Mosul, by Ben McKelvey

A couple of years after I got home from my tour of Afghanistan with the Australian Army (I served there in 2002) I was given the job of being the Army PR escort officer for a young journalist who was going to attempt the first phase of selection for Special Forces.

That journalist was Ben McKelvey, who was writing for Ralph Magazine at the time (the lads' magazine is sadly missing from his bio since he moved on to bigger things). I was impressed by Ben. He got through that tough battery of initial physical testing and wrote a cracker of a story about the experience.

I have two regrets about his impressive work of non-fiction, Mosul: 1. That it took me so long to read it (it was published in 2020), and 2. That even I, a former Army officer, knew virtually nothing about the events he describes.

The second point arises from the fact that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and the Australian Government micromanaged the flow of information about our involvement in the fight against ISIS, to the extent that the hard work and sacrifices of those who took part in this campaign remain largely unknown to most Australians.

I regret that I was part of a system which was too secretive, paranoid, or scared (or all of the above) to tell the people of our country what the men and women of Australia were doing in their name.

In Mosul, Ben not only fills a gap in our modern history, but also gives us an insight into the motivations and mindsets of Australians who fought on both sides - Special Forces soldiers engaged in supporting the brave Iraqi forces who took back their own city, and the delusional volunteers who signed on to fight as ISIS jihadis.

The ADF is good at what it does, fighting wars and keeping the peace, but its successes come at a price. Our collective training stresses self-sacrifice for the good of our mates and our team, but in doing so it sets up every single one of us who serves for a dose of survivor guilt. Whatever we do and no matter how well we do it, we are always expected to go just a little further; we're taught to fear failure more than bullets.

If they're brave enough to ask for help, those who witness the worst of war are cut adrift, with a pension, to fend for themselves, rather than cared for the by the organisation which broke them.

In Mosul we see Australian commandos, already veterans of several tours of Afghanistan, signing on again and again for more duty, their ongoing service interrupted by scenes of family lives unravelling and stays in psychiatric care.

It's brutal and nor for the faint-hearted, but it needed to be told.

Strength: five by five.

Tony Park

 

Published by Hachette Australia