Let him be

Private Kovko has been placed under a media microscope with too many of those peering through the lens only seeing their own prejudices. I have watched with amazement as a media circus lays the blame for his death and subsequent misplacement/missidentification at the feet of their enemies without a single solitary fact being considered. I’m further amazed at the dignitary list for his funeral with Prime Minister John Howard, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, Defence Force chief Angus Houston, Army chief Peter Leahy and officers from 3RAR. I personally think military funerals for soldiers should be restricted to family; both geneological and military with politicians best kept away least the event turns into a media circus. It’s a private and personal moment. During the Vietnam war the home battalions conducted funerals for the away battalion resulting in my being well versed in the procedure. Having acted as the Sergeant in charge of many funeral parties I can only conclude that what I saw on TV last night was a military funeral for a general….times change. My reading of the cause of his death was a single gunshot wound to the head administered while he was alone and until an inquirey is completed no amount of speculation will clarify the situation. Readers commenting throughout the blog world have gone as far as to lay out in military fashion the laid down procedures for clearing a 9mm Browning pistol with asides like ‘professional soldiers don’t have UDs’ (army talk for accidental discharge); ‘it’s impossible to accidentaly kill yourself with a 9mm pistol‘ and ‘if you do it properly you will not have an UD’ that all seem to ignore the reality of war. When on operations Infantrymen suffer from sleep deprivation working anything up to 20 hours in any one day all of it under some sort of pressure. This leads to errors of judgement and weapon handling. It also leads to over-familiarity with weapons and all of this leads to accidental death. It happens. A comment at Tim Balir’s site sums it up well.

No one can even guess what happened to this man. There are too many contradictory stories, and the people telling them may have reasons to obfuscate. No matter what the facts are, they have now been buried under everyone elses agenda. The actual man, and his actual family, are no longer any consideration. Those poor people. My condolences to them, and my condolences to those Aussies who are saddened to lose one of their protectors. No matter how he died, he died in a foreign country, doing the dangerous things that we sent him to do. Let the man rest in peace, he has earnt it and leave his family alone, they need time to heal.