates and I loved hanging out with him, mainly because we shared the same warped sense of humour and loved the same music. But I hadn’t seen him for 13 years and didn’t even know he’d done Selection and been in the SBS. After I left the military, I severed ties with pretty much everyone I’d served with. I didn’t really have any friends outside of whichever relationship I was in at the time, which is quite unusual for an ex-soldier. I was trying to find an alternative, something new, and I thought that meant completely forgetting the past and focusing on the future. The upshot of that thinking was bouncing all over the world, searching for that fix, when I should have been looking inside myself. But when you sink into a depression – even if you don’t know you’re depressed – you hide yourself away from the people you were close to. That’s not a wise thing to do, because they’re the people who know you best and are best placed to help.
After a couple of coffees, me and Foxy checked into a hotel and got on the lash, big time. When Foxy left the SBS, he went down a similar route to me and ended up working for a global facilities management company. It wasn’t his thing, but he thought it was expected of him. And when I told Foxy all about the plan for my business, which I was already referring to as Break-Point, it turned out that he’d been thinking along similar lines. We talked all night, visualising in forensic detail what the business would look like, and from that moment on, I decided not to work for anyone else full-time.
Break Point Page 16
