[ War Stories1 ]

War Stories1

“You want another beer, Tony?” Sandra asked me sweetly. She also has asked me the same question no more than five, maybe ten minutes ago. Maybe she didn’t hear me over the bar noise. No, I’m fine, I told her again. “You sure?” she said again. “You’re not paying for any of this tonight, you know?” Yeah, I know, I said. Really, I’m fine right now.2

“So, how’s it feel to be back, huh?” Joe asked me. Joe and Sandra have been boyfriend and girlfriend ever since high school. I think someone told me too that they were getting married sometime soon, but they might as well be already. You would hardly see them apart, I think, but then again I wouldn’t know for sure since I haven’t exactly been in around for the past couple of years.3

“Good, I guess,” I say. I should say something more than that. “Yeah... I dunno. It’s a...” (It’s not a relief, I know that much) “...change.”
“Yeah, I bet, man,” he says and the table goes silent again. The music starts playing ‘Tainted Love,’ drowning out the dregs of our conversation. Joe looks over to Sandra sitting right next to him and starts to mouth the words to her. She smiles. She’s still beautiful when she smiles, like it somehow makes her blond hair a little brighter and the color in her eyes go deeper.4

“Y’know, on second thought, I’ll take that second beer,” I blurt out.
“Oh,” she says with a pause, glancing over back at Joe for a brief moment, “Okay, just give me a sec, ‘kay?”
She gets up and walks off to the bar. I lean back a little in my chair; reach my hands around to the back of my head. Joe stares at me, apparently not knowing what else to say.5

“I’m... glad that you guys are still around,” I say to him. “I mean, you guys have really stuck around while I’ve been in the Army and when I was deployed too. You guys were the only ones to send me anything in the mail. I mean...,” my train of thought staggers and finally stops as Sandra comes back from the bar with a beer bottle in hand. “You guys have been great friends to me, that’s all,” I try to finish.6

“Well, come on Tony, you’ve been my best mate since the start of high school. Remember when we used to play Hacky Sack at lunch?” he said with a smile. One day I brought a Hacky Sack to kick around with one of my friends at the time. Joe and Sandra weren’t together then and that was when I wanted her to notice me. The Hacky Sack sessions started to become a small sensation around school and we started to pick up all sorts of other people from other groups. Sandra soon followed along with the rest of them, the first time I had any kind of significant contact with the girl I stared at on occasion in History. It was also the first significant contact that Joe ever had with her too. The group grew larger, took up more space as we struggled to make the shortening kicks more worthwhile and as she stood further away from me each day I guess she must’ve gotten closer with Joe instead.7

“You ever wonder sometimes what would’ve happened if you stayed? If you didn’t join the Army?” she asked. 8

I wonder if she knows how I felt about her, how I still feel about her. She was looking at me attentively, like she saw and was already amused by what I was thinking. Not really, I lied to her. The last thing I needed to do tonight was go down that track again, especially with her guy sitting right there.9

Her guy continued to stare off to the side of the table, sipping at his beer. Sandra turned to glance at him all the sudden and then went back to staring at me, they didn’t know what to say to me, nor I to them. Joe, whether he was following her eyes or simply embarrassed, went back to looking at me too. I still had no idea what to say. I looked down at the table and started to play with the number marker in the middle of the table. “I guess you didn’t have a whole lot of time like this when you were over there, huh?” she asked. I stopped and leaned back in my chair again. The tension was thick.10

“So come on, where are those war stories of yours?” she burst out.
“What do you mean?” I asked
“Come on, there’s got to be all sorts of crazy things you did and that you saw over there.” 11

I didn’t know what to say to her, did she want to hear about my time at ARTC Kapooka* before shipping out?
The highly intensive 80 day Recruit Course training course where signals, scouts, riflemen, artillerymen and medics were dragged by the scruff of their neck though the mud, the blood and the beer. 12

Everyone who goes though Kapooka gets a condensed perception of the life seen though the sweat-impaired view of the grunt. We worked hard for seven days a week with little time available for recreation or rest. What really burned ARTC into the mind was the combination of the rough, dry environment, exhaustion and the men and women who ran it- a mixed bag of legends, heroes, and bastards. Close your eyes and you can still see and hear them. 13

Did Sandra care about Sgt Luca, the hard-arse with the heart of gold? What Sgt Luca lacked in height and physical ability he made up with pure determination, flawless leadership and general soldiering ability. He loved all things military, converted command and believed 100% in doing things right. If you screwed up he wouldn’t hesitate to knock you on your arse, both fugitively and literally.14

Did Sandra care about Sgt Luca’s best drinking mate Cpl Haynes? He was a man who could not be more different from the Sergeant. He rarely talked and you could often find him staring off into the distance a smoke in his mouth and a beer in one hand, absorbed in a place on a whole other continent which he physically left many years ago, however, he will always be there.15

Then there was WO2 Reese one of the oldest and most experienced instructors at Kapooka he was fit, but gruff and slower then most. He still carried the medals he won in Vietnam for outstanding courage over his two tours of duty. His entire look and demeanour screamed bush, this was only enhanced by the roll-your-own cigarette that constantly hung from his mouth. You would never guess the man was a chess champion. 16

At the time these men were our best friends, our teachers, or family, our judge, jury and executioner. And they were our heroes. They were our legends then, now they are our memories.17

With the exception of time on Bivouacs, every day was started with a “warm-up” of an early morning run along a broken and dusty path. After that each Recruit pulled on his or her basic webbing- day pack, belt, ammunition pouches, water bottles and steyr pouches- and fastened the sling on their steyr assault riffles. 18

Did Sandra want to hear about the days we were “lucky” enough to get to do the Confidence Course. The instructor was a hard bastard who hard long gotten over being the most hated person in Kapooka. He double-timed the platoon all the way there while they mentally prepared themselves for what was to come. 19

“Don’t fuck around waiting for your mates, this is not a group exercise-and it is timed”
Shit, there are two guys directly ahead of me; if I can’t catch up I’ll be stuck behind on an obstacle.
The fist obstacle is only just coming up and already I’m drenched in sweat, the damn riffle is knocking between my shoulder blades and the water bottles tugging at my waist.20

I take a running jump and desperately cling to the wall in front of me, the sweat in my eyes and palms makes it hard but I begin to climb…
BOOM BOOM!
I lose my grip, I fall, I hit the ground hard. The instructors have started throwing flashers, simulated grenade explosions. I’m winded and I really just want to curl up in the fetal position until I feel better. Instead I jump to my feet and continue running.
God Damn riffle in my shoulders!
Splash!
I take another fall, this time of the narrow wooden planks into the chilling, stagnant creek. I’m surrounded by sounds POP and WHOOSH-smoke bombs. Can’t breath. I drag myself to the creek bed and cough up lumps of clay and a lungful of dirty water.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doin’, get up and do it right!”
Suppressing the urge to shoot the instructor, I jump up yet again and continue on.21

CRACK CRACK CRACK!22

I dive into the next obstacle- a tunnel- to avoid the blanks now being shot at me from a M60 Machine Gun. I’ve made it in front of the two guys from before, I must stay in front, I must stay in front.
There’s a mud patch at the bottom of the next obstacle, I take a massive jump, but realise about half way that I’m not going to make it. I hit the edge of it and my boots become stuck.
I think I’m going to die.23

Come on, keep movin’ don’t stop, keep moving24

I take a look up at the instructor, there’s a look of glee on his face, bastard, I must look like crap, completely soaked through, my bottom half encased in mud.25

I jump over the barbed wire, I can see the last obstacle, its nick-name is the “Slide-for-life” I climb up the ladder, I make the mistake of looking down, I want to vomit, to shit my pants, anything. The instructor is not happy with me, “Get moving! Your too high, you pause at high ground like that in a combat zone and you’ll end up with a third eye! Now fuckin’ MOVE!”26

I start to work my way along a cable to the other side about 10m away, then I have to take a jump from the platform onto a landing pad. I almost freeze up again, but there’s no power left in me, my arms feel like they are about to fall off, I just want to finish, I jump.
The instructor looks down at me and grins, “11 minutes, new record for Alpha Platoon”27


“Yeah, did you see anything really awful?” Joe added.28

The tension doubled. Good old Joe, he always knows the best moment to put his foot in his mouth. 29

“Oh shush,” she said turning to Joe with a hint of a smirk on her face, “you want to talk about the vote or something? Who cares about politics? Let’s hear about the funny stuff instead, huh?” I felt a smile grow on my own face when she said this. Maybe she already understands that what we spent the most of our time on wasn’t some hardcore barbarian invasion shit but making jokes and killing time.30

I remember in Australia, before we even left, having to sit though all those bore-us-stupid lectures on PTSD, after the men came back from Korea and Vietnam only to shoot themselves. Now days everyone thinks that the Soldiers will be ready to break after the most minimal amount of combat action. The truth is I never even really saw the enemies, sure they were the occasional rounds of gun fire directed at us, but that was a daily occurrence wherever you are in the country, not to mention it was mostly kids and civis with no idea how to even aim the weapon. 31

Oh and I was assigned to a 6-day protection detail on the Azeem** crossing. That was the most action packed 6 days of my time there, the Azeem crossing is a long and narrow path way know for being attacked almost every day. 32

It was where Sergeant Johnson earned the nick name South Paw, hah, I’ll have to tell Sandra about that one soon.33

I mean sure, I saw my share of bodies on that track, but really, none of them were our boys, most of the time they really had nothing to worry about, as soon as we detected enemy movement we’d follow the old army protocol, “If unsure, empty the round”.34

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Uhm... let me see here.” I took another swig of my beer. I started out by telling them about the main character to this story, which wasn’t me but our commander. Lieutenant Joel Manson. The man was a Soldier cliché to the extreme and we were all - I mean, all of us in the battalion - were just waiting for the day where he’d give us the pre-mission briefing only to catch the smell in the air, and proudly exclaim “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”***. But this was a guy with big ideas, right? Not gonna let those terrorizing bastards win this one, not on his watch. So there’s this typical pre-mission brief, same tired speech he always pulls the day before about how we’re liberating the fucking people by escorting a bunch of IP’s around...
“What’s the IPS?” Sandra asked
“EYE-pees. Iraqi Police.”
“Oh,” she said and leaned back towards Joe’s shoulder. I continue on.
So his latest great idea was to stake out all the roads for the IEDs (sorry, roadside bombs, I mean) that’ve been showing up around that time. So yeah, we’re all thinking “instead of driving by these things you think maybe we should just give them a sitting target instead, right?” 35

But whatever, move on, drink water, hooah. Next day comes; we all get out of the wire at the crack of dawn, go to our posts and just sit there like we’re told.36

Well, just like we expected, they start shooting at one of our trucks. You know typical pot shots and the gunner gets down, scans around, looks for a flash. Well, the truck I’m in is only about a click away from where the other truck is taking fire and our gunner’s ducking down too ‘cause, really, we don’t know where it’s coming from either. Well, no more than a couple of minutes after the shots die off when the CO’s truck, good old Manson himself, goes racing by on the street we’re staking out, going full-fucking-bore down to this ‘firefight’! And he’s freaking out over the radio too, yelling about time, distance, direction, people running from, people running to, cars, birds, you name it... like he’s going to call in a motherfucking air strike on a couple of teenagers taking some pot shots on an armored truck.37

So we’re listening to the radio in our truck, right? Well, he gets over to the site, starting freaking out over the radio again about how he’s not getting the answers he wants about the shots from the other truck, and we’re laughing our asses off at the whole thing. Well, next thing we know we start hearing some machine gun fire this time from over there, only all of us can tell it’s not an AK but a 240 Bravo.38

“Uhm...” Sandra hesitated out loud.
“One of our machine guns” I answer preemptively.39

Anyway, we hear all this and we’re all wondering what the fuck’s going on. Well, turns out the CO’s vehicle’s laying waste to this hut about five hundred meters away from the road they’re over watching. Just laying an entire fucking drum on the place, God only knows why. Well, the radio pipes up again:40

‘Cobra six, this is two-nine. No positive contact, ove... WHAT THE FUCK!?” (I tried to scream it the same way he did back then). I got one pax coming out of the hut. No weapon, no visible injuries (you could also hear the rest of their truck laughing in the background), I say again, I got one civilian here coming out of the hut, over.’
‘Break, break, break, this is six, cease fire, cease fire!’41

I chuckle a little to myself but I can see the blank looks on their faces. “I mean, he was the one firing at the guy,” I add to break the creeping silence, “Anyway, we take the guy in, not a scratch on him by the way, and he’s just this poor sap that’s been living there for the past ten years or so, or something like that.”42

“Oh my god,” Sandra starts.43

“Well, I mean...,” I start and stop too. What am I going to say after this? That everything turned out okay afterwards? That poor guy we shot at 200 times was kept for a full three days and I heard good old Manson still wanted to send him to Abu Ghraib even after it was obvious that all he did was have a house next to a war zone, like everyone else out there? Or that we finally found the bastards that really did shoot at us? Yeah, right, seeing that they were probably just a couple of punk kids trying out their daddy’s AK for a spin for a day. They always run off before we even got a chance to pop our heads back up.44

I started to think of all the other stories I thought I would tell when I got back, all while watching both Sandra’s and Joe’s slack, confused faces slowly tend to their own beers. What was the point? Where was the punch line to Jimmy Three-Fingers, a bomb maker we caught who kept saying he had them cut off from his angry dad instead of an errant bomb of his? Or South Paw, who was Sergeant Johnson before he had an IED rip off his right arm. We were so glad, and so was he I can imagine, that he came out alive from it that any joke at his expense was a blessing? How could I explain all that?45

“Sorry,” I said, not knowing what else I could say.
“S’okay Tony,” Sandra said, “You want another beer?”
“Yeah, sure.”46

47

*Although ARTC (Army Recruit Training Centre) Kapooka is a real place all descriptions of it, the training courses and the personnel who run it are creations of the authors’ imagination.This story is in no way factual and is not in anyway representing the Australian Army.
**The name Azeem is Arabic for Defender,this place does not exist.
***Credit for the line “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” goes to the film "Apocalypse Now."48