QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY REGIMENT ASSOCIATION

Volume 19 Number 1

February 2007

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President's Report

	QUR Regimental Parade Jan 1979 Second Row : Pte K Gorman, Cpl M Capewell, Pte A Lines Front Row: 2Lt B Walsh, Maj I Bunce, LTCOL D Luttrell, Capt G Murray, WO1 A HAndley
	From left to right Brian Venz, Alan Press, Peter Rule, Brian Cuttriss Camp Concert Wacol
	A youthful Peter Morton on the day he was promoted Captain
	A slim, trim Bill Beach sanding duckboards at St Lucia

G’day Peter,

I have attached the story of my going into, deserting from and going back to the Legion, which I have just published in the newsletter of Amicale des Anciens de la Légion étrangère d’Australie of which I am the secretary. You may enjoy the read. If you want to publish it in the QURA newsletter then that is OK by me.
Have a great Christmas and festive season

Kind regards
Brian

MY STORY

 

Everyone has a story; ex-legionnaires are no exception. When I first became a member of the Amicale des Anciens de la Légion étrangère d’Australie (Amicale), almost everyone knew my story but as the Amicale has grown over the past 10 years there are now many who don’t.

 

..1 Public Servant, Canberra 1972
I was born and raised in Brisbane but this part of my story begins just after I turned 30.

The year is 1972.  I am a public servant in Canberra, having just graduated from the Australian National University (ANU) with a BA majoring in Philosophy.  I am working in the Commonwealth Public Service as a Computer Programmer / Systems Analyst.  Although I am progressing well in the Public Service, work is not my passion so I am finding more interesting outlets in other activities, mainly classical dance and rowing. 

I row every morning in the chill and the beauty of Lake Burley Griffin with a wonderful group of blokes in the ANU lightweight fours.  Then every evening, with Graham Farquhar, one of the crew, I train for two to three hours with the Bryan Lawrence School of Ballet.  Graham and I enjoy the contrast with rowing; here we also sweat and pain, but now to the strains of classical music and surrounded by beautiful women…Whenever the Australian Ballet or the Australian Opera come to Canberra we are roped in as extras, ‘spear carriers’ as they are called in the jargon of the performing arts.  Graham has gone on to become a Fellow of the Royal Society and one of Australia’s most cited scientists. 

But meanwhile my private life was in a mess.  …My French wife and I had married in 1965 and had been together nine years.  Now the relationship was obviously at an end.  With no children to make ending the marriage difficult, separation was inevitable.  It was just a matter of my exiting gracefully…
So…Finally in autumn 1973 I sign my half of our house over to my wife and early one morning walk out the door with a pack on my back and begin hitch-hiking.  I do not know where I am going or what I am going to do.  I am quite depressed and feel vaguely suicidal.  I know that it is the end of my life so far.  My sense of anger, pain, grief and failure, is palpable.  Yet along the way other thoughts impinge, no doubt trying to fill the void inside.

I recall seeing the Foreign Légion marching down the Champs Elysées with their impressive slow marching rhythm (88 steps to the minute) on French television one 14th July.  I remember at the time asking my wife’s grandfather (a veteran of Verdun and holder of the Médaille Militaire) what unit it was…’ce sont des ‘têtes brulées’ de la Légion étrangère’ and why were they marching so slowly…’qui va lent va loin’, he replies.  I also recall having heard of the Foreign Légion from Professor Peter Loofs at the ANU (He had served with distinction in Indochina, where he had earned the Médaille Militaire.) And so the Légion is a possibility but I don’t have any firm plans.  The emptiness inside still remains; still no clear focus ahead.  Sometimes I feel that, like one of the characters in Sartre’s novels, I have to cut my life in two.  I need above all, it seems, to escape myself, to make a complete break with my past.  So, after a brief stay with my father (my mother had died when I was 15) at the family home in Brisbane, I make that clean break and fly to the UK.

 

..2 Oil field diver, North Sea and Nigeria 1973
I loved London…it was full of museums, history and architecture.  I remember spending a full Sunday walking from one Christopher Wren church to another, admiring his lovely clean architecture, ending in the magnificent ‘St Pauls’.  I fell in love with this beautiful structure… Every lunch hour I would take my sandwiches and eat them in St Paul’s Cathedral.  It became a very special place for me.  At the time I had a temporary job delivering bank drafts by hand all over London while I waited for my commercial diving course to begin.

 

I found the diving course easy as I had done a lot of sport diving before.  For some reason I didn’t even mind the icy water.  After graduating I found a job with ‘North Sea Diving Services’ which was a company owned and run by Ian Fraser, who had won a Victoria Cross for his exploits as a ‘frogman’ in World War II.  At first most of my work was what was called in the diving parlance ‘rope in the wheel jobs’.  This mainly consisted in untangling cables from the propellers of boats of all sizes, mostly in freezing, ‘black’ (zero visibility) water.  Much to everyone’s surprise I loved it.
North Sea Diving Services sent me to Nigeria to work on contract to Gulf Oil at Escravos, a remote port in Biafra.  Nigeria was much harder.  Oil field construction diving is hard, dirty and dangerous.  I saw two divers suffer the bends; one became a cripple for life.  We were consistently diving at the limit of the safe depth for air (as distinct from mixture: helium/oxygen) diving and the visibility was mostly zero.  It was all very new to me and my diving course had not really prepared me for it.  Nonetheless, I found it deeply satisfying.  Once kitted up, it was magic to jump over the side and sink slowly through the (initial) blue layers, the evil-looking barracuda, which frequented all off-shore structures, looking at me curiously.  It represented for me total escape.  All thoughts of the past were gone.  There was only the present and the imperative of a job to be done.  However, at times, I got the sense: it wasn’t enough…

After four months in Nigeria, I returned to the UK.  I was asked to go to Aberdeen and do a conversion course to learn mixture and saturation diving.  Saturation diving is where the divers live in a habitat on the sea bed for weeks at a time, leaving their habitat to work at the same depth.  It saves the time, delay and expense of constant compressing and decompressing.  It was safer than what I had been doing and payed an extraordinary amount of money.  I realised then that I was at a crossroads and that diving was not enough to heal me from the past - I needed something more intense.

A couple of days after arriving back in the UK, I was having a beer with some fellow divers in a pub in Lowestoft, East Anglia, when suddenly I saw very clearly what I had to do.  The next morning I caught the train to Heathrow and took the first available flight to Paris.  I asked the taxi driver to take me to ‘Fort de Nogent’, the Légion recruiting post in Paris.  ‘T’es vraiment con’, said the taxi driver as I paid him.  I knocked on the green door and said, ‘Je veux m’engager’.  The sentry looked me up and down, ‘Donne moi ton passeport et viens par ici.  Est-ce que t’as déjà mangé?’ The sentry took me through to a small dining area where I was served, of all things, boudin and a quarter litre of rough red to wash it down.  ‘Le boudin’ is the anthem of the Légion.  It is sung on ceremonial occasions with all légionnaires present standing to attention.

 

..3 Légionnaire 1974-76
I was an unusual recruit.  I had a university degree, a bank account flush with money (divers are well paid), and I spoke fluent French.  I said that I wanted to join for all sorts of idealistic reasons.  I suspect that I was only accepted when I finally admitted that I was really joining for that most classical of reasons – a failed marriage!

Then the real introduction to the Légion; I remember it in vivid detail! We are shipped to Corte in Corsica for l’instruction, (basic training).  After arriving we are issued with a mountain of gear called ‘le paquetage’ which we have to faithfully account for at regular intervals throughout our Légion career.  The sergeant is issuing rifles by throwing them at the recruits.  The inevitable happens; someone drops one, followed by complete silence.  The sergeant looks over towards the supervising officer who slowly turns away.  Then, with measured tread, the sergeant walks unhurriedly over to the recruit, picks up the rifle and slams the butt into his stomach.  The recruit collapses to the ground, writhing in agony.  We get the message; no more rifles are dropped - ever!

Basic training was very demanding, but I was pretty fit and had by now been living a tough life for the previous six months, so I didn’t find the physical side of training very difficult.  What I found hard was the ‘breaking in process’, the destruction of all individuality; you became a member of a very tight group, your ‘section’.  All your pleasures and all your pains were as a member of your section.  Your life existed only as part of the section.  They used to say during basic training, ‘it’s easy to be a civilian and it’s easy to be a légionnaire.  It is only the transition that’s hard’.  It was during that basic training that I met ‘my little Irish mate’, Sean, who has remained a lifelong friend.

I volunteered for the parachute regiment because it was regarded as the elite regiment of the Légion and was sent to that jewel of a place, Calvi, a small attractive tourist town on the west coast of Corsica.  ‘La promo (promotion)’, jump training, was fun.  As we were about to board the Nord Atlas aircraft for our final qualifying jump, one of the group, Jamie, a Scotsman, turned to me and said, ‘You know, Sotton (my name in the Légion), I have now taken off in an aircraft only seven times in my life and I’ve never yet landed once…’

We were presented with our brevet (parachute wings) and posted to one of the companies of the renowned 2ème Régiment étranger de Parachutistes (2ème REP).  I was posted to the 3rd (Amphibious) Company, because of my diving background. 

 

At that time tradition required that newcomers be tested by having one of the ‘hard’ men of the Company pick a fight.  My opponent was Brillbough, a huge ‘Gaston’.  To put it mildly Brillbough beat the living daylights out of me.  I had no idea of street fighting and Marquess of Queensbury rules didn’t get me very far.  He then gave a repeat performance in his treatment of a French mate, Perrin, who had intervened on my behalf.  Unknown to both of us Brillbough was actually doing time in the Regimental prison and had been temporarily sprung for the afternoon by his extensive network of mates when he had decided to ‘test’ me.  Perrin and I, battered and bruised and both sporting two very black eyes, were paraded the next day before the Company Commander. 

 

We had decided that we would follow tradition; we would not ‘dob’ Brillbough in; we would say that we fought each other.  Fortunately for Brillbough the Capitaine believed us.  ’C’est un règlement de comptes’, said the advising Sergent-chef.  After that Brillbough regarded me as his best friend.  He was at times a handy ally. 

..4 Peacekeeping, Djibouti, 1975
In Djibouti at last we did some real soldiering.  As far as operational service goes though, it was pretty mild.  We spent most of our time out in the desert either on foot or in 4-wheel drive vehicles, patrolling the borders of Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea.  The Somalis were the most aggressive and followed the progress of our patrols from vantage points on the ridges, their arms resting along their long-barrelled rifles which were slung over their shoulders.  It was commonly said that they could hit a coke bottle at 300 meters with those rifles. 

 

There were occasional fire fights but mainly probes and retreats, on both sides.  One légionnaire on sentry duty had his throat cut by an intruder but, as no weapons were stolen, it was suspected to be the work of a thief.  It certainly smartened up the sentries though.

Two légionnaires died from heat stroke on one of our marches: pretty tame compared with other Légion campaigns. 
I have always loved deserts…to me they have a stark, lonely beauty which I can’t get enough of.  I enjoyed our long patrols much more than time spent back at our base near the town of Djibouti itself.

Some of our patrolling was in ‘Puma’ helicopters.  These were terrific as we covered enormous distances ‘in air conditioned comfort’.  The pilots used a terrain-following protocol, flying meters above the ground and following the contours.  We would sit with open doors, no seat belts, feet braced against the superstructure of the helicopter, hearts in our mouths, grinning at each other like kids on a roller coaster.  Suddenly the ‘chopper’ would stop dead and land.  We had seconds to get out, as the Algerian-war-trained pilots would touch down and then immediately take off again.  I was lucky as, being the machine gunner, I was first out.  The last man often had to jump from a considerable height and would crumple on the ground cursing ‘ces putains d’aviateurs’.

I loved my time in Djibouti but all good things come to an end and in late February 1975, after six months in TFAI, my Company returned to Calvi and settled down to the rather hum drum existence of a barracks soldier in peacetime. 
Our regular monthly routine in Calvi started with a week of ‘Compagnie de services’, which meant that our Company provided all the manpower for running the Regiment.  We provided the 24 hour guard for the Regiment, mess orderlies for the Officers’ and Sergeants’ messes and manpower for any task that needed doing.  Everybody hated that week with a passion.  After that we would spend two weeks or so in general training activities.

Then came the part that I really loved: field exercises or manoeuvres.  Normally these would start with a parachute jump in full kit, carrying rations for four or five days.  We would then head off into the mountainous interior of Corsica and march from dawn to dark across some of the roughest and most beautiful country I have ever seen.  Before setting out we would be issued with our standard French Army ration packs, which we would go through, discarding almost everything except the cognac, cigarettes and coffee, replacing the remaining tinned junk with good food, such as camembert, eggs, paté de foie gras and smoked bacon, purchased from the ‘Foyer du Légionnaire’ (Canteen).  We would also carry a one litre ‘bidon’ (water bottle) of rough red wine to savour of an evening.  Some of the marches were hard but I loved it; they were the best part of being in the Légion.  After our week in the bush the cycle began again with a week of ‘Compagnie de services’.

I was a good légionnaire and was selected to attend Peloton Caporal (Caporal’s course) at the Légion’s training centre in Corte, Corsica.  I topped the course and was commended by the Colonel commanding the 2ème REP.
To my dismay, on my return I was posted away from my Section (this group with which I had completely identified) and all my mates, to the ‘Centre Amphibie’, which was outside the main barracks area and responsible for all marine activities.  My roles were diving instructor and ‘pilote de zodiac’ but in reality I spent most of my time with a pencil responsible for controlling the inventory of all of the marine equipment.  I no longer went out on manoeuvres with my section into the mountains of Corsica.  I loathed the ‘Centre Amphibie’.

When I approached my platoon commander to ask to be transferred back to my Section, he said that I had been selected to go on the next Sergeant’s course at Corte, that I was too valuable at ‘Centre Amphibie’ (because of my diving experience) and that I would just have to stay there.  The odd thing was that most légionnaires were envious of anyone posted to ‘Centre Amphibie’ because it was regarded as a plum job.

But then my life took an unexpected and irrevocable turning…

 

..5 My Big Mistake, Desertion, 1976
It began with a ‘phone call to home.  It was difficult, but possible, to call Australia from Calvi.  I spoke to my father, the ‘old man’ as I called him.  He sounded very depressed and told me that his health was failing.  He had been diagnosed with heart problems and diabetes.  He left me with the clear impression that he would not be alive by the time I finished my contract.  I resolved to see him. 

 

In a conversation with my platoon commander, Lt Pérushault, I gently probed the possibility of leave, ‘Tu connais bien, c’est la Légion, ce n’est pas possible’.  I started to think about the idea of going AWOL (absent without leave) to see my father. 

Out of the blue, Ian, one of my best friends from Australia suddenly turned up in Calvi to see me.  He and I had rowed together in the ANU lightweight fours.  He offered to help me ‘escape’.  I would be able to see my father.  I was sick of barracks life with ‘nothing at all (meaning, no soldiering) going on’ as my mate, Sean, put it.  I felt trapped at the ‘Centre Amphibie’.  It also appealed to my sense of adventure. 

 

I took my friend up on his offer to give me a lift in his hire car from Corsica to mainland France (in the car ferry) and then across France to Belgium.  It was all too easy…

I cannot explain how it came about that I deserted.  Most people have done something in life that they deeply regret, that they would love to be given another chance to do differently.  Deserting from the Légion was my big life mistake.  I would do anything to undo it…

 

..6 Australian Army 1976-82
I returned to Australia and lived with my father.  After being retired for medical reasons from Australia Post, his health began slowly to improve and he went on, after having a quadruple bypass and heart valve replacement, to live another ten years.

I joined the Australian Army Reserve, QUR (Queensland University Regiment), started studying again and got a job as a computer programmer with the QUT (Queensland University of Technology).  I started to put my life together and tried to forget about the Légion.

My training in the Légion prepared me well for the Australian Army.  I was promoted rapidly through the ranks and was commissioned a Lieutenant (Infantry) in 1978.  I was posted as Platoon Commander, Assault Pioneer Platoon, 9RQR (9 Royal Queensland Regiment), where I really enjoyed the challenges posed by mine warfare, field engineering and explosives.

The Australian Army Reserve was very different to the Légion.  The training was far less harsh and more intellectual.  I missed the long marches in the mountains and deserts.  I missed the comradeship that comes from shared hardship and living together 24 by 7.  But, strangely enough, the thing I missed most was the singing.  When légionnaires get together and sing Légion marching songs, it is quite magical; one is transported into a world of comrades, a band of brothers…

 

Only on one occasion in my time in the Australian Army, when I was invited on an exercise in the Mount Royale area near the Australian Army Infantry Centre at Singleton with recent graduates from Duntroon Military College, did I feel back on familiar territory.  This exercise was designed to develop the best of Australia’s young infantry officers; for me it was a replay of one of the REP’s manoeuvres; and I loved it.

I thought that I had forgotten about the Légion.  Then one day on lunch break from work at the QUT, I saw a copy of ‘Paris Match’.  On the front cover was a picture of my old Platoon Commander on active service with the 2ème REP in Kolwezi, where the REP carried out the last jump into combat undertaken by the French Army.  The operation was mounted to rescue French and Belgian civilians who were being held hostage by insurgents.  I bought the ‘Paris Match’ and took it into the Botanical Gardens, sat on a park bench and cried my heart out; my Regiment had gone into action and I had missed it. 

 

A few days later I flew to Sydney, saw the French Consul and asked what my options were for honouring my contract with the Légion.  ‘Il faut retourner en France vous présenter à la Légion.’ I resolved then and there to do just that.  The only problem was how to untangle myself from the life I had created in Australia.

With two associates I had just established our own business, Dialog Pty Ltd, which specialised in computer software services.  To add to the mix I had also fallen in love; and because of the new business, I was in debt.  I had just been promoted Lieutenant in the Australian Army and also had just committed to leading the diving component of a Queensland Museum Expedition to recover the aircraft (and perhaps the remains) of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith from its watery grave off the southern coast of Burma.

I promised myself that I would honour any commitments that I had made in Australia and then return to the Légion and volunteer to complete my contract.  I felt that I had to go back with a clean slate.  I couldn’t keep on leaving a trail of disaster behind me.
 

..7 Charles Kingsford Smith Expedition, 1983
It took us until 1983 to get to Burma…

On 7th November, 1935, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (‘Smithy’) and his co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge disappeared in their Lockheed Altair off the South West coast of Burma while attempting to break the London to Melbourne air speed record.  The Queensland Museum sponsored an expedition (which was financed by the public and the expedition members) to find the last resting place of these two famous Australian aviators.

The RAAF flew us and all our equipment from Australia to Burma in Hercules aircraft.  We landed in Rangoon on March 16th 1983.  The Burmese government was exceedingly cooperative and generously supplied us with a Burmese naval vessel complete with Navy divers to assist us.

We marked out a search site off Aye Island, a nautical mile off Burma’s Tenasserim coast, the area that our research had indicated was the most probable crash site.  We worked from dawn to very late at night for 10 continuous days in conditions which were as difficult as any professional diver would be asked to work in – totally black water and strong currents.  After 10 days we had completely exhausted ourselves and our finances.  We found ship wrecks that no one had known about but we did not find ‘Smithy’ or his aircraft.

I returned home to begin repaying my debts…


..8 Return to the Légion, 1990
In 1984 my son, Sean was born and his sister, Lainey 13 months later.  I had a whole new set of responsibilities. 

Ironically, the birth of my children made it even more important for me to go back to the Légion.  How could I face my children later if all I could say was that I had deserted from the renouned French Foreign Légion? What sort of a role model would that be for them?  I waited until they were of school age and then went back.

The morning before I left, Jennie, my wife, and I took the kids to a playground not far from home.  As I watched them playing, not knowing how long it would be before I saw them again, the image came to me of throwing away a piece of my heart.

I flew to Munich, where my ex-légionnaire mate Sean lived, enroute to Paris.  There was a magical period of four or five days where Sean and I were légionnaires on leave again.  We went from ‘locale’ to ‘locale’ just drinking the wonderful Bavarian ‘dunkel’ ale and talking and talking.  We had not really spent any time together since the Légion.

Then I caught my flight to Paris and onward to Marseilles.  I was carrying my original Légion uniform in my leather carryall.  I took the train to Aubagne, walked from the station to the Quartier Viénot and presented myself at the ‘Poste de Police’, ‘Caporal Sotton, matricule 152878, je suis déserteur, je veux compléter mon contrat’.

Eventually I was shown into the presence of Adjudant-chef Rémy, responsable pour le Bureau des Anciens de la Légion étrangère.  He had been a caporal with me in the REP in 1976.  ‘Je vous connais mon Adjudant-chef…Je te connais aussi…’ He explained that I had been amnestied under the law of the 4th August 1981 and that I could no longer finish my contract with the Légion.  However, if I wished to reengage for five years, then it was likely that with my good record and my service as an officer in the Australian Army that they would overlook the fact that I was over the age limit.

It was one of the most difficult decisions that I ever had to make: here was my chance for redemption, but I knew that I could not ‘desert’ Sean and Lainey.  ‘C’était un point d’honneur que je vienne me porter volontaire pour compléter mon contrat, mon Adjudant-chef, mais j’ai deux enfants de bas âge et je ne peux pas me réengager’.  Adjudant-chef Rémy used a phrase that I have only heard used in the Légion, ‘C’est correct’, meaning, that is the right/honourable thing to do.

He then asked le plastron (duty sentry) to escort me from the Légion headquarters.

 

..9 Secrétaire de l’Amicale, 1995-2006
When I returned from France my story was published in the ‘Sunday Sun’ of 12th August 1990.  I was contacted by Otto Wagner who was the president of the FFFLAA (Former French Foreign Légionnaires Association of Australia).  I was unaware then that this was a splinter group that had broken away from the formal Amicale.  With my fluent French and English, I was an obvious choice for secretary, so I became secretary of Otto’s group.  Otto’s group had many fine ex-légionnaires, veterans of Indo-china and Algeria.  Gradually we all began to realise that the FFFLAA should not exist and that we must reunite with the formal Amicale.

In 1995 Otto’s group was re-integrated back into the Amicale.  The incoming president Paul Kieffer asked if I would consider being secretary.  I said, ‘you know my story, do you still want me to be secretary?’ ‘Yes’, he said …’Then I would be honoured’, I replied. 

 

So, between the two ‘Amicales’ I have been secretary for the past 15 years.  For this I am very grateful as it has allowed me to give something back to the Légion which has given me so much.

Hindsight is a wonderful teacher, asking us to look again at something in our past that we find difficult to live with…What can I say now? Without that mistake I would not have been able to do one of the most meaningful things that I have done with my life: be the father of Sean and Lainey.

 

Of such stuff is life!

 

 

My Story by Brian Smith 4 December 2006

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