The best medicine

For SAS medic Terry Ledgard, to survive wartime Afghanistan, courage under fire was important, but maybe not as important as being to laugh it all off at the end of the day. In Bad Medicine, his no-holds-barred account of his experiences during the war in Afghanistan, Ledgard relates all the intensity, life-and-death situations and adventure you’d expect. But he also offers an honest, harrowing and surprisingly humorous snapshot of living with post-traumatic stress disorder while readjusting to the Real World.

Throughout Bad Medicine, scattered titbits, factoids and details reveal a matchless sense of humour and unique perspective of the world. Straight from the pages of the memoir, here’s a selection of Terry Ledgard’s one-of-a-kind observations.

School
Originally designed to equip minors with the necessary knowledge and skills to be a functioning member of society, schooling was transformed in the wake of the industrial and commercial revolution of the early 1900s. In the early twenty-first century, the purpose of school is to groom victims for a life of corporate servitude in the Real World while simultaneously crushing creativity and spirit under the guise of education, so that being an obedient little worker drone seems like the only reasonable choice in life.

Schools are administered by ghastly, reptile-skinned goblins known as teachers who feast on the very youth of their students and bathe in the tears of young children.

The Sixth Sense
The sixth sense is portrayed in popular culture as a paranormal phenomenon whereby a person experiences an indescribable sense of foreboding. In reality, the sixth sense is your subconscious mind picking up on subtle cues from sight, hearing, smell and touch; raising a barely perceptible red flag to warn of impending danger. Dismiss this feeling at your peril.

Nicknames
The uniquely Australian thirst for brevity is a time-honoured phenomenon that lies at the very heart of our national heritage. Unlike British rhyming slang, which involves perhaps one or two layers of abstraction, the Australian abbreviated nickname has sheer simplicity and laziness at its core.

This is how my nickname of ‘Leggy’ came to be. Think ‘Leadguard’ spoken really quickly. Make the ‘d’ silent so it sounds like ‘Leggard’, and then make that word into the laziest single syllable that could possibly be formed, so you get ‘Leg’. Add the obligatory Australian suffix of ‘o’ or ‘y’ (which actually makes it longer, but who’s counting?), incorporate the reference that I’m a lanky fucker and you finally end up with my new nickname: Leggy.

Gunfire
The sound of gunfire is featured in popular movies such as Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers and Saving Private Ryan. In these films, it’s portrayed as a high-pitched screech, as the bullets ricochet around the actors.

The movies are full of shit. Incoming fire doesn’t sound like that. The sound of incoming fire is so terrifyingly violent that you would dig a hole to hide in (with your eyelids) if you could.

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD for short, is a psychological condition that occurs after a person is exposed to an experience that they perceive to be abnormally traumatic. PTSD is characterised by severe bouts of depression, anxiety and incredibly vivid recurring dreams or memories of the traumatic experience. It can cause waking and sleeping flashbacks, a relentless sense of being in mortal danger (although no danger is present), insomnia, agoraphobia, and a laundry list of associated physical and psychological problems.

It is an empty, melancholy, seemingly insurmountable obstacle that saps the very enjoyment out of life.

Actually, no, that doesn’t quite cover it. PTSD sucks on the infected, prolapsed anus of an unhygienic irritable bowel syndrome sufferer who lives off a diet of greasy junk food and only changes their undies once a month.