XUAN LOC

Back in Nui Dat, I stayed with 9 RAR a little longer, long enough to go to a concert put on by a group of Australian entertainers.  I’ve forgotten now who they were for sure but I think Little Pattie was one.  She wore a very short mini skirt, playing up to the men in the front rows (officers only - they pulled rank...surprise, surprise), who were trying to see how high her legs went.  Col Joye and Judy Stone may have been among the others - that style of performer anyway.  Normie Rowe wasn’t singing, that’s for sure - he was too busy driving APCs, and doing a good job of it too.

As 9 RAR was responsible for the security of its area of the perimeter, it put out ambushes, called TAOR patrols, every night.  They would move out some hundreds of metres before dark to positions on likely enemy approach routes where they generally spent fruitless but nervous nights.  Once, the other two Task Force Sigs and I were asked if we would like to be part of the ambush party.  Two of us volunteered. Our Corporal reminded us of our unit directive that none of us were to engage in any patrolling and he wouldn’t let us go.  (Many years later, I learnt there was no such directive!)

You guessed it.  That night a small group of VC walked into the ambush.  I was in the HQ when the whispered radio message came in, “Movement to our left front, 30 metres.  Engaging now.”  They were doing all right till they copped an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) for their trouble.  That got their heads down and the VC took their chance to slip away, leaving a couple of dead behind.  We suffered no casualties but I was left wondering what might have been if...

Soon after this, I was put back on the hill, baby-sitting the sets again.  It must have been the most boring posting in Vietnam as it was such solitary work.  We would follow the various operations from markers placed on a large wall map but we could only locate positions when artillery or air support was called in or a contact was reported - otherwise, all positions were broadcast in code.  There was plenty of time for letter writing.

Finally on 31^st May, a vacancy came up at Xuan Loc, which wasn’t even in Phuoc Tuy Province, but Long Khanh.  It was well to the north of Nui Dat on the northern approach road to Bien Hoa, Long Binh and Saigon and was vital to the security of the southern area of Vietnam.  The 17th ARVN Division was based there, supported by US 155mm artillery and a large contingent of US personnel.

Because it was the centre of a Province bordering on Phuoc Tuy, the Australian Task Force maintained a Liaison team there which I joined.

Before the war, Xuan Loc had been a centre for the rubber industry and was surrounded by rubber plantations.  Many had probably only survived because the owners were paying some kind of levy to the VC.  It would have been an attractive town originally till a flood of escapees from North Vietnam in the mid-fifties made it look like a refugee camp.

The majority were Catholics who had been forbidden to practise their religion in the north.  They grabbed whatever possessions they could carry and crossed the border before the communists panicked and closed it off, ignoring United Nations resolutions.

In Xuan Loc, they built a beautiful sandstone gothic church which must have taunted the North Vietnamese no end.  The VC and NVA conducted a terror campaign against them from then on, threatening they would be the first killed when the war was over.

I joined two other radio operators there for a very enjoyable posting.  We lived in the US MACV compound with some hundreds of GIs.  They had no idea how to rough it.  There wasn’t a tent in sight - the buildings were divided into rooms which slept up to four in double decker bunks.  Their mess building was very elaborate, bettering anything we’d experienced in Australia.  I knew it was just the place for me.

Robroy MacGregor and another Sig whose name I’ve forgotten were the other two Aussies.  They filled me in on the routine.  The work wasn’t difficult nor were the hours long. We were allowed to close our set down between 10:00pm and 6:00am so there were only two shifts to worry about.

We drove a battered Land Rover through town to the ARVN HQ where we operated our radio from a table just inside a doorway opening out to a large parade ground.

Driving through the compound gates with Rob for my first shift, I noticed some unpainted sheets of iron on the red roofs of the buildings round the parade ground.

“What happened there, Rob?” I commented.

“Mortar rounds,” he replied, matter-of-factly.

“You give me 5000 pee!” she shouted at me as I pulled out first her and then the scooter.  All that noise had to mean she wasn't too badly hurt!  I bundled the bike in the back, her in the front, picked up the mail (just in time) and took her home (her home).  She was still cracking up as I dropped her off but I didn’t feel bad about not paying her - the accident wouldn’t have happened if she had been on her side of the road.

Another time, I hit a Vietnamese officer as I was turning through the entrance gate to the HQ.  Again, he wasn’t looking where he was going and went under the front without being badly hurt.  He actually seemed to be apologising rather than complaining as I helped him to his feet and dusted him off.

Perhaps the locals were conditioned to expect a few accidents because of the way they and the Yanks drove.  I cringed once, going through a little hamlet in the back of a truck (probably on the way to Vung Tau with 9 RAR).  The driver never attempted to slow down - he simply leant on the horn and counted on all the bare-bummed kids jumping out of the way.  That showed a poor regard for life.

Those few “hits” of ours and a number of near-misses forced us to do something about the Land Rover.  There seemed not a hope in hell’s chance of getting it repaired, nor could we count on it being replaced.  The three of us decided to steal a Jeep!

The Yanks were very lax with their equipment but pinching one of their vehicles from Xuan Loc itself would be chancing our luck too much.

The unknown Sig and I drove down the Bien Hoa highway for about half an hour to a small town where we found a Jeep parked outside a bar.  It seemed to be in good condition and not wearing the colours of any unit we recognised so we drove it home.  The Land Rover is probably still standing in our car park.

We drove the Jeep from then on as if we’d been issued with it.  Nobody ever questioned our right to it although it couldn’t possibly have fallen into our hands by any legal means.  Perhaps they just thought we’d swapped a couple of slouch hats for it!

The Yanks may not have looked after their equipment seriously but they knew how to take care of themselves.  They employed maids to wash and iron their clothes, polish their boots and clean their rooms.  These were Vietnamese women of course.  They came into the compound in the early morning, each of them assigned to particular rooms and men.

Our “mamasan” was Ba (Mrs) Ut who may have been in her 40s but looked about 60.  She had lost most of her teeth which left her with a very gummy smile, not that she was shy about smiling.  Her few remaining teeth would be busy chewing beetle nut which was the source of streams of red juice she was forever spitting out.  She and the other women would group together first up washing clothes on a slab of concrete in front of a tap.  They chattered away a mile a minute, still finding time to spit as they spoke.

It seemed a very primitive way to wash clothes yet they came back to us better than they ever had back in Australia.  They were crisply starched and beautifully ironed.

Ba Ut also polished our boots which were very much the worse for wear from months of ill treatment.  She brought them up to a shine better than any we had achieved at Singleton!  For all of that, she was paid 100 pee/week by each of us which seemed a paltry amount to me (officially US$1.00).

I tried talking to her while she was working.  She was very shy.  Eventually, she opened up and we stumbled along with the language barrier as we talked about our lives.

She told me how she had fled the north with her husband and young family; how, as an ARVN soldier, he had lost both legs to a landmine and was housebound.  She was the provider, struggling to put basic food on the table.  She was very grateful for our help in fighting the Northerners.    Here are some thoughts she inspired me to write:

There were times when I asked how to help her.  Eventually, she suggested that we sell her some cartons of beer and cigarettes which she could then on-sell to the black-market.  The three of us talked it over and decided to do it.  We had been warned that the VC benefited from the black-market by getting hold of military currency which they then exchanged for US dollars to buy weapons.  That idea seemed farfetched unless China and Russia (their arms suppliers) were also after dollars.  More likely, the bad effect would have been on the local currency which struggled along, with the black-market rate three times the official rate.

The PX store carried beer, cigarettes and many other small items.  Co (Miss) Ahn, a beautiful, confident girl, was the manager - she showed off the au dai better than any other girl I’d ever seen.  All the men on the base fancied her so the PX did a roaring trade - she showed not the slightest romantic interest in any of them.  Perhaps to hold that sort of position, she first had an arrangement with somebody in authority?

Each man carried a PX card which entitled him to a set ration of goods per month.  This card had to be presented and adjusted with each purchase.  We told Co Ahn we were buying for Ba Ut.  She then allowed us to buy whatever quantities we liked.  We would stash six cartons of Budweiser and a dozen cartons of smokes in the back of the Land Rover, throw a tarp over the top and drive out through the gates to meet Ba Ut.  Theoretically, the guards could search our vehicle any time they wanted.  They never did.

We made 100% on each deal, Ba Ut then made a further 100% selling to the bars, then they made some phenomenal amount selling the grog and smokes back to the GIs.

After some months, Ba Ut had enough to buy herself a fridge.  Our PX didn’t stock that sort of item so Rob and I drove down to Bien Hoa early one morning to find one for her.  She agreed to pay us $100 above the purchase price.

The road was swept for mines each morning and was normally considered safe for the rest of the day.  Even so, our rifles were right beside us with a round up the spout and the safety on.  The trip was uneventful, except for two incidents which give a good insight into the brutality and fickleness of the war.

Passing through a small hamlet, we noticed a crowd of villagers gathered round the most substantial building.  Some of them tried to wave us down.  We stopped.  A skinny old man was sitting on the front steps, hands clasped across his stomach to stop his guts falling out.  He was barely moaning, yet the pain must have been unbearable.

Just before daylight, the VC had tossed a grenade into the one roomed building where the village headman, his children and all his grand-children were sleeping together.  It was a reprisal for past lack of co-operation in providing food and shelter, a normal procedure for the VC.  The old man had been the slowest to move and consequently copped a large piece of shrapnel to help improve his loyalty to the cause.  We reported the incident in Bien Hoa and a medical team was sent to bring him into hospital.

A few drinks were necessary after seeing that so it was later in the day before we returned with the fridge in its carton lashed down in the back.

Just short of the little hamlet, we noticed a jeep overturned on the left of the road.  Later we heard that it had been ambushed only half an hour after we’d passed - an officer, travelling on his own, had been killed.  Fate was on our side again!  We were still driving the Land Rover at that stage - perhaps the VC allowed us to pass, waiting for something juicier than a couple of lousy Aussie Sigs!  It was probably the same group which had hit the hamlet.

Another time, Rob and I did chance our luck carelessly.  We were told about a small rifle range out in a rubber plantation on the southern Highway 2 where we could give our weapons a good workout.  It seemed like a reasonable idea until we turned off the bitumen and, in deathly silence, crawled through the trees.  The canopy above restricted light to a gloom.  If ever there was a good place for an ambush, that was it - there could have been a squad of VC within twenty metres for all we knew.

We were too far in for turning back so we continued on as though we were out for a Sunday picnic.  The range couldn’t be much further, could it?

It wasn’t.  We blasted away there with our SLRs and an Armalite Rob had borrowed, threw a couple of grenades each and called it quits within ten minutes.  The noise of it all would have attracted the attention of anybody in the area so we decided to head for home “toute suite”.

Back we drove through the eerie rubber, tree trunks standing up in the gloom like rows of silent soldiers.  None objected to our passing.  We paused at the main road to make a right turn back to town and saw a neatly manicured driveway leading off through the trees opposite.

Curiosity got the better of us so we took another tour through rubber to see where it led.  In no time, we came to a country club - sumptuous buildings set in landscaped gardens.  Finding a place like that hidden away in such a dangerous area left us speechless.

Eventually, Rob said, “Right then, let’s have a gander inside,” and before I could stop him, he strode up the wide front steps into a lavish bar decorated in rich red and black.

No one was there.  We called out.  That brought a pitter patter of steps on the tiled floor off behind the bar and a girl came into view.  It had been a day for the unexpected but nothing could have prepared us for that sight.  She should have had jet-black, waist length hair, slant eyes, and been wearing an au dai over black pants.

She was blonde, blue eyed and wore jeans!

I dredged up some Grade 10 French, hoping by some miracle to make myself understood.  Laughing, she replied in English.  She was a New Zealander, the governess for the property manager’s kids and was delighted to spend some time with us over a few drinks.  She must have been crazy to take on such a job and I wouldn’t have thought the Government would let civilians into the country for such work, yet there she was.

No doubt we would have been welcome to return but it would have been risking an ambush on that ten minute drive every time.  Except for when we stole the Jeep, that was the last time we ever left the town limits.

Our free time was normally spent writing letters, listening to the Armed Forces Network radio or watching the latest gridiron matches on colour TV.

Our base also showed fresh movies every night in a large outdoor theatre where we could sweat in relative comfort as we downed our cold Budweisers. Marijuana was openly smoked during the movies.  None of the Aussies was at all interested in smoking the stuff although our Sergeant tried his best to be an alcoholic.  (He later had to spend some time in Vung Tau hospital with blood poisoning because of his problem.)

One night, a Yank I was with puffed away on the sickly smelling stuff as I drank my couple of cans of beer.  He pestered and pestered me to “have a joint” and eventually I did.  In saying that, don’t get the idea I am in favour of smoking or snorting or sticking drugs into myself or that you should do the same.  Far from it!

I took a delicate little puff, then a big drawback which made my head start spinning within seconds.  If people think that’s a great feeling then they can keep it for themselves.

As my luck would have it, within minutes the siren sounded a red alert, the screen went blank, the camp lights went out.  We blundered off in the dark to find our assigned bunkers.  Hundreds of people were running in every possible direction, over each other, into chairs, buildings, trees.  Marijuana often has that effect on people, I understand.

A tree under the influence of two cans of weak Budweiser and a puff of marijuana ran into me, knocking my glasses off and breaking them.

I may have said a few angry words but they didn’t stop the certain knowledge that there’d be no more clear vision for me for some time.

Somehow, I headed in the right direction and fell into our bunker.  The air was very tense as we all listened silently for the first sign that it was to be more than a one hit wonder.  There was the sound of automatic fire in the distance, some explosions, and the wailing of Jeep sirens as the MPs raced round town picking up stray GIs.

We started relaxing (some were still clutching cold cans in hand), then a pitiful cry came from down low in one corner.  Torches flicked on showing a bundle of quivering, miserable, camouflage greens whimpering, “I don’t want to die...” over and over.  Shell shock they would have called it (PTSD is today’s fancy name) but I remember thinking he could have at least waited for the shells!  I would hope to be more understanding now but at that time I didn’t appreciate the many different ways people react to fear.  Somebody did show him some sympathy which only increased the cries and tears - the rest of us muttered about the “poor silly bastard” and left as the "All Clear" sounded.

That was the end of the night’s movies but nerves were stretched a little taut for sleep just yet so we settled down with some more cold cans.  A few hours later, the Budweiser began to taste like "XXXX".  That was sign enough for me to hit the sack.

Wearing anything in that heat and humidity made sleep uncomfortable so most of us slept naked.  I sprawled out there on the top bunk with only a mozzie net for privacy. Soldiers don’t have a problem with naked bodies and we were always up before the mamasans arrived in the mornings so they were never exposed to possible offence either.

There has to be an exception to the rule, doesn’t there?  Next morning, I slept in.  Part of me very visibly stood to attention.  My roommates thoughtfully didn’t disturb me, hoping to have some fun with the girls.

I woke to a pleasant giggling sound which must have fitted neatly into my dreams because it was some minutes before I realised that every mamasan in the camp seemed to be crammed into our room.  My Ba Ut was there in the very front, giggling away with the best of them!

There was no top sheet - my only defence was to roll over and present my backside. That brought even more hysterical laughter.  About then, I started shouting and they left.  I never would have believed my sweet, innocent Catholic girls could have acted like that and was too embarrassed to speak to Ba Ut for a couple of days.

(Ever since that incident, Doctor, I've suffered severely from recurring flashbacks!  It comes up night after night in my dreams and no matter how hard I try, the girls always leave laughing, with me lying there completely unsatisfied.)

My broken glasses were another problem caused by that night.  The Army had left me with just the one pair although my pre-embarkation check list was noted that another pair would be supplied before leaving Australia.  My night vision was RS.  I checked with our Nui Dat HQ to be told it would take a month to get me a new pair. The Yanks could do it within 24 hours of receiving the prescription.  (For some unknown reason, they could make the glasses but could not test my eyes to arrive at the correct specifications.)

I sent Mum an urgent letter to have my optometrist rush the prescription over.  It arrived in a surprisingly short time.  The next day, I had a new set of specs, set in the ugliest frame you’d ever see.  That fuelled my anger at the Army’s lack of assistance.  We’ll talk more about that later but the "used, abused and refused" syndrome had already started.

August came round, finally bringing my R & R in the last week.

IN AND OUT OF THE REAL WORLD

104 Signal Squadron must have been desperately short staffed because those few days off came when there was less than four months of my tour left - my only break up till then had been the three days in Vung Tau.  Our work in Xuan Loc could hardly be compared to jungle patrolling but even the donkey grinding the wheat needs a day off occasionally.

Army regulations governed R & R, of course.  It could be taken in Sydney, Bangkok, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and probably a few other places I’ve now forgotten.  The temptation was to opt for Sydney especially since a relationship had developed (on paper) with Mary Smith (the girl from Tasmania).  However, the word was that many Diggers couldn’t face going back to Vietnam once they’d been home so I decided to chicken out on that idea.  As well, there might never be another opportunity to see one of the exotic Asian cities so it would have been foolish to run for the safety of the home port.

I chose Hong Kong, for the shopping possibilities as well as the fact that English was commonly spoken there.  The Army paid for the airfares and the black-market operations paid for everything else - I spent $650 all up.  The money almost disappeared just before my leave too, which would have been a disaster.

As they periodically did, the Yanks called a sudden currency change to catch such black-market operations.  New MPC notes would be exchanged for old up to a certain limit - after that, the old notes wouldn’t even have been good for wiping your bum.  Luckily, a few of our Yank mates were willing to do us a favour and helped us out.

That cost me my slouch hat - swapped for a camouflage poncho liner, a deal which I’d been unwilling to go through with till then.  The liner has turned out to be very useful, putting in an appearance every winter for many years after, even still.

Coming back into Nui Dat from our outposts was always a bit of a culture shock for me.  For starters, it was too regimented, too much like the Army after the easy going routine off the base.  Why, we even had to appear on parade each morning for the pill swallowing and rifle inspection routine!

It was a good idea to at least have a couple of practice runs through the drill procedure of presenting arms for inspection.  It was a simple little drill, done hundreds of times by then during my army career but I wanted to be dead sure of it after months away.  It is always done with an empty magazine on the rifle - live rounds and drill procedures do not mix.  Normal practice in Nui Dat was to carry an empty magazine on the rifle, keeping full ones close by.  Away from the base, magazines were never empty.

Between breakfast and the parade, I stood in the middle of our tent beside the big box of cigarettes, watched by two or three others and went through the motions.  Part of the procedure involved cocking the weapon so the barrel could be checked.  Inspection over, the cocking mechanism is released by pulling the trigger.

However, I had forgotten to remove the loaded magazine...which meant that a bullet was cocked up the spout and when I pulled the trigger, it went through the roof of the tent…with a very loud bang.  We all stood there paralysed, cordite filling the tent with its telltale smell. 

Frantically, I pulled the rifle down to clean the barrel.  The others waved the smoke outside, sprayed some deodorant about and put some tape over the hole in the roof.  All that time, we were waiting to be sprung.  It could have been a catastrophe.  My R&R could have been spent in the lock-up - worse, somebody could have copped a bullet in the head.  Fortunately, nothing like that happened and nobody came to catch me. 

That didn’t stop me from feeling a proper dill.

So off I went to the big city - five days alone among 4 - 5 million Chinese.  It wasn’t a happy time because solo holidays aren’t much fun.  I stayed in a middle-of-the-road hotel, in a room out the back overlooking some buildings being demolished.  Most of my time of course was spent around town.

First off, I hunted around to fill my shopping orders.  There were presents for all the family, Mary, and best mate, Jolly Joe.  I even bought some sound gear for myself.  It was probably the first time I’d ever bought anything like that, especially for myself and I didn’t enjoy the bargaining much - the Chinese practically live for it.

The shopping took a surprising amount of time, spread out over a couple of days.  At the same time, I did some sight-seeing, alone and also on conducted tours.  Hong Kong proper is a beautiful but very small island separated from Kowloon (on the mainland and the largest area of the Colony) by a short stretch of deep water.

Huge modern ferries compete with tiny Chinese “runabouts” to link the accommodation of Kowloon with the business districts of Hong Kong.  I stuck with the big ships and marvelled at how quickly thousands of people could disembark and disappear on waiting buses.

Many high-rise buildings cluttered the steep hillsides of the capital.  Space was obviously at a premium with such a crush of people trying to live and work there so it was still a surprise (but shouldn’t have been) to find a large section of hillside covered with derelict shanties within metres of multi-storied buildings.  Refugees were squatting there in terrible conditions as they had nowhere else to go.

Each year, violent typhoons would sweep in on the island, blasting the shacks apart, filling the air with slashing sheets of metal, then sweep the carnage away with mudslides.  The shacks would be rebuilt each time.

The Government had an ongoing program to resettle all those people in high rise accommodation on the island itself and also on the mainland.  Apart from saving many lives and improving living standards, it had the added benefit of freeing up some very valuable real estate for business development.  Cynics would say perhaps that was the real reason for such a benevolent approach but the Government did seem to have the welfare of the people at heart.

Many people also lived on boats in a sheltered harbour on the other side of the island.  These were all linked together so it was possible not to ever have to set foot on dry land.  This area had become a tourist attraction with a number of floating restaurants and knick-knack shops although the smell coming off the water was more than a little off-putting.  The Government was trying to resettle those people too, without much success.

Privacy was almost unobtainable in such a place of wall-to-wall people.  I went to a picture theatre one day expecting to sit in rows of seats in a large space in front of a screen, just like the theatres at home.  The first clue that it was no ordinary theatre was when the usher pushed me into a lift!  People got out at each floor on the way up.  My seat was in a lounge about four levels up from the bleachers.  The building was maybe half the width of a suburban theatre back home but they squeezed in many more people by layering them on so many levels.

As if that wasn’t enough of an experience for me, the movie itself was.  It was spoken in Chinese naturally, with English and another Chinese dialect in subtitles!  Keeping track of the action was hard going as you can imagine, especially since it was so fast paced.

Another example of sharing experiences with a crowd was the day I decided to stop off for lunch while window shopping.  The eatery looked very basic, nothing fancy to attract tourists, but there were plenty of Chinese going in and out which was a good sign.

I went in to find myself alone among 5000 Chinese in a huge factory-like space.  Jesus fed this kind of a crowd but I don’t know how any normal person could be organised enough to do it.  Many people seemed to be serving themselves cafeteria style but waiters were everywhere too.

Sitting on a vacant seat listening to the Chinese chatter and the curious sound of 10,000 chopsticks hard at it, I lost my appetite, replaced by butterflies in the stomach.

The young bloke beside me grinned, spilling half a mouthful of rice just as a waiter arrived.  He couldn’t speak English.  Worse, the menu he offered was in Chinese!  Somehow, he understood that I would eat whatever he decided to give me.  The meal was already showing signs of being one to remember and the food was yet to appear on the table!

I can’t say it was delicious but it was different.  I didn’t have a clue what was on the plate - it tasted and looked nothing like the Chinese food we eat in Australia but it was edible.  (Compared to Nui Dat food it was a banquet fit for a king!)  I laboured over it for quite a while as others came and went from my table.  They ate at a furious pace as if they were being charged by the minute.

Just past the next table was a large fish tank with a number of sizeable fish swimming round and some crabs lazing on the bottom.  Considering the layout of the building, I wondered why the owners would bother to have an aquarium there for the enjoyment of the patrons.  Then a diner stopped in front of the tank, pointed out a particular fish which was scooped out with a net and a few minutes later he sat down to eat the fish of his choice.  Fresh is best, naturally.

Somehow, the bill arrived for my meal - the whole system ran very sweetly.  I found they had charged me such a ridiculously small amount it was close to embarrassing, even for a Murphy!

The days and nights sped by quickly and on the 29^th August, I caught the jet back to Saigon.  Behind me, millions of people were able to organise themselves to live peacefully in each other’s pockets - where I was going, millions more of the very same people were hell-bent on doing away with each other. 

Going back wasn’t hard though because life at Xuan Loc seemed relatively safe and there were only four months of my tour of duty left.  The war would be over for me soon enough.

 DESERTION IN THE FACE OF THE ENEMY

However, other plans had been made for me.  No longer for me the "pampered" life of Xuan Loc but instead the danger and uncertainty of being part of the Liaison Team attached to the 2/52 ARVN Battalion.

They were patrolling an area in the north east of Phuoc Tuy, up from Xuyen Moc.  Our job, as usual, was to call in air, artillery, armoured support and Dustoffs when required.  The Senior Advisers were a couple of Americans but our immediate superior was Warrant Officer Eddie Nervo (not his real name) from 9 RAR.  Bluey Hopper and Tony O’Dowd were my fellow Sigs.  We worked the usual eight hours on, sixteen off but were flexible about that, covering for each other whenever it was required.

The work was much the same as with 9 RAR.  The tension was worse because of the lack of firepower around us (no 105s, few APCs), the tightness of the Fire Support Base (too bunched up) and the fact that we were very dependent for security on South Vietnamese troops who inspired little confidence. We slept in slit trenches beside the mortar emplacement, dozing to the gentle blast of those weapons being fired.  When we were awake, we often talked among ourselves about how we should react to an attack on the base, Nervo specifically reminding us that we should stick close together, unsure as we were that the ARVN troops would stay and fight.  We kept our rifles with us always and cleaned them every day.

Eventually, the battalion was moved right over to the west of the province.  We drove in convoy down the “Red” road towards Xuyen Moc, expecting to be hit at any minute.  That “Red” classification meant that land mines could be expected anywhere along it and the road was generally dangerous because of regular enemy ambushes.  Vegetation grew very close to the roadside whereas it was always cleared back perhaps 2-300 metres on safer roads.  The trip was to take all day, through drizzling monsoon rain in the afternoon.

We hadn’t been driving long when an M60 opened up just in front of our Jeep.  We jerked to a stop, Bluey dived into the ditch and started firing blindly with his SLR.

All through the day, we passed through little villages, and larger towns like Dat Do and Baria etc until we were well up Highway 15 towards Saigon.  In fading light, we pulled into our new Fire Support Base Doody, no more than 50 metres off the road in a rice paddy.  The location was meant to be a secret, at least until some basic defences had been established yet it would have been a piece of cake for the enemy to track us there.

It was even easier for the ARVN Colonel’s wife.  She drove down from Saigon with her kids just before dark to see her husband and bring him some treats.  Found us without any trouble at all.

Bluey was a bit of a hit with the Colonel’s little boy, swinging him round and chucking him in the air, disregarding the potential dangers of his bare bum (what’s that after facing the possibility of a face full of lead?).  I suppose Saigon was no safer in those days than where we were but we did wonder at a system which allowed wives and families to join their husbands in a battlefield situation.  Fortunately, for our peace of mind, she took the kids back home the next morning.

The first truck unloaded was the one which carried a young steer.  It was quickly killed and butchered on the ground to supply the men’s meat for the duration of the operation.  That amount of meat wouldn’t have gone far with our troops but it formed only a small portion of the average meal for the Vietnamese.  They ate plenty of rice, with a number of little side dishes (such as meat, fish, chook, monkey, dog, etc) providing the flavour.  The Colonel received an allowance personally from the Government, using it to pay for all his battalion’s supplies - a curious way of running an army.  A crooked man would take that as a chance to line his own pockets and feed his men as poorly as he could get away with.

We found ourselves responsible for our own food too.  The Vietnamese were quite happy to feed us but their food wasn’t quite to our liking on a long term basis (not too hygienic either).  The Americans must have operated on some sort of food allowance also and were willing to share it with us so we ate whatever food was choppered into us or whatever they could buy in the nearest town.

Our base was sited in a rice paddy which the steady rain was starting to make spongy.  We tried digging our trenches but gave up when they immediately filled with water - we were going to need a snorkel to sleep in there.  In the end, we lay some sheets of corrugated iron on the ground, put some curved sheets over the top and there we had our own version of the igloo.

It didn’t offer any sort of protection from mortar or rocket fire.  We felt very exposed stuck there in those flat paddy fields.  Watching Tom, Dick and Ho going past on the highway, able to check out every little detail of our layout, we were spurred on to fill and lay as many sandbags as the structure would take.

Normally, when the rain allowed, we sat around a cooking fire, yarning about the day’s events.  The senior US adviser was an easy-going character, good company in those circumstances.  WO Nervo, on the other hand, was moody and a real wet blanket.

One night, we all sat there for a couple of hours discussing how to get hold of some more food as stocks were running low.  It was finally agreed that the senior adviser, Bluey and I would drive into Long Binh the next day.  It was about forty minutes away.

Our shopping trip went well and we returned just after lunch with a Jeep full of good stuff.  There was even a cold carton of Budweiser to freshen up those left behind.  Tony met us as we pulled up.

We just stood there, stunned.  It was too serious to be a joke. 

The ARVN troops had come into contact with a large force of NVA, quite a fight had developed with artillery and air support being called in.  Tony and the junior US adviser handled all that by themselves with no problems.  They had to: Nervo stayed in his tent till the action was over, only then strolling into the HQ asking, “How many of the *&*&ing little gooks copped it this time?”  In front of the Colonel and his staff, mind you.

He had cracked up about the way we had decided to get resupplies, feeling left out, I guessed.  He was unbalanced enough to use the morning’s action as an excuse to call our CO to demand a court martial.

We spoke to our Major Morel over the radio to explain what happened.

The chopper clap, clap, clapped its way at treetop height to Nui Dat.  Conversation was impossible over the din.  We sat there, looking at each other, wondering how it could all be happening.  Nervo sat opposite, our rifles between his feet.  The mongrel!  He must have loved putting the boot in by taking them off us but I bet he would have been thrusting them back into our hands quick smart if the chopper had to make a forced landing.

It’s a terrible feeling to be wrongly accused.  I felt humiliated, degraded.  Desertion, would you believe?!  I couldn’t.

Back at base, we cleaned up, dressing in our best greens as preparations were made for the hearing.  It was the 18th of September - only three weeks before, I had been enjoying the good life of Hong Kong.  I suddenly remembered I'd missed my birthday, 3 days earlier.  How could it have gone so wrong, so quickly? 

We marched into the orderly room.

As we waited a moment, the clerk helpfully offered, “You’re in for it now, boys!  The maximum penalty for desertion is still death by firing squad!”

We fronted the Major, feeling very tense - it was like some nightmare.

Then the first good news came.

He could also have said that the Army will always believe the evidence of the senior rank if it contradicts that of the junior.

I wondered if we would even be listened to - from what had happened to us so far, that didn’t seem likely.

However, Bluey and I were each given our say while Major Morel seemed to listen very carefully.  He also took his time reading the statement given to me by the US Adviser.  There was dead silence while he did that and for what seemed a long time after he finished.  We stood stiffly at attention...waiting.

We were without a job for a while so we resorted to leaning on rakes waiting for rubber tree leaves to fall.  No, not quite.  I found myself back up on the hill again. Chris Bonython was up there too.  The son of an Adelaide high flyer, he could have avoided his call-up without any trouble at all. A cross between John Farnham and Tom Cruise in looks, he was one of the nicest blokes you could meet and a good steadying influence on me at that time.  (I was still smarting over the treatment we’d copped.)

ON TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN

Well, my luck was about to change again.

Within a few days, we received a message calling me back to Nui Dat urgently. The milk run chopper diverted to pick me up, leaving no time at all for goodbyes except with those who happened to be handy.  There was no time to find Ba Ut which I regret to this day. I rushed to pack my gear together, pull the black-market money out of its hiding place and make it out to the airfield.

That was the end of a wonderful period among some ordinary Vietnamese people who knew their days were numbered.  Six years later when Xuan Loc was one of the last towns to fall before Saigon, I had fearful thoughts of the ordeal they were going through.  Those thoughts made me choke on the glee of the anti-war crowd who were deliriously happy to win “their” war while everybody else lost.

Unaware of that unhappy future, I was carried away, with many happy memories, back to Nui Dat and a posting still unknown.  What was all the urgency about?  My mind was trying to sort out the possibilities without being able to come up with anything that remotely made sense.  If they wanted an operator for a particular job, why didn’t they just take one from the base itself?

The chopper pilot did nothing to help keep my thinking calm and clear.  We were racing along at just above treetop height when he suddenly tipped us over on our side to fit between some taller trees.  Before we had gone much further, he had started weaving in and out of the trees.  Whether he was wary of enemy fire or he was just taking low flying orders literally I never found out but he put the wind up me.  Thoughts of my pending posting stopped bothering me anyway, as I concentrated on staying with the chopper.

An orderly met us at the chopper pad and escorted me over to our headquarters under the rubber trees.  He could have told me what was going on but, in true Army fashion, he let me stew till I was standing formally in front of the OC.

My mind started playing tricks on me because I couldn’t help remembering that the only other time I had set foot in that office was on the court martial charge a week before.

So that was it.  They’d actually looked up our records to find the best Morse operators in the country and pulled us in from wherever we were.  That had to mean this was very serious work with no room for the slightest mistake.

I met the other two operators that day and we were given time to prepare for the mission.  John “Ding” Bell was one.   In 2009, we found that Rick Male was the other.  We were to use voice ourselves, not Morse, to talk to the patrol but they would be sending to us at about ten words a minute.  We practised by reading messages to each other in “dits” and “dahs” as we had no equipment to do the job properly.  That speed is very slow for a competent operator but could be impossible to receive if the sender was hopeless.  We weren’t able to meet the SAS operators but we were confident of their ability to do anything

The mission was so important and so urgent that a special chopper was laid on to drop us on the mountain top.  It was Sunday, the 28^th September. The flight took as long as the Xuan Loc one but as the drop off point was at a height of about 1000 metres, we were able to fly at that height all the way.  That lessened the tension a little.

Then we saw our base.  It was on the very peak, the top five to ten metres, of a steep mountain, Hill 837 (Nui Chua Chan).  There could never be a road built up it - the only way to resupply the place was by air.  The jungle stretched away from the bottom as far as the eye could see.  In that war, the sight was pretty awesome.

The Yanks had blasted away parts of the mountain top as best they could, sprayed some Agent Orange around, squashed in a company of infantry, however many operators and technicians they needed, and installed a forest of aerials and towers of microwave dishes.  They then called it a communications base.  We’d never seen one of those but I doubt if they were meant to look like that place. Our Task Force commander must have had a good relationship with the Yanks to get their agreement to fit us into their base - there was absolutely no room for us. We squeezed our equipment into a radio room already bursting at the seams (although the Yanks had managed to fit a colour TV in).

Meals were taken in shifts so that wasn’t a problem.  Sleeping was.  Nobody minds sitting on a chair that others have sat on too but we had to share beds.  There were times when I came off shift dog-tired to find the Yank I hot-bedded with oversleeping.  Since we were guests, I could hardly complain so I sat there till he stirred and hopped out.

It never occurred to me really that there could be a problem in getting into a bed somebody had just left.  I mean how many times in your life would you ever have to do that yourself?  It had never happened to me before, except at home and that’s family, isn’t it?

None of us ever got off the mountain during the posting but the Yanks had regular days away.  My bed mate brought some “crabs” back with him and infested me.  The doctor told me they were often shared around but it would have been only fair to warn us in the beginning.  I got hold of my own bedding after that and slept on the floor, a little less comfortable but less exposed to the wildlife.

Back in Australia, crabs were the last things on people’s minds.  There was a Federal election to worry about with one of the main issues being National Service and the war in Vietnam.  Although it was the first election most of us had voted in, we couldn’t have cared less who was fighting over us at home even if there had been some way of following the campaign.  The milk run chopper made a special trip that day (25^th October) carrying a locked ballot box and some paperwork to help us decide which candidates belonged to the party of our choice.  It also brought and took away our mail which was probably more important to us.

There was little chance of relaxing up there - too many people were crowded together.  A basketball court had been set up on the larger helipad but time on court was restricted to those who were black and over 1.8 metres tall.  That qualifying standard was beyond us (John Bell was barely 165cms and I wasn't much taller than that.)  We kept to ourselves most of the time as the Yanks were almost unfriendly and mostly stoned.

Marijuana was smoked as commonly as Camels.  It reached the post on every incoming chopper, its reeking fumes competing thickly with the clean mountain air.  The men slobbed around like dazed hippies, seemingly without any attempt by the commander to whip them into shape.

A story was told (confirmed recently by a Yank over the Net) of a commander in the recent past who had searched every chopper and every man arriving, confiscating the stuff.  The supply ran out, the men went crazy.  One day, he was catching a siesta in his hut when a grenade came through the window and clattered on the floor.  He managed to chuck it back outside, following it up with his Armalite on automatic.  The GI druggies fell about among the rocks, unhurt but disappointed that they hadn’t bumped him off.  He decided to have second thoughts about making soldiers out of addicts, hence the hopeless situation when we arrived.

How could a mob like that ever hope to win the war?

We started thinking about the consequences of an enemy attack.  The soldiers wouldn’t be able to fight but at least they wouldn’t be able to turn tail either, hemmed in as they were.  There was no escape from the mountaintop - it was like being caught on an island. We knew we should stick together in an attack though and not be split up in different bunkers.

Rumour was, an NVA regimental hospital was dug in lower down the slopes. The Yanks were supposed to know about it but turned a blind eye provided the enemy kept away from our communications set-up.  No patrolling of any sort was done lower down than the fields of fire which had been cleared for a hundred metres or so all round the perimeter.  I didn’t believe the story, especially the bit about the enemy sticking to an agreement to leave us alone.  The base was strategically vital to the Yanks, and its defence was a joke.  If I had been Ho Chi Minh, its destruction would have been a priority.

We were permanently edgy about our safety - the feeling was even worse than when I was with the 2/52 ARVN Battalion.

Meanwhile five SAS troopers were somewhere below us in the jungle, keeping tabs on enemy movements down a track.  An Iroquois had briefly hovered over a grid reference while they abseiled down through the canopy with their equipment and disappeared into the jungle.  We were their only contact with help, should they get sprung.

Our slight doubts about the quality of their Morse transmissions disappeared with the very first message.  It came as smooth as silk, as good as the machine we had trained on.  The trooper was sending it on a keypad strapped to his knee, hardly ideal conditions.  Messages came coded in groups of five letters, tapped out at times decided by the patrol leader.  The code was not known to us.  We merely had to read it back to the patrol for confirmation, then send it on to Nui Dat.

The information was evidently quite detailed about numbers of enemy and the quality of their equipment.  Planning was then commenced to counter his movements later on some distance down the track.

The first patrol survived its two weeks as war-time peeping toms to be replaced by another patrol.

We manned the sets around the clock although the messages were coming through at regular times.  There was always a chance of the patrol being spotted though which would have required urgent action to get them out.

The only excitement to be had really was when the resupply choppers came in.  Heavily loaded Chinooks, slings hanging below, approached warily with their heavy thump-thump sound.

Suddenly, the frothing red stream registered and he veered his huge machine away in a screaming uuey.

I couldn’t believe the steady rhythm of his key work.  We relayed the message immediately on the SAS network.

A Bushranger Light Fire Team and an Iroquois were sent in after the patrol. The flight took some time to arrive but they found them intact.  An estimated battalion sized NVA unit was hot on their heels as they retreated down their prepared route.

With the gunships blasting away in cover, the Iroquois hovered over the treetops, ropes lowered with loops on the ends.  The troopers had slipped into their harnesses which they attached to the ropes.  They were lifted away, still firing at the enemy.

We sat there, communicating with further patrols, thinking about the trooper who’d lost his life and of his family mourning him back home.