With the bottom half of my body soiled, I ran into the toilets, where I remained for a good twenty minutes, while Crystal waited outside, unaware of what had transpired. Afterwards, with spots of brown on my white t-shirt, bad American army shorts and new white runners, I sheepishly walked back to my sister’s house. Crystal pieced together what had happened as I sulked (there is no other word for it) alongside her.
I laugh about it now, even using the story as an icebreaker in uncomfortable situations, but at the time I felt supremely humiliated, and it took me quite a while to come to terms with what had happened.
*
For the two months after my final operation, I lived in a strange limbo, trying to recover, while also apprehensive about what the blokes were going through in Iraq. I was constantly questioning the severity of my injuries – irrationally I was thinking: surely my injuries aren’t that bad? I should ask to go back to finish the tour.
I received snippets of news: the troop had been in two ambushes during their time at Al Kasik. No Australians were injured, but during the second ambush they had unleashed with everything, all the firepower in the troop, and the US later reported that they killed eleven insurgents.
Only when they had all returned to Australia did I feel I could rest properly.
PART II:
IRAQ
2006
9
GOING BACK
CRYSTAL SMASHED PLATES IN THE BACKYARD when I told her I was going back.
We’d moved from Darwin to Brisbane; it was supposed to be a respite posting with a quiet reserve unit in the suburbs. But circumstances overtook us, and all eyes were on the Brisbane regiment to man the next security detachment in Baghdad.
Crystal went through the classic stages of grief when I told her I had volunteered to return to Baghdad. First, she was quiet for days, then anger saw all our crockery methodically smashed, piece by piece in the backyard. After she finished trying to talk me out of it, then was miserable for a few days, she finally accepted that I was going. She had every right to grieve: she was losing me for another six months, and, as she knew better than most, there was a chance she could lose me forever.
I was being pigheaded, as always. Somehow my injuries and all the pain and surgery hadn’t dampened my enthusiasm for returning to Iraq. I was still itching for adventure and wanted to do the job for real. I even felt a little robbed that my first deployment had been cut short.
Except for breaking the plates, Crystal handled the crappy situation I put her in with nothing but class. She focused on planning and looking forward to our wedding, and making the most of our time together. She knew that soon pre-deployment training would consume all my time.
*
In the lead-up to deployment, our instructors used images of my IED strike and lectured us on ‘not setting routines the enemy can target’, unaware that the surly newly promoted captain with the scarred face sitting in the front row didn’t appreciate their advice.
Foolishly, I took Crystal to an information seminar run by welfare officers and padres. She was so tough through all of it. It was only when someone said we needed to keep our contact information up-to-date so that he didn’t deliver bad news to the wrong house that she started to cry.
I did get some leniency; I was excused from attending the three-week reconnaissance into Iraq that would be the first stage of our handover with the outgoing combat team. My commanding officer decided that, as I had already been to Baghdad, my spot would be better taken by someone else. The news came as an enormous relief to Crystal and me, as the reconnaissance had coincided with our planned wedding date.
We married in early November 2005 and had a short honeymoon before I commenced training for deployment in March.
*
For most of the junior soldiers, this was their first overseas deployment. But I found myself in a strange situation for a junior officer: I had some credibility with many of the soldiers already.
Generally, lieutenants and captains have to work hard to gain credibility, particularly with the non-commissioned officers – the corporals, sergeants and warrant officers – many of whom have served for considerably more time than junior officers. But many of the NCOs saw me as a hardened veteran.
I felt this credibility was completely undeserved. As far as I was concerned, I had got myself blown up – it was nothing to revere.
Rumours even began to circulate: that I was a great tactician; that I only slept a couple of hours a night and lived on coffee. The most ludicrous I heard was that I had thrown someone from the balcony in a nightclub fight. I got to work one Monday morning and some soldiers wouldn’t make eye contact with me as I passed them.
Many of my friends just joked that I was ‘going back for a re-test’.
Meanwhile, my mother, completely unintentionally, added to her notoriety with many high-ranking officers. During her long and emotional discussions with several generals following the IED strike, she had managed to get General Leahy, the Chief of the Army, to promise I would not be sent back to Iraq. So when my name was confirmed on the formal deployment order, I sheepishly approached my commanding officer to inform him of the promise that had been made to Mum.
The military cogs turned: my commanding officer called the brigade commander, who then called the land commander, who then spoke to General Leahy. Luckily, he saw the situation for what it was – he had told an emotional mother what she needed to hear during a very traumatic time. Through my brigade commander, he confirmed that I was volunteering to go, then passed on the message that I should be allowed to re-deploy. He also indicated that if my mother wanted to discuss the matter, he would happily contact her.
To Mum’s credit, after a call from me to explain what was happening, she didn’t take up the offer.
*
I boarded the plane to go back to Iraq eighteen months after I had first deployed. By then, I had recovered completely from my injuries, except for a few scars and some little quirks – I had permanent pins-and-needles down the right side of my jaw, I was very susceptible to sinus infection, and, as it turned out, the incontinence I first experienced on Manly Beach was an enduring physical ailment I would have to learn to live with.
During those eighteen months, I had spent considerable time training those going to Iraq. I was the one who told them what it was really like there. I would curb their enthusiasm by showing them photos of my injuries, videos of how they were going to operate, and telling them how, yes, people might try to kill them. There was always a noticeable change in the soldiers after my presentations: a shift from the childlike enthusiasm of looking forward to a big adventure to a sobering realisation of the environment they were about to enter. A friend of mine described it as ‘watching the arse drop out of their showbag’.
As executive officer of the next security detachment, I no longer interacted as much with soldiers; I didn’t have a troop, as on my first tour. Instead, I spent my time planning, training and preparing for all 110 of us to deploy. Again, the detachment was made up of infantry, cavalry and military police, with support from a range of other corps – intelligence, ordnance, signals, and electrical and mechanical engineers. We also had a couple of cooks.
I spent more time with the officers, as I would need to give daily direction to the troop leader and platoon commanders. They were a mixed bunch. The infantry lieutenants came from the 3rd Battalion, our parachute regiment – a unit with strong esprit de corps, forged by scaring the piss out of themselves by jumping out of planes. The two lieutenants were like chalk and cheese: one was a loudmouth from a military family; the other a pensive man, a trained physiotherapist. There was also a quiet cavalry troop leader and an opinionated military police captain. We all got along pretty well, but the driving force behind the combat team was the Boss.
He was older than most company commanders, just ticking over into his forties. He had discharged as a captain and made his way very successfully in the private sector before returning to the army �
�� he just missed the job.
The Boss’s age gave him a wisdom that most majors seemed to lack. To say he was a father figure to us is not right – he wasn’t that old – but he was a true mentor. He had a sharp mind and was as comfortable talking with generals as he was with private soldiers. He was one of those genuinely amicable characters – unless you crossed him. Then he would focus all his intellect and energy on calling you out and discrediting you and your opinion for all to see. He took his role and responsibilities very personally.
As much as he could, he developed relationships with the soldiers. He really wanted to know about their wives or girlfriends, and to get the boys’ opinions on matters: how they felt about this and that. It was what made him so well liked, but may also have led to the problems when we returned – once the dust settled and life moved on. His self-questioning, his guilt over what he may or may not have done – it broke him.
But as we readied to deploy, the Boss was the embodiment of strength. If you put all 110 of us in a room and asked who would suffer from post-traumatic stress on their return, he’d have been the last one you’d pick. Events would show that it’s not about mental weakness, it’s not about physical strength and it’s not about intelligence. It’s about individuals and circumstances, and how different people react differently.
10
BACK IN THE MIDDLE EAST
ONCE AGAIN THERE WERE MONTHS OF TRAINING, AND exercises – this time conducted around Brisbane – intended to replicate the job in Baghdad and expose us to every conceivable contingency: from changing ASLAV tyres in a hostile area to suicide bombers detonating at the front gate. We never trained for a soldier accidentally shooting himself – that was not a conceivable occurrence.
For our farewell we flew to Sydney: crappy sandwiches and instant coffee, a speech by a general, and then it was time to go.
I don’t know why I was so keen to return. I felt that I had unfinished business, even though I couldn’t say exactly what that business was. I did know I was the right man for the job.
It didn’t seem long before I was back in Kuwait, the desert stretching all around.
Our staging area was Ali Al Saleem Air Base – hot and dusty, with row upon row of tents. The tents ringed the dining hall, as well as fast-food outlets that competed with convenience stores, tailors, barbers and little shops selling trashy knick-knacks. The whole base seemed to have been dumped in the middle of nowhere – it was surrounded by a 10-foot barbed wire fence, beyond which was moonscape desert as far as you could see.
Dust blew through the place constantly. Down one end of the base, at the end of a long road that shimmered in the heat, was the airfield. Large transport planes thundered in and out, all through the night and day. The base moved up to 3000 people per day in and out of Iraq – and then later Afghanistan.
The dining hall on the base had the worst (some considered them the best) of the culinary delights offered by Mr Kellogg, Mr Brown and Mr Root – KBR, the bunch tied to the notorious company Halliburton. They fed thousands each meal, and the food tasted like it. The short-order line was for all things fried and grilled: burgers and chips mainly. The long-order line was stews and steaks and the occasional odd offering: tray upon tray of lobster tails or pigs’ trotters. One night there were crab claws – the Boss had one for dinner. The company sergeant major joked that as water was so far away, it must have been sand crab. The claws were enormous – how or where had they found them? There was no way I was touching one.
The Australian logistics unit had a fenced-off section of the base that they called home. There were a couple of office buildings where the staff managed the endless flights of people and equipment, a lecture room for final lessons and updates for those going forward to a war zone, and recreation areas, including a big television room where people transiting could relax. So much of people’s time in Kuwait was spent waiting. There was a good aspect to this: with all the people coming and going, I was constantly running into people I knew.
On one of our first evenings there, I managed to get on a phone for a few minutes’ conversation with Crystal. A small, demountable building was allocated as the ‘welfare’ room. It was partitioned with plywood walls to make three phone booths and a handful of internet terminals. If you listened, you would hear conversations ranging from teary, affectionate dialogue between family members to arguments over bills, or gossip about what was happening in the ‘married patch’ in Puckapunyal, Townsville or Darwin.
I had a good talk with Crystal. She sounded happy enough. She’d started a new job assisting with cardiac surgery. She was learning a lot in this new field, and was busy – long hours and shift work – and she had regularly volunteered to be on-call through the night. It all helped take her mind off the separation. Again, I had left her with just Girlie, the dog, who was now in her mid-teens and really showing her age.
*
Outside the base, the barrenness of the desert had its own beauty. Seeing the Bedouin camel-herders, I thought maybe I could enjoy life here, for a while at least. These Bedouin lived a nomadic existence. Their homes were demountable, corrugated-iron structures on the back of medium-sized trucks. Except for the fact that they were living within the live-fire danger traces of the ranges (where fired rounds could land), it was very peaceful. Most had their families with them. They carried a collection of bathtubs, which they scattered around to water their beasts – usually about ten to twenty camels.
Urban range, Kuwait.
During one of the first days in Kuwait, the company sergeant major hoped to conduct a shoot with our two snipers, but the Bedouin had moved their trailer homes into the danger area, preventing the snipers from firing. Briefly I thought that perhaps we could work on the policy of ‘big desert, small bullets’, and take our chances that in such a vast expanse the snipers would be unlikely to hit a camel or its herder. But in the end my conscience won out. And I later discovered that if you killed a Bedouin’s camel, you paid him not only for the camel, but also for the next three generations of camels – which equates to quite a sizeable sum.
Later we went out to the ‘urban range’ in a procession of air-conditioned buses. This was a patch of sand divided by berms into 20-metre-wide corridors. In the corridors were mock houses. The idea was that life-sized targets were placed in the buildings, and groups ranging from two to five moved through from one end to another, firing at the targets. As safety officer, I would move along the narrow walkways atop the structure and shout directions as required. The biggest problem was again the Bedouin, who let their animals graze at the end of the range. Most of the rifles shot out to more than 3 kilometres. The area was also littered with unexploded ordnance: I saw an 81-mm mortar sticking out of the sand. Whenever you use a range in Australia, you are briefed about the dangers of old ordnance: ‘Don’t touch them, kick them, don’t even cast a shadow over these things, as they might go off.’
The Boss and I went out to move the Bedouin and their camels out of the danger area. We kept to the existing vehicle tracks that crisscrossed the dunes, hoping this way we would be less likely to trigger any old munitions. Our plan was to drive from truck to truck (there were about ten, spaced about 500 metres from each other) and ask them politely to move off so that we didn’t shoot them.
Our first two attempts to move the herders out of the danger area met with lethargic, uninterested responses. I don’t think the Bedouin spoke English, and we had no interpreters. The Boss decided to try a bit of Arabic himself next time, with the aid of the Arabic at Your Command book we’d been issued. But to our surprise the third Bedouin truck was not owned by an Arabic-looking man, but by a dark African who spoke perfect English. It didn’t matter: he was equally immovable.
At that point, we gave up and I practised saying, ‘I have diarrhoea’ in Arabic instead. While it gave us a laugh, it also had a practical purpose: I had learnt I needed to be prepared for my overactive digestive system.
*
The evening saw a visit
from the new Minister for Defence, Dr Brendan Nelson, who had commenced in the role only a few weeks earlier. He met with us and exclaimed how fit we all looked. We were taken aback – it sounded a bit fruity. But then, considering we were in the company of the logistics unit staff who supported operations in the Middle East, full of truckies and storemen, well, we probably did look fit, so we decided to take the compliment in the spirit intended.
Nelson spoke very enthusiastically to the gathered crowd, clearly passionate about his work, but tending to say a bit too much. He spoke of how happy reserve soldiers would be about new pay incentives. But we were in the Middle East; there were no reserve soldiers here to be impressed by the increase. While I thought Nelson was a genuine person, I found his lack of awareness of his audience and the environment disconcerting. It seemed he was being let down by his military advisors. Later, as our time in Iraq progressed and circumstances unfolded, I think this poor support from his key military advisors got him into trouble, especially when he talked to the media.
We also met the brigadier commanding all Australians in the Middle East. He came across as an unassuming character who cracked a few jokes and seemed very relaxed.
The Australian army was finally getting over a period termed, by another brigadier, ‘the great peace’. Since Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, the army had deployed only a handful of times until the early 1990s. And then we had not sent troops away in any organisation larger than a battalion group – around 600 people – up until the deployment to East Timor in 1999. The result was a cohort of senior and non-commissioned officers who had never seen real conflict, let alone been tested by it.
After the Blast Page 7