gday there strex, ive heard a few stories you were in the army? bout time i got my ass into gear, had a few questions if ya use msn or any shat like that.

/edit i forgot to add email address, jimbobardy@hotmail.com

i dont use any chat progs, but shoot me a quick email (strecker at gmail) with a few main points you want to know and i will give you the full run down. or i could jump on irc if you really want.

i have been meaning to make a site about army s*** and advice for years now.

Can I send you a big email Strexxx

You served in the army strex? didnt you go to USA? were you in the army over there? if so i have a question for you aswell..

http://army.ausgamers.com/

thats about as far as i got in 2002 :(

i might whip something up when i have some spare time soon.

email me anytime, eye-kandy baby.

You served in the army strex?

Yeah 4 years mixture of part and full-time. Infantry and recon.

didnt you go to USA? were you in the army over there?

Was in the USA for year and a half, going back in a few months. Never in the marines or anything, f*** that.

How bout y'all just ask the army questions here. There are a few other army dudes hanging round the forum (korbs, primal etc).

yeah i remember korbs did a great write-up about his time at kapooka. anyone still got the link?

Because I am hard, you will not like me!

newbs

I thought Strex was dis-honourably discharged for partying too hard.

Oh Yeah!!

I plan on joining the army as soon as im old enough.

BTW dais.. Is that you who wrote that story? Which year was it? Great read too BTW :D

Read the name of the file. it says by korbs.
Korbs != Dais

Hmm true never knew that.

s***,that old thing of mine is still making the rounds...oh well, good stuff.

I also did a shorter write up of the first phase of my reservist infantry training. I'll see if i can dig it up somewhere.

gl to all those wanting to join.

found it!

RIOB began the way most training exercises do: a boring briefing and a truckload of paperwork. There were about 50 of us and we were quickly split up into two platoons of 25, aptly named One Platoon and Two Platoon. I, along with the two other guys from my regiment on the course were put into One Platoon.

The corporals marched us back to our sleeping quarters (which the army call ‘lines’) and told us to get some sleep and be ready for a “really f***ing early” start in the morning.

True to their word, we were awoken at about 3:30am the following morning by the booming voice of the CSM (Company Sergeant Major).

“You have 5 minutes to be clean shaved and formed up on the road in 3 ranks wearing your PT gear!!”. We leapt out of bed, grabbed our shaving kit and legged it down the bathrooms to shave. 25 guys crowded around 3 sinks with one mirror all trying to shave in world-record time isn’t something most people would see in their life, but for the 2 weeks of RIOB, it was a daily sight.

Dressed in our PT gear, which is just a t-shirt, shorts and joggers, we formed up on the road still rubbing our eyes and stifling our yawns, the sun was nowhere to be seen. Then out came the course PTI (Physical Training Instructor). As all PTI’s are, he was lean, ripped and with an air of physical authority that he wore like a second skin.

He briefly introduced himself, though I didn’t remember his name since my brain had only just cottoned onto the fact that I was no longer in bed. The next thing I head him say really stuck out though “Running, CHANGE!”.

The word ‘Change’ is used by the PTI’s whenever they give an order. They will just say what they want you to do, then exclaim the word CHANGE! Which is your prompt to start that activity. I must admit that it brings a smirk to my face whenever I hear it, because it sounds so ridiculous, especially when they string a whole bunch of exercises together, like during a warm up: “running on the spot, CHANGE! Punching to the front, CHANGE! Squats, CHANGE! Push ups, CHANGE!”.

..but back to the point.

“Running, CHANGE!” the strong man bellowed. Slowly our bodies responded and we broke out into a slow jog up the hill. I can’t quite remember what we did for PT that morning (or any morning for that matter, because I think I was still clinically asleep while it was on), but I imagine it was a lot of running, pushing, heaving, jumping and pulling as per standard army PT.

After PT each morning, we had a shower then it was down to the mess for breakfast. Now I’ll make it known that I don’t care what anybody thinks, army breakfasts ROCK! Bacon, eggs, toast, tomatoes, pancakes with syrup, fresh fruit, yoghurt and every type of cereal imaginable. After PT, you’re starving so naturally you dig in and fill yourself to the brim (and take a few extra pieces of fruit for snacks later). Being clean and full, your body only wants one thing: to go back to sleep.

This, however, was not a luxury we had. Straight after breakfast we were into the lessons. Weapons lessons, Tactics lessons, Combat lessons, Prisoner of War handling lessons and more. You would have lessons until 12 when you had an hour break for lunch, then another set of lessons until 5 when you broke for dinner. Then more lessons until 9pm when you were dismissed for the day and had to be in bed by 10pm.

This was the routine for the first week.

I should say something of the staff at this point. A platoon of soldiers (24 men) is broken down into 3 sections (usually named One Section, Two Section and Three Section) of 8 men. Each section is designated a ‘section commander’ who has the rank of corporal. His job is to keep the section running, give orders, look after the soldiers in his section and keep them in line. It’s a difficult job, since you have to earn the respect of your section with friendliness and approachability, but at the same time keep them in line with discipline and authority. I was in One Section and our section commander (or ‘secco’ as they are more commonly called) was a good example of what a section commander should be.

He was friendly, always coming up with a joke or story and made an effort to learn our nicknames and call us by them. However he still had the authority that made us keep ourselves in line, so as not to piss him off.

One of his more unique traits was the way he suckered people into doing crappy jobs. In the army, there are a lot of crappy tasks to be done. Unloading cargo off trucks, cleaning toilets, running up to the shops to get the sergeant a packet of smokes and sweeping out rooms being just a few examples.

Knowing that nobody would knowingly volunteer to do any of these crappy jobs, our secco took a different approach to most. While most corporals would just nominate a person and order them to do it, our secco would come up to us, pretending to be talking on his mobile phone (presumably to somebody higher up in the chain of command), saying “yes sir” “uh-huh” “no worries” and finally he would say “yep, I’ll just ask them now” at which point he would cover the receiver with his hand and ask us “do any of you fellas like riding motorbikes?”.

8 hands shot up.

He would choose one person with their hand up and then say into the phone “no worries sir, I’ll send him over now” and pretend to hang up.

“Private (NAME), go and unload the stores off that truck”

Every single time there was a crappy job that needed doing, he would take the same approach, each time asking a question like “Anyone here want to be in a short movie ?” or “Who thinks they’re good at skirmish” or “any of you fellas want to see the new machine gun the army has just designed ?”. Every time, without fail, a bunch of hands would fly up, the owners assuming they were about to be involved in something totally kick ass relating to the question. And every time, without fail the answer would be “scrub the toilets” or “bring 2 full water jerries’ back here from HQ”. After the first couple of times I figured him out and stopped putting my hand up, but there were some who kept trying long after the rest of us had recognised the pattern. I must admit that we felt sorry for them, but too smart to let them in on the secret (hey, if they want to scrub toilets, who are we to stop them).

Anyway, the first week was spent mainly in the classroom, our overloaded minds balanced precariously on the verge of sleep. Not that it was boring, not at all, but the long days certainly wore us down.

That Friday night, exactly 7 days after we had arrived, we got all our bush gear, piled onto two busses and headed off to the Greenbank Training Area for the range shooting and bush phases of the exercise.

We spent the Saturday on the MTR range, practicing our shooting with our personal rifles and the Minimi LSW machine gun. We’d done it all before, so it was nothing new, but on Sunday we got to do something none of us had previously tried: Throwing live grenades.

We marched down to the grenade range, got the safety brief and got sent to the waiting area with our ear plugs in. Before we got to throw the real big-boom grenades we had to do a couple of practice throws with practice grenades (which just pop and let out a bit of smoke). We all threw them no worries, carrying out the correct safety drills and throwing procedures. Then it came time to throw the real ones. The first thing that struck me about it was the effect it had on the person throwing it. Almost everyone had shaking hands, looked nervous, forgot some of the procedures or flat-out panicked. I mean, they look and feel identical to the practice grenades (which everyone was calm with) but it’s the knowledge that you are holding an incredibly powerful explosive device seemed to rattle everyone. After throwing the first one though, everyone seemed to relax (having overcome the initial fear).

The second thing that struck me about the grenades was the sound of the explosion. I’ve seen as many action movies as the next guy and in all of them, grenades always explode with massive fireballs and a thunderous, drawn-out boom. This, as I learned, is just another Hollywood-ism. Real grenades don’t make a fireball, and the sound of them is more like a booming POP that only lasts for a split second. With the explosion comes a concussion in the air that resonates in your chest cavity (like really loud, deep bass, but 100 times more intense) but only for a split second. That was from ~30 meters away. I don’t think I’d ever want to be much closer to a grenade than that, if at all.

With broad grins on our dirty faces, we marched over to assault grenade range where we got to put our grenade throwing skills to some more practical use (i.e., throwing grenades into bunkers from different positions and different distances. It was like basketball with explosives, except no bouncing, no referee and no cheer girls…actually, now that I think about it, it was nothing like basketball, forget I mentioned it.

After we’d all had a go at bunker-busting, we got to deploy and fire a bunch of claymore mines (although we aren’t allowed to call them mines *Cough*Geneva Convention*Cough*). They are nasty little suckers that you stick in the ground and set off with a detonator from a great distance away. If we though the blast from the grenades was intense, then the claymores redefined the word. It was the same feeling as the grenade, only amplified ten fold. We didn’t actually see it explode (as we were ducking down behind cover) but boy did we feel it.

After that, we packed up all our stuff, packed our packs for bush patrolling and jumped on the MOG (a giant 4WD truck for transporting infantry in the field) and headed off to our first camp site. The next few days were really quite unmemorable. We did section attacks, obstacle crossings, patrolling formations, more section attacks, silent movement, camouflage and yet more section attacks.

Section attacks are the ‘bread and butter’ of infantry work, and they are damn hard work. The actual mechanics of them are OPSEC classified (I think) but they involve a lot of running in short bursts, diving on the ground and then getting up again and repeating (slowly advancing towards the enemy). It really stuffs your knees and elbows up after a few of them (especially if the ground is hard or rocky). Most full-time infantry riflemen have stuffed knees or elbows after 5-10 years service and need knee reconstructions and all that nasty stuff. It’s a hard job, and I think few other corps in the army can say they do it as hard as the infantry.

Probably the most memorable occasion of the entire course came along on the Wednesday night. We got to our campsite in the later afternoon and set up our hootchies (personal shelters). The skies were clear, so we set up ‘fair weather’ hootchies (you set them up differently if you know it’s going to rain). Then we had to leave and head back to HQ for a night lesson on something or other. We came back to the campsite later that night and saw there were a few clouds approaching, nothing to worry about though. With the typical Aussie digger “she’ll be right, mate” attitude, we jumped into our sleeping bags and settled down for a good night’s sleep.

About 15 minutes later, just as we were dozing off, we felt a gust of wind come through the hootchie (there were 3 of us under this particular hootchie). It was that “it’s just about to piss down, find shelter NOW” type gust of wind. You know the one I’m talking about.
And sure enough, about 45 seconds later, the first –pat-pat-pat- of raindrops began to sound on the roof of our hootchie. Another minute or 2 and the heavens opened themselves up and it started bucketing down like nothing else! None of us were sure what to do, so we just lay there waiting and hoping it would stop soon. Then I felt wetness on the back of my neck, from where the water had run under the hootchie and soaked through my sleeping bag. The other 2 fellas must have felt it too at that same moment since we all sat bolt upright together, cursing like true infantrymen. Wondering what the hell we were going to do, we remembered that this particular campsite had an old shower-block nearby which had a proper roof. We grabbed as much gear as we could (only wearing our jocks at this stage) and started sprinting towards the shower block. It seems everyone in the platoon had the same idea, since there were hordes of white almost naked bodies swarming towards the shower block, burdened down with all their field gear. After a few trips, we had all of our stuff under cover and we were all just sitting there wondering what the hell we were going to do for the rest of the night.

Then an ominous figure in a rain-coat appears in the doorway, silhouetted against the dark background. With his hands on his hips, he stepped forward into the light and pulled back his hood.

No surprises, it was the CSM.

With that booming yell that only CSM’s seem to be able to do, he revved up. I can’t repeat exactly what he yelled (in case, by chance, a child ever reads this) but he told us in no uncertain terms what he thought of us as soldiers and what he thought of us cowering in the shower-block. He finished by saying that we had 60 seconds to get out of the shelter and back into our hootchies, or he’d deal with us personally. Coming from a CSM, that’s about the worst threat one can receive.

We ran back to our hootchie, which had half blown away in the wind, and proceeded (still in our underwear) to dig a trench around the outside to stem flood of water that was passing beneath it. It worked, sort-of. The ground was still saturated and we were basically sleeping in the mud. We all lay there, not sleeping. If we zipped our sleeping bags up, we got too hot and if we unzipped them, the mozzies would eat us alive. Needless to say, nobody got a good night’s sleep that night.

Thursday and Friday were much the same as before. More section attacks, more ambushing, more patrolling and more obstacle crossings all done on less sleep. Towards the end, it was a real effort just to keep awake, much less stay focused on task.. Another reason the infantry is the ‘hard corps’ of the army. Finally, we packed up our gear on Friday afternoon and jumped on the bus heading up to Wide bay for the final phase of the exercise.

We arrived at wide bay at about 7pm. We were no longer tactical (meaning we didn’t have to do everything as silently as possible and communicate only in signals) and were told to get our bags out and go straight to bed. After a week of continuous hard work on very little sleep , this came as a welcome change. Since it was a clear night, we just slept out under the stars, well under our mozzie nets at least.

The mozzies at Wide bay must be a different genus to all the others you find in the bush. I’m no mosquito expert, but I always figured mosquitos to be fairly stupid (like most insects). They just flew around aimlessly until they stumbled upon something they could suck blood from, have a feed, and then continue flying around aimlessly. The mosquitos at wide bay were different however. They were ruthless and intelligent to boot. To use a Hollywood example, combine Hannibal Lecter’s evil genius mind with The Predator’s hunting prowess. Now shrink it, give it a set of wings and attach a pointed straw to its face to suck blood with. If you never want to meet such a creature, I would advise you keep well clear of wide bay. They systematically probed my mozzie net for any hole or tear large enough to get through, communicating in a strange buzzing dialect I could never replicate. As soon as I changed position or rolled over they were immediately down at the base of the net trying to get in....it was almost as though they….i have no idea where this is going…

…back to the point

We awoke on Saturday morning somewhat more refreshed than usual after a long, peaceful (though insect filled) nights sleep. It was probably a good thing we were well rested, because what we were doing that day needed 100% concentration: Firing Anti-Armour rockets and the grenade launcher.

Like throwing the grenades, both of these things were really intense. Short, sharp explosions with intense blasts and booming concussions. We fired 2 practice rockets and then a real one (any guesses which one was the most fun?). Then we fired 2 grenades each and then sat back, flexed out and waited for everyone to go though (only one person could fire at a time). Then it was back on the bus and back to Enoggera where we spent the rest of the afternoon/evening cleaning our weapons and handing them back to the Armoury. After dinner, the night was our own. There were cold beers at the mess and after 2 dry weeks, a cold one (or six) really hit the spot. We all sat around outside the mess, like true Aussie diggers, drinking and having a laugh. The seccos all came down and had some drinks with us and even encouraged us to do some skits and pay them out.
We kindly obliged, taking the piss out of them, from the way they call drill, to the way they give their lessons, to the way they speak. It was all in good fun and everyone had a good laugh.

Over the 2 weeks, you become pretty close with all the blokes in the platoon. There is a very strong sense of brotherhood and mateship that is (and has always been) the cornerstone of the Australian army. Having a bit of a piss up with the blokes is a key part of the bonding process (or so we were told) and hey, who are we to argue with that?

Sunday morning we packed up all our gear, returned the last of our stores to the Q store and cleaned out the lines ready to go home. Then we were given the final debriefing and cut loose.

On my way home, I had some time to reflect on the course and I would have to say that although it was hard at times, overall, it was a great experience. I’ve made a great new bunch of mates, played with some really cool toys, learned a lot about army operations and also learned a lot about myself.

Nice story Korbs.

Korbs, what year did you join?

pls tell me that write up is coming out on video soon, cbf reading all that :P