Source: Radio New Zealand
A former soldier who attacked a taxi driver in a drunken rage says the NZ Defence Force (NZDF) failed to get him desperately needed help after a traumatic stint training Ukrainian civilians for war.
Jack Wesley says he was a ticking timebomb when he got back from Operation Tieke in the UK, drinking heavily and haunted by the deaths in Ukraine of people he helped prepare for the front line.
Following his six-month deployment in 2023, he was diagnosed with PTSD.
Wesley said if the Defence Force had given him the support he so badly needed, the awful assault could have been avoided.
The NZDF said it takes the preparation and psychological support for their deployed personnel seriously.
Operation Tieke
Since the deployment – dubbed ‘Operation Tieke’ – started in 2022, New Zealand infantry have been sent to the United Kingdom to prepare Ukrainian army recruits for battle.
Twenty-six-year-old Wesley was one of them. He trained hundreds of recruits – many of whom he now believed were dead.
He had served nearly seven years in the 1st Battalion, 1st Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment (RNZIR), before he was deployed for six months in 2023 as a lance corporal and section 2IC.
Wesley described his role as a ‘shadow’ who followed the recruits around, helping them, teaching them, giving them more “oomph” to their training.
Over his six months, around four lots of new recruits came through. Each training camp was five weeks long and made up of about 200 people.
They were split into groups and trained in combat first aid, operational law, weapon handling, field-craft, offensive and defence operations, and marksmanship.
Over each five weeks period, Wesley and his team worked 24/7 with the recruits.
“For our pre-deployment training, we were… drilled into, not to build a rapport with them.
“It’s pretty easy to start off with… we tried to stick as hard as we could to not building that rapport with the Ukrainians and as the days went on and days in on being stuck with them pretty much 24/7 for the five weeks the relationships grew quite strong.
“My youngest soldier that I taught just turned 18 just before he got on the flight over to the UK and my oldest was 56 years old and…. yeah it hit home, hit home for pretty much all of us.
He cried as he said: “We could see them as either our little brothers or brothers, sisters, fathers, mums.”
The unit often referred to them as ‘the kids’.
When the recruits arrived, Wesley said they were keen to learn, but by the end of the course morale had changed.
“They didn’t want to go, they didn’t want to go back. They felt scared. They didn’t want to leave us because they knew that we would try our hardest to protect them… it just hit home every time.”
Wesley said they became like one unit.
“Just day in, day out, always laughing at each other, giving each other, excuse my language, but shit. Just creating memories… once it got to the last week the raw feelings started to hit and we’d try not think about the day they had to go back home, but once the busses rocked up it started hitting all of us in the gut.”
Wesley and the recruits knew what waited for them in Ukraine.
Of the more than 800 Ukrainians his deployment trained, Wesley believes most are now dead.
Wesley said despite knowing they were not supposed to, the soldiers created a group online to stay connected.
“Just to be able to keep in touch and see how things are going, see whereabouts they are back home. And yeah, the numbers, they slowly started to drop…
“Sometimes the chat would go quiet and then someone will pop in and be like ‘oh blah blah blah is dead, we found him or her, they got ambushed’.
“Then they’d give us the low down of what happened which hit us even more because we put the blame on ourselves… saying did we give them the necessary training they needed? Did we give them 100 percent of us?”
Wesley said he was “sad, devastated and broken” by the deployment and that he was not alone in those feelings.
“If you were to pull them [other soldiers] aside 1 by 1 and ask them how they’re feeling, they’d breakdown.”
The close call
While on deployment, Wesley had a close call.
He was training recruits at the shooting range, working through various shooting positions – standing, kneeling and the prone position on the ground.
“With his transition to the prone he ended up bringing his rifle up on the 45 [degree angle] and as he hit the ground his finger was still on the trigger …heard a round going ‘pewwww’ right above my head…
“I went white as a ghost and just stood there thinking holy **** that just happened.
“I was kinda just shaking, sitting there, white as.”
The range commanding officer was informed and the training session ended.
“The rest of that day I was just shaking. I was like ****.
“That night we went pretty hard on the beers. Just be like **** , trying to decompress.”
Wesley said they did not tell anyone outside of his team about the incident, it was just what they did.
He said it was not the first time there had been close calls during the deployment, but there was a culture of not reporting incidents for fear of retribution or judgement.
“Since shit rolls downhill… they’ll find a way to make it bite you back.
“If I was to mention it or try to push it up higher, they’d probably just put me in the office, sit me down, talk to me about it and then send me back out.”
The NZDF said it had no record of any close calls or incidents during Operation Tieke.
It said if Wesley’s officer had been made aware of the incident and knew he was having psychological difficulties, he would have been recommended a compassionate return to NZ with further support.
Psychological support
Towards the end of Wesley’s deployment, personnel were given several days before a flight home for ‘group decompression”.
It was at that time in August 2023 they were given a psychologist’s appointment for an assessment.
After his assessment, Wesley said he was told more help would be waiting for him and his team within a month or so of their return and that they wouldn’t need to seek it out.
Many of the team from the deployment found it difficult to reintegrate back home and a lot of them resorted to drinking, he said
“It took a toll on us mentally.
‘Whenever we would get the chance, we would just resort to alcohol… it would take the pain away and make us feel numb and we’d just sit there cry.”
Or if his unit wasn’t around… I’d cry by myself. Or get angry.”
It was during this period, Wesley was violently assaulted at a party and suffered a broken jaw and concussion requiring emergency surgery. He returned to drinking as a coping mechanism after his recovery.
Wesley said he knew he was mentally unwell, but felt he could not ask for help.
“Because of the stigma around it, I didn’t want to look weak, I thought, no, I don’t need help, I can try overcome this myself. But yeah, it ended up going down the wrong path and I blew up.
NZDF said personnel were given a follow-up “psychological screen approximately six months after” returning from the deployment.
RNZ has been seeking answers about the timeframe and delay since September, but has not yet received a response from the NZDF.
Wesley said got a post-deployment phone call four months after he got home and was never seen again until his “bomb went off” .
The assault
In March 2024 Jack Wesley violently attacked a taxi driver on a drunken night out in Palmerston North. Court documents say he punched the taxi driver repeatedly until he was unconscious, hurt a passerby who tried to intervene, and kicked and punched two arresting officers.
The taxi driver was left with a broken eye socket and nose requiring weeks off work, surgeries and follow up dental work.
Wesley was charged with assault, intent to injure and assaulting a police officer and served a nine-month period of home detention.
A psychological assessment prepared for the NZDF after the arrests said he was suicidal and diagnosed him with high Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms and high levels of depression in connection to his deployment to the UK.
But the defence force disputes the cause, saying it was unclear whether trauma was related to his training stint or the injuries from the attack on him at the party.
Wesley said he has no memory of the night he assaulted the driver and has been sober ever since.
“I still feel heavily disappointed in myself and knowing that it was totally out of my character to do something so horrendous to someone and only wish that the victim and their family is safe and healthy.”
The victim is a married man with two young children. Following the assault he was unable to work for three weeks, graduating to reduced hours, during the day because his vision has not recovered from the injuries. At the time of sentencing he had been to five follow up appointments at the hospital and needed ongoing private dental care.
If Wesley had got his six months post deployment follow up debrief on time – it would have been in February, a month before the assault. According to NZDF it was conducted in June 2024 – 10 months after his deployment.
The psychologist report said Wesley’s drinking habits changed dramatically when he returned from the UK. He was consuming a box, or 12 bottles, a day to numb the pain.
“Jack’s experiences of his deployment to the UK appear to have left him with significant moral distress and grief regarding the civilians he trained and subsequently lost in war. He is a very relational person, seemingly inclined to put others first, and described building strong bonds with many of his trainees who he described as “the kids” (with a sense that he and his colleagues in the NZDF were their parents)”
Wesley said this hurt had been building for some time, and the delayed access to mental health support hindered him further.
“Pretty much the help started once my timer went off, and that only happened because the army put me in with a psych to see what was happening with me.”
He said members of his team complained to him about the time delay in getting help and said they were ‘losing their heads’.
“They [NZDF] tell us all the things that we need to know, we need to hear. But when it comes to actually supporting us, there’s nothing really there until s**t hits the fan.”
He said after his arrest, psychological help was readily available for the rest of his unit.
“It opened up so many people’s eyes, and they finally got the help that they needed to before they blew up as well.”
Job loss
Wesley lost his job in the NZ Defence Force because of his offending, despite pleas from his lawyer, concerns from the judge and recommendations from bosses and the psychologist.
Judge Stephanie Edwards said since his arrest, Wesley had shown remorse and sought help.
She also noted the links between his work trauma, drinking and offending – offering a discount to his sentence.
“There are clear links to the trauma that you have suffered partly in the service of your country in your excessive drinking and therefore to this offending.
“I note, too, that your employer, the New Zealand Defence Force, is to be commended for the steps they have taken to recognise the links between your role in the army and this offending and to provide you with psychological and counselling services,” said Judge Edwards.
A transcript document of the court sentencing shows while considering her options Judge Edwards asked whether home detention would affect his employment.
Those documents also show the NZ Defence Force representative said it would not affect his role, and the army would find a way to work around the realities of a home detention sentence.
Less than two months later the NZDF held a retention hearing, and he was let go.
“It shocked me the day that they came around sat me down and told me that my service is getting terminated. I took it on the chin once they said it, but deep down I was broken.”
“There’s just a big empty space in me now.”
Wesley said he would never go back, but he would die for his unit.
“I’ll take a bullet for every single one of them”
“I still have a lot of love for the defence force and what they do, just take care of our Servicemen and servicewomen who have taken this step to help defend a loving country. “
Operation Tieke is not a qualifying Operational Service under the Veterans’ Support Act 2014.
That means Wesley is not covered by the Veterans Support Act, and not eligible for support from Veterans Affairs.
Notes written by the Brigade Commander who signed off his discharge said: “I see that Wesley has raised the topic of PTSD and I want the unit and NZDF medical to ensure PTE Wesley has the appropriate support as he exits the service.”
Jack Wesley said there has been no support from the defence force since his termination.
The NZDF declined to be interviewed.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand