Dean Stott on Growing up in a Military Family – Jocko Willink

dean thanks for coming thanks for coming aboard no pleasure having me it’s been a long time that we have been getting requests to have a brit on here so you’re the you’re the first well we had we had one photographer who had been to iraq but i think you’re our first british military person and there’s been a lot of requests oh brilliant great so glad glad to have you here man yeah no pressure yeah the whole the whole nation is riding on on your shoulders so um that’s the that’s the beginning of this book and the beginning of the book starts off it’s sort of the middle of your your operational career when you talk about the military operations and then civilian operations but i guess we should start at the beginning i always like to start at the beginning of you know where you came from and and how you ended up in this particular situation in life and um yeah let’s get to it yeah so i was um i was born into military family my father he was in the royal engineers and um so very much immersed in that in that environment and i grew up in a town called aldershot which was the home of the british army so it’s just airborne heavy you had two parallel you had free paradis i’d never even heard of the royal marines or the special boat services i mean it was just sas and airborne um my father and my mother they ended up splitting up when i was quite a young age by the age of eight my mother um left my father and took me and my sisters to manchester up north and we ended up in a homeless home in moss side and moss side back in the 80s was the roughest estate in the whole of the uk now now when brits say a state yeah we see when americans say a state they’re thinking of like a country of state big houses when brits say a state you’re talking about the ghetto yes it is a ghetto yeah and it’s it’s a government housing right is that what isn’t a government housing estate that’s where the word estate comes from yeah they call them council estates and yeah obviously to get your your name on on the housing market you have to then go into a homeless home so that’s what we did we ended up in a homeless shelter in moss side and you know i was the only white me and my sisters the only caucasians in in the area so we were attracting attention from an early start the you know this soon ended up with me learning how to fight with my fist quite early you know protecting my sisters in in in the school playground actually i ended up having to leave that school because there’s too many fighting and we moved to another another place within manchester my mother we then got housing my father however used to travel up and pick us up every other weekend it’s about 240 mile drive one way and take us back down me and my father were very close my sister was very close to my mother and three years later my father got custody you know of me and my sisters um wow that’s that is that heart i mean america it’s pretty hard for uh especially a military dude to get custody yeah over the mom yeah no there was i think obviously you know he he put his career on pause he got promoted to a regimental sound major and was posted to germany and he said no i want to stay in uk i want to look after my kids and so he put his whole career online and i think the judge at the time um didn’t want the siblings splitting up you know didn’t want like two sisters being in manchester and the sun down south so the judge said no the children made the decision and being the eldest at the age about 10 and a half i had to make that quite hard decision and say no i want to live live with my father and he he got custody and i and you know even to the day i remember the day that my mum dropped us off and the reaction she saw when my father took us away you know that sticks with you something something like that but for me we moved back down to older shots and you know i’m very close to my father i never actually wanted to pursue a career in the military myself i actually always wanted to be a fireman um but we we grew up around there but my dad is he was he was a scotsman he was old school sergeant major he was old school uh through and through and i remember finishing like junior school and we went on to what you call high school secondary school and so this is what age what age is this well i would have been about 13 at this age so at 13 you’re you’ve been living with your dad for a few years now and you’re seeing the military but you’re still not quite you’re not quite um like enthralled by it yeah yeah as i say when i was immersed that our school playground uh was where the red devils used to take off which is the um the british parachute and freefall teams every day you’d see the parachutes the guys would be walking around in their their uniforms in their maroon berets and it was just it was almost like the the norm living in older shots so um but my father was now going to transition out the military my father his career wasn’t very um he was more sports he was what we would call a track suit soldier he was very good at a sport and and soccer was his so he was the army manager coach and player so i very rarely saw my father in green kit you know as more track suits trainers and on the football pitch so i didn’t really know much about the military and and the layout of the military and um was he going on deployments uh he he went on deployments to like norman island um but that was but when he then got custody of the kids you know that obviously stopped him going on on any deployments and this was a period of time actually you know the last conflict was 1982 which was was the falcon so there was a dry period up until now we had the gulf war in 91 but that was still to come actually i was two years two years later so other than northern ireland there wasn’t really any sort of overseas deployment so it didn’t didn’t really affect him going away um but he was now coming to the end of his career and transitioning to civvy street so growing up in older shot in these military schools um he then decided to put me in secondary school in a local town it’s called north camp um but being old school my my my father dressed me up day one in a blazer carrying like a a briefcase a leather briefcase you know it wasn’t even real leather that’s what i was more upset about um but my hair was was a crew cut you know rather than going downtown and paying for a normal haircut my father would take me to camp and just put me in straight at the front of the queue with all the recruits and that’s legit yeah so i really stood out when i turned up at school day one i i stood out wait so is this school what kind of is this school like a pr what we call in america a private school where you have to pay to go to or what was different no it was a public school but it wasn’t in a military town it was next to the military town so the children that went there their parents weren’t from the military because it was so close to aldershot there was a lot of rivalry between and so the haircut just just i just stood out and um yeah unfortunately a week later i got suspended from that school for fighting like were you just an angry youth or what no i just think i’ll just put in some really awkward positions and and that that being one but i always remember my father i know you guys do brazilian jiu jitsu you know my father again always taught me to fight with my fists and as soon as the guy we call that scottish jiu-jitsu but as soon as the opponent’s down that’s it you you know you stop you’ve got the bear of them and um there’s no like follow-up like there isn’t nowadays so i i was so nervous when i got home and and i sort of left there left a letter on the table and quickly ran upstairs to the toilet and my father could you know screams out my name and um i come down and his his one question was did you did you hit him when he was down i said no he said that’s fine and then i had to i then explained to him i said look you dressed me in this this and he he just fought he was doing good by me when in fact he was bringing too far too much attention um we then left actually not long a few months after that and moved out into the country um totally away from any sort of military town and and that was almost the start for me that was the start of a new life you know i’d left that military background behind me um so how old are you now i’m probably about 14 now right on and and then you get to where where where did you move to when you got this new start so it moved to uh into surrey so it’s just south of london but it’s um more very very green um you know the country the country exactly and now did you uh how was that was that like uh you said it was a new start because you’re able to fit in a little bit better your dad didn’t shave your head to send you to school yeah exactly there was no military barbers but it was also that no one could judge you you sort of left your your past behind you you know manchester fighting and um you know it’s almost like this is the baseline you start from now so um and again it was actually nice to um socialize with kids whose parents weren’t in is learning stuff that was out that military lifestyle you know all my friends back in older shot their dads were all airborne because my dad wasn’t they called him a hat you know i mean it was just like he didn’t have any of that i didn’t have to prove anything to them or or feel like you know you know because your father’s career you’re you’re part of that and that’s what older shot was like it was like what ranks your father is he para is he not and he’s like oh god i had a friend who was uh who is australian sas and he was saying you know him and his wife we were talking and he was like they’re they have an expression it was like oh their wife wears the rank of the family so it’s like oh you know he’s lieutenant colonel who are you it sounds like but i can’t imagine little kids telling me my dad’s not airborne oh yeah that’s great why they call him a hat uh it’s just saying that the parachute regiment call them ha i don’t know we say helly airborne troop but it’s it’s not they just call them a hat because they they don’t have the maroon berry and then you know some of the army commandos also take on that terminology and call them call them hats or screamers we in the army the american army they call someone that’s not airborne a leg and it’s said with such disdain i remember when i went to airborne schools i commit you nasty leg and then in the the in the navy the the aviation guys people that are in helicopters or jets or whatever planes they wear brown shoes it’s part of their uniforms so they call in a derogatory way they call anybody that’s not a brown shoe which no one’s used that term but they call everyone else a black shoe and so then in the teams we take that one step further and like the derogatory who’s that guy some shoe came over and told us we couldn’t wear that whatever so that’s uh it’s funny how you get these little little little words that stick but hat yeah hat is the parachute regiment and then the marines obviously from the army it’s pongo you’re little kids telling you your dad’s a hat yeah yeah and again no wonder you had to fight on a regular basis yeah if it was airborne i probably been alright and then so so so you end up in in surrey yeah you’re in the country do you feel like your life’s taken a better direction so your dad was a good great athlete apparently did you inherit that athleticism and love for the game i did yeah i think that’s where you know i’m very competitive i like to compete and i i think that’s you know from my father you know even to on christmas day with the board game it got that competitive um you you had to win you know and um you know so i did inherit that that from him um sport wise i and i i followed in his footsteps you know played uh played football as well i wasn’t great at sport but i just tried everything you know i was very fortunate at school i ended up getting sports personality of the year award which sounds amazing yeah but i wasn’t the best at football i wasn’t the best at rugby you know i just helped out you know if they said right we need someone on the basketball team well i don’t really know basketball but but i would step in so so i sort of ins had that from my father but um and i think that’s what helped later on in the military career you know i always found myself competing with others or having to prove prove a point or be an ambassador well that’s two different things actually prove a point or be an ambassador yeah i don’t know how that’s that’s like that’s two different things right if i’m trying to prove a point that’s one thing if i’m trying to be it’s like one’s gonna come at you the ambassador is gonna be cool so you found that nice like middle ground between those two things yeah well i found myself that you know when you’re in the army and you you are working alongside marines you’re an ambassador for your cat batch if that makes sense you know what i mean and then when you go to the sbs from the army you’re an ambassador for the for the british army when you’re on jocko’s podcast and you’re the first british guy you’re an ambassador to the british army so i was proving a point to myself into them but almost representing your unit or your cat batch