Skip to main content
The largest online newspaper archive
A Publisher Extra® Newspaper

The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • 91

Location:
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Issue Date:
Page:
91
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

18 'The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday, May 24, 1969 11 EIic 3nbncn 3Eontina 5Rciralb WEEKEND MAGAZINE AND BOOK REVIEWS Gurkhas bid sad goodbye to the wars Guard dogs have role in E-II1 plans it I i i A i I v' a 5 i i 4 the R.A.A.F., some of the dogs are donated out of patriotism, though one suspects the baser motives prevail. Melbourne, for unexplained reasons, yields up more unwanted German Shepherds than any other city. Preferred age for trainees is between one and two. The dogs can be male or female, but comparatively, few bitches seem to make the grade. Princess is the only one at No.

7 Stores Depot, but, ironically, is also undisputed leading dog. The trick is to turn a large but reasonably docile dog which will go to any friendly stranger into a one-man dog, jealous and possessive, totally devoted to his handler, and savage enough to attack on command. "We want a savage dog, but not a dangerous dog," the head of the dog training school at Drayton, Sergeant Heck, says precisely. "Our aim is controlled fury," a R.A.A.F. officer comments.

Obviously, the one-man dog creates problems. A dog's useful working life, after training, is usually only six or seven years. An eight-year-old dog is equivalent to a man of 56: not really up to jumping through fiery hoops, or attacking burglars, though still quite fit and vigorous. The dogs cannot, however, be found good homes, or otherwise gracefully retired. They have to be put down, and this can cause traumas.

At Drayton, we were told the story of a dog-handler, who planned to leave the R.A.A.F. at the end of his six years' term, but whose dog was still comparatively young. After some soul-searching, the man re-enlisted in the R.A.A.F. for a further three years, so his dog could be reprieved for at least the rest of its useful life. A man who volunteers as a handler has to be pretty dog-oriented in the first place.

He is, after all. going to spend a great deal of his working life with the ing the arrival of the 24 F-lllCs on order for the R.A.A.F. Other dogs and handlers work at Amberley, near Brisbane, patrolling the strips from which the supersonic swing-wing strike aircraft will fly. The R.A.A.F. has found its guard dog training program so successful that it is about to start building a big new dog training centre at No.

7 Stores Depot, at a cost of $80,000. R.A.A.F. officers say that one dog, plus handler, can do the work of five ordinary guards. The upkeep of the dog is only 90c a day, for meat, biscuits, and vitamins. The R.A.A.F.

dog training centre used to be at Tottenham in Victoria, but the area is industrial, and dogs are affected by smog and chemical fumes as easily as humans. At Drayton, near Toowoomba. the dogs can he kept in first-class fighting trim, and can be trained more easily in exercises involving scent. The complement of dops who will go on training courses at Drayton will gradually be increased to 42, and these will be used to guard R.A.A.F. bases within Australia.

The R.A.A.F. does not send dogs to Vietnam, as, unlike humans. they cannot be repatriated, and have to be destroyed when their handler's tour of duty is over. The training of guard docs is a remarkable business, involving techniques of human and canine psychology, complicated by a certain amount of The dogs all of them German Shepherds are not specially bred to the business. They come in as comparatively docile household pets, donated to the Air Force by people who find they cannot cope with a giant-size animal in cramped domestic surroundings.

Alternatively, according to By MARGARET JONES FANG is a big strong dog, but he has droopy ears which wouldn't look well on a parade ground. Fang's future is unlikely to lie in enlistment with the R.A.A.F., which is fanatical about smartness. Princess, on the other hand, has nothing droopy about her whole personality. She is, at the moment (pictured at right) barking loudly enough for a regiment of dogs, showing all 42 of her very sharp teeth, and attempting to attack an airman playing the role of an intruder. Her master.

Sergeant Cecil Heck, is restraining her, with an effort. If the airman were a real intruder. Sergeant Heck would loose Princess, shout "Get 'im!" and the man would have 801b of savage don swinging on his arm. Princess is the top dog at the R.A.A.F. Police Dog Training Centre at No.

7 Stores Depot, near Toowoomba. She knows it, and is a bit of an exhibitionist. This is exploitable, as Princess is used as a demonstrator, to teach new recruits what the business of being a guard dog is all about. A group of possible trainees including the unlikely-to-succced Fang peer out at her enviously from their pens. Some of these will make the grade.

Others will be weeded out. Princess and her colleagues there are now 12 dog-and-man teams working at No. 7 Stores Depot have the additional responsibility these days of guarding a multi-million dollar accumulation of spare parts await The puts his guard dog, Princess, on the attack. lipot! peninsula, In the war areas of France, in the Middle East, even in the foresiis of Africa where Gurkhas fell while helping with United Nations tasks in the Congo. More fell in Burma, in Italy, in Malaysia.

Gurkha casualties in battle have never been low, No British unit which has served alongside Gurkhas, no British officer who has commanded Gurkhas, has faded to feel a special warmth towards these little brown men with their wicked-looking curved kukri knives, their round pork-pie hats and their Black Watch plaids. There has always been a mutual trust and, on the British side, a feeling of Kiplingesque romanticism about the Gurkha temperament. Only the officer who gives an order can countermand it. The Gurkha motto, "It is better to die than to be a coward," is endured to the ultimate. The self-discipline is beyond ordinary experience.

Fifteen V.C's have been earned, and countless other decorations and honours. Tales of the Gurkhas are legion. There is the story of the Gurkha company about to make its first air-drop, being told that it would jump from 600 feet, and the Gurkha senior N.C.O. diffidently asking if the height could be reduced to cut down the risk of injury, not knowing that parachutes were being issued. There are well-authenticated stories of Gurkhas continuing to fight with appalling injuries, others fighting singlehanded when all their comrades have dropped Through generations, Gurkhas had left their homes in the hills of Nepal for the traditional adventure of serving in the British Army.

There was never a shortage of recruits from among the Gurkhas, who temperamentally are far different from the majority of the Nepalese, who are a peace-loving agricultural people. Recruiting continues for the Indian Army, in which there are a number of Gurkha battalions, but for the British Army it has all but stopped. There is the homeward trek from the illustrious Brigade of Gurkhas. And there are prob. lems.

There has always been the flow of returning time-expired men, but these had served long enough to receive an adequate pension. Now, as the Gurhka Brigade is drastically scaled down, there are younger men coming home and having to train for jobs, and find them. A former British Gurkha officer, Brigadier Gordon Richardson, has been assigned to- the British Embassy in Nepal to supervise rehabilitation schemes which are now beginning, partly financed by Britain under the Colombo plan. A demonstration farm has been laid out, courses are being planned for carpentry and building to try to ease the Gurkha soldiers back into a civilian life. Many people in Nepal think it as well that Britain's Gurkha Brigade is being run down.

They do not think it desirable that Nepalese should be faced with the prospect of "fighting other Asian nations for the policies of Britain." Yet among so many of the Gurkhas there is a sadness. The vista of military adventuring across the continents under the Union Jack is fading. Within the next few years there may only be the tales of Gurkha soldier veterans to link the remote mountain kingdom with the Army of Britain. From T. S.

MONKS in London THERE IS SADNESS and anxiety among the short, stocky, fighters of renown who make up Britain's dwindling Brigade of Gurkhas. Each month more and more have to make the unwilling homeward trek to the hills of Nepal, from the jungles of Malaysia as Britain's cuts bite. Is the end now in sight for Gurkhas in the British Army, the end of an extraordinary association through more than 150 years? Even in the hard matter-of-fact world which regards sentiment and tradrtion as too expensive, there is caution about saying that the days of the Gurkhas are done. The legends of the Gurkhas are too long, the acts of valour too numerous, the devotion too faithful, for the Brigade of Gurkhas to be easily dismissed from the British service. It is now in the process of being drastically scaled down from 14,000 men to 6,000 as Britain withdraws from the East.

And then? "No decision on the future of the Brigade after 1971 has been made," is the consistent official British reply to questioning. The Gurkhas worry. Hundreds of British officers who have been stirred by their service with the Gurkhas worry for them and plead for them. Surely the British Army will always have need for such men as these? There is no clear answer. All that is clear is the glorious record of the Gurkhas in the British Service right from its strange beginning.

In the early years of the last century, the Gurkha clan had conquered most of the land that is now Nepal and were raiding down into India causing much distress to the East India Com- PanV-. Military expeditions were mounted by the British from India again and again, but without success until Major-General Sir David Ochterlony drove the Gurkha's best soldier leader Amar Singh back to his last stockaded fortress. After a final fierce struggle, the Gurkhas came to terms with the British and a perpetual treaty of friendship between Britain and Nepal was signed. But far from being bitter at the fighting against the British, thousands of the Gurkhas who had fought under Amar Singh asked to join the East India Company's service as soldiers under the British flag. They were formed into what was the original Gurkha Regiment.

That was in 1816. It began the voluntary association between the Gurkhas and the British that became ever stronger. In military report terms the. Gurkhas' record would read: Courage unsurpassed. Loyalty fanatical.

Fighting qualities unquestioned. During the Indian Mutiny there was no wavering among the Gurkhas. The ruler of Nepal himself led 12,000 Gurkhas to help in suppressing the mutineers and after one fearfully bloody engagement the British troops who had fought alongside stood and cheered the Gurkhas. But Gurkha graves lie around the world. They are thick on the Gal Sergeant C.

Heck dog as his only companion, in the chilly watches of many a long night. The training school doesnY mind whether dogs are sedate or lively. Quiet men like quiet dogs, and the gregarious ones pick them frisky. But dogs which seem shy or timid are weeded out early. These are the dogs which will turn sneaky later.

gambling professor The dog's nature is irrevocably changed when he is taken out on bivouac wirh his handler, and man and dog live together in a small tent in the bush, menaced in the night by mysterious strangers airmen playing the part of aggressors who apparently threaten the safety of the beloved master. It is at this time, through some mysterious process of canine psychology, that the dog becomes possessive, savage, and protective, and from then on can be handled by no one but his master. It is unsafe from then on for anyone to attempt to touch the dog's handler even to shake hands in the dog's presence. At the first passing-out parade of dogs at Drayton recently, Wing-Commander I. C.

Collie, Deputy Provost Marshal, Headquarters, R.A.A.F. Training Unit, Melbourne, "showed" a trophy to the dux of the course, AC Mai Maslen, but did not hand it to him. Mela, Maslen's dog, would have objected and the penalty for biting a Wing-Commander is probably drastic. The dogs are kept in a constant state of angry attentiveness by mock "attacks" by airmen acting as intruders: The men wear thick padded sleeves to protect themselves, and the dogs are taught to go straight for the sleeve. We saw airmen pulling dogs off their feet and whirling them in the air, but they were unable to make the dogs loosen their grip.

The centre at Drayton has 15 more dogs awaiting training, and will soon start running regular 10-week courses to produce dogs for all R.A.A.F. installations in Australia. Professor Richard Jarecki has made The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo look like a smalltime gambler for, in a short time, he has netted a fortune and been barred in a number of casinos in Europe because he was winning too much. The dogs spend six weeks being taught the basic principles of obedience and Service discipline. At the "end of this time, however, they are still quite approachable, though devoted to a particular handler.

They have learned to leap through flaming hoops, jump hurdles, and crawl through drain pipes, but the "controlled fury" is still jto come. "as a test. feL t. K' mmmimam.m 'i i i Professor Richard Jarecki (right) gambles SPROD'S SYDNEY Signor Lardera took Professor Jarecki to his office and paid him out and asked him not to return to the casino for two weeks. "We are going to have some reorganisation," Lardera said.

"Please do not return for two weeks." Later Lardera admitted to reporters that the professor posed a distinct threat to the casino because, if he continued winning as he had won, the casino would either have to cut down its maximum permissible stake which would in itself be a ruinous thing to do or ban the professor altogether and that would not be good publicity for the casino. "If we banned him," Lardera said grimly, "it would stop other big gamblers from visiting our casino. They would get the impression that if they start winning we would stop them and that we were only happy while our customers lost. "This is not so. Professor Jarecki is no ordinary gambler; he is a menace to every casino in Europe.

I don't know how he docs it exactly, but if he never returned to my casino I would be a very happy man." In three days of playing there in 1968 Professor Jarecki cleaned up a little more than $250,000. Then in one blow he plaved for the high stakes, until the stake was equivalent to a bet for a fraction over $1,000,000. And that was where we came in. The ball dropped in his winning number and the table was temporarily closed. I met Professor Jarecki in Rome after he had come away from San Remo with the biggest fortune ever won there by any man.

Rather tall and slim and reedy looking just like a pro- fessor should, complete with a rumpled suit and a bewildered look, Professor Jarecki told me that he had been asked by a number of casinos privately not to return, for some time at least. "They haven't ordered me not to return," he said. "I think they are scared of the publicity, but they suggested very diplomatically that I might be better occupied elsewhere. Perhaps they are afraid of my system." He looks the innocent abroad and wholly unlike the popular concept of the Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo. He doesn't look a gambler and claims that he is not a gambler.

"I only gamble on certainties," he said. "1 think that mv system is almost foolproof. The casinos also think so. That's why the San Rcmo casino asked me to stay away for two weeks. They wanted time to recover.

Losing no much money must have shaken them up a little." He has been asked much the From ARMANDO VANNOZZI in Rome TENSION rhounted swiftly at the roulette table and the crowd who had gathered around broke out in a sweat as the reedy-looking man with the horn-rimmed spectacles placed a bet of over one hundred thousand dollars on a single spin of the wheel. Hardened gamblers, who had seen big winners come and go, held their breath as the croupier spun the wheel in the San Rcmo casino. Even the normally indifferent croupier with nerves of steel and iced water in his veins was a little nervous as he watched the wheel. At that moment not a table was in operation except the one being played by the American-born Professor Richard Jarecki. Everyone had gathered around to see him either win or lose a fortune on the turn of the wheel.

Many men like him had come to the casino with supposedly foolproof systems for beating the wheel. In the end all had gone home flat broke for the wheel always won in the end. All, that is, except Professor Jarecki He had come and come again and in two weeks had cleaned up over $250,000 and broken one of the casino's main tables. Funds to pay out the professor's winnings were brought from the reserve, something the casino had not done in over a decade. But, could this winning streak last? That was the question in everyone's mind, apart from the possibly more important question affecting their pockets: How did he do it? The ball dropped into a slot and stayed there and a collective long-drawn out "Ah" swept the floor.

The casino's managing director, Robert Lardera, had moved in to witness the downfall of the master gambler who looked precisely what he was: a professor at a university. But if Lardera hoped to see the professor crushed by a thundering big loss, he was shocked to his eye teeth when the croupier announced that the professor had won yet again. The stake won a sum of over $1,000,000 for the professor, the highest amount ever staked or woo in the casino. work and that both the computer and 1 could not be wrong, but the odds were still against us. The element of chance is something you cannot entirely rule out." He proved to be right.

He obtained the last three winning numbers and staked his bet according to them and increased his hundred dollars to $5,000. It wasn't exactly plain sailing from there on, Professor Jarecki emphasised. He could not win at will but backed by the system he had worked out he lost smaller stakes and won large ones. "1 lose like other gamblers," he confessed, "but sometimes I lose with the purpose of determining the three previous numbers immediately before staking a very heavy bet. "The system is that I must have the immediate three previous numbers.

They need not be winning numbers, they could be losing numbers, though if they are winning numbers my chances of success are increased about 90 per cent." Once he has the three-numbers he wants he slaps down bets ranging from 1 ,000 to $5,000. Few casinos will accept bets exceeding $5,000 and since Professor Jarecki has become so well known in the casinos they are not anxious even to accept a $5,000 bet from him but want to limit him to a few hundred dollars. Fear of unfavourable publicity, however, forces them to accept the bets he tenders, As he cleaned up at the roulette tables, one casino after the other took him aside and asked him either not to call again or to call again after some time. "There is a rumour floating around," Professor Jarecki said, "that I have been barred from all the casinos. This is, of course, untrue.

I can' go to the casinos at Monte Carlo Baden Baden, Cannes and to San Rcmo now, I was asked to stay away from San Remo for a time after the same thing by the casinos of Monte Carlo, Nice and Cannes. Richard Jarecki, who is 37 and who was born in the United States, is a lecturer in forensic medicine at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. The students regard him as an egghead and looked on him with the usual contempt with which they regard an absenlmind-ed professor until he rocked the casinos. Today he is the hero of every student at his university. Professor Jarecki told me that he did not go in for gambling as a professional, but, in his own words, "as a test." He began, he said, fiddling with a scheme to beat the roulette table, something that has occupied great minds for many years but also something no gambler has ever been able to achieve.

"In 1960," Professor Jarecki said, "I had some ideas on the subicct and began experimenting until I had the rough outline of a system based on the previous winning numbers. "One must start somewhere and I began by trying to calculate if numbers 1, 2, and 3 won the last three rounds, what was most likely to win the next three. "I spent years on it before I felt that I had enough data to feed into a computer to see what the computer would come up with. It gave me a series of numbers which coincided exactly with what I had worked out manually and I thought this was perhaps too much of a coincidence." After a talk with his attractive 33-ycar-old wife, Carol, the professor took off for Monte Carlo with the equivalent of $100 in his pocket, money he and Carol had saved for a holiday but which she was quite happy for him to stake on his computerised system in Monte Carlo's casino. "It was the only time I really gambled," Professor Jarecki said.

"1 knew that my system should municipal council held an emergency meeting. 1 think they were afraid I might pass my system on to other people and bankrupt them." Professor Jarecki, who was born of Polish emigres, and who has an infant daughter, told me that he did not enter the gambling world to become rich, but to prove that the roulette table can be beaten. "For very many years," he told me, "gamblers have tried to beat the table and failed. Every one had a system and sometimes the system worked for a while but in the end rt was always the table which won. I havs an analytical mind and put my mind to work on the subiec.

for a hobby. When I had completed my own system I fed al! the details into the computer and hey presto! out came a system which is almost foolproof. He was not, he added, willing to hand his prescription for instant success at the roulette table over to the world. "It would not be qurte fair," he smiled, his eyes wide and innocent behind the glasses. "If a dozen people had the system they would probably close down all the casinos in Europe and take so much fun out of life for so many people.

I am quite happy that I have proved my system works and the casino people, although they were worried at first, know I won't hand out the system to everyone at large and that makes (hem happy. "I wouldn't recommend anyone else to try working roughly along my lines. It is a rather precise science and unless one has all the details rt is best to go loaded to the casino and expect to come away empty-handed because that is what happens to most gamblers and will happen to anyone trying my system unless he knows exactly now it works, and this I am not prerired to reveal at the present time." "Fetch our child Joking, back from the drug orgy? You must Inspector the hat the car.".

Get access to Newspapers.com

  • The largest online newspaper archive
  • 300+ newspapers from the 1700's - 2000's
  • Millions of additional pages added every month

Publisher Extra® Newspapers

  • Exclusive licensed content from premium publishers like the The Sydney Morning Herald
  • Archives through last month
  • Continually updated

About The Sydney Morning Herald Archive

Pages Available:
2,319,638
Years Available:
1831-2002