Soldier's suicide sparks inquiry in Australia

Captain Andrew Paljakka, an explosives expert with the army, took his own life after a tour of duty in Afghanistan. His death has prompted a military inquiry.
Photo: PA

About 1200 claims from the 16,000 veterans of the East Timor peacekeeping operation have been filed with Veterans Affairs for shell-shock and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Soldier's suicide sparks inquiry in Australia

Les Kennedy
November 1, 2007

HE SERVED in Afghanistan for just six weeks, but it was enough time to see things that would haunt Andrew Paljakka long after his tour of duty ended.

He told of having witnessed a child being raped, and of having to listen to the "gurgling sound" of a man he had shot slowly dying.

After Captain Paljakka, 27, returned to Australia last year, he began drinking heavily and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and severe depression. In February he was admitted to a private hospital in Richmond, NSW, but discharged himself. On February 26, he took his own life. He left a young widow.

His death may prove to be a watershed. Amid growing concern over the psychological impact of modern military service in war zones ranging from Afghanistan to East Timor, a military board of inquiry will sit privately in Sydney to examine whether his suicide may have occurred in the course of his service.

The NSW Coroner will await the outcome of the inquiry before deciding whether to hold an inquest, a spokesman said yesterday.

Captain Paljakka was the youngest army recruit to graduate as an officer from Duntroon Military College in Canberra, and went on to become an expert on major explosives............

..........His suicide follows that of another Afghanistan returnee, former SAS trooper Geffrey Gregg, who took his own life in Perth.

..........In August 2005, two years after being discharged from the Royal Australian Navy after rising to the rank of lieutenant commander, David Buck, 53, a Timor veteran, tried to get NSW police to shoot him dead by staging a robbery at the Umina Bowling Club with a fake bomb.
click post title for the rest