You are sick

Got a comment the other day where I was called a "sick cunt". Sorry if the language offends - it wasn't me that said it.

Doesn't offend me - been called that before.

Did an exercise back in 1986 or 1987 - middle of summer in WA. Our platoon went out in the afternoon sun, when it was about 40 in the shade, and spent a few hours doing practice attacks up a pile of rocks masquerading as a hill. Each section took turns to attack some gooks (as they were back then) dug in up the top.

The trouble with the plastic blank ammo that we used was that after you'd put a lot of it through the gun, it left a thick residue of gunk in the chamber and barrel, and when that started to smoke (from overheating), it let off a quite disgusting smoke.

Apart from the gun overheating, I also overheated. I got heatstroke. To top it off, on the last attack, I found myself in the middle of a large patch of broken glass. Not grass - glass. The glass and the rocks and the crawling around and the vibration from firing the gun all teamed up to slice me up nicely. Not enough to need stitches, but I had the sort of cuts and abrasions on my arms, legs and abdomen that I get these days from coming off the bike at 40km/h and sliding along the bitumen.

So there I am, sliced up and bleeding, half delirious with heat stroke and then I get a lung full of the yucky smoke from the gun. I start chundering. But the attack hasn't finished, and according to the DS, I haven't been shot, so I keep on going.

I was not in a good way when it was all over. In fact, I was fucked. Fucked enough to get stuffed into an ambulance and carted back to the RAP. The medics were ready for this sort of thing - there were old empty houses on the training range, and they'd raided one and nicked a bath tub. It was full of ice, and in I went.

As I was lying there cooling off, one of them was kind enough to give me some porn to look at.

The ice stopped the cuts from bleeding, but there was enough blood on me to turn the icy slush a nice pink colour. I'd also managed to throw up in front of myself whilst crawling, and then crawled through it. It had been hot all week, and I hadn't had a shower for a week. I was a yucky, stinky mess - typical infantryman really.

One of our old soldiers rolled up - one of our training staff. He'd been out with us. He'd done Malaya and been to Vietnam a few times. He was a tough old bastard - been there, done that etc etc.

He looked at me reading the porno in a tub of bloody ice.

Old digger: "How are you feeling, digger?"

Me: "Much better sir"

Old digger: "Will you be right to go out again today?" Medics start shaking their heads.

Me: "Absolutely sir".

Old digger: "Bike, you are a sick cunt. Possibly the sickest cunt I have seen all week. Keep it up."

Me: "Thank you sir!"

Coming from a bloke like that, that was high praise indeed.

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I've fixed up the spelling errors and linked to the comment. I type like crap at 0600 hrs - should stick to typing at night.

Singing, and swearing, like a trooper

If you want to have a glimpse into the way soldiers think, talk and act then look no further at the songs they sing.

I am a reasonably well educated, well read, artistically inclined individual. I like the theatre, I enjoy talking to academic types and I sometimes think that I have taken in a small amount of high culture and art. In general, when I visit a city, the must see places for me are its museums and cathedral.

But when I wore a giggle hat, I happily went pure animal. This site showcases reams of tunes and ditties - and I've sung many of them in bars and boozers in the company of other grunts when I've had a beer or six. Or ten.

Here's a sample:

Oh they say there's a troopship just leaving Bombay

Bound for old Blighty's shore,

Heavily laden with time-expired men

Bound for the land they adore;

There's many a twat just finishing his time,

There's many a cunt signing on;

You'll get no promotion this side of the ocean,

So cheer up my lads, fuck 'em all!

Chorus:

Fuck 'em all!

Fuck 'em all!

The long and the short and the tall;

Fuck all the Sergeants and W.O.l.'s,

Fuck all the corporals and their bastard sons;

For we're saying goodbye to them all,

As up the C.O.'s arse they crawl;

You'll get no promotion this side of the ocean,

So cheer up my lads, fuck 'em all!

We didn't sing that exact song - the first verse was adjusted a bit, but the chorus always remains the same.

I suddenly feel like a few beers.

Stuff happens

Tony Abbott was stitched up nicely today by a Channel 7 "reporter". For some reason, the tool asking the questions thought that saying "Shit happens" was being insensitive.

Well, putting on my old giggle hat and writing as a rather useless part time soldier, I have only one comment to make - what a load of crap.

Soldiers have a vernacular all of their own, and most of it is incredibly offensive. We use the term "swear like a trooper" instead of "swear like a teacher" for good reason. Soldiering is hard work -physically and mentally harder than just about any other occupation - and it comes with a reasonable risk of death, injury or wounding. Soldiers think, talk and joke in a way that would make many civilians fall over in astonishment. The black humour of soldiers is something to wonder at - shrinks would call it a "coping mechanism".

Soldiers train and train and train and train - and then train some more - because the battlefield is one big bucket of "shit happens". Even though I was just a humble chocko that never had to run around a two way firing range, I was trained quite thoroughly to deal with and handle the wide variety of shit that comes your way on operations. And funnily enough, we used to regularly use expressions like "shit happens", because incredible as this might sound - shit happens in war! War is messy and unpleasant and things rarely go to plan.

Take the ending of the siege of the Iranian Embassy in London by the SAS. You had the best train assault teams in the world doing the work, and they were equipped with the best stuff available at the time. They'd rehearsed the entry many times, yet when they actually started blowing stuff up, one bloke got tangled in his ropes and was nearly roasted alive when flash bangs set the curtains on fire.

Even when you have a well planned op, with highly trained troops, good intelligence and the best equipment, things still go pear shaped. Shit happens - it's how you deal with it that matters.

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PS - the SAS op was called "Operation Nimrod". We used to use the term "nimrod" to denote a complete and utter fuckhead - like Mark Riley. Some crafty sods have been vandalising his Wikipedia entry - at 11.39 yesterday, someone added this to his entry (which has since been locked down):

He is a total fuckface who had [[sex]] with [[Julia Gillard]] in return for a bullshit story about Tony Abbott

Wasn't me by the way. And I don't believe this accusation for one moment. For crying out loud - who would want to screw Gillard?