[Julian Knight continues…]
“During my time at Duntroon I was never asked to participate in a peer group rating. My renewed enthusiasm and determination to make a vast improvement was not recognized by most of the senior cadets in Kokoda Company. As far as they were concerned, I was not worthy of being an Army officer and they were determined to ensure that I resigned my appointment.”
– Julian Knight (2013)
…
5th ‘Charge’
On Monday 27 April 198, during a Defaulters Parade on the RMC Parade Ground, I was charged for a fifth time.
At the commencement of the 0625hrs Defaulters Parade the 1st Class cadet acting as the CSC Orderly Officer, Lance Corporal Shane OBRYAN (CSC No 5101), conducted an inspection of the Defaulters field back packs. When he examined my pack he found that my steel cup canteen was dirty. He flew into a rage, yelled at me and demanded an explanation.
I calmly gave the standard reply: “No excuse, corporal.”
O’BRYAN furiously threw the cup canteen across the parade ground. At the end of the Defaulters Parade O’BRYAN paraded me before the 1st Class cadet acting as the CSC Orderly Sergeant, Sergeant Owen ROGERS (CSC No 5119), who subsequently charged me with Failure to Comply With a Lawful General Order in breach of s .29 of the DFDA (Defence Force Discipline Act 1982).
2nd Guidance Interview
During the evening of 27 April 1987, I was interviewed by Captain GOSS in another guidance session at the MTW building.
In the official Record of Interview Captain Goss wrote:
“I discussed SCDT Knight’s charges and poor result on EX FEM 1 (Field Exercise ‘Buna’) and gave guidance on personal administration and discipline. He was advised to improve his motivation and decrease his social activities. SCDT Knight was made aware that any more charges would be seen in a very serious light.”
‘FEX Tobruk’
[Another Duntroon Field Exercise…with targeted persecution by 2nd Class Cadets]
During 1-6 May 1987, I attended [Field Exercise] ‘FEX Tobruk’ at Duntroon’s dedicated Majura Field Firing Range.
Exercise “Tobruk” was a training exercise in company-level defensive operations and [following] FEX ‘Buna’ was a combined 2nd and 3rd Class field exercise. The exercise was conducted around entrenched defended positions in the northeast region of the Majura Training Area around 10kms from Canberra. For the duration of the eight-day exercise the command positions of section 21C, section leader, platoon sergeant and platoon commander were filled by 2nd Class [senior] cadets on a rotation basis. The 3rd Class cadets, and those 2nd Class cadets not in a command position, were employed as each section’s soldiers for the duration of the exercise.
On Exercise “Tobruk” each cadet was required to dig the necessary two-man “fire pits” (slit trench with two covered sleeping bays in a ‘U’ shape), but the 2nd Class cadets believed that they were exempt from distasteful or tedious duties, even when they were being employed as private soldiers. This attitude was based mainly on their belief that the status they had at the college via-a-vis junior cadets extended to training in the field.
Distasteful or tedious duties such as collecting meals from the company HQ, gathering stores from the company or platoon HQs, gathering foliage for the camouflaging of the fire pits, and the running of errands and delivering messages were seen by the 2nd Class cadets as the responsibility of the 3rd Class cadets. Even when 2nd Class cadets were being employed as private soldiers in the sections they only assisted with such duties on the rare occasion when there were not enough 3rd Class cadets available to complete the task.
Myself and the other 3rd Class cadets in my section, including Staff Cadets Trevor DARBY (CSC No 52420), Lynda SHRIMPTON (CSC No 5311) and T.M. NEWTOWN (CSC No 5290), noticed that whenever instructors were in the vicinity the 2nd Class cadets would furiously begin digging their fire pits or studiously begin performing other duties.
What angered us, however, was that the 2nd Class cadets would also start yelling at us – particularly myself and Staff Cadet DARBY – to “stop bludging and get back to work!” regardless of whether or not we were already working. On most occasions, it was the 2nd Class cadets who had been “bludging”.
I was, in particular, singled out for abuse by the 2nd Class cadets in my section, which included Staff Cadet Brett FITZPATRICK (CSC No 5170), Staff Cadet Scott BECKWITH (CSC No 4771) and Staff Cadet David MICHEL (CSC No 4725), a 21 year-old ADFA graduate. This was especially so when our instructors were in the area. Early one evening the section spotted our instructors, Captain M.G. BROWN and Sergeant A.J. SAID, walking towards our positions. The 3rd Class 2nd cadets in the section continued working. The 2nd Class cadets, however, pretended not to notice them approaching and waited until Captain BROWN and Sergeant SAID were within earshot then began yelling in the darkness:
“Where’s Knight the cunt? Why isn’t he working” and “get back to work, Knight!”
Captain BROWN and Sergeant SAID dutifully noted these comments and recorded them in their Field Report. Even though the 3rd Class cadets in the section performed most of the duties during the exercise, I felt that myself and Staff Cadet DARBY were chosen significantly more often than the other 3rd Class cadets in the section. We were assigned every duty or task during the exercise.
We were detailed even when Staff Cadet DARBY and I were the only members of the section occupied with some other task.
On one occasion, I decided to test my suspicion. When I saw a platoon orderly approaching the section’s position I suspected correctly that the orderly would be coming to inform the section leader that someone from the section was required to collect stores from the platoon HQ. As cadets were required to take their rifles and webbing with them wherever they went, I quickly took off my webbing, dismantled my SLR [the then Army-issued automatic assault rifle] and began cleaning it. When I glanced around the section position I noticed that apart from Staff Cadet DARBY, who was also not wearing his webbing and was in the process of cooking a meal over a hexamine stove, everyone else was sitting around their fire pits talking.
My assumption about the orderly was confirmed when I overheard the orderly tell the section leader that some stores were waiting to be picked up from the platoon HQ. The section leader had his back to me and before he could turn around I turned to Staff Cadet SHRIMPTON, who was sitting on the edge of the pit next to me, and said, “I betcha he picks me.” I then crouched down in my fire pit out of sight and told SHRIMPTON not to look down at me. An instant later the section leader turned around and called out, “Where’s Knight? .. Staff Cadet Knight!”
I could easily hear him but I remained in the bottom of the pit. Again the section leader called out, “Staff Cadet Knight!” I then stood up in plain view holding up my dismantled rifle in one hand and with a cleaning brush in the other. The section leader disregarded this and ordered me to fetch the stores from the platoon HQ, located on an adjacent rise about 200 metres away. When I looked around and saw that everyone else in the section, apart from Staff Cadet DARBY, were still sitting around doing nothing, I turned to SHRIMPTON and angrily muttered:
“I told you so, didn’t I? I fuckin’ knew it. I’m hiding in the bottom of the pit and he picks me. I’m the only one doing anything and he fuckin’ still picks me.”
The section leader then turned to Staff Cadet DARBY and detailed him to go with me. DARBY, with a spoon in one hand and holding a steel cup canteen over his stove with the other, stood up and made to protest but then muttered and threw the canteen to the ground.
Captain BROWN and Sergeant SAID’s Field Report on me for FEX “Tobruk” recorded that I ‘did not dig with enough effort, did not take aimed shots in the live fire exercise, did not use a correct fire position, made immature statements and was not accepted as an equal by his peers’. As a result, I received a bare pass score for the exercise of 5/10, the second worst score in his section. The worst score was attained by Staff Cadet DARBY who received a score of 4/10, due mainly to the fact that he fell asleep in a fire pit during the large-scale mock attack late in the exercise that “woke up half of Canberra.”
…
6th ‘Charge’
On Thursday 7 May 1987, I was charged for the sixth time. After sports training that afternoon two Kokoda Company 3rd Class cadets, Staff Cadets Craig SMITH (CSC No 5318) and Doug “Bart” BARTLE (CSC No 5225), asked me if they could borrow my car to get a take-away meal from the McDonald’s restaurant in Ainslie.
They knew that 3rd Class cadets did not have local leave but they had decided to take the risk of being caught off the college grounds. I had let them borrow my car on previous occasions, but on this occasion I told them that I would drive them there because my car had not been running well.
We left the college with me and BARTLE in our RMC tracksuits and with SMITH in his Patrol Blues Mess Dress uniform. As we were collecting our order from the drive-through take-away counter at the side of the restaurant, Lieutenant-Colonel WILLIS, who was off duty and in civilian attire, left the restaurant via the restaurant’s side entrance. Almost immediately, he noticed SMITH sitting in the front passenger seat of my car.
Lieutenant-Colonel WILLIS approached the car and questioned us. We admitted that we did not have local leave so Lieutenant-Colonel WILLIS took our names and ordered us to report to him the next morning. We found out later that two senior cadets were in the car behind us and were also AWOL, and were lucky not to also get caught by Lieutenant-Colonel WILLIS.
At 0800hrs on Friday 8 May 1987, we reported to Lieutenant-Colonel WILLIS in his office in the MTW building. He informed us that we were charged with being Absence Without Leave [AWOL], in breach of s.24 of the DFDA. This charge was heard at an OC’s hearing held on 13 May 1987.
Meeting with W02 Herr Siegfried REMIN
Later on Thursday 7 May 1987, I was seen by W02 Siegfried REMIN regarding my cheating on a map marking exercise.
A week earlier I realised only minutes before a map-marking lesson that I had forgotten to complete the four practice questions given as homework the previous evening. It was far too late for me to complete the practice exercise, which had to be submitted the following lesson, so I asked Staff Cadet Chris WHITTING (CSC No 5336) for assistance. WHITTING handed his completed exercise to me and told me to trace it, which I proceeded to do . Minutes later we attended the map marking lesson and submitted our practice exercises. The practice exercises were corrected and later returned to us on Friday 8 May 1987.
When I was handed my work I was told that the MTW instructor who had set the exercise, W02 Siegfried REMIN, wanted to see me in the MTW building. Arriving at the MTW building I was ordered by W02 S. REMIN to go into his office. I stood to attention in front of his desk as he walked into the office and closed the door behind him.
As soon as W02 REMIN got behind his desk he began abusing me and accusing me of copying from another cadet. I was given no opportunity to confirm or deny this accusation. He told me that I was not worthy of a commission and added:
“As long as my arsehole points to the ground you won’t be an officer in this man’s Army.”
I was then told that if I failed to improve he would take me on one of his:
, “… little walks where strange things happen. Just the two of us.” I was told that on these walks, “The person who’s with me falls down and breaks their nose and I graze my fist and knee helping them up.”
The implication was obvious. In addition to this reprimand I was given a sixty-five question map marking assignment’. [And this bloke got awarded a Military OAM in 1996? – they’ll hand them out to anyone nominated].
Comparable opening scene out of the Hollywood movie ‘Full Metal Jacket’ coincidentally released in June 1987 in which bastardising Gunnery Sergeant Hartman U.S. Marines Private Leonard Lawrence to be choked at Hartman’s hand. Had the movie’s director Stanley Kubrick researched Duntroon’s notorious bastardisation practices?
EDITOR: A Warrant Officer Class Two (WO2) is a deputy to a Warrant Officer Class 1 (commonly referred to as a Regimental Sergeant Major). It is a senior management role focusing on the training, welfare and discipline of a company, squadron or battery of up to 200 soldiers. WO2s act as senior adviser to the commander of a sub-unit and RMC Duntroon employed WO2 Siegfried REMIN as its supervising drill instructor in 1987.
So much for WO2 REMIN leading by example, being a trusted mentor and boosting morale.
…
3rd Guidance Interview
During the evening of Monday 11 May 1987, I saw Captain GOSS in the MTW building for what would become my last guidance interview. Prior to the meeting I had missed the evening meal but I had quickly had a beer in the cadet mess.
Captain GOSS’s personal evaluation of my situation at RMC was recorded in the official Record of Interview, which stated:
“During this interview I advised SCDT Knight that I was extremely unhappy with his performance since my last interview [27 April 1987] in particular his lack of self-discipline and maturity. He has not learnt from past lessons or accepted advice from myself, his Coy Comd [Major VERCOE], CI [Lieutenant-Colonel WILLIS] or CO CSC [Lieutenant-Colonel KIBBEY].
I believe his trouble stems from his lack of maturity and new found wealth resulting in a preference for social activities rather than applying himself at RMC. An example of his lack of self-discipline was that he reported to me for guidance with alcohol on his breath. The member has been left in no doubt [Captain GOSS’s emphasis] as to what will happen if his performance does not improve. I will discuss his performance further with his Coy Comd.”
On Wednesday 13 May 1987, SMITH, BARTLE and I each separately fronted Major Todd VERCOE in his office to have our AWOL charge heard.
Due to the seriousness of the charge, Major VERCOE referred the charge against all three of us to the CO CSC for hearing. I was the last to front Major VERCOE who, before he referred the charge, reprimanded me harshly. He accused me of being the one who suggested the excursion to McDonald’s, and then he reprimanded me for dragging SMITH and BARTLE down with me, for getting them into trouble when it was all my fault. I felt that if I attempted to tell Major VERCOE what actually happened, I would be betraying two fellow cadets and I would only be accused of lying in order to protect myself. As a result, I remained silent, looked straight ahead and accepted Major VERCOE’s angry reprimand without protest.
Around this time I finally realised that if I did not begin to make a concerted effort to improve my performance, I ran the risk of being asked to “Show Cause” (why my appointment as a staff cadet should not be terminated), and being thrown out of the college.
Days later I topped my group during a public speaking exercise. The classroom exercise was a mock Royal Commission hearing based on the Tasman Bridge maritime disaster when a ship had crashed into Hobart’s road bridge. I was given the role of the ship’s captain. After the exercise concluded, the instructor, Captain L.A. GREENLAND, praised me for my communication skills and told me, in front of the rest of the class, that I had topped the class. She also told me that she was pleased to see me making a much greater effort in class.
I was also now determined not just to pass my tests and examinations, but to pass them as well as I could. I was inspired by a renewed sense of motivation and I became dedicated to making a great comeback. I was pleased with the feeling that my performance was steadily improving. When the 3rd Class cadets did the PTT again I put in a determined effort and tried as hard as I could. During the 5km run I finished 5th in my half-class and took two minutes off my previous time. I remained alert during classroom lectures instead of falling asleep as I had frequently done beforehand, and I tried to appear enthusiastic during practical lessons without being boisterous or gung-ho. I also took a sensible approach to training exercises held at the Majura Field Firing Range.
One test conducted at the Majura range was the 5km cross-country run which I found difficult but which I passed easily with a reasonable time. I also tried to maintain a quiet, low profile in order to keep out of trouble, although I did occasionally seek responsibility and volunteer for extra duties.
Outside training hours I visited any of my cadet friends who were in 5 Camp Hospital, and whenever I was going on local leave or to a sporting event I went around the Kokoda Company barracks, asking my fellow 3rd Class cadets if any of them needed a lift. I believed strongly in helping my mates whenever I could. In a letter to me after my arrest for the Hoddle Street shootings, a fellow 3rd Class cadet in Kokoda Company wrote:
‘I may have only known you for six months but during that time you were always a great mate, and would do anything for anyone.’
A confidential peer group rating however, conducted within Kokoda Company on 15 May 1987, rated me as 23/26 of the 3rd Class cadets (one 3rd Class) Staff Cadet Steve RIDD (CSC No 5303) who having already resigned by this stage after having initially [gone AWOL].
Interviews conducted with several members of Kokoda Company produced the following comments:
(a) He is a “character” who was “quite liked”
(b) He is “too young” and has “no common sense”
(c) He was a “skinhead” in Melbourne, made it common knowledge and enjoyed the image
(d) He had had “blues” in town with civilians
(e) He “dug his own grave” and made it worse for himself by talking back
(f) He didn’t attempt to “fit-in” and the comments directed towards him in terms of his dress and speech were “water off a duck’s back”
This last comment suggests to me that the “peer group” interviewed consisted of senior cadets in the Company.
During my time at Duntroon I was never asked to participate in a peer group rating. My renewed enthusiasm and determination to make a vast improvement was not recognized by most of the senior cadets in Kokoda Company. As far as they were concerned, I was not worthy of being an Army officer and they were determined to ensure that I resigned my appointment.
On 13 May 1987, my section leader, Corporal CRANE, noted:
“SCDT (Staff Cadet) Knight continued to display a lower level of personal organisation than most members of Third Class.” He also commented on “SCDT Knight’s lack of reliability“.
Instead of my situation in the barracks improving it significantly worsened. By mid-May 1987, many senior cadets were subjecting me to regular abuse and harassment, sometimes for something I had neglected to do, but usually just for the sake of it or for light entertainment. Three 1st Class cadets in Kokoda Company’s 14 Platoon in particular. Corporal Matthew THOMSON (CSC No 5132), Lance-Corporal Craig THORP (CSC No 5133), and Staff Cadet Nicholas EVERINGHAM (CSC No 4823) singled me out for “special treatment” and abused and victimized me at almost every opportunity. Even though they were in 14 Platoon and their rooms were upstairs at the other end of the barracks to my room, they harassed me whenever they saw me.
I was warned by two 3rd Class cadets in 14 Platoon, Simon MACKS (CSC No 5276) and Kim EXAUDI-LARSEN (CSC No 5245), that THOMSON, THORP and EVERINGHAM had it in for me.
During one conversation I had with Staff Cadet MACKS, he said, “They [THOMSON, THORP and EVERINGHAM] really hate you.”
I replied that I did not why. I said that he “must hate being in their [THOMSON, THORP and EVERINGHAM’s] section.” He laughed and said, “No, they’re as good as gold with us.” MACKS and EXAUDI-LARSEN also told me that they did not know why THOMSON, THORP and EVERINGHAM gave me such a hard time as they were “good mates” with all the other 3rd Class cadets in the Company.
I was just as bewildered. I had not trained with or had any personal clashes or “run-ins” with these three senior cadets prior to their victimization of me starting, so I am at a loss, even today, to explain why they took such a dislike to me.
[SOURCE: The above is an extract in a series of Julian KNIGHT’s records as part of his 97-page ‘Personal Account’ of his 6-month relentless persecution at RMC Duntroon submitted to the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce dated 26 November 2013, pp.39-46].