It is hard to visit Mudspike and not read another ‘trigger’ that reminds me of my military service. This time it is a photo of a 707 - Where Are You Photos [2023] - #173 by ST0RM
Another Surveillance Platoon story. Back in 1993, before all the ‘menial’ tasks had been outsourced to civvy contractors, soldiers were still rostered for extra work such as mess duty, guard duty and in our case Company Orderly Room duty. Usually it wasn’t a bad gig, air con and a break from all the shite tasks that you usually got saddled with when back in ‘barracks’.
It just so happened that one day when I was rostered for Orderly Room duty was the same day that three Blackhawks from "Oakey’ were visiting and it had been teed up for us and Recon Platoons from 6 and 8/9 RAR to do a bit of rappelling.
The Ord room (and Company HQ) was in a separate building and about as far from the Surveillance Pl compound as you could get, but as the lads headed off to the LZ they made a point of filing past the counter (where I was seated) and pepper me with comments such as “Sucked in shitbag, we’re doing some rappelling today, what are you doing… Oh, that’s right”
Fuming and having to deal with a crusty old Ord room Sgt who thought the best use of my time was to go through files and find any folios that weren’t stapled ‘correctly’ then remove the staple and re-staple them. I was about a nanosecond away from an insubordination charge…
After lunch and just as I was considering slashing my wrists (or at least giving myself enough of a paper cut so that the Sarge didn’t want me bleeding all over his files) a signal came in over the fax. “Better get that” said the SGT. I swear, the fat lazy SOB hadn’t moved from his chair all day except to go to the toilet or grab a ‘goffer’ from the fridge.
I had to read the sig a couple of times for it to sink in. “I’d better show this to the 2IC straight away sarge” I said, “What the ■■■■ are you waiting for then” he said.
I knocked on the door to the COY 2IC’s office and informed him that 3 BDE Int Section were requesting a LCPL or CPL to augment them in the BDE CP for the upcoming Ex Tropic Lightning to be held in Hawaii.
“Well, I would say that the first LCPL or CPL to hand me a minute nominating themself would get to go” said the 2IC… I was a LCPL at the time.
I think the total time to return to the Ord Rm, write a minute and literally thrust it into the 2IC’s hand was less than 5 minutes 
Later that afternoon, and once again the boys thought they would take another opportunity to rub it in, only this time to be greeted by me with a huge ■■■■ eating grin on my face:
Excercise Tropic Lightning was a US Army 25th Infantry Division Command Post Excercise (CPX) based on a renewed invasion of South Korea by the North. The Australian Army 3rd Brigade had also been deployed in support. It was also colloquially known as Ex Tropical Holiday, because although the CPX only ran for 4 days, we would be in Hawaii for two weeks, so we had a ‘fair bit’ of R&R.
To top it off, while I was there I managed to meet a few of the LRS guys and that turned into an extra two months seconded to them after the CPX. Spent most of that time on the Big Island, but was awesome fun and made some lifelong friends along the way.