The footballer who became a hero
Cameron Baird, VC, was destined for the AFL until fate stepped in
HE’S been called a howling banshee, a commando with a face painted like a Mohican warrior, wanting to be seen and feared by the enemy.
It’s an image of Cameron Baird that does not sit squarely with the Gold Coast parents of Australia’s 100th recipient of the Victoria Cross, but they understand.
In talking about how his son would act in battle, Doug Baird prefers to use terms like “white line fever’’. It’s his football analogy to explain how his son, who was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously, would leap from the back of a Chinook and rush toward the enemy.
Whenever Corporal Baird’s boots hit the ground it was game on – just like his days as a young footballer when it seemed certain that each time he crossed the white line and ran onto the field in Melbourne, he was that many steps closer to an AFL career.
“In the early stages of his football career, everyone just expected he’d play AFL. He’d
IF THE GUN HAD NOT MALFUNCTIONED … IT WOULD PROBABLY HAVE BEEN OK, BUT HE WAS DEFENCELESS, JUST STANDING THERE.
DOUG BAIRD
worked on it for probably eight years, he dedicated himself to that. Diet and exercise, didn’t drink or smoke, did all the right things,’’ says his mother, Kaye.
Fate plays cruel tricks. The first was a shoulder injury that was a big factor in him missing selection in the AFL draft after he finished school as an 18year-old in 1999.
The second – as revealed in a new book titled The Commando by Ben Mckelvey and published by Hachette – was when the army rejected him.
“He just felt ‘OK, I’ll join the army, I’ll get away from Melbourne, I’ll be in Sydney where no one knows me or my sporting background, and I’ll prove myself again’,’’ Kaye told the Bulletin.
But an army doctor almost stopped that dream, claiming it was there in the textbooks – a shoulder could not recover from the injury that stopped his footy career.
Baird went to the surgeon who had pinned his shoulder back together. Rubbish, said the specialist, your shoulder is stronger than before. Baird challenged and was accepted into military training.
A few years later fate played another card. It would be fatal.
On June 22, 2013, Baird leapt from the back of a Chinook in the Khod Valley in Afghanistan, a known narcotics production area and a region army intelligence feared could become a vital supply route for the Taliban when the Australians pulled out.
Taliban forces were growing in confidence. Baird and his 2nd Commando special operations team were on a search and destroy mission.
Baird’s M4 assault rifle was always immaculately cleaned. The warrior’s weapon should never let its master down as he rushed into battle, smashing – as the book says – through the Taliban “like a wrecking ball’’.
But a warrior’s time is borrowed.
A Taliban bullet struck the suppressor on the end of his M4’s barrel, inflicting a mortal blow not only to the gun but also, in a frantic exchange of fire, to the soldier who had been through one tour of East Timor, two in Iraq and was on his fourth rotation in Afghanistan.
Cameron Baird, born June 7, 1981, in Burnie, Tasmania, and grew up in Gladstone Views in Melbourne’s northern suburbs dreaming of a football career, died aged 32 in a hellish gunfight between forces separated by just four metres on June 22, 2013, in a building in the village of Chawchak in Uruzgan Province.
His M4 now sits on display in the Australian War Memorial, where Baird’s Victoria Cross is housed in a section that honours the recipients – and their regiments – of this highest award for valour.
Asked how they feel about a description in the book prologue of their son as “a com-
mando, a howling banshee’’, his mum Kaye flinched and looked at Doug. This is still raw for the couple, who like many
Melburnians
Gold Coast.
As the interview proceeded the tears welled up.
retired to the
Kaye had never encountered the term “dead man’s pull’’ until she read the draft. It is the moment a trigger is pulled and the weapon fails.
The book is confronting, but has other sides too – the warm story of a loving couple who wanted the best for their sons, the slings and arrows of a footy career cut short, and a regiment – 4RAR – that rebuilt itself to become 2nd Commando Regiment, the equal of special forces anywhere.
Cameron Baird’s final battle is told through the eyes and words of soldiers who were there that day.
A few weeks earlier a commanding officer, LieutenantColonel Tom Porter, had urged Baird to take care with his charge from the chopper. “Just keep your f … head down mate,’’ Porter had said. “Yep sir, no worries,’’ Baird replied.
Jack Ducat (a fictitious name because he is still serving) and Baird were close mates who had fought shoulder to shoulder through the war.
On that day in 2013 Ducat was shot in the leg as his team surged through the village. Baird heard the radio message and the operation went up several gears. Ducat had to be evacuated. His leg and life depended on it.
“Be ready for room-floor combat,’’ Baird had said to his junior “doorkicker’’, Jez Thorne.
They soon found themselves fighting, reloading, pinned down and knowing they had to stop a group of Taliban fighters armed to the teeth and firing on them from a room in a large building. If they ignored that threat, they could all be cut down in the narrow alley they were racing through to reach their wounded mate.
Baird and Thorne were easy targets. Every time a grenade was used to try to dislodge the Taliban, the building filled with dust. The Australians stared into darkness while the enemy could see silhouettes.
Then Baird’s gun stopped firing. He moved back, checked the weapon and changed the magazine. He and Thorne charged the door again, Baird firing and hitting one of the enemy inside.
But his rifle stopped again, the dead man’s pull.
A burst of enemy machinegun fire smashed through the doorway. Thorne stepped forward, firing his M4 and dragging his fallen mate out while all hell broke loose.
The Taliban were stopped, Ducat was saved but Cameron Baird was dead.
Doug Baird is proud to tell the story of his son and regiment.
But it is hard not to weep in the telling and retelling. His stoic face has weathered Anzac Day ceremonies in public, but it crumpled momentarily in talking to the Bulletin about his son’s final moments.
“He was running to Jack to
try to help out.’’ Doug said.
“He’s charged the building three times. When you know what’s actually happened in that period of three minutes it’s like phew, they must have been flat chat, you know, bang bang bang bang sort of thing,
constant.’’ He paused, then began to talk about army video images.
“In the video, the last one (falters), sorry, it shows him walking around the edge looking for a way in. That’s the last bit of film of him …’’
Kaye took up the story. Her son would have known how dire his situation was.
“That last little bit I read (in the book), I thought you know what? I’ve never heard the term before, ‘a dead man’s pull’ … it had already stopped and he fixed it and he went back, but that last little bit something happened, he pulled the trigger to shoot, (voice shaking) and nothing happened.’’
Doug added: “If the gun had not malfunctioned – he’d already killed one Taliban at that stage, he probably would have … it would have been OK, but he was defenceless, just standing there.’’
The M4 is on display in the Australian War Memorial.
Doug tried to apologise for showing emotion, but any parent would fall in a heap. The fact the couple keep their chins up reveals courage – a trait their son inherited.