Smoky Joe's Cafe (7 page)

Kapooka was all the usual bullshit the army carries on to turn a raw recruit into a totally responsive, rigidly starched uniform with boot caps endlessly polished and brought to mirror gloss. There used to be a joke, you polished your boot caps ‘til you could see your face in them, that's so when you were standing close to a bird you could look down into your boot caps and see up her skirt.

I don't remember all that much about it to tell you the truth, I was too bloody tired most of the time, but a good few recruits got sent home because they didn't cut the mustard.

There's a poem written by a bloke named Bruce Dawe that sums up the instructors at Kapooka to a T. I've learned it off by heart and I hope he don't mind me using it now.

Then it was on to the School of Infantrymen at Ingle-burn, near Sydney. There we learned our contact drills, section attacks, platoon attacks, patrolling, digging weapon pits, firing M60s, Owen guns and throwing grenades, and so on until we dropped with exhaustion.

I know we thought we were pretty ridgy-didge when we come out of Ingleburn. We could march in a straight line, fire a rifle, stop on command with a single sound as our boots hit the deck. We'd lost most of our puppy fat and we could run a mile with a full pack and rifle and we could do all the things a warrior has to know to stay alive. Ha bloody ha, if only we'd known what lay ahead!

A mob of us were sent to join 6 RAR at Enoggera Barracks in Queensland. That was when Shorty got hold of us. Christ! He made our training at the School of Infantrymen seem like a sheila's knitting class. We ran miles with full gear, we practised mounting and dismounting drills for armoured personnel carriers and
jumping on and off bloody choppers ‘til our legs went to jelly. We practised ambushes, we dug holes, built barbed-wire obstacles, practised clearing mines and booby traps, we fired our weapons and endlessly practised patrolling. We worked sixteen hours a day in the bush and sometimes Shorty kept us going for days without sleep.

We thought that what Shorty was putting us through was tough, but really it was just a warm-up for Canungra, the jungle training centre in south-east Queensland. They must have searched the whole flamin' country to find this particular shithole. That's what it was, a big hole with hills called yamas surrounding it, filled with muddy water that might as well have been shit. It felt like shit. Tasted like shit and smelled like shit when you fell into it. And it stuck to you like shit sticks to a blanket.

We'd go out on patrol among the yamas, where they'd set up all sorts of so-called nasty surprises, shooting galleries and sneaker ranges. With the shooting galleries, cut-out targets would suddenly appear which we were supposed to destroy with a single shot, Audie Murphy style. Most of them looked as though they'd been there forever with no bullet holes to show, which gives you some idea of how effective we were gunna be in the killing fields of Vietnam.

The sneaker ranges I have to say were a bit more predictable. We'd be sneaking along a path, SLR at the ready, and the instructor would pull at some concealed rope or wire and, lo and behold, a target would be facing us. We were required to put three shots into it in the time it took us to blink. After a while, we could do this. I hasten to say, not because we were any better than before with the shooting galleries but because the bushes and foliage in the area of the target were so shredded by blokes who'd been before us that we could anticipate the enemy before the wire was released and so had plenty of time to get the three shots away.

Later, in Vietnam, when the same thing happened for real and this VC suddenly appeared in front of me, I seem to remember shitting my greens. No, I mean it, I shat meself. Fortunately I think he did too. I finally got the first three rounds off, all of which missed and the VC scarpered into the jungle before I could get another crack at him. So, Canungra style, I destroyed all the surrounding shrubbery in the direction he'd taken.

We never found him, not even a blood spot. I guess I missed Charlie with about a hundred rounds fired into a bamboo thicket and, I remember, I had a hard time convincing Shorty I hadn't imagined the whole
thing. We passed the spot a few weeks later and Spags Belgiovani said, ‘That's where Thommo shit himself and murdered a perfectly innocent bamboo thicket.'

But what they really rammed into us at Canungra was contact drills. We did them up yamas and down cliffs, across rivers and any other obstacle that would make our life a misery. There were contact drills for everything. ‘Contact Front' when the forward scout opened fire. ‘Contact Rear' if Charlie had a go at the tail-end. ‘Ambush Left' and ‘Ambush Right' if the enemy came from the sides.

We even practised contact drills in trucks. We'd be driving along some jungle track in an army truck packed in like sardines, rifles sticking up in the air to make more space for bodies, when suddenly some joker with blank ammo opens up on the vehicle from the bush with a machine gun. We then had to swing into contact drill pronto, which meant jumping from the moving truck to take up our defensive positions on either side of the vehicle, then lay down covering fire as the troops in the truck following us did a sweep to take out the machine gunner and whoever else represented the enemy.

It all sounded simple in the lectures but have you ever tried jumping from a moving truck seven feet above the
ground with every bloke in the platoon trying to do the same thing at the same time with their rifle and bayonet, entrenching tool and machete and spare ammunition?

The driver, often as not, puts his foot on the accelerator in panic when the shots come, then jams on the brakes a moment later, or vicki-verka. You jump and hope for the best and collect a kick in the head from the bloke jumpin' behind you. Or the bloke in front of you jams his rifle butt into the difference between you and your sister. If you were real lucky you made it with only a couple of dozen nasty bruises and a fair amount of gravel rash.

At Canungra they drove us until we dropped and then thought of some way else they could persecute us. ‘It's gunna be a lot worse when you useless bastards come up against Charlie, you're gunna die and they're gunna die laughing at your attempt to kill them!'

Because I was such a big bastard, 6′6″ non-metric, they loved to have a go, ‘Thompson, you big, dumb useless, uncut prick! The Viet Cong are going to drop to their knees and thank Buddha when they see you coming towards them!'

It went on like this all day and half the night as a regular army sergeant mouthed off at you. The worst part was that the bastard could do all the stuff that
was breaking your heart and your bones and not even crease his jungle greens. There was a fast-growing agreement among us that the brown envelope wasn't such a shit-hot lottery to win after all.

Slowly we got the hang of this kind of soldiering and developed into something we'd never thought we could become. We became lean as a drover's dog, fit as a mallee bull and, most importantly, we'd learned to act and think for ourselves. It probably saved our lives a dozen times over in Vietnam. If there are three words that are sweet to the lips of any Vietnam vet it is them three – ‘Contact bloody Drill'.

When we got to Vietnam we found that the Australians were the only force there who were jungle ready. Hardened to the fray.

And so to South Vietnam, Phuoc Tuy province and Nui Dat, the headquarters of the 1st Australian Task Force, 1 ATF for short. Nui Dat was situated in an old rubber plantation about twenty miles from a town named Baria. They called it the Funny Farm, because there was nothing funny about it. Just people in black pyjamas and conical hats who all looked and dressed the same, friend and foe alike.

These were a people who, during the dark of the night, would send seven-year-old children, mostly little
girls, into the six-mile minefield we'd laid between the Horseshoe and the coast. The minefield was supposed to form a barrier that would prevent the VC, who were hiding in an area known as the Long Green, from getting to the villages and their rice fields.

Patrolling the boundaries of the minefield was the responsibility of a South Vietnamese infantry battalion and some Regional Force units. Not being the most interested soldiers in the world, they didn't bother. Now you might as well not have a minefield if you don't keep a careful watch over it. So these skinny kids, about the size of an Australian four-year-old, would sneak into the minefield at night. Their tiny feet and delicate sensitive toes were like little noses sniffing out the M16 jumping jack mines. They would shuffle along, their toes scraping the surface of the earth until they gently nudged the metal prong or side of the mine, trying to be so gentle so as not to set the mine off. Then the mine would be lifted and put someplace else they weren't meant to be so we'd be the ones to step on them next day.

Once in a while a truck which had been along Route 44 would report seeing bits of rag and broken flesh hanging on the barbed wire in the sunlight. Another seven-year-old had given her life for the Funny Farm.
It was getting late at the cafe and some of the blokes had fallen asleep. It had been a long day for all of us, it was time for beddy-byes in the pub. But there was one last thing. During the whole night Nam Tran hadn't said much. Every time I looked over at him he was nodding and smiling but he didn't say nothing. Then right at the end he stands up, he's pissed, but then we all are. He waves his tinnie around. ‘You know why I come Australia?' he says.

‘Yeah, so yiz can fuck us up like we done you blokes,' Animal shouts, his usual self, subtle as a smack to the side of the head.

The little man ignores him. ‘I come because you fight good, same Vietnamese.' He means the Viet Cong, of course, not the South Vietnamese government mob. He looks around and I can see he wants to say more. ‘Also, you bury our dead.' He taps his chest with his finger, ‘You show me respect.' Then he sits down and stands up again almost immediately. ‘In North Vietnam Army we say, “Walk without footprint, cook without smoke, speak without sound, move at night like a falling leaf.”' Then he sits down and starts to cry.

I've never seen a Nog soldier cry, but I reckon he'll do me.

It's nearly two o'clock, time to get the mob up to the
pub for a good night's kip before tomorrow arvo, when we get the debrief on Shorty's bloody stupid idea. It's been a long day and I've got to get up early and clean the joint. I only pray there are no nightmares.

I
'm up at sparrow fart to clean up the cafe. It looks a bit like a mine has gone off inside the joint. I'd forgotten how many tinnies eleven blokes can drink in one sitting, because, of course, Bongface doesn't drink, though he's got through a fair few cans of Coke. They've, I mean we've, also polished off Shorty's plonk and there's cold chips, tomato sauce and bits of hamburger leftovers on just about every flat surface.

A broom and a mop, a bit of a wipe and a hose down where Animal's been sick out the back and, by the time Wendy gets in around eight o'clock, the place is ship-shape and ready to trade.

Three of the old-timers are in for their regular breakfast. They eat at Smoky Joe's and not at the pub because they've all had a blue with Willy McGregor some time in the past. As there is only one pub in town they're forced
to drink his grog, but they're buggered if they're gunna give Willy a penny more than their thirst demands. Small towns are like that, forgiveness comes real slow.

Wendy feeds Anna and gets her mum up and into her wheelchair. The old chook is already grumbling but Wendy takes no notice, she's always cheerful around Anna and won't let the old girl spoil the day. First she does her mother's hair while the silly old bugger holds up a mirror and gives instructions. Struth, she's foreman material all right, can't help herself, she does bugger all except carp and criticise and I can hear her all the way downstairs as she has a go at Wendy. ‘Yer never get it right, do you. You want me to look old, that's it isn't it, old and miserable!'

I hear Wendy laugh, ‘Mum, you are old and miserable but I love you anyway.'

‘That's what you say to me but what do you tell him, eh? Behind the door when you think nobody can hear!'

‘Been sneaking up in your wheelchair, looking through the keyhole have you, Mum?'