Wearing the Green Beret A Canadian with the Royal Marine Commandos

Name: Wearing the Green Beret A Canadian with the Royal Marine Commandos
Price: 8.31 USD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780771068577

ISBN-10: 0771068573

ISBN-13: 9780771068577

Edition: 2012

Authors: Jake Olafsen

List price: $21.00

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Book details

List price: $21.00
Copyright year: 2012
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Publication date: 1/17/2012
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 302
Size: 6.42" wide x 9.09" long x 0.71" tall
Weight: 1.012
Language: English

JAKE OLAFSEN was born and raised on Vancouver Island. After college he worked in the family business in the forest industry. He served with the Canadian Army Reserve for nearly 3 years and helped to battle the B.C. forest fires of 2003. In 2005-2009, Olafsen was a Royal Marine Commando and served 2 tours in Afghanistan. He was most recently in Afghanistan in April 2008, and in total he has spent nearly 14 months in the volatile Helmand province. In 2009, he left the Corps and returned home to Vancouver Island to pursue a career in the international maritime security industry, indulging his passion for mountaineering in his spare time. From the Hardcover edition.



Early Days


I was born in a small town on Vancouver Island off the coast of British Columbia in 1979 and my first home was a cabin surrounded by forests and wildlife. I lived in that little cabin with my mom, my dad, and my brother, who was three years older than me. My dad was building a nice family home on the property and the cabin was just a temporary measure as the house came together. My parents spent a few years in it, I think, but I barely did one. So, living miles away from the nearest town, I grew up playing with slingshots and wooden swords my dad made out of plywood. We had a few pigs and some chickens, and sometimes I couldn't go out to play because of bears or wolves in the yard. I thought it was a fantastic place to live. I was never bored, and my mother made sure that I was on the soccer and T-ball teams or involved with kids' clubs to keep me busy. When I wasn't up to that stuff I was back in the bush, throwing rocks at the snake nest or setting the tent up in the yard to sleep out at night. I loved it.


When I was about six my parents got divorced. My mom and my brother and I moved about fifty miles away to Comox and I had a whole new batch of friends. I was a little farther from the bush than I would have liked, but there were still some parks where I could crawl around in the trees and play soldier with my new mates. My dad had moved up to a more secluded town with plenty of bush around, so when I was visiting him I still managed to get my fill. I got to go fishing and camping, and learned to shoot in the local gravel pits at a young age.


High school came very quickly, and I excelled in every subject. Book work came easily to me and every few months my dreams of what I wanted to do when I grew up changed. Just before graduation we started having interviews and meetings with school and career counsellors about what options we had for the future. I had always thought of a career in the military, and was almost decided that that was what I was going to do. This counsellor who had been assigned to me actually spent most of his time trying to talk me out of it. The counsellor told me it was a horrible career choice, that the military as a whole was a huge waste of taxpayers' money and that no selfrespecting person would serve in the forces. My dad attended one of these meetings and I think he told this guy to piss off and mind his own business and then dragged me out of that office. Thinking back, it frustrates me to think that a professional providing career advice to kids would be so biased and unobjective. A career in the forces is a great option for many young people, and I hope that guy changed his tune over the years.


I couldn't quite make up my mind about what I wanted to do and ended up going to college for a year in my town, taking some general courses that I could use towards university if I decided to go down that road. But I was always a bit hesitant about committing to four years of classrooms so I never did apply to go to university. A year later I moved to Vancouver and enrolled in technical school for two years to study finance. As interesting as the program was, I never fully enjoyed my time there. I was just too much of a small-tow