The huge international military exercise Operation Talisman Sabre is underway in Australian waters (unfortunately with a tragic accident occurring yesterday) with beachheads involving more than 30,000 armed forces from 13 nations, but it’s also a personal reminder of what happened in the aftermath of one of the early war games involving US and Australian personnel about 15 years ago in Central Queensland.

This is a story that could have been lifted from the Hollywood movie series The Marine, crossed with TV’s The Bold and the Beautiful, except it actually happened. The plot has the lot – action, romance, passion, and intrigue, with the final chapter still a mystery today.

But one of the problems I faced as a freelance journo and newspaper columnist was me… I was involved in some of the plot myself.

It all started when a quietly spoken young African American man turned up at the Gladstone service business I managed, looking for work. I’ll wind back the clock and take up the story from there…

I needed an assistant to help keep the wheels turning and he seemed to fit the bill – a tall, fit looking 25 year old, who nervously handed me his resume, which I read with great interest.

Clyde is a former US Marine who resembles a young Denzel Washington. References from his superior officers and discharge papers show he had served with distinction in Iraq and other areas before completing his five-year military stint and resigning.

His resume detailed experience as an assault amphibious vehicle crewman/crew chief and military air traffic controller combined with Marine combat and military occupational training.

I told him his references are very impressive, but I’m wondering why a young bloke from North Carolina who has fought for his flag and country, is looking for a few hours of work in a place so far from friends and family. There has to be a woman involved…

Answering my thoughts, he replied that he was stationed here during the big military exercise Operation Talisman Sabre, and had met ‘a dancer’ at one of the city’s nightspots (a strip club). Romance blossomed and after returning to the US, he knew he had left his heart in this harbour city.

So he returned, moved in with his soul mate, and is now looking for some extra work. Any work, apparently. Another employer providing a casual job was supposedly in the process of handling a temporary work visa application on his behalf.

Any man who has served his country deserves some respect and what little help I can offer, so he gets the extra casual work with our business.

Over the next few weeks we become friends and he tells me more about Iraq in his own good time.

‘I think about it every day… I can’t get it out of my head,’ he tells me.

Not really knowing what to say, I ask what it was like.

‘Well, kinda like, you’re asleep in your house and someone sneaks in and blows up the kitchen, or the room next to where you’re sleeping and you’re wondering when it will be the room you’re sleeping in,’ he answers in his soft southern drawl, with a far off look in his eyes.

He tells me he believes America should never have become involved in the Iraq war (and history seems to have confirmed that).

One day just before Christmas, he turned up looking thoroughly dejected. According to him, the work visa application failed to eventuate, the Immigration Department was on his case and he has been told he has about one week to leave Australia or be arrested as an illegal immigrant. Detention and deportation were likely to follow.

I contacted the new owners of the business in Victoria, but they said there was too little time and not enough hours of employment for them to help at this stage.

I suggest some media exposure may help the authorities look at his situation more sympathetically.

‘You mean I should get on A Current Affair, John?’

‘Just might help, can’t do any harm. The new Labor Member might also be able to help get you some more time to sort things out,’ I added.

But with so little time, he flies out of Gladstone for Melbourne with several options in mind.

I’m not sure whether he will be allowed to choose, or if some bureaucrat will make the choice for him.

We have one brief phone conversation before his departure and I ask him if he’ll be coming back to work.

‘Maybe. I hope so.’ A pause, then, ‘Why don’t you write about me, I need help to stay here…’

He knew I was still doing some freelance writing but could that help?

A quick visit by Clyde to the US Embassy and immigration officials in Melbourne followed, and his deportation deadline was extended by little more than a week.

According to him, one option would have been to seek personal visa sponsorship on the basis of his romantic involvement with an Australian girl, but at a cost of more than $2,000 and with no guarantee of success or chance of a refund.

He says he was told this type of sponsorship was now the most difficult to obtain, in response to a tide of ‘mail order brides’ entering Australia.

A few days later on his return to Gladstone, I ask if he still wanted my help in drawing national media attention to his plight.

But he replied with a sigh and a note of resignation in his voice, ‘Why try to prolong the inevitable, John?’

So this time, for the first time, he has waved the white flag and arranged a flight back to the US.

But was that the end of the story? He told me he planned to organise a visa application as a skilled worker and return after several months. With his extensive military experience and references, as well as a citation for active service alongside our own troops in Iraq, I was hoping that next time, Australia will welcome him with open arms.

At our last meeting, he thanks me for my help and tells me:

‘You’re my only friend in Gladstone, John. You’re the only one who has listened to me…’

He mentions Iraq again, and the bad memories that still haunt him.

‘Did you lose any friends there?’ I ask.

‘Yes, I did.’

Stating the painfully obvious, I tell him that must have been bad.

A long pause, that familiar far-off look in his eyes, then, ‘Not as bad as losing them later.’

‘From injuries?’ I ask awkwardly.

‘Suicide, John, but I guess you could call that a war injury, their brains were all f***ed up… One friend whose birthday was on the same day as mine, threw himself in front of a truck. He was just 19…’

What can you say to that?

Anyway, I did write an article about Clyde but too late to make a difference.

One SMS textster replied with a blunt message: ‘Don’t give the Marines any sympathy’.

I wonder if she or he realised that without the Marines and the rest of the combined US forces, that text message probably would have been written in Japanese.

According to Clyde, the division he served with was actually formed in Australia during the second world war and its insignia includes the stars of The Southern Cross in recognition of this.

His parting words also reminded me of famous wartime General Douglas Macarthur, who kept his promise to return.

Meanwhile, I’ll extend my sympathy and respect wherever I see fit, and this young African American has earned both, in spades. A more apt title for his story would be The Bold and the Brave, but that’s also been taken.

My mind also travelled back to Clyde with the more recent debacle of the sudden withdrawal of US and Australian troops from Afghanistan, and the devastating effect this must have had on survivors of the long-running conflict there as well as locals loyal to our forces.

But I never heard from Clyde again and I can’t tell if his story ever had a happy ending. I hope it did and the Black Dog didn’t bite the way it has so many of his comrades in arms.

John Mikkelsen is a former newspaper editor, columnist, freelance writer and author of the Amazon Books memoir, Don’t Call Me Nev, which includes this chapter.