Dan Gleeson is decidedly younger than most of the other veterans of the Shepparton RSL sub-branch committee.
But he has an easy banter with the mainly Vietnam veterans, joking with them as you would an old mate.
At 43, he is probably 30 years younger than the others, but they all have one thing in common. They have all served in the Australian Defence Force.
They are all war veterans.
For Dan, being part of the sub-branch gives him a sense of belonging.
A sense of camaraderie.
Some quality banter.
And a group of like-minded people to be around.
“I fully encourage all younger veterans, whether they are unsure of the RSL or not, they should join. They won’t regret it,” Dan said.
Dan is an army veteran.
When he finished school he followed his father into the banking business.
But after spending time as a bank teller, he said he found the job boring and was looking for something else.
He decided to join the army, but his parents made him join the reserves first to ensure he liked it.
He did. Six months later he had joined the regular army.
He joined the 3rd Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR) — a parachute battalion — as a paratrooper.
Dan predominantly spent most of his time as a patrol commander in a reconnaissance platoon.
This meant he was at what he describes as “the pointy end of the spear”, where he was part of a small group to do reconnaissance ahead of everyone else on missions and send information back to headquarters.
In training, this would mean he would be one of five people to parachute into an area for five days before fighting and relay information back to headquarters to them to decide what the rest of the troops would do.
In Timor Leste in 2008 it meant Dan was part of a small group sent in to keep an eye on the man who attempted to assassinate the country’s president, Jose Ramos-Horta, and a group of other men holed up with him at a farmhouse.
Dan’s group of five would keep an eye on the house from observation posts, from 400m away to 2km from it.
In the distance somewhere would be a pair of Australian snipers.
It was the wet season in Timor Leste, and the humidity is something Dan still remembers all these years later.
“It was proper hot,” he said.
The recon group slept on the ground in a thin waterproof bag.
When they could sleep, that is.
“We were lucky to run off three hours’ sleep a night,” Dan said.
“One would be lookout, one would be writing and one would be rear protection.”
The other two could snatch some precious hours of sleep.
“When you got a chance to sleep, you’d sleep,” Dan said.
And with their missions all undercover, they were not allowed to cook anything, instead surviving on cold rations including beef, spaghetti and meatballs and chocolate bars.
“You got sick of it,” Dan said.
He thinks this time drives him to eat the way he does now.
“I’m very big on eating fresh,” he said.
“I think it scarred me.”
The group would stay out for a maximum of three weeks at a time before returning to the camp where they could rest for five days.
After two weeks in the field, the group would have to be resupplied with food and water and hike out to get it from where it was dropped off.
Living like this meant Dan got to know those in his recon group really well.
“It only takes four days and you know each other really well.”
Later, Dan was part of the group in helicopters that followed the convoy of East Timorese as they handed themselves into the authorities.
As the tension in the country dropped off in the final three months of his nine-month stint there, the army ran training courses as well as running operations and sending the men out on tasks.
Some of these were what Dan describes as “overt” — just talking to people.
Lots of the places they went were where the East Timorese had not seen any troops since 1999, while some of the children had never seen a white man before.
For Dan, the time in Timor Leste was time well spent.
“It felt good to do conventional operations,” he said.
“You felt like you were doing your job.”
The standout for him, though, was finally getting home to Australia.
The troops were only given one day’s notice of shipping out to Timor Leste.
“We turned up at work one day and were told the (Timor Leste) president had been shot,” Dan said.
“We thought it was a gee-up at first and that we were going to go into interrogation training.”
Instead, he was sent home to say goodbye to his then-girlfriend — who is now his wife — and the reality of what had happened set in as he saw news reports of the attempted assassination.
“The next morning we were in Timor,” Dan said.
“We were out in the jungle two days later with eyes on the targets.”
Timor Leste was not Dan’s only overseas posting.
He was also sent to Iraq two years earlier — in 2006 — as part of the rifle company.
His job here was based out of Baghdad, where he would look after diplomats, the Australian ambassador, and embassy staff.
They would go out of the heavily fortified “green zone” where Coalition forces ate and slept into the “red zone” to move diplomats around and ensure where they held meetings were safe.
They were in armoured tanks.
Tensions were high in Iraq at the time, as it was when the country’s former leader Saddam Hussein was on trial.
He was hung later that year after Dan had left Iraq.
“It was the busiest part of the war,” Dan said.
“It was the height of the insurgency.
“It was very eventful.
“There was always something happening.”
There was plenty of “indirect fire” at night while Dan was trying to sleep, with the insurgents firing on their location.
This meant all the men would have to get up, dress in all their gear and move to a safe place.
A few people were injured during his deployment.
And one died.
Jake Kovco.
He was the first Australian soldier killed since the Vietnam War.
A military inquiry found he accidentally shot himself while mishandling his pistol.
Jake was a friend of Dan’s.
“I was good mates with Jake. We had a ball on pre-deployment.”
For Dan, while things were heightened around them, he found it a “bit of a let down” in the work they were doing, although he recognised his work was also important.
“In Iraq you envisaged getting the opportunity to kick in doors,” Dan said.
“I felt sorry for the Americans because those guys were getting smoked, and we couldn’t help them.
“In Iraq, we got into contacts, but they were not as common as in any area they were in.”
What he remembers most, however, was the heat in Iraq.
“The shock to the system was the heat. It was 65 degrees,” Dan said.
“It was like opening your bedroom door and walking into an oven. That initial smack of heat in the face.”
“It’s something I’ve never forgotten.”
Dan discharged from the army in 2012 at the age of 41.
For him, he wanted to leave before getting married and having children.
He then spent the next 10 years in the army reserves.
He does not regret his time in the army though.
“It’s a good career for a young person,” he said.
“I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
The only thing he says he would have done differently now would be to join earlier so he would get out earlier, giving him more career options in post-military life.
For Dan, Anzac Day is a time of reflection.
“It’s reflecting on your mates and the mates who aren’t here, and your family,” he said.
On Anzac Day this year, Dan will be the guest speaker at the Shepparton dawn service and the Mooroopna service.
Immediately following the Shepparton dawn service, there will be a gunfire breakfast at the Shepparton RSL, with all proceeds from the sale of egg and bacon rolls going to the Anzac Appeal.