Break Point

by Matthew Ollerton

  It really started kicking off in 2004–05. There was a big price on any Westerner’s head and, one day, four of our team got kidnapped. When we were on the phone, trying to negotiate their release, we could hear another guy in the background having his head cut off – the screams, the commotion and the gargling of blood. We got them out eventually, which took money and certain assurances that we’d stop exploring contracts with the Americans. It was horribly stressful and a very surreal situation. But there were lives at stake, so I literally had to block out the background noise. It was no different to fighting in a war: whatever atrocities were going on around me, I had to kick them to the back of my mind and stay focused on the objective.

  Another time, I was in the office, typing an email, and a rocket-propelled grenade flew straight past the window and flattened a villa across the road. I looked up momentarily before going back to typing. There were three of us in the office at the time and nobody said a word, flinched or even raised an eyebrow. That’s how immune we’d become to all the chaos that was going on around us.

  We had Iraqi bodyguards, but I suspected that if the shit hit the fan, their loyalty would only stretch so far. We didn’t know who was who, and we knew there were people in our ranks who were dodgy. I slept with a pistol under my pillow and other weapons placed in strategic positions around the room. I’d lie in bed imagining the door being kicked open and the militia storming in. I didn’t know what anxiety was, but I was certainly showing some of the symptoms, including panic and uneasiness, which was hardly surprising.

  But, like Brian, I got complacent. I started doing things I shouldn’t have. I just didn’t seem to have any value for my life. We were being paid a fortune, but it was relative to the shit conditions we were living in. Our insurance policies weren’t credible, so we had our own policy: if anyone was blown up or shot and badly maimed, we’d shoot each other dead.

  I felt a massive sense of guilt at having left my wife and son and was drinking as a coping mechanism, at every opportunity. As soon as I finished work, I hit the bottle. And it wasn’t just me – everyone would down tools and get shitfaced in the villa. That was the military culture, and the habits were deep-seated. It was never a light session. It would be gallons of lager and whisky, sometimes dope. Just about anything was available on the streets of Baghdad. I was blacking out almost every night, then waking up the next morning and not being able to remember what had happened the night before. And when you’re drinking that much, the visualisation trick doesn’t really work. Your mind is confused, it’s like trying to navigate in a fog.

  Being the boss allowed me to employ pretty much anyone I wanted. So before I knew it, I was surrounded by old mates from the military, mostly lads I served with in the Royal Marines. Having them with me meant being able to have some fun amid the mayhem. One of the lads was called Benny, from Commando training’s 576 Troop. Benny was an amazing musician and had a band called Longspoon. He recorded tracks for his new album in Baghdad and we’d listen to him sing on the roof of our villa, while the sun went down, bullets whizzed overhead, explosions went off in the distance and mosques called to prayer. There was one track in particular, ‘Symphony of Man’, that summed up our situation: ‘In the heart of this troubled land, there’s a disease, a conflict of man…’

  But all the time you’re trying to pull that old military trick of having a drink and laughing – or singing – things off, all that chaos compounds in your head. You might not be thinking about it at the time, but it’s lurking in a more dangerous place, which is your subconscious. And that just makes you anxious. That’s how I met my new friend Valium. Someone recommended it for my anxiety, I bought some off the black market and it quickly became a habit. Before I knew it, I was popping three or four Valium a day, which provided another layer of fog. It put me on a different parallel, where Helen, Luke, home and all of life’s harsh realities that I feared terribly didn’t exist.

  We’d get threat warnings from the US State Department, telling us which areas to steer clear of. Sometimes, there would be a total lockdown. One day, we were told not to leave the building at all, but I wasn’t having it. It was my stubbornness coming to the fore again: because I’d been told not to go out, I was determined to go out. I was country manager, I ran the show in Iraq on rotation with another guy, so I thought I could do what I wanted. And, if I’m honest, the threat excited me.

  So I told my bodyguards that I wanted to buy a rug. They tried to talk me out of it, but I wasn’t budging. It sounds absurd, and it was. We headed to the Al Mansour district in a three-car convoy and when we arrived at the rug shop, I ran straight in and started negotiating with the owner while lying on the floor. I had my body armour on, my MP5 by my side, and I haggled for ages: ‘No, no, no, I’m not paying that…’ Eventually, I managed to get him down to $2,000. But as I was counting out this big wad of cash, one of the bodyguards came flying through the door. The militia were on their way and it was time to say goodbye.

  I paid the money, one of the bodyguards grabbed the rug and we crawled out of the shop. As we were driving off, bullets started coming down the side of the car and a couple flew straight through the rear window. It may sound crazy, but I found it fun. I got a buzz from buying a rug when I wasn’t supposed to and having to escape while being shot at. It made me feel alive.

  Most people would enjoy the quiet times, but I hated being stuck in my villa doing nothing in particular, just as I hated the downtime in the SBS. I wasn’t thinking about the possible consequences of my actions, didn’t give a shit. If it happened, it happened. That was my peace in war. I felt so at home in that environment. As crazy as it sounds, dodging bullets, living in fear and banging back Valium to deal with it made a lot more sense than being back in the UK, listening to the incessant chatter of everyday life. I’m sure I would have felt a bit different had I ended up on YouTube having my head sawn off. But I didn’t. I’d escaped with my new rug. And a very nice rug it was, too. It now has pride of place on a wall in my house and I smile every time I pass it.

  One night, I left a party, jumped in my car and started driving around the city on my own. Nobody ever did that. You were supposed to turn up, get shitfaced and stay overnight at the villa. The Americans were crashing about all over the place, there were bangs going off everywhere, and soon I was hopelessly lost. It was an open invitation to take me hostage. And because I’d forgotten my ID card, even if the Americans had stopped me, I would have been in trouble. I knew I needed to get to a high point, so I could work out where I was. I reached a bridge, opened the door and my AK47 hit the deck, shortly followed by me. Luckily, I wasn’t so pissed that I couldn’t make out some of the main landmarks below, and I managed to point my car in the right direction and get home.

  I was pushing and pushing and pushing, almost begging for some kind of hideous event that would end everything. It was the same situation as when I was a teenager, spiralling out of control. But there was no long arm of the law you could rely on in Baghdad – or Mum – to reach out and stop me.

  I’d have moments of clarity and reflection, when I’d conclude that I needed to leave Iraq. But I’d be doing something else stupid a few days later. There were good times in Baghdad, but they were overshadowed by the darkness of my mental state and the drinking. I was out of control, Baghdad was out of control. I don’t know how I lasted so long. I don’t know how I lasted at all.

  15

  ONE LAST JOB

  Telling Helen I wouldn’t be coming home had its downsides. I was supporting her and Luke the whole time I was in Iraq, paying the mortgage and the bills, which is what I should have done as a father. When she found a new fella, I was genuinely pleased for her. We were both entitled to new lives and I wanted us both to be happy. However, I phoned Luke once and he addressed me as Matt. I said, ‘Luke, this isn’t Matt, this is your daddy.’ Luke couldn’t compute what I was saying, and it convinced me that being in his life would be more confusing and damaging than not being. After 20
04, I didn’t see Luke, and barely spoke to him, for seven years.

  In 2006, I managed to get a divorce, after a long, tortuous process. It happens to so many people in the military. Women can fall in love with the uniform, the macho man of war and the apparent glamour. But there isn’t much glamour in being a soldier’s wife. Their husbands are away for long periods, during which they have to bring the kids up on their own and maintain the home on not a lot of money. You might be with someone for ten years, then they come out of the military and you suddenly discover that you don’t actually like each other. It can quickly curdle into a very resentful relationship and before you know it it’s fallen on its arse. Or you might have discovered that while you were still in the military, but thought it was too much hassle to split up, because you’d be heading back to work soon anyway. In moments of clarity I’d think, ‘Is this my life? Is this how it’s always going to be?’ But it’s like confronting a cliff face, looming high above you. You feel trapped and helpless.

  It was already on the cards to move to Australia with Nat, but the divorce made it a given. Nat was studying psychology, so had a lot of patience with what was going on in my life. She was an angel, the perfect girlfriend. But I wasn’t a good boyfriend for long. I’d get off the plane at Brisbane shitfaced and that would be me for the next six weeks. I hated myself and it pains me now to think of the person I was. Not only was I drinking heavily, I was hooked on Valium and had started injecting steroids. What a lethal combination. And when my leave was up, I couldn’t wait to get back to Baghdad. Looking back, I can only imagine that Nat couldn’t wait to see the back of me, although she insisted that wasn’t the case.

  Whereas once I’d been a happy drunk, now I was a nasty drunk. I was never one of those soldiers who liked fighting down the pub, but I wasn’t able to drink continuously in the military. Now, I’d pick arguments and be verbally aggressive. It wasn’t a pretty sight. It reached a point where Nat felt uncomfortable drinking with me, because she knew I would turn. It was horrible for her. And it was horrible for me. The drink was controlling me. It had become my life. Nat did eventually manage to get me off Valium. I came home on leave one time, was searching for my tablets and she’d flushed them down the toilet. It took a horrible few weeks of cold turkey, but with Nat’s support I did it.

  Nat was my world. I wouldn’t socialise with mates while on leave, partly because I was in a strange land, partly because I couldn’t be doing with people from the ‘normal’ world. So I’d do everything with her, and she was undoubtedly a great woman. However, looking back, I can see I was depressed, dependent and in a world of extreme turmoil. But there was no chance of me speaking to anyone about it. If anyone had suggested I was depressed, I would have told them not to be so stupid. On the surface, my life was brilliant. I was earning loads of money, I had a beautiful house in Australia, a beautiful girlfriend. But my life at home with Nat was as chaotic as my life in Baghdad. There was no safe haven to run to.

  I couldn’t even stay out of trouble during my occasional getaways to Dubai. Being in Dubai was a massive release, somewhere I could really let my hair down before returning to Australia after a stint in Baghdad. But one night, I was in a hotel bar when a fight kicked off between some Westerners and some locals. I jumped in to try to separate them and got coshed over the back of the head. When I came round, the first thing I saw was my hands in cuffs and my white T-shirt drenched in blood. I looked up to see two Arabs in the front seats, before seeing two Arabs on either side of me. I thought I was back in Iraq and I honestly thought they were taking me away to get my head chopped off. I started thinking about how to get out of the situation – put the cuffs over the driver’s head and strangle him, elbow the other two in the neck – before realising I was actually in a cop car in Dubai.

  They took me to the hospital and after they’d tested my blood for alcohol and I’d been checked out, I thought they’d let me go. Instead, they took me to the police station. I was going mental, trying to fight them, telling them to fuck off and that I had to catch a flight in hours, but they were having none of it. They threw me in a cell and when I looked round, it was full of Arabs. As it turned out, they looked after me, but I still missed my flight.

  I was given one phone call, so rang Nat in Australia and told her what had happened. She managed to get in touch with the Australian foreign ministry, who tried to get involved. The following day, I was frogmarched to my five star hotel room – I had to walk through the foyer with blood-matted hair and wearing my ripped and bloody T-shirt and handcuffs – so that I could give them my passport. When I opened the safe, there was my passport, a big wad of dollars and a bag of diamonds. Why not? Diamond dealing had gone so well the first time. They pocketed my passport, took me back to the cells and eventually let me out later that day. But when I asked for my passport back, they said, ‘Not possible, you’ve got to go to court.’

  ‘What do you mean? I have to go home. Where am I going to stay?’

  ‘Not our problem.’

  Later that day, Nat arrived in Dubai. She had no idea I’d been released until she saw me waiting in arrivals. Because I had no idea how long I’d have to stay, I’d booked the cheapest room at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel. But when I arrived, the woman behind reception said, ‘Ah, Mr Ollerton, would you please follow me?’ We didn’t know what the hell was going on. We followed her to this beautiful private reception area, where someone else said to me, ‘Sir, we’d like to upgrade you to the presidential suite.’ I turned to Nat and said, ‘I don’t know what the hell is happening, but let’s just roll with it…’ So that’s where we stayed, for the same price as the cheap room. The presidential suite was everything you’d expect it to be. They delivered popcorn to go with the films we were watching, champagne, fruit platters, anything we wanted. And a lot of things we didn’t. To this day, I don’t know why that happened, but it was yet another one of those silver linings.

  The next day, I went to the court and managed to see the judge. I asked him how long it would take for my case to come up, and he said it might take two or three months. Internally I went into a flat spin, picturing the time stretching out before me. Externally I tried to remain calm. I pulled out a wad of cash and said, ‘Is there another way?’

  ‘Of course, there’s always another way, my friend. You give me six hundred dollars fine and I’ll give you your passport back and you can go home.’

  So that was that. Not that we went home immediately: we stayed in the presidential suite for four more nights and also managed to get Nat an upgrade to join me in business class on our flight home. It turned out to be one of the best holidays I’ve ever had.

  As good as the money was in Iraq, I knew it could all end in a heartbeat. And I had no problem getting rid of the money I was earning. That created a lot of anxiety. There was work to be done in Baghdad, but the downtime was awful. There were even moments when being dead seemed a lot more comfortable than being alive. I never tried to take my own life and I don’t know how close I came to attempting it. But just the fact I was thinking about it was concerning, especially given that I’d visualised so much that had happened in my life. It seemed that suicide would make life simpler for me and everyone around me. I didn’t want to be a burden, so I thought maybe I’d drink a bottle of whisky, take a load of pills, quietly pass away and bring the mayhem to an end.

  In the end, Nat had enough of me. I came home one Christmas and some furniture had been cleared from the house. My mum was coming to Australia and the bed she was supposed to be sleeping in and the table we were supposed to be eating Christmas dinner on were gone. I don’t think Nat did it out of spite, I think she was probably instructed by her friends or family to salvage something from a failed relationship. But Nat was a full-time student and I’d paid for everything in that house, so I went into a rage beyond belief.

  But I never stayed upset for long when a relationship ended, I just switched off. I was always able to say, ‘Right, that wasn’t meant to be, let’s m
ove on.’ I don’t know if that’s the military thing of having to lock bad things away and march on, but it’s not necessarily a good way to be.

  The day after Nat confirmed it was over, I was invited to a baby shower on the Gold Coast. I thought, ‘Fuck it, I’ll go and have some fun. You meet a lot of women at baby showers…’ I always had to have a woman in my life, to the extent that I’d almost always make sure there was an overlap. The thought of being alone scared me, and I was already one day overdue.

  I got on the beers big time and met a girl who happened to have exactly the same birthday as me. Sucker that I was, I thought, ‘Wow, this was obviously meant to be! She’s been sent for you!’ Kelly was another Aussie but lived in the States. So the day after spending the night together, we flew to San Francisco. I didn’t hang about in those days. Christmas arrived, my mum came over to Australia – all prepared to console me after my recent break-up – and I suddenly had this new girlfriend. Her reaction? ‘For fuck’s sake…’

  My mum tells me now that for years she didn’t know me. I was careful not to tell her too much, but she knew enough to know I wasn’t right. I kept telling her how wonderful life in Australia was, but she knew that wasn’t the case. That Christmas was a nightmare for my poor mum. I was constantly drunk, to the extent I couldn’t have a normal conversation. I’d be placid one second and flaring up the next. My mum thought I was suffering from PTSD and advised me to seek help, but I didn’t want to hear it. She honestly thought I was going to end up dead. I’d get irritated and tell her she worried too much. But of course she worried, she was my mum.