the buddy system

I'm about to do my annual weapons shoot this week, out at Singleton, around an hour away from here. Coincidentally, it's going to be at the Army base where Private Kovco trained as a rifleman at the School of Infantry in 2002. Why is this a coincidence? Well, first of all, does anyone even remember Private Kovco? There was a bit of a kerfuffle about it, because he died from a gunshot to the head, despite him being thoroughly trained in the use of various weapons (being in the Infantry and all).

On the civvie side of things, Kovco's mother wasn't convinced that her son could have shot himself, intentionally or not. A conspiracy theory was bandied about regarding the government having something to do with Kovco's death in order to detract from the attention that the Australian Wheat Board scandal was getting. Does anyone even remember the wheat board scandal? I never really understood much of what was going on in the first place, and was more drawn to Kovco's story than anything else that was going on with Australia, Defence, or the Middle East at the time. So maybe if this conspiracy theory is true, it does have some ability to work on hapless members of the public.

We all love an intrigue, really. It's a sad and spooky tale of sorts, if you read through the details. The Wikipedia page alone seems to make Kovco's mother out to be little more than someone grasping desperately for another answer, an alternate reason, some kind of justification for her son's death. On the other side, there was Brendan Nelson (former Minister for Defence) trying not to fuel the fire of speculation surrounding the circumstances of Kovco's death, and meanwhile, everyone else in the Australian Defence Force was soon to be introduced to The Buddy System.

Now, I'm not too sure what existed before The Buddy System, (much like your average tabloid reader probably remembers Kovco more than the AWB shenanigans) because I did my weapons training post-2006. Basically, the The Buddy System means that whenever you clear a weapon (eg. before handing over to someone else, entering a building, picking up a weapon for the first time) you need to do it with someone else that is qualified on the same weapon. In the event of an unauthorised discharge of the weapon, both parties are to blame, not just the holder of the weapon responsible.

I can see the sense in The Buddy System, in terms of safety and ensuring that people are accountable for not only their weapon but that of their mate's. However, during much of recruit training (we carried around Steyrs for six weeks straight), The Buddy System turned out to be more of a pain in the arse than anything else. Our weapons weren't loaded except when we were out on field exercise, so for the times we were on base trying to madly get changed from PT to cams, or cams to service dress, or just to drop off some equipment before going to the mess, the thing that became an equivalent of road rage for us was The Buddy System.

The moral of Kovco's story (and the reasoning behind endlessly clearing known empty weapons during recruit training) is to always be mindful of one's weapon. Even when we popped into the shops to buy a magazine and came back to a weapon that was piqueted whilst it was resting on the ground, untouched by the person on piquet, we still had to go back to The Buddy System. The problem with initiating such repetitions of seemingly unnecessary actions was that much of the process of going through The Buddy System became autonomous, and not a conscious thing. People argued about how ridiculous the idea was, that a trained infantryman would or could not be aware that his weapon was loaded, let alone do something like point it at his head and pull the trigger. But wouldn't someone from infantry be even more tuned out to the precursor of The Buddy System than the typical Defence schmoe that only has to deal with weapons handling once a year?

Even with my understanding and respect for weapons, The Buddy System has begun to lose its effect on me. At recruits, we weren't told that The Buddy System came into place after the events of Kovco, but we still had it drilled so deeply into our minds that even though we know what it is and what it means, it's so much a part of our knowledge that we gloss over it whenever revision comes around. It's like catching planes on a regular basis - as soon as that safety brief begins you've done up your seatbelt and started reading a novel, and in the event of an actual emergency you probably won't remember what kind of aircraft you're flying or how to get to the lifejacket. But someone else would have paid attention, or you'll be able to figure it out from that information that's buried deep in your mind somewhere, surely?

Defence logic suggests that if The Buddy System were in place, the circumstances leading to Private Kovco's death would never have arisen, and therefore he might still be alive today. I worry that The Buddy System has already become a lullaby of sorts for higher-ups and the lower ranks alike, because when people go through the motions, there is always a risk of danger. Complancency(sic) kills, as stated during a Powerpoint presentation on Airside Awareness I attended earlier this year. I just wonder at the true effectiveness of The Buddy System as anything other than a hypnosis trigger word for most of the Australian Defence Force today.