The Way to a Man’s Heart by Jim Lounsbury

Somehow, a four-year science degree at Monash University

qualified me to find out why a fit, six-foot tall kid with angry hair

turned up dead and naked in the Iraqi desert. Aside from the

obvious reason: he was a member of the 1st RAR, an elite group of

Australian soldiers sent to the front lines of the infamous ‘war on

terror’. A Special Forces boy.

I signed up as a reservist with the 4RAR Commandos to pay for

my college degree, working weekends and holidays to cover school

fees. At the time I needed the money to survive. I didn’t think of it

as filing divorce papers with my jilted ideologies. When you sign up

as a reservist, you never expect to be rattling on a plane toward

Iraq. And once you’ve gone to war, no matter what the reason, you

don’t have a leg to stand on in a political rally, whether you’ve

stepped on a landmine or not.

All missions conducted by SOCOMD, the Command Centre for

Special Operations in Australia, are top secret. The assignment was

handed to me in person after a sideways glance in either direction -

an indication I would be filing the next five days in the vault of the

brain responsible for separating action from reason or, god willing,

memory. After a year in the military, a person develops a private

office in the mind, complete with a well-ordered filing cabinet full of

manila folders, locked by superiors.

In this case, a twenty one year old was dead and his family would

The Way to a Man’s Heart 1

be told he was missing in action. The letter had already been sent.

Not one page of my report would be discharged to the family.

Not even when a disbelieving voice called the 1st RAR asking

whether it could be a cruel mistake. Not twelve months later, when

the family phone still gets answered by the second ring. Not even

three years later when hope casts a shadow into an empty room full

of clean clothes. When you join the 1st RAR you sign a twenty-seven-

page document that absolves all rights to be accurately represented

in anything you do. Even dying.

****

I was flown to Baghdad airport in the cavernous cargo hold of a

C-130 military transport via Singapore, vibrating across the Indian

Ocean to the sound of green rivets, clattering their way through the

turbulence. Onboard were fifteen infantrymen

and myself, waiting to see the Middle East for the first time. No in-

flight movie. No food. No service. But there was plenty of legroom

and time to think.

The curse of science is that it calls ambitious men to learn from

everything, even what cannot be stomached. Hell, I didn’t even

know the name of the young soldier I was about to cut up. According

to the Army, that was irrelevant. They needed to know if he was

tortured. If he had leaked any ‘Intel’.

I should have said no. I wanted to convince the pilot to turn

around and go back, but it was too late. The military never goes

back. They don’t turn around. In military terms, going back is

2
retreating... admitting wrong. Accepting defeat. Not medal worthy

behaviour.

The turbulence was already working on my head, jumbling my

thoughts like a half assembled puzzle; some of my reservations

matched up, but most of them were upside down and backwards,

and coming apart fast.

The second I stepped onto the tarmac, my nose recoiled. The

smell of death and burning settled like indigestion in my throat. On

television, not a week ago, I watched the Prime Minister walk around

Baghdad airport with a smile crowding out the rest of his features.

There was no indication of the stench on his face. Incredible, I

thought, Politicians have an arsenal of impervious faces. One for

every occasion.

Squinting into the bleached canvas of the Middle East, I was led

to the morgue, one of the only walled structures among the tents

and convoys of the Australian command centre. It is hard to

refrigerate a tent, and the large air conditioning units on the side of

the building were a dead giveaway.

“Where did you find him?” I asked, beginning my assessment.

The female sergeant assigned to escort me returned my question

with glazed silence. Right, of course. Top secret. Must have been on

a Special Forces mission.

I tried another angle. “How did you find him… other than

naked?” I pried.

“I didn’t… someone found him the next day. On his back.” She

The Way to a Man’s Heart 3

offered, with tacit reluctance. “He’s in here”, she pointed to a door

bearing a plaque reading: M08. A camouflage chair loitered outside

the door. She sat down, giving me a disinterested look, “I’ll wait

outside”.

Hoping to draw in courage, I took a deep breath. It tasted more

like fear, but looking around the complex, everything seemed safe

enough. Locked down. Watched over. Carefully camouflaged from

attack or scrutiny.

I could procrastinate no longer.

Entering the room, I closed the door behind me. For the next two

hours, I would be the last human being to spend time with this

soldier. Perhaps he could tell me something about himself yet.

Next to the body, the instruments for autopsy were laid out on a

stainless steel table. Situated next to them, a manila folder with a

document sticking out the side like a tongue. Great. When is the

brass coming in to tell me what I can and can’t make mention of in

my report? I opened the folder, revealing three pages of

photocopied medical reports. Every second line was blacked out

with a permanent marker, including the soldier’s name. Ah, the

brass has already been here.

Only one of the unscathed lines in the report interested me:

March, 2003 - c/o chest pain

C/o was the abbreviation for ‘complained of’ and I wondered what

4
physical ailment had troubled this soldier prior to his death.

As I began the examination, I quickly found the only overt trace

of injury. A bullet wound, about three ribs below his right armpit,

gaped at me with smug irony. He complained of chest pain a year

ago.

As there was no exit wound, the most difficult task was to find

the bullet by tracing the path it made through his chest cavity. It

would take me at least an hour and a half, and before I settled into

the gruesome work, I needed to align my headspace. I stuck my

head out the door. The sergeant still sat on her camouflaged chair,

back straight, looking into the duotone array of tents. “Sergeant?”

The air outside the morgue was only slightly better than the air

inside.

“Yes,” the Sergeant replied, apathetic.

“Any chance you could get me a coffee?” My question was

answered with silence.

“It would help me to, ah, stay…”

“My orders are to stay here with you,” she interrupted, shifting in

her seat.

Orders or no orders, she doesn’t want to get me anything. “If you

prefer, we could go have a coffee together, in the mess, but I would

rather get started, and the coffee helps the, um… the smell.” As she

stood, I could sense I had won.

“No, I’ll get you one.” she said, departing with a defiant stride.

“Milk and two sugars,” I called after her, feeling my mouth

The Way to a Man’s Heart 5

creeping up at the corners. Most women I had met in the army were

jagged like her - the only visible weakness, a desire not to show

weakness. It would be interesting to see how she delivered the

coffee without losing face.

I pulled my head back into the room, and stood over the body,

looking for any sign of bruising I hadn’t seen before. There was no

indication of a struggle. No rope burns. No metallic residue from

shackles or cuffs. The body seemed clean enough. Some mild

bruising on the soles of the feet, but that was normal for a soldier

accustomed to carrying 35 kilograms of provisions, weaponry and

ammunition.

Circling the corpse, I couldn’t shake the thought that something

wasn’t right about it all. Maybe it was just my inner feelings about

travelling the world with the wrong wardrobe in my suitcase. Some

of the young guns in the army used to joke, saying, “The army is

great, we get paid to travel the world and meet interesting people…

then shoot them.” My philosophy about travel was a little less

disturbing. I wanted to experience the world by immersing myself in

a culture, not parading in a foreign attitude. I always felt travelling

in camouflage is like wearing a big sign that reads, “Don’t try to

make contact. I’m invisible here. Talk to the politicians back home,

I’m acting on their behalf…”

****

“What happened out there in the desert? What’s your name,

mate?” I looked down at the young corpse, retracing any

6
information that might help me do my job and get the hell out of

here. The crotchety Sergeant said they found him the next day in

the desert, lying on his back.

The next day… Why naked?

I snapped on a pair of surgical gloves and picked up the scalpel

to begin my work, starting at the entry point. Often, when a bullet

hits bone, it either ricochets into an alternate trajectory, or

fragments, sending four or five pieces in different directions. This

projectile had made a clean entry point, with no bone damage. It

travelled through the softer intercostal space between the ribs. It

would have sliced through the cartilage with ease. I could expect to

find the bullet intact.

There was an unenthusiastic knock at the door and I paused,

setting down the scalpel before I even got started.

About time, I could use that coffee.

It had been twenty minutes and I needed to take a break

already. Peeling off my gloves, I rinsed my hands and walked to the

door. My soapy right hand slipped as I turned the knob. Shit. I tried

again with no luck. “My hands are wet. You mind letting me out?” I

yelled, my face an inch from the door. A few seconds later, the sun

blinded me as the door opened, revealing the Sergeant.

She handed me a black coffee. “They were out of milk,” she

smirked.

Bullshit.

“Sorry.” She offered.

The Way to a Man’s Heart 7

 ”That’s okay,” I lied, taking a sip of the acidic beverage. Damn it,

she got the upper hand. Milk buffered the habit black coffee had of

giving me a stomach ache, and now I was stuck. “Thanks,” I

mustered.

The Sergeant smugly took her position outside the morgue.

My only rebuttal was to leave her there, staring out at the drab

landscape, wondering how she ended up here, and why she blended

into this wasteland of camouflage. I stared at her profile for a

moment, imagining I was beaming the thoughts into her head.

Instead, I ended up asking myself the same questions.

****

After returning to the body, it took forty-five minutes to pry open

the chest cavity, allowing me to pick up the path of the bullet on the

inner side of the rib cage.

Though I could already feel the coffee corroding my gut, I

decided to take another swig. I inhaled a nose full of the heady,

black perfume to sweeten my perception of the pungent air around

me. The caffeine twisted my nerves, wiring my mind to continue.

A dark red perforation marked the smooth outer wall of the

stomach, a capital city among the blood vessel map of the serosa.

Even if the bullet had missed the stomach, I would have cut it open

to find any evidence of toxins or other damage. Methods of torture

almost always include ingestion of foreign material.

The first thing I discovered in the stomach was unexpected, but

made sense. Ulcers. At least five, strung out along the folds and

8
creases of the inner stomach like oozing craters. That would explain

the chest pain. Five ulcers.

Stomach ulceration often causes chest pain similar to that of a

heart attack. Brought on by stress, they would have been irritated

by the military issue hot-box dinners, not to mention the war. Poor

boy. “You just wanted a home cooked meal, didn’t you?”

That was when it caught my attention. A bright, shining curve of

gold, embedded within the stomach. What’s that? Unable to

dislodge it with the scalpel, I reached for the forceps, keeping my

eye on the unusual thing, half expecting it to retreat within the body

like a strange, visceral animal. Blinking away the opaque fog the air

conditioning pulled over my vision, I guided the forceps into the

body, getting a firm grip on the edge of the odd discovery. I guided

it out with forceps, until I could get a good look at it… a wedding

ring.

Though it was corroded by stomach acid, I noticed an inscription

on the worn, inner curve of the golden band, ‘Johnny and Sarah

forever.’

“Hello Johnny. What happened out there?”

One thing I hadn’t considered until this point was how the bullet

had entered the body, under his arm like it had. Johnny’s arm was

positioned over his head when I came into the morgue, allowing me

clear access to the entry point, but judging by the position of the

wound, he must have had his arms up when he was shot.

“Why did you have your wedding ring in your stomach, Johnny?”

The Way to a Man’s Heart 9

I rinsed the wedding ring off, placing it on his finger. A perfect fit.

“And why did you get shot if you had your arms up?”

I sat the ring down and resumed the task of finding the bullet.

Deeper into the chest, I could see a hole in the pericardium, the

sack surrounding the heart. Like a bloodhound nearing the quarry, I

cut deep into Johnny’s heart before the scalpel found the bullet for

me, wedged between the left and right atria of the heart, right in

the centre.

Even if the projectile hadn’t severed the Purkinje fibres, the

biological pacemaker that stimulates the heart to strike an incessant

rhythm, the stomach acid would have killed Johnny within a few

minutes, leaking into his abdominal cavity, causing irreparable

organ damage.

I placed the bullet into a small, stainless steel bowl and began

taking organ samples to test Johnny’s biochemistry. Heart, liver and

lung reduced to flesh in vials. I leaned on the edge of the table to

steady my nerves. “We’re almost done, Johnny, almost done. Hang

in there.”

It didn’t look like Johnny had gone through any torture, except

being away from Sarah’s cooking, but before finishing my report I

picked up the bullet, turning it over in my hand. Up close, I could

see a small piece of fabric stuck to the soft lead tip of the bullet.

Using tweezers to extract the piece of cloth from the bullet, I fixed it

to a slide mount and slid it under the microscope. As the fibres

came into focus I could tell this was a rough-hewn fabric, perhaps

10
linen. Johnny was wearing something when he was shot, and it

wasn’t his khakis.

This brought up another issue. No sunburn. If Johnny was naked

when he was shot, and wasn’t found until the next day, his skin

would be cooked, whether he was alive or not.

Someone undressed this soldier, but why?

“What happened out there, Johnny?”

I couldn’t be sure why he was wearing Arab linen, but considering

he swallowed his wedding ring, he must have been captured. A gut

instinct to save something precious.

“You almost escaped, didn’t you? Well done.”

Wait.

In the distorted reflection of the stainless steel bowl, I caught

sight of markings on the side of the bullet. I adjusted the microscope

to accommodate the bullet, slowly positioning it beneath the

eyepiece. Three letters came into focus as I rotated the markings

into view…

ADI

The finding made me queasy. The whole desert scene painted itself

across my imagination, revealing a story I wasn’t sure I was ready to

believe.

ADI Limited was the manufacturer of bullets for the Australian

Defence force. Johnny had been shot by one of his own comrades,

The Way to a Man’s Heart 11

with his hands held high.

The family would never see my report, but this soldier was no

longer nameless to me. Johnny was a man in love with Sarah. He

hungered for home.

Yes, my report would be buried with Johnny, but there was

something I could do, something right. Sure, I might risk being court

marshalled, but hell… there were more important things to worry

about.

I washed my hands and prepared to go, dumping the rest of the

coffee down the sink. “Bye Johnny. Nice to know you.”

****

Sure enough, the hormonal Sergeant followed me around for a

few more days until she was all too happy to lead me back to a

plane waiting to take soldiers home who would never be the same.

As I walked across the tarmac, I couldn’t help but smile, knowing I

had regained the upper hand.

All the way to the plane, I thought of that ring, jingling away in

my pocket, a new assignment in the air. Except this time, I would

dress down and blend in. Act on my own behalf. I had to find a

woman named Sarah, and give her something precious… some

peace of mind.

Damn the consequences.

On that return plane ride, I spent a lot of time thinking about

Johnny. I wondered what kind of man he was, and what kind of food

he dreamed of back home with that wedding ring digesting away

12
inside him. I wondered why a shot was fired at anyone with their

hands above their head no matter how they were dressed, and how

that Australian-made bullet knew that the best way to that man’s

heart was through his stomach.

The Way to a Man’s Heart 13