PROFILE
5
SENT TO WAR TO FIGHT AN ENEMY SHE DIDN’T KNOW EXISTED:
HERSELF
BRAYDEN MAY veteran, Kylie Pearce knew her enlistment in the Royal Australian Navy came with that unspoken but fully understood caveat. She might end up in a shooting match somewhere, at best. Or in a war, at worst. And when her war did arrive Kylie was under orders at HMAS Nirimba — at 4 am she would be in a plane and headed for Desert Storm in the first Gulf War. Still not finished with her two-year basic training it must have all been overwhelming. Until the stand down came at 2 am — the extra Australian forces were not needed at that time. Even though Kylie and fellow trainees were ‘disappointed’ her mother wasn’t. “I said to mum I’ve got to go, and I’m being posted out only a few hours before the decision came through,” she said. “We weren’t allowed to tell anyone anything, not even where we were going. “I couldn’t even tell her if I would be back. It
like any service
was one of the worst phone calls I have made, she didn’t cope very well with it. “When I called her the next day, she thought I was playing a joke on her.” That might have been as close as Kylie came to combat in her six years with the Navy; but by the time she was discharged she was well on her way to becoming collateral damage. Because she might have been out of the firing line but too many she joined up with were not — some were gone before she left the service; others in the decades since. So for the next 22 years she would find herself fighting an enemy she didn’t even know existed. Herself. Life in the civilian world wasn’t all smooth sailing, it was more like the some of the rough seas Kylie had endured many times before. But one day on the calendar would increasingly prove the hardest of them all. For the military it is ‘the’ day. Anzac Day; April 25. The day Australians stand side-by-side; honouring those who have fallen and those who
have served. But not Kylie, she would sit in a darkened room in her Echuca home; alone with her thoughts and memories of friends lost. “I would try to avoid everyone; I wouldn’t talk to anyone. Not even those closest to me,” she said. She felt hapless in the war against herself, and although she never once considered running up the white flag from where she was looking Kylie could never see her winning. None of which stopped her being in the frontline of working with, helping, others in trouble, because she was lucky enough to have several support networks — extending from her husband Bruce to those with whom she had served. She doesn’t want to discuss where she might be without them. “Veteran suicide is the highest rate of any group of people in this country and it’s very sad. It is becoming more and more prevalent for those who are serving in places like Afghanistan,” Kylie said. “You help each other because you’ve gone through a lot with that person. You know they will save your life if they can,” she said. >>
JULY 2020
