Spotlight - 13.2019

AROUND OZ 13/2019 Spotlight 39

Fotos: 4x6, RuthBlack/iStock.com; privat

PETER FLYNN is a

public-relations

consultant and

social commenta-

tor who lives in

Perth, Western

Australia.

here’s been a lot of nostalgia lately about what a great

year 1969 was: the 50th anniversary of man landing

on the moon, the Woodstock music festival and the

famous photo on The Beatles’ Abbey Road album.

Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie, Once Upon a Time

in Hollywood, is set against the backdrop of 1969, at the

height of the hippie counterculture.

For me, though, and I remember 1969

quite well, watching the moon landing

with my science class in the school thea-

trette was overshadowed by an increas-

ing realization that I could be drafted

into the army and sent off to Vietnam

when I turned 18 —something that pre-

viously happened only to my friends’ older

brothers. Now, I was getting fearful, as happens

when reality overtakes innocence.

At my boarding school, we all had to take part in

the Army Cadets — a sort of junior military — which

required us to put on uniforms and play soldier, in-

cluding carrying around .303 calibre rifles left over

from the Second World War. Every Friday, 200 stu-

dents took out their .303s from the armoury in a bun-

ker under the junior science laboratory. The armoury

also housed thousands of rounds of live ammunition.

Instead of Woodstock, I remember classmates

sitting around and cleaning those rifles, using “pull

throughs” — a piece of oiled flannel on a long string

— to shine the inside of the barrel. During the regular

afternoon classes, the rifles were left on our dormi-

tory beds, ready for us to take to the parade ground.

By this time, I’d also been to proper militar y train-

ing camps, supervised by Australian Army trainers,

where there were fake Vietcong villages, booby traps

with purple smoke bombs and jungle exercises us-

ing modern, all-black SLR rifles and dummy bullets.

From playing soldiers, we had moved up to proper

war games. And we had to dig our own latrines, sleep

in tents and live off army rations (which, I think,

were also left over from the Second World War).

Towards the end of 1969, I was asked to attend a

“sergeants’ school” with the regular army. I declined,

saying I didn’t want to give up my summer holidays.

The truth was that I could feel a trap being set.

What’s more, most Australians had turned

against the Vietnam War. Our school ex-

ercise books were more likely to be cov-

ered with peace symbols than pictures

of sports stars or pretty girls.

My rebellious spirit was growing and

it was to be only one more year before the

school told my parents I was a “corrosive

force undermining Christian principles and gener-

al discipline” and asked them to take me home. Mum

was proud of that. The birthday-lottery drafting of

18-year-olds was stopped the year before I left school

— and the rest, as they say, is history.

AROUND OZ

1969: the

Australian view

Unserem Kolumnisten sind die Schrecken des Vietnam-

Krieges zwar erspart geblieben, aber er schaut mit sehr

gemischten Gefühlen auf die späten 60er-Jahre zurück.

Auf Seite 24 erfahren Sie, wie eine Amerikanerin diese

Zeit erlebt hat.

ADVANCED AUDIO

armoury [(A:mEri]

, Wa f f e n k a m m e r

backdrop [(bÄkdrQp]

, Hintergrund, Kulisse

barrel [(bÄrEl]

, hier: Gewehrlauf

boarding school [(bO:dIN sku:l]

, Internatsschule

booby trap [(bu:bi trÄp]

, versteckter Sprengsatz

bunker [(bVNkE]

, Geschützbunker

corrosive [kE(rEUsIv]

, zersetzend, zerstörend

counterculture [(kaUntEkVltʃə]

, Gegenkultur, Gegenbewegung

decline [di(klaIn]

, ablehnen

dormitory [(dO:mEtri]

, Schlafsaal-

draft sb. [drA:ft]

, jmdn. (zum Militärdienst)

einziehen

dummy [(dVmi]

, unecht

flannel [(flÄn&l]

, Flanell; hier: Tuch, Lappen

rifle [(raIf&l]

, Gewehr

theatrette [(TIEtEret] UK, Aus.

, kleines Theater; hier: Schul-

bühne

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