It is quite possible.
Consider the links between Somerton Man and my father. Alfred Greenwood, a signaller, had just been demobbed and spent some time stringing innumerable wires across the Woomera Rocket Range. I have a black-and-white photograph of a tall pole with a signaller sitting on the cross piece and nothing at all in any direction. ‘The lone and level sands stretch far away.’ My dad reported that the desert was hot during the day, cold at night, and had more venomous ‘Joe Blakes’ than he considered really respectable.
Soldiers from Woomera were allowed to go on leave into Adelaide. My father said that his beautiful tan – they all seemed to be clad only in shorts and boots – washed off in the harshly chlorinated brackish waters of the City Baths. They were the same baths where Somerton Man shaved his face and washed his body on his last day. He and my father may have passed each other in the locker room, noticed that each other was stylishly dressed (‘sharp’) and perhaps stopped to exchange a ritual ‘g’day’.
By 1948, governments all over were reluctantly releasing the reins of the economy that they had gripped so tightly during the war. Rationing – which had managed to equitably feed Britain, probably for the first time ever and had actually nourished previously unimportant creatures like pregnant women and children – was increasingly exasperating to the people in general. In Australia, some things were still rationed, notably petrol, but rationing in Australia had always been looser, possibly because this is a big country and someone usually knows someone who can lay their hands on a bit of beef or a pound of butter. For a consideration. Or a favour. Australians do not react well to regimentation.
Rationing was one of the reasons why the American soldiers had been so envied and loathed during the war. ‘Over paid, over sexed and over here.’ Not only were they better fed by their canteens, which had unheard of delights like ice-cream, but they had luxuries like perfume and stockings, dear to the female heart. They also wore very spiffy uniforms, tailored and smart, while the battle dress of the Australians was, in my father’s phrase, censored for my delicate ears, like ‘a wet sack full of spaghetti tied up ugly’. My dad used to do tailoring and alterations for his mates. He taught me to sew on a sewing machine, then gratefully handed over the worst job, replacing zippers, to me. He was good like that. No wonder I have problems with gender roles. He also taught me to skip. Boxers train by skipping. He was very adept, although he didn’t know the skipping rhyme ‘Old Mother Moore’ so I had to learn it in the school yard.
I heard a riposte when I was a child that I have just understood now, as I am typing. A Yank says to an Aussie, ‘We got all the girls’ and the Aussie replies, ‘Nah, mate, you just sorted them out for us’. Ouch. However, the Americans also had glamour, money, Big Bands and Swing. My father loved their music. He loved their tailoring. He liked their accents and he never had any trouble competing for female attention. If he had seen Somerton Man in the baths and decided, on the basis of his tailoring, that he was an American, he would still have said ‘g’day’. Then Somerton Man would have gone on to his date with destiny, while my father went on to the Central Market for a cup of coffee with his old mate Killer.
It is still difficult to find out exactly what everyone was doing at Woomera Rocket Range but it certainly needed a lot of wires. My father, otherwise known as Sig. Greenwood A 2nd/1st Aust Line Construction Sqn, took home with him the battery’s copy of Underground Cable Notes and Aerial Line Notes. (Both of them were issued by the Postmaster General’s (PMG) Department and property of the Australian Signaller Training Battalion Bonegilla. If they are still around, I may have to mortgage my house to pay the overdue fines.) The booklets tell signallers why they are important.
Lines of Communication are Vital in War. One pair of wires may be carrying 12 telephone and 18 telegraph messages at one time. Any of those messages may be a matter of life and death. A damaged insulator, a pole knocked over or a broken wire may:
Isolate defence areas;
Delay urgent national work;
Silence a call for aid;
Interrupt important preparations;
Hold back a vital warning;
Imperil troops and civilians;
And give the enemy the flying start that makes all the difference.
Cutting lines of communications is the first duty of enemy paratroops and
Fifth Columnists.
Don’t do the enemy’s job for him.
TRUNK LINES ARE LIFE LINES,
FOR YOUR SAFETY KEEP THEM INTACT.
What did my father tell me about Woomera?
That it was bloody hot during the day, then bloody cold at night. That the stars in the night sky were as close as lanterns. That it was top secret. That the food was lousy but that was standard. There has been no army in the history of the world where the soldiers have appreciated the food. Caesar’s legions bitched about Roman army food, though that does seem to have been un cuisine horreur. At least modern armies actually feed their soldiers, unlike those unlucky enough to follow Napoleon, who had to rob peasants or starve. But the unvarying army food does explain why my father never ate apricot jam again. He would leave the house when we were making it, too. He told me that any concoction, however dreadful, could be improved by adding vegemite, because then it tasted of vegemite. My partner David employed this theory at a particularly frightful choral camp, apparently catered by lunatics and famous for its fish-flavoured chocolate mousse. He possessed himself of a large bottle of chilli sauce and put it on everything, so that it at least tasted of something identifiable, like my father’s vegemite.
My father told me that the baccarat school he started in an idle moment had been very successful, until he had offended one of his fellow soldiers, who then stranded him out in the middle of nowhere all day. The sun was unrelenting and my father had only boots, shorts and a hat. No water or food, no firearm. He stood next to the pole he had erected and moved around it with the sun, either repenting his bad deeds or meditating revenge – guess which? – as he revolved slowly with the shadow. He said he ignored the passing snakes and they ignored him. He played word games in his head. And then the jeep came and got him and he was given water. I do not know what he did to his assailants because he would not tell me.
He told me that the best way of avoiding official notice was to carry a clipboard and look busy. He did this for days before anyone questioned him. He said that the persons in any organisation with whom you absolutely must make friends are the cooks. And he volunteered to build a tennis court in order not to go back on the wires. He had never even considered doing so before and he could not play tennis. But he built it and it was still there when he left. He often worked terribly hard to avoid doing what he was told. A trait I have, regrettably, inherited.