14/09/2026
“My story didn’t finish when I discharged. It just changed direction.”
Glen Barton was only 17 when he joined the Australian Army in 2000, celebrating his 18th birthday at Kapooka. He wasn’t searching for an ordinary career—he wanted adventure, challenge and the chance to belong to something bigger than himself.
During 12 years as a Combat Engineer, Glen served across Australia and overseas, including in Afghanistan. He helped communities recover from the 2011 Brisbane floods and trained other soldiers for some of the most demanding environments imaginable.
But what Glen carried most deeply from his service was something less visible: mateship, purpose and the certainty that his people would always turn up when it mattered.
Today, Glen has found a new way to serve—as a partner, a father and a social worker helping people through some of the most difficult moments of their lives.
This is Glen’s story of service, connection and discovering that purpose can change shape without ever disappearing.
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I joined the Australian Army in 2000. I was young, like 17 years old. I had my 18th at Kapooka. I certainly didn’t have my life mapped out all I ever wanted to be was a soldier.
I don’t remember having some great patriotic speech in my head about why I wanted to join. I wanted adventure. I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to belong to something. I wanted to be like my grandfather who I share my name with.
I became a Combat Engineer and spent the next 12 years in the Army. Those years took me around Australia and overseas, including Afghanistan with Reconstruction Task Force 4, Operation RELAX, training in Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, closer to home, helping during the Brisbane floods and storms in 2011.
But when I think about my Army service now, it’s funny because the things that come back aren’t necessarily the things you’d expect. It’s the stupid conversations with your mates. The laughing when you’re absolutely shagged. Being filthy, tired and uncomfortable and somehow still finding something funny. It’s sitting around waiting for something to happen, complaining about absolutely everything, and then immediately getting on with the job when it does. I don’t think I understood how important that was until I didn’t have it anymore.
The Army gave me a tribe before I probably even understood that I needed one. Mateship wasn’t something we sat around talking about. In fact, if you’d tried to have a serious conversation about anything serious back then, you probably would have been absolutely destroyed for it. We just were mates. You knew the bloke beside you would be there. You could give each other absolute hell, argue, fight and take the p**s relentlessly, but when things weren’t good, you didn’t need to ask whether your mates would turn up. They just did.
Afghanistan is obviously a significant part of my story. I’m proud that I deployed and I’m proud of what we did. But I’m equally proud of some of the things I did back home.
The Brisbane floods stick with me for a different reason. We were helping our own communities. People had lost homes, possessions and pieces of their lives, and we could actually get in there and do something useful. There was no great fanfare required. There was a job that needed doing, so we did it. That’s probably the Combat Engineer mentality that has never really left me. We work out the problem, find a way through it and just get on with it.
Training soldiers to go to war was another thing that sticks with me. Day in and day out for 3 years I trained combat engineers to be searchers in the most inhospitable place on earth. It took everything out of me and for a number of years I hated what it did to me. But now I look back on it and realise it was the most rewarding job I did in the Army.
I discharged in 2012 after 12 years of full-time service. I thought I was leaving a job. I didn’t realise I was leaving an identity.
The Army had been my entire adult life. I knew how to be a soldier. I knew how to be an engineer. I knew how to operate in that world. Then suddenly I wasn’t in it anymore. Nobody tells you how strange that can feel.
In the Army, you know where you belong. You know your role. You know the people around you. There’s structure and there’s purpose, even when you’re complaining about both of them.
Civilian life was different. I had jobs. I got on with life. I had a family to look after. From the outside I probably looked like I had transitioned. Inside, it took much longer.
For a long time, I think I was trying to work out where I fitted and what replaced the sense of purpose I’d had in the Army. And the older I’ve become, the more I’ve realised that my service didn’t only affect me. My family has carried parts of it too. That’s something I wish we spoke about more when we talk about veterans. The soldier wears the uniform, but the family lives with the service. They live with the absences. They live with the injuries. They live with the bloke who might not sleep properly, who can be stubborn as hell, who sometimes deals with problems by trying to push through them rather than talking about them. And sometimes they’re the ones who see that you’re struggling before you’re prepared to admit it yourself.
I’ve also learned that being tough and being okay aren’t necessarily the same thing. The Army made me very good at functioning. Keep moving. Solve the problem. Don’t become the problem. Those qualities have helped me enormously throughout my life, but I’ve also had to learn that not everything can be fixed by simply pushing harder.
For me, finding purpose again has been incredibly important. I eventually found my way into social work. On paper, Combat Engineer to social worker probably looks like a fairly strange career change. To me, it actually makes a lot of sense. My job now involves walking into people’s lives when things aren’t going particularly well. Sometimes they’re angry. Sometimes they’re frightened. Sometimes everything is chaotic and there isn’t a perfect answer. I realised that I still rely on things the Army taught me all those years ago. Stay calm. Read what’s happening around you. Look after your people. Don’t promise something you can’t deliver. Make a decision when a decision needs to be made. And when things go wrong, don’t disappear. Do it all again the next day.
Maybe that’s what service means to me now. I don’t wear the uniform anymore, but I still want what I do to matter.
I’m now in my forties. I’m a partner and a dad. I’ve got a big family and a completely different life from the young bloke who walked into the Army in 2000. There are physical reminders of those years, and there are other things that are harder to see. But I wouldn’t remove the Army from my story even if I could. It gave me some of my closest mates. It gave me experiences most people will never have. It gave me confidence, resilience and a very dark sense of humour. It also gave me things I’ve had to learn how to carry.
That’s part of being a veteran too. I think that’s why the veteran community still matters so much to me. You can sit beside another veteran you’ve never met before and within five minutes there can be a familiarity there.
Different service, different unit, different generation, completely different experience but something connects. You don’t have to explain everything. Sometimes that’s all someone needs. A place where they don’t have to explain themselves. That’s why organisations like the Veterans Wellbeing Foundation matter. Not because veterans need to be rescued, but because people need connection, purpose and somewhere they belong.
I don’t want the wider community to look at veterans and automatically see damaged people. Most veterans I know don’t want sympathy. They want opportunity and they want purpose. They want their experience to count for something. And when someone is having a rough time, sometimes the best thing another person can do is simply turn up and stay around. That’s the version of mateship I’ve carried with me from the Army.
When I look back now, I’m incredibly proud of the young bloke who joined in 2000, even though he had absolutely no idea where that decision was going to take him. I’m proud that I served. I’m proud that I deployed. I’m proud of being a Combat Engineer. But I’m also proud that my story didn’t finish when I discharged in 2012. It just changed direction.
I’m still figuring parts of it out. I’m still carrying parts of the Army with me and I probably always will.
