All right, we're ready for departure. Here at the Pilot Project Podcast,
the best source for stories and advice from the pilots of the RCAF.
Brought to you by Skies magazine and RCAF today.
I'm your host, Brian Morrison. With me today is our guest from the
Christmas episode, Greg Gerling. Greg, welcome to the
show and thanks so much for being here.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Before we start, let's go over Greg's bio.
Greg graduated from flight training in 2008 and was
posted to 403 Squadron in Gagetown, New Brunswick, flying the
Ch 146 Griffin. After getting qualified, he
was deployed to Afghanistan with a Canadian helicopter Force
Afghanistan from October 2009 until
August 2010 in support of Op Athena. While
there, he flew close to 600 combat hours in
103 sorties, doing mostly Chinook escort
reconnaissance, close combat attack, and armed overwatch
missions. While deployed, he held the position of
electronic warfare officer. Upon his return,
he was able to complete his Advanced Tactical Aviation Course, or
ATAC, and got his A Category Instructor rating and was
employed as a standards officer and check pilot. In
2019, Greg was posted to the Joint Rescue Coordination
Center, or JRCC.
In Halifax.
As an aeronautical coordinator there, he was responsible for
defining and coordinating missions for SAR crews, including
marine, air and humanitarian missions.
On his days off, Greg got his airline transport pilot
license for helicopters and was able to fly for Breton Air,
based in Sydney, Nova Scotia. In August
2023, Greg was posted to the Halifax Recruiting Center
and is just getting started there. Greg has close to 3000
hours military flying, including 600 combat,
800 instructional, and 500 on
NVGs. So where did
aviation start for you, Greg?
Great question. Aviation, it's, um,
not something I ever grew up thinking about or wanting. I
actually grew up on a farm in Anaganish,
Nova Scotia. We had a beef farm, and my dad had a
farm equipment dealership. So my whole dream
in life was to sell tractors. So I
started with an agricultural business diploma from the Nova Scotia
Agricultural College. I did a farm equipment
mechanics apprenticeship course on the side while I was working
as a mechanic. And then I also went to St of X University in
Anaganish to get my degree in business.
Towards the end of that degree, my dad had an
offer to buy his business. And I looked at the numbers
and stuff, and I knew that if they had that kind of money to buy him out, they
had that money to put him out, too. So the business
decision for him was definitely to sell. So that kind of
left me up in the air. What I was going to do with the rest of my life.
And it started a little journey on the business path where I went to
work for a company called Irving, and I worked for them for two years.
And on the sidelines, I
started in the infantry reserves going into my last year university
because my roommate was doing it, and he's like, hey, this will be fun for the
summer. Run around, shoot guns, throw grenades. That does
sound like I can go do that. So I never had
any interest in the military at all. And then I sort of got my foot
in the door because of my friend that got me into
that. Then I was doing that on the side while I was still working for
Irving and decided that, you know what, I really wanted to pursue a
full time military career. So I went to the recruiting center and I
said, hey, I want to go full time military. At this time, I
had already done all of my officer training, and, uh, I
was employed as a platoon commander with the first Nova Scotia Highlanders at a
Picto. So I said, that was a lot of hard work to get
all that done, so I'd like to do that job. And at
the time, Afghanistan was going on and I was interested in
deploying as an infantry officer. When I went into the
recruiting center, the guy there basically said, well, you have a business
degree. You could be a logistics officer. And I said, Well, I haven't really thought
about anything else. And then he said, well, geez, you could be a
pilot if you want.
And I'm like, that sounds pretty good.
Put me down for that. So that's how I became
a pilot. Like, just that simple. And, uh, I went through
the training and the selection, and here I am today.
Did you have any background experience in
aviation? Had you ever flown an airplane before that,
or did you go to air shows or anything like that?
So my dad had taken me to an air show in Shearwater
when I was a kid, and I still remember that. And the funny thing
about that story is, years later,
after training, I got my wings and I flew my dad out to
Winnipeg. Uh, and you know how that is, the wings grad
party. We had a few drinks and stuff, and we were at the back of the
mess and I said, dad, isn't it crazy? Like, all I ever wanted to do was
sell tractors. And he said to me, he's like, you know what, all I ever
wanted to do is be an Air Force pilot.
No way.
And I never knew that until I had wings on my chest. And it
was really interesting because, um, he actually went and applied
for the Air Force, but he immigrated from Holland
after World War II. My grandparents survived World War
II, got married, had my dad and then immigrated here to
farm. So he didn't learn English until
he was nine. So he was always a little bit behind in school. Super
smart, very, very common sense.
Just full of common sense.
He ended up going to the recruiting center and they said, well, you
need to have a degree. And he's like, Well, I'm not getting a degree. He went
on and got a mechanics license and then went on and became successful in
business. And I did know that he did pursue a little bit of
flying when I was a kid, but he was too busy with the kids and
the business was sort of taking off at the time, too, so so it's really
interesting that my dad had such an interest in aviation
that I never knew about. And then here I ended up sort of
living his dream and he sort of lived what I always dreamed that.
I was going to do.
How did you find your flight training experience in the forces?
Really, really rewarding, challenging,
rewarding. Super fun.
Yeah.
Had a really good time and I had really good, uh,
instructors and I had really good peers around me. My strength
was always hands and feet.
I don't know why.
I think partly because of growing up on a farm, just
operating equipment really served me well, and also having that work ethic
from being on a farm to be able to put the work in. I
had really good friends around me to help me with the book stuff. There's
one guy who's a lieutenant colonel now, Chris Bowers, who's in
Winnipeg, and we did every course right from air crew
selection together, right up until we had our wings. And
I would go to his house every night and
study, and he would teach me everything that was going on in the ground
school. And I beat him on every exam
except the very last one at our wings
course. And I definitely credit him for
being one of the best instructors that I've had
for the ground stuff, and certainly a very good friend in the
peer. And he's off doing really big things now, too. He
went into the maritime helicopter community and now he's in Winnipeg
doing big senior staff officer stuff.
Awesome. Yeah.
Were you stressed out at all, or was it fairly smooth
sailing for you?
So I wasn't stressed, um, too
much for the simple fact that it was never my dream
to be a pilot. And I think that that served me very well
when I had a stumbling block or something I found
challenging.
And it's like, I don't know if.
I'm going to get through this or not. I was like, well, if I don't,
I'm going to go to the infantry. Because I was already qualified as an
infantry platoon commander, and I was already a lieutenant at the time too.
So I had options, like I was going to be in the
military and I was going to do something that I loved to do, whether it was being a
pilot or in the infantry at that
time, they were both good options to me.
So because of that, I really handled the
stress well, because it wasn't something that I was
going to lose. I never felt like it was something I had or
really even wanted to be honest with you.
So I'm really grateful that that was the approach that I took,
because stress is the thing that really
is the most challenging thing for student pilots, for
sure.
I think managing it is one of the hardest skills you learn, and
it's such a hard thing for a lot of people. That
is their dream. Right? For most of them, I would argue that is
their dream. So you do put a lot of pressure on yourself, and it's such a
tricky thing to manage.
Yeah.
So you've got through your flight training, and selection time rolls around
and you get selected. Griffins was that what you
wanted?
I got a good story about that one. So
when I joined as a pilot, I went
to do my OJT at 413 Squadron in Greenwood,
Nova Scotia. And I wanted
comarons, for sure. I got
out with a guy named Major Steve Reed. Uh, he's still in
he's at Gander right now. He's over at Wing Ops
there. And he was just a wonderful mentor to
me. He took me on flights and stuff.
And after the crash in 2006 of
914, there was lots of issues and there was
hesitation in taking OJT pilots flying.
That was the comrade.
The comrade.
Yeah.
Off cancer. Nova Scotia. So I was there at that time,
uh, and he still took me
on this one mission where we went like 150 miles offshore
off of Yarmouth. And we rescued a lady
who had a lot of problems on a cruise ship. And, uh, I
watched the Sartex go down and package
her up and take her up, and just working on her in the
helicopter. And they saved her life. And it was
very impactful for me
as a human, but also as a member of this
team. Even though I was just a passenger, that really stuck
with me, and that was something that I wanted to do.
So then I went through flight training and stuff, and at the end
of Moosejaw, I did well, and
they tried to push me jets, and I was very interested in
jets. I had spent time in Cold Lake, and I really
loved the community. Like, all the people there were amazing. Some
of the best pilots you'll ever meet. And my
flight commander at the time was a very experienced fighter
pilot who did the F 15 exchange tour
up in Alaska a few years before. And he had been around for a long
time. I think he even started on Voodoos. So
he was telling me, hey, I think you'd be really good at this. And of course, as a
student know, you're just going to be happy getting wings at that
point, right? And then to kind of have your tires pumped a little
bit like this. It felt really good. And I also I
loved the form phase. Like flying in the Harvard and doing
formation was just I just loved it.
Yeah, it's very exciting and it's very.
Challenging and it's the one thing that only the
military really does. You know what I mean? It just felt this is
military flying, right? So
I told him, I'm like, I'm not sure.
And he's like, well, come to work tomorrow. We're going to put you
up in the Hawk. We'll send you for a flight. So there's a two ship flight going
out with a person that was just upgrading.
They had to do a radar square, so just take off two
ship, an instrument approach leading a two ship.
And then we had a whole bunch of gaffes. So they're like, well, then we're going to go
play. So we went out to the training area and we did like, 500 foot
separation. And the pilot I was with is actually,
um, Major Parker, who's the lead of
the Snowbirds right now. Um, yeah, I talked to him
here in Halifax not too long ago and he let me
fly the whole thing. And so after I landed, I
came in and my flight committer was like, so was that a fun flight? I'm like, honestly, that was
the best flight I've ever had in my life. Who gets to fly these
jets around and do all this? He's like, so are you going to go
jets? And I'm like, well, I need a little bit of time to think about. He's like, you have
30 minutes. And I was like, well, I've wanted to do chrome runs
for two years at this point, so 30 minutes isn't going to
be enough time to think on this.
So I said no.
So after I told him no, I went back to Anigan and Sean leave.
And a couple of days later he had called me and said, hey, Greg, we really
want you to go this. We've got a few jet slots here. And there was a lot of
really skilled pilots on my mooseja course too, that a
bunch of them did go on to fighter jobs and they're very
successful there and they've had a lot of operational experience.
But he wanted me to go and he talked me into it pretty
much. And I'm like, look, I'm 95% in on this. I
just need to talk to one guy, Major Steve Reed,
because he's been my mentor, he's been very good to me. So at the time he
was at a desk job in Ottawa. So I called,
left a message he was busy. And I went
out for a run just on a dirt road in behind my house in
Antigone ish about six k into the run, a
Comrade helicopter flies right over my head. And I'm like,
that has to be a sign. I ran home, I packed a bag,
I went down to Greenwood. I stayed with, uh, a friend of mine, Ron Bush,
who was a pilot on the Comrade at the time, and also
a good friend, too. And I went, I talked to everybody in the
community, and I talked to a friend of mine that I recruited into the
military who was a Woofie tech, water fuel, environmental
technician. Like, we went to high school together, and so we went and had lunch. And I'm
like, this is what it's all about. It's like being in my home,
know, flying search and rescue missions. And for me and,
uh, where I was at in my life at that time, it just made the most sense
to gun for the Comrade spot, not knowing that I could
get a Comrade spot. Yeah, I'm now putting my hat in for
helicopters. So then when I went to
helicopter school, I ended up being on the
small group evaluation for the Outlaw. So I was on the first Outlaw
course. There was four of us, and they wanted
a person to go to each of the fleets. So there
was a Comrant spot, a Griffin spot,
uh, Seeking spot, and a Chinook Exchange
in Australia. So I knew that I better
take a look at these communities before I
actually go to helicopter school because I didn't know anything about
maritime, I didn't know anything about Tech Hell mhm
at the time. I just knew that I loved Comarines and the mission
set, right? So I talked to my
flight commander, and I recommend this to all OJTs. Try to
get a week OJT, uh, on this airframe.
Like, go over and see the aurora, go over and see the
cyclone. If you can do that, and if it's in the budget, it's
very beneficial because if we can get our OJT
pilots on airframes that they enjoy the most and are the
best fit for them, not just for airframe, but mission set
and also location mhm we're going to keep them longer, so it
benefits us. I went and spent a week on the
Seeking, and it was very interesting what they
do. Their mission set is very cool. They get to travel the world and all that
stuff, but it just wasn't a good fit for me. And then I went
up to Gagetown and a guy named Jim Newton, who ended
up being the, uh, squadron commander there, took me under his
wing and he put me in the simulator. He'd got
me flying every day, got me on night flights, on night vision
goggles, and it was low level flying. And I actually
flew with, uh, General Alexander.
Okay.
He actually flew me there. He probably wouldn't remember that very cool,
but I remember it.
Yeah.
That week was a game changer for me because I fell in love
with Tackl. I mean, with my army background as well,
too. I understood the customer because the customer of Tackle
is the army, right?
Yeah.
And I also understood what it was like being a soldier, getting
supported by air, especially helicopter
support. Right. So I was like, wow, I really
love this flying. This is like, a really good fit.
And so when it came to selection in Portage,
I did top the course. So I had my first choice,
and there was a comb run spot available in, uh,
Greenwood. And my course director at the time, he's like, you
got your comrade spot. Do you want to do that? And I said, I kind of want
to go to 430 Squadron because I want to learn French.
And then I want to get posted to Gagetown and become an
instructor there on my second tour so I can be on the East Coast because
location was very important for me.
So then they said no to the
430 Squadron because my French wasn't good enough. I had a profile.
Yeah. But then my course director came to me and
he's like, hey, would you be interested in going as a pipeline
to 403 Squadron?
And I was like, yeah, I would be.
Okay, so we're going to shift gears, and the rest of the interview is going to
be focused on your time in Afghanistan.
Sure.
How did you find out you were going to Afghanistan?
So when I left helicopter school and got posted to
403 Squadron, I started my course right away. Like I
mentioned earlier, that's when Canada decided
to buy six Shinook helicopters and deploy eight Griffins
to theater. So when I was on
course on my Griffin course, I was told by
my Co at the time that I was going to
go, and I was really excited about it. So
it's funny because when you're going through pilot training,
like, when I was going through, we didn't have
any deployed air assets other than,
uh, uh, transport missions
in theater at the time, and there was no visibility that
that was going to happen. And then all of a sudden,
we bought six Chinooks and put eight Griffins
into Afghanistan, which was a very
active combat zone. And here I was,
just a student, still learning how to fly and
preparing to go to this combat theater. So I think it's
really important for a lot of your listeners who are
pilots going through the training system to know that, hey,
the stuff that you're learning right now, you may be using this within a
year even. You just never know what Canadian foreign policy is
going to be totally. And where the government is going to commit
its assets, its, uh, resources.
Yeah.
I never expected to, within less than a year
of finishing qualifying on the Aurora to be flying over
Iraq. That's for sure.
Right.
This is submarine hunter, so that was not in my
crystal ball.
It's crazy. My aircraft commander at the time, Ron
Krueger, he said, I feel bad for you guys, because he was
at the end of his career and I was at the beginning of mine, and he's like, this is the
highlight of your career. Like, this Afghanistan
job is very important
and very dynamic, and it is what
Takhel is all about. And you are
not going to get this again in your career.
Uh, I would bet that's the pinnacle of what Takhel is
meant to do.
Yeah.
And for me, it actually worked out really well, because I went in
and I got to deploy and do the job for ten months. When I came back, I
had more combat flying time than I had domestic flying time. So
I was very experienced with combat operations and
with the EOIR MX 15, like,
electro optic infrared systems and combat attack
work and all that stuff. And escort that
EOIR that you were.
Talking about there, electro optic infrared, uh,
and that, for the listeners, is the camera.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
So I always try to call it.
EOIR, but we call it EOIR.
Everybody calls it flur, and some systems.
Are flur systems, but flur being forward looking infrared.
That's right. Yeah. Anyways, that became a very useful
tool for us because our role on the Griffin is
attack and reconnaissance.
Right.
And tactical aviation does three
roles mobility, attack and
reconnaissance. So the Griffin basically took over the attack
and reconnaissance roles for Afghanistan, and the Chinook was
the mobility.
How did you feel when you found.
Out you were going? I was excited. Yeah.
Any trepidation?
Of course.
Yeah.
There's risk involved. Right. But we
all signed up for that risk.
Yeah.
It's a funny thing, because we sign a blank check when we first sign up
for whatever risk the government chooses us to take. We've
already pre signed the check.
Right. Yeah.
I think the interesting thing is when you start to
define the mission and location that you're going,
then you start to think about the specific
risks. And I think that if anybody didn't have
trepidation about it, I don't think.
That would be healthy.
I think it's healthy to think about, hey, what can go wrong?
What is the risk? And then, how can we mitigate it? Right. So I
was, um, probably more excited, though, because
my infantry background and having known infantry
friends that had deployed, and I wanted to be in the fight, and
I believed in the mission.
Yeah.
I mean, all of us who signed up post 911 kind
of knew there was a decent chance you'd end up in Afghanistan.
Right.
Yeah. So I was more excited,
but cautious as well. So it allowed me to really focus
on my training, though.
Yeah.
Speaking of your training, what was the workup training like for
Afghanistan?
It was a lot it was very intense.
Yeah.
So I was a brand new Fo.
I just learned how to fly.
And then I learned how to employ the Griffin tactically low level
flying. And then we had to step that up a level and
say, let's do it at 50 degrees, and let's do it
at 3000ft, and let's do it with dust. And now
let's do it with somebody shooting at you. Mhm, you know what I mean? So
we had to prepare for all that stuff but the workup training
that we did, it was incredible. We did everything
from rehearsing mission orders to planning was there was a lot
of planning training which was basically we just did
missions but we ran through the whole operational planning
cycle and then we would employ our tactics on these different
types of missions with the given threats that they would give us. And a
funny story is we did simulators so we would actually
get the intelligence briefs. We were in, like, Petawala
at the time or something, I think or Edmonton. And we were doing an
exercise, and this one was in Edmonton.
And, uh, they gave us a scenario and we planned this mission and then we go into
these little tents that had computers in them and we would fly the
missions on a simulator. And this one mission, I
remember we went and we did and we got shot down. As
luck would have it, we got shot down for real
pretty much in the same spot as we did in
that simulation which really prepared us
well for it. Uh, and I tend to use the term shot up
more than shot down because we were sort of able to recover the helicopter and it
feels like more of a win that we recovered it. It
was pretty damaged and we didn't get it all the way home. We just got a
two Ford operating base. But the crazy thing is
that's exactly how we handled that situation in the simulator
six months before it actually uh, happened. So very
intense training plus all your first aid and there's a lot
of things that you don't think about. There's cultural awareness training
so you know where you're flying and how the
people deal with day to day life so
you know actually what patterns of life look like and stuff like that.
Because uh, for us, something that maybe would
appear to be a threat with the knowledge they gave us about
the communities that were living there, we knew that, oh, actually people
gather here because of this at this time
or just.
That every household has a
rifle.
Yeah, absolutely.
Uh, I will say that by the time pre deployment training was
done we were all very happy to actually get deployed
to have that end. It was a lot of work, it was intense.
Yeah, but as you were saying, you never know when that training
is going to come in handy. Right? You do it in a simulator
and then you see that in real life, and it's just that much easier.
Yeah, absolutely. And that's like flying and handling. Just
normal flying emergencies, right?
Yeah.
We've spoken a little bit about this, but what were the roles the
Griffins filled in Afghanistan?
So the role of the Griffin was doing attack and reconnaissance
work, and, uh, the Chinook did the mobility
piece. So with that mobility piece that the Chinook
was handling, they were the workhorse of
Afghanistan. It was the Chinook. Our
mission for CHFA was to protect ground
troops and to do that,
80% of the casualties at the time were due to roadside
bombs. So flying people by air
was the safest way to do it. M and Canada basically
bought these Chinooks to put them there so that we wouldn't have to
rely on partner nations to move our own troops.
CfHA I think we said earlier is Canadian forces
helicopter Afghanistan.
Yeah.
In order to put the Chinook there and keep it safe, it needed an
armed escort, which we decided
to put the Griffin there in that role. So anywhere a Chinook
goes, it has protection with it. So the Chinook is the
protected force and the Griffin is the protector. So, uh,
probably about 70% of our workload was Chinook
escort. The Chinook ended up moving 7 million
pounds of cargo.
Wow.
And 91,000 troops.
That's crazy.
And CHFA was able to
reduce the casualty rates significantly there.
So I'm really proud of being a part of that just because
I know that being able to move
those troops by air kept a lot of troops alive. You don't
know for sure, but we felt that the job was very important,
very rewarding. So that was the
bulk of our work with Chinook escort. But we were
also able to do reconnaissance. So sometimes
intelligence would need imaging of something. So we had our camera system
that we could go out and take, uh, pictures,
or we could look at future landing zones
and stuff like that for upcoming operations. We did a lot
of air assaults where we would take
soldiers, whoever they might be, um,
sometimes special forces, sometimes conventional army
troops, and put them into different areas of operation to complete
their missions. We would move them by air so we could go out and
get imagery of the landing zones and stuff like that to see if it was
safe. Or we could get pattern of life stuff as well.
So that was sort of the biggest part of the reconnaissance role. But we would
also go out at night and look for roadside bombs. The really
cool thing about the camera that we had
with the, uh, infrared on it basically gives you an
image based off of temperature. So the way
that Afghanistan was was in the day, it would be like 50
degrees, so everything would warm up. All the ground
would heat right up. And then at night, it would
get down to sometimes like -15. Okay, so. There's a
huge temperature swing. And at night the
Taliban would go out and dig these roadside bombs
into the roads, letting all that cool air into that
top layer of dirt. So we would fly down the
road and we'd see these things called lollipops, which was
the main charge in the center of the road. And then they would
dig a line, like a detonation cord kind of thing. So
you'd have like a lollipop for us, it would show up in the camera
and we would see that's a bomb.
Yeah.
And so we would call that to an EOD team. Explosive
ordinance disposal. Yeah. So we would get an EOD team out in the morning
and they would detonate the bomb and it would save lives. And then sometimes we
would find people digging in the road as well, which we
had certain rules of engagement that we would follow to deal with
those threats and that sort of carries over into the
attack work that we would do. So our attack work was
if anybody was in theater, in the area that we
were, like basically we mostly operated just in
Canada's area of operations. But
any troops that came into contact could call us
up if we were flying in the area, whether we would be on Chinook
escort or just as a two ship of Griffin's flying around
and they would call us to support the firefight. Most of
the time we would show up and the firefight would be done because
the enemy were scared of us because of the gun. The
gun M really was effective. Very, very
effective. And if we had to engage the enemy, we were
capable of doing that. We did a lot of training on different
patterns and tactics that we employed to do the attack
work and work with the ground forces to make sure it's an effective
attack. With the primary goal of that
being where are the friendlies? Uh, protect
the friendlies, don't shoot at the friendlies. That was
the biggest rule out there, is like, first where's the friendlies?
And then start working out from there. Try to see if you can help
support those friendlies and the firefight. Yeah, the friendlies were
very good at handling their own firefights a lot of the time,
but I don't know any
Griffin crew that was, uh, out there for very long in a
firefight. The firefights ended pretty quick.
Yeah, well, those Dylan guns, like
you said, how many rounds per minute?
I think it's 3000 rounds a minute. Yeah.
I mean that's a pretty huge advantage.
It's a lot. Yeah. So we would carry 4000 rounds.
Wow. Yeah.
So it's like we could shoot for a minute. So you got to be
careful what you're shooting.
But is it hard to tell troops from each other, like enemy from
friendly.
When you're flying around?
No, it's easy to tell friendlies, but it's
hard to tell civilian
and enemy. It's very challenging.
Yeah.
That must be really difficult.
Yeah.
So our rules of engagement were very
appropriate, I'll say, for the theater.
Canada, to my knowledge, has
never had any kind of collateral
damage that I know of. Canada's preferred method
of attack work was the Griffin in
Afghanistan. From what I've seen anyways,
it worked really well because we had
small bullets and we had to be right there, so we knew
exactly what we were shooting and we weren't going to take down a building with
that.
Yeah, it's not like you're using explosive rounds or something that causes
collateral damage.
Exactly. Yeah. There is a capability that the Griffin has
on the Gao 21, which is a 50 caliber.
Okay.
Yeah, we can put explosive rounds in that, but I've never used
them before. What's it like being in a firefight?
It's busy.
Really busy.
Yeah.
I'll tell you a quick story. We were doing
a patrol in Afghanistan, just two Griffins. So it was
always two Griffins. We called them a Griffin's weapons team or a
GWT. So a, uh, Griffin never went anywhere
alone. We always had mutual support. So if one person
is sort of off to the front left, the other
Griffin would kind of stay back to the rear right, so it can cover
the 06:00 or the tail of the lead aircraft.
And then the lead aircraft would sort of COVID or scout
the ground that the trailing aircraft was going to fly. That's just an example
of one tactic on how to fly. But we were able to keep each
other really safe, working in pairs. So we were
flying around one day and we got a call from a sniper
detachment at a forward operating base. And they had
a target of four people that had
an illegal vehicle checkpoint set up. And
it was a valid target within our rules of engagement.
So I was flying with a very senior
team at the time. We had our camera system, so we just
punched up the lat long and the camera went right to it and we
were able to validate that. Okay, this is the
target, and it does fit the rules of engagement.
So the team on the ground, the snipers, wanted to take
the first shots, which is fairly common in combat
operations. So you probably saw this, uh, in Iraq as well.
Usually like a Predator or some kind of
UAV or a fast air asset will drop a bomb and
then they'll bring in helicopters, sort of for cleanup,
or people that survived the initial
impact of the bomb and are now running from the area.
Helicopters were a good asset to sort of track them down and find
them. So you can also do this
with snipers as well. So the sniper team on the ground that
day wanted to take the first shot. It was a long
shot, 2.6 km probably for
them, something like that. Uh, which would be like sort of world record
territory sort of thing. So we came up with an
attack plan. We briefed the section. We worked with the ground forces that are
going to take the opening shot. So we were sort of in a holding area, and then
we dropped low level and we turned in for the target. There was four
tack Taliban troops at the time, so we sort of had it
divided up, like, who's going to attack what, or we cover
off different directions to make sure that we do an
appropriate attack on the target, right? That's
efficient and safe for us. We call the
attack. So we roll in, snipers call shots away.
The bullets probably got, like, a five second flight time, I'm
guessing. And, um, I'm watching on the camera
system, and I know this is a valid target,
but nobody moves, nobody falls,
nothing. And the, uh, snipers called the
attack off. So we broke off and we came back up to our holding area,
and they're like, hey, we missed it's such a distance
that the bullet went subsonic, so they didn't hear it. So we're going to
try this attack again. And at the time, I was
flying with my commanding officer, who is a very senior
aviator, very switched on person. And
he's like, hey, we got this, right?
So we come up with a new attack plan, right? At that
time, there was a forward operating base, like, very close, within,
like, a kilometer or something like this. We could look down, see them because we were in a
sort of a top cover, kind of up at altitude,
coming up with our plans. And they called us and they
were taking fire.
Okay?
And they were involved in a tick, right,
which is troops in contact. So
they're like, hey, can you come and help us? And we're like, yeah,
we're rolling in. So we had done all this work working on this
illegal vehicle checkpoint. I'm not sure
how many minutes it would have been total, but basically, then
these guys are actually being shot at. They're
involved in a firefight. And the flexibility that
we had as a crew was just amazing looking back at
because we basically just started diving
low level, left hand turn, briefed our, uh, dash two.
Hey, it's going to be a right door gun engagement. There's two at. We
use clock distance reference or clock distance feature, right?
So 02:00, 300 meters, two
Taliban fighters behind a brick wall. And then we just rolled in
and we just engaged on those two fighters at the time.
So it was crazy. And then we popped up, and then we
were like, okay, well, let's go back to this illegal vehicle checkpoint.
But they were gone because they heard all the firing.
Well, yeah, I guess so, yeah. I don't know, but
it's wild to sit here and talk about it because it was very much
like our life at the time. And, I mean, it feels like
a lifetime ago, but it was the job. But it still
feels unnatural, do you know what I
mean? But it is very much the job. And
nobody ever wants to get into attack work, but we definitely
want to keep our troops on the ground safe.
What is the feeling when you go in and you guys are going
to I mean, we'll just say it. You're going to kill somebody. So what
is that feeling when you go in and you get some bad.
Guys when they're shooting back at
you?
I never had a problem with it. And I will say this.
There's a dissociation that I'm able to have as a pilot
mhm, because I didn't have a finger on a trigger. And I
think that the door gunners. So we would operate with an
infantry door gunner in the back. And they generally,
for us, had a ground tour before we took them, and they
brought a lot of knowledge to the crew on what's going on in the ground.
And then we also had a flight engineer door gunner. They
were the ones actually pulling the trigger. So it's interesting because the
responsibility lies with the aircraft commander. We will work with,
like, a joint tactical air controller or somebody on the
ground about defining the target. Is it
within the rules of engagement? All this stuff is done by the aircraft
commander, and now the aircraft commander has to talk on
the door gunner to make sure that they're engaging the right target.
Right. So there's a lot of responsibility there that
the aircraft commander holds and then
the door gunner. I like to think of it this way
anyways, it'd be interesting to get their take, but
they're not deciding what to engage. They're just following
the orders, which I think gives a little bit of,
uh, a healthy dissociation with it.
That okay, everything's been defined and stuff and I just have to
pull the trigger. And for a pilot, we just had to fly
them and put them in a position to be able to engage the target
in the best manner. Right. So for me, uh, to
answer your question, I never had a problem with.
Yeah, I didn't do it a like.
This is not something we did on a daily basis. This was
few and far between.
Okay, so now that we've covered the.
Roles that you guys were filling in Afghanistan, can
you tell us what an average day looked like for you in Afghanistan?
Yeah.
Ah, so we were on pretty much like a three day cycle. So
you'd do a day of planning. You'd get up in the morning,
you'd probably go to breakfast at, like, seven or something,
jump in the trucks and drive over to work. We were on the other side of
the air base. We would get over there and, uh,
you just start a day of planning. So operations would come and they'd be like,
hey, we have this mission coming up, you guys need to plan for it.
So prepare. It could be anything from like, ah,
a standard Chinook escort where they would just
start moving troops. They just kind of go from Fob to Fob, dropping
off some supplies. And it's kind of like almost like a milk run
sort of thing. Or it could be like a, uh, bigger operation, like, hey,
we're pushing. We were part of an operation
in Helman province where they're moving like 15,000
troops. So it's like somebody has assigned, hey, you need to plan
this. So those were kind of set aside for the planning
days and then you would end up flying for two days. So you
go out?
It depends.
I mean, it could have been a night mission, could have been day. The schedule
changed a lot. But you'd go out and we'd fly
typically from 6 hours
would probably be the average six hour flying days. Maybe
a lot of eight hour days. A lot of
extensions to fly. And I think my longest
mission in a day was a 10.2, which
is a lot in that heat.
It's a lot of time in a.
Helicopter and it's a lot of time in a helicopter. Yeah, you
get a callus on your butt for sure. And it's
intense where it's not mundane, any of
it. You're in a threat environment the whole time,
so your mind is constantly on
alert and, uh, being aware. And so at the end of the
day, you're so tired. But
we would work on fitness, so I'd go play floor hockey or go
to the gym. There's a couple of really good gyms there. The food
was decent, so we would always get square meals.
And my bed was amazing. We lived in a tent, but it had a little
air conditioner and, uh, so I shared like a Mod tent with
eight other pilots and that was connected to another tent with eight more
pilots. And it was all the Griffin pilots. So we're a very tight
team and we would do some social activities as
well too. Like we played Jenga and some other games and
stuff and hang out and see, uh, who got
the latest box of candy sent from Canada. And we'd
share that. Right. And then we would go out. And
when you're flying those missions, you're doing the roles that I spoke
about earlier. They're busy days.
Yeah.
And then I did that for ten months and then,
uh, I got two two week breaks.
HLTAs.
So you guys were going seven days a week?
Yeah. No breaks?
No, not really. There's nothing else to do there but
work anyways, right?
Yeah.
Generally, I remember I did have a day off.
I probably the whole time, maybe I had three days that
we just didn't go into the office.
I want to go to the office.
You're like, I want to go to the office. Because we believed in the mission
right. So the more time we had at the office and the more time
we put towards planning, the better prepared we were and the less stressful
the missions. Which is like flight training.
Yeah, absolutely.
What was the hardest part of the job when you got to
Afghanistan?
The hardest part of the job was just adjusting to the climate. First
of all, the hot weather and the dust was
challenging the smells. Uh, we were living
on a base that I was told this before. It was designed
for 3000 people and there's 30,000 people on
it. So the base basically
grew around the pooh pond. So when you had like
a south wind, it was, it was pretty pungent.
Stings the nostrils, as they say.
That pooh pond is pretty infamous.
It's pretty infamous. Anybody that's been to Afghanistan knows
the pooh pond and we all drive over and take a look and it's like, oh, there's
the like it's like the touristy thing to
do. Tactical tourism, we call it.
Right.
But yeah. So adjusting to the climate
was challenging. And from, uh, an operational
perspective, being able to fly the Griffin in that environment
was a challenge too. And same with the Chinook cruise as well.
The Chinook is an amazing helicopter. I heard your podcast with
Jackie there and she had a great story from Molly and the things that the
new Chinook is doing as well. So
getting her insight on the
planning for that helicopter that's so capable. I
mean, there's still so much going on
to adjust to the climate, even with, uh, a
beast like the Chinook.
Yeah.
So that was probably the biggest thing that we had to adjust to was, uh,
the climate.
How did you folks overcome that?
We, uh, just prepared for it. We
were in the books. So for the Griffin, it's a
very limited machine based off of its
capability. The Chinook is much more capable.
So we were just doing planning all the time. Like, where are we going,
what is the altitude, what is the temperature going to be there today? Is it
dusty? Do they have a prepared LZ and.
LZ is landing zone.
Landing zone, yeah, exactly. So they had different
methods in Afghanistan to deal with the dust. So they had a thing called
rhino snot, which was like
some kind of goo they would spray on the ground and then it would
make a suitable landing zone.
Basically like bind it all up so it doesn't go flying.
Yeah, so it's just like tar almost. Right, okay, so they would do
that. But there's other methods too. I mean, they would get gravel or they would
get these, um, sort of metal
pads that they would stake into the ground. And there's all kinds of ways
of doing it. And when they had those, it was much,
much safer because the dust was the most challenging, for
sure.
Yeah.
Well, it led to two accidents in Afghanistan.
Right. Yeah.
We lost two helicopters, three people
killed. Yeah. So in July 2009,
a Griffin ended up getting caught in some
dust. And it can happen really quick.
Uh, it's a scary thing to think about
overcoming.
It basically was lots of prep and
practice.
Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah.
What did you find was the most fulfilling part of the job in
Afghanistan?
The most fulfilling part of the job would
be when you got called on the
radio by troops that are in contact, and you hear in
their voice the stress and they need
help, and you hear them returning fire in the background.
And you get the lat long and you fly over there.
And then like I said earlier, most of
the time we didn't shoot a single round and the firefight
would end just because they would hide, they would run away,
whatever it might be. But then now you could talk to
that soldier on the ground and you could tell that the stress
had left their body.
You could hear the relief.
Yes. Very
rewarding.
That's really cool.
Yeah.
Were you guys very often called into ticks?
It wasn't the most common thing. I wouldn't even
know a number for me.
Okay.
What was your best day in Afghanistan?
My best day in Afghanistan was probably, uh,
Christmas Day. It was very rewarding to
be able to be tasked by
a foreign nation to support
flying their general around to see their troops.
Yeah.
It was just a real proud moment.
As a Canadian, it's a position of.
Trust they put you into. Yeah, for sure.
We weren't going to do anything anyways that day except work, but I remember
it's like the first Christmas I ever missed at
home. But I was with amazing people.
Like, our teams over there were just
amazing, so we had a lot of laughs. Like,
I could show you some pictures of me wearing a Christmas sweater and a
mullet wig that day. We always kept
it light, which you have to, I think, when you're in a theater like
that. And then we got home to our
Christmas dinner in a box lunch. It was like, in
Styrofoam. And we ate and we loved it.
Ah.
We had a great time. Other
than being home with family or whatever,
um, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else
than with, uh, sort of your band of brothers
and sisters. Right. So absolutely.
Yeah.
And if listeners would like to hear more about that, we first
had Greg on the show for our Christmas episode
last year, and you can hear the full story there.
Yeah.
What was your hardest day in Afghanistan?
The hardest days were when Canadians were yeah.
Yeah.
We would go out. There was, uh, an
five there's five casualties, and
they were blown up real really, it was a big,
big bomb. And so we went out.
Um, we supported any of
the IDs, like, we always would go and do an in or outer cordon
rights for security. Uh, and then
we would go and pick up the bodies. And, uh, the
Griffin generally didn't pick up the bodies. It was always
a Chinook task, but we always escorted to Chinook. And I
always remember going back into, uh, Kandahar. You'd
be it's sort of like in Canada when you're flying around, you carry the rescue call
sign, everybody gets out of your way. In
Afghanistan, it was called Angel Flight, and, uh,
it was really hard. The main pieces of the bodies
right, were kind of set aside, and then they had picked up all the
rest of the body parts, and they put them in one body bag,
and that was the only cargo. So it just made sense for a
Griffin to do it. So we went up to this place called Camp
Naismith to pick it up.
And, uh, it's good to talk
about and, like, you know,
it's.
The that's the toughest part. There's another day, too, that
there's bison, uh, that got hit by a roadside
bomb, and it was really bad. And you talk about, like, going to mental
health. Um, I used to go to the.
Clinic here in Staticona, and,
uh, they.
Have pictures and plaques of all the people that were
killed. And so those two are right there. So every time I'd have to go to see
the therapist or whatever, I'd walk by that, and it's just such a
trigger.
Right.
Yeah, man.
Yeah.
Because I was there when they died.
Right. So it's tough. Yeah.
I can't say I understand because I didn't have those
experiences, but I know it's hard to have tough
stuff.
I think you do understand. I mean, I think it's different for
everybody, but you understand that
sometimes this emotion comes in, right?
Yes.
It's tough to control.
That is part of the process.
Now, you have a red entry in your logbook representing
the day that you were shot down. Can you tell us more about that
flight?
Yeah, so that was my 9th mission. So, uh,
I was fairly new to the theater. On arrival, we were doing
sort of our indoc and stuff, and I was doing a lot of stuff focused on,
uh, the electronic warfare piece.
So once I hit the flight line, we started
going pretty hard. And on
November 24, 2009, we were tasked with
a Chinook escort to, uh, head up
north to a place called Terrancout to support
some Dutch troops.
I believe on that day, it was.
A challenging day, uh, for weather, because we actually
had rain and clouds, which we didn't have
very much of. I can't remember another day that stands out of
my mind that we had these conditions, but it
made it challenging because we had to go up through the mountains in the higher
terrain and our route, we have to
keep a certain minimum safe altitude. And we
didn't have any kind of approach capability with the Griffin at the time in
theater because we stripped all the Ils
and all that instrument equipment out to save
on. Ah, yeah. And we took the side
doors off as well, because we needed every ounce that we
could get. So it really restricted us
a lot for the places that we could go. So we were
sitting on this mission for the day and we were watching the
weather. And then we decided, okay, hey, we can go and do this.
So we started heading up north. The Chinook was in the lead,
and then we had two Griffins shake down, two five and two
six in the back,
following them. And as we were going, we generally
there's a certain safe altitude in combat that you want
to keep. What we call the threat band is like
from a low altitude to a high altitude. If you're
above it, you're good. If you're below it, you're generally good for small arms
fire.
So, on this day, we were going.
Up a, uh, valley that had rising terrain
on the valley, and each mountain peak on the
sides were covered in cloud. We
just knew we wanted to get a little bit higher because we were aware that we were
in the threat band a bit. And so we kind of wanted to creep up,
but we did not want to creep into the clouds. Yeah, it would have been
really bad. So we were kind of creeping up a little
bit. And then, um, I heard this
loud bang and smoke started
pouring into the cockpit.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. Uh, so
immediately, as a trained pilot, I
was like, oh, white smoke in the cockpit. What would you think that
is?
Electrical fire.
Electrical fire. So I started. Okay. Like, descend
land as soon as possible, whatever the checklist said. I
started executing that. At the same time, we lost our ability
to communicate with each other as a crew.
Okay.
Because we were using a, uh, certain secure communications
capability, we ended up losing a
generator. It went offline, which knocked that
offline, and then we just had static on the radio, so we
couldn't really communicate with the formation or each other as
a crew, which made it pretty challenging.
So at that time, I heard the door gunner yelling,
like, break right or break left? That door
gunner now is actually on his multi
engine course.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. Alex Cluccier, shout out to him.
Cool.
Um, yeah, he's switched over to pilot recently
and is now doing that. He's a great, great guy. And
then Ron Krueger was the aircraft commander at the time with me. And then, uh,
Luke Carlson was our doorganner. And we get in touch every
time, every anniversary. But one of them
yelled, Break right, we're being shot. So I start breaking. And then
you could see the bullets going by. Wow.
We had been shot. A bullet had actually
came up through the belly of the aircraft right by my leg and into that
air data computer sitting next to you there. And I
thought it was an electrical fire because we had all the electrical
problems, but that's because the bullet went through 50
wires on its way into that. It severed 30
and right off and 20 were
damaged.
Wow.
Uh, so we had all these problems.
So it was apparent that this is more
than an electrical fire. It turned out that
there's so much dust in Afghanistan, which is like this
powdery flower, that when the bullet went into that,
it knocked all this dust loose. That's why I thought, we're on
fire. Looks a lot like white smoke.
Okay.
Yeah. So at that point, I
start evading, which we would always do that anyways.
We generally don't fly straight and level, which is
so against everything we were taught in flight training.
Yeah, no kidding.
It's super fun to fly tactical helicopters because it's
like, okay, just keep a little bit up a little bit. Down a little bit.
Right? You're a harder target. Right.
So at this point, we could see the bullets going by,
not because there was tracers in the rounds, but because of the
atmospheric pressure and the moisture in the air. It was leaving like little
matrix type contrails.
Oh, little like smoke trails.
Yeah. It was bizarre. But the enemy
were very smart that day to take the tracers out because we couldn't
see the point of origin or the poo, we call it.
So we actually never returned fire to whoever shot
us that day. What we ended up doing was
I told all the tactical students that I've ever taught this
story, because when it happened, I felt my aircraft
commander get on the controls and start to shake the sticks. And
I thought, well, he must want control because we couldn't say, hey, you have
control, I have control. It's really, uh,
abnormal. But he just reacted and jumped on the stick. So I was
like, oh, he wants to fly. So I got to fix the radio problem here.
So I put my head down and I'm start going into the
computer and started like, what's broken? How can I
fix this? And I look up and his head's down doing the same
thing. And in the Griffin we have like, uh, different levels of
automation and happens. There's one that we call it force
trim on. So if I press the button and put the stick somewhere and release it, it's going to
stay there. So it was flying exactly what I wanted it to fly when I
let go of the sticks and I looked down and
he's doing the same thing. So then I took control again. But it
was really interesting, the things that you train for,
you can't train for every scenario, and that was one that
happened. So the most important thing is to keep flying.
So then, um, I brought the aircraft sort of low.
Level.
We were able to get in non secure comms a mayday
call out to formation. The Chinook went high level
and the other Griffin followed us down low level and we made the decision
to go to a forward operating base that was very close by,
like 10. Uh, we flew there
and landed and the Griffin and the Chinook came behind us
and put down. A funny story to that is we landed
in the LZ and we tucked it way over to the side because these forward operating
bases had so much helicopter traffic bringing in
supplies, ammo and stuff like that. So we tuck off
way over to the side, we get out and we see that we had more bullets
in the helicopter. Like, there's one in the main rotor as well.
Oh, wow.
And, uh, certainly the fear was that we would have one in the tail rotor,
but, um, wasn't the case. So we were able to recover there
safely.
How did those 10 Km feel?
They're scary.
Yeah.
So it's funny because, um, we're just
dealt to deal with emergencies very well as military pilots.
So I dealt with all the emergencies and then we made the decision
we're going to fly there. And then it was
like all we had to do left was fly there. And that was scary
because I thought, do we have a bullet in the tail rotor? Because we did
lose an aircraft in 2002, a Griffin
crashed up, uh, at a Goose Bay in
Labrador because of a tail rotor crack.
So I felt that it was sort of a weak spot. And we do
really in depth inspections on that tail rotor now,
but certainly, uh, that entered my mind. And yeah, that was
the scariest part of my tour, probably was that
10. Then when we landed, I ended
up jumping on a forklift, was driving by. So
I jumped on and I said, hey, take me to the Tactical Operations Center because I wanted to go
and give the information to them so they could send out somebody to go and get this
person that shot us.
Right?
And I get into the Tactical Operations Center or the
talk and this American Major, it was a
Canadian Ford operating base, but it had recently been handed over to the
Americans. He came up and I'm like, hey look, we're parking a helicopter.
We're going to leave it here, it's full of bullets. And he's like, oh,
do you need a download? And for those people that don't
know, a, uh, download is usually when an attack helicopter, like an
Apache or something comes in that wants to
take bullets off of the helicopter because they want
to reduce weight. And it was very common for this forward
operating base because it was the step off to going into the higher terrain up in
the mountains. And so he's like, oh, do you want to download?
He thought you meant you were carrying a ton of ammunition.
Yeah, exactly. And I was like, no, it's bad guy.
It's just it's kind of funny that he said that, but,
uh, then we went from there and we took just our kid off the
helicopter. We jumped in the Chinook, they flew us home. We felt a little bit of
shame because we always have this nice little back and forth with the
Chinook, Griffin and Chinook people. Everybody
in one wing knows I'm talking about. But, uh, we both
have a lot of high mutual respect for each
fleet. I have a tremendous amount of
respect for the Chinooks and their crews. And I'm thankful for them because they got
me home that day, even though the Chinook got hit as well.
And they didn't even know they were shot.
Wow.
Not until we got back to Kandahar.
Man, that was some accurate gunnery.
It was, yeah.
So there's actually I have a video from the tailgunner on the
you know, we didn't know we were being shot at, which was very common
for us in Afghanistan. We would often get calls from
troops on the ground being like, hey, you're being shot at from the
northwest of the Fob or whatever, ford Operating base.
So we would go and try to find them, but we would never hear the bullets.
But we know ear muffs. And we had
CEPS. I'm not sure what the acronym is, but it's basically like
headphones, like your air pods or whatever would be in your
ears, plugged into the communication system.
Okay.
And then you have your ear muffs on top of that and
built into your triple layer. Yeah, and we had to
do that because the door guns, when they're shooting, there's so
much noise, you still need to be able to communicate to the door gunners, especially
if you need them to cease fire. So that's why we
required that amount of hearing protection.
It just made you be able to communicate a lot better.
M, so with that, uh, you don't.
Hear the bullets outside there zinging by you, but in the
helmet cam that door gunner had, you could hear it.
We have the audio from this helmet cam footage and it shows
just how difficult it is to pick out the sounds of shooting over a
helicopter. Listen closely to the snaps and
cracks you hear. Those are bullets passing by the
Chinook.
No one on board could hear these shots.
We were engaged by what was assessed to be a PKM
machine gun.
Yes.
And they probably fired anywhere from, uh, one to
two belts at us. Wow. It'd be like 400
rounds.
Yeah, it has a big box of ammo PKM.
Exactly. So that's what got us that day.
But then we got back to Kandahar. The Griffin that
we were in that day ended up we sent out a
maintenance team. They pretty much, I was
told, hotwired to hot start like, one of
the engines to get a special authorization to fly it
back to Kandahar. And it took five or six weeks, I think, to get that
aircraft back in the fight. Just it had to be totally rewired.
Yeah. But it was back in the fight.
And then great story to that is, uh, it
came back to Canada, it was rebuilt, and then it ended up at four or three squadron,
where I was teaching new students how to fly the Gryffin on super cool. The
very helicopter that I was shot in.
Yeah.
Uh, aircraft four, five, eight for anybody that's flying it there, that's
awesome.
Yeah.
So that was definitely a standout day
for me, for sure. And it worked out really well because we were able to get home,
and I went to work the next day and got another
helicopter and went back out.
Yeah.
I was going to ask, what was the recovery like from that after
getting shot up? Do you guys have any,
uh, after effects, uh, in terms of going back out
there?
No.
Mission nine.
It's like yeah, I guess you did another 94
missions.
Exactly. I felt coming out of that
experience.
That and this was as a pilot.
Sitting in the front, we had armored seats. Our door gunners and
flight engineers in the back didn't have that. So
for me, I always felt that either the bullet is going to go.
Into the armored seat, or it can.
Only hit me in the legs or the arms or in the head. And I
always thought a headshot, you're done, arms and legs are going to survive.
So most likely it's going to hit you either because we had, um, armored
vests as well, too. So it's either going to get you in the vest or the
seat. So I just felt that
if I was going to
I mean, it's crazy to even talk to you about it right now and to think about it
this way, but I thought, oh, I could get shot in the arm, and that's not a big
deal. If I get shot in the head, it's done. It's not going to
hurt. You know what I mean? Which is just a crazy
concept to think about in combat. And I think it's just what gets you true.
Yeah.
You have to rationalize it.
Yeah.
But, uh, a true shootdown story is
Blowtorch 60 shot down. So
two very good friends of mine were flying that aircraft that day, and it is an
incredible story of being shot down. I like to
say that we got shot up.
I feel like it's more of a win if I say we got shot
up because we recovered the aircraft and we didn't make it the whole way home. So
it's in red in my logbook. But, uh, I mean, the aircraft
went on to fly lots of missions, whereas that
Chinook that got shot down, they got shot down. They were
engaged by heavy weapons. There was 21 troops in the back,
and they were able to land, uh, and get everybody
out to safety. And it's pretty amazing story.
Yeah.
Bill Fielding is the pilot that's flying, and Bill
got the Medal of Valor for that, too.
Yeah, he was, uh, in 400 Squadron.
When I was there.
I have a connection a little bit, so maybe I can get him on the
show.
Yeah.
So you and I have something in common. Your time in
Afghanistan resulted in PTSD. What were the
signs that this was becoming an issue in your life?
Yeah.
So it's an interesting thing. Like, when I got back from
Afghanistan, I was so excited just even to
see the color green mhm. It really affected me in a
positive way when I first returned, because I just had such
a great appreciation for everything. And that lasted for
about three months. And then I started to
just lose patience, you know what I mean? I'm not
generally angry person, but certainly
I would be much more quick to anger.
And I was sort of irritable, and I start to get a
little bit of anxiety, which was completely
unknown to me. And at the
time, it's easy to look back and see that that's
what I was going through. But I didn't attribute
it at all to Afghanistan. Not even a
little know, so it took a little bit of time. And
then what happens with PTSD is, like, you
have a bucket that can only hold so much water,
and, uh, I have a lot of stuff in
my bucket that I didn't know that I had there from
Afghanistan. And so now when you start putting your other
things in your bucket, like your finances or your
relationships, or somebody cut you off in
traffic, whatever it is that hits that last drop of
water that bucket can hold, then you have a little bit of a
breakdown or you get emotional. It comes out differently
for different people. So, for me, certainly, I got to the point where
my bucket was full and I knew that
something was different. I didn't know what it was at the
time. I didn't know anything about PTSD. So I just talked to
my flight surgeon, who was an ex F 18 pilot, and he was,
like, a really great guy that would
just tell it to you straight and stuff. Uh, and so
he ended up sending me for an assessment. And so I got a
diagnosis of PTSD, and then that sort of
started my healing journey.
Yeah.
Did you have a big incident that led
you to seek help?
No, I think back at that
time, I think they were looking at posting me to Moosejaw, and I
think that impacted
me because I had a very strong support
network, um, on the East Coast. And I
think that would have been the catalyst.
They ended up not posting me. Yeah.
Have you experienced any stigma in the forces as a result
of this?
No, none whatsoever. I have
been somewhat open about my PTSD.
I think it's important to talk about it. Um, there's a quote that
says there's no Unwounded soldiers in war, and I believe
that's true. Some people can come back
and always see the green grass.
Right?
Like Afghanistan. Everything was brown because everything green was covered in
dust.
Right.
So I did experience that really
strong feeling of appreciation for everything that we have here in
Canada, which was really good. And some people are able to
maintain that for a while, and then for other people it's a
little different, but it remains the
same that people are going to be different when you
come back from combat zones and stuff like that.
When you see traumatic things.
Yeah.
So when I came out to my
supervisors and stuff like that and told them sort of what
I was experiencing, I found there was lots
of support. Yeah.
What about from your peers?
Peers have been great.
Yeah.
Honestly, it's more prevalent than you'd think.
Yeah. No, I agree. I had a very similar experience. I
had super supportive supervisors.
And when I kind of, uh, as you
say, came out about it and talked a little more widely about
it, I had people reach out who were going through the same thing. A lot
of people that I never would have thought that were going through very
similar experiences.
Yeah.
And it's comforting.
Yeah, it is. Because you're not alone.
Yeah. You're not alone, that's for sure.
What do you think has been the most helpful thing in your healing journey so
far with PTSD?
Well, the most important thing is asking for help.
Yeah.
And then the help. My experience
with therapy and the mental
health system has been very good. A lot of people
really care and they have a lot of experience with this.
Right.
There's a lot of different tools out there that you can
learn to get yourself to a good place.
And for everybody it's different. So I go to
therapy regularly and it's
great. The thing about post traumatic stress disorder
is that it's stress that's not processed. Mhm,
and it happens after the event, which is common
in combat, because you're just too busy doing the job while you're there. You're
not going to have time to process this. And then when you get back, you're just too
excited to be back. And then these
things start to come out over time, the stress has just been never processed.
So you'll get dreams and all this stuff. Right. M, so the
therapy can definitely help you work through that stuff and
process it. And then once it's processed, you can kind of tuck
it to the bottom of your water
bucket. It's not ever always going to be gone,
but you learn how to manage it. And definitely the help that I got gave
me the tools to be able to manage it.
Yeah.
You found that made a big difference in your life.
Yeah.
What would you say to anyone who thinks, like, they're
listening to this and this is ringing a few bells and they maybe
think they're experiencing something similar?
Yeah.
Go into your flight surgeon or whoever, the mental
health nurse or whoever it has to be, and just talk to.
Them, get checked out.
And, uh, there's so much help and
it's so good. And Veterans Affairs is really good with this stuff
too. I know that long after I
retire, I'll still be able to get therapy.
And it's comforting.
It's really good.
So the scariest thing is that
people.
May not ask for help. Right. Because it can go to dark places.
Right. So asking for help is
the single best thing that you can do, and the help is very
good from people that really care.
How did you manage to take that step? Did you have
fears about losing your ability to fly?
For sure, yeah. And I think that would be very common with
any pilot. Our biggest fear is always like, hey,
am I going to be able to fly? And so for me,
throughout the process, asking for
help was I didn't know anything about it.
I thought I'd still be able to fly. And I did get grounded for
a brief period of time, and then I got put back on the flight line and
whereas happy, like, flying was very good for me.
But there are a lot of pilots that would
be scared of losing their flying category and stuff like that. And I think,
uh, it would take a long process
to get to that point. For me,
I opted to not take meds.
Right.
So I stayed off meds as much as I could. And what ended up
working for me really well was just working on healthy eating and
fitness. I always find that if I lead with my
body, my mind will follow. So if I get out
and I go for a walk with my dog or whatever like that,
uh, it's just going to help. Just clear some room in my head
or whatever.
Right. So that's always been good for me.
But yeah, I would say that for anybody worried about
that and losing their flying category, it's not worth it.
There's no flying category that's worth having to deal with
stress that you just need to process.
Yeah, I agree with that 100%.
We're going to go back to a little bit of lighter subject
matter. What was the most memorable flight you.
Did in the Griffin?
So the most memorable flight that I ever got to do was
during pre deployment training. I was
deploying with 408 Squadron out in Edmonton and I was posted in
Gagetown, so I was away a lot.
My grandparents that came from Holland
were having their 60th weding anniversary on a Saturday
and I was getting home on a Friday. And my
commanding officer at that time knew how
busy I was, and, uh, he told me, he's like, why
don't you just take a Griffin down instead of driving the four and a half hours or whatever
it was at the time? Take a griffin. So
myself and my good buddy Andrew Smith smitty that, you
know, we ended up grabbing a Griffin and a
flight engineer and going to
surprise my grandparents at their 60th weding anniversary. They
didn't know we were coming. It was only my uncle. We had all the proper
authorizations and stuff. And basically I had a time on
Target 03:00. My dad knew and my uncle knew, and that
was it. So everybody else thought that I wasn't going to make it. And we ended up
coming around in the circuit and we landed in a field and shut down,
and the whole family was there. And I had a very large
family, so, uh, it was very rewarding. And it
was really cool for my grandparents, too, because, again,
I'm, um, part of the military that they saw drive
the tanks into the streets of Holland and bring them chocolate and
cigarettes. Freedom.
Yeah. So that's cool.
That is really cool.
Yeah.
I'd also like to clarify all flying is good
training. This isn't just a case of somebody using
a government helicopter for personal use. They would have got great
training out of that. They're flying into an unprepared landing zone,
lots of other things that they're practicing and getting out of that. So
it's not just about going and
going to an anniversary party.
And in this instance, actually, it was, uh, for like,
VFR cross country and navigation and stuff, because we had been so
focused on the tactical portion of stuff, we had no time
to focus on what about flying in
Class G airspace?
Just flying in Canadian domestic airspace.
Exactly. So we need to keep that
skill up as well.
100%.
So what would you say is the most important thing you do to keep.
Yourself ready for the job again?
So it's all about my mental health.
M. So if I have a good.
Fitness regime and a good
diet, I'm pretty good to go. Yeah, that
is the most important thing. The other thing, too, is just
maintaining an awareness
of my capabilities.
So I have learned a lot in my
career and I've forgotten
just as much.
Like, probably everything I've learned in my career, I've forgotten
it. And then I've relearned sometimes, you
know, a good example would be a student will come to
me and be like, hey, Greg, I have this question about the hydraulic
system. How does that actuator work?
And I'll be like, I got to.
Go get the and it's I always looked at
it like a so today at the top of the
wheel is like, the hydraulic system and that actuator and oh,
jeez, I got to get back in the books and read up on that and
eventually tomorrow. I don't know what it's going to be, but
I'm going to be into whatever, like the rotor system
or the engines or what's the fuel control
system doing. That'll be tomorrow. And then the next day will be this one.
And eventually I'm going to come back around to that hydraulic system, because that's what being
a pilot is. It's just constantly being in the books
and reminding yourself and just being humble about
it and being okay with the fact that you do
forget things. And you do need to remind
yourself yeah, 100%. And get back into it.
Right.
So I think that for me,
the true skill came in identifying what's going to be
next on the wheel before I get there.
Yeah.
It's, uh, been a while since I've looked at the hydraulic system. Maybe I better you
get that feeling.
I was talking to someone about that recently as well. You get
that little spidey sense almost of like, oh,
for me, it was not quite a sense of anxiety, but, oh,
I'm really not as familiar as I should be with this
emergency procedure or whatever. And that's your sign to go
and review that. The best way to eliminate that worry is to go and
relearn it.
So if I told you you're going to go back to Iraq tomorrow, and I'm
going to give you an ATO tomorrow, what are you going to be studying tonight?
Oh, my gosh, it's been forever since you read, which is an air tasking.
Yeah, I'd have to go back and relearn how to read an
ATO.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So the important thing and I think this is where the upgrade process
comes in for aircraft commanders is to be
able to identify what is the priority to focus on at
this time. And that translates right through to students as well.
I mean, I heard a lot of your podcast, and I always loved
hearing the instructors talk about different techniques and
stuff for teaching students. And, uh, I think the last one I
was listening to, they were talking about phase three
fighter, where their student is taking something
that they've done, each of these. But it's like you could be thrown any one
of them on this mission. And that's when we get into
truly training thinking pilots. I think it's not
until phase three, but mostly
phase four, that it's truly like, all right,
what are you going to do?
And, uh, when you say phase four, like, on your operational aircraft?
Exactly. Yeah.
You're getting out into the real world. You're out of the box,
and there's a lot more variables out there.
Exactly. And so the solid, strong
aircraft commanders are the ones that can identify what's
coming and prepare for it and prioritize important
stuff.
Right. Yeah.
And that kind of rolls into my next question for you, which is, what do you
think makes a good pilot?
I love this question, and I hear all of your
guests talk about it, and I think
everybody's pretty much on the same
wavelength. And for me, I've heard it said
in different ways on the podcast, but, um, for me,
it's two things. It's stress management
and work ethic.
M. If you're a strong
worker, you.
Can overcome the stress management part. I give the example of
you're going to go into an overhead break, say.
In Moose Jaw, and you enter the.
Overhead break and you crank and you turn and you're like, oh, is it
62 or 63? And now
you're doubting yourself, but the
plane is still going 200 knots, or whatever it is.
And what he means there is 60 degrees bank and
2G or three G. Yeah.
So now you're stressed, and your decision making
is getting smaller because the aircraft is so much closer to your next
step on your final turn or gear down or
flaps or whatever it might be, but your head is
still back on the last decision.
Right. But with good, hard work,
you can chairfly that. For some people, they might chair fly it five
times. For other people, maybe they have to chair fly it 20
times, but you cannot get in that
airplane and doubt yourself on that stuff.
The other thing, I think that it's really important, not so much for students,
but I think for instructors, the most important thing that
you can give students is confidence.
Students need to know that they are
doing the work, the correct work, because as instructors, it's important for us
to guide students to focus their energy in the right place, because they
haven't learned the prioritization bit yet. Right. And
that's why it's easy in training. It's like, oh, LP One, this is what you're
doing, right? LP five, you're going to do circuits,
whatever. Um, so that works really well.
But as instructors, if we can focus them
on working on the right things and then just give them confidence,
sometimes it's good, bad, good. It might be, hey, you showed up in time today
for your brief. Now let's debrief your flight. And it's like, oh,
and by the way, your shoes are really shiny. That's really great.
You got to leave them with something. Because these students are working
hard, right. And sometimes they're not
getting the results that they're hoping for, which can be very
discouraging, but giving them the confidence that it's
okay to make mistakes and work on this
and bounce back. And I think the strongest lesson for any pilot
is that bouncing back from failure is the biggest
lesson that you're going to get.
Yeah, it's super hard, too.
It's really hard when it can be emotional.
If you fail or you make a big mistake, it can
cause a lot of emotions that you don't want to feel to come
up. Some people cry, some
people feel overwhelmed or angry
or whatever, and you got to learn to deal with that.
Yeah.
And it's a huge growth
opportunity, you know what I mean? Because that stuff happens to you in
combat, mhm.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, oh, we got shot here. Am I just going to roll over in
the trench? No, um, you don't have a choice. You have
to keep moving forward, keep doing the work,
keep fighting, keep flying that aircraft. Right?
Yeah.
And I think that if students and anybody
really just has the work ethic and
understands their stress levels and learns how to manage
them, however that works best for them, whether it be chair
flying or going to the gym or whatever, and then for instructors
to give confidence, that's just really, uh, helpful
for students.
Love that question, mhm. That's a great
answer.
So we're down to our last question. This is my favorite
question. If somebody's listening and they're
starting to think, hey, I really want to join,
I'd love to fly with the RCAF. Or maybe they've
just joined and they're listening to this and they're getting excited about their flight
training, what advice would you give to that new
pilot?
All right, so another great question. I love
definitely the best advice that I could
give for anybody. First of all, if you're thinking about joining, come down and
see me at the Halifax Recruiting Center and we'll, uh, definitely
get you on the path for enrollment. Certainly a
career in the forces is the best thing that's ever happened to me in
my like, it's been amazing. The people that I've met, the
friendships, the experiences, the stories, the
know, the job security, you know, everything
to pension, you know what I mean? There's just so many
benefits of a military career, period. I
mean, pilot for sure worked out really well for me.
I already discussed it wasn't my first choice. I would have been happy in the
infantry, but it's awesome. So once, um,
you get in that door, the best advice that I could give is just
work hard, don't quit.
You will get bumps. They will come. It will be
stressful, it can be emotional. But you just
need to either just step back, have a coffee,
and then get back in the books, or go for a run and find
out whatever works for you to manage that stress and just keep
working at it. Keep working at it. The dream is a dream. It is
a dream job. We're very lucky to be
able to call ourselves Air Force Pilots.
It's quite an honor and it's definitely worth all the
hard work.
100%.
But it is a lot of hard work. Some people get into it
and they're shocked about how much hard
work it is, but it always gets better,
especially as you get experienced. I mean, the workload becomes
less. Yeah, for sure. The first, like five
years are tough.
You're learning so much, so fast, and
it requires so much review to make it start sticking.
And at first it. Feels like it's never going to stick, but it does.
Eventually, you do enough reviews and you still
always are, uh, reviewing, but it's much more
familiar and it'll start to retain and like you
said, the workload decreases.
Yeah.
Then you have more fun. The other thing I will say is have fun.
Yeah. You know what mean?
Like and especially for instructors and supervisors out there,
too. I mean, it's really important to have an environment
for your students or your new pilots on Squadron
or whatever to actually have fun. It should
be know, it's easy because the workload
is very demanding on Air Force pilots because there's so few of
us and we're still trying to do the same missions that
Canada asks us to do. And we all do it, and we
all put a smile on our face, but it is really easy to
forget how cool the job is. Yeah, totally. For me,
it was always Family Day. Like, I go at Family Day and fly a
civilian, they are going to just be screaming in the back of the
helicopter and loving it. And you're like, oh, yeah,
my job is cool because the reality is, every day I go
to work, I work with pilots that do the exact same thing. So that the cool
factor wears off. But that's right. It's important, I think, to just step back
and realize that you have an opportunity to do amazing
things for your country and to support the ground
troops or whatever force your airframe is supporting.
They're very grateful to have that support because air
power brings a lot to the fight and we get to be the ones
to do that and wear the flight suits and that's.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, that does it for my questions. I want to thank you
so much for I didn't mention this, but we're actually at
Greg's house. My family and I are out,
uh, traveling the East Coast, so we decided to make
use of the opportunity and record this live together.
So thank you for having me here. Thanks for taking the time out
of your day to chat, and thank you for sharing
your experiences in Afghanistan. It's been really,
really a neat thing to learn about, so thank you.
Oh, thanks for having me.
Yeah.
Okay. That's going to wrap things up for our chat with Greg about
his adventures in Afghanistan. On May
17, 2020, snowbird Eleven suffered a
bird strike on takeoff resulting in an ejection.
One of the two crew members on board did not survive.
For our next episode, we'll be sitting down with the
surviving member, Rich McDougall, to talk about his experiences
being in the snowbirds as well as that day. Do you
have any questions or comments about anything you've heard in this episode
or would you or someone you know make a great guest? You can reach out
to us at, uh,
thepilotprojectpodcast@gmail.com, or
on all social media at at podpilot project.
It's been another great month for us, and we'd just like to thank you so much
for that and to ask you for your help with the big three that's like
and follow us on social media. Share with your friends
and follow and rate us five stars wherever you get your podcasts.
Uh, that's all for now. Thanks for listening. Keep
the blue side up. See you.
Engineer shut down all four. Shutting down all
four engines.