It was that bubbly and enthusiastic teacher by the name of Miss Cooper again who alerted us, the students of year 11 in Richmond Tech, and informed us about the looming Vietnam War that Australia was about to get involved in. Miss Cooper told us that the Australian Government was about to introduce conscription, national service, for males turning 20 years old, starting from the year 1965 and they will continue conscripting young men onwards as required.

The conscripts were to be chosen by a birthday ballot. This method of choosing recruits for national service was based on pure luck alone. Wooden marbles with numbers representing the days of the month and numbers representing the months of the year were inscribed on them. The marbles were chosen at random from a barrel. If your birthday coincided with the numbers drawn from that barrel, you were called up for national service for your country. If your birthday did not come up, you were free as a bird. But for those who were chosen by that ill-conceived birthday ballot, there was a strong possibility that they would be sent overseas - to a country they possibly had never heard of before, to do battle with people that they had never seen before.

Miss Cooper asked her students to write an essay as a social studies project, expressing their thoughts about this unfair conscription.

At this time of the year, I was approaching the age of 19 and soon the time when my name could have been chosen from that unfair birthday ballot barrel. I had strong opposing feelings about that unjust and potentially deadly enforcement the Australian Government was making on its young men. I wanted to avoid national service at any cost.

So I expressed my heartfelt opposing feelings in an essay that Miss Cooper was impressed with. So much so that she read it aloud at our school assembly. My essay was chosen to be read because it opened up with a strong and emotional sentence. It went on, something like this: I have just arrived in Australia from a war-torn country with nothing but a suitcase full of clothes. And now the Australian Government removed the clothes from my suitcase, replaced my clothes with a rifle. And now the Government wants me to go to Vietnam to shoot people who did no harm to me. Nor are they a threat to our country.

The essay, no matter how emotive it was, would not have saved me from national service. The authorities were aware that young people would resist national service and they covered all loopholes for avoiding it. The authorities were very strict with anyone trying to avoid national service. But luckily there were exemptions to national service provided one met at least one of the following conditions.

1. Family hardship: If one was the only breadwinner for their dependent parents, or running a farm.

2. If one was a tertiary student, or apprentice in an approved trade, this would defer the conscription until he completed his course.

3. If one had flat feet.

4. If one was below 5 feet 2 inches in height.

5. If one was gay.

6. If one had a criminal record.

7. If one had a mental disability or psychological problems, he had to sit a medical and a psychological test.

8. If one was a member of the Citizens Military Forces, prior the age of 19. Even this exemption did not fully preclude one from going to Vietnam. If the war effort required more manpower, then CMF soldiers would be sent to Vietnam.

9. If one was a conscientious objector. Not many conscientious objectors were successful in their applications at avoiding national service; some were jailed, most of them were given non-combatant duties. Only a few managed to gain exemption from national service.

My best option in avoiding a free trip to Vietnam with paid accommodation and food included and not having to take the gamble with the birthday marble was for me to join the Citizens Military Forces. I joined the CMF (dubbed the cut-lunch army). My application was accepted and I became a cut-lunch soldier for the next six years, starting from the age of 19.

Six years of part time service with the CMF was equivalent to two years of full time, plus another three years in the reserves for the conscripts (dubbed "the nashos").

The six years with CMF comprised of:

1. Two weeks away per year, training in the field.

2. Ten weekends away per year, training in the field.

3. One evening per week covering theory on military matters at a military unit.

All I had to do now was to choose a military unit that was compatible with my interests. The Royal Army Ordnance Corp (RAOC) was beckoning me and it was near my house. The RAOC unit was in East Melbourne. I enlisted there to complete my national service, mainly due to its proximity to my house and that it involved driving trucks which interested me.

Now this chapter, "The Cut-Lunch Soldier", appearing in this book about me being "An Aussie in a Parallel Universe", may not appear relevant to the main theme of this book. But I want to show you that the army is a subset of the Australian multicultural community and it contains an added layer of complexity that differentiates between individuals. So I will continue with this chapter for a bit longer to show you, the reader, that the army is a multi-status group of men within a multicultural Australia.

In addition to suspected racism, there is elitism in the army. The army is divided into two main groups of personnel. The commissioned officers and the non-commissioned officers, and within each of the two groups of personnel there are several different ranks of status. During my six years with the CMF I learned that the easiest way for a national serviceman to understand the military structure and to co-exist in the army during their compulsory service is to apply some sense of humour. This outlook helped me cope with the rigid procedures in the military. I actually enjoyed my time with the military because I saw the funny side of army life.

The first thing that I remember at RAOC was when I was completing a Psychological/ IQ questionnaire. I was seated next to a recruit named "Jason Ion", who was studying industrial chemistry at Monash Uni. I could not believe his surname was "Ion", as this in chemical terms means a charged atom or a charged molecule.

I could see that he was ticking the same boxes on the questionnaire and presumably the correct answers as I was. Half way down the list of questions, I decided to tick the wrong answers from then on, just for fun and to see what the CMF would make of this.

Well, the CMF authorities decided to exclude me from any training courses. This exclusion precluded me from rising up the military ranks; they didn't think I was "officer material". So I was given the lowest rank in the army, that of a "private", and I remained at this low rank for my entire tenure with the CMF. This suited me just fine, because now I could switch my brain into "idle-mode" and enjoy the next six years in the CMF without having to think. In this mode, I was the ideal private, someone who follows orders and risks repetitive strain injury by saluting the commissioned officers.

And now the fun begins.

I was driving a 1945 Studebaker 6-wheel-drive World War 2 truck from the army depot in Kensington towards Puckapunyal, the military training ground, with a truck load of new recruits. When I entered the Hume Highway and started to accelerate towards the highway's speed limit, the soldiers in the back of the truck yelled out that the truck was on fire.

I stopped the truck, pulled over to the side of the highway and saw that the hand brake was glowing red hot. The hand brake on that truck was made of a metal disc fixed to the drive shaft and it was visible to the recruits. Although this is not funny, it shows that I was in idle mode as a private. By the way, that truck had so much torque that I couldn't tell that the hand brake was on.

The next episode was with the same truck. But this time I was undertaking night driving training with the truck having most of the light beam of its headlights covered except for a slight horizontal slit across the headlights for me to see the road with. The narrow slit was affording a minimum visual light exposure to the make-believe enemy.

I was enjoying the drive, along a twisty dirt road in Mt Macedon, with a Lieutenant beside me and a cast-iron water-trailer (a Furphy) hitched to the back of the truck. It was past midnight; I was driving slowly and with total concentration. This was a challenging drive during a pitch-dark night, on a slippery road, towing a heavy Furphy trailer, and with a Lieutenant snoozing away in the passenger's seat. Next morning we noticed that the truck had its trailer missing. Nothing was said about the trailer by the Lieutenant who was on sleep-mode during the dark-night drive. The trailer is still resting to this day somewhere in the Mt Macedon ranges.

By now I had accumulated about six different driving licences. And now, for my next licence, I found myself together with the Lieutenant next to me in a tricky situation. I had to negotiate a very steep descent of a narrow dirt track in a new model truck with large wheels. This truck was fitted with powerful air brakes. My task was to successfully negotiate the steep dirt track in order to pass my seventh licence.

As I approached the steep slope, I tried to select a lower gear by the method of double-clutching, so that the truck would descend the narrow track slowly under engine braking. I couldn't engage a lower gear, so the truck bowed down the steep incline in neutral, i.e. no gear was selected and therefore no engine braking. The truck started to accelerate along the steep slope. This time the Lieutenant was fully awake and looked rather alarmed in the passenger seat.

I told him: "I won't use the brakes, as this may destabilise the truck at this speed."

It is very easy to lock the front wheels of a truck fitted with air brakes, causing the wheels to lock and to skid and thus losing control of the truck, especially on a dirt track.

The truck rushed at break-neck speed while I was skilfully steering it to avoid the trees along the narrow track. Eventually the speeding truck slowed down as we approached a rise in the narrow track. The Lieutenant who was a competent driver himself and who had raced his own home-made special car on many occasions at Calder Raceway, agreed with me and at the conclusion of that driving manoeuvre he awarded me with my seventh licence.

The seventh licence was a reward and a welcome gift from the CMF. My reward was a promotion to an important role, still within the rank of a private, a private with brownie points.

I was assigned to the duty of the official driver for the Colonel of the CMF. I had it easy from then on. All I had to do from then on was to take the Colonel from Puckapunyal to the Victoria Barracks in St Kilda Road Melbourne in the official military Holden EH and return him back to Puckapunyal, together with a carton of confidential items.

The rest of the day was mine to spend as I wished. One night, on my return trip to Puckapunyal, I was rewarded with a sharp and a genuine salute (even though I wasn't a commissioned officer) by one of the guards whom I had ordered to take the carton containing the confidential items straight to the officers' mess and to place it in the fridge. The confidential bottles of beer have to be kept cold, I told him.

By now, one would think that a driver with seven driving licences and who was trusted to drive the Colonel in the official military car would be immune to road accidents. But no, orders are orders, I was literally ordered to have an accident in the Studebaker.

On this occasion I was driving to a petrol service station somewhere near Pretty Sally Hill to refuel the "Study". And this time I had Sergeant Clark, a fellow student from Richmond Tech (don't you love these coincidences), in the passenger's seat.

As we entered the service station, Sergeant Clark jumped out of the truck and proceeded to direct me with military authorized hand signals in order for me to negotiate the "Study" into a tight spot between two rows of petrol pumps. But I could see in the rear-view mirror that the canopy of the truck was going to snag the overhanging light pole between the two petrol pumps. So I promptly stopped the truck.

The Sergeant then morphed into Yosemite Sam, the character from the "Bugs Bunny" show, and ran towards me yelling: "When I say go, you go, private."

So I went and I drove the "Study" forward and I could hear the canopy tearing and I could see the light pole starting to tilt the petrol pump. Then the ever-diligent Sergeant gave me the official stop sign, which I obeyed and I stopped the "Study" with a purposefully slow reaction time. The Sergeant ran to the truck's driver's door and with military precision presented me with a "section 13" and told me to fill in the details (section 13 is an accident report). This was just another day in the life of a private in the CMF.

The next near-miss accident could have had devastating results and this time it was my fault and it wasn't funny.

Williamstown Rifle Range was used by the CMF as well as by the nashos for target practice, with live ammunition.

This is where we were trained to use the 7.6mm self-loading rifle (SLR) and the Owen 9mm sub-machine gun. The SLR was fired from the prone position at fixed targets about 200 metres away. We were concentrating on accuracy and on controlling the rate of fire of the SLR. The Owen 9mm sub-machine gun on the other hand was fired from the hip, while we were standing up. The main objective with the sub-machine gun was to keep it steady, as it has a tendency to move in an arc away from the target when the weapon is fired. The Owen sub-machine gun is a rapid-firing-rugged weapon, but prone to jamming.

The Sergeant who was instructing us on how to use the sub-machine gun instructed us as follows. In the case of the weapon jamming, we were to face forward towards the targets and to raise our hand for help with unjamming the weapon.

I must have been in idle-mode when my sub-machine gun jammed, because I turned around to tell the Sergeant that my weapon jammed. The Sergeant instantly yelled: "Everybody down."

I could have easily shot down two or three soldiers to my right if the machine gun had freed itself.

There were other "misadventures" that often infuriated the Sergeant. Such as the time when I and one of the AFL footballers who I befriended decided to run at our top speed during a routine march.

The Collingwood football player and I would often go for a three-kilometre run in the afternoon (during rest and recreation time) to maintain our fitness.

The same Sergeant who directed me to have a driving accident ordered our section of soldiers to march at double time during one of those routine marches. I looked at the footy player and indicated to him that we should run flat-out. Well, I could hear the Sergeant yelling "Halt! Halt," just like Yosemite Sam yells at the top of his voice at the camel in one of those Bugs Bunny cartoons.

We stopped and the Sergeant eventually caught up with us and disciplined us by ordering us to march around the latrines ten times at double time, with our rifles above our heads.

Well, the well-built footballer grabbed the rifle by its muzzle and held it over his head with one hand (it's impossible for the average soldier to hold the rifle in this way) and he asked the Sergeant: "Is this the way you want me to hold the rifle, Sergeant?"

I could literally see steam coming out of the Sergeant's ears. I wasn't strong enough to hold the rifle with one hand, so I marched at double time around the latrines whilst holding my rifle overhead with both hands. After that incident, military activities continued in Puckapunyal in an orderly manner.

Meanwhile, back to civilian life where there was a growing opposition to the Vietnam War in Australia as well as in America. This culminated with the Australian public voting the Labor Party into power with the charismatic Gough Whitlam as the prime minister. The newly elected prime minister had promised to abolish national service and delivered within days of gaining office.

Gough Whitlam honoured his promise and abolished national service, but then he and his government were abolished by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr. The events on the steps of the parliament house were televised for the afternoon news. By now every Australian has heard Gough Whitlam's famous speech: "Well may we say God save the Queen because nothing will save the Governor-General."

Well, Gough was right because nothing saved the Governor-General, but Gough saved many young men from national service, including saving a few months of my six-year tenure.

The sudden and immediate abolition of national service caused panic amongst the commanding officers (COs) of the military units, some of whom by now had become accustomed to a comfortable life, which was supplemented by tax-free alcohol. The CO of RAOC asked each and every member of his unit if they were happy at his military unit (in other words, please don't leave).

I saw an opportunity here to gain some practical skills from the military. I wanted to learn the practical skill of welding. So I asked to be transferred to the Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (RAEME) unit, which had its training facility in Church Street, Windsor and where they taught welding. Within days I was being instructed in arc-welding, but there was a problem in the workshop.

There was a barking dog there in the form of a newly minted Second Lieutenant who was looking for salutes and who was interrupting my welding practice. The CO, who was desperate to keep his personnel and his job, would do anything including prioritising my demands over a commissioned officer's duties, which were practising his saluting technique. He told the newly minted officer not to come within saluting range of me again. I completed my course in welding and left the (RAEME) unit with gratitude to the Australian army for teaching me how to weld.

I was amazed that neither dad or mum ever asked me about my involvement with the CMF. I couldn't even start a conversation about my national service. Something was holding them back. Yet, when I drove dad and mum in my trusty Volkswagen Beetle to Sale in Gippsland to see mum's first cousin, they would engage in an endless conversation with her cousin. The conversation was about their involvement with the partisans during the civil war in Greece. Mum's cousin, his wife and dad fought the Greek National Army during the Greek Civil War.

Migrants from Europe are still traumatised by the wars in Europe. My involvement with the CMF must have triggered memories of those traumatic times for dad and mum.

Mum's cousin (vuiko Mitre - uncle Mitre) and his family who live in Sale are forever grateful to dad and partly to me for helping them migrate to Australia. After the Greek Civil War, vuiko Mitre and his wife defected to Russia, in what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They started a family there, but they wanted to migrate to Australia to reunite with Mitre's parents. However, the Australian Government wouldn't accept immigrants from a communist country, such as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

This is where dad and I come in. Dad approached Dr Jim Cairns, the Labor deputy prime minister of Australia for help. I helped dad with the interpreting. Jim Cairns was a down-to-earth politician who was often seen shopping at the Camberwell market on some Sundays as an ordinary citizen. He was approachable and a capable statesman. He arranged for vuiko Mitre to first migrate into Greece, where he could become a Greek citizen, and after a period of three years of compulsory citizenship in Greece he and his family were able to migrate to Australia.
Ironically, Mitre and his wife, both of whom fought with the communists and then lived in a communist country, were employed at the Royal Australian Air Force Base in Sale.

Vuiko Mitre and his wife lived happily in Sale until they both passed away recently, but their descendants are still in Gippsland enjoying the Australian way of life, courtesy of Dr Jim Cairns, and dad, with a minor contribution by me.

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