Well its been an interesting year to say the least.
I have been busy writing, Lesley has been busy editing and it has finally happened!
TOAST Book 2 ‘Hells Salvation’ is finally here, I have a small number of pre print run books in my hand but will wait for my main stock before launching itToast_Book 2_Cover_FNL (3)
Over the next six months, I am introducing one of my characters not only in Book 1 but in the whole series, at the rate of one a week, so every week you will get to know them as I do when I write about them. This week its-
Wayne Michaels (Sarge)
Sarge was an ex-Sapper RAA turned bushman. It was said he could survive on two red berries and a dirty puddle for a month!
He was Taswegian born and bred, coming into this world in 1970 in Kings Town; and was the son of Basil and Florence Michaels. Basil was a bulldozer driver who worked for a large civil contractor; his job often took him away from home and all over the state. Most of the time he’d camp away for the week, returning home for the weekend if he was lucky.
Sarge’s upbringing was different to most; he wasn’t a great scholar and pretty well hated his school days. Picked on by the hierarchy and branded dumb by his peers, most of the time Sarge just took off and spent time away with his father. Basil, a qualified bushman, taught him far more than he would ever have learned in the classroom; everything from how to drive a bulldozer to how to fall a tree.
Sarge thrived in this environment and by the time he was twelve years old he could out-cut most grown men with a chainsaw and could handle the O65 Stihl pro-saw with ease.
Basil realised the future wasn’t going to be easy for Wayne and encouraged him to try out for the Army. Much to everyone’s surprise he was accepted; given his lack of education one could only assume that Basil must have had contacts!
After completing his basic training at Kapooka in 1987, Sarge joined the Royal Australian Engineers. It was the perfect career path for him; being part of this corps would allow him to use all the skill sets his father had taught him.
Sapper Michaels attended the School of Military Engineering in Sydney and began his initial employment training as a Combat Engineer. Upon completion of his Combat Engineer course in August 1987, he was posted to the 2nd Combat Engineer Regiment in Brisbane.
As a Combat Engineer, Sarge belonged to the Royal Australian Engineers (RAE) Corps. RAE soldiers are known as ‘Sappers’ and are responsible for assisting their own forces to move, while at the same time denying mobility to the enemy. They are combat soldiers who are specialists in military field engineering, and hold a very wide range of trade and technical skills; being trained in a broad range of tasks including wielding a chainsaw, bridge-building, clearing minefields, demolitions, field defences and road and airfield construction and repair. They are also highly skilled in using explosives to demolish a target.
Among other things, at different times during this military career Sarge was called upon to assist in the construction of temporary roads, bypasses and fords, dig drains and construct culverts, erect bridges using both equipment and non-equipment components, construct and operate rafts and ferries, carry out concreting tasks, and construct field defenses and wire obstacles.
He was experienced in laying, arming, neutralising, disarming and removing mines and booby traps, conducting demolition tasks and producing potable water using water purification equipment. On top of this he could pretty well operate any field machine, boat or power tool you could think of.
Sarge saw extensive service in Iraq, East Timor, the Gulf War and Afghanistan. After paying off in 2000, he ended up back in Taswegia trying to start his own firewood cutting business.
To those who didn’t know him, he seemed like a quiet, unassuming man, with not much to say. But Sarge didn’t mind; he liked it that way.
It was Dick’s farrier who’d originally introduced him to Sarge; Sarge needed a supply of wood to cut and a place to stay, and Dick and Patch needed someone to help them finish building the motel; there was still a lot of fencing, landscaping, clearing and general bush work that needed to be done. It was a natural progression for Sarge to end up with them; his skills had sure come in handy!
Not long after that the long treks kicked off, and Sarge offered to be backup driver. It was his job to prepare the campsite for the arrival of Dick and his customers; this often meant travelling through dense forest on small, and sometimes non-existent tracks. He was also happy to double as a tail guide whenever needed, as well as help with cattle musters and general work around the property.
The friendship between Sarge and Dick developed rapidly; they were a great team, as well as great mates, and the pair worked tirelessly at whatever had to be done.
Sarge was a single man, and he thought it was the best idea ever when they started training the guides; nearly all of the trainees were female and under twenty years old. This was right up Sarge’s alley; and he proceeded to test them all out. By “testing”, he didn’t mean their horse-riding skills! He’d worked his way through to a guide whose name was Jan by the time the skinny local girl came onto the scene.
Fifteen-year-old Annie, who was an excellent horsewoman, took to Dick’s training like a duck takes to water. She also took a shine to Sarge, but Dick was never certain whether this was initially because of the fun it would be to take him away Jan or whether it was because of the feelings she had for the ex-Digger. Although there was a seventeen-year age difference neither of them cared; it was obvious to everyone that this relationship was one that was going to last.
Eventually, after Annie’s mother died, the pair settled down onto her family farm at Twaddle; her other siblings were happy for Sarge and Annie to pay them out, and farm eventually became Sarge and Annie’s place.
Jack Smouch
Born on the first day of June 1965, Jack grew up in the Northern Territory town of Katherine. He was the only son of Terry Smouch, a long-haul truck driver, and Sarah, who was the local remote area schoolteacher. The other sibling making up the Smouch household was Helen, his older sister.
Jack grew up about as far away from the sea as you could get. Nobody knows why he wanted to join the navy, but from a very early age this is all he ever wanted to do. Any time his father was taking a load anywhere near the ocean, Jack went with him, often without his mother’s knowledge! He would wag school to join his father on journeys that sometimes kept him away for weeks. Terry didn’t mind; he liked the company.
Fortunately for both of them, Sarah worked remote in the Aboriginal community of ‘Yarralin’, which meant she was usually away during the week. On Friday afternoons she would drive the four and a half hours back to Katherine for the weekend, then travel back in on Sunday afternoons.
Mind you, this only happened during the dry season. Over the wet season the roads were impassable, which meant she had to stay in community, away from her family for the duration. The wet season ran from late December until early April, with the only way out being by air on the mail plane. Passenger seats were limited, so most people chose to stay put.
The only other air service was the RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service) flights when they were requested, but there were no available seats on these.
Terry taught Jack how to shoot from an early age, and they would quite often break the return long-haul journeys with hunting or fishing trips. By the time he was in his teens Jack had started competition rifle shooting, and over time he became a crack shot and made his way up the ladder to first represent his school, and later the Northern Territory in the Nationals.
Helen was five years older than Jack. To put it bluntly, she was nothing but the local “bike”. She was the talk of the school in Katherine; many a tale was told about what Helen and the boys were doing behind the score board. One could say that she literally seduced her way through high school and then onto boarding school in Darwin, where she entertained the lecturers at college. Whether it was the lack of parental influence at home that sent her in this direction wasn’t clear, but Helen really didn’t seem to care; or maybe she’d stopped caring long ago.
Jack could tell that his parents’ marriage was falling apart, but he never raised the subject with either his father or his mother. As for his relationship with his sister? There wasn’t one!
After leaving school Jack found work locally, working for a tour company as a hunting guide, and showing would-be hunters where go to shoot wild pigs, kangaroo and bush turkeys. He put up with the work, even though he found it boring; he’d much rather be the one doing the shooting instead of having to deal with city folk who signed up for an adventure. He did his best to make sure they went home happy, with a pictorial trophy of something that they had shot; but to Jack it was just a job.
Things changed the day young Jack found himself taking out a group of navy divers. The four mates had decided to do something different to celebrate the impending wedding of one of their number; they figured it was a kind of buck’s party with a twist of adventure in celebration of the groom’s looming loss of independent living!
Jack couldn’t get enough of their stories; he loved hearing about the camaraderie, the grog, the girls and the sea! They got to do all of that and be trained to shoot people as well!
All too soon the tour came to an end. Jack hardly waited to wave them goodbye before heading off to Darwin to enlist. Leaving his never-at-home mother, and his whore of a sister didn’t worry him; the only thing he would miss were the truck driving times with Terry.
HMAS Cerberus, situated at Westernport Bay, south of Millburn in the state of Victoria, was the main adult recruit training establishment for the Royal Australian Navy. This was where Jack was to receive his indoctrination into the navy; and it was also where he would decide what branch of the navy he would go into.
After listening to the yarns of the buck’s party, he wanted to be a diver right or wrong! But he soon learned you can’t go straight into the CD (Clearance Diver) branch; you have to serve your apprenticeship, so to speak, in another branch first. In the past, this had to be a seaman branch, but at the time Jack signed up the navy was experimenting with something new. They knew Jack would eventually try out for CD but allowed him to train as a stoker first.
Stokers these days in the RAN are marine technicians; they operate and maintain the ship’s engineering plant including the engine room, generators, pumps, freshwater distilling equipment and also the boat engines. They also look after fuel stowage and transfer and ship’s stability and have equivalent ranks to other branches.
Jack served his first four years well and made it up the ranks to Leading Stoker; serving on DDG’s in the Gulf War. He had a chance to try out for CD in 1989; by then he was twenty-four years of age, and in perfect shape. The fitness test usually sorted the men from the boys; it was the equivalent of trying to get into the SAS or the US Marines, but also having to be able to swim three miles underwater before you started your assault on the enemy.
The selection course (CDAT) was murderous, but Jack loved every minute of it! Even though he woke up every morning on CDAT with his body screaming at him, ‘Why the fuck am I doing this’, he was up to the challenge, and knew it was what he was born to do. He passed with flying colours.
Then came the real test; the formidable thirty-seven-week basic training course that would eventually turn him into a clearance diver; provided he was still alive at the end of it!
He figures this would be a piece of cake when compared to the demands of the advanced clearance diver course and the clearance diving component of the mine warfare and clearance diving officer’s course. Those pour souls had to endure forty-one weeks of pure torture. The demands placed on potential applicants to that category were not seen anywhere else in the Australian Defence Forces, apart from those training for the special forces.
Jack joined CDT 1 based at HMAS Waterhen, and saw service throughout the world, specialising in bomb disposal. At at the pinnacle of his career he proudly served as a sniper with the TAG(E) as part of 2 Commando Regiment.
At some stage during his service Jack became a married man, and the father of two children, but the marriage didn’t last long under the strain of constantly having to move around. The divorce came through just prior to his last deployment to Afghanistan.
He was injured in 2005 whilst in a Black Hawk chopper being transported to Helmand Provence. The Black Hawk had come under ground fire and Jack took a round in the back; that pretty much ended his career right there and then. Being considered totally and permanently incapacitated, Jack was discharged later that year on a full TPI navy pension.
Jack moved to Taswegia, thinking the slower way of life would be a change; he met Dick shortly after the move, while attending a training course Dick was running on saddle building. Over the next couple of years he’d started riding under Dick’s guidance and became a decent rider in time; settling down to his new life on the farm and helping Dick and Patch out whenever they needed a hand.
Jack had no intentions of ever re-marrying, but things happen. He’d first met April, his wife-to-be, while travelling in France following the end of his first marriage. They caught up again while Jack was convalescing after being discharged from hospital after being shot in the back while on deployment in Afghanistan. They kept the conversation going by snail mail and occasional phone calls for a couple of years, and Jack eventually talked April into paying a visit to Taswegia. The spark between them that had flickered into life in France continued to grow, and eventually April packed up her life in France and moved to the secluded island for good. She loved her new life and it didn’t take long for Jack to ask her to be his wife. Much to his relief, she said “Yes!”
Over the next six months, I am introducing one of my characters not only in Book 1 but in the whole series, at the rate of one a week, so every week you will get to know them as I do when I write about them. This week its-
General Jun Lee Sung
General Jun Lee Sung was born in August 1954; the son of General Wan Zu Sun and Hee-Young Sun.
Military institutes, including the Pyongyang Academy, which became No. 2 KPA Officers School in January 1949, and the Central Constabulary Academy, which became the KPA Military Academy in December 1948, soon followed. These institutions were considered essential for the education of political and military officers for the new armed forces. Jun Lee’s father had been one of their star pupils, graduating in 1950, just before the Korean War, before working his way up the promotional ladder to the rank of General in 1987 at the age of 58.
During the opening phases of the Korean War in 1950, the Korean People’s Army, or KPA, quickly drove the South Korean forces south and captured Seoul. Jun Lee’s father played an instrumental role during this phase, leading his men to victory. By the time Jun Lee had come on the scene, his father was stationed at Pyongyang as a Captain, instructing at the Academy. By now, the war had left his father scarred; something that he himself came to acknowledge later in his own military career.
As a child, Jun Lee was raised with a huge heart, after mainly being brought up by his mother while his father was away. He and his siblings, brother, Wun Too, and sister, Ven Loo, were fascinated by all things American, and loved to play baseball, albeit with a stick and a handmade ball. Jun Lee also would watch the sailing boats with awe, swearing that one day he would learn to sail. He loved the way they moved gracefully through the water, with nothing propelling them except the wind.
Like most army children, young Jun Lee grew up within the military system, and, although his heart was elsewhere, his honour was to follow his father. He joined the army at the age of 16; electing to join the Infantry, and worked his way up the ranks, attaining the rank of Sergeant Major in 1982.
He attended the Central Constabulary Academy, then later that same year, re-joined XI Corps; staying with them until transferring to the Korean People’s Army Special Operation Force (KPASOF). This was an asymmetric force, with a total troop size of 200,000. Since the Korean War, which was widely known as the Korean War of Liberation, it has continued to play a role of concentrating infiltration of troops into the territory of the Republic of South Korea and conducting sabotage missions. This was something that Jun Lee became very good at.
XI Corps saw combat during the Libyan–Egyptian War in 1977, followed by the Angolan Civil War until 2002. Around 2004, as an instructor, Major General Jun Lee Sung trained Hezbollah fighters in guerrilla warfare tactics, prior to the Second Lebanon War in 2006. President Gin Jum Kim, having designed the Alliance, now needed a well-respected leader to lead the ground forces in Taswegia. At 54 years of age, Major General Jun Lee Sung was promoted to the position of General in 2010, bettering his father’s record by four years.
Well its Tuesday morning, cleaners been, pissing with rain but the flags are flying-ANF, Welsh and Red Ensign. I have been feeling like the Black Dog is biting, Ground Hog Day, I’m actually applying for DVA to change their name to WAITING
That’s all I seem to be doing lately, waiting for a decision, how much money they are going to pay me for my pension?
Can’t be that hard!
Photo Below of Dick on Bob
HDFU yesterday!
Big toe has ingrowing toenail
Hacked it out, full of infection
They are concerned about Infection, district nurse to dress it twice a week, no getting it wet etc.
Temperatures through the roof, lets just hope it was because of the infection?
I’m currently reading “The ride to Hell” I must say, having read many books from the same genre, this is up there with the best of them, hard to put down, action packed thrill a minute stuff.
If you like dystopian story telling, Rick has captured the essence of it with this , the first in the series of books in a typical Aussie way. Can’t wait for the next book in this series.
Bravo Zulu that man
Brent NSW
The Book signing team will be at the Oatlands RSL next Thursday night, 22nd
Dick and Jack will be bringing Patch and April, so come along and enjoy a Parmy and buy a book
Been a while, but I’m back (to quote the famous quote from Independence day)
Finally received my bulk shipment from China, a full pallet of 1000 paperbacks and freight being freight, the 5 boxes of Hardbacks were left sitting on the loading dock in Melbourne.
So I now have plenty of books, no excuse for you not ordering!!!
I currently have a special running- $26.00 POSTAGE INCLUDED!
Now to order all you have to do is click on the link on the home page which says Support Local Authors and pay the $26.00 as a donation then most importantly go to the Contact page and put in your details, address ,name, email address etc. and that you have just “donated”.
Now for your viewing pleasure, I have included at great expense the photo of the TRF FCPB Fremantle , Dusk at Mary Island