Address by Major John Aaskov OAM (Retired)
ANZAC Day Observance – 25 April 2025

Each year on ANZAC Day, we pause to honour the courage, sacrifice, and service of Australian and New Zealand defence personnel across generations. It is a time of solemn remembrance, reflection, and gratitude. Today, as we commemorate the 110th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, we are reminded not only of the battlefield bravery of our soldiers but also of those who have carried the weight of service in less visible but equally demanding roles.

This morning’s address was delivered by Major John Aaskov OAM (Retired)—a distinguished veteran, leader, and advocate for those who have served under the banner of peace. His reflections turn our attention to the Australian men and women who have worn the blue helmets of United Nations Peacekeepers—those who, with courage and compassion, stepped into the world’s darkest corners not to wage war, but to protect the innocent and preserve peace.

Through stories of extraordinary service and quiet heroism, Major Aaskov invites us to honour a broader ANZAC legacy—one that reminds us that peacekeeping, too, requires extraordinary sacrifice.

His words are below.

We are here, one hundred and ten years after that fateful morning in Suvla Bay, at Gallipoli, to give thanks for the Australian and New Zealand service men and women who have put mind, body and soul in harm’s way to preserve our freedoms. Perhaps appropriately, the focus on ANZAC Day usually is on our warriors but, this morning, I would like to draw attention, also, to the thousands of Defence Force personnel who risk, and have risked, mind body and soul trying to get protagonists to turn their swords into ploughshares or at least not to turn their ploughshares into swords – those who have worn the blue helmet of a United Nations Peace Keeper.

 

Susan Stone, was born in Brisbane on 24 March 1961 and attended Cleveland State High School. She taught Sunday School at Trinity Uniting Church at Cleveland for fifteen years and, later, married Major Klaus Felsche in that church as well.

In 1982, Sue became a Petty Officer in the Royal Australian Naval Reserve and planned to join the Navy as an undergraduate medical student, but in 1983 she transferred to the Army

I met Major Sue Felsche, in 1992, when she was posted to the 1st Military Hospital at Yeronga as the Medical Officer in Charge of Clinical Services.

In 1993, Sue was posted to the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara and one month after arrival she was killed in a ‘plane crash while undertaking an inspection of U.N. medical outposts. She was the first Australian female soldier to die on overseas service since World War II. Her body was returned to Australia, and a military funeral was held at her Trinity Uniting Church at Cleveland and her name has been added to the memorial at the top of the drive in front of the Medical School at Herston.

During my military career, I had the privilege of working with three people who were part of the Australian Army Medical Contingent working in Rwanda in 1994 and 1995 but this morning I would like to talk about another who paid an enormous price for her role as a peace-keeper in that country.

The Australian Medical Contingent in Rwanda ran the United Nations Hospital in the capital Kigali and supported the broader United Nations Assistance Mission In Rwanda, which was tasked with trying to stabilise the African nation after a civil war had resulted in 800,000 Tutsi being killed by Hutus in just 100 days.

Captain Vaughan-Evans, a Medical Officer and member of this contingent, led a small outreach team to set up a Casualty Clearance Post at a camp for internally displaced people at Kibeho about 150 kilometres south-west of Kigali. The camp contained about 150,000 displaced persons living in squalid conditions and many of those in the camp, being run by the, now, Tutsi-led Rwanda People’s Army, were former Hutu militia, responsible for the Tutsi genocide.

When Vaughan-Evans, some Australian Army medical staff and her close protection detail arrived at the camp at Kibeho, she felt it looked like a concentration camp and they were not welcome. The most senior Rwanda People’s Army officer at the camp, and the man most likely responsible for the chaos, almost spat he was so angry that the Australians had trespassed on his domain and he punctuated each and every word he spoke with a pistol, finger on the trigger, and pointed at various members of the detail. However, despite this, access to the camp was negotiated.

The Australians found the shell of an old medical facility crammed full of people, hundreds of them with all sorts of injuries, some holding their faces together where they’d been macheted down the middle. Initially, the triage area was just a tarpaulin on the ground, the Army ambulance became an operating theatre and the truck carrying all the medical supplies was emptied and it became a makeshift ward.

The following day, following a massive tropical storm, the people in the camp made an attempt at a mass break-out but, tragically, they had not anticipated the retaliation that would ensue. A battalion of Rwandan Patriotic Army soldiers fired on them with automatic and semi-automatic rifles, 50-calibre machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Vaughan-Evans described it as the most horrendous event to witness, and given the very strict Rules of Engagement for the U.N. Peace Keepers, the Australians could only engage the Rwandan Patriotic Army soldiers carrying out the killing if they themselves came under direct fire. An estimated 5,000 people—men, women and children— were slaughtered.

Vaughan-Evans described one particularly harrowing episode -

“I had lost a child whose little body had been riddled with bullets. I’d struggled desperately hard to save this child and, as I was working, I looked up and within my field of vision was a gaggle of these Rwandan Patriotic Army soldiers laughing at my desperate efforts. As the child died I was overwhelmed. I stood up, I cocked my weapon—I was going to kill them. Fortunately, my Signaler ever so gently touched my arm and said, ‘Ma’am... you are the doctor’. At that point the doctor in me had died and my Signaler reminding me helped me so very much. Whilst I was numb, I moved to my next victim, and then the next and the next, and so it went.”

Vaughan-Evans was awarded the Medal for Gallantry for her actions during the Kibeho massacre but suffered decades of Post Traumatic Stress before she finally sought help. She said “It took 20 years for me to accept that I was never going to be able to save everyone at Kibeho”. One of the measures she took to manage her demons was to change her name. Today, she is known as Dr Alexandra Douglas and works as an Anaesthetist in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast.

Several years ago, in Vietnam, I met a French doctor who had worked with Medecin Sans Frontiers in this camp and when I mentioned my colleagues who had been members of the Medical Contingent in Rwanda, tears began to stream down his face. He had been offered a lift out of the camp when the Australians finally withdrew but had declined. A young Australian soldier pointed out, very plainly, the folly of his decision and man handled him into the back of one of the departing Australian vehicles. The French doctor now believes that but for the actions of this young soldier he would have been killed that evening.

In a couple of hours, Australian Peace Keepers posted to flash points in Africa and the Middle East will be holding their Anzac Day services so this morning as we recall the sacrifices of our warriors, let us pause also to remember the men and women of the Australian Defence Force who have worn the blue helmet of a Peacekeeper – the world so desperately needs peacekeepers.