I went operational with 11 Alfa, Alfa Company of the 11th Battalion, as an assault pioneer. That was my first function at Airmobile and I did it for two and a half years.

Those first four months I went into an enormous acceleration, and it was purely because of who was standing next to me. We were sitting among guys who had been operational for a long time, so all of that could just pour straight into us. It was a fantastic time. That is something I will genuinely never forget.

And the guys I went through the course with came to 11 Alfa too, so you arrived already having friends there.

Then after four months a new group came in, and the level naturally drops again, and you build the whole thing back up together. That is the rhythm. It never stops.

It was during that time as an assault pioneer that I got my static line parachute certificate, within the first year of being operational.

Static line means the parachute is opened for you. A line runs from your chute to the aircraft, and when you leave the door that line pulls it open. You are not reaching for anything. You go out, and it opens. That is how you put a lot of people onto the ground fast, and it is the whole reason the brigade exists.

I was on the platoons for around two years, and that is when I started getting properly interested in the sniper trade. Then I found out the sniper group was standing empty.

So I went to have a word with Stefan. He was the senior corporal of the company and the leading man of the sniper group, and just a genuinely relaxed guy. Approachable, easy to deal with. You could go to him with anything, so that is what I did.

When they started looking for people, they ran an initial test to see who had potential. Two parts.

KaKo, map and compass. Navigation.

And a stalk. In a stalk you have to get to a firing position without being seen, and then take a shot at the spotters. If the spotters do not see you, you pass.

I will happily say I was genuinely good at KaKo, so that is where I took my points. The stalk is a different matter, because at that moment you do not really know how any of it works, so there is a bit of luck involved.

The proper selection also has a KaKo, but this time you have to shoot as well. In the period between the two tests we had a few shooting sessions with the group, to see where everyone’s level was.

Grouping means putting several rounds through more or less the same hole. Multiple holes close together make a group, and how tight that group is tells you everything about the shooter. Nothing else. It is just you, the rifle, and whether you can do the same thing five times in a row.

Do that, and pass the KaKo, and you were going to sniper school.

And then something happened that I still think about. My mate who finished first in the initial test did not make the standard. My mate who finished third did. So the two of us went to sniper school together.

Those were probably the best eight weeks I have ever experienced. And they do not start with the thing most people picture when they hear the word sniper.

The stalking, the camouflage, the reconnaissance side of it, all of that you can also pick up reasonably well back at the unit. But shooting is the part that happens least often at the unit. Range time is scarce. So that is the thing you genuinely have to learn on the course, and that is why the pressure sits there and why it comes first.

From early in the morning until late at night you are working. Lessons in everything, and I mean everything, that has anything to do with putting a round exactly where you want it.

Looking back, that first stretch is really the marksman part. It is about the rifle and about you.

I finished the final sniper exercise and I was given the best man certificate. But I want to tell you how that actually went, because the truth is better than the certificate.

My buddy on the course was Arjo, and the two of us ran completely level the whole way.

At the start of the course I simply shot better than he did. Then towards the end of the course my stalks stopped going well, and Arjo’s stalks were going very well. So it evened out, and we ended up standing at exactly the same level.

Which means we really had to share that best man between us. I got it because the certificate is personalised, and that obviously has to be decided well before the course ends.

To this day I know that Arjo and I became best man together. And that is a hell of a thing to carry.

After the course, Mathijs, a good mate of mine, and I came back to the sniper group. We became buddies, because we were the only two who had done the course. That meant we could pick up things here and there and pass them on.

We did outstanding things with the snipers.

And there is one more thing from those years that I owe you, because I promised it earlier.

The best jump I ever did came out of that American trip. We went into a two week exercise straight out of the aircraft.

That weapons bag holds both of my rifles, the Accuracy 338 and the Colt, and with everything else in there it comes to fifteen kilos on its own. The ruck was supposed to stay under thirty. Mine was thirty-five.

You do not walk in that. You waddle to the aircraft and other people help you up. Then you stand in the door of a C-17 with all of it on you, and you go.

When I think back on it now, it starts itching again, and I do miss that time.

I was with the snipers for two and a half years. And here is the number that eventually decided it for me.

Add it all up over two years and more than half of my life was spent somewhere else.

Towards the end of my time there I had already started The Trace, and I simply wanted to be home more.

The other thing was that we had been on a lot of exercises, and a lot of those exercises I found genuinely pointless and unnecessary. There was an ammunition shortage. So you are away from home again, for something you already know is not worth being away for. At a certain point I was standing there properly asking myself what I was actually doing.

So I left Airmobile at Schaarsbergen and went to work in Amersfoort, so that I could focus on being home and on The Trace. What stands there today stands there because of that decision.

Here is the part almost nobody knows.

You do not see the bullet. You see what it leaves behind.

That is the name. That is the whole idea. Everything on these garments is about what someone leaves behind, what they did, what they earned. Built On Achievements is not a slogan somebody wrote in a meeting. It came from a job where the only thing you can actually see is the trace.

Even if you get turned down everywhere, your route is written down somewhere. You have to keep doing your best, and eventually you find out what it is.

And do not be afraid to go and do the thing your passion is in, the thing you actually enjoy, because in the end The Trace was simply meant for me. I genuinely believe that.