Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in Melbourne 1947. Most of my childhood was in Melbourne. I went to

school in Caulfield, Primary School in Caulfield and then we moved out to Ringwood. I was six or seven I suppose when we moved out there. And I finished my education there. Left Ringwood, I went jackerooing [working on a cattle property] in about 1963 I think and did three years jackerooing and then decided to join the army, I had enough of jackerooing so I joined the army.

It was just a bit of an adventure at the time I thought. And I went in through Melbourne, I joined in Melbourne and I did three years in the army. My rookie training was at Kapooka, corps training at Ingleburn and then was posted to Brisbane. I spent about six months in Brisbane

and then got posted to Townsville unfortunately, I was due to go to Vietnam from Brisbane with 4 RAR [Royal Australian Regiment] and I came medically unfit for – over an incident with the police in Brisbane and so I couldn’t go to Vietnam with 4 RAR which disappointed me greatly cause I’d trained up for it and they sent me up here to Townsville and I trained for about oh

a yeah and a half I suppose nearly in Townsville with 6 RAR and left in 19, May ’69 boarded the HMAS Sydney off Townsville climbed the cargo nets to get on the boat and then headed off for Vietnam. I served in Vietnam from May ’69 to February ‘70

but my three years was then up so I chose not to sign up and finish another three months or something in Vietnam so I decided to get out and return to Australia. And after probably – no further than that…

Yeah I’d come home from Vietnam.

I’d arrived home from Vietnam.

Decided not to resign then

I found out the battalion was going to Singapore about six months after they came home which would’ve been in May. The battalion would’ve been home in May so I figured well if I sign on about ten weeks after I get home I won’t have to go back to Vietnam. I’ll be able to go back to 6 RAR and then do a tour of Singapore. But unfortunately when I joined the army, when I tried to join the army I said I was too deaf so they

wouldn’t take me back in. So I moved up here cause I’d met Maureen in Townsville before I left. And I worked for a tyre company for about four years up here and in Melbourne and then I joined Queensland Nickel and I worked at Queensland Nickel for twenty seven years and retired two years ago.

Yeah, Maureen and I married in 1970, November 1970. We had one child a daughter, Angela. We moved into this house in 1974, I think, and we’ve lived in the same place ever since.

I grew up in Caulfield… I lived in Caulfield until I was about six I think, six or seven and then we moved up to Monbulk up in the Dandenongs we were there for about two years and then back to Caulfield and then up to Ringwood.

I went to Melwood State School, I went to Caulfield State School first when I was living in Caulfield and then Norwood State School at Ringwood I think I did up to grade six in the State school and then I went to Melwood High School. Most of the – well we used to get up to the normal childhood stuff we used

like going to the movies on the weekend, go to the matinee watch the cowboy movies and go home and play cowboys and shoot them up and all that stuff. Built billycarts and you know the stuff that most kids do. Then when we moved out to Ringwood there were a lot of orchards and that around there so we used to go cherry raiding and you know there was always plenty of fruit on the table.

My parents were, they were, well I’d probably describe them as middle class. My father worked in the printing business he was in the printing game for nearly all his life and he provided us pretty well he was a good father. I never had any hassles with him or anything

we always got on well. I had two brothers, Peter and Chris. Chris was the younger brother he was about eight years younger than me and Peter was my older brother he’s about four years older than me. So there was a fair bit of difference between Chris and I but Peter and I you know sort of spent a lot of time together and we get along fairly well. And

most of it was just you know running amok as kids, as kids did sort of back then. Didn’t really get into trouble with – never had a criminal record or anything like that you know I wasn’t that bad that I would get in trouble from the police or anything but the neigh – you know we used to blow up letter boxes and things kids did.

Ringwood was

really nice, a lot of trees, a lot of parks, it was the outer suburb of Melbourne it was about fifteen miles out of Melbourne and it was, it was probably a pretty good place to bring kids up in you know it was better than closer in to the city. And here was plenty - like dams around we used to build tin boats and things like that out of corrugated iron and you know there was plenty of hills around for the billycarts.

There was a big oval just over the road you know massive big pine trees the area was fairly new at the time cause like it was the outskirts of Melbourne so when they, when they did the majority of the subdivisions there the majority of it they didn’t cut any trees down or whatever. They didn’t believe in, in fact I remember as a kid riding my bike into Ringwood from along the highway and they said – and there’s a big sign there saying

“If you cut down one tree plant two in its place.” So they were pretty conscious of it back then.

Yeah Mum she was a typical Mum, spoiled us rotten you know we could do no wrong. Even when we did wrong she defended us sort of. She worked, when I was living in Caulfield she worked at a florist shop or something or

craft shop and there was many a time I had to go down there after you know playing after school you know I’d split my head open with half a brick of someone had split my head open with half a brick or you know ripped a piece out of the knee or whatever and I’d go down there with a towel around my hand because I’d cut myself with a knife and blood everywhere and she hated the sight of blood. She was you know we had, the old fellow across the road worked for the St. John’s Ambulance so that was the normal trip

over the road. As soon as I walked in Mum said, “I don’t want to see it go over the road so I’d go over there and I’d get patched up.” Yeah she was a really good Mum you know she really doted on us. Chris was a bit of a surprise I don’t think she planned on Chris because there was such a big difference eight years between us or whatever and

he got absolutely spoilt rotten he was unbelievable well he still is to tell you the truth and he’s forty eight or whatever. Yeah, Ringwood had everything there was a bowl – a ten pin bowling alley there. I used to play football with the school, with the high school.

Oh what else…

Yeah, VFL, oh yeah I’m a VFL fanatic, well if you’re a Victorian…

I supported Melbourne actually. And we went regularly. Well I went to the 1956 Melbourne/ Collingwood grand final and there was round about a hundred and twenty thousand people there. And I used to, it was funny because back in those days there used to be a twenty, a twenty cent,

oh it wasn’t a twenty cent deposit… I’m not sure the deposit on a coke bottle it might have been a five pence or something but they had a deposit on the coke bottle so when we went to the football we used to take a hessian bag with us and after the game we’d collect all the bottles and we’d take them home and that was our spending money. So we were always fairly financial after the football because there were a lot of bottles there.

I’m

not really sure but you know if you got, you might’ve got five bob which was a fair bit of money back then.

Yeah the whole family supported the same team. In fact my father was a very one eyed Melbourne supporter. In fact he was almost embarrassing when you went to the football with him because he’d been you know like you see them abusing the umpire “You stupid mongrel!” and all this you know “What are you blind?” or you know so he was

pretty fanatical but the whole family was you know dead set Demon [Melbourne] supporters. Yeah.

Oh it was, there’s nothing like the MCG [Melbourne Cricket Ground] on a full day you now it’s really great, yeah.

Still support the Demons. Actually I spend, well I spent the whole weekend watching football because I love it so much. I don’t mind Rugby League. I’m a Rugby League fan as well but

not to the extent of Aussie Rules probably because I was brought up with it, yeah.

No my father wasn’t involved in the war. No, actually he was a fireman I think during the war I think he was the Volunteer Fire Brigade or something. He did, I think was just after the war or just before the war finished, I’ve got a cutting out of one of the

papers he organised the tour of one of the mini submarines that sank in Sydney that was recovered in Sydney Harbour he organised that for a tour of Melbourne to raise funds for the war effort. Something to do with the war anyway he sort of set all that up. Yeah so that was…

Did he talk to me much about it? No he hardly ever spoke about it really, no. He always communicated

but he never really mentioned what it was like during the war. I dare say, in Australian in the war it was nothing like being in England you know they had a few scares like Darwin and Townsville but I think as far as food rationing and all that, I really don’t know what it was like in Australia because he really didn’t mention it that much.

Well,

to me war was like fun you know it was excitement and you know you see all the heroes and all this sort of stuff and probably started off watching the cowboy movies you know the soldiers riding their horse into battle against the Indians you know and to me that was like pretty exciting you know. I suppose when you sat there and watched it it was just a movie and people got killed and you just accepted it as being

a movie. So as much I thought it was real I understood that you know they weren’t really killing each other so and then like you know after the movies we’d re-enact all the battles and all this sort of stuff. Half of us’d be Indians the other half was – you’d have to swap every time because you didn’t want to die all the time if you were an Indian because the Indians always died you know the cavalry was always pretty good.

Well my favourite was, what was it called, it was, it was about the Winchester rifle.

I think it was called, I’m not sure of the name but it was about the Winchester rifle and that sort of you know won the war for them and Custer’s last stand was always my favourite as well and

the Air Adventures of Biggles that was a good one that was all about the air force and that was excellent.

Well I went jackerooing, what happened was when I was at school, I excelled in woodwork and tech drawing and I was offered a job at GMH [General Motors Holden] to do an apprenticeship by my woodwork teacher he had a mate there

and I was thinking about doing it, but I didn’t really want to work in a factory, but it was an apprenticeship doing panel beating and spray painting which probably would’ve benefited me, but I didn’t want to work in a factory so I decided to go jackerooing, so I applied for a job as a jackeroo at Seymour which was you know about a hundred kilometres north of Melbourne. So I got the

job there and I was sixteen and that was a big adventure because you know, I was leaving home and I went to a place called Trail Wool and that was on the Goulburn River and they had a fairly big property there, sheep and cattle and Mum and Dad drove me up and Mum gave me twenty pound or something and said, “Look you know if you don’t like it get him to drive you in and put you on the train and come back to Melbourne.” And I was

determined I was going to like it anyway. And it was a good life cause I was outdoors and I kept really fit and I wasn’t sort of overweight or anything and you know. We had about eight thousand sheep or something and a heap of cattle. We grew vegetables for Campbell’s Soups as a side line that was a bit different that was sort of a bit different. I got involved in everything from you know ploughing and all the things that jackeroos do, ploughing

you know rounding up the sheep and the cattle. Crutching, shearing, fencing, it wasn’t the best place to work in as far as the weather went, because in the winter it was absolutely freezing cold, the wind sort of blew straight through the valley, very cold. You know, you’d have to go down and break the ice on the horse troughs and all that sort of stuff so the horse could have a drink in the winter, but in the summer it was unbearably hot. So you had like two extremes.

I remember going down at five o’clock in the morning and getting on a tractor with about four jackets on, a pair of jeans and gloves and still freezing, still feeling really cold and having to go and sa,y dig a hole with a crow bar, picking up an icy cold crow bar you know and you could just feel it go straight through your gloves. A lot of the stuff you couldn’t touch because your fingers would stick to it you know.

I did three years there. My boss, Murray Smith was, he was one of the Rats of Tobruk, so this was probably something you know he never, he didn’t really talk about it much but like I went to Anzac Day with him and you know, met a few of his mates and they always seemed to have a good time. And they were a really good family to work for. They had two sons one was eight I think and the other

was about eleven when I got there. But like they were handy because you could get them to feed the dogs and feed the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and that sort of stuff cause they were always keen they always wanted to ride on the tractor and do all the things that everyone else did. They were good in the shed at shearing time and that because that was always chaotic. So I did three years at Seymour and then I decided it was

time to leave and join the army.

On the property? No, I was the only one, I was the only jackeroo well they had two sons so they sort of helped them out a fair bit but it’s surprising how much work that Barbara did as well you know, his wife. She was always doing things you know as well around the property as much as looking after the house and the kids, she was still like you know, she would bring us our smokos [morning tea] and there was always something that

she was doing. She would work in the shed sometimes, yeah.

I lived in this little donga [cabin] it was about, it was just one room, had a wardrobe in it and a shower and it was yeah, yeah it was, it wasn’t very good accommodation really. It’s not as if it was something flash. There was no heater or anything in there.

Yeah,

initially I did, I always kept in contact with them and one a month I was allowed to have the weekend off so I generally tried to get down to Melbourne. When I was growing up we used to go to a place called Point Leo and I used to do a lot of surfing, I was right into surfing and even when I went jackerooing like if I got a chance to go to Melbourne, Mum and Dad always used to go to a place

called Point Leo so over Christmas they’d be at Point Leo so I’d go down there and you know we’d go surfing. We used to go on safaris all over Victoria. It was great fun you know.

No neither brothers surfed, no. My older brother had one go out of it and took a big chunk out of his knee and said, “That was enough” he said “I’m not doing that again.” You know used to go spear fishing.

I started probably drinking a bit when I started jackerooing you know I used to go out with the boys and that. The pub was a fair way from, the Trail Wool Hotel was probably about six or seven mile it would’ve been. There was – you had to go through three properties to get to ours and there was a jackeroo on each place so we used to get together occasionally and go to the pub

and go to the dance at Seymour or whatever.

Yeah they were pretty good, we always got along really well never had any disputes or anything. Met a few girls, met… to tell you the truth I can’t even think of her name at the moment, anyway…

At one of the dances, yeah, at Seymour and her father was a sergeant in the army and he was a real rough bastard, you know he was

rough. So he sort of put the breeze up me a bit [alarmed me] you know I was always worried he was going to catch me out or whatever and beat the hell out of me cause he was a big bloke too.

Yeah I knew a fair bit about the Rats of Tobruk. I knew that they were considered to be heroes and all this sort of stuff and although they got a beating, although they actually withdraw they held off for six months or whatever it was and you know gave the Germans

a bit of a beating. I knew a fair bit about the Second World War and it sort of interested me a fair bit. I don’t know whether it was the fact that it was sort of exciting. I don’t know whether I really considered it, I considered it to be an adventure for the blokes you know I mean, that’s why most of

them joined up sort of back then. I was thinking it would be a great adventure because just as, excuse me, a lot of people spend their lives sitting in the one house and hardly leaving their suburb you know. And here’s all these guys have jumped on a boat or whatever and been around the world and you know seen a lot. Yeah so that’s probably what made me join the

army plus Murray being one of the Rats.

No he didn’t, no, oh he had like his greatcoat and his hat a few other bits and pieces but he didn’t have a photo album or anything. He might’ve had one but I never saw it. He was a true gentleman though, like to me I was thinking that soldiers and all this sort of stuff were roughies and all that

but he was rough, but he was a gentleman sort of you know, he treated his kids really well and I sort of admired him for it although he had a few funny habits but like apart from that he was really, he was a good father and a good boss it was probably only just that what happened I was shearing a ram one day. Actually, well we were in a shed in the middle of shearing

rams and we had ewes penned up downstairs and he asked me to shut the gate, he said, “I don’t want the rams getting in with the ewes you know it creates a bit of a problem.” Then he asked me to sharpen his cutters and combs and that so I went down and did that forgot about closing the gate and came back up and I was in the middle of shearing this ram and he walked in and he really went of his cruet at me [lost his temper], like he abused hell out of me you know “You stupid bastard!” you know I mean we’d had a big day anyway and he said, “You stupid bastard!”

you know, “I told you to shut the gate the rams are in with the ewes!” and I sort of lost the plot a bit too [lost my temper], and just turned off the hand piece and let the ram go and he was only half shorn, he still had half the wool hanging off him and he started running around the wool shed, you know, anyway I said, “Oh look mate I’ve had enough” you know I said, “I’ve decided to pull the pin [leave].” That was enough to sort of you know that sort of made my decision. It wasn’t really because of him

I suppose I needed an excuse anyway. So that was it, I went down to the Southern Command and joined the army.

Well I had because my brother was in the army and he was training for Vietnam. He was in infantry, he was with the 7th battalion so I knew a bit about the army. I didn’t know that much about it. I didn’t, I had an idea

that the basic training was going to be pretty tough.

From him?

Well, when he was on leave and that occasionally I would see him. We wrote to each other occasionally, not very often but occasionally. He told me it was pretty tough, the training was pretty tough, but I figured being a jackeroo for three years I

was fit so I didn’t have to worry about the fitness side of it. So I went and saw Mum and Dad and said, “Look I’ve decided to join the army” and well I don’t think Mum was all that impressed because she already had one son in there and he was sort just about getting ready to head to Vietnam so but she said “Well if that’s what you want to do well go for it.”

Yeah, he didn’t really have much of an opinion he just said

“If that’s what you want to do” he didn’t warn me against it or anything. He just said, “Well if that’s what you want to do well go for it.”

Yeah oh it was just the look on her face when I told her that I was going to join the army . She was sort of…. I think she was a bit worried having – knowing that Vietnam was on and having two sons possibly going. She didn’t

really comment that much about it though. But I could tell she wasn’t really impressed with having two sons possibly going to Vietnam but I suppose too at that stage Vietnam was still in its infancy as far as the Australian public were concerned. National Service was, I think it had just been introduced and that was another reason why I joined, I

figured I’d probably get conscripted anyway, so I figured I may as well join up instead of having someone telling me that I’ve got to go in I may as well go in of my own accord . Well it’s funny because I think now that I look back on it I think if I had been conscripted I would’ve been a conscientious objector because I didn’t really like being told what to do yo know I was sort of always did my own thing and it’s a possibility that I would’ve

been a conscientious objector only due to the fact that they said, “You’ve got to do it” because I really didn’t like that very much. So I joined the army, went down to Southern Command in Spencer Street I think it is, or no St. Kilda Road.

I just went in there and said, “Look I’d like to join the army.” and they said, “Oh well we’ve got a few forms to

fill out and you’ll have to do a medical.” and that sort of stuff so I went through that. I can’t actually remember whether they took me whether they actually said that day whether I was in or not I’m not sure it was a long time ago.

Well it was a full medical checked my hearing, checked my eyesight and all that sort of stuff, checked my

fitness. Well everything was fine they said that I was okay to join up. I had good feet, I didn’t have flat feet or anything like that so that was it. There was, I was in the big green fighting machine.

I think I had about a week or something, or two weeks before I actually went in after I joined. Might’ve been about a week I think. They loaded us onto buses and took us to

Kapooka in New South Wales and that was fun, I enjoyed Kapooka. It was extremely tough but I knew that when I went into the army I decided it didn’t matter what they did, they weren’t going to break me like because that’s what Kapooka’s about. It’s about pushing you to the limit and just see what you can stand. Like,

things like you’d go for a five mile run and then when you got back you’d probably have tea or something like that and then you’d go up to our room or something, and then all of a sudden the sergeant would be there, “Righto everybody out into your PT [Physical Training] gear.” So you’d get into your PT gear and run down the three flights of stairs fall up and he’d say, “Okay now into your battledress.” So you’d race back up and get into your battledress and then you’d go back and then he’d say, “You can go to bed now” or whatever. And then like the next morning

they’d wake you up at four o’clock in the morning, “Okay you’re going to do a twenty mile route march in full gear in the middle of winter.” freezing cold and away you’d go and it was I found it challenging actually stuff like that. There was time like when they’d give you a heap of needles, they’d inoculate

for all sorts of stuff and that afternoon they’d want you to do twenty push ups or press ups, so it was bastardisation at its best, but like I said I would let anyone break me you know. Most of the blokes I joined up with were pretty good guys. I had no, there was probably two or three I suppose in that platoon that I didn’t get along with. One bloke didn’t like me, I knew he didn’t like me

and after one of our 20 mile marches a bloke named Tommy Goode, he was a shearer from Western Australia and myself virtually carried this guy for the last five k’s [kilometres] because his feet were just that blistered he couldn’t walk so we sort of supported him. When we got back, the bloke said to me, “Oh I’ve changed my mind about you.” sort of gave me a pat on the back sort of.

Don’t know it was just probably my attitude, I was fairly easy to get

along with but I believed in practical jokes and stuffing, general stuffing around . I got away with a lot of stuff while I was in recruit training.

Thinks like, well they’d drag you out on the parade ground at five o’clock in the morning or whatever. They’d blow reveille and you’d get up and you’d race out and you had to stand in the parade ground with your sheet and the idea of that was to make sure that you didn’t make your bed, you didn’t get up at four o’clock and make your bed and get all organised

because everyone had to do it together and then they’d come in and if your bed wasn’t – they’d get a two bob bit [two shilling coin] and flick it on your bed and if it didn’t bounce three times or whatever they’d get your bed and throw it out of the window, or they used to come in and look in your window and if you socks weren’t folded properly, everything out of that wardrobe went out the window, three floors, you’d have to bring it all back up and make sure you had it packed properly. And it was just, it was discipline, I can understand now why they did it. I mean to me it was bastardisation and

all that but it was still a challenge anyway. It was something, it didn’t faze me at all because I was prepared to accept anything that they threw at me. So if I had to run down the stairs three times and go and get it well, so be it. But what I did when I went home on leave after about, had leave after about six weeks or something, I took back half a sheet with me. So I was always on parade with my half a sheet, my bed was already made, and everything was done and

I could go on parade and everyone else still had to go back and make their beds and that. My half a sheet was folded up really neatly and went into the pillow case because they used to search, they used to do regular searches, always lift under the mattress and see if there was porno [pornographic] books or whatever. You couldn’t have anything, any civilian stuff in there at all what so ever, nothing, so yeah, little things like that sort of helped me get through it just made it a bit easier for me. You know

I could get out of bed earlier, get organised and then everyone else would be there doing their stuff and I would be sitting back having a cigarette or whatever, making life a bit easier. And that went on for three months, we got leave on a couple of weekends I think to go into Wagga [Wagga Wagga], have a few beers and go to a few dances and that. I don’t know whether we were very well liked or not, I’m not sure. I think the people of Wagga had had enough of

rookies going through the place but generally the public left us alone sort of. You know if we went into a hotel we weren’t hassled or anything. So that was three months of intensive training but it was the training there was mainly square bashing, learning how to march, how to salute, a bit of rifle fire. nav [navigation] access, running around with compass, learn how to use a compass,

map reading, but it was all basic stuff. And then…

I enjoyed all of it because everything I did I made it a challenge sort of so I wanted to be the best at everything and I was pretty good at everything. Then sort of towards the end of the – about two weeks I think before the end of basic training we had

to front the psychiatrist you see, because there was the selection of corps that you could go into whether it be Armoured Corps, Artillery, Engineers or whatever and they said to me, “Well you’ve got three choices, what do you want to be?” And I put down infantry, infantry and infantry because that’s what I wanted to do. Then I was in front of the psych [psychiatrist] and he said “Well you’ve got three choices?” so I said, “Well if I don’t get infantry I don’t want to be in the army it’s as simple as that.” well it felt that my three months basic

training was a waste of time because I don’t want to be in the army, because I felt that being in infantry was what soldiering was all about, being in infantry. So they said, “Oh well if that’s what you want we need plenty of cannon fighters so step up.” So they gave me infantry and then they sent me to Ingleburn, that was the infantry training centre.

I don’t know, I honestly don’t know, I just that to me that was what soldiering was about. I mean I could picture a bloke standing behind artillery pieces and stuff like that, and driving tanks and all that but it wasn’t really what I wanted to do . To me that wasn’t soldiering. I mean I’d seen blokes like in the First World War and the Second World War going over

over the pits and sort of run the people with bayonets and all that, why the hell I’d think that was exciting I don’t know, but to me that was soldiering . So that’s probably why I decided to do it. Infantry was it.

That was it, yeah.

Ingleburn just outside Sydney and it was three months of training but it was a bit more intense,

it was a bit more technical, a lot different weapons, a lot more bush work. They pushed you a lot harder and it was different to basic training cause basic training was more about learning the army. Infantry training was learning about being in infantry. The blokes that went to tankies [tanks] or whatever I’d dare say would’ve instead of going to infantry training would’ve gone to learn about tanks or whatever,

but mine was basically weapons handling and we didn’t do as much shooting as I thought we’d probably would. We didn’t do as much range work as I thought we would’ve, but we did a lot of bush work and it was like war games stuff. You know, you got out in the bush and then you hide and then they say, “Oh, these enemy are going to come through some time today and you’ll ambush them.” and you don’t know how many there are going to be and all this sort of stuff. We spent a lot of time up

at, around Bulli and I think it was in the middle of winter and it was bitterly cold and it was wet and it was pretty miserable out in the bush most of the time but corps training but I stuck it out and yeah I can’t really remember much about corps training. I can’t remember as much about corps training as I can about infantry training. I know a couple of times we got leave, I went down to Melbourne I think

twice while I was doing rooking – corps training. What else did I do?

Yeah well it was very the town of Ingleburn, I can’t really remember much about the town, I didn’t see much of it but the camp it was similar to Kapooka, it was like Second World War stuff, dongas, the accommodation wasn’t really good. There was twenty blokes I suppose living in each donga. Well, no, it would’ve been a platoon, it would’ve been thirty blokes in each donga. You had a wardrobe, chest of

drawers and a bed, and a trunk and that was what you consisted of. I think they had a, I know they had a boozer [bar] there because I went there quite a few times. They had their own little gaol and all that sort of stuff which I never spent any time in, although I did spend a bit of time in there, in gaol in the course of my three years. I remember a few times

we did like long runs and we’d go up through the hills and then actually come back, run back through town and it was a bit strange because you were jogging through town and that and people were just going about their normal business and you were training to go off to war sort of. You’d run through town in your greens and you were all sweating and you might’ve been out playing ball games and you looked a bit grotty [dirty] and you’d run through town and people would just give you a second glance. I suppose they were used to it.

Well the infantry training was good because it was starting to become a survival thing, it was more knowing that what I learnt there the more chance I had of surviving whatever I came across . Most of the NCO’s [Non Commissioned Officers] were, most of the instructors were ex-Vietnam Vets [veterans] or whatever

although none of them really talked about it. It was mainly just the training. We didn’t really have any contact with our instructors apart from the basic training itself. So we didn’t really get much feedback about the war at that stage. It didn’t really worry me that much anyway, that sort of

I knew a bit about it. I knew they were trying to stem the flow of communism from the north and all that. That wasn’t why I joined up, I didn’t join up to stem the flow of communism, I joined up because it was going to be an adventure and at that stage I still didn’t know if I would go to Vietnam . No one really knew whether they were going to go or not but I hoped that I did go because that was why I’d joined.

At that stage, well I suppose I was like everyone else in Australia at that stage, we’d all been brainwashed about them, the red hordes and that heading south, and I think at that stage probably the Chinese were sort of more of a threat because of the population, because of the amount of people they had. To tell you the truth I knew nothing about Vietnam from school, I mean we didn’t learn anything about Vietnam or anything like that so

I didn’t really know, I didn’t know their politics or their history or anything. Even when I joined the army I didn’t sort of study up on it. I probably wasn’t all that interested. I had an idea where it was but even if like in the early stages of my army career if you had’ve got a map and said, “Show me where Vietnam is.” I would’ve had a bit of trouble finding it. So I don’t know that I wasn’t

interested or whether it, it probably didn’t concern me at the time . I was probably more concerned about learning how to do my job properly.

Well, yeah, I had a fair bit of respect from them but at that stage I still did as I was told because

I thought it might help me but there was some things that they did that I felt weren’t beneficial. Initially in corps training like when you run up and down the stairs because they told you to keep changing, well that was fair enough because they were trying to break me and that. When I got to corps training it was just some of the things that they did I felt were probably bastardisation for the sake of bastardisation and

not for training purposes. They just wanted to sort of test you out to the limit but there was no need to cause they’d already got that far.

When did I feel most tested to the limit through training or….?

In the first six months probably, the first two weeks into infantry training

because that was the biggest step from rookie training . It was a bit more intense, a lot more shooting and weapons we hadn’t used before, and mind you some of the weapons were absolutely pathetic. I mean I had a rifle that just used to break open every time you fired it, it would just break open, which wasn’t too good and you went to the armourer and he said, “There’s nothing wrong with it.” and they gave us weapons like

the F One which was an automatic, a light automatic weapon and it was only good for twenty five metres. I couldn’t hit anything on a twenty five metre range. I didn’t like it at all and I thought, “Gee I hope I don’t have to use one of those over there.” because I was just no good at it. I was the same with a pistol you know, I’d just about shoot myself in the foot before it hit a target. And it was funny because at that stage I’d before I’d joined the army I didn’t like

rifles, I never ever fired a rifle when I was jackerooing. We used to go rabbiting but we’d go rabbiting with ferrets and if I went with blokes with rifles I never fired one, so it was funny because like I’d never fired a rifle, but I was going in to the army and I played when I was a kid,I ran around with the rifle, with a wooden rifle and pulled the trigger and went ‘Bang!’ and all that but I’d still never actually fired a rifle before I went

into the army. Yeah so I suppose it was a bit strange really and then to have all these weapons and realise how much power you had in your hands. You know they had De Carl Gostoff [?] which was an anti tank, it was a bit like a bazooka a bit smaller. We played with that we never ever fired it because I think we bought it from Sweden or somewhere and they were against the Vietnam War so we – we had the weapon but we didn’t get any ammunition

off them which was was pretty smart. We had the old inerger [?] grenade which you attached to the end of your rifle and put a blank round in your rifle and fired it, it wasn’t very accurate. And we fired the, started firing the M60 a bit which was the machine gun, the basic machine gun that we were going to use and a lot of SLR [self loading rifle], the SLR rifle which was the basic rifle that the infantry carried in Australia at the time.

So…

I carried, yeah my favourite was the SLR. Yeah, I also figured if we hit something with that it would do a good job. It had a pretty big round and it was good over three hundred metres you could hit someone in the eye with it if you wanted to. If you were a good shot with it, it was excellent. I didn’t realise that it wasn’t all that spectacular for jungle fighting

at that stage because I hadn’t actually fired it in a jungle. Like we used to go down the rifle range and there was a hundred metre range, three hundred metre range and you just fired at pop up little black targets so I had no idea of what sort of weapons would be good in a jungle. And no one sort of mentioned it to me either. It’s not even as though the NCO said, “Look.” even the blokes that’d been to Vietnam said, “This isn’t going to do you much

good.” or whatever. We didn’t have the armalite at that stage I don’t think the Australians had been issued with the armalite at that stage but we did earlier on, later on.

No, well it depends on whereabouts you were in a platoon as to what weapon you carried and…

Well it’s probably in your recruit,

I think in corps training we all carried the SLR because that was the basic weapon and I don’t think anyone carried the F One although we training with the F One I don’t remember anyway, I think we might’ve actually, the forward scout I think used one and I think the section commander might’ve used one but the rest of the blokes just had SLRs and they gave them to the forward scouts so that they could get off a fair bit of fire power in an initial contact.

But there was a lot of, we had, if you went out to the bush there was a lot of stuff you had to carry. You know like we had to carry smoke grenades, flares, claymore mines, extra belt for the machine guns. Each section is probably, there’s eleven men in a section, there’s senior NCO, he’s the corporal, a lance corporal, there’s a section commander, the forward scout and you’ve got

all the rest are just soldiers, infantry soldiers, ordinary soldiers. You’ve got a machine gunner and another two on the gun and so in that section I think in the rookie, in corps training we would’ve had probably two F Ones the little small automatic weapons, the M60 and the rest would’ve been armalites, would’ve been SLRs.

Yeah.

Yeah, well mainly the bush work because it was, excuse me, it was not stop like we went up to Bulli and you got no sleep and yo know it was all about sleep deprivation and all that sort of stuff I think. It was just to test you out and see how long you could go for without sleeping because according to

the rule books, when you did an ambush back in Australia they expected half the platoon to be awake and the other half to be resting. Well when are you supposed to get sleep if you’ve been doing it for three days? Well we learnt totally different tactics over in Vietnam. Everything, just about everything we learnt in basic training, or in corps training we didn’t use in

Vietnam. But I still think it was just to get us to a stage where we could sort of survive. I think that was basically what it was about.

Yeah there were a few blokes that didn’t handle it. There was, I think there was about out of our initial platoon I think we had a couple of blokes go AWOL [Absent Without Official Leave] in corps training we had two go AWOL.

I’ve got no idea what happened to them and they were both National Servicemen, they’d both been conscripted and probably didn’t want to be there. In corps training and infantry training I think there was one bloke I think went AWOL and I didn’t see him again. But there were a lot of blokes who struggled through it. I mean you can imagine a guy who has been

working in a bank he’s just left school and he’s got a job in a bank and he’s good at figures and all of a sudden someone’s come along and said, “Look mate, you’re in the army, you’re in the army and you’re going to go and do as we tell you.” now this guy had probably never played football in his life, he’s sat at home sort of all the time and all of a sudden someone’s said, “You’re in the big green fighting machine and you’re going to go out and kill people.” I dare say there is a lot of those National Servicemen had it

pretty tough. I couldn’t imagine sort of doing it, I couldn’t imagine me doing it, I would’ve been shattered I think. Like when we finished our infantry training I met a lot of blokes that I consider should never have…. by the time I’d finished infantry training there’s a blokes that shouldn’t have got

infantry, the Infantry Corps. They would’ve been suited to Armoured Corps or Service Corps. You know somewhere working in a Q Store [Quartermaster’s Store] or wherever. Blokes that , they had blokes in our platoon that were strapping big fellas but couldn’t do push ups or whatever. They were big but it wasn’t their way of life. I mean I was a jackeroo for three years and threw hay bales that weighed as much as I did and things like that.

So I can understand these guys having a bit of a struggle with it, and mainly I suppose because it wasn’t what they chose to do and then they’re told do it. I mean if you don’t enjoy your job it’s very hard to do, I enjoyed my job so that made it easy but for these guys, two years in the army would’ve been like

hell. I don’t know how so many of them actually went through it.

Oh well a lot of the guys, I mean I used to help guys. I sort of went out of my way to help blokes to learn map reading and stuff because I was pretty good at it. But just in general fitness and that, like if if we did a run

like to actually get out of infantry training you had to do five miles in full gear or something in eleven, in twenty, oh I can’t remember, but say it was twenty minutes and if the guys were lagging behind you knew that they were going to stay there, they wouldn’t….. and I always got along with everybody fairly well in infantry training I had no problems with anybody.

Infantry training, I can’t really remember any of the names of any of the guys in infantry training believe it or not. There was a bloke they used to call him the Reverend, his name was Enava[?] – he was like the father figure to everybody, he was a bit older than everybody else and he was a really nice bloke, but apart from that the only other bloke I can remember in

corps training was a bloke by the name of, believe it or not, Lyle Andrew Gates, now he joined the army on the same day as I did from Victoria and his name was Lyle Andrew Gates and I couldn’t believe it. I could understand if National Service or they’re calling people up through the alphabet or something but to have a bloke by the name of Andrew Gates in the same platoon was sort of unbelievable. So there was a lot of confusion there too, like when we got reamed out [shouted at] or

whatever, “Are you Gates?” or whatever, “Get out here!” and we’d both step forward, it was rather funny. There were a few instances where one of us had done something wrong and the other bloke had been reamed out or whatever.

Oh just general stuff ups like on parade, dropping something or turning the wrong way or

whatever. I mean, yeah, pretty constant, because you’re trying to think of what to do and all this sort of stuff and the platoon sergeant’s yelling out, “Right turn, left turn!” and you’re trying to think which is your right hand or you look at your mate and he’s turning right so you turn right but he was the one who made the mistake so you made it as well. You know, accidental discharges with weapons and stuff, you’re down the rifle range and you accidentally fire off a shot

while the sergeant’s yelling at you or something. That didn’t go – that was a chargeable offence, didn’t go down very well and you were pretty well reamed out over something like that.

Oh well, the maximum was, I never ever got to maximum in – at rookie or infantry training but the maximum was 7 days in gaol, a fourteen – a forty dollar fine, that was a lot of money in

those days, that was a week’s pay, your loss of pay while you’re in gaol as well and fourteen days confined to barracks which meant you couldn’t go anywhere. You had to get up at half past five in the morning and do a special parade. They had a parade for defaulters, for bad boys. But I struggled through that alright; I didn’t have to do any of that. I kept my nose clean up until that stage, yeah.

Oh yeah there were a few blokes.

got into trouble. Yeah, a lot of blokes couldn’t help get into trouble; like there was blokes in there like well as I mentioned, National Servicemen that virtually stumbled their way through it and some of those guys didn’t know their left foot from their right foot. And it wouldn’t matter how much training you gave them they still wouldn’t know their left foot from their right foot. And even to the stage where like when we got to

Vietnam, there were blokes there that shouldn’t have been there .

Weapons and that?

No, we had no one injured or killed or anything. I think we were fairly lucky actually. I think the grenades, we nearly had a bloke killed on the grenade range. Someone pulled a pin or something and didn’t throw the grenade or something and the NCO was yelling and screaming

and he eventually threw it. The handle had already come off and he was still talking with the grenade in his hand or whatever and had about two seconds or something I think before it went off, and it just went over the wall in time. But no, that’s about, no we didn’t have any major incidents.

Our officers, the officers through recruit training and corps or infantry training

I didn’t really have much time for. I didn’t really think the officers, I respected the NCOs more because to me they seemed to know more. I suppose it was, the officers… were sort of stand apart from us they were a lot higher so I didn’t really have that much to do with the officers.

Yeah, well the food was fairly good. I can’t really complain about the food. The messes were pretty big because they had to cater for three or four hundred blokes I dare say there would’ve been there. And breakfast was like bacon and eggs or scrambled eggs and the scrambled eggs were always powdered or something I think, they mixed it up like with water or something. Crumbed brains for breakfast and stuff like that. The

meals weren’t bad but out in the bush it was ration, most of it was ration pack food and that was… it didn’t consist of much at all, it’s supposed to sustain you and it probably does, but you can’t carry it because there’s too much in the pack. It’s alright if you’re going for one day and you take a one day packet out with you but you can’t do it, you can’t do it all the time. So on the odd occasion when we went out bush if we took

one man packs, you would probably go hungry because they expected you to carry everything that they supplied you, so if you were going out bush that day, you’d have a hootchie [a shelter], a ground sheet and they did a check before you went out, so you had to carry everything. Hootchie, ground sheet, stuff to clean your boots with, soap wash, everything, you name it, you carried the lot, carried your house on your back. And you basically

couldn’t do it, they overloaded you. On the odd occasion when we operated as a platoon out somewhere they’d bring in hot boxes. You know trucks would turn up, like if you were down at the rifle range the hot box meal would turn up. They had these little boxes with hot water in them and they had this food in these canisters and there’d be steak and vegies [vegetables] and potatoes, peas, but you were

reasonably well fed, I can’t really complain about the food. The only thing was the ration packs were a bit hard. And on the odd occasion they gave us ten men ration packs so you’d sit down and mix up a big feed for everybody sort of...

No you couldn’t have anything civilian, no.

What did I miss the most…

probably nothing really, no I don’t really think I missed much. I didn’t really require anything. I mean you’re allowed to have books, you were allowed to have books and stuff like that as long as they weren’t porno or whatever. I used to read a fair bit mainly 'warries' [war stories] and comics, war comics, they were my favourite actually at the time even when I was in the army.

Oh anything,

anything like all Second World War Stuff these little comics, Commando. I think the name of them was Commando that was the name of the brand of comic and they were always fun.

Oh well they were all different but it was, it wasn’t just about Commandos it was about everything. It was tankies or artillery guys or whatever plus Commandos

and it wasn’t just about Germany, it was about Japan and all this sort of stuff and the navy, warships and patrol boats and gun boats and torpedo boats, aircraft Spitfire pilots and all this sort of stuff and I used to enjoy them it was good entertainment.

Oh lots of practical jokes. Yeah that was,

well one of the things that they got me on one night was I went down the boozer one night and I’d really had a heap [drunk a lot] and I said to the boys, “I’m going to go back to my room and go to bed.” so I curled up in bed and I must’ve been asleep probably five minutes when they turned up. So they all got undressed to the stage where they were getting, starting to dressed again. They woke me up again and said, “Come on, parade. It’s five o’clock!” so

I couldn’t believe it, like six or seven hours or something had gone, passed, and I’m getting dressed and they’re all just about fully dressed and walking out the door and I walked out the door and they all just stood there and laughed, so I crawled back and threw up I think, before I went to bed. But that, as the sort of thing that went on there were some funny things happened. One of the guys didn’t get along with the platoon sergeant

so he – he went to the toilet on his desk in his office. The platoon sergeant wasn’t very impressed about it. He never found out who did it though no one would say anything because we were pretty close knit sort of. But there was a lot, yeah a lot of things happened. You know there was all sorts of practical jokes.

No, we didn’t have much in the way of women at all. Well there was no women basically in the army, there was women in there, but not in infantry, you didn’t see much of women. I hardly saw a woman I think in the first six months in greens [in uniform].

Yeah, I did have a girlfriend yeah. Not a… oh we weren’t sort of that close I don’t suppose

she was more of a friend than a girlfriend I suppose. She sort of wasn’t very impressed with me going into the army. I met her at Point Leo and we used to go surfing and that so we were surfing buddies. She used to ride a surfboard. Yeah so that was a sort of a sad goodbye when – I saw, I saw her half way through corps training and then I saw her halfway through infantry training. I only saw her

twice I think then we sort of parted company.

After infantry training?

I got posted to a mob called 1 BOD [?], they were a supply company in Sydney. Although I was infantry they were, there was a big exercise at Shoalwater Bay and

they had to look after that side of the exercise. You know setting up the mess and all that sort of stuff, looking after all the blokes. So they sent me up to Shoalwater Bay and when I arrived there they said, “Well you’ve just done infantry training so how would you like to play enemy for these battalions that are there?” There was a battalion of Australians and a battalion

of Poms [Englishmen] there, they were King’s Shropshire Light Infantry guys and they were training to go to Singapore. So I sort of said straight off, “Yeah I wouldn’t mind playing enemy.” because it was going to be an experience for me. And so I spent ten weeks flying around in choppers. They dropped, they had like camps like set up all over the place and they said, “You play it like you’re an enemy.” You wore the black pyjamas and the funny

hat and that, and we lived in these little villages and they’d come and say, “Oh probably in the next two days someone’s going to attack you or whatever.” sometimes they got a bit rough too like when they captured you they didn’t muck around sort of I think they got a bit carried away on the odd occasion.

Oh, like they’d push you around a fair bit, push you to the ground and say, “How many are you?” like try and interrogate you which

we were told was going to happen anyway. But it was fun because like there was a lot of streams and all that sort of stuff so we used to go yabbying [catching freshwater crayfish], we used to do a lot of fishing because there was really nothing else to do but sit around and wait for these guys and we rebuilt the huts and stuff like that and make them liveable because we had to stay in there, so the better the area was for us the easier it was to do the job. RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] used to fly us in a few cartons of beer every so often, every week or so

they’d fly in a couple of cartons. But it was funny because when we were operating with these Poms the practical jokes really started. We told them that there was these ‘drop bears’ and all this sort of stuff that lived in the trees and they’d drop on you and you had to walk around, if you walked around with your torch shining up in the air they wouldn’t drop on you. Oh there were aluminous spiders, they were up in the trees too, they dropped on you, so if you walked around with your torch in the air right,

none of these things would fall on you. So these guys were walking around tripping over tent pegs and logs and all sorts of stuff walking around with their torches in the air not realising we were having them on.

Oh didn’t take them long, yeah didn’t take them long. They were pretty fascinated by goannas large Australian lizard]. I think there was an incident, an incident where we were all standing around, we had a bit of a bonfire going and we were with the Poms having a few beers, this was about half way through the

exercise and there was this big goanna up this small gum tree and one of the blokes walked over and shook the tree and the goanna took off down the tree, across the ground straight up the nearest bloke which was one of these Poms; and they’ve got claws on them that are six inches long and this just up on the top of his head. Well this guy hit the ground that fast it wasn’t funny. The goanna took off straight away but there was a lot of screaming and it was quite funny.

Yeah got on with them really well yeah.

We swapped souvenirs and stuff like that swapped shirt cause they had different shirts than we did, swapped hats.

Definitely did for me to play enemy, I mean at that stage I had no idea what the enemy were going to be like and then when I found I’m going to be enemy and these blokes were hunting me down and we were told there were no restrictions on what we could do. We weren’t allowed to shoot them but there were no restrictions.

We could sneak out if we wanted to and try and attack them or whatever, so we sort of had our own rules and we just did what we liked . So yeah, I found it helpful. Actually I found the ten weeks there were exceptionally good.

In the ten weeks?

To actually attack them?

Oh well things like they attacked us and that and then captured

us and interrogated and us and that and then they had umpires, they had white bands on and they’d say, “Okay this section is finished or whatever so we’re going to move on.” and they’d move on and we’d follow them up and probably that night we would try and ambush them or whatever. Just, cause that’s what they told us to do, try and harass them and make it as real life as you could. So we’d go out and try and find them and

it was fun.

No, there was no live ammo fired. They did have ranges down there where they had a trail set up but it was very well prepared and they had targets that used to pop up and you would walk along the trails. But they might operate for say a week and then they’d bring them to this range. They did live fires but not where we were. Not sort of

knowing that there were people out front or whatever. But that was pretty standard procedure sort of about couple of weeks at Shoalwater Bay they’d have a live fire. You know, they’d do platoon assaults and stuff like that. Most of it was just walking up trails and shooting the pop up targets but then there was a bit of platoon assaults where you’d line out in a row and they’d have targets popping up and all that, and that was pretty scary because you can’t always see the

bloke beside you, you’re not sure whether you’ve moved forward too far or whatever. Although that didn’t concern me at that stage because I didn’t really do any of that. Mine was just all playing enemy.

There was probably all up about twenty I suppose altogether. But they had us split up into two or three groups. The food was ten man ration packs.

We didn’t have one man ration, they used to bring in the big ration packs for us which was pretty good because there was a better variety in the ten man packs. And with the yabbying and fishing and all that sort of stuff, we lived pretty well for ten weeks. It was fun because I’ve always loved yabbies. I used to go yabbying when I lived in Caulfield, when I was six or seven, the Caulfield racecourse it’s got two big lakes in it and we used to go around the neighbourhood and collect all the shoes and boots and throw them in the lake

and leave them there for a week and when you come back you’d grab a shoe throw it up on the bank and a yabbie would come out of it so we used to come home with half a bucket of yabbies . So I knew, well I enjoyed yabbies I used to eat them so when I got to Shoalwater Bay it was a delicacy .

Well after that I was posted to 6RAR who were still in Singapore at the time and they were going to be based at Enoggera in Brisbane when they came back, so

we sat in the barracks there for about two weeks waiting for 6RAR and someone spotted us; typical army, no one knew where anybody else was or whatever and the 4th Battalion was in the barracks there. They were in the new lines and they were preparing to go to Vietnam. So after about I think two weeks someone said, “Well look, this is a bit ridiculous. They’ve got blokes over there

getting ready to go to 6RAR who are coming back from Singapore and we’re undermanned so why don’t we get these guys?” So they did, someone arranged, I think there was about ten or twelve or us or something I don’t think there was any NCOs we sort of sat around doing nothing. So someone woke up to the fact that we were sitting around doing nothing and decided it was better that we joined the 4th Battalion. So the sergeant came over and said, “Okay you blokes pack your bags get everything

ready you’re moving over to 4R you’ve been posted.” so that was the start of the preparation for Vietnam because I knew that 4 RAR were preparing for Vietnam whereas 6 weren’t.

Oh well, I was pretty excited then, I was more excited than what I was two weeks earlier when I thought I was going to 6RAR. The move was, well the move was funny because when we

arrived there was a formal guard going on and the RSM [Regimental Sergeant Major] was on one side of the road and the guard was on the other side and we drove straight through the middle and he really spat the dummy [lost his temper], “Where the bloody hell…!” and I hadn’t’ had a haircut for about eleven weeks, nearly twelve, because I still hadn’t had a haircut when I got back to Enoggera so I was walking around with hair down to my shoulders and the RSM, when I – when we got out of the car and we were walking across the road he started screaming at us and he

said, he wanted to pick me out, and he said, “Who are you?” and I said, “Ross Gates.” and he said “Bloody hell!” and he was a Pom this guy too, and he was really regimental, he was only about five foot tall but he had a voice on him like a foghorn. His name was, Tony – Tony Toggle his name was and he used to wear shorts that were three sizes too big, they were ironed, they were as stiff as a board and he could walk but his shorts didn’t move, his legs moved in his shorts.

And we had another, I had an RSM like that another CSM [Company Sergeant Major] like that too, Keith Davidson. But he really went off his brain. Actually my slouch hat had a hole in it, someone had thrown one of those black boys, the plants, they’re like a fern with a big spike sticking out of it; well someone had thrown one of those through my slouch hat, used that as target practice so that had a hole through it so I arrived into the 4th Battalion, normally when you walk into a battalion you walk in

looking pretty good and I looked like shit I’ve got to admit. I didn’t feel like it but I looked like it and he threatened me, he didn’t charge me but he was pretty irate. He told me next time he saw me I’d better be in better condition. I tried to explain to him but it didn’t work sort of because there’s no excuse. It’s not as if you could make up an excuse say I didn’t know or I didn’t get time, that doesn’t wash in the army. You know, you just you’re expected to look good

no excuse, so I didn’t look all that good, I was a bit of a mess. But from then on it was down to training. We sort of we got stuck into it pretty well straight away. Most of the first, probably couple of months were a lot of rifle fire and that learning different weapons. I think we just got the armalite I think at that stage, so we had another weapon

to train with, the armalite. The barracks were brand new, they were big cream brick buildings. The mess was excellent, the food was really good, couldn’t complain about the food there and the blokes were pretty good. Most of the NCOs in the battalion were second tour blokes they’d already been to Vietnam.

No they still weren’t telling us that much, just to train hard but we still didn’t know. I mean right up until I left to go to Vietnam I didn’t get much information from the second tour guys. I don’t know whether they just didn’t want to talk about their experiences which I found hard, which I find hard to believe now because we were getting ready to go to Vietnam and these blokes weren’t saying much about it.

I’ve got no idea. I still can’t

fathom it. I know if I had’ve been in their shoes I would’ve been telling them every single thing I knew. I think one of the, probably one of the problems was that they were still told to instruct us by the book and because you couldn’t go by the book in Vietnam they couldn’t teach us to do it like that. I think that was where the problem was because I mean it was totally different in Vietnam to what the training

was. They hardly taught us about bunker systems or weapon pits and all this sort of stuff and tunnels. I hadn’t heard of a tunnel until I got to Vietnam. I think I was part of the way through Vietnam before I realised there was tunnel systems there anyway, so it’s not as if we were really well informed. I don’t think we were well informed at all even by accounts of the type of weapons that they had and all that sort of stuff.

They had the best assault weapon in the world…

No I probably didn’t, at the time I don’t think I realised, I just, I knew that I was being trained for Vietnam and I felt that the training I was doing was fine. I didn’t sort of realise that we should’ve trained a lot differently before we

went.

No, no, I hadn’t, and at that stage my brother was in Vietnam but I’d had really no contact with him at all. I think he’d probably been over there for about eight months, seven months or something and I still didn’t really know what Vietnam was like or whatever.

Well

it was just the same stuff as like we read out of the papers that the communist were invading the south and you were going over there to slow them up a bit. It was you know the yellow peril being supported by the Chinese that was, well that was true anyway. But to me I was just training, I was doing what I thought was the right thing because it was done by the book

but I didn’t know that the book wasn’t really all that good over there. Probably, there was, I had no idea really of what to expect when I got over there or anything. I mean to me targets that had popped up were just cardboard targets or whatever or things like that it still wasn’t, I still wasn’t at the stage where I realised that I was going to be shooting people in the near future

Yeah well that was a lot more intense. You know there was a lot more bush work and there was a lot more weapons handling and stuff like that. At that stage we’d still never worked with artillery, we still hadn’t worked with armoured personnel carriers or tanks

or anything like that. We still hadn’t worked with helicopters so at that stage while we were still relatively new as far as stuff that we had at our disposal it was just, we were still basically learning infantry tactics up to platoon, section level and platoon level. And as a platoon

it was, I probably didn’t learn much about how the platoon operated at that stage it was more the section, the eleven blokes, how you operated with the section and that it wasn’t until later on that I understood about platoons and all that sort of stuff. Although we were basically a platoon in training it was more we did section work I think that was basically the start of it.

Oh really good, yeah, I got along with everybody really well and I think I was there for, I’m not sure, I think I was there for about four months of something with 4 RAR. The whole battalion, the battalion was…

Yeah well I formed pretty good relationships with all the blokes in the platoon.

A couple of those blokes were second tour guides. My NCO, senior NCO was a second tour bloke. But they still didn’t discuss Vietnam that much to us. Most of that training was still pretty well by the book. I, and I honestly can’t understand why after them doing a second tour and knowing that the book was going

to get thrown out of the window and we were going to go shortly that they would still do it by the book. But that was just the way it eventuated.

But most of the blokes at that stage were - these guys that were with me were fairly well trained because they had already been training for probably twelve months to go to Vietnam. So I sort of, the blokes that came over from 6RAR we were

probably a bit under trained at that stage. That didn’t worry me that much cause I figured I’d catch up pretty quick. It’s always hard moving into a new section because like they split us up through the battalion. There was platoons in there that needed a couple of extra blokes so you just went to a battalion so you immediately lost contact basically with the blokes that you were with and you had to start with a new group which had been happening for twelve months, almost twelve months

whatever it was. You were continually meeting new guys. You’d just get to know them and the next minute you were split up again.

Not really, well they were all basically good friends. I got on with everybody you know but there’s really no one that I could say that I was really close to they were just drinking buddies I suppose.

Well I mean we’d probably go to the bush for a week or something come back in on the Friday and then we’d have the weekend to ourselves. It was basically with 4 RAR at that stage was probably pretty well a nine to five job. Until we went to,

I think once we went to Shoalwater Bay which was, it wasn’t long after I arrived there we did four weeks at Shoalwater Bay and that because I had been through Shoalwater Bay before and played enemy I knew what to expect anyway. So I did Shoalwater Bay again and that was a reversal that was chasing the enemy and it was four weeks out the bush with no comforts or whatever. Occasionally we

got a beer or whatever but generally it was just all bush work as though we were in a place like Vietnam. A lot of platoon and section ambushing and live fire, still hadn’t operated with artillery or anything. We operated with, I think they flew us in, I think they flew us up by Herc [Hercules aircraft], yeah flew us up by Herc to Shoalwater Bay

and we did a bit of chopper helicopter stuff while we were down there as well. That was the first time I’d really been involved with helicopters which was pretty exciting.

Yeah, well I was, I never really thought much of helicopters because the blades didn’t seem all that big and I didn’t think they’d be able to stay up there and the first ride up in a helicopter although back then you had to put your seatbelts on and all that sort of stuff, and had the doors

closed and all that because there were pretty strict rules about operating in Australia. Yeah the first ride it was extremely good. I think, actually when I played enemy at Shoalwater Bay for One BOD I got a few helicopter rides but that was just you know take us to one spot sort of and then drop us off but this was you know this was a bit more assaults into hot LZs [landing zones]and stuff like that where

you’ve got to jump out of the chopper and hit the ground and protect the helicopter and watch your back and watch your mates and all this sort of stuff. So it was a bit, it was a bit more intense the other the original stuff as you know to just ride out to where the villages were but no the helicopters were exciting.

Oh just being able to see everything from the air, I mean I’d been up in aircraft a couple of

times before that because when I was jackerooing I used to have show the crop dusters the boundary fences and stuff like that so I'd been up in fixed wing but I’d never been in helicopter but yeah it was most exciting I would recommend it to anybody.

No not really, no, no. I mean you get in there and you’re looking out the window and all of a sudden it’s you’re going up in the air, and all of a sudden you’re thinking, “Oh no what happens if the motor stops or something?” but no I don’t think I was ever really scared.

I might’ve been a bit apprehensive I suppose but no it was fun. It was really fun.

Oh well I presumed that that was basically what it was going to be like in Vietnam that’s what I believed because it was supposed to have

been apart from people playing enemy and firing blanks or whatever this was basically what it was like you know in Vietnam. And well I found out later on that it was totally different because it was nothing like that. Well Shoalwater Bay didn’t really have any jungle. Didn’t have the rice paddies, didn’t have all the water, didn’t have the rain, didn’t have the dry – well it had the rain but it didn’t rain I don’t think while we were there. It was pretty, extremely dry actually.

So yeah I figured that that was probably about as close to something I was going to get that was like Vietnam. And it was yeah four weeks of, it was non stop for four weeks and then it was back to the battalion and then within about three weeks I think we did Canungra which was a different ball game. That was really tough because they had people down there

that were going to push you to the limit to see if you would crack. That was more like Vietnam because they had it in the jungle and all that sort of stuff at Canungra. It was five o’clock in the morning out of bed, couple of mile run, back, do what you had to do in a hurry, eat what you had to eat in a hurry and then hurry up and do what you had to do. It was full on. And it was, the training was probably mainly

field craft and ambushing and jumping on and off choppers and stuff like that. Live fire. You know they had these machine guns set up and they used to fire over your head and you would be crawling along through barbed wire and they had the bear pit and all this sort of stuff. You know you had to climb over walls and climb through tunnels full of water and run up and down cargo nets and swing across ropes and all sorts of stuff and that was,

that was full on for about three weeks I think roughly, I think it was about three weeks.

I enjoyed that, yeah. It was pretty strenuous, it was pretty taxing but no I enjoyed it cause like I made it a challenge and I was going to, I wanted to learn as much as what I could and I was probably one of the best at map reading and that and I was a pretty good shot.

I was fit; I mean I was nowhere near as fit as

what I was when I came back from Vietnam got out of Vietnam but no I was pretty fit, I could run the two k’s [kilometres] in the morning no problems. But I was a fairly heavy smoker so the lungs would sort of bust a bit, but no, I was fit; I didn’t have much fat on me at all.

Some of the other blokes weren’t all that fit. I mean we had guys even over in Vietnam for some, don’t ask me how managed to stay

with a little of weight on you know but no most of the blokes were pretty fit there was the odd one that wasn’t. But most of them got through it all right.

No we had a, some bloke lost his – lost a finger jumping off a truck he got his wedding ring or something caught on a pin on the truck and jumped off and ripped his finger off. But I think that was about it. There was a lot of sprained ankles and stuff when you’re out in the bush the

blokes do their knees or whatever, sprained ankles and that. There was no, there was a couple of accidental discharges with weapons or whatever but they were only blanks. No so apart from that no it was pretty good there wasn’t too many blokes injured.

We went back to Brisbane and then started the training again I think it wasn’t long after

that oh I went into town one night and went to the pub and had a few beers in me and got into a fight. Oh well there was quite a few of us I suppose. You’d probably call it a brawl more than a fight and the police turned up with their paddy wagons [police trucks]. And actually I was standing out the front at the time and I wasn’t involved at that stage in a fight and this copper dragged a mate of mine out to throw him into the back of the van and

my mate was trying to punch this copper. So I grabbed my mate by the arm and obviously this other copper thought I was trying to drag my mate away from him so he got me in a head lock in a choker hold and dragged me to the paddy wagon and threw me in the back of the van; so I got a free trip around Brisbane for about two hours but we played up while we were in the back, we jumped up and down. We had the van bouncing from side to side and up and down and all that. Anyway we got back to the watch house [police station] and they

decided to process us and I was the last one to be processed and these burly coppers decided to use me as a punching bag. Anyway they proceeded to flatten me, I think I hit the ground about three times and on the third time I thought there’s not much point in getting up because they’re just going to flatten me again so I stayed on the ground and sort of covered up, and then they just said, “Get up, we’re taking you to the cell.” Well at that stage I

thought I had a bit of trouble hearing you know, so anyway I spent the night in gaol, anyway I paid two dollars, no a pound or no two dollars bail I think it was and got a cab back out to the army base and went and saw the medical officer because I had a horrible ringing in my ears and I felt like I was deaf in one ear. So the MO [Medical Officer] said, “Guess what buddy you’ve got a major perforation of the ear drum.” And

to me that really didn’t mean much it just meant I couldn’t hear at the time you know. But he said, “You’re going to have to….” they sent me to a specialist and they wouldn’t, he was talking about operating and doing a skin graft on it and he said, “Oh I won’t do that.” he didn’t want to do it at the time. And I didn’t think too much of it and just continued on doing what I was doing and they had this big parade one day and we’d been down at the rifle range at Red Bank or Green Bank or whatever I don’t remember the colours, whatever

colour it was, and when we got back the rest of the battalion had had a parade and a couple of blokes walked up and said “Hey guess what buddy, you’re not going to Vietnam.” and I said, “Why not?” and they said, “Oh wel,l apparently they read the names of about four blokes were medically unfit.” and I said “Like bloody hell!” and my platoon sergeant came over and said, “Sorry buddy, but you’re not going.” And this was just before Christmas and at that stage the battalion was just getting ready to

go on leave on pre em [pre-embarkation] leave, no on Christmas leave, I don’t think it was pre-embarkation leave I think it was just Christmas leave. So they said to me, “Oh well seeing as you’re not going to Vietnam you can stay here and do mess duties and all that sort of stuff while the rest of the blokes go on leave.” So I went and saw my platoon sergeant and said, “Listen, I joined the army to go to Vietnam and if I can’t go to Vietnam I’m not interested in your army.” So I went and packed all my belongings, put my back over my shoulder and hitched hiked down to Melbourne

and decided that seeing as though the army didn’t want me to go to Vietnam I didn’t want to be in the army, I mean I was really cheesed off [angry] because that was always what I had my heart set on and I’d done enough training to warrant me going over there and all of a sudden these blokes are telling me “Oh no, sorry mate, you’re not fit, you can’t hear out of one ear.” So off I went to Melbourne and I spent about fifteen days down there I think.

I went back, I slept in the battalion lines for about three days or something, no one dobbed me in [informed on me], I’d stay in the lines and then just go into town during the day. And then eventually the provosts [military police] caught me and someone must’ve told someone where I was and they walked into my room and said, “You’re AWOL [absent without official leave].” So I was charged with being AWOL and I fronted the OC [officer commanding] and I had the

CSM [company sergeant major] and two guards with me and they marched me in and the OC said to me, “Well you’ve really done a good job on it.” and I said, “Well sir, as far as I’m concerned there’s no point of me being in the army. I want to go to Vietnam and you say I can’t go there’s not much point in me being here.” and he said, “Well look” he said “I had a similar problem a few years ago when I was supposed to go to Borneo and I was playing rugby union and I damaged my knee and I couldn’t go” and he said,

“I know how you feel so what I’ll do I’ll have a chat to the CO [Commanding Officer] for you.” because after you front the OC you’ve got to front the CO so I figured this’ll be alright he’s going to have a chat to the CO for me. So I think next day I fronted the CO this Tony Toggle, and two guard and he yells out, “March the guilty party in.” and I thought, “Well that doesn’t sound real good. I’m the guilty party already and I haven’t even fronted the CO yet!” So

I walked in there and the CO said, “What have you got to say for yourself?” I said, “Well it’s like this sir” I said, “There’s no point of me being in the army” I said, “You don’t want me to go to Vietnam, I can’t go to Vietnam if you don’t want me there’s no point in me being here.” And the RSM just turned around and told me to, “Shut up.” so I just shut up and the CO said, “Oh well, seven days in gaol, a forty dollar fine and fourteen days field punishment – 14 days confined to barracks.” So then they marched me straight to the gaol and locked me up for seven days.

But gaol was a bit of an experience because you had to do the CB [confined to barracks] parades which meant that in the morning and in the afternoon all the defaulters marched around the parade ground and that. So they’d get me up at 5 o’clock in the morning, no weapon and there was, oh that’s right I did have a weapon because they used to make you run around the parade ground with a rifle over your head with your hands up in the air with the rifle over your head. They had steel trunks with rocks in that you had to run around,

one bloke on either side of it you’d run for a 100 metres, drop it, change sides, run, drop it, things like that and I got into a bit of trouble when the RP sergeant used to take these parades and they’d actually, they’d march around the parade ground. You know left, right, left right and because I was absolutely stone deaf in one ear I couldn’t hear him very well, so I’m out in the middle of this parade ground marching along with these guys and someone yells out, “Right turn!” but I don’t hear them

because me crook [injured] ear is not on their side, so all the blokes right turn and I keep going you know. So after about five minutes of this the RP sergeant’s got me by the shirt and he thinks that I’m a bit of a smart arse [ a cheeky one] and he’s got me by the shirt and he’s just about ready to punch me because he was really cheesed off with me, and I was lucky cause my platoon sergeant happened to be walking by and told him to let go, and he understood why I went AWOL. He said he probably would’ve done

the same thing. So I did seven days in gaol, actually on the, I’m just trying to think, my rifle had been put into the armoury but it hadn’t been cleaned. So they brought it down and gave it to me I think it was the second morning I was in gaol, and I had it on my knees with all the parts of it laid on the bed

when the orderly officer walked in and I couldn’t stand up, I mean well I could’ve but I would’ve just dropped everything, and he went off at me [shouted at me] for not standing up. He said, “Don’t you stand when an officer walks in the room?” So I did the right thing and just stood and just let the rifle hit the floor because at that stage I was rebellious, I’d had enough. So I was out cutting grass with scissors all that, you know, along the edge of the road. They gave me a pair of

scissors and they had this big copper pipe, copper stink pipe that connected to the toilet and that was polished every morning and that was my job. But it kept me fairly fit while I was in gaol because you know I had to do the CB parades and all that. That was my first taste of military life behind bars.

How they…

It was just a punch, yeah it was a punch.

Three police officers yeah. In fact there was actually a case, there was an enquiry went on into it but unfortunately about a month before the enquiry somehow I got transferred to Townsville which was a bit upsetting really because I had no chance of putting my case.

But I got a phone call from some guy that wanted to know if I had anything, how I could prove that I was in gaol at the time and I still had the receipt actually from getting out of gaol, so I sent that down but nothing came of it. They said that they couldn’t identify the police that were on duty that night yet there were signatures on it, a signature on it to get me out of gaol you know, to release me

but nothing ever came of it, so.

So nothing ever happened to those police officers, no. And I never held it, I mean you know, I dare say you being a copper you’ve got to put with all sorts of smart bums and that it would be a rotten job. I’ve never held it against a copper since it’s not - I still respect the police and that you know. It was just unfortunate there’s some ratbags [bad ones] amongst them.

No, no I don’t believe I was no.

No, I was just sitting on the bench and the copper said “Stand up” and I just said , I might’ve said something like, “Are you talking to me?” or whatever, but you know it wasn’t sort of , it’s not as though I tried to hit him or anything. I didn’t think I, well I didn’t try to hit any of the other blokes and I was the last one he processed.

No idea, just decided that you know I was a good target probably. But I definitely didn’t, I didn’t swear at them or anything like. Like I said, I even tried

to do the right thing and stop my mate from punching this other copper, so it’s not as though I was out to antagonise them or anything. He just happened to single me out I just happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time. I mean if I had been processed first I probably wouldn’t have got flattened. So I was in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

No, well it, it was crook for awhile. My hearing pretty

well returned to normal within about, oh I suppose five or six months, but I had a lot of specialist appointments you know I had to go and see a team of specialists and audio tests and all that sort of stuff. Yeah so that was really at the end of my 4 RAR experience.

No, no it didn’t enter my mind.

The only thing that entered my mind was that, well I never really thought that I wouldn’t be able to do my job properly in the first place, because you’ve got to have pretty good hearing if you’re a forward scout or your laying their on sentry or whatever, but that didn’t enter my mind. The only thing that entered my mind was I was ropeable [angry] because I wasn’t going to Vietnam because that’s what I trained for. And I felt that I had already done two trips to Shoalwater Bay and one trip to Canungra and I figured I was ready for

Vietnam and they were just about ready to leave. And another thing too, if I had’ve gone over 4 RAR, the 4th Battalion I would’ve been getting off the boat as my brother was getting on the boat which would’ve been a bit of an experience as well. So that didn’t happen, so that disappointed me a bit.

Oh yeah, there’s no way in the world I could’ve gone to Vietnam. No way. But that didn’t make

any difference to me I was hell bent on being cranky with the army you know. I can understand why they didn’t send me because there was no way I could’ve done my job properly.

I was… twenty, twenty I would’ve been.

Oh yeah a bit young to realise, a bit naïve, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah when I was in Townsville, I think I was in Townsville for about a month and I actually ran into someone, , about a month after the enquiry there was a bloke up here from Brisbane who was in the orderly room down there and he told me the outcome cause I didn’t hear the outcome of it, I didn’t hear anything. He just said that apparently they couldn’t work out who was on duty at that time and they couldn’t hold anyone responsible. So they didn’t deny it was you they just said, “Oh well,

if it happened we don’t know who it was that did it.”

Oh I was yeah.

Yeah it was, I think the mood was just starting to swing a bit against Vietnam mainly because of National Servicemen but I think the general consensus at that stage was the majority of people accepted the fact that we should’ve been there and that was

the way I felt as well so.

Don’t know. I think it was just all the training that I’d done probably and that to me, I hated the thought of all this training and not getting a chance to test it. It’s a bit like, it would be a bit like being a motor mechanic and doing an apprenticeship and when you’ve finished some bloke bringing in a toaster and saying, “Fix my toaster.” To me that was it you know. I was ropeable.

No, no, I was in civilians [clothes] but you know you could tell we were army because we looked like army. Cause the majority of kids in those days had long hair you know. We stuck out, I mean you could see us a mile away, we were army. Well you know, there’s ten blokes over there with short hair - you were army but we never really had any trouble with the civilian population or anything it’s not as if people, at that stage,

not as if people didn’t like us it was just accepted we were soldiers going off to Vietnam. It was a bit different later on though.

Oh yeah I think someone yelled out, I think it was… someone wanted this band to sing a particular song you know Twenty Miles or something like that Ray Brown and the Whispers I think it might’ve been. I’m pretty sure it was Ray Brown and the Whispers [the band]

and someone said you know, “Sing Twenty Miles” or whatever and they said, “Oh no we’re not going to do it” the next minute it was on. Oh there was a lot of blokes involved in it. But I was involved in it probably five minutes and I went outside you know I had had enough of it. And then the police arrived and I just stood outside and then my mate came out, getting dragged out by the cops so…

Oh I don’t thinks so, no, no, I don’t think so. Mind you it was only army blokes

that got locked up but probably because we were the worst, oh well, they were the worst offenders you know. You see back then we were training for Vietnam, so all of a sudden we became invincible, we could take on anybody and it wouldn’t matter, not that we did well you know, we might’ve occasionally, but generally the feeling was that we were bullet proof, we could do what we liked, say what we liked and no one was really going to worry us, so

I think the majority of the guys were like that. When we drank we didn’t drink in moderation put it that way, we really got stuck into it. I suppose there was that feeling of there mightn’t be a next month to enjoy, another beer or whatever, I don’t know but we just felt we were invincible.

At that stage it hadn’t really

occurred to me I was sort of pretty convinced that you know, trained enough, well trained enough to sort of get me through. And yeah at that stage yeah I thought I was well trained.

No seven days in gaol in just made me stronger. It made me more determined to get through what I had to get through cause I

still at that stage figured, “Well I’m going to get to Vietnam some how. If I’ve got to row a boat or whatever but I’ll get there.” So no, it probably just lit the fire a bit more I think, just made it a bit more intense so yeah.

No. Oh actually I had because… no actually at that stage I hadn’t it was a bit later. I hadn’t seen him

after he’d come home. No I’m just trying to think of… no it was when I was with 6, when I was with 6 RAR I went AWOL for awhile as well but that’s a different story…

That’s later.

So I was transferred to Townsville yeah.

Yeah well I was, I didn’t have a clue what was going to happen to me sort of and I sat around

probably or about three or four weeks or something I think before I got transferred and they said to me, “Oh you’ve been transferred to Townsville.’ and I said, “Yeah right where the hell’s Townsville?” cause I had no idea where Townsville was. I knew where Cains was because I’d been up here when I was a kid. Mum and Dad sent me up on a train, it was like the boys’ scouts or something like that for a couple of weeks on the train. So I knew where Cains was but I had no idea where Townsville was. I arrived here and I think it was

early February and they’d not had rain whatsoever. Got off the train had a bit of a look around, it looked like a dust bowl. It was a shocker. All the hills were brown, there wasn’t a blade of green grass anywhere. I think this mate of mine Ted and I, or it might’ve been Blue McCauley I’m not sure we walked out the front, there was two girls sitting on a bus seat there

and we were just sort of eyeing them off and this sheila [girl] turned around to me and said, excuse the language, “What are you fucking staring at?” and I said to Ted, “What the bloody, you know what have we got ourselves in for here?” the first people we met in Townsville, two chicks [girls], asking us what we we’re staring at with the language like I couldn’t believe. So that was our welcome to Townsville. So they sent a car out, we rang up Laverack Barracks and they sent a car out and picked us up from the station and took us out to Laverack and

that was the start, that was my welcome to 6 RAR, yeah. The battalion was just forming. There wasn’t many, the majority of the blokes that had done the tour before had been sent to other battalions or had got out of the army or whatever. So there was probably I think when I arrived here, about fifty blokes got into the battalion

and that was February ’68 and then the training started all over again. Here I was thinking I’ve got a chance to go to Vietnam knowing that it was still a long way off, it was still a year and a bit before I was going to get to Vietnam if I was going to go. So yeah the training started all over again. Trips, a lot of time spent up the High Range, I think in over a period of twelve

months I think we probably would’ve spent about a month in Townsville the rest of it was all bush work. APC’s [armoured personnel carriers]up the Ingham you know trucks up the High Range and running around up at Mount Speck in the jungle, it was full on.

Pretty much the same as what it was with 4 RAR.

Yeah, yeah the equipment was a bit better but it was still you know, they were trialling stuff like they gave us different packs to trial and nothing seemed to be any good. It was like they weren’t really quite sure what we needed. The packs had improved a fair bit. That made it a bit easier because we lugged a hell of a weight, it was not as if they were light or anything the amount of stuff we had to carry.

Oh I don’t know I’d say at a rough guess it would’ve had to be fifty or sixty pound I suppose, probably at least. The thing about the battalion was that they weren’t as strict what you had to take with you. If you decided you didn’t want to take a hootchie with you, well if you wanted to sleep in the rain well so be it you know they weren’t really that strict. But they had certain requirements, you know certain things that you had to take.

No but the training was full on here and then, I think …

The equipment?

Oh the climate sorry, the climate was….yeah there was a great change in climate. It was stinking hot during the day but believe it or not was freezing cold especially up the back there, it used to drop to three or four degrees

and we used to have combat jackets which we didn’t always take because it was just something else that you had to carry. So if you got a cold snap while you were up there well that was bad luck, you just froze. Like many a time Barry my machine gunner and I cuddled up together I’ve got to admit, because we were freezing. Unlike the boys playing enemy down they road, they had big fire going and all that, they’d be sitting around that chatting away, having a big fire and we had to lay in an ambush and couldn’t

touch your rifle, the barrel of your rifle because your fingers would stick to it. That was just up at High Range there you wouldn’t believe it could get that cold in north Queensland but it did, bitterly cold and stinking hot during the summer. It really didn’t make it easy I mean some of the stuff we did, we did a bit of a navigational exercise from the Ross

River Dam which is probably about fifteen miles from here up to the top of Mount Speck up to the top of Mount Stewart sorry, where the TV towers are and by the maps it’s probably about eight or ten k’s or something I suppose it would be, but on foot it’s about thirty because you’d just go up one hill down another down into a steep ravine and you’d walk up the next one and you think “Oh when’s it going to end?” it probably took about three days or something

and it was that tough and I don’t know how we didn’t suffer from dehydration, and we did because you can only carry a certain amount of water. I mean it is not as if you can drink whenever you feel like it because if you do you’ll definitely run out of water. You’ve got to conserve your water because you don’t know when you’re going to get it again. If you find a creek and it’s got water, because you don’t find a creek around here in the summer that’s got water in it, nothing’s got water in it around Townsville up over the back

or wherever, there was no water to be had, they had to bring it in by truck. So if you were going out for a few days you had to make sure you carried enough water, if you knew you were going to get a resupply fair enough but if you didn’t know when you were going to get resupplied it was a bit difficult.

Oh, it was even better

still than Brisbane. The blokes, I felt that the blokes were a better mob of blokes that I was with, I got along with them really well. I was probably one of the older guys in the platoon at this stage because I’d been in the army for eighteen months, nearly two years, well eighteen months I think it would’ve been, and a lot of these blokes were National Servicemen that had just come in. So I’d already done a lot of

training, been through Shoalwater Bay, been through Canungra, so I felt that, I probably felt a bit above everybody else as far as my training went. Our platoon commander he was straight out of Duntroon [Royal Military College] and he arrived at the battalion in his little sports car or whatever and sort of drove in there. I didn’t know at this

stage that he was going to be my platoon commander. I got on really well with him. What had happened...

Oh the platoon commander had just arrived but… I’ve just got to try and get it in the right order. We got straight into training pretty well straight away and my platoon sergeant was Bob

Buick and he was in [the battle of] Long Tan, so I figured well, I’ve got a hero here and he’s my platoon sergeant and he was at Long Tan and all that sort of stuff. So I thought I’d get a fair bit out of him as far as Vietnam but he didn’t really say much about it which I was very, we’ve discussed it since and we figured that even with the amount of time that he spent with us that he still didn’t really teach

us enough about Vietnam. It was still by the book [according to the rules]. Our training was still basically by the book which seems a bit strange but obviously that was the way they were required to do it. I was volunteered – not long I was at the battalion – he said to me, “Look, I’ve got a good job for you. I want you to be the CO’s batman.”

and I said, “Look sergeant, there’s no way in the world I want a job as a batman.” I said, “I’m in infantry and I’m not going to run around with the CO polishing his boots and carrying his Sig [signals] Set.” I said, “That’s not me.” You know, so I said, “You make me do that I’m off, I’ll go.” I was prepared to go again I wasn’t going to hang around. Anyway he decided that I’d make a good NCO

and he said, “Look I think there’s an army headquarter NCO course down on at Canungra and I would like you and Chuck Connors.” one of the other blokes in the platoon, “To do this NCO course.” And I said to Bob, “Look I’m only in for three years I don’t particularly want responsibility I just want the experience, want to do my job and then what ever happens after that so be it.” He said, “Well

you’re going whether you like it or not.” because that’s the way the army operates when they tell you to do something you do it. So, I decide I’m well so off we go. Chuck he’d only just become a corporal, he was a second tour bloke and he’d just become a corporal and he said there’s no need for me to go down and Bob said, “Oh well the experience’ll do you the world of good as well.” So it was down to Shoalwater Bay by bus

for about three or four weeks and that was pretty intense training as well, but it was at a different level as well because we were supposed to be teaching other people how to do things so this was a different level for me. It wasn’t beyond me but it wasn’t what I’d planned you know. So when I got down there I had to give lectures to people on the M60, the cyclic rate of fire and the muzzle

velocity and all this sort of stuff and teach, I mean I was only teaching people the same as me but I had to give lessons and all that sort of stuff. But there was still all the novel training as wel,l up at five in the morning, go for your run and then do all this, had to do all these courses, map reading and all that. It was three subjects, subject A, B and C. A was field craft I think, I can’t remember what but

I think subject C was military law and that was one that I definitely wasn’t interested in. So I passed the other two subjects but I failed military law badly I had no hope with that. The book was too thick for me. I enjoyed the training down there, it was a challenge. I figured that well, seeing as I’m here I’ll make the most of it. I only got into trouble once when I was down there. We went out one night and

didn’t get back until three, we sort’ve, it wasn’t actually, well I suppose we were able because we didn’t have leave passes but we shot through and went down the Gold Coast and then got back about three o’clock in the morning and I had to give a lesson on the M60 and I figured well, that won’t be too bad because hopefully it’ll be after lunch and I’ll be able to organise things at smoko [morning tea] or whatever and I just, my name happened to get read first up I didn’t have any machine guns with me, I had nothing prepared, I wasn’t prepared

so I got reamed out [yelled at] and I got told to get off my butt and to get over to the tent and you’ve got an hour or something to prepare your lesson and it’d better be good you know. So I whizzed over there sat down and studied up a bit, came back and did alright you know, yeah. But I’d already been through Canungra the once before that so I knew what to expect. The water was just as cold and

muddy in the bear bit or whatever they call it and the tunnels were just as long and the barbed wire was just as spiky and the shooting over the head the noise was just as bad. But no I enjoyed it.

No, I didn’t really enjoy that that much cause I felt a bit, I still felt at this stage that it was sort of a bit above me you know. I still hadn’t accepted that they were training me to be a NCO sort of and I still wanted,

I didn’t want the responsibility that wasn’t part of my plan you know. They’d totally changed the plans of everything because I was just going to do my job in the infantry section whether it be a machine gunner, forward scout or whatever well now all of a sudden someone said to me there could be a bit of responsibility involved. So, no, I accepted it but I was a bit nervous about it I was never a good speaker or anything like that and you know I probably, I probably couldn’t done better if I’d

studied up a bit on it but because of at that stage I hadn’t thought about doing it that I didn’t become involved that much you know. I mean, I learned very early in the piece to not become involved in anything in the army you walk around with a clip board in your hand and no one involves you in anything. Right, so everywhere I went I walked around with a clip board didn’t matter where I was going, no one ever pulls you up they think you’ve got a job. So that was all I did wandered around with a clip board

and never got involved in anything that I didn’t really feel that I should’ve got involved in.

Yeah the trick is to look busy look like you’ve always got something on so then we finished our training at Shoalwater Bay and on our way home we were just south of Bowen when oh about, we would’ve been about

fifty kilometres south of Bowen I was up talking to Chuck. So I was sitting on the floor having a chat to him and he said, “Oh have you got any money on you?” I said, “Oh yeah I’ve got about twenty bucks.” He said, “Can I borrow some?” because we’d arranged to meet at a – we arranged to have lunch at a hotel there in Bowen. And so I got up off the floor and walked back and sat in my seat which was about five seats from the back on the left hand side on the aisle seat and you know put my head back and shut my eyes

and about oh it would’ve only been a couple of minutes I suppose, I don’t think I was asleep, the bloke beside was grabbing me and like trying to pull me out of the seat. And no I wasn’t in the aisle seat I was in the other seat I was in the window seat and I looked across at him and I could see the ground, I could see the grass outside the window like going past the window and realised we were on our way over it was doing a roll you know and we blew a front tyre

on the bus just as we, we were lucky it just happened just as we hit the bridge, if it had’ve happened a hundred metres before the bridge it would’ve been total, I mean it was total cast as it was but I think probably half the blokes would’ve got killed in the bus. Anyway what happened was we blew the tyre, we ran off the road luckily to the left cause there was traffic on the road, caravans on the road and went over this embankment, didn’t touch the ground for something like about thirty

feet. The bus landed on its side and as it landed on its side I fell out of my seat, passed the bloke that was on the inside of me and was heading for the window on the far side and I thought I was going to go through the window, so I sort of put my foot and I hit one of the, well part of the aluminium on the side of the bus and realised that I wasn’t go through the window and then I looked up and saw this rifle coming at me. This was because we had all our rifles up on the parcel shelves

and it hit me in the head and that’s all I remember and when I came too I was lying, I wasn’t sure where, I was but I realised that I was laying in the roof of the bus because there was like these dome lights along there and I thought that’s well I’m definitely in the roof of the bus and I looked up and clear blue sky. There was no bus, the bus was sitting bedside us. The roof had been torn right off the bus. From the

floor right over was ripped off. About eighty percent of the seats were laid back or flattened a bit or whatever. There was guys you know, crawling around everywhere. I think I would’ve only been out for a couple of minutes I think. And I sort of picked myself up, I had a thumping – I had a great lump on my head where the rifle hit me. I had a, something had hit me in the face I had a big bruise under my eye

and I had a big footprint – I had bruised ribs and a big front print on my chest where someone’s boot must’ve sort of hit me. Anyway we started wandering around you know, all the luggage compartments flew open so all the gear got strewn out everywhere and we travelled, must’ve travelled about probably a hundred metres I suppose from the road. Apparently three complete somersaults it did. Hit this big tree stump on the second roll and that’s what tore the roof off. And I found

me mate Chuck and he wasn’t too good, he was sitting next to this tree stump. He had a severe gash over one eye but he had massive internal injuries so he lasted about five minutes I suppose, passed away which was a bit sad. But the coppers reckoned it it was the worst accident they’d seen in twenty years or thirty years but it was the most organised cause we had,

we’d all done first aid courses and all this sort of stuff. We had shell dressings, field dressings and all that you now for gun shots and all that. We had blokes that you know busted – one died where blokes that were probably – I think we had eleven seriously injured. You know blokes with broken legs, broken hips, broken arms all that sort of stuff. But by the time the ambulance got there everyone that could be treated was treated you know to the best of our abilities. There was no one sitting there with

head gashes or you know, if they had broken arms they had arms in a sling and all this so it was, yeah it was pretty traumatic sort of, because I know it’s probably the first time I’d been involved in sort of something like that apart from when I was jackerooing I got hit by a car when I was riding a pushbike which I didn’t mention.

All army blokes on the bus yeah. It was a Red Line bus and Red Line had a really bad

reputation for maintenance on their buses just in that – over about a five year period they had some monumental crashes. I think they had one up in the Blue Mountains somewhere, one up in Kosciusko somewhere they had some really good smashes.

It was 1968 yeah.

It was… I think it was about, I think it was

roughly mid year I think.

We were all coming back to Townsville yeah, on the bus. And it was arranged that we meet at this hotel for lunch anyway. I finished up in hospital for about three hours I think, they kept me under observation because I had been knocked unconscious and when I got out and went down the pub there were blokes sitting there with arms in slings and bandages around their heads and they patched up as many people as they could. They kept

a heap in hospital so we proceeded to sit down and have a few beers and had lunch and that. Oh this was pretty late this was about, would’ve been about three o’clock by this stage. And so no one really knew what was going on.

The driver Rick, his name was Rick, he wasn’t too good cause when the bus blew the tyre and started veering off the road, he put his arms through the steering wheel to try and lock the steering wheel and when it

came down the wheel dug in, spun the steering wheel around and ripped actually ripped his shoulder right out of its socket. His shoulder was sticking out of his arm almost. He wasn’t too good. And I actually met him a couple of years after it in Townsville. He’d given up bus driving, he said he wasn’t going to bus drive again after that.

Chuck was the only one that died yeah,

yeah which was a bit rude considering he didn’t want to go. He was just in the wrong spot at the wrong time plus he owed me twenty bucks. I think I gave him my gold cuff links as well. I think we went into town or somewhere and he borrowed my cuff links to impress some chick. No, but that doesn’t matter they’re only material things you know. Yeah but he was…

Oh we were pretty close, yeah pretty close, mm. Yeah so that was a bit of a shame but you know

that was, these things happen. I… it took awhile to sink in sort of, like I didn’t sort of accept the fact that he died. Even like for a couple of weeks I was still thinking that it wasn’t real sort of and then… what happened was when we were in the pub the coppers came in and said, “Look, you can ring your parents or whoever you want to

ring for nothing if you go to the post office.” So it would’ve been about 5 o’clock I went over. I thought they were going to ring the next of kin or whatever so I rang up Mum and said, “Oh look I’m alright I’ve only got a lump on my head and a few bruises.” And she said, “Why what happened?” I said, “Oh I was just involved in a bus smash didn’t the army contact you?” She said, “No they haven’t.” I said “Oh that’s good of them.” you know. So we went back to the pub and tea came and had tea and had a few more beers and everyone’s getting a bit

full by this stage. You could imagine with all just been through a fair sort of a trauma and probably everyone’s a bit jacked off [irritated] and we should’ve been home in Townsville so we had a few beers and then it must’ve been about 9 o’clock or 10 o’clock that night the coppers came in and said, “Look your ride’s out here for Townsville.” So we walked out and someone said, “That’s a fucking Red Line bus.” That was it, you now no one was going to move. We said, “Stuff you, we’re not moving, we’re not getting back on one of them bloody things.” So it took the coppers

about…. I think about half an hour to get us all back on the bus cause they’d drag a couple of blokes out and stick them on the bus and come back in then they’d get off the bus and come back in but eventually got us all on the bus, plus we had a couple of fairly seriously injured blokes as well, on the floor of the bus cause the hospital said that they didn’t have enough beds for the amount of people that they had and these guys were fit to travel although they were fairly badly injured you know. So there were a couple of blokes on the floor of the bus and I think we arrived

back in town I think it was about half past one in the morning or whatever and must’ve been the Sunday morning. Yeah, at that stage I knew Maureen and I had been going with Maureen for about a month I think. Must’ve been about August because I met Maureen on the 20th June well I think it would’ve been August sometime

and she heard about it yeah and rang the barracks and they said “Oh we can’t give you any information.” all that sort of stuff, yah yah, so she didn’t find out until after I had a chance to ring her when I got back home, when I got back here. It was a pretty hairy ride back I’ve got to admit. But ever since then I always travel up the back of the bus on that side. Mind you I haven’t been on many bus trips either, I’ve limited that. I’ve been in a couple of bus

rides, the first one I went on after that was in South Australia, twenty five years down the track and we were involved in an accident so, so buses aren’t my way of travelling, don’t like buses, yeah.

Well a car side swiped us, he tried to pass us over a rise, double lines and that and slammed into the side of the bus. The bus ran off the road but didn’t do any damage and the car slammed into a bank on the other side and stood on its side so there was a little kid in the car and I was just -

the funniest part about it was I had a super eight movie camera in my hand about thirty seconds before and I’d just put it down and looked out the back window and said, “Oh this.” I said to Maureen, “This stupid bitch is going to try and pass us.” and there’s a car, she couldn’t see the car coming because there was a rise, I said, “She’s going to try and pass us.” I thought this is going to be interesting and it happened sort of before I got the chance to get the camera out so. And then Maureen said to me, “Oh jump out and give her some assistance.” I said, “I’m not bloody getting involved in it.”

I’d already been involved in enough I didn’t want to get involved in that one. There was enough people on the bus, probably a few doctors on the bus anyway someone that that you know – she wasn’t, she had a few cuts and scrapes and that but and the baby was alright it was in a capsule so.

No, I mentioned when I was jackerooing I was riding, I was probably about

seventeen I think I didn’t have a licence and borrowed one of the kids pushbikes to ride into Seymour and it would’ve been about seven o’clock at night I suppose and I had a tail light on the bike and I know it was working but I’d taken a jumper with me and I might’ve had it tied around my waist so they mightn’t have seen the tail light and I’m riding along on the pushbike and the next thing I know I’m lying on the side of the road. I got hit by a car and it was hit and run, they didn’t stop they just kept driving and it was on the highway

so I don’t know what speed he was doing. I had no breaks at all, but I couldn’t, I was laying there, I had no, I didn’t feel like I had broken anything but I had severe back pain and that. I couldn’t feel my feet and I couldn’t moved I was that bruised and that eventually a couple of days later I was black from the back of my neck to the heels of my feet and my shoulders and you know my buttocks and that I was really, I really got a thumping.

he hit me and I’ve hit his windscreen or whatever and I broke off his rear vision mirror and his aerial. He must’ve had twin rear vision mirrors on it because he would’ve got me on the left hand side. I don’t know how long I was laying there for and there was a woman, I was, probably about three hundred metres I suppose from the edge, right on the edge of town I was. Probably about three hundred metres before the sixty k – zone.

And I think it would’ve been about eight o’clock I’m not sure but this woman was putting the milk out, putting the milk bottles out and I was laying on the side of the road you know, “Someone come and help me. Help me.” at the top of my voice and she heard me so she raced in and got her old man and he grabbed the next door neighbour and they walked up the road. I could see them but they couldn’t see me because the lights on the outskirt, outskirts of town sort of silhouetted them and they were like trooping up the road and I’m yelling out

“Come and f---ing help me you bastards.” you know cause they didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. I don’t know whether they thought it was a practical joke or whatever and they got the ambulance and I spent about, I think I spent about, I had x-rays – they x-rayed me and that and I spent about five hours in hospital and then the coppers walked in and said, “Do you want a ride back to the property?” and I said “Oh yeah, fine. Am I being discharged?” and the nurse said, “Yeah you can go home if you want to.” So we loaded

the bike into the police van and there’s about five gates on the way in there so the coppers weren’t very impressed because I couldn’t get out and open the gates, I couldn’t move. So they drove me to the property and they, this was some ungodly hour in the morning and they hadn’t, I hadn’t phoned them or anything see. And this copper said, “Where’s your boss?” I said, “Oh he’ll be in here.” so we just walked into the kitchen and walked down the hall and stood in the door of the bedroom and said, “Hey Murray.” and he said, “Oh what the bloody hell’s going on?” you know and this copper said, “Oh I’m sergeant so and so.” and he said, “What’s he done? What’s he

done?” he said “Oh he’s knocked of his bike or whatever and he’s in a pretty bad way.” So they carried me over to my hut and the next day we were supposed to be shearing – we started shearing the next day I couldn’t even get out of bed. I couldn’t move for about three weeks I think, I was just about bed ridden so that was my first near death experience.

Well at a dance down at the Sound Lounge it was called and Maureen was a waitress down there. Well she used to dance and that down there but she was employed down there as a waitress as well and so my mate Geoff and I and a couple of the boys decided to go down to the Sound Lounge and decided to have a look around and spotted this bird and thought, “Oh she looks alright, I’ll ask her for a dance.” So got up and had a dance and had a few more dances and I think I told her,

I said, “Oh do you want to come to the dance next week?” and she said, “Oh yeah.” and I said, “I’ll pick you up. Where do you live?” And she said, “I’m not telling you.” She wasn’t interested sort of you know, she didn’t want to go out with me, put it that way. She said, “I’ll meet you down here next week.” So we met down there next week and this happened over a couple of weeks and one night Geoffrey and I and Bob and a few of the boys had got stuck into the beer and I was drinking,

I was drinking gin, gin and Tresco, gin and bitter lemon and the boys said to the barmaid, “Throw him a nip of vodka in every glass.” see. Well I’d only had about four or five glasses and fell of the chair you know so I wasn’t really up to going to meet Maureen. But anyway I walked out the front and Geoffrey’s got me up against the wall straightening my tie up and all that, propping me up and Maureen happened to drive past. I didn’t know that she was in the car, I didn’t realise she was there.

She had to go home and change or something because it was really hot, so she decided to change any way she went back there and I got there late and I was going to say to her I had to do mess duties you know, and she said to me, “Do you always get dressed outside the hotel?” or whatever and I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” you know she said, “I saw Geoffrey holding you up outside the pub trying to do your tie up or whatever.” So it was a good thing that I didn’t tell her I was doing mess duties. For six weeks she wouldn’t let me take her out, I think it was about six weeks before I managed to take her

out. She finally agreed to go out with me.

I honestly don’t know. I never really discussed it with her although we didn’t see each other very much. I suppose in the time I met Maureen until the time we went to Vietnam I probably would’ve spent no more than a couple of weeks with her, a total of a couple of weeks out of you know eight

months or twelve months or whatever.

Well what happened he arrived in his little sports car and we’d been practising for the presentation of the colours, the battalion had been practising for the presentation of the colours. This was all about marching around a parade ground. This was very ceremonial. These are,

the battalion colours, you’d die for them you know and it was a presentation of the colours and there was a big thing made of it and for a month we square bashed around the parade we just marched and we marched and we marched. And I got very jack [si0ck] of it. I thought that my time would be better spent up at Mount Speckle somewhere. So I think we had a long weekend or something like that, it was a long weekend coming up and we’d been square bashing for about a month and a few of the blokes

said, “We’ve had enough we’re going AWOL [Absent Without Leave].” and I said, “Yous are mad because you’ll finish up in gaol you know.” Before they even got out the car park I’d changed my mind and I thought, “Oh bugger it I’ll go with them.” So I ran down the road in just my polyesters, I had nothing with me, my polyesters and my wallet and I said, “Hang on, I’ll go with you.” I think there were five of us in the car so we took off and drove down to the Gold Coast then to Sydney and then I hitch hiked from Sydney to Melbourne and I was gone for

about twenty days I think and because I was training for Vietnam the army took a dim view of it so they sent the military police looking for me and Mum was in the kitchen one day and there was a knock on the door and these coppers came out, these MP’s [Military Police] were out the front and Mum walked out and said, “What can I do for you?” and they said “Oh we’re looking for your son he’s AWOL.” And Mum said, “Oh no, no, he’s on leave at

the moment.” And she thought they meant Peter because Peter was on leave at the time see. And at this stage I’d already left Melbourne and come back up here. I was only down there about a week or something. Took ‘em a week to try and find me in Melbourne. So she said, “Oh no, Peter’s here he’s over at his girlfriend’s place.” And they said, ‘We’re not after Peter we’re after Ross.” She said “Oh he’s already headed back to Townsville he was here last week but he’s gone.” They said, “Well he’s AWOL.” So I was here for,

oh I arrived back here and then went to Mission Beach for a week. I had friends at Mission Beach so I hitch hiked up there and stayed up there for a week and when I arrived back the, this… the Ball was on the Friday night I think it was and on the Thursday night I went and got on the beer with the boys at one of the hotels and one of our corporals walked in. This bloke from the orderly room, I can’t remember what his name was

and he said to me, “You’re AWOL.” and I said, “Well it’s really none of your business.” you know, like cause my plan was to go to the Ball and have a ball and then go and hand myself in and say, “Look I’m back.” you know. I didn’t work like that because he walked straight out and rang the provos [provosts – military police] and the provos walked straight in and he must’ve said I had a blue shirt on or something and they just walked over and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me out and threw me in the wagon and then they took me to Jazoon [?] barracks for about an hour and then they took me back out to Laverack and pulled

the lock and key out and padlocked me away for awhile. And, the battalion had the Ball that night which I missed out on but I still had a few beers because Snow and a few of the boys like came down and passed me a bottle through the bars and that. And then the battalion went on leave for six days so I was stuck in gaol for six days under close arrest. Actually this guy said to me, the corporal said to me, “If you surrender to

me I’ll put you on open arrest.” which means you can move around the camp and I told him that it was none of his business so then I spent six days in gaol. It didn’t – it didn’t faze me at all, look I must’ve walked about five thousand miles I think in the six days I was there. I just walked up and down the exercise yard and at every end I did a push up and I just did that constantly, just keeping fit and it was a mental thing you know. And I

was in there for six days and I fronted the CO [commanding officer] and the CO said, “Oh this is disgusting.” and all that sort of stuff and really dressed me down and you know said, “I thought you were a better soldier than this.” and all that and he said, “I’m giving you seven days in gaol.” I thought he, the maximum the CO can give you is seven days well I’d already been in there for six so I figured he’d give me another day but he gave me another seven so I spent thirteen days in gaol and then I did fourteen days CB [confined to barracks] and lost

forty dollars, forty dollars worth of pay so at this stage I’ve done two years in the army roughly or nearly two years in the army and I’ve done a fair bit of time, I’ve done about fifty days in gaol or AWOL. You know so I didn’t have a real, as far as discipline went I didn’t have a real good record but I still considered myself to be a good solider. I still knew that I could do the job that I had to do well just that on odd occasions I got a bit carried away you know. So…

I did, I think I always had a bit of rebellious nature and I don’t think I realised really until I joined the army. It was probably the discipline thing I suppose. But I always said I’d never let them beat me and I think it was just to test, my way of testing the army out to see if they could break me you know. And cause I mean it was a real test of strength and

they were saying do this and I was saying I’m not interested or whatever. I think it’s stupid marching around a parade ground when we could be out in the bush training for Vietnam I thought that was definitely a no no. I couldn’t I really couldn’t see any point in it. So, then I met, Adrian Darja [?], the Platoon Commander, I was actually in gaol at the time and when an officer walks into a battalion they’re normally given the job as orderly officer

for two weeks or four weeks or whatever so that they can understand the running of the battalion, so that they can learn the layout, know the people, you know and I’m sitting in gaol and this snotty nose little officer walks in there and you know says, it was a Sunday and he says to me, “How are you this morning?” and I said, “I’m alright sir but I’d like to go to church, wouldn’t mind a trip to church.” And he said, “You’re having me on?” I said, “No.” and I said, “I’ve got a right to go to church

if you can get me to one.” I said “You can’t stop me from going to church.” So he said, “Oh well, I’ll get onto someone and see what I can find out.” So he rings around apparently, rings up minor units and they got back to him and said, “Oh look the service is already over there but at St. Matthews at the Rising Sun there’s a church service there at eleven o’clock or whatever.” So I said to the other blokes, “Do you guys want to go to church?” and they said, “Oh yeah.” because there were four of us in there at the time, and they said, “Oh yeah we wouldn’t mind going to church.” So he said look,

Adrian says, “You’ve got to promise me that you wont’ try and escape.” And I said, “There’s no way in world we’re going to try and bolt.” He said, “You’re going to have an armed guard with you anyway, you know and I’m going to make sure you don’t escape.” So there were two land rovers, about six guards or something. So they drop us off at St. Matthews and he puts a guard in front of each door, the doors are open because Townsville’s pretty hot. The doors are open the next moment there’s a guard standing there with a rifle across his chest in front of the door and every door.

We walk in sit down up at the back, sit through the church service, everyone stands up and I look up the front and who should be there but the CO, the company commander and his wife are there. Geez did he get upset, not with us, but I mean, I didn’t find out about it till we got back. Adrian went berserk. He got, the CO gave him an extra two weeks as orderly officer for being such an idiot for allowing me to pull the wool over his eyes and getting a trip into church. He said there’s

no way in the world, should’ve said can’t organise it, all the church services are over and whatever. Adrian’s done the right thing trying to get me to a church service and got into trouble over it and at that stage I didn’t know he was going to be my platoon commander either. He’s only just rocked up at the battalion but we got immediately.

Oh course I was, it was a set up. I just wanted to get out of gaol for awhile. Any break, I just wanted a break sort of

so I figured, “Well this’ll do, a drive into church.” It’s not as if I didn’t like church or whatever, I wasn’t religious but it didn’t worry me so I went to church and he got into trouble. He got an extra two weeks orderly officer or whatever it was.

Yeah we got on, yeah we hit it off pretty well straight away. I think he realised that I set him up and that but he didn’t sort of take it to heart and he was a

very good platoon commander. All the blokes got on with him immediately. Everyone sort of gelled [fitted together] straight away. He seemed to know what he was doing you know like we went out the bush he took command and he seemed to know what he was doing. So everyone just accepted him as being a good platoon commander. He seemed fair you know, if you stuffed up [made a mistake]. He’d look after if it wasn’t deliberate, if you didn’t deliberately stuff up he’d look after you if it was well you

suffered the punishment. He was fair but he was really good. And I think out of any officer that I ever met in the army he was the best guy to go to Vietnam with. He was the best platoon commander I reckon of all the officers I met in Vietnam, I met in the army.

Probably because, I think he was from a military background. I think is father was a retired brigadier

so obviously he had a bit of knowledge of the military and he went through Duntroon [Royal Military College], not that that always produced good officers but no he was really good, knew his job, mind you he is an extremely intelligent bloke so I’ve found out recently.

Extremely, extremely important because you had to be able to trust

each other. It all had to do with knowing that he knew his job, he knew that we knew our job. Like before we left he said, “Look.” he said “I’ll consider we’ve been successful in Vietnam if we come home and we haven’t lost anybody.” That was what he said. And he kept his promise so he was pretty good, yeah. But he was, no, he was a great bloke.

There’s a little bit more to this story, there’s still a lot more training to go yet because after all this I’ve got to go back to Canungra and do four weeks at Canungra or whatever it was with the battalion. So I’ve already done two trips to Canungra and now I’ve got to do a third one so by this stage I’m really invincible you know and then Shoalwater Bay again so it’s three trips to Shoalwater Bay and so by the time that’s over I’m totally convinced I’m

invincible I can do whatever I like in Vietnam and no one’s going to shoot me or whatever. I know, I know all about it you know. I’ve mastered the weapons, I know all about map reading, the blokes that I’m with trust me and respect me and at that stage I’m still only a private. I was a number two on a machine gun but on the odd occasion Adrian seemed to think that I was a really good soldier. So he used to give me jobs like

when we went through, when the battalion went through Shoal Water Bay I was having a bit of a dispute with him one day about something some decision he’d made and he said okay send us our Shorty Turners with company headquarters you’re platoon sergeant well at that stage I was still only a private so I’m doing like four, three, levels up or whatever and I managed it alright. Anyway one of the things I was asked one day to march the platoon over to company

headquarters and you know like when you march on the parade ground everything’s got to be really well done. So I said, I’ve marched the platoon off and I’ve got over to company headquarters and the other two platoons and company headquarters were already there and I yelled out “Platoon, please, halt.” and I used the word “please” well everyone, you know it was the perfect halt and then everyone just cracked – the whole company just started laughing, it just sounded so funny for a NCO to say

please to the soldiers you just don’t do you just give a command you know. “Platoon halt.” well “Platoon, please, halt.” and I didn’t see, the CSM [Company Sergeant Major] was up on the third floor and I didn’t seem him up there, old Davo. Well he started yelling at me you know he said, “Jesus Private Gates you know that’s not the way it’s done in the army.” and all this sort of stuff. He didn’t charge me or anything but he had a bit of a smile on his face I think after I’d said but he couldn’t let it go by you know, he had to say a few words about it.

I did muck around a bit you know to me it as all part of being in the army if it wasn’t fun you weren’t going to enjoy it and I had to sort of get a laugh out of the blokes and I did my best to amuse everybody.

That was part of, saying please was part of it you know. I knew everyone would get a laugh out of it but I didn’t see Davo there so but I wasn’t overly concerned about what would’ve

happened even if I said it because that was my nature; if I did the wrong thing you suffered the consequences. I learnt that early in the piece. Sergeant Buick didn’t come back over with us I was a bit disappointed in that because he like he was with us through our training and all that sort of stuff then all of a sudden he wasn’t our platoon sergeant anymore. Here’s this guy that I admired and I honestly believed that he was going back over on a second tour because he never mentioned he wasn’t. One day he was there

and the next day he’s gone so we got a new Platoon Sergeant, Shorty Turner, and he was, he’d already done one tour and he was an excellent platoon sergeant as well, he cared for the blokes made sure that we got what we needed, he was really good.

Yeah well we had a big parade one day and the battalion commander said, “Okay boys the time’s come we’re leaving for Vietnam in three weeks.” or whatever it was and he said, “Is there anyone here that doesn’t want to go?” and I think there was probably, I think

there was two blokes out of the battalion said they didn’t want to go I know there was a lot of National Servicemen that would’ve preferred not to go but because they’d done so much training and they’d formed such a bond that they didn’t want to let the side down so that just goes to show you how good the brainwashing was in the training, it must’ve been good for blokes that had no interest in warfare or

whatever to actually volunteer. I dare say that if they had’ve said no but didn’t have a good reason they still would’ve been sent. I think one of the blokes had marriage problems and I think another bloke had family problems but apart from that everyone stood there and accepted the fact that you know in a couple of weeks we would be heading off for Vietnam. We went on pre-em [pre embarkation] leave which was a week I went down to Melbourne to see my parents and

I don’t think Mum was very impressed with me because she just had a son arrive home from Vietnam and wanted to make sure that this one arrived home safely. She’d prefer I think that I didn’t go. She didn’t say as such but, but I had a feeling that she would’ve preferred I didn’t go. Dad really never didn’t say much, he didn’t say much about it he just sort of you know said stay safe and keep your head down and whatever. So then I was back up

to Townsville and…

No, I hardly got a chance to see him see that was a problem like if I was down he was away somewhere or you know we hardly ever saw each other. And I probably wouldn’t have believed half, not that he told me many, even since he’s been back, you know we’ve talked about Vietnam a bit but he’s like he said “I never fired - I was over there for twelve months and never fired a shot in anger.” or something he said you know so I don’t know what he did he was in infantry so…

obviously didn’t do too much. Anyway so, yeah the time came that, the morning arrived we had to march through, do a march through Townsville, do a march through the streets. And we were told under no circumstances were we to do battle with demonstrators and that because we had a big university here and they were a bit worried there might’ve been demonstrations and all that sort of stuff. So they said, “Look whatever you do don’t break ranks you just ignore what happens and just keep marching.”

So we marched through Townsville that was okay we had no problems with demonstrators or anything which I was a bit surprised at I thought we would’ve because at that stage the war was starting to get up people’s noses a bit.

Oh I thought they were arseholes personally I didn’t think much of them at all. To me, to me at that stage it was like it was almost treason to think that people would demonstrate against you.

Like I read in the paper where one of the battalions arrived and they threw paint and that over soldiers and I was thinking if you want to throw paint, throw it over the politicians, I mean the soldiers are just there to carry out the commands of their commanders and they can’t say no. Once you’re in the army it it’s not even as if you can say, “Look I’m really not interested.” or whatever you just do as you’re told and soldiers have defended their country through two wars or whatever and if they hadn’t have done what they were told we would’ve been

over the Japanese or the Germans or whatever you know, so soldiers did their job because the government sent them. I mean I volunteered to go, but that being beside the point I was in the army and I had a job to do. It was just like being a mechanic or whatever except I was a bit more adventurous. Maureen was she didn’t really say much about, I mean she was upset that I was going.

We marched down to the Strand and all lined up along there I think it was about seven o’clock in the morning or something. And HMAS Sydney is going to park out between Cape Cleveland and Magnetic Island and we’re going to take you out there in landing craft. And just climb up the gang plank or whatever. So, by nine o’clock there was no movement, by ten o’clock I think there was still not much movement so we were figuring, “What the hell’s the going on?”

Typical army you know standing around and kiss your girlfriend goodbye and then kiss her goodbye again because you know you’re hoping it’s only going to be quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, you don’t want to be standing around for three hours or whatever because you’re leaving your know. So the army in their wisdom decided it was too rough where the Sydney was so they had to take her around to the other side of the island where it was calmer and they used the Magnetic Island ferries to ferry us. The old Magnetic Island ferries which were shockers. They belonged

to Hayles, Hayles Ferries so eventually they you know we walked down and boarded the ferries and they took us out onto this aircraft carrier, took a fair while to sort of get out because the ferries were pretty slow and it was pretty rough and then we got beside the ferry – the aircraft carrier…. there was no gangplank we had to climb the cargo nets. We were in full gear, we’ve got full packs and carrying our bags and got our weapons slung and all this sort of stuff climbing up the side of ships and all that it’s not real fun

and the ferry was bobbing around like a cork you know it was rolling, cause they’re round bottoms they’re not designed for ocean stuff really. And at one stage one of the cargo nets got caught on the roof of the ferry and ripped the roof of the ferry and it collapsed on the blokes. No one got injured but you know it was just a bit more extra excitement and funny things that happen sort of in serious moments. Anyway everyone managed to climb the cargo nets without losing anything, without anyone falling in and here we were

up on this bloody big aircraft carrier heading off for Vietnam and went up onto the flight deck and sort of watch Townsville disappear into the distance and honestly said to myself, “What the bloody hell are you doing here?” That was the first time I had reservations about what I was doing. You know I thought, “Jesus. Am I doing the right thing?” after all this time, over two years in the army actually saying to myself, “Jesus, is this it?

Am I doing the right thing or aren’t I? What am I doing here?” and so that was over and I settled down to concentrating on heading for Vietnam. Aboard ship it was stinking hot because there’s no air conditioner, no air conditioning anywhere onboard and most of us had to sleep below decks and like there was about forty to a room about five metres by five metres or something

all in hammocks stacked three high and a lot of the blokes chose to sleep on the decks so long as we didn’t block gangways and things like that we could sleep on the decks. There was plenty…

Yeah after about three nights I think I slept on the deck. It took us about I think thirteen days to get there. There was a fair bit of training went on it was not as though we just laid around it wasn’t like a South China Sea cruise or whatever it was

you know you’d be shooting off the back of the ship like we used to put water in balloons and blow them up throw them over the back and line up along the back and shoot balloons, target practice off the back of the boat. I kept fit by running around the flight deck and that. I mean we had stuff set for us everyday it was not as if we could just sit around you know we had weapon inspections and we still carried out you know different procedures and that that we could on board a ship. Anything we could do onboard a ship we did. The meals

were good we were allowed I think one large can of Fosters I think it was called white death or something it was a white tin, a big a litre tin I think they were almost. One can of those a day. It was good because a few of the blokes didn’t drink so they used to collect their rations and share them out with everybody.

To be honest I still didn’t really know much about

the Vietnam War as far as whether we were winning or losing or what was going on. I just knew that the Australians were still involved there and didn’t really take much notice of the casualty count or whatever. I didn’t sort of watch, it’s not as if I watched it on the TV every night. In fact I don’t think, I could honestly say I ever sat down and watched the TV and saw anything on Vietnam. We didn’t have TVs in our room. So I probably didn’t see anything about Vietnam. It was probably best that I didn’t.

Oh I knew that they were from, from everyone that I had spoken to they said that like they weren’t all that well trained and they weren’t all that well disciplined but they were crafty. You know they were, because they’d been fighting wars for years and that they were pretty cunning. It wasn’t so much the VC that we were supposed be worried out it was the NVA, you know the North Vietnamese Army.

But no honestly up until that stage I still didn’t really know much about either of them. And I hadn’t seen much about, I hadn’t actually seen demonstrators in the streets and all that. I had been told about it. I’d probably seen a little bit of news where you know or people have said to me, “Oh the bastards are demonstrating in Melbourne.” or whatever but apart from that it wasn’t a focus of mine or whatever. It not as if I watched out for it. In fact I probably hardly saw it at all.

Oh well yeah I was a bit disappointed I mean sort of you always are when you’ve got yourself a nice girl and that you know.

Yeah well, probably we were fairly serious I suppose. We hadn’t actually spoken about getting engaged or getting married or anything that stupid you know but we were, I’d slept at her place a few times you know. I used to, because

there was really no where else to go around town or whatever I’d sort of drop in there and I might spend the night or on the weekend I might stay there but I hadn’t, how long had I known her at that stage, June to March probably nine months or ten months or something. I’d taken her to Melbourne a couple of times; I took her to Melbourne one I think to meet Mum and Dad. Mum and Dad were a bit concerned that being from Townsville they thought she might’ve been black. They thought she might’ve been indigenous.

And we arrived at night time and walked into the caravan there at Point Leo and I introduced Mum to Maureen and Mum was bit worried. I don’t know why I don’t know what she, you know. Anyway. Yes so no, Maureen and I we were pretty close but we hadn’t even discussed marriage or anything like that or getting engaged or whatever we were pretty close but the thought hadn’t even entered my mind to tell you the truth.

Yeah, so she was a bit sad to see me go you know she had the tears in the eyes along with everybody else. I probably shed a tear as well. I’m not sure whether I did actually. No but it was a sad occasion for everybody, there were like blokes there that just had children, there was guys with wives that were pregnant and all this sort of stuff. Mums that didn’t want their kids to go. National Servicemen that you know had families that still reckoned that their kids shouldn’t have been in the army and all that sort of stuff so it was pretty emotional on the strand.

Probably not, I didn’t really see any blokes really crack up I think most of the blokes took it fairly well. Resigned themselves to the fact that they were heading off and you know. I wasn’t overly concerned about not coming home because I was convinced that I was coming home anyway. At that stage anyway, I was convinced that I was coming home. I had a few thoughts later on but no at that stage I was still pretty convinced that the

training would get me through and the blokes would get me through.

Everybody yeah, everybody was in support. Yeah there was probably ten thousand people or something there. A big crowd, lined the streets both sides all you know clapping away and it felt good, this is really good, we’ve got support which like I said I thought there would be demonstrators there but there was no sign of any so. No it was good,

well I felt good cause I knew that we had support. If they had all been booing it might’ve been a different story altogether you know but I sort of felt, no I felt good that I was going to do the job that I’d trained for.

I’ve got absolutely no idea probably because I looked back at Australia and thought, “Geez I mightn’t see it again.” I say that was what it was we were just starting to get off in the distance a bit you know we’d probably

travelled for about half an hour or something before I’d said it to myself. So and I figured, “Jesus I mightn’t be coming home.” I suppose that’s what it was a little bit of doubt creeping in I suppose. But it wasn’t, it would’ve only been for a fleeting second anyway it wasn’t as if I sort of sat back and thought, I definitely didn’t sit back and think about it. It was not as if I sort of said you know I didn’t dwell on it it was just something that I said to myself on the spur of the moment you know

“What the hell are you doing here?” and then I got over it straight away.

Oh yeah, yeah, there was a sense of excitement. Yeah this was the adventure to beat all adventures this was. This was going to be really exciting. Although I had really no idea for the amount of training that I did I had very little idea of what the country was going to be like and what the people were going to be like, their

customs, I think we were all you know very naïve when it came to what was going to happen over there. I mean apart from you know running around the jungle shooting people I had no idea of their customs. I had no idea how they lived whether they – whether they all lived like peasants or you know. I figured a lot of them must’ve because they were supposed to be the people we were fighting but I had no idea they had big cities and I had no idea what Saigon would be like or

Vung Tau or so we were probably, we were probably all very ill prepared as far that that go.

No not really. I think they gave us a little booklet or something you know some of the language and that sort of stuff but there was really no, no nothing at all really. I mean like to us they were just VC or nogs [slang term for Vietnamese] that we were going to shot you know.

Overall, in the battalion about five hundred and fifty I think there would’ve been total and I think there was a couple hundred sailors onboard. There was a fair crowd of us. The food was pretty ordinary on the boat but I suppose it always is in a situation like that where you’re feeding seven hundred blokes in a hurry or whatever.

It was an aircraft carrier, so it had a big, it had a big flight – the whole top of it was all flight deck originally designed for launching aircraft with what they call an island in the middle. That’s the bridge and that and below decks was a lot of, quite a few kilometres of companion ways with little offices and stuff like that and boiler rooms and below decks, you know right down below is like the boiler room

and all that. But there was a big hangar deck that took up about half the ship towards the stern, that’s where they used to store all their aircraft and they had a lift in there that used to lift the aircraft up on to the flight deck so a lot of us actually slept on the trip over as well. Slept in the hangar deck.

No, no, but at one stage there they believed they thought someone had actually fallen overboard they

said to us it sounded like someone yelling for help or something or they heard a bit of a splash or so they said and then they said, “We think someone’s fallen overboard.” So that they had, they turned around and took about half an hour to turn the boat around, turn the ship around and go looking for this guy and then one stage we were zig zagging all over the place and they said we were being tracked by a submarine. And then we met up with an escort oh off Borneo somewhere I think, it

was, I think it was the Vampire we met up with and then she escorted us to Vietnam.

Yeah the navy guys were pretty good. Yeah although we didn’t have, most of them, they were pretty busy sort of doing their jobs and we were sort of pretty busy doing our – so we didn’t really mix that much. The only time when we really mixed was when we crossed the equator which was quite interesting because they had this bloody great above ground swimming pool set up there that everyone got

initiated in you know and they had, I think they had a couple of 44s [drums] of flour or eggs and rubbish and you name it and they had it in there and everyone got dunked and got thrown in this stuff and got bombed with flour bombs but apparently that’s traditional so you know no one got into trouble, it’s not as if we were breaking the rules or whatever, it was traditional. So, but everyone had a good time.

Oh we had a couple of

movies, we had a few movies onboard but mainly it was either exercise and training or sleeping because you were dog tired. You didn’t really get much time, you didn’t really get much time to sit around and do much. I suppose it was good in a way that you didn’t have time to sit down and ponder over what was going to happen you were kept busy. And to me every bit of training was closer to coming home sort of you know.

No not really we were told just be careful over there you’ll pick it up really easy and whatever and they told us you know we weren’t supposed to you know get along with the natives but that was going to be inevitable anyway I mean obviously you’ve got blokes in a war zone and they’ve got leave and they’re going to let their hair down

and they really don’t give a shit you know and why would you wear a condom when you could be dead tomorrow or whatever? You know there were heaps of blokes picked up a load [a case of VD] and all this sort of stuff you know because it was inevitable. And the army, the army didn’t really frown upon it. They didn’t like it because it put blokes out of action, not necessarily a lot of blokes but if a bloke had to stay behind to get you know to have the penicillin shots and blokes were

relying on him well they frown upon it but I think they accepted it as something that’s going to happen you know it’s just inevitable. No they didn’t sort of stress it before we left you know. And they didn’t stress it while we were over there either really.

No not really, No I wouldn’t say we went into anything in detail We might’ve had one or two

or something they might’ve just said you know like you know there’s hygiene problems and all that sort of stuff.

Well, when we arrived I was… I was up on the flight deck when we could see, you know they said, “We are an hour off Vietnam or two hours off.” So we all stood on the flight deck and couldn’t wait to see what was going on and got to within probably a

few k’s [kilometres], I think we were probably two or three k’s out or something and the landing craft pulled up alongside and we picked up all our gear and walked down the gangplank and they shoved us in this landing craft, you know standing room only stuff to get us in the landing craft with all our bags and that and we hit the beach and the front door dropped down and you know there was people standing around and all these people you could see them all walking along the street all dressed in black with their

little straw hats and all that on and I’m thinking, “Bloody hell this is you know I’ve been trained to shoot anyone dressed in black and ninety percent of the population is walking around in black!” and like here we are just hit a war zone and it looked like nothing was going on because there were was cars driving, it looked like ordinary sedans driving down the street. There was a lot of uniforms but not that many because Vung Tau was like a tourist resort for everybody. We went,

if we ever went on leave over in Vietnam we generally went to Vung Tau for a break like two days on R and C [Rest in Country] and there was an agreement between both, a mutual agreement between both sides that you wouldn’t shoot each other in there because both sides had their holidays there. So we’re mixing with the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese and they’re mixing with us and you could see as the bloke walked past and you’d just totally ignore him because you just

don’t think that he’s VC he’s just someone that’s in town there you know. But that’s how strange it was there they used the same town as we did for Rest and Recreation and whatever. So yeah it was a bit, it as probably a bit hard to fathom. But initially getting off the boat and seeing all these people I’d been trained to kill and walking everywhere and thinking, “Geez shit there’s a lot of targets!” and then realising okay it’s not quite what I was led to believe.

Oh well everyone, I suppose no one really said much. We were just sort of, we stood around and said, “Bloody hell this is a nice looking joint isn’t it? And you know there’s some nice little women up there you know this should be fun.” And no one was shooting at anybody so I didn’t feel, probably on the way in on the landing craft I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen because I had no idea whether we were in artillery range or whatever so you just I

didn’t have a clue just accepted that we were going to land on the beach and be ready if you have to.

Well that’s where they dropped us off so we could pick up the helicopters for Nui Dat. They flew us out there in the Chinooks [helicopters], in the big American Chinooks which was good because that was the first ride in a Chinnok. They loaded us into the Chinook and there’s only a few, there’s not many portholes in a Chinook normally in those you can’t see very much. If you were

lucky you could see out. And it looked like, it looked like foreign land to me with a lot of bomb craters and staff like that and then they dropped us at the Dat, Nui Dat.

Well I couldn’t really see, you can’t really see much of it from the air because what happened is they built it in a rubber plantation and then they cleared you know cleared out a couple of kilometres sort of right around

which is something the Americans didn’t do. What the Americans used to do when they built a base they liked bulldozed the whole place and set up a tent or whatever. So everyone could see them from miles around. But then their war was a bit different to ours see. They – their idea was all about body count and to get a body count you’ve got to make contact with the enemy and to make contact with the enemy you’ve got to bring them to you so you stand up there and beat your drum and make a lot of noise

and let the enemy come to you and hope that you’ve got better fire power and more people whereas ours was different, ours was like, ours was gorilla warfare. We went over there not planning to meet anyone face to face, ambush ‘em try and meet them on your terms not on their terms you know. So the Americans and us were totally different in the way we carried out our warfare.

I didn’t operate with them that much. I found them to be really great blokes. In fact just before I came home I spent three days at a base, I was the only Aussie there and they were absolutely fantastic and apart from that I didn’t really spend that much time. Didn’t operate with them much either.

We got into Nui Dat and then just found, told where our lines were. You know they took us around where our

tents were and that. It was a pretty good set up they had a boozer [bar] there and the mess looked pretty good. The tents weren’t in that bad a condition most of the sandbags were still pretty good they didn’t need sandbagging. They had pallets and stuff to walk on if it got too wet or whatever. The gun pits were still in pretty good nick didn’t need sandbagging or anything. Gun positions seemed to be pretty good as far as a defensive position goes. Had

good fields of fire and all that stuff.

Of what it would be like now or what it was like then.

Oh well it was a dirt road. Our place you walked along a dirt road straight towards the wire. There was a big sign, ‘B Company 6 RAR’.

There was the mess on the left, the latrines further left and out in front was a row of tents and on the right hand side were the officers’ mess, officers’ quarters with the wire directly out in front. And then when you link up all those you create a perimeter. Like each company would’ve basically been the same

and each company probably had oh I suppose half a kilometre of wire to defend basically. It was a pretty big base there was enough room in there for three battalions I think. So that’s a fair few guys. They had, we had American artillery in there as well had big one five five’s or I thin one five five’s or one seven five’s

field guns and that in there. We had the tanks in there. We had APCs [Armoured Personnel Carriers], squadron of APCs, squadron of tanks, the OR Artillery as well as the Americans. So at any one time there might’ve been oh about probably six or seven thousand blokes there I suppose. It was a pretty big base. They had an open air picture theatre.

They had a, they had, we had a sports ground like in the company area we could play cricket or football or whatever. The toilets, the toilets were just, it was like a big pit with it was covered over and it had planks across it with like forty four gallon drums with toilet seats on it and the fun, they used to get up to all sorts of pranks. They used to have – they used to burn them off every

week or so, so they, old Willy Killick, he was I think Will Killick was our hygiene officer. He was the funniest guy you ever met he was, he looked like a bean pole you know there really was nothing of him he was so skinny. And Willy’d take over his couple of litres of diesel or whatever and chuck it down there and then throw a match in there and it’d go “boof” and all the toilet seats would stand up at the one time. “Vooomm” cause

it’d get a puff a couple of times you know. And it looked quite good everyone always got a bit of chuckle that was – and it wasn’t separated sort of like you know there was ten blokes on the toilet all at the same time you could sit there and talk to each other because there was no dividing walls or anything, same in the showers or whatever.

No, well it was the same at Canungra there were no doors on the toilets. They did have partitions on the toilets but no doors on them I think. The showers and that, there was no

partitions in the showers or whatever.

No, no it didn’t worry me. Oh you know you’d walk from the shower over to your tent with nothing on it didn’t really matter it was not as if there was a lot of women around who cared you know it didn’t matter. Yeah so Nui Dat was yeah it was probably what I expected. It wasn’t sort of out of the ordinary

it was as big as I thought it would be. It was fairly neat there was no rubbish or anything anywhere. You couldn’t see, the only thing was that the wire down the front was pretty well overgrown with stuff, hadn’t been burnt off for a long time which can be a bit of a problem if you’ve got a fire throw there. Like our platoon commander Adrian found out one day when he decided to burn it off and set off all the claymores and that but that’s another story.

Yeah, so, no, Nui Dat was alright.

Well we just, said you know, we were told to just settle in unpack our gear, go over and have a meal you know meals be ready shortly, boozers going to be open tonight you can go and have a beer. Draw up pickets, at this stage I was a

lance corporal I was an NCO by this stage I was a section 2IC [second in command]. Oh no I wasn’t, no sorry I’d like to apologise I wasn’t, I was number two on the machine gunner at this stage. Barry Lewis and I are, were machine gunners. I had the qualifications for NCO but I still hadn’t worried about it but on a lot of occasions I was acting NCO or section gunner or 2IC.

Yeah I coped better with it when I was there yeah. Yeah I found it a bit easier to cope. Yeah I accepted the fact that I was probably better trained than a lot of blokes it was probably better that I did it anyway. But, yeah, in the first week I suppose it was just

you know make sure you take your malaria tablets make sure at night time as soon as you know half an hour before the sun goes down roll your sleeves down, button, button up at the top, mosquito repellent on or whatever. Just little things that you know make sure you take your tablets you know your malaria tablets and this sort of stuff. Check your equipment, we made sure we checked all equipment we drew stuff out of the Q Store [quartermaster’s store] all the stuff we need because there’s one hell of a lot of

stuff that when you go out on patrol there’s one hell of a lot of stuff you’ve got to take out. You know we collected the claymores and ammunition for the gun, each gun, we used to carry about eight hundred rounds for the machine gun and that was, the machine gunner carried probably three hundred rounds I suppose on average. They’d have a hundred rounds hooked onto the gun. He’d carry two hundred rounds I’d carry probably

two or three hundred rounds and they weigh about eight pound a hundred or something and that’s just extra ammo you know and probably two or three other blokes would carry one belt as well. So we carried eight hundred rounds for the gun and I think I carried about a hundred and forty rounds for my SLR [self loading rifle] in magazines. We carried in the section I think about six claymores [mines] which were pretty heavy.

We all carried about four grenades, we all carried flares, we all carried a smoke grenade. Then we had to carry, because we didn’t know generally how long we were going out for we had to carry as much water as we could carry which was probably about I reckon about probably four or five litres would’ve been five,

five water bottles would’ve been maximum, four to five water bottles and they probably wouldn’t have been litres either so we really, we probably didn’t carry enough water but we really had no choice because you know a four man, a one man ration pack, there’s that much in a one man ration pack that you couldn’t fit five ration packs into a pack you might just fit them in that’s with nothing else in there. So when they say okay tomorrow you’re going to go bush

they’ve given you a five, they given you five one man ration packs that’s got to last you five days but you can’t carry it because you’ve got all this other stuff. You know you’ve got a piece of rope that you’ve got to carry, you know toggle ropes to tie it on to someone and drag them over or whatever Someone’s got to carry the sig [signal] set and you’ve got a M79 which is a grenade launcher you need, you’ve got about twenty or thirty rounds for that. You’ve

got a couple of M72’s which are anti tank weapons good for blowing up bunkers and that. You were like a pack horse, you were like a pack in fact you didn’t stand up for long if you didn’t have too you know you leant up against a tree or you dropped your pack and it was a hell of weight. I reckon by that stage we were carrying sixty five pound at last probably seventy pound each so it was a bit of a struggle and that

was we drew that out initially and then you know you had to go through and check that everyone had all their equipment and then like I think we went out about a week after we got there I think we did our first patrols our first tail patrols which was a sweep somewhere out in front of where your position was. We might’ve been out a couple of kilometres or whatever and that was, we had our initial contact on our initial

tail. And we, we’d been out all day, I think it was, it was probably early the next morning and it was a restricted area so no one should’ve been in there and there was a guy with a, an old guy with a pushbike and a kid. And the kid was on the bike and the old guy was walking beside him with a hoe

over his shoulder. And our section commander who, I probably haven’t said at this stage was the only bloke I didn’t really get along with told everyone to shoot him which we didn’t do. Well he did, he fired on them, most of us, the machine gun fired up into the tree, Fred fired up into the tree and I didn’t even fire and he proceeded to shoot the old bloke, wound him

anyway we went and patched him up got him into the chopper and sent them both out and that was sort of our initiation but it wasn’t, to me it was nothing to do with what I was trained to do you know that wasn’t sort of part of my job it was, I felt he was wrong in what he did.

Obviously civilian, whether they were in a restricted area or not I mean you know we had rules of engagement and we had to abide by them you know

and our rules of engagement you didn’t shoot anyone unless they threatened you as simple as that. You can’t, you’ve got to be careful because you might be shooting your own people you know so there’s all, the rules of engagement were pretty strict. You know it was UN you know the Geneva Convention says, “That you must not shoot unarmed people and you must not shoot someone that’s got their hands in the air and you don’t shoot for the sake of shooting.” Anyway…

Was he?

No. No he wasn’t. But… he was you know this was his second tour too so I figured he would’ve known better. But he was really the only, up until that stage he was the only person I had a problem with while I was in the army that I had, had a total disregard for him. I didn’t like the guy at all and he didn’t like me and unfortunately he didn’t like most of the blokes in the section as well which made it extremely difficult

because I was sort of the meat in the sandwich. You know I was, I was the one that was trying to, he was trying to charge blokes like for having dirty rifles and all that sort of stuff and I’d say, “You know don’t worry about it when the time comes they’ll be right. It’s not a big issue sort of.” But he was always, he threatened to charge me a couple of times and so there wasn’t really much came of that. You know everyone just sort of accepted it as something that happened and

I just hoped that it wouldn’t happen again sort of. And then about three or four days later I think we went out on another tail patrol. We didn’t, on this one we didn’t have the platoon commander with us. This one we went out and we had the platoon commander with us and he said, “Look.” he said, “We’re going to….” he said, “Most of you blokes haven’t worked with artillery before so what I’m going to do.” he said “I’m going to call in some artillery down in this creek in front of us.” And he said, “Fellows

who haven’t worked with artillery there’ll be, you’ll hear a thump from Nui Dat and you’ll hear the round whistle overhead and it’ll go bang down the creek about three or four hundred metres down the creek there.” And obviously we weren’t where we were supposed to be or someone’s given the wrong grid reference because we were strung out in arrow head formation and there was a platoon of us so we were probably, you know, two hundred metres wide I suppose and probably a hundred metres deep. And this

artillery, we heard the thump of the round from the Dat and we heard a bit of a whistle and it just went bang right behind us you know, it landed within about sixty metres of us I suppose. Well Jesus you know everyone just about crapped themselves because we were laying waiting for it to go over the top and sort of land down in the creek. And I said to the blokes, “Jesus if this is artillery or whatever either the forward observer stuffed it up or we’re out on our grid reference.” I knew that we might’ve been our a hundred metres it wouldn’t have

been anymore than that…

Yeah we were in a “V” formation and this artillery landed, it was a one “o” five but it was enough amongst us to kill a number of people if it had landed amongst us. And for the life of me I couldn’t work out why it landed where it did because it was something like four hundred metres from where it was expected and I knew

we could’ve been a hundred metres out which still would’ve brought it nowhere near, so I never really found out what the result was, but I would say our forward observer gave the good references of where we were and not where the round was supposed to be, not only that we were a hundred yards out on our good reference, but we would’ve been actually where the round landed, so we were probably a hundred yards further forward

than we thought we were, we would’ve, it would’ve landed amongst us. So that was a pretty frightening experience sort of you know that was the second trip outside the wire.

Coming from our own guys yeah, which was a bit of worry that someone had called in the artillery and it was nowhere near where it was supposed to have been. And I’m thinking, “Well we’ve got to rely on this later on in the tour and we might need, we might need a lot of it for support and

you don’t want to call in a hundred rounds and have the whole hundred rounds drop on top of you.” I mean if they’d call in a hundred rounds where that stuff had landed we probably all have been killed. So that wasn’t a good, like the first two weeks was a bit worrying you know, got over that pretty easy but I was still feuding with my section commander, we still weren’t getting along.

Well he didn’t like the Nashos [National Servicemen] for a start.

I don’t know why he didn’t like the Nashos he didn’t seem to like anybody to tell you the truth. I know he didn’t like me. He said that I undermined his authority. But the only reason that I did that was because I knew I was going to have that much trouble with the blokes if he kept going the way he was. I was like between them, I mean you know if he charged them and fined them and all that sort of stuff and they lost money, they wouldn’t be too keen on fighting for him and all that sort of stuff and he treated them like crap you know, so we didn’t get on at all.

Well he didn’t really say – he actually didn’t know whether I fired or not and I didn’t tell him I didn’t fire. I don’t think he was impressed with the machine gunners, or the machine gunners

action shooting up in the trees. I don’t know, he didn’t really, he was a corporal mind you he wasn’t a sergeant, but you know he was the section commander but no, there wasn’t much of a reaction really at all.

Oh… probably about, I think there was two sections of us altogether. Oh no probably would’ve been about twelve blokes altogether would’ve been.

… what he said yeah.

But you’ve still got to use your own discretion in these things. It’s not as thought, I knew that they weren’t a threat so there was no way in the world I was going to shoot them, as simple as that. And most of the blokes I felt knew that they weren’t a threat. You know the section commander said, “He’s got a rifle over this shoulder.” well I know the difference between a rifle and a

hoe or whatever it is. Because it was his second tour I think he might’ve been, he might’ve been a bit edgy you know, he might’ve thought they were a threat. I certainly didn’t.

Oh would’ve been probably a hundred metres away I suppose possibly more. It was fairly open it’s not as if they were in jungle or anything so, yeah.

My

reaction was I just wasn’t going to shoot, it’s as simple as that. I was trained better, I was trained better than to shoot at someone that I hadn’t identified. My training you know, according to the Geneva Convention and all this sort of stuff, you’ve got rules of engagement and if they’re not a threat to you, you don’t shoot. He might’ve thought, he might’ve felt they were a threat because everyone, we’re all individuals and we’ve all got ideas of what we would consider to be threats and because they were in a restricted

area, I mean the Americans probably would’ve just shot them both because their policy sort of was if they were in a restricted area, well you’d kill them. I mean they flew along in helicopters and if someone was in a restricted area they shot them whether they looked like they had weapons or not, so that was a good idea for the peasants not to go into restricted areas; but you know these people had to make a livelihood they had to live somehow and they might’ve had a little crop or something in there or whatever, attending a crop or….

so no I didn’t feel that they were a threat but he might’ve, but I don’t know.

He just said, “Fire!” and you know I wasn’t prepared to fire it was as simple as that.

You’ve got to identify… To follow orders, yeah.

Yeah

well, there probably was, but according to my training if you broke the rules you had to suffer the consequences and if I had to suffer the consequences of not shooting well so be it. But I knew the rules of engagement and as far as I was concerned the rules of engagement, I didn’t figure, should’ve been used at that time.

Yeah he fired into the trees.

He didn’t say anything. He probably…

Well he probably didn’t even realise that he’d fired into the trees. But the machine gunner fired a few bursts but he definitely didn’t aim at them.

No, he was the only one that aimed at them. It’s hard, I don’t know what was going through his mind. I’ve got absolutely no idea but like I said, maybe

he felt because he was a first tour bloke, I mean maybe he thought they were a threat but I certainly didn’t.

That was my first experience yeah and I didn’t fire.

Oh I wasn’t very impressed with it. In fact I thought it was a pretty crappy thing to do because you know he put a couple of holes in him we had to get a chopper in. He lived. We got feed back that they were

that he was a VC sympathiser well I dare say that every bloke that they took in they said was a VC sympathiser. They probably were VC sympathisers they still weren’t a threat so that to me didn’t make it any more comfortable, knowing that he was supposed to have been a VC sympathiser. I mean they might’ve been going to single someone to fire mortars at us or something, but we’re not to know that. All I know he wasn’t carrying a rifle so I wasn’t prepared to do anything.

That was the only incident of its type really and that was the first incident so it didn’t impress me very much.

No, nothing, oh well I still didn’t like him. In fact I probably disliked him a lot more after that. And on the

first operation I had a few problems with him as well and I totally disliked the bloke actually after that. I didn’t feel that he was doing a good job.

No, no recriminations, no, nothing. Well as far as anyone was concerned, anyone back at base would’ve presumed that, you know, there was two VC sympathisers

or whatever out there and one of them was wounded. That would’ve been the action report or whatever. So, you know that was my first taste of Vietnam outside the wire really.

On the first operation

because the first operation lasted for about four maybe five weeks and to live out there for four or weeks with nothing but what you’ve got on your back, being able to patrol all day, ambush all night, do ambushes the way we thought they should’ve been done, it was easy enough to pick up because you knew that you couldn’t sustain the pace that you were, you had to

sustain for five weeks, four or five weeks. So it was a matter of starting to adapt to what you had to deal with. Like when we started doing ambushes we had two blokes on the machine gun and generally we would set up claymores in an ambush so we’d have the guys on them, two blokes on the machine, the rest of the blokes could be sleeping it wouldn’t matter as long as they were in an ambush position ready to fire as soon as something went

off and when the claymore went off you knew that the contact had started because it’s one hell of a big bang, it’s something you’ve heard in your life and this is maybe six or eight claymores going off at the one time. They’re all going off instantaneously because they were set up with det [detonator] cord to each claymore. And each claymore fires seven hundred ball bearings, fairly small ball bearings but enough to rip someone apart if they’re in front of it. And here’s

eight claymores going off that’s five thousand six hundred ball bearings flying out immediately with a bloody great blast and they’re plastic encased so the plastic flies everywhere. They’ve got a danger zone behind a claymore as well so if you’re too close behind it you’ll get injured. So we were always far enough back so that we wouldn’t get injured. Everybody woke immediately and squeezed the trigger if an ambush went off.

Well the briefing initially was, “We’re going out for a couple, well about four weeks or something. Well see it’s a warm up operation. We don’t believe there’s many enemy in the area it should be reasonably quiet, it’s just a warm up operation.” So…

A warm up for you know coming events to get you acclimatised to get you used to carrying the sort of gear that you’ve got to carry to work out your section routines and all this sort of stuff.

You know you’ve got gun pickets to do. You’ve got to have two blokes awake all the time at night time in your section so you’ve got to draw up a roster. An hour before the sun goes down you stand to so it doesn’t matter where you are. So you lay there with your rifle presuming that you’re going to get attacked because that is when you will get attacked. An hour before to an hour after the sun goes down and then you can have a sleep but you’ve got to do a two hour gun picket some time during the night. So if you get to bed at seven o’clock if you’re lucky

or eight o’clock, it depends on what time of the year it was, you might get two hours sleep then someone’s walked over to you and tapped you on the shoulder and generally that’s all, you didn’t need to talk or anything because you slept that lightly it didn’t make any difference. You did your two hour gun picket, you’d curl up and went back to sleep again if you were lucky. It depends on what had been on recently, if you’d just been in contact well you mightn’t have gone to sleep you might have just laid there all night watching shadows and that.

But generally we suffered sleep deprivation definitely because some days we would patrol and then we’d ambush all night and to do that over a period of four weeks, four or five weeks constantly with not enough food because you’ve generally dumped half of your food. Out of a one man ration pack there’s three tins in there. There’s a breakfast a lunch and a main course.

And they’re three different size tins, a small tin, a medium sized tin and a large tin. Well I used to keep the large tin and just throw the rest away. I used to have like one main meal. In the ration pack there was coffee, sugar, toilet paper, matches, tube of jam, tube of condensed milk, packet of rice, packet of curry, the

three tins and that was about it I think. But it was a reasonable size pack and there was no way in the world you could carry it all so you just, you just dumped it you just didn’t keep it all. So if you were going out initially you would leave it back at Nui Dat the stuff you didn’t want but if you were out there on a resupply and they flew you in five days of rations, well you’d just punch holes in the tins so that they couldn’t eat it and buried it. Just

carried what you needed.

It was one of excitement I think, I mean this is what I’m trained for and this was my test you know, of whether I’d passed or failed or not and if I failed well it could be a big failure you know, it could’ve been the enemy sort of. Oh, I considered that the other blokes were all well

trained, I could rely on everybody, even the section commander although I didn’t get along with him I figured he’d still do his job properly. So, we went out for the four of five weeks and we were probably out for oh, about four or five days I think before we actually had a contact. Now that was, Nui Dat had been rocketed

during the night that we were out there from the place with the Long Hais they fired rockets into Nui Dat. So they said to us, “These guys well more than likely they would’ve fired from this side of the mountain so they’ll be coming in your direction so keep an eye open for them.” and we’d been trailing and we didn’t walk on tracks; that’s one thing we didn’t do because of mines and booby traps, so we always walked along beside tracks or cut across tracks or whatever. And we had to

cross a track so we put a machine gun either side of where we were crossing the track probably about fifty, maybe seventy metres from where the rest of them blokes were crossing the track and the platoon crossed the track and myself and my machine gunner covered the track to the left and the gun crew covered it to the right. Almost the whole platoon was across the track there was probably still four or five blokes to cross some of them – it

wasn’t very thick jungle but it was fairly close, you could probably see twenty or thirty feet maybe if you were lucky and the track was fairly wide on one side, there wasn’t much undergrowth so there was blokes in the open and we were probably laying there no more than a couple of minutes while the platoon was crossing when I saw an enemy walking up the track and I gave Barry a bit of a whack and

he saw him straight away and I immediately pulled off one link of the hundred rounds of ammo and clipped it onto the gun and we were ready to go virtually but – we were behind a big mound and my rifle was just laying up against the mound because I was more concerned with making sure the machine gun had the ammo on it and that. And I said to Barry, I said, “Wait until he gets a bit closer.” because he was probably still at that stage about

oh sixty metres maybe I could see him like through the trees, the track sort of wound around a bit and then I saw another bloke behind him you know and I said to Barry, “There’s at least two of them.” So we waited until they got about probably forty metres away I suppose, maybe even a bit closer than that. And I hit Barry on the arm and I said, “Hit him Barry.” and Barry pulled the trigger and the machine gun just went clunk and just made this clunking noise

so I sort of looked up and he had an AK47 in his hand and he’s pointing it towards us but he can’t see us, I was pretty sure he couldn’t see us and so he started to turn so I picked up my SLR and I sighted him, I did all the things in my training you know you would do, take a breath, not too deep, hold it,

squeeze the trigger, don’t pull on it you now so that you don’t move your rifle and that, so I did all that and I squeezed the trigger and I felt the rifle kick but nothing happened because I had the safety catch on. All the, here’s one of the best trained blokes ever to go to Vietnam you know and I’ve just stuffed up, first contact and I’ve got the safety catch on. So I just knocked it off and aimed straight at him at shot him, and in the meantime

Barry got the machine gun firing. And we found out that he only had three rounds, he only had two rounds, when you pull the rounds in you’ve got to pull three rounds on in on the feed plate which means one is in front of the bolt and he only had two rounds there so the bolt flew forward and just made a clunk. We could hear it, I know they heard it because it’s a definite bang but it’s nothing like a rifle shot you know. He hesitated straight away and knew that there was someone there but he couldn’t see us.

Anyway I was a bit worried because we had blokes behind us, had our blokes behind us and a couple of them started firing as well so I was a bit worried about that, but I wasn’t really sure whether they could see anybody or whether they were shooting any – I could hear the crack of the rounds going overhead. I wasn’t really sure whether you know, how close, whether they were just trying to scare them off or not I don’t know. Anyway, yeah so we, I probably fired off about six rounds I think, I wasn’t sure whether I hit the other bloke

or not by the time Barry got the machine gun going we couldn’t really see anybody. It probably lasted probably sixty seconds, I suppose all it lasted and then it was quiet, nothing else happened. So the platoon commander came back across the edge of the track and said, “What happened?” and I said, “Oh we saw Nogs [slang term for enemy] coming up the track and I think I shot one I and I wasn’t really sure.” And he said, “Okay we’ll do a sweep.” So we got up

cause no one else had fired and we came across a body, he was shot fair in the back with a big hole in his chest and I stood there next to Barry I said, “Shit Barry.” I said, “Five minutes ago that guy was probably walking along thinking of his missus and kids or whatever and he’s as dead as a dodo.” And I said, “That could’ve been you or me.” I said, “Shit!” I said, “This is serious

stuff now.” All of a sudden I realised that all this training I’d done and all this sort of stuff was serious. All of a sudden I was involved in a war you know, at that stage I looked at him and thought ‘He’s dead’. So then we sort of went past him and we found another bloke about fifteen metres away I suppose, had been shot through his right hip and it came out through his, the inside of his right

leg and went back out through it, went across through his knee and out the other side of his, just below his knee and he didn’t even have a weapon with him but more than likely someone would’ve picked his weapon up if he’d been shot and someone else was next to him. The first bloke had an AK47, the next bloke didn’t have a weapon and there was a blood trail. We followed a blood trail for probably, oh I suppose a hundred metres and then the blood trail just stopped and that was it, we didn’t find anyone else.

So we went back and called up on the radio and said, “We had a WIA, KIA” wounded in action and killed in action, and requested a medivac chopper. They said, “Yeah we’ll be on to it straight away.” And within I suppose fifteen minutes we had a chopper there. We had to secure the area a bit more first, we had to do a sweep right round the area to make sure there was no one anti, so we could then get the helicopter in. And they dropped what they call a jungle penetrator,

because there was a fair bit of overhead cover, they dropped this thing down and we got this bloke, this wounded guy, stuck him on there and put out medic on it as well and they went up into the chopper and took off. So that was my initial contact in Vietnam and all of a sudden I realised it was scary and it didn’t matter how well trained you were, it was over in a second if you got shot, if you got killed. So I had my doubts

at that stage then whether I thought my training was as good as I thought it was. I knew that if I was well trained I had a better chance of survival so I still felt confident, but doubts starting going through my mind you know. This was pretty simple you know, we’d killed these guys but it could’ve been the other way around. It could’ve been us walking across the track, crossing the track and they could’ve had a gun there. So youk now Barry and I, I said to Barry, “Well, we’re going to have to be on the ball from now on.” So

that’s what we tried to do although it didn’t necessarily work the way it was supposed to because that night we followed this track for about, oh I suppose half a kilometre, it was pretty big and it was raining that night. We had a pretty crummy night sort of and our platoon commander told us we were going to put an ambush on the track and it was a night time ambush which meant we were reasonably close to the track,

probably about fifteen, twenty metres away and I can’t remember whether we set claymores or not. Normally we did but if we they weren’t used for some reason. Anyway in the early hours of the morning, it would’ve been six o’clock I suppose it would’ve been, not everyone was standing to, in other words not everyone was ready. I think someone might’ve been eating

a can of food or something with a spoon or whatever and I think someone might’ve been having a brew of coffee and I heard people coming up, I heard the enemy coming up on my left and the track came straight towards us and about forty metres or fifty metres away it swung out towards the front of us and then across the front and I could hear a couple of people talking, I knew they were enemy so I hit Barry and I gave a bit of

a whistle and I just gave the thumbs down, which meant the enemy were there and we had this, I suppose it would’ve been about probably sixty seconds, ninety seconds before he was right in front of us and we were right on the edge of the ambush, we were like on the corner of the ambush and there was a big vine hanging down over the rack and this guy bends down to sort of get under the vine

and he’s got his AK47 straight at us and I said to Barry, “Shoot him!” and Barry went ‘bang’ and the gun didn’t fire again, it just went clunk, I thought, “Jesus!” but anyway this time my rifle was leaning against the log but the safety catch wasn’t on, I already had the safety catch off this time. I didn’t even pick my rifle up, I just grabbed it and started squeezing the trigger. I figured if I go for a couple of shots at least he’s going to duck for cover or whatever, so I squeezed the trigger a couple of times, picked the rifle up and then started shooting. I didn’t hit him

but we did see a blood trail, well I don’t know whether I hit him or not, but we saw a blood trail probably about twenty minutes later when we did a sweep. I might’ve wounded him but it wasn’t enough to stop him. We later found out that the round had been hit by the pin, by the firing pin, but the round didn’t go off so it was a faulty round. So this is two calamities in two days, in forty eight hours we sort of stuffed up. No one fired,

I don’t know why the claymores weren’t fired off, I’ve got no idea. Whoever was on the claymores mightn’t have even known that there was enemy in front of us because they might’ve been up the other end. So, it wasn’t a real good start to the tour of Vietnam you now, two contacts both of them we stuffed up and unfortunately about an hour later the rest of the company were coming over to where we were when they got hit by about half a dozen blokes. They

virtually ran into each other, the blokes, the VC were moving across the track behind our tail end Charlie [last man in the line] and the two guys opened fire on each other. Barry James fired at the enemy at the same time that he fired at Barry and they both got killed. So that was you know wasn’t good.

No, no, not my machine gunner, no this was Barry James. He was the machine gunner in 6 Platoon and

he was at the end, he was at the tail end of the company and he got killed and he was a good mate of ours too. He was a good mate of Barry and mine and we think it was the same guys that we missed, so that wasn’t good.

Well at the time I felt a bit shitty about it. Initially, well we heard the shooting and then nothing for

probably about a quarter of an hour and then we heard them say, “Friendly KIA” and they said his number, his army number over the radio so we knew who it was you know. I was pretty pissed off and I sort of felt that we’d sort of let the side down a bit. But then it wasn’t just all my doing, I mean like we all stuffed up but we had the contact the day

before, the adrenalin was pumping you know we had a shitty night, rained all night and then to have that first thing in the morning, sort of it wasn’t good.

No, no way of knowing.

But I’d have to presume they were, yeah.

Because that was the direction that these guys headed off in. So that’s the reason why I reckon it was probably them. Yeah. It might not have been but

I just get the feeling that it was. We probably could’ve done our job better but I sort of, I look at it now and I think, “Well, these things happen.” I mean if the gun had’ve fired the faulty round, if it hadn’t been a faulty round, well it probably would’ve been fine you know. So it was just a bit of bad luck.

It didn’t shatter me

but it sort of lowered my morale a lot to know that we’d already had a bloke killed you know. At that stage in the company we’d killed one enemy and wounded one enemy and one of our own blokes killed which wasn’t too good. You know that’s not the sort of odds that we want. We’d rather be killing a lot of them and having none of ours killed so.

No, no, hadn’t even thought of it. Hadn’t even thought

of it, it was just something all of a sudden after all that training popped up.

Hadn’t thought that other people were going, well I knew, when I say I knew I wasn’t going to get killed, I kept saying to myself if anyone gets killed it would be someone else and it was someone else but I didn’t know it was going to be one of our mates as well, which sort of probably made it a bit harder. I mean if it was someone in one of the other companies you’d say,

“Oh that was pretty – that was sort of bad luck.” But when it was someone we knew fairly well and was pretty popular in the other platoon you know, sort of knocks you around a bit. But I didn’t let it get the better of me because I knew there was still a long way to go, so you know I just accepted that he got killed and we were just going to have to buck up a bit and make sure that we did the job properly.

Barry, he was a fun loving guy and he really enjoyed himself. He used to party and drink, no he always had a good time. Well liked by all the guys. Yeah.

No, he had a girlfriend. Actually me mate Barry, when we got back on the first op [operation], Barry wrote to his mother but

I didn’t worry about it, one was enough sort of. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Yeah well I thought it did yeah, I felt like it was all there. I had it all together and I was going to shoot the guy. And to

me it was, well I wasn’t shooting a bloke I was shooting a pop up target. It was a guy, I knew it was the enemy, but I didn’t consider him to be the enemy or a person, I just considered him to be a pop up target and it wasn’t until I walked over and saw him laying on the ground there that then I realised that it was, then when I said to Barry, “Jesus, you know he could’ve been married and thinking of his missus and kids and whatever and now he’s dead.” But initially it was just a

target that I was trained to shoot and only that I had the safety catch on which was fair enough because no one had actually fired. There really was no reason to take my safety catch up but as soon as I picked my rifle up I should’ve actually knocked the safety catch off, but the adrenalin was pumping and you know, you sort of lose it a bit.

Yeah all of a sudden

they were real soldiers with real weapons that could kill us just as easy as we could kill them. I still hoped that their training wasn’t as good as ours you know, although I knew that they were a lot more experienced than us cause they’d been fighting for years. Not necessarily the people we shot that day, might’ve been inexperienced, they might’ve been drafted or whatever, hijacked or kidnapped or whatever they used to do to a lot of them.

Well as soon as I knew Barry got killed I was out to shoot everyone I could find. I was hoping then that all my training would be really good and I could kill as many as I could.

Yeah, well I still figured that, yeah that shocked me, that shocked me into the reality

that all of a sudden I was involved in a war but then the other, then the incident the next day was I realised that the more I killed the more chance I had of surviving, so that was what I was out to do.

No, well I think it as just something that I always sort of blocked out of my mind because I hoped it wouldn’t

happen. You know, I was, well like I knew that a lot of people had died in Vietnam, the Australians hadn’t had all that many killed. I figured it was probably inevitable that we would have quite a few blokes killed, but not necessarily people that I knew. I honestly didn’t really think about it that much. I think it was just something that I hoped wouldn’t happen. I think that’s more probably what it would’ve been. I tried to block it out because I hoped it wouldn’t happen.

And it did on the first two days or whatever with the big op.

No nothing, no I don’t believe

any training can prepare you for the incident that you’ve got to pull the trigger on another human being sort of. You can train all you like and it doesn’t prepare you for seeing a body lay – if you’ve never been involved in killings. Like I dare say if you’re a policeman and you saw a dead body there I mean it must get to them, but after awhile they must become immune to it or they learn to accept or whatever, but it depends on the conditions too.

You know if they have to shoot somebody that’s just robbed a bank or something, I’d be quite prepared to do that, if they’d killed somebody or whatever that’s fine but to see someone shot by someone else would be fairly difficult, but for me I was just a soldier doing my job to the best of my ability sort of, so it’s still, it sort of

rattled me probably for a couple of days but then I settled down and then just did the job. I thought about it a bit, I sort of laid there and thought about it a bit, but then I sort of got over it.

Oh I think there was probably, there wasn’t really revenge involved but there was, now I’ve got a chance to use my talents you know, I’ve got a chance to use all that training

and all that sort of stuff and make sure that it doesn’t happen again you know, ensure that we don’t stuff. You know make sure that everything’s done really well, which is what we did basically.

Oh I was angry with myself for letting Barry down, but I was also, I was angry at everybody

really because I felt that what we did was pretty crappy you know, like we didn’t spring the ambush properly and all that sort of stuff; no one was on the ball but none of us had been through that situation before. You know it was like our first, it was our first ambush, we hadn’t had another ambush the one before that was just a contact on the move sort of, or virtually on the move, so we’d never really got involved in an ambush before so we really didn’t know how things were going to work out

and they didn’t work out it was a total failure. I mean, we sprung a lot more that did work out, that were really good. We never had another failure like that. Oh I tell a lie, we did we had one failure where about five enemy walked through and no one fired because everyone was asleep or whatever, but we told the CO, the ACO [Acting Commanding Officer] that they didn’t come through, that they must’ve gone off the track because on the odd occasion we would,

a lot of occasions when we set up an ambush if there was a company, if it was a platoon ambush, we had three sections in a platoon plus platoon headquarters, so we’d have two small ambushes probably a hundred and fifty metres apart. We’d set up half a dozen claymores if someone came from the left they would click on the radio how many enemy there were,

they’d walk through, we’d be prepared for them or vice versa. If they came from the other, if sixty people walked through there you didn’t spring it, you’d just lay low. No, you don’t move, you just spread yourself, but if it’s half a dozen or whatever you can get them in a killing ground, well you fire your claymore’s off. So what they’d do, they’d count them through, let them get into our killing ground, we’d press the button, fire off the claymores, let fly with the machine guns and all the riflemen would open up and after all the dust settled you hoped you’d hit everybody.

After that it was pretty quiet for, probably would’ve been about a week I suppose. We didn’t have any more contacts but the battalion had a lot of contacts, it was, there was enemy everywhere the information that we got regarding not many enemy in the area was totally wrong. There was contacts happening everywhere. But for us it was

sort of pretty quiet for about a week. There was still patrolling and when I say quiet it was no action but it wasn’t, it was never quiet sort of you were always moving, harbouring up, doing ambushes worrying about where you were going to find water and all this sort of stuff. You get blokes you know, blokes twist their ankles and you’ve got to worry about them. Blokes get crook [sick] during the night you’ve got to worry about them. You’ve got a bloke wounded or something you’ve got to get in someone else.

We were always short handed too. We never, a section was supposed to have been eleven blokes but the majority of the operations we did we had probably eight blokes to a section and they still expected you to carry the same amount of ammunition and all that sort of stuff, which we didn’t do we normally, cut back on it a bit because you just couldn’t carry it all you know there just wasn’t enough blokes in the section to carry it all.

Oh well

I don’t think I had another good night’s sleep in Vietnam apart from Nui Dat or Vung Tau because all the time, although you’ve gone to sleep you’re not really asleep. I mean the majority of times a bloke didn’t even have to tap you on the shoulder to wake you at eleven o’clock or whatever he just had to go near you and you were awake and you know you didn’t feel like you’d slept very well either.

Yeah, because there was, I said we were often short handed but you still needed to carry as much as you could to defend yourself with so the machine gunner carried the machine gun, the extra rounds. The number two on the gun which I was doing at the time, I had to carry probably two or three hundred rounds for the gun and that’s eight pound a hundred so that’s another twenty four

pound, plus I had to carry the spare barrel for the gun as well, because you had to change barrels if you were in a big fire fight and it lasted for a long time, you melted the barrel on it so you had to keep changing barrels. You had to carry a glove so you could change the barrels with it. So you’re down to eight blokes and you’re still basically carrying pretty much what eleven blokes would carry.

Different weapons for different situations see. The

MC72 if you get into a bunker system and you had to try and knock out a bunker system, well you couldn’t knock out a bunker with a machine gun or whatever, you had to fire a rocket into it. So we used to carry two of those. The M79 was like a little grenade, it was like an oversized shot gun. Had a ball, I think the ball was about probably three inches I suppose roughly and you could fire grenades, or you could

actually fire it like a shot gun. You had like shot gun cartridges as well which were really good for close in ambushes and that, you could like you point it in their direction, pull the trigger and you knew you hit somebody. So they were pretty good to use.

The weather was disastrous, especially on contact in the mud and the dirt and all that sort of stuff. Now we had a contact about two weeks after these initial

contacts, we had a really big contact and it was you know, it was basically quiet and we were patrolling along and the forward scout of 4 Platoon, we’d actually stopped to have a smoke on the track or just off the track and they’d sort of moved up in front a bit and the forward scout spotted a couple of hootchies down through the scrub and

then he saw a bloke with a poncho over himself sitting like under a tree; he must’ve been a sentry. So he went back and told the company commander, and the company commander said, “Oh well if it’s just two hootchies there it’s probably four or five blokes, so what we’ll do is get 4 Platoon and we’ll let them do an assault by this line out near the track, walk forward, shoot the guy and then do the assault.” So they proceeded to do that, they walked forward, shot the guy with the poncho over his

head and it turned out to be a bloody big bunker system in there you know, with something like two hundred and fifty guys in there altogether. And they were - it was a headquarters group and they defended them to the last sort of, you know, so they weren’t going to just leave anyone, they were going to fight there was no doubt about that, so 4 Platoon sort of walked straight into them and they had a couple of blokes wounded straight off and then they

couldn’t go any further, they sort of got bogged down and had to extract their wounded so they got us to move round slightly to their left and we tried to do an assault and that didn’t really work either. We had a couple of blokes sort of hit straight away. No one killed. Then 6 Platoon tried to do a flanker on them and that didn’t work cause they were ready, all round they had claymore mines set up. They had you know,

heavy machine guns and all this sort of stuff, it was absolutely bucketing down so you could hardly see a foot in front of you. You couldn’t tell where a lot of the firing was coming from, you couldn’t really see any of the enemy, we just knew that there was a lot there. So all in all we had, we were probably, our company would’ve been about eighty blokes I suppose, total. The company headquarters moved up to just behind us, the company commander got shot, he got wounded in the arm,

so he was out of action and then for four hours we exchanged fire with them and they were, they sort of surrounded us and got up into trees and stuff like that, but they still didn’t kill any of our blokes. We had a lot of blokes wounded. We immediately called in the gun ships, the American choppers and they continually blasted directly in front of us you know, they told us to

throw smoke we’d throw smoke and say, “Purple smoke.” and they’d confirm it, “Purple smoke, over.” and then they’d come in and hit the place with their mini guns and that and the M79 grenade launchers. They had belt fed grenade launchers as well so, but on a lot of occasions it was getting a bit nasty because the link was dropping on top of us out of machine guns and all that, because it just spits it out and it falls and it’s hot and it drops down you neck or whatever on you there. It was extremely muddy. Our machine gun

packed it in about a half a dozen times probably. Initially it got full of mud and the rounds got muddy and it wouldn’t fire and that, and I think that’s what saved Barry and I, because we were out in the open sort of for about the first ten minutes or so and not only the gun wasn’t firing because normally the machine guns draw a lot of enemy fire. So as you open up with a machine gun they want to take the machine gun out, so it was pretty hairy

you know. We moved back probably about ten metres from where we were behind a tree. Me mate Geoffrey, he was my platoon commanders sig. He was on the sig set and he was probably about ten metres behind us. And everything went quiet for a little while and then all of a sudden they opened fire again and Geoffrey must’ve moved and the sig set fell over on his leg and he yelled out, “I’ve

been hit, I’ve been hit.” And I sort of turned around and said, “Geoffrey have a look at your sig set.” And he said, “Oh shit, I’m alright, I’m alright I haven’t been hit.” I said, “Good on ya mate.” That was a sort of funny thing in amongst all the chaos and it was total chaos you know. We had artillery brought in, well actually we had artillery brought in within the first five minutes and in over a period of, I think

the actual fight probably lasted for about four hours. From four o’clock, half past three or four o’clock till just on dark and then we sort of moved back a bit, we regrouped a bit. We got medivac choppers in to chopper the wounded out. We set up the claymores and as we pulled out, we set the claymores off. We carried long leads for the claymores, so we’d fire off a bank of claymores then move back

through and then fire off another bank. We did that. We had a thousand rounds of artillery dropped to our immediate front. The noise is just chaotic you know, they stopped the artillery, the gun ships’d come in the. The gun ships’d fire at seven point six two then they’d fire the grenades and then they’d clear out and then the artillery would drop back in again. Cause we were worried, if they decided they probably would’ve overrun us fairly easy. Now one

of the worst things about it was that before we did the assault it was suggested that we drop our big packs. So we all dropped our big packs and unfortunately when we backed out we didn’t go through our big packs, we didn’t pick up any of our gear. And it was pitch black. It was fairly thick, the jungle was reasonably thick and nobody could see anybody else. You can imagine eighty, oh well down to about seventy or sixty five guys by that stage, trying to find our way through the jungle.

So some of the blokes had foot powder, you know white foot powder, so we sprinkled that on each other’s backs so we could see where we were and it took us, we’d never ever done like a night move before. And it probably took us, oh I suppose two hours to go about a kilometre that’s all we would’ve done because the forward scout wasn’t going to hurry because he didn’t know what was in front of him. Every time he’d stop, someone would run into him and then someone would run into him it was like a big concertina effect and they he’d move and then the bloke in front reach out and there was no one there, so

he’d panic and he’d move forward, so there was this big long caterpillar trying to move through the jungle, no idea where we were going. They were still firing RPGs, they didn’t know where we were exactly, but they were still firing RPGs and that at us and it was total, total scary it really was, yeah. And then we just settled down for the night, I didn’t, none of us slept a wink we just laid there and watched to our immediate front you know and

nothing happened during the night which I was glad. And then first thing in the morning the commander said to me, “I want you to take a patrol and go to the left of the bunker system, take the section and go to the left of the bunker system.” There was a creek, he said, “There’s a creek along there and we believe there’s a track runs across the creek. Don’t engage the enemy whatever you do. Just go and observe.” So we moved up

probably about six in the morning it would’ve been, only there for five, we got pretty close to the track we were only there for five minutes and we heard enemy talking and that and we heard enemy moving on the track so I said to the boys, “That’s it, let’s go, let’s get out of here, stuff this.” You know I didn’t know how many there were, but I knew there was a lot of them. So then we backed out and went back and told the platoon commander. We went back in there about… it would’ve been about eight o’clock I suppose. We did

a line out to do an assault, hopefully everything would turn out alright. Everyone was crapping themselves, I can tell you that right now and we’d lost most of our gear because they’d knocked off [taken] most of our packs so we did an assault and went through the bunker system and no one there. There was I think six fresh graves and six old graves that had been there for, you know up to probably three or four months.

So we just secured the area and called in the engineers to blow it you know, when we’d finished with it. We took whatever we could find out of there but we had to, I got volunteered to dig up bodies, dig up graves, yeah, Geoffrey and I, the commander said, “Look you blokes dig these graves.” and it’s funny because that day we had this we had an ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] film crew with us, flew in that morning straight after the action.

Yeah so they were sort’ve of doing a bit of filming and wandering around and Geoffrey and I proceeded to dig up all these bodies. And a couple of them were reasonably old and they’d been wrapped in ground sheets and they were, the ones that we killed during the contact were fine, they were just bodies, but these other ones, like we had to unwrap them and find what was in there and then you had to dig underneath it as well because they had a habit of

burying stuff underneath bodies, put weapons underneath there and stuff like that, so we pulled the bodies out and dug around to see that there were no weapons and then opened up the ground sheets and you know, the bodies just sort of fell apart you know, I grabbed the bloke by the legs or whatever the body was by the legs and it just sort of came away in my hands you know and in the process of doing this Geoffrey decides it’s lunchtime, he decides he’s got to have a feed. So

he pulls out a tin of baked beans and he said, “Do you want to share a tin of baked beans.” So I said, “Oh yeah righto buddy.” So we sat down and ate a tin of baked beans and that and then continued doing our work, wrapping them back up and threw them back in there and to this day I haven’t eaten baked beans. They make me, just the sight of them you know I smell dead bodies. It really sickens me. In fact I threw up on a plane one day going down to Brisbane, they had scrambled egg and baked beans and I uncovered it and

had a chunder, couldn’t handle it you know as soon as I saw the baked bean I could smell the bodies. Wasn’t good ,so we’ve got no baked beans in the house, we don’t have baked beans. If we go for breakfast somewhere and someone has baked beans at the table I’ve got to get up and move, that’s it as simple as that, can’t handle it.

Well the smell of, initially the smell of the dead bodies but the

number of bodies you know, like a dozen dead people there, sort of was a shock, whether we’d killed them all or not. You know this was the first big contact.

Why did we have to do it, well it’s got to be done because you’ve got to – see what happens you see what looks like a grave there, they might bury say six people. They might have seven graves there, the other one’s full of weapons, food, whatever could be anything in there you know so they’ve got to be dug up

to identify what’s in there and whether they’re old bodies, new bodies how long, I mean the old one could’ve been full of Bangalore torpedoes or whatever. RP7’S or you know grenade launchers or anything, cause they were cunning like that, they would use whatever means possible to camouflage whatever they had to camouflage and they’d use bodies or whatever.

Oh

no probably, I didn’t really feel sick I was, I wasn’t feeling real good but I wasn’t feeling sick. I wasn’t feeling sick enough to vomit or anything. It stunk, I mean I jackerooed for three years and smelt, I worked with foot rot sheep and there’s nothing worse, they’re even worse than human bodies I think so. No, it probably didn’t worry me that much as far as making me crook. But it was fairly unpleasant, it wasn’t

anything I’d ever planned to do while I was Vietnam you know, it wasn’t part of the deal. My job was to go round and shoot people or whatever, not dig up bodies or whatever but…

Oh yeah, yeah we chatted as though it was just a normal job you know. To me, there was nothing, although I’d never dug up dead bodies before, it was nothing out of the ordinary. I suppose I expected to see dead bodies,

but I never really expected to be digging them up or whatever. But I was inquisitive too because I knew that there was a reason for digging them up, wanted to see how many blokes we’d killed, what was in the other ones, whether there was stuff in there you know.

No they were just in, they were just in graves you know, just in graves outside yeah, they weren’t actually in bunkers or whatever, they were just buried

outside.

The bunker system, well it consisted of probably about, there would’ve been I suppose a dozen bunker systems and each bunker’s probably about three metres by four metres across, probably about five foot deep, four feet six deep, five foot deep with a raised roof made of logs and dirt and all that. If you dropped an artillery round on it

you’d have to have a direct hit on it to actually do any damage. If an artillery round landed five foot from it it wouldn’t hurt it. Anyone who was in there was reasonably safe unless they got a direct hit. They had fighting slits in front of it so they could see straight in front. They had a very uncanny knack of clearing vegetation at probably up to knee high. Anything from their slit trench or from

where they were firing, from along their line of fire was cleared but only to about knee high. So if you were walking along there they could see you but they wouldn’t necessarily open fire; even if they did open fire and you hit the ground they would still see you where you couldn’t necessarily see them because you didn’t know where they were you know. So it’s not as if they cleared, they didn’t clear full fire lane like I would’ve figured they would’ve done.

Somewhere they could see someone standing and the reason they did that is cause you would spot it as you were walking along see, because they cleared it low you wouldn’t notice it, so they were very clever. They were extremely cunning.

I was elated. I thought it was great because I think I was actually almost suffering from what shell shock or whatever they called it. I mean a lot’s said about

PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome] and shell shock they say, look at the blokes from World War II, they called it shell shock but I think shell shock and PTSD are a little bit different. I think PTSD somehow happens further down the track. I think shell shock is like I can imagine the guys over there in World War II with a big artillery barrage I mean they had you know, like five hundred field guns or something firing at once and all this sort of stuff you know, and it’s

almost numbing sort of just the volume of violence, but the advantages they had in a couple of days if they were suffering a bit, they could go back to Cairo or somewhere or go back you know twenty kilometres behind the line and sit down and have a beer have a smoke or have a bed or whatever. Whereas we didn’t get that luxury, we wake up the next morning in exactly the same place sort of you know. So my

thinking is that they talk about the guys from the Second World War as PTSD which they called shell shock I reckon is a totally different thing. I think shell shock’s an initial thing in a big contact with a lot of noise and a lot of carnage and PTSD happens years later when you wake on a Sunday and think ‘Shit what happened?” you know. To me that’s the best way I can explain it you know so that’s what

happens. But when we went back in there the next day there was, like there wasn’t a, like when we initially saw the place there was trees everywhere and there was plenty of cover and all that sort of stuff when we went back in there the next day there was just bits of tree stumps and bits of branches and leaves and shit everywhere. Nothing, nothing that resembled a tree was within you know probably three or four hundred metres of it. So I’m glad they weren’t there

but we found out that there was about two hundred and fifty of them in there altogether and they were the headquarters company of I think it was the Chow Phuoc or one of the local VC force companies. And while they moved out, most of them moved out at night apparently and they had, we had Whiskey Company who was a, see we were actually an ANZAC [Australian and New Zealand Army Corps] Battalion and we had company of Kiwis [New Zealanders], well I think it was

Whiskey Company and they spotted, they were moving along beside a trail and they spotted a heap of men moving along ahead, they were carrying branches and trees you know like camouflage and they said they had about twenty five stretcher cases and they set up immediately to ambush them and they said they were about within two hundred metres of the ambush when a helicopter flew over and all of a sudden these guys just scattered everywhere, so that

blew the ambush straight away. They even fired on them but they didn’t get anybody. So it was a pretty big force and it was something that I wasn’t, I mean to me you know, with my training I was going to fight you know, five blokes or ten blokes or whatever, I didn’t realise I was going to be fighting two hundred and fifty guys in a bunker system. Up until that stage I didn’t know what a bunker system was. I mean any bunkers that they talked about that we played games with, there was one or two or whatever, so you presume there’s probably four blokes or eight blokes

or something. So it was, immediately it was an eye opener. It was all of a sudden I realised it was on a lot bigger scale than what I thought it was going to be. The enemy were probably a lot more determined than I thought they would be. When I found out they reckoned they’d fight to the last to protect their NCOs or their officers and that you know, their main groups. So that was the sort of biggest contact that I had and that

was like the first major contact. It was scary but… I didn’t sort of let it worry me that much but I was just hoping that we wouldn’t run into a force like that when we were out patrolling somewhere like just as a section or a platoon.

Oh we can tell where they were firing -

they fire a red tracer and we fire green. So any red tracer that came out of there was the enemy and we could see where our blokes, one of our blokes could see a bunker and was firing at it you could also put fire into it.

Oh yeah, yeah, oh we would’ve been within probably, I think we got to within sixty metres probably of the bunker system, round about sixty metres probably.

In the whole contact I only, I could only honestly say I saw two enemy that I could shoot at but yeah the rest of them were in their bunkers firing out of their bunkers.

Oh yeah it was pretty constant, well like I suppose the initial contact probably lasted an hour with just continual exchanges of fire, then it probably died off

for a while. We started running out of ammo anyway, we were all getting a bit low on ammo, we had to get an ammo resupply, that was another thing we were worried about because we figured if it lasted much longer we would have nothing to throw at them you know. In fact we got to the stage where we threw all the smoke we had, all the smoke grenades we chucked all them and then we had to start throwing flares and we were telling the chopper pilots that we’ve only got flares and a couple of times they said, “Oh we can’t see them or we can’t identify them.” Cause of all the smoke and that.

I mean you can see purple smoke or whatever in amongst cordite smoke and rifle fire and all that sort of stuff and grenades and RPGs and all that but it’s a bit hard to identify flares you know and there’s a lot of overhead cover so it’s not as thought they’d be able to see it through the cover. So we were getting low on ammo, yeah getting low on just about everything.

Oh there’s no thought, it’s not as if, you didn’t even think about

probably having a drink of water you know when we got the resupply of ammunition it was pull the magazine out, pop the new rounds into it, pull the belts, get the belts up and this sort of stuff to the gun and just continue in your job and then it was sort of until about two o’clock the following, we’d had nothing to eat during the night, nothing to eat in the morning or nothing to eat you know that night we had, because we’d dumped all our gear. So

we finished up getting a resupply they sent in a heap of packs and stuff like that just general stuff that we needed that had been knocked off. And then it was just start patrolling again. We had, I think we had about eleven or twelve blokes seriously injured, a heap of blokes just with minor wounds and no one killed.

Well Mick Dunn was probably the worst he got hit something like about thirteen times altogether. He

was hit almost immediately and he got shot down, through the left side he got about four or five rounds through his left side and hit the ground and then he was there for about fifteen minutes I suppose and he was yelling out for a medic. Mick Hart finished up going , he was our medic, he finished up running down to grab him and he picked him up and as soon as he picked him up

they opened fired on the two of them but they didn’t hit Mick Hart but they hit Mick Dunn again. They hit him three times through the shoulder, under the shoulder blade. Two above the shoulder blade and one went underneath the shoulder blade. So Mike Hart dropped him and then laid down beside him for awhile and then he picked him up again and they opened fired on him again and he got three times in the head or something but he still wasn’t dead at this stage, well he didn’t die. He was lucky because his father was actually a surgeon,

a Collins Street specialist in Melbourne and they flew him over to Vietnam to work on his kid, so he had the best attention. He was a lucky boy. I saw him about five years after Vietnam, he still wears two of three of the rounds that, oh sorry about that,

he’s got two or three of the rounds hanging around his neck that they dug out of him you know but he was just lucky that he didn’t get hit in the vital organ you know, but he was really badly chopped up.

Some of them were lucky, lucky to survive it.

Oh most of them were fairly quiet they didn’t really make that much of a noise. I mean the blokes like the OC got shot through the wrist, well he didn’t say anything. One of the blokes got shot through the knee. They didn’t, it’s not as if they were yelling out and all that sort of stuff. Blokes with really serious injuries were moaning a bit

but they were pretty good. It was pretty hairy [dangerous]. It was sort of you know in all the training that I did it didn’t prepare me for that. I mean the first two contacts had prepared me for that because that’s what I sort of expected, someone walking up a track, a little ambush or something but I didn’t sort – I read about Long Tan, a hundred guys or something fighting a couple of thousand

or whatever and the big battle and all that sort of stuff and I knew that wasn’t the norm because it only happened the once and apparently we gave them such a flogging they weren’t too keen to take on the Australians again so, so I wasn’t really prepared for a big bunker system like that. And there was a lot of them there, there was a lot of big bunker systems like that. So we found out over the coming months.

I think just the noise, generally the noise and the smell of it, the smell of the powder from the rifle fire and the noise of the artillery and the gun ships like it was total chaos. It’s sort of hard to explain, it’s like sort of going down the Strand you know listening to

fireworks and turning the volume up ten times as much and having it, and moving it right in next to you. The fireworks are pretty, you can hear the fireworks pretty loud, well this is, well for three days I couldn’t hear anything. Couldn’t, all I could hear was this ringing in my ears, couldn’t hear a thing. This terrible ringing.

Well I fired about two hundred rounds out of my SLR for a start and that, one of those rounds is enough to make you deaf, so I fired two hundred rounds out of that lying next to the machine gun, having artillery

drop to your immediate front. I mean we walked in as close as we could because we had no choice but to keep them pinned down in case they decided to assault us. Cause I knew that, see the VC had a, what they used to do is they used to call ‘hanging on to your belt’, in other words they got…. because of our artillery they knew that they couldn’t assault us unless they got in really close initially, or in a hurry before the artillery fell. So generally they rushed immediately and I think the only thing that saved us

in this contact was that it was pouring with rain, the visibility was really bad and the volume of fire that we put out, I think they figured there was one hell of a lot of blokes there you know. Well I mean eighty blokes, there probably was a lot of us there but they would’ve had absolutely no idea.

Oh they still well and truly outnumbered us yeah but we weren’t to know that. And I mean at that stage I figured there might have been probably fifty blokes there or something. I really had no idea but I probably

figured about fifty blokes, but there was something like two hundred and fifty there or whatever. So there was a fair swag of them.

Well I was very pleased to lay down that night because the artillery stopped at about, I think they stopped the artillery at about eleven o’clock that night. They just kept bombarding it and bombarding it and they walked the artillery towards us a bit more as well

just to make sure they wouldn’t go after us. So I laid there sort of during the night thinking “Oh I hope sort of nothing comes of this.” The next morning when I got up I sort of, I actually felt relieved that it was over and although they said we’re going back in, I sort of, I felt a bit more confident because after seeing what we’d done, I figured that anyone who went through that he would having ringing in his ears, he wouldn’t be able to see or hear too well. The amount of artillery, a thousand

rounds of artillery is a hell of a lot of big shells you know. Yeah, so I wouldn’t say I was scared, I was apprehensive about going back in. And standing there and sort of trying to observe it and trying to picture what it was like the night before because it looked absolutely nothing like it, there was no trees, foliage there was a few bunkers been blown up but not many,

probably three or four direct hits or whatever the rest of them were still intact. So we called the engineers in and they blow them up.

No we’d already moved out. We moved out that afternoon. Got the resupply from the choppers and moved out straight away just started patrolling again.

Just about everything, yeah, yeah they just loaded up packs and sent them out in the choppers.

I think we lost about thirty packs or something altogether.

Oh no, no we were out for another three weeks after that or whatever. The longest I did out the bush in Vietnam was seventy seven days with no comforts what so ever. Two showers in seventy seven days. So we went to a fire support base, I think it was fire support base Peggy.

We’d just finished one operation and they said we’re starting another operation and we need you straight away. Flew us into a fire support base and we were there for two days, we just laid there and had rations packs, went over and had a shower, did that the next day and then it was time to move out again. Seventy seven days, two showers, no brush your teeth, wash your body properly for seventy seven days, no

stand there for half an hour and have a good tub or whatever. No decent food, no fresh fruit in seventy seven days, no fresh tucker, all ration packs. Seventy seven days - like even tins of ham and egg or boned, some of it was American stuff so it was like a boned turkey or whatever. Some of the rations were dehydrated which we didn’t like because had to put water with them,

so you’d probably need a half a litre of water or something for one of these meal packs. It tasted nice but we didn’t have the luxury of having heaps of water. In the dry season over there, there wasn’t many creeks around. If you were out for a couple of days and you started running low on water that was your bad luck you know, you were just low on water, there was nothing you could do. Once,

we called in for emergency supply of water because we were all out of water, no one had any water left, we hadn’t any water for about a day and they brought them out in plastic jerry cans, kicked them out of the chopper and they all busted when they hit the ground. So that was really exciting you know. That was actually, we were actually sending a bloke out we had a guy, yeah well that’s right we had a guy who was totally dehydrated and we had to chopper him out and we asked for water

to come in so they put the penetrator through the trees and lifted out the guy out and kicked the water out and they all busted when they hit the ground. So that wasn’t a real good idea. I don’t know who came up with that one.

Oh we were a bit pissed off. It’s bad enough when you haven’t had a drink for a day or whatever and its stinking hot.

No everyone was still pretty good.

I mean you get very lethargic and that because you haven’t got the energy to do anything you know. You’ve got, I used, with the ration packs I used to keep the lollies [sweets] out of it. I used to keep the jam and I used to keep the condensed milk cause you could lie there during the night and just suck on one of those. It would last you through the night you know, just a little bit of energy and you’d wake up in the morning and you’d feel a bit better because you’d had thirty grams of jam or whatever in your stomach

a little bit of sugar, a little bit of energy. But water was a real problem over there and the quality of the water was a big problem too because if you did find a creek you could fill your bottle up out of it but you didn’t know what was up the creek, there could’ve been bodies in it or whatever you know. Well you knew there was bodies in some of them you know. We had sterilisation tablets that we used to put in the water and I used to put in an extra one just to make sure. We actually picked up some water one night

there was like a swamp right behind us and we’d had no water and we just filled up out of that and I put about four tablets in it and the next morning I wouldn’t even shave with it, it was that bad, it was just green you know. It was putrid I just tipped it out. Had to wait until the resupply.

Yeah well it didn’t overly

concern me, I think that the way we were fighting the war was good because we fought it as guerrillas. We didn’t fight it, like I said before the Americans wanted to call the enemy to them and they wanted fire power and manpower, won in a day sort of. Whereas ours was if there was a hill and we knew the enemy were going up into the hill all the time

right, there’s not much point in assaulting the hill, all you do is just get around the base of the hill and shoot them when they were heading for the hill or cut off their supplies so they can’t do anything to you, you know. The Yanks they used to storm hills and lose fifty blokes or a hundred blokes get to the top, wave the American flag and then leave it. Well I couldn’t see any point in that, it didn’t make any sense to me; the way we did it was stealth, we crept around through the jungle we mightn’t have killed anywhere near as many as they

did but for the amount of blokes that we had killed we had an exception rate of kill for the amount of blokes we had killed. I think we lost about, I think we had twenty seven killed in the battalion and we had about a hundred and fifty wounded for a body count of, well we killed over a hundred of them on the first op so I think it was something like five or six hundred probably total. But this is sort of,

this isn’t an American body count job you know, we had to identify them and all this sort of stuff not that we possibly could’ve killed them or whatever.

No for the whole operation for just Operation Laverack which was the first op, we killed a hundred. We had three or our own killed and forty seven or something wounded I think. So the odds were still fairly good. Although

if you have one bloke killed it’s not real good you know. Two of the guys, we only had one bloke out of the battalion there was only one Australian killed but two of the other blokes were Kiwis. So, yeah.

It was just patrolling, ambushing, patrolling, ambushing, they’d come in and pick you up with the chopper

drop you in another area immediately. You might patrol three or four days, you might have two or three contacts. You might go for two weeks and not see anything. And then…. but after two weeks you’re starting to feel let down sort of because there’s no adrenalin rush. It’s, the boredom starting to set in and that’s when things go wrong. So you’re patrolling, you’re ambushing, nothing’s happened, everyone’s starting to lose

concentration, you’re starting to think of having a beer when you get back and your girlfriend and all that instead of concentrating on your job which was extremely difficult over a long period. Like it was fine if you swung an ambush every three or four days or something, or five days, that’d be fine, the adrenalin’s there, you keep saying to yourself, “I’ve got to be on the bal.” and of a sudden everything goes quiet for two weeks or three weeks; you walk along and nothing’s happening.

You know other people are having contacts because you can hear them three or four k’s off or whatever or you know there’s that many radio signals going backwards and forwards, you know which companies in your battalion are in contact because you’ve all got numbers so you know who’s who. And you think of that A Company’s, they’ve had a heap of contacts in the last week and we’ve been walking around doing nothing and it’s really starting to cheese me off [irritate me] you know because I’m getting bored and I used to hope that

something would happen. I know it sounds stupid but I used to hope that something would happen to stop the boredom you know so that I would be more alert and hopefully continue winning the war of whatever. Yeah so…

Hygiene went by the wayside, in fact there’s been a lot of controversy over blokes going for certain illnesses and things like that since we’ve been back, guys that have had skin rashes and that. An example is that a friend of mine

had been to the doctor, he continually gets this rash all the time and the department [Department of Veterans’ Affairs] sent him to a doctor and unfortunately this doctor happened to be Vietnamese too and he was in Melbourne. And the doctor said to him, “Why do you think that this skin rash, why do you put this down to Vietnam?” and he said to him, “Our personal hygiene was non existent.” And this guy, this doctor said, “Well you could’ve had a shower, why didn’t you have a shower every day?” I mean things like that just don’t

make sense. Obviously he doesn’t know anything about Vietnam. He’s treating a Vietnam Vet but he’s got no idea what his problem is you know. He says, “I don’t see why skin rashes would be a problem.” But you know, obviously if you don’t bathe for two months at a time or whatever it’s got to create a problem.

No showers,

no toilet, well you know, you walked out if you were patrolling and you were really busting to go to the toilet you give a little bit of a whistle and you’d just let them know that you were going out ten metres or whatever and you’d just drop your daks [pants]. The toilet paper that they supplied you in these ration papers was a laugh. It was like glass. I think there was five sheets in it, five little sheets in it folded over and it was shiny on one side and a little bit rough on the other and that was it. Now that was absolutely

hopeless you know. But the good thing about it was it was green, it was camouflaged, you didn’t notice it if you used it or whatever but we totally lacked hygiene. I didn’t you know, I wouldn’t use a toothbrush or toothpaste, well for a start you needed water so that was the last thing I was worried about was brushing my teeth. As far as yeah going to the toilet goes, you just went whenever you could. It was, if you

had diarrhoea that was bad luck, you had diarrhoea, you couldn’t do anything about it. Your medic’d carry something for it or whatever but if you crapped yourself you crapped yourself, that was bad luck; you didn’t have a change of greens, just tried to keep away from the bloke in front of you, you know and hoped it was going to rain shortly. You know sometimes like, we used to get a resupply generally every five days but if on the fifth day

you had a contact well you didn’t get a resupply, so you might go six or seven days without extra, you might go without food for two days, go without water for two days. What they used to do was fly us in, I never wore socks while I was over there, I threw away the socks because when you wear socks and they get wet, your feet get wet and they stay wet. You hardly ever took your boots off. Most of the blokes never ever took their boots of. If you did you took them off to inspect them to make sure your feet

were still there and then put your boots back on. The guys that got like…. if we often walked through rice paddies or creeks up to our shoulders or whatever carry our weapons above our heads; now when you got to the other side of that if you had socks on, your socks stayed wet unless you had time to take off your boots, wring your socks out and all that. I used to lay up against a tree and put my feet up and drain the water out of them. Generally during the night your feet would be almost dry in the morning.

So that was how I coped with rotting feet and the majority of the blokes, a lot of the blokes didn’t wear socks. Some of them did, some of them carried like a half a dozen pair of socks but I didn’t see any point in it. It just wasn’t worth it.

Oh I used to suffer from tinea and foot rot sometimes, you know you could take your socks off and like half the sole of your foot would peel off with I;t you know what it’s like if you’ve been in the swimming pool for four hours what

your skin goes like, well that’s what your feet are like and if they’re like that for days on end it’s not real good for your feet. Your feet blister very easily if you’re doing a lot of walking and your feet are really wet you know, two minutes of rubbing on that foot and you’ve got yourself a blister there. But I can honestly say that I had the perfect feet and I’ve still got the perfect feet. They never ever let me down. They were good.

Over there, nothing really,

nothing except a bad odour and I think we all suffered from that. That’s one thing about it, we all stunk the same so it didn’t make any difference. But no, I didn’t suffer from any health problems.

A few blokes from dehydration and that, rashes, a lot of rashes you know, rashes around the groin and under the arms and stuff like that. Chafing where your webbing rode on your hips your shoulders where you were carrying your big packs.

Because like in the wet season you’ve been out there for a week and you’ve been wet for a week. In all that time while you’re patrolling during the day, your pack’s dragging on your shoulders, it’s not doing your skin any good at all you know, so there was a lot of blisters and rashes and body rashes and stuff like that but no one complained because no one wanted to let the side down. You didn’t put your hand up and said, “Look I want to go back and see the MO [Medical Officer] because I’ve got a rash between my legs.” You

just put up with it. You got a bit of foot powder and sprinkled it around there or whatever. We had plenty of foot power, sprinkled it around everywhere it was good it cured everything. I think it did anyway. Yeah.

No one complained.

We didn’t talk, basically didn’t talk. You wouldn’t say any more than, the average bloke wouldn’t say anymore than a dozen words a day unless he had to. If you had to speak to the platoon commander,

if you were the forward scout and the platoon commander called you back and said, “Now I want you to change…” and it’d be a whisper and he’d say, “I want you to change course head at such a such a bearing or whatever we’ll go a thousand metres, stop and then we’ll harbour up for awhile, try and find a good harbour spot.” that would be it, that’s all he would say. Very limited contact, you could go, you could walk all day and not say a word to anybody. And at night time if you were going to say something

it was very limited because in the jungle at night you can hear from a long way off. We smoked during the day you know, like we stopped and had a smoke. At night time it was almost a death sentence to smoke, someone’s just as liable to shoot you. If they saw you smoking, one of your blokes, well if one of their blokes saw you, well you were definitely dead. If one of our blokes saw you smoking they’d be very irate because it meant that you were giving away your position

so I had, my bush hat had a hole burnt through the top of it and I used to turn my bush hat upside down and I used to smoke in the bush hat, the cigarette was in the bush hat. That’s how we smoked, generally the smokers smoked like that during the night and it was rollies [roll your own cigarettes] mainly because you couldn’t carry enough packets to see you for a week or two weeks or whatever. So you carried tobacco with you and hoped it’d keep dry enough to be able to smoke.

No I honestly don’t think that worried anybody. I was happy to keep quiet and I was happy that other people kept quiet because the quieter you kept the safer you were. In fact if someone spoke and you could hear it then the enemy could hear it

generally, so I mean if the bloke down the back yelled out something you’d give him a stern look or whatever and you know generally, no one did, but you know I think a lot of blokes would want to go down and beat him with a rifle butt if someone talked loud enough that other people could hear them. It was mainly hand signals. At night time if you’re lying with your mate and you’re only four inches away you could whisper to each other but then you were normally too buggered to talk anyway.

All you wanted to do was get a bit of shut eye.

Honestly I look back at it and think how did I do all of that time with so little? I mean Maureen and I go and do the shopping, we do a week’s shopping and the three of us – the two of us have got to do three trips to the car to bring it up yet I carried that around in my pack you know, what I needed

for five days around in my pack and that included the water and everything. I mean you could imagine everything that you use generally for day to day living and we did it on a shoestring virtually. We did it you, we did it tough.

Just a piece of silk. We were issued with like a very thin, a small blanket it was about say five foot

by four foot it would probably be. It’s a very light woollen blanket with an outer silk sleeping bag that it clips into. I just carried the outer silk, I didn’t carry the blanket because it took up too much room. The less of that the more water you could carry, or the more ammunition. I’d rather carry more water and ammunition than carry a toothbrush or anything like that.

We didn’t shave regularly because our platoon commander said if we met up with the company we had to have a shave but generally he wasn’t concerned about it, well you couldn’t waste the water.

It was beautiful, I loved it. It was nice and warm. It didn’t keep the rain out but no, it was good. I generally just put it over the top of me. It was a bit like a sleeping bag, it was stitched on one end but it was

split three quarters of the way up but I just used to throw it over me. Most of the blokes didn’t carry hootchies you know, we hardly ever hootchied up. Only if we knew we were in a really safe area and like I said most of the blokes didn’t carry hootchies anyway, so it was too much of a hassle to put them up and pull them back down again.

Just

where you were, you just rolled over and did what you had to do right next to you. Didn’t worry about a shovel or anything like that, yeah. It wasn’t uncomfortable, it’s not as if, because everyone was doing it. It’s not as if you say you know, “Look at this, look at what this grub’s just done beside you there.” it was always the same you know. It certainly wasn’t, you wouldn’t want to get up and walk out thirty or forty metres to go to the toilet because you didn’t know what was out there.

And then you didn’t know, you hoped that the blokes that you had on sentry knew that you were out there. There was nothing worse getting up to do a gun picket, we used to run cord, hootchie cord around our perimeter and so you knew where to get to the gun if it was pitch black. And you could just grab the cord and follow the cord to the gun but if you let go of that cord you didn’t know where you were. You might finish up stumbling around in the dark for the next week. Not for the next week but for the rest of the night trying to find the blokes or getting shot

at. So you tried, you moved very little. In fact at lot of our pickets weren’t always done on a machine gun. Some of them were done where you were lying sort of. Save you getting up, save you moving, but it was always a worry if you did a gun picket and you knew you were on a two o’clock and no one would wake you up you know you wake up and you look at your watch and you think “Shit it’s three o’clock

in the morning and no one’s woken me. Why haven’t they woken me? Where’s our sentries? Where’s our pickets?” certainly had some explaining to do in the morning. “What happened?” “Oh, I just decided that I didn’t feel like, I wasn’t tired so I just laid there and…” You hoped that was the excuse and not that I was asleep or whatever. So you’d have to try and trace back who let the side down in the first place. Cause I mean if the bloke at nine o’clock didn’t wake up the next guy then you go all night without a picket

and in that time they could’ve walked straight through the place.

No, it didn’t, well it did a couple of times but sort of late you know, four or five o’clock in the morning. None of them went all night and the people that did it got reamed out and they were told on no uncertain terms to get their act into gear. We had a couple of guys in the section that I’d say, I wouldn’t say you could

really rely on, totally, because they weren’t really soldiers they were ‘bank Johnnies’ [people who had worked in banks] or whatever.

Just about anyone in the section could do anyone else’s

job but some of the blokes you just wouldn’t use them you know. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them it was just that you thought that they weren’t capable of doing the job you know.

Oh just their actions.

We had a guy that accidentally set of a claymore we were actually setting up an ambush and he got tangled up in the bamboo and thought he connected his lead to the claymore to take it back which is, you connected it to the claymore but you don’t put the detonator on until you get back to where you’re going to lay. He’s put his detonator on and he’s going back and he’s got caught up and he thrown it on the ground and

the safety bar was broken on it so it just went off, set the claymore went off. Everybody was out front setting up claymores, lucky nobody was behind it or actually in front of it, next minute there’s an almighty explosion and there’s crap flying everywhere everyone’s in a total panic, ‘Oh we’ve been sprung!’ someone’s just fired an RPG at us we presumed and it wasn’t it was Mick. He was a Nasho. Mick was, we put him out on sentry one day and he was out there for about ten minutes and the next minutes we hear these shot and Mick’s running

back in and firing over his shoulder. And I said to Mick, I said, “What happened?” he said, “Oh there’s a couple of Nogs coming up the track.” I said, “Did you shoot them?” He said “I fired…” I said, “I’m not…” because he’d just been done for this claymore job you know two weeks loss of pay and that and he said, “ I’m not getting paid to kill anybody.” so he just fired over their heads. But that what was Mick was like he was a real wag you know. But you know I could’ve shot him, “I’m not getting paid to kill anybody.”

But I laughed, I’ve got to admit I had to laugh because it sounded funny at the time the way he came out with it.

Oh he was always funning around you know. He was a general stuff up. Everything he touched he stuffed up. We had a bloke Graham Taylor, who I hadn’t seen until twelve months ago and he rang me up and said, “I’m in town” and I said, “Come over we’ll

have a barbecue.” And he came over and he said, “I didn’t know what sort of a welcome I’d get.” I said, “Why?” and he said “Well, you know I was a shit house soldier.” And I said, “Yeah but it wasn’t your fault you were a National Serviceman. I didn’t expect you to be you know a super soldier or whatever just so long as you tried to do you best.” you know I mean he finished up getting shot because he was standing in the middle of the track and one of our blokes yelled out, “Don’t stand there you’ll get shot.” and all of a sudden one of our, one of the 6 Platoon blokes shot him, one of our own, one of our own

guys shot him. We were harboured up and he’d just, Graham had moved around onto the track and 6 Platoon was supposed to be on the other side, patrolling on the other side of the creek, the going got too tough for them and they crossed to our side without telling us. We stopped and they walked into us. Our blokes realised it was 6 Platoon and didn’t open fire but 6 Platoon opened on Graham and shot him through the leg. Hit two of them - one bloke got shot in the shoulder and the other bloke got shot in the knee.

So you know that’s rules of engagement caused that, not obeying rules of engagement. Identify your target, make sure that it’s your enemy and not your friend. So these sort of things happen in war. It’s inevitable that people are going to get killed and wounded by friendly fire because there’s always someone in the heat of the moment is going to squeeze the trigger at the wrong time, think he saw someone or whatever. On my last op,

on my last op I, second last op sorry, we had a contact and we killed a couple of guys. We did a sweep and then we followed this track for about, oh I suppose about a kilometre, two kilometres. We stopped at a track junction and platoon headquarters and my section stayed on the track junction and the two other sections went up either track just to follow it and see if anyone had been up there.

Now while we were in the little harbour, what we call a harbour, we had all around the fence happening, I noticed, it looked like someone had run through the scrub just in front of where we were. So I said to Johnny Holgate, he was my forward scout, I said, “Johnny I think it looks like somebody’s gone through the scrub, I’ll go back and see Adrian.” So I walked over to Adrian and I said, “I’m going to do a reccie [reconnoitre] out there.” and he said, “Yeah no worries.” So I gave a whistle and it was that, that’s the signal for a ‘reccie you know, enemy

out across there you know, everyone sort of seemed to be okay with it and so we went out; we went down the track a little bit and then we did sweep and we got out, we were out about forty metres I suppose the two of us and the next minute a shot was fired but it didn’t come from that direction, it came from where the platoon was. But unfortunately, oh well not unfortunately, there was enemy had run through there and they were laying

low now

my platoon sergeant he open fired on us thinking that we were enemy. These guys open fired on us because they thought we’d spotted them. So these guys, lucky he only fired one shot and he reckons it was an aimed shot at one of us cause when I got back I was fuming, I was absolutely ropeable because I knew the first shot came from the platoon. I was running backwards and nearly shot myself in the foot because I fell over as I was following

these other guys that were shooting at us and when I got back I said, “Who was the dick head that fired the first shot?” and he said, “It was me. I saw two enemy out there.” And I said, “You got the message Johnny Holgate and I were going out there.” He said, “They were enemy I could tell by…” you know I mean our greens looked black anyway we’d been out in the scrub for months or weeks or whatever, perspiration, we looked grotty and not only that too, we’d actually dropped our webbing which was the first time I’d ever done that. I’d never ever gone outside without a weapon because that’s where you carry your

basic pouches and that, your spare ammo and that, and I’d dropped everything and that’s probably one of the reasons why we might’ve looked like enemy because we had no basic pouches on. But anyway he fired one aimed shot, one of us was extremely lucky, he couldn’t have hit the two of us but I don’t know how he missed us about forty metres away. That was, I think my second last op and that was when I decided that I wasn’t going to sign on and do any more time over there.

I figured that was enough for me.

That particular incident, I decided it was time you know I was taking too much of a risk signing on and doing another three months or whatever it was so I was prepared to go home.

I was actually thinking about it yeah. I was seriously thinking about it.

There was an incident, there was another incident I had with my section commander and it was after the first operation and I was sitting in my tent reading a – I was writing a letter to Maureen and it was about ten to ten or something and this guy had had a few beers he was orderly corporal and he walked into the tent and he said, “I want you to turn the light out.” I said, “I’ve got ten minutes to finish writing the letter, I’ll turn the light out.” He said, he

said, “I want you to turn it out now.” I said, “Mate I’m not turning it out that’s all there is to it you know.” And he said, “I’m sick of your attitude and this crap, you’re always undermining my authority and all that” this was just after the first op and so he invited me outside the tent for a punch up and I thought, well this is going to be exciting cause you know I said, “Righto if you want to.” So I walked outside with him and I said him, “You’d want to make it a good one.” But

even at that stage I’d made up my mind I wasn’t going to throw a punch ,because he’s my section commander and I figured if he threw punches that’s fine but if someone said, “What happened?” I’d say, “Well he punched the crap out of me.” you know but I wasn’t going to hit him back. So he smacked me one really good one in the jaw, just about busted my jaw with the first punch I reckon and then he sort of and I just covered up and he started punching hell out of me and after I suppose thirty seconds or a minute I just started laughing and all the boys had come out of their tents and all that sort of stuff “Oh fight, fight!” you know

clapping and cheering and all that “Hit him, hit him!” and I didn’t have to throw a punch. Anyway in the finish he stopped throwing punches and then he tried to put his arm around me and he said, “Hey listen, oh buddy, you’ve always been number one or something…” and I just said, “Piss off!” you know and he was gone about two weeks later he was back home. That was probably the best thing that happened to our section and our platoon while we were over there.

Out of all the other incidents that happened that was probably the best, him leaving.

Yes, yeah, mm.

Oh I know of him. Yeah I still contact him actually cause as much as I dislike him he was still part of the team. I mean he was invited up here for the reunion because he was part of the team. And I wouldn’t hold it against him

I mean people do things that they shouldn’t do we all know that, but I don’t hold grudges against anybody so I just…. you know. Doing what I did to him was enough you know, I embarrassed the crap out of him. In fact the next morning I went over to, I had to go to Q Store [quartermasters store] and Billy McCutcheon was the QM [Quartermaster] and Billy said to me, “What’s this I hear you got in a bit of a punch up last night?” and I said “Did you hear about it did you?” And he said, “Yeah, you won the fight and you didn’t

even have to throw a punch that was pretty good.” So it got around pretty quick that you know. Apparently the same thing happened on the first tour he had really bad diarrhoea and came home. I’ve since been told that he was eating, he was just eating sweet biscuits or whatever and drinking black tea. And obviously that’s going to give you diarrhoea or something you can’t just live on that, so

whether he was, or whether it was a plan to get out of Vietnam I don’t know. But I know he shouldn’t have gone, most of the second tour blokes I don’t think have gone. I don’t think anyone should have to go through that twice and be sane and be able to do their job properly. Especially when you’ve come home you’ve seen what life’s all about you know you’ve walked in the pubs, you’ve watched the TV and you’ve taken your girlfriend out and then all of a sudden you’re back in Vietnam again. It’s not real good you know.

I did, yeah I came home and I got engaged. Yeah I, five days…

I was over there for about five months I think before I came home. I was out the bush one day on an operation I flew out on a resupply, I back loaded on a resupply back to Nui Dat, that was that morning. That afternoon I was at

Ton San Nhut [airport] in Saigon. That night, two o’clock in the morning I was in Sydney. That afternoon I was in Townsville sitting there talking to Maureen. It was amazing, sort of like one minute you’re sort of full on and the next minute…. but I was still full on, I hadn’t turned off and I don’t think you do.

I was still doing gun picket at like two o’clock in the morning sitting on the front patio. Maureen’d come out and say, “What are you doing?” “Just having a cigarette.” you know. Five days of total confusion because I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, you know. I was worried that the blokes were there and I wasn’t there. I was glad that I was home with Maureen but I still couldn’t accept the fact that I wasn’t in a war zone. You know, yesterday I was in a war zone, today I’m sitting there drinking coffee, having a cigarette, having a beer whatever you know.

I think I was home for about three days and I said to Maureen, “Will you marry me?” and she said, “Yeah okay.” So that was good.

No, no plans, no it wasn’t planned. No, no, it was spontaneous. And my mother was up from Melbourne because she knew I was coming home on R and R [rest and recreation]. And I said to her you know “We’ve decided to get engaged.” and she said, “Oh good on you.” And then it was like gone in

a couple of days and it was all over and I was heading back on a plane to Nui Dat you know, within a day and half I was back in the bush again.

I’m not really sure whether it had an effect on it, I think it was actually, probably it might’ve been a bit of a dumb thing to do at the time because

I didn’t’ know whether I was going to come home or not and I think I’ve just tied, I virtually tied the knot; I’ve told her that I love her and want to marry her and then I’ve gone back to Vietnam when I actually thought when I got back there it mightn’t have been the right thing to do and I was concerned for Maureen, because I thought like, all of a sudden she’s got this guy who says he wants to marry her and he mightn’t come home. But I never really asked her what her reaction was.

Possibly shuffled it along a bit. Yeah might’ve. Maybe I needed some security or something I don’t now. It could’ve been something to hang on to for the next three or four months or whatever. Quite possible but like I said when I got off the plane in Townsville I had actually no plans of getting engaged it wasn’t part of the plan. So yeah it was good.

Yeah, well I’d say that was what it was because you know, I hadn’t been with any women at that stage you know in Vietnam, I’d been down the Vungers [Vung Tau] once and just got pissed [drunk] and didn’t worry about the women. Later on in the tour, which was probably the wrong time because I’d just got engaged, but these things happen you know,

it was not as if I fell in love with anyone over there it was just ‘wham bam thank you m’aam’ or whatever you know, I’m going back into the field and sex’d be good for five minutes just to relieve the frustrations and you know, yeah.

Oh actually I was at I think I was operating at the Horseshoe we were training the ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam] and I spent ten weeks at the

Horseshoe which was a, it was a feature like a volcano, a volcanic crater with an entrance at the front so it was like a Horseshoe, that’s why it’s call the Horseshoe I suppose and we trained the ARVN there. And because it was fairly close to Vung Tau they said, “Oh well you can have a couple of days in Vung Tau if you want to.” So we went down to Vung Tau and proceeded to get full and we drank the local, the local booze [beer] , the Bami Ba Thirty Three, it was a French

beer and I had no intentions of picking up any birds anyway I was just going to have a good time and finished up, this bird [girl] sat on my lap and you know within about thirty seconds, I suppose she didn’t have to do much talking. And it was upstairs and ‘wham bam thank you m’am’ back downstairs and back on the booze. But I actually got done

for breaking curfew and AWOL that night because I didn’t get back to the Badcoe Centre where we were supposed to be staying. We sat at this bar and proceeded to get drunker and drunker and by then it was ten o’clock and we couldn’t leave, so we just stayed there the night and we got there about half past eight in the morning. You could leave the place about eight o’clock and we tried to walk in at half past eight and they had these guys on sentry who had just arrived over there and they were pretty conscientious and they said, “Where’s your leave pass?” and we said, “Oh we’ve just gone

out and we’re coming back in we’ve left our money, “Oh no you haven’t, I haven’t seen your leave pass.” so wanted the leave pass didn’t have, then so front the CO, forty dollar fine, fourteen days field punishment which was filling sandbags and digging pits and all that sort of stuff which I didn’t have to do anyway because while I was at the Horseshoe I had to go and do subject ‘C’ which was military law back at Nui Dat for two weeks. So I went back to Nui Dat, this was the day

I had to go back to Nui Dat, so I went back to Nui Dat and didn’t tell anybody. So I got fined forty dollars and just wandered around like nothing had happened.

So it was, yes a very expensive night out, forty dollars that would’ve got me a fair bit over there actually. Beer was extremely cheap. A bottle of Black Walker, a bottle of Black Label was a dollar eighty a litre. No a dollar eighty a twenty six ounce bottle which was pretty good.

Oh five, five US dollars a night, no five US dollars for a spin [intercourse], but if you could talk them into all night you could get it for five bucks because once the curfew was on they couldn’t go anywhere anyway so which was pretty cheap.

No I hadn’t touched them up until them and that was my last experience with them. Cause I didn’t, I only went to

Vungers twice I think. The first time I didn’t worry about them the second time I did.

In Vung Tau?

Oh just a little bar you know, a few tables and a bar and probably half a dozen girls in there and they sort of crawled all over you. It was pretty hard to take really. It’s not everyday you have five or six women trying to sit on your lap you know. And some of them,

a lot of them were French Vietnamese so some of them were extremely beautiful, really beautiful. And you know, really bubbly sort you know, a lot of it you can tell the people that are false and the people that aren’t. Most of them were sort of happy, they seemed to be extremely happy they were chatty and all that sort of stuff.

Oh I paid for it yeah, yeah.

That was about five US bucks yeah so that was pretty cheap.

Yeah in Sydney I had yeah, before I went over, oh would’ve been about twelve months before I went over. I must’ve still been at, I think I might’ve been it would’ve been about eighteen months before up at the Cross [Kings Cross] anyway. Got stuck into a few beers and got stuck into a few women. Yeah.

With sex? Yeah because the majority of the girls, the females I’d had sex with I’d had some feeling for apart from the pro [prostitute] that I had in Sydney, most of them I’d spent a lot of time with so yeah,

no it was a bit different. It was just, it was just getting the rocks off or whatever you’d like to call it. That’s all it was.

Oh I’m sure they did. I think that every men really needed to. I think I should’ve done it more than that actually. I think I left it a bit. I think it just you know, I mean, men you’ve got

hormones and obviously they build up and all that stuff. You’re lying out there with your mate or whatever, it’s not as if you’re going to tear one off with your mate. I dare say that on numerous occasions while we were out there or whatever. Not each other but you know if you had a chance and you were alone there, well so be it. I mean you’ve got to do something or you suffer, generally males suffer pretty badly if they don’t do it occasionally yeah so yeah these things happen.

Yeah just one other thing that wasn’t happening in your life you know. Not that, not like, I can honestly say that I don’t think I walked around there thinking about women or sex or whatever but the hormones are obviously there and I know males get frustrated they get cranky, they get irritable if they don’t’ get sex, it’s a known

fact, I tell my wife that all the time. So when you’re out there for twelve months and you don’t have sex, obviously you can’t, you don’t do your job as good but we were lucky that we didn’t have women with us, not like some people that, like this generation of soldiers where they’ve got women in the defence force, blokes go out the bush, the women don’t - I mean the infantry don’t do it yet but they’ve got front line women

in different corps, they’ve got to come in and have a shower every three days. The personal hygiene of a woman is far more important than it is for a guy, that’s definite. Now there’s no way in the world, well I discussed it with, my platoon commander was the defence spokesman for the army for about five years and he’d get on the TV and speak about things I’d disagree with, I disagree with what he said but it wasn’t what he was saying,

it was what the defence was saying and they were talking about women in the defence force and I always disagreed with it, I said it’s absolute crap. I could imagine doing a tour of Vietnam and having two or three women in a section, I’ve got nothing against women I love them, but in a situation like that where you’ve got, where you’re carrying machine guns and stuff like that you’re going to have infatuations, you’re going to have people that fall in love and all this sort of stuff operating side by side which

is just, there’s just no way you could do it. I couldn’t see it happening because you put them out on gun picket and they haven’t had a chance to have sex for a week so they say, “Oh let’s tee one off now.” or whatever. They mightn’t necessarily be good soldiers, you’ve got to hope they are but there’s no guarantee there is and the last thing you’d want is your sentries out there having a bonk while you’re trying to sleep and not get your throat cut. You know little things like that, women’s needs are far greater than men’s as far as hygiene goes. What do you do

every two or three days? Get in a resupply helicopter you know, all the girls with their periods at a different time, what do you do, every second day you’ve got a chopper coming in, you don’t want to disclose your position by calling in the helicopter for no reason whatsoever or what I consider to be you know, something that shouldn’t happen? So I’ve got a strong view on that, I don’t like the idea of women on the front line at all and not only that she might get wounded right,

you’ve said to him, “I want you to keep these people pinned down on a machine gun.” and she’s over there screaming “Help me Harry, help me!” what does he do, keep squeezing the trigger on the machine gun or go and help his girlfriend? You know, it’s not right I don’t reckon, that’s just my opinion but I just thought I’d mention it.

One of the operations we did was a commemoration to the blokes at Long Tan and our engineers made up a cross to be placed at the battle

site of Long Tan. Unfortunately I wasn’t at the exact spot but we were in a protection group while they, they had about I think sixteen, fifteen or sixteen of the original Long Tan Vets, had the cross and we protected them and they had a nice little church service and the chopper flew the cross in, lowered it in and then the engineers set it, but unfortunately it was stolen a few years later, sort

of by some Vietnamese. I think they know where it is though I think it’s been kept somewhere over there. But that was one of the ops I did.

No, I didn’t get to meet any of them, no. And we did an operation into a place called the Nui Matows[?] and no one had been in there for about five or six years. The last time the Americans had a go

at it they had a bit of a beating so they didn’t go back. So I wasn’t really looking forward to that one because I knew it was going to be pretty tough and it was very mountainous, like caves and everything and there was going to be a lot of bunker systems in it. Anyway we had APCs and they must’ve known we were coming because they were blowing up the bridges before we were even getting to the bridges you know. We had a bridge layer so they were laying bridges over creeks and stuff. Anyway,

we were at around like the base of the Nui Matows and we sat for about two days while the Yanks bombed it with B52s and how anyone could survive up in those mountains with the B52s dropping bombs has got me beat. I mean the ground just shook and it was constant for two days before we went in there. It was probably good in one way that it probably drove a lot of them out and killed a lot of them but it also made it difficult for us

because of the bomb craters and that, because everywhere you walked there was a bomb crater and it generally was full of water, half full of water or full of mud. All the trees were knocked over so you couldn’t go in a straight line. It was you know, you’d send your forward scout on a course and you didn’t look anything like getting there because you’d have to do, you’d do a detour to the left, you’d want to come back right but there was another bomb crater so you’d have to go left

again. And then there’d be a bomb crater to your right, so then you’d have to go left and it was extremely difficult operating and it was very mountainous, like you had to be a mountain goat almost to walk up there. And you know the amount of stuff that we were carrying and all this sort of stuff. We had a few small contacts, nothing major... We came across a lot of bunker systems, empty bunker systems. But we found a lot of caches with

rice and medical supplies; we caught about twenty or thirty PO, well not actually POWs [Prisoners of War],we presumed were VC,most of them were out of the hospital system that was called the K26 I think and when we eventually found that it was unbelievable,they had operating theatres and they had a Mini Minor motor [car motor] for electricity, you know a generator. They had operating tables and a dentist

chair and all sorts of stuff there. They had, well we took out, the 6th Battalion took out the biggest haul of medical equipment, drugs and all that sort of stuff that had been captured in the whole of the Vietnam. It was the biggest cache but probably cause it was in an area that no one had been in to and I think they

felt fairly safe in there.

Well it was, it wasn’t actually dug underground, it was dug in the ground and then an overhead cover put over it most of it. It wasn’t deep underground so it was, it was more like a giant bunker system you know, with leading passageways and all that. But there was heaps of equipment they left

heaps of equipment and that behind. A lot of documents we picked up, stuff you know, like I think it was later on in that operation they came across these – I think it was in the Nui Matows we captured, B Company captured I wasn’t with them at the time, they captured a thing called a One Time Pad, I think it was called [ a pad used for encrypted messages], it was something to do with their signals, a signals

communication and only one other set had been captured in the whole of the Vietnam War. So you know the boys sort of did pretty good with that but I wasn’t actually with them at the time, it was captured.

Well it went, most of the medical supplies went back to be distributed to you know other people that need it sort of – United – I think it was, I’m not sure whether it was

something set up, I think it was set up by the UN, the United Nations actually and they distributed it. So it was good to know that came in handy for someone anyway.

Yeah, they were pretty passive the majority of them, because of the amount of destruction that went on around them. We only had minor contacts, we had a few ambushes. A couple of times we had like snipers firing a couple of shots at us and then taking

off. But apart from that it was really fairly quiet. I don’t think, I think we only had one bloke wounded or something on that op. That was probably about the quietest op we had. It was probably the toughest as far as physical endurance and that went but it was probably the quietest as far as contacts with the enemy and that went.

That one lasted about four weeks I think. About four weeks. And then the next operation I did was

a big operation with the armour. We had a heap of, we had a squadron of tanks, I think we had some Yank tanks, we had some mobile guns and one five track mounted guns and a couple of squadrons of APCs. It was the biggest armoured convoy since the Second World War but it was pointless in Vietnam, didn’t make any sense because you could hear us coming from twenty miles away

you know, so we sort of wandered around there for awhile. We spent a bit of time along the beach ambushing craft you know, hoping that craft were going to come into the beach and we’d ambush them. We had limited contacts obviously because of the noise, I mean the majority of the local weapons that the guys had around there weren’t good enough to take on tanks or whatever. So it was fairly quiet, lasted awhile.

That was basically the last operation I did over in Vietnam. I was out on that, I think I was out on that for about two weeks and I was sitting in an APC reading a comic and I heard them say, “Lance Corporal ARG is to RTA” [Return to Australia] And I said to the boys, “Gee that’s me. I’m going home.” Because at that stage I was due out on the 27th of February

and this was like late January and I had forty five days leave coming to me and it didn’t compute, I figured I should’ve been home three weeks ago or whatever. So I’m out the bush there with the boys and the next minute the Yanks came in and picked me up with this little, a little Bell Jet Ranger or whatever it was a little Bell Bubble anyway. Just the pilot, so I jumped in. And I said, “Where are you taking me?” and he said, “Up to a place called Hang Tan.” It’s a Yank

base I said “Righto, no worries.” So we took off and we flew up along the beach, flew about fifteen k’s up along the beach and then inland up a river and over a few bridges and he just dropped me off at this big base, this big Yank base you know and I was covered in crap and the boys had back loaded a bit of gear on me and I had no money or anything. I got of the chopper and this Yank captain walked over and said “Hi Aussie you know what are you doing?” and I said, “Well I’ve got to go back to Nui Dat.” And he said,

“There’s no kangaroo flights coming in here for three days.” He said, “They’ve got to pick up an APC motor in three days time you can go back on that.” And I said, “What am I supposed to do I’ve got nothing.” He said, “There’s a room over there.” he said “Go and put your stuff over there. There’s a pair of clean greens over there, put them on we’ll get your stuff all cleaned up.” So I did that, within about half an hour my gear was back all nice and clean and that you now. And then he came over and said, “If you want a meal

the mess is over that way.” I said, “I haven’t got any money.” He said, “You won’t need money.” he said “Just go over to the boozer and introduce yourself.” So I walked into the boozer and said, “Hi fellas, how are you going and that and…” and that was it for full on for three days just drinking with the Yanks and going to the movies and drinking with the Yanks and going to movies. They really looked after me I had a ball you know, fed me well. Couldn’t have wished for better blokes you know. And then jumped on the chopper, jumped on a

Caribou, sorry, and went back to Nui Dat and arrived back there and they said, “Oh you’ve got nine days to go in country.” And I thought “Thank God it’s finally over. You know, this is like a dream come true.” I was a bit, I was sort of apprehensive because I didn’t want to leave the blokes you know but I didn’t want to spend any more time, I’d copped enough. So I accepted the fact that I was

coming home in nine days. And I thought well you know, no more outside the wire; well that didn’t work out because they decided that, I think I had about five days to go and they said, “We need you to take out a patrol, tail patrol, overnight tail patrol and you’re going to do an ambush about three kilometres from the Long Tan Church.” which is a long way from Nui Dat and I had five days to go and I wasn’t real impressed. So I went back and the majority of the blokes that I took were what we call ‘pogos’ you know they were cooks and stuff like that.

There was probably three or four of our platoon that was still back in there doing, cause you always had to leave someone behind to man the guns and do pickets so I think there was about nine of us I think altogether, went out and my instructions were to drop off to Lang Tan Church head east about three kilometres blah, blah, blah there’s a track we want you to ambush the track or whatever. We got off the trucks and we went about three hundred metres and I said to the boys, “This is pretty thick here isn’t it?” and they said,

“Yeah” and I said, “Okay this is where we’re setting up for the night.” I wasn’t going three kilometres, no way. I’d made up my mind I wasn’t going to get shot with five days to go or whatever. And so I said to the boys you know and I told them they could take out a can of beer out each. They could take a radio with an ear plug in because this is sort of pretty close to the Dat you don’t expect anything to happen. So we harboured up you know, put sentries out told them not to make a noise, wake me at seven, six o’clock

in the morning, five o’clock in the – wake me just before the sun comes up. At about two o’clock they woke me up and they said, “Hey what’s our grid reference?” and I said, “What do you want to know our grid reference for?” and they said, “We’ve just had a call over the radio that there’s a heap of enemy in the area of the Long Tan Church and they’re going to start dropping a heap of artillery. They’re going to start firing artillery.” And I said, “What was the grid reference they said?” and they told me the grid reference and I had a look at the map and said, “Well it’s pretty close

to where we are.” I said, “I hope this – there’s not a big heap of enemy in the area and I hope they don’t start bloody shelling it.” They said, “What do you reckon we should do?” Kenny said to me, “What do you reckon we should do?” and I said, “Well we could make a break for the Long Tan Church because it’s never ever been flattened. It’s had a few bullet holes in it but it’s never ever been flattened.” But I said, “What happens if the enemy are in there? Were going to look pretty stupid running in there for cover and finding it’s full of enemy.” And they said, “You’d better bloody make a decision. You got us into this mess you’d better get us out of it.” And they were getting pretty

serious you know and I thought, “Oh shit.” and then one of them started laughing and I thought, “You bastards.” They’d set me up, they set me up, I was ready, I could’ve killed them you know. Here I am thinking five days to go not only am I going to die but I’m going to get these other nine guys killed as well and I’m going to be in, not that I’m going to be around but you know people are not going to think much of me because when I called up BHQ [battalion headquarters] and told them I was three kilometres from the Long Tan Church. I was,

I told them I didn’t like the ambush position that they said they wanted me to do. I said, “I didn’t like that position very much I said I’d moved you know about three kilometres south west.” or whatever it was just to make it sound good sort of not that they’d ever send anyone out there anyway. But that’s what they did to me, bastards. And they thought it was really funny, they all started a bit of a chuckle and I could’ve shot ‘em all.

I told them they were bastards.

I said, “Jesus Christ! I mean give a bloke a chance you know, five days to go!” but I’m thinking I’m home and hosed you know. I’ve got through the worst of it but no I didn’t, I didn’t do much to them I could’ve killed them.

What rank was I, I was a lance corporal.

[We got a new commander and] he was what they call a ninety day wonder anyway, he did stuff all and then they sent them over there. And this guy was

absolutely hopeless. He couldn’t read a map for shit. He used to get us, we were never lost, we were misplaced a lot of times and on one occasion we were fairly well lost. No, we weren’t lost, Snow and I knew where we were, where we were on the map but he didn’t believe us. He decided, no, we were lost. So he called for a marked mission which is the artillery, you tell the artillery where you want three rounds fired.

You lay your map on the ground, you orient it and then you tell the artillery to drop a round here, a round there and a round there on your map so you give them the coordinates for the three rounds. The artillery fires the three rounds, when you hear the first one they fire one, you take a bearing on it. You look at the map and you say that’s about the bearing we’re in. If you think you’re in that position there that’s where you drop your round. So you take a bearing, bang yeah that’s pretty well spot on. So you mark it on the map

where the bearing was and you do that three times and you get the exact spot. But with our dickhead platoon commander he reckoned we were there he didn’t reckon where we were. But he called, that’s where he called the round in where he reckons we were. Like we were, we knew we were here. He called a round there, and a round there and a round there and that’s where we were, where Snow and I said we were. He said we were over there, he just about dropped a big one five five just about right on

top of us and it would’ve landed two hundred metres away. And we said to him, “Look from now…” the good thing about him was that he didn’t generally push us as far as a decision; he didn’t push us as far as his decision making went. If we got into a contact he just moved up to the back and let us do what we thought was the best. Because he had you know, like he’d arrived in Vietnam halfway through our tour, he had no experience

in Vietnam and he’s expecting to take over you know, I mean we sort of didn’t let it happen because we knew it was going to be safer if we did it. The only other time he nearly killed us, we had to form a cut off group in a creek bed. That’s how bright this platoon commander is and we’re in a creek bed which had got to be at the bottom of a hill, it can’t be on the top of a hill a creek bed. So we’ve looked at the map and Snow and I have worked out where we are and we’ve

walked two kilometres and he says, “No, we’ve still got another six hundred metres to go or seven hundred metres to go.” which was on the top of this hill but we knew we had to be a cut off group put an ambush in the creek bed. We just sort of did what we were told the only trouble was the rest of the company were, they were doing an assault over the hill and we met them at the top of the hill and the only thing that saved us was Snowy got caught up in a bit of ‘wait awhile’ or bamboo

and was swearing and cursing and said, “You fucking dill or whatever, you’ve taken us to the top of the hill…” and the next minute someone yelled out “Aussies!” or whatever you know and it was the rest of the company coming over the hill and we got punished, we got sent, the rest of the blokes got sent back to Nui Dat after that episode we had to go for a walk for three days and teach him how to map read you know, so he wasn’t the best of platoon commanders, although like I said

generally we had him fairly well controlled which was good; if we had a contact he just moved up the back and he called in artillery and that, we let him call in artillery and stuff like that but generally he just sort of kept out of the way you know. Glad I didn’t spend my whole tour with him. I think it would’ve been a disastrous tour if he had’ve been there initially.

We spent most of it with Adrian, Adrian Darja [?].

He was

excellent, everything he did was spot on he knew, if he said we were here on the map that’s exactly where we were you know. He could call, well he took over from the company, he took over the company when the company commander got shot in the big contact and he called in all the artillery and called in the gun ships and ended up getting a Military Cross out of it. He won an MC. He’d say, “Oh it doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to you blokes.” he said, “You blokes earned it for me. He said, “If it wasn’t for you blokes I wouldn’t have got it.”

or whatever you know. I try to make it sound good. No, I didn’t go to win medals I went over there to play infantry. But…

The platoon commander, I liked him from the word go yeah for the whole tour up until the time he got promoted he was really terrific. Our platoon sergeant was the same,

Shorty Turner, he was an excellent platoon sergeant. He could get anything we needed if we were out in the bush he would get on to the quarter master, the QM was the greatest bloke you’d ever meet, he would access anything you required. I didn’t matter what it was. I mean if you know if you wanted a tank out there he would steal one for you or whatever. Didn’t matter what you wanted he would get it for you. And unfortunately like

halfway through the tour our platoon commander changed and also our platoon sergeant changed.

Did I get to see more of…?

Well I sort of, I had a fair bit to do with him before we left actually cause Maureen and his wife were extremely good friends so

we used to go round, and I used to go round and have a cup of coffee with him or whatever. I didn’t socialise with him that much that it would’ve affected our relationship. I did, when I came home, when the battalion came home from Vietnam we used to spend a lot of time round there. We were always over there playing cards and you know playing Monopoly and all that sort of stuff. We got on really well. We struck up a really good relationship. Although there was such a difference between ranks and all that it didn’t bother him that much.

Oh yeah he was with us all the time. I mean if we spent seventy seven days out to bush he spent seventy seven days out to bush as well. We weren’t always necessarily right with platoon, I mean often we went off, we did section patrolling. We wouldn’t go too far though as a section though because it was a bit unsafe. It was only once we ever operated really as a section without,

without their support and that was when we were operating with the ARVN, when we were training with the ARVN and it was a shake down operation to see how much they’d learnt and it was up near a base called Black Horse and there was a company of them and about ten of us, the company of ARVN, South Vietnamese and about ten of us and we had a contact and killed a couple of guys and killed a woman and captured a woman

and we told this bloke to stay with the captives while we formed the harbour. When we called him in and he came in but he didn’t bring them in, they just shot through. Anyway, during the night we got mortared and we’d taught them whenever they harboured up they had to dig in and that sort of stuff that was something we didn’t, very rarely did but that’s the way the book said you had to do it so we taught them how to do that. So they dug in

and we just curled up you know and we got mortared during the night, so we told them that we moved the perimeter out a bit further; so we moved them out of their shell scrapes and trenches and that and we moved them into there. They already had about six blokes killed before that happened anyway. They had six killed and about nine or ten wounded in the initial bombardment so it didn’t really matter whether we kicked them out or not. We were lucky we didn’t get hit cause I was lying there and Snow said to me, “Oh geez

listen to that, it sounds like our artillery going out.” But it was the pop of the round being fired out there somewhere and the next minute they started landing in the perimeter you know and the following day we had to go out and try and find out whee they were being fired from, try and find where the base plate, the base plate always leaves a mark. So we were out there for awhile and all of a sudden there’s a lot of shooting up in the front. And I can’t speak the lingo and they couldn’t speak English sort of, you know we could hand signal a

bit and I was sort of tailing Charlie with oh I think Peter Simpson was twenty metres in front of me I suppose, anyway I yelled out to Pete, “What going on?” he said “Oh buggered if I know, I’ll find out.” So he’s yelling up the line and a quarter of an hour later we’ve heard nothing and the next thing these South Vietnamese come through with a pole carrying a pig on it. Well they hadn’t had fresh meat for days so they just shot the pig. So we said, “That’s it, pack up, let’s go home, there’s no point in…..” you know because we’re supposed to be out here making no noise and all this sort of stuff and they decide to

have a contact with a pig. - fresh meat. So we went back to the camp, the next day we did a patrol and we had a contact and we killed two people, we killed two VC, we killed two VC and got a blood trail. And we told, we asked the company commander of the ARVN to give us a dozen blokes and a radio and we’d go and chase it up and he refused to

go, he said he wouldn’t he didn’t want to go. And at that stage we had an ABC film crew with us too and being mug lairs [show offs] we decided to take them with us and I think there were seven of us went out and we followed this trail, blood trail for about two or three hundred metres up through along this creek about that deep found out where he went up the bank followed him through a heap of scrub came across a old donga,

you know a little hut so we decided to do an assault on it, throw in grenades and all this sort of stuff for the film crew so we hauled grenades and all that sort of stuff and there was no one there. And after we done the assault I said to Snowy, “Geez we’re dickheads you know.” He said, “Why?” and I said, “We haven’t even got a sig set you know we didn’t even bring a sig set with us.” We’re out in the middle of nowhere with no support we can’t even call in support we can’t call in artillery we can’t call in anything, we’re goners if we get caught which was probably was the most stupid thing I did

in the whole time that I was over there. I wasn’t very impressed with it and I felt like an idiot because we had these two civvies with us, two guys from the ABC with us, anyway when we got back Darja went off his brain. He called up the company, he called up this company guy, the company guy of the ARVN and said, “Where’s my boys?” and he said, “I don’t know, I think they’re all dead, I hear shooting and explosions I think they’re all dead.” Well Adrian’s crapped himself because he can’t contact us because we haven’t got a radio.

So he thinks we’ve wiped ourself out. And that would’ve been the biggest, stupidest thing I did while I was over there and it was probably just lack of concentration just being a bit gung ho [foolhardy] I suppose at the time, you know. I think at that stage we almost thought we were invincible anyway because we…

Oh he wasn’t very impressed at all, dressed us down, told us we were stupid,

didn’t think much of the idea, thought we were pretty stupid. And he was right you know. Mind you the ARVN should’ve come with us you know, there’s not reason why they shouldn’t have come that’s what we were training them for to hunt and kill you know. When you’ve just been into contact you always follow it up. If you know someone’s been wounded go after them and they weren’t interested. I mean they didn’t like bush work anyway, they didn’t like going to the bush. They were very hard to train.

We nearly had a shoot out with a few of them out at the Horseshoe. When we were initially training them we were doing chopper training and then we took them down to the rifle range and they were having a shoot down the range. There was a platoon of them and there was three of us and they’re, and the platoon commander and the company commander. And their meals, they used to get

hot box meals, they didn’t get ration packs they used to get meals supplied or whatever and the lunch didn’t turn up. So they jacked up and just disappeared off into the scrub or whatever and wouldn’t do anything. So the company commander walked over to Snow and wanted his armalite so Snow gives him his armalite so he starts firing through the scrub just above where all these guys’d be. So they came back and he said, “Form them up on the road take them for a run, make them run.” You know push them. So we did we pushed them you know we ran them for about two or three k’s but just,

not long after we started up it was pretty muddy and it had been raining and this guy kept stumbling and falling over and all that anyway Snowy gave him a bit of a smack with the rifle butt and the next minute they’re all cocking their weapons so we’re, and it’s only me and Snow and Mick Horn, and Mick’s got a pistol and Snow and I have got armalite and there’s thirty of them all with armalites and everyone’s cocking weapons and that’s like a Mexican stand off sort of and it was a bit worrying for awhile and then you know like Snow and I both pointed it,

they’d cocked their’s but they weren’t pointing them, they were sort of holding down here. Well we both raised ours up here and sort of looked straight at them and looked them in the eye and then they just put their weapons you know, uncocked their weapons and sort of didn’t threaten us again, but one of the blokes shot himself in the foot about quarter of an hour later so he didn’t have to run he just went bang and shot himself through the foot. So we had to organise a chopper to come and pick him up and we thought that he’d get you know medivaced to hospital or whatever but they just took him back they

just flew him into the Horseshoe which was about two kilometres away and stuck him into this cage, wire cage with no roof on it, you couldn’t stand up in it and you could only just sit up in it. No medical attention they just stuck him in there and that was it. They spent three days or something in there I don’t know what happened to him after that. But their punishment was pretty harsh. They were pretty rough with them. Mind you it didn’t worry me that much I thought that he deserved something you know

shooting himself in the foot.

Oh yeah terrible, extremely unreliable. Yeah there’s no way in the world if you got in a real fire fight you’d want to know that they were supporting you. Most of them were kids. I think the oldest would’ve been about eighteen or something, you know fifteen, fourteen, fifteen and they looked like kids you know. And that was all that was left because all the rest had either been conscripted into the army long before that or were fighting for the other - been conscripted by the other side. Because the

VC and that used to just come into a village and they’d just take whoever they wanted and the elders couldn’t do anything because if they did they tried to stop ‘em they’d just shoot the head guy and just say, “You’re the head guy now and we’ll be back next week and we want rice.” and all that sort of stuff and if he refused they shot him. I remember going past a, past a school in Dat Do and the teacher was hanging from the flag – hung the teacher from the flagpole cause he was teaching, I don’t know he probably wouldn’t have been teaching English but he would’ve been

teaching the western way of life and not the communist way of life or whatever. So they strung him up on the flagpole. They didn’t give a shit about their own people. They were very, they really didn’t care. I mean they went in and butchered for the sake of butchering you know. Anyone that they thought was not siding with them they just executed. Anyone that wouldn’t help they executed.

And sort of we tried, part of our programme was that you know to try and befriend them and try and help them as much as we could but it wasn’t easy because you know unless you were there all the time you couldn’t help them. And if we weren’t there helping them and the VC came in and shot a couple of them they wanted us to help them but they knew they had to help the VC because who was the next to die sort of you know they’d shot their wives or kill their kids or whatever or kill all their stock.

So it was extremely, you know the programme that we had the sort of hearts and minds programme was a bit difficult to carry out and we tried resettling a lot of them you know we basically built new towns for them you know but they didn’t like them because they had running water and they didn’t know how to use a tap and just wasn’t the same you know. So they weren’t real all that interested in that.

Yeah by that stage I still didn’t really know much about their culture. I mean I still really hadn’t had much contact with anyone except people I’d shot or people I’d wounded. We done quite a few co-ordinance searches of villages and I really had nothing to do with them because we’d cordon a village, we cordon it off so no one could get in or out and we’d stay there for a couple of days to make sure no other people you know the dentist they brought a dentist in and the doctor and all that sort of stuff. They

checked the people out they also had the MPs and that in there South Vietnamese police and that they’d check their IDs [identity cards] and that sort of stuff so I still really didn’t have much knowledge of their culture or whatever. Apparently most of them were I think Catholics or whatever. Catholics and Buddhists or whatever but they were, the majority of the people I dealt with were real peasants you know,

I mean that was like the bottom, the bottom class there was nothing sort of lower they were out in the fields you know, planting a little bit of rice just scratching a living and I sort of felt sorry for them because most of them seemed friendly enough. They always smiled at you when you went past, they didn’t frown. The kids were lovely kids, you’d be giving them chocolates and lollies and all that sort of stuff and they were always demanding food we always you know looked after them.

Oh millions. Well I think, I think like there was probably a million civilians I think disappeared you know died during the Vietnam War. There was probably almost as many soldiers died during the Vietnam War on their side. Two, I think something like two or three million people died altogether which is a lot of people. People say to me

it was a police action but you know when three million people die and fifty thousand Americans die it’s not a police action it’s a war. A police action is somewhere where someone stands out in the road and stops the traffic and generally try and keep the peace; this was nothing like that, this was, this was ten years of you know…. they dropped more bombs

on Hanoi or something than they did in the whole of the Second World War you know so that was a lot of bombs.

Mainly killing by their own side I think. You know killing by the VC when they wouldn’t co-operate when we first tried to pacify them you know. They didn’t really care about their own people. They’d brainwash them and if they weren’t prepared to do

the right thing well they’d butcher them. We often came across graves and bodies and stuff like that. Probably, the most I had to do with any of them was like searching in a house, searching a house you know for like weapons or something like that but that was probably the closest I came to actually meeting them in their own room or

in their own house. Well generally their house was just one room, dirt floor, cooking pot and a stretcher made or bamboo or whatever made out of coke, you know corrugated iron coke cans. You know a sheet of, a sheet that they stamp coke cans out of or something. It had the coke imprint on it or whatever the modern technologies that we had and you know they were using it for shelter or for walls or something like that. But generally I didn’t really

have much to do with them at all.

No not even in Vung Tau didn’t have much to do with them no we just kept to ourselves really. Drank beer, met a few Yanks in Vung Tau and that nothing out of the ordinary.

Yeah, and detained one yeah.

Well we don’t know they just disappeared because the guy that we left guarding them was

an ARVN guy, he was an ARVN soldier and when his company commander whistled him in he just walked back in you know because we set up probably a hundred metres or something from where they were, that was the best place for the harbour, and you know the company commander told him to guard them and then he just gave him a whistle and he wandered in someone ran out and they were both gone. She was shot through the soldier or something.

Yeah quite a few, yeah. And

probably total in the ambushes probably would’ve been fifteen, fifteen women I suppose. Probably the ratio probably would’ve been about… one in four or something probably would’ve been women, one in five.

No not really, they were all, they were carrying weapons you know if they’re carrying weapons they’re fair game as far as I was concerned.

We took… I’m not sure, I wouldn’t probably about… our platoon would’ve taken probably about eight prisoners I suppose or ten prisoners I suppose altogether some of them wounded, some of them just ‘choo hoyed’ you know put their hands in the air and surrendered. We had an incident where we had an ambush and killed two initially and had four wounded but fairly seriously wounded.

And we called up we considered that we got 2KIA [killed in action] and 4WIA [wounded in action] and then about three or four minutes later one of them died you know so we called up and said, “Oh we’ve got 3KIA AND 3WIA” and then about five minutes later another guy died. It sounded like we were sort of chopping, to me it sounded like we were knocking them on the head sort of you know but you know they’d been chopped to pieces you know and there’s nothing we could do with any of them. One bloke was lying there we had a, he was hit with

a machine gun and he had a tracer in him and he had smoke coming out of him. And he’s laying there and I gave him a cigarette you know he wanted a cigarette so I gave him a cigarette. And I sort of had a bit of a chuckle I was thinking you know here’s this guy he’s actually smoking and he’s smoking. You know he’s got smoke coming out of his stomach with phosphorous was burning him and he’s got a cigarette in his hand. I sort of felt, I felt a bit sad by it really. Some of the time was horrific you know.

Well looking back, from my point of view now,

I believe that it was an unjust war, we shouldn’t have been there. The people that we, I mean it was, we invaded their country. I would’ve fought my guts out if someone had’ve invaded mine and the way I see it it was, it was more of a civil war that got out of hand and the Americans decided to get involved a bit like what they’ve done in Iraq and I disagree

with that one as well. I figured I would accepted Iraq if the UN had’ve said, “Yes, go in there.” But for the Americans to say, “We’re going to do it stuff the UN.” it was wrong, shouldn’t do it. They were under no threat from them, the same as we were – I mean the theory you know, the domino theory was you know like we were going to get eventually but when I look back on it now I don’t believe that

that would’ve happened. It might’ve slowed the process ten years of war might’ve taken the stuffing out of them we’ll never know. History, we’ll never know whether that changed the course of history or not but to me it was, we got involved in an unjust war and killed people we possibly shouldn’t have killed.

Oh well but we were invited into Vietnam

by the Vietnamese Government and by the Americans, but only because they wanted to dominate Vietnam you know the Americans seemed to be hell bent on ensuring that the government’s, the government that they put in there, the government that was there they put in there. I mean they, they you know they had this, had a programme going in there of executing people that didn’t like their way of thinking. I mean the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] were absolute, they absolutely ruthless and

the South Vietnamese that were working with the CIA were absolutely ruthless. Anyone that opposed the government was executed. Anyone they thought were sympathisers anywhere in Saigon as soon as they had an idea they were sympathisers they were bumped off. So, I mean you know I’ve since found this out I didn’t know it at the time so to me at the time it was just another war but now when I look now this is one of the reasons why I have so many problems

sleeping at night cause to me, we probably shouldn’t have been there.

Oh the time that I was there I felt quite comfortable with what I did. To me you know we were waving the flag you know that’s what it was about you know our government sent us there go in there do the job to the best of your ability. But if I had, well probably if I, I know now if I had

my time again but I knew what I know now I would’ve been a conscientious objector. I would’ve just said, “No way in the world I’m going in there.” That would’ve been it.

Personally probably about, probably four that I actually aimed at and shot and numerous others that I squeezed the claymore clacker on and fired

at what I thought were targets that died like in ambushes but in, generally ambushes are a group like thing you know everyone’s firing but I think probably four I’m pretty sure I killed with my weapon.

Well at the time it didn’t really faze me all that much. To me they were just, they were the enemy. They were, they were the black pop targets that the army taught me to teach

and while they were alive there was a chance I could get shot sot to me they were the enemy and they had to die you know.

Well after the war, my story after the war when I left Vietnam, I… I flew out of Saigon, flew out of Ton San Nhut back to Sydney arrived at two o’clock in the morning because we were told

you know, we weren’t actually told we realised later that they flew us in at two o’clock in the morning because there would be no demonstrators there at two o’clock in the morning, change into your civilians, don’t walk around in army gear because we don’t want you to get your head kicked in by the demonstrators out the front or whatever and keep a low profile. So I had about fifteen days leave coming to me so I came up to Townsville. Spent fifteen, spent about I think I spent twelve days

with Maureen up in Townsville and went back to Brisbane and was discharged from Brisbane and then flew to Melbourne and then proceeded to jump into bed and hop out of bed once in about ten weeks I think because I was totally and utterly physically and mentally exhausted. I just wasn’t capable of functioning that’s how knackered [exhausted] I was. I think when I got home I was about seventy five kilos.

I was absolutely buggered and I wouldn’t pick up a newspaper. I didn’t want to watch the news or anything because I was worried, I was shit scared that you know I’d left the blokes over there and, because I didn’t come home with the battalion they were still over there fighting the war and I was sitting at home in a nice comfortable bed so for ten weeks sort of didn’t, I went to the pub once. And that wasn’t any good because after three beers I finished up on the floor and finished up in hospital so I finished up getting this,

getting this pain in my lower abdomen that I had twice in Vietnam. Once about six or seven weeks before we came home, I got a really high fever at night time during an ambush and then started dry retching and they took me back about two hundred metres from an ambush and tried to gag me and shut me up and cause I was making a bit of noise and I was a threat to them. I think they threatened to shoot me at one stage

although they weren’t very happy with because I just couldn’t shut up you know, once you start dry retching that’s it, there was just no way I could stop. In the morning I was okay so I stayed with the blokes and I had no more occurrence of it. I thought it might have been water, crook water or something. I was back in Nui Dat for, this is, you know I had nine days to go in Nui Dat and I think I was back two days and I got crook again and I was crook all night. I went and

saw the MO in the morning, he checked me and said, “Look mate I think you might have appendicitis but I’m not really sure and I said, “I’m going home in a couple of days.” And he said, “Well I won’t open you up here, no way, unless you’re really crook I’m not touching you.” So I said, “Okay.” so I didn’t worry about it after that until I fell off the chair. I only had three beers so I know it wasn’t the beer you know and finished in the Box Hill Hospital for about three days. And they

checked me over and this doctor said, “Look you know I’m pretty sure it’s your appendix. We’re going to operate on you at lunchtime.” He said, “The anaesthetist will come in and have a bit of a chat to you.” So the anaesthetist came in and said, “What have you done recently and that?” I said, “Oh I’ve just come back from Vietnam.” Anyway he called the surgeon in and the surgeon said, “You’ve just come from Vietnam I’m not going to open you up if it’s not your appendix.” He said, “It could be anything, could be intestinal worm, anything.” He said, “I’m not going to go

chopping around until we find out what it is.” Anyway it sort of, that was I think was, that was on the second day I think and then they kept me in for another day under observation and let me go. And I’ve, about three more times over about the next ten years I’ve had what I thought was like appendicitis pains not as bad as what I got over there but I’ve still got my appendix so I’m still here.

Who knows,

we really don’t know it could’ve been anything. I mean with the conditions that we lived under the hygiene was, I mean you know we ate out of cups you know, we had cups you know, our water bottles used to sit in. We rinsed it out with our sweat rag and then we’d put our sweat rag around our neck and we’d wander around for days and took the sweat rag off and drank our coffee you know, boiled the, I mean it was obviously alright the water’s been boiling in it but the coffee was more like soup because you didn’t want to wipe it off properly so you

hygiene was disgusting I don’t know I’ve never really put it down to anything.

Yeah..

Yeah I was emotionally drained as well. I couldn’t accept you know one minute I was sort of over in Vietnam fighting the war and the next minute I was lying in a safe bedroom sort of and it felt foreign, it felt like an unreal experience you know. I felt like it wasn’t

happening. I felt the urge to sort of go back. I knew I couldn’t because they wouldn’t have taken me back in and got me back over there quick enough for the battalion anyway. So, but I decided while I was lying there I’ll join the army again. So I figured oh well I’ll join the army. So after ten weeks I walked into Southern Command and said, “Look here I am.” The battalion was going to go to Singapore after they got home. So I would’ve training for six months

and then gone to Singapore which would’ve been a good posting. So I walked into Southern Command and they gave me a medical and they said, “Oh no you’re as deaf as post you know we don’t want you in the army.” And I said, “That’s a load of crap,” I said, “You discharged me ten weeks ago.” I don’t even remember having a medical to tell you the truth but they discharged me medically 'A one' and then ten weeks later they said, “You’re too deaf, you can’t go back in.” They’ve already been on to the battalion and the battalion said, “Yeah we’ll have him back.” And they said, “Oh no, too deaf.”

Because that was my family you know I sort of felt attached to it. Missed all the blokes you know, missed the adventure. At that stage you know Vietnam was still something that I had to so I figured Singapore would’ve been good a two year posting in Singapore a totally different situation altogether. Get married and then go to Singapore it would’ve been great and it didn’t eventuate.

It deflated me, it really deflated me. Yeah I felt a bit depressed after that because it was something that I decided that I really wanted to do you know because even after all I had been through I loved the army you know I loved the way of life, I loved – the blokes were great, you couldn’t wish for a better mob of blokes the companionship you know the trust and it was really good.

No I wasn’t aware of anything. I was that, it was like I was on drugs sort of you know. I was… I was virtually out of it you know. I wasn’t game to watch the TV or read the newspaper because of fear of seeing some action of Vietnam or someone being killed or whatever

and I was prepared to just lay in bed you know Mum’d come and wake me up at ten o’clock and say, “Are you going to get up?” I say, “Oh, I’ll just sleep in for another couple of hours.” And I’d probably get up at one o’clock and have a bit of lunch or something and then just go back to bed again that was it for ten weeks except for once that I went down the pub.

Oh cause I was worried that I, I’d let the blokes you know I was worried that I was going to see a name of one of the blokes that I’d served with for a start and that I

couldn’t do anything to help them and I felt guilty for not being there you know. I had the op... I had the option of signing on over there. Adrian said to me, “Look,” he said, “I’ll give you another.” he said “If you sign on.” he said, “I’ll give you another hook [a promotion]. I’ll give you a job as…” and he said, and I said, “You’ll send me out bush.” “No” he said, “I’ll get you a job in the Q Store.” And I went over and saw Billy McCutshon and said to Bill, “Billy, Adrian said that you’ll give me a job as – you’ll give me a job as a…he’d give me a job as full corporal in the Q Store.” And he said, “Mate as soon as you sign the

dotted line you’ll have your hook, you’ll have another hook and you’ll be, but….” he said, “You’ll be straight out to bush because he’s always short of blokes.” So he said, “Take a bit of advice of an old bloke who’s been through Korea and now Vietnam, don’t sign on.” and I said, “Thanks Billy” and proceeded to come home.

It really pissed me off. I was really

aggro [aggressive] with them. I reckon that you know, as it was we got short supplied over there because the wharfies [wharf labourers] would load the Jeparit you know, load our supply ships with beer and I mean running out of VB or whatever it was you know almost a sin. I think we only had Courage left or something and that was terrible stuff. Mind you I didn’t drink, after the first op I only drank soft drink unless I went to Vung Tau but it

ruined morale because the blokes didn’t get the beer, we weren’t getting letters, the posties, the posties wouldn’t deliver mail for Vietnam. I mean that was like treason you know. It wasn’t us it was the government sent us there and you know they were taking it out on soldiers. Just if they didn’t want to deliver mail, don’t deliver government mail for Christ’s sake you know. They would’ve made a lot, it probably would’ve been a lot more effective than attacking the soldiers.

What sort of response did I receive? I received, well I received a fairly good response from the people that I knew which was really Maureen and mother and father and my mother and father and brother because I didn’t associate with anybody else. In fact I haven’t associated with anyone else for thirty years except you know blokes, I worked in Queensland Nickel for twenty seven years and didn’t make one friend there because to me they were just you know dills.

They were civilians that, I know it sounds stupid I only spend three years in the army but they wanted to do things like they called it team work and all that sort of stuff and had special programmes for team work I mean we worked as a team all the time you know don’t have to teach me to work as a team. Just stupid little things you know.

Yeah.

That’s true to this day yes.

Don’t know, probably because we were so close because I knew the bloke behind me wouldn’t shoot me in the back because he knew his job, he’d watch my back and I’d watch his you know and that’s what it is. I mean we were so close it’s not funny. I used to ring up Geoffrey you know and say to Geoffrey, “G’day buddy how are you going?” and he’d say “Oh good and how are you mate?” and in the finished he’d say, “I love you.” And I’d say “I love you too buddy.” But I wouldn’t say it Maureen you know.

I’d say to my mate which was stupid but that’s how close we were we still are, thirty years. And twenty seven years I didn’t make a mate in Vietnam, you know that’s crazy. I mean make a mate at Queensland Nickel, twenty seven years. Yet these guys I’d do anything for them you know. Might’ve got a bit of marshalling I think

but oh well can’t be helped. Yeah.

Great, absolutely fantastic.

I think our first one was about 1985 or something I think, no it might’ve been 1988, it was the Welcome Home Parade and that was really the first, I think that was the first reunion that we sort of met at. And even then I didn’t, we didn’t all

meet there was only like a dozen of us I suppose turned up. We bumped into Adrian, we went over the North Shore, over to his girlfriend’s place he was taking out Margaret Waterhouse at the time. A really flash pad over there so we went over there and proceeded to get full [drunk] and catch a taxi over to the Domain and had a few beers and like, we did we put us out as forward scout and told him to get us there, you know funning around you know. You’d make a lousy forward scout and all that you’re going the wrong way and all this sort

of stuff. And we had the esky [cooler], carrying the eskies with us and then we had the Melbourne reunion and a few more of us went up there. Kenny McGorman turned up, I hadn’t seen Ken since Vietnam. Kenny was, Kenny walked, walked – I think we were at the Myer Music Bowl or whatever, we were having a concert there. Kenny walked up and as soon as he saw me he just absolutely cracked up, he just started bawling

his eyes out you know, and threw his arm around me cause Kenny was like, he was the baby of the section you know and I sort of mothered him you know although I was, wasn’t much older than he was because I’d already done a couple of years and that sort of and I was I just sort of looked after him you know. Well I looked after all the blokes but him in particular you know cause he was sort of, to me he seemed like the sort of bloke that shouldn’t have been there either you know. And so I sort of went out of my way to look after

Ken and yeah so he really cracked up, which cracked me up but no, so since then you know we found a fairly big percentage of the blokes are now all in touch and you know it’s good.

Oh very important yeah cause you’ve really got to know how your mates are getting on you know. I mean a lot of them are

alcoholics you know and stuff marriages. One of the blokes blew his brains out but I can’t say that that was the Vietnam War but he you know he was one of our blokes and he shot himself in the head so. You don’t want blokes to do that and the best way you can stop it is you know by keeping in touch and looking after your mates.

Because it was an unpopular war, because it turned out to be an unpopular war. Because we didn’t win the war, I mean you know the Second World War guys, if I had’ve fought in the Second World War I could’ve come home and thumped my chest and said “Shit we’ve just defeated evil you know

full on.” Yeah we came home, we came second or whatever it was, that was the way I looked at it. We never got beaten in a battle but we didn’t win the war. Our politicians let us down and our, and the population let us down. So, we didn’t, the way I see it if it had’ve been the Second World War I could’ve been proud of what I did

but because it was an unpopular and I know now I really believe now that we shouldn’t have been there, my whole outlook changed you know. But it took a long time to do it, it wasn’t sort of something that happened in the first year or whatever. It’s taken me years.

I don’t know, I reckon it was probably about six or seven years ago probably. I sort

of had a few nightmares and just starting losing the plot you know and I really don’t know what caused it. You know I couldn’t talk to people or whatever, wasn’t prepared to talk to people. The only friends I had were Kathy and Russ, he’s a Vietnam Vet, Neil was army, Garth next door, Vietnam Vet,

plus all the boys so you know that was it, that was our circle of friends. And I figured there must be something wrong if we can’t make any friends you know. Nothing was, nothing was happening and then I started figuring it was me. Must’ve been something I did and then I started getting the guilts about what I did

which was pretty tough. I’d never wish it on anybody else. I think if you can, if it’s justified if you’ve been invaded go for your life you know or whatever but this going to places that you shouldn’t be involved you know I read that some bloke

I believe about twenty five Americans have committed suicide since they invaded Iraq which is a lot of blokes, a lot of blokes and it’s since they’ve found there were no weapons of mass destruction. These guys have gone in there and killed people and said, “What the hell are we doing in there? You know, we shouldn’t be in there.” Bull shit, so… that’s probably the best way to put it.

Well apart from being totally shafted by DVA [Department of Veterans’ Affairs] earlier in the piece when I, when I finished up, when I got out of hospital the doctor said to me, “Make sure you get on to DVA because you had the problem in Vietnam and you’ve had the problem twice before this. You know make sure DVA know about it.” So, I went into DVA and I didn’t,

I didn’t actually put in a claim as such, I like notified ‘em and they said you’ve got to fill out these forms and say what was wrong and all this sort of stuff. Now I didn’t, I mean I didn’t know what a pension was in those days or we didn’t sort of know, it’s not as if they told you if there was something wrong with you you could go. Anyway I met someone that said, “Oh have you got a hearing pension?” and I said, “No.” and they said “Well you should go for it because you’ve got a hearing problem.” Anyway so

I got on to DVA about my hearing problem and they sent me to this, to their – also about the pains in my abdomen, so they sent me to one of their doctors. See back in those days you didn’t go to your doctor you went to a DVA doctor and I went to a guy by the name of Doctor McLaughlin anyway this guy didn’t know me from a bar of soap. He’s paid by DVA and I walk in there and he says, “What’s your problem?” and I said, “Well

you know I’ve had severe pains in the stomach, in the lower abdomen and I finished up in the Box Hill Hospital.” and I had evidence of that as well but I didn’t say that to him. I just said, “I finished up in the Box Hill Hospital, the doctor there said to me get on to DVA and make sure that it’s recorded.” So he checked me over you know the usual the rubber glove and all this sort of stuff and he said, “Yeah okay.” and that was it. And I didn’t really expect anything out of them because I just went

to make sure that they knew about it but I had trouble with my hearing pension they weren’t interested and they’d already told me I couldn’t get back in the army because I was too deaf. They sent me to a hearing specialist in Townsville, the government hearing specialists, he said, I needed two hearing aids. but DVA still weren’t interested. They said, “It’s not pensionable.” I didn’t worry about it for about eighteen, seventeen, probably eighteen years

after Vietnam. And I thought, someone said to me, “Look why don’t you chase it up?” So I got on to the DVA and said, I got my record, my medical records under the Freedom of Information Act. And I’m skipping through my medical files and low and behold I come across this bit here I’ve seen Doctor McLaughlin, where it says, where it says… what was the word… diagnosis,

he had ‘repatriationitis’. ‘Repatriationitis’ now what the frigging hell would ‘repatriationitis’ be? I presume that that means that I’m just after a pension. ‘Repatriationi…’ I mean I could understand if he said I had a broken leg or a broken arm but not ‘repatriationitis’ as soon as I read that I said to Maureen, “That bastards trying to say that all I’m after is a pension.” And this is eighteen years later mind you. And I figured every public servant

who picked my records and saw that would say, “Huh this bloke – this doctor reckons he’s after a pension.” So, I was ropeable, I said to Maureen, “I want to go and kill that bastard.” If I had a few beers that night I would’ve gone around and killed him I was so ropeable. I thought, you bastard, you don’t know me from a bar of soap. I’ve walked in there off the street in good faith expecting DVA to pay you to do your job properly and he’s treated me like shit. And I figured,

if he’s done it to me how many other guys has he done it to you know, he could’ve done it to heaps of blokes. So the next Vietnam Vets meeting I went to you know I brought it up. And I said, “Look there’s a doctor up here McLaughlin if you’ve got – don’t go and see him because he’s a quack.” And I told them but the trouble is it was eighteen years down the track but he was still operating at the time, and I said whatever you do don’t go near the bastard and get hold, if any of you have been to him get hold of your medical records cause there’s no telling what he’s put on there.

And this, this bloke was in the medical profession he signed an oath to help people and he’s been paid, he’s collected the money by DVA under false pretences you know. That was just one incident that I could tell you about you know. I mean I had mate of mine Mick Edmonson who got shot in the first op. He was a machine gunner in 6 Platoon and he got shot through the hand ricocheted off the gun and blew the whole top of his head off.

Absolutely blew the crown of his head off. And he was a vegetable, he was in the Heidelberg Repat for three years. He couldn’t talk, hardly walk or anything right, they discharged him after three years still with about twenty percent mobility or thirty percent mobility, hardly any speech sent him home to his mother’s place and put him on the dole. Here’s a guy that’s totally stuffed and he was like that for eighteen

years before someone found him you know. It was wrong. Sorry about that, you know he got shafted. Eighteen stinking years before he got recognised or someone said, “Mate you should be TPI.” [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated (pension)] And when I met him I said, “Look how come you haven’t been to any of the reunions?” He said, “Oh shit mate

I’ve been living in a shed at my Mum and Dad’s place.” It cut me up, it really did.

Yeah, no, I’m alright, No I’m alright.

Well it’s just about finished anyway I think.

It doesn’t matter, but to think this guy was a war hero did his bit for his country and got shafted.

And it’s happened to so many blokes you know, been shafted. Disgraceful. Oh, these things happen I suppose don’t they? They shouldn’t have but they did and they wonder why blokes are going nuts. Shooting themselves and stuff like that

because there was just no support unfortunately and hopefully they do a better job with the [East] Timor Vets and guys like that. Certainly hope they help them a bit better. Yeah…

Oh didn’t do it any of it any good I don’t think. We’ve had our big

bust ups and you know. We’ve been, my daughter Angela and I have been really close but I had a few busts up with her as well. Threatened to kill her a couple of times only in the heat of the moment sort of you know.

Yeah I’ve spoken to Maureen sort of just in the last six months or so. Since I did that PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome]

course which is probably the best thing I ever did.

I didn’t actually want to do it. Maureen sort of, Maureen talked me into it and like when the day came I said, “Oh shit Maureen I don’t really think I’m up to this.” And she said, “Well you know I think you should do it.” So I went along and sat there with you know a few of the blokes, blokes that’s I’d never, apart from Geoffrey, well I actually said if

it looked like Geoffrey was going to get on the course and because I hadn’t filled in my application form I wasn’t going to get on it so I said, “Well if I don’t get – if Geoffrey’s on the course and I’m not on it, Geoffrey said he wasn’t going to do and if it was the other way around I wasn’t going to do it. There was no way in the world I was going to do it by myself. So I think after the second day I think I said to Maureen, “Oh stuff it, I’m not doing it anymore this is giving me the shits you know.” She

said, “Bear with it, you’ve got to be able to tell your story.” So you know, but we did, went out you know for a walk every morning, we went for a walk for an hour or something and then went back in and discussed alcohol and drugs and had a chat to psychs [psychiatrists] and all that sort of stuff. Didn’t, I was probably, it was probably four weeks into the course before I could really tell my story you know and sort of no one

else had at that stage either and I virtually got up and you know told them. The shit that we went through and the after effects you know. But I was lucky that Geoffrey was there because I wouldn’t have stayed if Geoffrey hadn’t’ve been there. And it was good because we were both like together went through the same stuff together and you know.

To me it means that… it means that my country let me, my country let me down and sent me on a mission that I shouldn’t have gone on and I’ve suffered guilt, I’ve suffered a guilt trip ever since. I’ve killed people that I believe now that I shouldn’t have killed and

I’ve just suffered the guilt of it, had the nightmares of it. You know carried the burden without support.

Oh recurring, generally pretty much the same, one of me shooting someone on the first op.

and then reaching down and my hand going straight through his chest like he wasn’t there sort of. It just kept popping, the same one kept popping up all the time you know and I could never understand it. I went and saw my psych and she said, “Well you know maybe he’s trying to tell you something. Maybe the dream is that he’s fine he’s not suffering with it or whatever.” and I don’t know.

But I’ve got to admit since I’ve been seeing the psych and you know accepted it a lot more. Palmed a bit of the guilt off back on to the country I think, back on to the doctors and told the government it stinks.

Oh on the odd occasions nowhere near like I was having before.

And I didn’t start getting them until probably about five years ago I suppose. I hardly ever ever thought about Nam. I could watch movies it didn’t worry me you know watch warries [war stories] and then I just started falling apart.

Not that I can put it down to. I started to get really frustra… excuse me, frustrated at work cause

I started getting a short term memory loss which made it really hard to do my job. I enjoyed my job out there because I didn’t work with people. I didn’t have to deal with the public. I only had to deal with a couple of truck drivers that I got on really well with. They aren’t the only people I got on well with but I didn’t work with them all the time. They just drove in you know, picked up the stuff and took off. I set the, I did the same job for twenty seven years shipping the nickel got it down to a fine art where I

didn’t really need anybody. The work load got bigger and bigger, I got more and more stressed because I had more and more work I suppose it was a good avenue for me to get rid of my frustrations and that on people if I did you know I didn’t have smokos [breaks] with the blokes, I didn’t have lunches with the blokes I always went at different times you know. I sort of turned into a hermit at work you know. If I got, I woke up at four o’clock

in the morning I went to work. I had, I could work whatever hours I liked, they didn’t worry, I mean it was a full time job but when I say I could work whatever hours I liked I worked flexi time or overtime and so if I felt like a couple of hours off on Friday would be fine when I woke up at four o’clock then I’d just get in the car and go to work. I always had something to do you know put everything single thing I had into my job. Well like I did when I was in the army you know had to be done to the best of my

ability but I started making monumental stuff ups. I had some, stuffed up some stuff like a shipment that I’d sent to Korea they’d already told me that they didn’t want three million bucks worth of nickel. I loaded it out and sent it to them and they’d already said they didn’t want those particular lots because they were hight in sulphur or something like that you know. So that didn’t do me much favour and then you know I ship cobalt. I shipped a container of cobalt to Japan and had to stop it at

Yokohama, unload it, air freight four tonne of cobalt and you know the company wasn’t very happy with that and I started to stuff things up you know.

Yeah, yeah fairly well back on track.

This is, you know this is sort of, no I’m generally now, I’m pretty good you know I don’t,

I don’t get involved in arguments I’d rather walk away from an argument now than sort of like at work I would stand and argue or threaten or whatever but now I just walk off because I know I understand that’s the best way of solving the problem. On a couple of occasions I just got in the car and Maureen’s brother’s got a beach house up at Forest Beach up near Ingham so I’ve just got in the car and driven up there and spent the night there, gone fishing come home in the morning I’m all calmed down.

Maureen doesn’t yell at me, I don’t yell at her you know. Good relations with Angela, great relations with our friends, not that we’ve got many but you know we’re good buddies Garth and I next door. Shane’s really nice, he’s not a Vet but you know I’ve accepted him. The guy over the back’s just moved in, he’s an air traffic controller, met him he’s nice, going to have a few beers Anzac Day. This Anzac

Day should be good because…