By GARRY HOWE
AS he has traversed the length of the country, Walking Wounded crusader Brian Freeman has been struck by the number of ex-soldiers he has encountered on the journey in need of help.
When he arrived in Pakenham on Sunday afternoon, he didn’t have to look far to find another.
Among those gathered at the local RSL was club member Henry van Diemen, a Vietnam veteran given the task of officially welcoming Brian and his entourage to town.
Henry relates well to the cause the Great Traverse team is championing along the way – the on-going health and welfare of soldiers who return from conflict.
As a young man, Henry returned from Vietnam worse for wear. He had hardly any vision, yet was not deemed wounded enough to warrant help or respect.
It wasn’t until many years later, when Henry reached his early sixties, that the more serious wounds began to emerge.
He endured nightmares that wouldn’t go away and at times found himself walking aimlessly around the streets.
“I just couldn’t sleep,” he explained. “It was like my head was spinning 900 miles per hour.”
Henry hit the wall and spent a bit over a month in the psych ward at Dandenong Hospital but has now picked up the pieces with the support of his wife and children and his psychologist.
“I’m not the only one,” he says. “There are a lot of others out there.”
Henry applauds the work of the Walking Wounded movement, hatched by Brian Freeman during a quick meeting with his former boss and current Governor General Peter Cosgrove in cyclone ravaged Innisfail eight years ago.
Brian has since led four groups of ex-soliders across the Kokoda Track – having crossed it himself 53 times – and has his fifth soldiers tour penciled in after this venture.
The Pakenham visit was Day 64 of the Great Traverse, which began at Mount Everest in Nepal in April and will finish with another Kokoda trek and scaling Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.
As part of the Australian leg, he will kayak across Bass Strait and become the first person to fully traverse the country on human power alone.
He is not doing it for any person accolade – but to raise awareness and funding to help the cause of former soldiers who have fallen through the cracks.
In every one of the 89 communities the Traverse team stops, Brian asks every RSL president and every mayor to reach out to the young men in their communities to “give them a hand up, not a hand out”.
“The suicide rate is multiple times and casualty rate,” he said. “I don’t think a young soldier should come back from serving their country and pay for it with mental illness.”
He wants to help prevent the current crop of soldiers from suffering like Henry did.
“We are among the best in the world at training soldiers, but one of the worst in the world at looking after them when they get out,” Henry reflected on Sunday.
“We train them to kill people but don’t put enough effort into getting them back to their normal life.
“Too many are lost to suicide, or turn to binge drinking. There are a lot of Vietnam veterans who are alcoholics. They don’t know any better – and it helps put the nightmares to sleep.”
Henry said the work of the Walking Wounded crew was critical.
“These young soldiers can be 24 or 26 when they get out and they have the best years of their lives ahead of them, but instead they end up taking their own lives,” he said.
“It’s bad enough for the parents who lost their children on the battlefields – how do the ones feel who lose them to suicide?”
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