I VISITED KNACKERS every week, and he often dropped in to my place after work. There was another battalion reunion organised; we both wanted to go, but couldn’t make up our minds. I can see now that we were exhausted, scared, and overflowing with insecurity.
However, this year I returned to my old habits. I enrolled in a post-graduate course at Deakin University. Naturally, I continued in fulltime work. My time had to be carefully arranged or I wouldn’t cope. I became socially isolated, and went back to four hours’ sleep a night. My results indicated that I was likely to get distinctions and first-class honours … Sound familiar?
For once, August almost snuck up on me. Then, suddenly, it was all consuming. For months now, the emotions that surfaced during my nightmares had begun to intrude into my waking hours. It was difficult to study, I was slower, and lacked the memory and recall I had with earlier studies. At work I was blurry-eyed and jumpy. People talking behind me would cause me to sweat and lose concentration. After work, I would go home exhausted, nap on the chair in front of the TV, and then bury myself in studies. But once I got into bed, I couldn’t sleep. I had chest pains …
An appointment was made with my GP. In his room I told him — not the psychiatrist — that I was having severe sleeping problems and prolonged nightmares. He gently enquired further as to their cause. He was a kind man, genuinely interested in my well being; he knew my wife and family very well. Then, without warning, I burst out with a deep, guttural roar. I screamed at him about a contact we’d had; I roared the vivid details of a wounded VC woman. I was on my feet ranting, ‘What a stupid bloody idea … walking into our lines holding up a leaflet.’ I blurted out a scene of a young child with elephantitis, with his mother sitting helplessly beside him. ‘We were so fucking heartless.’ I started to cry. It was a crude, wrenching, sobbing burst of agony. The doctor had tears in his eyes. Clearly distressed, he was shaken by my uncontrollable outburst and again insisted, even pleaded, that I rest, and take a month off work.
‘And please tell the psych.’
I needed a mate, so I sought out Knackers. I badly needed his company, and I knew the feeling was mutual. On the night of the sixth of August, I drove out to his humpy, a camper bus. It was located in a paddock near a dam. As I got closer, I could see there were no lights on, and I thought he might be asleep. Then I saw a dim light: it was his gas stove, burning very low. His van batteries were flat. He was having a can of beer, and I joined him.
‘I’m rooted, mate. I just can’t sleep. What are we gunna do, Baz?’
I said nothing. I often asked that question of myself, and had no answer for it.
‘Why did they send me to Bangkok?’ sobbed Knackers, tears running down his face. ‘Poor bastards … shit, Baz … ‘
I was struggling to remain composed. Knackers rarely called me Baz — only in moments of complete openness. When we’d first spoken after I came back from Hong Kong, he’d called me that. I’ll never forget the sadness of our awkward, disjointed conversation that day. Now, here we were, inarticulate and overwhelmed again. Knackers kept cursing himself for having gone to Bangkok on leave and for not being there when he was needed. I echoed him; I was distraught about my incompetence on the radio, my terror, my inability to cope, and my failure. And both of us were faced with added agony, as it was generally accepted by now that the war in Vietnam had been wrong, stupid, a waste, and a pointless exercise … we were both rambling.
The pain in my heart that night was all-consuming, bottomless, and overpowering. I felt hopeless, unable to help or to accept help. At 4.00am, I left Knackers in his bus and headed back home, drunk.
On the fourteenth of August, my wife answered the phone.
Knackers was dead.
I didn’t believe her. But I did. Surely, she had it wrong. But it must have been true. His heart was broken when I saw him last. Instead of going to work early, I sat in the lounge room, staring at nothing. A chunk of my being, the thing that made me myself, had been ripped out. The pain was excruciating. I couldn’t imagine life without him. Lyn was confused and scared. She didn’t understand. But how could she? I’d never shared anything with her about Knackers or the significance of the sixth of August. I’d never included her, or any members of my family, in my friendships with my army mates. She couldn’t know that he’d been someone who shared a little of my grief and guilt, and understood it.
Poor Knackers. Poor Lyn.
I went to work. I never stopped. I had shortened lunchtimes, and apologised to staff members and clients about the hay fever that made it look as though I had tears in my eyes. When someone asked if I knew the veteran who’d died, I rushed out of the room. I had never introduced Knackers to fellow workers. He didn’t want that.
Some of the blokes — Grunter, Booster, and Beebop — were at his funeral.
Every day after work, I visited his grave. I talked and talked and talked some more. It was too late now but, finally and uselessly, I talked about myself. I asked why and how.
It was several weeks after Knackers’ death. I had come home from work exhausted. I went to bed late. I had written a 3000-word assignment and was in front with my studies. But, by now, Vietnam memories were always hanging about, whether I was awake or asleep. I was becoming hyper-vigilant again. Any noise outside the house was an intruder. Earlier in the week, I had sat outside in the dark, just near our letterbox, for over an hour, watching … in fact, I was quite happy not to go to bed. But, this night, when I finally went to bed, Lyn was sound asleep. I must have dozed off.
I woke up terrified. It was the same nightmare: a wailing, screaming VC falling down, shot badly … accusing me of the filth that summed up my being. The scene was vivid, and it wouldn’t go away. It was in the room. The room was the jungle. I was awake in a nightmare … I was back in Vietnam, awake. I seemed to have lost reality.
My shoulders and chest ached from the heavy pack on my back. My muscles started to cramp and contract. I tried to throw off the radio. The weight started to crush my whole body. I could feel it slowing down my heart and it knocking hard against my chest. It was slowing … I was going … I couldn’t get the weight off. But I remained quiet … this was my problem. Lyn was beside me, sleeping in the bed in the jungle. I was at the point of collapse, sinking, filled with the feeling that, all along, this had been meant to happen. Soon I would faint from pain. That was OK, but it got too much. My pulse was very low. I woke Lyn.
‘My heart is hurting, bad. I’m going to be sick.’
She didn’t panic. I staggered with her help to the bathroom, and the jungle started to disappear. Instead, I was in a warm, soft place that was bright, peaceful, and beautiful, like the top of Connors Hill. It was where I wanted to be. If only the pain in my chest would stop.
Lyn tells me now she knew I was dying, but at the time she continued to talk to me and encourage me to come back, to stay with her, to breathe deep, to not pass out. Her persistence was what saved me. I vividly recall making the conscious decision to focus on the pain and to fight to survive.
Then I was on the couch in the lounge room with two MICA ambulance officers on either side. They were asking blunt questions with the utmost tact. Then the hospital ceiling was spinning as I was wheeled somewhere. I kept apologising to my poor wife.
I heard the words, ‘His symptoms … major heart attack’. They were wrong. I had to explain.
‘It’s OK. My heart’s OK!’ I ranted to those trying to help me. ‘It’s not my heart. It’s all in my head. It’s full of shit!’
Funnily enough, I was right. My heart was fine. Broken, maybe. It really was my head.
I awoke to see my psychiatrist sitting next to me in the hospital room. I had slept for thirty hours. I was very weak and frightened. Later, I remember collapsing in the hospital shower and just being able to reach the red button for help. I had no strength. I had been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). My condition was very fragile.
Normally, I would have been transferred to the Heidelberg Psychiatric Hospital for veterans in Melbourne. It had a ward specifically for PTSD sufferers — the ward we’d all talked about as the mental ward, where you go when you’re stuffed. But that was for other veterans when they collapsed, not me. The thought terrified me.
I believe that, knowing this, my wife and son had felt strongly that I should stay in my local hospital until my strength returned. I wasn’t ready for Heidelberg. Sadly, earlier that year, some blokes had tried to persuade poor Knackers into attending. He was deeply hurt by their concern, and disgusted that he was seen as a victim of PTSD.