War Dogs

by Shane Bryant

The bombardier continued prowling along the corridor, watching, waiting for another victim to move. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guy who had moved his feet stick out his right hand, his arm bent at 90 degrees at the elbow, which is how you put your hand up if you are standing to attention. ‘Bombardier,’ he said in a high-pitched voice.

  The lino now screamed as the bombardier executed an about-turn and came marching back down the line. ‘Put-your-fucking-hand-down,’ he said slowly and quietly, sounding even more menacing. ‘I SAID, NO FUCKING MOVEMENT.’

  ‘But, Bombardier, I need to . . .’

  ‘SHUT UP!’

  The guy apparently had a death wish and for a moment I felt sure that the non-commissioned officer was going to punch him. Instead, the bombardier repeated his order and walked up and down the line, telling us all that we needed to learn some fucking self-control.

  A little while later, with the pain burning through the thick soles of my boots and my shoulder muscles starting to cramp, I heard it. I think everyone heard it, no matter how far along the corridor they were, but no-one wanted to look. Soon, I could smell it.

  I risked moving my gaze to the recruit who had asked for permission to speak. The front of one leg of his green trousers was stained black, and a puddle of piss was fanning out on the lino, around his boots.

  It was my mum who encouraged me to join the army.

  I was born in Leichhardt, in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, where we lived until I was five. After that, we moved to Dapto, on the New South Wales south coast, which was a big change from the city’s cramped terrace houses and narrow streets.

  I have two sisters and a brother, and am the oldest by five years, so I found myself doing quite a bit around the house after my folks split up when I was in fifth class. Later, my mum had twins, a boy and a girl, Reece and Naomi, from her second relationship.

  Dapto’s big claim to fame is its greyhound dog racing track, but I don’t think this had anything to do with my future career choices. Dapto’s not by the beach and is pretty suburban, so I didn’t grow up a surfie, spending all my time on the sand, smoking dope and driving a panel van.

  I wouldn’t live in Dapto now, but it was a good place to grow up. I started playing rugby for Wollongong, the nearest big city, when I was fourteen and that kept me occupied during my early to mid teen years. I always wanted to be outdoors, either riding my pushbike or playing sport, rather than hanging around the house.

  Dogs became a part of my life pretty early on. I really wanted a Doberman, but mum bought me a cattle dog instead, which I called Sheba. I really liked being with her, and I’d walk her every day, along with a mate of mine who also had a dog. Sheba was a good friend and always happy to see me. At that stage, though, I had no thoughts of ever working with animals.

  I wasn’t good at applying myself at school, and I couldn’t wait to get out and start doing something – anything. I just wanted to escape. Looking back, I wish I’d applied for a trade, or kept up with my studies. My mum wasn’t going to force me to stay on until Year Twelve, and she decided that if I wanted to leave, I should think about joining the army. My dad had been in the army, in the transport corps, so it wasn’t as though Mum was unfamiliar with the military life and all that it involved

  The defence force recruiters, from the army, navy and air force, came to our school, and after their talks I spoke to the army guy. I’d already decided that if I were going to join one of the services, it would be the army. I told Mum this, and she called the recruiting office and arranged for someone to come to our house and talk to me about it some more.

  The recruiter started the ball rolling and, before I knew it, I was on the train to Sydney for my medical and psych evaluation. I was told I had high blood pressure, so I had to go for more tests once I got back to Dapto. The doctor gave me the all clear and suddenly I was being sworn in as an Australian Army recruit.

  I was seventeen years old and on a bus with a bunch of blokes I didn’t know, on my way to the 1st Recruit Training Battalion at Kapooka, near Wagga, in southern New South Wales. I was looking forward to starting my career and earning some money. The army recruiters had been friendly and supportive, and there were a few of them travelling with us.

  There was a relaxed feel about the trip. We stopped at a road-house on the way to Kapooka and got some lunch, and everyone was in good spirits. The countryside was mostly wide open grazing lands covered with short, yellow-brown grass; very different from the rolling emerald-green hills of the south coast where I’d spent most of my life. The coast gets decent rainfall and it’s good dairy country, but out here in the inland, it was dry, tough country. I’d never really been away from home, and my senses were a bit overwhelmed.

  It was about six in the evening by the time we reached Kapooka. When the bus stopped, the driver opened the door and a group of MPs – military police – in bright red berets got on board. It was as if someone had just flipped a switch on my life.

  ‘GET OFF THE BUS!’

  We all looked at each other, and a couple of the guys smirked at the screamed command.

  ‘I SAID, GET OFF THIS FUCKING BUS NOW AND FALL IN OUTSIDE. MOVE IT!’

  We suddenly all knew this was for real, and bumped into each other as we got out of our seats and pushed our way to the door.

  ‘NO FUCKING TALKING. GET OFF THE BUS. GET YOUR SHIT AND LINE UP OUTSIDE!’

  Talk about a reality check! Once we’d had our names marked off, we didn’t stop running. Over the next few days we were issued with uniforms and a pile of other gear including a pack, webbing pouches and belt and harness, water bottles, boots, mess tins, hats, raincoats, sheets, blankets, towels and even a toothbrush. We were given everything we’d need to start our lives all over again. It was May, and although it wasn’t yet winter, that place was cold. Anyone who’s been to that part of Australia knows how bitter it can be when the chilled wind whips across those empty plains and you wake to find the grass white with frost. It was extreme – freezing in winter and baking, stinking hot in summer. I would discover there was nothing that could remotely be described as mild about the place or the experience.

  ‘HALLWAY TWENTY-SIX, WAKEY, WAKEY. OUTSIDE!’

  Had I even slept? The next morning, it seemed like I’d had my eyes closed for ten minutes when our section commander was screaming at us to wake up. ‘GET OUT HERE AND BRING YOUR SHEET WITH YOU, OVER YOUR SHOULDER!’

  Screaming, screaming, screaming. Bombardier Wilson was an absolute arsehole. It was the section commander’s job to get in our faces and tip our civilian world upside down, and Wilson seemed to love his job.

  We were sleeping four to a room, and had to parade in the hallway with our top sheets over our shoulders to make sure that each of us had pulled his bed apart. In the past, some smart arses had tried to take a short cut by making their beds perfectly and then sleeping on top of the blankets so they could save a few precious minutes of morning routine, but the instructors knew all the short cuts in the book.

  Wilson went on at us from the moment we woke to the moment we passed out in the evenings. He’d follow us into the bathroom to make sure we were shaving. It was rush, rush, rush all the time, and guys would have bits of toilet paper sticking to their faces where they’d cut themselves. I was seventeen and had barely started shaving, but still had to go through the motions. Mates of mine back home were in school, sneaking drinks and cigarettes, surfing or playing footy, but I was a teenager who had to iron his fucking pyjamas, on pain of punishment.

  Everything had to be perfect.

  Sheets had to be pulled tight and tucked in with hospital corners. The stripes on the scratchy, red-brown blankets had to run right down the centre of the beds, and sheets had to be turned over at the top precisely the length of a rifle bayonet. Everything we owned had to be kept in its designated place. Uniforms had to be ironed and hung facing the same way, and our civilian clothes were locked away so that there were no reminders of the lives we’d left behind. Socks had
to be folded just-so, and there were rules about how far each item of clothing or belt buckle or toothbrush could be from the next.

  Nights were filled with the smell of Brasso and spray starch, as we strove to get our uniforms in a state fit for the following morning’s inspection. Minor infractions were punished with screams of abuse and the violent ransacking of whatever had been done incorrectly. Blankets and sheets were ripped from beds and tossed out the barracks first-floor window to land in the dirt and grass below. If Bombardier Wilson found a water bottle a few millimetres out of place in a locker, he would reach in and slide everything onto the floor, and the hapless recruit would have to start all over again.

  There was no free time. The army owned us, body and soul, and every minute of every day was filled with some sort of activity. We’d run in the morning, our cheeks and noses, bare arms and legs stinging from the cold, our breath freezing in front of our faces. Panting, gasping, sometimes throwing up, we realised how easy our lives at home had been. Having played rugby helped me a bit, but they were pushing my young body to its limits, and beyond. During crisp, cool days under empty blue skies, we drilled and marched, learning to walk all over again, as though we were toddlers. Always there was the yelling, the abuse, and the bombardier’s nose almost touching yours as he delivered each day’s fresh insult, punctuated with tiny drips of spittle.

  ‘CLOSE YOUR FIST WHEN YOU MARCH OR I’LL STICK MY COCK IN IT, BRYANT!’

  ‘EYES FRONT OR I’LL RIP THEM OUT AND SKULL-FUCK YOU TO DEATH, YOU STUPID BASTARD!’

  ‘SWING THOSE FUCKING ARMS BREAST-POCKET HIGH WHEN YOU MARCH, OR I’LL RIP THEM OFF, STICK THEM IN YOUR EARS AND RIDE YOU AROUND THE PARADE GROUND LIKE YOU’RE A FUCKING HONDA!’

  Breakfast, lunch and dinner became our only respite. I looked forward to meals and shovelled the food into me. Our bodies had become machines and our brains weren’t far behind.

  When we weren’t marching or drilling, our foggy minds were being filled with map reading, military law, first aid or radio procedures. A few of the guys were excited at the prospect of the weapons lessons but there were weeks of training before anyone pulled a trigger. During the lessons, the bombardier didn’t scream, but he was no more tolerant of mistakes, especially safety breaches. Still, there was at least a feeling the instructor was genuinely trying to teach you something, rather than just hoping you’d remember it through constant ranting, belittlement and abuse.

  As we recruits grew more confident and started getting into the groove of life at Kapooka, we could laugh and joke in private about some of the things the instructors did. There was a dark side to that barren, windswept, soulless place as well, though.

  I’ve got mates who are still in the army who have been posted to Kapooka to be instructors and they tell me that, these days, recruits are issued with cards that they can hold up to instructors to let them know when they’ve had enough of their bullying and abuse. That sounds extreme to someone like me who survived the old system, but we did have some serious problems. Two recruits went absent without leave during my time at Kapooka. One jumped a train and was so exhausted that he fell asleep and rolled off and injured himself. The other guy made it to Melbourne, where he hanged himself in a public toilet.

  Things often went too far, as with the recruit who had pissed himself rather than move from his spot in the corridor. I understand that they’re trying to break you down and then rebuild you, but things had to change at Kapooka and, apparently, they have. Although I didn’t know it at the time, and neither did the army, I’d joined the Australian Defence Force at what was probably a turning point.

  Our uniforms back then were the same plain green heavy cotton ones that troops had been wearing, pretty much unchanged, since the end of World War II. They had to be starched and ironed with razor-sharp creases and our black leather boots had to be spit polished, which took hours. Our rifles were the big, old 7.62- milli metre self-loading rifle (the SLR) and the F1 sub-machine gun, which dated from the late 1950s and early ’60s. Back then, in 1989, Australian soldiers hadn’t been to war since Vietnam in the ’60s and ’70s. Our training methods, including the virtually unchecked abuse our instructors meted out, belonged to another era.

  Within a few years, the army would switch to polyester-blend camouflage uniforms that didn’t need ironing; to a lighter, smaller calibre rifle, the 5.56-millimetre F88 Steyr; and would be serving in modern peacekeeping operations in places such as Rwanda and Somalia, where knowing who was your friend and who was your enemy was even more confusing than in Vietnam. By the turn of the 21st century, the army would be fighting an enemy different from any we’d ever encountered, in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan and Iraq.

  *

  Failure was never an option for me – I hate the thought of letting myself down. I set myself small goals in order to keep my sanity and make it through Kapooka. At seventeen I was the youngest recruit in the platoon, but could see that men who were older than me were finding the hard slog of training just as difficult as I was. This inspired me, because I wanted to prove to everyone, especially myself, that I could pass this tough course at my age.

  As we progressed, we’d be given rewards, like we were dogs in training, and the smallest thing could mean so much. The first time I got to leave the base was like a dream. We were allowed to go into Wagga, and, while we were forbidden to drink alcohol, we could wander around the shops, have a soft drink, look at girls who weren’t wearing baggy, unflattering green skins and, most importantly, not be in Kapooka. Later, even though I was still seventeen, I was allowed with the other recruits to start having a few beers in the boozer, the canteen on base.

  During the days, we spent increasing time on the range, zeroing and trying to qualify with our SLRs. We also got to fire a heavy-barrelled automatic version of the SLR, called the AR. I’d only ever fired a .22 rifle before joining up and, even after my training at Kapooka, I was never a fantastic shot. As it’s turned out, I’ve carried a firearm for work most of my adult life, although, unlike some of the Americans I’ve served with in Afghanistan, I’m not a gun freak. Weapons are a tool of the job to me; nothing more.

  Like a lot of people on the course, the only thing I enjoyed about basic training was the march-out parade at the end of it. I really felt as though I’d achieved something. Halfway though our course, Bombardier Wilson had broken his leg playing rugby and had been replaced by a medic corporal, who was about as different from the abusive artilleryman as he could be. Wilson came back to Kapooka to have a beer with us the day we graduated and, despite all the ill-treatment we’d been through, we were happy to have a drink with him – as soldiers, rather than his scared, white-faced recruits.

  About three years after recruit training, I was playing rugby at Holsworthy in south-western Sydney, where I was based, and when the other team ran on to the field, I saw Bombardier Wilson among them. He grinned at me in recognition and I nodded back at him. That day, I didn’t care whether our team won or lost; I spent the whole game chasing him around the field.

  It was payback time, and when I caught up with him, I smashed him.

  I thought for a while about applying to be an army medic or physical training instructor, but ever since I’d seen the picture of the army dog handler in the corridor at Kapooka, I’d been sure what I wanted to do. As it happened, I was posted to the Royal Australian Engineers, the corps that controls the army’s explosive sniffer dogs.

  There was something about dogs, and working with them, that really appealed to me. I like a dog’s companionship – it gives me a sense of fulfilment and peacefulness, like the feeling some people get sitting on a beach watching waves roll in. Dogs really are loyal to the last beat of their heart. Nothing’s simple in the army, though, and it was four years before I could actually do a dog handler’s course.

  When I finished at Kapooka, I was sent, with the rank of sapper, to the School of Military Engineering at Holsworthy to learn how to be a combat field engineer during my initial e
mployment training. Engineer training was interesting, with the course covering a whole heap of subjects, including building bridges, water purification, clearing land mines and booby traps, small boat handling, demolitions, and rope work. It was good to be learning new things, as opposed to marching and being screamed at. We got weekends off, and I’d go home to Dapto to see my girlfriend, Jane. I’d first met Jane two weeks before leaving for Kapooka. She was fifteen at the time, a friend of a friend and she worked in the McDonald’s at Albion Park Rail, near where I lived.

  After I finished training, I was sent to 1 Field Engineer Squadron at Holsworthy, where I screwed up, big-time, very early on. I was on guard duty at the front gate and one morning I managed to sleep in because an overnight blackout had cut the power to my alarm clock. There was no sympathy, though, and I was given two weeks’ restriction of privileges. I was charged and fined, and spent a lot of time doing drill, cleaning garbage bins, sweeping roads and cutting hedges, working until ten o’clock most nights. It was a good lesson for a young digger to learn – that people depend on you doing your job and there’s no excuse for failure.

  Even when I was I was on restriction of privileges and being punished, I was still army-mad. I thought I’d like to try out for the SAS selection course, and asked the sergeant of the guard if I could start running with a full pack and webbing during my punishment period. He told me I was too young even to apply for the SAS, that I should wait until I was 21 and had more experience, but I persisted and he gave me the OK. He probably thought I was crazy, and I think some of the other people on base thought the sergeant was beasting me by making me run with my pack on.

  After my punishment was finished, I had enough on my plate without training for the SAS in my spare time, and it increasingly looked like Jane and I were going to settle down together. I did an army driver’s course, and when I was posted to 1 Field’s airborne troop, I was sent to the Parachute Training School at Nowra, near where I’d grown up on the south coast. The first few jumps, in particular, were exhilarating and, unlike Kapooka, we were able to get pissed every night.