Few of you BUGgers out there would know that Bob Katter Jnr and I were trained killers in an earlier life.

It’s true. We were comrades in arms as sergeants in 49 RQR or the Bush Rifles Regiment in the early 1970s. And I’m here to let people know that the shouting, crazed and threatening man we saw on the TV news last night was the exact opposite of the comrade-in-arms I fought beside as we pretended to play our part in turning back the yellow commie hordes that threatened Australia at the time.

As proud members of the Citizens Military Force, Bob as much as I did enjoyed training callow young men in how to snap a VC’s neck just by looking at him.

And the memories of what we saw down in the OR lines at morning check parade with 30 or so virile young men standing outside their six-man tents, each for the use of, naked except for their giggle hats and holding their weapons, and by that I mean their SLRs, will last our lifetimes.

But it wasn’t all fun and games. Bob was a softly spoken and decent chap and I have absolutely no idea why the 80-year old version of him I saw last night was so fired up over a reporter’s mention of his Lebanese heritage.

In the Sergeants Mess late at night after we tired of singing Where Do You Go To, My Lovely, Bob would grab a guitar and sing some lovely Lebanese folk songs and weep openly as he did so.

He also constantly longed for some tucker from his grandfather’s homeland by going AWOL most nights to a Leb takeaway in nearby Inala, that he also used as a base to sell insurance.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Bob or I were brilliant soldiers. I fondly remember out on bush exercises once where not minutes after we broke camp, Bob came running up to me to say he had lost his platoon. I calmed him down by saying they shouldn’t be hard to find seeing we had only marched an open gun range distance from our bivouac. I told what was left of my own platoon to take a rest and not smoke even if they had them while I quickly helped Bob find his own sections.

It’s also possible that both of us were threatened with a dishonourable discharge if we didn’t resign our non-commissions and get the fuck out of the CMF.

Disclaimer: some bits of the above rant are made up. This is The Bug after all. Can you guess what those made-up parts were?
That Bob and I were never in the Weekend Warriors together.
That Bob never played guitar and sang Lebanese folk songs in the Snake Pit late at night.
That Bob frequently went AWOL at night to a Lebanese takeaway in nearby Inala that he used as a base to sell life insurance.
That Bob once lost his platoon barely minutes after breaking camp on field manoeuvres.
That both Bob and I were threatened with a dishonourable discharge if we didn’t agree to relinquish our non-commissions and fuck right off.
That we never sang Where Do You Go To, My Lovely together and that’s anywhere at any time. It was a medley of Frankie Lane’s cowboy songs.

Where Do You Go To, My Lovely

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