Defence analysis
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Ross Eastgate is a military historian, writer and journalist specialising in defence. A graduate of Duntroon and the Army Command and Staff College, he has served in the Middle East, PNG and East Timor.
SUICIDE is the ultimate selfish act which solves nothing but leaves extreme pain in its wake.
Nor do others necessarily need to have a close relationship with an individual who chooses to take his or her life to be deeply affected by that suicide.
Some years ago a near neighbour was driving past and stopped for a chat.
A prominent jockey who had enjoyed a successful international career, his private life was sadly in some turmoil.
We were not close acquaintances although we passed occasional pleasantries.
He was buoyant, more happy than he had seemed for some time.
After a pleasant exchange he drove into his palatial home across the road.
He then connected his pool vacuum hose to his car’s exhaust pipe, closed the windows, and ran the engine while he consumed the bottle of whisky he had just bought at the local bottle shop.
He first rang close friends to confuse them about his actual location.
It was then and remains a deeply disturbing personal experience.
While I struggled to understand what had changed between our ap
parently convivial conversation and what he subsequently did, a senior military medical acquaintance explained that he was in that euphoric state when those who have decided to end their lives move to that conclusion.
I still don’t understand why, but trying to determine why military veterans choose to end their lives also remains an eternal mystery.
Every individual will have had a separate experience, so speculation why will always be just that.
Nor is that a new phenomenon. Soldiers returning from World War I disappeared from their troopships, comrades suspecting they had done so deliberately, plagued by demons from their war service.
Even the most courageous soldiers were not immune.
In 1933, VC recipient Hugo Throssell, deeply in debt, in pain from his wounds shot himself on his West Australian property.
A note suggested he imagined his wife and young son would be more financially secure with a war widows pension.
In recent days Defence Force Welfare Association national president Kel Ryan has been unfairly criticised for opposing a royal commission into veterans’ suicides.
Royal commissions, despite enthusiasm from proponents such as Jacqui Lambie, can be a doubleedged sword.
They can also expose unpleasant truths as opposed to conclusions their proponents hope.
Veteran suicides are a crucial issue the wider defence community has to address, though before the act rather than after.
Any royal commission may allow those who have survived or lived with the tragic circumstances to address why they believe such desperation occurred.
That could be a cathartic unburdening of grief, but can never adequately explain why individuals chose to end their lives.
And they will never discover why those who chose to end their lives did so.
They will never be able to have those who have ended their lives explain why they made that choice.
Those are secrets they took to their graves.
Apportioning blame after event will always be unhelpful.
Attempting intervention before will always be more beneficial. the
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