We Dont Need Another Hero: The Captain Australia Story (Chapter Four)

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Chapter Four: Manhood

I saw my mother (and brothers) again at my grandmother’s funeral.

My mother seemed to have pulled her life together somewhat, and was trying to make amends.  Both brothers were living with her (the youngest on a part-time basis, shared with his father).  In an awkward reconciliation, we agreed to keep a level of contact, although I flatly refused to live with her again at any point.  I was seventeen years old now, I had not yet finished school, and had reached a decision point in my young life, an old chapter ending, a new one beginning.

I lived with my grandfather for a time, in that old house.  He drank, but I became adept at seeing the signs, and turning him from his murderous rage.  I began to understand him, and the root cause of his violence, and pity him for it.  Many nights, he would weep to me, letting out storms that had otherwise been sealed up inside him for decades.  He told me of his internment in Nazi camps, and how he sold out villagers and members of the resistance to ensure his own safety and survival.  Late one night he told me about how he had to batter a man to death with a broomstick, vividly reliving the moment.

I learned from those stories .. that sometimes death is better.  Sometimes death is better than honour forsaken.  Sometimes death is better than living with guilt, wishing you could take back that one defining moment when you made the wrong choice.  Sometimes death is better than living with pain, living with shame.  On the cusp of manhood, I resolved that I would never betray my honour – that I would rather die than live with the grief and shame and regret.

Inevitably, my grandfathers’ great rage and grief did erupt into violence.  I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t talk him down.  He drank and drank and drank, and eventually stormed around the house, smashing and wrecking things.  Then, finally, he turned his rage against me.  He was a big, bearish man, and I did not have the heart to hurt him, but somehow I was able to consistently thwart him, deflecting his blows preventing him from striking me or hurting himself, without actually hitting him back – until eventually he fell into a drunken and exhausted sleep.

The following morning, he declared me no longer welcome in his home.  So I left him to his fate.  He died from cancer six years later.

-o0o–o0o–o0o-

Without support, I had to leave school.  I spent the next few years drifting, I found a series of itinerant jobs: cleaning, fruit picking, and slowly worked my way south to Melbourne.  Realising that I was rudderless, I took stock of my life and weighed up the options available to me.

So I joined the military.

This time of my life was intensely focussed.  I threw myself into my training with enthusiasm, and honestly – I quite enjoyed the male camaraderie, the sense of being part of something larger than myself.  Thankfully, I was not deployed overseas.  In the three years I served, my time and energy was spent in skill development and training exercises.  I didn’t put it into a deeper context (the fact that I was agreeing, in principle, to kill in service of the military arm of the government), I just saw it as a way to bring direction to my life.

I want to be very careful not to compromise my secret identity here, as certain facts could potentially be tied back to my military records.

The absolute emphasis was physical training and skill development, and I distinguished myself in a number of areas.  Relationships were secondary during this intense period of my life, although I will take a moment to describe a rivalry that I had with another soldier (lets call him Wade).

We used to have a kind of ‘fight club’, where a bunch of the men would get together on a Sunday afternoon behind the barracks and engage in structured bouts. (We secretly referred to it as “Bible Bashing”).  I know that it probably sounds dangerous, but it was all voluntary, and I have to explain that when reasonably matched fighters above a certain skill level square off, the likelihood of serious injury is actually quite low.  Although it’s physical combat, it’s also a kind of animal chess, mounting a feigned offense to reveal weaknesses in your opponents defensive posture – that kind of thing.

I really enjoyed those Sunday afternoon Bible Bashing.  It wasn’t rowdy, there was a ‘blokiness’ about it, but it was generally friendly and respectful.

I didn’t discover it until a few months into my training, and at the time the reigning champion was the bloke I mentioned before, Wade.  In his late thirties, he was a mechanical engineer – and a real meat-head.  His face was weathered and sun-dried, if you saw him on the street, you’d suspect he’s a bikey, or a farmer from the bush maybe.  He was naturally big, extremely stocky, and when he took his shirt off you’d see that it was 95% muscle.  He’d been boxing for all his adult life, and in the Bible Bashing arena he had a reputation that he simply could not be beaten.

The first weekend, I didn’t get the opportunity to fight him, but watching him I saw that his obvious weakness was his legs.  Nobody could get close enough to grapple the guy, but if you could sweep his legs out from under him, and get on top of him, he’d be (excuse me) fucked.

The second weekend, I was starting to get a reputation as the talented newcomer, and one of the blokes suggested that I fight Wade.  There was friendly joshing and a few of the men suggesting that I wasn’t ready and should ease into it – but I readily agreed, and we found ourselves facing off.

The thing that I’ve learned about boxing, is that it is very tactical (despite its reputation as a knuckle-head sport).  A good boxer can maintain his defense and stamina, and when the time is right unleash a flurry of blows.  In a street fight, I hadn’t previously recognised the value in mitigating damage because fights are normally fast & brutal.  Martial arts are all focussed on avoiding the blow, whereas boxing shows you how to take a blow and absorb the energy, how to roll with a punch and turn around and give some back (very handy skills).

The thing about Wade is that he was so strong and balanced, and he was a very perceptive fighter – he saw at once that I was going to go for his legs, and would manoeuvre to his advantage.  That first fight I wasn’t able to bring him down, but nor was he able to do me any serious harm either.

At the time, I was learning a laundry-list of useful skills.  How to read a map & use a compass.  The hazards associated with explosives.  How to un-jam a rifle.  But I think the thing I enjoyed most was Bible Bashing – I came to look forward to those bouts every week, even though for the six weeks, I simply couldn’t get any leverage over Wade.

I came to realise that I was being too conservative, too cautious, which was allowing him to keep a steady defense and keeping us in a relative stalemate.  Sure, there were bruises and black eyes, the occasional minor victory – but winning a skirmish isn’t the same as winning a war, and we were both clearly interested and enthused to see a victory.  (I think in fact, that some of the men had bets going that Wade would eventually take my scalp, for a few weeks there our rivalry was a common topic of discussion).

What I ended up doing was putting aside strategy in a superficial way, and going toe-to-toe with him, luring him out of his defensive shell.  He knocked me around severely, rattling my teeth with a few phenomenal punches, but he also exposed himself more than he had previously.  I didn’t go for the legs at first, while he was pummelling me, I threw wild punches at him, and then leaned in and grappled with him as if in a desperate attempt to defend and recover.  His mistake was not to back away and re-group and keep firing jabs at me: he got caught up in the heat of the moment as I had hoped & intended.  Once I was inside his reach, I was able to then lock his right arm with my left and swept his legs out from under him.

A boxer is next to useless on the ground, and he knew that my little coup had worked and had the good grace to congratulate me (after I choked him down to semi-consciousness, locking his head with my legs).

“Nice job, mate, nice fucking job”, I remember him saying.  “But you’d never get me in the boxing ring, that’s for sure”.
Sour grapes ?

-o0o–o0o–o0o-

So that’s how I discovered boxing.

I did end up beating Wade about a year and a half later (although he was 100% correct, in the first few boxing bouts he overwhelmed me and knocked me out cold).  I continued with the Bible Bashing, but shifted focus into legitimate boxing, and became quite proficient.

The next couple of years were pretty-much a stable routine of extensive training.  When those evil bastards crashed those planes into the twin towers killing so many innocent people, our country went terrorism-crazy.  In a way, it had a ripple effect of fear and paranoia throughout the entire western world.  It was a tense time in the military, but thankfully I was discharged a few months before things got really serious in Afghanistan.

You see, it had been beginning to sink in that I was no longer a person with completely free will, but rather I was an agent of the establishment, a servant of the government who could be given a lawful order to kill at any time.  I know it probably sounds naïve to assert that I only just reached this understanding after 3 years of training, but it’s true.  Somehow, imagining terrorists infiltrating day-to-day life in Australia woke me up to it.  I was at risk of becoming a politically endorsed killer.

It was around that time that I had news of my old friend, Ben, dying in a car crash.  Although a promising officer candidate and a richly trained soldier, it was on the cusp of a three year interval, and I was able to be discharged and return to civilian life.

I was now 22 years old, hardened by grief, loneliness and uncertainty.  By an accident of fate, I was a highly trained fighting machine, but had no motivation to somehow turn this to the service of humanity.

I want you to understand the wave of helpless depression that washed over me with Ben’s death.  I was so deeply wounded by his loss.  I’d already come to accept death and loss, the thing that hurt most about Ben’s passing was the futility of it, the pointlessness.  I couldn’t find any way to reconcile it in my mind, I couldn’t understand the cruelty and stupidity of it.  I couldn’t accept that I had failed my friend, and that his life story ended in such a bloody and useless punctuation mark.

In fact, at the time if you had approached me and said “There is a God, and you are God’s Moderator.  At the 1000 year review, God asks you – should I send another Christ to redeem mankind, or should I call an end to the world and start over ?”, I would have replied simply “burn it all down”.