Service Toil

[John Saxton]

An old Sailor and an old Digger were sitting in the bar arguing about who'd had the tougher career.
"I did 30 years in the Army," the grunt declared proudly, "and fought in three of my country's wars. Fresh out of boot camp I fought on the Kokoda Track, clawed my way up the blood-soaked mountains and eventually took out an entire enemy machine gun nest with a single grenade.
"As a sergeant, I fought in Korea. We pushed back the enemy inch by bloody inch all the way up to the Chinese border, always
under a barrage of artillery and small arms fire.
"Finally, I did three consecutive combat tours in Vietnam. We humped through the mud and razor grass for 14 hours a day, plagued by rain and mosquitoes, ducking under sniper fire all day and mortar fire all night. In a fire-fight, we'd fire until our arms ached and our guns were empty, then we'd charge the enemy with bayonets!"
"Ah," said the Sailor with a dismissive wave of his hand, "You lucky ba#%*@*d, all shore time.

Cheers

[Ashore]

How true that is, they don't know how lucky they are