Don Barnby sits back on the chair in what he jokingly calls his war room, surrounded by photographs of his army and police service, sculptures of soldiers, little rustic trinkets from places he's served in, shelves lined with books on military history. The Canberra Times photographer is prepping him for the shot, we're chatting, and then Cold Chisel's Khe Sanh comes on the radio.
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"That's kind of a coincidence, isn't it?" Barnby says and, just maybe, his thoughts slip somewhere else for a moment.
In 1971 Barnby celebrated his 21st birthday in the jungles around Nui Dat, in Phuoc Tuy province. His regiment mates gave him a tin of peaches and a tube of condensed milk as a present.
"I was young and full of bullshit. You know, 10 foot tall and bulletproof."
Now, Barnby, 67, realises he never was bulletproof. He might still be full of bullshit but the things he has seen and done over the years have changed him forever.
Not one to tell "warries", Barnby has told his story in a new book Gimme Shelter, by Paul Field, a collection of interviews with military veterans, peacekeepers, first responders and their families about what happens when the fighting is over.
Royalties from the sale of the book are being shared with Soldier On, which supports those who have been physically or psychologically affected by their service. It's a cause close to Barnby's heart.
"Governments need to be aware that when they bang the drum and send these people away, they'd better be prepared to look after them when they come back," he says.
"They all come back changed, they all come back different."
He also wanted to be involved in the book because it told the stories of the "first responders": policemen, nurses and paramedics.
"I saw far worse things in my 25 years as a policeman than I ever did in Vietnam," he says.
When he left the army in 1973 he joined the ACT Police, which became the Australian Federal Police in 1979, serving in Cyprus, Bougainville and East Timor working in search and rescue, witness protection, and for Interpol, among other things.
"The military see some horrible stuff when they're on deployment, but as a first responder you see it every day, 24/7, see what horror people in the suburbs can do to each other."
He says there needs to be more support for people in these occupations.
"I remember when I first joined the AFP, we'd see something terrible and just head up to Capitol Hill, before new Parliament House was built, with a case of beer and just talk shit, that was our way of coping with it.
"Things are different now but more still needs to be done to support these people."
For all he has been through, it was working in East Timor in the lead-up to the election in 1999 that broke him.
He was working as part of the UN Integrated Mission, charged with organising the referendum to allow East Timor to choose between autonomy within Indonesia or independence. He was meant to assist with the voting registration process in the villages, conduct an election, secure the ballot boxes.
And then it all went to shit. Armed militia threatened voters, the UN headquarters was under fire, violence erupted in the villages. There was nothing the unarmed Barnby, and his small team of police, could do.
"I remember we were trying to get all the ballot boxes on the UN chopper … we're in a river bed, the militia are charging at us, firing over our heads and we had nothing but rocks to protect ourselves with.
"Two or three militia came at me, I picked up a piece of wood to clout one of them and it fell apart in my hands, it was full of white ants, I just stood there."
It was a feeling of helplessness that was familiar.
"When we withdrew from Vietnam we left them to their fate, in East Timor we were telling the villagers we'd be there for them, but we were pulled out of there too.
"People were massacred, we saw things over there you wouldn't believe, you'd hear screams and there was nothing we could do."
One night he heard reports that a house, just 500m from where they were staying, had been burnt down, the parents killed, and the three young daughters were being gang raped.
"I thought we're police, we have to do something about it." So Barnby and five other police drove to the house, unarmed, were pelted with rocks and threatened with guns and machetes. They turned around.
"I remember catching up with an old regiment mate from Vietnam not long after I got back from East Timor and I just broke down. I had dengue fever and typhoid. I was a mess.
"He said to me you've been to the well of courage too often, Don, it's dry, don't go back there."
Barnby can shut the door to his war room. Light floods the rest of the house, rosellas come and nibble at a birdfeeder hanging off a tree near his deck, his walls are decorated with vibrant works of art including a set of comic-like birds by Melbourne artist Dean Bowen that just make you want to smile. He can shut the door to the small dark room in his house. Whether the door to the things he's seen can be closed is another question. The same question that all men and women who come home, that the families of those who don't, ask themselves every day. Can that door ever really be closed?
Gimme Shelter will be launched at the Australian War Memorial on August 17. 6 for 6.30pm. Details at info@bonnierpublishing.com.au
Gimme Shelter: Stories of courage, endurance and survival from the frontline and back home, by Paul Field. Echo Publishing. $32.99.
