He Was Destroyed By War

As a family we would always head down to the coast for camping holidays, to meet up with our cousins, who lived in a different state.

It was the greatest fun and every year we would look forward to the summer holiday near the beach, a place called Rocky Bay, an apt description.

The thing with camping though is that you are never sure of who is going to be renting the camping site near yours. We had a large family so there were three large sites that we all rented right next to each other.

One day a man came in to camp alone. he had a beard and looked a little unkempt. He was strong, broad shoulders and scars on his arms.

The climate was humid so most of the day he spent with his shirt off, revealing more scars.

He was very quiet during the day, and went fishing on his own. He would just fish off the rocks, or from the sandy beach.

He was very polite and would always greet us. I noticed he never seemed to change his clothes, he wore no shirt and the same shorts the entire time we were there for two weeks. Black short pants.

Night time would be when things got a little weird. He would drink rum from a pigskin drinking pouch and then begin to sing to the tune of ' we had joy we had fun, we had seasons..' the Terry jacks song.

His song was not the same, you see his words were a cry for help, a pleading for the relief of his conscience. He had seen and done bad things in the war he had been in, and it bothered him.

He had not received any counselling, or post war mental health coping strategies. He was being eaten from the inside by the alcohol, as he would sing every night and drink rum every night.

His words were 'We had joy we had fun, shooting them all there in the sun, and the blood on their face and their innards out of place." he would repeat those words over and over.

Nobody dared tell him to be quiet, because he had a wild look about him when the rum kicked in. His eyes became wild and the polite man from earlier in the day time, was no longer resident in the body that glistened in the camp fire light.

The following day he would be polite and courteous and make his way down to the beach to fish or swim in the waves.

As children we were all told not to go near him. I did not realise it at the time because I wasn't mature enough to understand, but we were watching a man slowly destroy himself. It was his inner being, his conscience eating him like a cancer from the inside. We heard about fires they would sit around as soldiers, wearing necklaces made from the ears of the enemy that they had killed. This was their status symbol, the more ears on your necklace the higher up was your standing in the group.

We heard of them shoving bush knife blades under people's finger nails who would not give them the answers they were looking for. They would interrogate the local population and apparently this type of torture was commonplace.

Now I am not sure how much of the stories of the ear necklaces and the bush knife blades under the fingernails is embellished. Given the state of the man we came to know. I think horrific deeds like this were done.

I will never forget the soldier that we met on those camping trips and I am not sure if I am correct that he died some years after that, he was definitely on a path to self destruction and alcohol and his conscience were tag teaming him to an early grave.

It is terrible to witness this kind of thing, and not know what or how to help, I doubt we could have helped him, even if we had known what to do. War and the actions taken in the name of serving some political agenda is always costly.

Young men are programmed because young men do not think of consequence until after the age of about 25 years. It seems to be something that is inherent in most males.

I hope this inspires someone to get close to any soldier that you know, to look out for the war veterans, who too often are the forgotten in societies. Think about it. Freedom has a price, the freedoms we enjoy was paid for by others, sometimes they paid the ultimate price. Those that live on, have internal scars, far more deep than any external ones they may carry.