Just to preface – I’m not a current or prior service member, please excuse any mistakes in military jargon.

So, to paint the picture, in the late 60’s/early 70’s, a lot of young Aussie guys were Nasho’s (national service/conscripts). My dad was one of these, and was drafted into service, and like so many other young men, was sent to Vietnam.

My Dad was fortunate in that he was studying to be a med tech (pathology) when he got drafted, so unbeknownst to him, he was already earmarked for deployment to a field hospital unit, and ended up being seconded to a major British hospital unit in Singapore.

The way he tells it, when he landed in Singapore, he was dropped at some dingy airfield at night, with no illumination and not a soul in sight. After about 10 minutes of wondering how fucked he was, a car pulls up and out steps a guy with a familiar accent, dressed in thongs (flip flops for the yanks), the classic short-shorts of the time, and from my best guess of the description, basically a short sleeved safari shirt.

‘Evening mate, you (father’s name)?’

‘Yeah mate.’

‘Alright, jump in.’

They get to chatting as they head out of the airstrip. Turns out stubby-shorts-safari man is Major Smith, 2ic of the hospital my dad’s to be stationed at and one of 3 Aussies seconded to it. Turns out Major Smith is just happy to have another Aussie around so there was no real standing on ceremony. He gives my Dad the lay of the land, what to watch out for with the locals and a (very relevant) warning about Singaporean beer, namely Tiger beer, which had chemically sterilized bottles and would almost certainly give you the runs if you drank it.

After getting settled in, my Dad got to work and by all accounts, really enjoyed his service. He got a lot of practical training in his field and ended up coming out of it as a fully qualified lab tech. There was, however, two major complaints. Being seconded to a British unit meant two things:

• You were eating at a British mess

• Your only option for beer, unless you wanted to brave the liquid laxative known as Tiger beer, was lukewarm British beer.

The mess hall was so fucking bad that the Australian army actually gave all of their troopers an actual meat allowance in their pay so they could buy their own, because even Australian army administrators agreed that what the British were serving was basically unfit for human consumption and would give nothing but Anaemia to their soldiers due to the lack of iron. I’m not joking on this, there was an actual nutritional requirement table that the English food didn’t actually meet.

As you can also imagine on the beer front, as a red blooded Australian, the thought of having to deal with what he considered essentially room temperature dog water made his stomach churn.

In a bout of desperation, he ended up writing a letter to Carlton United Brewery’s predecessor (the guys who make the somewhat infamous Fosters, and what my Dad was really after, being Victoria bitter). In this letter, he just basically asked if there were any liquour stores or distribution centers in Singapore that stocked the good stuff, because he was just thoroughly sick of British beer and there weren’t any real alternatives. He posted the letter without any real expectations, other than maybe being able to pick up a couple of bottles some time in the future from a bottle shop.

About 2 months pass, and the letter he sent is a dim memory. About half way through an otherwise ordinary shift, a disgruntled supply sergeant comes storming into the lab, asking for my dad and why the fuck there is a huge, fully stacked pallet personally addressed to him, currently taking up space in his supply store.

A little confused, he and Major Smith, overhearing the conversation from his office, went down to investigate.

Well, the supply Sergeant wasn’t wrong. There was a gigantic pallet sitting in the middle of the warehouse, wrapped in cardboard. Having absolutely no explanation for this, my Dad decided to peel off a section of carboard, and was greeted with a sight that would’ve made any Aussie weep with joy –

This pallet was stacked from bottom to top, about 7 foot high, with cartons of Victoria Bitter. Enough to get the entire hospital unit sloshed for the better part of a year.

Major smith was in awe –

‘Mate, i don’t know what the fuck you did, but I think i’m in love right now.’

Even better than this was the surprise that they found at the center of the pallet, buried in magnificent beer - A brand new refrigerator, with a note attached:

‘No digger should be forced to drink warm British piss. Enjoy the beer’.

Turns out one of the upper management at the brewery was handed my Dad’s letter, and he was utterly appalled. He basically considered the beer situation a warcrime and sprung into action to rectify the situation.

So for the rest of my Dad’s deployment, and probably for a long time after, the beer fridge was set up in the supply store, with anyone allowed access for a coin donation, and my father never had to drink British beer again.

Hope you guys enjoyed the story. There’s a bunch of smaller stories that i’d be happy to write up at a later date, if this gets any traction. They include being nearly killed by a Ghurka for making his Wife jump while drawing blood, the joys of swabbing the privates of dirty privates for STI testing, and (literally, thanks to some crafty processing dyes) pissing red, white and blue at the urinals to freak out the Yanks on a night out of heavy drinking.