The Crossroad

by Mark Donaldson, VC

  I looked up to the north and could see this enemy position behind a sangar, or a rock wall that they’d built for cover, with holes they could put their barrels through. I put the American onto that target. ‘Left a bit . . . Left a bit . . . You’re on.’

  He fired, which only brought heaps of rounds our way, pinging off the car. He was ducking and weaving, though in that situation it pretty much doesn’t matter what you do, either your number is up or it’s not. Then someone yelled out a target indication to the south. As I turned, I could see a Talib pop up in the longer grass in the green belt with an RPG-launcher on his shoulder. I shouted, ‘RPG!’ I got a couple of shots off, but the enemy managed to get a rocket away. Whoosh – you could feel the power of the rocket pushing the air out of the way. The enemy fighter dropped.

  Our group started taking a few hits. Adam, the patrol commander, was shot through the wrist. Barry was hit in both legs, and then Eric, our JTAC, who was talking to some Apaches to assist, caught a round through his ribcage. A few of us who were uninjured pushed away from our car and lay in a ditch. All Bruce and I had for cover were two small rocks, about the size of footballs, stacked on top of each other to create what passed for a wall. Rounds were zooming over our heads. Bruce, who was now leading the patrol, was doing an awesome job, telling us where to look and what to report on, asking how much ammo we had and giving us orders. It’s a big thing in a contact having someone talking to you who exudes calm. For myself, I felt I was able to control the fear and stay lucid.

  In the ditch, Bruce and I had a chat. There was an abandoned compound about 50 metres away on the edge of the green belt. We talked about making a strongpoint there and pushing into the green. He said, ‘They might come out and try to surround us, but at least we’d have the cover of that building.’

  I said, ‘I don’t think the Yanks will want to do that. We could cut them loose and do it ourselves, but then we’d be on our own in this valley trying to fight until night-time.’

  There was a chance of getting more air support from some Dutch Apache helicopters, but when they were called in by the JTAC they decided not to attack. I’ll get to that in detail later. For now, all that needs to be said is that when the Apaches flew away we realised we were on our own. If we were going to get out of this it would have to be without further air support.

  Again, we were limited in our actions by our responsibilities to the whole convoy. Meanwhile, the medics stabilised Barry and Eric and wanted to move Barry into our car. I ran around to help get him out, but the front car took off at speed and left me in the open. I tried to get alongside it, but a shower of rounds came at me as I was in the open.

  I managed to make it to the relative safety of the next vehicle in the packet. Bruce and Taylor were beside it. The car in front was copping a heap of rounds. I remember seeing a lot of RPGs coming onto them. One bounced off the bonnet and the other went under the car and blew up. There was a big burst of dust and at first I thought they’d hit an IED. Fuck, we’re going to have a mobility kill. A mobility kill, or a disabled vehicle, could change everything for the worse. We’d have to rally around this car, put up a section defence, transfer all the people and gear out of it, and consolidate two cars into one. If we take a mobility kill, I thought, we’re in the shit. As if we weren’t already.

  The car was all right, but we were taking more casualties. I said to Bruce, ‘They’ve got this spot dialled in.’ The Talibs had their guns and RPG launchers set for that exact distance. ‘I’m going to run through that position and take cover there.’ I pointed to a rock about the size of a coffee table. ‘The cars are what’s drawing the RPG fire,’ I said. If we ran out, we might be able to divert the fire for long enough to get our car through.

  Bruce said, ‘Righto,’ and ran into the open beside me.

  I remember hearing one RPG being fired off. We dived behind that rock and watched the car go through. No RPGs were shot at it, but we’d nearly been knocked off. I joked to Bruce, ‘That probably wasn’t such a good idea.’

  For the next kilometre, Bruce, Taylor and I basically ran around and around our car as it drove along, firing back as much as we could. We were drake-shooting across the likely enemy positions, raking them with fire, but it was depleting our ammunition. I’d gone through all six of the magazines I’d brought with me – there were thirty rounds per mag – but I still needed more, and picked up extra from the back of the car.

  It was a pretty hairy period, maybe the most intense of the whole ambush. We’d be three seconds on one side of the car, with rounds banging in around us. We’d run around the vehicle to escape, and the rounds chased us. Once we got to the other side, we’d have five seconds’ breathing space to locate the enemy and shoot back before the rounds would come in from that side.

  At one point I felt a round come really close behind, like someone had ripped my pants. I later realised that this was exactly what had happened: a round had gone through my pants without touching me. Soldiers have a complicated relationship with the idea of luck: obviously you train in order to minimise the impact of luck and maximise your control over a situation. Some believe more in luck than others. I’m one who trains extremely seriously to improve my odds, but I’m also under no illusion about how decisive luck can be.

  I saw some enemy fighters breaking from one building to another, took some shots at them, and was changing my magazine when the strangest thing happened. Everything around me felt like it closed in and went quiet. I was shooting my weapon but couldn’t hear it. I felt odd, and kind of numb.

  Soon I figured out what had taken place. The .50-calibre machine gun in the turret of the vehicle was only a foot above my head and the percussion of that, three or four rounds at a time, had dulled my senses. My ears were ringing and I felt deaf. Now I was getting a shock every time it fired, due to the percussive effect of the weapon.

  Once I got myself together, I took some more cracks at the fighters in the buildings on the edge of the green belt. I could feel rounds hitting the metal of the car just beside me. I felt even more exposed than earlier, more or less a sitting duck. The metal was flaking, bits flying off and hitting my cheek. I had to run around again to the other side.

  By now the ambush had been going on, the enemy rolling along beside us, for more than two hours. But we were getting towards the end of the valley. About two kilometres from the FOB, the ridge line squeezed in from the north and formed a choke point. It was another dangerous spot, but possibly the last before we could accelerate towards safety. The sun, setting in the west, was shining into our eyes but we could see the cars in front copping a fair bit of fire, as were we.

  A bullet hit Taylor in the head; it caused a serious graze but he was still alive. It’s all luck, in the end. We were inching closer to our escape, but the fight was a long way from over. The car in front of us was having a really bad time, and as it came through that choke point, an RPG went off in airburst right above it. The grenade sent shrapnel down, and the force of the blast threw at least two people out. One was an Afghan interpreter, who’d basically had half his face taken off by shrapnel, and another was a dog-handling engineer, David.

  Our car veered off to the flank and was overtaking the position where the other car had been hit. Freakishly, the vehicle was still able to move and had laboured forward. As we went past them, I saw the EDD labrador, Sarbi, running around like crazy. Her handler, David, got up and dusted himself off, but Sarbi took off towards the buildings in the green belt. Famously, she’d turn up again a year later.

  I also saw the Afghan terp lying face-down in the dust. These terps took enormous risks just by working with us. If the Taliban knew their identities, their families would be threatened and their lives wouldn’t be worth living. I didn’t know the guy well, but he was part of our convoy and when someone’s injured you don’t make distinctions.

  I yelled to Bruce, ‘I’m going to get that bloke.’

&nb
sp; Bruce looked at the terp, who wasn’t moving.

  The convoy was grinding towards the end of the valley and what seemed like safety. In probably 500 metres, we’d be all right. We were now about 80 metres ahead of the terp.

  I said again to Bruce, ‘I’m going to grab this guy.’

  He shook his head. ‘Nup, don’t worry about him, let the other cars pick him up.’

  But we knew the condition of the car nearest us, and for all we knew the other vehicles might have been getting hit just as badly. I remember looking at Bruce, and looking back at the terp. A lot of fire was still coming in, hitting the ground around us. I said nothing.

  And then I took off.

  *

  There are times in life when you reach a crossroad without realising it. That day, in Afghanistan, I’d unknowingly reached such a point, and a voice in my head told me to take a particular path. If I’d made a different decision, chosen another path, then my life wouldn’t have turned out the way it has, and whether that’s for better or for worse I still don’t know. But that voice told me to take off, and what happened next became a bigger thing than me. It gained a symbolism that seems heavier than one individual can carry. For the Australian Army, it would turn into a badly needed ‘good news’ story. It brought me the Victoria Cross, an honour I only really began to understand when I saw how much it meant to other people, from senior military officers, the Queen and political leaders to people who came up to me in the street in Australia and overseas with tears in their eyes. To my mates in the Regiment, it was just a small part of one of many important jobs we did together in Afghanistan. To that interpreter, it meant the difference between life and death. But there’s a flipside. To Bruce, it’s still the stupidest thing he’s ever seen in battle. And to my wife, Emma, it’s not a pleasant memory. It’s the day when, in her mind, I could just as easily have not come home.

  At the bottom of it, whether it was brave or dumb or both, whatever combination it was of my professionalism and luck that got me through, it was what it was. A crossroad I didn’t know I’d arrived at, and a voice in my head that told me to run back and pick up that terp. And what I get asked – what I ask myself, without going anywhere near really knowing the answer – is where that voice came from.

  ONE

  I was in the SAS for a few years before I realised that a lot of us had hardship or some big trauma in our backgrounds. One guy had seen his father murder his mother when he was six years old. Another saw his girlfriend die in a car accident. It makes a certain sense that big things like this, if they don’t kill you, can shape you into a person who wants to take on the particular challenges of life as an elite soldier.

  How I became that person is a complicated story. A lot of it comes from my mum and dad – what they gave me, and what happened to them when I was a teenager. I don’t feel like I’m a victim in life, and don’t want to make too much of how a couple of terrible events shaped my character. I’m more than just the product of what happened to Mum and Dad, and my childhood had a whole lot more happiness than tragedy. But at the same time, I can’t run away from it, and I can’t say for sure that losing my parents didn’t play a big part in producing that voice that told me, one day in Afghanistan, to get to my feet and do something they would be proud of.

  *

  There are military families, and there are families with soldiers in them. Ours was definitely the second type. We had men, uncles and great-uncles down to my own father, who’d joined the military and fought in wars going back to World War I. But that didn’t mean we had medals on the walls and photographs and memorabilia and evenings of sitting by the fireside hearing stories of wartime heroics. In fact, we didn’t even go to Anzac Day marches. Men in our family were soldiers by temperament, but being a soldier didn’t define them. If you weren’t aware of their histories, you wouldn’t have known they’d ever been in uniform.

  Some of them never got to be returned servicemen. My mum’s uncle Bernie, a commando in the Australian infantry, was killed in Borneo in 1945. Three weeks before the ceasefire, he died of his wounds. Another of Mum’s uncles also died in that war, after going to Britain and joining the RAF. My dad’s father, Luke, had migrated to Australia from Scotland in the 1920s but decided to go back home when World War II broke out. His ship was sunk in the Mediterranean by a German torpedo, but he survived and went to work as a fitter and turner in a munitions factory outside Edinburgh. He and my grandmother Prue came back to Australia after the war and moved to Griffith, in southern New South Wales, where Luke set up an aircraft parts and car repairs workshop. Their eldest son, my uncle Ross, would be in the RAAF for twelve years, making electronics components at the Williamtown base near Newcastle. It’s a pretty strong military heritage, but I didn’t hear much about it growing up, and at the centre of that silence was my father, Greg.

  Luke and Prue had three sons by the end of the 1940s: Ross, Ian and Greg, who was born in 1947. Luke developed problems with his health after a lifetime working in factories, and in 1950 they moved to Nambucca Heads on the north coast of New South Wales for a quieter and healthier lifestyle. Dad was a wiry, freckly redhead, and as the baby of the family seems to have been a favourite of his father’s. Dad was a lot closer to Luke than he was to Prue, and spent a lot of time following his old man around. He was only eight when Luke died from a heart attack at the age of forty-seven, and it must have been a shocking blow. The family didn’t know how to tell him, and he was sent away to stay with friends for a few days without having it explained. He only found out his father had died when he saw a funeral notice in a window in Nambucca.

  It doesn’t surprise me when I hear that Dad was a rebellious kid; Uncle Ross says I’m cut from the same cloth, both physically and in temperament. To see photos of Dad, I almost feel like I’m seeing a version of myself.

  After his father died, Dad spent most of his time with his mates, and didn’t pay much attention to the academic side of his schooling. He left Macksville High School at fifteen and went straight to work as an apprentice butcher for Oldham’s, a meat company based in Newcastle. As the 1960s went by he honed his butchering skills, put down roots in the Hunter Valley and began to look out for a girl.

  *

  Mum’s father, Fred Smee, was a welder at the BHP steelworks when he met Kathleen Hurley in the 1940s. Her father, William, was a wharf worker and a local sporting identity, part of the rugby league, cricket and athletics scene in the Mayfield area, where a lot of wharfies and steelworkers lived. Fred and Kathleen had four children: Margaret, Carol, Kenny and Bernadette.

  Like any family, they had diverse personalities, and a few cracks opened up when Kathleen died at fifty. Bernadette, the youngest, already had something in common with Greg Donaldson up the coast: she was only a twelve-year-old when her mother died, and at first she wasn’t told. Fred told the elder three kids but couldn’t face up to telling Bernadette, the baby, leaving it to the others.

  After Kathleen died, they managed to get by for a while, sharing the housework and cooking: Margaret grew up never knowing how to make custard, because that was Kenny’s job, and likewise Kenny didn’t have a clue about gravy.

  Losing her mother really rocked Mum’s world. From a stable traditional nuclear family, they soon began to break up. Margaret and Carol both got married, and in what must have been a big shake-up for Mum, Fred remarried. Joan, his new wife, was very jealous and wouldn’t let Mum spend the time she needed with her only parent. Before long Kenny had moved out as well, so Mum was alone with Fred and Joan in a house where she often felt unwelcome.

  She was a bright girl though, and cracked on with it, playing netball and learning to drive a Mini Minor. She left school early, wanting independence, and worked as a hairdresser before getting a job as a secretary at Oldham’s Meats, where one of the butchers started to show an interest in her.

  I’d have a clearer picture of Mum and Dad as young adults if they
were still around. As you do with your parents, you don’t credit them with much of a life when you’re growing up. You’re too tied up in yourself. It was after I lost them that I asked a lot of questions of my aunts and uncles and began to get to know Greg and Bernadette a bit better.

  I can imagine Dad being pretty quiet but determined about courting Mum, and I imagine her as also being quiet, but lively and fun for him to be around. By around 1969 they were an item, and probably thinking about marriage. But Dad had been in the workforce for a few years by then, and he had an adventurous streak that no doubt wasn’t quite ready to be domesticated. In 1970, a mixture of fate and that spirit came together to delay any future plans and play a role in shaping the man Dad was to become.

  Since reintroducing conscription for the Vietnam War, the Australian Government had been sending thousands of kids a year into the army and up to the conflict. Dad’s number came up in the ballot, but rather than being a conscript he wanted to take matters into his own hands, so he entered the army as a volunteer instead. There were financial benefits in volunteering, but knowing Dad, I bet something of his contrary nature was coming through.

  Up to that point, Dad hadn’t told his family about Bernadette, and it was only when Ross and his wife, Val, came down to Sydney Airport to see Greg off that they realised the cute little strawberry-blonde shedding a quiet tear was his girlfriend – or, as they found out, pretty much his fiancée.

  Mum kept working at Oldham’s, and then in the records department of the Mater Hospital at Waratah, while Dad was in Vietnam. He went for one tour from 1970 to 1971, working as a loadmaster/rigger for the Chinook helicopters, the military workhorse I would come to know very well. But I wouldn’t learn about them from Dad. He never talked to me in any detail about Vietnam, and from what I know he didn’t share much of it with Mum either. He told Ross about resupplying the CIA up in the north, and about being shit-scared when he witnessed a death from friendly fire. An Australian soldier took a grenade and his self-loading rifle into a mess tent, threw the grenade and let rip with the gun. He’d just walked past Dad and said hello seconds before he breached that tent. Dad was one of the first on the scene to assist.