1971

The Fourth Dimension

John Sinclair

Do you remember those clear absolutely pitch black nights that you could have at Nui Dat; the air would be so perfectly still and warm you could cut it; those nights so quiet that your senses were fully alert?

There were a number of nights like that when no work was going on in the workshop and it was unusually quiet.

On one such occasion there were reports of rustling noises to our front and on the perimeter wire. It was nothing, probably just mongooses but it was causing some concern to some of those that had heard it. Eventually to help everybody settle down, Stand To was activated. As everybody knows an order to Stand To produces enough irritation to settle the most vivid of imaginations.

Anyway, on just such night, and quite late, a certain Workshop Officer, who shall be nameless, was the Duty Officer and had been watching a dim light in the sky that hovered for a time, erratically darted off at high speed only to again hover and then repeat the process. He watched this phenomenon for some time

Eventually he couldn't stand not knowing what it was any longer and rang the Duty Officer at the Task Force who put him onto Intelligence.

He was told that they had had a lot of reports about it and were watching it closely. They weren't sure if it was a new spy device although they tended to think it was a UFO. "What!" he said, "that's BS!". "Of course it is" was the reply. "It's only the Gunners doing their Met thing.

This is the sort of trouble you get into if you never serve with the Gunners. Of course there are lots of other troubles you can get into if you do.