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These two pictures were taken for my military and civilian ID cards, just before
we left Adelaide for Vietnam in December 1967. I was nineteen.
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Getting There
The battalion travelled to Vietnam on HMAS Sydney,
an old aircraft carrier converted to a troopship, which made so many trips to Vietnam that it became known as the Vung Tau
ferry. Our departure from Outer Harbour, Port Adelaide, was quite a big deal, with a huge crowd, streamers, and not a
dry eye in the place when the crowd started singing "Now Is The Hour" as the ship pulled away from the shore.
This picture of 3RAR's departure from Outer Harbour, Adelaide, comes from the Australian War
Memorial photo collection.
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The
voyage to Vietnam took about two weeks, during which three significant things happened. The first was my twentieth birthday,
the third was Christmas, and in between, back in Australia, the Prime Minister disappeared while spearfishing at a beach south
of Melbourne.
Sleeping conditions for the soldiers on the Sydney
were ridiculous. We were expected to sleep in several levels of hammocks, so densely packed together that it seemed we
all had someone to our right, someone to our left, someone above and someone else below us. There was no fresh air, and the
atmosphere was stifling.
The first night out of Adelaide, in the rough waters of the Australian Bight, I went to see a movie.
It was screened in a completely enclosed room, crowded with smokers. The atmosphere, combined with the rolling of the ship,
made me quite ill, and I went outside onto the deck to get some fresh air. It was so pleasant out there that I decided to
sleep there. From that night on, I did not spend one night in a hammock. The next day a sailor showed me the fo'c'sle area,
where the anchor chains were kept. It was up near the front of the ship, and had huge openings in the sides for the anchor
chains. Sailors would sleep up there because of the cool, fresh air that came in through those openings. No doubt the quality
of their sleep was enhanced by being able to laugh at the discomfort of the soldiers crowded into their cramped quarters like
sardines. That anchor compartment became my sleeping quarters for the whole trip.
I had a very enjoyable voyage. I was nominally a member of Signal Platoon, attached to C Company.
When it was time for PT or training drills, if I wasn't with the sigs, they would assume I was with Charlie Company, and vice
versa. In fact, I was sunbathing on the flight deck or learning from the sailors all the best places on the ship
to hide to avoid duties. The one exception was target practice. This was done at the back of the ship, where balloons were
dropped into the sea, and we would shoot at them as they floated away. For target practice I would turn up with both
Sig Platoon and Charlie Company.
We stopped briefly in Fremantle, where Western Australians were allowed to go ashore and meet their
famiies. Then we sailed north, past Christmas Island and onto Sunda Strait. A highlight for me was the day we passed by Krakatoa,
the Indonesian volcano whose eruption in the nineteenth century had been the biggest explosion in recorded history. If you
can imagine the ideal image of what a volcano should look like, Krakatoa was it. A perfect conical shaped mountain rising
out of the ocean.
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In Country
The Sydney anchored in Vung Tau Harbour on the morning of the
27th of December 1967, and a fleet of Chinook helicopters landed on the deck to take us to Nui Dat. A lot of veterans have
vivid memories of the moment they first set foot on Vietnamese soil, but I have none. I saw nothing from the Chinook, and
there was nothing memorable about our landing.
This picture shows 3RAR soldiers on the flight deck of HMAS Sydney in Vung Tau Harbour, loading
onto a Chinook to fly to Nui Dat (AWM photo collection).
Arriving at Nui Dat (AWM photo collection).
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Nui Dat
3RAR
occupied a new area of the Nui Dat base, and was actually outside the previously existing perimeter. It was under construction
when we arrived, and apparently the idea was that we would work on constructing a connection with the rest of the Task Force
base at the same time as we carried out our patrolling duties. The Tet Offensive put an end to that idea, because we actually
spent an average of one day in three on operations outside Phuoc Tuy Province. That meant that for the whole time I was in
Vietnam there was no way that a 3RAR soldier could walk to the main Task Force area without being part of an escorted
convoy. Consequently, in my whole tour of duty, I was never able to visit the PX, and I never saw a concert at the Luscombe
Bowl.
I
arrived in Vietnam at an interesting time in Australian history. While we had been at sea, the Australian Prime Minister,
Harold Holt, had disappeared while spearfishing at a beach on the Mornington Peninsular, south of Melbourne. When we arrived,
with limited access to Australian news, I did the best I could to follow what was happening. Once the political machinery
accepted that the Prime Minister had most likely died, a new leader had to be found in an unprecedented set of circumstances.
The majority party made their choice, but again they made it interesting. They chose a Senator, John Gorton, who then had
to resign from the Senate and find a seat in the House of Representatives. It was a remarkable time for a young digger with
an interest in politics to be starting a tour of duty in a war zone far from home.
Adding
further interest to those early days in country, the next news sensation in Australia was happening just up the road from
my family home. It became known as the Glenfield Siege.
Glenfield
was part of the catchment area for my high school, and the young woman involved in the siege, Beryl Muddle, had attended my
school.
A
local young man, Wally Mellish, apparently fired a shot at some police who had knocked on his door wanting to talk to
him about some relatively minor matter. This led to an armed stand-off between Wally and the local police. It turned
into a "siege" when the police found out that Beryl Muddle and her young baby were inside the house. At first the police thought
she was a hostage, but they had to change their minds when Wally announced that one of his demands was to marry Beryl.
The
siege became the biggest spectator event in local history. It turned into a farce of the highest order when the State Police
Commissioner went in to negotiate and became not only a hostage but a witness at Wally and Beryl's wedding.
The
Commissioner then escalated the farce to a new level when he made Wally an offer he couldn't refuse. Since Wally seemed to
be so handy with firearms, the Commissioner reasoned, why not ask him if he would kindly consider joining the army and going
to Vietnam to fight our nation's enemies instead of the local police? Having secured immunity from prosecution for the siege
as part of the deal, Wally agreed. He was then taken to army headquarters, only for the army to discover that Wally was way,
way below their minimum standard for education and aptitude. So Wally walked free! Too dumb to go to a foreign country he'd
barely heard of and be shot at, but not too dumb to pull off one of the greatest tactical victories in Australian legal history!
Little wonder that the movie that was made of the siege ends with Wally putting his arm around Beryl and saying "you've gotta
love this country."
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Anti-Tank
Platoon
While
I was in 3RAR I was nominally a member of the signal platoon. I was an infantry signaller, or radio operator (sig for short).
Sig platoon does not operate as a platoon however, because its sigs are deployed to various parts of the battalion. I arrived
in Vietnam as a sig attached to ‘C’ Company. But I was only in country for a few days when I was shifted to anti-tank
platoon.
In
3RAR, anti-tank platoon was a multi-tasked outfit. The Viet Cong did not have tanks, at least not in the III Corps zone where
we operated. So we used our anti-tank weapons as infantry fire support. Anti-tank platoon also contained the battalion’s
tracker teams, comprising tracker dogs, dog handlers and visual trackers. In addition, anti-tank could also be used as a long-range
reconnaissance platoon, or as an extra rifle platoon attached to one of the rifle companies.
From
the time I arrived in anti-tank, we seemed to be on an endless programme of patrolling around the battalion’s TAOR (tactical
area of operational responsibility). In Stuart Rintoul's book Ashes of Vietnam,
I recount the experience of my first patrol with Anti-Tank, and the fact that I was too busy worrying about the
two live grenades I was carrying in pouches on my chest to be scared of running into the VC. Obviously I had thrown grenades
before, but I had never previously carried live ones around with me. I would laugh about that experience later, when carrying
grenades became as much a part of the daily routine as carrying a sweat rag.
I
also remember that first patrol with Anti-Tank for my first experience of hearing a live bullet whizz past my ears. Or at
least that is what it felt like. We were heading back to Nui Dat, walking across a rice paddy when that shot rang out.
As we all hit the dirt I discovered that a rice paddy in the dry season feels just like concrete! We reported that we were
under fire and prepared to carry out a contact drill, when a message came through on the radio that we had come too close
to an ARVN post, and they had fired a warning shot over our heads. Welcome to Vietnam!
On
one of my first mornings in Anti-Tank, I walked out of my tent intending to have a wash and a shave, when I saw
an aircraft fly over and spray the area with a nasty smelling, greasy liquid. With hindsight I believe it was an insecticide,
most likely Malathion. The smell and the greasy feel of the stuff comes from the fact that the herbicides and pesticides used
in Vietnam couldn't be sprayed from aircraft in their pure form. They had to be mixed with a solvent that would break
down into a fine spray, and the solvent that seemed to work best was diesel fuel.
I
went back inside my tent, and when I emerged later for my wash and shave, I looked down, and on the ground I saw the biggest,
blackest, hairiest, meanest looking spider I had ever seen. It was on the ground at my feet, and it was dead. Other members
of the platoon came over to have their photos taken with "Fang," as I called him. Most of them posed holding him in an open
hand to demonstrate that he was so big that his legs would hang over the sides of the hand. Two thoughts occurred to me that
morning. One was that I was lucky to find Fang dead, not alive and angry, the other was, whatever they sprayed from that aircraft
must be pretty powerful stuff.
Anti-Tank's
routine patrolling duties included day patrols, night ambush patrols, and night listening patrols. Our home base covered a
sector of the Nui Dat perimeter, so every night that we spent at Nui Dat we would all be rostered for two-hour shifts on a
machine gun post.
And
then came Tet.
This is a picture of Anti-Tank Platoon preparing to leave FSB Coral in May 1968. I was no longer
with the platoon when this picture was taken. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of myself with Anti-Tank. I found
this picture on the internet. A veteran had posted it on a web site with a query, asking if anybody knew who the soldiers
and dogs in the picture were.
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The Tet Offensive
On the first morning of February 1968, I was doing
my watch at a machine gun post when an order came for us to get ready for a patrol. This came as quite a surprise, because
it was still pre-dawn. An overnight listening patrol had found a Viet Cong mortar base plate position with a cache of ammunition.
Anti-tank platoon was to go out and find the listening patrol, set up an ambush on the ammunition cache in case anybody came
back for it and, if not, blow it up.
At this stage 2RAR, 7RAR and one company of 3RAR
were away from Nui Dat. They were in Bien Hoa Province on Operation Coburg. 3RAR were still the new boys on the block, having
been in country for just a month. Because of the absence of so much of the task force, the listening patrol was made up of
rear echelon personnel with little patrolling experience. That’s why anti-tank was tasked with this job.
On the western side of the road between Nui Dat
and Hoa Long there is an old rubber plantation. Beyond the rubber there is a wide expanse of rice paddies. The paddies end
with some thick bush flanking a stream, the Song Dinh, that runs from north to south. The listening patrol was in the rice
paddies. A troop of armoured personnel carriers picked us up and took us as far as the rubber trees. That is when they told
us that they couldn’t take us any further. The provincial capital, Baria, had been attacked. Our APCs had to go back
to Nui Dat, pick up ‘A’ Company, one of our battalion’s rifle companies, and go into Baria and take back
the town. Baria had become part of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese offensive, which took advantage of the national cease-fire
for the Tet national holiday to attack every city and major town in South Vietnam.
After they dropped us off and picked up ‘A’
Company, those same APCs drove into Baria, where they were hit by rocket propelled grenades in a VC ambush. In charge of the
APCs that morning was a young Lieutenant, Roger Tingley. Roger was wounded in the RPG attack, but stayed on duty, and was
later awarded the Military Cross. Some 20 years later, Roger and I would find ourselves working together in veterans’
organisations in Western Australia.
We found the listening patrol, and they led us to
the ammunition cache. We set up an ambush, but the VC did not return. So, just after dawn, we blew it up. My old mate Jack
Hammer was the demolition man who did the job. Jack and I had been founding members of 8RAR (in Brisbane), before we were
both transferred to 3RAR (in Adelaide). I owned a car at the time, so Jack and I cashed in our travel warrants and drove non-stop
from Brisbane to Adelaide together. When we arrived, I was placed in Sig Platoon, while Jack went to Anti-tank, where he was
a machine gunner, as well as being a demolition expert.
By the time we blew up the ammunition cache, a battle
was raging in Baria. We could see it, and we could hear it. At some time during the morning, a message came over the radio.
Four VC had been seen leaving the fighting in Baria, and they were headed in our direction. We were given a grid reference
for a place where the track they were on would cross the Song Dinh. If we hurried, we could reach the crossing and set up
an ambush.
We charged off in the direction of the crossing.
Before we got there though, there was some pretty thick jungle to get through. It included an incredibly thick stand of bamboo.
When this stuff grows in the wild, it bears little resemblance to the ornamental bamboo that grows in domestic gardens. Its
branches are pointed like spears, and it gets so thickly entangled that the only way you can get through it is to crawl on
your belly. Even then it can rip the clothes right off you.
Now remember, at this stage we were not just anti-tank
platoon, with its extensive patrolling experience from its first month in country. Our numbers also included the members of
the listening patrol we had picked up earlier. They were cooks, clerks and storemen, and this was their first time outside
the wire.
Just as we arrived at the creek crossing, another
message came over the radio. It wasn’t four VC, it was forty, and we had better get the hell out of there! Now, I actually
remember the number as four hundred. But anti-tank had a reunion in 2002, and was evenly split between those who remember
it as 40 and those who remember it as 400. So, in telling the story, I have decided to err on the side of not exaggerating.
Let’s just say it was 40. That is still too many for a platoon to ambush. So, as quickly as we had struggled through
the bamboo jungle to reach the crossing, we now had to clear out of there.
Eventually we made it back to the rice paddies between
the rubber and the Song Dinh. This was when we realised that there was a role we could play in the Battle of Baria. The creek,
with its thick cover, was a VC escape route from the fighting in Baria. As long as we could stay out of sight, we could observe
their escape and call in artillery or air strikes on them. Staying out of sight was the key, because we were in the middle
of an expanse of wide-open (dry season) rice paddies. If anybody saw us, we were sitting ducks, and heavily outnumbered sitting
ducks.
We started calling in artillery, and that appeared
to be working. Then some American pilots asked for a chance to get in on the action, and we found ourselves calling in air
strikes. The American pilots soon grew impatient going through the usual radio procedures, so one of the pilots gave me a
radio frequency that I could use to talk directly to him. This was against the rules we normally operated under, but my platoon
commander, Lieutenant Clarke, agreed to it. So we were calling in air strikes and giving immediate corrections to the American
pilots as they bombed the escaping VC. We had our own fireworks display all through the afternoon.
So that is my memory of Day One of the Tet Offensive.
It was just the beginning of my adventures with anti-tank platoon.
The events of the next couple of weeks are somewhat
blurred in my mind. I remember the things that happened, but the order in which they happened are not clear. I have consulted
the battalion history, but that has not exactly helped.
The events that I remember are firstly, Anti-tank
going into Baria with B Company when they relieved A Company; secondly, a cordon and search of Hoa Long; thirdly, the battle
in Long Dien, in which Anti-tank participated using our anti-tank weapons as fire support. As I describe these events, the
confusion of my memory and the facts will become apparent.
The battalion history confirms that “B”
Company relieved “A” Company in Baria on the 2nd of February; that is, the second day of the Tet Offensive.
There is no mention of anti-tank going with them. The book does show that we accompanied B Company into Baria on the 8th
of February, but that is the excursion that would take us into Long Dien. I still believe that anti-tank accompanied B Company
into Baria on the 2nd. What makes me so certain of that is the strong memory I have of walking through Hoa Long
on the day after the battle of Baria.
Hoa Long is the nearest Vietnamese village to the
Australian base camp at Nui Dat. The Australian base and the Hoa Long village had been co-existing relatively peacefully for
a couple of years. Australian patrols going through Hoa Long would normally be greeted by crowds of young children, cheerfully
running around amongst us, asking for chocolates and cigarettes. But I distinctly remember the eerie feeling of walking through
a totally silent Hoa Long the day after Tet. Not a soul was in the streets, and it felt as though all of the residents were
hiding inside their houses, watching us but staying out of sight.
After the VC had been cleared out of Baria, they
moved on to Long Dien, a market town a couple of kilometres east of the provincial capital. By contrast with Baria where,
despite the savage fighting, A Company had taken back the town without loss of any 3RAR members, the battle in Long Dien cost
us the first four members of our battalion to be killed in Vietnam.
There were two stages to the battle of Long Dien,
and here again I am somewhat confused. Anti-tank went into Long Dien with our 106mm anti-tank weapons mounted on the backs
of Land Rovers. I remember us coming under fire in the market place, and using the 106s to blow up a building. However, I
also remember us being with B Company. The problem is that the battalion history shows that D Company fought in the market
place on the 4th, while B Company fought in a different part of the town on the 8th. The book’s account of
the first part of the battle mentions the destruction of a house, which suggests that this was indeed the battle in which
we used the 106s.
Since I wrote that last paragraph, I have received an email from Dave Morgan, who was
a platoon commander in B Company. He remembers being supported by vehicle-mounted anti-tank weapons in Long Dien. So
it was definitely B Company that we accompanied into Long Dien.
In that battle in Long Dien, three members of B Company were killed. One was a platoon commander,
and one was a platoon sig. I was a platoon sig, and I worked closely with my platoon commander. Imagine how it made me and
all the other platoon sigs feel when we heard this news. It felt like we were walking around a war zone with a target on our
backs.
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This picture shows me, at left, with Anti-Tank Platoon Commander Colin Clarke.
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FSB Andersen
After the battles of Tet, 3RAR left the Australian area of operations in Phuoc Tuy Province
for the first time, to take part in Operation Coburg, in Bien Hoa Province. There we would earn the distinction of being the
first Australian unit to come under ground assault at a fire support base in the Vietnam War. That is the subject of the next
chapter of my story.
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