Mark Wales

Mark Adam Wales (born 3 November 1979) is an Australian author and entrepreneur. He gained national attention as a competitor on Australian Survivor, which he eventually won. His earlier career had been as an officer in the Australian Army, where he made ten deployments over 16 years, including four to Afghanistan with the Special Air Service Regiment. On leaving the military he began business studies in the United States, before launching an apparel brand in New York. His 2021 memoir, also called Survivor, documented his experiences of war, PTSD and moral injury.

Early life

Family background Wales' parents met in the country town of Maffra in Victoria, where his mother was a secretary and his father a bank teller, before taking a job as truck driver in the remote iron ore community of Newman, Western Australia.

He has written about regional Australia in the 1980s as friendly, happily hitchhiking as a child with his older brother.

Job moves with Australian Customs took the family to Perth, then Geraldton, then back to Perth, with the family settling in Leeming, where Wales went to high school Wales recalls a moment at school where he decided his future: seeing the front cover of a classmate's magazine which showed black-clad troops storming the Iranian Embassy in London to rescue western hostages. In June 1996, his final year of school, 18 Australian soldiers were killed in a tragic Black Hawk accident; though this seemed to increase his resolve.

Military service

According to his service memoir, Wales took the Oath of Allegiance at an Australian Defence Force ceremony at Swan Barracks in 1997, at age 17. In his grenade training, the weapon was fumbled before exploding, though, remarkably, no one was hurt. Even so, he successfully completed his degree and went on to Royal Military College, Duntroon in 2000. Here, Wales was dressed down by an assessor officer for a catastrophic ambush exercise, along with the feedback that "To my absolute bloody amazement, they followed you. They wanted to work for you. That’s a good thing. You can lead, you have that skill – you just need more technical work." Through 2001, he led the platoon on exercises at Line Creek Junction, before deploying to East Timor. These involved long patrols of up to nine-days without resupply; and securing Junction Point Alpha on the border with West Timor. Reporting to Angus Campbell allowed him to learn more about the SASR from a former Squadron commander. Only he heard the unit was, at that time, "a menagerie" and that warfare "brings nothing but misery. During Easter 2002, his platoon oversaw the repatriation of 3,000 East-Timorese from refugee camps, which, Wales later said, was the first time he had witnessed real human suffering.

Solomon Islands, 2003 To support Operation Anode, Wales' 2RAR unit was sent to the Solomon Islands in to stabilise the country. This included missions on rigid inflatable boats close to where Australians fought in the Guadalcanal campaign of World War II. By the end of that year he was made a Captain, leading exercises for the 11th/28th Battalion, based in Perth.

Selection, 2004 Wales was one of 83 candidates who underwent the 2004 Selection for the Special Air Service Regiment, completing the additional officers module after the first week. In interviews, Wales has said this included planning a hostage rescue operation, whilst being denied food and sleep, and a 130 kilometre navigation exercise, on foot, in which he became badly injured. Though he had concerns that his size would impede endurance (he is six foot three inches) he completed all modules and was accepted into the regiment and began the one-year reinforcement cycle in 2005.

Close protection, 2006 Operational roles in special forces began when Wales started leading close protection teams in war zones. He led protective security detachments for visiting generals and political leaders, such as Lt Gen Peter Leahy, as they visited Baghdad, Basra, Talil, and Camp Victory in Iraq; and Kabul, Camp Russell, Kandahar, and Bagram in Afghanistan. Wales' squadron was called to provide protection to Xanana Gusmão during the 2006 East Timorese crisis, which extended to combat roles later in the year.

Afghanistan, late 2007 While in Timor, Wales was asked to help form a composite troop within Rotation V, deploying to Uruzgan Province in September 2007.

On 24–25 October, he led his soldiers in a 12-hour firefight with Taliban fighters in a greenbelt of cornfield and its surrounding compounds. The unharvested field enabled an ambush by the enemy and, very early in the action, Wales' sergeant, Matthew Locke was shot in the upper chest by a PK machine gun, and pronounced dead after extraction. Wales was devastated by the death of his sergeant, giving himself tough criticism for being insufficiently aware of the dangers of the greenbelt.

On 1–5 December, Wales led the Australian force element in support of an attack on the enemy stronghold of Musa Qala in Helmand Province. Wales' unit soon came under mortar fire but the Taliban effort was repulsed by heavy weapons, artillery fire from a long range self propelled Panzerhaubitze howitzer and B-1 Lancer bombing runs, dropping 500 pound munitions. Wales was given a task to enter the country within 24 hours, in a discreet reconnaissance mission, planning a possible national evacuation operation. He took on the role of Executive Officer of 1 Squadron, leading combat operations from Camp Russell, Tarin Kot, in the northern summer of 2010, during what became known as the troop surge. This involved planning operations, including air packages, the rotary wing, counter-insurgency and targeting force commanders.

By the end of 2010, Wales saw strategic, operational and moral problems in Operation Slipper. Strategically, he began seeing the conflict as an "aimless war" with no discernible objective. This gave the enemy an advantage that could not be overcome: "The arrogance you have as a Westerner with hardware, satellites etc. We think we can be beaten and it is such a shock to learn somebody incredibly motivated with a cheap weapon and a willingness to fight you at close range can nullify all those advantages." He has expressed "frustration that we're not, at the national level, understanding that." Even so, the journalist Masters came to describe Wales as one a small number of SAS officers who was "admired for assured application of intelligence and integrity within an anarchic a sometimes soulless environment. When the Brereton Report found evidence of war crimes in the regiment, Wales expressed that he was shocked, but unsurprised, telling Neil Mitchell that a cohort of soldiers had been exposed to combat for too long, such that “your sense of what is normal gets warped".

Duntroon, 2011 Now a Major, Wales returned to Australia, with some anxiety about the future. Outside of teaching hours, Wales began to look at ways to move into the business world, applying to American business schools and practicing the GMAT. After several attempts, he won a place at Wharton School in Pennsylvania, resigning his commission and leaving the army in 2012. On graduation Wharton selected Wales for the "40 under 40" list for business excellence.

McKinsey After completing the MBA, Wales applied for a role with McKinsey & Company. However, he chose to move on from the company to concentrate on his own start up. Beginning with leather jackets, he hoped the brand could be a way of telling the story of what he, and others, had been through. During business development, he was partly inspired by retired general Jim Mattis, who had come to visit students, "He told us the best thing we could do for the security of the country was to go out and start good businesses to make the economy stronger." The shape was directly taken from contemporary special forces combat gear, which had become form-fitting.

Eco-challenge and Survivor While in New York, where funds were running low, a friend recommended that Wales audition for the season 4 of Australian Survivor. One of 20,000 applicants to the Endemol production in 2017, Wales positioned himself as a 'special ops / fashion designer' and he was invited to screen test. Filmed in 2019 and premiered on Amazon Prime in August 2020, the 700 km course was said to be extremely demanding, where contestants experienced hypothermia in the highlands. Wales' team finished 26th out of field of 44.

Both Gash and Wales returned to Survivor for Australian Survivor: Blood V Water.

Shortly after Survivor, Wales auditioned for a character role in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, being cast as Hefty Brakeman and he was filmed on location in mid 2022. His first non-fiction work, many parts were written in "a cold sweat" as they covered disturbing aspects of family life, and combat, which he later said, "unhinged me morally and mentally." At its mid-point, Wales becomes not only critical of himself, but of the leaders and policies who had sent him to war:"...more people would die, more proclamations about ‘difficult, fragile’ progress would be made. Meanwhile the moral injuries piled up behind the casualty lists – especially in special forces. We were being flogged with operational tempo, which we loved, at least initially... But the cost was high. Death, injury and burnout was boiling to the surface. I had seen all three of them as far back as 2007. The memoir was endorsed by Bear Grylls, receiving positive reviews from the Australian military community, describing it as "inspirational" and an "epic story of survival" and was listed for the Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award for 2022. It is the first memoir published after the Brereton Report, and seems to have emboldened Wales to write further contributions about the war in Afghanistan, including an op-ed with the Sydney Morning Herald titled "SAS war crimes: 'killing became incentivised, a toxic culture grew.'" Wales' first novel is slated to be published in 2024. It is said to depict a fictional Australian conflict, where a coup is triggered by the influence of the CCP.

Outrider Wales released his first fictional work in 2024. Outrider is set in the near future, where China has destroyed three US Naval carrier groups and the entire Royal Australian Navy in three battles, before fomenting a civil war in mainland Australia. In the occupied territory near Melbourne, the protagonist Jack Dunne begins an insurrection against PLA-aligned forces, while trying to protect his 11-year-old boy. Books+Publishing described Wales' book as a "fast-paced, high-octane thriller", comparing it favourably to works by novelists Lee Child and Chris Ryan. He has a son from a previous relationship with Samantha Gash, named Harry Locke Wales. However, with a close family member experiencing a life-threatening health episode, he withdrew from the competition, in order to "provide all the support they need."

While staying silent for many years on his experience of childhood abuse, becoming a father prompted Wales to report the matter to Western Australian Police in 2019. The abuser, who was later convicted, was his mother's cousin, Richard Ernest Jackson.