For over three decades Vietnam Veteran, Bill Beggs has been a regular fixture at Singleton’s Anzac Day commemorations. However, this year he has been invited to our nation’s capital to mark the 70th anniversary of the formation of the Army Apprentices School.
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On Wednesday a large contingent of apprentices who trained at the defunct Army Apprentices School (AAS) will have the honour of leading our national Anzac Day march in Canberra.
Singleton’s Bill Beggs will be among the estimated 600 former apprentices who will mark the auspicious occasion – 70 years since the pioneering institution was established.
Replacing the more limited Workshop Apprentice Scheme for fitters and turners that had commenced in 1939, the school allowed successful applicants aged between 15 to 17-and-a-half years of age to enlist in the army and complete a live–in, three year trade qualifying course.
And, despite being relocated, renamed and eventually closed, during its fifty years of operation the subsequent training scheme produced 7 500 architectural draughtsmen, blacksmiths, bricklayers, carpenters and joiners, clerks, electrical fitters, electricians, electronics technicians, fitters and turners, motor mechanics, musicians, plumbers and gasfitters, radio and telecom mechanics and welders.
Graduates have been credited with “being the backbone of the maintenance of mobility and firepower of an ever–increasing, technically–oriented Australian Army providing electrical, mechanical and construction engineering expertise to every area in which the Army has served, at home or overseas, on peacekeeping duties or on active service, from the Korean campaigns to current deployments.”
On August 2 in 1948, the Australian Regular Army (ARA) opened a trade training school at Balcombe on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria to meet the growing technological needs of the post-war Australian Army.
This is where a 15-year-old Mr Beggs undertook his mechanical apprenticeship.
In 1950, fresh from the Crows Nest Technical School in Sydney and straight out of home, he had to adjust to life on the base.
“I was in the 4th intake and we were guinea pigs,” he explains.
“The barracks were used by American soldiers during the war and then abandoned.”
He remembers arriving to find bare wooden huts and having to “boil his socks.”
Describing conditions as “rugged and tough”.
A place where these young men acquired more than just mechanical skills.
“During our physical training we actually had to build armco buildings to use as workshops and lecture halls,” he states.
According to the Victorian War heritage inventory, the Balcombe Army Camp was established during the Second World War. After Pearl Harbour in 1941 and the consequent American involvement in the war, Balcombe was used as an American headquarters and for the rehabilitation of their servicemen in 1942.
Then, it became the AAS site. Receiving many new buildings and landscaping, it developed into one of the largest schools of its kind in the country.
As it turns out making do with what they had and coming up with a solution – or the “bludge and go” principle as Mr Beggs describes it – held him in good stead during his diverse military career. Especially when he served in Vietnam.
As a member of the Third Cavalry Regiment – B Squadron – light aid detachment, when he first arrived they were working under a tent on a dirt floor.
But with some ingenuity and a dash of good old Aussie optimism, they ended up constructing an ad hoc workshop. “It was basically a lean-to with a concrete floor,” he says.
He recalls intercepting trucks carrying cement, and various other supplies, before they reached their actual destination.
With the veteran working mainly on N114 personnel carriers and Centurion tanks during his time at the Australian base at Nui Dat.
Although he was not on the front line, Mr Beggs was often tasked with retrieving vehicles and other equipment that came under fire.
“Picking up carriers that had been blown up was a stressful experience,” he states.
After Vietnam he returned to work at the Singleton Army Base, where remained until discharged in 1981. Rising to the rank of Artificer Sergeant Major (ASM), or in his words, “the technical advisor in a workshop”.
Mr Beggs met his wife Shirley Medhurst during one of his postings to Singleton in the early 1950s, and they married just after the 1955 flood.
...During our physical training we actually had to build armco buildings to use as workshops and lecture halls
- Bill Beggs
His daughter, Rhonda Brown, is accompanying her father on the trip to Canberra so he can take part in the reunion to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the formation of the AAS from Tuesday, April 24 through to Friday, April 27.
Organised by the Australian Army Apprentices Association, leading the march and the Last Post Ceremony at the Australian War Memorial (AWM) on April 26 are the two highlights. At the ceremony an apprentice will be honoured; Corporal Ronald John Engstrom, 18th C&J, 1 Fd Sqn RAE who was killed in Vietnam on Jan 30, 1970.
A reunion dinner at the National Convention Centre is to follow. Meanwhile, prior to the march on Anzac Day Mr Beggs, and his fellow former apprentices, are to attend the Dawn Service followed by a Gunfire Breakfast.
On Tuesday (tomorrow) the group will be officially welcomed at a meet and greet function.
And, no doubt plenty of stories will be shared as when the 49th intake completed their on-the-job phase in late 1998 it bought an end to half- a-century of training under age enlistees.