{"id":2659,"date":"2013-07-01T18:51:20","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T18:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=2659"},"modified":"2013-07-01T18:51:20","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T18:51:20","slug":"life-in-the-australian-army","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=2659","title":{"rendered":"Life in the Australian Army"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Editor’s Note: This piece was contributed by Mr. Rei Ozaeta who is a frequent visitor to Australia. He’s a Filipino American who now resides in Los Angeles. He once fought with the Philippine Army. Boat people and others who have just arrived in Australia will not appreciate nor understand the slang used in the letter below. I thought it is best published unedited for readers to appreciate.<\/em>) <\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Mum & Dad,<\/p>\n

I am well. Hope youse are\u00a0 too. Tell me big brothers Doug\u00a0and Phil that the Army is better than workin’ on the farm\u00a0\u2014 tell them to get in bloody quick smart before the jobs\u00a0are all gone! I wuz a bit slow in settling down at first, because ya don’t hafta get outta bed until 6am. But I like sleeping in now, cuz all ya gotta do before brekky is make\u00a0ya bed and shine ya boots and\u00a0 clean ya uniform. No bloody cows to milk, no calves to feed, no feed to stack \u2014 nothin’! Ya haz gotta shower though, but its not so bad, coz there’s lotsa hot water and even a light to see what ya doing!<\/p>\n

At brekky ya get cereal, fruit and eggs but there’s no kangaroo steaks or possum stew like wot Mum makes. You\u00a0don’t get fed again until noon and by that time all the\u00a0city boys are buggered because we’ve been\u00a0 on a ‘route\u00a0march’ \u2014 geez its only just like walking to the windmill\u00a0in the back paddock!<\/p>\n

This one will kill me brothers Doug and Phil with laughter.\u00a0I keep getting medals for shootin’ \u2014 dunno why. The bulls-eye is as big as a bloody possum’s bum and it don’t move\u00a0and it’s not firing back at ya like the Johnsons did when\u00a0our big scrubber bull got into their prize cows before the Ekka last year! All ya gotta do is make yourself comfortable and hit the target \u2014 it’s a piece of piss!!\u00a0 You don’t even load your own cartridges, they comes in little boxes, and\u00a0\u00a0ya don’t have to steady yourself against the rollbar of\u00a0 the roo shooting truck when you reload!<\/p>\n

Sometimes ya\u00a0gotta wrestle\u00a0with the city boys and I gotta\u00a0be real careful coz they break easy. It’s not like fighting with Doug and Phil and Jack and Boori and Steve and Muzza\u00a0all at once like we do at home after the muster.\u00a0Turns out\u00a0 I’m not a bad boxer either and it looks like I’m the best\u00a0 the platoon’s got. I’ve only been beaten by this one\u00a0bloke from the Engineers. He’s 6 foot 5 and 15 stones and three pick handles across the shoulders and as ya know I’m only 5 foot 7 and eight stones wringin’ wet, but I fought\u00a0him till the other blokes carried me off to the boozer.<\/p>\n

I can’t complain about the Army. Tell the boys to get in quick before word gets around how bloody good it is.<\/p>\n

Your loving\u00a0 daughter,<\/p>\n

Sheila<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Editor’s Note: This piece was contributed by Mr. Rei Ozaeta who is a frequent visitor to Australia. He’s a Filipino American who now resides in Los Angeles. He once fought with the Philippine Army. Boat people and others who have just arrived in Australia will not appreciate nor understand the slang used in the letter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,37,51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}