Australians at War Film Archive

I was born on the 7th September 1946 at Hammersmith Hospital, London, England and I’m the eldest of twins. My twin brother’s name is Edward Matthew. We migrated to Australia in 1950 as part of the immigration program coming out of England and we spent most of our

time on farms in Western Australia in the wheat-belt area. Most of our time was spent at a town called Brookton and Pingelly. All of our schooling was done in the town of Pingelly. I joined the army in 1962 as an army apprentice, 17th intake and went to Balcombe in Victoria where I completed an automotive apprenticeship under the army apprentices’ scheme. From there I went to Sydney and

went to the corps of engineers to be a plant fitter, finished my apprenticeship there in our fourth year. I was then posted to 24th Construction Squadron in Brisbane and from Brisbane I went to jungle training centre, but it wasn’t Canungra it was at Greenbank, which was nice and flat. And from there went to Vietnam to 1 Field Squadron Workshops on the 7th of June 1967.

On return from Vietnam I went to another engineer unit and then the promotions sort of started. I went there as a corporal. To get promoted to sergeant I had to go to Kapooka and run a little workshop there. It was a terrible place. I had some hard times there. Myself and the RSM [regimental sergeant major] didn’t get on very well. Also, at that time I went to RAEME [Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers] training centre to do my artificers course and they offered an instructor’s position

there. I did fairly well in the course. I got the instructor’s job. And ended up staying at Bandiana RAEME Training Centre for five years as an instructor. From there I went down to Hobart, Hobart to Adelaide to the air defence regiment, and from there back to Melbourne to get promoted to warrant officer class one to [the] Maintenance Engineering Agency, from there up to 4 Base workshops here at Bandiana. Spent two years there and at the end of that

I was commissioned. I went to Sydney, promoted there straight to captain from warrant officer class one and stayed there for three years and went to what is known as 2 Base workshops as a trade repair officer. I did one year there and was offered a job on promotion to major as the senior instructor at RAEME training centres in the vehicle wing. I went there and then was posted to Western Australia to help wind up Perth Workshop Company

into the logistic group. Whilst I was there I was offered a two year trip to Thailand to go to the army apprentice’s school they have in Bangkok. I took that up, went for two years but stayed for three. Once that was completed I came back to Australia out here to the old 4 Base workshops or the Bandiana logistics group. But I found that I had changed so much after three years in Thailand.

One of my boys was going through an horrific time and things had changed so much in the army that I could no longer, sort of, put up with it. I’d had a gutful and then I decided, well, that’s it, and I got out on the 12th of January ‘97, after 35 years. For the first year out I did nothing, stayed at home and had a bit of a holiday.

But after 12 months I was starting to climb up the walls so I ended up getting employed with the church group, with Brotherhood of Saint Lawrence and Anglicare, working for them. Then went out on my own. I was only out on my own for a year and then had my first minor stroke. Four weeks later I had a heart attack. Another six months after that another small stroke so I had no choice but to retire, and here we are today.

It always happens.

Alright.

My Mum’s name was Annie, Annie Bayliss, and she worked as a housemaid or a cleaner

at a place in Beckenham, Kent, and it just happens to be where my Dad lived. He spent the Second World War in the veterinary corps, spending most of his time in Italy and the Middle East and around those areas. But anyway, he lived in Beckenham in Kent. That’s where he met Mum. In the end they ended up getting married and the first child was my

sister, elder sister, Anne Marie, and she was born about 1937, I think it was, and then me and my twin brother weren’t born until after the war when Dad came home and he must have had very cold feet because we ended up with twins. And I beat my brother out by 20 minutes. After that when the war finished Dad’s main job was demobilising the animals,

which were, sort of, called up. And his main job was to do with guard dogs, reverting them back to pets from being guard dogs. And apparently he’s quite proud of that as they had 100 percent success rate with that. After that it’s a little bit vague. I’m not sure why that Mum and Dad decided to migrate to Australia – whether it was unemployment or

Dad was sick of England and wanted to see somewhere else but at that stage of the game they decided to emigrate to Australia and they sort a sponsor and the sponsor ended up being a Mr Overhew who lived or owned a farm west of Brookton in West Australia in the wheatbelt area. And also at that same time my next brother was born, Richard, Richard Eugene. He was born

three months before we come out to Australia. Apparently we would have come out a couple a months earlier but Mum wasn’t allowed to travel with a new born baby. It had to be a minimum of three months old. So the ship that we came out on was the SS New Australia and that ship, in itself, has got a lot of history. It first started of as the Monarch of Bermuda in 1931 and it used to do the millionaire’s trade between New York and the Caribbean but

during the war it got recommissioned as a troop ship. At the end of the war, while it was being refitted out from troop ship back to luxury liner, it burnt out and was left lying as a hulk but the hull and the engines apparently were in good condition so the British Ministry of Transport decided to refitted it and put it into what they called the migrant trade, which was starting up then. So once it was refitted they renamed it the SS New Australia, which was

in line with the cargo it was about to carry. So we travelled on its maiden voyage on the 15th of September 1950 to Australia. At that stage there was Mum, Dad, my elder sister, Anne, twin brother, Edward and my younger brother, Rick. And we travelled out through the Suez Canal to Ceylon and down to Fremantle and while we were on the boat, two days out of Fremantle,

my twin brother and I had our 4th birthday. We had it on the boat and I don’t remember a thing about it. We landed in Fremantle on the 9th of January – sorry, the 9th of September 1950 and we went to a migrant camp for the night called Point Walter. The following day the farmer came and picked us up in his truck and we ended up being taken down to his place

west of Brookton on the farm. There was a little old stone cottage up the back. I thought it was stone but my twin brother talked to me and he said it was an old mud brick house. Doesn’t really matter it was a very old house, not very big, no electricity, very little furniture but we moved into that and it was quite good. As a kid I can remember thoroughly enjoying ourselves there – learned how to ride a pushbike.

My younger brother Rick had a terrible accident where he reached up onto a stove and pulled a big saucepan of boiling hot water down on top of him and now he’s got scars that run inside his mouth, down his chest and on one arm, though it didn’t stop him getting in the army though, later on in life. So that was a bit of a trauma. We moved around a little bit

in the next – I think we had a contract, or the sponsorship, was for two years so the end of two years Dad moved or we moved to another farm, which was out east Brookton to – not sure the name of the people’s place, but we were only there for a year. We went to a place called Ardath. I don’t remember anything of Ardath though speaking to Mum later in life,

we didn’t stay there very long because of the snakes. Apparently, this place was just riddled with snakes and Mum couldn’t handle snakes so we up and went back to Brookton and Dad worked, I think, as a ganger [labourer] on the railway for a period of time which we lived in Brookton. By this time we were probably about six or seven years old and I think we went to infants’ school in Brookton. We were only there for a little while and then

this Mr Overhew, we originally came out to, bought another farm west of Pingelly, which was the next town up. So we moved out to this farm out at West Pingelly and we stayed there for a couple of years. We used to get the bus into school and the rest of it. And then Dad moved back in to another farm, owned by a fellow by the name of Doug Sewell, which was on the outskirts of the town of Pingelly.

And again we lived in an old mud brick place there just with oil lamp, or kerosene lamps, and a toilet out the back where you had to go and empty once a week. Oh, that was a terrible job. I used to hate it. We lived there for a while and then Dad must have decided that he’d had enough of this farming racket. And he got a job as a driver and storeman

with the local co-operative in town. And then he found an old house and he bought the house for a thousand pounds, I think it was, in about 1957-58. And we moved into town and we then started full time going to the Pingelly High School, which was only really just across the road from where we lived. Life sort of changed there.

Things seemed to be harder. There wasn’t the same amount of food on the table and the rest of it. Dad was the only one working at that stage of the game and we really started to live below the poverty line. Sugar sandwich for tea or bread and dripping sandwiches for tea were fairly common. The only meat that we ever seemed to get were sausages. Though once a fortnight we used to get a leg of kangaroo

because Dad and the local butcher used to go out shooting every second Friday night and shoot a couple roos because the Aboriginals of the area couldn’t afford to buy the good meat from the butcher shop but they would buy cheap kangaroo so we used to get one of the legs and hang it for a few days and then have kangaroo meat, which was quite nice. I’d enjoy it. And we used to eat a fair bit of rabbit. We had WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, and the rest of it, down the back but

they were for eggs. No touching the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s or the ducks. Life started then to get pretty hard and then as I was coming up through the school, school was getting pretty hard. I think Ed and I were the only two, sort of, migrant kids in the class that we were in – that’s in the early part – and all the rest of the kids were farmers kids

or kids from other people who lived in the town for years and years and years and years, so we used to get picked on a fair bit as being bloody Poms, one thing and another, and that was the hard part, living through some of that stuff, but, you know, we survived. We had lots of good times as kids, lot of bad times, but it was mostly enjoyable.

Oh, it used to get pretty nasty. I remember once where it was at school where my twin brother, Ted – if I say Ted, it’s my twin brother – where Ted was out in the schoolyard and was being punched around by four of these kids. I still remember their names and what they looked like,

so I went round there, “What’s going on?” and they turned on me but I had a great lump of wood, so I stopped them from bashing Ed up but Ed took off and then they got the wood off me and started to pummel the hell out of me. But all the time you were at school, like when you played sport, and the rest of it, some times you couldn’t get a game, “Ah no, we’ll put someone else in there. You kids don’t have bloody shoes or footy boots or anything.”

I remember I never wore shoes until I went to high school, first year high school in Pingelly. There was that and, you know, you’d be downtown on your bike and then they’d start chasing you and the rest of it. So there was a fair bit of survival there. You’d know all the back ways and where to hide and where not to hide, and the rest of it, but bullying was a big part of growing up. I was only a thin kid.

I wasn’t over endowed with lots of build and bones and the rest of it to protect myself. Most of the time it was flight but we used to put up with that. But and then sometimes you’d get on real well with them. They wanted you to be part of the gang, but I think they only did that as long as it suited them, you know. When you were no longer required they’d soon

push you off.

Yeah, yeah, real hard. In fact, that was one of the things that ended up driving me out of the town when the opportunity came. The reason, I thought, was if I stay here I’m only going to become a cocky’s labourer, you know, working on a farm for, for all my life, as someone, you know, bagging wheat, and driving trucks, and ploughing and the rest of it and that is not for me.

I could not stand to live in this place much longer and the first opportunity and I bolted.

Well, from living in Kensington

in London, which is pretty well middle of London near Hammersmith and – I forget the name of the other place, and it was really low income area but it was fairly dense, a lot of people and the rest of it, and straight to the bush environment. It was probably a big change in our life and we did find it fairly – we enjoyed it, loved it, but at times, you know, pretty hard.

Well, the circumstances were that there was just not much money. Dad used to drink a fair bit and he’d always – well, the wages weren’t terribly high but Dad would always go to the pub on his way home. And it was six o’clock closing so he’d have to leave at six but he’d always bring a bottle home. Later on in life, or later on,

instead of bring a bottle home, he ended up starting to drink claret and he used to buy a little wooden barrel of that and that would come on the train from Perth. So he was a heavy drinker and a very heavy smoker. In fact, his fingers were black from nicotine. A very heavy smoker. So I guess a lot of our money went on grog and smokes and what have you, but it really was a lack of money.

At one stage I started working down at the co-op [co-operative store] after school, washing vinegar bottles and bottling vinegar and bagging spuds. And while you were there, the opportunity to – they used to – all the biscuits came in big square boxes, not the way they do now in packets, and you used to have to weigh them out, say, half a pound or whatever, of biscuits in these bags and

there were always broken ones. Every opportunity you got you used to scoff yourself with biscuits and one thing and another. But I used to get – I don’t know what it was – I think it was one pound a week working there. It was after school, two days a week and on Saturdays. Then I also got a bit of a job at Jack Stack’s Bakery, chopping firewood. We’re talking about 9-10 years old

at that stage of the game. It was really, I think, the lack of money. You know, once Dad had his share, you know, there was very little to go around.

Well, I don’t know what he was like during the war and immediately afterwards. When we lived out West Brookton

there wouldn’t have been much beer out there because the town was 20 or 30 miles away. But I think once he moved into town and it was there, he started on it. And maybe a bit of that rubbed off on me. Things were getting really difficult and I think it was about that stage of the game that he used to give Mum a bit of a knock every now and then. I remember once where he came home

and around about nine o’clock that night Mum was crying, grabbed us kids and we took off – threw some stuff in a bag and we ended up going down, sitting on the post office steps. Why we went there, I don’t know. There was nowhere else to go. But we only stayed there for a couple of hours and then snuck home. The old man was asleep. But then he did become fairly – well, he was always fairly harsh with discipline and he used to use his fist or his belt

and the fist was always – give you a knuckle on the arm and what have you. Mum wasn’t as bad. She used to use a broom handle or something like that but if you did something and Dad wanted to punish you there was no point in running away because he’d just wait till you came back and you still got it so if he said, “Get here!” you got there and took a thump on the arm or the belt. He was pretty harsh when it come to

physical punishment. Not much you can do about it. In those days everyone was being treated the same. Other kids in the street and I remember the Waltons, the same with their kids and Gary Sargent with his parents and the only one who didn’t cop, I think, it was the minister’s kid, Martin Hardy. But life was pretty tough, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah, towards the end he was, yeah.

Yeah, because he’d drink every night and when he got onto the claret when that ran out he’d get another barrel. But it was that and his smoking. He’d just smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke and it ended up killing him. He ended up with a three-inch tear in an artery because the artery was just like a lump of water pipe.

‘76, I think it was, that he died. He’d retired from work and he’d taken up lawn bowls and he was up playing lawn bowls one day and it was his turn to bowl the jack down the other end and he bowled the jack and followed it straight into the lawn and he was dead within 15 minutes. And when they checked him out and he had this big tear so he just bled to death.

There was no saving him at that stage. I was in Tasmania at the time.

Yes, he was in the Royal Veterinary Corps because before the war started he was working as a laboratory assistant in a veterinary hospital so when the war came he went straight into the veterinary corps because, in England, animals were still a big part of the mobility stuff

for the British army so he went into the Royal Veterinary Corps and he also, I think, before he went overseas he was at Sandhurst, I remember, which was their big college, and he used to be a farrier there. Did all the horseshoes and learnt tent pegging. I remember he told us once about tent pegging. He was in the Royal Veterinary Corps

and got out.

Well, most of his stuff, I guess, would have been with pack animals as far as things which means just, you know, leading animals with loads of goods and that towards the frontline. I’m not sure. He was in Italy when Vesuvius erupted in ‘43 or ‘44.

He saw that. And then he was in Italy, Palestine. In fact, I’ve got a photo of him in his British desert gear and he looks a bit like Lawrence of Arabia. But, when we saw the picture and said, “Who’s that?” he said, “That’s Percy of Palestine.” In fact, I’ve got a photo of myself at Lake Callabonna in South Australia

and I’ve got this head gear on, too, and I called myself Clarence of Callabonna. Yeah, he spent most of his time in the Middle East, I think. I know he learnt Arabic. In fact he was quite lingual as far as I know – French and Arabic. I’m not sure about Italian. I think he could speak Italian because he used to chat every now and again with a guy we used to call Poppa Venditti.

They were some Italian migrants that lived in the town and every now and then – well, he must have got on well with him because every now and then he used to get an old flagon of vino off him and I know that old Poppa Venditti didn’t speak any English. So, at least he knew three languages, or four, including English. He was quite skilled but why he ever become a – work on a farm I don’t know.

He was a lot brainier than that.

Could be. Could quite easily be. Plus it didn’t cost anything. You know, they say 10 buck tourists, well, putting that back to 10 pounds but I’ve since read that if your parents, or the husband or the wife

were in the British army during the war then they didn’t have to pay to come out on this migrant scheme. So, in fact, ours was a free passage, I guess, which would have made it all the more attractive. But even then I don’t think 10 pounds would have been a lot for a whole family to migrate to Australia.

No, you had to push him. You had to push him into it.

Well, the time he told us about the volcano erupt, he told us about that. No, I don’t think he ever told us. I’m quite sure we would have asked him but he just would have avoided it and mentioned the volcano and settled for that. No, he never spoke about it at all. Even when we asked him to teach us. I remember when his mother

came out to Australia in about 1956 for a couple of weeks. She was French, or Belgium. Belgium? French, I think she was. He name was Fanny Borg and she came out and they just spoke French, fluent French. Now, he hadn’t spoken French for years and when old gran came out, straight into French. He was a smart guy but

didn’t want to do anything. Never did anything around the house or anything to improve the place. Never dug gardens. He did put in some roses once. Once our pet cockatoo died, he buried it under a rose bush and the rose bush died so he give the roses a miss.

He was? I think he could have been but in them days there was

no treatment other than the bottle and maybe talking to some friends but they probably had their own problems. Yeah, he could have been depressed that it didn’t turn out what he thought it would.

Well, nothing. I didn’t really know about World War II until

in the late ‘50s, maybe first year high school. It just didn’t seem to ring a bell about anything until we had to read a book called The Silver Sword and The Silver Sword was all about these kids in Warsaw learning how to survive in Warsaw. And I thought, “Warsaw. What’s this?” and then I started to get a bit interested and read about

it and they talked about the Germans and the rest of it so then I became sort of interested in that. Probably the late ‘50s that the war came to be mentioned and you learnt about it. Korea didn’t get a mention. You never heard anything about Korea. I remember there being national service in the ‘50s because a couple of people from our town had to go and do their three months national service. I remember a fellow by the name of

Dougie Pearman went and when he come back I said, “Where’ve you been?” and he said, “Oh, I had to go and do my national service.” “What’s that?” “I had to go and join the army for three months.” But apart from that the war didn’t, sort of, enter the cue. I remember when sputnik went up. When was that? About ‘56/57, I think it was. I remember we saw sputnik going across the sky. I still remember that. Dad was –

I was keen to watch it. He must have read about it and heard about it and he said, “There’s a spaceship up there.” We were all out one night and there it was going across the sky. So, I remember that but nothing about the Cold War, didn’t ring a bell until I joined the army. And they asked me was my father a Communist. “A what? What the hell is a Communist?” I didn’t have a clue. I knew it had

something to do with government. I said, “I think my Dad votes Liberal. What’s a Communist?” When I join the army then all of a sudden they teach you all of this stuff. So I learnt more about what was going on in the world.

No.

Yeah. Well, the Russians had put up a spaceship and it was called Sputnik and

the radio said that if you go out at night-time you can see it in the sky. And they just said it was in the sky, not in the low sky or the high sky or anything. So you’re just looking and, “Oh, there it is.” We saw it on a few nights actually. It was good.

Oh yeah, yeah. You could see this light moving across the sky. It was really good.

It did then. Once I’d read this book The Silver Sword about these kids in Warsaw sort of living through that period I then started to try and find books. I read Douglas Bader’s book,

Reach For The Sky as a kid. I then got interested in Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island and that sort of stuff. And I did, I then started to become a bit of a reader and I have been ever since. I don’t read fiction books and that sort of stuff. I like reading factual books. Though, I like adventure books. That’s why I read Wilbur Smith books and

Clive Cussler. Mostly all the books that I’ve got are books about people or things or places and the rest of it. And one of the projects I’ve got at the moment is history orientated from World War I. But do you want to talk about that later or now?

No. I don’t think it sort of went into deeply what life was about, you know.

Douglas Bader just talked about flying. He had an accident and he had these tin legs and could fly an aeroplane and got shot down and one thing and another. It never really told me anything about what war was about or anything. I’d never heard about the battle of Dien Bien Phu, which was happening in 1954. I would have been eight

and it didn’t register that there was a big battle, and the rest of it, going on, though 10 years later I would be part of it in a fashion. But, no, war was just a sort of non-event that was mainly putting up with living in the town. During the summer time it was the heat. Terrible heat in this town of Pingelly.

Probably playing and ‘cowboys and indians’ and all this sort of stuff. We had an old, what they said was an old volcanic plug that used to be right on the edge of town. We used to call it Limestone Hill. And a lot of our time was spent up on Limestone Hill, going through the rocks and the rest of it and playing hidey and chasey and cowboys and indians and building billy carts and racing them down and putting them back together again

and back up to the top.

Oh yeah. We had lots of good times when we were out playing. We had really good times. It was also then that athletics dragged me into it and sport about that age, too. I guess running away from these other kids taught you how to run but when it came to the school athletics

I was quite good, particularly in running and the athletics side of it. We used to play football but it was always in bare feet because we never had boots. I don’t think I ever got football boots until I joined the army and it was Aussie Rules, nothing else – Aussie Rules or cricket. We even played cricket in bare feet.

Didn’t know anything about the Empire.

Though at school, every day, we used to sing the national anthem. The parade in the morning, the whole school’d line up and it’d be God Save the Queen, yeah, it would be God Save the Queen at that stage of the game and then we’d go into class but that was the only thing. Anzac Day was sort of big in the town

though we didn’t really know what it was for at that stage of the game. To us it was just remembering those that got killed in a war. War? But we could be part of it because we could march at the end. Diggers would go past and the rest of it and all us cheeky kids would join in at the rear. I still remember Anzac Day.

Yeah, because we were learning those things at school because always with a map of Australia, as part of a test, you had to put down where these cities were and God help you if you put them in the ocean or somewhere else and also the major rivers of the east coast. We were never asked to do major rivers of the west coast

because everyone knew the Swan River but they didn’t seem to be worried about the ones going up the west coast. Yeah, we learnt a lot about Australia at school but always the eastern states. We used to write away to cotton places and wheat places and the rest of it, for projects for school and they used to send you a little bit of cardboard with samples of cotton

and all this sort of stuff and we’d get a big kick because it was coming from the eastern states. But I’d never been on a plane and in fact I think we’d only ever been to Perth three times as kids until I’d joined the army. The only planes I saw, because I’d never seen an airport, was when the planes come over from the eastern states they used to go over the top of Pingelly and turn right. I found out later in life that there was a marker there, a radio beacon

and that was their turn point. So, up high, you’d always see planes, the old Electras and Viscounts and things. We knew about where they were but had no idea. We just thought probably they were the same as Perth. Didn’t know if they were bigger or smaller or really I guess to us they were all the same size. We had no idea of populations and that sort of stuff.

But we did learn about where they were getting gold because most of that was Western Australia. And the crops and the mines and that in the east, not mines but they’d mine gold in Queensland and sugar and all that sort of stuff.

Probably when I was about 10. From the age of nine, Mum got a job as a cleaner at the school

and that included over the evening meal period so I became the cook at nine years old. I used to have to do five nights a week used to have to cook tea because when Dad go home from the pub at six tea had to be on the table and God help you if it wasn’t. So I then became the cook. My twin brother never did anything. He was out playing

and at the same time I was trying to do this little bit of part-time work.

At nine.

Well, really it was go without or you’ve got to do something. So, in fact, when I used to get me wage from the co-op I used to shout the other two into the movies because they had movies once on a Saturday night in town

in this old tin building and the rest of it, so I used to shout them into the movies and that came out of my wage. But it was two shillings, one and six to get in and six pence for the mixed lollies. So from nine I started the –

At the end of third – well the town’s school only went to third year high school, which is Year 10? If you wanted to do Year 11 and 12 you had to go to Narrogin which was 40 mile away and they went into the higher school and

we could never afford to live away from home because they had uniforms and you’d have to go and bord somewhere and what have you and we couldn’t afford that. So half way through third year high school, which would have been about June, July, I saw this guy in town and I thought that he

he’d been away and I remember once seeing him in uniform and I said to him Digger Hathaway his name was, Rowley, Rowley Hathaway, I said, “Listen Digger, what’re you doing back in town? I thought you were in the army.” He said, “Yeah, I got kicked out.” I said, “Why?” and he said, “We weren’t suppose to have a car and alcohol and I had both and had a crash so they kicked me out.” I said, “Where was it?” and he said, “At the army apprentice’s school.” So it was

then that I thought, “Alright.” But then I had some sort of feeling about maybe I should take his place because he got kicked out. So I went home and I said to Dad that Rowley Hathaway was back in town and got kicked out of the army apprentices’ school, I said, “And apparently they do trades there. He was doing a vehicle mechanics course.” So at that stage, also, there must have been something in the Western Australian

to do with joining the army and the rest of it. We found a letter or something to do with it and we wrote away for the application and the application forms came back with some brochures, and what have you, about it and so we filled them in and sent them away and I wasn’t a terribly good scholar at school but I was sort of holding me own. By this time

my twin brother, Edward, had left school. He and I differ over the reason he left and he said something about ‘they could no longer afford both of us in high school’, and I sort of don’t remember that. I thought he left because he just wasn’t handling it. So a letter came back saying, “Please report to Swan Barracks

in Perth for medical and aptitude tests.” I thought “Struth. Who’s coming with me?” “Ah, no. You go on you own.” “Oh. Thank you.” So we ended up buying some clothes, nice clothes. I caught the train up and I had an aunty who lived in Fremantle so I went and got the train to Perth and went out to her place and got the train in and went and had a medical all in one day,

aptitude tests and all this sort of stuff. That’s when they first asked me, “Is your father a Communist?” “He votes Liberal.” So we went through that whole process and then I went back home and then in September I got another letter saying, “Please present yourself to an interview board.” And the interview board was senior army people including the

commandant of the army apprentices school. So I went up there and, oh boy, a job interview. I didn’t know anything about this sort of stuff. So, I went in there and they just asked me all these sort of questions. Asked me what I wanted to be and I said I’ve always sort of been interested in cooking, did they have apprentice cooks. No, they don’t have apprentice cooks. What about radios, I like radios. Can I be a radio mechanic or something. He said, “Have you any other choices?”

“Ahh – maybe a mechanic or something.” OK. So I finished up with that and went home and in late October we had to go to Beverley, which is a town about 60 mile away, for the interschool sports and when I got home that night there was this letter waiting for me. Opened it up and it said, “Congratulations, John, you have been selected to the army apprentices’ school as an apprentice vehicle mechanic.”

I said, “Oh, excellent.” So that was in October and you are to report on the 9th of January. School doesn’t finish until close to Christmas Eve. School used to go almost right up to Christmas Eve. So we had to keep going to school and we did our junior certificate which is the third year exam. The high school certificate, I think they called them. And

fronted up on the 8th. Again, me Mum and Dad didn’t come with me at all. And this sort of thing goes on. Mum and Dad never ever fronted up to anything. And –

I really don’t know. When I come back from Vietnam they weren’t there to meet me, even at the railway station. It was unreal. I’ll tell you about that later. And, so

I was disappointed but I wouldn’t say I was upset. I was disappointed they didn’t come. So on the 9th January I fronted up to the Swan Barracks. That was in the morning. There were 17 of us, I remember, and we all piled into this one room, arm up, hand on a Bible and, “Sign here. You’re in the army.” And he said,

“Right. You need to be at the airport at midnight.” And they gave us four shillings or they gave us a cheque. Seventeen times four shillings in a cheque. He said, “Go and cash that at the bank and that’s your midday meal.” So for that we got a pie and a milkshake, I think, at Coles’ cafeteria in Bourke Street in Perth. And then I went home to where to me auntie’s place and then they took me out the airport.

They didn’t stay because it was late and they wanted to get home. So all these other kids that I’d recognised from the morning, we sort of pooled together and then I saw my first real aeroplane close up and I was going on it.

They were quite happy about it. They just said, “Well done.” Otherwise, like I said, I was just going to be a cocky’s labourer. My

twin brother had started apprentice mechanic with Watson’s Service Station. He didn’t last there long. He ended up going to Narrogin to do apprenticeship butchers but didn’t last there long either. But by that time I’d left town. He ended up joining the army not that longer after me but as a regular soldier, not as an apprentice. At that stage I was only 15 when I joined up. Fifteen years, four months and two days old.

I was real pleased. This was the start of a, to me, like a big adventure. I’m going away to this place to learn a trade. Going to be in the army. Be like going to school again but, I just left school so I didn’t think it would be that much difference. When we flew over on the aeroplane. That was a buzz. I’d never been on a plane or seen one let alone get on this huge big silver machine.

We flew to Essendon airport. The other one wasn’t built then. We got out and turned out so we found out typical Melbourne weather and they bussed us to Watsonia. And we had breakfast at Watsonia. And then they said, “OK, gather your – ” We only had a little bag each. I don’t even know what was in them. Wouldn’t have been much. Put us in the back of these trucks.

Oh boy, this is going to be cold and wet and we bussed down to Balcombe, down near Mornington. And on the way down there that’s when I thought, “What the hell have I got myself into? I’m 4,000 miles away.” And the funny part was I’d said to me parents, because they said you have mid-year leave, “I won’t come home for mid-year leave. I’ll get some mates and we’ll go somewhere else.” Like hell. You get

homesick initially but, I thought, “What the hell have I got myself in for?” And then we got down there and the rain had stopped and we got out of the truck and they lined us up and called our names, “You go over there.” Then a senior intake apprentice come and grabbed us. He was in charge of our hut. The hut were a communal hut, 16 to a hut – eight down one side, eight down the other. And he looked us up and said, “This is where you

sleep. You’re there. You’re there.” Everything you owned had your names on, the beds and everything. And then we had to get the mattress cover. So he said, “Right. Grab your mattress cover.” So we pulled the mattress cover off the bed, out the door and they marched us down to the Q-Store [quartermaster’s store] and you just went through this big queue. Open your bag, hat, etc etc and they’re throwing the stuff in. I remember then they sent us a little set of what size clothes do you wear. But I don’t remember.

Throwing this stuff in. And we had to go back and lay it all out on the road and you had to try everything on and it was a case of trying everything on and you had to swap, trying to find things that fitted you. At the end of that you went back into the hut and the senior intake guy showed you how things had to be folded. And your feet never touched the ground after that. And you really didn’t have time to think about what the hell am I doing here, because you just didn’t have a chance to think of it.

Go, go, go. All of a sudden it’s 10 o’clock at night. Bed, lights out. When they had lights out – lights out, no lights on. Five-thirty in the morning, the huts were made out of corrugated iron, the ARA [assessment resources and analysis] staff would walk along rattling their sticks up and down the tin, “Wakey, wakey!” You had to fly out of bed, put your sandshoes on and your great coat and stand out in the road and they did a roll call.

Make sure you were still there. And then once you done that, inside, shower, learn how to shower that day, it was still bum fluff [initial growth of facial hair]. It was funny because I’d watched Dad shave before but I’d never done it myself and bum fluff was not allowed, so I had soap all up over me, and this guy said, “What are you doing?” “I’m having a shave.” “Well, you don’t shave like that,” So he showed me how to shave.

Every day you’d shave the bum fluff off. And then you’d shower and shave, get your bed made up, then go down to breakfast, march down to breakfast, scoff through that. Get back and tidy things up so when they had the morning parade everything was suppose to be done. It just happened all the time.

I wanted a trade. I wanted something behind me and I wanted a trade and I couldn’t see it happening in Pingelly or anywhere else. But this army thing had the opportunity to learn a trade so, and I knew for three years that’s all it would be, learning a trade. What come after that, I worked out I’d be 18, not that you’re entitled to anything at 18,

when I left there. But that’s the reason, not necessarily to be in the army but to learn a trade and the army was the benefit. I was being paid, free medical, and free board and all this sort of stuff.

Well, not then. You were there for three years. You had junior, intermediate and senior intakes.

Junior intakes – for the first year you never went anywhere. You stayed in camp.

Ah, to get out of Pingelly. In fact when I went back home at me first leave, in six months I changed so much, that the kids that I used to muck round with – “Let’s go down and get a milkshake!” I don’t want to get a milkshake – I’m not going to have

a bloody milkshake. I’m more smarter than that. In fact, a couple of years later when I was old enough – well, I wasn’t old enough to drink – but when I went home on Christmas leave, Dad said, “I’ll meet you at the pub.” I went down the pub and Mr Markwell knew I wasn’t 18. What was it, 21 to drink then or 18? Eighteen. And he knew I wasn’t old enough to drink. “Could I have a beer, please.” “Yep. Where’s your Dad?” “Oh, he’s on his way.”

So, I was in there having a beer at, say, 17. These kids are out there drinking bloody milkshakes. And I thought that I’d started to mature more. I was more independent. I didn’t need other people to do things for me because I’d been taught how to do things myself.

Well, I think I did. You started taking on things like – someone would come up and say, “We need someone to do this or that.” Oh that sounds alright, “Oh, I’ll do that.” And things you’ve never done before. We’ve got a big cross-country coming up. Oh geez, I’m pretty old.

And there are 300 kids lined up on the playground. Go. And boy, it was a cross-country. And I end up coming 12 out of 300. And I thought, “Oh, this is alright.” And all of a sudden you started to work your way up the status street, because you were starting to show promise at things. It was the guys who never showed promise at things that found it hard. I remember we had Hardwick, Herford and Henderson, the three Hs, and

they were not sport adapted or orientated and they left at the end of the first year. Their grades weren’t up and they weren’t doing this and they weren’t doing that. The three Hs ended up leaving within three months. But if you did sport and you’d go and do activities when they came up. They’d say there is a bushwalk

going on or a group going snorkelling down at wherever. And you’d say, “I’ll go.” And you started to mix in and doing other things with other people. You couldn’t say well, no, I’m not going to go. There was a bit of peer pressure there, I guess but you became part of it so it was easy to do.

Yeah. All the junior intakes were 15/16, then 16/17 and then 17/18. So there were young kids. I was one of the youngest. A fellow by the name of Jock Courtney was younger than me, I think. I was only five foot two and eight stone in a wet blanket. A pretty skinny kid. We hung in there.

We used to get into trouble and you’d get extra duties and one thing and another but that was part of the deal. There used to be a fair bit of bastardisation going on but the thought was well if it’s happening to me now, when I’m senior intake then I can dish it out. And you did. And everyone used to accept it. By the time we left there and another two intakes had gone through, the style and the maturity and something,

of the people coming through weren’t the same and then all of a sudden people were writing home and saying, “They bashed my up last night,” and then bastardisation became a part of it. Hang on, this is not on. But we used to have guys come through and that five to 10 the senior intake, “Open up your locker. This is untidy.” And they’d drop your locker on the bloody ground, or tip you out of bed, or make you run round the playground in the

raw and all that sort of stuff. On your birthday was worse. We used to have a big wheel like an old ox cart wheel and it was part of one of the guards and what they used to do was they grab you after they caught you. You used to lead them on a merry chase because that seemed to be part of it. If you gave up – But they’d tie you to this wheel and someone would say,

“He’s too clean,” and someone would throw a bucket of dirt on you. And someone else would say, “He’s so dirty,” and they’d throw a bucket of water on you. And this would go on for about 10 minutes. After that they’d let you go. But some people decided that’s not for us and bastardisation became a real big issue. But when we were there it didn’t seem an issue to us. It was just part of growing up, part of the deal.

Yeah. Well to us it just seemed like, gee, in third year I’m going to be able to do this. And you did. We chased the junior intakes, tie them to the wheel and you could chuck the water on them.

Oh yeah. Maximum age 18. And they were nice blokes. They just did it because it was part of life.

Yeah. It was done to them.

Oh, very rarely. If someone ever tubbed he might get the bash-broom treatment but there was never any belting up, like just taking them in and belting him up for the sake of belting him up. It did occur once. One of our guys, Frank Elliot, was being bastardised on by one of our group, Brian Brown – not Brian –

ah, it doesn’t matter. But Frank was about my size and him and Norm Marsh were always picking on Frank and one day – and it was in the last year of our senior intake, too – and in the end Frank after three years had had a gutful of this. He went in and saw Ron Dyne and Ron Dyne was our senior intake apprentice warrant officer and he was a big tall man. He says,

“Listen, I’ve had a gutful of all that. If you don’t do something, something bad’s going to happen.” So Frank went out and Ron Dyne called this Brown guy in and wack, thump, bash. He left Frank alone after that. It was only when it was really, really deemed necessary. Otherwise it was – well it wasn’t funny having you locker or tipped out of bed at 10 o’clock when the lights were out and you were trying to put this stuff back in.

Bashings for the sake of bashing people up wasn’t on, except for that one occasion that I knew of.

Well, when we started off we had to do Year 11 and 12 equivalent in maths, science and English and history.

Our first three months was regimental training. We had to learn how to come to attention, stand at ease, march, rifle, drill, you name it, and we were learning the regimental recruit training bit for the first 12 weeks and then at the end of the 12 weeks you started the programme of your education. Like I said, the normal academic subjects and then your trade subjects. You were divided up into sections, A, B, C and D

and you’d march around together and go to class together. You’d do PT [physical training] as part of it. It was all worked around 45 minute periods. So you’d do a 45 minute PT period, rush back to the lines, have a shower, get changed and then down to your next class which might be carburettors or something. Then on a Wednesday afternoon was sport, it was always sport. Sport was sort of compulsory unless you had

a chit [permission slip] or a reason not to play. We only did the academic subjects for two years and then the last year was nothing but trade. At that stage of the game we were very good theoretical trade’s men but not very good at practical things because most of it was learning the theory of it. You still got to pull an engine apart and put it back together but it was different from going and pulling one out of a truck and pulling it apart

and putting it back. They were all on stands and everything. It was go from six o’clock in the morning. We had compulsory study nights. Two compulsory study nights a week. The ARA staff would walk around from hut to hut and God forbid if you weren’t sitting at your little personnel desk studying. Was it in 1962,

the Cuba crisis? Yeah, we were in English that day, that morning, and Lieutenant Jock Williams, a one-eyed, crook-knee guy, used to be the rugby coach, we went in there for English and we sat down. We heard earlier that the American president was going to talk about Cuba and then we sat down and he brought a radio in and we listed to this speech that the US [United States] President. And then a little bit of

fear came into it. Oh God, if this starts up, there will be a war. Well, we’re too young to go. You’ve got to be 19. He said yeah but we’ll eventually go. There was not much talk about atomic bombs then. It wasn’t till a couple of years later that we realised how close it came to being maybe the end of civilisation. We listened

intently to that and then we talked about it and then Jock Williams told us all about the Cuban missile crisis. So that was our English lesson. But we listened to that on the day of the thing and that’s really when the army started to come to light because then I remember one of our ARA staff left to go to Vietnam as a

training team person. And we thought “Where’s Vietnam?” Out with the maps and we started to learn all about this sort of stuff. It started to sort of come to us that there was more to the army than learning a trade.

Yeah. We then started that. It was part of the English, learning about the Berlin Wall and all that sort of stuff, and ‘reds under the bed’ and one thing and another.

And that’s when we really started to learn. We were only 16, 17, 15, 16 at that stage of the game. I’d never taken any notice of the kid, didn’t effect me, but now I was in the army. And that bit about the Cuba, that’s when I had my first sort of, “Ooooo – what’s all this about?” When I ended up going to Vietnam I thought it was an adventure.

I really did.

It really was because all I’d really had is that four week break between leaving school and joining the army and it was with four or five hundred boys at this apprentices’ school. It was like going to a big boarding school. Yeah, it was an extension of school. I don’t know if it made it

easier or not but I enjoyed it because you were busy all the time and good food. I’d never had such good food in all me life. It was good. You’d go down there and your plate was full of this stuff. Some of the guys would go, “Bloody stew.” I said, “God, this is great. What do you mean, ‘bloody stew again’? You guys have never eaten bloody nothing before.”

Oh, never heard of dripping after that.

Actually, a couple of months ago here, we had some dripping in the bottom of the pan and I said, “Toby, you want some of this on bread?” Blahhh. The meals were great. For breakfast there were a couple of eggs. For dinner you got a big bowl of bloody food and a big bowl of pudding. Night-time was the same. You didn’t get fat at that stage because you were working, you were go, go, go all the

time. The food was good. It was even better when you got mess duty. Every 17 days we’d cop a mess duty. You had to get up early, real early if you wanted to do the pick of the jobs, race down to the kitchen and get yourself in front of, say there were seven guys – the whole section would do it and there were seven guys in a section – so you’d fly down there and stand in front of where you would

be peeling veggies or bashing dixies [washing dishes]. Bashing dixies was the worst so whoever got there last got the dixie bashing. Otherwise it was mopping the floors and this sort of stuff. And then you were able to get a bit extra if you wanted it but there was no real need because you were well, very well fed. It was good meals. I thought they were great meals.

Really, I think it was the same as it was before. Nothing had changed. Just that I was in khaki uniform originally until they changed it to green. But at home you took them off and hung them up and were just wearing shorts. You didn’t want to do what the other kids wanted. Actually, I’d get

quite frustrated and, in the end, toey to get back. In fact, when I got back from Vietnam I ended up going back to my unit early. I’d had a gut full. Christmas leave plus 12 days for being in Vietnam. I think I only lasted a fortnight and I thought, “I’m going. I’ve got to go back to my unit.” I’d never been there yet because when we came back from Vietnam it was straight off the plane and go home.

So I just went into Perth and changed my bookings on my train trip and went back early. I’d just had enough of the town. There was nothing there. No one there. It was boring.

No, in fact you initially had to sign on for nine years. Four years for doing the course, so that’s

that four years and the other four years to match that, plus one. So it was a total of nine years you had to sign up for. So the three years at Balcombe was learning the theory and that of your trade and your fourth year you went to a large base workshop somewhere where you worked on rebuild lines and what have you where you worked under the guidance of the main people working there, like the

civilians or military people who were posted there. Most of them were civilians working on rebuilt lines and the rest of it. “You work with him. You work with him. You work with him.” But at that stage I was an engineer so we did six months at the Commonwealth’s Rebuild Facility at Villawood where they just used to rebuild trucks and cars. And the other one at 2 Base workshops where we worked on military vehicles.

So we finished that year and the end of that year you did a trade test and that was it. We were then a fully qualified tradesman.

No, never thought about it. It was nine years, sign here, not a problem. And everyone knew. When you were at the apprentice’s school some said, “I’m going to get out of it,” but you

can’t you’ve got to do this nine years. And most of them would have done it. I’d say 99 percent would have gone through and done the nine years. I recon 80 percent would have got out and 20 percent would have stayed in. But the big thing in those days was to stay in for 20 because we started paying our superannuation and you only had to do 20

years to get your lump sum and a pension. So at 35, if you joined at 15, at 35 you could retire. And that was the goal. Do 20 years in the army, get out, get your lump sum, under DFRDB [Defence Force Retirements and Death Benefits] and that was it. But now that’s all changed and you can’t get it until your fifty-five. When I signed on, when they changed from DFRDB to this new

system you were given the option and I stayed with the old option. So when I did my 35 years, I got out and I could still get my lump sum before 55. By that time I was 50 anyway. It wasn’t a big pension because it depended on the rank you were when you got out, how much you’d contributed.

Yeah, yeah,

that was all part of the deal. About once a fortnight, Friday afternoons it used to be military training. It could be anything from doing parade work or going down the range or doing obstacle courses, going to Portsea throwing grenades. You were 15, 16 and throwing grenades and shooting a rifle. We were the first

group to get the new self-loading rifle. The other guys before us had .303s. When we got there everyone was issued, and .303s were taken out, and we got the SLR [self loading rifle]. I still remember my first rifle number – AD6007006. And you had that for the three years you were there. It was kept in a rifle rack, all under control and locks. When you had duty, you’d have to get the key and get your rifle

out, make sure it was clean and go and do your parades and the rest of it. So you were responsible at 15 for a weapon. The bolt was kept at the Q-store but the rifle was there. If you needed it you go and get your bolt.

Loved it. I really enjoyed it. It was good. It was physical activity.

It was great. I enjoyed it. It was interesting things to do. We were probably doing the same things as kids but not with the same idea in mind. We used to climb over rocks and scramble up ropes, swim in rivers and things, but didn’t realise it was part of military training.

Yeah, that’s right. In our third year we could go on weekend leave once a month, and you could wear civilians. But in those first two years, no civilian clothing. Anyway, when you’re allowed to wear civilian clothing, you went to the Q-store and picked up your stuff where it was in bags for two years,

you’d chuck it out as you’d grown bigger. Well I didn’t grow that much bigger. You had to buy new stuff anyway. We used to go on leave once a month if you wanted to but most of the time we had football or athletics on so my weekends, almost every Saturday, was taken up with sport. I was in the school’s rugby

team, playing rugby in the third grade and in summer it was athletics. The school had an athletic club and we used to go Mentone to the athletic track. Don’t know if it is still there or not. We used to go to Mentone and race in competitions there. And this is where later on in life I may have screwed up

is I didn’t have an adolescence. I matured but I didn’t go through this thing that normal kids do. For three years, bang, you’re doing this, you’re doing this, you’re doing this, for three years. Fourth year you’re in Sydney, a little bit of freedom and then all of a sudden, back in the army, real army again. Gees, I’m 21. Where did my adolescence go? And

then when Luke had his problems, I said to him I don’t understand what you’re going through because I didn’t go through it. From the time I was 15 my life was regimented, while yours is not.

That I didn’t recognise what has going on. That I missed out and didn’t know what he was feeling. That I never had a chance

to get that feeling. He was 18 or 19 and having big problems. Hey, I didn’t have these problems. Get your act together kid. Yeah, it was a big penalty in the end. I recon it was anyway, that I missed out on.

Nineteen.

Then I went from there to Brisbane to 24th Construction Squadron. I turned 20 there and it was while I was 20 that I went to Vietnam so I went to Vietnam aged 20. Nineteen is the legal age to go overseas, but I was 20. Just brand new out of my apprenticeship really. Not too much experience.

Soon got that.

We had to go to a, well, they started up some big exercise in Queensland at Shoalwater Bay. The very first one they had involved with people going to Vietnam was Exercise Barrawinga. And it was based on, or we thought it was based on, jungle fighting and all this sort of stuff. But there is no jungle around Shoalwater Bay,

it’s dry and it’s hot, a terrible spot. So that was the first thing about going out on exercises, military life in the field. When it came time to do the jungle training, my boss came up to me and he said, “I’m going to Vietnam as the commander of a workshop over there. Are you interested in going to Vietnam?” I thought, “Oh shit, yeah.

I’ll go there.” And he said, “There’s a space on the same jungle training course I’m doing. It’s not going to be very nice but we’re not going to Canungra. It’s at Greenbank.” I used to work out at Greenbank, working on army equipment out there. I thought that’s nice and flat and everything, lovely weather, yeah, I’ll go. So I ended up doing the same jungle training course. Instead of a fortnight, we only did a week, and it was flat and mostly it was learning how to patrol

and track. And that was it.

I just wanted to go and do something. I wanted to be involved. It was an adventure. Joining the army was a bit of an adventure. I was enjoying myself up to that point in an engineer unit. Engineer units are the best units ever to belong to. They go and do road building and bridge building and demolition and being part of that is just good fun.

End of tape

Well, when we went up there I was with 24 Construction Squadron Workshops and we were camped at a place called Pink Lilly, which was near the airport so we were back in a logistic roll. The main exercise area was up in the Shoalwater Bay. We had a lot of engineers working up there so we had to go up and support them. They were doing road work and airfield works and putting up

buildings, water supply and the rest of it. So we had to go up there in convoys, guns at the ready, make sure we didn’t get attacked and then do our work and might stay overnight, come back the next day or whatever. And that was most of our work there, logistic support to the main people working up.

Not there. Not at Shoalwater Bay. No. Even when we went to Greenbank,

Greenbank is nice and flat, not too much jungle around Greenbank, it’s all houses there now. But the army had a rifle range there, one of those new dart types, the prototype where you shoot them and they fall over automatically.

Yeah. It was just patrolling and tracking through the bush. And we slept in tents during the night. Whereas at Greenbank,

at Canungra, most of the time they would sleep in huts until they did their little three-day trek in the bush. But we slept out every night. It was only for seven days.

No.

No.

Nothing. The only thing we were really taught there was that anyone in black pyjamas was fair game. This is what they look like and they gave us a little book,

if I remember, about the customs, but it was a pretty thin book. And that was about it. We went out, we did our patrolling and tracking and ambushes and one thing and another and that was it. Nothing to do with Vietnam really.

Oh, it was mainly what the people looked like, what they wore. It showed pictured of the weapons they carried, one thing

and another, and the houses that they lived in. That was basically it. I didn’t know that most of them were either Buddhist or Catholic or anything like that.

Yeah. You’d learn – well at the start there weren’t many people who were qualified at rigging up booby traps. It was mostly a theory lecture on you can set these things up here. I probably learnt more about booby traps when I did the engineer,

field engineering course the year before. In fact, some of us on that course probably knew more about booby traps than the instructors did on the course because we come through the engineer group.

24 Construction Squadron Workshops.

Could be, yeah. But there is a difference in living in

Vung Tau and living in Nui Dat when we got to Vietnam. Vung Tau was strictly logistics and they lived a logistic life. Whereas up at Nui Dat it was, you lived in rubber plantations and you lived in tents. These buggers were living in nice old wooden huts and one thing and another. Different lifestyle between one and the top two.

But it wasn’t until we got out into the bush like when the engineers went bush, we went with them, that’s when you learnt a lot of things about the Vietnam there. Went down the odd tunnel and had a look.

Yeah. Well, in fact, that was probably the best way because when they said anyone in black pyjamas was fair game, I flew from Darwin to Vung Tau in a

Hercules and we got off the Hercules and there were all these people in black pyjamas and cone hats walking across to the aeroplane and I thought, “Aren’t we suppose to shoot these buggers? They’ve got brooms and brushes to come to clean the plane.” That part of it was not right for a start. So then what else is different? We found out that the money we had in our pockets was no good because they use what they called MPC [Military Payment Certificates/Currency], or ‘Monopoly money’. Military Payment Certificates

is what we got paid in and spent. You don’t use your American money or your Australian money.

Yeah.

Yeah. They didn’t want foreign money going into the local people because with American green you can buy anything. Maybe not so much the Australian dollar, but yeah, they could change that. But the American dollar is good in any

ones hands. So they come up with a method and the local currency was worthless so they come up with the Military Payment Certificates, MPC. And it was a bit like monopoly money and it had values and that on it and they used to change it every year from one colour to the next because the local population would end up getting a big build up of this MPC. Because if we went into the shops at Baria and bought a chair, we’d pay for it with MPC because it was the only money we had.

And they would get it and they’d try and change that back into Dong [currency]. But once every 12 months they’d get a shock as it was worth nothing because they’d change the colours so, this year, it might be all blue MPC and next year it might be red. But that’s how we got paid, in MPCs.

I volunteered. My boss at 24 Construction Squadron Workshops

was a fellow by the name of Geoff Hawker and he was a captain and he was in charge of the workshop. And he come up to me one day and he said, “Do you want to go to Vietnam?” I said, “I’d love to go.” And he said, “Well, I’m going on my jungle training course and there is a vacancy, do you want to go?” I said, “When do we go to Vietnam?” and he said, “In about four or five weeks.” And I said, “Oh, OK.” That was on a Friday, I think, and on the Monday I went on this course

and that was it. He did whatever paperwork had to be done to put me name down because they were probably looking for mechanics and the rest of it, because at that stage of the game the workshop that was already there, the 1 Field Squadron Workshop, those guys had been there 12 months and were ready to come home so they needed people to fill their spots. Being an engineer unit, the skills were there, or the

brand new skills were there so they preferred people to go from an engineer unit in Australia to an engineer unit in Vietnam. So, my name went down and I went on my jungle training course.

No, I think it was about four of us. There was Geoff Hawker, myself, the storeman guy we had there, I think he went, and a

national service electrician. I think his name was Ru Inglis and he went. There was four of us. They went over on a different day to me. They didn’t go on the same day, but I’m pretty sure we ended up doing the same jungle training course.

Yeah.

Oh, what they were saying was it’s bloody hot, you gotta be careful, always be alert, and the mozzies, malaria, the food’s crap. But apart from that they said it was dangerous. Keep your wits about you was the main thing. It wasn’t until later that we learnt that keeping your wits about you was

sorta watching the kids. If the kids were around you, no problem. If the kids all of a sudden took off, oops, take care. It was those sort of things. They never taught us that. We learnt that ourselves. It was just mainly what we were doing there. The Australian training team, we met one or two of them, and they told us what they were doing about going

up to different parts of Vietnam and teaching the local ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam] soldiers and going out on patrols with them.

Not about the NVA. We were told that the NVA were more up north. The local problems around where we were going were the Viet Cong and they were dressed in these black pyjamas and these cone hats and

they just do guerrilla warfare. We learnt about pansy stakes. That was a big issue because at that stage the boots that we had a stake would go right through it. It wasn’t until later that they put that steel plate in. Yeah, we learnt about pansy stakes. Always be careful of when you’re patrolling. Don’t just walk down the road like the Yanks do. The Yanks we found there were a

different kettle of fish. They had no idea.

Oh, some of it was official lectures, some of it was word-of-mouth. The pansies, the booby traps were official stuff but you never got to see a pit they just said, “Here is a wooden thing with all these stakes and that nailed up through it and they are generally in holes in the ground.” But they never had one.

“Don’t step on one of these.” And another one would swivel inwards so you didn’t worry about going up. It would come up on the side. If you go in tunnels be careful because there are snakes and scorpions and things in there.

Yeah. Well the one I went into there was no one in that one, thank God. I went in there with a real crazy guy, a lovely fellow, by the name of Brett Nolan.

More about him later.

Well, there was no anti-war movement in ‘67 that we noticed. We just went about our job. We’d start to see probably, newspaper clippings of what was going on in Vietnam but

in ‘67, well, the Battle of Long Tan had been and gone so there was a big cry about this big battle but most of the thing we heard about the battle was how brave and everything everyone was and 18 killed was a bit of a shock. But it was just a matter of, geez. But the public hadn’t at that stage, Jim Cairns hadn’t got his rallies together.

But I think people were becoming aware that people didn’t expect people to be killed over there. Though I don’t know how they thought you go away to a war and someone doesn’t get hurt. They would be pretty lucky in Iraq.

People now know more about Iraq than anyone ever did about Vietnam. No one knew anything about Vietnam. It was in the jungle and it was there and that’s it. No one knew about that country

but now everyone knows about Iraq. Or we can get the battles as they happen now. Even though they reckon that Vietnam was an armchair war, but you watch the battle two or three days after, whereas now you can see what’s going on. I guess, with the Muslim, everyone’s got a different opinion about what Muslim,

or what Islam is about. A lot of people say there is nothing wrong with Islam. It’s a nice peaceful cause and in it’s original, it probably is but some radicals are making it look bad, so is it good, is it bad. And people are starting to argue and debate that. No one ever debated about whether Buddhism was good in Vietnam or Catholicism

or anything like that it was just bloody Ho Chi Minh was trying to take over the south and America didn’t want to be there on it’s own and we ended up joining it’s party. We got a, I think the area we had in Phuoc Tuy province originally very hostile but by the time the Australians left it was fairly quiet. We used to hear stories, even now

when people meet the old Viet Cong that they were very wary about contacting the Australians that they knew it would be one hell of a job. We used to try and act like they act. But American doesn’t seem to have learnt the lesson. They used to use firepower, and lots of it, same as they are using overseas in Iraq. In Iraq now they’ve got people who are willing to

stand up and have a go at them.

Yes. Yeah. Twelve months and I was being posted to 1 Field Squadron Workshops, which was at Nui Dat and when the engineers go out in the field the workshop people go out and support them. It would have been the whole workshop. If some bulldozers were going out they

might send a fitter, electrician and a couple of mechanics. So you just went out and supported them. When you went out you had to do all the things to live in the field. You had weapon pits to dig, areas of responsibility to look after at night and that sort of stuff, plus do your job during the day, keeping the machines going. They said you’ll be going there, you’ll be going for 12 months unless something changes.

And that was it and what your job was.

Nui Dat.

Well, we left Brisbane, sorry, left Sydney in a commercial aircraft to Darwin, then stayed overnight in Darwin and then the next day flew to Vung Tau in a Hercules. And when we got there we were immediately transhipped to a Caribou

and then flown up to Nui Dat where we were picked up at the little Nui Dat airport and driven down to where we were going to live.

No. We were probably there less than an hour. It was just a matter of get off, hurry up and wait over there and we had to change any money that we had, American or Australian

into, none of us knew about this Monopoly money that we were going to be paid in so we took Australian and American. I did. I took bit of Australian, bit of American but we had to change that at the airport. And then just got on the Caribou and went up. So we were there for only an hour. We just looked around and noticed the heat was very oppressive. Everything was busy. I’ve never seen so many aeroplanes in all my life. Things going in, going out. There were

jets. There were helicopters. It was really a busy place but gee it was hot.

Yeah, Well, when they lowered the ramp of the aeroplane and we walked out the back, these bloody black pyjamas were coming and, “Shit, no guns, where’s our guns? Oh, they’re only cleaners – ”

Didn’t really freak, we just thought, “Well, aren’t we suppose to – ? What are they doing?”

Just, they’re cleaners. Someone is pulling our leg somewhere. It wasn’t really a scare of anything but hang on aren’t we suppose to bloody shoot these buggers. No, they’re cleaners.

Yeah and it wasn’t the last.

Well, when we flew up, I remember we flew pretty low, we didn’t go up very high in the

Caribou, because it was only about a 20 minute flight. All over the jungle was fairly green, and rice paddies, was all sort of nice looking. When we got off there was a lot of red dust around up there. Vung Tau is sand because it’s on the beach but up there it’s red dust and it gets in and everywhere. And when it gets wet, it’s red mud. When we got there the

the chief warrant officer of the workshop was there to meet us and four of us ended up going there and he had had a land rover so we jumped in the back of the Land Rover. And as we left he said, “Welcome to 1 Field Squadron, Nui Dat.” We introduced ourselves to him and we started driving up the road. It was about a kilometre, I guess, from the airport to where the workshop was. As we’re going up, “That’s the tip.

That’s 7 Battalion lines and that’s 2 Battalion lines. That’s SAS [Special Air Service] up on SAS hill up there.” Then we’d turn the corner and the provos [provosts, military police] or dickie bird motel, as they called it, are there. There 1 Field Squadron workshops, eh 1 Field Squadron lines, and we’re down the end. And we get there and turned into the workshop and you saw the workshop and there’s stuff everywhere, lying everywhere. Engines out of things lying everywhere. Good God. What a

mess. And then the guys that we replaced, they’d packed and we got out and they got on the land rover. The guy that I replaced was a guy I knew in apprentice’s school in the same intake. “G’day Ron.” “Good-bye Ron,” and away they went. They showed us our tent. “These are the weapons you’re responsible

for.” I ended up moving into what we called Downing Street. The workshop had two residential lines – the top and the bottom and there were four tent on the top and four tents on the bottom, and I was in the bottom tent. And I was responsible for the section weapons. We had an M60 machine-gun which would go into our main pit, an armour lite with a starscope on it.

That’s a night vision device. These days they’re

fairly small but this was about that round and about that long and put on a M60. Then when you go into a bunker at night you take the cover off and when you turn it on it magnifies starlight a couple of thousand times. So when you’re looking through it it’s like looking through a green day.

Yeah, like you’ve seen on the movies. Yeah. And every night that would go down to the bunker. So I’d make sure it was clean and working and all that sort of stuff. Same with

the M60 and my own weapon, which was a SLR. And that was my bed space. And it was just the 16 by 16 tents, the real old style tents, sand bagged all around with a wooden floor, four stretches that had been raised up, a mozzie net and the

stretcher had a thin palliasse mattress and a pillow. And that was it – home sweet home. Oh God.

I didn’t know what to expect but I didn’t expect it to be as bad as that. I thought it should be a bit better at least a bit more comfortable. But what you do though over the time you’re there, you change things

and get things. Like the first opportunity we had to go to Baria, which is the capital of Phuoc Tuy was a Sunday afternoon. We went and bought some little plastic chairs from the market so we had nice little plastic chairs, one thing and another, and a radio. You could make it look quite. It was still only a mattress with palliasse, and the thing was, but we did build a patio at the back. We’d just extended

the tent line and got another canvas and put it up and sandbagged it and put a wooden floor. That was our sort of lounge room and we put our chairs out there.

We were on the edge. Yeah. Where we were we had the water point and beside the water point and what you traditionally do with water points is that it needs to be protected so it had an anti-personnel

mine field. And our workshop, we had two bunkers, one at the bottom and one at the top, So we had a bunker at either end of the mine field and we would man them every night, three people in each one. Yeah, but we were right on the edge of the – and at night time when you would do bunker duty you would go down to your bunker, take your guns down, cock and load them, put the claymore mines out and then you do a clearing

patrol. You’d walk along the front of the minefield, just make sure everything was in place and that there was nothing unusual there, come back and you’d spend the night in there – one on and two asleep. There were only two bunks in there. One on and then when you changed you kicked him out and got into his bed and just revolve until the morning.

Not patrols out. We’d be in the bunker.

But in the morning at first light, before you finished in the box, you’d go back out again and do another patrol the full length of the minefield then come back, pull your claymores in, put them in, take your gun and start work. And then that night you’d go back down again. We used to do it every third night, get bunkered, yeah.

Nui Dat means

‘hill’ and that’s where it got its name from but there are more than one Nui Dat in Vietnam. But Nui Dat was the name of this hill and the Australian army military were built around that. The SAS were on top of the hill. They were in the thickest part of the jungle because no one was suppose to know where they lived or what they did or anything. Then the rest of Nui Dat army part

was based around the hill. There was a village about, I’d say, less than a kilometre from where we were called Hoa Long. If you were with the artillery they were near the main gate. They could see Hoa Long from where they were. That was just a little village on the edge of where we were but Nui Dat, itself, was our own build army area. There was no Nui Dat town or anything like that. It was just a

big military base. Everything just sort of, infantry there, infantry there, tanks there, guns there, engineers there so you were protected the whole way round. Each unit was responsible for their little part of the cabbage patch on the perimeter.

It would have been once. Not really jungle. It was rubber plantations, originally. The whole of 1 Field Squadron Line, in fact most of the task force area, we were in a rubber plantation,

but the rubber trees were still there. They only took down the rubber trees that they needed to take down. They left the rest there as good natural cover. There were rubber trees everywhere. It was not a bad area except for the mud or the dust.

Well we never had any – Vietnamese civilians were not allowed in Nui Dat. The only Vietnamese

people that would come in would be the interpreters or those military people going out with our patrol and they normally took an interpreter with them. But the local towns folk, like when you’d – when we build the village at Ap Suoi Nghe, which was the result of a big clearing exercise they did. They purpose built this village and from a

place called Xa Bang back to Nui Dat, all the people who lived in any of these little hamlets got moved out of their hamlets into this village and then the engineers cleared 200 metres either side of the road and that idea was to allow our convoys to move up and down with little chance of being ambushed. When the people moved into Ap Suoi Nghe they were lovely people. You could go in there and get a bottle of Coke and

go back out to where you were working, anything really, just go in and talk to them. Some of them could speak English. A lot of them spoke French, but none of us spoke French. They were quite nice people. I don’t think I met anyone who was bitter and twisted. Like, when we uprooted these poor people some of the older people got a bit choppy about it, leaving their home. Been there for years and years and years and

now they’re being kicked out, all their luggage was put out on the road and trucks would come along and chuck it on board, take it down to this purpose built village for them.

Buddhist. The only Christian ones that I noted were mostly around orphanages. Like the Catholic nuns, they were Vietnamese Catholic nuns, ran a

lot of orphanages for kids and most of them they were all Catholic, but we never saw any Buddhist run orphanages or anything like that. And there was a couple in Baria, which is the capital of Phuoc Tuy, in fact our unit used to go down there every second Sunday afternoon. We had half a day off a week and about six of eight people would go down and clean out some drains for them,

play with the kids, that sort of thing.

Go to the market. Yeah. It was good. We enjoyed it. We went down there for Christmas dinner. It was on December the 16th, but that’s another story.

I’ve never been so crook in all my life.

Well, that’s when I learnt about it. I didn’t know much about the battle of Dien Bien Phu. I’d learnt before or read something about how the French had colonised it or since World War II were the French had already colonised it, the Japanese moved in during the second World War, basically kicked the French out,

then at the end of the war the French came back in and that’s when Ho Chi Minh decided, “Hang on, what’s going on here?” And he started to say that, well, the French should really leave and as a result they had the battle of Dien Bien Phu, which is when they decided to divide the nation up. And the south was to be predominantly

Catholic and the north was to be Buddhist. They had a big influx of people going either way and then all of a suddenly they said, “That’s it.” And then the Prime Minister of the South said we need assistance for our army to get trained and to look after ourselves and the Americans said, “Well, we’ll come and give you a hand.” And they sent over a few advises and a few more, and a few more,

then a few more and it just went from there. But that’s when I learnt about the French, yeah. In fact, my wife’s been back to Vietnam. She went there. I’d love to go back but I’d only want to go to Dien Bien Phu. I’m wrapped in that place. I’ve got a video on it and some books on it. I’d really love to go there and see where it all started because I consider that’s where it started, not two hundred years before, because they’ve probably been warring with

each other for years. The local clans, the French come in and bugger it up. Big French influence over there, big French

Yeah.

The rubber plantations were owned by Pirelli. The buildings – all French-styled colonial type buildings. The language – there was a lot of French spoken.

Some of their food – their breads and all that sort of stuff had French whatsiname in them

Yeah. Well, I’d never heard of a croissant before. I only had fresh bread once a year. You could see the French influence and even in some of the, in fact, there was a story of a town called Cat Lo, which was between Baria and Vung Tau.

You had to go through Cat Lo and you could smell Cat Lo before you got there and you’d smell it after you went through because it was predominantly the fishing and all the fish would come out and – ahhh. Before Cat Lo you’d have to hang on to your breath and we used to go past this little shop and there was this woman there. She was Vietnamese but she was also French – very, very pretty. Everyone would say we’ve gotta stop here. ”We’re not stopping here. Can’t hold our breath for that long.”

Yeah, but you could see some very pretty women who were a mix of French and Vietnamese, very pretty.

No. Things changed. A month after I got there they come up with an operation. I forget the name of it now. It might have been Pinnaroo.

We had to go to a village of Xuyen Moc and we were part of a fire support base. The infantry were out and the engineers had to do up some roads and the rest of it, so we went along. I think there were four of us. Four of us went. There was me, Alf Newman, Bobby Matthews and I think Les Harris or Gordon Dodds – I can’t remember.

Anyway we went there and it rained and it rained and the roads turned to quagmire and the engineers got the ‘hurry up’ to get these roads, put some laterite on it for a bit of a road base. And there was a laterite pit not far from us and so the engineer guy, Donny Ryde was his name, he went up there on it with a TD15 bulldozer to

build up stockpile of this laterite. The bulldozer that we took, we had to go under a bridge and the bulldozer on the trailer with a canopy on it was too high so they took the scrub canopy off, left it behind. In fact one of those photographs you saw of the bulldozer fell off the low loader on the way there, got pushed off the road by a big yank tank, got bogged, so they pulled it out.

About the second or third morning we were there, Alf and I had the lube wagon. We used to go and do the servicing of the bulldozers and the rest of it. Donny Ryde had been working up there for an hour so we called him over and he brought his dozer over, and engine oil and grease and we went back to our land rover which was only about 10, 15 feet away and made up a brew

and while we’re having a brew we heard this almighty scream. And what had happened was this one bloody rubber tree in the middle of this laterite pit, Don decided to knock it over. It fell over but the root was still in the ground. As he went to push the thing away, the tree come up over the bulldozer, over the blade and because there is no scrub canopy it come straight back. Exhaust pipe and air

cleaner pipe, the throttle jammed in full, the gear levers was all smashed and it was stuck in gear and he had the tree up around him, a tree about that big, up on his chest. At the back of the bulldozer there were these two big levers to operate a scrape or something on the back, and he was screaming and the rest of it. So we rushed over and we

tried to lift this tree off. We couldn’t because it was too bloody big and some Yanks saw what was going on and they come across, “We’ve gotta kill this engine!” So I jumped down on the ground and found a lump of wood and I’m bashing away at the fuel injection pump or the throttle to try and cut the engine because it is still in gear and trying to push forward. All of a sudden the tracks gripped

and moved forward again probably two or three inches and I got thrown off the side onto the end of the whatsiname but the thing went right up onto his chest. I think by that stage he was probably dead. And then I remembered the fuel tap, “Fuckin’ fuel tap.” Jumped down, stuck me hand in under the – and turned it off and as soon as I turned it off the engine died. Why didn’t I fuckin’ think of that before?

That’s something that has haunted me ever since. Someone else, an American got a bucket thingamabob to come over and lifted the tree off him and put him on the ground, and a Yank medic come and resuscitation for about 45 minutes until the helicopter come. But he was changed all grey.

And they took him away in a helicopter. Ah shit, what are we going to do? So we went back down and everyone by this time knew what was going on so we had to go back up and get it so we could move the bulldozer. So we had to pull this shit and end up drive that back down. That played on me for years and years and years. On of the things that

really got my goat about it was that no one ever come and asked us after what happened. Donny Ryde went away to Vung Tau, he was dead, shipped him back to Australia. No investigation was done. Normally someone does a report but nothing. We were never asked, Alf and I, we were never asked what happened, what went on. And I always

get the feeling that this engineer lieutenant, and I wouldn’t have a clue what his name was, would have been in deep shit if the system had know that he was operating a bulldozer without a scrub canopy. Now, OWHS [occupational/workplace health and safety] wasn’t a big deal in those days, but it was sort of principle that you operate a bulldozer with a scrub canopy. But the Americans never. They used to operate their own ploughs

without it but..

Because it was too low to go under this bridge to get to there so they took the scrub canopy off to get under this bridge but instead of taking it with them they left if behind. And it’s only four bolts and they would have slipped into the little holes and had big bolts that they would have tightened them on. So they left it there. And no one ever counselled us or anything like that

and that has stuck in my goat for years and still now I get a bit emotional about why no one ever did anything. And when you read the report it just says accidental death. I don’t know if his family knows how he died or anything like that. It was a shame, something should have been done but nothing was done. We were never asked

why he –

Yeah, well we ended up going back to the camp that night, well we were just on the edge of it anyway and I just could not sleep. I did not sleep that night at all, a terrible feeling that this guy had died and we were with him and that I could have saved him if I’d thought of the bloody fuel switch but I didn’t I was

thinking, trying to do something else. And you look back and you don’t know whether it’s guilt or whether it’s ‘what if’ or whatever, but it still sort of plays on your mind. I always think that if someone had debriefed us afterwards it wouldn’t have this effect on you years down. For years afterwards you don’t think of it very much because you’re busy all the time but once you retire or stop work and you’ve got time on your hands

then that’s when these things start to rock out, I think. Some people it happens to early. Little fragments occur earlier but once I got out of the army and it was only ‘97 that I started crying on Anzac Day, particularly Vietnam Vets [Veteran] Day, tears running down me eyes. When I hear that minute song I always think of Donny Ryde. It just hangs in there. When I went to the War Memorial in

Canberra last night, searched his name up and went through the computer and on there it said ‘accidental death’ and I always wonder if his family know what happened, what really happened that day, and whether they’d want to know. A couple of years ago I spoke to Alf Newman, his real name is Jerry, but I didn’t know his name was Jerry an I’d known him for years and years as Alf,

and I said to him, one of these days I want to see if I can, I’ve got his sister’s name but I don’t know where she lives, I’d really like to go and have a talk to her. “Ah I wouldn’t. It’s not really going to serve any purpose.” I just think it’s something I’d like to do. I don’t know whether she’d like it, say, “No, I don’t want to listen to it.” But yeah, that was a bad couple of days because the following night we got brassed up by our own artillery’s

machine-gun post and that didn’t go down too well either. That was right on midnight. When you set up your machine-gun pits you have arcs of fire and we had ours laid out because we knew where their machine-gun pit was and when they put their machine-gun pit out they didn’t put arcs of fire out and we didn’t know that their M60 was pointing at our weapon pit. They’d set up a flare out in front and I was on

shift doing the shift that night in the weapon pit and all of a sudden this flair went off in front of us and I sort of looked at it and the next minute ‘rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat’, their machine-gun opened up an where were the bullets coming? Straight into out weapon pits. Down the hole me and Alf went, onto the radio, “Our bloody artillery machine-gun is shooting at us,” and he said, “Well, get over here and tell us about it.” “I’m not going any bloody where until you stop that shootin’.” And it

took them about five minutes to stop them.

Yeah, we were on a bit of a bend. Our workshop machine-gun for the night was near our workplace and then you had barbed wire, single stranded barb wire going round and then the next weapon pit and it would be manned but it was manned by the artillery guys because it was round that side and

and there was a sort of, one went, ours was facing that way and theirs was facing this way, which is fair enough but you have pegs in the ground so that when you turn your machine-gun it doesn’t cross into your own area. So our left hand peg was there which means that we could only shoot across in front of them but their weapon pit didn’t have any pegs at all so when they fired and the flair went off there it

just happened to be in line with our weapon pit. So they just, pht-pht-pht, into it. And the next morning we had a water trailer behind us that was empty, had a couple of holes in it – that’s how low it was. I thought, “Jesus Christ, someone’s after me.” We ended up staying there a week. We got the dozer going, enough for them to still build up laterite. It was a sort of a dull week after that.

One month.

Not up to that point, no.

No, none at all. That was the first time. We had been there just four weeks and we were out on this particular operation.

Years later, many years later. Like

in the early ‘70s and ‘70s when the protests started to mount and build up I still believed that what we were doing was right. We were over there to help the Americans stop the red hoard from coming down over and going into other countries. And I thought I don’t have a problem with that and I was a bit peeved that other people were, particularly when they were

treating the people who were over there. A lot of them volunteered, a lot of them didn’t volunteer, but it doesn’t matter, they were there doing a job. And the way that the Australians appeared to be treat. They didn’t know us personally but they were quite happy to sit there and spit and do the ‘Save Our Sons’ bit and marches and posties going on strike, wouldn’t deliver our mail back in Australia, wharfies refused to load the ships and that sort of stuff, and so

on. They shouldn’t be doing that. It wasn’t probably until when I got out of the army and started to question things that, “Oh well, maybe we shouldn’t have gone there.” But we did and I was part of that. To me there was no point in arguing about that. We were there. Once you get there you’re part of it whether the people back at home agree with you or not. When you first leave home and your mother

doesn’t want you to go, you go and then afterwards it sorts itself out. You end up going home eventually. But because it was a dirty war, the way each side fought each other. The Yanks had the massive power and the napalm and when you see those things go off. Sometimes when you were out on an op [operation] you’d see the aeroplanes come in at a bit of a distance dropping

napalm. Oh my God. People having this burning dieseline and this sort of stuff going all over them. That’s pretty horrific.

No.

No. We were more in awe of what was happening than anything else. All of a sudden you’d look up and trail of smoke, “Ah that’s a Phantom.”

Because when the F4 Phantoms come in they left a tail of black smoke out the back and you’d sit there and, “Ah – Look at that. Ah.” Boom. And you’d hear the boom and whatever. So you’re more in awe of it, the noise and what was happening and more VC dead or something like that. Even when we went down to Baria for the Tet Offensive there were bodies everywhere but

you were busy doing what you were doing and you just looked at them and said, “Oh, there are dead bodies lying everywhere,” but you just kept driving down the road. You had a job to do and you concentrated on it. If you’d stopped and said, “Stop. That’s it. I’m not going any further. I don’t like the look of this,” then you might as well have not been there.

Well, the first time I really got concerned and

perturbed about whether I was going to see the night out or not was up at Xa Bang on my 21st birthday. We’d set up camp and the rest of it. It might have been the night before. We had an American with us in the workshop, Smith, I think his name might have been, a real idiot and myself and Bobby Matthews, I think, we’d bee on gun picket together. This Smith and Alf Newman

took over and we slept right behind the weapon pit because we had sandbags built up just to sleep around. And the next minute, rat-at-at-at-at-at-at. Bloody hell. We immediately jumped into our weapon pit but these two guys were already there so we had to get into theirs. And he’s blazing away and we said to him, “What the hell’s going on?” and he said, “They’re out in front of us, they’re out in front of us.” I said,

“Where?” I couldn’t see anything out there and next morning when we did the clearing patrol all the bullets were up in the tops of trees so if anyone was out there – and he reckoned there was – It turned out to be there was because whoever it was went round near where the infantry were and the infantry stitched him up. Turned out to be a money collector and his offsider and they got them both. But the following night the infantry said,

“We’ll put a mortar DF in.” And what they do is put, say, two hundred metres out, they drop a mortar and plot it and then they bring it in fifty and plot it and then bring it in and put it right next to your wire. And we were watching that coming in and just sort of sitting up watching it and one come inside the wire. And we said, “They’re dropping them inside the wire.” This is near where we were standing. And we all hit the bloody deck. And we got

the thing is they’re not ours, they’re theirs. And what the Viet Cong had done and got use to was the infantry doing these DF patterns in case something happens during the night, and they just join in because they knew that they started out and brought them in so just joined them coming in. Well, that was a bloody, a bit of a bloody panic, thinking “Christ all bloody mighty. I’m going to get me bum shot off here.” Because a friend of mine had his heel shot off – not at that particular place

but on Operation Balmoral, I think, had his heal blown off by a mortar. So that was a bit of a worry. Another time we went out as protection party for the bulldozers. They were out clearing a bit of land but all of the people who could have gone out as protection, like infantry, were out somewhere. So they got a patrol of us out of the workshop together, under

one of the vehicle mechanic sergeants and seeing I was the section machine-gunner, I ended up taking the M60 and we all had M60 rounds, done up like bloody Arnold Schwarzenegger and we used to work out in front of the bulldozers to make – and we were told that everyone in this particular village was in the village. Anyone out there was fair game. We’re going around and we’d stopped and then we got a message on the radio,

“There’s one guy running out and he’s got a gun” and he was breaking out of the village and heading to where we were. Nicky Vanderboon [?] said, “Shit, what are we going to do? I’m going to get behind this tree and if I see him come through that thing, I’m going to blast away.” They someone said,, “There he is,” but then a helicopter was over the top and the helicopter was about 50 yards away, gee, getting close and close and then it ended up with the biggest comedy of the lot.

We come across a house in this paddy area and we could hear noises in there and this guy says, I think it was Bobby Matthews, said, “Nick, there’s people in the house.” So we get on the radio and said, “There’s people in this house up here. We can hear them.” This guy said, “ Well, anyone out there we said is fair game but go and see who it is and what’s going on.” I thought, “We’ve never raided a

house before. We’re not trained in this sort of stuff.” I went to the rear of the house and covered the rear with the machine-gun and these other people snuck up on the front door and kicked it in. And there in the corner of this (they were only one room houses), in the corner of this house or room was this little old man and little old lady about 120 not out. They were ga-ga, just sitting there and playing with each other and the rest of it. And poor Nicky Vanderboon, he reckon he come so close to shooting them. It

wasn’t, well, it weren’t funny. But it soon got out that we caught the village idiots. That didn’t go down too well. And then we went further around to the entrance of this village and there was a big bamboo thicket and as we were getting there the helicopter was firing rounds into it. The bulldozer come up and they said, “Ah, we’ve got one of them. Will you go in and pull him out?”

Really? Yeah. So I jumped up on the board of the bulldozer and one guy sat on the blade and we just pushed through this thing and the helicopter guided us in and there was the bloke there that the helicopter had shot so we picked him up and draped him over the blade. He had a M1, Ah – F1 carbine – our nine-millimetre carbine. It turns out that three months before, the

military police were ambushed near Dat Do and I think they killed two of them and pinched their weapons. In fact, one of the weapons we found belonged to those provos.

Yes, Australian provos. And they had these F1s so we retrieved one of their guns for them, which was lucky but didn’t help the MPs [military police]. But the other time that was really

worrying and scary was on the Tet Offensive. Everyone was out. All the battalions were out, the carriers were out, artillery was out and Nui Dat was pretty light on. And all of a sudden a job came through that a troop of armoured personnel carriers, which was a troop of four, was stuck in Baria. They were in Baria and they were ambushed. As it turns out, one

had a RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] through the engine and the engine had blown up so he was immobile. Another one had an RPG through a road wheel. Another one, an RPG had hit an American in the head and killed the Australian and the ARVN inside the back of the carrier. The driver had shrapnel on his back, I think, and on around his buttock area and the crew commander had shrapnel on his leg. And

one carrier was serviceable. We got the call the night before about nine o’clock to prepare to move the next day with our wrecker. And they ended getting a hodge-podge of vehicles together. There was our wrecker which was a big truck with a big boom on the back and a tilt-bed trailer, two fitters vehicles, armoured personnel carriers with cranes on them from one of the other workshops and B Company

of 3 Battalion, which was B Company’s first op that they were going on. They were left back into camp as protection for B Company but they ended up coming out with us. Next morning we got the order to form up and move and we’re going down to pull them out. Apparently, they were being shot at during the night because they were right in the middle of the market square. So we took off at nine o’clock in the morning.

Went down through the main gate, through Hoa Long. We got sniped at in the village of Hoa Long and we had to stop there while the infantry went through and cleared that. And then we went out through the bottom end of Hoa Long and there is an old French fort there, an old white French fort. It had been abandoned for years and years and years, and as soon as we got to the French fort, sniped at again from Baria. I think it was about two hours waiting for the infantry to come through and

clear it and you could see where people were firing at our small convoy way down towards the entrance of Baria. And they cleared them probably around about one o’clock and then it took us another hour to do two kilometres to get into Baria because we had to get down, turn right and the jail was on your left and that’s where a lot of bodies were outside. They were everywhere and on the right hand side there were more

and a cow had recently been shot, or an old buffalo and there were women over there with big meat cleavers chopping this thing up to get the meat and then scurrying off again while this damn battle was going on. So we went down past the – got sniped at again at the corner of the jail and we turned left there and that got us to the market place.

No. And as soon as we got there, I set up the

machine-gun pointing down the road but I also had the job to prepare one of the carriers, to get it ready to be towed out. Which one did I get? I think it was the one with the road wheel and then they decided that the one with the road wheel wouldn’t be towed because he could still use it even thought the road wheel was smashed. So we just took the outside road wheel off and

he was still able to drive it and that way he had a turret that could operate and he could operate the carrier as a carrier. The one with the engine was hooked up at the back of another carrier and the one that the American or the dead bodies in the back, he could still operate so and then they had one good carrier. So it took us about an hour to get every thing sorted out and the rest of it. You could see down the end of the road that went down this little canal near the water

tower people running across and you didn’t know who they were. Some of them would have jungle greens with a red scarf on and someone would be with a blue scarf on. All of a sudden just someone would run across in civilians with a weapon. You didn’t know whether it was – are they VC or what are they? Do we shoot? They said, “Nah, Just get this bloody vehicle ready to get out of here.” I thought, “Hang on. Am I here to protect? Do I shoot?

What do I shoot? Who do I shoot?” It was just a little bit confused. So once we had the carriers hooked up we immediately headed off again and back out the way we come in. B Company went out in front and cleared anything that was in front of us. We got out pretty quick – a damn sight faster than we got in there and when we got up near the French fort we pulled up and then B Company hopped on anything that would provide

space, on vehicles, everything and we just bolted out of there. The carriers immediately went to the task force hospital and they reckon that what was in the back of the carrier was not a pretty sight. They basically had to hose them out, out the back. We went down there the next day to take the carrier away but it had all been cleaned up by then.

That one, yeah, that would have been the first time.

The Tet Offensive, yeah.

Oh, it was – we’d had the Christmas truce as such – Christmas truce or New Years’ truce? Or maybe I think it was Christmas Day truce and come into New Year, and apparently Tet they have every year at the same time. It’s just a, I guess a cultural anniversary or whatever they have every year at this time, like Chinese New Year

and they said what’s been happening they have a bit of a fire fight the year before and it was nothing but then when we used to have our intelligence groups in the morning, “They think there is a build up here and a build up there,” “They think we could get hit or they could hit there,” and it turned out like it was going to be something big. And then the battalions went out into these areas and in fact

on the Friday night, that’s when we were preparing to go out on the Saturday, on the Friday night we were sitting on our – because we were at ‘stand to’ all the time – at night time if you weren’t asleep you were on ‘stand to’, boozer’s closed, everything was closed – have you heard of Puff the Magic Dragon [AC-47D gunship]?

Yeah, well, Puff the Magic Dragon – we could almost – well, we could see Baria almost from where we were and you could see

Puff – you could just hear like an aeroplane flying over a then all of a sudden you could hear something like a braaack – like that, a noise like that, and what it was, was Puff would lay out a spray of bullets and that was the sort of noise it made, and they say it depends what height, what the spread is but they reckon they can put a bullet in every square foot and they can do a football field in five seconds or something so, God, you

couldn’t stand anywhere and not get hit and you’d see that going around Baria every now and then and all of sudden you’d see this cone come out of the sky – couldn’t see the aeroplane but just this cone of bullets come out. God, and there were flares all the time, all night. Struth, and we’re going down there tomorrow. Ah yeah, it will all be over by then. But it took a few more days for it to be over. Yeah, that was one hell of a

sort of experience. You’re on your edge all the time. You want – and we had to make sure there was no one coming into our area because our perimeter would have been pretty thin if anyone had decided to give us a nudge.

Mmm.

No, nothing, absolutely nothing. I think we only had a small group of artillery. Each unit that was there kept their people, everything from cooks

and God knows what else were manning the guns and that was because everyone was out – the battalions were out, the carriers were out. Oh the tanks weren’t out because they’d only just got there, the centurions. So that area there, the armoured regiment, they were all on board and they would have had the tanks around the top edge. A, B, – A, C and D Company three were out, the carriers were out,

the other battalion was out, carriers were out, so it was pretty thin on the ground.

Not in a like patrol to go out to kill or lay in ambush or anything like that.

No. Only Tet Offensive really. And apart from like I said being shot at by our own people. When the land-clearing bulldozers

went out, out past this Sui Nai village that they were working on, we go a message to say that one of them had caught on fire because when they plough through bamboo they get a lot of chaff and the chaff was getting in around the engine and the heat from the exhaust and it caught alight and burnt a hole in the radiator. So we had to go out into the bush past Sui Nai with a wrecker in – it would have been around midday

and they guy said, “We can’t repair this dozer here. We’re going to have to take either the dozer of the radiator back.” So they said, “Well we’re not taking – leaving the dozer – well, the other dozer – we’re staying here. Take the radiator out.” And that turned out to be a bigger job because no one had ever taken one out of these things before. So we took it out and strapped it to the back of the tow truck and then as we were driving between there and Ap Suoi Nghe we got sniped at. You just heard a zing. We heard a bang a zing. And then, “Jesus. Where did that

come from?” You don’t know because it could come from anywhere. So that sort a made you keep your head down. A lot of isolated little incidents but I never got involved in a big shoot out or whatever.

Well, you just don’t know where it’s coming from. You’ve got no idea where it’s coming from. Where do you point – cause I was sitting on the back of the truck with the M60 because we’ve have a little

rod there and the M60 sits on top and got me tin helmet and flack jacket on, but when you hear a bang and a zing and you, “Geez, and you’re trying to find where did that come from?” The vehicle is moving and you’re the only one on the back of the truck. The other two guys are in the truck driving. You have a vehicle at the front and a vehicle at the back. “Whoa – keep going you buggers.” It’s just not knowing where it come from.

And you know who did it, but you don’t know where it come from, whether it come out of the edge of the village or that side of the rubber or in amongst all of the rubbish that’s down there.

Well, they didn’t. You sort of picked – we never learnt that – well, in Australia they learnt ambush drills off the back of a truck. You’d be sitting on the back of a truck and all of a sudden they’d say, “Ambush,” and the truck would stop and you’d have to jump

off, hit the ground and then someone would say, “Ambush left,” and you’d have do your ambush or get up and move into it. But just a lone sniper like that, you just keep going. You don’t want to stop.

No, not by black trade people like myself. We weren’t trained in going looking for them. We

had our job to do and a lot of times it was with these guys who were trained to do it so we just kept doing our job and if something happened, they’d go out.

Yeah. There was always – you never went out, just say, “Well, you four workshop guys, go out and look after that one bulldozer and stay out over night,” like we would do here, “Let’s go

camping.” No way. Unless there is a big group, and it was an organised set up, there was none of this going out and doing little one-night trippers.

Well, they would go through a drill. If they were out on your left flank and someone fired from out there, they would go into their ambush drill or sniper drill. They would initially go to ground

and then they’d talk through – someone would say, “A shot came 100 yards up there on the left.” And then the platoon commander would say, “Alright. I’ll send this section up here to the higher ground.” You always put your machine-guns on the higher ground and then you’ll get this crowd to move up through it with this gunner for protection across this way. They’d go through their drills and clear the area and then

move on again. But if we were with them we would stop. If they were out there flanking us either side and we got into the – and someone shot at us, we would stop, get off our vehicles and lay on the ground near the vehicles with your guns, looking, waiting for someone to tell you what to do.

Yeah. Well we went down, myself and – I don’t know – Stuart, his name

was. We got a job to go out with the American advisers. There was an American adviser team in Long – I forget the name of it. It was down near Baria, and there was a couple of Australians with them and they had posts at Xuyen Moc, Bimbar and another place, and they had to go and replace their generators because they only operated on generators. So we got the

job to go out and lift the generators off and put them in the new ones and get them up and running for them. So they said, “What you’ve got to do is go with the convoy that is going to Vung Tau, and then branch off at Nui Dat and go to the – ah, branch off at Baria – and go to this ARVN place or this advisers’ place. We followed there and turned left, went in there and they said, “Righto, We’re going to head of now. We’ve got two trucks with these generators on.

We’re going to Xuyen Moc first.” I said, “What protection is there?” “Oh, we’ve got a company of ARVN.” I said, “Really?” And we were very sceptical of the ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, because we used to call them ‘Charvn’ – ARVN by day and Charlie [Viet Cong, the enemy] by night – so, and they were going to be our escort. I said, “That’s a long way down to Xuyen Moc. What time are we getting there?”

“Oh, it’ll be OK. Things will be alright.” So if – me and the old tow truck driver, we were starting – we thought, “Oh Jesus, this is going to be a set up.” And there was an American and Australian as advisers in the jeep. They were leading it and they had two trucks of these Charvn at the rear. And the whole time we were going down we kept alert all the time because I just didn’t trust them at all.

Well, during the day, while they’re under the terms of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, and under control of the Americans or Australians or whoever, they’d do the job, but at night time when they had nothing to do, then they would – those that were kindred or anything to the Viet Cong would go out and – because they’ve got a gun, already got their weapons and everything – and they would go out and be Charlie by night. And by day, they’d come

back to work. And that was the consensus of what they, what we thought they were.

Not really. But it was just a thing that everyone knew or suspected that they were – they couldn’t be trusted. They always kept very carefully – everyone

Yeah.

Like, anyone who went out with an ARVN unit, or with ARVN with them used to be very careful of the ARVN. No, there were some stories. When you talk to Keith Payne, the VC [Victoria Cross] winner and when he got his VC he said some of them just bolted, took off, and he said and one or two of them would stay, he said. So you could never trust them. Always watched your back. So that was a worry. So when we got down to Xuyen Moc and changed these generators over, they said, “Come in and have a bit of lunch.”

and we went in and had lunch and come out to head off to Binh Ba and anything that wasn’t tied down on the AP [?UNCLEAR], on our wrecker was fairly knocked off. There were chains missing and all of our three day – because you always go anywhere with rations, because you don’t know when you’re going to head back. All our rations had gone, a spare change of clothes. We used to have just a spare set of greens rolled up in a bundle under the seat and

they had gone. Thieving bastards. So, yeah, that was a very long day because then when we went up to Binh Ba, theirs is a very tricky outpost to get into. And it was a bit like going through a very sharp set of Ss and the road is only just wide enough for a large vehicle and then they’ve got minefields, trip wires and everything. So we had to

guide ourself in through this. I said, “I’ll go out the front of the vehicle and guide you in.” He said, “What happens if I hit one of the bloody wires?” I said, “If you see me take off, you can do what you like, because I’m running because you’ve hit the bloody wire and there’s a grenade going to go off.” But we got in alright and we changed their stuff over and that. But that was a very nerve wracking day. When you got back that night, straight over to the boozer and had a couple of beers.

You’re sort of on your toes all the time. You weren’t sure what was going to happen or if something was going to happen you try and learnt so, alright, so that’s minefield there and that’s minefield there and what sort are they. And you could just see the damn things. Grenades strapped to bloody things with wires running off them. Lovely. They’re well protected. But poor old Binh Ba – they got hit a few times. A couple of Australians

were killed there, in Binh Ba – advisers. It was a hot area. It was known as a very hot area.

Yes. We had – every major exercise you went out to, you went to a Fire Support Base. It was normally the name of the operation that was on at the time – Fire Support Base, Pinnaroo, Fire Support Base Coral,

Balmoral, anything, whatever names they were using. And they were – the Fire Support Bases were mostly artillery, but then they had these add on units that went with them, or passing through units like when we went up to Xa Bang to do the work up there, we had a Fire Support Base which was back near Binh Ba and we ended up coming back over a period of a fortnight in their Fire

Support Base and when we finished our job, we left. But they were our support if anything had tried to get us up there. But they would try to get the artillery in as close as possible. They were very helpful.

No, only that time at Xa Bang when the mortars come in.

That was the only time. But you could hear them, these little pop – sssssss. Oh Shit. You knew what the noise was. We heard the infantry ones coming in and then these other buggers just added on. So you learnt the noise. So, if you heard the noise then you’d know what it was. Same when the big guns fired – you knew which guns they

were by the characteristic noises, whether they were ours or theirs or the big 185 gun.

The big guns they had at 1st at 83rd, which was a unit, an American unit close to ours, and they had the big mobile guns. Basically it was a tank chaise with a massive big gun on it but they could have a 20 foot barrel or a

12 foot barrel. Occasionally our wrecker would go down there and help them change barrels. But it depends on what sort of missions that they were firing. I think they were 155s [? millimetre shells], were the 12 foot barrels and 175 millimetre were the big 20 foot barrels. But when the 20 foot barrels used to start firing they used to say something like a, they would fire a kilometre per foot of barrel so

a 12 foot of barrel would fire 12 miles and a 20-foot barrel would fire 20 miles. When the big guns went off, because of the larger projectile, you used to hear them break the sound barrier then you’d hear the gunfire so you had an idea – you knew immediately what barrels they had on these things. Soon as they went off the guys used to rush to the toilet because what would happen is the – well, the toilets we had like an open dug

latrine pit with flywire screen round it and what have you and a four seater thunderbox on there and the guys used to rush over there and sit on it because when the guns went off the ground would vibrate and any of the air that was inside these toilets used to compress themselves and come out of the top of the thunderbox and the guys used to race over and sit on it just to get the feel of this hot air rushing up.

They used to try and get point for the number of times a month. There’d be a bit of paper in the toilet and you’d put a tick every time you got one. But you needed things like that to entertain yourselves otherwise it’d – it used to be very, very boring. We used to finish work at about half past five at night and we’d have our little knock off parade, go and have a shower

and pull on your long trousers and your long sleeve shirt because the mozzies only bit from six o’clock in the evening over there. They must have been well timed, because during the day we only wore boots, shorts and hat – no shirt or anything. And then you’d go over the boozer and have a few beers there and then you’d go from there to tea. And then after tea you’d go back to the lines because you’d have ‘stand

to’ where you’d have to put your webbing on, grab your rifle and stand – if you weren’t on bunker duty you’d have to stand and your weapon put outside your tent.

End of tape

Well, the Vietnamese people that I had a bit to do with were in the village of Ap Suoi Nghe, that’s the village that the engineers constructed not far from Nui Dat and they brought the people – where we were clearing either side of the road, the villages that were on the road, they’d move them all into there. So I had a little bit to do with them. We’d

go down – if we weren’t doing anything, we’d go down and help them cart stuff out onto the road or lift things on or even back in the village when they finally moved into the village. We used to go in and help them and what have you. We used to look after an orphanage in Baria on Sunday afternoons. We used to have half a day a week off and normally eight people every Sunday went down there. And they used to go round to the kitchens and

get the old food we weren’t eating and they’d take it down to the orphanage. I don’t know if the VC when in there and go their order later on in the afternoon but we’d go down, take this food down, do some repair work around the orphanage. Mostly, a lot of it was fixing drains, cleaning drains, fixing up a bit of brickwork or taps and that sort of stuff. And we got on really, really well with them. The nuns were very nice people. They were Vietnamese nuns.

And very, very nice people, they were. They used to be very fascinated with some of our stature like Griffo, for example, was a hairy man. So he was called ‘Monkey’ because he had body hair on his front, his back, you name it. He had a lot of hair. So he was a real number one guy. And we had another guy with really blonde hair and he was sorta picked on as

being a centrepiece for them cause we – they don’t have that sorta stuff. So that was good, and then when we used to go to the markets, that used to be – I went in there with Gordon Dodds into Baria after the orphanage and he said, “I gotta have a bowl of soup.” I said, “You’re not going to eat any of this stuff. It’ll kill ya.” He said, “No, I’m determined to have a bowl of soup.” So we went into this little thing and someone else was eating soup and

he just sorta pointed and he said, “One a them.” And she came out with this bowl of soup and I thought, “Ahhh.” You could see the steam – you could almost see the steam peeling the paint off the roof off this place. But he ate it and I thought, “No, I’m not going to touch this stuff at all.” And that was a sort of a bit of a laugh and then when we went down and we bought ourselves a couple of these little tubular deck chairs you could

buy because for our tents and we’re coming back and a little old woman walks out on to the – out of a shop to the edge of the street, lift up one bloody leg, sit there and have a leak and she’d go back inside for a bowl of water and flush it away. Nothing seemed to concern them. That was their way of living and that was it. But the small amount of time I had to deal with them I found them very nice and

polite and if you were polite to them, they were polite to you. Had no problem. Sometimes the Yanks used to – they were very brusque with the local people. They would always tell them to piss off in no uncertain terms. They try to sell them a Coke, “What you got in that Coke? Gasoline?” They just didn’t like them at all. The Australians got on well with the locals. I think they have done everywhere they’ve gone.

I think it was an orphanage because of the war. A lot of the kids in there come from a whole stack of different areas. So, it they’re parents have been killed they’ve been put there. There were a couple of Montagnard kids there. Montagnard are the people from the hill tribes and I don’t know why they would have been down our way at all but you could

tell the Montagnard kids – most of them are taller than the other kids and had frizzy hair like the Fuzzy-Wuzzies [indigenous Papua New Guineans]. So you’d look at a person and immediately see they were a Montagnard. There were a couple of Montagnard kids there. You could tell that by their frizzy hair. But I think they came from there. There weren’t just eight, nine, 10 year olds, there were some real little ones, and what have you. And I don’t know once they got 18 whether they had to go and join the army or not but we only ever saw little kids there.

Just the nuns, the Vietnamese nuns. There was, I think, about six, it I remember correctly. There were no male nuns and no male people around. The kids were mixed, boy and girl, but there were no menfolk around at all.

Maybe, yeah, they were out farming or fighting or whatever – conscripted. They lost a lot of people so, I guess a lot of the, what would have been local, men

would have been and gone.

I don’t think they were very happy about it. They had not known peace for such a long time, they may have become accustomed to it. When my wife went to Vietnam two years ago, she said that everyone seemed quite

happy. No warfare at all. They were doing what we do every day – down to the shops, doing their farming, kids going to school, industry was really good – particularly local industry. She went to shirt street where they just sold shirts or tin street where it was tinware or lacquer street where it was lacquerware. But it was not like that when we were there. It was still rice farming and doing

everything the hard way, working in the rubber plantations. It would have been – I guess they would have become accustomed to it and I think they would have found peace a little bit hard to get used to because every day, a lot of the kids who were 10 years had been in the war for 10 years. And those that are 20 and can remember the French have been involved in fighting for 20 years and then there is another generation before

that. So really the local people have know nothing but fighting and treachery and bullets and bangs and booms all their lives. So I think they were a bit nonplussed about it. They were probably upset that they couldn’t live a proper life. They were very poor, but now that it’s all gone, I just hope they’ve found peace easier to get used to.

That’s our people?

I think that they did know that – that when they had the demarcation at the 17th Parallel or that zone there, that the

northerners stayed north and the southerners stayed south and then the Prime Minister then wanted to become democratic and the north was gone Communist under Ho Chi Minh, I think they were looking for a nice life. Then all of a sudden it turned dirty when the NVA and the local guerrillas, which were the VC who were part of the North

Vietnamese, I guess, decided they were going to get rid of this democracy and make the whole of Vietnam one thing. So, they didn’t have any choice. I think the north had already decided that the south was going to become Communist and that was it. I don’t think they expected the Americans to pour so many people in there. The American’s were not as good as – plenty of fire power but

if you can’t find them, there is no point in firing at them, is there. They just basted the crap out of everything and they just went underground and when it was al over they’d come back out again. A lot of times they probably massacred thousands and thousands of them but on the whole though, I think it was a loosing battle from the start. I say that in retrospect.

I think it was – they may have seen it as democracy against Communism. The local politicians, Vietnamese politicians wanted democracy and the only way they could get it was have the Americans help them get it, but I don’t think they realised how tenacious the north were to seek the whole country to be Communist.

I think they probably thought, once it started, I think, they realised then it was Communism against democracy.

I think they just wanted peace. They just wanted to live in peace. Doesn’t matter whether it was democratic peace or Communist peace, they just wanted peace. They’d been fighting for years. They were sick of it.

There was definitely no hope for them. All of the young men were going to nothing but go away and get killed, so what’s the point. I think they just wanted peace and didn’t care which one it was. They just needed that.

You couldn’t. You did not know who was who. The

Vietnamese during the day could be the simple farmer, working in his paddy fields doing his rice and at night just picked up a gun and went out to be VC for the night, then come back the next day and do work. They never had an official uniform. Only the NVA had uniforms but the VC were just who in the street. Could be anyone. You really didn’t know

and the kids – you didn’t know whether they were intelligence gathering or they’re legitimately coming out asking for food or whatever – they come out, “Oh, this guy’s got that and that guy’s got that,” and then go off and telling them, “Oh, we saw these people today doing this.” You didn’t know what the kids were doing. They’d try to sell you Coke, their sister and anything else but they were probably double-dipping as foot workers for their cause or their parents’ cause.

No, you couldn’t tell the difference. They were – like I said before, when we were told when we were going over there anyone in black pyjamas and a cone hat’s dead. Rubbish, everyone wears it. It’s the daily uniform. If they didn’t have that on it was a scruffy air of jeans and a western shirt, so, no.

You just become very careful, I think. You could normally tell if a

person was hiding something. If he’s walking along the street and he’s just got a pair of shorts and a shirt well, no, he’s alright, but if you noticed something different you would be careful or wary when you went past them. If a tuk-tuk [type of rickshaw] come up and it was loaded with stores and the rest of it, if there were people hanging off it then that seemed to be alright because they wouldn’t sort of take their

own out in that number. If it was a guy with a suspicious looking load on the back and he was on his own, well, you might think twice about keeping your distance. Same with the kids – if the kids were around you felt alright. If the kids disappeared or there were no kids around you would be a little wary and just kept – and just kept looking around and kept your weapon handy, because everywhere you went you had to carry your weapon, doesn’t matter where you went, except within the unit lines

we didn’t have to. When you went out of the unit lines or went anywhere you always carried your weapon, doesn’t matter, everywhere and it had to have – there was always a full magazine on but not one up the barrel, unless you were going to Vung Tau in a convoy they used to put one up the barrel but normally you’d just drive around and always make sure it was handy. And you had your webbing always there. That had your

spare mags. And normally if you were a vehicle orientated person you used to operate out of the vehicle, you’d also have a box of ammo [ammunition] sitting in the back, hoping you didn’t need to use it.

No, you learnt on the job. No, we were never taught about the – how to get around or anything like that. It was when you got there, when you go out you do this. That’s the

standing order for going and doing this job or whatever. We never got taught that at jungle training at all. It was not part of the training cycle.

No, no when you’re doing your jungle training and you do this patrolling and tracking, you’ve got this hierarchical order.

For example, in a section you’re got a section commander and a section 2IC [second in command] and a couple of guys with riflemen and the machine-gunners and when something happens, there’s a drill and you do the drill. And the guy there, at the front, he tells you what to do and where to go. So it was automatic stuff. If he said, “Get up there behind that tree,” you’d get up there behind that tree.

If they said, “Assault position,” you’d get up in assault position. You couldn’t afford to have your own thoughts in a situation like that. It was – yeah, everything was drilled. But going out in the bush and doing things, they were things you had to learn – some of the techniques, what you took with you, what you didn’t take with you. We always go over there with a great big machete – you never carry a machete with you. You always took two more water bottles

than what was recommended. You’d always take a condom or two. This is the infantry guys, we never had to do it but we carried condoms and the infantry used to use it when they went through swamps. They’d put a condom on because they’d get leeches. I’ve heard of two occasions where guys got leeches up the eye of the old fella [penis] and that was quite painful, so then it was condoms. So when you went into the marshy

swamp area you put on condoms. Otherwise if it was pouring with rain you might slip it over the end of the barrel of your gun to stop the water getting down inside because if all of a sudden you had a barrel full of water and you had to fire a shot out of it you’d split the barrel.

No, on the job. Thing, oh is that what you do. Oh, OK. Like, “Don’t wear socks,” “Don’t wear underpants” – you need to let the air

get up in you. If you’re wearing underpants, then that’s going to stop the sweat and you’ll end up getting rashes. Rashes were a big thing over there. I copped a pearler once under the arms. They called it ‘monsoon blisters’ but it was impetigo. It was terrible, but you were always getting blisters either between the legs, tinea was bad, that’s why we never wore socks. At night you had to make sure your boots were dry and then in the morning you put dry feet into

dry boots and try to keep them dry. Because if you let them get wet – I know I always get tinea in this small toe, never any other toe, but just that one, even now unless you dry them properly. Tinea was bad, skin rashes, impetigo, heat rashes – a lot of people used to cop heat rashes up their arm and on their belly and that kind of stuff and prickly heat – some got it bad.

No, just chuck them on. A lot of people – the Americans used to have a system where you could purchase a lace, a lace-up – a zip-up – you could take your laces out and put this zip-up one in. You would lace it on but instead of undoing laces to take your boots off you just undid the zip, come out and zip it back up again.

But most of us we just put our boots on and tie them up.

I think they regarded the Australians with a lot more respect than they did the Americans. We never saw anything of the Koreans or the Thais or whatever, but I know – I think they respected the Australians a lot better

than anyone else, mainly because we weren’t so rude – rude to them. We weren’t in such a – if we thought there was something wrong the Americans would probably open up whereas we would give it the benefit of the doubt. Because we had fairly strict rules of engagement. I think it was basically, “Don’t shoot until they shoot at you,”

and that was fairly well adhered to. We wouldn't just shoot someone because he was carrying a gun. It could end up being an ARVN soldier in his civilian garb going home and he's carrying his M1. Now, is he or isn't he? But you drive past and keep an eye on him. Whereas the Americans would probably think, "Ah, stuff you.

Outa the way.” They were always with their vehicles pushing other vehicles off the road. We had to get used to driving on the opposite side of the road over there. That was a bit of fun when we first got there. But if people walked along the road over there or little tuk-tuks and things, the Yanks wouldn’t toot their horn they just give them a nudge and get them out of the way. They were callous sort of bastards. A lot of them were – met some nice ones, Yanks – met some nice ones –

big black Negro, Sherman Gray. He was a sergeant. He was a nice fellow. CPJ Jones Junior – he was a dump truck driver, or ‘dermp trerk drarver’ – he was nice. He used to smoke a lot of pot [marijuana] but he was a nice sort of a fella and he was a good guy and they were attached to us for a while with the engineers and we used to repair their vehicles for them.

Yeah, they were just – well I think a lot of them were just fairly rude, just right up themselves. They did used to have this racial thing between their own people, with the Americans and the Negroes. That was evident, very evident. But the Australians never had any problems mixing with their blacks at all or their

whites. And sometimes they’d say to me, “Where are all the blacks in your army?” I’d say, “Well, we haven’t got any. As a matter of fact the blacks aren’t allowed to be called up and we don’t have many volunteers for the army. So there aren’t any because there aren’t any. We understand what your situation is but we don’t have the problem with the blacks over there.” I think they might have been a bit intrigued at us and we were probably intrigued at them because I’ve never

seen Negroes before – big American blacks. And Puerto Ricans who couldn’t speak English. One Puerto Rican used to come to the workshop with his big scraper and we’d have to go and get this big black Sherman Gray come and find out what the hell this guy wanted because we couldn’t understand. He was Puerto Rican and didn’t speak English. So Sherman would come across and say, “Something’s happening.” So we’d say, “OK,” and we’d fix it. The guy would stay there and you’d try to get to talk

to him because he couldn’t speak English at all it was pretty hard to converse with him.

Oh, at least a third. Some of their tank crews were completely black. Some of their recovery crews were completely black no white fellows in them. I

never saw – very few mixed vehicles with people in it like JB Jones Junior and his ‘dermp trerk’, it would just be him, there wouldn’t be anyone else. And the same – another one might be driven by a black but it wouldn’t be a black and a white together. In their tanks the drivers were black, crew commanders were black but the tank behind it might be all whites in it but they wouldn’t mix them. That

sorta, used to – never shocked us we just used to say, “Well, it’s that bad.” And it was that bad. But when we went over to our boozer, the night that they came up and they were going to be with us for a month and we said, “We’re going over to our boozer. Are you coming over?” And they said, “Is there one for us?” And we said, “No, everyone drinks at the same boozer. There is no black boozer or white boozer. We all go and

drink and we sit together and talk or whatever.” So we went over. They criticised our beer until they drank it and they said, “Oh, this is strong.” Yeah, but we had no problem with them at all. When you worked with them – there were some arseholes among them – but a lot of them were really good. Easy to talk to and they were quite happy to talk to you.

I did initially. I did initially because I didn’t really know anything about America and what was going on. I knew there were American Negroes and where they came from, from the old slave days. I’d read about that and I may have seen a movie or two all with that sort of thing in it but it didn’t really strike me it was that bad until we were in

Vietnam. Black and white wouldn’t mix. Blacks would walk round together and they’d have their own boozer. I remember Phil Brown a mate of mine from just up the road, he went over with the first group that went over in ‘65. They were part of – they went to Bien Hoa first and they could only go to – they could have a choice of going to boozers but one day him and a mate walked into this

bar and there were all blacks in there and they said, “What are you guys doing in here? Get to your own boozer.” “No, we only want beer.” And they got into this big discussion about it and said. “No, we don’t have that sort of stuff.” And the next minute they are all pally [friendly] and sitting around and having a beer. They didn’t want to go to the white – “They’ve got cold beer here, let’s drink here.” So even from the very start we had that more of a – “Your problem doesn’t concern us.

It might concern you guys, but we’re not worried whether you’re black or white, just do your bloody job – and give me a beer.” It was as easy as that.

Accepted Australians – they might have called them ‘whities’ or whatever it is but, ‘Bloody Aussies’.

It was a numbers game, I think

Probably to make it seem fair to all Americans we couldn’t just have the Americans – white Americans fighting so I think they tried to make it look as fair as possible by making sure that at a least a third of them were black. I think most of the black Americans didn’t particularly want to go. It wasn’t their fight.

No, I think it was a numbers game. They had to get – put the numbers in

there and they couldn’t do it just using the white people because there was a white American government so they needed to put – what do we call it sometimes – the ‘token black’. That’s probably being a bit rude but I think they put them there because it was a numbers game. They’ need to make it look as if everyone was participating to keep the white people happy. “What’s the point losing all of our white people if none of the blacks are being killed. Send

everyone.” So they did.

Well, I never got down to Vung Tau very often and there were a lot of Americans down there. So I never ever went to their bars or anything. Only heard stories about their mixed fighting but they were only stories. No reason not to believe them seeing the way that they would act.

Ah, just that in bars someone would come in or a group of them would go in, whether they were white into a black area or black into a white area. “Get outta here,” and that sort of stuff. “You piss off,” and the next minute there is a brawl and a fight and the rest of it. Jim Wiltshire a friend of mine, he was telling me about – he was based in Vung Tau and he said that he went to a few bars

and you’d go in there and there would be fights between Americans, white and black, but the Australians wouldn’t get involved. They’d just sit back over in the corner drinking their – this is not our fight. So they’d just stay out of it unless they got involved. But he said that most of the time they’d just sit back in a corner, drink their grog and let them fight it out. The provos would come along and haul them off. But most of those were logistic people from Vung Tau because it was a massive big American logistic area.

A lot of merchant Americans from the boats bringing goods in; a lot of air force people because there was a huge big massive airstrip there; there were a couple of big civilian engineering companies. So there was not only white American military, there was white American civilians and black American civilians. So it was a big brewing pot that just needed to be stirred gently.

I don’t know. We – I never got involved in any American infantry companies or anything like that. Only what you see on TV [television] and that’s a – and those movies don’t do anything for me. They disgust me more than anything else because it’s

the way they act is the way they act. Guts and glory and give me a Goddamn medal. That soldier – that movie with Mel Gibson in, We Were – Once We Were Soldiers or We Were Soldiers. That – Denise said to me, “What caused all that?” I said, “That stupid bloody lieutenant that took after that guy that was running at the beginning. If

they had just hit the ground and let him go. But he took off and he isolated a platoon and then the other platoon couldn’t get to him and the shit hit the fan.” They were just up the guts with a ball of smoke and that’s typical of them. Australians wouldn’t do that. They might have a section chasing for about 20 or 30 metres but if he’s ducking into the bush, it’s quite obviously what he’s going to do. He’s drawing you into a trap and nah, nah, nah, no. It’s ridiculous.

Always thought it was up the guts with a ball of smoke.

Totally different. Totally different. The Americans just used to completely blast an area. Going into an area they would just bomb away, bomb away with artillery and planes and then they’d stop and then the infantry would come through. But they’d already

sent the Viet Cong the message that they were coming by the bombardment and they would just hide from the bombardment underground and when the bombing stopped they knew that the infantry were on the way and they’d be waiting for them. Whereas the Australians would just go in. They’d – whether they walked in from Nui Dat or whether they were choppered in or whatever, they’d be choppered in well away and then they would walk in. And try and catch them unawares,

beat them at their own game. When they were in there they never washed, the Australians, never tubbed, might go a week. Might take a change of clothes with them but most of the time it was just go in there and be the same as them. Take your litter with you, or bury it, that it can’t be found. Don’t leave tins lying around. Take the tins out with you. But there weren’t too many tins in our

ration packs. There were in the American ones. Ah, that was crap. But we just had a totally different attitude. With – like for example, Phil Brown went out on a patrol with an American little patrol and our reaction when you get into an ambush, if you’re patrolling along and all of a sudden there is an ambush on your right, someone just yells, “Ambush right,” and you turn into it

and just charge straight into it and try and break them up. But the Americans don’t. They break left and then form a defence line and call in the artillery or something. So, they got into this ambush and suddenly, “Ambush right,” and the Americans went left and the two Australians turned and they’d gone about two paces and they realised they were on their own. So they hit the bloody deck and stayed there. And it took them nearly

20 minutes to find the Yanks afterwards. The firing stopped, “Where’d you blokes bloody go?” “Hey, man, you don’t do that. You break left.” “No you don’t you break right.” Total two different attitudes to an ambush. It was hilarious. But they just had a different attitude. Even though the sleeveless shirts you see on TV, that was the go.

I’ve seen them with radios walking around. Particularly – when was it – wasn’t at Xuyen Moc because that was all Australians except for the artillery – might have been up around Bing Gia or some place like that – they were patrolling, walking down the road single file listening to bloody armed forces radio,

or listening to music, gun over their shoulder, holding on to the barrel like this. You’d soon pick out – you wouldn’t shoot them first, you’d shoot the guy that was ready. But with the Australians, the Australians always went with their rifles at the ready and even the tale guy continually turning around checking. The Yanks were totally different. I think they could have learnt a lot off us. I really do.

So the story goes is that when we left Phuoc Tuy province was pretty good, pretty secure. There were no more big battles with the VC because they realised if we go in there we ain’t going to win. But the Americans – easy. We know they’re coming. They send their message and then we just wait for them and wonder why the hell they got the crap beat out of them. Plus, drugs I think was a big thing with them. They just got

so scared and so bored or whatever it was and they decided to used drugs as the only way to see it out. Whereas we probably drank a lot of grog, they probably smoked a lot of pot.

Probably. I think so because not only were we involved there we also then got involved in Malaya and that was all jungle warfare.

So all our warfares since the First World War, except Korea which was only a short stint, all of our activity had been involved in the jungle. We found out that if you want to fight them you got to fight them on their same terms. You can’t just rush up the beach with 20 pounders and they ain’t there then. So, I think it stood us in good stead. Even though it wasn’t the guys in

New Guinea didn’t go to Vietnam but what they’d learnt and passed on through the training put everyone in good stead. We’re more aware of what’s – even though we don’t have a jungle environment we live in, we’re aware of what to do when we get there. Whereas we may find Iraq a little bit different because we’re not used to out in the open, totally vulnerable.

Yeah. It’s all hit and run stuff with the guerrillas and the same as what these guys are doing. And it’s hard to catch anyone that’s fired one shot and pissed off. He’s got one dead, “Ah we win.” and they take off. And you take half an hour to get him but you won’t get him and then you keep going again. And as soon as you can learn how to do hit and run, which is what we used to do, put little ambushes in. We’d be going along the road and nothing’s happening all day.

Let’s go and set up an ambush. Just ad hoc and you do it and all of a sudden someone comes down the road, “Ah ha, gotcha!” You’re doing the same thing to them as what they were doing to us.

Well, it is, yeah. Bit of one-up-man-ship, gotcha this time. You think that if you can get on top of them while your on top you want to stay there.

I think that’s what the Australians did in Phuoc Tuy province. We got on top. Our SAS were absolutely marvellous. They could go and see things and they’d move out and no one would even know they’d been there. Incredible. My youngest brother, Rick, was with them and he doesn’t talk very much about it but once or twice he said you could go for four or five days, not much longer,

and you’d see things and you’d report it in and that was it. Very rarely got into a fight but they could get out of one if they got into it. Because they used to do a number of hot extractions which they sort of trained for. But they were mostly recognisance. You’d never know they were there. I remember once when I was coming back from Ap Suoi Nghe one night, or one evening about five o’clock,

I used to head back into Nui Dat. It was only about a mile away, and I’d head off down the road and all of a sudden, only doing about 20 or 30 mile an hour, these three or four things would step out onto the road. I’d shit myself and I’d pull up and you’d immediately recognise who they were by the garb they had on. They were totally black and dirty filthy greens and the rest of it and unshaven. “Give us a lift, mate.”

“OK, hop on.” And on my little workshop land rover they’d sit on the back and I’d drive them back up to Nui Dat hill and drop them off and go back to work. But they’d just step out onto the road. I didn’t know they were there until they stepped out. I don’t know how long they’d been watching me.

They were. Yeah, they’d just step out. Ahh. But as soon as you saw them you recognised them as your own guys.

End of tape

I think the Americans just accepted that as part of the deal. If they – if the people got in the road they were there accidentally or they were there because they were told to be there by the other side saying, “They won’t bomb us if civilians are here.” But

I think the Americans just accepted collateral damage. When you’re dropping bombs, for example, from 32,000 feet, accurately, I don’t think so. Today you might with the guided – with these cruise missiles. But when you get eight or nine B52 bombers dropping 20-odd bombs each, there’s nothing accurate, no. And people get in the road and they get killed and that’s the

the sort of sad part about it. Same with napalm. That girl that sort of got made a bit of a publicity thing, she was running with those napalm burns, there’s two stories. There was the Americans had dropped the napalm and the Americans said, “No, it wasn’t us, it was the ARVN air force who dropped the napalm.” Who dropped the napalm? No one wants to own up to it.

So you get things like that where who’s responsible for doing these things? I think that girl – she was on TV last year or the year before, lives in Canada now – I don’t think she knows who dropped the napalm but it doesn’t really matter. It was the way it was used. If they know they are going to use napalm near buildings, there’s got to be people in those. That’s probably

a bit unfair but then they probably don’t care. They’re going to bomb Charlie and if they get in the road then they get in the road. I don’t think the Americans have much conscience about collateral damage. They say it’s just a means to an end.

Well that’s –

well, they probably had zones and anyone in that zone is Charlie. Regardless of whether they were or they weren’t, if they decided that this area was – anyone in there was Charlie, away they went. Just because there were a couple of villages of normal people living in there was – didn’t matter. The bombers just dropped the bomb on that area. I think they had no conscience, the Yanks.

They used to call them what – gooks. We never called them gooks. I think we might have called them Charlie or something like that but that was probably about it, or slant-eyes, but that’s about as far as it got. We never sort of looked at them as gooks. Never even knew what a gook was. Ah, though we knew what they said a gook was, but gooks, that’s not our language. I think they just treated all Vietnamese with contempt, particularly towards the end of the war when so many people

were being killed of their side. Yeah, just a different attitude. They’re the most powerful country in the world. Who cares. What are they going to do to us?

I think the politicians probably knew that,

but the man on the street didn’t. His job was to – we’re going to do a search and destroy and search we will and destroy we will. That’s what we have been told we got to do and when we get back to camp we’ll have some pot and forget about it. I don’t think that the diggers knew or worried or concerned about the rest of it. I think they only got concerned when they got home where no one would talk to them and treated them like crap, that they realised that

that maybe that what they were doing wasn’t the right thing. Once these protests started up and the soldiers from that era went over there, then I think they started to question what it was about. But until the protests and that started, I think everyone thought, “This is going alright. We’ll probably win here.

Just give us some more troops.” And the more that were being killed and then the My Lai massacre with William Calley, they started to say, “Hang on. What’s going on here? What happened here?” There was probably a few more things. People started to question maybe the Gulf of Tonkin incident. That wasn’t an accident at all. It was deliberate. But you can come up with so many conspiracy

theories as to what happened. Every one of them is right. But, no, I think that once the protests started back in the main countries like America and Australia then I think that was the end of the line. People started to question not only the numbers of their people being killed but the killing of other people.

I think the Australian way would be to find out exactly where this guy is, right, and then do an assault on it.

And then if that didn’t work they would call in some mortars or an artillery or something, but, I think the Americans would immediately – there’s a sniper in that building. Artillery, blow him out of there. And they would do that regardless of who was there. But if you can put in an attack like I think the Australians would, you can get a lot of the people – they know where he is, they could probably know he was on his own, or

he might have one or two with him, but the women and kids that are around they would probably try and shove them out. But by doing an assault with small arms you’ve got better control over where your bullets are flying. But the Yanks are just, “Ah, blow him out. Where’s a tank? Get him outta here. Blow him outta here.” That’s what they’d do, regardless of who was there. And then they’d probably say, “Ah, we’ve got the wrong bloody building. That’s the one over there.”

I don’t think they used to be too accurate at what they used to fire at. In fact, when you see a lot of these guerrilla-type movies – not movies, now on news items – you see like in Beirut and the rest of it – you see a guy with an AK47 [automatic rifle] get to a corner of a building and he just puts his rifle round and presses the trigger and goes like this. They don’t see what they’re firing at. What’s the point?

You probably wouldn’t ever put your head down because you know he’s not going to get anywhere near. In fact, when you look at it most of them fire high. A natural reaction to a weapon is to lift so your first bullet might go in the general direction but the rest are going to shoot pigeons. And I think the Americans that’s that sort of way, too. When you – even on these news bulletins in Iraq you see – I saw one the other day lift it up,

bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, 20 rounds, head down, change magazines, up, bang, bang, bang – what the hell was he shooting at? Where as an Australian I think would – we’ve got to find out were this guy is and we’ve got to get him out. You might have one or two people just sort of lay a bit of fuselage fire in that direction so someone can try get an idea of where he is or how you can get there, but no, totally different.

It does, particularly when you use automatic weapons. In our weapon pits in Vietnam when we’re out in the bush, you’d have a weapon pit with an M60 in it, which was your main workshop one and then around you might have an infantry one there and the rest of it a machine-gun. You never fired the machine-gun unless you had to. It was always small arms fire.

If you saw someone out in front of you, just small arms fire. It would be nice to use the M60 but you need that if the shit really hits the fan. But while there are only one or two out there, or you think there is only one or two out there, then fire a single shot at him because they’re looking for your main firepower. So. there’s main firepower here, there’s main firepower there, there’s the weak point.

Instead of, they come up, there’s no machine-gun. So the whole platoon moves in – gotcha. Hang on, that wasn’t there before. Because we didn’t fire it. And that was one thing we made sure – we only used your automatic weapons when things became something. But while you just sitting there listening, when you got permission to fire, it was only small arms fire.

Ignorant. I don’t think they were very – too intelligent. Like when we did our vehicle mechanics course, we learnt everything about a vehicle. But when they do it they are either a clutch expert, or a brake expert or a

wheel expert and that’s all they did and the same with their plant operators. Our plant operators, say, our guy with the grader, he could build a road with a grader, but not the Yanks. You either had a flat man who just laid out flat in the middle and you had a man who did the gutters and this sort of stuff. They just did one thing. We had one guy who said, “Listen, would you just run your dozer blade.” “I don’t know how to do that.” He said, “I’m just the flat man.”

And he just does the flat bit in the middle of the road because that’s all they do. I don’t know whether it’s to keep their training time down and just get this one guy to do that, but that’s all they did. And if he wasn’t doing that he wasn’t doing anything. He just sat back and waited until he had to flat grade again. And I think they were just so full of themselves, a lot of them. We are the greatest power in the world and I’m

part of that. And I’ll put my chest out and show you that I am and splash me money around that I earn. But I don’t think they are as smart as what they – this is their average GI Joe [General Issue American soldier] – compared to an Australian fellow. We got guys that aren’t as smart too but we’ve got a different attitude to the way we do things.

Well, I think they’ve got so much equipment and so number of people and if I can teach this guy to grade a flat part and get him out there on the job then that’s all he’s got to do. I can give this other guy another grader and teach him to do the side cuts.

And then another guy to do the sides of the cuttings or something like that. Yeah, they’ve got so much equipment and so many people, just teach him this bit and that’s all he does. And he sits there and waits until he’s got to do that job. Same with their mechanic. “Give us a hand with this?” “I’m a brakeman. I don’t do engines, man. I just do brakes. And I’m a damn good brake man.” “Got anyone who can help me?” “I don’t think so.”

But they were specialists. In fact, their bottom rank used to be called spec – specialist – specialist four, spec five, spec three, spec six. And it was all to do with their abilities.

Well, on a bulldo – on a grader, probably not a great deal but that’s what he did and that’s what he was trained for and

even now Australians are starting to get a bit like that. When you – at TAFE [technical and further education] courses now you can do an automatic transmission course or you can do a front end course or something like that. But with our army you learn everything. You need to know a bit about everything because you don’t know where you’re going to be when something happens. There’d be nothing worse than having a truckload of brake mechanic when your engine blows up and no one can do anything with it.

You’re going to have that. We found this specialist bit was a bit overbearing.

Yeah. The night meal used to be choppered [helicoptered] in, in hot boxes. Their ration packs – every now and then when we couldn’t get Australian ration packs when we were out in the bush we’d have to take American’s and we’d have a – our ration packs was probably about

that wide, that high and that long and that was three meals in there – one whole day. They would have at least three of them for one day. In most cases they’d have a breakfast one, a lunch one and a hot meal that come in. Our group that would go out with four or five days rations in their pack and that would have to do you for that time.

I know our infantry used to hate going out with American ration packs because there was no tea in it. There was no tea in American ration packs. Coffee, plenty of coffee but Australians when they go bush like to drink tea and they like a bit of fresh fruit if they can get it. When we were at that Xuyen Moc when the battalion come through our lines, when we got towards the end and the rest of it, and

we said, “Anything you guys want?” and they said, “You haven’t go any tea, have you? We’ve been on this American shit for days.” So we ended up – we had – we used to take – because we had vehicles you’d have your little buggery tins full of the niceties of life so you didn’t go without. You might have a little tin of tea, so here take this with you, take this with you, take this with you. And their eyes would gleam, “Oh, an orange. We’d love an orange.” You’d give them that.

But Americans had really sort of bland stuff like ham and lima beans and poached, not poached egg, scrambled eggs and something else and the little tins of fruit were a bit same as ours but all the other stuff in it was rubbish, and some smokes. They get little cup of smokes and some other stuff and a Hershey bar. Well, ours had Hershey bar, or chocolate.

But it was just different food and tasted different. And you’d have different packs, A, B, C, the same as ours but we’d expect to go out for a whole day with this one pack and they’d have three packs. There was probably more food in it but it wasn’t very nice tasting and like I said, no tea. You’ve got to have tea.

Their positions in a lot of cases, yeah.

Particularly if they were going into a big operational area like the Iron Triangle, I think they called it. They go in there and harbour up at night, “No one’s here. Bring in the tea.” Choppers would come in and they’d only be there about 10 minutes. All of a sudden the mortars would start popping in. The Yanks are having tea. We had one guy over there who was amazing. Don’t know if you heard of him or not – the Everyman? [Everyman’s Welfare Service]

He’s a bit – I think they’re Salvation Army orientated. They’re non-combatants and the old Everyman; he would turn up in place you wouldn’t believe. He’d have an urn full of cordial, an urn full of tea and packets of biscuits. I can remember when we first started Ap Suoi Nghe up, the village out there, the very first day we had this big column of

vehicles and the rest of it and we had a company of infantry and they wanted to go out and make sure the area was clear and we’d bring the bulldozers in and flatten land and engineers would start building houses and the rest of it and the choppers would come in and the rest of it. And they got out there and there’s the Everyman and his bloody land rover and his tea, coffee and bloody biscuits. “What the hell are you doing here?” “Oh, I’ve been here for half an hour waiting for you guys.” They said, “This is a hot area.”

“No one told me.” But he would, he’d turn up at the most unusual places. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you get here?” “Just drove up here.”

Yeah. He’d have his jungle green trousers on but with the Salvation Army little red stripes on there and little sign on the side of his thing saying that he was the Everyman. But he’d turn up anywhere with a little snack and particularly if he went into an

infantry area, oh, he was most appreciated. All of a sudden this guy would turn up and there would be proper biscuits, tin biscuits from Australia but proper biscuits, and tea and cordial and if anyone had any money on him, they used to give him the, like some MPC, the script that we used to pay and he’d take that back, that money, because he had a little drop-in centre that he had near the post

office. So if you ever wanted to go up and read a book or pour your heart out to someone, you could go up there and he’d have a nice comfortable chair and some books to read and a bit of a chat. He was a – I never knew any of their names but they were the most well respected people. But they used to turn up at the most unexpected spots.

You’d be more shocked than anything else. “What the hell are you doing

here?” “Been here for half an hour.” “It’s a hot area.” ”Really?” They were well liked. But the main food back in the camps was never very nice. You may have heard about ether eggs and the eggs when you ate them, say they fried them, they’d crack them – they all came from America – don’t know how old they

were, but they’d crack them open but they’d stink of ether and even when you ate them they smelt of ether. I don’t know whether they coated the eggs in some form of ether type thing to preserve them or to stop them aging or something, but ahhhhhh – and their powdered potato and powdered eggs. Everything was sort of water reconstituted-type food. And sometimes we’d get fresh vegetables, ahh, used to be wrapped in that.

Everyone would go and have a meal if they found out fresh veggies were on. Sometimes guys – “Ah, I’m not going over for that.” And they’d find some old tins from their ration pack and wouldn’t go to tea but, “There’s fresh veggies on.” And everyone would go to tea because it was good. But most of the American type meals were bland, and you don’t know how old it was. The eggs would have been months old and all of the meat that come up had been

frozen and dumped off at the docks and brought up. They had an ice-cream ship down at Vung Tau. We used to get ice cream every now and then. It was shipped up. Because they had an ice-cream ship. They did. It’s true.

Well, when I read the – watched a movie on the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which was done by the French when they went into

Dien Bien Phu they even took their mobile brothels with them. They thought we’re going to be there for a month of two so they took their mobile brothels. They were well equipped. They took hospitals and barbers. In fact, the commentator when he did this particular thing he said it really looked more like a scout jamboree than a battle that’s going to happen here.

Oh, they just think, “That’s typical.” We’ll eat it. You didn’t very often get ice-cream. It was a rarity probably once a month you might get it. Otherwise it was either tinned peaches, or pears or rice puddings and things like that. And bread, fresh bread. They had the bakers baking ship and all that sort of stuff. They had bakers’ ovens.

I don’t know. These days it would probably be McDonalds [fast-food restaurant chain]. But in those days I think it was ice-cream because it was

a luxury. “Ah, ice-cream. I’m at home. Put it on me rice pudding,” or something. Ice-cream. I think mainly it was a luxury and you didn’t get it that often so when you got it, it was – it’d try to make you forget of home or something. Don’t know if it was full of bromide or not, but it would be nice to get some ice-cream

and whether it tasted nice – most of it was always vanilla. I don’t remember getting chocolate ice-cream or anything. I think it was just a luxury. As I said now you’d probably get a McDonald’s instead of an ice-cream. We always had chocolate, always – Hershey bars. They used to come in supplementary packs in fact. Besides having one in your ration pack, American one, we used to get boxes of them. Sometimes someone would say, “Are you guys going

out yet. Right, here’s a box of Hershey bars and here’s a box of smokes.” The smokes were normally half a dozen in a little pack. “Here are the smokers – you have all these and we’ll have the Hershey bars.” But I think that’s probably what it was. And bread, always got bread.

I don’t think so. I think most of the people that were part of our training regime would have been Borneo, Malaya and right up through there, Indonesia, during the Communist insurgence in the ‘60s – ‘60s? No ‘50s, late ‘50s. And I think that’s where all of our instructors come from, the ex-sergeants and the

warrant officers from those battalions that went over because they’d experienced it and knew what to do and it wasn’t much different, just our webbing and weapons had changed but the tactics remained very similar. But I don’t think the World War II guys would have been around doing the instructing. I can’t recall any. Even the senior instructors we had at the apprentices’ school when I joined up

were all sort of ex-Korea people. So, most of them were from there.

Yes, well, we’ve done our bit. Maybe they would have gone to Korea and then got out and too old to do anything else and the younger Korea veterans soldiered on. I know one or two of them ended up in Vietnam. Sergeant Jones, he was in instructor down there and he ended up being a company sar [sergeant] major with 2 Battalion over there.

So he went there and he’d have to be in his eighties now. He seemed to be an old man to me when I was at the apprentices’ school.

SAS were the reconnaissance but there were intelligence offices on the staff of task forces headquarters. So the –

all the intel [intelligence] would go into task force headquarters and then they would deal with it there. I don’t know whether they had the same problems there as what they are having at the moment but they were in the task force headquarters. There probably would have been an intelligence guy with the SAS who would first get the information from the SAS guy and he would disseminate and send it to task force. But one would hope that not too many fibs come down to the

people in the field. Sometimes you’d hear something a little bit, “Oh, that doesn’t sound right, but must be.”

I think – well the – well, firstly from the SAS guys. They would go out and do reconnaissance and then report in the area they had to do, what they saw, what they found was happening. Then that would go to headquarters

and from there to task force. And they get an idea of an over all picture. But when the infantry went out in their battalions and the rest of it, they’d all be doing intel the whole time. Every time they had a body count they’d search the bodies and pull out all the documents they could or anything and they’d go through all of those and find out where they’re from, what unit they were in if they could from what they carried. Where they came from. What weapons they had.

What clothes they were wearing. That could have a baring on where they may have come from and all that and they’d check all that out. And then observation from aeroplanes from the recce [reconnaissance] flights. Every day there was the – either the bird dogs or the Cessnas were up doing, searching areas

and if there was an ambush they’d go there immediately after the ambush and circle to find out how many people they thought were there. Sometimes with ambushes you do the ambush and bolt. Otherwise you do the ambush and go and search them. If it was an ambush and disappear then a plane would come over the top, take photos, see if anyone had come in and taken the bodies, where the drag marks were going and that sort of stuff and it all added up into a picture which they

disseminated at task force headquarters and worked out what they wanted to do from there. But when it come to organising the big operations I don’t really know. I think really the task force people worked out what they wanted to do, what they thought was going to happen, but I think the final approval would have come out of Saigon, where the main guy was sort of hold up.

Probably not very often, I wouldn’t think so. Probably if we were going out on a combined exercise they would. But we were only responsible for Phuoc Tuy problems. Anything else that was happening around Phuoc Tuy wasn’t really our responsibility so I guess they wouldn’t have told us too much. When the 68’ Tet came

everyone was rumouring it. It was going to come from everywhere, so it was just a matter of, “Oh well, if they’re going to hit Saigon they’ll hit here. Baria was a provincial capital; Australians are in charge of that, let’s give them a nudge.” And everywhere else was the same, so that was an expected thing. But that was probably from information. They probably noticed – our intelligence gathers noted a build up of people in certain areas. I remembered

reading the Battle of Long Tan because that occurred before I got there. The intelligence people for weeks had been following radios, radio transmissions. They were intel guys and what they were doing is they learnt a particular person and a particular – and they could monitor him where he was radioing from and then they worked out somehow what position he had in a

company and that he was in a headquarter part. So then the worked out that maybe the headquarters of D445 were moving. And which way are they moving. They are moving towards here. And then 274 regiment they found out was moving from somewhere else, so they noted there was movement. There’s a big – that’s when they sent D Company out to see if they could find out what was going on. And D Company just happened to bump the whole bloody lot in one

hit. And that’s why they had that fire-fight. But they had means of being able to listen to radio transmissions and see he’s radioing from here today. Oh, tomorrow he’s there. So he’s moving which means the headquarters are moving. Why would the headquarters be moving? And they could do those sort of things and check it out.

I think they were co-ordinated pretty well,

particularly between air strikes, like wanting air strikes, wanting artillery strikes and medivac [medical evacuations] and things like that. It was – if you wanted an air strike all of a sudden it was there. Within minutes someone would be there with an air strike. Where they came from, God only knows. Whether it was out of Vung Tau or out of Saigon or Bien Hoa or any other spot, all of a sudden bloody Phantoms would be roaring over

head dropping bombs and God knows what else and they’re gone. Don’t know which way they came, don’t know which way – every now and then they’d fly over Nui Dat, bloody Americans, with the Phantoms and they’d get right in the middle of Nui Dat, point them up and hit the after burner. And they’d go – you’d just hear this big booom as they went, but you’d never hear them coming but you’d hear them going. I think the task force were always sending messages to the Americans in

Vung Tau to get that arsehole out of here. Stop doing this. But when it came to co-ordination between medivac and chopper use, I remember when one of the battalions went out there was a hundred choppers. We had a big chopper pad called kangaroo pad and it was like a big paddock and was right in the middle of Nui Dat and it was all graded and the rest of it, with little

Xs on it and the outfit’d come down and a section would stand there and they’d – and all of a sudden a hundred choppers would come in, hit the deck and 10 seconds later, all off in formation again. So those sort of things have to be pretty well coordinated.

Dar-da-da-dar-da, Dar-da-da-dar-da. No done of that. No, they just come in. Their helicopter lift capacity

was good. You ever see the sky cranes and – you know the two aeroplanes they use for fire-fighting now? You know, that’s 1962 technology and everyone says they’re new – they’re 1962 because the Americans had them in Vietnam. They were first used as – you know the particular funny shape that they’ve got, well, that space, the empty space underneath the what’s-a-name, fits a conix

and a conix has a hospital in it. And what they were first used for were to deliver surgical hospitals into the field. If there was a big battle and they had a safe area they could shift a hospital up into the field with a helicopter, drop it on the ground, and then bring in the surgeons and everything and they’d have a hospital there. When they’d finished, pick it up and take it away. That was their original concept was to put a hospital on the ground but we use it over – I never ever saw a hospital

moved; saw a lot of conixes being moved. We used to used them for the engineers. They could pick a bulldozer up, head off and take it to wherever you going to take it, if there was no transport available. They were for always delivering – them and Chinooks, the big Chinooks – delivering artillery pieces. You’d see them flying – they’d have the gun underneath and then underneath that would be strung a pallet with all of the ammo and that on it and behind that would follow a normal Huey with the crew, bulldozers,

engines, other helicopters dangling underneath. They’d go and pick one out of the bush and go and hook it on and fly off with it. They were fantastic. The helicopter was really good. The Vietnam veteran, his most favourite helicopter is the Huey, the transport helicopter and then maybe the Chinook and then followed the Cobra gunship. They were only new in

about ‘67, the Cobra gunships. They were excellent to watch – massive firepower, but the problem was they were too fast. We were talking to some pilots one day and they said that the Huey gunships, which are little Hueys with rocket pods and everything, were good because they could come in slow and get a decent aim. But the Huey Cobra, narrow thing, sports model, flew too fast and they couldn’t get a –

you know, they were going too fast and they couldn’t slow down to get a decent bee but geez they were devastating. It was just like a mobile – a flying tank. Rocket pods, automatic grenade launchers off the front nose, 20 millimetre canons – lovely. And then maybe the big – what did they call them?

my mind’s gone all blank – the big choppers with the six bladders, looked like a praying mantis. They were very good to watch and to see them in action working and what have you was very awe inspiring. They had the equipment, the Yanks, there is no doubt about that.

Yeah,

most of the time. I did hear of one time where they dropped short and put them near our people. I don’t know whether any of them got hurt or not but most of the time the observer who was calling them in would tell them exactly where he wanted them and the rest of it. So they were pretty good.

A bit six of one and half a dozen of another.

When we saw them out in the open they would be up high, and then come down, and then drop it, and then peel off. But when they were operating around the mountains and that, they used to be fairly low because I think they come in and then they’d lift and when they lifted they’d then drop the bomb and the bomb would sort of project in. They were very inspiring to watch. They were just – the Phantoms, to me, were just

brute force – a lot of noise.

Well, yeah. To see the force of firepower was incredible. You’d sit back and, “Oh my God, look at that.” Boom. The ground would vibrate and you’re sort of sitting back watching this movie happening in front of you, but you’re part of it.

You’ve got a front row seat and it becomes awe inspiring because it’s – things are just so big and so massive. And you say, “Australia doesn’t have – we don’t have these – Puff the Magic Dragon.” We don’t have – we had Canberra bombers over there. I helped destroy them at Woomera when we were doing cluster bomb trials in 1983, just to get rid of the damn things. But the Canberra bomber, they were just so slow.

Nothing – they were probably a nice aircraft but there was nothing dynamic like a Phantom, anything like that. But our Caribous and our Hercules – excellent, got a lot of time for them. The Hercules air transport and the Caribous, excellent, really, really good for –

Yeah, I went down into one tunnel with a guy by the name of Brett Nolan and he was the senior engineer. He used to do a lot of the teaching of the engineers and infantry when they first went over there. He had a little bit of a classroom with some rather

grizzly bits in it which he used to show the guy to say so, “If you stuff up or do something wrong, this is what your foot will look like.” He had a boot there all smashed to pieces and cut to ribbons and other stuff so when we were up at Za Bang, we’d been there about a day and a half and he come into the workshops, our little workshop we had set up there, and he

said to me, “You ever been down a tunnel?” I said, “Nup.” He said, “You want a have a look down one?” “Alright.” So we headed off and we went into the village near where the dozers were operating and he said, “Come with me.” So we went into this house. It was probably about 30 metres from the roadway and he lifted up a floor panel and he said, “Just jump down there.” “You got a torch.” “Yeah,” he said, “You’ll be

right.” So I jumped down and then he jumped down and then he got a small tin with a bit of hexamine in it, which just one of those heating cubes and he lit that and said, “Right, follow me.” And I said, “You gotta be joking. Where’s the torch?” He said, “No, this is all I’ve got.” So we headed off and it was fairly well a straight line, but you had to be – it was fairly narrow and you had to stoop over to go down it and it turns up – ends up underneath the roadway. And in there, there were two little seats

and a table and it was a listening post. And they could tell – in fact you could hear vehicles travelling up and down the road and anyone who was experienced could tell what sort of vehicles were coming down and what have you without necessarily going out to do it. So they could sit there and act – and there was another one very similar in the house next door but

it didn’t seem to go anywhere. He said it came out – I couldn’t tell where it came – were it ended up but it was near the road, but it wasn’t under the road, and it was just a tunnel with a dead-end in it. So, that was quite a thrill, in a way, to go down these tunnels and you look back and it was really damp and dark and just going in there with this lighted piece of hexamine was a fairly scary thing for me that,

to go down originally. I was glad when I got out of there. Yeah, that was good and then a quick look down the other one. But it was very, very similar. But my wife’s been down the Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam. She went over a couple of years ago. They’ve got a part of it now where they can take foreigners down but they’ve had to make them enlarged to allow the big fat American and foreign tourist to get down them.

But at the end of it they’ve got it how it naturally is and she said, “How they ever fitted in some of these is incredible.” Well, even that one we went in was fairly small. It was narrow.

Probably only about that wide and to duck down, about a metre high. You really had to, oh, for us you really had to duck down because the Vietnamese were generally a lot shorter than us. Yeah, it was quite interesting.

The room was really only a square, probably about a meter and a half by a metre and a half. And in there, like I said, there was a little wooden stool, two little wooden stools and a table. So obviously two people used to go down there and do their listening duties and probably eat and drink down there and have a little candle or something to be able to see by. But there was nothing else in it other than that. If they’d had any documents they’d all

gone and in the end they ended up blowing them up. They put it down the tunnel where the house was and blew it from there. They couldn’t put it under the road otherwise the road would collapse. It appeared to be about six foot under the road itself.

No, no. Just dirt, dug up, just dirt dug away

from the – out of the hole, just chipped away and stuff. The earth over there is pretty soft. When they say kilometres and kilometres of tunnel, there wouldn’t be any problem digging it because the earth is pretty soft. At least up near Nui Dat it was mostly red dirt, red clay, so it would be easy to dig. No, but just a tunnel. The entrance was well concealed.

Oh, Brett had already been in there before and he knew it was an empty thing. When he come up and said, “Do you want to come and see that tunnel?” He’d already been down. In fact, he’d found about three others and he’d already been down them and had a look. But he used to go down on his own – bloody mad. Another guy I know from down the club, Kev, he was a tunnel rat. He had a lot more stories. He used to

tell us about some of the things he used to find down there or didn’t find down there. But when you see him now you think, “God, he’d never fit in a tunnel.”

Oh, just like when you were going in you’d have to be very careful. He said most of them stank to high heaven from living in them. He said they were really putrid smelling. You only ever went in with a pistol because there was no room to carry a rifle or anything like that. And a torch.

And you just moved inch by inch as you went down because you never knew what you were going to run into. He said one of the favourite things was snakes in the tunnels, apparently, they used to have a little hole dug in the wall with a bit of mesh. Snakes were kept in there and when they went through they just pulled off the cover and let the snakes come out. And most of the snakes there were either cobras or banded crates. Banded crates were pretty poisonous.

Any form of trap or trip wires, whatever, trying to get people and then every now and then the engineers used to gas them and put gas in them and then you would find out where the entrances and the rest of it were. And sometimes they would gas over there about two or three hundred yards away and there would be someone in a tunnel over here. One or twice they were gassing their own guys. It was only tear gas to try and drive them out.

But if you’ve ever been tear gassed it’s not a – it’s not a – pleasant – we did that at training. We had to go through a tear gas thing with no masks. You cough and cry and cry and cough and sneeze and your nose just runs and you can’t breathe. Once you get into the fresh air it’s alright but if you’re trapped in a tunnel and there aren’t no fresh air, there’s a good chance of suffocating.

People used to debate whether there was tunnels under Nui Dat because for the 10 years we were there they could have dug from Hoa Long under Nui Dat and we would never of known. I don’t think we put out senses to find out what they were doing. Maybe they did come up at night and walk around and knock our stuff off. I don’t know. It would have been possible.

Most villages had tunnel systems, not only for security for their own safety but also for storage of weapons and all this sort of stuff. Lots of weapon and food caches were found in tunnel systems, particularly rice, rice and weapons.

Well, they’d just cover – like in a house, it would just be part of a floor. They’d make up a –

most of their floors were earthen floors so they’d have carpets or bamboo rugs or something on the floor and they’d have them set up under that or under a table or under a sideboard and they’d just pull them out, jump down and put the sideboard back on. Up in the – outside most of it was just natural growth. They’d end up making a hole and then natural growth would just cover

it. You’d walk past it and not see it. We’ve got a lot of similar mine shafts out at Yackandandah. And a lot of those, unless you know where they are, you can walk past them and the natural growth of raspberry – blackberry bush and the rest of it, just covers it. So just natural growth and one thing and another or if it was near a path it would be covered with dead leaves. So everything was made to look as if it was just normal and you wouldn’t know it was there.

Yeah, they come out the side of riverbanks, as long as they didn’t flood. But, yeah, the ones – they had some north of our – up towards Hue somewhere, where they came out on the beach. You could be on the beach and next minute all the people are gone

and they’ve gone into the sand dunes and disappeared through the tunnel system there. Apparently, some of the tunnel systems are kilometres and kilometres and kilometres, long but they’ve been doing it for – digging tunnels what, 20, 30, forty years. So they could have had labyrinth – or some of the places, I never went into them, but some of the places had hospitals in them and kitchens, training rooms and everything.

They don’t take – you don’t dig them in a day. They’ve been there for a damn long time. And most of them are fairly deep so they’re not going to collapse from bombing on top. Though I don’t think I’d like to be down one when they started to bomb on top – I’d be packing it. Well, they probably were, too, but me more so.

I think that in the north that Ho Chi Minh and Giap had really instilled into the people that we’ve got to get rid of this Western influence of life because Ho Chi Minh had done

his courses and that in China and also in Moscow and he was a fairly keen sort of a Communist and this way of life was ideal. Albeit he helped the Poms against the Japanese in the Second World War but as soon as that finished things changed and I think he just wanted to drive the foreigners out of Vietnam so Vietnam could become

just a Vietnam with Vietnamese people and that and, whereas the people in the south who were living a democratic way of life, I think were pretty corrupt. I think a lot of countries where there is democracy there is corruption so bad but now there is so much corruption in Vietnam, too, now that they are becoming affluent.

And once they start becoming corrupt other people think they are missing out so they have a coup and get rid of him and I’ll take over and then he becomes rich and whatever and gets his money sunk away and some other general thinks, “Hang on, I’m missing out here. I think maybe I should be in charge.” Because they seem to have a coup every year. I think there were two coups in the year I was there.

And it gets rid of one general and puts another one in charge. It’s – when you’re working for a crowd like that, military wise, you think, “What the hell am I missing out on? How come they’re so affluent ad being treated like a bloody pig?” So I think the military of the south were more disgruntled about their leaders and really didn’t want to get into any of the fighting. I think most of them were conscripted.

I don’t think there were too many regular soldiers among the South Vietnamese Army. So it was either kill or we’ll do it for you. So I think really they had no reason in the south, the ARVN, to fight, but they were made to. They didn’t want to. But the north they had a reason. They wanted to get rid of the democratic south and turn the country into Communism and they had

this fervour to want to do that and I think they believed in Ho Chi Minh, that he was doing the right thing. There was probably a lot of them didn’t want to fight. I remember at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, there were thousands and thousands of North Vietnamese, or Viet Minhs they were called, I think, that were killed. It was just wave after wave were just cut down so I’d say that most of them didn’t want to die at the time, but I think they were all

conscripted into it. And even when they built the Ho Chi Minh trail – it wasn’t for the love of labour doing that. Most of them were conscripted people and probably most of them died doing it. But the hierarchy convinced the people that this was for the good and went at it. I think they had more reason to do it than the south did.

I think they did but they were forced into it. They wanted to – they wanted to be free but unfortunately they had to fight for it and I don’t think anyone really sort of wanted to fight for it but it was the only way because in the south the South Vietnamese were bringing the Americans into help them and the sooner they could stop that the better.

But unfortunately it dragged on because the Americans just brought the numbers in. Tried to obliterate them but that didn’t work, mainly because I think they went underground every time there was a bombing raid. You go underground and when it’s all over you come back out again.

I think – with the Americans, I think it was just the way that they approached

the way they did things. They just let themselves get ambushed that many times and just got caught out. I think most of them – maybe a few of them tried to be a bit gung-ho and paid the price. But I think that they – once they got hit there was just bloody – let’s get outta here and bring in the artillery. They didn’t particularly want to

fight them. And they reckon that Hamburger Hill movie was based on truth. Well, when you look at it, who the hell fights up a hill and it poured with rain while they were doing it on one day so you take two steps up and 10 back. Just general fighting, whether it’s guerrilla war or any war, once you got the high ground you hold the position and if people have got to fight uphill to get at you they’re at the disadvantage.

So, why did the Americans do that? Was it gung-ho and glory and was the general about to get another pip or medal or something. I don’t know. I think they just had the wrong attitude. They lost – it was either 150 – was it 150 they lost?

But that 60,000 killed didn’t include those who died out of country. The 150, or

the names that are on that wall, I’ve been told, that they are only the names of those killed in Vietnam. There are a lot that came back and died of wounds and they are not included on that wall. So, they lost a lot more dead. But I think it’s just their attitude to the warfare. I think all their tactics were wrong. Like, if we had an ambush, we’d turn into the ambush. They’d back off. And while they’re backing off they’re getting peppered and running into booby

traps and one thing and another. Whereas a lot of our guys were killed with booby traps and some by our artillery. The Battle of Long Tan was a – well it was just overwhelming odds. We lost 18 there. You’re probably looking at 2,000 against 39 and – or 40 or 50 people. And to come out with

18 dead and a few wounded, that were pretty fortunate. But the thing that saved them, I think, was the artillery. They kept pumping in round after round, after round and you can only stay there for so long when that’s happening. Most of the Vietnamese would have been killed from the artillery. Yeah, but most of, I think, our people – there were accidents, when they were particularly

dealing with mines and booby traps people got killed. Snipers got quite a number of them, I think. Being the front-end guy was always the worst job.

Yeah, well you’re the first one to see him and if you don’t see him then he sees you first. But the – and a few ambushes. But again the ambush, the well-set ambush is designed to

get up. But I think the 500-odd that we lost over the period of time, we lost more to battle casualties than we did to probably what the Americans lost theirs. But the way that they lost theirs was just their style of fighting. Get up and run – crap, you stay down, inch your way forward. I just think they

do things wrong.

Australian nashos [national servicemen]? Of all the national servicemen that called up in Australia, only 20 percent went to Vietnam, the rest didn’t go. There were a few that went who didn’t particularly want to be there. If my recollection serves me right and

in fact that’s right, Dick Gill, who was a fitter and turner, he didn’t want to be there. But he ended up doing his job and he didn’t carry a weapon while he was there. Unless he went to Vung Tau and he had to carry one there.

Well, that was driving from Nui Dat to Vung Tau in a convoy you had to be – you always – if you were in the back of a truck you had to stand up with you weapon out, just protection for yourself. But around

camp, I think he only went out in the scrub twice, and he made it quite clear that he didn’t want to be there but he did his job as a fitter and turner and everyone seemed to be happy with that.

No he was a RAEME guy – Royal Australian Electrical Mechanical Engineers. But he was a nasho and he did his job. But there are a lot of stories that Donny Sutherland,

the guy out of – he wasn’t liked very much. He was the TV star. You know, he used to have that big dog with the floppy ears.

Don Sutherland? I don’t know. Anyway, he wasn’t very popular because he didn’t – he ended up being thrown in gaol. And word got around about him and he was unpopular amongst other national servicemen.

People – some people were a little bit thoughtful about why Dougie Walters didn’t go overseas. Dougie Walters, the cricketer, was a nasho. Whereas Normie Rowe ended up going over as a carrier driver, APC [armoured personnel carrier] driver. But most – those that went, I don’t think there was too much of a worry really.

There was one guy, I’m not sure he was a natio, the one that they chained up, they had some problems with. The only way they could sort of, handle they had to chain him into a weapon pit with a star picket. I think he was a national serviceman. He didn’t want to be there.

No, that’s why there was a big hullabaloo about this national service – I think he was a nasho. They soon brought him back to Australia and put him in gaol back here. I don’t know what he did but

to keep him there, they chained him to a star picket in a weapon pit.

No, not necessarily, no. When they put them in with a battalion they went with the battalion. That was part of the deal. I don’t think there was anything to do with choice. I think the government probably

had a policy about the numbers of national servicemen that would be in the battalions that would go overseas. That’s why maybe only 20 percent went because that’s the number. So, no, I think most of the guys that went there volunteered. There would have been a few that went there that didn’t particularly want to go. I’m sure there were. But of all the people I knew as national servicemen, they didn’t have a problem. My next door

neighbour in the town that I come from in Pingelly, Geoffrey Box, he was a farmer and he got called up and he went to engineers as a plant operator, did his 12 months and came back. Haven’t seen him since but he was a national serviceman. I remember him saying that he didn’t particularly want to go but if you’re going, you got to go. I think the general consensus was for nashos if they had to go, they would go.

Yeah, that’s where the numbers are that’s where you’re going to get most attention. Like, a protest in Dubbo probably wouldn’t go down very well, but that’s where the numbers were and that’s where the politicians are and that’s where they had the protest. We felt it a little bit when we were there because there was – well, it wasn’t the protests in the street at

that stage, but the posties went on strike and refused to deliver mail marked ‘Free Post’ because we never used to pay for – we just write ‘Free Post’ on it and it would be delivered, and apparently they refused to post, or deliver any Vietnam letters and parcels and things in Australia. So there was a thing going round about ‘Punch a Postie’ and you used to write it on the back of your letter, “Dear Mum, Punch a postie,” because they were

doing this. That upset a lot of people because the only – you couldn’t ring up on a phone, there were no mobiles and there was no phones, yellow phones, so you couldn’t speak to your family back home. All you could do was write letters. That was the only way to communicate. But a lot of people did send tapes, but still that’s a letter, just in tape form. So when you – you wanted your mail delivered and you wanted answers back because you could communicate with your

family. That was the only way to do it.

I used to write once a week home. Nothing much in it but I used to write a letter once a week and if ever you forgot you’d find a letter coming through weeks later, “Haven’t heard from you.” I’d say, “I’ve been out in the bush.”

Not necessarily combat stress but I have been

diagnosed with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] and most of that was bought about by this incident with Donny Ryde when he was killed, that I have either never forgiven myself or find myself guilt of not thinking of a faster way to stop what was happening and that’s sort of gone with me all the time. Plus the pressures. A lot of people think – it’s not

only combat, it’s living there, living in a tent for 12 months, not knowing that tomorrow you could be mortared. Even walking from point A to point B you have that caution that you’re putting your life on the line here. Living under that pressure and tension, though it’s not visible at the time, but it’s when you come back and geez, I was highly strung about this

or strung about that. Only getting a hot wash every couple of days or a hot shower every couple of days, mainly because someone screwed up that they didn’t fill up the boilers and that sort of stuff to make the hot water and it’s these sort of things that thing and sometimes you get short with people because something’s not going right and it’s all those pressures that build up. You’re away for say 10 or 12 months and it does have an effect on you.

Not necessarily being pounded with mortars every night and rockets going over head, that’s probably a different sort of stress but the thing that got me was this incident with Donny Ryde, which I’ve spoken about before. And it still makes me angry. I take pills now. One of the

things, and I don’t know, it might have been a throwback to my father because my father was a very hard task master and when my kids were growing up I think I was a bit too hard. Used to give them a wack and the strap and one thing and another and all of a sudden one day I stopped, 18 years ago I just stopped. I said, “Hang on, this is not right.” My wife had been telling me for

years but, you know, sometimes it just gets to you and then maybe you look back and say is it because I’m chemically unbalanced now because of Agent Orange. The chemicals that have gone inside have gone to my brain and I’ve now got a chemical imbalance that causes depression and get you angry and what have you. It’s that sort of combat stress not necessarily being bombarded

day after day after day.

Didn’t know about it until we got back. The way I see it is that when they started the defoliation program, which was fairly early, and the idea was to – because they were in the jungle and you couldn’t see them but if you too out the tree tops, the leaves, you could see them. So we’ll defoliate the place, so the planes would fly over these massive areas with

defoliant and spray it and then the trees would lose all their leave and drop dead and then the planes would go back to wherever they came from and get a mission to go and spray anti-malarial spray over army camps or military bases, so they’d fill up with that. But what they weren’t doing was cleaning the cocktail that was already in there out. There might be only a cup full but it’s enough.

So they’d come home fly – and I’ve got some photos of planes flying over Nui Dat, C123s, spraying this insecticide. All well and good and you sit there, watch them flying over and you take a photo and what have you but you’re ingesting these chemicals into you and then when you go out in the bush and you go through an area that is defoliated there is still residue that you’re picking up. This residue gets in through you skin

and leaching in through your body, gets into your system, gets into your blood and you can’t tell me it’s not doing something wrong.

I think they knew the dangers of these insecticides. Well one of them was DDT [insecticide, dichlarodiphenyl trichloroethane] and everyone knew about DDT. When they first started using DDT in the 50s, oh, it was excellent on the farms. Crops were being produced. They were

killing all the bugs. This is great. Then all of a sudden the farmers were doing stupid things and birds eggs – the shells were getting thinner and now they’ve even seen the products of DDT in the Antarctic where the animals down there have got traces of DDT in them and it’s killing them. So if just plain DDT can do that itself, once you mix it with other brands, it’s like mixing sodium nitrate

and bloody diesel. When it goes bang it knocks them around. I’m an avid believer that this Agent Orange and the chemicals and the rest of it have had some degree of effect on everyone that was in Vietnam. I really do. That’s why I even think it may happen to the guys in Iraq because there seems to be enough

proof that Saddam Hussein used chemicals there. Now, if these residues of chemicals are lying around in the soil and whatever and the people are walking through there and the dust, you telling me it’s not getting into them? It may not show up today or tomorrow or the next day but it may show up in 10 or 15 years. Apparently the mortality rate studies that are done on Vietnam vets and their kids, they say it’s higher than

any other pro rata in the civilian set up. Why? Agent Orange. No we don’t believe in it. The Americans are paying out on Agent Orange but the Australian Government won’t. So, yeah, I think there is something in it.

No. I was pretty happy to be coming home.

In fact, probably about the last four weeks that you are there you are getting all keen and eager to get out of the place, which is fair enough, you’re going home and the rest of it. You start having a few different pills put into you to start cleaning you out and one thing and another and as time gets closer you get more and more eager. I don’t know about being disillusioned. I just thought, “Oh well, I’ve done my time. I’ll go back to Australia

and put in to come back again.” I didn’t have any qualms about going back a second time if I was part of that. But no, I had no disillusions about the place. I was happy to be going home. I didn’t know what I was going home to but I was happy to be going back to Australia.

Well, actually when everyone comes home they said they had the war won till come home

now as soon as I come home it’s gone down hill. Well, in 1968 we had only been there four years and we still had another four years to go and if it was winnable it was going to take a lot of work. But the way they would say that the body counts were mounting when we used to have these things and they’d say, “Oh, body count for I Corps was 6,000 this week,” and you’d add them up and

multiply them by 365 days, geez there can’t be too many of these buggers left. But, no.

Americans were known to exaggerate. I doubt if – maybe the digger at the workface would claim that he killed more than they did, because maybe he had a thing going in their company about how many kills they got or something. When it came to official body

counts I think that the Australians were pretty close to what they said. If they said they got 15 then I would say they got pretty close to 15. It’s a bit like playing cowboys and indians, and you go out and you shoot all the indians. I got four. I got six. No you didn’t, you only got three. There is probably a bit of one-up-man-ship going on there but I think the Americans – they just seem to –

body count seemed to be important to them. The more they get, the more value for the dollar they were getting. I think they looked more at the dollar value than anything else. The Australians just went out, did the job, if they got 10, they said they got 10, that was it. We never used to get hundreds of them, not like the Yanks used to do but when you lay down carpet bombs and artillery and everything, you’re bound to pick up a few. So I think they could

afford to say they got 200 when they may have only killed 100. But it seemed to be body count stuff.

No, no. We were never told of anyone – when we had our parades in the morning, we used to get a bit of an int [intelligence] report and he would come up and the boss would say that operations yesterday and he’d say the unit and the rest of it, one Australian was wounded or one Australian was killed and four VC were found and what have you.

We were never ever sort of told that 750. God, if someone said that, God, that’s more than half the people we’ve got here. No, I don’t think we were ever told that huge quantities of Americans were killed. We used to hear some body counts of the Vietnamese were always fairly substantial but never the American troops at

all.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The way they were doing things, it seemed obvious to us that their casualties would be high because some places they’d go in they’d go in without intelligence and someone would say, “Oh shit.” And that would be the end of them, and they’d drag them out. Like, that movie with Mel Gibson we were talking about before based on –

based on truth. Now, if the truth is with the numbers game, when you look at the VC that were coming up this hill they were keeling over like they were going out of fashion. And the same with the Americans – according to them they lost half a battalion on that six days on the hill. Well, that would be – half a battalion, that would be 300-odd people, and that’s a lot of people to lose. And to

think that they would allow that to go on. I don’t think the Australians would do that. They’d just get straight in there and get them out. Wouldn’t hang back and say, “Oh well, we lost a battalion, God damn.” We’ll try and make sure he gets a medal or something. They just seem lackadaisical about numbers.

Different style of warfare

that – now when you see the movies of the North African campaigns going through the desert. They used to line up right across the plains with their tanks, but that style of warfare has been going on for years and unfortunately the Americans still use it. This thing about, “Just let’s form a line and charge.” They seem to think, “Oh

well, we’ll do this operation, 15 percent casualties, not a bad problem, we’ll probably get – they expect – 15 percent of 1,000 is 150 people. Australia wouldn’t stand that sort of mortality rate. It would be too overbearing for us. Though during the Second World War when the Melbourne went – was it the Melbourne? – went down with 365 on board

that would have been a hell of a shock. I think Australia was shocked when the 18 were killed at Long Tan. Oh, hells bells, 18 in one hit. That’s a lot of people. I hope this is not going to continue.

Not for R & R for Australians, R & C [rest in country]. There’s a rest and recuperation or rest and convalescence. If ever you got a light wound or something or needed a few days off you would probably go to Vung Tau and you would stay at the army accommodation they had down there. There

seemed to be plenty of it. The army started a beach club there. They had a swimming pool. I think it was The Badcoe – the Badcoe Bar, or the Badcoe something or other after Peter Badcoe, a VC [Victoria Cross] winner. So they had that there so you could go and buy a hamburger. Go swim or go swim in the ocean among all the sea snakes. And it was barbed-wired off at either end so it was part of the Australian

area. But I never got – I went down once for – we had our corp – the RAEME birthday – even those things go to war. So it was a Sunday and it was a day off so they decided we’d take the whole workshop to Vung Tau and leave back a small ordinance people who weren’t RAEME and we picked up the kids and the nuns from the orphanage and we went down.

We had boiled crabs and the rest of it, which we bought. Bought them raw and the nuns and that cooked them. Played with the kids, softball and whatever you wanted to play. Then a truck took them back to the orphanage at Baria later in the afternoon and then we got down to some serious drinking and then on the way back we sort of got ourselves into trouble a bit.

There was a vehicle travelling behind us. It was a army jeep with three army, or three civilians in it but American. They were getting a bit close to the vehicle and of course when we finished our cans of beer we would just throw them at this bloody vehicle because it was full of state schools and they followed us all the way back and when we got back there they wanted to throw us in gaol. Turns out they were American SIB [Special Investigations Bureau].

Special Investigations Bureau.

We didn’t know that. But our boss, Lenny Masters – he was a nice guy – had talked them out of it. I’ll punish these guy tomorrow, and the rest of it, and all get to bed. So that was the end of that. But next day that was the last visit to Vung Tau for three months, so that was the end of that. And I only ever went down after that to pick up a spare parts and sometimes we’d do a spare parts run where one vehicle would

go in a convoy, do the run around, get parts and thing at the logistic depot or try and con something off the Yanks and back that night. Yeah, only had two trips to Vung Tau.

Oh, amongst the Vietnamese and the soldiers it was, yeah. Down the sandpit which was near this French fort, apparently

the Australian army would pay the women of the village of Hoa Long to fill sand bags in the sand pit and you could go down on a Sunday in a truck and get these sand bags already filled and take them back and use them round your huts and whatever and they used to pay them and then when you got down there the kids and that were there with all the booty and bounty that you wanted to buy. Couple of guys bought bayonets from weapons – God knows where they came from.

But if there was anything you wanted to buy

Well, more than likely. We never bought any guns there but I’m quite sure the little ARVN guard would be quite happy to sell his weapon if someone offered him enough money for it. In fact in our section we had a buckshee M16 which someone had knocked off from the Americans at some stage of the game. The number ground off it so when you going round inside Nui Dat you’d carry this M16

because it was nice and light. The SLRs were damn heavy things. But it was just a buckshee weapon and when I come home someone else took it over. I don’t know what happened in the end whatever happened to it. Yeah, you could get almost anything you wanted to. Cigarettes were a big thing. If you wanted to buy anything from the Vietnamese you could sell them a carton of Salem because they were a menthol cigarette and apparently that was quite the big deal. You could sell packet of soap or boxes

of soap and almost anything. It wasn’t big black market, like you couldn’t go out and buy a vehicle. You probably could in Saigon or something like that but we never ever got there. No, we were just aught up with the local luxuries of life where we were living. Yeah, there was a bit of black market and that going on. When we got – at Christmas, no, it was New Year

someone in our unit got into real serious trouble with a gas grenade and the following – and as a result of that the unit was put on the dry for a whole month, the whole month of January, which means the boozer was closed. You could still get grog. Vehicles would go down to Vung Tau and come back with cartons of Black Label [whisky] and Budweiser beer and the rest of it. You could still get a beer. In the end I think the punishment

only went for two weeks and the CO [commanding officer] of the unit realised these guys are still drinking, we may as well open the boozer. Yeah, you could get any of that sort of stuff. Go down to Vung Tau. As long as you had the money, you could get anything you wanted.

I think that it would have been the major part of it.

When we were there you couldn’t come back to Australia. You could only go to Hong Kong, Bangkok, I think, Taipei, were the only places you could go on R & R. Just as I was leaving there they opened up Australia to come back and also with the Yanks coming back to Australia, But most guys would go to one of those other places.

And you had six days R – you had to be there six months before you got any R & R. And then you put your name on the list of where you wanted to go. You might get it but it didn’t really matter whether it was Bangkok, Hong Kong – they are all the same. But, yeah, sex would have probably been the biggest thing besides eating and drinking.

I think it is, yeah. You need – because there was never any

female company up at Nui Dat. The only females we ever saw was the odd nurse that would come up from Vung Tau, or I only ever saw two shows, variety shows, and there were women there but you were sitting 40 back cheering your heart out whether they were good or bad. Yeah, there was never any contact with women unless you were

out on an operation and you got game enough to go into the local town and try and get a bit.

Oh, yeah, it was full of bars. Well, the Vung Tau township was just like Wodonga and then you’d have the army camp on the side of it. So, it was really a town.

Tallangatta. No, the – in fact, it used to be called Cape St Jaques and

on a lot of maps it is still called Cape St Jaques and it used to be the French Riviera of Vietnam. So there are a lot of hotels and bars and everything was part of their lifestyle for the French and they’d go there. Even now – I’ve never been back there but even now the Russians and Americans and everything have built hotel there because there are a lot of companies working there so they’ve built special accommodation and there’s

Russians and there’s Americans and Australians live – what now – used to be where –they’ve put big hotels there where the old army camp – Australian were. Yeah, it is loaded – it was loaded, loaded with – the time we went down on the spare parts run we drove through the middle of Vungers [Vung Tau] and it was a lot of brothels and everything there, same as there was in – well,

I’d worked in Thailand for three years in the 90s and I knew what that was like and that would have been bigger and better back in the gold rush days. I ended going to Hong Kong for my R & R.

No, it meant money to them. Because they didn’t have much money and they needed the money and I don’t think they felt it as a degradation. It was a way of income. Why be poor? So, I think there was a lot of VD [venereal disease] in Vung

Tau. I know a number of people that ended up coming down with a load. One guy came down with seven loads, a plant operator. How he ever got home – I didn’t think they let him come home.

Yeah, just the normal low grade ones. There used to be one there that they used to call ‘Black Jack’ and if you got that they used to give you – they reckon they’d give you a pistol and a cut lunch because you weren’t going anywhere. But I never

heard of any Australians getting – there was a lot of gonorrheae and a lot of syphilis and the rest of it. I remember one guy went to Bangkok for his R & R, came back, he was back a couple of weeks no problem. He ended up going down to Vung Tau and he was only there one night and came back and seven days later, oh shit. I’d say we had –

12 – 24, say 32 people in our workshop and I reckon at least – one – two – about five or six got a load over that period of 12 months that they were there.

PC

OD?

Not that one.

Yeah, that’s when you weren’t allowed – yeah. Don’t go to Vung Tau. One and a wakey – two and a wakey – three and a wakey.

Yeah there were things like that. In fact they wouldn’t – they made a point of not letting anyone go anywhere with only a month to go. If something come up to Vung Tau you weren’t allowed – or in our workshop, no one was allowed to go down in that month if you were going home. They thought at least when you got home you were clean when you left there, you might not be when you got home. Yeah, pussy cut-off date, yeah,

that fits.

Oh, one and a wakey. Oh that was ‘one egg and a wakey’. You wouldn’t have breakfast on the morning you left because that would be – you’d wake up, but ‘one’ was an egg, the breakfast the day before. If it was ‘three and a wakey’, you’d have three breakfasts and then we’d wake up and go home or ‘four and a wakey’ or ‘five and a wakey’ and you used to count down. In fact, most people had,

and they did it on pictures of Jane Fonda because Jane Fonda was one who went to Hanoi as a pro-Viet Cong side of things, so everyone had a picture of a shapely girl and it was divided up into 365 days with the last date being right in the middle and every day you would colour in one square –

all of it was divided up – then you colour in one square, then work up her legs, work up her other leg and then down a bit and end up right in the middle hole. But Jane Fonda wasn’t a very liked person. A lot of Australians didn’t think that she was nice. She was a bit of an arsehole we thought, doing what she was doing. Even now on the internet on the Vietnam Veterans’ sites and the rest of it, “Do you remember this bitch?”

And it would be a picture of Jane Fonda standing there with this famous photograph. And there were those things. And the cleanout pills. By geez we used to crap. They used to reckon that if you had any germs in side you if you take them about four days before you went home, go to the RAP [regimental aid post] and he’d give you this big pill, swallow it you could bet your life by lunchtime you’d be in the toilet and it would try and clean all of the germs out of you. Sometimes

you used to come out and chuck the bloody things away. There was never any control over – the only control over our Paledrine tablets for malaria, every morning.

Paledrine.

Paladrine.

Yeah, and what would happen in the morning, we would line up for our roll call parade and the ASM [adjutant sergeant major] or the workshop sar major would call the names out and one of the sergeants would come along and

he’d stay there and you’d have to take it and they’d watch you swallow it. Next name. They were pretty strict with the anti-malarial tablets. It was one a day. And I think we had to take it for a week after we got home, but I don’t think – once you got out of there you would chuck that crap away. Get rid of it.

Oh, it was ‘boom-boom’ was asking for a screw and if you wanted a big one it was ‘buku boom-boom’. Oh, what was, what was another one? I think it was mostly, “You want boom-boom? Eh?” “Maybe 10 P.” Oh, and they’d be 10 P.

Ten P was actually 10 MPC which was about 10 cents and they’d say, “Ahh, 100,” that was a dollar, well that’s better. I remember I gave Alf Newman 10 bucks one day. He never give me any change. We were up at this fire support base near this town. It was our last two days there. Alf and I were sitting in the pit. We had no work to do so we were sitting on the gun. These sheilas walked along the road about 20 metres away and Alf

starts yelling out, “Ehh, want boom-boom,” and two of them kept going and one of them stops. Alf says, “You got any money?” I think I had a 10-dollar note or something like that and he took off. Got this sheila over the edge of a road and into a tree or something and he come back about quarter of an hour later. I said, “You got any change?” “No,” he said, “but it was worth it though.” And the bugger still hasn’t paid me back.

A head job was a head job, I think. Contraceptives were a no-go. I don’t think anyone ever used those. I don’t think they used to say ‘bare back’, I think it was just – that wasn’t part of the deal.

Well, probably was. Well, that

was were the soldiers go. I’m not sure if I said it to you or the other fellow about when Dien Bien Phu went in with the French they took their mobile brothels in with them. I guess it’s a natural thing for man to want, and if it’s available he’ll make use of it. He may suffer a bit of pain and indignation later but that’s the chances.

When I – the night before I was due to come back, of course you go over to the boozer and it’s farewell time. None of this two cans per day per haps racket. There was always plenty of beer and the CO normally comes in and the commander of the unit comes in and wishes you farewell and this Major Kent, or Herman Munster as we affectionately called him,

had this thing about wanting something off you when you left. So you’d be over there in your long green trousers but you always made sure you wore an old pair and an old shirt and he said, “I think I need an epaulette,” the little things on there, and he’d rip it off, “Thanks very much.” And someone else would say, “I want the other one.” And that would come off, then your pockets would come off and your sleeves would come off and next minute you’d be full as a state door standing there in the bloody raw with nothing on. And there was about four of us all standing

around and they had a big tractor wheel and they chained us to the tractor wheel. And the thing was they used to give the key to the duty officer. So you’d be in there at midnight, lights out at 10 o’clock, boozer closed at 10 and the bar’s gone, everyone’s gone and we’re all there in the raw chained to this – “We’ve got a plane to catch in the morning. Haven’t packed me bag.” Around midnight the duty officer would come over with the key and then you’d have to run back to your tent and

got into bed. And about an hour later shots were fired and they said, “Stand to, Stand to.” I was too drunk to go outside so I just hid under my cot and the then boss come in, “Where’s John Wild?” And then someone said, “I think he’s under his cot.” “You bastard,” he said. When was the last time you cleaned the Armalite?” Or the M16, “Yesterday.” “Well, it didn’t bloody-well fire. We could have got our first kill.” And

apparently there was someone out in the thing and they found him with the star scope and they went to fire the star scope and it misfired because he said it was dirty. Yeah. And next morning, very crook, we get our bags and then big farewell and go round and see everyone. My replacement had turned up. Down to the airport and on to a Caribou and from a

Caribou into Tan Son Nhut airbase and we were there for probably a couple of hours. No paperwork or anything, just do this and then we came home on a Boeing BOAC, I think it was, a pommy plane and we flew into Sydney at midnight. Now, all we had was 20 dollars. That was all the money they gave you. We were allowed to have

20 dollars Australian, the clothes that we stood up in and a hand bag. Your trunk would get sent later. God knows when later would be. But any spare clothes you had or anything went in the trunk. So we got these little bags and then we got to Sydney at midnight and the idea was to get you there at midnight there would be no one around, no one out there protesting and the rest of it, you’d just get off the plane, go through

customs and the guy would say, “Right, you go that way, you go that way” and I was going to the west. And I said to him, or he said, “Where you off to?” and I said, “Perth.” He said, “Here’s your train ticket.” I said, “What?” He said, “Your train ticket. You’re going by train.” I said, Oh, I thought we’d we flying home.” He said, “No, Western Australians, you’re going by train.” I said, “I’ve got 20 dollars and I’m in the same clothes I’ve got. How much difference will it

be to fly to Western Australia?” and I think he said something about 80 dollars. So I said, “Take it out of my pay book.” So I paid the 80 dollars out of my own pocket to get home and then we immediately flew to Melbourne and we were four hours before the plane left and we fell asleep on the lounge chairs at Essendon airport. And then in the morning we got on the plane and we had to stop at Adelaide and then Perth and

by that was in the afternoon. We hadn’t showered and hadn’t shaved and in our uniforms. And all of a sudden this hostess come up with – there were three of us at this stage – with three cans of beer. We said, “We didn’t order these.” “No, a gentleman down the front did.” Someone in first class had bought us a beer. We said, “We’d like to buy him on back.” He said, “No, he doesn’t want a beer,” and –

Polyesters, yeah. So when the plane lands the three of us just follow the rest of the crowd off and these two other guys, their parents were there to meet him but there was no one there to meet me and I’d let them know that I was coming home and where I’d be and sent a telegram. So I checked and the train that was going down to Pingelly wasn’t leaving until the next evening so

they shipped me out to Swanbourne, so I stayed there the night and then got a train next day and got home at midnight. The train gets in at Pingelly at midnight. Got off the train, still no one there. Mum and Dad or no one had come down so I walked home and walked up on the veranda. Front door was open so I just opened the front door. No one there so I just curled up on the couch and went to sleep. That sort of upset

me a bit. In fact, I was only home for a fortnight and I thought, “Oh bugger this. I can’t stand this anymore.” Everything had changed. I’d changed. And even in the country some of the people had decided that Vietnam wasn’t the way to go. So you’d say, “G’day,” to someone and they’d just say, “G’day,” and keep walking. Before they would talk to you. So I just said to

Mum, “Gotta go.” She said, “I thought you were here for four weeks.” I said, “No, only two.” I said, “I gotta go.” So I went to Perth and got my ticket changed and went by train back to Sydney and got back there and had a week off before I started work. Yeah, but it was just back to work again and that was it.

Yeah. In fact you know the ribbons that you wear? When we

left the unit at 1 Field Squadron the day that we left, right, or the week before you went you were told you were entitled to two ribbons, your medal come later. So we’d come to collect our ribbons. “Oh we don’t have them. You have to buy them at the market in Baria.” I said, “What?” He said, “You’ve got to buy them in the market at Baria.” So we had to arrange to get to Baria on the Sunday before we left,

went into this little market shop and there’s all the Australian ribbons made up, plastic on them and everything. Looked quite neat. So I better buy two of these. So we went back, bought them out of a bloody shop in the town. The army didn’t give them to us. And that really irked me that I had to go and buy my own bloody ribbons so I could we could wear them – I could go home with nothing but I thought, “No, bugger it, I’ve been here and done my time and I’m entitled to

wear them.” So we went down and bought our ribbon, put them on. In fact when we got back to our new unit they said, “You’re not allowed to wear those plastic ones any more.” We said, “Well that’s all we’ve bloody-well got.” So we had to go through the process of going to the Q store and getting ribbons and take them in to town to a tailor to make them up. Pathetic. And in fact, when the

medals turned up, they turned up in the mail. In fact, of all of the ribbons that I’ve got, the four and then the four bars, only one bar was I ever presented on a parade. All the rest just came in the mail. “Here’s your medals, John.” “Well done, Mr Postman, thank you very much.” And you go home and stick these things on and I don’t – and it seems – and a lot of

people say the same thing. And that’s one reason why I haven’t applied – I’m entitled to another two ribbons that they’ve come up with and I haven’t applied and they say you have to apply for them. And I said, “If the government can’t send them to me, I don’t want to wear them. I’m going to apply for something that I’m entitled to wear.” So I’ve never bothered with the other two. I’ll just wear the ones that come to me in the mail and one on the parade. So that was it. I’m a bit

cranky about the way the army dishes out its honours and awards and things. Just expect them in the mail, that’s pathetic.

After that I started to think that, yeah. After all that I was starting off again in a new unit, I’d been promoted to corporal, a different job and luckily they sent me bush straight away, up to

Shoalwater Bay. I did three months up there but I loved it because I was back out in the bush and we were supporting some exercises at Shoalwater Bay. It was just a little group of us. I think it was three of us out of a workshop up there. I was the corporal running the workshop, a recovery mech and an electrician. We had a ball. We stayed there for four months. They contacted us once and said we’re going to swap you over and we said, “No, we don’t want to come back.” We ended up staying there for a couple of months. We enjoyed it. It was good. You were

back in the bush and way from that. But, yeah, you did feel – again, with the army system, if you want promotion you’ve got to move. They just won’t promote you where you are if there is a vacancy. So if I was a corporal vehicle mechanic, qualified to be sergeant and the sergeant leaves, instead of promoting me to be sergeant, no, they’ll post someone into here and send me somewhere else. That got up my goat a bit. I

could have stayed with the unit I was in but, oh no, you’ve got to move. If you want to be a warrant officer you’ve got to move again. In the end I think we moved – when I got married, got married in 1972, we had 17 moves in 20 years. And that was chasing promotions. Some of the postings I didn’t have to move thingamabobs but

it was going from one unit to another. Like out here, you could move twice. In Sydney I moved twice in the one spot. No, but it’s a – I really do think they do things the wrong way.

Yeah, originally, back in the early days, yeah, because it seemed to us that the RSL [Returned and Services League] guys who were predominantly World War II, went along with the government idea that Vietnam’s not really a war – wasn’t declared therefore it’s not a war. I don’t give a damn what it was. We were involved in a conflict which was

organised by our government and we went to it. Just because it wasn’t a declared war it doesn’t mean to say it’s not a war. So there was – in fact a lot of guys – I know Sooty Lunt has never been in an RSL, ever, because he went to one when he got home and they shunned him. Myself and another guy who was a military medallist, we got shunned at the SS&A [sailor, soldier and airmen’s] club. I was in uniform and he was out of the army then – had the military medal on.

It was on Anzac Day and they said, “You can’t come in here.” “You can stuff the SS&A Club up your arse,” so we ended up going to a pub somewhere or wherever. Yeah, and it still exists between a number of Vietnam veterans and the RSL. I never become a member of the RSL until three years ago. I never wanted nothing to do with them. The only reason I’m part of it here is I think one day the RSL might

be able to help me in some way. So I thought being part of it but up until then I didn’t want anything to do with it.

Here, there’s not a great deal. There are more members of the Vietnam Veterans’ club. We’ve got a membership of over 120 Vietnam vets in this area and members of our Vietnam veterans club. It’s a licensed club and it’s only 50 yards away from the RSL but there are guys who will not go anywhere near the RSL

at all. They refuse to go in it. So there still is that bit of a division. But there seems to be a bigger division between UN [United Nations] guys and Vietnam veterans. Some of us are of the opinion that the UN guys lack camaraderie. Because they only go somewhere for three months or six months they might only take two out of this unit and two out of that, and two out of that.

Maybe the battalions are different but all of the other support people, when they come back to the unit they are just a member of the unit and they lack cohesion and lack camaraderie. And you can see that on UN day. They get very few people turn up, UN guys. Now, I know there are a lot of UN guys retire here and a lot of civilians have been in the UN here but they never turn up. They’re just fragmented three or four people

and they just seem to lack this unison that the Vietnam vets – Vietnam vets, they gather together real quick. If something comes up – Vietnam Vets’ Day is excellent. We’d have hundreds around here turn up for the Vietnam Vets’ Day because they are proud to be Vietnam vets. But the UN guys lack it, and we don’t know why.

Well to that there are a couple of answers. I don’t know if they are excuses or answers. But with the people

in the Second World War, statistically they used to actually fight in battles about one battle every five months. So between that time they were back in the training and the back areas waiting for the next battle. Whereas in Vietnam, the infantry, for example, out of the 365-day year

they’d probably do nearly 270 days in the field. So we say we did more battle that what they did. But the thing that the Vietnam veterans have decided to do is to make sure that the government honour their pledges to veterans. Right, now if that means we’ve got to get out and start bashing a few ears and say, hang on, you bastards sent us over there. A lot of us are dying

from one thing and another or there is something wrong with it. And your pension stinks. And all this sort of stuff. “You’re treating us not right.” You made these pledges and promises before, stick to them. Whereas the World War II guys just – bugger it, we’re not going to do anything about it, therefore they don’t get a lot of these things. But if you sit back and don’t do anything, you’ll get nothing but if you go out and say, “Listen, you made these promises, you do it.”

In the book A Fortunate Life, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of it, Albert Facey, a pretty famous sort of a guy in World War I, in that book he, to go to World War I, there was him and a couple of mates decided to go, so they went up to the boss and said, “Listen, we’re thinking of joining the army and going overseas.” And the guy said to him, “If you do, be very careful. The government will make promises and won’t stick to them.”

And that was World War I. And the same thing is happening now. The government is saying, “Oh, we’ll look after the veterans when they come back from Iraq.” But it’s not the day they come back. Oh it’s nice to have a warm fuzzy feeling and we’ll march through the city and the soldiers are proud and happy and the people watching them are proud and happy. But it’s not that day that the soldiers have got to be looked after, it’s later on when all of a sudden this bloke starts

going off the deep end over it. All of a sudden he’s got rashes all over his body or something else. Their kid’s born and it’s got two heads or something. What’s caused this? Look after me. No, you’re alright. No such thing as bloody germ warfare over there or UN involved in depleted uranium or something like that. They need to be made accountable for

for doing those things. Yes, we might whinge but we’re doing – we are making the government accountable for what they should be doing, whereas, I think, those guys just accepted that what’s the point and don’t bother about it. Well, we’re bothering about it and ding something about it, In fact this is the very end of it, we’ve formed our own political party. The Ex-service, Service and Veterans’ Party and it was – it got

borne out of the Clark Report. When we went through the Clark Report there come all of these recommendations for veterans and a lot of it was just not right. They were cutting out things we’ve got, doing away with some and not even considering others and what have you. And hang on, this is not right. And we were having our club 10th birthday and Keith Payne, VC, was down here and we were talking to him about it and he said, “Well, there is only

one way veterans will really be able to do something about the government, and that’s be part of it.” He said, “Why don’t you form a political party?” So there were nine of us sitting around this table and that day last year – was it last year? yeah – we formed the Ex-service – Service and Veterans’ Party. We’ve got 900 paid-up members, we’re fully registered with the electoral commission and we’re only going for senate

seats because we want to be on the board of management so when the lower house brings up these policies to go in to law, then if we can get into the senate then we can make sure that whatever is coming through has any remote reaction to a veteran, whether it is a military veteran, police veteran, nurse veteran, doctor veteran, fireman veteran, past, future and present,

that they’re been done right by. So we can say, hang on, as a senator, I’m not going to vote on this or we want something done better. So we formed our political party.

That didn’t get on there –

One of the parallels between the two is that we followed America in to something that America’s created. I don’t particularly agree that that’s a good idea. I don’t have a problem with our soldiers being there as long as they are being looked after, there – they get the best possible protection in the jobs that they’re doing – and they are

looked after when they get back. I have no problem with seeing Saddam Hussein removed but unfortunately when the Americans and everyone leaves Iraq, I think because of the culture of the Iraqis they will go back into the same way of life but under a different ruler. And I don’t think that – it depends who the new ruler is and what his policies are

but I think things will go back the same way.

Well, thank you very much. It’s been sort of enjoyable.