It was our first mounted operation—a bit of a novelty after foot-slogging around the bush. But it didn’t take long for the novelty to wear off as travelling in the back of the carriers was not nice. It was noisy and we could no longer search for sign on the ground. If we were going to meet the Viet Cong it was going to be a situation where they had the advantage of hearing us before we could see them. I wasn’t too keen on patrolling in the APCs even if it meant we didn’t have to walk and carry our packs.
The heat inside the cars was stifling. The combination of the tropical sun and humidity, plus the heat generated by the diesel motor of the APC, was quite stupefying. We were forced to get out of the tracked carriers if we were operating out in the open or along the cleared, defoliated fire trails for any length of time. The men were shaken around, disoriented unless they stuck their heads out of the hatch at the back, and subjected to incredible heat. Our ability to react quickly and efficiently after jolting around in the back of the APCs was something I was glad we didn’t have to test.
It didn’t take long for the operation to start yielding results. C Company located an aggressively defended Viet Cong bunker system on the afternoon of 29 July. 7 Platoon was following a track when they made contact with the enemy. Several Viet Cong were shot. The Viet Cong fired rocket propelled grenades, machine-guns and claymore mines which were located in the trees. Contact was maintained for over an hour before the platoon could be extracted.
The bunker system was along the line of the Suoi Ca River close to the Long Khanh and Phuoc Tuy Province borders. The bunkers were hit with considerable artillery and aerial bombardment as C Company manoeuvred to attack. Nightfall beat their attempts, and when C Company moved against the position at first light the next morning the Viet Cong had withdrawn.
Our company was hastily regrouped with the tanks and then moved from its area to assist C Company; we really busted a gut to reach them, despite the incredibly thick jungle and broken terrain. We spent that morning searching the bunker system, and then destroying it. The tanks either crushed the bunkers or the Assault Pioneer Platoon blew them up. Afterwards, the commanding officer decided to clear down the line of the river in a south-westerly direction, with C Company on the southern bank and D Company on the northern bank.
Around three o’clock in the afternoon we started to move out along the line of the river. Our armoured personnel carriers and tanks were sent off to refuel as we made our way along the side of the river through very thick jungle with huge trees and interminable vines hanging everywhere. Because of the numbers of enemy we were expected to encounter, we were moving as a whole company for the first time—and it was a slow process indeed. The thick vegetation had forced us to move in single file and whilst it was easy to control it was pretty boring for those stuck at the tail end of the column.
It didn’t stay boring for very long. My platoon, which was at the tail, had not moved when all hell broke loose at the point. We had hit another bunker system even though we had not even travelled 200 metres out of the one we had just destroyed. 10 and 12 Platoon were both shaken out into a formation where they could ascertain how big this system was. From the amount of small arms fire we could hear, there was no shortage of enemy or ammunition in there. Major Taylor decided to push forward as a company and see what we were up against. The tanks were given a call on the radio and told to get back to join us as quick as they could. This would be no mean feat as scrub-bashing in this type of thick jungle in a Centurion was close to impossible. Reconnaissance by Kevin Byrne and Graham Spinkston showed that we were up against a reasonably sized system and that the enemy was not about to withdraw.
C Company were tasked to cover our southern flank and, when the tanks joined us, we were going to assault the bunkers. It was going to be tricky, as we had never trained or practised fighting with the tanks in jungle. So it was going to be another case of ‘suck it and see’. I gave my orders to the platoon and had to hide my disappointment: 11 Platoon was tasked as the depth platoon in the assault and we would not be given a chance to fight unless the two forward platoons got bogged down or we needed to punch through on a flank. Somehow the Centurions from C Squadron 1 Armoured Regiment had managed to find their way through the jungle to join us. The company would be assaulting with two platoons forward, each with two sections in assault formation with a tank central with each platoon. Company headquarters would be travelling in the centre just behind the assault sections and my platoon would be centre-rear.
The forward observer started adjusting artillery fire as close as we could get it and the plan was that we would keep the artillery falling just in front of the assault to keep any enemy in depth to our assault line from interfering with our attack. This proved more difficult than anyone had imagined: as the trees were so tall they were catching the odd shell, and we took a few minor casualties from our own artillery fire. The wounds were not too bad—mainly shrapnel wounds to the backs of the legs.
The attack started in earnest. Before long the battle was in full cry. The sections were crawling forward and clearing about five or ten metres in front of the tanks, which would then drive slowly forward and come just past the men lying on the jungle floor. The Centurions would then engage any bunkers they could see and hit them with high explosive shell and machine gun fire. If they couldn’t see anything to their front they let rip with a canister round to clear the vegetation. The tank troop commander was Lt Bruce Cameron and he had done this sort of thing before on operation Overlord with 3 RAR and he had his act together. Jerry Taylor was coordinating the assault and trying to keep the platoons level so we didn’t expose a flank to the enemy in the fire fight.
It was extremely slow going. Fire and movement had to be done on our stomachs all the way as to stand up in the assault line was asking for trouble. 10 Platoon had their first casualty when one of their riflemen, Pte Bernie Pengilly, stood up to get out of the way of a tank. He was hit in the chest by a large calibre machine-gun bullet which knocked him backwards about a metre. I was forward, carrying an ammunition resupply to the forward platoons, who by now had been fighting through the bunkers for over half an hour. I grabbed my medic Frank Wessing and got him to go forward to where Pengilly had been hit to see what he could do. Frank crawled forward and reached Pengilly. He was in a bad way. I wasn’t sure if he had been killed instantly but he was hit pretty badly. I didn’t hold too much hope for him. While Frank was treating the wounded Pengilly, he put his rifle down on the track. A Centurion passed and then another tank, probably Cameron’s, came past and ran over his rifle. It was a mess; the woodwork was completely shattered and the barrel was bent almost at right angles. Pengilly was now dead and Frank was preparing to put him in a collapsible stretcher to move him out of the battle area. He came back to where I was watching the fire fight. He was shaken by Pengilly’s death and was concerned at what had happened to his SLR. I told him to take Pengilly’s rifle.
By now the company was right inside the bunker system and the fighting was pretty fierce. The tanks were the key to our going forward. The Viet Cong were fighting from behind the lids of their bunkers and occasionally from inside the stepped entrance. Most of the bunkers were about six feet square and had a raised roof which was very well camouflaged and which was only a foot or so above ground level. They were not the classic Second World War bunker everyone imagines, with a slit firing port and made out of concrete. In fact the roof was constructed of three or more layers of logs with hard packed clay between each layer of timber. They were primarily designed as protection against US B-52 air strikes and artillery fire. The camouflage on the bunkers was so good you could literally be sitting on top of one before you knew it. Fighting through the bunker system was hard because fire lanes had been prepared between each bunker in order to give mutual support to one another. Knowing where all the bunkers were was vital before we could push forward; otherwise men would be cut down in the fire lane.
10 and 12 Platoon were finding the going tough and progress was slow. After an hour or so we had probably advanced no more than 100 metres into the system, yet the firing was still intense. I went forward with some of my men several times to resupply the forward platoons with gun ammunition and to try to see how the battle was going. At about this time an incident occurred as a result of the enemy firing a captured M60 machine gun. Often the only way we could tell where we had advanced to in the thick undergrowth was by the noise of our weapons. Weapon types have their own individual sound; and between D Company and C Company there was the constant fire of an M60. The sound of this weapon led our company headquarters, which was travelling centrally, to believe that 10 Platoon was going quite nicely. As I was forward I was tasked by Peter Schuman to take more linked ammo to 10 Platoon; but after I had failed to locate his flank in the bush, Jerry Taylor asked both platoons to throw a coloured smoke grenade. After a delay of a minute or so orange coloured smoke began drifting upward through the dense foliage. The only problem was that it was to company headquarters’ rear and they in fact were way out in front in the assault line. Peter Schuman made a suggestion that they get their backsides out of where they were and let the platoons do the attacking (not the headquarters). A hasty withdrawal was made and Major Taylor decided to push my platoon through 10 Platoon: they were just about out of ammunition and the bunker system now seemed to be narrowing in front.
I dashed back to where my platoon was lined out and we moved forward in extended line to start our assault. By now radio voice procedure had been abbreviated; in fact Major Taylor was calling the platoons by the platoon commander’s first name. It saved time and saved confusion between the radio call signs 41, 42 and 43—company headquarters being 40. (These are pronounced ‘four one, four two’ and so on.) Besides, the noise from the small arms, the motors on the Centurions and firing of the 20 pounder main gun on the tank meant that it was bloody difficult to hear what was being said over the radio. I linked up with the tank which would be pushing forward with our platoon and we started assaulting.
The soldiers were told to watch their ammunition usage as the company had run out of ammo several times already and the APCs only had so much left on board. Keeping my men moving forward was a difficult task. Every time I tried to yell a command, someone would either fire a rifle or a tank would let go with a canister round or enemy fire would force our heads down and no-one would be able, or care too much, to hear. The only way I could get my message across was to move across to the section commander I wanted to speak to and talk into his ear at close range. We made reasonable progress and ‘cater-pillared’ forward with the tank. When the tank fired its canister round the noise was unbelievable. It was a stunning sensation and had the effect of drowning out all the other noise for some time after. But the tank was keeping us going forward: it was devastating bunkers with high explosive shell or running over the roof of the bunker and then doing a track turn and collapsing the lid.
As we fought our way through we came under fire from an M60 machine-gun. Instead of the high pitched ‘chat chat chat’ of the AK-47 assault rifles we were now hearing a slower ‘dug, dug, dug’. It was firing at the tank and ricochets were going everywhere. The tank wasn’t being damaged by this enemy gun but it was stopping my men from going forward as it ripped through the trees and logs we were using for cover. Finally we were able to get a reasonable fix on where this machine-gun was firing from. I jumped up onto the back of the tank and gave the crew commander a target indication. The tank then raked the area with its machine-gun and before long a Viet Cong gun crew broke from cover and withdrew along a footpad between the bunkers. I heard the tank crew commander on his radio yell ‘Traverse left, canister load, fire!’ and the gun crew were hit at a range of about 40 metres at most and that was the end of them.
This was the first time we had been under heavy enemy fire. The sensation was incredible. Most of the enemy rounds were passing above our heads and the noise of the bullets going overhead was eerie. There was a high pitched cracking noise like a thin bull-whip as the round went overhead. After the ‘crack!’ came a ‘thump’ which was the sound of the weapon firing the bullet. As their rounds were going overhead pieces of tree and foliage would spit down on us. Every now and then there would be a big bang as the enemy fired their rocket propelled grenades. This was primarily an anti-tank weapon but was useful if fired into the trees above, raining shrapnel down upon us. Most of the rocket propelled grenade rounds were detonating behind us and luckily no-one was hit by these rockets.
It was now around 4.30 pm and we had been fighting our way through the bunkers for two hours. The enemy’s resistance to our assault seemed to be weakening. We were now able to keep crawling forward with less fire being directed at us. To see what was going on in my forward sections, I had to position myself almost level with the assault line and right in the middle between the two sections. It was difficult to get a picture of the enemy and where he was fighting from. It wasn’t until we had been fighting for almost half an hour that I saw that the enemy was in fact firing from behind the bunkers and not from inside the stairwell. It was almost impossible to get an aimed shot away at the enemy as the vegetation kept obscuring the view. If you moved to a better fire position the target area looked completely different and one had to start searching the area all over again.
The platoon was slowly moving forward, a routine had been established with our tank and we started to capture a few bunkers. We didn’t have any grenades to throw into the bunkers as they had all been withdrawn from issue because a batch of grenades with instantaneous fuses had been mixed up with the normal seven second delay fuses. Fortunately we hadn’t been issued any of the wrong grenades, but now we needed grenades badly. It was asking for trouble to stick your head into a bunker even if it looked empty as the enemy could quite easily be in a corner and kill you as you entered from above. The noise of the fire fight was starting to decrease as we neared what appeared to be the end of the bunker system.
One of my sections was spread out around a bunker and they called me over to show me what they had found. Down the stairwell of the bunker I could see a leg and foot of a man. The section commander told me that they had heard voices and believed the enemy was still trapped inside and there was obviously no escape tunnel. I yelled out to the enemy in Vietnamese to surrender and received no response. My ‘splinter team’ sappers had come forward and one of them by the name of Smith decided that he would have a look with the aid of his torch. He had hardly stuck his foot down onto the first step when a burst of AK-47 fire ripped up out of the bunker letting all and sundry know that the occupants were not keen on visitors. I grabbed the M60 gun off Ralph Niblett and shot away the corner of the entrance hoping to splinter the logs and convince the Viet Cong that they were in a hopeless position. Once again I called on the enemy to surrender and again a burst of fire was the response. I was wondering how I was going to get the bunker cleared when Peter Schuman came up with the idea of using a claymore mine. I grabbed a mine off the APC travelling with company headquarters and taped it together so the detonators wouldn’t pull out when I threw it in. Meanwhile, one of the sappers in the two-man splinter team attached to the platoon had obtained a grenade from somewhere and we decided to try it first. He lobbed it in and everyone hit the ground waiting for the big bang. It didn’t come. We waited a little while in case it was a dud or had a long or faulty fuse, but still no bang. After about two minutes there was no sound of the enemy moving or attempting to throw the grenade back out. I asked the sapper if he had remembered to take the electrical tape holding the detonating handle down against the body of the grenade off before he had pulled the pin. He said he wasn’t sure and in the excitement of it all I don’t think he had, and so there was the enemy huddling up in one corner of the bunker and a grenade lobs in and just sits there on the floor in the damp gloom.
Now I was committed to using the claymore. I laid out the firing cable and prepared it for firing. I yelled out one more time and getting no response, hurled in the claymore and ran to the initiating device and fired the mine. There was a tremendous explosion as the claymore went off in the bunker. Thick grey and brown smoke drifted up out of the stairwell. It was impossible to see down in the bunker and so I told the section commander to secure his area and let me know if there were any more bunkers to be cleared.
By now all the firing had ceased right across the company front. Major Taylor gave the command to secure our position and to very carefully clear all the bunkers. We had to move quickly as it was almost six o’clock; night would soon be upon us. I swept the platoon forward to where we were pretty sure the bunker system ended and searched for sign. It appeared that those enemy who hadn’t been caught in the bunker system had withdrawn west back along the river line. After positioning sentries on the footpads that led out of the system, we started a systematic search of the bunkers. We were now the left forward platoon and 12 Platoon was just to our north and 10 Platoon behind us to our east. Company headquarters was central and the Centurions were now grouped together and allocated a part of the company perimeter.
My platoon sergeant had been forward with my other section. He came back to tell me that he didn’t think there were any more enemy left to our front. Just as he said that, firing broke out up front: one of my sections was letting all hell loose at a bunker. I came up behind the riflemen in the section: they said they could see the enemy. They pointed out where they had seen him and I searched for the bunker. No firing had been directed back at us, so I told the section commander to push forward and clear the area but to be bloody careful. He moved his men forward—they used ‘dry’ fire and movement to crawl their way onwards. After about ten minutes of careful movement, they halted and I was called forward and shown what all the action had been about. In the steps of the stairwell was a Viet Cong soldier who had been shot. But we hadn’t killed him. Sometime earlier in the fighting he must have stuck his head up out of the bunker at about the same time that one of the tanks had fired a canister round into the jungle. For there, right between this unfortunate soldier’s eyes was a piece of the steel out of the canister round. This soldier had been dead for over half an hour, judging by the dried blood on his forehead and mouth. He had dropped where he had been hit. My men had carried out a contact drill on a dead man.
There were no more bunkers containing surprises. As it was almost dark we settled into our night routine. However it was far from a routine night as the wind came up during the evening and trees and branches which had been shattered by artillery and tank fire started to fall. There was so much deadfall coming down that I was seriously considering sleeping in an enemy bunker. One particular tree over 60 feet tall came down with a tremendous crash and I spent a long time staring at the roof of my hootchie before I fell asleep.
It had been an incredible day. I hadn’t been scared as I thought I might have been, even when we actually led the assault. I think I was too busy to be worrying about my feelings at that time. I knew I was exhausted both physically and mentally. As a platoon commander I seemed to have spent most of my time keeping my sections pointed in the right direction. I hadn’t fired directly at an enemy soldier as they had been too hard to identify and get a clear shot at. When all the fighting had stopped and the noise from the artillery and tanks had finished, I sat down on my pack sketching the layout of the bunkers we had cleared; my hand started to shake so badly I couldn’t draw a straight line. Once all the danger was over my system must have finally let go and took the time out to remind me just how dangerous battle can be. The company had lost one man killed and four wounded. Those wounded were primarily hit by shrapnel from our own artillery, as the rounds hit the tall trees. We had been pretty fortunate considering the experience most people had when they attacked bunker systems. There was no doubt that the Centurions had made all the difference.
Trying to count the enemy dead was not easy. My platoon had scored about six; but we couldn’t get into a lot of the bunkers as the Centurions had crushed the lids in, no doubt with the occupants inside. The total body count of enemy was placed at twelve as it was a little useless digging up bunkers to find another handful of enemy bodies. The haul of weapons was five AK-47 assault rifles, the GPMG M60 that had caused us so much trouble and confusion, and a couple of B40 rocket propelled grenade launchers. In addition there were hundreds of rounds of machine-gun ammunition, AK-47 magazines, shovels, 18 backpacks, and about 100 kilograms of rice.
Once again, the bunker system was laid out in a pattern which resembled a large letter X on the ground. The cross point of the X was a command bunker to others which were sighted along the legs of the cross. Light blue signal wire was found connecting the bunkers, and small torch globes conveyed the signals to the bunker occupants. Some of the bunkers were situated a little further out—these were sentry bunkers. Once we were able to lie down behind the bunkers we could see the fire lanes which we had had to assault through. If we had been standing, the enemy would have seen us between our ankles and our knees. This impressed upon us the enemy’s intense preparation of his defences and our need to be on our stomachs when fighting through bunkers.
At about midnight or one o’clock that night everything had settled down; most of the deadfall had finished crashing down as the wind abated. The tanks were mounting a picquet within their own organisation, operating what is called a ‘guard tank’ system. This entails soldiers changing sentry inside the tank. This is not an easy thing to do in the cramped confines of the tank turret, especially when you’re half asleep. The tank normally carries a canister round up the spout when they laager for the night in close country. Just as everything was quiet and peaceful one of the tankers accidentally hit the button on the main gun of the guard tank. The noise in the calm, deep dark of night was shattering. I felt as if someone had plugged me into an electric circuit and hit the switch. I was sleeping in a recently captured hammock and when the explosion of the accidentally fired canister round went off, I literally jumped in the air and fell out of my bed.
It wasn’t the first time that night that I found myself on my bum on the ground. As we were settling in for the night my platoon sergeant had asked which men in the platoon would want a hammock out of all the packs we had captured. As some men already had hammocks I was able to get one. The only problem was it had a bullet hole through it; and, because the hammock had been rolled tightly up into a ball, the bullet hole was repeated a further four times across the opened hammock. I was a bit dubious about using it but didn’t relish the thought of sleeping on the damp ground in the bunker system next to the river line. The place was lousy with leeches and I really wanted to collapse for the night and not be bothered by creepy crawlies. I thought I was safe. After an hour or so the hammock was still holding, and I was contemplating how I could make it stronger and what I would have to sew it up with. So I moved to snuggle into the hammock—and suddenly without warning I was deposited onto the ground, much to the great enjoyment of my platoon headquarters. I scrounged another hammock and reset my mosquito net and had been asleep for a couple of hours when the tank round went off. We stood to thinking the enemy were coming back to have a go at us. Everyone had eyes like saucers, searching the jungle to their front. After a quarter of an hour or so the word came across the radio explaining what had happened and we stood down.
The next morning saw the company finishing off the battle procedure we had started the night before. We had to recover the dead enemy out of the bunker I had thrown the claymore into and search them for documents. There was still a bit of searching in the bunker system to be done for equipment and stray bodies. For a lot of my men this would be the first time they would have to search and strip a dead enemy; they were not exactly looking forward to the task. The dead were now a bit putrid as the heat and humidity had taken its toll. I had to call for volunteers. Phil Asprey from Five Section was one who was prepared to go down into the stench of the bunker, on the understanding that he was given a fair share of any decent souvenirs. He tied a handkerchief around his nose and down he went. The bodies were a real mess, which was to be expected with 500 steel ball bearings propelled by a pound and a half of high explosive in such a confined space, and Phil certainly earned his booty.
The enemy were identified as being part of 274 VC Main Force Regiment; in fact we had hit the 1st Battalion of this Regiment and their headquarter element. The men in the bunker were officers and one was the battalion intelligence officer. One of my diggers remarked that for an intelligence officer he hadn’t shown much of it by not surrendering—but in the same breath he acknowledged his bravery and determination to fight to the end.
The Task Force commander, Brigadier B. A. McDonald, dropped in by helicopter to survey the scene and to talk to Jerry Taylor about the battle. It had created a lot of interest as the Task Force was supposed to be winding down its operations and not having two-hour battles against enemy regiments. He came over to talk to some of my diggers and in one ghoulish incident I nearly got into strife. I had given the sections the task of burying the dead after they had been stripped and searched and documented. They were to make sure that the graves were deep and marked. When the Task Force commander came over to speak with some of my men, I noticed he was slowly sinking into a very shallow grave one of the gun sections had dug. He was in danger of being in an awful mess. I successfully managed to steer the brigadier to where we were scattering several hundred pounds of rice around to render it useless. It was a close thing and I detailed that crew to dig the platoon latrines for the remainder of the operation as punishment. By mid-afternoon we had finished the battlefield clearance and we were on our way west to try and pick up sign of where the enemy may have gone.
The company swept west along the Song Ca but the only signs we found were where we thought the enemy may have come back on the first night to see if we were still occupying the bunker system. We continued working with the APCs and tanks and concentrated on searching along the line of the Song Ca River. After a week or so of fruitless searching we were able to relieve the monotony of patrolling by having a wash in the Song Ca. This was a small tactical exercise in itself. I secured the area by sweeping both sides of the river and then posted sentries. We bathed a section at a time and with the aid of some soap that we had borrowed from the APC crewmen we had a ball. There was no skylarking as the area wasn’t too secure; but it was so nice to lie naked in the quickly flowing river amongst the rocks and have fresh, cool, clean water cascade over our bodies. During this period of tactical toilet a Royal Thai Air Force helicopter flew overhead and then suddenly circled back and flew around us. I couldn’t speak to the chopper on the radio to tell him who we were; so I hoped that they didn’t think we were Viet Cong and shoot at us. The soldiers in the creek did their best to look friendly and stood up and waved. I wasn’t sure if they saw we were Australian or whether the sight of half a dozen lily white naked men waving at them was too much to bear; in any event they flew away and left us intact.
There were a few incidents in the next couple of days which highlighted a rather unproductive time while we were working with the armour. As we were moving along one of the cleared fire trails, a Centurion tank ran over a mine and blew off its track and damaged a road wheel. The driver was lucky to escape without major injury. As we secured the area to allow the tank crews room and time to repair the tank a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter flew overhead with smoke streaming out of the nose of the aircraft. He saw us and made a very rapid turn and landed in the middle of the fire trail. The pilot jumped out of his machine with a fire extinguisher and sprayed the contents into the area from where the smoke was billowing. This seemed to stop the smoke and he then began examining the helo to try to find out what had caused the fire. After a while he sauntered over to where the tank crewmen were working on the Centurion and asked if anyone was a mechanic. One of the tank crewmen responded and the pilot asked if he would have a look at his chopper. The crewman said he knew nothing about helos but would have a look. The pilot and the crewman then spent five minutes or so looking at the workings under the front panel of the chopper and after agreeing that they both didn’t have a clue what to do, the pilot remounted his machine. He turned the turbine over and after a minute or so when it hadn’t caught fire again he took off and headed toward Nui Dat. The crewman, who had been looking at the aircraft, said that the pilot had no instruments of any consequence working but it ‘sounded alright’ and he would try to fly back. We didn’t hear of him crashing, so we assumed he made it back safely.
By 6 August, some ten days into the operation, we were back on our feet and patrolling the hard way. The operation we were now on was called North Ward, after a suburb in Townsville, and was scheduled to continue until the middle of September. We weren’t sad to leave the tracks and tanks as we couldn’t use all our patrolling and tracking skills, and being bounced around in the back of the hot APCs had ceased to amuse us. The company was allocated an area around the Courtenay rubber plantation and close to Route 2, to clear and ambush. The Courtenay rubber plantation was quite large and covered at least twenty thousand square metres. He employed a few hundred civilians as rubber tappers and workers and it was rumoured that Courtenay paid the Viet Cong to stay away from the plantation. A bullet hole in a rubber tree can ruin and even destroy its productivity and he obviously didn’t want fire fights in the plantation.
It was cool in under the rubber as the trees were about 60 to 70 feet high and quite shady. The soil underneath the thick canopy was deep red and always damp. Patrolling through ‘clean’ rubber which was being worked was a real snap and we could cover three or four kilometres an hour with ease. Unfortunately we didn’t patrol for very long through the rubber and we were soon back into the thick jungle near the civilian access limit looking for the footpads the Viet Cong were using to come into the villages by night. The heat during the day was now increasing as the wet season seemed to intensify. I found I was having to rest the platoon for about an hour and a half in the heat of the day to keep their minds on the job and not on the insufferable heat. A lot of letters from home were starting to reach my men. These referred to an early withdrawal from Vietnam. The topic became a constant talking point whenever two or more soldiers got together to compare notes.
The style of operation was now taking the form where Major Taylor would allocate several grid squares (thousand metre squares) to each of the platoons and tell us to clear it. This was in total contrast to our previous company commander who had dictated what and how we would search. As platoon commanders we liked this new arrangement as it gave us a lot more flexibility and allowed the man on the ground to plan his search.
My platoon went through a lean spell again at this time as far as contact with the enemy was concerned. Several times we were targetted against enemy resupply columns or rendezvous spots—only to be hampered by thick jungle which was extremely heavy going. On one occasion we were given an agent report that a squad of Viet Cong would be moving through an area a couple of kilometres away. We set off to find the track the enemy would be using and hit incredibly thick jungle and scrub. To make matters worse it had been hit by air strikes and there was deadfall everywhere. We made the best speed we could but were beaten by the failing light. The next morning we set off to find the track and there, 300 metres from where we had harboured, was a footpad with recent signs that eight to ten enemy had moved along some time before. It wasn’t all sour grapes though: as their sign led through thorny bamboo we concluded that unless they were using torches, the footpad would have been negotiated in daylight.
This meant that the most likely destination was a nearby village; and so after doing a reconnaissance of the area we set up an ambush in an overgrown coffee plantation about two kilometres from the village. We were certain we would nab some enemy here as their signs led right through the plantation. We laid out a claymore ambush with about eighteen claymores in three banks covering the intersection of four tracks. We were in the thick coffee trees firing out into reasonably clean rubber in the other three quadrants of the intersection. After three days of literally roasting in the coffee we moved out to take a resupply several kilometres away in the rubber. This resupply was delivered by APC and I hoped that anyone in the area would think we were leaving, and so after dark I moved back to where we had been ambushing in the hope of catching the enemy by surprise.
Nothing happened for almost 36 hours. I became suspicious that we had been seen relocating back into our old position. That night we stood to when a couple of men with torches were spotted heading toward the rear of our ambush location. They didn’t come close enough for us to engage them with our claymores; and so, deciding that the game was up, we left at first light the next morning and swept through the village on our way north. The hamlet contained nothing but dozens of kids, old ladies and young women and innumerable chickens and pigs. The houses could best be described as hovels and sanitation appeared unheard of. As we moved out of the village we passed through a large open area scattered with uncovered faeces—an outdoor toilet. The stench was overpowering but it gave us a good idea of how many people actually belonged to that hamlet.
The only exciting things happening were in the other two platoons. 12 platoon had found a body without a head on it and 10 platoon had found a cache of about 50 kilograms of rice and pumpkins. They set up an ambush on the cache but before Kev Byrne was able to spring it, he was evacuated from the field with an ear infection. An insect of some kind had laid eggs in his ear overnight and he was unable to walk the next day. After Kevin had been taken out, his platoon maintained their ambush; and at 7.30 pm three enemy came in and the platoon killed two and the third escaped but was believed wounded. We heard all this news sitting on an island in the middle of the wettest valley we had come across.
The platoon was having incredibly bad luck with the weather and the ground. Every time I said ‘move’, we were drenched by a tropical downpour or ran into flooded creeks or valleys. We spent several days on end trudging through water up to our groins and had difficulty finding a dry place to sit and cook a meal. We were really quite miserable as everywhere we went we saw little sign of the enemy and lots of water. The day that 10 Platoon had their ambush I had literally patrolled all day through water and the only thing that happened was that one of the diggers was bitten on the back of the calf by what we suspected was a turtle.
On 19 August we heard on the American Forces Vietnam Network radio that the battalion would be returned to Australia three to five months earlier than anticipated. It was hard to stop the buzz of conversation which swept around the platoon and given the recent miserable couple of wet, unproductive weeks we had just had, I couldn’t blame them. This news meant that the battalion would most likely be home by Christmas or February 1972. For some of the men that wasn’t soon enough. My own wife wrote how happy she was that we were coming home earlier. I took the news with mixed emotions. I missed my wife terribly, but at the same time I wanted to see as much action as I could.
The company came in from operation North Ward on 23 August having been out on patrol for some four weeks. It was given six days off before we were due to go out on another long operation. The day we arrived back off the choppers in Nui Dat, we were told that the battalion was going to return to Australia at Christmas; but we in Delta Company would return in February 1972—we were to protect the Australian Logistic Support Group complex in Vung Tau until the withdrawal of all Australian forces was complete.
The company went through the normal post-patrol routine. Then we went down to the rest centre at Vung Tau for two days. The town was off-limits as elections were being held. A yellow alert was in force. This meant that Viet Cong activity was expected and that convoys needed protection and that road movement by night was to be avoided. We had a great company party down at the Badcoe Club and really enjoyed the sun and water despite some giant hangovers. Our next stint out bush would be into an area known as the Hat Dich, (pronounced ‘hut zick’), not far from where we had patrolled with our first company commander on our first operation. But now the area was inundated and the standing joke was to ask for flippers and snorkels every time someone mentioned where we were headed.
The plot for the next operation was that we were to sweep north from the south of the province through the Suoi Chau Pha Valley (again) and clear any local Viet Cong units out of the area. In a straight line, that amounted to something like 25 kilometres; but on the ground it was a whole lot more. We were going to be flown into an area which had had helicopter landing zones prepared for our choppers by big 500 pound bombs known as ‘daisy cutters’. These massive bombs were designed to detonate just above the ground and blow everything away for about a ten metre radius, hence their name. The insertion went quite smoothly and D Company set off once again in pursuit of the dreaded Chau Duc guerillas.
The Suoi Chau Pha Valley was a completely different piece of ground now that the wet season had hit. We were unable to recognise landmarks or find tracks that we knew should be there. Every day and usually toward the evening, we were getting pelted with incredibly heavy downpours of monsoonal rain. Patrolling was more like swimming. In one day we were only able to make 3000 metres as the going was so difficult. I tried to manoeuvre around the obvious areas which would be carrying water but found no respite. We also found no bloody Chau Duc! Any self-respecting enemy would have been miles from where we were treading water and the complete lack of sign indicated I was right. The big events on this patrol up the western side of the province seemed to centre around wildlife.
The first incident occurred as we were wading through waist deep water and then into water only shin deep. I had felt an itch in the region of my genitals and when it persisted I halted the platoon for a quick smoke so I could check out the cause of my discomfort. I opened the fly of my trousers and, much to my horror, there on the head of my circumcised penis was a big fat leech. It had one of its feet or suckers on my glans penis and the other foot down inside the urethra tube out of where one normally pees. The discovery of this blood sucking worm caused great interest amongst the more sadistic in the platoon who came up with a variety of methods to remove the leech. Solutions varied from putting insect repellent or salt onto the leech, to burning it off, and one unfunny suggestion of short arm amputation. Eventually we decided to heat a needle and hit the leech with it. As leeches hated intense heat it would instantly let go and I would be freed of the offending beast. This proved to be a success but my problems had only just begun. Leeches use an anti-coagulant to assist their feeding and after we had removed the leech and washed my bruised penis with fresh water, I started to bleed. This brought out some very unkind remarks about what sex the platoon commander really was, with many allusions to my ‘monthly problems’ to confirm their suspicions. Despite wrapping my penis in bandages and later even resorting to a shell dressing to try to stem the flow of blood, I continued to bleed. The only recourse was for me to lie down with my body flat and hope that would work. After about half an hour it did. So, complete with a huge bloodstain circling my groin, we continued our patrol.
A couple of very soggy days later we had bad incidents with hornets. I sent Cpl Mick Kennedy out on a reconnaissance to do a navigation check as the ground we were moving through was so thick and difficult it was not easy to determine our exact location. I expected he would be gone for about half an hour at most as he only had about a 400 metre trip. After an hour had passed and he hadn’t returned with his section I was becoming concerned. We hadn’t heard any gunfire. I kept hoping he hadn’t run into a large enemy group and couldn’t get back to our position. I learnt a very valuable lesson here: I had two radios available and I could easily have given Mick one if I had thought of it. What happened was his section had found the river line I was hoping he would find, and just as they were about to return a swarm of hornets descended on Mick and stung him quite badly. His section tried to treat him as best they could but his stings were so numerous that he was in a state of shock and unable to move. He was quite a big fellow—around 15 stone plus—and carrying him back on a field stretcher would have taken ages. So they decided to bathe his stings and treat him for shock. He was in so much agony he had to have a sweat rag stuck in his mouth to quieten him down. His eyes had closed over from the numerous stings he had taken to his face and head and things looked bad for his section. Eventually Mick recovered enough for his section to lead him back to my location where my medic was able to sedate him and treat his stings with cream. He was in no condition to move and as it was only an hour or so to dark, I harboured where we were for the night.
Within two days we had more medical problems as the constant patrolling through the swamp, flooded paddies and marshy ground took its toll on some of the soldiers. We had one particularly bad stretch of weather when it was quite cool during the nights when it rained. The soldiers on gun picquet got soaked to the skin and chilled through by the wind accompanying the rain. Three of my men started to cough quite badly and were feeling more than just off-colour. Frank Wessing suggested we chopper them out as they had high temperatures. It turned out to be good advice as two had severe bronchitis and one was developing pneumonia.
Another of the more memorable beasties that kept us on our toes were ‘chomper’ ants. These large red meat-eating ants were capable of giving a very painful bite and were to be avoided at all costs. They would eat through most fabric to get at their quarry and I found the only way to combat their advance upon my person was to sleep on one of the bright pink luminous helicopter marker panels that I carried. For some reason the chomper ants would burrow away underneath the marker panel and chomp around but would not bite through the plastic covered material. If my arm came off the area of the marker panel I was vulnerable to being bitten, and so I learnt to sleep without moving around too much.
We finally found our way out of the swamps and lowlands after five days and were just starting to make some good ground when one of my men badly wrenched a knee and was unable to walk. I halted the platoon again short of a full day’s patrolling hoping the soldier’s leg would mend and he could continue. His knee was still up like a balloon the next day. So another casualty evacuation (casevac) chopper was called and out he went. No sooner had that little drama been settled when an hour later one of my signallers stirred up a nest of hornets in a tree with his radio antennae; he was stung about seven times on the face and received one bad sting on the upper eyelid. We weren’t having much luck with the animals.
The heat was now even more oppressive as the constant rain and high humidity combined. The daily temperature was in the eighties and over and that, plus the heavy going and no sign of the enemy, was starting to wear a bit thin. Thankfully, the Australian soldier has the character and sense of humour to help him overcome these things and allow him to persevere and not drop his bundle. The platoon strength in the patrol was now down to around 24 men and sections were comprised of only six men. My headquarters numbered six—myself, the platoon sergeant, two signallers, the medic and the mortar fire controller. With only six men in a section it meant long gun picquets at night; so where possible I tried to harbour up against thorny bamboo and present a half moon shape to the front as the impenetrable bamboo protected our rear. When I couldn’t do that, I had the platoon headquarters help out on the early evening gun picquet to ease the burden on the sections.
It was during one such occasion that we had one of the more memorable gun picquets manned by platoon headquarters. I was out on the perimeter manning one of the section guns with my platoon sergeant down next to me. It was still half an hour till dark and the sections were preparing their hootchie spots for the night. Darryl and I were quietly discussing what our plan of action should be for the next couple of days when he suddenly stopped talking and was looking at some dark red mud he had rolled into a small ball in his fingers. He said, ‘Gee, that looks just like a Malteser chocolate ball, doesn’t it?’ and before I could agree he stood up and went back to where his pack was. He returned quickly with an American ration can called a B-1A unit. This can contained four round salted crackers and two chocolate discs covered in silver foil paper. The discs were flavoured in chocolate fudge, in vanilla chocolate and a third flavour was coconut. Darryl quickly cut open the bottom of the can and removed one of the chocolate discs and ate it. He then made a flat mud disc the size of the one he had just eaten and covered it with the silver paper. He carefully replaced it into the bottom of the B-1A unit can and put the can down next to the gun.
Frank Wessing, our ever-hungry medic, was due to come onto the gun to relieve me in a matter of minutes; and as my sergeant sat there chortling to himself I began to realise what he had in mind. Frank arrived and plonked himself down next to me and I quickly briefed him as to where the sentry was out to our front and so on. Frank’s eyes were soon rivetted onto the B-1A unit and he only had his attention focused on the ration can. Frank was an enormous eater. Despite the fact that he was as skinny as a rake, he would carry enough rations for two men. On a five day issue he would run out of food by day three and be spongeing off anyone who would let him. I always thought he was a conscientious medic the way he was always out around the sections looking at the diggers—but he was also out bludging rations.
After a couple of minutes Darryl picked up the ration can and opened up the top and took out the biscuits and the top chocolate disc. He made a sandwich out of two of the crackers and slowly munched and crunched his way through the biscuit. As this was day four of our normal ration issue, Frank was starving. He was almost beside himself when Darryl licked his fingers and said ‘how good those chocolate discs were’. Then in the fading light he took out the look-alike disc and made another chocolate disc sandwich. He almost had it into his mouth when he stopped, looked at me and said I don’t really feel like another one, do you want it skipper?’ I hummed and aahed for a little while and made to reach out for it and then declined the offer. Darryl turned around to the now heavily salivating Frank and asked him if he wanted the disc. Frank nearly took his hand off as he grabbed the sandwich and wolfed about half the chocolate disc into his mouth.
He had swallowed at least a mouthful before he realised what he was eating and started spitting out the mud disc. Frank swore at Darryl and I began to laugh and had to leave the machine-gun pit. I had to stick my sweat rag into my mouth so I wouldn’t make any noise. Eventually Darryl had to leave as well as he could hardly stop from crying with laughter and also had his mouth full of sweat rag. For about the next half an hour I kept picturing Frank jamming the disc into his mouth and then realising with a terrible look on his face that he was chomping into rich Phouc Tuy mud.
Maintenance of morale was important to the operation of the platoon. Patrolling in the wet season where we got a wet backside every day and found little or no sign was pretty heartbreaking. Some would say that not everyone wanted to have a contact with the enemy but I disagree. Our platoon took great pride in the fact that no-one had ever got the drop on us and we patrolled quietly and efficiently. Even though maintaining our security was a constant burden which left us tired, we had not been caught with our pants down and more importantly we hadn’t lost anyone killed or wounded.
When the big maintdem resupplies came in every ten days or so with clean greens, socks, fresh fruit and milk, we often had a birthday to celebrate. Because the draft age was 20, a lot of the birthdays were 21sts. A lot of the regular soldiers were also in the same age group. To celebrate a 21st birthday we would sit the lucky celebrant inside a small circle on the floor of the jungle and the remainder of the platoon would gather around. The platoon sergeant would then squirt instant shaving cream which came in on the resupply onto the celebrant’s head. Then a paper candle was fashioned and stuck into the mound of shaving cream on his head and lit. Then, not to breach our security, we would all sing in a stage whisper ‘Happy Birthday’ and later devour a large cake the cooks had prepared for the event. I think it was silly simple things like this which helped to keep morale up.
My own morale problems at this time were the same as any other married officer or soldier in the unit. Rumours had been spreading for some time of an early return and I had just had to write and tell my wife the company was staying until February. Her letters in reply were quite miserable and dispirited. I had to keep my mind on the job and yet I felt for Gay as we both admitted we felt the separation keener than we both had anticipated.
The patrolling on the western side of the province was proving pretty fruitless and we were all hoping we could move in closer to the villages to get nearer to where most of the action normally took place. My platoon had to do a stint of travelling with company headquarters at this time and as we didn’t move as often and fast as the platoons on their own, it was a bit easier for a couple of days. When Major Taylor asked me to look for a spot to stop for the night, I went through three unsuccessful choices of what I thought was nice close country to pack down for a quiet night’s sleep. Instead he chose a more open area. When I asked him why he wanted to be out where the trees were further apart the answer was he had a longer hammock and needed more room!
We left company headquarters a few days later and continued to patrol independently. The very few tracks we found in the area yielded no joy for us; so when the word came over the radio that we were going to redeploy by chopper across to the other side of the province, east of Route 2, our spirits went up. By 9 September we were patrolling south and east of the Courtenay rubber and our artillery fire support base ‘Cherie’. After a day or so of patrolling in an area the company commander had given me to clear, we returned to the fire support base to help with a security problem in the area. We trekked through really lousy scrub on a very hot day and reached the fire support base by about midday. I left the platoon at the bottom of Courtenay Hill and trudged up the steep track to where the fire support base headquarters and the battalion command post were established. It was stinking hot and as I reached the summit of what was known as ‘The Estate’ the Assistant QM, Paul Darby, handed me a cold can of soft drink.
I could have kissed Paul right there and then. A cold can of drink was the one thing all of us dreamed about when out on operations—and here it was! After I slowly sank the can I was given a briefing by Capt John McAloney who was responsible for the security of the fire support base. It seemed as though the enemy were sending in men to reconnoitre the base. They were sitting out from the base some distance and using binoculars to check out the position. My job was to find the track they were using and knock them off. Back down the hill I went past the battery of American 155 mm guns from the 5th/42nd US Artillery. I sat down with my section commanders and platoon sergeant and nutted out a way to get into a position where we could ambush whoever was spying on the fire support base. I decided to use a long roundabout route into where I thought we could be most successful. I was hoping that if anyone saw us they might think we were heading away from the area.
By the time we took up a position where there was a footpad which looked like it had been used recently, it was almost dark. We were situated about 800 metres north of the fire support base and facing east. The cover was good and we had our claymore banks set up and things were looking right for an easy hit. But about two hours after dark I had changed our state of alert from 100 per cent to about 50 per cent: no-one had come down the track, and the most likely time for the enemy to come along now was an hour before first light. Just after we had settled into our new routine an almighty amount of noise was heard coming from the vicinity of the fire support base. It wasn’t shooting but sounded more like a party. I was mystified as to what it was and the more I strained to hear the more perplexing it became. For over an hour the noise continued. I could see by the faint moonlight that my soldiers were just as puzzled as I was.
After another hour of the noise continuing I concluded that it was coming from the bottom of the fire support base hill, where the American gun battery was located. The ambush remained unsprung. Then the revelry from the fire support base died, around nine o’clock or so. The next morning the platoon was retasked to continue to patrol in the area; but I wanted to check out what all the noise was from the night before. Back up the hill I went and I was told the noise emanated from the Americans at the bottom of the hill. I expressed my displeasure at trying to ambush enemy sneaking along a track with a distraction such as that of the previous night not doing anything for our chances or for the morale of my troops. It seemed as if the noise was a weekly occurrence and so back down the hill I went to get on with my job. The platoon were visiting the US 155’s as they hadn’t seen these huge guns before and so I took the opportunity to speak to the lieutenant in charge. He was a gunner by the name of Greg Scott who was a decent sort of a bloke but who had a real load on his plate.
After we introduced ourselves, I told him what we had been doing in the area and asked him quite bluntly what all the noise was the night before. He looked at me and said ‘Oh yeah, last night was our beer ration night and everyone was letting off a little steam’. I commented that they must have had a truck load of beer from all the noise they were making; he said they only had a couple of cans per man. I rejoined with the obvious remark that they must all be ‘two pot screamers’ and Scott replied that ‘Hell no! Not everybody drinks beer and so some guys get more than a couple of cans’. I asked what the others drank thinking it would be spirits and he said, ‘Shit no man, they smoke dope’. I couldn’t believe my ears. Here was a direct support battery of 155 mm guns firing in support of us and the battery was full of pot heads! I questioned Greg further and asked how he controlled this sort of thing and he said that they had a weekly ‘shake down’ when they searched the soldiers’ tents, but when the soldiers ran past his bunker on the way to muster, they would throw the dope into his bed space to avoid detection. He was quite sincere when he said that he considered he was pretty lucky since ‘none of my guys are onto hard stuff’.
I was stunned and had to thank God that we didn’t have a drug problem in our army like the Americans had. It still worried me a lot that these soldiers were likely to fire in support of us whilst we were patrolling in this area. While discussing the Americans later with my men, most of them seemed unimpressed by the slack manner in which the Americans conducted themselves and the general untidiness of their area. The US soldiers appeared almost insolent when talking to their superiors; indeed their tone could only be described as almost hostile in some quarters. I made a mental note that if and when we called for fire support in future I would try not to use that American battery.
We crossed back over to the eastern side of Route 2 and continued patrolling in an area south of the Courtenay rubber. The area was being saturated with patrols as successful contacts by our Kiwi company had identified the area as being used for courier and resupply routes. Tracker Platoon with Mike Murphy at the helm was operating very close to us and he was on our radio net, so we didn’t clash. Both Mike and I found good fresh sign of a squad size movement coming out of the jungle and skirting around the edge of the rubber, heading toward the Phuoc Tuy and Long Khanh border. Murphy and I both decided to ‘track-squat’ that night on this likely enemy access route. At 0620 hours the next morning, four enemy—including one woman—walked into Murphy’s platoon right on stand to. You couldn’t have asked for a better time: everyone was fully alert and watching their front. The tracker platoon killed three enemy, wounded the fourth (whom I believe was later found) and captured one rifle, two pistols and a very sizeable quantity of cash. Murphy in fact had accounted for some very important members of the Chau Duc District Forces; from documents it was evident that a new and active force had commenced reconnoitring the area.
After we took a resupply by APC on 12 September on the edge of the rubber, we moved off to start patrolling an area south and east of the plantation in fairly thick jungle. For two days we continued to clear the area systematically by searching in a square and hoping to pick up tracks leading into the area. There was plenty of sign but because of the rains it was difficult to tell how old it was. On 14 September we halted in a small harbour and I sent a section off for about 200 metres to reconnoitre an area. They were crossing a dry creek bed when they heard voices. Instead of waiting for the enemy to close up to them Mick Kennedy opted to get his machine-gun better placed to catch the enemy. This was not a good decision (unfortunately in hindsight) and the enemy obviously heard Kennedy moving, and despite lots of bullets chasing them they got away. They dropped some equipment but nothing of intelligence value. The lesson learned was that to try to manoeuvre in thick bush is not practical and that one dead enemy is better than none.
The next day we followed up the sign left by the enemy but it petered out on a washed out footpad. The afternoon rains were so heavy one could fill a litre water-bottle off a hootchie in less than 30 seconds. This type of downpour made tracking often useless and so we needed to be off patrolling at first light. At about 1100 hours on 15 September we were moving south from our overnight harbour and checking out an old APC track one of my reconnaissance patrols had found the day before. One patrol member had dropped a Zippo lighter where they had halted and so I had agreed to go by where he thought he had dropped his lighter to try to find it. We found the lighter and were just about to move off in single file on our patrol, when my forward section spotted two enemy moving through the bush from the east. Four of the lead section all saw the enemy at the same time and fired at the scrub-bashing enemy soldiers 20 metres away. Both of the enemy returned fire which went ten feet over our heads. One of the enemy yelled out something and could be heard withdrawing away from our fire. Another enemy had dropped to the ground 15 or so metres in front and to the flank of the forward section. Quick, aggressive action was required; so the first section acted as a pivot and I swept the remainder of the platoon past the forward section.
Since we had so few soldiers in the platoon at the time, we were operating as two half-platoon groups, each with two M60 guns; and so while we fixed the enemy with one group the other swept to flush him out. The men in the forward section could hear the enemy cocking his AK-47 but couldn’t see him through the thick bush. My sergeant took the rear group on the sweep and I was trying to find out exactly how many enemy had been sighted. As the sweep came level with me I joined it, just in time to see the enemy move his head from behind a tree 15 metres in front of where we were crawling along in an extended line. As he moved his head back again Darryl Jenkin aimed his M16 rifle and killed him. We quickly swept past the dead soldier and found sign that we had hit his companion—but obviously not too badly.
We quickly reorganised into a tight harbour and searched the dead soldier. He wasn’t dressed as a normal Viet Cong soldier and he carried no identifying documentation. He was wearing greens and webbing with sandals and socks. He had a pack on his back and had been using a compass. In his pack he carried a crude gas mask, a sheet of plastic, a hammock, 7 kilograms of flour, salt, rice, spare greens and a yellow silk scarf. He had been shot through the legs several times; one machine-gun bullet had completely shattered his knee joint, something which obviously accounted for his dropping in the initial contact. He had taken one M16 bullet through his wrist and another larger round possibly from the gun or SLR in the stomach. His AK-47 had been hit where the magazine fits into the body of the rifle and his weapon had been jammed. This accounted for the cocking noise we could hear while the sweep was going in. The soldier looked about 17 years of age and both he and his weapon before the contact had been in poor condition. His rifle had not been well maintained, in contrast with 274 VC Main Force Regiment soldiers. His body was covered in insect bites; he was undernourished and he sported a few tropical ulcers.
In all, from the time the contact had broken out until the shooting had stopped, no more than three or four minutes had elapsed. Once again no-one in the platoon had been hit and I put our good fortune down to the fact that we were moving quietly, that we had good camouflage on our faces and that we were aggressive. After questioning the men on what they had seen first about the enemy they all said it was the yellow skin of their faces. I noticed that the facial camouflage in the platoon never slackened after that observation.
The platoon was now feeling pretty good and were patrolling with a keen eye. They now knew that we were in country used by the ‘nasties’. The previous contact had indicated that at least five of them were patrolling in single file, and as they were scrub-bashing this meant that they were strangers to the area. The packs on their backs indicated they may have been in transit through the area or were patrolling out from a distant base. Things were warming up.