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Suicide of Australian ex-servicemen

I have been saddened to hear on Skye News of the high rate of suicide among Australian ex-servicemen. There have been 500 at least during this year alone.

I am an ex-servicemen with 22 years service enlisting in the Australian Army in 1971, two years  before the end of the Vietnam War. There was no other war during my service that ended in 1992.

I think of my father who served in WW2 in the 9^th Division and saw action in North Africa and New Guinea.

He spent his time in the same unit as his younger brother Harry. They were gunners in the 4^th Light Ack Ack.

Both enlisted as private soldiers after a life of poverty after the death of their father who was a soldier of WW1 and committed suicide in 1925.

He was John Bell Copeland and suffered from tuberculosis contracted during the war.

My mother told me that my father changed after coming home from the war. He used to be so happy-go-lucky but was now bitter and full of hatred.

My uncle told us that my father suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) the result of war.

His brother committed suicide in the 1960s some 15 years after the war. My father suffered hypertension and strokes and died in 1969 at the age of 53.

My mother and father sought help from the Department of Veterans Affairs but were told that my father’s sickness was contracted after the war not the result of combat.

My father was like many soldiers who wanted only to go back home after the war and was happy to leave the Army with a clean sheet of health. Not a wise move. He paid for that in decades to come.

Men do not like to admit suffering from trauma and prefer to walk tall as men. My father eventually received a part disability pension before he died in 1969 at the age of 53.

Like so many soldiers before and now, he left the army with no skills to be used as a civilian. There are no jobs in civilian life that require skills of a marksman and ack-ack gunner.

Retired soldiers have flogged “man-management” to death on their curriculum vitaes. Military man-management is probably old hat these days.

Discharge from the armed forces can bring trauma to soldiers who have no civilian qualifications. No one wants to employ a rifleman. My father ended up with jobs as a labourer.

That is probably the cause of so much stress among veterans today. They can not find jobs that bring security, job satisfaction, salary, comradeship and respect as they found in the armed forces.

We hear the commentators on TV stations treat as inexcusable that the Minister for Defence did not know how many ex-servicemen are living in the community.

Of course not. They have to register or they just disappear. I have never registered and Veterans’ Affairs would have no record of me. I do not need them yet.

I joined the Australian Army with qualifications as a teacher. While serving, I completed my BA and BEdSt by correspondence from the University of Queensland.

I once had someone say that I was not a real army officer as I had half my mind still as a civilian. Of course !!

During my last years of service, I was Chairman of a school board, president of a Parish Council and Secretary of the local political branch. There was a smooth transition after I retired.

On retirement, there was no trauma as I went straight back to Education. My involvement in HIV/AIDS awareness in Papua New Guinea was a natural progression.

The only trauma in my life was to have looney Australian activists telling the community that I was a violent womanizing child molester. I had to be stopped from promoting family values to the PNG community.

It is very important for all service members to prepare themselves for retirement by completing training in occupations that can be followed in civilian life.

They can complete education up to equivalent of grade 11 in the armed forces. That is the Services General Certificate of Education (SGCE)

Then they can proceed at public expense to complete further education and training. They can undertake training prior to retirement.

Suicides are becoming common among farmers in drought ravaged Australia and India. Farmers in India suffer crippling loans with no chance to repay.

There is a rise in suicide among indigenous young people suffering hopelessness at a lack of schooling, no job opportunities in the Australian bush, alcoholism and sexual abuse for young girls.

It is all about hopelessness with no light apparent at the end of the tunnel. There is only death at the end of the tunnel.

Dispute over Rosie Batty and domestic violence

In the last week, there has been a furious disagreement between the Opposition Leader Anthony Balbanese and boss of the CFMMEU John Setka.

Comments were reportedly made by Setka on the domestic violence message of former Australian Woman of the Year Rosie Batty. He said that men’s rights had been diminished.

What would he mean by that if he had said it? There is no proof and witnesses report he made no such comments.

It seems as if the Opposition Leader and Secretary of the ACTU have gone off half-cocked.

But there is a rational basis to such a comment. In Papua New Guinea, the AusAID and UN loony lesbians have claimed for years that all women are abused and all men are violent.

Women have been angelized and men have been demonized. This is to fulfill the anti-man and anti-family agenda of the foreign lesbians.

The plan is to break down families and remove the authority of parents. Kids are to be stolen by paedophiles for gender reassignment and sex.

What does Rosie Batty have to say about gender equality? Are all Australian men violent to women and girls? A speaker on ABC Q&A advised that 93% of Australian men are loving fathers and husbands.

The legislations in Papua New Guinea are gender biased towards women which gives them the freedom to play tricks on men and the law.

A woman can bash a man and run to the police if he responds with violence.

I would like to see Rosie Batty on Sky News giving her views on domestic violence. Will she place all blame on men? 

Will she paint all women as loving wives and mothers? Will she acknowledge violence of women to men?

I do hope that Rosie Batty is a loving caring woman of Middle Australia and not a leftist looney lesbian of the ALP. This would turn the recent problem into a factional fight. Haha.