by John Curtis
The commandos were an interesting bunch.
What I learned, after joining them again, was that about 20 per cent of them were New South Wales police officers, who got paid military leave to do their Army Reserve time, and about 5 per cent were criminals (or at least tending that way), with the occasional neo-Nazi thrown in.
The other 75 per cent of the unit were pretty average people, and I was happy to be in that majority. One thing I did know, from my earlier time in the unit, was that to gain any respect at all in the commandos you had to earn the coveted green beret. You could serve in the unit in a range of support jobs, such as a clerk, a driver, a storeman, or, like me, in the intelligence cell, without having to attempt the gruelling commando training course, but I wanted to do it, and to win the beret that came with passing. Commandos who had already earned the green beret referred to the soldiers in support roles, and even trainee commandos, as ‘black hats’ (because of the colour of their head gear) and ‘maggots’.
As a member of the intelligence cell it wasn't mandatory for me to do commando training, but I knew it was something I needed to do, for myself as well as for my good standing with the rest of the guys. I was enjoying life in the commandos the second time around a lot more than I had when I was eighteen. The intelligence guys were pretty much left to their own devices and when the captain who ran the cell eventually left the unit I ended up running the cell myself, even though I was still only a private.
By the time I attempted the commando training course I was thirty-two. Most of the other guys trying for the green beret were in their late teens or early twenties. I'm not a big guy, or very muscular, but my aerobic fitness was good and I could do plenty of push-ups and sit-ups. As with other Special Forces selection and training courses, this one was a test of your mental willpower as much as, or even more than, your physical ability.
To earn the green beret we had to first do a 3.2-kilometre run and then a ten-kilometre run carrying a rifle and twelve-kilogram basic webbing gear, which consisted of waterbottles, ammunition pouches, and a small ‘bum’ pack. In addition to this there were tests involving chin-ups, sit-ups, push-ups, rope climbs and swimming, and we had to qualify on an array of weapons I hadn't encountered in my previous units, such as silenced pistols, anti-tank weapons, the M16 assault rifle, and sub-machine guns. The toughest test of fitness and stamina was a killer 32-kilometre run carrying a rifle, basic webbing, and a 25-kilo pack.
While I had passed all of the tests leading up to this, I had been so busy organising my survival courses for unemployed youth that I hadn't done nearly enough training for the final long run. I knew the only way I would get through the 32 kilometres was by using my mind. My first live-in partner many years before had been a past-life regressionist and hypnotherapist and she had used me as a guinea pig. In the process she also showed me how to hypnotise myself, and as I lay in the back of the Unimog army truck on the way to the drop-off point for the run I used these techniques to stop myself freaking out. I took my mind down through the levels, counting back from ten to one, and then programmed myself: ‘Just keep going, just keep going,’ I said to myself in a kind of mantra.
The sergeant supervising the test was Bones Brady – a true hard man. On one training exercise Brady sent some of the boys up and down a hellishly steep hill three times, until they were all knackered. At the end of this seemingly pointless exercise he said to them, ‘The army's not going to want us when we're fresh and rested. They're going to want us when we're stuffed and exhausted and nearly dead. One thing I hate is a quitter. I could give up smoking tomorrow, if I wanted to, but I'm not a fucking quitter!’
When I was doing the earlier ten-kilometre run I had strapped down my water bottles to stop them hitting my hips as I ran and as a result it became too difficult to get the bottles out to drink from. I became dehydrated and Bones walked with me for the final three kilometres to make sure I made it in on time. He strode effortlessly beside me as I staggered along, offering me a cigarette and joking that I'd do the run easier if I was a smoker.
Now, on this final gruelling run, I soon started to lag behind the main body of trainees, and things looked bad. Although I preferred running by myself I also needed to keep up with the pack if I was going to complete the run in time. I was hunched over as I ran, which prompted one of the corporals to call out, ‘Straighten up, Private Curtis – you look like a fucking foetus!’
‘Just keep going, just keep going,’ I mumbled to myself. At one point I tripped over and as soon as my body stopped moving every muscle started to cramp and lock up. My hands were like claws from the cramping. One of the other guys came up behind me and hauled me to my feet. I stumbled along and eventually, after a few hundred metres at a shuffling jog, my body started to unlock.
At the halfway point, Bones Brady was sitting in the passenger seat of an army Land Rover, puffing on a cigarette as I shuffled by him. ‘Do you want that cigarette now?’ he called to me.
‘No, sarge, I'm a non-smoker,’ I croaked. ‘If I gave up being a non-smoker, I'd be a quitter. And I'm not a quitter.’ Brady smiled and I laughed as I trudged on.
I made it across the finish line with fifteen minutes to spare, beating a number of the guys who had trained for months. Some other guys helped me get my pack and webbing off and I sank to the ground, lying flat on my back. My whole body ached, I was chafed, and my boots and socks were full of blood from burst blisters.
The presentation of our green berets was a bit of an anticlimax. To qualify formally we had to spend two weeks in the bush on exercise, ending with a simulated commando raid on the Eildon Weir in Victoria. We raced across the huge body of water at night-time, cleaned up some ‘bad guys’, set the charges to blow the dam, and then returned to our start point. It was freezing and as we skimmed over the water in our Zodiac inflatable assault boats we were hit by cold, stinging water. Most of us were hunkered down in the boats but one guy, nicknamed Molly, was sitting upright, copping the full blast of wind and water. I reached for him and shook him. Molly responded incoherently and I realised he was suffering from exposure. I dragged him down, pushed some army ration chocolate into his mouth and tried to get him warm, and he gradually improved.
When we got back to base there was the usual drudgery of cleaning out the boats and eventually we were released back to Puckapunyal army base. I spent an hour in a hot shower trying to get heat back into my body. The next day we were called on to parade. We looked like crap and the commanding officer walked past each of us, said a few words here and there, and his adjutant handed us our green berets. I couldn't help being disappointed; I'd been expecting a formal parade, but it was as if the casual handing out of something we'd strived so hard to earn was a reminder to us that this wasn't about pomp and ceremony and glory – just about proving we could do the job.
While the pragmatist in me realised that the path to reaching a goal was always more enjoyable and fulfilling than actually achieving it, my new age side found that earning the beret had freed up a lot of energy inside me. I'd gotten over the ‘ineffective’ tag and now felt I had the strength and determination to get on with my life. It was as though I had passed through some sort of barrier. I was now an achiever, and no longer the ‘ineffective’ label that had dogged me for so long. I had set my mind on achieving something difficult and fought through the pain and mental obstacles to reach my goal.
I also learned from my time in the army that while so much of the training and ethos emphasised the importance of working as a team, I was happiest on those rare occasions when I was left to my own devices.
Once, I was asked to help train potential green berets by playing enemy for them. I was tasked with ambushing a section of black hats (soldiers who had yet to earn the coveted commando headgear). I was largely free to come up with my own game plan and there was no one to tell me what to do. It was liberating. The supervisors had instructed me to be reasonably visible, so first I hunkered down behind a twiggy branch and opened up on the pa
trol with my F88 Steyr rifle, full of blank ammunition. The new guys began their counter ambush drills, but couldn't find me even though I had chosen a fairly exposed position. Next, I lay along the lip of a ravine and gave a few bursts from my Steyr. Then I ran down the ravine, popped up behind them and opened up again from a different direction. When they swept blindly past my new position I shot them all again.
Finally, the sergeant asked me to stand out in the open so they could see me in plain view, which I thought negated the whole point of the exercise. Reluctantly I did as I was told, and stood between two gum trees while the section patrolled towards me. I opened up again and this time they spotted me and overran my position. It was pointless, I thought, making the exercise so easy, but I'd had fun while I'd been free to do my own thing.
A few people join the commandos because they want the chance to fight, others to test themselves, while some are more ‘be all you can be’ kind of people. I remember being in the back of a truck at the end of a commando exercise. We'd parachuted into some godforsaken part of Victoria, conducted a raid and some ambushes, frozen our butts off and now we were going home after a long, hard weekend. I was sitting next to a mate of mine, John Warburton. John was a smart guy, with a PhD in political science; definitely one of the be-all-you-can-be guys.
John and I were chatting about what we wanted to do in life. For the first time, I voiced a thought I'd had for some time. ‘I've had a strong feeling for a few years now that the first thirty-five years of my life I lived for myself, but the next thirty-five years are going to be for the human race and the planet.’
‘Doing what?’ John asked.
‘I don't know,’ I replied honestly. ‘I'm still trying to work that bit out.’
TWO
Epiphany
I'd had an interest in Asia, and perhaps injustice, ever since I first read about the plight of the Penan people, and during my time in the army I was becoming similarly concerned at the treatment of the population of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor.
Australia had turned a blind eye when Indonesia launched a military invasion of East Timor in 1975, and news was regularly filtering out of the tiny state about human rights abuses perpetrated by the Javanese invaders. I felt our country's lack of action over Timor was a black mark against our international image and showed a lack of concern for our neighbours. I wrote several letters to the then Foreign Minister Gareth Evans voicing my concerns.
Some time in the early 1990s I learned through the Special Forces grapevine that as a result of quiet moves to strengthen ties between Australia and Indonesia, the Australian SAS had begun training their Indonesian counterparts. Indonesia's elite troops, known as Kopassus, stood accused of perpetrating some of the worst crimes against the East Timorese freedom fighters and their supporters, and I was outraged that our guys would even be working with them, let alone teaching them, and that the government had sanctioned this.
I was disillusioned with the Australian government's lack of balls and their duplicity. At the same time, I was losing interest in the training I was doing with the commandos. Some of our earlier commanding officers had had a vision for what we should be training to do, and how we could be employed in imaginative, unconventional military roles. Others, like the officer in charge during the time of my growing disenchantment, had the view that commandos were simply infantry soldiers who had been trained to insert into the battlefield in novel ways, such as by parachute or by water. The unit had lapsed into what I thought was a pretty boring routine of practising conventional infantry skills.
All of my frustrations came to a head when we were sent to northern Australia to take part in an exercise called Kangaroo 92 (K92). The Indonesians had been invited to come and watch, as our training engagement with them was now stated government policy and widely reported in the media. I was part of a force of 160 commandos playing the enemy for the opening of K92, which was witnessed by the top brass from Indonesia and Australia. We flew into RAAF Base Curtin in Western Australia and tried to acclimatise to the heat. It was 50 degrees Celsius in my tent and 60 degrees out on the runway. We were doing pack marches and our guys were dropping like flies from heat exhaustion. I was carrying a 40-kilogram pack and I only weighed 65 kilograms.
One of my jobs as a member of the intelligence cell was to make sure everyone was ‘sterile’ before going on a patrol – this meant that they weren't carrying any identifying information or personal effects. I told a captain who should have known better that he would have to remove his T-shirt, which had ‘1st Commando Regiment’ emblazoned on it. As usual, I had a running battle with guys who loved to sneak cameras through so they could take pictures of their exploits. I always thought this carry-on was a waste of time, because if I was the enemy I would have singled out as a commando anyone with a large multifunction watch (the preferred watch of special forces). A camouflaged C-130 Hercules transport aircraft sat waiting on the desert strip ready to deploy us. We had no idea what our destination was going to be.
It turned out to be Melville Island off the northern coast of Australia. Our small force of heavily armed, fast-moving commandos wiped out the ‘invading’ force of Australian regular army soldiers who landed at an airfield and outnumbered us five to one. This wasn't part of the script and the people in charge would have been embarrassed if the Indonesians saw how such a small force could defeat Australia's much-vaunted conventional army. As such, the word came down via the umpires that the commandos had all now been defeated and those of us who hadn't been killed would be taken prisoner. Our boss was pissed off as he had led us brilliantly, only to be shafted by our own people.
Our government's behaviour in this instance and in relation to having the SAS train Kopassus just outraged me. I didn't blame the SAS, as they simply go where they are sent. I went to see the captain who had taken over as the boss of the commando regiment's intelligence cell and told him of my concerns over East Timor and the Indonesians.
‘Off the record,’ the new captain said, ‘I agree with you. But it's the way of the world.’
‘Not my world, sir,’ I replied. I took leave from the unit I'd worked so hard to be accepted into. Who, I wondered, was ineffective now?
When I left the army, at the age of thirty-five, I decided to travel overseas in search of an answer to the question that had plagued my life: why was I here? As well as my interest in martial arts I was also fascinated with medieval history; a good friend of mine, James, had a plan to retrace the routes of the great crusades, and I decided, along with another mate, Tim, to join James on the adventure. I'd also been interested for some time in one of the local philosophies, Sufism, and so I travelled through Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Israel to try to broaden my horizons and find some clues about what course the rest of my life should take.
I hooked up with a Quaker woman for a while in Ramallah and wondered if my purpose in life would be to help poor people in that part of the world. What soon dawned on me, however, was that even though I was meeting people who hardly had two pennies to rub together, let alone two cars, they didn't really need my help. They might not have had many assets, but they had strong extended family networks whose members all did the best they could to help each other out when times were tough. In that way they were richer than I had ever been, or ever would be. I wondered if that was what was missing in my life – a simple sense of family.
While in Israel I decided that my time in the army was long over so I sent a letter of resignation to the commandos. After I'd finished my travels in the Middle East I backpacked on to Scandinavia, where I stayed with my good survival buddy Håkan Strotz whom I had met at the Tracker school some years earlier. The Tracker school is a famous survival school in America I attended in 1989. During the six-week course I learned native American survival skills, including how to track animals. I had a chance to further develop my survival skills and even teach on some courses that Håkan was running. On a hunting and fishing course, I met the head of survival training for
the Swedish Army, Captain Lars Falt, and was invited to attend his Swedish army officers' course as a civilian. I was the first Australian invited to attend. Later, in the UK, I was introduced to Ray Mears, who went on to become the star of a popular BBC series about living in the wild. Ray became a good friend and he and I would later teach survival to military instructors from fourteen countries. The course was in the Arctic and other renowned survival experts, including Mel De Weese, Turkka Aaltonen and Mors Kochanski, were also there. They all became good friends of mine. I have a favourite photo of Ray and me using a wooden hand drill to light a fire on a block of ice with a blizzard sweeping in. We travelled on skidoos, and dog-sleds, went ice fishing and skied cross country. It was a great trip.
I had a great time in Europe; however, when I got back to Sydney in September 1995, I was just as lost as when I'd left. I called James, who lived in Brisbane, and took up his suggestion that I move to his hometown. Now aged thirty-seven, I enrolled in a degree course in anthropology at the University of Queensland, studying the ways indigenous and ancient peoples lived off the land. This gave me an excuse to formalise my qualifications while studying something that fascinated me.
During my first year of university I decided to clear up some unfinished business, so I wrote a letter to the then Minister of Defence, Robert Ray. I told him of my reason for leaving the commandos and my opposition to the government's policy on using the SAS to train Kopassus. I was just tying up a loose end and thought that would be the end of it.