The Crossroad

by Mark Donaldson, VC

  There was a phase of urban fighting, which involved complex scenarios with IEDs (improvised explosive devices), enemy fighters behind barricades and the like, partly based on procedures we’d learnt from the Americans. I was in my element moving between buildings and shooting on the move. I put a lot of pressure on myself and found my confidence increasing. It was hard, with a lot of PT throughout the courses to break us down, but by this stage I was confident I was going to get through. To give us a boost, they had formally posted us to the Regiment. Even though we didn’t have our sandy berets, we were allowed to call ourselves SAS troopers now.

  Late in 2004, I bought a house at Willagee, down the south end of Perth, and Emma and I moved in together. We weren’t mucking about. In the Regiment I was paid far better than in the infantry, and having owned nothing my whole life, I overcompensated by buying a big four-bedroom place the pair of us rattled around in. It was fun, though, to have some time off. We had an orphans’ Christmas with some others who didn’t have anywhere else to go, and walked to the beach every morning with our new dog, a bull-mastiff-ridgeback cross Emma had bought from a pet shop. When I’d left Dorrigo, my old dog Lister had gone to live with the Beaumonts and then with a family in the Bellinger Valley, and had a good life until he died in 2009. This dog, though, was a menace – it got narky with Emma, chewed off part of the side of the house and gave us a bit of grief.

  Back at work, I did a driver’s course to drive army cars, which you had to do even if you already had a licence. We followed that with our patrol insertion courses. Again, there were specialties for insertion: you could choose between land, air and water. There was a myth that the wateries were the hardest blokes in the Regiment, but I just liked the idea of diving, coming off submarines and climbing up the sides of ships. Those days I’d spent watching Dad scuba diving, going snorkelling with him, and later, the time of my surfing obsession, had left me with a special affinity for water. The risk of becoming a watery was that they were known for having high standards, and for being punishing, quite judgemental, on their rookies.

  The wateries’ course started with two weeks of boating, which was hard because you had to de-service your kit every night to have it ready the next morning. The motto was ‘de-service or die’. If you didn’t keep it functional, it would break down on you in the ocean, which is a bad place for that to happen. So after days of PT, going out in big swells around Rottnest Island and learning all the boating techniques, we’d be up until one or two o’clock in the morning pulling apart and cleaning the engines and other gear. The DS would come up and say, ‘Hurry up, you’re in your own time,’ and then make you start again if there was a grain of sand in there. It was like selection again.

  The exercises themselves were challenging but fun. We did a parachute drop, taking our boats with us. We hit the water, swam to the rafts, unrolled them from their bundle or cut them from their pallet if they were already inflated, hooked up our fuel lines, pumped the rafts up a bit more, and got underway. We then had to do a 60–nautical mile transit to an island, and send a swimmer-scout to recce it and find a landing spot on the beach. This was all under the cover of darkness. When landing, we dragged everything up onto the beach, dug a hole and buried it. Then, with our pack and gun, we were off to conduct the task.

  I was excited when we got to the diving phase. Much as I loved the water, I’d never scuba dived. The first time, it was a matter of coping with the overflow of information when I went under the water. We did two pool dives on air sets – compressed air breathing apparatus (CABA) – and our first night dive was straight into the ocean. It was overwhelming initially. The noise of the bubbles and the inky blackness and the thick shiny phosphorescence got my heart and breathing rate so high I was chewing through my air and had to check my gauge.

  After seven days of that, we did our free ascent training in an 18-metre-deep pool. If you take air in at depth, as you rise the gas expands relative to the decreasing pressure. If you keep that air in, your lungs will explode. That’s what had killed an SAS trooper, David O’Callaghan, during a training exercise in Bass Strait in 1982. We had to learn how to let it out slowly. It wasn’t too hard, but was another hurdle: if you didn’t master it, you couldn’t progress. We followed that with closed-circuit breathing, which is using an oxygen cylinder, soda lime and a scrubber canister to recycle your air and create no bubbles. For us, trying to escape detection, it’s an important skill.

  We were taught how to navigate under the water, keeping our bearings, time and distance in a complicated exercise. Then, in the tactical phase, wearing body armour and carrying guns and climbing equipment, we practised going up the side of a ship or the pillars of an oil rig. We dived as a team, launching off our craft and swimming with poles, steel-wire ladders, grappling hooks with ropes and a set of Jumars (ascenders), and put ropes around a pylon in accordance with specific timings. At the signal from the PC, we closed our circuits, breathed out and came to the surface, making sure we didn’t blow our lungs. We had our weapons up and ready to fight. Then we hooked our ladders onto the target and climbed up.

  I loved that war-ish stuff, and it was a thrill to think we were going to go off and do it rather than spend our careers in a peacetime army. In 2005, though, the Regiment was in limbo when it came to assignments. Their work in Afghanistan had ended in 2002 and in Iraq in 2004. There was a big exodus of SAS troopers to the private security sector. The Regiment hadn’t committed back to Afghanistan so when I came out of Reo in April 2005, we were in that in-between period.

  But that was not on our minds when we had our beret parade. It was held in the gym at Swanbourne, and was run by the Governor-General, Michael Jeffery, who had been a commanding officer of the Regiment in the early days. I’d had a great year with the guys on my course. The Regiment used to keep patrol strength – maintain the same small teams – for years. Nowadays, it’s much busier and patrols are mixed up, so you don’t have that same continuity and camaraderie, which means the bond you develop with the comrades on your Reo cycle can be the strongest of your whole time in the Regiment.

  I had Uncle Ken and Auntie Margaret come over, and was as proud as could be. I still had The Sentinel in my wallet, and the articles I’d collected from September 11. Now I was getting the coveted winged dagger badge. It was as if I could now stand my ground alongside that picture in my wallet.

  I was pleased to have got to this point less than three years after turning up at Kapooka, although there was an embarrassing moment where my inexperience was shown up. Some others on my Reo cycle had done a lot in the army, including going to Iraq and Afghanistan. When we were called up to receive our berets, our military biographies were read out: ‘So-and-so has been to Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor’, naming the units they’d been with. Then it was: ‘Trooper Mark Donaldson. 1RAR. Enlisted 2002.’ And silence. Walking the full length of the basketball court, amid the empty echoes of my inexperience, was something I’ll never forget!

  There was no silence at the crucial moment in the official photo we had taken in front of the Gratwick Club, the soldiers’ boozer at Campbell Barracks, affectionately known as the Gratto. We were out on the lawn, overlooking Rottnest Island, lined up in a big group. The Governor-General and senior officers joined us. Smile!

  It’s not your average photo. Some of the people are making disgusted faces, the officers are cringing, and most of us are fighting back laughter. Julian, whose speciality in Reo was doing the loudest fart at the most inappropriate time – say, when a particularly disliked DS was giving a lesson, or out on that patrol course – had just delivered. I love that photo, which shows us all reacting. All except for one, that is. The Governor-General is completely unfazed, a serene smile on his face. He didn’t say a word, just carried on. I guess that was his training kicking in!

  SIXTEEN

  Since joining the army, I’d often felt like I was on my first day at a new school, but nothing was quite like this. Wh
en I took my paperwork to 3 Squadron, my new home, I was told to grab a shopping trolley and go to the squadron Q store. When I got there, they said I could take whatever I wanted. Body armour, gas masks, pouches, boots, flush hoods, helmets, you name it; there was more in that Q store than in the whole infantry. The Q-ies at the battalion made you sign for everything, begrudging even a water bottle and warning you against losing one. Here, they were much looser about signing for things. They trusted you.

  The flipside of being treated as a grown-up was that you weren’t pandered to in any way. Each squadron had about seventy-five personnel, divided into three troops: land, water and free-fall. Within each troop, there were four patrols of five operators each, and also an officer, a sergeant and a signaller. On top of that, each squadron had another fifteen to twenty staff in operations support, intelligence, signals and admin. I was put into 3 Squadron as one of their wateries. I knew a few of the others from rugby, which I’d begun playing on weekends during Reo. Guys from work used to play for a local club in the Perth competition. Because they couldn’t be regularly available, they played in fourth grade, but they were much better than that. The opposition used to hate it when the Regiment guys turned up for a game. That year, we went through undefeated and won the grand final. So knowing some in the squadron was good, but it was still ‘Hey, Rookie’, with the implied threat that you had to prove yourself or else. I was constantly on my toes.

  3 Squadron was on call for domestic counterterrorism, which meant we were on very short notice to go anywhere in Australia. On the first Friday night, I was out getting pissed to celebrate finishing Reo; on the Sunday night we were called out for a national exercise and were put on a Herc to Adelaide. It happened that quickly.

  The exercise, involving police, fire brigade, ambulance and emergency services, was held at the Edinburgh RAAF base and then at a warehouse in town. According to the scenario, hostages had been taken and police were negotiating. We were there to be called in for the worst-case scenario, the last resort. Our operation was based on the British SAS assault on the Iranian Embassy in London. I enjoyed being part of what was clearly a professional operation in a different league. Emma was there too, having been attached to 3 Squadron as a signaller, one of the few times we could work in the same place.

  We were about to head home when they gathered us in and said, ‘There’s an Australian who’s been taken hostage in Iraq, and we’re going to send two patrols over.’ We were all excited, and Emma and I were asking each other if we knew who was going. In the end they picked one land and one water patrol, but not ours. The hostage was the businessman Douglas Wood. Even though I missed out, it made me realise how quickly I could be on a plane to Iraq, or anywhere else for that matter. The ones who came into the Regiment after having been to Iraq or Afghanistan were more battle-ready. They knew the feelings they’d get when they went outside the wire. Inexperienced, I just wanted to go and be part of it. The whole reason I’d joined was to be in this group and go away, get in a fight, and test myself and see how I handled things under fire. No amount of training is going to simulate the real thing. For me that keenness to get into a firefight, just to see how I’d go, was building. I thought I was ready. I just wanted to have a go. When I look back, all I can see is a young, naïve kid who thinks he’s ready but really doesn’t have a clue what’s waiting for him. That’s not a criticism of junior soldiers; it’s just that being in combat changes you and tests you in ways you can never anticipate.

  *

  Late in 2005, my PC told me I would be needed for a personal security detail (PSD). The chief of army, prime minister and defence minister were going on separate trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the government had already sent one of the SAS squadrons back into Afghanistan. Things were heating up.

  I was stoked to have been chosen, and rang Emma. She was happy for me, but with mixed feelings, because we’d just got some news of our own. She was pregnant. I got into my training. It was a quick build-up period, and we had to practise skills with some new fellows from other squadrons. I was getting more and more excited until, two days before I left, Emma had a miscarriage.

  If you haven’t anticipated it, or been close to someone it’s happened to, it’s very hard to comprehend what a trauma a miscarriage is. Emma was ten or twelve weeks pregnant, and of course I’d heard how common they were, but nothing prepared me for the grief she was feeling. She didn’t want me to go away, and it was difficult. I was trying to say, ‘This is something I’ve worked for for a long time, and they’re depending on me.’ She thought I was choosing work over her. I didn’t see it like that. They’d asked me to go, and if I turned it down, I thought that would be it, my career would be over.

  We eventually worked our way through it, under the pressure of a 48-hour deadline. I went away, feeling I had let her down but unable to do differently. I wished I could have stayed around. But the timing wasn’t mine to control, and I was a newcomer; I didn’t feel I could ask to stay out of an operation. Looking back, maybe I could have, but being a rookie I was highly keyed up and didn’t feel I had the power to make a personal request.

  The first PSD was for the Chief of Army, General Peter Leahy. Two weeks ahead of him, we flew in a chartered passenger jet into a controlled Kuwaiti air base. I looked down on thirty or forty big concrete bunkers left over from the first Gulf War. Every one of them had been hit by a bomb of some description. I thought it was good that they’d been left there, as a stark reminder to inexperienced soldiers like me that we weren’t here for a harmless adventure.

  When we stepped off the plane, we were hit by a wall of heat. I’d never experienced anything like it. I had felt the heat in Townsville and out in remote Western Australia in the summer, but this was the driest heat I had ever been in. The hot wind mixed with the searing earth was bad enough but when it gusted hot, dry sand into all open spaces it was close to unbearable. We were bundled onto a bus, air-conditioned fortunately, and were shouted at by an army guy. The place was ringed with American checkpoints, and we had to wait in two-kilometre lines. Every vehicle, military and civilian, was being checked. It was our first impression of the size of the American operation.

  We zipped into Kuwait City in our own cars for a look around. There was nothing around the base but sandhills as far as the eye could see. The Kuwaitis drove like madmen. We were going 140 kilometres per hour on a freeway, and cars were overtaking us easily, including a ute with a camel standing in the back!

  Our two weeks of reconnaissance and training included a few days at a rifle range run by Sandy, a crusty US soldier who’d been there since the first Gulf War. He was a classic southern-states American, chewing tobacco the whole time, setting up the targets for us. Our exercise involved being ambushed. We were driving as a two-car packet in a couple of American Chevys, big V8 town cars. The top priority was to get the VIP out to the safe house, and those of us who were left had to fight our way out.

  We ran the drill as usual, a dry run first, without bullets, and then a live fire exercise. I was driving the first car, which got hit. I pulled up where I was supposed to, and the VIP got moved to the second car. I went around to the back of the first car as the second reversed up to get the VIP out of there. It reversed, and then stopped with a jerk. Then it sped off. I was firing at targets with a machine gun.

  All of a sudden people were yelling out, ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’

  When someone yells ‘Stop!’ on a range, you know something’s gone wrong. I turned and looked. The second car was 30–50 metres away and I could see someone under it. By the time we got over there, they were calling for a med kit. The guy I was with was saying, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ Sandy came running over, asking what the hell was going on. The driver of the second car had jumped out to look underneath, and now he was just sitting down, in shock, with another bloke looking after him.

  We took a look and saw our warrant officer, Dave Nary, trapped under the car. I could
instantly tell it was bad by the position he was in.

  After getting the jack out, we tried to lift the car so the medic could have access to Dave. We tried to chock up the jack with blocks of wood so it wouldn’t sink. We dug into the sand to get some access. The medic was checking Dave’s vitals, but said he couldn’t feel a pulse. We called for an AME – aeromedical evacuation – and the chopper was on its way.

  The AME landed through some purple smoke. An American doctor jumped out and climbed under the car. A few seconds later he came back out and said, ‘That’s it, he’s dead. There’s nothing I can do.’

  Every time we tried to lift the car to get him free it just wasn’t working. In the end one of the senior men said, ‘Leave it, that’s enough.’

  We just sat around and started trying to come to grips with it. We got Dave’s body armour off him and put his gun to one side. The driver, who was badly shaken up, was taken away from the range. Eventually they lifted the car with a forklift and cut Dave out. He was very experienced and well liked, and we were all rocked. When we got back to our accommodation I helped one of the guys pack Dave’s gear so we could send it home to his family. It is never a nice thing to do. It was not the last time I would find myself doing it, either. We hadn’t even done the task and someone had died. No one had died on a PSD before, either in the real thing or in training.

  A decision was made not to bring us home or swap out the team. They replaced Dave with a new warrant officer, and we carried on. When Peter Leahy arrived, he took us into a room and said, ‘I understand you guys have gone through some stuff recently and I appreciate what you’re doing for us. I’m sure he was a good man and he’ll be respected appropriately back at home.’ He kept it low-key, and it was good to have such a senior person still trusting us to look after him.