Community support for ADF crucial

By Chap Mick Taylor
Location: Townsville, a few years ago. It was about 1430 hours, and I was on my way to see a soldier who was hospitalised in the General Hospital. I called into Flinders Mall to get him a book to read.

As I was walking back down the mall, a very drunken man about 20 feet behind me started yelling at me.

He could only see me from behind – I was wearing cams.

“HEY SOLDIER!” he bellowed, “How many BABIES did you slaughter in Vietnam?”

I ignored him, and kept walking up to the pedestrian crossing onto Stanley Street.

“HEY AJ! I’M TALKING TO YOU!”

A little voice rang out in my head, repeating an instruction that someone must have given me at some point: “Do not respond to this situation. Pretend he’s not there.”

And on and on his tirade went, with a string of vitriol about soldiers being murderers, etc, etc. He kept his distance – so courageously – but kept up the heckling.

He didn’t realise I was a chaplain, and he didn’t realise how the people standing with me at the lights were becoming distressed by his attacks.

One enormous, muscly fellow standing next to me suddenly groaned, and turned around, and faced the heckler.

With a voice that could blast and shatter solid concrete he suddenly roared some very ferocious and formidable words that simply could not be printed here without the paper catching on fire.

I was stunned by the furious and fiery onslaught.

The heckling suddenly ceased, and the man just muttered something under his breath and slipped away.

The big fellow then looked down at me and quietly quipped, “Don’t you worry there, little Padre! I’m on leave, see. I’m a recruit instructor, you know.”

“Yeah,” I said, wondrously, “I can tell.”

I thanked him, and other people offered words of support about the Army and how Townsville would shrivel up and vanish if the Army ever moved on.

The light began flashing green, and we walked across. I went back to Lavarack, and the heckling was reported.

Many of us – and our families – are anxious in these days of the commitment to forcibly disarm Iraq.

What sort of support can we expect from the Australian community? The Vietnam experience is still fresh in our collective memories. The reasoning for the abuse back then still defies belief today: The argument went something like this: “You deliberately chose to join the Army.

So you are deliberately choosing to fight. Therefore, we must intimidate you.”

The middle statement is not even accurate when you take National Service into account, nor is it in itself even logical, but that didn’t seem to matter.

It didn’t seem to matter back then that soldiers had suffered grievously, and in so many cases, had been horribly injured. It did not at all matter that our soldiers had been involved in nightmarish actions that saw the horrendous loss of life, both of their immediate mates, and those whom they were called to fight.

It didn’t seem to matter that these soldiers were feeling, breathing, human beings who were doing exactly what the elected Government of Australia had deployed them to do.

It didn’t seem to matter that hundreds of our soldiers actually died in the course of duty throughout those turbulent years. Back then, by and large, Australian soldiers were to be harassed and punished, and the mild heckling I encountered all those years after Vietnam was but an unpleasant echo of a very dark episode in the history of our nation’s public mindset.

Therefore, we can only be heartened that in these uncertain days, one clear message that is emerging in the wider community is that our personnel and our families must be given support, regardless of whatever the diverse feelings there are regarding commitments against Iraq.

In fact, when I recently attended a civilian church leaders meeting in Townsville, I was very heartened to hear church leaders who have little or no connection with Defence emphasising the need for everyone to support Defence personnel and their families, regardless of the ‘right or wrong’ of the Government’s position.

Soldiers do not have the luxury to decide which wars they will fight. Chaplains – with many others – have a duty to support soldiers, and to support their families. It is most encouraging to find in these days, unlike the days of yesteryear, how the Australian community seems to be recognising the importance of giving that support.

And if there is a recruit instructor out there who can remember the above incident – please drop me a line! I owe you one or two shouts, even though really, with great tongue in cheek, I still feel awfully sympathetic to your recruits!