Christopher Hodder - Army veteran

Bella the companion dog

Bella has been with me now since probably October last year, August or September, October last year. She's with me. she looks after me. Since she's come into my life, my life has changed dramatically. I heard about the program Integra are running with the service dogs while I was in the public service at Russell, they bought some dogs in there. Always wanted a dog, I'm from the country, originally a country boy.

My wife was very apprehensive about that because she comes from a country where the dogs are let loose as pups when they're not wanted and they pack and kill people, unfortunately. So it was a struggle to get her to understand. But Bella, come to us and after about three days, my wife sort of fell in love with her and, you know, it's history now.

It's a bit of a battle, Bella's for me but it's a bit of a battle with my wife because she's changed the family, actually. My son didn't like dogs either and now this one has changed the whole perspective of the family. Bella's four years old, she come to us from the guide dogs, she was … I don't like the word reject, she was didn't suit the guide dogs. She has a condition where she has allergies so a blind person can't see when she starts to itch so she has to have Cytopoint injections every 4 to 5 weeks.

But as you see here is as you get her. She's very placid, sits down next to me. Of a night, she's great, of a night she … I have a lot of bad nights with dreams and nightmares and she will wake me up. She'll sit up and poke me with her nose and say sort of "Hey, are you alright?" And if I go out to sit in the lounge she comes with me. Cannot say how much she's changed me and how I am and what she's done for us as a family … She's a lab retriever, and they've just got the most beautiful nature, you know, she's just adorable.

Joining the army

I was born in Cowra in New South Wales. I spent most of my young adult life in Canowindra, which is about 20Ks from Cowra. My father was a shearer. I left school after year ten and decided to get a job because if I didn't have a job Dad said I had to go back to school and I didn't want to go back to school.

So my first job I did was out in far northwest New South Wales shooting foxes and trapping rabbits. I did that for six months and I come back and I worked in shearing shed for a while with my father and I had a job on a property in Canowindra and then just before I applied for the army I was driving headers up through the middle of New South Wales, up into Queensland and the word come through that the army had accepted my application.

It was in the middle of the really bad drought, it was 81, 82 and I thought, "You know what, I'm going to give the Army a go". So I did. I joined in November of 1982. And as a young guy from the country, never been to the city and that, it was a bit of a daunting thing but looking back now, it was the best thing I ever did.

Family military connections

I did have family in the military. I had a great uncle that served in the First World War and was captured in … No, sorry, that's not right, he was in the Second World War. He was in a German prisoner of war camp, I've still got all those documents. And I had another uncle who was in Kokoda, Uncle Jack Pollard. He was with the AIF up in in New Guinea.

So I had sort of ties, but it was really, it wasn't something I thought about until I thought, "What am I going to do with my life?" And I saw the recruiting, you know, the advertisements. I thought, "Oh, what have I got to lose. If I don't like it, I'll come back out and do other things again. Obviously the military's not for everyone, but I, I fell into the space and, and I enjoyed it.

Basic training and camaraderie

Obviously you enlist in Sydney at, I think them days it was Liverpool Street. You had no concept of the city. The city wasn't somewhere I'd ever really been. Got on a bus, from the second you got on the bus, obviously, like most people, they start yelling at you.

Arrived in Wagga, I knew I was going to go to Wagga, well, then you do the thirteen weeks in Wagga. The cliche that it either makes you or breaks you I think is one of the best cliches you could use for that place and I didn't, I fell into it pretty good because I was used to being told what to do. When I say ‘told what to do' I mean I always did what my parents told me.

I think the people who had their own way in where they come from found it a lot harder in what I did. But I just rolled with the punches, you know, I just wanted to get through there and the best way to get through there was to do as you were told. Stand at attention when you're told. Salute when you're told and get on with it. And that's what I did.

Thirteen weeks later, after being there, you walk out of there and you end up with some good mates that you've got for life. One of them was my best man at my wedding and I was his best man at his wedding. And yeah, it's just you build a camaraderie ship from the minute you walk in, you build a camaraderie ship with it, with a with a number of people.

A 171 freight handler

When I joined, it was a bit different. I think, now, well, I know now because I was in recruiting for a while before I left the public service each year, you corps recruit. When we joined you went in, you did your psych test, you did all your aptitude tests, and then they would come back and say to you, "These are the trades you can apply for, not necessarily get".

Obviously infantry is always the one they want to get people into. I wanted to go to engineers actually because I'd driven large scale machinery on the land. I thought that might help, but I ended up in transport and large-scale machinery. I ended up as a terminal operator in Sydney, that was my first posting after I did my initial employment corps training down at Puckapunyal, where you do your driver training and that. But my actual trade that I was allocated was a 171 Freight Handler.

Somalia - The best and worst

Somalia was, I always say this to people, Somalia was the best deployment I ever did. The reason I say that it was because we were such a small contingent and we were so tightly knit and we looked after each other. At the same time, Somalia was probably the worst place I went. Of all the places I went, it was probably the worst living conditions. I don't hide the fact that I don't have a love for Somalia. I don't have a love for the Somalian adults. … the kids are what I saw as the victims in Somalia.

We looked after an orphanage in Baidoa, used to go out there and spend time with the kids and, you know, you're seeing kids, I come home from Somalia and I said to my kids at that stage, you know, "You kids whinge about not having a PlayStation or you whinge about not having this. You whinge …" These kids, wearing the same clothes they wear every day. They had limited food, no shelter over their head, they had no education. And being looked after by people who were all about themselves and not about the kids, really, it was what was in it for them, you know, I remember we took a heap of stuff, a Hercules load of clothes and toys up and they didn't want to give it to the kids because they would get nothing, the adults.

So yeah, Somalia was a strange place and I just, I look back at it now and I wonder, other than lots of money being spent there, what we achieved and I especially the United Nations. I don't think we achieved anything really because it's back to what it was. An achievement to me is that a country changes or that the environment changes for the better. Well, I haven't seen any of that happen there.

And unfortunately, while we went in there with the best intent and we did our job and we did our job the best we could, and we did our job, you know, very proudly and looked after, did what we had to do to try and make the operation work and we were we were very good to the people. We knew that because when we went to Baidoa, they used to say to us, they knew about, I think it was 2RARI was up there and they used to say, "Oh, we love Australians, we love Australians" because Australian servicemen are very empathetic to people. I really mean that.

When we go somewhere, we have empathy for people and, you know, we don't want anything from the people. We're there to help the people. So that was a very proud thing for us I think as Australian service people, servicemen, the ADF, men and women where while we may not have achieved the end state, we achieved the daily state of trying to do what we could. And you can only do so much as 67 people, in an environment where it's so harsh and hostile and, you know, and you're dealing with things that you'd love to fix, but you can't.

Trying to win hearts and minds in Somalia

The big thing with the briefs, we were told you win over people through hearts and minds. You know, if I like coined the term, coined the phrase, if you flog a dog, the dog might do as it's told, but only through fear. Whereas if you train a dog and you treat a dog well, the dog will do what it does because it loves you.

Now, with people, it's no different. If you go into a country and you put the hard fist down like we've seen some people do. If you go in there with empathy, you want to win the hearts and minds of people, you know, and genuinely make them understand that you're not there to cause them grief, you are there to help them. Then that's how you win over places. You don't win over places by going in and aggressively trying to get your point across.

There's a time for aggression. There's a time. And Somalia was a place where you, it was a real, you had to juggle it because the people who were coming in to, you know, we had Somalis working for us who were coming in and leaving their AK 47s and their machetes and everything at the gate when they come in to do work for you, you know, they were reasonably nice people, you know, they laugh with you.

But at the same token, if you went into Somalia in the middle of nowhere, and we didn't, but if you did, it's highly likely the same guy is going to kill you. So you treat people with that empathy and with that, you know, "We're here to help'.. And, you know, that makes them understand hopefully that what you're doing there is for the good of the country not to reap the country, if that makes sense.

A comparison of Timor and Somalia

Look, we were told, some of the stuff we were told, that we were going to go in there and it was going to be Hell and fire if you want to put it that way. Well, we arrived in Timor, the Timorese were very, they wanted us there. You could tell they wanted us there. And we arrived in there and a majority of the issues had been pushed out or had left the country because they heard we were coming. There were still some of the remnants of the Indonesian forces.

TNI were still there around the airport where we were and that but for me Timor was pretty benign compared to, especially compared to Somalia. There were elements of the ADF I'm sure, that found it to be not to be benign, but it was sad because the stuff that happened in Timor post us the arriving, the atrocities, was really bad and everywhere you went you saw the results of that. But the heartening thing about Timor was, you know, again, it's funny, they loved Australians.

When they heard, I recall speaking to my translator, I had a translator and some years later while I was working in the public service, I spoke to him again. He was still working for the DCP program in Timor, Carlos his name was. And I remember him saying to us, "You stay, don't let the UN in." They had a real thing about the UN because they said, "The UN will just drop everything and run when things happen.

Australians come in here, they don't want anything from us, they're just helping us. They don't try and push us out of our houses. They don't try and make their life ... " We were living in hootchies at the airfield and we treated them, again, with respect, hearts and minds, you know, treat them with respect. It's no different to you and if they do a good job, you say, "Thank you", you know, you build that trust with people and I'll be the first to sit here and I'll say it day in, day out, there might be elements of the ADF that that don't do it, individuals within the ADF is a better way of putting it, but I would say that most people in the ADF are doing what they're doing to try and make things better and they want to work, they want to make things better for these people.

And to do that you build trust with people, you know, If I want to build a good relationship with you, I build trust with you, you know, and you see me and you say, "I can trust you', you know, "I know you're going to do what you say you're here to do". So, yeah, look, Timor rolled on. Saw a lot of stuff in Timor, good stuff in Timor, love Timor. Timor's a great country, you know, I went all over Timor, you know, I went to Macao and to Viqueque, I went to Suai, went up into Balibo.

I was in Maliana sometime later, went down to Oecusse. It was just a job I was in that I travelled around Timor and everywhere I saw the Timorese they were just nice people, trying to live life and they weren't violent, totally different environment to Somalia. Somalis were very, very aggressive. I found the Timorese to be very passive, very, very, friendly and just wanted to help.

Returning the Timorese to their homes

I went into Timor as the WO2 in movement operations. I was at the airfield to start with, with the det at the airfield, and we were doing the coordinating of the moving of troops, cargo vehicles in and out of the airfield and through Timor, out through Timor, through, you know, they'd come in to us and then we put them on the different modes of transport to get them, you know, on the old CM 8s and the aircraft and C-130s to move them around the different locations and the convoys.

So a lot of the stuff I did, I went to check on dets that I had around Timor. We were instrumental, our guys were instrumental in moving the first major load of relocation or repatriation of Timorese who had run from Suai across to Dili because when everything happened they all converged on Dili, a lot of them converged on Dili.

If they weren't up in the hills, they are in Dili and they were living on the port or at the airfield, so we'd use the Jervis Bay, the fast catamaran and we did the loads of the people to relocate them back around to Suai, so where they come from. So that was a real boost because you're seeing people go back, it's like someone come in and wiped out Canberra and you're coming back, you've been away from your hometown for four months and, you know, all of a sudden you're back, the smiles on their faces.

So, you know, that was a really good thing. It had been hit pretty hard, they'd done some pretty atrocious things. And so that and from Bacau down was probably the real areas where they did the most damage. But it was enlightening to see how the people reacted when they got back there, you know, for them it was sad, but at the same time they were home.

Urgency as a matter of perspective

I came home from Somalia and my then wife, I'm on my third wife, that's not unusual in the military, but she said to me, "You're different". Now, you will never believe yourself, you're different. It's a human nature thing to say, "Oh, there's nothing wrong with me". But as time went on and you have debriefs and things, but you come home and you're coming from an environment where you live and breathe right in the pockets of people.

You had a purpose. I mean, you genuinely had a purpose. Both in Somalia and Timor, you had a purpose to be there. You come back, and I remember one thing I thought about, if you come home and someone goes off their nut because there's not a box of pens in the cupboard. And you think to yourself, "Get a grip about it. You just don't understand what it is not to have something".

So that was probably the big thing that I identified, was the fact that what someone here in our country saw as a catastrophe, was a joke. Whereas you've been in places where, you know, you get a guy, and I'll slip to Somalia, I mean, we had a lieutenant from Botswana, come in one day and he said, "Oh, Mr. Chris, I need to get some water to my troops". "Oh yeah", I said, "No worries. How many days water have they got left?" He said, "None. They've been without water for two days now".

This is in a country, in a hostile, that's in drought and out at Beledweyne, it's just clay pan and they had no water, so had to drop everything. Luckily we run U3 Air which is the aircraft. We took pallet loads of water out. You know, that's a tragedy waiting to happen. No water. A box of pencils not being in the cupboard is not a tragedy waiting to happen. We'll go and buy a box of pencils, you know, or a box of pens.

So your whole perspective on what is critical, what is urgent, what is a tragedy, changes big time … Having a sense of what is urgent, what is not urgent, you know, someone not having 20 bottles of water and have got three left to drink Is, "Yes, we need to supply them". Someone having no water and having had no water for two days is an urgent matter and the prospect of tragedy because you die of thirst.

Paid to be a soldier

I always had the opinion that if they were going to send me to Somalia, Timor, Iraq, Afghanistan to do my job that I'm paid to do, I'd prefer to do that than to go to Shoalwater Bay for five months because Shoalwater Bay I'm still away from family, I'm living in crappy conditions in the dust and I'm seeing the same place over and over, whereas I'd quite willingly go anywhere to see something different. I believe the majority of people in the forces are hooked like that. It's a purpose, but unfortunately also there's an element of money.

People got to the point where it is about money, you know, "I didn't get to go there and you got all these allowance as well". I used to say to people, take the allowances off me, I mean that, take it off and send me there. Give me my field allowance, take tax away from me because I shouldn't be taxed and I'll be happy to do that. I don't need another $200 a day or whatever it is to be there because I'm paid to be a soldier. I'm paid to go where my government told me, you know, sign that dotted line and give an oath, that's what you're doing.

It's like saying a fireman needs to get more money because he puts out a fire. So I had a different perspective on that. And I used to use that when I had deployments going for my troops because people were all too willing not to go to Shoalwater Bay and find out every reason but as soon as a deployment came up, they were happy to, "Yes." But that's just me, I have this thing, but I would say, predominantly, when you've been somewhere and you've done what you're trying to do, it's a good feeling.

And that doesn't necessarily mean you're killing people, like we're all trained as military to pick up arms and fight. But just when you're doing the job you're paid, moving things, getting things to where they need to be, you know, making sure people can survive and do their job is a good feeling. … what we do works. And if it doesn't work, we need to identify what happened, that it didn't work and fix it.

Christmas Island, Nauru, September 11, and Kuwait

2001 was a big year for me. I did infantry minor tactics, then I went to exercise, Tandem Thrust at Shoalwater Bay. I come out of there and I got put on a plane to go to Christmas Island where the Tampa arrived, the child overboard stuff happened. So sent across there with the logistics element to do the movements and control movement in and out of there. I did four weeks over there. I came home, I got off a C-130, drive to Ryde and had a phone call to say, "Leave your bags packed. You're going to Nauru."

The following morning I flew from Australia to Nauru and I was across there with the engineers to build the, it's not a concentration camp, to build the camp, holding camp I'll call it, for the people on Nauru. I was there for, I think it was two weeks, two- and a-bit weeks and I had a phone call, I hadn't even seen what happened in America, and then I had a phone call to say, "You've heard about September 11th?", I said, "No". And then we saw it on the news and they said, "Pack your bongos you're getting on a plane with some people and you'll meet a major there and away we go.

So I ended up in Perth, did two months training with the SASR doing their weapons and bits and pieces and I was on the advance party with the advance party into the operational area. We went in on the 24th, hang on, 23rd of November I think it was. No it wasn't, correction, 21st November, the advance party flew out from Perth into Kuwait and I was supposed to be with the task force for four months and I ended up eight months without a break because when the changeover time come, one of us had to stay and my marriage broke down and they said to me, "What do I want to do?" I said," I'll just stay, I've got nothing to go home to". And so I did eight months.

Into the home of El Qaeda

I was in Kuwait doing the intermediate base stuff there, but I was flying in and out of doing reruns into Bagram. So yeah, that was an interesting time. I arrived in Kuwait, I got thrown a set of keys to a car and they said, "Go and do your job". Well, first day I went to do my job I got lost and ended up in an area in part of Kuwait that was not the area to be at the time.

I got escorted out of there by a Kuwaiti captain and pulled up on the side of a highway and he said to me, "Don't ever get back there". They said, "You've just gone into the home of al Qaeda. This part of is known for al Qaeda". He said, "you're lucky you even got out of it." So I learned a lesson there.

Australia's contribution like a pin drop in the ocean

I was a lone, a lone operator in the coalition area there for a long time in Kuwait. And if it wasn't for the US I wouldn't get a lot of things done. Now again, it's about building relationships and building that trust in, you know, because, you know, a lot of people, a lot of the coalition forces ... Everyone thinks the coalition was just like, oh, bend over backwards to help each other.

Yes, to a degree. Then again, at the same time, no. I went down and spoke to my counterparts, the 99 Novembers which is movers, US Army movers and through the rapport I got with them, at the drop of a hat, I could get a forklift, I could get a truck, I could get pallets, I could get what I needed because I didn't have it. Australia in that whole thing was like a pin, a pin drop in the ocean.

At loggerheads with Big Brother

To get our people, to get out our fighting force into Afghanistan, the work that took to get them on the aircraft because you remember the Americans were moving their stuff in there at 100 miles an hour as well. So we had to fight, you know, to get them in. And I can remember standing at the Air Force base in Kuwait, Ali Al Salem and I've got a line of LRPVs with our with our special forces guys waiting to get on a plane.

The plane was sitting on the tarmac and it was churning and burning. I mean, it was running because it was hot ops. And I've got this American standing there saying to me, "Sorry, you haven't got authorization to come on to the base". Now you're sitting there and you're thinking to yourself, "You're kidding".

And I lost it. And I said to this bloke, I said, "You know what?" I said, "We're not here because we want to come to a party. We're here because your president phoned our Prime Minister and said, 'Come with us, come with us and fight terrorism' ". I said, "So here I am with these Special Forces guys who want to get in there, fight terrorism. And you're telling me I can't come on your Air Force base.

You get the clearance, son. I don't give a crap. You get the clearance". I said, "If I can't get the clearance, I'm going to ring my government and get them to ring your president. And tell them what's going on". I said, "This is rubbish". So there was this big moment of silence and he was standing there shuddering in his boots because I sort of went a bit hotter than what I just said there. I was physically yelling at him.

So next thing you know, the gate opened and he said, "Yeah, okay, bring them on but my commander wants to see you tomorrow". So yeah, "I'll see , your commander tomorrow. I don't give a rat's arse. I'm here to do a job. We're here to bleed with you so don't stand in the way". So we got them on the plane, the troops finally got onto the plane. They went in, and the next day, you know, I got fronted by this airfield commander, O.C., and he wanted to rip me, you know, proceeded to go off at me. And I just said, you know, "Listen mate, if you don't want us here, just give us the word".

I said, "I'll get back to my ops, go back to Australia and I'll ring them and say, 'Listen, the Yanks don't want us here'. Either you want us here or you don't want us here. Which is it? You know, the agreement was we come in, we don't have our own assets to move stuff around. You said you could provide that, you tell me what you want". So I, myself and the major, ended up getting a pass and we had a pass to get on and off the base to get our stuff in Kuwait into Bagram. So yes, we were a coalition, at the same time, you wonder sometimes about Big Brother. Not that they're good for a lot, they're in line with us, but we forget that they're trying to look after themselves and then we come in and we want to be looked after as well, sometimes you just got to force the issue.

Flying into Bagram

I flew into Bagram and we took a load of pallets in, myself and another guy, and the guys there were on the airfield, they had an area, like a little compound with barbed wire around it. To the back of the compound there was a barbed wire fence. And I remember the kids used to come, the locals used to come walking through this area. And I said, "What's the deal?" And he said, "Oh, well, there could still be mines in there but the kids seem to know where the mines were" and they used to want the dollar, the US dollar.

Bagram was in a valley, big valley. There were still MiG jets there that had been left by the Russians. The story I heard was that before we got there, that someone had climbed into one of these MIG jets and pulled a, they'd never been decommissioned, and pulled the ejection thing and apparently ejected him. And that was the end of him because you eject in the air, not eject on the ground. And I don't know whether it was a rubbish story or whatever, but it would make sense because stupid people do that kind of thing.

But I spent ,that time I spent three days there and overnight you'd sit there and it'd be sort of dead quiet and you'd have a lot of time to think about stuff. But the day we were leaving there, it was like… Have you ever seen the movie Platoon? And when they're walking across the hill line and the lightning was in the background and they were singing, we flew out of there and it was a severe storm and the planes used to sort of circle around to get out of the valley. And that was to do with so they were less of a target for missiles.

And it was just like out of a movie. And you're sitting there, there was only two of us on the plane and two pallets and it was a C-130 and we ran out, it was sort of raining, we ran out and there was lightning, thunder. And I got on the plane, I was sitting there and I said to the other guy with me, I said, "Jesus, this is just like out of a movie." Like you never dreamed you'd be in that sort of thing.

Delivering chocolate and coke

Bagram, apart from that, was a cold, cold place in winter. Hot place in summer. I remember the guys coming out of the hills with their fingers black or starting to go black from frostbite, sores and that on their face from the cold. And again, you talk about urgency. We were told that they needed basically 10,000 Mars Bars and coke.

Now, anywhere else you'd say, "You've got to be joking?" but you've got to remember, these guys were operating in an area where they needed high sugar intake and the best way to get them high sugar intake was chocolate and coke. So we ran around. Yeah, I remember going into every shop in Kuwait, finding coke, pallets of coke and Mars Bars.

In Australia. if someone said to me, "Oh I need a box of coke", you know. "Right, whatever". It was an urgent thing, these guys were living under conditions, the Special Forces guys were living under conditions that most people wouldn't even want to be or think about, let alone be in. Those kind of things were important, very important, you know, to the morale, to the welfare and to their ability to do what they needed to do. So you drop everything and just do what you need to do.

Familiar landscapes

I equate to very much like Saudi, you know, I spent four years in Saudi and you go through Saudi and you go to the empty quarter, which is just thousands of kilometre of desert. But then there are other parts of Saudi where they grow oranges and mandarins, where they grow roses in the highlands. So it's rolls of sand, then there's mountains of rock, there's green valleys.

Every now and then it's, yeah, biblical would be ... It's something you see in a movie, like, again, like the old Lawrence of Arabia and that, yeah, that kind of stuff, where it's just … but at the same time, a lot of these countries also remind you of Australia. Everywhere I've been in the world, I've walked into a place and it's reminded me of Australia, something as silly as, you know, like a I rock face or whatever. You just look and say "Oh, shit", I've seen that out around the Pilbara, you know. So, yeah, the world is a funny place where you go somewhere expecting to see something different and sometimes you just see the same thing.

Circumnavigating the Yanks

My role, predominantly, I work with the military and now when you talk about coalition and that, so to get into the airfield in Kuwait you had the international airport and you had the American airbase, American slash, Kuwaiti slash American airbase. And really the Americans, they sort of take over the military side of it, you know, and for a better word of expression, they like to make the people think they own the airfield, they still control the airfield but the Americans sort of have their dominance.

But what I found was, there were two ways to get into the airfield. You go down through Wolf route which was through the Americans. Then you'd get, as the expression goes, the rubber glove to get in there. Or you could go through the Kuwait gate and get the wave. Now to get the wave, you need to get into the minds of the Kuwaitis.

When I first arrived there and I found out they had an entry, I went down there and I took down some food and bits and pieces and I knocked on their door and I spoke limited Arabic and these guys spoke limited English. But we sat down, and I suppose within the space of a few hours, I'd built a rapport with those guys where what I needed from the Kuwaitis, I got, and that was just through hearts and minds.

So I'd get in there and they'd give you 50 cups of coffee and their dates and you'd be walking into a room and you had to cut your way through with through the smoke because they all smoke and you sit there and you just babble on bullshit to them, a little bit to Arabic, a little bit to English. So whenever I needed to get on that air base really quickly, I could because I'd circumnavigate the Yanks because quick wasn't the word the Yanks understood.

Held as suspected terrorists

This is a funny story actually, getting on the American base, Camp Doha, which was in Kuwait. I had a young corporal working for me at this stage. Him and I have been to the airfield and we hadn't, I hadn't been to bed for three days and we were tired and we come back, and to get on Camp Doha, first you got to a gate and you had to show them your I.D. Then the next was a mirrored pit where they check for explosive devices.

Then the next was you had to get out and they check for explosive devices. Plus, they put the dogs through your car and they check you and they check everything. So of a morning to get into this place, there's a lot of civilian Americans that work there as well. There was a line up and we were coming back from the airfield. It was probably about 6.40 in the morning. We got through the first gate, we got to the got to the mirrored area. And then there was a big hold up where they started doing their checks.

Anyway, we both fell asleep. The last thing I remember was the music on the radio. I said something to Mick and then apparently all the cars were gone from in front of us and we were there sound asleep in the car. Well, the next thing you know, the door flew open and I've got a nine-mil pistol at my head, screaming at me to get out of the car and all.

Yeah, I nearly crapped myself and this guy, "Get out and get on the ground". We lay on the ground, they zip tied us. And I said, "What's going on?" He said, "What were you doing?" I said, "Obviously, I was asleep". He goes, "Why?" Well, what kind of a stupid question is that? I'm tired. I haven't been to bed for three days.

So they sat us down and they brought the car and they went through the car and he said, "You're in big trouble, the commander of the base ..." Well, I said, "Mate …" some words I used, I said, "You're a joke. You're going off, you're nut about two people that are tired and fell asleep". "Oh, you know, you could have been terrorists". And you know, I had to ring the EXO and I rang my OC and said this is where we are and he said, "I haven't got time for jokes. I said, "I'm not joking We are. We're locked up at the front gate by the exit" and the EXO had to come down and she stood there and shook her head. So we got locked up because we were asleep and I said, "When was it a crime …" and as we were going, I said to this guy, "You and I going cross roads." I said, "You made a real dick of yourself today, but that's all right. What goes around comes around."

I got him back a couple of days later, so yeah, those kind of things. These are the kind of things that people don't see in the, you know. Christmas Day, I was waiting for an aircraft in 2001, and I sat all day from 5 o'clock in the morning till 23. 59, all day at the airfield, no food. Had nothing to eat. We scavenged what we could eat. And we had hot water and the plane never, ever turned up, but no-one told us so. But yeah, this the military. This is what you do when you're in the military. This is life in the military. So, you know. You can get upset about it, but it happened. It's part of, you know, it just happens.

A friendly provost

A couple of days later, we had trucks that were coming in to pick up some stores to go out to the airfield and they refused to let the drivers drive the trucks in which were locally employed people. And I said to him, "Mate this is all … "I went over to him and he said, "Oh, it's you". And I said, "Yeah, it's me". And he said, "This isn't happening". And I said, "Mate, this is all been arranged through the provost marshal." And he said, "Well, I'm telling you, it's not happening". I said, "Well, I'm telling you it is happening". He said, "Well, they're not driving in".

So we had to actually physically drive the semis in, which was wrong anyway but we did. We drove the semi in. When I got the semi in, I went down to the Provost Marshall who I knew really well. She was a really nice lady and I knocked on the door midnight and she said, "What's going on?" I told her and she said, "That right?" So the following day that guy was gone, apparently he'd been making trouble. So she said, "Really sorry about what happened" because it really caused a lot of damage because one of the guys drove one of the trucks with the brakes on all the way out. And it was just, he was just annoying. But yeah, he was gone the following day.

Phoning home

When we were in Somalia, we used to get our, was a six-minute phone call once a month, satellite phone call to your family and mail. And when I say mail, you know, letters and stuff like that. And even then, there wasn't a lot of Internet, 94 wasn't a big internet time. Then Timor changed with the introduction of the postal service, where your family could send you a 2kg parcel, which was good, and that sort of got better and better as deployments went on.

So you know, you went from limited interaction with Australia, especially your family interaction, with military went along by and by because it just happened, you had the comms but it was your family, that was the big disconnect in the early parts of deployments. But as time went on it got better. So Timor got better. Even when we were in India, Afghanistan, Kuwait, we had better comms and better stuff because we could tap into the Americans.

They had internet cafes and stuff you could use. And by the time I did my last deployment to Iraq in 2006, where I was actually the WO Post, I was the OIC postal, you know, you had communication with your family and with people you need to be in contact with, was pretty much a daily event. And that helps because you don't feel dislocated from the country and from your people, from your family, especially.

For me, I didn't have any family at that stage from 2000 through to when I got married to second wife, I had very little apart from mum and dad. So it didn't impact on me, but it does impact on guys that have got young families and newlywed and all that kind of stuff, you know, interaction with home and that can cause big trouble, you know, like it's hard, you know, if you've got, especially kids, like people with kids, it was hard for them. But I think as much as some people will say, "Oh, you know, we couldn't get the Internet every day".

And I always think back to when, you know, I used to say to people, "Guys, get back to Vietnam even, they were lucky to get mail and anything else from home, you know, I said so, you know, "Let's be honest about where we're at in time". So I think that was the government, well, not the government, the defence were very cognizant of the fact that break down of, communications is the lifeblood for both military operations and family.

A reflection on a changed military culture

When I joined the Army, you didn't question what you were told, you just did what you were told. And the reason you do that and the reason they train you like that is because when things are trumps, saying that word trumps, there ain't no time to question. You just do as you're told. Now, the rationale of it is, these days, people are encouraged to question, one might say. Now there's a time to question and there's a time to do as you're told. What I found was, it got to a point where there was more questioning than doing what they were told.

Now the military is not an area where I believe people need to be questioning every 5 minutes. So I saw from my time in the military when I first joined, as I transitioned through, the military, you know, like I would never in my days walk into anyone's office when I was a junior soldier and start demanding something. But I had someone walk into my office once and start demanding everything, and they were told to do an about face and get out and when they wanted to have bit of respect, come back.

So I think there are, and it's a societal change, it's not just the military, it's everything. So I think that as time has transitioned, when I joined, things have changed dramatically. Whether that people are better equipped, better trained, far be it for me to say yes or no to that or that they are aren't. What I would say is I just hope that people understand that the reason there are, the reason we have a military and the reason we act like a military is because when the time is needed, there is no time to argue.

And, you know, the greatest of people will say, you can sit back and make a decision, not make a decision, but you either make a decision or you don't make a decision. If it's a good decision or a bad decision, it's a decision. And if you don't make that decision, especially as someone in the military, especially when you're leading people, then either way there's consequences and you can't, you know, we never know whether it's going to be the right decision or not, but you got to make a decision and go with it. So people today are more inclined to question, I think, rather than just do. So, again, not casting aspersions, I just think it's society overall. If you look at society, I think that's the way our society is now. I just don't think at times that's what the military needs.

Love of the army

I did 30 years in the Army. I love the Army. I still love the army. I follow it and what's happening with it. I like to think that defence is a positive thing in the Australian community or seen as a positive thing. I think we do a lot of stuff or we've done a lot of stuff now for the community, we've done a lot of stuff for the country.

The last thing I would say, I would just ask that the same people that send us to places and ask us to put our life on the line in defence of our country or in defence of a greater good, that when they do that, they understand that sometimes post decisions or what they make can dramatically influence veterans.

So just be aware when you do send us places or when you do send, not me anymore, but when you do send these young men and women to do what you've asked them to do, don't throw it back in their face with some of the decisions you make later, because I would ask, would you put your son or daughter in that position?

So but you know what, the world is what it is, there will always be military, there will always be conflict. And we can only hope that the Australian Defence Force will continue to be the 100% best it is and has been in my time anyway.