Canning Vale resident Horace Misko was a proud attendee at the annual National Servicemen’s Day luncheon held last Friday, 14 February at the RAAFA Memorial Estate in Bull Creek, to recognise the story of the post-World War 2 national service schemes.
There were two official post-war national service schemes, running from 1951 to 1959, and 1965 to 1972.
“My forced army service was from April to December 1972, when conscription was abolished by the incoming Whitlam government,” Mr Misko said.
“After recruit training in Puckapunyal, Victoria, I was allocated to infantry training at Singleton in New South Wales and posted to South Australia. From there we undertook training with Armoured Personnel Carriers, weapons training using all that is normally available to Infantry soldiers such as the SLR rifle, M16 automatic assault weapon, General purpose M60 machine gun, hand grenades, M79 40mm grenade launcher, M72 anti-tank rocket, Claymore mines and more
“I was chosen to carry the M60 machine gun in our section of the platoon. My last month in the Army was at the jungle training centre in Canungra in Queensland, where we practiced ambushes, patrolling and contact drills. The last 10 days was working with UH 1 Huey helicopters establishing and securing landing zones for “dust offs” and extraction from hot zones and where loading a section of men had to be done rapidly. Because I had the machine gun my seat was on the side of the aircraft, no doors, just a seatbelt so the M60 could be used to return fire and was capable of 600 rounds per minute.”
Mr Misko said had Gough Whitlam not won the election in 1972, he would have been ready to be deployed overseas if the need arose, with further training scheduled at Shoalwater Bay in the new year.
“This was the reality of ‘National Service’,” he said. “We were not just playing soldiers. As a machine gunner I had the firepower of my section but I also would have been the main target of the enemy,” he said.
“We will never forget.”
