Author(s): Dan Box

History

Jake Kovco was the first casualty, the first Australian soldier to die in Iraq. If the Bali bombing had shown Australians could fall victim to what many said was the defining international threat - Islamic terrorism - his death showed Australians could die as part of the defining, armed, response. The personal tragedy of his fatal shooting became a national and political sensation. The Prime Minister had a front-row seat at his funeral. But Jake's death was not that simple. Evidence from the barracks room in which he died was lost. The Military Police themselves wrote large parts of the witness statements from other soldiers in his unit. Jake's body went missing and that of a Bosnian carpenter brought home it its place. The military inquiry that followed was dismissed as a cover-up by his family and a failure by the lawyers involved. Carry Me Home is the definitive account of the life and death of the soldier at the centre of this maelstrom. Based on exclusive interviews with members of Jake's family, the army, politicians and key police investigators, this book reveals the systemic failures of the military bureaucracy to which Jake gave his life. A bureaucracy that failed to return his body to Australia, failed to properly investigate his death and repeatedly failed to hold fair and efficient inquiries into these failures. Worst of all, a bureaucracy that was known to be failing long before Jake left for Iraq. Thought-provoking, detailed and gripping, Carry Me Home provides the inside story of the two-year investigation into Jake's death. In doing so, it exposes the dark underbelly of the military establishment that has become one of the fundamental components of Australia's idea of itself.