Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in Sydney in 1939 in a suburb called Five Dock and I grew up there for most of my early years I went to Christian Brothers College,

Burwood from the initial education from First Class right through to the Intermediate. After schooling I worked then for a short period of time at a hardware store as a counter assistant. After that I then worked at AWA, Amalgamated Wireless Australia at Ashfield

which was down the road from Five Dock as a trainee accountant and that was because my Mum wanted me to do that sort of activity. I went to Fort Street Boys High Tech [Technical] studying accountancy but that was not really what I wanted to do I just kept looking out the window all the time at life so I decided that I would join the air force my Dad being an

serviceman from World War II he was a bit reluctant at the start but after awhile I remember him and Mum talking and saying it might make a man of him. I always remember that ant I thought I hope so. I must have been a bit of a problem at that stage. I joined the air force in 1957 and went to Richmond where I did my recruit course there

and then because I had Accounting background the recruiting officer said, I really wanted to fly, I mean most people join the air force to fly but I didn’t have the education for it. He said if you join the air force in mustering and what you can do then is concentrate on your schooling and then you can re-muster to aircrew later on, I thought that sounds good to me that is what I have always wanted to do. I was always drawing aeroplanes and reading

aeroplane stories and I had vague memories of World War II and that sort of thing and I wanted an interesting active life. I joined the air force as a Clerk Equipment Accounts because of my accounting background. After I finished recruit course at Richmond I then went to Rathmines was my first posting and

that was a seaplane, an ex World War II seaplane base on Lake Macquarie. That is where I met my wife, Mary, and she was from Newcastle. I continued there as a Clerk Equipment Accounts and I found where I wasn’t really happy in civilian street writing all sorts of paper I was back in the same environment as a

Equipment Accounts as an Internal Auditor so I was going to bed at night dreaming about green ticks and red ticks and vouchers and all this sort of thing I thought no Bazza [Barry] this is not me. What came up in routine orders was calling for applications for a drill instructor. I was 19 years of age at that time

and I liked my recruit course I think within me I am a person that likes regimentation I really enjoyed it and I thought why not. I tried in the early years of the air force studying but I found I couldn’t recapture all the basics of mathematics and I was really having difficulty studying so I thought well I will d0 that job and I will just see what happens.

with my application. I re-mustered in 1958 as a drill instructor and did a drill instructors Course up at Amberley in Queensland that is up near Ipswich. I found I really enjoyed that it was 3 months and then I was posted back to Rathmines as a drill instructor. The boy wonder they used to call me at 19 years of age full of power a corporal and I used to say that Hitler and Napoleon were corporals and they did all right so I must be doing all right, but then I didn’t realise I think they were both assassinated,

killed anyway. There I was a young Corporal DI [Drill Instructor] at 19 in charge a flight of recruits 30 in number and my job then was to introduce them to the air force teach them all about administration and law, weapons drill and basic map reading, first aid

field engineering and it was basic stuff and I liked it. I think then I began to realise that I liked being in front, it is hard to say without being big time about it but I enjoyed leading I enjoyed calling the shots. I was very conscious of people around me and their styles of leadership

I was also very keen I wasn’t too carried away with the fact that I was an NCO [Non Commissioned Officer]. Some people went charge happy and all that. An old fellow said to me that a charge is the last resort of an NCO. If you can’t solve the problem all your doing ins demonstrating to the boss that you can’t handle it. That was extremely advice that I have had right through all my life. I vowed not to become power hungry. I enjoyed that.

After I did that for about 18 months and then I was posted to Wagga [Wagga Wagga] to an apprentice squadron where each squadron there were three intakes 1st, 2nd and 3rd year and I was put into the 3rd year intake and I was I think 19 or 20 and these were 16, 17 year olds so there wasn’t much of a

age difference. I was teamed up with a very experienced warrant officer George Sturgas who was an ex-desert rat with World War II experience and very wise and he taught me quite a lot of aspects about leadership and I got on pretty well with the apprentices because our interests were the same. I played in their baseball teams, I played a little bit of football with them that sort of

thing and the places they would frequent I would frequent like dances and that sort of thing but I came to an understanding with them whilst on the job I was the corporal and they were the apprentice and we would go our different ways. A good example of that was the apprentices were not allowed to drink because they were wards of the air force but on town patrol you would walk into a pub you

all you would see is half empty glasses and the doors swinging. I would walk in and they would say good evening Corp and they would finish their drink and go. They were doing the right thing by me and I chose not to see things like that because that was part of a growing up process. I didn’t particularly enjoy my time there because there wasn’t a lot of involvement in my job because they were technical apprentices once we parade them in the morning we would march them up to the hanger, they would do their job

and we would collect them at lunchtime and after work. Every so often there would be a period of general service training. Virtually the same subjects that I taught to recruits but to the apprentices over a longer time but that was not very involved. That was about 1½ years I was with apprentices and I was driving up to Sydney pretty well every second

weekend. I got married whilst I was at Wagga and my son was on the way and Mary moved from Newcastle down to live with my Mum so I used to try and get home because I was young and a baby on the way and it was better that we didn’t get into a married quarter and things like that. I used to spend every second weekend travelling up to Mum’s place to see my wife.

After Tye was born I was then posted to Amberley in Queensland that is when I re-mustered then and did another course which was part of the Ground Defence category progression which went from a drill instructor to an Air Ground Defence Instructor. I had to do another 3 months

at Amberley and I brought my wife up with me so when we left Wagga my introduction to married life we had a car that we were paying off a young son and a wife and that was it. When we arrive din Ipswich we lived in an old Queenslander house with 4 other families in that particular house that we shared and it was quite funny and pretty

thin because I remember the guy next door used to serenade his wife with this beautiful, beautiful Queensland. My son’s cot was my tin trunk on a box propped up and a mosquito net thrown over the top that was his first cot, I think he was destined to be a soldier right from the start.

Then my boss heard about that and he said no we can’t have that and he gave us a cot, that is how we started with virtually nothing. So I did my Aerodrome Defence and chocolate course and then we remained at Amberley as a defence Instructor and my job there was teaching aircrew and base combatants. We covered nuclear and biological warfare I did an NBC [Nuclear, Biological and Chemical] course at that same time NBC Instructor

We covered weapons, NBC and that seemed to be the thrust at that time we are talking about the early 60’s. The current NBC weapons of mass destruction isn’t anything new. We were very much aware of the advancement in those weapons and at Amberley there was a Lincoln undergoing a weathering process.

It had been used in the trials in Woomera, you would recall the British trials, so we had a fair bit of knowledge of that particular thing that was being used and at that time that was the flavour of the month. Teaching nuclear effects and biological chemical warfare and protect. I taught that as an Aerodrome Defence Instructor also got into the Training Corps and taking them out into the bush and that kept my field skills alive.

I was there for about 2 years or so and then I was posted around about 1964 back to Williamtown as a corporal and then the person that I replaced was a sergeant so I said to the boss, as a corporal I can’t be a Range Supervisor I can’t run ranges as a corporal I can only be a

controller there is a difference. A Range Supervisor can run the practices and be responsible for the lot as a Fire Controller you can only run the firing point as a corporal I don’t have the legal coverage to run ranges and that is part of the job there. He said we will fix that we will make you an acting sergeant. I was promoted then to acting sergeant and I was there for about 2 years 64 to 66. In 66

I was then posted to Ubon in South East Asia in Thailand. I won’t go into details of our job there or the mission or anything like that. I was there from January 66 to July 66, it was a 6 months tour and broadly speaking I was

responsible for ground activities running introductory courses for people that arrived in Thailand to make sure they were up to speed on weapons and that sort of thing and also aircrew on weapon training integrating the lot into our ground defence plan and every couple of weeks we would practice that plan. So it was all ground defence. My secondary role there was to

build and maintain a bunker system. I would need to explain our part in the defence of the base. My secondary role there was to build and maintain bunkers and to maintain and carry out construction of barbed wire defences and that sort of thing. There were the two areas.

When I was posted there my boss said do the right thing and learn as much as you can when you go back to Australia you will be promoted to flight sergeant and you will be going to the Ground Defence Flight Training at Amberley which is our school. That is exactly what happened after 6 months I returned and was posted to Amberley. The wife and son

I think my daughter was born before I went to Thailand and we were living on a farm at Williamtown £4 a week and free milk and vegetables. The old farmer was looking after my family while I was away. We were then posted back up to Amberley to the school. I knew mustering had been formed, air force Defence Guards and

that was because we had bases overseas then in Vietnam both in Thailand and in Vietnam at Vung Tau and Phan Rang. The new mustering was to provide ground defence expertise at the lower rank level. Whilst I was an Aerodrome Defence Instructor these were Airfield Defence Guards, soldiers so to speak. It was based on similar line to the RAF [Royal Air Force] in England, ground gunners.

What they needed me there for was to bring back South-East Asian experience and pass it on. I was promoted to flight sergeant and I was on the base one day and they said don’t unpack you are going to Canungra the jungle training base centre I was there for once our guards had done their basic course we will send them to Canungra where they will do a polishing course. I went to Canungra for 6 weeks and did battle efficiency courses

upset a few people there because I beat them in all their weapon training and they couldn’t understand how an air force boy could out shoot them and out gun them and I enjoyed doing that which will become evident in later life. That was good and that is exactly what happened where I was then employed as an Assistant Instructor training Airfield Defence Guards for Vietnam and Thailand.

In broad terms the school is required to patrol outside the perimeter in what we call the rocket zone. The rocket zone is outside the perimeter out to the extreme range of your support weapons or the range of your enemy weapons. The principal is guarding in depth you just don’t guard your perimeter you guard out. They needed those skills to be able to

patrol that and to ambush that as well and to prevent the enemy from stockpiling weapons as well. That was the course we were running there. I did that for 2 years and then I got a phone call from a friend of mine whilst I was at Williamtown after I came back from Thailand the Parachute School was

established there. They were tremendously impressed by this smart looking red beret wearing soldiers of the Airborne Platoon which was a demonstration platoon for the Parachute School and they really impressed me. At that time I applied to do a parachute course and got knocked back about 4 times. I kept on applying I thought I will wear them down. I ended up having to take leave and my arguments were

I hadn’t lost anything and I needed the skills for credibility in the Ground Defence world there was a limit to what I could expand on and in the end I wore them down and they said OK you can do it but it is at no cost so I did it in my own time officially but in my own time. When I get up to Amberley I got a phone call from one of the warrant officers down here a Clem Keeley

he was RSM [Regimental Sergeant Major] Parachute School and later RSM SAS [Special Air Service] Regiment and he was to be the instructor and he said we are replacing we are running an Air Force Parachute jump Instructors course and I know you are pretty keen. At that time the Parachute School was very small. It had an Air Force Squadron Leader, an army major

6 Warrant Officers, 3 Army and 3 Air Force. The army element tended to stay for 2 or 3 years and then were posted to war or a regimental posting but the air force stayed there. We maintained, it was an Air Force School and we maintained continuity of the Parachuting Schools. They weren’t, the Instructors the only time they were replaced

when they were injured and that was about the only reason they would stay, it was a good job and they really hung onto it, Mert Morrrison the guy I replaced had injured himself and Clem rang up and said are you still interested and I said yes. At that stage I was a bit disillusioned because the Airfield Defence Guards that we had been training, in the initial courses, had been sent to Vung Tau and all they were being used on was

villa guards and their skills weren’t being properly used. It was recognised and they were used properly in Thailand and Phan Rang. I was a bit disillusioned I thought I would like to teach Parachuting, an active job. I think I would like to do that practical stuff. From Amberley I then came down in 1967 to Williamtown

and did the Instructors Course, passed that was promoted to warrant officer brought the family back down to Williamtown for the second time and got established there and I was appointed a married quarter just off the strip. That is probably why I am half deaf now from all the noise. I was there from 1968 to 1975. It was one of my best postings I really liked it because it was a

subject that you could teach, that had depth you could see your results, it was only short, 4 weeks. You could see a young soldier march in and he would march out about 4 foot taller. I believe that the school existed for character building. At that time it was very necessary where you could teach a soldier to meet fear

to believe in his leadership and do what he was told and he wouldn’t get hurt. We taught the principles of military operations. They were training, they were briefing, rehearsals, do it, analyse where you went wrong, do correction and do it again. Be brief after you have come back. Again be brief, reanalyse, retrain the whole concept of operations.

I thought it had very much value I couldn’t see that we would ever have large scale operations again as we had in Arnhem in World War II but I did believe the factory produced a good product. When a guy graduated you could see him with his wings and he got a little bit extra pay out of it. He was a bit taller and when he shaved of a morning he did it with his shirt on and the right arm forward. You could really see I believe

an interesting change in a young soldier, so I enjoyed those years. That was on the static line side and also we taught free fall parachute techniques to the SAS and commandos. At the end of that 1968 to 75, in 1975 the air force

handed over the school to the army and I was the last warrant officer to leave the school. I was offered a transfer to the army and the CO [Commanding Officer] of the School, Lieutenant Colonel Harry Smith who became famous or at that time Harry Smith put me through my PJI [Parachute Jump Instructor] Course as a young captain but in Vietnam he was Company Commander at Long Tan, he won a Military Cross.

He then came back and he was CO of the school as a Lieutenant Colonel so he interviewed me and said are you interested in moving to the army I said under certain conditions. He said what are your conditions, I said I am a warrant officer now, one, I would like my rank that I think would be appropriate would be a temporary WO2, warrant officer second class and to be standard to be doing successfully warrant officer courses.

I said I throw away too much I get paid as a warrant officer 1 equivalent and I wouldn’t be doing the right thing by my family. He put it to the Military Office and they came back and they said the best we can offer is substantive sergeant. I thought with respect to the skills required to look after the school that was probably the right decision in that I was an air force warrant Officer not the regimental or battalion school

for a warrant officer I see it now I think it was pretty fair. I sometimes wonder if my life would have changed or I would still be sitting here because I would most certainly, would have gone to Vietnam. During the time I was there I could see people that were going to Vietnam and when they come back, in some cases changed completely in their personalities. The instructors, a lot of my friends were sergeants and above, I knew them either before they went

or they came back for their 2nd or 3rd term. After the Parachute School and we handed over because the job requirement was for a warrant officer during my time at the Parachute School I did a warrant officer Disciplinary Course out at Point Cook so I had a feeder mustering to go to if we hurt ourselves. After

I left the school I then found myself as a warrant officer Disciplinary at RAAF Williamtown. The rough equivalent would be an RSM of a military unit but my job was protocol and legal in terms of processing charges against airmen and things like that. Again another wise fellow Jim Fleming said he

was an ex-Sergeant Pilot and he called me up and he said Barry I want you also to take over the Chairman of the Mess Committee, Senior Sergeants Mess and I need to know what is going on before it happens. It was not a spying job and at least he knew how to use me, he was very good and whilst I was a senior Disciplinarian on the base I was also managing the sergeant’s mess as well. It wasn’t a

period if I had wanting to run a mess or a steward I would have joined the air force but I knew it was a secondary requirement. I didn’t particularly go to the Disciplinary side. I thought to myself if I told people to go and get haircuts and get their hands out of their pockets when I was a young corporal. I had left a very active world so I wasn’t very happy. I applied then for a Commission in the Ground Defence World. Back to my old world

and I waited about 18 months. It was about the time when the Ground Defence world was going under reviews and I got to the point where I spoke to the DPO [District Police Officer] Officer, he was coming around visiting the bases and it was coming around. I said I am just about to tell you to shove it I have had 19 years in the air force as a warrant officer I have applied Commission if you don’t want my skills I am out I am not hanging around any longer.

From transition from that application to being commissioned was a process of about a week. It didn’t take long, I ruffled the waters and it worked again it taught me a lesson for later on.

I was commissioned then and that was 1976 posted down to Richmond as AGT Flight Commander. I was fortunate there because my flight sergeant there my 2IC [Second In Command], was my corporal when I was a flight sergeant so we knew each other pretty well and I had 30 Air Defence Guards then. I trained their skills. That was a very good posting I enjoyed that for 2½

years and then came time and again I found it enjoyable and I basically I had to maintain the skills that were required overseas in airfield defence. 1976 to 79, 1979 then my

boss rang up and he said you are going to be posted to Townsville as a Base Defence and Fire Officer. I thought here we go this is another job so we picked up sticks with the family and we proceeded north. By that time my son had just about finished his education in third year and my daughter was a year behind, they were teenagers. We went to Townsville.

Base Defence and Fire Officer there. Base Defence meaning running continuation of training for airmen and aircrew there was always a secondary role. The Ground Defence role looked after the Administrative aspect of the services they didn’t have Fire Officers the senior Fireman on the base was a warrant officer. All that I was required to do was administrate and represent the fires to higher command.

That was quite enjoyable because training of firemen wasn’t too different from training ADGs [Air Defence Guards] they have a recognised training syllabus in over a year. Where it goes from individual training right through to collective training I didn’t find that too hard to do and that last for about 12 months where I was running Defence Continuation Training and administering those

The boss ran again and said guess what you are about to take over the Combat Survival School. We are moving it from the number 1 at Amberley up to Queensland so you will be establishing the school there. I was a Flight Lieutenant then. I inherited the Combat Survival School which was a four wheel drive full of training aides,

four wheel drive Toyota which was the vehicle we used for moving around the scrub. A young LAC [Leading Aircraftsman] as foreman and a sergeant ADG [Air Defence Guards] that was my backup. That was the beginning of the school. I think now the school has a staff of about 30. At the Combat Survival School I was required to train aircrew of the 3 services army, navy and air force in the combat survival techniques

in peace and war. That was conduct before captured, escape and evasion. Combat after capture and then survival techniques in a hostile environment or peace time environment world wide. During that time at the school I underwent training in America at Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington State and then down to Texas at Lackland Air Force Base where I visited the Air Base Defence School

which was similar to our ADGs and almost talked into an exchange posting there. Across to Homestead Air Force Base in Miami, the Deep Sea Aerospace Recovery School, Deep Sea Survival School and the unit that was responsible from picking up astronauts from the sea after they splash down.

I did my courses there in Deep Sea Survival and I came back and was convinced that whilst we did things in Australia on a smaller scale we did it better, more personal contact and less hand outs so to speak. An example of that I sat for an hour at Fairchild Air Force Base taught how to sharpen a knife and an axe. This is a blade

stone move it in this direction, one two, three four spit, an hour of this. In my debrief of that sort of thing and I was debriefed by the colonel in charge of the school and we talked about that and I said that is something we don’t do. He said why is that and I said well most of us have a bush background or were in the Boy Scouts and that sort of thing.

The way the Australians do it when I teach them the basic of survival techniques I leave that to the practical phase. On the practical phase I issue them a knife and a sharpening stone when they leave on that phase they have 8 fingers and 2 thumbs. They come back out of the jungle and they are still there they have obviously learnt how to sharpen an axe and knife. He said you are a hard core man, hard core. That sort of thing on our Evasion Phase

on snow shoes and we had this helicopter over the top and he said check your azimuth, check your azimuth, another word for bearing sort of thing, they really looked after their students too much and under their conditions for servicemen each serviceman had to get a hot meal once a day so here you are under a survival situation getting a hot meal, it is not the way we do. Our guys are given a ration pack and Air Crew Flying

they are told to exist on that and supplement it and I would give them marks on how much supplementary food they made. Some guys on our courses didn't even touch the rations they just lived off the land. We have a different approach the way the Australian’s teach the basics man in the field under supervision, but not leading and they would learn themselves. I came back from there learning a hell of a lot. During that time at

the school I went down to Antarctica where we were conducted subzero survival training for 36 Squadron they were the C130 [transport aircraft] crews that were going to do the aerial re-supply of Casey and Mawson bases. Again my boss rang up and said you have done your snow training in America I want you to give these guys snow training in Kosciuosko they wanted to live in a chalet. That is not the place to do it why don’t we take them down to the Antarctic that is the place to learn that is what

we did. We put them all in one aircraft and flew down to the Antarctic lived with the Americans and New Zealanders at Scott base and lived out on the Ross Shelf and the various techniques. At one stage doing some survival research which essential where I lived with the Bush Tucker Man, Les Hiddens

and we lived with an aboriginal community up on Croker island. What Les wanted to do, he was forming the Army Survival School and we wanted to combine it and after we looked at it and talked about it really meaningful there were two different techniques involved but it was better to go our own separate ways. It was an interesting time. I found I really enjoyed those 3 years after that back to Richmond as an XO [Executive Officer], second command in charge of two Air Force Defence Squadrons

and Assistant Base Security Officer working with the Policeman and then again the boss rang up and said how would you like to go to Butterworth as a Squadron Leader. That sounds great to me how long will it take, he said I can do it tomorrow. How long do you want me he said can you be there within a month and I said yes. We packed up after a year at Richmond and went to Butterworth I was a Senior

Ground Defence officer there responsible for Base defence and co-ordinating the air force and the Royal Malaysian Air Force and the Australian Rifle Company in the ground defence activities of the base. At that time I had just about 28, 29 years up so I decided it is time to go so I decided to resign then because my next posting was going to be down in the God shop in Canberra where the Head Chef at Glenbrook. A staff job

lots of paper for group captains and arguing with public servants and I thought this is not your life. Broadly you can categorise officers in three areas. Your operators and generally that when they are young, trainers where they go from operators to instructors and staff, people at very good at writing skills and that wasn’t me. I think it is time to go and I got out in 1986

’83 to ’86 was in Butterworth and I promptly rejoined 26 Squadron I worked with Armaguard.

I got out of the air force in 1986 because I got out from Malaysia I had no house I was given 3 months resettlement training in Williamtown so I asked to be posted back to Williamtown but it was pretty natural that I would chose this area because I had several postings here before. My kids grew up in Port Stephens

my wife came from Newcastle and I liked the bay and I thought we would move back here and the chances of a job. Most of my skills are military skills. I was limited in what I could do although my resume that I had prepared by a civilian consultant who happened to be an ex-army Major

helped me in that respect. He seemed to think that security or even teaching was my forte. When I came back here I lived in a motel I had ordered a car. I arrived back in the country and lived in a hotel room and car delivered and we moved up here for a week and researched a house.

I decided I would stay with 26 Squadron because I joined the air force. 26 squadron operates very different from a lot of the other squadrons you had to have a job that would allow you to work during the week alongside your PAF Permanent Air Force counterpart and our founder made that fact very firm that we were not going to train on weekends. The emphasis would be on

retaining old skills rather than develop new ones. You have got, in my case 30 years why throw that away. We could do up to 100 days per year, you had to do 30 days a year. If I work that out I did a 5 day fortnight, 2 days one week and 3 days the next. I needed a part time job to balance that so I ended up getting a job with Armaguard who

have a lot of ex-friends doing that particular job. Armaguard was half ex-Defence Force the other quarter were ex-Police and a quarter civilian backgrounds. I enjoyed that, that was my Clayton’s job. The job you have when you really don’t have a job until I worked out what I really wanted to do. It balanced in well their roster wagged the tail and Ronny RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] could take what was left.

Then a job came up as relief manager down at the caravan park here at Shoal Bay, it was a management team the idea was to relieve the manager on weekends or on his recreation. I said to my wife, OK how about we do this for a while. We got the job their as relief managers and I was in the job one month and had a heart attack. I was all right for

working on my own work with the Missus and had a heart attack. I think it was a fair bit of responsibility and had a heart attack. I thought it was only a small one but apparently it was a massive heart attack. I had that in 1990 I was off work for about 8 weeks I felt obligated to the management to do what I asked to do so I went back to that for

for about another 12 months in the reserve and to the caravan park. I ended up doing that for 4 years but towards the end the doc [doctor] said to me you are pushing your luck you are straining the friendships a bit you are going to push it. You are in the reserve as well, training so I would suggest that you give one of those up so I resigned from the caravan park because I felt comfortable with Ronny RAAF

and I did flexible hours. One month after resigning the caravan park Ronny RAAF said sorry Bazza but you are medically unfit for further service and I thought no there is permanent air force guys that I know with the same medical category that I have got and also at my rank level I don't need to go running around the scrub and bouncing off trees and yelling I have NCOs for that my job is administrative running a Command Post I know I can do that job. The day I left the air force

medically unfit for further service I hit them with a redress agreement words to the effect that I had asked before I resigned from the caravan park whether my medical category would still be acceptable and they said yes everything is fine and I said after 30 years of service I expect a better brand of loyalty than you are showing now. For 12 months I was out in the cold I fought that redress right up to the top

and ended up taking that to the ombudsman where I would feel that it was being stalled. With the redress system you are given an update at every month if it can’t be fixed at one level, like at the base it goes to the next level and so on. I got to the God shop in Canberra and I was invited to attend a graduation parade at Duntroon of one of our young Airfield Defence Guards that we had in

the squadron and whilst I was having breakfast I spoke with one of my old Air Vice Marshals, Trudi Treloar, he was the Training Officer in 3 Squadron through Helicopters in Vietnam and he was a Director General or Assistant Air Force personnel. He said, “What are you doing Barry?” I said, “I am just attending a parade I am out at the present moment trying to get back in.” He said, “Tell me the story.” He said, “Leave it with me and I will see what I can do.”

I am getting stalled all the way along. That took a week and I got a phone call at home from 26 Squadron he said what are you doing at home get your uniform and get back to work. I got a phone call straight after that from Bob Treloar and said Air Vice Marshall Cox, Director of Personnel wants to know what do you want, what sort of compensation do you want I said just put me back in uniform I don’t want any

money or anything like that and put me back in uniform and give me what I had when I left. I was on an ex-short service another 2 or 3 years that is all I want I am just not ready to get out I thought it was unfair. He said we would like to apologise it was unprofessionalism for someone who has been loyal so long. I went back in and it is not often that people win that sort of redress but again it was lessons learnt earlier in life I you know you are right then keep fighting it.

Don’t accept the decision keep going. So I did another 2 years until 1996 that was just on 10 years in the Reserve, 2 years I was XO, Executive Officer, of the Squadron we had a permanent Air force CO and then they said, sorry Bazza medically unfit for service. It was right because I couldn’t keep up with my physical training physical testing.

In 1996 it was goodbye air force and that is where I retired but my involvement now I am still in uniform in a sense in that I have been involved in the Royal Volunteer Coastal Patrol and I enjoy because it allows me to use my radio skills, search and rescue techniques and that sort of thin. I have a lot of ex-service friends

who are also involved that keeps me active and when I finish my shift I say hooroo, I am going home to get on the road again. I know it is essential that you retire that you need to give your own sort of privacy and to keep your brain going. That is where I am now that was 30 years in the permanent air force and another 10 years in the active Reserve, 40 years all up and now I am just staying alive.

Since I had my heart attack I got 7 years out of that I have developed heart palpitations so I have an implanatable defibrillator when my heart starts to race it gives me a bolt and it fixes itself. I am on medication. I have got 13 years since my heart attack and by-pass, it is just on 5 years now so I am just about ready for a battery

change. As the boys say we don’t have to worry about a flat battery we will just carry jumper leads and if the battery goes flat just plug her into Barry.

It was 8 February

1939 and it was in Five Dock in Sydney.

My father was away from 1940 to 1946. I don’t remember much about him then he was away in the war I do remember this stranger coming home and kissing Mum. Dad was in the Middle East in Egypt

Palestine, Syria, Tobruk in that area and wears the appropriate medals for that. He was in the army Service Corps and he was one of four brothers and he was the only one who went to war, which I am extremely proud of. He came back to Australia and then

did work in the Northern Territory working out of Katherine where my boarder his granddaughter was stationed 40 or 50 years later they were there early in ’80s. His job then was running bombs up and down to the various troops up and down the road between Katherine and Darwin

He then came back to Queensland and then transferred to Ducks, that is the landing craft, DUKW [D=1942, U = Utility K=Front Wheel Drive W=Rear wheel driving axles] but it was an amphibious truck. He did his training in Queensland deployed with the 7th Division in Borneo he was in on the landings at Tarakan and Balikpapan. He came back in 1946.

My Mum, she was on her own for all that time and when I read the papers and I listen to the people who are whingeing that they haven’t spoken to their husband for a week or he is going to be away for a month or so. I believe they let them ring back from Timor on a weekly basis and I often, some of my young troops I would be counselling , the thing I was away for

a lot of time in the service. My wife can tell you in the traditional role when looked after the kids and maintained the home. I was away for courses and all sorts of things and my Mum was on her own for 5 years although her sister did live with her. I have a very dim memory of being about this height

and coming home from the pictures in Five Dock between these two women my Mum and my Auntie Edna, she is dead now, I am asleep on my feet and they are taking me home. I believe Auntie Edna moved in with Mum for company. I didn’t see much of Dad later. He came back he had an adjustment problem of being saddled with the family again. I use the word saddled,

domesticated probably a better word and I found I had similar problems after being away in a men’s world and simulate back into a domestic world. My Dad had a problem with it for a while and he would like to escape up to the RSL [Returned and Services League] with his mates. He always wanted me to come up and have a beer with him I said no Dad I don’t drink I am not into that. I had been in the Air force a year and I

realised that if you didn’t go to the booza [bar] for a beer after work it was a pretty lonely place so I learnt to have a drink then. It seemed to be the thing there. The air force had a policy where you had to live in married people could live out. Strange fate I met my wife and I took her home they were on holidays at

Ocean Beach and my Dad met Mary for the first and last time and he and I went had a few beers with my two uncles and we got a bit tipsy, so I only ever had that beer with him once, when I came back to Rathmines he died. He died in

1958, I had been in the Air force a year. He came back in 46 and died in 58. That was my Dad.

He changed from my father to a mate.

and he was always a father to me very hard disciplinarian. It was only that one time when we broke those barriers down and I resolved with my son that it would not be the case that I would be more of a mate to him and we have been very close except I only see my son now once a year or 18 months or so which hurts a bit.

My Dad was very standoffish not the real father that you would expect, he just found it hard to relate to the kids. I put it down to his war service.

Just more at home with his mates just standoffish. I can’t ever remember him playing together or

telling me he loved me or anything like that, he was Dad he was there but never close. I know a couple of times I can remember some pretty bad rows with Mum, booze related. I think once I recall him getting pretty violent and that was a frustration of jobs at that time, times were pretty hard. Dad came back

and got a job because he had welding skills, he took vocational training he got a job with Ford Motor Company at Homebush and then when he died he was a shop foreman on the floor there. We were getting close but I think it was a matter of me growing up and becoming more of a man’s man in the air force rather than a

teenager sort of thing. It was a combination of both I am thankful that we got together in the end.

No I don’t recall. I know it was with my two uncles, there were four of us no I don’t recall but it was just a beer Dad liked a drop and

every Friday night was p at the RSL Club with his mates and then football on Saturdays. I remember Anzac Day was his special day he would start saving for about 3 months before he wouldn’t go up the Club, the suit was dry cleaned the week before, boots polished he would disappear at 3 in the morning and go into the dawn service in town and we wouldn’t see him until about 4 that afternoon. He would come home with a couple of boozy mates and we would cook up the steak

bangers and mash and that was his big day.

Just being able to talk on the same level. Something in common. We were talking about my service I had just done recruit training and

at Rathmines and we were talking about a service environment. Common ground that we could talk about I think that was basically it. To him I was an air force Blue Orchid and he was a pongo we were throwing that at one another.

Yes I

I recall being in, Mum said to wear a uniform he would be proud of that. I recall paying compliments there and I said to Mum I have 3 brothers and a sister I guess I better get out and be the man of the family and she said no you do your career I will manage. That could have been a

big turning point because I thought I have got to be the man now she said no you stay with what you have got we will manage. She was a war widow then of course and looked after by Legacy and my brothers and my sister they were raised by Legacy. I have got two brothers and a sister still alive one of my brothers died at 18 from a brain haemorrhage at Warren. That was a turning point but

but I was getting emotional at the funeral I sort of tried to stand up that is what comes from a service family we do our crying behind doors.

She is still alive she is 85 she lives in a home unit, her own unit in a retirement village in Bateau Bay.

I have said there a couple of times that is the second best thing you ever did Mum she said what was the first best I said having me of course. She is a very hard woman because of her responsibilities. Hard and tough in raising the family I always know how my Mum is going whether I can get an argument out of her. If she can argue or if she can pick a

her day is Saturday no one rings her on Saturday so she sits in her command chair with her telephone, radio and TV [television] and she has a bet. Saturday is her day. As long as I can remember running to the bookies to pick up the money or pay them what we owe them Saturday is her day. Dad had his club and Mum had her betting. It has never changed. When I know she can’t have a bet I know she is pretty crook. She has never been beaten in

an argument. I know that she had a discussion with my brother in law about helicopters in World War II whether they were ever involved she rang me and I said I can’t recall but I don’t think so . She ended up ringing the Department of Air to get an answer, she will not be beaten in an argument. I think I have some of those tenacious attitudes to hang on when you know you are right.

I think I got it from her.

Good mother. I can remember when I left school her taking me to De Havilland’s she wanted to be involved in a Draftsman or an Architect because I used to like drawing planes so she went with me with the drawings and she chased up the jobs at AWA and that got me interviews and the whole bit.

She raised the family it would have been hard. I don’t think women expect a little bit more, the war was changed and we have all sorts of luxuries and all sorts of aides to live in but it was a hard time to raising, Dad was away to start and then raising the family. She had a bit to put up

with.

That is hard to put a finger on values. Values were different. A hard days work for a hard day’s job we didn’t seem to.

I look back in history our unions were emerging then. Values, school we didn’t seem to have the political. It is only that I have got out of the air force that I have become politically aware of what is going on around me. Now I take a great interest in the political scene. Whilst in the air force

we were paid by our masters and we did as we were told. I never got really interested in politics. At that time I couldn’t even contemplate on that it was a simple life. I can remember going to the grocers and the butcher shop with my backpack and going shopping with a list and that sort of thing. The drink and I would take a can full of fresh milk and I would drink half of that on the way home. It is just a hard

life a simpler life. I can remember the prop mans, the horse and cart with the props that you put your clothes lines up with. Eggs and honey man and a few of others the ice man they are all gone.

We all had ice chests in my early days fridges didn’t come in until

later on and you got your ice delivered every couple of days. The ice chest has a lid at the top and you put the ice in and cold air sinks. I remember the ice works just around the back from our place. That is one of my jokes about the Irish ice works that went broke when they lost the recipe.

I suppose it is very different now.

Five Dock. We lived near Bardwell Park and there was a canal and a tip at Homebush Bay. That was my playground playing in the mangroves with the tidal flats, rubbish tips that gradually covered in the mangroves it gradually got built out. Canada Bay they call it now.

I think they put a golf course in there where I grew up was near Gangston Hughes, the tin can place. That was my playground in the tip and down the mud flats and catching tadpoles, fish and crabs that sort of thing. Five Dock was a town about the same size as Nelson Bay at that time.

It has grown a lot now. Two theatres, the pub has never changed it is still in the same place.

Yes the Astor and the Regal. Definitely the Astor and I seem to recall another one. It was pretty big and my Auntie lived at Abbottsford that was my sort of growing up

but most of my boyhood days I joined the Sea Scouts at Ryde Bridge, again it might have been a link to regimentation or uniforms or whatever I looked at the Scouts I didn’t particularly like the area at Five Dock and I think I had a friend it was a school boy friend who was in the Scouts

at Ryde Bridge so I joined that. A lot of my mates were around the Ryde area from school. I was in the Boy Scouts for 3 or 4 years and I think that would have been an early grounding for the uniforms and the bush work and regimentation and badges and courses. It must have been in the blood.

Whether my Dad I don’t think there is any links before Dad the original Ahrens was the village blacksmith at Milton, First Fleeters I could only go back that far. Whether there were soldiers in the background I don’t know. I often laugh Mary has a coffee cup out there, Barry

Beer mug. In another age you carried a spear, for what purpose it isn’t clear perhaps it was to guard your kith and kin or maybe hunt for another bearskin. What Barry’s link to that I don’t know but I think the scouts probably might have helped a little bit in joining the air force. It was funny that I joined the Sea Scouts and then joined the air force and ended up doing

an army job. I am now finding a lot of the skills that I learnt as a Boy Scout seamanship that I am now coming across it in courses in Coastal Patrol and the terminology. It is interesting.

I went to Christian Brothers College

a Catholic school from 3rd class, 1st and 2nd class was with the nuns at St Mary’s. Mum wanted me to go to a Catholic school, we were Catholics and I think that is part of the Irish carry over at that time as most of our forefathers were Irish stock and we were a Catholic family. We weren’t a hard, whilst we went to mass on

Sunday we weren’t it wasn’t overly done, we paid our respects on Sundays and that was it. I went to Christian Brothers College we spent a bit of time on religious instruction of a morning and then morning prayers and then the afternoon and benediction on Fridays there was a bit of time. When I look back now I realise there was a lot of time wasted in that

area. At that time they said it was important. The one aspect I thought was important was Christian politeness. We were taught manners and that seems not to be evident lately. I can remember the book Christian Politeness that had value. Whether the religious the Catechism and all that but because it was a Catholic School it was always the bottom line. I was an average student

when I passed my Intermediate it was only just I never liked school I liked sport I liked the active bit. I couldn’t wait to get out and go and play. The Brothers seemed to pamper towards students that had the brains and if you couldn’t keep up they weren’t too concerned about it. When I look at some of my failures, I had difficulty

in writing and I look back now and I think that because the classes were so big 30 or 40 in a class that the student instructor ratio was high. I look back now and if Mum and Dad might have been a bit richer I might have had personal tuition and I might have done better. While I look at myself sometime as being a bit dumb in that aspect I realise that they might not be the fault

More specialised school might have been better. I was happy there they were well controlled the Brothers there were no sexual overtones that you read about now. I talk with other people about that and they say did you ever notice that and I say never ever to me it couldn’t happen not in the Catholic Church the priests the brothers that never happened. But now there are things that did occur

I certainly never encountered it.

Yes, I got a few of the strap. I remember a couple of times we got to it and cut the strap.

We cut the stitching it had a blade in it and we pulled it out and it went limp. That was it if you didn’t do you homework or something it was a cut, it didn’t really hurt they ruled by fear I remember being picked up here. They had discipline and that was the way it was. No victimisation or harassment or anything like that

you get nowadays.

They were from my wife Mary went to a nun’s school and she used to say they were hard disciplinarians. Maybe it was a good thing but you wouldn't get away with it nowadays but at least they taught us manners there is no way in the world we would do some of the things I read about now. We would have never got away with it.

I worked in a hardware store, WR Johnstons at Five Dock as a Counter Assistant. Like most young boys I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and I think nowadays where they have vocational training I often tell my grandson he is just on 14 now and I stress to him it is important to try and work out what you want to be

so we can target his education to meet that requirement. My brother’s sons and daughters they are in the same age. I talk to them in the same vane. Try and make up your mind what you want to be. My brother’s son he wanted to join the air force so I had to say these are the subjects you will require so target your later years of education to them and meet that requirement if you can do it.

We never got that sort of impetuous that sort of push in making that clear so I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I needed a bit of pocket money and at £4 a week and I gave it to Mum. Mum said give it to me and I will give you money.

I liked aeroplanes I was always drawing aeroplanes.

I think movies 12 o’clock High and that sort of thing and I wanted to fly and I wanted a uniform environment but I think I was just impatient. I was a counter assistant and then I went into AWA, Mum kept pushing accountancy she got me that job there so I agreed I will do a trainee accountant but it wasn’t me I wanted a more active role I needed to get out. I think the Boy Scouts it might have been

an influence it just wasn’t enough. The air force possibly because there were limited vacancies and I was able to join the air force as a direct entry without training me I could re-muster straight into this job. I had to do a trade test at Richmond and I passed the test so they were able to recruit me as that.

It might have had some bearing on it.

The hardware store about 12 months or so, AWA was about 2 years that is also when I was doing accountancy at tech. Again that was Mercantile Law and bookkeeping and again I can’t handle this. I was handling it all right and passing it

but it just wasn’t me it is not what I want to be I don’t want to be locked up in an office.

I don’t remember.

I remember gong down to Rushcutters Bay was the Recruiting Depot.

I remember going down there and just looking around trying to find myself. It was at Rushcutters Bay near White City tennis courts I went there and that is when they sent me to Richmond for the trade testing and that.

Trade testing was question and answer multi choice things. At a

trade test equipment. That was basic bookkeeping questions. I think they were looking for an aptitude so I had that I was able to pass that.

I think that was just generalised thing. I think we have Bridges at Toko Ri and I think

with John Wayne. We had a lot of war movies came in towards the end of World War II so no particular war movie although I think there is no particular war movie but a generalised thing and born in that period of time and my Dad away and then growing up with

Anzac Days and all that I just had an interest in that sort of thing the warrior world.

After I finished that test they sort of said and wait and we call you. I was called up and they said you are acceptable to us in the air force

do you still want to go ahead with it, yes I was to report down to the regular recruitment centre at Rushcutters Bay with the following equipment. I did do and there were 6 of us hopped onto a train the rattler and went to Richmond, I remember we got off at

a Race Track and you got off there and then you had to cross the strip to Richmond and report to Recruit Training.

I overheard them when I put it to them that I wanted to join and I remember Dad saying to Mum we will let him have a go it might make a man of him.

I am thinking that is just what I need that to do. I just wanted to get out of the office environment and still searching for what I wanted to be. They were for it although when I was in the air force for 12 months when my Dad died I continued to support my family. Part of the deal was when I joined the air force because

they were battling that I send some money home. When I was working with the AWA I was paying rent they said you can join but we want you to maintain that because we need the income. I said fair enough when Dad died I continued to keep that up until I got married. I felt good about that because whilst I wasn’t actually the figure head

I remember said at the start I had better get out when Dad died she said no you stay in so I felt I was the head of the family indirectly financially. They were happy enough to let me go.

I loved it, it was good. A lot of foot stamping and drill, the weapon training and the outdoors

stuff. I have come from an office environment and the next thing it is an outdoor world and it is all practical stuff. A team environment we were living in barracks with 4 persons to a room and I enjoyed it.

We were fortunate enough to have a drill instructor who was ex-Grenadier guards but I checked it out later and he was an ex-Grenadier guards so he was very regimented a pommie [English] and a very good instructor. When I think later about the jobs that I have done he was influencing me to

no small degree in following a military path. I really enjoyed it he made us feel that the aim was to be the best recruit course I think there were about 8 recruit courses running at that time and we were going to be the best. From then later on in life I adopted a motto which was the motto of the Coldstream Guards (UNCLEAR) second to none and that became a personal motto of mine.

The first one was of the Royal Australian Regiment which was duty first and second to none and I have always kept those mottoes because I believed it. I think he put that into me at that stage and the drill of course I understood the purpose of that because it was properly explained that it just wasn’t food stamping for the benefit it was a way of getting us to work together to obey orders instinctively. Again that is pretty important in the army

not necessarily important in the air force where you have a technical guy you can’t just tell him to do something it has to be explained and he has to know what references he has to apply to. They teach the basics of being indoctrinated into an organisation into a system that is what drill does. It gets you to work together it gets you to obey orders and it makes you

a good organisation. It gets you to accept the rank structure in the military in the defence force you assume that because a person has a higher rank that he is much more experienced in that particular thing and that experience you rely on for leadership and guidance so you learn at that stage to accept that. To accept the

orders and that sort of thing.

The recruit course again cuts the bond the medical

cord so to speak you learn very quickly that you have got to look after yourself. Whilst other people say they are looking after your interests you have still got to look after yourself. It teaches you to be independent it also teaches you to look after your buddies which is the essential part of field operations is yourself and your buddy. It

teaches that sort of self reliance. A funny story which I think will amplify this is when my son joined the army he went to Kapooka and again it was natural that he would join an armed service because he grew up in that environment. I rang him up he was down at Kapooka I said well son have they taught you anything really good. He said well Dad they are teaching me the really good things I have learnt that

you don’t iron a nylon shirt because it melts and sticks to the iron, I have learnt that you can’t chuck your white singlets in with your green tracksuit because your singlets go green. It is a learning phase and that answers your question, you learn the basics and I think it is really good for young people. I have friends and their sons and daughters are in their 30’s and they are still living at home

sort of thing. I left the next when I was 19 and I have never regretted that and both my son and my daughter did the same thing. I was confident in letting them go that they would learn to stand on their own two feet and look after themselves, that is what it does.

I really laughed when he said the nylon shirt sticks to your iron.

Even today my son is in the Army Reserve,

a senior constable in the Australian Police Force he does his own ironing he won’t let his wife do that he does that and that is a habit and I noticed when he came back from the infantry centre and joined us in Townsville the first thing he did was reconfigure his room and wardrobe so everything was hanging the same distance apart the same regulations that is it and it is part of his life as it is mine. It is an organised existence.

Bob Ashton was his name.

He was very smart in appearance and bearing. His lessons showed evidence of

preparation and again that is a lesson I have learnt. The presentation of a lesson always reflects your preparation and I used to teach my student the 9 P’s of Chairman Mao. Chairman Mao’s little red book on revolutionary warfare. The 9 P’s pride, preparation and planning prevents piss poor performance and pissed off people. That is an early lesson an influence by

it was very obvious he never did anything in half measures it was always black and white and he was always well prepared. I looked up to him. Later on I had cause to speak on similar subjects at officers training school where I was speaking of the CO where people who are posted to officer’s training school has to be the best because they influence young officers attitudes to the service and their life. You just don’t put someone there on a disciplinary posting.

The army follows that concept when you got posted to Duntroon or any of their schools they were hand picked they knew they were on their way up for promotion and it is a very necessary thing. He was the beginning of that lesson.

Yes but he had again as an instructor and later on as a NCO and later on as an officer you learn to keep barriers there but you have to keep approachable. In their place you don’t become, the key words were fair, firm and friendly and never familiar. I stuck to that he was firm, fair and friendly you never got too close.

that was a lesson. Later on when I was a drill instructor with my own courses I kept that not quite standoffishness but I kept that barrier there and you had to with recruits because they were learning that place where they sit. No longer was it a matter of speaking out your opinion there was a time and place for that and the way that you do it with a bit of diplomacy. You learn it to keep that shut.

That was 3 months.

I was posted to Rathmines that was a seaplane base on the Lake Macquarie and as their a Clerk Equipment Accounts. There internal audit moving through stores and that is where I met my wife as well. That was 12 months of that back at the desk again doing the same thing I did at AWA.

Again whilst I was in and at the same time I was doing a bit of studying to try and get the subjects I required for aircrew training but I found I was battling at that too. Some of the higher maths I just had problems with and I always have. For aircrew you need higher maths you need to be fast and I just couldn’t handle that. That was that

time where I was struggling at that and doing the same things that I did before that is why when they started calling for a drill instructor I went for that and I thought I really enjoyed my course recruit course I liked the regimentation the military aspects of that, that is going to be a big leap from what I have been doing so I will do it a go and do the course.

My friends on the base I think, Kevin Carrol he invited me to a party, Mary was his girlfriend and I was to escort her girlfriend but the situations changed during the party and I ended up

winning Mary. That was it she was more attracted to me than the girlfriend was. I don’t think he was too happy about that but I white anted him in better words.

You needed

time out any other teenager we had the same interest sort of thing on weekends we would go into town to Newcastle or something like that. I had my sport I used to do a bit of sailing and a bit of bush walking and we went to the Palais Royal it was a dance still there in Newcastle

I think it is closed up now but we went to the dances or something every fortnight.

About 3 years, I got posted away from Rathmines down to Wagga and we were pretty close then and we became engaged and Mary decided to move down to Sydney to live with Mum and she

helped Mum with the income and it wasn’t so far to drive from Wagga up to Sydney and I was able to kill two birds with the same stone. Visit my family which I felt I was still required and visit my fiancée. That is where we got married from there.

Yes I did

I had to go to Amberley for 3 months for the Instructors Course and I was posted back to Rathmines where number one Recruit Training was held.

We were assigned to a course there were 30 students on a recruit course and my job was to teach them drill right through from individual drill arms drill, flight drill, squadron drill. There was a sequence

to do, administration air force administration like leave applications. Law teach them all about charge forms and I was the instructor of the legal system. Airmanship they were taught by an Airmanship Instructor, that was marshalling aeroplanes, first aid, fire fighting, map reading, small bit of minor tactics a lot of ranges a lot of weapons training

I taught them the .303 rifle, the .303 light machine gun the Bren gun and the 45 calibre Thomson machine gun plus the 36 mls grenade. We do all that weapons and that sort of thing. Three months to take them from the raw recruit to march out parade. On the march out parade I was the one who lead them and we were assessed then by the warrant officer

and by the Commanding Officer of the unit to what level we were at. Not only were they being tested but so was I. I enjoyed that very much. The only time I required another instructor was for some specialist which was first aid and Nuclear and Biological Chemical Warfare. Those aspects.

That was during the course I had those specialists instructor. The rest of the time I had them 8 hours a day and sometimes for the night period.

Three months to turn them out to the point where they could be thrown out into the system.

That sort of faded out at that time, I realised that I didn’t have the subjects and that I should focus perhaps on the military aspects. I considered after that when I went down to Wagga with the apprentices

transferring to the army. When I thought about that I am a corporal and I have a young son, just married and I am going to throw away a lot of that to go back and be a Private soldier I think I will stay where I am. I felt that I was comfortable in an atmosphere that taught military subjects.

You had to do a NBC Instructors Course which I did.

Nuclear Biological Chemical Warfare. It was just after the Woomera tests and it was recognised as a form of warfare.

They had already been employed in World War II the NBC side countries were developing their nuclear technology so it could be reasonably expected that one day it might be used against us so we needed to be able to fight in that environment how to take protective measures and all the rest of it. Biological Warfare on the nuclear side was predicting

fallout patterns down wind of nuclear explosion although the information we had came from Hiroshima and Nagasaki facts and figures fielding the facts, fall out predictions was one road logical monitoring where we used various instruments to be able to monitor various contaminated areas, individual decontamination and proper suits so we could fight in a nuclear

environment, service respirator.

Decontamination was the terms of aircraft was a matter of washing and washing and washing and getting right down and the same thing in where in a personal sort of thing in discarding your clothes contaminated with dust and thorough scrubbing down and going through special decontamination chambers

that allowed all this to happen where you went in dirty at one end and came out clean at the other. Biological aspect was a fairly complex one. Chemical warfare had more potential to be used than biological. Biological agents can turn against you because they are affected by the weather the wind and the big problem is to be able to project them it wasn’t one that they placed a lot

of emphasis on because of the difficulties using it. Chemical had a lot of potential it was first used in World War I with Mustard Gas. It was able to kill you or to incapacitate you or just to irritate you but to destroy your will to fight. The countries of the world that had agreed not to use chemical weapons most of the countries except at that time by the US and they hadn’t signed that agreement because Russia hadn’t. Obviously they were quite

prepared to retaliate it if Russia initiated that means of chemical warfare. We were a signatory of that chemical ban. It had a lot of potential and we needed to identify the threats the exactly the same as it is today. To perfect preventative measures against that sort of warfare.

At that time we knew that all the countries in the world were developing it nuclear technology. Chemical warfare we knew that, that was expanding that they were still stockpiling. It doesn’t seem to have changed much in terms of these weapons of destruction there are today. It was a containment and I think we were going into the mad period mutual assured destruction, mad. We were heading for Armageddon sort of thing.

It was an area at that time we concentrated on as a potential threat rather than the conventional warfare aspect.

Basically I was doing the same thing with apprentices as recruits but stretched over a longer period. They were there for

3 years, 1st, 2nd 3rd year doing an engineering courses. airframe fitters, instrument fitters, electrical fitters, motor transport fitters so the general service training I taught the recruits was spread over a much longer period. It only meant I would be employed for a couple of periods a day it wasn’t enough for me. I needed to be more active.

In regards to what I think about that

in terms of things in all the units and things that I have been associated with the Wombats were the 3rd year group of apprentices that I was assigned to originally with that warrant officer that I mentioned previously was pretty experienced he was an ex-desert rat. I have been to their 15th, 20th, 25th and their 30th reunion

they talk about their 40th reunion but there is not many left in the service now. Most of them are all senior officers. I have noted one thing with all these reunions and I was always invited back the personality never changes of the blokes. They get fatter and they get balder but the guys who are the agricultural guys are still the agricultural guys the smart asses are still the smart asses. The boffins are still the boffins, so to me it suggested that our personality

developed very early in life and they don’t change much. You recognise them straight away. They might be a bit changed facially but their personality doesn’t change. I have enjoyed that. I have identified with that particular group for many years and I was only their NCO.

We are talking about

prior to going to war. I have just left Wagga I went back to Amberley in base defence that was starting to build I recall doing training for 2 Squadron they were Canberra’s they were deploying to South Vietnam I remember talking to the

aircrew and in fact teaching the aircrews weapons and NBC at that time. Vietnam was a possible threat. I was then promoted and went back to Williamtown that was a time when in terms of communism and going to war I felt at that time, for a starters the service

men go where you are told you are at the whim of your political masters. I always thought if I was sent overseas and I would assume that the decision to send me would not have been taken lightly and it would be in the countries best interest to send us and that is exactly the same consideration we should have for Iraq. Communism was a scourge that was sweeping the world so to speak

but it was looked to be evil at that stage but it wasn’t expanded on what evil was except that it was not a nice sort of thing it was going to endanger our culture. That was the impression I gained there was no political indoctrination

for us. Any feelings I had about communism most cases came from newspapers or people talking. When we went to Vietnam in 1962 and I went there in 1966 I didn’t have any problems in going. One because it was my duty to go and two because we were honouring SEATO [South East Asia Treaty Organisation] obligation

it is essential. If you sign up to do something and for your credibility you have got to stand by that signatory. We were honouring, Thailand was a partner in SEATO, South East Asia Treaty Organisation we were part of that obligation. America required us there to assist them in

preventing aggression. There was this domino theory that communism was gradually coming through Vietnam was in the middle of a war, Laos and Cambodia were already being infiltrated. Thailand was in the middle of an insurgent war as was the others it was gradually creeping down. I felt comfortable with the idea of fighting the war in someone else’s backyard rather than Australia where I would have to defend my family. Taking the war somewhere else I thought was right.

Standing by our American allies I feel the same today as I did then, they had asked us for a hand, they helped us in World War II with the Japanese invaders and I think a lot of the arguments at that time one of the big pushes the primary reasons, but one of the biggest arguments

was standing by our friends because one day we might need them again. When I went to America to do my training for the Survival School in the service environment the Americans couldn’t do enough for us. Couldn’t do enough as soon as they knew I was an Australian. The first thing that would come out man you were with us in Vietnam and we hope you are there again and they really looked after us because of that. I think now today I was listening to a report there

on television on Indonesia and if you look at all the Asian countries that are up there, there are millions of Asians the history of warfare one minute they are our friends and the next minute we are fighting them everything seems to go unstable. There are a lot of radicals up there bomb threats radical religion, reactionaries and that sort of thing. We need our friends.

I have agreed with the reasons we went to Vietnam and those reasons I think still stood for Iraq to stand by our friendship. Not an obligation, I don’t believe we owe America anything but there will come a time when we will need friends again. It works both ways if your friend wants assistance you give him a hand.

I only went in summary because I had to. SEATO Agreement and because the Yanks asked us for a hand but the reaction then was exactly the same the country provided what it thought it could commensurate with the threat. When we went to Thailand before that the problem was Laos. SEATO Plan 5 called for an infantry battalion

from the Fair East Strategic Reserve in Malaysia, a couple of navy ships and a Fighter Squadron and that was the plan. Under SEATO there were plans for various contingencies as you have today. Our deployment like Afghanistan is measured. We always made we had a reserve at home and the thinking then is exactly the same as it has been in the last 12 months.

We noticed that was the deployment of our Advisers that went in 1962. The deployment to Ubon, 79 Squadron deployed at the same time as our Australian Army advisers deployed to Vietnam 1962.

All of a sudden it is not fun and games any more. This is what you signed up for Bazza and I am sure this sort of thought must have struck a lot of people where they joined the forces for a career and all of a sudden they realise they have to put their life on the line. That is where they really do their homework. I had

that same thought when I went overseas to Thailand that feeling that is when you need your friends. If you are going to be in trouble it is nice to have people there with you.

I went back to Amberley that is where things were shaping up, we had a Bomber Squadron deploying, we had the 16 Army Light Aircraft Squadron they were equipped with Suez Helicopters

they were going through and intensive period of training was the general feeling, we were looking at ourselves pretty critically, that would have been the early 60’s, I went to Williamtown in ‘63 as a sergeant. At Williamtown that sort of feeling. I can’t remember when confrontation with Indonesia came in

I know I was a sergeant and I know it was at Williamtown it might have been before I went to South East Asia.

No I was very lucky. Lucky in this sense, I think

when I got married at Rathmines as an Instructor. One of our padres there, Padre Ham was an ex-army padre and I remember him and he used to do some morale instruction to the recruits which was part of the syllabus but I remember him saying to me just before you get married bring your wife along and let me have a chat with her and my wife.

We did before we got married and one of the things he made very clear to Mary is that she is marrying two people. A serviceman and the man and there would be time when the serviceman would take precedent. That worked for Mary, I knew that she knew that if we went to war then she would accept that. Never had a problem that she would object she knew that it was good she knew what she was getting into

she would always be my camp follower my lifeline and she has never varied she has always been there right through that and she knew that. I was happy that she knew at the start there was two people involved.

Exactly.

Newspapers, television. There wasn’t any feedback, RAAF News which I still have a couple of copies with my photo in it from the Parachute School. RAAF News was a monthly thing and that told us about our Squadrons that were deploying and what they were doing

it was good that was making sure the air force environment knew what was going on. The army News the navy News did the same thing. Newspapers.

Just a posting order came out. I was posted to Thailand and the fact it came out in November

and I was going away for my Christmas holidays with my brother in law and sister in law we were going up to a property at that my wife’s uncle was managing at he was drowned at that time, duck hunting and they found his clothes and

they were beside the river. He had obviously shot a duck and went after it and drowned that was Kevin, she was married to Mary’s sister so I often thought to myself I wondered, I cancelled that holiday because I was to go away in January so I thought I had better make sure everything was right at home everything was set up to be able to manage for 6 months away. I often think if I had gone away would I have made any difference.

I got word in November I was to deploy in January.

No that wasn’t my job. When I left Wagga I went up to Amberley I did a re-muster from a drill instructor to an Aerodrome Defence Instructor and then I did an NBC, Neutral Biological Course

and then was part of the continuation training to teach people NBC stuff and also had exercises where we would plant small metal discs that were radio active in an area with radio active signs they had to use their meters to measure the difference between hot spots and light spots. Of course it was highly

all of them were accountable we couldn’t close the training for the day until we recovered all the disks they all had to be accountable all signed out of the radio active storage area. They were very, you could probably have one on your person for 2 years and you wouldn’t even get a burn. It was for an instrument. It was that sort of thing and that the same time number 3 Aircraft Depot, 3AD had a decontamination centre

that was just down at the back of the hangers and it consisted of a round concrete area that was sloped for a collection pit in the centre. Parked on that was a Lincoln Bomber. The Lincoln had been part of the trials at Maralinga and whether it had a

flown through a dust cloud or it was part of the measurement process but it was being decontaminated which was a process of washing it down and the dust would be collected in a collection area. Where that residue went to I don’t know. The other process was actual weathering where radioactivity wears off over time. There was nothing covert about that I think we were opening supporting the tests it was all adding to our knowledge

of nuclear defence which had the potential for future warfare. We were just going through that phase.

Basically where before I taught drill and admin and law the aerodrome defence concentrated more on field battle monitor tactics more weapons

field engineering, patrolling techniques, it was all field skills. Field Engineering, sandbagging, wiring, field craft techniques some minor demolitions and booby traps involved. It was all the skills that you would need

to operate outside the wire and also to develop fixed defences on a base. It was a higher level from teaching recruits and then your next step up was teaching base combatants because they needed to defend their airfield. I have used many times as an officer I used to teach Ground Defence Policy

and always when introducing that lesson on the blackboard I would put a quotation that Winston Churchill used in 1940 and it personifies exactly what it is all about. He said in 1940 he had army detachments around all the airfields and he reckoned it was a waste of time and what he wanted to do was take the fight to Germany on the European mainland

so he said in 1940 and that was when the Battle of Britain was in progress that every airfield should be the stronghold of fighting air groundsmen and not the abode of uniformed civilians in the prime of life protected by detachment of soldiers. That is what it was about. That is the sort of thing that I had to project the whole time in our world. Aerodrome Defence

Instructors in the air force, there would have been about 80 of us Specialist Instructors. Anything that smelled of army brown jobs in the air force were frowned upon and we had to get the message across that the army would be doing their job and they weren’t about to sit around protecting the airfield on their own bit of real estate, we had to look after ourselves. So the person had to have a spanner in one hand and a rifle in the other. I was pleased to say

that before I left the air force they have recognised that where they now run extensive training of ground combat training. Time was kept to a minimum but that is what it was all about, it was those skills I was taught to teach and then pass those skills on. Those skills were required for a pre-deployment training to Vietnam and Thailand. When 79 Squadron

went in 1962 and those schools were already being employed and we had about 3 aerodrome a Defence Officer, a flight sergeant and a Sergeant Aerodrome Defence Instructors and it was there job to make sure that people were trained to defend themselves. They found that wasn’t enough that is why the Airfield Defence Guard mustering came into being where they

required specialists to be able to patrol outside the wire in that zone that I call the rocket zone it is out to about 5 kms [kilometres] and it is determined by the length of your support weapons and the range of your shoulder fire rockets or mortars that the enemy might have. They have to dominate that bit of real estate. It is called defence in depth you don’t just defend your perimeter line

you know the circle of wagons you have to get out past that and try and get it before it happens.

You must understand with Airfield Defence you will not prevent the bad guys from getting in it is too big a bit of real estate what you have got to do is deny him the opportunity to target the acquisition and make it hard for him to stockpile his weapons and you do that by patrolling by day

and night. You deny him his intelligence and if he does get in you have got to make it hard for him to operate and then you have got to have the means if he does do his job to make it hard for him to get out again. You can recover quickly your operations and also your passive defence mechanisms to be able to get on with the primary mission of launching and that is what it is about. We teach base combatants

to protect their bit of real estate within the perimeter, the Airfield Defence Guards that came into being and that is when I came back from Thailand were required to be trained in the skills outside the perimeter. They were part of a QRF, Quick Reaction Force, the reserve force able to react to any intrusions of the perimeter were specialists. Very dangerous job when you are operating with half trained air force guys it is a bit iffy [questionable].

a bit quick on the trigger finger very dangerous. In fact we often used to say I would prefer to be outside the fence than inside.

I looked at the house and made sure she had the essentials she required. We were living on a farm

luckily the farmer said I will look after her, we lived in his old house, he had bought a new one, I will be able to look after her. I had to make sure she could get the much needed groceries and that sort of thing, there was a bus with the 2 kids to make sure that there was backups in terms of paying bills, that there was nothing that needed repair

preparing her for to make sure the money allotment system was going to work to make sure she was looked after while I was away. Most military systems army, navy and air force have a system whereby they look after their own where their wives get together and they look after their own they do follow ups. Like Veterans Affairs do today then the wives would follow up on the wives it is part of a big family.

Not much about it, I think like most blokes it was a big adventure. For me it was a matter of going and doing something that I had been training for all the time to put my skills. It wasn’t a matter of thinking that you were going to die or anything like that. In the air force world is quite different from an infantryman’s world.

In the infantry world there was a big chance you might get blown away but in the air force world there is because of the nature of aeroplanes being very expensive and very vulnerable you don’t put them in a forward area they are always in a rear area so you are reasonably secure. The same thoughts wouldn’t go through the average air force bloke as would go through the average army bloke who has much more to lose than his life. I wasn’t particularly worried about going into that sort of environment

going away although when I got there I found it wasn’t as secure as I thought it was. There was no big emotions I was fairly certain I was going to come back because I thought I was going to be in a reasonably secure environment.

I think like any other woman

who had her husband going away for 6 months she didn’t understand the difference between a secure area and a non-secure area. She was a little bit tearful, the kids were too young I think Tye was 4 and Renee was 2 so they didn’t really understand. Because the air force wouldn’t deploy the unit we went as individuals.

Quite different from the army where the Battalion goes away as a group whereas the air force sends individuals. I went over on a Qantas jet via Singapore. Then to Butterworth and then by C130 from Butterworth to Thailand to Ubon.

Dirty dusty little place. A dusty place a lot of aircraft activity a feeling of what are you doing here all of a sudden this is not the newspaper reading, you are there and I think it binds you together when you realise, it is not as if you are on your own but

you are a group and we have to stick together. I am a long way from home in a potentially hostile country. What I will have to do now is explain what was there and why we were doing it. Ubon is in north eastern Thailand it is 50 miles away from the ocean border and

not miles kilometres 50 kilometres from the ocean border and 80 kilometres from the Cambodian border and about 180 kilometres from the border of Laos and Vietnam not far at all. Ubon is a Royal Thai air force base we were there on the invitation of the Thais to assist them in the border defence

of Thailand against communist insurgency that was already happening. The base we first deployed there in 1962 as part of a SEATO agreement and we had 8 Mark 32 Sabre aircraft and we were there

for the primary mission at that time was the air defence of the base and the air defence of the Thai-Cambodian border. It didn’t have any fast jets so that was our job. The aircraft came from 77 Squadron in Butterworth. Tunku Abdul Rahman, the President, the boss man in Malaysia stated that none of the bases

were to be used to prosecute the war in Vietnam so the 8 aircraft were taken from Butterworth flown down to Singapore and then they formed as a Squadron, 79 Squadron and then flew into Ubon. The boss man CO was Wing Commander Hubble, 8 aircraft took off and they only just made it, two aircraft lost their radios in flight

they only had maps that took them a little more than half way. They flew from Singapore to Bangkok and then to Thailand so the maps only took them half way. They lost two birds with no radio but the guy was leading the second in command was Ray Tabrilka and he had read reports as obviously as our push for recognition when they landed their

Hubble’s aircraft was on its emergency fuel it had ran into bad weather and it could have been very bad for them, they got there on their last reserves of fuel, that was 1962.

They just stayed with the leader. They had a flight plan and they flew the plan, they just followed.

Sorry they weren’t lost they lost their radio, no radio communication. So you have 6 birds that can communicate with one another and

two that can’t and then they ran into bad weather and then they almost had a navigational problem of finding it. They got in, in 1962 and the base then was a big base I think the runway is about 5,000 feet which isn’t very long for the aircraft. It has a town directly outside the main gate. The Americans

deployed there in 1965 I went there in early 66 they deployed because in Vietnam they were pushing the war up into North Vietnam into Hanoi and there were not US [United States of America] bases in the northern part of South Vietnam that is near the

border the demilitarised zone that we have there now and they asked for and got the nod to operate from Thailand. In Thailand there were 7 US bases, 5 strike and 2 support. The 5 strike bases were Nakhon Phanom, Takhli, Ubon and one other

I don’t recall. The other two were support bases, that was U-Tapao and Butepayah [?] and Don Muang which is out of Bangkok. Support bases were KC-135 tankers and B52 bombers at U-Tapao. The other 5 were strike bases and they operated F4 Phantoms, F105 Thunderchiefs

and F100 Super Sabres. At Nakhon Phanom, was right on the border on the Mekong River, the border with Thailand and that had Sandys which were A1 propeller driven aircraft, Jolly Green Giants they were

Chinook helicopters sort of thing, helicopters, Huey gunships, C147s gunships and AC130 Spectre gunships, they were right up on the border. They were involved in a fair bit of clandestine operations in Laos. Laos was neutral at that time as was Cambodia.

Any operations there were classified. They were support aeroplanes because the Yanks didn’t have the bases close to North Vietnam that is whey they were there. Also I think the King of Thailand thought with those bases it was also protecting his own interests and also when the Yanks pulled out they handed over those bases. Ubon now had, the base I landed in, in 1966

had Phantoms aeroplane. It is a 2 engine very heavy fighter bomber. Very hard to describe but it is an ugly looking bird but very effective it carries a lot of armament and a lot of weapons. There were 80 of those and they were the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing

they called themselves. They shot down one third the total number of aircraft that was shot down in the air war in Vietnam. They were responsible for 68 Mig [jet fighter] kills and their greatest claim to fame in early 1967 was they shot down 7 Mig 21s [fighter jet] in one day. The North Vietnamese had Mig 17’s, Mig 19s and Mig 21s.

It was suspected they had Russian and Chinese advisers but that was classified but they were supposedly joined by North Vietnamese. Not a lot is known about the air war in Vietnam. The 8th Tactical Fighter Wing that we were co located with shot down one third of the total number of aircraft. It was quite a hot bed of activity in North Vietnam. There were

9,000 AAA anti-aircraft [artillery] sites around North Vietnam about 6,000 were in the 30 mile zone, that is 30 miles out from the centre of Hanoi they were AAA. 3,500 were in the inner zone I think that was about 10 miles. 150 odd SAM sites, Surface Air Missiles and they were capable of pumping out 100 rockets

a day. The Yanks were losing about 25 aeroplanes a month in Vietnam. I read an interesting report that the 105 Thunderchiefs they had about 850 for use at that time and there is still 400 there that were downed by missiles and artillery so it was a pretty heavy war. The 8th Tactical Fighter Wing were prosecuting from Ubon

to Korat and Takhli and one other place. 80%, of these figures I am fairly certain of, of all the air missions came from Thailand. When we talk about the Vietnam War we prefer to talk about it as a war in South East Asia. It wasn’t necessarily contained within the borders of Vietnam. A lot of the air stuff, the air war was fought there.

There were 8 Sabre aircraft. There was about 85 F4’s there was Royal Thai air force Skyraiders a big prop driven job. Dakota C41 gunships and later C130 Spectre gunships as well. The air force mission there, so the mission of the

base was to maintain a system of air superiority over North Vietnam. To carry out intermittent missions to Hanoi bombing it sort, to North Vietnam, to carry out missions on the main supply routes and that is another way of saying the Ho Chi Minh Trail that came down

to Laos that was supposed to be neutral that is why I say supply routes. Some covert missions into Laos where Americans weren’t supposed to be. The Americans were in Laos because the aircraft had to fly across Laos to get to North Vietnam. It took fire or missiles or whatever a lot of aircraft went down in that area so they had Special Forces teams to rescue them. At Nakon Phanom

on the border was where they had aircraft that were capable of supporting search and rescue missions. They were the gunships and the helicopters and bird dog aircraft the Forward Air Control aircraft and if they needed fast movers that is jet aircraft to support those missions so they had to control them from there. It was

pretty active that was the base at Ubon. Our job the 79 Squadron was the air defence of the Thai-Laos-Cambodian border. That changed.

I think I should. In 1962 when we went there that was part of a SEATO agreement when we were asked by Thailand to help protect their border, in

1965 it changed so we were there before the Yanks got there. When the Yanks got there in 1964 they wanted us more involved in the air war in Vietnam but Australia wouldn’t allow that to happen. What happened then is that before that we came under command of SEATO Headquarters in Bangkok, strict rules of engagement, virtually amounting to fire if fired upon

defence. In 1965 it changed and from 1962 right through until we came home aircraft were on a dawn till dusk alert status, alert 5, means that the aircraft we had 2 Sabres sitting on the end of the strip with five minutes notice to move so the pilots were dressed in their standby hut and they were able to race out to the aircraft and

wind her up and get airborne in five minutes. That went on from dawn to dusk from 1962 to 198. The rules of engagement changed in 1965 the aircraft were armed with air to air Sidewinder missiles and 30 mm cannons. The Yanks [Americans] asked us to look after the air defence of the base not only the borders but the base. That meant that they didn’t have to worry about they could prosecute the war into North Vietnam.

without defending the base. The job then changed from not only the borders but protecting the base itself. We in our fight for recognition we saw ourselves as part of the air war in Vietnam a de facto partner while we flew into, our aircraft never went into Vietnam but we were part of assisting the Americans in carrying out the air war. The other job that the

pilots did because the Americans were losing a lot of aircraft and the pilots they were getting as replacements were not as trained as they should be and our FCIs our Fighter Combat Instructors were teaching these young fellows air to air combats tactics what they call dissimilar aircraft tactics. I have a letter that our Ubon Reunion Recognition Group

we are fighting for recognition since 1963 and it is only lately that we have been given recognised properly and it is still ongoing. Robin Olds was the Commander of the base in 1967. He said then that the contribution that we made there in the defence of the base and training his young aircrew was immeasurable. He also said which comes in my world that it would be remiss of him not to mention the security

provided at the base by the Airfield Defence Guards patrolled outside which they weren’t allowed to do. Their ground defence were Air Policemen. Trained in military skills. Although the Thai Army and the Border Police were responsible outside.

Responsibilities for the Guards they only just got there.

The training of ground combatant personnel and aircrew in weapon refreshers. Their part and how they were supposed to have done some training before deployment we had to make sure they were trained with their weapons make sure they understood that their allocated place in the base itself and what would happen on the various alerts. In other words how they fitted into the defence

plan. With the defence plan you go through various phases from green, amber to pink to red. Green everything is OK mate, amber is a standby things are starting to we have got warnings against the place, pink it is very close red they are on top of us, so it is various phases. On each of those phases you go into a different pre

defence series of plans and part of it was when to draw weapons when to establish communication what bunkers to occupy and so on and they had to be fitted into that so we could react on a moments notice. Also the aircrews had to be reacted into similar postures for the air defence role. It wasn’t my role, mine was ground defence role. It was making sure what to do when the time came.

That is when attack on the base is imminent whereas pink it is a possibility within 12 hours. Most of them are on time and on red it is when you are actually in the weapon pits, your weapons are loaded and you are facing up. Understand on a base, a base is a fair bit of real estate, a defended area

we call that a defended area and you have a perimeter fence goes around it, within that perimeter you have defended localities on the flight lines. We were only one small part. We had 8 Sabre aircraft and about 20 officers and ranks a very small detachment and we are in one part of the airport right next door to the fuel farm.

The fuel farm was 6 metres outside our perimeter we were 150 metres from the strip, very noisy place. We had a few aircraft came back battle damaged and exploded and we were always worried about the fuel farm next door because if it went up we would go too. In our little area it was surrounded by barbed wire and bunkers. The bunkers were sited in depth and it was my job after the boss of the Ground Defence had sited them to construct one.

A lot of them had already been done we had been there since 62 a lot of work by my predecessors my job was to maintain what existed and develop new ones. All the wiring had to be renewed and with triple rolls of concertina, that sort of thing. As well as the instruction bit it was to maintain that. I had a small task force of a half a dozen. They

worked with me during the week and on weekends they and their families would go to the sandpit and they would fill sandbags. They used to get paid overtime that is the way they supported themselves. It used to take them 3 minutes to lay one sandbag they had been taught well and they would these little mallets and they would put it into place and they would pat it down and square it and the whole bit a real work of art. Rather than just throw them on top of one another the sandbag would all collapse

particularly if it gets wet on one side. That was always our problem with monsoons the driving rain, it would collapse. If they are correctly bonded.

Yes. Like in Malaysia at Butterworth it was an agreement that we employ LEC, locally employed citizens it was part of the deal at Butterworth later on and there we were doing the same thing.

It is not something I liked.

Because they are the same as the enemy and you can’t pick them. They were all Asian appearance and it would be very easy to infiltrate the enemy into your base. They were never put into responsible positions so you could always observe. For example you would never find an Asian

soldier in an infantry battalion unless he was there as an interpreter but that was the deal. They were heavily screened by the Thais and the threat wasn’t a big threat but it would never set well with us that they were there. Right in the middle of us all that intelligence. Information on the siting of our bunker systems and all that was easily obtained.

Great. Wonderfully happy people I think Thailand means free land. They had never been subject to a colonial power like Cambodia, Laos and Thailand they never had the French, Thailand had never been subject to that, they were happy people. Wherever you went in every home you would find a photograph, maybe a newspaper clipping of the King, King

Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit together. Everywhere you went, very patriotic. I attended some of their schools because I had young kids I took an interest in their schools, they were very well dressed kids and the flag went up every morning they had their parades and they sang their national anthem. I think is probably missing in our schools today, every afternoon and every morning that is how their day, the flag and then the national anthem. The flag and then the national anthem.

Across the road from the base I had a friend and he was where you could get a cool drink and all that sort of thing, a boy there about 7, he couldn’t talk English but he would write it, we used communicate with one another on paper. I found out later all his English was a second language taught in their schools the trade language but the problem was with the teachers they can’t speak it.

They couldn’t speak it but they could teach it, he had a beautiful hand. We used to write to one another.

Just tell him about my family, my kids that they did. Just little things but it felt good only a young boy. I met him because his brother who was 16 somehow or other I don’t know how when I went to town for a haircut or for a beer or something he would call out Sergeant Barry,

Sergeant Barry. He was a very smart businessman he used to cost me about $5 Australian to have this day all day, he would wait for me, always on the go and if I went for a few beers at a nightclub or the hotel, there were a couple of hotels in town, he would be there. I can remember coming home, curfew was midnight maybe 11 o’clock at night and here would be this young fellow waiting for me.

It was his younger brother I would talk to.

Yes in a Saamlaw. A Saamlaw is a pushbike with a thing on two wheels behind it that was the taxi the universal taxi. The others used to wait outside the main gate of Thailand. Somehow I don’t know how but he knew my name. Smart businessman so he was my driver.

Yes it was his young brother.

Yes. The (UNCLEAR) threat in Thailand in 1966 according to records were about 3,500 communist insurgents known to be in Thailand

there was about 1500 according to Thai Border Police about 1500 in our general area. Assassinations of village officials were occurring at about 10 a month. There was a lot of activity not readily apparent to us. Not like in Vietnam where you had your enemy on your doorsteps. The base at Ubon was never attacked while we

were there. That was ’62 to ’68, it was attacked in ’69, ’70 and ’72 I think. Sapper attacks, engineers carrying satchel charges. It happened three times we reckoned that it was our ground defence measures and our patrolling, the ADGs did that, kept us secure up to that point. It only happened after we left in 68.

In the previous discussions I mentioned I had reservations about the locals working on the base and I think that was part of my reasoning for that was that the boss I had at that time was an ex-RAAF Regiment guy

air force and he had come from he had done service in Cyprus, Aden and they had very bad terrorist situations and he was very suspicious of indigenous people working on the base and that sort of got to me too and maybe that made us very much aware of security consciousness. Having said that our, in all the sections on the base we had some little input

from the local indigenous population. In the Defence Section there was a Flight Lieutenant, Ground Defence Officer, Flight Sergeant, Aerodrome Defence Instructor and a Sergeant Aerodrome Defence Instructor only 3 of us and we changed every 6 months when the new ones came in but it was staggered. The only person that afforded continuous continuity was Kamah. He was our Thai

headboy so to speak to the point where he had access to the keys of the section and the armoury and the whole bit. When Flight Lieutenant Harlow arrived he took that off him he took that access off him. I understand he accepted it and I thought it was the right move.

Australians tend to make friends. When we went to Butterworth part of the deal there was to employ

civilians so we had a gardener and an amah. I spoke to Mary a couple of times to say that you have got to remember the amah I am employing I am paying it is part of the deal she is an employee she is not your friend. Mary would talk with her and have afternoon tea and all that they do it all the time because they are not working. I said you have got to keep that border there. We sorted that out the same thing where we tend to become very friendly

where the Poms have this colonial relationship they have been masters of it, where they would put the natives for want of a better word in their place, Australians aren’t like that.

Yes extremely friendly people and because they made us feel welcome you tend to relax more but they could be dangerous in some areas. Kamah was our headboy and he remained

in that section he knew all about it. It was good because he could go back since we got there in 1962 and I was there in 66 so he knew what had gone on the whole bit he knew everything about the place. Whilst it is good it is bad.

He just used to clean the weapons in the armoury and clean out the defence section, run messages and act as our interpreter when we were travelling

around for any reason whatsoever things of that nature. He was also the head boy the foreman for the labourers. I had 5 other workers, Kami, Kamisong, Kampoo, I can’t remember their names but their job was the construction of the bunkers and the maintenance of the bunkers they were very good at it because they had been doing it for years. It was quite good because

on weekends they would bring their families into the sandpit which was near to the base and I would say how many Kami sandbags do you think we need for next week’s construction we were always planning ahead and he would say about 3,000 sandbags. I would say that is your target I want 3,000 sandbags. The family would get in, Mum, kids the whole bit they would be out there filling these sandbags. We would pay the LEC overtime sort of thing

I don’t know how they gave it out to the family his overtime paid for that. That was their job, one head boy in the section and the other five assisted in helping me to lay barbed wire and construct and maintain bunkers.

Yes. They would knock a bunker up in about a week and a half from memory and they had it down to the inch in width. The bunkers you saw in the photograph are made of a wooden frame base of 4 x 4 timbers they were heavily sandbagged around the sides with dirt parapets overhead protection to give protection of the occupants from incoming

mortars and that sort of thing. I don’t think they would have been any protection against heavy artillery but certainly from mortars. Over the top of the bunkers we stretched chicken wire which was propped up with bamboo struts and that was meant to be protection from grenade would bounce off that so they were stretched tight and pegged and the lot was camouflaged with sandbags died black and dark green.

The aim of that was not to camouflage the bunker you can’t conceal something like that but to make it difficult to ascertain exactly what it was and in most cases they just looked like a dump or a heap of pillage and they were constructed and the Ground Defence Officer sighted them so they had clear fire lanes or an arc of responsibility and that is another area that I

would touch upon is that on the air base it is a defended locality area within that big area you have defended localities. Each locality is responsible for its own defence. In a high threat situation you all close into your localities each locality can support the other one it is one of the principles of defence it is called mutual support you are all locked in. In our particular case the huts that we lived in were galvanised

iron and timber and we had a caterpillar tractor as part of our workforce. We could have flattened all that in a hurry so what you would have been left with just debris with strategically tactically sited bunkers ringed in by wire. We were capable of defending ourselves.

Just clear fields of fire so you could see around you. Where the bunkers were there were

buildings all around them so you flatten them. It would have taken a bit of time a couple of days or a day but assuming there was a lot of warning. Also keeping in mind where you have got a high threat to the base where a threat is imminent and definite and then in most cases you get rid of your aircraft and your aircrews because they are vulnerable. One round into an aeroplane there is $1 million worth of damage and

without aeroplanes we are not an air force we have lost our planes. In a lot of cases there is a high threat they would launched to a satellite airfield we would shut the gates and lock in and defend ourselves.

Threats we went to phase amber during my time there and most of those were related to radar. Just up the road was an American radar base called Lyon

and sometimes they picked up threats which we thought were helicopters. The Thai Border Police indicated the insurgents were being supplied by helicopters flying in from Laos. Part of the rules of engagement we were to attempt to destroy them if contacted. A couple of times we got suspicious blips on radar aircraft were launched to pick them up and the base was locked into a defensive posture.

When we got there and part of the Ground Defence Officer job was to liaise with the local Defence Authorities and I think Warin 6 Military Brigade a local army unit and just down the road from us was a, the Thai Border Police and he developed his contacts with the intelligence section there and I liaised a bit with the

CO’s there. I have a photograph of a warrant officer there, Leekid. I think our friendship was formed on the fact that he wore parachute wings and so did I. We were bent legs that is a term for a parachutist as against straight legs. All those who would like to be and those who aren’t.

When you are in a parachuting landing position your legs are bent to absorb the impact like a spring. It is an American term we have always been called bent

legs as against straights.

Intelligence indicated that whilst we were on the edges of town and the only evidence of war was the continuous activity of the Phantoms [aircraft] taking off, one particular time we had 80 aircraft launched in just over an hour. A terribly noisy environment. Our base,

our locality was only 150 metres from the main strip so you can imagine how noisy it was, that is probably why I am deaf today or going deaf. That was the only evidence of war we had battle damaged aircraft coming back crashes on the strip and one particular crash where an aircraft took off and became unstable I think it hit a dog or something like that and inverted just after takeoff we

saw the back seater go out first which he has to do. If the front seater goes first then he fries the guy behind him, the Phantom is a 2 seater aircraft, we saw the back seater go out and we saw the aircraft rolled over and the front seat just injected straight into the ground and then boom because he was fully loaded with ordinance. That sort of thing, this really isn’t just a civilian airport. Incidents like that. There was a helicopter that was shot down just after I came home

in 67 it took ground fire it was a C130, it took ground fire from the approaches to the strip. From a Ground Defence point of view the most dangerous are your thresholds are your ends of the strips where aircraft has just got to come down to land and we actively patrolled the lot. Aircraft were taking

ground fire from there so we knew there were people who were active it was suggested that there were assassinations taking place in the north eastern area of Thailand by insurgents who were coming across from Laos and they were happening about 10 per month which is a pretty high rate of men and village officials are killed in front of their families and things like that.

We never did. All our letters were censored that sort of thing, I assumed they were censored. Operational matters was something that we were briefed on and you don’t discuss none of that. I just said not to worry too much we are in a reasonably peaceful area as I said you don’t put aeroplanes in high areas they are too vulnerable. You can assume that you are going to be in a reasonably

secure area but you have always got the thought of small groups, commandos or in this case insurgents.

That was before I went to Thailand and I was at Williamtown as a young sergeant and I did a

Parachute Course. Harry was doing his Parachute Jump Instructors course a captain and from 1 Commando Company in Sydney and I was on his qualifying stick. You have a group of trainees, you drop a stick of bombs you drop a stick of parachuters I was on his qualifying stick. The next time I met him was when he came back as CO of the Parachute School when the air force

were handing over to the army and during the time that he had been away he went away as a Company Commander with D Company, 6RAR [Royal Australian Regiment] and he was the Commander at Long Tan which you know was one of our major battles.

For co-ordinating the fire support of, for co0ordinating they were

ran into a very heavy group of North Vietnamese regulars in a rubber plantation came under heavy fire so he co-ordinated the defence of his 3 platoons in the company and he then co-ordinated the fire plan where they used supporting artillery to their front and he was there when the APCs, Armoured Personnel Carriers came in to pull them out. He was doing his job.

He was a good commander in backing up his platoons in co-ordination.

He is a quiet man I have seen him a couple of times since then but he tends to fade out now I believe at Long Tan Day where he used to be guest speaker they don’t see much of him now. I think a lot of veterans tend to do that.

I am not really certain.

I have seen it in some cases where some blokes they just be reminded of the horrors of war and each time they sort of each reunion they renew it. After awhile it wears thin they would prefer to forget that they were part of the horror that sort of thing.

My view.

Remember there weren’t any Viet Cong

in Thailand, they were Thai communists. From reading a lot about the Viet Cong and what stories we got back when we came back to Australia a lot of my friends were in the army the North Vietnamese regular was a very trained professional and when he engaged in a fire fight

he wasn’t an easy enemy to combat. The Viet Cong was a very much hit and run sort of person, hitting at unlikely times. In attacks on air bases a lot of the attacks on air bases were done by the North Vietnamese regulars when it became later on in the war and they came down and the bases were

being hit in Vietnam the bases there being hit by well trained people but they were always characterised by a very hard and very fast and very well planned attacks into the base at night. Fast hitting, fast withdrawal very quickly but evidence that all targets had been pre-selected and they had done rehearsals and pre-trains and get out fast.

They were a very determined enemy. We never struck that in Thailand it was only after we left that a couple, Ubon was hit which was further up the track and there were Americans killed there. At Ubon we had aircraft damaged and I think there were no American servicemen injured but there were a couple I think one KIA [Killed In Action] and a couple wounded in action, Thai

communists.

Again we never saw them. They never actually hit the base the only evidence we had was what we were getting from intelligence. Mostly they were in the early phases of the war intimidation of the local population prior to an expansion of that sort of thing. We didn’t see any contact with them

at all.

The intimidation was the assassination of village head men to put fear in the people because part of the insurgency code of operations modus operandi you can’t live in the jungle unsupported you need the village infra-structure to be able to get your rations to keep feeding the force. You have

got to maintain that and communist revolutionary warfare depended on that to carry out their goals. Whereas the Australian/American concept was the hearts and minds there where we had to win them over and maintain a pretty close relationship on that aspect.

Yes. Particularly our pilots always over in the Yank camp and they were always in our mess. Our pilots were linking because they weren’t involved in the war then they obviously wanted to know more to what was going on. They were continually

picking the brains of the pilots on the American side. At that stage I couldn’t tell you too much about it because I was a sergeant but in talking to a few of the guys later they had a close relationship. They had a close relationship in teaching them dissimilar aircraft tactics because their aircraft was very similar in characteristics to the Mig 19 whereas a Mig 21 was like a Mirage. They were able to work out bounces on the aircraft coming back

from Hanoi that was the time they generally slackened up they were on the way home so they bounced them and dissected that later on in the debrief of where they went wrong the whole bit. A close relationship that way. If aircraft were coming back and battle damaged were having problems with navigation it wouldn’t have been the first time that an Australian voice came up on the radio and said OK Yank let’s have a look at you first and we will see the damage

and I will get you home. They couldn’t do that over the border. They had to meet them at the border, I believe that happened on a few occasions.

Not actually sent up it was part of a it is possible, when I say actually sent up, I would say that they would do a practice scramble and it just happened that there was incoming aircraft to assist because they weren’t supposed to actively participate

in operations in Vietnam. I have no doubt that there would have been a comrade between the aircrews on that taking place.

In Thailand they were better dressed than our guys.

The Australian aircraft fitter was in a pair of shorts and sunburnt torso with GP [General Purpose] boots and socks turned down. The Americans were always in a white clean T-shirt with nice smart greens and a nice hat. They looked professional that was in that environment. The Thai police that we worked within Ground Defence,

they were reasonably proficient in their job except they had very limited soldier which they recognised after Vietnam that that is where a deficiency was. When I went over to America with the Survival School I visited there the Lackland Training Air Force Base in San Antonio and they recognised then that their policemen weren’t in the league at all of our own

Airfield Defence Guards. We were trained as infantrymen not police skills.

Very good in appearance, very professional, they did things very comfortable there was no way about how they built things up but I think every warrior tries to get himself comfortable as he can in the environment. I learnt a lot when I went to America when I was running the (UNCLEAR) Survival School and I

went to several of their bases and I realise that firstly we were the flavour of the month as Australians and simply because we were with them in Vietnam we had honoured our obligations. I still think we need to do that they really liked us and it wasn’t put on.

You don’t put a man on the moon for being an idiot do you, they are very efficient. When I did their courses in some cases they might have been a little bit boy scoutish but

the environment at Fairchild Air Force Bas in Washington they had a huge hanged setup and it had the various environments like you go into this hanger and all the survival aids that an aircrew could expect in desert warfare and they had sand dunes and it was a real dry heat and then you go next door and you are in sub zero survival cool school they used to call it. It was all shapes like polystyrene

igloos and all this sort of stuff and freezing and then you go next door into their jungle survival and it has creepy crawly things very humid environment. They go to great pains in their training aids a lot of money spent on training aids. In a lot of cases I got the impression they seem to lack the personal touch that the Australians. When I came back

from doing courses with the Americans whilst they are very professional and very friendly, once you get away from their back slapping methods and understand them, I met a lot of professionals.

I don’t know I think it was just because they would pamper their people too much. Too many of I won’t say ice cream and steak. I know of instance where you have

got a fly support base in the middle of jungle next minute a helicopter comes along and you get fresh steak and ice creams. That is not the way we do it we give them a ration pack and we will see you in 7 days when you run out and that is the way we tend to operate. The only concept is train hard fight easy. You do not pamper people in training you give them a hard time knowing that in war time it will be easy.

It is one that they use a

lot my son is an ex SAS soldier and he was 140 on his pre-selection, 28 when he graduated but he cut them out I told him he was going to get a hard time. That is the way we operated. In Thailand I found them professional, their aircraft looked well and they obviously fought well. I said the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing that we were co-located with they had some very big scores

in one day 7 Mig 21s which is a pretty big kill rate that was an ambush. They took off and duplicated the call signs formations and altitudes of the F105sThunderchiefs which were inferior to the Migs and they scrambled thinking they were going to come up against F105s and they were F4 Phantoms that had top cover and they

big fight, 7 in one day is a pretty big kill. I think their overall kill rate was 68 Migs for the Vietnam War.

Yes that was the sergeant’s mess. What did we do,

we had a games night and we invited the senior NCOs [Non commissioned Officer] the senior Master Sergeants over and ours was a much smaller mess I think there was only 24 senior NCOs, sergeants, flight sergeants and warrant officers. Pretty small, it would have only been 20 odd officers a small mess they came over and they had a really good time. The next day they turned up with this truck loaded with

beds and surgical equipment and enormous fridge that we put into the sergeant’s mess and just because they were under war time accounting standards where we were on peace time which means you have to account for everything with theirs they just wrote it off. We ended up with a truckload of gear just for being hospitable. That is the way the Americans are. We had 2 or 3 Americans Honorary members

of our mess that worked in the radar a place up the road, Bob Orth was his name he was an army sergeant we had a sprinkling of them. It was not something that we encouraged we often used to go to their senior NCOs club but that happened one day.

Thailand

is either hot and wet or hot and dry. The dry season is really dry but it is always hot. The wet season the monsoon, preceding that there used to be a ceremony the Water Festival but I know we went over real big because for about 3 days everyone throws water over everyone else. You would go into town and you would be

wearing buckets of water and kids would have water pistols so we went one better and took a water tanker in and blew them all away with this water cart and they reckoned this was number one really good. That was the beginning of the wet season and when it rained it was the usual cloudless morning the clouds gradually building up the thunderstorm would develop the duty thunderstorm we used to call it, at 4 o’clock every

afternoon and down she would come. Half an hour of really solid rain that is why in South East Asia you have monsoon drains and they are a metre deep by a metre wide that is their interpretation of a gutter and you need that sort of thing for the amount of water that comes down. That happened and that was almost constantly everyday it freshened everything up but it also made things very muggy. In those particular circumstances a lot of skin problems,

the biggest trouble with injuries in the tropics is that they get infected very quickly.

Yes I have still got problems with tinea a very common problem.

We started at 6.30 in the morning and we finished at 2 in the afternoon because that is when it was really getting hot.

Generally you would go over and have a shower and then go over to the sergeant’s mess and have a beer or three or four. That is the problem because beer was cheap and because of the high tropics you are losing a lot of fluid a couple of beers to put that fluid back in and once you get the taste it is hard to stop that was it. Other than that it was too hot to play sport but we did have a tennis court. Sometime

we would bat around at night and even then it was humid. They had a little swimming pool which was about 20 metres across and about 2 metres deep that is all. You would have got about 20 people in there, it was there if you wanted to cool off real quick you could dive in there, it didn’t take a lot of water so we weren’t draining the thing.

It occasionally got to some of them, yes I think it carried on later on in life. A lot of veterans have that problem for the same reason particularly in Vietnam in battalions and that where they were on the dry for 7 days 14 days and they would come back. Alcohol used in its place to relax you to

make you calm down it is quite good but it can be abused and alcohol abuse was always a constant problem that you had to monitor. You sweat it out a lot too. It got to the end a mate and I would go to town just for to have dinner or something like that go to the movies or a nightclub or something like that. If you listened to a bit of music you would take a dozen stubbies a bottle of

vodka and because you couldn’t drink anything that didn’t come out of a can or a bottle you couldn’t have ice so you would take your little bag with some ice in it from the base and then you would buy a bottle of Howdy or Coke out of the fridge tick a quarter of it out and put Vodka in. I did notice in time the people who were there, their alcoholic

consumption did increase just to get a kick out of it. It was very refreshing too the Americans were on the 24 hour operations and we were right alongside the strip and it was always day and night they were on the runway, operation rolling thunder. Air bombardment of North Vietnam. It was pretty hard to sleep because you sleep lightly in the tropics it caught up and because there is not a lot to do you would go to the bar and have a couple of beers and that was it.

Possibly to sleep you could at least you could guarantee when you put your head down you would get 3 or 4 hours that sort of thing. In that sense there was an application to doing it but it could get a hold of you. I kept an eye on the diggers and the other ranks so if

any closely with their boozer and make sure he was only open at certain hours and the Duty Officer closed it on time and then the Orderly Officer or the sergeant patrolled the lines to make sure they weren’t carrying any into the barracks.

No.

I didn’t see any evidence of that in Ubon at all. I didn’t see any evidence

at the Yank camp but there must have been now that I read a lot about it. Not in our world we had no drug, crimes or anything like that no disciplinary problems linked to drugs. I was never approached at any time, it is not as evident as it is now but I believe in Vietnam it was very much in

use by the American serviceman.

Pretty important. You couldn’t afford to have someone hiding in his hole. I think a good analogy is in Scott Base after work each day you got together in the bar and I talked with the

Commanders there. In Scott Base I think there was 10 in the winter over and 40 in the summer over and they stayed there all the time and they have a Commander and Senior Scientist. The Senior Administrative guy was a Squadron Leader of the Royal New Zealand Air Force I had a talk with him about it. We promote having a beer after work here and we keep an eye on people that are

we don’t see but retreat back into their holes and they don’t mix and become very silent and that means there is a problem if that same thing in the Defence Forces where you keep an eye on people who suddenly become morose and withdrawn and that sort of thing and you realise they have a problem somewhere.

I think it is a matter of counselling and try and work out

what the problem is. From an Officer or Senior NCO point of view you would get your suspicions confirmed by observations from other people and then you would have a talk to the guy and then you could draw him out but there were danger signs.

There could be problems at home things that were worrying them mail they were getting that sort of thing, it could be just the boredom.

Not seeing their families day after day the same pattern that sort of thing.

I don’t think so. The only stresses because we didn’t have close contact with the enemy the threat was always there but because the Americans were hurting the North Vietnamese in Hanoi and they knew the bases they knew where the aircraft were coming from. All the American aircraft have a designator

on their tail plate and they knew when aircraft took off from Ubon and at the end of the strip was what we call the tree of knowledge and it always used to be Thai nationals underneath that and we knew that when aircraft took off they were copying tail numbers and numbers and the whole bit. Advance warning was going back there was a strike on. It was just something that was known. I think it was sort of tolerated

where they knew where they were because if they bounced them they would have gone underground and they would done the same thing. I believe that was there.

Yes. We believe so that was passed to us from the Thai Border Police Intelligence that is what they suspected they were doing. Tail numbers of aircraft that were coming and again I read back now stories of POWs [Prisoner of War]

and when an aircraft crashed when they got the tail number they knew exactly where it came from. The Yanks had a system of designating their bases to their tail numbers and big OA or O1.

There would have to be. That went back through the system to Hanoi. It was part of their air defence alerting procedures. Their

radars and that were fairly sophisticated radar network I am led to believe and that was part of the advance warning that aircraft were inbound. The deception measures afoot to make sure the aircraft didn’t take off in waves or whatever it may be I don’t know exactly what went on. I was only a young sergeant very raw, I have only really learnt a lot

lately as we have been researching our claims for recognition as to what went on.

Ubon was mentioned several times that we were going to expect a visit. Primarily that would have been directed towards the Yanks. Ubon was a known strike base and they were hurting and we were told we would expect to get

retaliation in some form that is why even though we didn’t see much evidence of war around us we always knew it would come back at us and strike at us.

No a strike base. They knew where the aircraft were and where they were coming from.

It was only I just can’t remember too much about that it was a lot of references to American Units and somebody is having a birthday today. It was more destroying morale by bringing up names and letting them think that they knew all about you, that sort of thing.

I believe that the aircraft from the 8th Tactical Wing lost 3 aircraft yesterday in North Vietnam and all that which would have been pretty easy and we hope that we capture them and we will look after them these people for you at our comfortable Hanoi Hilton pub and that sort of thing. It just sort of all part of psychological warfare.

I didn’t listen very often at all we had local radio stations and we picked up radio Vietnam which was mostly all American pop hits and that sort of stuff. I don’t remember much about that.

Don’t know. I have only heard that in talking to other people and reading references to it.

Particularly when I was researching the history of the A Tactical Fighter Wing, which interests me. Now I look back on it when we are researching the history of it, it was quite a significant time.

Like thunder. I often tell people lately when I listen or reading or hear about them complaining

jet noise what you are listening to is the sound of freedom. Listen to the sound of an F18 and a big 21 let’s put it that way. A Russian night fighter or Indonesian night fighter or whoever the enemy maybe the noise our base was located 150 metres to 200 metres from the main strip. The strip was only about 5,000 feet long, I believe pretty short for jet aircraft, so they needed a fair bit

the Phantom had two engines and heavily loaded with ordinance. I think there was about 18 inches ground clearance when fully loaded up and they need a lot of power to get air borne and all that vibration the whole building would shake and I vaguely recall someone in a drunken state and he was going to race down and put a few rounds into this Phantom. I can well understand that it would drive you

I suppose another link to alcohol in trying to sleep. The whole thing galvanised iron and wooden structures would shake.

It did. I don’t only have that problem there but when I was at the Parachute School the married quarter was just off the strip at the civilian air terminal at Williamtown, so I have had a lot of aircraft.

Yes, Night and day operations. The 8th Tactical Fighter Wing consisted of 4 Squadrons 3 day fighters and 1 night fighter. The Fighter Squadron was used predominantly for strikes in the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos so that was it. They were either getting or winding up

before dawn for the day and then they would be off at dawn because it is a long haul to Hanoi and back. At night then you would have the engine fitters doing test runs on the aircraft and the Sabres and the Phantoms to keep them serviceable to keep the rate up and then you had the night fighters so it was going on the whole time.

I got set up once we had an officers, sergeants drinks we invited the officers over a bloke by the name of Roger Wilson set me up.

He got out as a group captain. I have flown twice with him in a Mirage and a Macchi as a passenger Roger said I’ll bet you I can lift you and two other guys off the deck just me. No Roger, bet you I can, I’ll bet you 200 Baht, $20 I think it was, I said no we will see OK.

After I had a few beers I said I will pay your silly game and so he said OK wait until I get my mates. He called over big Kev Merigan, Roger and Dun Riding was an Air Vice Marshal later on, they were two knuckle heads which is another name for fighter pilots, two big guys, I thought I think I am being set up here so I had to sit down on the ground and he said I will just

I have got to have you locked in together so I can lift the 3 of you. This brought every one to attention. One guy sat in front of me in between my legs and locked his arms around my knees and the other fellow sat behind me and locked his arms around my shoulders, bobsled. I couldn’t move and he said I will count to 3 and you lock in tight, he said I am watching the whole bit. He has got them all in now,

I am going to lift Bazza, he counted to 3 with these 2 guys locked in I couldn’t move clicked his fingers and this guy came over with a big jug of beer he undid my fly and poured the beer down there and leapt up, I was going to kill him. He said I told you I would lift you. Many years later I have met him a couple of times and one day I am going to get you on this 3 man

lift. That sort of humour and sort of thing other than jokes. We had quite a few nights that sort of things in the mess hall just trying to develop some good rapport with our pilots. In fact I think that would have been the only time that I have felt a real close rapport

as it was we were all together and that was unaccompanied there were no families we were all living in and the ground crews and the aircrews we were all together and we all relied on each other, that is the only time I have felt really close. In peacetime operations you go home and you are married and it just becomes another job.

Because we realised we relied on one another because we were so far away we needed that closeness and the threat and knowledge of a common threat that sort of thing. The technical crews their job was to make sure they had all the aircraft serviceable there was only 8. I think in my 6 months there I only

saw them all air borne once all 8 together and that was no mean feat because generally there is something wrong with one aeroplane. On the other hand one morning where we towed 2 aeroplanes that were on duty, we towed them down by tractor and they were unserviceable. Nobody knew that, pilots were all dressed and going through the motions. We didn’t get an alert but on a rare occasion that would happen.

It is technical side they were pretty well on the ball. Two guys came from 75 Fighter Wing in Butterworth for about 2 months of the time and we were there for 6 months. The changeover of aircraft for major servicing, because Tunku Abdul Rahman said that none of the bases in Malaysia were to assist in the war in Vietnam it used to happen when aircraft were due for major services was a Canberra bomber would take off

from Butterworth and it would marry up with two Sabres, tuck in under the wings so that when they crossed into Thai air space, when they crossed out of Malaysian air space into Thai air space only one radar blip and when they got to Ubon, the American patrols must have known this, they would marry over Ubon the two would separate and the two going back would tuck under the Canberra and they would go back. It was supposed to be on a weather mission or something like that.

Our covert changeovers.

No that was it for 6 months I was continuation training in weapons and that sort of thing and defence plan and practicing the defence plan and the maintenance of the bunkers. I had one other secondary role which I didn’t like and I only did that for 2 months and it was dog destruction.

Because there was very little ground there were a lot of dogs roaming around the place and because there was not much clearance from the strip to the ordinance under the wing if it hit a dog on take off there was a possibility it would go unstable so we had a system whereby if a dog was sighted near the strip the Air Traffic Controllers

in the tower would call defence section and they would say dog on the 3,000 yard marker or whatever it was scramble. Whoever took the phone call would go ma, ma, ma which is dog in Thai so we would jump in our Jeep with the bonnet down and a big frame over the top Kamah, the head boy, would give me the shot gun

and the rounds and I would grab another one of my work boys and up would go the hat like John Wayne from Hatari and we would take off and blow them away. When I first started there the flight sergeant who I took over from used to use an Owen gun because it was short range and we had problems with the Air Field Defence is that the friendlies will do more damage to aircraft than enemy through indiscriminate fire.

All our bunkers had preset arcs of fire and the worse thing you could do is put rounds in the flight line and it is still a problem that is why normally aircraft are in revetments not to protect them from the enemy but to protect them from indiscriminate fire. He used to use an Owen gun [machine gun] which is short fire and I went out with him once and said this is terrible they would blow their legs off. I think a shot gun with double O buck

would be hard hitting thing and then we would build traps to catch them all around the flight lines at night when they would come in scavenging for food and a couple of times I would have to go out and shoot this dog with a pistol. In the end I had one bad day where it was a little pup and it was just looking at me and I had to blow it away and I said and went back to the boss and said that is it I am not doing this any more that is enough it is just getting to me.

So we decided then that we would bury them where we shot them. I was alongside the strip one day and my boy was digging a hole for the dog to go in to and the Yank Air Police came over and said hey man what are you doing, I said I just shot a couple of charlies [Viet Cong] and we bury them on the spot we don’t muck around with funerals. Hey man you sassing us. In the end I said a couple of dogs, I had him right in.

Yes that was an unpleasant side duty I knocked up about 80 or so dogs I didn’t want to do that any more. They were a real bad pest and not only that 80% of them had the mange they had a disease problem.

Frequently, especially when you get letters from home

photos of the kids.

Just missing the family that sort of thing and then you would look at the calendar and do the count down how many days to go. Most people had calendars they would mark off the days and get down. Herc [Hercules transport aircraft] Day, when the Hercs [C130 Hercules aircraft] came in once a fortnight for the changeover of personnel and we used to have a pre-Herc

night in the sergeants mess where you would farewell the guys going home and traditionally we had a ball and chain and they were chained to the bar and that is where they stayed and we used to bring them a piddle pot and bring their meals to them they were there all night and that is where you stayed all night. That was pre-Herc night and then you had Herc night when we welcomed the new guests. I will never forget that chained to the bar.

They were good it was the only contact was the changeover once a fortnight.

Yes that was when you met your replacement briefed him on the section where he slept and all that sort of thing the Herc stayed overnight. In the end you had to do a rapid

turnover because if the threat was there or some other reason they would turn it straight around.

Malaysian Tiger Beer, American Slitz, Black Label, Philippine Don Miguel and Fosters.

Fosters obviously

I didn’t mind San Mig [San Miguel] after a while. The real dangerous drink was the Thai whiskey, Mekong whiskey which was beautiful when it was mixed with coke but a lot of people you had to check the label on it I never drunk it because I saw too many personality changes with people who got stuck into it. It really went down fast but then the whole characters would change with this whiskey

there was a date on the inside if it was any more than a month old you didn’t drink it.

I don’t know check the label. Sometimes blokes would buy it when they were in town. That was the local drink but I never touched that sort of thing. There wasn’t any wine it was just all beer and very cheap.

I got dengue fever at the base.

We went through a phase after the monsoons and for one week I don’t remember too much the hospital was full and high fever and your joints ache really painful. I went to the doctor he said dengue fever so he gave me some knock out drops and I spent a week on the bed. They brought meals to me at one stage and the doc checked every

twice a day he would check in because there was no room in the hospital, towards the end of the week I remember going to the mess for meals but I don’t remember too much about it. It took em about a week to get over it.

Dengue fever. I have had no further repercussions or that sort of thing. Malaria was always a threat but we took safeguards for that sort of thing.

No not the only wounded people if someone would get into a fight or an industrial accident or something like that war wounds no. The Americans would have had their share with aircraft coming back battle damage and that sort of thing. No.

Investment meaning?

I felt very good about the job there as an Aerodrome Defence Instructor this plan all of a sudden we assumed a degree of importance we didn’t have in Australia. All of a sudden people realised they might need us for specialist training and specialist advice and that sort of thing.

We had pretty dedicated customers and they really wanted to know. On the bunker side I was quite happy with that, I was lucky because a lot of them were developed it was only a matter of maintaining them. I just liked the interaction with another force and the fact that we were doing our part. Albeit a small part but I thought

reasonably important.

That started in 1963, we go there in 1962. In 1963 the Officer Commanding Butterworth wrote to because his crews were staging from there to

Thailand he wanted proper repatriation benefits and that sort of thing. They were reluctant to grant that, they said you are only there as a peace keeper rather than an enforcer. A peace keeper under SEATO you are not involved in the war you are there for the border defence of Thailand and Thailand only has minor insurgency threat. That was fought and fought it was only after Freedom of Information came in that we were able to, a lot of the documents were

classified. We have an Ubon reunion, recognition group that got pretty active after we started to see. The threat that we had there was far greater there than the big grey war canoes the navy ships were operating off the coast of South Vietnam providing gun fire support. I think some of them never even got off the ship I think we were at greater risk than they were for retaliation there weren’t any major ships

in the Viet Cong navy lets put it that way. Some of the post traumatic stress disorders from the navy, they were probably worrying about the frogmen that might come up the anchor chain I think we had a greater threat there. After we realised where people were being recognised we said come on now we have been not done by so we started to research things and put it through.

We were a

wartime base that we were assisting Americans that we were under Command of 7th Air Force in Saigon, wrong under control of. We were always commanded by our own Commanders a lot of people have to understand that. Since Breaker Morant. We were under our own Commanders and responsible to the Department of Air but we were under operational control of the Americans. We were part of the air defence

of the base we could have expected retaliation there was an act of insurgency and we just felt they were the reasons and the fact that our American buddies on the same base received full recognition and repatriation benefits and a Nam [Vietnam] Campaign medal either for service in Vietnam or the waters off Vietnam or for operations in Thailand if in direct support of the air war. They

got full recognition and we got nothing and we didn’t feel that was right.

We were an operational base that was it and we put our ambulances were being used when required our firey's [fire fighters] were being used when battle damaged aircraft came in, our refuelling tankers were working with the Americans

their aircraft as well as our own aircraft, we were on alert duties it was part of the war. Precedence had been set like Afghanistan where the aircraft, F18’s in Garcia which is 4,000 miles away in Iraq. The aircraft, the F18’s weren’t in the country but the fact that we weren’t in the country didn’t,

why isn’t it recognised for us.

These were work files unit history sheets detailing classified incidents that occurred on the base and that sort of stuff that we couldn’t access. Orders, Ministerial Government decisions that went on about Committees it was kept very quiet but now

and also then we developed a few contacts at the Pentagon we were able to speak to a guy like Brigadier General Robin Olds who commanded the 8th Tactical Wing in 1964 and 1967 and he gave us a very glowing report that we contributed enormously of his particular job of launching air missions into North Vietnam.

I am not sure it was a very touchy thing

I think with the Malaysian bit and to link with the fact that, the Yanks wanted to drag us into the war and I think we are still seeing it now where they want us to send some troops because they are having a problem in Iraq they want more representation from Australia. They were keen to pull us in as well.

The training team went in 62 and about 1965 was when 1 Battalion deployed to Bien Hoa as part of the American 107th Airborne and from then

it grew to 2 battalions at Nui Dat, the task force. They wanted to pull us into it. Again it was to I think more seeking morale support rather than actual squadron of 8 aircraft I mean they had hundreds of aircraft. Exactly what you have seen lately.

Yes, how much to deploy, when to deploy how much we would commit ourselves to. The problems that John Howard has had in just how far do we go. The Americans want to drag us in and I know there is much writing going on and they were very upset when we pulled out in 1968

and we pulled out in 1968 because we were changing over from the Sabers to the Mirage aircraft and it was not cost effective to leave us there the Americans were well settled in the whole bit so they pulled us out.

I think

I am not sure but 2 Squadron. We had in Vietnam were the Royal Army Australian Force wrong there was a mob of Engineers just up the road at a Pommie base they were developing the Engineers only a small detachment then there was us in Vietnam we had aircraft wise 9 Squadron

35 Squadron that was Caribous and 2 Squadron that was Canberra bombers we had no fighters there. The Canberra’s I am not certain whether they were allowed to go into North Vietnam.

I don’t know. Our own world after talking to our organisers our own world seems

to be part of the Department of Air. It maybe because some of the senior guys were in Vietnam and they didn’t think that we in Thailand because we never took part in the Vietnam War we were de facto partners indirectly they are jealous of that. I really don’t know the politics there. We won our battle to the report the Committee investigation

into Defence Awards that was 1984 when they were revising all the awards they said they acknowledge that you were in direct support of the air war in Vietnam.

’94.

’94.

They gave us the Australian service medal 45/75 but that didn’t give us repatriation benefits it only meant we had served in an operational area for Australia and that wasn’t good enough for us. In 2000 that was updated to an Australian Active Service Medal, AASM, plus a return from active service badge so they acknowledge that we were veterans under the context in that we were on war

operations rather than non war like and there was a threat from the enemy. Our thing is now is because we have never been treated as Vietnam veterans because we were never in Vietnam we don’t march on the welcome home parade we think we should be entitled to the logistics support medal because that is exactly what we were doing support.

79 Squadron.

Ubon, Thailand we are talking about 1500 to 2000 people.

Probably most of them, they are all around my vintage about 1500 or so. We have negotiated with various Governments I think it was a change of government that gave us the AASM and at this stage Labor have said we have a

case and they would support our quest for recognition and we would re-examine if we gain government. To me that is another word just saying vote for us. I guess the way we have done it the next time that the government changes and then we ask them again and when they have the bucket of gold and they will say well

I don’t know I sense we might win next time. That is not a reason to change your politics but that is the way we have had to negotiate it.

I think it is for me because most of my friends are all Vietnam veterans and every Friday afternoon I have a beer in the Bowling Club with my mates from the Parachute School and they are all infantry men and I am the only blue hawker we have two navy guys and

one blue orchid and about 6 Army we throw a lot of garbage at each other. It is important to me to be recognised as part of that war and that is what we see it as we would like some recognition to tie us there. Even though we have got the dollars in the pockets in relation to repatriation benefits we still want to link it to that war that we were part of it.

That was the Vietnam Logistics Support medal that links us to a campaign. Right now we have an Australian Active Service medal with just a little clasp on it Thailand. The Vietnam veterans got a Vietnam medal a Thai medal and they get an Australian Active Service medal. We haven’t got a campaign medal that links us to it.

If we can get it. We are 99% of the way there we have got the important things we just want to finish the fight.

We will just keep lobbying that sort of thing and we keep coming up with facts we are just digging deeper and getting recognition from the right places the whole bit. You have got to strike the right people at the right time.

Departure from Thailand in a C130 with an JATO [Jet Assisted Take Off] engine strapped on coming back to Australia I think there was 21 of us on board and I slept most of the way home down through Darwin and back at Williamtown and we were home.

Only the usual Herc night, a few beers.

We had the tankard and I was chained to the bar and got my piddle pot and I got my meals given to me and that sort of thing that was it. Air Force is individuals not units and there were 3 of us on the aeroplane and hand over takeover and we left for Australia

and my wife and 2 kids met me and they were all dressed up, Dad’s home and that was it.

It was great it was a big thing when you are away for a long time. The old farmer did the right thing he kept an eye on things. I know the front end of my car fell off because Mary wasn’t a driver and she had been practicing her driving and I left it in the garage and she had been driving it around the paddocks and the suspension fell off

when I got home I wasn’t really impressed. It was her frustration having to catch buses and everything it was good to be home. Again it was an adjustment for a short time domesticity rather than a man’s environment.

No. Not as bad as some veterans I saw that came back from Vietnam when I was at the Parachute School they had a harder time. It wasn’t overly difficult lets put it

that way it was just adjustment to now being accountable to the Mrs and the kids you now have responsibilities.

Yes. I think honestly Mary and I now have been together 42 years married and about 45 years together I think the reason we have stayed that long is because of my service and taking courses

and able to go away and live in a man’s world and be accountable to myself and then come home and have another honeymoon on the homecoming and when things get a little bit strained she would look at me and she would say it must be time for you to go away again. It was just the breaks rather than from a civilian relationship where it is the same thing all the time at least the serviceman has a break

and his wife needs a break too. That is what we find now I go to volunteer coastal patrol. I go down there once a week and do a shift that is her privacy and that is my privacy I enjoy that.

It is I enjoy it and because they are about as professional a civilian amateur organisation you can get very well organised, very clear cut SOP, Standard Operating Procedures

good mature people and I enjoy it and I am able to contribute as well. The guy you met yesterday Alan Stewart and Barry are contributing we are the new guard.

That was where when they were going through that anti Vietnam demonstrations. Whilst it did not personally affect me I could glean that it had a dramatic

effect on the soldiers that had borne the brunt of the war in Vietnam and they were obviously being treated savagely by people that didn’t appreciate their efforts in Vietnam. It wasn’t a very popular war the Americans had the same thing. I believe that they felt they were doing the right thing and then it got to the point it was costing too much. It cost us 500 odd lives and it cost the Americans I think 25,000

it would have been a big thing. I dare say that your attitude towards the war would have been influenced if you had lost a husband. The same in Iraq if you had lost a husband or lost a son you would question why we were there and obviously when we got off lightly in Iraq. It was not a very high price 500 lives but that is 500 more than you should fighting somebody else’s war.

My earlier views I believe then and I still believe we did the right thing.

I think the general feeling as in America where people were wondering why are we doing this why are we losing

our soldiers why are we there. It has got nothing to do with Australia they didn’t have a better term to do it now or wait to later attitude I just thought that people didn’t quite understand but that was the reason. I would rather fight a war in somebody else’s backyard than my own.

No. I think to me it was duty and it was a matter of being a professional and putting in those skills what I had been teaching all my life. I am hesitant to use a word a

big adventure. You know about war now no one should ever wish for it but as a young fellow it is an adventure in that sense but I think that attitude very quickly turns when you see what injuries people can sustain in that sort of war. I don’t really agree with

conscription I thought we would have got our reinforcements from volunteers as they did in Korea where they raised what they called K force [Korea Force] and they were volunteers to go and do that. I can really understand the attitude of the young national serviceman who didn’t want to go there and was pulled out of his vocation whatever it may have been for 2 years and then some of his

contemporaries who weren’t unlucky to have their marble pulled in the big barrel and they came home 2 years later I could understand them getting angry and particularly the public the sort of attitude they got when they came home and were told not to wear their uniform. It would have been a lot harder on national serviceman than it was on regulars.

I was posted then as a flight sergeant as an Instructor at the Ground Defence Training School where we were training Airfield Defence Guards to go to Vietnam and Thailand.

That came later that was a period of 2 years where I

was put through, or Assistant Instructor on number 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 courses and they were on their way to Vietnam where initially they were on villa guards which caused a big morale problem.

Villa guards, guarding villas and that sort of thing on the one bit of real estate the whole time.

A far cry from what they were trained to do. At the factory at Phan Rang they were correctly employed outside the perimeter and in Thailand they were doing the same role. They weren’t real happy about that particular aspect and we trained up to a pretty high standard there. Basic ADG Course, Airfield Defence Guard.

I think the worse thing the Air force ever did was put the word guard. The RAAF Regiment call them Ground Gunners that is a more better description. Airfield Defence Guard and the Air Force Commanders, there used to be a mustering in World War II known as Security Guard and they saw them as that and they were far from that. They had a big morale problem overseas. When talking about alcohol problem a lot of them took to the booze in that way because they were really bored. Very soul destroying when that is all you can look

forward to standing on a bit of concrete day after day for 12 months. What they did after awhile they arranged a couple of detachments or attachments with the army at Nui Dat. They were doing patrolling there with the local protection company at Nui Dat so that give them a bit of a break. They called for volunteers for chopper gunners. The majority of the gunners in 9 Squadron were ADGs and that was

because they were weapon trained particularly on the M60 general purpose machine gun which was part of our basic weaponry at Nui Dat so that was a way out for some.

Amberley was patrolling skills, weaponry, field craft, battle miner tactics, field engineering. The skills required

for patrolling outside the perimeter and for a perimeter defence bunker defence and that sort of thing. It was detection of targets, fire control methods and things of that nature.

About 2 years.

No.

Initially when I got to Amberley I had to go to Canungra to do a battle efficiency course which the intention was that when the ADGs finished their basic course we would send them to Canungra as a work up. Every soldier that went to Vietnam had to do a battle efficiency course at Canungra before he went. I was sent there to make sure our ADGs were at a standard to compete there with their army contemporaries. They did very well. In fact they got a bit embarrassed

because they were out shooting and out running it was because they had come from 3 months team environment and they went and did the same group straight up there when they were fit and they excelled.

Battle efficiency again was the basic techniques of protection at rest where they taught patrolling and harbouring skills, field craft skills

Harbouring is when you stop it is protection at rest when you stop for five minute breaks you go into an all round defence of the perimeter. Where you are going to stay overnight you go into a harbour position and you do that silently once you get a field signal from the flight commander or army platoon to harbour you go into a technique where it is a pacing system

and you have normally got 3 guns in a platoon and one goes out once the platoon commander indicates what is 12 o’clock and a number of paces and it depends on the undergrowth how far he wants the gun from where he stands he will point to 12 o’clock and he will give an indication of the number of paces, it might be 15. They will go out 15 paces, the lead section and dump their gun and they keep going around to the right.

The turn follows through this path then they will dump another gun at 4 o’clock and another gun at 8 o’clock. So you have 12, 4 and 8 o’clock around your section as the same time as they are being dropped you are dropping off pairs on the perimeter and two other pits in depth. With the section you have a gun a pit, a pit, a pit, another pit and the section commander in one of those pits. In the end you get a result where you get a,

the principle of this hasn’t changed for many years and centuries, one of the principles is all round defence where you never know what the direction will assault from. The other principle is defence in depth where you don’t just have the covered wagon you have depth like the old castles in England where you have an inner keep so you get depth so when you go through one perimeter you have got to get into another one and so on.

A platoon harbour gives that depth and once everyone is on the ground and they send out sentries that go to the guns and out of the noise distance they go about another 30 paces out but are visible to the gunner so he can give protection by fire, they have a communications cord comes back and what he does while the rest of the platoon are digging pits, even it is an overnight stop they dig in

he is out there listening to give early warning. When that is done the sentries are called in and they do a clean patrol whereas two men a scout and another man will go out through their gun or throughout a neighbouring gun and they circle around to the front out one visual your pits and you are making sure there is no enemy. You will circle around there and come back in through your own gun. That is

a clearing and that is done right on last light and right on first light. It takes about 30 minutes. The way it was taught at Canungra we were on a Padang which is a Malay word for oval in a grandstand sort of thing and you watch a demonstration team do this and they have all got coloured helmets on, the number 1 scout, the number 2 scout, the section commander the gunners and so on they are all out and they are all on

the ground without a word. Just a matter of harbour, position, distance and it just goes into a drill. We did that many times in the jungle at Ba Valley [?] with an active enemy then you go into a night routine after you establish your safe harbour, security first, then the inner person have a quick meal while you watch and after dark your hutchie goes up and you go into a sentry position.

A half shelter, some people slept in them some people slept under them. It is just a water proof sheet that you wrapped around you. They don’t go up until after dark because they reflect light. These were drills and every soldier who went to Vietnam did a Battle Efficiency Course. To get his physical fitness up and to get his basic infantry skills tuned up.

I think it was for the non infantry core people it was essential for the infantry core it was only a refresher. They had gone from the infantry centre they had been taught all this before so it was only a refresher. The Battalion would have done a very similar thing, the rules never changed maybe slightly on the personality of the platoon commander.

I have taught that many times. The principles of defence don’t change whether it is a platoon position on the ground to a airfield you have still got to have all round defence, defence in depth, communication, security, fire power, they don’t change.

That was about at the end of ’67, ’68 somewhere about

then and I got a phone call the PJI Course was 6 months at Williamtown so I had to leave my wife behind and it was something I really wanted to do. I enjoyed parachuting and I enjoyed working with soldiers and the idea of teaching something that was tangible you could see your results.

Parachute Jump Instructor.

To do that you had to be a basic parachutist that is 8 jumps 4 by day and 4 by night, 3 with equipment, 4 out of a Caribou and 4 out of a Herc to get your wings. It was over 4 weeks. That is the basic parachute, you had to be that plus at that time you had to be a senior NCO sergeant or above that or an instructor so I fulfilled that. So I went down there

and did the course and there were only 2 of us qualified myself and the other guy was a Physical Training Instructor, PTI.

They fall by the wayside because they weren’t good instructors. Someone doesn’t willing launch himself out of an aeroplane he has to be lead he has to have confidence in the guy who is teaching him and you have got to have pretty good

instructional skills to be able to do that. These two guys didn’t have well developed instructional skills whereas I did. I really enjoyed that that was 6 months. That is where I came in contact with Harry Smith like Bob Ashton my DI when I first joined the air force, Harry had a pretty good effect on me a very good officer, good image good instructor.

We reckon it is mind or matter, we don’t mind and you don’t matter.

I have never had any student come back and say my parachute didn’t open. That doesn’t happen.

On a basic course. The basic course there is 40 students and they are split into sticks of 10. The instructor student ratio is 1 to 10. It is 4 weeks

the first week is on ground training in the hanger, the second week is on towers, the third week is on Caribou jumping out of a Caribou aircraft and the fourth week is a Hercules. The first week ground training concentrates on aircraft drills, drawing a parachute, checking it for serviceability, learning how to put it on the fitting. Boarding the aeroplane and carrying out the drills to exit in the air.

Such as hook on, check equipment, take off and check equipment and so on. It is fairly lengthy it is a set sequence of actions. Very noisy aeroplanes most of the signals are carried on by hand. That gets them to the door. The next things that they learn are flight drills what happens when they leave the aircraft and they look up and see a canopy over their head or they don’t see an canopy over their head, emergency drills, all the drills that are required to assess the wind drift

drop their equipment. Paratrooping is very different from just a parachute descent. The aim of delivery means to the battlefield by air to the battle. The motto of the air borne forces, (UNCLEAR) by air to battle. The army guys used to call the air force just taxi drivers they would get us to the battlefield. They would be carrying equipment so they need drills to get out of the aircraft, check for malfunctions

assess their drift factors, steer away from other parachuters. You can imagine a parachutist is subject to dispersion by winds, they are dispersed on their droppings are only vulnerable to put out as many about a second apart, fairly tight but because they are close together there is collisions so they learn steering drills and collision drills and malfunction drills. This

after they get to the ground they learn landing drills, how to carry out a forward landing a back landing a side landing forward right, back left landing. Parachuting landing fore a lot of time goes onto that and then there is harness release and drag. If your canopy stays inflated how to release yourself from the canopy. It is virtually aircraft drill, exit, flight and landing.

All that goes in the first week and it becomes repetitive it is a drill. It is the same as learning drill on the parade ground it is just punched in and punched in period after period of instruction and so it becomes automatic. The reason for this is on your first descent it takes about a minute from 1,000 feet you don’t remember a lot about it because you are in a high state of adrenaline a lot of people can’t even remember their

first descent and what the drill is when they do their first descent you put your canopy to the wind and march over to the instructor and you give him your regimental number, rank and name and a lot can’t get it out. You have got to say stop look down at the ground that is your boots look up there that is an aeroplane you are on the ground now. What is your number, some people forget their number, other people can rattle it off real quick. You say OK smart arse, now say it backwards.

It is a matter of testing their reaction to a later assessment as to how we assess them as parachuters.

Nervous control or completely nervous.

Possible. We wore gaiters so there was no problem with that.

On our dropping zones there was a row of pump stations and we used to tell the students that was toilets so they have got to hang on and soon as they get on the ground they will find a toilet there but they didn’t know they were locked. It was a funny sight you would see a guy pull his canopy and he would race like hell and he would go, and then go to the next one about three and then he would head off into the woods. Parachuting had to have its lighter moments

because it was a lot of fear involved in it you had to keep it at have some good moments. The first week was ground training the second week was on tower. A tower was 30 foot high and the exit tower went along cables and simulated exits and a Polish tower that you went up it was 90 foot high off a frame did all your flight drills and we released the frame and down you went.

an approach to the ground. If you had some smart arse young officer who was giving you a problem one of the things we would do is got to the point we would say prepare for landing and you would take off you would say to the air borne guy who was assisting you just lock the brake half way down, so the guy would go down and he would go chung, we would say we have a bit of a problem with the brake just hang about we will have to go and get the fitter so you would get the rest of your stick and say we are going to have a brew now, there is this guy there hanging around, he will get the

message. Sir we have fixed the brake now, brake off. Little things that was in towers it meant to sort out refusals if you get any that would be the place they would refuse on the towers. After that you would go into the aircraft proper actual parachuting.

Was obviously scared. Lets put it this way the frame comes out pretty tight and you have got a gate they are leaning up against the gate and you can see they might be a bit reluctant. Because of the rules they are taught, one moment they are hooked on and the next moment they are in space but you don’t tell them that.

You might have to give them a little bit of a nudge the same in the air, sometimes they hesitate a bit so you might you push people out you system them out. Sometimes a boot assisted takeoff but you don’t push people. Regards what gets people out of an aeroplane it isn’t guts. The biggest thing that gets a person out of an aeroplane is the thought of refusal. That’s it we can take that

You have gone through two weeks of training you are in the aeroplane and the Caribou is like flying in the garage with a door open because you have the door up and the ramp level you can see from the minute you take off where you are. After you are looking across at the other guy if he goes I am going no way in the world I am going to refuse. That is what it is that gets you out. That is why we always used to put a

officer up front, if there was a warrant officer I would say right oh sir you are paid to lead start earning your money. The reason I put him up front is he has a lot to lose. The sergeant I would say to him you make sure they all get out won’t you sergeant. He made sure they got out as well because he had more to lose as well. Sheep you might, following it is not guts it is the fear of refusal. Every so often you would get a refusal a guy who just couldn’t

you don’t push him out let’s put it that way if he wouldn’t move and you couldn’t get him to move you would unhook and take him right up the front and give him (UNCLEAR) and say take him back, escort him back and you would tell the dropping zone that we have a refusal. The zone would radio the base and when we went back with the aircraft one of the staff would meet him he would refuse in the morning he would be gone by the afternoon he would never see his mates again. Fear is contagious so we never let him back in contact with the course and

also he would be afraid to look at his mates, it would save him that embarrassment we have him cleared off the unit and gone return to unit and it would be unlikely to become a proficient parachutist, no cowardice no refusal just unlikely to become a proficient parachutist. That is all his unit needed to know about it. When you talk to him you say don’t worry about it mate some people can’t go in submarines, some people won’t go down in a mine just not your bag. Some people hate

going in APC, Armoured Personnel Carriers they have a fear of it it is not your bag you did the right thing you got so far and at least you had a go I don’t blame you for that.

You only refuse once that is it. Your course you have 8 jumps and you are given parachute wings and you are given parachute pay it then becomes an order so up to that point it is volunteers on your course

once you qualify it is an order and when you are dispatching or enplaning qualified parachuters on parachute parade they are given an order to that effect. When the red light on the aircraft comes on this is an order to prepare to jump, when the green light comes on this is an order to jump, you will exit the aircraft in the correct manner and sequence and failure to draw a parachute and plane and jump when so ordered renders you liable to disciplinary action

disobeying a lawful command. This is to be understood by all, they would all say sir and that was it. That is the difference. I had an airborne soldier refusal I said you know where you were at the country club well we were doing water jumps over the top of Tomaree with air crew you put them out at 3,000 feet so they can get some the idea of a parachute descents but into water where there was no chance of injury

they were too valuable to bend. With trainees you always put a qualified parachuter out first to test the calculations of the dropping zone are they going to land where he wants them. This guy was out over the top and we had a strong, and we generally run in from the sea towards the headland and it was dropping early so they would drift in, a very strong easterly wind we were releasing over the top of Tomaree headland and this soldier looked down no way because the land was about 500 feet beneath him

he said I was going to do a water jump I am not going to do a land jump I said go, he wouldn’t go. So unhook and take him forward in and he went back with the aircraft and he was charged disobeying a lawful command and marched out a couple of days later. That is way it has to go.

You would say come on mate give it a go, you would have a bit of a talk with him but it is very noisy. Your support

where you can assist them down assist to make his mind up for him but if he is fighting it well then you don’t know this guy is not going to go it is not his environment and that is it. You do 4 jumps with the Caribou 2 of which with combo equipment. One clean fatigue, 2 equipment and the fourth one is at night but that is at the end of the course. Then there is the Hercules phase

where you are double dooring [jumping] out the side a very noisy aircraft, by that time they have done 4 and it is unlikely they are going to refuse but you are doing their simultaneous 32’s where you are getting 64 parachutes at very tight going out both doors one at a time a second apart, what we call simultaneous32’s, 64 in the air. One run over the dropping zone and that is what it is all about with combat equipment so that is their 7th jump

their 8th jump is a night jump. The night jump is a qualifying jump at night from a Caribou and because it is very hard to calculate your height above the ground to prepare for landing you have just got to have a good parachute position and let the earth come up and hit you. That is the only way and sometimes even the instructors get hurt. On moonlight night it is OK you get reflection off the sand but in the dark you just can’t see anything all you can see is the horizon coming up as you

land so you lock in real tight and then it hits you.

On a course of 40 you would probably scrub 5 to 10 ground training, pulled muscles, bruised ankles in ground training, there is always a very large percentage. In actions maybe 2 when they hurt themselves. Malfunctions

where a parachute incorrectly deploys or entanglements you might get 2 that is about all. We had the world’s parachuting record 100,000 descents fatality free. There is a certificate that says I was a member of that sortie that was flown by Bertie Miln from 36 Squadron, the actual descent was made by Sergeant Col Polo,

he was killed about a year after that when we were testing a high performance parachute and he got into a bad rotating malfunction because it is the square parachute and it is aerodynamically balanced any small malfunction like a line over it tends to go unstable and he was spinning and he was trying to correct it. A student would have cut the line but I would have done the same thing as Col just try to work out what had gone wrong for later evaluation

he realised but what you don’t realise that he was spinning like that quite quickly and he tried to get his reserve out at about 800 feet but it wrapped around him because of the spin. He landed broke his spine and was killed but it was just a strange irony a quirk of fate that he was the one who did the 100,000 jump and also the first one at the school it was just after we handed over to the army.

I think they have had a few fatalities since then, SAS [Special Air Service] have had a few I think about 8 parachute fatalities. During war there are quite a few in training and that was static line operations and we did free fall operations. Free falling is for commandos and SAS operations or covert insertions and that was from 10,000 feet. They all had to be qualified parachutists and that was

20 jump, a minimum of 20 and up to 60 and that was with combat equipment and we put an AAD, automatic opening device set it to open at 3,000 feet chuck them out at 10,000 and they got free fall. Again a different attitude the Brits system is you do a 5 second delay a 10 second a delay all the way down

we took the American system you take them to 10,000 feet where you give them about 2 days training flat and stable on the table getting their positions right and canopy control and take them up to 10,000 feet and you have an instructor just sitting off one side analysing what he is doing. Nowadays they go out linked or even piggy backed but at that time we went out and watched them to one side and told him how he went on the ground.

In 40 seconds they learn a lot and generally after 4 to 5 descents they are able to fall flat and stable and head for their target heading for a controlled opening. The AAD [Automatic Activations Device] obviously went really bad it fires and the canopy deploy where he hits his ripcord handle or not. The aim is to get him up and then we teach him turns and back loops and

things like that and then relative work, the ultimate aim is to get a guy out at night with equipment at 40,000 feet on oxygen formatting on his team leader and falling together or formatting on a free fall bundle where you have an aircraft that is out of sight and out of sound of the ground. That is a free fall.

Yes you had to have your jokes. Sometimes some courses might have a high accident rate on the towers so come the day the jumps they would be a little bit there you could always pick it there would be a guy sitting down reading a book the only problem would be it would be upside down and other people are pretty vocal and laughing until you tell them to stand up and they go quiet,

and take off and they would be all looking, that sort of thing was a bit of an act. We had a red carpet where we would lay it from the aircraft so they got the red carpet treatment or other times where you were down to service the aircraft that would mean that before jumping that you would go down and check the crew had configured the aircraft correctly with the static line cables and all that. At breakfast you got some scrambled eggs, tomato and bacon and stuff and you would put

it in a plastic bag and put it in your flying suit pocket and when you went down to the aircraft before the parachuters came in you just stowed it down in the back of the aeroplane, the Caribou. The 2 instructors sit down the back so you have everybody forward, 2 pilots all your students and the 2 instructors, dispatches and the ramp. When you get air borne you would look to your mate and say I had a bad one last night I had a few beers in the mess and I am really crook

sick bag, up there and they would pick up one of these sick bags and pass it down to you, so you would turn so they can’t see you and put on this bit of an act and grab this plastic bag and drop it in the thing and say that was good and your mate would say are you right mate and you would say I will be right. You pass the plastic bag along the line and they would be going and he said

what are you doing with the sick bag bring it back down here so they would pass it back down here and he would get it the other side. What did you have for breakfast Bazza and I would say bacon and eggs and he would say breakfast and reach in and grab all these bacon and eggs and drop it down and he would have all this bacon and eggs and tomato down his flying suit and they would be all going, we used to do it to take their mind off the big step we used to say what it is

this sort of thing or when you had crew training the crews would come up from 38 Squadron they would fly them up and they would have about 3 crews so you would tell the load master we will do the beer can bit, OK mate. In the mess that night he would have collected half a dozen cans of empty beer and put them with the 2 pilots. What they used to do they would put them up with the 2 pilots

and they would have a 3rd guy up there and they couldn’t see this guy up there and they would pull the door closed so the students couldn’t see this. When we got airborne the aircraft would start floating it would sort of sink and go to one side, then the door would open and an empty beer can would be chucked out and it would go ding, ding, ding, they said they are drunk, and the plane would go up and down

and another can would go clink, they are all drunk they are drinking up there, the door would open and one of the crew would walk down to the ramp and he would open his fly and he would start and have a pee he had a megaphone sort of thing that is what the toilet is and it goes out of the aircraft, and the next minute another pilot would come down the co-pilot and he would stand next to

him and say have you finished with the tube yet OK mate, there is two of them down there and the students are saying pilot, co-pilot and the load master is here who is flying the bloody aircraft this would be the third guy they didn’t know was up there. The aircraft would start to sway and one wing drop and these pair would start jumping up and down to straighten the wing up and it would go nose up and they went for the roof and they would start jumping up and down, it was funny times.

That added a bit of lightness but not with every course and you would just pick your mark.

You start at the Basic Parachute Course and then that was when I was a sergeant and then I went to Thailand and after Thailand back to Amberley and then from Amberley to the school for a Parachute Jump Instructors Course. After that

I did a Stick Commander’s Course and that is usually for NCO in a Parachute Battalion and they are taught to control a stick of operational parachutes in the aircraft and get them out so for me to run Stick Commanders Courses I had to do a Stick Commanders Course and I did a basic Free Fall Course and a Free Fall Dispatchers Course and a Free Fall Instructors Course, an FFI.

I was then a Free Fall Instructor. I was there from 1968 to 1975 I was the last warrant officer to leave the school when we handed over to the army in 1975. From that point I became a Formation Officer Disciplinary at Williamtown and a CMC, Chairman of the Mess Committee of the sergeant’s mess. I did that for about 18 months I wasn’t really impressed it wasn’t well I had gone from a real operational world

and worse because my married quarters were alongside the strip I could hear the paratroops taking off all morning and that really hurt. I really wasn’t interested in telling people to get hair cuts and get their hands out of their pockets I did that as a corporal, I didn’t really enjoy that warrant officer Disciplinary world. I applied for a commission then and I went back into the Ground Defence world after a fair bit of time for my

application to be accepted.

In a lot of cases it was young basic parachuters, young fellows

they would go away for their 12 months in Vietnam and then they would come back and then I would get them as a stick command. Or they would instructors senior NCOs I would see come through and they would come back on the instructors course. In a lot of cases a very marked difference in all the boyish the high spirits and all that not they come back much more serious. A guy I remember in particular, Jimmy Stewart

the same vintage as Alan. Jimmy Stewart was Alan’s troop sergeant when Alan was a young corporal he obviously had a fair fright over there he was SAS and when he came back for his second time he was really bad and he couldn’t wait to get to the bar it used to take him 3 middies or schooners [beers] to stop the shaking to settle down.

He really went through a very nervous stage. Jim died a couple of years ago, I noticed a change in him. Some other guys came back and they were very quick to anger. Very quick to get involved into a verbal punch up and then sometimes they would have a physical one. Very quick to argue a point in the mess. Little things you would pass over you would find they would become very

argumentative. Subtle changes in their personalities that weren’t there before they went to Vietnam.

Some did, some didn’t as a general rule those that did things didn’t. those that did things that were worthy of recognition didn’t

really want to talk about it and were fairly quiet. Those who didn’t do a lot of things were fairly boisterous and fairly vocal in their descriptions of the war. I learnt a hell of a lot by just listening and having a few beers. As I said at my 7 years at the Parachute School I saw a lot come and go army guys and I used to listen to a lot of their experiences and because of that and because of

going over and participating in exercises with the SAS Regiment in New Guinea I was accepted unanimously as a member of the SAS Association. I got on pretty good with them by listening and looking after them. When they were over there on their courses they were always welcome at my place and I think that also influenced my son when he joined the army and went to the SAS he got used to seeing them,

a barbecue in the backyard and that sort of thing. There were changes I noticed and with regards to talking about it, I was only talking to Alan Stewart the other day a soldier was to me Alan Roser a very quiet guy didn’t say much but when I read about some of his exploits he had really accomplished, a very professional soldier. I have found that

a lot of people found that particular thing. You won’t get much out of Alan Stewart, put it this way he doesn’t talk that much but I know his record I know he got his MID [Mentioned In Dispatches], mentioned in the book Feelings of the Jungle. His background was quite an achievement for what he did I don’t know whether the talked about it to you but you would find they don’t discuss things.

There were people who talked too much about it too.

Didn’t know anything about it at Parachute School

it is only came out later in life I think in the last 10 to 15 years I become aware of what it was. It was not something that was sort of accepted as a known problem. It is like when I was going for my Veterans Review Board, they tried to link my heart problem with the service I had

injuries to my shoulder and ankle, I dislocated my shoulder and did my ankle on night jumps and that sort of thing, but they couldn’t find it on my medical records because at that time you were loathe to go to medical you would say the only way you are going to get me there is on a stretcher and we always we were going to lose our pension or whatever it may be and because I was air force and all the rest were army I had my

service, I had to make sure I was as good as they were and the attitude was with your injuries if it was hurting a bit you got on with the job. I have hurt myself with jumps and I found myself still parachuting and I found myself unable to reach up with one hand so I would use the other one to pull down. Injuries you were a men that sort of thing

you very rarely went to medical it was the culture.

I think

aggressiveness, quick to anger all these are symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. I remember one party we had at my place and bloke by the name of Ray Brown came into my bedroom about 3 in the morning he slept on the lounge room floor and he came in and caught my eye I have got to go home Bass I have embarrassed you I have wet myself he said yes on the

carpet I said don’t worry about it I will square off with the Missus. I said how long have you been doing this for he said since I came back from Vietnam pretty regular it took him a long while to get out of that. Those sort of things occasionally would crop up I don’t know why or what caused it but he was very embarrassed about it.

Very hard at the Parachute School that was very evident after work I almost had marriage breakdowns where I was trying to maintain the air force image keeping up with my army mates. The Senior NCOs come back from the training team or SAS had drunk a lot over there, they would get after work

and finish the course. We would start at 4 in the morning breakfast and we would be over the dropping zones at first light you would be finishing work at lunchtime so where would you go, to the sergeant’s mess you can’t go home at lunchtime. Once you would go in there you would have a couple of beers and then they would close the bar so you would grab a few and you would be sitting outside and after awhile after they got the taste they would be going home with half a dozen cans or spending it at the hotel. I had an agreement with my wife that no matter where I was

5 o’clock that would be it, I would come home. We didn’t have random breath testing and that sort of thing and so there was a lot of drinking and driving. I had to give them my share and I would leave and that is what I used to do and it used to upset my mates we just bought you a beer, wimp air force blokes. I don’t care I am going home I will see you tomorrow that is the only way I could keep my relationship together.

I found that they really did drink heavily after they came back. De-stressing period I don’t know but that was the way.

They got used to moving schools, making new friends that didn’t seem to bother them.

Some people have a thing about that where they leave the wife and their family behind because they didn’t want to interfere with their schooling, but it didn’t seem to affect mine they seemed to cope and changing schools. They liked changing schools and making new friends and that I didn’t get any complaints from them in that respect. I was as close as I could be but I spent a lot of time away and I thought it was natural

that they both joined the services when they finished school. Tye went into the army for 12 years in the army, 6 years with the SAS regiment and he is a policeman a Senior Constable with the Australian Police. My daughter was 10 years in the air force she got out as a Sergeant Communications Coms Op [Operations] Both of them were cleared as top secret and I was only clear to secret.

Because of their jobs they had higher security classification. They followed that path and I was quite happy for them to follow that path because I knew they were in a controlled environment and if they got into bad company or bad habits with drugs or whatever it may be the system has a process of recognising this and taking corrective action. I also knew that by going it alone they

would learn to look after themselves and solve their own problems. It didn’t seem to have any affect on the kids the lot of time away. It is only now when we are separated I would find that I have more time for my grandchildren than I have for my kids. I have maintained a pretty close relationship with my son he followed a similar career path but I don’t see enough of him.

It didn’t seem to affect their schooling or their relationships with other people it made them fairly independent. They have never given me any problems. I have never had any drug problems or things like that they have sort of opted to leave the family nest when they were Tye was 18 and Renee was 18. They grew up in that environment.

I was commissioned and I was ADG at the Air Field Defence Guard Flight Command at Richmond where I had a flight of 30 ADGs and my job was to provide

instruction and training to keep their battle skills alive. I enjoyed that very much because it was close contact and my 2IC was my corporal so we knew each other very well and we were away on exercises a lot. Doing a lot of courses again as a junior officer so less time at home. There were fire officer courses ADGs Operations Course, Demolitions Course, all sorts of officer training schools

all those sort of courses that I had reached the top as a warrant officer and now I started again. All those initial courses and then exercises as well, I had a good time I enjoyed that. Then I went to Townsville posted as the Defence and Fire Officer and that was just continuing running continuation and weapon training and that sort of thing for aircrew and base combatants and.

managing fire section. The administrative leader of the section. My senior officer on the base was a warrant officer. He just needed someone to represent him to higher authority, I didn’t have a problem with that. I was there about 12 months and then they said you are going to take over the Combat Survival School which moved from Numinbah Valley in Queensland outside of Amberley up to Townsville. My takeover was my very good friend

Ken Thackery. Ken I had put through as a basic ADG on 7 Course and I put him through as a sergeant on his basic Parachute Course and he said to me why am I always the first person out of the towers and why am I always the first person out of the aeroplane. I said because you are air force, I see. It was funny because when I did my basic combat survival course he was the instructor.

He said you know what you are going to get he said your turn. He did give me a hard time but I had to do the basics survival course before I took over the school at Amberley to set it up. As part of that I went to America to do the United States Air Force USAAF [United States Army Air Force] Survival Course at Fairchild Air Force Base which is at Spokane, Washington State.

I didn’t learn, I had a choice of doing that as a student or as an observer, assistant instructor but I chose student as I learnt more that way psyching the people and listening to others on the course I was on and the instructors so I did that course. They tend to pamper a bit too much. I went down to San Antonio to the Air Base Ground Defence world and had a look at their training facilities

at Homestead in Miami, Florida, the Deep Sea Survival School and did a course there. That had it’s lighter moments and I enjoyed that course.

The lighter moments I think on the Deep Sea Survival phase you have a phase where they take you out into Biscayne Bay and they have a converted landing craft infantry. It looks like a little aircraft carrier and the students about 30 students on this course and they call you up one at a time onto the flight deck

the flight deck has a big frame and then a parachute harness you have seen the big parasails it is one of those. They put you in a harness and put this parachute up against this wire frame and a speed boat out in front and they toss a tow rope and they hook it up and then the instructor says start running on the spot and then he says go and this speed boat takes off

and you are lifted off. You got right up to 800 feet and you look down and they wave this yellow flag at you and you hit this pelican hook and what they do and this is an example of their professionalism you are then suspended under a T9 parachute, standard aircrew flying parachute dressed in flying clothing exactly the same kit that you fly in. All their survival equipment

when its written off time goes to the survival school. Before you go out on this boat they say what do you fly and they might say A4s, put that on, put that on and put that on and they dress you in what you normally fly in. When you are released you are hanging from this parachute in the gear that you would be if you ejected or bailed out. You do your water landing drills. When you land in the water you hit your life jacket

for inflation and under this gear you have a personal survival pack with a dingy in it you take the bottle out of it so you have to manually inflate it. The funny side of this there was this Negro sergeant and the basics survival course at Fairchild’s Air Force base where we did basic survival drills. Again this was in this big swimming pool that they blacked out,

they had waves, the wind night sky and the whole bit you would imagine you were at sea. On a base in a hangar. Terrific aids. This guy couldn’t swim and he was pretty terrified and I knew that he wasn’t real keen to do this particular thing. I watched him I knew he was after me and I am sitting in the water blowing and this fellow he ran all the way up to 800 feet and he didn’t stop because no one told him to stop

I can still see his legs still running he ran all the way up and then he cut lose and I saw him come down for his water entry drill and he no sooner hit the water and he was in his dingy. He was in the dingy before I was. When he got in the dingy, he was only about 50 meters away, about 150 meters away, and he said sharks you are not going to get me. I was killing myself laughing.

At the basic course we were doing the evasion phase in the Cascade Mountains and just before that they were teaching us night navigation so picture 6 guys in this particular group that we were in we all have the shoulder of the man in front of him and we have a compass in our hand and we are going through the snow

I couldn’t stop laughing and the instructor said what are you laughing at captain, I was flight lieutenant I said nothing it is just a little private thing I was just laughing about my children. What it was in my mind was this song don’t go out in the woods tonight the teddy bears are having a picnic. I couldn’t stop laughing. When I was debriefed by the colonel

and he told me about differences in the course and I explained about the sharpening of knives bit and another thing I explained about the navigation where you were teaching us I said if we did that with Australians the guy up the front would turn around and say if one of you guys tell me I am going too far right or too far left I am going to shove that compass right up where the sun don’t shine. Would you, yes the way we do it we give the compass to the guy in front and we follow

if he loses us we kill him. The colonel said that is hardcore. That is way we are we trust him. You can’t have a pilot and 6 navigators. I had to be diplomatic about how I put this, I said the guy would turn around and say and that is what happens and Australian would. They would not accept that. Check your bearing, check your that, but it had it’s funny sides.

Yes that was one of the American courses. They were initially courses to give me credibility as a Ground Defence Officer to be able to talk to aircrew on a level because the USAAF survival schools are run by Aircrew Officers whereas our schools are run by Ground Defence Officers. It is because we are more skilled in the field

and more discipline oriented I found that the Aircrew officers tend to look after the Aircrew officers. Too easy on them whereas I can say to my students there is one thing you people will remember you are not my boss in order words you are never going to get back at me. There were those courses

on self reliance and then after at the school for a couple of years my staff officer, Bushy Cavanagh, Bushy because he was born in the bush he was an ideal person we had a good relationship he was at Glenbrook and he did all the staffing and he said Barry you run the school and I will run all the staff work. I said that is fine you just keep the heavy paperwork and he did that very well and he used to visit me twice a year to see that he wasn’t seeing things through blue eyes

air force eyes rather than Green eyes, army eyes. I said that was good it was fine. He rang me up and said 36 Squadron are going to do the aerial supply of Mawson and Casey and they want some snow training they want to go down to Kosciuosko. I said no the training in the Cascades they will only want to do it in the ski resort at Perisher Blue or something I said no. We will have to do it properly we will have to go to Antarctica it is very different.

He played around with that idea and he rang me back a week later and said we are going to do it we are going to take the crews down in a C130 and have training down there. We put 20 of them three crews and flew to Christchurch which was the jump off point for Antarctica, the Americans called it operation deep freeze. You had to wait there until the weather conditions were right in the Antarctic. The C130 had fuel problems

you reach the point of no return once you were committed you were committed you had to make sure of the weather conditions and the conditions were right the weather moves in very quickly down there. We waited for about 3 days and then we launched down to the Antarctic. The Australian Antarctic Research Station gave us all specialised clothes. When they were flying down there we

landed at McMurdo on the shelf side, which is an American base on a conventional aircraft and then we spent a day with the Americans and then the New Zealander’s looked after us at Scott Base. They were a much smaller base and we felt much more at home. We do our survival training out on the (UNCLEAR) shelf with instructors from Mt Cook in New Zealand.

After we spent about 3 or 4 days out on the (UNCLEAR) shelf learning how to put up shelters and the whole bit and then we came back and we talked a bit about the problems involved if a crew went down what the problems would be. Most of the aircraft a quarter of their whole weight is survival equipment. Exposed flesh freezes in 30 seconds down there. You have to do your homework from the minute you open your eyes until the minute, particularly in survival

because of the environment. We talked about it and one of the things that came to us in the bar was that there is no way in the world, survival concepts is if you stay in the aircraft it is like living in a refrigerator it is a lot colder inside than it is outside and somewhere along the line you take initial shelter but then you have got to get out. It is warmer under the snow than what is in the actual aircraft, it is the same in the desert

you have to get away from the aircraft because it is a big oven. We were standing around and we thought how and the hell are we going to do this. We had built igloos and we built snow pits and use snow blocks to make these things. This is going to take hours this is no good and then one of the load masters said I have got the solution if we go down what we will do is jettison a 10 man life raft under the wings and they have a hood on them they are insulated and they have got a ready made

igloo all we have to peg them down and put some snow over them and that will take 10 minutes. We have got to do it before the panels freeze up. We would not have known that unless we were down there analysing the problem of the environment. That is an example of what I was saying we need to do it first and that was very productive. We got stuck down there for a couple of weeks because we couldn’t get back out again. To land a conventional plane you have got to snow plough

the strip and throw a layer of snow over it to let the wheels grip. No sooner you would prepare it and the weather would come over and you would be right back where you started. It took us a while, we ended coming back in a C1, a Big Skymaster an American aircraft and it had a loiter time of about 2 hours and something like that, it landed and we got home on that. I went from that environment 0 degrees and I rang my wife up

up in Townsville from that Survival school and I said what are you doing she said out getting a sun tan I said I am down here freezing my rear end off. We were speaking over a satellite phone it is a big difference. Very interesting place. There were 40 people in the summer reducing to 10 people over. They told me there were no females in winter and at the time we were there were about 4

one was a vulcanologist, one was a meteorologist, one was a postmaster and one was something else. One thing I did notice they never sat at the same table at each meal always moving. When I spoke to one of them later they said what we don’t want to do is create any jealousy among the males. That is why the New Zealanders wouldn’t let them stay there in the winter over, 6 months confined

it is dark the whole time. I think they have changed their policies now it was interesting to note how well they had been briefed that they kept moving. The fact was that they encourage us to get to the bar after a day’s work and have a few beers and a talk where they are watching for withdrawal signs. In terms it is hard to adjust in the summer over because the sun doesn’t go down so you have got to get into your

cabin like a bunk pull the curtains and create artificial darkness in able to get to sleep. Many a time you would be standing and have a talk and you look across and the only reason you would know it was night time was because of the length of the shadows. The sun does an elliptical orbit it is just above the horizon it is up top so when it is low it means it is probably mid night you just lose track of time.

Very interesting. Very interesting talking to people particularly they had the dogs down there the Huskies they were a carry over from earlier teams and they have now been replaced and I learnt a lot about dogs there by talking to the handler. Dog psychology and what happens on

their line and various other things. It is a very interesting place. In a survival situation it is very demanding in

the temperature is never above zero so it is always wet it is all snow. It holds 90% of the world’s water there. Antarctica is a continent where as the north pole is sea ice on the sea. Antarctica is a continent and what you don’t realise about it is 3 times the size of the Australian land mass and in maps you are not able to do a comparative size on its own

It is classified as a desert, and a desert is classified because of its precipitation in other words is it going to rain and it doesn’t rain there because the temperatures never rise above zero. The coldest the temperature was –80 degrees at Vostok Station a Russian station down there. All the

rubbish that was generated there has to be backloaded. One of the things about the American crew there you don’t get onto the place unless you have got mail. The aircraft would come down with cargo and it would go back with rubbish. Rubbish and it was an attempt to keep the environment in the same condition. Interesting enough it is the coldest place on earth you can’t get a cold there. Germs won’t survive.

Another thing there your appetite, we were having 5 meals a day with the New Zealanders because you are burning up a lot of body heat so morning and afternoon tea was a meal unto it themselves and you don’t put on weight. If you were the normal tour was 12 months, if you were there for that 12 months time the winter and the summer you would need to get fairly involved in your job. As I said there were

vulcanologists, meteorologist and all sorts of ologists they were all specialist scientists. They had a scientific and led by a scientific leader like a Base Squadron we will call it and generally there were administrators from New Zealand that looked after that. I think it was an Air Force Squadron Leader looking after it but fascinating.

About 6 weeks in all.

Other funny things because the most precious commodity there is fresh water because it freezes. The only fresh water there is generated by the power because of that you only wash once a week and you only do your washing once a week. To wash down there you only get 3 minutes of hot water so you strip off quickly. Luckily the bathrooms are heated

and you hit this red button and you only have 3 minutes of hot water it is just scarce it takes a lot of power to generate fresh water. You could always pick the guys who were new to it because you would hear this ah oh bloody hell and they would come racing out and they would have shampoo all over them. So engrossed in doing this and time had got away from them. It took 5 minutes for the tanks to build up again so it had its funny

side the only people that were allowed to shower every day was the dog handler and that is because he was feeding the dogs seal meat . They shot 60 odd seals and put them in a snow box. Each time they would feed the dogs they would put them in a band saw. Interesting dog psychology that the dog that was fed first was the biggest Frisbee is the pack leader and that goes right down to the pups.

If there was any discipline to be administered it was always the pups first like if there was a fight on the dog sled and invariably there would be a fight because there is so much tension on these leads the discipline would be a rubber hose and the pups would get it first and it worked its way up the line to various degrees you know better than that he is the leader and if you

got stuck into him he would lose credibility with the rest of the mob. There was a lot of little things like that, the leader of the pack.

Just one other thing on human nature which was interesting that was the toilet system we used to call it the throne room. There were two Racasan, Racasan is a chemical you visited them once a day but it is interesting to note that on the back of the toilet door was routine orders for the day and

an escape plan. If you think about it everyone likes to have something to read so that is where they published orders not on the notice door but on the back of the toilet door. The duty roster and the other thing was the fire escape plan and that was important because there is was no water. Whilst it has 90% fresh water there is no running water. If you have a fire there you have to use your fixed fire fighting extinguishers,

and that is it you are out in the cold. The escape plan and their fire fighting equipment was the major part plus your survival gear because if a fire started and you got extremely strong winds and the wood is extremely dry because it is never wet fire goes through it real quick and that was our greatest fear which you wouldn’t believe. Being able to contain it because once they are gone you don’t have the fresh water to fight it. That is where the fire escape plan

I thought it was fascinating that is real human nature. An interesting thing when you think about it. If you want to put a notice up it is going to be read by everybody that is the place.

It does.

Ok, the

aim of the course to train the aircrew members of the three services army, navy and air force in basic survival techniques in peace and war, global, global meaning moist tropics arid lands, cold lands rather than saying freezing lands, sea coast and deep sea environments. Global survival in peace time

and in war time which had certain different priorities. I had 4 weeks to do that. A week of it was the first week all theory lectures mostly on survival psychology techniques and the priorities of survival, protection, location, water and food and how they affect the body.

then we applied those priorities to the different land forms. Then we had a deep sea phase, a lot of the stuff I learnt in the States which was of value came into it we used marine section which had an air-sea rescue crash boat. I put the students out and take them out in between Magnetic, Herald and Acron Islands, that was their sea training area and I would launch them all

off this crash boat wearing a life jacket and they had a problem as soon as they hit the water because I would appoint one of each group they were in 10 man life rafts so I would put them up to 10 in each particular life raft, normally about 7. As soon as they hit the water most of them their jackets wouldn’t have bottles in them but manually inflating them, again that was a carry over

they had to be helped and they had someone who was screaming who had been injured and had to be helped he was a victim I used to brief on the way out and I would brief him on the sort of wounds I wanted him to have which was shock, badly lacerated arm, foreign object in the eye and I want you to hit the water and start screaming. The other reason for that was to keep their minds off sharks

I thought one day someone is going to be screaming for real. As soon as they hit the water they had a 10 man life raft and it was upside down drifting away with the wind, their strongest swimmers had to get that those who couldn’t swim and someone who was wounded and they had problems with their life jackets that got them into a life raft and after we had them bobbing around for a few hours

we would visit them in a rubber duck I operated off the crash rescue vessel and my medical orderly and myself would visit them and my medical would then examine their treatment of the member’s wounds, they used their first aid techniques correctly and then they would go through the various techniques of water procurement and food procurement and all that drills. At the time they used to spend about 5 hours in the life raft, I didn’t leave them out over night

because it was dangerous from lessons I learnt overseas from the Americans, so what happened then they would hear wok, wok on the horizon so they would use their survival techniques and they would call up rescue aircraft this is shark bait alpha, shark bait bravo, I gave them all these various call signs, they used to shake their heads

I am going to get you, they would call up and the aircraft would vector to them, vector procedures is part of it, and it would wince them out one at a time into the helicopter. The helicopter would then fly over Herald or Acron Island depending on which one I was using the sergeant would set up location aids such as signs in the sand, flares, rockets, all sorts of equipment that the aircrew would be looking to locate a survivor.

A demonstration from the pilot’s point of view what he is looking for. After they would overfly the aircraft and see that and land on the ground and they were pre-briefed to go to a particular area and my sergeant would set up for sea coast survival. It would take quite some time to extra about four rafts and chopper them to the island then they would go through there once they got to the island

demonstration and then they would be there 2 days and then I would assess them on how they had achieved the priorities. Location, water and food. It was assessed in that I could tell you while they were going that their priorities were wrong they should have had more particular attention to this particular thing bad or because of whatever it was. They are then back on the craft and back onto the

base where we taught them some more skills related to jungle survival, escape and evasion and resistance to interrogation and then they did a phase where.

Most of that is classified but it is ways that they can hold out as long as possible whilst being interrogated by a skilled person

bearing in mind everyone has their breaking points and they will break. Part of the way the service guards against that is only briefing aircrews on information they are required to know on that particular mission, the tactical mission rather than the strategic position and why senior officers rarely fly on operations. It is a need to know basis and the teaching is to evade as long as you can up to 3 days and any

information that will be got out of you by torture is of no consequence so we taught them techniques of how to handle different types of interrogation and how much they could divulge under duress.

I think that is all that needs to be known. The Americans on their basic course the Commander of the Resistance School was an ex-navy

Aviator and he obviously suffered a lot in Hanoi Hilton. He was the ideal man for the job except it was very difficult at times to understand what he was talking about it had affected his brain but he ran a very good resistance training. The Americans had 1500 aircrew that went down in North Vietnam they only recovered 500 which was unacceptable for an air environment that was favourable to them because they had the resources. A lot of guys

didn’t use their survival equipment and a lot of guys didn’t know how to survive after capture. What we had to do was reproduce as much as we can. There was a resistance phase. After they were briefed I gave them a brief told them they had to be in the lecture room the following morning with the following equipment make sure their water bottles were not full and they would carry no food or anything like that only their own equipment.

They would assemble outside the classroom and the first thing I would say make sure you empty your water bottles because I don’t trust you, you will get water when I drop you in the invasion area. Some of them were filled up with booze and things. Make sure you go to the toilet and urinate or dislocate before you get on the truck you won’t be getting off it. They then go into the classroom one at a time where they will be stripped and searched clothes, contraband, cigarettes they were allowed one pack of cigarettes and a box

of matches they were issued with a tomahawk and a knife and various bits of survival equipment. They could refuse to take any of it but I strongly advise you to take it with you. They all started off the same gear and the same handicaps, they went they received their equipment they were searched they came out on the truck. Sides down and once I got them all down they were then taken up into the survival area and when they got there

they didn’t know where they were going and I asked graduates of the course not to tell future students where the area was but some would have talked when I got up there I then briefed them they were the survivors of a crashed C130 and they were members of the Australian Air Force and the Palm Islands had got cranky and they had run out of coconuts and invaded the main land and you were flying in support of the army

and you had taken ground fire crash. First problem find out where you are, so then navigation skills to find out where they were and when that was so, I want you to navigate using the skills I have taught you on escape and evasion to get to another spot where I will recover you and check that you are physically fit and you will be given directions for where your rendezvous point will be for your rescue pick up. They would take off. The enemy was army, I used to get an army

platoon at the task force brief them and they were to chase and capture and interrogate and then they were to take one emergency ration that is all they got for 7 days. They had a team of 4 with a designated senior responsible officer and then other people. Teams of 4, so they were caught, interrogated and taken back to the starting point. The basis

of evasion is the hard way is the safest way they were like mountain goats and the army just loved chasing aircrew. They participated really well and the Task Force Commander was happy that he was assisting us working together. Probably the best people were the Armoured Corps the tankies [tank drivers] they really relished getting out on their feet and doing the job. That was the 2 day phase and I had recovered them for safety reasons and then they

would get to a rendezvous and line up tactically and they would hear a helicopter and they would vector the helicopter into them for a takeoff as they would do. They were choppered there from the invasion area to the jungle survival area. The jungle survival area they were met and taken to a location and said this is it this is where you are going to stay for X number of days unknown you are going to be here for eternity, there is no coming out.

One thing that is uncertain about survival you don’t know when you are going to be rescued. They had to get themselves set up each day with the equipment they had, they had a program each day to achieve and I visited them everyday to make sure they were achieving those objectives and to check they were medically fit to see if they had any problems. You would find even though there was an officer in each group that I had to appoint as the senior responsible officer in many cases he wasn’t the leader. I could pick that when I would say tell me someone

what is going on and someone who might only be the young private soldier would start talking. Indirect leadership. In most cases he was an agricultural guy happy in the bush and people would naturally follow him so it didn’t matter what you wore there after awhile it wears very thin. You would walk in sometimes see the odd black eye or something like that and someone had had an altercation. The officer and the senior NCO and two others.

They did that every day and after about 6 days I would give them an assessment on what they had achieved and also check their location activity by giving them a scenario I hear an aircraft, what they had to do was get the message out of the jungle over the jungle canopy, they did that by fires and smoke and by rockets on a time. If they couldn’t get a message out in 3 minutes then they failed. It had gone.

OK I will reassess you tomorrow, it was very easy to say who bludged or who did well because they were same numbers with the same equipment and the same environment. Some people cheated twice as much as others and in most cases it was leadership and other cases that was it but I told them at the start I don’t fail individuals because I don’t live with you I fail groups so you had better learn to work together and if there is someone bludging you had better sort him out.

A lot of them said I ain’t coming back here so they sorted their own problems out, that is what survival is all about. It was very interesting for me psychology wise to see the whole bit.

Someone that can

convince others that his way is the right way. The oth4ers have got to get confidence from him that he knows what he is talking about. A lot of cases even the strong silent type that doesn’t say much can exert leadership but it is mostly it is the ability to influence other people to following your way, leaders evolve not necessarily with a bar.

I found that the aircrew up there are the professionals but on the ground they are the amateurs. In most cases I had a mix of army, navy and air force and in a lot of cases it might be the young soldier. Bush background and he was comfortable in the field and he would lead but mostly by suggestion, that’s a good idea. The officer would instinctively know this guy knows what he is doing. That is what would happen.

To listen, a lot of it was group activities we will sort it out what do you think we should do, like a group average sort of thing and then plan and stick to it but working together is extremely difficult with some they just couldn’t click there were arguments. The only way they would follow these guys is to see what he is going to stuff up next

follow him out of sheer curiosity. It was very interesting to see what groups could achieve. A psychologist would have a field day with us there particularly under pressure where these guys had been chased for 2 days and they weren’t eating a lot, I only gave them one flying ration and if they got caught that would get you one, they were assessed on how much they had left at the end of it whether they were able to live off the land. After awhile stress come in

they had to really work hard with interpersonal problems.

That was it. The deep sea phase and there is now a desert phase that they have included a desert phase much as same as the sea coast phase and the invasion phase and a jungle survival phase. The invasion phase is in front of it so it is pre-stress,

particularly in the dry season where I had a lot of problems with dehydration in fact I had one guy die a Flight Engineer died from heat stroke. Again it was unfortunate that the team leader was a young guy and he allowed the team to be split up which is what I told them not to do but luckily one guy was injured and they decided that they would spit and they had a road that used to go through the centre of my

area and I patrolled that every 4 hours day and night, at night with the headlights on so they had a navigational aid but also they had hand held radios but in some cases they didn’t even know where they were they couldn’t find them so there was no point ringing up and saying I am lost because if you are lost and you don’t know where you are how can I find you. We had problems with lost teams and this guy was injured and they left 2 behind the officer and this flight sergeant and

he went into convulsions and started vomiting and all that sort of thing. The officer left him and ran onto the road and we found him and I was able to ring up and I raced him with my sergeant and my medic who was always with us, Maggie, the young medical orderly she did a really good job of mouth to mouth and my sergeant got to work on him straight away. I ran back to my vehicle and got a radio call back to my base camp to my young

supply and I had a high frequency air link back to the base have a casualty presumed dead, can you send the helicopter which I had on standby and I had the helicopter land on a pre-zoned dropping zone within 20 minutes of the call. I had a doctor to him within 45 minutes from when I first found him. They couldn’t get him back. They put the defibrillators on, unfortunately he was only about 70 metres

from the creek and he had travelled, rather than trying to force water into him, it was heat stroke rather than dehydration. If he had lowered his body temperature quickly the guy might have survived, unfortunately that was the only guy that I lost. Subsequently a board of enquiry held in the field they said no your safety procedures and backups were adequate we don’t hold the school at fault. Unfortunately when you are training hard for war these things happen.

The aircrew on the course. They went back to base and I convinced my boss that the best thing for them rather than sitting around a board of enquiry was back in the field the board of enquiry could come to us. It got their mind off it, it is something I learnt in the Parachute world when someone had an injury get back up there as soon as possible. The same as the aircrew with an accident you get them up again as quickly as you can.

He said I think that is a good idea so I took the course back into the field and continued with the course and they and they interviewed (UNCLEAR).

It hurt a bit it was the first student I had lost in many years. I couldn’t eat meat for about a month afterwards because the guy had been dead for a while and all his body fluids had gone to his lungs and we were giving mouth to mouth and cardiac massage and spewing.

All the fluids were coming up, it affected him for a while. It was a bit of a downer but I got over and I had to accept that it was one of those things it could have happened in the parachuting world it was the only student that I ever lost. He came to me a couple of days before with fingernails going black so I sent him to medical and I said I need a clearance from the doctor that you are clear for evasion. The doctor told me that it was a potassium deficiency whether it was linked to the heat stroke I don’t know.

I told the air force that it would happen one day we were sticking our necks out some of the students were ringing out their clothes with mud to get water in their water bottles. A hostile environment but that was the only one. That was a very satisfying time 3 years with associated course and I really enjoyed that. After that

I left Townsville went back to Richmond as XO, that is Executive Officer Defence, Airfield Defence Squadron and I got the phone call do you want to go to Butterworth do you want to go there we will promote you to Squadron Leader and how fast can you be there. That was the next step up the line as Senior Ground Defence Officer I had a junior officer with me and my job up there was to co-ordinate the defence training and the ground defence activities of the base.

The air force element, RAAF element the RMAF, the Royal Malaysian Air Force element and the Rifle Company the Australian Rifle Company that was deployed up there for Air Force Base activities. That was very challenging. We ran two exercises a year and my job was to run the Command post. The Ground Defence exercises were also run simultaneously with the air defence.

exercise it was putting the base on a defensive posture. I did that for 3 years I extended a year and happy with that and decided to pull the plug I resigned up there and came back to Williamtown and decided to settle, 3 months resettlement training there and then got out.

I said to her when we were looking for this house,

I said make sure it is a good choice because you are not getting me out of here we are still here that was 1986. We have always lived in married quarters so she liked a place where she could put a nail in the wall and know it was going to stay there. This is why she is so much a house person and frustrated now because she can’t get out in the gardens because of a back problem and stays to cleaning the house up.

We have learnt to deal with that, it is something I miss the activity but the Coastal Patrol is a good out so to speak where I can get involved in that and I will probably get more involved in the training side, Alan is involved in the boat crews and Barry is assistant training officer so we have service skills to offer and

we will get involved in that it will take me back into the old world.

I think you will see that the 3 of us will balance it out. We are very slowly putting our views across.

No I have been quite happy to pass on my experiences I have been very happy in the air force I would do that again tomorrow. I was very lucky that I was able to program my promotion and my courses. The air force has a system of calling for a preferential postings and you can tell them what you would like and in most cases they can do it

so I just called the shots most of the time and luckily I was able to do the things I was able to do a lot of service friends.

It is becoming more important and we tend as we get older to fall back on old acquaintances.

For example I pickup up my old CO on Friday where we have both been invited to 26 Squadron Parade where they have been given the Air Force Association Cup the most efficient reserve squadron in the air force. After I resigned from the permanent air force I joined the Reserve. John and I worked together the last 2 years. John was an ex-platoon commander in 1 Battalion and the he did staff

work. He came back in the air force, he was a GLO, Ground Liaison Officer and then came back as a Operations Officer in the Reserve. There was a short time that they ran out of permanent officers for CO of the squadron so he ran the Squadron he was XO before and then became CO and said come on Bazza you are XO. We got on very well because we spoke the same language. He lives at Tweed Heads I pick him up on an aeroplane on Friday

and attend the parade and I will put him on a plane to go home on Sunday. He is very heavily involved in Associations.

I am with the Air Field Defence Association which is the Ground Defence World, I am an affiliated member of the SAS Association, my link with the

Parachuting world, I am with the RSL Sub branch here. I haven’t joined the Vietnam Veterans Association and I won’t do that until we get proper recognition and I have told them that I won’t do that until I can join as a full member. Two Associations that I get journals from and now

you have to keep your mind alert and active. I know things are changing and I think somebody says when a man retires and he sits in his favourite chair he begins to die and I think that is true.

I forget that Association the Ubon Reunion and Recognition Group we are working on that for proper recognition.