'we're Ready,' Say Sailors
Sun Herald
Sunday November 11, 1990
IN Woolloomooloo's dockyard hotels, the sailors were telling their last tall stories on their final Friday night in Sydney.
Across Cowper Wharf Road, the smart grey battle dresses of HMAS Sydney and HMAS Brisbane's special radar nightware gleamed in the street lights.
At the Tilbury Hotel, in "Frisco's", at the Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel, affectionately known as the Rockers, the jokes were flying as fast as the imaginations of those bound on tomorrow's "Persian Excursion".
But behind the talk something was tumbling over in the heads of the sailors bound for the Gulf, and something was fluttering in their stomachs.
It was the prospect of missing summer at home, missing Christmas with their families and going to war.
"Able Seaman Jack Tar", the preferred pseudonym of one sailor leaving tomorrow, said: "Adelaide and Darwin have already stopped a couple of ships over there. You just take each day as it comes. You can't help thinking about being in battle; you always do that. I'm confident we'll do all right.
"I reckon the Australian Navy can hold its own."
Had he thought about dying? "If it happens, it happens."
Jack, 25, is fairly typical of the 450 or so men leaving tomorrow: he agrees with George Bush that Saddam Hussein is a modern-day Hitler; he doesn't believe any person should be allowed to get away with invading an innocent country; his family is 100 per cent behind him and his girlfriend hopes he gets back in one piece.
© 1990 Sun Herald
