Shady Places

“The world was on fire, no one could save me but you
It’s strange what desire will make foolish people do
I’d never dreamed that I’d love somebody like you
And I’d never dreamed that I’d lose somebody like you.”

– Chris Isaak

1997-98

When Alison left me, I was gutted. To say that I wasn’t expecting to be dropped when I called to wish her a merry Christmas would be an understatement. Of all the things that she could have said to me that day, “we are breaking up” was the last thing that I ever expected to hear from her. Only a week earlier, she had handed me a letter, which read:

I couldn’t have imagined a better ending to my year than being with you than if I had written it myself. You are the greatest thing that has ever happened in my life. Now stop reading, put down this letter and fuck me as hard as you ever have!

Alison’s change of heart was so unexpected I felt as though a train had hit me. I sat there holding that phone, amid my family Christmas, seeing my life ending in front of me. I simply couldn’t process what I was hearing. And while her explanation of why she was breaking up with me may have made sense to her, it truly broke my heart in every way.

In my mind, every appeal to logic and love should have been enough to convince her that this was simply unnecessary and so very wrong. We loved each other, were so happy, we were together. I was prepared to give up everything to be with her. How could she not see that? What had happened? What had I done that she could become so cold, so fast?

I didn’t sleep that night or for many days after. Running through endless arguments in my head, hoping I could convince her to change her mind. But all I kept hearing in response were the words she said again and again that day, “I’ve made this decision.” They would be the last words I heard from Alison for the next 25 years. If she had just called once in that time telling me to come back, I would have dropped everything I was doing, run to the airport, and gone straight to her.

“I’ll be there in 24 hours.” But the call never came.

To make matters worse, my transfer to Sydney was granted just a few weeks later. That made the loss even more crushing because I would now be within a few miles of Alison. I would now live a fifteen-minute drive from her flat. Not our current three hour trek. We could have spent every night together for the next three years. She could have moved out of her flat and lived with me rent free.

But the suddenness of the breakup caused me to wonder what she hadn’t said. I wanted her to be telling me the truth about her career goals and how she didn’t want me “waiting for her”. But I was terrified that she used that as a smokescreen for some other reason. If I tested the waters and let her know I was close and told her I still loved her, and she rejected me again, then I think that I would have been done. I didn’t have drink or drugs to turn to-that was never me-I just had pain.

And thus begun a grim period. I wanted to walk up to Alison’s door and surprise her with my news, hoping that we would reunite, but I couldn’t be the one to make the first move. Rejection at that point, or worse, seeing her in the company of another man, was my constant nightmare. I didn’t want to turn over that rock and find something that would, more or less, kill me.

So I didn’t. I moved to Rose Bay in Sydney, just over the hill from Alison’s flat, and avoided Randwick for the next two years. I didn’t even go to the Sydney Cricket Ground-the scene of our first-date to see my team play, for fear of being accused of stalking if bumped into her.

But I had one lucky break when I moved to Sydney. My army reserve posting wasn’t automatically transferred to Brigade HQ in Randwick. That was the closest unit to my residence, and also where Alison paraded. No, for my sins, they sent me back to Bardia Barracks in southern Sydney to earn my captaincy. When it rains, it pours.

I say “sent back” for good reason. Since the first day of my army life, I’d been returning to Bardia with increasing frequency and less excitement for training and misery. In the late 90s, there were many clapped out facilities in the army inventory. But none more so than Ingleburn’s Bardia Barracks and Heraklion Lines, that just lay just across Campbelltown road in southern Sydney. People rightly complain about some of the third world faculties at Singleton Infantry Centre and other such places. Glorified camp grounds for reserve units coming from and going to the field. Ingleburn was supposed to be a barracks.

The problem with Ingleburn was that they had built it in the 1940s as the army ramped up its recruitment for the Second World War and nothing had changed since. The entire place was falling apart and barely functional. I suspect that the only reason that the reserve put up with being given the place was it was close to Sydney. As a bonus, no regular army soldier wanted to be seen dead in the place.

I rag on the regulars, not as part of any healthy rivalry, but to point out that fact that they despised the reserve and made no secret of it. And the lower the regs were in rank, the more they hated us.

I am not trying to intimate that the reserve came anywhere near the regulars in terms of professionalism, fitness or discipline. But the history of the Australian Army clearly showed that in times of war, conscripted civilians and the reserve always answered the call. They also paid the ultimate sacrifice and won the day. Which meant that the regular army wasn’t that special as, given time, anyone could be a soldier. All the regulars had over us was that soldiering was their only profession. A high school dropout working full time at McDonald’s would always be better at flipping burgers than the weekend shift.

But the fundamental problem for me in being sent to Bardia again was that this would be the third year out of the last six that I had had to spend all my time in that dump. I believe the government sold the land a few years ago, and made a pile of money in the over inflated Australian property market. Perhaps that is what they had been holding out for all those long decades. And why they put so little money into maintaining that place over that period? They knew that the whole place was going to be bulldozed into the ground one day.

The one saving grace this time around was now I was an officer, not a cadet. Which meant that, despite my low rank, I was now considered one of them. People had to salute me, say yes sir, and leave me alone. All I had to do was turn up to training and not fall asleep, and the army treated me like an adult. I was so glad not to be an “other rank” anymore.

Captain’s training comprised relearning all the things from five years earlier that we’d endured as trainee lieutenants. Mostly administration, military law and endless TEWTs. A TEWT is a Tactical Exercise without Troops. To understand a TEWT, imagine standing on windswept hillside in the worst weather an Australian summer or winter can throw at you. Then having to think about how to defend that hill from some imaginary enemy coming toward you. Or attack the same imaginary enemy on the next hill, then stand up and tell your assessors how you would do it. That was my weekends for most of 1998.

If there was any redeeming feature of that twelve months at Bardia, it was the mess life. As much as I complain about Ingleburn’s crumbling facilities–and they were literally crumbling–there was always cheap beer to be had at the end of each day. And I mean, very cheap beer and at the end of every day. No one expected you to drink yourself into oblivion every night–we weren’t in the navy–but having a few beers at the end of each day definitely took the edge off. And those that did bonded closer than those that didn’t.

So it was with much relief that I finally passed Captain’s school at the end of ’98 and prayed that they would never send me back to Bardia Barracks again. The last twelve months had taken their toll on me and I was sick of my life, which included everything to do with the army. So, without a second thought, I collected my promotion and my pay and promptly resigned my commission.

I had made captain. No one could take that away from me.