Meet Dave Lassam, The Man for the Job: My 39 Years Service in the Royal Australian Navy

Copyright © 2022 by Dave Lassam.

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Rev. date: 07/19/2022

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Contents

Why Did I Join the Royal Australian Navy?

Recruit School and Medical School

Medical Training School

HMAS Cerberus

HMAS Cerberus — West Head Gunnery Range

The Cow

The Softball Game

Health Centre Cerberus

Death Ball

Dog Show at Cerberus

HMAS Albatross— 1979–1980

The Ghosts

HMAS Melbourne: CVS 21 – Aircraft Carrier— 1980–1982

Deploying to the Indian Ocean

Crash on Deck

Training at Sea

The Royal Jahore Polo Club

Cockies

The Bank

Melbourne Group 99 (MG99)

The Cold War I

The Cold War II

HMAS Harman— 1982–1984

ANZAC Day

Rocks in the Head

The Bet

HMAS Huon— 1984–1986

Bass— The Depot Dog

Promotion — Welcome to the Dark Side(1988)

Australia Day 1988 — The Bicentennial

The Fleet Medical Administration Office

Canberra— Directorate of Navy Health(1988)

Recruiting

Shit Magnet

Tyabb–Victoria— 1988

CPR at the Dog Show

More CPR

HMAS Penguin

Disaster Management

The Park

The First Bali Bombing (12 October 2002), Headquarters Northern Command (HQNORCOM), and Other Adventures

The Area of Operations

The First Bali Bombing

HMAS Penguin— 2005–2007

Exercise Croix Du Sud (Southern Cross)

Operation Sumatra Assist II— The Loss of a Sea King: Call Sign Shark02

Lahewa

Epilogue

Operation Quickstep and Black Hawk Down

Epilogue

Operation Astute— 2006

USNS Mercy — 2006

Epilogue

Headquarters Joint Operations Command— 2008–2010

OP Slipper

Volunteering

Submarine Association — Speech at the Shrine

The Red Cross

The Defence Medal

Royal North Shore (RNS) Hospital

Parade Commander

Cousin Clare

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) andProstate Cancer

Glenda

ADF Long Tan Youth LeadershipandTeamwork Awards

Epilogue

Dedications

Glossary of Naval Terminology Used in This Book

Why Did I Join the Royal Australian Navy?

I suppose the best place to start is at the beginning – funny about that.

On Christmas Day 1959, in the small town of Rosebery on the west coast of Tasmania, my mum gave birth to a very good-looking baby: me. Rosebery is quite small and had a bush hospital where I was born, but we were not destined to stay there for too long. My dad was studying geology at university, but he needed to go to where the work was, so my family upped sticks and moved to Newcastle, New South Wales, when I was 12 months old.

We moved into a housing commission house in Waratah West, where we lived for about nine years. Now Dad wasn’t known for his style back then, which is why he painted the house mauve with matching dark purple gutters. Yes, I was scarred for life!

In the early 1960s, I started school and quickly earned a reputation when I was 5 years old to be quite accident prone. On the second day of school, I fell down our front steps and fractured my skull; I was playing in the school yard and was climbing up a tree stump, slipped, and ripped open my left inner knee area on a rusty nail, and I fell off my cubby house roof playing Batman with my mate from next door. By 1968, we were moving again, this time to Brisbane in Queensland.

This was a big move mainly because my nearest relatives were back in Newcastle, and by this stage, I had two brothers and a sister. We moved into a Baptist church manse in the suburb of Sunnybank, a southern suburb of Brisbane. I suppose we had a pretty normal upbringing in a working-class area, but this would change after a serious car accident. As I recall, on Friday, 13 April 1969, Dad decided we should go back to Newcastle for a holiday over Easter. We had an old EB Holden sedan, with the three elder kids being in the back and my little brother in what was, I remember, one of the first child restraint seats which just hooked over the middle of the bench seat.

My dad was never what you would call a good driver, and he could be very single-minded when he was trying to keep to a schedule. ‘Impatient’ is the word. So we headed off to Newcastle via the New England Highway; remember that this was the late 1960s and the roads were pretty ordinary. I recall at one point in the trip, the three of us in the back seat were fighting about something, and we were warned that if we didn’t stop, we would be turfed out and made to walk! Yeah, right –but that’s exactly what happened. As the eldest, I was removed from the back seat on the side of a major highway and left there, being told that they would meet me in a mile up the road. Then off they went. I eventually caught up with them after walking the mile or so down the road. Needless to say I was somewhat quieter for the rest of the trip.

Unfortunately, the trip did not end as one would have hoped. Near the town of Tenterfield, there is a bridge over quite a long drop to a river below. We had been behind a bus for some time, and as I noted before, my dad was not a very patient man. As we came onto the bridge, which was only two lanes wide, he decided to overtake the bus. Unfortunately, the car coming the other way could not stop in time, and we had nowhere to go. The result of the head-on collision left my mum with lots of injuries, and Dad had head injuries. However, we all survived, but it was to be the end of my parents’ marriage within about fiveyears.

After they split, my brother Peter and I stayed with Dad, while my sister, Denise, and little brother, Ross, went with Mum. As is quite common in these situations, both my parents found new partners in due course. Without going into too much detail, I did not get along with my new stepsister, and the result was I was bundled off to boarding school. This was quite devastating for me as I was sent there in Term Three of my Year 10. There was no way this was going to end prettily.

Brisbane Boys’ College (boarding school) was particularly nasty for a new boy who had no idea of how this system worked. I was bullied, assaulted, and given an all-around hard time. However, it did build my resilience to such things, and when I finished Year 10, I was allowed to go and visit my mum, who had, by now, moved to Launceston in Tasmania. I was told by my dad that if I came back, I would be sent back to boarding school. Needless to say, I stayed in Tasmania and started at a brand-new school for the rest of my education.

I started college in 1976, and in 1977, I was completing my Year 12 matriculation at Alanvale College in Launceston, Tasmania. Midway through that year, if you had asked me what I was going to do at the end of school, I would have said I was going to be a forest ranger with the hope that I might emigrate to Canada to work in Alberta as that had been a childhood dream. However, this was not to be.

I had applied through Forestry Tasmania for a position where I could advance and make a difference in the environment, which, in Tasmania, was a high priority. As you can probably guess, this did not happen. The Forestry Commission in Tasmania had, during this time, a lengthy period where they did not recruit any new members. So with that in mind, I was a little dismayed but continued my studies at Alanvale.

After our final exams, a few of my mates decided that they were going to join the navy as they wanted to be fighter pilots. After some discussion, I thought I would tag along and see what they were on about, and we all ended up at the recruiting office in Launceston, which was located at an army reserve base in the city.

There were six of us who attended that first day, and after chatting with the recruiters, we were given appointments to return and undergo the initial testing for joining. I had been counselled, and the best option for me at that time was to become a medic. All my mates undertook the same preliminary exams but had an extra area to cover for prospective pilots. I was the only one who passed! Little did I know then that I was about to embark on a most amazing career for which I am ever thankful.

After I completed my schooling, I was at a bit of a loose end until my call-up to the navy. So after a week at home, I went to a nearby chicken farm and asked for a job. The interview was short and sweet. The boss asked if I had a pair of gumboots, which I did. He said to go home and get them –‘You are working this afternoon!’

After a fairly short wait of about two months, I received word via the local police that the navy wanted to talk to me. I was living outside a small town near Launceston called Longford at the time and had taken the job at the local chicken farm while I waited for call-up. On this particular day, I was at work, and the navy had to call the police to try to find me. I was informed by the police to contact recruiting, where I was told that I would be joining on 7 February 1978, a week and a half away. I immediately quit my job at the chicken farm and prepared for the next part of my life. It was an exciting time. Could I do it? What was it going to be like? How long would I last? All were questions that would be answered over the next thirty-nine years.

Recruit School and Medical School

On 7 February 1978, I signed on the dotted line at the Hobart recruiting office along with two other new recruits as we enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy. Little did we know – as most recruits don’t, to start with – where this would take us. For me, it was the start of a career that would last nearly four decades where I travelled all over the world and was part of an incredible team–but let’s not get too carried away just yet.

When you joined, you had the option to sign on for either nine or twelve years. Now at 18, I had no idea how I would go, let alone possibly last twelve years in the navy, so I signed on for nine years in the first instance as a medical sailor. You may ask why I chose to become a medic. After discussions at the initial recruiting interviews, it was suggested to me that I should consider being a medic. This was based on my mum’s current employment, where she worked at the Launceston General Hospital, and her father’s job during World War II as a member of the St Johns Ambulance in Wales, UK.

Following another interview with the recruiting officer and a full medical examination, I was deemed fit to serve and was offered a place in the 7 February 1978 recruit intake, which I was thrilled to accept. The day came when I was to travel to Hobart and be sworn in as a recruit medic. I still remember it vividly to this day, the three of us standing in front of the recruiting officer, raising one hand, the other on a Bible, pledging allegiance to Queen and country. After signing away our lives, we were taken to Hobart Airport to fly to Melbourne –no dramas so far. It was a bit foggy, but our flight took off on time, as I remember, and we arrived in Melbourne an hour or so later.

The recruiters in Tasmania had told us to take the SkyBus into the city, where we would be met by a sailor who would take us to our next stop, HMAS Lonsdale. This navy establishment was located near what is now Docklands and was an administrative base mainly in support of the naval reserves in Victoria. The reason we were taken here was that we had to wait until the next day to get the bus to HMAS Cerberus because the recruits from Western Australia would not get to Melbourne until that morning. So we were to overnight at HMAS Lonsdale.

Now way back in the 1970s, it was a little different to how recruits are looked after. We were met by a sailor who loaded us and our gear into a light-blue-and-white naval car, and I remember being still quite excited about this next stage of my life. Now back in the day, all navy vehicles were painted a light blue with a white roof –no radio and no carpet. I did find out some years later that the cars actually had the carpet replaced with rubber mats, and even the radios were removed. Apparently, the higher-ups didn’t trust the lowly sailors with having a radio in the car. This actually cost more as the factory models came with all the whizz-bang bits, but we were not allowed to have even the radio. Anyway, we were off, and after a short drive, we pulled up at the gangway at HMAS Lonsdale.

The driver told us we had arrived when he said, ‘Go to the gangway, see the duty killick, and he will sort you out.’

Having no idea what he had just said, we stood and watched the car disappear down the road. Right at that moment, I was not feeling necessarily happy and wondered what the hell I had got into, but with no other option, we did as we had been instructed.

The entry point for every naval vessel and establishment is called a gangway. The seagoing vessels have the typical sloping walkway, and the establishments have security access for vehicles and personnel. So we three brand-new recruits nervously headed to the gangway of HMAS Lonsdale, where we were greeted by a duty sailor who promptly advised us to go to the SCRAN hall and ask for the duty victualler, and ‘he will sort you out’. To say we were a little confused was an understatement, but we eventually found the duty victualler, who advised us that SCRAN was off, and he then sorted us out for bedding for the night. We were issued two blankets and a pillow –no sheets or pillow case, and were then advised to go to the accommodation block, pick any donger, and that was where we were to stay until the morning. SCRAN was on at 0600. Now what is SCRAN, you ask? It is ‘shit cooked by the Royal Australian Navy’, and it isn’t as bad as it sounds; sometimes it’s worse! Well, not really, but again, we were a bit underwhelmed by our first day in the navy. However, as new recruits, we just had to obey the orders.

The next morning, we managed to make it to SCRAN and were then picked up by the bus from HMAS Cerberus. It was driven by Petty Officer Weapons Mechanic Tom Lawton, who would be my squad’s instructor. A rather loud, bearded man, he was to become our leading light. He had been in the navy for some time – I think about fifteen years – and he had seen it all, and despite his gruff exterior, he was a great bloke.

As you might imagine, we all had feelings of excitement, trepidation, and expectations about joining. The navy bus went via the SkyBus depot in the city and picked up the interstate recruits, and off we headed for HMAS Cerberus, the navy’s premier training establishment. HMAS Cerberus is located adjacent to the small town of Crib Point in Victoria. In the days when I joined, it was about a two-to-three-hour drive from Melbourne as the M1 had not been built then.

On arrival, we were grouped off into our squads, given a ‘welcome to the navy speech’ by the officer-in-charge (OIC), LCDR Ochriemenko, and sorted out with accommodation. We were billeted four to a room with lino floors and no airconditioning, but it wasn’t too bad –and so it began. We had been allocated our personal numbers or PNs after we had signed our enlistment papers. I did learn later on in my career that if your name was Bond (yes, it’s true), they would do everything to make sure that your PN ended in 007. This would then be a lifetime joke as when we were paid on payday, we were given a paypacket, but to receive it, we waited in alphabetic order, and as your name was called, you called ‘Sir!’, took a step forward with your identity card in your left hand, held it up for the officer to view, saluted with your right hand, and called out the last three digits of your PN. So if there was a Bond, he would step forward, salute, and go‘007, sir!’, much to the amusement of all present.

This ritual had been occurring for many, many years, and it wasn’t until sometime after I joined that they changed it to directly pay into your bank account. This solved a couple of problems. First, it reduced the risk of theft as we had a large number of personnel in one place with a huge amount of cash on the base which could be a target for armed gunmen. This did occur once – an inside job, as you would expect – but after this happened, every payday at the undercover parade ground, each point had an armed gunnery jack (seamanship/gunnery sailor) in attendance, and as Cerberus had two choke points for entry, known as the main gate and the back gate, at the start of each payday, buses were driven across the roads to prevent robbers driving out. This definitely solved the problem, and as far as I am aware, this only ever happened once.

The other thing that the automation of pay into bank accounts solved was that the amount of time taken to conduct a payday went to zero. Usually, the payday would start at 0730 until 0900. Then we had to return to our squads and march halfway around the base to reach our training school, and with all the usual phaffing around, we most likely spent two and a half hours doing not much, waiting for our training day to start. Remember, this was the 1970s, and it was how things were done. As technology came to the fore, this streamlined many processes throughout the navy. To this day, when someone calls my name when I’m out, mainly at a dog show, my immediate response is ‘563, sir!’ Most of my friends know what I’m on about, but I still get some looks every now and then.

Before we got that first pay, we had to wait two weeks from when we joined, but the pay, although good, was not even a blip on my radar right then. A whole new world was opening up for me, and every moment of every day was new, often challenging but also character building. Now I don’t mean here that we picked on others, but we were under pressure to perform – scholastically, physically, and mentally. This last point was very important as it inculcated the need for teamwork, and that credo is used to this day. ‘The team works.’

So the next twelve weeks were spent changing us from civilians into sailors. We started by being placed into our squads, so immediately, we had a bond, and these guys would help one another do their best. We were allocated a cabin with four to a room; we each had a locker for our uniforms and a single bunk bed each. Once we had worked that out, we were taken outside, placed in our squads, and then the fun started. We had to attend the base clothing store, where we would be issued all our uniforms, but first, we had to march the five metres or so from recruit school to the issue centre. We took a fair while to get the hang of marching in step together, but the excitement of that day still rings loud and true for me. I was embarking, along with my new best friends, on an exciting journey; everything was new and had to be understood, and we, in turn, had a responsibility to add as much as possible to the effort to create this team.

Once issued with uniforms, we returned to recruit school and were immediately given instruction on how to iron our rigs (uniforms). Sounds easy, but you had to get this stuff right because if you didn’t, you would get into trouble not only for yourself but also for the other members of your squad. Sounds archaic, and today you probably could not get away with it. However, it certainly sharpened the mind when you knew that there were always consequences to your actions. Still, I thrived; it was exactly what I needed. The training includes many things, as you might expect – how to make your bed properly, how to iron your uniform correctly, how to spit-polish your boots, first aid, survival at sea training, a swimming test, weapons training, naval history and lore, and keeping duties, to name but a few. With only twelve weeks to convert a civilian to a sailor, it is a very hectic program.

One of my favourite modules was firefighting. HMAS Cerberus, had its own fire ground to the western side of the establishment. Today there is a modern state-of-the-art facility which has a gas-fired ship’s superstructure for firefighting, and a ship’s section tilted over that floods with cold water to imitate a sinking ship. In later years, as the OIC of the medical school, I would supervise medics rescuing patients under flooding conditions; to say the least, the facilities are now awesome.

However, back in 1978, it was a bit different. Environmental considerations, whilst known, were not top of the list when it came to training. We had a job to do. So imagine, if you will, an Olympic-sized swimming pool area, not deep but nevertheless filled with furnace fuel oil, a huge oil pit that was set alight, and we had to extinguish it with water. Now we know that this is probably contradictive to what you might expect, using water on an oil fire. However, at sea, all you have is sea water and usually plenty of it, so we had to know how to put it out. We were suited up with appropriate safety gear, which was basically our working uniform wearing anti-flash protection. Trousers rolled into your socks and head and hand protection –it was and is still a major part of every sailor’s kit when going to sea. The heat from this fire was very intense, and although we worked in a controlled manner, it was still a huge adrenalin rush for all us young blokes.

I would just like to point out here that we did have females in the navy, but they were trained separately from the sailors (I wonder why?)in a separate recruit school. Their initial training was a few weeks less than the men, and we only ever got to see them at SCRAN. This would change in the future, where all recruits were trained exactly the same way after the decision was taken in the late 1980s to send females to sea.

The twelve weeks went by very quickly and was completed by a ‘passing out’ ceremony. This involved the graduating class being the guard of honour, often attended by the senior naval officer of Victoria or even the chief of navy (CN). These ceremonies are seen as very important as sailors move through their careers. It marks the finish of one part and the commencement of another. When we had completed the day’s ceremony, we had to move from recruit school to one of the ship’s accommodation buildings in preparation for the next part of my naval career, the medical training school.

We were a rabble when we started, but by the time we had finished the recruit training, we had been molded into sailors. We lost a few guys on the way – figuratively speaking, that is. Not everyone who gets into recruit school manages to get through. It can be quite tough and rightly so. Some people just can’t handle the discipline, or they get homesick, but mostly, we get through.

Medical Training School

Sometimes in the training environment, especially at a large training base like HMAS Cerberus, you don’t get to start your next course for any number of reasons. So it was for me and the others who were to train to be medics in 1978. We had a two-week wait, and the navy had some novel ways to keep us occupied during these. One was the old ‘paint the rocks white’ scenario, which is exactly what it seems. Cerberus is a very large base, and to keep it looking good, the grounds and environs are meticulously maintained. So I spent that two weeks painting the gutters and rocks placed around the base. It wasn’t too bad, but autumn was upon us when we were ready to start our medical training.

The medical training school or MTS was located directly behind the old hospital at HMAS Cerberus in what was the ‘old’ F Ward. This ward was used during World War II for sailors injured during this conflict. When I arrived at the MTS, I was placed in a class of around ten other new sailors, including females, who would undertake the nine-month training course to provide the navy with another cohort of medical personnel.

You will note here I deliberately stated above that we had females on our course. In the 1970s, not every branch or category in the navy – or, for that matter, the army or RAAF – allowed females to work. In the navy, the branches that did were medical, dental, driver, writer and steward. It was to be some years into the future that females were to serve at sea, so at that time, there was no need to train them in other seagoing categories. This sounds sexist, and it was. Since the introduction of enabling females to serve at sea, this has changed dramatically and rightly so. Of course, there were always going to be ‘old salts’ who grumbled about this in the beginning, but I am pleased to say the navy now caters for both male and female personnel in all categories, including clearance diver, which is a frontline category.

My medic course started in late April 1978 and went for almost nine months. This involved, as you might expect, some pretty heavy subject matters, including anatomy and physiology, the treatment of all sorts of maladies, from the common cold to some of the less glamorous diseases such as syphilis and ingrown toenails. We had to be well versed in nursing procedures. Why, you say? Well, no matter what we were to treat in our future postings, especially at sea, once the initial treatment had occurred, a patient may well require certain procedures such as wound dressings, suturing, and other basic nursing skills.

At sea, the commanding officer (CO) has a ship to run in both peace and war. The fitness and health of every single member of the ship’s company (crew) is vital to the smooth and efficient