Daniel Keighran VC - Courage Under Fire

On 24 August 2010, in battle in Afghanistan, Corporal Daniel Keighran risked his life in a hail of gunfire to save his fellow soldiers. His actions saw him awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia, making him the 99th Australian to receive our countrys highest award for bravery.

Courage Under Fire tells of Daniels unlikely journey to become one of Australias most celebrated soldiers. Growing up was tough for Daniel. When he was eleven, his father showed up in his life, for the first time, with a gunshot wound to the stomach. He relocated his son, daughter and their mother 400 kilometres away from their loving grandparents and a coastal home to a shack with a dirt floor in outback Queensland. From then on, Daniel fought to maintain a sense of order and purpose amid the chaos of family violence and criminal activity.

Inspired by his much-loved grandfather, a WWII veteran, Daniel joined the army. There he found the structure that was missing from his teen years. Although just seventeen, Daniel adapted quickly to the demands of life in the military, always willing to learn, always wanting to grow, always seeking to emulate the example of his grandfather.

Courage Under Fire is an outstanding military memoir, packed with tales of multiple tours, accounts of extraordinary camaraderie, and a reflection on the unseen cost of service. Most of all it is a testament to the idea that anything is possible if you know what you stand for.

For Alan Pyburne,
2/4th Field Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery

Cowboy was the first man I ever saw whod been shot.

He was my father.

Hed been at a party, somewhere in country Victoria, and the story went that in an attempt to save someone, which was probably bullshit, hed thrown himself in front of a guy who stormed into the gathering with a rifle. Most likely, it had something to do with illegal drugs. The dude with the gun opened up and Cowboy copped the bullet, in the gut.

After hed discharged himself from hospital, Cowboy showed up on our doorstep in Maleny, Queensland, where Mum had made us a nice home.

I would learn, in time, that our household was everything he wasnt small and quaint, neat and tidy, quiet and industrious, sober and safe. He was big and tough, loudly full of outlaw bravado, punching-on and on the grog more often than not.

In fact, Cowboy was the biggest human Id ever seen. Six-foot-four, massive shoulders, a barrel-chested giant of a man, he almost blocked out the harsh Queensland sunlight as he stood there in our doorway in his blue wife-beater singlet, his stubby shorts and his battered riding boots. Over his singlet was an unbuttoned flannelette shirt, rolled up and stretched over his biceps. He was wincing a bit from where hed taken a hot lead slug in the gut.

To be fair to him, a weaker man might have died.

Gday, Knackers, he said when I answered the door.

I was eleven years old and I had no idea who this stranger was or why he was calling me a funny name.

This is your father, Dan, Mum said, standing beside me, looking from me to him, something odd, not quite right, in her voice. It was, I think, a mix of love and dread.

As I gazed up at him, reeling inside, my sister, Susan, eyed him off from a position of safety inside the house. She might have remembered him; she was old enough to have cried when he left.

I recall, clearly, when Mum got the phone call, about four weeks before Dad had turned up. That was the first time it really hit me that I had an actual father, not just some long-forgotten, faded pictures on a fridge or in Mums room. Cowboy had left my mother, Judy, a few days after I was born. Susan was six at the time.

But the phone had rung that night and when Mum answered it, it was Ian Cowboy Keighrans latest girlfriend on the line.

Mrs Keighran, I just want to let you know that Ians been shot, the distraught young woman said by way of greeting. At least she knew that her boyfriend had a wife.

Is he dead? Mum replied.

No, but hes in hospital and hes not real good, the girlfriend said, in that way country people have of understating things.

Oh. Mum hung up the phone. Its finally happened.

What, Mum? I asked.

She looked down at me. Your fathers been shot.

Id never given him a second thought, the man with the fair hair in the picture with Mum on her wedding day, and now I was learning he had been shot, like someone in a Western movie. It figured. He was a cowboy and thats what people called him.

My world was being turned upside down by something that most other kids loved, or took for granted the presence of a father. Sure, I knew I had a biological father, but I had never asked about him, never worried that he hadnt been in my life or that I had absolutely no recollection of him.

Even when other kids at school talked about their complete families and I saw their dads sometimes pick them up or drop them off at school, it never occurred to me that I was missing out on anything. My grandfather was my dad, the reason I joined Defence, my mentor, my father figure and he had already begun to instil old-school values in me.

Now all of a sudden, I did have a father, and he had returned as it turned out, to rob us of the life Mum had worked hard to create for us.

After I found out I was going to receive the Victoria Cross for Australia, the Australian Defence Force did a pretty good job of whitewashing my family background.

Under my new legend as spies call their cover story Ian Cowboy Keighran was a rodeo rider, a roustabout, a Crocodile Dundee, rough around the edges, but community minded with a heart of gold. There was no mention of drugs, other girlfriends, gunshot wounds, a half-brother of mine who was conceived while Cowboy and Judy were living together, or of my mother handing in his guns because she feared for her life.

Like all good legends, it was based on truth. Little grains here and there did reflect part of his story. He did organise rodeos, he did bring people together, he could be a romantic figure, but that wasnt the half of it.

My own life was also airbrushed. My social media accounts were scrubbed clean of the sorts of things soldiers have on them pictures of drunken parties, crude jokes and general evidence of someone leading a normal life.

Later, after I had received the medal, one of the many media opportunities I said yes to involved me visiting a young offenders prison in Queensland and talking to a group of inmates. They were sullen and withdrawn, perhaps too tough or too scared to open up in front of a television camera and a bloke they had never heard of. The Victoria Cross meant nothing to them; I was just another fly-in fly-out do-gooder. I tried engaging them, but nothing I said was making them open up or giving the TV crew what they wanted good television.

In desperation, I broke cover.

You mightnt think I know what youve been through, I said to the group, but my dad broke the law.

One or two of them looked up from the floor, or away from the clock on the wall.

Yeah, I continued, hed abandoned Mum and my sister and me and I only met him when I was eleven and he showed up at our place after hed been shot.

The truth freed something up between us. My dad, who if he wasnt breaking the law was circumventing it, was of more interest to these guys than anything I had done in Afghanistan.