Later, I asked him how long it had taken. He said, ‘I love my wood carving, mate, it only took me a morning and a bit. I just got up really early one morning and felt proud of ya and smoked a really big joint and carved this out for ya. Ya’ll have to come out to the farm one time.’ He said he had carved designs and faces and totems into a lot of fence posts around his farm. One day I’ll go and see them all.
No doubt a few people in Dorrigo were surprised at what I’d done. They generally said it was the cow shit and the mountain air that had made me what I was. I got letters from Vaughan’s parents, and from Jamie Bleakley, whose dad used to coach us at soccer. My friends from my North American period got in touch. Drew said he’d googled my name and couldn’t believe what came up. He wasn’t alone.
There were notes of recognition from people that blew me away. PACOM, the Pacific commander of the American fleet, sent me his hat. The US General James Mattis, who had commanded the first push into Afghanistan, sent me a letter. But alongside those, the things that most affected me were letters from kids in Australia to say thanks. In Canberra, a lady came up in the street and said she was proud to meet me. She suddenly started crying and gave me a hug. She said her father was a vet who hadn’t talked about the war. It was pretty moving, happening out of the blue on the streets of Canberra. Seeing how it affected others was what brought the magnitude of the Cross home to me.
I wanted to help Legacy. Meeting old diggers was an absolute privilege. I got to meet POW survivors from Changi, vets with two Military Crosses from different wars. I met Georgie Palmer from the 39th battalion at Kokoda and got him to sign a photo for me. The World War II vets spoke to me differently, soldier to soldier. Those who have seen combat have a more subtle approach, but are also more direct in the way they talk about it. You’re sharing an experience, and you enjoy mutual respect.
Meeting Keith Payne on the day of the ceremony was a high point, as was going to Geelong to meet Ted Kenna a week later. Ted, who was the last World War II VC recipient in New Guinea, was about ninety, and when I first walked into his house, he had a smoky look in his eyes. His daughter and wife were sort of interpreting his croaky words for me. He’d got shot in the face three weeks after his VC action, and the first time he saw this nurse in the hospital, he said he was going to marry her. By the time he got out they were engaged, and here they were, more than sixty years later. He joked about smuggling alcohol to the front, and trudging through the jungle hung-over. His eyes lit up. The smokiness went out of them and he was young again, back in the 1940s. It’s those little things that are the most enjoyable – talking to a veteran and seeing that reaction. I get more out of that than from making a speech to a thousand people.
When Ted died a year or so later, I was overseas, so it was a privilege to have met him. I’ll never forget, at one point, him turning to me and saying sharply, ‘Don’t ever let it go to your head. That’s the only thing I can tell you about it. Don’t let it go to your head.’
As we left, he settled back down into his chair and the smoky glaze went back over his eyes.
*
The tug-of-war inside me was starting to build up after a couple of months. There was no road map for this. There wasn’t a template that could be followed or used to navigate how to deal with such an amazing honour. Keith Payne had done his bit, but that was nearly forty years ago. Society and media, especially social media, has changed a lot since then. I don’t think anyone expected another VC to be awarded. So we basically made it up as we went along. I learnt a lot and had to develop a strategy of deciding when and what to do. I enjoyed going to Kapooka and Singleton, re-creating the ambush in a ‘Lessons Learnt’ seminar. I loved doing school events. I felt positively honoured to be taken to the War Memorial for a behind-the-scenes look at some of the treasures in the archives, such as letters from Simpson and World War II POWs. Even so, I never got used to being this VC guy.
One day Emma and I were walking into Army Headquarters at Russell Barracks, Canberra, and an army officer saluted me going through the turnstiles. I was just wearing jeans and a T-shirt. I said to Emma, ‘Who was he saluting?’
‘You, you idiot!’
But there was also the pressure of being a so-called celebrity. Backyard Blitz requested to come and fix up our house. (Emma nearly killed me when I said no.) Men’s Health wanted to stick me on the cover. I was invited to hundreds of cocktail parties, which wasn’t my world anyway, and sometimes all I was meant to do was be a celebrity ‘name’. When I pushed back against that, Patto stepped in to play the bad cop. He knew where I was coming from. The army wanted at least one good news story to come out of Afghanistan, when all the media were running with was the roll call of the latest fatalities. I was pushing back a bit because I never thought an SAS trooper was the right type of person to be doing that kind of hearts-and-minds work in Australia. We don’t ask for praise, we get on with the job, we’re anonymous – that’s the fundamental ethos of the Regiment. It looks for humility in soldiers. To go from that to being put on the front page, on radio and TV, and getting letters was bizarre and went against the grain, and I felt the pressure.
Patto and Brigadier David Mulhall, the Chief of Staff of Army Headquarters, were key influences in helping me deal with that. First, I had to accept that you don’t choose the Victoria Cross, it chooses you. It can be awarded to anyone who is deemed to meet the requirements, regardless of whether that person comes from good stock or has the right family bloodlines. The truth is many recipients are ordinary people. An Australian VC recipient once said that everyone has a VC moment inside them. What makes it so special is because it can be awarded to any rank. I had to remember that I represented something much bigger than myself. So if I blew someone off and came across as an arsehole, they would remember something bad about the Victoria Cross. I had to remember, from my experience with that lady in Canberra, that it might be an amazing experience for someone else, which you can destroy by acting badly. People may forget what you said or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
The burning issue for me, even more so in mid-year than when I’d first asked the question of Ken Gillespie in that café at Cottesloe, was whether I would be allowed to rejoin my squadron. I really wanted to do another trip as a scout. If I missed out on 2009, the way our rotations were working, I wouldn’t be going again until 2011. My concern was that I would never get back to being a soldier. My career was still young; I had a lot of things I still wanted to do. Everyone was telling me, ‘That’s it for you, you’re never going back. They’ll wrap you up in cotton wool, the politicians won’t put you at risk. You’ll be like Keith.’
There was a tradition behind this belief. ‘Diver’ Derrick was a VC who went back in World War II and then got killed. There was a bit of public backlash about it. Ray Simpson went back to Vietnam after winning his VC, but was put in a less hot area. Keith was wounded and had a stomach ulcer, and by the time he was better Vietnam was over. The other two who won the Cross in Vietnam died in those contacts. The circumstances are always different, so there was no law about VCs not being allowed to go back to war. And the inner me, the deviant, was saying, If you tell me I can’t do something, I’ll go do it. I made it my mission. It was hard on Emma and Kaylee, who would have been very happy for me to be in cotton wool, but I was so determined, I said I would just show up in Tarin Kowt of my own accord, and they would have to take me in.
I put the argument to my superiors that if I couldn’t be a soldier over there, why had they spent a million dollars training me? I hadn’t done enough time or got enough experience to go into a training role, which I didn’t want to do anyway. If they weren’t going to send me back, I threatened to get out of the Regiment altogether.
Emma would have been happy enough for that to be the case. She never wanted me to go back, and had a hard time dealing with the way people celebrated what I’d done. She looks at it as the day I coul
d have died and not come home. She doesn’t feel happy about the celebrations. She’s happy for me, but it’s a different day for her. She doesn’t remember it with good feelings. And she’s right. People don’t think about how close you came to dying. Whether it’s a VC or MG (Medal for Gallantry) or SG (Star of Gallantry) or no medal at all, the difference might be a couple of millimetres between that and not coming home at all. So for Emma, what people are celebrating is only that tiny margin from what, for her, would have been a lifetime of grief.
But I was on a mission. I was becoming acutely conscious of dropping out of contact with my squadron. They would tell me about training they’d done and I felt I was letting them down by not being there. I started fighting with myself over it. Should I be away with them? Should I give it up and concentrate on being a father and husband? We were trying to have another child. Amid all that, the demands of the Cross increased the pressure. I was being pulled this way and that by too many different commitments.
By Anzac Day, everyone was asking me to go to their parade, a lot of them rural and regional. All I wanted was to be at home. On the day, I walked with the SASR Association in Perth. They put me out the front. I had never walked in an Anzac Day parade. I remember watching it on my pushie in Dorrigo, sitting on the corner watching the old soldiers marching to the monument. Everyone was quiet, so I was too. I remembered the look on the diggers’ faces. Now, to be in one, I finally understood how emotional it was. Until then, I just hadn’t got it. People were yelling out, ‘Hey, here come the SAS boys!’ or shouting my name. I never thought the public would be that proud of us. I also felt very exposed, like being on a cliff face or in a firefight, those moments when the big nuts you thought you had turn out to be small nuts.
Afterwards, I went to the Gratto and hung out with the boys. Lee Harden, a graffiti artist, had done a painting of me before Anzac Day. It was only the seventh time he’d done oils, and it was amazing. The CO and RSM unveiled it that day. Everyone was yelling out things like, ‘Where’s the G-string?’ When I was back with the boys, the question of my future was settled. I knew where I had to be.
Within a few days, there was another memorial to mark. It was the eleventh anniversary of the last day Mum had been seen. I went down to the beach, as I had every year, for five minutes on my own to think about her. I took some deep breaths. I remembered who she was, and said thanks to her. It didn’t feel like eleven years. It felt like a lot longer, especially after the year I’d just had. I guess I hope she’s up there seeing it all. I doubt it, but you never know.
TWENTY-FIVE
It was mid-May before I finally made it back to the troop. There was always the chance the minister for defence might pull my approval at the last minute, so I wasn’t able to relax yet – and I still couldn’t quite come to terms with the fact that my personal deployment might be on the minister’s desk. But for all the importance of the Cross, I was still me, focused on getting on with the job.
We went up to Townsville for some exercises, and I was ecstatic. Everything felt like it was my first time again. We jumped out of helicopters, and I said, ‘That was unreal!’
The guys said, ‘What are you talking about? It’s normal.’
‘No, that was awesome!’
‘Why are you so excited? Are you on drugs or what?’
I was like a little kid. ‘You don’t understand how good this job is!’
They rolled their eyes and said, ‘All right, calm down, it’s fine.’
While in Sydney for some training, I went to Rooty Hill RSL where they made me an honorary life member of the RSL. It was another enormous honour, considering they usually only gave it to those who’d been members for fifty years. But it was protocol to give it to a VC. Again, I had to see myself as a custodian of this great tradition, part soldier, part statesman.
We went to Perth for the usual time off and build-up before going away again. All things considered, Emma was fantastic – she acted normally, not making a big deal of it even though she was concerned about me going. It would have been hard to leave if she hadn’t been so tolerant. But the older Kaylee got, the harder it was getting to leave her. I made a couple of videos of me reading stories that she could watch while I was gone. She often complained that I read too fast for her, so now she could control the pace.
When we stepped off the back of the Herc in Afghanistan, I paused on the ramp, almost like I was in a movie. The heat, the noise – again I had that feeling that everything was new again. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath and smelt the Afghanistan air. I was taking a moment for myself to suck it all up – I’d managed to get back there when everyone had told me I wasn’t going to be able to do it. I was still a soldier.
‘Fucken get the fuck out of the way, Donno!’
In TK, there was the usual garbage smell and constant sound of horns, whistles, sirens and lorries, together with a new sound. The town was being expanded and there was a constant clunking rock-digging machine, generator-powered, with pipes boring down into the earth. The clunk-clunk-clunk sound of the generators was part of the new soundtrack of TK. We had the usual death-by-PowerPoint briefs and handover from 2 Squadron, who had picked up on what we’d been doing in 2008 and taken it further. The big change this time was that we would have helo support from the American Aviation Group, known as Wolfpack, who’d come out of Iraq. They came with Apaches and some gunned-up OH-58 Deltas, modified Kiowa helicopters, like the Australian Army used to have. I liked how the Yanks always thought of ways to use their assets more and for longer. If only we did the same. We could now base our insertions around those helicopters. It was a huge improvement, because it lessened our chances of getting hit by IEDs and also enabled us to surprise the enemy and get hold of them.
Protecting ourselves, it goes without saying, was a high priority after all the casualties of 2007 and 2008. In the old SAS, it was said that the shot you didn’t fire was as important as the one you did; if a patrol fired a shot, it failed. But that was the old world. In my time, the Regiment was being used for aggressive purposes, as an attack force, which was the way I liked it, but it led to much greater risks: although Special Forces made up five per cent of the Australian military, we’d suffered 90 per cent of the casualties in Afghanistan.
Another big change in the wind since 2008 was the rules and restrictions that our own side was putting on us. There was always a process to go through before we could go out on jobs. At night-time, we would have to jump through extra governance and legal hoops. It was frustrating enough already, but now the screws had really tightened. The amount of extra work our ops guys had to do to get us out at night was too much, eventually forcing us to do a lot of day jobs, which levelled the playing field. We had now lost our element of surprise by night and had to adapt to fighting the enemy on what was becoming more his own terms.
Our first job was back at the place where we’d blown up the target’s house and motorbike. We inserted off the helicopters at first light. Sitting on that chopper at four o’clock in the morning, I was soaking it up, on a high – back on operations to a place I’d been before, with potential for getting a result, on a helicopter so we didn’t have to walk. I thought, It doesn’t get much better.
It was later in the year, and the poppy-field smells were different. After the harvest, once they’d bled and dried out and picked the poppies, they fertilised the paddocks and reseeded them with corn or maize. So the dry poppy smell was giving way to a fresh maize aroma, which is more like the grassy, wheaty smell of wheat belts at home.
We cleared a campsite that the enemy had hastily left. Their sleeping rolls were still warm. I was puffing in the high altitude. The PC gathered us together and said, ‘We’re going to go up this re-entrant [an indent in the mountain between two spur lines]. Donno, you stay here.’
The guys were dumping some of their gear. I had to hold the spot for other patrols coming up behind.
I said,
‘Are you fucken kidding or what?’
‘Nup, I need someone to stay here with the gear.’
I couldn’t argue with the PC. They took off, and I was walking in circles kicking the dirt, throwing a tantrum. I suspected that he’d left me there because he didn’t want to risk me. That probably wasn’t why, but I was oversensitive to any change in the way they were using me.
All of a sudden some shots rang out up the valley. I thought, Fuck it, you fuckers, I’m going! I ran up the hill towards near where they were. They’d been into it for a while. They had no radios, having dumped them with me. Some rounds were pinging off the rocks. We knew where the enemy were and pinned them down. One of our guys hit a Talib through the neck. We ended up getting three EKIA, including a Taliban commander. The funny thing was, we’d been looking for a suspect codenamed Scalpel, but the one we’d got was a different target, codenamed Tomahawk. It turned out that he was probably the more important of the two, so that was good.
Being the scout, I had to do the SSE (sensitive site exploitation), getting information, taking photos, gathering what intelligence we could. We searched the tents in their camps and the Black Hawks came to take us back home. It wasn’t a bad result: three and a half hours from take-off to being back at base. Flying back, we waved to an Australian patrol in the TK bowl. It felt awesome to be back out on the job again.
The Crossroad Page 28