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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.