1
00:01:09,570 --> 00:01:11,238
We need sandbag...

2
00:01:12,114 --> 00:01:15,034
to stop water coming in,
and we need a generator...

3
00:01:16,285 --> 00:01:17,912
to pump water out.

4
00:01:18,663 --> 00:01:20,289
And we need to do it quick.

5
00:01:20,915 --> 00:01:24,085
If they've gone this way, no,
they die already.

6
00:01:28,715 --> 00:01:30,299
They know what to do, yeah?

7
00:01:49,110 --> 00:01:51,904
The boys,
aged between 11 and 16 years old,

8
00:01:51,988 --> 00:01:53,906
are all members of a Thai soccer team.

9
00:01:54,156 --> 00:01:58,160
They became stranded in the dark tunnels
after a sudden and continuous downpour

10
00:01:58,410 --> 00:01:59,620
blocked all exits.

11
00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:06,460
This rain is gonna get worse and worse

12
00:02:06,543 --> 00:02:08,671
and worse as the months go by,
four months of monsoon.

13
00:02:08,838 --> 00:02:12,549
It will flood out that cave system,
so there will be no hope of getting out

14
00:02:12,633 --> 00:02:14,218
if we don't get them out very soon.

15
00:02:49,503 --> 00:02:51,672
Before they went into the cave complex,

16
00:02:51,798 --> 00:02:54,008
they were planning to celebrate
a birthday party,

17
00:02:54,091 --> 00:02:55,718
and that's what the boys were doing

18
00:02:55,802 --> 00:02:59,305
when they found suddenly
it was raining heavily outside the cave

19
00:02:59,388 --> 00:03:02,349
and the water level inside
started increasing.

20
00:05:14,106 --> 00:05:15,942
I've been involved very heavily

21
00:05:16,025 --> 00:05:17,860
with the exploration of the cave,

22
00:05:18,652 --> 00:05:20,988
that's how I became known as

23
00:05:21,405 --> 00:05:23,950
you know, locally,
the crazy foreign caver.

24
00:05:24,116 --> 00:05:25,117
Here's the junction.

25
00:05:25,284 --> 00:05:28,204
When I first started exploring
the Tham Luang system,

26
00:05:28,287 --> 00:05:30,873
it was just
over six-and-a-half kilometers long.

27
00:05:31,123 --> 00:05:34,168
Over the years,
we've extended it to ten kilometers.

28
00:05:34,376 --> 00:05:39,256
And today it's the fourth longest
cave system in Thailand.

29
00:05:39,423 --> 00:05:42,801
Tham Luang is made up
of three main passages.

30
00:05:42,969 --> 00:05:47,514
One runs from the entrance to Sam Yaek,
known as the T-junction.

31
00:05:47,639 --> 00:05:49,850
Water had come in
from the right-hand branch,

32
00:05:49,934 --> 00:05:51,602
and it blocked their route out.

33
00:05:52,103 --> 00:05:56,190
So, the boys weren't actually missing,
they were trapped.

34
00:06:22,508 --> 00:06:25,302
The Navy SEALs, with, uh, respect,

35
00:06:25,386 --> 00:06:28,055
you know, they're a strong
disciplined outfit,

36
00:06:28,180 --> 00:06:34,979
but cave diving needs specific skills
and specific types of equipment.

37
00:06:46,949 --> 00:06:48,700
We went to what we call the "war room."

38
00:06:48,993 --> 00:06:54,581
I waited for Governor Narongsak.
And in my normal blunt way, said to him,

39
00:06:54,665 --> 00:06:58,002
"Sir, you have one chance at this rescue."

40
00:06:58,335 --> 00:07:02,339
I told him that we need
expert cave divers out here.

41
00:07:03,340 --> 00:07:07,594
He showed this note
to the Minister of Interior...

42
00:07:08,512 --> 00:07:12,058
saying these are the best cave divers
in the world.

43
00:07:36,415 --> 00:07:38,042
Get the smile on, Mr. Stanton.

44
00:07:42,213 --> 00:07:46,342
- Yep. How many?
- Two please, and quite a thick one.

45
00:07:47,551 --> 00:07:50,262
That's it, perfect. That's four quid.

46
00:08:00,397 --> 00:08:04,026
When I see a dark space in a cave,
it fascinates me.

47
00:08:04,276 --> 00:08:06,695
It's like, I wonder what's there.

48
00:08:07,279 --> 00:08:13,285
To most people, it's an alien environment.
It's dark, it could be claustrophobic.

49
00:08:14,495 --> 00:08:16,247
To most people, that would be a disaster,

50
00:08:16,330 --> 00:08:22,086
but this is the strange world that
I enjoy. Caving, cave diving.

51
00:08:23,837 --> 00:08:26,590
You can look at a cave in two ways.
You could say,

52
00:08:26,673 --> 00:08:29,510
I'm under hundreds of feet
and tons and tons of rock,

53
00:08:29,635 --> 00:08:30,969
my life's in danger.

54
00:08:31,470 --> 00:08:36,642
Or you can say, my world
is this small passage, actually it's okay.

55
00:08:38,269 --> 00:08:39,954
I think this is actually
just a cunning ploy...

56
00:08:39,978 --> 00:08:42,058
For people of my generation
in the cave diving world,

57
00:08:42,106 --> 00:08:44,108
Rick and John, you know,
they're sort of like

58
00:08:44,191 --> 00:08:46,568
the figureheads, the idols to us.

59
00:08:48,779 --> 00:08:51,490
The first time I dived with Rick
was in this cave in New Zealand

60
00:08:51,573 --> 00:08:52,949
called the Pearse Resurgence,

61
00:08:53,033 --> 00:08:55,494
which is an extraordinarily
intimidating place.

62
00:08:55,577 --> 00:09:00,040
It's really deep, it's freezing cold,
it's black, like, it soaks up your light.

63
00:09:00,124 --> 00:09:02,284
And I'd heard about the famous
Rick Stanton, of course.

64
00:09:02,334 --> 00:09:06,088
But he turns up with this dry suit
that looks like it's 50 years old

65
00:09:06,172 --> 00:09:09,508
and he's got this homemade harness
with a big lump of lead

66
00:09:09,591 --> 00:09:13,637
between his shoulder blades
that are sort of sticky taped on.

67
00:09:14,054 --> 00:09:16,390
And he's got a homemade
side mount rebreather.

68
00:09:16,473 --> 00:09:18,767
I mean, both those words are terrifying.

69
00:09:22,313 --> 00:09:25,232
The side mount rebreather
was made from scratch

70
00:09:25,316 --> 00:09:27,443
because there wasn't such
a thing available.

71
00:09:28,235 --> 00:09:32,698
All the components were made by me
on a lath or a mill.

72
00:09:35,617 --> 00:09:39,121
And so, Rick, using
this extraordinary bit of homemade kit...

73
00:09:39,871 --> 00:09:44,126
jumped in the cave
and casually swims down to a new record.

74
00:09:46,378 --> 00:09:48,046
And we're all just going, "Far out,

75
00:09:48,130 --> 00:09:50,382
there's no way
I'll ever be like that guy."

76
00:09:54,553 --> 00:10:00,976
John and I have been involved
in some very significant caving events,

77
00:10:01,227 --> 00:10:03,770
which could take you right to the edge.

78
00:10:04,938 --> 00:10:06,857
And just going to those places...

79
00:10:08,234 --> 00:10:10,402
you can't fail to have a bond.

80
00:10:13,113 --> 00:10:15,741
John's one of these people
that's done a lot of activities,

81
00:10:15,824 --> 00:10:19,661
and does them
all with a huge degree of success.

82
00:10:20,329 --> 00:10:23,749
First it was marathons,
then he got on to ultramarathons.

83
00:10:25,292 --> 00:10:28,920
Very competent climber.
Really good kayaker.

84
00:10:30,797 --> 00:10:32,716
Doing all of these dangerous things,

85
00:10:32,883 --> 00:10:35,636
has that made relationships
difficult for you?

86
00:10:36,011 --> 00:10:37,095
Well, I wouldn't...

87
00:10:37,179 --> 00:10:40,015
Just because an activity
is seen as dangerous

88
00:10:40,266 --> 00:10:42,934
doesn't mean to say that you do it
in a dangerous manner.

89
00:10:43,059 --> 00:10:46,313
But to answer your question,
probably yes.

90
00:11:44,746 --> 00:11:46,665
I don't know how to explain this.

91
00:11:48,124 --> 00:11:49,710
Did you fall in love?

92
00:11:50,043 --> 00:11:51,044
Yes.

93
00:12:27,789 --> 00:12:30,792
Amp called me and she said,
"Have you heard?

94
00:12:31,918 --> 00:12:34,630
"There's a football team
trapped in a cave."

95
00:12:45,307 --> 00:12:47,067
I was thinking
this has actually got our name

96
00:12:47,100 --> 00:12:48,226
all over it.

97
00:12:48,477 --> 00:12:51,647
We realized that we had a contact
on the ground,

98
00:12:51,938 --> 00:12:56,151
a British guy, Vern Unsworth.
He knew the cave very, very well.

99
00:12:56,402 --> 00:13:01,823
Vern had got the critical note
to the Thai Minister of Tourism and Sport.

100
00:13:02,449 --> 00:13:05,035
Vern rang and said,
"You're coming to Thailand

101
00:13:05,160 --> 00:13:07,371
and you're on the half-past nine flight
that night."

102
00:13:07,496 --> 00:13:08,830
They flew us out business class,

103
00:13:08,914 --> 00:13:12,334
which was quite an experience.
I quite liked that.

104
00:13:13,502 --> 00:13:15,671
That was great,
because we are volunteers,

105
00:13:15,754 --> 00:13:16,755
we don't get paid.

106
00:13:18,298 --> 00:13:20,634
We arrived in Chiang Rai airport.

107
00:13:22,386 --> 00:13:26,515
There was a big sign-up that said,
"Welcome to the World's Best Cave Divers."

108
00:13:27,057 --> 00:13:29,976
And we were marched out to this sign
and had to pose in front of it.

109
00:13:30,811 --> 00:13:32,479
All very embarrassing.

110
00:13:42,322 --> 00:13:45,367
When we arrived at the cave site,
there was complete chaos.

111
00:13:47,578 --> 00:13:49,258
I've had a full career
in the fire service,

112
00:13:49,287 --> 00:13:53,375
I've been to big incidents,
I've seen chaos, but not to this scale.

113
00:13:56,545 --> 00:14:00,882
We were followed around by press cameras,
there were rescue people everywhere.

114
00:14:02,050 --> 00:14:04,344
Where's the people
that are supposed to be leading us?

115
00:14:05,345 --> 00:14:07,305
Somehow we managed to find Vern.

116
00:14:07,848 --> 00:14:09,516
He said they'd seen the cave

117
00:14:09,725 --> 00:14:12,352
progressively flood
in the last three days.

118
00:14:12,936 --> 00:14:15,689
Just too much flow.
It was a difficult time.

119
00:14:16,398 --> 00:14:17,983
Some people were thinking,

120
00:14:18,066 --> 00:14:21,903
"Are their kids still alive?"
You know, "Where can they be?"

121
00:14:22,779 --> 00:14:26,074
We decided that we wanted to go in
and see as much as possible

122
00:14:26,157 --> 00:14:27,534
before it flooded further.

123
00:14:28,535 --> 00:14:31,872
As we walked in the entrance chamber,
which was a huge chamber,

124
00:14:31,955 --> 00:14:36,960
there were electric lights blazing,
hoses, pumps and telephone wires.

125
00:14:37,085 --> 00:14:40,046
Although the governor
was in charge of the incident,

126
00:14:40,171 --> 00:14:44,468
he had devolved all responsibility
for the diving to the Navy SEALs,

127
00:14:44,635 --> 00:14:46,904
and they were very clear
that they wouldn't let us go in the water.

128
00:14:46,928 --> 00:14:49,848
Our area of expertise is different.

129
00:14:49,931 --> 00:14:53,018
At that point,
it's really not safe to go in.

130
00:14:53,143 --> 00:14:57,856
The UK team still insisted.
It got quite heated.

131
00:14:59,190 --> 00:15:01,359
You understand
there are 13 children...

132
00:15:01,443 --> 00:15:02,963
- I don't care, okay?
- ...in the cave?

133
00:15:04,029 --> 00:15:06,239
The argument went all the way up top.

134
00:15:07,741 --> 00:15:09,576
He actually told the UK guy,

135
00:15:09,660 --> 00:15:12,996
"If you die in there,
don't expecting us to go fetch your body."

136
00:15:13,955 --> 00:15:17,125
If you are the Thai Navy SEALs,
and suddenly,

137
00:15:17,208 --> 00:15:20,336
two scruffy-looking,
middle-aged men turn up,

138
00:15:20,420 --> 00:15:22,756
I can see how that really is a bad...

139
00:15:23,674 --> 00:15:25,467
start to a relationship.

140
00:15:29,971 --> 00:15:33,725
When we got out, it really was raining.
Absolute monsoon on steroids.

141
00:15:35,018 --> 00:15:38,354
We were taken back to the hotel
in the back of an open pickup.

142
00:15:39,189 --> 00:15:41,942
Literally cowering behind the cab
to try and get out of the rain.

143
00:15:43,276 --> 00:15:45,654
John and I had to share a double bed.

144
00:15:46,488 --> 00:15:47,906
We...

145
00:15:49,365 --> 00:15:52,285
One... We did top and tail.

146
00:16:01,753 --> 00:16:05,549
So, the next morning, John and I
set off from the entrance chamber

147
00:16:05,882 --> 00:16:08,844
with all our equipment,
our cylinders on our harness.

148
00:16:09,135 --> 00:16:11,012
Nobody came in the cave with us.

149
00:16:15,100 --> 00:16:17,185
Only 200 meters from the entrance,

150
00:16:17,686 --> 00:16:20,731
the water met the rock
and it was a proper sump dive.

151
00:16:26,653 --> 00:16:30,240
From the entrance chamber,
now to the second and third chamber,

152
00:16:30,323 --> 00:16:32,618
was a river, a raging river.

153
00:16:48,341 --> 00:16:50,844
So, the term I would use
is "white water caving."

154
00:16:58,852 --> 00:17:00,353
Very poor visibility.

155
00:17:01,437 --> 00:17:03,565
Really brown, really chocolaty brown.

156
00:17:04,650 --> 00:17:08,862
There's a ton of man-made hazards as well.
Telephone wire...

157
00:17:09,780 --> 00:17:11,657
cables. All sorts of things.

158
00:17:35,556 --> 00:17:38,266
We surfaced
in what became known as "Chamber Three."

159
00:17:49,152 --> 00:17:52,113
We thought
we'd found four of the football team.

160
00:18:02,916 --> 00:18:06,962
They were pump workers.
They had been asleep on the sandbank,

161
00:18:07,045 --> 00:18:10,590
missed the evacuation
and got flooded into the cave.

162
00:18:10,674 --> 00:18:12,258
And nobody knew they were missing.

163
00:18:14,845 --> 00:18:17,198
We didn't know if that chamber
was going to flood completely

164
00:18:17,222 --> 00:18:18,724
in hours or minutes.

165
00:18:18,890 --> 00:18:21,685
We needed to dive
these four guys out immediately.

166
00:18:26,022 --> 00:18:29,234
They were terrified,
but they didn't have another option.

167
00:18:31,987 --> 00:18:35,031
We just gave them a regulator
from one of the cylinders

168
00:18:35,115 --> 00:18:36,574
that was still attached to us.

169
00:18:42,998 --> 00:18:45,083
So, we have to keep them very close to us

170
00:18:45,208 --> 00:18:47,269
or the regulator in their mouth
is going to be pulled out

171
00:18:47,293 --> 00:18:49,014
and they're not going to be able
to breathe.

172
00:18:54,592 --> 00:18:57,721
It's highly disorientating being led,

173
00:18:57,804 --> 00:18:59,597
basically blind, underwater.

174
00:19:01,474 --> 00:19:03,559
It was quite brutal,
they were banging their heads,

175
00:19:03,643 --> 00:19:05,747
we were moving them around,
trying to find the right hole

176
00:19:05,771 --> 00:19:06,772
for them to go through.

177
00:19:12,152 --> 00:19:14,362
All of the pump workers reacted the same,

178
00:19:14,821 --> 00:19:16,948
the second they thought
they were under airspace,

179
00:19:17,115 --> 00:19:19,409
they kind of bolted up
without any thought.

180
00:19:40,596 --> 00:19:43,224
I described it
as an underwater wrestling match.

181
00:19:52,442 --> 00:19:54,277
After getting the pump workers out

182
00:19:54,360 --> 00:19:56,279
we didn't turn around
and go back in the cave,

183
00:19:56,362 --> 00:19:57,530
it was too dangerous.

184
00:19:59,783 --> 00:20:01,701
The four water workers,
they were underwater

185
00:20:01,785 --> 00:20:04,245
for only 30, 40 seconds...

186
00:20:04,788 --> 00:20:06,998
but they still panicked
and they were adults.

187
00:20:08,124 --> 00:20:10,961
Now, we were talking
about a group of children.

188
00:20:11,252 --> 00:20:14,380
We didn't think it was possible for us
to dive the children out.

189
00:20:15,090 --> 00:20:18,218
Even if they were alive,
it can't be done.

190
00:20:19,594 --> 00:20:21,930
Now, what the hell are we gonna do now?

191
00:20:37,237 --> 00:20:39,072
The Thais were all praying

192
00:20:39,155 --> 00:20:41,407
for success in the mission.

193
00:20:41,783 --> 00:20:47,122
They believed that success could only come
if they had the permission

194
00:20:47,205 --> 00:20:48,999
from the guardian spirit.

195
00:20:50,250 --> 00:20:54,045
I know as soon as I got down,
I had to pay respects to those shrines.

196
00:22:05,241 --> 00:22:08,119
It has been
seven days since this team of 12 Thai boys

197
00:22:08,203 --> 00:22:11,372
and their football coach has been missing
in this vast cave complex.

198
00:22:11,456 --> 00:22:13,541
Water levels in the cave have been rising,

199
00:22:13,624 --> 00:22:16,836
going up overnight
by six inches every hour.

200
00:22:16,920 --> 00:22:19,255
High water levels
have made the search very challenging,

201
00:22:19,339 --> 00:22:22,342
but divers use huge pumps
to reduce some of that water.

202
00:22:44,822 --> 00:22:46,741
Now, volunteers have been traveling

203
00:22:46,824 --> 00:22:49,285
to northern Thailand
to help with the rescue operation.

204
00:22:49,369 --> 00:22:51,496
This has become,
really, a worldwide rescue effort.

205
00:22:51,579 --> 00:22:55,208
Volunteers from Europe,
Australia, Asia and the U.S.

206
00:23:26,156 --> 00:23:30,826
Today, I am training
in the Khao Yai National Park.

207
00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:54,976
- You need gasoline for...
- One thousand...

208
00:24:00,481 --> 00:24:03,234
That evening,
we met the American military

209
00:24:03,318 --> 00:24:05,195
who had deployed from Japan.

210
00:24:07,072 --> 00:24:09,949
Rick and John
were very laid back, you know?

211
00:24:10,283 --> 00:24:12,785
They were definitely not
what you're used to seeing

212
00:24:12,868 --> 00:24:16,414
in the military.
Shorts and flip flops and T-shirts.

213
00:24:17,748 --> 00:24:19,101
But, as I started speaking with them,

214
00:24:19,125 --> 00:24:21,836
I realized that they were very,
very highly skilled.

215
00:24:22,253 --> 00:24:26,007
I had gone in myself to Chamber Three
where I had to do a couple of short dives,

216
00:24:26,174 --> 00:24:29,135
but I was thinking to myself,
"Man, this is absolutely horrible."

217
00:24:29,385 --> 00:24:33,598
I remember John kind of laughed at me
because he knew the next question I had,

218
00:24:33,723 --> 00:24:35,516
"Why would someone do this for fun?"

219
00:24:38,061 --> 00:24:40,438
Cave diving for me is relaxing.

220
00:24:41,231 --> 00:24:42,857
Nobody tells you what to do...

221
00:24:43,608 --> 00:24:46,611
your time is your own.
It's very liberating.

222
00:24:46,694 --> 00:24:49,989
But having said that, most of the time
it is jumping into a muddy hole.

223
00:24:50,073 --> 00:24:51,241
That's exactly right.

224
00:25:01,834 --> 00:25:05,213
Caving is clearly
about the exploration side of it.

225
00:25:07,548 --> 00:25:09,967
Some of the dives we do,
you could be hours in,

226
00:25:10,176 --> 00:25:14,389
totally reliant on artificial light,
artificial heating.

227
00:25:15,556 --> 00:25:17,142
It's like being in space.

228
00:25:18,059 --> 00:25:20,478
Probably the purest adventure
you could have.

229
00:25:24,899 --> 00:25:28,653
It takes a peculiar type of person
to be a cave diving explorer.

230
00:25:34,742 --> 00:25:37,370
What makes someone want to be
an explorer?

231
00:25:38,371 --> 00:25:42,500
I think it's two parts ego,
one part curiosity,

232
00:25:43,251 --> 00:25:45,211
one part, um...

233
00:25:46,546 --> 00:25:52,593
um, lack of confidence in yourself
and a need to prove yourself.

234
00:25:55,513 --> 00:25:57,682
You know, maybe I was no good
at footy and cricket,

235
00:25:57,765 --> 00:26:00,726
but at least I can, you know,
cave dive quite well.

236
00:26:01,811 --> 00:26:04,980
I think it's fair to say all of us
were not team players.

237
00:26:05,064 --> 00:26:07,983
None of us are very good
with ball skills.

238
00:26:08,401 --> 00:26:09,694
I was a loser.

239
00:26:10,111 --> 00:26:12,071
I'm terrible at team sports.

240
00:26:12,530 --> 00:26:16,075
I think "doesn't play well with others"
is the phrase that you're looking for.

241
00:26:17,452 --> 00:26:20,163
I was quiet and shy
and didn't like confrontation.

242
00:26:20,663 --> 00:26:22,081
I wasn't so sociable.

243
00:26:22,207 --> 00:26:25,418
I was bullied a bit as a teenager, yeah,
'cause I was a little bit different.

244
00:26:25,585 --> 00:26:27,587
I've got a lazy left eye.

245
00:26:27,878 --> 00:26:30,519
Which, when I was younger,
actually pointed in the wrong direction.

246
00:26:31,006 --> 00:26:33,050
Which is quite funny looking back on it

247
00:26:33,134 --> 00:26:36,762
'cause it was quite a big part
of my life at the time,

248
00:26:36,846 --> 00:26:38,556
like, it was quite a self...

249
00:26:40,015 --> 00:26:43,519
I was quite self-conscious about it,
you know? Kids are mean.

250
00:26:46,147 --> 00:26:48,941
There's no question
that in my younger years.

251
00:26:49,442 --> 00:26:52,362
I started off
perhaps emotionally challenged.

252
00:26:52,945 --> 00:26:56,199
Yeah, I wasn't the most social person.
A bit of bullying at school and stuff,

253
00:26:56,282 --> 00:26:58,784
but the worst people
I've blocked out of my mind.

254
00:27:00,119 --> 00:27:03,456
But once I get underground,
that all disappears.

255
00:27:06,083 --> 00:27:09,545
Can't see anything,
just my bubbles.

256
00:27:10,421 --> 00:27:11,506
Isolated.

257
00:27:11,797 --> 00:27:14,467
It's the place where I,
kind of feel comfortable

258
00:27:14,550 --> 00:27:16,135
and feel like, I...

259
00:27:17,637 --> 00:27:19,639
feel safe.

260
00:27:20,390 --> 00:27:21,974
Quiet and peace.

261
00:27:23,309 --> 00:27:26,521
Get away from everything
in normal society.

262
00:27:26,687 --> 00:27:29,064
Back to the age of the cave man.

263
00:27:37,198 --> 00:27:39,074
It comes back
to that kind of ability

264
00:27:39,242 --> 00:27:41,160
to expand your comfort zone...

265
00:27:42,620 --> 00:27:45,122
but probably
some people's worst nightmares.

266
00:27:52,087 --> 00:27:55,216
It's about controlling
your emotions and your fear...

267
00:27:56,717 --> 00:27:59,637
because panic is death in the cave.

268
00:28:09,647 --> 00:28:14,444
There is still a reason for optimism.
Medical experts say it is possible

269
00:28:14,569 --> 00:28:17,655
to stay alive for this period of time
without food.

270
00:28:18,155 --> 00:28:22,618
But in an operation like this, every hour
is important. And every hour...

271
00:28:22,910 --> 00:28:25,955
Even when it's not raining,
rescuers say water is continuing

272
00:28:26,038 --> 00:28:27,457
to seep into the cave.

273
00:28:27,665 --> 00:28:30,835
They're up in the mountains right now
trying to divert it away.

274
00:28:32,127 --> 00:28:36,090
You have to hike, and then you have
to actually look for places

275
00:28:36,507 --> 00:28:38,468
where the water, like, disappears.

276
00:28:39,802 --> 00:28:43,138
If we found cracks,
we laid out plastic bags,

277
00:28:43,306 --> 00:28:46,434
and divert the water
by using sandbags and a pipe.

278
00:28:50,062 --> 00:28:52,273
You know, just behind us,
there's some heavy equipment

279
00:28:52,357 --> 00:28:55,818
that's just been brought in here
to pump out more water from the caves.

280
00:28:55,901 --> 00:28:57,570
And Howard, we were talking yesterday

281
00:28:57,820 --> 00:29:00,114
about the British divers
who've gone out there.

282
00:29:00,323 --> 00:29:04,201
I asked them for an update,
but they walked past, very stony-faced.

283
00:29:04,410 --> 00:29:05,995
They've been very media shy.

284
00:29:06,078 --> 00:29:07,955
Actually, they've been keeping
their heads down

285
00:29:08,038 --> 00:29:09,582
and getting on with the job.

286
00:29:13,002 --> 00:29:16,381
The next morning,
we decided to see if we could progress.

287
00:29:17,715 --> 00:29:21,511
Now there was another guy on the scene,
a Belgian guy called Ben Reymenants.

288
00:29:25,848 --> 00:29:28,934
We met Ben when he was coming out
from his dive.

289
00:29:29,810 --> 00:29:32,688
The three of us are chest deep
in water in this little pool.

290
00:29:32,855 --> 00:29:35,358
He said it was impossible
to make progress.

291
00:29:35,816 --> 00:29:36,859
The flow was so strong,

292
00:29:36,942 --> 00:29:40,195
that if I would've turned my head,
my mask would've been ripped off.

293
00:29:40,613 --> 00:29:42,281
My watch had broken against the rocks.

294
00:29:42,490 --> 00:29:45,618
My dry suit was leaking.
I couldn't properly breath.

295
00:29:45,910 --> 00:29:47,310
"This is suicide. What am I doing?"

296
00:29:55,586 --> 00:29:57,922
We essentially agreed
that the conditions

297
00:29:58,005 --> 00:30:00,090
in the cave were impossible.

298
00:30:01,634 --> 00:30:03,093
The monsoon had come early,

299
00:30:03,469 --> 00:30:06,556
and it wasn't going to let up
for many months.

300
00:30:16,315 --> 00:30:21,362
There was a very strong feeling
that the children couldn't be still alive.

301
00:30:21,904 --> 00:30:24,407
It just didn't... it didn't seem possible.

302
00:30:25,324 --> 00:30:26,659
We lost hope.

303
00:30:43,968 --> 00:30:47,555
The American contingent
also felt it's a lost cause.

304
00:30:48,973 --> 00:30:53,185
We were really kind of just sat around
waiting for a body recovery.

305
00:31:02,695 --> 00:31:05,197
...fancied Belgium come face to face

306
00:31:05,280 --> 00:31:08,701
with the only Asian team left
in the competition...

307
00:31:09,243 --> 00:31:12,162
People had their mobile phones
and were looking at the World Cup.

308
00:31:13,664 --> 00:31:16,626
We just sat around.
We were quite despondent,

309
00:31:16,709 --> 00:31:19,294
with the fate of those children
in our thoughts.

310
00:31:21,589 --> 00:31:24,174
We started to wonder,
"Do we actually need to be here?"

311
00:31:24,759 --> 00:31:29,555
We reached out to the British consular,
saying, "Can he sort some flights out?"

312
00:31:29,889 --> 00:31:31,516
And that didn't go down very well.

313
00:33:33,846 --> 00:33:35,640
They're doing everything possible

314
00:33:35,723 --> 00:33:38,601
to stem the flow of water
into the cave system.

315
00:33:42,229 --> 00:33:46,441
Standing here four days ago
I would've been knee deep in water.

316
00:33:46,942 --> 00:33:48,819
It's quite a feat of engineering.

317
00:34:06,003 --> 00:34:07,924
Rick and I went
to the Americans and said, "Look,

318
00:34:08,172 --> 00:34:10,173
"We want to get back in the game.
Can you help us?"

319
00:34:11,216 --> 00:34:14,219
So, eventually, the Thais
allowed us back in the cave.

320
00:34:15,596 --> 00:34:16,847
On that Sunday morning,

321
00:34:16,931 --> 00:34:20,392
Ben had done quite a bit of work
continuing the line of the SEALs.

322
00:34:20,893 --> 00:34:24,313
I give credit to Ben and the SEALs
for persevering

323
00:34:24,396 --> 00:34:26,774
when we thought
it was absolutely impossible.

324
00:34:28,984 --> 00:34:32,487
I am extremely disappointed in myself...

325
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:37,993
that we kind of gave up when we did.
That shouldn't have happened.

326
00:34:42,081 --> 00:34:43,874
We laid line on Sunday.

327
00:34:45,250 --> 00:34:49,546
The next day, John and I took another
two bags of rope to continue it.

328
00:34:51,716 --> 00:34:56,178
One of the golden rules of cave diving
is to have a continuous line

329
00:34:56,261 --> 00:34:58,097
between you and safety.

330
00:35:09,775 --> 00:35:12,778
After two or three hours,
we reached a junction.

331
00:35:14,321 --> 00:35:17,366
Which is about 800 meters
beyond Chamber Three.

332
00:35:19,034 --> 00:35:22,621
Tham Luang is one
of the longest caves in Thailand.

333
00:35:25,666 --> 00:35:29,795
The cave lies under
the Doi Nang Non mountain range.

334
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:39,221
From the entrance,
it's 800 meters to Chamber Three.

335
00:35:40,723 --> 00:35:46,020
Chamber Three had enough dry land
that the SEALs were in residence there.

336
00:35:47,772 --> 00:35:51,817
And then beyond that, you were largely
in the water the whole way.

337
00:35:52,651 --> 00:35:54,862
The next feature is the T-junction.

338
00:35:55,154 --> 00:35:58,448
Two underground rivers
unite at the T-junction

339
00:35:58,532 --> 00:36:00,200
and then flow to the entrance.

340
00:36:01,576 --> 00:36:06,290
We thought the possible places
where the kids could've found sanctuary

341
00:36:06,498 --> 00:36:08,542
was a place called Pattaya Beach.

342
00:36:10,460 --> 00:36:12,379
Pattaya Beach is the most
comfortable area.

343
00:36:12,587 --> 00:36:14,423
It was the highest area as well.

344
00:36:18,135 --> 00:36:20,763
We progressed by feel
and dead reckoning.

345
00:36:20,971 --> 00:36:23,432
We've no idea what we're going to find.

346
00:36:24,349 --> 00:36:27,436
So, I was just feeling around in the murk.

347
00:36:30,064 --> 00:36:33,650
We had no idea whether we were going
to encounter dead bodies.

348
00:36:34,109 --> 00:36:36,779
We were stealing ourselves
from that eventuality.

349
00:36:37,446 --> 00:36:39,907
I know what I was prepared to bump into

350
00:36:39,990 --> 00:36:42,367
because I'd visualized it very,
very carefully.

351
00:36:43,744 --> 00:36:47,915
I'm a great believer in visualization.
I try and put emotions in a box.

352
00:36:48,707 --> 00:36:50,292
I can visualize a shelf,

353
00:36:50,542 --> 00:36:53,628
and I put the box on the top shelf
and I leave it there,

354
00:36:53,879 --> 00:36:55,214
and I do what I need to do.

355
00:37:03,472 --> 00:37:07,392
As we got to any airspace,
I took my mask off and had a sniff.

356
00:37:08,435 --> 00:37:10,354
Caves have got a very neutral smell.

357
00:37:10,437 --> 00:37:14,108
You'd easily smell people
that had been in there for ten days,

358
00:37:14,608 --> 00:37:16,568
defecating, decaying.

359
00:37:19,780 --> 00:37:21,007
Rick and I had already discussed

360
00:37:21,031 --> 00:37:23,700
that we would lay the thick line
as far as we could.

361
00:37:23,784 --> 00:37:26,703
And then I had a reel
of 200 meters of thinner line.

362
00:37:26,912 --> 00:37:30,791
We would use these to give us
maximum possible reach into the cave.

363
00:37:36,964 --> 00:37:40,050
Everyone had held their hopes out
that the children were at this place

364
00:37:40,134 --> 00:37:41,635
called Pattaya Beach.

365
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:45,639
We did know from the survey
that was the only section of the cave

366
00:37:45,806 --> 00:37:47,266
that traveled due east.

367
00:37:50,685 --> 00:37:53,647
So, when our compasses
started to point east...

368
00:37:56,859 --> 00:37:59,319
we were at the mythical Pattaya Beach.

369
00:38:00,946 --> 00:38:02,322
Everything was underwater.

370
00:38:04,658 --> 00:38:07,452
We actually retraced our route there
a few times.

371
00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:11,874
But there was absolutely nowhere
a group of people could have survived.

372
00:38:15,335 --> 00:38:17,337
I was getting quite keen to turn around

373
00:38:17,421 --> 00:38:20,841
because I was way beyond
any sensible air margin.

374
00:38:21,967 --> 00:38:25,137
Rule number one,
use a third of your air on the way in,

375
00:38:25,220 --> 00:38:27,806
a third on the way out,
and you keep a third for spare.

376
00:38:29,391 --> 00:38:32,644
But I just had
this powerful feeling that...

377
00:38:34,771 --> 00:38:38,608
just that it was time to push.
It was the right time to push.

378
00:38:46,992 --> 00:38:49,328
So, we continue upstream...

379
00:38:51,121 --> 00:38:52,497
trying to follow the flow.

380
00:39:27,699 --> 00:39:29,659
It was instantaneous.

381
00:39:29,994 --> 00:39:32,204
A pungent smell.

382
00:39:32,829 --> 00:39:34,123
Silence.

383
00:39:35,165 --> 00:39:38,543
We both assumed
we were smelling decomposing bodies.

384
00:39:39,878 --> 00:39:41,713
There's something unpleasant here.

385
00:39:45,300 --> 00:39:48,512
And then, suddenly, I saw a light flash.

386
00:39:56,853 --> 00:39:58,772
John immediately got out the camera.

387
00:40:03,277 --> 00:40:05,487
John, light it up. Yeah, best you can.

388
00:40:07,822 --> 00:40:09,658
How many of you?

389
00:40:09,950 --> 00:40:11,368
- Thirteen.
- Thirteen?

390
00:40:11,493 --> 00:40:12,995
- Yeah, thirteen.
- Brilliant.

391
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:14,163
Yeah, yeah.

392
00:40:15,872 --> 00:40:18,833
Believe. Believe.

393
00:40:20,085 --> 00:40:23,130
On the audio, there's me saying "Believe."

394
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:26,258
That was me trying to tell me,
"This is real.

395
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:28,343
"This is actually happening."

396
00:40:30,720 --> 00:40:32,389
No. Not today.

397
00:40:32,597 --> 00:40:34,266
- Please?
- Not today.

398
00:40:34,516 --> 00:40:35,725
We have to dive.

399
00:40:36,060 --> 00:40:37,852
We are coming. It's okay.

400
00:40:37,936 --> 00:40:39,771
- It's okay.
- Many people are coming.

401
00:40:39,938 --> 00:40:43,400
Many, many people.
We are the first. Many people come.

402
00:40:46,236 --> 00:40:48,488
Tomorrow. No, no, no. What day is it now?

403
00:40:52,367 --> 00:40:54,494
- I don't know...
- Monday, Monday.

404
00:40:54,619 --> 00:40:59,833
Okay but one week and Monday.
You have been here ten days.

405
00:41:00,875 --> 00:41:03,462
Ten days. You are very strong.

406
00:41:05,047 --> 00:41:06,256
Very strong.

407
00:41:11,511 --> 00:41:14,848
I don't know.
Okay, get back. We come. We come.

408
00:41:16,516 --> 00:41:18,310
I know. I know. I understand.

409
00:41:18,977 --> 00:41:21,646
We come. Okay. We come.

410
00:41:31,573 --> 00:41:32,949
We took our equipment off

411
00:41:33,033 --> 00:41:36,120
on the other side of the passage
and made our way over to them.

412
00:41:39,289 --> 00:41:43,085
I mean, clearly, John has a son.
And I haven't got children.

413
00:41:43,377 --> 00:41:46,463
I've structured my life to avoid children
as much as possible.

414
00:41:47,214 --> 00:41:48,882
But John is a cub master,

415
00:41:49,007 --> 00:41:50,888
so he's used to dealing
with groups of children.

416
00:41:50,967 --> 00:41:52,802
Say... Thumbs up. Say, "Yay!"

417
00:41:52,886 --> 00:41:54,012
- Yay!
- Yay!

418
00:41:54,096 --> 00:41:56,640
He got them to do
a motivational exercise.

419
00:41:56,723 --> 00:41:57,974
Everybody say, "Yeah!"

420
00:41:58,058 --> 00:41:59,143
- Yeah!
- Yeah!

421
00:41:59,268 --> 00:42:02,354
Excellent. Say, "Hello, Americans."

422
00:42:02,646 --> 00:42:04,165
- Hello, Americans.
- Hello, Americans.

423
00:42:04,189 --> 00:42:05,732
Hello, Thai Navy.

424
00:42:05,940 --> 00:42:07,692
- Hello, Thai Navy.
- Hello, Thai Navy.

425
00:42:08,068 --> 00:42:09,903
Say, "Hello, Australians."

426
00:42:10,028 --> 00:42:11,821
- Hello, Australia.
- Hello, Australia.

427
00:42:12,072 --> 00:42:13,448
Hello, Chinese.

428
00:42:13,532 --> 00:42:14,800
- Hello, Chinese.
- Hello, Chinese.

429
00:42:14,824 --> 00:42:16,410
And thank you, everybody else.

430
00:42:16,493 --> 00:42:18,554
- And thank you, everybody.
- And thank you, everybody.

431
00:42:18,578 --> 00:42:20,330
Okay. We see you soon.

432
00:42:21,248 --> 00:42:24,668
As we left, pretty much all of them
came and hugged us individually.

433
00:42:26,545 --> 00:42:28,797
I made them a promise
that I would come back.

434
00:42:30,215 --> 00:42:32,134
I am really happy you're here.

435
00:42:32,217 --> 00:42:33,927
We are happy too.

436
00:42:34,178 --> 00:42:36,680
- Yes. Thank you so much.
- Thank you so much.

437
00:42:36,805 --> 00:42:38,807
- Okay.
- So, where you come from?

438
00:42:39,766 --> 00:42:41,976
- England, UK.
- Oh.

439
00:42:44,020 --> 00:42:46,273
As we went round the corner
and kitted up,

440
00:42:46,606 --> 00:42:49,401
total silence between me and John,
just...

441
00:42:49,484 --> 00:42:51,778
...looking to each other's faces thinking,

442
00:42:51,986 --> 00:42:54,531
"We may be the only ones
that ever see them."

443
00:42:56,408 --> 00:42:58,577
That was a distinct possibility.

444
00:43:04,624 --> 00:43:07,752
The whole journey back,
all I was thinking was,

445
00:43:07,961 --> 00:43:10,214
"What on earth are we going to do now?"

446
00:43:19,348 --> 00:43:23,727
I surfaced first in Chamber Three
where the Thai Navy SEALs had their base.

447
00:43:23,977 --> 00:43:25,895
Thirteen alive.

448
00:43:26,020 --> 00:43:27,314
They're okay. Yeah.

449
00:43:31,067 --> 00:43:32,361
You close.

450
00:43:33,653 --> 00:43:35,113
We've got a message. This is...

451
00:43:36,656 --> 00:43:37,699
Good job, man.

452
00:43:48,752 --> 00:43:51,129
The SEALs
immediately relayed the news

453
00:43:51,213 --> 00:43:52,464
to the outside.

454
00:43:53,382 --> 00:43:55,008
Shortly after we exited,

455
00:43:55,217 --> 00:43:58,094
the footage was released
all over the world.

456
00:43:58,762 --> 00:44:00,722
Live images coming out of Thailand.

457
00:44:02,474 --> 00:44:03,933
Dramatic breaking news.

458
00:44:04,100 --> 00:44:05,435
You are very strong.

459
00:44:06,645 --> 00:44:08,062
A true miracle.

460
00:44:08,230 --> 00:44:10,023
The moment.

461
00:44:21,660 --> 00:44:23,245
Thailand's prayers have paid off.

462
00:44:31,378 --> 00:44:33,004
- Thank you.
- Thank you very much.

463
00:44:33,087 --> 00:44:35,173
Your troops are doing
a really good job.

464
00:44:35,257 --> 00:44:36,591
Back at you too.

465
00:44:37,133 --> 00:44:38,802
What a remarkable turn of events.

466
00:44:55,026 --> 00:44:58,863
I would like to say thank you to everyone.

467
00:45:03,910 --> 00:45:05,329
- We are team.
- Family.

468
00:45:05,412 --> 00:45:06,913
Yes, team, yes.

469
00:45:07,331 --> 00:45:11,626
That night, there was as battle meeting
at the American camp with the Thai Navy.

470
00:45:12,336 --> 00:45:15,880
This was a formal meeting
with Rear Admiral Apakorn.

471
00:45:16,548 --> 00:45:20,969
Rick and John told the Thais
finding the boys was the easy part,

472
00:45:21,052 --> 00:45:24,973
and they really didn't have a clue
how to get those kids out.

473
00:45:26,516 --> 00:45:30,645
Rear Admiral Apakorn thanked us
for our role of being path finders.

474
00:45:31,313 --> 00:45:35,317
And he said, "The Thai SEALs
would take over chain of command

475
00:45:35,400 --> 00:45:38,194
"and you will just be
in an advisory role."

476
00:45:48,747 --> 00:45:51,583
Suddenly, it was like a navy going to war.

477
00:46:30,997 --> 00:46:34,376
The Thai Navy SEALs
carried in vast quantities of equipment,

478
00:46:34,459 --> 00:46:36,545
the piles of diving cylinders.

479
00:46:36,711 --> 00:46:39,464
The task was absolutely massive
and crucial.

480
00:46:55,146 --> 00:46:58,525
They had a lot of people
and a lot of equipment.

481
00:46:58,900 --> 00:47:01,945
But we started to hear
that their first set of divers

482
00:47:02,028 --> 00:47:03,697
had run into problems.

483
00:48:43,296 --> 00:48:44,589
The four that were left

484
00:48:44,714 --> 00:48:46,925
were effectively trapped in
with the children.

485
00:49:14,494 --> 00:49:17,622
Authorities there are looking
at all of their options,

486
00:49:17,706 --> 00:49:18,706
none of them easy.

487
00:49:18,748 --> 00:49:22,335
Right now, the preferable option
is to keep them down there.

488
00:49:22,418 --> 00:49:25,004
It could be months
to get those boys out safely.

489
00:49:25,254 --> 00:49:27,298
Sending in supplies
and waiting until the season

490
00:49:27,423 --> 00:49:30,844
of the monsoons and flooding is over,
they said that could be till October.

491
00:49:31,052 --> 00:49:33,346
The search also continues
in the hills and jungle

492
00:49:33,429 --> 00:49:36,307
above the cave complex.
Workers looking for any way

493
00:49:36,390 --> 00:49:38,852
to get into the cave
beyond the flooded sections.

494
00:49:39,603 --> 00:49:41,479
Another possibility they're looking at

495
00:49:41,605 --> 00:49:45,316
is drilling new entries into the caves
so they can pull them out.

496
00:49:45,734 --> 00:49:47,318
Creating the shaft large enough

497
00:49:47,611 --> 00:49:50,989
will be extremely complicated
and could take a long time.

498
00:49:51,072 --> 00:49:54,784
The only real alternative
is to pump out the water.

499
00:49:55,034 --> 00:49:59,163
They're pumping out
something like 1.6 million liters of water

500
00:49:59,247 --> 00:50:00,999
and it only went down one centimeter.

501
00:50:09,340 --> 00:50:12,260
There's almost a one in a billion chance

502
00:50:12,510 --> 00:50:14,763
that any of these things
could have worked.

503
00:50:16,305 --> 00:50:18,474
And so the Americans were getting worried,

504
00:50:18,642 --> 00:50:21,895
and they were asking us,
"Was there anything that we could do?"

505
00:50:22,228 --> 00:50:26,024
We said we didn't think it was possible
for us to dive the children out.

506
00:50:26,107 --> 00:50:28,568
The experience with the four pump workers

507
00:50:28,777 --> 00:50:31,457
was an indication of that,
where they couldn't even hold it together

508
00:50:31,529 --> 00:50:34,741
for 30 seconds,
let alone two-and-a-half-hours.

509
00:50:35,449 --> 00:50:36,993
We said it can't be done.

510
00:50:38,703 --> 00:50:40,747
I was like, "Well, what if it could?"

511
00:50:41,915 --> 00:50:44,042
What does the impossible look like?

512
00:50:49,005 --> 00:50:51,090
When we got back
to our resort that night,

513
00:50:51,382 --> 00:50:53,176
we continued thinking it through.

514
00:51:01,267 --> 00:51:04,771
I texted an old friend,
Dr. Richard Harris from Australia.

515
00:51:09,358 --> 00:51:11,527
It was on a Thursday,
the 5th of July,

516
00:51:11,611 --> 00:51:14,781
when I started
exchanging messages with Rick.

517
00:51:16,741 --> 00:51:19,911
I said, "Is it possible
to anesthetize the children?"

518
00:51:21,329 --> 00:51:25,499
My immediate response to Rick
was, "Absolutely not. It's not possible."

519
00:51:26,793 --> 00:51:29,253
Early one morning,
Harry's phone had been

520
00:51:29,378 --> 00:51:32,632
pinging away all night, and I had a look,
and I saw the message from Rick saying,

521
00:51:32,716 --> 00:51:37,261
"What do you think about sedating
the boys and diving them out?"

522
00:51:37,345 --> 00:51:43,267
And I actually laughed.
I laughed. It just sounded ludicrous.

523
00:51:43,852 --> 00:51:47,271
I could think of a 100 ways
a child would die very quickly.

524
00:51:48,064 --> 00:51:52,568
For example, to maintain your airway,
you know, you need to keep their chin up.

525
00:51:52,694 --> 00:51:55,488
At any time during the dive,
the child's airway could obstruct.

526
00:51:55,905 --> 00:51:58,867
They would asphyxiate.
Their sinuses could fill up with blood.

527
00:51:58,950 --> 00:52:00,744
They could drown in their own saliva.

528
00:52:00,910 --> 00:52:03,204
Honestly, I could talk for an hour
about the ways

529
00:52:03,287 --> 00:52:05,123
that I thought these kids could die.

530
00:52:08,042 --> 00:52:11,755
So, the next morning,
we had a proper voice conversation,

531
00:52:11,880 --> 00:52:15,842
and he said he was willing
to consider it, give it some thought.

532
00:52:22,556 --> 00:52:26,519
At the same time, we realized
it's two days since we'd found them

533
00:52:26,602 --> 00:52:28,396
and no proper meals had gone in.

534
00:52:31,024 --> 00:52:35,695
We took it upon ourselves to scrounge
some ration packs off the Americans.

535
00:53:04,473 --> 00:53:06,684
It just seemed a bit ludicrous to me,

536
00:53:07,101 --> 00:53:08,895
relying on bracelets.

537
00:53:09,645 --> 00:53:14,275
I said, "Rick, those kids
really believe in spirits.

538
00:53:14,567 --> 00:53:18,780
"It will improve their morale.
It really is important."

539
00:53:18,988 --> 00:53:20,614
Then he calmed down. He said,

540
00:53:20,782 --> 00:53:24,368
"Okay, just leave... Put 'em in.
I'll take them in there."

541
00:53:32,585 --> 00:53:34,337
It was a desperate struggle

542
00:53:34,670 --> 00:53:38,049
dragging these two huge bags of food
against the current.

543
00:53:40,927 --> 00:53:42,804
My most difficult dive yet.

544
00:53:48,726 --> 00:53:51,938
When we got to the children
they were really excited to see us.

545
00:53:52,105 --> 00:53:53,397
Their morale was good.

546
00:53:54,315 --> 00:53:57,318
We passed the bracelets
out to the boys one by one.

547
00:53:57,568 --> 00:54:00,613
And they knew what they were,
reaching their hands out to get them.

548
00:54:01,572 --> 00:54:04,742
Dr. Bhak put two of the boys
to work stacking the food

549
00:54:04,826 --> 00:54:07,411
in neat, orderly piles,
they didn't tear into it.

550
00:54:24,012 --> 00:54:25,805
As they were eating,

551
00:54:25,889 --> 00:54:29,517
both John and I felt the air
was starting to feel a little bit stale.

552
00:54:30,393 --> 00:54:31,727
I think it's recording.

553
00:54:31,895 --> 00:54:36,107
The effort of climbing the slope,
the panting that was required.

554
00:54:38,067 --> 00:54:39,735
Let's just do a count down. Hang on.

555
00:54:43,072 --> 00:54:47,326
So, I turned the oxygen monitor on
and it immediately went into full alarm...

556
00:54:48,702 --> 00:54:50,788
and registered 15 percent.

557
00:54:51,664 --> 00:54:54,708
For the oxygen, anything under 18 percent

558
00:54:54,792 --> 00:54:57,045
is not sustainable to life
in the long term.

559
00:54:59,172 --> 00:55:01,715
I couldn't look the children
in their eyes.

560
00:55:08,848 --> 00:55:11,100
Breaking news right now out of Thailand.

561
00:55:11,184 --> 00:55:14,270
We just found out that
a Thai Navy SEAL working to save

562
00:55:14,353 --> 00:55:18,357
those young boys inside that deep,
dark cave has died.

563
00:55:19,817 --> 00:55:22,987
The man who died was young, he was fit,
he was a former Navy SEAL.

564
00:55:23,071 --> 00:55:26,782
Authorities say, "38-year-old Saman Gunan,
who'd rejoined the SEALs

565
00:55:27,033 --> 00:55:30,328
"solely to help the search,
died from lack of oxygen."

566
00:55:45,468 --> 00:55:47,178
The bundle of neoprene wetsuits

567
00:55:47,261 --> 00:55:48,512
was really buoyant

568
00:55:48,679 --> 00:55:51,099
and it would've been
a huge burden to take in.

569
00:55:52,225 --> 00:55:56,520
On his way back, he ran out of air
fairly close to the third chamber.

570
00:57:19,270 --> 00:57:20,771
Unfortunately, it was Saman.

571
00:57:20,854 --> 00:57:22,815
It could've been another one earlier on.

572
00:57:23,774 --> 00:57:25,443
Saman is in the SEALs.

573
00:57:25,609 --> 00:57:28,696
They were operating in an environment
they're not used to.

574
00:57:30,281 --> 00:57:32,033
None of them had dived in caves

575
00:57:32,116 --> 00:57:34,577
and the kit they had
was completely unsuitable.

576
00:57:36,120 --> 00:57:38,331
They were unbelievably brave.

577
00:57:48,549 --> 00:57:52,553
The moment Saman Gunan died,
the Rear Admiral said,

578
00:57:52,678 --> 00:57:54,763
"We won't be diving
to the boys any further."

579
00:57:54,972 --> 00:57:58,226
And from that time on,
there was no further diving

580
00:57:58,309 --> 00:58:00,519
by Thai SEALs beyond Chamber Three.

581
00:58:01,687 --> 00:58:06,150
The Thai Navy SEALs
put everything they had into it.

582
00:58:06,442 --> 00:58:09,112
They risked their lives,
I would say, more than the Brits.

583
00:58:09,612 --> 00:58:14,533
But they didn't have the skill set,
and they couldn't quite figure out

584
00:58:14,742 --> 00:58:18,329
why these old men were a lot better
at doing it than them.

585
00:58:19,538 --> 00:58:23,834
But no special force in the world
has those skills.

586
00:58:24,043 --> 00:58:27,838
Only this private group of people
who do it as a weekend hobby.

587
00:58:30,758 --> 00:58:35,554
The moment I found the boys,
Amp said that I totally changed.

588
00:58:35,888 --> 00:58:39,850
The responsibility despite not officially
being on my shoulders

589
00:58:39,975 --> 00:58:41,935
was morally on my shoulders.

590
00:58:43,687 --> 00:58:45,148
It had to be us.

591
00:58:51,987 --> 00:58:55,741
In the morning, I had
a chat with Harry. I told him the truth.

592
00:58:55,824 --> 00:58:58,494
I said sedation was the only option.

593
00:58:59,328 --> 00:59:03,124
He said he'd come out to help us,
but not to sedate them.

594
00:59:04,208 --> 00:59:07,420
Maybe I sounded like I just thought
this would be a good jolly

595
00:59:07,503 --> 00:59:11,132
or a good adventure to Rick.
Because he said to me on the phone...

596
00:59:11,507 --> 00:59:14,302
"If you come here,
and you dive to the children,

597
00:59:14,510 --> 00:59:16,111
"and you're not prepared to sedate them,

598
00:59:16,179 --> 00:59:18,514
"you will see the children
and they will die."

599
00:59:24,103 --> 00:59:28,941
This plan, still so preposterous.
Surely this is not gonna work.

600
00:59:29,483 --> 00:59:32,236
And the thought of just bringing out
the bodies of these kids

601
00:59:32,320 --> 00:59:34,029
was just too much for me.

602
00:59:35,781 --> 00:59:39,243
How many times
have you had to remove bodies...

603
00:59:39,785 --> 00:59:41,412
which have been left in caves?

604
00:59:44,415 --> 00:59:48,336
It's not quite double figures,
but I think it's around nine, I think.

605
00:59:50,671 --> 00:59:53,757
I went to Mexico in 1994

606
00:59:54,133 --> 00:59:56,719
in a very deep cave,
1,000-meter-deep cave.

607
00:59:57,136 --> 01:00:00,139
My best friend was operating
as a diver on that project

608
01:00:00,389 --> 01:00:02,766
and he had an incident and he did die.

609
01:00:05,686 --> 01:00:10,816
It was traumatic, 'cause he was such
a close friend, and it was so hands-on.

610
01:00:10,899 --> 01:00:13,819
He wasn't in a stretcher,
he wasn't wrapped up.

611
01:00:17,573 --> 01:00:22,953
Despite Harry's skepticism, I became more
and more convinced this was the only way.

612
01:00:24,079 --> 01:00:26,832
So, the next morning,
I told Derek the concept.

613
01:00:27,916 --> 01:00:30,503
I told him it's a horrible idea.
And then Rick said,

614
01:00:30,586 --> 01:00:32,087
"What if it's the only idea?"

615
01:00:33,172 --> 01:00:34,632
I was highly skeptical.

616
01:00:35,090 --> 01:00:37,843
But I believed in their talents
and their abilities.

617
01:00:47,228 --> 01:00:48,229
I asked,

618
01:00:48,312 --> 01:00:50,039
"If you could put together
the best team in the world

619
01:00:50,063 --> 01:00:53,651
"of guys that you would need to do this,
who would it be?"

620
01:00:56,069 --> 01:00:57,405
I had a message from John saying,

621
01:00:57,571 --> 01:01:00,658
"We don't think the time and treatment
can affect the evacuation.

622
01:01:00,741 --> 01:01:02,462
"That means we need you
and you need Jason."

623
01:01:03,452 --> 01:01:06,289
I was climbing
the internal structure of a building,

624
01:01:06,455 --> 01:01:08,916
checked my phone, and Chris says,
"We're flying out tonight."

625
01:01:12,336 --> 01:01:15,005
I was a couple of days
from the end of my holiday,

626
01:01:15,088 --> 01:01:16,924
on my way down a mountain in Italy.

627
01:01:17,341 --> 01:01:19,968
I get a text saying,
"How soon can you be ready?"

628
01:01:20,135 --> 01:01:22,638
I was ringing my boss to get time off.

629
01:01:26,099 --> 01:01:29,186
I was actually meant to attend
my friend's stag do on that Saturday.

630
01:01:32,440 --> 01:01:36,151
When I realized I was gonna be
headed over to Thailand,

631
01:01:36,402 --> 01:01:38,821
I went in to visit my dad
in the nursing home.

632
01:01:40,698 --> 01:01:45,244
His dad, he didn't understand
the cave diving thing.

633
01:01:45,994 --> 01:01:49,665
Definitely less than me,
and they had a bit of a long running joke.

634
01:01:49,832 --> 01:01:52,793
He would constantly ask
when I was gonna give up cave diving,

635
01:01:52,876 --> 01:01:56,380
'cause it worried him, obviously.
And I'd always joke with him, saying,

636
01:01:56,464 --> 01:01:59,800
"Oh, actually, that was my last dive,
I'm finished now."

637
01:01:59,925 --> 01:02:01,686
And he'd go,
"That's great. I'm so relieved."

638
01:02:01,719 --> 01:02:03,655
And then he'd look at me
and then roar with laughter

639
01:02:03,679 --> 01:02:05,556
as he'd realized I was pulling his leg.

640
01:02:05,639 --> 01:02:08,809
So, we had a good chat,
and then I headed off the next day.

641
01:02:23,282 --> 01:02:25,284
So, when we arrived at the cave,

642
01:02:25,368 --> 01:02:29,788
we step out of this minivan
to a sea of cameras staring us down.

643
01:02:31,164 --> 01:02:33,542
I found it really frightening actually.

644
01:02:34,793 --> 01:02:39,214
We found John and Rick,
and they looked a bit shagged.

645
01:02:40,883 --> 01:02:42,593
The first thing I said was,

646
01:02:42,676 --> 01:02:46,096
"Look, I've got to dive the cave,
get to the end, see the kids myself,

647
01:02:46,263 --> 01:02:48,807
"convince myself that there's no other way
to get them out."

648
01:02:50,559 --> 01:02:53,896
My partner, Craig,
and I swam to the children.

649
01:02:55,272 --> 01:02:57,232
It was just a muddy hole, really.

650
01:03:02,780 --> 01:03:05,824
As I surfaced,
the filth floating on the water

651
01:03:06,033 --> 01:03:08,619
meant we were in the final chamber
where the kids were.

652
01:03:10,371 --> 01:03:12,873
When I realized I was actually
about to meet these boys,

653
01:03:12,956 --> 01:03:15,751
of course,
I thought about my own children.

654
01:03:17,210 --> 01:03:19,922
I was slightly horrified
how thin they looked.

655
01:03:20,506 --> 01:03:23,926
And I could hear a couple
of them coughing, pretty wet coughs.

656
01:03:25,302 --> 01:03:28,514
They looked weak to me,
but it's incredible to me still

657
01:03:28,597 --> 01:03:33,811
that there was not one trembling lip,
not a tear, not any sign of any concern.

658
01:03:56,917 --> 01:03:58,919
I just spent
the whole time swimming out

659
01:03:59,002 --> 01:04:02,089
and thinking about what we were gonna do.

660
01:04:02,465 --> 01:04:05,175
And I guess that's when I decided that,

661
01:04:05,300 --> 01:04:08,846
"Yeah, I'm just gonna have
to get on board with this plan."

662
01:04:15,603 --> 01:04:18,606
At that point, we need the bodies,
the guys who were able

663
01:04:18,689 --> 01:04:21,567
to help alleviate some
of the work load off John and Rick.

664
01:04:23,235 --> 01:04:26,739
We were kind of a team
that's living in Thailand already.

665
01:04:27,239 --> 01:04:32,453
Kind of the technical dive instructors.
Most of us were from Europe.

666
01:04:33,161 --> 01:04:35,372
We rolled them in immediately
into our team.

667
01:04:36,457 --> 01:04:39,835
The team was ready,
but the Thai authorities

668
01:04:40,043 --> 01:04:45,966
were still unwilling to make a decision
and give the go ahead.

669
01:04:54,266 --> 01:04:57,394
Conditions worsening,
air supply dwindling,

670
01:04:57,478 --> 01:05:01,649
and the other concern looming
is the monsoon rain in the forecast.

671
01:05:03,150 --> 01:05:06,737
We now had two ticking clocks,
the oxygen and the weather.

672
01:05:06,820 --> 01:05:08,906
...afternoon as we get thunderstorms
that developed,

673
01:05:08,989 --> 01:05:11,659
this is a tell-tale sign
of the monsoons really.

674
01:05:18,874 --> 01:05:23,045
The Thai Navy SEALs want zero risk.
That's not gonna happen.

675
01:05:24,630 --> 01:05:28,175
But what appeared to tip the balance
was a gentleman called, "Josh Morris."

676
01:05:29,552 --> 01:05:32,638
When I arrived, I said,
"I have a climbing and caving school,

677
01:05:32,721 --> 01:05:35,808
"and I speak Thai."
Thanet and I were working together.

678
01:05:35,891 --> 01:05:41,354
Then I bumped into Vern, who let me know,
kind of, things weren't so hunky-dory.

679
01:05:42,272 --> 01:05:45,484
I have access to, like... So, I...

680
01:05:45,734 --> 01:05:48,588
- So, they won't listen to us now.
- I just bumped into him this morning,

681
01:05:48,612 --> 01:05:51,782
and I'd be happy to communicate for you.
Shall I take notes?

682
01:05:51,990 --> 01:05:56,495
John was visibly stressed.
And he said, "If it rains,

683
01:05:56,704 --> 01:05:59,164
"and the waters come up,
nobody's getting in that cave.

684
01:05:59,289 --> 01:06:01,458
"The conditions are terrible in there.

685
01:06:01,542 --> 01:06:03,311
"They're in those blankets
and everybody looks happy,

686
01:06:03,335 --> 01:06:05,504
"but the room stinks,

687
01:06:06,004 --> 01:06:09,216
they don't have any food, they've got
cuts, like, they're gonna get sick."

688
01:06:09,466 --> 01:06:12,469
I said, "What are you talking about?
I haven't heard any of that.

689
01:06:12,636 --> 01:06:14,513
"How much food do they have?"
And he said,

690
01:06:14,722 --> 01:06:16,056
"They've got about a 100 meals."

691
01:06:17,140 --> 01:06:20,185
- Oxygen is at what level now? Do we know?
- So we measured it at 15.

692
01:06:20,268 --> 01:06:23,438
But we're not... It could be 16 percent.

693
01:06:24,356 --> 01:06:26,149
You know we play it safe.

694
01:06:26,525 --> 01:06:29,903
How about the dive?
How do you guys feel about that?

695
01:06:30,112 --> 01:06:34,032
It's exceptionally, exceptionally risky.
But they haven't got any other chance.

696
01:06:34,157 --> 01:06:35,384
You don't think there's any chance?

697
01:06:35,408 --> 01:06:37,129
- If they don't dive...
- Are you recording?

698
01:06:46,211 --> 01:06:49,089
Finally, we got the audience
we needed that night.

699
01:06:49,715 --> 01:06:52,384
The Minister of the Interior came,
and everybody ended up

700
01:06:52,467 --> 01:06:55,262
in the room together,
and I helped to translate.

701
01:06:56,138 --> 01:06:57,973
We just walked them through the plan.

702
01:06:59,016 --> 01:07:01,202
I think the biggest questions
that people were having still

703
01:07:01,226 --> 01:07:06,023
was, like, the risk, you know? And like,
I told 'em, "It's extremely risky.

704
01:07:06,106 --> 01:07:08,567
"But if you could get one kid back
to their parents alive,

705
01:07:08,692 --> 01:07:10,360
"that to me would be a success."

706
01:07:12,738 --> 01:07:14,406
They asked me lots of questions.

707
01:07:14,615 --> 01:07:17,367
"Why was I choosing this drug?
Why was I choosing these doses?"

708
01:07:17,450 --> 01:07:21,246
And I had to keep emphasizing to them,
"Look, this is my best guess,

709
01:07:21,371 --> 01:07:26,084
"nobody's ever done it before,
I am totally open to a better suggestion."

710
01:07:26,585 --> 01:07:29,254
I remember feeling like
a used car salesman

711
01:07:29,379 --> 01:07:33,341
who was trying to sell an old bomb
to some unsuspecting people...

712
01:07:33,634 --> 01:07:37,179
um, and I just... I felt like just a liar.

713
01:07:37,888 --> 01:07:40,182
They kept asking,
"Can we just leave them in there?"

714
01:07:40,265 --> 01:07:42,142
That kept coming back on the table.

715
01:07:42,267 --> 01:07:44,148
And I said,
"Well, we're running out of oxygen."

716
01:07:44,227 --> 01:07:47,439
Also, we calculated 2,000 meals
we'd have to bring in.

717
01:07:47,606 --> 01:07:51,026
And once the rain started again
you couldn't swim against those flows.

718
01:07:53,111 --> 01:07:56,239
And then Thanet and I
ended back up in another meeting.

719
01:07:56,406 --> 01:07:58,491
At one point I said to the minister,

720
01:07:58,701 --> 01:08:01,244
"The only guarantee I can give you
is that if you don't dive,

721
01:08:01,328 --> 01:08:02,454
"everyone will die.

722
01:08:03,371 --> 01:08:07,084
"I don't envy you, sir.
Both choices are terrible,

723
01:08:07,334 --> 01:08:09,086
"but one is worse than the other."

724
01:08:18,721 --> 01:08:21,598
Still, the following morning,
we didn't have the go ahead,

725
01:08:21,682 --> 01:08:24,810
but we came up
with an actual, logistical plan,

726
01:08:24,893 --> 01:08:28,313
the real nuts and bolts
of how it was going to work.

727
01:08:30,565 --> 01:08:34,945
How we were going to transport the boys
to how we were gonna package them.

728
01:08:35,904 --> 01:08:38,657
The cylinder was going to go
on the front of the child, not the back.

729
01:08:39,783 --> 01:08:43,203
So that when they were floating face down,
that tank would act like a keel.

730
01:08:44,496 --> 01:08:47,582
We worked out that you needed
positive pressure masks...

731
01:08:48,291 --> 01:08:51,336
so if you made a leak,
it'd go outwards and not inwards.

732
01:08:51,962 --> 01:08:54,589
And the Americans happened
to have four of these masks.

733
01:08:55,758 --> 01:09:00,679
So, that meant we'd go in multiple times.
We had to go in every day, for three days.

734
01:09:01,429 --> 01:09:03,181
There was a demonstration
that was done,

735
01:09:03,556 --> 01:09:05,684
the Americans called it a rock drill.

736
01:09:05,768 --> 01:09:08,603
A big drill called
the rehearsal of concept.

737
01:09:09,437 --> 01:09:12,649
We kind of simulated the extraction
as best we could.

738
01:09:18,906 --> 01:09:20,115
If the water comes up...

739
01:09:20,240 --> 01:09:23,535
It was useful, but it was more useful
for people making the decisions.

740
01:09:23,618 --> 01:09:26,579
They suddenly realized that, sort of,
there is some method to the madness,

741
01:09:27,164 --> 01:09:29,332
and maybe we could pull it off.

742
01:09:31,710 --> 01:09:35,047
One of the foreign affairs guys
from Australia came up to me and said,

743
01:09:35,130 --> 01:09:38,801
"Look, in the...
in the interest of full disclosure,

744
01:09:38,884 --> 01:09:41,219
"I just need to tell you
that if something goes wrong

745
01:09:41,428 --> 01:09:43,931
"during the rescue, it's not impossible

746
01:09:44,014 --> 01:09:46,809
"that you could end up
in the Thai judicial system."

747
01:09:46,892 --> 01:09:48,452
And I said,
"What? You mean, 'imprisonment'?"

748
01:09:48,476 --> 01:09:50,621
And he said, "Yeah,
that's sort of the worst-case scenario,

749
01:09:50,645 --> 01:09:52,166
"and the rules here are pretty harsh."

750
01:09:53,899 --> 01:09:55,442
If things had gone wrong,

751
01:09:55,650 --> 01:09:59,529
public opinion would have turned
against them very quickly.

752
01:10:01,156 --> 01:10:03,491
There was an extraction plan in place.

753
01:10:04,659 --> 01:10:07,579
To put us in a van,
drive us cross-country on back roads

754
01:10:07,662 --> 01:10:11,083
to the embassy compound.
So, all very James Bond-esque.

755
01:10:12,375 --> 01:10:14,336
There is a green privacy screen

756
01:10:14,419 --> 01:10:17,130
that has now been put up,
blocking the entrance to the cave.

757
01:10:17,214 --> 01:10:21,885
This is perhaps another indication
this rescue could be incredibly close.

758
01:10:26,098 --> 01:10:29,142
It was about 2:00 in the morning
that the Minister for the Interior said,

759
01:10:29,226 --> 01:10:32,020
"Okay, assume the plans
going ahead tomorrow,

760
01:10:32,437 --> 01:10:34,689
"um, and we'll give you the green light
in the morning."

761
01:10:36,566 --> 01:10:38,777
We had a debrief every night,

762
01:10:38,861 --> 01:10:42,655
and on the night
before the first rescue day,

763
01:10:43,240 --> 01:10:47,160
which incidentally
was our 28th wedding anniversary...

764
01:10:47,702 --> 01:10:51,123
But I spoke to him that night,
and he outlined what they were gonna do.

765
01:10:51,289 --> 01:10:53,351
It was a terrible conversation,
'cause he said, "Look,

766
01:10:53,375 --> 01:10:55,127
"I don't think it'll...

767
01:10:55,836 --> 01:10:58,755
"work, I think they'll probably drown
under anesthetic."

768
01:11:00,757 --> 01:11:04,803
I slept very badly that night.
Lying in bed, I thought,

769
01:11:04,928 --> 01:11:08,849
"Who am I to take this chance
to get the kids out this way?"

770
01:11:10,558 --> 01:11:15,522
But to walk away and leave them in there,
that's impossible, you can't do it.

771
01:11:16,564 --> 01:11:19,651
The other thing that gave me
the courage to go through with this

772
01:11:19,818 --> 01:11:21,319
was my dad.

773
01:11:21,904 --> 01:11:24,447
My dad was a doctor,
he was a vascular surgeon.

774
01:11:24,948 --> 01:11:27,325
The thing I've got from my father
more than anything

775
01:11:27,409 --> 01:11:29,202
was the way to treat other people.

776
01:11:29,786 --> 01:11:32,039
You know, he's a very generous man.

777
01:11:33,248 --> 01:11:38,128
It was a good lesson to me
to try and treat people the way he did.

778
01:11:53,060 --> 01:11:55,228
Reporters say
they've been ordered to get back.

779
01:11:55,312 --> 01:11:57,272
There are rumors floating around the camp

780
01:11:57,355 --> 01:12:00,733
that this rescue
could even be happening as soon as today.

781
01:12:00,859 --> 01:12:03,611
The relatives
can only watch and wait anxiously.

782
01:12:03,695 --> 01:12:05,780
For a final rescue, Thai medical teams

783
01:12:05,864 --> 01:12:07,115
are running rescue drills...

784
01:12:07,699 --> 01:12:10,410
I got the Thai medical people, overnight,

785
01:12:10,493 --> 01:12:13,746
to prepare all the drugs
into prefilled syringes.

786
01:12:14,164 --> 01:12:16,499
I had to basically teach
the rest of the divers

787
01:12:16,666 --> 01:12:19,419
how to top up the child
with another injection.

788
01:12:20,628 --> 01:12:22,672
The boys were gonna be sedated
in the final chamber,

789
01:12:22,755 --> 01:12:25,884
but it would take more than two hours
to dive them out.

790
01:12:26,051 --> 01:12:28,178
So, that sedative would wear off.

791
01:12:28,553 --> 01:12:32,515
It would be necessary for us
to readminister that sedative.

792
01:12:33,433 --> 01:12:35,685
So, we had a little anesthesia 101 class.

793
01:12:35,978 --> 01:12:38,355
Basically I just said,
"Stick it in their leg,

794
01:12:38,438 --> 01:12:41,816
"preferably on the outside of their thigh,
jab it through the wetsuit,

795
01:12:41,942 --> 01:12:43,693
"and it doesn't matter
if you hit the bone.

796
01:12:44,652 --> 01:12:48,740
"Nothing could possibly go wrong."
Once again, lying through my teeth.

797
01:12:49,074 --> 01:12:51,326
It's just to really give them
the courage to do it.

798
01:13:11,096 --> 01:13:15,976
I have ten divers ready to go
in the next 30 minutes.

799
01:13:21,356 --> 01:13:24,817
The ropes team will consist
of six Americans,

800
01:13:24,943 --> 01:13:29,781
five Australians, five Chinese,
and six rope-specialist civilians.

801
01:13:30,949 --> 01:13:32,784
Chamber Three, there will be

802
01:13:32,867 --> 01:13:35,287
a Thai national coordination.

803
01:13:41,084 --> 01:13:44,337
We cordoned off
our section of Chamber Three,

804
01:13:44,504 --> 01:13:48,133
we brought in 15 body bags
in case things did go south.

805
01:14:02,897 --> 01:14:08,861
I went straight to the end of the cave,
along with Jason and John and Harry.

806
01:14:10,322 --> 01:14:14,826
We all know our position in the cave
and we went in roughly in that order.

807
01:14:52,197 --> 01:14:55,617
I got the first boy ready
with the help of the SEALs.

808
01:14:57,535 --> 01:15:00,872
We needed to put this hood on,
put his buoyancy jacket over...

809
01:15:01,873 --> 01:15:05,502
put these bungee cords around
ready for the cylinder.

810
01:15:13,718 --> 01:15:17,347
It was a very simple combination
of drugs that I came up with.

811
01:15:20,392 --> 01:15:25,230
Xanax was the tablet, which has
a very strong anti-anxiety effect.

812
01:15:26,064 --> 01:15:29,567
Dr. Bhak had given the first tablet
to the first kid.

813
01:15:43,748 --> 01:15:46,709
So, I injected
the atropine into one leg first,

814
01:15:46,793 --> 01:15:49,837
which has an anti-salivation side effect,

815
01:15:49,921 --> 01:15:52,715
because they could drown
in their own saliva potentially.

816
01:15:53,841 --> 01:15:55,510
And then, pretty much straight away

817
01:15:55,593 --> 01:15:58,596
followed it up with the injection
of ketamine in the other leg,

818
01:15:58,680 --> 01:16:00,973
which is the general anesthetic drug.

819
01:16:01,933 --> 01:16:05,978
I'd hold up the syringe in front of them
and pat their leg to let them know

820
01:16:06,062 --> 01:16:07,689
they're about to get an injection.

821
01:16:20,118 --> 01:16:21,661
Once they were unconscious

822
01:16:21,744 --> 01:16:24,372
it was basically trying
to put a mask on a rag doll.

823
01:16:26,833 --> 01:16:31,963
I didn't feel comfortable in any way,
shape or form about what we were doing.

824
01:16:32,422 --> 01:16:34,442
I mean, there were two things
that were really powerful,

825
01:16:34,466 --> 01:16:36,343
and that is pushing
someone's face underwater

826
01:16:36,759 --> 01:16:38,136
who's unconscious,

827
01:16:39,346 --> 01:16:41,306
and then tying their hands
behind their back.

828
01:16:41,431 --> 01:16:44,309
I mean, both those things feel very,
very wrong.

829
01:16:46,894 --> 01:16:48,646
It felt like euthanasia to me.

830
01:16:55,695 --> 01:16:58,030
On that first trip,
Jason yelled back to me and said,

831
01:16:58,114 --> 01:17:00,116
"Oh, Harry, he's not breathing very much."

832
01:17:01,075 --> 01:17:04,496
And I told the guys,
"This is a one-way trip,

833
01:17:04,579 --> 01:17:06,331
"once you start you cannot stop.

834
01:17:06,414 --> 01:17:09,209
"You can't come back to me,
'cause there's nothing I can do.

835
01:17:09,834 --> 01:17:12,128
"If you end up taking a body
out of the cave

836
01:17:12,212 --> 01:17:14,172
"then that's what
you're taking out of the cave."

837
01:17:27,185 --> 01:17:31,314
In Chamber Eight, it felt like
we were waiting forever.

838
01:17:34,066 --> 01:17:35,943
Suddenly the line twitched.

839
01:17:38,196 --> 01:17:40,282
And Jason comes up with a child...

840
01:17:41,908 --> 01:17:43,201
looking for a breath.

841
01:17:45,203 --> 01:17:49,791
I can only say that there was just
this huge tension in the air.

842
01:17:52,794 --> 01:17:55,463
The fact that he was still alive,
it was just

843
01:17:55,547 --> 01:17:58,341
like a weight
had been lifted off my shoulders.

844
01:17:59,008 --> 01:18:00,427
But that was only 300 meters,

845
01:18:00,510 --> 01:18:03,263
they still had a kilometer-and-a-half
to get out of the cave.

846
01:18:04,889 --> 01:18:08,476
Then he actually started twitchin',
movin' the fingers,

847
01:18:08,726 --> 01:18:12,021
he looked like a zombie.
Our eyes were agog with this.

848
01:18:13,440 --> 01:18:16,651
We gave 'em another injection there
and we transported him

849
01:18:16,734 --> 01:18:18,986
over the dry chamber
to the next flooded section.

850
01:18:24,992 --> 01:18:27,203
John took the second child.

851
01:18:28,996 --> 01:18:32,250
I remember, John looked at me,
and he said, "What's his name?"

852
01:18:33,251 --> 01:18:34,586
"I don't know, John."

853
01:18:35,253 --> 01:18:37,672
I was nervous.
I would go further than that,

854
01:18:37,755 --> 01:18:39,424
I would say I was shitting myself.

855
01:18:42,051 --> 01:18:47,807
As I swam him out, I just remember feeling
ownership and determination

856
01:18:48,266 --> 01:18:50,977
that I'll make damned sure
that my child survived.

857
01:18:54,522 --> 01:18:56,023
Chris took the third child.

858
01:18:58,360 --> 01:19:01,488
You couldn't see your hand
in front of your face.

859
01:19:02,071 --> 01:19:05,074
Occasionally, you'll get a glimpse
of something through the murk.

860
01:19:06,284 --> 01:19:09,954
I remember trying to wriggle through holes
that I couldn't wriggle through.

861
01:19:10,204 --> 01:19:13,916
Finding a bigger space
and then that repeating again and again.

862
01:19:16,461 --> 01:19:20,882
After the first submerged section,
I carried on out with the lad that I had.

863
01:19:22,800 --> 01:19:26,929
I surfaced in a deep water canal,
and there was no dry land.

864
01:19:28,390 --> 01:19:30,350
But he was starting twitching again.

865
01:19:35,062 --> 01:19:37,565
So, I got my vials of ketamine out.

866
01:19:41,611 --> 01:19:44,489
My hands are shaking 'cause I've
never given an injection before.

867
01:19:45,990 --> 01:19:49,118
I managed to get one of the vials,
you've got a separate needle,

868
01:19:49,201 --> 01:19:51,788
took it out of its holder,
stabbed myself in the finger.

869
01:19:51,913 --> 01:19:54,416
I'm lucky that's not connected
to the vial of ketamine

870
01:19:54,499 --> 01:19:57,126
otherwise there'd be two bodies
floating on the surface.

871
01:19:58,753 --> 01:20:00,129
Gave him that injection.

872
01:20:01,506 --> 01:20:03,383
True enough, he had stopped twitching.

873
01:20:15,895 --> 01:20:18,523
John came to the chamber,
and the child didn't appear

874
01:20:18,606 --> 01:20:19,857
to be breathing right.

875
01:20:21,818 --> 01:20:25,572
I had to change
the oxygen cylinders for the child.

876
01:20:25,780 --> 01:20:29,075
And I couldn't get him
breathing again with the mask on.

877
01:20:29,742 --> 01:20:30,827
Mask off.

878
01:20:32,244 --> 01:20:34,372
We'd take the mask off,
and it did improve,

879
01:20:34,456 --> 01:20:37,917
and then we put the mask back on
and it would get worse again.

880
01:20:38,250 --> 01:20:40,670
And this went on
for a couple of times.

881
01:20:42,547 --> 01:20:44,006
John was really worried.

882
01:20:44,507 --> 01:20:47,844
I wanted to bolt for the exit
and it would have been finished.

883
01:20:47,927 --> 01:20:49,178
Mask's all right.

884
01:20:49,429 --> 01:20:51,681
It really felt like a sheer act of will,

885
01:20:51,764 --> 01:20:54,476
because every fiber in my being
wanted to be out.

886
01:20:55,101 --> 01:20:56,936
But I knew that I couldn't do that,

887
01:20:57,103 --> 01:21:00,064
because I knew I'd end up with a corpse
at the end rather than a child.

888
01:21:03,359 --> 01:21:06,738
By the time John left with the kid,
it looked like we did fix it.

889
01:21:18,708 --> 01:21:21,377
When you got back
to the final flooded section

890
01:21:21,461 --> 01:21:24,213
that was always the hardest sump
to go through.

891
01:21:24,296 --> 01:21:26,758
You couldn't fit through
with a kid on either side.

892
01:21:31,220 --> 01:21:34,140
We had to push him through first
and then you went through after him.

893
01:21:35,975 --> 01:21:40,146
And then, as you approach Chamber Three,
you'd hear the humming of the pumps.

894
01:21:45,192 --> 01:21:46,819
I surfaced with the boy.

895
01:21:47,361 --> 01:21:50,281
A dozen hands there
are ready to take the child off you,

896
01:21:50,615 --> 01:21:52,241
straight into another stretcher.

897
01:21:59,916 --> 01:22:02,251
- Thirty kilos.
- Thirty kilos.

898
01:22:02,960 --> 01:22:06,631
Kid number one's alive, breathing.
I think that was...

899
01:22:07,381 --> 01:22:08,424
a huge morale boost.

900
01:22:09,175 --> 01:22:11,010
One, two, three.

901
01:22:32,615 --> 01:22:35,535
I surfaced
in Chamber Three with my child.

902
01:22:36,494 --> 01:22:37,662
Relief.

903
01:22:38,538 --> 01:22:40,331
One, two, three, pull!

904
01:22:42,249 --> 01:22:43,334
Pull!

905
01:22:44,168 --> 01:22:45,252
Pull!

906
01:22:46,504 --> 01:22:47,505
Pull!

907
01:22:49,090 --> 01:22:50,382
Pull!

908
01:23:25,376 --> 01:23:28,921
There are reports,
I must stress they are unconfirmed,

909
01:23:29,171 --> 01:23:32,133
that two boys have now
emerged from the cave.

910
01:23:32,299 --> 01:23:35,136
Just seconds ago,
we saw another ambulance going in,

911
01:23:35,302 --> 01:23:37,388
perhaps a third will be extracted.

912
01:23:39,682 --> 01:23:41,017
I arrived with my boy...

913
01:23:42,143 --> 01:23:43,561
handed this precious cargo off.

914
01:23:48,524 --> 01:23:50,943
I remember John saying to me,
"We've got three for three.

915
01:23:51,110 --> 01:23:52,779
"Amazing, got three for three."

916
01:23:53,154 --> 01:23:54,572
Then he looked at me, he said,

917
01:23:54,656 --> 01:23:57,256
"Come on, Stanton, don't... it up.
We've gotta get four for four."

918
01:23:59,035 --> 01:24:02,246
Rick took the last child
and he headed out of the cave.

919
01:24:02,872 --> 01:24:07,293
I said to Dr. Bhak, "That's it.
"Let's do four tomorrow."

920
01:24:28,355 --> 01:24:30,692
As I swam out to Chamber Eight,

921
01:24:31,025 --> 01:24:32,735
completely zero visibility,

922
01:24:33,360 --> 01:24:34,779
my hand's running along the rope...

923
01:24:36,322 --> 01:24:39,992
and suddenly I put my hand on something
that felt like a dead fish.

924
01:24:42,078 --> 01:24:46,666
Craig and Rick were looking quite anxious,
and they were saying, "Quick, get out."

925
01:24:46,916 --> 01:24:47,959
Hurry, he's not breathing.

926
01:24:48,084 --> 01:24:51,128
"We don't think this kid's breathing."
I quickly got my gear off.

927
01:24:51,212 --> 01:24:53,840
I thought, "Well, you know,
this is it, the first one's died."

928
01:24:55,466 --> 01:24:56,926
He looked pretty blue.

929
01:24:57,844 --> 01:24:59,386
Very cold and lifeless.

930
01:25:00,137 --> 01:25:03,307
And I actually couldn't convince myself
that he was breathing.

931
01:25:04,976 --> 01:25:06,811
I was about to start mouth to mouth,

932
01:25:06,936 --> 01:25:09,772
but just before I did
I gave his jaw a real hard push

933
01:25:09,856 --> 01:25:13,192
to open his airway a bit, and he actually
started breathing with that.

934
01:25:14,694 --> 01:25:16,320
But I still was really worried.

935
01:25:16,403 --> 01:25:18,990
I still couldn't conceive
that this child would make it.

936
01:25:22,660 --> 01:25:26,580
He was like that the whole way,
between two-and-a-half and three hours.

937
01:25:29,000 --> 01:25:31,418
Just for my own sanity,
I would roll him over

938
01:25:31,502 --> 01:25:32,920
so I could look into his face.

939
01:25:33,838 --> 01:25:34,881
He looked asleep.

940
01:25:36,048 --> 01:25:37,925
Except he happened to be underwater.

941
01:25:42,847 --> 01:25:44,431
The moment you surface,

942
01:25:44,515 --> 01:25:47,601
a fantastic sense
of elation and achievement.

943
01:26:07,038 --> 01:26:09,874
There was a sense
of disbelief that this technique worked.

944
01:26:11,000 --> 01:26:15,296
Four of the young soccer players
trapped in that cave in Thailand are out.

945
01:26:15,421 --> 01:26:18,925
So, eight boys
and their coach remain trapped,

946
01:26:19,008 --> 01:26:23,220
their lives still hanging in the balance.
This isn't over.

947
01:26:23,470 --> 01:26:26,515
We'd just pulled off something we thought
was unbelievable and incredible.

948
01:26:27,433 --> 01:26:29,101
Let's do it twice more.

949
01:26:39,862 --> 01:26:41,530
The breaking news is out of Thailand...

950
01:26:41,781 --> 01:26:44,283
A boy was seen transported on stretcher...

951
01:26:44,450 --> 01:26:45,910
The fifth boy to be rescued...

952
01:26:45,993 --> 01:26:48,329
One boy was taken from the cave
this morning...

953
01:26:48,412 --> 01:26:51,958
That right there is an ambulance
we believe to be carrying that sixth boy.

954
01:26:52,124 --> 01:26:55,294
This operation is being executed
extremely smoothly.

955
01:26:55,377 --> 01:26:57,671
And that appears
to be the seventh right there.

956
01:26:57,755 --> 01:26:59,465
The boys are coming out.

957
01:26:59,673 --> 01:27:02,634
It's not the seventh child,
it is the eighth child.

958
01:27:02,844 --> 01:27:05,012
Wild Boar eight out.

959
01:27:05,137 --> 01:27:07,598
One more day on the weather.
The last several days,

960
01:27:07,681 --> 01:27:09,141
they've had enormous luck.

961
01:27:09,308 --> 01:27:11,853
These monsoon rains
seem to have held off.

962
01:27:13,562 --> 01:27:17,108
But the forecast we kept getting
were it's gonna rain imminently.

963
01:27:19,068 --> 01:27:20,319
And it did.

964
01:27:23,447 --> 01:27:24,782
It lashed it down.

965
01:27:25,699 --> 01:27:26,993
It never stopped.

966
01:27:27,201 --> 01:27:30,454
These rains will flood
the caves very quickly.

967
01:27:33,290 --> 01:27:35,167
We spent the night listening to the rain.

968
01:27:35,376 --> 01:27:37,711
It was really, really hammering down,

969
01:27:38,254 --> 01:27:40,714
wondering what was gonna happen
in the cave.

970
01:27:42,967 --> 01:27:47,554
It's the only time
I've ever seen Rick and John look anxious,

971
01:27:47,847 --> 01:27:50,474
which was actually starting
to unsettle Craig and me.

972
01:28:00,609 --> 01:28:01,819
We got up in the morning

973
01:28:01,903 --> 01:28:04,446
and the whole place
was just awash with water.

974
01:28:06,323 --> 01:28:08,993
We worried that the dams
that diverted the water

975
01:28:09,076 --> 01:28:10,369
would be drenched.

976
01:28:11,245 --> 01:28:12,746
They couldn't hold off forever.

977
01:28:14,040 --> 01:28:16,292
The water diversion will not last.

978
01:28:17,168 --> 01:28:18,627
That's gonna destroy everything.

979
01:28:22,256 --> 01:28:25,259
And then when we got
to our predive briefing in the morning,

980
01:28:25,342 --> 01:28:27,023
and some of the guys were saying,
you know,

981
01:28:27,094 --> 01:28:30,681
"Should we be going into the cave?
Should we be risking our lives?"

982
01:28:30,848 --> 01:28:32,617
And then there were those of us
that were saying,

983
01:28:32,641 --> 01:28:33,935
"What if we didn't go in today,

984
01:28:34,143 --> 01:28:37,188
"and then tomorrow,
there was no more opportunity?"

985
01:28:37,646 --> 01:28:40,149
And I felt like
I had to shut that down really quickly.

986
01:28:40,774 --> 01:28:42,985
We just got up and walked
straight to the cave

987
01:28:43,152 --> 01:28:46,864
and everybody else followed.
So, that was the decision made.

988
01:28:49,325 --> 01:28:54,163
So, we realized we were going to attempt
five people on the last day.

989
01:28:58,334 --> 01:29:01,045
Before heading into the cave,
the decision was made

990
01:29:01,128 --> 01:29:06,258
- that I would be the one to bring out...
- ...the first child that day.

991
01:29:07,426 --> 01:29:10,179
As I was swimming,
my mind was on overdrive.

992
01:29:10,972 --> 01:29:12,764
"Oh, my God, am I gonna be good enough?

993
01:29:13,849 --> 01:29:16,560
"What about the parents
and the friends in the cave?"

994
01:29:16,978 --> 01:29:18,520
It's a huge burden.

995
01:29:19,021 --> 01:29:22,108
"If they die, it's gonna tear me apart.
Am I gonna start drinking?"

996
01:29:22,733 --> 01:29:24,276
You know, "Go off the rails?"

997
01:29:25,819 --> 01:29:27,196
I was given the coach.

998
01:29:27,529 --> 01:29:32,576
As soon as I was holding him,
I switched to getting the job done.

999
01:29:41,002 --> 01:29:43,045
Everything was going quite well.

1000
01:29:45,089 --> 01:29:46,882
I remember those last few minutes,

1001
01:29:47,133 --> 01:29:50,970
thinking to myself, "I'm nearly there.
What am I gonna do?"

1002
01:29:51,387 --> 01:29:54,098
'Cause I was pretty close
to my threshold.

1003
01:29:54,306 --> 01:29:56,600
"Am I gonna start crying
when I deliver him?"

1004
01:30:37,808 --> 01:30:40,561
John arrived after me,
then Rick arrived.

1005
01:30:40,644 --> 01:30:43,147
And Chris was due to come out next.

1006
01:30:43,605 --> 01:30:47,776
I kept waiting and waiting and waiting,
and he just didn't come.

1007
01:30:50,612 --> 01:30:53,615
I got all the way back
to the final underwater section,

1008
01:30:54,116 --> 01:30:57,369
the most awkward section.
Got the boy with me at this point,

1009
01:30:57,536 --> 01:30:59,121
you know, my precious cargo.

1010
01:31:01,915 --> 01:31:04,793
It's not a normal place
to have a line above you like that.

1011
01:31:05,336 --> 01:31:07,064
So, you'd have been on this side,
child in one hand,

1012
01:31:07,088 --> 01:31:09,798
line in the other above you.
Quite an awkward position.

1013
01:31:10,466 --> 01:31:13,385
And then something
on that last day changed,

1014
01:31:13,469 --> 01:31:15,596
and we all had problems in that section.

1015
01:31:17,056 --> 01:31:19,183
Just as I was going round
one of the corners,

1016
01:31:19,350 --> 01:31:22,561
I needed to transfer the rope
from one hand to another hand.

1017
01:31:23,395 --> 01:31:25,772
But it just pinged away from my hand.

1018
01:31:31,445 --> 01:31:32,946
This precious line

1019
01:31:33,030 --> 01:31:36,325
that ensures that we're going
to get out the water in one piece,

1020
01:31:36,617 --> 01:31:39,911
the thing you never lose,
the thing you never let go of,

1021
01:31:40,537 --> 01:31:41,955
I managed to let go of.

1022
01:31:44,333 --> 01:31:47,044
And I didn't know if the boy
might run out of gas.

1023
01:31:58,639 --> 01:32:01,683
It was just myself and Dr. Harris
in the water in Chamber Nine.

1024
01:32:01,767 --> 01:32:03,448
Everybody else had gone out by this point.

1025
01:32:04,728 --> 01:32:07,273
I thought the smallest child
had already gone,

1026
01:32:07,439 --> 01:32:14,196
but the last kid to walk down the hill
was this boy, Mark, who was 29 kilos.

1027
01:32:15,072 --> 01:32:19,160
Mark was by far the most small-faced
petite kid of them all.

1028
01:32:20,661 --> 01:32:23,342
We looked to each other and thought,
"That mask isn't gonna fit him.

1029
01:32:24,498 --> 01:32:26,618
"We can't leave him here today
and come back tomorrow,

1030
01:32:26,667 --> 01:32:28,948
"'cause I don't think
there's gonna be a chance tomorrow."

1031
01:32:31,088 --> 01:32:32,464
We tried the mask.

1032
01:32:33,174 --> 01:32:36,760
We tried packing stuff around it,
like putting the hood under it.

1033
01:32:38,387 --> 01:32:40,306
Try and tighten it up
as tight as possible,

1034
01:32:40,389 --> 01:32:43,058
so we were literally
crushing the kid's nose.

1035
01:32:43,642 --> 01:32:45,811
But there was no way
it was gonna keep water out.

1036
01:32:46,895 --> 01:32:50,399
For some reason, we'd brought
this more leisure-type,

1037
01:32:50,482 --> 01:32:51,858
full-faced mask too.

1038
01:32:52,401 --> 01:32:55,446
Compared to the other ones,
it looked like a little pink toy.

1039
01:32:56,071 --> 01:32:59,116
And when we tried cranking the straps
down on this leisure mask,

1040
01:32:59,200 --> 01:33:00,367
the seal collapsed.

1041
01:33:01,368 --> 01:33:02,869
And then water entered.

1042
01:33:04,163 --> 01:33:07,541
So we backed it off, tried it again,
then it collapsed again.

1043
01:33:07,791 --> 01:33:10,961
It just sat on his face, and you knew
that if it took a sideways knock,

1044
01:33:11,044 --> 01:33:12,421
that would have been curtains.

1045
01:33:15,716 --> 01:33:18,760
Jason, I could see
was very unhappy about it.

1046
01:33:22,598 --> 01:33:24,516
The very last child and I was thinking,

1047
01:33:24,683 --> 01:33:27,769
"Poor Jason," you know? "The last kid
is gonna be the one to drown,"

1048
01:33:27,936 --> 01:33:30,439
"and Jason's gonna have
to deal with that."

1049
01:33:32,524 --> 01:33:34,985
I had to go so slowly, so carefully.

1050
01:33:43,118 --> 01:33:44,370
We were waiting and waiting

1051
01:33:44,453 --> 01:33:47,873
and Chris didn't come,
so that was quite anxious.

1052
01:33:51,543 --> 01:33:55,631
Despite sweeping around
in the water to try and find this rope,

1053
01:33:56,382 --> 01:34:00,344
I couldn't find it.
I kept finding electrical cable.

1054
01:34:02,763 --> 01:34:05,432
That electrical cable
probably goes back to Chamber Three.

1055
01:34:06,558 --> 01:34:08,059
So, I started following it.

1056
01:34:11,480 --> 01:34:15,317
After, I guess, what was ten minutes,
I popped up into a chamber.

1057
01:34:16,151 --> 01:34:17,486
I was confused.

1058
01:34:20,656 --> 01:34:22,991
I was expecting to surface
in Chamber Three,

1059
01:34:23,074 --> 01:34:27,162
where the rescue workers were.
I surfaced in a chamber that was empty.

1060
01:34:27,663 --> 01:34:28,705
Hello!

1061
01:34:30,457 --> 01:34:31,667
Hello!

1062
01:34:32,751 --> 01:34:33,960
Hello!

1063
01:34:39,383 --> 01:34:42,553
If I've managed to find
an unknown chamber,

1064
01:34:42,636 --> 01:34:44,179
completely off the main route,

1065
01:34:44,763 --> 01:34:46,307
nobody's gonna come and find us.

1066
01:34:56,400 --> 01:34:59,570
I surfaced in the last air chamber
with the child,

1067
01:34:59,695 --> 01:35:02,698
and immediately in front of me,
there was this apparition of Chris,

1068
01:35:02,781 --> 01:35:04,325
and there was a child at his feet.

1069
01:35:04,408 --> 01:35:06,618
And my immediate thought was,
"We've lost one of them."

1070
01:35:06,952 --> 01:35:11,582
When I saw Jason,
I realized I'd gone backwards in the cave.

1071
01:35:11,748 --> 01:35:13,375
I realized I was back in Chamber Four.

1072
01:35:15,043 --> 01:35:18,922
Jason headed into the final section,
and then Harry appeared.

1073
01:35:20,966 --> 01:35:23,844
I said, "Look, mate,
you just stay here, gather your thoughts,

1074
01:35:23,927 --> 01:35:26,928
"I'll take the kid out in the last bit.
You come through when you're ready."

1075
01:35:32,769 --> 01:35:34,688
When I hear the humming
of the pump, I knew

1076
01:35:34,771 --> 01:35:37,649
I'm nearly at Chamber Three.
Just before I handed the kid over,

1077
01:35:37,733 --> 01:35:40,444
I got a lump in my throat,
'cause I knew he was gonna be out alive.

1078
01:35:42,112 --> 01:35:45,282
Okay, three, two, one.

1079
01:35:50,245 --> 01:35:52,789
When we heard Harry
was bringing Chris's boy forward,

1080
01:35:52,998 --> 01:35:54,082
I was confident in Harry

1081
01:35:54,207 --> 01:35:56,918
and pleased for him as well,
that he was able to experience that.

1082
01:35:59,671 --> 01:36:01,965
There was these big guys
from the U.S. Air Force there,

1083
01:36:02,299 --> 01:36:03,717
grabbing the kid off you.

1084
01:36:04,593 --> 01:36:07,429
Whisking him into a stretcher
and off up the hill.

1085
01:36:07,638 --> 01:36:09,014
And then he's just gone.

1086
01:36:13,101 --> 01:36:15,896
Suddenly, the mood was just amazing.

1087
01:36:17,898 --> 01:36:19,775
Passing around a bottle of Jack Daniels...

1088
01:36:21,067 --> 01:36:22,444
that wasn't really allowed.

1089
01:36:23,737 --> 01:36:25,217
Bloody done this, I can't believe it.

1090
01:36:27,908 --> 01:36:31,537
I knew the Thai Navy guys
and Dr. Bhak still had to come out

1091
01:36:31,620 --> 01:36:35,123
and we were still worried about them.
I mean, they still had a challenging dive.

1092
01:36:36,082 --> 01:36:39,169
And suddenly there's this cry
of something's going wrong.

1093
01:36:39,420 --> 01:36:42,464
One of the main pumps
in Chamber Three burst

1094
01:36:42,589 --> 01:36:44,841
and just started spewing water everywhere.

1095
01:36:47,469 --> 01:36:49,513
Oh, my God, it's rising really fast.

1096
01:36:49,596 --> 01:36:52,098
And we've got no regulators,
we need to get out of here.

1097
01:36:54,059 --> 01:36:55,852
We were waiting
on just two more SEALs

1098
01:36:55,936 --> 01:36:58,397
and as that water started to crash,

1099
01:36:58,480 --> 01:37:01,608
- those SEALs came out.
- Then the whole chamber flooded.

1100
01:37:01,817 --> 01:37:04,319
We just barely got out
by holding our breath.

1101
01:37:06,905 --> 01:37:09,575
We were saying that this must be
what the lady of the cave said,

1102
01:37:09,658 --> 01:37:13,244
"Now, you guys got what you wanted,
and now it's time to go."

1103
01:37:15,706 --> 01:37:17,248
Thank you!

1104
01:37:17,499 --> 01:37:20,502
And then the SEALs were coming out
right at the end.

1105
01:37:45,611 --> 01:37:47,404
Even though we were the sort of spearhead

1106
01:37:47,488 --> 01:37:48,530
to this operation,

1107
01:37:48,739 --> 01:37:51,658
there were 100s and 100s of people
in that cave.

1108
01:38:20,937 --> 01:38:22,773
It seems
that the lady opposite me

1109
01:38:22,898 --> 01:38:24,107
was Titan's mother...

1110
01:38:24,900 --> 01:38:27,861
the youngest boy
that I'd brought out on that last day.

1111
01:38:30,363 --> 01:38:33,450
Titan's mom said,
"On behalf of all the parents,

1112
01:38:33,617 --> 01:38:35,952
"we wanna thank you
for what you've done.

1113
01:38:36,036 --> 01:38:39,540
"It's like our children had died
and been given another life. And...

1114
01:38:41,041 --> 01:38:44,545
"you know, can't thank you enough."

1115
01:38:55,806 --> 01:38:58,433
That's what brought home
what we'd done.

1116
01:38:58,809 --> 01:39:00,936
They had a family life and parents.

1117
01:39:09,235 --> 01:39:12,823
Don't forget it.
Thailand is your second home.

1118
01:39:14,658 --> 01:39:18,411
This amazing sense of relief
and euphoria and elation.

1119
01:39:18,579 --> 01:39:21,164
I'd had my usual text message, saying...

1120
01:39:22,332 --> 01:39:24,960
"I'm out, I'll ring you
when I get back to the hotel."

1121
01:39:28,589 --> 01:39:30,465
So, he finally rang.

1122
01:39:32,258 --> 01:39:34,469
And I'm just babbling, I'm just, you know,

1123
01:39:34,553 --> 01:39:37,973
completely pumped full of adrenalin
at this point.

1124
01:39:38,056 --> 01:39:40,767
And I must have gone on
for ten minutes or something, at least,

1125
01:39:40,851 --> 01:39:46,982
and finally, I sort of draw a breath
and then suddenly, she's burst into tears.

1126
01:39:52,112 --> 01:39:56,324
And yeah, she tells my dad's just died,
literally a couple of hours ago.

1127
01:39:58,994 --> 01:40:04,124
So, I didn't know what to feel. You know,
it was this huge swing of emotions,

1128
01:40:04,207 --> 01:40:06,209
from being up here, to suddenly,

1129
01:40:06,292 --> 01:40:10,797
What... "How has this possibly
happened today, you know, of all days?"

1130
01:40:16,052 --> 01:40:18,471
Everyone was very sympathetic
and they all assumed

1131
01:40:18,555 --> 01:40:21,266
that I'd wanna go straight home,
which I thought about.

1132
01:40:22,559 --> 01:40:25,937
But then I thought,
"That's actually not gonna help me."

1133
01:40:26,021 --> 01:40:27,856
And even by the end of that first day,

1134
01:40:27,939 --> 01:40:30,316
I was already sort
of feeling better about it all,

1135
01:40:30,483 --> 01:40:35,614
because Dad had a fantastic life,
and you know, he just died, like that.

1136
01:40:35,739 --> 01:40:41,286
And I thought, "Well,
you couldn't ask for a better exit."

1137
01:40:43,204 --> 01:40:46,041
And so I sort of started
to see the positive side of it

1138
01:40:46,166 --> 01:40:49,460
and started to think,
"Well, this is actually another cause

1139
01:40:49,544 --> 01:40:50,671
"for celebration."

1140
01:40:51,379 --> 01:40:54,925
You know, I was celebrating the kids,
but also my dad.

1141
01:41:03,308 --> 01:41:04,392
Thank you so much.

1142
01:41:10,774 --> 01:41:13,026
Miracle piled upon miracle.

1143
01:41:45,809 --> 01:41:47,728
We'll see them. Sometime in the future.

1144
01:41:48,269 --> 01:41:51,564
Well, I think I hold a sort of great pride
in what...

1145
01:41:52,565 --> 01:41:53,692
what we did.

1146
01:41:54,192 --> 01:41:59,698
You could say justification
for the dedication I put forward

1147
01:42:00,073 --> 01:42:05,787
into a ridiculous minority sport
that no one ever took seriously.

1148
01:42:05,912 --> 01:42:07,914
Yes, it's definitely changed my life

1149
01:42:08,164 --> 01:42:11,209
and made me into
maybe a more confident person.

1150
01:42:11,459 --> 01:42:15,005
Last to be chosen for the cricket team,
first to be chosen for the cave rescue.

1151
01:42:16,047 --> 01:42:19,009
I did used to worry,
"Was I a bit too cold?

1152
01:42:19,217 --> 01:42:20,677
"Was I a bit too unemotional?"

1153
01:42:21,177 --> 01:42:24,765
I found a use and a purpose
to that level of detachment.

1154
01:42:25,140 --> 01:42:27,183
You can use it to do good things.

1155
01:42:28,143 --> 01:42:30,645
The Wild Boars.

1156
01:43:10,143 --> 01:43:14,314
He said, "You need to marry Amp."

1157
01:43:53,603 --> 01:43:56,314
They said it can't be done.

1158
01:43:59,109 --> 01:44:03,154
That this one's a challenge
You won't overcome.

1159
01:44:07,325 --> 01:44:10,829
I know your dreams are bold.

1160
01:44:12,873 --> 01:44:17,002
Keep going, you'll find that you're not
On your own.

1161
01:44:21,631 --> 01:44:27,595
So don't give up.

1162
01:44:28,471 --> 01:44:34,727
And don't give in.

1163
01:44:35,145 --> 01:44:41,484
You've gotta believe, believe, believe
That anything is possible.

1164
01:44:42,068 --> 01:44:48,283
You've gotta believe, believe, believe
That anything is possible.

1165
01:44:48,867 --> 01:44:55,748
You gotta keep on and see it through
No matter how hard that is to do.

1166
01:44:55,874 --> 01:45:02,047
You've gotta believe to find the fire
That's inside you.

1167
01:45:02,713 --> 01:45:07,010
You've gotta believe.

1168
01:45:09,220 --> 01:45:11,764
So here we are.

1169
01:45:14,684 --> 01:45:19,230
With billions of prayers
out there floating like stars...

1170
01:45:22,984 --> 01:45:26,154
I know it seems hard.

1171
01:45:28,406 --> 01:45:32,535
Just hold on to hope 'cause you've made it
This far.

1172
01:45:32,911 --> 01:45:36,539
Soon you'll be out of the dark.

1173
01:45:37,248 --> 01:45:43,046
So don't give up.

1174
01:45:44,047 --> 01:45:50,678
And don't give in.

1175
01:45:50,761 --> 01:45:56,893
You've gotta believe, believe, believe
That anything is possible.

1176
01:45:57,602 --> 01:46:03,691
You've gotta believe, believe, believe
That anything is possible.

1177
01:46:04,400 --> 01:46:11,199
You gotta keep on and see it through
No matter how hard that is to do.

1178
01:46:11,366 --> 01:46:17,497
You've gotta believe to find the fire
That's inside you.

1179
01:46:18,164 --> 01:46:23,836
You've gotta believe.

1180
01:46:31,928 --> 01:46:38,601
You gotta keep on and see it through
No matter how hard that is to do.

1181
01:46:38,768 --> 01:46:44,774
You've gotta believe to find the fire
That's inside you.

1182
01:46:45,650 --> 01:46:50,030
You've gotta believe