Exit Wounds Updated Edition

One Australian's War On Terror

John Cantwell, Greg Bearup

• Publisher: Melbourne University Press Digital
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780522864670
• eBook ISBN: 9780522864946
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

John Cantwell, Queensland country boy, enlisted in the army as a private and rose to the rank of major general. He was on the front line in 1991 as Coalition forces fitted bulldozer blades to tanks and buried Iraqi troops alive. He served in Baghdad in 2006 and saw what a car bomb does to a crowded marketplace. He was commander of Australian forces in Afghanistan in 2010 when ten of his soldiers were killed. He came home in 2011 to be considered for the job of chief of the Australian Army. Instead, he ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
Exit Wounds is the deeply human account of one man's tour of the War on Terror, the moving story of life on a modern battlefield: from the nightmare of cheating death in a field strewn with mines, to the utter despair of looking into the face of a dead soldier before sending his body home to his mother. Cantwell hid his post-traumatic stress disorder for decades, fearing it would affect his career.
Australia has been at war for the past twenty years and yet there has been no stand-out account from these conflicts - Exit Wounds is it. Raw, candid and eye-opening, no one who reads this book will be unmoved.

1

The Dawn Before

4 a.m., 24 February 1991

I am crouched in the darkness beside my armoured vehicle, a modified personnel carrier, in a nameless patch of the Saudi Arabian desert near Iraq. I have been in this desert for two months and the searing summer has become a bitter winter. The border is only a few kilometres away and just north of that is an infantry division of the Iraqi Army we intend to destroy. The division is thought to number 6,000 men with tanks and artillery. In an hour and a half the American force to which I have been attached will surge forward to attack the Iraqis in the opening blow of the ground offensive of the 1991 Gulf War—Saddam’s Mother of All Battles. I am thirty-five years old and have been a soldier half my life. This is my first war.

Around me, hundreds of armoured vehicles and their crews are constantly strobe-lit by the flashes of massive explosions to our front, a bizarre disco of men and machinery. One moment the hulking shapes are barely visible in the murk, the next they are etched into my vision by the flashes of detonation after detonation. During a lull in the artillery barrages, B-52s lay a carpet of bombs onto the Iraqis. In comparison to the artillery salvos, the aerial bombardment is god-like and merciless, falling thousands of feet from places unheard and unseen. To my left, about 20 metres away, is the prominent humpbacked command and control vehicle from which the US colonel commanding this part of the war will run the battle. With each flash there’s a silhouette of the vehicle’s bristling antennas, boxes of rations stacked on its roof, a rolled camouflage net bulging where it has been lashed down. In the intervening darkness, dull red light from its open rear door spills onto the sand behind. But this and all other colour is stripped away with each flare of light, leaving a hard-edged black-and-white image in my eyes. In this monochrome scene, other men have gathered, like us, to watch the show from behind their armoured personnel carriers. There is an occasional yell and I see a raised fist applauding the deadly work. The excitement is infectious.

Accompanying the light show, violent shock waves are transmitted through the wet desert sand and up through my heavy boots. Even the armoured vehicle at my side rattles and rocks on its suspension with each tremor. But it is the noise—brutal, incessant and inhuman—that is overwhelming. It is the most physical sound I have ever heard. The thuds slam into me; the horizon ripples and convulses with explosions, and I find myself whooping along with my two fellow crewmen. ‘Will you look at that!’ I yell at them, but my voice is drowned by the crash of the bombs. In the flashes of light I can see my radio operator, Steve, yelling something back at me but I have no idea what he’s saying. We grin at each other and I punch his shoulder. Beyond him I see my driver, Pete, propped on one knee. He is staring ahead, mesmerised. They are good men, a couple of English lads just a few years out of school. Pete is chirpy and boyish and eager to please while Steve, a tad older, is a little more reserved and thoughtful. Both are keen, when given the chance, to take the piss out of me for being an Aussie convict and like to dredge up old and rare English cricket victories. We’ve become close, cocooned in our little wagon in preparation for this moment.

I look to the conflagration ahead and feel the prickle of fear return, dampening the euphoria of the cheering. Soon I will face combat for the first time. The questions every soldier asks himself before his first battle nag at my consciousness: What will it really be like? Will I freeze with fear? Will I let my team down? I’ve trained for this moment since I was seventeen, and I’m confident I know what to do. Soldiers don’t ask, Will I die? Death, we figure, is always for others.

The aerial bombardment suddenly stops with a final rending ripple of blasts and the darkness envelops us again. For a time there is silence before I speak. ‘Can you imagine what it must have been like to be under that?’

Pete, his eyes wide and his voice almost reverent, responds: ‘Who could live through something like that?’ No-one answers. The truth is I am not really thinking about the people beneath all this. In a few hours I may have to kill Iraqis but I feel no hatred towards them. I despise Saddam Hussein, but for his soldiers there is simply no emotion. They are an obstacle to be neutralised by capture or death.

I am an Australian Army officer serving with the British, having been seconded to a British tank regiment a couple of years ago. My job is liaison officer; I am accompanying the American advance to report back to my own commander and to help coordinate the movement of the British troops and tanks that will follow. I stand next to my armoured vehicle, resting a hand on its steel shell. Its cold metal plate is reassuring yet relatively thin compared to the thick armour of a heavy combat tank, my normal mode of transport.

After days of constant activity with only a few hours’ sleep, I am overtaken by a sudden wave of tiredness and I yawn into the night before shrugging my shoulders to cast off the weariness. I need to be more alert. I take a few deep breaths of the cold, moist air but I still feel weary and my head aches.

Then the artillery resumes—not since the great battles of World War II has such fury been unleashed. Throughout the night an extraordinary concentration of artillery and rockets pound the Iraqi defences ahead—50,000 rounds in the final two hours, each capable of destroying a block of flats. If this attack were to be unleashed on the centre of any city in Australia, barely a building would be left standing. Our formation, the 1st Brigade of the US 1st Infantry Division, is just one of many combat units now preparing to attack. We have been allocated thirteen artillery battalions and more if needed. Thirteen artillery battalions with eighteen guns each! In my entire career I’ve only ever witnessed the firepower of one battalion, and then it was spread over multiple targets. During my years of training I had marvelled at old black-and-white film of massed British guns firing during the desert battles of North Africa in World War II, but that was nothing compared to this.

Now the guns are joined by a new instrument of destruction as boxy rocket launchers point to the horizon; there is a whooshing roar as one by one the rockets leap from the tubes, the howl of their departure continuing for several seconds as each arcs upwards propelling the warhead towards its target, carving golden trails through the darkness. Each rocket launcher is capable of blanketing an entire square kilometre with high explosive bomblets and I can see a dozen or more clustered to our rear. The firings shroud the launch sites in clouds of glowing white smoke that drift across the desert as an acrid fog. We’ll soon assault the Iraqi defences where these missiles are aimed and I can’t help but murmur encouragement to the gunners.

During another break in the firing, Coalition Apache attack helicopters sweep overhead in the darkness. Unlit, they remain invisible until they begin launching their Hellfire missiles in coordinated volleys. I can see the yellow flare of the missiles leaving the rails, and hear the thump of explosions as they hit their targets. As they break off their attack and clatter away to the south, the deep thud of artillery resumes with a beat that hits with a slap on the chest.

‹ ›

Standing beside my vehicle with Steve and Pete, I mentally review the assault plan. At around 0530 hours this force, along with another equally powerful brigade on our right flank, will advance to attack the Iraqi defensive line. In the lead will be Abrams tanks and Bradley armoured infantry fighting vehicles, accompanied by combat engineer vehicles fitted with bulldozer blades and other grappling devices. Under the cover of a last barrage of artillery fire, combat engineers will bulldoze holes through the border berm—a snaking, earthern defensive barrier a couple of metres high and many kilometres long. The assaulting troops will close up on the enemy positions, firing at their targets as they advance. The combat engineer vehicles will begin clearing paths through the Iraqi traps and obstacles: yawning ditches, serried ranks of barbed wire and deep, layered minefields containing both anti-personnel and anti-tank mines by the tens of thousands.

With the lanes cleared of mines, more tanks and fighting vehicles will pour through, seizing a large front, some 16 kilometres wide. When the American field commanders decide the breach area is ready, I will radio my headquarters, waiting behind, to begin a second wave of attack. On that signal the British 1st Armoured Division will lunge forward, passing through the breach in the Iraqi defences opened by the Americans.

That is the plan but there is much that could go wrong. It is possible the Iraqis will emerge from their underground bunkers and put up a real contest from their fighting trenches. Disciplined troops fighting from well-prepared defensive positions have an advantage over the assaulting force, which must pass through pre-planned killing zones. The artillery barrage now underway is designed to reduce that advantage by neutralising the defenders. But it is likely our force will suffer casualties from mines, both to vehicles and the dismounted troops, so mine clearers will lead the way. A major threat is the Iraqi artillery. Coalition aircraft have pounded dozens of Iraqi artillery positions in the days leading up to the assault, but there is no guarantee all of the artillery and mortar emplacements have been destroyed. They could be deadly if used against us while we are crowded into the breach lanes.

The greatest fear is Iraq’s chemical munitions—mustard gas and nerve agents—which are thought to be part of its defensive array. The Iraqis proved their willingness to use chemical weapons on many occasions during the prolonged Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s and even against their own citizens in the infamous gassing of Kurdish civilians in the town of Halabja in 1988, killing 5,000 people. As a precaution we are all wearing thick protective carbon-impregnated cloth chemical suits, along with rubber overboots. We carry our gasmasks and gloves in a bulky satchel on our hips.

Perhaps the most likely risk to an orderly assault is the ‘friction’ that accompanies all military operations: the accumulation of small setbacks, losses and plain mistakes that fray the best-laid military plans. Every sensible commander recognises that his plan will begin to unravel from the moment he launches his forces. In such a complex operation, in a congested and deadly area with thousands of vehicles moving through it, the likelihood of mistakes and mishaps is very high. The sheer difficulty of getting everything right is enormous despite multiple rehearsals. Everyone—especially the commanders—is tense as the assault draws near.

Waiting in the dark, still watching the fireworks along the Iraqi front, my mind is focused on the potential problems of the coming hours, but I am surprised by my relative calm. I am a little nervous but overall I feel a sense of anticipation. A professional soldier, I did everything in my power to make sure I was selected to be here. My wife, Jane, to whom my thoughts dart at unexpected moments throughout the night, understood my desire, need even, to prove myself in war.

I decide to conduct a final meeting with the commander of the brigade, Colonel Lon ‘Bert’ Maggart, and with a gesture to my crew I step across the dark sand towards his vehicle. The ramp of the command vehicle is down and several men dressed in their chemical suits stand around it listening to the radio traffic. In the light from the vehicle’s interior, I spot the commander standing with his executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Magee. Both men, but especially the colonel, have impressed me with their calm manner and competence.

‘Hi, sir,’ I say, identifying myself in the dark. ‘It’s Major John Cantwell. I wanted to check if there are any last-minute changes.’

‘Hey John,’ Colonel Maggart replies. ‘Nothing new to report. We’ll be doing it just like we practised.’ He sounds a little edgy.

‘Great, sir,’ I say. ‘The Brits will be moving into their positions about now. I’ve heard nothing that you need to worry about.’ Hundreds of British armoured and wheeled vehicles are massing in the darkness behind us in a vast holding area, waiting to stream north after the Americans attack.

The colonel nods but makes no comment. He’s anxious to get started, repeatedly folding his arms then placing them on his hips. In contrast, Dan Magee, standing at his boss’s side, is a picture of stillness.

Yesterday Lieutenant Colonel Magee and another officer briefed me on the plans for the assault. Among the many details, one element struck me. The plan is to overwhelm the Iraqi infantry in the trenches. It is simple but brutal—pairs of tanks equipped with bulldozer blades will plough down both sides of the enemy trenches, pushing masses of sand into the trenches while a Bradley fighting vehicle, following the tanks, fires between them at the Iraqis. The intent, cold and clear, is to bury them, alive or dead. When I heard this I was startled, struggling with the morality of burying men alive. Magee sensed my unease and said: ‘A bullet or a bulldozer blade, it doesn’t matter. We’re saving American lives, and that’s all that does matter.’ Despite his ethical arithmetic, I was still uneasy. But there was nothing I could have done to change those plans and so I stayed mute—I was about to go into battle with these men and I didn’t want them to think of me as ‘that soft-cock Australian liaison officer’.

Now, waiting in the desert with less than an hour until the assault is triggered, I wish Colonel Maggart good luck and we shake hands. I had liked him on first meeting. I’d appreciated his cheerful nature and willingness to talk about what lay ahead. When I’d been talking with him yesterday a group of American soldiers had walked by, burdened with helmets, body armour and weapons. Colonel Maggart had called the company commander over to introduce me. The man was a huge Native American with a wonderful name: John Bushyhead, his surname a marker of his Cherokee heritage. When I asked how his men were feeling, Captain Bushyhead smiled. ‘They’re fine and ready to go, sir!’ he said, more for Colonel Maggart’s benefit than mine. I asked if there were any nerves about facing combat for the first time. ‘A few nerves, sir,’ said Bushyhead more sedately, ‘but I’ve got some great NCOs and they’ll look after the men.’

Colonel Maggart spoke quietly: ‘We’ll all be combat veterans soon, Captain.’ For a moment the three of us pondered this, then Maggart put out his hand to shake Bushyhead’s enormous paw. The captain replied with an equally level ‘Yessir’ then departed to follow his men. Part of me wished I was him, about to lead men in combat.

Afterwards, we walked back to my vehicle where I promised the colonel a meal prepared with British rations, a change from the weeks of the much-disdained Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs: plastic bags of pulpy pasta or stew. Unlike the US food, the British ration packs were made up of canned meat and vegetables, much prized by Americans longing for something that at least looked a little like ‘joined-up food’. As Colonel Maggart and I arrived at the rear of our vehicle, Steve and Pete handed us plastic plates of steaming food through the open rear door, right on schedule.

While we ate...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Maps
• Prologue
• First GULF War, 1990–91
• 1 The Dawn Before
• 2 The Road to War
• 3 Into the Breach
• 4 The British Unleashed
• 5 A Walk in a Minefield
• 6 Operation Scorpion
• 7 Rejoining the British
• 8 Into the Void
• 9 Fright Night Part 1
• 10 Fright Night Part 2
• 11 A Desert Dash
• 12 The Beginning of the End
• 13 War’s End
• 14 A Private War Begins
• 15 Jane’s Story, Part 1
• Second Gulf War, 2006
• 16 Back to Iraq
• 17 The Death Spiral
• 18 The Madness Grows
• 19 Frustration and Sadness
• 20 New Plans and Near Misses
• 21 A Day at the Market
• 22 Up Close and Personal
• 23 Goodbye Iraq
• 24 Jane’s Story, Part 2
• Middle East Area of Operations, 2010–11
• 25 Middle East Commander
• 26 Outside the Wire
• 27 Travels
• 28 First Blood
• 29 Who Dares Wins, Without Warning
• 30 Summer’s Deadly Harvest
• 31 Last Hurrah
• Australia, 2011–12
• 32 Exit Wounds
• Epilogue
• Postscript
• Beyond The Call
• Acknowledgements
• Index