Blood, sweat and tears: veterans' struggles laid bare

For Every Drop Shed in Anguish is composed of marble carved into drops of blood, sweat and tears. (HANDOUT/AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL)

When Ben Farinazzo finished his deployment in East Timor, he returned a completely different person, his wife says.

Australian Defence Force personnel had been sent to the Southeast Asian nation after violence erupted in the wake of its 1999 independence crisis.