After the Blast

by Garth Callender

  The adrenaline and euphoria wore off quickly when reports of dead security guards reached us. Many of the men fell into dejection. The ambassador received venomous phone calls from the irate Iraqi trade minister. Like most Iraqi government officials, he employed his extended family as security. The people in the car had been his nephews, who worked as his guards. One was killed, the other three badly wounded; later came reports of a wounded civilian who had been caught in the gunfire.

  Three soldiers had opened fire.

  The first took it in his stride. He knew he’d acted according to his rules of engagement, and he also knew the Iraqi guards had fucked up. There didn’t seem to be any further emotional or ethical issues for him.

  The second grappled with the morality of it all for several days, until he spoke to his father. His father said he had seen the news and the pictures of the four-wheel drive with its bullet-riddled windscreen. His comment to his son was ‘Nice group’, referring to the tight spread of bullet holes in the vehicle’s windscreen. With that, the soldier settled.

  The third, a real character and, unbeknown to most of us, a deeply religious man, struggled with what he had done. He felt that as he had killed an innocent man, he would now go to hell. It took several visits from the padre and the psychologists to get him in a reasonable mindset.

  Tragically, Jamie, the third soldier, died in a motorcycle accident not long after returning to Australia.

  *

  By August we were starting to plan our return to Australia and the handover with the next combat team. I travelled by ASLAV down Route Irish to the Australian headquarters at Camp Victory. I was there to attend a planning conference for our ‘relief in place’.

  I found my bed and went to sleep in the happy knowledge that the conference didn’t start until 1100 hours, and that not many people knew I was there. So I was surprised to be woken at 0635 hours, when someone entered the dormitory room and came to my bed. He asked, ‘Captain Callender? Can you get up and come downstairs?’ I dressed and moved out to the hall, to hear two men speaking about someone with a broken leg. In the operations room, a crowd had gathered.

  ‘A rocket has hit the accommodation at SECDET, there are five in hospital.’

  I was no help to anyone stuck out at Camp Victory, and I knew of a corporal about to get on a helicopter to fly into the International Zone. She didn’t really need that flight. Through one of the staff officers, I convinced the operations staff to let me take her seat. At Landing Zone Washington I found an ASLAV waiting for me. The operator quickly explained what was going on and we headed back to the Cove. I ran the last 200 metres, as I knew the crew would take longer than me to get the ASLAV in as they had to clear all the vehicle’s weapons.

  I entered the main gates to see that a heavy T-wall positioned to protect the accommodation had been blown almost in half, with the steel reinforcements sticking out and twisted at odd angles. Most of the up-armoured and soft fleet had been damaged, with at least two vehicles completely destroyed. The place buzzed with activity, with sergeants running work parties clearing rubble, removing what was left of the T-wall and the damaged brick wall behind it, and cleaning out the damaged rooms.

  At the command post, the cavalry lieutenant was drafting the incident report; the Boss was calmly giving directions. Most of the windows in the building had been blown out, so there was the odd sensation of a cross-breeze where there was usually none.

  One accommodation room had been hit, but only by the percussion of the rocket blast, not by the actual fragmentation. The rocket had hit the T-wall first. Thank fuck – otherwise we would have had at least one dead, maybe four.

  The two unarmoured GMC Suburbans were cut to pieces. The other armoured SUVs all had holes here and there, their chassis warped by the blast.

  The female signals corporal who worked in the ‘vault’ was by far the worst injured. She had been sleeping on the top bunk, closest to where the rocket hit. She was thrown off her bunk and over a set of lockers and had landed on the floor. The impact had dislocated her hip, fractured her kneecap, split her forehead open and chipped her skull. First reports were of an ‘open fracture of the skull’, which made me envisage horrific injuries. As it turned out, she was badly injured, but it was not life-threatening. She was evacuated to Germany before getting back to Australia.

  The rest of the team suffered mainly cuts, bruises, scratches and grazes. We had been really lucky. When we had arrived in March, besides some useless ‘duck and cover’ bunkers, the Cove was in no way set up to deal with the constant threat of indirect fire. So we had come up with a plan to harden our defences against rocket attack, which involved surrounding all the structures in the Cove with 7-or 9-foot T-walls of good-quality reinforced concrete.

  The plan was approved, and several weeks and almost one hundred thousand dollars later, a team of Iraqi labourers was escorted into the compound to install the walls. One of the lieutenants took charge of the job, and the jokes started about him getting a second platoon, this one made up of ‘Smooftys’, as the locals were affectionately called.

  Safety became a concern when we realised that the sole task of one of the Iraqi team members was to use buckets and tubs to catch the hydraulic fluid that poured from the 20-tonne crane as it moved the T-walls. He would then take this fluid and pour it back into the reservoir, as the crane continued the task. We were also a little frightened by the sight of the frayed and twisted steel cable, which strained and creaked under load.

  The T-walls had been installed only three weeks before the rocket strike. For the first time in my life, I had had a direct influence on saving someone’s life. It felt good.

  Later that day, the brigadier came out to see the injured and inspect the impact site. Several rooms had had their doors blown off, including the Boss’s. As they were about to enter the Boss’s room, the goat bounded out, looking startled and chewing on a yellow rubber glove. It stopped to stare at them.

  ‘CSM – get this fucking goat out of here!’

  15

  AFTERMATH

  I STAYED A FEW EXTRA DAYS IN BAGHDAD AS part of the handover, providing final guidance to the incoming combat team as they settled in, and also making sure the goat went to a good home – one of the local contractor’s daughters had taken a liking to her. I met up with the rest of the combat team in Kuwait for the return trip.

  After days of travelling, the Boss, the CSM and I led the procession of soldiers, all in uniform, through customs at Sydney airport and along the walkway to exit to the public area. Cameras flashed and people jostled to get a look at the soldiers the newspapers had written so much about and whose actions had been placed under so much scrutiny.

  The Boss’s infant daughter broke from the crowd and ran forward crying, ‘Da-da, Da-da’, and the high-ranking greeting party and reporters swarmed around him and his family. The Boss, ever the consummate professional, stayed for some time answering questions and speaking with generals, before going home to try to resume a normal life.

  I travelled on to Brisbane, where I was reunited with my beautiful wife.

  *

  I always felt the Boss hadn’t been looked after. He’d taken things so personally.

  The Defence leadership never stepped in to give him proper support. They never said to the media, the government or the board of inquiry, ‘Back off, he’s commanding 110 soldiers in Baghdad at the height of an insurgency.’ Rather, they let the media run their stories uncorrected, let the board of inquiry drag him into headquarters for 3 a.m. grillings, and then told him that his career would suffer.

  He never seemed too shaken by it. He always had a smile and an encouraging word or personal question for the soldiers. He always did his best to look after me and the other officers. When we got back to Australia and his commanding officer ordered him to take all his leave before being posted to Canberra, he didn’t complain. But it meant he went from the chaos of Baghdad to the silence of his home almost overnight, where he stayed for almos
t four months before starting his new job.

  He also found that when he got home, his wife had no interest in talking about the deployment. She wasn’t interested in hearing anything from the previous six months of his life that he had given so much of himself to, and that had taken so much. Eventually his marriage fell to pieces – her silence had masked the fact she was having a long-term affair with another staff officer.

  As it turned out, his career didn’t suffer, at least not at first. He held a staff position in army headquarters, working for a general for a year, and then attended Command and Staff College in the following year, where he got the second-top position on the course. It was only at the end of our second year back that he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. He had called his estranged wife and explained to her that he was pondering the course of his life and questioning why he should still be alive. He had his hunting rifle in his hands when he rang.

  He spent weeks in hospital for his psychotic condition, but was released after the drugs and counselling levelled him out. His condition meant that he couldn’t continue to serve in the military, so he was discharged not long after being promoted to lieutenant colonel.

  On being discharged, he moved to Geelong to be close to his daughters. He lives a much quieter life. With the PTSD he has good weeks and bad. When not dealing with his own demons, he spends a lot of his time helping other troubled veterans.

  He’s always got his phone handy. He takes a lot of calls from former soldiers. He spends too much of his time convincing them not to take their own life.

  PART III:

  AFGHANISTAN

  2009–10

  16

  A JOB I COULDN’T SAY NO TO

  THIS TIME CRYSTAL DECIDED SOMETHING was very wrong. I’d been so quiet; I’d hardly spoken to her in a week. Was I having an affair? Did I not love her anymore? Did I want a divorce? …

  The truth was I was deploying again, this time for eight months – and I had no idea how to tell her. I thought I needed to be smart about it, to wait for the exact right moment. But in my typical foolish way I got it all wrong.

  The army only deploys volunteers, but most go when their unit does. Not me this time. I asked to go. I had found a job I knew was right for me. I like to think that it was the only job I would ever have volunteered for. We had a daughter now. Little Eva made things very different. I felt older, more mature, and I was not interested in chasing adventures or settling scores. This time it was the role I couldn’t turn down. It was a chance to save lives, or at the very least put things in place that would save lives, and not just those of other soldiers – civilians were getting maimed and killed too.

  How could I not volunteer? It was an opportunity to help stop use of the very same weapons that had injured me and killed so many. So I didn’t say no; in fact I put myself forward, knowing all the while that Crystal would be devastated. I hoped that although we would suffer a little by being separated, this would be outweighed by helping to save lives or at least slow the spread of the technology and techniques used in the bombs.

  When I told her, Crystal didn’t break plates in the backyard – she just cried and cried and was really angry with me. And I deserved it. I would be training in Townsville, away from home for three months, with the battle-group that I would support on an eight-month deployment. All up I would be away for about a year.

  *

  After returning from Iraq, I had spent time with the Recruit Training Battalion in Wagga Wagga, trying to be optimistic about a posting that seemed like a waste because I achieved very little. During the year in Wagga, my personal life took precedence over my career when we found out that Crystal was pregnant, and then, about halfway through the pregnancy, that the child, Jack, had a serious congenital disorder. In the end, Jack was delivered stillborn at twenty-one weeks. Our lives were turned upside-down. For all I had been through, and will go through, I hope never again to experience anything as painful as losing a child.

  My posting to Wagga Wagga was cut from two years to one around the time we found out Crystal was pregnant again. In late 2007 we moved to Canberra so that I could commence work with the Counter-IED Taskforce in Russell Offices.

  We were both very nervous about this second pregnancy, but not long after we moved to Canberra, Crystal gave birth to a healthy little girl: my beautiful daughter Eva. I would work in an office, be home each night at a reasonable hour, and I definitely did not expect to be deployed to war zones. The new posting was the perfect job for a new dad.

  Since 2006, when I had first heard about it, I had been working hard to be assigned to the taskforce. Throughout 2006 and 2007 I had conducted an underhand campaign of lobbying and pestering. I introduced myself to some of the lieutenant colonels at the taskforce, who in turn introduced me to the brigadier who commanded the team. Together we circumvented the normal process and I was asked for specifically for the role.

  The taskforce had been created to provide strategic oversight and direction for the entire defence force’s efforts against improvised explosive devices. As part of my role, I was introduced to the upper echelons of Defence, and while I spent far too much time in formal uniform and behind a desk, I also sank my teeth into the job and enjoyed it. I was thrust into a world where I regularly briefed generals, cabinet ministers, police, scientists and intelligence specialists.

  It was a time of extremes: one day I would be making sure enough lunches had been ordered for a course we were running, and the next I would be briefing the Chief of Army on the latest, highly sensitive, counter-IED initiatives and technology. My head spun for the first three months, and I spent the remainder of my time there in a state of mild confusion.

  The taskforce was a mix of military and civilians – dedicated and handpicked individuals who devoted their time to understanding IEDs and looking for ways to combat them. From them, I learnt about the value of thorough intelligence processes to identify current and emerging threats and perpetrators.

  Before this, my understanding had been focused on physical protection: body armour, ballistic goggles, helmets and vehicles to protect against blast and fragmentation; anti-flash hoods and gloves to protect against the extreme heat generated in an explosion; jammers to stop radio-controlled bombs from detonating.

  Now I was introduced to the idea of technical intelligence by my new boss, an extremely devoted lieutenant colonel, who was single, in his late thirties and had a work ethic I have encountered in only a few. I found him one morning at his desk in the same clothes he had been wearing the evening before. ‘Did you make it home last night, sir?’ I asked. His mumbled reply about having a lot of high-priority jobs on his plate and the half-eaten chocolate cake in the fridge answered my question. We would joke about buying him a dog to give him a reason to go home.

  Another character in our team was an ammunition technical officer with, it seemed, three brains. He broadened my understanding of technical intelligence and what a weapons intelligence team deployed in theatre could achieve. He had received several commendations from Australia and the United States for his work running one such team for Taskforce Troy, the US Counter-IED Taskforce in Iraq. He showed me how much information and ‘actionable intelligence’ could be derived from incident sites.

  Technical intelligence involves understanding everything about an incident: what the good guys were doing; what the bad guys were trying to achieve; how the IED was emplaced; what it was made up of; the triggering method; the chemical make-up of the explosive charge; the power supply; how it was all connected; whether fingerprints or DNA had been left during the fabrication or emplacing … the list goes on. If you take all this information and compare it with other IED incidents, you start to see patterns, trends and signatures that provide clues as to who built it, who emplaced it, and what the supply chain looked like. Then you overlay all the other intelligence that you have about insurgents, and suddenly real information starts to fall out.

  There are two valuable outcomes from this. F
irst, you have information about attacks that you can feed to soldiers so they understand the bombs being used against them. Understanding the weapons allows them to train and develop tactics to protect themselves. Second, a ‘target pack’ can be built with all the information, so that an individual bombmaker, transporter or trainer can be targeted. This target pack would drive ‘cordon and search’ operations by joint Coalition and Afghan soldiers or, if you pulled together some really solid information, the Special Forces might even use it for raids to capture key insurgents or in planning more secretive operations.

  The taskforce in Canberra stood up the first Australian Weapons Intelligence Team, which deployed to Afghanistan in April 2008. It was designed to work with our deployed units, as well as Dutch, US and UK forces, to gain answers to these questions. I helped to set it up, but did not go myself – in fact, at this early stage I had no desire to be part of one of the teams. Unfortunately, for several reasons this team and the one after it received a frosty reception from the Australian units they were supposed to be supporting. Some of it was due to personalities, some to a complete lack of understanding of what they were doing there (including from the team members themselves), but primarily it was because many commanding officers and staff saw four blokes whose task they did not understand but who were, due to the cap on overall deployment numbers, taking four valuable positions from them – a brick of infantry, or an ASLAV crew.

  The team’s role was something new and not clearly understood. Also, it was an unusual thing for the Australian military, a bit of a mongrel – four people with different but complementary skills pulled together rather than coming from a regular unit.

  The more I learnt about the team, the more I understood how valuable these four people were – they could provide so much more than another brick of infantry or a vehicle crew.

  *

  It was widely acknowledged that the best person to be the next team leader would be an officer, more specifically an arms corps officer. And so, on a cold morning in mid-2008, I had, as alcoholics call it, a ‘moment of clarity’ as I ran between the Australian War Memorial and Parliament House on the 9-kilometre route from home to the office. The best person for the next deployment would be me.