Current/ex-military types...

[sailor]

"TRADITION! The NAVY has tradition; the RAAF just has bad habits!"
Truer words have never been spoken. The RAN is consumed with tradition and we all know about that... in fact we are addicted to our sacred traditions.

I wonder how many military/ex-military people (and RAAFies ) there are on SS? I can think of at least a couple who haven't outed themselves yet.

Yes...well...I'm outing myself now...

Joined WRANSR (before amalgamation with RANR) in 1984 as a LEUT Psychologist, but never did any psych work with them for the first 5 years....specialised in Personnel and Physical Security and loved it.

As a psych got to go to sea heaps, and a few times have been allowed on the helm...now that's fun! MCR (engine room) crew always knew when "Psych-O" (psychology officer) was at the helm, because they could feel the boat zig zagging all over the ocean. Fav boats are our Patrol Boats, they are awesome!

Lots of warries over the years. Made life-long and fantastic friends in Oz and overseas.

Lots of interesting adventures and courses completed and now hold rank of CMDR.

Happy for people to talk in anacronyms...they are now real words for me!

JOIN THE RESERVE - Best paid hobby in the world!

 

[Liverpool St]

Navy

Yes...well...I'm outing myself now...

.specialised in Personnel and Physical Security and loved it.

Hey Sailor,

Me too. Was with PV in Canberra for 13 years and now with DSA here in Sydney. I spent some time up in Cairns on the good old Flinders. That Hydro Navy - they can have it

Liverpool St

 

[Hunterinvestor]

Well to start off I will say I hope you all enjoyed ANZAC day where ever it was spent.
So tell me why are there so many ex RAAF in here, hardly any Navy or Army.
I myself am EX Navy, joined in July 98 - July 2004. Done my 6 years of service and left, as you are all aware if you want to get in to property investing and have a family as well. You would need to live of 2 minute noodles to do this with the wage the military pays. I was an ex stocker ( well they still call them stockers), but these days its more a stand by mechanical fitter.

So whats gossip on hot spots around aus?

Anyway hope to keep up to date.

Russ

 

[AlmostBob]

Ex Army
RAN -bus service, delivery men
RAAF -taxi service

 

[Darren1968]

ex-military

Joined the RAAF as an Instrument Fitter in Jan 1987.

Left in March 1995.

Spent 18 months at 481 Squadron at Williamtown NSW (Jun88 to Nov89)
5 years at 77 Squadron (Williamtown) - Nov 89 till Nov94
Then back to 481 Sqn till discharge.


Still work in the defence aviation industy and spend a lot of time at RAAF Williamtown although I am based at ARDU at RAAF Edinburgh in Adelaide.

I loved my time in the RAAF and the 5 years at 77Sqn were the absolute best years if my life. Lots of overseas trips, lots of good mates and lots of alcohol.

I still work on a RAAF Base and work with the military everyday so the only real difference is the uniform (oh and no parades!!!!)

 

[Perp]

no parades!!!!

Allelujah to that! Man I loathed parades.

 

[MichaelW]

Raaf - 1983-1989.

Trained at Point Cook as an Indonesian Linguist for 12 months.

Hi Dose,

But were you a Cunning Linguist?

There certainly is a fair few RAAFies here. Maybe all that time in the air gives them a real affinity for hard standing and a desire to own as much of it as they can...


Michael

 

[LynnH]

I still work on a RAAF Base and work with the military everyday so the only real difference is the uniform (oh and no parades!!!!)

I worked mostly in Recruiting Centres - we didn't have parades!

Cheers
LynnH

 

[turk]

Raaf - 1983-1989.

Trained at Point Cook as an Indonesian Linguist for 12 months. Graduated as a Corporal much to the disgust of the Army students.

DSD Melb for the rest of the time. Pretty cushy job - Work hours 8-4 , rostered day off a month, no parades or military-type activities. Those grunts we worked with hated us.

I didn't really feel like I was in the military at all.

Dose

Brother did much the same thing. Navy, Stoney B.

Regards

Peter

 

[Simon]

Allelujah to that! Man I loathed parades.

I love parades. Especially being the Parade Commander, sam browne, sword, slouch hat - the chicks really love it

 

[LynnH]

Simon,

I think in Tracey's case - and in mine (on the few occasions I ventured onto one) - the chicks very definitely wanted to get off the bl@@dy parade ground!!! Eye candy notwithstanding!!!

Cheers
LynnH

 

[Raddles]

HI there
interesting comments about parades - I remember hubbie was commander one time when Parliament was being opened in Adelaide, he was leading the pack after the police on their horses - one of which had done a number on the road - I can well recall my eldest (who was 5yrs at the time) yelling out to her Dad with the sword etc - watch out for the Pooh Daddy!

As for service in the RAAF, hubby joined in 1981 and separated from the permanent force in June 2001, he is still in the reserves.
He served at Townsville, Fairburn ACT (No 34 Squadron - the VIPs), Support Unit Melbourne, Maintenance at Richmond NSW (No 486 - the radios and radars), Research and Development Edinburgh SA (electronic warfare), logistics at Oakey QLD (helicopters to overseas deployments), warfare centre Williamtown NSW, we also had a stint overseas at Greenwith Texas USA and if he told me what he did he would have to shoot me.
thanks

 

[LynnH]

..... and if he told me what he did he would have to shoot me.

Reminds me! Years ago hubby went on one of these 'secret missions'. The guys couldn't tell us where they were going, when they would be home, etc. All very hush-hush!!

Happened to be relaxing on the beach at Pallarenda (Townsville) on beautiful Sunday morning - with a newspaper .....

Later that day, the crews arrived back at TSV - I went to pick hubby up (actually, he was boyfriend then), and asked the guys in his crew how they had enjoyed their SAR flights to rescue the Vietnamese boat people (who had just started started arriving in Australia in the aftermath of the Vietnamese War). "Where did you get that information?", "Who told you that?", "Who have you told about it?", "This is really serious stuff." etc ...

You should have seen their faces when I produced the newspaper - tada! -with photos and story of the arrival of the 'boatpeople' on its front page!

Cheers
LynnH

 

[Perp]

I love parades. Especially being the Parade Commander, sam browne, sword, slouch hat - the chicks really love it

Maybe the civvie chicks! I was eternally terrified - as a junior officer - that I'd royally screw up and the SNCOs would never let me forget it. At least when my fears eventuated I was amongst strangers. I was asked to step in and be in the weekly apprentices' parade at Wagga when I was there on course. I had about 30 seconds run-down on how it went. I screwed up from the moment the WOD called "officers on parade" The parade ground was about 6 flights wide by 6 flights deep and I somehow miscounted the number of flights and went right past my flight (say it was "three flight"), and nearly ran into the back of the two flight commander when he stopped at two flight (which I thought was three flight)!

Having screwed up, what should I have done? Come to a neat halt, about-turned, and marched back to where I should have been, and about-turned again. That would have been mildly embarrassing but no big deal. What did I actually do? Panicked and ran backwards to my spot. Like if I ran fast enough nobody would notice, hey? ROTFLOL at my own stupidity...

if he told me what he did he would have to shoot me.

You should have seen their faces when I produced the newspaper - tada! -with photos and story of the arrival of the 'boatpeople' on its front page!

In a restaurant many years ago, I overheard a guy at the next table telling his fellow diner this you-beaut new defence equipment could do xxx - information that I knew was highly classified (TS). Being conscientious, I rang Defence Security immediately, and filed a report about the incident. The military police, amazingly, identified this defence civilian by bringing me a photo of the right guy within 16 hours. (Makes "elephant trackers" seem a bit harsh. For the civvies: military police are referred to as "elephant trackers" because the joke is that "they couldn't track a menstruating elephant in a snow storm.") The defence civilian was able to avoid any trouble by demonstrating that he had no access to that information through his employment, but had in fact figured out the information in question by putting together a bunch of unclassifed information.

 

[LynnH]

Tracey

OMG, I'm laughing so much that tears are streaming down my cheeks!!!!! But, seriously, how absolutely mortifying for you. As you say, at least you were among strangers!

Cheers
LynnH

 

[Barracuda]

Was commissioned as a Lieutenant a few years later and commanded a Troop of 30 odd Tactical Electronic Warfare Specialists with their associated jamming, locating and eavesdropping gear.

Had a reasonably enjoyable and sometimes exciting career and retired as a Major commanding a Squadron of men and women some years later.

Noone is interested in all the details and acronyms

Don't bet on it.

Similar to MW, enlisted 1991, commissioned Army Officer 1994, first command with 8 Signals Regt. K95 my guys were running the deployed field LAN and 2 Div comms. May have worked with some of your EW guys up there - small teams really wreaked havoc. Then ops officer and 2IC roles.

After Command and Staff College, was the first Signals officer in over a decade to break back into Arty Field regiments as an RSO (Regimental Signals Officer). Tried to introduce comms discipline and technologies into Arty comms to bring awareness to what I had seen the EW guys doing to fire missions and locating comms sources.

Then posted as EWLO 2Div (Electronic Warfare Liaison Officer), unfortunately, they didn't know what to do with one and ended up as 2IC of the Ops Support Sqn before going inactive in 2000 after training changes meant that we had next to no qualified soldiers anymore.

 

[Perp]

*Bump*

I watched and loved the series "Commando: On The Front Line" on BBC Knowledge (Foxtel) the past few weeks. It followed a group of Royal Marine Commando recruits through their basic training, and also included a lot of footage from where they were headed, which was Afghanistan.

It reminded me again just how much I respect those who serve. I was only in the military during peacetime, and never really faced any prospect of being deployed operationally, so I don't count myself. But boy, times have changed in the past decade, and the whole military is much more operationally-focused than it used to be (and rightly so).

Seeing the work that's being done in Afghanistan, and undoubtedly in Iraq and other theatres, had a profound impact on me. It was, I confess, much more dangerous than I'd imagined. The training that these Commandos, in particular, go through is first-class, and incredibly tough. I respect anybody who can get through it, let alone go on to put it into practise whilst being shot at, and trying to avoid IEDs.

Let's all spare a thought at this time of year for all those families who are separated because a loved one is serving, and also for all the innocent Afghani, Iraqi, Palestinian, Israeli, and other civilians who have been caught up in conflicts.

 

[asdf]

It reminded me again just how much I respect those who serve.

No arguments here. Men and women in uniform have my vote, ahead of the useless pollies anyway.

 

[Matt007]

Didn't serve but spent a long time in INT, went through some interesting postings in Canberra, DSA/the various alphabet soup of agencies down there, spent some good time training with DInTC people, left Defence about 2 years ago and am a SCEC consultant now, spend more time on bases doing defence work than I did when i worked for DSA!
Of course for a better salary
Still 15 years in govt doing that job never really leaves you..

Lacasa at Swanbourne I think you were there when one or two of my mates were..some of them working for us now.. damn small world..

Cheers

 

[Hoffy]

RAAF 96 - 03. Started as Direct Entry Officer at OTS, finished as Directing Staff at OTS. All postings in VIC. Best was 2 years at the ADF Physical Training School at HMAS Cerberus.