Iraq war means a new batallion of lost souls bunkered down in suburban homes

ANGUS Sim draws deep breaths. He warns, as he tells his story, that he is becoming worked up.

He looks like most modern young warriors, built strongly and emblazoned with heavy ink. He shifts between tears and rage.

For Sim, the quiet streets of Sunbury, in Melbourne's northern outskirts, may as well be filled with hidden home-made bombs, snipers and trucks being prepared for suicide bomb missions.

Sim, 24, returned from Iraq in June 2005 after serving with the Brisbane-based infantry battalion, 6RAR.

He was involved in four incidents that would separately, and cumulatively, damage him profoundly.

His energy has nowhere to evaporate. Time bomb or loose cannon, take your pick.

Sim doesn't like people much. "I got back to Sunbury after Iraq," he said. "I had a girlfriend and I broke up with her. It turned nasty. I got called a 'psycho from Iraq' and this sort of stuff. People don't understand. But the Australian people need to understand."

Sim likes his memories even less. The need for hyper-vigilance after being assigned to the security detachment, or SecDet, guarding Australian embassy staff within Baghdad's red zone - the uncontrolled, dangerous part of that city - stays with him.

Sim has post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition the military once regarded with scepticism.

PTSD sufferers were seen as bludgers looking for compo.

The military now accepts the reality of PTSD.

But who could blame the public for not understanding Sim's pain? This Government, like the previous one, has kept a tight leash on all information from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Defence drip-feeds abbreviated information about Australians wounded or killed in conflict, and has even less to say on the mentally damaged.

Just like Vietnam, a new battalion of lost souls is bunkered down in suburban homes, haunted by intrusive images of carnage.

The Federal Government claims it is trying harder with mental health issues and has promised $83 million over the next four years to implement the recommendations of Prof David Dunt, who last year produced two Australian Defence Force reports on improving mental health.

BUT they have done nothing to help the Australian public cushion the landing for returning soldiers.

Public knowledge of Iraq and Afghanistan has been mostly limited to wives and babies kissing camouflaged homecoming soldiers.

Sim doesn't like it. Most soldiers don't.

They feel their service is undervalued.

Sim has an inbuilt bull detection meter. It's set to maximum. "I'm safe, but I got a short fuse and a bad temper," he said. "People just annoy me. On Anzac Day a few years ago, there was this guy at the pub telling me he was SAS. I questioned him and his story didn't add up.

"I finished my beer and slammed the glass into his face. He was lying. He was showing no respect. And I'd do it again."

These days, Sim has almost totally withdrawn.

He feels safer indoors and knows he is less of a threat to others there. "I don't really go out much any more," he said.

"I stay around here. I might as well be in jail. I avoid situations, I suppose."

It's hard to believe these are the comments of a man who, at 24, should be just starting out on his working life. He feels Australia did the right thing in going to Iraq, but says his country used him, then threw him out without preparing him for normal life.

"My debrief from Iraq was with one psychiatrist, for half an hour, in Iraq," he said. "I had some real dramas. I hit the drugs pretty hard. I'd never touched them in my life. I was 19. The last year I was in the army I was doing drugs every weekend. You name it - speed, ice, ecstasy, acid.

"I went off the rails. It just took me away from everything. It was just a way of dealing with it. Not the right way, I know. And I was drinking a fair bit, too.

"It's just disappointing. I hate this country now. Well, I don't hate it, but f------ hell, we're soldiers going over to do a bit of good for the world. We didn't just look for terrorists. We were trying to bring some peace to Iraq.

"And I think we achieved that. We helped them get their first election up."

Sim is discharged, classified TPI - totally and permanently incapacitated.

He likes cooking for his fiancee, Jess, and he likes his widescreen TV.

NOT much else. "I'm always on guard, high strung and on edge. If I'm in bed and Jess comes home, I'll wake up ready to kill her," he said.

"We hooked up a year ago. We fight - had a doozy the other night. But she's good, she's caring. She understands, as much as she can."

The sense around Australia's veteran community is that PTSD numbers from Iraq and Afghanistan are creeping above 10 per cent, though delayed onset means that number will only grow.

We know now why those who served in World Wars I and II rarely talked about their wars. They couldn't talk about them. Many were undiagnosed PTSD sufferers.

On January 19, 2005, a truck laden with explosives attempted to ram the Australian embassy compound. Sim was blown out of his bed, but, like the other Australian soldiers guarding the vicinity, he was unhurt.

Several Iraqi civilians were killed. The bomb was followed by a secondary device and sniper fire.

"That woke us up and told us we were in Baghdad," said Sim. His detachment became renowned for the number of events it faced in the first half of 2005.

A WEEK after the embassy attack, Sim and others stopped a vehicle. "This bloke, a civilian, was pissed and staggering around," he said. "We looked in his van and he had drums in the back. We didn't take any risks, we shot him.

"One of my mates did, shot him four times.

"Turned out it was only some barrels of petrol, no detonators. It was silly of him the way he was acting. His missus was all upset."

Now it's Sim, recounting this story, who's upset.

The next day, Australia Day, an Australian light-armoured vehicle was hit by a suicide car bomber on the road to the airport.

Sim's detachment arrived at the scene minutes later.

"I don't now how no one died. One guy had serious facial wounds, he lost his nose. We skull-dragged the vehicles back to the nearest base, which was American, and I had to clean the vehicles of (the suicide bomber's) body pieces.

"There was skin all over our vehicles. I found a bit of his spine and had to pull his foot out of the exhaust system. I got all the flesh, put it in the bin. A few of our boys were sent to (hospital in) Germany."

By then, everyone in SecDet was on edge. The next incident affected Sim more than the others.

"These civilians were driving up the road," he said. "We had night-vision goggles. They didn't stop. One of the boys opened fire with a burst of machinegun. One bullet hit a female passenger in the head. She was sitting in the front seat.

"A little kid in the back got hit with glass in his eye, lost his eye. It was just a family. That just plays on me. It wasn't me who shot him. We donated a heap of money to try and fix his eyesight, but he ended up losing his eye. The mum didn't die. I think she had brain damage. We went to hospital to see them, tried to do the right thing."

SIM'S mental health care on return was two weeks' stress leave.

"The help was crap," he says. "I just said to myself, 'I'll deal with this.' I dealt with it until I couldn't deal with it any more. I have bad days, bad months, still.

"It's not as bad as when I tried to keep it all in. I thought I was going crazy. And in a way I was.



"The biggest kick in the a--- was when we got back, the way we were handled.

"We should have gone straight into a debriefing program. If you want help, you should be able to get it."

The Department of Veterans' Affairs pays for Sim's medication and psychiatric help, but only after he was admitted to hospital for suicide attempts.

He wants it known he is only speaking out so other soldiers might benefit.

An estimated 36,000 Australians have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

John Vincent, of the Totally and Permanently Incapacitated Veterans Association says 30 per cent of those who serve in conflicts will develop some form of PTSD.