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Well Done, Those Men: memoirs of a Vietnam veteran
Well Done, Those Men: memoirs of a Vietnam veteran
Well Done, Those Men: memoirs of a Vietnam veteran
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Well Done, Those Men: memoirs of a Vietnam veteran

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In this intensely personal account, Barry Heard draws on his own experiences as a young conscript, along with those of his comrades, to look back at life before, during, and after the Vietnam War. The result is a sympathetic vision of a group of young men who were sent off to war completely unprepared for the emotional and psychological impact it would have on them. It is also a vivid and searingly honest portrayal of the author’s post-war, slow-motion breakdown, and how he dealt with it.

Well Done, Those Men attempts to make sense of what Vietnam did to the soldiers who fought there. It deals with the comic absurdity of their military training and the horror of the war they fought, and is unforgettably moving in recounting what happened to Barry and his comrades when they returned home to Australia. As we now know, most Vietnam vets had to deal with a community that shunned them, and with their own depression, trauma, and guilt. Barry Heard’s sensitive account of his long journey home from Vietnam is a tribute to his mates, and an inspiring story of a life reclaimed.

PRAISE FOR BARRY HEARD

Well Done, Those Men is a human, moving, and brutally honest account of one man's emotionally racked journey from naive country boy to jungle soldier, psychologically scarred veteran, and ultimately triumphant victor over the demons within.' The Herald Sun

‘Heard gives meaning and sense to overused cliches such as “stolen youth”, “buried horrors” and even “mateship”.’ The Age

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 4, 2005
ISBN9781921753077
Well Done, Those Men: memoirs of a Vietnam veteran
Author

Barry Heard

Barry Heard was conscripted in Australia’s first national-service ballot, and served in Vietnam as an infantryman and radio operator. After completing his national service, he returned home, where he found himself unable to settle down. He had ten different jobs in his first ten years back, worked as a teacher for a further ten years, and then held several mid-managerial posts before succumbing to a devastating breakdown due to severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Since recovering, Barry has decided to concentrate on his writing. His short stories have received several prizes, including the Sir Edmund Herring Memorial Award and the Sir Weary Dunlop Prize. Barry’s books include the bestselling memoir Well Done, Those Men, its prequel, The View from Connor’s Hill, and the World War I novel Tag. He lives with his family in rural Victoria.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It was not what I expected. I joined the US Air Force the day the Tet Offensive of 1968 began. I couldn't know the the job I would be trained for would preclude any direct involvement with the Viet Nam War. So I never saw combat but, many of the friends that I made after I left the service were directly involved. This book gave me an insight that I didn't know or ever understood abut their experiences. I don't think I have ever shed as many tears just reading a book. Thank you for your honesty and willingness to describe the pain and frustration of what PTSD is about. Well done, this man!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
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    Excellent I was pig

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Well Done, Those Men - Barry Heard

Praise for

Well Done, Those Men

‘This is a powerful, beautifully written book that should be read by everyone who wants to understand the evil, senseless personal damage done by war.’

— Bruce Elder, The Sydney Morning Herald

Well Done, Those Men is a human, moving, and brutally honest account of one man’s emotionally racked journey from naïve country boy to jungle soldier, psychologically scarred veteran, and ultimately triumphant victor over the demons within.’

— Greg Thom, The Herald Sun

A ‘remarkable book’.

— The Newcastle Herald

‘Barry Heard’s book is the autobiography of a Vietnam veteran, but it’s so perceptive it represents a whole generation ... The book is very well written, clear in its descriptions, self-aware in its assessments and, surprisingly, not depressing to read. It is amazing that Barry Heard has been able to get all this traumatic material down so vividly, and to be able to interpret his experiences so convincingly.’

— Patrick Morgan, Quadrant

‘Heard writes honestly and painfully of that soiled era.’

— Tony Maniaty, The Weekend Australian

‘Heard gives meaning and sense to overused cliches such as stolen youth, buried horrors and even mateship.’

— Lorien Kaye, The Age

‘As devastating as Heard’s account of the war undoubtedly is, it’s the last third of the book — wherein he returns to a country that seems embarrassed to acknowledge his existence, and tries to deal with his shattered psyche with little support from an uncomprehending family and an ever-decreasing number of friends — that packs the biggest emotional wallop.’

— Terry Oberg, The Courier Mail

‘This is a searingly honest account of one man’s battle to overcome his tormented past in an unpopular war and to recover from a complete breakdown.’

— Ros Sydes, The Examiner

‘Vietnam veteran Barry Heard has written an inspiring story about a life reclaimed.’

— Sue Wallace, The Border Mail

‘Heard’s recounting of his Vietnam tour is chilling. But it is the last third of the book that really hits home. In less than 100 pages, Heard describes 30 years of hell … this is an important book on a still hidden topic, and one that deserves a wide audience.’

— Tim Coronel, Australian Bookseller & Publisher

Well Done, Those Men is highly recommended, as a glimpse into Australia 40 years ago, as an honest account of fighting in Vietnam, and as an entertaining and thought-provoking read.’

The Canberra Times

‘This book will give comfort to many veterans and their families that they are not alone in dealing with the mental scars of war, and for others it will teach and guide us to how we, as a community, must respond to their needs.’

— Mark Sullivan, Secretary, Department of Veteran Affairs

Scribe Publications

WELL DONE, THOSE MEN

Barry Heard was conscripted in the first national service ballot, and served in Vietnam as an infantryman and radio operator. After completing his national service he returned to Australia, where he found himself unable to settle down. He had ten different jobs in his first 10 years back, worked as a teacher for a further 10 years, and then held several mid-managerial posts before succumbing to a devastating breakdown due to severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Since recovering, Barry has decided to concentrate on his writing. His short stories have received several prizes, including the Sir Edmund Herring Memorial Award and the Sir Weary Dunlop Prize. Well Done, Those Men is his first book. He lives with his family in rural Victoria.

WELL

DONE,

THOSE

MEN

MEMOIRS OF A VIETNAM VETERAN

BARRY HEARD

SCRIBE

Melbourne

Scribe Publications Pty Ltd

PO Box 523

Carlton North, Victoria, Australia 3054

Email: info@scribepub.com.au

First published by Scribe 2005

Reprinted 2005, 2006

This edition published 2007

Reprinted 2007, 2009

Copyright © Barry Heard 2005, 2006, 2007

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

Text designed and typeset in 11/15.5pt Sabon by Miriam Rosenbloom

Cover designed by Peter Long

Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

Front cover image: Barry Heard’s mates heading home, their tour of duty over, on board a Caribou aircraft that has just taken off from Nui Dat, Vietnam

Photograph courtesy of the author

Back cover image: Connors Hill, East Gippsland, Victoria, Australia

Photograph © Peter Firus, Flagstaffotos

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication data

Heard, Barry.

Well done, those men.

Rev. ed.

9781921753077 (e-Book.)

1. Heard, Barry. 2. Vietnam War, 1961-1975 - Personal

narratives, Australian. 3. Soldiers - Australia -

Biography. 4. Vietnam War, 1961-1975 - Veterans -

Biography. 5. Australia - Armed Forces - Biography. I.

Title.

959.7043394

www.scribepublications.com.au

To my wife Lyn and my children John, Denise, and Simon,

who have lived much of this story with me.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Beginnings

PART I: TRAINING

Recruit Training, Puckapunyal 1966

Infantry Corps Training, 3TB Singleton NSW

My New Home: 7RAR, Puckapunyal

Canungra

Exercises Barrawinga and Nilla Qua

Shoalwater Bay, Queensland

PART II: VIETNAM

Welcome to Vietnam

The New Me

The 5RAR Experience

7RAR, Vietnam

The Battalion’s First Operation

In the Jungle

Operation Ballarat

Return to Base Camp

Last Days

PART III: HOME

Where’s Home?

Melbourne Lessons

No Time for Exams

The Long Way Home

1992

1993

1994

1995

The Aftermath

Heidelberg

Back to School

Afterword

Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION

REPORTS, STUDIES, AND COMMITTEES OF INQUIRY have shown that Vietnam veterans are an unhealthy lot, and that our children are at high risk of ill-health as well. For most of my life, as it happens, I have had good physical health. But therein lies the confusion. In fact, I have been very sick. My illness isn’t measured by my pulse rate or my cholesterol levels. I haven’t been a drunk in years, I eat well, and my doctor always compliments me on my fitness. My illness has been in my head, as a result of memories I carry around with me. Some I found repulsive, sickening, and disgusting. They made me angry — very angry, at times. Others were so sad I would rate them as the most painful things I have ever experienced. The good memories were swamped. I was rarely able to plug into them.

For years after returning from Vietnam, I kept my illness hidden with long hours of work, study, sporting pursuits, and anything that produced total exhaustion and allowed me to fall into a bed and sleep. It was a successful ploy. In the early years I had endless energy and lived as a recluse. Then I married, kept to my demanding schedule, and continued to live in a cone. On the surface, I am well educated, have had a successful career, and my family are to be admired. But I was wearing out; my resilience to the flashbacks and nightmares was weakening. Two hours’ sleep a night, or sometimes four, was the norm. I became hyper-vigilant, wary of crowded places and doorways, and my general physical health deteriorated.

Other veterans I knew well were in mental health care or struggling to work at a job. Some were close mates — blokes I went through Vietnam with — and their deterioration frightened me. Then there were the suicides, and others who died too young. It was becoming all too common. I was no longer able to hide Vietnam from myself. It was similar to when I first returned. There was too much happening, but this time I wasn’t able to shut it out by working longer hours and studying. It never occurred to me, even though I was told, that I could get help. I considered mental illness or a failure to cope as a weakness. This was a warped idea I held and grew up with; men just get on with it.

The warning signals were there, particularly when I made appointments with my doctor after I started suffering chest pains. Every visit found my heart to be sound. I was declared fit, but exhausted. Then one night I collapsed. I knew I was dying, and I now believe I welcomed the event. Obviously I survived, but the episode left me with many problems and the life of a loser. It was hard. The changes required to get my life back to some form of normality were daunting. I had no strength, mentally or physically. But I had a vague will to live. Perhaps more important was the fact that I didn’t want to die that way — ever. It wasn’t right or fair to those around me. I wanted to be me … whoever that was.

This book is about a series of events that covers most of my life. Some, particularly at the beginning, I enjoyed writing about, and I hope you will smile along as I did when I wrote them. Writing about them brought the memory of the pleasure I experienced at the time.

Then there are those powerful moments and events that I wanted to take to my grave. My putting pen to paper about these incidents and torrid times in my life was an attempt to finally purge many demons. It started as a journal, and then I connected events into short stories or chapters of my life. With some hesitation, I showed a piece to a psychiatrist. He encouraged my writing, which led me to open up about my deep guilt over matters that soldiers are reluctant to share. For me, this was a first. Usually such revelations took endless patience and cajoling from the psychiatrist, or the security of a safe haven like the one that was offered at the psychiatric ward at Heidelberg hospital, where I was a patient for a time.

I never planned to put this work into print. I simply felt that my family, particularly my children and some very close friends, would be able to understand me a little better after reading what I had struggled to write and, until recently, had refused to say. Even then, my attempts at verbalising my thoughts and feelings, particularly about Vietnam, would always be cut off by tears and a dry throat that refused to let the words flow.

But good fortune has been my companion for the last eight years. I have had a caring wife and family, along with good professional help. Slowly I have regained strength after nearly allowing death to take away my pain and experience. Gradually I wrote the frightening stories, in between writing about the better times.

My fear when writing about my painful memories was that if I touched on the Vietnam War, or the protests that followed, I would pay for it later that night. For many years I had tried unsuccessfully to push intrusive flashbacks of those experiences from my mind. All too often those fleeting visions were signals that the nightmares would be returning. They were violent episodes that would wake me, sweating in a wet bed and petrified. Then I would bewilder those close to me because I would offer no explanation.

Finally, I became able to write about the dark times without nightmares. Today, most people I meet are repulsed by war. But war is often only a small part of the battle that determines the rest of a soldier’s life. That is what this book is about.

BEGINNINGS

I WAS BORN in Melbourne in 1945, the second of three boys. Four months before my younger brother was born, when I was 17 months old, my father died. Despite this family tragedy, I grew up happily in the outer suburb of Ringwood, where we lived until I was nine years old. Of my early youth I have nothing but fond memories — of school, the matinees, the tuck shop, neighbours, and fun. Life was a treat. The weekly arrivals of the horse-drawn bread cart and the iceman were special events that we waited for with excitement, as it meant a slice of fresh bread to savour or a lump of ice to suck on. Come weekends, there would be a trip to the Saturday-afternoon movies in the Ringwood Town Hall, where Hopalong Cassidy and Tarzan righted the world’s wrongs. Afterwards, for threepence, we could buy enough chips for the two of us.

I still recall my big brother doing well in the annual billycart race down Greenwood Avenue — which was some achievement, as Ringwood was a city. There was always something happening. The last exciting thing I remember is standing beside the railway line in 1954 and waving a flag frantically as the new Queen and her husband rushed past. I didn’t realise they were at the rear of the train, and managed only a fleeting glance as I turned to leave.

Sadly, after my older brother Ian died in an accident, our family moved to Tongio in far-east Gippsland. My mother had grown up there as a child. It wasn’t even a town. There was a sign that said ‘Tongio’ on the side of a narrow dirt road in the middle of a group of farms, and the post office was a spare room in someone’s house. It was sixteen miles from Omeo, an old gold-mining town located just below the snow line of the Victorian Alps. The entire area is called the ‘High Country’, but that is a latter-day tag. One thing Tongio certainly was — remote.

For me, the move was terrible. My younger brother and I travelled up from Melbourne in my new dad’s 1938 Chevrolet ute (my mother had just remarried). It took four hours to reach Bairnsdale, which was a large regional town. Then the road headed due north into the rugged Great Dividing Range. Both of us vomited to the point of exhaustion with carsickness from Bairnsdale to Swifts Creek, a slow three-hour grind. We shared the back with a dog, a goat, and furniture. It was a dirt road, narrow, and had bends all the way. The dust was choking.

It was just on dark when we first arrived at a deserted house on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. I could just make out an old weatherboard house in a huge paddock. There were no neighbours. I rushed up onto the veranda and opened the door, which didn’t have a lock. Frantically, I slid my hand up and down the wall near the architrave, trying to turn on the light. I soon found out that there was no switch, no lights, no power, no hot water, no radio, and no toilet. Well, that’s not quite true: there was something out the back that was called a dunny. It was halfway up a hill about fifty yards away, and it had a door with a latch that refused to stay shut. Admittedly, once inside, there was a magnificent view over the valley, but this scary, small cell-like room had a very deep hole under a seat that hosted redback spiders and a foul smell.

There were many wild animals prowling the paddocks. Some were called Hereford cattle; others, merino sheep. In the bush, which was in every direction on the border of this small farming district, were wild kangaroos. They roamed the country in the dark, and were capable of attacking me and tearing out my guts. At least, that’s what the kids at my new one-teacher school told me. There were fifteen of them. These bush kids were different. They were quieter than city kids, and spoke a lot like grown-ups at times. They were concerned about the weather, the lack of rain, or severe frosts. They rode and walked long distances to school, and seemed to have endless chores to do and no time for hanging around after school. I hated Tongio, the bush, the school … everything. Ringwood was my paradise lost.

Some of those problems disappeared when the Tongio School was burnt to the ground after I had been there only 18 months. As a result, our family had to move just down the road to a small two-bedroom house on the Tambo River at Doctors Flat. I then attended Swifts Creek Primary School. It was much bigger: some of the classes held over a dozen kids. I felt more at ease in this bigger school. I made a couple of mates, and soon become involved in the earthly pursuits of kick-to-kick, marbles, and cricket. Slowly, I ventured into the bush and explored the river. I gained skills such as a good eye, and never got lost in the mountains. Within a couple of years I loved to camp out with my horse, some mates, a rifle, the camp oven, and a First World War canvas sleeping-bag. I became adept at trapping rabbits, hunting wombats, and fishing. I enjoyed trekking for days into the unknown, and saw some amazing wildlife.

However, like most boys, my career path was set out for me: leave at the end of year ten, or Proficiency as it was called, and get a job. Most would work in the local sawmill, some would return to the farm, and the odd one would get an apprenticeship. The only kids pursuing an education had left the area years earlier, and went to private schools in Melbourne and Geelong. Most of them were boys.

In late October 1960, I left school and worked with my step dad, who was a plumber. Naturally, I didn’t pass my final year at school, but what use was an education?

After eight months working with my father, I was told that I would be moving to Ensay, which was a farming community. I would live on the property from Monday to Friday as a farm labourer. It took me over an hour to get to the farm on my horse, but the job was a wonderful experience. At the end of each day, I showered and dressed up for tea. It was usually a large, three-course meal. During the meals, discussions would centre on breeding, pastures, and management decisions. There was never any swearing. At least one night a week, one of us would be involved on a committee. They were fine people, excellent farmers, and very involved in the community. I was treated like a son.

The Omeo shire was huge, and spread out over 50-odd miles from end to end. The main towns were Benambra, Omeo, Swifts Creek, and Ensay. Everyone knew everyone else. These isolated communities thrived because people supported each other. They contained many diverse organisations. In a bushfire, for example, the locals would marshal their many skills, and never needed to depend on outside volunteers. Somehow, food would be prepared for such emergencies, and tractors with water tankers on trailers would always be at the ready. I remember leaving a cricket match along with both teams to fight a grass fire at Omeo. Once we’d helped put it out, we returned to the game and kept playing.

I still have a vivid memory of how close knit this community was after a young local man, who had been a fellow footballer, was killed in a single-car accident. Hundreds attended the funeral; it was impossible to get into the church during his funeral service. Then, at the cemetery, I saw a display that summed up the locals. Initially, I walked in with the rest of the footballers, and stood there wondering what the correct procedure or protocol was. How was I meant to look? What was I meant to say? Then, as the coffin was lowered into the ground, it seemed that the entire community started to grieve as one. There were tears, hugging, touching, support, and love. Distressed young people like me were cared for, and our dear friend’s soul was sent off with all the love this little community could muster. There was no set-out ceremony; it was done just right, if there is such a thing.

During my five years at Ensay I played footy, cricket, and badminton; helped run the scouts and Young Farmers; and was a projectionist at the local picture theatre. There was a high expectation that young people would get involved. I now realise this was different from larger cities and other regional places in the state of Victoria. But we had no public electric power, or SEC, as it was called. Consequently, there was no television — it wasn’t available in the district until 1968. We could only entertain ourselves within the district, as it was too far to travel to other shires.

By the time I was nineteen, in 1964, I had a steady girlfriend, a young woman I’d been seeing regularly for several years. Socially, my life was hectic. There was always a dance, a barbeque after the footy or cricket, woolshed dances, Young Farmers’ balls, and debutante balls. Most young people had no choice; we learned how to dance. Although owning your own car was rare, when I turned eighteen I, like most, was given the family car keys.

My life was good. It was simple. I had been reared in a community that fostered cooperation, the nurturing of its young people, and responsibility to others as a priority. Others my age were on committees, organised annual events, and did a lot of voluntary work. Looking back, I believe it was like growing up in the late 1930s, probably 25 years behind the rest of the state. The modern era simply hadn’t hit the Omeo shire. It was like a void. Amongst young people, there were few drunks or louts, and little swearing. There wasn’t time for that. I was content. Admittedly, I had no plans; maybe I thought about buying some land one day, shearing, or doing some droving. I honestly can’t recall.

Then, out of the blue, I received a letter, a very official letter in a brown envelope, informing me that my number had been drawn in the ballot for National Service. I was balloted for the first intake. Conscription had rarely been mentioned at home or on the farm where I worked. I guess I’d assumed it wouldn’t happen to me, like so many things involving youth. But I’d been drawn in the barrel, and the letter told me I’d been selected, providing I passed the necessary tests.

Apart from feeling a sense of mild panic, I had no idea what it all meant. I read what little I could about it, and none of what I read appealed to me. I was the first person called up in our district, so there was no one to refer to.

A second letter stated that I had to attend the Bairnsdale Medical Centre for a check-up. On the due date, Dad drove me down the mountains to the surgery. It took over two hours. I hadn’t been carsick for years, but when we arrived I felt quite crook. There were quite a few blokes being assessed but, luckily, my name came up early. The nurse asked me to remove my clothes to my undies. The doctor mumbled my name and a few other details to confirm who I was, then looked up.

‘Jesus,’ he said bluntly. ‘How long have you had that rash?’

‘I’ve never seen it before,’ I replied. It was all over my chest.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Crook as a dog.’

‘I guess you shook hands with everyone out there?’ he asked accusingly.

‘Yes,’ I answered, confused.

‘Well, you’re in the advanced stages of German measles, young man. Get out, go home, and don’t go near anyone, particularly pregnant women!’ he snapped.

I got dressed and left, anxious. My boss’s wife was pregnant at the time, and I had seen her that very day.

Months passed with no word from the government, and I felt with relief that I must have failed or been rejected. My mates certainly reckoned I was a reject. But in October 1965 another letter arrived, requiring me to turn up for another medical appointment. This time I passed, and was set to go into the army in February 1966, on decimal currency day, as part of the third intake of National Servicemen. I had just turned twenty-one.

Looking back, my being called up and going away for two years was never an issue for my parents, my bosses, or the locals. The National Service debate was never a topic of argument or discussion. It was endorsed by the Country Party, so that was that. Typically, the Ensay community organised a send-off party for me a few nights before I was due to leave. There was a band called ‘The Diamonds’, and the hall was decorated with flowers and streamers. It was the way things were done back then. There were over two hundred people there, a big proportion of the small local community, and many nice things were said. For the first time, some of the old diggers came over and spoke to me. I felt privileged.

There’d been a lot of handshakes and dancing, and a generous supper as usual. I didn’t know it, but a large envelope had been passed around. Prior to my send-off, the word had been circulated: Bring no presents, just a small donation. When I returned home that night, the envelope contained more money than I had earned in the previous twelve months as a farm labourer.

Although I felt an obscure sense of duty, I wasn’t happy to be leaving the small, isolated community of Ensay in Victoria to enter National Service. Several days later, I definitely wasn’t happy …

PART 1

TRAINING

RECRUIT TRAINING, PUCKAPUNYAL 1966

THE MAIL BUS from Swifts Creek to Bairnsdale was a slow, winding trip. I only had a small bag with a few things in it. Those were the instructions. As the first person called up from our district, I had no idea what to expect or what lay ahead. If I had, I might never have hopped onto the bus. I was going to spend the night in a hotel in Bairnsdale and catch the early-morning train to Melbourne the next day.

There were five of us at the station at Bairnsdale the following morning, and our instructions were brief: report to the CSM at Spencer Street Station. Nobody explained that this referred to the company sergeant major.

What was a CSM, we wondered? City stationmaster? Catholics’ Special Mass? Coffee, scones, and a muffin? We decided we would just follow the crowd when we got there. The train picked up new recruits all the way down. On arrival in Melbourne, an army bloke greeted us, walking very stiffly. His uniform was so starched it squeaked. A couple in our much larger group muttered to each other.

‘Looks like a green emu.’

‘Looks like he’s just cacked his daks.’

Grinning, we were herded towards a gate where scant details were checked and we were asked how we were feeling. Later, I was told that this was actually another medical. Two olive-green army buses were waiting outside the station. The third intake of National Servicemen stepped aboard. By now, some of them were becoming a bit boisterous — the result, no doubt, of the beers they were consuming rather than having taken offence at the way they were being treated. So far, every request by the army was prefaced by ‘please’, ‘could you’, and ‘would you mind’. The new recruits were having a good time generally. As the buses drove through Melbourne, they stuck their heads out of the windows, and wolf whistles along with primitive mating howls greeted any attractive girl who was within earshot. ‘Getyagearoff’ and similar suggestive proposals were screamed and chanted from windows. This youthful bravado was new to me. The language was crude, and I became an observer. The squeaky army blokes just sat quietly up the front. They seemed to condone this behaviour.

Halfway to Puckapunyal army base, the buses pulled over at a service station for lunch and a pee stop. The recruits, contrary to instructions from the starched soldiers, dawdled back onto the buses with their fists full of food and drink. By the time we had reached Puckapunyal, about two hours north of Melbourne, the bus was full of noise, rubbish, and booming egos. Even a little singing was taking place.

The drive into the army camp was impressive. A long avenue of trees with a neat and trimmed lawn made it look like you were entering a cemetery. Everything was clean, freshly painted, and orderly. It was quiet. Several buildings appeared on the left, including the hospital. Nothing was out of place, apart from two busloads of new army recruits perhaps. The buses stopped at a brick building that was located in front of a large parade ground. There were about ten soldiers gathered on the ground, and they looked big and ugly. Their instructions for us to get off the bus were blunt and crude, but had little impact. Blokes just sauntered off. An attempt was made to line us up in three ranks, but this, too, was pretty hopeless. Then a square-jawed, mean-looking, six-foot-six-inch part animal, in a green uniform and wearing a beret, called out to one of the blokes.

‘Hey, you — yes, you — you ugly six foot of sewer sludge. Get your arse over here … now!’

Silence fell immediately.

The six foot of sewer sludge had been one of the chief instigators of mischief on the bus. He strolled warily over to The Beret, turned back to the mob, and winked. The Beret snarled, bared his gigantic teeth and then, with his face a full six inches from the mischief-maker, bellowed in a voice that could have been heard half a mile away.

‘What’s your name, boy?’

‘Crackbottle,’ said the boy, leaning backwards and somewhat startled.

‘I can’t hear ya, boy!’ barked The Beret, getting angry.

‘Crackbottle,’ shouted the boy.

‘You got balls, boy?’ sneered The Beret.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the boy.

‘Call me sir again and I’ll eat ya fuck’n balls for breakfast … slowly,’ said The Beret, now very red in the face. He was shaking with anger. I was worried that he might thump the boy.

‘Whatsya full name, boy?’ spat The Beret, his nose three inches from the boy’s face.

‘Kenneth Crackbottle!’ yelled the boy, who was now attempting to stand at attention and still leaning back at a precarious angle. He looked like a dead body in a coffin that was standing up, rested against a wall. His wide grins and loud-mouthed behaviour had disappeared. He had a stupid stare on his face. It was from fear, not alcohol.

‘We gotta girl called Ken Crackbottle, Sergeant,’ said The Beret, turning to another monster in a green uniform who had muscles on his ear lobes.

‘Yes, Corporal,’ said Sergeant Big Ears, then added, ‘Crackbottle, your number is 3788324, you are in D Company, 11 Platoon, hut 22, bed 6. Move, you fuck’n moron.’ The sergeant’s gigantic mouth was stretched open wide. It would have held two cricket balls.

‘March, Crackbottle,’ snarled The Beret.

Poor Kenneth Crackbottle strutted off in haste, not having a clue what was going on or where he was going. He looked like a circus clown, his arms swinging too high, his knees coming halfway up his chest. It looked funny, but no one laughed.

‘Double up, ya dopey prick, Crackbottle,’ shouted another well-muscled Uniform with a neck like a Hereford bull. Consequently, Crackbottle started to run across the parade ground. Suddenly a booming, dignified voice came over the public address system.

‘Get that horrible man off my parade ground.’

Poor Kenneth Crackbottle: he had a look of bewildered terror on his face. He copped abuse no matter which direction he headed in.

Meanwhile, The Beret and Big Ears were calling others up. By the time it came to me, there were 25 bodies running everywhere. I stopped, and politely asked a Uniform where I had to go.

‘You’ve been told. Now fuck off,’ he replied.

Amid this confusion, a familiar voice reverberated from the public address system.

‘Come back, you morons, and line up beside the buses … now!’

It was Sergeant Big Ears. We formed a much better three-ranks and stood in complete silence, very still and alert. There was no more bravado; we were like a frightened bunch of

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