As a brief interlude from the stifling monotony of life in the cages, around thirty 3CSSB medics, including me, managed to wangle their way to the Medical Corps’ 100th birthday celebrations in Brisbane, later in 2003. When we arrived at the stiflingly formal event, we were horrified to learn that the entire group had been split and individually sat next to one political dignitary or another. This injustice just wouldn’t stand. We raised a collective rebellion and fucked that noise off to hit the cesspit of tainted morality more popularly known as the Valley.
The lads and I hit the skimpy bars, hard. It was my first time at the strippers. With strobe lights glaring and bass blaring, scantily clad women paraded around the dingy stage area to the tune of Mötley Crüe’s ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ and other stripper anthems. One of the lads bought $200 worth of raffle tickets from the topless barmaids and then passed out in his chair. While he was off with the fairies and couldn’t be awoken, he’d left three winning tickets on the table. I picked up all the winning tickets and didn’t pay a single cent for my first three lap dances. Hand in hand, one of the strippers led me away to the seediness of the VIP room, with me grinning from ear to ear. I emerged from the den of sin some forty-five minutes later to the cheers of my buddies, dishevelled hair, lipstick marks all over my face, smelling like a unique combination of stripper B.O., coconut oil and ‘I’m just trying to pay my way through law school’ lies. It took weeks to wash that smell off. Gold.
After the 100th birthday celebrations, I endured a few more months of brain-splitting inactivity back in the cages. In a stroke of sheer fortune, my boss decided that I was the perfect candidate for an extracurricular two-month assignment, so he sent me on detachment to the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR – Infantry) for Exercise Tandem Thrust. This exercise was a giant, coordinated training effort to test all the capabilities of the army’s different specialised units.
After a smelly and sweaty but necessary two-week stint on the HMAS Kanimbla navy ship, 1RAR and I found ourselves storming the beaches of Shoalwater Bay, north-west Queensland, in a simulated invasion. Raging a full battle hard-on, I played my part in swamping that unsuspecting coastline and conquering its arse. After the beach was taken, I settled against a tree and dug into my ration pack.
All of a sudden, I noticed a fleeting danger from the corner of my eye. A king brown snake had tried to steal a piece of my ration pack, which was lying next to my thigh! Just happy that the serpent hadn’t tried to bite me, I watched in horror as the next infantry section closed in behind our position – effectively boxing the creature in. It arced up. Standing on the snake equivalent of its haunches, it hissed violently at the newcomers, ready to end a life. In a display of absolute retardation, the incoming infantry captain pulled out his bayonet (which was thirty centimetres in length) and attempted to subdue the slithering beast (whose reach was 120 centimetres in length).
Fortunately, I managed to convince him that fighting the animal with a bayonet was like validating a one-way ticket on the short bus. All serpent-related stupidity aside, 1RAR managed to survive the training exercise without serious repercussion, and the snake escaped unharmed.
In what seemed like no time at all, I returned to my parent unit at 3CSSB in November 2003. The boredom was even more intolerable because I’d had a great time with 1RAR on the training exercise. But this time, the Soldier Career Management Agency (SCMA) was in annual attendance. SCMA’s job was basically a human-resources function – decide who to promote and how to fill vacant positions from around the army. Despite repeated attempts to sell a South Australian medic position to others in the unit, SCMA couldn’t seem to find a willing victim at 3CSSB. Just to be clear, a South Australian posting is a fate worse than death to most eastern-state military incumbents. But when SCMA sold this South Australian position to me, I was more than ready to go back home. ‘Just one word of warning,’ SCMA said as we discussed the terms of my South Australian posting. ‘We need you to be a fully-fledged corporal.’
Oh, what a bastard. I get a posting back home plus I get promoted ahead of my time.
I took the offer. While I was glad to go back to my home state, I would have taken any offer they put on the table – anything would have been better than spending another minute in the cages. There were still a few special exceptions that needed to be signed due to my lack of seniority before the deal could be sealed. But after a hop, skip and jump through some bureaucratic hoops, 2004 was the year I returned home. I was so relieved to be released from the evil clutches of the cages.
The 16th Air Defence Regiment (16AD), located in Woodside, South Australia, was unlike any other unit in my juvenile experience. They rocked a seriously kick-ass arsenal of Rapier and RBS-70 surface-to-air missiles. The whole unit was centred on protecting Australian airstrips. But the Australian government of the day would never mess with an enemy who had superior air capability. So, whereas in previous units my mates had been overseas and seen some action, and could feed that back in to the generally accepted ways of doing things back home, 16AD was different. At the time, there wasn’t a great need for defending oxygen, so no one had been deployed anywhere or done their job in anger. I was a junior jube amid a sea of thirty-five-year veterans who’d only ever experienced war in theory. As a result, 16AD felt very isolated from military reality – the perfect posting for an enthusiastic young medic to make their mark.
The Advanced Medic course that was promised to me by the career-management people came and went, a few months after touching down at 16AD. I did okay – not great, but okay – on the course. I learnt all the advanced trauma protocols that were expected of me: how to be a trauma team leader, advanced drug administration, fuck-me-this-poor-plastic-mannequin-is-going-to-die-in-front-of-me emergency scenarios and basic intubation protocols. I was relieved that I now had the medical skills to fulfil the duties of my new role; I was qualified to support training tasks by myself, without having to burden the more senior medics with babysitting me.
Then, a few months later, the program for being promoted to corporal came about, and I nailed it. I was close to the top of the class but far enough shy to remain under the radar. The promotion courses and the responsibilities of the role inspired me to actually apply myself, sometimes. The curriculum consisted of learning about leadership and how to teach basic soldiering skills, such as weapons training, field craft and drill.
During a round of practical testing for our drill instructional technique, one of my classmates, Rick, was at the helm and being scored on his acumen in teaching the ‘static incline’ drill manoeuvre. Rick was a member of the 152 Signal Squadron, who were attached to the SAS, so he had a keen sense of humour and a healthy distaste for army formalities. While I and four other students were frozen in a static position, Rick ‘dogged’ along the line, which involves critiquing incorrect body positioning during the execution of the parade movement. After slowly moving along the front of the line, Rick moved on to dogging the back.
‘Oh, that’s tight. Yes, very tight. My goodness,’ Rick said as he stared at my ass.
He moved on to the next student as a muffled, contagious snicker rumbled around the group. ‘Your left foot must be splayed at the standard regimental incline of forty-five degrees, private,’ Rick said to the next student.
‘Ooh, that’s better, that’s really good. Mmmm, so tight!’ Rick said as he stared at the next guy’s ass.
The volume of the sniggering increased as Rick moved down the line. ‘Private, I am going to touch your person to rectify your incorrect drill position,’ Rick said.
Then he slapped the next guy’s ass. ‘God help me, everyone is just so tight! So firm,’ Rick said.
The sniggering turned into a riotous cacophony of laughter, all of us now in danger of pissing our pants. The senior assessor’s face was fiery red, about to explode with rage at our taking the mickey out of his super-serious class.
A week later, we moved into the field-craft phase of the course, to practise
our section-commander skills in the middle of the Cultana Training Area scrub. I was the only medic on the course. The rest of the students consisted mainly of Grunts, Chooks (radio gurus) and Gun Bunnies (artillery), so I was given a new nickname as a term of endearment; I became known as ‘The Man-Nurse’.
Living in the scrub with zero amenities can cause a number of minor medical problems, such as infections and tick infestations, which can quickly turn into debilitating ailments if left unchecked. The army, of course, has a measure to combat this problem – the ‘free from infection’ (FFI) buddy system for regular inspections. However, as I was the only medic on the course, the running joke was that everyone should report to The Man-Nurse for their daily FFI check-up.
Kyle, one of the Gun Bunny jokesters, came up to me while I was eating dinner and flopped out one of his testes. ‘What do you reckon about this?’ he asked, laughing.
‘That’s a weird-looking nut, brother,’ I replied.
‘Nah, half-seriously, bro, do you see that big vein?’ Kyle asked.
I sensed an opportunity for some head-fuck payback, so I took a closer look. Kyle had this freakishly large vein running the length of his giggle-berry. ‘Dude, does your other testicle have a vein sticking out like that?’ I asked, feigning professionalism and concern.
‘No, only this one,’ Kyle replied, taking the bait.
‘Seriously, hombre, an engorged vein like this is an early-warning sign of chronic testicular mono-dysplasia,’ I bullshitted.
Kyle’s demeanour became serious. ‘Shit, what does that mean, Tezz?’ he asked.
I pulled out my pocket knife, flicking the blade open. ‘We’re gonna have to amputate,’ I joked.
It cost Kyle a few terrified moments to realise that I was kidding, but the look on his face was priceless.
The powers that be promoted me to lance corporal in 2004 and then to corporal six months later, in 2005. This was a very quick promotion, but it was more a formality and a small pay bump because I’d been doing the duties of a corporal from early on at 16AD. Although I felt fairly confident in the role and was appreciative, I really struggled to accept that I deserved the promotion. I was filled with feelings of self-doubt and unworthiness. I could’ve written a six-volume encyclopaedia of people who were more qualified to take my place.
So there I was, two chevrons on my arm – a full track corporal at the age of twenty-one. Who the hell has the necessary life skills to be a corporal at twenty-one? It had taken less than three years from my first day at boot camp to reach this point. Fifteen months of that time was training. I’d skipped the whole period where it was accepted that a young bloke will naturally do stupid shit and it can be explained away as being young and dumb. I had to grow up very quickly, even though my inner child was pouting in the corner. But being a responsible adult was now expected of me so I tried my hardest.
All feelings of being undeserving aside, I quickly became bored with my corporal station at 16AD. As a medic, my mornings were filled with an endless cadre of sickly, malingering punters who were hell-bent on escaping morning PT sessions. This phenomenon was known as ‘sick parade’.
SICK PARADE
‘Sick parade’ is another of those quirky terms that infiltrates your vocabulary as an army soldier. In contrast to its name, it does not entail brass bands, juggling clowns and a legion of zombie-like, snotty-nosed, projectile-vomiting and swollen-limbed soldiers limping down the street with gawking onlookers cheering and throwing confetti.
Sick parade is a strict three-hour period between 0730 and 1030 when ill and injured soldiers must present to the medical centre for treatment. Outside of these timings, the military does not recognise that an illness or injury exists.
The irony is I would happily have taken their places; I loved PT. The tedium of sick parade and other forms of army drudgery were starting to take their toll. Chasing rank stopped being the point for me, and I soon started to feel the familiar rumblings of boredom taking over. At one stage, during my Baby Medic years, one of my senior and trusted confidants had suggested that I go for SAS selection. ‘You hit that nav marker on the tit, within an inch, stop being a pussy,’ he’d say about my performance during a navigation exercise. ‘Go for the Regiment,’ he encouraged me.
In early 2005, during a battalion training exercise, we heard that the SAS were in the area and itching to kill us in our sleep. The SAS were infamous for sneaking into military positions and drawing dotted red texta lines across the throats of their victims to denote they’d ended them while they slept and escaped completely undetected. On one morning of the exercise, our security piquet reported that the SAS had been and gone, completely screwing up their mission by hitting the wrong unit. By all reports, the SAS blokes had been on reinforcement cycle (REO cycle), meaning they weren’t fully-fledged operators yet – they were hard-hitters in training.
These guys are human after all. They’re not supermen. I might actually have a chance.
I was bored with my job, the SAS seemed exciting, and chicks dig Special Forces guys. Boom – another snap decision made.
So, in 2005, I set myself a new challenge. I wanted to have a crack at SAS selection, which is an utterly brutal three weeks of demoralising pain, designed to break people down and reveal their inner workings. If you’re still standing at the end of the course and your deepest personality traits gel with the SAS ethos, you’re allowed to commence the REO cycle training, which is like eighteen months of rubbing salt into a knife wound with a wire brush.
Dispensing with all things rank related, I trained my ass off. Seven days a week for a good nine months, I trained like a man on a mission. I did the paperwork and sat the requisite meetings with my superiors. I obliterated the IQ test (revealing that I was smart enough to be a fighter pilot – the ADF’s smartest job). I’d bombed out on my initial army IQ test when I joined in 2002 – I’d been in high-school exam mode, where you were given a generous three hours to finish a thirty-minute test, but (unbeknown to me) the initial army IQ test had an hour limit, so I only answered seventy-odd questions in the allocated time. I’d royally fucked that test up and felt like a complete dumb-ass, but was glad to get a reprieve with this latest round of testing. I smashed the psych test (which, if you pass it, indicates that you may share certain personality traits with psychopaths – not cunty psychopaths like axe murderers, but productive psychopaths like high-level politicians and business executives).
I did brutal gym sessions where I’d punch out over 120 push-ups in two minutes. I smacked out 2.4-kilometre runs in less than eight minutes. I had a spare two minutes on my run time, an additional six minutes on my swim and thirty minutes on my twenty-kilometre pack march over and above the minimum recommended requirement for SAS selection. I was a monster.
For nine long months, I was fully dedicated to the cause. I even gave up drinking for three months, which is harder than astrophysics for any young Australian. I read SAS books before bedtime like a parent reads fairy tales to their children. Aspiring to the Regiment consumed my life. It got to the point where, despite my best efforts and eating double rations at every chance, I couldn’t seem to stack on any extra weight over my lanky 94-kilogram frame, which I reckoned wouldn’t be enough to get me through selection. I saw a professional nutritionist, but she did nothing for me. She couldn’t seem to devise a meal plan that would give me more calories than I was expending, even though she worked with Olympic athletes. With my twenty-kilometre pack marches, fifty-kilometre pack marches, one-hundred-kilometre pack marches, I was training harder than her professional athlete clients.
It all came to a head during one torturous training session. I was doing three five-kilometre sprints carrying ten kilograms on my back with only a few short minutes’ rest between each sprint. I went into the training session feeling like a finely tuned Lamborghini but walked away feeling like a rusty old VW Beetle. I did my first five-kilometre sprint in an awesome time, my personal best. My next sprint was slightly slower but still
better than any of my previous trials. I felt like I was dying on the third sprint. Afterwards, I flopped into bed and lay there for hours, quivering like a crack addict. I’d overtrained to such an extent that my immune system had given up on me. I stayed in bed for the next week, sick to the cellular level with nothing more than a common cold.
Okay, I get the gist: ease back on the pedal a bit.
Before my confidence reached the point of no return, I rolled my ankle playing volleyball in the weeks before the 2005 Special Forces barrier test (the precursor round of physical tests to qualify for SAS selection). After I’d been so careful to avoid injury, of all the godforsaken sports that could possibly bring me undone, the non-contact sport of volleyball was the one that got me. I was staring down the barrel of missing the following year’s selection and having to repeat the heinous training regime all over again. There was no way I could pass the barrier test on crutches. My fear of failure started to take control.
Just when it seemed like all hope was lost, the career-management people once again came to the rescue in late 2005. Having heard about my commitment to SAS selection through the grapevine, SCMA laid down the mother of all ultimatums. I could go ahead and take my chances at becoming a fully-fledged SAS operator (injured) and risk complete failure, or I could go to the SAS as an underwater medic (UM) – a requisite skill set that would be needed to support the SF diving capability, and intensive trauma cases that needed a more deft touch that only the UM course could teach. SCMA offered that I could cover selection as a ‘black hat’ (a medic – not a sandy beret qualified SAS operator), and attempt the whole selection game on my own terms in the following year. The only stipulation was that I had to pull out of that year’s SAS selection regime.
Bad Medicine Page 4