In August1962, Australia sent its first contingent of military personnel to South Vietnam to support the American forces. Regular recruiting for the Army seemed insufficient again, so the Australian Government introduced the National Service Act 1964. In this scheme, men aged 20 were selected by a birthday ballot for the Army. Once you passed your 20th birthday, you wer required to register for national service, and for all who were conscripted became known as 'Nashos'. Selection was by a lottery like draw of balls from a barrel with birthdates on them. If your birthday came up,you were in.

Any chance of me joining the guys in the baggy green suits and having to prance around some steamy jungle with a back pack and gun seemed extremely remote even as I was approaching my 20th birthday in 1971. I was going about the business of working in my apprenticeship in the printing industry and doing all the things that a teenager in those days did to pass the time. Mostly it was about fixing and driving around in old cars. I never got into hippy free love or smoking pot or listening to war protest songs from folksy musicians. Woodstock was only something that I vaguely heard about at the time. I mostly only remember that 10 years later, if a guy had long hair, he was referred to as a refugee from Woodstock. It was a standing unfunny joke.

Conscription looming but unlikely for me

In 1971, as incredible as it seemed that the war in Vietnam would still be going on, it was, and the conscription of guys into the Army to feed the war effort was still going on. Thoughts of me actually going through to being called up and becoming a “Nasho” seemed unlikely for two reasons. First, there was the ballot. The odds of being called up through the draw were not good since there were actually relatively few dates drawn to provide the number of draftees the Army wanted. Secondly, less than 3 years earlier, I had gone through a medical procedure to correct a hyper thyroid condition, and even had surgery to remove part of the gland and had to take medication daily to keep things in balance. This I was sure would be enough to render me sufficiently medically unfit as to be rejected.

When the draw came out, I had not even heard about it until I was met by some of my friends who all pointed at me and thought that it was just the funniest thing that out of all of the group, I was the only one with a called out birthday. Yes, I won this lottery and none of my friends or anyone else that I knew or even heard about had to go. Just me, and I had been conscripted under the National Service Act 1964. How lucky am I.

No worries though, I still had the medically unfit card to play and surely that will see me out once they get a look at me. I went to a couple of doctors who gave me the appropriate letters that were to be my get out of army free cards, and trotted off to the army offices to report myself for duty and request to be excused on medical grounds.

No Medical way out for me

Not so fast. These army guys had seen this kind of thing before, and amazingly it was common for guys to play up medical conditions in an attempt to get passed over. They looked at my letters with something bordering on contempt, and simply issued me with orders to attend an army selected medical professional for evaluation. This did not look good, but I was still confident that there was no way that they would accept me, surely there were undamaged bodies out there to be had.

I knew right away that the army selected doctor was going to green light me the moment I saw him and he greeted me with a grunt and the way that he flapped his hand around in the direction of a metal chair which was my command to go and sit. The man was balding, way older than my father, and most certainly a member of the Bob Menzies fan club (Australian Prime Minister, 19 December 1949 – 26 January 1966). He was undoubtedly a royalist, fiercely nationalistic, old school believer in discipline and one who thought that military service was the perfect cure for all the ills of the younger generation of Australians. Before he even started to examine me I knew the result. It was only a matter of him going through the motions of evaluating my physical condition and then hand me the paper that he already had typed up. Medically fit A1. That was me and that was the piece of paper that was to shape my destiny.

Called up but deferred

Being in an apprenticeship process that was not going to complete until 1972, the need to report for military service was then deferred until the employment training was complete. This was another glimmer of hope that I would escape the perceived terrible fate of having to actually go through this torture of being inducted into the army because maybe something would change and my having to report would become unnecessary when the time finally came.

But it did come, and I did go. Intake 3/72 was my call time, and on fifth of July 1972, I presented myself at Brisbane domestic airport terminal to be taken on a chartered flight to Melbourne where we would then be taken by bus to the training camp where we, myself and the 59 other guys on the flight, would become 13 platoon, C company, 2 Recruit Training Battalion, Puckapunyal.

The Australian Army takes over my life

Coming out of sunny skies in Brisbane on a warm afternoon, and arriving in this camp on an old and uncomfortable army bus, late at night, in the rain, in winter, in Victoria. Day one of Army life and we were all cold, tired, and scared, but putting on a brave face as best we could. Suddenly there were guys in army uniforms, corporals and sergeants, all screaming loud obscenities at us while ordering us off the bus, stand up, hurry up, line up, and most of all, shut the fook up. It was made clear that our lives to this moment were irrellevant, you are now the property of the Australian Army, and everything was about to change. It felt like being thrown in jail for no reason and and you had zero control of anything that was happening.

The basic training we were starting on this day was to carry on for 10 weeks and it was to be full time, that is 24 hours a day, for the first 4 weeks. No time off, no canteen selling the usual snacks that may be a diversion. You are in the army, this is basic training, you are going to do it, so get used to it. I remember receiving eight different immunizations in one pass with four doctors or nurses on each side and we had to walk down the middle. They each jabbed so that each arm received four doses of whatever it was. No matter if you had received shots in your previous life as a civilian, they didn’t believe it and simply gave you the lot to be sure to be sure.

But something changes as you go through the training. Call it growing up, taking responsibility, being in a team and working together for the team, a core spirit starts to arise, and by the end of our time in basic training, we were indeed becoming soldiers. We went in as a bunch of average guys and were molded into a working unit. Those NCOs who we thought were just brutalizing us as we came off the bus on that rainy, cold night had become our respected leaders and trainers. They were in reality guys who had done the hard yards themselves and were now doing what was needed to help us be part of the working force as well as being complete and resourceful individuals.

The Passing Out Parade finally comes

The culmination of our training, discipline, and ability to work as a team came on our march out day. We formed up on Gods Little Acre, the pet name for the commanding officers parade ground that was paved with bitumen and then covered with a layer of fine crushed granite pebbles in such a way that when hundreds of soldiers came to attention in one unit, the crashing sound in unison of all those army boots on the pavement echoed from the distant hills. It was thrilling to be a part of. The military band of bagpipes and drums led the parade and we marched onto the square under our slouch hats and carrying our rifles and we were a very proud band of ordinary guys now inducted fully into the Australian Army.

This was an experience never to be forgotten. To be trained, equipped, and fully able to function as an integral part of such a large machine as is the case in a battalion of 1,200 solders. It is the emotion and the feeling of empowerment that has captivated men for generations and made it possible for governments to have them marched away to war so that they will fight to protect the property and privileges of the ruling classes… but I digress….

Ordinance Corp and my Army job for the duration

Basic training over, I went to Bonegilla, on the Murray River on the Victorian side of the New South Wales border for my corps training in Ordinance Corp. From there, I was finally transferred to One Base Printing Company in Caulfield, a suburb of Melbourne. I was given this assignment because I had completed my apprenticeship and passed the army trade test. This job assignment was important because as a tradesman in the printing industry and employed by the army in this capacity, I was entitled to level 6 pay, the top level of salary. It also meant that I didn’t have to be quite so involved with the normal army routines. As long as I attended work every day at the printing establishment, that was enough, so it was not quite like military service but more like a civilian job but with better pay.

I stayed in this job through to the fulfillment of my national service obligation. I was asked if I would consider staying in the army, and I responded that I would be happy to do so but did not like to live in Melbourne and if there were a posting anywhere else in Australia, I would sign on for another hitch of 3 years. They couldn’t offer me any job other than the one that I was currently in Melbourne, so I made the decision to get out and go back to Brisbane and resume my life before conscription. It seemed like the best option at the time, but I have always thought that perhaps further time spent in the army would have been a quite good lifestyle. It leads to some interesting speculation on what would have, could have, been possible. I never have regrets, and such thoughts are only that, thoughts of possibilities and alternatives to the ones chosen.

Training that stays with you for life

Things that I take away from the experience are first a personal discipline that I could have learned in no other way. To this day I hang my shirts up in a particular way, I stack my underwear and socks in the army way, and I hate seeing an unmade bed once the day has started. I still play bagpipe music in headphones when I am walking distances for exercise as I find that with the marching music comes back all the discipline and regimented movement that allows a person to endure much longer than just trudging along.

Being forcibly removed from my comfortable lifestyle in my parents’ house, with my simple job, nice girlfriend, and doing easy and entertaining activities I now consider to have been a blessing. At the time, I hated it, and I resented the intrusion into my life. I was angry at the way I was just taken to be pressed into their service and the removal of any of my rights as an individual.

Was National Service good for me? Absolutely!

At the end of the day, I am very happy that I had the experience and that it took me out of myself so that I could learn more self reliance. I am now an advocate of compulsory military training for every male in the population because of the way it takes the place of the ancient initiation rituals that showed boys that they were now of age and time to stop thinking and acting like boys, and being responsible men with duties to themselves, their loved ones, and their country.