Ceasefire!: The Ivan Molloy Story

By Ivan Molloy

This is a true story! On one level it is part my autobiography. On another it deals with three generations of my family’s active involvement in war, terrorism, political and social conflict; and the tragic emotional and psychological consequences my family endured as a result.

In 2009 as an Australian academic with expertise in global terrorism, and a one-time aspiring federal politician, I fled to France to try and deal with clinical depression, and associated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I was fleeing the nightmare of a destroyed career and a shattered family. As I tried to battle the ‘Black Dog’ of depression, suicide was a very real option for me. But first, I decided to write a book about my research and involvement with Muslim ‘terrorists’ and revolutionary guerrilla groups in the Philippines. It was a way of combating a public media campaign that had destroyed my professional and private life. But to do this I needed to retrace both my own and my family’s earlier experiences with conflicts elsewhere, which influenced me to choose such research. In so doing I discovered new realities about the psychological condition I was battling and how it impacted on, and haunted, my own extended family over generations, and all due to war and social conflict with horrific human consequences.

Ultimately, I have concluded I’m certainly not alone in my struggle. I’m merely another casualty of a brutal primeval human phenomenon, which continually infects the psychology of the next generation. It is the phenomenon of the subconscious human struggle for the survival of the fittest. Now with a greater understanding of my condition I have, at least so far, managed a stand-off with the Black Dog. I realise it wasn’t spawned by any particular condition of my own, but rather the very nature of human society. So far society still fails to take responsibility for generating such a condition and instead still promotes our innate species drive to achieve the survival of the fittest, an endgame which usually results in warfare. In the 21st century if we do not challenge and change our notion of what is needed to survive then forget the Koreas, ISIS, nuclear warfare, etc., human kind will eventually psychologically and then physically self-destruct.

How did I come to this realisation? It all played out in a small village called Ouroux En Morvan, in France.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Feb 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796008814

Ivan Molloy

Dr Ivan Molloy is a political scientist, freelance journalist and photographer, writer of fiction, non-fiction and an artist. Over the years, he has been very active politically achieving significant national and international notoriety with his research, political campaigns and speaking out on many issues such as Terrorism, US Foreign Policy, Human Rights, the Environment, Australian Nationalism and Politics in general (see his website: www: ivan-molloy.org).

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Copyright © 2020 by Ivan Molloy.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/27/2020

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CONTENTS

About the Author

Synopsis

Introduction

1 Panic In Ouroux En Morvan

2 Prickles In Gallipoli

3 Traumatic Memories

4 A Time To Write: How Sweet Is the Durian?

Chp. 1. The Revolutionary?

Chp. 2. Going ‘Inside’

5 Ghosts Of War: Nazis And Crusaders

6 Boots

7 Chris Savin

8 Hippie Trails: Gallipoli Revisted-The 1976 Soccer War

9 War Wounds

10 How Sweet Is The Durian?

Chp. 3. Time To Run

11 Sack The Australian Terrorist!

12 The Veteran And The Letter, The Blind And The Brawlers

13 Courting The Revolution

14 How Sweet Is The Durian?

Chp. 4. Revolutionaries, Revolutions And Those In Between

15 Sex

16 How Sweet Is The Durian?

Chp.5. Prostitutes And Sparrows

17 The Boxer

18 Time To Go To War

19 Ouroux Cemetery

20 Fighting Yanks

21 Bad Dreams And Gun Barrels

22 How Sweet Is The Durian?

Chp. 6. Marawi: The Revolutionary, The Spy And The Missionary

23 Different Ghosts

24 How Sweet Is The Durian?

Chp. 7. Bobby Peace And Strange Alliances

25 Hippie Trails: The Komlar River

26 Smells Of Chicken And Coming Home

27 How Sweet Is The Durian?

Chp. 8. Secret Agent Man

28 Domestic Battle Lines

29 The Last Fight

30 How Sweet Is The Durian?

Chp. 9. Emotional Missions

31 Melbourne The Early Days

32 Writer’s Block

33 Nuclear Bombs And Japanese Cousins

34 Hippie Trails: Meeting The Ayatollah

35 Bobbing Heads In Moro Country

36 Early 1960s: Fights, Sex, Coms And Kennedy

37 Benny’s House

38 Rabbits

39 That Asian War!

40 Mt Ararat

41 In The Shadows Of Vietnam-Hells Angels And The Firing Order

42 The Battle And The Barber

43 Cliff McGan: The Black Dog Way Out

44 The Working Class Recreates Its Own

45 Nightmares

46 Belfast And The Troubles-

Part One: A Taste Of Glass

47 Drugs, Death And Rock N Roll

48 Chasing Morad

49 The Polaris Inn

50 Falklands In Ouroux En Morvan

51 Moments Of Epiphany: Panic, Sparrows, Murder And the ‘Nipole Factor’

52 Life Decisions

53 Bushfires

54 Milperra And The First Sniff Of The Dog

55 Belfast And The Troubles–Part Two: The Bar And The Bomb!

56 Done With The Book!

57 Gregenygog-Being Savaged By The Black Dog

58 Climbing Collapsing Ivory Towers

59 Growing Old With Dogma

60 Time To Settle Old Scores

61 House Of Fools: Howard, Latham, Rudd-And Ghosts Of McCarthyism

62 Meeting Arthur Walker

63 Finishing It

64 Finding The Menin Gate

65 The Last Page

One Final Word

A true story of an Australian academic and his family’s

long journey through war, terrorism, political and

social conflict-and its deadly consequences.

In Loving Memory Of

My Daughter:

Melanie Molloy

&

Chris Savin

When you’ve visited the other side, you’ve

got to chart it for others.

About the Author

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The Author: Dr. Ivan Molloy, Spain 2009

Dr Ivan Molloy is an academic, political scientist, freelance journalist and photographer, writer of fiction, non-fiction, and an artist. He has been very active politically achieving significant national and international notoriety with his research, political campaigns and speaking out on many issues including Terrorism, US Foreign Policy, Human Rights, the Environment, Australian Nationalism and Politics in general. To learn more, go to Ivan’s webpage: www.ivan-molloy.org

CEASEFIRE!

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The Author Deep In Moro Country 1983

Synopsis

This is a true story! On one level it is part my autobiography; on another it deals with three generations of my family’s active involvement in war, terrorism, political and social conflict; and the tragic emotional and psychological consequences my family endured as a result.

In 2009 as an Australian academic with expertise in global terrorism, and a one-time aspiring federal politician, I fled to France to try and deal with clinical depression, and associated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I was fleeing the nightmare of a destroyed career and a shattered family. As I tried to battle the ‘Black Dog’ of depression, suicide was a very real option for me. But first, I decided to write a book about my research and involvement with Muslim ‘terrorists’ and revolutionary guerrilla groups in the Philippines. It was a way of combating a public media smear campaign that had destroyed my professional and private life. But to do this I needed to retrace both my own and my family’s earlier experiences with conflicts elsewhere, which influenced me to choose such research. In so doing I discovered new realities about the psychological condition I was battling and how it impacted on, and haunted, my own extended family over generations, and all due to war and social conflict with horrific human consequences.

Ultimately, I have concluded I’m certainly not alone in my struggle. I’m merely another casualty of a brutal primeval human phenomenon, which continually infects the psychology of the next generation. It is the phenomenon of the subconscious human struggle for the survival of the fittest. Now with a greater understanding of my condition I have, at least so far, managed a stand-off with the Black Dog. I realise it wasn’t spawned by any particular condition of my own, but rather the very nature of human society. So far society still fails to take responsibility for generating such a condition and instead still promotes our innate species drive to achieve the survival of the fittest, an endgame which usually results in warfare. In the 21st century if we do not challenge and change our notion of what is needed to survive then forget the Koreas, ISIS, nuclear warfare, etc., human kind will eventually psychologically and then physically self-destruct.

How did I come to this realisation? It all played out in a small village called Ouroux En Morvan, in France.

Dr Ivan Molloy

Introduction

Almost in the geographical centre of France, deep in the green-forested hills of Burgundy lies the region known as the Morvan, and within it lies a hill-top village known as Ouroux En Morvan. Steeped in the history of war, Ouroux’s narrow cobble-stoned streets, lined with cracking grey brick and brown concrete-walled cottages, suggest its mediaeval age. Many of these buildings, some three stories high, present crumbling mortar facades with broken wooden doors opening right onto the village’s narrow streets. They paint a very depressing picture, as depressing as Ouroux’s history itself.

In the mornings, the smell of wood fires, grass and manure; and the sounds of pigs grunting and hens cackling, permeate the village. Just like they did 800 years ago when King Richard and his Crusaders marched by on their way to the Holy Lands from Vezelay Cathedral just up the road. Later, so too did French revolutionaries travel past hunting for monarchists. Then 60 years ago and more, so too did Nazi troops pass, as did their fierce adversaries the Marquis Bernard and others of the French resistance. All passed in their own times, and their own wars, with their ghosts seemingly still doing so today. And much like the smells and sounds, so also do the bodiless emotions of terror and misery permeate the town and surrounding forests. All from forgotten horrors inflicted over many centuries. Early in the 21st century Ouroux En Morvan is indeed a mysterious, eerie village. And one could be forgiven for thinking it harbours a very dark spirituality.

But there is another dimension to this place. In real time, while rapidly diminishing each year, some still living ex-Wehrmacht veterans also travel by. Such forlorn, troubled elderly figures still hope to achieve redemption for their past butchery by making their way to Vezelay Cathedral where the bones of Mary Magdalene supposedly lie.

Overall, Ouroux En Morvan was, and is, quite unremarkable at least in appearance, however at its best it’s always rather vague and haunting. There are many villages dotting the French countryside all around with their own stories of horror and war over the centuries. And all with deep brooding memories propagated by those who survived. However, Ouroux is different. Not just for its picturesque lake and its high church steeple overlooking Lac Pancier, Lac Setton and the villages of Chaumard and Chateau-Chinon in the distance; but because recently Ouroux En Morvan provided sanctuary for a few refugees from different dimensions of war, and one of them was me, Dr Ivan Molloy. For a while this small village provided sanctuary for me while I wrestled with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, coupled with suicidal clinical depression.

For a time, I lived on the edge of this village in a four hundred-year-old stone two story farmhouse, with a sagging roofline wracked by age and neglect. This uncomfortable old farmhouse was a sight to see. Like so many others in Ouroux, it had rotting, wooden window shutters and cracked walls of roughly hewn stone and white crumbling mortar.

Outside, black-broken slate roof tiles, blown from the barn roof over many years, litter the ground all about. The house and its two barns form a large U shape with their adjoining ageing rooflines slowly collapsing. On the inside of the house, the floor of the main room consists of deep-faded, cracked red tiles resting on concrete. Always freezing, the tiles ensure the winter cold pushes upwards into the house itself, nullifying any heating. At one end of the large room stands a spiral wooden staircase snaking up to a single loft bedroom. Beside it an old metal stove stands with a long chimney pipe rising high, before bending back at right angles into the wall. At the other end of the room stands a rotting wooden table, a red leather couch, and a few aging chairs. These are the room’s main features. And it was in this room I sought refuge during a tough French winter while spending most of my time wrestling with my demons.

While the house belongs to an Australian academic friend of mine, for a long time it remained deserted after I left. And for some time on the long wooden table by the house’s rear window, my old broken black-cased laptop computer could be seen, its screen still flipped up. While such a modern apparatus challenged the integrity of this aging medieval town, this dusty machine, its key board curiously splattered with blood-like stains, once supplied a focal point for intersecting worlds. These were the worlds of the psychological and the real, both different yet both once immersed in horror.

It was on this computer where my worlds of fear, the horrors of war and their all too real consequences once intersected. And it was on this, I worked while suffering from chronic suicidal depression. I was trying desperately to reconcile my demons and make some sense of the dilemma plaguing not just me, but so many others before me.

On this computer I tried to understand the truth of the essential human condition. Like so many others, I faced the tragic consequences of not being able to understand the harsh realities of my procession through a violent life littered with the carnage of many competing ideologies and belief systems. I once called them ‘Kingdoms of Consciousness’, which relentlessly reduce so many people to misguided cannon fodder, fighting for competing lifeways and values, defined by and benefitting only the few. While, for those who survive, psychological trauma and illness generally await.

In short, this book is a true story. It is about conflict, its psychological battlefields and the cruel consequences for all touched by it. It is about me as a psychologically condemned man attempting to write a book to clear my name and ease my pain. It is also about my family and the lives within, from which I emerged psychologically scarred and emotionally traumatised. Yet it was, and is, a family not unlike countless millions of others over countless generations. It is the story about lives lost to competing ideologies, human manipulation and the consequences of the essential human condition: the struggle for power, and hence of the ‘fittest’ to survive. And I guess only the survivors get to define the ‘fittest’.

 …

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Ouroux En Morvan, Region Of Burgundy, France

1

Panic In Ouroux En Morvan

I was flying high, my body floating through time and space. Below I could see thick, grey clouds streaked with black smoke! Like an eagle, I soared down through the clouds and instantly recognised the vista unfolding below. I was deep in Northern France, and now felt very excited; I was looking down at the shell-pocked battlefield of First World War Verdun, barely a few metres below me. I could see thousands of soldiers, wrecked wagons, scores of smashed vehicles, and dead horses. I could see explosions and massed artillery fire.

But it was all quiet!

I looked out towards the horizon and could see quilt-like patches of grey and black, intersected by random parallel stretches of blackened trenches, laced with mud stretching forever. I flew on and skimmed across countless broken, littered wooden walkways connecting the trench lines. Effortlessly I flew low for seeming kilometres until I reached a bulldozed trench from which fifty and more rusted French bayonets protruded, horrible monuments to the dead soldiers still clasping them underneath. I flew on with no apparent control over my direction towards a new battlefield. I was in Belgium now and hovering over the smoking ruins of a town called Ypres. More trenches—more carnage. But no soldiers anywhere now. And still quiet! Then I saw a slightly muddied-green patch, alongside a heavily shelled road littered with smashed wagons and burnt and twisted artillery. I was curious, so I glided down and effortlessly landed, my feet running as I hit the ground. But before I could stop on a small patch of grass fringed with mud, I ended up standing at the bottom of a huge, muddied shell crater.

Then, oddly enough, I looked around for my father. But no one was in sight. That’s a shame, I thought, still elated by my new-found freedom of movement. I was in a weird, happy headspace; the remnants of war all around didn’t even faze me. I looked around some more and then saw a large white-painted wooden cross before me. It had some writing on it. I looked to read it. But then a dark, gnarled, and bloodied hand broke through the mud at my feet and seized my left leg with a vice-like grip. I shouted in fright and tried to pull away, but it was too strong and slowly it pulled me down beneath the surface.

I guessed I was dreaming—and I was! At least, I thought I was. The battlefield vanished as I was pulled down—down through more mud and then into my old bed in my parents’ house, way back in Australia. I sat up and looked for my father, but he still wasn’t there! Nor was my mother. A rush of despair gripped me as the reality of the early morning set in. I was alone. I was the last of the family—the very last.

I walked around the house confused, trying to make some sense of it all. The house encapsulated a whole family life of seventy years and more. Around its walls were pictures and photos and trinkets—all signposting my family’s existence. I looked at the photos slowly—and then it came to me. Everywhere were pictures of uniforms and political rallies and men boxing and hunting. My entire family life was on all the walls; the pictures of my brothers and sister and all the fun events of their lives gone by. But those of my mother and father—mainly my father, seemed all to be defined by conflict. There were my dad’s boxing pictures, him in his army uniform, his marches in ANZAC day rallies, and even wearing his uniform at his wedding. Then it occurred to me that my own life, as a son of my father, was also defined purely by conflict and the consequences of that conflict. What a waste—what a waste! I thought, somewhat detached. Why had my family endured this? And what of the consequences?

I stood back. The brooding background of the fear and anxiety of my early family life suddenly began to haunt me now; just as I knew it had my father. But also haunting me was my father’s anger at being forced to kill in war, and the way that anger was inflicted not just on me but also my brothers and sister. And then how my own anger was once inflicted on my own children.

Suddenly my mind raced as it flicked between nightmare and emerging consciousness. Images of my father, Mat Molloy, again shot through my mind. The troubled returned soldier, the ex-champion boxer, the recreated Cold War ideologist, and the lone communist fighting the world. But above all was the image of the troubled returned soldier, with rage in his eyes, holding an armchair above the head of my frightened mother cowering at her husband’s feet. ‘I’ll kill the bastards! I’ll kill the bastards! Before I die, I’ll kill them all!’ My dad bellowed before dropping the chair and falling to the floor crying.

In truth, my dad’s life was defined by nothing but conflict, anger, and grief! His life was one of the eternal global soldier, first fighting fascism, then as the Cold War warrior fighting for a belief system, he hoped could justify the atrocities he’d inflicted on others. A fight that became increasingly meaningless as old age crept on and dementia slowly replaced rationality.

I now floated above my father, who’d suddenly appeared sitting in that living room, and calm and somewhat detached again I thought: What a waste, dad! Your life has always been about conflict and war. You’ve always been fighting! And that’s sad enough. But trouble is—you committed us all to it, you bastard! You sentenced us all to a life of conflict, fighting a useless crusade to save the fucking world and to placate your own bloody conscience for being a pawn for others!

These thoughts faded as I was jolted into consciousness. My dream vanished. I heard something outside. At least, I thought I did. I opened my eyes, and the cold reality of dawn engulfed me. No—it was all a dream. I wasn’t in the family home back in Australia. I was somewhere else. I struggled to think where, but my mind refused to concentrate. It was so bloody dark—black velvet dark! Not a hint of light anywhere. And it was so cold—the cold of freezing bricks. And it was so quiet.

I lay there for some time in the blackness, concentrating on keeping warm while my thoughts slowly sharpened. I listened intently to all around—but there was no more sound. I lay there for a few minutes more, still not moving. I still wondered where I was while reality steadily built itself around me, mental brick by mental brick, until I realised where I was. It’d been such a long trip for me to finally get here. But it was good to be back in Ouroux En Morvan, the scrubby little French village on a hilltop in the Morvan region of Burgundy, and in this little farmhouse that my friend back in Australia owned and was glad for me to use as a refuge. But after a few moments the feeling of lying in this little room, in this crumbling stone house, soon quashed any euphoria I felt. The reality was it was so dark! And so early morning quiet. The room felt so much like a grave, a dark, cold grave that perhaps I was entombed in.

The silence, the darkness, and the cold rattled me. I felt anxious—even frightened. And then I could feel it happening. The first inkling of panic creeping through my psyche—beginning at first with a prickly feeling in my gut. My god! I thought. It’s happening! The tentacles of terrifying claustrophobia were enveloping me. The dark room felt just like a morgue. I tried to calm myself by repeating loudly, ‘I’m back in the farmhouse. I’m back …’ But still my terrifying anxiety grew. I tried to hold the panic back by thinking of anything but the room. I tried to think of sex—of fucking. But then I thought of a woman’s face, a woman I knew so well, but I couldn’t think of her name, or even the context from where I knew her, and that fed my panic even more. Was I going mad? Then I thought of my mother, who’d just died while I was in Spain two weeks before. I thought of her face as she lay there in state at her funeral, which I managed to view via Skype on the phone of a mate who’d agreed to attend her funeral on my behalf.

That sent me off. A full anxiety attack now rendered me a panicking, blubbering mess. I could feel it happening physically, like a terrifying wave of unbridled fear quickly engulfing me. My god! I thought again. It’s happening again!

I sat up in the dark, struggling to contain the growing terror enveloping me. Didn’t Ashley, my Chinese psychologist, say whenever attacks came to put my tongue up against my teeth and focus on controlled breathing? I pushed my tongue forward. One-two, count to ten, I told myself. Think of the book, think of reality, think of anything to stop it. But it was no use. The beast—the ‘Black Dog’, now had me firmly in its invisible, crushing jaws. Acute, dementing, terrifying claustrophobia and nauseating panic wracked me from head to toe. I couldn’t breathe, and I pissed myself as my whole body shook.

I was losing my mind. ‘Gotta get out,’ I choked, tumbling out of bed. Even the jarring cold of the floor didn’t break my seizure. I felt for the door, wrenched it open, and burst out into the living room as shit ran down my legs. I fumbled for the light, risking electrocution from the aging switch. Black turned to artificial light. But even that didn’t help. I remained crippled by all-consuming panic. Finally, I managed to swing open the heavy wooden back door leading to the snow-covered courtyard. Plaster crumbled to the floor from the door’s rusted hinges and crunched under my feet as, terrified, I ran out the doorway.

Outside, it was morning twilight, a faint glow was on the horizon. All was white with snow. Above the barn I could see Ouroux’s church steeple, still bathed in a night spotlight, clawing through a low mist. But the tangible barn and steeple offered me no comfort. I felt I was in an alien world with no familiar reference points to ease my anxiety. Terrifying claustrophobia was crushing the life out of me. I fell down in the snow into a crumpled foetal position.

‘Help me! Help me!’ I gasped out loud as I hyperventilated with sheer terror.

There was nothing do to stop the anxiety attack crippling my body. It would stop only when the Black Dog was done. But then I thought of the shotgun. If I could just get it, I could end all this. I breathed in and out slowly, attempting to combat chronic hyperventilation.

I really am sick! I thought to myself and then spluttered out loud with saliva dripping off my chin: ‘I’m badly damaged goods.’

Slowly the emotional drama passed and my panic dissipated, replaced by the cold chill of the icy snow under my body. All in all, my panic attack, the cold face of PTSD as Ashley, my shrink called it, only lasted about a minute but it seemed forever.

I lay there panting for a while; and then shivering, pulled myself slowly to my feet. With my cold feet slipping on some ice, I stumbled back inside the heavy door and into the kitchen, my feet finding no comfort from the cold slate floor. With trembling hands, I entered the bathroom and cleaned myself up, then I lit the open fire, boiled the kettle and made some coffee. Shaken, I rugged up inside some blankets. I sat down at my laptop on the old carved wooden table in the large stoned-lined room that passed for a lounge. I looked at the computer’s blank screen and just stared at it.

I thought of mum and cried a bit. It seemed only days since she passed. For me, while her death was expected, I thought she’d last much longer. I got the news from the nursing home when I was travelling through the tiny 12th century coastal town of San Vincente De La Barque, deep in Basque territory in Northern Spain. I had wanted to stay awhile by the beach before heading for Ouroux. But it was then I thought I should have stayed longer at home to see her off. However, I had to go when I did, I was an absolute emotional basket case. And she’d already lost her mind before I left Australia, with barely a smile the best I could get when I said goodbye with a kiss on her cheek. I would do my grieving in the days to come.

It seemed to take hours to recover as I continued to sit at the table by the fire. It was mid-morning when, though still jittery, I thought I could function. What to do? My life can’t go on like this! I thought. I looked at the old double-barrelled shotgun hanging above the fire place. Could I ever do that? No perhaps not this time, not yet anyway, I thought. But at least it was there, and that thought felt strangely comforting. It could be my ultimate leave pass. Meanwhile outside, another cold winter’s day had dawned in the tiny French village of Ouroux En Morvan. Another day in which panic and death seemed always present for me. After another coffee, I looked again at my computer sitting in front of me. I flicked it on and worked the mouse with shaking hands. I decided to do some work on my draft manuscript. Perhaps I could lose myself in this book about my life and work in the Philippines. Hopefully this will be cathartic, I thought. Got to exhort my fucking demons!

The old scratched table at which I sat was scattered with books about the Muslim guerrillas in the Southern Philippines. There were also my personal field notes from my time with them in the 1980s. They were the Filipino Muslim separatists, or ‘the Moros,’ as they were otherwise known. There were also notes from the research I’d done on the Communist New People’s Army or NPA, a revolutionary guerrilla army in the Christian areas of the Philippines. Finally, there was my old tattered diary of my other experiences travelling the so-called ‘Hippy Trail’ from Australia, across Asia to Europe in the 1970s.

The book I was writing called ‘How Sweet Is the Durian’ glared up at me from the bright silver screen, lighting my face in the dimly-lit room. I had convinced myself this would be the book to ‘set things right’. Through this book I could reveal the truth to combat the lies of all the detractors of my academic work, and those who’d publicly labelled me a terrorist sympathiser back home. Barely disguised as ‘factional’ in nature, it was to be a true account of the research I’d done in the Southern Philippines, interspersed with related notes about how I got to do what I did politically, emotionally and all other ways, and what had motivated me to do all this dangerous stuff in the first place. I was also inspired by the work of another researcher who I knew of in the Philippines, a brave young American journalist known as Frank Gould. Gould was murdered in the Philippines a few years before as he was researching much of the stuff I was, primarily the relationships between two different ‘terrorist’ groups. Gould failed, but I didn’t! However, after I returned home my work was so badly distorted by a politicized media during the 2004 Federal Election, I was labelled a terrorist sympathizer. Consequently, my career was left in tatters and my family shattered. Therefore, I hoped with this book I could set things right by revealing the truth of my work. I was never a terrorist sympathiser! And even though I carried a gun I never was a terrorist! Surely, I thought, this book would prove I wasn’t.

By writing this book I also hoped such a cathartic exercise might ease my frequent panic attacks, such agonising reminders as they were of my ongoing clinical depression and PTSD. I hoped this manuscript would take me psychologically out of Ouroux En Morvan back to the Philippines. There perhaps, I could lose myself, at least mentally and emotionally, in my former life as a researcher in another world completely. A world so far from France and the snow, and so far from Australia. By writing this I also hoped I could maybe shed some light on the truth of Frank Gould’s life and death in the murky conflict between the Islamic guerrillas and the Manila Government that has plagued the Southern Philippines, also known as ‘Moroland’ for decades. By writing about myself I thought I also might get a better focus, some answers, and perhaps some closure on what was a ghastly episode of my life.

However, in my current condition I knew it was too painful to write about aspects of my family life that drove me to do what I did in the Philippines and other war zones I researched in Central America in the 1980s without digging down to earlier parts of my life. Much of that life I’d recorded was lying scattered in notes on the old wooden table. I had brought these with me so I could investigate once and for all a question that has nagged me, and still does all my adult life. And that question is: what the fuck drove me all these years to literally put my life on the line countless times to pursue research in fucking war zones? Was I trying to be a ‘wannabe martyr’ or just a fucking fool?

Needless to say, from time to time I dug through these notes and sometimes added to what’s become a loose diary of my life and my family over the years.

Before my recent troubles, I’d tried to write about my family life once before, wracked as it was by conflict and PTSD. But the book fell by the wayside, the truth to hurtful to me and to others. And realistically it was politically too damning of some high-profile people, my country and some glorified national institutions, to be ever published. I had called it ‘Firing Order’. I thought this name was symbolic of both the order of life and death created by so many powerful people who tend to emerge untouched by the deadly consequences of their quest for more power and fame. The title was also too painful for me in another sense. It was a constant reminder of my older brother Mick and his mad road to death, as he tried to escape the horrors of Vietnam and an emotionally wracked upbringing at the hands of a demented father. In the end the title was too close, amongst everything else, to what I recognise now as my own deadly ‘condition’. But in a different time in a different country, maybe finally I could more effectively and cathartically put pen to paper.

As time passed and the sun rose, its glaring rays glinting off the snow outside, I continued to stare at my mess of notes and newspaper clippings, my book’s literary cannon fodder if you like. Finally, my eyes rested on my old brown leather diary lying in the middle of the table. It had been the most immediate trigger for my whole fucking nightmare. My diary summarised my own and my whole family’s journey through world wars, then the ideological conflict of the Cold War, which left whole generations traumatised with bitter and sometimes deadly consequences; and all due to those false political messiahs and morally corrupt vested interests; or so I, like most left-wing academics, believe.

So, my story, I determined, would not be just about the direct conflicts I was involved in, but also about those poor beggars and their families swept up in such nightmares. While those in the West, and everywhere for that matter, seem to view conflict in a false, glossy, media-created world of heroes and computer games, I was determined to reveal the other human dimension of war-the horror world of the psychological. I would expose the difference between the two worlds: one falsely created by media barons and other global interests; and the other, the horrific human reality of it all. I felt I could do this, driven as I was by a consciousness now laid bare and unshackled in Ouroux. In so doing I hoped to rebuild my credibility via such a swan song, perhaps before ending it all.

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Ouroux By Night

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By Day

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A Hilltop Picture Of Ouroux En Morvan

2

Prickles In Gallipoli

The realities of war came far too early to my life, if there ever can be a proper age to understand this barbarous activity. I often wonder if this was the reason during my academic career, I chose to research what brings people to fight and die for whatever cause, having already come to terms with the horrors of war so young. Or was it because of my father’s, or indeed my grandfather’s experiences in wars, and somehow subconsciously I was trying to be like them? A bit like a truck driver’s kid being subtly programmed to drive trucks himself. Only my problem was I didn’t have a war to fight in, so I went looking for one.

My early introduction to war was not of my choosing however. As a skinny blond-haired kid, I remember listening to my grandfather’s stories of his experiences in the First World War. Perhaps they were little more than embellished yarns but they did the trick, I was totally fascinated with these tales just the same. My favourite was ‘Poppa Percy’s’ colourful but dreadful account of storming off the barges with other young diggers at the Gallipoli beachhead on the 25th of April 1915. It was right at the beginning of that fateful allied invasion of the Turkish peninsula flanking the Dardanelles, a campaign designed to knock Turkey out of the war.

I would listen wide-eyed, and curiously excited to Poppa Percy’s story of staring up from the beachhead through seawater-stung eyes at the steep, jagged clay-coloured cliffs of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and that tall peak known as ‘The Sphinx’ that dominated all like some impenetrable fortress; of watching the Turks atop pour down their deadly machine gun fire on Anzac Cove, hails of bullets pocking the cliff faces, the water, the sand and pebbles, but horribly men’s heads and bodies as well. Old Poppa didn’t spare me any of the gory details! He talked of the many already dead in the water and on the beach. He told me of the screaming everywhere, of cries of terror and pain, as the young terrified invaders after hitting the beach scrambled for cover-any cover. Australian soldiers, some no more than kids, were being cut down all around, some calling for their mothers, some for god. Not all the casualties were shot, many drowned where they embarked, their heavy kits dragging them to the bottom of the blood-stained sea.

Such were Poppa’s horrific stories. However, I also remember just as vividly as his stories, my lingering fear of this old man, my father’s father. This silver haired, little old man, always seemed to be looming menacingly over me in those days; the hard-edged man with the frowning threatening face that never smiled.

I never really did get to know Poppa Percy that well because Percy died when I was quite young. But I do remember how stooped old Poppa Percy was. And he was always coughing it seemed. Percy’s lungs, my own father Mat Molloy once said, were ‘stuffed’ by gas in the First World War, somewhere in the trenches in France, dad thought. But I’m not too sure about that now because the old hard-arsed bastard used to smoke a hell of a lot. And while the old fella recounted Gallipoli, he never spoke of the time he was said to have spent in the battle of the Somme in France after recovering from his wound from Gallipoli. And as the years wore on, I increasingly suspected it was just bullshit.

In my later years I harboured very mixed feelings about this stooped old man though I vaguely remember being terrified when he used to often cuff me around the ear when I was no more than four years old; this old stooped bastard that used intrigue me so with his stories of Gallipoli.

While old man Percy’s stories always left me as a kid with feelings of admiration and wonderment, later in life I instead looked back with disgust at the humiliating cock-up and resulting slaughter that was Gallipoli. While studying this military campaign as a young political scientist, it proved my first encounter with the power reality of Australian life. The Gallipoli hero myth was Australia’s first great media creation and entirely bullshit, but it injected a false sense of pride, achievement and notion of what it meant to be Australian in Australia’s mass consciousness. Established by a media machine intent on wielding its coercive psychological power, in time the myth grew to influence Governments, their decision making, and even the nature of Australian culture. It wasn’t soldiers who created the ANZAC myth of courage, equality and mateship. It was an infant Australian media machine which, borne with federation, became a major determinate of the political nature of Australian society, not for Australians, but for the increasingly powerful foreign interests and elite local lackeys that controlled it.

There was once a time in my life however that I did feel close to Poppa Percy. But it was long time after the old man died. I’d just finished doing the overland across Asia ‘Hippy Trail’ journey in the 1970s, with Dave, my mate from school days. After many months on the road, I found myself in a wine-induced haze standing on the beach at Anzac Cove in Turkey. It was a lonely beach then, no anniversaries celebrated by drunken Aussie backpackers in those days. With the azure blue waters of the Aegean Sea behind me and looking up at the barren steep cliffs that formed the backbone of the entire peninsula, I could remember pretending to be where Poppa perhaps stood 60 years before. As I let my mind drift, I could almost hear the fighting and smell the horror and the death; and feel the prickles ripping at his flesh as he charged up the hill against a torrent of gunfire.

And the prickles that studded those cliffs were the most surprising reality of that place. The one that made it all finally appear so real to me. Everywhere on Gallipoli’s steep hills and its rugged cliffs, which those thousands of guys fought their way up so long ago on such a futile, stupid mission, there was nothing but prickles hidden in all the cliffs’ nooks and crannies. Sharp prickles everywhere! At school back in Australia so many years later, none of the history books nor the teachers ever mentioned the prickles on those hot, endless Anzac Day ceremonies. In the 1950s, all the kids gullible little heads were ever filled with as they sang the national anthem and diligently saluted the flag, were visions of medals and accounts of bravery, and blaring `last posts’ and the heroic feats of Simpson and his donkey, who was never an Australian anyway, Simpson that is, not the donkey! Little was ever said about the horror of it all, I thought, when thinking about that campaign years after. Never was there any mention of the fear, or the vomit, and the smell of blood and shit and urine, when a man’s body is smashed to pieces by bullets, or blown apart by shells. Nor were the small kids with their father’s huge medals on their chests, ever be told of the lingering sense of death that still haunts the place. Nor did they ever mention the brothels in Egypt, or the drunken brawls on the streets of Cairo when the unruly troops from the colonies too often got out of hand. Yep-Poppa Percy, for all his ills, was a brave man, I once decided as a young child, a belief confirmed much later with the simple painful nick of a prickle on my leg on a beach in a far-off land. But with what consequences?

But years later, another competing reality, another ugly vision, dulled my admiration for my grandfather. As an older child, I came to believe Poppa Percy was perhaps no hero at all, just a very sad, troubled, embittered man. This seemed confirmed many times over the years when memories of this gnarled old man periodically sprang to life for reasons I didn’t really know. Central to these sporadic memories were usually images of this silver-haired old man snarling or yelling angrily at me when so very young; sometimes pointing his finger right at my heart, sometimes raising his fist as if to strike me. It was always when we were alone and whenever my parents were off working on weekends for an extra quid in Western New South Wales, on the farm of my dad’s old army friend called ‘Lofty’. I wasn’t sure why old Percy did this to me. But sometimes I felt maybe Poppa Percy resented his youngest grandchild for being life so young, a life not plagued with horrible memories of the war he’d endured. I often wondered this because at times I could remember him breaking down and sobbing for no apparent reason. But then again, in later years, and in less forgiving moments, I thought perhaps Poppa Percy had it coming. Poppa didn’t have to go to his war, the First World War, which in its own way was just as ‘dirty’ as later wars for later generations, like Vietnam was for me. Maybe his harsh reality was he’d finally realised he’d been nothing more than just a prick for going to war and trying to kill people just like himself, and for no good reason! All for King, Country and fucking Empire!

Still, I was content to think Poppa Percy was once brave in his own way. Even if my Poppa had actually injured his leg himself to escape Anzac Cove, as was one hushed belief.

But my grandfather wasn’t the reason for doing what I later did in the 1980s, in war zones in the Philippines and Nicaragua. I wasn’t trying to be like my Poppa, like so many sons and grandsons do. It wasn’t Poppa that drove me to ‘go-inside’, to travel deep into ‘enemy’ territory in the war zones that dotted the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ Philippines, and elsewhere amongst the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in Central America. Nor were they Poppa’s sort of wars I was involved in. The war in the Philippines in the 1970s and 1980s was a much different war-a war of many different enemies, some even fighting on supposedly the same side as each other. Poppa’s war was much closer to my father’s sort of war. It was much closer to the very things Mat Molloy went off to New Guinea to fight for in 1943. However, I still shared one thing in common with my family elders and my own involvement in wars. I also became no stranger to deep depression and deadly PTSD later in life, when I realised these horrifying linked conditions had consumed not only my father, but maybe even old Percy as well.

 …

3

Traumatic Memories

With my breath white with the cold, I put more wood on the fire. It was eerily quiet outside, the falling snow muffling all noise. I wrapped a woollen scarf around my neck and shuffled around amongst the notes on the table unti I saw three small micro tapes. The taped interviews jogged my memories of a special night twenty years before. I was sitting around the kitchen table with my father, Mat Molloy and my mother Beryl who was frail and grey even then. Wine glasses were in their hands and the cassette recorder was rolling. My dad and mum seemed nervous, their demeanour strangely formal, like someone facing a camera for the first time. But they told their stories nonetheless and I listened in awe.

Dad, hesitating at times told me how dangerous it was in New Guinea in the Second World War-his war. At first, dad continued to think it all a