Australian gunslinger Paul Davey on war, life on the front line and PTSD.

From Brisbane to Townsville and Timor to Iraq, Davey has spent his life serving his country until leaving in July 2015.

He was unaware of the path it would lead him down and how, even years after, the effects would be felt.

Paul Davey joined the army in June, 1988. He was 18 years old and living in Brisbane.

He travelled to Kapooka and underwent infantry school before moving to Townsville for several years.

From there, he was sent overseas to Africa. He returned to Townsville to become an instructor before being sent to Timor in 2000.

It was in 2007 that Davey was deployed to Iraq before spending most of 2012 in Afghanistan.

“It’s not like what you see in movies. You aren’t tossing families out into the street or anything like that,” the married, father-of-two said.

“A typical daily life in Afghanistan would be getting up at 6am and going to the gym for half an hour before going out of the base for work,” he said.

The base was a self contained city shared with troops from the United States. It was a large target which made it easier for the Afghans to attack.

“The rocket attacks were a bit of a lotto,” Davey said.

“It’s literally people laying a rocket onto a bed of rocks, aiming with their eyes and trying to line it up with the base that is a few kilometres away.

When he was there, his life was spent with a pistol on his hip and, more often than not, a rifle strapped across his chest.

“That is how I spent every waking moment of life,” he said.

Although he never suffered the loss of limbs like many of his fellow soldiers, he certainly has the scars both physically – and mentally.

“I know a lot of blokes who don’t have their legs, or who are missing an arm or something like that,” he said.

“People might look at me and think ‘this bloke looks really fit’ but nah, I don’t know what is happening to me now.

“They tell me it could be the anti-malaria drug, doxycycline, and there has to be some side effects that haven’t been discussed.”

The impact of the drugs, which were taken years ago, means something is now going wrong in his stomach.

“In my case I’m having some side effects from the drugs but I also have other scars, like my shin for example. That was from a road side blast,” he said.

“I was standing back behind a car but stepped out from behind the wheel maybe a second after they blew it, and some rocks and metal came flying along the road and into my shin.”

Paul doesn’t shy away from the fact that he, like so many others who have served in wars, has his issues.

“One week I’m walking out amongst people and goats and looking at vehicles and looking under seats of cars in Afghanistan,” he said.

“The next week I’m pushing a trolley down the aisle at Woolworths, wondering why people are so on edge about something. It can be like that at times.”

He says that PTSD and other forms of depression relating to his experiences in the army are not something you can control.

“Some days you feel more depressed than others and you don’t know why,” he said.

“Other days you’re more motivated to do stuff. It’s totally unreliable.

“If someone had to rely on me to work then I don’t know what they would get on a day to day basis.”

Sometimes he will be easily startled by the slightest noise, ready to snap at everything as if the rubber band is already stretched.

“I have a nurse that comes to the house every couple of weeks to talk, and I see a psychiatrist in Taree,” he said.

“I’ve got what I need and I find that it helps. I talk to others who deal with PTSD as well. I know a few of the younger blokes around town.”

With war comes many deaths, and the need to kill or be killed. Despite all of this, he says he certainly did not hate his time in the army.

“It’s a different world to what most people are use to. But it was a world that I was use to,” he said.

“I’ve lost mates. I’ve seen people get killed, but I was involved since I was 18.

“I was use to it, I was comfortable with the way life was over in Afghanistan and in the army by the time I left.

“People who aren’t a part of the defence force have the luxury of rationalising and politicise everything that is going on.

“With us (soldiers), if we were to get wrapped around the axle on our position in Afghanistan for instance, it has no bearing, it doesn’t make the day go better or worse.

“We were there because we were told to be there, so that’s it.”

As the nation prepares to remember those who have sacrificed so much, Paul declared he would proudly be on the Town Green in Port Macquarie with one of his two sons.

“Remembrance Day is a significant day for me. I don’t have any issues with other veterans,” he said.

“A lot of young blokes are saying they aren’t fussed to join the RSL for whatever reason, but at the end of the day they are a great bunch of blokes.

“Greg Laird (Port Macquarie RSL Sub-Branch president) and the team here in Port are fantastic. They might talk about things that happened in the Second World War and I’m talking about something from Afghanistan, but we find a meeting point.”