Hair-raising stuff, yet Mitch talks of each with the emotional detachment of the professional soldier he trained to be.
However, shift the conversation to the neuroblastoma which manifested itself as an adrenal gland tumour when daughter Anya was 3 months old and Mitch crumbles.
It's eight years since her emergency airlift to Starship Hospital; miraculously she survived, grew into a fit, healthy girl but what she and others like her have suffered is something her dad will never recover from.
Tears are his release valve.
The experience was the inspiration for his recently published children's book Safari Fitness - Wild New Zealand, it's dedicated to Anya. Through its bi-lingual pages, she and brother Austin go adventuring, it's peppered with exercises and instructions as blunt as "drink water until you have long, clear wees."
Mitch is an authority on such prosaic matters, with two army terms behind him he's tailored military fitness into a civilian context, become a personal trainer and owner of Instinctive Fitness Gym.
Which is how his name came Our People's way with a request to share this fitness guru's story, simultaneously acknowledging his successful Pakaru Tinana programme.
Its name translates into "broken body" but that's a very literal interpretation. What Mitch does is encourage those who've reached Gold Card status lose weight (52kg between 50 of them at an August weigh-in) and reach peak fitness.
A contingent's off to next month's Māori Ironman, several have already competed in the Kaumatua Olympics.
Included in this group of seniors is a heart recipient, some have arthritis, others diabetes, high blood pressure and Alzheimer's. So who is this miracle worker?
It comes as a shock when, post-interview, we twig he's slotted so much life experience into a mere 33 years we suspect we'd mistakenly recorded his birth year.
Texting him for confirmation the reply whizzed back "yeah, 1985 ... unfortunately."
Sorry, Mitch, there's nothing at all unfortunate about it. You are, as your koeke (elders) fan club says, "the man" age, yours and theirs, doesn't come into it.
Our chat begins with a request for clarification of that Mitch name.
"It's actually Calvin, no one's ever called me that, I'm Mitch full stop, I'm a Tainui Mitchell, the Te Arawa Mitchells have kindly adopted me."
Mitch had his first taste of Te Arawa territory in his teens when his parents moved from Putaruru "to give us kids better opportunities".
It was already a given that he'd go into the army. "A lot of my uncles and cousins were World War II and Vietnam vets, they inspired me."
After six months intensive training he became a lead scout "the battle catcher, the section's eyes and ears".
Come 2006 he was in East Timor.
"New Zealand was there as peacekeepers during the transitional elections, there were lots of riots, a bit like the Black Power and Mongrel Mob, as soon as the light went down the tit-for-tat started."
Mitch had been home only briefly when he was selected to compete in the army's World Cup Olympics in Wales, "at the Brecon Beacons, home of the SAS.
"I've always been a good runner, as a young fella we didn't have a car so I ran everywhere, it's the foundation for my fitness."
His second overseas deployment was Afghanistan, with Mitch's unit stationed in Bamyan province's mountainous north.
"The best way to explain the surroundings is Biblical - dirt roads, donkeys, mud huts. We were driving around in Toyota Hiluxes on roads too narrow for tanks. I can't go into too much detail, it's classified [information] but we were always on the alert, there were a lot of buried explosive devices, the Taliban were hiding in caves.
"It wasn't all bad, we helped rebuild schools, played volleyball with the kids, dug wells."
Anya's illness, initially considered terminal, preceded his overseas postings.
Mitch's praise for his former partner, Shelly Mitchell's, care for their daughter brings more tears.
"She was there 24/7, I wasn't."
He and Shelly met while he was at Boys' High and she was working in McDonald's.
"I kind of fancied her, when she was at university in Palmerston North we met up by chance. We were together 13 years, didn't marry, the fact she's a Mitchell too's purely coincidental".
Part one of Mitch's army life ended after 10 years, before his second stint he studied personal training and business skills in Auckland.
"When I graduated there was none of those sorts of jobs in Rotorua, a mate asked me to do private security overseas."
His first assignment was a 52-day anti-piracy gig on a cable-laying ship.
"Somalian pirates are like wasps buzzing around your vessel, there've been pirates for centuries, there they have the same status as All Blacks do here."
Levering out of him he was armed, the inevitable question follows, "did you kill anyone?"
"Put it this way, to them we're the villains, to us they're the invaders. In Yemen we bought our weapons on the black market, that was a mud hut, I was in a situation where I asked a mate to pass over an AK47, levelled it, it didn't fire, I guess we both got lucky."
Back in Rotorua, he used a garage sale's proceeds to fund a free boot camp trial.
"With five minutes to the advertised opening time no one showed then suddenly all these vehicles turned up, my fitness programmes grew from there, I worked out of my garage, business grew so fast I leased a gym, then my present one.
"The military gave me some great skills, I do military-style workouts, boot camps became battle camps – battling to get out of your comfort zone, punch force fit."
FACTBOX:
MITCH (CALVIN) MITCHELL
Born: Putaruru, 1985
Education: Putaruru West Primary, Putaruru High, Rotorua Boy' High (two years); NZ Army, Max Fitness College, Auckland
Family: Daughter Anya, 8, son Austin, 6
Iwi Affiliations: Tainui, Ngati Raukawa,
Interests: Whanau, health and fitness, hunting, trout fishing "My son gets heaps more than me."
Personal regret: "Failing to get into the SAS, I'm colour blind, gunfire's deafened one ear."
On Rotorua: "It has a proud tradition of soldiers, warriors."
On the military: "An unfortunate but necessary fact."
Awards nominations: Gym and book finalists in next month's Fitness NZ awards
Personal philosophy: "Hard times don't last, hard men do."
