THE "GOLDEN YEARS"   by Terry Gygar

At QUR reunions and dinners there always seems to be a disproportionate number of ‘old soldiers’ who served in the mid-1960’s, but this should be no surprise because these were truly the “Golden Years” of the Regiment.  These were simpler days before National Servicemen were called up for Viet Nam (late 1965) and before the Tet Offensive of 1968 turned the Press, and through them the public, against that war.

Over 200 recruits signed up for QUR in the Regiment’s January 1965 intake.  In those uncomplicated times UQ was the only University in Queensland.  With no quotas in any Faculties except second year Medicine, Vet Science and Dentistry, a large number of new students came from the GPS Schools, all of which made service in their school Cadet Units compulsory.  With no HECS or other student support schemes, tax free service in the Regiment was the natural choice for fit young men with a sense of adventure and the taste for Army life that was nurtured in those Cadet Units.  Lots of fun, you get to blow up things and fire machine guns and get paid good money for doing it!  It sure beat packing groceries at Woolworths and, if you were a Vet Science student, it made you very popular with the Dean, John Springhall who also happened to be the CO of the Regiment.

In January 1965 two Companies of Recruits were inducted into the Regiment.  If you were a former Cadet Under Officer or Sergeant you joined A Company, and were also given the opportunity to attend the January camp at Tin Can Bay.  The vast majority in B Company also had previous cadet service, so drill and weapons training for recruits was a fairly swift and easy task.  A few former cadets who had turned up at the Regiment straight after their Senior exams were also given the opportunity to attend the December Courses at Greenbank to play the part of ‘enemy’ or act as GD’s.  So a few of us earned our Christmas spending money at Greenbank, the last group to be issued with Khaki uniforms.

We were a safe source of obedient work parties – we knew how to march and drill, were overawed by the Staff, who were mainly crusty old WW II, Korea and Malaya infantry veterans and were thrilled to get our hands on the ‘brand new’ SLR’s to replace the .303’s that had been bruising our juvenile shoulders since we were 14 year olds.  We weren’t so thrilled to be wearing US pattern steel helmets though – they were just as heavy and just as useless then as they remained throughout their un-illustrious career.

The leadership in those days was superb, or so it seemed to us at the time.  I think our judgment was sound though, as illustrated by the NCO’s placed over us.  The names of our Sergeants and Warrant Officers were later to feature prominently in the life of the Nation in both military and non-military fields. Names like Luttrell (a feared Warrant Officer!) Byrne, Dowsett, Fryberg etc and Sam Harrison was soon to take up the posting of CO.

It was also a time before Occupational Health and Safety restrictions hovered over everything we did.  Travel to Tin Can Bay was in the back of long nosed WW II surplus 6 wheeled trucks, with an NCO positioned at the back to maintain order and the travellers spread over kit bags and webbing.  These vehicles later came in handy to practice “helicopter de-planing drills” – a euphemism for leaping out of the back of a truck going at 30 mph.  It took a few years before we saw a real Huey helicopter and realised that getting out of them bore no resemblance to this insane exercise in machismo.  But we had a full strength medical platoon and they got excellent training as a result.  I can still recall Sgt Vlas Efstathis instructing eager medical students in the finer points of stitch removal and giving them practice at removing one stitch each from the neat work he had done sewing up my left hand a few days previously.

Ernie Dunwoody was another of the legendary characters.  Ernie roared into the Regiment every Sunday morning before parades on a war surplus Harley Davidson dispatch riders bike, still in the original green paint work, and was an enthusiastic employer of vast amounts of plastic explosives for “battle noise simulation”.  When Ernie wired up the “pre-planned DF’s” outside the defence perimeter you knew what fire support was all about!

What young man could have asked for a better way to earn a few dollars?  Digging down to OHP on the ridges of Tin Can Bay.  Putting out double apron triple wire fences in the small hours (and then pulling them down again in the summer heat).  Exercising in Wiangaree State Forest and taking over 25% “no duff” casualties to the saturated triple canopy, spiked vines and stinging nettles.  Some of us at least learned the valuable lesson that, unless you laid perfect perimeter and coms cords, you could end up sleeping within three feet of your hooch and never know it was there.  We also experienced the joys of the “mobile bath platoon” because we smelt so bad after a week in the jungle that they just wrote off our work dress uniforms and issued us new ones before they would let us back on the trucks.  The “drink a beer in every pub in Gympie’s main street” challenge on leave night was also a “right of passage” for new recruits – from recollection only Cpl Rheinhardt Baer even came close.

As everyone was paid in cash on the last day, the post camp pay parade gave rise to a spectacle that distressed some of the local civilians.  Army regulations required that this huge amount of money (the equivalent today of nearly $1 million) be collected from the Commonwealth Bank at Toowong by a three vehicle convoy accompanied by a section of SLR and F1 toting desperados led by Officers wearing .38 Smith & Wesson revolvers.  After a few false alarms, we eventually arranged for the police to prominently park a marked patrol car on the foot path outside the Bank before we arrived and shake hands with the pay officer in full view of the observers before their imaginations ran riot.

The beginning of the end of these simple ways and happy days can, in retrospect, perhaps be traced to May 1966. By this time I had came into the Army on full time duty and was the Sergeant Chief Clerk of the Regiment.  The ABC news announced the night before that Pte Ernie Noak had become the first national Serviceman to be killed in Viet Nam.  When I drove into Walcott Street at 8.00am to open the depot gates there was a line of 5 cars waiting for us to arrive.  These contained anxious parents who were bringing their 18 year old sons in to sign up in the CMF, where 6 years service was an alternative to National Service.  Recruiting had also become more complicated.  The QUR table in the Great Court during O Week, where we previously displayed weapons and uniforms, was now deemed to be provocative to student demonstrators and the Colours could no longer be paraded on Campus after one demonstrator grabbing at the Regimental Colour fell onto the butt of an SLR being held at the ‘one guard’ position by one of the Colour Guard.

So what can we learn from history ?

Firstly, there is no doubt in my mind that the greatest pool of recruits once came from School Cadet units.  I can’t help but think that if half the millions currently spent of ineffectual recruiting advertising was diverted into support for cadet units the “product” would sell itself and our recruiting would not be faced with selling an unknown product to an ignorant, and often misled, audience.

Secondly, The University Regiments once had a secondary role – “the military training of undergraduates”.  Many of our recruits did not want to become officers or their careers did not lend themselves to long term service.  None the less they usually enjoyed their service and became life long supporters of the Reserve.  We gained a large pool of influential long term sympathisers (names like DeJersey and Prentice spring to mind) and, from those who became teachers, we trained a pool of Cadet Officers to support those units in schools.  Perhaps the existence of such a pool would assist in overcoming some of the problems currently faced by the Cadet movement.  When Viet Nam (and subsequent conflicts) came, QUR also supplied a significant number of full time participants, many in highly trained and difficult to recruit specialties (Taske, Sharwood and Efstathis are but a few).

Armies take a generation to train, and it seems obvious that Australia lacks the resources and will to maintain a full strength Regular Army that can respond to every possible long term scenario.  A highly professional Regular Army core with Officers drawn from the widest possible pool of quality candidates and supported by large and flexible Reserve and by leaders across the community is a national imperative.  Perhaps our Reserve Officer training units should be recognised as being ideal vehicles to achieve some of the difficult prerequisites required – and these extend far beyond the mere training of the next generation of junior officers for the Active Reserve.
 

Terry Gygar
QUR 1963 – ‘67, 1973 –‘86