Forged by War: Australians in Combat and Back Home

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Author: Gina Lennox

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FORGED BY WAR

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kjkjkjkljkjlk

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Drops of Blood in a Pond of Water

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FORGED BY WAR AUSTRALIANS IN COMBAT AND BACK HOME

GINA LENNOX

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MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Ltd (MUP Ltd) 187 Grattan Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia [email protected] www.mup.com.au First published 2005 Text © Gina Lennox 2005 Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Ltd 2005 This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers. Designed by Phil Campbell Typeset in Malaysia by Syarikat Seng Teik Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Lennox, Gina. Forged by war: Australians in combat and back home. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 0 522 85171 1. 1. Veterans—Australia. 2. Families of military personnel—Australia. 3. Australia—History, Military. 4. Australia—Armed Forces—History. I. Title. 355.00994

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

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CONTENTS Acknowledgements Abbreviations and glossary Introduction: ‘Only the Dead have seen the End of War’ Part I Drops of Blood in a Pond of Water

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War in Afghanistan [2001– ] and Iraq [2003– ] and UN Deployments from 1989 1. Always a Little Further—An SAS Veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq

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2. A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain—Paul Copeland, Peacemaker in Cambodia; and other Peacemakers—Peacekeepers in Iraqi Kurdistan, Namibia and Somalia

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3. Out of the Closet—Dr Tony Williams and Peacemakers in Rwanda and East Timor

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Part II Generations of War

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Families with Veterans from World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War 4. Camaraderie and Commonsense—General Peter Cosgrove and Lynne Cosgrove

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5. True Blue—Glenda Humes, Noel Conigrave and John Kinsela

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6. A Real War—Gloria Robinson

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7. Diamonds and Stone—Garry Heskett

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Part III As the Call, So the Echo

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Aftermath of the Vietnam War 8. War and Politics—Graham Edwards

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9. Eggs and Eggshells—Kathleen Schulz, Len Schulz Junior and Len Schulz Senior

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10. When Penguins Fly—Patricia Parsons

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11. Agent Orange Mist—Clarrie, Lona and Darcy Upton

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12. Soldier On Regardless—Michael Wykes

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13. I Was Only Nineteen—Frank Hunt

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Notes

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MAPS Afghanistan

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Iraq

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Cambodia

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East Timor

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South East Asia

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to the Australia Council for the Arts, whose community cultural development grant made possible the two years’ work on this book, to Lyla Coorey of the Vietnam Veterans’ Counselling Service, whose phone call gave me the initial inspiration, and to Maree Johnson, Barry Billing and Leisl Koledziej for their letters of support and contacts, as well as my friend, Bill Keefer, who gave me contacts and feedback. Highest thanks of all goes to the fifty-five war veterans, peacemakers–peacekeepers, veterans’ partners, daughters, sons and parents who gave so generously of their time, honesty and trust in the interview and consultation process. A special thanks to two of them, Milan Nikolic and Michael Wykes, who allowed me access to their own writings, and to the people whose stories had to be left out or this book would have been twice as long. Thanks to the transcribers, June Festejo, Elizabeth Stanley, Margaret Carless and Sue Fraser, for transcribing interviews ranging from three to twelve hours of tape, and to the Australian Government, Department of Defence, for their support and permissions to use various materials. As well, I would like to thank George Gittoes, the Warrnambool Standard and Sophia Borick for allowing me to use their photos and Universal/MCA Music Publishing Pty Ltd for permission to use the song I Was Only Nineteen. Lastly, thanks to Sybil Nolan, commissioning editor at Melbourne University Publishing, for her belief in the manuscript and invaluable feedback, and likewise to Sally Moss, freelance editor, and other members of the team at MUP.

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ABBREVIATIONS AND GLOSSARY AC ADF AK AO APC APPVA ARU ARVN AusAID AUSBATT AWOL battalion BULGABATT cal cam CIVPOL CO comms company DCM Dustoff DVA FALINTIL

Companion of the Military Division of the Order of Australia Australian Defence Force AK-47 assault rifle Area of Operation armoured personnel carrier Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans’ Association Australian Reinforcement Unit Army of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnamese Army) Australian overseas aid Australian UN Forces absent without leave In the Australian context, an Infantry combat unit of usually 700 to 800 soldiers. Bulgarian UN Forces calibre camouflage Civilian Police (UN) Commanding Officer communications 80–100 soldiers made up of three to four platoons Distinguished Conduct Medal emergency battlefield medivacs done by helicopter Department of Veterans’ Affairs (Commonwealth) National Armed Forces for the Liberation of East Timor (literally Forças Armadas de Libertação Nacional de Timor Leste) Green Berets American Special Forces helo helicopter Herc Hercules hootchie One- or two-man field sleeping accomodation, usually with the soldiers sleeping on the ground covered by a plastic sheet as a tent. INTERFET International Force East Timor 1999–2000—5500 Australians Kibeyo phonetic spelling of Kabaya, Rwanda LAV Light Armoured Vehicle LRPV Long Range Patrol Vehicle LUP Lying Up Place where small numbers of soldiers gather to prepare for further operations, usually located close to the enemy. MBE Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire medivac medical evacuation MFO Multinational Force & Observers, Sinai MM Military Medal NCO non-commissioned officer, e.g. Lance-corporal, Corporal, Sergeant, Staffsergeant. Nog term used for Viet Cong. Also a racist term for Asians generally. NVA North Vietnamese Army NVGs night vision goggles OC Officer Commanding

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OP Operation Habitat PAKBATT piquet platoon POW Provo PSY OPS PT PTSD RAAF RAP RAR

rats recon reo RPG RSM SAM SAS section SF SI Sig 2IC TPI UNAMET UNAMIC UNAMIR UNITAF UNMO UNOSOM I UNOSOM II UNTAC UNTAET UNTAG VC VFL Viet Cong VVCS

observation post (Kurdistan, Northern Iraq) 1991—75 Australians Pakistani UN Forces A sentry in a field, as opposed to a barracks situation. A unit of twenty to thirty soldiers, usually commanded by a Lieutenant. prisoner of war military police Psychological Operations physical training post-traumatic stress disorder Royal Australian Air Force Regimental Aid Post Royal Australian Regiment: a regiment consisting of a number of Australian Infantry battalions. Each of those battalions has a regimental affiliation to the Regiment, e.g., 1RAR, 2RAR. rations reconnaissance—preliminary investigation reinforcement rocket-propelled grenade Regimental Sergeant Major surface-to-air missile Special Air Service smallest formal unit in the ADF—about ten soldiers Special Forces Senior Instructor signaller second in command totally and permanently incapacitated (TPI is the highest level of Veterans Affairs ‘war’ pension) United Nations Assistance Mission to East Timor 1999—50 Australians United Nations Assistance Mission in Cambodia 1991–92—65 Australians United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda 1993–96—308 Australians Unified Task Force in Somalia 1992–93—937 Australians United Nations Military Observer First United Nations Operations in Somalia 1992–93—30 Australians Second United Nations Operations in Somalia 1993–95—30 Australians United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia 1992–93—564 Australians United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor 1999–present— 2000 Australians United Nations Transition Assistance Group (Namibia) 1989–90—338 Australians Viet Cong Victorian Football League (Australian Rules Football) South Vietnamese fighters allied to North Vietnamese Vietnam Veterans’ Counselling Service

Abbreviations and Glossary

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INTRODUCTION ‘ONLY THE DEAD HAVE SEEN THE END OF WAR’ Plato I was shocked when I first read a poem about war written by an American veteran of World War II, Father Denis Edward O’Brien. It says that it is the soldier, not the reporter, poet or political activist, who defends our freedom to debate, create and demonstrate; that it is ultimately the soldier who defends our democratic processes. No doubt my strong reaction was the result of having grown up in the Vietnam War era, when the prevailing mantra was antiwar and anti-soldier. I had little knowledge of my grandfather’s experiences in World War I and my father’s in World War II, although some connections could be made between their service and life afterwards. The unquestioning nature of my anti-war stance came in for a battering in the 1990s when I wrote about the Kurds of Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. This led me to an interest in war and its impact on generations of Australian families. Since the Maori War of 1860–61, two million Australians have fought in thirteen conflicts, and more than 102 800 of them died. In addition, more than 46 000 Australian military personnel have served in fifty-six peacekeeping and peacemaking operations since 1947, twelve of them dying in the line of duty. The only decade in which Australia was not involved in a conflict of some form was the 1920s. And just as one war can sow the seeds of the next, the effects of veterans’ war experiences can ripple through families, with significant personal, social and political implications. The result of my research into war and its effects on veterans and their families is a book that records generations of Australians’ combat experiences and their lives long after the bullets and bombs have stopped. Those I interviewed include veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, the Vietnam War; an SAS trooper in Afghanistan and Iraq; and UN peacemakers and peacekeepers in Cambodia, Iraqi Kurdistan, Namibia, 1

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Somalia, Rwanda, the Sinai and East Timor. To tap into the career soldier and his family, I went to the top, interviewing the Chief of the Australian Defence Force, General Peter Cosgrove, and his wife Lynne. From the outset, my intention was to discover the perspectives of parents, partners and children of veterans, as well as the veterans themselves, to find out what it was like to have a loved one go to a war zone and return home, and how this impacts on family dynamics. The Vietnam War became the link between stories, as I came to see Vietnam as a major turning point, not only for the way civilians view war, but also for the manner in which modern war is fought and its aftermath negotiated. Vietnam veterans were caught in the middle of the change. They grew up in a conservative era, their fathers and grandfathers having gone to World War I and II, returning home stern and silent about war and its affects. In Vietnam they fought in a messy war, only to come home to a society undergoing a social revolution, many of its members greeting them as villains and murderers. Yet some went on to father or train the next generation of military personnel. The servicemen and -women of today operate in different paradigms, personally and professionally, their deployments governed by complex mandates intent on minimising casualties, but often limiting their ability to protect civilians. While most recent deployments are not as bloody as those of Vietnam and before, they carry their own set of stresses. At least modern service personnel benefit from the experience gained by those who fought in Vietnam and the post-Vietnam acknowledgement of the psychological and family issues that can result from combat service. War and its consequences bring out the best and worst in humanity. This was the case in the bloodiest war ever. In 1918, Australia had a population of five million people, of whom 324 000 served overseas in World War I. These were the people who forged the Digger legend, yet the cost was enormous: 61 919 died and 155 000 were wounded, including those who were exposed to chlorine, phosgene or mustard gas. Some country towns lost an entire generation of men. World War I veterans who suffered from shell shock were hospitalized and treated with aspirin, bromides and electric shocks. Many veterans could not find employment, some seeking solitude in the bush. Then came the Great Depression, which saw the rise of unionism and, for a number, an interest in Marxism and its applications. One-third of the population married, most of them for life. The legacy of war was buried under a culture of stoicism, often mediated by alcohol.

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After the horror of World War I the League of Nations was established in 1919 to end all wars. It did not stop German or Japanese aggression and so war veterans of the Great War watched their children go off to World War II; this time Australia was being threatened. Australia’s population in 1939 was seven million. Over the next six years 993 000 Australians enlisted: 39 366 died and 30 560 were taken prisoner, mainly by the Japanese. Those involved in the post-war occupation of Japan saw the effects of two atomic bombs, which by 1950 had killed 340 000 Japanese. For veterans who returned home with extreme war neuroses there was hospitalization. A number were put into insulin comas until their weight and nerves adjusted. Again alcohol was often used to forget. Having won the war and saved Australia from possible Japanese invasion with the help of the Americans, World War II veterans re-entered a society growing in prosperity, the effects of war on themselves and their families remaining largely unrecognized. The establishment of the United Nations in 1945 was another attempt to resolve conflicts by political mediation rather than military means. However, the UN Security Council’s requirement for consensus meant it was powerless to prevent the world divide between the imperialism of capitalist and communist alike, led by the two superpowers, the USA and the USSR, who fought a Cold War of nuclear brinkmanship. In this Cold War era came hot wars including the Korean War (1950–53), in which 17 164 Australians participated. Then came the Malayan Emergency (1950–62), involving 7000 Australians, and the Indonesian Confrontation of Malaysia (1964–66) in which 3500 Australians fought in Borneo as part of the British Commonwealth. When it came to the Vietnam War (1962–75), it was Australia’s indebtedness to the US alliance that led to our involvement. Sold as a war against communism, the Vietnam War was that and more, given that the Vietnamese were fighting for independence following the broken promises and missed opportunities for nation building after World War II. As a result, in 1954 their country was divided between the communist north and American-backed south. While Vietnam was not the first war fought without UN approval, many people came to see it as a war founded on lies, the chief one being that if communists weren’t fought on their own soil they would domino capitalism out of existence. I would argue that rather than being a lie, this was an assessment by the US and Australian governments of the day, based on the history of capitalist and communist post-war power plays in Europe and Asia. For instance, by the 1960s Indonesia had the third-largest communist party in the world. Nevertheless, lies were told. In August 1964, a false claim that North Vietnamese vessels had attacked the US destroyer

Introduction

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Maddox in the Bay of Tonkin resulted in the US Congress voting in support of taking all necessary measures to repel future attack. When the North Vietnamese Army attacked two US Army installations in 1965 the US began a bombing campaign that saw more bombs dropped in six months than throughout World War II. Unlike previous wars, the Vietnam War relied on conscription of National Servicemen selected by ballot. As a consequence the average age of the soldier was twenty: younger than in previous wars. Conscripts were given the choice of serving in Vietnam or Australia, but this was after their military training had instilled in them a team spirit, physical fitness and military disposition, along with the promise of a war service loan, on which few reneged. In the war, 59 000 Australians joined 545 000 Americans, 313 000 South Koreans and 1.4 million South Vietnamese troops, as well as Thais, Filipinos and New Zealanders, to fight an enemy of 1.73 million Vietnamese aided by 55 000 Russian advisers and 327 000 Chinese troops. These numbers are huge when compared to the numbers involved in the Iraq War [2003– ]. Even so, the Vietnam War would have had far less impact on civilian attitudes if it had not been, above all, the first war that received daily television coverage. In 1963 I was a child of seven, but I vividly remember images of monks setting themselves on fire in protest against US-backed President Diem and his brother raiding the monasteries looking for communists, and later the ARVN soldier shooting a Viet Cong and a naked girl running from napalm. For ten long years civilians were visually exposed to the horror of war, and by 1970 hundreds of thousands of people were marching in the streets of Australia and America in anti-war protests. This rising tide of opinion had a significant effect on its outcome, Australia withdrawing by December 1972 and US forces leaving the following March, although the US Government continued to support the South Vietnamese Army until August 1974. With the fall of Saigon in 1975, Vietnam became the first war deemed to have been lost by the US and its Allies. In 1975 the communists took a triplet: Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This was after a death toll of 58 000 US soldiers, 520 Australian soldiers, and an estimated 185 000 to 225 000 South Vietnamese soldiers. Between 900 000 and two million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were killed, along with one million Vietnamese civilians and 850 000 Cambodians and Laotians. Throughout this controversial war returning veterans were spat upon, ridiculed and condemned. This bitter reception was to have a lasting effect on how they processed the war. Many felt betrayed by the government and the people, and those who still believed in the war kept this to themselves. Vietnam

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veterans also returned to a society where every conceivable social ethos was being questioned, from attitudes to authority to the institution of marriage and family. By the early 1980s, the effects of the Vietnam War on veterans and their families were becoming apparent. As an increasing number of veterans reported alarming physical and psychological symptoms that they linked to the war, Vietnam veteran associations and counselling services were established, and in 1989 the ADF instituted a debriefing program for all service personnel returning from overseas deployment. Vietnam veterans were also reporting stillbirths, abnormal births and cancers in their children, which they linked to their exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs Vietnam Veterans’ Health Study and subsequent validation studies conducted between 1998 and 2001 discovered that Vietnam veterans had a higher than normal incidence of motor neurone disease, prostate cancer, cancer of the colon and male breast cancer. Of the forty thousand veterans surveyed in 1998, thirty to forty-five per cent reported panic attacks, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with thirty-nine per cent of their partners having sought treatment for stress, anxiety or depression. Domestic violence issues were disclosed by 43.8 per cent of those surveyed, twenty-three per cent being the rate in the general population (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1996). Younger children of veterans were found to have died by accident at twice the expected rate, and adult children were committing suicide at three times the expected rate. Veterans’ children also had three to eleven times the normal rate of spina bifida, cleft lip and palate, absent body parts and some cancers. With many partners and children seeking help for mood disorders, professionals started talking about secondary PTSD. After Vietnam, the world again looked to the UN to solve internal and international conflicts. Although UN action is limited by its member states’ interests and the principle that sovereignty is an inalienable territorial right, the 1990s witnessed an unprecedented number of UN peacekeeping and peacemaking missions. In 1990–91, 750 to 1800 Australian military personnel, mainly from the Navy, were deployed to the Gulf, as part of a UN coalition following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Afterwards, veterans began talking about a Gulf War Syndrome. Other UN peacekeeping and peacemaking missions put increasing demands on ADF personnel. These UN missions are seen to be without the vested self-interests of war, the criterion for action generally being that a government has to invite a UN multinational force to provide impartial security and constructive assistance under strict rules of engagement. While

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the world’s conscience is eased by such deployments, many civilians have little understanding of the conditions to which peacekeepers and peacemakers are exposed, or the often conflicting demands made on them. Just twelve years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has embarked on a new era of conflict. To call the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon ‘acts of war’, as the Bush administration did, set the tone for the United States and its allies’ response. To what degree the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will coalesce the fundamentally anarchic and disparate groups of Islamic militants or wipe out their power bases remains to be seen but, once again, people look to the United Nations for guidance. The UN Security Council quickly approved the war on Afghanistan, which destroyed hundreds of al-Qa’ida training camps. However, the US-proposed war on Iraq was opposed by France, Germany, Russia, China and others. The resonances between the Cold War and the ‘War on Terror’ are many, not least that the seeds of the current problems were sown in the earlier era, when the West supported Islamic and Arab nationalist groups, as well as monarchies and military dictatorships throughout the Middle East and Asia, to counteract the growth of communism. Just as Western countries lost a window of opportunity to grant self-determination in Asia after World War II, so they missed opportunities to support democratic movements in the Middle East. Eighteen months after September 11, a US-led Coalition invaded Iraq. Like the Vietnam War and Kosovo, the 2003 Iraq War was not UN-approved but a unilateral action. Like Vietnam, the war split public opinion. Those who opposed it saw as no imminent threat Saddam Hussein’s links to terrorism— for example, his financial support for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers—and the twelve years he had flouted UN resolutions which demanded transparent accounting for and the destruction of Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons. They called for UN weapons inspections and diplomacy to be given more time, fearing that a pre-emptive action was illegal, unjust and likely to open a Pandora’s box. In contrast, the US, British and Australian governments promoted the war in terms of Saddam Hussein still possessing chemical and biological weapons. Of major concern was what he intended to do with them, if not now then in the future, especially when international sanctions against Iraq were lifted, which some opposing the war were lobbying for. A large number of supporters of the war, including all but two people I interviewed for this book, saw the war as justified on humanitarian grounds

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alone: that the Iraqi people had already suffered thirty-five years of tyranny and three wars (the Kurdish revolution, Iran and Kuwait). From 19 March until the cessation of conventional combat on 28 April 2003, troop involvement was 255 000 Americans, 45 000 British, 2000 Australians, 400 Czechs and Slovakians and 200 Poles. By mid-February 2005, two weeks after Iraq’s elections, 1455 Americans and 172 other Coalition nationals had died in combat, one being Australian. Iraqi soldier and civilian deaths are difficult to ascertain; estimates vary between 16 800 and 100 000. Echoes of the Vietnam War include a daily media coverage of bombings, body counts and human rights violations, including those of US personnel stationed at Abu Ghraib Prison. Just as the Vietnam War was part of a larger battle of ideologies that spilled over into Cambodia and Laos, so too is the war in Iraq, with ideology, money and fighters pouring in from neighbouring countries. Just as the Vietnamese used guerrilla tactics designed to wear down the superior forces of the USA and turn public opinion, so too did some estimated 20 000 Iraqi insurgents and foreign militants. However, the differences are significant. The first is that the majority of Iraqis were glad to see the end of Saddam Hussein, his sons and cohorts. This is in contrast to the majority of Vietnamese, who wanted independence, although not necessarily in the form of communism. The second is the nature of the enemy. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were united and ready to die for a nationalist cause. Anticoalition groups in Iraq have no unity of purpose. In fact Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, a foreign Sunni militant leader, is calling for a jihad war on Iraq’s Shiah. The third difference is the statistics of the war, befitting a post-Vietnam world where deaths of civilians and enemy soldiers are of official concern. The fourth is the immediate and massive reconstruction effort in Iraq, albeit based on its oil and benefiting foreign companies. The Iraq War is the first time since the Vietnam War that Australian troops were sent to war by a prime minister who did not have the support of the Opposition.Those serving in Iraq return home to a country divided about the war. As the Vietnam veteran experience has shown, this may prove to have significant implications for the long-term well-being of veterans of Iraq and their families. As for their physical health and that of their offspring, troops involved in the initial six weeks of combat were inoculated for anthrax and botulinum (plague), and although in Iraq there was no need for defoliants like Agent Orange, the Coalition deployed an estimated 127 tons of nucleardepleted missiles between 20 March and 28 April 2003. One could ask how well the US and Australian governments have learnt the lessons of Vietnam: the need to be honest about the reasons for going to war

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and the contingencies involved, the need to have clearly defined goals and public support, the need to understand and not underestimate the enemy and, last but not least, the need to consider the impact of the war on all those involved and to provide for their future well-being. Having spent two years working with Australian veterans of military conflict, I am greatly impressed by their sense of humanity. It is a practical humanitarianism in which actions speak louder than words, and for which some personally suffer. For those who have been severely affected, there is an equal respect for what their families endure. Finally, by examining so many wars and UN missions I am forced to face the inevitability of conflict. Even in a world where ninety per cent of the world’s resources are no longer consumed by a privileged ten per cent, human nature will always throw up tyrants and fanatics. That human beings are so adept at going to war with themselves and each other points to the inevitability of conflict in some form. The costs for subsequent generations are multiple if the means is war, but the costs of prevaricating in the face of tyranny, genocide or international aggression may be just as great. As the English philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote: ‘War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.’ Thus, in order to find effective alternatives one must face the complexities, to which saying one is ‘anti-war’ is a premise, not a solution. Gina Lennox Sydney, March 2005

The editors wish to alert Aboriginal readers that this book contains images of Aboriginal soldiers who have passed away since the photos were taken. This advice is given as a sign of respect for the soldiers and to their immediate families.

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PART I

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WAR IN AFGHANISTAN (2001– ) AND IRAQ (2003– ) AND UN DEPLOYMENTS FROM 1989

Like UN peacekeeping and peacemaking missions, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq operate morally and militarily in new paradigms, linked to a changed notion of conflict and the ‘enemy’ arising out of the Vietnam War era. They have been fought under strict rules of engagement, where even the number of enemy soldiers killed is of concern. Australia’s contribution to these wars has been small in quantity but high in quality, with the inclusion of our most elite troops: the SAS, or Special Air Service Regiment. Three SAS Sabre Squadrons rotated through Afghanistan, while for the war on Iraq, Australian SAS were the first Coalition forces to cross the border. Given the unusual nature of these wars, the SAS were required to be highly skilled in soldiering, peacemaking and crosscultural relations, enhanced by training and experience in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere. These and other UN contributions benefit from the depth of experience the ADF has accumulated in peacekeeping and peacemaking. Australia contributed to the first UN peacekeeping mission—Indonesia in 1947—Australians having commanded five UN missions: Nimmo in Kashmir (1950–66), Sanderson in Cambodia (1992–93), Ferguson in the Sinai (1994–97), Butler in Iraq (1997–98), and Ford in the Sinai (1998–2000), while Cosgrove led the multinational force in East Timor (1999–2000). Between 1975 and 1988 Australia was involved in eight UN missions (the Sinai, Kashmir, South Korea, Cyprus, Syria and Lebanon— all ongoing—as well as Rhodesia). Since 1989 many military personnel have become veterans of multiple missions. Between 1999 and 2004 the Australian

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contribution of eight thousand to UNAMET, INTERFET and UNTAET in East Timor was the largest Australian deployment since Vietnam. Mandates for these missions are increasingly complex, many requiring the building of social and administrative institutions as well as the disarming and demobilizing of combatants. The soldier takes on multiple roles in dealing with people of different languages and cultures, usually with a long history of conflict. As soldier, police person, advocate, negotiator and garbage collector, as well as their specialist role of medic, signaller and so on, they operate in dangerous and unpredictable environments. They must know when to be sensitive and when to be tough, while always being mindful of the rules of engagement for that particular mission. Civilians may ask ‘Under what conditions is military action justified?’ and ‘Which acts are justifiable?’—but it is the soldier who faces the ambiguities and, along with their families, lives with the consequences. Veterans of these deployments cannot but be changed by witnessing other cultures, extreme poverty and violence, as well as the strengths and pitfalls of the mission. Veterans who find life difficult as a result benefit from the trail blazed by Vietnam veterans in terms of understanding and services. They also benefit from having grown up in an era where men, as well as women, are not as bound by patriarchal stereotypes. Young veterans tend to be more willing and frank in acknowledging what is happening inside them. Yet it has taken forty years to fully appreciate the impact of the Vietnam War. The long-term effects of recent deployments on veterans and their families remain to be seen.


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ALWAYS A LITTLE FURTHER An SAS Veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq GLORIA ROBINSON

Australia’s elite SAS Regiment was established in 1957. In Vietnam its members became known as ‘Phantoms of the Jungle’. Their next war was in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan in 2001–02, where the first squadron sent over took part in Operation Anaconda, the biggest battle of the Afghanistan War, involving over two thousand allied soldiers. In Iraq in 2003, they were the ‘Phantoms of the Western Desert’, slipping from target to target as if on a magic carpet, their most urgent mission being to locate long-range missiles. Before these conflicts, they were involved in the multinational build-up in Kuwait to apply pressure on Iraq in 1998 and in East Timor and the Solomon Islands in 2000. This is one SAS soldier’s personal account of his tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, to which his wife and his father, who served as a forward scout in Vietnam with 9 Battalion in 1968–69, contribute. As anonymity is critical for SAS operators, pseudonyms have been used throughout.

I was working as a ringer on different properties in Northern Queensland, riding horses and chasing cattle for four years, when I met Clare. When we decided to marry in 1994, I thought joining the Army was a good way of settling down without slowing down. Dad having been in the Army, more than him being a Vietnam veteran, had everything to do with it. As a boy you think about following in your father’s footsteps. I see it in my own son.

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Dad had a library of military books, so I’d read about the SAS in Vietnam and Borneo. Always in the back of my head was the thought ‘I wonder if I could do that.’ I did fairly well at Kapooka [training centre], and in 1 Battalion I became a sniper, physically training with SAS in mind. I was twenty-five when I went through the twenty-day selection course. It’s physical, but it is what you bring to it mentally that gets you through. The Senior Instructor warned us that his course would take our minds to places we had never been before. He was right. In 1-NAVEX [Navigation Exercises], we pack-marched fifty kilometres in twelve hours before being shown how to strip several weapons we hadn’t used before. After five days of marches and nightly foreign language lessons, at one stage being expected to read a map in the language to find our way, we were given one of the weapons to put back together. We were fed a small amount and woken six times a night. The whole course was designed to wear you down to see who you really were. It’s those who can do things at the limit of their endurance, and laugh about it, who end up in SAS. The way I got through was not so much thinking about what Dad went through, because he hasn’t told me, but thinking about what I’d read of Australian soldiers from the Maori Wars to Vietnam. I’d think: ‘It isn’t so hard. At least I’m not getting shot at.’ By the end of the course I wasn’t laughing but I was there. Of the 140 blokes who started, twenty-four stayed to the end. Six ended up in my troop. I came away thinking, ‘I went that far, how much further could I have gone?’ On operations, it’s no good to get so near your limits. On 11 September 2001 I’d been with the Regiment four years and in the Army for seven. I was at home with Clare and the kids in Swanbourne, in Western Australia, where the Regiment is based, when we got a phone call from Clare’s father telling us to put on the television. As we watched the footage of the planes ploughing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, I said to Clare, ‘This is going to be big.’ My gut feeling was the same as the other blokes in the Regiment: that this was one of those defining moments in world history. The Americans weren’t going to stand for it. My squadron was on line for a war role. When President Bush called for a ‘war on terror’, saying, ‘You’re either with us or against us’, I thought, ‘Yep, he’s serious.’ No soldier wants to be put into a situation where the people running the show are half-hearted. There’s always other ways of doing things but when it boils down to it—no one person makes the final decision in isolation. There are hundreds of experts giving advice based on international law, safety of the troops, the end game, whatever. From what I was to see, it was not about getting rid of a few people. But at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what a soldier thinks—he follows orders; what matters is that he can do the job and that he is comfortable doing

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it. A side issue, but an important one, is that people at home believe in what he is doing. We were well up to speed. By September 2001 my squadron had spent ten months training for different war scenarios, doing bush and mountain work, roping out of helicopters—the list is endless. Each troop specializes. There is a mobility troop, which concentrates on vehicle movements; a water troop, which does all facets of water work—diving, canoes and boarding ships; and a free-fall troop that parachutes out of helos and planes. The training makes a troop tight-knit. Clare jokes that you know the blokes better than you know your wife. You certainly spend more time with them, so sometimes you get sick of them, the same as any close relationship. I was fortunate with my troop: everyone got on well, everyone was a bloomin’ character. Six of us came from the bush. Four had fathers who’d been to Vietnam. You know each other so well you learn to complement each other. That is the strength of the Regiment. The myths of what SAS can do are built on the team. Coming from the country I was used to bush work, riding motorbikes, tracking, trapping and shooting rabbits and foxes, so I was a long-range sniper and photographer. Con was exNavy, a linguist and switched on with signals. Slipper, with his Egyptian background, was a linguist and a medic, and so on. Then it’s up to the patrol commander to gel it all together. My squadron had already been to Kuwait in 1998 and to Timor in 2000, so we had experience in desert and jungle. For Kuwait, we arrived in February for Operation Pollard, our contribution to Operation Desert Thunder, in response to Saddam Hussein declaring eight palaces off limits to the UNSCOM weapons inspectors and kicking them out of the country. Kuwait was my first exposure to how big America’s war machine is, and Britain’s. It was also the first time since Vietnam that an SAS squadron had been deployed. We stayed overnight in Diego Garcia, the British and US Military base south of the Maldives, but mid-flight to Kuwait, we had to turn around and fly back to Garcia. A Kuwaiti VIP who wanted to give us the red carpet treatment wasn’t ready. When we landed the next night the VIP was waiting to shake everybody’s hand as we came off the plane. At two in the morning he insisted on shouting us breakfast: our first taste of Middle Eastern hospitality but the last thing we felt like. We were then bussed out into the desert and, just before dawn, given an hour’s rest in three big canvas tents. As the sun came up, all we could see was flat grey desert—not a blade of grass—and twenty metres above us, dozens of humming power lines. After a two-hour drive we reached the Americans’ Ali Al Salim Air Base. For the next month we slept on stretchers in air-conditioned American Air Force tents, fifteen blokes to a tent, in a summer heat that reached 51 degrees 14


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Celsius. We started training, the SEALS [American Navy Special Forces], Canadians, Poms, Kiwis, Kuwaitis and Aussies competing for jobs: special reconnaissance for pinpointing targets so aircraft crews could do a bombing raid and CSAR [Combat Search And Rescue] for downed aircraft crews. I think our CSAR demos impressed the American commanders. After three weeks we got the feeling that the Coalition build-up was more about applying pressure and some exercises became a matter of ‘Let’s go and test the motorbikes.’ We had time to yarn with the locals. Non-Kuwaitis minded the mobs of camels, sheep and goats or worked in wheel-less caravans that sold Coke and soccer balls along the highway. Most of them were virtually slave labour from Bangladesh or India. The Kuwaitis wouldn’t even pay them—they’d pay their parents back home. At dawn we’d see one sleeping on the ground next to a mob of sheep, with only a blanket, a plastic container of water and a bag of dates. There were a few Bedouin and their camels and then there were the rich Kuwaitis who came to the desert for a weekend camping trip in big seven-seat Chevrolets. Sometimes they brought their wives and children. We’d be out in the desert, fully cammed up [in camouflage] and if we saw one of their red-and-white striped tents, we went over. The men would be dressed in white kaftans and the red-and-white checked shamarg headgear. Most spoke English. We had a smattering of Arabic and Slipper was fluent, so we’d grab him and go ‘G’day, what’s happening?’ They would invite us into their tent for a drink of goat’s milk or tea, and always bent the rules for us: ‘Don’t worry about taking off your boots. Bring your gun.’ Inside there were woven kilims that acted as snake barriers, and usually a giant hunting falcon sitting on a pedestal. Kuwaitis love their falconing and if you showed an interest you were their mate. All of them knew about Australia because of our camels and lamb. After a month in this pale desert your eyes adjust, so when we returned to Doha, on the edge of Kuwait City, colours were a surprise. Doha is known as the camp of no horizons—a concrete city behind high walls, a bit like a prison but with all the mod cons Americans like to cart around with them. Between exercises we could go into Kuwait City, a mixture of modern buildings, kebab stalls and teahouses full of men smoking hubbly bubblies. None of the people working in shops were Kuwaiti and you never saw Kuwaiti women drive—they weren’t allowed. The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, had meetings with Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, in Kuwait and Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Iraq was forced to agree to give weapons inspectors unrestricted access to all sites. It meant we came home but the trip opened our eyes to the people and the politics. Always a Little Further

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At that stage I had been married four years and had two children: Tom was two and Laura was a baby of five months. By the time I left for East Timor in January 2000, our third child, Isabelle, was six months old. East Timor was my first experience of a combat area. We were working out of Dili and Balibo, providing Ready Reaction teams to apprehend people of interest, patrolling near the border to keep an eye on the TNI [Indonesian Army] border posts and stray militia. The biggest thing I learnt was handling the mental stress of going out with four to six blokes in close country, and the fear of the unknown, especially when we were being inserted. Once you’re on the ground it’s a relief. The country reminded me of the mountains north of Cairns. On patrol we didn’t talk unless it was absolutely necessary and then it was only a whisper. To sleep we’d find an impregnable spot and crawl in. For water we’d catch the rain or use local water. Most of the time we were too close to the border to cook. Towards the end of the deployment we had more contact with the locals in the villages. One troop stayed with FALINTIL [National Armed Forces for the Liberation of East Timor] in their enclave to keep them entertained and out of trouble. One night they were sitting around a campfire and there was Nick dancing the Moonwalker and Sprinkler, a FALINTIL playing a guitar. The locals were happy to see us—the adults felt some connection, having protected our Commandos from the Japanese. When they took us to sites where people were buried I wished we’d got there earlier. When I got home, ten-month-old Isabelle took a day or so before she gave me a cuddle—she wasn’t quite sure about me. Two months later, in June 2000, we were sent to the Solomon Islands, on the invitation of the Solomon Islands Government. The Malaita Eagles Force [MEF], led by Jimmy Rasta and other factional leaders, all running around in red berets and black balaclavas, had organized a coup and taken over Honiara. Since January 1999 there had been trouble between the MEF and Harold Keke and Joseph Sangu’s mob [the Isatabu Freedom Movement or IFM], who were indigenous to Guadalcanal and resented the Malaitans taking over land and businesses. The IFM were attacking Malaitans, then hiding out on the remote Weathercoast. We were to facilitate peace talks and would go to various places to pick up the key players and take them to HMAS Tobruk. The islands are awesome: phenomenal little coastal coves with coral under twenty metres of crystal clear water, white beaches and palm trees. Officially we weren’t allowed to set foot on land, but we had to convince the leaders that it was safe to come with us, and it’s hard to do that if you expect them to swim out to you. We’d drive the boat onto the beach and have a yarn and sometimes a feed. After that, they were more than willing to come, except Keke—he 16


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refused to participate. His people had to take all the paperwork back to him, but everyone eventually agreed to a ceasefire and a future meeting in Townsville. We were rotating through, so I went to the Solomons four times over an eighteen-month period. In October 2000 we were involved in bringing the important players to Townsville to make a peace agreement. Then, in June 2001, Harold Keke’s group tried to assassinate Premier Ezekiel Alebua in retaliation for police operations on the Weathercoast. An International Peace Monitoring team went over to advise and monitor, but guns were not being handed in and there was corruption in the police and government, especially with the Won-tok system, where family ties are more important than any others and that’s why Australians were invited back for a more active role in 2003. So we’d been busy in the lead-up to September 11, and within days of the attacks we were hearing rumours that we would be deployed to Afghanistan. On 18 September, Prime Minister John Howard announced that President Bush had formally requested that Australia be involved. Squadron Headquarters started preparing. If we were to be called upon we knew the general nature of our tasks—to locate al-Qa’ida and Taliban, gather intelligence and do surveillance and search and rescues—but we didn’t know for sure if we were going. Week after week, units around Australia gear up for something that will never happen. But also, my squadron was about to be rotated out of war role and into counter-terrorism. Of course we wanted to go. I was instructing a CQB [Close Quarter Battle] course for new blokes. It involves shooting live rounds in rooms and around buildings, it’s high tempo and dangerous but it was terminated halfway through so that we could focus on getting ready for Afghanistan. We had revision lectures and rehearsals for dealing with land mines, mountain climbing, obstacle crossings and cold weather injuries like frost bite. Experts lectured us on preparing for the temperature ranges and altitudes. We familiarized ourselves with towns and villages, the different fuels for stoves and vehicles, how the weather was going to affect our ammunition, battery life for radios, torches and NVGs [night vision goggles]. We were told how Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan had not conquered Afghanistan, and the Brits had a hard time of it. Journalists were saying, ‘The Soviet Union couldn’t conquer Afghanistan’, but the way I looked at it, yes, the Afghanis are tough, resilient fighters, but they had the backing of China, the US, and Britain when fighting the Soviets. Culture-wise, we had experts talk about Afghani food, the position of women, the languages, religion and politics. I learnt that ‘Taliban’ means ‘religious student’ and that the US had coined the label ‘al-Qa’ida’ which means ‘the base’ or ‘foundation’ of Jihad. The Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, came from a village near Kandahar and had met Osama Always a Little Further

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bin Laden during the Mujahedeens’ fight against the Soviets [1979–89]. In 1988 Bin Laden decided to extend the Jihad beyond Afghanistan and began setting up a loose network. In 1989 he left for Pakistan. He was in Saudi Arabia when Iraq invaded Kuwait, then lived in Sudan from 1991 to 1996. He returned to Afghanistan after the Taliban took Kabul. The Taliban seemed to have appeared from nowhere.1 Before Kabul they had a series of military victories over the Mujahedeen warlords, and by 1998 they controlled most of the country. They were funded, trained and equipped from multiple sources, allegedly including different factions in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Probably their success had a lot to do with the initial support of the people. Mullah Mohammed Omar promised to create a pure Islamic State, which would end the rape, pillage and bloodshed of the Mujahedeen. Once Bin Laden was back in Afghanistan, his group began training militants from Algeria, Sudan, Somalia, Chechnya, Yemen, Egypt, the Philippines, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kosovo and Bosnia. He seemed to have significant influence over the Taliban Government. After the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, the US bombed several al-Qa’ida training camps and demanded that the Taliban Government hand over Bin Laden. The Taliban refused—whether as a matter of pride or of principle, who knows?—so the UN slapped an air and arms embargo on Afghanistan. After September 11, the Taliban again refused to hand over Bin Laden unless they were presented with evidence of his guilt. By 2001, there were 10 000 to 12 000 Taliban and al-Qa’ida fighters inside the country, about a third being nonAfghani. None had uniforms as we understand uniforms. All we were to see were black turbans and the black shalwar kameez [baggy pants and long tunic]. The Taliban governed, the al-Qa’ida ran the training camps; we were told to make no distinction. Slipper’s Arabic was a great help with people who spoke Arabic, who we suspected were foreigners. Most of the villagers spoke Pashtu. The School of Languages distributed booklets with basic Pashtu, such as ‘Stop or I’ll shoot’ and ‘Get out of your car, I’m going to search your car’. In-country we picked up a few words. We had learnt a bit of etiquette from being in Kuwait and from training foreign soldiers, and some blokes had taken to reading about Islam and Muslims. The more you know their ways the better it is for assessing the situation. On 7 October the Americans began bombing Taliban targets and ten days later Prime Minister John Howard announced to Parliament that he had committed 1550 Australian troops, RAAF aircraft and naval vessels to the ‘war against terrorism’, without defining roles. Two hundred troops left on HMAS Sydney for the Gulf, to enforce the international trade embargo against Iraq. The only 18


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ground troops heading for Afghanistan were my squadron, to take part in Operation Slipper, Australia’s contribution to Operation Enduring Freedom. Two weeks later Howard came over to Campbell Barracks to talk to the squadron and our wives. He indicated that he didn’t take lightly what he was doing; he knew the risks, but he believed it was the right thing. It made us feel good. I remember a journalist asking Howard, ‘Will the SAS be required to assassinate anybody? Will you be sending them on any suicide missions?’ I was speaking to Howard in the troop office and said: ‘You should introduce a twostupid-questions rule. If a journalist asks two stupid questions you should be able to kick them out of the room.’ He slapped his thigh laughing. We weren’t going on any suicide missions! Clare’s reaction was not so big. She was used to my work being full-on. The Regiment has lost more men in training than in war—forty-three blokes in total, with only ten having been killed in action—so war is a continuation, it is not a big step for the wives. Clare handles it well and Mum’s the same—they believe I’m far too capable for anything to happen to me. Whether that’s right or wrong, it’s their way of coping. Dad’s different. On the telephone he was sombre, probably because he knew what was possible. He said, ‘Just do your job and keep your head down.’ Of the blokes in my troop, sixteen had children, all were in long-term relationships and the wives supported each other. Before we went into Afghanistan and for the first six weeks in-country, there was no communication. After that we were allowed e-mail and two satellite phone calls: a five-minute call at Christmas and another call after one of our vehicle commanders, Andy Russell, died. Sometimes our families know as much as we do: very little. Most of the time we leave in the early hours of the morning and Afghanistan was no different. I probably read to the kids the night before and said, ‘I’m going away to help some people. I’ll be back.’ When they got up on 26 November, I was gone. They’ve always been good about me going away. I think Clare’s attitude helps but they didn’t understand that I might be gone for nine to twelve months. I remember saying goodbye to Clare at three in the morning and wandering up the road with my pack on my back, thinking, ‘When will I be coming home?’ That walk up to the Regiment was the hardest. We flew to Diego Garcia in a Qantas 707. There’d been a lot of people trying to figure out how to get us into Afghanistan: do they fly us over and we jump out? You can parachute a Land Rover in but there’s the problem of refuelling. Do we go in from Pakistan? The Pakistan Government was still sorting things out with America. At least Australians had been in Kuwait training the Kuwaiti Army since 1998, and they could say it was a continuation of that, so we got Always a Little Further

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permission to fly to Kuwait and in early December an American C-130 did a hot drop of my troop into Fire Support Base RHINO, a hundred kilometres south of Kandahar. This meant flying in at low altitude over a flat stony desert, landing on an airstrip outside a compound, opening the back gate and driving out, guns ready, as the Hercules flew off. RHINO had been taken by US Rangers in late November and secured by the Marines. A ring of weapon pits and a mortar section protected the airstrip and the three Cobra gun ships, half a dozen Chinooks, half a dozen LAVs [Light Armoured Vehicles with wheels] a dozen big tents and countless hootchies [sleeping spots under waterproof material used for shelter]. Those Marines had it hard. They slept in the tents, hootchies, pits, helos or LAVS. Planes were landing twenty-four hours a day, the grey talcum powder dust getting into everything. Three-metre-high walls, all whitewashed and bullet-chipped, enclosed the compound. Like all Afghani compounds there was a walkway on top of the walls connecting ten-metre guard towers at each corner. We drove through the open gates. Inside, the 100-by-150-metre space had a small mosque and a forty-by-fifty-metre shed that had been used for growing opium hydroponically. Basically it had been a drug factory in the middle of the desert. Inside the shed, we slept in sleeping bags, as did the SEALS and Marines, about a hundred blokes. Outside was a cooking area and a table where we mixed freely. Everyone was on hard rats [rations]. That first night, the Taliban decided to attack. We were stood-to as tracers and rockets came in and the Americans sent out a salvo of mortars. The Marines were hooking in with 25 millimetre cannons on the LAVs, and in Cobras. For forty-five minutes we watched the light show, taking it pretty lightly within the safety of the compound, until one of the gun ships came back to refuel. The pilot had ‘brown out’. Blinded by dust he tilted over and smashed into the ground. There was an almighty explosion and rescue crews raced over. Suddenly it was serious: we didn’t think the two pilots would survive but they did, amazingly. Before any insertion, we have a lockdown, which means we are isolated from the rest of the world, so it wasn’t until RHINO that I heard about the al-Qa’ida and Taliban prisoner revolt up at Qali-e Jangi Fort in the city of Mazar-e Sharif. The CIA had been interrogating prisoners and many were still armed. In the revolt a CIA officer was killed, along with thirty Northern Alliance and 500 prisoners. Over the next few days casualties and prisoners from the fort were coming through RHINO, it being the only American base at the time. We had a couple of funerals for Northern Alliance fighters. I’d seen bodies

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in hospitals when training as a medic but this was the first time I’d seen the casualties of war. Most were in body bags. I walked past one bloke strapped to a stretcher. He was filthy. I presumed he was dead. Later I was told he was alive and an American. The prisoners were brought in blindfolded as part of a disorientation process to soften them up. They were kept in a metal shipping container with a small grille cut in one side, a guard making sure they didn’t talk. Although the Americans did not officially give them the status of POW, they were given the treatment accorded to POWs—medical attention, three meals a day and so on. After Kandahar fell on 9 December, most of them were taken to the new prison camp up there. The Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, remained elusive but the Taliban’s military leader, Muhammed Atef, was reportedly killed and a thousand of his men were held in Kandahar. From there six hundred-odd were sent to Guantanamo Bay. Later I toured the prison. Groups of twenty to thirty prisoners were sitting behind barbed wire on fluffy rugs under canvas. They had outside latrines with no walls and were not allowed to talk. Most had been given a copy of the Quran. A lot of them were wounded, so the Red Cross provided medical care. Some were even having their rotten teeth pulled out. I remember thinking that if we were POWs I doubt we would have been given the same treatment. Even so, I would not like to have swapped places, having gone through the SAS’s interrogation training session, and that was with people I knew wouldn’t kill me. Within a hundred-kilometre radius of RHINO there were mud villages and compounds that were suspected to house Taliban, and the jobs on offer were doing recons and applying pressure. As in Timor, and before any operation, for the first three days the US Operations Commander would go ‘I need someone to look at this village’, and three groups would compete for the job, our OC telling a patrol commander ‘Righto, we need to figure this out’, so the patrol commander can tell his 2IC to prepare. The rest of us run around getting the gear ready according to our role. I’d be in charge of the vehicle type, say motorbikes, the fuel, smoke flares and strobes to be recognized by the Cobras and Apache gun ships. The sig [signaller] would get his radios and code words together. We’d all be getting the appropriate weapons and ammo, food and water, sorting out the signals to use, looking at the maps and planning what we would do if things went wrong: memorizing all the grid references for safe zones, who we would meet, the dates and times—it’s an endless job. Then our OC would go ‘We didn’t get that job. Figure out how we’re going to do this job’ and instantly—snap—right, pack the gear, forget all the previous stuff and start again: another vehicle type, new maps, code words and grids. We did this


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for three eighteen-hour days, preparing for three jobs that didn’t happen. Your cynical part starts saying ‘Why bother with that detail?’ but every time you have to do it one hundred per cent right, because this time might mean action. It was high pressure, tiring and mind-boggling and you had to keep a clear head. If you knew your family was okay, it was one less thing to worry about. The Northern Alliance had walked into Kabul on 13 November. We were hearing reports that Afghanis were burning the black Taliban flag and we began to think the war would be over before we’d started. That’s why, when my patrol commander asked if I’d like to be a sniper for another patrol, I said ‘Sure.’ Our job was to do a recon on some buildings. If we found Taliban, the Marines would do a raid. We set about camouflaging six four-wheel Polaris motorbikes and our weapons, sniper rifles—50 cal and 7.62—machine guns and rocket launchers, painting them with paint we found in the shed, throwing dirt over them and concealing their shape with burlap [hessian]. Instant cam. Our uniforms were desert cam, and we cut down on anything that shone. We met the crew of the two Chinooks that were inserting us, finding out how they wanted us to load and where they were going to land in relation to each other, so at night, we knew exactly where everyone would be, right down to the order we would come off. Finally we strapped three bikes into each helo. We landed after midnight and it was like driving onto a billiard table: a flat, treeless, rock-strewn desert to the horizon. The moon was too bright for comfort, the NVGs making it look like daylight. For the rest of the night we rode the bikes, guided by the GPS [Global Positioning System] on our tanks, intermittently checking our maps. By early morning we had come to a depression on the edge of a river and set up an LUP [lying up place], from where we could defend ourselves and make a quick escape. The patrol commander and I moved forward a kilometre, taking our camera and radio gear, to an OP [observation post] from where we could watch a small compound 800 metres away. For the next two days we rotated in two-hour shifts. Visibility in the desert is phenomenal but all we could see was a family who seemed to be caretakers. The only movement was cars pulling up, probably to deliver food. Another compound about a kilometre away was of greater interest. It flew the Taliban flag and vehicles were coming and going, with armed people dressed in black. We sent back intelligence. We slept in the clothes we were wearing: light thermals and cams. I rigged a plastic hootchie over the edge of the bike, to keep the wind and most of the rain off. It was cold and damp but not as cold as it was going to get. For food we had enough for one meal a day: dehyds (dehydrated rations) that you mix with water and heat on a pump fuel stove that we dug a hole for. We’d heat 22


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one pot a day, and only in daylight. Otherwise we survived on biscuits, cheese and lollies. Just before moving out four camels strolled across the path we had made between our LUP and OP. We were on edge, knowing somebody would be looking for them. Sure enough, two blokes with another two camels came along. We saw them checking our tracks and looking around. You could read their minds—‘I don’t want to be here’—and off they went. The end result of that three-day recon was a raid by the Marines on the second compound, where the men surrendered their weapons without a fight. On our return to RHINO we heard that the Americans were bombing the cave systems at Tora Bora and that Osama bin Laden had escaped. In the following week I went on another three-day recon with my own patrol, and after sixteen days at RHINO it was time to leave for Kandahar. Just before we left, US Major General J N Mattis, a Vietnam veteran, gave us a pep talk about how much he appreciated the work we were doing. He referred to the time when we were gearing up for that second patrol. Eight vehicles were lined up at the front gate. It’s a big thing going through the perimeter. Inside you have protection, outside is no man’s land, so it’s a mental barrier and we were joking around. Mattis said, ‘Seeing all you men and your vehicles cammed up ready to go, I remember thinking, “If any of those poor silly Taliban meet up with you, I feel sorry for them”.’ We were thinking the same. Before dawn on 21 December, the squadron lined up at the gates: a Unimog fuel truck, eight or nine guys on motorbikes each with a rifle slung over his shoulder and fifteen Land Rovers and LRPVs [Long Range Patrol Vehicles]. By this time we’d all grown beards—at least those who could, those who couldn’t being constantly paid out. The fifteen-hour drive to Kandahar was over rough roads and dry river beds in the south, at one point the Unimog truck getting bogged in sand. The only signs of life were the occasional nomad and their goats. We had yet to figure whether the Afghanis were going to be on our side, and had to pass through the town of Lashkargah, which had a Wild West reputation. The one and only time the SEALS had driven through was at three in the morning. When we arrived the bloke in charge of the cable across the main street, which was used to stop travellers so they pay a tax, immediately opened the road. In broad daylight we drove through the narrow streets, bordered by high walls and guard towers. The locals were armed and dressed in black but a lot of them waved and laughed, as if excited to see the first foreign military vehicles driving through town! Kids were running down the alleys just to have a look. It was almost a carnival atmosphere, although some of them looked serious. I think they were in shock. Always a Little Further

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North of Lashkargah, the landscape was more undulating, with distant mountains. Low concrete bridges crossed rivers, which now had water in them, but there were no crops. It was not until we got closer to Kandahar and up around Kabul that irrigation supported orchards and fields of grain, bound by low mud walls. By evening we were on the outskirts of Kandahar, the Taliban heartland—another town the Americans avoided. We took the risk. The walls were covered with pro-Taliban graffiti in English and Pashtu, announcing ‘Mullah Omar, Protector of Kandahar’. The narrow-walled streets were ideal for an ambush: armed men were everywhere, all giving the impression they thought they were shit hot. We waved to them. I remember seeing an RPG rocket pointing straight at me, on the shoulder of a bloke climbing over a wall. I’m thinking ‘Is this bloke going to shoot or is he coming to say G’day?’ I’m pointing my rifle at him and he has this silly grin on his face and I’m thinking ‘Yeah, just point that thing the other way and we’ll be great mates.’ I’m sure they knew our rules of engagement, or at least they were seasoned enough to know that if they pointed their weapon at you, you were going to shoot. Whenever we drove past, they pointed their big guns skyward. After being in the desert it was strange seeing bananas, oranges and vegetables in the Kandahar markets. Whether they were grown locally or brought in from Pakistan or Iran, I don’t know. Some shanty-type shops had English words like ‘Pharmacy’ and ‘Optometrist’. Only a few of the rundown mud-brick buildings were bomb-affected. We arrived at the international airport about four kilometres outside town and set up in an old hospital. From here we did a few short patrols and two long patrols of thirty to thirty-five days, going as far south as Lashkargah and to the Pakistan and Iranian borders. I was one of two drivers in my patrol, each car having a vehicle commander and a gunner. A driver has to be switched on, driving long distances, often in NVGs, tactically moving the vehicle into a spot, or out of harm’s way, following roads or not following them, getting out of bogs, all the time looking for mines. The long patrols were arduous. It was getting colder and our Land Rovers were open-topped. It only snowed a few times but there were days when it was minus 16 degrees Celsius, and you can’t get away from that sort of cold. We had beanies, hiking boots and army-issue thermals. A couple of us country blokes had the blue Jackie Howe singlet, Jackie Howe being a famous Queensland shearer. Now a Jackie Howe is not cold weather kit but we would step out of the tent and say, ‘I think it’s a double Jackie Howe today.’ We had our cams, a polar fleece jacket and a Japara jacket that was like a Gortex raincoat that stops the wind and rain but lets the sweat out. We still froze. Yet on our first long patrol 24


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no one was going to be the first to wear his thermal pants. Then ET caught out our patrol commander on a toilet stop. Everyone gave him stick, but after that we all started slipping into our thermals. It might sound stupid but, as the Regiment’s saying goes, ‘Always a little further.’ It doesn’t matter how much further ... always a bit more ... until the job’s done. As it got even colder, we got balaclavas and Nuroprene facemasks. Blokes were still getting frost nip on their ears, nose and fingers. Our water was ice, so blokes weren’t drinking a lot and over time we became dehydrated. The harder it got, the more we’d joke. All but the poorest people lived in compounds, either one big compound or a series of family compounds, complete with towers. It was medieval. The great iron gates were often painted with scenery like a waterfall, forest or snow-covered mountain. Then there were the big hairy Afghan hounds used to guard the compounds, as savage as. To warn off the dogs, and as a method of entry, I always took a shotgun. A lot of buildings sported pro-Taliban graffiti, but it contradicted our reception. The kids were the same as kids all over the world—inquisitive, smiling, barefoot—and most of the adults were happy to talk. They wanted us there. We ended up buying the traditional flat-topped, rolled-up camel hair hats. They are very warm and the locals loved it. We always mentioned we were Australian. In Afghanistan cricket was the key, many Afghanis having spent time in Pakistan. One bloke, who spoke no English, knew all about Shane Warne. We might stop and ask how they were going and what they thought of the war, to piece together the puzzle. Nobody was Taliban. Most said they were Northern Alliance, and this meant they could keep their weapons. We’d ask each other, ‘Where are those wily Taliban?’ A lot of them were worried about planes, because the Yanks had done a lot of bombing. They’d ask ‘You’re not going to bomb us, are you?’ but they were friendly, hospitable, rural people. It didn’t matter how poor they were, they couldn’t do enough for you. Some would invite us into their visitor’s room and bring out what could be their last bit of tea, sugar, pickled fruit or vegetables. We always accepted their hospitality so as not to be rude, but would try to leave behind more than we’d taken— maybe diesel for their lamp, tea, sugar, or utensils, not making a big deal of it. We had heaps compared to them. Underneath you didn’t know their real sympathies. A lot of them would have supported the Taliban. That doesn’t mean they believed in what the Taliban were doing. It was a way of surviving. It was on the patrols out from Kandahar that the squadron came across numerous Taliban ammo dumps and al-Qa’ida training camps. We took one ammo dump mid-January, three weeks into our first long patrol. It was on a hill next to a village. Around the perimeter were three tanks and four artillery

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pieces, left over from the Soviet occupation. The amount of gear in the underground bunkers was phenomenal. You’d go down stairs dug into the ground. Two bunkers were forty metres long, five metres wide and five metres high, with beams holding up the earth. Three smaller bunkers were four metres long. All were filled with mostly Russian-made RPG rockets, land mines, artillery and mortar rounds, various types of ammunition, as well as helmets and sights; a bit of American stuff; a lot of ordnance on the ground outside. We spent the next four days doing a stocktake, disabling the artillery pieces, rigging the tanks and wiring the rest of the place. We didn’t have many explosives, so we pulled mines apart and made our own. When we first arrived a crowd of about two hundred men from the village had gathered to meet us. We were totally outnumbered but they were happy that we were cleaning up the place. As the afternoon wore on, they started going home, Slipper asking four or five to stay to keep the rest away—for safety reasons. On the second night Mel chased away two blokes who’d come to steal mines. On the fourth day we were back at the vehicles ready to light the fuse and blast the hill when we heard an explosion and a scream. I thought it was a local. We raced back up and there’s Mel, having stepped on a bloomin’ mine at the entrance of a bunker, trying to walk out, knowing nine tons of explosives were ready to go. Mel had lost two toes and shattered bones in his foot and ankle. His face and eyes were damaged. One medic got the morphine, one set up a stretcher and another took his obs. I remember Mel saying ‘This is killing me,’ and I’m going ‘Well no, that’s one thing it’s not doing.’ I think everybody was thinking the same: that this could have been far worse. Because we were halfway between Kandahar and Kabul the Americans flew a helo from both places. They pulled out all stops. After a US Black Hawk took Mel to Kandahar we lit the fuse. It was a big bang, with a giant billowing black cloud. We were 800 metres away but bits of metal were flying past us. While we had been doing this, another SAS troop had come across a huge al-Qa’ida training camp with loads of weapons, including tanks, and large numbers of fighters, in the Shahi Khot Mountains. Instead of following it through, we were sent south. A month later it was to become the scene of Operation Anaconda. There was no shortage of ammunition but water for washing was in short supply. For the first six weeks we didn’t wash. After two days in Kandahar, cleaning up and re-gearing, we’d go on another job: a one- to three-day recon and assault—say, six hours’ drive out of Kandahar, targeting an al-Qa’ida training camp or compound that American intelligence said was of interest. Once we were sent to a farmhouse in the middle of an opium poppy field. We didn’t


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find anything and debated whether to burn the poppies. It was one of those moral decisions you have to make on the spot. We decided against it: it was their only way of feeding their families. To check out one al-Qa’ida training camp, my patrol was inserted by helo onto a ridgeline three metres wide with a 150-metre drop on one side and a sixty-metre drop on the other. That was a blood rush. The point of insertion is when you are most vulnerable and normally we would go like the clappers but because of the terrain we moved ten metres and waited for dawn. We walked the rest of the way—six kilometres through rough pink–grey mountains, hard going with a pack on—to set up an OP about a kilometre from the camp, where the squadron was doing an assault the next day. The camp was a substantial set-up among ravines, with gun pits and sniper hides cut into the mountains. In an area twelve kilometres by three kilometres there were shooting ranges, a demolition range, a hospital, clusters of buildings for accommodating hundreds of people, groups of latrines in different areas—much like our military bases at Holsworthy and Lavarack Barracks. The only ways in or out were by walking over the mountains or by a single road, with gun pits all the way along, where a car could be seen for thirty kilometres. Extensive as it was, it wasn’t as well set up as a lot of the camps we found. We’d been there four hours when across the mountain came a man of about thirty and a fifteen-year-old boy dressed in black. It was our impression that they were looking for us, probably having heard the helicopters the night before. Knowing our rules of engagement, they were unarmed and walked straight up. This happened time after time in Afghanistan. Having established our position the pair wanted to go but we weren’t about to let them. We got on the radio to an American mob, and they put on an interpreter. Our Afghani friend was basically a tribesman and here was someone speaking Pashtu on a handset. When we got him to talk into it, he was yelling and talking to us, as if the radio was an interpreting machine. He was adamant that he wanted to go, but the interpreter was equally insistent: ‘You have to stay until tomorrow.’ Finally the two Afghans resigned themselves to being our guests. We fed them biscuits and chewing gum—they didn’t want anything else—and they rolled up in two of our sleeping bags, waking the next morning after the squadron had started the assault. Off they went, as happy as. It was probably the warmest night they’d bloomin’ had. With some camps, Squadron Headquarters would call in American bombers, but with this one the squadron flew in to clear it. One of the helicopters had a rough landing: lost the front wheel over the side of a hill. They had to winch the Land Rover out. The pilot was a female Marine, so word went round: ‘You can’t trust them woman drivers.’ The squadron spent two days 28


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blowing up ammunition. We came across a lot of literature, photographs and training videos. I saw some horrific photographs of Africans having their hands or heads cut off and crowds carrying around human body parts. Perhaps they were used to instil fear or to desensitize people, or both. But this was one of hundreds of al-Qa’ida training camps in Afghanistan. The one near Kandahar airport could sleep a thousand people in rooms full of stretchers. Seeing the number of camps, and those photos, opened our eyes to how truly evil al-Qa’ida is. Most camps were near villages and the word through the interpreters was that the villagers were forced to supply food, water and labour. When we arrived at a camp we were usually outnumbered but they were outgunned and no one wanted a fight. The people of interest had gone. At the time we didn’t know where, but we probably met up with some in Operation Anaconda, and others had probably returned to their villages. Those who stayed seemed happy that the training camps were being destroyed. They were caretakers, sympathizers, looters or people living there because they had nowhere else to live. None admitted to being al-Qa’ida or Taliban. All of them wanted to be on our side. In the whole time in Afghanistan we never received fire. Maybe they did not want to mess with us, except one man, who had a go at me for how I was wearing my Afghani hat. Two weeks into our second patrol, on 16 February, we were travelling across country. My patrol’s two vehicles were about five kilometres ahead of Andy Russell’s patrol, the OC’s vehicles behind them, when Andy’s vehicle went through a water channel. His left front tyre hit a thirty-year-old Soviet anti-tank mine—about eight kilos of explosives. Andy was nearest the explosion. We got a radio message to come back to secure the area and in the meantime, because we were too far out for a helo to come without a refuel, the Americans sent a C-130 with 3 PJs [Air Force paramedics in the Special Tactics Squadron]. In the middle of the night they parachuted into the old minefield. Pretty brave. We had exhausted our supplies of morphine, bandages and IV fluid, so the PJs got out theirs, then all we could do was wait for a helo. We stayed on the spot that night, taking turns on piquet. The next morning we heard that Andy had died in the helicopter. Jason Cunningham, one of the PJs who flew back with Andy, was pretty cut up about his death. Back in Kandahar he developed something of a bond with the Australians, but he was one of eight Americans who died at Anaconda sixteen days later … We had mixed feelings: sad for Andy, but grateful that the other four blokes in the vehicle were still alive. We had spent two and a half months driving around a country with the highest concentration of land mines anywhere bar Cambodia, and it was like ‘Where does good luck finish?’ By the end of four Always a Little Further

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months we’d done 15 000 bloomin’ kilometres and we only hit one mine. That’s good odds. It’s a different headspace. Walking around with guns, looking for people to shoot, you have to keep hold of two realities—the one you are in, and the one back home—and what is acceptable in one is not acceptable in the other. Andy’s father was a Vietnam veteran. Andy was a great bloke. At his funeral every nice thing they said about him was true. Along the highway to Kabul, boys would see us coming and run to the edge of the road to shovel dirt into potholes. All the local truck drivers threw them money and we got into the habit of throwing them something. Once, Nick threw a mini Mars bar. The kids scattered, as if he’d thrown a grenade. Kabul was an eye opener. Up until then we’d seen a country of tribes and villages but Kabul was a modern city of concrete buildings and lots of people, all waraffected. One wall might be standing and there would be a family living in a pile of rubble. Kabul had been a major trading centre. Only a generation ago many Kabul women lived like Western women. Now they were in burkas, many widowed and begging in the street. By late February we were on our way to Operation Anaconda. My troop was inserted five days beforehand, to do recons and cut off escape routes. We drove south and skirted grey mountains that soared 3300 metres above sea level. The country was rugged—the sort that people were saying was impossible to win in—but we were acclimatized. Another troop, who flew into Anaconda from Kuwait via Bagram Air Base, was affected by altitude: bleeding noses and nausea. The Yanks kept telling us, ‘We’ll be in and out in no Electronic rights time’, but we knew Anaconda was going to be big. In the for this image are valley were villages and hundreds of fighters living in not available caves, and they were armed: tanks, SAMs [surface-to-air missiles], all types of anti-aircraft guns, mortar tubes, artillery and RPGs. The Americans probably thought the people would surrender without a fight, like the rest of Afghanistan, but we were sending reports back: ‘We can Andy Russell see twenty fighters. At least four of them are white.’ As it outside Kandahar, turned out, there were heaps of Chechens and Uzbeks, so January 2001, my theory is that it wasn’t like a Chechen could walk up courtesy of and say ‘I want to go back to the Chechnya.’ This was Australian going to be their last stand. Government, We had taken fuel and water for twelve days and slept Department of in two-man civilian hiking tents, by this time the temperDefence. ature’s only minus nine. There were a few nights when it

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snowed. Snow covered the mountain peaks. A couple of our patrols that were inserted by helo directly influenced the battle, calling in planes twenty-four hours a day. They also ran an OP and piquet, and collected snow for water. They didn’t have enough rations for the days they were up there but with something this big there was no way they were going to go back because they were short. After a night of bombing, early on 2 March, 300 to 400 allied Pashtun fighters went in from the west in their colourful ‘jingle’ trucks [so-named because they were decorated with chains that rattled as they moved]. They got pummelled with artillery. The trucks stopped and the Pashtuns got out to take cover, only to find that both sides of the road were mined. As they pulled out they were still taking fire. They lost a lot of blokes. Around the same time, about two hundred Rangers, and one of our signallers and a warrant officer, flew in from the east in MH-47 twin-bladed Chinooks, to be inserted on a ridgeline. As soon as they hit the ground they came under fire from small arms, RPGs and mortars, which knocked out their mortar tube. As they scrambled for cover, many Americans dropped their packs, but our signaller kept his, so for the rest of the day, while they dug in for the fire fight, he was in radio communication with Bagram. Thirty were wounded. We were three kilometres away, so we couldn’t see the action but we were close enough to see the smoke. Our blokes on the mountain we called Three Zero One Zero were calling in air support. Apache gun ships provided air cover and a few returned to base damaged by RPG fire. Eighteen hours after the initial insertion two helos carrying twenty Rangers flew in to do a medivac and rescue. One helo crashed and had casualties. The other landed but, detecting RPG fire, lifted off and a SEAL fell out of the helo. The SEAL was involved in a fire fight with four to six enemy before being captured and killed. A second rescue was launched from Gardeyz, the closest town, with some of our SAS and American Special Forces. They managed to recover people and seven bodies, but not the SEAL’s. From 2 to 11 March, it was one big noisy light show. Apparently a thermobaric bomb was used early on, like at Tora Bora. The whole sky from about 10 000 to 30 000 feet was layer upon layer of planes and gun ships getting ready for different missions, from unmanned Predators to an AWACS—an airborne mobile control tower—its crew collating all the information about who wanted fire, who should give it and in what order. At night there were B-1 and B-52 bombers and C-130s, with its three scopes, including thermal and infrared, and carrying twenty-millimetre cannon, grenade launchers and artillery weapon systems, and during the day the F-15 and F-16 jet fighters flew in from


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Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Diego Garcia. In between were Apaches and Cobras firing rockets. It was continuous. We’d see half a dozen aircraft at any one time and hear the rest over the radio. After a while you’d go ‘Will you blokes shut up? I want to get some sleep.’ Our sigs were in communication with the pilots. The rest of us could only watch and listen. One time an F-16 came in for a bomb run. He dropped his bombs and was coming up, and we could see a SAM heading straight at him. I was trying to will him out of there. He’s bucking and turning and diving and going straight up, throwing flares and chaff at 1200 kilometres an hour, but I still wanted him to go faster. It wasn’t overkill. A machine gun would be taken out and two hours later, there would be another machine gun at the same cave entrance. The blokes at Anaconda were giving us the finger. They had artillery with a range of seven kilometres but we were not advertising our position and at night we’d move around. We did foot patrols up ravines that were likely escape routes and came across donkeys laden with rockets, just walking themselves into the mountains, or nomads and their tents and goats. We’d search their tents but found nothing. In the middle of Anaconda they were just going about their lives! At different times we lined up with other patrols or set up ambushes after reports came through that people were escaping. We stopped a lot of cars. All the ones we searched were full of women, children and old men, probably from the villages. One patrol stopped a heap of American journalists who were driving into the valley. Crazy! In the last days we were sent into a village and bagged a Pashtun whose house was full of literature on ambushes and military tactics. We handed him over to the Americans. We saw black-clad armed fighters in the hills four hundred metres away and called in the A-10s. An estimated 100 to 500 al-Qa’ida and Taliban were killed at Anaconda but a lot of fighters got away, probably fleeing to the Pakistan border fifty kilometres to the east. After we left, troops went in to clear the weapons caches. By mid-March we were on our way back to Kandahar and the following week we flew to Kuwait, where we cleaned our gear, had a debrief—a group interview and a one-on-one—and did a bit of winding down: shopping or going to a movie, a café or the gym, by this time everyone saying ‘Let’s go home.’ Nineteen days after Anaconda we were back in Australia and glad to be home. The threat of mines, especially, takes its toll. At any time, you could drive or walk on one. To take a pee you end up walking in the footprints of the bloke in front. In the months I was away, Clare coped, even with our youngest having a serious medical problem that involved an operation. Apparently one day, my 32


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kids and Sock’s kids were watching Fatcat and Friends on TV when there was a newsbreak: ‘The Taliban are falling back’, and all the kids starting cheering. Four-year-old Tom and the other boys were jumping and yelling, ‘We’re winning! Dad’s winning!’ like it was a football game. One problem with Afghanistan was that the US hierarchy had a blanket rule of banning alcohol. It doesn’t seem to worry them, but for Australians it was a contentious issue. We could fire a $100 000 missile, we had power over life or death, but after a month’s patrol they’d give you a can of Coke. To compensate we smoked Cuban cigars. The whole troop came back puffing cigars. I was enjoying a drink, but that wasn’t about Afghanistan. It was more about babysitting five kids while Clare and a friend went to Bali for a break. When I realized what I was doing I cut it out. Every experience changes a person, but not necessarily uncontrollably. Even from training, you come home hyper-alert. After Afghanistan, I’d be walking in the bush behind our house, and would find myself looking at the ground for land mines, unconsciously stepping in other people’s footsteps. Another adjustment is driving a car. In Afghanistan, we owned the road. As for not liking crowds, I’ve never liked them. Any overseas deployment makes you think about people and the way they live, and what people like the Taliban do to them. One of the biggest adjustments was seeing so many women again. I could count on one hand the number of times I saw an Afghani woman’s face. Even women in burkas would hurry inside or be pushed inside when they saw us coming. There’s a lot of stuff you want to put out of your head and that’s why I don’t tell Clare. She has a sense of what I’ve done, but why worry her for the next time? Also you are enjoying being home with the family, especially after a week or so, because it takes time to settle: just the freedom to be able to go for a walk along the beach with the kids or to the fridge when you feel like it. It’s good to take a break from the blokes. We knew Afghanistan was just the start of America’s ‘war on terror’. I think there are different plans for different countries, and nobody was surprised that Iraq was the next focus. Whether we had UN support did not worry me; most UN actions don’t run smoothly. My only concern was whether the Australian people would support us. This was not based on what my father told me—he’s never talked about it—but I’d read how Vietnam veterans were treated. It’s hard enough living with memories, let alone being vilified for them. The majority of blokes, when they see a protest, think: ‘The reason we do what we do is to allow you the right to protest.’ There’s one protest I’d prefer to remember: after Afghanistan a lone man dressed in a suit held up a placard: ‘Welcome home fellas: a job well done’. Always a Little Further

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I wasn’t worried about it being a pre-emptive strike. Iraq had pre-empted on Iran and Kuwait. After seeing what the Afghani people had been through, how happy they were to be lifted of that oppression, in my mind the Number One reason was to give Iraqis a chance to live and bring up their families. The other reason was that even if Saddam Hussein did not have chemical and biological weapons, he had used them, he wanted to have them, and as soon as the UN sanctions were lifted he would immediately go about getting them. In most blokes’ minds it was ‘If we don’t go in now, is my son going to have to do it in fifteen years’ time?’ So we watched the picture unfold and pre-empted. The other squadrons were rotating through Afghanistan, and that left my squadron back on the front plate. The others were squealing! We had three Arabic speakers including a bloke who became known in the media as Trooper X. He got recognition after an attack involving twenty Iraqi military. Under fire he used his Javelin missile off his shoulder to shoot a truck, his rifle to knock out a mortar tube, and a 50 cal machine gun to destroy vehicles and scatter the Iraqis. Some Iraqis held up a white flag. When they got nearer they lowered their ‘stick’ and started shooting. Nearby others were surrendering, so Trooper X used his sniper rifle until all who were left surrendered. The rest of us did some language training and I did a Forward Air Controller course on the East Coast to call in planes. We did the normal lectures, revising chemical and biological weapons and rehearsing in nuclear-biologicalchemical suits. They are heavy, cumbersome and claustrophobic, and bloomin’ hard to fight in. We got top-up injections for anthrax, plague, rabies and typhoid and we carried nerve gas tablets. Back in 98 we got anthrax injections and some blokes were crook for a few days. The effects of chemical or biological weapons are so obscene, any thought of them has to be put out of your mind. Operation Falconer was a gradual build-up and we had time with our families. By this stage Tom was seven, Laura was five and Isabelle was almost three. Clare basically took it in her stride although after watching television she would say, ‘This one is different. This is big. This is war.’ It was on and off. Clare: The first weeks after he goes are the worst: the uncertainty. You don’t hear from them. You follow the news. I try to treat it like he is on an exercise— at least that’s what I tell the kids—and I keep busy. Will: Come February 2003 we boarded an Air Holland plane and sat on the airstrip for four hours. Some blokes slept. Others were walking up and down the aisle and doing push-ups. I did a bit of that and read. I’d taken The Iliad and The Odyssey. We finally flew to Diego Garcia to get clearance to go into 34


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Kuwait and then we were back in the hangers at Doha, within days flying to a huge air base in the host country. Once again it was awesome to see the enormity of the US war machine. This time I was 2IC, as I was in Timor. Four blokes in my patrol were with me in Afghanistan. Our primary task was to make sure nothing was fired at the Israelis, in case they retaliated and drew in other Arab nations. We were to identify targets and call in American planes, so we did a bit of training with the C-130s, F-16s, A-10s, and the Little Bird helicopters, making sure we had a chat and a beer with the US pilots so they could put a face to us. We were assured that, unless a missile was about to be launched, no pilot would drop a bomb in our AO [Area of Operation] without our say-so. Within two weeks we were ready to go, having been fully booted up with different weapons systems, and rightly so. Those we were facing were better prepared than the wily Taliban, and SAS has a saying: ‘One is none, two is one.’ Personally I had a 50 cal sniper rifle, a 7.62 sniper rifle, a shotgun, a pistol, a Mag 58 machine gun, grenades and forty-millimetre mortars. The vehicle was packed with weapons. But time kept rolling, and it turned out that we had over a month to gear up. It couldn’t have worked out better. Five days before we crossed the fence we’d had every briefing, met every pilot, the cars had been stripped and put back together so many times we knew blindfold where everything was, we had memorized and burnt all our Escape and Evasion codes, and we were flexing. One of the things that I enjoy about the Regiment is how the blokes speak their mind. There is not so much of a ‘yes sir, no sir’ mentality, and that flows over to officers in other armies. I remember Colonel Mulholland, the US Commander of the Western Desert, giving the task force a spiel before we moved forward. At the end he said, ‘Is there anything you fellas want before you go?’ After a moment’s silence I said ‘Yes, Sir, when are we going to get some beer?’ The General took a step back. ‘Well … if that is an Australian tradition, it is not for me to interfere.’ Then ET piped up: ‘We wouldn’t mind a few Stingers, Sir.’ Now, Stingers are about $100 000 a piece, but they were ideal protection from Iraqi helicopters, which we had no weapons systems for. Straight faced, the General responded, ‘Well, I’ll see what I can do. So let me get this right. What I am taking away from this is you Aussies want beer and Stingers?’ It was pretty funny. We got both. We spent the nights of 16 and 17 March in the second staging camp, a city of tents. We were informed that Bush wasn’t satisfied that Saddam had pulled out a few rockets and had given Saddam a 48-hour deadline to leave the country. It was exciting. We were confident, although there were all the normal Always a Little Further

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worries: Are we all going to make it home? Am I going to perform well? I visualize how I want to perform and run it over in my mind. A liaison officer from the host country went with us everywhere and on the night of the eighteenth we told him we were going to the range for a shoot. We drove to the range, test-fired our weapons and kept driving. He knew which way we were heading and was pissed off, thinking he would be in trouble. We got to the final staging camp and sent Slipper over to talk to him. He refused to talk, although he’d mellowed by the next morning. We were camping with a mob of Green Berets and Scorpions—Iraqi guerrillas who had been inside Iraq gathering information and doing a few raids. Other SAS patrols were to be inserted by Chinook. We were going across country in six-wheeled open LRPVs. The next night we were all gunned up and on our way. But nothing is ever that simple. Where we were to cross had a guard post on either side of the border and several berms—deep trenches with levy banks and barbed wire. In the preceding weeks there had been numerous plans for breaching them. The Americans would go: ‘We’ll blanket bomb with B-52s’, and we’re like ‘Yeah but that will leave lots of craters, which will slow us down.’ Then it would be: ‘We’ll hit the border with F-18s and send in infantry.’ In the end they sent fifteen to twenty Iraqi guerrillas to clear the border post—as in kill the guards—while an American engineer unit reduced the berms with shovels. The enormity of the crossing weighed on us. This was the first time since Gallipoli that Australian soldiers had invaded a country. We had no illusions about the fact that the whole world, but more importantly Australia, would be watching. All the Diggers, including my father, would be wondering whether we were made of the same stuff. We hoped we would give a good account of ourselves. We crept forward, no worries. After an hour the Iraqis came back, saying ‘No one was there’, which meant they had gone over and probably said, ‘Look, best you fellows ding ding’, which is fair enough. Once the breach was completed, we drove through, the Americans standing on the sidelines, going ‘Give them hell, Aussies.’ We were the first to cross, the Iraqi guerrillas and Americans following—all of us heading for different AOs. This time it was not like Afghanistan where they could say ‘I’m Northern Alliance.’ In Iraq, if they had a weapon, they were enemy soldiers and this meant handing over their weapon or being killed, which in theory was going to make it easier: the Western Desert was about to get real noisy. Twenty-six minutes after crossing the border, driving at speed across flat stony desert, we had our first contact. When Prime Minister Howard visited President Bush at Camp David, Bush apparently said ‘I hear your fellows got the first contact of the war’, and Howard replied, ‘What did you expect?’

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The convoy was a military bus full of border guards and several trucks loaded with mortars and mortar tubes, travelling with no lights. We saw them through NVGs and stopped, hoping they would drive past. We didn’t want the contact, but they drove straight through the middle of us. The first of our vehicles fired, not to kill but to hit the bus engine. The funny part was, afterwards Chook was saying ‘I was trying to shoot the engine’, and I was going ‘Yeah, but bus engines are in the back, mate, not the front.’ The front had been shot to pieces. The Iraqis were pulled off, we patched up two blokes—one shot in the foot, another in the hand, I don’t think anyone was killed—before telling them to walk. We were going to call in Air to bomb the vehicles. The weather was mild—at night only minus 5 degrees Celsius—although we had some big winds and by the end of the six weeks it was up to 43 degrees during the day. On the first night, we stopped for a drink and a bit of a rest between dawn and daylight, to let our eyes adjust. As the sun came over the horizon we heard goat bells, then saw three Bedouin tents and six Bedouins poking about with their goats and sheep. It felt familiar. We had always said, ‘We’re not going to get far without being seen.’ Bedouins were everywhere. Some of them seemed indifferent to our presence, as if cammed-up foreign soldiers in gun buggies were an everyday sight. Others waved. At this stage we weren’t stopping for a chat. The roads were excellent, not like in Afghanistan, where we were getting a flat tyre every second day and being bogged up to fifteen times a night. Even with the off-road work in Iraq, we only had two flat tyres in six weeks. Also the Iraqi minefields were documented and there weren’t any in the Western Desert, as far as we knew. Two troops in fourteen vehicles drove all morning, heading for what our maps called an agricultural facility, known to have two sixty-metre towers and six smaller ones, which didn’t fit the label. We arrived in the afternoon and did an OP, observing soldiers with guns and a couple of tanks, which further aroused our suspicions. At night we approached in chemical suits and NVGs. Half a dozen armed guards came out, having heard our vehicles. Some were firing, others were standing around not knowing what to do. I was part of the assault force but didn’t fire a shot. Blokes on the other side returned fire, and forty-millimetre grenades were lobbed into their bunker. There were casualties—I saw blokes knocked down. The rest of them left their guns and ran. We went in and discovered it was a relay station. We cleared the buildings and destroyed the telephones and radios. In the process ET’s patrol is shotgunning all the doors to get in, and ET hears this poof of gas. He’s singing out ‘Gas, gas, it’s on’, and they’re all grabbing gas masks. It turned out he’d shot the back of a fridge.


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I called in the planes to bomb the towers, the other troop left and we were on our own: six vehicles heading for the next target. There were dozens of places and we needed to clear as many as we could in the shortest possible time. We drove through the night, an hour before dawn stopping on Route 10, the highway to Jordon and Syria. One LRPV parked on the road, the other five strung out 500 metres off the road. We had decided to stop vehicles, to confuse the Iraqi command as to our purpose and numbers. At dawn we saw a military bus and gestured for it to stop, but it kept coming. Chook fired a 50 cal into the front window. Now, a 50 cal is a big slug and it’s punched out very fast. It went straight through the bus and could have killed a dozen people. The bus stopped and all forty-five soldiers got out. Slipper told them: ‘We’ve won the war. You may as well go home.’ They looked at us as if we were crazy. We went in to clear weapons, finding an RPG and seven AKs. The only person injured was the bus driver, who’d lost a finger. He probably hadn’t wanted to show his colours too early because, as the medic bandaged his hand he said, ‘Thank you for coming. I’m not an Iraqi soldier any more. I go home.’ He was so happy! To see this was mind-boggling. Within fifteen minutes two military trucks and six utes with gun racks came along. Suddenly they’d see our LRPV in the middle of the road and a bloke gesturing ‘Stop’ but none of them stopped until we fired a warning shot. They looked out the window and saw the rest of us covering them. No one wanted to die. Slipper told them to get out and they did, still in uniform, shaking with fear. We cleared the vehicles of weapons and Slipper said: ‘The war is over, we’ve won. Go home.’ The problem was, the next bus did not stop until the last hundred metres and we were ready to shoot. Fortunately we didn’t. It was full of women and kids. After that we decided to move off the road: it was too easy to make a mistake. Twenty minutes later, at six in the morning, we approached another relay station. We saw no activity. Once the other vehicles had got into position to provide covering fire, Sykes’s car drove up to one corner while my car rammed the big metal gates, smashing them off their hinges. I jumped out and was getting around the side when I saw a young bloke’s head pop out of a door, but I wasn’t quick enough to get my rifle around before he disappeared. As Sykes and another bloke headed for the door, I saw another soldier and yelled ‘There’s jundi inside.’ But we weren’t receiving fire and I’m thinking ‘If I don’t have to kill anyone, it will be a good day for me.’ Slipper called for them to come out. No movement. We were probably in our rights to throw a grenade but we weren’t taking fire, so we took up positions around the front door, Con lining up his machine gun and firing some rounds into the roof. When Slipper called a second time, three terrified blokes gingerly stepped out. 38


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While we went in to clear the place and blow up their telephones and radios, Slipper tried to calm them down. He took them over to a wall and was offering them a cigarette when I walked over. Their faces were grey; they were shaking with fear. We realized they thought we were going to shoot them. Slipper’s saying ‘No, no, youse are all right, you’re fine.’ Finally big smiles all round. Slipper goes ‘Here, have the packet of cigarettes.’ That was for growing them a few grey hairs. We reassured them: ‘We’re not going to bomb. You can wait until a car comes.’ What we hadn’t realized was that in the initial minutes they had time to get on the radio, so people knew our exact location. The raid had taken an hour and we were in our vehicles a kilometre from the compound when we saw ten or twelve Mazda Twin Cab Utes, with gun mounts on the back, pull up. About twenty Fedayeen dressed in black jumped out and ran up to the front vehicle. I was still not convinced they were a threat. Iraqis had come in with us and although they were not meant to be in our AO, it was something in the back of my mind. But then their machine guns started splattering rounds around us. I’m telling Con: ‘Yep, they’re enemy all right. Start firing.’ We got into position, Con on the 40 millimetre grenade launcher, the rest of the troop opening up, and after twenty minutes of so much lead coming their way, they were overwhelmed. While the wounded continued to fire from ditches others got into their cars and were racing in all directions. Some blokes knew what they were doing. They got into the compound and returned fire. A truck moved in with extra men and they began setting up a mortar plate. We knocked it out and spent the next two and a half hours racing around the desert, pinning them down with 50 cal machine guns, grenades and a Javelin. But they kept fighting. We’re saying ‘Haven’t they had enough?’ When the F-16s came in and bombed the compound we left. Another patrol picked up one wounded and two dead. A week later we met up with twelve Fedayeen in another raid. We went in to clear the compound and found the Fedayeen dressed in civilian gear but with uniforms hanging in the cupboard, complete with Special Forces insignia, as well as a stash of weapons and a wheat bag full of Iraqi dinar. They told us they were waiting for the guerrilla uprising, but we had no way of taking prisoners. That first contact with the Fedayeen had us on our toes and although we had no sleep for two nights, we kept moving, eating and drinking on the run. On the third day, 22 March, we were twenty kilometres up the road, doing an OP on an engineers’ compound. We saw several white utes with gun mounts, but more importantly, a crane and a truck, fuel and other equipment, which our engineers said could be used to lift missiles into launch position. There were various targets and we took turns calling in the A-10s. Always a Little Further

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On the fifth day, we were stuck in a sandstorm with a visibility of ten metres. It was hard to breathe, and our goggles were full of dust. Protected by shamargs and balaclavas, Sykes and I crawled up to the highway to identify military vehicles. It started to rain and for two hours we were pummelled with mud. Then all of a sudden the rain stopped, the clouds parted above us and we could see for 600 metres. Exactly at this point, a bus came flying out of the dust cloud. The bus driver did a U-turn. We piled into our vehicles and gave chase. When the bus stopped, fifty-odd blokes bailed out and did a runner, so we drove around the desert collecting them. They were Air Force, and being one of the better units had good weapons and gas masks. In the end I immobilized the bus and they were allowed to walk. During the day, if we were on the road doing an ambush and not all of us were needed, blokes would take turns to stay back, clean gear, have a proper meal and a sleep. We had no light at night, so we did our cooking by day. We’d taken ten days of cut-down dehydrated US rations and in six weeks had two C-130 parachute drops for food, ammunition, fuel and cams. Listening to BBC news reports, we knew the Americans and British were moving fast. The Brits had skirted around Basra by the third day, and the Yanks were within fifty kilometres of Baghdad by 24 March. On 26 March we heard that a thousand US paratroopers had parachuted into Arbil to join up with the Kurds and open a Northern Front. We took an interest in that because it was in the realms of where we could have been deployed. When the resistance kicked in it was stronger than expected, especially around places like Nasiriyah and Basra, but from intelligence reports everything was going as expected. By the end of the first week whole busloads of troops were deserting their posts and going home. We told them: ‘Go home and wait. The new Iraqi Government might call on your services.’ Most were relieved, smiling and waving as they walked or drove away. With vehicles that we shot at, some people died, but others, even those who were shot in the ankle or had a head graze or worse, were happy to see us! Nothing seemed to faze them. I was searching one man’s car and he was saying in English ‘My wife and son are already dead. How come you took so long?’ He had been waiting thirty-five years for somebody to kick out Saddam Hussein. One and a half million Iraqis had already died from war genocide and Saddam ripping off the food-for-oil program, so these reactions were happening to us a few times a day. How do you explain that to people back home? It re-confirmed to us that, even though innocent people were dying, a lot more were going to be saved. From what I saw, if you asked an Iraqi ‘If it costs a thousand civilian lives, is it worth it?’ they would say ‘Yes, of course’, and even to ‘Is 100 000 lives worth it?’ they would probably say ‘Yes.’ To live free of fear is worth a heap to them. 40


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We heard about Basra falling to the British on 7 April. Two days before, US tanks rolled through Baghdad. There was some heavy fighting but we were surprised by the lack of resistance. In Baghdad there would have been people with more to lose. Maybe the plan all along was for them to fall back to become part of an insurgency, especially as in the second and third weeks we stopped a dozen buses heading to Baghdad. In one hour we stopped five. In each were sixty men with Syrian passports—all with sequential visa numbers issued three days before. They were as scared as, probably expecting to be shot. We asked ‘Why are you going to Baghdad?’ ‘To have a look.’ They were not carrying weapons or threatening us, so all we could do was put them back on the bus, saying ‘We’ll see you in Baghdad in a few days’ and ‘You are all going there to die.’ Letting them go gave us some angst. Two days later we’d stop the same buses coming back from Baghdad, mostly empty, although Slipper talked to one disillusioned foreign fighter returning home. He had gone to fight the Americans and was given no weapon or orders. In between stopping vehicles we were jumping up the highway, going from target to target, getting closer to Baghdad. We would leapfrog a few targets, so if Iraqi forces were sent to the next one, we wouldn’t be there. The next minute they were getting hit from behind. Militarily we had the freedom to do this and every time we walked away we would look at each other saying, ‘Not a scratch. How good is this? How many times can we get away with it?’ When the military started travelling in civilian cars, we started hitting civilian cars. As more women started travelling, we might check their passports and let them go, but then we started getting suspicious blokes in amongst the women. Next minute we are checking every car with women and finding weapons. With the women, we didn’t want to offend but we had a job to do. Sometimes the men would use the women to put one over, like ‘I’ve got women, you should let us go.’ The men always wanted to do the talking but sometimes we talked to the women, asking people the same questions to see if their stories added up. People were saying that Fedayeen were forcing people to supply them food and water and bandits were stealing from travellers. Several times we came across people stealing cars. We ended up giving the cars away and joked about setting up a Beagles Car Lot. One ute was full of ice and fish, so we handed over a wad of dinars to by some fish. We’d buy potatoes, onions, Turkish delight, naan bread or dates. The travellers would want to give us the food but were over the moon when we paid for it. Once we bought chooks, killed them and cooked up a tomato and chicken stew with rice at a water pumping station. We shared our food with the three soldiers meant to be guarding it. On seeing us approach they had virtually torn off their uniforms.

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On 7 April we were patrolling two hundred kilometres west of Baghdad when we were sent a message to stop a Russian Embassy convoy. We motioned to the eight sedans to pull up, which they did. A man jumped out of a car and strutted over, as arrogant as. He was lucky he didn’t get three holes in him. He says, ‘I am Vladmir Titorenko, the Russian ambassador to Iraq. I have diplomatic immunity. You can’t look in the cars, you can’t talk to anybody, you have to let us go.’ He had ID but the others could have been anybody. We could see metal suitcases inside the cars. We wanted to search them, but the Boss, our troop commander, held a conference by satellite phone between the Russian ambassador and the relevant authorities and in the end nobody was searched, nobody was photographed. A few had minor wounds. We offered medical assistance, but the ambassador kept saying, ‘We don’t want your help, you’ve already shot us up.’ We hadn’t fired a shot, but they reckoned Americans had attacked them as they left Baghdad. There were no bullet or shrapnel holes in any of the cars and in the end everybody got back in their cars with very smug looks on their faces. It left a sour taste, not knowing who or what we were letting go. After Baghdad fell on 9 April, there was lots of traffic: civilians driving from Jordan and Syria to see their families. Many spoke English. Others coming from Baghdad were students with Yemeni, Palestinian, Syrian, Somalian and Algerian passports. All claimed to have been studying mathematics or biological sciences at the University of Baghdad. It was all too suspicious for me. On 10 April, a brand new Land Cruiser with Ministry of Agriculture stickers pulled up at our checkpoint. Two men got out: a civilian who said he had been in Iraqi intelligence and a young man in an Olympic Soccer tracksuit. Both claimed to be relatives of General Mohammed Jarawi, the Iraqi commander of the Western Desert. The intelligence bloke suggested the General might want to capitulate to the Coalition. He asked how the General would be treated and if we would provide security for a meeting. The boss expressed interest, and they returned to Ar-Ramadi to make arrangements. April 12 turned out to be a long day. We were on the Jordan Highway, suspecting there would be people of interest taking advantage of the open borders. In the morning we stopped a flashy Chrysler coming from Baghdad. Inside were four or five well-to-do men. When we asked who they were, it was, ‘I am a businessman’, ‘I am a computer expert’, ‘I am a US citizen.’ That sparked our interest. Slipper took the ‘American citizen’ aside. The man gave an address. He knew we were Australians but we had an American Combat Controller with us. We took the address to him and he said, ‘That’s a PO Box and zip code.’


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Kezza and I began searching the car. Kezza picked up a tissue box that was suspiciously heavy. He pulled it apart and found a wad of notes—US$10 000— stuck between the tissues. Underneath the seat, there was a box containing US$100 000. Brand-new shirts in cellophane had been slit and a wad of $10 000 slid into them. We cut open the seat and found another $100 000. In total we found US$640 000, plus Canadian money and Iraqi dinar, jewellery and watches. In our books with photos of people of interest we couldn’t find any of them, so all we could say was: ‘We’ll give the money to the authorities and when you get to wherever you are going, you can apply to get the money back.’ They weren’t real happy about that. But then we decided to make them wait while we sent the names they had given us back to Regiment Headquarters. Meanwhile we stopped a bus of sixty-odd young men. We found no weapons but decided to search them. Some had Syrian passports. Quite a few had no ID and the odd one carried a Yemeni or Somali passport. However, several had US$5000 in their pockets and merit certificates, which, roughly translated, said: ‘You are a good Muslim. You have killed an American, you are awarded $5000.’ We had no means of taking prisoners, but having apprehended the suspect businessmen and this busload we decided to call Higher Command. As the afternoon wore on, our ‘businessmen’ were anxious to get going. We told them they had to wait, not mentioning that we were arranging a free helicopter ride. In between all this we were being visited by the intelligence bloke and the Olympic soccer player, as well as two sheikhs, who turned up with big trays of rice and roast mutton, enough food to feed everyone, including our seventyodd guests. When night came, because of the cold we had everyone jogging up and down the road and doing star jumps to keep warm, the businessmen getting more and more nervous. At eleven o’clock we heard two helos, the young Coalition soldiers coming out of them on such a knife’s edge that even we took a step back. They immediately bagged the men’s heads and raced them to the helos. It took three shifts, finishing at about three in the morning. Later we heard that at least one of the ‘businessmen’ was allegedly a top al-Qa’ida operative, although the Americans wanted his capture kept secret so his network could be undone. On 13 April four sheikhs in ceremonial dress accompanied General Jarawi for a meeting with the Boss. The general was in full uniform, with an array of medals, a pistol on his hip and a silver-plated AK-47 in his hand. In the middle of the desert, sitting around trays of food the sheikhs had brought, the Boss explained, through Slipper, that the Americans would be brought in for the capitulation and the documents would be written in English and Arabic.

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Two days later American Special Forces arrived in six cars to check out the meeting place—a relay station. It was a huge thing, to have another fighting force inside your AO, and we were a little shocked: they had with them a female CIA. The next day General Jarawi rocked up with his silver-plated AK-47 and the American General and his entourage arrived in two Black Hawks. An assistant scurried around, folding out a table and two chairs. Maps and other documents were pored over to establish what areas were involved, and the negotiations began. I was videoing it. Initially General Jarawi had a list of conditions and it was interesting to watch them being chipped away. In the end the Americans agreed to leave him with enough Iraqi soldiers to provide security in Ar-Ramadi. Meanwhile we continued patrolling in arcs around our AO, coming across one compound with hundreds of giant concrete bunkers and three-sided dugouts, all filled with tons of ammunitions. The amount of ordinance was mind-boggling and this was just one of many all over Iraq. It will take years to destroy. The Americans had bombed some bunkers and some had been looted. We were looking for dates, where things were made, and other details, some of which was beyond our expertise, but we photographed and videoed as much as possible. Around this time we heard that another troop had attacked a large cement works guarded by forty soldiers. To avoid a fire fight they had called in an F-14 to fly in low and break the sound barrier. The Iraqis surrendered without a shot. On 16 April, two troops captured Al-Asad Air Base, with a few light contacts and Australian F/A-18s for air support, and on 20 April we joined the rest of the squadron at Al-Asad. The base was fourteen kilometres by seven kilometres, with fifty-seven MiG aircraft including three MiG-25 Foxbats—Russian-made interceptors that could fly faster than anything the Americans had at the time—hidden in pits under camouflage netting or in groves of palm trees. To stop an invasion force, the Iraqis had bombed some airstrips and put armoured personnel carriers, trucks and tanks on others. Blokes hot-wired bulldozers to clear and grade the strips, and re-wired the comms towers and generators. Some of the captured weapons we had pulled apart and the rest we handed in at Al-Asad. Commandos came in to do security while we documented all the explosives, missiles and planes. We found gas masks in a number of bunkers and several modern missiles marked ‘Made in France’ still in their packing cases. We went into Little Baghdad, where the Iraqi Air Forces’ living quarters were, and checked out the police station. The police convinced Slipper they were pro-Coalition, so we left them to it. We celebrated Anzac Day with a


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morning service, games of two-up and a barbecue, and pulled out some planes, guns and trucks to show a stream of visitors: War Memorial historians; Chief of the ADF, General Peter Cosgrove; Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Peter Leahy; Commander of Special Forces Operations, Major General Duncan Lewis; the land commander; the RSM [regimental sergeant major] of the Army; and the top padre. Rumour had it that the Americans wanted us to go to Baghdad but we were told we were going home. I’d called Clare a few times over a 48-hour period before we moved to the second staging camp. She was happily surprised, saying ‘You’ve gone to war, how come you’re ringing me?’ I didn’t speak with the children. It’s hard enough knowing what to say to your wife in so short a time. With the relationship we’ve got, everything has been said anyway. Some blokes prefer not to make the calls —they are worse for it afterwards. It’s not like you can tell your wife exactly what’s happening or say ‘I’m thinking of you’, because there are days on end when I don’t think about my family. Even when you are lying under the stars there is only a fleeting second away from thinking, ‘Right, where’s my rifle? Yep, I’ve cleaned it, the safety’s on, it’s good to go. Now there’s a dip in front of the car. If we get hit from the left, we go right.’ If you are not thinking like this, it’s too late when something happens. Missing the family usually happens when the job is finished, like in Kuwait after we flew out from Al-Asad and they said ‘Qantas is coming in two weeks.’ In the meantime we keep busy cleaning our gear, going shopping or to the mess, getting endless lectures and being debriefed, discussing what could have been done better. That’s when tempers fray. You need to slow down. Even when you get home, you are racing ten times faster than everyone else. We flew into Perth and were bussed to the barracks where we were greeted by Prime Minister John Howard and Simon Crean, then Leader of the Opposition, General Peter Cosgrove and Lieutenant General Peter Leahy. We went into the gymnasium where all the families were. That was good: all the kids running around. Seeing Clare and the kids was emotional. Everyone was happy. It was not like Afghanistan. In Iraq no one got a scratch, which is pretty phenomenal when you consider the amount of rounds that were fired at us. Also, I knew this was the end of my army career. I had put in for discharge a week before we went over the fence. I’d discussed it with Clare. She had mixed feelings. She was happy I was leaving but she had a great life in Swanbourne, apart from me going away. Coming east was going to be a big change but I wanted to give our kids the country life I’d had as a kid. I’d done ten years in the Army. If I did another five or ten, it would have been the same question—‘What am I going to do now?’—and in the back of my mind,

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I thought I’d seen the best of the Regiment. I had enjoyed the tempo and meeting people. I didn’t want to move up the ranks and do jobs I would not enjoy. Mates were going to the four winds. It was the end of an era, so it wasn’t a hard decision. After Iraq, I thought about telling Clare more than I usually do, but I decided that the people close to me didn’t need to know. I can tell them about Andy’s death, but not the details of the last three hours. There is a need to talk and process it yourself, especially with blokes who have been there. They understand. A lot of things you do, it’s not normal … Those Iraqis that were wounded and still happy … You are left thinking ‘What events led you to be that way?’ I read Australian news reports about SAS slaughtering people but we were always waiting for a sign so we did not have to bloomin’ shoot. It was nothing like the highway of death from Kuwait City to Basra in 91: a graveyard of vehicles and burnt corpses that we saw in 98. That doesn’t make it normal. We were wounding and killing people who probably wanted to surrender. You had situations where one bloke was shooting and the others were standing around. How do you react to that? It is easier to fight an enemy who want to kill you, like those Fedayeen. Afterwards you come home to all the anti-war opinion and you wonder what the Iraqis would make of it. Little things remind you of stuff. I was driving over an overpass taking the kids to school and a truck came up the rise in the opposite direction, changing gears. Out of the corner of my eye I saw black smoke through the trees, and my heart raced for a second. It looked like an RPG round self-detonating. In our house, we had the TV near a window and every time a leaf fluttered I turned to look, heart racing, so I pulled down the blind. I have always been more alert and security conscious than the average person, having been a hunter, but a normal hunter hunts with the odds in his favour. There’s no contest. Being a soldier is different. Overseas, even if I am tired, I sleep light, whereas back home the kids can be crying and I will be dead to the world. I’m safe. I didn’t have nightmares, but for six months I was in hyper-survival mode. It can be annoying. A month back from Iraq, I flew to Queensland after Clare said ‘If we are going east we need somewhere to live.’ Within a week I’d bought a Queenslander on two hundred acres and lined up a job as a builder’s apprentice. Mum and Dad were very happy. Their feeling was: ‘It’s over.’ Will’s father: When Will joined the Army it was great. You can learn a lot, see a lot, do a lot. In the 1980s it did not enter our heads that he could be whisked off to war. When he was selected for SAS, I thought it was the pinnacle. We went over for the badging and I gave him a big hug and shook his hand, and


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said, ‘Well done. You can’t go any higher.’ In Vietnam, we respected SAS: four men behind enemy lines, walking into an enemy camp and leaving a note. Will became a corporal and learnt to lead men. I knocked back that opportunity because I liked being a forward scout, being up front knowing what was happening. But when he went over to East Timor I worried. No matter how good you are there’s always someone that’s going to get killed or wounded. I thought about Vietnam: the same hot steaming jungle, the same close range. Timor brought it all back. I was a conscript but keen to go. I still believe we did the right thing. I went over in November 68, as part of the advance party for 9 Battalion. I was only there five months. I had wanted to do the full twelve months but once I saw action I was ready to come home. We were losing too many good men. Friends. That’s when reality changes. You change. We had been two weeks in the bush and had a few contacts. On 9 February we were taking out a bunker system. As forward scouts, Tom Meredith and I were ahead of the others. The enemy opened up and Tom got hit. A couple of others were wounded. From that day on, I wasn’t the same person. Another scout replaced Tom. I refused to talk to him. The stupid part was, six months later, blokes would be taking out the same bunker. Ten days after Tom was killed, we were in single file, when we heard a shot. I’m thinking ‘Oh well, we’ve just killed somebody’, but it was one of ours: Reggie Phillips. We were sitting around. Messages were going up and down the line. Next minute the enemy was all around yelling, ‘Ookdal’i’—‘Go home.’ Half a dozen of them came up the creek in front of me. I shot a bloke at close range, just blew his head off … That night we moved a couple of hundred yards and set up an ambush near a big bunker system. The next morning they were waiting for us. We lost another three, one of them right beside me. They were all within a couple of metres. Eight wounded. Our front line wiped out. The whole company changed after that. You aren’t human. You do stupid, awful things. When we searched a village or did roadblocks we’d push people around and abuse them because they looked like the people who’d killed our friends. We didn’t do anything drastic but you wouldn’t treat a person back home that way. After another week of Operation Woodwood, we went back to Nui Dat for a few days and I flew back to Sydney at one in the morning. Nobody to meet you. Nobody to organize you. Nowhere to stay. I was told to turn up at Watsons Bay the next morning. As a conscript, the Regular Army didn’t want to know you. Two weeks later my discharge came through. When Will was in East Timor I kept my thoughts to myself. I didn’t want Helen or the other kids to worry. When he came back we flew over to see him. 48


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Then September 11 comes. I was getting out of bed when I heard the news. Stunned, I thought ‘This is it—the start of World War III.’ By this time my second son was in the Army. Another worry. You don’t want two of them going off to war. Will’s squadron was on standby, but it was coming up for rotation. Helen and I were hoping he’d miss out. He was hoping the opposite. We all do as young men. That’s what’s wrong with us. It’s the challenge and excitement, the big adventure, until you fire the first shot that kills or your best friend dies. But that’s what he was trained for. You get pumped up and ready to roll. When he was in Afghanistan and the news started filtering through, I knew they were in the thick of it. You worry every day he is over there. I never watched television. I didn’t want to see the carnage. I read newspapers and kept the clippings for him. This time it wasn’t jungle; it was rock and snow, and so cold it would be like sitting in a freezer. He told us about driving into a village and the kids fighting to put their bare feet over the muffler to get warm. Still, I thought about Vietnam. There was no jungle but there were shooting, bombs, helicopters and ground troops. All war is the same. Death. I read about Anaconda but I didn’t know he was involved. I have asked a couple of questions, skirted around the edges. It’s hard. As a kid he used to ask about Vietnam and I wouldn’t tell him. I never told him I killed anyone. I don’t think they’re things that make you proud. Years later you are still thinking about it. They are human the same as us. Also, SAS are not allowed to tell you things, so you respect that. I don’t want to know whether he has taken life. I don’t know how it would affect me. I would probably worry how it was going to affect him. I don’t want him to break down in front of me. When he came back from Afghanistan, we flew over. I wanted to make sure he was all right. We stayed a couple of weeks. There was talk of Iraq. I wanted someone to get rid of Saddam but when he said they were definitely going I was downhearted. You’ve just got him home from one conflict, you can breathe again, and next thing they’re going to an even bigger one. It’s gut wrenching and I’m only his father. I don’t know how Clare handles it. She is very strong— like Helen. When he told us he was getting out of the Army, we were very pleased. The way the world’s going you can’t push your luck. When he came home for a week and bought the house and lined up a job, it was very exciting for all of us. We are a tight-knit family, the kids and grandkids. Again we haven’t heard about what he did over there. It’ll come out one day when we sit down and raise our voices. Maybe not. Time will tell. He’s said most of the Iraqis weren’t keen to fight. With the Vietnamese, they shot to kill. But it’s still war. Another world. That’s the hardest part. When you come Always a Little Further

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back you want people to realize that, but also to let you get on with life, not bring it all back. It took seven years for me to settle. Helen had to live with a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde but I tried to control myself around the kids. Took them everywhere. The way I see it, you brought them into the world, you look after them. I’ve probably done better than a lot mates but after you’ve seen action I don’t think anyone really settles. I still have nightmares. It doesn’t go away. Now that Will’s home, Helen and I see changes in him. He’s more edgy but I think he can control it. These days, when we talk he says I’m yelling at him and I think he’s yelling at me. The volume keeps going up. Time will tell if it’s me, or him, or a bit of both. Will: Obviously Vietnam changed Dad, but he wasn’t affected like some people. He’s a fairly level-headed country bloke. He has a temper but was never abusive. He drank a lot. That was the era. You didn’t have to go to Vietnam to do that. There were times when Mum and Dad argued but us kids weren’t involved. I can never remember thinking ‘He is like this because he’s been to war.’ He always did heaps of things with us: camping, fishing, riding motorbikes, setting rabbit traps and shooting foxes, skinning and letting me sell the skins. I had a good upbringing. To come back to Queensland we took three weeks to travel around the top end. It was great being with the family, doing things like trying to keep hermit crabs alive until Mount Isa’s heat killed them. In January 2004 we arrived back in the town where I grew up. Clare and the kids settled in well. Clare started work as a nurse at the local hospital. Tom loves animals, loves studying bugs and lizards and is very observant. Clare calls him ‘environmental’. He is a lot like me at his age. He likes adventure but has commonsense and checks out the situation before he plunges in, whereas Laura jumps in, then gets scared. Isabelle is my little princess. They all have an awareness of what’s happening in the world. I don’t sit down and tell them, but they know where I’ve been and it rubs off. After four weeks setting up the house I started work with a bloke I knew from Grade Seven. Some of the locals are interested in what I’ve done and if they ask a question I answer it, although it’s hard talking about things that are so far off their radar. I don’t know whether I feel closer to Dad. We have always been close. In a military sense, blokes who have been to war share an unspoken bond. It comes down to the fact that killing people is not an easy thing to do. I like to

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believe I appreciate my family more, and the only complaint is sometimes I get frustrated if Clare and I have a disagreement and we are not communicating properly for a day or two. It’s wasted time. I know how life can change in milliseconds. In the future, if I thought I wasn’t coping, I would talk to blokes in the Regiment, but who knows how I would react if Clare told me I wasn’t handling things. From history, most blokes don’t want to admit that they can’t handle their combat experiences, so for a while I might not listen. Living on a farm is mainly about letting the kids enjoy the freedom of the country, having chickens and calves and growing things. I am interested in permaculture and would like to get the place fairly self-sufficient. But thinking I could settle down, maybe I was kidding myself. When I was offered a job with a security firm in Iraq I took it. It wasn’t only about the money. I wanted to be involved in Iraq’s one big chance. In March 2004 I arrived in Baghdad, collected a rifle, and thought ‘I’m back. Nothing’s changed.’ I live in the Green Zone, escort Australian personnel to various ministries and offices around Baghdad and meet a lot of ordinary Iraqis working hard to rebuild their country. When I go out to the car around seven of a morning I see the school kids going to school and the men coming back from prayers. At first they were shy, but after a few weeks of me saying ‘G’day’ they started looking for me. There are people pushing carts full of lettuces or chooks, and juice shops and electronic shops with boxes of videos. In the cafeteria at lunchtime, well-dressed Iraqi women, with makeup-packed faces, queue with the rest of us, giggling and talking as if they are out on the town. One man boasted about the number of Christian churches in Iraq and how they used to have draught beer. The Iraqi media and the locals I’ve talked to were critical of Moqtada AlSada’s Shiah militants fighting the Coalition forces in Sadr City, Najaf and elsewhere. The Mahdi fighters and the Sunni insurgents barge into mosques and people’s houses and start shooting at the Yanks. Everyone wants them and the Americans to stop fighting and leave. Our gardener, house worker and guard have all been threatened because they work for us, but they stay. They need to feed their families. The western media reports the violence and none of the peace. They say there are electricity shortages and forget to mention the threefold increase in consumption as people buy air conditioners, televisions, fridges and washing machines, or that power is going to places it has never been before. They describe the queues for petrol but not the antiquated transport trucks and pumps that can’t keep up with rising demand. There is little coverage of municipal elections and the new community organizations, schools, hospitals, newspapers and satellite TV channels.


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The Iraqis are also misinformed as they soak up the same media as everybody else. Often they say, ‘If only the Americans would stop killing the Iraqis, it would be all right’. I say, ‘What about the Iraqis killing the Americans?’ ‘Oh no. They are foreigners.’ I work for two months, come home for a month and go back, so I was in Iraq for the elections. Leading up, people were confused. They didn’t know the names of the candidates or where the polling booths would be. They were concerned that their names were misspelt on the electoral roles. Arabs don’t trust Kurds and Kurds don’t trust Arabs. Insurgents were threatening to kill everyone who took part. Even so, all the people around me said they intended to vote. When it came to 30 January 2005, the turn out was amazing. People took their children to let them place the ballot in the box. The next day, our workers came to work holding up their purple ink fingers, smiling like mad. Clare: Will being away is harder than when we were in Swanbourne, but the kids and I love it here. When people ask, ‘What the hell is he doing? He should be with his family’, I stick up for him. I say: ‘In ten years time, if Iraq is a better place, he will be able to look back and say he was a part of it.’

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2

A BENT STALK LADEN WITH GRAIN Paul Copeland, Peacemaker in Cambodia; and other Peacemakers—Peacekeepers in Iraqi Kurdistan, Namibia and Somalia

It is estimated that in the twentieth century, one hundred million people died at the hands of the states that ruled them, compared with forty million people killed in international wars. At a time when people look to United Nations resolutions and deployments to resolve conflict, veterans of UN peacemaking and peacekeeping missions know what the seventeenth-century Jewish philosopher Spinoza meant when he wrote ‘Peace is not the absence of war’. Paul Copeland, son of a Vietnam veteran, and a member of Special Forces, served in the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in 1993 and the Sinai in 1995–96. While technically well prepared for Cambodia, Copeland had little concept of what it would be like to operate in a country torn apart by decades of tyranny and war. Between 1969 and 1975, an estimated 600 000 Cambodians died and a further two million people were made homeless. And that was before the Khmer Rouge’s three-year reign of terror. When Vietnam invaded at the end of 1978, the Khmer Rouge fought on, assisted by Chinese weapons and international food aid. By 1991, Cambodia was a mess. After leaving the ADF, Copeland became president of the Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans’ Association. During his service he met the three other peacemakers and peacekeepers I interviewed for this story: Wayne Lyons, a peacekeeper in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991 and Cambodia in 1993; Kev Ryan, a peacekeeper in Namibia in 1989; and Geoff, a peacemaker in Somalia in 1993. Geoff insisted I interview a mate of his, Dave, who was involved in Radio Mogadishu and Black Hawk Down incidents in Somalia, so I did. From their

A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain

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overseas experiences, all five men gained greater awareness of other cultures and of themselves, but at a price. As the Asian proverb says, ‘A bended stalk is laden with grain’.

Paul Copeland: We were in Cambodia to keep the peace in the lead-up to the elections in June 1993, but the country was so dangerous that the rules of engagement changed while I was there. They were originally amber card, which is a cautionary approach, using the minimum force necessary to protect yourself or other UN personnel: showing your weapon by holding it horizontally and, in Khmer, asking people to stop whatever they were doing. If this didn’t work the next step was to use physical restraint and if that failed and the person was armed, we were allowed to point our weapon and warn in Khmer: ‘Stop, hands up or I’ll shoot.’ If the person continued to be threatening, it was only then that you could open fire. It was a split-second assessment. This approach was upgraded to being allowed to open fire on anybody or any faction that was aiming their weapon at us or other UN personnel, equipment or installations, but not when they were threatening a local civilian. All we could do when a civilian was being threatened was try to negotiate. I was a commando in Special Forces—or, more specifically, in the Special Warfare Field Troop, 126 Signal Squadron, First Commando Regiment, where, being a signaller, I was commonly called ‘a chook’. For deployment to Cambodia I was placed in a mainstream signals troop and deployed as a troop sergeant, based at our headquarters in Sihanoukville, a port on the South China Sea. My job was to look after the operations of twenty-eight men and women stationed at headquarters and at checkpoints around Sector Six and to report back to my troop commander, the Squadron Sergeant Major and Supervisor Communications in Phnom Penh, some three hundred kilometres away. I was well prepared for the deployment. I had been in the Army eleven years, undergoing extensive training in Special Forces, plus I had completed a Khmer language course at the School of Languages at Point Cook. I could speak Khmer reasonably well, but in-country, whenever I spoke, the locals would laugh their heads off. I soon realized the language they taught at Point Cook was far more eloquent than the commonly used colloquialisms and I quickly wiped out the poshness. During two three-week pre-deployment training sessions, I did a combat medics course and was trained in mine awareness, Cambodia being the most heavily mined country in the world at the time. We were also trained in the basic pleasantries: how to greet the sampeah way: put your palms together

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and slightly bow your head; how not to offend: to speak quietly and never shout or have the soles of your feet facing someone, never pat a kid’s head or cross your fingers, as these actions are considered rude. To refuse an offer of food is also an insult. We were taught about the various provinces, and a basic history: that Cambodia was a country of ten million people that had been part of French Indochina, achieving independence in 1954, largely through the diplomatic efforts of King Norodom Sihanouk. He was neutral during the Vietnam War and by the late 1960s the war had spilled over the border, with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army seeking safe haven and supplies. This resulted in heavy US bombardments of Cambodia during 1969–73. In 1969 General Lon Nol, backed by the Khmer Rouge and the USA, launched a military coup against the King, taking over in 1970. The US continued to back Lon Nol for the next five years in his fight against the Khmer Rouge, but he lost to the communists when the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh in April 1975. Three and a half years of genocide followed, stopped only by Vietnam invading in December 1978. By the following January, Vietnamese tanks had reached Phnom Penh. They quickly installed a puppet regime led by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge officer. He was still in power when we were there, so basically the country was preparing for elections after 190 years of French rule and twentyfour years of war that killed at least twenty per cent of the population. My previous overseas experiences were in Tonga and Vanuatu. Until those deployments, right through the 1980s life in the Army had been a regimented waiting game of sparkling boots, ironed greens, spotless rooms and weird parades. Most of the senior NCOs and warrant officers were Vietnam veterans, like my father. Being combat veterans they were hard men and tough trainers. Otherwise we partied. Come August 1991, I was ecstatic about being deployed to Tonga with two mates—Corporal Adam Fisher, otherwise known as Fish; and Sergeant Dave Skerry, also in the Special Forces Training Team—for Exercise Tafa Kula. It was a joint exercise with the United States Marine Corps First Marine Expeditionary Battalion that had just come back from the Gulf War, except their war was hovering in an aircraft carrier over the Persian Gulf and southern Iraq as part of a deception force. They were pissed off that they hadn’t seen action. Five months after Tonga, in January 1992, I was the ground liaison officer deployed with some satellite gear by Headquarters Special Forces for Operation Aspen, a cyclone relief operation in Vanuatu. The Australian Embassy put us up in the Le Lagon Resort, the height of luxury. Our task was to supply materials like rice, tarpaulins, blankets and medicines to the people affected


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by the cyclone, to check damage to airstrips and perform medical evacuations, the Vanuatu Military Force being as casual as the Tongan Defence Service: it’s known as South West Pacific time, ‘She’ll be right, mate’ taken to the extreme. After twelve days, the Prime Minister of Vanuatu invited us for a farewell dinner in a magnificent outdoor setting. I sat next to Vanuatu’s transport minister around a twenty-metre table laden with delights, entertained by grassskirted dancers. I felt like the great white hunter out of a Tarzan movie. Hardly a preparation for Cambodia! After several false starts my posting order to Cambodia finally came in 1993. On 13 March, with 150 others in the Reinforcement Group, I left Sydney to join the Force Communications Unit, which comprised about 545 Air Force, Navy and Army communicators from Australia and New Zealand. The first things that hit me when landing in Phnom Penh were the smell—that sickly sweet smell of rotting vegetation—and the hot wet blanket of air that nearly knocks you over. The whole city was run down. Infrastructure was non-existent: no town water or sewerage, the only electricity being from generators. Most of the buildings had holes from bullets and rocket shells, especially the university where the UN German Field Hospital was located. We got an introduction to the current state of the country when we were at Pteah Australii—the base of our communication unit’s headquarters and supporting elements—getting a frank briefing by Captain Sue Evans, the Regimental Medical Officer, about health matters, including an instruction to wear condoms during oral sex. Suddenly we heard AK-47 fire coming from outside. Having been in-country all of three days, I found myself travelling south on a French-built bitumen road full of potholes. We were in an Australian Army Land Rover, a right-hand drive in a left-hand drive country, heading to Sector Six’s headquarters at Sihanoukville. The land was barren and littered with B-52 bomb craters from the Nixon Doctrine, with few trees and no major towns— only the odd village—all the huts built on stilts on the edge of rice paddies. Eight kilometres from Sre Ambel, we came across thirty government troops as pissed as newts. Some lay on tables, others were face-down in the red earth. The more adventurous were driving three utes and swinging their twin 12.7 millimetre machine guns, mounted in the back, in our direction. Around Sihanoukville the landscape looked a bit like the Australian outback—very dry and red—with dirt roads and a few palm trees, although apparently in the wet the country turns green. The town itself was home to about a thousand people, who lived on a little patch of dirt, perhaps with a small vegetable garden, in an all-purpose room up on stilts made of wood and a palm-leaf roof, maybe a pig or two and some chickens, a battered old bicycle 56


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or a two-stroke motorbike underneath. Most people had no job and no money, so one lot had eggs and another rice and they’d do a trade. There were a number of French villas but they had been blown up or dismantled, the only new buildings being in the UN compound directly fronting the beach. We were told that, in the pre-French days, especially in the Golden Age of Angkor (between the ninth and the fifteenth centuries), the Khmer population was one of the most civilized and united people in South-East Asia. They built irrigation systems, ponds, fountains and temples, a number of examples surviving in Sihanoukville. North-West of Kampot, a two and a half hour drive east, there was an old university set in gardens with large man-made pools. When Pol Pot took over he had all the university’s academics and students dismantle the place brick by brick before they were executed. Anyone who was educated, rich or devoutly Buddhist, and who didn’t speak out against the Khmer Rouge, was sent to the countryside to grow rice and be re-indoctrinated. One and a half million died from exhaustion, starvation or illness, while their children were taken and brainwashed to interrogate, torture and kill. Guides told us these stories when they took us through Tuol Sleng, on the fringe of Phnom Penh. A huge glass case of skulls marks the entrance to the Killing Fields, a place where people were massacred and buried in mass graves. The atrocities are all documented. Pol Pot had studied Marxism in Paris, and wanted to create a peasant society devoted to agriculture and free of money and Buddhism. He despised anyone who stood up to him. The Tuol Sleng prison has become a museum where paintings show Khmer Rouge dressed in black caps and pyjamas sticking their AK-47 bayonets into newborn babies, then blasting the babies into the air, or grabbing a baby by the feet and smashing its skull against a tree that is still there, and which I see clearly to this day, before tossing it onto a pile. They tortured women by cutting their nipples with bolt cutters or shoving centipedes up their vaginas. The men had their genitals cut off or were hung by the feet and dropped into water, to be brought up, revived and dropped in again. Tuol Sleng leaves you with a lasting impression of what Year Zero was all about. Sihanoukville was rumoured to have been where Pol Pot made his last stand. The locals told us that, before he escaped by boat to Thailand in 1979, he stood on the roof of a French hotel and, as a farewell gesture, personally chucked ‘traitors’ over the side of the six-storey building. Not long after the Khmer Rouge escaped into Thailand they infiltrated back into the Pailin area in the north and the heavily forested Cardamom Mountains in our sector, fighting for another nineteen years. When the UN decided to provide peacekeepers in 1991 to prepare the country for elections the Khmer Rouge changed the name of their military wing to NADK, or National Army of A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain

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the Democratic Kampuchea, and called their political wing the Party for Democratic Kampuchea or DK. But in July 1992, eight months before I arrived, the DK had pulled out of participating in the forthcoming elections. Consequently the atmosphere was very tense. In Sector Six, the NADK had a definite presence. When not trying to undermine the UN by ambushing convoys and personnel, they were operating as guerrilla insurgents, forever clashing with government troops. It was not unusual to hear a battle between them. In other sectors, other factions caused trouble, including government troops. They seemed to be a law unto themselves. Prince Norodom Ranariddh’s Party, FUNCINPEC, seemed to be the only faction not making trouble. Local support for NADK was either voluntary or coerced. NADK supporters would have seen Prime Minister Hun Sen as a Vietnamese puppet, although he remains prime minister to this day [2005]. Others were terrified of NADK because of what had happened between 1975 and 1978. With the Vietnamese invasion came an influx of Russian advisers and trainers. Apparently during the UNAMIC tour of 1991 the locals mistook the Australians for Spetsnaz, the Russian Special Forces, because we had similarlooking cams and blue berets, but it was not unusual to come across Khmers who could speak fluent Russian. Fortunately, by the time we arrived, the locals had learnt the difference and a lot of them liked us, I guess because we did our

Electronic rights for this image are not available

Sgt Paul Copeland on patrol speaking to a local fisherman, Sihanoukville, Cambodia, 1993, photographed by Corporal Al Green, Army PR. Courtesy of the Australian Government, Department of Defence, Defence Public Relations.

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job, and they appreciated our adaptability. Wherever we went we tried to speak their language, eat their food and would give the kids lollies or riels— Cambodian money that was worth bugger all to us but was gold to them. Fifteen soldiers were based at our headquarters, a UN-rented house with no electricity or hot water, behind the UN compound. There were beds, a table and that’s all. We relied on water delivered in jerry cans and plastic bottles, and ate in the UN mess. The other thirteen sigs were spread out at different checkpoints, west of the Cardamom and Elephant Mountains at Koh Kong on the Thai border, north to Sre Ambel, and east to the provinces of Kampot and Takeo on the Vietnamese border. We also fixed communication problems at the Ream Naval Base and had two checkpoints in the Mekong Delta. The signallers at these checkpoints lived by their wits in a little hut, in many cases on their own or with a mate, their only immediate protection being themselves and their weapon. They were there to provide comms for Sector Headquarters, report any problems or needs of the UN and NGOs, scrounge whatever they could for the NGOs and act as mission escorts for the UNMOs [UN Military Observers tasked to gather intelligence, investigate ceasefire violations, mediate between factions and report on troop movements]. They also built bunkers, administered first aid to civilians and dealt with any incident that arose. In Sector Six, they had little spare time. My job was to make sure supplies reached their outposts. In most cases we provided them with Vietnamese, Cambodian or Thai money, depending on their location, so they could go to the nearest town or village and eat at the local restaurant or buy food, because it was hard getting rations out on a regular basis. Consequently a lot of them came down with Hep A and Black Water Fever, as well as malaria. I was a jack of all trades—troop administrator, infantryman, medic, padre, operations sergeant and, as store manager, the counter of bullets and money —as well as the solver of communications problems: radio, satellite and line. The biggest pressure was trying to get the troops resupplied because helicopters were not always available. There was a lot of improvising. At one stage Charlie Victor One and Charlie Victor Two on the Vietnamese border, each manned by a single Australian soldier with three to four unarmed UNMOs, had gone for five weeks without being supplied fuel for the generator, money, fresh water, food, batteries or mail. I went to the Polish Logistics Company and because of the language barrier took six hours to convince them to help. The Poles decided to run a convoy out but the convoy went down the wrong track and got ambushed in a cutting through a mountain near Kampot. Three were killed and two survived. It was a NADK area, the same area where David Wilson and two other backpackers were taken off the train and murdered a year later. 60


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I think the same commanders, Sam Bith and Chhouk Rin, were responsible. If it wasn’t for me the Poles would still be alive, and even to this day, if I reflect on it too much, I get emotional, but at the time the Polish commander indicated ‘That’s life’, and my immediate concern was to find an alternative means to get the supplies to the men. Eventually I convinced a French pilot to fly out. That was the everyday pressure of working with the UN in Cambodia. We were flying by the seat of our pants. I’d be up at five to get the troops to physical training in the stinking heat. Then it was shower, clean weapons and work till midnight. If I took a couple of hours off I’d have thirty beers. Every fortnight I returned to Pteah Australii for resupply runs and administration tasks. Occasionally I’d ring my parents on the satellite terminal and would discover they’d heard nothing on the media about the battles between all the factions, the lawlessness and corruption, because as well as confrontations with the NADK and CPAF [government troops], there were thieves and ex-soldiers pretending to be soldiers. Most of the police chiefs were corrupt. At every bridge, government troops had a manned 7.62 millimetre machine gun and would force the locals to pay a toll. They never tried it on us but I’d have my F-88 Steyr cocked, safety off in ‘instant’ weapon condition,2 so if anything happened I could shoot through the car door. Because of all these problems, most locals were happy with the UN presence. However, they started to dislike the UN in some sectors because of the manner of the UN troops. BULGABATT [Bulgarian Battalion] was based in the province of Kompong Speu, north of Sector Six. Rumour had it that BULGABATT was made up of ex-criminals who had been given the choice of going to prison or serving in the first Bulgarian contribution to a UN mission. They gained a reputation for swaggering about, gambling with the police chief and throwing locals through plate glass windows. There was payback. They got hit a couple of times by local police and government forces. One time CPAF staged a battle among themselves not far from the Bulgarian camp. The Bulgarians deployed a Ready Reaction Force. The government troops immediately ambushed the Bulgarians and killed the driver of the lead BRDM [a Russian-made APC] with an RPG. You could say the situation was a little hostile in that area. Nothing like that happened to Australians but some Australians based in the Bulgarians’ area, such as a good mate of mine, Mark Stonehouse, otherwise known as Stony, had some harrowing experiences, which he won’t talk about. I know one of his signallers was manning a checkpoint on his own when a Khmer woman, accompanied by a man who could speak a few words of English, asked him to help her and her three children. The police chief was A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain

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trying to evict them from where they were squatting. On arriving at the scene this Aussie soldier, armed only with his Steyr, confronted six police pointing their weapons at him and the family. The woman was hoping he would protect her, but the police chief’s way of enforcing her eviction was to pull out his pistol and shoot her little girl in the head. The Aussie’s cams were splattered with blood and bits of skull. He was too stunned to say or do anything other than go back to his hut and wash. That incident still haunts him. In general I found the civilians okay. I admired their resilience and respected their devotion to Buddha, but I did not trust them. Some seemed to have no respect for life. It would not be unusual to hear of a group of men blasting each other with AK-47s over a card game or soccer game. It was dog eat dog, as if the whole country was suffering a severe psychological disorder. There were a lot of confronting experiences: weapons being pointed at us as we travelled along the road or pulled up at a checkpoint, bullets flying overhead with the occasional tracer. After the first Australian was wounded by ground fire when travelling in a helicopter, whenever we were in a helicopter we would sit on our flak jackets. Anything seemed fair target. They would shoot at the moon! One time, I went up to inoculate three Aussies based at Kampot: a bombardier in artillery, a sig and a tech. When I arrived they showed me a letter sent by NADK. It was in Sanskrit, the language used by Khmer, with an English translation: ‘If any of you UN pigs are in your compound tonight we will kill you all.’ Not wishing to rely on the Japanese in the vicinity to protect us, we went off to bide the night in an establishment across the river. This involved a fair amount of drinking and some ladies. Then there were land mines. At the time, Cambodia had over 1.5 million unmarked, uncharted land mines, not to mention the marked areas, so even in vehicles we used to sit on our flak jackets. You saw land mine victims everywhere. In Sihanoukville they lay dying on the floor of makeshift hospitals, one or both legs blown off. You never forget it: kids with their legs blown off … In early April, a mate, Sergeant Ian Mintern, otherwise known as Minty when one is being polite, came down to Sihanoukville to relieve me of half my duties. He was to run administration, while I ran operations. I had been two and a half months in-country, and was pretty uptight and tired from living on nerves. One day three of us were coming back to Sihanoukville through Kampong Spueu. I had a bout of dysentery so Minty was at the wheel, the other passenger being a radio operator in Armoured Corps, Arnott by name, and consequently called Biscuits. Three Khmers in khaki uniform but no identifiable badges, all armed with AK-47s, gestured for us to pull over. Minty didn’t want to stop but I insisted. I got out of the car, went to ‘instant’ and

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pointed my weapon at their chests, telling them in no uncertain Khmer to go away. Fortunately they did, which was a relief. I was ready to kill. Five minutes down the track, near Samrong Tong, old Buddha got me back: we slid out of control in the monsoon rain. I had visions of us rolling into the sign-posted land mine area. We were travelling side-on to any oncoming traffic when suddenly through the mist came a Russian truck loaded with sand and fifteen people on top, three or four in the cabin, heading straight for us. That was the point at which I thought I was going to die. With our speed and the truck’s speed the impact was about 130 kilometres an hour. People on the top of the truck were flung off and those in the cabin crashed through the front window. We spun off the road and smashed into a mango tree. With blood coming out of my mouth I turned to poor concussed Minty, who was rubbing his sore knees, and gave him a mouthful of unquotable expletives about his driving. At that stage I didn’t realize that my femur was sticking out through the back of my leg. The place had been deserted before the accident. Kids came from everywhere, tapping on the bonnet and laughing at us. They tried to pull me out of the wreck. I told them ‘No’, because I realized my leg was broken and didn’t want to risk rupturing the femoral artery. I produced an English–Khmer dictionary and was trying to get a young man to call an ambulance when he grabbed the dictionary and walked off. The mob proceeded to break the back windows and rob us of 2500 rounds of link ammunition, satellite parts, mail, combat rations and all our personal gear, while some twenty metres away two Pakistani UN civilian police pretended not to notice. I couldn’t believe it. At this point I saw a government soldier at about one o’clock, pointing his AK-47 at us. I looked down at my Steyr stuck between the transfer stick and gear stick, thinking, ‘I don’t know what to do here.’ An Australian group coming up from Sihanoukville saw what was going on, pulled up, put on their flak jackets and immediately set up a cordon around the vehicle, straight away adopting the Action Condition. I was bloody glad to see them. Just seeing that Australian flag on their uniforms was the biggest relief. Everything they did and were about to do makes me very proud to be an Aussie. One of their vehicles gave Minty a lift into Kompong Speu to get an ambulance. Minty returned with Stoney, accompanied by a BULGABATT doctor in a UN ambulance. I asked the doctor to give me a painkiller and IV because I was losing fluid. He replied, ‘You come in my ambulance. I fix you up.’ I told him: ‘I’m not going anywhere. The Australians are on their way. I just want you to administer the IV.’ He refused and walked away.


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Next thing, this huge moustached Bulgarian soldier—looking like a sevenfoot version of the flea out of the Bugs Bunny Show—walked around our vehicle, cracking his head on the passenger door. He swears and slams the door straight onto my broken leg. It was my turn to swear. In an instant I see Corporal Colin Taylor from 1RAR come running up, ready to butt stroke the Bulgarian in the back of the head. I said, ‘No! No mate, don’t. It might start an international incident. Go get that fucking doctor. Tell him I need an IV or I’m going to die.’ Next minute the doctor comes back with his hands in the air, saying, ‘I must give you IV and painkiller.’ I say, ‘It’s about time you saw things my way’, wondering what the hell his hands were doing stuck up in the air. Then I see Colin Taylor behind him, his weapon in his back, saying ‘Everything all right Sarge?’ ‘Sure. Don’t let the bastard get away.’ Colin Taylor saved my life, the doctor quickly dispensing the treatment I had requested. Finally the Australians rocked up in an ambulance. As Stony helped me out of the car he says ‘You’re bleeding all over me you bastard, and I know where you’ve been. Now I’m going to have to get blood tested.’ I say, ‘Mate, that stuff’s worth bottling. If I was you, I’d keep a sample.’ It was a fifty-minute drive to the ANZAC ward, our Regimental Aid Post at Pteah Australii, where they cut my clothes and triaged me before taking me to the German Field Hospital. The X-ray indicated that I had shattered my right femur in three places but the Germans didn’t want to operate in case of infection. For the next four days I was laid up on morphine while they arranged to get a Hercules to take me back to Australia. The delay was over who was going to pay for the Herc: whether it was the responsibility of the Australian Defence Force or the UN. Finally Captain Evans put it to the authorities as succinctly as she did in her condom talk: ‘If you don’t get this man out he is going to die or lose his leg. Do you want that on your conscience for the media?’ The flight was arranged. I don’t know who paid for it. I know that reimbursement for contingent-owned equipment and troop costs for UNTAC was slow in coming to different countries because of the non-payment of dues from member states to the UN Secretariat. My one and only psych debrief took place the day I was to be evacuated. I was high on morphine in the ANZAC ward when a military psychologist came in with a checklist, saying ‘I’m in a hurry to catch a flight up to Battambang. Just quickly, who do you blame for the accident?’ ‘Who do I blame? I don’t blame anybody.’ ‘You’ve got to blame somebody.’ ‘Well how about I blame Buddha?’ ‘You’re not taking me seriously, Sergeant.’ ‘No, I’m not, Sir. How about you get fucking real with me?’ So he says, ‘Oh well, you look all right to me’ and leaves. 64


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I arrived at the Alfred Hospital trauma unit in Melbourne on 21 May. All I wanted was my leg to be fixed so I could get back to being a soldier, but the orthopaedic surgeon said to me ‘I don’t know whether we can operate.’ I didn’t understand what was happening but after he put a forty-centimetre nail in my leg to pin it all together, he kept saying to me ‘You’re a lucky man.’ After the fourth time, I asked ‘Why do you keep saying I’m so lucky?’ ‘Put it this way, if you had an ounce of infection in there I might have had to amputate.’ That was my tour of duty in Cambodia. I was a week or two in the Alfred and another month in No. 6 RAAF Hospital at Laverton. At that point, I was happy to be alive and thanking God that Minty and Biscuits were alive too, although three or four of the locals travelling on the truck were confirmed dead. There could have been more. People were crawling away or getting dragged. Underlying the relief, I felt bad. What really got to me was not seeing the tour through or saying goodbye to the boys down south. A month out of hospital, I would go to the pub and drink. Seriously drink. The people around me would be having a great time while I’d be sitting there bitter and twisted, thinking: ‘Do you know that people overseas are getting killed? Do you know this world’s not as pretty as you think it is?’ I felt cheated. Disillusioned. We were over there to protect them and all they could do when we needed help was laugh and rob us. It didn’t make sense. Because of my leg, my parachuting days were over, so I couldn’t go back to Special Forces. That broke my heart. Instead, I spent three months as an outpatient convalescing on crutches at the Special Warfare Wing at Queenscliff, providing Khmer language training and country updates. From there I was posted to the Strategic Communications Unit at Watsonia. I was working in an air-conditioned concrete building, when I saw myself as a field soldier. There were a couple of us recently returned from Cambodia, the Sinai and Western Sahara. We got on well but it was a case of ‘us and them’, ‘them’ being the ones who hadn’t served overseas. Down at Queenscliff I had met a young woman called Rhonda. She was the manager of Beaches Delicatessen and Café, very open and friendly. I liked the look of her too. I decided to pursue our acquaintance and would go down to Queenscliff on the off-chance of seeing her. I don’t know what she saw in me. She must have fallen for the crutches. We started going out in late 1994. Around the same time, a carrot was waved in front of me: if I had the nail taken out I’d have another tour of duty. To pass the basic fitness test prior to posting, still with the nail in my leg and only eighteen months after the accident, I did my first five-kilometre run in twenty-four minutes. All the young blokes were coming in after me. I got the nail taken out, moved in with Rhonda in April 95, and in the following July–August got my posting order for MFO A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain

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[Multinational Force and Observers], Sinai, with a pre-embarkation scheduled for November. Rhonda came home and told me about her day, and then asked ‘What about yours?’ ‘Oh nothing much. By the way … I’m being posted to the Sinai.’ ‘Do I have a say in this?’ ‘No, this is the Army. You get posted—you go.’ I wasn’t torn. When you’re deployed you feel that at last you are doing something useful. Also there was a sense that finally I was going to finish a tour of duty. But just to make sure Rhonda would be there when I got back, I proposed to her two nights before I left. The MFO had been operational since 1979, to monitor the Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt. An Australian RWAU [Rotary Winged Aviation Unit] had been involved during 1982–86, and since 1993 we were there to carry out recon and operational patrols along the international borders and in designated areas, do search-and-rescues and man checkpoints. With a contingent of twenty-eight Australians from different service backgrounds, I went over in November 1995 to be stationed in El-Gorah,3 the MFO’s North Camp, twentysix kilometres west of Gaza. We worked a twelve-hour shift, mostly out of the Force Duty Centre run by four Australian sergeants. They were answerable to the force executive secretary, who worked for the US State Department, the major sponsor of MFO Sinai—it is not a UN mission—and the chief of staff, a full-bird American colonel, who was an extremely hard man and not very popular with us. With the aid of huge maps and the observational posts, our tasks were to observe, track and collate any authorized movements of Egyptian and Israeli defence forces in the four sectors and report any unauthorized civilian, troop or aircraft movement along the border with Israel. Then there were the searchand-rescue missions and medivacs—say, if people got lost in the desert or at sea while scuba diving at Sharm El-Sheikh, or when they hit a land mine or had a vehicle accident. Around El-Gorah there were land mines from the two world wars, the SixDay War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur conflict of 1973. When the sands moved they could be exposed and many were still active. A number of times I had to co-ordinate medivacs for land mine victims. One incident really affected me. I was on duty at the Force Duty Centre when I got a phone call from a panicked Colombian speaking fluent Spanish. I told him to go and get a Colombian translator, a Private Ortiz, whom I knew to be a decent fellow. I logged it down and eventually Ortiz rang, ‘Sir, there’s been a mine explosion at 66


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one of the checkpoints and a little girl was hit. The mother is holding her body up on the wire, in a known minefield, and the Colombians can’t get to them.’ The family had been taking their donkey and cart across the wadi and rain had washed down an anti-tank mine. The weight of the cart had detonated the mine, blowing up the donkey and killing the grandfather. The cordite from the explosion had seriously burnt the girl. I said ‘Get them to cut the fence so they don’t have to send troops outside the compound where the mines are.’ They did so and retrieved the mother and girl. Meanwhile I co-ordinated the aero-medical evacuation, which meant getting the MFO Egyptian liaison officer to talk to his contacts in the Egyptian Military so we could fly a chopper down to pick up one of their nationals and advising the Israelis that we were flying an unscheduled flight. It seemed to be an eternity before they got this little girl out, although it was only a matter of hours. They flew her back to North Camp and took her straight into the Force Medical Facility. For the next few days they treated her burns in an intensive care environment. I probably did the wrong thing by going to visit because I saw how bad she was: this little burnt and blistered face and upper body, tubes everywhere. Apparently her trachea was blistered. The image stays with you … Next thing we know, the Egyptians demand that she be taken to their hospital at El-Arish. The medics knew what that meant. Within three days she was dead. She would have had a chance with us. I wasn’t registering that these incidents were shaking me up. I was stuffing them—basically shoving them to the back of my head. As soon as I got off duty I’d hit the booze. It was the only way I could sleep. The incidents were traumatic in themselves, there was a lot of pressure and stress, but what was coming back to me was Cambodia. I was having nightmares and a daytime video was playing in my mind. My manner could be aggressive, standoffish and often humourless. I only socialized to break the boredom of sitting in my room listening to CDs or being brainwashed by the American Forces Television Network beamed in from Germany. Four months into my tour I was missing Rhonda, so I arranged for her to come to Israel for a holiday. I was in Tel Aviv the day I was to pick her up at the airport. Because everything is in Hebrew I got lost looking for a hotel and was caught in a traffic jam at an intersection. Minutes after getting through, a suicide bomber detonated himself in the lunchtime crowd, killing twelve people. It was eerie: all of a sudden everything stopped and people were listening to their transistor radios. At the hotel the concierge said ‘You’re a lucky man.’ It wasn’t Buddha this time; I was in the Holy Land of a different god. It was pandemonium and I was running late. At Ben Gurion Airport I sprinted towards the terminal, wearing a belt with a pouch. Next thing I see a A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain

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bloke in a trench coat with his hand out, his thumb pressed to his upturned cupped fingers, which I knew meant ‘patience, slow down’, but I was ready to shoulder him. He grabbed me by the throat and shoved a Glock pistol in my face, his mate coming up behind, pressing an Uzi in my back. I threw my hands up: ‘Yeah, you got me.’ They were undercover security police and very jumpy. They insisted I go with them. After a half-hour standoff they let me go. Fortunately Rhonda’s flight was late. We drove to the hotel passing through roadblocks. Arabs were being made to stand with their hands up while their cars were ripped to bits. Rhonda was stunned. On our way to Beersheba to see the Australian Light Horse Memorial, Rhonda was again shocked. At every checkpoint we would be waved through. Everyone who looked Arab had their cars ransacked while they were made to lie on the road with their hands and feet stretched out. In the shopping centre of Beersheba, everyone was slinging an Uzi or pistol. Rhonda says ‘That man’s got a gun and so has she.’ I told her ‘Well, if 6.5 million of you were surrounded by 250 million Arabs who might want to kill you, what would you do?’ By June 96, after six months in the Sinai, I was glad to come home. In the August I was posted to the Electronic Warfare Regiment in Toowoomba, Queensland, as staff sergeant, supervisor communications. Minty was posted to the same unit as troop sergeant, working for me. He has only once talked to me about the dark side of Cambodia. He was drunk when he mentioned he had witnessed a young girl getting shot in the head. So many peacekeepers are closed books. I was still engaged to Rhonda—I don’t know how. At least after a day of swearing like a trooper I’d come home and refrain from swearing. Rhonda came with me to Toowoomba and we married in September. Occasionally I’d flash onto Cambodia—say, if we were driving down a track on an exercise, and it was like I was over there in land mine country, with all the physical reactions, or I’d be back at the accident, but I kept it to myself. I wasn’t travelling well. I was very direct and undiplomatic with my superiors, peers and subordinates, and very hard and aggressive on my soldiers, I guess to toughen them up. It caused a bit of stress in the workplace and Rhonda was also feeling the pinch. I’d go off on a two-day drinking binge and not come home. After eighteen months I was posted to Sydney, to a very demanding job as warrant officer, manager communications, for the Army Reserves, 2 Division, which entailed being away for sixty-eight per cent of the year. As well, I was doing a degree—anything to keep my mind off things. In December 1998 our daughter was born. The following year I had a new commanding officer. She did not like the way I did business. I stuffed up one night, going on a fourteen-hour drinking binge, and when I returned to base I was told to change into my cams 68


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and sleep it off on the floor of the Ops Room. Next day I fronted Bill Foster, the Regimental Sergeant Major, saying, ‘When do you want me to start duty on the front gate?’ ‘No need,’ he said, ‘I think you have problems from Cambodia.’ I knew I was at a low ebb. I was advised to ring the Vietnam Veterans’ Counselling Service [VVCS], which I did, and a woman recommended I see Dr Tony Williams out at Holsworthy Army Barracks. I wasn’t interested, thinking I would be putting my career in jeopardy. But the RAP called me, saying that I had an appointment with Dr Williams. I had to go. This was 99. Dr Williams wanted to know my symptoms. I had been isolating myself from these, in denial, so it was the first time I was forced to describe what was happening: I couldn’t understand why I was getting up in the morning shaking like a leaf, feeling like dry reaching and dreading the day ahead. I’d be sitting at my desk, staring into space for an hour. I was nudging the booze and my relationship with Rhonda was falling down a black hole. I was moody and angry … lots of arguments. I didn’t hit her but it was very verbal. Nightmares, sleepless nights, flashes to Cambodia. Any loud bang, I’d hit the floor. Dr Williams observed: ‘You remind me of some Vietnam veterans.’ I was on standby for INTERFET [International Force for East Timor] to go over and sort out the cryptographic and frequency confliction between the multinational forces’ communication links and I had to obtain a clean bill of health. Dr Williams said, ‘I think you’re okay to go. Just take your medication and if you have problems see a military psychologist.’ But the doctor at Randwick wrote a report saying I couldn’t go because of my problems. Not long after that, in 2000, I was posted to Watsonia in Melbourne as a force development warrant officer, writing doctrine about the interoperability of comms systems and electronic warfare between the US, British, Canadian and Australian armies. I enjoyed the job. A psychologist had treated me with hypnotherapy and a psychiatrist changed my medication. I was stabilizing to some degree but was having back pains, which I was trying to fight through. Finally I went for tests, which found I had lumber, cervical and thoracic spondylosis. Physically I was cactus. The doctor said, ‘I suggest you think about another career.’ ‘But I love being a soldier.’ ‘I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.’ Having served nineteen and a half years, I received a notice of intent to discharge on medical grounds. Soon after that blow, I was given an annual performance report recommending promotion to Warrant Officer Class 1, with the view of being commissioned to Captain, but the medical discharge took precedence. Deemed unfit to be deployed, I couldn’t stay in the Australian Defence Force. I went downhill fast. My friends were disgusted with how the A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain

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Army was treating me. The ADF used to look after their own. I stayed out my twenty years, and then after a drunken farewell I walked out the door, hurt. Deeply hurt. Straight away, I landed a job as an IT project manager in the Department of Defence. I was getting up at five in the morning and coming home late, not seeing my daughter, cutting myself off from the family. A film of Cambodia was perpetually rolling in my head. I was depressed, crying, everything seemed black. After five months I called the VVCS and on their recommendation put myself into the Geelong clinic to dry out and do a PTSD program. I was exhausted, mentally and physically. I came out and continued with psychotherapy and seeing a psychiatrist. I was on sick leave for twenty-six months, they really wanted me back, but I couldn’t do it, and in 2003 I was retired on grounds of invalidity and went on a TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated pension]. I am now president of the Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans’ Association (APPVA), which has seven hundred members from sixtyfour operations, including Vietnam, the 1991 Gulf War, East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq. I took over from Wayne Lyons, who had gone to Northern Iraq as part of Operation Habitat in May–June 1991. Wayne Lyons: I was one of seventy-five Australians who spent five weeks in Kurdistan at the tail end of the Gulf War, tasked with delivering humanitarian aid. We left from the US Air Force base at Incerlik, Turkey, travelling by convoy to the Iraq border, where a Turkish presence was preventing an influx of refugees. Once we crossed, the consequences of Saddam’s regime were plainly evident. There was little infrastructure, the roads were in disrepair and buildings were obviously war-affected. Most villages had been flattened. We passed thousands of Kurdish refugees, some on the move, others camped beside the road, cheering and waving at us. Our advance party had selected an area next to a marked minefield near the village of Giripit for a base. There were four medical teams, a preventative medicine section and a dental section, sigs, engineers and logistic support. Gun pits were dug at various positions along the perimeter, and because of our small numbers, all ranks from Private to WO1 [warrant officer Class 1] took turns on the M-60 at the front gate. As well, we carried our personal weapon at all times: old rattly hand-me-down M-16s. I was the SNCO [senior non-commissioned officer] in charge of the laboratory. Working a twelve- to fourteen-hour day, our primary task was to identify water sources used by the Kurds, collect samples and test them for bacterial and chemical contamination, to determine which sources were potable and 70


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which required treatment. All water was treated with chlorine, a taste the refugees were reluctant to acquire; they preferred their old water supply. The various Kurdish factions carried weapons including RPGs, SRAAWs [short range anti-armour weapons], automating weapons, machine guns and the rounds to go with them. Occasionally we heard gunfire as the different factions sorted out their differences or had an altercation with the Iraqi Army. The Iraqi Army had left vehicles and equipment but the only Iraqi soldiers I saw were stationed at the gates to Saddam’s palace, and these chaps were particularly touchy when we tried to approach. The camps stank, but not like in Phnom Penh. The people were friendly, the men sitting around drinking tea while the women fetched water and wood and kept the area clean. We sprayed the camps for mosquitos, fleas and other pests, and our mobile medical teams treated ailments, the dental team setting up in a shelled-out hospital. Two days before we left, the commander of the British Forces, Brigadier General Ross, organized a Chinook to fly us to a village to take on the English at a game of cricket. From the air you could see all the destroyed villages. It was the first cricket match ever played in the region and about a thousand people attended, including the village chief and his lieutenants. The Aussies won convincingly, and afterwards, the Lords’ cricket set Electronic rights for this image are was donated to the people. not available. The next day we flew out from an airport that the Ba’ath Regime had made by chopping the top off a mountain. After a twelve-day stopover in Cyprus, where we visited our Federal Police cohorts stationed at the buffer zone between the Turkish and Greek Cypriots in Nicosia, I flew home. My wife said I’d changed. Little things niggled me. The next year I Sgt Wayne Lyons and WO2 Martin Carr, spent two months in New Guinea victorious against the Poms in a cricket working on a trial of a new anti- match during Operation Habitat, Iraqi malarial drug and contracted Kurdistan, 1991. A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain

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Hepatitis A. Although not in peak physical condition, I was classified CZE [Communication Zones Everywhere], and because of the small numbers in my trade I was approved to go to Cambodia, arriving in March 1993. I was one of two malaria reference laboratory technicians based at Pteah Australii, tasked with monitoring the Australian troops for malaria. A lot of countries do not have our experience with the illness and we sometimes worked with other UN troops, making sure they were being correctly diagnosed. But for me, the worst aspect of Cambodia, apart from missing my wife and daughter, was seeing the road accidents and being under orders not to stop and help. It went against the grain. Also the poverty: the maimed beggars, the people at the garbage tip scrambling for our three-day-old fly-blown food scraps. Once we covered a load with soil. The people gave us a real tongue lashing for ruining their food supply. Then there were the trigger happy Khmers: eighty-three UN military and civilian staff were killed in Cambodia. It was madness. The debrief for Operation Habitat was conducted on the plane home. For Cambodia it was in groups. No one talked. I came back a mess. I had missed the first four years of my daughter’s life. I was drinking. I couldn’t talk to my wife. Some things I didn’t want to revisit and if I tried talking, it often ended in a yelling match. Twenty years in the Army was enough. After taking eight months off work, I’ve returned on a part-time basis, but at forty-six years of age I suffer from PTSD, depression and anxiety, both knees and ankles are buggered, I have fifty per cent range of movement in my lower back, and loss of movement in both shoulders. I often wonder whether my service was worth it. Paul Copeland: The biggest Australian overseas contingent after Vietnam, and the first time the UN got involved in a civil war, as opposed to an international conflict, was UNTAG [United Nations Transitional Assistance Group] in Namibia in 1989–90. A total of 338 Australian troops went over—mainly engineers, with signallers, medics and military police to back them up. Lance Corporal Kev Ryan was deployed as one of four signallers. Kev Ryan: I went in the first contingent on a six-month mission to keep the peace to ensure free and fair elections in November 1989, following the 1988 ceasefire and peace agreement between South Africa and SWAPO [South West African Peoples’ Organization], after SWAPO’s seventy-three years of fighting for Namibia’s independence. In February 1989 we landed in the capital, Windhoek, which has a modern central business district, a large white population living in the suburbs and most of the black population living in a huge shanty town—seventy-five per 72


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cent of them infected with AIDS. On a weekly basis, we would go to a rubbish dump where people lived in humpies. We never had to unload. As soon as we arrived the people would climb onto the trailer looking for food. Once I saw a woman eat food scraps I would not give to a dog. She vomited it all up and went straight back to eating. I was not a smoker but the stench of this dump was so nauseating I would light a cigarette to cover the smell. We lived in a monastery fifteen kilometres from the centre of town and worked out of a two-storey SWATDF [South West African Territory Defence Force] building in town. Otherwise we travelled all over the country, which was classified as a war zone for the first month, so we wore helmets, flak jackets and were weapon ready. We carried SLRs, M-16s and the wombat gun—the M-79 grenade launcher—and hoped we would not meet up with any triggerhappy SWAPOs. We were under a yellow card–red card system. Yellow meant if you were fired upon you could not fire back unless given the order. Fortunately I never received fire. I regularly travelled three hundred kilometres north, to the engineers’ base at Grootfontein, passing through low mountains that contained so much iron ore we could not transmit, until the UN supplied new Motorola radios that could punch through the signals. My main task was to train the engineers to use the radio equipment—teach them the different codes and frequencies for when they were out clearing land mines and building roads, homes, police stations and electoral offices. The South Africans had laid about one million mines, and SWAPO another million. My other tasks were maintaining equipment and relaying reports on the three comms systems. Each country had a specific role. The British were responsible for comms back to the real world via Cyprus. The military police were Fins and the infantry were Kenyan and Malaysian. The Italians flew the helicopters and the Spanish flew Cassars, a small version of the Hercules C-130, and so on. When flying in a Cassar north to the Angolan border to check out the antenna farms around Rundu, we discovered the Spaniards were hopeless air navigators. They were using road maps and told us to look out the window to make sure the Kunene River, which marks the border, was on our right. Sometimes it was on our left, which meant we were in Angolan air space. We looked down to see Angolan missiles being raised on their platforms and directed our way. The flight engineer whacked the two pilots over their heads and told them to go south. My friend, Barney, was put in a similar predicament but that time the Angolans strafed the plane. The country is an expanse of red and brown dirt, except for the white sand dunes to the west, before you hit the Atlantic Ocean. Underneath the desert are diamonds, gold, uranium, copper, iron ore and tin. Most of the 1.3 million A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain

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people lived in small rural towns and scattered mud villages, with no power or running water. They were mainly herders of cattle, and you’d see children in charge of sheep and goats, and sometimes women dressed in colourful head wraps and long dresses. In the countryside people were very approachable and happy that the UN was there, but in Windhoek the local Afrikaner suppliers would double or triple their prices if they knew the UN was their customer, and supermarket prices inflated accordingly. Some locals resented this and blamed the UN. Often we would come across white Afrikaners talking about us in a derogatory way and a number of UN personnel were assaulted and robbed by Afrikaners. One incident, which at times still bugs me, was when I was sent into town to pick up the boys who were having a night off. Driving down a dark side street I passed a mob of about twelve white fellows standing around a black guy with two knives sticking out of him. I detoured to the local police station to report what I’d seen. On duty was an obese Afrikaner sergeant, who responded with: ‘It’s only a kaffir. I’m watching TV. I’ll check it out when the program’s finished.’ I was with an officer on a recon to Oshakati, a two-day drive, when we passed through a petrified forest—logs on the ground mineralized into red and black rock. An old Bushman who lived in a humpy offered to show us Electronic rights for this image are not prehistoric paintings of San available. hunters chasing antelope and buffalo. Afterwards we gave him 100 rand, equivalent to $40 Australian, about a year’s wage for him. He was near to tears. If I’d had more I would have given it to him. I flew home in October, and for three weeks I couldn’t sleep. Seeing the poverty and the war devastation, the lack of infraLCpl Kev Ryan and a bushman in a structure and the way people treat petrified forest, Namibia, 1989, each other makes you think and photographed by Capt Rice. sometimes dream, but basically 74


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I got on with life. Then a run-in with my OC prevented me from going to Cambodia and after twenty-two years in the Army I realized I’d had enough. All the downsizing was piling on the pressure. My wife was happy about my decision to get out, and it has allowed me more time to enjoy my daughter. I work for a job placement organization in Coburg and deal with a lot of ethnic communities, a sizable Arab population, as well as indigenous people, and have no trouble getting them jobs. I miss my army mates, although comradeship does not die, but some friends do. A good friend hung himself in 2002. When he was in Cambodia in 1991 his interpreter was shot and the only way he could stop the bleeding was to put his fingers in the man’s chest to plug the bullet holes. The bloke died in his arms. Mark was a sergeant and did not feel it was appropriate to talk to his Diggers about the incident. On Chinese New Year 2000, he was driving with his family when fireworks went off. He flashed to Cambodia, pulled over, got out and dived for cover, yelling at his wife and children as if they were his Diggers. At Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital he was diagnosed as suffering from severe depression and PTSD and was medically discharged. Within a year he’d hung himself. One thing that pisses me off is that Namibia is never mentioned in any news or documentaries about Australian involvement in UN missions. Nor is Cyprus, Kosovo, Sinai or Rhodesia. It’s on our service record and for Namibia our medals were upgraded to the AASM [Active Australian Service Medal], which makes us ‘war veterans’, otherwise it is as if we had never been. Paul Copeland: Many peacekeepers and peacemakers do not get the recognition they deserve, yet they work in unpredictable situations which can degenerate while they are there, as was the case in Somalia. By 1991, the country was in civil war, after the socialist regime of President Said Barre was toppled by the USC [United Somali Congress], which split into rival factions. Somalia was the first time the UN sent troops without prior permission from the Government. There was no government! Thirty Australians were sent over as part of UNOSOM I [First UN Operation in Somalia] to oversee movement control, then when people started dying of famine and disease, 937 Australians took part in UNITAF [United Task Force in Somalia] to protect the delivery of humanitarian aid. Some Australians involved in UNITAF were stationed in the Baidoa region and by all accounts did a good job. They applied the law of military occupation and recruited former Somali judges and police officers, retraining them to administer justice. Some warlords the Australians captured were tried and punished under Somali law. Then UNOSOM I was replaced by UNOSOM II in 1993. A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain

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Geoff: UNOSOM I operated under Chapter Six of the UN Charter. When UNOSOM I transitioned to UNOSOM II, Chapter Seven was implemented: we were no longer peacekeepers but peacemakers. This was the first time the UN invoked Chapter Seven’s rules of engagement. It meant we could shoot any Somali who carried a weapon and I wouldn’t mind a dollar for every Somali I saw with an RPG or AK-47. Those RPGs, they’re sexy weapons except when they’re pointed at you, then it’s surreal: there’s this audio exclusion. You hear what matters. Things slow down, as in The Matrix, but without the sunglasses and acrobatics. I’d joined the Regular Army in 1982 and had been in Commandos for two and a half years before Somalia. It was my first and last overseas deployment. I was fit and looking forward to going—that was until 5 June 1993. We were celebrating my partner’s birthday and news came through that twenty-four Pakistanis had been killed and mutilated by Muhammad Farah Aideed’s supporters while returning from inspecting the authorised weapons storage sites in Mogadishu. Muhammad Farah Aideed, the self-appointed leader of Mogadishu, had declared war on the UN. I felt like a fireman who had never put out a fire—very apprehensive. We were partially prepared equipment-wise. Our personal weapon was the Steyr rifle but we had Vietnam-era body armour and no armoured vehicles or heavy weapons. Everything the Australians did was on the smell of an oily rag. We begged, borrowed or ‘acquired’ additional equipment, relying heavily on the Americans. All the American Q-Store demanded was a signature and once I signed for some M-79 grenade launchers using the name ‘Ian Botham’. Luckily the Americans don’t play cricket. I flew into Mogadishu on 4 July, on a C-130. At the time there were about 32 000 troops on the ground. On landing the RSM says ‘Where’s the chook?’ ‘Here sir.’ ‘You can ride in that Egyptian AFV [armoured fighting vehicle] and spot the snipers. The others will go on a bus behind you.’ I’d been in-country all of thirty-five seconds and he gives me a Steyr I’d never fired before. The RSM turned to the others, saying, ‘If you start taking shots hit the floor. Abdi’s a good driver.’ So here I am on the way to the American compound looking for crooks in a city I’d never been in—without any briefing, Actions On, etc. All I had to fall back on were the rules of engagement. We stayed in Besser brick accommodation, one of the few buildings that could take mortar rounds because it still had a roof, inside the UN compound. No exaggeration, every day for three months the compound was mortared. As a precaution the Atco huts, which housed many of the UN personnel, had cyclone fencing placed above the rooves so that the mortars would explode when they hit the fence rather than come through the roof. 76


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Those mortars were a morale downer. They were only sixty millimetres, but big enough to put a hole through you. They don’t whistle and warn you like the bigger ones, they just go boom when they hit. I was in charge of a morning PT run when a mortar exploded behind me. It was close: ten to fifteen metres away. I mean, where do you turn after that? Another mortar went boom. The little buggers were chasing us down the road. I was the only medic and signaller for forty-five Australian troops. They were in charge of protecting stores and equipment coming off the ships and planes, and later, when the R&R program kicked in, making sure the blokes got safely to and from the planes heading for Nairobi or Mombassa. We also took over air traffic control and security. My other duties were being in charge of the Q-Store, and taking PT three days a week. Like thousands of troops, I worked every day, mostly inside the compound, but I was always on the lookout for an excuse to get out and mix. To do this I was aided by the American 5 Special Forces Group A Team Detachment. These guys had the best of everything, and loved to show and tell to their fellow Green Beret. Mogadishu was a looted putrid toilet of a place, a garbage tip of plastic bottles and burning tyres. It was sad because Somalia has a pleasant Mediterranean climate and in medieval times was apparently covered in forest and animals. But in the six months I was there I saw nothing alive except humans, bugs, one donkey and a little bird. Otherwise, Mogadishu was a circus that carried, a death warrant. The clans were constantly fighting it out on the streets, dressed in baggy trousers and Tshirts, with more front than Myers. As combatants you had to tip your hat to them. How the NGOs went around unarmed and survived, I do not know. It was unusual to see a vehicle not studded with bullet holes. When I went out, I drove at speed on cracked roads, spending most of the time on the horn and the footpath. Pedestrians beware. I clipped a few. Once, we were driving down the street in a soft-skinned vehicle, part of a Electronic rights for this image are three-vehicle convoy, and the lead not available. vehicle had a hand grenade go off very close. There was the familiar sound of semi-automatic weapons and I am sinking low in my seat. The firing stopped and two Somali guys ran off with their AK-47s. I could have shot them but what CPL Geoff—Commando, Signals the heck: all it would mean was two Corps, and peacemaker in Mogadishu, Somalia, 1993. more dead Somalis. A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain

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Then there were mines. A mate’s Humvee was hit by a command-detonated mine near the seaport. He was thrown clear, copping a bit of shrapnel. When he came to, he looked over to see Somalis fighting over who was going to eat the leg of a dead American serviceman. You got the impression that the young Somali males hated us with a passion. It was a prime example of mission creep. The UN originally went over to deliver humanitarian aid to feed the starving millions but the only dead people I saw had bullets in them. Then it became a matter of nation building: the most ambitious UN mission ever embarked on, especially as there was no nation to build. Aideed’s main opponent, Ali Mahdi, was pro UN and wanted to share power with the other warlords, including Aideed, but that wasn’t Aideed’s style. After he and his lieutenants refused to disarm, all the Americans wanted to do was capture them. That was what the movie Black Hawk Down was about. The movie painted it as it was. I was over there when the Black Hawk and Little Bird Helicopters went into Bakarrah Market on 3 October. The Americans came under fire and the rest is history: two Black Hawks down and eighteen soldiers from the Rangers and Delta Force dead. What is less publicised is that the Americans succeeded in nabbing the majority of blokes they were after, although it meant killing hundreds of Somalis in the process. The only times I had anything to do with the locals were like when I went out with a Lieutenant Colonel to hire some vehicles for the UN. We were surrounded by a few hundred people anxious to rent their battered vehicles at UN prices. The Lieutenant Colonel darted around, telling people ‘That’s a fuckin’ shit box. Piss off.’ I could see the resentment rising. Kids were pulling on our arms and webbing, probably to distract us as the adults surreptitiously passed knives to each other. It got so hot we retreated into a UN-leased villa for an hour. When we went out the car I was meant to travel in had to be jumpstarted and once it got going my mate didn’t want to stop. Suddenly I am alone in an angry crowd. It was like I had been caught naked. I bolted up narrow streets, running and hiding, being chased all the way, until I was rescued. That split-second decision to run probably saved my life. One night I was unofficially invited to go out with an American Special Forces A Team aboard a Black Hawk. The helicopter was armed with two Barrett Light 50s—12.9-kilo sniper rifles with a range of 1800 metres—and the normal complement of M-60s. North of the capital, I presume they were looking for Aideed’s militia: we shot at anything that moved. Ten centimetres away from where I sat, a row of bullets laced the metal. At one stage the young pilot says, ‘What the fuck! We have a missile locked onto us!’ We’re zigzagging through the countryside, our wheels nudging the trees, and I’m thinking ‘I’m

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probably going to die. I wonder if I’ve paid my bills …’ Then I went back to enjoying the ride. But my experiences are nothing compared to a friend’s. Dave was an Australian corporal in Commandos, Intelligence Corps. He spent nine months in Somalia, recruiting Somali agents, pinpointing the locations of Aideed and his lieutenants, conducting raids and interrogating those who were captured. He was involved in the raid on the authorized weapons storage site at Radio Mogadishu. In late 1992, US forces had disarmed the local militias of their heavy weapons, then inventoried and stored them in seven authorized sites in and around Mogadishu, most weapons belonging to Aideed’s militia. To count the weapons, on 5 June 1993, a UN inspection team consisting of two Land Cruisers with six to eight inspectors and a platoon of thirty to forty Pakistani soldiers, travelling in APCs as protection parties, went to each site. When Dave’s team reached the radio station compound it seemed deserted. Half the Pakistanis formed an internal perimeter while the other half were left outside to set up roadblocks. There were three bunker-like buildings and one four-storey office building to check, so the inspection team split up to search the buildings. One member of the team had a video camera and was instructed to go to the roof of the highest building and record all activities in and around the compound while the inspection was being conducted. Dave and a US Special Forces operator were clearing the building that housed the main radio studios. There were about twenty rooms and for each the door was kicked in and either highpower strobes or glow sticks were thrown in to confuse potential enemies. Halfway through the search they came across the main studio room and found three Somalis broadcasting on the radio. Before Dave could hit the radio kill switch, the Somalis broadcast a message announcing that the UN/US forces were ‘taking over’ the radio station. Half an hour later all the buildings had been searched and no weapons found. Everything had been cleaned out. The inspection team emerged from the buildings to face a crowd of up to a thousand hostile Somalis gathered at the entrance of the compound. While the Pakistanis valiantly tried to hold back the crowd, Dave, the rest of the inspection party and the Pakistani internal perimeter fired warning shots over the Somalis but they kept advancing, knowing that unless they displayed weapons they would not be shot. From the video, Dave recognized a couple of Aideed’s lieutenants. The Commander of the Pakistani Protection Party told the inspection team to get in their vehicles and take the video back to the UN compound. Dave told him ‘We’re not going until you guys are in your APCs’, but the Pakistani commander insisted.


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The crowd surged forward as Dave and his team got in their vehicles. As they moved off, the Somalis starting pulling out AK-47s and machetes. They advanced through the crowd, the Somalis trying to pull them out of their vehicles. At this point Dave looked in his rear vision mirror to see six Pakistanis being swarmed and flayed alive with machetes. He rammed his foot on the accelerator, running over some Somalis in the process. The inspection team made it back to the UN compound and were viewing the video when they heard gunfire coming from the south-east wall. Dave, two of his team and a number of other UN personnel went onto the roof of the operations building and had a half-hour fire fight with Somalis trying to get over the wall, after which they headed back to Intelligence through the Operations Centre. There Dave heard that his protection party and another party from the Northern authorized weapons storage site were pinned down on 21 October Road by at least five hundred Somalis. There was a large battle to rescue them but it was not until night that the survivors could be pulled out by helicopter. For the rest of the night Dave and others had to unload bodies and wounded in Dustoff after Dustoff. Eighteen bodies were accounted for. Six were not recovered that night, but the Somalis eventually returned them because they were Muslim. Dave was also involved in the aftermath of 3 October [Black Hawk Down]. He was one of a select number of people who were given the task of buying back body parts of the Americans who had not been recovered. Somali agents were recruited, pick-up times, places and ‘recovery costs’ were negotiated, then he would have to go out and do the deal solo, which entailed considerable situation awareness. On each occasion the Somalis would hand over only one body part. It meant Dave had to do it again and again over a number of weeks. He knew the Somalis he was dealing with and felt like strangling them, but by that time he was hardened, switched off. He had been in Mogadishu too long. There’s a line you cross over. I was annoyed: we were meant to be helping them, but they didn’t want our help. When I started going out looking for trouble—driving around, trying to rev up the locals so they would take a pot shot at us—I knew it was time to go home. Six months of helicopters buzzing in your ears, guns and mortars going off at all hours—you don’t realize how much it wears you down until you come back. Of course you come home different. You have to expect psychological problems: being more aggressive or detached, but does that mean you do nothing? My partner was in the services. We’d been together six years. I had a heap of leave with nothing to do and seemed to spend every moment looking for

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something, perhaps my weapon. For six months I had slept with my Steyr. I was bored. Crowds spun me out. I treated my partner like shit: not abusive or purposefully mean, but I was negligent. I preferred to be with my mates. Our two sons were born. I love them and wasn’t a bad father. I never hit them, but I wasn’t there. My partner endured nine years of me being distant, lost and in denial, before she left. It was a congenial break-up—no solicitors—and for a time I wanted her back, but she didn’t want me. She made the decision and stuck to it. I admire her courage. After Somalia I was in Commandos for seven years, doing all the exciting things: paratrooping, mountain warfare and amphibious operations but I wouldn’t go bungy jumping because it’s dangerous! For a good ten years all I wanted to do was go back to Somalia—for the excitement, but also because we’ve made life way too complicated in Australia: all the bills and taxes and fines. It was simple in Somalia—all you had to think about was not getting killed. I used to rubbish talk about PTSD. Now I don’t, but you make a decision: how much you want to dwell on things or get on with life. My solution is to make it simple. If something is going to complicate my life or not enhance it, I piss it off. It’s black and white. Sometimes I have a long fuse, sometimes I am dismissive. I’m hyper vigilant but good at archiving the nasty memories. If they come up I ring the kids or trim the roses. On the positive side, Somalia made me more interested in world affairs. I have a different mindset, and a new girlfriend. In the last two years I have come to terms with how I’ve changed, and back in July 2003, after twenty-one years in the ADF, I got out and walked straight into a highly paid job that utilizes all my skills. Paul Copeland: At least Somalia, Rwanda and Cambodia made the UN rethink missions and now mandates are often more robust. That does not mean veterans come away unaffected. The APPVA is there to help them. We lobby the Government—the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Repatriation Commission and various committees and forums—to change policy. A top priority is to change the policy of not retaining and rehabilitating people within the ADF. We want to give veterans back their pride and self-esteem and for the ADF to benefit from the veterans’ wealth of experience, which cannot be quantified. We also have cases where people still serving have undergone three months’ psychotherapy and their CO refuses to take them back. They are basically put in the discharge cell. The work gives me a sense of purpose, some strength, a focal point and a network, but it’s demanding. I will be glad when somebody can take over. Rhonda is waiting for the day.


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At least I’ve got my daughter back. For the first five years of Jasmine’s life she didn’t want to know me. I was a stranger coming home after she went to bed. She would have heard arguments and sensed the anger. Now we go to the beach or play pirates and damsels in distress, Peter Pan and Wendy and Rumpelstiltskin—whatever her fertile imagination conjures up. I am less moody. My relationship with Rhonda has improved, although she thinks dealing with veterans and their issues pulls me down. Recently there has been another complication: my ten-year-old son, whom I’d never met. He is the result of a one-night stand before Cambodia. In 2003 I was contacted to undergo a DNA test. Now I’m paying the price; but whereas the mother wanted money, the boy wanted a father. I decided to initiate a meeting. His mother was against it but he applied some pressure and came and stayed with us for two weeks. I think he had this image of a funloving, rich father who would treat him like a king. I didn’t fit the bill. I found him intelligent but rather persistent in his dialogue. He is very keen to pursue our relationship and we have seen each other since—kicked the football, gone camping and swimming—and have regular phone contact. I think we are adjusting. In a way history is repeating itself: my father came back from twelve months in Vietnam when I was nine. He had gone over in May 1969 as part of the First Operational Support Unit stationed in the RAAF base at Vung Tau, becoming a volunteer crewman on the Dustoff choppers when they were short on loadmasters. He used to handle body bags and now hates sleeping bags. That’s all I know. I remember him talking about being a kid in the London bombing raids during World War II and about guerrillas in Vietnam. I thought he was referring to the furry kind. He hasn’t asked about Cambodia. I guess I haven’t offered. I’ve thought he might not want to listen. While he was in Vietnam, Mum worked and raised four kids aged ten months to nine years. I was the eldest and a little bugger. I had little regard for my own life. At school, teachers called the troops murderers but I didn’t understand. All I knew was that I missed him. In one photograph of the family before Dad left I am wrapped around his legs like a leech. That twelve months seemed like an eternity. But when he came home, he was still away. By day he was an airman in the RAAF, then he worked in security and cleaning until six in the morning. Mum felt the pressure. Six months after he came back, she fainted in the hallway. Then Dad was posted to Butterworth in Malaysia and things were back on track. That was two and a half years of paradise. I can’t remember Dad doing much with us, but I always knew he loved us, so much so that sometimes I used to lie in bed and cry myself to sleep with the thought that if he ever died it would break my heart. It still would. I look up to 82


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him. That’s a major reason why the first thing I did after my seventeenth birthday was apply to go into the Air Force. I already knew that I wanted to be an Op Sig—a communications analyst intercepting electronic warfare—but the recruiting officer said I was too immature. Dad flipped out. He was still in the RAAF and knew the officer. He rang and blasted him: ‘Bloody hell, this is you getting back at me, you bastard.’ Six months later I enlisted in the Army. After finishing the radio operator’s course at Watsonia the old man rang the RAAF recruiting officer: ‘My son is now in the Army and has just qualified as a radio operator. You can stick your Air Force up your arse.’ He was proud that I’d joined and so was Mum but she didn’t like me joining Commandos. She never knew where I was. Twenty-one years later, Dad knows I’m crook. When the fireworks started on New Year’s Eve 1999 he saw me hit the ground and cry like a baby. I made a complete and utter dickhead of myself and went to bed wearing earmuffs. The next day I walked out. He was sitting on the lounge. He shook his head and was very quiet. I took it as disbelief and disappointment, although I haven’t asked him what his feelings were. It took him a long time to accept that I had PTSD. I think he expected better from me. I expected better of myself. A couple of months later we had a chat and he realized we had some things in common: drinking, Electronic rights for this image are not nightmares, apprehension and available. vagueness. It took another three years to convince him to go and get help for his own problems. He had lived with them for so long he thought they were normal but at the age of seventy he was diagnosed with PTSD. Still I feel he’s disappointed that I’m on a TPI, although maybe it’s me feeling disappointed with myself. Mum understands. When I broached the subject, saying, ‘Going TPI, Paul Copeland’s family before I’ve let the side down’, she goes James Copeland’s departure for Vietnam, May 1969. ‘Your grandfather was TPI.’ A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain

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‘But he was a POW on the Japanese death railway. Dad’s not TPI.’ ‘Well, your dad came back from Vietnam a different man and you came back from Cambodia a different man. Now I worry for your brother.’ My young brother, James, has been sixteen years in the Army. He joined as an infantryman, served in the Parachute Battalian of 3RAR, then joined Signals, before being posted to Special Forces. He’s been overseas three times. At the end of 1993 he went to Western Sahara with the UN for a six-month tour, as a signaller responsible for communications in various outposts. He was often the only Australian soldier, in the middle of sand and drunken Russians. The Polisario, or Saharawi resistance force, had been fighting for Saharawi independence since 1973, first against the Spanish and then against the Moroccans, when they invaded in 1975. The Polisario’s small arms would be trucked in from Algeria, although ammunition was in short supply. Basically they used guerrilla hit-and-run tactics, at night sneaking into a Moroccan position to kill soldiers before withdrawing to desert caves or hiding out among their fellow Saharawi. The UN became involved in 1990, to try and organize a referendum on independence, but the referendum keeps being delayed. It’s an ongoing war. My brother and a group of military observers, all unarmed, would go into the desert by helicopter or four-wheeled drives, to talk to the Polisario and gather intelligence. One time he was with a Chinese officer and they drove through a mined area before realizing where they were. He was glad to get out of that one. In the desert they would see nothing but a few camels and some large canvas tents, each housing a family with a number of wives. Over three or more glasses of super-sweet black tea and sometimes cake, camel meat or soup, they would ask the locals whether they had seen any Moroccan forces. James liked the Saharawi: they were friendly and lived a hard life. He thought less of the Moroccans: they were in-your-face opportunists and had secret police everywhere who were always spying on the UN and Saharawi. In May 1998 James was deployed to Indonesia, during the pro-democracy student demonstrations that forced President Suharto to resign after thirtytwo years in power. Two hundred students had been killed in four days and his job was to set up a communications link in the Australian Embassy, to coordinate a services-protected evacuation of Australian and other nationals from Jakarta. The following year he went to Cyprus to have a look at the UN mission that’s been there since 1964. He visited the border between Turkey and Greek Cyprus and walked the streets of Nicosia. He says everything seemed frozen in time since the 1974 ceasefire. James is now a sergeant based up in Darwin, married with two children. We get on pretty well and have talked about our tours of duty. I’m not sure what he 84


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thinks about PTSD. With him being in the service culture, he probably thinks I am a wuss. As a soldier you are trained for these deployments. You have six actionpacked months, come home, train and do courses, meanwhile looking forward to the next tour: the adrenalin rush and being of use. You could call it thrill-seeking but deployments become your experience base and basically I wouldn’t change a thing. I don’t regret going to Cambodia, not even the accident. Cambodia gave me an education that not many people have. Being posted to 126 Signal Squadron was the most rewarding job in my army career. I am proud of my service and am proud of the blokes I served with. I absolutely loved being a soldier: putting on the uniform, the challenges of physical training, going bush, one day taking high speed Morse code, the next jumping out of a Hercules, parachuting into Sydney Harbour, roping or doing Water Operations—not a gentleman’s way of insertion—or airborne repelling from a Black Hawk at one hundred feet above the ground with full combat equipment. I loved the mateship, being fit, the whole institution. Certainly the good times outweighed the tough times. If my son or daughter wanted to join I would advise them to join the RAAF and become an officer. They’d be safer. But if one of them wanted to join a combat-related unit I don’t think I could stop them. Whatever came their way, I would support them.


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3

OUT OF THE CLOSET Dr Tony Williams and Peacemakers in Rwanda and East Timor GLORIA ROBINSON

Peacemakers and peacekeepers can find themselves embroiled in terrible incidents which they do not have a mandate to prevent or intervene in. This can lead to veterans suffering anxiety, depression, panic attacks or PTSD. Those who need to talk or who seek treatment often find it easier to open up to someone who has been through a hazardous military deployment. Dr Tony Williams was a regimental medical officer for 7 Battalion in Vietnam in 1967–68. Afterwards he became a psychiatrist specialising in public health and education, as well as cross cultural and military psychiatry. As a military psychiatrist he treats peacemakers and peacekeepers. I interviewed two of them: Milan Nikolic, a medic serving in the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), who witnessed a massacre of up to 5000 people at the displaced persons’ camp at Kibeyo,4 and Dave, a lieutenant who served in the Australianled INTERFET mission in East Timor in 1999–2000, when the Indonesian Army and militia were still a presence and much of the East Timorese population was traumatised by displacement and violence.

Tony Williams: As a psychiatrist I avoid treating Vietnam veterans. I see them for advocacy purposes but even then, when they talk of contacts or their fear and tension on patrol, I identify too closely. Just listening to their accounts stirs physical reactions: a rising pulse rate, clammy palms, butterflies in the stomach, nausea and dizziness. To compensate I write copious notes. After the consultation I distract myself—do some gardening or listen to classical music, 86


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or have a pipe and a cup of tea, then once I have settled I write the report— whether for an initial claim to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs or for an appeal before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. I am more comfortable treating peacemakers and peacekeepers. I can maintain the required objectivity. From 1985 until 2001, I held a weekly clinic at the Holsworthy military hospital. Initially I was seeing defence personnel with general psychiatric problems: alcohol and substance abuse, depression, people querying whether they were suitable for military service. But from the early 1990s I began seeing peacemakers and peacekeepers from the deployments in Cambodia, Somalia and Rwanda referred to me by military psychologists or medical officers at the military hospital. The Australian Defence Force began a formal debriefing program in 1989, during the Namibia peacekeeping deployment, giving groups critical incident stress debriefing in accordance with the Mitchell model. In this model debriefing occurs as soon as possible after the incident. The efficacy of this has been questioned. It was found people could be re-traumatized if debriefed too close to the event. The ADF program slowly evolved into individual and group debriefs, and a general preparation for the veteran’s return to Australia. However, in these official debriefs many do not express their concerns for fear of being stigmatized and a few fall through the loop. Some only recognize that they have problems four or five years after the mission, although I was seeing veterans of INTERFET as early as 2000. In the field, their training and self-discipline keep them functioning but on return to Australia a proportion find themselves suffering from anxiety, depression or PTSD: vivid intrusive memories, nightmares and night sweats, significant personality changes, heightened arousal responses, anger, mood swings, numbness, avoidance, withdrawal and tension, often accompanied by depression, anxiety and substance abuse. The re-experiencing phenomenon or flashback is far less common. A trigger like a smell, a sound, a visual association or an internal cue can induce a trance-like state. Often the person appears to be going about their business, a bit like sleepwalking, when they suddenly become aware that they have no recollection of what they were doing. For instance one Vietnam veteran I saw was driving down Parramatta Road when the smell of a passing garbage truck took him back to Saigon where he had witnessed the South Vietnamese Government parading corpses of Viet Cong as a warning to others, and he lost control of his vehicle. In some cases violent behaviour can occur. For this degree of dissociation it is thought that a cue triggers a sudden rush of overwhelming anxiety which the person handles by splitting off some of the personality so that one bit is functioning while the rest of the personality is Out of the Closet

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handling the anxiety. In terms of treatment, you have to be careful that you don’t provoke intense anxiety and cause the split, so one tends initially to go down the track of teaching relaxation, stress and anxiety management. Veterans I have treated from the Cambodian deployment mainly worked as military police and signallers, often with little backup. The traumatic incidents usually involved civilian deaths or injuries from land mines, grenades or shootings. A number of veterans were involved in intense standoffs with remnants of the Khmer Rouge. One female corporal was deployed as a driver. She was experiencing panic attacks while driving in Australia and I diagnosed PTSD, with co-morbid depression and panic, as a result of her witnessing many critical incidents of civilians being killed or injured and her not being able to prevent an incident or adequately help. Like most people I saw who developed severe psychological problems, she was medically discharged from the services. The veterans of Somalia served during 1992–95 and witnessed enormous brutality between the factions, some incidents involving women and children. One chap was trying to control civilians surging forward to access food. Shots were fired. He fired. When the chaos subsided he was presented with a dead baby. Ever since he has been plagued with guilt: ‘Did I kill the baby or did someone else, or was the baby already dead?’ I’ve treated half a dozen veterans of Rwanda. They served in the Medical Corps either on the first or second tour, back to back in 1994–95. People from the first tour describe going into Kigali Central Hospital to be confronted by the smell of death and scattered body parts, or entering the cathedral where civilians had sought refuge from Hutu military, militia and civilians, to find thousands of skulls and bones. In April–May 1994, three months before the first contingent arrived, 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been massacred in a hundred days, the perpetuators incited by months of radio propaganda and fear of death if they did not join in. On the second tour medical personnel, guarded by a small contingent of infantry, worked in a displaced persons’ camp at Kibeyo, the complication being that they had no idea how many people in the camp had taken part in the hundred-day massacre. The Australian contingent had only been there three days when they witnessed the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Army [RPA] enter the camp and slaughter an estimated three to five thousand people. One medic I treated had told a group of young Hutu males ‘Stay here while I get water for you.’ When he returned they had been hacked to death. His horror and guilt at being unable to protect them played on his mind and he developed severe PTSD, which was complicated by him experiencing a number of dangerous

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dissociative episodes whilst riding his motorbike. His condition was aggravated by an extremely violent childhood, childhood trauma being a significant antecedent to post-traumatic stress. Another medic, Milan Nikolic, was also at Kibeyo. Milan Nikolic: All of us selected for Rwanda were green, keen and full of hope. We had no idea that we were going to be a band-aid solution for a country oozing blood. Before leaving, I relocated my wife and two sons to Sydney, then went to Townsville for sixteen days’ pre-embarkation. We were from all three services and there wasn’t much time to train as a unit. A booklet with words and phrases in Swahili was handed out, but I learnt more language in-country. Another booklet outlined what our mission was to be: basically to give medical aid to the sick and injured, with instructions not to display our presence as an aggressor. There was no discussion about the on-the-ground conditions or the history and culture of Rwanda. For that I had to resort to the library and a travel guide. From this limited reading I learnt that Rwanda was a German colony taken over by Belgium, that Catholicism was the dominant religion, and there were three ethnic groups: the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa, Hutu making up eighty-five per cent of the population. Back in 1961 Hutus had overthrown the Tutsi monarchy and in 1990 the [Tutsi] Rwandese Patriotic Front had invaded from Uganda. After two years of fighting, the Hutu Government negotiated a ceasefire, and in 1994 moderate Hutu politicians were negotiating a power sharing arrangement, which Hutu extremists in the army and militia opposed. Colleagues who had been on the first contingent did not say much. After going there myself, I understand why. I know they unearthed mass graves around Central Kigali Hospital. The smell of death was still there in February 1995. On arriving at Kigali airport we saw the wreckage of the plane that had carried the moderate Rwandan President and Burundian President when it was shot down on 6 April 1994, the day the killings started. A night curfew made Kigali an unlit ghost town of broken windows and perforated walls, although during the day markets and businesses had begun to operate. Actually, the place reminded me of Serbian towns north of Belgrade, where my father came from: rustic one- or two-storey cement-rendered buildings with handmade glass-panelled windows, mountains in the background. Within twenty-four hours we had taken over from the first contingent. It was not much of a settling-in period. Initially I worked in the Regimental Aid Post [RAP] at the Australian Hospital in a compound next to Central Kigali Hospital. Across the road were RPA barracks. The RPA ran everything. We

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helped specialist doctors from the Australian Reserves treat foreign and local UN personnel and whoever was brought in from the field, staying in the UN barracks where I shared a few meals and games of basketball with some Gurkhas. On a daily basis a Electronic rights for this image are small team of armed medics, accomnot available. panied by infantry, would go out to a fortified orphanage on the outskirts of Kigali, where Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity looked after orphans or kids who were the product of rape. The first contingent had built a playground and made beds and cribs. My eldest son was going on Medic Milan Nikolic during time out three and my youngest was eighteen in downtown Kigali, Rwanda, months, so relating with the kids was March 1995. second nature. After a month in-country I was reassigned to the CCP [Casualty Clearing Post], to travel to orphanages and displaced persons’ camps at Butare, Gikongoro and elsewhere, to tend wounds and ailments and carry out worming and inoculation programs for typhoid, tetanus and whatever, depending on stocks from Médecins Sans Frontières [Doctors Without Borders]. Others on the team developed hygiene programs or set up water purification units. The countryside was incredibly green, with lush mountains and plateaus, and hills of maize, bananas, peas and beans. Houses were mainly rendered Besser block or mud brick and Hutu and Tutsi lived side by side. As adults the Tutsi are tall and lean, the Hutu short and stocky. The first contingent had broken the ice: I found the locals warm and friendly; they would help if they could. On 19 April a small convoy of six vehicles, carrying six medics, a section of fifteen infantry, one or two engineers, a couple of signalmen, a lieutenant and his sergeant, as well as the war artist George Gittoes, headed up to the displaced persons’ camp at Kibeyo on the Zaire border, 400 kilometres from Kigali, arriving at a staging point run by a Mali force, where we were to sleep, eat and refuel. We were on a five-day turnaround. The next morning we headed off to the camp on unsealed roads, some sections on the sides of cliffs completely washed out. Five kilometres outside the camp we drove through a small village where people swarmed us, begging for 90


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food. The children looked hungry and I hadn’t come to Rwanda for the biscuits, so they got mine. The two things you notice when approaching a camp of 100 000 people is the stench of sewage and rotten garbage, and the noise. It is deafening, like a swarm of bees—much louder than a soccer crowd at Wimberley Stadium. All the vegetation had been taken for fuel, and buildings along the road leading to the camp had been shot up and burnt. At the last checkpoint young RPA soldiers stopped us, holding their AK-47s in a manner indicating they were prepared to use them. The camp itself was in a five- to seven-acre natural amphitheatre, like a giant Colosseum. From the ridge it was a sea of orange, green and blue plastic tarpaulins surrounded by concertina wire, with a sandbag entry point. Inside we passed a long, crushing queue of people waiting for fresh water, Zambian infantry attempting to organize them. In the dust and flies people cooked on open fires, the UN having distributed some aluminium cooking utensils along with blankets. We made our way to a hill outside the wire where there was a statue of Mary and a cross in front of what looked like an old brick school, where the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières and other NGOs were based, Zambian forces having meagrely fortified the area with a sandbag wall and a couple of gun pits. We started treating people outside the buildings. Basically the RPA dominated the camp and the border with about a thousand soldiers, helped by the [Tutsi] Rwandese Patriotic Front inside the camp. Neither of them liked the UN presence because both were intent on taking revenge on the Hutu. At night members of the Patriotic Front would hack and shoot people indiscriminately, to encourage people to leave the country, and it was these cases, as well as land mine victims and the usual ailments, that we medics and Dr Carol Vaughan Evans treated. The injuries were horrific and sometimes months old. I wondered how some of the people were still alive but I was too busy to be shocked. Part of your brain shuts down. The next day, 20 April, we arrived at nine in the morning and set up our triage point in an abandoned house overlooking the camp, about five hundred metres from the old school buildings. It appeared the former occupants had left in a hurry, leaving a big bag of rice, cooking utensils and clothes. Outside, long lines of people were being prodded and beaten like cattle as they waited to have their documents and belongings checked by RPA soldiers, the border some five to ten kilometres away. Those lucky enough to get through walked down a muddy dusty track to who knows where. There were very few men among them. Along the road, at the water collection point and the RPA checkpoint, we searched for and treated people, all of them having been injured in the Out of the Closet

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rampage of the previous night. A man cradled a dead child who had been shot in the head, thinking we could perform miracles. One woman had her jaw hacked off with a machete. A boy had lost half his face. A man had no elbow. Another man had machete wounds to the back of his neck, exposing the ligaments. I accompanied one woman to Kigali in a helicopter. Time seemed to freeze as I looked out the window. In contrast to the horror I was seeing at the camp, I was awestruck by the beauty of the mountains and plateau: rivers cut through massive gorges and the curved lines of banana and maize fields and jungle followed the natural contours. It was as if it had all been carefully handcarved and painted by a great artist. On my return to Kibeyo, to make a path through the people pleading for help, I held my weapon horizontally, my hand on my ammunition pouch. I got to the other medics and continued working. The next day we worked for a couple of hours collecting the wounded and bringing the worst to the triage point on stretchers. In the background RPA soldiers were singing and screaming a chant, as if working themselves into a heightened state. All thirty of us were inside the camp, collecting the wounded, when suddenly there were gunshots. Next we heard heavy machine gun fire. I looked up to see RPGs being launched and two lines of RPA soldiers swooping down the hill, indiscriminately going up to people and shooting them in their heads and chests. Others were hacking people with machetes, chopping off their limbs. People were screaming and stampeding in all directions, some attempting to find protection behind us. We pulled back, running and dodging the dying people and flying dirt from explosions, taking cover behind piles of garbage and faeces. People were dropping like flies, their body parts flying into the air after being hit by RPGs. A colleague had a radio and a situation report came through with orders: ‘Move up to the Zambian compound.’ We readied to take action to protect ourselves. Under our rules of engagement we were not allowed to open fire to protect civilians, but it was hard to tell who the bullets were being aimed at. As we zigzagged and leap-frogged up the hill, going to ground when we heard gunfire, everything happened in slow motion. Each sound was distinct: the swish of clothes, my heartbeat, the rush of air through my ears. I felt detached, as if moving in a bubble. We finally made it to the sandbag barricade. It was then that I realized it was raining, the red mud mixing with the blood. A line of bullets hit a brick wall behind us. At that moment it became real: I froze with a flash of immense fear, feeling totally incapacitated. Then all the instinctive training kicked into gear and it was back to being too busy to think. People were throwing themselves and their children over the wire, and in the rain and mud we were treating whoever we could. I cannot be sure of the exact sequence of events—everything was happening so quickly, with such 92


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force and fury. Everyone has his own experiences of the day. What stands out in my mind is the spectacle of abandoned babies and children lying underneath their dead mothers. One old man protected himself by pulling corpses over him. There would be a lull, then another round of fire. Under the rules of engagement basically we had to stand by as thousands of people were slaughtered. We felt helpless, confused and pissed off. I saw people running up the 45-degree slope like startled gazelles only to be picked off one by one. A couple of men managed to dodge the bullets and get over the wire. When they got to the flat, still being chased by armed Tutsis, you wouldn’t see them for dust. Below us, in the middle of all the blood and horror, a man stood with a hand raised, clutching a book, I think a Bible. He remained there all afternoon reading to people. Beside me was a communications vehicle. I could hear the signalman sending out a contact report and requesting medical supplies. This reinforced the reality. We crammed the injured onto trucks so they could be taken to the hospital at Butare. Then the Canadian-piloted UN helicopters arrived, flying in low and landing behind a knoll to avoid being targeted by the RPA. I believe one helicopter was fired upon. Those who were Priority One were flown out. Loading the choppers or trucks I felt naked, although the security around us was ready to return fire. All afternoon, in heavy rain, we helped the wounded and searched for others who needed medical treatment, at one stage going into the building where I had seen mothers and toddlers on the first day. Now there were only screaming babies and children. Bullets sprayed outside the building, and again, prepared to take action to protect ourselves, we took as many babies as we could, before making our way back to the triage point, passing piles of wounded. On dusk we left the camp, travelling in convoy. We could see bodies draped over the wire and piles of bodies just inside the perimeter. Outside, wounded people were lying on their side or stomach, arms reaching out to us. Others were wandering in a daze. I was in the front of the ambulance with an SAS patrol medic when we spotted a naked, runny-nosed infant all alone. We stopped and wrapped him in an emergency blanket. In the back of the ambulance I think the doctor gave him Valium before we hid him in a compartment. The RPA were checking our vehicles to see if we were sneaking out anyone who wasn’t injured. They didn’t find the child. Next day we returned to the camp, searching under corpses for survivors. After we cleared an area, a bulldozer came in to dig pits and shovel the bodies in. The smell was overpowering. In the rain, we set up a triage point under a tarpaulin, where we treated people with gunshot and machete wounds, the Out of the Closet

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Australian soldiers protecting medics in the displaced persons’ camp at Kibeyo, Rwanda, 21 April 1995, photographed by George Gittoes.

rain washing their blood away, before organizing their evacuation. We had to make a decision on who stayed and who went where. Hundreds of children had been abandoned. It was terrible. I watched a group of five kids being separated from a family member—with the language barrier it was difficult to work out who was who—and when nobody was looking I wrapped a couple of bandages around the kids and threw them into the truck with their relative. The kids were so quiet and brave. Although I wanted to stay and help, we were being replaced by another contingent, so we left that afternoon. Back in Kigali, the first thing I did was go and pump weights for hours—I felt so wound up. It was like ants were crawling all over me. I felt let down. We had tried to do everything in our power but the problem was too great. It left me hardened and detached. When I heard of another death, I’d go ‘Yeah, so?’ The whole Kibeyo experience is something the UN must learn from: they had known about the camp and what was happening. A massive humanitarian relief program was needed, yet they sent in a doctor and six medics! I didn’t tell my wife. She read it in the newspapers. Afterwards, three of us went to Nairobi and lived it up for a few days. That’s when I discovered the effectiveness of alcohol. 94


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One day, back in the UN compound in Kigali, about two hundred locals started yelling and chanting and pushing on the iron gates, demanding that the UN leave. Behind them was a line of RPA soldiers and a couple of trucks with youths manning heavy machine guns and RPGs. We stood there, a skeletal staff, and all I could think was ‘Why are they biting the hand that’s feeding them?’—although most people were grateful for our help. Five weeks after Kibeyo, on 27 May, we were travelling in a convoy of four or five vehicles to another displaced persons’ camp. I was in the back of the last vehicle, a Land Rover, with four colleagues, our gear stowed under our feet, our Steyrs at our sides, another two people in the front cabin. We had left around 3 a.m. The roads were full of potholes and mud from landslides. After a couple of hours we were travelling along the top of a ravine and I remember hearing the driver say ‘Oh shit.’ Suddenly we were airborne and it was sky, land, sky, land. For ninety metres we tumbled around as if in a washing machine, before an almighty impact, as if a bomb had gone off, then a shock wave. The vehicle had hit a reverse slope. I was flung out of the vehicle and back in, the other three landing on top of me. I felt a stabbing pain in the back of my leg and lower abdomen. The trailer was completely severed. Far below was a canopy of trees. When the guys ahead of us saw our vehicle going off the road they thought we were taking a short cut. They returned and pulled everyone out. How we all survived was a miracle. Everyone had injuries and mine was from a loaded F-88 long-barrelled Steyr. About thirty centimetres of barrel had gone through my thigh and into my abdomen. It didn’t hurt that much—I was in total disbelief and shock—but when they took me up to the road, because the weapon was loaded they decided to pull it out. That hurt: slow agony spanning a second. I felt like a knight having a sword pulled out. I self-administered some pethidine, but only half the dose. I thought I wasn’t going to make it and wanted to be conscious. Meanwhile there was a mini standoff with a rogue patrol of RPA soldiers. Feeling a little helpless I yelled, ‘Get those black bastards away.’ Their presence was more overwhelming than the pain—I have a pretty good pain threshold. I situated one IV, telling a sergeant and an infantry soldier where to place the other. Minutes later, I went to take a pee and couldn’t. I had internal injuries. A chopper took me back to Kigali and within two hours of the accident I was on the operating table. My urethra had been severed, my bladder and bowel ruptured, my ureter damaged and my L3 vertebra shaved. As I was lying in a heap of pain after the operation, a colleague came in very upset. He told me that during the operation the surgeon had tripped over some equipment, which had prevented venous action and put my life in danger. Then I was told Out of the Closet

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I had to have a blood transfusion. I became distraught, having heard all the AIDS stories. Seven to ten days later I was evacuated to Australia, split like a watermelon and stapled together. My wife had learnt of the accident on the news, but at least she was brought to the airport. I was pale and fifteen kilos lighter and she said I smelt different. They took me to the military hospital at Ingleburn, where there were some familiar faces, but it was hard going. I was soon to discover who my true friends were. My back pain was extreme and in the second operation they found several crushed vertebrae and a fractured hip. I went through rehabilitation and then had a premature return to work that wasn’t sustained. There were more operations on my bowel and water works, and, in between, I was trying to work out where I’d come from and where I was going. I felt isolated. My hands would shake, I felt intensely anxious and I’d start crying. I wasn’t sleeping. There were dreams, vivid memories, and a state of hyper alertness. I was making no sense of it. Out of hospital, I did not want to associate with anyone. I was on a very short fuse and began drinking. I was angry with my wife and unaffectionate. If the children cried I had to leave the house. Otherwise I was very protective of them. Still am. A colleague suggested I go and see Dr Tony Williams, a consultant psychiatrist out at Holsworthy, and Dr Williams said I was suffering from severe post-traumatic stress, but I was posted back to my old regiment—the First Armoured Regiment—in Darwin, relocating my family yet again. On the surface I was okay but when I was doing a sick parade and a warrant officer came in complaining of an ingrown toenail, I told him: ‘Get real. I’ve seen twelve-year-old kids with half a leg walk fifty kilometres, and you’re telling me you want more attention for an ingrown toenail.’ He went off at me and I felt like tearing his head off. Fortunately a colleague, a veteran of Cambodia, pacified him. When I was sent on a three-day squadron exercise out in the field and the tanks fired live rounds my legs turned to jelly. I wanted to take cover. I kept it inside but even now I tremble thinking about it. The physical stuff is so real— it’s as if experiences change your body and brain for life. It still happens if a car backfires and I am caught off guard. Memories of Rwanda replay before my eyes. I get a lump in my throat. It’s the same when I hear my boys crying. After the range practice I was hospitalized, then relocated to the RAP at Randwick. I was still having severe symptoms of PTSD and was totally disorientated. When someone complained about a bus being late I thought about people who were searching for their next bit of bread and shelter. I was shaking my head all the time. I could not connect, even with my wife. I connected with Vietnam veterans and those who understood, but they were few.

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At Randwick I asked for an enquiry into what had happened during my operation in Kigali, thinking ‘If I had died, what would they have put down as the cause of death?’ I went to the RAP’s civilian doctor about my PTSD and all he could say was that I was making up my psychological problems, that I was a troublemaker with a hidden agenda, a pariah motivated by money. His words were like a sword going through me. He had no understanding of PTSD or my situation, yet he was meant to be in a position to help. He referred me to a civilian psychiatrist but I felt they were in cahoots. I was dirty with the Army. It was like my best friend had let me down. I went back to Dr Williams. He understood. A veteran himself, he knew how experiences can affect young soldiers, especially those who are trying to render care but cannot. He suggested I move towards a medical discharge. I wanted to remain in the military, perhaps in a training role, but I was never given the opportunity to discuss a way forward. Without having any say in it, my discharge was rushed through. My world shattered. I learnt that an injured soldier is like a car with a flat tyre that gets ditched rather than having its tyre changed. That’s the system, backed up by the doctor at Randwick and some career advisers from Canberra. In February 1998, two years after Rwanda, I was medically discharged. I felt humiliated. There was no regard for my service, no duty of care. With some savings we bought a house on the Central Coast but, with no foreseeable income, the pressures seemed endless. My wife was expecting our third son. Physically and mentally unwell, I had to organize another move and find a school for my sons. What saved me were the ‘Man upstairs’, the love and support of my wife, and knowing I had to hold it together for the sake of my family, that what I was experiencing wasn’t their fault. Determined that I was not going to be a veteran who goes through years of PTSD, drinking and gambling to escape, only to end up destroying his family and, three marriages later, have his kids hate him, on the advice of Dr Williams, I did a PTSD course at the Wesley Hospital at Ashfield and started seeing a civilian psychiatrist. After four years of rough travelling, I can now kick a ball with my sons, go fishing and swim with them, take them to soccer and help with their homework rather than go to the pub. Even on bad days I go on the bus with them to school and pick them up. The hardest part is finding a social network and a way of contributing back to society. I have lost the camaraderie of the Army. Some mates are in a bad way. Of the 657 service personnel who went to Rwanda, 147 have ended up on a disability pension, yet DVA classifies Rwanda as a ‘non-hazardous mission’ and what we’ve done doesn’t seem to matter on Civilian Street.

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In 2004, seeing what was happening in Iraq, especially the beheadings of hostages, triggered everything about Rwanda: the raw, senseless cruelty and my helplessness. For a while I was not travelling well. Otherwise I still have bouts of anxiety and depression, I’m still hyper vigilant and find it hard to show emotion. Ten years on, the memories are as intense as if they happened yesterday, but I keep it all to myself. Despite all this, what I have experienced has given me a kind of strength and perspective: I know that life is precious and what is important: having the love of my wife and sons. Tony Williams: The sense of abandonment expressed by Milan and others reminds me of the homecoming of many Vietnam veterans. The ADF used to have non-combat roles in stores and clerical work for the ‘walking wounded’— the physically or psychologically disabled—but since the early 1990s these jobs are contracted out and the criterion for retention is that everybody must be fit for immediate deployment. So many good service people are being medically discharged on grounds of PTSD. This has implications for individual morale and what is disclosed in debriefs, and also for what the ADF is losing. A colleague of mine commented that many of the cranky sergeants and officers he dealt with probably had PTSD from serving in Korea, but they were the backbone of the Army. Often peacemakers and peacekeepers express frustration with rules of engagement that go against all their military training. It is common for them to say ‘We were trained to fight, to face danger, to protect civilians.’ Recent literature has cited that the rule that bars you from shooting to protect others imposes severe stress. This rule did not apply for the first five months in East Timor. It was of interest that nearly all the people I saw who served with INTERFET had previous experience in Cambodia, Somalia or Rwanda. After their earlier deployment they appeared to have coped, although a number of them told me they were using alcohol to help with their nightmares and broken sleep. Then came INTERFET, in which our forces were exposed to significant risks, including contacts with pro-Indonesian militia. Some were involved in exhuming mass graves or observed evidence of East Timorese having been tortured, as in the case of Dave, a platoon commander referred to me. Dave: Our mandate meant we were able to use lethal force for the protection of ourselves, local civilians and property deemed ‘mission essential’. This meant that for the first time the majority of us were facing the very real prospect of taking someone’s life. Even as trained soldiers, this is an abstract thought until you are put in the situation and there was a lot of discussion 98


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about the circumstances in which it would be deemed necessary. The other monkey on our back was: ‘Are we going to live up to the Digger legend?’ With hindsight, although our actual departure was chaotic, a lot of planning had gone into it. In March 1999, when violence erupted in East Timor following President Habibie’s announcement that there would be a referendum on whether East Timor should remain part of Indonesia, the Government announced that another brigade would be brought to enhanced readiness at twenty-eight days’ notice. In June our brigade commander decided that it would be a prudent measure to put us through a pre-deployment program. A brigade exercise called Croc West began with the scenario of one country invading another, then once we had kicked them out we had to deal with the aftermath, forming a tactical co-ordination line and weapons control points, complete with insurgents coming across the border, cordon and searches of villages, searching and detaining people, all of which was reinforced in-country. We were well trained to go through the force continuum: to initially use verbal warnings—‘Stop! Hands up!’—with the aid of cards in Bahasa (but, funnily enough, not in Tetum, the first language of the East Timorese), and so on, only pointing our weapon as a last resort. Thanks to my very switched-on CO at the time—the best there is—we got a detailed briefing on the history and culture of East Timor, one officer bringing in an East Timorese family to talk about their experiences. We knew that an estimated 200 000 people—a quarter of the population—had died from massacres, disease and starvation since 1975 but they personalized the statistics, telling us what it was like to have a family member go missing, then have his mutilated body dumped outside their home. Still unsure whether we were going, our CO used battalion funds to send guys to do a Bahasa language course. He also brought his wife in to talk to families. I was single, but it made me aware of the issues, and while we were in-country he instigated the writing of a monthly newsletter to send home. His wife and other women formed the PIT [Partners In Timor] Crew, and when we started receiving mail the guys were getting things like jars of Vaseline to put under their noses to block the smell of decomposing bodies. When their partners realized we were on hard rats the PIT Crew sent food for the entire platoon! The day I left for East Timor, 7 October 1999, was bedlam. I was up until four in the morning preparing gear and getting my personal effects sorted for storage, checking on the guys, making sure they had finished their wills, the whole gamut. After two hours’ sleep, I was at a brief, to be told we were leaving in two hours. I ran off to get ammunition, thinking, ‘Stuff it, bullets are more important than food.’ Out of the Closet

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In the classic sense of ‘hurry up and wait’ we arrived at the airport, weighed down in Kevlar gear and packs, only to sit for six hours in the midst of frenetic activity, before hitching a ride on a Canadian C-130 Hercules. Coming into Dili, you could see massive black clouds rising from a burning fuel dump. It was like the whole town was on fire. Most buildings were burnt-out shells. The streets were deserted. Up to 200 000 people had been forcibly displaced or fled from their homes. We stayed at another battalion’s headquarters and the next morning I looked out the window to see an Indonesian Army barracks with a machine gun pointing directly at our building. I commented to a soldier, ‘That’s a bit rough.’ He laughed, saying: ‘That’s okay. We were thinking of putting you up in the morgue.’ A week later, my platoon arrived and within days our company was sent to Liquica, a coastal town west of Dili where on 6 April 1999 militia had conducted a grenade attack on a church, killing twenty-two people. On our approach we saw a couple of FALINTIL sitting on a ridge above the town, an ideal position for observing what was going on and for quick escape. Another platoon commander who spoke Bahasa, our OC and myself approached them, saying: ‘We have a company coming to detain militia and re-establish law and order. Where are the people?’ They hunched over in conversation, probably discussing whether they could trust us, asked a few more questions, then one of them got on his motorbike and tore off into the hills. Liquica is on the other side of the river to Dato, a town with a few colonial buildings. The majority of Liquica’s houses were shanties. A few were made of mud brick, or rock and mortar. In between Dato and Liquica was a transmigration centre for three thousand people. It had become a ghost town after the Indonesian Government evacuated the non-Timorese during and after the referendum. Immediately south of the transmigration area was the town’s telecommunications facility, where those who made phone calls could easily be observed and their conversations tapped. The million-dollar facility, complete with satellite dish and relays, had been smashed and burnt, presumably by the military. It was the same for all the major infrastructure of towns and villages along the roads. It appeared to be a co-ordinated campaign. We set up shop in the polri [police] station, which I had concern about: the new power taking over from the old power. The windows had been knocked out, human faeces lay in odd places and police records were scattered everywhere. Leafing through the files that documented incidents after February, we found some reports half-written in English, perhaps for the benefit of the UN observers. In others we worked out the gist. There would have been some polri who didn’t like what was going on and they could have been the ones who wrote the reports, especially after April, when the ABRI [Armed Forces of 100


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the Republic of Indonesia] split and the police became a separate service to the Army. We were told there was conflict between the two. The police were paid less and were relatively powerless. There is the occasional police brigadier, like Made Mangku Pastika, who was involved in identifying Kopassus as having killed the West Papuan independence leader Theys Hiyo Eluay and who subsequently headed investigations into the Bali bombing—honest and unafraid to get to the truth—but from what we saw the polri were scorned by the military. There were photos of smashed UN cars and a number of trophy photos: guys wearing red and white bandannas, holding handmade guns, standing next to others with modern automatic weapons, clearly the movers and shakers, behind a body as if they had just killed a wild pig. In the background of some photos you could see smiling TNI [Indonesian Armed Forces] or police with the militia. Very confronting photos showed people who had been beaten, tortured or dismembered. One set of negatives was a sequence of a guy having his head crushed with a rock. One of my soldiers goes: ‘Those tiles look like the ones in the photos.’ We had set up our kitchen and communal area where the guy had been killed. Outside we found the rock. To break the tension I tasked a guy to crush it with the APC. That first day, we did a recon with an East Timorese, who pointed out graves from 1975 and took us through the transmigration area. Before leaving town the Indonesian military had trashed and burnt their barracks and painted English graffiti on the walls: ‘Australia you die’, ‘Australian Army—you lose’. Graffiti in Bahasa said nasty things about our mothers. When our guide ushered me into one room his effusive manner turned quiet and wary. Stuck down a water cubicle were bones and bits of decomposing body. The remains became known as LIL, Lady In Loo. They were of a young woman who had worked with UNAMET to count the referendum ballots. To take revenge they had beaten, tortured and raped her and then dismembered her. On a more detailed recon, I went back to the room to be told her family had taken her remains. On return to Australia I spoke about LIL to a military psychologist. Her comment was ‘Oh LIL—but the military police found no evidence.’ I’m thinking ‘What’s going on here?’ and said quietly, ‘I saw the remains. Who do you think told the MPs to investigate?’ After seeing LIL, our guide took us to a creek, saying ‘Here they shot two men and covered them with dirt.’ As everybody walked away my curiosity got the better of me. I jumped into the creek bed and scrambled at the earth. ‘Holy shit! It’s someone’s backbone.’ I trusted our guide after that. He told us that down the road near Maubara there was a well with about ten bodies inside. A patrol went to investigate. The guys reported back that they 102


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could see bodies—the only question was how deep the well was. Engineers were sent in but decided it was structurally unsafe, so the well was closed over and the case—like many others—was recorded as ‘unconfirmed’. In addition we found evidence of bodies having been moved, like what happened in Srebrenica. As the people came trickling back we heard a litany of atrocities committed by militia, with the imprimatur of the Indonesian authorities, and met enough guys with missing fingers or miss-set arms or legs to believe it all. Some were effectively crippled. I met scores of people who told us variations of ‘We hid as we watched my brother and father be taken away. They took them out to sea in a boat.’ When my guys were mucking around on the beach, doing doughnuts in their vehicle, they found a decomposing body and scattered bones half buried in the sand. The remains were dubbed BOB, as in ‘Bones On Beach’. Later I learnt that the intelligence officer of another battalion reported the excavation of a mass grave of about forty bodies in the Oecussi Enclave, near the border. Another five hundred metres and the grave would never have been discovered. There is no accurate count of the number killed in the six months leading up to the referendum on 30 August and afterwards. Some say two hundred. I believe it was significantly more. Estimates vary from a thousand to five thousand. The Indonesian Government was denying any systematic policy, claiming it was the action of rogue elements, and the Australian Government gave them the benefit of the doubt. In our area there were a number of reports that were never investigated, so when people ask ‘Where are the bodies?’ my answer is: ‘They are there, they just haven’t been discovered, countered or recorded.’ Liquica was one of the few places where records hadn’t been destroyed but it was only when we left that CIVPOL [UN Civilian Police] came down, bagged the documentation and took it away. For us, it just disappeared into the UN bureaucracy. On our first night in Liquica we were told 150 militia armed with automatic weapons were coming to attack us. Having seen the photos, having been on the initial recon and not fully knowing the lie of the land, I had never been so scared. I wandered around checking my guys on piquet, before thinking I might be spooking them. For the rest of the night I sat under a mosquito net, nervously waiting. The next day, CNN reported that the notorious mullet-haired militia leader Eurico Gutteres was in Liquica. Locals told us that he had left a path of death en route to West Timor. To investigate, the commander of INTERFET, Major General Peter Cosgrove, and his entourage flew down in two Black Hawks, which Cosgrove let us use to conduct an aerial overview. We saw many Out of the Closet

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people camped in the hills and others moving towards the coast. In the days that followed we were able to co-ordinate with the NGOs to provide potable water and emergency food for the returnees, the town’s water pipes having been smashed. Cosgrove was excellent. Some generals are reserved, but he had an easy rapport and proceeded to go through the list of common soldier grievances: ‘I have made a representation back home that we should have a two-beer-a-day policy and we’re going to try and get fresh rats to you once a week. Then there’s the matter of rotation. It might be six months, not nine, so don’t go spending all your allowances. I am also making a representation to the Chief that they cut back the requirement for the ICB [Infantry Combat Medal] from ninety days to sixty days because 2RAR and 3RAR are slated to go home in December.’ Sure enough, he delivered on every point. People started saying ‘He’d make a good Chief of Army.’ Initially the people were terrified of us. They saw us as military—Indonesian or Australian it made no difference—and we were very conscious that a mistake, even a small insult to the wrong person, could have significant ramifications, so a primary focus was to establish rapport. We’d ask local leaders to tell people that they no longer had to worry about militia; that they could come home. Later, in Aidabaleten, we asked the local priest to include this in his Sunday sermon. We made a point of doing foot and vehicle patrols, to look for militia and gather information but also to be seen, and to be on the spot if there was an altercation. Around Liquica, and later in Gleno, locals set up roadblocks in an attempt to control who was coming and going. One night we were at a roadblock having the discussion ‘You have to dismantle this’ when a carload of Muslims came down the road. The locals became very agitated. One waved a machete. We had to step in and escort the guys through town. Another day a woman and her two militia sons were recognized in Liquica’s market place. Two hundred people descended upon them, throwing stones and demanding vengeance. One of my corporals and his section, armed only with their personal weapons, stepped in and across the language barrier argued that the two young men had to go through the justice system. The locals taunted, ‘You’re here to protect us. Why are you protecting them?’ The corporal, a veteran of Cambodia, had to cock his weapon and say ‘You cannot harm these people’ before the crowd understood his seriousness. Later we radioed for the Military Police in Dili to come and take the militia to a repatriation centre. Armed FALINTIL were contained in enclaves in case the Indonesians provoked them, the chief one being Aileu in the hills near Dili. However, the CNRT

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[National Council for Timorese Resistance] had created a counter-militia that was habitually detaining and interrogating people. We heard they had captured a pro-Indonesian militia and through our company’s interpreter I insisted they hand him over. They gave us another man. I knew by his name that he wasn’t the man we wanted. I said ‘We know you have another one.’ When they handed him over we could see the bruises. I was in charge of twenty-five men. No women. The Army has a policy of not having women in a combat corps, although women working in other capacities are exposed to danger. A female tank driver would drive up from Dili. She’d be on her own, at the wheel and so unable to defend herself, with a tanker full of fuel: an attractive target. There were women like my future partner who worked in PSY OPS [Psychological Operations] and female medics who went out with an infantry patrol. I liked having them with us. Local women may be unwilling to talk to us fellows, but they would talk to a female medic, and whereas the male leaders might put on a macho front or give you an answer they think you want, women are sometimes more honest. They are the ones who know where their sons are. After four weeks in Liquica we spent two weeks in Dili, tasked to provide security at Pertamina Wharf, a fuel storage area on the main port. The Indonesians still had an estimated 20 000 to 25 000 troops in East Timor, mostly in Dili. At Cosgrove’s level, he had a certain cache, but on the ground there was tension. Frequently they would drive by and hurl verbal abuse or rocks at us, or we’d be out patrolling and the TNI walking down the street would deliberately shake out into an assault formation, pointing weapons. There would be a standoff until their commander came along, then they’d laugh and walk on. In late November 1999 we were sent up to Gleno in the hills south of Dili, staying in the military barracks, our AO including the town of Ermera and the surrounding villages. Only the more remote ones had not been destroyed. A section would go out on patrol in very rugged country, in heavy Kevlar gear and basic webbing, with packs and seven magazines, which had been frontline practice since Long Tan. In the heat they felt like sweaty mules. The only other forces we saw were a few UNMOs in Ermera headed by a Malaysian lieutenant colonel who drove around a lot. The Thais and South Koreans were stationed east of Dili. We were to the west. In December the battalion was moved forward to the border area to take over from 2RAR. We were based at Marko, a typical village of bamboo, palm and mud huts, with a poor excuse for a road and little infrastructure. We slept under hootchies. The guys nicknamed it Shitsville. There was a road on one

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side of the river but when we crossed to conduct a patrol on the other side, carrying only basic first aid supplies, we saw kids with eyes gummed up and people drinking filthy water. People hadn’t been able to plant crops. The wet season was coming and remote villages would be cut off for months. We gave the kids eye drops, wondering why aid wasn’t being brought in, and went back to Maliana and asked the aid agencies. Their answer was, ‘It’s too hard to cross the river.’ ‘Our armoured vehicles can take you across.’ ‘Oh no! Being seen in your vehicles would impinge on our neutrality.’ ‘Hang on, we’re not TNI. We’re INTERFET, we’re here to help.’ From Marko we moved to Aidabaleten on the coast, a village of a few hundred people, with a church and some civic buildings as well as huts. One day a guy brazenly walked past carrying a weapon. We’re chasing him, yelling out and he’s oblivious. Finally he turns, sees us, and keeps walking! I cocked my weapon, yelled and motioned for him to put down his weapon. He clicks. I’m telling him ‘Don’t carry that around’ and pulling out this little phrase book with helpful things like, ‘Which way to the airport?’ I’m saying, ‘Kilat’, for ‘weapon’, and he’s going ‘No, no.’ I’m saying ‘I can now see it’s not real’ (we had come across carved wooden replicas before) ‘but you shouldn’t carry it because it looks real and you don’t want to end up accidentally dead.’ A curious crowd gathered, some offering words like ‘Coca-Cola’, which helped enormously. The language problem was partially solved by PSY OPS designed leaflets with graphics and instructions in Tetum and Bahasa. We’d take the leaflets with us: ‘Don’t carry dummy weapons or you could get shot’ and ‘Don’t take retribution against members of the militia’ and ‘Any person concerned about the welfare of an apprehended person should contact the INTERFET Headquarters in Dili’. The leaflets were a great help. If we had unnecessarily killed someone we would have lost the trust of the people and our safety rested on that trust. It was tense until Christmas. The TNI had not planned to lose East Timor and their antagonism towards us was clear, as was demonstrated by the Montaain incident on 10 October. On this occasion an Australian platoon was patrolling ahead of their company and next thing crack crack. Guys dived into a ditch, those forward of them firing back, killing two militia. At first it was, ‘What side of the border are we on?’ They could see Indonesian militia in cam pants and T-shirts in the company of off duty TNI. As the Aussies moved forward, shaking out in case the contact continued, there’s some footage showing the section commander saying, ‘All right, take a beat on him but do not fire unless he aims his weapon at you.’ The bodies and other militia were subsequently taken away by truck and the media portrayed it as an incident 106


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between Australian and Indonesian military. The TNI had been told we were a pushover but incidents like that helped establish an uneasy truce, before AUSBATT began regular border meetings with the Indonesian military. As well as the TNI and militia, the Indonesian media was also demonising our presence, juxtaposing pictures of soldiers and bodies, so people crossing over from West Timor were terrified. When an inoculation program started, rumour had it that we were giving people lethal injections. To counteract the propaganda AUSBATT set up border information centres, their message being reinforced by us in the villages. Tensions eased with the onset of the wet season, when traditionally people spend time with their families. Militia were dumping their weapons and crossing the border to go home, returning to West Timor in the New Year. That’s why 6RAR had contacts in late January, but in the Christmas–New Year period, within twenty-four hours of our rules of engagement becoming restricted to defending life not property, there was an incident in which an unarmed party stole an Australian soldier’s weapon, which is a big deal—losing your weapon. Frequently individuals and groups infiltrated across the border, sometimes tripping over a flare and giving themselves away. If they were unarmed, all we could do was watch as they ran like rabbits back into West Timor. I think it was the Indonesian way of pushing the envelope and retaining face but one guy was caught sniping at the Kiwis. We were to use minimum force but the Kiwi only had a 50 cal on top of an APC, which pretty well took the guy apart. Although he had Indonesian military ID the Indonesians disowned him, saying ‘He was off duty.’ So it was serious business along the border. Having seen what had been done to the East Timorese people, my guys were saying: ‘If we catch someone like Eurico Gutteres, Boss, I don’t know if we are going to let him go’; and for me it was: ‘I know what you’re saying’. We had stepped over that invisible line. If we had caught a militia doing the wrong thing it was no longer a matter of ‘Could I take someone’s life?’ To this day, I haven’t forgiven them for what they did to the East Timorese. As a lieutenant I’d go out with my entire platoon but often a section went out and there was a dilemma: I had to show confidence in my corporals yet not give the impression that I wasn’t contributing. Another dilemma was how familiar I got. Most of the guys were my age and had similar cultural references, the same taste in music; it’s just that I’d gone through university and officer training. There are people who say you need to keep some distance or you could make the wrong decision and put life in harm’s way. That’s rubbish. You need to have rapport, to understand what they are going through, if only to balance out the fatigue, nerves and personality Out of the Closet

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clashes. But also you have to earn respect, to be able to pull them up: ‘I know you think it’s a waste of time, but we’ve been given an order.’ There were times when I’d get frustrated, like when I didn’t get to call home when the other guys did, which is understandable—as platoon commander I went last and we would run out of time. After Christmas, once a week they’d bring in fresh rats and we’d have a barbecue. I’d go and socialize, but would not drink. I wanted to keep a clear head and would give my allocation to a soldier saying ‘Good work on patrol’, then duck off to give the guys some space. I felt the need to talk, but how do you admit to being terrified—say, on that first night in Liquica —to guys who look to you to keep them safe? They don’t cover that in Duntroon. No one had prepared me for how lonely it can be as a lieutenant. In hindsight, I isolated myself too much but there were no ghosts from Vietnam giving me pointers. The battalion stayed on the border till Anzac Day 2000 but on 20 January I was rotated home. I wanted to stay with my guys, but was told ‘You’re getting promoted.’ In-country I had a five-minute debrief—there were so many men to get through. The battalion’s demobilization was well managed. Before going on leave the guys went on a malaria eradication program and for about six weeks played sport and knocked off early, so they could adjust back to family life. After three months they got an in-depth interview. But for those posted out early it was ad hoc and I fell through the cracks. My experience was handing in my weapon and being signed out with ‘See you later.’ It snowballed from there. On the ten-week course I was waking every night between 1 and 3 a.m., the time I would roster myself on piquet to give the guys a break. I’d lie in bed thinking about Timor or go for a run. Smells triggered memories. When we had first arrived in Dili I was struck by the fragrance of tropical flowers and the odour of death, decay and faeces. In Queensland I would be running past tropical flowers and flash to that first night—how deserted Dili was and the looks on people’s faces: as scared as hell. I was haunted by images of LIL, or a figure in the middle of burnt-out buildings. I’d ask myself ‘Why couldn’t we have gone in earlier?’ We couldn’t have invaded but they could have put more pressure on Indonesia, especially when the killing started. I was trying to put everything into perspective, while the course instructors were openly deriding our experiences: ‘You lot in Dili had it easy. We saw you in the newspaper partying up on Melbourne Cup Day!’ There was an anxiety building up. In East Timor my decisions impacted on my soldiers, and on the course I’m going: ‘Hang on, why gloss over that? It could save lives.’ I would stand up for what I thought was right—not aggressively, more in a cold calculating way, but

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conversations went in circles until I was told ‘Get over it champion.’ Then I’d see red. I was putting myself in situations where I was prepared to use force when it was inappropriate. This wasn’t me. It was someone I didn’t like. I went to a career adviser and tried to explain. He butted in: ‘I appreciate that you worked hard in Timor but get over it.’ I shut down. One warrant officer goaded and goaded until I got stuck into him. He reported me to the senior instructor, and sure enough the SI called me in. He happened to be a British exchange officer filling the job temporarily. He said, ‘Dave, could you tell me your story?’ ‘I’m just back from East Timor and if this guy carried on like he is doing over there, he would cost people their lives.’ The SI studied me, and then started a line of questioning, ‘What did you see in Timor?’ ‘Stuff.’ ‘Bodies?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Are you sleeping?’ ‘No.’ ‘How much time have you had off since you came back?’ ‘A week.’ ‘Dave, this is normal in the British Army after soldiers have been to Northern Ireland. We have programs in place. I’m going to get you some help.’ I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t fortuitously crossed paths with this Brit. He arranged for a debrief at the psych centre at Enogerra but I was more concerned about finishing the course than being honest. I gave all the right answers: ‘I’ve had troubles but I’m better now.’ After the course I went to a Regional Force Surveillance Unit in Northern Australia. It was everything I expected it to be. I worked the first four weeks without a day off. Occasionally I would snap or be sarcastic and think, ‘I don’t like this.’ When the adjutant pulled me up, with ‘Mate, don’t act like this, it’s unnecessary’, I started crying with frustration. I didn’t know how to deal with all the physical stuff. He asked whether I wanted to talk. I didn’t feel I could— he hadn’t been overseas. But my CO had and he invited me to dinner with his family. I was in the backyard sitting cross-legged because that’s what we did in Timor and he’s like, ‘Dave, come and sit on a chair. You’re not in Timor now.’ Days later he goes: ‘Would you like to go to Bougainville?’ ‘Of course.’ Bougainville suited me fine. I hadn’t unpacked my belongings. The paraphernalia scared me. For ten weeks I was based at headquarters in Arawa, tasked with helping run the Peace Monitoring Group, to keep the team sites supplied and relay information back to Australia. It was rewarding work. Bougainville was a bit like Timor, maybe worse. Both the Bougainville Revolutionary Army and the Papua New Guinea Defence Force had been responsible for a lot of death and damage.

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Initially I had a good boss but he was replaced by one whose way of speaking was: ‘Did you kill anyone in Timor?’ and ‘I was here when the South Pacific peacekeeping force brokered the talks in 95. That was harder than Timor.’ He’d get stuck into me and I’d go, ‘Don’t treat me like an idiot, Sir.’ I went to the personnel officer and warned him my boss was going to write a bad report. The personnel officer says: ‘I’m surprised you didn’t come to me earlier. Your boss is a social hand grenade.’ I was referred to the chief of staff, who said ‘Your Major has been bad mouthing you but I reckon there’s more to it.’ ‘He’s belittling my experiences in Timor, Sir.’ This colonel clicks. ‘Where I come from I only have to know someone’s background. We had the Black Hawk accident. Fifteen SAS dead. We’ve had other incidents. We’ll sort you out’, and he spoke with Land Headquarters in Sydney and got my posting changed to Sydney. For my Bougainville debrief they put me last, figuring I’d have a bit to say. When I finished, the psychologist said, ‘You seem okay about Bougainville.’ ‘I’m fine. Shit happened but nothing I couldn’t handle.’ I came back to Sydney and enjoyed talking with friends, but when I went for a formal evaluation the army psychologist wrote that I had symptoms of PTSD. I did not know the significance of this until I was referred to Dr Williams out at Holsworthy. On the first visit I am crying. On the second visit I learn he is a Vietnam vet, that here was someone who understood army culture. He worked with me and over time my condition improved. Later he said: ‘You suffer from anxiety, not PTSD’, which clearly I did and from time to time still do. Something triggers tightness in my chest. I’m hyper alert. A door slams: I jump. But it’s manageable. The whole experience has made me want to do advocacy work. The military has got to acknowledge that problems occur and people can pull through. Apart from Dr Williams’s care and professionalism, what helped was meeting my partner, Alison, in 2000. Getting posted to Sydney meant I could be with her. She had served in East Timor with PSY OPS, working on leaflets. She had been to places I had been, so it was easy to open up. Then when she went back to Timor for six months I experienced everything from the angle of having a partner who’s not there and who’s not mentioning things on the phone. After she came back there were adjustments on both sides. A few months later she was posted back to East Timor, then to Kosovo, before going to the Middle East in February 2003. Even within the military, there was a lot of debate about Iraq. Some did not support Australia going in. I did. Having seen what happens to people when regimes rule by fear and violence, I can’t abide it any more. I would say:

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‘I don’t care about weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant to his people; he has to go.’ When Alison was over there, many people outside the military would say ‘We shouldn’t be there.’ It made me realize that no matter how right it is, it’s no good going to war if you don’t have the support of the people. Our 2003 separation was more challenging than the others. We had no contact for six weeks and there were some confronting things, like seeing a photo of Alison dressed in a gas mask and protective clothing. It turned out to be a false alarm, but they didn’t know that at the time. They had a number of chemical alerts. In Special Forces Headquarters on the night of 19 March 2003, when the SAS crossed into Iraq, there was a palpable silence. After Baghdad fell on 9 April, she flew into Baghdad. The Herc came under fire and had to take evasive action. When she came back in May, I got her to tell me everything blow by blow, asking, ‘How did you feel?’ ‘Helpless. We were flying low so we could distribute leaflets and out the window we could see tracers, smoke and flashes from the SAMS.’ Alison’s job was to oversee the design and content of the leaflets in accordance with the different stages of the campaign. Initially our government was saying ‘We are not part of regime change’, so they steered clear of that, although they demonised Saddam: ‘Your children suffer while Saddam spends money on houses, cars and parties. Support the coalition effort to bring you a better life.’ Other leaflets said ‘Soldiers fighting in either military or civilian clothing will be destroyed by coalition forces. Stay at home and live, or return to the battlefield and die’ and ‘Coalition forces treat captured Iraqi forces with care and return them home with honour’. After the SF Commander approved the product it was translated into Arabic and given to another Arabic speaker to re-translate to make sure they weren’t saying ‘The coalition has funny noses.’ The final check was asking Arab people for their reactions. Then the leaflets were distributed in special boxes that broke open mid-air. The quality of their product meant the Americans asked them to produce leaflets. Of the eight million leaflets they produced, seven million were for the Americans. It was our PSY OPS team that produced the one million leaflets dropped after major combat operations had ended: ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom has been a success. Hostilities have ended’ and ‘The coalition thanks you for your co-operation and will continue to assist Iraq to establish a new government’. On her return Alison had no dramas and was then posted to the Solomon Islands for four months. She is a little tired but she takes it in her stride. She

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says her experiences are not as bad as mine. I say: ‘That’s like me saying I wasn’t at Kibeyo, so why am I getting frustrated and angry with myself? You can’t compare operations.’ Tony Williams: This lieutenant did not have a problem with alcohol, which was beneficial for his recovery. Substance abuse compounds the problems. I routinely ask about a person’s drinking habits before the mission, on the mission and afterwards and find many self-medicate with alcohol. The dilemma is that a lot of programs insist on detoxifying the veteran first, so the person is put under added pressure. That the peacemakers and peacekeepers are usually in their twenties— young, tough and very fit—means their anger and irritability can be intimidating, particularly if they are from Special Forces. My gut feeling with a couple of veterans was that their level of control was paper-thin and I made sure I sat near an open door. After an initial one-hour session, if possible I involve their partner in subsequent sessions, as service personnel present to their family what they may not present to their peers or be willing to admit to. I educate both of them about the condition and its management. It’s often an eye opener for the partner to distinguish between the personality and the symptomatology. It helps explain the behaviour, although I always stress that it does not excuse it. I take a hard line on domestic violence: zero tolerance. I explain that PTSD may reduce the sentence but not the criminal charge. In one case, a veteran and his wife were driving back from a party when she commented, ‘I wish you’d behave yourself.’ On arriving home he said ‘I’ll teach you’. He then ripped off the front door and went from room to room smashing furniture. A few weeks later his wife said to him ‘I’m sick of your mood swings.’ His response was to strangle her dog. She came to me, with his knowledge, and asked ‘Do you think it’s serious what he’s done?’ I said ‘I’d take his threat of violence quite seriously’, and I hope she did. I am constantly surprised by the degree of threat or actual violence some women put up with, although unlike many Vietnam veteran marriages—and this is an impression, I have no data on this—a lot of the peacekeepers’ marriages are shortlived, especially if there are no children. While the threat of a break-up is a strong incentive to seek help, when a relationship does fall apart the younger veteran is left to deal with his problems alone. As a psychiatrist it is hard dealing with the anger, case after case. I feel for the men and their families, but also there is a sense of frustration: many are going to be discharged, and while I try to make sure they get their entitlements and a continuity of treatment, I know they are in for a stormy road ahead. One 112


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factor in their favour is that peacemakers and peacekeepers do not have to deal with the negative homecoming that hurt so many veterans of Vietnam. The community accepts their roles as peacemakers and peacekeepers. This is not necessarily the case for the service men and women who serve in Iraq. This potentially adds stress—even if, at the time of deployment, service personnel are convinced that there are valid reasons for our involvement. At least the debriefing program and level of education of the officers and noncommissioned officers on what to look for means cases can be picked up earlier. These factors may reduce the likelihood of isolation, which seems to be a significant contributor to PTSD, although there, as yet, is no hard scientific evidence for this. Nevertheless I find the younger veterans more difficult to engage than the older Vietnam veterans. Those still in the services fear that stigmatization will affect their relationships with their peers and superiors, as well as their careers, and this is reality-based. As a member of the VVCS National Advisory Committee I co-wrote a report to the Minister of Veterans’ Affairs on the subject. Peer attitudes, and the ADF’s management of some soldiers who have reported psychological problems, have not always been helpful. For instance, the rehabilitation platoon in one military base is known as the ‘spastic platoon’. Even those without mental problems can be bastardized for being different. I treated one veteran of East Timor, who was bullied and vilified for being a devout Christian. He developed major depression and self-referred to a uniformed psychologist, who sent a report back to his commanding officer recommending an administrative discharge. Such a discharge has significant implications for future employment. He came to me—a 21-year-old man, trembling, crying and confused. With the help of a military doctor and a very supportive family we pulled every string possible to get him the more honourable medical discharge, but even that can carry a stigma. People can leave the service feeling like they have failed their peers, their family and themselves. My own background, serving as a regimental medical officer in Vietnam from March 1967 to January 1968, enabled me to better relate to what combat soldiers endure out in the field, but for a good two decades I was reticent about disclosing my experience. For instance, I worked for two years part-time at the Australian Centre for Post-Traumatic Health, tasked with accrediting PTSD programs, before it was revealed to my colleagues that I had been to Vietnam. In Vietnam I never fired a weapon and my only direct confrontation with Vietnamese was when half a dozen cowboys attacked me on the street in Saigon. Fortunately I was bigger and stronger and they failed in their robbery. Mind you, I wasn’t carrying anything worth robbing. Out of the Closet

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Four years after graduating from medicine, having volunteered to go to Vietnam as a doctor on the understanding I would be working in the field hospital in Vung Tau, I found myself, instead, serving as a regimental medical officer for 7 Battalion. This meant I would go out on operations or be taken out by helicopter to triage casualties in the field and when veterans talk of the adrenalin rush I immediately think back to my first experience of being winched down from a helicopter during Operation Forrest, launched in November 1967 to stop rice supplies getting through to the Viet Cong. The men were involved in a contact near a bunker system, which resulted in two deaths and at least twenty-two wounded. I flew in on one of three Iroquois helicopters. The rain was torrential, and in the pitch black of night, in the middle of RPG explosions and machine gun fire, we hovered over the canopy. To be winched down I had to put my arms through a harness and hold tight, before being lowered by a steel cable until my feet touched the leaves. The problem was they could not find a hole in the canopy so it took five attempts—the cable being reeled in and out, me going up and down—not the most secure feeling in the world, especially as I have a fear of heights! All I could do was close my eyes. I was so hyped up, it was almost surreal. Once on the ground, I had to crawl forward to the injured lying on makeshift stretchers in the oppressively wet dark undergrowth, to sort out who had priority for Dustoff. One of the hardest decisions I ever had to make was when the soldiers wanted me to send someone I knew was not going to survive, ahead of others who I deemed more urgent in terms of their resuscibility. In the end I sent the person because I felt that the troops would lose confidence otherwise. It took me two hours to triage the casualties and arrange for them to be winched up on a stretcher or in the harness. I was the last to be winched up. Like many veterans I have forgotten many details and even whole incidents. I remember spending four days sitting in the sandhills near the fishing village of Phuoc Hai while engineers laid mines. The sappers had refused to lay the mines unless a doctor was there, which seemed rather absurd to me. That time only a few stray dogs were blown up. However I do not remember a more critical time in late May, during Operation Leeton, when M-16 mines were being laid between Dat Do and Phuoc Hai, and one sapper was killed and two suffered appalling injuries and I was flown in. I only know of my involvement because it is written up in my battalion’s book. Injured VC were treated in the Australian field hospital in Vung Tau, alongside injured Australians, after which they would be carted away for interrogation, while very sick or injured Vietnamese civilians were sent to the Australian-run civilian hospital in Vung Tau or Binh Hoa, Australian nurses 114


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doing wonderful work in all three hospitals. I regularly held a day clinic at an ARVN [South Vietnamese Army] military compound up the road from the village of Binh Ba, and at least once a fortnight I held a sick parade in different villages, working with a Vietnamese interpreter. One day, escorted by a platoon, I visited the village of Binh Gia, known for its communist sympathies. We set up and, as usual, the Australian soldiers were handing out lollies to the children, the whole atmosphere quite festive and relaxed. But then I noticed that a lot of the patients were young men. That was unusual: all young men were in one of the armed forces, allied or otherwise. I also noted that they were paler and I was getting a lot of skin and chest complaints. It did not take too long for me to work out that I was doing a sick parade for a North Vietnamese Regiment that must have got intelligence that I was coming. Last in line was a person better dressed than the rest. Assuming he was their officer, I said to the interpreter: ‘Tell him, I understand that his doctor must be sick for these people to be here.’ The interpreter refused to translate, so I spoke to this man in my limited high school French, giving him a present of Vitamin B injections for their doctor, who I knew, from our intelligence, to be female. I then informed the non-commissioned officer with me: ‘Alert the soldiers. Get everyElectronic rights for this image are not one organized. We’re getting out available. of here—now.’ As we packed, their officer came up, thanked me, kissed me on both cheeks and wished me a safe trip home! Back in base I raced up to the CO’s tent. The CO and the intelligence officer looked at the maps and confirmed that it must have been the particular regiment I suspected: the notorious D 445. On average I treated forty Regimental Medical Officer Captain Tony patients a day—mainly back at the Williams listening to an interpreter giving Regimental Aid Post in battalion a patient’s medical history at a civil aid lines. The most common condi- clinic in the Phuoc Tuy Province, tions were malaria, scrub typhus, Vietnam, 1967. Out of the Closet

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tropical fevers of unknown origin, skin conditions related to the tropics and not being able to wash, respiratory conditions, intestinal and orthopaedic complaints and minor injuries. Then there were bites and stings from snakes, wasps, spiders and ticks. Mosquitoes were everywhere. You’d have a very fit soldier out in the field and suddenly he’d come down with a temperature of forty degrees and be unable to stand. There were more Dustoffs for illness than for injuries, especially in August–September, and November, after an operation in the Thua Tich area, where 7 Battalion had a malaria epidemic. The helicopters were like swarms of wasps, taking the sick to hospital. I was nearly sent home because of it. I reported that the strain in the particular swamps the men had been in seemed resistant to Paludrine, our preventative treatment, but was accused by my superiors of not ensuring that all the men were taking the precautionary measures. I told them I was sure, based on my communications with the medics I had placed in each platoon. A few dreadful months followed, in which time everyone was subject to intense interrogation, but tests completed after I returned to Australia proved my case. A few years later the ADF set up a malaria research unit. It was an era when we were quite blasé about chemicals and other occupational hazards. I remember seeing planes spraying Agent Orange north of Nui Dat as if they were crop dusting. Soldiers fired mortars without earmuffs and there was no adequate skin protection from the sun. In regard to my own well-being, the camaraderie out in the field and in the officers’ mess helped, as did my regular brief to the CO. The problem was I never knew when I was going to be called out to a more dangerous situations. There was always an apprehension, and at one stage I felt run down. I was losing weight and it was recommended I take five days’ leave. I went to Bangkok and it was probably the worst thing I could have done. I was alone. However, I went back with a reel-to-reel stereo system and used music to unwind. Unfortunately, some of the soldiers in nearby tents did not appreciate my taste in music. They would yell out ‘Oh God he’s got bloody Joan Sutherland on again.’ At night I was available for people to come and talk if they had psychological issues, and I developed an interesting way of dealing with some individuals who had combat-related stress. As a medical officer and a captain I was entitled to have a batman, which was particularly helpful out in the bush. To case-conference with the company medics, I would spend a lot of time on the administrative radio net, so the batman would fix up my evening meal and prepare my night position. I’d had a series of batmen who were pretty hopeless, so I suggested to the company commander that I could take on as my

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batmen some of the men I was seeing with stress reactions, before they went back to their platoon. I’d take an individual for a week, talk about ordinary things and gradually ease him back to piquet work, then he’d go back to his company. Recently, the commanding officer told me he would marvel at how I could get these men back into shape. It was this kind of work, coupled with the horror of the injuries I saw, that significantly influenced my decision to study psychiatry on my return to Australia. In 1999, when my colleagues at the Australian Centre for Post-Traumatic Health discovered I was a Vietnam veteran, they asked me to give a talk to doctors, nurses and psychologists in the Armed Forces on the role of a regimental medical officer with a battalion. Although I encouraged the soldiers I treated to talk freely, the thought of talking about my own traumatic instances made me nervous. I was sweating and had a bit of a tremor. I worried that I might get teary, but I kept control of the meeting. My audience would have seen me as having no personal issues at all. I avoided bringing up the fact that, after many years of living an apparently normal life, I was losing confidence, getting irritable, having periods of depression and not coping with even parttime work. A contributing factor was that, despite my professional experience, I had not diagnosed myself. Having come out of the closet about my service at least, I began wearing my Return from Active Service badge when meeting veterans and staff of PTSD programs to be accredited. I noticed the on-site meetings were more orderly after that. I was now one of them. What is most confronting about these meetings is how easily veterans are aroused to unrestrained, high-volume anger. When an individual brings up personal traumatic memories, I feel this frantic need to put a lid on him— firstly, so he won’t embarrass himself, but secondly so he won’t escalate. Part of me wants to provide clinical feedback but that could cut across the clinical work already being done. I try to defuse the situation and get the meeting back onto providing feedback about the program and the follow-up treatment. Afterwards I talk to those who have been stirred up and if they are still distressed I make sure one of the staff sees them. What worries me is the number of World War II and Korean vets, now in their seventies and eighties, who break down in tears as they describe years of nightmares and mood swings. For them the programs often seem too little, too late, although one older vet told one meeting: ‘My wife said to me, “I want you do to the program. I don’t want you buggering up the grandchildren with your anger and irritability like you buggered up your children”, so I came and did

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the program and I’m pleased to tell you I am not buggering up my grandchildren.’ But even when all goes well I leave the meetings feeling absolutely drained. It is as if I have been at the end of a battering ram. After Vietnam I thought I’d adjusted. I saw Vietnam as a unique, intense experience, having always been interested in other cultures, as was of my father. He had worked as an intelligence officer in the Air Force in Wewak, Aitape and in the Pacific with the Americans during World War II. Being fluent in Japanese he would interrogate prisoners and after the war he spent six months in the occupation forces in Kobi. He was a hard disciplinarian and always clamped down when war was mentioned. He also had these unexplained collapses that put him in hospital but he always liked Japanese people and kept up his Japanese, even after he retired. In 1968 I was sent to Orange Hospital to do my first year training in psychiatry. One of the other trainees was also in the Army Reserve, so we went to an Anzac Day celebration and one of the RSL people came up and said ‘We don’t like people like you coming here with your Mickey Mouse ribbons.’ I was shocked. On one occasion at the hospital, when I heard people talking in a nearby room and smelt something that reminded me of Vietnam, my pulse rate rose. I began to sweat, feel dizzy and have difficulty breathing. A group of Vietnamese doctors was visiting the hospital. Once I saw them I settled down. When driving back to Sydney on the Bells Line of Road I’d have a vivid memory of crawling through an unsecured area and the injuries I’d treated, or when I couldn’t resuscitate a person or when I accompanied a seriously injured person in a helicopter, I would relive the tension, frustration or anxiety and the sensation of being winched down from a helicopter, and would start to sweat. I had to pull over to the side of the road and focus on anything other than Vietnam. I told my supervisor and he asked: ‘What’s the most dangerous thing you do now that you’re back?’ ‘Driving.’ When I came down to Sydney for my second and third year, many of the nurses were going to the big anti-war demonstrations and would say ‘Why don’t you come?’ I never went, partly because it would have been disloyal to those I’d served with, and partly because I disagreed with the anti-war propaganda—more than their political stance. I was ambivalent about the war. I had gone over accepting the political rhetoric of the day, but over the months became aware that it was a civil war, that we shouldn’t have been involved. Yet I was proud of what we’d done in Phuoc Tuy Province, and what was being said about Australian soldiers made me angry. It was from this time that I resolved not to tell anyone that I was a Vietnam veteran. 118


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In 1973, for three months I became withdrawn and low in energy and interest—the classic symptoms of depression. I do not know the cause but I sought treatment and when I met my wife-to-be I was on anti-depressants. Initially I did not mention that I was a Vietnam veteran and we never discussed it; it was in the past. We married in 1974 and went to the States after I got a Fellowship to do a Masters degree at Yale. A number of classmates were Vietnam veterans. On their homecoming some had been physically assaulted or refused entry into restaurants. Our daughter was born after our return to Australia in 1975, our first son in 1977 and our second son in 1980. Given my interest in cross-cultural work, on the request of Foreign Affairs I became involved in debriefing Afghan students when the Afghan monarchy was overthrown in 1973. In 1983, in response to a newspaper advertisement, I applied for and accepted the position of consultant psychiatrist for the Government’s community mental health program in Botswana. The whole family went with me, for two years living in a northern rural town. As well as teaching nurses and doctors I spent one week of every month going on field trips to Bantu villages, conducting consultations through an interpreter. Epilepsy was common, and those who fitted often suffered burns from the open fire. There were cases of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and young people suffering from short-term psychosis. A number of patients were wasting away and dying from unknown causes. It could have been AIDS. The children loved Botswana. We went to the game parks in Zimbabwe and they played with expatriate and local children. Our eldest son was six and always a leader of the pack, climbing trees and going off on adventures. We invariably had to go looking for him. A year after we arrived, he climbed onto the roof of a friend’s house and was electrocuted by uninsulated wires. The housemaid saw him and Lyn climbed up and attempted to resuscitate him, a Belgian nurse giving assistance. Lyn phoned me at the hospital and I raced to the house but was unable to save him. I coped by denial, by working and not talking about it, whereas Lyn got comfort from correspondence with a selfhelp group for people who had lost children. Our daughter was very upset. I tried to compensate by spending time with the children, taking them on the motor scooter around town or into the bush. The 1998 DVA Vietnam Veterans’ Health Study, which canvassed forty thousand people and received a ninety per cent response, discovered that the death of younger children by accident occurs at twice the expected rate among Vietnam veterans’ children. I have never thought about whether my son knew that I had gone to Vietnam although he would have seen my medals and met veteran friends. On our return to Australia our daughter suffered depression Out of the Closet

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Dr Tony Williams and his wife, Lyn, and children, Karen, Simon and Damien, before leaving for Botswana, December 1982.

and we sought treatment for her. We would remember our son’s death every year but it’s only in the last few years that Lyn and I have been able to talk about him. Now we commemorate his birth. Since Botswana I’ve worked for the World Health Organization in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, teaching nurses and doctors, conducting workshops and taking part in the examination of prospective psychiatrists. In 1990 I went to Hanoi and Saigon to review community mental health services and the treatment of mental disorders. The services were under-resourced and reached only twenty-five per cent of the population, a primary focus being alcohol and narcotic abuse. Before this visit I had reviewed research on the manifestation of PTSD in different cultures. In 1984 Dr Tsang conducted the first study into PTSD among Vietnamese refugees in Australia and found no evidence of it. A later study used community leaders to engage participants and found the opposite. This lead to the formation of STARTTS, a mental health service for refugees, specializing in treating trauma-affected people, which I was involved in getting started. It was interesting to compare groups. The Chileans were very verbal and psychological in their expression of trauma. The Cambodians expressed it more in psychosomatic terms. 120


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In regard to my own symptoms, Lyn says I get spaced out, that my mind is somewhere else, and over the years I’ve had episodes of nightmares and drenching night sweats—we put it down to me being a restless sleeper or to the remnant of a tropical illness. I only have partial memory of the nightmares. They are not necessarily war footage—more situations of violence where I am unable to stop people from being injured, or I am unable to help. I’ve coped by having a few drinks to help me sleep. By the 1990s I was finding the pressure and nature of my work increasingly difficult. When driving with a colleague up the freeway to Newcastle, on the approach to Mooney Mooney Bridge, which traverses a gorge, I suddenly went into a state of acute panic: sweating, hyperventilating and feeling dizzy. It was all I could do to steer the car onto the verge. The same thing started happening on the Anzac Bridge, then the Harbour Bridge and the bypass at Mittagong. Just the speed on the freeways was so unnerving that I lost confidence in negotiating lanes. I was working six days a week, bringing work home and putting off dinner until I’d settled. Then I’d often pick at the food, saying, ‘The cooking’s lovely, it’s just that I haven’t got the appetite.’ Sometimes I would add, ‘It’s been one of those days.’ I would not expand—the experiences I was hearing about were too shocking. I was irritable and would shout, ‘Why is the house in such a mess?’ without registering my volume, tone of voice or body language. Lyn would not reply or confront the behaviour, preferring to get out of the way. With my adolescent daughter and son, for a period of about eight years I was rather rigid and controlling. I considered I was being fair and appropriate but I set high standards—at the top end of the normal range—whether it was to do with their behaviour, homework, level of cleanliness or tidiness. The kids would say ‘Why are you so angry?’ or ‘Stop shouting’, and I’d shout back: ‘I’m not shouting! Why aren’t you pulling your weight?’ Lyn would distract me and later say quietly that I had been ‘over the top’ or ‘overboard’ in my reactions. The kids would check with their mother first: ‘Will this make Dad angry?’ Of course they rebelled against this grumpy old bastard. Lyn developed the habit of feeding them before I came home. The whole family was on tenterhooks not to stir me. Meanwhile, I felt misunderstood, alienated and numb. I’d say to Lyn ‘They have to understand the hours I work and the pressure I’m under’ and she’d say ‘But you should relax when you come home.’ ‘How can I relax when they’re doing that?’ It was always a circular conversation without resolution. None of us related my panic attacks, irritability and other foibles to Vietnam, even though I was treating post-traumatic stress on a regular basis. For some people the bottom suddenly falls out from underneath them, whereas for me it was cumulative, like a stone gathering moss over years. Time Out of the Closet

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camouflaged the pattern. I put individual symptoms down to the stress of work, the pace of life, bringing up adolescents and having middle age descend upon me—no longer being physically resilient. If one or two coping mechanisms break down that puts a strain on the system and other symptoms can surface. I thought the best way to handle it was to cut down on work and create a new lifestyle. In 1997 I did so but I was still coming home exhausted and stressed. Feedback from the family was that I remained a tyrant. Then the tremors started, even when I wasn’t driving, although unnoticed by me. I began to have an exaggerated startle response to any loud noise. I would not answer the phone, my theory being that it is a fear of the unknown, a need to control the environment and one’s reactions to it, which I later realized can be a feature of PTSD. I became anti-social and began having an intense aversion to crowds. It was a matter of excessive vigilance—becoming careful wherever I went, including where I sat in a restaurant or on a train. My reactions to driving grew worse and by 2001 they were dangerous. My vision would blur, I would be so tense, tremulous and sweaty that I couldn’t grip the steering wheel. At home, to rebalance I’d go for a walk, have a drink and be generally irritable and difficult. Fortunately Lyn has always been a very patient, careful, self-controlled woman. She doesn’t ruffle easily. I take my hat off to her. If there has been a disagreement, we have always been able to reach a compromise. It’s helped that she has her own work and interests apart from what we do together, but even she was getting a little irritable with my antics, especially in the car. A wound-up spring does not make a good travel companion. At the end of 2001 I stopped doing the army clinics at Holsworthy. Around the same time my hearing loss in the high tones began interfering with my work, especially in accreditation meetings, and I went to see an advocate in the RSL to apply for a part-pension so I could get a concession for public transport. He noticed my tremor and said: ‘Let’s be frank. It’s more than your hearing loss. What else has been going on?’ I told him and he advised: ‘You should do something about it—not only for your sake but for your family.’ I promptly asserted, ‘I’m not seeing a psychiatrist!’ ‘Then who will you see?’ I refused to see anyone in Sydney, but he put the pressure on and I’m glad he did. I travelled to a psychiatrist in Newcastle. I was very uncomfortable. I suspect he was too. He gave me a script for an anti-depressant that I never got filled. Nine months later I asked my GP for a sedative so I could sleep and happened to let slip that the psychiatrist had prescribed an anti-depressant. He blew me up, so for the last two years I’ve taken an anti-depressant.

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After the reports came back from the various specialists Lyn pored over them and said, ‘I can now see what’s been going on.’ Now the kids talk openly about PTSD. They make comments like, ‘Oh, her father is a veteran,’ as if that explains something. If the phone rings, they’ll joke, ‘Why don’t you answer it Dad?’ I think my critical tone and attitude have affected their self-esteem and confidence. I feel guilty about that and I am trying to undo it by being more spontaneous and praising. I don’t know whether it is due to me being a Vietnam veteran, but both children set high standards and are very hardworking. For thirty years I avoided Anzac Day celebrations but in the last few years I’ve become involved with the association of the Seventh Battalion Royal Australian Regiment. I now work eight hours a week in Sydney and practise in a community health centre on the south coast. To cope with my panic in the car I fly down. On our return Lyn insists I take a tranquilliser before dropping me off at Goulbourn, where I catch the train to Sydney. It means we both arrive home in a stable condition. Every three months I see a psychiatrist and I find that valuable. Lyn says the anti-depressants make me easier to live with—less irritable, more tolerant, although they have no effect on my hyper arousal or panic attacks and I still avoid any situation that makes me feel uncomfortable and tense or might bring up an intrusive memory. If I watch war coverage on television I can get very emotional and will often leave the room. But I am relating much better with the kids. Lyn is surprised that I don’t get annoyed about the things I used to get annoyed about. The fact is I still get annoyed but I push it aside or I clean up the mess. I am more reflective and self-aware, and not so defensive. I talk things through and ask for feedback, which Lyn has no qualms in doing. Now that she distinguishes the symptoms from the basic personality, she confronts the symptoms. The 2001 DVA statistics indicate that twenty per cent of those who went to Vietnam have post-traumatic stress disorder. That means eighty per cent don’t have it, or have not been diagnosed. As for the percentage of peacemakers, peacekeepers and veterans of the three wars since 1990, it is early days. The diagnosis itself has only been defined since 1980, although it has been known by other names. An American forensic psychologist, Eric T. Dean, examined the records of ex-combatants of the American Civil War who were inmates of insane asylums and the thesis in his book, Shook Over Hell, which I understand he proved, is that they had post-traumatic stress disorder, which was known as nostalgia. During and after World War I it was called shell shock, battle fatigue or war neurosis, which often manifested among the troops as bizarre somatic

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complaints such as blindness, loss of hearing or speech, paralysis or uncontrollable jerky movements. During the war doctors realized it was psychogenic but what is interesting is that the ranks tended to get the physical symptoms while the officers had more psychological problems, one theory being that in those days society was more stratified. In World War II the condition was called war neurosis or psychoneurosis and manifested as anxiety disorders, depression and alcohol abuse, much the same as in Vietnam veterans, peacemakers and peacekeepers. By 1952 it was called gross stress reaction. When visiting Concord Repatriation Hospital as a young registrar in 1963–64 I would walk into a darkened ward to see all the veterans asleep. Insulin was still being used to induce a sub coma. Fortunately our clinical experience and treatments have advanced and these days veterans can go to psychologists, psychiatrists and community-based programs, which are far less confronting than the back ward of a repatriation hospital. The problem is that, although we have knowledge of the antecedents, events and post-cedents that can induce PTSD, we have no evidence that anything will prevent or cure it. It is one of the most enduring of anxiety disorders in terms of longevity and chronicity, and has the highest rate of co-morbid conditions. Consequently it affects not only veterans and their partners and children but also their grandchildren. This is significant for any society that is suffering mass trauma, and also for Australia, if the number of overseas missions continues to increase. To genuinely open up and address issues, people need to feel they can trust the person they are seeking help from, and if they have PTSD, distrust is part of the picture. My own experiences in the National Service, in the Citizens’ Military Force and Medical Corps, and as a doctor for a combat unit in Vietnam, being close to people I would not have associated with otherwise, has given me a deeper understanding of human nature, something of great benefit to a psychiatrist! When peacemakers and peacekeepers describe their symptoms I empathize, without disclosing that I know what they are talking about from personal experience. When they see the battalion shield in my office, or discover in some other way that I went to Vietnam, I think they feel a little more at ease.

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PART II

GENERATIONS OF WAR

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FAMILIES WITH VETERANS FROM WORLD WAR I, WORLD WAR II, THE KOREAN WAR AND THE VIETNAM WAR

For generations, Australian families have been affected by wars not fought on Australian soil. On a veteran’s return home, their cloak of silence limits loved ones’ understanding of the war and its effects. For many civilians the memories of war recede as time goes by, yet the veteran’s military training and combat experience remain resilient influences, even if on a subconscious level. At times it can be as if the veteran is caught in a warp of time and place. Armed service personnel can be ambivalent about their military service. While many do not relish the spit and polish parades and rigid hierarchical structure, most have high regard for the physical fitness, teamwork and selfdiscipline, the loyalty and mental awareness that military training instils. War is an even greater paradox. In war, servicemen and -women face horror, maiming and death—which can leave the most harrowing of memories; but there is also the raw adrenalin intensity of the primordial hunt, unsurpassed camaraderie and ritual of surviving the full force of the natural elements—its climate, insects and other entanglements. In war the character is truly tested. Those who survive have the rest of their lives to contemplate what it all means. For career soldiers, the sense of camaraderie continues, as do the military’s principles and standards, yet even those who leave the military often apply what they have learnt in their civilian life. While war veterans can feel torn, even broken, by aspects of war, their qualities and priorities as people can inspire their children to enlist or marry into the military. From 1975 to 2001 the prospect of serving men or women going off to war was a distant possibility. Now it is not so remote. Nor is it guaranteed that the 126

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war will have the support of the Australian population, as did the wars before Vietnam. Consequently some parents who have known service themselves have mixed reactions to their sons and daughters enlisting. This was the case for one woman I interviewed, Maree Johnson, whose grandfather and father served in World War I and II, and who joined the Women’s Royal Australian Army Corps before marrying a Vietnam veteran. Her godson enlisted. Her daughter married a serviceman. She was shocked when her eldest son, who had always been antimilitary, announced he was joining the Air Force. When her second son expressed a keen interest to enlist, her reaction was: ‘I’m proud of my godson and son-in-law. I’m proud of my husband’s service. I’m proud of my own service, but I’m more educated, I have a point of view. Now I wouldn’t handle someone with two stripes barking orders at me from less than a metre away. I’d speak up. My son says “I’m going to be a tankee”, and I say “But there’s no tanks on civvy street. Think about a trade.” He says “I’ll be a grunt” and I say “They’re the hardest hit!” He says “I’ll go into SAS or Commandos.” To me, he is a boy wanting to play soldier. I can’t convince him. I hope he grows out of it or they knock him back. I don’t want him to go through what my husband Bill has gone through. I don’t want his partner to go through what I’ve been through. I want it to stop with Bill and me.’ Other veterans are proud that their adult child is entering what they see as an essential and honourable profession.

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4

CAMARADERIE AND COMMONSENSE General Peter Cosgrove AC MC and Lynne Cosgrove GLORIA ROBINSON

General Peter Cosgrove’s father and grandfather were both career soldiers and veterans of war, and in 1965, at the age of eighteen, Cosgrove entered Duntroon. Four years later he was sent to Vietnam. In October 1969, a month after arriving in-country, the young lieutenant led 5 Platoon B Company, 9 Battalion, in an attack on an enemy bunker system. The contact resulted in four enemy killed or wounded. Six days later 5 Platoon engaged in a fire fight near another bunker. Most of the enemy fled, abandoning stores and documents. The next day, Cosgrove led the search, coming under fire and killing two enemy. There were no Australian casualties. For this action he was awarded the Military Cross. On return to Australia, Cosgrove was posted to the Methods of Instruction Team at Ingleburn, New South Wales, in 1972 becoming aide-de-camp to Governor-General Sir Paul Hasluck and during 1973–75 serving as company second in command, adjutant, then company commander of 5 Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, then 5/7 Battalion. In 1976, while posted as an instructor of tactics at the Infantry Centre at Singleton, he married Lynne Payne. In 1983–84 Cosgrove was commanding officer of 1 Battalion and in 1990 was appointed director of infantry. Cosgrove was made commandant of the Australian Defence Force Warfare Centre at Williamstown in 1996, a year later becoming commandant of the Royal Military College Duntroon and in 1998 commander First Division and Deployable Joint Forces Headquarters. He was in this position when he was made commander of INTERFET in East Timor, between September 1999 and February 2000. He was appointed Chief of Army in July 2000 and has served as Chief of the Defence Force (CDF) from 2002 to 2005. Two of his three sons are now in the ADF. 128

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Peter Cosgrove: Warfare is a terrible thing and no senior commander should make a decision blithe of a careful consideration of the casualties that might accrue from that decision. If you show me one who has, then he is not a commander I would like to work for. As best he can, a commander counts the costs ahead of time. As CDF, in every case other than the most urgent, I have thought carefully and over a very long time about what we must do. I have talked with colleagues and weighed up the pros and cons before making my recommendations to the Government. The political leaders look you in the eye and accept your advice, as they did for the Iraq campaign in terms of the specific jobs for which we were best suited, or they discuss it, and either they agree to your recommendations or you go in another direction. In any event you remain responsible for the advice you gave and the decisions made. Of course, you are enormously connected to the consequences of these decisions. You stay monitoring the situation the whole time and there can be nights of very little sleep when you are receiving information. In the months leading up to the Iraq campaign and during the first six weeks of combat, I was working long hours. I was going to bed late and getting up at 3.30 a.m. I didn’t begrudge the lack of sleep. We knew the war would be relatively short. That was a professional calculation. Also, the two thousand Australian men and women who were deployed to the Middle East Area of Operation were getting about the same amount of sleep in circumstances involving far more danger and discomfort. Given the tempo of operations that our Special Forces were involved in, and our other roles searching vessels in the Gulf (on 20 March, the first day of the war, finding eighty-six sea mines), our Navy divers clearing mines in the port of Umm Qasr, the F/A-18 Hornets taking part in strike and support operations, the AP-3C Orions carrying out surveillance and the HMAS Anzac providing gun support for UK Marines on the Al Faw peninsula, we were incredibly lucky that we did not take a single casualty. Lynne Cosgrove: Peter’s weightiest concern was the possibility of casualties. Fortunately he operates well on little sleep. Small things sometimes annoy him but he is incredibly calm and decisive under pressure. Peter: In Vietnam your stamina was put to the test. You were out on patrol for six to eight weeks, sleeping on the ground, in the wet season getting soaked every day, awake half the night. A little noise woke you but also, as a platoon commander, I would regularly check that my sentries were properly alert. You had the radio by your ear and people talking to you most of the night. Soldiers know they do not have an inalienable right to sleep or comfort. The Camaraderie and Commonsense

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only constant is your duty. Also, over the years I have noticed you can always guarantee that your geographic problems will be on the joins of four maps, your contemporary problems will be in the middle of the night and if you sneak off for a couple of days’ leave you are sure to cop a crisis. You accept those as physical laws. When your troops are on operations in Iraq you expect those laws to operate. Lynne: Phone calls from Iraq would come in at any time. It was the same for Timor and Afghanistan. Peter does not like secondhand information. Peter: With the explosion of technical communications, it’s like having a 9000-mile screwdriver to be used only when necessary. It becomes an issue of confidence. The subordinate must have confidence that you are not unnecessarily going to put your sticky fingers all over what he is doing and you must have confidence in him, or her. For my part I’d rather let 99.99 per cent of what people do be allowed to run, even though, in that opinionated way we all have, you might think ‘I would do it differently’. On the odd occasion I directly interfered. In the immediate aftermath of the capture of Baghdad there was concern for the overflow of civilian casualties into hospitals. After a phone call to the Minister of Defence, and the Prime Minister deciding that it was a good idea, I ordered Operation Baghdad Assist, whereby we stripped out thirteen tonnes of our precious medical supplies on HMAS Kanimbla, nearly all we had, loaded them onto an Australian Hercules and flew them into Baghdad, one of the first flights in. This decision was based on my assessment that the main battles were over. Also, like the Vietnam War, Iraq is a televised war. Given the sophistication of the mass media, a small tactical action of a young soldier, seaman or aircraftsman can have major ramifications. Imagine the SAS on a desert road and a Land Rover pulls up. If a corporal apprehends an Iraqi private, it is not an issue. If that person happens to be Saddam Hussein, the action has huge political and strategic implications, which have to be conveyed upwards and managed downwards with great care. I went over to Iraq in April 2003 and have made regular visits since to ensure that our troops are doing what they were sent to do, that we are looking after them; and to report back to the Government. Each time, I find the morale of the Australian troops is high. While Iraq is still a dangerous place, they understand they’re making a great contribution to rehabilitating the Iraqi nation and I have not met one serviceman or -woman who wasn’t glad for the chance to serve in this unique way. For Christmas 2003 I went over to represent loved ones back in Australia. At dawn on Christmas Day I was in the control 130

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CDF General Peter Cosgrove surveying US aerial damage to a presidential palace on the outskirts of Baghdad, 27 April 2003, photographed by Darren Hilder. Courtesy of the Australian Government, Department of Defence, Public Affairs & Corporate Communication.

tower at Baghdad Airport with four Australian air traffic controllers. As the sun came up we shook hands and wished each other a merry Christmas. Pilots had got used to the Australian accent and at the end of a transmission our air traffic controllers signed off with ‘G’day’, which many American pilots came to emulate. I also visited the troops protecting the Australian Representative Office, set up on 8 May, only a week after the US declared an end to major combat operations. A security detachment, an infantry platoon and an explosive ordinance detachment are located nearby in a shell of a building, with no plumbing and no glass in the windows. There is nothing to keep out the elements. The youngsters live in Spartan circumstances. They go out on patrol and have occasionally been targeted by mortars and RPGs, or a remotely detonated bomb, but the ordinary Iraqi people have come to welcome their presence. Our people have rendered safe unexploded ordinance and helped people after an attack. They hold barbecues with the community and contribute to the upkeep and improvement of the local pre-school. The Iraqis are responding well to the Aussies, and when we drive around the bustling streets, many, many Iraqis greet us warmly. The war damage was reasonably confined in Baghdad and each time I go back I see less rubble and more new facilities, the return of utilities and services and signs of commerce. Although there is Camaraderie and Commonsense

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still high unemployment and incidents of violence, there is an atmosphere of expanding normality in much of Iraq. About nine hundred Australians from all three services are involved in Operation Catalyst, Australia’s contribution to the rehabilitation of Iraq. For eight months some fifteen Australians worked in the Iraqi Survey Group looking for and cataloguing the mega tonnage of conventional weapons. We had a few scientists available to assist in the technical and forensic side of weapons of mass destruction, as distinct from searching under rocks. Since February 2004, an Australian Army training team of forty-four personnel has been training three Iraqi Army battalions at Al-Kasik Military Training Base near Mosul, and our Navy has assisted in the training of the Iraqi Coastal Defence Force in maritime interception operations. I think the ADF has a particularly good approach to training. Our people have an egalitarian attitude, are professional in their military skills and robust, cheerful and respectful in their manner. We do not go in with rose-coloured glasses thinking we are going to make huge cultural changes, but we are what we are, and the Iraqis are responding. I have no doubt that there will be some very fine Iraqi infantry soldiers and navy personnel who will make good use of a few Australian colloquialisms and a lot of Australian professionalism in their military performance. A tour of duty in Iraq is generally about six months. The troops are used to the privations and discomforts and the possibility of danger. When incidents have occurred they have performed admirably. Corporal Sarah Longshaw was the only medic up at the training base at Al-Kasik. In June 2004, when the base came under mortar fire, and in the following August, when two vehicle-born bombs caused many Iraqi casualties, she coolly stepped in to give life saving aid and prepare the wounded for evacuation, for which she was awarded the Nursing Service Cross. In April the same year there was an incident near two oil terminals that jut out into the Gulf. Seven sailors from the USS Firebolt were blasted into the water when a dhow they were investigating was blown up by those on board. One of our Seahawk helicopters from the HMAS Stuart was sent to investigate. It was night, and on realising the sailors were too injured to be hauled out of the water with the strop, crewman L.S. Slime jumped from the helicopter into the water, to hold up the most injured of the sailors until one of our RHIBs [Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats] arrived to take them to the Stuart. Otherwise the biggest difficulty for troops in Iraq is missing the family. At least in the modern services they can e-mail and call home on a satellite phone. Lynne: When Peter goes over to Iraq I try to put concern for his safety to the back of my mind. At least these days, I know everybody is doing their level best 132

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to look after him and we can be in near-daily communication. We managed a quick call on Christmas Day 2003. Being with two of our sons and our extended family distracted me—on and off. Whether overseas or on exercises, there is always danger. Accidents happen. Also, with three sons in their twenties who drive cars or go with people who drive cars, Peter being away is just one more jolly thing to worry about. I am not battle hardened. Any separation more than a day or two is difficult and with East Timor it was just short of six months. What took the sting out of it was that I knew it was coming and I was excited for Peter being put in command of the multinational force. When a family member is deployed, the Defence Force warns us not to get too absorbed in the media—it might worry you—but for East Timor every time we turned on a radio or TV or picked up a newspaper there was Peter, so we exempted ourselves. The boys were still living at home and we had the TVs tuned to different channels. Somebody would be watching one and call out ‘Quick turn to Channel so and so’. The boys would give Peter a rating. We were cutting out every newspaper article until we filled three scrapbooks. After that we became more selective. We each had our way of processing it all. Our youngest would watch Dad on TV, give a little chuckle, look proud and think ‘That makes sense’, and walk away. The middle one was really involved but became a little blasé over time, whereas our eldest was totally consumed and impassioned the whole time. He is a bit of a philosopher and wants to be a writer. Peter: As soon as it became apparent that violence was occurring after President Habibie’s February 1999 announcement that there would be a referendum on East Timor, the Australian Government was in close consultation with the Indonesian Government and Military to ensure that either the Indonesians would be able to deal with the potential violence during and after the referendum or that Indonesia would collaboratively work with other nations, including Australia, to bring an end to it. It had to be done this way— we have to respect Indonesia’s sovereignty and it is in Australia’s interest for Indonesia to handle its own issues. UNAMET personnel and election observers were in place to oversee the referendum on 30 August. For some months we had been doing desktop considerations of ‘what if’ in case these personnel had to be evacuated. I had an inkling that if anything was to happen I would be in command, but when the staggering violence broke out after the announcement on 3 September that the East Timorese had overwhelmingly voted for independence from Indonesia, the mission suddenly became more urgent. Given Indonesia’s initial concerns about inviting a regional peacekeeping force in, the Australian Camaraderie and Commonsense

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Government sent a team to Jakarta to work with a mission from the UN Security Council and a high-level Indonesian team to see what could be brought to bear. The force would have to be organized in a matter of weeks, so Australia volunteered to contribute a large number of troops and take command. In the following days the US suspended arms sales to Indonesia and threatened economic sanctions. APEC leaders negotiated with Indonesian leaders to allow a peacekeeping force into East Timor. Within days, on 12 September, Indonesia accepted the UN Security Council’s offer for a multinational regional effort led by Australia to go in and provide security. To avoid the possibility of civilians and troops being put at unnecessary risk, the Australian Government, on the advice of Australian Command, pushed for a strong mandate and on 14 September the Security Council authorised INTERFET to operate under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter and, more specifically, under UN Security Council Resolution 1246, which included the phrase ‘to take all necessary measures to fulfil this mandate’—words that had not been included in any previous UN resolution for a peacekeeping or peacemaking operation. Australian Command drafted the details of the rules of engagement, including the option to use military force in order to protect the people of East Timor. These rules were discussed with the participating nations and once they agreed, it was all systems go. There were other capable senior officers who could have been appointed commander of INTERFET but in the end it was a matter of ‘send the troops, send their existing headquarters, and oh, by the way, send their boss too’. After my appointment was confirmed, one of the many things I did was ring Lieutenant General John Sanderson, the eminent commander of the UN mission in Cambodia, to canvass his thoughts and advice. Among the things he emphasized was the importance of nurturing the twenty-two nations that comprised the multinational force as if they were a precious garden. I arrived in Dili on 19 September to discuss issues on the ground with the Indonesian military commander, General Syahnakri. Although I had not met him personally, he had worked with Australians in joint training exercises, which was a net positive. There was a lot of fire damage in Dili. Fires were still burning. You could not assume a structure marked on a map was still there, so I left a few personnel to work out where we could set up headquarters while I flew back to Darwin. The next day I returned with the lead elements of the multinational force. Within twenty-four hours we had two thousand Australian infantry soldiers on the ground. Dili public library became our headquarters and I set up a stretcher in the corner. It was perfectly adequate. I’m an old infantryman; I reckon I can sleep on a pin head. 134

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Most of Dili’s population had fled and were in hiding on high ground to the south. Indonesian troops were garrisoned in town or passing through in the process of withdrawing either by sea or overland into West Timor. There was a constant danger that Indonesian and INTERFET soldiers might fall into a confrontation. We could leave nothing to chance. Every day General Syahnakri and I met to discuss issues, some of them very sensitive. We respected each other and co-ordinated well. His collaboration and goodwill and that of his staff were major factors in avoiding misunderstandings between the troops. Our most urgent task was to look for, deter and apprehend militia. We quickly established a pervasive security framework. Most militia took themselves off to West Timor, which by my calculations was fine. It became a matter of watching for adventurous militia crossing back over the border. This entailed ceaseless vigilance. A mantra for the troops, which I brought with me from Vietnam, was ‘Never relax’. During the whole ‘ground-hog’ day routine of being on patrol out in the bush, I impressed upon them that they had to treat every step they took and every tree they were about to look around as though the enemy could be on the other side. I never wanted them to think ‘We are safe now. We don’t need sentries.’ We didn’t know how long we would be there —I likened it to a marathon—but I was constantly reinforcing that you are only as good as your professional behaviour. If you are vigilant and still get bowled over, well okay—it’s not your lucky day. The hot, steamy climate, particularly at the start of the wet season, and the wild and woolly terrain in parts of East Timor, were reminiscent of some of the tougher terrain and conditions in which we operated in Vietnam. When I met up with young soldiers and officers doing a very tough job, seeing them in their heavy military kit, drenched in perspiration, the whole tension and fatigue of being out on patrol written on their faces, it didn’t take much memory to see my time in Vietnam reflected there. I was many levels of command removed, making the big plans and giving the orders, but I understood the nature of their work and the toll of my orders. This is a priceless gift for a commander. All of us were aware that our fundamental mission was to uplift the East Timorese people. As soldiers in Vietnam we had tried hard, generally and episodically, to connect with the Vietnamese. When we went into a village we behaved in a civilized manner. This engendered respect although not necessarily overwhelming co-operation, but the opposite was to be avoided. I impressed upon the troops in East Timor never to miss any opportunity to connect, and the Australians took to it like ducks to water. In the first days when driving around Dili, I saw a big sergeant with a rifle slung over his back organizing an ad hoc game of cricket. The kids knew nothing about the game Camaraderie and Commonsense

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but the sergeant was teaching them with a tennis ball and a fence paling. If a kid managed to hit the ball, he led them in ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi!’ The kids and adults standing around had big smiles on their faces and I thought: ‘Yes, that is exactly what I want.’ I understood it was happening all over East Timor. Our soldiers were high fiving the kids, sharing their ration packs and helping East Timorese adults clean up the wreckage, in between looking out for militia and overseeing the return home of a quarter of the population—some 200 000 displaced East Timorese. These people needed to be reassured that it was safe to come down from the hills. If they were coming from West Timor they had to be processed and assisted in their movement. Troops had to be co-ordinated to provide road transport and maintain security. The returnees’ needs had to be assessed and there was a constant pressure to try and get a safe environment for UN and NGO personnel to deliver aid requirements in areas where we could not have lots of troops on the ground. There was a certain amount of risk taking. One challenge that kept me awake at night was the condition of the roads, which were in no condition to take all the heavy military vehicles. Another was the health of the troops. As in Vietnam, mosquitoes carried the insidious illnesses of malaria and dengue fever. Dengue fever does not kill but it is debilitating, and unlike for malaria there are no prophylactic drugs to prevent it. Supplies of skin repellent and clothes impregnated with a repellent had to be kept up to the troops. One morning I had a phone call from the hospital to say that a lance corporal, who’d been in hospital, ostensibly with dengue fever, had started to decline and they were hoping to fly him to Darwin. The next phone call said he was too ill to be transported. A short time later another call came through saying he had passed away. I went down to the hospital. The doctors and nurses were devastated. While talking with them, I was informed by phone of a serious minibus accident involving East Timorese. I told the medical staff: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are a wonderful group and I’m very sad you have lost your patient but we are bringing in helicopters full of East Timorese who have been involved in a bus accident.’ They were straight back into it. I would take every opportunity to visit the troops. The youngsters would ask ‘Can you fix that?’ In Australia, you have a lot of procedures to follow, whereas on operations you can frequently cut through the red tape. But I constantly marvelled at the resourcefulness of our soldiers. I was down in a far corner of the Oecussi Enclave when a young corporal in a machine gun platoon asked: ‘Sir, do you think we could get a doctor down here?’ I said ‘Why, are you crook mate?’ ‘No Sir. We’re all healthy but we need a doctor for the East

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Timorese.’ I said, ‘That’s an issue for the UN but I can look into it. What’s the problem?’ ‘Oh well, about a week ago I was minding my own business and an East Timorese man came in and insisted I go with him. He took me to his home where his wife was about to give birth. There were no midwives or anybody so I delivered the baby.’ ‘That must be a first for you Corporal.’ ‘Yes Sir. But then two days ago another man took me to his wife, who was also in labour. That one was a breech birth and you know, Sir, I’m not too good on breech births, so can we have a doctor?’ I took his point. This young corporal had muscles in his eyebrows and the odd tattoo. He had been trained to take on any foe and here he was standing in as a midwife. No one put a quantum on the number of hours they worked. For many kids it was twenty-four hours a day broken by a few snatched hours of sleep, six and a half days a week. The workload was such that some became skin and bone. People who were supporting those out on patrol—mechanics, engineers and so on—worked tremendously hard to get infrastructure on an even keel. Then there were the logistics units receiving our supplies down at the docks. The Foodstuffs Platoon was under the command of a young female lieutenant, who had bags upon bags under her eyes. Her troops were working like Trojans. Talking to her, I established that when they received a ship load of rations of a Sunday they worked non-stop with no sleep for three days, breaking the consignment into smaller loads to be sent all over East Timor by road or helicopter. Then they would grab the quickest possible sleep before beginning an ordinary day of fourteen hours, until the next Sunday. This went on week after week. I quickly realized that they were crucial to the whole operation. If they got sick or had an accident or if their leadership was poor, the troops would starve. I visited them regularly and the young lady, her NCOs and troops always had a big cheery ‘can do’ attitude. Similarly in our headquarters: officers worked very long shifts to make sure that they were on deck for when the crucial calls for help came in or there was a requirement to pass on information. Most of my 157 days in Timor were spent talking and listening, listening and talking. As a commander you are constantly bombarded with a million inputs: specific information and briefings, or the sights and sounds of a situation; you soak it all up like a sponge. You process it and ask for more information or make the necessary decisions. It could be thinking quite lengthily about how to develop the next stage of the mission. Nothing is pure and simple in war or peacekeeping and we were dealing with both conflict and

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nation building. Or it could be a snap decision on the spot, as was the case when I was giving a media briefing a couple of days into the mission. A journalist relayed that he had strong information that a Dutch journalist by the name of Sander Thoenes had gone missing and may have been killed. I quickly finished the media conference and interviewed the journalist. He said, ‘I have a Timorese man who could take us there.’ I organized an escort and a couple of vehicles and went straight to the suburb in Dili. If Thoenes had died by violence, my intention was to secure the area without delay. Also it was important for the media to know that we would react promptly if we were informed of a serious matter. Sadly we found Thoenes’s remains. We immediately got the Indonesians to assist in piqueting the area and initiated an investigation. Meanwhile I deployed INTERFET troops, although at the time it was outside our limits of deployment. As Sanderson had advised, I consulted every day with our coalition partners, either individually or collectively, to discuss our activities. After I’d got the military situation into a routine pattern, I was able to ceaselessly visit the coalition, to discuss issues, receive briefings and point out the good things they were doing. The good things you shout from the rooftops. For things that need correction, you talk quietly but firmly in a commander’s ear, but I found much to praise. While the coalition was not without its frictions, these were minor—a result of misunderstanding rather than ill will—and quickly fixed up. I worked closely with Sergio de Mello who was in charge of UNAMET, the UN component of the mission. Sergio was a magnificent man—a charismatic, hugely intelligent, eloquent individual with great skills as an administrator —very diplomatic. Secretary General Kofi Annan had sent one of his top administrators. The charming Sergio immediately established a benign control over all parts of the UN administration and it was not the easiest of environments. You had the traumatised East Timorese, the emerging political groups and the tremendously respected but only newly liberated FALINTIL, who had spent the previous twenty-five years being chased and harried. All these people created pressure within the body politic but Sergio understood the importance of immediately incorporating figures like Xanana Gusmao into the mapping of East Timor’s future. He also understood our partnership. Normally a force would be an integral part of the overall UN mission. In Timor we had two entities: INTERFET, under my command; and UNAMET under his. Who was boss? The answer was: both of us and neither of us. My instructions were to collaborate with Sergio, acknowledge his needs and support him. His instructions were to shape the civil rehabilitation operation in and around the realities of the security situation. We worked together and it was a great loss

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The head of UNAMET and later UNTAET, Sergio de Mello; Commander INTERFET, Major General Peter Cosgrove; General Taumatan Ruak and Commander US Forces, US Marine Corps, Brigadier General Castellaw before a border meeting with the Indonesians at Montaain, 22 November 1999. Courtesy of the Australian Government, Department of Defence, Defence Public Affairs Organisation.

to the world when he was murdered in the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003. It was a personal loss too: I lost a friend. Sergio was a major reason for the success of the UN mission in East Timor. Xanana Gusmao, another remarkable charismatic figure connected to all parts of the East Timorese population and respected in Indonesia, also provided great leadership. He is undoubtedly the father of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. We developed a good understanding. Others played a crucial role, not least Jose Ramos Horta, who had spent twenty-five long years walking the corridors of the UN and State departments around the world to mobilize international opinion. In the new Timor-Leste, Jose kept people focused so they didn’t fall into the trap of thinking ‘East Timor is independent, let’s move on’. While there may have been brief moments of friction between the East Timorese leadership and the UN about the lack of amenities of the former, plainly in order to optimize the delivery of aid, the UN administration needed to operate at the cutting edge of information technology and, in order to have people work long hours, the UN needed to provide some level of amenity. Inevitably there are haves and have-nots, but I don’t think the East Timorese would want that issue over-played. The fact that we got through the whole


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military assistance task as harmoniously as we did is a tribute to the goodwill between the multinational force, the UN and the people of East Timor. On 23 February 2000 I handed over to Lieutenant General Jaime De los Santos, the Philippino commander who became part of UNTAET, or the United Nations’ Transitional Administration, under Sergio de Mello. By the end of a mission, everyone looks forward to seeing their family— although, being in a privileged position, I was not enduring a typical service separation. There were five phones on the desk that I could dial home on. The kids were in their late teens and early twenties. I was on the news every day, so they could see I was robust. Nonetheless I missed them tremendously. Lynne: A lot of people were talking about how it takes time for a person to adjust and settle in and the necessity for families to be patient. On the morning after Peter arrived home, I suggested we have breakfast at a place down at Five Ways in Paddington. As we walked there I asked, ‘Does it feel any different being back?’ He looked around and said, ‘What? Paddington? It hasn’t changed that much since I was growing up here.’ Still searching, I commented, ‘I bet you’re looking forward to getting into something other than a camouflage uniform’, but Peter was unfazed. Six months in uniform was no big deal. Fortunately his most dangerous deployment—Vietnam—occurred before we met. Peter: I was twenty-two when I went to Vietnam. The challenge of a young platoon commander in battle—getting the job done and keeping your people safe—is that you are inexperienced by virtue of being young and I was very conscious of my noviciate—there was a sense of exposure. Even though my peers and I in Vietnam were magnificently prepared by veterans of previous conflicts and from the early years of Vietnam, we didn’t know it at the time. In training, all these people are blathering at you and until you actually apply what you have learnt you are unsure of its relevance or that it will stick. As it turned out, what we were taught was extremely relevant—but still, there are vast amounts that you don’t know about command, leadership, warfare and the technical aspects of predominating in battle. If you are lucky enough to get through that noviciate, you have got to the first plateau of proficiency. I think all young people tend to be convinced of their immortality. There is a tendency to say ‘Nothing will get me.’ At least in war this is soon balanced with frequently seeing the outcome of combat. There is ample evidence that nobody is bullet proof. A month after arriving in Vietnam we came across a bunker system. The enemy fled but in an incident where they re-entered the

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bunker system the next day, I went in ahead of my troops. Some people might see this as gung ho, but as a commander I thought it was urgently necessary, I knew somebody had to do it, and I decided it was my responsibility. More broadly, I was full of energy and not shy in attempting and executing missions that stretched our capacities. I had so much confidence in my men that, when tough missions came along, like extended patrols where we would be a long way from other people’s support, I would think ‘Yes, we can do that.’ When we got into battle we were extremely aggressive. By our aggression we tended to be safer than if we had been more passive, which may have encouraged the enemy to think we were easy meat. You end up taking more casualties when you are fighting people off, instead of having them on the run, surrendering or being overwhelmed. As a young platoon commander out on operations, you have to get used to being somewhat lonely. You take advice but ultimately you bear the burden of the consequences of your decisions, and to some degree that insulates you. It doesn’t mean that you don’t enjoy the fellowship of the troops but it does mean a cocoon of responsibility surrounds you. On return from Vietnam, I was travelling a lot, especially as aide-de-camp to the Governor-General and then serving in 5RAR, so any social life was catch as catch can. Then in 1975, the year I began courting Lynne, I was a company commander in 5/7RAR based in Sydney. It was a good indicator to Lynne of how life was going to be: me rushing off on an exercise, coming back and cleaning up, getting the Diggers away on leave, then into the mess for half a dozen quick beers. After that we’d have a date. I wasn’t deliberating, ‘She’d make a good partner for a career soldier’, although there might have been a bit of natural selection. She was not put off, whereas others could have been. I would like to think there was a dash of romance. I remember walking past a phone box at the Infantry Centre in early 1976 and deciding to ring her to propose. Fortunately Lynne loves adventure, although not the hardships. You’d be mad to love them. Lynne: I went in eyes wide open. We have always had a healthy communication and in the early days Peter talked about the war, the scrapes they had and the funny times—thinking they were being ambushed and having a wild boar appear from nowhere, or trying to quietly cross a creek, seeing a snake, falling off a log and thrashing around. What has helped is that I am one of the last of the dinosaurs: I was very prepared to put my life into my husband’s career, and being married to a career soldier has given me a tremendously varied life. We’ve lived in twenty-one different homes, including three overseas postings


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in the USA, UK and India, and have met interesting people of diverse backgrounds. I have been going to military functions since our second date. I love it. I like dressing up and talking with people. Our eldest son was born in 1978, just before we left to go to the US. It was temporarily difficult having a young baby far from family but we moved into an apartment building at the US Marine Corps Staff College in Quantico and within a couple of weeks it was like one big happy family. I had the best support. Our second son was born in 1979, after we came back from the US, and our third in 1982, so in 1984 when Peter became an army exchange instructor at the Army Staff College in Camberley, UK, I had three kids under the age of six. Although it was a lot of work, it was another adventure. We lived on campus and I found another family. The best times have been when we have lived on base. A lot of people don’t like that—they want more privacy—but I always enjoy myself. You are surrounded by people in the same situation. In general the kids have coped with the moves, although from time to time they complained: ‘Not another move. Not another school.’ Being three boys, although they had their fights, they were great mates, and still are, as their phone bills testify. The biggest problem was the different education systems and interruptions to their sport. The compensation is that they are well travelled. Peter: Where military and home life knock heads most is when there are protracted absences. That creates pressure on the homemaker. You miss births and birthdays, broken arms and Christmases. Lynne: The separation that gave me some understanding of what younger families go through was when Peter went to Rhodesia before Christmas 1979. Our eldest was not yet two and I had a baby a few weeks old, and we didn’t know how long Peter was going to be away. Fortunately I have always found it easy to make friends. I can only imagine how difficult it would be if you were shy. Peter: For shy ones, you hope somebody kind and a little bossy knocks their knuckles raw on the door to say ‘I’m coming in for a cup of tea.’ Lynne: My advice to a young wife whose husband is deployed is: Make sure you tell somebody if you are having a good day or a bad day. Keep in touch with people.

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Peter: What Lynne is too modest to say is that since I’ve been in command jobs she has played a tremendous leadership role with the families. When it was a smallish command, she knew all the wives and kids, all their birthdays and public family dramas. She is a pretty wise and friendly person. She couldn’t have afforded to be a shrinking violet with four boof-head males in the house. We had to get a female dog to add some decorum. Lynne: The three boys were little live wires: very loud and rough. I admit to the occasional hole in the wall from a wrestling match. They loved to wrestle … Peter: Ride bikes, fall off bikes, climb trees, fall out of trees, get into fights. Lynne: My theory is that the young male of the species tends to take more risks, and having three of the one sex might have added to their physicality. Peter: In the military environment I’m required continuously to be a leader, so at home I can be the mollusc on the lounge. Lynne is the one with the getup-and-go to get everyone organized. Lynne: With Peter away or preoccupied with work, I did a lot of the raising, often protecting Peter from day to day events. At times I came unstuck—in the end I needed to involve him. When a serious reprimand was required we had a ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine. If somebody was getting an earful from me, when Peter came home he would be the good cop, or vice versa. At least the kids did not have both parents yelling in each ear. As for expecting his sons to obey him as if they were his soldiers, I think most fathers do, don’t they? Peter: As a new father you have so much pride in your kids. You have this image, especially in their younger lives, ‘Don’t be a normal kid, be a perfect kid’, and it takes a while for you to realize that you’re not perfect; even your parents—much loved as they were—were not perfect; so why are you getting so much on the kid’s case? Over time you take the blinkers off and expand the boundaries and try to make it a more reasonable environment in which the kid can grow and develop, trip over and pick themselves up. But I think that’s a parenting issue rather than one arising from service. Lynne: While Peter was in East Timor he was appointed to start as land commander when he came home. It meant moving to Victoria Barracks in Sydney. I spent two weeks making our new home absolutely perfect when three days


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before he arrived back he telephoned saying ‘It’s been hinted that we might not be at Victoria Barracks for long.’ My reaction was, ‘What!’ The word was out that he was to be made Chief of Army. The news was bitter-sweet—bitter in that we would have to move again, sweet in that ‘Wow, Chief of Army. Fantastic!’ Our eldest was thrilled to bits. The middle one was, ‘Always thought it would happen’, and the youngest: ‘I’m not changing schools again’—and he didn’t. Peter: While I was in Timor, Philip, our middle son, joined the Army Reserves and went through recruit training at Kapooka and subsequently transferred to the Regular Army. Lynne: As youngsters the boys wouldn’t have dreamt of joining the Army. In their teens they lived four years on the campus at Duntroon and on their morning jogs they saw cadets going about their business at the Royal Military College and the adjacent Academy, but it was Timor that inspired them. Along with other Australians, they watched the news showing young Aussies giving aid where aid was deserved. If our youngest son could have raced out and joined up straight away he would have. Peter: I was always very strong on saying to the kids, ‘You’ve got your own life to live, follow your instincts’. The eldest toyed with the notion of enlisting and was accepted, but when he got a very good pass in the Higher School Certificate it became a dilemma between being a lawyer and a soldier. I was straight onto it, saying, ‘If you have any doubts, be a lawyer.’ When Philip enlisted I was in East Timor, so I didn’t have a chance to talk to him. With David, we asked him ‘Why do you want to do this?’ He said ‘I think I’ve got an aptitude.’ I did not see the need to talk about the possibilities of war. When they were young and curious I would quietly deflect their questions. Lynne: As the boys got older they continued to ask about Vietnam. Peter was more forthright then, but he never went into details. Peter: With any young Australian thinking of joining the services, I would not talk about the realities of combat. Such experiences are personal in nature and hard to relate to people who have no frame of reference. Nor would I want to be responsible for depriving them of the benefits: the camaraderie, loyalty and fantastic pride in your group; the sense of adventure and the mental and physical robustness of accepting the probability of hazard. Then there are the opportunities afforded by accepting a leadership role—being able to establish 144

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an honest communication with your troops, to fulfil their needs and draw out their bravery, to set a difficult task and have the team achieve—often seeing them punch far above their weight, a legendary Anzac trait. All this balances the sad times and occasional defeats. Lynne: Philip joined in 2000, and in 2002 David finished school and went straight into the Army Reserves. Neither wanted to go through ADFA, unsure whether they want to make a career of it. Seeing them sworn in, I had a real lump in the throat and a tremendous pride—Philip in Brisbane with his beautiful girlfriend sitting beside me, tears in her eyes, and David in Canberra, except there was no blonde with a tear in her eye. Peter: When I heard David was being sworn in to the Regular Army I went down to the depot in Canberra where this was to occur and asked the young officer ‘Do you mind if I do this?’ It was a thrill swearing in my own son. Lynne: After the last of the boys left home, and Peter went away for the first time, I said to the dog ‘It’s just you and me and the remote control’. The only thing is: I’ve never had any control over the remote control! I had to phone a son to ask how to operate it. Now one boy is in 1 Battalion based in Townsville and the other is in 6 Battalion based in Brisbane. With their father being chief there has only been a bit of ‘Well I hope you live up to your father’, or when one made a small mistake ‘Are you going to tell your father that one?’ Peter: My sons speak from a Digger’s perspective. It’s refreshing, like having an earth wire connector. They talk about their sports, what exercises they go on, the equipment they use, their aspirations, how boring it is on guard duty —everyday stuff that after forty years in khaki is familiar territory. Yet I am careful about relying on their feedback because they only know what is happening in their immediate environment. I have other ways of finding out what’s on a soldier’s mind. First and foremost you have to be absolutely approachable and, to the degree you need to be, thick skinned. It is not unusual for me to be talking to a group of servicemen and -women in an operational environment and for someone to say ‘Some dopey person made this decision and I thought I’d ask you why.’ On occasions I’ve had to put up my hand, saying, ‘Well I am the dope who made that decision. Now don’t worry. Don’t panic. Let’s talk about why you think it’s dopey.’ You hope that approach rubs off on every officer because the opportunity to let off steam should be God given. Every commander has to be able to say ‘Tell me what’s on your mind.’ Camaraderie and Commonsense

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You rely on information that climbs up the ladder, while acknowledging that it gets filtered and modified. The dilemma is how you burrow to get accurate information. It is something you have to work at constantly. One way is to have frank discussions with the senior non-commissioned officers. These folk are great sources of insight. Another way is to tell a soldier what’s on your mind and get them to quiz you on it. If they trust you, they will. This also serves to inform them because, left uninformed, soldiers can come up with some bizarre and inaccurate suppositions. I remember in Vietnam, near the end of my twelve months, we took a twenty-foot observation tower into a little base where my infantry platoon, some tanks and APCs were sent to protect engineers who were improving the road with bulldozers. My Diggers would go up the tower on piquet and one day I went up. There was a wooden bench that over time the men had graffiti’d. It was here that I found a character reference. It said ‘Cosgrove is a war dog.’ I thought ‘Well, that seems complimentary’, and I took it as such in the context of Vietnam.

Lynne: Philip was with the last lot over in East Timor. I admire the way the kids want to make a contribution, although as a mother you worry about them all the time. You can never be prepared for your child going off to war and all the possible consequences. It is not only about them being killed or injured. A couple of months after Peter came back from Timor the Partners of Veterans Association, which was set up to provide support and lobby government, asked me to be their patron. I was honoured and have learnt a lot. There are many war veterans, veteran partners and children who are suffering, but I am amazed how strong the bonds of love, dedication and loyalty are in so many families, even after living through decades of demons. Yet it’s foreign territory to me. With Peter there is only the odd issue we disagree on. Peter: Vietnam was a tough war fought by some magnificent warriors who, in many cases, went on to eminently successful lives. Nonetheless, over the years I have observed the genuine plight of some Vietnam veterans, as well as our people involved in Cambodia and Rwanda. Then there is General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian Commander of the UN forces in Rwanda between October 1993 and August 1994. Over a period of three months he saw the situation becoming tense before the hundred-day genocide and could not get the authority or reinforcements to deal with it. During the genocide he submitted a plan for a Rapid Reaction Force, which the UN Security Council rejected. When he went home he suffered emotionally and after his medical 146

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discharge wrote a book, Shake Hands with the Devil—The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. There are others who have gone through privation, isolation and harsh circumstances, even if spared the more horrific sights, who also suffer. Fortunately it has not troubled me in the way it has some people and I wonder why I have been spared. It’s not about blocking emotions. I’d take advice on this, but it seems to me that allowing a safety vent for things that are troubling you is a better way ahead. Blocking seems to say ‘I won’t let it in’ or ‘I won’t let it out’. In the first instance, the best support structure is the soldier’s small group of like-minded people, who may or may not have shared the experience. This was the case with my platoon in Vietnam. Whatever happened on a particular day, the coping strategy varied from excitedly talking about it with outbursts of bizarre humour to occasionally people crying, getting the shakes or becoming withdrawn, sometimes almost catatonic. We looked after them as if they were wounded. Beyond that there was help from the Padres and other experts. After the war, I may have been lucky in that the Regular Army environment was probably more nurturing than the environment surrounding those who left the services. Vast numbers around me had also been to Vietnam, so we would endlessly drone on about our experiences, the tone somewhere between profundity and ribaldry. In the end, perhaps your experiences are washed down, the sharp edges worn away. Ten years after I came home I met up with a national serviceman who was a great soldier of mine in Vietnam. We were chatting over a beer, as one does, and I was bubbling along about an incident, when this chap pulled me up, saying ‘Boss, it didn’t occur like that.’ He very clinically took me through the details. On a few important points, it came to me that he was right and I was wrong. I thought, ‘Now why is that?’ as I have a pretty good memory. I figured that he had probably internalized the experience —it was as sharp to him as if it was yesterday, whereas it was just one of my gazillion memories that had blurred over time. Perhaps I’d spoken about it so often it had morphed into another creation. Also, I was enjoying a successful career, progressing through a number of command appointments. As a CO of an infantry battalion there were the constant challenges of a large organization to look after, direct and motivate, and throughout I was absorbed in the training of soldiers for any unexpected challenge. Knowing what war was about, I was always trying to simulate the real thing as much as possible, encouraging and sometimes enforcing my subordinates to do likewise. But had I been less active or absorbed, would I have tended to dwell on Vietnam? I have never made the connection. Camaraderie and Commonsense

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I don’t know what it is. I cannot point to anything about my childhood or character that has left me relatively unscarred by war, except that I had a very stable upbringing. Mum and Dad were wonderful characters. My maternal grandfather and father were both career soldiers. Dad joined the Army before World War II, and in the early part of the European war was deployed as part of the Darwin Mobile Force, a precautionary deployment by the Government because divisions were being sent to Syria and North Africa, leaving Northern Australia exposed. He then transferred to the AIF and served as a gunner in the artillery in places like Nauru and New Guinea. Dad and I got on famously and I would pester him to death about the war but he would mumble and change the subject—the custom of the time. Also, he was often away at Puckapunyal and other places and would come home on weekends, until his retirement from the Army in 1975, after thirty-eight years of service. But he was kind and loving, not war affected at all. I grew up in Paddington—a wonderful working-class suburb with salt-ofthe-earth type people, where everybody knew everybody for streets around. You used to hear about old Diggers who had shot nerves from World War I or II. My grandfather, who had been in both wars, lived with us, so he had to put up with my incessant questioning. We had vast affection for each other. He was also a reluctant dragon—not a great raconteur on war stories, but in my teens I did not let the poor guy alone until he had told me a few. He left out the gory stuff and talked broadly about the battles in a matter-of-fact way. He joined in March 1915 but missed out on Gallipoli. In 1916 he went to England as an infantry soldier and in November was sent over to France with the second wave of Anzacs, arriving just in time for winter. For the next two years he lived in abysmal conditions. He talked about the prevalence of lice, foot rot, influenza and tuberculosis—all those things that prey upon people stuck in crowded muddy trenches, exposed to the elements in the presence of dead bodies. I know he was wounded several times. He spoke about Flanders and Vauvillers but I can’t remember him mentioning the names of battles, except for when they took on the Germans at Villers-Bretonneux on the night of 24 April 1918. He was in the forefront of that. He described wave upon wave of Germans coming over the banked railway line into a large field. There was not a lot of artillery. On the Allied side the artillery had been redeployed because of the German advance, and on the German side, their artillery had not caught up with them, so it was a ferocious battle conducted with machine guns, rifles and grenades. By the following day the field was full of dead and wounded German soldiers, some lying doggo in an attempt to avoid being killed or captured.

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In March 1919, my grandfather headed back to Australia and married. Mum was born in 1920. From memory he left the Army, then rejoined, and as a Warrant Officer Class 2, was sent to Malaya with 2/19 Battalion of the Eighth Division on 28 August 1940. After the fall of Singapore the Japanese took prisoner more than 15 000 from Eighth Division but fortunately for my grandfather, six months before, in August 1941, he had an ulcer that burst and he was evacuated to Australia. I’m sure he would not have survived captivity. He was mentally as tough as old boots—very resilient and determined— re-enlisting in October 1941, the day after his discharge, but when I knew him he had fragile physical health, which I attribute to the war. Otherwise he did not have any hatreds or hang-ups. He retired when he was sixty-five and died two years later. That was 1966. I was in my second year at Duntroon. He had no qualms when I joined the Army. He saw it as an honourable and necessary profession, being of a generation who thought that there are some things worth fighting for, that some people have to step forward—fighting doesn’t do itself. Then again, he died before I went to Vietnam, so he wasn’t there to ask ‘What do you think?’ On my return from Vietnam I was no more nervous or hyper alert. I came back to a reasonably ordered life, as one tends to live in uniform, and got rid of any excess energy on the football field, playing cricket and re-establishing a social life. There has been no area in which I feel troubled. I have never had nightmares or night sweats. Lynne: I can assure you he sleeps like a baby, and on the odd occasion, say once every three years, when he mumbles or says he’s had a nightmare, it’s usually about being chased by a bear or a tiger. But then, Peter has never been one to dwell on the past or on anything negative. He is always pushing ahead. Peter: Of course I have thought about Vietnam. Over the years I have come to the conclusion that, militarily, Vietnam was a mistake, a debatable opinion that I will not amplify until after I retire. Having said that, I now think I understand why the government of the day did what it did. I separate the political decision from the military component but I don’t think anyone knowingly says ‘Let’s go off and make a mistake.’ It was not until September 2001 that I had the opportunity to return to Vietnam. A visit was arranged government to government and the Vietnamese People’s Army [VPA] issued me an invitation. Admiral Barrie had gone over as CDF, but significantly no Chief of Army had been since the war. I had great


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meetings with senior officers in the VPA in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and then with some D 445 officers at a VPA function in Vung Tau. Back in 1969–70 we did battle with D 445 a few times. In 2001 they were like old soldiers everywhere: proud of their service and more interested in me being a Vietnam veteran than Chief of Army. We communicated through interpreters over a couple of beers but from the body language there was mutual respect and goodwill. There is a logic to it. Old soldiers share a bond even if years before they were hammering into each other. The day of the meeting, I went with other Australian Vietnam veterans to the site of Long Tan. We walked through the rubber trees to the white wood cross, taller than a man, my Vietnamese escort standing back out of thoughtfulness. I was very moved by this simple outdoor cathedral that commemorated the bravery and sacrifice on both sides. I had been there before—three years after the battle when conducting a military operation in the area. We found no VC so we took the opportunity to check out the area, and as I stood and gazed down the rows of rubber trees in this cool dark grotto I recreated the legendary battle in my head. Because of the thick canopy overhead it would have been like fighting in a stadium. The rain and entrapped cordite smoke would have shrunk visibility and all the sounds of battle would have rolled and reverberated. At least they would not have been thrashing around getting entangled in walls of shrubs and vines, but there was no cover. Trees are not good to hide behind. I could see old bullet strikes on the trunks, which in three years had almost healed over. On 9 September 2001 I flew from Vietnam to Kuala Lumpur to meet Lynne a day before the start of the Pacific Armies Chiefs Conference, co-hosted by the Chief of Army Malaysia, General Hashim bin Hussein, and the Chief of Staff, US Army, General Eric Shinseki. On the night of September 10–11 New York time—Lynne and I were attending a reception of five hundred people when, at about seven or eight o’clock, word went round like wildfire that an aircraft had crashed into the World Trade Center. I said to Lynne, ‘Something’s not right. It couldn’t be an accident.’ I decided to head back to the hotel, to make some phone calls back to Australia and turn on CNN. We were going down the escalator when we bumped into Eric Shinseki, who is a friend. He looked pale. He had been in a side room taking a telephone call from the States and said ‘We’ve had reports that a second jet has crashed into the World Trade Center.’ Next thing an aide handed him a phone and, after a brief conversation, he got off saying ‘A plane has just gone into the Pentagon.’ Military and civil police escorted our convoy back to the hotel where all of us were staying. From those first moments I was certain that we had seen a sea change in the global strategic environment, that the big power 150

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settings would be refocused on the pervasive and unknown nature of a global terrorist phenomenon. For the rest of the night, in between phone calls, Lynne and I were glued to CNN, watching the terrible tragedy unfold. At breakfast, all the chiefs of the Pacific Rim were assembled without their wives, in readiness for the day’s program. Eric Shinseki was understandably late and while we waited I made a decision to return to Australia on the next available flight to be available for the Government and the CDF, who would be looking to me to provide advice on the Army. Other chiefs were making the same decision. When Shinseki walked in, the whole room went silent. Spontaneously everybody stood up and applauded him. It was a gesture of total sympathy and solidarity with the American people. A poignant moment. Eric had been up all night. He had lost friends, colleagues and subordinates in the attack. Back in Australia I went straight to work, participating in the Government’s early responses to what had occurred. The Government was of the view that Afghanistan was unmistakably a safe haven for a terrorist movement that was directly implicated in the 9/11 atrocity and we had to support the Americans in a military response. The whole iterative and consultative process and decision loop went into action. Basically the Military recommends and the Government decides. After consulting his chiefs, the CDF, Admiral Barrie, liaised with the Government in terms of what troops were to be sent over and the nature of their mission. He recommended that among the options the Government might consider was to send our SAS, a relatively small number of people but hugely well trained in counter-terrorism and close-quarter combat skills. This recommendation was based on the fact that we already had significant responsibilities in East Timor and were on standby for our wider region. Further to that, it was decided that we could cover our other Special Force needs by sending only one of the three SAS squadrons. The Government agreed to put this proposal to the Americans. While we arrived at these decisions independently, the Americans knew our SAS were more than ready to take on a foe like the Taliban and al-Qa’ida. They had seen them in training in Kuwait in 1998 and on operations in East Timor. They no doubt responded favourably. On 7 October, American forces began targeting al-Qa’ida strongholds in Afghanistan and by mid-October we had committed our Special Forces to Operation Slipper. As Chief of Army, my major tasks in the lead-up were to expeditiously and effectively liaise with command of Special Forces, then Brigadier Duncan Lewis, to organize the raising, pre-deployment training and sustaining of the troops and equipment to be sent. Secondly I had to look at any readjustments to plans and commitments closer to home, so if the squadron Camaraderie and Commonsense

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was scheduled to go on exercise with Country X, I had to organize others to be sent on the exercise. Thirdly I had to advise the CDF and his operations staff of the maintenance and sustainment arrangements for their time away. In the meantime the CDF was consulting with the Government to find out how long the mission would last, recommending that, if we were to be there for sufficient time, a rotation should be contemplated. When the Government agreed to this, it was up to me to liaise with Duncan Lewis to select a point at which a new squadron would be prepared and sent over. That is the ordinary activity of a service chief, to keep forces prepared for if and when the Government needs them. Having provided the troops and their support, the Chief of Army monitors the situation in readiness for the operational calls made by the CDF and gives advice when asked, but the ultimate command decisions are made by the CDF. Lynne: As Chief of Army, Peter was totally absorbed with the job in hand but with every promotion I would wonder if he would go one step further, and on 4 July 2002 the Defence Minister, with the agreement of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, promoted him to general and chief of the Defence Force. Peter is quite a humble guy, so you have to know him to know what it meant to him. Of course, I was thrilled to see the one I love reach the absolute pinnacle of his career, particularly because he has always been so devoted to his work, although I did not realize the amount of work involved. When he was Chief of Army I thought ‘He can’t work harder than this’, but as CDF he does, especially in these exceptional times. Fortunately Peter thrives on responsibility and solving problems. He takes each challenge as it comes, as was the case with Bali. We were in Sydney on a few days’ leave. On the night of Saturday 12 October 2002, we had gone to sleep listening to the cricket on the radio. At 3 a.m. I woke to the news of the explosion at the Sari Club. I nudged Peter and he immediately rang Canberra, to discuss the need to send medical teams and Air Force to evacuate people. We drove straight back to Canberra, Peter on the phone the whole time. At such times all I can do is be there for him and listen. Peter: While we were surprised by Bali, after 9/11 we had a context. Imagine if Bali had occurred before 9/11. I think the shock in Australia would have trebled. After 9/11 we did not know the place, time or identity of the attackers or who would be attacked, but we were forewarned that our values could be challenged in the same manner, so it was straight into action. Our immediate view was that the large number of casualties could overwhelm the facilities in Bali, that we had to give the Indonesian Government 152

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and the authorities on the ground, including the medical authorities, the opportunity to move casualties back to Australian hospitals. From the early hours of Sunday morning and throughout the following days we set about recalling and assembling flight crews, preparing aeroplanes and sending plane after plane of doctors and nurses to classify and register patients and bring them back. At such times you cannot allow yourself to be distracted by natural feelings of sadness for the victims and their families. They need your help more. Later is the time to feel sadness, outrage, whatever. In the meantime it is necessary to have the clearest and coolest mind to provide the best assistance possible. This is part of military training and the longer you are in, and the more complex the problems you have to analyse and the arrangements you have to make, the less cluttered your mind must be: you get to the essentials. While September 11 was a sophisticated operation, you don’t have to be sophisticated to kill people—and that was shown in Bali and other attacks in Indonesia, the Philippines, Spain, Morocco and Turkey—yet where that act can be shown to have instigation, funding or any level of support from a regional or global network, it is a phenomenon that is just as dangerous as the attacks on the World Trade Center. You cannot measure terrorism by the raw number of casualties or the dollar value of damage to infrastructure. The danger of terrorism is in its apparent randomness, the fact that it can strike the innocent wherever they are, and in our inability to say we have eradicated it. All you can do is be vigilant and wind up the price of terrorism by attempting to ensure that every country forbids terrorist activities to be launched from that country so that eventually terrorists are starved of support. These long-term regional decisions occur in a more deliberate environment. Nonetheless, even complex issues have to be construed as simple propositions for which you try to have an unambiguous set of responses that can be clearly articulated, so that, when put into operation, they are understood by the people who have to give them effect. The essential consideration in deciding on a response is that neither the issue nor the response becomes a showstopper for either the particular goal or our long-term objective, this being to maintain constructive relationships with our neighbours. Having clarity and options is hugely important in managing the more deliberate part of the day-to-day business of a CDF. What helps are patience and experience, which come with age, and the ability to build relationships with your colleagues in Country X, Y and Z, to be able to discuss and gain their insights on issues concerning our region, as well as having open channels of communication with your Australian colleagues. This involves long discussions with your chiefs who may have insights you haven’t thought or Camaraderie and Commonsense

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heard of, and people like the secretary of Defence and the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and other experts. No one has a stranglehold on wisdom. It means that when the time comes for an urgent response to a challenge, that tends not to be black and white, other people help fill in the colour. Such was the lead-up to Iraq. One difference between Afghanistan and Iraq was that Iraq was a country armed to the teeth with a substantial military force that had a significant history of conducting wars of aggression. This was the environment in which, as CDF, I gave the Australian Government options on how best to contribute, first and foremost, to try and persuade Saddam to allow unfettered inspection access. The Government decided to allow for a forward deployment that was credible and which could be turned into a coalition operation if required. Preparations were made accordingly and when the persuasive intent of forward deployment failed we went into the war phase, with the intention of eliminating the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Remember that was what we genuinely thought were there. There are cemeteries full of Iraqi people and many others who believed that Saddam had a chemical and biological weapon capability. For Iraq the decisions I made were weightier because I was now CDF. I bear the responsibility for the day-to-day advice I give the Government and the command decisions I make subsequent to the Government’s commitment of troops in the initial phase, the war phase and the rehabilitation phase. Some of the issues I deal with can only be discussed with those who are authorized, but a vast amount of what I do is ordinary administrative leadership and there are many general issues that I come home and talk to Lynne about. We are a team and Lynne is a wonderful sounding board or a sponge, as I don’t necessarily look to her to give advice, rather just to be there so I can talk out an issue. I can then walk away thinking, ‘Now I know what I’m going to do.’ Lynne: As well as the war, in 2004 Peter has been involved in a number of parliamentary enquiries,5 which were featured in the media. You can’t expect the garden to be rosy and Peter takes all the controversy as part of being in the public eye. He does not complain or comment. Peter: I am a news junkie. International issues have become my bread and butter. I read three newspapers in the morning and listen to every news broad154

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cast from six o’clock until I go to work. Media that can examine, explore, propound, argue and even proselytize are one of the great attributes of a free society. Equally I have confidence in the ability of Australian people to make up their own minds. Also, taking part in the parliamentary enquiries is part of the CDF’s responsibility and accountability. We have hardworking people who sometimes get it wrong and the CDF is ultimately responsible. I take it on the chin. Also, though I have spent forty years in the armed services, it would be wrong to think I am in a military cocoon. As CDF I meet a huge cross-section of Aussies and a lot of ordinary Australians walk up to me and, after saying their hellos, are not shy in offering their views. By and large, those views are very supportive of the Defence Force and the work we do but in amongst all that are their insights. I figure it all helps. Lynne: At least in the last ten years, with so many UN deployments and responses to crises like East Timor, the Solomon Islands and the Asian tsunami, people can see the Defence Force is no longer just about fighting wars. Peter: The times in my career when I have felt most challenged are as a platoon commander in Vietnam, as commander of INTERFET and now chief, each time because of the life-and-death nature of the risks people were, or are, taking under my command. In each of these periods the decisions have been tough. In Vietnam, the decisions made in close quarter battle were tough because you didn’t have the time to debate and cogitate on what might be an alternative course of action. You do what you do and hope it works out. As you get more senior in rank, you have a lot more factors impinging on your decisions, so they typically get tougher because the consequences of bad decisions are more far reaching. You expect to deliberate more. In INTERFET the decision to deploy troops out of Dili into the western regencies was crucial. It involved balancing the need to make and keep Dili secure and the need to provide security elsewhere. Now that we have all three services under significant threat in Iraq, there is tremendous responsibility on everybody in the chain of command, culminating, in uniform, with me, and beyond me the Minister of Defence, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. Other decisions involve all 74 000 men and women of our Navy, Army and Air Force, including regulars and reservists. Then, from time to time, you have to make a decision in relation to an individual. Maybe their services are no longer required. The decision doesn’t put people’s lives in danger but it can be very confronting for the subject of the decision and for the people making it. You have to think carefully. Camaraderie and Commonsense

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Lynne: I often think about what life would have been like married to somebody who was not as strong and determined. I have gained tremendous strength from living with Peter. Where I have challenged him, I would like to think, is in slowing down to smell the roses. I remember on our honeymoon I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the New Zealand countryside and was pointing things out to him. Peter had never really looked at scenery before. Otherwise Peter has not changed much. Peter: Fundamentally I am the same bloke as that young platoon commander in Vietnam, except I have a huge amount of additional experience, less hair and more weight. Lynne: Perhaps he has grown with the times, especially in his respect for women in the Defence Force. Now he is equally proud of his girls as he is of his boys, whereas back in the Vietnam era many men would have thought women incapable of going bush for a week or doing the jobs they do now. There are female pilots flying Hercules into Baghdad International Airport! I absolutely admire their adventurousness. Peter: Sadly, human beings have been killing each other since we could walk upright and we have become expert in ways of doing it. Debates on how to avoid doing it have been around for just as long. Thousands of people have considered opinions on the alternatives to war and I would not argue with any of them. But for now I must remain focused on doing my job and fulfilling my technical and moral responsibilities: identifying what the Defence Force does and can do and the risks involved, and honestly and thoroughly reporting to government, to ensure that the people working in defence of our interests are looked after.

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5

TRUE BLUE Glenda Humes, Noel Conigrave and John Kinsela GLORIA ROBINSON

Indigenous Australians served as trackers in the Boer War [1899–1902] and with distinction in every subsequent war. About five hundred Aborigines served in World War I and six thousand Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders served in regular, irregular and support units in World War II. The most famous of all is Captain Reginald Walter Saunders MBE, the first Aboriginal to be commissioned as an officer. Reg Saunders went on to serve in the Korean War during 1950–52, along with his friend Noel Conigrave. Reg’s father had served in World War I. One of his sons joined the Army. Four of his daughters, including Glenda Humes, married military men. Two of his nephews by marriage served in Vietnam, one of them, John Kinsela, having represented Australia in the Mexico Olympics.

Glenda: Reginald Walter Saunders was named after his uncles, Reg Rawlings and Walter Saunders. They both won military medals in World War I. Apart from being Gunditjmara, Dad had Jamaican blood from a slave who jumped ship in Adelaide. Mum was a descendant of the Jawoyn people from Pine Creek, with a bit of Cornish and Sri Lankan ancestry, so when it comes to cricket I barrack for everybody. Like his father Chris Saunders, Dad was brought up at Lake Condah Mission on Gunditjmara land, forty-one kilometres from Portland, Victoria. All the boys in the Portland–Warrnambool area joined up to fight in World War I. It was a collective action. Aboriginals lived on missions but they played football True Blue

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and worked on the farms and in the sawmills with the white boys. It wasn’t about fighting for a king or queen. If your country is at war, you fight. Chris Saunders came back but his brother didn’t. Walter was killed in Vauvillers in 1918, three weeks after winning a DCM at Morlancourt Ridge. It was the same in World War II. Dad came back but his brother, Harry, didn’t. Dad was born in 1920 and Harry in 1922 at Framlingham. In 1924, their twenty-year-old mother died of pneumonia after giving birth to a daughter, who also died. Chris refused to give up his two sons and the three of them moved to Lake Condah Mission to be with the in-laws, Chris working in railway gangs, shearing sheds and sawmills. They didn’t have much language but would sit around telling stories, before television wrecked it for everyone. Dad learnt about the different birds: hearing the cries of a mopoke being the foreteller of catastrophe, and how to read the weather and to track and cook animals. He told us that traditionally the Gunditjmara lived in villages, with houses of stone and roofs of tea-tree and kangaroo skins. They farmed eels and fish, but otherwise I know little about my heritage. I’m a city kid. Dad had an obsession to educate himself and would sneak down to the riverbank and study by candlelight, but when Chris Saunders remarried, Dad’s stepmother had other ideas. Dad left school at thirteen and was sent to work on a farm near Portland, for three years living in a corrugated iron hut, where he continued to read. All his life, he loved reading. When Dad was about seventeen, Chris, Harry and Dad leased some forest and started their own pit sawmill. The Victorian bushfires of 1939 wiped it out. Seventy-one people died in those fires. When war was declared on 3 September, within a week Dad enlisted, along with his football mates, but I don’t remember Dad talking about World War II, perhaps because it was before we were born. I’ve found out more from his friend Noel Conigrave. Noel: Reg Saunders was as good as they say he was. He was an outstanding soldier and platoon commander, who had a natural presence and charisma. Three months after Reg enlisted he was promoted to sergeant—which was unusual, particularly for an Aboriginal—and in 1940, shortly after arriving in Palestine, the legend of Reg Saunders began. They were camped on the edge of the Sinai Desert and his commanding officer, Major Henry Guinn, tells the story of how a soldier went AWOL and was placed in the guardhouse. Reg was on duty as guard sergeant. The soldier was filthy, swearing and flinging abuses at him, so Reg said, ‘The best thing you can do is come outside and have a wash.’ The redneck replied, ‘I’m not going to have a black bastard telling me what to do.’ Reg opened the cell door, manhandled him out of the guardhouse 158

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and belted the living daylights out of him, then carried him back to his cell. Unbeknown to Reg, Major Guinn witnessed the altercation. Overnight, he gained a reputation for solving problems his own way. He was sent as a reinforcement to the 2/7 Battalion, reverting to the rank of private. He reckoned that after chasing the Italians across the desert, they had more fluid in their blistered feet than in their water bottles. At Mersa Brega, when three German fighter planes strafed the battalion, Reg claimed he dug a slit trench with his tin hat, his toothbrush still in his mouth. He was a great teller of tall tales. In April 1941, having been re-promoted to sergeant, Reg and the Sixth Division landed in Greece. The German advance was underway and the Australians met with constant aerial bombardment. Forced to retreat, along with Greek troops and refugees, they fought where they could, until the Greek Government capitulated. Two weeks after arriving in Greece they made their way to the beach for an evacuation that was on a scale second only to Dunkirk. The Dutch ship Costa Rica took them to Crete, but in Suda Bay the ship was bombed. The lights went out and the ship took water. Some men were put in lifeboats, a few jumped overboard, while most were off-loaded onto British destroyers to be taken to land. After a three-mile march, they camped in the open near snow-covered mountains, in freezing conditions with no tents or supplies. All they could do was sit through the German air raids. On 20 May, the Germans invaded by air with thousands of parachute troops. Six days later, the Allies fought the battle of Suda Bay. With little ammunition, Reg’s company and some New Zealanders fixed their bayonets and charged four hundred Germans to engage them in a blood lust of hand-to-hand combat. After the battle, orders came through to withdraw and evacuate. Everyone made their way to the beaches, hiding in caves or wherever they could find cover, a few lucky ones being evacuated by boat. For those left behind without food or ammunition, it was every man for himself. They split into groups, Reg joining up with fifteen men, hiding from the Germans who were taking prisoners. Desperately hungry, they stole and cooked a goat. When the Cretians came for their goat, the men handed over the last of their money. Heading back to Suda Bay to find some tins of bully beef they had buried, Reg lost them. For the next twelve months, Reg was posted missing in action. Some men mingled with the locals but this was impossible for Reg. Because of his appearance it would have been a red rag to the German bull, so he operated alone in the mountains. He developed a strong affection for the Cretians, often relying on their generosity. One story he told was how he hadn’t eaten for three days when he came down to a shepherd’s hut on dusk. The shepherd sent his children to bed without a meal so he could feed Reg. Reg objected but the shepherd replied, True Blue

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‘You are starving, you don’t know when your next meal will be. These children will eat tomorrow.’ Reg lived on honey, eggs, milk and goat meat. On one occasion, he came across a lone German paratrooper in the mountains. They crawled towards each other. The German was firing downhill and his bullets were cracking over Reg’s head. After Reg killed him, he went to his body, checked his rifle and discovered the sights were still set at 400 yards. The German, in his panic, had not adjusted them. Reg looked at the man’s papers: he was nineteen years old. In June 1942, Reg escaped on a trawler, disembarking at Bardia. It was only then that he heard that Japan had entered the war and Singapore had fallen. By August, he was on a ship back to Australia. Reg’s brother, Harry, had enlisted in 1940, sailing to the Middle East with the 2/14 Battalion six weeks after Reg. Several times they met on leave. Like Reg, Harry was an outstanding soldier and made some good mates. He served in Lebanon and was wounded in Tripoli before being sent to Syria. In January 1942, Prime Minister Curtin had recalled the Sixth and Seventh Divisions back to Australia. It was a short stay. By August 1942, Harry was in the Owen Stanley Ranges of New Guinea, fighting an enemy outnumbering them four to one. The Australians suffered huge losses in stopping the Japanese advance on Port Moresby, for five weeks sleeping and fighting in wet clothes and mud. Harry lost his best mate, Bruce Kingsbury, when Kingsbury, with no regard for his own life, cleared a path through enemy lines. Five days later, Harry was one of forty-two men and three officers who made a 42-day withdrawal through enemy territory. Eleven were killed and two of the wounded were carried on stretchers. One man who’d been shot in the ankle crawled all the way. In November, Harry and the remainder of the 2/14th were flown into Gona on the north coast. Five days of fighting later, on 25 November, Harry was crossing a swamp under enemy fire when a sniper cut him down. Harry’s death shattered Reg. At one stage, he had contemplated claiming Harry for his own battalion. Somehow, he felt responsible. In April 1943, Reg arrived in Port Moresby and within a week he was on patrols in very rugged country, heading for Salamana. His commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Guinn, noted he was an excellent jungle fighter: as silent and deadly as a cat. Around this time, his best mate, Baxter, who had served with him at Suda Bay, killed eight Japanese in his advance to within three yards of an enemy pit and was himself killed. When the commander of 13 Platoon was wounded at The Pimple, Reg took charge, continuing a war of hide-and-seek until November, when Reg returned to Australia for some well-earned leave. In December 1944, when Reg’s unit was stationed up at the Atherton Tablelands, Guinn recommended Reg for an officer cadet training unit, with a 160

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view to Reg becoming a commissioned officer. This was without precedent. Remember, this is 1944. Most Aboriginals didn’t vote and they couldn’t own land. They lived in missions or on Aboriginal reserves and were not permitted in town after 6 p.m. Reg went before a selection board of two lieutenant colonels, Guinn having stepped aside for Reg’s case to be reviewed. From a field of outstanding candidates, Reg’s manner, bearing and war record stood out but the selection board was not prepared to make the contentious decision. They referred the matter to Sir John Northcott, Chief of the General Staff, who referred it to General Thomas Blamey, Commander of the ADF. Blamey said: ‘If Lieutenant Colonel Guinn is prepared to accept Sergeant Saunders as an officer, I am prepared to do the same.’ It was customary that when an NCO became a commissioned officer he was sent to another unit but Blamey stated: ‘Saunders is to return to his original unit where he is known and held in high regard.’ That was another precedent. Reg did three months at the officer training school at Seymour, training with the likes of ‘Teddy’ Bear, DCM, MM, from Harry’s old battalion, and Oliver Drake-Brockman, the son of a World War I general. Then there was Tom ‘Diver’ Derek, a peacetime battler who had become a legend in Tobruk, El Alamein and New Guinea. ‘Diver’ Derek had already won a VC, after he’d climbed the ridge at Satelberg Hill in the Ramu Valley and single-handedly wiped out ten enemy pits with grenades. Reg and ‘Diver’ Derek shared a room, went on leave together and became extremely close. Later, when ‘Diver’ Derek was killed at Tarakan in Borneo, Reg was devastated. For the rest of his life, he had a photo of ‘Diver’ Derek’s grave beside his bed. On graduation, Reg became the first Aboriginal to achieve commissioned rank in the Australian Army. He returned to New Guinea in March 1945, leading a platoon. The battalion was soon up to their necks in the Wewak Campaign, where Reg continued to get even for Harry. On occasions, he would sneak into the jungle alone to kill a Japanese sentry. In an attack in the Torricellis behind Aitape, Reg copped five bullets to his knee and leg from a Japanese machine gun. One of the bullets was never taken out but this did not stop his love of sport. He was to become a professional runner, and representing his battalion, he was a member of both the Australian Rules and Rugby Union premiership sides in the Seymour–Puckapunyal army competitions. The same year, he was captain of Ringwood in the Sunday League grand final —Aussie Rules again. He took up golf aged fifty, and in a few years was down to a six handicap. He was also a deadly snooker and billiard player. I wasn’t a bad hustler myself, and we had some tremendous battles on the table. The tragedy was that, having served with such distinction for six long years, on return to civilian life, there were no job offers for Reg, from either True Blue

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government or private firms. He applied for the occupation forces in Japan, but they were not accepting Aboriginal. The only job he could get was as a tram conductor in Melbourne. After nine months he could see no advancement— he was ambitious—and decided to get a trade. He moved to Sydney with his wife, Dorothy, who he’d married before going to New Guinea the second time, and his three daughters, Barbara, Glenda and Dorothy. They lived in two rooms and Reg did a short stint in a foundry, after which an old army friend got Reg work as a tallyclerk on the Port Melbourne waterfront. That was where he was when the North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel on 25 June 1950, and war was declared the following day. In early August, the Australian Government announced they were sending troops. A special ‘K’ Force of seven hundred World War II veterans was formed to reinforce the battalion in Japan. Some 350 from Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria were on parade at Puckapunyal five days later. I’d come from Western Australia, having served with the Light Horse in World War II, where three out of six men in my tent were Aboriginal. I was acting platoon sergeant when the order was given: ‘Officers take post.’ Lieutenant Reg Saunders marched to our platoon. When I saluted him, he said, ‘Thank you Corporal. You know who I am, what’s your name?’ ‘Corporal Conigrave, Sir.’ ‘All right Corporal, when this bulldust is over, we’ll break away and get to know the rest of the platoon.’ I didn’t have to go to war to realize our new platoon commander was a breed apart. Within a week, he had formed a football team and challenged 2 Battalion to a match, and had organized a sports carnival for ‘K’ Force. When a young 2IC was too busy to process my early leave application, Reg went to see him saying, ‘Young fellow, a Digger’s main concerns are mail, leave and tucker. Give me the application and I’ll take it to the adjutant myself.’ I was amazed that an officer would do this. The following Monday, seventy of us entrained for Sydney. On the Tuesday night, we flew to Japan, Reg arriving two days later. Instead of joining 3RAR, on 30 September, we went up to Haramura, about twelve miles from Hiroshima, to the Battle Training Unit. On 4 November, ten of us landed at Pongyang and headed north in a truck to join 3 Battalion at Pakchon. A jeep passed by. Inside were Reg and Lieutenant Jim Young. When we arrived, the battalion was already under heavy attack. We suffered severe casualties: twelve dead and sixty-four wounded. Reg and I were in A Company, under Captain Benny O’Dowd, but Reg went to 1 Platoon and I went to 2 Platoon. Within a couple of days, we were out on long-range patrols. Reg had a sixth sense for danger and consequently did more patrols into no man’s land than any other platoon commander. Early on, I remember going across to him on another knoll a hundred yards away, where 162

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he had a stripped-down Bren gun on a ground sheet in front of him. I said, ‘What are you doing cleaning a Bren?’ ‘One of my gunners hasn’t written to his wife for five days. I told him to write to her.’ I said, ‘Jesus, he must think the stars shine out of your bum.’ ‘What are you talking about? I’m a professional. I don’t want my main firepower worrying about his wife and I don’t want him going on patrol with a dirty gun.’ The patrol engaged in a heavy fire fight, killing eight enemy. The Korean winter of 1950–51 was bone-harrowingly cold. For several weeks, the temperature was minus 24 degrees Celsius and sometimes 30 degrees below. We were exposed to the elements twenty-four hours a day. Our uniforms were totally inadequate, even after the distribution of American windcheaters and snow boots. With our sweat, the felt of the boots turned to ice. There was a lot of frostbite. At night we would set up defensive positions on high ground. Whether there was snow or not, the ground was frozen for at least a foot, so instead of digging weapon pits we made rock barricades in front of our two-man tents. We’d heat food on little tins of canned heat about the size of a Kiwi boot polish tin, lighting the solidified petroleum extract, then putting our Dixie on top. We slept on a ground sheet. Winds came through at forty or fifty miles an hour and there were cases of snow blindness. In one blizzard a fellow commented ‘This is no place for a white man.’ Reg retorted, ‘And it’s no place for a black man, either.’ After a week or two we were in North Korea, based forty miles south of the Yalu River, marking the border with China, patrolling to within ten miles of the border. It was flat country covered in snow. The Japanese had chopped down the trees. In the third week of November, the Chinese entered the war with fourteen divisions—about 160 000 men—and the Americans ordered the UN forces to withdraw. We called it ‘the big bug out’. It was frustrating but we had no option. We headed south, as did the refugees, with the Chinese on our tail. At one stage we’d marched for three days with no rations for the previous forty-eight hours. We were told there was an American supply depot ahead but when we were within three miles the Americans set fire to it, so the Chinese couldn’t capture the supplies. Having marched through the night we camped in a village. Late in the afternoon, Reg’s runner came over to our hut, saying, ‘Skipper wants you and Lofty Bowden to come across.’ We entered the hut and here’s Reg’s platoon sitting around a small pig roasting on a makeshift spit. We were still in North Korea, where pillaging was a chargeable offence. I said, ‘Skip, you could be in strife for this.’ Reg replied, ‘Those bastards may attack tomorrow and my blokes aren’t going to fight on empty bellies. Shut up and have a feed.’ That day we were the only troops out of several hundred men who ate a decent meal. True Blue

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During the retreat Reg’s platoon set up on top of a hill. His soldiers had taken off their backpacks before the climb. While his men were settling into position, Reg went down and returned with a pack on his back and another on each shoulder. He did this several times. His men, completely exhausted, thought this was magic. What he was actually doing was dropping off their packs and saying, ‘How about moving the Bren over there? Do you think that’s a better field of fire?’ December 11 found us back in Uijongbu, fifteen miles north of Seoul. From Uijongbu once we were taken out on patrol by American Negro transport drivers. In Korea, Negro soldiers were given mundane jobs, and if one was in charge, he could only be in charge of Negro troops. So here was Reg, as black as the ace of spades, in charge of twenty-five Caucasian blokes and the eyes of these Negroes rolled like Eddy Canter. They couldn’t believe it. I guess they didn’t know Reg Saunders. Like when Reg was on leave in Japan. A number of men had teamed up with Japanese women, and one day Reg walked in on the padre, who was in the middle of sending off letters to the Australian wives of three men killed in action. Reg took it upon himself to visit the men’s Shinto wives, to tell them the sad news. Back in Korea, in early 1951, Reg was promoted to 2IC of A Company under Benny O’Dowd. By this time we had consolidated in a fixed position at Changhowan and the monotony of field rations was supplemented by cooked meals brought up from A Echelon. As 2IC, Reg had the job of bringing up the trailer of hot boxes. The only access to the battalion area was a narrow causeway between paddy fields. Several trucks were parked on one side and the officer in charge had his jeep parked alongside the lead truck, blocking the roadway. Reg moved forward, saying to the officer, ‘Excuse me Sir, would you mind moving your jeep? I need to get this hot food to my troops.’ The Major replied, ‘Saunders, I will move my jeep when I am good and ready.’ Reg got into the Major’s jeep and drove it off the causeway, bogging it in the paddy field. The Major’s screaming, ‘Saunders, I’m going to have you court martialled for this.’ Reg and the Major were brought before Lieutenant Colonel Ferguson. The Major was adamant—he wanted Reg court martialled. Ferguson smoothed the waters before telling them to leave. He then called Reg back, saying, ‘Will you control yourself! You were in the right but you handled it the wrong way. Now nick off.’ When Diggers declare Reg Saunders was the best officer they ever served under, it was because the welfare of his men came first. At his eulogy I said ‘When one of Reg Saunders’ men was wounded, he bled a little. When he lost a man, a little of him died.’

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When Benny O’Dowd was wounded in a fire fight, Reg rang Lieutenant Colonel Ferguson, saying ‘O’Dowd’s been hit. I’m taking over, Boss’, and hung up. Years later, Ferguson chuckled as he said to me, ‘It was the quickest self promotion ever.’ Three weeks before the Battle of Kapyong, when O’Dowd resumed duties, Reg became the CO of C Company. Before Kapyong the Turks and Australians had been fighting side by side and were planning to celebrate Anzac Day together, but when the poorly trained South Koreans pulled back the Chinese got the scent. Sixty thousand Chinese troops easily overran the South Koreans, forcing the Diggers to retreat. By 10 p.m. on 23 April, ten thousand Chinese had reached the Australian perimeter. US tanks and 3RAR attempted to hold them back. A Company bore the brunt. B Company was second in line while Reg’s C Company was to reinforce A and B. By daybreak the Chinese were easy targets but after thirty-eight hours of battle the Australians were ordered to withdraw. It was the Canadians who halted the Chinese advance on the afternoon of 25 April—Anzac Day. Thirty-two Australians had been killed, another fifty-eight wounded. When Colonel Hasset took over from Lieutenant Colonel Ferguson, things changed for Reg. Colonel Hasset disapproved of officers mixing with their troops and had Reg transferred to platoon commander of a Vickers machine gun platoon. It was in this position that Reg fought in the Battle of Mary An San in October 1951, a three-day offensive that was very tough. Reg wasn’t the only Aboriginal who gave outstanding service to their country. In World War II about a thousand Aboriginals fought overseas. In Korea, from Western Australia there was Ken Colbung; Len Oglivie, who was wounded on 5 November at Pakchon; his brother Wally; and Gavin Mallard, the Mallards having fought in every war since the Boer, just to name a few. But when they came home they were treated like bums. It was the same for Reg, but he rolled with the punches. If somebody had a go at him he’d laugh. Even in the 1960s, when he went into a pub and the barmaid told him ‘Sorry, I can’t serve Aborigines’, he said, ‘No sweetheart, I’m a university student from Pakistan.’ ‘Then have a beer.’ He always had a quick answer. Glenda: I was three when Dad went to Korea. As a kid I’d ask him to tell me about the war, but he only told me how freezing it was, and how one day they were sheltering in a hut, very tired, hungry and dirty, when they heard a cry coming from a bundle of rags. A baby had been left behind. It was only when I lived with him for a short time as an adult that he told me about another incident. After forward scouts reported Chinese in a nearby village Dad radioed in for air support. From his vantage point he could see the school. As

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the bombs dropped he watched the kids run out. He said to me, ‘There was a little girl around your age and I was saying to her “Just make it, make it”, but she didn’t.’ The only other thing I remember him saying about war was that you have people alive and talking one minute and the next thing they are dead. Then your worry is, ‘What am I going to do with the body?’ I never saw him grieve or cry for anyone who died, not even his father. For him it was just ‘They are gone, what can I do?’ Facing his own death he was very calm. He’d been sick with heart failure and went into hospital at Christmas, 1989. He knew he was dying. The family had gathered around him. One of my sisters was stroking him and he said ‘Just leave me alone.’ I think it hurt her, but he didn’t want to be smothered. My mother and father had been separated for thirty-six years, but Mum was there. She spent all day, every day, at the hospital. His last words were to her. He looked at her and said ‘Thanks mate’, then went into a coma. That was March 1990. He was sixty-nine. Mum and I, Dad’s three sons, my family and Hilary went to Lake Condah to scatter his ashes. My brother, David, opened the lid of the box and it was like the ashes jumped out. They fell on some relatives, who yelled and carried on, but a cousin of Dad’s said to her son ‘You have cousin Reggie on you!’ as if it was lucky. Hilary and I were sobbing. We laugh about it now—how eager Dad was to be free. I can’t remember him leaving for Korea. Mum might not have been impressed. Her health wasn’t good, she had three children under the age of five and it was the third time she had seen the man she loved go off to war. You see, Mum had been in love with Harry. They were writing to each other and planned to marry. When Harry was killed, Mum wrote to Dad and he wrote back. His first letter to her is dated 14 May 1943, a month after he arrived in New Guinea: ‘Harry mentioned he had a girlfriend but never mentioned names. I had not seen him for two and a half years, and only had one letter … At least, I’ve been able to avenge Harry’s death … When I return to Australia maybe we’ll meet … respectfully yours, Reginald Saunders.’ Mum didn’t talk about Harry. He was her personal affair—her first love. It was a time of war. She was a good-looking woman, but he was very, very special. Every Anzac Day she’d take his letters down from the top of the wardrobe and read them. After Dad came back from New Guinea the first time, he met Mum. They fell in love and married on 3 April 1944. So Mum had two of them Saunders boys! She was still in the Air Force. Dad went back to New Guinea the following March, and Mum was left for a second time. It must have been hard for her but she was patriotic.

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When Korea came up, Dad did not have to enlist, but he loved being a soldier and a leader. He liked the excitement, the power and responsibility. It was a contrast to his civvy life—it was eating at a different table. In the Australian Army the only skin colour is green, and when he was overseas, people would flock to him, like they did with his friend, ‘Diver’ Derek. To be near them was to have their stuff rub off on you too. Back on civvy street: no more adoration. So Dad enlisted for Korea. Mum kept Dad’s letters too. In one, written in December 1951, he wrote: ‘Please give my special love to Barby. As I lie here … I can’t help think of the day she hid under the bushes from you in 14 Glebe Street, and the day she ate snails and the intense joy she gave us when she born … Tonight … My eyes are so much in love with you they are dim to all else. I feel so very lonely. I miss you and our three darlings so much it makes me want to cry. I am hoping I am home with you all very soon. Give Glen a big hug from me. She is extra special. I wonder does [sic] her eyes flash the same and does she still swear and is she as wild as ever? Is her hair still singed from the gas stove? Last but not least is my own precious baby. I bet she’s spoilt by everyone … Is her hair still curly and does she still call for her daddy when she is in trouble? I love you all so much it hurts … My fondest love only to you and our precious babies … always yours, Reginald.’ We’d get an allotment from his pay. It wasn’t much and though Mum was a great money manager we had our feast and famine weeks. We lived in a leaky, rat-infested room with holes in the floorboards. After my baby sister got bitten by a rat Mum wrote to a newspaper. A journalist came out and took a photo and wrote a newspaper article. The caption read something like ‘War Hero’s Family Lives in Atrocious Conditions’. After that Mum was offered a five-bedroom home in the middle of an orchard out at Ringwood. We lived there with her mother and father and my aunty and uncle and their three children, John, Lorraine and Michael Kinsela. In March 1952, we trooped down to Spencer Street Railway Station to meet Dad, the three of us girls in brand-new frilly dresses and starched petticoats, with bonnets to match. We were so vain and excited. I remember running to Dad and being hugged and thrown in the air, and later climbing all over him. He looked so good in his uniform. Mum was radiant. Dad and I were mates. Later he told me that after he came back from Korea I’d said to him ‘I don’t want to be black’, and he said ‘Oh, all right.’ He took me down the street of Ringwood and all these people were saying, ‘Hello Reg, how are you?’ Dad was playing for Ringwood Football Club at the time. I said, ‘How come you know so many people?’ ‘Because I’m black.’ He made me think about being black in another way … just as I think having three kids before Korea

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changed the way Dad felt about war. Mum always said ‘After Korea he was a changed man.’ He was more moody and angry and they argued, although never in front of us. I never sensed anything wrong, but Mum said he was drinking and womanising with the nurses, less of a family man, Electronic rights for this image are not available. just living in the moment. I think that’s what they argued about. She was trying to save the marriage. With us, Dad was strict. It was very much ‘children should be seen and not heard’ but he played and talked and was always a comfortable person to be around. He never hit us. For punishment we Captain Reginald Saunders and his wife, would have to go down and face Dorothy, with their three eldest daughters, the back fence. Dorothy, Barbara and Glenda, on Reg’s Dad was still in the Army and homecoming from Korea, 1952. away a lot. He trained 2RAR recruits for Korea up at Puckapunyal and then National Servicemen at Watsonia. That’s when he really started playing up. When in Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital with a bout of malaria he met a nurse, Pat. One day Mum dressed up three of us and took us into town. We waited outside a Melbourne cinema until we saw Pat and Dad come out. Mum slapped Pat in the face, saying ‘This is my family that you are destroying.’ Mum and Pat exchanged a few angry words. Dad was quiet. And that was the end of the marriage. Dad started living with Pat. He wanted me to go and live with them and Mum asked me what I wanted to do. I said, ‘No. If I went I’d burn the house down.’ I would never leave Mum. The year was 1954, the year Dad had his first child to Pat: Christopher. It means Mum was pregnant with Elizabeth at the same time Pat was pregnant with Chris. That same year all the good-time, party-boy stuff was found out and it undid Dad’s army career. He was asked to resign, which he did. With no job prospects, he went back to working in a sawmill, dreaming of owning a farm. Other veterans used to get settlement blocks, or a war service loan to buy a home. Gunditjmara land was divided up for soldier settlement blocks, but not 168

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for Dad. He was a captain of men but as an Aboriginal he had no right to own land or a home. He wasn’t even a citizen, and on civvy street he was back to basics. He was bitter about that, but proud too. He was often in debt, partly from having lowly paid jobs, but also he loved to gamble. Once or twice his veteran mates offered him money but he would say ‘I paddle my own canoe.’ A decent job offer would have been better. Times were tough. Mum was having massive asthma attacks. We moved to Sydney, first to her parents’ in Redfern, and then to a Salvation Army place at La Perouse. After seven months we were allocated a small house at Herne Bay, the old US army hospital. We lived there for four years, sleeping three to a bed. Mum was an extraordinary person: courageous, caring and gentle. She was often sick with asthma. The attacks were severe and frequent, depending on the weather or the stress she was under. She could have packed it in, given us up, but she didn’t. For her everything centred round her children. Our house was always happy and bright, filled with music and dancing and lots of people. We had an unwritten deal. When Mum was well we didn’t lift a finger. We would swan in and out and fight over who was going to do the dishes until she’d say ‘Get out of my sight’ and do the lot. It was a good ploy. But when she had asthma we looked after her. We fed her, bathed her, cleaned up, never complained, then it was back to being bitches. It was in the winter of 1957, that Mum wrote a letter to Dad saying she wanted a divorce. In those days you had to be separated for two years. The next week Dad turned up and stayed. That’s when David was conceived. In my memory it was like Dad stayed for a year—we were all so happy to have him back—but according to Aunty Shirley, a good friend of Mum’s, he only stayed a week. The day he left, Aunty Shirley says Mum came over to her, very upset, holding a writing pad in her hand. It had the imprint of a letter Dad had written to Pat saying he was going back to her. Soon after, Mum had a bad asthma attack during which she could hardly breathe. We moved to Greenacre, Nana coming too. Not long after that Mum developed TB, and for three months the four eldest girls went to a Red Cross home in Bowral. Elizabeth and David stayed somewhere else. Nana would ring to check how we were. Until she died, when I was thirteen, Nana and I were very close. I named Alpena, my eldest daughter, after her. In 1959, Dad moved to St Marys with Pat and their three children. We’d come home from school and find him visiting, or we’d be outside playing and he’d pull up in a taxi or he’d come and go when we weren’t there. We’d be thrilled to see him, give him a big hug and kiss and sit and have a yarn over Mum’s homemade scones and a cup of tea. He was always full of jokes and laughter, and a real gentleman. He never spoke about his other family. I don’t True Blue

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think Pat knew that he was seeing us and the other kids never knew we existed. We knew they existed but we didn’t waste our breath on them. Mum accepted Dad’s coming and going. She was always happy to see him. She never ran him down. In the end she would say, ‘Good friends can’t live together.’ And after her initial reaction she never ran Pat down either. She knew Pat had a heart condition and no family in Australia. When Dad was there the whole place would light up, then he’d be gone. No big deal. He never stayed more than two days and it would be a couple of months before we saw him again. Feast week was pension week because it was always hard to get money out of Dad. He even did some prison time for that. In a very lean week, Mum might ring him and it was my responsibility to catch the bus and train from Greenacre to Sydenham Railway Station to meet him. We’d have a yarn and he’d give me ten pounds, and off I’d go. He would come in an emergency and even came to see me running at the State Athletics Carnival, except I didn’t turn up. I had no running shoes. Even after us kids moved out, he’d visit Mum and they would ring each other. He always said there were only two women in his life. He loved them both and after Pat died he would ask Mum to accompany him to official functions, like the opening of the new Parliament House. Life became easier once us girls started work. We all contributed. I was the first to marry. I met Bill at the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs, where we used to go of a Sunday night. Bill was from Western Australia and was stationed with 5RAR at Holsworthy. He had six months to serve and he didn’t want to sign up again. I was grateful for that. I wanted Dad to give me away so I decided to take Bill over to Dad’s place at St Marys. I knew that Dad and Pat had four children but I walked into a house of strangers. Dad was very welcoming. He kept hugging me. They all watched, probably in a state of shock. Chris was ten, Hilary was nine, and Andrew was three. Maggie was still with her foster family. Bill ended up introducing three of my sisters to their future husbands. It meant four of us girls married army boys! Two had just come back from Vietnam. Dorothy married Arthur Bowyer, or Cass, who was in signals. Judith married Ernie Thompson, or Tommo, a medic in 1RAR. Throughout the war our house was full of army boys. All Bill’s relatives, the Noongar boys from Western Australia, came and stayed with us. Most were conscripts. There was Lenny Culbung and Bill’s nephew, Charlie Parfitt, and Bill’s cousin, Ray Kickett. The smell of those army boots! We’d have a big feed, a yarn and a laugh and would see them off and write to them all. Then there were my cousins Michael and John Kinsela. They both went to Vietnam.

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John Kinsela: I’d got polio when I was four and wore leg braces. The doctor said I’d probably wear them all my life but I proved him wrong. Dad was an alcoholic until he gave up the drink in his forties. He was in and out of jobs and we moved around, but at least he put food on the table. When I was eleven I went to a boys’ home in Bowral for twelve months and at fourteen I left school because we needed money. I worked in different jobs, but continued in the Scouts and started wrestling at the Police Citizens’ Youth Club. My first bout was with the State Champion. Within months I was beating him—I had the strength, agility and technique. I’d been wrestling for three years when I got the Queen’s Scout Award and the Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award, given out by the Duke himself in 1968. I had just been selected for the Olympics but I was too tongue-tied to tell him. In my first bout at Mexico I was up against the European Champion, an Italian guy who came fourth, then a Russian, and with two losses I was out. From then on I enjoyed myself. Mexico was the last of the friendly games. A year later I was conscripted. At the end of recruit training I put artillery first, with the intention of becoming a physical training instructor. It was in corps training that I heard about the battle at Fire Support Base CORAL in May 1968. It was the biggest battle after Long Tan. Fourteen Australians died. The story frightened the hell out of me but I still reckoned artillery was safer than infantry. They were calling for volunteers to go to Vietnam and ninety per cent of us wanted to go. In May/June 1970 we flew out. We arrived at the lines of 106 Battery at Nui Dat and twenty-four hours later were driving through Hoa Long, a village known to be inhabited by VC, then Dat Do, on our way to The Horseshoe, five or six kilometres west of the Long Hai hills. I was in shock: all the police, soldiers and guns, the shot-up Buddhist temples and people squatting in the street to go to the toilet; rotten food everywhere. The stench sticks in your nostrils. When we passed an ARVN compound I saw a row of six dead bodies covered in white powder to stop them from smelling and decaying. The Horseshoe had six guns within a barbed wire perimeter on the low ground and a sentry post on each arm of the ridge. As a Reo [Reinforcement], at first I didn’t know anybody but there were many nationalities and people respected you for who you were. For most of the next eight months I slept next to my gun on a bomb pallet floor, inside walls of sandbags with a corrugated iron roof, sandbags on top. Our guns provided fire support for ambushes within a seven-kilometre radius. At any hour of the night the guns would go off for H&I [harassment

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John Kinsela on sentry duty at The Horseshoe, Vietnam, 1970.

and interdiction] to keep the enemy on their toes. Army intelligence would give locations of known VC trails or the radar would pick up signals from the Americans’ heat-sensing devices and we’d let off three or four bombs. We were quite successful at killing VC. Sometimes cows. I heard recently that an SAS soldier in East Timor kicked a body. It made me think, ‘Some of the things I saw in Vietnam were far worse.’ When I was at Fire Support Base BRIGIT I watched a mob roll over a corpse and put a noose around his head. Someone was taking pictures; others were having lunch. It disgusted me. I had been brought up a Christian and believed that killing people is not proper. I had the option to transfer to the 12th Field Regiment, where my brother was, but I was pissed off with not being able to wrestle and I was homesick. Being stuck beside a gun felt like being in a prison cell. But also, one of my mates, Doyle, an APC guy I’d met at Canungra, who used to sing ‘You’ll come home in a plastic bag, doo dah, doo dah’, ended up in a body bag. That cut me up. I didn’t want to stay. It was a war that we shouldn’t have been in. For years I was ashamed to say that I went to Vietnam. For years I would wake up at night with a sweaty pillow after the same dream. It was a particular spot near the Luscombe airstrip at Nui Dat. It was like I didn’t want to be there. When I came home I had a series of operations and was hitting the grog but just before Christmas I got back into wrestling. I had five months before the Munich Olympics selections. To qualify I had to do well in sixteen bouts, get a place in the state and national championships, then be one of three wrestlers 172

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selected across ten divisions. In February 1972 I was selected. The freestyle wrestling was on the first four days. I was lucky: I won my first match against a South American, got a bye in the next and in the third I was up against the Italian who beat me in Mexico. I lost—but whereas he beat me twentysomething in Mexico, he only got two points up on me in Munich. On the fourth day of the Games I went to the wrestling finals, and the next day, 4 September, we were having drinks in the courtyard when out of nowhere I heard the distinct sound of AK-47s. I hit the deck, thinking, ‘It can’t be—this is the Olympics.’ One person said ‘Somebody’s letting off firecrackers’, so we went back to enjoying ourselves. The following day our manager called a meeting and told us that eight Black September Palestinians had taken the Israeli wrestling team hostage. They had killed two hostages. The siege had lasted all day and in the evening the terrorists and their hostages were taken to the airport. German police were waiting in ambush. In the shoot-out all the hostages, five terrorists and one policeman were killed. A few days after the siege, I picked up a leaflet. It said the Olympics were all about competition, just like a war. It got me thinking, ‘Well, I’ve been to a war, and now to two Olympics’, and with the Israelis getting shot, my heart wasn’t in it. I decided to retire. All I wanted was a little peace and serenity. Two years later, in 1974, my old coach talked me out of retirement. I got an Aboriginal grant to go to Istanbul for the World Championships. I didn’t win but I had a good time. The Turks treated us well. A year later I won the Australian Championship in the 52-kilo division. Now I don’t agree with that leaflet. I think the Olympics bring countries together. Back home, I was training and working hard as a courier, a job where I could be on the move and more or less my own boss. I had a young family but I became a binge drinker. When tension built up I hit the bottle. Fortunately I have a good wife who stuck by me and Aborigines are very family orientated. In 1978 I joined the Army Reserves and became a corporal in the Commandos and in 1981 I was Commando of the Year but when we got custody of my sister’s two children, I gave up Reserves. Things were rocky at home. I’d lose the plot over Koori time: with my military background, if someone was five minutes late I’d start panicking. Being a disciplined person, and a perfectionist, I was strict with my kids and would sometimes go off my nut. I encouraged them in sport but they did not take to training regimes. You either have it or you don’t. I never wore my RSL badge and never mentioned Vietnam. It was only after the Welcome Home Parade in 1987 that I started going to Anzac Day. When I met up with veterans of World War II and Korea they spoke highly of Uncle Reg. One guy from Korea said he’d go anywhere with Uncle Reg ’cos Reg had no fear True Blue

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and led by example. I knew Aborigines make good soldiers—we learn fast. Otherwise I didn’t have much to do with Uncle Reg. My Dad was more of a father to those Saunders girls. I never missed a day’s work but by 1995–96 I was becoming anxious on the road. I changed jobs. Each job felt like I was being incarcerated so I went back to couriering. By 1997 I was anti-social, hitting the bottle, gambling, and arguing with my wife. I felt guilty. I wasn’t sleeping, I was always anticipating, always racing against time. For years I haven’t known how to rest. I started forgetting things and feeling tired. I had no interest in anything. Being a proud person, I didn’t allow people to see what was happening. But it built up to a point where I had a complete breakdown. Two weeks later I put myself into St John of God. I stayed off the grog and smokes. I learnt about anger management. I had never admitted that I was an alcoholic, even after my brother died in his own vomit from being so drunk. Vietnam changed him. He became disillusioned with the Army. All his Nasho mates left, he went AWOL and got a dishonourable discharge. It’s been hard to tell my family that I can’t go back to work. At least they’re supportive and the new medication makes me think clearer. I can talk to people. Glenda: Ray Kickett and Charlie Parfitt also ended up with problems. Charlie found it hard to get work. It was the same for Dad. For fourteen years all he could get were foundry and labouring jobs, then in 1969, two years after the referendum that made Aboriginals citizens, Dad became one of three Aboriginals to be employed by the Commonwealth Government as a liaison officer for the Office of Aboriginal Affairs, a subsidiary of the Prime Minister’s Department. He travelled all over Australia, meeting people and camping in the desert. He loved it. He took old Nugget Coombs across the Simpson and would take other high-profile people to remote communities, consulting the people about the programs they needed. He used to talk about how lucky we were compared with other Aboriginal kids. I didn’t think much about it until I started working in Aboriginal Affairs. Now I know how tough it is for people: how it’s a very thin line that we walk. He told me one story about being out in the desert, sitting alone by a campfire. An old bloke came along and they spent the night talking and drinking billy tea. When Dad woke up the old fellow had gone. Dad couldn’t find his tracks. It was like he had never been there. Any time he was in Western Australia he would catch up with Noel Conigrave. Noel: Soon after he got the job with Aboriginal Affairs he came over to Perth on his way up to the Pilbara and the Kimberley. I accompanied him to the air174

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port to catch a plane. He was Mr Immaculate, dressed in long white socks, cream shorts, a lemon shirt and a cravat. He walked up to the counter of MacRobertson Miller Airways, saying, ‘My name is Saunders. I’m booking in.’ The desk attendant looked at him as if he was a mushroom just out of the ground saying, ‘Your name’s not on the flight.’ Reg replied, ‘I have twelve flights booked in the next nineteen days. I’m going on that plane.’ The attendant said, ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ Reg pulled a paper from his wallet, saying, ‘This is the second time I’ve had to use this.’ The paper said, ‘Mr Reginald Saunders is the bearer of this pass, and any request made by him will be deemed to be made by myself’, signed John Grey Gorton, Prime Minister. He was a communicator, an extrovert, but brooked no nonsense. On one of his trips, Reg had to visit Gnowangerup in the Great Southern Desert, to address the severe unemployment among Aboriginals. The local shire had great difficulty in getting staff for road works and Reg was authorised to instigate a system whereby the Office of Aboriginal Affairs would pay full wages for three months and half wages for six months if the shire trained and employed indigenous workers. Reg left my home in a Commonwealth car, a big Dodge Phoenix. Several hours later, on the outskirts of Gnowangerup, a dirty young Aboriginal hailed the car for a lift into town. The driver asked Reg if he should pick him up. Reg replied, ‘Would you like him in your home in that condition?’ ‘No Sir.’ ‘Well, I don’t want him in this car. He needs a good scrub.’ Reg was at the post office when the hitchhiker came up and said to Reg, ‘You were the bastard that let me walk into town.’ By this time Reg was in his fifties, but he could still fight like a Kilkenny cat, so he says, ‘Yeah. How would you like to come outside?’ Behind the post office he belted the bejesus out of the young fellow, then told him ‘You’re a bum, but I’m here to give you a job.’ The shire employed this fellow and some years later he became the shire works foreman. Over the years, when Reg came west or I came east, we’d have our nights on the town. When I heard Reg was sick I drove over to Portland to see him. You could play his ribs like a xylophone. He was having difficulty walking any distance, partly because of his war wound and also his liver problems. He took me down to Lake Condah and showed me his favourite fishing spots at the mouth of the river before announcing he was coming back to Western Australia with me. I queried him about making the trip but he said, ‘When I’m tired, we can pull up. I’d like to see my old army mates in the West before I go.’ I’d rung ahead to tell the blokes Reg was coming. Twenty-odd blokes who’d served with Reg in Korea made it to lunch, and when word got out others came later. That was the level of respect he commanded. A week after he returned to Canberra, he went into hospital and never came out. I came over for his memorial service. I remember a statuesque blonde arriving in a Mercedes. True Blue

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After the service she went up to Dorothy, saying, ‘Oh Mrs Saunders, I was a friend of Reg’s. Actually, I was more than a friend.’ Dorothy replied, ‘Many were called but few were chosen. I was chosen.’ Glenda: Dad worked in Aboriginal Affairs until the mid-1980s and became a fount of knowledge. Often he saw things from a different perspective to others on the front line. He supported our fight for self-determination, to have our own organizations, but he worked within the system. He had the ear of Prime Minister John Grey Gorton and worked during the time of McMahon, Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke, although by 1972, when the Whitlam Government set up the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs, he did not have a direct line to the top. He was always the quiet, articulate, well-dressed man. To Aboriginals working in Canberra, he emphasized the need to respect themselves and each other and was a great one for guidelines and teamwork. Towards the end Dad was less of a roving person and did a lot of work with the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee set up in 1972, the forerunner of ATSIC. His top priorities were for Aboriginal children to have access to early childhood education, sports programs and drug and alcohol programs, and supporting women in their attempts to keep their families together. When Hawke became prime minister, under the Federal Land Act of 1987 Framlingham and Lake Condah were given back to the Gunditjmara. Dad always said land rights were not the whole answer. He’d say, ‘It’s no good giving land if people don’t have the skills to make it economically viable. Working on a cattle station is different to running one.’ Training and support structures had to go with the land. Over the years I got to know Dad and Pat’s children and noticed how he related to his sons. Conversations were short and sharp. Male banter quickly became a put-down. There was a lot of slamming doors, clearing out, Dad always having the upper hand. I think living with the Saunders name and expectation was difficult for Pat’s boys. They weren’t into sport. They were artistic, sensitive types. My brother, David, had nothing like what those boys experienced: he did not live with Dad, but also he was more his father’s son. He played soccer and Aussie Rules and served in the Army for three years. I think he joined to prove a point, but as David’s regimental sergeant major told him, ‘You’re a man with a wheelbarrow. I served under your old man and you better be good.’ David got on with life in his own quiet way. When Dad was ill in hospital, David came and looked after him. Their relationship didn’t have the tensions Dad had with the other boys. Andrew was in and out of trouble. Chris and Dad remained estranged. Chris became a heavy drinker and died of diabetes a couple of years after Dad. 176

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Pat’s heart condition meant she knew she was not going to live long. Just before she died I was with Mum in the car and said, ‘I’m going to call in to see Dad and Pat. Do you want to stay in the car or do you want to come in?’ and she came in and had a cup of tea. They were civil, skimming the surface, letting the past remain in the past. By this time both knew what it was like to be cheated on. Dad had other relationships. For the last seven years of his life Dad lived alone. He was self-sufficient. He still had his golf and his army buddies dropping in and would go to the RSL for two hours of an afternoon. He’d be up with the birds and liked his own company. In 2000, when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Veteran and Services Association formed, I became its national secretary. Most Aborigines did not feel comfortable going to other associations. After Vietnam they were unwelcome in the RSL clubs and in previous wars it was the law that kept them isolated. Many are physically ill. Electronic rights for this image are Sometimes you can’t talk to them not available. because they are so ill. Other times they are men of steel—won’t take a step back. You can hear it in their voices. But I respect them all, for the lives they’ve lived. Part of the problem is that Aboriginals don’t recognize their problems could be war-related and doctors don’t think to ask whether they’ve been to war. It means they don’t get to apply for a war service pension or a TPI. A Glenda Humes at Lake Condah, 2004, prority of the Association is getting the photographed by Damian White. word out. It’s mainly word of mouth— Courtesy of the Warrnambool Standard. many Aboriginals don’t have a stable address. Even when they get the information, to get a TPI you have to go to so many doctors, and many have no way of doing that. Most do not go to Anzac Day, whereas we always went, and still do. But back in 1987, for the Welcome Home Parade, a lot of them Noongar boys made it over. Ray Kickett and my cousin, John Kinsela, were there. From the sidelines we cheered and yelled for all of them. True Blue

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Judith and Dorothy’s husbands were also affected by Vietnam. Both were workaholic career soldiers so my sisters had to move around and do a lot on their own. At least while they were in the Army, Cass and Tommo were with like-minded people, but it made them regimented. Dorothy and Cass never had children. For most of their 23-year marriage Cass was on edge and very controlling and after their divorce he got a TPI for post-traumatic stress. Dorothy can’t understand why he has PTSD—he was never front line, but war affects people differently. Cass’s father brought him up. When his father died, Dorothy was everything. So break-ups and deaths can trigger things. Judith and Tommo’s two daughters were premature and neither has walked a smooth road. After twenty years of marriage, Judith instigated a divorce. Tommo was always coming back, saying he wanted to help with the children, and there were arguments. That was when Mum went to stay with her in Toowoomba to help with the girls while Judith worked. But then Mum became ill with undisclosed cancer. She was wasting away. After Christmas 1996 she came to live with us in Canberra. She was bedridden. The Aboriginal Medical Service was brilliant. My sisters would visit and I can remember Elizabeth sitting on the bed, crying, and Mum saying ‘Don’t let her do that.’ I said, ‘Okay Mum, but you know we all cry.’ ‘Do youse?’ She was surprised! She knew she was dying. She had a quiet acceptance of it. My friend, Flo, would come and read her the Bible and Aunty Shirley would read Mills and Boon. In her sixties, Mum had gone back to study at university and remarried. That lasted twelve months. She never wanted to talk about it. Even when she was sick, she told me, ‘Don’t tell him. I don’t want that bastard anywhere near my funeral.’ She wanted to be buried at Botany Bay next to my daughter, Alpena. They had a special relationship. Alpena had died on 25 January 1988. She was twenty-one. It was totally out of the blue and rocked us all. She was one of a kind—very articulate and outgoing, with a flair for languages. When she was six she came home from school crying, saying, ‘The kids won’t let me play with them.’ ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because I can’t speak their language.’ I said ‘Why don’t you try and learn?’ And she did. They were Croatian, so she learnt Yugoslavian and went on to speak French, Italian, Spanish and Vietnamese. As far back as I can remember, Mum always voted. She knew her rights, and so did Alpena. Alpena joined up with others to champion for John Pat, an Aboriginal who died after being allegedly bashed by police in Roebourne lockup. Alpena’s group were asking questions and with pressure from them and others the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was set up in 1987. After Pat died, for a while Alpena lived with Dad. She was right up his alley, a chip off the old block—could debate anything with him. Unbeknown to 178

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us, Alpena had started experimenting with heroin. Dad was devastated. I only know of one burial that he attended and that was Alpena’s. So Mum outlived her granddaughter by nine years and Dad by seven, and was buried beside our beloved Alpena. The deaths of Alpena and Mum have left two big holes in my heart but I count my blessings. I have known two heroes: Dad and Mum. Captain Reg Saunders had ten children, twenty-seven grandchildren, eighteen great grandchildren, and we’re still counting … His sons Chris and Andrew did it tough, and so did Mum and Pat, but Dad’s ability to talk, achieve and inspire flowed to his daughters and David. As a lawyer I have worked in Aboriginal Legal Services and Legal Aid and now, with a Masters in Indigenous Social Policy, I work for an Aboriginal community-controlled health organization. Dorothy works in Aboriginal health. Judith has a degree in psychology and works in schools with Aboriginal kids. Barbara worked at the Australian Taxation Office before she retired. Hilary works in Aboriginal Affairs. David was a director of a company and is now involved with Aboriginal sport. And Elizabeth—well, she worked as a child protection worker before her fatal heart attack in 2003. Her daughter, Sarah, wanted her mother’s ashes to be with Dad’s, so we went to Lake Condah. After scattering them, all of us were standing in the bush and Dad’s brother, Keith, called the old people in language: ‘Come, come …’ His son whispered to me ‘Your father might come too.’ There was an eerie silence. Suddenly a crack pierced the air. A tree branch broke and crashed to the ground. A piece of bark fell off another tree. It was like they had come.

Noel Conigrave died on 8 March 2005. He had requested his ashes be scattered with his friend Reg Saunders at Lake Condah.

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6

A REAL WAR Gloria Robinson

Gloria Robinson married an RAAF man, Fred Robinson, who served in Vietnam in 1966. Three of her brothers had served in World War II, and one of them, Kevin, was among the 13 000 Australian prisoners of war who worked on the Thai–Burma Railway. During the seventeen months the railway took to complete, 100 000 POWs died, 2650 of them Australians. Despite her brothers’ experiences of military conflict, it was only after thirty years of marriage that Gloria began connecting Fred’s behaviour to Vietnam. This is a story of Kevin’s experiences in World War II, and of Gloria and Fred.

Gloria: When I met women from the Vietnam Veteran Partners’ Support Group it was like coming home. I thought all the problems I was having were just a part of living, that if I talked to someone I would be being disloyal to Fred, or no one would understand or believe me, but in the group we only have to say a word or look into each other’s eyes. We can laugh at ourselves, our husbands and our situations, knowing that we have stuck by our husbands because we love them and because we were born into an era where that is what you do. My three brothers were veterans of World War II but I never put my own marital problems down to Fred being a Vietnam veteran. Fred never talked about the war. My brothers never talked about their war. Even if they had, I was too young to understand. Jack was in the Army. He went up on the small ships to Labuan, Borneo. Reg was in the Air Force in Darwin throughout 1942–43, so 180

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he was there when 188 Japanese fighter aircraft bombed Darwin on 19 February 1942, ten weeks after Pearl Harbor and four days after the fall of Singapore. The Government’s official figure was that 243 people died but this could have been an underestimation. Half the population fled south. The Japanese carried out sixty-four bombing raids in all, not only on Darwin but also on Broome, Derby, Wyndham, Port Hedland, Katherine and Townsville. As for Kevin—well, I was born when he was a POW working on the Thai–Burma railway. He came home when I was three, just in time for our father’s funeral. Over the years, everyone accepted that Kevin was different. He had a wall up—he was always remote and unapproachable at family gatherings. For years the only time he referred to the war was to occasionally mention people like Black Jack Galleghan, the commander of the 2/30 Battalion and Uncle Bruce, my mother’s brother, who died on the Thai–Burma Railway. It’s only in the last ten years that Kevin has talked. Kevin: I was seventeen when I enlisted. To avoid being knocked back for being under age, I told them I was twenty, sailing to Keppel Harbour in Singapore on 29 July 1941. Initially we trained in the Changi military area, living in ataprooved6 barracks that rained lizards and geckoes in a wind. In October we moved to Batu Pahat on the Malay Peninsula for jungle warfare training. I was a rifleman in A Company. When the Japanese bombed Singapore a few hours before they bombed Pearl Harbor on 8 December, we were not surprised. I had grown up believing Japan was a potential threat. On the same day we heard that Nips were landing in Kota Bahru, and a few days later, Kuantan and Mersing in the north, but we had no information coming through about the battles with the British garrisons. All we knew was that our colour code turned red, marshal law was declared and we were on our way to Kluang Airfield to defend it against paratroopers. We saw plenty of Nip air activity but no paratroopers, and after five days we were sent to Jemaluang for battalion ambush training. It was during those exercises that they decided to reduce ambush sizes to company strength. News came through that some 90 000 Nips were heading south and on 12 January we were trucked to Gemas. For the main battlefront we set up under the canopy of rubber trees, south of a tank trap—concrete cylinders that the engineers had used to block the only road. The British withdrew behind us to give the impression that the Nips had open slather. We carried out day and night patrols in section strength. We slept on the ground, and if it rained, in the mud, eating dry rations: tins of unheated bully beef and mildewed biscuits. Later in January the supply line brought tins of A Real War

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beetroot, cheese and pineapple. It all looked the same in the dark, and the taste was always a surprise. We came to rely on fruit scavenged from the countryside, going hungry for meat. In the whole month of fighting I had only one hot meal, and I came upon that by chance. At Gemas it rained solidly for two days, clearing on the third: 14 January. B Company had moved five kilometres north in preparation for the initial ambush at Gemencheh Bridge. In the afternoon the Nips came in on bicycles, their weapons strapped to their bikes. It was carnage. B Company blew the bridge and killed 200 to 300 Japanese. The Nips on the road behind were slaughtered with grenades, machine guns, Tommies, rifles and mortars. In the end it came down to bayonets. Between 700 and 800 Nips were killed that day. The road was a mass of broken bikes and bodies. On night patrol I stepped over logs. There are no logs in rubber plantations. I presume they were bodies, sleeping, wounded or dead. One section was involved in a skirmish. The next day was the main battle. In the morning D Company attacked the foot soldiers with bayonets, emitting bloodcurdling cooees in the charge. That battle cry became our signature. We made such a din, no wonder the Nips ran away. Then came the tanks. The trap forced them off the road and in between the rubber trees, where the Bren guns got them. Whoever emerged from the tanks copped our Tommy guns and Lee Enfields, mine included. Two hundred Nips were killed that day. Our casualties were low, and late in the afternoon we withdrew to Fort Rose rubber plantation to lick our wounds and hide from the Japanese reconnaissance planes which flew so low I could see the expressions on the pilots’ faces. They were out to get us but it was the 29 and 2/19 Battalions and the Indian 49th Brigade that copped their vengeance at Parit Sulong. We’d moved to Segamat and then up to Yong Peng, in readiness to support the battle but we were too late. The Commanders were not willing to risk more casualties. Of the 4000 soldiers involved in the battle, the 950 who were able were ordered to retreat and leave behind the wounded. On our way to Lalang Hill, we passed a line of ambulances fresh from the battlefront. We could see Aussies lying on stretchers: all of them dead—shot in the head. The Nips had killed the wounded. I had already crossed the line at Gemas, but seeing this was my baptism of fire. On the second day at Lalang Hill the Japs attacked. At eight hundred metres I saw the first of them and their field pieces, and waited until they were in range. Orders went out that we were going to launch a bayonet attack and for courage we were given 5X Indian Rum: my first taste. Fortunately the attack was called off, the only casualties in my section being two men who came down with typhus, carried by louse on the rats that nested in the long lalang grass. 182

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That night we withdrew into a mangrove swamp, in stench and mud, the roots cutting our legs, to avoid the Japanese strafers, and from there we went to the battle at Simpang Rengam, where the Gordon Highlanders were making a stand. On patrol there was no talking, no smoking. You kept Electronic rights for this image are not your eyes on the trees because available. that’s where the snipers hid. Waiting for action or in the thick of it, there was no room for sentiment. I was an adventurer by nature. Grim determination was all I felt. It was after Simpang Rengam that I became part of the rearguard action, going around in a vehicle with a couple of engineers to blow up the bridges that had Kevin, aged seventeen, in Lismore, already been wired. If the Japanese December 1940, before embarking for were on or near a bridge, we rifle- Singapore. men would engage them so the engineers could lay the blasts, then we’d run before they hit the plunges. In that month in Malaya our division lost 2314 men, mainly at Parit Sulong, but the last days on the peninsula were the most frustrating. No one knew what was going on. Refugees were walking south. The Nips were cutting the signal wires, so orders were not getting through. The broadcaster Tokyo Rose was giving out our passwords! We began to suspect some orders were coming from the Fifth Column [enemy collaborators] as many locals were anti-British. I watched one Fifth Column direct bombers by upturning and placing a palm frond so it pointed to a target. On one occasion I had the pleasure of punching one out. If we caught them we had our way, but we couldn’t go too far in case they were useful to intelligence. By the end of January we were at the Causeway to Singapore. The Argyle Regiment insisted our vehicle cross first, their bagpipes playing The Rock of Gibraltar and Road to the Isles at our rear. The engineers had already rolled out the barbed wire, set up a tank trap and wired the whole Causeway with detonators. The plunges were ready if the order came, but it never did. We took A Real War

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up position at Woodlands, the main entrance of Singapore Naval Base. From our pillbox we had a clear view of the Causeway but when the fighting began on 8 February, it was all to the west, forward of Mandai. Even so, the Japs were firing artillery barrages over us and our artillery returned fire, until we got orders to stop shooting: the Sultan of Jahore had yet to leave his palace and Malay Command wanted to minimize damage to infrastructure. During that first night we could hear barges being unloaded in the Strait of Jahore directly in front of us. Down the line came the order to withdraw. We went to the cemetery behind Woodlands, confused about why we were being pulled back, given that the Nips were landing. It was a long night, and while it was still dark we were ordered to return to Woodlands passing the silhouettes of unarmed youngsters carrying supplies. I said ‘G’day’, and got no reply. We concluded they were Nips but our conscience did not let us kill unarmed people. There was utter confusion and later we suspected our order to withdraw had come from the Fifth Column. We were moved to Mandai Road and throughout 13 February—Black Friday —we watched five hundred bombers fly over in waves of twenty-five to bomb Singapore city. It was as if they were targeting the kampongs to put pressure on the Allies. The civilians had no protection—too many were dying. That’s why Sir Shenton Thomas, the Governor of Singapore, went to General Percival to ask him to discontinue the engagement. Percival met with General Yamashita and asked for a ceasefire. Yamashita demanded unconditional surrender. When runners were sent out on 14 February with the message that the ceasefire was to take effect from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. we were at Tanglin fighting Nips in open parkland. That night we slept in the silence of the ceasefire, the next day being ordered to lay down our arms. It was then that it hit me: we were going to be POWs. I took my Lee Enfield over to the pile but I couldn’t put it down. I went back to my section saying, ‘We could always head for the hills …’ No one answered. I kept looking at the pile of rifles, the trucks and the field pieces. The quantities were amazing. I had no choice: I went back and added my rifle to the rest. I still haven’t come to terms with the capitulation. Within days—I can’t be more exact because we lost all sense of time— armed Japanese guards came to collect us. At night we were marched through the streets, the gutters trickling blood, a few corpses yet to be buried, people lining the way, watching. Not all of them were friendly. Some spat. Some held little Japanese flags. Maybe they were Fifth Column or believed the propaganda that the Nips were coming as liberators. Those who were on our side held no flags and some offered water and bananas as we walked some twentynine kilometres.

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By daybreak we had reached the Changi military area, on the eastern side. We were kept in our units and slept on the floor. Our own cooks made the best they could of the food brought to them. For the next three and a half years we were fed a cup of dry rice a day—‘sweepings’ we called it because it was always full of grit and other foreign bodies, sometimes wriggling. Then there were some vegetables and occasionally a bit of unidentifiable meat. Our digestive tracts didn’t like the new diet. First it was constipation, then dysentery. For a week or so we hung around waiting for the Nips to organize what they were going to do with the 123 000 Australian, New Zealand, British and Indian POWs on Singapore. In the distance we heard gunfire. Maybe it was the Nips slaughtering the Chinese. We were divided into working parties and I went with some of my unit to a fun park called The Great World. From there we would be taken to the wharves or the railway station, from dawn to dusk, or dusk to dawn, unloading supplies or loading whatever they were plundering. When not working, we were allowed to find any nook or cranny in the fun park to sleep, the rain our only way of washing. At night there was no light and a Nip might walk through in a slouch hat, to listen to our conversation. We often thought of escape but the whole island was running with Nips. They were like ants. After some months I grew sick from exhaustion and malnutrition and was sent to a hospital in the Changi area, then onto a working party at Thompson Road, between the city and Bukit Timah, to build a Japanese memorial road. Black Jack was our camp leader. The Nips seemed to accept him as a man of authority. Sikh or Nip guards would take us to our work places. The guards hated us and we hated them. We would not bow to them and calling them ‘Nip’ sent them into a frenzy. For the slightest reason they’d belt you with the butt of their rifle or a stick, and if you went down, which I determined never to do, you’d get the boot. Often we wouldn’t have a clue why it was happening but if you resisted, more guards came. It was at Thompson Road that I began losing my eyesight. I was sent back to hospital, and the doctor told me it was from malnutrition. Then it was back to work. Come April my unit started leaving for Thailand. I was told I wouldn’t be going because of my impaired vision, but in early May I was packed into a steel rice van with twenty-seven other men for the five-day train journey to Ban Pong. There was no room to lie. The steel walls burnt our skin and the lack of air was suffocating. We’d take turns to sit, the sick getting preferential treatment. When the train stopped for water and wood for the furnace, there would be a rush to the door. There was so much dysentery from the rice and wormriddled gruel that in between stops a fellow would have to hang out the van

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while others held onto him. It was a dirty business. I tried to eat as little as possible. I could not see the worms but I could hear the others counting. From Ban Pong we marched by night in the rain to Kamburi, our Changi guards along with us. From Kamburi it was another seven or eight nights on narrow tracks through virgin jungle, sometimes sinking to our knees in mud, holding up the weak. For some reason the Nips feared the tribesmen in the area and on occasions would hand over their loaded rifles for us to carry. We didn’t fire on the Nips in fear of their retribution on us all but given the chance we’d unload the ammunition and later did a roaring trade swapping bullets for food. Kanya Two camp was a hot jungle and bamboo hell on earth. In a sevenkilometre section of the 415-kilometre railway that the Nips were building to supply Burma, they had decided to cut five passes through granite mountains and in other sections build shelves into the mountainsides above the river. When not working a twelve-hour shift we slept under canvas, the flaps rolled up for ventilation. Two fellows working alternate shifts shared the same sleeping bay. To raise ourselves above the mud and termites, we made a platform of bamboo tied together by rattan cane with a mattress of split bamboo, which we’d flatten as much as possible. You had to be dog-tired to sleep on that. The shards of bamboo were like a thousand razors on our bone-stretched skin, and after a sleep our scabby backs looked like corrugated iron. The work site was down a 45-degree face, which was dangerously slippery in the wet and early on I lost my boots in the mud. There’d be no breaks in a shift, no wandering off. We’d relieve ourselves where we stood. Back in camp you could at least use a leaf to clean up. I was a hammer-and-tap man, which meant using a hand drill to dig the holes before ramming the gelignite in with a length of bamboo. We’d sharpen one end of it because the fuses were so short that, after lighting them, we had to run and climb up a steel ladder to escape the explosion and I would ram the sharpened end up the Khyber of the Nip on the ladder above, making sure the length of bamboo was long enough to avoid his boot. Once I was slow getting away from the explosion and a flying rock put a hole in my water tin. I went to the Nip blacksmith, who was the fuse keeper, asking him to cut longer fuses. He answered by belting me with a length of fuse. When the cholera came through, we lost nearly half the camp—about two hundred men. Once you were crook you lay in your mess until you died. In half an hour men became dehydrated wrinkly husks. We’d bury them and on my visits back I always tie a poppy to the trees, their roots being the closest thing to my dead mates. At night, piles of fast-burning bamboo lit the work site, the fires needing constant feeding. When you looked down on the fires and the red light they 186

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threw on the bony, wet backs of the men breaking rocks and carrying the rock in bamboo baskets, it looked like hell. It was hell. Doc Fagan would try to protect the sick from working, but the Nips had to see blood to think a person was too sick to work and as time went on they drove us harder, extending our hours. One punishment was no food and no return to camp for two shifts. We were fed once a day on maggoty rice, supplies being brought up the Kwai Noi River. On our way back to camp we would pilfer what we could. That’s how I slipped a few eggs my way. They gave me energy. The occasional egg, determination, being a country boy and belonging to a group kept me going. The word ‘Always’ will go on my gravestone. Much about that hellhole is locked in. There’s lots I won’t talk about, if only to protect people from what it was really like. I’m a closed book on man’s inhumanity to man, which is far worse to experience than battle. It was dog eat dog and you had to stand your ground or die. The guards were illiterate brutes, basically peasants who disliked the fact that most of us towered over them. When they hit us it would be an upward swing of an open hand to our jaw. They were not used to a closed fist and sometimes we would purposefully start a blue, with each other or a guard, to get into a punch-up with them. When they copped a fist they squealed like pigs. We’d throw their rifles clear of the fight, but they’d attack with hoes and shovels, and it was not just the handle they used. We were lucky at Kanya Two. We had a doctor: Doctor Kevin Fagan. The sun rose and set in that man, but he couldn’t do anything about the ulcer on my leg. I would bathe it and by September it had extended from my knee to my ankle. It had ceased to bleed because of gangrene but the maggots didn’t do a good enough job of cleaning it so I was taken down river to a bush hospital in Chung Kai. With what anaesthetic was available Doc Fagan cut away the gangrenous meat with his scalpel, trimming it back to the bone. It was a neat job. My leg looked like something out of a butcher’s shop. I was lucky I didn’t lose it, or worse. In those bush hospitals amputations often led to death, but with exposure to air the bone turned black and starting flaking. After Chung Kai, I was taken to another bush hospital in the village of Kanchanaburi where I stayed until May 1944, then it was a five-day train journey back to Singapore and a hospital in the Changi area. For the first three days I floated in and out of consciousness. I was given a wood-and-material shield to put over my shin but it was too uncomfortable to wear and over the next seventeen months the ten centimetres of bone were gradually covered by flesh and scar tissue. It was only back in Australia in 1947 that they fixed my leg. For a month they strapped my forearm to my abdomen to grow tissue, and for A Real War

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another month I had my forearm strapped to my shin for the graft, then they stretched my skin and sewed it all together. For years I wore a calliper. In Singapore I was sent back to my unit but Doc Taylor, our regimental medical officer, said, ‘We’ve got to get you out of here or they’ll make you work’, and he sent me to the ‘new’ Changi hospital—a wooden and atap room next to the prison. When I was well enough, I would attend Changi ‘university’ where different POWs gave lectures of an evening but often I could not stand because my muscles had ceased to work. Month after month I lay on the floor under the cobwebs, with ulcers of the bowel, rotten with malaria and cardiac berry berry. I kept my own council. No one wants to listen to bellyaches. You lived in your mind but you survived together—except for those who’d gone troppo. One bloke attacked me, wanting my little teaspoon, which is all we had to eat with. By the second week of August 1945 rumours started circulating that the war was near its end. A mate on bamboo crutches came to visit me. He was so excited and out of breath that he couldn’t get his words out. ‘We … the war … it’s about the war …’ Finally: ‘The war has ended.’ I let myself get a little excited. The day before, the guard on the back gate had shot himself. After 8 August, he’d come to us, crying. I said to the others, ‘Hey, have you ever seen a Nip cry before?’ His family came from Hiroshima. I didn’t feel sorry for him. The Nips surrendered on 15 August 1945, but not in Singapore. They ran the place until 12 September, perhaps fearful that they would be put on trial for war crimes. During that month, one day I was lying there and I thought I was dreaming. I heard a female voice with an Australian accent asking ‘Are you decent?’ ‘No. We haven’t been decent for a long time.’ All I wore was a loincloth, a leftover scrap from my shirt. She came in, in full uniform, and announced, ‘I’m a war nurse. We’ve come to look after you. Planes and a hospital ship are arriving soon.’ Next came the Red Cross, handing out yellow T-shirts and khaki shorts, but when we boarded the hospital ship we were asked to strip and all the clothes were thrown overboard because of the lice. In the water, the locals were collecting the cast-offs. Hospitals back in Australia were full, so we were taken to a hospital in Borneo, staying some weeks, adjusting to the diet and building up strength before being shipped out. On 20 October we came back to wartime Australia, where rationing and restrictions were still in force. Everyone had an air raid shelter. There was a period of unwinding but I didn’t bring back anything I couldn’t cope with. My mind was busy with the present and future. When I caught up with mates it 188

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was, ‘How’s it going? Are you married?’ I could adapt to life in Australia far more easily than I could adapt to being a POW. I never adapted to that. I spent two years in and out of hospital and being around veterans. In December 1947, when my discharge came through, I walked into a pub. In a mirror I looked at myself for the first time in civilian clothes: I was no longer a soldier. I was a lonely man. The State Government helped me get a job as a switchboard operator in a technical college, a job I held for the next thirtyeight years. Three years after the war I met Dorothy, a professional chef and an independent woman from a family of fourteen, her father a seasonal worker. She became my wife. Until she died fourteen years ago, I was very fortunate. She was an excellent wife and mother to our four children, a sensitive, proud woman who knew how to mix with people. We had a happy marriage. She respected my judgement and I respected hers. You can never replace a woman like that. Over the years there was the occasional nightmare, and even now I have the odd restless night. I remember a lot of what happened as if it was yesterday. A few men went bomb happy, reacting to any noise or touch. A few committed suicide, perhaps because they found it hard to adjust to civilian life. I was spared, but I’ve never sought out Japanese. When I was back in Singapore for the 12 September commemoration in 1995, after dinner I went for a walk in the Tanglin area and passed two Japanese women sitting in a bus shelter. I can’t remember how I came to realize that they had some connection to the war, but the elder one put out her hand, saying ‘Would you like to shake my hand?’ And I did. I even shook the hand of the other woman. I walked away a little taller. I had done something I never imagined I would do. Had they been men it may have been different. I will never answer the question ‘Have you forgiven them?’ Gloria: Nowadays the war is all Kevin talks about. Everything leads back to Changi. You are talking about roses or caravans and it’s, ‘In Changi not a day passed when there were no bad experiences …’ Recently, at my sister’s funeral, I went up to him. After the greetings it was: ‘In Changi we handled the bad times.’ I was so upset I walked away. A few years ago, I plucked up the courage to talk about PTSD. Kevin didn’t know what it was, so I explained, then told him, ‘Kev, I want to tell you that Fred’s been diagnosed with PTSD.’ ‘Oh has he? In my day it was face-to-face combat and Dorothy never complained about me.’ I kept my mouth shut tight. He’s eighty-one and is legally blind. He has cataracts and bone cancer. I do feel for him, but his attitude infuriates me. A Real War

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My three older brothers were from another generation. They would talk in one corner, along with our neighbour, who’d been a cook in the Army in Egypt, and us younger ones would be in the Electronic rights for this image are not other corner, including our neighavailable. bour’s son, Fred. I’d fallen in love with Fred over the back fence when I was six and he was seven. We grew up playing mothers and fathers, cowboys and Indians, doctors and nurses. That was memorable: my first experience Gloria and Fred Robinson on their wedding of a male body. I was always going day, Sydney, 1964. in and visiting, until he turned fifteen and joined the Air Force and spent three years in Wagga training as an airframe fitter. I remember vividly, when I was fifteen, the moment he saw me. I had jumped the fence to visit his mother, long skinny legs sticking out of my shorts. He was up the back tinkering on a car. Our eyes connected and the heavens opened. From that day it was different. He was my Paul Newman: skinny as hell, blue eyes and light hair, very handsome; never an outgoing person but always loving. Six years later we married. Two years on, thirteen months after our first child, Julie, was born, Fred completed a one-month course up at Wheeny Creek in the Blue Mountains, bivouacking and learning how to dig trenches, and was off to Vietnam. For Fred the war meant doing the job he was trained for: keeping planes in the air. He considered it a just war—defending the South Vietnamese from an invasion—a war of ideologies, and also a way to get a war service loan for a home. But going to the airport with him, my heart was breaking. I was parting from my other half. Even in March 1966 anyone in uniform was a target for abuse, so he was dressed in civilian clothes. I clung to him. It was a total wrench. Immediately he was out of sight I became utterly distraught. I have never missed an Anzac Day march and a month after Fred left, I stood in George Street, Sydney, with my mother and Julie in the pram. Everyone was cheering and waving little flags as the men passed. At the end of the line was the Vietnam RAAF contingent from Richmond. I cheered. The rest of the crowd went silent. I saw the men look around with wary looks. I hurt for

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them. A wave of anxiety and anger came over me: ‘My husband and nephew are over there risking their lives. It’s not the war you should support, but the men.’ I fainted and an ambulance was called. In the following June the mood turned nasty when 1RAR marched through Sydney for their Welcome Home Parade. That night on the news I saw the incident where a woman rushed out of the crowd and threw red paint over the men in uniform. The men looked puzzled. I was horrified. Everywhere people were talking about Vietnam. I’d sit at a bus stop or in the shopping centre with Julie, listening to the people saying ‘It’s not our war— our blokes shouldn’t be there.’ I’d hear the anger in their voices. I kept quiet, fuming inside, but once—with much effort, because I was very, very shy— I said, ‘Don’t blame the men. The decision was made and they are doing their job.’ The intense looks made me shut up. I felt like the enemy. It was frightening. After that I wasn’t game to open my mouth. I never heard from the Air Force or the Government while Fred was away. I lived with Mum. We helped each other and shared expenses, my money coming from work and Fred’s allotment. I became very independent. Although for the whole nine months I was frightened out of my wits that he wouldn’t return. I was not the only one who missed him. At the doctor’s surgery, Julie and I would be sitting there and she’d pick the oldest man and say, ‘Dadda, Dadda.’ I wrote to Fred every day, posting the letters to a Sydney post office box. His letters would come in bundles of six. My job was sorting letters at the post office. The men were fantastic. When Fred’s letters arrived they’d say, ‘Not another one! Can we read it?’ ‘Don’t you touch my letters.’ He only wrote about general things, that he was stationed at Vung Tau and worked on the Caribou planes at the airfield. He would occasionally fly up to Nha Trang and Da Nang. The Americans had Caribous, so whenever there was news that one had crashed or been fired at I would worry. Fred and the others in RTFV [RAAF Transport Flight Vietnam, later called 35 Squadron] would eat at the American canteen at the airfield. He wrote how he couldn’t believe the way the Americans put molasses or tomato sauce on everything. He couldn’t wait for a decent barbecue. When the Australian taskforce arrived in Phuoc Tuy province, Fred or others in 35 Squadron would fly to Butterworth to have their aircraft checked, and they’d pick up sausages and steaks for barbecues on Back Beach. But the Americans constantly amazed him. They had complete faith in their superior technology. He wrote about the funny things, like the time they heard gunshots while sleeping in the French villa, where 35 Squadron lived. When they all jumped

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up one chap got tangled in his mosquito net. Another time a chap was riding a bicycle back to the hangar at night, a bit under the weather. He drove between two lights and hit the vehicle. Fred could have come home for R&R but we didn’t want to go through another parting. In December 1966 I drove alone to the airport, a bundle of nerves and excitement. I saw a very thin man dressed in civvies walking down the ramp with a self-contained look in his eyes. I was crying. We kissed and hugged. Fred has always been a quiet man, but there was a reserve, a withdrawnness that I put down to being apart for so long. Then came the drive home. The Fred I knew was a careful driver but he drove aggressively, nearly ramming into the cars in front. For the whole time my feet were clamped to the floor, as if putting on the brakes. Fred said little. I chattered about Julie. Fred’s parents, Mum and two-year-old Julie were at home to welcome him but when he went to pick up Julie she cried. That night Fred and I went to a motel. We celebrated with a bottle of French champagne —rotten stuff—but also I was frightened. He was the same, yet not the same. It was the homecoming of a man I did not know. In those early days he told me about one incident. They had flown out in a Caribou to an American fire support base called BA TO. It was on a hill beside a thousand-foot airstrip, next to an area laid with mines, the land falling away at either end. Due to pilot error the port wing dropped, the wheels hit a bank and the struts were sheered. They bounced along, hitting an engine from a previous crash. Fortunately that veered them up the airstrip rather than into the mines. After a six-week holiday Fred returned to the RAAF base at Richmond. His section commander welcomed him with: ‘You Vietnam blokes think your shit doesn’t stink. Well you’re not going to get away with that back here.’ The same section commander refused to process Fred’s application to become a flight engineer. Instead he sent Fred away for eight weeks to run a decompression training course for pilots. It only increased Fred’s paranoia about being a Vietnam veteran. If I asked, ‘What are some of the things you did?’ he was vague. He mentioned they had to be wary when they were travelling to the airfield, especially of pillions on the back of motorcycles in case they lobbed a grenade, and that a Vietnamese family did their laundry and housework. He did not mention that ten-year-old boys tried to sell their sisters for sex and the lane behind the villa was full of prostitutes. When the news came on he would walk away or turn it off but he was outraged seeing Australian politicians like Jim Cairns marching in a moratorium with a North Vietnamese flag out in front. After that Fred said he’d prefer to vote for Idi Amin. He never referred to Vietnam in public. 192

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I was used to making my own decisions and had to re-adjust to consulting Fred. For months Julie screamed every time he went near her. Mum and I had spoilt her, and her crying and whinging frustrated him. Initially we lived in the married quarters at South Windsor where we had a pan toilet out the back. I refused to let Julie use it. Julie was a strong-minded person, still is, and I can remember her screaming and refusing to sit on the commode. Fred would say, ‘She’s got to sit there. She’s got to stop crying—now!’ It was an order. There was no room for negotiation. His aggressive and autocratic tone—‘I say, you do’— was fearsome. Fred had been so kind and patient before the war. I started to think ‘I don’t want to live like this’, but we were married and I soon learnt to keep my ideas to myself. You didn’t argue with Fred; you listened. Fred made the decisions and I did as I was told. Our home was our sanctuary. Fred left for work at 7 a.m. and came home at 6 p.m. and played golf every Saturday. I was grateful he was not home a lot because by the time we had two kids, he could not stand them bickering. I tried to have them fed and ready for bed before he came through the door. If we were going to drive anywhere I would threaten them with all manner of things if they dared cause trouble. Fred’s reaction was to yell. If he slapped them I stepped in: ‘Fred, enough.’ Once, when Julie and Gary were arguing in the back of the car, he slapped each of them on the face with such force that later I said, ‘If you ever do that again, I’m leaving.’ When I was sick and had to have an operation, and I’ve had a few, Fred would bath and feed the children and look after them, although never for any length of time. I knew how naughty and stressful they could be, but when Gary was four and Julie was seven I had to go into hospital with an ectopic pregnancy. Fred assured me: ‘They’ll be loved, cleaned and fed. Don’t expect any more of me.’ I came home feeling rotten and to my amazement over every door and window were freshly washed and ironed clothes! It was after that operation that we had one of our biggest blues. I was very maternal and when I found out I couldn’t have another baby I wanted to adopt. Fred exploded. I said, ‘This is my only way of having another child’, but his mind was set. All my anger and frustration boiled over and I let him have the lot. I picked him up and threw him with such force that he and the chair lurched back and hit the wall. I loved him and wanted to live with him but how could I live with somebody who didn’t consider how I felt? Fred never hit me but after a misunderstanding in bed one night his fist whistled past my nose and into the wall. I began to fear the next explosion. The solution was not to say anything, but when I did the hands would wave and the yelling would start. After an outburst, in bed he’d be the opposite. I would still be hurting and angry, thinking, ‘I can’t switch off that quickly.’ A Real War

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Often it was like sleeping with hot coals. The bottom sheet would be soaked and yellow. In the early days I’d say ‘Fred, maybe you have malaria’, and later ‘Maybe you’ve got an infection’. At times his legs and arms would thrash around and I’d cop a kick or a punch. I’d sleep clinging to the edge of the bed. One night he screamed, jumped out of bed and shouted ‘There’s snakes in here!’ I moved very fast! Other times I’d wake him and tell him he was having a nightmare and he’d look at me as if to say ‘What are you talking about?’ Sometimes he’d say ‘I had a bad one last night’, yet if I asked ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he’d change the subject or walk away. Being tired became a way of life. I put the nightmares down to childhood issues but suggested he see a doctor. He refused. Being in the RAAF, if he admitted to a psychological problem it would go on his record. Anyway, he didn’t have a problem did he? I was the problem. The only time he saw a doctor was when he got red itchy patches that would start in his navel and spread. I tried to keep everything well oiled and running smoothly because Fred’s temper was vicious. Apart from yelling he would verbally put us down. Julie and Gary shied away from telling him things but if they felt it important we would discuss a plan of action. They soon learnt that if Fred said something was black, it was black. There was no white or grey. I would deal with most issues. When he did have occasion to discipline them I would think he was being unreasonably hard. Over something trivial it was ‘No riding your bike for two weeks’, or ‘Go to your room’, with no time limit. I would wait to discuss the matter, in the meantime building up the courage. I’d feel my muscles tense and my stomach turn. Sometimes I even vomited with the tension as I planned what I was going to say to minimize the reaction. At times I felt so angry and frustrated my first instinct was to cry. This made Fred furious, so I would go into a room, have a cry, then come out and express my concern: ‘Fred I think you are being a bit unfair.’ Invariably the hands would fling in the air as he shouted ‘All right, handle it your own way. You don’t want me to have anything to do with them!’ There was a possessiveness about Fred. I assumed it was his way of showing love. I didn’t dare be late home or he’d think I was dead or injured. When he was ready to go to bed, it was, ‘I’m going to bed. I’ll turn the TV off’, not ‘Will I?’ I have come to see it as a form of control. But I also developed a protective attitude. When he was impolite to neighbours or someone in the family, or when he wanted to suddenly leave a family gathering, I would make excuses. My family was my lifeline, but he found them emotionally draining, too loud and noisy. I used to think that he didn’t want me to enjoy myself. I now realize it is a need to escape. 194

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It was like living with two people. In between the high-intensity explosions, Fred was the kindest, most loving and affectionate, intelligent person: my greatest source of strength. He was appreciative and considerate. He’d thank me after a well-cooked meal, open doors and hold hands. In forty years of marriage he has never forgotten a wedding anniversary or birthday. After work, he’d help the kids with their homework. If there was genuine grief, like a death in the family, or when I was ill, he was very supportive. When I was studying a childcare course, he cooked the evening meals while I was at lectures and he showed me how to write assignments. It was just that his outbursts were so unpredictable. The kids and I walked on glass, never knowing the moment when the glass would shatter and frighten the life out of us. It was nerve-wracking. Working in childcare became my solace—I could be myself around the children. Ten years into the marriage I began having hay fever and sinus problems, then came the asthma and stomach pains. When I went to the doctor I never mentioned Fred’s outbursts. I had no idea that stress and tension could manifest physically. I was already claustrophobic but began having panic and anxiety attacks, where I couldn’t breathe and would hyperventilate. My arms would get pins and needles and then go numb. I was prescribed Zanax. When Fred exploded and I felt panicky, I’d take one. My life revolved around Zanax. After five years I thought ‘I’ve got to get off these pills’. It was hard. A psychologist gave me rapid eye movement therapy and helped work out a strategy to calm myself without pills. Still, sometimes I thought I was mad. I was told often enough. Fred was sympathetic when the panic attack was in a lift or somewhere—he had the ability to calm me down. But if it was a result of one of his rages, he was too busy fluffing his arms around and storming out. Recently he said that on most occasions he felt justified, but sometimes he felt like a goose and would go away and sulk. I know work got the best of Fred. He was good at his job. When Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974, he worked thirty-six hours straight to fix a Hercules. After twenty years in the Air Force, he got a job with a conglomerate and built up its water treatment section. He was highly respected in his field. When the section was put up for sale, the men got together and bought it. Fred was made general manager. But then they sold fifty per cent of the company, and the new management began downsizing. Meanwhile the accounts section boomed. Fred strongly disagreed with the decisions being made. We went on holidays and on his return to work he was offered the position of managing director, which would have made him personally liable if the company went bust. At the same time he found himself sitting in his office, with no one reporting to him. I said ‘Fred, don’t go back.’ He went in, A Real War

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intending to negotiate a package. They refused. After twenty years in the company he left the same day without a thank you. Within a couple of weeks three companies offered him a job. He was with one for three years, but it was a slide downhill. The stuffing had been knocked out of him. He was perpetually tired. After dinner he went straight to bed and on his days off, when he wasn’t playing golf, he slept. He gave up reading books. He stopped wanting to go out with people, saying ‘Don’t include me in your plans.’ On the rare occasion when we had guests, he might slip off to bed. He started getting thick, red callous-like sores all over his hands and arms and would pick at them constantly, but he refused to see a doctor. The nightmares and sweats and his explosions were more intense and frequent. He seemed to be in a world of his own and if I tried to talk about it there was an argument: ‘It’s got nothing to do with you’, or ‘Forget it.’ I felt awful. I ate and got bigger. I felt unattractive. Eventually I confronted him: ‘Are you seeing someone else?’ and he replied, ‘No—I’m just too tired. You don’t understand.’ Out of the blue he announced he was cutting back to three days a week and that he had given notice that he would be retiring at the end of the year. I checked our financial situation to see if we could manage and to my surprise we had very little saved. Thousands had been withdrawn. Nervous and upset, I confronted him with the bank statements: ‘Where has it gone?’ ‘Well it’s gone. It’s no use going on about it.’ I had not realized the extent of his gambling. One day I was dusting around his computer and found some notes. They were instructions on how to get into the computer. I thought ‘Maybe he has Alzheimers.’ Around this time, we went on a visit to Brisbane to see Bill—Fred’s closest friend and another Vietnam veteran. Bill and Fred had a big talk in the backyard. Bill was crying. I couldn’t see Fred’s face, but he was as stiff as a board, a sure sign that he was in an emotional situation. I began to look back over the years and noticed that everything was worse leading up to Christmas. I thought ‘Maybe it’s because of the end-of-year parties, or it’s the hot weather reminding him of Vietnam.’ It was also the time Bill came home. A month before Fred was due to retire, in desperation I rang the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and they put me onto the Vietnam Veterans’ Counselling Service. I talked to a psychologist and he said, ‘From what you tell me your husband has signs of PTSD.’ I thought I knew about PTSD. Bill had a mental breakdown after he came back from Vietnam. He had seen something involving an American and a Vietnamese civilian that should never have happened, and for years he had been angry and depressed, and had even threatened suicide, so I said, ‘No,

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Fred’s not like that.’ The psychologist advised me to get him to The Train, a counselling service at St Marys. It took two days of nerves to build up to it. I was scared. I shut all the doors so our neighbours couldn’t hear the anticipated rage. I was shaking. I stood well back to avoid his arms, saying as kindly as I could, ‘Fred, you have to get help or, as much as I love you, as much as it would hurt me, I’m leaving. I can’t live this way any more.’ I was expecting him to yell ‘It’s not me, it’s you’, but he didn’t. He slumped forward in his chair. My heart was breaking. One lure was that if he was going to leave work he had to apply for a war service pension. We both turned up for the appointment, Fred as stiff as a rod, me so stressed I could hardly think. The counsellor was a Vietnam veteran from the Navy. He talked about a service pension but also a TPI, if it was proved that Fred had PTSD. He described the symptoms, then said, ‘Look mate, you seem to have all the signs and we have ways to help you but you need to see a psychiatrist out at St John of God.’ I was so tense I started to cry. The counsellor looked at me, saying to Fred, ‘You know you’ve got to do something. Look how upset your wife is.’ Fred went white, his fists clenched, as he growled, ‘Upset! Gloria’s always upset about something.’ For me it was a relief: for the first time someone was sympathizing with me. Finally we might be shown a way through. We went outside. I stayed well back. I sensed his mood and was waiting for the eruption. It happened in the car. ‘You’re making me go to a psych. What are you trying to do to me?’ The words were tumbling out at top volume. The trip back home was hairy. He saw the psychiatrist and came home saying, ‘Well she doesn’t think I have a problem. If you think I’ve got a problem you see her.’ A few days later we both went. I sat there as she asked him questions. I couldn’t believe his answers. It wasn’t lies exactly, but he was skimming, and I interrupted and told her how it was. It was the first time I had laid everything out in front of him. When I talked about him sleeping all the time, not washing and other personal matters, I felt disloyal but the psychiatrist had to know. Fred collapsed back and listened. At the end she suggested he do the four-week course at St John of God. To get the TPI, Fred had to see all sorts of doctors. Over the following months he noticed they seemed to be able to describe exactly the way he felt and behaved. He decided to go into St John of God if only to prove he didn’t have a problem, and while he was there I attended a partners’ group. It was alarming. I was one big ball of emotion. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t talk. I didn’t have to: the other women were saying it all for me; they were talking

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about my life. Then anger swelled up inside me: anger at being left by the Government and armed services to fend for ourselves in a state of complete ignorance. I went home and had a panic attack, but that day was good: I was no longer alone. When Fred came home from the course he asked, ‘Where are all my Vietnam photos?’ He had not touched them for thirty-three years. They are now in his bedside drawer. It was weird. After so many years of marriage I heard more about Fred’s Vietnam experiences listening to him talk to psychiatrists and psychologists than ever before. I had known about an attack on the airfield, but I didn’t know that they would often hear explosions in Vung Tau. One time someone lobbed a grenade into a bar and killed an American. A bicycle stuffed with explosives would be left against a wall or there would be a fight between bar owners or black marketeers. No wonder Fred doesn’t like crowds. He never told me that he would go out in a Caribou to drop supplies and body bags to Americans and Australians in the middle of nowhere and that once he flew to a Montagnard7 village in the Central Highlands, to resupply two Australian SAS who were training a village militia. I would sit there listening, thinking, ‘If only I had known, it would have explained so much.’ I learnt that a trigger could occur hours before a rage. He always listened to the helicopters coming into Richmond and if he heard a helicopter that sounded like a high-pitched Hue a trivial event hours later could make him explode. I learnt how PTSD has both emotional and physical effects, including an effect on a person’s libido, and I learnt about secondary PTSD. At St John of God, Fred met police and ambulance officers also affected by trauma, so there was less stigma. The course helped him recognize that he was getting upset over minor things and making knee-jerk decisions when by nature he is careful. These days he doesn’t explode as often and when he does he is more ready to apologize. He still sleeps a lot and has the occasional bout of gambling, but he is more sociable. Also I am standing my ground more. Overall we are working things out. Fred now understands how he affected the children, especially Gary, a very kind and loyal person, who has gone through some tough times with the break-up of his first marriage and a stormy second partnership. In two years, we’ve only seen him twice, very briefly. The separation is very painful. Julie left home at eighteen to do nursing, joined the Army Reserves and at twenty-eight married Jeoff, an army man. She had no reservation about that. I have a lot of respect for my son-in-law. He is a totally dedicated serviceman. But with four children to look after his absences were hard on Julie, whereas he

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was doing a job he loved. In July 2000, six months after their fourth child was born, he went over to the Sinai as part of the Multinational Force and Observation Force. On his return he described being stationed at El-Gorah, where there were a thousand service people from different countries. The troops’ wages are paid to the government of a country and then that government pays their troops, so some were not paid as much as others. Jeoff was a security sergeant, one of four whose duties were to train a Colombian platoon on the finer points of running a checkpoint, searching cars and people. Most of the Colombian NCOs and officers were veterans of the Colombian drug wars. Being stationed in the Sinai Desert was their respite. He had little contact with the locals, except to smile and wave, although for a while two Bedouin families camped in tents near the base with a herd of scrawny goats. He would travel to Egypt and Israel in his time off, but when the second Intifada started and a bomb killed an Israeli customs agent and an ambush killed seven Israeli citizens at the checkpoint, the border was closed for non-essential travel. Then in October 2000 a small boat packed with explosives rammed the USS Cole in Aden Harbour, killing seventeen sailors. Afterwards, all vehicles, including MFO vehicles, had to be searched before entering the base. Jeoff was away six months and not long after he came back Julie asked for a separation. In the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the anti-war demonstrations brought back all the feelings from when Fred was in Vietnam. Fred, Jeoff and I all think there is a case for going to war with a regime that is practising genocide. Jeoff sees Australian’s involvement as a continuation of our naval presence since 1991 and is critical of the UN, having seen the high life and political agendas of UN observers in the Sinai. Fred says, ‘Despots only listen to a big stick.’ My brother Kevin has mixed feelings. He says, ‘The terrorists are having a field day. The question is: Is it going to be worthwhile? And what it is going to mean for the troops on their return?’ When news about Iraq comes on television, Fred turns it off. I am not comfortable. It’s voyeuristic and we are not being told the full story. Again, it is a nasty war, with people coercing others to fight the Americans, just like the Viet Cong did. I cry for the people in Iraq. Fred’s biggest fear is that the Americans will lose heart. He says, ‘If you start a war, you have to do anything it takes to win it, and that means establishing a stable government.’ Every year I go to Anzac Day. Fred never went. Then in April 2000, Bill invited him up to Brisbane to march for the very first time since Vietnam. He marched with RTFV/35 Squadron and afterwards he walked up, standing tall, with a look of amazement on his face, ‘They were clapping!’ The next year he

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marched, but Bill couldn’t drag him away from the casino. In 2002 Bill came to Sydney and Fred’s grandchildren, whom he adores, were able to see him march. But he still doesn’t talk about Vietnam. Getting anything out of him is like drawing teeth from a hen and Vietnam goes deep. Bringing it up is not necessarily going to fix him. Nor do I want to revisit the past. There are some things I don’t want to know … and I have nothing to complain about really, especially when I see what others go through. Fred’s a good person and we love each other dearly. If anything happened to him … it’s too awful to contemplate.

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7

DIAMONDS AND STONE Garry Heskett GLORIA ROBINSON

Garry Heskett’s grandfather and father were both war veterans. His father, Wal Heskett, served in New Guinea in World War II but kept silent about the war until he wrote an autobiography in his later years. Garry served in Vietnam in 1971–72, afterwards working in the Ambulance Service of New South Wales, then with New South Wales Police. As a homicide detective he was involved in the investigation into Anita Cobby’s murder in 1986. For the next fifteen years Heskett was annually awarded for his excellent police work and negotiating skills. In 2000 and 2001 he won four awards for his work as deputy venue commander at the Sydney Olympics. In 2001 he was made Police Officer of the Year and in 2004 he was awarded the Deputy Commissioner’s Citation for Bravery. His eldest son is now an officer in the ADF.

Six years as an infantry soldier in the Australian Regular Army, which included war service in Vietnam, prepared me for police work. Quite a few Vietnam veterans joined the police, ambulance or fire brigade. It was the same after every war. Veterans have experience in coming to the forefront when the shit hits the fan. We know the consequences if you let your mates down. The Police Service is an armed service and we are familiar with weapons and the need to be careful with them. We are used to taking orders and operating in a regimented, hierarchical structure. Until recently, rank and going for promotion in the police were similar to in the armed forces. An army’s lance corporal is

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equivalent to constable First Class. An army captain is equivalent to a police inspector, in the days when an inspector ran a whole station. In the army it’s ‘Yes Sergeant, no Sergeant.’ It’s the same for police. You understand the need for discipline in the way you conduct yourself, the need to be a team player, to stay calm and in control when the adrenalin is pumping. One of the first jobs I went to as a probationary constable was when a woman from Fairfield called the police saying her husband was going to shoot her. Upon arrival, police found her outside the house. She showed them a handful of .22 bullets, so police surrounded the house, pistols drawn. I remained in the police vehicle under instruction from my senior partner. After watching the Mexican-standoff, I got out and asked some of the officers present, ‘Has anyone bothered to take any details from the woman?’ No one had, so I approached her, ‘What have you got there?’ She showed me the bullets. They appeared to be spotted with rust. ‘Has he got a weapon inside?’ ‘Yes—a .22 rifle. He’s threatening to shoot me.’ My hunch was that the rifle was probably in the same condition as the bullets. I thought, ‘This is a lot of stuffing around for .22 bullets. He’d have to be a bloody good shot to do any real damage.’ I approached my senior officer, ‘Has anyone knocked on the door?’ ‘No mate, we’re going to attempt to talk him out.’ ‘Could you give me a go?’ I was a little older than the average novice so he shrugged in affirmation. I cautiously walked up to the fly screen door. The front door was ajar so I positioned myself to the side for some protection in case my hunch was wrong, then knocked. ‘Hello, anyone in there?’ Silence. I kept knocking, then turned to the woman, ‘Are you sure your husband’s in there?’ ‘Yeah, yeah.’ ‘Mate, if you’re in there it’s the police.’ There’s a distant ‘I’m in the shower.’ ‘Mate, it’s the police. Can you wrap a towel around yourself and come to the door please?’ ‘Sure.’ I heard him walking up the hallway. ‘What’s up?’ ‘Mate, don’t do anything stupid. Firstly, have you got a weapon on the premises?’ ‘No mate.’ ‘Mate, your wife is out the front. She’s told the police you threatened to shoot her.’ ‘We had an argument, but I haven’t got a gun. I did have one; it was an old .22 with a bent barrel, so I gave it to a mate.’ ‘Well, she has a handful of bullets.’ ‘Yeah. I had those in a bloody drawer.’ ‘Mate, do you mind if I come in?’ 202

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‘Not a problem.’ We searched. No drama. He’d threatened her, obviously, but we dealt with that later. Afterwards my senior officer said, ‘You’ll get a bravery medal for this Gazza.’ ‘Piss off! There’s nothing brave about what I did.’ I come from a long line of soldiers. My grandfather was a farmer when he enlisted as a private at the age of eighteen. He was sent to England as a Reo [Reinforcement] on 8 May 1918, to serve in a Machine Gun Company of the 41 Infantry Battalion. He was overseas 535 days and on his return he met my grandmother at a small-town Welcome Home party. He raised his two sons in a hard, regimental but loving way: do as you’re told, keep your head up, don’t cry—it’s only a cut. I’d ask Pop about the war and he’d say, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ His two sons served in New Guinea. They were in the 2/3 Machine Gun Battalion. Dad’s brother was a machine gunner, Dad a signaller. Dad was nineteen when he enlisted in December 1941. He had 433 days of overseas war service. He never spoke about the war either. Until he wrote his life story when he was in his sixties all I knew was that when he got out of the Army in 1946, he couldn’t handle the city. He only went to a couple of Anzac Day marches and they made him cry. We lived in the bush, for a couple of years in a tent and then a house. He rode a horse for work—fencing and dipping cattle for the Department of Agriculture. He preferred to work alone—just him, his horse and his dog. It gave him the time and space to think. He had rashes from the tropics and I remember him often raking his spurs down his leg to scratch them. Dad was a very deep, analytical man. He played the guitar and ukulele, the mouth organ, piano accordion and violin—all self-taught—to himself or to put us kids to sleep. When I was in Vietnam he sent over two tapes of him playing the guitar. But he was a hard, remote man, and very strict: correct manners; follow orders—no questions asked. He brought us up as he was brought up: tough. To me, he was never outwardly affectionate, perhaps because I was a wild card, but he let you know he loved you. Just that pat on the back, with ‘Well done son’, or ‘You stuffed that up, didn’t you?’ When we were young and living in the bush, my brother and I would wait for him at the creek to come riding home at sundown. He’d cross the creek and throw us up on the saddle, and home we’d ride. I loved him. He taught me to have a go—to never give in. As Dad got older, after work he’d zonk out in the sun, have a cup of tea, then go out to his shed and carve horses. That was his world. He loved horses. Grew up on them, trained them, worked on them, and when he couldn’t ride any more he carved them. His carvings were so good he won first prize thirteen years in a row in the whittling and carving section at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. He never touched the drink, but he was a loner because of the war. He just never got over it, except I didn’t realize that until after Vietnam. Diamonds and Stone

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Mum didn’t handle Dad well. She also came from a hard background and she was never a woman to show love or affection. Twenty-five years into their marriage, I said to Dad, ‘All you and Mum do is bicker and fight. You’ve stayed away or locked yourself in this shed; you haven’t involved her in anything. You don’t love each other. What the bloody hell are you still doing with her?’ I pushed and pushed and after twenty-nine years of marriage they split. When he remarried a couple of years later I was his best man. I knew it wouldn’t last—he was an old dog. When he met another woman I said, ‘If you even think about getting married I’ll handcuff you to the bloody bed.’ It was a beautiful relationship. Like Dad, I didn’t like authority. From sunup to sundown I was off in the bush with my slug gun, playing cowboys and Indians with my brother and friends. Because I didn’t get on with my mother, when I was ten Dad sent me to live with my aunt and uncle who managed the Royal Hotel in Bundaberg. That was two and a half years of flog first, ask questions later. When I turned fifteen, Dad pushed me to leave school to do a trade. The family had moved to Sydney and I joined the Post Master General’s Department with the intention of becoming a linesman. I’ve always been a team player —played rugby league at school, as well as rugby union and cricket and was also into amateur boxing, swimming and athletics. I hated Electronic rights for this image are not bullies and would get into a few available. punch-ups in the street, especially when I joined a bodgie gang. Two years later, the Elvis Presley look underwent a drastic change: I enlisted in the Australian Regular Army. The intention was to get out of a lifestyle that might lead me into trouble and to do a trade while having a roof over my head and three meals a day. It was 1969—the year Keith Payne of the AATTV [Australian Army Training Garry Heskett in infantry corps training, Team in Vietnam] won his VC for Ingleburn, June 1969.

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risking his life to bring his South Vietnamese company back to safety. I was aware that since 1962 our AATTV members had been in Vietnam, and by 1964 Australians were involved in fighting. When you enlist, they ask, ‘If there was a war would you be prepared to go and defend your country?’ Of course I said yes, but to be truthful, I thought the war would be over by the time I turned nineteen. Two years later, in 1971, I remember being on parade and the officer announcing, ‘We have been officially notified that the 4 Battalion Royal Australian Regiment will be next to tour Vietnam. We will commence training for that purpose. Those of you who object to going, step out of the ranks now.’ A couple of chaps broke lines. I was old enough to go to war but not old enough to vote. On a week’s pre-embarkation leave, Dad’s only comment was, ‘Keep your head down. You’ll be alright. It’ll make a man of you.’ It was 4RAR’s second tour of Vietnam. For me it was about going off to fight for Country, Flag and Honour. Shortly after arriving in-country it became more about looking after yourself and your mates, a tradition that goes back to Gallipoli. We sailed from Townsville on HMAS Sydney in May. I believed in what we were doing—giving the South Vietnamese the right to live under a free enterprise system, defending them (and ultimately Australia) against communism. But, to be honest, I was scared out of my wits on landing at Vung Tau. In the chopper to Nui Dat, I saw that the Jewel of the Pacific had become a mass of bomb craters. My speciality was mortars. Mainly we’d work out of Fire Support Bases MARY, TRISH, DEBBIE and others located in and around Phuoc Tuy province, backing up the infantry units when they were out of range of the main Task Force Base at Nui Dat. Otherwise we operated in converted mortar armoured personnel carriers, all terrain vehicles with tracks and a V6 engine. When charging across the terrain we’d stand with our heads out of the hatch, rifles ready, hanging on. It was a bumpy, noisy ride. Being in the hands of the driver was a nerve-wracking experience. Given the pace and the load—HE [high explosives], WP [white phosphorus], and illumination rounds, which were attached to little parachutes to light the night sky—if we hit a mine you could say goodnight. We were as loud as a diesel truck, so enemy would hear us coming, but rarely did they take us on. Our MFC [mortar fire controller] would travel with an infantry platoon or the company. If they came into contact with the enemy he would radio in for fire support, giving the grid references and map readings etc. to our command post for where he wanted our mortars to land. The mortar platoon personnel would analyse the data and relay the converted data in the form of bearings

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and elevations for the mortar rounds to us blokes on the mortar line. We would then be given the command to ‘fire for effect’. This would allow the MFC to see where the round landed and adjust accordingly. We always hoped he could read a map well. Once he was satisfied that our rounds were on target then it was basically bomb the shit out of the enemy. Sometimes, due to the nature of the contact, there was very little distance between our blokes and them, and the close proximity of our fire could be dangerous. Our blokes could take shrapnel. I recall one such incident. It’s something I still think about. We did nine operations in all. Often we asked ourselves ‘Why don’t we just drop a bomb on the joint and get out of here?’—and we were talking about the atomic bomb. It’s a terrible thing to say, but we were young men, sick and tired of fighting an enemy we couldn’t see. Nowadays I realize bombs weren’t going to stop them and the trouble is, if you had done that, you would have started World War III, because we were taking on more than the North Vietnamese. Both Russia and China were supporting North Vietnam in their aggression against the South. After five or six weeks of living on edge we’d come back to Nui Dat for a week, have a shower and a feed of fresh rations, clean our gear and wipe ourselves out on our accumulated beer ration: one can per man per day. At least as a policeman you can unwind after work by having a yarn over a beer on a daily basis. I was twenty-five years in the police force. I wouldn’t like to sustain a war of that length of time. If we were lucky we got a 36-hour recreation leave pass to go into Vung Tau, a frontier black market town. You name it, it was available, which was exciting for a young soldier. You walked into a bar and half a dozen girls would swarm you, saying, ‘You buy me tea, I sit with you. We go boom boom.’ It got to the stage of ‘Piss off. I’m having a beer with me mates.’ I had never seen a porno show. My eyes were opened. When I came home on HMAS Sydney in March 1972 my family were there to greet me. We had a party and Dad said, ‘Have you ever heard of a singer called John Denver?’ ‘Yeah, on the Australian Force’s radio.’ ‘I don’t know what to say to you mate, so I want to play you a song.’ He whacked on a record of Back Home Again. The song describes a storm coming across the valley, and a truckie coming home after a long absence and how good it will be to catch up on all the news. Afterwards he says, ‘That sums up how I feel.’ That first night, I was asleep on the top bunk, my brother underneath and I dreamt I was back in Vietnam. I was in a hootchie and sandbag foxhole, and

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a snake came in and curled up on my chest. I lay there for an hour working out how to get my hands out of my sleeping bag, roll the sleeping bag over the snake and crawl out. Finally I acted, hitting my head on the rear wall and falling to the floor. I lay there confused—I had no idea where I was. My brother had let the cat in and the cat had decided to sleep on my chest. Without realizing what I was doing, I had grabbed the cat and thrown it against the wall. The cat’s screech woke my brother. He’s calling me crazy and I’m saying, ‘What’s the idea of having a bloody animal in the house?’ Next thing we’re in a fight. I knew I had to get outside before I wrecked the house and I’m down the back leaning on the fence, all fired up. My old man came down and put his arm around me, saying, ‘I think you need help.’ ‘Fuck off and leave me alone. You’re the one that needs help. I thought you might have some understanding.’ ‘I do. That’s why I think you need help.’ ‘No I don’t. I just need to get on.’ Dad walked away. We never talked about it again. Years later he gave me his battalion book. A couple of years after that, I gave him my battalion book. The only other time war was mentioned was when Pop died, and that was only a passing comment. Back in 1972, while on leave, I saw the sorts of things my mates were doing and thought how childish they were, although I had been doing the same things only a year before. War and soldiering does make you grow up quickly: the responsibility of knowing people rely on you and you rely on them to stay


Garry, Wal and Dick Heskett on Anzac Day, Coffs Harbour, 1976.

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alive. After Vietnam that sense of belonging, loyalty and comradeship disappeared, although it never waivers with the blokes you trained and went to war with, it’s just I didn’t meet up with them until 1987. I stayed in the Army for another three years, always seeking adrenalin, becoming a qualified parachutist and scuba diving off the reefs. On weekends in Townsville I played football and rode horses. I even entered a couple of rodeos riding bareback broncs, but I was always bucked off before the whip cracked. My battalion was due to be deployed for a two-year stint in Malaya, but when Gough Whitlam was elected in a landslide victory the deployment was cancelled, as was National Service. The Army became a dull place. Once proud units that stood alone with their battle honours were amalgamated with other units to make up numbers. A lack of defence spending meant courses were no longer available. Soldiers sat around twiddling their thumbs. A turning point was my twenty-first birthday. I was in the barracks and hadn’t got a card from anyone. That night I had one beer and decided, ‘No one else is going to look after you. You’ve got to look after yourself. Make every post a winner. If you succeed, that’s a bonus. If not, don’t give in. Just don’t have high expectations.’ All the birthday cards came the next day. Two years later I cried as I watched the fall of Saigon on TV. Over two million dead, mates killed, all the wounded and battle-scarred, the destruction of villages and countryside, the girls forced into prostitution … it had all been for nothing. I disagreed with us pulling out. I think we should have finished it good and proper but it was the White House that called the shots. General Creighton Abrams, the US commander in Vietnam from 1968 to 72, oversaw the withdrawal of US troops and the process of Vietnamization. In the end, without US financial support, the South Vietnamese threw down the gauntlet. I often wonder what would have happened if we’d stayed. I was having nightmares. Nevertheless, I looked for a career that would employ my military skills. I sought the adrenalin rush and the camaraderie, that basic human instinct: working in a team with its jokers and loners, loudmouths and stirrers. So after my discharge in 1975, I applied to join the Ambulance Service of New South Wales and the New South Wales Police. The Ambulance was the first to reply. I worked three and a half years as an ambulance officer, but I had a few police mates and liked what they did, so I left and joined the police. For a long time I didn’t wear my campaign ribbons. Even though I was proud of my service, with so much scorn from the general public I put them away. I avoided telling anyone I’d been to Vietnam, then very early in my policing career my commanding officer said, ‘Garry, I hear that you are a Vietnam veteran, that you’ve got campaign ribbons. Why don’t you wear them?’ 208

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‘Well, Sir, I’m working in Cabramatta for a start.’ It was the late 1970s and Vietnamese refugees were settling there. I continued, ‘Also people don’t respect what Vietnam was about.’ He said, ‘Well, you wear the Queen’s uniform as a police officer, the same as you did in the armed services. That means your campaign ribbons are part of your uniform. You earned them and I think you should wear them with pride. I expect to see you wearing them the next time we meet.’ If I heard a call over the police radio network of a Vietnam veteran in a siege or domestic violence situation, I would notify the operator of my background, saying I was available to assist to either negotiate or counsel. I’ve dealt with a few Vietnam veterans. In the majority of cases all it took was another veteran or a very experienced police officer to sit down and talk with him. But on the whole, I put Vietnam behind me and in 1976 I married. Suzanne’s father had served six years in the Royal Australian Navy. She was of the opinion that the South Vietnamese needed us, and rightly so. It was a big factor in getting to know her but I never talked about the war and I rarely talked to her about work. I talk with mates because mates provide things that wives cannot. I don’t have to explain and in the early days when we finished a job, got the crooks, recovered the property, it was: ‘Great job fellows. Everyone put in $10 and we’ll get a pizza and a carton of grog.’ It was a way to debrief and settle down before going home. The problem was you might go home halfstung, which is not good for the family. I never went overboard, but when I did get home and Suzanne asked ‘How was your day?’ I’d answer ‘Good’ or ‘A shit of a day’. I switched off by watching TV. As I rose through the ranks, the welfare of my people came first. I’ve always prided myself on being able to talk it out if anyone felt down or had been through a hairy situation. I would emphasize loyalty and camaraderie to get the best out of people and would lead from the front. If an issue arose in the street I would be out there to support them, the way a good leader in the Army operates. Even in the late 1990s, when I went back to uniform at Liverpool Police Station, for my team I selected people with a military background, although not all of them had served overseas. My regimental style resonated with their previous armed service experience. My team was the Red Team: everyone had to wear some form of red undergarment. And I was highly competitive, building them up with ‘We are the best. We are Number One. We lead, the rest follow.’ If we were going to raid a house for drugs or stolen goods, I’d say, ‘Okay team, this is the operation. This is where the enemy are’, although I always made it clear that, in these circumstances, the enemy was innocent until proven guilty and had to be treated with the same level of respect as you would a victim or a witness. Diamonds and Stone

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In many ways treating the criminal as ‘the enemy’ is saying it as it is. Police are the last line of defence for the tax-paying public. If we are out looking for crooks it is like a posse going on a hunt, as it was in Vietnam. The difference is, in Vietnam, if the enemy aimed a gun at you you’d shoot because you knew he was out to kill you, but it is not usually the case with armed criminals in New South Wales. Often police have to make a judgement on the spot and my military background, combined with Vietnam, gave me the perspective to look at the options. Fortunately a lot of Australian criminals don’t carry weapons. That gives us an advantage. In Vietnam we also had the advantage in weaponry, but I admired the VCs’ resourcefulness. We fought with a 7.62 self-loading rifle. They used the Russian and Chinese AK-47 and rifles that fired the 7.62, which meant they could use our ammunition. We fired the eighty-one millimetre mortar. They fired the eighty-two millimetre mortar, as well as the eighty and sixty, which meant they could use our rounds. I admired their fighting ability— they were tough, resilient and self-disciplined, although they usually didn’t stay around too long unless they had numbers. I suppose they were up against us: since World War II, Australians had developed a jungle fighting capability second to none. Even so, you don’t stay alive if you don’t respect the enemy. As a policeman you have to be fairly suspicious, and it was the same in Vietnam. You could be talking to a Vietnamese and you wouldn’t know which side he was on. The difference is, I have never met a criminal with a cause bigger than himself, in contrast to the VC who were fighting for their country. I respected them for that. I never hated them: they were the enemy and our job was to kill them. I’ve never hated criminals either, although I am disgusted by sexual deviates, rapists, child molesters, and murderers—depending on the category of murder committed—or a criminal who assaults and robs the elderly, or a thief who defecates in or otherwise violates a house, as opposed to a thief who simply steals. I have no respect for criminals who rule by fear and I did not have a high opinion of the way some VC treated their fellow Vietnamese. We saw the results of their fear tactics: a village elder killed and hung up as a warning that VC were in the area recruiting. They often abducted men and boys and took them off to train. That left the women working the paddy fields and taking care of the old people. The media blamed Americans for burning villages. The VC did the same if they weren’t looked after. I didn’t see it as a matter of survival. Nor is crime a matter of survival. Policing involves irregular hours and, for me, years of blocking emotions. It’s a control thing. I liked coming home to an ordered house. I expected things to be ship-shape, the beds made, everything in its place. In the Army, if it didn’t 210

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happen you’d be charged. Over the years, Suzanne and I have argued over this. She chose to work and as a nurse she did shift work. She would be stressed on a number of fronts and I would explode, ‘Why is there dust everywhere? Why has this not been put away?’ ‘Because we live here!’ ‘Well clean the bloody joint up. If you can’t do it, I’ll do it’, and I would. I am a perfectionist, so I took over the starching and ironing of my uniform, and the spit polishing of my shoes. Otherwise Suzanne was responsible for the house and I looked after the yard: kept it like a parade ground. Even the firewood had to be cut and stacked in lines. There was method in my excessiveness. If the wood was stacked properly it took up less space and was easier to get, but now I realize Suzanne was right: a house has to be lived in, although I still can’t stand sloppiness. While I was nowhere near as strict as my father, if the kids did the wrong thing, it would be, ‘If you do that again I’ll give you a kick up the arse’, and if it continued, whack—a smack on the bum. When Brad was a teenager we had an argument. By this stage, he was taller than me and I said, ‘You’re not yet big enough to take me on.’ He went to take a swing. I saw red, and dived on him and was about to punch him when I clicked: ‘I can’t do this to my son.’ We were both upset and had a good talk afterwards. I always wanted a pretty girl. I got a pretty girl but one who is as headstrong as me. From a very young age Shannon needed a lot of attention, constantly interrupting a conversation. That annoyed me. When she was thirteen, she was diagnosed with ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] and was put on medication. She would get depressed because she was not coping at school or felt she had no friends. She often sought my approval and there were times when I was preoccupied and not ready to listen. I was continually saying, ‘Look, you don’t have to satisfy me. Get on with it.’ I probably didn’t provide the type of attention she wanted. I am not a lovey-dovey person. Gregory, the youngest, also has ADHD but he was diagnosed earlier than Shannon and he’s on dexamphetamine. Sometimes he gets a bit crazy and back-answers, but he knows to pull short of the line. My triggers were screaming and yelling. Tempers would flare. I thought the kids had an attitude problem. They thought I had a perception problem. Suzanne, being the mother of the nest, would intervene, and I would be the worst bastard in the world, but I was different to my father. I always encouraged the kids to play sport, particularly a team sport. It’s good for the character: to learn responsibility and loyalty, to dig in when times are tough, to share the victories and learn from the losses, and I did my best to support them from the sideline. From when they were very young I would talk to them about walking Diamonds and Stone

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to their own drumbeat. For each of them I’ve asked, ‘Tell me what you want to do in life so we can gear your education.’ When Bradley was twelve, I showed him a Reader’s Digest advertisement for the Australian Defence Force Academy. About a week later he announced, ‘Dad, I’m going to ADFA’, so, chuckling on the side, I took him down to join Cadets. When he was older I got him his shooter’s licence so he would know how to use a weapon and respect it. Similarly, as soon as Shannon was out of nappies she wanted to be a hairdresser, so I got her work experience in a hairdressing salon. Her ADHD meant it has been a tough road for her—she never lets up talking and wanting approval—but now she’s a qualified hairdresser. However, I share Lord Denning’s view that a man’s home is his castle. I won’t stand for disrespect in my own home. Suzanne bore the brunt of my outbursts. Both of us are opinionated and headstrong. After a confrontation I could be angry for a day or a week, and she’d live on tenterhooks. We have nearly split a few times. I learnt to walk away before getting too wound up. All my family, but particularly Suzanne, has been through it all: the anger, the mood swings, the army-style orders, the rashes, the nightmares and night sweats, up at three in the morning, walking around checking the doors and windows, me being jumpy and oversensitive. I am fully aware that a lesser woman would have walked out years ago. Policing is not only about the hunt: there are the court appearances and paperwork. Perhaps the toughest trial for me was that of Murdoch and the three Murphy brothers, who, along with Travers, were charged with the rape and murder of Anita Cobby. My role in the case began at 1 p.m. on 4 February 1986 while working out of the Homicide Squad—Criminal Investigation Branch—in Sydney, with a phone call from Superintendent Hadrick, the Commander of Penrith District: ‘A brutalised female body has just been found in a paddock on Reen Road at Prospect.’ My boss said, ‘Well Garry, you’d better get out there and take Speed with you.’ Detective Sergeant Ian ‘Speed’ Kennedy accompanied me to the scene. Numerous detectives and uniform police had already cordoned off the area and Dr Malouf, the government medical officer, and the scientific photographer were there. We walked over and saw Anita lying face down near a tree. All she had on was a Russian wedding ring. When her body was rolled over we saw that her face was swollen, her throat almost severed. It was obvious that there had been more than one attacker and she had put up a hell of a fight. Dr Malouf noted down the details. In these situations it is important to remain detached, look for evidence, listen to what others are saying, follow procedures, get running sheets and enquiries started. You don’t have time to think about the person. 212

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Anita’s father, Garry Lynch, had already put in a missing person’s report to Constable Murphy, who had known Anita at school. He was on the scene with a recent photo but I think he was in a state of shock, because he could not identify her. Speed and I looked at each other. ‘Yeah that’s her all right.’ Speed removed her ring for identification purposes. After organizing an initial search, Kennedy and I drove to the Lynches’ home. Garry came to the door, his eyes searching for answers. We were pretty sure that it was Anita but we couldn’t say anything until further clarification. After the initial formalities Garry’s first words were: ‘I could wish it was someone else’s daughter, but I can’t, can I? They would have to go through what we are going through.’ After collecting information and photographs we left for Blacktown Police Station, the centre of operations. The same afternoon, we returned to the Lynches’ to take Garry and Anita’s ex-husband to the mortuary. I dissuaded Grace from coming, having been brought up in the old school of protecting women. At that stage I had no idea of Grace’s strength and courage, or that she’d been a nurse. From what I was to observe throughout the investigation and trial, in my opinion, Anita’s fighting instinct had a lot to do with Grace. At the mortuary the morgue attendant pulled back the screen to the viewing room to reveal Anita’s body lying there with only her face exposed. Although shaken, Garry held himself in as he looked at his daughter. I thought he was about to collapse, so I put my arm around him, holding him up. He reminded me of my old man. ‘You’ll be right mate. Come on.’ On the way back to the police station Speed and I talked about the strategies we would employ to hunt the killers, and how to cope with the imminent media onslaught. There were more than fifteen detectives on the case. It was a team effort. John Travers was the first to be arrested. He admitted to the murder, so he never went to trial. Michael Murdoch was next. Then it was a matter of going after the three Murphy brothers: Les, Gary and Michael. We went from house to house, gathering information. On 24 February we arrived at a Granville address at 2.30 a.m. and in a bedroom we found Les Murphy lying on the floor between two mattresses. He was arrested and escorted to Blacktown Police Station for the record of interview. From 4.15 to 8.30 a.m. Detective Senior Constable Kevin Raue and I interviewed a very compliant Murphy. He admitted to everything, although there was no remorse and later he was to plead ‘not guilty’. After signing the report, Murphy accompanied four of us on a runaround, Raue asking the questions, me writing his answers and the photographer photographing each stage of the crime: the point of abduction, their route to Reen Road and onto Doonside, where they burnt her clothes. By mid-morning Murphy was charged with murder, abduction and assault and at 1 p.m. we were in Blacktown Court to present the Diamonds and Stone

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evidence and argue against bail. By 3 p.m., after working thirty-one hours straight, we knocked off. Not all criminals and their victims can be classified in terms of black and white but over time I came to know Anita and her family as outstandingly genuine, dignified people and the perpetrators as very sick people. Travis was the worst. Learning about his background through the course of the investigation, how his father abused him, and for all five men, how they had no proper care or schooling, I commented to a colleague, ‘This murder didn’t need to happen.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘If these families were given proper support, their sons would not turn into car thieves, armed robbers, sexual deviants and murderers.’ The three-month trial in 1987 was the longest trial ever up till then. We attended every day. There was a lot of pressure on us, particularly given the public interest, and in those days it wasn’t a matter of reading sixteen pages of evidence. You had to commit it all to memory. ‘At such and such a date and time, I said, he said, I did, he did …’ You had to be accurate and consistent during the cross-examination by five defence barristers. The courtroom was packed. The media were there. The jury were watching for every little bead of sweat. Your peers, who had already given evidence, were watching you. One mistake and bang, they’ve got something to nail on you. It was an exacting investigation and a difficult trial. There had to be no room for doubt. The four got a fair hearing. There were no impact statements like they have today, thanks to the work of Garry, Grace and others. From years of observation I’ve decided judges all have their idiosyncrasies and flavours of the month—that’s why I believe in the jury system, but Justice Maxwell was meticulous. He didn’t miss a beat. I guarantee if people had got hold of those blokes, they would have strung them up by the neck, but I don’t agree with capital punishment. Some people turn out to be innocent. In the case of those five men, there was no doubt about their guilt, but death would have been too easy for them. A few months after the trial, in October 1987, there was the Welcome Home Parade. Although I had been involved in organizing it, when it came time to leave I said to Suzanne, ‘I don’t want to go.’ ‘Why?’ ‘The public will probably throw paint on us. Women Against Rape will come out and everyone will downgrade us like they always have. They hate us. They have no respect for what we did.’ Finally a mate and his girlfriend rocked up and Joe said, ‘Come on mate.’

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Nervously I walked behind Sydney Hospital looking for my battalion’s flag. There were thousands of people. I’m going ‘Holy shit, this is bigger than I thought.’ I spot the flag, get in amongst them and next thing eyes click, and it’s ‘Heskett—you bastard, it’s you, isn’t it? You haven’t changed a bit.’ I’m thinking, ‘Just a bit older and heavier’. Hugs all round. It was as if Vietnam and army life were yesterday. It was the first time Shannon and Brad had seen me march. As my unit came out of Martin Place into George Street I spotted the kids standing with Suzanne waving flags and cheering. We made eye contact. All my emotions welled up. I felt proud. I had tears in my eyes to the end of the march. I could not get their image out of my head. It was a great day and an emotional one. I was running into blokes I hadn’t seen for fifteen years, on my feet for nearly twenty-four hours getting pissed and sober, pissed and sober. The next thing they’re inviting us over for barbecues. We’d all been through the same mill and the wives started talking, ‘Does your husband do this?’ and Suzanne says, ‘Yeah, he goes into a restaurant and always chooses a corner table.’ If there’s going to be an attack I want to see it coming. A year or so after the parade Dad posted me his memoirs. I read the book straight through, at last learning about his part in the Wewak Campaign. He described advancing in small units from Aitape to Wewak on the north coast of New Guinea, a distance of 154 kilometres as the crow flies. Australian soldiers faced an estimated 60 000 Japs operating in units of ten to a hundred. As a signaller, Dad worked a 108 radio set and used Morse code. In a contact he would have to roll out the field cable from one pit to another, often under fire, as a favourite trick of the Japs was to cut the signal wire between the artillery forward observers and the guns. The Japs’ biggest problem was food. They’d raid the villages’ sweet potato gardens, so these became places for the Diggers to ambush. One of Dad’s most disturbing memories was seeing evidence of cannibalism. When they searched the bodies and sacks of the Japs they occasionally found human meat. Once Jap snipers had them pinned down and Dad was trying to hook up the communications back to the platoon commander. He came under fire and was forced to dive behind a log. A mate pointed to the other side of the log. Dad thought it was a Jap but it turned out to be a cannibalised mate. Incidents like that, a man never forgets. Like Vietnam, you never knew when you would come across the enemy, although at least you could recognize him. Like Vietnam, the worst time for nerves was on night piquet, where every stump seems to move the longer you look at it. Dad describes a time when his mate, Tiny, was on piquet and had his

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throat cut. Days later, when Dad was on piquet from 1 a.m. he felt something on his left shoulder. He froze, waiting for the knife. When it didn’t come he reached up. It was a fig leaf. He admitted to tears of relief. They had all the humidity and rain of Vietnam, the swamps, mud and dense jungle, the close contacts, booby traps, and malaria—the difference being that if they were sick or injured they had to be carried out by stretcher or be treated on the spot. We had Dustoffs. And their supply lines were less regular. At least most of the locals were on their side, with knowledge of the rugged terrain and wild food, and the same lust to kill Japs. A local would be paid two shillings for every Japanese soldier he killed, as long as he had evidence. This would be wrapped in a banana leaf. Dad wrote about one night when they were camped on a gravel flat near the Danmap River. He twiddled his radio to pick up Tokyo Rose, a female broadcaster who was describing how the Japs were pushing the Australians into the sea. It had been raining up in the Torricelli Mountains and locals warned them of the consequences, which the commanding officers disregarded. In no time torrential rain and upstream muddy waters had them surrounded. In the company of snakes and every other creepy-crawly, thirtyfive men spent seven hours clambering and swimming in water up to their chests, clinging to logs or trees, getting entangled in vines, watching people go under or being carried away by the current. At dawn, they finally reached dry ground. Dad’s comment was that Tokyo Rose had been right that night, but it wasn’t the Japs who were pushing them out to sea. After digging their equipment out of the mud they headed inland. At the first shots fired by the Japanese the carriers dropped their load and went bush. Not all of them returned. With the extra load everyone started to climb a muddy mountain, one step up, three slides back. To keep them going the unit doctor flogged them with his handkerchief! Just before Arohemi, they ran into Japs, on dusk finally making it to base. Japs had been sighted, so they had to stand-to—all night lying in mud, their backs pelted with rain. The next morning the Beaufort bombers came in but the only smoke they could see was from the cookhouse. Dad writes, ‘You can guess the rest’: two dead, nine wounded. For the next twenty-four hours, they fought the rain and seventy Japs. As well as the war, he described growing up, getting married and having children. His story stopped when I was ten. He writes, ‘I was hard on Garry. He was the eldest and I expected a lot from him.’ He asked, ‘What did you think of it?’ ‘You certainly were in the thick of it. But why did you leave off when I was ten?’

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‘It’s for you to finish.’ Dad got Alzheimers a year or so later. He had it for seven years before he died at the age of seventy-seven. In 1993 Suzanne and I went to Vietnam for the commemoration of the September 1971 Battle of Nui Le, in which Delta Company 4RAR lost five soldiers and the battalion and supporting units had a considerable number wounded. We were fighting a battalion of the 33 NVA Regiment that was held up in a headquarter bunker system. That and Operation Ivanhoe, in the same month—when we pushed the well-equipped battle-hardened 245 VC Regiment and 274 NVA Regiment out of the province—had been an embarrassment for the Government because the politicians were saying the war was over, that everyone, except for the rear guard, would be home by Christmas. Going to Vietnam, Suzanne gained a level of understanding, but she did not like the accommodation, food or humidity. I was reliving memories, trying to rid myself of old ghosts. It was a great trip in that respect. After the fall of Saigon some resentment had built up inside me towards the South Vietnamese. Now in my forties, I was more aware of their plight and felt sorry for them. Nothing had changed. The fat-cat Hanoi communists provide a lousy health system, no social security and few jobs. The bomb craters and deforestation from Agent Orange were still evident, as were war-related injuries. People still Electronic rights for this image are not felt bitterness and hatred available. towards Americans, but once they found out we were Aussies they could not do enough for us. I had the privilege of accompanying Jerry Taylor, the commander of Delta Company, and Gary McKay, a platoon commander, who was writing a book called Delta Four, on a number of Garry Heskett at a Roman Catholic interviews with former VC and orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, NVA commanders. The meetings 1993, photographed by Jerry Taylor, were very friendly. Respect was a AM, MC. two-way street.

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In 1994, the Wood Royal Commission began a three-year investigation into police corruption. I’d given my best to the service. I knew there was an element of corruption—it disgusts me. Suddenly the media and people in the street were branding all police and detectives ‘scumbag criminals’. We were made to feel ashamed for being a detective. Fifteen blokes committed suicide. Many police were set up. One workmate, an excellent detective, lost his marriage and his house. He had to go before the Independent Commission Against Corruption to clear his name, which he did, but by then he was a broken man. The Royal Commission was a nightmare. If you forgot to write something in your diary you could be charged with neglect. If they wanted you, they could get you. It was the same for our homecoming. We went over to Vietnam, did our best, and on our return were called murderers and scumbags by fellow Australians. My own grandmother, whose husband and two sons had served in war, told me, ‘It wasn’t a war. It was a police action.’ ‘Hang on Nan, you’re a fairly astute woman. How do you explain 58 000 dead Americans and 500-odd dead Australians?’ People saw things on television but they had no concept of what was going on. Australians didn’t take movie cameras into the bush. No one acknowledged the building of wells, schools and orphanages. I have never taken kindly to fools. I remember once, when driving with Suzanne, Shannon and Bradley, pulling up for petrol and this bloke beeping his horn and trying to overtake. I thought, ‘You prick.’ The female passenger gave me the finger. I followed them up the road until a red light, Brad saying ‘Oh no’, and Suzanne, ‘Please don’t.’ I pulled up beside them, wound down my window and yelled, ‘Hey bitch, tell your weak-arsed, coward friend that I’m going to flog him.’ She stuck her finger up again. I got out of the car, fuming, ‘If you stick your finger up at me again I’ll stick it where your mother never kissed you.’ I wanted a fight. By this time Bradley’s laughing; Suzanne’s screaming— she could see I was ready to kill the prick but I had a bit of control that time —my family was present. Other times, I’d leave the car in the middle of the traffic and go up, saying, ‘Don’t bother winding your window up.’ Bang. My fuse was getting shorter and by the mid-1990s my vet mates started asking ‘What’s wrong mate?’ I’ve always had a sense of achievement in getting the job done, but I’d been on the front line too long. I saw things in Vietnam that will remain with me for the rest of my life. As an ambulance officer I’d pulled bodies out of mangled cars, people screaming. As an operational policeman you deal with one disaster after another. There’s not a night I didn’t dream of my time in Vietnam, or pulling a dead baby out of a car, or death from autoeroticism, stabbing, shooting or hanging, or some maggot-ridden corpse.

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A person can only take so much death in all its grotesque misery. It got to the stage that I couldn’t go into a morgue because of the smell. I remember a particular incident in 1996, when I was called to a scene of an alleged suicide to see whether there were any suspicious circumstances. I walked into the flat and the uniform police officer says, ‘Hi Sarge, how you going?’ ‘What have you got?’ ‘A bloke strung himself up Sarge.’ ‘Any family?’ ‘A wife and a newborn baby. They’re outside.’ ‘Right, make sure they’re being looked after. Where’s the body?’ I walked through the kitchen and there he was: hanging in the doorway between the kitchen and the laundry, feet just touching the floor, his eyes at my eye level, naked except for his jocks, with a Christmas card hanging out of them. Using a pen, I prised open the card. He’d written, ‘This is what you made me do, you bitch. Have a good Christmas.’ The boys in blue were standing behind me. ‘What happened?’ They explained: ‘He wanted a son and when he got a daughter he blamed his missus. She came home from hospital, they had a fight, and she went and stayed with her mother to let him calm down. She came home with the baby and found him.’ ‘So this is his repayment, is it?’ I looked into the dead eyes of this imbecile and started giving him a lecture. ‘If there’s such a thing as life after death, I hope you’re around to hear me because you are a scumbag piece of shit. You have left your wife with an indelible print that will remain on her mind always. Every Christmas that woman will go through the nightmare of seeing you hung by your neck, just because you didn’t get your way.’ I’m standing there raving to this corpse and the boys are saying, ‘Are you all right Sarge? Come on Sarge, get out of here.’ You get to a stage where death is another body. You’re hardened to it. It is the living who are left to suffer. Apart from bodies I’d had too many adrenalin rushes. My nerves were shot; the nightmares were more intense. I would do my block with the family. I couldn’t understand why they weren’t following orders. They’d say ‘We’re not criminals, Dad’, or ‘You’re not in the Army now’, and I’d say ‘I know that. Just do it.’ In 1996 I was sitting in quiet contemplation at my desk at Liverpool Police Station when suddenly a three-day operation unrolled before my eyes: all the colours, smells and sounds of combat, all the physical reactions. I sat, shaken. People were saying, ‘What’s wrong?’ I thought I’d gone crazy. I don’t know what triggered it. I was under a fair bit of stress. My boss told me to see

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a psychiatrist and I’m thinking, ‘I’m not talking to those fools. They’ve never been through it.’ My biggest fear was they would think I was off my rocker and say ‘This bloke shouldn’t be a police officer.’ Finally I went to a psychiatrist and asked why this was happening. He said, ‘Garry, the sub-conscious never lets it go. You try to move on, but it’s always there, and your police work is enhancing it.’ He prescribed medication. I was casual in taking it and eventually cut it out altogether. The majority of operational police go through stress, and many suffer numbness, depression or PTSD, but for me it went back to Vietnam, compounded by my police work. I know this because I was always trying to emulate the military environment. The drill was always there. I operated on teamwork and regulations, on never backing down. For a short time I was put on light duties, then after leading task forces, being senior investigator and Chief of Detectives at various offices, I went back to uniform at Liverpool Police Station. But police culture was changing. After the Wood Royal Commission’s report came out in 1997, under Police Commissioners Ryan, Avery, Jarrett and others, the New South Wales Police force was being decimated. No longer was there any trust, loyalty or sense of camaraderie. It was every man for himself. It was about dobbing in your workmate or climbing over him to get promoted. Academics or people working as prosecutors or in non-operational areas such as in Internal Affairs, with only two years’ experience in general duties, were being transferred to operational command positions. Those of us who were marathon runners, earning their rank through years of front-line service, were being passed over for others who had half our years of service. It became ‘value for money’ policing—a sycophantic business partnership between the Police Commissioner and the Government, with input from politically correct academics. Never mind the quality of onthe-ground operations. I continued to work, but I was nervous and agitated. You only had to crumple a bit of paper near me and I’d do my block. Then in 1999, following a battalion reunion in Perth, I went down a black hole. I took myself off to a GP who referred me to a psych and he directed me off duty for three months. My father died, but I would say it was the changes in the police force culture that were aggravating my problems. I sat at home unable to get motivated. I thought about walking away from the family, but my mind kept telling me, ‘No, you’re a responsible person.’ I have always been able to pull myself short of the worst, even in a rage, and I was determined to defeat the depression for my own self-worth and for my children’s, to be able to say ‘I can do it.’ Medication helped but my biggest motivation was a sense of family, to lead by example. I began pushing myself. 220

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I’d walk, jog or go to the gym every day and set myself one task to start and finish, whether it was pulling fence palings or washing the car. Then it became two tasks a day, then three. Finally I got back on my feet. I returned to work, and started in a new position as crime co-ordinator. Two months later, in July 1999, a young man threw a brick at me as I exited the front doors of Liverpool Police Station, near the Court House. I pursued him, told him to stop, that he was under arrest. He turned and started advancing towards me brandishing a pistol in his right hand and a large carving knife in his left. We stopped within two metres of each other, my pistol levelled at his head, the offender likewise. Four males in the vicinity were encouraging him to shoot or stab me. I had my gun drawn but I’m thinking ‘If he wanted to shoot, why didn’t he fire? He obviously doesn’t have the killer instinct.’ So I held back. There were fifty onlookers, including police, barristers and court staff. I could have killed him with impunity. Instead, I maintained eye contact and talked to him for the next ninety minutes, making sure I was between him and the crowd. At one stage the gun fell to the ground. It went tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. I said, ‘That’s not even a real gun. I could have killed you.’ He says, ‘Yeah. Now you know’, but he kept threatening me with his butcher’s knife. I wasn’t too worried about that and so as not to aggravate the situation I re-holstered my gun, without securing it. In between the negotiations we talked about football, cricket and his family problems. His uncle had molested him when he was a kid and now he had a son. Every time he put his son in the bath he felt dirty, in case he turned out like his uncle. I suggested he get some counselling. ‘Have you thought of laying charges against your uncle?’ ‘No, bring him here so he can watch me die.’ I wasn’t about to give him his death wish. He noticed my campaign medals and we talked about Vietnam—anything to keep his mind ticking over. Finally capsicum spray was used to apprehend him. I’d kept my cool. It was afterwards that I was a nervous wreck. Regardless of my personal problems I continued working hard and in 1999 the local community nominated me for Police Officer of the Year, along with about ten other police in our area. I did not get the award—but felt honoured to have been nominated. In 2001 I was again nominated. I remember attending the award ceremony and standing on the stage with the other nominees when my name was called out. Although humbled, I felt privileged to have won, considering I was the dinosaur in a line-up of young guns. When interviewed by the local newspaper I said, ‘This is one for the old blokes.’ After twenty-five years of operational police work I decided to call it a day while I still had enough sanity and health to reinvent myself. I owed it to myself, but more importantly to my family and close friends, and in November 2003 I was discharged on medical grounds. I continue my association with a Diamonds and Stone

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police rugby league team on a voluntary basis, as a qualified sports trainer. I am there to dust them off, and tend their sprains, strains, dislocations and fractures. I enjoy the fellowship and spirit, the glory and competition and the opportunity to mentor the young police. Whatever I do, even if it’s a game of ‘I Spy’ with the kids in the car when they were young, I give my best. The kids would say, ‘Come on Dad, give in.’ ‘No. Never concede. Never quit.’ I kept one ‘I Spy’ going for two days. It’s not for any reward. It’s the personal satisfaction. It is the same when I train footballers. I like the build-up, the talking up, ‘Never say die.’ If the team loses, it doesn’t matter, as long as they’ve gone out and played like tough men. So as not to dwell on the past I keep busy. There’s football, playing guitar, the RSL, various committees and veteran organizations and working with youth in the area. By helping others I help myself. By helping myself I help others. Then there’s reading. I love military history. However, my priority is the family. There is an old saying: ‘If you live with a cripple long enough you end up walking with a limp’ and I think Suzanne has PTSD herself. But at the end of the day I believe in the Marriage Act of 1966 on which I took the vows of office, so I say ‘I’m here for life, if you are.’ She finds me easier to live with now that I am on medication and away from the policing environment. I’ve got big things that piss her off, she’s got little things that piss me off—but I think our great times outweigh the bad times. If I had to pay her the ultimate compliment, I would say that she has been the one constant in a world of variables. I admire and love her for that and owe it to her to make it easier from here on in. With my kids, although I’ve been strict and had my rages, I’ve tried to be a loving father. Shannon and I have had our share of emotional and physical contacts, but for all of that, we are close. I call her Crash Craddock. She’s written off four cars and I say, ‘There’s no doubt about you girl, you’re unkillable, but why do you need to drive so fast?’ Outwardly she’s tough. Inside she has a heart as big as Phar Lap’s. For a school assignment Greg interviewed me about life in the 1960s and the Vietnam War. It was the first time I had spoken to him in any depth about Vietnam. In his summing up he wrote: ‘I learnt that my father, despite his hard exterior, is actually quite emotional when it comes to the Vietnam War. One of the reasons … is he lost mates in the war that in the end accomplished nothing … I’ve never really had a second thought of what he might be feeling … Now I realize that my dad, and everyone else for that matter, may not be coping with past events as well as they would like … but they go on because they are all proud men.’

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Brad applied for an ADFA scholarship and missed out, so we made sure he was ready for the next interview. When they asked him why he wanted to join he wrote: ‘I come from a long line of soldiers and I’ve been fortunate throughout my life that my father has included me around the campfires with his veteran mates. The thing that has inspired me most to join the Army is the camaraderie that he still has with those mates of years ago.’ He graduated as a lieutenant in the Royal Australian Engineers and in 2003 spent five months on attachment to the 17 Construction Squadron on Palm Island, building houses and infrastructure and training young Aborigines. Now he is a troop commander in the 3rd Combat Engineer Regiment. His attitude is that no decent person wants to go to war but there is call to give aid to countries in need. We both think similarly about the current war in Iraq. Saddam was a rogue that needed to be sorted and I subscribe to Aristotle’s words: ‘We make wars so that we can have peace.’ There is a wall of wonders in our house: photos and war memorabilia of my grandfather, my father and me. Brad said, ‘How come I’m not up there Dad?’ I said, ‘Son, when you’re gonged up, you go on the war wall.’ It’s the last thing I want to see: him going off to war. If he did, he would be in the field leading a troop of combat engineers tasked with building infrastructure and detecting mines. In Vietnam it was the engineers who went into the bunkers first. I’d stand there, wave goodbye and shed a tear, but that’s his duty and I have no doubt that my son will end up doing his bit for Australia. He knows the possible consequences. He’s seen my good days and bad days—or, as John Denver so eloquently put it in the song Some Days Are Diamonds, Some Days Are Stones, that sometimes hard times don’t leave you alone … but he knows my motto: ‘Don’t quit. Duty first.’

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PART III

AS THE CALL, SO THE ECHO

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AFTERMATH OF THE VIETNAM WAR

In the conventional and guerrilla mix of warfare in Vietnam, there was no front line. It was impossible to tell who was friend or foe. Australian soldiers spent up to eight weeks out in the bush following a daily routine of silent signals, night harbours, stand-tos and stand-downs, always on alert. Even without a contact, war is intense. Then there was the homecoming. Apart from becoming scapegoats for a society that had become anti-war, Vietnam veterans were forced to straddle two eras: the one of their childhood, that of unquestioned patriarchy, strict discipline and relative consistency; and the one they returned to: an era of choice, debate and rapid change. For those who left the armed services the camaraderie that had sustained them suddenly vanished, leaving them to confront a family life with different rules of engagement. Some were at a loss for weapons to negotiate. While many made a successful transition into civilian life, some were affected by the war within a few years of their return, and others came crashing down thirty or more years later, when they were middle-aged and not so resilient to the stress of another social revolution, that of workplace culture. The more individualistic, competitive work environment and the real possibility of retrenchment resonates with the war that was lost and with their homecoming. For all these reasons and more, forty years after the Vietnam War, of the 50 300 Vietnam veterans still alive, fifty-nine per cent are on a disability pension, at least twenty per cent of all veterans having been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder. The veteran suffers, as do their partners, children

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and grandchildren. Even when families stay together, many are estranged. In the worst cases, a family member contemplates, attempts or succeeds in committing suicide, or there is domestic violence. For those who are prepared to confront the ghosts of war, there can be a new lease of life, the family sagas often being ones of true love: a love of endurance, while those who are sailing very well forty years on tend to have successful careers in which they feel they are making a worthwhile contribution.


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8

WAR AND POLITICS Graham Edwards

In 1967, Australians laid an eleven-kilometre barrier of 21 000 mines between The Horseshoe and Long Phuoc. Never properly guarded, it became a source of mines for the Viet Cong. Of 520 Australian deaths in Vietnam, 109 were from mines. Many more Australians were wounded. Thirty-three deaths were from friendly fire. In 1970, Graham Edwards was wounded in a friendly fire incident, then lost his legs in a mine explosion. In 1983 he became a Member of the State Parliament of Western Australia, and in 1998 he was elected to Federal Parliament, where he is the only sitting member who is a war veteran.

The first time I met a politician was when my old man suggested I go and see Harry Webb, the Federal Member for Stirling in Western Australia, about a blue I was having with the Department of Defence. Eight months after I returned from Vietnam, and while I was still sporting artificial legs and crutches, the Department wanted to downgrade my army pension, which wasn’t very much to begin with. My old man and I sat in Harry Webb’s office while Harry rang the Minister for Defence, Andrew Peacock. Harry was put straight through. They had a bit of a yarn—‘How are you? How’s the kids?’—before Harry says, ‘Look Andrew, I’ve got a young bloke here, ex Vietnam, who has a few problems. Can you help him?’ He passed on the details and put down the phone, ‘Peacock will look into it.’ Within two days, the unfixable problem was fixed. I’ve never forgotten that lesson. Some things are above politics and since I’ve joined the fray, it doesn’t matter who contacts me, if they have a genuine 228


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problem, I do my utmost to help. Also what a wonderful era it must have been to work in, where an Opposition backbencher could get directly through to a government minister. These days it is just about impossible for a member of the Government, let alone an Opposition member, to get through to a minister. Having spent twenty-five years in local, state and federal politics, I know politics is about compromise but it is a tough game and we are going through a crisis of confidence because of the lies being told. You only need to look at the border protection issue—the standoff after the Tampa rescued 430 asylum seekers in 2001, then being told that asylum seekers on SIEV 4 threw their kids overboard and the sinking of SIEV X causing 353 asylum seekers to drown,8 and the reasons given for going to war with Iraq—to see we are being fed chest-thumping lies all the bloody time. I hate being lied to, and this goes back to the lies the Menzies Government told for why we went into Vietnam. The biggest lie was that our troops were requested to go. The offer was made to send troops, and at the last minute the Australian Government decided we’d better have a request from the South Vietnamese Government. Other rhetoric we borrowed from McCarthyism in America: the domino theory that maintained that the yellow hordes of communism would threaten our freedom. There were a few communists in the Unions and the Labor Party, and in 1950 Menzies got legislation passed to ban the Communist Party like they had done in America. Fortunately Menzies failed: the High Court challenged the decision and when it was put to a referendum in 1951 the people rejected the ban for good reason: whether you are a communist or not, it doesn’t mean you are an enemy of the State. The truth is that we live in a tremendous democracy and it was this democratic freedom that people were not prepared to curtail. Looking back, the Vietnam War, unlike the Korean War, was initially more about self-determination. Ho Chi Minh saw great parallels between the Viet Minh’s fight against the French and America’s War of Independence against the British. He was our Ally during World War II, rescuing downed American pilots and, in the last months of the war, working with the OSS [Office of Strategic Services], who provided weapons and training in return for intelligence about the Japanese. After the war he looked to America for support. When the Americans rebuffed him, he turned to the Soviets. Just as Menzies politically benefited from inflaming a fear of communism forty years ago, since 2001 Prime Minister John Howard has been deriving political benefit from fostering a fear of terrorism. Howard had long committed Australian troops to go to war in Iraq before Parliament and the general public were ever informed. Weapons inspections in Iraq were under-resourced and cut short. Intelligence reports had no hard evidence of weapons of mass War and Politics

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destruction and they have not been found. There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in September 11. If we were going in for regime change, why not say that? Saddam was a tyrant, a danger to his own people and to the region, but Howard explicitly denied this intention. Yet regime change was a reason I could accept, as long as we went in as part of a UN force after exhausting other alternatives. If the UN still rejected going to war on that basis, if France, Germany and Russia were unwilling to do so for whatever reasons, at least we would have had an honest debate and people could have made up their minds on that basis. Now in its third year, the war has become muddy water, reminiscent of Vietnam. As a man of twenty I joined the Army because I believed what people had to say about the dangers of communism. Although not a Catholic I’d gone to a Catholic school where we were subject to daily tirades on what the Soviets had done to the Church. I’d grown up listening to stories of World War II, so it seemed a natural thing to do: join the Army to fight in Vietnam. I went over in February 1970 in the advance party of 7 Battalion, Support Company, as a machine gunner. Being in a pioneer platoon involves a whole range of skills,


Graham Edwards, Rod Mason, Bill McDonald and (sitting) Steve Brinkworth in training at Canungra, 1969.

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from laying and lifting minefields to constructing fire support bases, temporary bridges and landing zones for helicopters, although in Vietnam our pioneering skills were rarely called on. Our riflemen skills were called on all the time. But from the moment I started moving around the province of Phuoc Tuy I could see we did not have the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese, not even within the ARVN, that we were just stemming the inevitable tide. I came to the conclusion long before I lost my legs that every life lost was going to be for nothing. By May we were stationed up at The Horseshoe, a secure forward base overlooking the village of Dat Do, a hotspot for VC, from where we would provide support and launch patrols into the Long Hais and the Long Green. It was on one of these patrols, on 12 May, that we were travelling in APCs through waist-high scrub in an area well known for its land mines. Our CO was flying overhead in a Hue helicopter when, for some inexplicable reason, we were ordered off the vehicles to patrol in advance of them. We spread out and had only gone thirty metres when I trod on an M-16 land mine from Charlie’s Ordinance Depot: an Australian mine stolen and replanted by a resourceful enemy. But I was lucky: when the mine exploded it didn’t jump as high as they normally do; it must have been old or contaminated by water. After the initial shock, the pain jogged me into fairly serious consciousness. I sat there, my legs a bloody mess, repeating to myself ‘I’m not going to die’, cradling my M-60, not game to move in case there was another mine, while my mates prodded a path to me. The medic, Ron Howell, and a couple of others administered a shot of morphine and tried frantically to stop the bleeding. I knew my legs were buggered; all I was concerned about was how high the amputations would be. At least I knew how good the Dustoff system was and how competent the medical staff were at One Field Hospital in Vung Tau, having been dusted off six weeks earlier, after a friendly fire incident. It took twenty minutes for the helicopter to arrive. There was a concern that the down thrust of its blades could activate stick mines but it landed, Paul Noble using his body to shelter me from the flying debris. I was put in a hootchie and carried to the helicopter, all the time telling myself ‘I’m not going to die.’ Twenty minutes later we landed in Vung Tau. The medical team rushed out for triage, got my gear off, then ran me into X-rays before the operation. The first thing I did when I woke up was look down to see how high the amputations were. It wasn’t a shock. I was pretty drugged and basically I was grateful to be alive. A week later they flew me to Butterworth in Malaysia. It was meant to be a brief stopover but I’d started haemorrhaging on the plane and an Indian doctor said I had to stay. That upset me. I turned to an Australian officer and, War and Politics

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in front of the Indian, said, ‘Are you going to let that black bastard keep me here?’ The Australian shrugged. ‘He’s the boss.’ The Indian doctor didn’t bat an eyelid. He turned out to be a dedicated professional and a great human being. Over the next two weeks he performed a number of operations designed to stretch the skin over the stumps. The pain was incredible but it meant that I was saved from needing skin grafts. On the last day he picked me up in his car and showed me the sights of Penang. He was genuinely concerned. From the beginning he understood what I was going through: the frustration, anger and pain, that all I wanted to do was get home to my wife and daughter. He certainly taught me a lesson in humility. I came back on a Hercules in excruciating, bone-gnawing pain, mainly around my stumps, the take-off, bumpy flight and landing exacerbating it. They had dosed me up on everything, including sleeping tablets. I didn’t sleep a wink. We arrived at three in the morning, snuck in under the cover of darkness when most sensible people and the media were asleep. The moratoriums were in full swing and the Government didn’t want anyone to see the flotsam and jetsam of an unpopular war. I was taken to the RAAF hospital at Richmond and twenty-four hours later flown to Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital in Melbourne. I was keen to be reunited with my family. Noelene and I had met when she was nursing at 2 Military Hospital at Ingleburn and I was training across the road. My daughter was three months old when I’d left. Noelene was there to meet me. It was an emotional reunion and good to be home, but I was fearful about the future, uncertain and insecure, my biggest fear being that I had left school at fourteen and didn’t have an education or job skills. But I was determined and very keen to get fitted with artificial legs and leave the hospital. Fortunately, there was never any fear of how Noelene would handle it. I had complete faith in her, which was vindicated, and there were difficult years ahead. She kept her own counsel and we pulled together. Also seeing Kerryn, this seven-month-old happy-go-lucky baby, became the heart and soul of my determination. I was in Heidelberg for three weeks, undergoing physiotherapy and educational assessments and getting fitted with legs while doctors ensured there was no infection. The legs were cumbersome and painful. I couldn’t bend them beyond a certain angle and would often fall, but I wanted to get out of the hospital environment. I was placed in an army-financed government-run rehabilitation program where every morning I was picked up by taxi to be taken to a school in Toorak. The first session was learning how to use artificial legs. The woman in charge was a blue-rinse physiotherapist who showed not a scrap of interest in me or 232


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Tom Bourke, who’d lost his legs in a mine incident shortly after mine. As far as she was concerned we were a distraction from chatting with her colleagues about where she’d been the night before, which bloke she’d been with, what she was wearing and where she was going next. She used to tell us to bugger off, literally. Her idea of physio was ‘Go for a walk.’ The next session was English, where we were instructed to go to the back of the room and not talk or disturb the teacher while we read the prescribed texts along the lines of ‘Dick threw the ball to Dora.’ I kid you not. I would finish in two minutes and sit for the next hour twiddling my thumbs in frustration. After that was Maths, which was more of the same: complete simple additions, then sit in silence. Following these inspiring sessions came occupational therapy. My first project was making a breadboard: a week of designing, another week selecting the wood, a third week where we were actually allowed to cut a corner. After several weeks of this crap I told the program manager, ‘This is doing nothing for me.’ I was polite but bloody angry. He got very upset and said I didn’t appreciate what my nation was doing for me. I determined to stick it out. Things did change. The physiotherapist was just as disinterested but in English we learnt that Dora caught the ball that Dick threw, and in Maths I was allowed to explore the lofty realms of multiplication and long division. In occupational therapy they let me finish the breadboard and make a pair of moccasins. Tom Bourke showed less patience and better judgement. He told them to stick their courses up their bloody so-and-sos and stormed out. After a couple of months I, too, had had a gutful. I told the Army I wanted to go back to Perth where I maybe had a future. After some to-ing and fro-ing, the Army gave me two days’ notice that they were sending me to Perth, which put a strain on our marriage. Noelene was not keen. Her family was close-knit and it felt like I was dragging her to the other end of the earth. We had a pretty good blue over it, but she came. The first two years in Perth were a continuance of the worst period of my life. I’ve never had night sweats or nightmares. My nightmares were by day. One of the emptiest feelings was standing on the floor of the orderly room at Karrakatta Barracks completing my discharge procedure: not a word of thanks. I was very angry with the Army. After three years of service I was being discharged with no security, no sense of future, not even ‘All the best, mate.’ After completing my junior certificate and while doing my leaving certificate, I undertook a commercial course at Leederville Technical College with a view to working as a company secretary or something similar. In the middle of summer I found myself sitting in a class of sixteen-year-old girls learning shorthand, typing and elementary accounting. All of a sudden the suction on my stumps would break and there would be this dreadful, embarrassing sound War and Politics

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as if I’d passed wind. It was an incredibly demeaning time but I persevered and, at the end of the course, I went down to Hollywood Hospital to see the DVA people meant to be supervising me. I told them that I’d finished the course, I’d done my two years of rehabilitation and school, now I wanted a job. The bloke in charge says, ‘Edwards, we’ve been watching you and you’ve done well. We’re happy to help you find employment and we have a place in mind.’ He took me to Claremont, where we walked up some twenty stairs to the top floor of a building, and he said, ‘Come in and have a look around.’ Inside the room were people with intellectual disabilities taking old tops off bottles or cleaning Nugget boot polish tins. My guide said, ‘As I said Edwards, you’ve done well. Any one of these jobs is yours.’ I’ve never been so close to snotting a bloke. I left without saying a word. There’s an old poem that sums it up: ‘In times of danger, And not before, God and soldier we adore. When the trouble is over, And all has been righted, God is forgotten, And the soldier slighted.’ Noelene and I didn’t have two bob to rub together. The maximum war service loan was $8000. The cheapest house was $15 000. Because I didn’t have a job, the Commonwealth Bank, in those days a government bank, wouldn’t lend us money. In the end my old man helped and we took a second mortgage from another bank so we could buy a house in Balcatta, in a new sub-division called Amelia Heights. But given all the hoops we had to go through, I was angry with the Government, seeing they had sent us off to war. The whole experience shaped my attitude to life in and out of politics. I’d have bouts of anxiety about the future and would get depressed. As a youngster I’d lived for football and cricket, and also played baseball and tennis. I remember watching young people kicking a football and thinking how much I’d love to be out there. I think that was a catalyst in coming to the conclusion that I could spend the rest of my life moping about what I couldn’t do, or I could find out what I could do with the abilities and capacities I had. At least I was fit. The physio at Heidelberg had given me a rigorous physio course to build up the upper body and three months after arriving home I’d started swimming. I was surprised at my buoyancy and how well my arms could propel me through the water. In Perth I took up kayaking and rowing and later played wheelchair basketball. I enjoyed the challenge of pushing the envelope. If people said to me ‘Someone in a wheelchair can’t do that’, I set out to see if I could. In 1971 we had our second delightful daughter, Jaynie, and in 1972 I got my first-hand taste of an election when, after Harry Webb had sorted out my problem with DVA, I worked on a booth for him. Unfortunately he lost, although it was the election that Gough Whitlam’s Labor Government won. I had time on my hands and, determined that my girls would not grow up thinking their 234


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father was a freak, I decided to get involved with the community. Amelia Heights had all the issues of young families looking for community resources, so I joined the local ratepayers’ association. Through a friend with sons playing football, I became team manager for the Under Seventeens, and when Kerryn started school I joined the school’s Parents’ & Citizens’ group. All this gave me a focal point, an interest and sense of involvement with people who took me as I was. Meanwhile, I began hunting for a job. A friend of Dad’s, a bloke by the name of Brigadier Bill Jamison, who was in charge of the Fifth Military District, pulled a few strings and in 1973 got me work as a civilian clerk at the army base in Guilford. I loved it. I was back in the fold, although I would come home absolutely buggered. My stumps would be red raw and often bloody because the suction holding my legs on constantly broke. The legs were so limiting that I felt like a bird in a cage. I used to take them off and leave them sitting on the end of the bed, complete with shoes and pants. It looked like half a body. Noelene would help me put them on. Each leg had a bucket at the top to fit over the stump. You had to put a sock on the stump and create suction by pulling the sock through a hole in the bucket. Once, when she was pulling the sock through, the leg jerked up and gave her a black eye. The doctor told me I would be socially incomplete without legs but after seven years I threw them away. Best thing I ever did. A lightweight wheelchair is more versatile. I found most people took no notice of my means of transport, although when I was with Noelene, the odd person would come up and talk to her about me, as if they equated my physical disability with an intellectual inability. Noelene would say, ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ I wouldn’t have been the easiest bloke to live with. Noelene had to accept that there were things I couldn’t do. She blames her bad back on having to carry the kids and move furniture but basically she became as fiercely independent as I did. She also had to put up with my mood swings and the fact that I used to drink a fair bit. I carried a fair amount of anger, hurt and frustration. I was quick to shout and, like many veterans, didn’t want to talk about Vietnam except with blokes who had been there. Noelene wouldn’t ask. My body language and attitude were probably enough to stop her. I did not understand what I was going through myself, let alone be able to convey it to her, so for a good twelve years we were riding rough. After two years at Guilford and another two years working at the ordinance depot at Karrakatta, I worked for DVA as a clerk at Hollywood Hospital. Although I had security of income and regular hours, I came to hate being stuck behind a desk. Just going to work was a grind, so in 1978, when I was approached to stand for the Council of the City of Stirling because of my War and Politics

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involvement in the community ratepayers’ association and P & C, I thought, ‘I’ll give it a go.’ I lost, but three years later I was elected. We wanted sports fields, a community hall, and a solution to the odour coming from the nearby sewage treatment works. It was good to be part of a decision-making group. We got our recreational facilities and in early 1983 we put together the first Vietnam veterans’ memorial ever erected in Australia. When the VVCS opened in Perth in 1982, I got a job as the meet-and-greet bloke at the front desk. Many veterans were starting to hit the wall, although it was still daunting for them to ask for help, but I came to recognise a lot of things I was going through in them. I look back and wonder how the poor buggers who went through Gallipoli and the Western Front ever retained their sanity, but one significant difference was we came back to a community that was not only divided but indeed hostile in parts. This was brought home many years later. My father told me that after the mine incident, the local reverend had asked the congregation to pray for the son of Mrs Edwards. Two days later my parents were going through the mail when Mum let out a cry. My father took the card she was reading. It was from an anonymous person in the church who said that although they were Christian they could not pray for a killer and it would be better if I died. The hostility was one reason why blokes put a lid on their feelings and had them boiling in a cauldron. We had two excellent counsellors in Patrick Howard and Bill Davies, Bill having been a chopper pilot in Vietnam, and we were busy. I loved the job although we all felt the traumas that were often visited upon us. But the opening of VVCS offices around the country, the Welcome Home Parade in 1987 and the National Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in 1992 were watersheds for Vietnam veterans and their families. Back in 1982, Brian Burke, a neighbour and member of our ratepayers’ association as well as Leader of the Opposition in Western Australia, asked me to stand for the next state election. I thought, ‘Why not have a crack at it?’ I had a talk with Noelene and she was supportive. I knew it was going to be a difficult seat to win but I like a challenge. People ask, ‘Why did you end up in politics? Why the Labor Party?’ Given that the Labor Party opposed going to Vietnam, and on my return I was angry with the Government, I ended up in politics because I wanted to do something for my community and I joined the Labor Party because there were Labor politicians who supported individual Diggers, even though they opposed the war. I enjoyed going around the electorate interacting with people. Noelene and the kids came canvassing and helped behind the scenes—pasting, folding and stuffing envelopes, to the point where the kids got sick of it. I probably 236


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realized more than they did how the hours of work were going to affect our family life. One thing I regret is spending so much time away from home when the girls were teenagers. It’s not about picnics and other activities. It’s about being there. But after the election in 1983, I thrived on being fully occupied as part of a successful government. In 1987 the Premier made me Minister of Sport and we established the Aboriginal Sports Foundation, designed to give kids sporting opportunities in their own communities, and assisted the funding of disabled sports. For a year I was also Minister for Consumer Affairs. We were able to expose some shonky business operators, develop policy and change legislation to give consumers greater protection. During 1989–90 I was Minister of Race and Gaming, Sport, Recreation and Youth. They were difficult times for the racing and pacing industry and the greyhounds—they had become so fragmented and competitive and were battling to maintain financial viability. For youth we held regular meetings to give young people a voice and a sense of involvement. They confront a different world to the one I grew up in. Society might be more tolerant but they don’t have as many freedoms in terms of playing in the bush or leaving school at fourteen and having a choice of jobs. People are generally working longer, harder and more irregular hours, just to maintain some security of employment, and this has eroded the time we have for each other. But perhaps the most difficult portfolio was Police and Emergency Services between 1990 and 93. The political wheel had turned, we knew we were going to lose the next election and the Union was positioning itself for the change of government. In face-to-face meetings I knew everything was being reported back to the Liberal Party. It was also a time when there was controversy about law and order issues to do with juvenile crime, car theft and a number of highspeed chases, and in a massive rally outside Parliament House people were demanding harsher penalties for juvenile offenders. One man held a noose. From when I was elected in 1983, but even more so as a minister from 1987 to 1997, I was working seventy- to ninety-hour weeks, often travelling or getting home at three or four in the morning. It was a hard slog. My physical disability probably made it more so but I never took that into account—my colleagues were working just as hard. At least I didn’t have time for mood swings! I was fully committed and loved it: loved the people, the constituency work and, above all, the opportunity to influence things. But it meant Noelene had to do all the running around for the girls and the house. I don’t think she minded. She was very supportive of what I was doing, never moaned about me being away, and enjoyed providing a stable home for the girls. They had a good mother–daughter relationship. War and Politics

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Leading up to the 1993 election I was putting in long hours in a hard political environment. That’s when it became a drudge. After the election I became Leader of the Opposition in the Upper House and after a couple of years I hit the wall. I was a physical and emotional wreck. Perhaps the long hours caught up with me or I went through a mid-life crisis—I was in my late-forties. I don’t know how much the deaths of my dad in 1992 and my mum in 95 had an influence. Whatever it was, I was finding politics increasingly tough to deal with— the insincerity and dishonesty, but particularly the backstabbing. I felt no inclination to fight back and decided not to recontest the next election. Noelene and I didn’t discuss my political retirement in any depth. She probably could see how exhausted and disillusioned I was. I had no idea what the future would bring but I needed a change. I bought a Harley Davidson motorbike, which I had converted into a trike with the idea of buggering off around Australia for twelve months, but the trike never worked. I’d go fishing in a little twelve-foot tinnie, sometimes with mates, but mainly by myself: bottom bouncing for a feed of whiting or bream in the river or ocean, relaxing with the space and time to think or not to think. It was a process of regeneration: luxuriating in my own solitude. I was fishing in the Scott River Basin near Augusta, in very shallow water, when a storm came up the river. There were flashes of fork lightning. I had to row, as the propeller was ploughing and dragging mud, and managed to get under some protection away from the boat. It was around this time that the whole divisive phenomenon of Pauline Hanson came to the fore. She tapped into an ugly side of Australia that I had seen in the law and order rally, with simplistic solutions touching on racism, especially in her stance against migrants taking jobs. To me, she was a cheap opportunist, which is easy to be in a diverse society. What was worse, Howard was content to give her free rein, as if he saw political mileage in letting her and the One Nation Party light the fires. A juggernaut was underway: Australia was becoming a less open and fair-go society, and that reignited my passions. It spurred my return to politics. Noelene was supportive and my daughters were encouraging, although I would have done it regardless—I felt so strongly. It meant contesting a very difficult preselection to represent the seat of Cowan for the Federal Labor Party. For twelve solid months Noelene, a team of volunteers and I door-knocked the electorate. It wasn’t an instant rebound of enthusiasm but I was determined to confront what Pauline Hanson was about. Then it was back into campaigning for the 1998 election. The first thing I did was get together with a number of my friends and colleagues from various ethnic backgrounds, including Vietnamese, for a photograph which was printed on a pamphlet and delivered throughout the electorate under the banner that Australia is a diverse nation 238


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and it’s through this diversity that we can become a better nation. That’s how I ended up in Canberra—on the other side of the continent. It is a totally different game to the state scene: the issues are bigger and it is more clinical and cold, more competitive and faction-oriented. Some- Electronic rights for this image are not one said to me: ‘If you want a available. friend in Canberra buy a dog.’ The new Parliament House has long white corridors from where people vanish like rabbits down their burrows. In Perth members from different parties gather in the bar to have a beer and a yarn. Here in Canberra there is no place to do that. The whole House is constructed to keep members apart. Graham Edwards outside Parliament In Western Australia, when House, Canberra, 2002, photographed by new members give their maiden Sophia Borick. speeches everyone sits in because that twenty-minute speech usually augurs the way they will pursue politics. But here in Canberra, I couldn’t believe it: once everyone from one side finished their maiden speeches, everyone from that side got up and walked out. For my speech I spoke about the values of mateship, service and courage, and was critical in relation to the way half a dozen Vietnam veterans had not been given medals for their war service. I subsequently set out to rectify that. The then Minister of Defence, Bronwyn Beehive Bishop, said ‘They’ll get those medals over my dead body’ but within twelve months those medals were awarded and Bishop is still kicking. Above all, I spoke of my belief in an Australia that gives everyone a fair go. That is the Australia I was brought up to believe in, and the ways we are being steered away from that is what most affronts me. That’s why I place so much importance on education. In my electorate some teachers tell me the only stable thing in some kids’ lives is their school. A quality education is the best thing a young person can have in modern times and it is an intolerable state of affairs when educational opportunities become the domain of those who can afford to pay. War and Politics

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I also spoke strongly in favour of a republic. As a member of parliament I find it offensive that I had to swear allegiance to a Queen of another country, her heirs and successors. I want to swear allegiance to Australia and its people. My attitude probably goes back to growing up in Kalgoorlie and Scarborough. Some of the World War I Diggers used to talk about Gallipoli, Flanders and the Somme as being great disasters for Australia, the way incompetent British commanders treated soldiers like cannon fodder. The war began only thirteen years after Federation. Out of a population of 4.7 million, 62 000 Australians lost their lives and 156 000 were wounded or taken prisoner. It was a massive price to pay for a war that was avoidable and only led to another world war. Even in World War II, Prime Minister Curtin had to fight Churchill to get our troops home to defend Australia, and some didn’t make it. It was the Americans who came to our aid, Curtin putting our troops under the overall command of General MacArthur. But then Curtin had to stand up to Roosevelt, because it seemed neither Churchill nor Roosevelt put a high priority on the defence of Australia. That is one reason why I strongly believe we need an Australian as our head of state, appointed either by the Parliament or by the people. Alliances are valuable but we must define our place in the world. I spend half the year in Canberra, about two weeks at a time away from Perth, sitting in the House, taking part in the Constitutional Convention of 1998, having been elected to represent the Australian Republican Movement, attending committees and associated duties. The hours are long. I love getting home but it’s not a break. There’s the constituency work to catch up on, letters, phone calls and meetings. I try to be available for my constituents, the greatest successes and failures being in the area of immigration: getting a relative or fiancé a visa when it is a genuine relationship. As a politician you are on call, so most personal arrangements have to be fluid. The girls are now in their early thirties. Kerryn is a very vibrant young woman who has spent the last twelve years working in London. The youngest, Jaynie, is more considered but just as independent and strong-minded. It is hard to say whether me being a Vietnam veteran has had any impact on them. Obviously having a father in a wheelchair is different. I’d like to think they have been more influenced by what I believe in and am prepared to fight for. In 2001, Simon Crean, then Leader of the Opposition, appointed me parliamentary secretary to the Shadow Minister of Defence, Chris Evans. I became responsible for military awards and honours, Defence housing and the Defence Reserve. I deal with enquiries from all over Australia, meet with various members of the ADF, help develop policy and monitor what the Government

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is doing, and, if need be, fight legislation on defence and veteran affairs that comes through the Lower House. With a decreasing national birth rate, recruitment is going to be a concern, and the only acceptable solution is to look at wages and conditions. Tied in with this is the contentious issue of the level at which you continue to outsource services and still maintain a sustainable force. Civilian bean counters have made outsourcing an art form, and there is little understanding of its implications. For example, when we went to East Timor, they had to go on a mad recruitment drive for cooks. In 2002–03 the Government attempted to outsource Defence health in Victoria. On the advice of ADF officers, we argued it would not work in terms of costs and the lack of suitably trained civilian medical personnel and we were able to reverse the Government’s decision. The lack of resources is such that some Defence Force personnel are forced to buy their own kit. Given this level of outsourcing and under-resourcing, as well as the increase in demand for overseas deployments and the difficulty in recruiting and training specialists like pilots and air traffic controllers, some Defence personnel are being asked to work very long hours and to forgo annual leave. Many are stretched to the limit and this places a lot of stress on them and their families. Another policy development that needs to be looked at is that all Defence Force personnel are now required to be fit and ready for deployment. While this is ideal, I know what it is like to feel abandoned by the system. Forty years on, I wonder if there aren’t suitable postings for some veterans who are being discharged on medical grounds. Then there is the matter that in order to get compensation for a condition, the Department of Defence and Department of Veteran Affairs have to recognize the condition as being related to the veteran’s service. For instance, as patron of the Gulf War Veterans’ Association in Western Australia, I became aware that a number of veterans from the Gulf War of 1990–91 were reporting aching joints, chronic fatigue, headaches, memory loss, rashes, breathing problems and chest pains. It was my pressuring of the Minister of Defence, coupled with media attention, that directly led to the Gulf War Veterans’ Health Study, which published its findings in 2003. Conducted on a small group over a short time, the study found no scientific basis for what has been called Gulf War Syndrome. There is controversy in many parts of the world about whether the syndrome exists and, if so, what caused it. People talk about it being caused by the inoculations against anthrax and botulinum, the fumes from oil fires, the possible exposure to Iraq’s chemical weapons, or the depleted uranium and electromagnetic radiation of the high-tech weaponry used by the Allies, all of which cannot be too healthy. My

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view is that if a government is prepared to send men or women overseas to fight a war then it has a long-term duty of care, and this duty is passed on from government to government. On the other hand, we have to be cautious about self-fulfilling prophecies. I sometimes think too many veterans put the cue back up on the rack too early and go onto TPI pensions. But there is a reason for this. A lot of blokes get crook and feel anxious that if they don’t secure a TPI now they might not get one in the future. I continue fighting for a fairer system of military honours and awards. Its current unfairness dates back to Gallipoli, when 22-year-old John Simpson Kirkpatrick was killed by a sniper after twenty-four days of defying bullets, mortars and grenades in Shrapnel Valley to rescue some 300 wounded men by carrying them out on donkeys. His CO, Captain Lyle Buchanan, was quoted as saying that Simpson had earned the Victoria Cross fifty times over but he has never received a military honour. Instead he has become an Anzac legend. There are many stories like Simpson’s. In World War II, ordinary Seaman ‘Teddy’ Sheean was on HMAS Armidale off the coast of Timor when Japanese aircraft attacked on 1 December 1942. Whilst his ship was sinking, eighteen-year-old ‘Teddy’ strapped himself to his Oerlikon gun and repelled the oncoming aircraft strafing his fellow crewmen in the water around him. Hit twice, Sheean kept firing, even as HMAS Armidale disappeared beneath the surface. For his bravery Sheean posthumously received a Mention in Dispatches, the lower grade of two military awards that can be awarded posthumously. The other one is the Victoria Cross—an award which to this day has not been received by a member of the Royal Australian Navy. From the Vietnam War, similar stories include the downgrading of Australian awards to the officers, and the non-acceptance of the South Vietnamese Government’s ARVN citation and other awards to the company involved in the Battle of Long Tan in 1966. One hundred and eight men fought off an NVA battalion. Eighteen Australians were killed. The enemy lost 245 confirmed dead, although army intelligence estimates the figure could be as high as 800. It is unfinished business that I have taken up in parliament. Then came September 11. I was in Perth and, like everyone else, watched on television the appalling horror of the planes going into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Most parliamentarians agreed that we had to unite with the Americans to prevent that sort of thing happening again and accepted the need for military action against the al-Qa’ida network of training camps in Afghanistan, although I wondered why the likes of Osama bin Laden were not dealt with before September 11. That America had supported both Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in the past seems to be arrant stupidity for which America and the rest of the world is now paying the price. 242


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In 2002 I had the opportunity to visit our troops on the ships that were enforcing the UN trade embargo against Iraq in the Gulf, as well as the landbased troops in Kuwait, and Air Force personnel at Manas Air Base in Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, who had the job of flying into northern Afghanistan to refuel the American and French fighter planes. I also visited our SAS blokes at the UN military base at Bagram, north of Kabul. Bagram’s hustle and bustle reminded me of Nui Dat—the same intense mood—except they were living in buildings. The SAS blokes looked like Afghans with their long flowing beards and hair, which was the effect they were trying to create for their long-range reconnaissance work. The SAS were pulled out in November 2002. Two years on we have only one de-mining person left in Afghanistan, even though beyond the cities there is no security, the borders are leaking like sieves, people are living in dire circumstances and the whole countryside is sown with mines. Other unfinished business is the 660 prisoners taken from Afghanistan that are being held at Guantanamo Bay. I see them as prisoners of war, not ‘illegal combatants’, and it is important how you treat POWs, especially when we are involved in the field of conflict and run the possibility of having Australians taken prisoner. The whole situation at Guantanamo Bay, and the 2004 revelations of the treatment of some prisoners in Abu Ghraib Prison outside Baghdad, is a grisly reminder of the tiger cages on Con Son Island off the coast of Vietnam, where 9500 prisoners were shackled in cement pits and subjected to all kinds of torture and mistreatment. One of the problems for America is that, rightly or wrongly, it is perceived by a lot of people as a country that is a law unto itself and, in terms of the geopolitics of the Middle East, far too supportive of Israel in relation to Palestine. These and other factors contribute to the proliferation of terrorists, which means you have to endeavour to work on the conditions that enable current fanatics to recruit the next generation. To do this, in my view, Australia needs to better engage with Asian countries like Indonesia. To Prime Minister Keating’s credit he had the foresight to do this and was criticized for it. Even I was uncomfortable with the military training of Kopassus, given their track record in human rights abuses, but with the level of co-operation we were to need over East Timor, the Bali bombing and Australian Embassy bombing, it turned out he was right. To develop long-term strategies, we need regional think tanks. It’s the way you engage with countries and relate as individuals that can affect the degree to which we can influence human rights, wages and conditions, freedom of expression and other precursors to instability. Unfortunately, in Opposition there is a limit to what you can do. It’s bloody frustrating. This frustration increases when young Australians are risking their lives in a war, which I believe we have never been told the real reasons for. Even as War and Politics

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a federal politician you often do not learn the truth. In Opposition, you don’t get the access to intelligence. And once you come to power, the personal briefings that are not written up are lost forever, but at least you can read the briefings that were previously denied—you are better able to assess and respond. Ultimately there may have been no alternative but to go war with Iraq, although I do not believe this is necessarily the case. For Australia, the commitment to go to war is not made by the Parliament; it is the sole decision of the Prime Minister, signed off by the GovernorGeneral. The rest of us have no say in it, unless one gets the numbers to take a vote of no confidence to force the Prime Minister to stand down. Consequently, Iraq became the first war since Vietnam that did not have the support of the Opposition. While Vietnam was unilateral it was not pre-emptive and what concerns my Labor Party colleagues and me the most is the pre-emptive nature of the strike on Iraq. Where do we stand if China decides to make a preemptive strike on Taiwan? What is the difference between a madman like Saddam and a madman like Mugabe in Zimbabwe? Where do you stop? Although I do not think Australia should have got involved in either Vietnam or Iraq, I have never once regretted the Vietnam War because I lost my legs. I could have stayed home and got hit by a truck. I take immense pride in the professionalism and courage of Australian troops. The ADF teaches you discipline and the value of teamwork and that is helpful in politics, although teamwork is more evident in the ADF. Soldiers sleep and fight, survive or die together. In politics I am more of a loner. But while politics is a stinking, backstabbing, brutal career in which you need a tough skin to survive, it is an important job and some of the most decent, honest, hardworking people I have ever met are in politics, and not all of them are Labor.

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9

EGGS AND EGGSHELLS Kathleen Schulz, Len Schulz Junior and Len Schulz Senior GLORIA ROBINSON

Many adult children of Vietnam veterans had stormy childhoods. In some cases, their fathers’ remoteness and unpredictable outbursts of extreme anger wrought havoc on their self-confidence and trust in others. Some express extreme anger, even hatred, towards their father. Yet if they and their father shared periods of genuine care and communication, children could be very forgiving. Even so, in many cases there has been a transfer of tension, aggression and depression, this pattern of secondary PTSD becoming tertiary if the adult child mirrors their father when relating to their own partner and children. For years a family may not understand the war veteran’s anger or depression, even after they have linked it to the war. Apart from the combat experience, it can be related to the high standards set in military training and the Digger Legend that a soldier wants to live up to. If a war veteran believes they have not performed with the utmost bravery, or they have let a mate down, or if they have survived when their mate has died, or they have killed a civilian, they can be plagued by guilt and shame, often the cause known only to themselves. Some contemplate or attempt suicide. Others commit suicide. According to the DVA’s 1998 Vietnam Veterans’ Health Study, the rate of suicide among Vietnam veterans is not significantly higher than in the normal population, although this was immediately questioned by Vietnam veterans associations, many suicides being recorded as accidents. Also, by all accounts, the rate of contemplated or attempted suicide was not reflected in the study.

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Len Schulz Senior served in Vietnam in 1970–71. For thirty years his daughter and son, Kathleen and Len Junior, did not understand the root of their father’s depression. Finally he had the courage to tell them.

Kat: John Wayne and Audie Murphy have a hell of a lot to answer for. John Wayne may have died at the end of two war movies, but he was always back for the next. A uniform makes the ugliest guy look handsome! That’s the army brat coming out in me. As a teenager I wanted to join the Army, but on one condition: that I would be in a serving unit, fighting alongside men, to prove that I could be as tough as anybody else, and in many respects to prove myself to Dad. Dad pronounced: ‘A woman doesn’t belong in a serving unit’, so I didn’t join. Dad’s reaction was: ‘Thank God for that—if they let her out with a gun, oh my God.’ My grandma had three sons before her husband went off to fight in the islands in World War II. He came back and skipped through before Dad was born, then died seven years later. Dad knows no more—Grandma never spoke about his father. Dad’s mother was a very strong-willed lady of five foot and a quarter inches, who brooked no nonsense. When Dad was carrying a cord of wood in for the fire, she asked him to do another task. He swore at her, so she wrapped a bullwhip around his ankles and pulled his legs out from underneath him, saying, ‘That’ll teach you to swear at me.’ In his fall he broke his collarbone. She untangled the bullwhip, gave him a cuddle and took him to the doctor. Dad was a cocky, loud, horse-mad lad who hated school and left in Year Seven. The next day he went on a hundred-mile cattle drive. In Darwin he applied to join the Army but didn’t have the education so the recruiting sergeant suggested he join the CMF. Six months later, in 1968, he transferred. In basic training at Kapooka he met up with two other scoundrels: Kevin Cuthbertson, otherwise known as KC or Cubby, and Graham Edwards, whom they called Jack because it was always ‘She’ll be right Jack.’ The three of them hit it off and, being highly original, called themselves the three musketeers. They were put into 7RAR, but Cubby and Jack got sent to Pioneers and Dad to B Company. Three days later Dad was notified to pack and report to Support Company. He was unpacking when in walked Cubby and Jack. They were back together, which was dangerous and still is: it is a beautiful sight to behold. Back in Easter 1968 Dad went to Sydney with Shortie from Engineers and ended up at the Royal Easter Show to pick up chicks. That’s where he met this painfully shy little pixie called Wendy: forty-one kilograms wringing wet, who 246


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looks as if she could be blown over by a gust of wind, except that she has the willpower of a nine-foot bear. The family joke is that Mum made the mistake of visiting him when he was sick, and lying on his deathbed he proposed. They married in October 1968. That’s how Dad went from one matriarchal family to another, because when my mother’s mother was alive she was boss. I was born a year after they married, and LJ [Len Schulz Junior] three years after me: one baby before the war and one after. Dad went to Vietnam in 1970. I was three months when he left and fifteen months when he came back. I’d been told this good-looking man in a photo on the coffee table was my father but when I looked up all I could see was a red-haired, orange-skinned, towering beast, Vietnam’s red soil in every pore of his body. I screamed. I can still remember it. It was shattering for both of us. I would try and get into bed with them and every time he attempted to pick me up I’d scream and pull away. It took eighteen months for me to adjust. Dad soon realized he had a very precocious, opinionated child: a miniature walking, talking adult. At the age of three I discovered an obsession with Egypt, and now I am studying hieroglyphs. Back then, Dad thought my obsession was a whim but he soon learnt that I can argue anyone under the table, even if they are right. Now Dad is resigned to the fact that I am not a typical 34-year-old. I have a congenital degenerative disc disease in my spinal column. The pain is intense, so I am on a disability pension. I live at home. Like Dad, I don’t play well with others. I don’t have a boyfriend. The man I marry would have to be intelligent, funny and drive better than me, the legacy of spending my childhood at Liverpool Speedway. LJ: Our house was pretty volatile and on a couple of occasions Dad threatened to walk out, or he packed his gear ready to leave and I remember panicking the first time he did. I was five. I couldn’t imagine life without him. I think that’s what really sparked me into thinking: ‘I’ll do anything to make him happy, to keep them together and with us.’ I became a very appeasing child, doing my best not to disappoint him. I saw Dad as two disconnected people. One was devoted to his family and let us get away with murder. He was the one who played cricket and touch footie with all the kids in the neighbourhood and sat and talked with us. The other one was a volatile red-faced ogre who went off the deep end, physically straining to keep control, because we were running around the house or not doing the chores or our homework. Or he lost his temper over finances, dinner not being cooked on time, or the house not being clean. This one was not my father—he was a product of something else, I just didn’t know what. The problem was, you never knew which one was going to turn up. But I learnt quickly Eggs and Eggshells

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how to pick his mood. If I saw his hands clenched and a fixed look in his eyes, or if Mum and Dad argued, I’d take flight and play outside or go to my room. At other times, to get a laugh I’d crack fart jokes or fall over, play Laurel and Hardy or be a smart arse. Kat: My brother and I were like oil and water: perfectionists who often did not see eye to eye. We would fight tooth and nail and tear chunks off each other, literally. In a quiet voice of authority our mother would say, ‘Don’t make me count to three, or else.’ We never found out what the ‘or else’ was because she never got to three. We were terrified of her. But when Dad was in a mood, LJ and I were little mice in the corner trying not to be seen or heard. LJ: Dad would talk about ‘the war’ when he had a few drinks under his belt, especially coming up to Anzac Day. I always thought it was World War II because of the movies, and also Pop was a transport engineer in New Guinea. The more I heard, the more I wanted to have my own adventures. I’d seek danger and dream of being a policeman or a fireman. Kat: When Dad talked about the war it was about being a larrikin, like in their training days, collecting unexploded mortar shells and playing with them to make things go boom. Or how they teased the Yanks. In Vietnam apparently the Yanks loved our beer, so the Aussies would trade a carton of beer, a slouch hat or a kangaroo ‘feather’ for a boom box or a mini M-15 (a pump action shot gun). LJ: One night, when I was about nine, just before Anzac Day, Dad was drinking and crying. Kat and I asked what was wrong. He said, ‘It’s something about Vietnam.’ My ears pricked up. It was the first time I’d heard the word Vietnam. We started asking questions, when normally we wouldn’t. Dad told us they had been out in the bush, when his unit took mortar fire. He told us: ‘I screamed. I was a coward.’ Nothing more was said.


Len Schulz Senior, Kathleen Schulz and Len Schulz Junior as a baby, Christmas, 1974.

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Kat: We didn’t understand what was behind Dad’s bouts of anger and depression. He’d get cysts and growths and these big scaly flakes on


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his scalp. A loud noise made him hit the deck. He had night sweats and I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t prowling the house at some God-forsaken hour. He does a perimeter sweep, sits down, has a couple of cigarettes, gets up, does another sweep, sits down. That’s normal. As a kid I would hear him. I had some pretty strange nightmares myself: it would be dark, an explosion would go off and I’d be terrified. Dad had trouble getting work. In the first twelve months after he got out of the Army, employers would ask, ‘Did you go to Vietnam?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘There’s the door.’ Over time, he’d say he was out droving, and one time he even said he was in prison, rather than say he’d spent six years in the Army. If he did get a job it wouldn’t last long. He would get into fights with the boss or the customers, and once even punched a girl at the photocopier for being annoying. He would quit or be sacked, whether he was working as a caravan salesman, a bus driver or a truckie. Most of the time we lived below the breadline. When we couldn’t afford the rent we were evicted and moved in with Nan and Pop. Dad and Mum slept in a caravan out the front and my brother and I shared a room. At school I was constantly teased for wearing hand-me-downs but I only had to be told once that we couldn’t afford something. Mum did the best she could and never complained within my hearing. Not that they didn’t have arguments. Mum would be tense or depressed, especially after a sleepless night. He’d do something to frustrate her and she’d lose it: ‘I’ve already got two children!’ It was quiet, unassuming Nan who calmed things. She would tell Dad ‘Stop it now’, or ‘Don’t bring that mood around me.’ Nan was a complex woman who understood Dad without understanding Vietnam. Her brother had been killed in New Guinea and whenever she heard the Last Post she’d bawl her eyes out. In the war, she worked in a factory soldering transistors, then on the egg board while her husband, Pop, drove soldiers and supplies in New Guinea, Bougainville and Rabaul. It was hard to get any conversation out of Pop. He was born in 1913. During the Depression his parents palmed him off to every other relative. He didn’t know how to show love but he liked Dad, though for a long time he didn’t understand where Dad was coming from. After Dad’s breakdown they talked and Pop said, ‘I have what you’ve got but in a milder form.’ Considering all his problems, Dad was not a control freak. Coming from a matriarchal family it would have been whipped out of him. He’d listen and talk with us, although sex was always discussed with a bright-red face and an extensive use of euphemisms. He taught LJ and me to stand up for ourselves. He’d say ‘To be armed you don’t need to carry a weapon. You’ve got a pair of Eggs and Eggshells

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feet—use them’, and ‘Don’t throw the first punch; throw the last.’ He taught us how to assess the situation, spin and manoeuvre, and use pressure or kick in the side of the knees or the private parts, then run like blazes to the nearest police officer. When I was fifteen everything came to a head. Dad had been unemployed for four years. We had our names down for a house with the Department of Housing. Mum would ring up every week and be told ‘You’re third on the list’, and the next week, ‘You’re thirty-third on the list’. All this was weighing on Dad. He’d never been so depressed. One day, a trivial argument between Nan and him was the last straw. Dad had been out in the caravan watching sport on television. When he came into the house Nan said, ‘You’ve been out there all afternoon wasting electricity.’ Dad raised his voice and, as usual when a fight began, I did the foxhole routine: I went into the garden, sat with the dogs and read a book. LJ: I remember Nan, Pop, Mum and Dad yelling—the usual scenario when Dad was in a bad mood. I went to my room and after a while I heard this surreal powder keg explosion, the caravan door slam and Dad walk up the road with his cane. When everything went quiet, I came out and heard Pop say, ‘He’ll be back when he’s hungry.’ Kat: Having some sort of prescience Nan and Mum followed him. They made their way to this vacant land behind some shops, three hundred metres from the house, and discovered him hanging by his neck from a tree. Nan immediately got her shoulder under his backside to take the pressure off the noose, telling Mum to find a knife. Nan broke a finger saving Dad. After they cut him down, while he was in this vague state on the ground, Nan tore strips off him, ‘If you’re going to fight you stay and fight. Don’t you ever do that again.’ When Nan and Mum came home Nan’s finger was bandaged and I’m saying, ‘What’s wrong?’ Nan says, ‘Your father’s in hospital.’ LJ: I came out of my room and Mum was crying and agitated. Then she took off. Dad had been taken to Rydalmere Hospital. He became aggressive, so Mum rang up the Vietnam Veterans’ Federation and Tim McCombe got on the blower and had him transferred to Concord Repatriation Hospital. We went to visit him, Mum explaining, ‘This is a special hospital for mentally sick people.’ Dad looked pale and drawn. Kat: Mum was gone for days—staying with him, making sure he stayed calm and didn’t hurt anyone. One night in Concord, a nurse crept up and gently 250


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tried to wake him to give him a sleeping tablet. Dad woke and grabbed her by the throat. Another veteran said, ‘Schulzie, let her go.’ Dad apologized, saying, ‘Look, point of reference, don’t creep around. If you want to wake me, stand at the end of the bed and pound it.’ At home, he could sleep through a hurricane, but the moment it was dead quiet and you started creeping around, he was awake looking for the bad guys. Dad had his breakdown in October 1984. He spent eight weeks in hospital and during that time I wrote a long, indignant letter to Prime Minister Bob Hawke explaining that my father had served in Vietnam, how he had to lie to get a job, that he had tried to hang himself and the Department of Housing was giving us the yo-yo treatment. One month later I got a letter from his secretary saying that the Prime Minister had read my letter, they were investigating the Department of Housing situation and a copy of my letter had been sent to the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs. The Minister ended up tabling the letter in parliament. Within six weeks the Department of Housing offered us a couple of houses: one in Cabramatta, which we rejected considering Dad’s attitude towards Vietnamese at the time, and another, which we took. A week before Dad came out of Concord we moved into a three-bedroom fibro house in North Parramatta. Concord brought Dad into contact with other veterans, their associations, and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and he got a TPI pension. He was put on an early form of Prozac, and God bless Prozac for anyone who does not have an adverse reaction. It was a miracle drug for Dad. He actually smiled occasionally, but he was housebound. Until 1987 he was still depressed and minor things could set him off. LJ: For five years Dad locked himself away. Sometimes we’d find him sitting, shaking and crying. We had no idea why. On occasions, when a stranger pissed him off, he physically attacked them, although Dad never hit us. There was only one incident. It happened six months after he attempted suicide. Dad and Kat were wrestling on the floor and Dad was on all fours. I waltzed in from behind, put my hands around his throat and pulled. Next thing I hit the floor and Dad grabbed me by the throat. I thought it was part of the game until he started squeezing. I heard Mum’s calm voice: ‘Come on Len, that’s your son. Back off.’ It wasn’t until I was eighteen that we actually talked about it. He was killing a gook in black pyjamas. Kat: I remember sitting there staring at my brother’s bulging, terrified eyes while Mum said ‘Come on Len, let him go.’ Dad froze, then collapsed on the floor, got up, went into the bedroom and put his fist through the wall—right through. For a long time he did not play with us—he feared what might happen. Eggs and Eggshells

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LJ: Basically my first three years of high school were hell. All the other kids had fathers who were ‘successful’. My Dad had just tried to hang himself. I couldn’t talk about it to anyone. It was a strange feeling, like I was an island, I believe, because Dad was different, because I was weird: a freakish runt with chloracne —huge pimples and blackheads all over my face. I was a target for bullies. Then, in the Year Nine school holidays, I started doing martial arts and my confidence got a boost overnight. I came back to school more assertive. When a couple of kids tried to pick on me I knocked their living lights out. After that nobody picked on me. At the end of Year Ten I started rock climbing and abseiling. Kat: Having nearly strangled LJ, Dad realized he had something wrong with him. He starting talking about Vietnam in bits and pieces, but nothing about the incident that made him scream. He talked about the three musketeers and how they had an uncanny sense of each other. When Jack lost his legs Dad was back at Nui Dat when suddenly his legs gave out from underneath him. Someone said, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ and Dad’s said, ‘Jack or Cubby has stepped on a mine.’ The other bloke thought he was talking bullshit, but then it came over the radio that a Dustoff had been called for 62, the code for Pioneers, EDW and the first three numbers of Graham Edwards’ service number. Jack lost his legs but that did not stop him swimming, kayaking and rock climbing with pure arm power and ending up in politics. Nor did Cubby come out of the Army in one piece. Back in Australia he was training a driver inside an APC. The driver panicked and crashed into one of the big towers out at Holsworthy, bringing it down on top of them. Cubby’s legs were smashed and he lost a finger when the turret hatch fell on his hand. Even so, he went back inside to help a guy who was trapped. LJ: We used hear Dad scream at night and the next day we’d ask ‘What happened?’ Sometimes he had dreamt about an incident that occurred soon after he came back from Vietnam. He had been out at Holsworthy on duty at the front gate. There were twelve of them facing a mob of 300 people who were protesting that Simon Townsend, a conscientious objector, had been locked in the guardhouse. When the protesters started charging the gate the officer on duty ordered, ‘Present arms.’ They stood there with their rifles forward, bayonets mounted. The protestors kept coming and one woman put her baby’s neck on the bayonet of Dad’s rifle. Kat: After a nightmare, he wakes up, his irritability level off the scale. He’ll sit nervously scratching his arm until he draws blood. Just breathing near him

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makes him snap. He never went to an Anzac Day or even watched one on TV. The closer it got to either Anzac Day or Long Tan Day, the more depressed he was. I thought I understood why. He would say, ‘My Dad came home a hero. I came home a villain.’ LJ: During the war the media replayed selected shots, like the image of an ARVN officer shooting a kneeling VC in the back of the head without giving the background story that this VC had raped and killed his entire family the previous day, or the naked girl running away from billowing clouds of napalm, not explaining that huge numbers of US troops had been lost before the napalming. Protest leaders and politicians were inflaming the situation for their own purposes. The troops were screwed. Being painted as the bad guys played on their psyche. Also, they had been trained to kill. The Army turns the switch on but doesn’t turn it off. The veteran comes home with a mindset of action and reaction, which takes its toll. Kat: That still did not explain him muttering ‘I’m nothing but a bloody coward.’ It wasn’t until after he marched in the Welcome Home Parade in 1987, people cheering on the sidelines, that we dragged the story out of him. LJ: He told us they were on an overnight patrol out from Fire Support Base ANNE—having just spent some days checking the area for mines, building the RAP and underground command post and erecting the perimeter wire. Dad was in his night position. Suddenly two mortars from their own side landed close by. He screamed. Six in his unit were wounded. They called in a Dustoff and Dad described how he held torches to guide the helicopters into the clearing and helped load the wounded. When the two choppers left, his section commander walked up and shone a torch in his face. Dad had blood pouring out his ears and nose. The next morning they walked back to ANNE and he was sent back to Nui Dat and was transferred to Transport. Kat: It was only supposed to be for a week, enough time for his ears to heal, but they forgot about him. For years he thought they had transferred him because he screamed. LJ: After the mortar incident, Dad had a death wish. He’d do stupid things, like turn a red road into a green road. A red road is where you travel in convoy. He’d go down by himself in a Land Rover or he would drive off into the bush not thinking about mines, thinking ‘If I die, I die.’

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Kat: When he finally told the story I said ‘There is more to it than that. You talk to Cubby and Jack and find out what really happened. If you don’t, I will.’ He talked to Cubby and Cubby said ‘Look you bloody great idiot, the mortars landed, we got the shock wave and you screamed.’ In other words, he had screamed when his eardrum ruptured. ‘As for you being a coward, you— expletive, expletive, expletive—we were all scared.’ But Dad still got depressed. There is a difference between knowing in your head and knowing in your heart. I would say, ‘What else could you have done? Not scream? Hello, let me do it again and see you not scream.’ We’d have a heated argument, but in my mind, anger is better than depression. You’ve got something to fight with. LJ: By 1989–90, when I was in Years Eleven and Twelve, Dad was less volatile and more confident, especially after he started working with other vets. I began to feel I could talk to him without feeling that his problems were weightier than mine. I think that helped kick off ‘I am who I am.’ I spread my wings, rock climbing and abseiling, and winning martial arts tournaments. I worked on the school magazine and had a group of people around me. I became more opinionated, without fear of being ridiculed, and took to public speaking like a duck to water. In Year Twelve they discovered I was dyslexic. I was able to get tutoring in Maths and English and my grades improved. After school, for seven years I worked in the Rural Fire Service as a volunteer— rushing in where angels fear to tread. I applied to go into the Army to become a helicopter pilot, for my own sake and also to make Dad proud. But after the psychological tests the recruitment officer said: ‘Mr Schulz, unfortunately you haven’t made it. We believe your aggression may be a hindrance to your capabilities as an officer.’ I’m thinking, ‘Oh yeah? I thought you’d want somebody who’d get the job done.’ I had jobs on and off. The shortest lasted four weeks, the longest eighteen months. I worked in a disposal company where I learnt about different weapons. Dad and I got our shooter’s licences and we went hunting. Then after a personality clash with my supervisor in a storeman and packer job I was out of work for a year, going to interview after interview. I didn’t have a girlfriend or any close friends. For a good five years I’d been hitting the drink. One night in 1995 I was in my room cleaning my hunting rifle and feeling down. I had stripped it and put it back together and before I knew it, I’d put a round in the chamber, bolted it, put the barrel in my mouth and applied pressure on the trigger so there was no slack. Suddenly into my mind flashed this phrase that had come to me when I was doing an assignment on why people commit suicide: ‘It’s a long-term solution for a short-term problem.’ Logic stepped in:

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‘God, if I committed suicide it would rip the family apart.’ I put the safety catch on, unbolted the rifle and stripped it down. I told nobody. I was sober that night, but a short time later the bush fire brigade showed us some photos of car accidents as a result of driving under the influence. They shocked me enough to radically cut down drinking. Seven months later I met the most wonderful woman in the world. Some people say she is almost the carbon copy of Mum. Strong! Vesna had come to Australia from Yugoslavia when she was twelve. She respected communism under Tito, but rebelled against the patriarchy. She was a magnificent influence. She helped do my CV and in no time I got a job. I was enjoying it until one day I called the owner a fuckwit and got the sack. Three months later I got an excellent job with a company that I stayed with for four years. My wage skyrocketed from $19 000 to $36 000. I had money coming out of my yin yang. Ves and I moved in together. This was in 1997. Kat: For all our problems our family pulls together. We did Len’s wedding for less than $4000. Dad baked chickens and hams like no one’s business. Mum, my aunt and I made the wedding cake. I did the bouquets and my friends and I decorated the wedding reception. My sister-in-law hired her dress and Dad’s friend got the bridal cars. Dad drove the bride and groom and the bridesmaid and was in his element, as proud as punch that his son was getting married. LJ: I felt in control, which is important for a major control freak. In 2000 I was appointed escalations supervisor. In four months I reduced outstanding services from ninety-two per cent to ten per cent but when my boss ordered me to fudge statistics in a report to make him look better I told him to go fuck himself. He accused me of not being a team player. This time I wasn’t sacked. I was transferred to the help desk. I was taking a hundred calls a day and under pressure to take more. No word of thanks. I felt worthless. It was as if the horse had bolted and I couldn’t grab onto the saddle. It got to a point that if somebody said something I was scared I was going to kill them. At home I was crabby. Ves handled it like a trooper: gave me space or affection or blasted me like a viper when I warranted it. Apparently I was talking in my sleep and that’s how she found out what was happening. One day I was driving to work. Ves was with me. When we arrived it was like somebody had put up a barrier around the office. I said, ‘I can’t go in.’ She said, ‘We’ll go home.’ Ves took the day off work. After a good cry we had a long talk. The next day I went in determined to handle it, but as I walked in my feet were as heavy

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as lead. I started taking calls but it felt like everything was crushing in on me. I panicked, my nose started to bleed and I rang Ves and told her what was happening. She said ‘Fine, we’re taking you to a psychiatrist.’ I said ‘No way’ and hung up on her. Mum and Dad picked me up—Ves had already taken too much time off work. They took me straight to a doctor to get a referral to a psychiatrist, then drove me to the psych. I told him what had happened at work and a bit about my family. As I talked I was scratching the back of my hand until it bled, unaware I was doing it. The psychiatrist prescribed Zoloft, an antidepressant, and told me to take a week off work. Within a fortnight I had mellowed. I continued seeing him: he knew how to dig deep and get the ticks out of my back. I was made supervisor of the point-of-sale communications help desk and I felt I was going somewhere, to the point Ves thought it safe enough to trade lip and fall pregnant. I was concerned about the effects of Agent Orange being passed on to the next generation, so we had every test we could, before and after our son was born. So far, so good. My son has given me a second childhood. For thirteen months, life was fine, then one day in September 2001 I slipped in the car park at work and damaged a disc, my hip and right leg. I tried to go back to work but the pain was too great. I was put on workers’ compensation for three years. I was in constant pain, still am, but I try not to let it rule my life. I do housework. It costs me in pain but I feel good that I’ve achieved something. I started going into Dad’s office to work with veterans four hours a week. That was good. I bag the guys and they bag me. When talking to vets’ kids I feel lucky in comparison, but I say, ‘So your father is an angry prick. Do you know why? Find out what happened in Vietnam. If you can’t talk to him, talk to other vets.’ Now I am junior vice-president of the New South Wales branch of the Vietnam Veterans’ Association of Australia. It keeps me positive. Yet some days I can’t deal with the pain: mentally I’m in the gutter. The standards I set myself —the abseiling, rock climbing and hunting I used to do, all the handyman stuff, I can’t do any more. Sometimes I erupt, like Dad used to, and I see my son reacting the way I used to. He runs and hides. I don’t like myself and try to curb it although sometimes I don’t even know how cranky I am. At least hurting my back has given me humility. I used to be confident of my combat abilities. Now I’m at the mercy of my verbal skills. Kat: Like Len’s, Dad’s injuries were invisible but Mum is a dynamo. If Dad is nervous when travelling on public transport, or causing trouble, like after waking up from quadruple heart bypass surgery, Mum calms him just by being there, touching him and talking to him in that well-modulated, no-nonsense voice of hers. It should be patented. 256


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LJ: In our family it can get very hot, which has the advantage that we know each other’s temper points and blow off the steam. But if Mum wasn’t so strong, I think the family would have broken up years ago. She’s a mediator, say between Dad and me when our moods synchronize and it’s like two bulls head butting each other. At other times, when Dad’s down, she jumps on him boots and all. Kat: The mortar incident was still haunting him. We were at a loss to understand why. Finally Dad told us the truth. Len Schulz Senior: To this day I’m scared to face the truth in case, underneath, people think I am a coward. When Graham lost his legs I couldn’t even go and visit him in Vung Tau hospital. I’d cut myself off from all the blokes in Pioneers. I couldn’t face them. Six weeks earlier, we had set up a harbour in dense foliage four kilometres from ANNE. Dark had fallen and you couldn’t see beyond your hand. All was quiet, apart from the occasional whisper. I was in a small trough between two trees. As I lay there, our platoon sergeant, Trevor Bourke, or Stony as we called him, was on the radio calling in mortars to get a grid reference for where we were. We heard two rounds landing to the north. Fine. We knew they were coming. My eyes closed. Next thing: a great flash of light and thump—as if someone had punched the earth. A mortar had landed some twenty feet away and its shrapnel had peppered the trees on either side of me. I was told later that the trough I was in must have channelled the concussion wave and burst my eardrums, because from that moment I couldn’t hear a thing. The next mortar landed on the other side of the creek. By this time I was sitting up, my eyes open. I saw a sun of yellow and orange with a copper green centre but there was no sound. I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t hear the two choppers arriving for a Dustoff. I just sat there, watching a bloke guide them in with two torches as they hovered over the canopy and lowered the scrub penetrator. Five wounded were lifted up. I had told my family it was me who had guided in the choppers and helped load the wounded, but I just sat there, as if my brain had shut down. After the choppers left, Barry de Bomford, our section commander, shone a torch in my face and years later he tells me he’d asked, ‘Are you all right Schulzie?’ wiping his hand across my left ear. I saw that his hand was covered in blood. I apparently said, ‘I’m in no pain.’ I’ve blanked out what happened next. Stony must have radioed the CO for an artillery umbrella, in case the mortars and helicopters had alerted the enemy to our position, because Eggs and Eggshells

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the next thing I remember was the artillery overhead. I don’t know whether I heard or sensed it, but it felt like it was only an arm’s length above me, when it was hundreds of metres away. I know I screamed. I must have screamed. I hear the scream, and I hear me screaming on the second round. By the third barrage I was screaming in the command centre—I can’t remember getting there—but Stony had his arms around me, saying, ‘It’s all right Schulzie. They’re not coming in.’ That was the first thing I remember hearing except for my screams. Stony made me sleep next to him. His other name was ‘mother’ because he was always fussing over his chicks. I can’t remember going to sleep or waking and eating and cleaning my weapon, although I remember walking back to ANNE and seeing Lieutenant Colonel Gray, our battalion CO, with one leg on the overhead protections for the mortars. He said, ‘Schulz, come here.’ I walked over and saluted as he said, ‘I want you to go over to the RAP, then back to your pit and pack. You’re going back to the Dat.’ I can’t remember talking to anyone. I felt totally numb as I was driven back in the Rover and told to report to Transport Platoon. Three weeks later I went berserk in the boozer, shouting and kicking tables. Next thing I know I’m down at Eight Field Ambulance with five medics trying to put me into a straight jacket. I was given medication and ordered back to Transport, where I was for the next ten months. It weighed heavily on me, even more so when Jack lost his legs, that I was no longer one of the three musketeers; that I had not lived up to the warrior code. I had a death wish, risking my life and other lives too. I’d drive a platoon off the road when dropping them out on patrol from ISA on the foothills of the Long Hais, not caring about the mines. When I didn’t die, I started embellishing the truth, with stories of having an RPG fire a grenade between my legs, or a sniper riddling my Land Rover with bullets, or being court martialled for telling an officer to get stuffed, trying to convince myself and anyone else who would listen that I was a hero, all the time knowing it was bullshit, and sensing others knew too. The next time I saw the guys from Pioneers was on HMAS Sydney, coming into Perth. I saw Jack, with his prosthetic legs, standing on the wharf, propped up on crutches, waving. I looked in the direction of his gaze and saw some Pioneers waving back. I felt sick in the stomach. I went on to race cars at Liverpool Speedway and drive trucks, so high on piss and pills that little green men were swinging off my arms. I’d jump off cliffs with the rope on my back and parachute out of planes. I wanted to die a hero. Then in 1984 I tried to hang myself. I threatened to rip the head off the first doctor I saw. The second one was not worth the time of day. The third, Graham

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Sprag, said, ‘Schulzie, you were supposed to see me in Vung Tau. I would have had you medivacced out.’ I was never told of the appointment. I met up with the blokes at the Welcome Home Parade in 1987, and afterwards started talking to Wendy and the kids about the mortar night, vaguely at first, and never the whole story. It lifted some of the weight, but I was scared of letting them in. I embellished the details and never told them that I became a bullshit artist. I never told them of my dreams of saving people from an air crash and being awarded not one VC but three. In real life, for anything I did, like saving a young girl from drowning, I avoid recognition. I don’t deserve it. My two friends, Graham and Cubby, proved to be exceptional and in my heart I was never going to live up to them. All my work with veterans, anything I do for others, is about redeeming myself for that. Underneath I am ashamed to call myself a Vietnam vet. Others did so much. All I could do was scream and embellish. I am depressed for a week just thinking about it. Looking back I’ve made up fairy tales about my whole life—how I was born on a ship going to America or owned a big trucking business. In truth, I did have a small trucking business but lost it for lack of money. In truth, my father was a Yank, and my mother’s husband, Len Schulz, father of my three brothers, left her when he found out she was pregnant with me. LJ: When Dad told me I could see he was nervous. My response was, ‘You’re still my Dad. I love you. My son loves you. Ves loves you. Mum and Kat love you. It doesn’t change a bloody thing.’ That was a year ago. I think he is calmer for it. Kat: It’s tough love in our family and we love him for being the decrepit old man he is. It’s like on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary when he asked Mum ‘What do you want for your anniversary?’ Mum said ‘Never to have to cook again’ and she hasn’t. For the last ten years Dad has done the cooking. They’ve been married for thirty-five years. Together they’re exceptionally strong. Dad worships the ground she walks on. Mum says that she married one man and had this other man come home, and now she has a third husband. I think she likes the third one best. He still has nightmares. He still has his good days and bad days but he’s more mature and self-assured and doesn’t need to big-note himself. He is more kind, gentle and true.

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10

WHEN PENGUINS FLY Patricia Parsons GLORIA ROBINSON

Since the Boer War, 10 000 Australian nurses have cared for war’s sick, injured and dying. During World War I, 29 of them died in the line of duty. In World War II, 71 perished and 59 were taken prisoner by the Japanese. In the Vietnam War about 210 nurses worked in military and civilian hospitals for six to twelve months, many doing second or third tours. In 2004, the ADF has 42 female doctors and 150 female nurses. Although the ADF has a policy of no female combat soldiers, female doctors and medics are often on the front line of missions. Patricia Parsons served as an RAAF nurse during the Vietnam War. She was posted overseas for two years, between 1968 and 1970 doing medivacs out of Butterworth, the RAAF base in Malaysia, and Vung Tau, as well as US bases incountry and elsewhere. She later married Phillip Parsons, a medical orderly, who was involved in Dustoffs (emergency battlefield medivacs) in Vietnam.

Phillip and I both being Vietnam veterans with medical backgrounds has helped rather than hindered our marriage. We never talk about the war, but it is an underlying security blanket, for me anyway, that I know that he knows what I did and where I’ve been, without me having to tell him. We first met in 1966, down at the RAAF Base at Point Cook, on Port Phillip Bay. I had completed four years’ nursing training, specialising in midwifery, when a nurse friend who had joined the RAAF wrote to me saying, ‘I’m lonely. Come and join me.’ I thought it would be different, not realizing it was going

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to be very, very different. My friends thought I was mad but Dad approved and he was very much the swayer in whatever I did in life. As a nurse in the RAAF, you automatically become a section officer, graduating to flight officer after two years. There were five nurses doing officer training, learning about medivacs and how to march. We were never very competent at marching and the fellows were always laughing at us, calling us penguins in our starched veils and whites and forever catching us out on protocol, whether at dining-ins or having to salute. They would come around a corner and snap to attention, and we would have to salute back. We knew they were setting us up and it was very embarrassing. My stomach would knot in infuriation. Phillip was one of them. He was a medical orderly and a real smart aleck—a young boy who needed a good kick up the pants. After three weeks of drill training, I was posted to No. 6 RAAF Hospital at Laverton Air Base, and then to Wagga Base Sick Quarters, treating colds and ingrown toenails. On duty there was no ‘I’m an officer, you’re not.’ We worked as a team, although not knowing protocol we nurses relied on our NCOs to organize anything and, off duty, officers and airmen were not allowed to mix. In late 1968 I was posted overseas, initially for six months, but extending to two years, mainly working out of Butterworth in Malaysia. I knew this meant doing medivacs in Vietnam. I agreed with our involvement. As a Catholic, I had been led to believe that communism was a dictatorship of the downtrodden masses and the Government’s idea that if we weren’t fighting over there then soon we would be fighting an Indonesian invasion was probably reinforced by listening to my grandfather speak about the Japanese. My parents made no comment about my posting. I was ambivalent. I worried whether I’d be competent in making decisions and carrying out duties without the usual backup of doctors, nurses and wards men. I had done no general nursing since my training days although having been trained in a small hospital where we did everything, and with two years’ experience handling emergencies in the labour ward and nursery, I thought I would get by. However, treatments change, medications change. I had to reorientate my thoughts from babies, bums and breasts and revise procedures and protocols. Going into a war zone was scary but I thought the experience would be great and I had a strong faith that God would look after me. Even today, I find that my faith is what helps me more than anything. In Vietnam there was many a time I would say a silent prayer. Butterworth was a sprawling brick-and-tin air base on the main peninsula, a short ferry trip to Penang Island, in a tropical setting: palm and oleander trees, frangipani and bougainvillea, and from the nurses’ quarters and the

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officers’ mess next-door, we could see the sea. We never swam in it. The foreshore looked like a muddy river and there were sea snakes. We’d go by bus to work at 4 Hosp [No. 4 RAAF Hospital], which had its own operating theatres and intensive ward for treating Australian and British armed service personnel, including Gurkhas, and their dependants and we would be rostered to do the medivacs from Vung Tau to Butterworth and from Butterworth to Richmond in the Hercs. Medivacs to Vung Tau flew out every fortnight at 5 a.m. on a Monday. About once a month on the Sunday afternoon, a medical orderly, another nurse and I would be told it was our turn. We would be given a patient list and with the help of the loadmaster we’d organize the litters on the Herc, attaching them in a configuration according to the number of patients and how sick they were. We’d check we had all the necessary medications and equipment and if we had someone who was really, really sick, like on a ventilator, we had a doctor with us, but most of the time the two sisters were in charge. It was a two-hour flight to Vung Tau. Until you actually touched down and saw the patients you worried about being prepared for all eventualities, that the conditions of the patients might have changed in the twelve hours between the notification and your arrival. We’d come in from the sea, flying over a coastline of white beaches and the occasional fishing village, and jungle-covered mountains that follow the coastline. If there was bombing going on in the mountains, you would see smoke, but otherwise it looked like a holiday resort. We’d land on the short airstrip one kilometre east of Vung Tau. There’d be buses lined up with patients from One Field Hospital at Back Beach. We’d load and secure the patients and receive their medical records from the doctor or nurse. That’s where I met up with Phillip a couple of times in 1969–70, when he was with 1 Operational Support Unit based at the RAAF unit in Vung Tau. He would help load and attach the litters. I was his boss basically and although we nurses never pulled rank—we knew we were token officers—I sensed he did not like the petticoat government. After one to two hours, depending on the load, it was ‘Goodbye’. We were caring for amputees, men with abdominal wounds, head and eye injuries, and men with mental problems, classified as 1A, 1B or 1C. Those who were 1A had to be sedated and restrained on the aircraft, in case they harmed themselves or others. It was the mental patients who frightened me most. I had no psychiatric training and you sensed some of them were ready to jump off the side of a mountain. Fortunately, with the Aussies, they were few and far between. When we got back to Butterworth, some fellows needed further treatment. We did a lot of surgery for the de-bribing, re-suturing and re-dressing

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of wounds. Others, who were ambulatory, were taken over to Penang for a shopping spree by Red Cross workers and those who were well enough were flown on the next flight back to Australia. The medivacs back to Richmond were worse than the Vung Tau medivacs. It was a thirteen- to fifteen-hour flight, depending on the weather. Once we had a patient with a chest injury and a drain, who was thrashing about. We did not think he would survive the trip. The doctor and I were in constant communication with the navigator to ensure the altitude and temperature of the aircraft did not adversely affect his condition. We had to make sure the drain remained in place, and at one stage were thinking about an unscheduled landing. It was panic stations for at least half an hour until we stabilized him by increasing his sedation and IV drip. Then it was a matter of constant checking and giving him reassurance. On another flight we had a double amputee. He had stepped on a mine, which caused a number of his men to sustain injuries. He was pale and silent, with that faraway look in his eyes. When he spoke he blamed himself for causing the injury of others. We tried to reassure him that it wasn’t his fault, but he worried about facing everybody in Australia. I sometimes wonder how he is today. It was very hard for the men, cooped up in rows of litters for hours on end, patients above and below. All they wanted to do was get home. Some were frightened. A lot of TLC was needed. We had a hospitality pallet and would serve coffee, drinks and sandwiches. Usually there were only two nurses and a medical orderly so for the whole flight you were constantly climbing up and down to reassure each one that they’d be home soon, trying to be heard above the roar of the Herc. You had no time to think of yourself. Back in Australia, once the adrenalin stopped pumping, you’d flake for twenty-four hours or more. Being a Sydney girl, I could go home but this meant I didn’t always debrief at the mess. We weren’t allowed to talk about what we did. I used to tell my parents about the good times, when we’d go shopping or swim in the pool at Butterworth. After three days, we’d go back on a civilian flight and as soon as we landed we’d go straight to the mess and have a drink with the fellows, half the time still in our khaki flight uniform. The mess was a tropical beer garden and having a drink there was a good way to unwind. It was an excellent social life. The nurses had this little car that had two gears, like a lawn mower, which we would pile into and drive over to Penang. Once a girlfriend and I took a train to Thailand. At the border at least fifty armed terrorists stopped the train and confiscated our passports. We were too petrified to ask who they were, but they could’ve been Malay communists. For

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seven hours we sat there not knowing what was going to happen. The terrorists were abrupt, but not particularly threatening. Eventually they brought back our passports and allowed the train to go on. We decided to fly back. After twelve months at Butterworth, in January–February 1969 I did a twomonth attachment to the American 902nd and 903rd Aeromedical Evacuation Squadrons based at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, operating out of Vietnam and Thailand in either an A model Herc or a C-57. Being shy, I was apprehensive about the attachment, especially on arriving at Clark Air Base, north of Manila. At the time it was the biggest US military base in the world—more like a city. People drove around in giant petrol guzzlers and my living quarters were in a huge multi-storey building. What made it more uncomfortable was that men and women stayed in neighbouring rooms, and I am very Catholic. From Clark Air Base we flew into Cam Ranh Bay, south of Nha Trang, and stayed one to four days, doing in-country flights or taking patients to either Clark Air Base or Yokato Air Base in Tokyo. I did four trips on a C-141, which continued from Tokyo to Elmendorf Air Base in Alaska. We’d be dropped off there and take the next AMES [Aero Medical Evacuation Service] onto Scott Air Base in Illinois, McGuire in Philadelphia, Dover in New Jersey or Travis in California. On one flight there were thirty-nine litters, twenty-nine walkers and one psychiatric patient who got out of his restraints and headed for the hatch. He thought he was Jesus and wanted to walk on clouds. He was a big Negro fellow and I had no idea how to approach him. Luckily there were three burly, highly professional Negro med-techs on board. They held him down so I could sedate him. I don’t know his history. We weren’t given medical histories for the Americans, but it seemed they had a lot more psychiatric patients than the Australians, even if one takes into account there were ten times more Americans in Vietnam. It also seemed that their injuries were worse but perhaps that was because I was doing in-country flights out of Cam Ranh Bay to Da Nang, Chu Lai, Phu Cat and Nha Trang, and to various fire support bases in the jungle, where I was seeing the men before triage. They always looked exhausted. We would do two or three pick-ups and sometimes we had to replace their field dressings in-flight. Flying inland you could see the flashes and smoke of mortar and artillery fire and all the bomb craters. On one of these flights we were at a fire support base in Pleiku. As we were loading patients mortars fell fifty metres away. The men’s field dressings were very rough and their weapons were being loaded as well. Unlike American nurses we weren’t trained with weapons. As the pilot urged us to get a move on, I started throwing the weapons out of the plane saying, ‘We don’t want these.’ I overheard someone growl, ‘There’s a bloody

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Australian on board.’ A Negro med-tech stepped in, saying, ‘You take the patients and I’ll take the weaponry.’ It never occurred to me that I might die, or that the mortars could hit us when we were airborne. While the adrenalin is pumping your whole mind is on what you are doing for your patients. It’s afterwards, when you sit down with a drink, that you start thinking ‘Oh my God.’ What helped were the looks on the guys’ faces. The Americans always wanted you to talk just to hear your accent. They made you feel like a saint, the way they were so appreciative of everything you did for them. The Aussie guys were the same. It was: ‘It’s good to see an Aussie girl.’ Once we were flying into Bien Hoa Air Base, north of Saigon, and because of the volume of traffic our pilot asked us to keep a watch out for planes and helicopters coming into our air space. I thought, ‘I don’t even know port from starboard’, but the only time I really feared for my life was when we lost one of two engines over the South China Sea. As the plane lurched and dived, we were ordered to commence ditching procedures: put our heads between our knees. I hurriedly went around instructing the patients and then found a seat. It was only then that I thought, ‘My God, I can’t swim in flying boots! What am I going to do with my camera and purse?’ Then, ‘Why worry about that? I probably won’t even surface.’ I prayed and after fifteen minutes we landed at Cam Ranh Bay. When staying at Cam Ranh Bay there was often the sound of distant explosions and a couple of times the air base was mortared. Once, I was alone in my quarters. Not knowing from which direction the mortars were coming and too scared to run anywhere, I hid under the bed. The other time I was socializing in an officer’s air-conditioned caravan. We all ran to the shelter. In company I was not frightened at all. I did one flight from Cam Ranh Bay to Kadena, Taegu and Osan Air Bases in Korea. We called the Koreans ROKs, ROK being the acronym for Republic of Korea. The name fitted: they could be in excruciating pain and never complained. It was the same with the Gurkhas in Malaysia. The ROKs were lovely. You were supposed to be looking after them but they would be trying to look after you. It was a strange contrast to their reputation in Vietnam as being fearless warriors who took no prisoners. According to Phillip their body count was eleven to one, eleven being the number of enemy for every one of them. He reckons that the enemy only feared two Allies: the ROKs and the Australians. When assigned to the Don Muang Air Base in Bangkok I stayed with another nurse in her off-base unit above a Thai restaurant, and to this day I don’t eat Thai food—it reminds me of being there. The American bases in Thailand were high-security areas and once, on the way back to Don Muang when we called into Udorn, near the Laos border, where all the B-52s were, I 266


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had my camera and film confiscated. We would pick up wounded American soldiers from Khli, Udorn and Ubon, near where Thailand, Cambodia and Laos meet, or Nakhon Phanom on the Laos border, Korat and Taphao and take them to either Yokato in Japan or Clark Air Base. What I was too busy to realize was that we were picking up injured American soldiers from forward bases in Cambodia and Laos: the Secret War, as well as Jet jockies who had been brought down by SAMs and MiG-21s while doing bombing raids in North Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos. According to Phillip some of the bomber pilots, known as Ravens, were Australians recruited from Vietnam. There was a special squadron whose sole purpose was to retrieve the downed air crews. After the two-month attachment I went back to Butterworth for another ten months, doing the Vung Tau and Richmond runs. Two years is a long time and I was glad to come back to the familiarity and cleanliness of Australia. Although I would have gone back to Vietnam if they’d asked me, if only to see the appreciation on the men’s faces, I also yearned for normality. I didn’t get it. At least being put in charge of medivacs at No. 3 RAAF Hospital at Richmond I’d be escorting one patient instead of a planeload. Once I was meant to pick up a civilian with oesophageal varices—a bleeding oesophagus. He was bleeding something shocking and had IVs wherever they could put them. He kept coughing up the tube that had been inserted to put pressure on the varices. The doctor and I decided he was too sick to travel but it brought back memories of the long flights back to Australia, and made me think, ‘How did I cope with all those patients when I’m not coping with one?’ In charge of training new nurses for medivacs, I would emphasize the need to check all the equipment and medications before the flight, take nothing for granted and prepare for all contingencies. I talked about the value of debriefing, saying, ‘I’m not necessarily suggesting you get drunk in the mess. Just make sure you talk it over with somebody, even if it is just asking somebody in the hospital how the patient is.’ Nurses never debrief and I think it’s a source of problems. We cope with the day and go home to our family, or to the cat or dog. It was during the eighteen months I was working at No. 3 RAAF Hospital at Richmond that I met up with Phillip again. We worked together when he was rostered on to my ward—the surgical ward—or when we were on the same medivac flight. He was very good at his job, the problem being he had a quip for everything. He could be very rude and sometimes that would embarrass me. The only way I could come out on top was to ignore him, made me feel like a dumb blonde. The first time we really talked was at the Christmas Party. Phillip said that over in Vietnam, if an officer gave them a hard time, they’d say, ‘What are you going to do—send us to Vietnam?’ He did the night Dustoffs with 9 Squadron, When Penguins Fly

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landing in the middle of the jungle, sometimes the helicopter’s rotors clipping the trees because the landing zone was so small, or hovering above the canopy or a minefield and going down by winch or the jungle penetrator, guided by a strobe or a torch. He had to tend the wounded in the field, sometimes under fire. The helicopter he was travelling in was hit a number of times but not badly enough to bring it down. Three times they had hydraulic failure, and once they came down in the jungle. He was on call for twenty-four hours every second day. He was much more in the thick of it than I was. He’d felt totally unprepared for the helicopter medivacs. Before Vietnam, in 1968 he was posted to Ubon Air Base in Thailand where he would drive to the Thai–Cambodian border with the service police, to provide medical aid for the Thais who were building a huge dam, the rock carriers all being women, but he had only one afternoon’s training in the car park of Point Cook for dealing with mass casualties. It wasn’t until his second day in Vietnam that he had anything to do with helicopters. He learnt on the job. On his day off he would help organize the music and news reports for the Australian Armed Forces radio, the favourite songs being Got to Get out of this Place by Eric Bird and The Animals, and Aquarius, and occasionally he went to the An Phong Orphanage in Vung Tau to do a bit of ‘reallocation’ of essential equipment. When I was ready to go back to my quarters Phillip asked if he could walk with me. We clicked that night. Don’t ask me why. I was three years older than him and felt I was cradle snatching. He joked he was saving me from the convent. Perhaps it was because we were the only two on base who had been to Vietnam. Or maybe it was the roaring laughter. We complemented each other: I was quiet and he was extrovert. Whatever it was, we became inseparable, although we could not let on because of the rules. We met off base and Phillip jokes that the RAAF can’t keep their secrets as well as we kept ours. Fortunately we only had to keep quiet for a couple of months before I got out. A few months later, at the end of 1972, so did Phillip. I thought I was coping well, although once I left the RAAF I avoided jobs where I would be confronted with trauma. I did this without thinking. As far as I was concerned Vietnam was in the past, and thirty-odd years down the track I have wiped a lot of it from my memory. There’s a lot I can’t talk about and a lot I won’t talk about. I went back to mothercraft nursing, working with babies in the labour ward and nursery. If I was caring for a very sick baby I would get a cold shiver down my spine and sometimes break out in a sweat, remembering the time I medivacced a three-week-old American baby with a Tof—a tracheo-oesophageal fistula—from Bangkok to Tokyo, stopping off in Cam Ranh Bay to pick up patients. The baby was in a humidicrib and I had the

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responsibility of taking him through a war zone. I was incredibly anxious and after we landed the baby was whisked away. You never knew what happened to your patients. Phillip joined the Ambulance Service of New South Wales, becoming a paramedic in 1976. He was well liked by other ambulance officers because you always know where you stand with Phillip. If you did well you were praised, if you did something wrong you had to correct it. By 1989 he was lecturing in paramedics, and doing a degree through Charles Sturt University, and between 1988 and 95, when our kids were teenagers and I was running a mothercraft clinic, Phillip used to give first aid lectures and he was very, very good. He could talk to parents in practical, down-to-earth terms. He wouldn’t say ‘Don’t let your kid do this’, because he knew the kid would do it anyway. In 1974 our twins came along. For the first week Michelle had to stay in hospital. I was breast-feeding her, then racing home to breast-feed Catherine. We lived in a caravan at the back of my parents’ house. Because I was mothercraft trained, and having plenty of help from Phillip and my parents, everybody thought I was coping. Even when I tried saying ‘Hey, I need to get these babies into a routine’, nobody seemed to listen. Probably I wasn’t getting my point across—I was too embarrassed to say ‘This mothercraft nurse is just not coping.’ Both the twins had asthma, so when they were five months old we took them swimming and by eighteen months they were little fish. At least when we moved to our own home, things settled down, and when Adrian came along three years after the twins he was a textbook baby. He knew what to do. We never brought up Vietnam and if someone mentioned Vietnam we unconsciously changed the subject. Sometimes we thought we might march on Anzac Day and then would decide against it. We basically wiped that period out of our lives, yet if I heard a Hercules, I’d get a cold shiver and break out in a sweat. Sometimes I’d get a sharp pain in my chest, like a panic reaction. I’d think of those long trips back to Australia and would wonder how I coped and what had happened to all those boys. But every so often I had this weird inclination—a passion—to go out to Richmond to see the Hercs. They fascinated me and, funnily enough, going out made me feel good. I felt satisfied with the work I had done. In a way I treasured the experience because on those long flights to Richmond you got very close to your patients. Our kids grew into little monsters. From birth the twins were incredibly in tune with each other. You would have a conversation with one, she’d disappear and the other one would come and take up where the other left off. But it was as if all three were in competition to see who could rile me the most. I suppose

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any mother with three children three years apart could be excused for having a short fuse, but I’d get really, really angry. I must have been the mother from hell. I was prone to yelling and sometimes would lash out. I never marked them but I would use my hand or a wooden spoon to give them a hard clip for trivial things. I could yell irrationally: ‘Use your knife and fork’ or ‘You’re old enough not to spill things.’ I made molehills into mountains, but it is only in the last year I have realized this. That’s life. I can’t change the past. Phillip also expected a lot from the kids. He did not tolerate flaws and could have a short fuse. He was never violent but emotionally he could be crushing. Sometimes I thought his expectations were far fetched—like he expected them to make their beds and keep their room tidy at the age of five. He particularly expected a lot from Adrian, probably so Adrian could be his mate. He was constantly saying, ‘Adrian, come with me out the back. Don’t sit in the corner and hatch.’ When Adrian was four I got work in a nursing home. I was there for seven years and would swap war stories with the Diggers from World War II. They’d talk about the German bunkers and I’d talk about the Cu Chi tunnels. They’d talk about the British Army nurses, how very strict they were, and I’d say ‘We weren’t that bad!’ Phillip and I would arrange our shifts so every day one of us could take the kids to swimming training or softball. I was happily busy, although sometimes my mind felt like a steam train, but when I sat watching them going up and down the pool, my head was a blank. Being a paramedic, Phillip would often come home agitated, especially after working on an injured child. He’d occasionally explode over everything having to be in its proper place, or money. ‘You’re spending too much!’ ‘We have to eat!’ Often I felt he wasn’t listening. He was always in the right. After a rant and rave he would disappear out to his shed for hours and come back happier. Or I would walk away to clear my mind. Despite the whole catastrophe we had a very loving partnership, did everything together, and still do. When he was in a mood or when I was quiet and withdrawn we’d still trot off or sit together, happily not talking for ages. About half a dozen times I thought of leaving him, and then it would be: ‘Why am I thinking like this? I love him.’ Phillip admits now that he probably took the wrong job: he was dealing with trauma and doing basically what he had done in Vietnam. He had the occasional bad dream. Neither of us would go to sleep without checking that all the doors and windows were locked and I always had a light on. I always sat facing the door or window. I did it without thinking. To this day, if a car backfires, a door slams or somebody drops something, I jump. The worst thing is for someone to walk up behind me when I haven’t heard them. A chopper flying overhead is an irritation, particularly for Phillip. Sirens upset him but it 270


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was only in 2002 that I came to see that these behaviours are excessive and related to Vietnam. Back in 1987, I was relieved more than excited about the Welcome Home Parade. At last we were being recognized after all the name-calling and egg throwing. I was more proud for Phillip, because his job in Vietnam was more life-and-death critical. What I looked forward to most was seeing the nurses. The most moving part of the day was the dawn service, when two choppers flew over the Australian War Memorial. I don’t think there was a dry eye. Phillip had his arm tightly around me, as if, ‘I am not going to let you go.’ All the husbands and wives were standing close. Vietnam was a helicopter war and even the Herc pilots and sabre jockeys were moved. Then there was the parade. It was wonderful seeing all the RAAF nurses. We never stopped talking. Guys were coming up and saying, ‘Remember me? You brought me home.’ One guy was a double amputee in a wheelchair. We both started crying. I was proud to be a nurse, proud to think that I’d helped in some way. We all got tipsy. But the Welcome Home Parade churned the barrel. Both of us started having nightmares two or three times a week. I’d wake up with palpitations, in a lather of perspiration, really scared, and Phillip would say I’d been thrashing around and calling out in my sleep. I couldn’t remember what I dreamt about. Nor could he. Sometimes we both had a nightmare on the same night. Neither of us associated our dreams with Vietnam. Over the next few years I withdrew into myself. The Parade brought back feelings of loneliness, of being on a flight when everybody was asleep and all you could sense was the rumble and vibration of the Herc. You’d study the faces. Some were peaceful and serene, others contorted. It brought back the scary times. For several years I was depressed without realizing it. I’d think: ‘I can’t cope. I’ll drive into that pole or fence.’ These occasions were infrequent but intense. It was the thought of how it would affect the kids and Phillip that always pulled me back. During this time Phillip and I were not communicating well, I wasn’t handling work, my father died, and Michelle’s marriage ended. That broke us all up. Also I had a heart attack, a stent put in [where the blocked artery is opened, the calcification scraped and a mesh balloon inserted] and surgery for breast cancer. Phillip was having atrial fibrillations. They could last for days and were very debilitating. The medications weren’t working. One time I took him to Concord Hospital and they gave him an intravenous medication to try and slow his heart beat. It didn’t work so they gave him another dose but the first lot of medication kicked in and we nearly lost him. I went to pieces. I was crying and yelling at them not to let him die. It was not me at all. On my way home to get his clothes, one of Phillip’s mates rang and said ‘How are you?’ I lost it. I had to pull over. I sat thinking, ‘Why Lord? Why is this all happening?’ When Penguins Fly

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Perhaps it was God’s way of saying we needed help. I was seeing a psychiatrist by this stage, and was on antidepressants, which had taken a lot of persuasion for me to go on—I was worried about addiction, but I probably needed more help. I Electronic rights for this image are not available. decided to cut down from four days’ work to two, but even then I wasn’t coping. I was having panic attacks at work or when someone was coming to dinner. Despite it all, we are a remarkably close family. I think it’s because although the sparks fly The Parsons Family: Patricia Parsons, we always make up. With the kids, children Michelle, Adrian and Catherine, even in a flare-up, we listen, and and husband Phillip. we have always been there for them. There is always an undercurrent of love and a lot of laughter. As Catherine says, ‘We have everyone’s faults pinpointed.’ She reckons it is a military thing: we stick together. A turn in the road came in 1998. After twenty-seven years as a paramedic, Phillip lost it at work: told them where to go and drove home. At age fifty-four, he’d had enough. Eighteen months later, having just finished treatment for breast cancer, I left work too. I was fifty-nine. I should have gone earlier. With the children now independent, Phillip and I do a lot of travelling in the caravan, staying at out-of-the-way places. Neither of us like feeling hemmed in. The only argument we have is when Phillip is reversing the caravan and I become a dribbling idiot trying to give him directions. By the time he’s finished yelling, I’m ready for a beer. Otherwise, he goes off fishing and I sit and read, or do absolutely nothing. It’s perfect. Lots of vets are doing the same thing. But 2003 was a topsy-turvy year. On the downside, Catherine was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, had a complete thyroidectomy and underwent radioiodine therapy. This involved swallowing a massive dose of radioactive iodine. She was so radioactive she had to be isolated for three days. A nurse would place her food at the end of a four-metre corridor that led to her room. She will be on thyroxin for the rest of her life. Michelle has benign nodes on her thyroid gland and had her isthmus removed. Prognoses for both are excellent but

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there is no history of thyroid in our families. We wonder whether it’s related to Agent Orange. As well, I got sick with cellulitis of the breasts and had to be aspirated numerous times. Phillip had his second knee replacement and was diagnosed with diabetes. Now the whole family eats as if we are diabetic, to make him feel happy. On the upside, the year was an eye opener. Phillip and I did a veterans’ course at Evesham, which was excellent. I was able to talk about things that I hadn’t talked about and will never talk about again. They were more to do with men than the war: Australian as well as American. I was the only woman in the group and the men listened in amazement, but they believed me. Phillip was upset that I had never told him and we haven’t spoken about it since. On the third day of each week Catherine, Michelle and Adrian got time off from work to attend the family group. They have also had counselling and have been to a sons’ and daughters’ group, which has helped them understand more. I did a partner’s course, and came away feeling lucky. Phillip and I have no mistrust and usually communicate on a fairly level basis. One of the best things was a one-week lifestyle course with eleven other couples. The courses and being on antidepressants have helped us get on a more even keel. Now I go with the flow. I can cope with seeing people and don’t go into a spin if someone comes for dinner. 2003 was also the first year for ages that I attended an Anzac Day. We were marching along George Street and Dick Smith yells out, ‘Good on you girls. We couldn’t have done without you.’ I felt, ‘Hey he’s talking about us!’ Vietnam was as exciting as it was traumatizing. There was great satisfaction in helping those fellows who were protecting our country and way of life, because I still think: If we hadn’t taken a stand, who knows where we would be now?

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11

AGENT ORANGE MIST Clarrie, Lona and Darcy Upton GLORIA ROBINSON

Operation Hades and Operation Ranch Hand sprayed high concentrations of Agents Orange, White, Purple and Blue over ten per cent of South Vietnam between 1962 and 1971, and inside Laos and Cambodia during 1969–70. Agent Blue is an arsenic compound. Agents Orange, Purple and White are variations of a mixture of two chlorophenoxyacetic acids, which produces a toxic dioxin. The sweet-smelling, yellowish mist penetrates the skin, lungs and mouth, and acts on a cell’s nucleus to change chemical–molecular processes. Jungle, waterways, crops and granaries were sprayed, affecting both wild and domesticated animals, as well as clearing vegetation. An estimated four million Vietnamese people were exposed to up to nine hundred times the normal level of dioxin, and because of its decades-long life span dioxin remains at high levels in Vietnam’s soil, water and food chains. An estimated 500 000 Vietnamese have died from dioxin poisoning, a further 650 000 suffering from paralysis, mental and physical retardation, foetal abnormalities, still births, goitres and rashes. By the early 1980s, Vietnam veterans began making a link between their exposure to Agent Orange and their own physical ailments, their partners’ miscarriages and stillbirths, and the incidence in their children of spina bifida, cleft lip and palate, Down’s Syndrome, tracheosophageal fistula, tumours on the nervous system, Wilm’s Tumour, leukaemia, other birth abnormalities and chloracne. However, it was not until the DVA Vietnam Veterans’ Health Study of 1998, and the follow-up validation studies, that statistically significant trends in two of these conditions—spina bifida and cleft lip and palate—were established. 274


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Even so, the studies did not conclusively link the conditions to Agent Orange due to confounding factors such as the veterans’ exposure to anti mosquito foggers and other chemicals. Clarence Raymond Upton, OAM, BS (US), was a career soldier who had extensive exposure to Agent Orange. He served in Malaya during 1959–61 and Vietnam in 1967, as part of the Australian Army Training Team in Vietnam (AATTV). His son Darcy was born with spina bifida.

Clarrie: Darcy was born in the middle of a thunderstorm at 0300 hours in Liverpool Hospital. I had dropped Lona off at the hospital and gone home to get the older kids to school and go to work. At midday there was an urgent call: ‘Come straight away. Your son’s going to Princess Alexandra Children’s Hospital for an operation.’ I sat in the ambulance holding him in a wicker basket. He was wrapped in cotton wool so he would not be rocked or get a shock. His head looked normal. I couldn’t work out what the hell was wrong. At the children’s hospital they told me to come back the following night. I returned to Lona in the ambulance. She said, ‘Darcy’s got something called spina bifida.’ I said ‘What the hell is that?’ Neither of us knew, so I rang Lona’s sister Iris, who was a nursing sister, and she told me: ‘It means he’s been born with an open spine. They’ll do an operation to close it, otherwise he’ll die.’ Lona is a tough country girl. She was in a little shock but taking it in her stride. I set about finding out more about spina bifida. One of the doctors said, ‘It’s very prevalent in Ireland. We think it comes from blighted potatoes.’ I asked the army doctors. They said it was genetic. After twenty-four worrying hours Lona and I went down to Princess Alexandra to see him. He looked like a skinned rabbit in a sling, hung up on a hook, naked, the operation on his back clearly visible. A nurse came in and told us the operation was a success. He was put in an incubator and spent another two weeks in hospital. Every day Lona would go by train or her brother or sister would pick her up, as I was working eighteen-hour days, six or seven days a week out at Holsworthy as a platoon sergeant in one of the training platoons in the battle wing. After a few weeks at home Darcy had to have another operation on one of his kidneys, which was pointing in the wrong direction. He was always in and out of hospital. Lona handled most of it. With work, I was out of the picture. Twelve months later Darcy began having asthma attacks. They were so severe, they worried the hell out of us. I called a mate who was with me in the AATTV and asked him to do a favour and get me transferred north. We had to wait nine months but Darcy had fewer attacks up in Townsville. Agent Orange Mist

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As a baby Lona had to measure Darcy’s head twice a week to make sure it didn’t grow too much. When he was two and a half the doctors found that fluid was building up in his brain, so they put a shunt in his head to drain the fluid into his stomach. The shunt had to be replaced every two years until he was eight, when they put in one that stretched. For those early operations, Lona took Darcy to Brisbane. She had to exercise his legs twice a day for about twenty minutes each time, and then strap his legs in a leather splint for an hour. When he was three we were told to buy him callipers. In them days the callipers cost $200. I was only earning $83 a fortnight, so I asked for a bank loan. The bank refused. I contacted a CMF [Citizens’ Military Force] soldier I knew, who was the head of the Commonwealth Bank in South Queensland, and he fixed us up with a loan. Once we got the callipers, every day Lona would take him to the physio to get him to walk up and down the bars. She was always running him backwards and forwards to doctors, hospitals, physio and occupational therapists. Lona: The worst part was getting the callipers on and off, and carrying him with them on. When I took Darcy places the other children stayed with a neighbour. His skin would break down and when he was five he had an operation on a pressure area. If he got too excited or went out in a wind he got asthma, and had to be taken to hospital. But he was determined to walk so he could get out and play with the other kids. He had a real fighting spirit. Darcy: By the time I was five I was running around in callipers, with crutches, chasing the kids next door, falling over and getting up, going up and down stairs with my arms because it’s mainly below the waist that I am affected. Clarrie: We moved every twelve to eighteen months and I was away a lot. I was a quartermaster in charge of all the stores for an area that covered southeastern Queensland, west to Mount Isa and north to Cairns. It would take me two or three months to get around: a big job with very little staff. Do it yourself or it doesn’t get done. Darcy: Dad would take me up to the sergeants’ mess for happy hour of a Friday night and when he was home we might go fishing or to one of the beaches along the coast. From when I was four I went to Cutheringa Children’s Home in Townsville. For six years I’d do four and a half hours of school and two hours of physio— walking on parallel bars and swimming—to build up my arms and legs and loosen the muscles. I was determined to get the use of my legs and when I was 276


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ten I threw my callipers and crutches away. I had a few stumbles but it felt good. Normal. My brother John would take me up to the shop and we would walk down to Tobruk Swimming Pool. I never learnt to swim. Once I went to the bottom of the pool and panicked and that made me afraid of water. It was around this time, in the early 1980s, that Dad started suspecting my spina bifida might be related to Agent Orange. Clarrie: In my twenty-two and a half years in the Army and two and a half years in the CMF, we were not told a thing. It was only with the Evatt Royal Commission [1983–85] that I realized there could be a link. I started gathering information from America and became very angry. My attitude was, ‘Do what you want with the damn soldier, but don’t do this to his family.’ My brother, who also went to Vietnam, reckons the effects of Agent Orange last for eight generations. They should ban anything like that, and they should compensate that boy and his mother, his brother and sisters, for everything they have gone through. But that Evatt Commission was an exercise in sweeping things under the carpet. Nothing was established because of ‘confounding factors’ and small sample sizes. It’s only in the DVA Vietnam Veterans’ Health Study of 1998 that spina bifida was found to occur at a much higher rate in children of Vietnam veterans. See, Vietnam wasn’t my first war and it wasn’t my first exposure to Agent Orange. I had always wanted to be a soldier. Both my grandfathers went to France and the only reason my father did not go to war was they wouldn’t let him. He worked in the railways. For nine years we lived in a tent along the railway line. When I was twelve, I found my eighteen-month-old brother dead on the railway track. He’d been run over by a train. I was cranky I missed Korea. I was fifteen when it finished. But I caught the next one. Malaya made me grow up in a hurry. My father was dead so I was supporting my mother and five brothers and sisters. I went over in September 1959 and spent 421 days on operations as an infantry soldier with 1RAR, B Company, 4 Platoon. We were with the 28th Commonwealth Brigade, made up of a battalion of English, a battalion of Kiwis and a battalion of Australians, who were part of the 17 Gurkha Division, so we had a lot to do with the little men of Nepal. Good men: very dedicated and adaptable. Got the biggest kill ratio in Malaya. We were based on the edge of Sungi Siput, where a couple of thousand Malays lived in huts next to a muddy river in the middle of secondary jungle and rubber plantations, but our operational area was up on the Malay–Thai border, ninety-six miles to the north. We’d be in-base for ten days, which Agent Orange Mist

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included six on Penang and four getting ready to go back north, testing weapons and packing gear in between drinking a few rums and beers at a local bar called Mama Railways till three in the morning. Then we’d grab an hour’s sleep before getting on the trucks and heading to a place called Grik, eighty mile up a mountainous road—spewing on every corner. After Grik we did a hard two-day walk to the mountains along the border, through dense primary jungle, monkeys swinging in the canopy, yelling and yahooing and carrying on like the little ratbags they are; elephants moving so quietly the biggest fear was they would step on you at night, and the occasional tiger. It was up and down mountains, carrying a Bren gun and all the ammunition that goes with it, surviving on cut-down British rations, which your dog wouldn’t eat. We’d have one meal a day, and get resupplied by air once in twenty-two days. It was called the Black Area, where the last remnants of communists were supposed to be. On the first operation we come to an area that looked like a moonscape. All the trees were dead on the ground. Everything was dead. I thought it was the result of bombs but forty years later I found out that in the 1950s the British had used Agent Orange in Malaya. We were in it for eight days, drinking and cooking with the water, sleeping on the ground. On patrol we used hand signals and never relaxed, and the enemy knew it. It’s probably why we only had a couple of good contacts. Also by the time we got there most of the communists were gone. The few who remained had been in the jungle fighting since 1942. They kept away from us. We would go out in a section of five and track them all day. I would do the tracking. It must be the Aboriginal blood in me. Canungra had something to do with it. But they would sneak over the border into Thailand. Very frustrating. The only reason we ended up fighting them was because they were promised independence after the Japanese were driven out, and the British broke their promise. Malaya got its independence while I was over there: 1960. In 1961, before I returned to Australia in November, the battalion got its marching orders. We waited at the railway station for five hours before they sent us back to our barracks. They’d been going to send us to Vietnam. I knew Vietnam was going to be the next blue. They called them communists but if your country had been occupied for a hundred years wouldn’t you want it back? The difference between the British in Malaya and the French in Vietnam is that the French never promised anything. I’d met Lona before I left. She wrote a few letters but blokes were getting ‘Dear John’ letters so I didn’t answer them. When I came home I hooked up with her again and we married in 62. By 1967 we had two children—Linda and John. I had spent two years with the Second Recruit Training Battalion at 278


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Puckapunyal. It’s cold, it’s hot, it’s blowy and it’s dusty so when the adjutant came round asking, ‘Any infantry sergeants want to volunteer for the training team in Vietnam?’ my mate pushed me out of the way and I pushed him. We both went over. I still say it was better to go to Vietnam than stay in Puckapunyal. I knew Vietnam wasn’t going to be like Malaya. I’d already lost a few mates in 1RAR. The AATTV ended up the highest decorated unit in the history of the Australian Defence Force. We got four Victoria Crosses and hundreds of other bloody decorations. I even picked up an American Bronze Star for Valour. Of the hundred men, forty of them were World War II blokes who’d been to Korea and Malaysia, so Vietnam was their fourth war. Others were on their third. We were spread all over the country and were always in trouble. Us silly buggers in the MIKE [Mobile] Reaction Force would be choppered into the middle of a battle if Special Forces came under fire. That’s why we had so many damn casualties. I ended up in one of the biggest battles they ever had up at a place called Con Thien, right on the DMZ [Demilitarized Zone], six hundred miles north of Nui Dat, the DMZ being the most heavily sprayed area. We drank the water and dropped our food into it. At Con Thien there was a tiny two hundred foot hill that everybody wanted. Except me—I didn’t want the mongrel. We got to the Hill on 12 May, when they were trying to give it to Ho Chi Minh for his birthday. I went in as a 2IC with three other Australians, two Green Berets and 160 Chinese mercenaries, hired by American Special Forces and trained by us. Some AATTV trained Montagnards. Some trained Vietnamese. We trained Nungs. They were the children of Chiang Kai-shek’s soldiers who’d escaped to Burma, when Mao Tse Tung took over. From there the French enlisted them to fight in Vietnam. Those we inherited were mainly orphans. The ones younger than twelve would work around our camp on China Beach, while the ones over twelve went out on operations. Not everything is as pretty as it is in Australia. We tried to keep the younger ones out of the main fighting. We used them to cover our backs when we stopped to read a map or talk on the radio. They were very loyal and keen. They had to follow orders. We had power over life and death, although the worst you can do to a Chinaman is make him lose face in front of his peers. Back at Con Thien, my Chinese bloke, all of thirteen, got his head blown off when we were getting out of the place after thirteen days of being surrounded by 21 000 Vietnamese. Those of us who survived only did so because of the Americans’ fire support. A cruiser and two destroyers sat off the coast five mile away and took the night shift, while nine mile behind us was the Marine Division Headquarters at Dong Ha that took the day shift. On top we had a Agent Orange Mist

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squadron of jets and three Puff the Magic Dragons—the big Hercules with their mini guns. That stopped most of them. Some would try to creep in. We knocked over about 280 one night. The rats blew up an Amtrac [an amphibious track vehicle] with a new type of Russian flame-thrower. We went down the next morning. Inside the Amtrac was a big ball of blubber: eighteen dead Marines. I was twenty-nine but fit enough to run a kilometre with a wounded bloke on my back. For a run like that you need incentive. I had incentive: two hundred enemy trying to stop us. This was four days after we got to Con Thien. The company had walked into a DFSOS [Defensive Fire Set On Site]. The whole world opened up on us. A third of my platoon were killed, another third badly wounded. I could see the enemy jumping out of trenches coming at us so I covered the rear saying ‘Go, go, go’, carrying this wounded bloke. If a man was supposed to die, it was that day. After Con Thien I was transferred to elements of the first ARVN Division. I got there just in time. VC wiped out my team of four blokes. I saw what happened. The sergeant and lieutenant were pegged out naked, with bamboo stakes driven into their hands and legs. The mongrels had flayed their skin. After that I carried a 45 with seven rounds, five for them and two for me, in case one misfired. Working with the ARVN battalion up at Quang Tri, north of Da Nang, after six and a half months of being in-country, I was wobbling down the road. It turned out I had a hearing infection from a close shave with a mortar in the DFSOS, so I was sent south to 36 Evac, where the doctor said ‘You’ve had a heart attack.’ I said ‘Go to buggery, I’m as fit as a Mallee bull.’ After tests the doctor announced: ‘You have pericarditis, an infection in the fluid around your heart.’ They said I had to go home and I couldn’t convince them otherwise. Of course I missed my family but I wanted to finish the job. I’d seen a lot of death, but coming back to Australia was worse. I wore me knuckles out. We got to the stage where we were ashamed to wear our uniform. That was the real tragedy of the Vietnam War. My faith was restored when I was in a pub up in Mallanganee, having a beer with some dairy farmers, and a road gang came in. The Union rep asked me ‘How many women and children did you kill?’ ‘As a matter of fact, without telling you any lies, two women and three kids.’ I did not add, ‘But you don’t have time to regret anything when you’re dead.’ I flattened him on the spot. The whole road gang wanted to have a go, but the pub was owned by three World War II vets and all the timber cutters and dairy farmers stood up, saying, ‘You have to come through us to get to him.’ Some people do shameful things in war, but it’s not the war, it’s the people, and often it’s the difference between disciplined troops and undisciplined 280


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troops. Once they crack and the blood lust gets pumping, they don’t stop. That’s what happened at My Lai in 68. Five hundred unarmed civilians shot in the head. It should never have happened. I did one thing I was ashamed of in Vietnam. I was given the order to shoot a prisoner. I argued with the order and was told ‘Do it.’ I said to the prisoner: ‘Come with me.’ He started to panic. I didn’t like the whole damn situation. Some blokes in the AATTV did five years, and I would have gone back to Vietnam. With a family, you have to chase the dollar somehow, even though when I got home Lona said, ‘All I wanted was my husband and I didn’t get him.’ She got me instead: a bloke with shot nerves and anxiety, on edge the whole damn time. It doesn’t go away, no matter how much you try to beat it. The dreams never stop. I’d get nervous rashes. Even now, if a truck backfires, I jump for cover. Any war makes you harder. You can’t afford to be soft or squeamish. You have to block things out of your mind and I did so by working. At least I was among Vietnam veterans and we could have a yarn. But the mood swings are the worst. I try and control them. If Lona argues, if someone else argues or I hear a loud noise, in an instant I can go off my nut. It’s only afterwards you think, ‘Jesus, why did I do that? Why can’t I stop this?’ In 82, after I got out of the Army, I was diagnosed with anxiety. They didn’t know about PTSD in them days, but the older I got, the worse it got, until Lona got me these mad pills back in 98. She was on them. They work quite well. It was Lona who’s born the brunt. It’s always the women who wear the hard part of the war. Lona: It was like living with an unexploded bomb. You never knew when it was going to go off. It made me a nervous wreck. If the kids were about when the bomb went off, I’d tell them to go to their room, that he couldn’t help it. Otherwise they stayed away from him. Darcy coped pretty well. Darcy: From when I was eight, I can remember Dad talking about war. He told me everything, probably to explain why he got angry. But Dad’s a very decent bloke, a good father. He’s quite happy most of the time. We talk a lot, especially early in the morning when no one else is around. Clarrie: I never hit Lona or the children, except one time. I’d just come back from Vietnam. John back-answered Lona and I knocked him over and laid the boot into him. It was an instant reaction and something I’ve always regretted. I thought, ‘Geez, I am acting like my bloody mongrel father.’ He was a wife beater and a child beater—a gutless bastard. I hated him. A white man. My mother was one hundred per cent Darag. Lona hit me once. She even sat me Agent Orange Mist

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on my bum, something no man has ever been able to do. I sat there laughing; I deserved it. But I’m lucky. I guess Lona comes from an era where a woman always stuck by her husband. She was brought up on a dairy farm. Her father had been in World War I. She’s very stoic and good-hearted, pretty even tempered. Very kind and loving to me, the kids, the grandkids and the foster kid. As for Darcy—I don’t know whether it’s a matter of him being affected by me or me being affected by him. It’s been a big cross to bear, even before I knew his condition was related to my damn war service. Darcy: When I was eleven, I left Cutheringa and went to a special primary school for slow learners. Two years later I started at Heatley High School. I’d never been to a normal school, so leading up to it was scary. The worst part was when my catheter bag broke or leaked. Often I wouldn’t know so I’d be walking around with wet pants. One or two kids might make a show of standing away from me. Or they would spy on me in the toilets. But I made a good mate in the first couple of weeks. Michael did favours for me, like carry my bag when it got too heavy or get me stuff at the tuckshop. He was a very big fella and it was like I had a bodyguard. He was someone I could talk and laugh with. He even invited me over to stay overnight as his place. He didn’t know I wore a nappy to bed and didn’t say anything when he found out. I felt like I was achieving something—getting an education and meeting people, but I was missing a lot of school because of asthma, I wasn’t passing exams and sometimes I wagged class, so at the end of Year Nine Dad and Mum thought I was only going to fall further behind, that it wasn’t worth continuing. I didn’t mind. Michael was going to a new school anyway. For two years I went to a rehabilitation centre for a few hours a day, learning cooking skills, business skills, typing and how to use a computer, woodwork and metal work. I dreamt of being self-sufficient and getting into business. I wanted to work on computers or learn car mechanics, because that’s mostly upper bodywork. At sixteen, I lived in a rehabilitation flat for a three-month trial but got a lot of pressure problems from bludging around. I did weights to keep my arms strong and played indoor bowls and got my driver’s licence. The problem was, whenever I worry I end up having an asthma attack, so I started staying home more and more—watching TV, reading, always following the news, especially when the Gulf War was on in 1990–91 or there is something about Agent Orange. Or I talked to Mum or my cockatiel, except he died before I could teach him to talk back. While I was at the rehab centre my shunt broke, then a year later it got blocked. Two more operations. Or my skin breaks down. I hate going to hospital but the doctor talks me into it. 282


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In my early twenties my legs started to stiffen and I’d fall over. When I was twenty-four I went from walking to a wheelchair in six months. I got angry when I ran into things or couldn’t turn but I soon became a master. I can stand up and pivot by lifting my legs into position and hanging on with my hands and then I have to sit down quickly. But I stopped pushing myself. I got into a comfort zone and couldn’t dig myself out. Twelve years later I’m still doing the same things: talking to Mum and Dad, spending a lot of time in my room watching TV, reading, sleeping and listening to music. Or I am waiting for the Blue Nurses to come and give me physio, or a wheelchair taxi to come and take me to the doctors. We live twenty kilometres out of town, so it’s difficult to get transport and access to places. I get bored and frustrated. I want to get out of the house whenever I can, even if it means sitting in the car. I don’t think I could get a job. I have very sensitive hearing and am frightened of loud noises: fireworks, gun shots or dynamite explosions. I am particularly scared of storms. I don’t like the way lightning lights up the sky, and I have to get inside, close the curtains and bury my face in the pillow. When the thunder comes I go into a real panic. My heart races. I take Valium and put earphones on to block the noise. Clarrie: Veteran Affairs doesn’t want to know about Darcy. As far as they are concerned, they only look after veterans, not their children. In 2000 they set up a scheme called the Vietnam Veterans’ Children Support Program, but it’s the biggest paper tiger. They couldn’t even buy Darcy a motorized wheelchair when we were trying to get him more mobile. For that the Vietnam veterans associations around Australia chipped in. The only thing we’ve ever got out of the scheme was a reimbursement for a couple of batteries. Darcy: The problem with the motorised wheelchair is our house is very small, so it was difficult to move around. Six years ago I got another wheelchair that wasn’t motorized. Even so, if I’m in the kitchen or hallway you can’t get past me. Spending fourteen hours a day in it I’ve worn it out and I’m constantly getting infections in the pressure areas. Every day Mum or the Blue Nurses have to dress my bottom pressure cavity and if it gets real bad I go into hospital. In 2000 I had my hips operated on. They were going to cut the tendons to stop them contracting together but at five o’clock in the afternoon before the operation the doctor came in and said he was going to chip the bone away from my femurs. It was an excruciating recovery. I was going through morphine like it was water and became suicidal. What got me through were a friendly nurse and a policeman guarding a prisoner in the ward, but ever since I have pain in my hips. Agent Orange Mist

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Clarrie: That time in hospital, Darcy contracted golden staph, which meant he was entitled to a free ambulance, except every time they took him anywhere the ambulance had to be cleaned and fumigated so it was off the road for fortyeight hours. Now they say he doesn’t fit the criteria. Instead he catches a wheelchair taxi to the doctors. I sent the taxi bills to the Vietnam Veterans’ Children Support Program but they sent the bills back, saying ‘We don’t pay these.’ He gets half-price vouchers but it still costs $32 a week out of a disability pension of $200. If he wants to go into town it costs $15 each way. We can’t take him in the car because these days I can’t lift his wheelchair. The other problem is that getting in and out of the car the catheter bag is prone to loosen. You get halfway to town and have to turn around. We have no concrete paths so he rarely goes outside the house. At thirty-six he is practically a hermit. Darcy: My problem is I am very, very shy, except after I get to know somebody. Then I can talk for hours. I used to go to the RSL. I drank Coke because I get drunk easily and would talk to the two girls on the front desk, one in particular. I heard she was leaving and gave her a rose and a bottle of champagne with a sweet teddy bear to thank her for being so nice to me. A couple of days later I gave a rose to the girls who had told me she was leaving but I don’t think it was worth going to management about. The management told me that I was not allowed to talk to the girls at the front desk any more. I stopped going to the RSL. I like to think I’m normal and that’s why I keep away from disability groups and sons’ and Electronic rights for this image are not daughters’ groups, although if I available. had a computer I wouldn’t mind contacting a person in a similar situation to see if anyone else has this hearing problem or reaction to storms. Now I have an infection in the bone and blood. They don’t know what it’s from. I feel tired, as if I have run a marathon. There’s this Clarrie, Darcy and Lona Upton at home in ice-cold feeling in my feet and Townsville, 2004. lower legs. They say it’s nerve pain.

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I’m a bit stubborn and get stuck on an issue, especially with the nurses and doctors. I suppose I like things resolved in my favour. Some of the Blue Nurses I’ve had are great but it’s hard when they go away and a new one replaces them. It is frustrating being in the hands of other people. You can never plan or do something spontaneously. I can get angry about being stuck in a place. I go to bed about 7.30 and get up about five. Dad makes me breakfast and gets the newspaper for me. Clarrie: Darcy was always a fighter; he stands up for himself. But in the last five years, he has started to snap every now and then. Lona and him have their little fights. He gets jealous when her attention is taken up with the foster kid or grandkids. Lona tries to be fair. Darcy: There are situations that never used to get to me. Now they do. Dad’s advice is: ‘Take each day as it comes and try not to get too worked up about things, especially things you have no control over.’ Clarrie Upton died on 3 March 2005.

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12

SOLDIER ON REGARDLESS Michael Wykes GLORIA ROBINSON

A system of National Service for all twenty-year old males was operational between 1964 and 1972. Based on birth date, 63 000 were called up. Of these, 17 424 volunteered to go to Vietnam, the rest serving out their two years’ national service in Australia. Michael Wykes was a National Serviceman who served in Vietnam in 1969– 70. Twenty-eight years later, having had a successful career as an engineer, he was tired of experiencing nightmares and headaches, and started to question other aspects of his life. On hearing a radio program about PTSD, he decided to seek help. He participated in three PTSD programs, in which he was taught a number of coping skills.

I’d heard of sensitive new age guys and knew I wasn’t one of them. My daughter saw me as angry, obsessive, bitter, twisted and cruel, so when a psychologist suggested a desensitizing program I wondered how I could have whatever sensitivity I had reduced. The psychologist assured me the process involved no electric shocks. I assured her I would think it over. Back in 1967, I became a conscript by fluke of birth date. I was able to defer because of my engineering studies but the system didn’t forget me, and in the summer of 1969 I began training at Singleton Army Camp. Basic training gave me fitness, self-sufficiency and confidence. I learnt to read a map, use a compass, shoot and maintain a rifle, and work as a team. After a twenty-kilometre

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march I was ready to take on the world. To serve out my remaining fifteen months I put in for Engineers, Signals or Armoured Corps. The Army had its own agenda: I got 8RAR Infantry Battalion. My parents were more upset than I was about me going to Vietnam. Both had served in the Army in World War II. My father said he’d stand behind me if I didn’t want to go but I saw it as an adventure, an opportunity to travel, a way of financing a home, if and when I returned, and I was in a team that I respected and trusted. All of us had been indoctrinated about the domino effect. Deep down I was scared. At twenty-two years of age I went to Vietnam as a lance corporal, responsible for the two guys on the machine gun, and came back a corporal. In between were the dust and mud, the drenching rain, the horror and mateship of Phuoc Tuy Province, which I buried deep. I was hardened, numb and angry—angry at the system and the politicians who controlled it. To family and friends I was Mr Nice Guy. In 1971, I married and put the war behind me. Fourteen years later, a counsellor at the Vietnam Veterans’ Association reckoned my headaches, nightmares and controlling behaviour were war-related. It sounded absurd but I was curious enough to go to the North Shore psychiatrist he suggested. I came out feeling like a dirty dish-rag. After four visits I read a report Electronic rights for this image are not available. about a person I did not know. Treatment was medication and Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing [EMDR]: watching his finger waggle. I decided he was having me on. Five years went by. I was lying in bed after a typical day at work when on the radio came a woman talking about PTSD. I listened to her talk about my life. My wife pointed out that my occasional bursts of aggression and zealous CPL Michael Wykes with a Vietnamese over-protectiveness of her and the child, Phuoc Tuy Province, 1969–70.

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children could be war-related, and suggested that the St John of God hospital might have some answers. It took a couple of weeks to pluck up the courage to make an appointment with my favourite professional: the psychiatrist. My body was one big knot. I got the usual leer over the glasses but I booked myself in. I’m a cautious fellow, one who doesn’t like being in the hands of others, so it was a bold step. I hadn’t hit the wall but I had noticed changes—my children had left home and I had lost control over their lives; I was beginning to question work and who I really was, so in the winter of 1998 my wife dropped me off. The walk to Xavier Ward was like a tunnel to eternity. The first few days I was left to my own devices. Boredom took hold, despite the horse-studded green environs and the grandness of the 1892 mansion. Fellow clients preferred to nod or mutter. Evenings were spent in front of the television, before a nightly pill parade. Sleep was interrupted by the night nurse’s torch. Then there were the battery of tests, ward meetings and group sessions. The subjects under discussion were not my usual repertoire: emotions, habits, anger, sadness, conflicts, assertiveness, guilt and triggers. The notice board was the key for each day, and it changed by the hour. I felt like Noah looking for a life raft. Groups were confronting. The piercing looks would have sent a chill down the most insensitive guy’s spine. The blank eyes were even worse. We learnt about SUDS, the Subject Units of Distress Scale, and were taught to put a number on our anxiety level. We learnt about breathing from the gut and counting to ten before reacting. I could relate to what some of the men had to say and began to understand more about why I got angry. Another part of me was saying ‘What’s wrong with anger?’ I knew about resentment too, especially after coming home. All the lies flying about: you bet they vexed. I knew about short fuses: the muscle ache and vision blurred. Over there others protected your back. At home there was only you. Some guys were affected more than others and had to leave the room. I found myself drawn to them. My stomach would knot, afraid that I would lose control too. Three days after I arrived, I talked to the guy I shared a bathroom with. I waited for a reply, slightly embarrassed until I heard him whisper. We talked for a few minutes and I put my hand on his. When I went to go, his electric grip tightened and between stiff lips he said ‘Thank you.’ Our friendship uncoiled. He opened up and even joked and strummed a guitar. After Vietnam he’d become a country fire brigade officer. Emotions: I had no difficulty understanding the words but I was unable to feel any or give them a label. Except anger. As one guy talked I remembered losing my closest friend in Vietnam. I had wanted to go to him, to be by his side but was told, ‘Stay put. That’s an order.’ Ever since, I have been as hard as rock. 288


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The discussion made sense: letting go, breaking through barriers, releasing pain. I just couldn’t do it—it was like flying to the moon. At the mention of triggers most guys thought of guns. The facilitator had to explain: an event, a word, a tone of voice that fires an extreme physical or emotional reaction; people being too close; confined spaces that make you sweat and shake; shopping centres and answering the telephone: fear of the unexpected. That night sleep evaded me. My mind flipped from one friend to another reacting to my off-putting remarks, rants and raves, my dislike of waffle, and my sudden departures. So many friends had disappeared. I would ask myself ‘Was it me? Was it them?’ and conclude ‘I don’t need them anyway.’ I prayed to God for a new way to love my wife, children and others. The weekend was slow; phone calls to my wife a real pick-up, except when she told me of my son’s speeding fine. Both children ride motorbikes. Why do so many vets’ children seek adrenalin? I controlled the swelling anger. Kathren added, ‘The dogs wait at the front gate for you to come home from work.’ The following week I met my one-on-one, a female psychologist in her early thirties. I thought, ‘How could you possibly understand the ambushes, trip wires and pits, the pitch black nights and sounds that played games in your head?’ I’d told no one. They’d think I was mad, a killer, a storyteller. But she had the skills to ask, listen and explain and I began to trust, although talking made my guts tight, skin wet and body shake. Afterwards, the mind raced. A nightmare woke me up in a frenzy of sweat. They had told us to get up, walk around and have a cup of milk and honey, then go back to bed. This was to break the cycle and refocus on the bed as a place to sleep. There had been so many nights walking the floor. My usual remedy was to work harder and tire more. I did some pottery, which passed the time, and then worked on trust and avoidance. Close to the bone. There were times when I almost left the room. We talked about how we used people, like our wives, to avoid small talk at social gatherings. Small talk sends me into a panic. The session made me hollow. To break the heaviness we cut pictures from magazines and chose one that was the closest to how we felt. I chose a city at night—silhouetted skyscrapers standing aloof from one another. One method I use to solve my lack of trust in people is talk to the dog. At least he wags his tail. Others in the group conferred: if not a dog, a horse, a hen, a door, a gum tree! Providing you passed the psychiatrist’s test you could go home on the second and third weekends. On the second weekend there was no guarantee that I would return, but I did. The outside world was too noisy. Back on the course my medication was increased to nine multi-coloured pills, much to my disgust. For the next week we focused on self-talk, attitudes and relationships. Soldier On Regardless

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At first it was beyond my reach. All I could think about were the negatives and dangers everywhere. The key, according to the facilitator, was to find a word, an image, a song—something that could lift you out of the descending trap. All afternoon I pondered on what my key should be. It came in a moment of thinking absolutely nothing: ‘Michael, row the boat ashore.’ In week four the discussions started to make sense. It was a time to link things, talk about time management, drug and alcohol dependency— self-medications that don’t affect me, thank goodness; how to use the breathing techniques to control anxiety, how to listen—or, as one guy put it, ‘Keep your bloody mouth shut.’ Highlight of the week was family day, but Kathren found it too traumatic and walked out. Some of the abuse under discussion was foreign to her. Other comments exposed patterns she had not thought about. By the end of the course I still felt uncomfortable with the psychiatrist, but my one-on-one made up for it. I was to return to the hospital on a monthly basis to monitor my progress and medication, and over the next couple of days I psyched myself into going back to work. The first day back I approached my full in-basket of invoices and contracts with surprising calm, but after a few days of pressure, even with delegation, my SUDS levels rose and the nightmares resumed. I woke, my eyes searching the ceiling for shadows, as the hours ground on. Then another day’s work, each task a mountain. For the headaches that slice my brain, I tried breathing in conjunction with the five-by-five rule: sitting quietly and listing five things you could see, hear or feel, then four things, then three and so on. It’s meant to relax you. I used my key: ‘Michael, row the boat ashore.’ The months passed: a roller coaster of good and bad days. Driving to work one morning I was stunned when I realized that I could not remember the previous half-hour. It was scary. I slammed on the brakes to stop ramming into the car in front as the car radio blared out the Beatles song, Help. Things weren’t improving and my one-on-one suggested a desensitizing program. My wife and I agreed that I should give it a go. Two weeks later, after a CAT scan informed me that I still had a brain, I was back in St John of God. The first day: all the formalities and waiting, everyone saying, ‘Yeah, I’m okay’, when they wouldn’t be there if they were. The new psychiatrist asked the same old questions. I felt like yelling, ‘Why don’t you read my file?’ Then my one-on-one explained the process and the potential side-effects. I was to be confined to my room to write down as much as I could about the memory, then read it through at least five times a day, adding more as it came back to me. When the memory was complete, I was to continue reading it, and 290


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record my SUDS levels and other reactions. We talked through the war memories and selected one. I chose ‘The Hand’, a frequent dream: A hand emerges from the ground like a mushroom and goes to grab me. I try and jump away but hear my corporal’s boots and his voice, ‘Get in there son and shake the hand of that dead Nog.’ I can’t. He orders again. I wake, soaked in sweat, my head throbbing. I fenced off a corner of my room, creating a boundary between past and present, and settled on a chair. But when I picked up a pen my arm felt like lead: ‘Now which way did I turn to hide? To the right, then a yell from Bluey, “I’ve been hit.” Keep firing. I crawl on my knees.’ It was like yesterday. The words leapt out. For the next few days I wrote, read and dreamt: ‘Sound is the only sense I trust: the creak of bamboo and rustle of dead leaves. My gaze fixes on a position twenty-five metres at 11 o’clock: a large leaf moving gently. My eyes adjust like a camera’s automatic focus. Something pushes out of the red earth. I’m transfixed. It takes shape: a fist. It’s a man’s arm and callused hand, fingers slightly bent towards me. I shiver and try to move but I am pinned. Panic. Perspiration. I feel giddy.’ In my dream I try to look away but it has me mesmerized. It sways like a cobra then lunges forward digging its fingernails into the back of my skull. When I have this dream I scream and hear Kathren saying, ‘Wake up, wake up.’ Then came the monitoring process. It was bloody hard work. My one-onone’s well-aimed questions helped me unravel details, especially when I drifted off track, and the more I read, the more I could remember the details of the ambush: the smells of blood and death and the colours of jungle. I wrote thirty pages. When I got to the order to bury the bodies my stomach cramped. I became constipated and had a choking feeling. On reading my memory to my one-on-one for the first time, I gasped with anguish. I couldn’t continued. I thought I was going to faint. I feel guilt, shame and hate. I’d never told a single soul. My one-on-one sat in silence. I apologized and she reassured me that it all meant I was coming to grips with the memory and the emotions that were physically locked together inside me. She told me to take deep breaths. After ten minutes my muscles loosened and we called it a day. Back in the room I felt tired but relaxed. I lay down and could not stop the tears, the heart rate, the hot feeling. I wanted to drive a wedge between the pain and me. Yet somewhere deep inside my gut the ropes released a little. I started walking around the room, saying, ‘Horses in paddock, green grass, tall trees, closed door, light switch’, then sat in the chair and stared out the window. I focused on a small gum tree: its shape changed and I was back in the event. I bent over in tears. My one-on-one found me like this and after some breathing and reassurance, I slept. Soldier On Regardless

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The next day I felt like I had been beaten with a sledge hammer. I slept, and read my memory. Details would leap out and bring a feeling of hate, anger or loss. My one-on-one suggested I take the weekend off. I tried to distract myself by watching television and listening to jazz but I kept returning to what made me tick. Not a usual preoccupation. The following week was hard slog. I focused on the worst parts of the memory. I read out loud and recorded my feelings, SUDS and physical reactions. Discussion with my one-on-one became more intense. We arrived at the conclusion that I was a good soldier. I did my best. I followed orders even when they were against every principle. What happened was outside my control. The realization was like a lead weight lifting off me. But then there was doubt. What else lay buried? My one-on-one’s parting words were: ‘We are only a telephone call away.’ At work a few days took care of the in-tray but flashbacks and stray thoughts sneaked in and so began another cycle of headaches, nightmares and sleepless nights. Months passed. I needed all the stress management skills I had. My confidence in the system, my boss and others was falling like dominoes. It was like I was being sucked into the blades of a fan. When I confronted the boss with concerns about the lack of co-ordination between departments he recited the usual management slogans. I was dreaming about a form in white and a person pointing his finger, accusing me of failure. Around this time our world was blown apart. I heard my daughter’s voice on the other end of the phone: ‘He’s dead Father. Alarn’s dead.’ ‘Hang on. We’ll be right over.’ Koreen’s fiancé had been killed in a motorbike accident. Normally a hard and unemotional person, I could feel her hurt. Tears flowed as I hugged her. I found it difficult to focus on work. Frequent headaches and lack of sleep compounded. Different medication had no effect. I saw a one-on-one that had replaced my previous one. She described a new pain management technique where they insert nodes into the body and apply electric pulses. I told her ‘No way.’ She suggested another desensitizing program incorporating rapid eye movement. ‘No.’ But my normally conservative wife suggested I give it a go. A few weeks later I was back in Richmond, staring out at the rain. A playful colt chased its mother up the fence line. It was like a tonic. I listened to a tape on how not to worry. As far as I was concerned worry meant being prepared, obsessively hunting for a noise or checking that the doors were locked. The GP suggested a change in medication. I was on antidepressants, mood stabilizers and sleep enhancers, all taken against my will. Back in my room I remembered my daughter’s words: ‘Give it a go Father.’

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That night I woke, the white figure etched in my brain, but this time it was bloodstained. When it came time to see my one-on-one I told her in a few sentences all I could remember. She looked puzzled, ‘Is that all?’ ‘That’s it.’ ‘Okay, we’ll see how it goes.’ She described the EMDR process and told me to go back to my room and start writing. I couldn’t focus. In the next session my one-on-one instructed, ‘I want you to close your eyes and focus on the white figure. Try and place sounds, colours, smells, anything, and describe them to me.’ A dazzling flash of white took human form and was coming towards me. She told me to hold the image, open my eyes, look directly at her two fingers and follow them with my eyes, keeping my head still. Her fingers moved back and forth. I was then instructed to close my eyes and take a deep breath. She asked what I was feeling. ‘Tense.’ ‘With your eyes closed focus on the point of pain, then open your eyes and follow my fingers.’ As I concentrated my chest muscles contracted. I felt I would burst. Deep breathing helped. She kept probing, focusing on the tension that the image induced. Afterwards I felt washed out; my mouth tasted like the bottom of a bird’s cage. That night I dozed off, only to wake in a sweat. I saw myself running fast, out of breath. A heavy pack is ripped off my arm by a bamboo spike. I fall, pick myself up, and continue to run. Dawn found me sitting on the side of the bed but for some strange reason I didn’t feel tired. In the crisp air I watched a butterfly land on a flowering bottlebrush. It prepared me for work. The next session was like putting together a jigsaw blindfold. I was amazed at the way she was able to predict my reactions. We worked on the pain centres with deep breathing and relaxation techniques and that night I rewrote the memory, adding details: ‘On dusk we walk through rustling bamboo heading for an area where we are to set an ambush for VC coming into the villages. We make sure we avoid NVA so they don’t send out tracers to warn the VC of our position.’ When I had exhausted everything I worked backwards from the end of the memory: ‘I’m back in base camp: the corporal makes snide remarks about how I’d mishandled my section. I fiercely assert to the contrary.’ What seemed trivial to me—the time of day, who was with me, where we were, what I was carrying—my one-on-one considered important. They were the keys to unlock the rest. As I followed her hand movements, I could feel my temperature rise and my head pound. She began to speak, but suddenly I was spinning around in my chair, my tongue making the trilling sound of automatic fire. Images rushed in: I’m lying flat, peering through grass, listening, thinking, waiting. The images stopped. I asked, ‘What happened?’ ‘I’ll explain later.’ I


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had to breathe deeply to relieve the pain and after a while I was able to stand. She reckoned I was progressing better than she had expected. I retreated to my room and crashed onto the bed. Just before midnight, I was woken by a vision: My white figure has a face, arms and legs. An old face. He’s lying dead. I called out, ‘Ah shit! Ah shit!’ and sat up abruptly. I tried to stand and lost my balance. My one-on-one was excited! Skilfully she helped me unwind the rest of the memory. I felt guilt, shame and anger: There’s blood on your clothes. You lie there, dead. A boy lies beside you. I think he is your son. I shot you and your son! But you were unarmed. Was it the bamboo pole you were carrying or that you walked outside the hour of curfew? Why did our paths have to cross? My officer tells me to collect your ID and bury you beside the paddy field near your home. I promise to do my best to let your family know where you are but there is no opportunity. Tears ran down my cheek and neck. The next day I wasn’t hungry. It was Saturday, so we went into Richmond and I sat down to watch the passing parade. An Asian child, accompanied by his mother, sat beside me. I got emotional and had to walk away. It was a weekend of tears and stomach knots. Afterwards my main task was to re-read and re-write, to exhaust the memory until its impact was minimal. When I took a break to watch the TV news it was all about the Australian forces in East Timor. By the end of the third week I was able to recall the whole memory with reasonable emotional control. Still it wasn’t the end. In the following days I began to feel compassion for the father and son, as well as guilt and shame. I cried, shook and almost vomited. I rang home and luckily caught my son, daughter and wife. I wondered if I could ever tell them. I was jumpy the next time I saw my one-on-one. My tongue was like lead. ‘Come on, what is it?’ she quizzed. ‘I still don’t sleep. My body hurts. I hate myself for what happened and I can’t see any way that I can rectify it.’ Tears rolled. She said nothing for a good five minutes, and then responded, ‘I can’t take your feelings away but I can help you slowly make them have less impact on your life.’ She suggested I write two letters to the father and son—one as if it was written twenty years ago, and the other written in the present. My mind baulked on the battleground of my thoughts: What do I say? That weekend East Timor continued to dominate the news. Some of the guys were getting very agitated. Images of well-armed soldiers surrounded by children caused comments like, ‘It’s a cake walk.’ I kept silent. It was history repeating itself. I couldn’t write the letters. My one-on-one made me focus on three feelings: guilt, shame and hate. Back in my cell, I tried to write—firstly, to the people I 294


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felt guilty about and secondly, to the person I felt disgust and hatred towards. I felt lost, thinking, ‘I’m not the same person. I can’t relate to what happened.’ The next day the pen flowed: ‘Forget situational relevance. Forget rules of engagement that were not adhered to. In a moment of indecision: a quick and deadly action. Forgive me.’ My one-on-one was pleased. I still couldn’t see how the letters could resolve anything. She assured me, ‘Give it time.’ Kathren and Koreen came for a visit, both looking wonderful. I didn’t want to talk about me, so we chitchatted and Koreen casually mentioned her outstanding traffic fines that were enough to cancel her licence. I began to challenge the stupidity of not paying them, but backed off and started talking in general about taking responsibility. She responded churlishly: ‘Mind your own business. I don’t care if I go to prison.’ Before I did or said something I would be ashamed of, I asked them both to leave, then walked out the door. In the dark of my room I began crying with hurt and frustration at my daughter’s nonsense. There was a knock. She asked to come in. ‘Do you hate me, Father?’ ‘No, but go away. You’re upsetting me. You’re too headstrong.’ I ended with, ‘Promise you won’t travel home tonight on the train.’ I didn’t sleep that night. My whole body ached. Before leaving the hospital I talked to the chaplain. He suggested that God did not want me to carry the guilt and shame forever and asked me to bring the letters to the chapel. We sat on the floor and prayed, while he made me burn the letters. Afterwards, Kathren knocked on the door. ‘Ready?’ ‘You bet, let’s go.’ She was interested in the EMDR process but was not ready to listen to the memory, whereas Koreen wanted to know and listened without interruption before asking questions at a hundred miles an hour. Over time Koreen badgered her mother, ‘How could you not want to know?’ I think Kathren felt guilty that she had lived with me all these years without knowing, and when given the opportunity shied away, unable to face what I had gone through. Or perhaps it resonated too much with her background. Her parents had met in a German concentration camp. At work there were four weeks to catch up on. My staff had performed magnificently, but the company was in disaster mode. Morale was low. My days were punctuated by headaches, the Panadeine Forte making me drowsy. In between the typing, voice mail, e-mail and idle chatter, the face of the man in white would appear on the computer screen. I’d sit in a daze, trying to hold back tears. All the skills I had been taught—nothing worked. I was desperate. I took time off work and surprise, surprise, I slept better and my headaches were less frequent. Back at work it was a day-by-day battle until I was discovered crying at the computer. ‘Xavier Ward please.’ Soldier On Regardless

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After a session with the psychiatrist and GP, the next day was a non-event. Kathren suggested that God may be wanting me to slow down. On a walk I watched a snail cross the road, its antenna-propped eyes bobbing up and down. In the first session with my one-on-one I decided that I was going to deal with the death of my best mate, which occurred only three months after we had arrived in Phuoc Tuy. I felt like two pieces of wood being bolted together. At the end of the session I tried to get up from the chair and couldn’t. My hands gripped the armrests of the chair, my arms and legs locked. I told her, ‘I can’t move.’ ‘Just sit easy. It’s muscle tension probably linked to your memory.’ She lightly massaged my neck and shoulders until the tightness eased. ‘Stretch your fingers and take deep breaths.’ After ten minutes I was able to stand but as I walked back to my room I felt as if I was veering to the right. That night spasms in my legs woke me about 3 a.m. Then I had the strangest dream in full technicolour: swirling stick-like figures, animals, trees, waterfalls, caught me up in their spiral. Two days later I am focusing on the swirling images with my one-on-one: ‘The helicopter drops us. For two hours we walk through bamboo, scrub and trees. My section on the machine gun is at the rear. Sounds of a creek, then enemy fire. We hit the deck and wait for orders.’ Another brick wall. My head spun. Back in my room I soaked a towel in cold water and put it over my forehead. My one-on-one called by and dropped a bombshell. She could no longer work at the hospital. I should report to the psychiatrist on Monday. I felt cheated and angry with the system for messing me around and with her for ditching me. Rumour had it that she had come into conflict with the administration about new contractual arrangements. I told the psychiatrist I was determined to face what had just been opened, he reassured me that they were going to try and get my first one-on-one. It was arranged and I was back on track: over the next days I began unwinding the ball of string. In my room I set up a work zone, spending the next days walking and writing, thinking, eating and trying to sleep. It was a strange space but I managed eight pages. When I reached the point just before the creek my hand started to shake. ‘Who are the swirling grey figures? Is it a fantasy? Was I there at all?’ All I could remember was back at Nui Dat when my lieutenant asked me to pack my friend’s kit, take it to the company store and write a letter to his mum and dad. I held the image and let my mind wander. After a fourth reading I began to write: ‘The forward scout spots a track going up the hill on the other side of the creek. The corporal orders us across the creek.’ I started quivering, 296


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my mind in overdrive. I was thankful for a visit from Kathren. She told me Koreen had decided to go to counselling over her fiancé’s death. I continued to work: ‘Enemy fire overhead. We make our way up the hill, collecting the packs of the two sections in front. Then suddenly bullets rip bark off the trees. Someone calls out, “Enemy at twelve o’clock.” Gunfire. We go in chockers: 16s, 79s and 74 rockets, moving up the hill. At the top the corporal orders, “Go left with the gun.” I mutter, “Not likely. We’ll get fried.” Hours of manoeuvring and feeding the gun.’ On the second reading I froze. My heart was being squeezed in a vice: ‘Suddenly to the left, ah shit, fire lanes three metres above. Orders from the corporal: we are to move into the enemy’s fire lane! We can’t see the enemy, but they see us and they’re firing. I can’t believe it: the risk is too high. Dazza and the other forward scout are under pressure. Our machine gun covers them as they move to better their position. Then it happens: five metres in front of me an AK-47 bullet rips through Dazza. He screams and falls. His body is covered in blood and dirt. I wait for him to move. Nothing. I want to get to him but the corporal orders, “Pull back 200 into the trees. We’ll call in artillery.” I want to spew. “No way”, I say. “My mate’s out there.” I feel a hand grab the back of my shirt. “No, or you get a rifle butt to your head.” “You bastard.” As we crawl back, anger burns a hole in my guts.’ Dazza and I had gone through basic training together. In Vietnam we shared a tent. He’d back me up. I stood by him. After the war we had planned so much: he was to be best man at my wedding. I see him often in my dreams. I continue to write: ‘I cry all night. When morning breaks they send some guys to search the area and they report back to command: two bodies, one our own. Dazza. I watch them bag him up and chopper him away. I curse. Dazza dead: cut down by bloody stupidity.’ After writing thirty-five pages I stepped out of the work zone and stretched every muscle. It felt good. My one-on-one was dumbfounded. She asked me to focus on Dazza’s death and being restrained. The session emptied me but I felt good about my one-on-one. She never pushed her own barrow. It was a joint effort. In the last session she suggested that I needed to think seriously about the effect work was having on my health: ‘It’s going to be a difficult decision and you are the only one who can make it.’ I thought of my family, and what impact my PTSD had on them, how my wife had put up with all my problems. My sleepless nights were hers too. I had tried to protect her by withdrawing into myself, but if my headaches were too bad I would spend a day in bed. For the next week I did odd jobs around the home. I wasn’t looking forward to going back to work, but I couldn’t see any other way of paying the bills. I Soldier On Regardless

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knew about the TPI but I was refusing the tag: Totally and Permanently Incapacitated. Three days back at work, after thirty years in the company, I realized the wheels were falling off. Management was changing, standards were slipping and people were becoming isolated and negative, caught up in protecting their own positions. Rumours spread like wildfire; real communication was a non-event. It was a disgrace to see how some people were being treated. I tried to discuss these concerns with the boss, but my words fell on deaf ears. My staff and I had developed a strategy for addressing the lack of commitment, nevertheless everything was sliding into quicksand. Work wasn’t working. My lifeline was ‘Michael, row the boat ashore.’ I discussed the situation with Kathren. She said the decision was up to me. I tossed and turned with all the pros and cons. Work had defined my life. I was only fifty-four, with plenty of good years ahead. I asked God for guidance. No answer. One morning, driving to work, I passed a Nike billboard with large lettering: ‘Just Do It’. That evening I wrote a resignation letter. I didn’t sleep and the next day I nervously waited for an opportunity to see the manager. At 2.30 I stepped into his office. ‘Come back later.’ ‘Please, just five minutes of your day. It’s important.’ I explained my decision to leave work on health grounds, presenting him with my letter and a copy of the letter from the psychiatrist. All he could say was, ‘I’ll get back to you tomorrow.’ I replied sharply, ‘I need an answer today.’ At 3.45 I received a call from the department manager to come up to his office. I sat down, trembling, and told him about PTSD and how it was affecting my work and life. After he read the psychiatrist’s letter, he said, ‘I don’t understand war. I’ve had nothing to do with it. I’m sorry that you have been affected as you have and will review your request in terms of entitlements and superannuation and get back to you tomorrow.’ The next day he met me saying, ‘We don’t want to lose you. However, if it is in your best interest we will have to let you go. When do you want to leave?’ My legs were jelly as I walked back to my office. A gigantic step had been made and there was no turning back. In the last weeks my staff and a few close workmates expressed their sadness about my departure. I felt honoured. On the last day I packed up some boxes of personal effects and put them in the car. There was a sombre air among my staff. My boss was not available. After saying my goodbyes, I sat in my office for an hour, reflecting on the last thirty years. I had put so much into my job, the company and the people I’d worked with. I picked up my briefcase and walked down the corridor and out of the automatic doors. When they closed behind me somehow the air felt different. That was five years ago. My wife and I took a whirlwind holiday through Europe and decided to stay in Sydney to be close to Koreen and our son Daryl. I noticed some friends pull back when they learnt I had PTSD and had retired 298


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on medical grounds. According to my one-on-one the key was honesty and a thick-skinned approach to their reactions. Others appreciated my newfound openness. Mostly I relied on my family. My small home projects made me feel useful and now life is busier than ever. My health has improved. I am less choked with grief and pain and am free to be the man I am. I still experience war-related mood swings, sleeplessness and headaches but Kathren and Koreen can both be relied upon to pull me up when necessary. I feel like an oak tree that has been bent and swayed by storms. People have come along and lopped off a few branches. Sometimes the roots have been over-fertilized with good intentions, but somehow the tree remains strong.


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13

I WAS ONLY NINETEEN Frank Hunt GLORIA ROBINSON

Frank Hunt was a Mallee boy from northern Victoria, who joined the Army and was sent to Vietnam in 1969. In 1983, the mine incident in which he had been badly injured was featured in the popular song I Was Only Nineteen. Vietnam veterans, particularly, took the song to heart: at last the tragedy of Vietnam was being recognised. But Frank Hunt’s story is more than a song, and in 1988 he was awarded an OAM for his voluntary work with war veterans, Scouts, Aussie Rules footballers and youth. I was a forward scout in 6 Battalion, A Company, 3 Platoon, and Mick Storan was a rifleman in the same section. Some years after the war Mick uncharacteristically opened his heart to his brother-in-law, John Schumann, lead singer and songwriter in a band called Redgum, and John wrote a song. He called it A Walk in the Light Green, referring to map areas marked light green—that is, light on jungle and heavy on mines—but the song was released as I Was Only Nineteen.9 Mum and Dad and Denny saw the passing out parade at Puckapunyal Was a long march from cadets Sixth Battalion was the next to tour and it was me who drew the card We did Canungra and Shoalwater before we left … Denny was Mick’s sister, who married John Schumann. It was Mick who drew the card, became a Nasho, training at Puckapunyal, north of Melbourne. I’d 300


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joined as a regular in 67 because of the drought. Our wheat crop was failing and our sheep were selling for a shilling each, when a pair of rabbits was bringing in seven shillings and sixpence. I didn’t know there was a country called Vietnam, let alone a war, until I met a bloke in Basic Training at Kapooka and asked him how he got his ribbons. ‘Vietnam.’ Kapooka was more modern than Puckapunyal but just as bloody cold. From day one I felt the adrenalin. I was slow in going somewhere. A corporal bellowed, ‘Have you got balls soldier?’ I turned to him, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Don’t back answer me! Get moving—you’re not paid to think around here.’ Ten weeks of basic training was all about fitness, fitness and more fitness: marching, drill, weaponry, learning your rifle backwards. Our weapon was an SLR, a 7.62 millimetre self-loading rifle, and we also learnt on the F-1 submachine gun and the M-60. Later I went on to the armalite or M-16, the preferred weapon of a forward scout. From the first day the propaganda was: ‘Number One: Aussies never let their mates down.’ If a person had an untidy locker or hadn’t made their bed properly, the rest of the platoon could be confined to barracks, get an extra thirty push-ups or more guard duty. If someone lagged behind on a ten-mile run or a twenty-mile walk the corporal or sergeant would yell, ‘Catch up you fat lazy bastard!’ Two of us might drop back and take his pack or weapon or grab hold of his arms. Then the corporal would yell, ‘Leave the bloody old woman alone.’ If a bloke had been looked after all his life and couldn’t take the discipline or believed the war movies, he might crack—but better he crack in training than in war. I saw half a dozen recruits go AWOL. Everyone else copped it sweet—all it did was toughen us and instil mateship. In ten weeks they moulded thirty-five personalities and cemented them into a team. It did not matter what ethnic background you were from or whether you were a Regular or a conscript, we acted as one. From Basic Training we were sent to Armoured Corps, Artillery Corps, Engineers, Signals, Ordinance Corps, Service Corps or even SAS, but the majority became Infantry. I did my Infantry Corps training at Ingleburn, in south-west Sydney. Over the next thirteen weeks they moulded us into another unit. It was a long march from cadets. Whereas Basic Training taught us not to think, Corps Training taught us to think by instinct. We learnt the various patrol formations depending on the country: single file, arrow head, staggered, spread out and noiseless, forward scout in front, second scout next (if there was one), followed by the section commander; the drill in setting up a night harbour one hundred per cent—stand-to, fifty per cent stand-down, digging I Was Only Nineteen

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in; silently, leaf by leaf, clearing paths inside the night harbour, and in an ambush, the tactics for when that first shot went off: to react in seconds to twenty things simultaneously. We learnt hand signals, vital for a forward scout to communicate back to his commander what he’s seen. Thumb down: enemy ahead; two open hands swiped horizontally: hit the deck; fingers indicating one to the right, two to the left. In Corps Training we were treated as soldiers. To free up the senses, everything became an instant automatic reaction. Allocated to 6 Battalion, I went to Townsville, where we waited twelve months for a full complement: 800 to 850 men. I was assigned to 3 Platoon, where I met Mick. In the ranges around Townsville, our platoon commander and sergeant picked our skills. Lieutenant Peter Hines, otherwise known as Skip, was an old man—all of twenty-six. Sergeant Gerry Newberry was even more ancient at twenty-eight. He had served in Malaya and this was his second tour in Vietnam, having gone with 1 Battalion in 1965. Most forward scouts came from the bush. I was from the flat Mallee country in north-west Victoria. Vietnam was jungle, and no way did I like those leeches, but I had a good ear for sounds and a good eye for distances and details. If we were ten miles inland, why would there be a pile of beach stones on a track or a stick going through a tobacco leaf or a reed around a tuft of grass? Any one of them could mean a mine. If I heard a noise I would whisper ‘Skip, a hundred yards at three o’clock’, assessing it from his position, not mine, so he could decide the tactics: placing the machine gunners to the right or on high ground, the rifle men to the left or lower. At first we weren’t popular with the Townsville locals. They remembered the Americans back in 1942–45 taking all their women. But we had less money: a hundred dollars a fortnight and over in Vietnam an extra eight dollars. It didn’t stop us drinking. Soon after I arrived, four 6RAR veterans of Malaya decided to knock off a steer from the Ross River Meatworks and walk it across the bridge at 10.30 on a Saturday night. They came upon me at the Great Northern Hotel and handed me my chaps and hat—they must have raided my room—betting that a Mallee bloke couldn’t ride a steer because we had dust for brains. It was on. The steer bucked for the first twenty yards—definitely past the eight seconds mark and there was no bell ringing or roundup men. I reckon I rode through six sets of traffic lights down the main street of Townsville, police giving chase. When they caught me they threw me in the wagon. I’m saying, ‘Why don’t you become real men and exchange your brown for green!’ For that I got the telephone book treatment—cricket bat and all. Over time Townsville took us into their hearts. It’s where I met Connie. A bunch of us were waiting to go into the movies, three months before our

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departure. I asked her out for a coffee and from the moment we talked I knew that we were meant for each other. She was seventeen, beautiful, caring, strong, passionate and very honest. Both of us were very much in lust and love, and two weeks before my departure we got engaged. Jim Kelly also met a girl. Alfie Lamb had no one, so over in Vietnam I wrote to Connie and she lined up a workmate. Little nuggetty Alf was a bloody good soldier, a real larrikin on the drink, but the most tender man. He would get full and recite love poems he’d written for Jenny, and they’ve just had their thirtieth wedding anniversary. We did Canungra and Shoalwater before we left in preparation for Vietnam. Canungra had been a jungle training centre since World War II. We jumped off towers into rivers with our backpacks on, frogmen underneath just in case we got stuck. We climbed Heartbreak Hill, with its seven false crests. Once, crossing a river, I slipped and damaged my kidneys. The boys were not impressed. They had to make a stretcher and carry me out. It was tough training, all about testing our fears, timing and co-ordination. I’ve since been told they allowed for a ten per cent casualty rate—death, broken backs and legs. An infantryman is half-born. We were glued together by training, physical hardship and the constant stirring, the Nashos giving us hell: ‘You blokes must be brain dead to have signed up. Look where we are: slugs and leeches up to our dicks, bloody bitten half-alive.’ And we’d fire back: ‘Mate, you didn’t have the guts to volunteer. If you weren’t a bloody Nasho you wouldn’t have a job.’ The final war exercise was at Shoalwater Bay near Rockhampton: rainforest and swamp country. After ten days of carrying sixty to a hundred pounds on our backs, exposed to the elements and having contacts, no one Electronic rights for this image are not available. wanting to fail, it was Skip who held us together. He was a motivator, a champion, a beautiful man. Also, the Diggers’ experiences in the jungles of New Guinea, Malaya and Borneo prepared us. We were good at reconnaissance and ambushing and Connie Morgan and Private Frank Hunt at operating in small numbers. We 6RAR’s Farewell Ball in Townsville, were ready to roll. May 1969.

I Was Only Nineteen

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We had ten days’ pre-embarkation leave. The first night, when we went to a bar the barman refused to serve me. At nineteen I was old enough to go to war but not old enough to drink in a pub. Gerry Newberry immediately ordered ‘Right, army out.’ He emptied the pub, before saying to the publican: ‘That poor bastard’s going to Vietnam in ten days and you won’t even give him a beer. Get stuffed the lot of you.’ Two nights before our departure, Skip had us round to his home. His wife, Norma, was feeling down, as were a lot of the women. I watched as Johnny Needs went up and quietly talked to her. Now, Johnny Needs was the rogue of the platoon. Playing darts or snooker he could take your money as soon as look at you—a real con who had married Donna three months before. He was a section commander and a bloody good soldier, having been in A Company 6 Battalion’s first tour in 1965–66. It was A Company that went in to support D Company in the Battle of Long Tan. He’d seen it all and was close to Skip. Both of them had done the hard yards. So Needsy asked Norma, ‘You worried that the boss won’t come home?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well if he doesn’t, neither will I.’ He was telling her: ‘I’ll work my arse off to protect him.’ Needsy wasn’t always so consoling. Just before Connie and I left the party he comes up and puts his arm around my shoulders, saying, ‘You know mate, if a forward scout lasts six seconds after the first shot, he’ll be right.’ And Townsville lined the footpaths as we marched down to the quay This clipping from the paper shows us young and strong and clean And there’s me in me slouch hat with me SLR and greens God help me, I was only nineteen … That day in April 1969, I’ll never forget. The people lining the streets were cheering. We were the first battalion to leave Townsville since World War II. It was an ANZAC battalion—the two New Zealand companies were all welltrained volunteers. In A Company there were twenty-four nationalities: Yugoslav, Czechoslovakian, Russian, Chinese, Greek, Italian, Aborigine and the rest, from all walks of life. I’ve still got a photo of Connie and me as we walk on the grass near the quay, just before we were loaded onto the landing craft to go out to HMAS Sydney. She’s fiddling with a handkerchief, having cried most of the morning. A week at sea and we’re in Vung Tau Harbour. On the landing barge Needsy tells us, ‘Well this is it fellows. Check your gear. Check your weapons. Make sure they’re loaded. When that tailgate goes down, head down, arse up. Get onto that beach running and into a firing position.’ When our guts kissed the sand I looked up and saw two beautiful Vietnamese girls doubling on a bicycle, 304


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Private Frank Hunt and Connie Morgan at The Strand, Townsville, before Frank embarked on HMAS Sydney, 8 May 1969.

one holding a parasol. I think, ‘This is bloody war?’ I look back: Needsy is laughing his head off. We were trucked into Nui Dat on a bitumen highway—rice paddies, villages and kids on either side—and taken straight to our lines. Thirty-six hours later we were on our first overnight patrol outside the wire. I was amazed at my lack of nerves. It was straight into training mode. Also, I knew we were in good hands: Johnny Needs, Gerry Newberry, Ben Hall, Greg Cooper and Bill Warren were all on their second tour. We came to see these patrols as a breeze, the biggest danger being our people coming in through the rubber plantation at the wrong point and not identifying themselves correctly. From Vung Tau riding Chinooks to the dust at Nui Dat I’d been in and out of choppers now for months … Half the time, a helicopter dropped us out in the bush. Other times, we went out in trucks or armoured personnel carriers and then we’d walk. A helicopter gunship overhead was a sign there was enemy around, and a good number of them. A Huey Iroquois meant Dustoff: someone had been hit. I still hear choppers as they fly into Bega Hospital. Some blokes go troppo with the noise but I think, ‘I’m alive because of a chopper.’ We would have lost a lot more than five hundred if it weren’t for the choppers. Four to six weeks out in the bush, as the lead forward scout of our section I might be forty to fifty metres ahead in semi-open country—four metres ahead I Was Only Nineteen

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in dense jungle—hacking through the vines and undergrowth with a machete, always on edge for what the next step might bring, waiting, anticipating, alert. The tension ate away at you. That was the war within yourself. When the first shot was fired, it was: thank God, I can fight back. I have a real block for remembering individual operations, trails and villages. Other blokes can name them all. I remember the Viet Cong’s fishy smell from all the catfish they ate, and my closest encounter. Twenty-five metres away five black-clad VC were running parallel to us along a creek bed. Watching from behind a sapling I thought one was wearing a tiger suit! I know one was a kid. I opened up and their return fire stripped the bark. Skip yelled ‘Get back, get back’, but there was no cover fire. I kept firing. I’m positive I killed two, maybe three, one of them being the kid, before getting down on my guts and crawling back. Later, when we went down, we found blood trails but no bodies. If they could, the VC would drag the bodies away so we wouldn’t have the satisfaction of a body count. It was like shooting a rabbit and going to get the bloody feed and it’s gone. When we did find a body we’d tie toggle ropes to each arm and leg and walk away, before pulling the ropes to turn him over in case he was booby-trapped. But for years I’ve thought about that boy: ‘Whose son was that?’ We’d lost a bloke a fortnight before, so it had become a war of getting even. And an Agent Orange sunset through the scrub … Every day the four o’clock rain drenched us to the bone, intensifying the jungle greens and pinks and whites of flowers, the red mud of the high country, the lava hues of the low country: rich soil that could grow thirty bags of wheat to an acre. When the sun spilt through the clouds, the sky transformed into a brilliant orange: Asian orange more than Agent Orange. The rain washed the mouldy smell of mulch and moss away as if opening the doors of a stuffy old library. The thing is, people think of war as shooting, but it’s nature’s weapons that continually bit us on the bum: living in it, being continuously wet, trying to cook a meal under a dripping tarp, or eating it cold, being soaked on piquet or being a meal for a million mosquitoes is nothing like looking at a National Geographic photo. Then there were the leeches, snakes, spiders and scorpions. The worst was the red ant. Once, when I hit an eight-inch leaf, I had thousands of the mongrels crawling all over me. You couldn’t brush them off—they have pincers front and back. And bloody oath they stung—enough to drive you nuts, although nothing like the pain I’ve known since. The smelly bastards were having a feast—I had to strip to get at them, the corporal shouting, ‘Get up! Keep going.’ It was Skip who came to my rescue. 306


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And can you tell me doctor why I still can’t get to sleep? And night time’s just a jungle dark and a barking M-16? The nights were particularly lonely. Terrifying. It was uncanny: back in the lines at Nui Dat most of us snored to blazes, but out in the bush you never heard a single snore. The brain must have got the message: ‘Snoring is deadly.’ Then suddenly it was red alert, enemy were coming through and you’d be awake, waiting, weapon ready. If there were numbers, we’d lie low. The worst part was the waiting. The longer the wait, the greater the tension. The stomach churns. The smallest sound is magnified a hundred decibels: ‘What is it?’ It could be a monkey or a possum rustling in the leaves, or the fleet feet of wild dogs or cats. A couple of blokes saw tigers. Once, on sentry, I heard a thunderous sound: ‘Shit,’ I thought, ‘there’s a thousand coming.’ It was a great ox. I was glad I didn’t fire: I would have killed some poor farmer’s tractor. And what’s this rash that comes and goes, can you tell me what it means God help me, I was only nineteen … Some of the plants were poisonous and gave you rashes. Then there were dermatitis and tinea from being continuously hot and wet. Thanks to Needsy’s advice I never wore socks and rarely wore underpants because once you got a rash it was bloody hard to get rid of. As for rashes years later, maybe the tropics were still in us, or Agent Orange. We’d go through areas that had been stripped of leaves. It was stupid. We were jungle fighters. We needed the cover. Or maybe the rashes came from nerves or the anti-mosquito foggers that were sprayed in our four-man tents back at Nui Dat. And we made our tents a home, VB and pinups on the lockers … My pinup was a photo of Connie. She sent me a lock of her hair and I still have it. We’d hit the beer and have a few fights to release the tension, then write letters. My shortest letter was on toilet paper, ‘Dear Connie, doing okay, love. This letter has to catch the helicopter. Bye, Love Frank.’ We loved our letters. Anyone who got one, his eyes would brighten, and after pouring over it, he would pass it around no matter how intimate the lines. Except for the ‘Dear John’s. If a bloke got one of those, we took turns to stay by his side. We shared so much, we got to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and we covered for these. If someone was in the mood to be left alone, we left him alone. It was the instinct needed to survive: to be totally in tune with your mate and where he was. It was mates that kept you going and also the attitude ‘It’s not going to beat me.’ A sense of humour helped. I remember, in the middle of a contact, Peter Hoskin turning his back on the machine gun to let it I Was Only Nineteen

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cool down and telling a joke. Then it was ‘Righto, better get back to the job.’ If someone was a lazy bugger you got stuck into him but when the chips were down your mates were your number one priority. If not, then you weren’t infantry material. It was a war within yourself But you wouldn’t let your mates down ’til they had you lifted off So you closed your eyes and thought about something else … If I had a moment, I thought about Connie: the last time we held each other, hoping like hell that I would see her again. In her I had someone I could trust, which was important, especially when we read the Australian newspapers and magazines being sent to us. We’d hand them around, saying, ‘Read this fuckin’ bullshit. Why don’t the journalists get out of Saigon and report what’s really going on?’ Never any mention of our Civil Aid teams, Construction Squads and medical clinics. Never any mention of the cruelty we saw. In one village we came across several bodies, beheaded and left as a warning. The massacres of the Montagnards in 67 and the Hue massacre in 68 left thousands dead and were never written up in the newspapers. The posties stopped sending our mail; the wharfies stopped loading supplies. The teachers were telling their students that we were murderers. We developed a catchcry: ‘Wallop a wharfie, punch a postie, taunt a teacher.’ We could have added ‘Murder the media.’ In Vietnam at least we had each other. So you closed your eyes and thought about something else … I’d watch a farmer dressed in white pyjamas and a big straw hat, with a whip in his hand, walking behind his ox as it pulled a single-furrow plough, his whole family working their guts out from dawn to dusk: his wife with a yoke, carrying wooden buckets of water, the children planting rice or weeding. Seeing farms destroyed by spraying and bombs made me angry. I thought of our farm. It had been in the family since 1882. We’d do a Cordon and Search in a village, looking for food and weapon caches, and young men without ID. We were always careful. People lived in thatched, bamboo or timber huts, with basic beds of wood, maybe a wardrobe and table, on dirt floors clean enough to eat off. If they could, they sent their children to the village school. I admired their pride. I remember the gratitude of an old lady when I put foot powder on her grandchild’s clubfoot. Between my broken Vietnamese and her broken English I explained that we could get the child to a hospital, and we brought in a helicopter. Later a medic told me that the child had elephantitis, which was treated. Her token of thanks was a bunch of green bananas, which gave some of us diarrhoea for a week. 308


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Even so, we could never lower our guard. Some villages supported the Viet Cong. You never knew when a man, woman or child was going to produce a grenade and you hoped like Christ that it wasn’t going to be a woman or a child. The ambiguities meant everyone—us and the Vietnamese—were suspicious and nervy, and I always felt sorry that I never got to know the Vietnamese better because, in general, I grew to admire them. Against American B-52s and thousand pound bombs and all the artillery, they fought with the most basic of weapons: beer cans made into bangalore torpedoes, or glass-, nut- and bolt-laced booby traps, or punji pits of spiked bamboo, dipped in poison or excrement. To build those tunnels along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, to live for months in bunker systems out in the bush, to be bombed with two to three times more bombs than were dropped in the whole of World Wars I and II—nothing was going to stop them ridding themselves of another lot of foreigners in the hope of ending a life of unrelenting poverty. Seeing the disparities, the people starving, in the midst of bars and a thriving black market in Vung Tau, some of us started to question: Why are we fighting? Did we swallow propaganda? From day one of training it was: ‘If we don’t stop communism in Vietnam, Indonesia will be next.’ By the mid1970s I smelt a rat. I decided the 1965–66 purge in Indonesia was an excuse for a dictatorship to crack down on political activists and the Chinese. Back in Vietnam, I thought about after the war, how Vietnam would need support to rebuild and hold elections. I can still see Frankie drinking tinnies in the Grand Hotel On a thirty-six hour rec leave in Vung Tau … I only had one rec leave in Vung Tau. There, Aussies were into the grog first, a decent feed second, with sex coming a poor third. For me it was more about holding a woman, an escape from loneliness. There was no guilt. We could die tomorrow. On the first night, having spent hours in a bar watching girls do a strip, and walking out when they brought in a donkey, five of us were caught after eleven o’clock curfew. When we got out of the lockup at ten the next morning we were straight back into it. On the second night, I was having a few beers with two male Negro nurses, who were farmers from the Deep South. Three White American Provos came in: ‘You can’t drink with them black sons of bitches.’ ‘Mate, I drink with who I fuckin’ want to.’ It was on: about twelve Australians and New Zealanders against eight Americans twice our size, except for the Maori boys. Even our padre turned his shirt collar in. I instructed my Negro mates: ‘Now get out before we finish off these blokes.’ So that’s how my second night was also spent in the lockup. It was only the padres’ presence I Was Only Nineteen

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that stopped the Aussie MPs from charging us. A day after that, we were back in the bush. A four-week operation when each step could mean your last one on two legs … We had been in-country seventy-seven days and were heading into the Long Hais. Just before we flew out Needsy confided to me, ‘I’ve got this gut feeling that I won’t be coming back.’ I said, ‘You’ll be right mate’, inside thinking ‘Shit.’ We’d been out three weeks … And then someone yelled out ‘Contact!’ and the bloke behind me swore We hooked in there for hours then a God almighty roar Mates have since told me we broke our night harbour and within half an hour had a contact with four or five enemy. I’d completely wiped it. On this occasion I was manning the platoon radio back to Company Headquarters three to five hundred metres to our rear. To this day, every day, I wonder if I could have prevented what happened next if I’d been out in front. War leaves you wondering. There are a lot of ‘if’s. We’d been hooking through the scrub for hours, watching out for mines and booby traps. Skip, me and another mate were doing a recon. On the radio a message came through that Neil Armstrong had stepped on the moon. I said, ‘Skip, the Yanks have landed on the moon.’ ‘Stuff the Yanks.’ Skip was more concerned with our immediate danger. Five seconds later there’s an almighty thunder crack and I’m knocked arse over head onto my backside. Five metres away Skip lay still. Needsy took over, yelling instructions, ‘Mine drill! Mine drill!’ and to me, ‘Let CHQ know we’ve hit a mine. Let them know Skip’s gone.’ Frankie kicked a mine the day that mankind kicked the moon God help me, he was going home in June … In 1983, after I had heard the song for the first time, Mick rang me: ‘Frank what do you think?’ I said, ‘Top song, Mick, but it was Skip who stood on it.’ It’s like having four different witnesses to a car accident, but I’ve done a lot of thinking: it must have been Skip. Mick says, ‘Well mate, I don’t want to put Skip’s name down.’ I twigged. Mick continued, ‘Frank, would you take it?’ ‘Yeah, I’ll take it. I was closest to him anyway.’ I’ve worn it for all these years. There’s still people who believe I stood on it. Being right beside Skip, I was hit in the legs, back, chest and face. I was bleeding all over the place. First thing I did was put my hand down my trousers. It felt like my balls were swimming in blood. Shrapnel had split my scrotum. 310


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The shrapnel in my chest alone would have killed me except it hit my St Christopher medal hanging on my dog tags. Connie had given it to me before we sailed. Later they had to dig it out. Back in Australia I wrote to the Pope and asked him to reinstate St Christopher as the patron saint of travellers. I’m still waiting for his answer. And I can still see Frankie lying screaming in the jungle ’Til the morphine came and killed the bloody row I was slipping in and out of consciousness from losing so much blood, but I don’t think I was screaming in pain. It didn’t hit me immediately. I know I was screaming into the radio, ‘We need air support. Medivac. This is the lock stat [location situation]. Sunray’s dead, Sunray Minor’s critically wounded.’ Sunray was Skip. Sunray Minor was Gerry Newberry. Gerry lay fifteen metres away. He was yelling, ‘Keep fighting. They’ll get us out.’ He looked over to me. ‘Frank, how are you mate?’ ‘Mate, I think I’ve lost me balls. How you going?’ ‘I think I’ve lost mine too.’ After the first explosion no one was game to move except Needsy and the engineers, who were using metal detectors. Others were following the engineers, digging their bayonets into the mulch at a 45-degree angle to define a path, marking it with white tape. Doc Davis, our medic, was wounded in the stomach, so I reckon it took one and a half hours for the chopper to bring the morphine, along with Dr Trevor Anderson, who was winched down, the chopper hovering eighty feet above in case its rotor blades triggered another mine. But you wouldn’t let your mates down ’til they had you lifted off … Needsy was going from bloke to bloke seeing which one needed first aid and who had priority for Dustoff. He was a rogue but a leader of men. It’s got me stuffed why he didn’t get a medal for what he did that day. Five choppers later, he was helping Dr Trevor Anderson load a man on a stretcher onto the winch. Suddenly: another explosion. Trevor had stepped outside the white tape, and bang, Needsy went down. Shrapnel sliced Trevor’s optic nerve and both his legs were broken. He had wanted to be a surgeon. Beside him, Colonel David Butler was wounded too. And the ANZAC legends didn’t mention mud and blood and tears And the stories that my father told me never seemed quite real. I caught some pieces in my back that I didn’t even feel God help me, I was only nineteen I Was Only Nineteen

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In that two-mine incident we had twenty-three wounded, including Mick Storan, and two killed: Peter Hines and Johnny Needs. During the twelve month tour only one of the original thirty-three blokes in 3 Platoon remained uninjured. I was winched up on a stretcher but I can’t remember the ride back. When I regained consciousness I thought I was in a carpenter’s workshop. They flew me, with my legs in plaster, to Butterworth, then Richmond and finally to the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital in Melbourne. I was six weeks in a coma, twice coming out of it: the first time seeing my parents who were waiting for me when I arrived, on 29 July 1969. My legs and spine were damaged and I was in chronic pain. For eight weeks they talked about amputating, but I stood my ground: ‘No bloody way, I’m hanging onto them.’ Going in and out of operations and covered in plaster, I got others to write letters to Connie, and when finally I made a phone call I told her how much I missed her. Two weeks later, unbeknownst to me, the wife of my OC, Major Peter Belt, arranged for Connie to come south. In those days that was a big step for a young girl. I’m lying there, on the coldest August day for thirty-seven years, when Harry Jenkins, the Ward 54 sister, comes in saying ‘I’ve got a surprise for you Frankie’, and there’s Connie, wearing the yellow summer frock I’d first seen her in, her eyes beaming. I cried my heart out. I felt no pain that day. We drew the curtains and held hands—Connie not knowing where or how to hold me. We didn’t need to talk. I was so happy. My world had come back to me: I have never known joy like it before or since. Connie rented a little flat in Melbourne, bought some secondhand furniture and lived on potatoes. After working all day in a kid’s orthopaedic shoe store, she visited me every night for the next nineteen and a half months— every night. She would not get home till half-past nine. I told her to take Sundays off. ‘Go and see a movie or something.’ But she was there for me. What can I say? I love that woman. I will never be able to repay her. On first meeting my surgeon, Professor Jim Hodge, I had asked, ‘How long am I likely to be here doc?’ and with a flick of his cigarette he said ‘Two years’ and kept walking. I thought ‘Shit, he’s a bit rough’, but I got to know him—I was in his operating theatre often enough. When one leg went septic they had to scrape and break bones all over again. I was clotting everywhere and they had breakfast, lunch and tea while I was under. I had the last rites said over me five times, including three times in Heidelberg. Connie would ring my family: ‘Please come. He’s not expected to last the night.’ They were only a three-hour drive away but during those two years I spent in hospital Dad came twice after the first visit and the only other family members to come were Uncle Tom Hunt and my twin brother, still at university and going to moratorium 312


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marches. I know Dad carried a lot of guilt because I joined up at seventeen when you need a parent’s signature and he had signed. Mum was dead against it. She is a closed book about Vietnam. Then there was the matter of some sheep. I thought I had enough money in stock to buy a house and set Connie and me up, but the sheep had been sold, drought had got the rest, and all the money was gone. It was not until September 2002 that I spoke to Dad for the first time in any depth. When we were alone I came straight out: ‘Dad, I want to clear a few things up. What started the drinking?’ He’d always been a heavy drinker, but a kind man. He was the sort of fellow who took half a sheep to a widow so she could feed her family. I was one of eight children and Mum had foster kids too. Sometimes Dad got frustrated and might bang the table but I never knew him to hit anyone, except once, when I was on a tractor sowing wheat. He apologized the next day. Dad had joined the Light Horse but went to Dutch New Guinea with the Pioneers—first in to set up camp and dig trenches and last out. He is proud of his service and never misses Anzac Day, even at eighty, but he still likes his plonk. Back in 2002, he told me that he had taken to drink because he couldn’t come to grips with his memories of war. He couldn’t sleep. He’d have nightmares and sweats. He would tell us it was malaria. Like me, he missed his mates. Then in 1959, hail destroyed all his crops. It was the last straw. He drank to forget. We talked for hours. I told him about Vietnam. He told me a bit about the horror he had seen. We laughed, we cried, and next morning he said, ‘That was a wonderful night. It’s the most we’ve ever spoke. Thanks son. I slept well last night,’ and he gave me a big hug. The love is still there. But that took thirtythree years, and back in hospital I was sad and confused about my family. Thank God for Connie. Yet I could see no future for us. Who was going to employ me? What sort of life could I give her? It was eating into me and one day, having just come through a massive operation, I told her we had to break it off, that it was cruel to hang on to her. She went home crying. A mate in another bed growled, ‘You fuckin’ fool.’ I picked up the phone and through tears told her ‘I’m sorry.’ In hospital, I studied and passed my matriculation and got a Diploma in Credit Management. Hospital was also good for bonding with other veterans. The old Diggers saw from our injuries that we had been to war. In the book Crossfire, there’s a statistic saying Vietnam veterans saw on average 314 days on the front line in one year compared with an average of forty days over four years for veterans of World War II,10 although nothing can compare with World War I. In that war, my grandfather was in the Somme for the duration. He was a driver, which meant leading the horses carrying the artillery pieces. There I Was Only Nineteen

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was no radio. Half the time the telephone lines were down. Moving troops meant marching for days. They fought in the mud of the trenches among the dead and wounded. In one 24-hour period a Division (twelve to fifteen thousand) lost 5724 men. That’s the whole town of Bega. My grandfather detested the English generals for that reason. Like my father, my grandfather didn’t talk about the war. It was my grandmother who told me how he had flashbacks, nightmares and nerves. He’d get up at two in the morning, go out and light the forge and make shoes for the horses. But he was a strong man with a great sense of humour, a loving, caring man, who’d have two beers at the Shamrock Hotel on a Friday night and that would be it. But, I remember, just before he died, he was in church listening to a visiting Catholic priest screeching hell, fire and damnation from the pulpit before concluding, ‘Now let us pray for rain.’ Everyone’s head went down. In the silence the whole church heard, ‘Stupid bugger! What’s the use of praying for rain when the wind’s in the nor-west?’ I was the altar boy and after the service I was in the sacristy with the priest. We walked down the stairs and there’s Grandpa waiting, shaking, red in the face. He says to the priest, ‘Why don’t you blokes ever speak of love? You talk about hell. Well, I’ve been to hell and back several times, so don’t you ever do fire and brimstone in this church again. If you do, you’ll have me to answer to.’ I would have liked him to live longer. On Anzac Day three generations could have marched together. One day the nurses decided to take three of us to a movie in Bourke Street. We were all in wheelchairs, wrapped in dressing gowns with drips hanging off us. I was still in a plaster case; one fellow had one leg, the other had no legs. We came out of the movies and suddenly there’s a shout: ‘Child killers!’ About twenty long-haired people joined in chanting ‘Murderers, rapists, child killers.’ I copped eggs, tomatoes, pies and lettuce. All they needed was the bacon and I would have had a full breakfast! Other people stopped to look. Not one tried to intervene. It was supposed to be an outing to get us back into the community! Instead I felt absolute shame, embarrassment, anger and betrayal. I wanted to lash out, ‘You pigs, why don’t you go over there and see for yourselves?’ Okay I didn’t know about Agent Orange at that stage, but I did know that no Aussie did anything like what the Americans did at My Lai in 1968. I saw only one incident involving an Australian soldier. Out of revenge he went to cut the finger off a corpse, but the corporal stepped in and gave him a bloody good punch for even thinking about it. I lay in the hospital bed feeling totally alone. That night Connie came in and I started telling her. She pulled the curtains and jumped on the bed and hugged me while I cried. I kept saying, ‘Why are they doing this? Needy’s not 314


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alive. Skip’s not alive.’ That night I pledged that I was going to help Vietnam veterans feel good about themselves. Fortunately not everyone was like the protesters. Birchip Council had given the nine of us who went to Vietnam out of a population of 850 an individual send-off with a wallet of money. They sent over newspapers, and later, on request from the RSL, gave us all a Certificate of Appreciation. I was lucky to have come from the Mallee. It made up for the dog’s breakfast I was served outside the cinema. What hurt most of all in those first nineteen months in hospital, then eight months, then three months, was that I never saw one mate from Vietnam. The team had split. We came from all over Australia and everyone was too busy coping and getting on with life. But I would have loved someone to visit. I wanted to know how they were, how my best mate, Jimmy Kelly, and Gerry Newberry were. I had never felt so alone. After nineteen months I got weekend leave and would go and stay with Connie. On a five-day break from hospital we married: 17 October 1970. We flew to Noosa for an overnight honeymoon, and on our return to Melbourne I went straight back to hospital for another operation. In late April the following year, I started living with Connie, still in constant pain and a plaster case. Connie always had to be the proactive lover. Within a week I landed a job with Skil Sher Power Tools, licking stamps, and within a fortnight I was a clerk in the export department. Connie would drive me to work and I’d take the tram home, the driver and conductor lifting me up and putting me in the front where the prams go. On the way I’d stop off at the Harp Hotel in Kew, looking for male company more than anything else, but I was a silly bugger: pissed as a parrot, I was proud enough to say ‘I’m a Vietnam veteran’ and the number of blues I got into meant at least half a dozen times the cops brought me home. I was missing my mates, and there was no one on the same plateau. It was: ‘How’s the weather?’ ‘Jesus Christ, get real.’ I was a peace-loving man, a happy drunk around Connie—a sing-along, party animal—but it was tough on her. She tried to get me to talk about the war but I couldn’t. It wasn’t about signing the secrecy document. A lot of us couldn’t talk. She was caring but she’d cry and say, ‘Frank, when you’re drunk you are not the man I fell in love with. Your drinking is pulling us apart.’ I was angry with myself for hurting her but didn’t have the answers. After two months I said: ‘It’s not fair on you. I’ve got to get back to the country.’ Connie saved me from alcoholism by being there and being honest. That’s what I love about her: she was a great friend, a wonderful lover and mother, and a person you never gave directions to. We were equals. We discussed matters but she made her own decisions. I Was Only Nineteen

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We came to Bega and everything sailed along, more or less. I was still in severe pain and still drank, but not on a daily basis. I got work as a credit manager for a Holden dealer and then set up my own enquiry agency, being paid by solicitors to serve papers. Our daughter, Kerry, was born. Connie wanted to be a stay-at-home mother and I agreed. Seventeen months after Kerry we had triplets: Pam, Brett and James. We got into a routine of being on duty alternate nights. If it was my night Connie would go to the end room, which we’d padded to block the noise of crying babies. That’s the way we kept our sanity. I’d come home and do the laundry and iron while Connie looked after the children. It was tiring: four babies under the age of two. As well, from 1972 I was working with Vietnam veterans, when they were still outcasts and long before there were any counselling services or police trained in siege work. It was crisis management. Wives would ring, saying ‘My husband’s gone off his head. Please help.’ One family lived in the Snowy Mountains. The veteran had gone on a wild rampage shooting the chooks and dogs. On the phone his wife was hysterical. She was worried for her young children. I told her I was coming up. I wore the giggle hat, the floppy green hat of the Australian Army. It was a two-hour drive. The scene was shocking—dead animals draped over the barbed wire fence and on the ground. I lay on my belly yelling, ‘The password’s Macho. It’s Skip here. Permission to enter.’ A man dressed in army greens and carrying a shotgun walked towards me. ‘Enter.’ I got up, saying ‘Stand down.’ He was totally disorientated. He was in Vietnam. The animals were VC. Not game to take him out of Vietnam, I got him to talk about the contact, careful not to say the wrong word because Vietnam veterans in that state can be suspicious and unpredictable. I did a lot of listening and gradually drew him back to: ‘Well, we’re going on leave tomorrow. We’re off to Vunkas, so get some rest. I’ll take over.’ I slipped him a sleeping tablet, saying it was for malaria. While he slept I got his wife and the children out, giving directions to go to a safe place, then woke him, saying ‘Righto mate, we’re on leave—come on.’ I drove him to Kenmore Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Goulburn. After that, his wife left him and he got a pension for PTSD. The flashbacks are only for a short time. Sometimes they remember what’s happened. Usually booze is involved. Showing proof I am a Vietnam veteran is my ticket in, then I use the language—‘Stand down. Relax. It’s Skip. I’m coming through’—until I get them back to reality. Then it’s: ‘Tell me what triggered it.’ Getting them talking is the hardest part but I keep them talking to get it out of their system, meanwhile getting the wife and kids to safety, especially if there’s a weapon involved.

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Over the years, I’ve been greeted by a rifle or a shotgun nineteen times. I take them to a doctor or, after it opened in the early 1980s, to the Vietnam Veterans’ Counselling Service in Canberra. I taught myself, although in 1977, while in Sydney for another operation, I followed Ted Noffs around Kings Cross to see how he dealt with people. Some Vietnam veterans became street people. It made me think back to the 1950s and the swaggies on the road. Many were World War II veterans. Dad always gave them a feed. The veterans’ experiences were not alien. In 1975, four years after moving to Bega, when the triplets were two years old, I was working a hundred hours a week and in horrific pain. One night at two o’clock in the morning, Connie found me on piquet in the front yard, hiding behind the trees. She called me in and I’m saying, ‘Sshhh, the nogs are coming.’ I was stone cold sober. Connie took me back to bed. Another night, the same year, after I’d knocked off work at the RSL, only one tinnie under my belt, I got in the car and the next seventeen hours are a complete vacuum. My father-in-law found me at 3 p.m. the following day parked on the side of the road south of Eden, crying uncontrollably. I’d done 384 miles on the speedometer. He took me to Bega Hospital and they put me on medication and kept me overnight. When I got home I threw the medication down the toilet. I was determined to do it myself. But working with Vietnam veterans is draining and saddening, and often I come home a wreck. In one ten-day period I dealt with three suicides. There had been no recognition of these blokes’ courage and service. They were estranged from their families and had left me as next of kin. I was called in to identify the bodies, attend the Coroner’s Court and do the burial services. Back and forth, back and forth: Sale, Nowra and one up near the Snowy Mountains. I have never been so sad and angry. The one in Sale had been travelling from friend to friend and had been dead in his car a long time. Another had hung himself in the bush shack he was living in. Many veterans prefer the isolation of the bush. It is their way of coping with a society that rejected them. Some drink heavily or smoke dope. Others live a clean life. One I know wired up his fence with cans and other rattly things as if it was a perimeter. Some veterans have trouble keeping a job. They do their block. Others are seeking the adrenalin that the war gave them. One fellow kept the adrenalin going by robbing banks and houses. He had spent sixteen years in prison before coming to the south coast to start a new life. I advized him to go to the local policeman and let him know that he was in the area. He said, ‘Why the fuck should I tell them?’ ‘To take the pressure off.’ He saw the policeman and later the policeman rang me, ‘Gee Frank, that was a character you sent me—a bit rough but I was probably a bit rough too. As he was leaving

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he says, “By the way I don’t touch anything under $100 000.” ’ The copper felt the area was safe knowing that. One veteran spent a lot of time in prison for hurting paedophiles. He saw too many kids hurt in the war, so he says ‘We have to protect kids.’ Never married. He says, ‘I’m not worthy of having children.’ I’ve been to too many funerals. Only recently, I spoke at one for a 55-yearold man who served in 3 Battalion. For years he had been kick-starting the day with a cask of wine. His three sons were very, very angry. Father Mick started the service: ‘This is not a time to judge. It is a time to forgive.’ I followed. ‘I have a story to tell you that your father asked me not to tell, but now is the time. When his unit’s forward scout hit a bunker and was badly wounded K went forward, risking his own life to drag him back. As K held the dying man in his arms the man kept saying, “Tell Stephanie I love her. Promise me you will”, but over the years K couldn’t face Stephanie, he couldn’t keep his promise.’ I told the boys: ‘Think of that man of twenty-two, younger than you. Picture his zest for life, his lust and dreams. Your father was a good man, he just couldn’t rise above the war. Don’t forget why so many Vietnam veterans couldn’t handle life afterwards. We all know about the heroes of Tobruk, El-Alamein and the Kokoda Trail, but what about Long Tan, where 108 Diggers fought 2500 enemy? What about the battles for BALMORAL and CORAL in 68? 3 Battalion was over there for TET. They saw some big battles. So please don’t judge this man by his last years. Judge him for being the hero that he was.’ As I walked out of the church Father Mick grabbed me, ‘Thank you, Frank. You’ve given them back their father.’ My life has been about acceptance and giving people back their dignity. Many Aborigines around Bega have served in war. Les Alderidge’s great uncles served in World War II. A Japanese guard in Changi Prison had stabbed one brother to death in front of the other. Then there’s the Parson family, the Stewarts and the Dixons. For Anzac Day 2000, Geoff McCallum, the historical officer, and I, then secretary of the RSL sub-branch and vice-president of the club, decided to include the Aboriginal flag at the front of the march. This was a first. Les Aldridge asked the elders’ permission to carry the flag and the honour was given to Adrian Luff, a Torres Strait Islander who served in the Navy for eight years. At least in the early days I had Connie to talk to. She was a great leveller. After those three suicides I lay on the floor, asking, ‘Why did he do it?’ Connie said, ‘His time was up Frank. He was lonely; he didn’t have love. We all need love.’ We talked and cuddled until making love was a natural progression. Sharing with Connie and the children counteracted the horror. It made life worthwhile.

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For seven years of my marriage I’d go to bed, have a cuddle, then lie on a blanket on the floorboards because the mattress was too uncomfortable for my back, hips and legs. That was the only way I could sleep. Every day I was in pain and only rarely did I take a painkiller. At one stage Connie said, ‘Frank if I have to dress you, you will have to stop work. That’s it, ’cos I’m not going through this any more—seeing you in so much pain.’ Sometimes I cried with pain, although never in front of the kids. With them I’d put on a big smiling clown face. I didn’t have a snappy temper but I did have moods. I’d go silent for hours and I wouldn’t be aware of it. Connie would say, ‘Frank, what are you thinking about?’ Sometimes I didn’t know. Other times I knew: I was missing my mates, wondering what they were doing. I’d say, ‘Okay, Con, would you call me if I do it again please?’ I always took check and can honestly say the kids were never afraid of me. One night in 1983 I got a phone call: ‘I’m John Schumann from Redgum. Have you heard of the band?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well I’ve just written a song about Mick Storan and you.’ The next day I met John and Denny in their motel room and John sang the song. ‘What do you think?’ ‘It’s brilliant, you bastard. But I’ve got to go for a walk.’ I walked along Tathra beach for forty minutes. Cried my eyes out. Went back in and Denny’s got stuck into him for upsetting me. John says, ‘Do you feel like a beer?’ ‘Yeah.’ Out came the long necks. After two each, John asked if I would agree to the song being recorded with my name in it. I couldn’t give him an answer. I have always believed it was not me who stood on the mine. Three weeks later I had to go to Sydney. I visited the psych ward at Concord Hospital and saw all these veterans—some I knew—walking around like zombies. The next day I spoke to children of Vietnam veterans at the VVCS. As I listened to their stories, what came out time and time again was they had been walking on crystal all their lives, frightened to do or say the wrong thing. Dad was temperamental or drunk and would fly off the handle for no apparent reason. That evening I met a group of partners of veterans and they described the same thing. The one common denominator was fear. After midnight I got back to the motel where John Schumann and I were staying and said ‘If that song means that every soldier is Frankie, and every doctor and nurse are Frankie, and if it can help the women and kids, let’s go with it.’ Six months later, when all the publicity started and we travelled around Australia promoting the song, that’s what I tried to put across in the

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interviews. The song was number one for six weeks and in the Top 20 for twenty weeks. That same year I had a phone call from a Sue Earle, Johnny Needs’s sister. She and her mother wanted to see me. I flew up to Sydney and talked to them about our respect for Needsy, his larrikinism and heroism, how the day he died he had walked from one injured bloke to the next, heedless of the mines. Nothing had ever been explained to them. Early the next year Bega Valley Shire Council held a plebiscite on whether the shire should be declared a nuclear-free shire. A clear majority voted in favour but Council refused to adopt the policy. I was president of the RSL sub-branch and people started ringing up—all the environmentalists and anti-war people—saying, ‘Frank, we’re marching in protest against the Council’s decision. Will you join us?’ I said I would think about it. Connie and the children were marching. The night before the march I announced to the family, ‘I’ve decided to march.’ They knew I had been in a difficult position and Connie hugged me, saying, ‘What made your mind up?’ ‘Well here I am going around saying the wars were all about protecting democracy and in our own shire democracy is not being practised.’ We marched as a family in among the orange people, the long hair and trinkets. People watching were shouting ‘Get a bloody haircut. Go and have a bath’, then ‘Shit, there’s Frank Hunt!’ I’m in a suit wearing my RSL badge. I had been asked to do a twenty-minute speech at the end of the march. In it I challenged the councillors, particularly those who’d seen service overseas: ‘You speak on Anzac Day about defending freedom and democracy but today you’ve sold out. You either practise what you preach and honour this plebiscite, or stop speaking to kids and setting double standards.’ Next day, one of the counsellors who was a World War II vet came round. I didn’t know what to expect but he shook my hand and congratulated me, saying, ‘You’re right. I have changed my mind.’ The following day I went to the RSL. Nobody talked to me. I was ostracized for years. But the night I made that decision to march was the night I became a man. I didn’t join as part of a mob. There was no propaganda to get me there. It was my decision, whatever the cost. I was channelling most of my energy into veterans through the RSL, the Vietnam Veterans Association and Legacy. The triplets’ birthday is 18 August, Long Tan Day, so from the early 1980s they spent their birthdays at the Vietnam veterans’ picnic, until finally they said, ‘We’re not going any more, Dad.’ I pulled out as president of the Vietnam Veterans Association and started spending more time with them.

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Connie was putting her energies into studying, counselling and the women’s refuge. The difference was she knew when to cut off and say, ‘No I can’t help tonight—I’ve got something on with the children’, whereas I would say, ‘Okay I’ll be there in five minutes.’ I should have read the signs. Connie and I hadn’t been talking much, and one day in 1985, when the kids were twelve and thirteen, she says to me, ‘Frank, I can’t handle it any more. I need space to sort myself out. I’m leaving.’ ‘What about the kids?’ ‘Frank—you’re a good father. The children can stay with you. I’ll miss them, but we’ll see each other.’ She had been through so much with me, she wanted a different lifestyle, and had made arrangements to move in with a female friend. An hour after Connie’s announcement we were driving her to her friend’s place. The kids and I cried all the way home. I was angry with myself. I knew I had thrown away something very, very dear. I can’t remember whether I made tea or not, but I put them to bed, moving from room to room talking and cuddling. They couldn’t understand why it was happening. I explained that Mum needed time out—that I had to accept responsibility. We were all in shock. A week later the children and I held a meeting to make a few house rules: ‘Right, tea’s going to be at 6.30. Everyone has to make their own beds and put their dirty washing in the laundry basket and that includes football gear and wet towels. If we want to do something, we sit and discuss it.’ I didn’t have the money to buy the latest shoes and sports gear but I always made sure the kids were fed, dressed and their clothes ironed. The beautiful thing was, apart from the first six months of hurt, which was probably more out of concern for me, the kids maintained a wonderful rapport with their mother. They would phone her and visit her, no pre-arrangements. Connie and I never had a bad word to say about each other. When I went to my solicitor to arrange the property settlement, the solicitor said, ‘Frank ’cos you’ve got the kids we can look at 80–20 or 90–10.’ I said, ‘No, 50–50. I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for Connie.’ I knew Connie must have been going through hell not having the kids around her. A year before the separation, I had gone on a TPI pension, and sixteen years after we separated, I rang Connie and said, ‘How would you like an early Christmas gift?’ She said, ‘Thanks. What are you thinking of?’ ‘A divorce.’ ‘Oh that’d be good. No regrets Frank?’ I said, ‘None whatsoever Connie. What we had was beautiful. I’m sad I lost it but we’ve got four wonderful children. What more could we ask for?’

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As teenagers, they always had their friends over and many a party was held at home. If they were going out I would give them a curfew and would lie awake or read until the car pulled up. When one started coming home with red eyes I said, ‘Oh dear, hay fever’s very prevalent at the moment, isn’t it?’ ‘Yeah Dad.’ I always had the attitude that kids were going to experiment—that’s part of growing up—but I advised, ‘Mate don’t let any substance control you. Just remember the Hunt family has a record of substance abuse.’ I let them make their own decisions but if they wanted to discuss anything I was there. In 1987 the kids and I went up to Sydney for the Welcome Home Parade. Two days before, I had fallen down some steps and put everything out of whack so I was in a wheelchair. We marched with Skip’s wife Norma and their child Shane, and Needsy’s sister, Sue Earle. I met up with Gerry Newberry for the first time since the war. The march brought Vietnam veterans out of the woodwork. At the concert in the Domain afterwards John Schumann sang I Was Only Nineteen to an audience of ninety thousand, and here’s me up on stage in a bloody wheelchair, along with my kids. Soon after the Welcome Home Parade, both James and Brett began playing music and now Brett’s a full-time musician. He plays the harmonica and guitar and writes his own songs. His music is very powerful, full of passion and soul. James also writes songs, plays the bruin (an Irish drum) and a mean slide guitar. In 2000, Kerry spent six months in Mongolia working for a Mongolian Youth Development Centre. After ten years of democracy there was more political freedom but not the same level of social support so while she was there people voted in a communist government. One-third of the population are seasonal nomads living in gers, the traditional tents, with herds of sheep and indigenous horses. When doing a research project in the province of Bayan Ulgii, next to Kazakhstan, she talked with children of these families, assessing their needs. One project was with girls at risk. To prevent Mongolia developing a child prostitution market, they were teaching the girls literacy skills and alternative lines of work. Hearing all this, I told her, ‘I think you’re fighting the biggest war of all Kerry.’ As for Pam, we are extremely close. She was the one who came with me to Anzac Day and, if I was in pain, made me a cup of tea. She is a tiny, bubbly person but try and bounce her seven stone—you’ve got no chance. That’s what I love about my kids: their honesty and ability to have a blue and make up. They never grandstand; they’re practical and real and would do anything for each other. For five years I was single. When I made a friend the kids were glad for me. At first I thought, ‘Bugger this courting business—this is tough work.’ I 322


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felt fifteen again. We never lived together and after fourteen years the relationship ended. I am still coming to grips with that. My children no longer live in Bega, so being involved with veterans and other people’s children keeps me going. I have built up a bit of a reputation for helping young people. Kids tell other kids, ‘Go and see Frank.’ I saved one girl from suicide: jumped in the dam, fully clothed in winter, when she tried to drown herself. I was asked to lead the search for a sixteen-year-old lad who went missing whilst surfing with his mates, walking the fifteen kilometres from Merimbula to Wallagoot Lake. We never found his body. Afterwards I couldn’t get my calliper off because my leg was so swollen. Only recently I was coming back late at night after helping some teenage girls who were being harassed. I went arse over tit. I have four grazes on my face from different falls. I’ve never had PTSD although recently Kerry said, ‘Dad, for seven years we heard and saw you having nightmares’. I was shocked. I never knew I had them. These days my kids are telling me I should slow down, that I’ve got to learn to say ‘No’. I am tired, burnt out, Vietnammed out. The pain is constant, but some days it is extreme and I can hardly move. My doctor says, ‘Frank, over the years the pain has taken a toll on your organs. You’ve got to start taking painkillers.’ I know the break-up of my relationship has knocked me about. It could be psychosomatic. My concentration is lapsing but being involved in the lives of kids is a breath of fresh air. I run a Young Speakers Club and have talked to more than ten thousand kids around Australia. My father’s generation told us nothing about World War II. I am more honest: I tell them that if they enlist they must be prepared that one day they may be ordered to pick up a gun with real bullets, that the bottom line of war is to kill or be killed. I tell them that, above all, we must be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and do a self-appraisal. I talk about the 6 Ps: proper preparation prevents pisspoor performance. They get a laugh out of that. I tell them about my heroes: Graham Edwards, a member of Federal Parliament from Western Australia, who lost both legs in a mine explosion; and Dr Trevor Anderson, who was blinded in a mine explosion and went on to study psychiatry by Braille. He never saw his children, yet the love in that family is unbelievable. Sadly in 2004 he died. I talk about my other dead heroes: Johnny Needs and Peter Hines, and I go on to describe the value of teamwork, how when I was a kid, a farmer broke his leg and everybody left their own wheat crop to go to his farm with thirteen harvesters and twenty trucks to harvest his crop. I talk about how that sort of teamwork seems to be disappearing. There’s a social breakdown where people don’t trust each other or are too busy chasing the dollar to visit each other. We’ve got to say ‘Hang on, what are we doing to ourselves?’ I suggest ‘choice’ is an overrated word: I’ll make a choice that suits me but I Was Only Nineteen

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is that choice going to benefit the community? I tell them it’s got to start with them. Then I talk about Anzac Day, about why it is becoming more popular, not because of national pride but because people appreciate the sacrifices of others so we can live well. But more than that—this came to me in bed one night at three in the morning—we have peace in Australia because those who come back from war do not teach the next generation to hate. My grandfather and father never taught their children to hate the Germans, Turks or Japanese. I never taught my children to hate the Vietnamese. In other countries you see hate being passed down from generation to generation, but here we live next door to the people we fought. For me, that’s what the Anzac tradition is about.

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NOTES 1 Always a Little Further 1

The first public fact is that in 1994 a group of Taliban was asked to guard a Pakistan trade convoy travelling through Afghanistan.

2 A Bent Stalk Laden With Grain 2 3

The point in weapons handling where rounds are chambered, the safety latch is off and you take a sight picture of your target. ‘El-Gorah’ was the spelling on the old maps used by Copeland. Basically the Arabic ‘El’ and ‘Al’ are interchangeable.

3 Out of the Closet 4

Phonetic spelling of ‘Kibyjeo’; also spelt ‘Kabaya’.

4 Camaraderie and Commonsense 5

In May–June 2004 there were two parliamentary enquiries. One was conducted into Lieutenant Colonel Lance Collins’s allegations of failures and biases in the Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO). Collins alleged that the DIO failed to predict the fall of Suharto and the resumption of India’s nuclear testing in 1998 and the 2000 coup in the Solomon Islands, and that, from as early as mid-1998, the DIO and the Government had a pro-Indonesian bias towards Collins’s intelligence reports into the TNI’s complicity in the violence towards the East Timorese. He accused them of failing to act on his prediction that there would be an escalation of violence leading up to and after the referendum on independence. He also claimed that a 24-hour blackout on intelligence in December 1999 was the result of a deliberate action rather than technical difficulties. Collins was Cosgrove’s senior intelligence officer during INTERFET, and he was later victimised and his career prospects ruined for his stance on East Timor. The other controversial enquiry investigated when and how much the Government knew about extreme prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Three Australian Army legal officers worked for the US legal office in Baghdad—one in particular, Major George O’Kane, being featured in the enquiry. During his six months’ deployment up to February 2004, Major O’Kane visited Abu Ghraib prison five times, in November drafting a response to the International Red Cross’s report on prisoner conditions and mistreatment, including prisoners being left naked and handcuffed to the bed. In January 2004, O’Kane facilitated a second visit of the IRC to the prison. Both the Minister of Defence, Senator Robert Hill, and CDF General Peter Cosgrove claimed that O’Kane, in his weekly reports to his Australian military commanders, saw and mentioned nothing of the extreme abuses of prisoners that were made public in May 2004. However, his reports did express a concern about understaffing and a lack of training in interrogation protocols. After some prevaricating, the Government claimed they had first been made aware of allegations of extreme prisoner abuse in January 2004 but that they were not informed of the details until April, a month before photographs of prisoner abuse became public.

Notes

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6 A Real War 6 7

Made with palm fronds bound together by wooden slats. Montagnard is pronounced like ‘mountain yard’ and is the French for the mountain people who call themselves Dega, De and Ga being their Adam and Eve. A fiercely independent people, they lived in the Central Highlands of Vietnam for at least 2000 years, remaining isolated from the Cham, Khmer, Lao and Vietnamese kingdoms, relying on forest products and rice growing. General Diem began resettling Vietnamese on Montagnard land and in 1964 their peaceful fight for independence became militant. During the war many of their villages were cleared to create free fire zones. Other villages were taken over by the communists. By 1975, eighty-five per cent of all Montagnard villages had been destroyed or abandoned, and 200 000 Montagnard had been killed. After the war their leaders were sent to prison or re-education camps. A few escaped and formed a resistance movement. The Communist Government prohibited their traditional beliefs, cultural and farming practices in the name of progress and resettled Vietnamese on Montagnard land, the remaining 800 000 Montagnard now living as displaced refugees.

8 War and Politics 8

In August 2001 the crew of a Norwegian merchant vessel called the Tampa saved 430 asylum seekers when their boat sank. On approaching Christmas Island off northern Australia, Australian military personnel boarded the ship and forced it into international waters. After a ten-day stand-off asylum seekers were refused entry into Australia. Instead, special camps were set up for them in Nauru and other places. On 7 October, Phillip Ruddock, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs in the Howard Government, announced that asylum seekers on another vessel, SIEV 4, SIEV standing for Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel, had thrown their children overboard. Photographs taken on 8 October, showing people in the water as their boat was sinking, were used as proof of the story. Two women drowned in the sinking. Others were rescued but despite the Navy telling various government ministers and public servants that no children were thrown overboard, the Government kept to their original story until after the election in November. Later it was revealed that the Navy had fired warning shots near the vessel and boarded it, before it sunk. On 21 October, the sinking of another vessel that became known as SIEV X, resulted in 353 asylum seekers drowning. The 44 survivors were taken to Indonesia.

13 I Was Only Nineteen 9

10

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I Was Only Nineteen, words and music by John Schumann, © Universal/MCA Music Publishing Pty. Ltd., All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted with permission. Peter Haran & Robert Kearney, Crossfire, New Holland, 2001, p. xvii.

Notes

Forged by War: Australians in Combat and Back Home

Back Home

Back Home

Forged by Greed

Forged by Greed

Back Home Again

Blue Hole Back Home

Back Home Again

Back Home Again

The Girl Back Home

Come Back Home

The Boys Back Home

The Way Back Home

The Boys Back Home

By Temptations and By War

By Temptations and By War

By Temptations And By War

By Temptations and By War

By Temptations and By War

By Temptations and By War

By Temptations And By War

By Temptations and By War

Forged

Haunted by Combat: Understanding PTSD in War Veterans Including Women, Reservists, and Those Coming Back from Iraq

Back Home on the Farm

Forged in Fire

In Fire Forged

Forged in Battle

Forged in Battle

Forged in Fire

Forged by War: Australians in Combat and Back Home

Back Home

Back Home

Forged by Greed

Forged by Greed

Back Home Again

Blue Hole Back Home

Back Home Again

Back Home Again

The Girl Back Home

Come Back Home

The Boys Back Home

The Way Back Home

The Boys Back Home

By Temptations and By War

By Temptations and By War

By Temptations And By War

By Temptations and By War

By Temptations and By War

By Temptations and By War

By Temptations And By War

By Temptations and By War

Forged

Haunted by Combat: Understanding PTSD in War Veterans Including Women, Reservists, and Those Coming Back from Iraq

Back Home on the Farm

Forged in Fire

In Fire Forged

Forged in Battle

Forged in Battle

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