Stoned Warriers

[pipeman]

There was a story on Today this morning about this article in The Bulletin. So I thought I'd dig it up to see what it said....

 

http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/Ed...A256E1B00040E1C

 

STONED WARRIORS

 

Darwin's Robertson Barracks is home to some of Australia's finest frontline troops – it's also home to a festering drug culture with dangerous links to organised crime, Paul Toohey reports.

 

A removalist sent to collect the belongings of a rifleman making an unscheduled exit from army life at Darwin's Robertson Barracks was stunned by just how little the soldier owned. "He had bugger-all," said the removalist. "After six years in the army, he had nothing to show for it. Five packing boxes, two bookcases, a TV and video, and an early-model Celica stuck in fifth gear. You'd have thought he'd have had more." The removalist said the rifleman was stoned and drunk in the middle of the day and, as his few earthly belongings were carted away to an uncertain future, he was too upset to conceal his depression. Head in his hands, he said he'd been kicked out of the army after being caught with drugs and complained of being given a hard time by the military police.

 

"He said he didn't know what he was going to do with himself," said the removalist. "He's a gunner. He said he was absolutely stuffed in the real world. He said he was going to Canberra, to smoke dope and play guitar — there wasn't much else he knew how to do."

 

This man represents a small part of the fallout of a joint police and military ­investigation on Robertson which resulted in 97 members of 1 Brigade being tested for drugs on October 13 last year. The results rattled the army: 47 came back positive for drugs including marijuana, speed, ecstasy and opiates.

 

Northern Territory police have revealed to The Bulletin that their investigation established links between 1 Brigade soldiers and a nationally known organised crime syndicate, which they decline to name. But southern-based bikies trying to make supply inroads into northern Australia generally fit the picture. At Robertson Barracks, it seems, they found a captive market.

 

"The objective of our operation was to identify any military personnel that were using, selling or supplying illegal drugs," says NT police commander George Owens. "We were also interested in where these people were sourcing these from and as to whether there was a connection with organised crime. The source of the drugs in some circumstances came from organised crime groups, yes."

 

Of particular concern to police is the disappearance in the past 12 months of two Steyr automatic rifles, a semi-automatic pistol, night-vision goggles and ammunition from Robertson. The suspicion is that soldiers have traded them with bikies for drugs.

 

"That's a real concern for us that these weapons have gone into the wrong hands." says Owens. "It is a concern because organised crime gangs are always trying to get their hands on weapons."

 

Robertson is the home of 1 Brigade which, along with Townsville's 3 Brigade, are Australia's only two fully fledged operational army brigades, meaning they are, in theory, at all times combat ready. The barracks, a set of testosterone-filled dormitories inside a cyclone-fenced perimeter, is located alongside the satellite city of Palmerston, 25 minutes south of Darwin. Robertson is a comfort zone for some, with meals, cheap booze and almost rent-free accommodation. For others, army life is a slow-working noose.

 

The army's ongoing national advertising pitch about the nobility of service – especially relating to East Timor, where the picture is of thoughtful, big-hearted soldiers for whom carrying a gun is almost an afterthought – have had an impact. But the ads don't discuss the reality of life in a place like Robertson.

 

"The army's black and white," says a former commander from Robertson, who asked not to be named. "It likes to put a fence around you. It attracts a lot of people who are footloose and I imagine it's attracted a lot of people since East Timor, which was seen by some as glamorous. And there was the glamour of seeing the SAS in Afghanistan. They think, 'This is the army.' A lot of the people who are footloose like the fence – they get looked after, they're well provisioned, get taught gung-ho machismo skills and it suits them. For others, it's quite a disappointment when they come in and find it's boring and routine. And they have a lot of difficulty with the people that command them."

 

The army insists it has an open-door policy on drug matters but won't provide a breakdown of the drugs the 47 soldiers tested positive for. "I don't think we want to get into that much detail," says spokesman Joshua Hutton. It is known that cannabis was the majority drug.

 

1 Brigade is made up of soldiers from: 1st Armoured, a Leopard tank regiment; the 2nd Cavalry reconnaissance unit; the 5/7 infantry battalion; 8/12 medium ­artillery regiment; and the logistics providing ­Combat Services Support Battalion. Soldiers can live on barracks or off. Those who tested positive came from both spheres, but most were diggers living on Robertson and were members of the 5/7 RAR infantry battalion and the 2nd Cavalry. They are Australia's truest frontline grunt unit forces, with the task of being first to reach a battlefront. They have been on high rotation in East Timor since 1999. They have been to Afghanistan and Iraq and are Australia's most experienced vanguard troops.

 

Whether it was the army that first approached the NT police, or whether the police forced 1 Brigade to face up to its problems, is a matter both organisations prefer not to discuss. Each claim it approached the other simultaneously after receiving tip-offs from informers.

 

NT police went to Defence headquarters in Canberra, where a memorandum of understanding was secretly drawn up to allow an undercover policeman to infiltrate 1 Brigade. This was done in co-operation with higher-ranking Robertson officers and the army's Special Investigation Branch, an adjunct of the military police. The agent entered Robertson disguised as a grunt. His cover was far from assured after a Defence employee in Canberra immediately leaked details to a mid-ranking officer at Robertson, who complained loudly that the spy's placement was an infringement of soldierly rights. The threat to blow the policeman's cover was contained, however, and the operative was able to begin compiling a disturbing narrative of drug use.

 

"We identified a number [of soldiers] who were using and a number who were using as well as supplying," says Commander Owen. He says the soldiers weren't exactly warm in bed with the crime gang but were clearly connected along the supply chain.

 

The 97 suspect soldiers were collected, from both on and off the barracks, and lined up in a gymnasium on Robertson where military investigators flown in from the south began interviewing and taking urine samples. A civilian neighbour of one private bundled into a paddy wagon from his flat in suburban Palmerston and taken for testing says the man returned home spewing vitriol about his commanders. It was humiliating for soldiers who were otherwise prepared to give their lives but it was also – as far as the command was concerned – an overdue crackdown on a long-simmering problem.

 

The possibility that a soldier might succumb to drug and alcohol abuse in Darwin is neither new nor extraordinary. Loneliness, a shortage of women, an insistently thirsty heat and the chance that battlefield duty might shorten your life can provide a potent self-justification for serious bingeing. And there's no need to leave barracks to score. That soldiers tested positive for opiates, specifically morphine, may seem curious. But Palmerston is where a nationally anomalous morphine scene has been created as heroin addicts, until recently denied methadone treatment by the NT government, found sympathetic doctors willing to prescribe morphine as a get-down. Invalided pain sufferers as well, looking for a bit of post-prescription profit, have joined the market. Recreational users know it is possible to find fast access to heavy sedation in the carpark outside Palmerston shopping centre.

 

Those who tested positive for non-prescription benzodiazepines may be cause for particular concern. Benzodiazepines are the highly addictive family of drugs – such as Valium and Ativan – used to calm stressed and anxious souls. And these souls are in all likelihood nursing ugly memories from far-off battlefields.

 

Being posted to Robertson is not seen as cause for rejoicing. "Palmerston has a lot of social problems," says Australian Defence Association executive director Neil James. "It's nickname among 2nd Cavalry wives when they first moved there in 1994 was Soweto." It has a high indigenous population and the uniform rows of government-issue houses make it seem less like the frontier north than the depressed suburbia of southern housing commission estates.

 

According to several accounts from anonymous army wives to Darwin's Northern Territory News, problems at the base have nothing to do with drugs. One told of her husband being forced to attend booze parades; of a rampant porn culture; of higher-ranking bullies ordering grunts to stay away from non-military psychiatrists; of steroid use and demeaning punishments such as litter duty. "Husbands arrived home absolutely maggoted," said one wife. "The pressure to binge drink is intense. The main problem is the men are bored out of their minds." But our soldiers are not meant to be bored: the tempo of the Australian army is supposed to be red-hot, with opportunities to serve overseas and to pick up extra cash – along with honour, glory and pride. So what is going wrong?

 

Military-type commentators stress that army life is merely a reflection of wider society; that is, soldiers doing drugs are only doing what everyone else is doing. But 1 Brigade commander, Brigadier Ash Power, was clearly disappointed in how many tested positive on his patch. He indicated he would be glad to see the back of them: "These people will be given a termination notice and if they want to fight that to stay, they can attempt to do that." At the same time, Power stressed that given there were more than 3000 personnel at Robertson, 47 proven drug users was not a bad result.

 

The officially sanctioned Army: The Soldier's Newspaper began its web report with a barefaced beat-down: "Only 47 soldiers out of 1 Brigade's more than 3000 personnel have returned a result indicating the use of illicit drugs." The story went on to quote Power: "Whilst the number of soldiers who returned a positive result may seem high, it is important to remember that this was a targeted raid based on intelligence provided by soldiers and was not random." The question presented itself: what would the score have been if all 3000 had been tested?

 

Doug Gibbons, who, until he left the army in 1995, was the most senior commander in northern Australia, questions the positive spin. "Are they saying the glass is half full or half empty?" he asks. "The 97 wouldn't have been targeted unless there was good reason. If they reckon there were at least 97 using drugs, that's a significant number. And that's just the ones they know about.

 

"There is a problem out there."

 

Behind the scenes, the army – along with various Defence-related organisations – have been urging everyone to take a long, cold shower. With 39 soldiers picked up drug-positive in Townsville and Adelaide last year, 29 of whom have been discharged, the army knows it cannot afford to keep tossing out soldiers. Cannon fodder is not easy to come by, and 5/7 and 2 Cavalry soldiers are the men who stand up when the going's bad.

 

"It costs a lot of money to throw in a soldier," says Graham Howatt, industrial officer for the Armed Forces Federation of Australia. "The infantry is short at the lower level – you've got to think twice about throwing someone out. It's a lot more cost-effective to retain the services of a serving soldier rather than training up someone new."

 

The initial anger among army command appears to have given way to sober talk about helping the soldiers. Eleven of the 47 drug-positive Robertson soldiers immediately admitted they were regular drug users and some were given involuntary discharges (the army won't say how many of the 11 are gone); the remainder are being given every opportunity to explain themselves in a second round of interviews. Their futures won't be known "for some months".

 

For the grunts, there is only one correct answer – to say they were naive, one-time drug experimenters. It doesn't matter if anyone believes it. Coupled to a plea for mercy and a promise never to do it again, they will most likely keep their jobs. The bosses want to hear how the stress of service became the reason for one mad night of drug-taking. But don't say you were bored. Don't say you needed it.

 

Denis Burke, until November the Country Liberal Party's Opposition leader, lost his job over comments that he knew about drug use on barracks. Burke was the first commander of Robertson in the early '90s (then known as Waler Barracks). He later became NT chief minister. Questioned on ABC radio about drug use in Robertson in the middle of last year, long before the drug issue blew up, Burke's comments would come back to haunt him. He had said: "It's never bothered me, in the same way that people don't get into me because I like a few drinks. But there are many people, and I noticed it especially when I was CEO of 2 Cav Regiment, there are many people that will not drink alcohol, but will have the occasional smoke. Now, you know, that's for them to decide."

 

Many saw this as a realistic summary. But when NT's Labor government dug up the comments and fed them to journalists in the context of the Robertson problem many months later, army chief General Peter Cosgrove said Burke had been a "goose" for talking so liberally. (Cosgrove later retracted the comment, although Burke remains angry.) What few realise is that Burke reluctantly had to sack three good soldiers for dope smoking: army rules at the time gave him no other option. Now, the army wants to be seen as being tougher on drugs and, from January 1, all soldiers are subject to random testing. Yet proven first-time drug-users must go through a long show-cause process before being booted out – and may paradoxically have a better chance of keeping their jobs than before.

 

Burke was always going to be rolled after losing the 2001 election. The CLP was searching for an excuse and found it in the perception that he was a pro-doper, which is so at odds with the real Denis Burke as to be absurd. But what Burke was getting at was fundamental to army psyche: would a dope smoker, when he was sitting in a foxhole with two mates and coming under heavy fire, scare quicker than a beer drinker?

 

The army has long wrestled with the issue of homosexuality. Paul Keating's government changed that in 1992, forcing the military to employ without discrimination. The question of serving with homosexuals remains vexed for gung-ho military types, who these days must keep opinions to themselves. But ask a grunt if he's got any worries about facing the enemy alongside a comrade who uses drugs and prejudice evaporates.

 

Take this anonymous letter to web magazine Australian Diggers: "An alky suffering on the day after is more dangerous and twice as useless [as a drug user], and drunkenness tends to be accepted as an Aussie condition of service. Zero tolerance on illegal drugs is fine, but recognise the dangers of all drugs!" Or this one: "The drug raid is news, the use of drugs isn't. In the Palmerston area ... there are two major drinking holes, the Hub and Cazaly's. When the troops are off having a beer and getting pissed, it is fairly common to hear them talking about drugs. In conversations I have overhead, it appears the rationale is: 'If it is all right for civvies to do it, we can do it too, just don't get caught'."

 

Power believes anyone wrestling with drug – or any other – problems ought to first go to their immediate supervisors. But people using speed and cannabis don't see themselves as having a problem, especially when they stand themselves alongside some of the Territory's better pissheads. And going to your boss to talk out a problem is not as simple as it once was, with all sorts of duty-of-care burdens placed upon bosses to report problems.

 

Army culture has changed to the point where low-ranking soldiers have become distanced from their immediate commanders. "Once, commanders had a lot more direct responsibility for looking after their soldiers," says the former Robertson commander. "If a soldier had a problem, he'd go to his boss and his boss fixed things. Now, you've got to find solutions all over the place and a lot of responsibilities for immediate commanders have disappeared. You've got defence community services, social workers looking after children's schooling. It's all being outsourced away from the units. As well, a lot of wives now see themselves as quite separate from the military and I think a lot of the command see themselves as nine-to-fivers."

 

The point, he says, is that the army had to let down its hair to encourage more people to enlist. This means soldiers – and their partners – expect to have lives both in and out of the military. At the same time, not having the archetypal screaming drill sergeant forever on your back has encouraged unsoldierly conduct. And trading weapons for drugs is about as unsoldierly as it gets.

 

"They want to shoot 47 soldiers, but there's a bigger question," he says. "Let's hear from the sub-unit commanders, the company commanders and battalion commanders. Let's work from there down, rather than nailing the soldiers. It's symptomatic of a leadership problem. There was only one NCO among those who tested positive – the rest were privates. Above them is a whole military structure. I'd be drilling down right now, trying to find out where the management and leadership have failed. They say the total number [of drug-positive soldiers] is small. Well, it isn't."

 

Doug Gibbons talks of what soldiers call the "Dili dash for cash". "They're getting extraordinary amounts – an extra $200 a day for being in Dili, the Solomons, Iraq or Afghanistan. That's more than $1000 a week, tax-free. That's a lot for the young singly who's got nothing better to do. Maybe I'm barking up the tree but there's got to be a reason for this drug abuse. Don't tell me they're bored."

 

With relatively high disposable wages, many single men think little of using their postings in the north to knuckle down and save. The priority is making life bearable, which means – according to one who has known the life – fast cars or bikes, giant-screen TVs and PlayStations, beer and ordering in pizzas to barracks. And drugs.

 

"Our position is simple – people in the defence forces shouldn't use drugs," says the ADA's Neil James. "People naively expect the defence forces to be different from society at large. If you've got a problem in wider society, you'll get it in the defence forces."

 

Asked whether he thought any of the Robertson soldiers – such as the man off to smoke dope and play guitar in Canberra – ought to be carefully prepared for their reintroduction to civilian society, James responds: "You're not alluding to the idea that we might be sending dangerous people back into society, are you? There's been well over 1 million Australians trained in the use of arms since 1900. The number of people going back into society, you can count the number of times their military training has caused a problem to civilian ­society on one hand. Everyone thinks of [Julian Knight at] Hoddle Street [Melbourne] – but after that, there's only the Vietnam-era rage killings, where people ­suffered post-traumatic stress syndrome."

 

"They'll go through the same processes as those who discharge voluntarily," a Defence spokesman says. "However, they may not have access to all services. That will depend on their length of service and the nature of their discharge."

 

Robertson's remaining drug-positive ­soldiers are on "restricted duty when on duty", the spokesman says. "Basically, safety restrictions are placed upon them. If they were in a command position, that responsibility would be taken away from them."

 

The army says it is unaware of any study that addresses the question of whether anyone coming off a drug binge is any worse a soldier than one nursing a hangover. In the end, "drugs" is simply not a word that can be worked into acceptable army use, even though alcohol is a drug. If the question for soldiers looking to party is: "What's your poison?", the army's heavy drinkers could not look the heavy smokers or snorters in the eye without a sense of relief they are home and hosed, no urine required.

 

Click on these stories too: Rest and recreation (the army's alcohol problems) and the army's missing millions ...

 

 

Care to comment?

Letters to The Bulletin should be no longer than 200 words and sent to: bulletinletters@acp.com.au or Letters Editor, The Bulletin, GPO Box 3957, Sydney, NSW 1028. Fax: (02) 9267 4359. Only letters and emails with a daytime phone number, suburb and state will be considered for publication. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

 

or contact Paul Toohey direct: ptoohey@acp.com.au

[Luke Skywalker]

Thanks for that mate, interesting read indeed. I'd been wondering where this would head....