Melbourne - (Ass Mess): Traditional Australian Navy evasive tactics drilled into every sailor from inception may have won the day in December 2004 when hostile Iranian gunboats attempted to seize two dozen Aussie seamen captive.
According to reports just released the Aussies from HMAS Adelaide were conducting a routine stop-and-search of a typical cocaine-carrying cargo boat, the MV Sham, in international waters off Iraq when five Iranian gunboat patrols "suddenly pounced" and tried to take them hostage.
But the Aussies weren't having any of it and turned on their assailants with the kind of international coloquialisms that "made their attackers' bollocks freeze."
Royal Australian Navy Commodore Steve Gilmore said today:
"All my men are highly trained in verbal combat and soon began effing and blinding in thirty different foreign languages.
"This included Farsi, Hindi, Urdu, Mandarin, Swahili, Hausa, Inuit, Serbo-Croatian, Bengali, Sanskrit, Amharic, Cantonese, Greek, Norwegian, Gaelic, Portuguese, Kikuyu, Italian, Yoruba, Hebrew, Arabic, Polish and English.
"After twenty minutes, there was a kind of stand off as the Iranians began getting the message.
"We then reboarded the Adelaide and took up standard gun positions all pointing at the patrol boats that has given us bother.
"Actually it was a pretty relaxed scenario and some of my boys even stripped off a bit to do some sunbathing while the Iranian commander haggled with his crew over what the f*** to do next after being called a witless c**t in thirty different languages.
"So in the end diplomacy won the day and we headed back to port for a spot of tucker with the rest of the patrol cres in the area.
"Pity you Brits don't use the same training manual that's been standard in the Australian Navy for over a hundred years.
"That pitiful showdown earlier in the year could have been neatly avoided with just a bit of typical Aussie thinking.
"And nobody would be laughing at you behing your backs about those wimps of your selling their stories to the British press.
"I'll send you a compy of the training manual if you like, just to give your boys a bit of a hand, because God knows your really need it these days."
