Australian Troops and invisible scars of a soldier

Nick McKenzie
March 8, 2008

THE bullet smashed the windscreen, spraying shards of glass into an eight-year-old boy's eye. He would never see out of it again. It also pierced the face of the boy's mother. She, too, would be left sightless in one eye, as well as partially deaf and with severe head trauma.

The young Australian soldier who fired the shots on a Baghdad street two years ago says it was like a scene from Pulp Fiction, in which a gangster played by John Travolta accidentally shoots a man in the head in a car. But this was real. He had pulled the trigger. It was bullets from his gun — three in all — that pierced the family's Volkswagen as it drove towards another soldier who was screaming at the driver to stop.

And it was Ben's life that, in a few seconds, changed forever. It was February 26, 2005, and he was 20 years old.

"Everyone is screaming. And everyone in the back (of the car) just jumps out and goes, 'Why? Why? Why?' They were covered in blood," recalls the former infantry man, now 23. "Straight away, I felt like shit."

Ben's story — he has asked that his surname not be used — offers a rare first-hand account of the confusion and ugliness of the Iraq war and of its impact on some of the young Australians sent to fight in it. It is a side of the war the Australian Defence Force has mostly kept secret.

Kept quiet, too, is the other thread to Ben's experience — how soldiers are treated after a horrific event and what happens when they come home.

The shooting of the al-Saadi family — middle-class shop owners now suing the Federal Government in a landmark case for compensation — was made worse for Ben by what happened afterwards, a series of missteps and alleged attempts to cover up what had occurred.

The warning shots fired at the car by one of his superior officers should never have happened, as warning shots are banned under Australian rules of engagement. Ben alleges that another soldier falsely claimed that the family had guns in the boot of their car, a lie that incenses Ben because it implied his actions somehow required covering up.

Then there was the decision several months after the shooting to hand the Saadi family two envelopes filled with cash. Without notice, Ben was asked to contribute to the payments, which increased his sense that he was quietly being blamed by senior officers. Ben handed over the contents of his wallet. He had $33.

He was ordered to accompany his new commanding officer to the Saadis' home. "I did not know we were going (to their house). When we got there, the kids are bringing us Pepsi. They were the kids of the mother I shot. I felt like shit," he recalls. "He (the commanding officer) never rang my f---ing house to see if my wife or kids were all right."

Last November, Ben was medically discharged from the army, suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that can follow a major traumatic event. Symptoms include depression, anxiety, fear of public places, nightmares and flashbacks.

"I am lucky to go an hour without thinking about Iraq. Every hour I think about it."

Ben had wanted to join the army since he was 10 years old, following in the footsteps of his uncle, an army engineer. He joined at 17, three months before the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington. After three years and an uneventful stint in East Timor, he was desperate to put his training into action and to "make a difference". On the same day Ben landed in Kuwait bound for Iraq, he was told his wife, Tara, was pregnant.
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