My name is Meleisha Morrison but everyone calls me ‘Leish’.
I enlisted into the Australian Army on 2 December 1999. I enlisted because I have a family history of joining the military and I also wanted to have a career within the military.
The career I went for initially with the Army was in the Royal Australian Signal Corps (RASIGS) as an electronic warfare person and then I transferred over to the Royal Australian Army Ordnance Corps (RAAOC) as a clerk admin before transferring over to Psychology (Psych) Corps as a Psych Examiner.
The career that I enjoyed the most was the Psych Examiner job. The role of the psych examiner is to conduct psychometric testing and mental health screens on fellow soldiers and officers.
When someone does a trade transfer, they have to do psychometric testing. Part of the psychometric testing is personality tests and I’ve done those tests on myself and found out what personality type I am.
The time I spent in the Army was just short of 15 years, around 13 years full-time service and the rest part-time service.
After my initial training at Kapooka, I was posted to Toowoomba to complete Electronic Warfare training. As I was unable to do Morse Code, I did a trade transfer to RAAOC as a Clerk Admin. I trained down in Bandiana near Albury. On completion of the course, I was posted to Brisbane at 2 Health Support Battalion (2HSB). I spent nearly two years there and was deployed over to East Timor in 2002.
My deployment was cut short due to being posted in 2003 to the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in Canberra. I spent a year at ADFA then got posted to the Director of Officer Career Management Army (DOCM-A). I got promoted to the rank of Corporal and then I got recruited to Psychology Corps in 2006. After doing training back again in Bandiana and qualifying as a Psych Examiner I was then posted to Pitt Street Defence Plaza. I was there for a year-and-a-half and then was posted to 1 Psych Unit at Randwick Barracks.
My last posting - 1 Psych Unit - was the main unit in the Psychology Corps that got deployed. The role of 1 Psych Unit is to be on deployments supporting the troops on the ground. I got deployed over to East Timor - a couple of tours; a tour to Kuwait and another tour over to Afghanistan.
The majority of deployments with 1 Psych Unit is to conduct the mental health screens prior to soldiers and officers returning to Australia. The job itself was not difficult. We would work in teams and would have to process a battalion or a platoon. I would interview, along with the Psychologist, up to eight soldiers a day and then do up the reports. It was a full heavy day of listening to someone’s deployment and then writing the report up. If any personnel required additional psychological support, then I refer them to the psychologist.
I didn’t find the role difficult in regards to self-care. The training we receive instills boundary setting so we can minimise the exposure to second-hand trauma. The Psychologists were always available if I needed to debrief about any situation.
The thing that I loved most about being in the Army was mateships. The connections you make along the way. You have to depend on your fellow soldiers, you have to depend on your hierarchy and especially in a war zone. It does bring a form of closeness that I haven’t really experienced after leaving the Army.
Civilian land is not a life-or-death situation whereas when you’re on deployments you’re in a war zone. People die, people get hurt and you have to trust in your training. That you’re trained to the best abilities that we have.
The most difficult time I found in my military career was being away from family and friends. You get posted to a location, you build those support networks, those friendships and then you get posted three years later to a new location and so you could lose those connections and you have to make new ones.
The advice I would give to someone wanting to enlist in the military is ‘go for it’. Once you’re in there though don’t play any sports because if you do get injured, it can have an impact on your career. Do a gentle sport, do arts and crafts. Limit your time with sports because it can affect your career. This is from personal experience and seeing other people on the football field getting injured. If you are injured and not deployable you may miss the opportunity to have a fulfilling military career. My recommendation would be to take part in low contact sports like swimming.
The events that kept me in the military was the mateship, career advancement, postings around Australia and the money. A personal thing about myself is that I also believe in the same values that the Army have and that’s courage, integrity, respect and teamwork. Those values and beliefs came from my parents and my upbringing and I was able to duplicate that in the military.
My military connection runs deep on both sides of my family: my grandfather and step-grandfather on my mother’s side and great-grandfather on my father’s side. My brother and I tried to enlist at the same time. He got in before me because I had some medical issues, I got them fixed up and then I joined about two years later. We were fortunate that both of us were deployed to East Timor in 2002. We used to sit down sometimes and have lunch and dinner together. That was one of the best moments of that deployment, being with a family member. A highlight of that tour actually was when my brother took me up and down in the helicopter as they were practising their rapelling. That was just a wonderful day I had a blast.
I have been able to replicate in civilian land the training and skills I received during my time in the Army. These skills include professionalism, being on time, being presentable and respectful.,
The hindrance part of that is I believe that we become very insular in the Army, institutionalised to a certain extent. For example, a young person who came straight from high school then joined the military and then discharges after six years might not know anything about Medicare or Centrelink. They may be lacking the skills for their own personal administration because it is taken care of [in the Army] by Administration Clerks and this may be daunting to discharging soldiers.
One of the roles I did in the Army was to administer the Return to Australia Psychological Screen (RTAPS), which are conducted at the end of deployments for every person returning to Australia. This is followed with a Post Operational Psychological Screen (POPS) around the six-month mark to check that the soldiers are travelling okay and they reintegrated back into the family life.
During my time in the military service I identified as a lesbian and during that time - when I first joined - same-sex relationships were not approved in the military. It wasn’t frowned upon but it wasn’t recognised as an actual relationship. Then around about the end of 2003 same-sex relationships became equal to normal de-facto relationships and I believe that was the starting point for the government to find out or to see whether society would approve of same-sex relationships in the general community.
In the POPS one of the elements was an alcohol survey. One of the common trends I discovered during my time as a psych examiner was the high-risk levels of drinking that soldiers practice. As part of our culture we are encouraged - we were back then - on a Thursday or Friday afternoon to go to the boozer and consume really cheap alcoholic drinks. On integrating with civilians, the high alcohol intake is higher than the general population. I believe at that time we had a drinking culture that was negative. We were encouraged to drink lots of alcohol, were encouraged to go to a venue that served alcohol, there weren’t many non-alcoholic options and sometimes there wasn’t food provided.
Members who presented to the Psych Unit for a trade transfer would do their psychological testing with me and then have an interview with the Psychologist. The main thing I found is if a soldier was not performing at their best, it was up to the chain of command to send them to Psychology. Sometimes I believe the hierarchy should have done more to understand their soldiers and get to know the soldiers more, about their personal life, and that could have prevented a lot more injury to themselves or to the family.
So in regards to mental health and post-deployment, PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder] is a real thing, it does occur and I believe that we did have the right systems in place, it was the hierarchy who failed to enforce those systems.
Soldiers and officers - it’s not just a lower rank its commission officers as well - they are able to hide their mental health condition because it’s actually seen as a negative. It’s seen as you’re a weaker person if you have a mental health condition, therefore people weren’t honestly sharing about their mental health situation. Therefore, they would fall through the gaps. There would be, for instance, perhaps single-vehicle car accidents into trees to hide suicides. If they did get picked up earlier and there was a lot of alcohol involved they would be sent off to a rehab and address their drinking habits. BUT the drinking habits is not the actual issue, PTSD is the issue.
Is the hierarchy or DVA dealing proactively with our mental health conditions that we experience from our time in the military?
No, I don’t think they are. I think they could improve the service a lot more. You’ve got to remember that when you’re in the military you’re cocooned. It’s a whole different world. It’s a world within a world really and you can get away with a lot more things in the military in regards to hiding who you are. When you come out and you’re in civilian land you don’t have that level of protection, you don’t have your mateships, you don’t have your mates round you, you don’t have that security blanket anymore and you can feel isolated and alone which is why many veterans have taken their lives.
I think one of the things to be taken into consideration when you join the military is the effect of the service on your partner. Partners and children end up spending a lot of time away from the person who is in the military. It could be that the military person has gone off on training, exercises, or deployments and there are times where having distance apart from families can actually destroy families. It can make kids either clingy or stand-offish. It can have a negative effect on relationships.
The way to combat the negative family effects is to include more family support days, more family orientated events to bring in that cohesion. Recognise that, yes, the military member is a valued part of this organisation, but that person can’t be there without the support of the partners or the family.
By including family partners, I think that would minimise that gap. Have family fun day events, have exhibitions of the weapons and the machinery that we work with. Since I’ve been out the military have become more family focused, with more family fun-day events, there’s more partner support regarding employment - assistance with resumes so they have improved in ways.
This is the story of Meleisha Morrison as told to Carla Edwards.
