Don't Do What I Did

In the years prior to my conscription, because of the ongoing need for troops inVietnam other nashos were trained and then offered mainly cannon fodder optionsas units to join. These units now still needed soldiers, but the chances of anoverseas deployment were remote. Vietnam was a televised war, really the firstone. The pictures were graphic, the actions not Hollywood and the blood was real.At Kapooka we were pretty much shielded from it but the occasional trips intotown gave us the sense of what was going on. Newspapers carried photos andcasualty figures but as one journo pointed out you were more likely to be killeddriving on the road than in Vietnam. One wag in the camp countered that was thatour sergeant was more likely to kill you than a Viet Cong soldier. Detective Inspector "Sarge" Downs uncle is visiting his nephew in Cairns. Ray Downs had adopted Sarge when Sarge was only four after his parents had been killed in a car accident. Ray was normally a quietly spoken man, mainly because his wife Jean wouldn't let him get a word in edgeways. However, when he was given a number of drinks, Ray became quite garrulous and told Sarge and Sarge's partner Sarah about the time he was caught up in National Service. Instead of being sent to Vietnam, Ray was seconding to the intelligence section of the army based in Canberra, where he came across some illegal operations, spying and corruption around the time of the change in government in Australia when the Labor Party's Gough Whitlam rose to power.