August 29, 2026 — 4:30am

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For Mervyn McDonald the army was something he could never quite leave behind. He tried once and it did not last.

Even after 13 years in uniform, four tours of Timor-Leste and a sixth deployment to Afghanistan, the pull of military life remained.

“He just couldn’t get it out of his system,” his mother Myrna Walker recalled. “Even when he was back home, his phone was constantly going off with calls from his friends.”

On Saturday afternoon, almost 14 years to the day after his death in Uruzgan Province, his family…

Read the full article at SMH.COM.AU