Water Hole

 

We had been in the national park for most of a fortnight, somewhere between Thames and the coastline. We jog trotted the single tracks all day numbering off from one to seventeen over and over so as to know no one had been left behind. The PTI's, the physical training instructors, would come and go amongst us, encouraging, admonishing, gesticulating, constantly pushing us on in a straight line which probably doubled back on the line we had followed the day before.

I was at the front, I spent most of the time up there as platoon leader. The voices were trailing away back to number seventeen again, some guys took the time to put on a silly voice, most just got it over and done with.

The PTI was suddenly there in front of me, coming fast back along the track so that I stepped short for a moment. He came right up and then eased by, passing along down the line with the thick bush straining against his thick legs, all the time he was saying 'just keep going, just keep going...'.

I ran on, called 'one', and the voices came again in their slowly weakening train.

Maybe a couple of hundred metres on the path opened slightly, the ground under our feet carpeted in spindly grass which caught the sunlight as the canopy above opened. I was running straight up to a rocky edge, with a view of the river stretching out below. I must have hesitated for a moment and he was there at my shoulder, the PTI moving fast so that he came past me, looked back and said 'just keep going' as he opened his arm out towards the space beyond the edge.

I just kept going. We were wearing boots and carrying heavy backpacks. I remember hitting the water because it was the first time I had ever gone under and not started to rise, so that I had to really kick my legs to begin up towards the light. I came and saw him up there, his big hand on the chest of number two, holding back the train. He waved his arm again, get out of the way, so that I pushed myself towards the bank, and number two came down to explode against the dark green water.

Spaghetti from the can

 

We were all obsessed with our kit, we had to be, everything was based around the clothes you wore being immaculate, the clothes in your locker in the dorm being just as immaculate, next to the bunk with its perfectly folded bedding. If it wasn't you could expect to spend your day in the press up position with a boot in the middle of your back, while you were loudly told how pathetic most of the things that made up your being were.

Or worse, I remember looking out the tall windows of our dorm in the late afternoon, I was probably ironing or trying to sew my surname into a sock or some such, and one of the recruits from another platoon was coming up the long slope of the hill from Narrow Neck beach. It was a perfect afternoon, and his hair was wet and slicked back. In a different life he would have been home from work and jogged down the hill to leap into the warm water, soak up the beauty of late summer. He had a bunch of sodden clothing in his arms, pressed to his chest. White shirts, blue shorts belts and socks. One of the petty officers had decided his kit was rubbish, and made him gather it up, sprint down the hill and throw it into the water while bemused mums and businessmen with their shoes and socks off watched on. 

I was platoon leader, so my kit was supposed to be beyond immaculate. There were eight platoons, eight leaders, and we were the first to be inspected every morning head to toe, standing rigidly at attention while the instructors circled with their parade sticks flicking about menacingly.

There was one chief petty officer who outdid all the others for menace without even trying. He did it perfectly, always lurking back beyond the ones who ranted and waved their arms about, so that you began to wonder what unspeakable horror would unfold if he ever was to step forward. He was huge and muscular and wore his peaked cap low so that the eyes you dared not meet remained unseen.

I was as fit as I could be. Every morning I would get up earlier than most and have my kit just right before the morning run. We would line up for breakfast and the cooks while line up trays of bacon and eggs, baked beans and spaghetti. I had the cereal and fruit which was dumped at the far end of the long, long servery, maybe a boiled egg wolfed down and then I was gone, making sure the dorm was neat as a pin before morning parade. We used to hang our hats on pegs along the wall of the mess hall, as we were called to parade all the recruits would funnel down to that point, grab their hats and rush out onto the parade ground, the small parade ground, and await the beginnings of the day.

I let my guys go past me, making sure they looked okay, socks up high, cap tallies centered perfectly above their nose, put on my own with a quick look in the long mirror and went out to stand in front of them.

The parade began with the usual, there were always a few threats and admonishments, nothing major. 

We were probably getting ready to move away, race back to the dorms and head out to the classes of the day. 

The chief stepped between a couple of the petty officers standing in front of him, I'm sure I'm making it up but I can imagine all eyes furtively turning to the movement, as if a huge piece of an Antarctic glacier had come loose and slipped into the sea.

He came down unhurriedly and at last I realised he was standing somewhere near my left shoulder, quiet.

'You happy with your kit recruit?'

"Yes Chief."

He reached up and took my hat off, held it in front of my face. There was a tiny string of spaghetti stuck in the stitching along the edge, about where someone must have grabbed it as they rushed for the parade ground, turned it over to read the name in the lining and realised it wasn't theirs.

He didn't say anything else. He just put it back on my head, and slammed his hand down so hard that the front edge came down and split the skin along the bridge of my nose and blood poured down my blue drill shirt.

The parade commander dismissed us, we turned right, held for a moment, and made our way off the parade ground.

Tamaki

 

I joined the Navy in 1991, in the summer.

I remember it being a perfect day on the Auckland waterfront, in the early afternoon. I had caught the bus, the 'intercity coach' up from Hamilton, not very far really. There must have been other young men and women on the same bus, but we weren't Navy yet, still incognito in civvies and everyday haircuts.

The terminus caught everything, all the city buses, the trains, right down on the waterfront just beyond the point where Queen Street spilled down to the ferry wharves. As I took my turn to step down onto the tarmac people were everywhere, heading away to an afternoon business meeting, or back into their Auckland lives. 

I had really wanted to join up, do something that was alien and completely unknown, but as I picked up the small bag packed with the few things we were supposed to bring I thought for a long moment how wonderful it would be to just slip away, join the slow exodus out into the sunshine of the beautiful harbour afternoon, maybe have a couple of beers in one of the waterfront bars. 

A friend of mine joined the Navy here long before me and has almost the same memory, the subtle change from your life up to that moment and then bang, the reality when you really couldn't go back. His is hilarious, the navy even sent him some money for the trip to Melbourne and so he had a boozy farewell lunch with his mates before boarding the midday bus. He describes perfectly the 'hail fellow well met' moments of taking his bag from the intercity coach and finding the minibus that would take them to base, lots of smiling faces and banter amongst the young men. The trip wasn't very far, and then they turned onto the last small road leading into base, and as it passed between twin gates marking the entrance the Petty Officer, who had been sitting silent in the seats behind the driver leapt to his feet, filling the aisle, and let rip with a stream of expletives and threats of bodily harm if they all didn't shut up and realise what a world of pain they were entering.

I don't really remember the short trip to Tamaki, although it was familiar to me because Dad's parents and brother lived in Takapuna, and as we rose up over the harbour bridge and down again I looked out to the restaurant nestled right in under the bridge on the north side, you could always just see the hexagon of its roof. Mum and Dad went there with Dad's sisters and their husbands for New Years Eve some years when we were little boys. It all seemed so exotic to me sitting on the couch at Grandma's Takapuna townhouse, Grandad in his chair watching something like Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales. We would wake up to breakfast with presents of the little cocktail umbrellas and things from their night.

There was a sense of finality as we turned into the broad driveway leading up to the guardhouse of Tamaki base, thankfully none of the screaming and abuse though, kiwis are a bit more reserved I guess. It was such a beautiful late afternoon the quiet beach below the base was filled with mums and little kids dancing about in the quiet water stretching away towards Rangitoto. It was hard not to join them, just rip your shirt off and dive in.

We were allowed to do our own thing until dinner in the huge mess hall. I remember standing on the small parade ground near the guard house, watching recruits who lived in Auckland walk up the driveway with their bags. One young guy arrived on the back of trail bike, in filthy overalls and muddy gumboots. When he took off his helmet and gave it to the rider a huge afro exploded out in all directions. I think a lot of us wondered if a Sargeant Major wouldn't beam down and just end him right there on the tarmac.

I trained with that guy, we were communicators. I vividly remember about a month later, we all looked the same, rock hard fit to the point of being pinched and thin, buzz cut down to the quick so that our necks and ears were burned from the hours on parade. It was in the evening, after dinner, and we were in the dorms doing our kit as we always did. He was giving me tips on how to iron the collars we wore over our square neck shirts. How the shot of steam was crucial, not too much, just enough.

I looked at him and thought I bet your mum always wished you might come in the front door in a crisply ironed shirt, instead of those filthy overalls stuffed in your bag in storage.