‘I taught 11,000 people how to put up a stretcher.’ In this week’s episode, the creator of the popular Instagram page Tuesday Night Violence Co. joins us to talk through equipment and gear setup. The creator – CPL Mitchell Clark – is currently posted as the Training Sergeant at 2nd/17th Battalion, Royal New South Wales Regiment (2/17 RNSWR) but spends his spare time providing ‘hot chips’ for diggers on fitness, gear and tactical planning activities. CPL Clark has bounced in-and-out of full-time and part-time service and today he takes us through his philosophy for gear selection and setup and what having his gear squared away does for his mindset.
CPL Clark came to Army with a teaching background and finds real fulfilment in teaching and mentoring diggers as a Junior Non-Commissioned Officer. The Instagram page gives him the ability to reach almost 12,000 followers and he started when he returned from a rewarding deployment to Iraq, trying to work out what was next. He now conducts Research and Development for several different companies, designing gear to improve his DP1 and then thrashing prototypes to help diggers in the battalions spend hard earnt money on excellent equipment.
CPL Clark uses the conditions faced by Lark Force in Rabaul to emphasise that we need to make what we have work, and that our issued gear is world-class and envied by fighters in other nations. When looking at either issued or non-issued equipment, versatility and redundance are the two most important things that must be considered. Versatility so that everything we carry is high value and redundancy to ensure that we can still fight even when things go wrong. We go through packs, sleeping gear, shelter and heaps of other equipment to describe what makes fighters more lethal. We sum up the episode with CPL Clark taking us through three high value items that you should consider when posting into your first unit.
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Subscribe to The Cove Podcast to make sure that you do not miss out on any of the heavy hitting content we have recorded with CPL Clark and many other amazing guests. If you haven’t already done so, go back and listen to Invasion Rabaul and Age in War which CPL Clark recommends in this episode.
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56:46
From Swanbourne to Dili – MAJ Guy Warnock
‘Language leads to culture and then culture leads to understanding.’ In this week’s episode, we talk through what it would be like to deploy to a pacific or southeast Asian nation using Timor as our case study. Our guest – MAJ Guy Warnock– just returned from years in the Defence Cooperation Program (DCP) in Timor-Leste but this is not where his interest in Timor first started. MAJ Warnock deployed to Timor as a Special Forces Operator from the Special Air Service Regiment in the first few months of INTERFET.
MAJ Warnock tells stories about diggers predicting that the Australian Army would end up in Timor years beforehand, troopers itching for any information that they could find before flying into Dili, including learning Bahasa in the halls of Swanbourne Barracks from a tape player and how his force element equipped themselves before deploying. To the soldiers that first deployed to Timor on INTERFET, this was the main event.
Commanders now need to encourage all soldiers to learn a language. Language leads to culture and culture leads to understanding. Allowing soldiers to learn a language like Bahasa or Tetum and then seeking opportunities for them to deploy on Mobile Training Teams or post to DCP will build the soldiers we need for the fighting of tomorrow. Lean into the qualifications, interests and expertise that you already have in your team because you may be surprised at what each member can offer. Make a deliberate effort to force continuity in command. Large changeover of commanders and their staff make it incredibly difficult to build highly functional teams that can deploy into volatile and uncertain countries to either kill the enemy or protect the people of the host nation.
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Subscribe to The Cove Podcast to make sure that you do not miss our second and third episode in the Timor series on Sparrow Force in WWII centred on Ambon in West Timor and Dili in East Timor and on the 2/2 Independent Commando Company mounting a guerrilla campaign in the hills that surround Dili.
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49:51
Special Operations: Mindset for Selection and Beyond – SOCOMD Psychologists Mel & Georgia
Serving in Special Operations Command (SOCOMD) is an aspiration for many and attainable for some. It is a popular choice for ADF members seeking to take their career to the next level and civilians wanting more out of life than a trade or corporate job can offer.
Recruiting is underway to identify the next generation of Special Forces Operators, Engineers, Signallers, Medics and Enablers. Depending on the role, some candidates participate in the Special Forces Selection Course (SFSC) – one of the longest and most gruelling selection courses in the world.
We’ve partnered with the ADF School of Special Operations to produce a series of episodes to give you insights straight from the source. If you’re interested in joining SOCOMD’s units - 1st Commando Regiment, Special Air Service Regiment, 2nd Commando Regiment, Special Operations Engineer Regiment or Special Operations Logistics Squadron then this is the series for you.
This episode features two SOCOMD Psychologists who discuss enhancing mindsets and building mental toughness for the Special Forces Selection Course. Together they possess a wealth of collective experience in SOCOMD and have witnessed first-hand how mental preparation can impact performance on Selection, the Reinforcement Training Cycle and Operations. Their discussion provides helpful strategies to assist candidates when responding to different scenarios during Selection and beyond. The insights they have gained from engaging with successful and unsuccessful candidates provide helpful tips to assist future candidates facing those tough and challenging moments on Selection. The key takeaway - if you are not there at the end of Selection, you won’t have the opportunity to be selected. Therefore, you need to build those mental skills to help you persevere and thrive to the end.
SOCOMD is looking for high calibre individuals who are ready to play a part in cutting-edge warfare now, and into the future. Could it be you?
Find out More: Special Forces Operator - ADF Careers
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53:18
Warrior Culture – MAJGEN Chris Smith
‘Nations that win wars are those that subjugate the individual for the team or more importantly the cause for which you are fighting.’ In this week’s episode, we sit down with the Deputy Chief of Army, MAJGEN Chris Smith to discuss warrior culture. Join us as we try to define the warrior culture that we ought to aspire to in the Australian Army.
Warrior culture, MAJGEN Chris Smith argues, needs to be a culture that wins battles, and by extension wins wars. It must sustain morale and a fighting spirit. It needs to imbue soldiers with the ability to kill. It must be a noble culture with an element of restraint, mirroring the expectations of the society that sends us to protect it. It needs a strong sense of loyalty, loyalty to the government and the cause for which we fight for. It must include an obedience to the lawful orders of the chain of command complimented by a strong sense of discipline.
Many have experienced combat; few have experienced war. Particularly the war we are planning for. War looks more like what was fought in Europe during WW1 or our own experience in the pacific during WWII. When looking for ideals, we ought to question when an individual becomes more obsessed with how they appear, coming up with some sort of call or warrior appearance rather than why they fight. Vanity shows a disrespect for the business we are in.
MAJGEN Chris Smith uses stories from Gladiator, the 1st and 2nd AIF, the story of Achillies and Hector, and the Kibeho Massacre in Rwanda in 1995 to discuss or start to define the needs of a modern warrior culture for the Australian Army. In war, he argues, there exists Sheep, Sheep Dogs and Wolves citing Dave Grossman’s On Killing. In war, we ought to be the Sheep Dogs that protect the Sheep; however, ever present is the tendency to drift into becoming a Wolf.
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Subscribe to The Cove Podcast to make sure that you do not miss out on any of the heavy hitting content we have planned.
The Cove Podcast was given explicit permission to use the snippet of audio that contains the US Army Sergeant Major from The Jedburgh Podcast. To listen to the full episode, listen to The Jedburgh Podcast Episode #143: There’s No Do-overs In The Next Fight – Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer
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1:01:43
When the Peace Ends: 12 Months as a UN Observer – MAJ Mick Evans and CAPT Rhys Turner
‘You can’t discern where [the rockets were] actually landing and by night, the noise is enveloping.’ In this week’s episode, we talk about the conflict in Israel, Lebanon and Syria with two people that were on the ground on October 7th, 2023. Our guests – MAJ Mick Evans and CAPT Rhys Turner – talk us through their deployment on OPERATION PALADIN and what it was like being there when thousands of rockets started flying.
OPERATION PALADIN is the Australian Defence Force support to the UN Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO), whose activities are spread across Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syrian Arab Republic. Both guests deployed for a lengthy 12-month stint, with MAJ Mick Evans spending his time in Syria and CAPT Rhys Turner spending his time in Israel and then southern Lebanon. We explore the geo-political situation in one of the most complex regions and conflicts in the world, attempting to unpack everything that they both learnt over their long deployments.
We talk to the training they received at the Peace Operations Training Centre, their infiltration into what was intended to be a ‘normal’ deployment, what happen on and after October 7th and the varying conditions within each country. Rhys observed the Israeli mobilisation where thousands of troops were mobilised and moved throughout the country. Mick was at an Observation Post that had rockets flying over the top of his position, dropping short some 600m from their position.
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Subscribe to The Cove Podcast to make sure that you do not miss out on any of the heavy hitting content we have planned.
The Cove Podcast aims to explore all aspects of Professional Military Education within the Australian Army. From short tips and soldier's fives to interviews of Army personnel on operations, find out how the men and women of today's Australian Army work towards professional excellence.
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