Soldiers can have more difficulty coming to terms with killing others than facing the prospect of their own death in combat, Australian Army chaplain Ivan Grant says.
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He said this was it should be: "Sometimes it is necessary to kill to protect your country and the people you care about but killing should be hard; it should be a difficult thing to do.
"As army chaplains we journey through that with them [individual soldiers] and sometimes it as hard for us as it is for them."
Chaplain Grant said war was always terrible.
"Soldiers see things that make people want to know if there is a God and [if so] how can he allow this. Sometimes you just sit there and suffer with them, you share the pain."
Chaplain Grant, who was deployed to Iraq in 2004, comes from a family with a long defence history for whom Anzac Day has always been special.
His great uncle, Ivan William Grant, was killed on the Western Front on April 6, 1917, and his grandfather, Cecil Williams, was a Rat of Tobruk in World War II.
Chaplain Grant said today's army regarded such men as pioneers and an inspiration.
"Defence, in the 13 years I have been with it, has become very proactive in both trying to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and to recruit and engage them," he said.
"There is a desire to tell the untold story of black diggers, of Aboriginal men and women who have served in the past when they couldn't even vote.
"Their stories are amazing in that they were even allowed to get through [at a time when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders weren't permitted to enlist].
"Once they got over the barriers of being recruited they [Indigenous servicemen and women] were treated as equals. Now they are not just seen as equals, there is recognition their diverse culture and heritage actually adds something to the defence force."
Ivan William Grant served with the 53rd Battalion in France in early 1917.
"As the German army was withdrawing to the Hindenburg Line the 53rd was in pursuit," Chaplain Grant said. "He was killed by a shell on the 6th of April, 1917."
He said there was a special bond within the army between soldiers and the chaplain.
"There was a major attack on our base in Iraq [when I was there]," he said. "My role was to walk around and to be available. It is pastoral care but not [always] underpinned on spiritual beliefs."
The difference between a chaplain and the psych teams who can be brought in after soldiers have been exposed to a traumatic experience is simple and significant.
"We [the chaplains] engage with everybody," Chaplain Grant said. "We are [literally] embedded. If they are muddy and cold and wet then so are we."
