From a Cold Office Floor to Veteran X

There are songs that take months to write, and then there are songs that just spill out of you. Veteran X was one of those songs. It came out of me fast, almost as if it had been sitting there waiting my whole life to be written.

At the time, I was living in a tiny office space that I had secretly moved into after returning from Bali. I had no proper home, no kitchen, no real bed. Just a busted old lounge and later a swag rolled out on the cold floor. I would heat buckets of water to shower late at night after everyone had gone home. It was one of the toughest periods of my life. But that silence and loneliness became a strange kind of sanctuary. It gave me space to listen to my thoughts, and out of that came music that was raw, honest, and deeply personal.

That is where Veteran X was born.

My grandfather, Peter Kearney, WWII

A Childhood Fascination with War

My fascination with the military started when I was a kid. Back then, if you wanted to learn about something, you did not go online. You subscribed to magazines. I used to get The World at War delivered every month. I would pore over every page, reading about battles, strategies, weapons, and the people behind them.

Both my grandfathers served in World War Two. One of them had a mate everyone called Fat Harry, who had been in a Japanese concentration camp. They told stories about what they went through. The starvation, the rats, the cockroaches. I would sit there wide eyed, hanging on every word. My grandfather even gave me bits of war memorabilia, including a Nazi helmet that had been taken from a grave. From a young age those stories, that imagery, that history, were all around me.

Seeing Through the Lies

When the first Iraq war broke out, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and George Bush Senior sent troops in, I was old enough to start paying real attention. I was fascinated by the strategy and the technology, but also by the politics.

Then came 9/11, and everything changed. By that time I had matured enough to see through what the media was feeding us. I knew Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. I knew there were no weapons of mass destruction. I was living in London when the war started, and I still remember sitting on the couch watching the countdown to the first bombs being dropped on Baghdad. It was surreal, like they had turned war into a TV event.

There were people cheering, waving flags, proud of what was happening. But to me it felt wrong. I knew it was about oil and power, not freedom or justice. The more I read and listened, the clearer it became that the public was being manipulated. The United States had armed and funded groups like the Mujahideen years earlier, and now they were painting every Muslim as a terrorist. It was a mess, an endless cycle of cause and effect dressed up as righteousness.

Living in London in 2002 with my Aussie mate Nathan Goode

The Soldiers I Met

Years later I ended up sharing a house with a few guys who had served in the Australian Special Forces. Some of them had done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and later went back as private military contractors. The stories they told me were confronting. They talked about guarding poppy fields in Afghanistan and about the corruption and double standards they saw every day.

Many of them had gone over believing they were doing something noble, fighting for freedom and protecting people, but came back disillusioned. The only thing keeping them going was pride. Most eventually left the army and turned to private security work, where the money was better and the mission, at least, was clear. Get paid and stay alive.

Those conversations stayed with me. They were the final pieces of the puzzle that would eventually become Veteran X.

The first time I performed Veteran X, just after it was written.

Writing the Song

When Veteran X came out of me in that little office it was like opening a floodgate. The words were not laboured over. They just arrived, whole and clear. I did not need to think about rhymes or structure. The story told itself.

It is the story of a young Australian boy from the bush who joins the army full of pride and adventure, only to discover the truth behind the uniform. He realises that wars are not always fought for freedom and that the people who pay the price are rarely the ones who start them.

As the chorus says, Freedom is an easy word to say, when you don’t have to die.

It is not an anti-soldier song. It is a human song. It is about disillusionment, morality, and the lies we are told to make us feel like we are on the right side.

The Reaction

I was not sure how veterans would react. I expected backlash. Instead, the opposite happened. When I posted an early acoustic version online, it spread fast. Thousands of views, messages from veterans, from bikie clubs made up of former servicemen, and even from families who had lost loved ones. They did not hate it. They understood it because it spoke to something real.

What It Means Now

I have recorded Veteran X in a few different ways over the years. Acoustic, rock, even with big gang vocals. But none of them ever felt quite right until now. This version finally captures what the song was always meant to be. Honest, raw, and human.

You can stream Veteran X here
If you would like to support independent music directly, you can buy it from my website here
and get an instant MP3 download.

And if you want to wear the message loud and proud, you can grab a cool Veteran X shirt here.

Veteran X is not just a protest song. It is a reflection on pride, propaganda, and the cost of war, not only to soldiers, but to all of us. It is a story that began in a dusty country town, travelled through the corridors of world politics, and found its voice in a small office where I was sleeping on the floor, trying to rebuild my life.