Mark Incze - RAAF veteran

A seed is planted

High school and primary school all at the same place, grew up in the same house in Newcastle, in the Lake Macquarie area. And good friends, lots of sports, wasn't the best student till I went to a mate's place and I saw his dad doing some electronics on TVs and I just happened to ask how he got into that. And he explained, "Oh, I was in the air force for a time." "Oh, what did you do in the air force?" was my question. And he said, "I was a gunny." "What's a gunny?" And he said, "Oh, I'm an armament fitter." "And what do they do?" "Well, armament fitters will play with bombs, missile launchers, ejection seats." And all of that just resounded with me for some reason. So in my head, I think I'm 14 at the time and I just straight away said I want to look into that. So I went to recruiting office at age of 14. And then they said, "How's your grades? Start to pick them up and once you graduate year 10, we'll take you as an apprentice armament fitter." And so picked up the grades, got everything squared away. Recruiting was what it was, all the medical tests and the cup and cough left, cup left and turn your head, that sort of coughing thing. That was odd for a teenage kid and then everybody meets up in Sydney when we hit the bus to drive down to Wagga for air force recruitment and RSTT, the training down there. But, yeah, that's where it started. Real desire, I don't know too many people that know what they want to do at that age. And as soon as he said that I went, "That's what I want to do. I want to go and play with bombs and missiles and things that blow up, that sounds exciting".

Arriving at the RAAF School of Technical Training

So off to the bus and RSTT, it was for the next year and a half. I think it was 14 weeks of basics or boot camp, the running the drills, the getting yelled at, weapons training. Getting your head shaved, don't need that anymore, I'll do it myself. But all these kids with long hair and all that sort of stuff coming in, everyone's 15 to 16, still can't believe my parents signed off on it. I look at kids now in youth or playing soccer or whatever, I'm like, "I was that age? Skinny little thing." And get down there and they start to shape you into what they want but we catch the bus down there actually and as soon as we pull up, "All right, everybody out, get on the yellow line." And all the corporal drill instructors, sergeant drill instructors just going at you straight away and one kid didn't even get off the bus, just stayed on the bus, went straight back to Sydney, "I am not doing this", in his mind. And so everybody else was like, "All right, see you man." And we got off and a bit of a shock start as a kid, but there was some excitement to it as well, it's new, it's fresh but the haircut thing was something that was bizarre. You'd go in for a haircut and they'd actually ask you, "Well, how do you want it?" "Short back sides." And then they'd just, straight down the middle and you'd be sitting next to guys with this full ... I always had short hair anyway, but these guys with these big hairdos and everything. And then, straight down the middle, their face is like, "What have you done to me?" And then they'd push us out the back door so no one could actually see what haircut everyone was getting. But you go out the back and everyone looked like this, actually, it was bunch of models, all the same in their overalls and bald heads. So kind of cool introduction … It was just, "Yes, Corporal. No, Corporal." and you didn't really have a relationship. That was actually one of the weird things, after weeks and then you graduate as an apprentice and they're about to send you away. Here are these guys that you think hate you for almost a year and a half and then, "Congratulations, well done Apprentice Incze" and it's like, "You like me now? I thought you hated me for a year and a half." There was just this mentality like that.

Interest in Anzac Day 

I'd always get pretty emotional during Anzac Days. I don't think I ever remember being to one. Nowadays, schools will show up to them. In high school, I don't think I ever went to one, but I would watch them on TV and the stories and then some movies, mix all that together and there was always a pretty big interest in the military. I never really knew where that would take me, but it wasn't until my mate's dad mentioned that, "Yeah, that's where I'll fit, join the air force, go become a gunny."

Exhaustion from training

I actually have a mate that, he regressed in his physical training because he was an elite sort of athletics guy and they would get into him about why are your speeds for your 2.4 run dropping? Why are you getting worse? And he had to tell him, "Well, I would train all the time and I'm not now". So yeah, I don't actually remember, I remember falling asleep, almost falling asleep a lot and one of the keys was, they would tell you, "If you're going to fall asleep in this classroom, stand up." So you go out and do the physical training, up at 5:00, whatever it was, run around and everything and then you're sitting in a classroom with some boring doctrine about, "This is where the air force is coming." It's still interesting but when you're exhausted, head nodding off and you see guys standing up all the time, guys and girls just trying to stay awake. So there's a level of that, I think, more exhausting, trying to be on point with everything. Everything's sharp, everything creases and you're ironing, all the little things like that was, I'd say, stressful. I didn't realize it was stress at the time, but yeah, you're just trying to impress and not be the guy that gets called out constantly.

No. 2 Aircraft Depot, Richmond

2AD is where I was at Richmond, that was the service area for the Hercs that are based there. So it's all transport, so the Caribous, Hercs and 707s predominantly out of Richmond. As far as gunnies go, like I said, there's not many bullets and bombs and missiles, ejection seats that go onto a transport aircraft, so very little stuff that we'd play with. Bomb racks off the Herc where they push a pallet out and the parachute has to come out the back, there's a bomb rack that they use to pull the parachute out the back there, I believe, and then a flare gun up the front and some search and rescue equipment which is flares and all that sort of stuff, so we would house that and allocate that to aircraft where needed. So, kind of a sleepy posting there. I think there were seven of us, eight of us on the base, gunnies that is, and we also serviced rifles up in Malaysia. So, in the one and a half years I was there, I got a six-week deployment up to Malaysia to service a few hundred SLRs back in the day, the L1A ones. So that was fun, two of us went up to do that, that was a blast getting to visit Malaysia, travel around a bit up there but then you go from there to the Hornet Squadrons. So I was at 2OCU, which is the squadron that grabs the trainee pilots ... They've gone through all their other aircraft, now they want to be a Hornet pilot, 2OCU is the training squadron. So a lot of dual-seater Hornets, whereas most of the active squadrons are single and were high intensity, lots of activities going on, whether you'd be on a weapons crew, gunnery crew, chaff or flare crew, you'd be on the flight line itself. A shift, B shift, a flight line would be whenever the jets wanted to go, whenever the pilots are scheduled. So bigger teams, you're talking three squadrons on the base, so there's gunnies all over plus a maintenance squadron, which is more gunnies there. So tons of gunnies on the base but then there's just tons of people as well. So lots of action sort of stuff going on as far as weapons and everything, way more involved, which was exciting to get there, after, I wasn't sitting at Richmond for too long, enjoyed my time there, really good friends out of Richmond but, yeah, the squadrons at Williamtown was where the fun was for as a gunny.

Flying in Hercules and Caribous

I went up in a Caribou once, we were dropping some sonar bouys out the back. That there was what it was. The most time I will have spent in the Hercs getting around was anytime you had to go somewhere and the Hercules, the C130 would pick up and grab gear and then throw people in the back as well, depending on what the role was of the plane. So when I was at Williamtown, I probably went on more rides in a Herc than I did when I was at Richmond. There was no real need for me to go on a Herc most of the time. Did fly up to Malaysia in one, so that's a lot of hours sitting there on a buzzing Herc. Flying in Hercs was always interesting, depending if you had gear in there you could find a place to lay down. If it was just for personnel and they said, "Let's get this squadron to here", you would sit literally knee in, knee out, and I'd be looking at you but you are just here, and you sit there for six hours flying up to wherever it was just looking at Dale, going, "Oh excellent, how are you mate? Yeah, you good? Okay." So very comfortable, very friendly with everybody else for however many hours you're sitting on a Herc ... depending on the role that they're carrying out. A Herc will have to drop some cargo and it'll go out the back. They put the lower ramp, the back door would come up as well. It goes inwards but throw the pallet out the back and they have to see and the load master watches where it goes, that sort of thing. So on the Caribou when we were punching out some sonar buoys out the back and then throwing out flares and that sort of thing or smoke flares, I think it was, out the back as well, looking out the back, hooked up, flying along, just, here's this pretty awesome view backwards.

F18 joyride - I

The luck of being posted to 2OCU, which was the training squadron and having all of the two-seater planes, is every now and then when we did a deployment and sometimes just at the base they would grab some guys and when you got posted there your name went at the bottom of the list and slowly they would just give joyrides, and sometimes there'd be people outside the squadron or that sort of thing. But your name just slowly creeped to the top and I was there for about eight and a half years. So in eight and a half years we've got three different F18 rides, just amazing. You go on a plane and you can see a lot, in Cessnas, and you get up to 10,000 feet or something and you can see but being in a Hornet with that full canopy bubble where you can just look everywhere, back over your shoulder and, you know, can see both wings, the experience is amazing. I call up my dad, "Thanks for your taxpayer dollars, guess what I got to do today" as a joke. But just taking off, you feel the insane power as it sort of pushes off. My first flight was Townsville and the pilot's, "What do you want to do?" And I just said, "Just show me the plane." So we did a 2000 feet to 20,000 feet putting the plane on its butt, just going to the sky and can't lift your arms and that sort of stuff. Did pass the speed of sound and I'm expecting some big sonic boom and all you see is the digital 0.8, 0.9, 1, felt nothing, it's all happening behind you but then the big one was the pulling seven and a half Gs, and no one told me that when you are into pulling Gs, you've got to do this with your body. So I'm, "Okay, let's go." and he cranks it round and all of a sudden the world's turning in and I'm, "Whoa, this is not good." and he's just talking like it's fairly normal, that's what I remember anyway. Rollout and I'm like ready to puke my guts up but then the pilot, and I had this on all three, anytime you would feel sick they would let you control the stick a little bit, just take your mind off it. So he's, "All right, that's Townsville, let's get you back there before you throw up in this plane." So the first flight was awesome and you did what they call a high alpha where the plane is sort of nose up and just flying really slowly. So the flaps are down, the forward A-Lines, I think, they're rolled over and he's just going so slow and you look at the wings and they've got missile launchers and missiles on the side of them and the wings are just rattling and it looks like they're about to fall off and just cruising like this, and I've seen it at an air display but being inside the plane, just a shake and the stress that they put these jets through. We'd crawl all over them to inspect them and stuff, but just the stress that they can handle is quite amazing. 

F18 joyride - II

My second flight was take-off from Williamtown and it's all clear cover everywhere and I don't think I've ever been more claustrophobic than going through that thick cloud cover and it's just here, because you're in the bubble of the cockpit, and it just felt weird. I'm like, "Is this going to be the whole flight?" then you popped up the top and it's all blue sky, all cloud cover below us and we're in twoship or two planes. The pilot pulls up, right up underneath you, I'm taking photos, it's like this big toy just hanging, just there, and you look on a TV where they're flying next to each other and how close they appear to be and it's just cool and there's the racks that I've fitted or something and over the top, and the guy in the back, we're both like, "Whoa.", that's awesome and 30,000 feet out north and we 30,000 feet down southwest and then he goes, "All right, here comes the fun. We're going to pretend to drop a bomb out on this bridge." So we dropped down to 500 feet, out the Blue Mountains area coming in from West Sydney is what I recall and my pilot, the other guy's a mile away and they're just cruising, we're sort of wingtip staying together, but he's cruising, my pilot goes, "You ready for some fun?" "Yeah." and he goes, "Look, there's a house, there's some sheep, there's a cow, there's trees." And he's ducking it through hills, "Sir, I'm going to puke." and so I grabbed the bag, had a bit of a hurl, a lot of a hurl, actually, and then he's let me fly for a few seconds and he goes, "All right, the bombing runs coming up." and so he comes in and does the bombing run and there's a little map pocket down here, I puked in the bag, wrapped that up, no issues, mask back on, and I wanted an inverted photo looking back at myself because on the first flight I'd got a couple of photos and you see the rear stabs in the background and you've got the visor on, happened to be blotchy cloud, looks cool. So I want an inverted one. So goes inverted for me and so I get this photo back couple of weeks later after development ... and I remember rolling out and something hit my leg, I'm like, "Oh, there's the bag." So I put it back in the map pocket but in the photo, we're upside down and the puke bag is sitting right there on the canopy, right above my head and it's like, "Oh, that could have been quite a big mess." But yeah, that was cool, the pilot threw it around everywhere. That was fun.

F18 joyride - III

The last one was the CO of 2OSU took me in and he actually asked me, I'd been there a while and I'd just been posted out, so my nickname's Spider, he goes, "Spider, what do you want to do?" I go, "Oh sir, I'd love a lot of hand on stick." And the funny thing was I go, "I'd like to do a touch and go." A touch and go is where you come in, you land and then just throttle up again and take back off and so you don't actually stop your landing, you keep on going. So, touch and go and he sits there and he thinks for a second and he goes, "You know what, Spider? Our guys do a bunch of hours before they ever get to do a touch and go." I'm like, "No sir, I don't actually want to fly the plane. I want you to fly the plane, I just want to sit in the back and do a touch and go." But I was always amazed that he sat there and contemplated it for a second to let me have a go. I'm like, "No way." But yeah, lots of hand on stick on that one. We're doing wing overs where you come up, drop the plane, roll it back down and he's talking me through the whole thing. He's probably doing some foot pedals and that, but I'm on the stick doing seven and a half G myself this time because I knew what to do with the G suit, flex against it and breathing and that sort of thing and then he goes, "All right, you want to see what this thing can do?" "Yes, let's go." And he takes up this canyon out northwestern Newcastle and me on the, off the side and just banging through that, yeah, awesome trip and then he did the touch and go, which wasn't as exciting as I thought it'd be. So I've got about five hours up in the back of Hornets, kind of.

The Alternate Mission Equipment bay

AME bay is the alternate mission equipment bay. So alternate mission equipment, you have the Hornet, usually it's what we call clean skin, so the wings have nothing on them. They mandatorily will have a LAU7 launcher on the wingtip and then maybe some missiles on the wingtip, but if it's got nothing under the skin and under the underbelly, it’s a clean-skin plane, anything that links up to that. So to put a bomb on the wing, you would need a pylon, in that pylon's a bomb rack and then you put the bomb on. That pylon is called alternate mission equipment. Your mission is normally fighting and then, if you want do bombing or something else or add extra stuff under there, the alternate mission equipment. So that's all taken care of at AME bay. So it all would come off, go back to AME bay for maintenance, repair, or sometimes just to house it and, yeah, AME bay had been in a bit of a state of disrepair so the base handpicked some guys, some electricians as well to come in and do electrical work and then a couple of gunnies to go and build it back up and have some actual AME for the base because we were running short on things at times and so, yeah, it’s kind of a prestigious thing where they handpicked me. I didn't want to go because I was loving 2OCU, the gunny section there, the family life, it was a really good bunch of guys, the family, knowing what I knew about the squadrons, but got there, did some good work, an independent inspector over there, which do the level of inspection towards the end of each maintenance set and then from there is where I got attached to 77, after September 11th had happened.

Living on the base at Richmond

Lived on base when I was at Richmond and then lived on base at Newcastle. That was a lot of fun times, actually, played Defence Force basketball, so played for the Air Force New South Wales team, would get picked for the combined Army Air Force New South Wales, we’d combine a team and then we would play each of the states. So I've done a lot of ... that’s how I’ve seen most of Australia, actually is on the back of Defence Force basketball and there was a bunch of guys that could play, so fond memories of each day, we finish around four o'clock. If it's winter or something, head to the basketball courts, it was summer, maybe go to the beach or something but the basketball court there was really good and lots of guys would get down and good skill levels but eating at the mess and stuff like that, it's always pretty healthy meals, I guess fairly good food, always been amazed at how they would feed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people as they come through but I still get laughed at, the way I do eat based on that, go back to bootcamp where they would tell you've got 10 minutes to go and eat and really you'd have 45 minutes or an hour or whatever, but you got 10 minutes, you just get in there and you jam food into your head, get a drink, and then you go out and I still sort of eat like that, I haven't changed that, get in trouble for that sometimes but the base was always interesting when they would do night flights, be trying to go to bed and the ground would shake, the noise. I was actually at one point the closest bedroom to the runway, that was excellent, at times not so excellent … So, a lot of mates, just to get out of town go up to Newcastle, Richmond, sort of inland. So, go up, in Newcastle you could hit the beach, go to the lake, whatever. My parents' house became a stop in for lots of young air force kids, I get to Richmond, I'm still only 17, 18, get to 19, 20 and when you’re hitting the pubs and stuff, you need a good base to stay at and my parents' place was a good base to stay with all the boys, we go out in the night into town or that sort of thing as well.

September 11 and the call to active service

So, September 11th happens, and I'm at home, I'm actually staying with a mate and his girlfriend at the time and I didn't really know much about it and he comes home from B shift, "Check this out mate." We've come home early, he's come home early and we think we're off to war, they just sent us home and so September 11th has happened, I've met this young lady a few months ago from America and I'm supposed to fly out to the States on September 16th and then, short story, Impulse Airlines was an airline at the time, as well, so within, in this week span, Impulse Airlines has collapsed, I'm supposed to fly Qantas, couldn't get hold of them because of the Impulse Airlines and everything but I ended up flying out to the States and no one's decided whether we're going anywhere yet and I've probably been in 11 and a half years at the time and as a fighter squadrons or bomber squadrons, no one has deployed since Korea, so it's almost 50 years. So, I get to the States and all my girlfriend, who is now my wife, all her family. "Oh, you're in the Air Force, are you going to go to war with us?" "No, we don't do that, I'm Australian, we might send some SAS or a couple of army guys or maybe a Hercules or one boat or something, one ship or something. The Navy will do more than we will do, the army will do." And then, so for a month I'm over there brainwashing myself into we won't do anything. Get off the plane, first muster parade on the base the next day … and "Hey, Corporal Incze, how was your trip?" "Oh yeah, pretty good sir. Thank you." "Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it. You're attached to 77, you're off to war." "What?" "Yeah, we're doing something." So from there, telling the family was interesting because we didn't know where we were going, so there's this nervousness. You look back and mum was mum, really concerned. Dad was, I think, concerned but he didn't let it on like mum did.

Deployment to Diego Garcia

We end up finding out that we're going to Diego Garcia and you look at it on a map, here's Australia, here's Africa, here's India, smack dab in the middle of the Indian Ocean is this small atoll, Diego Garcia. I'm like, "What is going to happen out there?" and so mum's still concerned, "Oh, you're still at wartime?" and I'm like, "Mum, this, that's a long boat ride. I don't know how they're going to get a plane out there." And so what they end up doing was they used us, I believe, more as an experiment; How would Australians go deploying and interacting on the air force side, on the fighter squadron side with the US or allies? And so they deployed 60 people total and four F18s. So, quite honoured to be hand selected for that. So, the independent inspector for AME bay, there was a flight sergeant, but he was an instrument fitter and as the senior gunny in the section, they grabbed me, sent, I think it was six or seven other gunnies, and then had your other trades to take care of those four planes and our job was guard the airspace, nothing was ever going to come, but that's what we believed anyway and we got told we were deploying for three months. So, some interesting phone calls out of that, "Hey girlfriend in the States, you know I said I was going to come back quick?" Yeah, off to war. So her mind's gone to the drama of what it is and then, ironically, I sent a photo of myself on Diego Garcia and Diego Garcia, if you took all the military stuff off and put a hotel on it, people would fly there just to hang out on this gorgeous island, blue water and everything. So I sent a photo of myself all tanned up, palm trees in the background. She's like, "That's your wartime?" "Yeah, yeah." So I tell people, I'm almost embarrassed to say I'm a veteran, but I'm still proud that I got to be part of that group. From that group there was another... So we went for three months, another squadron followed us three months again and out of that, once I had returned back to Williamtown, we ended up, I think it was 75 Squadron we sent as a full squadron and I believe they went to, maybe Iraq, I'm not sure but we were the step in. Some cool stuff out of that, met Sir Peter Cosgrove, he came over to congratulate us on what we were doing. We weren't doing much, but there was thousands of Americans there. It's a massive base. We would deploy as 2OCU and go to Townsville every six months and we'd get big bombs to load. And normally we use small stuff as practice rounds. These big bombs, 2000-pound bombs or 500-pound bombs, we wouldn't get many, let's say a hundred tops, they're expensive. The Americans would have a ship that would come in and they would take four days to unload that thing, all the bombs and it's just the amount of money that was on that island in personnel, buildings, weapons, planes but they would fly B52s, and I believe it was B2 bombers out of there, round trips up to Afghanistan and back. Yeah, we’d get there and they sort of split us up to the camp. I think on the north side, tents was corporals and below, and I got promoted within a few days of being there, got promoted to sergeant so they put me in the blocks and in those blocks were the pilots and ended up being the pilots for the B52s. So we ended up having a chat with a couple of guys, came back real excited one day and they actually thought they had gotten Osama Bin Laden, they were dead set that they had done it and that had been the goal for a while. Go and find that guy and take him out. Cool relationships but you've got these thousands of Americans on an island owned by the British, couple hundred British police, military police that police the island. You have Mauritians serving the island and then you had 60 Aussies show up and everybody knew we were there, everybody. Everyone wanted to hang out with us. We'd put on an Australia Day event, that was kind of cool. Hundreds of people coming down for a sausage sizzle and all this sort, some Aussie beers and that sort of thing but, yeah, it was interesting. I think they did a really good job, really gave me some insight into, I guess the real military, I'll say it that way. No disrespect for anyone that's served, but there are people that have served in the thick of it and then there's people that have done what I've done and everybody has a place and I get that.

A three-month deployment

I'm talking to some guys, one military police guy, he's a Puerto Rican ... and he tells me the story that, you know, joined up to the reserves and he could get deployed at any time. So he goes home one day, has to tell his wife he's packing his bags and he's leaving in 24 hours and he's going for a year. My story was, well, war breaks out, I don't get told for ages, I get told, five weeks later we deploy and I went for three months. The contrasts, so he tells me his wife is throwing pots and pans at him, "I told you this would happen." and I'm like, "Mate, how are you doing that?" and there's all these Americans go for a year and, I believe, there's more Aussies, they went three months with us, three months with the next group and the next guys went, I think six, maybe nine months, I think, where they started to realize, okay, longer deployments are okay.

Riot training

I've got to be a riot guy. What's a riot guy? Well, the military police needed people as part of an exercise to act like they hated them and wanted to riot against them, so I volunteered for that. We would work a day on and a day off, 24 hour shifts, and on one of the days off we'd just play cricket with, looking through the riot shields, punching riot shields and everything and they're smashing you with battens and stuff like that, throwing potatoes at them, real good fun. They have a shield wall and all of a sudden you'd be shaking the shield and everything, "Oh, get off us." The shield wall would open up and they'd grab a guy straight through the shield wall, pull it back and you're like, "Oh, that was quick." and they'd be wrestling them out the back sort of thing. That was cool but, I think, for us it was more the amazing size and grandeur of the US military when we were there.

Recreation on Diego Garcia

So, the island itself, being an atoll, they called it the footprint of freedom. So if you were to trace your big toe, come down, you've got the instep and around the bottom, sort of looks like that and then there's a couple little islands up the top which almost looked like toes and so, the footprint of freedom. On the far side there was this plantation and the backstory that they picked up the natives, put them on some other island because they really wanted to use that as a base. I don't know when that happened but I think the British did that and they just sent them somewhere else. So there's these locations around the base, around the island, which are just gorgeous. You've got the base and there's a fuel, what is it called? Fuel tank and all that sort of stuff and you've got the ammo dumps, you've got the runways and everything else, the military, but then there's parts which is just gorgeous little beaches and stuff on there. But they would put on events for us, knowing that guys were going to be there for a year. They would host a fun run. One of the coolest fun runs I've been part of was day glow sticks, they handed out day glow sticks, two of them to everybody, now tie them to your shoes, it's pitch black out in the island, but you go for a 5K run out there and all you see is all these little day glow sticks going, and there's five, six, seven hundred people that showed up for it. So it was some cool events like that that have different sports. We played a cricket match against the British, the English guys. So, that was fun, we called it the Ashes, actually got 131 runs, not out, kind of proud of that. Broke a bat, lost a couple of cricket balls into the jungle areas there and then, yeah, the cricket bat ended up in the pub on base, put it up on the wall in there.

Comparison of US and Australian work practices

Their job was quite different to ours. Australia, being a smaller defence force, we cross train a lot. So, if you can imagine a Hornet Squadron in the US, my understanding is there is guys out at the ammo prep area, that's all they do. So, they might have the label of armament but they're not an armament fitter, they're a prep guy and then you have the weapons system guys. So, they technically work out any kinks with the weapons system and then you have the fitting guys. Then you also have egress guys, which work on injection seats and that type of thing. We got to do it all. So, go out to the ammo prep and one week you're out doing that or you're prepping different things in preparation for next week or whatever, then we're doing fitment. One of the cooler jobs I really did enjoy was the ejection seat. Just a cool bit of technical gear, the way it works, the way it operates and dangerous to play with, you could pull a couple of lanyards is what we would call them, but you pull those and you're firing shotgun sized explosives and so, good bit of gear to play with, fun bit of gear but each of the bits of gear that we would load are dangerous in their own way, their own right. The size of some of those weapons, because they cost so much, there's only a few times I've ever loaded live Aim Nines or Aim Sevens and that was for any pilot that was now becoming an instructor, they would get to play with the real cool stuff, otherwise, it was dummy weapons a lot of the time, especially missiles. So, a pilot, becoming a Hornet pilot, they would get big bombs and then that's sort of maybe later, got a bomb here or there but once you became an instructor you get to fire a missile and that sort of stuff but cost prohibitive. Maybe that's changed but back in the day that's how it was but we would visit with the US and just see what they were doing but, again, how many bombs you're putting on this thing, we'd put two 2000-pound bombs on a Hornet and they would park 10 of them down the runway in Townsville if we were doing that. They're putting 25, 30 bombs on a B52 and there's 10 B52s up and down the runway. There's a lot that they would be doing but we didn't do any real crossover like that.

Contact with home

So, I had the duality of the pleasure of talking both to the US, where my girlfriend was, and Australia, and video chatting had started to get bigger then, so I don't know. I would always think when I was watching Anzac Day parades and stuff, these guys would write a letter and it would take weeks to get back and then they'd get a letter and we had the pleasure of technology where it's, "Hey, I'll call you tomorrow if I can do." Do-do-do, a couple of dials but it wasn't as private as you probably would've liked, you're in a room with 40 computers because there's thousands of people that want to do that and so there's all these different places you could go do that and log into whatever system you have to use to have a video chat. That helped but, yeah, a few times probably called my girlfriend more than my family. I don't know, it's a weird guy thing, probably called my girlfriend more than my family, that's what we do but had a chat with the family here and there, made it a bit easier but kind of technology helps. So, it's like today, right? You can jump on a phone or a video chat with anyone in the world … we were using the American ones because they had set up these rooms with everything in there and a regular phone, we got to use them every now and then but I want to say it was still push-button phones with the big buttons on it but the American setup, I think they spend the money, when a guy's going to be there for 12 months they want to try to make them as comfortable as possible. So, the fun events eats time, that's what it's doing, their work will eat time and then make available to them fairly good technology to be able to chat with their family. We didn't really have to use any Australian set up or anything, so it was all set up by the US, all the cold rooms and that sort of thing.

Working days

We would work 24 hours and then we'd have 24 hours off. So, wake up and just get back to our area, our four Hornets were sitting sort of off the apron almost, big park area with all the B52s and everything and we're sort of down in the corner and there's only 60 of us, so we don't take up much space and there's only 30 of us working per day, that's if you split us, but then there's guys that probably didn't need to be there sometimes, pilots, as well, and everything. So, let's say there's 30 of us, that's not much space there. So, we're in some little buildings there and there's a lot of time sitting around but then there's times where we would go out and you have to put the plane through its thing every now and then. So, the pilot wants to go for a flight or we would just change the mission equipment just because it kept us fresh and it's all part of the military training, you train, you train, you train, you train, and then there's little snippets of reality and I would say that's true for army, navy, air force, everything revolves around polishing your skills so that should anything happen, you're at a level where you can operate quite well and so we would unload, reload. They might pull an engine out or something like that of one plane but still got three and, really, you only needed two planes to ever do anything, the other two were always spares. So, it just depended on the day, what we're going to do. Some days you'd be a fun day. Remember the Hornets went up just to show off to all the Americans, they invited people all around and they took off and straight over where we were, they were doing dog fighting. Impressive. They're just up there, flying around in figure eights, sort of just barrel and behind each other and everything. It was just cool to watch and everyone's used to, all the Americans used to B52s, just off they go and they come back and then here's these Hornets buzzing around everywhere, people coming out of buildings just to enjoy the spectacle and then other stuff, we'd catch up with the British military and got to fire some of their weapons once when they were doing training. Again, revolved around the training. So, we probably actually hung out with the British guys more often than the US even though we were on the same platforms for the planes and everything but I don't know how that occurred. I don't know if it's just the British connection, the Queen and Country sort of thing but they had captured some boats from somewhere, so they've set up all these machine guns and just on dusk we’re firing weapons.

24-hour shifts

You want those planes ready to go at all times. So, normally our shift back in Australia would be seven- or eight-hour shift and you'd have a shift in the morning and then the afternoon would be B shift and then there's nothing going on from 10 o'clock at night through to 6:00, 7:00 in the morning. So, the C shift, so to speak, is non-existent but if you really want to operate 100 per cent of the time, which at war you do, then someone has to be working in the middle of the night. So, we would start at whatever time it wasn't go 7:00 till 7:00 and most of it's a sleeping shift, and you would get woken up if needed. A couple of times we wake up when a plane is coming back and, I think it's their transponder, as it tells them, "Hey, I am this plane, I am a friendly", and the base would know, "Oh, that's a friendly coming in". All of a sudden a plane didn't do that. So, every now and then here goes the alarm, our guys run out, start the jets up and the pilots take off ... and away they go, they're ready to go intercept that aircraft. Hang on, they don't even get off the ground sometimes, transponder turns on, "Oh, it's a friendly". So there was some action moments, we're like, "Wow, okay." We assumed it was planes just coming back from their bombing run. If they're doing bombing runs up at Afghanistan and they had 16 hours in the air, I could see how they'd be tired and they might forget that or something but, yeah, a couple of moments where it's action like that and that could happen 11 o'clock at night, three in the morning. So 24 shifts allows your staff to be on site ready to go at any given time.

Serving the nation

But, yeah, lots of people that I care for, lots of people that I respect out there. I don't think I realized until having returned from that deployment that, actually, yeah, I did spend some time giving up or serving our nation for a time, it was just a token thing and a lot of us weren't real proud because all we were doing was ever, in essence, just training, just doing, it was a job. It wasn't till I think September 11th happened and now you have a bunch of guys and girls that have deployed for real. Yes, I deployed. Is it for real? I'll say yeah. The next guys, but then the guys that went to Iraq, Afghanistan, so I respect them a lot, they deployed for real and we now have guys and girls that have been killed, army, air force, navy over the last few years. So there's a huge respect level that I have for them. So thank you to those guys and girls that have served this nation, privilege to have served with them, a lot of good times. So I miss it a lot sometimes.

Camaraderie of the military

The young lady that I met, the American young lady, I packed up and moved over there. So different. I'd said earlier that there was a cross-training going on in the Defence Force that over there that allowed people to step into a civilian world. Well, I got to the US and ended up making $7 an hour fuelling planes because that was the thing I thought I could do, go to the airport and get a job working on planes in Tallahassee, Florida but, yes, $7.50 an hour. So tough transition. I didn't think I realized I missed the military so much until probably two years in where I jumped around careers but I don't think it was as bad as some guys that have deployed to war zones, been shot at, seen their mates injured and that sort of thing, civilian life can be really hard for them but, yeah, you go to workplaces and the camaraderie is not there. I've realized that the apprentices, there was 180 of us, but I believe there was some six, 7,000 people that applied or something, that thousands of people apply and here you have 180, and out of that 180, 150 graduated or something. So I'll say the cream of the crop, you get the best of this big group and these people put in effort working with their brothers and sisters and mates and if you didn't, a section would quite easily, not only would your sergeants, flight sergeants officers tell you weren't doing a good job, but your mates would tell you weren't doing a good job, so you wanted to be there for your mates. That, in the civilian world is not a thing as much and so I think that's what I missed, that effort to, you didn't want to let the guy to your left and right down. It doesn't matter what job it was and the harder you worked, the more fun it became and you'd race each other, still within boundaries of safety and everything, playing with bombs and missiles, but you race each other doing these certain things. Once did a gunnery program and me and my mate Trap, we loaded a gun system, which is all cogs and gears, we were timing on these cogs and gears interfaced together, we did it blindfolded with our eyes closed, just challenging each other to be better. So, I missed that of the military, I think. So not as bad as some but I think there's a tough aspect to it. You get trained and as a kid, if that's all for 14 years or odd, that's all I knew was serving the guy next to me, doing the best I can and taking orders to go out in the civilian world and people take care of themselves not the person next to them a lot, can be quite frustrating.

The importance of Anzac Day

Put everything aside for that day, have taught my children since we have been back, we've lived in the US 15 years, so my kids, we've been back about five years in Australia and we've hit every Anzac Day. Even the ones during COVID where we had to do it out the front. That was different, that was tough, you know, want to go out and honour those that have come before you, honour those guys and the guys and the ladies that have served, given their life and you get to stand at the front of your house and so there was a moment I said to my son, he's seven or eight at the time, I go, "Mate, I got to go for a march." We've got a flag and we just marched around the block just for a walk just to say, "Yep, we did it." Yeah, I don't know, I get quite emotional about that thinking of guys at Gallipoli, what they were doing, just larrikin Aussies and I think about myself with my air force mates, larrikin Aussies, taking care of each other and every Anzac Day I look around and I'll point to my son and my daughter, my wife, "See that guy over there, see all those metals there?" and then they'll have the medals on the other side from their father or their grandfather or something as well and I think it's the Victoria Cross, George's Cross, I think there was a gentleman when we went to Anzac Day, he had that on and it was his grandfather's, I believe, and we're just like, "Son, that guy there, that's a legit war hero." and this gentleman's got seven or eight and he's got his this and this and I'm like, "That's a family of honour right there." But just getting to march and when you're young, you join the air force and you're 17, you go into Sydney and you march and there was this level of honour where the squadrons they put you in and whichever squadron you were in, all the veterans of that squadron, all those who deployed would be in front of you and you look at them and you just think, "Wow." and we got to sit down and hear some of those stories, like the World War II stories were just amazing. How do you get away with that? And the mind boggling and they're having a beer, having a rum or something and telling you these stories and I miss that because they've all gone now, all those World War II veterans have passed, majority have and I'll cherish those memories, excuse me, cherish those times but now it's the Vietnam guys, the Korea guys, that you can stand there and look at and go, "Wow, thank you." But Anzac Day, love it, and I think it goes back to me as a kid watching all those guys and all those people march in Sydney. I remember marching in Sydney and biggest cheers would, they would have an army jeep, a couple of people driving in the back seat with a big old sign, "Gallipoli veteran." and I'm standing there in my air force uniform, 17, 18, 19, whatever age I was and just looking at that guy going, "Oh, that guy's a superhero". So much respect for Anzac Day itself.