After the Blast

by Garth Callender

  The whole experience was a great insight into the Afghan battalions – the officers were all about keeping face, while the soldiers were poorly educated and poorly trained, but had a childlike enthusiasm you couldn’t help but warm to. They were never going to be a fighting force that would rival a Western, First World army. But the training and mentoring they were getting from the Coalition forces in the province was good. I felt there was a better than average chance they could hold the Taliban at bay after we withdrew at the end of 2013, or at the very least help force them to the bargaining table. Only time would tell.

  *

  Not long after this, we flew out to an IED find in the Baluchi Valley. It was another opportunity to see the work the Australians were doing. We were dropped in a field and led through a maze of qalas, not far from where Private Ranaudo was killed. While we waited for the Dutch EOD team, who were walking in from the dasht, I exchanged pleasantries with the patrol commander, a matter-of-fact 50-year-old who was somewhat of a legend in the infantry corps for his years of training jungle warfare – Jungle Jim, he was affectionately called.

  It wasn’t long before the Dutch team leader, Attila, and his men arrived. It was all smiles and handshakes. He and his partner were a funny pair – both Dutch gypsies. Attila was a burly buck-toothed bear of a man, while his partner was slight and quiet. Both were well-known and well-liked by the Australians.

  Attila made some final equipment checks. Then, no longer smiling, he walked stoically towards the small sack with wires emerging from it that the patrol had identified. We all waited behind cover, in case Attila didn’t get it right.

  After a small bang, when Attila cut the battery wires with a detonator, he called us forward. We recovered the remnants of the radio-controlled IED with four 82-mm mortar rounds.

  Two days later, we were back there again: the same patrol had found two IEDs within 150 metres of each other, and one had just detonated. It had been emplaced on the bank of a deep aqueduct, where one of the Australian sections had moved after they found the first device. From speaking to the section commander, I learnt he must have unknowingly stepped over it while looking for a spot to go to the toilet. When they switched off their radio-controlled IED jammer, it had blown – amazingly, there had been no casualties.

  The first IED was a large radio-controlled bomb consisting of about 12 kilograms of homemade explosive mixed with small motorcycle parts (added for fragmentation). While we were looking at it, the patrol commander got a call to investigate another suspicious item.

  It was a long walk with our gear, including the bag of ammonium nitrate aluminium full of ball bearings, and nuts and bolts in my small pack. Then, when we arrived, the suspicious item was gone. The patrol questioned some locals and sprayed several with X-Spray to see if they had been handling explosives. In the end they had six suspects: shady-looking men. Using my biometrics kit, I recorded photos, fingerprints and irises, and noted their names, where they were picked up, where they were from and so on.

  They were detained and marched back to the base, where one started to bleat after a little questioning. He claimed one of the others was Taliban and had recovered the IED and emplaced it in another location.

  We sat at Patrol Base Mashal for three days, waiting for a return flight. It was freezing cold and the only accommodation was a canvas tent that had bent poles so the flaps wouldn’t close; the wind whistled through the place all night. I only had what I carried in my small pack, and I had left room for evidence, so that wasn’t much at all. In my lightweight sleeping bag and thermal shirt and trousers, I froze and got bugger-all sleep. I was an idiot and a touch too proud to ask the men based there for more gear.

  While we waited, the detainees were released, as they had reached the maximum detention period without charge. The Black Hawks kept circling, but never landed. But at least I got to watch Jim and his team at work. It was inspiring to see how he led his patrol out into the thick fog that blanketed the Baluchi Valley one morning. I wasn’t keen to get out of bed, but Jim rallied the Afghan soldiers, motivated his team, and off they trudged out the gate of the patrol base. Hours later, they returned, wet and cold, to hot soup the patrol base cook had ready for them.

  *

  Journal entry: At least eleven killed today. Eight Afghan soldiers just outside Patrol Base Mashal. Soldiers who I had lived alongside and patrolled with just after Christmas. Another three Afghan police were killed near Patrol Base Tabar.

  *

  By mid-January we were preparing to go home. I realised how long we had been there when Scotty, the US Special Forces bomb guy, who had rotated out two months after we arrived, now rotated back to the province after a four-month break stateside. The roles had reversed and somehow we were the experienced guys telling him what was going on in the province.

  We had formalised the process for requesting helicopter movements for teams like ours and cut through a lot of the red tape and bureaucracy. There was now a form to submit for requesting transport out to a bomb site. It wasn’t perfect, but we left the problem better than we found it.

  We had finally convinced our Dutch weapons intelligence counterparts to work after dinner rather than watch movies and do ‘shportz’ (go to the gym in lime-green bike pants, ride slowly on an exercise bike for 15 minutes, then talk for an hour beside the water fridge). While they were reasonable characters, initially they didn’t grasp the bigger picture, didn’t see that the work they were doing would save lives. I think they finally started to listen by the time we left. It was the rollover after an IED attack near Tabar that turned one of them – it had been his friend who was crushed when the vehicle flipped.

  On my second-last day in town, I made my farewells at the Australian headquarters, and the commanding officer said some very kind words at his nightly briefing. Perhaps my memory has embellished them somewhat, but I recall him saying: ‘It would be difficult to understand how far behind we would be without a team like yours keeping a check on the IED threat. While we do not know for sure, your team has likely been responsible for saving lives, more so than all the individuals in this room together.’ I passed the sentiment on to the rest of my team, who grinned at me – we had done what we had gone there to do.

  *

  Journal entry, 3 February 2010: On the flight home after three days in Dubai. Still constantly checking my hip for my pistol, which I returned to the armoury days ago.

  This homecoming will be very different. In 2004, after two days at the Coalition hospital in Baghdad, then a week in a US hospital in Germany, I arrived at Sydney airport and was wheeled out through a back entrance to a waiting car, where I was whisked out to the military hospital in Holsworthy. During the drive a radio reporter announced that I had arrived back in Australia.

  This homecoming will also be very different to the reception at Sydney airport when we arrived home in 2006. Then, there were reporters, cameras and a grieving widow. Today I don’t expect to be met at the airport. Rather I will have a shuttle bus drop me to the girls. This is fitting.

  I break into a smile every now and then when I think of the work we have done and what we have achieved. Somehow I feel that I have quieted those demons somewhat and done my part to stop soldiers and locals from being injured or killed.

  With one of the gunners, Scotty, in front of the Victory Arch (Crossed Swords) monument.

  Loading one of the Phase 3 ASLAVs for transport to Iraq.

  ASLAVs departing the Flats through the Hesco chicane.

  Al-Faw Palace, Baghdad.

  View from the Flats to the north-east.

  The same view moments after the IED detonated. The still image is captured from the footage taken by the Australian snipers on the roof of the Flats.

  My vehicle sustained significant damage in the IED blast.

  The house that was adjacent to the IED blast.

  An Iraqi fire-fighter hoses blood from the footpath after the blast.

  At the CSH, Baghdad, following the IED strike.<
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  Crystal with me in Germany.

  Getting cleaned up – the two holes where the fragmentation had penetrated my sinus cavity beside and above my right eye were packed with wadding.

  My boots, now held by the Australian War Memorial (photo courtesy of the AWM).

  The Cove, with the former Ba’ath Party Headquarters in the background.

  SECDET IX soldier (photo courtesy of Jim Culloden).

  Memorial plaque for Private Jacob Kovco.

  Anzac Day in Baghdad, 2006.

  With the Boss on Anzac Day, out the front of the SECDET headquarters.

  The impact site where the rocket hit the T-wall.

  The damaged Hilux: incredibly none of the eight occupants was seriously injured.

  Looking for the impact site of a rocket attack on the airfield from the previous night.

  Mortar rounds lashed together with rubber inner tube – a common main charge throughout the province.

  The blokes at a strike near Patrol Base Mashal – Pete is in the crater.

  My squadron at Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area in mid-2012.

  The team outside our lab and office in Tarin Kowt.

  Four days after my return from Afghanistan, little Zoe was born.

  Ten years to the day since the IED attack in Baghdad: at Admiralty House, Sydney, with my old troop. Matt is fourth from the right.

  EPILOGUE

  I WAS HOME TO MY BEAUTIFUL CRYSTAL, WHO was right on nine months. Through all this time, she’d been raising little Eva on her own, while steadily getting more and more pregnant. Eva was sheepish around me for the first few hours after I arrived by shuttle bus to the apartment on the Gold Coast.

  ‘Decompression’ is compulsory when a soldier returns from overseas deployment. The idea is sound: it’s not healthy to go from long periods in a war zone straight to a long holiday. The large battalions and company groups had a process: set programs, including time with psychs, a bit of team bonding, a few social functions and the opportunity to have a beer or ten. The idea was that it was better for returning soldiers to get on the piss with the blokes they deployed with rather than go home to the family to get drunk and unleash whatever built-up angst they had accumulated over the past eight months.

  For smaller groups like my team, it wasn’t so clear-cut. Most of us went back to work for a week, had a few short days, answered some very old emails and knocked off about lunchtime. But because the girls had moved up to the Gold Coast, I didn’t have that option. Instead, I organised a day at the intelligence training centre at Canungra, in the hills behind the Gold Coast. I gave a presentation on technical intelligence and what we had done in Afghanistan.

  The presentation was somewhat inconsequential. Afterwards, I left the secure area and picked up my mobile phone, to find I had a couple of missed calls. I phoned Crystal back, who told me she thought I should come home, as she was pretty sure she was having contractions.

  Four days after I returned from Afghanistan, lovely little Zoe was born.

  *

  Our family moved to Townsville and I spent two years at the Combat Training Centre there. I couldn’t have asked for a more rewarding role. For the first year, I was a mentor for commanders about to deploy overseas. Throughout their training, I would be their shadow and make sure they got the most from it. I would be a sounding board and advisor, but more importantly I would pull together ‘after-action reviews’ so that they could understand how they performed – what they did well and what they could improve on.

  In the second year, the commanding officer appointed me lead planner of the large exercises: multi-million dollar activities that I designed and ran, involving a couple of thousand people, including people from AusAID and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through to the federal police and the air force F/A-18s. There were thousands of moving parts, but most importantly I was given the flexibility to design exercises so that what I had learnt overseas was transferred on through the training. I had a chance to pass on the lessons I had learnt about getting blown up, developing technical intelligence and biometrics, and some of the things I had gathered, particularly from Afghanistan, about counterinsurgency warfare. It was a great posting to have after a long deployment.

  It was during this period that I was told I had been selected to command a squadron in my old regiment. Squadron command was seen as the pinnacle of a junior officer’s career. I was promoted to major in the field by a general and posted up to lead A Squadron, back with the 2nd Cavalry Regiment.

  I really enjoyed working with soldiers again. Perhaps, though, squadron command didn’t live up to its reputation as the pinnacle of roles. Perhaps after seventeen years in the army, the difficult parts of the job were becoming harder and harder to tolerate. Perhaps I struggled to give all I could to the role and the 120 officers and soldiers under my command. During this time I spent four months away training in Shoalwater Bay – it was another chunk missed of Eva’s life, and now Zoe was growing up too.

  Things came to a head when, nearing the end of my first year as squadron commander, I was put under pressure to go back to Afghanistan. The job was a good one – head of plans for the province – but my heart wasn’t in it. There was no way I could leave the girls again, particularly as the army couldn’t give me a firm end-date for the deployment – it was supposed to be nine months but might stretch to twelve months or longer, as it was likely to cover the Australian draw-down and exit.

  So – for the first time in my career – I said no, I would not volunteer for the job. My commanding officer threatened that my career would suffer and that I would not be considered for the next promotion gate, selection for Command and Staff College, which meant I would stagnate at my current rank. His point was that I was not offering ‘effective’ service by failing to fill a service need – and on one level I completely agreed with him.

  I went home and discussed it with Crystal and she was clear: ‘I think it’s time you got out of the army.’ This was something she had never said to me before, although I was sure she had wanted to. My life in the service had taken a toll on her. I had been away from her for years, and Eva, aged 5, had already moved house five times. It wasn’t fair on them; while it hurt to walk away from a career to which I had given so much, I knew my family had to take precedence – a very overdue sentiment on my part.

  I left the military wanting to find a worthwhile job where I wouldn’t have to sell my soul, and where I would be doing something ethically grounded. It took a while to find it. I eventually found a good job with an employer who had the foresight to see what a former military person could bring to his organisation. I had been appalled by how far from reality was the private-sector rhetoric that employers would jump at the chance to get someone from the military. I was equally sickened by the mantra for motivating staff in many management roles: ‘That’s how you get the big house in Mosman.’

  *

  As I write, Iraq is again plunged into war. My dream of going back to a peaceful Baghdad – boating on the Tigris, lazy afternoons in restaurants lining the boulevards near the 14th July Monument – now seem more distant than ever. The Islamic State fighters have orchestrated the perfect inducement to draw the attention of the Western world. By beheading journalists, they have put the media in a frenzy. The West has allowed the media to posture, and to drive popular opinion – and so it is inevitable that once more we are dropping bombs and deploying ‘advisers’ into the war zones of Iraq and Syria.

  While I don’t necessarily disagree with responding aggressively to the advance of the Islamic State, I can’t help but feel we have taken the bait of the extremists. By committing forces to fight them, we have legitimised their cause. The prestige of opposing Western forces has given a significant boost to both the reach and numbers of Islamic State recruitment. Most alarmingly, as arrests and shootings continue around Australia, there now appears some truth to the prediction that home-grown terror cells and returning radicalised foreign fighters will
be the greatest threat to Western countries in the near future.

  The biggest mistake anyone can make, assessing this whole tragic episode in global affairs, is to believe that it is more ideologically or religiously based than it is. This is not a Muslim versus Christian fight. Nor is it even Sunni versus Shia, or Kurd. And it is definitely not an Arab versus the West fight. Rather this is a fight against a group of arseholes for whom religion is just an excuse to spread their influence by force, carrying out wanton atrocities as they see fit.

  *

  In April 2014 there were several television reports about a former soldier, Matthew Millhouse, and his fight with younger onset dementia. Matt served with me in Iraq and his illness has been linked to the IED attack in which we were both wounded.

  My wounds were obvious and I was treated with surgery and hospitalisation; Matt’s wounds were not obvious, but were much worse and much more sinister. Matt has suffered from depression, post-traumatic stress and now dementia. He only received treatment years later, when his condition became debilitating. His current state is such that he has been admitted to a nursing home because his young family is no longer able to look after him. He is 34 years old.

  I owe Matt a lot. He helped protect me when I was injured in the streets of Baghdad, when I couldn’t protect myself. He assisted in my evacuation to hospital. He sat by my bed when I was in recovery after surgery.