LIAM Haven looks like an ordinary 24-year-old with a tattoo sleeve and lip piercing, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt featuring the English ska band Madness.
But the fresh-faced Digger, with one piercing blue eye, is far from ordinary. Back home in Newport, Private Haven plans to help army personnel like himself, who have returned from combat but left something of themselves overseas.
A month shy of his 18th birthday, Private Haven enlisted in the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, leaving his home in Broome, Western Australia.
He was 19 when deployed to Iraq, tasked with intercepting arms trafficking.
Seven months in, and 14 days from packing up to go home, a roadside bomb detonated a few metres in front of his eight-man patrol vehicle.
“The glasses I was wearing shattered because the metal they used was ridiculously dense and it was quite a high powered explosive,” Private Haven said.
“The windows on the vehicle that we were in are about two inches thick — so they’re designed to take some massive amounts of impact — and the crack went almost all the way through that. So, ballistic goggles didn’t really have a chance.
“My left eye was cut in half and my right eye was peppered with shrapnel and I lost quite a lot of the aqueous jelly, which is the white stuff inside your eye.”
Private Haven was medically evacuated to an Australian base in Southern Iraq, then on to Baghdad and eventually Germany. Despite losing almost all his vision, his outlook contains not a trace of bitterness. “I don’t really like to regret a lot of things. I think regrets are a pointless thing: it just reminds you of what you should have done or what you could have done, when you can’t change it.
“I’ve pretty much not let it stopped me doing anything that I wanted to do, so to me the only real difference in my life is that I can’t see it any more with my eyes.
“But I mean, what’s one sense? You’ve still got four other ones.”
Now studying at Swinburne University, Private Haven aims to become a civilian psychologist.
“I’ll hopefully specialise in post traumatic stress and treat military personnel, as well as treating normal trauma victims and giving some time to charity.”
Born to an English father and Burmese mother, Private Haven said Anzac Day was a time for people to come together and remember sacrifices made.
“The Anzac spirit to me means it’s a time for everyone to put aside their differences and just remember those guys who have given a sacrifice, whether it be their life or a body part, or whether or not it just means they’ve left a little tiny piece of themselves mentally overseas.
“It’s not something that you have to be Australian to be part of.
“A lot of people I know who have gone to Turkey to Anzac Day . . . the spirit is just as strong, if not stronger, than it is here.
In September, Private Haven will walk from Sydney to Canberra to raise money for Guide Dogs Victoria and Soldier On, an organisation for young soldiers. Details: onefootforward.gofundraise.com.au
