A subscriber wrote:

>I would be interested to know where
Mike Burke has had his experiences with Australia’s defence forces, because it
is most certainly NOT in Darwin. My experiences with the personnel from all
three of the forces represented in Darwin is that while drinking may not be
officially encouraged it is most definitely part of the culture and by default
encouraged by group behaviour and role models. That is not to claim that there
isn’t a problem with a drinking culture in Darwin outside the defence
forces.

For what it’s worth, I never claimed that there was not a
drinking
culture in the Australian military. That there is, in some places
and
among some age groups in particular, is obvious. However, it is
an
Australian drinking culture at work here, not a military
one.

However, my point is that it is not in any way encouraged by the
ADF
or the single Services – officially or unofficially. Quite
the
contrary as others have noted in support of my original
statements.

Civilians these days have a very distorted view of the
military. All
sorts of weird and wonderful myths abound, and it was in
response to
yet another journalist purveying such mythology as if it were
the
gospel truth that I wrote my earlier piece on the subject. Given
that
it is now 60 years since the end of World War II, it’s perhaps
timely
to recall that that ‘when Oi were a laaad’ and starting out in
the
workplace in the late 50s, nearly everybody in the work force
was
either a war veteran, the sibling or spouse of a war veteran, or
the
child/nephew/niece of a war veteran. In those days, people
knew
enough about the military either from direct personal experience or
by
osmosis from discussions with their close relatives with
direct
personal experience, that there was nothing seen to be strange
or
unusual about military life or about military personnel. It was
a
given that they were just like the rest of us.

However, these days,
the reverse is the case. The overwhelming
majority of people in Australia
probably have few if any living
relatives with any military background, and
are easily gulled by the
frequently cynical media who tend to describe the
few military
personnel that they deign to recognise as either heroes or
rogues,
whether they deserve it or not. I guess it’s far easier
for
journalists to produce, and for ordinary people to believe, this
crap
than it is to make the effort to find out the truth.

A few months
ago, some young men in Sydney tortured a kitten and
seriously injured it on a
suburban railway station. There was a
justifiable furore and the people
concerned were charged but, as seems
to be the norm in these enlightened
times, given a mere slap with a
magisterial feather. A year or so before
that, some young soldiers in
Townsville or Darwin did something similar.
Among the penalties they
received was the loss of their employment – a far
greater penalty than
anything suffered by their civilian counterparts. Years
ago some
young RAAF airfield defence guards at Richmond RAAF Base also
tortured
and killed some kittens and were discharged as part of their
penalty.

Apart from the nature of the crimes and the victims, the
common
element in all of these cases was the relatively young age of the
men,
and the excessive use of alcohol. It is a regrettable fact that
there
is a widespread, indeed almost universal, drinking culture among
young
men and women in this country.

As some contributors to this
discussion have stated, their experience
in the military has been that they
have been forced to drink alcohol
to excess. They believe that the military
condones and even
encourages this. From their perspective as very junior
personnel,
officer cadets or recent appointees/enlistees, this may seem to be
the
case, despite the reams of Defence Instructions (orders) to
the
contrary.

But, in nearly 28 years as an officer in the RAAF,
during which time I
willingly and voluntarily drank to excess far too
frequently all over
this great land and in foreign parts, I can honestly say
that never in
all that time was I ordered or even encouraged to drink
alcohol, and
never saw anyone else ordered or encouraged to do so by the
actions of
a more senior officer (that might have been interpreted as an
order).
As everyone knows, however, peer group pressure can be
overwhelming
and this can be exacerbated by the Australian ‘shouting’
custom. My
civilian friends and acquaintances were drinking to excess just
as
often as I was, and under precisely the same peer group pressures.
It
had, and has, nothing whatsoever to do with the culture of ADF or
the
single Services.

While I have been retired for some years now, my
friends tell me
nothing has changed.

In my experience, young people,
whether civilian or military, are
pretty much interchangeable in their
drinking habits. Military
personnel are, however, more visible because for
the most part they
are strangers in the communities where they are based and,
as such,
their behaviour is more noticeable.

Mike Burke