Tim Heale | Glass Half-Full Approach to Life
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Tim’s grief was compounded by the loss of his best friend and then-wife within a year of each other. It’s enough to send anyone into a tailspin as it did for Tim.
He found himself at the lowest point in his life. Grief-stricken, he found solace in a bottle until a friend asked him if he thought he had been drinking too much. From then on, he considered his path and decided to change his approach to life.
Love found him where he least expected it; in the arms of the widow of his deceased best friend. He and his now wife found themselves in the same grief boat and decided to give love a chance – to give their capacity to love a chance.
In this episode, Tim shares how grief from past experiences of losing the people closest to him shaped his outlook on life. Additionally, he shares how his experiences serving in the British military gave him a unique perspective on life.
Love helped to turn Tim’s life around. More importantly, however, his renewed hope and outlook opened his heart to life again.
“Life’s too short to muck about. You need to do as much as you can with what life you’ve got.”
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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Victoria Volk 0:00
Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. Today, my guest is Tim Hill. Having spent most of his adult life in the British Army as an infantry soldier, he has seen a lot of action in some very dangerous places from Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Macedonia, Afghanistan and Iraq to name a few, and has lost some good mates along the way, which is always hard to deal with. But as we know, grief is cumulative. And as cumulatively negative. And thank you so much for being here and being open to sharing your loss stories. And so because we tend to accumulate these suitcases of grief, you know, one after the other, and they kind of stack up. Let’s start with your first experience that was really difficult for you.
Tim Heale 0:50
This thing, the very, very, very first loss that I experienced was her dog lady, when I was growing up was, was by 11, when she and she was around from before I was born. So no, no for a long time. And it was, it was a bit of a messy time. My mother split up our Father, and we had to move away. And he wasn’t able, we weren’t able to take the dog with us. And they had put down so when we moved back, we didn’t have adult. So that was our first real bit of grief that really properly experienced.
Victoria Volk 1:34
Which is really common for a lot of people. Yeah, in childhood.
Tim Heale 1:39
Lose a pet. It’s, it’s devastating, especially if you, your dad pet for a long time. So for me, that was that was a first time I’d experienced proper grief. The next time was 1980. I’ve been spending the last two and a half years in Berlin on a posting, which was one of the best postings you can imagine. there then. Then we moved to Northern Ireland in January of 1980. And I was on the advice party, or a very important job, very important role at the time. And just about then my grandmother died. And fortunately, I couldn’t get away to come back for a funeral. My grandmother’s spent, I spent a lot a lot of time with my grandmother growing up. Especially in my teen years, I used to meet Remy grands. And she used to feed me quite well. And yeah, so I spent a lot of time with her. When I was working as a lead. I used to call round now at lunchtime from from the place I was working at. And she she could be large. And we’ll sit in chat and watch Emma dial 500. So before going back to work, so so her loss was did hit me quite hard at a time.
Victoria Volk 3:14
I’m just curious, what would you say is one of the greatest lessons that you’ve taken away from the time that you knew you knew your grandmother.
Tim Heale 3:22
I mean, she taught me so much really, over the years. I mean, we used to chat away about all sorts of stuff and because my granddad died before I was born, I used to chat about him. And now looking back, and having done a bit of research and putting a few bits and pieces together. Why understand what he did, but his life he was in a Royal Navy. In the in the first world war he was injured down in the Dardanelles off of Turkey. It was a was in the Navy. He was a writer, sonnets, a scribe in the Royal Navy, and he was injured and he had a bone replaced in his forearm with a titanium one, which I guess back in those times was was something of a novelty to replace a bone in an army in our arm to replace any bone I guess. So that was one of the things that we used to chat about grandfather and the rest of the family. Yeah, I think just the the ability to sit and listen on a nap that was wanting to hear from my grandmother because she did like the talk. And I’d ask you a question and and then I’ll get the full explanation and and I just love set setting and a few times I was I was like back to work because I did like the solid say, Well, man, we’ve got a clear off we’ll get back to work that but yeah, a real real fond memories of Madame.
Victoria Volk 5:03
That’s wonderful. I think in you know, she didn’t know it, but she was teaching your patients to, right?
Tim Heale 5:08
Absolutely. And, and I guess it’s paid off over the years where I’ve, I’ve had jobs where you’ve had to sit and wait. And there’s nothing worse than then than sort of sitting waiting for somebody watching for something to happen. And somebody sort of fidget in a way in determining, you know, the type of person that calls itself for a second. Now, I’m currently married to one of those. You just go on sale for five minutes? And if she does, was it then crap phone, or I didn’t want to watch in the first place. I want to watch this. So two minutes later, you’re gone. For a count. And if I chose you over, I was watching it like you would? Yeah, it certainly patients, I think that was one of the things I took from and then to be able to sit and do nothing. And just watch. And listen, I think that’s that was one of the keys.
Victoria Volk 6:15
And be present, right? Be present with the person or when this deep listening and presence.
Tim Heale 6:22
So I think those boding well for what I do nowadays, with my particular podcast, where I try to get other people’s stories, and I’ll give them the opportunity to tell it and occasionally just give a little prod to, to bring out a little bit more information or, or bring them back when I’ve gone too far ahead.
Victoria Volk 6:44
So that was your first initial hard boss, but that’s not your last, of course.
Tim Heale 6:51
Not, I mean, no got a list as long as you’re on rock and rock and roll off. I mean, there was there was one year just recently, I attended 20 funerals, in the cyber six months of law lost mates that I’d served with years ago. And on regimental net, we may publish when somebody has died in the regiment, whether they are a veteran or serving, and then they give details at a funeral and, and lots of guys turn out to pay respects and law in the street for for their coffee when it comes in and attend the funerals. So yeah, 20 funerals inside six months was was a tough, tough nut to crack. And particularly some of the guys I was close with. They’ll work closely with and they were, I mean, we’re in the same sections, and the same pattern, in some pretty rough. rough times, is where I was scenes, we all know, one day you were going to die. We all know that one day, somebody’s going to grieve for us. And we all know that we have to accept loss, and move on. And I think that’s the hardest part is accepting that somebody’s gone, you’re never gonna see him again. And you want to be accepted that you agree for them. And then you have to move on with your own life that you can’t live in the past. And I think that makes it maybe easier to deal with knowing the fact that they’ve gone and they’re not coming back. And you’ve had the best of times with them. Does that make a lot of sense?
Victoria Volk 8:45
Yeah. And you know, one of the expressions that, you know, we say in the Grief Recovery Institute, which I’m certified through is a grief recovery specialist is that, you know, people say you have to move on, but they don’t tell you how. And so what has the how looked like for you?
Tim Heale 9:07
Or do you try and bury in a bowl, and that doesn’t work. I mean, it’s just you feel, particularly when I lost my best mate. And a year later, I lost my wife and losing the two lows within a year of each other. I’ll get it into something of a bit of a depression. And yeah, I started to drink thinking that I’ve got nothing else so it didn’t take long to sort of start knocking back half a bottle of rum. Sometimes three quarters of all of ram a night for me was a fairly short time it was it was a couple of months but young and I was thinking an awful lot of RAM and somebody said you that pointed out the fact that you think you should be drinking quite so much. And the problem is, I inherited my father’s ability to drink, he could drink an awful lot, and get out and function perfectly well the following day. And I’ve, I’ve got that ability on me I can, I can go Happy St. Arthur Butler RAM, and before and the next morning and go out and just function a normal. So to become a functioning alcoholic, would have been really, really easy for me. But I lost another friend, and went to the funeral. And I looked around some of the other guys that were there and thinking, when they did all of it, all of this is going to be gone. I need to move on with my life. So did I don’t pull the pin out, I just said, That’s it. I’m not drinking avenues off on a social function. So I stopped drinking. I was feeling pretty low, pretty lonely at the time. And I’ll go into Internet dating.com I mean, kids are grown up and moved away, which sold the house, I was living in barracks. So I had an awful lot of time on my hands in the evening, which is one of the reasons I was doing an awful lot of drinking. I was going in the bar in the evening and starting there and then going back to the room and, and polishing off what was left at the bar from the day before. But I decided something somebody says to me, you need to get yourself sorted out and and get back on the circuit. It’s nicer density, you’re going to have internet buying.com. So I did. So I started that game, I went out met a couple of dozen really nice ladies went out for a meal and a chat. And there was one lady that we got together with for a bit. We were together for I guess about a year and a bit. The problem is you can’t if you put two areas together, which is a fire sign that the flames are down a bit. So it was never going to be but it was fun while it lasted. And then because my best might. His wife was best mates with my wife. We were godparents to both for the kids. She was by herself lonely. I was down saying the kids and we decided what aren’t we may come up make a go of it. So when it was, what, 13 years ago now? 13 years ago? Yeah, there abouts. And here we are been happily married. Together we can we can sit and talk about Dave and Sandra, quite happily, because we’ve got so much history by and when we’ve known each other for the best part of this is about 35 years now. So yeah. So from that point of view, I mean, when it’s or birthdays come up, we can remember that we could of course talk about them. And we’ve got that shared experience. And that’s how we cope with both the loss of two soulmates. Is that Is that Is that gonna help somebody?
Victoria Volk 13:42
That’s a beautiful story. It’s our lives are never, they never unfold as we expect them to. And sometimes they unfold even better than what we could have ever imagined.
Tim Heale 13:56
The one thing to take away for me is that it doesn’t matter what you do in life, you have to live it and live every day, as though it’s going to be your last one day will be and there’ll be people grieving for you. But let them know that it’s okay to grieve. It’s okay to shed a tear but get on with your life it’s over my life have been over get on with your own life and and I think that’s what Dave and Santa would say is you hats off to get on with it. Enjoy your life while you’ve got it, because once your elf stars and you start falling the bits, then life gets a bit tougher. Especially if you see so Many people that go through a long, long illness, and their lives are curtailed, they can’t get on, they can’t do anything, there just isn’t, it’s not like seeing a dog in pain that you can you can put down. You can’t do that on a human at the moment, by they frown on it, particularly if you saw using a pillar to open along the way. But it’s except in fact that one day, you’re not, they’re not going to be there. And, and when you’re not there, you will either have to go.
Victoria Volk 15:39
I think there’s a an important aspect of what you shared that I want to highlight and that someone had the courage to say to you, hey, what’s going on? You know, I think you need to clean up your life and maybe look at you’re drinking too much, you know, just having the courage to ask that question. I’m curious what that relationship was, was it a close friend was an acquaintance. I don’t have to say who? Okay, we’re calling.
Tim Heale 16:12
Look a like, dummy did the arm is a fairly close knit community anyway. And we were on pre deployment training. And yeah, it’s insane. It’s in a bar a few times and above, I must have said something. And they’re not gonna not gonna refuse to give me a drink because this money got across the bar. But they said, Yeah, you need to cut down your drinking a bit. And, and maybe my BS, right. Especially if you’re going out on arranges getting ready to deploy out into somewhere hostile that way, you could lose your life anyway, here, just a little bit of a wake up call. And I think, I think that’s what might do for you. Particularly in the army, you look after each other, you look after each other, you cover each other’s back, particularly, you have to trust these guys that you’re working with. And to be out on patrol. You got to know that the talent Charlie’s doing the right thing. And you’ve got to know about the guys in front there on the sweep below mine detectors that they’re doing their job properly. It is that trust that somebody says something, and they do it for your own good. So I think that was a little bit of a wake up call for me at that time. And occasionally, I’ll slip back to having the Spiced Rum hotter or an evening. But I mean, locked down was particularly tough, because I’m retired, couldn’t get out anyway. And initially, it was it was pretty tough, because we’ve been fairly active we couldn’t get access to, to the boat, we couldn’t go sailing, we couldn’t do anything. And apart from knit to the shop and got the bowser spice runner these the way through so but it didn’t take long to realize that Thomas stopped drinking so much. He does run in my family, unfortunately. Alcoholism. So it isn’t all that much of a coping mechanism.
Victoria Volk 18:43
No, it’s not. It’s a it is definitely a band aid. It’s always Sue theirselves and no amount and not not feel. Yeah. So your service was that something that you always knew you wanted to do growing up?
Tim Heale 19:03
Well, kind of up until the age of about 10 and a half. I was gonna be a farmer
Tim Heale 19:13
With my grandmother, grandfather worked on a farm on my mom’s side. And we used to spend a lot of time most of the summer holidays Down on the Farm helping out with the pigs and stuff like that. And I thought this what I want to do want to be a farmer. And then at the age of about 1010 and a half, I took the the 11 plus, which is if you pass out you got the opportunity to go to a grammar school and get a really a really decent education. So I took the LM plus and found that quite miserably and, and then I was we were looking at I was gonna go to a boarding school That was an agricultural boarding school. So you do your normal sort of studies, but you also do farming studies, animal husbandry, that sort of thing. So we went over to this place called Haddon Hall, in half a chair. And I took an entrance test for that. And found that quite spectacularly. Got no jobs are coming in to college. That’s a boarding school. So that was it. My life, my life as if I was gonna be over.
Victoria Volk 20:39
Was there grief in that?
Tim Heale 20:41
Well, there was a bit of shock. Although, I mean, it shouldn’t have been too much of a shock because I was pretty rubbish at school. Anyway, I got put off fairly early age, I was about six, when I got put off school, there was a bully in school and this was like the infant school and, and he started picking on me one day, when he got fed up with picking on other people. And I spoke to the old man or CD, or God is bullied at startup pick on my watch the derby derby. He says, Well, son, first thing you do is give him a thump. And make it a good cause if he is going to give you an idea. So anyway, the next thing anybody saw was me, giving him a good thump him flying backwards straight into school pond, me and dragged off to the headmaster’s office, the sixth and the best. I felt quite a bit of an injustice. And that kind of put me off school. It was also burnouts. Some a lot years later, don’t suffer from dyslexia. So that didn’t help either. I spent more my secondary school years, I guess you call it high school, going in getting registered and earning clear enough. And it wasn’t until go into join the army. So the age of 11, I thought, well, I’ll go and join the army instead of being a farmer. When I take the test to join the army and failed out fairly, fairly miserably as well. And an recruiting sergeant, he says to me, Son, if you can’t read and write proper, you can’t come in. And he only saw that weekend, over and over. I took a long, hard look at myself and figuring what you’re doing your map it, get your finger out, get some sort of education, and then go back and try and get back into the art or try and get into the army. Because if you don’t, you’ll end up in prison or at some of these other Tigrex. So that was it. I went into school that following Monday, turn over complete new leaf. Instead of getting registered and bunking off, I went through every single lesson that week after the teachers, so I was a new student come in.
Victoria Volk 23:11
You’ll find yourself.
Tim Heale 23:13
Yeah, I’ve also got my finger and got stuck in Stein read reading books and soaking up as much as I could. And then it was about six months. Seven months later, I went back to the recruiting office with a mate who kindly helped out with somebody else’s. And I managed to get a place to join the army at 16. And I look back since I’ve done I’ve done a pretty good career. All in all. Do I have studied a bit over the years of minister? Yeah, I can read books nowadays. I’ve read all the Harry Potter’s for free of all times, I used to collect war stories, escape stories from the Second World War and then die for my best might. We used to go out and order the bookshops looking for these books if we get first editions and stuff like that, and then we’d read them and swap them about and yeah, so I’ve made up for it since but it was a tough outbreak upbringing, I must admit and it was a rough area as well. When I when I where I grew up. But here I am. 60 odd years later, looking gorgeous and then dealing with life as it comes along. And gives us a ride ride club rally.
Victoria Volk 24:45
Do you think that experience of you know overcoming that, you know those setbacks of I wanted to be a farmer and then you realize that wasn’t going to happen? You wanted to join the military and then that wasn’t going to happen and then you realize like, I have to do Turn this around and even despite your dyslexia, yeah. Also you had this determination to make something of yourself. Was that kind of emulated or encouraged in your upbringing by your parents? Or was it this something? Was it just something that was within you? Do you think?
Tim Heale 25:23
Or think I’ve always had a glasses off full. Always offered, I did. I’ve never, never let things get me down for too long. I’ve always bounced back from from, in the jaws of defeat and, and some of our some real, proper knockbacks. I mean, in my life, I had some real disappointments and losses as well. But I’ve always learned to sort of sit back, analyze it slightly and just get on with life. It’s life’s too short to muck about with, you need to do as much as you can with the life you’ve got. And at the moment, if I was to die tomorrow, I could be at the pearly gates have been himself. Well, I’ve had a fair Oh life, and pretty much one of my own choosing. So if I can die that happy that I’ve lived a life, full life, and I’m one of my own choosing, then why are you doing so bad? Oh, my God. Having said that, I’ve got a ticket until 102. I’m gonna die a Chelsea pensioner once I get my second telegram off the King, I say. But we’re close.
Victoria Volk 26:46
So what do you think has been the greatest lesson that your military service has taught you? And do you think that the grief experiences and those have kind of prepared you for this stage of your life?
Tim Heale 27:01
Well, one thing I learned is to stay low, move fast, and watch where you put your feet? Because if you don’t, he’ll probably end up without any feet. And I’ve seen that an awful lot. Yeah, I think my life has just been one long lesson of just dealing with stuff. I mean, the Army is a great, great place to learn to deal with stuff. The training that you go through, is all designed fear to, to just get on and deal with it. That’s what I mean, whenever there’s a crisis in this country in the UK, whenever there’s a crisis, I mean, the there was a foot and mouth there was the firemen strike, there was the rollout of a vaccine, that the first thing they do is call in the military. There’s a reason that they call in the military, because the military instill in you in training to get the job done. And that’s, I think that’s one of the things that that has helped me certainly is, is if somebody needs don’t just get on and get it done, doesn’t matter what he takes. And I think they, they don’t get it instilled in in civvy street. They, for some reason, is not taught is not taught to get the job done. It’s like on the stage, the show must go on. That does not happen in a lot of places. So first, there is a crisis. The first thing they call is a military. But what I’ve done with the military at the moment is stripping it of its key asset, which is the soldiers coming back going back since when I joined the British Army in 1974. It sat around about 160 170,000. Today, as we sit here, it’s about 66,000. We’ve lost somewhere over 100,000 troops over the last 4050 years. And they continue to be cutting back. They’re investing. Yeah, they say they’re invested in a lot of money. I mean, we got two brand new aircraft carriers. Of course, a few bob, we got some new submarines that’s coming on. We’ve got the FA five that we’re buying from the Americans cost an absolute fortune, but we haven’t really got his boots on the ground.
Victoria Volk 29:49
Do you think that’s in part two less people serving?
Tim Heale 29:54
But I don’t think it’s less people serving I think, because we’re not fighting a war. At the moment, and it’s Oregon, for example, when we’re in in the midst of award brought through the 20 years where was in Afghanistan, we didn’t have much of a recruiting problem. It’s a boy’s own adventure. I mean, guys sign up for four years. But the do their training, they go to Afghanistan or do a six month 12 month tour, come back, job done, and move on in back in civvy street. Where we haven’t where we not got warfighter. But we are probably as a military in a moment, though far more than what we were when we were in Afghanistan, we’re far less if we get into another conflict, similar to to Afghan we couldn’t sustain. We just couldn’t sustain it at the moment, we have, we could get the first first brigade out on the ground. But we would really struggle again a second brigade to go and do a rip a relief in place for him.
Victoria Volk 31:06
It’s not a recruiting problem?
Tim Heale 31:09
Is a recruiting burden. And it’s been going on for quite a while now. But it’s also a funding problem. I think where they’re, they’re spending huge amounts of money on capital investment in lighter carriers, aircraft. They’re part of hold our tanks that just bought them all up, left them in Germany. They’ve only got I think, one squadron the tanks, the US for training purposes. It’s it’s, it’s just a continual cutback. And my regiment, our first battalion a moment and serpins served in Cyprus, when they come back from Cyprus, they’re going to cut it from a 450 battalion down to 250 battalion. So and it’s going to be a battalion that will go out on and deliver small training teams around the world for different places. The Second Battalion will pick up the ones that they’re not going to use in the first battalion and now become a Ranger Regiment. So, what they’re doing with the regiment, ethos, instilling people, regimental pride, they’re slowly slowly chipping away at the the MES software system. And when it’s asked message is what holds the regiment, the army together CD rights, senior ranks over decades now, they’ve been chipping away at mess life, where we used to have mess stewards, that was soldiers, they’ve got rid of them, mess manages the soldiers, they got rid of them. And they they subbed it out to subcontractors to civilian sub contracts. And it’s destroying the mess life is made it you can’t have a function like we used to, you can’t have a dinner night because it’s it’s now become too expensive, because they’ve got civilians have got try and make a profit. So the regimental system is being chipped away. And before long, we won’t ever regiment the system you won’t have the pride in in regiments that we’ve, we’ve had for decades, for centuries. Now when the See what I did to toward the Scottish regiments, they there was six or seven Scottish regiments that they amalgamated into one regiment. And at the time, I mean, there was a lot of a lot of pushback, a lot of fighting over it. But I’ve done that to two English regiments now, and they had done for a long time so.
Victoria Volk 34:01
I had never given much thought to the military be coming. You know this where they start to subcontract, right, where they start to farm out certain things for the military. But I mean, I see it all the time in the corporate world, right? You didn’t hire third party contractors for things in it or, you know, infrastructure, things like that. But, boy, if that were to happen with the military, that’s a slippery slope.
Tim Heale 34:32
And I think they’re saving money by doing it.
Victoria Volk 34:36
Yeah, well because, right, because you have to invest every soldier is an investment, you know? Yeah. A long term investment for some, for many. I know here in the States, the statistic has been, I think it still is that less than 1% of Americans serve in the military. Less than 1% You know, it’s crazy. It is crazy to me that it is I mean, by far some of the greatest lessons that someone can ever distill and, you know, experience and really carry with them throughout their entire life.
Tim Heale 35:16
Yeah. Well, what, so when I joined the Army, but I joined a battalion in Germany in 1975, the battalion was around about 1000 strong. And it was made up of we had saved the infantry companies, we, that we were a mechanized battalion, so we had armored personnel carriers, so it needed a few more blokes in in the platoons to be able to do it. And I guess each company was about 100 and 150. Strong. Then you had all the debts and debts that may made up the assault pioneers of domestic pioneers, where their own own chefs also started battalion was about 1000 strong. When, when we came back from Germany in 1976, the battalion changed to a 650 battalion, which was a light roll battalion. So lots of guys were, were getting out anyway at that time and natural wastage. And some of them were posted to, to one or the other battalions. When we came back, we dropped down to a 650 battalion, and then order the like the chef’s and then we got chefs from the army catering call it started then that’s where Condor, the rot sets in. And successive governments over the last 100 years, I guess, have been cutting back getting back cutting back during the Cold War, in the Cold War years were great for for a standing army set in Germany. I mean, the Americans were there as well. And they were good times. And there was no real real threat from Russia to come across the because there was no need to do it. Not like now. Now, because we’ve been deployed the so Batchi. He’s, he’s gone into the Ukraine. And if he would have got away with that, he would have then pushed on into, into into the Balkans and the Baltic states.
Victoria Volk 37:38
What do you think is his greater greater strategy? Because I’m thinking it’s like, you want the power? Right? It’s he’s power hungry. And but you know, you, let’s say you he obtains Ukraine. He’s just destroyed the very country he’s trying to obtain. So financially, it might be a drop in the bucket for him. I have no idea. But what do you think is his greater strategy here? I mean, I know it’s to just infiltrate further and you know.
Tim Heale 38:14
How many goes back to the old USSR days? And I think that’s what he’s kind of misses.
Victoria Volk 38:21
Stuck in the past, right? Maybe he needs to listen to this podcast.
Tim Heale 38:26
Absolutely. Yeah. If you if you’re listening to this, Mr. Putin, you kind of got your strategy wrong. Listen. I would just stick with what you go. Yeah, that we we’ve watched you go.
Victoria Volk 38:41
Yeah. Never
Tim Heale 38:42
To be friends than enemies.
Victoria Volk 38:44
Yeah, he hasn’t gotten that memo yet. Unfortunately. So I’m curious too, because of all your service and experiences and, and hotbed places. Did you ever experience PTSD symptoms or have you know, troubles with flashbacks, things like that?
Tim Heale 39:08
I can the early days in the knowledge 77 was in Belfast was in a place called the belly Murphy. And every single day, we had some sort of major type of incident going on. We had shootings, we had rocket attacks, we had bombs. We had riots and adjourn at all at the end of that so I came home and we got some leave and I was stopping my parents house. And I was walking up the town we’d be mum. And she was chatting away and ran away. And a cold backfired, immediately took a hedge Jawwad gone on, only took a few seconds to work out what was going on. Up But you silly sod. So I’ll go back up and got back along so she hadn’t even noticed I’d gone earlier. But that was just a tiny kicking in, in lady is particularly Afghanistan or done three tours of Afghanistan I was there in 2000. So after 911, I had a wonderful time. I had a brilliant, brilliant time in Kabul. I got there in late January, and I left there on the 20th of June in 2002. For me, it was a fairly benign area. At that time, I was able to go out around the streets around I was at the the main headquarters for ISEF. I was working to the general everything we did was directed at the locals. I was in psychological operations. So we were we had a few campaigns that go in with reporting crime and bits and pieces like that. But one of our main focuses was, we put together a tri service, toy language, newspaper, with good good news stories mainly for and we distributed out throughout the city. I was able to go out with just myself and an interpreter and walking around the streets and the bazaars, talking to people getting stories and stuff. If I had to go outside of the city, we went up to Bagram a couple of times with my boss. We had to have an escort to go that road, because the road from Kabul to Bagram. There was lots of legacy mines looking around. And you could see him wash down at the site in a row. There was a big tank battle up there. You can see where the tanks had been. This was in the Russian area. So more timing in Kabul into zone two was awesome. Then, the next thing I found myself in Iraq and Iraq, in southern Iraq, my job was pretty tough on me, I was just on a hide into nowhere with it. Or had to come up with a campaign directed at the population of southern Iraq, particularly, this is where we’re operating to enhance the perception of the Iraqi police service in the eyes of the locals. The Iraqi pursuit police service for decades have been mistrusted. They were corrupt, and it was just a hide into nowhere. But I got to travel around an awful lot around Southern Iraq went up to Nigeria, where are you Italians were a sound were up. But the Dutch and the Japanese were now to LMR where we add troops and into badger city. And he used to go down to QA once a fortnight and printers to get some stuff printed up the way we’re distributing. Well, I didn’t, I saw a couple of incidents, but nothing that bad. Going back slightly, a few years. Prior to that in 1999. In 2000, I was in Kosovo. And I spent the best part of a year in Kosovo. And because so many decided that psychological operations and media operations should operate at the same office. We thought it was a particularly good idea at the time. But I didn’t have an awful lot sign it. Their driver that drove what we call an FFR. Land Rover FFR, which is fitted for radio had to leave and I was the only person that was qualified to drive this this vehicle with a secure fit in the back. So as a crypto radio set in the back, we had a satellite phone on board and mobile phones and the media ops jobs was to go out to incidents to be the focal point for the media. So they didn’t bother the commander on the ground. So we will be the link between the media and the guy on the ground. On top of that, I was doing my psyops work. And one of our main projects was a newspaper for the Serbs just outside of Christina in a bicycle Gretz in nature, so we were putting together a newspaper for him never As my other main focus, but occasionally I’ll get crashed out to go to incidents. And a few of the incidents that went out to were the the mass graves, we’ve only got a few mass graves that were turned over turned out at the time, particularly in the early days. And seeing some of that sticks in your mind a bit. And then went back to Afghanistan in 2000 2006 2007. And the future ones all went out on the ground. Regarding some trouble one particular day we’re going to travel we got dropped off my helicopter to patrolling the village. And then in chapter one, we will speak to locals and then we arrived upon by the Taliban. That time it was a shooting type wall. And I know quite a bit of a stand up shooting match with us. And we spent nine hours trying to break off his contact, our radios have gone down. And we were trying to extract back towards somewhere where we could get picked up by helicopter. So we were dropping Taliban like folding plates. Fortunately, we didn’t lose anybody. We we almost got down to So one round left per man, and expanded on a drunk call of water that we’re carrying. And then I started off on going out on patrol with 42 kilos on the back. Now got back in with about 20. So we’d used up an awful lot of ammunition, awful lot of water. And that’s pretty much all we carried on in body armor and helmet and weapon system. That was a tough day. And everyone went back into Thursday nine I only went out on the ground four times. Twice, we got hit by IDs and a few guys lost their lives. And the few guys survived but bits missing so it does play on your mind a bit I tend to view that is part of the job you are gonna see this stuff is if you let it affect you Yes, occasionally you get off we live somebody incidents but you just say well as part of job and not let it affect your life doesn’t matter how tough somebody is. Some people it will affect and it’s difficult not to let it affect you. Personally, I take that view that it’s it’s something that that is part of the job it’s it’s part of what I like to say when you see enough more films and stuff like that, and I think one of the one of the most graphic films to watch is the the opening sequences of Saving Private Ryan and and that was done fairly well in seeing what’s happening. Rounds coming in and hitting around that type of experience is what we had on that particular day. And how we didn’t get anybody called I don’t know or hit. They must have been pretty rubbish shots. Use an AK 40 sevens foreign it like that over you aid. You’d be like anywhere a barn doors or two feet where we’re trying to take aim shots.
Tim Heale 49:03
It did have a habit as slowing them down a bit. And my last job in the army I was a unit welfare officer for London central garrison. And I’ve seen a lot of guys coming through with issues. I mean, we had the three companies or Foot Guards coming neezy fairly much young lads come in straight from training. And we had one lead done filming this day. You couldn’t make this up. This young man who was only and only about 17 grown up playing Call of Duty apparently so by Call of Duty most was young a young knife. You go around Boston place up but he’s all over the place. No problem at all. Coming through training. They they Use, I think Athena will use an old pig carcasses or something like that, but a bidet practice with sticky and twisted put out as far as we could work out from our basic knowledge, that was possibly the catalyst that sent him into PST, PTSD is poor lad never seen anything in his life other than was Call of Duty. You start these binary peacocks. And is is it reality. And it sent him over. Unfortunately, knowing that should have been picked up in training, it didn’t, it hadn’t been picked up in training, they could have got rid of him a bit sooner. But it was left to us to pick up the pieces. But yeah, I would say quite a few guys at that time, coming back from Afghanistan, because I was not just a welfare officer, but was also visiting officer. So the British military kinda look after their wounded, injured soldiers. The notification officer, he’ll go and see the families tell him what’s happened today, their loved one. And then you get a visiting officer that then come along after and then look after the family liaise with the hospitals and stuff like that for a family and, and make sure that they get everything they need, during that distressing time of either having a loved one killed or seriously injured. And that’s a pretty tough job. And I did it three times. And it puts you to the test. Especially seen going out to the hospital. That time I was in Selly Oak, and seeing guys with with missing limbs and, and seriously injured guys that does bring home some of the horrors could have been me. And that’s one of the things that corner corner does play on occasionally. But not too often. Normally could have been made symbols that may have been so many situations where it could have been made. But it wasn’t. And I think that’s where my half a blast comes in. It’s somebody smiling down on me, looking at me.
Victoria Volk 52:30
Thank you for your service, first of all, and all that you shared. And I think one of the things that knowing what I know now about grief and military service, for my own personal experience, too, is that I don’t know why the military doesn’t have a more, and maybe they do now I shouldn’t say that they don’t. But my thinking is, you know, there’s something called the ACE study, which was done years, many years ago in the states here, but its adverse childhood experiences. And the more ACEs that you have, let’s say, you know, you had a parent that died or, and then you were sexually abused. And then like, that’s my experience, and then on and on and on or you had a parent that was incarcerated, and then your other parent was had a drug addiction or substance abuse disorder, you know, so all these different scenarios that are possible that create this fight or flight experience for a child that’s sustained for a long period of time. And then and then you train them to kill, essentially, in the military training, right? And then you put them into an environment that’s, again, that fight or flight, you know, so it’s not surprising to me that the suicide rate is really high in the military returning soldiers from deployment and things like that, because I don’t think that that those childhood experiences are even really screened. In someone who’s looking to be in the military.
Tim Heale 54:15
I certainly not done in the British Army because as a welfare officer, I’ve seen dozens and dozens of cases that guys have come through training and got problems. And they don’t deal with it in training where the thing is in though they’ve been training for about 18 weeks. They identify it fairly early on on site. So right so right that they’ll do everybody in a battalion. Problem is during training, they can get rid of people very easily because they haven’t done a form they own taped all the right boxes so they can they can pass them out. Put them back into series straight before before they go too far. Once you get to the bottom When I say that, it’s it’s so much more difficult to get rid of somebody.
Victoria Volk 55:06
And then their potential liability, because if they’re unstable emotionally, Yes, yep.
Tim Heale 55:12
And the reason the reason that they don’t do it in training is because it’s numbers, that plan that numbers game, they got to get people through the door, or out the door. Once they got me in, they got to get them out. And if I kicking them out, that’s affecting their, their stats. And that’s why they try and pass these guys through an AI is just not helping the situation at all further down the line, it just causes more and more problems. And particularly when you’re in a hostile area, you don’t need people with problems. Because it just compounds the issue. It just compounds everything that makes things so much worse than they could be. But there you go.
Victoria Volk 56:08
No, I completely agree with you. So what gives you the most hope for the future?
Tim Heale 56:19
Live in 202
Tim Heale 56:20
It’s a good goal.
Tim Heale 56:24
we’re gonna get down to it and so there’ll be a Chelsea pensioner when she when she’s gone. And Olga, I’m going to offer Chelsea give me red coat on, go out and order on the jollies. And once every second telegram off King, because there’ll be a king by then I’m sure because you get a telegram when you get 200. So once about the second one, is it time to depart?
Victoria Volk 56:55
What is something that’s on your bucket list that you would like to do experience or accomplish?
Tim Heale 57:02
Good grief. The problem is my bucket list is quite a long one.
Victoria Volk 57:10
Give me your number one, what’s your number one
Tim Heale 57:12
be number one right at the moment. Number one bucket list now.
Victoria Volk 57:19
It could be tied with something else.
Tim Heale 57:21
Well, I’m hoping not to get my hip done. So I say to specialists who have awakened we had a look at the x rays and all the rest and we we decided to delay it for for another years. And then compare it say what it’s like been where I’ve been getting a massage every week. On now Stein is eased off an awful lot among some pills for it and stuff like that. And I started doing a bit of training on a on a recline cycle machine. I’m able to go skiing again. There you go. I want to go probably Telemark skis on and go go and do some skiing lessons. So that’s one of my goals at the moment. I’d also like to come up on a lorry and help.
Victoria Volk 58:16
Being able to use your legs in a way that you want, right because you know our hips. That’s kind of a big deal, right? That’s a good goal to have not gonna let my hip get me down, right?
Tim Heale 58:27
Absolutely. No. The problem is and we what goes on up here. And I’m what this says I can do.
Victoria Volk 58:36
And you’re pointing to your head for people who don’t can’t see.
Tim Heale 58:41
What my brain is telling me I’m still not 25 And oh well was done at 25 My body said we slow down your dark mica you can’t.
Victoria Volk 58:54
There’s grief and not to raise.
Tim Heale 58:56
Oh, yeah it’s not that depression. No, me. You just accept the fact that yeah, you might be saying you’re 25 your body’s saying Look, you’re 64 Leave it alone.
Victoria Volk 59:10
But for a lot of people who are aging can be a really difficult thing for a lot of poeple.
Tim Heale 59:16
Slowly. I mean, I know people that don’t want to go old mothers for one. I mean, she’s, she’s she’s had a problems recently, but she says odd I want to get too old. I’ll come around with a pillar, shall I?
Victoria Volk 59:37
Nope, that would be illegal.
Tim Heale 59:39
Yeah, know, but a problem is she’s still spending more inheritance while looking at it.
Victoria Volk 59:48
Oh, jeez. So what is what is one thing that you would like, like to share that maybe you didn’t get a chance to?
Tim Heale 59:57
Just tell him I loved him every day. Yeah, got it pretty much. But just to know that I really, really loved. And I don’t think. And that’s all I want to do is just give me as much love as I can do that with the current Mrs. Hill lover every night.
Tim Heale 1:00:28
We have a date on the first day, because I’m busy off. I don’t know why I was, I don’t know how I had time to go out to work. And I’ve been retired now for years. And I’m busier now than there was when I was at work. And we waited a bit more when I was at work. But nowadays I’m so busy doing stuff when you retire. Yeah, it gets busy. So we, so we, we take Thursday off, and we go out somewhere and do something special on the first day. And then Thursday evening, I do my Thursday, Thursday live stream. And there’s quite a bit of fun.
Victoria Volk 1:01:11
So where can people find you and your podcast and all the things if they want to reach out to you?
Tim Heale 1:01:18
Well, if they want to, if they want to jump on to any of the podcast platforms, on Buzzsprout, which pushes out to Spotify, Google, Apple, all the rest of them stitch out these and all that. If I just type in the Tim Heale podcasts, or ordinary people’s extraordinary stories, they’ll find us there. And if you do go on there, give us a like and pop a comment in if you liked the episodes. Or if you go on to YouTube, the Tim Heale podcasts on YouTube. Or if you’re putting in a Thirsty Thursday live stream, you can join in on a Thursday Thursday goes on from seven until nine or BSD, British summertime or Greenwich mean time during the winter. And we do like to have a laugh. We we do some specials. We’ve had veterans mental health specials we’ve had boating special. I’ve had a pre election special. I’m planning on doing a post election special this week. But a moment I’m having a bit of difficulty getting the getting the counselors to turn to and come and join us on the show. I think they’re a bit worried that I’m gonna ask for too many serious questions. But being a taxpayer and an elector then of I feel that I’d put them there is their duty to come and have a word with us. So my might just have to let them off this week, give him a chance to bed into the new the new council. And in a couple of months time once the dust settles a bit. I’ll get him back in. And I can we can see are outperforming then. But it’s their duty they come onto a public platform and tell us they’re wasting their taxpayers money.
Victoria Volk 1:03:25
Hey, kudos to you put the hand to the grindstone.
Tim Heale 1:03:32
I know we have some open forums, and we talk about anything. But we’ll come comments in in a chat box and about one hour what I want us to talk about or ask questions from the panel. And we can have some real good fun. We have a real good laughs on Thursdays because there’s a serious as well.
Victoria Volk 1:03:56
And that I will put the link to the YouTube and all that in the show notes. And much. Thank you so much for your time today and sharing your experiences with the military and all the loss that you’ve had in your life. Grief is cumulative, and it’s cumulatively negative and we all address it and deal with it in our own ways. And you have found a way that has served you and worked for you and I I congratulate you on that and in your inner drive to live life to the fullest and how you choose now.
Tim Heale 1:04:36
Got one life, live it and live every day as though it’s your last because one day it will be.
Victoria Volk 1:04:45
And on that note, remember, when you unleash your heart you unleash your life. Much love.