The Crossroad

by Mark Donaldson, VC

  We went through the battlefields heading south back to Paris: Pozières, where there’s a memorial to the Australians who won VCs; and Villers-Bretonneux, to see the Victoria school and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery. Earlier that year, back in Australia, I’d met some kids who’d won a prize to go to the trenches at Pozières. They’d won an essay competition in which they’d written about someone from their town who’d died over there. ‘Just remember,’ I said, ‘when you see his grave, you’ll be surprised how emotional you’re going to be.’ One of the kids later wrote back to me, ‘You were right.’ It’s indescribable, the emotions that come over you in that setting, knowing what happened. As a group we always took the appropriate time at each site to say thanks and pay our respects for those Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and others who did not make it back.

  In Villers-Bretonneux I was given a paperweight inscribed with the Victoria Cross, made of the same stone as the gravestones. Nearly a hundred years after World War I, people were still coming up and expressing thanks to Barry and me, just because we were Australian. Even though I didn’t do it consciously, I was trying to be a good ambassador for Australia.

  At Le Hamel, we were shown the battlefield where Sir John Monash had led the integration of forms of warfare in a decisive battle, in which two Australians had won VCs in ten minutes. I still carry around a small piece of rock from one of the bunkers at Le Hamel, along with mementos from throughout that trip. If ever I’m getting overwhelmed, I pick up that piece of rock and think, ‘This is nothing compared to what they went through. Stop whingeing.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Before I’d left Afghanistan in 2009, Ken Gillespie had contacted me in country to tell me I had been nominated and chosen as Young Australian of the Year for Western Australia, and was therefore up for the award of Young Australian of the Year, which would be announced on Australia Day 2010. Having just returned to being a soldier once more after all the attention around the Victoria Cross, I told him again that I was hesitant. I don’t know if he saw this as my (laudable, I hope) commitment to my profession, or just thought that I was a pain in the neck, but he said it would be a good thing if I accepted. I said, ‘Okay, I’ll accept it, but if it later turns out to mean a lot of extra time away from my family and the job, I hope you’ll understand if I back off and decide to turn it down.’

  When we were in Fromelles, the Chief of Staff of Army Headquarters, Brigadier David Mulhall, called to ask if I would accept the Young Australian of the Year honour if it came to me. I took my counsel from Emma and Brent, who had gone to Perth to accept the state award on my behalf. Brent said, ‘There’s two ways of looking at it. You might not do it, and that’s fine because you want to spend that time with Emma and Kaylee. But on the other hand, no private soldier has been awarded the Young Australian of the Year. A trooper’s the lowest rank, and to be awarded this is a pretty big deal. Don’t think of it as yourself, think of it as representing all those other soldiers you’re working with. You’re getting the word out to younger people about the job you’re doing.’

  Emma said much the same thing, and the two of them swung me around. In January, after we’d got home from France, I had a chat with Adam Gilchrist, the great former Test cricketer and chairman of the Australia Day Council. When I told him I was worried about travelling the country again for public appearances, Gilly said, ‘We didn’t choose you because of the amount of time you’d put in. We chose you because you’re an inspiration.’ It was a nice thing to say, and lifted a lot of the pressure I’d been putting on myself. The award ceremony was great to be a part of. I was impressed to be able to meet so many amazing people. Many of them were completely selfless in what they endeavoured to do with their lives.

  In the end it was a great honour, although sometimes I felt I was disappointing people because I couldn’t answer all their questions about what we were doing in Afghanistan, which was a hot topic of course. There was always this tension between us wanting to tell our story about all the things we were achieving over there, and the restrictions on what we could say. And I’m not exactly the world’s smoothest salesman. I hoped that my own story could inspire people all the same.

  Back at work, I spent 2010 in a ‘recovery’ role in Perth, meaning I had to be prepared and ready to go at a moment’s notice. I did my promotion courses for corporal, a stage I’d missed out on due to my commitments in 2009. I definitely wanted to step up and begin the path to leadership. The truth is, you can lead from any position. They call Afghanistan the war of the ‘strategic private’. Your attitude, leadership style and the way you do business shows leadership at any level. But gaining promotion is the normal progression, and you won’t have much longevity in the Regiment if you don’t want to be a PC or TL (team leader). Guys often say they want to stay a trooper and stick to the simple life, but they find that their mates progress, more junior people go past them, and eventually a bloke who’s been a trooper for seven or eight years will be operating beneath a corporal who’s much less experienced. That can create instability and distrust in a team environment. And besides, the Regiment is always looking for leadership qualities from the very outset, and I’d found that the longer I was in it, and the more action I saw in Afghanistan, the more interested I was in seeing the bigger picture and influencing events where I could.

  I went to Adelaide to do one of my courses with the regular army. Once again, my shyness about being the centre of attention got the better of me. Within the Regiment, I was treated as Donno. In fact, when the VC came up, which was every day, it was often because of Bruce’s unyielding belief that what I did was stupid. We still laugh about it. He would give orders, and sometimes finish with, ‘Unless you want to do something stupid like Donno.’ Those who understand, they like to take the piss out of each other. By contrast, on the promotion course with people from the wider army, which are almost like corporate training days, I was treated as ‘the VC guy’, with everyone wanting to hear about Afghanistan, which was a little unsettling when I was trying to blend in with the crowd doing a course for one of the lowest ranks. I didn’t mind too much, but I was still adapting to what I had to accept was now my normal life.

  The course put me into an agitated state. It was dragging on for eight weeks, which was a long time away on top of operations and training. It added a huge burden to my home life, and I was beginning to think that the point of the course was not much more than a tick in a box to say we had passed the army’s corporate governance standards for junior leaders. It was also eight weeks when I could have been giving back to the Regiment, sharing knowledge on our own training. In the mood I was in, I talked myself into thinking the course was counterproductive, detracting from our own capability. My frame of mind was also typical of how a combat soldier can feel when away from the action: impatient and critical with the slow pace of things when they’re used to a high tempo, excitement and the satisfaction of achieving results.

  I became a corporal, but soon I had something much more important to worry about. Late in 2009 Emma had fallen pregnant, but halfway through my promotion course she called up, quite upset, to tell me there was something wrong. Two weeks earlier, she’d had an accident on her bicycle that had resulted in Kaylee breaking her arm, and Emma hadn’t felt right ever since.

  When I called her doctor, he said, ‘She’s okay. Just calm her down.’

  I said, ‘She knows her own body. She knows if something’s wrong.’

  The next day, she went to hospital with pain and bleeding. I flew home and went straight there, where they told me that Emma had been pregnant with twins but had lost both of them. The operation they performed had damaged her tubes. When I got to see her, she was very upset because it might mean she couldn’t have any more babies.

  Over the next weeks and months, she and I started discussing IVF. We decided to commit to it, but it was harder than usual. I was often away on courses or doing representative dutie
s when Emma was ovulating, so they had to freeze my samples, which apparently wasn’t as good for the process as having me on the spot. Time after time we tried it, and when nothing was happening the anxiety and disappointment began to wear away at Emma. The constant cycle of having to do it all herself without me there to help would have been extremely hard for her and I really don’t know how she managed. We really wanted to increase our small tribe by one and it was depressing both of us that it wasn’t working as easy as we’d hoped.

  In fact that year, when we were supposed to be back in Australia spending time at home, I actually spent more time away from it than I would have if I was involved in a full tour in Afghanistan. After two promotional courses, a skydiving course, a two-week surge into Afghanistan, VC duties and other time away with general SAS training, Emma and I figured out how long I’d been away. By the 38-week mark of the year, I had been away from home for 28 weeks. There were still 14 weeks left and a lot of work to come.

  Meanwhile, work was taking an interesting new turn. Ever since childhood, I’d loved dogs. Angie had been a favourite, and my own dog, Lister, had definitely been my best friend when things were at their lowest. The opportunity to combine my love of dogs with work came up in 2010, when the Regiment was stepping up its use of combat assault dogs. In Afghanistan, we were now working much more during the daytime, and the dogs could act as a force-multiplier. Having an early warning system of a dog running into abandoned buildings, through thick vegetation or high-risk compounds would give us a buffer before we contacted the enemy. The Talibs hated and feared dogs. They did have dogs themselves, but tended to treat them like . . . dogs, keeping them in a filthy state and feeding them badly. Properly trained combat dogs could transform the way the Regiment contacted the enemy at close quarters. So, rather than become a patrol 2IC, the normal role for a corporal, I put my hand up to be a dog handler.

  In August, my mate Blue and I went to visit a dog breeder in the western suburbs of Sydney. There was a Belgian malinois that had a different quality from the ones I’d been training with. He was aggressive but highly obedient. There was just something about him. I thought, ‘If I had a dog to work with, I’d love this one.’ I’d been having trouble developing an ex-RAAF dog, and this one had an X-factor. His name was Devil, and he was eighteen months old. Blue decided to take him and put him through our selection process.

  Back at Swanbourne, the boys were sceptical because Devil was small and self-contained. The typical dogs we used were big, hard-hitting and menacing. But I could see his potential. We were pushing a dual role for the dogs, in which they could both attack armed fighters and also sniff out explosives. Speed, flexibility and adaptability are always key to what we do, and having dogs that could combine multiple jobs would be part of our light, fast-moving work patterns.

  I began working with Devil every day, coming into work early, walking him and training him. There was one day early in our partnership when he tested who was in charge. The other handlers had warned me about this but I didn’t think he would try it, not my dog. It was afternoon feed time and I was prepping his meal. I had it in a dish on the counter and he was patiently sitting behind me on the floor. I moved away to wash my hands and when I turned back he was two paws up on the counter helping himself to a free feed. I scolded him and went to pull him away from it. I had a hold of his collar when he turned and snapped and snarled at me, trying to bite my arm. I quickly grabbed him by the scruff of the tail and lifted him off the ground, but he managed to sink a few teeth into my arm. I carried him to his kennel and threw him in with a kick up the bum mid-flight. I didn’t give him his food that night and after that there was never an issue with who was in control, at dinner time anyway. It was a steep learning curve for both of us. We had some US Special Forces personnel visit for a few days to do some training with us, and one of them said the quality of your dog would result directly from the amount of work you put into him. The key, as the others were always telling me, was: ‘Trust your dog, trust your dog.’ The dog knows what he’s doing. It’s you that second-guesses and plays mind games. But it takes a while before you realise that in most situations you, the human, are the weaker link.

  Training Devil was almost like going back to the beginning and relearning how to be an operator, this time with him as my other half. Urban combat was especially important; as a team, we went down ropes, jumped out of planes, did low-light and night work, live-fire contact skills and fighting house to house. It was in a training exercise at Swanbourne that we had our breakthrough moment. I sent Devil to scout in thick bush where someone was hiding to ambush us. Devil’s job was to find him and attack him before he got us. I thought the guy was in a certain spot, and Devil kept going the other way. He was off-lead, 100 metres or more in front of me, working his nose on the enemy’s scent. He turned and, through some bushes, gave me a look. I was trying to point him in another direction with hand gestures. He paid me off, as if to say, ‘Mate, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Five seconds later, he found the bloke hiding in the bush. Devil 1, Mark 0. I had to learn to trust him.

  *

  Late in the year, I was finally in Perth at the right time to contribute to the IVF process (to give a live sample). The heartache, pain and worry that Emma went through was really hard and almost pushed us to the brink. We had tried so many times, and the emotional changes came upon her in big wrenching swells. Though it was difficult, I had enormous love and respect for how much effort and heart she put in, all for the chance to increase our family by one.

  Shortly after that attempt, we were invited to England for a reunion of the VCGC (Victoria Cross and George Cross) Association. Emma would get to meet the Queen this time, and we took her mother to look after Kaylee while we went to events. It was exciting for Emma to be able to do more with me, though there was something missing. I really felt like I had left someone behind. I said, ‘I can’t stop thinking about what’s happening to Devil.’ Emma just rolled her eyes.

  There were only eight or nine VCs and twenty-odd GCs, so the reception with the Queen and Prince Phillip in Buckingham Palace was quite intimate. We were at the end of the line waiting to meet Her Majesty and were having the pleasure of meeting Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, as well as other members of the royal family, when Emma started getting extremely emotional.

  She began this high-pitched whisper: ‘That’s the Queen – she’s right there!’

  I tried to calm her down. ‘Yep, don’t worry, she’s just the Queen.’

  ‘That’s what I mean! She’s almost here!’

  We got through it, but Emma’s emotions were at a peak. And there was a reason for it. Later that day, she called the hospital in Australia and they said she was pregnant. We were absolutely stoked.

  The next day we met Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, at Clarence House for lunch, a tour and a photograph. I found them extremely knowledgeable and approachable, but as usual I didn’t have a clue about the protocol. I was chatting with Prince Charles and Camilla while we were waiting to go into lunch, and then a reporter sidled up to ask me some questions. I got caught up in the conversation and suddenly there was a tug at my elbow.

  ‘Mark!’ It was Emma. ‘Get the hell in here. Everyone’s waiting for you to come inside the hall! No one can sit down!’

  I went in, and stood between my chair and the table. My embarrassment wasn’t quite finished. Camilla stood next to me, and I was in the process of sitting down when Emma, on my other side, grabbed my arm.

  ‘Mark! Don’t sit down yet! They sit down first!’

  As I tried to stop myself from sitting, I managed to knock my chair over. It went down with a great clatter and as I was fixing it up, Camilla sat next to me and said with a wry smile, ‘You’ve got to watch those chairs, they can be tricky sometimes.’

  We had more official functions, which I probably enjoyed even more than the previous year because
I was ready for them. I met Princess Anne at the opening of a VCGC exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. I was extremely surprised by how much she knew of not only me and Emma, but also my actions and the number of times I had been to Afghanistan. She was impressive and straight down the line. I spoke the Ode of Remembrance at St Martins in the Field on 11 November. Giving the Ode and hearing my voice echo around the church was a very powerful, emotional moment. I chatted with Charles and Camilla, Viscount Slim and others who’d been there in 2009, and we did another ceremony at the Remembrance Monument. Weirdly, it almost felt like a reunion. These people were as foreign to my upbringing and experience as can be imagined, but I was comfortable, as if among old friends.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The first months of 2011 were about gearing up to go back to Afghanistan, and I was building a real bond with Devil. Craig was the senior dog handler in the squadron. He was extremely helpful, passing his knowledge on to me when I was learning all the basics. He had been doing it for a few years so his advice was sound. His commitment to his dogs was a testament to how well they performed, so much so he has received recognition for his efforts in the form of an award. Craig and I had two dogs for the whole squadron, and our plan was to float between the patrols and attach ourselves wherever we could be most useful. It was a hard sell to say to these super-professional, brave and keen operators, ‘Stop and we’ll send the dogs out in front.’ It wasn’t natural for them to accept that a dog might be smarter and faster in finding the enemy. But we demonstrated it in exercises. We’d jump out of helicopters with the dogs, looking for suspects hidden in the bush, and suddenly the dogs would get a scent of them on the wind and take off. Or, the boys would clear a room and the dogs would find someone hidden in a cupboard who’d been overlooked. Once our guys saw it happen, they understood what a force-multiplier the dogs could be.