Chapter 1

“I’d never seen my mum cry before. Here I was standing in the dirt and dust in my best clothes holding a suitcase that belonged to my father and all I could see were the tears streaming down my mother’s wrinkled face. My father as stilted and unemotional as always just shook my hand and said, “See ya when you come back.” My younger brother gave me a huge hug and I swung his sixteen-year-old body around in my arms just as I had when he was a toddler. We had both grown up but we were still just kids. My girlfriend stood silently nearby and I didn’t know what to do. Do I kiss her? Do I hug her? In the end I tried to emulate my father and stood there and pretended not to feel anywhere near as shit scared as I was. The whole town it seemed had turned out. For today only, I was a celebrity or perhaps an icon of amusement. I don’t know. The bus pulled up all too soon and at that point there was no going back, no changing my mind, no running to my bedroom and seeking the warmth and security of the home that I perhaps would never see again.

The news had said that it was unlikely that any more conscripts would be sent to Vietnam. Australia had grown tired of the war and the senseless waste of human life. It was said to be unwinnable and in streets in cities large protests had been held wanting us to exit the conflict. But I was caught in the crossfire. I was the winner of the worst lottery that you could enter and entry was compulsory. If my mother had held on for a couple of minutes longer on the night I was born, I wouldn’t have been catching the bus that day. New Year’s Eve 1951 was what it said on my birth certificate and when those dates came up in the ballot; well it changed my life completely. I was born at 11:58pm and for the sake of two bloody minutes I was forced to leave my family and …… well, it was just really tough. Not even twenty years later I was heading off to a training camp near Wagga Wagga in New South Wales called Kapooka. Bloody long way from outback Queensland. Hell, I’d only been to Cairns once and then only for a day.

I could have been found exempt on hardship grounds as I worked on the farm. I had already deferred a degree course to help dad out. I could have deferred my National Service because I was studying too. But we Downs men don’t do things like that. It was fine to put on hold a chance to be one of the first students to study at the newly proclaimed James Cook Uni in Townsville, but not fine to pass up the opportunity to get shot. Dad had said it was all about doing something for your country rather than yourself. I had found it was never any use arguing with him. Disrespecting elders is another thing we Downs men didn’t do. Perhaps his stoic manner was really a façade, but whatever emotions he ever felt, he masked in front of us.

I tried to stop my knees from shaking as I climbed aboard the bus. Eight long, long hours later and I was in Townsville. Buses in those days aren’t like the swanky coaches they are now. Leg room for tall people is seen as a waste of space. Putting sponge in between the vinyl and the wood on the seats is seen as extravagant. My bones ached, my bum ached and my head ached from the constant drone and smell from the old diesel engine in the ‘luxurious best in the fleet’ bus that took me away from home. I was billeted in the Lavarack Barracks overnight along with a few other North Queenslanders who, like me, wondered why us Nashos had to travel so far down south to train, particularly if we were going to be sent to a war in the tropics. It just didn’t make sense. I soon found that a lot of things in the army didn’t make sense.

Being on a farm I was used to the early rising, but the guy next to me most certainly wasn’t. I wondered whether he had been mollycoddled all his life. The RSM who woke us certainly was of that opinion. He wrenched the thin blanket off George who immediately clutched his groin in an instinctive reaction. The RSM bellowed at him saying that such tiny little things didn’t matter and he wouldn’t be using those parts for anything more worthwhile than pissing himself if someone said boo to him. I realised then that bullying and intimidation would soon become a normal part of my life. I grabbed George’s clothes and threw them at him, indicating that he should quickly get dressed. The RSM had already moved on looking for someone else as a victim. However, if he came back, and George was still in bed, the abuse would have risen exponentially. George didn’t understand the word exponential but he quickly got dressed anyway.

All too soon after breakfast, we marched out to the army bus that was to take us away to ‘nirvana’, as the regular army guys, who stood around watching us jeering, called Kapooka. The RSM made us march. It was a sight to behold apparently. No-one was in time with anyone else. We were tired, half asleep and certainly unimpressed with our first introduction into army life. I never did really understand what the predisposition to marching was that the military had, but the brief march to the bus was a portent of things to come.

You had to be tough to survive in the army apparently. The army bus did make the previous bus seem luxurious after all. Like all things in the army it was green, military green and given the standard of driving and the sheer lack of comfort on the bus, we all soon assumed the hue of military green on our faces. All of us that is, except for two. One being the driver who did have a comfortable seat and a latent desire to be a formula 1 driver obviously, based on his devil may car attitude to road surfaces and road signs. The other was a corporal from the regulars who was determined to ensure that army property was not damaged, scratched, discoloured or dirtied in any way by the cretins he had seen boarding. Militarily he was outnumbered. He knew it. We knew it, but such is the power of rank, that he wouldn’t show it. Most of us felt so disenchanted, ill and homesick already that we let the little martinet have his way. We sat listless and bumsore for six hours until we stopped in Emerald for lunch. The corporal swaggered into the bakery and brought out lovely smelling pies and cakes, two of each for himself and the driver. The driver had pulled out large eskies out from under the bus and we were forced to help ourselves to cold sandwiches and bottled water from the barracks in Townsville. And those bastards stood upwind of us so the aroma of their food wafted down to us. Rank does have privileges it seems.

Few of us had slept well the night before and the next five hours we travelled non-stop in a daze, uncaring about the world around us. Towns and hamlets drifted past that I had never heard of, nor would probably hear of again. The army had decided that it was far cheaper to have just two in charge of this cattle truck, rather than towing a trailer with camping gear for the twenty of us, along with food and cooking equipment and having at least a cook come along with us. The corporal and driver had volunteered for the job obviously - a couple of days off base, a chance to lord it over a whole group of non-army types and to eat nice meals and stay in swish hotels. The hotel we stayed at was hardly swish. It had been booked ahead and we dragged our tired bodies and suitcases into the rooms whose previous residents were probably fleas and bedbugs. I say previous because the stench of insecticide hit us as we opened the doors to the rooms. We paired off and I deliberately stood next to George, who looked like he needed a guiding hand and perhaps some protection to boot. The rooms had double beds and we all looked at each other. I immediately said, “Okay, top to tail with clean feet.” Others thought that was a good idea and the look on people’s faces was one of relief. Our two supervisors, Jack Brabham and Attila the Hun, said they would organise dinner while we got settled. Two hours later they returned with beery breath and some pizzas. The counter tea at the pub must have been filling, as they opted not to have the dry cardboard-flavoured cold pizza.

Room service toast, UHT milk and cereal and motel coffee didn’t really prepare us for another long day’s travel. The motel had been right on the highway and out of town on a bend, just where cattle road trains and freight trucks would use their air and exhaust brakes regardless of the time of day, or NIGHT. Zombies were more alive than us. Perhaps this was the way the army inducted people. Kill all sense of reality and the will to live and they can do anything with you. Five boring hours followed before lunch at Walgett. It must have been boring as our driver decided that the best way to get our attention was to drive off the road half asleep. Luckily, he was woken up by the blare of an oncoming Kenworth. Because we hadn’t actually presented our enlistment papers at Kapooka, our potential deaths wouldn’t have been treated as battle related ones, although I must admit that our driver did battle hard to get us back onto the right side of the road in time.

In zombie world, time is an unessential element. It serves no purpose. It has no meaning. Sandwiches from a bakery in Walgett, a toilet stop and we were heading towards Dubbo. Outside the bus the birds were probably singing, cattle possibly lowing and the wind stirring through the leaves. Inside the gigantic hearse there were flies buzzing and the constant slapping of hands on exposed skin. Our beloved tour guides had parked us for lunch at a billabong attached to the Barwon River. Mosquitoes in plague proportions had descended on us and, deciding they didn’t mind a voyage of discovery, joined us on the bus as well. The only benefit we found was that mosquitoes took no notice of rank.

Three hours later and we were in Dubbo, but only for a brief period of time. The corporal and the driver realised that they needed to be at Kapooka before the mess hall closed, and they had badly misjudged the time. There was no toilet stop as we roared through the town. Obviously over the speed limit, the police saw it was an army bus and decided not to stop us. Bladders nearly bursting we arrived at Kapooka some nearly four and a half hours later. Timed to perfection, it wasn’t; possibly by minutes only. We would have to wait until morning. When one someone asked why it could be reopened, all the RSM said was, “Welcome to the army, son.”