00:00:00
Speaker 1: G'day, everyone. Welcome to Conversations once again. Now, when I was a kid, there was a romantic notion surrounding the French Foreign Legion. It seemed to be an exotic group of men who fought in amazing places and did amazing things. I never knew anyone who'd been in the French Foreign Legion, but today's guest has. Jamie Williams has written a book about his experience of traumatic childhood, his time qualifying for the French Foreign Legion. and going away to fight against the ISIS insurgency in Syria, coming back and settling down. That's a very brief snapshot of Jamie Williams' life, and he joins us today. Jamie, how are you?
00:00:44
Speaker 2: I'm very good, Walt. How are you?
00:00:45
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good. The first thing that struck me, Jamie, was for someone who had such a disruptive childhood and obviously wasn't very good at school, how well the book was written. I mean... Where did the English come from?
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Speaker 2: Well, I never really struggled at school. School wasn't difficult for me. I just didn't apply myself to the education to going through. I didn't put a lot of importance on it, but I didn't struggle when I was actually in the classroom. I had no issues learning.
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Speaker 1: Obviously. Was English one of your good subjects? Yeah.
00:01:20
Speaker 2: So in primary school, I was actually very good at spelling. I had like a photographic memory for spelling. So... I went to a very small primary school. It was a bush school. So we had two classrooms, the little grade and the big grade. In the big grade, there was grade three, four, five, and six were all in one classroom. So every week, the teacher would give 10 words to spell, to learn to spell for grade three and four, and then 10 harder words for five and six. Because I was so good at spelling, I got the whole 20 words every week. I did no memorizing, no practicing of the words. And it was just easy. At the end of the week, I'd get every single one correct, no issues.
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Speaker 1: One wonders, had you stayed at school, where your life, what direction your life might have taken? It took a dramatic turn, obviously. I mean, the story about your dad losing your dad, that sounds so traumatic. Can you write about it in the book? Can you relive it for our listeners?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so my father died in a tragic accident at our home when I was three years old. So he was on the roof cleaning out the gutters on Australia Day and was electrocuted. So, yeah, that is a pivotal point of my childhood that shaped every year to come from there.
00:02:37
Speaker 1: You talk about, you mentioned the drama you had with the insurance claim. Was the family ever compensated for it?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so there was a court case that took, I think, roughly six years. We did not win the case. We had to settle outside of court, but there was compensation, yeah.
00:02:55
Speaker 1: Okay. You talk about growing up, you seem to be constantly scared as you write about it. I mean, your brother scared you, just being in the house scared you. What are your memories of those early years?
00:03:08
Speaker 2: Yeah. So just my environment, I guess I never really felt safe. There was, you know, my brother had an older brother and there was always a bit of conflict there. Yeah, just the environment. It was just, it felt like a vulnerable child, I guess.
00:03:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. How did you survive that? Not physically, but psychologically? Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I just kept moving forward. Yeah, as a child, you don't really have any coping mechanisms that have been taught or learned. So I just kept going and eventually got through it, I guess.
00:03:37
Speaker 1: What was life like for you and your mum after your father had died?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was very difficult for that six-year period while the court case was ongoing after my father's death. Money was very tight. There was periods where we had to live with my grandparents. There was.
00:03:56
Speaker 2: Like government housing for stints. We moved around a lot. It was very unstable sort of home life. Yeah, we struggled.
00:04:06
Speaker 1: Your grandparents seem to play an important part in your life too, as I read it. Would that be right?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so they were a stabilising factor. There were periods where we had to live with them and if they were not there for us to live with, then the situation could have been a lot worse. We would have been in more dangerous situations i guess.
00:04:27
Speaker 1: As you get older in school uh you've seemed to you you grow wild i mean i think i've read that correctly i mean you're into drugs and alcohol and give us a description of those years and and what stimulated.
00:04:41
Speaker 2: That yeah so i think um from experiencing my father's death at such a young age i was confronted with the thought of death not just growing old and dying, but accidents like death out of nowhere, crossing the road, getting hit by a bus or something like it can come at any moment. So I had a very nihilistic worldview where I thought, why am I going to stress myself and bother myself with trying to, you know, learn things and do essays and everything else. Everybody was so focused on a school when I thought it could all be for nothing. We could die tomorrow. So yeah, I, just let the wind take me where it wanted to. I got involved in drugs and fighting and, you know, really made every sort of mistake you can make in those formative teenage years and went off the rails, yeah.
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Speaker 1: You're so open about your drug dealing.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't, looking back, I'm not proud of it, but it is something that I did do. It's not something I'm going to hide. I tried to write the book as open and honestly as I can, as if I was talking to a close friend. I'm not trying to hide anything Yeah, it's all part of my past. It's me to where I am today. So it's, you know, yeah.
00:05:48
Speaker 1: Well, it is open. I mean, I can't imagine anything you would have left out.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel to really sell a convincing story. You've got to be honest, you know. I think the readers these days can see bullshit. So I've just sat down and tried not to censor anything. I didn't think about how it's going to be perceived or judged or anything like that. I just sat down and I wrote the book. Now, obviously, that it is a completed story. Walking it is out there in the world. There is that nervousness that comes with it. How is it going to be received? But yeah, the writing process, I try not to let that affect how I write.
00:06:21
Speaker 1: What's the reaction been so far? Had much feedback?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so I got the advanced copies, which I gave to close friends and family. The feedback has been great, yeah. But obviously, from my perspective, it's hard to accept a close friend's feedback because of course they're biased. They're going to tell me what I want to hear. whether it's good or not, they're going to give me the thumbs up. So it will really hit home, I guess, if it's good or not. When I start getting strangers, people I have nothing to do with, start doing reviews and share their experience with the book.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so you're this teenage kid who's opted out of school. You're taking drugs. You're dealing drugs. Is there a pivotal moment where your attitude shifts?
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Speaker 2: So it wasn't until I was past, well, 18 was a turning point. I always thought that I wasn't going to see 18, that I was living risky. I was living fast and hard. And I thought, you know, I'm basically going to burn out pretty quick and something will happen. I'm not going to have to deal with being an adult. Um, so when I turned 18, that was a bit of an eye opener. I hit that point and go, okay, so this is the threshold where now I'm legally an adult.
00:07:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: What to do with it now.
00:07:32
Speaker 1: And what did you do?
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Speaker 2: It wasn't an instant fix. Obviously there, I still struggled for a while. There was, um, The early 18, 19, 20 years old type thing, I was still doing what I was doing, if not even harder. But yeah, there was a moment where I hit rock bottom, basically. I wasn't enjoying my life. I wasn't enjoying what I was doing. And I wasn't dying early like I expected I would. So I drew a line in the sand and said, okay, from this point onwards, I'm going to try to rebuild and have a good hard crack at having a happier life and doing something with my life instead of just being a victim.
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Speaker 1: Somebody listening to this who might be in that similar situation, who've had a troubled childhood and into drugs and alcohol in their teenage, late teenage years, what's the first step? What's the advice you would give them?
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Speaker 2: Well, you've got to want it. Nobody can fix it for you. If you don't want help, if you don't want to fix your life, if you don't want to do the hard work, and it is hard work, then you're never going to change. You need to sit down with yourself and have a real honest, hard, Look at yourself in conversation with yourself and deal with it yourself and say, do I want to change? What am I willing to do to make this change?
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Speaker 1: Normally there's a mentor, though, that leads you or inspires you or guides you. Did you have one of those?
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Speaker 2: No, I feel like I did everything myself. Yeah, there was nobody really pushing me or encouraging me or telling me to change. It all came from me. So there can be a mentor, but there doesn't always have to be. At the end of the day, the person who's doing the work is not the mentor. They can help guide and encourage, but it's the person who's going through it that really needs to do the work.
00:09:12
Speaker 1: I was looking for the first step, the very first step you take to redemption. Even though you say you're not after redemption in the book, but from that transition to this wild kid, is there a first step that you have to take?
00:09:27
Speaker 2: Well, I basically went ghost. When I made the decision that I was going to change everything, I had to get away from my environment. It's the people around you. If you have a bad circle, you're going to reflect that in yourself. So you need to change your circle. You're not going to see different results by doing the same thing. You've got to change every aspect of your life and what's around you.
00:09:49
Speaker 1: Yeah. Jamie Williams is my guest, folks. His book is called War Dog, Breaking the Change, and it's An amazing story, really. He goes off and joins the French foreign legend. Who does that? Back after the break. Welcome back, everybody. I'm talking today to Jamie Williams. Now, Jamie's a guy who joined the French Foreign Legion. I'll say it just like that because that's what he did. Tough upbringing, traumatic childhood. He loses his dad. Family lives in poverty. He descends into drugs and alcohol. But one day makes the decision he's going to shake all of that off and make life better. How does the French Foreign Legion come up, Jamie? From where do you get that inspiration?
00:10:34
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I've always been an avid watcher of documentaries. Like when I left school, I didn't stop learning. Like I directed my learning to where my interests were. So I've always watched documentaries. I remember seeing a documentary where Bear Grylls joins the legion. So that kind of just sat back in the back of my mind. And I tried to go the traditional route through the Australian Army. And because of my background, my history, yeah, I got denied. Can I interrupt?
00:11:02
Speaker 1: How do they research your history? What do you say?
00:11:07
Speaker 2: Through the psychological interviews. I've always been an honest person. Some people say I'm honest to a false. Like a lot of people that I've spoken to that have joined the Australian Army, they tell me about their past and I sort of, cross-referenced with my parts. And I was like, well, that sounds a lot worse than what I told them. So how did you get accepted? And I didn't. It's because most people don't tell them the truth. I told them more than I needed to, I think.
00:11:30
Speaker 1: What, the alcohol and the drugs? That counted against you?
00:11:33
Speaker 2: Is that what it was? Yeah, part of that, fighting. There was a drink driving charge that was kind of recent at the time as well. I was about 12 months old. So just a combination of things. And I think there was details I was forgetting because I didn't, put as much relevance on it as they may have. So I was getting my, my wires crossed a bit when it came to getting into fights and stuff. I was talking about one fight, but then there was another fight. So they thought I was being evasive when I was just being honest, you know, things I hadn't really thought about in a long time. And they're asking me to have times and dates and specifics on these things. And I was like, well, you know, I don't know. I've put that behind me. I'm trying to look forward.
00:12:13
Speaker 1: Anyway. So you see the document about Bear Grylls. Did he, Did he do the whole, did he actually join the Legion or was it just a television?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just for television. So he went through the process. The process he went through was a bit different to my process. He kind of mimics the traditional process, which was in Algeria, I think, the home of the Legion. When I joined, it was all done in France, yeah.
00:12:39
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're inspired by this. What's the next step? I mean, how does a young man go and join the French Foreign Legion? There's a song about that. I'm sure about joining the French Foreign Legion. So you see the documentary. What's the next step?
00:12:54
Speaker 2: Well, there is only one way to join is to buy a plane ticket and go to France and find the regiment. So there's two regiments you can go. There's Fort de Nogent, which is in the north of the country, just east of France.
00:13:07
Speaker 1: Sorry, Paris.
00:13:09
Speaker 2: And then there's Aubagne, which is in the south of France. So, yeah, buy a plane ticket. You jump on a plane and you walk up to either one of those regiments. You hand your passport over and say, I want to join.
00:13:19
Speaker 1: Just like that.
00:13:21
Speaker 2: Just like that. Have a pretty efficient process, I must say, in the Australian military processing. It can take a minimum of six months to process somebody. Whether they're accepted or not can take longer. In France, the France Front Legion, you'll know within two weeks.
00:13:37
Speaker 1: So you just front up. Is it a garrison of some sort? Is it a castle? What are you fronting up to?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a military base. It's a big walled structure. They've got buildings that are built into the ground, like bunkers and stuff. It's an old traditional military base, yeah.
00:13:59
Speaker 1: So you're saying, look, I'm Jamie Williams from Australia. Not even. Not even.
00:14:06
Speaker 2: Rock up to the gate. There's the bars. There's the guard there. And you don't know whether he understands English or not. He's staring at you, you're staring at him. You go, I'm here to join the Legion. All he said was one word. He stuck his hand out and he says, passport. Hand over your passport. And he goes, wait. That's it. And it begins.
00:14:24
Speaker 1: And what happens after you wait? How long do you wait for?
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Speaker 2: It depends. They've got a room just inside the gate off to the side, which is a cold, dark sort of room. And... If you rock up late at night, they may make you wait all night until the next morning in that room because this is a time for you to sort of let yourself process, do I actually want to be here or not? The longer you sit there, the more time you've got to second guess yourself. So I think a lot of people probably get to that step. They just walk in the gate and sit there for an hour or so and go, no, I'm not ready for this, and they leave. So they make you wait. They let you stress until to see how dedicated you are. So right from the first word, it is a process of trying to weed you out and push you out. You have to prove to them that you want to be there. There's a saying in the Legion that says, you come to us, we didn't come to you.
00:15:18
Speaker 1: Is the French Foreign Legion comprised of all foreigners or are there Frenchmen in there? Foreign Legion?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so as the name says, it's the French Foreign Legion. So it is part of the French military, but it is a separate military from the French military. You've got the French Regulars, which is all French citizens. French Foreign Legion is made up of all foreigners. There are French officers. There are Frenchmen that have criminal records that can't join the French Regulars that do join, but it is majority all foreigners here. When I was there, there was 146 different nationalities. I met people in the Legion. from all over the world that I'd never meet in any other context.
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Speaker 1: 140. No, there's so many countries.
00:16:00
Speaker 2: 140.
00:16:00
Speaker 1: Anyway, so you're sitting in this room, this cold room. What happens? Are you whisked away? Are you stripped of all your possessions? Tell us what happens.
00:16:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you just sit there for a bit. I don't know how many hours passed while I was sitting there waiting, waiting, waiting. And they, yeah, out of nowhere, they come and grab you and they take you up and you start a questionnaire. You do basic questions. and see if you are cognitively competent, I guess. There's some people that might rock up and they'll pretty quickly go, no, off you go. So, yeah, then they start going through your kit. They tear your bag apart. They pat you down, search your pockets, ask if you have any weapons like that. And, yeah, they strip you of everything.
00:16:46
Speaker 1: And then what? All your clothes are taken away. Do they outfit you or are they?
00:16:52
Speaker 2: Yeah so and you get given a blue tracksuit uh and then you go into like a barracks room a dormitory room they've got all um bunk beds pretty pretty you know bare rooms um and you wait you wait and you wait and then all of a sudden they come grab you say okay medical so they go and they poke and they prod they do some medicals and off the fuck you go again and then Yeah, throughout the two weeks, you just go through a series every day of different sort of tests. So I think I went to Fort de Mejean myself. I think I was there for a few days, and then they stick you on a bus and send you down to Auburn. Auburn is where you do the proper rest of the process. Auburn is still selection, but it's more intensive selection. That's where you do the bulk of the selection. So after that, when you're actually officially accepted, then you will go to Castellnaudery for basic training.
00:17:50
Speaker 1: Does the selection include a physical component? Do you have to be fit, strong?
00:17:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you do push-ups, pull-ups, you do a beep test.
00:18:01
Speaker 1: How hard was it?
00:18:03
Speaker 2: You need a standard level of fitness to get accepted. Like you can't just walk in off the street. I did prepare for it. I was fit and healthy. There was definitely people that were more fit than me, people that were less fit than me. I was always sort of, In the middle, which is where I wanted to be. Never wanted to get too much attention for being too good or too bad. Yeah, anybody who's put a little bit of effort into health and fitness and exercise should be able to pass their standards.
00:18:26
Speaker 1: Okay, so now you're selected. Now you start basic training. I've done national service and had to do basic training. Have you spoken to soldiers who had to do similar things and how would it compare? How would the French Foreign Legion's basic training compare to the Australian Army?
00:18:44
Speaker 2: I would assume it is very similar in a lot of aspects. You do the basic formations and that sort of stuff. There's a health and fitness aspect to it. From my understanding, there's a large focus on esprit de corps for the Legion because you've got so many people from different nationalities. There's always that friction. People sort of tend to grip off into language groups. So the Russians with the Russians, the English speakers with the English speakers. So it'll be English, Scottish, Irish, Australians, Americans, they'll all sort of group together. So to break that separateness, you'll have to learn the same language, and they focus on joint suffering, I guess. So people bond through joint suffering, so they definitely hammer you until you sort of form bonds with people that you ordinarily probably wouldn't.
00:19:36
Speaker 1: Can you speak French? Did you learn French?
00:19:38
Speaker 2: Oui, bien sûr.
00:19:40
Speaker 1: Moi aussi.
00:19:41
Speaker 2: I would say I'm semi fluent in French. You learn what you need to for the military structure. A lot of it is sort of legion French. I would say it's not civilian French because you've got so many different influences from Polish and Russian and whatnot. There are words that are thrown in there that are not French words, but I thought were French words initially because they're so commonly used. So yeah, for, For military life, when it comes to sit down, stand up, shut up, run, go faster, all these sort of commands, you learn pretty quickly. You quickly learn how limited your French is when you first go out into civilian life and try to have a conversation with the French person. Okay.
00:20:25
Speaker 1: My guest is Jamie Williams. He joined the French Foreign Legion to go to war. He ended up going to war, but there's a lot of drama in the meantime. Back after the break, folks. Welcome back to Conversations, everybody. If you've just tuned in, it's a really interesting chat with a young man called Jamie Williams who had a pretty rough childhood and when he sorted himself out, decided to go and join the French Foreign Legion and you should listen to how he does that. He's been accepted into the Legion. He goes off to do his basic training and we'll pick it up there. So you do your basic training. Can you give us an oversight of just how tough that was in terms of And when you describe it in the book, the arduousness of it picks up every week and the things you are having to do, it sounded pretty tough. Yeah.
00:21:15
Speaker 2: So obviously everybody's sort of out of their element that doesn't speak French. You never really understand 100% of what's happening. You learn to watch the group and just go with the flow. So there's a lot of disorientation, a lot of confusion, confusion. There's the physical side of it. You're up early every day. As soon as you're up, your feet hit the ground running. So there's always that sort of level of anxiety of go, go, go, never relax. You can't speak your own language. You get punished for speaking your own language. So you're struggling to communicate. Yeah, everything has to be perfect. The slightest mistake is punishable by yelling at the minimum. So you're being hit, kicked, shoved. Yeah, it is full on. It's not for, I guess, snowflakes. You've got to really want to be there. There's people there that come from extremely harsh backgrounds and harsh environments, and yeah.
00:22:16
Speaker 1: But you finish basic training and you graduate. Is that the word? I mean, what sort of dropout rate would there be along the way?
00:22:24
Speaker 2: So they have a very big turnover rate because... It is so easy to just kind of disappear. Through basic training, if you want to put your hand up and quit, no problems. You're done. You're out. So there is a very high turnover rate. That's why they have such a quick processing through the selection is because it's like a processing plant. They just churn them in, churn them out because there is such a high dropout rate.
00:22:48
Speaker 1: You get through, you get posted to a regiment. So what are your duties in the regiment? I mean, do they go away? Were they sent away to war?
00:22:56
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I was with the Duesium REI, which is the 2nd Infantry Regiment. So that was the Infantry Regiment. They did posts in Africa a lot. They were in Afghanistan. Just like any infantry unit, they'd get posted to anywhere in the world that required it.
00:23:15
Speaker 1: The thing that puzzled me, Jamie, you're in the French Foreign Legion, you're posted to a battalion, and the next minute you go to London on leave, And you get arrested and you're in jail and you don't come back. I mean, was it as simple as that or as dramatic as that?
00:23:32
Speaker 2: I guess, yes. So I was on the regiment for a while. We did training, like just everyday training, preparing for war like they do. I did specialised training as a squad marksman. That was six weeks. So after that period a little bit, we had 10 days vacancy, So I've been in the Legion for about a bit under 12 months at this stage. We had time off. So my best friend and myself that I was with in the Legion, we both decided to go to London. We were there for a day and a half before I got arrested.
00:24:06
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, you have to explain. You can tell people to read the book. But it seems to me a case of mistaken identity. Your mate who looks similar. dressed similarly, commits a crime, you get arrested for it. Is it as basic as that?
00:24:25
Speaker 2: That's exactly it, yeah. Yeah, we were there together. We got separated for a short period of time. I am oblivious, sitting at a bus stop, staring at a sandwich, thinking if he's not back in the next five minutes, I'm going to eat his bloody sandwich. And the police rock up and point the finger at me and say there's been an attack on a lady in the area and you fit the description. And, yeah, it was all downhill from there.
00:24:47
Speaker 1: But you looked similar with the shaved heads and the clothes you were wearing. And you were in jail for six months while the process took place. Eventually, you are cleared. So what's happening in the meantime? How do you tell the legion that you're in jail, or don't you?
00:25:08
Speaker 2: Well, I don't, yeah. I had no contact. I didn't contact my family. I didn't contact the legion. I sat in prison on remand in London for six months with any contact with the outside world except for my lawyers. So my lawyer had been in prison for a while by the time he actually contacted Legion and notified them to try and get service records as like a character reference for the actual trial. And they just said, yeah, he was here. He served here. We don't release any records because the Legion is very private and secretive that way. They acknowledged that I was there, but they wouldn't give me any other information beyond that. And they said that I've been dismissed because I obviously didn't go back to the regiment on time. So that was it.
00:25:50
Speaker 1: You kicked out of the regiment. You're in jail. You're still confronting court. And there's still some doubt because the girl identifies you in a line-up parade until the photograph is shown of your mate. And she says, no, that's you.
00:26:04
Speaker 2: That's you. Yeah. So she picked me out of a lineup and said that I was the person who attacked her. That was the only piece of evidence that connected me to the crime was her saying it was me. So when it comes full circle to the actual court case, she was handed a photograph of my friend at the time, the person who did it. And she said, yes, this is the person who attacked me. So she's then identified him and myself basically as being the same person. She couldn't differentiate through photographs that it's two different people. So the judge just said, well, that was the only piece of evidence tying it here, so we've got to throw it out.
00:26:42
Speaker 1: So you kicked out of the regiment. How did you feel about that?
00:26:45
Speaker 2: I was furious, yeah. I put everything in it to get there and to have that taken away like that through no fault of my own, yeah, it was crushing.
00:26:59
Speaker 1: So you couldn't rejoin, you couldn't front up and say, explain what had happened and say, I'm here, I'm back.
00:27:05
Speaker 2: Potentially, yeah. But the headspace I was in at that time, I'd just been through the legion process. So selection, which is stressful. Going to the regiment is even more stressful than doing the slash TP training, which was the sniper training, the squad marksman training, which was even more stressful again. So it's just ramping up and up and up. And then prison for six months is an exhausting experience in itself. So by the time I'd just been through all that over the last year and a half and I got freedom and I was out, I just wanted to go home. I was like, I didn't feel like I could face the Legion again. But looking back, I regret not going back to the Legion. Like I should have just gone back in and dealt with whatever was thrown at me. I could potentially have been accepted back in again, but I would have had to have started from the bottom and really, you know, gained every bit of respect back again. And, you know, I just couldn't see myself climbing that hill again at that stage.
00:28:03
Speaker 1: So you've got no money, you ring a friend and they pay your ticket to come home and you land back in Melbourne. What are your prospects?
00:28:13
Speaker 2: Not really. It was a relief to be home at first. I was like, great, I can relax. But I quickly learned that, you know, things weren't, nothing had changed for me back in Australia. You know, I was, The same friends were still there waiting, doing what they were doing and everything like that. And no job prospects, no military.
00:28:33
Speaker 1: You couldn't join the Australian? Did you want to join the Australian Army?
00:28:36
Speaker 2: I did. I tried to. I went through the process again and, yeah, was denied again. So I thought my experience in the Legion would have been a bonus for Nils. Look, I've already got on-the-job training for this job, for this role. I don't think the Australian Army likes that. I thought it was a plus.
00:28:53
Speaker 1: They thought, no. Jamie Williams is my guest, folks. His book is called War Dog and we're skipping over things as we go. Obviously, you have to. The details in the book. But he still gets a chance to go away to war and that gets him into more trouble as well. So back after the break. Jamie Williams is my guest, folks. He's written about his experiences and a wild kid in all sorts of trouble as a kid. Goes to France, joins the French Foreign Legion, goes on leave to London, gets arrested and is in jail for six months before he's exonerated. Comes back to Australia with no prospects, but he's got this experience. He's trained now as a soldier. The Australian Army won't accept him. So what are your prospects? How on earth do you get tied up in this war in the Middle East?
00:29:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I just tried to regain some form of stability. Obviously, I didn't want to go off the rails again. I'd come a long way. So it was a matter of just trying to slowly rebuild again. So I got full-time work. I was working as a security guard. And then, yeah, all the news started coming out about Islamic State, about the atrocities being committed, people getting executed, and the Yazidis being taken as slaves. It dominated the news, and it obviously grabbed my attention, and I followed it very closely. And then, yeah, it was just the anger and whatever that grew inside me, watching this happening and just feeling helpless. And then it got to a certain point where people were starting to volunteer to go over there. And I thought, well, shit, I didn't think this was an option, but now I see it is an option that you can basically just jump on an aeroplane and go volunteer to find a zoning state. Similarly to how I went and joined the Legion. It wasn't a big stretch for me because I've already kind of done something similar.
00:30:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, but when you get on the plane to do that, or try to get on the plane to do that, you're stopped by our customs officials and you're actually charged, aren't you?
00:30:48
Speaker 2: Yes, there's a little bit more to it. Other than that, as I said, I had the experience of jumping on an airplane and going to join the Legion, and that seemed kind of normal to me. So me jumping on an airplane to go and join the YPG, it seemed kind of normal to me. So I didn't take the secrecy as seriously as I should have. So I was stopped at the airport, questions by customs, it all pretty quickly came out what my intentions were. I spoke to the federal police at the airport who were a bit confused as to whether I was breaking the law or not. Obviously, I didn't know. I did what research I could to to find out if it was illegal or not. I didn't find anything. So yeah, I was questioned at the airport, but released again. I wasn't charged or officially arrested like that at the airport. I was requested to go back to the federal police headquarters the next day for a voluntary interview, which I did. So I felt I've got nothing to hide. I'm not doing anything bad here. I'm going to go fight against Islamic extremism and support the good guys. So what do I have to hide? Once again, too honest. And it wasn't for another seven months. until I was actually officially arrested and charged.
00:31:54
Speaker 1: And that's another trauma for everybody. Again, the charges are dropped. Am I right?
00:32:00
Speaker 2: Eventually, yes. So I went through the initial stages of the court process, which is like committal hearings, and they kept sort of getting bounced back. I think there was three or four court appearances where the case hadn't actually proceeded. where the federal police kept on asking, or the DPP, the public prosecutors kept asking for more time to prepare. And yeah, when the judge actually put the hammer down and said, this is the last adjournment, next time you have to be ready to move forward, when that next date came, they dropped the case, they withdrew the charges.
00:32:35
Speaker 1: The book opens your first chapter of the prologue, you're in Raqqa, and we've got you there from court into Raqqa already in a firefight. How dangerous was it?
00:32:44
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, very dangerous. Yeah, there's bullets flying, there's explosions. You've got aircraft circling overhead, dropping bombs and shooting munitions. It was, yeah, as close as you can get to it as possible.
00:32:56
Speaker 1: So how long did you spend there and how do you extract yourself from that?
00:33:00
Speaker 2: So I think there was a long journey from landing in Syria at the academy and actually trying to get to the front line. So I think I was in Raqqa for probably four months until... We got into that sort of situation, which was maybe three months into Raqqa. So we were there for one day. We went there, got there during the day. Then we were ambushed and we lost one of our team members. So we had to try and secure his body back at the location. We waited for nightfall to extract his body, and then we stayed there for the rest of the night until the preceding day.
00:33:36
Speaker 1: Well, how do you come back to normal reality? I mean, Raqqa Falls, they reclaimed the city. ISIS... disappears or doesn't disappear but retreats but then you have to come back we have to get you back to Australia how long before you get back to Australia and how hard is it to settle down after all.
00:33:54
Speaker 2: That so yeah I stayed on for a while after we liberated Raqqa the city was still in ruins the civilians started to return to try and reclaim their houses and rebuild the city and rebuild their lives Islamic State had IEDs planted everywhere So every day we'd hear explosions off in the distance of civilians trying to go home and, you know, just walk into their house and getting blown up from a bomb that was left by ISIS. So me and my team, we started doing demining efforts in Raqqa. So I stayed on and did that for a while. And I eventually decided to leave during December of that year. So I got back to Australia the following January. Yeah, it is not easy. under ideal circumstances, to reintegrate after being in a war situation, let alone the scrutiny of the AFP and everything else that followed that I had to deal with afterwards.
00:34:52
Speaker 1: But you marry, you have kids, and now you've got a normal, can I say normal life? We're jumping, but how did you pick up your life?
00:35:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was completely unexpected. I was expecting to die in Syria. I wasn't expecting to have to come home and do a three-building normal life. But yeah, I was under such scrutiny from the AFP, from the police and everything that I was just kept my head down. I didn't have a passport, so I couldn't travel. That was taken. So I just started slowly rebuilding. I reached out to a friend for a job. He gave me employment and I just started tripping away at it. And eventually I met, you know, the lady who would become my wife. And out of nowhere, we fell in love. And it just grew from there under the, The scrutiny and the what should be everything else with the threat of potentially being arrested.
00:35:41
Speaker 1: How can they take your passport away?
00:35:43
Speaker 2: So they seized it as evidence, physical passport as an item of evidence for the investigation. I was under investigation for nearly 60 years after returning to Australia.
00:35:53
Speaker 1: What did they think you were going to do? They think you were a terrorist when you'd actually been fighting terrorism.
00:35:59
Speaker 2: Well, they shouldn't have thought I was a terrorist because we had the first trial. There was the defence that was put forward. The charges were withdrawn because of the defence, in my opinion, that was put forward, although there was no precedent set. So in my opinion, there was no reason for that six-year investigation besides that being a punishment in itself.
00:36:20
Speaker 1: Would you advise young men to follow the same path?
00:36:23
Speaker 2: Look, I would tell people to follow their conscience. I wouldn't recommend they do it. It's dangerous. It's whatever. But I'm all about freedom. I'm a libertarian. People as adults should be able to make their own choices. So if that's something that somebody seriously believes in and they need it in their soul to volunteer for an effort like that, then that's on them. Everybody should be free to make their own decisions.
00:36:52
Speaker 1: So as you observe the politics of the world today and the insurrection that's all over the place, what are your thoughts? Where is the world going?
00:37:01
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's another difficult thing. Just when I've finally got my shit together and settled down and have a family and everything, you watch the news and it's getting worse and worse and worse. We've got the war in Ukraine and Russia. We've got Iran now. We've got Israel bombing. It's just constant. It's nonstop. And it's hard to not get caught up in the mentality of, We're headed for World War III, nuclear Armageddon, and everything's just going to be burnt to the ground. It's very hard to have a positive view on that. But obviously with the kids, the family, I have to keep it positive and keep it moving forward.
00:37:36
Speaker 1: So as you observe that, where are your allegiances aligned these days?
00:37:39
Speaker 2: My allegiances have always been and will always be with Australia.
00:37:43
Speaker 1: Well done.
00:37:44
Speaker 2: And my family, obviously. My family comes first.
00:37:47
Speaker 1: So how did you meet your wife? So you've come back, you've got all this experience behind you. How do you meet your wife and how does she understand what you've been through?
00:37:56
Speaker 2: So we met through Facebook. My brother and her worked together in the office. She learnt of me through that sort of connection. She reached out to me through Facebook and we just started talking and it grew naturally from there, organically, yeah.
00:38:11
Speaker 1: Is she curious about your background in terms of the ordeals that you've had, the experiences that you've had?
00:38:18
Speaker 2: I mean, not really. I don't think she sees that person in the person she knows. She didn't ask, she didn't pry too much. She was just there. She didn't force anything out of me. She just accepted me for who I was at the time and we built a relationship together. So I think it's been pretty eye-opening and maybe a little bit confronting for her as well to read the story. As I wrote the book, she read chapter by chapter. She's always pushing, I need to I need the next chapter. I have to write the next chapter. I want to know what happens next. So yeah, we don't judge each other for our past. We just accept who we are now and build the future together.
00:38:58
Speaker 1: As I said before, I'm just impressed with how well it's written. Was there much change from what words you wrote to the editorial process, to the editing process? Were your words changed much?
00:39:11
Speaker 2: No, it was mainly just compressed. So I wrote The agreed contract for the book was around 80,000 words, which is a standard length. I wrote 135,000 words. So there's quite a bit that needed to be cut and compressed, but there was no structural issues. There was no... um major sentence you know grammatical sort of stuff that was all line editing and just compression yeah as.
00:39:37
Speaker 1: We're leaving i'll just quote on the back todd with brutal honesty harder and wisdom war dog is jamie's first person reckoning with trauma addiction brotherhood betrayal and survival It charts the full arc of a man forged by fire through childhood wounds, brutal military training, frontline combat, wrongful prosecution, and the long, quiet battle to become a better father, partner, and man. And have you become a better father, partner, and man, Jamie?
00:40:04
Speaker 2: It is an ongoing thing. Every day I try to do better and better. Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely a learning curve. There's hard days, but it's the most rewarding thing I've ever had to do with my life.
00:40:14
Speaker 1: And, you know, the.
00:40:15
Speaker 2: the role I could be most proud of is that of being called dad, yeah.
00:40:19
Speaker 1: Thanks for your time, mate. It's a great read. It's an amazing experience. I don't think I would want to have had it myself, but it's interesting to read about it. All the best with it.
00:40:28
Speaker 2: Thank you. Cheers.
00:40:30
Speaker 1: Jamie Williams was my guest, folk. One Man's Fight Against Inner Demons, ISIS and the Australian Justice System. The book is called War Dog. It is a Hachette publication. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1: G'day, everyone. Welcome to Conversations once again. Now, when I was a kid, there was a romantic notion surrounding the French Foreign Legion. It seemed to be an exotic group of men who fought in amazing places and did amazing things. I never knew anyone who'd been in the French Foreign Legion, but today's guest has. Jamie Williams has written a book about his experience of traumatic childhood, his time qualifying for the French Foreign Legion. and going away to fight against the ISIS insurgency in Syria, coming back and settling down. That's a very brief snapshot of Jamie Williams' life, and he joins us today. Jamie, how are you?
00:00:44
Speaker 2: I'm very good, Walt. How are you?
00:00:45
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good. The first thing that struck me, Jamie, was for someone who had such a disruptive childhood and obviously wasn't very good at school, how well the book was written. I mean... Where did the English come from?
00:01:02
Speaker 2: Well, I never really struggled at school. School wasn't difficult for me. I just didn't apply myself to the education to going through. I didn't put a lot of importance on it, but I didn't struggle when I was actually in the classroom. I had no issues learning.
00:01:16
Speaker 1: Obviously. Was English one of your good subjects? Yeah.
00:01:20
Speaker 2: So in primary school, I was actually very good at spelling. I had like a photographic memory for spelling. So... I went to a very small primary school. It was a bush school. So we had two classrooms, the little grade and the big grade. In the big grade, there was grade three, four, five, and six were all in one classroom. So every week, the teacher would give 10 words to spell, to learn to spell for grade three and four, and then 10 harder words for five and six. Because I was so good at spelling, I got the whole 20 words every week. I did no memorizing, no practicing of the words. And it was just easy. At the end of the week, I'd get every single one correct, no issues.
00:02:00
Speaker 1: One wonders, had you stayed at school, where your life, what direction your life might have taken? It took a dramatic turn, obviously. I mean, the story about your dad losing your dad, that sounds so traumatic. Can you write about it in the book? Can you relive it for our listeners?
00:02:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, so my father died in a tragic accident at our home when I was three years old. So he was on the roof cleaning out the gutters on Australia Day and was electrocuted. So, yeah, that is a pivotal point of my childhood that shaped every year to come from there.
00:02:37
Speaker 1: You talk about, you mentioned the drama you had with the insurance claim. Was the family ever compensated for it?
00:02:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there was a court case that took, I think, roughly six years. We did not win the case. We had to settle outside of court, but there was compensation, yeah.
00:02:55
Speaker 1: Okay. You talk about growing up, you seem to be constantly scared as you write about it. I mean, your brother scared you, just being in the house scared you. What are your memories of those early years?
00:03:08
Speaker 2: Yeah. So just my environment, I guess I never really felt safe. There was, you know, my brother had an older brother and there was always a bit of conflict there. Yeah, just the environment. It was just, it felt like a vulnerable child, I guess.
00:03:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. How did you survive that? Not physically, but psychologically? Yeah.
00:03:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just kept moving forward. Yeah, as a child, you don't really have any coping mechanisms that have been taught or learned. So I just kept going and eventually got through it, I guess.
00:03:37
Speaker 1: What was life like for you and your mum after your father had died?
00:03:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was very difficult for that six-year period while the court case was ongoing after my father's death. Money was very tight. There was periods where we had to live with my grandparents. There was.
00:03:56
Speaker 2: Like government housing for stints. We moved around a lot. It was very unstable sort of home life. Yeah, we struggled.
00:04:06
Speaker 1: Your grandparents seem to play an important part in your life too, as I read it. Would that be right?
00:04:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they were a stabilising factor. There were periods where we had to live with them and if they were not there for us to live with, then the situation could have been a lot worse. We would have been in more dangerous situations i guess.
00:04:27
Speaker 1: As you get older in school uh you've seemed to you you grow wild i mean i think i've read that correctly i mean you're into drugs and alcohol and give us a description of those years and and what stimulated.
00:04:41
Speaker 2: That yeah so i think um from experiencing my father's death at such a young age i was confronted with the thought of death not just growing old and dying, but accidents like death out of nowhere, crossing the road, getting hit by a bus or something like it can come at any moment. So I had a very nihilistic worldview where I thought, why am I going to stress myself and bother myself with trying to, you know, learn things and do essays and everything else. Everybody was so focused on a school when I thought it could all be for nothing. We could die tomorrow. So yeah, I, just let the wind take me where it wanted to. I got involved in drugs and fighting and, you know, really made every sort of mistake you can make in those formative teenage years and went off the rails, yeah.
00:05:27
Speaker 1: You're so open about your drug dealing.
00:05:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't, looking back, I'm not proud of it, but it is something that I did do. It's not something I'm going to hide. I tried to write the book as open and honestly as I can, as if I was talking to a close friend. I'm not trying to hide anything Yeah, it's all part of my past. It's me to where I am today. So it's, you know, yeah.
00:05:48
Speaker 1: Well, it is open. I mean, I can't imagine anything you would have left out.
00:05:53
Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel to really sell a convincing story. You've got to be honest, you know. I think the readers these days can see bullshit. So I've just sat down and tried not to censor anything. I didn't think about how it's going to be perceived or judged or anything like that. I just sat down and I wrote the book. Now, obviously, that it is a completed story. Walking it is out there in the world. There is that nervousness that comes with it. How is it going to be received? But yeah, the writing process, I try not to let that affect how I write.
00:06:21
Speaker 1: What's the reaction been so far? Had much feedback?
00:06:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I got the advanced copies, which I gave to close friends and family. The feedback has been great, yeah. But obviously, from my perspective, it's hard to accept a close friend's feedback because of course they're biased. They're going to tell me what I want to hear. whether it's good or not, they're going to give me the thumbs up. So it will really hit home, I guess, if it's good or not. When I start getting strangers, people I have nothing to do with, start doing reviews and share their experience with the book.
00:06:54
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're this teenage kid who's opted out of school. You're taking drugs. You're dealing drugs. Is there a pivotal moment where your attitude shifts?
00:07:04
Speaker 2: So it wasn't until I was past, well, 18 was a turning point. I always thought that I wasn't going to see 18, that I was living risky. I was living fast and hard. And I thought, you know, I'm basically going to burn out pretty quick and something will happen. I'm not going to have to deal with being an adult. Um, so when I turned 18, that was a bit of an eye opener. I hit that point and go, okay, so this is the threshold where now I'm legally an adult.
00:07:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:07:31
Speaker 2: What to do with it now.
00:07:32
Speaker 1: And what did you do?
00:07:33
Speaker 2: It wasn't an instant fix. Obviously there, I still struggled for a while. There was, um, The early 18, 19, 20 years old type thing, I was still doing what I was doing, if not even harder. But yeah, there was a moment where I hit rock bottom, basically. I wasn't enjoying my life. I wasn't enjoying what I was doing. And I wasn't dying early like I expected I would. So I drew a line in the sand and said, okay, from this point onwards, I'm going to try to rebuild and have a good hard crack at having a happier life and doing something with my life instead of just being a victim.
00:08:08
Speaker 1: Somebody listening to this who might be in that similar situation, who've had a troubled childhood and into drugs and alcohol in their teenage, late teenage years, what's the first step? What's the advice you would give them?
00:08:22
Speaker 2: Well, you've got to want it. Nobody can fix it for you. If you don't want help, if you don't want to fix your life, if you don't want to do the hard work, and it is hard work, then you're never going to change. You need to sit down with yourself and have a real honest, hard, Look at yourself in conversation with yourself and deal with it yourself and say, do I want to change? What am I willing to do to make this change?
00:08:44
Speaker 1: Normally there's a mentor, though, that leads you or inspires you or guides you. Did you have one of those?
00:08:51
Speaker 2: No, I feel like I did everything myself. Yeah, there was nobody really pushing me or encouraging me or telling me to change. It all came from me. So there can be a mentor, but there doesn't always have to be. At the end of the day, the person who's doing the work is not the mentor. They can help guide and encourage, but it's the person who's going through it that really needs to do the work.
00:09:12
Speaker 1: I was looking for the first step, the very first step you take to redemption. Even though you say you're not after redemption in the book, but from that transition to this wild kid, is there a first step that you have to take?
00:09:27
Speaker 2: Well, I basically went ghost. When I made the decision that I was going to change everything, I had to get away from my environment. It's the people around you. If you have a bad circle, you're going to reflect that in yourself. So you need to change your circle. You're not going to see different results by doing the same thing. You've got to change every aspect of your life and what's around you.
00:09:49
Speaker 1: Yeah. Jamie Williams is my guest, folks. His book is called War Dog, Breaking the Change, and it's An amazing story, really. He goes off and joins the French foreign legend. Who does that? Back after the break. Welcome back, everybody. I'm talking today to Jamie Williams. Now, Jamie's a guy who joined the French Foreign Legion. I'll say it just like that because that's what he did. Tough upbringing, traumatic childhood. He loses his dad. Family lives in poverty. He descends into drugs and alcohol. But one day makes the decision he's going to shake all of that off and make life better. How does the French Foreign Legion come up, Jamie? From where do you get that inspiration?
00:10:34
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I've always been an avid watcher of documentaries. Like when I left school, I didn't stop learning. Like I directed my learning to where my interests were. So I've always watched documentaries. I remember seeing a documentary where Bear Grylls joins the legion. So that kind of just sat back in the back of my mind. And I tried to go the traditional route through the Australian Army. And because of my background, my history, yeah, I got denied. Can I interrupt?
00:11:02
Speaker 1: How do they research your history? What do you say?
00:11:07
Speaker 2: Through the psychological interviews. I've always been an honest person. Some people say I'm honest to a false. Like a lot of people that I've spoken to that have joined the Australian Army, they tell me about their past and I sort of, cross-referenced with my parts. And I was like, well, that sounds a lot worse than what I told them. So how did you get accepted? And I didn't. It's because most people don't tell them the truth. I told them more than I needed to, I think.
00:11:30
Speaker 1: What, the alcohol and the drugs? That counted against you?
00:11:33
Speaker 2: Is that what it was? Yeah, part of that, fighting. There was a drink driving charge that was kind of recent at the time as well. I was about 12 months old. So just a combination of things. And I think there was details I was forgetting because I didn't, put as much relevance on it as they may have. So I was getting my, my wires crossed a bit when it came to getting into fights and stuff. I was talking about one fight, but then there was another fight. So they thought I was being evasive when I was just being honest, you know, things I hadn't really thought about in a long time. And they're asking me to have times and dates and specifics on these things. And I was like, well, you know, I don't know. I've put that behind me. I'm trying to look forward.
00:12:13
Speaker 1: Anyway. So you see the document about Bear Grylls. Did he, Did he do the whole, did he actually join the Legion or was it just a television?
00:12:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just for television. So he went through the process. The process he went through was a bit different to my process. He kind of mimics the traditional process, which was in Algeria, I think, the home of the Legion. When I joined, it was all done in France, yeah.
00:12:39
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're inspired by this. What's the next step? I mean, how does a young man go and join the French Foreign Legion? There's a song about that. I'm sure about joining the French Foreign Legion. So you see the documentary. What's the next step?
00:12:54
Speaker 2: Well, there is only one way to join is to buy a plane ticket and go to France and find the regiment. So there's two regiments you can go. There's Fort de Nogent, which is in the north of the country, just east of France.
00:13:07
Speaker 1: Sorry, Paris.
00:13:09
Speaker 2: And then there's Aubagne, which is in the south of France. So, yeah, buy a plane ticket. You jump on a plane and you walk up to either one of those regiments. You hand your passport over and say, I want to join.
00:13:19
Speaker 1: Just like that.
00:13:21
Speaker 2: Just like that. Have a pretty efficient process, I must say, in the Australian military processing. It can take a minimum of six months to process somebody. Whether they're accepted or not can take longer. In France, the France Front Legion, you'll know within two weeks.
00:13:37
Speaker 1: So you just front up. Is it a garrison of some sort? Is it a castle? What are you fronting up to?
00:13:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a military base. It's a big walled structure. They've got buildings that are built into the ground, like bunkers and stuff. It's an old traditional military base, yeah.
00:13:59
Speaker 1: So you're saying, look, I'm Jamie Williams from Australia. Not even. Not even.
00:14:06
Speaker 2: Rock up to the gate. There's the bars. There's the guard there. And you don't know whether he understands English or not. He's staring at you, you're staring at him. You go, I'm here to join the Legion. All he said was one word. He stuck his hand out and he says, passport. Hand over your passport. And he goes, wait. That's it. And it begins.
00:14:24
Speaker 1: And what happens after you wait? How long do you wait for?
00:14:27
Speaker 2: It depends. They've got a room just inside the gate off to the side, which is a cold, dark sort of room. And... If you rock up late at night, they may make you wait all night until the next morning in that room because this is a time for you to sort of let yourself process, do I actually want to be here or not? The longer you sit there, the more time you've got to second guess yourself. So I think a lot of people probably get to that step. They just walk in the gate and sit there for an hour or so and go, no, I'm not ready for this, and they leave. So they make you wait. They let you stress until to see how dedicated you are. So right from the first word, it is a process of trying to weed you out and push you out. You have to prove to them that you want to be there. There's a saying in the Legion that says, you come to us, we didn't come to you.
00:15:18
Speaker 1: Is the French Foreign Legion comprised of all foreigners or are there Frenchmen in there? Foreign Legion?
00:15:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, so as the name says, it's the French Foreign Legion. So it is part of the French military, but it is a separate military from the French military. You've got the French Regulars, which is all French citizens. French Foreign Legion is made up of all foreigners. There are French officers. There are Frenchmen that have criminal records that can't join the French Regulars that do join, but it is majority all foreigners here. When I was there, there was 146 different nationalities. I met people in the Legion. from all over the world that I'd never meet in any other context.
00:15:57
Speaker 1: 140. No, there's so many countries.
00:16:00
Speaker 2: 140.
00:16:00
Speaker 1: Anyway, so you're sitting in this room, this cold room. What happens? Are you whisked away? Are you stripped of all your possessions? Tell us what happens.
00:16:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you just sit there for a bit. I don't know how many hours passed while I was sitting there waiting, waiting, waiting. And they, yeah, out of nowhere, they come and grab you and they take you up and you start a questionnaire. You do basic questions. and see if you are cognitively competent, I guess. There's some people that might rock up and they'll pretty quickly go, no, off you go. So, yeah, then they start going through your kit. They tear your bag apart. They pat you down, search your pockets, ask if you have any weapons like that. And, yeah, they strip you of everything.
00:16:46
Speaker 1: And then what? All your clothes are taken away. Do they outfit you or are they?
00:16:52
Speaker 2: Yeah so and you get given a blue tracksuit uh and then you go into like a barracks room a dormitory room they've got all um bunk beds pretty pretty you know bare rooms um and you wait you wait and you wait and then all of a sudden they come grab you say okay medical so they go and they poke and they prod they do some medicals and off the fuck you go again and then Yeah, throughout the two weeks, you just go through a series every day of different sort of tests. So I think I went to Fort de Mejean myself. I think I was there for a few days, and then they stick you on a bus and send you down to Auburn. Auburn is where you do the proper rest of the process. Auburn is still selection, but it's more intensive selection. That's where you do the bulk of the selection. So after that, when you're actually officially accepted, then you will go to Castellnaudery for basic training.
00:17:50
Speaker 1: Does the selection include a physical component? Do you have to be fit, strong?
00:17:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you do push-ups, pull-ups, you do a beep test.
00:18:01
Speaker 1: How hard was it?
00:18:03
Speaker 2: You need a standard level of fitness to get accepted. Like you can't just walk in off the street. I did prepare for it. I was fit and healthy. There was definitely people that were more fit than me, people that were less fit than me. I was always sort of, In the middle, which is where I wanted to be. Never wanted to get too much attention for being too good or too bad. Yeah, anybody who's put a little bit of effort into health and fitness and exercise should be able to pass their standards.
00:18:26
Speaker 1: Okay, so now you're selected. Now you start basic training. I've done national service and had to do basic training. Have you spoken to soldiers who had to do similar things and how would it compare? How would the French Foreign Legion's basic training compare to the Australian Army?
00:18:44
Speaker 2: I would assume it is very similar in a lot of aspects. You do the basic formations and that sort of stuff. There's a health and fitness aspect to it. From my understanding, there's a large focus on esprit de corps for the Legion because you've got so many people from different nationalities. There's always that friction. People sort of tend to grip off into language groups. So the Russians with the Russians, the English speakers with the English speakers. So it'll be English, Scottish, Irish, Australians, Americans, they'll all sort of group together. So to break that separateness, you'll have to learn the same language, and they focus on joint suffering, I guess. So people bond through joint suffering, so they definitely hammer you until you sort of form bonds with people that you ordinarily probably wouldn't.
00:19:36
Speaker 1: Can you speak French? Did you learn French?
00:19:38
Speaker 2: Oui, bien sûr.
00:19:40
Speaker 1: Moi aussi.
00:19:41
Speaker 2: I would say I'm semi fluent in French. You learn what you need to for the military structure. A lot of it is sort of legion French. I would say it's not civilian French because you've got so many different influences from Polish and Russian and whatnot. There are words that are thrown in there that are not French words, but I thought were French words initially because they're so commonly used. So yeah, for, For military life, when it comes to sit down, stand up, shut up, run, go faster, all these sort of commands, you learn pretty quickly. You quickly learn how limited your French is when you first go out into civilian life and try to have a conversation with the French person. Okay.
00:20:25
Speaker 1: My guest is Jamie Williams. He joined the French Foreign Legion to go to war. He ended up going to war, but there's a lot of drama in the meantime. Back after the break, folks. Welcome back to Conversations, everybody. If you've just tuned in, it's a really interesting chat with a young man called Jamie Williams who had a pretty rough childhood and when he sorted himself out, decided to go and join the French Foreign Legion and you should listen to how he does that. He's been accepted into the Legion. He goes off to do his basic training and we'll pick it up there. So you do your basic training. Can you give us an oversight of just how tough that was in terms of And when you describe it in the book, the arduousness of it picks up every week and the things you are having to do, it sounded pretty tough. Yeah.
00:21:15
Speaker 2: So obviously everybody's sort of out of their element that doesn't speak French. You never really understand 100% of what's happening. You learn to watch the group and just go with the flow. So there's a lot of disorientation, a lot of confusion, confusion. There's the physical side of it. You're up early every day. As soon as you're up, your feet hit the ground running. So there's always that sort of level of anxiety of go, go, go, never relax. You can't speak your own language. You get punished for speaking your own language. So you're struggling to communicate. Yeah, everything has to be perfect. The slightest mistake is punishable by yelling at the minimum. So you're being hit, kicked, shoved. Yeah, it is full on. It's not for, I guess, snowflakes. You've got to really want to be there. There's people there that come from extremely harsh backgrounds and harsh environments, and yeah.
00:22:16
Speaker 1: But you finish basic training and you graduate. Is that the word? I mean, what sort of dropout rate would there be along the way?
00:22:24
Speaker 2: So they have a very big turnover rate because... It is so easy to just kind of disappear. Through basic training, if you want to put your hand up and quit, no problems. You're done. You're out. So there is a very high turnover rate. That's why they have such a quick processing through the selection is because it's like a processing plant. They just churn them in, churn them out because there is such a high dropout rate.
00:22:48
Speaker 1: You get through, you get posted to a regiment. So what are your duties in the regiment? I mean, do they go away? Were they sent away to war?
00:22:56
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I was with the Duesium REI, which is the 2nd Infantry Regiment. So that was the Infantry Regiment. They did posts in Africa a lot. They were in Afghanistan. Just like any infantry unit, they'd get posted to anywhere in the world that required it.
00:23:15
Speaker 1: The thing that puzzled me, Jamie, you're in the French Foreign Legion, you're posted to a battalion, and the next minute you go to London on leave, And you get arrested and you're in jail and you don't come back. I mean, was it as simple as that or as dramatic as that?
00:23:32
Speaker 2: I guess, yes. So I was on the regiment for a while. We did training, like just everyday training, preparing for war like they do. I did specialised training as a squad marksman. That was six weeks. So after that period a little bit, we had 10 days vacancy, So I've been in the Legion for about a bit under 12 months at this stage. We had time off. So my best friend and myself that I was with in the Legion, we both decided to go to London. We were there for a day and a half before I got arrested.
00:24:06
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, you have to explain. You can tell people to read the book. But it seems to me a case of mistaken identity. Your mate who looks similar. dressed similarly, commits a crime, you get arrested for it. Is it as basic as that?
00:24:25
Speaker 2: That's exactly it, yeah. Yeah, we were there together. We got separated for a short period of time. I am oblivious, sitting at a bus stop, staring at a sandwich, thinking if he's not back in the next five minutes, I'm going to eat his bloody sandwich. And the police rock up and point the finger at me and say there's been an attack on a lady in the area and you fit the description. And, yeah, it was all downhill from there.
00:24:47
Speaker 1: But you looked similar with the shaved heads and the clothes you were wearing. And you were in jail for six months while the process took place. Eventually, you are cleared. So what's happening in the meantime? How do you tell the legion that you're in jail, or don't you?
00:25:08
Speaker 2: Well, I don't, yeah. I had no contact. I didn't contact my family. I didn't contact the legion. I sat in prison on remand in London for six months with any contact with the outside world except for my lawyers. So my lawyer had been in prison for a while by the time he actually contacted Legion and notified them to try and get service records as like a character reference for the actual trial. And they just said, yeah, he was here. He served here. We don't release any records because the Legion is very private and secretive that way. They acknowledged that I was there, but they wouldn't give me any other information beyond that. And they said that I've been dismissed because I obviously didn't go back to the regiment on time. So that was it.
00:25:50
Speaker 1: You kicked out of the regiment. You're in jail. You're still confronting court. And there's still some doubt because the girl identifies you in a line-up parade until the photograph is shown of your mate. And she says, no, that's you.
00:26:04
Speaker 2: That's you. Yeah. So she picked me out of a lineup and said that I was the person who attacked her. That was the only piece of evidence that connected me to the crime was her saying it was me. So when it comes full circle to the actual court case, she was handed a photograph of my friend at the time, the person who did it. And she said, yes, this is the person who attacked me. So she's then identified him and myself basically as being the same person. She couldn't differentiate through photographs that it's two different people. So the judge just said, well, that was the only piece of evidence tying it here, so we've got to throw it out.
00:26:42
Speaker 1: So you kicked out of the regiment. How did you feel about that?
00:26:45
Speaker 2: I was furious, yeah. I put everything in it to get there and to have that taken away like that through no fault of my own, yeah, it was crushing.
00:26:59
Speaker 1: So you couldn't rejoin, you couldn't front up and say, explain what had happened and say, I'm here, I'm back.
00:27:05
Speaker 2: Potentially, yeah. But the headspace I was in at that time, I'd just been through the legion process. So selection, which is stressful. Going to the regiment is even more stressful than doing the slash TP training, which was the sniper training, the squad marksman training, which was even more stressful again. So it's just ramping up and up and up. And then prison for six months is an exhausting experience in itself. So by the time I'd just been through all that over the last year and a half and I got freedom and I was out, I just wanted to go home. I was like, I didn't feel like I could face the Legion again. But looking back, I regret not going back to the Legion. Like I should have just gone back in and dealt with whatever was thrown at me. I could potentially have been accepted back in again, but I would have had to have started from the bottom and really, you know, gained every bit of respect back again. And, you know, I just couldn't see myself climbing that hill again at that stage.
00:28:03
Speaker 1: So you've got no money, you ring a friend and they pay your ticket to come home and you land back in Melbourne. What are your prospects?
00:28:13
Speaker 2: Not really. It was a relief to be home at first. I was like, great, I can relax. But I quickly learned that, you know, things weren't, nothing had changed for me back in Australia. You know, I was, The same friends were still there waiting, doing what they were doing and everything like that. And no job prospects, no military.
00:28:33
Speaker 1: You couldn't join the Australian? Did you want to join the Australian Army?
00:28:36
Speaker 2: I did. I tried to. I went through the process again and, yeah, was denied again. So I thought my experience in the Legion would have been a bonus for Nils. Look, I've already got on-the-job training for this job, for this role. I don't think the Australian Army likes that. I thought it was a plus.
00:28:53
Speaker 1: They thought, no. Jamie Williams is my guest, folks. His book is called War Dog and we're skipping over things as we go. Obviously, you have to. The details in the book. But he still gets a chance to go away to war and that gets him into more trouble as well. So back after the break. Jamie Williams is my guest, folks. He's written about his experiences and a wild kid in all sorts of trouble as a kid. Goes to France, joins the French Foreign Legion, goes on leave to London, gets arrested and is in jail for six months before he's exonerated. Comes back to Australia with no prospects, but he's got this experience. He's trained now as a soldier. The Australian Army won't accept him. So what are your prospects? How on earth do you get tied up in this war in the Middle East?
00:29:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I just tried to regain some form of stability. Obviously, I didn't want to go off the rails again. I'd come a long way. So it was a matter of just trying to slowly rebuild again. So I got full-time work. I was working as a security guard. And then, yeah, all the news started coming out about Islamic State, about the atrocities being committed, people getting executed, and the Yazidis being taken as slaves. It dominated the news, and it obviously grabbed my attention, and I followed it very closely. And then, yeah, it was just the anger and whatever that grew inside me, watching this happening and just feeling helpless. And then it got to a certain point where people were starting to volunteer to go over there. And I thought, well, shit, I didn't think this was an option, but now I see it is an option that you can basically just jump on an aeroplane and go volunteer to find a zoning state. Similarly to how I went and joined the Legion. It wasn't a big stretch for me because I've already kind of done something similar.
00:30:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, but when you get on the plane to do that, or try to get on the plane to do that, you're stopped by our customs officials and you're actually charged, aren't you?
00:30:48
Speaker 2: Yes, there's a little bit more to it. Other than that, as I said, I had the experience of jumping on an airplane and going to join the Legion, and that seemed kind of normal to me. So me jumping on an airplane to go and join the YPG, it seemed kind of normal to me. So I didn't take the secrecy as seriously as I should have. So I was stopped at the airport, questions by customs, it all pretty quickly came out what my intentions were. I spoke to the federal police at the airport who were a bit confused as to whether I was breaking the law or not. Obviously, I didn't know. I did what research I could to to find out if it was illegal or not. I didn't find anything. So yeah, I was questioned at the airport, but released again. I wasn't charged or officially arrested like that at the airport. I was requested to go back to the federal police headquarters the next day for a voluntary interview, which I did. So I felt I've got nothing to hide. I'm not doing anything bad here. I'm going to go fight against Islamic extremism and support the good guys. So what do I have to hide? Once again, too honest. And it wasn't for another seven months. until I was actually officially arrested and charged.
00:31:54
Speaker 1: And that's another trauma for everybody. Again, the charges are dropped. Am I right?
00:32:00
Speaker 2: Eventually, yes. So I went through the initial stages of the court process, which is like committal hearings, and they kept sort of getting bounced back. I think there was three or four court appearances where the case hadn't actually proceeded. where the federal police kept on asking, or the DPP, the public prosecutors kept asking for more time to prepare. And yeah, when the judge actually put the hammer down and said, this is the last adjournment, next time you have to be ready to move forward, when that next date came, they dropped the case, they withdrew the charges.
00:32:35
Speaker 1: The book opens your first chapter of the prologue, you're in Raqqa, and we've got you there from court into Raqqa already in a firefight. How dangerous was it?
00:32:44
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, very dangerous. Yeah, there's bullets flying, there's explosions. You've got aircraft circling overhead, dropping bombs and shooting munitions. It was, yeah, as close as you can get to it as possible.
00:32:56
Speaker 1: So how long did you spend there and how do you extract yourself from that?
00:33:00
Speaker 2: So I think there was a long journey from landing in Syria at the academy and actually trying to get to the front line. So I think I was in Raqqa for probably four months until... We got into that sort of situation, which was maybe three months into Raqqa. So we were there for one day. We went there, got there during the day. Then we were ambushed and we lost one of our team members. So we had to try and secure his body back at the location. We waited for nightfall to extract his body, and then we stayed there for the rest of the night until the preceding day.
00:33:36
Speaker 1: Well, how do you come back to normal reality? I mean, Raqqa Falls, they reclaimed the city. ISIS... disappears or doesn't disappear but retreats but then you have to come back we have to get you back to Australia how long before you get back to Australia and how hard is it to settle down after all.
00:33:54
Speaker 2: That so yeah I stayed on for a while after we liberated Raqqa the city was still in ruins the civilians started to return to try and reclaim their houses and rebuild the city and rebuild their lives Islamic State had IEDs planted everywhere So every day we'd hear explosions off in the distance of civilians trying to go home and, you know, just walk into their house and getting blown up from a bomb that was left by ISIS. So me and my team, we started doing demining efforts in Raqqa. So I stayed on and did that for a while. And I eventually decided to leave during December of that year. So I got back to Australia the following January. Yeah, it is not easy. under ideal circumstances, to reintegrate after being in a war situation, let alone the scrutiny of the AFP and everything else that followed that I had to deal with afterwards.
00:34:52
Speaker 1: But you marry, you have kids, and now you've got a normal, can I say normal life? We're jumping, but how did you pick up your life?
00:35:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was completely unexpected. I was expecting to die in Syria. I wasn't expecting to have to come home and do a three-building normal life. But yeah, I was under such scrutiny from the AFP, from the police and everything that I was just kept my head down. I didn't have a passport, so I couldn't travel. That was taken. So I just started slowly rebuilding. I reached out to a friend for a job. He gave me employment and I just started tripping away at it. And eventually I met, you know, the lady who would become my wife. And out of nowhere, we fell in love. And it just grew from there under the, The scrutiny and the what should be everything else with the threat of potentially being arrested.
00:35:41
Speaker 1: How can they take your passport away?
00:35:43
Speaker 2: So they seized it as evidence, physical passport as an item of evidence for the investigation. I was under investigation for nearly 60 years after returning to Australia.
00:35:53
Speaker 1: What did they think you were going to do? They think you were a terrorist when you'd actually been fighting terrorism.
00:35:59
Speaker 2: Well, they shouldn't have thought I was a terrorist because we had the first trial. There was the defence that was put forward. The charges were withdrawn because of the defence, in my opinion, that was put forward, although there was no precedent set. So in my opinion, there was no reason for that six-year investigation besides that being a punishment in itself.
00:36:20
Speaker 1: Would you advise young men to follow the same path?
00:36:23
Speaker 2: Look, I would tell people to follow their conscience. I wouldn't recommend they do it. It's dangerous. It's whatever. But I'm all about freedom. I'm a libertarian. People as adults should be able to make their own choices. So if that's something that somebody seriously believes in and they need it in their soul to volunteer for an effort like that, then that's on them. Everybody should be free to make their own decisions.
00:36:52
Speaker 1: So as you observe the politics of the world today and the insurrection that's all over the place, what are your thoughts? Where is the world going?
00:37:01
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's another difficult thing. Just when I've finally got my shit together and settled down and have a family and everything, you watch the news and it's getting worse and worse and worse. We've got the war in Ukraine and Russia. We've got Iran now. We've got Israel bombing. It's just constant. It's nonstop. And it's hard to not get caught up in the mentality of, We're headed for World War III, nuclear Armageddon, and everything's just going to be burnt to the ground. It's very hard to have a positive view on that. But obviously with the kids, the family, I have to keep it positive and keep it moving forward.
00:37:36
Speaker 1: So as you observe that, where are your allegiances aligned these days?
00:37:39
Speaker 2: My allegiances have always been and will always be with Australia.
00:37:43
Speaker 1: Well done.
00:37:44
Speaker 2: And my family, obviously. My family comes first.
00:37:47
Speaker 1: So how did you meet your wife? So you've come back, you've got all this experience behind you. How do you meet your wife and how does she understand what you've been through?
00:37:56
Speaker 2: So we met through Facebook. My brother and her worked together in the office. She learnt of me through that sort of connection. She reached out to me through Facebook and we just started talking and it grew naturally from there, organically, yeah.
00:38:11
Speaker 1: Is she curious about your background in terms of the ordeals that you've had, the experiences that you've had?
00:38:18
Speaker 2: I mean, not really. I don't think she sees that person in the person she knows. She didn't ask, she didn't pry too much. She was just there. She didn't force anything out of me. She just accepted me for who I was at the time and we built a relationship together. So I think it's been pretty eye-opening and maybe a little bit confronting for her as well to read the story. As I wrote the book, she read chapter by chapter. She's always pushing, I need to I need the next chapter. I have to write the next chapter. I want to know what happens next. So yeah, we don't judge each other for our past. We just accept who we are now and build the future together.
00:38:58
Speaker 1: As I said before, I'm just impressed with how well it's written. Was there much change from what words you wrote to the editorial process, to the editing process? Were your words changed much?
00:39:11
Speaker 2: No, it was mainly just compressed. So I wrote The agreed contract for the book was around 80,000 words, which is a standard length. I wrote 135,000 words. So there's quite a bit that needed to be cut and compressed, but there was no structural issues. There was no... um major sentence you know grammatical sort of stuff that was all line editing and just compression yeah as.
00:39:37
Speaker 1: We're leaving i'll just quote on the back todd with brutal honesty harder and wisdom war dog is jamie's first person reckoning with trauma addiction brotherhood betrayal and survival It charts the full arc of a man forged by fire through childhood wounds, brutal military training, frontline combat, wrongful prosecution, and the long, quiet battle to become a better father, partner, and man. And have you become a better father, partner, and man, Jamie?
00:40:04
Speaker 2: It is an ongoing thing. Every day I try to do better and better. Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely a learning curve. There's hard days, but it's the most rewarding thing I've ever had to do with my life.
00:40:14
Speaker 1: And, you know, the.
00:40:15
Speaker 2: the role I could be most proud of is that of being called dad, yeah.
00:40:19
Speaker 1: Thanks for your time, mate. It's a great read. It's an amazing experience. I don't think I would want to have had it myself, but it's interesting to read about it. All the best with it.
00:40:28
Speaker 2: Thank you. Cheers.
00:40:30
Speaker 1: Jamie Williams was my guest, folk. One Man's Fight Against Inner Demons, ISIS and the Australian Justice System. The book is called War Dog. It is a Hachette publication. Thank you so much for your time.
