Well, it has taken quite too long a while, but here is Chapter 10. I intend to complete Chapter 11 and post it within a week, so keep me honest with that!
With warmth,
Norm
Chapter 10: In Which I Win the Lottery!
Age: 20
Early in 1965, a little-publicised event changed my life forever. An anonymous Commonwealth servant put his hand into a wooden barrel borrowed from Tattersalls in Melbourne, and drew out a small wooden ball with 3 April painted on it. That was my birthday date, a winner in the first draw for National Service in the Vietnam War. Lucky Norm.
A month later I received a letter from the Department of Labour and National Service, directing me to report for a medical examination, which was held in an office somewhere near the corner of Adelaide and Creek Streets in Brisbane. My eldest brother assured that I had no chance of passing the medical, because of my flat feet. (Apologies to all those who thought I had a perfect figure – you should have checked out the feet!)
At the medical, two young my doctors gave me a brief medical examination (including an embarrassing moment when they asked me to cough while one of them was … oh … never mind!). Finally, they asked me to walk three times round the small room we were in. One said “Very flat feet.”
So, I thought, Jim was right, at least, until the other replied, “A few 20 mile route marches should sort them out.” They both laughed.
Brother Jim was outraged, and wanted me to take the matter higher, to get the decision reversed, but I had been brought up to obey the law, AND I was looking forward to a break my boring workday life.
A couple of weeks later I received a letter advising me to present myself to Brisbane Airport with a list of clothing and personal articles, at 0800 hours on 30 June 1965. I wrote a letter home with the news.
I rang my mother, and said I would come home for a weekend before I went into the army, but she said that she and Ern did not want me to stay with them. I could, however, stay for one night with my brother Jim, and my mother would meet me in the Maryborough Botanical Gardens to say goodbye. When we had our meeting, she said that I could write to her from Vietnam if I wished, but not to include Ern in any letters- he didn’t want to know anything.
As usual, I accepted this arrangement, because of my automatic obedience to my stepfather’s wishes/edicts. Although I felt hurt, and very much abandoned by my parents, it did not diminish the love I had for them. What I felt instead was that, once again, I had done something wrong, and was, rightfully, being punished. Silly twit!
On a cool, windy Wednesday morning on the last day of June 1965, I stood, shivering, beside a chain wire fence at Brisbane airport. A below-strength sun filtered down onto the many young men who comprised South East Queensland’s contribution to the first intake of National Servicemen.
The day passed in a blur – a roll call, boarding, flight, bus trip, another roll call, and allocation to different platoons, a walk around Kapooka Recruit Training Battalion grounds (just outside Wagga Wagga) in wintry darkness, medicals, armfuls of uniforms, mess kits, blankets thrust into our arms, dinner, roll call, allocation into huts, ablutions, roll call, program for the following morning, and, finally, bed. So began our first day in the Army.
Very early next morning we were woken by a corporal with a foghorn voice telling us to get up, in disgustingly crude terms (beginning with the words, ‘Wakey, wakey, hands off …). He then explained and demonstrated how we were to keep our bedspaces and clothes cupboards, where every item of equipment would be placed, how it would be folded/polished/ironed, and that we would maintain our gear in our spare time.
Then we had two minutes to dress and get to our platoon parade ground, 50 metres up the hill. After a hasty shower and a hurried breakfast, we began our 12 week recruit training program.
I don’t intend to say a lot about recruit training, because, let’s face it, when you spend 12 weeks in a usual routine of getting up very early on cold, cold winter mornings, marching about a lot, learning to shoot and bayonet and grenade things, running about with packs on, becoming obsessively neat and tidy, spit-polishing boots until they reflected the person with the spit; being yelled at a lot; learning to obey orders without thought or question, no matter how silly they seem, then, it doesn’t make for a particularly interesting narrative.
I don’t intend to bore you with detailed accounts of the daily hut, locker and kit inspections, either, except to say that I got into strife many times for my natural tidilessness[1], [2]
There were a few stand-out moments; at least, they stood out for me.
Firstly, as a 20 year old who had little experience of interacting with his peers, I found it incredibly difficult at first to be lumped together with large numbers of people, ALL of whom were approximately my own age. (The first intake of National Service was drawn from that pool of people whose 20th birthdays fell between January 1 1965 and June 30 1965).
On our first night at Kapooka, after lights out, there was some anonymous chatter in the darkness of our hut, and someone asked people to give their names. When I said ‘Norm’, another voice chimed in immediately with, “I knew a Norm once – he was a wanker.” This brought about a general chuckle from the assorted beds (I forget how many – I think 20, but it may have been fewer), and a deep desire on my part to strangle the man. (No, I DID not know him, and was NOT that particular Norm of whom he spoke).
A greater shock came from my first visit to the toilet block. There were many urinals, and many toilet cubicles, facing each other in two lines, without doors! A Recruit Training Battalion has no place for false or real modesty. But, one learns to cope with life as it is, not how one wants it to be.
The cargo net exercise almost defeated me. The activity was to climb a set of footholds nailed to a tree, and to jump about 10 feet (just over three metres) into a cargo net. Little Normie, ever terrified of heights, stood, quivering, on the platform staring down into the cargo net while every one else jumped. Eventually I got the corporal to push me, then immediately climbed up twice more, closed my eyes, and jumped.
One afternoon a week we played sport, and, because I had played a few games of soccer in the back yard at home with Brother Les, I signed up for that. The coach/referee was our platoon commander, a lieutenant who was, quite clearly, a soccer fanatic. It took him perhaps two minutes to realise that I knew nothing whatsoever about the game, and to banish me to something else.
Fortunately for me, I escaped any further participation in any sport (perhaps the instructors all realised that I had no sporting ability/experience whatsoever).
At the time we were paraded to select our sports, the platoon sergeant asked, firstly, if Recruit Wallace, K. J., would come forward. Recruit Wallace, small and cheeky stepped out, and was told he would be playing rugby union. This intrigued me, so, after I was thrown out of soccer, I wandered down to the rugby union area (rugby league was not, in those days, played at Kapooka).
It became very clear to me that Ken Wallace was a star. He was fast, he was elusive, and he could kick, pass, and tackle all with great skill and timing. He had noticed me standing on the sideline, and, since I was in his hut, he came to me after the trial game, which his team won fairly easily. From that we became mates, and I learned that, until his call-up, he had been the A Grade half-back for Western Suburbs Rugby League team in Brisbane. (I never checked the accuracy of his story, because he was clearly brilliant at the game, and he was the first ‘friend’ I had made at Kapooka).
An incident concerning gloves almost led to the violent death of one recruit, who shall be nameless (no, it wasn’t me). Our training took place in the three months of winter – June, July, August – and it was ALWAYS bitterly cold at 0500 hours (a bit of military time, that). Our platoon sergeant, who seemed to have a heart colder than winter itself, said to us in our first week that the canteen sold warm gloves and, if we each purchased a pair, we could wear them for drill parades (except for those involving weapons). That resulted in a rush on gloves at the canteen, but they had LOTS of them.
The next morning, we all assembled for parade wearing gloves – EXCEPT for Recruit Nameless. When the sergeant saw that, we had two minutes to return to our huts and put our gloves away. I doubt if I have ever seen so many vengeful stares focused on one person before or since.
Two members of our platoon soon developed reputations for being last on parade, clumsiest at drill and weaponry, slowest to gain understanding of all matters military. Alas! One of them was me.
We had a session one day of ‘how to determine the height of a tree by the length of its shadow from a long way away’, or something like that. After our individual and combined guesses, the corporal called on Recruit Wotherspoon to pace the distance to the tree. I set off, marching proudly toward the tree but, after ten paces, I heard a voice I did not know say, quite loudly, “Geez! He walks like a bloody fairy.”
I didn’t do very well with weapons. Although I threw grenades the least furthest, and my bayoneting skills fell far short of perfection, it was with the SLR rifle where I under-excelled most. It was awkward for a left-hander to fire a rifle right-handed, and I had the happy knack of missing targets a lot, or just grazing the outer edges of them. I had even greater trouble dismantling and mantling[3] the rifle.
Henry Reed wrote a poem (Naming of Parts) that I have always liked, and I have read many analyses of it, in which people interpret it as being about war, peace, sex, nature etc. I most like the following one:
‘John Nevill's comment says it all. It conveys well the disorientation
felt by any sensitive person on being drafted into the armed forces and
subjected to mind-numbing instruction, however necessary.’ [4]
felt by any sensitive person on being drafted into the armed forces and
subjected to mind-numbing instruction, however necessary.’ [4]
We had two brief excursions from Kapooka. Six weeks into our training, under the watchful supervision of our Sergeant and corporals, we travelled by bus to Falls Creek, where I first saw and played in snow. On the way home we toured Canberra briefly, which impressed me mostly for the large numbers of roundabouts, which I had never seen before.
On another night, those who wished were permitted to visit Wagga Wagga for a pop concert featuring a trio of teenaged brothers from Brisbane, the Bee Gees. That was some years before they became world-wide famous.
For me, the highlight of my time at Kapooka was the day I spent being assessed for selection into the Officer Training School. I applied because we were told that those who applied had a full day away from training.
So, at the civilised hour of 0900 hours, I reported to the appointed place, and was asked to shower and change back into my uniform. I thoroughly enjoyed the joy of a hot shower without the pressure of time, and was last back to the meeting room. Apparently, this was designed to identify those who were best able to shower and change in very limited time. After that, the day was filled with group exercises of how we could get a platoon across a raging river using only three differently sized pieces of board, how we could build something to climb over a barbed wire fence, and such stuff. I stood in the background a lot, smiling and agreeing with stuff, but without a clue as to how the tasks could be done.
At lunchtime in the Officers’ Mess, with fine food AND wine, we were each lured into conversation by the psychologists who had been observing us through the morning.
My man asked me about the latest book I had read, and I launched into fervent praise for Catch 22, which a friend (with a sense of humour) had given me to take into my army career. After my first reading, I thought it was one of the funniest books I had ever read, but I suspect the psychologist understood it to be what it truly was – one of the great anti-war novels of our time.
Following lunch, we completed some other boring tasks. Recruit Wotherspoon did not get invited to attend Officer Training School as a result of his day off. Many years later I read my file at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, and saw the comment on my performance; it read ‘Not up to this level’. Sigh. I would have to agree with that.
Toward the end of our training we submitted our orders of preference for the Army Corps for the next stage of our career. I chose Intelligence Corps first, because it sounded nice (after my officer selection debacle, this was NEVER going to happen) and my second choice as Infantry, because we were given to understand that this would take us back to Brisbane.
In September 1965 I arrived back in Brisbane as a private in 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment[5], and my Corps training began.
I arrived with a core set of skills that included how to: Present Arms; Quick and Slow March in time; form part of a straight line on parade; a sort of slow learner’s ability to put together and take apart rifles, and to shoot badly with them, and the ability to obey shouted orders instantly. Not to mention the skills necessary to spit-polish boots, wash, starch and iron my Army greens, and how to make belts and belt-buckles glisten with multiple applications of Brasso, shoe polish, spit and elbow grease. There was also something we had to do with our hats, but I have quite forgotten that, perhaps because I have never cared much for hats.
