Oonn ccoopiinngg

THEY are elite fighters, operating in high- performing teams with a strong sense of purpose – until the day they discharge from the military.

“Then you get out and you’re at home washing the dishes, taking the dog for a walk,” said Major Bram Connolly, who spent more than 20 years in the ADF.

“You’re no longer in a Blackhawk at night racing across the desert with someone yelling out ‘ 30 seconds’ before you’re running out and getting shot at and you’re shooting back.”

Suddenly veterans are at home, thrust back into “normal” life with families and domestic duties. For many, the initial transition back into civilian society is fraught.

It is at least equally true for the Voodoo Medics, the elite group of medical specialists who accompany our special forces into combat whose stories are revealed in the Townsville Bulletin series.

Because of the nature of their work, even seasoned special forces soldiers say the medics saw the worst of the trauma on the battlefield.

By the time Major Dan Pronk, a former doctor within Australia’s Special Operations Command, discharged in 2014, he felt like he had merged with his role of combat doctor.

“I cut my hair down into a mohawk and grew a goatee beard,” he said. “All emotion was removed from myself at the time to keep going.

“Anyone looking at special ops from the outside, all you see is the shiny stuff – the action, the painted rifles, the bearded operators, the ballistic sunglasses – but like any of these things the reality of it is very different.”

That reality included the violent deaths of three comrades within weeks during his second deployment in 2011.

In separate incidents, Sergeant Brett Wood died from an improvised explosive device blast on May 23; Sapper Rowan Robinson was killed by a Taliban sniper on June 6; and Sgt Todd Langley was