Left, Right, Left.

During Officer Training School, we students would do anything to break the regulated monotony. It was a challenge to awaken our personalities and get away with it as we were constantly scrutinised and evaluated for our ‘officer qualities’ and ‘followership’.

Each day a different student took turns to be Course Orderly (or ‘Course Horse’). It was their job to take charge of our 24 Course members and march us about RAAF Point Cook to and from morning parade, lectures, drill, PT, and meals in the Mess. We were made up of recent university graduates in Engineering, Dentistry, Medicine, Law ( hello), Nursing and a smattering of older and wiser airmen commissioned as officers, and a few direct entrant Air Traffic Controllers and Air Defence Officers.

Like most of Officer Training School, the job of Course Horse wasn’t particularly intellectually demanding for a group of mostly university graduates. The hardest part for some was knowing our left from our right. Differentiating left from right was the foundation of moving about as a disciplined, orderly, synchronised body of troops. We used the Right Dress to form up. We had to step to the left with our left foot when given the order to ‘Stand at… EASE!’. We would be ordered to turn left or right once we’d done so. We would step off on the Left foot when ordered to ‘Quick, March!’ The Quick March would be prefaced with either ‘By the Right’ or ‘By the Left’ to indicate whether we should keep aligned with or ‘dress off’ the person on our left or right. The Course Horse would occasionally yell ‘Left! … Left! Left, Right Left!’ to set and emphasise the marching cadence of 116 steps per minute. We were ordered to left or right wheel to turn us to the left or right. If we approached an officer, we would be ordered to salute with an Eyes Right or Eyes Left depending on what side we passed them. We had to right turn when dismissed. In a way, being able to quickly process left from right was the code of conduct of marching. It was the foundation of how we moved ourselves about in unison. For most of us, our left and right was literally drilled into our subconscious by about Week Three. Most of us.

You’ve not witnessed the chaos and disruption to an orderly group from a single person mistaking their left from their right. I knew and understood and wanted this when I did what I did one chilly pre-dawn cold morning in about Week Four.

The Course Horse was literally subtly moving her left and her right hand as she stood at attention in front of us, mentally calculating whether we, in a mirror position to her, needed to be turned to the left or the right before she marched us to morning PT. At one point she slightly twisted her left shoulder to her right as she attempted to confirm the direction she needed to turn us. As one of the tallest in our Course, I was the left hand Marker, the person at the far left of the front rank. Finally she turned us to the left, and squeaked ‘Course! By the Left! Quick … March!’

We took about five steps before she realised she had to turn us out of the car park and onto the road. We, of course, had done this dozens of times before and knew which way to turn without piling into the course members’ parked cars. ‘Right…wheel!’ she croaked just in time. But it was not over. She had to decide whether to left or right wheel us to follow the road. I had other plans.

Instead of ordering us to turn left as we’d always done, and more logically because it was the road to the gym, she hesitated. As the left marker, it was up to me to help her out and start wheeling to the left independently of her order, thus taking us to where the muscle bound corporal physical training instructors waited for their morning opportunity to inflict pain on a group of officers. It was an unwritten rule that we all helped the Course Horse to look good as we knew we’d each have the job multiple times.

Not today. I was over stupidity. So instead, I broke the unwritten rule. I obeyed her. I blindly complied.

I didn’t turn. I kept obeying her last order. I kept marching straight. Which meant all 22 of us kept marching straight.

We crossed the road and over the kerb onto the grass. And kept going. The Course Horse spluttered, growing more confused with our blind compliance. I heard muted giggling around me. ‘You Bastard!’ Wayne the Electronic Engineer, who would graduate to keeping maritime patrol aircraft avionics up to hunting enemy submarines, whispered from behind me. We - that is I - kept marching. Swinging our arms. Shoulder height, front to rear. Head and eyes to the front. Perfectly. Perfectly out of control.

‘Course!…’ the Course Horse managed to croak. Then nothing. So we kept going cross country. My joke had gone uncorrected by the Course Horse way beyond what my two second anarchic compliance ‘idea’ intended back at our lines. I was ‘leading’ her and 22 compliant course mates … somewhere.

As we strode as body of men and women across the grass, I realised we were heading to the oval across from the gym. I adjusted our direction slightly. (The Order to do so if given would have been ‘Right wheel … Forward!’). I pointed us towards the lights of the gym. The Course Horse remained silent until squeaking ‘Course … Halt!’ as we arrived at the front door two minutes later.

My mischief had ‘discovered’ a short cut to the gym. Not so much discovered the short cut, as discovered that no instructor was dumb enough to be up and about at 5am to catch us. And our mute Course Horse’s inability to shout orders had not alerted anyone else on Base as to our ‘illegal’ route across the oval. Most brilliantly, the shorter route that we took every morning from then on, gained us a precious five extra minutes of sleep a night. The equivalent of five hours for exhausted officer trainees on Week Four of Officer Training School.

For my literal obedience of the Course Horse and breaking the unwritten rule, Wayne christened me ‘BLEGO’. Bastard Legal Officer.

Analogies galore.

One person can change the course of many.

Compliance with stupidity isn’t a virtue.

A bad leader can hide behind the momentum of good followers.

Dissent can reveal a better way.

Alignment can lead you astray.

Astray is relative.

Authority is useless if you can’t communicate.

A bad leader always assumes people are following them.

Sometimes leadership is knowing left from right.

Compliance with stupidity can look smart.

‘Align’ comes from the Middle English word ‘to copulate’.

Think about that, boss, next time you accuse someone of not being aligned with you.