There's no room for Jack

One blazing hot afternoon, around a scrubby tree out in the middle of nowhere, I sat with a group of soldiers. I was a new chaplain back then and still getting used to the Army "way".

We were told we had to wait for four, maybe five, hours for an air extraction, and while I myself was amazed at the length of this wait, the soldiers seemed to think this was quite normal. They made little nests of their packs and webbing, and they sat and leaned upon these in the "wait position", with many fishing out paperback novels to pass the time. Young Turner produced a Game Boy from a basic pouch, which was pretty impressive.

My own inexperience began to show. I didn't have anything to read. Conversations were brief and light, and I quickly realised that these were only verbal screen-savers to pass the time. People dozed off; I looked about.

I hummed a bit. I studied the welts in my boots and began to count them to see if there was the same number on the left as the right. There were. I hummed a bit more. I watched a determined section of ants lead a frontal assault up the dizzy heights of Corporal Durham's webbing, until they disappeared in the tora-bora depths of his basic pouch. Durham only noticed the last one, but slammed a mighty big fist into his pouch before bashing it repeatedly. I wondered if ants had chaplains, and who would do the memorial services back in the nest. More time passed.

Jacko suddenly looked up from his enormous paperback and surveyed me curiously.

"Hey. You bored, Padre?" he said.

"Yep." No point in denying the obvious.

Jacko's eyebrows quickly rendezvoused in immediate concern. "Didn't bring a Bible, maybe," he said.

"Nope."

Jacko looked at his book, and then he did something that I thought was astonishing.

He suddenly tore his enormous paperback in two, right down the middle.

"Here, Padre," he said, rather solemnly, "You read this half."

I have since learned that soldiers like Jacko are everywhere in our Army. Jacko gave me half his book, but I soon came to realise that he - and many others - would not hesitate to give a lot more when the chips were down and real true-believers had to be counted on.

Some might complain that soldiers today have lost this art, but I don't think that's true.

In East Timor and in Bougainville, in Afghanistan and in Syria - and in Townsville and Darwin, Singleton and Sydney - the ingenuity, goodwill, and generosity of soldiers continue to appear. It's a solemn tradition that reaches right back through Vietnam. It goes back to Malaya and Korea and Changi - it goes back to Gallipoli and it's still with us today.

"Don't be Jack" is the first cultural lesson recruits learn at Kapooka. The simple admonition expresses the heart of much of Army ethos. And in that statement is also expressed much of the Christian Gospel and the message of the world's great religions.

But there's only one very maddening problem I am left with. My half of the book was great - but Jacko, wherever you are now - any chance of getting the other half? Cheers!

By Chap Ben Granger