Cold War vets should be recognised
It’s shameful what some of our military vets have to go through. Spend souldestroying decades trying to prove their ailments are a result of active service just so they can get a meagre disability allowance to live on.
This November, we had the ‘‘landmark’’ case of an elderly NZ naval veteran awarded disability compensation for Parkinsons brought on by chemical poisoning incurred during the 1948-1960 Malayan Emergency. But the reality is that it was just one of seven separate claims awarded against VANZ (Veteran Affairs New Zealand) this year. The cases mount up, claimants all having to fight long and hard to prove related injuries, the burden of proof forever stacked against them.
One stonewalled case is that of retired army engineer Ian Leslie ‘‘Les or Stobe’’ Stobie, whose been on a back-foot right from the start because his Cold War era files from serving in Moscow were almost certainly destroyed by the Defence Department, such were their sensitive nature.
As a Royal New Zealand Engineer or ‘sappers’ as they are called (derived from French sappe referring back to spadework and military trenchwork of the 17th century), Stobie got deployed in a dozen-strong detachment which got sent to Moscow for the job of ‘‘refurbishing’’ New Zealand’s Embassy there.
Essentially their job was to keep the place secure, in particular continually sweeping the whole embassy building for listening devices. All were under no misunderstanding that their mission was top secret, so secret they had to be seconded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as civilian workers for the term of their assignments.
Stobie did two tours of duty in Moscow, from August 1978 to early 1980. It was the height of the Cold War and Russia was moving into Afghanistan. Diplomatic missions to Moscow, especially those of Western powers and their allies, came under an unprecedented surveillance attack. The English Embassy even got breached by a tunnel, while the Canadians shifted their secure strong room upstairs to avoid it. The Australians had steel grille window bars hacksawed through, their embassy subsequently found to be full of bugs.
Things were extremely tense, and the Russians did not treat our embassy newcomers any better. Recalls Stobie: ‘‘We were put in harm’s way from day one, getting a taste of what was to come on our arrival when all our gear was ripped apart by border officials. It was constant harassment from there on.’’
The group’s posting would become a psychologically challenging environment for the serving sappers, who were without either diplomatic immunity protection or Defence Department status. Essentially they were set up as military personnel dressed in civilian’s clothing working as civilians on secondment.
It was all about command and authority of the military behind the ‘‘Iron Curtain’’, at the height of the Cold War.
From the start, no communication with spouses or families at home was permitted except via diplomatic post bags once a week. Any dialogue the men had concerning the embassy could only be conveyed outside in low voices because the place was almost certainly bugged and monitored 24/7. Out on the street they noticed they were not only always watched and followed but approached regularly by probable KGB agents.
Some angled for a setup, others were downright menacing, interrogating them and roughing them up even.
It became a matter of constantly watching their backs, always on guard even when talking in their living quarters. The Russians were masters of planting bugs. One device found in our embassy only days after the room had been cleared was behind a ceiling vent in the dining room. That bug is now held by the GCSB’s secret spy museum in Wellington.
In his book Letters from Moscow then Ambassador Jim Weir says before the sappers arrived, the embassy was regularly broken into during the early hours and that he regularly slept with our and allied nations’ secrets in his pyjamas for safe keeping.
But things would only get worse. The Soviet Ambassador to New Zealand Vsevolod Sofinsky got expelled in 1980 for supposedly funneling money to the pro-Soviet Socialist Unity Party. Tit for tat, Weir was declared persona non grata and expelled too.
Stobie’s defining event would come in a rundown Moscow hospital after he fell painfully ill with acute appendicitis in February 1980. Rather than being evacuated to a hospital in Helsinki or London like his usual Commonwealth medical scheme would have ensured, Stobie found himself taken by embassy car to Moscow’s sprawling public hospital, Kropotkinskaya.
After waking up in the surgery ward, he remembers being wheeled to a smaller one-bed room, where soon after two men came in and shut the door. Together they grabbed Stobie’s left shoulder and left forearm before roughly injecting him with a needle and syringe.
‘‘It was sheer terror. They injected me while I struggled in extreme fear and excruciating pain, not knowing what the hell was happening.’’
For the next however long, they interrogated him. Stobie still has nightmares thinking what the KGB did to him in Moscow.
‘‘Essentially it was a chemical interrogation. But NZDF [New Zealand Defence Force] say they have no evidence of such an occurrence.’’
In that Soviet hospital Stobie had felt utterly abandoned. The NZ Embassy only rung the hospital for medical updates and it was not until a fellow workmate visited Stobie that concerns were raised about his hospital treatment.
Stobie was finally ‘‘retrieved’’ after four and a half days in hospital and evacuated back to New Zealand, arriving back 10 days after his surgery. His wound opened during his arduous trip home and become badly infected, resulting in 18 months of medical treatment ending in more surgery. He left the Army in April 1984 suffering from depression after having completed two more Tours of Duty to Scott Base.
Stobie found adapting to ordinary civilian life increasingly hard. His health plummeted in the late 1990s as he developed a range of mysterious unrelated aliments, and was finally diagnosed with chronic PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in 2010.
‘‘It’s totally debilitating, it wrecks your life. You just can’t function properly.’’
Victims of PTSD in this country are barely acknowledged. The sad and tragic irony of the Stobie case is that his bid for a war disability pension was rejected by VANZ because ‘‘the Cold War was not a recognised conflict or emergency’’.
Furthermore, the government’s secondment of Defence Force personnel to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as civilians meant Stobie did not even qualify for consideration in the first place, his access to Defence Department records about his secondment to Moscow denied because they were destroyed, deemed too sensitive after hiding behind a 30 years security non-disclosure clause.
As his health continues to deteriorate, Stobie battles on, collecting evidence; medical and psychological reports, affidavits from fellow sappers, ex military police. Numerous letters and applications to the Ombudsman and parliamentarians seeking help only get rejected. The man is thorough, but he knows his time and energy are limited. Emergency funds from the RSA have assisted him along the way, they believe his story, even if the government doesn’t.
Stobie, who now lives in Perth, was raised in Golden Bay. His father, grandfather and great uncles also served overseas. When he was 16, Stobie began an apprenticeship at the NZED in Nelson and enlisted into the Territorial Volunteer Force (TF).
He enlisted with the regular forces in April 1977 and got posted to 1FD SQN in Papakura. The following year he was asked if he would like to volunteer to do a Tour of Duty to the Soviet Union to ‘‘refurbish’’ the NZ embassy. He willingly accepted the offer and underwent a rigorous security vetting by the SIS.
‘‘Our first tour of duty was a living hell, working upwards of 96 hour weeks and even hitting 108 hours for the week, sometimes the guys worked around the clock for 24-hours or longer. Many of my old colleagues I have since contacted are still extremely angry at the abuse of being made to work those hours, living in confined and extremely dusty environments, subject to asbestos both in the work place and in our sleeping quarters.
When I signed up I wanted to help my country, carry on the tradition established by my family.
‘‘Our deployment proved a bad deal, and now we aren’t even being acknowledged for our service. There’s no honour in it, we were just treated as disposable and spat out. It’s a part of our military history that needs to be acknowledged and addressed.’’