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110 SIG SQUADRON
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the mutiny |
       
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There was the time that there was a mutiny in the Squadron.
Not a real mutiny. Just a bunch of half pissed troops who were fed up with the endless round of emu-bobs. "All right," the C. O. would say on parade. "There's cans and bits of paper and shit everywhere. You're gunna pick it all up." So off we'd go bobbing like emus around the perimeter wire picking up litter. We always seemed to be picking up litter. There were endless work parties and rosters, of course. But on top of that there were emu-bobs. Every Squadron parade became and announcement of a new round of emu-bobs. It became a sore point. Blokes would sit around in the lines talking about how they were fed up with the whole emu-bob thing, How somebody ought to do something. "We're supposed to be technicians, not garbologists." went the refrain. It was one of those hot steamy days. Naturally. All days were hot and steamy in Vung Tau, and as an aside, perhaps that was the problem. Anyway, things were said. And before you could sneeze a group of blokes were getting together to march on the Orderly Room demanding an end to emu-bobs. I didn't join the march. To my eternal shame. I was quite happy to gripe and grouse with the best of them. After all bitching about the rigors (imagined or real) of army life is part of the fun of the whole military experience. But it seemed to me that marching on the Orderly Room demanding anything out of the army was an incredibly brain dead idea. All right I accept that this was at the end of the sixties and the sixties were nothing if not a time where everybody was marching for something. The idea of going on a march even if it were the hundred or so yards around the compound to the Orderly Room was a genuine sixties way doing things. If people back home could march to protest the war then we could march to protest the emu-bob.. But the idea of marching assumes that the army is an enlightened, modern, open, democratic, and civilized institution that can accept well meaning criticism. It's not. Import a Centurion from ancient Rome and plonk him down in a modern army and he'd feel right at home. He'd feel right at home because in essence a modern army isn't. Nothing much has changed in the last 2 thousand years. Consider.
It's not that I object to being shot at as such. I'd considered all that before volunteering for Vietnam. After all if you're going to go into a war zone then you got to think the issues through. The chances are there that you can find yourself being shot at and having to shoot back. At that point it's a bit late to turn around and say "Hang on I'm not comfortable with the moral issues here. Can we take a few minutes to consider this?" To underline the point it's worth remembering that the first thing they issued you with when you arrived "in country" was bullets. Guns we'd carried around all through basic training. They were a part of your uniform. The grunt and his gun. But bullets were something else. The only time we'd seen bullets in Australia was on the range. and very toey about letting us play with live rounds they were too. A gun without bullets, after all is nothing more than an awkward, mainly metallic, stick. Add bullets and suddenly it's something very deadly indeed. But in Vietnam the rifle was de rigeur. You went everywhere with the thing and carried bullets to boot. The purpose was pointed. The threat ever present, and the tension palpable. So much so that some people couldn't cope with it. One guy packed up within days of arriving in country and had to be shipped home. I don't blame him, and it was far from uncommon. It seemed to me that going on a protest march on the Orderly Room was putting a darn sight too much faith in the benevolence and flexibility of the military mind, so I declined to attend. In the end the march was more farce than anything else. The marchers were confronted by a sergeant with drawn revolver, and after some heated words and some waving of the gun in the air the marchers dispersed. The sergeant concerned was a nice bloke, but not an old school tough-as-nails soldier. He always struck me a a bit of a fuss pot. A bit of a panic merchant. Not the sort who you'd want to be put in a position like that, facing down a mob of angry, half drunk soldiers. It would have been all to easy for something to go wrong. I'm glad I wasn't there. For, I'm told, the entire time the gun was waving in the air his finger was on the trigger.
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For any further information about this site, the plays, or anything else Fred, he can be E-Mailed @ willettfj@hotmail.com copyright © 31-5-2002 Fred Willett |
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