News & Media

Young soldier Kylie Higgins returned from Afghanistan to invalidation and trauma. She tells senior journalist LAURA TURNER about the demons she’s battled, the new life she’s forged – and her new mission.

Every footstep lands a little heavier than the last.

Through the airport, green boots trudge a path laden with ambivalence and a yearning to turn back to the fold.

And, “when comms went down,” as Higgins puts it, “ I was one of the first to receive the information as to who (was hurt) and how bad.”

If an Australian lay dead or injured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, it was Lance Corporal Higgins who had to inform Australian Army Company clerks that one of their own soldiers was down.

“That was possibly one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” Higgins tells me.

But even harder was the moment she had to leave her mates behind. It was the ‘fighting summer’ in Afghanistan 2012 when the twenty-five-year-old was training in the gym in the Army base at Tarin Kowt and another soldier accidentally kicked her with such force she suffered a debilitating injury to her shoulder, striking a blow so severe she had to be sent home to Australia, never to serve again.

So as those green boots hit the ground at Brisbane airport, Higgins wanted nothing more than to turn back to the fold, even if that meant living and working in the middle of a bloody war. Instead she and another injured soldier, Daniel, made their way into the Qantas lounge to wait for a connecting flight to Townsville. As they near-dragged their feet into the airport lounge, their minds and bodies heavy with the dread and disappointment of being returned injured, they heard the words that cut them both down at the knees.

‘Three Australian soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan”.

Kylie and Daniel dropped to the floor beneath the TV blaring the devastating news. Pictures flashed up of the patrol base where the deaths had occurred. It was ‘Bravo company – Daniels’ company.

The pair sobbed on the airport lounge floor. The need to be back on with her mates was now dragging at Kylie’s heart.

Guilt saturated her, in her mind she’d left her mates behind. She wasn’t there for them when tragedy struck. The ADF had not released the names of those killed, so she and Daniel spent the next 24 hours tortured by the loss of three unknown mates.

It was at a memorial service in Townsville the very next day where Kylie says she was dealt the first of many blows she encountered as a returned female soldier. As Daniel was thanked for his service, Kylie says she was ignored. She remembers sitting right next to Daniel, her right arm in a sling, his body slung over crutches, but for some reason it was only his injuries that caught the eye of their comrades. Kylie says she was invisible. “Ten years ago, people didn’t understand there were young soldiers, and female soldiers deploying to active duty.”

The news finally broke that those who’d died were Corporal Stjepan Milosevic, Private Robert Poate and Sapper James Martin in the Uruzgan Province.

Their deaths came on the same day another two Australian soldiers were killed. It was the deadliest day Australia had had in combat since the Vietnam War. Kylie didn’t personally know any of the dead, but she wears their names around her wrist to this day.

In the months after her return and as the pain from her shoulder injury racked her body, Kylie’s life spiralled.

She claims she was “bastardised by her superiors” because she wasn’t able to perform her duties, and bullied to the point where she lodged a discharge request.

She was desperate to come home to Mildura, but when she got here, the comrades she spent the most time with were a bottle of bourbon and a packet of painkillers.

“I was mixing medication and alcohol. I wouldn’t get out of bed most of the day,” she says.

Depression was closing in, and Kylie felt like the ADF chewed her up and spat her out.

She recalls walking through Mildura Central and hearing a phone ringtone that sounded like an air raid siren. Her body filled with adrenalin once more and she had to stop herself from diving to the ground. That dark curtain was still closing in, bringing with it a weight on her shoulders that felt like failure.

It was during her darkest days in 2018, Kylie would drive her ute down to the Murray River at Merbein. In moments of madness, she’d perform burnouts in the dirt and size up trees that might help her do the unthinkable. Her mind would soon turn to the box of beers on the front seat and she’d sink them alone until night fell.

Out there the river was the only witness to the demise of a soldier surrendering to the grip of PTSD.

Compounding her trauma was how Kylie’s service was being invalidated. She attended a gunfire breakfast after an ANZAC commemoration in Port Macquarie and it was there the President of the RSL refused her entry, claiming she was wearing her medals on the wrong side of her chest.

It was only after he’d seen her join the march that he apologised profusely. Again her service was invalidated. Was it because she was female? Or a young veteran? She will never know.

Kylie was at her lowest in the months before she was diagnosed with the illness she says saved her. Pancreatitis was “a life changing diagnosis for me.” She changed her drinking and her diet, packed her car and drove to Ipswich where her life took off. She had a great job, fell in love and started playing women’s AFL on a team filled with servicewomen. Life was on the up. “I felt physically and mentally strong.” Her dark days by the river were finally fading. But then the phone rang and she was summoned to come home to Sunraysia. Kylie’s beloved dad Kevin was dying.

When Kevin Higgins’s ashes fell to the surface of the Murray River, a new foundation, ‘Dad’s Legacy’ was born. The Higgins family now works to raise money for prostate cancer research. Kylie is back in Sunraysia to stay, too. This weekend she’ll again hop in her ute and trundle down to the river at Merbein. This is no final act though, the dark curtain of depression has been raised. She’ll be down there with a strong cast of good friends. They’ll raise a glass to Kevin Higgins, and to an ex-servicewoman whose dedication to her country is not dismissed but revered.

If you need mental health help, call Lifeline: 131 314 or lifeline.org.au and Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467 or suicidecallbackservice.org.au.

Article written by: Laura Turner

Article provided by The Sunraysia Daily
https://www.sunraysiadaily.com.au