Well Done, Those Men

by Barry Heard

  ‘Pass the fuck’n sauce will ya, Dad.’

  The table went suddenly quiet. They were all looking at me.

  ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t use that language at the table,’ said the old man.

  ‘Oh, shit, I’m sorry,’ I said, when it dawned on me that I had sworn.

  Mum left the room as my brothers and sister exploded into giggles.

  Years later, at our first battalion reunion, that bloody story sounded like a cracked record. It had happened to most of the blokes.

  Later, feeling restless, I walked down to the river to smell the water and have a cigarette. The dog followed me down, just to keep me company. It was nice to pat a dog again.

  My parents were horrified at my language. They were shocked that I smoked and drank. My brothers and sisters were terrified. Years later, they told me how scary I was when I went to bed. We only had a small house, and the boys’ room had two bunks that slept the three brothers and me. I liked a top bunk. I would go to bed very late, well after midnight. The last thing I would do was light up a cigarette. In no time I would be asleep, the fag glowing in my fingers. Several times, they attempted to wake me up and warn me about the fag. They told me I would jump up, swinging my fists and muttering language the likes of which they had never heard before. After that, they took it in turns to pick up the butt or try very, very carefully to remove it from between my fingers.

  My first venture into the town was to the local pub. I was looking forward to it. A lot of blokes my age turned up — fellas I had been to school with, played footy with or against, socialised with. I considered them my friends. Quite a few ales later, I had had enough. Primed with alcohol and feeling like someone from a different planet among these normal young fellow citizens, I let fly.

  ‘You’re all a pack of wankers!’ I shouted. ‘All you can talk about is how much piss you can drink, who you should have decked at footy, how fast your frig’n car can go, and who you’re trying to get into the sack! Get a fuck’n life!’

  They stood there staring, stunned, and slightly gob-smacked. In one long breath, I had isolated myself from the fine young people I had grown up with; people who had come down to the pub to see me and talk. I felt a mixture of anger and disappointment when I left. Well done, that man.

  Today I wonder what they made of this drunken, foul-mouthed foreigner telling them hypocritically what was wrong with them.

  At home, it was much the same. I sat there silently, listening to Bob complaining bitterly about the new Land Rover and the back door that had a dickey hinge. Mum got me up to speed on all the Mothers’ Club’s problems. She was the president, and didn’t spare me any detail, no matter how trivial. For myself, I marvelled at the shower taps that had hot and cold water. There was a phone, and light switches everywhere. Everybody’s wardrobes were packed with clothes; I was used to just one change. And the kids went to school on a bus — a modern bus.

  Gossip, something that in my past I had often listened to with amusement, really irked me. It appeared so pointless in the scheme of things. I visited a few friends and acquaintances, sat through awkward conversations, and battled with nausea if I had had a meal. I couldn’t hold down the rich food, particularly dinner. A couple of times the topic of Vietnam came up, and each person’s political persuasions determined the argument. I was stunned by comments that appeared way out of touch with the reality of my experience. I had only spent a little time with my family, but I had to get away.

  Within five days of arriving home, I had gone to Lakes Entrance, a seaside resort about two hours from home. I knew a fine old man there who liked fishing.

  Every morning, about 5.00am, the two of us would rise, grab the fishing gear, and stroll down to the boat. It was a wooden clinker built with a half cabin and driven by a slow Chapman-pup engine. We would putt across the calm lake and secure some bait — fresh mussels off the rocks or some sea lettuce, depending on the tide. Then we’d anchor off the bank or go to the entrance and just fish. We always caught a good feed. However, the old fella’s company was what was most welcome. Most of the time, we wouldn’t say much at all. There were few people about. Every now and then, he’d break the silence.

  ‘Got one, Baz?’

  ‘A flattie, you beauty!’

  ‘Play him, boy, play him, that’s it. Now feed him a bit of line. That’s it! Good fish, Baz. He’ll go down well!’

  That might be the entire conversation for five hours. Satisfied with our catch and needing a meal, we’d start up the Chapman-pup and head for the mooring. At his home, we’d gut the fish, roll them in flour, and put them in the fridge for tea. After a big feed of bacon and eggs we would have a lie down for a couple of hours, and the old fella would sleep. I would lie there, trying not to think about what the future might hold. After an early tea, a bit of telly, I would go to bed. My stomach was still very tender. I could hold down a morning meal, but dinner usually came up within the hour. My time at Lakes Entrance blurred into two weeks.

  Then a letter informed me that I was to report to Puckapunyal, as I still had over eight weeks before I was due to be discharged. I returned to the old 7RAR barracks area to find most of the old crew there: Booster, Knackers, Snoggons, Roster, and a handful of others who’d been there from the day I’d entered the army. We discovered we had an unusual duty to perform: we were to train young cadet army officers. It was recruit training all over again, except this time we were the trainers.

  We’d been away from parade grounds for so long that the RSM in charge decided we needed some re-training and discipline ourselves. It was three days before the cadets arrived. He began the day by criticising our dress, our lack of decent haircuts, and the appalling condition of our boots. He then marched us to the parade ground and started yelling at us. Bad move, mate.

  ‘Look to the front, that man!’

  ‘That was bloody hopeless! As you were!’

  ‘Do it together, girls. Do it together!’

  Roster, in the back row, coughed. ‘Stuff him,’ he said loudly.

  ‘Fuck the army!’ followed another comment.

  The RSM was fuming. Training was cut short, and we were marched off the parade ground. We went straight into the boozer, where large, cold ales were ordered. After a time, in walked the RSM.

  ‘Look fellas, sorry. Lost the plot,’ he said. ‘Let me buy you a beer, and we’ll start again.’

  We had a chat and, though he’d never been overseas himself, he was amazed to realise we were returned servicemen, and due to be discharged in a couple of months. The RSM turned out to be a top bloke, and he introduced us with pride and honour to the recruits several days later. If only the RSL had shown us the same respect.

  Just over the hill from our 7RAR barracks were the 2RTB training grounds and huts where we had done recruit training all that time ago. Back then it had been Nostrils, the ugly bugger, Big Ears, The Beret, and Sergeant Big Red who had metered out punishment, insults, and wisdom. And off course, Mr. Fairly (something!)

  On our second night in Pucka we just had to visit 2RTB to see if any of the trainers who had screamed at us for our first ten weeks in the army were still there. Big Red was the first to greet us in the company headquarters.

  ‘Shit, I don’t believe it, you bastards. Shit, you look different,’ he said.

  Then he grinned. ‘Well, bugger me, it’s good to see ya. What have you been up to?’

  He remembered us. Sergeant Big Red was actually human.

  ‘Recruit Heard, how many times did you run up Tit Hill?’

  In no time, an hour had passed. We laughed a little, re-lived the few fond memories, and arranged to contact the other staff over the next few days. But we had another agenda, too. My younger brother Robbie had just started recruit training at Pucka, which surprised me as he was very anti-war and had all the hallmarks of a genuine conscientious objector. He was well educated and smart. I was introduced to his platoon corporal, and with the corporal’s permission we organised a visit, Knackers a
nd I. We got all dressed up in whatever rank the sergeant could lend us, and headed for my brother’s hut. It was late in the evening, just before lights out. I banged loudly on the door.

  A meek little voice — about the same as Vic Tamower’s — announced, ‘Stand to!’

  ‘Did you hear a noise?’ said Knackers, turning to me as we entered the hut.

  ‘Stand to!’ screamed the meek little man, and threw Knackers and myself a salute for good measure.

  ‘Salute me again and I’ll rip your bloody arm awf and shove the soggy end up ya arse. I have it on good authority that this is the worst bloody hut in the company,’ Knackers shouted.

  We slowly walked through the hut, banging lockers and poking beds with the parade batons the sergeant had lent us. We reached my brother’s bed. There was an added bonus — another bloke whom I knew very well from Omeo near home was standing opposite.

  ‘Good evening, Sir, Corporal … er, Mr. Heard,’ said my brother.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this shit,’ said Knackers. ‘Gather around this man’s bed and double to it!’

  All sixteen of the recruits jammed in the small cubicle, frozen at attention, with not one of them giving us eye contact.

  ‘Tell the dickheads who I am,’ I ordered my brother.

  He did, and there was a long silence.

  ‘Anyone feel like a little celebration?’

  Knackers went out the front door and returned with a bottle of whiskey, a slab of cold cans, and some soft drink. It took some time to convince them that we weren’t the CIA on some secret mission. Suddenly, it was after lights out, but who cared? We drew the curtains. After a while, the new recruits settled down and asked endless questions. Big Red said they looked very sheepish the next morning, but he kept quiet and it was our little secret. We had a ball, and it gave me a different perspective on the trainers. Sergeant Big Red came and watched us training the young cadets. He said we were hopeless.

  My brother went to Vietnam the following year, and so did his mate from Omeo. I was discharged on the due date and headed for home. By now I had called off my relationship with my girlfriend of over four years. She was a good person, but now we were two people from completely different worlds. The last thing I wanted was a close relationship. I had no plans, and I felt cut adrift. Maybe, I decided, I hadn’t given home a good try. Perhaps my initial five-day stay at home had been a disaster waiting to happen anyhow.

  I thought: no mouthing off in the pub and no swearing. Maybe it can be different.

  I borrowed a car, then suddenly realised I hadn’t driven a car for so long that my trip home became scary. On arrival, there was a new TV set in the house. I hadn’t noticed it before — the river and its silence had had more appeal. When I’d left to start my National Service in February 1966, there had been no power or SEC in the entire shire apart from a couple of tiny pockets in Swifts Creek and Omeo, where 240-volt power had been generated by a timber mill and a town plant. Prior to the SEC, we had a small 12-volt power plant out the back of the house that was started every evening and provided power for lights only. Even then, it struggled if several lights were on at once. Turning off the light to save power was as important as turning off a tap to save water.

  Some nights as a youngster I would be in bed, reading a comic, and I would hear Dad go out to turn off the engine driving the lighting plant. Every night when I’d hear ‘Lights out’ I’d get out of bed, pull the long ceiling cord with its giveaway loud click, and jump back into bed. I would wait for ten or fifteen minutes and pretend to have a loud coughing fit, during which I could pull on the light cord undetected. The Phantom comic would re-appear from under my pillow, and I would have about twenty minutes before the batteries went flat. Prior to the army, mealtime was always a noisy affair. I had a little six-year-old brother and a baby sister who babbled endlessly. Dad always told a good yarn and we often had a visitor. Mum seemed to have a store of endless meals. I loved listening to the old timers telling tales about the gold-mining days, the local blacksmith, and the ‘39 fires.

  I had grown up in a community alive with activity. There was no television.

  But now, in early 1968 coming home to Swifts Creek after Vietnam, shattered what little partially imagined or real dreams I had of the area. Things like the new TV in the lounge room at home, which had been there a little over six months, was the centre of life in the evening. Any attempt at conversation was greeted with ‘Shhh!’ Further attempts were ignored. I went along with the novelty for a few nights before total boredom set in. The reception was so poor that there was nothing more than a foggy haze with the odd shaky human figure on the screen.

  This didn’t deter my family; they remained fixated. Bedtime for the kids became a ritual of orders given from an armchair, normally disobeyed until the offending party was threatened with dire warnings. Bedtime for the older members was determined by the dot that appeared on the TV when there was no longer any transmission. It wasn’t just my parents. This new, mesmerising addiction had hit the entire district, almost overnight once power and reception was available.

  After my discharge from the army, the only thing that survived in the Omeo shire was the footy. Sporting bodies were forced to combine with outer-district towns to keep their teams alive, and all other social events seemed to disappear. The TV, the pub, the footy, in that order, was now the new way of life. Now, after a footy match in the winter, the players would rush home to watch the replay on the TV. Whereas before there were yarns, dinnertime stories, socialising, and popping in for a cuppa, they soon became a thing of the past and were replaced with TV shows.

  I couldn’t hack it. I had no idea what to do. I wanted to be a farmer, but couldn’t afford to buy a new tractor, let alone a farm. I wanted to work on a farm — but as the manager, not the labourer. That required an education, and I had left school at fifteen and failed most subjects.

  With vague ideas and no direction, I went to Melbourne to see if I could perhaps attempt an education. It was frustrating. I was pushed from institutions to offices, to career-guidance people, and back to the institutions. I had no pre-requisites to enter any agricultural college or institute, and was about to give up when I met a guidance counsellor who suggested I sit for an IQ test. He suggested that my only avenue was to obtain a good result that could give me entry-level requirements. I booked myself in, paid the fee, and was told to turn up the next day at 10.00am for the numerically based test. I was told that any agricultural course would require a competence in maths and science.

  In the room were a desk, a few people, a test paper, and a person to adjudicate. The instructions were simple: work your way down each page, and do as many problems as you can. He would tell us when to stop. At a given time we started, and I worked my way down the page. It was mainly numbers. There were groups of eight-digit numbers, and I had to put a line through the odd number out. I added up series of numbers. I memorised numbers and circled an identical number in a mass of numbers. There were phone numbers that had to be matched with numbers over the page. Each number had two letters at the front.

  Roughly twenty minutes after I started, I closed the paper, stood up, and handed it to the supervisor. He looked up, surprised.

  ‘You sure you’ve finished?’ he said. I nodded, and he looked very sorry for me.

  ‘Bad luck, mate. It can be very daunting,’ he added sympathetically, taking the paper. ‘It scares a lot of people. Very confusing, I reckon.’

  He told me to have a seat while the others continued working. A bell rang, and the remainder of the people got up. I was the only one who had finished early. We all left for a period whilst the results were calculated. I went for a walk and came back about half-an-hour later. When it was time to return, I felt perhaps that I should leave and not bother. When I’d left earlier, the adjudicator’s look certainly indicated that I was about to be told something that teachers had always implied about me: he’s OK, just a bit thick.

  People were handed their results, b
ut not me. The adjudicator was scratching his head and looking at me in an embarrassed way, and I guessed he was wondering how to let me down politely.

  ‘Interesting result’, he said instead. ‘I’ve checked it twice. You have a very high IQ.’

  He added that the result would get me into any institute that had a vacancy. Nothing was making any sense, and I asked him to explain the result. I hadn’t made a single mistake? He had checked his timer clock several times, and was satisfied. Twenty minutes was one of the fastest times he’d ever seen. By now, I was very suspicious. Was this some sort of joke? Then it dawned on me what had happened. ‘Look, mate,’ I said, ‘that’s bullshit. I’ve been carrying a radio on my frig’n back for over twelve months. I could commit heaps of eight-digit numbers to memory all day, any day. That was my frig’n job.’

  He didn’t seem convinced.

  ‘Shit, I could do that bastard of a test quicker than that if I knew there was a time factor.’ I said. ‘In fact, I could march half-a-dozen ugly frig’n Sigs in here right now and they would do it a bloody sight quicker than me. I had a mate, Kards; he was brilliant.’

  He just smiled.

  ‘Doesn’t matter, mate,’ he answered. ‘You’re in. It’s your lucky day. Good on you.’ I left with a crisp envelope that stated I was smart and could attend an institute.

  You bloody bewdy, I thought, promising myself yet again to learn to curb my swearing. It was frightening people.

  I finally found a course that offered a certificate of agriculture at one institute plus a wool-classing certificate and sheep husbandry at another, and a semester at the Werribee research farm doing several courses including artificial insemination.

  Good, I thought. That should keep me busy.

  Like most returning soldiers, particularly from the infantry, I had a couple of thousand dollars saved in the bank. There hadn’t been much to spend it on in base camp. Beer had been free or at giveaway prices; cigarettes were issued or obtainable in cartons for next to nothing. Table limits were set for the crown and anchor that was held in the boozer, so gambling was never a problem for most blokes. The bulk of our pay had mostly been sent to bank accounts in Australia.