Peacekeeper's Debriefings.

[Peacekeeper1966]

Chapter 1.

Coke Bottles, Old Warriors and Iron Bottom Sound - Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands

I have some nice old bottles I have found over the years. A few years back I was deployed to the Solomon Islands, ended up being there for two years and got to know a few parts of Guadalcanal and Malaita Islands. The waters between Guadalcanal and the Florida's is called Iron Bottom Sound and with good reason, 32 Allied and at least 18 Japanese ships sleep on the sea bed. So it is with good reason that for the sailors, airmen and soldiers who served in the area during that time, Iron Bottom Sound is considered a cemetery and sacred, much the same as Pearl Harbour and the USS Arizona memorial.

During the 63rd Anniversary of the US landings on Red Beach out near Tetere, a small group of US Veterans visited our lines and we hosted them for a dinner. Grand old warriors, gentlemen all of them and one of those moments in my life that I am humble to have had: The men that were there, giving us a first hand account of contacts and battles, killings and casualties right where they had happened, you could see them re-living their history. Powerful stuff. The gentleman who had organised the visit was a Royal Air Force Bomber Command pilot who had survived many missions over The Channel to Germany and had retired to Florida in the USA.

You don't have to go far to find chunks of old rusty iron on the beaches around Honiara as not far west towards Bonegi Beach and beyond, seven Japanese ships found their watery graves. One, the supply ship Hirokawa Maru was beached by her captain before sinking and the bow and a fair amount of deck are exposed at low tide. I have free dived on it quite a few times, it never lost its thrill. Up behind Honiara is the US War Memorial that is maintained by the US Government and has a commanding view over the sound and Savo Island. Savo is a live volcano that is owned by one of the former Solomon Island Prime Ministers. I cant remember his name, I would have to check my diary notes of my visit but, I do recall that he had been knighted. It is a magnificent view, I used to visit there sometimes and along with quiet contemplation, I would imagine what the naval and air battles where like; the monstrous anger and 'wump, wump' of heavy naval artillery, the thumping punch and staccato of 30 and 50 cal. machine guns and, the terrifying screams of supercharged radial engines over revving in a terminal dive.

I spent a bit of time exploring, with the help of the locals, around the hinterland villages along Bonegi Creek. We were shown aircraft crash sites and the site of a US military dump. The dump was just a ridge-line that dropped off into a deep gulch were hundred of tons of rubbish and then surplus was dumped. I used to head that way on Sunday arvo's when I could get a Troopie to use and spent hours down in that gulch in the steaming jungle scrounging and ratting through it all. Most was rusted or corroded away from the constant tropical coastal conditions but I did find some interesting relics.

One of the more common refuse items from the war are old US made 6 Fl Oz coke bottles. All have the date and place of manufacture cast into them on or around the base, for example 'Oakland Calif' & 'San Francisco Calif'. Most are a light green glass but some very late ones were clear glass. They could be found washed up after a storm along the coast, in the jungle or on some of the outer islands, huge middens of them the locals had piled up.

Another place I liked to visit and managed to take my children to on a return trip to the Solomons after the civil war had ended, is Red Beach. Red Beach is a long flat and repetitively level beach that is the site where the US Marines landed in AmTracs on 7th August 1942. Amtracs are amphibious landing craft that look very much like a small tank or APC, but are made of light gauge steel and the tracks have cast aluminium 'cleats' in place of rubber or steel friction plates that work like a paddle steamers wheel. There are still 96 Amtracs lined up as in a parking lot, a few hundred metres from the shore line and just behind the leaf hut of the man who's great grand father met the Marine Colonel as the Marines landed and secured the beach head. There are also half a dozen or so of the rusting hulks of these near 75 year old machines scattered about the front of the leaf hut and for a small consideration the owner of the custom land and leaf hut will show you about. If you are luck, he will proudly show you his old sepia photos of his Great Grandfather with the Colonel, with the Colonels written account of the event written in his hand on the back of the old photo. More living history that I feel very fortunate to have experienced.

Inside the first 4 months of my tour, I was posted to a Provincial coastal town called Maluu on the tip of Malaita Island. Our long house looked down from a small plateau over the bay that was formed by reefs, sand bars and the near by Basacana Island that lay a bout 1000m off shore. I used to pay $50 Solomon ($AUS9.00) for a big chaff bag full of live lobsters and about $2 Sol for the biggest mud crabs I have ever seen, the claws where the same size as my hands. Yep, we ate well which sort of made up a little for being in such a remote and phucked up part of the work with no phones and the usual attendant deprivations of mission life.

In the bay, there was a Japanese Zero that had crashed into the shallows of the bay in 1942 and ended belly-up. The pilot survived the crash but the local village chiefs decided his punishment as an enemy was death so they removed his head. I could not find out what happened to the body but cannibalism is documented as being widely practiced on Malaita where the people although now Christian, still have strong beliefs in animism and witchcraft and are very superstitious. The Solomon Islands still has Anti-Sorcery legislation and sorcery is today an offence under both state and customary laws in Solomon Islands. Sorcery in Solomon Islands can refer to an act or action that causes serious sickness or illness that could result in misfortune, insanity or death if no customary means of cure is given to the victim.

The Penal Code, Chap. 26, S. 190 refers to sorcery as:

i) the performance of any magical ritual where there is a general belief
among a class of persons that may result in harm to any person; or
ii) the possession of articles (without lawful excuse) commonly
associated by any class of persons with harmful magic.

I cant say that I am a believer in much beyond that which is tangible and explained in science but the locals are shite scared of this stuff and have some very strange (to us) practices and beliefs. Lots of 'Tambu' places with skulls and creepy stuff and when people get 'Big Sick', very often locals believe that s sorcerer is at work.
Ok, enough of my reminiscences for one evening.

Regards,
The Peacekeeper

 

[SCROUNGER]

Good stuff peacekeeper, thoroughly enjoyable read. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Bjay]

Good stuff peacekeeper, thoroughly enjoyable read. Thanks for sharing.

Likewise . My brother has gone to a lot of the pacific islands doing research and always talks of the old war relics which I would love to see someday .

 

[Peacekeeper1966]

Chapter 2

Stori Blong Mi Long Taem Mi Stap Long Solomon Aelan

Mid-March 2006, 18.34 hrs and I had pulled together enough rations to make up a beef stew for dinner in the kitchen - come radio room of our Long House. Presently, the aromas from the languid and seemingly constipated bubbling from the pot of 'boeuf de jour' were over powered by the ever more pungent paint fumes from the Dulux 101 Clotted Cream that my two comrades slapped over the Globite school-bag tat of the Masonite walls. The grabbing closeness of the afternoon monsoon conspired with the paint fumes to drive me out onto the back veranda. I needed a breath of air anyway.

Gaz, a tall rangy Queenslander with God Bothering leanings and gangling primate arms that enabled him to reach the ceiling, was slapping away with his brush, as he steadily left a trail of sweat drops from the end of his elongated aquiline nose on to Rose's (our House Mary) immaculate floor. At the same time that Gaz slapped painted over the gloom of the close confining walls that reminded me of the Head Masters Office at Old Bar Public School, each slap of those pig bristles ironically painted a portrait of gloom within my being and dragged my mood down another notch. The Long House kitchen walls were now the same bloody colour as my lounge room at home and that now ubiquitous and indelible fact just made me think of my wife and kids even more.

Big Maf, a huge but kindly and gentle Pacific Islander was much like Paddington- a bear of very few words. When Maf wanted to tell you that we were getting low on anti-malarials, he just tilted and motioned his lantern jaw towards the container of doxycycline tablets that lived on top of the fridge next to the salt pig and pepper grinder. As with everything he did, Maf was uncomplainingly toiling away with the paint roller, filling in the bulk of the canvass that Gaz fussed over with the cutting in and other brush work. It was times like this that I was glad I enjoyed doing most of the cooking.

The Long House was about 30 meters stem to stern and 8 meters in beam, had been built by Australian Army Engineers and the outer walls as well as the roof were made or corrugated iron so there wasnt much to stop the tropical sun from punching through and super heating the place particularly when we were away patrolling and left the joint locked up. In circumstances of aggravation, the ceiling was one big open cavity, except for our secure storeroom come armoury, so effectively, the place was one big sauna during the day but minus the Swedish health club attendants. At the back, we had an elevated veranda some 4 metres long and as wide as the house that served as our dining room, sleep-out and laundry.

The veranda was also the focus of our rest hours as well as a place for meals, meetings, paperwork and discussions because it was generally the coolest place in our compound. This was due to the roof, unlike the rest of our post, being made from leaf-hut panels that were a coconut frond split down its spine and then thatched together by hand to make a roughly 1 metre by 3 metre panel. Cost per panel-$2.00 Sol Dollars or 40 cents Aus. Like many variations on natural roofing materials in the Pacific and South-East Asia, the leaf-hut panels when over laid in a thick bank, are all-but waterproof and provided very good insulation from the relentless equatorial suns rays.

Despite the isolation from the outside world with useless sat-phones and Barret HF radios for comms and a lack of tall Swedish blondes call Inga, Provincial Postings in the Solomon Islands were reasonably comfortable. For a start it was good not to have to walk a mile to the SAL (showers and latrines) block when you needed a shite in the middle of the night and it was pissing down outside. Also, not having to share the manky tinea and wiry pubic-hair clogged drain holes of the showers with a hundred others or being condemned to cleaning your teeth with a platoon of wild PNG Infantrymen voiding there bowels of curried-fish morning turds just the other side of a thin panel was more than consolation. Toothpaste and turds whilst providing an opportunity for alliteration when present together will fail every time when presented to your olfactories in the same space and time. God I pitied those poor toilet cleaners back at the main base on Guadalcanal, they must have felt like Chewbaccas wifes gynecologist pulling all those PNG pubes out of those shower drain holes.

After a few days you would acclimatise to the constant heat but, it was still difficult getting off to sleep on very hot and humid nights. The technique I developed for a good nights sleep was to physically tire myself out with some sort of exercise or hard labour to accompany the mental tiredness that seemed to always find me at the end of the day. I set about making tropical gardens and a vegetable patch in our compound and for this I bought ten truckloads of soil from a local village chief. It was all done by hand, just shovels and a mattock. I had a couple of local lads as helpsters for this but, Melanesians can be a pretty sedentary lot who operate on Island Time and as I soon learned, with this sort of thing, I was on my own. So, shoveling dirt and collecting and transplanting tropical plants to improve the looks of the post was just the ticket for a sound sleep of the dead. It is also worth noting here that the same spade work also served to dig the foundations of good relationships between white officers and the locals, as there were still some residual hang-overs and stigma from the days of the Raj or British Colonial Administration with some older folk. I certainly felt it many times and found myself feeling a degree of shame and embarrassment at what is known in such circumstances as the power imbalance.

Now, the other part of the technique was to shower (we had no hot water) immediately before bed and then without drying off, lay spread-eagle on top of your bed with a pedestal fan turned up to 27 blasting away at you. Big Maf just slept out on the veranda with the geckos and a mozzie coil. No covers, just shorts and sometimes a t-shirt and the mozzie coil between him, malaria, dengue fever and thousands of bloody cane toads!

Our Long House and the few Government buildings were about 200 meters from the ocean and elevated on a slight plateau which helped some days to catch the sea breeze. Directly outside our compound fence was the local sports field where soccer dominated the sporting interests of the local kids and youth. The oval also served as the primary and high school playground, the two story wood and wire windowed buildings of which huddled together within sight of our front door. Maf took it upon himself to keep that oval mowed and must have gone through a whole 44 gallon drum of fuel every few months in doing so, but it was a kind thing to do and I admired Maf for it and the many other selfless things he did for the community.

The villages surrounding Maluu were spread out as there was a reasonable sized coastal plain to the east that permitted a generous interval between each chiefs village limits. Within about half a click of the Government buildings was a cluster of government employee houses. Teachers, Police Officers, Nurses and a few other public officials had called the houses home until the start of the civil war, known locally and understatedly as The Tensions. All bar a few places were uninhabitable due to being shot up, fire bombed, vandalised, stripped and looted by the Malaitan Eagle Force (MEF), the dominant rebel militia group. The MEF just happened to have been based in Maluu and their Head Quarters building was only a hundred metres or so to the west of and at the foot of our plateau. MEF HQ was a regular source of trouble and a focus for civil unrest and criminal activity even though the MEF had been decapitated and largely dismantled by RAMSI Forces (Regional Assistance Mission Solomon Islands).

A good number of local people were still loyal or, shite scared of the MEF and the few rebels still at large. One particular thorn in our side was the countries most wanted man John Toloi. Toloi was an MEF rebel and had been on the run since a contact and gun battle with a RAMSI patrol one morning when he had been hunted down to a particular house in Maluu. The patrol suffered no casualties in the exchange and Tolois SLR (7.62 mm Self Loading Rifle) Rifle had a stoppage that had saved one particular RAMSI officers life as he stared down the barrel. It is believed that Toloi had taken a 5.56 or 9 mm round through a tricep but he had made good his escape into the Malaitan hinterland jungle.

The Peacekeeper
29 OCT 2015

 

[Bjay]

Chapter 2

Stori Blong Mi Long Taem Mi Stap Long Solomon Aelan

Mid-March 2006, 18.34 hrs and I had pulled together enough rations to make up a beef stew for dinner in the kitchen - come radio room of our Long House. Presently, the aromas from the languid and seemingly constipated bubbling from the pot of 'boeuf de jour' were over powered by the ever more pungent paint fumes from the Dulux 101 Clotted Cream that my two comrades slapped over the Globite school-bag tat of the Masonite walls. The grabbing closeness of the afternoon monsoon conspired with the paint fumes to drive me out onto the back veranda. I needed a breath of air anyway.

Gaz, a tall rangy Queenslander with God Bothering leanings and gangling primate arms that enabled him to reach the ceiling, was slapping away with his brush, as he steadily left a trail of sweat drops from the end of his elongated aquiline nose on to Rose's (our House Mary) immaculate floor. At the same time that Gaz slapped painted over the gloom of the close confining walls that reminded me of the Head Masters Office at Old Bar Public School, each slap of those pig bristles ironically painted a portrait of gloom within my being and dragged my mood down another notch. The Long House kitchen walls were now the same bloody colour as my lounge room at home and that now ubiquitous and indelible fact just made me think of my wife and kids even more.

Big Maf, a huge but kindly and gentle Pacific Islander was much like Paddington- a bear of very few words. When Maf wanted to tell you that we were getting low on anti-malarials, he just tilted and motioned his lantern jaw towards the container of doxycycline tablets that lived on top of the fridge next to the salt pig and pepper grinder. As with everything he did, Maf was uncomplainingly toiling away with the paint roller, filling in the bulk of the canvass that Gaz fussed over with the cutting in and other brush work. It was times like this that I was glad I enjoyed doing most of the cooking.

The Long House was about 30 meters stem to stern and 8 meters in beam, had been built by Australian Army Engineers and the outer walls as well as the roof were made or corrugated iron so there wasnt much to stop the tropical sun from punching through and super heating the place particularly when we were away patrolling and left the joint locked up. In circumstances of aggravation, the ceiling was one big open cavity, except for our secure storeroom come armoury, so effectively, the place was one big sauna during the day but minus the Swedish health club attendants. At the back, we had an elevated veranda some 4 metres long and as wide as the house that served as our dining room, sleep-out and laundry.

The veranda was also the focus of our rest hours as well as a place for meals, meetings, paperwork and discussions because it was generally the coolest place in our compound. This was due to the roof, unlike the rest of our post, being made from leaf-hut panels that were a coconut frond split down its spine and then thatched together by hand to make a roughly 1 metre by 3 metre panel. Cost per panel-$2.00 Sol Dollars or 40 cents Aus. Like many variations on natural roofing materials in the Pacific and South-East Asia, the leaf-hut panels when over laid in a thick bank, are all-but waterproof and provided very good insulation from the relentless equatorial suns rays.

Despite the isolation from the outside world with useless sat-phones and Barret HF radios for comms and a lack of tall Swedish blondes call Inga, Provincial Postings in the Solomon Islands were reasonably comfortable. For a start it was good not to have to walk a mile to the SAL (showers and latrines) block when you needed a shite in the middle of the night and it was pissing down outside. Also, not having to share the manky tinea and wiry pubic-hair clogged drain holes of the showers with a hundred others or being condemned to cleaning your teeth with a platoon of wild PNG Infantrymen voiding there bowels of curried-fish morning turds just the other side of a thin panel was more than consolation. Toothpaste and turds whilst providing an opportunity for alliteration when present together will fail every time when presented to your olfactories in the same space and time. God I pitied those poor toilet cleaners back at the main base on Guadalcanal, they must have felt like Chewbaccas wifes gynecologist pulling all those PNG pubes out of those shower drain holes.

After a few days you would acclimatise to the constant heat but, it was still difficult getting off to sleep on very hot and humid nights. The technique I developed for a good nights sleep was to physically tire myself out with some sort of exercise or hard labour to accompany the mental tiredness that seemed to always find me at the end of the day. I set about making tropical gardens and a vegetable patch in our compound and for this I bought ten truckloads of soil from a local village chief. It was all done by hand, just shovels and a mattock. I had a couple of local lads as helpsters for this but, Melanesians can be a pretty sedentary lot who operate on Island Time and as I soon learned, with this sort of thing, I was on my own. So, shoveling dirt and collecting and transplanting tropical plants to improve the looks of the post was just the ticket for a sound sleep of the dead. It is also worth noting here that the same spade work also served to dig the foundations of good relationships between white officers and the locals, as there were still some residual hang-overs and stigma from the days of the Raj or British Colonial Administration with some older folk. I certainly felt it many times and found myself feeling a degree of shame and embarrassment at what is known in such circumstances as the power imbalance.

Now, the other part of the technique was to shower (we had no hot water) immediately before bed and then without drying off, lay spread-eagle on top of your bed with a pedestal fan turned up to 27 blasting away at you. Big Maf just slept out on the veranda with the geckos and a mozzie coil. No covers, just shorts and sometimes a t-shirt and the mozzie coil between him, malaria, dengue fever and thousands of bloody cane toads!

Our Long House and the few Government buildings were about 200 meters from the ocean and elevated on a slight plateau which helped some days to catch the sea breeze. Directly outside our compound fence was the local sports field where soccer dominated the sporting interests of the local kids and youth. The oval also served as the primary and high school playground, the two story wood and wire windowed buildings of which huddled together within sight of our front door. Maf took it upon himself to keep that oval mowed and must have gone through a whole 44 gallon drum of fuel every few months in doing so, but it was a kind thing to do and I admired Maf for it and the many other selfless things he did for the community.

The villages surrounding Maluu were spread out as there was a reasonable sized coastal plain to the east that permitted a generous interval between each chiefs village limits. Within about half a click of the Government buildings was a cluster of government employee houses. Teachers, Police Officers, Nurses and a few other public officials had called the houses home until the start of the civil war, known locally and understatedly as The Tensions. All bar a few places were uninhabitable due to being shot up, fire bombed, vandalised, stripped and looted by the Malaitan Eagle Force (MEF), the dominant rebel militia group. The MEF just happened to have been based in Maluu and their Head Quarters building was only a hundred metres or so to the west of and at the foot of our plateau. MEF HQ was a regular source of trouble and a focus for civil unrest and criminal activity even though the MEF had been decapitated and largely dismantled by RAMSI Forces (Regional Assistance Mission Solomon Islands).

A good number of local people were still loyal or, shite scared of the MEF and the few rebels still at large. One particular thorn in our side was the countries most wanted man John Toloi. Toloi was an MEF rebel and had been on the run since a contact and gun battle with a RAMSI patrol one morning when he had been hunted down to a particular house in Maluu. The patrol suffered no casualties in the exchange and Tolois SLR (7.62 mm Self Loading Rifle) Rifle had a stoppage that had saved one particular RAMSI officers life as he stared down the barrel. It is believed that Toloi had taken a 5.56 or 9 mm round through a tricep but he had made good his escape into the Malaitan hinterland jungle.

The Peacekeeper
29 OCT 2015

Sounds to me like a book is in order as you do have a talent for writing.

 

[Peacekeeper1966]

Thanks folks. I am going to pack the Disco now ready to head to Hill End in the morning for a long weekend of sluicing. I have been writing training materials all day so I probably wont write anymore today as my brain has had enough of me today.

Lookem iu - (Pidgin that translates to an approximation of good-bye or more literally, "Looking at you behind me", in the sense of, as I walk away from you, I look back and say good bye or wave good bye.

The Peacekeeper

 

[dwt]

Cool reads peacekeeper,

 

[Peacekeeper1966]

On Helicopters, the manipulation of custom and global obscenity.

My operational flight from Henderson Airfield to Maluu was in one of the contracted B212 helicopters, otherwise known as a Twin Huey. For the tech minded, its called a twin due to having a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6T-3 Twin-Pac stuffed in between the bulkhead and the tail boom. The two turbines drive a common gearbox and produce about 1,800 horsepower and if one fails, the other engine will, rather comfortingly, continue to run and the 212 will keep cruising even at its maximum weight.

Flight time was around 45 minutes, flying over the Florida Islands and then on to North Malaita. Although a rotary winged aircraft can take off vertically or at practically any angle if needs be, once cleared the normal practice for departure from Henderson is very similar to that of a fixed wing aircraft. After going through procedure and checks, my pilot dialed in the power. The noise inside a 212 is bloody loud and comm's is though the head sets and mics and hand signals and the odd silly face or stupid hand signal. The pilot sits in the right/starboard seat and with his left hand, he pulled on the collective control stick as the air-frame started to pulse with those insanely spinning rotors now biting into the lazy tropical air.

The spinning disc of the rotors clawed and heaved into the air a metre of so and the airframe followed, vibrating, whirring, thumping and struggling against gravity and our human cargo. Through 180 degrees and now facing the apron, the pilot gently pushed the cyclic control stick forward as he balanced the torque of the main rotor with the tail rotor via the foot pedals. Like a pendulum, we swung forwards under the increased forward tilt and pitch of the disc, now taking bigger bites of air in the foremost half of the cycle and dragging us forwards.

Taxiing to a point about half way along the main runway, we turned through 180 degrees again and steadied for a few moments on the invisible sea of air before the pilot wound on the power and worked the controls to punch us into take off and slingshot us away from the shimmering black tarmac that had once launched the war planes of 1st Marine Aircraft Wing and before then, the Japanese Imperial Forces who constructed the airfield in July 1942.

We climbed and then levelled out at around 1500 feet where the air was slightly cooler as the emerald green of Hells Points coastal jungle and the darker greens of the African Oil Palms and Coconut plantations as they slipped away in our rotor wash. Again I thought about the Pacific War. The Battle of Tenaru had been fought just below us and I remembered the black and white images of hundreds of dead soldiers strewn along the beach near the mouth of the Alligator River. I then wondered if anyone else thought about our main operations base leaving another page in the dark history of conflict in the Solomon Islands. I turned the page I was on and returned to the present and spoke to the pilot.

We spoke about our heading and flight plan and a little about the ship we flew in and the fact he had served in the NZ Defence Force and had thousands of hours flight time in the mountains of New Zealand flying rescue, tourists, adventurers and photographers. Its always nice to know you have a mature and experience pilot since helicopters are unbalance giddy contraptions that dont glide particularly well and limitations that would surprise you. On the other hand, I find flying in helicopters a fantastic experience every time, not particularly fast but agile, maneuverable and devastating in capability.

One afternoon I watched almost mesmerised as three US Army Apaches wheeled about for about 10 minutes, pulverising the side of a hill in Uruzgan Province. The Infidels 30mm chain guns, Hellfire and Hyra rockets punching, concussing, crushing and pulverising the moonscape into an appalling column of brown dust and destruction. No doubt NATO had just facilitated an introduction to Allah for a bunch of sorry arsed insurgents. But, of course, it is His will, I though venomously at the time: The most fundamental belief of a Muslim is that Allah is the creator and sustainer of everything in the universe and that Islam explains all existence and relates to human life and death (Quran 33:5, 40:26; Moore; 2006, p.141; Saeed, 2004, p. 17; et al), the Islamic view could only be that the AH-64 Apache gunship I had just been dumbfounded by must be inclusive within the will of God as revealed to The Prophet Muhammad, but I thought better of mentioning such thoughts to my Afghan interpreter the following morning.

As we swept over the Floridas, I captured some beautiful aerial shots of crystal waters, idyllic white coral sand beaches lined with gently waving coconut palms and leaf hut villages. How could such a beautiful place harbour such brutality and human depravity? How could the same people that seemingly live in such an idyll be the same people that could hack each other to death with machetes or tie a man by his throat to a jungle tree trunk with fencing wire and keep him alive with water to be slowly tortured and consumed by the jungle insects and starvation for a month before the final mercy of death.

Certainly and without variation, mans obscene capacity for cruelty and the appealing and despicable treatment of his fellow human beings in the name of ideology, belief or the manipulation of custom or culture transcends all social and moral boundaries and transgresses every geographical frontier, age in time and natural aesthetic.

The Peacekeeper

 

[Ramjet]

No religious discussion please people. Thank you.

Forum Rules

Due to varying beliefs and opinions, discussions directly relating to politics or religion are not permitted.

 

[Guest]

No religious discussion please people. Thank you.

Forum Rules

Due to varying beliefs and opinions, discussions directly relating to politics or religion are not permitted.

PLEASE REMOVE THE ABOVE POST IN REGARDS TO WHAT I WROTE EARLIER. YOU REMOVE MY POST YET DO NOTHING ABOUT THE LAST POST BY peecekeeper.

 

[Peacekeeper1966]

No Uncle Bob,

I'm not talking about prophets or their roles. As the title, "On Helicopters, the manipulation of custom and global obscenity" indicates, my most recent reflections are about my experiences, thoughts and reactions during and after operational service in two very different but similarly violent countries and relating the two to each other.

My reference that you have seized upon is a self criticism of some less than humanitarian and unpleasant cheap-shot thoughts toward the Taliban that I had at a time when a number of my comrades had been killed and injured and I was also formally studying the local cultural practices as a requirement to perform my job and be more effective in my role. To paraphrase you, let me tell you one thing. My knowledge and experience of central Asian, south east Asian and pacific societies and cultures is not indicative of any faith or belief system I may or may not have.

However Uncle Bob, I trust I have made my "position" clear and I trust that your position can only be one of respect and understanding for the thousands of Australian men and women who volunteer and sacrifice so that all of us can enjoy the lives we do.

Sincerely,
The Peacekeeper.

 

[Ramjet]

No religious discussion please people. Thank you.

Forum Rules

Due to varying beliefs and opinions, discussions directly relating to politics or religion are not permitted.

PLEASE REMOVE THE ABOVE POST IN REGARDS TO WHAT I WROTE EARLIER. YOU REMOVE MY POST YET DO NOTHING ABOUT THE LAST POST BY peecekeeper.

I believe that Peacekeeper's comments are relevant to his story and do not raise any negative connotations. However I will raise the subject with the Moderator team and see what they say.

Interesting Uncle Bob that from Peacekeeper's 3 very interesting chapters so far you only commented on the religious part.

 

[dwt]

No Uncle Bob,

I'm not talking about prophets or their roles. As the title, "On Helicopters, the manipulation of custom and global obscenity" indicates, my most recent reflections are about my experiences, thoughts and reactions during and after operational service in two very different but similarly violent countries and relating the two to each other.

My reference that you have seized upon is a self criticism of some less than humanitarian and unpleasant cheap-shot thoughts toward the Taliban that I had at a time when a number of my comrades had been killed and injured and I was also formally studying the local cultural practices as a requirement to perform my job and be more effective in my role. To paraphrase you, let me tell you one thing. My knowledge and experience of central Asian, south east Asian and pacific societies and cultures is not indicative of any faith or belief system I may or may not have.

However Uncle Bob, I trust I have made my "position" clear and I trust that your position can only be one of respect and understanding for the thousands of Australian men and women who volunteer and sacrifice so that all of us can enjoy the lives we do.

Sincerely,
The Peacekeeper.

HEAR HEAR, well said Peacekeeper, well said Sir.
Peacekeepers stories are obviously from fact, from being there, not some made up notion on what he believes.
I for one am enjoying these posts from Peacekeeper, and will continue to do so, simply scroll past this thread next time Uncle Bob if you find it upsetting and let one of our countries finest tell his story.

 

[Tathradj]

This is from reality,
Not a fantasy.
PeaceKeeper, We are honored to have you putting it out there for us and
to actually be given a small glimpse of the horror that you would have been
subjected to so we can stay safe in our hearts and homes.
The last paragraph explains to me why the comments about creators are mentioned.
Cobber, I think you better write a book as your writing skills are impeccable.

 

[Ramjet]

Peace keeper. I hadn't read your tales until last night. Very interesting. Thank you very much for sharing and then you for you're service.

 

[goldtruck59]

Gidday all,

I would rather hear about your day with the sluice PK and your hopefully, gold findings.
This is a Prospecting forum and to date the light hearted meanderings and adventures of its patrons.

There is reality checks everywhere for those that wish and seek them.
Religion, war, politics , and so on cause much angst and pain in the world.
In my mind at least, it is not for the pages of this great and peaceful forum.

PK, write a book mate you certainly have the wherewithal, then let us know for those that are interested, where a copy can be purchased.

GT

 

[Guest]

I hear you Fellas, say no more.

 

[Peacekeeper1966]

Good morning folks,

I have just been outside sweeping the pavers and hosing the bat shit of the chairs whilst thinking about all this:

First and foremost, Uncle Bob I apologise for offending your sensibilities if I did. I suspect that you may have perceived that I had a view or intent other than just giving an account of events and reflections thereupon.

My accounts are not designed to provoke argument or result in factions or division here on PA. I do however understand and expect they will prompt people to think and I hope that happens. My views are that whilst exclusiveness and division in any community are not desirable or productive, constructive criticism and healthy debate are to be encouraged for the benefit and edification of all of us. With such social intercourse, we expand our world and develop our understanding of it and others in it.

Such development is the inherent evolution of the complex principals and codes that we make our his lifes journey by. These codes and principals are usually influenced and learned in family nurturing, social conditioning and formal education processes. We all learn a livelihood and we learn our cultural heritage through its art, literature, drama, television, the internet and news media. Learning is a necessary part of us and participation in online discussion such as PA Fora must be included particularly given the depth of interest, involvement and value many PA member have in our hobby and interest in prospecting.

Learning how things go together in ones life is a fundamental principal of human knowledge and we all know, as we gain grey whiskers and gravity effects our frames, we also become wiser, less impulsive and more reflective. I value this forum and the opinions of others foremost as a place to learn from and for sharing ideas and I read these pages most avidly practically everyday. I also value this forum as a place where I can contribute and help where I can and feel valued and accepted as a part of our on-line community.

In closing, thank you for everyone's feedback and thanks to the Moderators for providing an unexpected place of expression for something I am finding very cathartic in recounting great and treasure memories as well as post traumatic recall.

Sincerely,
The Peacekeeper.

 

[Jaros]

I see nothing offensive in your writings T.P. I enjoy a well written article and like to learn from the past as well.
Cheers Jaros

 

[SCROUNGER]

For what it's worth i'm thoroughly enjoying your memoirs Peacekeeper and so long as the forum rules are abided by then i personally don't see a problem with them being posted. If somebody has a problem and they think forum rules have been broken then they should be encouraged to report that breach and put there case for removal. There are also members of this site that would like all small talk and non prospecting related issues not be on the site at all, but i'm also not of that opinion. The differences of opinion and the right to express it within the rules of the forum just makes this site so much more enjoyable, entertaining and interesting. The only problem i have is when some resort to name calling or abusive attitudes to those simply having an opinion, thankfully those posts are extremely rare and are soon reeled in.
It's a great forum imo with a wonderful mix of people, thoughts, attitudes and ideas and one i'm proud to be a member of.