Our Special Air Service fought in the War on Terror but little has been said about what they did or the impact it had on those elite soldiers. Senior writer David Fisher spoke with former NZSAS corporal Gregg Johnson about the hidden cost of fighting that war - and what support exists for a contemporary veteran in New Zealand.
Gregg Johnson knows exactly how many people he led out into the Kabul night on NZSAS missions and exactly how many came home again.
“As a team leader, I brought all my people home. We were responding to spectacular attacks. Lives were on the line. We were hunting high-value targets.
“And I took that incredibly seriously, you know, bringing people home. That was important to me.”
Troubled by headaches and gaps in his memory, Johnson sought help from Veterans’ Affairs 12 months ago, 11 years after returning from Afghanistan.
In an interview extraordinary for its rarity, the former NZSAS corporal has spoken of what the elite unit did in Afghanistan and how that service is yet to be balanced by the support veterans expected.
The delay is baffling to Johnson, who knows he is not the only one battling the effects of war. At a recent gathering of about 30 NZSAS veterans, others described similar symptoms, becoming known among overseas special forces’ communities as “operator syndrome”.
Johnson’s frustration extends beyond that elite NZSAS cadre and concerns over traumatic brain injury. In his quest to stay healthy, he has spoken with contemporary veterans with a range of issues and a common frustration over the support and understanding available through Veterans’ Affairs.
Johnson knows how many people he led out of Camp Warehouse in Kabul on missions that took and saved lives.
Similarly, our recent military history has precise details at specific points. We know our Provincial Reconstruction Team first went in 2003 with 122 people. We know 19 NZDF personnel were at Hamid Karzai International Airport 20 years later, organising evacuations.
We know 10 New Zealanders died in Afghanistan.
But when it comes to our population of modern veterans, Veterans’ Affairs does not know how many exist. Its parent body, the New Zealand Defence Force, also does not know. The Minister of Veterans’ Affairs, Peeni Henare, does not know how many veterans he is minister for.
For 30 years, we have sent military personnel to some of the world’s most dangerous places without keeping a complete record of those who went into harm’s way in New Zealand’s name.
As a ballpark figure, it is about 30,000 people. But that figure could swing 20 per cent in either direction.
This gap in our knowledge has led to a $1 billion variable in NZDF’s accounts because no one knows exactly how much money to put aside for veterans’ entitlements in years to come.
Henare says he is “confident” eligible veterans get the support they need, “on top of all the other government support that is available for veterans across government agencies”. In support of his position, he cites an “independent survey by the Veterans’ Affairs [that] shows 93 per cent of those living in New Zealand were satisfied with the service they received”.
The Herald has dug deep into that survey and found that of the 4843 interviews carried out with veterans from 2018 to 2022, just 66 were with veterans aged under 60.
Johnson is 49. He is a contemporary veteran.
Brain fog and memory gaps
Gregg Johnson lives in a caravan out the back of an overflow carpark.
In an application to Veterans’ Affairs last year, he explained he could no longer work full-time because of “brain fog and an inability to focus”.
The cause, he stated, was “years of exposure to explosive overpressure on operation and in training” - and 20 staples in his head after “a fall down a mountain in Afghanistan”.
He isn’t looking for sympathy. He wants a system that works for him and other veterans who have served in modern conflicts.
Right now, at least a year after asking Veterans’ Affairs for help, he doesn’t believe that system exists.
Johnson’s daily focus is staying healthy. With elite athlete partner Nicole Walker, he runs - sometimes with a 25kg weight in his pack - long distances. He exercises at the gym, eats healthily and researches nutrients and vitamins beneficial to brain health.
In a shed near the caravan, Johnson has set up a personal hyperbaric tent designed to pump more oxygen into the body. It’s a treatment that can bring life to damaged brain tissue.
Some days, he will spend hours in there studying books he forgets within days, hoping his mind captures at least the gist of what he read.
If the worst eventuates, medical research shows Johnson is heading for early onset dementia. If so, this is likely a result of repeated, small, explosive shockwaves through the brain. Everything he does is aimed at keeping that at bay - and trying to share the lessons he has learned with fellow contemporary veterans.
It’s a community that, in New Zealand, can be mapped from the early 1990s when combat troops were deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
It was the first such deployment since Vietnam and a commitment lasting 15 years, by which time New Zealand had become fully immersed first in Timor-Leste and then Afghanistan.
Our first combat death since Vietnam took place in Timor-Leste on July 24, 2000, when Private Leonard William Manning died in an ambush.
It was a decade before New Zealand suffered another loss and that was in Afghanistan when Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell was killed on August 3, 2010 with an improvised explosive device (IED, or homemade bomb).
By then, Johnson was based in Kabul with the NZSAS on repeat tours of counterinsurgency operations in support of - and while training - the Afghan Crisis Response Unit (CRU).
He had first deployed to Afghanistan with the NZSAS in 2002. After a break working the private military contractor circuit in Iraq, he returned to NZ Army and rejoined his old unit in 2008.
Back in Afghanistan, the work was constant and dangerous, as it was for special forces operators from all coalition nations.
A standard mission? Well, there was one night, he says, when it was winter but not snowing. Cold but not so cold that gloves had to be worn which was good because it is harder to pull a trigger or the pin from a grenade when you can’t feel your fingers.
“I can’t remember exactly what side of Christmas,” says Johnson. His brow furrows, thinking hard. “I know it wasn’t snow so I’m guessing it was either near the end of a tour for me or near the start. I can’t remember those details.”
These are the memory gaps which started troubling Johnson in 2021.
The mission this night was a “high-value target”. That’s what they called insurgency leaders whose capture would seriously impact the opposition’s efforts to destabilise the fledgling Afghan Government.
It was almost always night work. The streets were emptier, eyeballs fewer. The vehicles were chosen to fit the mission. There were Land Cruisers but also motorcycles, trucks and vans for a lower profile if needed.
“As soon as you drove out the gate,” says Johnson, “you’re in bandit country.” Everyone is watchful, weapons are ready for use.
The “trigger” for the mission was meeting a set of conditions established through intelligence. That intelligence apparatus would be following multiple targets creating a “pattern of life” for each, understanding their connections, regular locations and networks.
Sometimes the right combination of factors would lock into place. “It’s a lot of effort to catch somebody bad in that place when they’re moving all the time. When the trigger was met, we would launch.”
Johnson describes a level of fluid expertise in which NZSAS operators, as they are called, leverage off every advantage they possess.
There was almost always some form of air support. They accrued experience to build a wide range of templates for each mission, and contingencies for each. There was the achievement-focused mindset for which members of the NZSAS were chosen. And training - constant and demanding.
On this night, those who would be on a cordon surrounding the compound went in first in low-profile vehicles. “You’d just park wherever you needed to park and quietly go about your business setting up the cordon snipers.”
And they needed to get on with it. “We were in the f**king bad lands,” says Johnson. “Not in the middle of nowhere but we were out somewhere dangerous.” It was outside Kabul, in one of the six surrounding provinces where the NZSAS operated, where those planning “spectacular” attacks in the city would prepare.
With the cordon established, the assault force made its way to the compound’s large steel double gate. Explosive charges were set to force an entry point through which the CRU would carry out an armed entry.
The assault troops set the explosive, lined up alongside the compound wall in what they call a “stack” and blew the charge.
The doors didn’t budge. There was no entry point. A second charge was set - a larger explosive charge - and this time they buckled and the CRU went in.
By then, any element of surprise was gone. The man they were seeking knew he was being hunted.
“We had our snipers on the ladders and on roofs watching the compound as they made entry,” says Johnson.
“The main target we were after squirted out a back gate. The guy who shot him … saw him going out the gate and saw him raise his rifle, knowing the guy was out there on the cordon.
“It was probably instantaneous that the insurgent fired and his weapon jammed and he was shot by the sniper on the roof.”
Inside, the CRU found and arrested other “high-value targets” - an unexpected bonus for the night’s work.
Then, as quickly as they came, they left. At least, that’s the best Johnson can recall.
“It was five or six suicide bombers in town”
There are many issues contemporary veterans raise with Veterans’ Affairs and Johnson’s story does not capture all of them.
Like others who served, Johnson’s experience was specific and produced specific problems.
It required a specific response to those problems and Johnson believes he has yet to see Veterans’ Affairs meet that need.
Veterans’ Affairs, by its own admission, struggles to meet the needs of veterans. An inquiry in 2018 said it could not do so. Recently, it admitted it could not deal with the volume of claims. Johnson’s own Veterans’ Affairs log refers to backlogs and delays in other claims as reasons his is not further advanced.
Veterans’ Affairs’ message to Parliament is different. In NZDF’s annual report, it cites the same veteran satisfaction surveys as its minister, Henare, and how it shows 93 per cent of those interviewed were satisfied with the service received.
This is the research the Herald found was based on interviews with 4843 veterans, of whom 66 were aged under 60.
Johnson is of the view that part of Veterans’ Affairs problem is that it doesn’t understand the needs of contemporary veterans. In one email, Johnson asked his case manager: “Have you served in uniform and if so, did you see operation[al] service?” No, says his case manager, but he does have whānau who currently serve.
He sees that lack of understanding extending to the medical professionals to whom he has been referred by Veterans’ Affairs. They don’t understand military medical issues. It leads him to question if those at Veterans’ Affairs do.
Johnson’s effort to engage with Veterans’ Affairs began in 2022 after he left military service. In March last year, through an NZDF doctor, he met with a neurologist in Christchurch. As willing as the specialist was, the doctor’s own notes from the consultation admit ignorance as to Johnson’s specific military medical issues.
Although that visit was arranged by NZDF, Veterans’ Affairs records show Johnson’s first recorded contact with them was on June 30, 2022. The next day he was contacted to “confirm the conditions he wished to apply for”. The records show those to be exposure to explosive pressures - the phenomena called “breachers brain” that afflicts those who use explosives to gain entry to buildings - along with tinnitus and “confirmed hearing loss”.
By February this year, Johnson was still waiting. His file at Veterans’ Affairs includes apologies for delays and explanations about the backlog. When he asks if the agency has any knowledge of the mental health impact of untreated brain injury, he is “highly encourage[d]” to make a claim on that basis to speed his application along.
In May, Johnson was referred to a neuropsychologist. Medical notes from the assessment record years of conflict from his first deployment to Afghanistan in 2002. It shows exposure to combat, use of explosives to breach doors and walls and use of flash-bangs a couple of times a week.
And then in Kabul, from 2008 through to 2011, there were extended periods of what they call “direct action”. It means heading towards a fight in which you or someone else will likely die. There was also a period of about seven months “where [Johnson] was engaged in [explosive] breaching on a nightly basis”.
The intensity of operations was not understood in New Zealand, only hinted at in one rare photograph showing Willie Apiata on a Kabul street with another member of the NZSAS.
Johnson was roused early that day. “Boss came in, woke me up, said, ‘get to town, I’ll call you on the way in and tell you what’s going on’.” They parked up 800m from the action and began fighting, racing from one response to another.
“I think it was five or six suicide bombers in town that day.” Those who came to Kabul to die detonated the bombs carried on their bodies at one site after another as the NZSAS raced to limit the damage they caused.
“And yeah, went home and had dinner, went back to bed.”
For Johnson, Afghanistan was what he signed up to do. “If we talk about being at that elite level, I was getting to play a test every day. It was getting to do my job. You know, being tested every day to be who we say we were.”
And the reason why mattered deeply. “You know, if you’re a warrior and that’s the path you’re meant to be on, then you know that’s what you do - you protect the people.
“And I saw enough of Afghanistan to know that we were trying to protect the populace and more attacks in Afghanistan were on the local populace than they ever were on the coalition.
“They were trying to destabilise the Government. You know, blow up buses, blow up hospitals, do the schools. They wanted to make it look like the security force couldn’t do their job. Our job was to stop that.”
The NZSAS is our fighting elite, considered one of New Zealand’s three military strategic assets - the other two being multimillion-dollar frigates and P3-Orion aircraft.
Johnson’s medical notes reflect the exacting training needed to stay at an elite level. The notes record training days in which 30 explosive entry blasts were carried out.
“So you come out like you’ve been beat up,” he says. Medical notes record “headaches, tiredness and a transient feeling of brain fog”.
Walker is listening and says with a note of horrified wonder: “That can’t be good for you.” Johnson bursts into laughter: “It’s not good for you!”
In the years he was in the NZSAS, Johnson recalled the changing degree of understanding about how blast pressure worked. At the outset, there was hearing protection. It was discovered later it wasn’t effective – stopping noise did not stop blast waves.
Some years on, shields were used but were then discovered to offer less protection than thought. Distances from the explosive charges changed, too, as understanding grew, although in practice those taking part continued to edge as close as possible to be first through the door.
“They are doing things very differently now,” Johnson says. “It used to be ‘train for as long as you could’. That was the SAS.”
There were other occasions, twice with explosives and a number of times parachuting, in which he lost consciousness. In his medical consultation, he estimated about 10 concussive injuries a year with a loss of consciousness once or twice a year.
The description of operations in Johnson’s medical notes is similar to special forces operators from a range of countries in Afghanistan and Iraq during what was called “the War on Terror”. The training patterns are also those described by other special forces units.
It is an experience so particular to the elite soldier that the health consequences now have a name. They call it “Operator Syndrome”.
Modern warfare and ‘Operator Syndrome’
The term “Operator Syndrome” was coined in a 2020 research paper by clinical psychologist Dr Christopher Frueh, who studied 50 US special forces veterans.
He found the high intelligence and “extraordinary physical and mental toughness” that marked out special forces soldiers was balanced by “a cascade of medical, emotional, and social problems” for which there was no prescribed treatment.
Frueh called the health impact the “natural consequence” of the physical demands of being an elite operator while carrying an extraordinarily high stress load. Operators could carry such a load although it would eventually take a toll.
The psychology professor at the University of Hawaii-Hilo set out pressures on special forces operators including “highly demanding training and frequent combat deployment cycles”, years of absence from family, the stress of physical danger along with combat and training injuries.
One particular feature of those injuries was “concussive impact injuries and blast-wave exposure that cause traumatic brain injuries’'. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) was central to Operator Syndrome, with Freuh estimating 85 per cent of special forces operators suffering some sort of brain damage just from training.
That damage emerged in two ways - chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) from impact trauma and interface astroglial scarring (IAS) from blast-wave exposure. While CTE became familiar for its emergence among rugby and other contact sport players, IAS was the result of the blast waves created by explosives.
Frueh found those with TBI were “more likely to experience memory and cognitive impairments, chronic pain and headaches, depression, and suicide”, and a range of other health consequences.
The thesis of Operator Syndrome was further embraced in a paper called “Modern Warfare Destroys Brains” for the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, the public policy school of Harvard University.
The authors - an experienced military nurse, Colonel Warren Stewart, and a special forces commander, Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Trujillo - said traumatic brain injury was “central to Operator Syndrome” and the “signature injury” of the War on Terror.
In the paper, they talk about “mild traumatic brain injury” - known as mTBI - as the most common form, calling it “insidious” as it was often undiagnosed and untreated. It didn’t necessarily result in a loss of consciousness and occurred in typical military tasks such as firing large-calibre weapons and being close to explosions.
The authors focused on blast traumatic brain injury caused when someone is struck by the supersonic wave of pressure expanding out from an explosive centre. The front of the wave is a punch of compressed gases followed by the “blast wind” of negative pressure that creates a suction back towards the centre.
A range of factors can alter the damage caused, including the size of the explosion and distance from it, and the way it is shaped by the means of explosion and where it happens. For example, an explosion near or inside hard surfaces – such as commonly used training houses used by special forces - can amplify explosive force by two-to-nine times.
Stewart and Trujillo described how blast waves pass through the head and brain tissue damage, rather than the concussive knock associated with CTE. Like CTE, IAS is only able to be seen after death when a brain is studied under a high-powered microscope.
For those brains studied, what is found is tiny patterns of scarring at junctures in the brain, around blood vessels and along structures lining the ventricles. The scarring was caused by the grey and white brain tissue shearing as waves of pressure through the brain caused different flesh to move at a different pace.
Diagnosis is difficult with IAS (and CTE) presenting the same symptoms as PTSD - “poor sleep, difficulty thinking, impulsive behaviour, depression or apathy, memory loss, difficulty planning and carrying out tasks , emotional instability, substance misuse and suicidal thoughts or behaviour”.
Stewart and Trujillo urged the US military to embrace a preventative programme and research treatment options for what was considered specific needs of the special forces community.
“The human costs are tragic, and the financial costs are unsustainable.”
Johnson’s medical report ticks off a host of mTBI symptoms. His medical notes show they were first raised with a neurologist in March 2022. The meeting with the neuropsychiatrist was in May this year. He now has a referral - but not an appointment - for an MRI scan.
As he waited, Veterans’ Affairs finally came through on a claim for hearing loss and tinnitus. In a letter dated May 26, 2023, Veterans’ Affairs told Johnson he qualified for 5 per cent disability allowance and would receive a lump sum payment of $2928.98.
“As yet,” the letter stated, “no decision has been made on: Overblast exposure/breacher brain.
“This is because further consideration of the medical evidence and the circumstances of your service is being undertaken.”
Threading the needle
Getting a claim accepted by Veterans’ Affairs requires threading two bureaucratic needles.
The first is being considered a “veteran”. In New Zealand, you have to take part in certain specific missions before earning what is called “qualifying service”.
Examples of service that don’t count is the deployment to South Korea to face North Korea across the demilitarised zone. Those people are not considered veterans.
Also not included was the 1998 posting of 24 NZSAS personnel to Kuwait during tensions with Iraq. They spent months in the desert patrolling and preparing for a war that came years later.
In contrast, “qualifying service” does include those in the NZDF medical team who flew to Papua New Guinea to treat survivors of the 1998 tsunami, or those posted to the New Zealand Embassy in Moscow between 1978 and 1992, or those on Te Mana when it joined 11 other ships in a 2004 deployment to the Red Sea.
For Johnson, the time in Afghanistan is considered “qualifying service”, as it was for those who made up the Provincial Reconstruction Team in remote Bamiyan.
The next bureaucratic needle is whether the damage occurred while carrying out that operating service.
If Johnson does have blast traumatic brain injury, was it caused by frequent explosive entries in and around Kabul? Was it falling down a mountain in 2002? Or was it caused by training for those missions?
If Veterans Affairs’ decides it was operational then it will cover treatment and compensate Johnson. If it is not, then he gets passed across to ACC where he knows he will be a world away from people who understand military service.
And what then? As it stands now, Veterans’ Affairs has told veterans it is struggling to meet their needs.
In an online forum for veterans in late May, Veterans’ Affairs manager of applications and entitlements Ann-Marie Tribe said she was “really sorry about the impact the delays were having”.
“Our service is not at the level we want to deliver and it is well below what you, our veterans and whānau, deserve.”
There had been an increase in the number of claims fielded by Veterans’ Affairs, she said in the forum. In the first three months of 2022, there were 469 claims, while the first three months of 2023 saw 807 claims. The rate of claims processed has fallen from 83 per cent to 74 per cent.
In the past 18 months, Tribe said, there had also been a surge of 1000 claims for ex-gratia payments from Vietnam veterans.
“Fundamentally, our issue is we have not been able to keep our staff capacity levels up to match the level of claims being received.”
Claims were prioritised for urgency, such as those for mental health support or veterans with terminal illnesses. It meant claims were not assessed on a “first-come first-served” basis.
In 2018, former Ombudsman Professor Ron Paterson found problems with support for veterans while carrying out a “Warrant of Fitness” inquiry for NZDF into the 2014 Veterans’ Support Act.
Paterson described “teething problems” with enacting the 2014 legislation, saying it created a “regime [that] does not put veterans first, nor is it family-friendly”.
He set out a broad range of recommendations - 64 in total - many of which have not been carried out. Some were dropped. Others were described as having been addressed through policy and practice changes at Veterans’ Affairs, although the problems they were meant to solve are still considered problems by veterans’ support groups.
And then there are the recommendations that remain open. One of those reads: “Veterans’ Affairs is mandated and resourced to be the single point of contact for veteran-focused services and supports for those veterans with the highest and most complex needs.”
In effect, Paterson called for Veterans’ Affairs to be given what it needed to do its job. The annual funding allocated in the Budget for veterans was $127m in 2017 and is now $135m. Adjusted for inflation, it hasn’t increased.
Paterson wanted Veterans’ Affairs funding ring-fenced from NZDF. The veterans’ community in New Zealand was too small to stand alone but NZDF’s operational priorities meant there was “low priority given to veterans”.
He urged NZDF to build a register of veterans as it was “essential” to connect with those people and plan for whatever support was needed. There is a “preliminary” register to 2014 but no definite decision on continuing the work.
And Paterson wanted the Government to address “dissatisfaction” - particularly among contemporary service people - over the definition of “veteran” as someone deployed to one of the countries and time periods on the “qualifying service” list.
Veterans felt “short-changed”, he said. “On grounds of equity, their views are justified.”
That led to the Veterans’ Advisory Board being asked to investigate. It told Ron Mark, Minister for Veterans in 2019, that the definition should be extended to include anyone who had served.
In a December 2020 briefing, new Minister of Veterans’ Affairs minister Meka Whaitiri was told all who served took the same oath and the physical nature of the job meant all were “harmed in some way by their service”.
It would be a change that carried a cost, she was told. It would increase the number of those considered to be veterans from around 40,000 to 120,000. With an estimated 24,000 expected to use veterans’ services, costs were predicted to rise from $144m a year to $522m a year.
That’s where the issue died, from a government perspective, although Victoria Cross recipient Willie Apiata raised it again in a 2021 round table organised by Veterans’ Affairs.
On this subject, last year Australia’s Chief of Defence, General Angus Campbell, told its ongoing Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide the type of service being performed at the time of injury or disease was not relevant to the Government’s obligation to provide support.
“I think the nation’s responsibility to support its service personnel to enable their wellbeing is an inherent and reciprocal duty of the state and arises irrespective of the nature or circumstance of the service they are directed to perform.”
‘It’s all just more talking’
Gregg Johnson is becoming frustrated over his interactions with Veterans’ Affairs.
The Operator Syndrome he believes is afflicting him is not one familiar to the case manager whose emails promise to maintain contact “every five or six months”. It’s not even familiar to the medical professionals he meets.
As a former NZSAS member - particularly one who spent three years on the “circuit” - he’s plugged into special forces’ communities of “thousands of people” across the world.
“We’ve read all the research, we’re involved with people who are in this space and we’ve talked to people from America and around the world that are in this space and have been for a long time.”
And yet he waits, and as he waits he talks to those with whom he served and they are becoming as worried as he is.
“Who knows how long it’s gonna take them to decide. I’m currently on unemployment benefit. It makes it really hard to do the proactive things that I need to do to support myself.”
Three years after Ron Paterson’s damning report, Veterans’ Affairs held a series of roundtable meetings to, in the words of then-Veterans’ Affairs chief Bernadine Mackenzie, “develop a policy framework which describes veterans’ unique needs clearly for other mainstream agencies and for ministers”.
Those meetings led to a 2022 “Veteran, Family and Whānau Mental Health and Wellbeing Policy Framework” which acknowledged “the need for system improvements, increased awareness, effective prevention, and enhanced support”.
The first work programme has just got under way. It sets out to advocate across the public service on veterans’ needs. As an example, it is looking to meet with the Suicide Prevention Office to “investigate the gaps in data” around veteran suicide. Veterans’ Affairs has confirmed to the Herald it does not know how many veterans have taken their own lives.
It is hoped the new project will find a way to identify veterans in future. Acting chief Marti Eller said: “Veterans are not a specific group identified by this data. This makes it difficult to conduct any rigorous research or draw any firm conclusions about veteran suicide rates in this country.”
“It’s all just more talking,” says Johnson, whose whole life has been about doing. When the Herald asked Eller about progress on Johnson’s claim, she said he had been referred for an MRI and the process “has not been delayed and that his claim is progressing”.
Johnson, meanwhile, says he’s waiting for travel costs to be approved. Like others in the contemporary veterans’ community, he sees so much more that could be done - and so many who need it to be done now.
It is one explanation for the slew of grassroots efforts that have emerged to connect and support contemporary veterans.
Johnson is involved with Pakari Adventure alongside partner Walker, a former police forensics specialist, and Ben Pointer, a former Royal Marine Commando who retrained as a mental health counsellor. Aimed at building resilience and developing leadership skills, it has found its offering has a particular connection for families in the veterans’ community.
The three are also trustees with Pilgrim Bandits, which brings veterans and their families together in nature.
Some grassroots efforts remodel the old, like those of Ryan Gilbert and the Mackenzie RSA. Contemporary veterans shy away from the traditional bricks-and-mortar clubrooms, cheap beer and pokie machines. Gilbert’s focus is on bringing veterans together for camaraderie and family bonding. The national RSA office is currently going through a review with the intent of focusing its offerings on veteran support and welfare rather than hospitality.
Others are primarily solution-focused, like the No Duff crisis response charity that ran a 24/7 helpline until the effort required burned out its own people. It is now developing a “health hub” that aims to be a centre of knowledge for issues afflicting modern veterans.
It’s a different veteran community to which New Zealand has become accustomed. And it has different problems. For those who served, Anzac Day happens every day because their service provides ongoing reminders of their service.
Johnson is geared to lead by example. There is so much evidence available across the world, but Johnson says: “We’re so far behind in New Zealand.”
David Fisher has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He first joined the Herald in 2004.
Where to get help
If it is an emergency and you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
For support for veterans
RSA: https://www.rsa.org.nz/get-support/support-for-veterans/
No Duff Learning Centre: https://ndlc.org.nz/
NZDF: NZDF4U (0800 693 348) offering support for currently serving military personnel and their families.
For counselling and support
Lifeline: Call 0800 543 354 or text 4357 (HELP)
Suicide Crisis Helpline: Call 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO)
Need to talk? Call or text 1737
Depression helpline: Call 0800 111 757 or text 4202
For children and young people
Youthline: Call 0800 376 633 or text 234
What’s Up: Call 0800 942 8787 (11am to 11pm) or webchat (11am to 10.30pm)
For help with specific issues
Alcohol and Drug Helpline: Call 0800 787 797
Anxiety Helpline: Call 0800 269 4389 (0800 ANXIETY)
OutLine: Call 0800 688 5463 (0800 OUTLINE) (6pm-9pm)
Safe to talk (sexual harm): Call 0800 044 334 or text 4334
For more information and support, talk to your local doctor, hauora, community mental health team, or counselling service. The Mental Health Foundation has more helplines and service contacts on its website.