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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, friends and former comrades in the 2nd Commando Regiment will gather at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra to hear his name read aloud.
For many Australians the Last Post ceremony is a daily ritual for names from wars long past. But Afghanistan – which started 25 years ago this October – is different. The people who fought there are still living with its memories.
Lance Corporal McDonald was 30 when he was travelling aboard a United States helicopter with Private Nathanael Galagher, when it crashed on August 30, 2012. The American pilot taking them on an early morning raid became disoriented and crashed near a Taliban stronghold, a report later found.
It was one of the deadliest 24 hours in modern Australian military history. Three other Australian soldiers were killed in a “green-on-blue” attack by a rogue Afghan soldier, making it the darkest day for Australian forces since the Battle of Nui Le in Vietnam, 41 years earlier.
Warrant Officer D, who served alongside McDonald and remains in the Defence Force, remembers a soldier who combined an easy-going manner with an uncompromising approach to his work.
“Everyone knew Merv for his dedication to the job and work ethic,” he said. “He was a true mentor and a soldier that we all looked up to and respected. Although due to his humble nature he would never take any credit for himself.”
McDonald, described as a “quiet, hard-working, likeable bloke”, was someone his colleagues could rely on, as well as a mentor to those around him.
His mates remember the humour, too – quotes from ’80s action movies and glam-rock songs, delivered before McDonald would wander away, laughing to himself.
McDonald had joined the army at 17. He later passed selection for the commandos and joined the Special Operations Task Group. He was due to marry his fiancee, Rachael Sprigg-McKinnie, in Bendigo at Easter in 2013, and planned to start a family after one last deployment.
His mother remembers a boy who loved the bush and ocean, passions developed through camping trips with his father in the Kimberley.
“The one thing I miss every day is his smile,” she said. “It would light up any room he walked into. Merv was such a positive and happy person.”
She has since lost a second son, Merv’s brother Percy, who served in Timor, Iraq and the Solomon Islands before joining the police, to cancer in 2024.
Australian War Memorial director Matt Anderson said the country’s longest war should not be followed by its longest silence. More than 35,000 ADF personnel served in operations related to the war since Operation Slipper was launched in 2001. Forty-one Australians lost their lives and 263 were wounded as a result of their service.
“We must do all we can to honour all who served in Afghanistan and ensure they receive the same recognition as those who fought at Gallipoli and Kokoda,” he said.
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“This ceremony is our way to share Mervyn McDonald’s story of service and ultimate sacrifice with the nation but also in front of the friends and family who knew and loved him.”
On Saturday, Warrant Officer D will bring his wife and three daughters to the memorial in Canberra.
“I really want my three girls to know that Afghan story and how much of a part of our history for so many years it was,” he said, acknowledging the nation is still wrestling with its understanding of the war.
That is part of the reason Anderson said the memorial’s new Afghanistan galleries matter.
“When I arrived in 2020, in 15 paces you could walk from the Vietnam gallery to what was then the Afghanistan exhibition in an exit corridor,” Anderson said.
He said the gallery gives the conflict the space and depth it deserves, telling the story of the tens of thousands of Australian men and women sent to Afghanistan and the complexity of their service, amid war crimes allegations.
A Black Hawk helicopter, an F-18 and a light armoured vehicle are not relics of some distant war to a child walking through the memorial.
“They remind particularly the young that wars are fought by young men and by young women, and they’re being fought today,” Anderson said.
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Rob Harris is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra. He is a former Europe correspondent.Connect via email.From our partners
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