Part two, we finished where we left off, attempting to install civilisation amongst SAVAGES!

ADF recognises the unquestionable authority of the Sherrin in civilising dark places.

Smarty walked over to the Afghani who started it all.  From the bits of him, not adhered to the walls, we discerned something grim, a fragment of what looked like leather, on the external surface, “ Gift from the RAR”, and still barely discernible “SHERRIN”. 

‘Jeez’! Smarty ejaculated, ‘that bloke wasn’t carrying a bomb, he was carrying a footy, the Royal Australian Regiment has been here before, (he paused for emphasis), “IN CIVILISING”!. If we’d known we would’ve bought em a complete set of Ted Whitten hand-balling skills DVD’s, (‘and a player’ interjected Ces) along with the barby. Buggered if I know what that bugger was trying to do with the footy? Is it a crime to desecrate a Sherrin’? 

‘You betcha mate, it’s not only disrespectful to our culture, but it’s also sacrilegious. It’d be like questioning the bona-fides of a VC holder, or suggesting that a Minister of the Crown was crooked’. 

‘You’re right Smarty”!…. We faced in the direction of OZ, and with our hands on our hearts intoned, “,No Clean-livin Aussie would do that”!

NO CLEAN LIVIN AUSSIE WOULD DO THAT!

Still, we’d better get onto it, and before you could say ‘snag’, we had the cement mixer whirring away and the barbie, was being built. An Apache landed a load of bricks, and another Iroquois loaded a bench top and several gas cylinders. Each cylinder, marked ‘A GIFT FROM THE AUSSIE GOVT,’ with Don’s batting average inscribed on the side. ‘Who said war’s bad’? Ces laughed. We all had a chuckle this was our ‘Good Morning Vietnam’ moment. 

‘Fuck me’! (opined Quent), “where are the locals? Who’s gonna use the barby’?

‘I dunno’, Ces replied,  ‘maybe they’re hiding! No use having a Barbie unless you’ve got locals otherwise what would be the use? It’d be like questioning our very role in helping these blighted bastards in the first place’. 

Smarty was onto it, ‘Round up what you can find and bring em over to the barby’. If they don’t wanna join-in we’ll make em. Just at that moment a slab of VB fell from the sky. We looked up, “who said there aint heaven’? And we each cracked a can, and waited for the locals. Ces, busied himself in troweling off the edges. 

Ted Whitten, universally accepted symbol of international fair play and sportsmanship on the Field of valour, God and King etc, etc,

Smarty returned with a gaggle of local kids and women. The women were all veiled, we sniggered, as if we wanted to look at em anyway, and motioning with the butt of his 50 cal, smarty made em look at the barbie. The crest at the rear of the splash-plate was a rising sun motif, and beneath ‘a gift from the Australian Army’. 

The women and children started screaming and yabbering. Ces offered em a beer, and they looked more scared, like it was a grenade. ‘Jeez, Smarty thought you said you’d sorted out the Abos out during the intervention, why aint it working here’?   ‘I dunno’? Smarty curtly replied (you could tell he was annoyed) ‘maybe there’s something missing’. ?

In a flash he had the answer, running back to the Perentie and the still smoking quadruple 50 cal and a group of disinterested SAS veterans playing cards he muttered a few words, and in a flash, the SAS were over with an interpreter. 

Our replacement interpreter. Lasted about as long as the other one. Cant remember his name either.

‘Whaddare they sayin’?, Ces cried, ‘dunno’, the interpreter waived to us, we wandered over, 

‘What’s up’? In strongly accented dialogue he described the villagers we killed were all innocent; “That why what’s left of the village aint happy (and to put a finer point of international relations on it), they aint rapt in your civilising’. ‘Innocent me balls’! Ces cried, “they wouldn’t graciously accept our offer of a barbie! In Oz that’d be worse than dissing a mate”. 

“I know’!, Smarty had an idea, “howsabout we do a ”Wake in Fright on em”

What’s a “Wake in Fright’? Will our intrepid men at the front introduce ‘two-up’ as a cross cultural benefit, or is it portentous of something more impenetrable?  Stay tuned to our next explosive episode in ” Two cans to Tarenkot’ or…”You only live Once”!