For some totally incomprehensible reason the Australian Army is axing funding for the Salvation Army’s Red Shield Services Sallyman service.

Everyone is familiar with the Salvos. They might be housing the homeless, providing street people and families in need with food and always being there when everybody else has given up.

But if everyone is familiar with the Salvos there is one service which is very special to a section of Australians – our soldiers. They have provided it through the Sallyman service which has been operating since the Boer War.

It started 126 years ago when the Salvation Army’s co-founder, Adjutant Mary Murry began to offer troops respite. Since then the service has been provided throughout two world wars and every conflict we have been involved in. They also provide services to families on bases – adults and their children whose partners and parents are away – are also offered help.

I have personal experience of just how the Salvos operate in these situations.

On my final operation in Vietnam in 1969 a small advance party under my command was choppered into a rubber plantation north of Nui Dat where we planned to set up a Fire Support base. We dug in and stayed up all night watching out for possible attacks. The next morning, we had an alert when someone spotted a vehicle approaching.

It turned out to be a Salvo driving up – on his own – from Nui Dat. When he got to us he said he had heard that we were out here and he thought we might need some decent tea and grub. You can imagine our reaction.

Since then, I have always had immense respect for the Salvos, have learnt more about how much they do for communities and individuals and our family have been very generous supporters of them over the years.

The Salvos offer a brew and a bickie to diggers – or in our case gunners – despite the risks. I think the brass has lost track of what the Salvos do and why it is so important.

From talking with fellow veterans local MPs are also being contacted urging that the decision be scrapped.

Now I don’t have much of a brief for the RSL (of which more in a later blog) although on this issue they have come out strongly. RSL National President, Greg Melick, said it was a serious concern that the Sallyman was no longer available. He said the RSL accepted the need for the billions being spent on AUKUS and other things but that “The Salvation Army Sallymans have played a vital role in building and maintaining morale throughout the military and more often on the frontline of conflicts.”

I would have thought junking AUKUS was well worth it for all the other things which could be done with the money. We handed over a couple of billions with no guarantee that the US will go ahead with the sale and, even if they did, when on earth they may arrive. Given US and Australian records on procurement my grandchild’s grandchildren may have a slim hope of seeing them in action.

….. and one has to wish that Greg Melick could also have the same passion for Australian War Memorial (where he is a Council member) representations of the Australian Wars – our longest and most deadly wars.

But nevertheless – on this issue – he and the RSL are right.

The blog tries to avoid using the perpendicular pronoun in posts. This one is, perhaps understandably, a one-off exception to that rule.