WA VETERANS of Australia’s last conscription scheme will gather in Bull Creek this weekend to mark 60 years since the first intake of National Servicemen—commonly known as Nashos—began military training under the controversial 1965–1972 Selective National Service scheme.

A commemorative lunch at the RAAFA Memorial Estate will bring together dozens of men who were conscripted from WA under a system they say stole their youth, offered little recognition, and continues to leave gaps in their entitlements.

The event is being organised by the WA committee representing veterans of the 1965–72 scheme, which selected young men for compulsory service through a birthday ballot system. Most WA recruits were sent to the eastern states for training and deployment, with limited opportunities to serve near home.

“All of that group have earned the OBE—‘over bloody eighty’,” the committee said in a statement. “Every Nasho had a different experience in the army, some good, some neutral and some bad. Only Nashos can relate to one another through our ‘lived experience’.

“When a politician uses the well-worn line of ‘thank you for your service’ what they really should be saying when referring to Nashos is ‘thank you for your servitude’.”

Two Perth men, who will attend the event and requested anonymity out of concern they could face repercussions from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs or fall foul of the Secrecy Act, said they hoped the anniversary would highlight what they see as decades of neglect and denial.

“We were not soldiers. We were chatels,” said Soldier A, who was among the earliest recruits. 

He said while Nashos were processed like regular soldiers, they were denied the same status or support and were often left isolated from family.

“Most West Australians could not get a posting in Western Australia after they’ve done their basic and core training. 

“There’s no positions over here, they’ve only got the SAS, and there’s a few other little bits and pieces. 

“First of all, you went to Puckapunyal, that’s where all the WA guys were. After your core training, then you were selected for a unit.”

Soldier B, conscripted in 1966, said his time in the army began with confusion, fear, and exhaustion.

“For 48 hours we didn’t sleep when we landed. You’re being processed, you walk down a bloody passageway, jab, jab, jab, jab, and I saw big blokes just collapsing, you know? 

“And then you’d walk across the road to the barber shop and he’d just take all your hair off. So this is how it all went, and we’d just been taken off the street.”

Both men described a system they say treated recruits as expendable, with little transparency around how birthdays were selected or how men were assigned roles.

“They led us to believe that there were two draws a year, but it’s bullshit,” said Soldier A.

“What happened is they had one draw a year, and then there, there were two marble numbers linked together, and the second draw was a sham, and they’d be drawn by a ‘distinguished citizen’, and he would draw out the first marble and then the press was told to piss off.”

Soldier A said the government targeted men with higher education or cadet training to raise the average intelligence level in the army.

“Even in the first two weeks of recruit training, anyone, – I was targeted as one – anyone who’s got an educational qualification and been in cadets and done all that, we were targeted and they said, ‘Do you want to go to officer training in Officer Training Unit at Scheyville? 

“I couldn’t order people around. 

“So they came out as second lieutenants, but also they came out of second class lieutenants, because the regulars and the Nashos, there was this divide.”

Soldier B said he was surprised to later find out how the army had assessed him.

“There’s no way I could [get selected for officer training] because I had a low education. 

“My son, when I got my records, went through it because he’s 30 plus years Army Reserve… and he said, ‘Oh, Dad, they’ve got you down as a low IQ’.

“I said, ‘mate, you know, I had to leave school when I was 15 because I had to pay board and everything’.”

Despite requests for preferred postings, WA Nashos often ended up far from home and in physically demanding training environments.

“We had to dig a bloody foxhole for two to about that deep – everybody had blisters. 

“The toilet!! They had a backhoe in before we got there and dug a trench… and they just had saplings on it.

“You had to get out on the sapling and do your business, right.

“The blowies are all up around your bum. You can imagine if they were to try doing that today.”

Soldier B also served on the Western Command Military Funeral Squad, performing pallbearer duties at services for Nashos killed in Vietnam.

“I think I did eight,” he said.

“That was the full military honours; the coffin would come up on a gun carriage, but it would stop outside the cemetery. I was a pallbearer, so there’d be six of us, and we would take the coffin off. 

Coffin

“Then you’d form up, and we’d have the bloody coffin on our shoulder, and then slow march.”

He said the emotional toll was often overwhelming.

“The parents would turn and look at you and say, ‘Why my son’ and that really hits hard. 

“There was an Italian grandmother, she was all dressed in black, she nearly threw herself in the grave; they just grabbed her. 

“They don’t train you or educate you on how to handle those things – you just go through the process.”

“But the worst experience was, we had a young Lieu came in after we’d done three or four… and we showed him how and he seemingly got it. But the seven rifleman squad for the 21 gun salute, he put them on the steps of the crematorium, right outside the door. We said, ‘Don’t do it, put the bloody squad 50 meters away’.

“You should have heard the family screaming, abusing us. 

“They came out of the crematorium and… well, he got kicked off.

Soldier A said the end of conscription under the Whitlam government in 1972 brought abrupt changes that led to inconsistent eligibility for medals and medical coverage.

“When Whitlam got elected, it was such a majority that normally you have a caretaker government until Whitlam and his people put a cabinet together, but he couldn’t wait and went to the governor, and him and Lance Barnard… they shared the portfolios for two weeks. 

“The minister for defence has always had the authority to exempt people from national service, so Barnard exempted the lot.

Exceptional hardship

“They discharged us on exceptional hardship, which was a bullshit one that no longer exists, but if you had completed your national service… you were eligible for the Defence of Australia Medal because you had fulfilled your obligation of national service. 

“Guess who’s not eligible for the Defence of Australia Medal?

“There was also an incentive scheme. Some people only had a couple of months to go – because every three months there’s a new intake – so they were given the option of staying on and completing their time, and they would be covered for cancer. 

“Now, all the people before that who had completed their time are not eligible for cancer treatment. So that’s one of the anomalies that are there.”

Soldier B, having just married, recalled being placed on notice for deployment in 1967.

“They said, ‘Okay, we’re going to start preparing for deployment’. And I said, ‘shit’, I had twelve months to go. 

“And then they had SAS come down, and we started training… Every morning we went down and the SAS instructors were there, and there’s all these big wooden lamp posts. 

“There was four to a lamp post – that was weight training; ‘lift up there, hold it out here, do the squats’, you know. And so when you put a claim in for arthritis in your knee joints, they don’t want to know, because they wouldn’t have a clue what we did.”

He said a secrecy agreement he signed at the time remains in his possession.

“Well, I had to sign it.”

O negative

Soldier A said Nashos with O negative blood were often placed in front-line roles due to their universal donor status.

“Seven per cent of people have got O negative blood, and you’re the universal donor; perfect to be in a platoon of guys, because they can siphon you anytime… Guess what sort of blood an O negative person can have? You can only have O negative. So you want at least two, maybe three guys in a platoon or a section, and yeah, guess where I end up – in infantry.”

The commemorative lunch in Bull Creek will mark six decades since the conscription scheme began, but for many Nashos, unresolved grievances remain.

“There was ‘no going home for the weekend’, just the sterile environment of the ‘men only’ army camp away from family and friends,” the WA committee said in a statement. “A couple of lousy medals and a virtually useless DVA White card is pretty poor recognition for two years of youth stolen from us.”

by STEVE GRANT