Lackey on Defence

　
A case of BLBRY WAT.
　
My excuse for rabbiting on about events of the past (the onset of senility is a plausible explanation) is that by studying the past we will avoid repeating mistakes in the future. This notion should, in any event, be flipped on it's ear. That is, we will continue to make the same old cock-ups, because we don’t study the lessons of the past.

Take, for example, all the hullabaloo over defence. I never rose above Lieutenant and you really have to be a General, an Admiral, or an Air-Whatsit to comment on such things . But I do want to say something about Ron Mark’s assertion that the New Zealand Army was 'a pack of thieving rascals'. He used more parliamentary language - said everyone called us the 'Hydraulics' because we 'could lift anything'. This is only partly true.

What is true is that NZ’s successive military ventures have been run on the smell of an oily rag - and no more so than in Vietnam, particularly when New Zealand citizens, and then their leaders, chose to wash their hands of the whole thing.
The secret of our survival was a sophisticated system of networking - using all the cunning, guile and, dare I say, charm which have been hallmarks of the Kiwi's military excursions.

Transportation is a case in point. Our fleet of Landrovers lived up to the maker’s claim that they were the most dependable transportation known to man - you could depend on them breaking down. One by one they ground to a halt, despite some amazing feats of No 8 wire mechanical engineering and canibalisation.

One thing was certain - replacement vehicles were out of the question.

Our American colleagues had no such problem. When a jeep or a truck so much as coughed, let alone spluttered, it would suffer a horrible accident - run over an imaginary mine, for example- and be replaced. It could then be loaned, or sold, or used for parts, or serve as an officer’s personal runabout.

Thus Landrover No 35768 (not it’s real name) miraculously became a 2 1/2 Ton General Motors truck. The miracle being $200 from our Officers Mess kitty. All that was left of the original was it’s registration number, but our redoubtable Battery Captain kept sending home Vehicle Condition Reports (in triplicate of course) informing the Buckle Street base-wallahs of the "Landrover's" amazing good health.
Sometimes the American's supply system proved an embarrassment of riches. I had a call one day from my mate, Lieutenant Hon, US Army. An audit team were about to descend on Hon’s battalion and would I be so kind as to take care of three Jeeps which , as he quaintly put it, were "Off Inventory"?

My jeep-sitting fee took the form of several cartons of prime beef cuts and other assorted delicacies. Included was a case of one gallon tins marked, in three places, with the words BLBRY WAT.

Now the US Military is nomenclaturely possessed and the naming in three places would presumably prevent someone mistaking them for cans of, say, napalm. It is one thing to hurl a can of napalm on an unsuspecting enemy, but a can of BLBRY WAT might violate the Geneva Convention, or possibly the Pure Foods Act.

We never found out what BLBRY WAT was. It was clear that Cook regarded it as a challenge to his culinary abilities; a challenge that he would never be ready to confront. The eight gallons of BLBRY WAT sat in his larder as a constant reminder of the gulf between our two cultures. He refused point blank to take up the old can-opener. It seemed churlish to ask if one could to take a little peek - besides, everyone knows that if you open a can, you have to finish the contents. A gallon of BLBRY WAT. Who would dare?

First published in the Wellington Capital Times in 2001