Blog Day 150 - Friday 21 August 2020

Welcome to week four of Virus Free Friday.

I thought that today that having told you something of the family military background  I would tell you a little about my own military experience.

My first encounter with a military body, excluding the quasi military Cubs and a short time in the Scouts, was when I was in high school and I joined the Air Training Corps (ATC) otherwise known as the Air Cadets.  I joined the ATC because the army cadets were run as part of high school and I hated school, so I wasn't going to join any organization that made me spend more time there than necessary.

After arriving in Melbourne in early 1972 I had to register for the National Service ballot for the second half of that year.  The ballot was run on the basis of your birthdate and you had to register in the half of the year that you turned twenty.  Would you believe that the ballot was conducted using the same barrel that Tattersalls used for selecting their lottery winners.  In the case of the National Service ballot the big wooden barrel was filled with wooden balls, each one representing a birthdate for that half year.  Depending on how many recruits were need for the army a number of wooden balls, representing birth dates, were drawn from the barrel and if you were lucky enough to have your date drawn, it was into the army for you sunshine.  Initially the national service period was two years later reduced to eighteen months.  The reduction in time was due to our staged withdrawal from Vietnam.

National Service (or conscription or the draft) was required to provide an increased number of recruits to the army.  The increased number of recruits was required due to Australia's involvement in the Vietnam war. 

Anyway my number wasn't drawn and I wasn't conscripted into the army.

Sometime early in 1973 I was working at the CBC Bank in Northcote and one of our customers was a military man by the name of Noel Tinning.  Noel had been a member of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV), the most highly decorated unit in the Australian army and one of the most highly decorated units in the British Commonwealth.  At the time Noel was the Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) at a CMF (Citizens Military Force - part time army) unit, 6th Field Ambulance.  

Myself and another guy at the bank (Maurie) got to know Noel pretty well and one day he suggested we go to the 6th Field Ambulance depot in the city one parade night and have a look around.  So we did.  By the time we left the army depot that night we had both signed up for a 3 or 4 year term in the CMF.  I am still not sure how that happened, it had the smell of the press gang about it.  Anyway I didn't regret it and served out my time.

The CMF required a pretty hefty commitment.  We used to parade every Thursday night and usually one Saturday or one weekend a month.  We also attended a camp annually which was a minimum of two weeks.

Shortly after enlisting I was required to attend my recruit training camp which ran for two weeks at the military camp at Puckapunyal.  The training was run by a regular army unit called 2nd Recruit Training Battalion (2 RTB).  These guys were regular army and used to training national servicemen for the regular army.  To say that the 2 RTB people didn't think much of the CMF recruits was an understatement.  They tried to get as much of the regular army 10 week recruit training as they could into the two weeks that they had us.  They ran us ragged and put us under as much pressure as they could.  The drop out rate for recruit training was about 10%.  

Probably like a lot of us I enjoyed the field work, map reading, weapons training and firing weapons, grenade training and throwing (including live grenades) and the discipline and drill to a point. I didn't enjoy the unnecessary pressure but that was part of the program so you had to put up with it.

I survived recruit training and returned to my unit as a full blown private.

That will do for today, maybe in next weeks Virus Free Friday I might tell you how I achieved the lofty rank of Corporal and how I transferred to 5 RVR (5th Battalion Royal Victoria Regiment) an infantry unit.

Got trivia tonight.  Seem to spend half my time on Zoom these days, and now my U3A group is talking about doing some Zoom sessions.  While I am doing this I am listening to the Cold Play album "Live in Buenos Aires", fantastic.

Life is tough in lock down.