A Rum’un in the Regiment

A Rum'un in the Regiment is Des Blazely's story: a Tasmanian farm boy who was driving tractors at five and playing senior football at fifteen, who spent his 21st birthday in Vietnam with a match stuck into a ration-pack fruitcake for a candle, and who went on to serve 21 years in the Australian Army.

A portion of his served time was in the D&E Platoon, a platoon Canberra erased, but Vietnam veterans refused to let it stay forgotten.
It wasn’t missing in action. It wasn’t classified. It was simply gone - struck from the Army's own records, as if the men who wore the uniform had never worn it at all. 

When Blazely came home from Vietnam, his own little daughter, Leanne, didn't recognise him, and much of his story went unspoken. 50 years on, he's begun sharing pieces of his life his family never knew.

It's a story of mates who didn't come home, a father who took his own war stories to the grave, and a lifetime spent testing his mother's theory about candles burnt at both ends.

The book doesn't take itself too seriously, even when the subject matter does.
"Mum told me when I was 16 that if I kept burning the candle at both ends, I wouldn't make 25," Blazely recalls. "Five years later I was spending my 21st birthday in Vietnam, where the only candle I got was a match stuck into a ration-pack fruitcake."

"Lives undocumented. Soldiers’ stories, Des's story and his Battalion mate Binky, whose story is recounted in the book. He was walking ahead of Des out in the field one minute and gone the next. They are hard stories to share but important stories for families, and a piece of Australian history.” Publisher Rachael Bermingham from Bermingham Books said.

Equal parts war memoir, family history and larrikin confession - this is a true Australian story about mateship, mischief, and having a bit of mongrel in you.

Published by Bermingham Books.

Paperback ISBN - 978-1-7643732-1-0
Ebook also available via book retailers