Digger finds the missing pieces
All was not well with Scott Rogers when he returned from Iraq in 2006.
The former sapper had spent six years as a combat engineer in East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia and Iraq. He saw things that would stay with him for the rest of his life, but he believed in his mission, he was there with his mates and they were all in it together.
The Victorian-born carpenter, then 31, left the army after Iraq and moved to Perth to start a family with his wife Jade.
It should have been bliss but there was something missing.
"I felt lost. I felt very lost," he said. "I went and saw a psychologist but I felt that in my circumstances, it didn't work.
"They kept telling me they understood and I was thinking, 'How do you understand when you haven't been there?'"
From a soldier in war zones and humanitarian crises to a civilian in an unfamiliar city, life had slowed for Mr Rogers, but his mind was working overtime.
There were thoughts of the locals left behind in war-torn Iraq, including one man who told him he had never known such freedom but knew it would disappear when the foreign troops pulled out.
There were haunting visions of East Timorese people filling their boots with water so they could run into rubbish fires to look for food scraps or clothing.
He remembers seeing a dog running past with a human leg in its mouth after the Boxing Day tsunami in Banda Aceh, a sight he and his fellow soldiers had joked about, using humour as a form of defence.
But it wasn't just the memories that were troubling him, there was something else he couldn't quite put his finger on.
"I went down to the Bellevue RSL and I came back smiling," he said. "It was the missing piece to the jigsaw.
"I felt very comfortable talking to people who had been in similar environments and I didn't feel like I was burdening them with my issues. I had that bond back."
Mr Rogers, 40, now a father of two, is the president of the Bellevue sub-branch and is on the board of directors at State level.
He said the RSL had changed for the better since his father's return from Vietnam but the organisation needed younger veterans to keep signing up.
"They're finding that camaraderie and support network we all used to have in the defence force," he said.
