Former NRL player Andrew Hodge still waiting for Army to look after him after injuries in line of duty

ANDREW Hodge is one of few to have played top-flight rugby league and served his country in the army but, instead of being celebrated, he’s a victim.

Former rugby league player Andrew Hodge

HIS name is Andrew Hodge and he lives in complicated torment.

He will talk to his wife Monica and tell her something wonderful and she will slow down, the troubled plight of a wife, and with kind words she will tell him he told her that yesterday.

It confused him initially.

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Andrew Hodge is somebody few of us know but whom we all owe a great debt.

Former rugby league player Andrew Hodge

He played rugby league for Gold Coast in 1995 and Newcastle the season after and failed to crack it. So he left looking for something meaningful and that was the Army’s special forces and life as a sniper.

The world was a different place then. The two towers stood tall in New York. There was safety in crowds, nothing else, and bag checks at sporting grounds searched for nothing more sinister than soft drinks.

We say this now because Anzac Day, which unifies this country more than any day on our calendar, comes next Tuesday and the NRL is celebrating its Anzac Round.

Andrew Hodge and his bike while serving in Afghanistan. Source: Supplied

Hodge is one of the few to have done the elite level at both but, instead of being celebrated, he remains among the victims.

Pain and depression are daily battles in his life.

It began on tour in Afghanistan in 2008 when a rock shifted under his tyre and he and the quad-bike he was riding tumbled down a mountainside.

He suffered fractured bones across his body. It tore nerves in his neck and shoulder. The tyre rolled across his head, causing brain damage.

Andrew Hodge during his playing days with the Gold Coast. Source: Supplied

Later they found a bone chip between his C5 and C6 vertebrae.

Hodge returned to Australia with promises of care, finally discharged in 2010. He called last August distraught. Gripped in his hand was a letter from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

“I note that both children were born after your accepted injury, therefore, you and Mrs Hodge would have been aware of your limitations and parental responsibilities with regards to the care children require,” stated the letter.

“Although child care assistance has been previously approved this does not fit with the MRCA policy and guidelines nor community standards in regards to caring for children when both parents are not working/studying.”

Andrew Hodge says he has received insufficient assistance from the government since returning.

The DVA cut Monica’s attendant care allowance and their child care allowance. There was no choice but to write about it.

Then the night before the story, the printers began rolling at Chullora with that great rumble that says news is coming, a call from out of the blue arrived at the Hodge household.

The DVA expressed dismay at his plight and promised change. Within days, their child care assistance was restored.

Many more promises were made in the days following and for the first time in many months a relief filled Andrew Hodge’s voice. For a man in constant pain, relief is everything, and such was its size Hodge wanted to tell everyone how the DVA had come to his assistance. But he was warned to be patient. All he had were promises.

Now it is six months later and nothing more has changed.

Now Hodge, who fought for this country, whose game is celebrating that sacrifice this weekend, is more frustrated than he ever was.

His advocate was a tireless man called Frank Benfield who fought hard.

Benfield worked on the Veteran’s Review Board for 13 years and was a member of the Prime Ministerial Advisory Council and said on the record Hodge had severe problems.

Now Benfield has retired, though, and Hodge has to bring his new caseworker up to speed. With a memory that fails and a drawer full of conflicting letters from the Defence Department and the Department of Veteran Affairs it is close to fulltime work to comprehend. He feels like he is always talking to someone new.

Andrew Hodge suffered serious injuries while serving his nation.

Hodge was on the phone again this week, beaten down by frustration. The relief in his voice long gone and his complaints came from 40 directions.

He believes the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Dan Tehan listens and remains sympathetic but he is not being told the complete truth.

Hodge had in his hand a letter from the DVA telling his new advocate that caseworkers were in regular contact with his doctor, co-ordinating Hodge’s needs. In truth, used loosely here in relation to government departments, they were fulfilling the first law of the public service which is to document empty work to show movement.

“I spoke to my GP after I got that,” he says of this letter to the Minister. “He’s had one phone call in six years.”

The only regular action he gets now are the defeats. “Their replies are full of lies,” he says.

Recently he finally got granted access to massages and acupuncture to deal with his pain. But the Army had already classified him an invalid because of his brain injury and so taken his driver’s licence. And the DVA won’t pay for his travel, so the treatments are again irrelevant.

The DVA’s behaviour seems to follow the course of the big insurance companies. Employ delay tactics to frustrate their liabilities.

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And that’s what Hodge seems to be to them, a liability. It is the only way to explain his daily struggle to live a life pain free. That is all he wants. Constant staff turnovers mean he is forever retelling his story, always going back to the start, always starting again at the next switch.

We celebrate this weekend for the sacrifices that many made.

And yet we overlook those still paying for it because it seems to be an inconvenience, a story that fails to fit the narrative.

It is our shame.