War Stories and Other

hose early days of Suport Group in Fire Force were fun but a steep learning curve ... After Vawns tragic accident we were all a little down as he had been a great friend and comrade ... We were still woefully short of men but training troop was starting to trickle more in ... One of the biggest problems was that in the early days of the Battalion you couldn't go directly to Support woithout spending time in the commandos first ... We were now getting guys direct from training troop and luckily most of the older troops welcomed the new guys ... From that fatefull day we rotated back to patrols & OP's in the rural area and every 4^th bush trip we were in on FF ... this gave us a chance to break the new guys in and form up as a new unit ... Our long absence from Darwin, then the only FF base, saw many changes when we returned as we now had barrack rooms and offices all constructed from Galvanized sheet on frame on concrete slabs ... In a Rhody summer this was not pleasant in the heat and I remained in my corner bunker with my MAG ... Sgt Vancy refused to let anyone else carry a gun in his stick as I was it ... However that FF trip we lost Sgt Vance to SS and I started to experience other operators ... We didn't have good NCO's at that stage and a lot of the leadership was coming from the youngsters just joining ... We had a couple of good guys but we soon lost them to SS...