A Mother’s Worry: Young Bagzar

By Ian Stiles OAM, JP

Immerse yourself in the riveting true story of a young maverick’s journey from the gritty slums of Melbourne to the elite ranks of Australia’s Special Air Service (SAS) during the tumultuous 1950s and 60s. Witness the struggles of his mother, wed to an abusive man, and how the hardships of his upbringing influenced his formative years. Leaving school at 14, he delved into the world of firearms and hunting by working in a gun shop, a precursor to his military service.

Enlist alongside him at 17 and endure the gruelling selection process and intense training regimen that propelled him into the SAS, Australia’s pinnacle military unit. Experience firsthand his arduous pre-deployment conditioning in the unforgiving terrains of New Guinea, and feel the adrenaline rush as he was thrust into the heart of the Vietnam War at just 19 years old.

Laced with unfiltered humour and detailing the escapades of the SAS’s hard-living, harder-fighting men, this memoir utilizes Australian War Memorial records to shed light on the innovative tactics and extraordinary kill ratios the unit achieved in Vietnam, despite their primary mission of intelligence gathering.

Chart his meteoric rise from Private to Sergeant in just one year, a promotion that garnered him both awe and animosity from older, yet less aggressive, SAS soldiers. Finally, accompany him as he navigates the tumultuous transition from battle-hardened warrior to peacetime soldier, facing the strictures of a by-the-book Regimental Sergeant Major upon his return to Australia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035830923

Ian Stiles OAM, JP

Ian ‘Bagzar’ Stiles OAM, JP escaped from working-class background to a life of adventure, excitement, and travel. Passing the Australian Special Air Service selection at 18, he was sent to New Guinea. He then saw service in Vietnam at 19 and was leading SAS patrols on his second tour as a sergeant at 22 years of age. Leaving the Australian SAS after a court martial for fighting, he joined the Rhodesian SAS fighting in Zambia and Mozambique. Leaving the military, he took up oil field diving, living, and working in many parts of the world. Retiring from commercial diving he became a dive shop, and charter boat operator and became involved in his community as a shire councillor, justice of the peace, volunteer ambulance driver, and marine rescue volunteer. He co-authored a paper on ‘Euthanising Large Whales with Explosives,’ which was accepted by the International Whale Commission as the preferred method. He has travelled to all seven continents and was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for his service to the community. He and his wife Sharon of 48 years have two grown-up daughters and three grandchildren.

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About the Author

Ian ‘Bagzar’ Stiles OAM, JP escaped from working-class background to a life of adventure, excitement, and travel. Passing the Australian Special Air Service selection at 18, he was sent to New Guinea. He then saw service in Vietnam at 19 and was leading SAS patrols on his second tour as a sergeant at 22 years of age. Leaving the Australian SAS after a court martial for fighting, he joined the Rhodesian SAS fighting in Zambia and Mozambique. Leaving the military, he took up oil field diving, living, and working in many parts of the world. Retiring from commercial diving he became a dive shop, and charter boat operator and became involved in his community as a shire councillor, justice of the peace, volunteer ambulance driver, and marine rescue volunteer. He co-authored a paper on ‘Euthanising Large Whales with Explosives,’ which was accepted by the International Whale Commission as the preferred method. He has travelled to all seven continents and was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for his service to the community. He and his wife Sharon of 48 years have two grown-up daughters and three grandchildren.

Dedication

In memory of my mother, who was taken too soon.

To my devoted wife, Sharon, who has always had my back.

And our three grandchildren, Isla, Harvey, and Sonny, who in future years will find that their grumps had an interesting life.

Copyright Information ©

Ian Stiles OAM, JP 2024

The right of Ian Stiles OAM, JP to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035830909 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035830916 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781035830923 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.co.uk

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank:

My wife, Sharon, for her patience,

Michael Malone OAM for his editorial skills,

Fred Roberts DCM for being a lifelong friend,

Brad Falconer for being a good mate and encouraging me,

Brigadier Chris Roberts AM, CSC for morals advice,

some of which was not taken.

Chapter One

Early Life

I sat waiting amongst the other award recipients in the function room of Government House in Western Australia. As I sat, I was thinking of my grandkids and how much I would have loved them to be here today, to watch their grumps shake hands with the Governor of Western Australia. Our daughter Simone was not allowing us to see the grandkids as we had remained friends with the grandkid’s father Matt, Simone’s ex-husband.

I was also thinking of my mum, of the grief and worry I had caused her in my younger days and how I wished she could be here today and see me and how her son had turned out. How her roguish son had become a respected member of the community. I was bought back to reality when I heard my name being announced and that I was being awarded the Order of Australia Medal for my service to the Jurien Bay Community. I stood up, turned, and gave my wonderful wife Sharon a little wave; for nearly 50 years, I had also caused her more than a little worry, It was Sharon who deserved not a Gong, but a Sainthood.

My earliest memory is of my mother, Eileen Alice Slaven, pushing a pram outside St Vincent De Pauls, a charity shop in Fitzroy Melbourne. Slaven was my mother’s parent’s name. I used to think it was a name that someone had given her as she had spent all her life slaving, dying at an early age when she was just 55. Her parents had put her and her sister in a Roman Catholic orphanage in Ballarat Victoria. Sadly, for Mum, her younger sister was adopted, and my mother was left in the orphanage. Mum never spoke of her younger sister Mary, and I have gained this information from my sister looking at Heritage.com.

During the Second World War, as a teenager, Mum had worked in a Roman Catholic-run industrial laundry. There she worked long hours under virtually slave labour conditions doing laundry for the American Forces Hospitals in Melbourne.

At the age of sixteen, she became pregnant (probably to a Catholic priest). My sister Pat was the result of this union. I was unaware of my older sister’s existence for over 60 years until both my sisters, Jeanette, who I grew up with, and Pat started checking the family tree, independently of each other. The probable pregnancy by the Catholic priest may explain my mother’s lifetime distrust of priests, the church and religion. I also have never had any respect for religion and my aversion and intolerance of religion has gotten worse as I get older. My wife, Sharon tells me if I don’t behave, she will have a priest, a rabbi and a mullah presiding over my funeral. A similar threat was made to her Uncle Fred who hated cats. If Fred did not behave, he was told, his ashes were to be spread over the Cat Haven.

Mother Eileen with Ian and Jeanette

According to a marriage certificate found by both my long-lost older sister Pat and my younger sister Jeanette, my mother was married to a man named Brooke before I was born. I would like to think that this man Brooke was my father and not Harry Stiles because Harry Stiles was a useless, lying, drunken beater of his wife, his mother, his sister, and children. As a boy of about nine, riding in a bus towards my Nana’s house with my mother and sister, I saw Harry Stiles coming in the opposite direction driving a truck. I put my arm out the window and waved as he went past, he saw me and pulled his truck over. Mum and us two kids got off at the next bus stop and began walking back towards him. When we reached him, my mother was struck suddenly in the face by his fist without warning, knocking her to the ground. Harry then turned and just walked back to his truck, then drove off. My sister Jeanette and I helped Mum up off the ground. To this day, I do not know what the incident was about, but still feel guilty as the cause of Mum’s beating because I put my arm out the bus window and attracted Harry’s attention. This was not the first time he had beaten my mother or other women. When I was an adult, Auntie Margaret (Harry’s half-sister) showed me a dent in the wall at Nana’s house where Harry had knocked my Nana (Harry’s mother) down in the kitchen and she hit the wall. Auntie Margaret also told me that he had beaten her.

To me, my mother was a kind-natured person, who neither drank alcohol, smoked nor swore. Whilst she was with Harry, I never saw her even look at another man. My mother’s, Nana’s and Auntie’s acceptance of these beatings did have an influence on me. I could not accept the fact that a person would put up with being beaten and not either leave or retaliate. If the women in my life accepted these beatings, I believed all women must be the same. I loved them all, but I could not really respect them for not standing up for themselves.

Looking back on domestic violence and the women’s acceptance of it, I could see how a young person could grow up believing it was the normal thing for men to beat up women, and women, who had seen it happen to their mothers as girls, to accept it. It took me a long time to realise that there were intelligent women out there who would stand up for themselves and not be treated like dirt. The actions of this man also had an influence on my intolerance of what I believe is the most intolerant religion, Islam. The Koran, in simple language, is a religious doctrine that views women as second-class citizens. I look at women today, who voluntarily wear a Burka or Hijab, either as ‘a look at me’ fashion statement or as poor brainwashed person with little self-esteem.

A few years ago, I was flying to Darwin and sat next to a very small but bright Aboriginal woman. We got chatting and she told me she had been to Perth at a woman’s conference. She said, Those white women don’t understand what’s going on in the Aboriginal communities. Our fella’s get drunk and come home and beat us. The ‘Do-Gooder’ White women at the conference did not want to talk about the drunken beatings nor support the removal of the black man’s ‘right’ to alcohol. My advice to this little Aboriginal woman was: Next time her husband came home drunk and beat her, whilst he slept in his drunken stupor, she was to sew her husband up in the bed sheet. When he awoke with his hangover, she was to get a piece of wood and beat the crap out of him. She was then not to let him free, (let him piss and shit the bed) until he promised not to beat her again. I wish I could have given that advice to my mum.

Harry was a Merchant Seaman and according to his sea time record was a steward on the troopship HMAS Westralia during the Second World War. This troopship the Westralia carried thousands of troops and landed them on contested beaches in the Pacific. Any serviceman would be proud to have served on this ship. Henry George (Harry) Stiles did serve on the Westralia according to his Sea Time record it was the only ship he served on during World War Two. Harry served on the Westralia as a steward from 12 January 1943 to 4 February 1943, whilst the ship was in a shipyard in Sydney being converted from an Armed Merchant Cruiser to an Infantry Landing Ship. Three weeks aboard a ship in Australia, thousands of miles from the front line to me do not constitute ‘War Service.’ Harry Stiles joined the army on 8 July 1943, but according to Australian War Memorial records, he never left Australia. I however remember him telling many war stories to others that he was a stoker and had been sunk many times by submarines.

Another favourite story was how he dropped Z force soldiers onto the Japanese occupied islands to our North. Once when he saw me reading an article in a magazine on a World War Two Malta Convoy, he told me that he was a stoker on the merchantman Ohio. This was a famous oil tanker that had been bombed and caught fire, which her brave crew put out and was bought sinking into Malta’s Valetta Harbour with her much-needed cargo of fuel for the besieged island. There was no way that this liar could have been a crewman on the Ohio. What annoyed me was my mother, his mother and many people believed his lies. Harry also became a used car salesman, and later he became an interstate truck driver. Driving between Melbourne and Brisbane gave him the excuse of being away for long periods of time. This enabled him to have another family, a second wife Barbara and a daughter by her—Michelle. Sometimes he would be gone six weeks ‘as floods had washed out the roads’ he would tell my mother. One Christmas my mother kept the Christmas dinner warm, and Christmas presents unopened until night fell, hoping the bastard would turn up for Christmas as promised. He did not turn up as he had spent Christmas with his other Family.

I do not hold any grudge against stepmother Barbara or my half-sister Michelle, they also were victims of Harry’s lies. In the days before single-parent pensions, to survive meant begging money for food from friends, family, and neighbours. Bread and dripping were often on the menu and my nana and friends often helped us with food and money. St Vincent De Pauls a charity shop in Brunswick Street Fitzroy was where we got a lot of our clothes.

Nana was a real character, she had had three children Harry, Lenny, and Margaret to different men. Nana would sing ditties which would be very politically incorrect today.

One was: Nellie was married to a coon, Nellie was married to a coon, He was not Brown he was not Yellow, He was a dirty Old Black Fella.

Another was: Auntie Mary, Auntie Mary, look at our Uncle Jim, diving in the Pee pot learning how to swim, first he does the breaststroke then he does the glide, now in his underwater swimming against the tide.

Only a couple of days before Nana died; I visited her in a Nursing Home. I could hear singing and the sound of a piano playing as I walked into the main entrance. When I got to the recreation room, there she was playing the piano, singing out loud, accompanied by half a dozen smiling happy residents. She was a war widow and never really had much but gave Jeanette and me lots of love.

I cannot remember Harry Stiles ever helping my sister or me with our homework, taking us to sports or ever teaching us anything. My Auntie Margaret taught me to swim and ride a bike. I never went to a football game, learnt how to kick a football, bowl a cricket ball, or catch a fish. It was my Auntie Margaret who took us to Luna Park, the movies and on other outings.

On the odd occasion, Jeanette and I were looked after by Harry, he took us to the pub, and I was bought a sarsaparilla drink as he flirted with the bar maids. Our mother was probably at the time working in a factory. At times, because she had no one to look after us, we were taken to a factory where she worked, where we would sit in a corner much to the annoyance of the factory manager.

At home, I often had to go and face the bill collectors at the front door, lying that my mother or Harry were not home, whilst they hid in a back room. Hire Purchase was the way we bought things but most of the time the items were repossessed before the final Hire Purchase payment was made. Consequently, we never owned anything of value, and we were always getting into debt. The garden was never watered, nor the lawn mown. The Olympic Games and TV came to Melbourne in 1956, I never got to see anything of the games not even the grand parade through Melbourne because Harry was not interested in taking his kids to see anything of this historic event.

TV first arrived in Melbourne in 1956, in time for the Olympic Games. People would take their chairs and sit on the footpath to watch TV in the shop front windows or crowd in some kind ‘rich’ person’s lounge room.

My first school was Belfield State School which was just down the road from my Nanas in Banksia Street Heidelberg. We were living with my Nana at the time, but we soon moved, and I went to St Joseph’s in Collingwood where the sexually frustrated nuns would beat us with 18-inch steel-edged rulers. Our school time seemed to be learning how Christianity was spread. I remember having to try to make my exercise book look like the Book of Kells, with fancy capital letters at the beginning of a page. I never realised that there were so many Saints, it seemed that every second day out of every week we would traipse into the church and pray for someone who had led a holy life.

I sold the evening Herald newspaper on the corner of Smith and Gertrude Streets, Fitzroy. The tram would come down Gertrude Street and I would jump aboard and sell as many papers as I could before being kicked off by the irate conductor. I would weave in and out of the traffic selling papers to motorists pulled up at the tram stop. I became quite confident, and I suppose reckless. As an amusement, I would put a copper penny on the tram track to have it flattened when the tram ran over it. One afternoon however I was in the middle of the road bending over to place a penny on the tram track when I was knocked to the ground. I thought I had been hit by a car or something, but I looked up and saw Harry standing over me abusing me for wasting money.

After Collingwood, we then moved to Diamond Creek where I went to school for a very short period before going to a school little further up the train track at Wattle Glen, because it was closer to our house. Our house was on five acres and backed onto Diamond Creek which had many blackberry bushes growing along its banks.

The Wattle Glen school had two-teachers, with a row of desks being each year or grade. I started being a bit of a rebel, I would not do my homework as I believed that out-of-school hours belonged to me. The male teacher would give me six ‘cuts’ or lashes on my hand with his leather strap for not doing my homework. I had learnt that physical pain hurts when it is administered and to be feared, but the body has no memory of physical pain, and it is very soon forgotten. Withdrawal of love is a far more effective way to discipline a child. I don’t know how I did it, but I also learnt I could urinate over the wall dividing the girls’ and boys’ toilets, much to the disgust of the girls.

It was at Diamond Creek that Harry partially redeemed himself a little and bought Jeanette and me a horse called Tony. I may be cynical, but today I feel he bought the horse as a ‘status symbol’ for himself. So, he could brag that he had bought his kids a horse. There was no instruction from Harry. No, how to put the bridal on, currycomb it, the need to water the horse, just there’s your horse, I’m off for a beer.

Tony was a Bay gelding Galloway at 14 hands high. He came with a bridal but no saddle. The downside was the bridal reins were easily unbuckled from the bit and became a bloody good strap with which to give me a hiding. For my first ride with Tony, I was helped on his back, and I was then on my own. I began my ride with a walk, Tony then began to trot off down the road. After about 100 metres I fell off and had to lead the horse to a fence and climb back on, this became a ritual, climbing up a fence to get on the horse’s back. Later, a saddle was borrowed from someone, and I was able to stay on more.

Cowboy Ian and horse Tony at Nana’s

I did gain confidence and therefore fell off quite a few times taking off bits of skin. I ended up in the Children’s hospital at least twice with concussion, one of the nursing sisters who had seen me before in her ward gave me a good talking to on how dangerous horses were. Tony was a mate with whom I spent many happy days riding around Rural Diamond Creek and Wattle Glen. The blacksmith was in Hurstbridge, and he must have hurt Tony the first time I rode him there because Tony did not like going to Hurstbridge. If he needed shoeing, I would have to take a circuitous route to the blacksmith. If Tony knew we were near the blacksmiths, he would not budge, and I would have to tie him up and walk into the town to get the blacksmith to help me get him to the forge.

I rode him a couple of times from Diamond Creek to Nana’s house in Banksia Street Heidelberg, about 20 kilometres. On our way back to Diamond Creek one time we were galloping along a straight stretch of road when a truck pulled up alongside and the passenger said Hello. I said, Hi back, and we began a short conversation. At about this time, I wanted to slow Tony down as we were coming into Greensborough. Tony, however, was spooked, he took the bit between his teeth and started to bolt down the main street of Greensborough. The passenger of the old-fashioned doorless truck saw my plight, he leaned out and grabbed the reins to pull Tony up, the truck veered to the other side of the road, and it created a little stir for the Saturday morning shoppers. Tony was eventually pulled over at the bottom of the hill, I got off and calmed the poor horse down. A man drove up to me and asked the horse’s and my name and where I lived. I gave him the information and continued my way riding back to Diamond Creek.

I had forgotten about the incident, but my mother was most upset when she read on the front page of