Dry your eyes, Princess
Guess who didn’t enjoy his National Service. A letter to The Australian
DEFENCE Minister Joel Fitzgibbon is talking through his backside when he states Gen Y recruits find “even a month-long commitment is an eternity to an Australian teenager’’, as I can well assure him my two years’ national service in the 1960s felt like 20. I think it might have had something to do with the brain-dead company of regular soldiers whose idea of great literature was a comic; they were generally hopeless people who would need to have been taught how to breathe in civvy life, and were, in the main, hopeless losers and drunkards. The same goes for the commissioned ranks. David William Hall Southport, QldComic reader, loser and drunkard….hmm, at least I’ve been noticed. David, if you’re in Brisbane on Apr 25 why not drop in to the Pig and Whistle at Eagle Street and I’ll arrange for you to have the floor as you explain to the 7RAR and SASR Associations your theories on dumb regular soldiers.
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I’m with you there – I don’t recall ever seeing my father with a comic book (unless he was cleaning up after me), and loser and drunkard doesn’t seem to fit either.
Mind you he was a Nasho that stayed in and became a Regular so perhaps that explains it. . .
David Hall is entitled to his opinion, but I don’t agree with him.
One of the strengths of the Australian military is that it has a history of being made up of people from all walks of life, and a variety of backgrounds. I don’t recall the divisions Hall speaks of when I did my Nasho. In fact, the differences between individuals in recruits and corps training (all Nashos) were no more or less apparent than they were once I was posted to a unit containing regs.
I did not advertise the fact that I was a teacher during rookies, however, because some of the NCOs were inclined to give teachers a hard time. I still read comics.
Sounds like an ungrateful idiot to me, and his children (Gen Y) probably got the attitude from him
My umpteenth pair of boots has more time up than this clown. From the AWM archives, it appears that the above mentioned served with 3 RAR in SVN in 68. Dave obviously has lingering issues over this time some 40 years after the event.
Dave should consider keeping his mouth shut, less someone “assists” him in the understanding of the conscripted versus volunteer dichotomy. Far be it from me to prove the point, but I resent his implication that my forebears were so stupid as to be incapable of reading anything more than slim picture books designed for 12 year old boys.