Norman McFarlane — Across the Border Surviving the Secret War in Angola

what's your dream what's your goal what's your motivation what's important to you what's your passion what can you do to change the world this is what's involved conversations with thought leaders and change makers from around the world hear stories of hope and inspiration to help motivate people like you to live your life find your passion passion and live your dream together we could all bring positive change to our world now here's your host David Watts once again it is what's involved especially as joining me today I've got to be honest about this and you'll understand why during the course of this conversation this is a guest I wanted to chat to it's also a guest I didn't want to chat to it's about a book that he wrote that needed to be written and it's also a book I didn't want to read so with that in mind my special guest today is Norman McFarlane he is the author of Across the Border surviving the secret war in Angola hello Norman how are you hi David I'm good thanks and how are you I'm okay thank you okay as I said you know this this was a book it came across my desk and initially my first impression was oh it's another war story okay cool because you know we've we've all read some of them about some of the the elite units in South Africa and about what happened here and there and everywhere and then I got into the book a little bit and I realized it's actually not a war story it's it's kind of I suppose I would call it a hero's journey story and it's about what happened to you as Norman as an individual experiencing this time in your life so before we dive into it let's start off at the very beginning tell me a little bit about Norman well David Norman is was growing up quite a solitary young boy I didn't make friends terribly easily I prefer to spend my time lost in a book or reading or dreaming about who knows what so and I had I would is a rather strange upbringing in the sense that I grew up in a very loving family we and family extended beyond just our immediate family and I was fortunate enough when I was young to spend a great deal of time in the Tron sky and that those experiences were very much a formative part of how I came together as a young man before I went into the military and I have fond memories and I made the observation in the book that they're great sweat I don't remember but certainly in terms of my earlier life I have vivid memories of so much that transpired in my young life with my family I'm going fishing with my grandfather and my dad on the spot popper in Port Elizabeth where I grew up for the first 13 or 14 years of my life my very close relationship with my brother after I turned 16 for some reason or other four years apart we fought like cat and dog until I kind of magically reached the age of 16 and then we became the closest of friends and I had a very close relationship with my mom and dad both of human no longer with me so but my what informed my thinking a great deal was the times I used to spend in the Tron sky at Whabenny which is the ancestral home of my late uncle but my marriage Donald Woods and I recall as a teenager sitting for hours at his feet and I do recant this in the book as well listening to what Donald had to say about South Africa and what apartheid was and what it meant to us as a society and that in many respects informed who I was when I went into the military which did result in a significant degree of conflict I have to tell you but I had I had a I had a lovely talent and I had a loving family and I had a loving mom and dad until the days that they both passed away so yeah that's me and yeah I came out of out of school and I went straight into the military there was there was no money in our family for university so it was come out of school go to the army and when you're done with that find a job and get working which is amazing because so many of us from that period of time really we kind of that was just the thing you did I mean I didn't come from a family that was that was wealthy either I came from I suppose a kind of very much middle of the road we were just getting by my dad worked for an international company my mom was a dancing teacher so I never really grew up in you know having these racist kind of things thrust upon me because to me I was a kid I was growing up you know and it never occurred to me and then suddenly it became a reality when you get that little postcard and I'm sure it happened to you as well but at that stage even with with by the time I went into into the army because I went into service after you it wasn't the damn thing you know to to kind of not go or to it be a conscientious object that was we're starting but and particularly for mild-fashioned sort of family they were exactly like that you know you've finished high school now we're not sending you to varsity there's no money go to the army do what you got to do come out get a job preferably as you know something like a banker or you know it's something that's acceptable to the family and and off you go and well let me tell you it's I've oftentimes heard it referred to as the best two years of your life that you never want to do again and I think there's there's an element of truth to that but I don't think it's entirely like that but you start your journey with you now arriving at the at that you know you've now been called up and off you go where were you called up to let's start there and then how did you get to where you started with your training okay I was called up to four field regiments and artillery regiment in potterstrom at the time one of the only two full-time artillery regiments everything else was with citizen force at the time and I went there from Durban which is where my parents had moved to and where I'd finished my schooling so yes that little card arrived in the mail and said that you need to report to Durban station at this time on this day which was the 5th of January 1975 and we're going to take you away from your loving parents and your loving home in the world that you understand and we're going to thrust you into something that is completely alien and disconcerting and in some respects very difficult to deal with so that's how the journey started I have to say the opening line in the book in the prologue was I do make the observation that I had these great big blanks that I didn't call it all but the opening line that I attribute to Benny Harbinger one of my my comrades up there was absolutely word perfect because I will never ever forget the statement he made that night when we were sitting in the compartment on the way up to Potterstrom and it just when I started to write the book it just seemed to be the right place to start the story and that's why the narrative unfolded the way it did I didn't I didn't start writing the book with a plan in my head of where the narrative was going to go to it it literally grew organically once I started to write now that statement made by by Benny Harbinger I mean as I read it and I was like yeah that's that's the way to describe it because that's what happened and I think it's a very South African term it basically in in today's nice polite language you said that you were going to be doing a lot of throwing up and in our slang at the time I don't know if it's still very much in vague or not it was called coaching which I think was which I think was a very apt word as well and that that that is absolutely true and and it's it's true as well that you get thrown into this environment yeah was just just turned 18 no idea get dropped off in the dark at a place told you're not going to see your mom and dad again for at least three months or your family or friends and we're taking you somewhere but we're not going to tell you exactly where we're taking you and then getting on to the the Psalmals that's the one thing that I do remember and they had Psalm of 50s and Psalm of hundreds there and you know they would tell you to scream and shout at you get on get on and you get on you think okay well it's full now and then they would they would take off and hit the brakes and you'd all go sliding around and they'd repeat this a couple of times until there was way more than a hundred or fifty of you in the vehicle and then off we went so you're now there and as part of it and people may not know this which I still I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that there are people that have no concept of of this kind of military service or anything but you know you you set off that they take you somewhere people are screaming at you the whole time and you have no idea why they're screaming at you and and what the problem is and what those little markings on them mean on their sleeves and stuff like that how was that beginning experience for you the boring and it was an assault on the senses and you know the right from the very beginning in when we arrived at the station and it very quickly sunk in that's the order of the order of the day in the military is to get chartered out constantly and you get told that you're useless and that you're and I don't want to use the expletives that are so commonly used or we're so commonly used in the military in those days because it literally an assault on the senses it's bewildering it's disconcerting and it's troubling and you're with a group of people you've never met before you don't know them from a bar of soap in most instances so you can't really reach out to anybody for any kind of support or encouragement because it just ain't there so it's just a complete assault on the senses and that's the way I experienced that initially and and I think that's that's part of part of what they did at that time was was was that total onslaught of on the senses and and breaking you down I mean I'll another thing that's stuck in my mind is when when we had to sort of fall in for our first official parade and the camp commandant came up there and his opening statement is as of now the army is your mother and I am your father but we're not married so you know what makes that makes you lot and and that was kind of that was kind of the theme of it I quickly got to dislike people with those little PTI badges which was the PT instructors and then yeah we got shoved into into into barracks into dormitories I mean you know there was like 50 or 60 of us the conditions were appalling I'd never had to do the kind of stuff I'd had to do in in my life before but then and in those and that's how long was your basic training in those days was it six weeks in those days David six weeks six weeks so you now start to learn about throwing up and about being broken down and and and again you know today if somebody had to say to me see that tree over there go and get me a leaf I'm gonna go get the leaf yourself buddy yep in those days you could not do that and we experienced I'm sure you did as well water PT no that's something we didn't do we did pole PT and we did a variety of other PT's we did we did the two comma four we did we did enormous distances with a rifle held above your head and once we started gunnery training we did the same distances with the pair of hands back sort of above your head no we did that is our water PT now instances was they would do our PT instruction but then force us to drink water and then carry on pushing us until invariably the water wants to leave at speed so that was that was kind of my bit but then in terms of the similarities in military experience yours then took another turning so you finished your basics whatever well after basics we actually had the opportunity of going home to visit the path and home for the first time in six weeks which was enormously welcome I do write about it briefly in the book as well but that that that's interlude in the assault on your senses and your psyche lasts for a very brief period which is literally a weekend and then once we got back from that we headed into gunnery training as I recall correctly which is now a deviation because if you're in the infantry what you start with in basics you continue with through the rest of your training whereas we had to now come to terms with the in this case the field gun at 25 pounder field gun which was a weapon of choice of the battery that I was in which is a whole different set of circumstances the whole different ball game in terms of training and getting to grips with what you have to get to grips with you know it's very interesting I mean you also you you relate to a story about the whole this is my rifle this is my gun thing which again you know it kind of brings a bit of a wry smile to my face because there was there was a lot of punishment involved around your rifle and how you would treat your rifle and bar by association any form of equipment and etc etc now you've you've completed your training you kind of they've kind of broken us all down at this stage and now we're trying to they're rebuilding us as this cohesive unit in your instance it was the battery that you were with so the writing then I guess was on the wall for you because if you were if you were you know in in one of the gunnery batteries for example then you you kind of knew you were going to the border well yes but you were going in an infantry role because we actually also did coin training or counterinsurgency training after we completed our gunnery training in preparation for going to the border and at that stage irrespective of where you were deployed if you were a fighting unit you would end up going to the borders so the one difference there of course was armored because the armored units so one SSB and two SSB did play a role on the border in the anodic cars but typically if you're in the artillery you would end up going to the border in an infantry role and that's the role that we initially went up to what was then called two sub area in was in an infantry role okay now but by this stage would you say that things were changing in your psyche it had this had this been where the change had started or was that still to come no that was still to come you know at the end of the day once once the the typical approach to military training which is to try to as far as possible turn people into automatons that react rather than think because we were so often told you're not here to think you're here to do as you're told and you had to react when the time is right and there is there is a measure of in that approach to military training because the intention is that if you're in the operational area and something goes badly wrong and there is an attack or you were ambushed or whatever the case may be or you're getting to a firefight the expectation is that you will simply react and keep yourself and your comments alive because if you're going to sit and deliberate about what you ought to do next when there are bullets flying in all sorts of directions that's ideally not the situation that one wants to be in it's the methodology of course which is an entirely separate issue in my view so you know by that stage of the game you've accustomed yourself to military discipline as much as it rankles and as much as you dislike it but you've accustomed yourself to it and at that stage I figured well you know what this is this is my reality for until the end of this year so I'm just going to knuckle down and I'm going to get through it as best as I can wonderful stuff we're gonna dive a little bit more deeply into that when we come back my special guest Norman McFarlane author of Across the Border surviving the secret war in Angola says what's involved back in a bit you're listening to what's involved with David Watts have you been to our website check it out www.what's involved calm and while you're there click on the coffee mug icon and buy David a cup of coffee they'll love it and we're back what's involved that is chatting with Norman McFarlane author of Across the Border surviving the secret war in Angola so let's let's fast forward a little bit Norman now how on earth did you you end up then getting involved actively in this war well we were deployed to two sub areas I said and in fact the entire regiment was deployed to sub area and it was the regiment of record at the time we occupied multiple bases into sub area all of the previously set up bases which came into being in 19 from 1974 onwards when the military then took over from the South African Beast force as the security force of record on the border and to protect the border so to speak and I was based I was at various bases during the course of the time that I was out there and towards the towards the end of October early November we were told that we were going to be redeployed and that we were going to be deployed in an artillery role that was what we were told at that time the rest was disclosed to us when we arrived at Byzantine sometime later but we had been through a very difficult period where and I do talk about it in the book where we had two platoon strength groups from our regiment that went into southern Angola and the first instance when the group went up they didn't encounter any resistance or any issues of any nature but the second deployment resulted in multiple casualties and and and dreadful wounding of some of my comrades and that kind of started the process of my undoing if I can express it that way and I talk about that in the book as well and that was the first inclination I had of just what it meant although second hand because I wasn't involved in that deployment what the implication that actually being at war might be what war fighting is all about and what it can result in you know you see that's that's the thing I mean you know it's all very much romanticized and and you know you're doing it for the country and you you probably had it this that's the same as I did those it was all about the communists and we've got to protect our country from the communists and from the swark afar and we continually were indoctrinated as to why we were doing this and we got regaled with stories of what would happen if these nameless faceless people took over and what they would do to our wives our families our girlfriends and and that was that was difficult for me because my route then took me into counterinsurgency as well but we stayed within the borders and we did the township counterinsurgency which when when I spoke to people about it afterwards or at the time it's two totally different things the bush war and the and the country insurgency in the townships two totally different things indeed you know my ideological liberties at the time I'm not with standing as a result of the time I spent with Donald my uncle Donald and the propaganda machine that was deployed time in South Africa was enormously effective on impressionable young minds and I guess many respects I was just as impressionable as anybody else that went into the military with me so despite the way I felt about what we confronted as a society it was very difficult to resist the suggestion that we had to defend our country and we had to defend ourselves from as you so rightly put it's this walk far and the road from and I've thought a great deal about that since and hindsight of course gives one 20/20 vision so and I'm still not at peace with my service I'm still not at peace with the fact that I went and I don't think I ever will be okay let me rephrase that I have come to terms with the fact that I went and I live with the dissonance of the way I felt at that time and the way I still feel today about our country and what happened to it but I'm at peace with the fact that I will never be able to reconcile that decides it's just something I've come to accept and I'm grateful that I am actually at peace with it and that the conflict that I've struggled with for so many years I can actually set aside at this time and that that in itself and I think that is the thrust and the gist of the book that I would like to get across to people is that not all of us that went in to the army were that way inclined at the time some of us were even then fairly free thinkers and the stuff that happened and the stuff that we saw and that we were subjected to had a very deep and a very lasting effect on a lot of us as we continue though your journey Norman because you got to the stage and I can totally relate and this is something that nobody will understand unless you've experienced it is seeing friends and comrades getting injured and maimed and killed in some instances yeah that is that is just horrific and and also you know seeing the results of your actions on the opposing forces that's that's not easy not easy at all so take us on a little bit because you did a year and in your in those days camps where we're something that as in my time we're compulsory as well so to need take me through to that period okay sir we went through what we went through with absevana and the decision to go was motivated by an inclination to want to get involved we had the choice of not going to Angola and I still wonder why I chose to go I think part of it must have been that I didn't want to be single artist before coward must have had some kind of motivation in my decision to go but the propaganda machine that had been launched was significant I talk about the war being an illegal war and I'm steadfast in my determination that it was a legal war South Africa had no right to be there and I've been taken on about that quite frankly in a fairly recent book launch and somebody was an officer probably eight or nine years subsequent to my service took me on in a public forum and told me that he disagreed with me it wasn't in the legal war we had every right to be there and I said well we'll just have to agree to disagree he did come up to me later and apologize and the point he made was an interesting one he said what I meant was we had no choice we had to go and I said in that context I'll agree with you but it wasn't a legal war at the end of the day and there's been surprising a little pushback on my assertion and it's not something that I conjured up it is in fact the truth it wasn't a legal war we had no right to be there but what was heartening was the degree of support that I've had from comrades who were up there with me at the time fully agree that it wasn't a legal war and that's been a very hot circumstance in the recent past so we got back we were demobilized and it was the most it was an interesting experience getting back to the unit because we traveled by train from front row to attend for about three or four days we arrived back at six o'clock in the morning as I recall there were Bedford standing at the station waiting for us we were crammed onto Bedford's driven back to the lines offloaded on the on the main regimental parade ground we were addressed by our OC and we were told that they would get us cleared out and on our way home before the end of the day and we were told we were not to engage with any of the new recruits who had literally a month before that reported for duty at the regiment and if we were to stay away from them we went to disclose where we had been what we had seen what we had done because we had in fact signed an official secrets act document before we left Richmond time to find to define to and over and it just came to an end very abruptly we were back and we were gone and we were out of there by four o'clock in the afternoon and that didn't cost a drift go you're done and don't ever talk to anybody about what you saw did not even to your family you may not tell yeah yeah absolutely we're gonna take another break now quickly at Norman back with you in just a bit because I want to dive into this this kind of that shock of getting back into civilian life my special guest is Norman McFarlane that we're talking about his book Across the Border Surviving the Secret War in Angola as I said in the beginning not a war story like I thought it was at all more of a hero's journey because there's we'll get into this when we come back there's a lot to talk about still this is what's involved we'll be right back with more what's involved David would love to hear from you to leave a voice message visit what's involved calm and click drop me a voice note and we're back with my special guest Norman McFarlane so just before the breakdown when we'd gotten to the stage where you had been demobilized and a lot of the time still to this day I have to kind of pause and think about what the English word would be for for you know because it was you were clawed out it was an eight o'clock but order that was kind of the thing but you know I did I did I did two years service that the last year was almost exclusively in the townships and same thing happens you know where they sit you there you go thank you very much guys so you're up and out of here make sure you hand all your stuff back bye-bye and and I got it back I got back into civilian life and after everything that had gone down I was ill-equipped to deal with life in general how did it affect you but affected me much the same way that you know the the joy was getting home and seeing my mom and dad again and picking up from where we lived or from we spoke at length about what had and hadn't happened in the intervening period since they'd last heard from me which was months before that and I settled back into civilian life but it was was difficulty because it eventually dawned on me that I felt I felt attached in terms of what had happened and how life looked and felt when I returned to civilian life it was different I picked up the relationships that I'd had in the neighborhood with my friends and it went up there with me and it was peculiar because the relationships weren't the same anymore they were different and in some respects quite awkward at times and it it didn't penetrate at the time but this might be the portent of something significant that had happened to me psychologically or emotionally it just it just felt different and it felt I felt distanced if I can if I can express it that way David so that's what struck me you know I was yeah I think it's very much like that for many many many thousands of the young men that had gone in through those times because for me I came back and I was an absolute animal I was I was short with people I was aggressive and and the I was always this constant hyper vigilance and it seemed to me that civilian life somebody like turned down the contrast it was it was gray it was it was just not you know and my body had now become so used to living on the edge all the time you know and and then you you end up having discussions with people and friends of yours that maybe didn't go in or went to varsity whatever the case may be and you look at them and you go we've got nothing in common nothing anymore you know and that's that's a major major thing but then you I guess pretty much like me you went okay well that's done now now it's time to get a job so what did you do well not to really match initially because I did come back with a little bit of money more of it arrived later and I spent probably the next month living a completely dissolute life my cousin Ashley who'd been in military before me from trans guy he flew out to Cleveland flew up and spent three weeks with me and we spent our days and nights doing and carousing and having fun and it was I think probably an opportunity for me to relieve a lot of the stress and anxiety and unhappiness that I was struggling with at the time I wasn't a head trigger most as well I remember and we hang around in some pretty dingy dives in Point Road in Berlin which was well known for a particular industry that exists in Point Road and still to this day and given to understand and there were many occasions when Ashley had to pull me out of a fight because I'd run too much and I was on a head trigger and I wanted to smack anybody that looked me in the face so it had already started at that stage and I was a veritable sister see this when I went into the military and I was on a head trigger when I came out and that persisted for for decades assisted for actual decades and a couple months later when we were living in Johannesburg working for a consulting firm and my bus turned to me one day and it was in relation to competition popping up for the work that we were doing and I said well we can't code just so that we've got to take them out because we can't have competition with this nature and he said to me you know I don't understand you everything that perks had set up in front of you you want to you want to knock down or pill and I still remember that conversation I had with my boss and it didn't strike me as odd at the time but that's the way I saw life and you made the observation that you lived on the edge and I isolated for decades between fight and flight I either wanted to take people out or scream at them or I wanted to run and hide in the dark hole and I will tell you that I spent a lot of time hiding in a dark hole during those those decades when I was struggling this as badly as I did I don't I don't think you know that you have in those instances I don't think that you have much choice because at some stage it starts to register at least for me in my mind that this is not normal behavior and that you know there's this dark hole places it's comfortable and at least you're not gonna do anything dumb if you if you kind of out of the way and minding your own business because again yeah I was exactly the same and you know this hair trigger thing and I was I suppose unfortunate enough to have a father that thought that walking into my bedroom at five o'clock in the morning or pop us for and shut things down up which was you know was funny and and for me it wasn't you know I then immediately went into that that fight mode because every time I got a fright I was ready to take on whatever and however you still did camps in your time and then going back to the camps also had a huge effect on it they did in particular the time that I spent up in what the clay was by that stage take to 20 he'd caught it in run do at a place called in Bungu Flay for reasons that I never was able to work out because there was no plane evidence and that was the regimental HQ from the town field artillery that were out there in an infantry role and we had an incident there that also troubled me deeply and that was an accident of shooting which nearly resulted in a death but I I was always conflicted about the camps because it was great to get back together with friends and comments from that time and the thing that struck me was that we never spoke about the bad times we never spoke about what happened in southern Angola we never spoke about what happened in Angola during our first in Savannah it was only ever about the funny stuff the 20 bodyboard chickens that we stole when we were leaving HQ one day in Angola because we were outraged about the fact that the office of core and the NCOs were sitting having their bacon and egg breakfast and we were struggling to find rations to keep ourselves alive because that sort of thing that we spoke of and in fact I talked about I spoke about that gunner's lunch in Berlin which I went to the weekend before last I flew up specifically with the intention of connecting with my friends who I hadn't seen for decades and I made that observation in the talk I gave and afterwards we were standing outside and Miranda having beer and the group that was with me over five or six of us that had been up there at that time in Angola one of them turned to me and he said well you know I never thought about it but it's exactly the way it was we never discussed that stuff when we went on counts we just didn't want to talk about we pretended that it hadn't happened and I spent a lot of time pretending that it hadn't happened I'm a storyteller by nature day but I was journalist for 14 years the first time I put pen to paper about my time in the army and subsequently Operation Savannah was in June 2010 it's the very first time I wrote a word about those experiences well considering that I'm a storyteller I it never struck me as odd I just didn't well there's this in my life as well and many many thousands of other people these these things I've learned that I need to talk about this stuff but there's still certain things to this day that I have not shared with anybody and that I just not I won't I just can't because it triggers all sorts of stuff Norman when we come back I'd like to to wrap up our chat with you and find out a little bit about when you discovered it the wheels had really come off and talk a bit about your journey this is what's involved my special guest is Norman McFarlane we're talking about his book Across the Border surviving the secret war in Angola if you are looking for a war story yeah it's got it in there but the main thrust of the book is not at all about that too we'll we'll find out more when we come back this is what's involved this is what's involved don't forget to subscribe and leave a review more next and we're back what's involved it is my guest is Norman McFarlane we're talking about the book that he's recently authored called Across the Border surviving the secret war in Angola so Norman when when did when did the wheels actually really fall off and and you made this decision to kind of rebuild and kind of you noticed that there was a problem well the portents were there from it from a relatively early stage once we got into the early 90s when freedom was about to arrive on our doorsteps for the first time in 365 years I started to see stuff on television where people who at that time had been in the military and who'd suffered speaking about their experiences and there was one particularly incident when our children were very young that just took me over the edge completely I burst into tears and I cried and my wife was shocked and clear what was going on she took the girls off to bed and we chatted about for a while and she said look I think you have difficulties in problems I think you need to get them seen too but I did the typical male thing which is to say I'm not going to see any bloody shrink I can deal with this myself it's fine leave me be and that repeated itself over the years periodically the same sort of thing happened my wife didn't know me before I went into the military so the package she got was me after having come out of the military so that's the only Norman she ever knew she didn't know who Norman was prior to 1975 so what she saw in me perhaps she didn't twig initially was the main thrust about heavy was because of what had happened to me but it really hit ground zero in 20 and that was a confluence of circumstances which I talked about in the book and I realized at that point and because she said to me you either go and get this fixed or and the implication of the all was I will take the girls and I would leave you and that prompted me to seek help for the first time and I sought home and I went into counseling with a psychologist who still lives in Somerset West and with whom I am still in touch she's tired and I was in and out of counseling for four years but eventually I got back to the point where I live a relatively normal life but I had to develop an understanding of the triggers and I'd had to develop the skills to be able to deal with what was coming my way not always successfully I have to tell you and that endured for a period of time I'd become a journalist and I was very happy being a journalist I was in my third career and I had the most wonderful editor who was still a very close friend of mine and in many ways she enabled me because when I needed to run and hide she actually did let me go and run and hide and I have to be grateful to her to help keep me on a relatively straight and narrow path but eventually when I entered my fourth career which is that of City Councilor in the city of Cape Town and salt in my senses of what I had to do as a City Councilor and combined with the loss of my mom-in-law who I loved dearly in November and at that time we were busy going through the final editing stages with the books I was reading the manuscript over and over and over and over again and that combination of circumstances just undid me completely again and I ended up back in counseling actually had to take a whole month off work and I was told to take a month told to go and get myself right before I came back to work and it was at that time that I finally realized when I went on to medication that I should have done a decade to do and I also concluded that I'd suffered with chronic depression for 45 years yep so it's it took it took far too long David for me to seek help I always considered myself not the average white South African male but it came with something of a shock to discover that I was no good to any other white South African man and I had the same sense of indestructibility despite my fragilities of decades that I can deal with this stuff and I don't need anybody to tell me how to get right and it took me a terribly long time far too long in my view and I look at the damage I caused to my family I look at the damage I caused to relationships I look how it impacted on my business life so severe and my greatest wish for this book is that people who read it are encouraged to go and seek the hope that's out there because there are thousands of people David thousands of people who struggle with this silent malignant ailment can literally destroy your life absolutely and I've come to use the term I've come to use the term take your life back and that is whenever I speak and I'm speaking frequently these days at military veterans groups and so on and so forth my message is please take that step take your life back because you can and you know what you don't realize and it took me also years and years and years because I was the same thing you know there's nothing wrong with me I can sort this stuff out myself I'm fine but years and years and years of aggression of violence of hair trigger hyper vigilance destroying relationships left right and center and again like you it's like we're like a lost generation we're lost couple of generations and there's so many of us that need help that's why again read the book it's gonna trigger you I mean if you were there at any stage before our 94 elections it affects you and that I think to me I'm the one thing I'm still battling to come to terms with is that sense of betrayal is like I went out I did what I was told and then you let me go yeah and you cost me a drift and I had no idea how to cope with any of the observation earlier David so it's cut across you but you said you know why did I write the book initially I started writing the book after I've come out of counseling and I was back on a relatively even kill my heart rates was about the fact that in particular the two battle groups I fought with that the best friend after boxer received no mention in any of the scholarly papers that subsequently appeared about that that conflict from 66 to 89 and it was as with a sense of upgrades that I started to write the book which is not the best place to start writing the book I understand but it very quickly me that the way the narrative was unfolding was dealing with the aftermath and that's when I finally realized why I was writing the book because I wanted my family and my friends to understand why I am the way I am and if I'd achieved that then I feel I've achieved something of substance as well well Norman I certainly think you have and it's it's a book that in places it makes you laugh because there's a couple of things that come up and and you go oh yeah there's there's some fun things in the jokes about the rations etc etc and you know in in our case swapping our rat packs for for illegal booze etc etc but it is it's a tough time and there's not enough support so I would encourage anybody to go out and get the book and read it it's available in good bookstores available online as well yes it is fantastic fantastic and Norman if somebody's listening to this and they they kind of going yeah all right you guys have now pushed all my buttons what is your advice to people that may suddenly have gone all right I'm not alone well my best advice and this comes from a number of engagements I've had book launches that I've attended of for the book over the last two weeks a number of people have come to me after I've spoken and said I finally realized that I need to go and seek help and I'm going to the person you're going to need to speak to is the person is qualified to help you and that's a counseling psychologist so reach out to your general practitioner and say look understand I have a problem I need to speak to somebody can you refer me and my one message in that regard is when you engage with a counseling psychologist be sure that that person is the right fit for you because not it's not always a case of that automatically it's going to be a right fit business accounting psychologist you might need to find the right person with whom you are able to communicate honestly and openly where you feel that there's a sense of community in this engagement and I was fortunate in both instances my new counseling psychologist was introduced through a friend and she has been absolutely wonderful and she's managed to get me back on to a straighter narrow that quite frankly I've never been on before I know the medication does help and I'm just regretful that I didn't go on to it earlier and my message to people is this don't be afraid of the fact that you might need to go on to medication because it literally helps to give you your life back my mantra at the moment David since this most recent incident is I'm walking on sunshine and I'm walking on sunshine for the first time in 45 years and if more people are out there that read my book and that feel that they need help can get to that point but I feel that they're walking on sunshine you know achieve something I believe yeah absolutely listen I mean our paths although it in a different decade we're very very similar and now I'm 100% with you because in the beginning I was like I don't need to talk to anybody you don't need to shrink or a counselor that's for sissies that's for babies not real men and depression was something that other people got and they just needed to toughen up and sort themselves out and of course if you were medicated I would look down at you from my lofty heights and indeed poo-poo you well you know what the medication actually turned my life around as well and and I get your walking on sunshine analogy because over the last year or so that's where I've been as well I'm suddenly this life is an amazing thing Norman before I let you go a question I like to always ask my guests is what's next for Norman Macfarlane what's next for Norman well Norman is in his fourth career as I've indicated and I don't know how many people the privilege to have had four careers in their lifetime and the other thing is of course I am still writing and there are three other books in the pipeline as we speak wonderful okay well I'm putting my hand up to chat about them as and when okay indeed David thank you so much wonderful stuff thank you very much there we go wraps it up my special guest is Norman Macfarlane author of across the border surviving the secret war in Angola surviving being the operative word here and all I can say as we've discussed in this episode if you're listening and if you were in the military at that time and any of this resonates with you get the help that you need because it's going to make the world of difference wraps it up for this edition of what's involved to each and every one of you look after yourselves take care and thank you for listening thanks for listening to what's involved we hope this episode inspires you to find your passion and live your dream don't forget to rate review and share the podcast and to see what's happening what's going on and what's coming follow what's involved on Facebook and Twitter and what's involved thanks again for listening