His name was Dean Presley Rule. We were gunners together in 10 Pl D Coy 1 RAR in the ’80s. He then went to Recon Pl. A great bloke but Blue Gleeson, the CSM of D Coy at the time, didn’t think so. Blue’s welco […]

I was on ex with 21 Const. After finishing an attack on a hill after reorg, a digger ran up to the OC 21 Construction and asked to check if there were any enemy left in the area. The OC gave permission, so the […]

We were in the Solomon Islands in 2003 – the first ones there when it all flared up. It took probably a couple of months to do all the main stuff we had to do and it started to quieten down a bit, so the b […]

Being back in the barracks in the early 1980s was normally always boring. With Labor in power, there were the usual Defence Force cuts, so little ammunition to waste or money for adventure-training stuff. There […]

It was ’78 or ’79, not sure, but 8/9 RAR was having a ranges week at Greenbank and the battalion had taken over several of the areas out the back where the kitchens etc were located.
Once the day’s activ […]

On K89, on a night recon patrol where I was the 2IC and the patrol commander was Steve King, we busted a US Special Forces patrol in an LUP waiting for the other half of their patrol to come back from […]

Matt Austin and Dean West and the Kings Cross massacre.
On a Sunday night in October ’95, Westy and I decided to get some
food from Hungry Jacks in Kings Cross. We’d been to Jason Kieghtly’s wedding the n […]

In 1986 I was chosen as the Infantry Signals Corporal to the Raven Trails Team to test the new Plessey Radio Communication System. Gerry Bruegum was the detachment sergeant and we had two great diggers from 6 […]

It was 6th August 1986. I was sitting at my desk doing something important as only a good 2LT would do, when in bounded one of my diggers… It was none other than the famous Rufus Rule. He was still only a lid […]

Even though I served 15 years, I was fortunate enough to only serve in the 1st Battalion, but from what I heard around the traps, Mortarmen were the same ilk across the regiment, ie. grotty little buggers but […]

In 8/9 RAR in the late ’80s me and my mate, Dicko were finally allowed to move out of the C Coy lines. The only place we could get was this shitbox nicknamed ‘The Pad’. We tried everywhere to get a rental place […]

With 1 RAR back in 1994, on Thursdays we were at sporty’s after lunch. Everyone had to do a sport – no excuses. Well, I had a fucked shoulder and could not get in the Aussie Rules side and had my discharge in […]

Heavy Weapons 8/9 RAR were asked to attend an exercise in support of 6 RAR Company Group plus elements of 6 RAR support company – to act as enemy for a 3 BDE exercise in Pucka. If my memory serves me right, i […]

We had a reo from RAR in my section in Somalia who had two UDs in country, the first while we were driving through Mogadishu on Yank trucks (luckily centre seating). A round went into the crowd of locals; we […]

When I was on my subject course for promotion in the Army in 1971 we did the training and course at the Greenbank Army Training Area near Brisbane. It was subject 1 and 2 for corporal. Sgt Lofty Wendt, who was […]

On our last exercise before deploying to Timor in April 2000, we were on ex in Wide Bay and the last night of the exercise was spent patrolling at night through a pine forest.
It was pissing down with rain […]

In 1979 Rick Piggott, Peter Haynes and I stole one of those yellow RAAF bikes on arrival at RCB Malaysia as we were sick of walking down to the BC bar or all the way up to either the Boatie Tigers Club or […]

After finishing the Kapooka chapel, 21 Construction was tasked to build the Port Wakefield test facility. All trades were involved. It so happened that in one of the brick walls the letters ‘FTA’ appeared but […]

K2 in 1976 I went straight to 6 RAR and straight out bush for a month. I had no stick books and had to draw a naked chick in my field notebook to have a wank. I was having a bat the night the war started. I was […]

The year was 1986 – the back end of ’86 to be precise. The Edgar Towner VC Gentlemen’s club had a special membership for the men of the 2nd/4th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment. An unlikely alliance forge […]