SUICIDE AMONG VETERAN SERVICEMEN

There has been a recent focus of the Australian Federal Government on suicide among retired servicemen. 

Many of them suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). My father suffered after WW2 when it was called a nervous breakdown. My mother said he was never the same after the war.

I am an ex-serviceman retired after 22 years in 1992. I have been diagnosed as suffering from PTSD but not through military service.

I have worked through the desire to take my own life particularly after my Australian family abandoned me. I looked after my children all their young lives and helped them gain professional careers. Then they turned their backs on me when I was in trauma.

It has been through massive stress as executor of my mother's will facing greedy vicious sisters.

Then there was the abortive corrupt contract in the Solomon Islands. I was employed in a position that was never advertised. I was black banned by the other workers until I left for Australia. Many had wanted the job.

Then there was the horror of community hatred in my town near Geelong when I as the Secretary of the local ALP branch supported the building of the Barwon Correction Centre. 

Half the town supported the prison as a humane replacement for the stone walled Pentridge prison. The other half were concerned with property values and escaped prisoners.

Even many people in my church rejected me though I had been President of the Parish Council for 7 years. I was abused in the streets and threatened with violence. I moved to PNG where I thought I would be at peace.

But the worst traumatic stress came in Papua New Guinea when I faced a hate campaign at the hands of the AusAID and UN paedophiles who opposed Positive Living.

I was caring for two people in my family and being vilified by the AusAID counsellors who should have been giving support. They sought to destroy my little family. They claimed I was a killer and abuser of women That did not help my PTSD.

But retired servicemen are not the only ones to take their own lives. There must be hundreds of retirees who are in poverty and unable to find employment.

There are recorded hundreds of farmers who have killed themselves as their stock died and their water dried up. 

There will be suicides among the people who lost their homes in the recent bush-fires. Many Indian farmers commit suicide to avoid the endless loan payments to loan shark landlords.

I ended up not taking my own life but helping people suffering from HIV/AIDS. I still do that though my PTSD is still with me. I am still able to work, defend myself and look after others. In the end we are alone.

I am not feeling sorry for myself. I have lived longer than many people I know and have a loving family in Papua New Guinea. I had a profession to go to after retirement from the Army. 

So many soldiers do not have skills that will find them employment. No employer needs a rifleman or a radar operator.

My younger daughter has a husband-to-be in the PNGDF who has just come home from training in China. I am relieved that he is not going back until Coronavirus settles down. He is a Captain one rank lower than I was.

I am getting too old to be looking after widowed daughters and their kids. My eldest is a widow.