SAS widow Kylie Russell’s new fight to help homeless veterans

Tossed between the white heat of the public glare and the intense darkness of grief Kylie Russell summoned the strength to determine that her husband’s death would not be in vain.

It was February 2002, she was 28, a new mother to a daughter her husband would never see, and now a widow.

In life, Sgt Andrew Russell was a soldier with the elite Special Air Service Regiment who went quietly about his business; in death, at just 33, he became known variously as the first Australian casualty of the war against terror, the first SAS casualty since the Black Hawk disaster in Queensland in 1996 and the country’s first casualty in active war duty since the Vietnam War.

“I wanted him to be remembered not just for that person who was killed by a bomb in Afghanistan,” Russell says. “I wanted him to be remembered for making a difference for those left back home.

“I couldn’t change what was happening in Afghanistan but I could change what was happening here and use him to make that change happen, for soldiers and for widows that I knew would come. I knew I wouldn’t be the only widow for very long.”

Within months of her husband’s death, Russell would fight the might of John Howard’s government, working alongside former soldier and Federal MP Graham Edwards and veterans’ groups to reform an archaic and unjust compensation system.

She would join the global campaign to ban the use of anti-vehicle landmines, help overturn an 80-year-old protocol that prevented the names of fallen SAS soldiers based in WA but who were born or enlisted elsewhere from being inscribed on the State War Memorial and beat down bureaucracy to have Andrew’s name and others killed in the war against terror honoured at the Australian War Memorial.

“I was told they don’t put the name on the memorial until after a war has ended. I thought, ‘hang on a minute, it’s the war against terror, that could go on for another 20 years. So, I have to wait 20 years before I can take my daughter to see her father’s name?’ And I was like, I don’t think so.”

An encounter with two of her husband’s former colleagues a few years ago set her on a new course to help introduce to WA a landmark program for struggling veterans. “I think in my head I’d assumed they were all kind of OK. I just remembered seeing them and having a chat and thinking, gosh, they’re a little broken.

“And I guess I remember them as young men in their 20s and 30s, full of life and vibrant, the attitude they could do anything. Then I saw them and thought where is that spark, it’s gone, it’s just gone, and I just think if Andrew had been alive today, he wouldn’t have been the man I married. What life would we have had?”

The Andrew Russell Veteran Living Program was established in Adelaide in 2016 by RSL Cares to help former servicemen and women down on their luck regain control of their lives. It is the country’s only dedicated homeless accommodation service for contemporary veterans and works with them as individuals to link them with the support services they need.

Andrew was originally from South Australia and the group had asked Russell if it could use her husband’s name. She had received such requests before and turned many down because “Andrew wasn’t that type of person” but this program struck a chord. “Andrew would be stoked that something like this would be named after him,” she says.

Russell formed a close connection with RSL Cares, flying to Adelaide a number of times to see the program in action and being deeply affected by its success. On a flight home with daughter Leisa one year she again gathered her resolve, determining that it should be established in WA. “Leisa said ‘yes, mum, we’ve got to do this’.”

There has never been a time when Andrew hasn’t been part of Leisa’s life. “I started telling her about her dad from the day she was born because he wasn’t there,” Russell says. “I talked about him every day. I put together this photo mural of him in her bedroom and I just used to speak about him all the time — your dad would have loved that, he would have found that funny, you know.

“We talked about Dad being in heaven. We’d go to his grave and she would leave birthday presents and Christmas presents and things that you make at school or when you are in kindy. I said, we just leave them there and the angels will come down at night and pick them up and they deliver them to heaven.

“She never once really questioned anything but as she matured she started to understand a little more and I’ve always just been really honest. I guess over 20 years we’ve had every conversation you can imagine.”

On Russell’s return to WA she set up a meeting with Labor MP Peter Tinley, the minister for veterans issues who also served with the SAS. He would introduce her to the man waiting outside his office, Ian Craig, head of the RAAFA WA Clear Skies program, a charitable venture that supports serving and former servicemen and community groups.

On February 16 this year — 20 years to the day of Andrew’s death — ARVL was launched in WA.

The Royal Australian Air Force Association began life in 1929 as the Australian Flying Corps Association and has grown to become one of the biggest aged-care and retirement living providers in WA.

It has bought a parcel of land in Cannington and is now fundraising to build 27 units, which it expects to cost $10 million. “We have designed the building and are putting all our energy into funding it,” Craig says.

“The success of the program is that they land in permanent housing that they can call their home as a contributing member of the community.”

Craig has a bigger dream that the project can be expanded to also support women and children and provide preventative programs but funding comes first.

“We have a burning desire to do this because tonight someone needs this support,” he says.

In 2021, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released a report showing that between 2001 and 2019 there were 1273 certified deaths by suicide among those with Australian Defence Force service since January 1, 1985. Of these, 1062 occurred among former serving members, 121 among permanent members and 90 among Reserves.

Compared with the Australian population, the suicide rates were 24 per cent higher for former serving males and 102 per cent higher for former serving females. Permanent male members of the ADF and in the Reserve had significantly lower rates than the general population.

An Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute report found veterans were at higher risk of homelessness than the general population, more likely to be homeless for longer and less likely to access mainstream services. More recently, the preliminary report from the Interim National Commissioner for Defence and Veteran Suicide Prevention highlighted the direct correlation between veteran homelessness and veteran suicide.

Last year, Scott Morrison’s Liberal government bowed to pressure and established the royal commission into defence and veteran suicide to examine “the human cost” of defence service.

The previous two decades had produced numerous reports, each spelling out the difficulties of transitioning back to civilian life but each producing few results.

The commission’s interim report, released in August, painted a picture of a complex, cumbersome compensation and rehabilitation system so riddled with backlogs that it was harming the mental health of serving and former ADF members.

Former members and bereaved families gave harrowing testimony of a patchwork system that had failed them and their loved ones after they returned from serving their country.

“When Andrew died, people in the street knew he was away all the time and thought he was FIFO,” Russell says. “In World War I and WWII when everyone went off to fight, everyone in the street had someone who was at war, so when someone got a knock at the door, everyone else was acutely aware and someone was there. The community looked after each other.

“Afghanistan was our longest-serving war. How many people knew that? There’s not that same level of engagement, and it’s so different to what people understand or have any knowledge of. It was the war against terror. It actually doesn’t have a name.”

When members quit the ADF they leave behind a service that has organised their lives and they often return to communities where their friends and families have moved on with their lives.

“A lot of things change in civilian life and there can be that struggle to reconnect,” Russell says. “While they are in Defence they have that community around them and they do take care of each other and they’ve got that safety net for the most part, but when it’s time to leave, some may not be living in the same place, they may go to a place where everybody else has moved on, you have to go back and re-establish all those connections and it’s very easy to fall into the space of where do I belong.”

In the 20 years since her husband’s death, Russell has established herself in the medical industry and currently works as an associate professor in the school of medicine at the University of Notre Dame. She lives in East Fremantle with her new partner, Malcolm.

Her passion to get a better deal for veterans has remained undimmed through the passage of time. “One of things Andrew said to me before he left . . . was I won’t be taken care of and I’ll have to fight for that. We had seen that after the Black Hawk, so we were very aware of how widows were treated.”

Russell was offered a lump sum of $187,000 when Andrew died — far less than those awarded damages in civil compensation cases. She chose to receive a pension of just over $13,000 a year and a lump sum of $92,000, $55,000 of which was put aside for Leisa’s schooling.

“It was really important to me that if any of the guys came back injured, if any other widows came to be, that they would be taken care of better than I had been taken care of.”

To donate, visit www.raafawa.org.au

Lifeline 13 11 14

Open Arms Veterans and Family Counselling 1800 011 046

ADF 24-hour support line 1800 628 036