This is me on an exercise with the Foreign Legion. I was 20 and full of optimism about life and the world. Note the lack of cam. The frogs thought camouflage was too intimidating for the general public, and so didn't issue it. From that type of attitude you can extrapolate the standard of their troops. The long wire sticking up behind my rifle is the antenna of my radio. It was huge, looked like a big green telephone, and if you wore it slung the wrong way you transmitted constantly, wrecking the entire network...

This is more like it. A few years later, in the 'J', on ops...but where is my weapon? Answer, it was a humanitarian operation, so we were dropped in unannounced by helo into a Nicaraguan village. The locals spoke Mesquite, and some Spanish. Translation was left to me, cutting my troop officer out of the loop. I became good friends with the local head honcho whilst there, oversaw the food distribution, and generally had a great time.

An early photo of a young Kobrateam. We arranged a climbing holiday in the Alps on impulse and were in France the next weekend. It was cold, we had shovels as ice-picks, and Dom had a crappy 3-season bag, whilst I had my luxury tog 20 down 5 season bag...we had no tent either, and it was too cold to for Dom to sleep. But being a true Kobrateam member, he didn't disturb my beauty sleep with his misery.

Of course its not all hard work in Kobrateam. We do take a break from our tiring missions (playing Rogue Spear). Here Dom, who is actually a fucking good cook, throws together some scran. The camera flash has illuminated the scene; its actually very dark, hence the torch-in-mouth.

The best day of my life, sincerely. We got married on August first, 1998, in the garden of our summer house in Sweden. It was a perfect day, pretty much exactly as K and I had wanted. All of my friends were there, eg Dom.

You've got to come full circle some day. At last Tanya Badman managed to make an 'honest' man of Dom. (or so she thinks). Kobrateam is getting old, average age is now a shocking over thirty. Dom's even bringing another Kobrateam member into this world soon, to carry on the tradition. Dom and Tanya got married in June of 2001.