In 1951, "Menzies introduced National Service to provide partially trained soldiers to send against the Russians in the Middle East or to Europe as cannon fodder in the impending struggle for that continent," says John Ward who poignantly reflects upon his time as a 'Nasho'.
On the 7 April 1939, Prime Minister Joseph Lyons suddenly died.
On the 20 April 1939, in the House of Representatives, Page said the Country Party could not serve in a coalition government headed by Menzies.
Page claimed this man Menzies was unfit to be Prime Minister. With World War II threatening, he claimed that Menzies was particularly unsuited to leading the nation. Page implied that Menzies was a shirker and a coward, asserting that in World War I he had resigned his Reserve University Army Officers Commission to avoid overseas service. Such a person, Page claimed, would ‘not be able to get the maximum effort out of the people in the event of war’. In the end, Menzies turned out to be 'the great conscriptor’ after publicly declaring, “my brain is too valuable to be wasted on the battle field”.
It was with this background, in 1951, that Menzies introduced National Service to provide partially trained soldiers to send against the Russians in the Middle East or to Europe as cannon fodder in the impending struggle for that continent. (See cabinet notes in the National Archives, particularly those made by the public servants in their own note books).
Right from the start, it was a sad joke.
From the time I left school at 14, until I was swept up in Menzies Nasho system, I was learning to be a wool classer, and spent most of my time in shearing teams around Merriwa and New England, out at Booligal and Hay on the western plains and then back to Crookwell in what was known as a ‘Run’.
Most of that time working as a shed hand I earned adult wages plus my keep. I had to keep my earnings up to send home to my mother and sisters, who by this time were living in Drouin, east of Melbourne. Almost all my money went home to Mum, Rhonda and Joy.
So the girls had a rented house in Gippsland and were able to go to study at school in peace for the first time in their lives.
I felt it was my duty to see my family through these hard times, until mum got her health back. I literally was the bread winner from 15 years of age on. So, when conscription finally caught up with me in 1954, our income dropped through the floor.
*****
I found myself climbing aboard a train leaving Warragul heading for an army camp just outside of Seymour, north of Melbourne, called Puckapunyal. An Aboriginal name meaning "Valley of the Winds".
Like almost every soldier before me, I found the army had a specially focused talent of finding the hottest, dustiest coldest, muddiest, and most windy and flyblown places across Australia to build their training establishments.
By the time we pulled into the siding at Seymour, many other young blokes were getting off trains and being assembled by soldiers in slouch hats with chin straps and red faces, who were stamping around bawling out orders that seemed to add to the confusion. We were soon very hot and dusty in the February sun. They lined us up in ranks that were over a hundred yards long and three or four paces apart. We stood with our belongings at our feet. A general grumbling growled its way around amongst our shambling ranks when, to our surprise, we were told to drop our trousers around our ankles. Jaws dropped and ‘What the F***s’, were exclaimed. ‘What for’? The Sergeants began letting us know precisely who was in charge. The air was filled with their unbelievable bellows and curses as trousers began to fall around white legs all about.
Some nursing sisters in starched uniforms, accompanied by a doctor in a white coat, came from around the side of the shed in front of us. The order was now to drop your jocks and bend over. I did that straight away, so I couldn’t see the nurse’s faces as they moved along the line inspecting our sphincters for piles.
It was so bloody embarrassing, and as the time dragged on, our backs started to ache and sweat was dripping off my nose. Just when I am thinking this couldn’t get worse, the main line – just 80 yards away behind us roared into life – as the passenger express thundered past and the people on board got an eyeful of acres of acres as white as the day they were born.
Pondering what this is all about, I came to the conclusion that the timing of the express train and the dominance this exercise demonstrated, put all of us immediately in our place and under the thumb of the Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO’s) the Corporals, Sergeants and Warrant Officers. It did not end up being too bad an experience.
After my first week of resentment, my corporal explained to me that there are many more people like him and my bucking the system would only have me feeling unhappy, so I should just “SHUT YOUR F****NG MOUTH!”
*****
Having things explained to me so succinctly, and grateful for the early advice, I got into the swing of the thing and within weeks I was a gun layer on the twenty-five pounders of the 14th National Service Battalion; putting the data relayed down the communications system onto the gun’s range and elevation instruments and the bubble, line, bubble, line, bubble. Fire!! And CRACK, that brilliant little gun would propel 25 pounds of HE (high explosive) some nine miles down range. We felt pretty smart when we hit what we were aiming at.
Throwing 303 Lee Enfield rifles around and simultaneously shouting ‘one two three, one two three, one’ over and over at the top of our lungs, we drilled and drilled until at some time we were all doing the same thing at the same time. We got to be quite pleased with ourselves as we got closer to being somewhat competent. I must say once you heard the WHACK of one thousand Rifles crash down in unison when we ‘ordered arms’ the hair had to stand on end at the back of your neck. That is, if the barber had left you any.
One hot afternoon, our company was marched out to the 25 yard firing range. It is a place that is still in my memory. The 25 yard range was a long bank on which about thirty regular soldiers, were sprawled in firing postures, all in a line, facing down a gentle slope to a high steep bank with targets in the shape of men standing facing us. The regulars were armed with 303 Lee Enfield rifles, Bren light machine guns and two Vickers belt-fed machine guns.
We were spread out behind this firing line to witness a demonstration of what people had been asked to attack through in the first and second World Wars.
When the order was given to 'FIRE' all senses were blotted out. The noise is one solid wall of sound, you can't think of anything, the dust the smell of gun powder; the shock of it is as if everything is this one solid block of deafening roar.
After some minutes of continuous fire, the smell of overheated gun oil and gun metal grows. Just as your thoughts grow in amongst this blinding dust and begin to reel in horror knowing for sure, that no one person, could run more than 5 yards into those guns, without being cut to pieces and shot through over and over again. Not the clean shot and falling in slow motion like a falling autumn leaf as we see in the Hollywood films. Instead, it seemed to us that if we were sent into that storm it would be sheer bloody butchery. There was hardly a mutter among the ranks marching away from that place. Just a lot of very sober, very white, faces.
If one of us messed up, we all copped the punishment. For instance, there is always a hill in these camps with a Trig Point on top and a road going up, and up, getting steeper as it climbed. There is also always some bugger who has to open his big trap.
One day, the Physical Training Instructor (PTI) took us off in our horrible baggy shorts and Dunlop sand shoes on a five mile run up that bloody hill.
We would do a double march, all running in step sort of twice as fast as the marching pace. Being, at first, unfit as a group, we were slowly lifting our fitness levels, but still had a ways to go. So, on coming to a halt outside our barracks and busting to get a shower before knocking off for the day, we are breathing hard when a voice within our ranks pants in exasperation, ‘fuck me’.
The PTI, who is army fit – that is, a really hard fitness—not athletic, more a relentless fighting fitness that just doesn’t seem to stop – upon hearing the gasped exasperation, says, “soldier I wouldn’t f**k you with a rag cock, but what I will do is take you all back up the hill”.
“About-turn, double march,” he growls and we learn yet another trick the army has up its sleeve.
Fairly quickly they can turn we individuals into an organism that we might call a team, but the laughing and sweating and striving together means that when you’re swinging down the road all in step and with an Australian Army swagger, you feel you’re part of something that has a great purpose not just to work as a unit but that lives closer than a family would — because the group knows it must operate in a way that it must prevail. Because the people involved appreciate the character of the group and the character of each individual as vital to its purpose and its survival.
Besides that, marching along covering the miles feels pretty damn good. When you finally cannot be a part of that entity any more you have lost something you won’t get back. Not once you’re back in Civvie Street.
What a fantastic experience, closer than a family.
*****
We drilled with the bayonet till our hands bled. We always had the rifle cocked with a round supposedly up the spout. This was in case the bayonet jammed between your enemy’s ribs, you could fire the shot and get clear quickly as another nightmare came at you. I always thought ‘I’ll aim the bayonet straight at him, fire first, the stick the poor bastard and then reload’. I tried to kid myself that this would work.
The shock, the impact of hitting the dummies meant that no matter how hard your grip, your right hand behind the bolt of the rifle went forward and up under the cocking mechanism. This caused the bleeding of the web between your thumb and forefinger. My fury with my father dissipated as I took my anger out on those straw dummies.
Often, the bayonets snapped like carrots — yet Menzies wanted us to kill Chinese or Russian commies with these things and they (bayonets) don’t survive a fight with a straw bag.
Following the experience at the 25 yard range we were given a lecture by a Korean War veteran, a Warrant Officer (WO) from 3Bn RAR. He was an inspiring character and had plenty of stories. He explained that the Army knows that when you are put out at a 'listening post' – a small fox hole perhaps, out in no-man's land, to give early warning to the front line – in the dark of night your eyes will play tricks on you and after a few hours in the dark and cold, you will see what you thought was a bush, and the bloody thing will be moving towards you. So you will fire on the bush and thereby give away your position. “Knowing this “, he said the Army puts two of you out there so that when you become convinced that the 'bloody' bush moved, you both can fire on it.
“In Atomic war”, he told us, “ there are few things for you to worry about, the blast travels at the speed of sound, and the atomic flash and radiation travel at the speed of light and are unlikely to immediately harm you.
“No, those things won’t get you, but what will get you are the flying shithouse roofs”. Thanks a lot I thought to myself.
*****
Many of the nashos had never been away from home until they got to Puckapunyal. It is amazing to see the transformation as self-confidence grows and kids who have never ironed a shirt in their lives are, within days, doing a credible job of ironing their uniforms. I can imagine their mothers spitting chips that the rotten little sods had never even tried to do washing and ironing for themselves.
There they go, sitting on the side of the bed Polishing boots till you can see your reflection in the toe cap. What’s more these boys seemed to be getting to be proud of achievements that added up to growing competence.
*****
Besides the training and drilling and firing range activities with Lee Enfield, Bren Light Machine Gun, and the Owen Machine Carbine, we also prepared to play a part in the first visit of Queen Elizabeth to Australia in Melbourne.
This was the time when Menzies and ASIO were whipping the electorate into a frenzy over the “Communist threat” leading up to an election and, right on cue, ASIO made suspects and targets of anti-war activists and homosexuals, among many others. Even the wearing of a red tie caused government employees to be suspect. The Queen’s visit offered Menzies the opportunity to denigrate the Red Ensign as the peoples flag by declaring the Blue Ensign as Australia’s National Flag, saying he would not have red in his flag.
Many of those who had fought in both world wars saw the Red Ensign as the flag they fought under, because the Blue was only used on official government business. Any person who protested was automatically labelled fellow travellers of the Communists.
Now we know even more about the Petrov Affair, and ASIO's role in it.
Charles Spry, the founding director of ASIO, went to extraordinary lengths to watch what suspected Communist sympathisers were doing.
The Queens visit and Petrov’s defection made for a perfect run up to an election. Bob, the great toady, was in his element.
We rehearsed over and over again, till we had the lining of the route into Melbourne just right.
We were all decked out in our battle dress. Our 303 rifles – of which some would have seen service in the World Wars and Korea – were polished, our bayonets flashing brilliant in the sunlight and our boots comparing well to those of guardsmen outside Buckingham Palace.
We were to de-train at Spencer Street, march proudly up Elizabeth Street and take position in front of the hospital where the road comes into town from Essendon Airport — where Her Majesty would disembark from her flight; blah, blah, blah!
*****
Finally, the great day arrived and we de-trained as planned, everything going like clockwork. Big crowds were lining the streets. The people got out early and were in a great mood for the occasion. We formed up on the road in columns of threes.
‘Right dress’ is barked out by the Regimental Sergeant Major and there is a rattle of steel-heeled boots on the pavement as proper intervals are established between us. We are ready to go. ‘Right turn’, then a long pause and that deep down from his bass diaphragm this large resonating Aussie voice, ’By the left quick march’, we’re off swinging along and the crowd begins to cheer us on. Applause rolls like waves around us as the speaker system along the route springs into life playing martial music and click slam boots down with a skip to get us into step with Colonel Bogey or something like it. We are now up near the top of Elizabeth Street, and it is such a sight of flags and bunting with columns of flashing silver bayonets out there in front us as far as one can see.
The crowd is enthusiastic and enjoying the spectacle when, as always happens, some idiot in the control centre changes the record and bungs on ‘The Teddy bears Picnic’. Suddenly, a thousand pairs of army boots of the 14th National Service Training Battalion go out of step and such changing of step and banging of feet, the clashing of steel boot heels and hob nails on tram tracks, the slipping back on heads of slouch hat like Sunday bloody bonnets, chin straps in mouths and flashing bayonets no longer in unison but wobbling everywhere. What a shambles!
Worse still, the Melbourne football crowd begins jeering and cheering taking the piss as only they can. I say to myself, “John, there goes three months of your life shot right up the arse”.
The Queen goes past in a flash. We see her around our presented arms and then march back to the train — this time without the Teddy Bears bloody picnic. We laugh a lot and hope no one recognised us individually or took our photo.
*****
In the end Nasho for us ‘Bob Menzies Cowboys’ was only a hundred days plus a fortnight’s camp each year for three years and lots of curries sausages.
We did not go into battle, like the young Vietnam men did, and each Anzac day I think of all the young dead when the Ode is read.
The third verse of the ode to the fallen seems to fit well with the young faces we see on TV, reporting yet another loss from today’s more mature volunteer professional men and women, who serve Australia so well. Perhaps at 76 I feel their loss too keenly.
They went with song into battle, they were young, straight of limb, keen of eye, steady and aglow;
They were staunch against odds uncounted, they fell with their faces to the foe.
