When a soldier removes his name plate

Welcome to Turkey!

by Toby Barrett

When a soldier removes his name plate as he’s walking toward you, you pretty well know what’s going to happen next. In this case I knew I deserved it … he had no choice and I didn’t really care.

The past 24 hours slowly crossing out of Iran at the Turkish border had already been eventful.

Even hitching rides from Tehran to the border had been interesting but had taken forever … I spent all one day riding a horse-drawn wagon: another on a donkey.

This border was endless lines through various security checks and full-body drug searches. I could see why. Most Europeans I met in Iran were laid out on a floor somewhere, addicted to opium, probably never to return home.

It was bittersweet to spend time in the border queues and to meet an enchanting girl from Denmark … we knew we would be ideal travel companions … but she was travelling east and I was going west.

Once over to the Turkish side I bought a ticket on a bus leaving for the closest town. This also provided me the long back bench for a night of good sleep. I did have to wake up at some point to let smugglers stuff bags of hash under the seat … they told me it was tea.

The engine started at 7, passengers boarded, and I took a seat beside a European guy.

Turns out we had both spent time in Australia earlier in the year.

I told him about travelling the west coast of Australia after finishing a construction job at the harbour in Esperance on the Southern Ocean, eventually getting to Darwin in the north.

It was a 3,000-mile hitch hike … but no roads, no cars and mostly trucks, Land Rovers and Toyota Land Cruisers … sometimes it was a dirt track linking various cattle stations.

Part of my travel was with a group of Rhodesian mercenaries, part of Colonel Hoare’s network, who were doing seismic survey work along the western edge of The Great Sandy Desert. They and another crew, also mercenaries, were locating ore drilling potential through triangulation with a ship anchored offshore in the Indian Ocean.

I got the impression the Rhodesian and the Australian governments had an agreement to provide them with very high paying work in between missions, but away from society.

They told me their mercenary work in Africa was killing blacks or as they described them, Communists… some of whom had been brainwashed to believe that bullets couldn’t hurt them.

My job in return for transportation was to provide companionship for one soldier in particular who was hurting; he wouldn’t talk, and none of the other guys would go near him.

Back to my seat mate on the bus in Turkey. My time in Darwin was work in a Coca Cola bottling plant and finding a way to get up to Indonesia.

One day a small ship tied up in the harbour, and as I told my seat mate, I went down to talk to a fellow working on the bow about catching a ride or working as crew. Turns out it was the ship the seismic survey crew used for triangulation.

The guy sitting next to me on the bus turned around, stared at me and then said,

“That was me you were talking to… I was with the survey company you were with and now I’m on my way home to Hungary!”

Neither one of us could fathom how two guys could, by coincidence, run into each other again on the other side of the world.

To celebrate the occasion, he pulled a small bottle of Scotch from his knapsack.

We finished it about 8 or 9 in the morning as two soldiers came on board to check tickets.

Things are a little unclear at this point, but my newfound friend either didn’t have one or refused to show it. They dragged him to the side doors of the bus but couldn’t get him out and started kicking him.

I arrived on the scene by this time and grabbed one soldier from behind and pulled him off. There was an immediate gasp from all the passengers, and it dawned on me you don’t do this in a military country like Turkey.

I went back to my seat; they finished kicking my friend out on the road; and I awaited my fate.

As I described earlier, the soldier I wrestled removed his name plate as he came for me.

He had to do what he had to do. There were 40 witnesses.

He punched me on the side of the jaw, probably not as hard as he could have, and between that and the Scotch I was out of it for the next hour.

Welcome to Turkey!