A place to heal
The grinding crunch of metal sounded like a bomb. Chatting at a coffee shop, David Gillard didn’t see the car that sped across a loose grating behind him, but he reacted instantly to the noise. The former RAAF sergeant hit the ground and took cover under the table where, until a second earlier, he’d been quietly celebrating his son’s 21st birthday. Suddenly, David was catapulted back to September 6, 2004, and a bloody event in Baghdad that changed his life forever. That’s when seven US Marines were ripped apart in front of him as their HumVee struck an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). David, in the same convoy, was caught up in the resulting fire fight that killed three enemy, one of them in a woman’s burqa.
“Those 15 minutes were the worst time in my life, but for years I never told anyone about it,” the Adelaide father of five recalls, battling his emotions. “You just lock things away, try to bury them. I had compartmentalised everything, but hearing that sound at the cafe brought it all rushing back.
“A psychiatrist later told me it was like I’d been living in a mental cell, but the door was blasted open six years later when that car hit
