I got this from Sharkey Ward (yeah the guy that hammered the Argentinians during the Falkland's War) and it made me laugh so hard I had to share it. Enjoy.
“Dear Mum & Dad,
I am well. Hope youse are too. Tell me big brothers Doug and Phil that the Army is better than workin' on the farm - tell them to get in bloody quick smart before the jobs are 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 ya bed and shine ya boots and clean ya uniform. No bloody cows to milk, no calves to feed, no feed to stack - 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!
At brekky ya get cereal, fruit and eggs but there's no kangaroo steaks or possum stew like wot Mum makes. You don't get fed again until noon and by that time all the city boys are buggered because we've been on a 'route march' - geez its only just like walking to the windmill in the back paddock!!
This one will kill me brothers Doug and Phil with laughter. I keep getting medals for shootin' - dunno why. The bullseye is as big as a bloody possum's bum and it don't move and it's not firing back at ya like the Johnsons did when our 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 - it's a piece of piss!! You don't even load your own cartridges, they comes in little boxes, and ya don't have to steady yourself against the rollbar of the roo shooting truck when you reload!
Sometimes ya gotta wrestle with the city boys and I gotta be real careful coz they break easy - it's not like fighting with Doug and Phil and Jack and Boori and Steve and Muzza all at once like we do at home after the muster.
Turns out I'm not a bad boxer either and it looks like I'm the best the platoon's got, and I've only been beaten by this one bloke from the Engineers - he's 6 foot 5 and 15 stone and three pick handles across the shoulders and as ya know I'm only 5 foot 7 and eight stone wringin' wet, but I fought him till the other blokes carried me off to the boozer.
I can't complain about the Army - tell the boys to get in quick before word gets around how bloody good it is.
Your loving daughter,
Sheila"
lol,
ReplyDeletesounds like the truth.
solomon, thinks you fuxed the copy & paste, at the end.
Solomon:
ReplyDeleteIn 2010, Ward and the son of Cap. Ruben Martel (the pilot that he in the call of duty killed on the 1 of June 1982), Ezequiel Martel, talked. It was a tense moment. Both spoke about the incident (witch was a controversial kill). After that started a relationship. After all of these years, and all the pain, two pilots touched by the war in different ways. One as a soldier, the other one as a child (now a man) who grow up with out a father.
The incredible thing is that they started a relationship. This speaks about the class of gentlemen that Ward is.
War is war, and in no war is easy to say this are the good ones and that are the bad ones. A soldier do not chose to go to war; he/she follows orders, in the call of duty.
To these 2 men, talking between each other helped them to heal the pain.
On the anniversary of the C-130 kill, Ward sent flowers to Ezequiel for him to put on the crew monument in Buenos Aires. The flowers have a legend “For a pilot that knows fly with the angels. Sharkey Ward”
On 30th of March of 2012 they talked again on a radio show, the first part is in Spanish, but @17:23 you can listen the talk in “Spanglish” and English here http://perros.metro951.com/2012/03/30/30-anos-de-memoria/
In Ward own words “that contact changed his life”… enjoy it.
Solomon: Sorry he wrote "For a Hero know flying with the angel. From Sharkey Ward" http://perros.metro951.com/2011/06/01/homenaje-malvinense/
ReplyDelete