As the train slowly left the platform, I lent out the window and waved the family farewell.  I sat down, and even before my carriage left the South Brisbane Station, I asked myself why the fuck am I doing this?...there's still time...jump off the train...now.

A biographical account of Shorty, a young married soldier who spends a great deal of time preparing for overseas service to help prevent the spread of communism.  He wants to get over there before the huge American juggernaut plows through Vietnam and there will be nothing left to do.  It is 1966.

Fate finds him being transferred to an Army Aviation group where he meets up with Johnsy, a young and wild soldier and they become mates - a mateship that endures through the odd times ahead.  Follow them on a hysterical romp from Brisbane, through Sydney and the Phillippines "the QANTAS staff went on strike in mid-air and chucked us off in Manila" then off to Siagon and to their final destination - 161 (Indep) Recce Flt at the Australian Task Force Base at Nui Dat.  Shorty describes every day life in the camp and explains that even through he is only a "baggy-arse clerk", he still has his stories to tell.  So follows a collection of wonderful and bizarre tales, described graphically and in the vernacular of the day.

Some stories contain: the absurd,  "we had a 105mm Howitzer but no one knew how to fire it, so we had to learn from a user manual", the ridiculous, "I was looking at a land mine outside my tent - on it, I could read, FACE TOWARD ENEMY: the pathetic, small children scrambling for small change, filling sandbags for a few cents each, a side-splitting story of McGee, a soldier who was overwhelmed by the American "free stuff" and could not help but help himself to it.  Shorty meets an American soldier who was involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and reveals his fascinating secrets, the intensive, Tet "the first Offensive", and the disturbing story "Home sweet Hamlet" where Shorty is exposed to the lives of innocent peasants, discusses guerilla warfare and the practice of relocating villages.

As his stint in Vietnam ends, he questions himself as to what he as achieved, the state of the nation's opposition to the Vietnam conflict and the insult that "we were advised, by our own government, not to wear our uniform in the streets of Australia." He resolved to forget all and get on with his life - until his arrival back at Sydney Airport - where he saw a "fat, whingy and whiney brat with soft serve ice-cream dribbling down his chin.  He was hitting his mother and was obviously thoroughly spoilt."   Shorty had a flashback to the forlorn children of the sandbag farm and he experienced a nefarious compulsion to "throttle this little shit to death - that would even things out a bit -  at this point I knew I was carrying some baggage that the customs man had not seen - and it was in my head."


Printed in Aussie - Paperback 200 pages.  Written and published by Tony Lourensen November 2009  ISBN 978 0 646 523231

 

published and printed with the assistance of loveofbooks.com.au