Ian Langford - Army veteran

Service overview

My career prior to service is pretty limited to school and part time work. I'm the son of a soldier who spent more than 25 years in the Army. And so my childhood was replete with living in places for two- or three-years spurts, and then moving to another place. So we got to live in North Queensland, Tasmania, New South Wales, South Australia, country Victoria, Brisbane. And so my school ranged across primary and high school in those states predominantly but ended in Wodonga.

In the heart of the 92 recession, which we will probably remember was a pretty torrid time, particularly for country Victorians coming out of school trying to find work. So I was motivated to join the army because of my family as much as I was to get a job. So I joined in 92, the army was grappling with its role and relevance in the period post-Vietnam and certainly it had excellent soldiers and was performing important work, but really was very different back then to what it is now in the sense that I went into Kapooka.

Graduated in 1993, into artillery, and then was a gunner in artillery for about two years before then being selected for the Royal Military College where I began officer training here in Canberra in 1994, graduating at the end of 95 to infantry and then up to Townsville to begin my regimental appointments in the First Battalion, and then followed by eventually attempting and completing special forces selection and reinforcing into Commandos, which at that time was an emerging full time capability despite the fact that it had been part of Army's orbit and capability set in the time since the Second World War.

So that then coincided, essentially, with the East Timor crisis of 1999, the War on Terror which began with the attack on the Twin Towers of September 11. And then that drumbeat of continual deployments to the Middle East area of operations, both in the context of UN deployments but also as part of Australia's commitment to the global war on terror all the way through to the end of 2014 15 with a deployment to Iraq as the Special Operations task group commander to task group 632, which was Australia's contribution to the counter ISIS security emergency in Iraq at that time, so a pretty deployment rich career and very fortunate to have my time in uniform coincide with a very busy operational tempo.

But much of our success can only be described in the context of the generations that went before me in terms of maintaining our training and our standards across those periods in the 1970s and 80s, which protected our training systems and made sure that the army was capable and ready when war came, which unfortunately did in that period post September 11.

Expectations

My expectation was to join a professional organisation that was responsible for generating armed force on behalf of the nation. So understanding the institution that you're becoming part of and the obligations of service that come with mentoring and fostering 120 years of service and commitment on behalf of the nation, I think, is really important.

You know, the uniform you wear not only demonstrates the sort of person that you are but also the institution that you represent and that manifests in all sorts of things to include customs and traditions, but also morals and ethics. And the other piece is to be part of something bigger, to be part of the national story, to be able to point to a higher purpose.

And I think a lot of people who join the army do that, they're not quite sure what experience that they're in for but they're motivated by all sorts of things to include access to technology to be able to work as part of a team to be trusted and important in the context of capability, but also, to serve. And this notion of service, I think, remains really important in terms of our people and what motivates them in uniform but also how our community values the army and the institution that's been around since Federation.

The moral heuristic

Your parents give you morals, and your profession teaches you ethics. And I think as a baseline in terms of how you perceive the world, how you make judgements, how you exercise your own temperament and your own agency and doing what's right, in the context that there are versions of right and there is also wrong. It's not about not being forgiven for making mistakes.

Being able to make mistakes is what is fundamental to being human. But also, I think, operating in the context of military service which means, again, you're obligated to think about the higher purpose of what you do. So, you know, my mum and dad taught me morals, here's what's right, here's what's wrong. And, you know, the service teaches you ethics in the context of that moral heuristic. And so this is about, you know, it is wrong to kill but in the context of military service where armed violence is intrinsic to what you do on behalf of the state, there are occasions where there is an exception to that.

And ethics, I think, is what gives us the ability to distinguish right from wrong when faced with wrong and wrong as an option. And I think, again, that's really important and what makes professional armies responsible in terms of what they do, relative to other military forces that don't subscribe to the same values.

Service values

The military is one of those institutions that its success is defined by its morals, its ethics and its values and so establishing a baseline of what its values are as a service is the first step in setting expectations around individual obligation in terms of behaviours and norms. And so, having, you know, service, courage, respect, integrity, and excellence as a set of defined values at the organisational level is the first step to being able to set behaviours when it comes to the obligations of all members that where the uniform.

And then as we bring people in the service, through the delivery of professional military education through learning off the experience of others, and through, again, that process of iterative learning, we expose our people to a series of rule sets, essentially, to help them be able to make decisions in a way that reflects our values but also is morally and ethically defensible.

And then, of course, when you put context on top of all of that, it recognises, I think, as we ask our people to do very difficult things, in often complex and dangerous circumstances, that we give them a set of principles and protocols to help inform their decision making at that point. And the aim and the expectation is, at least through the prism of values informed by their own morals.

And with an understanding of ethics we can get it right more often than not. And I think, as an institution, the Army does its best to enable our people with that sort of knowledge and with the ability to apply it in what are very unique, often dangerous, confusing and chaotic circumstances, all the while recognising the nature of humanity, in that mistakes can be made and that's okay, but it's got to be in the context of trying to do the right thing all the time. And I think that's what we subscribe to in terms of service.

Guarding against moral drift

All soldiers may not be religious but they are all spiritual. And I think that's true. I mean, that's certainly been my experience in the context of, you know, armed service and the collective experience of sort of violence. And so knowing that, understanding that, again, we're all part of a higher calling, part of an institution that is beyond itself, is sort of the first step in understanding the dynamics around your own mortality, the trust that has to exist amongst comrades, particularly when unified by either a common purpose or a common threat. And then understanding the protective factors that that generates, insofar as being asked to do unusual and extraordinary things in very trying circumstances. So I guess the numbness and the indifference is a problem when you start to normalize that behaviour. So, you know, there are situations where ethics we are oriented to the situation and they're exceptional. So, as I said, the legitimacy of the use and employment of violence in the context of acting on behalf of the state, through armed military action is excusable and is justifiable and is lawful and is appropriate. But that doesn't make it appropriate to all circumstances and the challenge is not to allow indifference to that unique situation to conflate into normalized behaviour. And understanding that leadership and education and communication and trust is how you protect against that because the risk of drift is prevalent throughout our military history, in terms of how we help our people cope with dealing with sudden and extraordinary violence, which, either they are the perpetrators or the victims and often both. And I think, again, it's intrinsic to what we are obliged to provide for our people in preparing them for war, to be able to expose them to those sorts of challenges through training and through education so that they can protect against it. And again, you know, I'm very confident that we have done that. Every experience, I think, is quite personal and so people have different perspectives on what happened and to the extent in which, you know, we understand events as either a storyboard or a spectrum of activities. And so, you know, using re-enactment using debriefing, and so the lessons learned processes, again, are really important to at least establish the centreline of what we think happened, understand the impact it had on people and then to be able to help them process and use that experience in a positive way going forward. You know, it is absolutely personal in terms of how people process, but we need even handrails, and we need to help them, you know, soldiers are not victims, they're not, they're professionals. And with that idea of profession comes the obligation in terms of giving people the skills to be able to do their job. And that's probably the point that I would make in terms of guarding against drift and indifference when it comes to those sort of chaotic circumstances.

Leadership responsibility

Debriefing and understanding lessons, the challenge is always in applying those lessons to improve the system or the outcome or make repeatable, perhaps, the ability to survive and learn from those sorts of experiences, so how you systemize it. I think the unity of purpose and the understanding of the higher purpose is what acts as a protective mechanism.

When people are in unusual circumstances, it's not clear to them what, you know, this version of right is versus that version of right and they need to rely on what is core to their mission, as in C O R E. This is about giving them the skills to discern quickly in all circumstances what the higher purpose is and the importance and value of their part of operating in that team in those circumstances. And that's a really important, I think, protective function and the essence of how you apply that is through leadership.

And so again, the focus that the Army has on training our leaders and supporting all of our people to lead regardless of rank or appointment. If you're a number one scout infantry section, you have a leadership responsibility, that is different to the corporal section commander. But nonetheless, you still have to lead and being able to give people the confidence and agency to lead when the requirement and the need is there without having to rely on rank or appointment is really important. Again, it's that element of being able to trust and expect our people to do the right thing in various stages of operation with or without supervision that our training system is responsible for in terms of preparing people for these sorts of activities.

Guarding against moral injury

We need to give our leaders and our people the skill sets to understand the context in which they're operating, the environment in which they have to be able to, you know, understand, whether that be conducting a stability operation or whether it's a, you know, humanitarian assistance where you can't help everybody and so there are limits to what you can do.

So giving people the context and clarity around their mission, being able to wrap around the kind of coping and skills that are required to give context to their purpose and then being able to provide the kind of moral support in the context of the moral injury that you're describing when it comes to reassuring them that they have the right skills, the right equipment, they are acting for a higher purpose in the context of service in uniform, that they represent the institution of the army and our nation more broadly.

And they should go forward with the confidence that we trust them, that they are doing the right thing in the context of a problem which can be challenging and extreme in which you can control the situation, in which we can forgive them for making mistakes. But being part of a profession obligates us to subscribe to values, to have professional training systems, to have a discipline system where people are accountable and responsible. And so, in that context, they've also got to be as well prepared to do their job as they can.

And I think with that admixture of profession with, you know, knowledge as to how to care for our people, and this is in the context of a preventative function as opposed to a post incident sort of health intervention, that's what helps enable organisations and the people within them to cope with these sorts of challenges.

It's really difficult. And again, you know, moral injury is something that's quite personal, it takes, it manifests in all different forms over different sort of time epochs. So I think the focus we have on leadership, on education, on the coping skills, and the context in which our people operate is really important from a preventative health point of view.

Mission preparation

My experience is where you condition yourself through mission preparation, when you're exposed to things that are genuinely traumatic to include comrades getting wounded or killed, there is an immediate protective function that training and preparation brings that enables you to operate through it. Where there is risk is when you're exposed to those situations that you weren't expecting and often that can involve civilians and non-combatants, or indeed, where you are not sensitive to your own warning signs in terms of how you process both sorts of incidents, exposed after the fact.

That's where I think risk sort of metastasises as it relates to people and their well-being, it's the situations you don't expect that you perhaps didn't try and fall that are traumatic that you don't have a protective or defensive mechanism for, as opposed often to the horrors and traumas of close combat where you have thought a lot about it, you're still processing it but to a point where it hasn't interrupted or interfered with your ability to still function. And so you can still do the mission but it's horrifying in terms of what you've done and then that becomes an issue in terms of processing and decompressing after the mission has been complete.

So there's different phases and stages of where there is risk. Again, these are really unusual circumstances, they are not something that we would expect our people to not be emotionally triggered or affected by because they are humans, they're compassionate. They are, you know, Australians who, you know, do react to people who are suffering whether it be their own or others. And so in that context, it's about understanding how this process might affect individuals and then being able to build protective functions on one hand, but then also support mechanisms on the other. And that starts again, with leadership, and with trust, and with the ability for comrades to, again, look after each other.

Offering alternative views

The majority view isn't necessarily wrong but you need to be sensitive to it because, again, it can often conflate to mob rule which can potentially drift away from the difference between right and wrong based on sentiment around, you know, the passion of the moment or some strong individuals that sort of are leading in perhaps not a positive way. And therefore the ability, I think, to be able to resist that temptation to fall in and to offer an alternate view and then to stand by it based on your own set of principles is a really challenging situation, it's never easy.

But there's an element of your personality, particularly as a leader, which I think needs to do that so you can continue to safeguard against the casualisation of, you know, either some sort of drift, or, frankly, you know, a perverse view of a situation. So that's really hard. But that's why we operate in teams.

That's why we have, again, an emphasis on leadership, a training system that helps to make people aware, as support mechanisms through the way we command and lead that gives comfort to those that want to provide an alternative view in the face of what they perceive to be either an ethical or moral drift. And then being able to, again, provide a forum for that view to be exercised. And so in small groups, in extreme circumstances, like combat is really difficult, and it's really difficult, but again, you know, as an institution we need to carry, encourage those sorts of behaviours, to protect ourselves from ourselves.

And again, you know, 99, more than 99% of our people always do the right thing. But that doesn't become an assumption that you can therefore no longer worry about that very, you know, extreme and remote possibility of there being drift. And that's in all institutions, whether it be high level corruption in the commercial sector, whether it be political corruption in the context of how governments function, and whether it be, you know, any sort of perverse behaviour that is clearly wrong in the context of, you know, an ex-post sort of review you see it In sporting clubs and in other institutions.

The reason why it's so profoundly important in the military is because of the level of importance that military service brings, but also the consequences as they relate to armed violence. And I think that's why we, as an institution, put so much emphasis on these skills in order to live up to the values that we subscribe for ourselves.

A diversity of views

Leadership … is the ability to be able to persuade and convince those who are legally obliged to follow you into supporting your world view with the kind of conviction and perspective that builds cohesion that military fighting power relies so heavily on. T

he other piece, that the establishment of a command centre around the CEO, the senior soldier and the Padre is that you bring a diversity in a pleurisy of views to your decision making. So, you know, the RSM brings the kind of statecraft and trade craft knowledge that 25 years' experience having lived from private through to senior soldier, as well as having an understanding of the pressures that the commander has upon him or her to that environment.

The Padre, not from necessarily a religious perspective but certainly from a position where they are one degree removed from the chain of command and therefore are able to perhaps discern or nuance some of the views both from, you know, the units, and as well as the leadership, when it comes to maintaining the virtue of what you're doing and being able to provide an all-informed perspective to decision making. And that again builds trust, they're not there to operate outside the chain of command, they're there to reinforce it.

But they do provide an alternative view often, which I think is necessary for effective decision making. And if a unit didn't have a Padre, you might rely on a different form of advice. But in the way our regimental structures have historically worked, I have found the establishment of a really close relationship between those three individuals, in my view, is fundamental to effective leadership. And I just think our history is replete with examples of where that has worked. And it's worked for a reason, and it still has value today.

East Timor

East Timor, in the context of the Interfet to sort of Operation Tanager sort of epoch was important for a number of reasons. And this is from a professional army point of view. At that level, at that scale, it's the first time that we had projected in an operational theatre since the Vietnam War.

So very much was a confidence building exercise within the Army, and the ADF more broadly, in terms of what our resources and experience and tactics and capabilities could do relative to how they were managed in that period between the Vietnam War and the Interfet activity. So that confidence building that came from that operational experience still holds true today and still informs much of our decisions, particularly how we interact in the region. How we think about force projection how we understand places like Darwin as they relate to access into the region. So that's sort of the high-level stuff.

Also, I think the really impressive thing about the East Timor experience was the way in which our soldiers were able to rapidly adapt to that environment in terms of, you know, a heightened perception around that experience, as it was anticipated relative to things like the threat and the operating environment which quickly evolved into what was concurrently also a humanitarian operation, a stability operation, in some corners and in some experiences a security operation relative to an armed an active threat.

And then also, how we then transition to support a new government in terms of running free and fair elections in the context of the 2001 election of the new president and the new prime minister. So when you think about it from 99, through to 2001, the nuance in the agility that the Australian Army had to demonstrate, in the period where they hadn't deployed operationally at that level for nearly 25 years, is just profoundly impressive. And the reason that was successful was because of our training system and our people.

And, you know, again, soldiers are not a blunt instrument, they are ambassadors, they're humanitarian assistance workers, they're problem solvers. You know, they know how to nuance their purpose in a mission to meet the need and the requirements of what's urgent without compromising in the broadest sense what's important. And again, I just point to the collective experience of East Timor as the evidence that the Australian Army is pretty powerful in terms of its human talent and the ability to demonstrate discretion when it comes to assessing the situation, being able to adjust expectations and behaviours and do the right thing.

And that Interfet experience and the UN commitment posts that is proof positive of those sorts of behaviours. So really, really important. I mean, equally, you know, at my career point, I was a senior lieutenant junior captain and the fulfilment on a personal level of being able to, you know, conduct platoon level patrolling activities in a security environment where, as a, you know, mid 20s-year-old officer responsible for the lives and welfare of 30 men, and you're doing really important work in often dangerous circumstances.

So that personal fulfilment, that nature and calling of service I found really professionally stimulating and rewarding. And again, you know, it set for me a context and a foundation, which, again, proved really important when in the post September 11 environment we then moved into a collective sort of Middle Eastern area of operations experience which came with a very different sort of threat profile, a different demographic in terms of people we were dealing with and a different set of pressures, in terms of being able to again, get on the ground, assess the situation, and nuance your behaviours to what's important, what's urgent, and what's necessary in the context of an overall mission.

Middle Eastern deployments

The Middle Eastern period of sort of my career, it really kicked off with a UN deployment to Lebanon, Syria, and Northern Israel as part of the United Nations Truce supervisory organisation in which, again, there's an expectation around the operating environment which proved to be different almost immediately I had arrived.

And there was an exchange between local Hezbollah and the Israeli Defence Forces which resulted in the death of UN observers. Now, again, that was not the expectation going into that experience but that threat and hazard profile, even though that you are a UN observer and not a participant to hostilities quickly meant you had to adjust your understanding the environment and apply yourself accordingly.

So that kind of mental agility and ability to discern changing circumstances became really important. And then, you know, moving from that into the Afghanistan experience where, again, it's a different operating environment altogether. You've got a different threat profile, you've got a different means of coping with that mechanism. you're operating in a coalition some of which is strengthened by alliances and by intelligence sharing, others are not.

And then you've got an Afghan population which really has been the victim throughout that entire experience, who are desperate in terms of the need for the provision of basic security effects which we assisted Afghan partners in doing, but also need facilitated to them the delivery of essential aid to enable things like their kids to survive. And it literally was life or death in terms of how that provision of support was engendered.

Afghanistan

The reality was, each country was there for their own interests, which is, okay. And so as a, you know, as a military leader, you've got to look past that and you've got to build teams and forge collective interests in the context of the mission that's at hand. So if there was a particular requirement of a partner, as it relates to their own nation's policy, as it involved their commitment to Afghanistan, that's okay, that's just the reality of dealing with coalitions and being able to, you know, absorb that as just an operating factor was, I think, you know, important in terms of demonstrating effective leadership in that environment.

So, those things weren't restrictions or constraints, they were just considerations. And so, you know, not all militaries operate in the same way, not all have the same capabilities but they all bring something unique. And perhaps, where we lacked cultural competence in the early parts of the operation purely because we hadn't operated in that part of the world. at that scale probably ever, you have to go back to sort of Allenby and you know, the road to Damascus campaigns of the First World War, perhaps, to sort of emulate some of what we were required to do, you know, we needed to get smart on cultural competence really quickly, we needed to better integrate with our wholly government partners to include Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade really quickly.

And, again, because of the talent of our people we were able to do that. But Afghanistan in particular is one of those theatres where I think experiences vary, because of the nature of that operation. We had some parts of our force that were engaged in high intensity close combat, we had other parts of our force that were staff officers as part of a multinational headquarters. Both are of equal value, but the experiences were very different.

And I think organisationally, now we need to draw all of those experiences, understand how we can improve professionally as an organisation, understand what are the key insights that we can draw from that as it relates to us informing our future operating environment and then move forward in that context. And, you know, taking those experiences, applying to what we think our future challenges are is what is really important right now because, again, we want to avoid making mistakes and missteps and use this to reinforce strengths as we move forward.

Indigenous connections

The army has a relationship, I think, with, you know, the earth, the sky and the sea, not in an emotional way as our indigenous people do but nonetheless, the connection is still there. And so I think where there is a real confluence of understanding, certainly as it relates to, you know, how we interrelate with Australia as a nation, both our indigenous people and the army - I see connection, you know, we spend a lot of time out across Australia, understanding our environment, and respecting it, and nurturing it and stewarding it in terms of our training areas.

And I think that's where we have an opportunity to better see a perspective that our indigenous people have always seen which can help inform, you know, how we, as part of the country, move forward collectively to recognise the mistakes of the past and also what our responsibilities are of the future.

So my own sort of family lineage I've got by descent, Kamilaroi, and then by marriage Bundjalung, that's from north and northwest in New South Wales, and certainly understanding my own family history as it relates to that part of the country but also some of the political action that they were part of in terms of Aboriginal rights, the block in Sydney, and generating that profile to a national consciousness has been, you know, in terms of being able to draw upon that and link it to military service something that's only become a recent phenomenon.

When I joined, we had really no consciousness at unit level. We certainly had indigenous people as part of our organisation and, you know, we saw them as equals. And that was absolutely true. And the Army's got a rich tradition of perhaps being ahead of the societal curve when it comes to recognising our indigenous people and their service. And we've got examples from the First and Second World War that are testament and evidence of that.

But, you know, we are on a journey now where I think it's the right thing and we're obligated to be able to celebrate and be more conscious of indigenous perspectives, particularly in the context of defending our land, our sea, and our air, but also how we relate to both their history, their experience, and their perspectives.

And again, whether it be the regional force surveillance group across our north and drawing upon their experience as it relates to understanding that part of the world, or whether it be through the continued advocacy around encouraging indigenous people to come into the army to help perhaps contribute to our institution so we can also leverage and celebrate their cultural experiences is really important because we need to represent our society.

And, you know, I just find that, you know, whereas 30 years ago, I mean, I would not have even talked about my own family and ancestral links, A: because I've got this paranoia about not being black enough, but B: it just wasn't relevant, it was almost a joke. And there was, there was a degree of shame in the context of, you know, loose language and the sort of Nicky Winmar effect of making people feel less than they were worth because of, you know, a really poor attempt at humour or, or, you know, abject name calling.

I mean, that's all unacceptable, it always has been and now it's recognised. And I think that's really positive but the army has a greater opportunity to benefit from understanding indigenous history, celebrating with indigenous people, you know, their traditions, their culture, their beliefs, because at the end of the day, it's going to inform who we are, make sure we better represent our nation and make us better in an operational sense in terms of understanding cultural nuance and being able to read environments and be more discreet, perhaps in terms of how we make decisions that are sensitive to everyone including non-combatants and others.

Ensuring true societal representation

I think it's less about substituting one for the other. It's more now about giving pride and confidence to both. So you can be a proud indigenous person and be a proud member of the Australian Army. And they're never, and nor should they have ever been one a substitution for the other.

And that's also true of other minorities in terms of encouraging them into service because, again, if we don't represent our constituency, if we don't represent the community, then how can we represent our country in the context of armed violence. We need to reflect community values, we need to uphold the standards and norms and behaviours that they will expect. And you can't do that if you don't reflect, you know, the demographics, the culture, the experience, the challenges of living in Australia as part of normal life, you know, we are not an outcast from society, we are part of it.

And the difference is that we wear a uniform, we are subjected to some degree to a higher calling through the nature of service but that doesn't make us better, it just makes us more obligated and more responsible to understand that which we represent and to do our best effort in making sure that we represent them effectively.

The value of oral history

This is really important work. I look at some of the reels of veterans from particularly the First World War and you always, in those interviews are wanting to know more. So the best efforts that are underway to capture an oral history may not prove valuable for another 50 or 60 years but they're absolutely worth it. So I just thank DVA and others for doing what they do and I hope this makes a contribution.