Combat Battalion: The 8th Battalion in Vietnam

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COMBAT BATTALION

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92 CHANDOS STREET ST LEONARDS NSW 2065

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COMBAT BATTALION The Eighth Battalion in Vietnam Robert A. Hall

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First published in 2000 Copyright © Robert A. Hall, 2000 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 9 Atchison Street St Leonards NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 E-mail: [email protected] Web: http://www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Hall, Robert A. (Robert Anthony), 1947 . Combat battalion: the Eighth Battalion in Vietnam. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 1 86508 229 5. 1. Australia. Army. Battalion, 8th. 2. Vietnamese Conflict, 19611975Regimental historiesAustralia. 3. Vietnamese Conflict, 19611975Personal narratives, Australian. I. Title. 959.70434 Set in 11pt MBembo by DOCUPRO, Sydney Printed by SRM Production Services Sdn Bhd, Malaysia 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


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This book is dedicated to the men of 8RAR and to the women who loved them. In particular, it is dedicated to the memory of: edication

Private Eric Gould, D Company, KIA 21 December 1969 Private Victor Wagstaff, Support Company, KIA 29 January 1970 Sergeant Douglas Baker, Support Company, KIA 25 February 1970 Private Barry Munday, A Company, KIA 28 February 1970 Private Philip Richter, A Company, KIA 28 February 1970 Private Timo Pesonen, A Company, KIA 28 February 1970 Private Larry MacLennon, A Company, KIA 28 February 1970 Private Garry West, A Company, DOW 28 February 1970 Sergeant William Hoban, BEM, A Company, KIA 28 February 1970 Corporal Robert Jackson, A Company, KIA 28 February 1970 Corporal James Barrett, A Company, KIA 28 February 1970 Private John Bressington, B Company, KIA 6 March 1970 Private Stephen ODal, B Company, KIA 6 March 1970 Private Daryl Poulsen, A Company, KIA 3 April 1970 Private John McQuat, C Company, KIA 30 April 1970 Private Philip Earle, D Company, KIA 1 May 1970 Lance Corporal Phillip Goody, D Company, DOW 1 May 1970 Sergeant Alan Ahearn, D Company, DOW 14 May 1970

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Contents Content

Maps, figures and tables Illustrations Terms and abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction

viii x xi xv xvii

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

1 17 41 77 100 118 149 174 197 216 236 255

Getting ready: 8RARs genesis and makeup A hostile environment . . . 8RAR operations: finding the way to pacification The life of the infantryman Patterns in combat Three fire fights: life on the two-way range The waiting killers Friendly fire The enemy within Forces of cohesion and disintegration Discipline Tours end

Notes Sources and bibliography Index

263 296 302

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Maps, figures and tables Map

figure and table

MAPS 1 Phuoc Tuy Province 21 2 Operation Hammersley: the situation on the night of 18/19 February 1970 51 3 Operation Phoi Hop: 8RAR ambushes, 719 April 1970 63 4 11 Platoon, D Company: friendly fire incident, 18 February 1970 180 5 C Company and elements of B Squadron, 3 Cavalry Regiment: friendly fire clash, 2 July 1970 186

FIGURES 1 Organisation of an Australian infantry battalion 2 8RAR contacts: ranges of engagement

3 106

TABLES 1 2 3 4

1ATF infantry and VC/NVA contacts, casualties and loss rates 44 8RAR and VC/NVA contacts, casualties and loss rates 45 Ratio of cartridges to casualties: two Australian battalions 108 Enemy weapons feared most by 8RAR soldiers 111 viii


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ix Maps, figures and tables

5 Weapons causing casualties: 8RAR 6 Use of weapons in fire fights: 8RAR 7 Average enemy and friendly strength in contacts: 8RAR, November 1969 to November 1970 8 AWL and other offences against manpower: four infantry battalions 9 Alcohol and drug related offences: four infantry battalions 10 Sleeping on picquet and offences relating to weapons: four infantry battalions


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111 115 117 243 244 251

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Illustrations llu tration

Departure Mount up! Operation Hammersley Searching for prints Arms cache Commanders Fire mission Lookout Reading the signs Dressed to kill Patch up Back to the Dat Ever alert Jungle patrol Honing skills Daily ritual Issuing orders The awful results of combat Smoko Warhorse Deaths scoreboard Aftermath High praise Mates The soldiers boozer Going home

13 46 49 50 56 61 79 80 83 86 92 98 101 104 109 113 135 143 170 187 200 213 214 219 244 256 x


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Terms and abbreviations Term

AATTV AFV AHQ AIF AK47 ALSG AO APC A/Q Armalite ARU ARVN ATF AWL AWM B52 BC CCOSC CG CGS Chicom Chieu Hoi

and abbreviation

Australian Army Training Team Vietnam Australian Force Vietnam (Saigon) Army Headquarters (Canberra) Australian Imperial Force 7.62 mm assault rifle of Soviet bloc or Chicom manufacture (First) Australian Logistics Support Group Area of operations Armoured personnel carrier Administration and Quartermaster See M16 (First) Australian Reinforcement Unit Army of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) (First) Australian Task Force Absent without leave Australian War Memorial US heavy bomber Body count Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee Commanding General Chief of the General Staff Chinese communist Psychological warfare program aimed at encouraging VC to rally to the South Vietnamese side xi


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xii Combat battalion

Claymore CO COMAFV Comd COMUSMACV CORDS CP CQMS CRW CSM CTZ DAQMG DCGS DOW FFV FGA FO FORS FSB FSPB FWMAF GP GVN H&I HC HE HMAS HQ KIA Lcpl Lt LZ M1 carbine M1 Garand M16

Command detonated directional mine Commanding Officer Commander Australian Force Vietnam Command or commander Commander, United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support Command post Company Quartermaster Sergeant Counter-revolutionary warfare Company Sergeant Major (III) Corps Tactical Zone Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General Deputy Chief of the General Staff Died of wounds (II) Field Force Vietnam Fighter ground attack Forward observer Field Operational Research Section Fire support base Fire support patrol base Free World Military Assistance Forces General purpose Government of Vietnam (South Vietnam) Harassing and interdiction Hoi Chanh; one who has rallied to the South Vietnamese side under the Chieu Hoi program High explosive Her Majestys Australian Ship Headquarters Killed in action Lance Corporal Lieutenant Landing zone Light, semi-automatic rifle of World War II vintage manufactured by the US Semi-automatic rifle of World War II vintage manufactured by the US Lightweight 5.56 mm automatic rifle, also called Armalite


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xiii Terms and abbreviations

M16 mine M26 M60 M72 M79 M203 MACV MATT MID MM Nasho NCO NDP NLF NVA OC PF Picquet PSDF Pte PTSD PW RAAF RAE RAR RAR/NZ R&R R&C Reo RF RPD RPG RNZA RSM

Anti-personnel mine of the jumping-jack variety HE hand grenade of US manufacture General purpose machine gun of US manufacture Light anti-tank rocket with a 66 mm warhead of US manufacture often used against bunkers or in an anti-personnel role 40 mm grenade launcher M16 rifle fitted with a 40 mm grenade launcher Military Assistance Command Vietnam Mobile Advisory and Training Team Mentioned in Dispatches Military Medal Commonly used contraction of National Serviceman Non-commissioned officer Night defensive position National Liberation Front North Vietnamese Army Officer commanding Popular Force (RVN territorial units) Sentry Peoples Self Defence Force (RVN local units) Private Post-traumatic stress disorder Prisoner of war Royal Australian Air Force Royal Australian Engineers Royal Australian Regiment Royal Australian Regiment/New Zealand (signifying a battalion of the RAR with an attached NZ company) Rest and recreation Rest and convalescence Soldier joining a unit as a reinforcement Regional Force (RVN regional units) Light machine gun of 7.62 mm calibre of Soviet bloc or Chicom manufacture Rocket-propelled grenade (the VC/NVA equivalent of the M72) Royal New Zealand Artillery Regimental Sergeant Major


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RVN RVNAF SAS SKS SLR SOP(s) TAOR VCI VC/NVA VD VVAA WIA WO

Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces Special Air Service Semi-automatic 7.62 mm rifle of Soviet bloc or Chicom manufacture Self-loading rifle (of 7.62 mm calibre) Standing operating procedures Tactical area of responsibility Viet Cong Infrastructure Viet Cong/North Vietnamese Army Venereal diseases Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia Wounded in action Warrant Officer


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Acknowledgements Acknowledgement

This study of 8RAR in Vietnam was aided by an Army History Research Grant which enabled me to visit and interview 8RAR soldiers in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. The Army also granted me access to files still in the closed period, which are held at the Australian War Memorial. I am greatly indebted to the Army for this assistance. The staff of the Australian War Memorial, particularly Rick Pelvin and others in the research section and also Bill Fogarty and Ian Affleck, were, as usual, enormously helpful. The 8RAR Association has been strongly supportive throughout the many years this project has been under way. The Association put me in touch with numerous mentoo many to list individuallywho answered questionnaires, provided photographs, letters or diaries, or patiently endured my interviews. This book would not have been possible without their support and their candour. The Australian Defence Studies Centre, University College, Australian Defence Force Academy has been an understanding employer during the project, allowing me to take a year off my contract in 1997 so that I could concentrate full time on research and writing. The University College was supportive in other ways too. Christopher Dawkins at the ADFA library provided valuable assistance in my research and Bev Lincoln of the School of Politics helped with the maps and illustrations. xv


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There are a number of individuals to whom I owe special thanks. John Dwyer, Trevor Taylor, Chad Sherrin, Tony Jucha and John and Thea Norris read an early draft of the book and gave me invaluable feedback. Lieutenant General John Coates (retired) provided me with his perspective on my chapter on friendly fire. Jeff Grey and Ian McNeill gave enthusiastic support and encouragement which started the project and helped to maintain its momentum. Greg Lockhart translated an important Vietnamese source for me. Copy editor Devon Mills and production editor Lynne Frolich assisted in the final stages. However, there are three people who deserve particular thanks: John Norris for the painstaking hours he put into building a complete nominal roll of the battalion and into his analysis of the company roll books; Graeme Cheeseman for the endless hours he put into encouraging me and for the good humour he displayed in listening, for the hundredth time, to my prattlings about the project; and lastly my wife Madeline, without whose support I could not have continued. Though I owe all these a debt of gratitude, still the work is mine and any errors or misjudgements it contains are my responsibility. Robert Hall Canberra, 2000


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Introduction Introduction

The infantry’s role in combat is to close with the enemy and to kill or capture him. Behind this cold appraisal of the infantry’s brutal task lies the flesh and blood of men. Despite the popular fascination with military technology it is the men—and particularly the men of the infantry—who must go forward in combat and exert their will over their enemy. The human factor is an essential ingredient of successful infantry combat operations. Yet an understanding of the human factor in combat has seemed strangely absent from Australian military historiography of the Vietnam War. Many of the unit histories of the Vietnam War tend to recount a series of operations without attempting to explain their implications for the men who fought through them. Some are the battalion Operations Log and Commander’s Diary turned into running text. To this limited foundation is sometimes added the recollections of those who were there. But typically these histories follow the chronology of the Commander’s Diary in lock-step: detail piles upon detail according to chronological order. Though particular incidents scream for a digression that would provide context or deeper analysis, the authors find it impossible to escape the tyranny of chronology. This approach may form a useful record for those who served with the batallion and whose memories provide the context, but it fails to explain to a broader readership what infantry operations in Vietnam were really like. The personal dimension is often overlooked.1 xvii




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xviii Combat battalion

Some oral histories do deal with the human face of war. Gary McKay’s Vietnam Fragments: An Oral History of Australians at War 3 and Delta Four: Australian Riflemen in Vietnam4 are good examples. But these tend to dispense with documentary evidence altogether, often leaving the contributors’ statements beached without a broader context to float in. Others, like Deborah Challinor’s Grey Ghosts: New Zealand Vietnam Vets Talk About Their War,5 draw on numerous interviews and published sources but apparently make no use of records held in either Australian or New Zealand archives. There is also a tendency for the unit histories published so far to memorialise the units that are their subject.6 But history is not a memorial. Good history requires that critical and fearless evaluations be made and that understanding, not memorialisation, is the aim. It demands that an attempt be made to confront reality because, no matter how depressing or negative this may be, it is the first step towards coming to terms with it. This book offers an account of the men of a particular Australian infantry battalion—the Eighth Battalion—in combat in Vietnam from November 1969 to November 1970, at the height of the Australian commitment there. It aims to provide the soldiers’ witness together with the documentary evidence. While the record of those who participated in the events is important, their view can often be narrow and their memory faulty. Memory provides an imperfect record: the object of memory is not to record events but to make emotional sense of them. Therefore the accounts given by eyewitnesses need to be treated cautiously. In this book, as far as possible, I have used the recollections of several eyewitnesses to each of the events I describe so that each verifies the recollections of the others. I have also drawn upon records held by the Australian War Memorial to provide depth and perspective.7 As I interviewed ex-members of 8RAR for this book many said they wanted the book to ‘tell the truth’ about combat in Vietnam. The truth is notoriously difficult to pin down. I took this plea to mean that they wanted their role in Vietnam to be explained; that the book should penetrate beyond the description of operations typical of many unit histories and that it should not avoid the unpleasant incidents that accompany war and which occasionally were part of their experiences in Vietnam. I have written the book with these aims in mind but the truth remains elusive. Whatever truth is to be found here is mine. It may not represent the truth as others see it. Still, I have done what I can to provide an accurate account of




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xix Introduction

8RAR soldiers in combat. Many 8RAR soldiers will find here events that they remember; they will also learn for the first time of other events that influenced their lives. They will see the battalion’s operations set within the broader contexts of US strategy and the politics of the Australian high command. They will see their performance compared to other Australian battalions and also to that of the US Army. They will see their experience of combat recorded so that later generations of Australian soldiers can learn from it. This book approaches the history of 8RAR in Vietnam not chronologically but thematically. In so doing, it attempts to give the reader a better understanding of both the nature of land warfare as it was conducted in Vietnam and the central part that the human factor plays in it.




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1

Getting ready: 8RAR’s genesis and makeup Getting ready: 8RAR’s genesis and makeup

Raised on 14 July 1966, 8RAR was one of those battalions of the Royal Australian Regiment that were created specifically for the war in Vietnam. The Australian Army’s commitment to the war began modestly in 1962 with the dispatch there of 30 members of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam. But by 1965, as the political and military situation in Vietnam deteriorated, the Australian government decided to increase its commitment. In January 1965 Senator Shane Paltridge, the Minister for Defence, announced the expansion of the AATTV to 100 men.1 In April the government announced the deployment to Vietnam of 1RAR and in August the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, said that Australian combat forces in Vietnam would be expanded to a battalion group comprising an infantry battalion and supporting artillery, engineer, medical, logistics and other units. In March 1966 the government stated that the battalion group would be increased to a Task Force. Meanwhile, the government decided that the Army’s voluntary system of recruitment would not produce sufficient new recruits in time to meet the Army’s growing commitments. On 24 November 1964 the National Service Act was passed by parliament and a few days later it was amended to permit the overseas deployment of conscripts. The new scheme was selective: birthdates were used to select, from the population of 20-year-olds, those who were to serve in the Army. Of 804 286 young men who registered for National 1

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Service, only 63 790 would actually serve in the Army. Under the scheme, conscripts were required to serve two years full time in the Australian Regular Army, followed by a period of further service in reserves.2 Initially, Aborigines and non-naturalised migrants were exempted from call-up but, following strong public criticism of the exemption of migrants, the government made migrants liable for conscription in January 1967. The first conscripts under the scheme began training on 1 July 1965. Against this background, 8RAR was raised. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel J. O. Langtry, a small nucleus of officers and NCOs gathered to which, in time, were added drafts of private soldiers, NCOs and officers, as what began as a mere collection of individuals developed into the makings of a battalion. A critical part of this transformation was the arrival of a draft of over 100 men from 1RAR. Many of these men brought with them the high standards of professionalism of 1RAR and the experience of recent service in Vietnam. Many had served together for years before the Vietnam War and they formed a foundation for the new battalion’s esprit de corps. A second, smaller draft, mainly of corporals and some sergeants, came to the new battalion from the Infantry Centre where they had been instructors. These men were to be invaluable in training the battalion for its role in Vietnam. Their quality was remarkable. By the time 8RAR was deployed to Vietnam most had been promoted to sergeant or staff sergeant. Later in their careers several would be commissioned while others achieved promotion to warrant officer class one. One man, ‘Lofty’ Wendt, was to become RSM of the Army. Together with Colonel Langtry’s personality, these men were to leave their stamp on the early character of 8RAR. The early days of the battalion were tumultuous. Langtry was to write of them: Companies were commanded for months by second lieutenants, and away from base for months on end. Wonderful work was done by our senior NCOs, many of whom commanded platoons for twelve months and more. We trained seemingly endlessly through the rain forests around Canungra; put up and pulled down tented camps at Greenbank . . . looked after cadets. We raised and trained specialist platoons, only to have them reposted to higher priority battalions preparing for Vietnam. Months were spent at Greenbank training almost all of our junior NCOs and conducting Corps training for national servicemen. It was a time for endless innovation, improvisation and hard work.3


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3 Getting ready: 8RAR’s genesis and makeup

Organisation of an Australian Infantry Battalion

Figure 1

INFANTRY BATTALION Bn HQ 5 Offrs & 31 OR 5 x 3/4 ton vehs 2 GPMG 4 Admin Coy

SP Coy

5 Offrs & 84 OR 8 x 3/4 ton vehs 1 x ton veh (garage) 5 GPMG

Rifle Coy

7 Offrs & 166 OR 11 x 3/4 ton vehs 10 GPMG 6 mor 8 MAW

HQ

HQ

1 Offrs & 6 OR 1 x 3/4 ton veh 3 GPMG

5 Offrs & 118 OR 1 x 3/4 ton vehs 9 GPMG 2 MAW

HQ

1 Offrs & 12 OR 1 x 3/4 ton veh 2 GPMG

2 Offrs & 13 OR 1 x 3/4 ton veh 3

QM PI

Med PI

3 Offrs & 42 OR 5 x 3/4 ton vehs 1 x 3/4 ton veh (garage)

Mor PI 2 Offrs & 39 OR 5 x 3/4 ton vehs 4 GPMG 6 mor 81mm

Rifle PI

Sp Sect

1 Offrs & 36 OR 2 x 3/4 ton vehs FWSF

6 OR 2 MAW

Sig PI

Aslt Pnr PI

A Tk PI

1 Offr & 39 OR 2 x 3/4 ton vehs 1 GPMG

1 Offr & 31 OR 1 x 3/4 ton veh 8 MAW

1 Offrs & 33 OR 3 GPMG

Surv PI

1 Offr & 31 OR 2 x 3/4 ton vehs 3 GPMG

1 Offr & 14 OR (approx)

Summary

Source:

Offrs

OR

All Ranks

3/4 Ton Vehs

3/4 Ton Veh (Garage)

GPMG

Mor

MAW

37

753

790

28

1

53

6

16

The Division in Battle, Pamphlet No. 8, Infantry, 1969, Army Headquarters, Canberra, 1969, p. 5.

In January 1967 the battalion was warned for service in the Far East Strategic Reserve and preparations began for the move to Terendak Garrison near Malacca, Malaysia. By late 1967 the move had been completed and the battalion had begun training at its new home.




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The move was fortuitous. It removed the new battalion from the turbulence and disruption of the rapid expansion of the Australian Army in the early years of the Vietnam commitment and allowed it to focus, with few interruptions, on preparation for eventual combat. When it arrived in Malaysia, the new battalion was not performing well. It had had insufficient time to properly shake down, its administrative and quartermaster (stores) systems were not yet working properly and it had still to develop a set of standing operating procedures, or SOPs. Langtry, together with Major Max Mules, OC Admin Company, Captain Gerry Woodrow, Quartermaster, and later on Major Adrian Clunies-Ross, who was initially Operations Officer but subsequently battalion second in command, set about organising the battalion. Faulty administration could cause friction within the battalion which might waste valuable time and disrupt training for operations. Langtry and his team placed high priority on ensuring that the battalion had smoothly functioning standing orders for A/Q work. Battalion SOPs were adopted from 3RAR and modified by those in the battalion who had Vietnam experience. The battalion also received and widely circulated ‘lessons from Vietnam’ documents produced by other battalions, particularly 7RAR, after their Vietnam tours.4 Langtry encouraged members of the battalion to see the unit as a family. This was assisted by the battalion’s isolation from Australia and by its membership of a Commonwealth Brigade in which the other battalions, against which the men of 8RAR would naturally judge themselves, were from Britain and New Zealand. He endeavoured as far as possible to fill vacant NCO positions by promoting soldiers within the battalion rather than accepting NCOs posted in from Australia, some of whom, in Langtry’s experience, lacked quality. This did not go unnoticed by the soldiers who saw that good performance was valued and rewarded. This approach was extended to discipline, and in time most soldiers came to adopt a sense of individual responsibility and to recognise the battalion as a team; offences committed by one man reflected badly on the battalion as a whole. Throughout, Langtry’s emphasis was on a low-key professionalism. By the time the battalion completed its tour in Malaysia it had transformed itself into a well-trained, cohesive and smoothly functioning unit. Clunies-Ross recalled: When I arrived in January 1968, the battalion was in an early stage of development and had not fully settled down. By the time we left Malaysia even the Brits conceded that we were the best battalion in the Brigade.


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On the final Divisional exercise we performed better than anyone else. An officer at Brigade Headquarters said to me: ‘You fellows have had a transformation from quite shaky when you arrived to without a doubt the best battalion in the field.’ This was a great tribute from my point of view, particularly to the CO, but also to the battalion as a whole.5

Warned for service in Vietnam, the battalion returned to Australia in April 1969. The tempo of training and preparations for deployment to Vietnam quickened. Langtry relinquished command to Lieutenant Colonel Keith O’Neill. Those who would go with the battalion to Vietnam replaced other officers who had nurtured the growth and development of the battalion through the early days and the Malaysian deployment. Some foundation members of the battalion, like RSM Joe Lee, Captain Gerry Woodrow and the second in command of A Company, Captain John Dwyer, were to stay with the battalion through its deployment to Vietnam. The battalion was brought to near full strength with drafts from the 13th, 14th and 15th National Service intakes.6 Unlike previous drafts, the 148 men of the 15th intake were posted direct to 8RAR following their basic training, and 8RAR rather than the Infantry Centre conducted their Corps training. 8RAR was to be manned to meet a Vietnam establishment of 795 all ranks of whom 50 per cent were to be National Servicemen. Generally, support and administrative companies, with their specialists who required more lengthy training, had greater than 50 per cent of regular soldiers, while rifle companies had a compensating greater than 50 per cent representation of National Servicemen. A program of intense training was begun. Specialist training for the battalion’s mortarmen, signallers, assault pioneers and anti-tank platoon members was conducted while the rifle companies concentrated on fine tuning their skills in infantry minor tactics and marksmanship. The ‘lessons learnt’ documents that came to 8RAR from battalions already in Vietnam, as well as O’Neill’s own discussions and observations during a reconnaissance visit to Vietnam, helped to focus the battalion’s training on the particular tactical problems the men were likely to encounter there. Training particularly dealt with attacking the enemy in his fortified jungle camps or ‘bunker systems’, patrolling, ambushing and security. Personal skills of weapon handling, marksmanship and concealment were honed. Intensive training at Enoggera and in the State forests and Army training areas around Brisbane culminated in company and battalion tactical exercises. During this period of preparation, each company




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underwent intensive training at the Jungle Training Centre, Canungra, ending in an arduous week-long exercise in the rainforest of the Wiangaree State Forest. The battalion command post group fine-tuned its procedures by deploying to Wiangaree for five weeks of on-the-job training while it controlled each company’s final exercise. Training climaxed in a major battalion exercise in the Shoalwater Bay Training Area designed to test the battalion under conditions as close as possible to those it would find in Vietnam. The [exercise] area was designed to represent Phuoc Tuy Province with the complex at Samuel Hill representing the Task Force Base at Nui Dat. Exercise Tropic Glow began on 27th September with 4RAR acting as enemy, preparing the Battalion for exercise Straight Kris which was designed to finally mould the unit into a cohesive force. From this final exercise the Battalion received excellent reports praising the fitness and morale of what was considered a highly trained, confident and professional force.7

It had been a long, hard road from July 1966, but the battalion was now ready for combat. On 17 November 1969 the main body of the battalion boarded HMAS Sydney at Hamilton Wharf in Brisbane for the journey to Vietnam. The next day the advance party departed from Eagle Farm airport to arrive in Vietnam the same day.

BATTALION PERSONALITIES The commanding officer of 8RAR, Lieutenant Colonel Keith O’Neill, 43, had joined the Army in 1945. He was a Duntroon graduate and had held appointments in a number of infantry battalions including 1RAR, where he had been a company commander and second in command during that battalion’s deployment to Malaya for operations in the Malayan Emergency. Fluent in French, he had served as Services Attaché in Cambodia from December 1964 till January 1967. Later he had served in the Directorate of Military Intelligence. O’Neill felt that, together with his service as a company commander during the Malayan Emergency, his experience in Cambodia had been invaluable for his later understanding of the Vietnam War. As a military attaché in Phnom Penh, I did a lot of work . . . with civilians, trying to get information, working with local Army of Cambodia officers, and I found that in Phuoc Tuy it was just the same sort of thing. Trying


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to get information from the HUMINT [human intelligence] side . . . You see, as a company commander in Malaya you were starting to think intelligence-wise. [The two postings were] absolutely invaluable.8

Graham Walker worked closely with O’Neill as both Adjutant, and later, company commander. He thought O’Neill was the ideal commander for the type of war 8RAR was to face in Phuoc Tuy Province. It was a complex war that demanded an intellectually rigorous approach— that of a thinker rather than a warrior. Particularly after 1968, the counterrevolutionary warfare (CRW) of the type Australia was fighting in Phuoc Tuy Province involved mostly small scale combat at the platoon or company level. Larger scale combat did occur from time to time but it was rare. These small scale combats did not usually require the intervention of the CO; they were best left to the platoon or company commander. Instead, the CO devoted most of his effort to planning future operations. This war called for subtlety, political as well as military acumen and, above all, thought. Walker remembered: [O’Neill] was what I always considered a thoughtful commander . . . His style was also one which . . . was very economical on casualties, because he was much more concerned about out-thinking the enemy than with confronting them . . . He had a good intellectual understanding of the war. He understood what kind of war it was and I think he operated accordingly, and therefore, I think, for that war he was an excellent commander.9

Walker contrasted O’Neill with other COs who possessed more overtly aggressive, even ‘gung-ho’, personalities perhaps more suited to large scale conventional operations: He wasn’t your classic battalion commander. He wasn’t your bloke who out-drank his company commanders at the bar or kept them there till the last one dropped . . . He didn’t have that kind of personality and . . . that’s why I say that he was a really good commander for that war. [There were disagreements but] the disagreements didn’t seem to me to affect anything operationally.10

O’Neill’s thoughtful approach to the war was given a relatively free rein in the absence of close oversight by the Task Force. O’Neill recalled: There was no Task Force concept [of operations], so battalions were let go to do what they wanted up to a point. As long as they were chasing the enemy and showing a certain amount of aggression they’d be let go.




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No-one pulled you up. But people would criticise you if you failed or something went wrong.11

A strong and highly experienced team supported O’Neill. Major Adrian Clunies-Ross, O’Neill’s second in command, was highly regarded throughout the battalion, competent and efficient. He had served previously in Vietnam as Senior Australian Advisor in the AATTV, he understood the war better than many and he had a strong tactical grasp. Major Noel Williams, the Operations Officer, coordinated the operational planning of the battalion and was responsible to the CO for the running of the battalion CP. Williams was the ideal foil for O’Neill. While O’Neill’s mind was on the broader issues and the conceptual analysis of operations, Williams paid meticulous attention to the details. Painstaking and thorough, Williams was adept at transforming O’Neill’s concepts into practical plans which ensured smooth operations. Like the commanding officer of a battalion, the personality of the company commander shapes the style of his command. A Company began the tour under the command of Major Vin Murphy, with Captain John Dwyer as second in command and Warrant Officer ‘Dusty’ Miller as the CSM. The three men worked together to weld the company into a highly cohesive unit. Murphy had previously served in the AATTV and had commanded a small battalion of Montagnard and Nung mercenaries he had recruited and, with a small team of Australian warrant officers, trained and led in combat. Murphy had been a free agent during his tour with the AATTV and he found that the more conventional, regimental soldiering of 8RAR was frustrating by comparison. Because of his extensive experience in Vietnam, in April 1970 he was posted as Task Force liaison officer to Headquarters II FFV. Murphy was replaced temporarily by Major Phil Pritchard; later by Major Graham Walker. Since joining 8RAR in December 1968, Walker had been the Adjutant and so had an intimate understanding of how the battalion and particularly O’Neill’s command group worked. Taking over a company and leading it on operations without the opportunity to mould its character through training is difficult, but Walker managed the process without problems. Major Mike Jeffery, OC of B Company, had served in the SAS as a platoon commander and later on detachment to the SAS Regiment in the United Kingdom as Operations Officer. He also possessed extensive experience in 2RAR, 3RAR and with 1PIR. An excellent company commander, he was O’Neill’s favourite. Major David Rankine commanded C Company. Rankine was tactically skilled and despite his


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firm approach to discipline was much loved by his soldiers. He was perhaps less outgoing than other company commanders and his relationship with O’Neill was not as close. Responding to his strong leadership and perhaps as a result of his relationship with O’Neill, C Company tended to be rather self-contained. That was the way Rankine liked it. Major Mal Peck, a nuggety, feisty character, was the flamboyant commander of D Company. For a time, Peck went armed with a pumpaction shotgun, but when that was ruled contrary to the Geneva Convention he switched to an M79 40 mm grenade launcher. His choice of weapons seemed to match his command style: aggressive, full bore, always willing to try the unusual. He was an excellent tactician but some of his idiosyncrasies, like banning the use of hexamine stoves on operations because the enemy might smell cooking fumes, were misunderstood by his soldiers and clouded their relationship with him. Major Phil Pritchard commanded Admin Company and, for short periods, A and C companies. Aged 46, Pritchard was a tough and experienced company commander. He had risen through the ranks and had previously served in Vietnam, briefly commanding a company of 1RAR. He was greatly respected throughout the battalion. Apart from Murphy’s replacement by Walker, these commanders remained in place from mid-1969 during pre-deployment training and throughout the battalion’s tour in Vietnam. They provided a stable, experienced platform on which the cohesion and professionalism of the battalion would rest. Each man’s career was strongly oriented towards Australia’s region, particularly Southeast Asia. Of these nine officers, all had previous service somewhere in the region. Eight had served in Malaya (or Malaysia) and four had already served in South Vietnam.12 Three, Williams, Jeffery and Walker, had served in other parts of the region including Sarawak, Sabah, Brunei, Borneo and Cambodia. Five had served in Papua New Guinea where, if they had not been at war, they were at least familiarised with the difficulties of jungle operations in areas with poor infrastructure. The professional orientation of these men was towards the conduct of counter-revolutionary warfare in Southeast Asia. Junior officers filled the roles of company second in command, Adjutant and platoon commanders. The Adjutant was the CO’s staff officer and attended to administrative issues, leaving the CO free to focus on operational planning. The role of the company second in command was to understudy the company commander and to oversee the smooth functioning of company A/Q work. Platoon commanders were usually lieutenants or second lieutenants (although the commanders of the signals and mortar platoons were captains). Mostly they were freshly minted




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infantry officers produced from the Officer Training Unit at Scheyville if they were National Servicemen, or from the Officer Cadet School at Portsea or the Royal Military College, Duntroon, if they were regulars. In either case they were young and eager but inexperienced. They were matched with platoon sergeants who were often older and more experienced than their officers. Platoon sergeants frequently commanded platoons when their officers became casualties. While company commanders frequently described the war as a company commander’s war, platoon commanders knew it was a platoon commander’s war. The latter were the officers who led their men into combat against the enemy. For men aged 20 to 24 or thereabouts they had tremendous responsibility. In contact with the enemy they fought the battle. They manoeuvred their sections, applied their tactical skills and called for fire support and, in the long days of patrolling with no contact, they kept their men motivated and ready for action. Platoon commanders took the orders of their company commanders and carried them out. The battalion’s NCOs were led by the RSM, WO1 Joe Lee, an impressive and gentlemanly figure who spent most of the battalion’s tour detached to a Military Assistance and Training Team and so was unable to influence the battalion during its tour. Each company had a company sergeant major (CSM) and a company quartermaster sergeant (CQMS). CSMs were their company commanders’ right hand men. They were responsible for discipline and the control and distribution of ammunition, but they also provided leadership to the junior NCOs and soldiers; all were experienced men whom the soldiers respected. The CQMSs performed the unglamorous but vital role of keeping their companies supplied with rations, water and the myriad other stores that were often needed. Section commanders had perhaps one of the most difficult tasks. As a corporal, each lived and identified with the nine other men in his section, yet he faced the onerous responsibility of personally leading them into combat. His decisions and actions might place their lives at risk. He was at the end of the line, required to carry out the orders issued by his platoon commander.

SLICE OF AN ARMY While the battalion’s leaders were important, its soldiers were its foundation. Nominally a ‘regular’ unit, the battalion was heavily popu-


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lated with ‘citizen soldiers’—National Servicemen—and so (perhaps) in some ways it was closer to the AIF tradition than 1RAR had been when it deployed to Vietnam in 1965. These ‘civilian’ connections were reflected in several ways. The 50 per cent of National Servicemen in the battalion changed the battalion’s profile. Nashos were generally older, more mature and better educated than regular soldiers. However, although legislation of the time permitted 19-year-old regular soldiers to serve overseas on operations, some regulars were what was known at that time as ‘professional privates’—men who had joined the Army at 18 or 19 but who continued to serve as private soldiers into their late twenties or even thirties. Private Joe Nally, aged 32, and Lance Corporal Bob Venables, aged 28, were typical examples. Another, Gordon Hewett, enlisted in the Australian Army in 1968 aged 32, but he had served in the British Army in Suez, Borneo and Malaya before coming to Australia. Sometimes these men were father figures to their fellow privates, their maturity lending a steadying influence. But most regulars were much younger, usually 19 or 20. National Servicemen on the other hand were aged between 21 and 22, with a few, who had for one reason or another deferred their National Service obligation, aged between 23 and 25. In contrast to their regular army colleagues, almost all National Servicemen had been employed in some capacity before call-up. Les Wicks of D Company had been a butcher, Barry Stephens of C Company a policeman, Rod Scutter of B Company a plumber, Wayne Maschette of Support Company a teacher.13 These men had been plucked from their lives and flung into the Army yet they had bought with them a broader experience of the world than many regular soldiers had. In what seems a contradiction in terms some, like Neil Roberts, Noel Herbert, Paul Gallagher, Peter Crump, Peter Buxton and Keith Carl, had volunteered to be conscripted. And they were proud of the fact. Others, like Neville O’Shea, had extended their National Service obligation so that they could go with the battalion to Vietnam. Many National Servicemen recalled that in various ways they were given the option of avoiding a tour of duty in Vietnam. Peter Ball, a reinforcement who joined B Company, said that members of the 16th National Service intake were invited to allocate themselves to groups including those who wanted to go to Vietnam and those who didn’t. Peter Cousins who served in Support Company believed that every Nasho could have avoided service in Vietnam but that exercising the option might require some radical action like joining the Communist




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Party of Australia, becoming a practising homosexual or assaulting one’s platoon commander. He volunteered for service in the infantry: ‘The placement staff didn’t realise I was mad. [They] put me in infantry and sent me to a unit earmarked to go [to Vietnam].’ David Jones, who joined 8RAR as a reinforcement, recalled: ‘We were lined up and told that if we didn’t wish to go we didn’t have to. I would think that 95 per cent, apart from a few married men, wanted to go.’ Andrew Roberts, also a reinforcement, was officially warned for overseas service at Reinforcement Wing, Ingleburn. ‘The officer taking the parade stated that if for any reason we objected or didn’t want to go to Vietnam we could be exempted and each case would be considered.’ Those who had joined 8RAR before its deployment to Vietnam also had a choice. Jeffrey Sculley remembered: ‘There was a battalion parade about six to eight weeks before we went over and we were told if we didn’t want to go [we should] report to [our] platoon commander after the parade and they would have you replaced.’ But by then the cohesion created within the battalion during the lengthy period of intensive training had all but made it impossible for soldiers to opt out. While he felt that all Nashos had the option of not going if they chose to exercise it, one Nasho recalled: ‘There was a general feeling of great mateship and wanting to stay together and go.’ However, other Nashos have claimed that they had no option but to go. Rod Scutter who served in B Company tried to avoid going but went anyway. Derek Walsh of Support Company was given a range of options but he thought they were loaded against the Nasho. Allocated to the infantry, he was given the choice of joining one of three battalions, all of which were liable for service in Vietnam. ‘I chose 8RAR as I believed no-one could be so cruel as to bring a battalion home from Malaysia and then, shortly afterwards, send them to Vietnam’, he recalled. But Walsh hadn’t reckoned on the Army. And Bruce Neal felt he’d been caught in the same trap: ‘After Corps training I had a choice of four units. Each one was assigned to tour [Vietnam] at some stage during my National Service commitment.’ When they went to Vietnam, most 8RAR soldiers were politically conservative, favouring the Liberal and Country Parties.14 However, nearly one quarter had formed no political allegiance. Of those who favoured a particular political party, most believed that their participation in the war had not altered their political views though some, perhaps through the combined effects of their Vietnam experience and added maturity, found that their political views had changed. Paul Simson recalled being ‘very right wing’ before going to Vietnam, but


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Image rights unavailable

Departure. Hamilton wharf, Brisbane. While these two unidentified C Company soldiers appear pleased at the prospect of their imminent departure for Vietnam the faces of their loved ones reflect both pride and concern. (Photo courtesy of David Rankine)

confessed that after the war he was much more confused about its political complexities and inclined more towards the middle ground of politics. A few were highly politicised by their experience. Trevor Lynch, who reinforced 8RAR from 9RAR, was apolitical before Vietnam but he has always voted ALP since returning: ‘I believe in retrospect that Australian soldiers killed in Vietnam did not die for their country; they were murdered by the [Liberal/Country Party] government of the day.’ Others, like Tex Lyons who served in D Company, felt that one government was very much like another. Most soldiers reported that religious belief was not of great importance to them; they were predominantly nominal, not practising Christians.15 Nevertheless, most did claim a religion. Reflecting the historical patterns of the Army, in which Anglicans have been overrepresented compared with the civilian population,16 most men belonged to the Church of England. Roman Catholics were also well




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represented within the battalion.17 It is often said that ‘there are no atheists in the foxholes’, but while the prospect of combat may have resulted for some in a temporary turning towards faith, few men felt that their service in Vietnam changed their religious commitment in the long term. For every soldier who thought he had become more committed to religion as a result of the war there was another who claimed to have become less so. For example, Corporal Bob O’Callaghan of Support Company thought that if anything he was ‘less committed to religion after seeing that inhumanity’, but Corporal Brian Partridge of D Company felt that his participation in the war had strengthened his faith. 8RAR was well served by its two spiritual guides, Stan Hessey, the battalion padre, and Don Woodland, the Salvation Army representative. Both men performed outstanding service in assisting soldiers to cope with the disturbances of combat. Hessey held the classic Anglican view of war and peace which saw war as part of the human condition which cannot be legislated or wished into non-existence but must be faced and dealt with in a practical way. Hessey certainly did that. He moved frequently from company to company, meeting and talking with the soldiers, going on operations into the jungle, supporting the soldiers and comforting the wounded where he found them. Woodland, too, made frequent contact with the soldiers and his ‘Red Shield’ Landrover came under enemy fire several times as he travelled about the Province to contact platoons deployed on operations. But Hessey and Woodland could not be everywhere and, in widely dispersed operations, they were unable to visit many platoons. ‘Where were our padres in Vietnam?’ lamented Gordon Hewett. ‘You hardly ever saw them, and never around the lines.’ In January 1967 the National Service Act was amended to make non-naturalised migrants liable for the call-up. As a result, from 1967 till conscription ceased in 1972, the Australian Army tended to more closely reflect the changing patterns of ethnic origins of the Australian population following the post-World War II immigration program. If 8RAR was indicative of the Army as a whole, immigrants from northern Europe seemed particularly drawn to service in the Regular Army. Lance Corporal Joe Danyluk, born in Subiaco after his mother had emigrated from Poland in 1949, probably spoke for many when he said: The biggest thing from a Polish point of view was . . . we had a lot of pride being in the services, you know. To us, to serve your country was


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one of the big things. It’s not like something that you’ve got to do. We find it integrates you into that society.18

Other northern European immigrants seemed to agree. For example, regulars such as Corporals Ulf Liebich, Bruno Jaudzemis and John Smigowski and Lance Corporal Rudi Schwarschnik, were born in Germany, Corporal Paul Zaat and Private Wilhelm Veldkamp in Holland, Private Franz Hatzel in Austria and Private Timo Pesonen in Finland.19 But the full range of migrant origins tended to be represented among the Nashos. Lance Corporal Gerardus Van Haren and Private Weren Van Loon were born in Holland; Private Costas Constantinides in Cyprus; Privates Fabio Barcovich and Bozidar Ristic in Yugoslavia; Privates Carl Piazza, Carl Vassarelli, Luciano Sartori and Tito DiGiovanni in Italy; Private Alain Cossardeaux in France; Privates Helmut Gommermann, Alexander Dimitrijevic and Hans Katala in Germany. Black Australians were there too. Corporal Cliff Bond, an Aborigine from Eidsvold, Queensland, and Corporal Stewart Yow Yeh, a South Sea Islander, led their sections with distinction.20 Many of the private soldiers and NCOs of the battalion were of very high quality. Some were to give lengthy and exemplary service to the Army well beyond their time in 8RAR. By 1997 the Army’s Soldier Career Management Agency recorded that NCOs or private soldiers who had served with 8RAR in Vietnam had gone on to produce one lieutenant colonel, four majors, five captains, 20 warrant officers class one and 18 warrant officers class two.21 Private David Bennett of A Company, who entered the Army as a National Serviceman, and Private Raymond Salmon of Support Company, who was a regular, both rose to the rank of WO1. Private Peter Crump of D Company, also a Nasho, attained the rank of WO2. Sergeant Peter Buckney of D Company achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel and Corporal Klaus ‘Tanky’ Scheuermann of A Company rose to the rank of major. All these men displayed the outstanding professionalism and leadership during their time in 8RAR that was to later take them to senior NCO or commissioned rank. Many 8RAR men, like me, had fathers who had served in World War II. By strange coincidence, my father had served in the 2/8th Battalion from which 8RAR drew its heritage. Like many other 8RAR men I was raised on a diet of war stories about the attack on Bardia, the evacuation from Greece, the struggle in Crete and on the Kokoda Trail. The immigrant soldiers added a particular poignancy to these recollections. Major Phil Pritchard, the OC of Admin Company, had




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joined the British Army in 1942 and landed in Normandy on D Day as a private soldier in Number 6 Commando, which had 22 of its 64 men made casualties on the first day. Pritchard was later wounded himself. Warrant Officer Alex Von Kurtz of Support Company began his military career as a member of the Hitler Youth, defending Germany against Pritchard’s British Army. Joe Danyluk’s mother had survived six years in the Nazi concentration camps before migrating to Australia, where Joe was born. They joined many Australians who also bore an emotional legacy, albeit vicariously, of World War II. One man, Private Douglas MacArthur Hazell, even carried the memory of that war in his name. Whatever their origin, whatever their myths about combat and World War II, Vietnam was to measure them against their fathers.


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2

A hostile environment . . . A hostile environment . . .

By November 1969, when 8RAR arrived in Vietnam to replace 9RAR, the pattern of operations conducted by the First Australian Task Force (1ATF) was well established. Eight battalion tours had already been completed and 8RAR joined 5RAR and 6RAR, both nearing the end of their tour, to make up the three infantry battalions of the Australian Task Force. However, by 1969, the commanders, including those at battalion level, found that the war had become increasingly politically sensitive. The 1968 Tet offensive had so demoralised the American public that ‘Vietnamisation’—the progressive turning over of the war to the South Vietnamese and the phased withdrawal of American forces—had become US policy. It was clear that Australia would inevitably follow the US lead and withdraw its forces as well. The revelation of the My Lai massacre had undermined the moral authority of US and, by implication, Australian involvement in the war. Finally, domestic political opposition to the war in both the USA and Australia had increased considerably since the deployment of 1RAR to Vietnam in 1965. Not surprisingly, Major General K. Mackay, Commander Australian Forces Vietnam (COMAFV) from May 1966 to January 1967, thought that ‘the really important changes in command after the Second World War were in the political implications of command, and this development was most evident in Vietnam’. 1 In addition to the usual complexities of their area of operations and fighting the enemy, commanders now needed to consider the Australian public and 17




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their political representatives, the US command and the reactions of Australian soldiers.

THE POLITICS OF COMMAND COMAFV commanded all Australian forces in Vietnam, but 1ATF—of which 8RAR was a part—was under the operational control of the (US) Commanding General, II FFV. A directive issued by the Chiefs of Staff Committee spelt out broad conditions and roles of the employment of Australian forces, but its key paragraph described COMAFV’s role in relation to preserving the security of the Australian force and the actions that COMAFV could take if that security were threatened. It read: You are responsible for the safety and well-being of your force, and are to ensure that it is employed in accordance with the provisions of this Directive. Should you be allotted a task which in your opinion is contrary to the provisions of this Directive, endangers the national interests of Australia, or is likely to imperil unduly units of your command or any part of it, you are to report the situation at once to the Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee, with copies to the Australian Ambassador to the Republic of Vietnam and to each of the Chiefs of Staff, having first informed COMUSMACV of your intention and the reasons for doing so.2

Although the directive empowered COMAFV merely to report tasks which he thought not in the best interests of Australia or of his force, the political ramifications of doing so meant that in effect he possessed the power to veto such tasks. Frank Frost has pointed out that ‘given the close liaison maintained between the Australian headquarters in Saigon and the US command, it was no doubt possible for the Australian commander to make his views clear before the stage was ever reached of the US making a request to the Australians which was then formally vetoed’.3 COMAFV was likely to interpret this paragraph of his directive in accordance with his understanding of the political sensitivities being felt in Australia. For example, his assessment of tasks that might ‘imperil unduly’ the units under his command called for fine judgements about what might be an acceptable risk in a war fought for diplomatic ends rather than the defence of national sovereignty and in connection with which there was a rising tide of popular dissent at home. By 1969 the best commanders—at Task Force and COMAFV level—were those


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who understood that the war was a lost cause.4 They saw Australia’s involvement for what it was: a diplomatic gesture rather than a military necessity. They conducted operations accordingly, keeping casualties as low as possible while aiming to achieve limited military goals. A COMAFV who acknowledged to himself that the war was a lost cause would be more likely to use his power of veto over Australian operations in order to hold casualties down. Several senior Australian commanders doubted that the war would be won. Mackay, COMAFV from May 1966 to January 1967, had a better understanding of the war than most (including the Australian Ambassador) and according to D. M. Horner, ‘by the time he left the country at the beginning of 1967 had grave doubts about the outcome of the war’.5 Major General A. L. MacDonald, COMAFV from January 1968 to February 1969, had initially felt that the war was being won ‘but following Tet [1968] he had lost confidence in American intelligence assessments and had begun to doubt the outcome’.6 By the end of his tour he believed that the Department of Defence and the government were working to extract the Australians from Vietnam. MacDonald was replaced by Major General R. A. Hay, who considered that the Vietnamese could not survive on their own if the Americans pulled out as they had announced they would. His Chief of Staff, Colonel A. B. Stretton, returned to Australia at the end of his tour in 1970 ‘with the firm conviction that we had lost the war and that America was looking for a face-saving device to get out’.7 Commanders at battalion level had also to concern themselves with the politics of Australian involvement in the war and their conduct of operations. Keith O’Neill found himself dealing with political issues even before 8RAR had departed for Vietnam. On 17 November 1969, as 8RAR soldiers boarded HMAS Sydney for the trip to Vietnam, journalists hounded O’Neill seeking interviews with soldiers they thought were being sent to Vietnam against their will. To quash the idea O’Neill arranged with the ship’s captain that the journalists be allowed on board to interview any soldier they chose. He told the journalists that if they found any soldier who did not want to go he would have the soldier taken off the Sydney, without punishment. The journalists searched but could find no reluctant soldiers.8 In this climate of growing opposition to the war the government, and therefore the Australian higher command, was sensitive to adverse publicity surrounding the war. Most likely to attract adverse media attention were high battle casualties, casualties resulting from friendly fire, unlawful killings such as accidents, fraggings9 and ‘atrocities’, and other behaviour such as




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excessive drinking or drug use that suggested that discipline and control might be lax. But how and whether these issues would impact upon operations would depend on the politics of command.

PHUOC TUY PROVINCE Phuoc Tuy Province was to be the focus of 8RAR operations.10 The province (see Map 1) and the adjoining district of Vung Tau were located on the coast south east of Saigon. The geography of the province was in some ways ideally suited to the waging of revolutionary guerilla war: the major population centres (the provincial capital, Baria, and the major villages of Hoa Long, Long Dien and Dat Do), together with their surrounding rice paddi and gardens, were clustered centrally in the basins of the Song Dinh and Suoi Da Bang. Except for some isolated pockets of population—Xuyen Moc in the east and Binh Ba and Binh Gia along Route 2 to the north—the remainder of the province (about three-quarters of it) was largely unpopulated.11 The unpopulated bulk of the province was for the most part flat. It was covered in part by scrub similar to the vegetation of Queensland’s Shoalwater Bay training area that most Australian soldiers were familiar with. But mostly it was covered with a thick blanket of jungle, ideal for the concealment of the base camps and advanced camps of guerilla fighters. In some places this had been defoliated by ‘Ranch Hand’ missions, which had largely been phased out in Phuoc Tuy by November 1969. In other places land-clearing operations had cut ‘fire trails’ through the jungle in an effort to make the movement patterns of the Viet Cong more visible. Occasionally the infantrymen patrolling this vast sea of jungle would come across the sites of earlier battles where artillery and air attack had cratered the earth and blown down the trees. Opened to the light, these areas would be quickly reclaimed by the jungle, forming a tangle of water-filled craters, fallen trees and new growth for the soldiers to negotiate. Out of this flat, jungle-covered plain rose three main hill features. The May Tao hills to the north east of the province were about 30 kilometres from its main population centres and lay astride the border of Phuoc Tuy Province and the provinces of Long Khanh and Binh Tuy. The remoteness of the May Tao hills and their location at the intersection of three province boundaries, where coordination between GVN (South Vietnamese) or allied forces would be complex, made them ideal locations for Viet Cong support bases and training areas.


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Map 1

Source:

Phouc Tuy Province

Ian McNeill, To Long Tan: The Australian Army and the Vietnam War 1950–1966, 1993, p. 209.

To the north west of the provincial capital and only five kilometres distant was a hill complex made up of the Nui Thi, Nui Dinh and outlying Nui Thi Vai features. About nine kilometres south of the major population centres of Long Dien and Dat Do were the infamous Long Hai hills. Each of these hill features included rugged, junglecovered terrain, dense undergrowth, boulders, cliffs and caves as well as many streams providing year-round water. They provided the Viet Cong with ideal protection from observation and attack—many of the caves were impervious to even the heaviest air strikes—and both the Nui Dinh and Long Hai hills were within easy striking distance of the major population centres of the province. Along the south western border of the province were mangrove forests, also providing excellent concealed approaches to the populated centres. The Viet Cong and before them the Viet Minh had used the hills and mangrove forests for many years as base areas.




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Phuoc Tuy Province had relatively little land suitable for rice growing and therefore the population of about 100 000 was not large in comparison with other provinces. The main economic activities were fishing and rubber. Several large rubber plantations with their ordered fields of trees were hacked out of the jungle on each side of Route 2, the main road linking Phuoc Tuy to Long Khanh Province and running due north from Hoa Long. 1ATF, consisting of the combat and combat support elements of the Australian Army in Vietnam, had its base at Nui Dat in the geographic centre of the province and on the northern edge of the most densely populated area. Its presence acted as a partial barrier between the population and the enemy’s jungle camps to the north. 1ATF also occupied the ‘Horseshoe’, the rim of an extinct volcano located north of the village of Dat Do. The ‘Horseshoe’ dominated the surrounding countryside. The 1st Australian Logistic Support Group provided the logistic support to keep the units of 1ATF in the field. Its base was on the beach near the city of Vung Tau.

THE ENEMY Throughout South Vietnam the National Liberation Front (NLF) administered a parallel state which duplicated the GVN state and competed with it. In its ‘shadow’ system of government the enemy combined Phuoc Tuy and the neighbouring Long Khanh Province into what it called Ba Long Province. Within Phuoc Tuy the NLF administered four districts: Chau Duc, Xuyen Moc, Long Dat and Cau Su, with several ‘special zones’ with their own local administration— Baria Special Zone, Vung Tau Special Zone and Long Son, an island within a sea of mangrove forest (see Map 1). In Ba Long Province the enemy operated a number of so-called ‘main force’ units, manned by local Viet Cong as well as North Vietnamese Army personnel, and under the control of Military Region 7. The 274 Regiment operated along the northern border of Phuoc Tuy Province. Another main force unit, D65 Engineer Battalion, made up of about 65 per cent NVA, operated from base areas in the Nui Thi Vai hills against Route 15 linking Vung Tau to Saigon. It drew its supplies from the villages of Thai Thien and Phu My on Route 15. Both these main force units and others operating in the area from time to time were supported by 84 Rear Services Group, a logistic support organisation which kept


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the units supplied with food, ammunition, clothing, medical equipment and the other necessaries of war. Ba Long Province also contained two ‘local force’ battalions known as D440 and D445. D440 Battalion operated mainly from bases in the jungle to the west of Route 2 in what the enemy called the Hat Dich Secret Zone. D445 battalion operated and drew supplies in the populated areas of Long Dien and Dat Do and to the east of Route 2 to Xuyen Moc and beyond. It had long-established bases in the Long Hai hills. These were supported by a number of smaller and less aggressive local units operated from the NLF districts. C41 Company and the Chau Duc District Headquarters operated from the Nui Dinh hills and the Suoi Chau Pha valley with its focus on the village of Hoa Long. C25 Company and the Long Dat District Headquarters occupied bases in the Long Hai hills and their operations were directed at the villages of Long Dien and An Ngai. C70 Platoon and the Xuyen Moc District Headquarters operated in the vicinity of Xuyen Moc village in the east of the province. K44 Platoon and the Cau Su District Headquarters focused their attention on the rubber-producing areas along Route 2 in the north of the province. Below these local forces were about 26 village guerilla units supporting Village Party Chapters in various towns and villages throughout the province. Although the appellation ‘main force’ was applied by Free World Military Assistance Forces (FWMAF) to the large, aggressive and relatively conventionally structured enemy units which engaged allied troops in combat, in reality these minor village guerilla units and the Viet Cong Infrastructure, or political organisations they supported, were in a sense the enemy’s ‘main force’. As Robert Thompson, the British counter-revolutionary warfare expert and author, noted: In a People’s Revolutionary War, and Vietnam is no exception, the primary weapon is this underground organization within the population. The secondary weapon is the guerrilla forces which depend on the underground organization for all their requirements, but which, at the same time, support the advance of the underground organization into the heart of the threatened government and country. The political aim is, therefore, dominant and guerrilla operations are designed to achieve political rather than military results.12

It was this ‘primary weapon’ which conducted political activity against the GVN, including (with the support of village guerillas and if necessary the district and provincial units) politically motivated




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attacks on government officials such as district chiefs and their staffs, policemen, school teachers and so on. The political cadres involved also gathered intelligence about GVN and allied political and military intentions; collected, stored and distributed supplies; recruited new members for the guerilla units; and collected taxes to fund the continuing campaign. To the Australian soldiers these political cadres were known as the Viet Cong Infrastructure, or VCI. As Robert Thompson argued, the success of an insurgent movement depends ‘almost entirely’ on the activities of an organisation such as the VCI.13 This appeared to be the case in Vietnam. Evidence available at the time showed that the war in South Vietnam was supported by supplies and men brought in from the north, but was not dependent on them. Like many other places in South Vietnam, Phuoc Tuy Province produced sufficient rice, other food and supplies to support the population, the GVN (through taxes) and the Viet Cong (through taxes and direct supply). Contrary to the popular image of the Ho Chi Minh Trail as a major supply route into the south, US estimates showed that the enemy received only a small portion of its supplies—albeit critical ones like weapons and ammunition—from the north.14 Most of the supplies (food, clothing, medical equipment, etc.) came direct from the villages in the south or were acquired through the sale of food for cash which found its way to the VC who then purchased locally what they needed. By 1967 a RAND Corporation study for US intelligence stated that ‘the Viet Cong could purchase almost anything they wanted in Saigon by using various fronts and agents’.15 Rice supply was particularly crucial to the VC and NVA. At NLF provincial level and below, party finance and economic sections were responsible for setting and meeting rice quotas. Rice was acquired through a combination of taxation in food or cash, fund drives, purchase in markets and the NLF’s own farms. Stocks of rice and other food were stored in supporters’ houses in villages and in caches in the jungle. Provincial rice stocks might be held for 30 to 60 days and reserves of rice would be built up to support planned campaigns. Conversely, by controlling VC access to food, the FWMAF could control the size of the forces the VC could put against them. Reducing VC access to food could be achieved by crop destruction operations, by locating and destroying caches through searchand-destroy operations and, most importantly, by denying the VC its access to villages and controlling the movement of food through pacification operations.


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Australian commanders were well aware of the importance of food control as a method of controlling the size and effectiveness of the forces the VC/NVA could put in the field. In 1968 Brigadier S. C. Graham, Commander 1ATF from January to October 1967, wrote: . . . it would be an impossible task for the enemy to supply from out of country the complete daily food requirements of the large forces now deployed in South Vietnam. If we can prevent him augmenting significantly his supplies from in-country sources he must either fight to obtain his needs on ground of our choosing or else split down to small groups to forage.16

While food and other supplies came largely from the south, manpower was another matter. Beginning at least in 1959 and well before the arrival of major US and Australian units in South Vietnam, the North was infiltrating armed insurgents into the South. Guenter Lewy argues that by 1968 ‘North Vietnamese forces were estimated to constitute 71 percent of total communist combat strength in the South’.17 At the beginning of 1967 USMACV estimated that, despite US attempts to prevent it, North Vietnam was able to infiltrate about 8400 men per month into the South. The VC was able to recruit an additional 3500 men per month locally. This gave the VC/NVA an annual input of 142 800 men. For 1968, MACV raised its estimate of the annual input to 300 000 men. Despite high casualties being inflicted upon the VC/NVA, no attrition was taking place because infiltration and local recruitment exceeded losses.18

AUSTRALIAN CRW DOCTRINE AND EXPERIENCE By late 1969, when 8RAR arrived in Phuoc Tuy Province, the Australian Army had a well-established doctrine for the waging of counter-revolutionary war which was based on years of experience fighting communist terrorists in Malaya and Vietnam and on the more diverse experience of the British Army. This doctrine was not to be implemented slavishly but aimed to provide commanders at all levels with broad advice on how to deal with the problems of revolutionary warfare. According to the Army’s doctrinal pamphlet, Counter Revolutionary Warfare: Revolutionary warfare is a process by which Communism, using local and infiltrated supporters, destroys the whole fabric of the existing society so as to overthrow the established social order and constitutional government.




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It achieves this by propaganda, threat, blackmail, extortion, terrorism, murder and armed attack, aimed principally at the indigenous local authorities and designed to paralyse the armed forces by progressively committing them to defensive tasks . . . A revolutionary war . . . is an internal struggle without fronts or frontiers to seize control of the government of a country. The act of government ultimately depends on the acquiescence, if not the active support, of the people. The aim of both sides is to secure this . . . Counter insurgency operations are simultaneously political and military in their nature. There is no purely military solution.19

The pamphlet went on to make an important point: Insurgents have difficulty in surviving without civilian help. Civilians provide food, clothing and other supplies, hideouts and transportation; gather information; send warnings; act as home guards; give medical support. If support is not given voluntarily, guerillas will use terrorism to compel it.20

Although it sketched a handy general outline of CRW (counterrevolutionary warfare) doctrine, the pamphlet did not provide a good description of the particular counter-revolutionary war the Australian Army found in Vietnam. It tended to suggest, for example, that the insurgents would attempt to supplant a fully functioning government, whereas in Vietnam the government had not effectively established control in many places.21 It suggested that ‘civilians’ merely ‘helped’ the insurgency, when in fact the reverse was true; as described above, the political cadres—the VCI—were the core of the revolution and were ‘helped’ by the guerillas to achieve their political aims. Australian CRW doctrine called for the careful coordination of military and civil efforts in defeating insurgency through the establishment of a War Executive Council at the highest level of national coordination, with subordinate Area War Executive Committees at the provincial level. These coordinating committees were based on Malayan experience but were never achieved in Phuoc Tuy Province. In 1971 the Chief of the General Staff reviewed the Australian Army’s operational experience in Vietnam in his annual CGS Exercise. The review noted that ‘the task force never owned Phuoc Tuy Province nor did it enjoy the benign autocratic association with the Government [of South Vietnam] which was evident in the Malayan Emergency’,22 which permitted close coordination of military, intelligence and civil authorities and which


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the Army’s own CRW doctrine assessed as essential to the success of a CRW campaign.23 Even at the tactical level CRW doctrine applied imperfectly to the situation the Army found in Vietnam. For example, based on Malayan experience, CRW doctrine suggested that infantry attacks on insurgent camps would be easy and quick. The enemy would not concentrate in large numbers and would attempt to flee as soon as engaged. The infantry’s greatest problem would be preventing their escape. However, the VC and NVA proved to be a much more dangerous enemy. Their equivalent of the ‘insurgent camp’ was the bunker system, a complex of well-camouflaged weapon pits with overhead protection against artillery and air attack, providing mutual support and with prepared fire lanes, defensive mines and booby traps in which the enemy might be found in up to company strength. Far from fleeing, the VC/NVA would often stay and fight and Australian soldiers soon learned that an encounter with an enemy bunker system often resulted in a tough fight and casualties. Despite these and other shortcomings the Australian Army’s CRW doctrine did contain much broad guidance that could be applied to the war in Vietnam. For example, it argued that political and military operations should be coordinated, that achieving the support of the population was vital and that this was best won through ‘effective military and police operations against the revolutionaries and the insurgent political organization’.24 It also argued that the enemy should be cleared from a selected area, control achieved, and the population and local leaders won over, before the process was spread to adjoining hamlets and villages. According to the doctrine, the counter-revolutionary struggle should spread like a stain from a central point, eventually covering the entire country. It saw little value in operations that cleared the enemy from areas only to abandon those areas later. In this regard at least, Australian CRW doctrine closely followed the ideas of Robert Thompson. Apart from doctrinal publications like the Army’s pamphlet Counter Revolutionary Warfare, the Australian Army Journal carried numerous articles and book reviews addressing issues such as communism, security in Southeast Asia and guerilla warfare, as well as counter-revolutionary warfare.25 Moreover, by 1970 the Australian Army possessed a large number of officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers experienced in the conduct of counter-revolutionary warfare in Southeast Asia through their service in the Malayan Emergency and, later, South Vietnam. Some individuals even possessed experience from the closing




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months of World War II, when the skills of jungle warfare, patrolling and ambushing had been tested and refined. The Australian Army was thus generally well informed about the nature of CRW and the Vietnam War in particular, possessed a wealth of experience from its operations in Malaya, and had a useful doctrinal framework, which if not perfect was at least a basis upon which to build.

US STRATEGY TO WIN THE WAR: FROM ATTRITION TO PACIFICATION The Australian Task Force, of which 8RAR was a part, was under the command of COMAFV (who himself was under the command of General William C. Westmoreland, COMUSMACV). But the Task Force was under the operational control of the US Army’s Commanding General II Field Force Vietnam (II FFV). This formation was responsible for operations throughout III Corps Tactical Zone. Thus the Australian Task Force was obliged to accept orders and directives issued by its US superior commander and to fit itself into US strategy. This was sometimes difficult since Australian CRW doctrine differed markedly from the US strategy to win the war. For the Americans, the Vietnam War was far more significant than for Australia. The United States saw itself as the champion of the free world against expansionist communism. Communist expansion was checked for the moment in Europe but the communist victory in China, the Korean War and the Malayan Emergency were seen as evidence that it remained a dangerous possibility in Asia. To the United States, the Vietnam war presented an opportunity and a responsibility to check communist expansion in this quarter; to demonstrate US resolve and, by implication, send a message to the Soviet Union; to defend the doorway to further communist expansion into Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, India, Japan and the Philippines; to demonstrate the fruits of democracy in Asia; and finally, to demonstrate the strength of its own national will.26 When it was deployed to Vietnam the US Army brought with it a poor understanding of CRW. It had been successful in World War II and Korea by making maximum use of the massive firepower that its impressive industrial processes could bring to bear on the battlefield. It continued to prepare for mid- to high-intensity conventional war (and possibly nuclear war) against its foremost enemy, the Soviet Red Army, in Europe and not surprisingly brought these techniques and


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thinking to Vietnam. A characteristic of the US way of warfare that reached its apogee in Vietnam was the use of firepower to save manpower and casualties. Concern to minimise casualties reached new heights in the US military in the Korean and Vietnam wars and it tended to be an act of faith among US Army officers that massive firepower would achieve that aim. Yet the techniques of conventional war and the use of heavy firepower were inappropriate for CRW. In CRW the insurgents seek to avoid battle unless it is on their terms. They operate in small groups, well dispersed, coming together into larger units and formations for short periods to execute thoroughly planned attacks. They present few opportunities to be caught in the large scale manoeuvres of forces supported by armour and artillery that characterise modern conventional war. The massive use of firepower may have saved the lives of US soldiers (although this is arguable and in any case there may be better ways of doing this), but in doing so it also killed and wounded civilians and destroyed their property. It therefore lost, or made it much harder to win, civilian support for the GVN. As Krepinevich notes, ‘counterinsurgency operations place a premium on the protection of the population, and this often conflicts with the axiom of massive firepower liberally applied’.27 Nevertheless, the US Army in Vietnam followed these inappropriate techniques. It set out to fight the war it wanted, not the one it found in Vietnam.28 The predominance of conventional war thinking, a belief in the efficacy of massive firepower liberally applied and a lack of awareness of the subtleties of CRW were soon reflected in the strategy the USA intended would win the war in Vietnam. Unlike its Australian counterpart, the US Army believed the war in Vietnam was essentially a military rather than political problem. Prevented from taking the war to North Vietnam and convinced that its superior firepower and mobility would quickly overwhelm the enemy, MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) adopted a strategy of attrition. US Army units would seek to engage enemy main force units and formations in major battles away from the centres of population where US firepower could be freely applied and where the means of mobility in the US Army—tanks, APCs and helicopters—would enable the Americans to out-manoeuvre the enemy. General William C. Westmoreland, COMUSMACV, specifically rejected the use of US Army units in pacification roles aimed at providing villages with security against penetration by the VC.29 That job was to be left to




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the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), indigenous Regional Force and Popular Force troops, and the South Vietnamese civil police. The attrition strategy led to the US obsession with body count since it aimed to achieve that magical point where the number of enemy killed in any given period exceeded the enemy’s ability to replace them—the so-called ‘crossover point’. Substantial intelligence effort was spent in gathering data about NVA infiltration and local recruiting and the numbers of enemy KIA. Over time, body count became a measure of unit and command effectiveness and this led to the inflation of body count figures by many US units as their commanders strove to make the effectiveness of themselves and their units look better. Other inflationary pressures included the killing of civilians and double counting of bodies by two or more units involved in an operation. Inflationary pressures were thought to be roughly cancelled out by deflationary pressures such as the enemy removing bodies from the battlefield, wounded enemy leaving the battlefield and dying uncounted in the jungle30 and enemy being killed ‘remotely’, for example by artillery harassing and interdiction fire, or by helicopter gunship, under circumstances where a body count could not be carried out. But despite these deflationary factors, a US Department of Defense review of the data revealed that enemy body count figures were overstated by at least 30 per cent.31 In any case, attrition was a flawed strategy. It depended upon the US Army controlling the rate at which the enemy was killed in battle. The US Army was never able to do this because the enemy initiated 88 per cent of all engagements with US Army troops.32 This meant that the enemy could choose whether to initiate or avoid battle and hence could control the rate at which it accepted losses. The US strategy of attrition could never succeed on this basis. At least part of the reason why the VC initiated most of the engagements with the US Army was that they were seldom forced into battle. By attempting to engage the enemy in big battles in the jungle, the US Army allowed the VC the option of choosing to fight, or not, as they saw fit. Furthermore, the attrition strategy could not have succeeded for other reasons. Given the level of political commitment in North Vietnam to the war and the size of the pool of military age men there, the United States would have needed to achieve impossibly high ‘exchange rates’—the number of VC KIA per US KIA. Indeed, as early as 1969, a National Security Council study found that the enemy had the manpower to outlast the attrition strategy indefinitely.33 And it was always likely that the US was more politically sensitive to high


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casualties than was North Vietnam. Attrition was a failed strategy before it began. Following the 1968 Tet Offensive and Westmoreland’s replacement by General Creighton W. Abrams in July that year, the rhetoric of the US Army began to shift towards CRW rather than the ‘big battle’ approach that Westmoreland had favoured. A village security or pacification strategy had been proposed very early in the war34 but had received no support from MACV. The US Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support program, created in 1967, represented a first serious attempt at a coordinated pacification program and included efforts to improve population security through upgrading the South’s RF and PF units, reorganising and improving the civil police, reinvigorating the Chieu Hoi program and attacking the Viet Cong Infrastructure through the Phoenix program. This approach was boosted first by the 1968 Tet Offensive when the VCI exposed themselves to destruction and were decimated. The second significant change was the election of Richard Nixon, who replaced Lyndon Johnson as President of the United States in November that year. Under the Nixon administration, ‘Vietnamisation’ and phased American disengagement became official policy. By early 1969 General Abrams’ campaign plan proposed the termination of major commitments of US military resources to the war by 30 June 1972 and redirected the strategic thrust away from bringing enemy major units to battle, towards providing ongoing security to the population thereby permitting thecivil authority to expand its area of control.35 The intention was to turn away from attrition and ‘body count’ towards security for the people of South Vietnam as the measure of success or failure in the war. Abrams’ campaign plan failed largely because he was unable to overcome the organisational inertia of the US Army. Though some progress towards population security was made, the US Army continued to see bringing the enemy’s main force to battle, so that it could be subjected to attrition warfare, as the apotheosis of its role.36 By November 1969, the US Army had made some progress towards the adoption of what Australian military professionals of the 1960s and 1970s would recognise as a proper CRW campaign, but the Americans’ strategy remained overshadowed by their lingering obsession with the techniques of conventional war—particularly the use of massive firepower against major enemy units to achieve attrition.37 These remnants of the attrition strategy sat uneasily with the Australian Army’s comparatively well developed and understood CRW doctrine and with the




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wealth of practical experience of CRW operations among many of its officers, non-commissioned officers and regular private soldiers. They were to prevent Australian commanders from applying their professional understanding of CRW as they knew they should. Unlike COMAFV, who received an initial directive from General Sir John Wilton, the Chairman of the Australian Chiefs of Staff Committee,38 the commanders of 1ATF received no formal orders or mission from the Commander II FFV but did receive general directives. D. M. Horner described these as follows: In general terms [Brigadier Jackson, the first of the commanders of 1ATF] and his successors had to destroy or at least neutralize the enemy’s main and regional forces while at the same time dealing with the Viet Cong Infrastructure in the villages. The first task required conventional operations while the second required pacification and counter-guerilla operations.39

Between the time of the first deployment of Australian combat forces to Vietnam and May 1969, and in conformity with MACV policy, the focus of 1ATF operations was predominantly on ‘conventional operations’—mainly ‘search and destroy’ or ‘reconnaissance in force’ operations—against major enemy units deep in the jungle. The security of villages—or ‘pacification’ operations—was left to South Vietnamese (GVN) forces, particularly the RF, PF and PSDF. The Australian Task Force could participate in pacification operations but only when invited to do so by the Province Chief, who held sole responsibility for the security of the populated areas. Although 1ATF operations against major enemy units in the jungles of Phuoc Tuy Province and beyond were regarded as successful, their success tended to be judged in terms of Australian perceptions of the war. The enemy may have had a quite different view of their purpose, and of their ‘success’. To the VC/NVA, the real war was to be found around the villages. Most battles deep in the jungle, while preferably avoided and sometimes damaging, were to them a largely irrelevant sideshow. While successive Australian Task Force Commanders were aware of the necessity to provide security to the villagers—their considerable professional experience of CRW campaigns, their training and Australian CRW doctrine told them that this was the crucial issue—under operational control of the Commanding General II FFV they had little choice but to adhere to the operational directives they received. Some may have been seduced by the massive firepower and resources available to the US Army and hence may have fallen under the spell


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of attrition warfare and the ‘conventionalisation’ of a plainly CRW campaign. Others may have conceived of the war as two campaigns: a CRW campaign in the populated parts of South Vietnam, overlaid in particular areas (especially in I CTZ and along the Cambodian border in III CTZ) with a conventional campaign against large, aggressive VC main force units. The issue was particularly topical during Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell’s period as Commander II FFV. Ewell had previously commanded the US 9th Infantry Division, which operated in the Mekong Delta. According to Krepinevich, the 9th Infantry Division under Ewell’s command marked ‘perhaps the acme of the body count mentality’ and Ewell himself was known by some as the ‘Delta Butcher’ for his obsession with body count.40 Under his command the units of the 9th Infantry Division were encouraged to do everything possible to achieve high ‘exchange ratios’; that is, high ratios of enemy KIA to friendly KIA. The achievement of a high body count was taken by Ewell to be a measure of unit effectiveness and hence it became also a test of the unit commander’s professional competence. Ewell set body count quotas and threatened to relieve subordinate commanders if they failed to reach them. Such was the pressure on Ewell’s subordinates that many used the firepower at their disposal aggressively, sometimes recklessly, leading to the possibility of high civilian casualties. Others faked their figures rather than kill innocents.41 Ewell’s emphasis on body count matched the US Army’s existing approach to the war and on 2 April 1969 he was rewarded with promotion to Lieutenant General and command of II FFV. Once there, Ewell applied the techniques that had served him so well in the delta. Krepinevich notes that with Ewell’s elevation to this new command ‘it was evident that despite Abrams’ ‘‘new’’ strategy [with its emphasis on pacification], the rewards continued to flow to those who practised the art of war as prescribed by the Concept’.42 That is, to those whose focus remained on conventional mid-intensity war and a reliance on massive firepower to maximise body count and minimise friendly casualties. As might be imagined, Ewell was dismissive of the Australian approach to CRW with its emphasis on population security. He characterised the approach as ‘soft’. He wrote: The soft approach has been tried many times [in Vietnam] with a noticeable lack of success. The deceptive aspect of the soft approach was




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that it worked well on the surface for a period of months until the enemy organized a response and then retrogression set in. The Malaysian [sic] experience tended to support the soft approach as it was quite successful in that case. What the casual observer missed was that the Malaya insurrection was a relatively weak and soft Communist effort, whereas the Vietnamese effort was a real war made possible by massive external support and intervention. As a result the rules in Vietnam were almost the opposite from Malaya. This was graphically illustrated by the experience of the Australian Task Force. This fine outfit, one of the best in the theatre, had every advantage. It had Malaysian [sic] experience in the jungle, stabilized units, extensive training and so on. Yet its successes were based on innovation and its least productive efforts were based on Malaysian type operations.43

Many of the critics of Ewell’s approach were by no means ‘casual observers’ of military operations. As well as many Australian senior officers whose professional lives had been involved with the study and conduct of CRW, they included Sir Robert Thompson, arguably the world’s leading expert on CRW, and Ewell’s own commander, General Creighton W. Abrams. Although the specific practices of the Malayan Emergency would need to be modified to apply to Vietnam, the principles of CRW established there remained valid; a CRW campaign was primarily political, not military, and the focus of operations was the separation of the enemy from the population, not the engagement of main force units deep in the jungle. In Vietnam, enemy main force elements would have to be engaged to prevent them interfering with pacification operations. But the balance of effort was often too strongly in favour of finding and destroying main force units. Rather than occupying a central place in the strategy, security of the villages was seen as an afterthought, safely relegated to the most poorly trained, led and equipped troops—the RF and PF and the poorest of the ARVN units. The importance of internal security was recognised in Abrams’ 1969 MACV Strategic Objectives Plan, which placed new emphasis on the provision of security to the Vietnamese people thereby permitting the expansion of effective civil authority. This was to be the ‘key strategic thrust’.44 Abrams thought it especially important that the command move away from the over-emphasized and often irrelevant ‘body count’ preoccupation . . . In order to provide security for the population our operations must succeed in neutralizing the VCI and separating the enemy from the population. The enemy


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Main Forces and NVA are blind without the VCI. They cannot obtain intelligence, cannot obtain food, cannot prepare the battlefield, and cannot move ‘unseen’.

Ewell seemed unable to grasp the significance of this change. While he made rhetorical gestures towards pacification, for him it remained in the shadow of conventional military operations against main force enemy units.45 Ewell had been personally well rewarded as a practitioner of conventional war against the VC/NVA. No doubt this had made it difficult for him to make the transition to Abrams’ pacification strategy. Another factor may have been that the strategic nature of ‘pacification’ was not well understood. Indeed, Ewell tended to see pacification simply as ‘winning the hearts and minds of the people’. After visits to his subordinate commanders, including Major General R. A. Hay, COMAFV, and Brigadier C. M. I. Pearson, Commander 1ATF, during which he was assured that there were no ‘strings’ attached to the employment of 1ATF and that the Australian Task Force had no particular sensitivity to casualties,46 Ewell issued on 16 April 1969 a new directive to 1ATF. Superficially it conformed with Abrams’ strategic plan. The Task Force’s top priority was to be pacification. Improving the quality of RVN forces was second priority and ‘military operations’, that is operations against main force enemy units, third. But although Ewell’s rhetoric embraced pacification, he remained implacably committed to attrition. After describing Abrams’ priorities for pacification, Ewell ignored Abrams’ call to move away from an ‘over-emphasis on irrelevant body count’ and instead launched into an exhortation to his subordinate commanders to kill more VC. He wrote: The military aspects of the problem reveal that the essential enemy infiltration rate as contrasted to our present kill rates will result in a net gain of approximately 9000 people for the enemy by July. At the present rate of attrition, we are losing ground as far as grinding down enemy forces. Ideally, we should eliminate about 9000 NVA per month through all sources (i.e. BC, HC, PW, etc.). The goal to be achieved is to make the pressure of losses felt all the way to Hanoi in order to create a favourable climate for the peace talks in Paris. Our immediate goal [therefore] is to attrit the enemy at a rate of 6000 per month by the end of April. This figure is the break even point and is merely the entry price. Within the units, we must put the requirement on them to produce results.47




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Ewell’s approach was stunningly mathematical. The political complexities of the war seem to have completely escaped him. He urged his subordinates to higher kill rates: In a strictly mathematical way, we can determine that a company day in the field attrits ‘X’ number of NVA/VC. Consequently, more company days produce more NVA/VC. Require men to spend as many company days in the field as possible, without overdoing it. A 75% activity rate is about the limit which we can hope to achieve. In order to achieve a reasonable kill rate, a brigade needs two to ten night contacts [per night]. Brigade commanders must push their battalions out to where the enemy is . . . Keep a close eye on your kill ratio. With the proper amount of brain work, careful planning, aggressive and well thought out operations, we can accomplish substantially higher kills and at the same time reduce our friendly casualties.48

His memorandum concluded, ‘right now the enemy has the initiative; we have to get it. He is gaining in strength and will continue to do so unless we increase the kill rate’.49 In May, Ewell issued another memorandum repeating his earlier exhortation to kill more VC. ‘If you aren’t getting one kill per company day,’ he told his subordinate commanders, ‘you’re not in the ball game.’ He saw providing security to the villages as a distraction from the real task. His subordinate commanders were instructed to try to avoid such roles unless they were absolutely necessary and, if they were unavoidable, to keep their commitments to those tasks as short as possible.50 He applied pressure to achieve his target of 9000 kills per month. While he urged others of his subordinates to get their kill ratios to 20:1 or 30:1, he was particularly disappointed with the performance of the Australians. In March, April and May of 1969, their ‘exchange ratios’ (kill ratios) had been 11:1, 15.3:1 and 9.3:1 respectively,51 well short of Ewell’s targets. Senior Australian officers recognised the flaws in Ewell’s approach. Hay had passed a copy of Ewell’s 16 April directive to Major General S. C. Graham, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff and a former commander of 1ATF. Graham replied that the directive had ‘depressed’ him. He added: One could take issue with it on many basic points and indeed it could have been written by a French general 20 years ago. What really intrigued


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me though was that it started off giving top priority to pacification and finished up with the old (and to my mind discredited) message ‘get out and kill them bums’.52

However, whether they disagreed with Ewell’s approach or not, Australian commanders in Vietnam were largely hamstrung. As Hay was to explain to the Australian Ambassador, Ralph Harry, on 4 October 1969: You will appreciate that the Australian military effort is under the operational control of MACV, and AFV quite rightly is obliged to follow US priorities. It would be unthinkable for Australia to contemplate developing independent operations on national lines. It is only since May, 1969 that United States policy has allowed the Task Force to exert maximum influence on the population of Phuoc Tuy.53

In spite of Ewell’s love of attrition warfare with its body count mentality, use of massive firepower and big battles, the Australian Task Force began a series of pacification operations in mid-1969. Operation Reynella was conducted by 9RAR from 8 May to 15 June near Long Dien and Dat Do. The aims of the operation were to continue to pursue enemy main force units to limit their influence on the villages, to improve the self-defence capabilities of the villages, and to ‘inspire the villagers through better resource availability into greater confidence in protecting themselves and aligning with the South Vietnamese government’.54 A second operation, Neppabunna,55 included a significant pacification element although it also involved reconnaissance in force. 6RAR/NZ conducted Operation Mundingburra and 5RAR carried out Operation Esso I, II and III from 15 June to 15 July. Both operations continued the pacification effort begun by 9RAR in the Long Dien and Dat Do areas. But then the effort stopped. The Task Force returned to reconnaissance in force. In Phuoc Tuy Province, Abrams’ ‘key strategic thrust’ and his exhortation to move away from over-emphasised and irrelevant body count had lasted but a few months. During this shortlived pacification effort the battalions and other units involved had taken high casualties, mainly from mines and booby traps. Over twenty Australians were killed and 100 wounded.56 But the operations had achieved some success. The historian of 5RAR wrote of the pacification operations: 1ATF forces in this area over a period of months produced a real and significant result in the pacification programme. Captured documents




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revealed that the enemy infrastructure could not function properly because of the Allied ambushing at night. Rice control also forced the price of rice on the black market to be raised by one third.57

6RAR/NZ was also convinced that its Operation Mundingburra had been a marked success despite the casualties to mines. Although the Dat Do district contained about 70 per cent of the province’s VCI and was considered by the VC to be a ‘liberated area’, Operation Mundingburra had produced impressive results. Rice caches had been discovered, base camps destroyed, and covered approaches to Dat Do and to Route 44 had been disrupted by land-clearing operations. The GVN forces inside the hamlets of Dat Do had also increased pressure upon the VCI, making their recruiting more difficult. But perhaps most important of all the constant ambushing had broken the contact between the VC in the jungle hides and those living in the hamlets. Any rice or financial resupply was hazardous . . . By 15 August it was obvious that the VC had lost his supply system . . . There was no VC activity in the hamlets, more people responded to government projects, public meetings had been held to affirm support for the government, and there was a new response to calls to form popular self-defence forces.58

There is also evidence that the worst effects of enemy mines and booby traps were now past. A mine casualty study by G. F. Cawsey, the Science Adviser to COMAFV, concluded: By the end of the . . . period examined, the mine battle had been won, the ability to find mines and deal with them at relatively low risk had been demonstrated and the pacification programme had developed enormously with very marked success. It seems to me quite likely that these particular operations were among the most successful 1ATF has conducted and certainly at this stage of the war they are of major importance.59

Over 400 mines and booby traps of various sorts were either activated, detected or found in caches by soldiers participating in Operation Mundingburra. Of those, only seventeen had detonated causing Australian casualties. However, as Horner has noted, the fact that the operations were not sustained over a longer period meant that the enemy could soon restore itself and the gains achieved at such cost in Australian lives were allowed to fritter away. Horner cites three reasons for the pacifi-


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cation effort being brought to a close. First, progress in improving the performance of the local Vietnamese forces had been slow and Task Force units were reluctant to operate with them. Second, the heavy mine and booby trap casualties had led to debate in Federal Parliament about the wisdom of the operations. It was thought that Brigadier Pearson, Commander 1ATF, had come under political pressure to withdraw the Australian troops from the area. Third, ‘the Americans, particularly the Province Senior Adviser, thought that the South Vietnamese with their US advisers should be given an opportunity to play a more active role’.60 It also would seem likely that Ewell pressured 1ATF to direct its efforts away from pacification towards operations against enemy main force units and the pursuit of higher kill ratios. Certainly, until his departure in April 1970, 1ATF conducted no further pacification operations. Instead, reconnaissance in force was taken up with vigour.61 Turning pacification on and off in this way defeated its purpose. If pacification operations were to provide security to the villagers then that security had to be maintained over the long term. Improving the performance of the RF, PF and the PSDF would take time. Denial of food to the VC would be effective only if it persisted long enough to exhaust their caches. The GVN would need time to establish control and support within the community. Withdrawing 1ATF forces and allowing the enemy to re-establish its connections with its VCI merely served to make pacification operations more difficult next time. The villagers would be more sceptical about their long-term security and would refrain from showing support for the GVN or the Australians lest they be punished when the Australians left and the VC returned. The VC would know that if they cached sufficient rice and used their main or provincial force units to mount demonstrations drawing the Australians into the jungle and away from the villages, they could easily defeat pacification operations.

CONCLUSION When 8RAR arrived at Nui Dat to begin operations against the Viet Cong, its CO and other senior officers expected to fit within a well-constructed concept of operations based on Australian CRW doctrine with its emphasis on providing security to the population and establishing close connections between the civil and military authorities. Instead, they found that the security of the villages was to




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be left to second or third rate forces while units of 1ATF pursued the enemy in the jungle. 1ATF had attempted pacification operations in the province with good results, but these had quickly ended, probably as a result of pressure from Lieutenant General Julian Ewell, Commander II FFV. Despite changes in the direction of US strategy following the replacement of Westmoreland by Abrams, Ewell was unable to switch from attrition warfare to pacification. When the Australian Task Force eventually returned to pacification operations, 8RAR was to play an important part in making the change.


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3

8RAR operations: finding the way to pacification 8RAR operations: finding the way to pacification

On 1 September 1969, a little over a month after the demise of pacification operations in Phuoc Tuy Province and the return to operations against main force enemy units operating deep in the jungle, Brigadier S. P. Weir replaced Brigadier C. M. I. Pearson as Commander 1ATF. When 8RAR arrived in Vietnam in November that year its commander, Keith O’Neill, felt confident that Task Force operations would be well organised and would follow the familiar principles of CRW doctrine. From September 1959 to November 1961 O’Neill had served with 1RAR in Singapore and Malaya where he had been a company commander and, later, battalion second in command. Weir had been his CO. The two had got on well and O’Neill had been impressed by Weir’s grasp of the strategic and tactical situation there and his handling of the battalion. He expected that Weir would bring the same strengths and insights to the planning of operations in Phuoc Tuy Province. However, O’Neill and other senior 8RAR officers soon felt that something was wrong with Task Force operational planning. Weir seemed more interested in conventional operations than in pacification. It was thought that this was due to the constraints put upon Weir by his US commanders. Generally there were high expectations that 1ATF would be able to fully apply its doctrine and techniques to the conduct of the war. These were not always met. Adrian Clunies-Ross recalled: 41




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We certainly had the experience. We certainly had the doctrine. But we were diverted to some degree by the priorities of the Americans. As a result we were not always able to fight the war on our terms. This was difficult for the CO, who had a very clear idea of what he wanted to do and a very strong grasp of CRW.1

Evidence that Weir was indeed predisposed towards the American view of operations is contained in an interview he gave to Frank Frost. According to Weir, when he arrived to take over command of the Task Force from Brigadier Pearson: Pearson had been conducting the Task Force operations around Dat Do . . . Long Hai and Long Phuoc Hai and Long Dien . . . that was the prime concentration of the Task Force, and they were having enormous casualties from mines. Well, he wanted to get out of there because of the mine problem, and the Province Senior Adviser . . . was trying to get the Task Force out of the populated areas because the VC had largely gone away from there . . . So when I got there, there had been this agreement with the Province Senior Adviser and the Province Chief that the Task Force would pull out of the populated areas and the local forces . . . would take them as their responsibility. Well, that was fine—that appealed to me because that was the proper function of the Task Force . . . to get out after the regular VC and knock them out, eliminate them and separate them from the population.2

But the VC had not ‘largely gone away’ from the villages at all. On the night of 4/5 September 1969, just a few days after Weir’s arrival, the VC reacted to the recent spate of Australian pacification operations by mounting a carefully planned attack against the village of Dat Do. They killed several RF soldiers, wounded several Australians and destroyed bunkers newly built as part of a program to improve village security. It was a clear VC response to the changed Australian operations. The attack was substantial. It lasted two hours. Elements of 9RAR were involved and called for air support and the redeployment of tanks and APCs in an attempt to catch the enemy before they withdrew.3 The VC continued to attack the bunkers that had been installed by the Australians around Dat Do. These incidents notwithstanding, Weir, probably under pressure from Ewell, continued to favour operations against enemy main force units. By early 1970 there was concern within the top echelons of the Australian Army that the pressure on Weir might be too great. Weir was by nature a brusque, determined and forceful personality


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who was demanding of his staff and it concerned senior Australian officers that his staff were unhappy and were feeling the strain. However, there was no suggestion that the operational performance of the Task Force had suffered.4 Nor was there any suggestion that Weir should be removed. He remained as commander and as a result, for 8RAR, the initial operational emphasis was to be placed on reconnaissance-in-force operations where the battalion would, like most of its predecessors, attempt to locate and destroy enemy units hidden in the jungle. Reconnaissance-in-force operations would expose 8RAR to the perennial problems of such operations: how to locate the enemy, how to bring him to battle once located, and particularly, how to cope with the enemy in bunkers.

BUNKER ATTACK OR AMBUSH? SHAPING OPERATIONS TO GET THE PREFERRED MODE OF CONTACT Even before his formal appointment as CO of 8RAR, O’Neill had visited the Task Force in Phuoc Tuy Province to get an understanding of operations there.5 One observation made a particular impression on him: that attacking enemy bunker systems was unprofitable. VC bunker systems were complexes of dug-in shelters with overhead protection. Individual bunkers were built to a roughly standard configuration. A rectangular hole in the ground approximately 1.5 metres deep by 3 metres long and 2 metres wide was roofed with logs covered with matting, stones, compressed earth and sometimes earth stabilised with cement. It was resistant to artillery fire and even to aerial bombing. Each bunker usually had two entrances that also doubled as firing positions, although trenches and tunnels could also be built. Tell-tale signs—cut trees, latrines, animal traps, the sound of chopping and cooking smells—could signal that a bunker system was nearby but the bunkers themselves were usually well camouflaged. Australian troops often approached to within a few metres of them before seeing them or, much worse, being fired upon from them. Perimeter bunkers usually had prepared fire lanes where the vegetation had been stripped of leaves to about knee height, giving the enemy a clear, ground-level view of the legs of approaching Australians. Bunkers were often positioned on low ridges, near a source of fresh water, and were sited to provide mutual support. They could not be outflanked. Mines and booby traps were often sited on the likely approaches.6




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Table 1

1ATF infantry and VC/NVA contacts, casualties and loss rates

Type of contact

Contacts

Australian casualties

Australian loss rate

VC/NVA casualties

VC/NVA loss rate

Bunker Ambush Patrol Security

164 506 272 227

291 128 86 61

1.77 0.25 0.32 0.27

299 930 311 186

1.82 1.84 1.14 0.82

O’Neill learnt that attacks on VC bunker systems presented difficult tactical problems and were usually costly. During its tour of Vietnam, 9RAR lost 35 men KIA, many in attacks on bunkers. O’Neill had built a typical VC bunker system in the Enoggera training area at Brisbane and 8RAR rifle companies took turns in planning and executing attacks against it. These experiments confirmed that a better approach had to be found. ‘I think we were all convinced that there was no answer to attacking bunkers, certainly without tanks’, O’Neill recalled. ‘That was a very great influence on my thinking—that we shouldn’t waste time attacking bunkers. So that’s why I swung to the ambush side of things.’7 O’Neill decided to avoid costly and indecisive attacks on bunkers whenever possible and instead to focus on intensive ambushing where 8RAR selected the ground and retained the initiative. An analysis of 3325 1ATF contacts, conducted by Andrew Ross, shows that O’Neill’s judgement was correct. Ross analysed Australian bunker attacks, ambushes, encounter battles and what Ross terms ‘security’ battles and found that, although bunker attacks were the least common type of contact, they produced the highest number of Australian casualties. Generally, for each enemy killed or wounded in a bunker attack, an Australian was also killed or wounded. Table 1 compares the contacts, casualties (KIA and WIA) and loss rate per contact for both Australian infantry and the VC/NVA.8 Of the types of contact in Ross’s analysis, bunker attack produced the highest Australian casualties while ambushing produced the lowest. Ambushing also produced the highest casualties for the enemy. Ross’s analysis confirms that O’Neill was correct to focus on the ambush as the preferred mode of contact. With 8RAR in Vietnam, O’Neill applied the ideas he had developed in Enoggera. When bunker systems were encountered they were approached cautiously and with extensive artillery and airstrike preparation. Whenever possible, infantry assaults were supported with tanks. In some operations, O’Neill chose to surround suspected bunker


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Table 2

8RAR and VC/NVA contacts, casualties and loss rates

Type of contact

Contacts

Australian casualties

Australian loss rate

VC/NVA casualties

VC/NVA loss rate

Bunker Ambush Patrol Security

6 91 21 16

10 35 19 1

1.66 0.38 0.90 0.06

13 221 30 16

2.16 2.42 1.42 1.00

systems with blocking ambushes on likely escape routes. Artillery and airstrikes followed by infantry assault supported with tanks were intended to drive the enemy from their prepared positions into the waiting ambushes. The effect of O’Neill’s approach can be seen in Table 2. It shows 8RAR contacts, casualties and loss rate per contact and compares them with the VC/NVA.9 Bunker attacks represented only 4.5 per cent of 8RAR contacts (compared with 14 per cent of all 1ATF contacts) and ambushes represented 68 per cent of 8RAR contacts (compared to only 43.3 per cent of all 1ATF contacts). 8RAR was able to achieve a higher VC/NVA loss rate across all four types of contact than 1ATF as a whole did; and the data show that 8RAR was able to achieve a particularly high VC/NVA loss rate in ambushing.

RECONNAISSANCE-IN-FORCE OPERATIONS The main body of 8RAR arrived at Vung Tau on 28 November 1969 and immediately moved to Nui Dat by truck, making the battalion complete.10 All members of the battalion went through ‘Exercise Lifesaver’, an exercise designed to heighten the soldiers’ awareness of the rules of engagement and the need for constant vigilance in weapons handling. The exercise was intended to reduce the incidence of casualties lost to friendly fire and to reduce the loss of life to innocent civilians. Mine warfare and booby trap familiarisation, infantry–armour cooperation and fire support procedures were also practised during this pre-operational period. On 10 December, with familiarisation completed, the battalion was ready. Its early deployments were all reconnaissance-in-force operations. Operation Atherton (10 December 1969 to 10 January 1970) was a reconnaissance-in-force to the north and west of the Binh Ba rubber plantation. The mission was to destroy the enemy and their installations in AO Ashgrove, a large portion of the north of Phuoc Tuy Province




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Mount up! 8RAR soldiers board trucks for a move to the village of Xuyen Moc in the east of Phuoc Tuy Province, where they were to conduct a cordon and search as the first phase of Operation Keperra. Although helicopter deployments seem synonymous with the war in Vietnam, many deployments were by truck or APC. Sergeant ‘Bluey’ Shannon, the battalion PR Sergeant, can be seen with cameras at the ready to record the event. (Photo courtesy of Tony Flaherty)

measuring approximately 19 by 19 kilometres. The enemy’s 84 Rear Services Group was believed to be resupplying main force elements to the west of Route 2 and the battalion expected to contact larger enemy forces taking resupply and redeploying. In the south the VC Chau Duc District Company was expected to be found. It drew support from the villages of Binh Ba and Ngai Giao, both of which also supported guerilla squads totalling 25 to 30 men. The role of these squads was terrorism, assassination, kidnapping on behalf of the village VCI, and resupply of local force units and interdiction of Route 2.11 Operation Keperra (26 January and 14 February 1970) involved the cordon and search of Xuyen Moc and Nui Nhon villages, followed by a reconnaissance-in-force of the Nui Dinh hills aimed at upsetting VC and NVA plans for operations against the city of Baria during the 1970 Tet holiday. Operation Hamilton (3 to 24 March 1970) was a


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reconnaissance-in-force in the east of the province near Xuyen Moc. It was aimed at locating and destroying the remnants of the enemy’s D445 Battalion following the success of Operation Hammersley (described later) which had dislodged D445 Battalion from the Long Hai hills. Operation Petrie (29 June to 13 July 1970) was the last of 8RAR’s reconnaissance-in-force operations and was conducted in the north of the province astride the province boundary with Bien Hoa and Long Khanh provinces. Operation Petrie was conducted against D440 Battalion which intelligence reports indicated was located in the north of the province and to the west of the Courtney rubber plantation. O’Neill decided to deploy the battalion in a wide cordon around the likely enemy location. FGA (fighter ground attack) and artillery fire was brought down on the suspected enemy location and, following this, two companies carried out a reconnaissance-in-force while the remainder of the battalion waited in ambush on likely enemy egress routes. Later, as a result of information supplied by a Hoi Chanh (an enemy soldier who had rallied to the South Vietnamese government side), the battalion redeployed in an attempt to locate a large enemy hospital on the border with Long Khanh Province.12 Generally, in each case, O’Neill’s concept of operations was that command, fire support and reserve elements of the battalion group would remain positioned at a centrally located fire support patrol base from which artillery support and communications could be provided over most of the area of operations. After studying the likely patterns of enemy movement, O’Neill used one or more companies in ambush positions while the remainder of the battalion conducted a reconnaissancein-force with the aim of driving the enemy from their camps through the waiting ambushes. Tracks located during the reconnaissance would be ambushed. These reconnaissance-in-force operations achieved modest success; their pattern was upset by Operation Hammersley.

OPERATION HAMMERSLEY Operation Hammersley was a landmark operation for 8RAR. It was to deal a heavy blow to the enemy’s D445 Battalion, hold important political consequences for Phuoc Tuy Province and add further impetus to O’Neill’s interests in pacification operations. The operation also led to 8RAR’s heaviest casualties. It began on 10 February 1970 without a hint of its later importance. It was an HQ 1ATF operation to secure and develop a quarry




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for roadbuilding materials at a site known as NDP Isa (see Map 2) near the base of the Long Hai hills. It ended as a 1ATF operation, mainly involving 8RAR, to destroy the enemy’s D445 Battalion. Assigned to the initial job was Major David Rankine’s C Company with tank, APC and mortar support and Engineer Construction Squadron elements including bulldozers and two mini-teams from 1 Field Squadron. C Company was to secure the quarry site and conduct operations to destroy any enemy within the AO. C Company’s part in the operation was expected to end on 16 February, when the company was due to return to the Nui Dat base.13 On the night of 15/16 February, Peter Lauder’s 9 Platoon, C Company, were lying in ambush at the base of the north eastern Long Hai hills. At about 7:30 p.m. 100 enemy, relaxed and confident, unaware of 9 Platoon’s presence, walked into the ambush. They were on their way north to the villages of Dat Do and Long Dien. Lauder’s men triggered the ambush and after a stiff 45-minute fight were reinforced by tanks and Chris Sinclair’s 8 Platoon. The next morning revealed that Lauder’s men had killed ten VC. They found an additional 22 heavy drag marks where the enemy had dragged the bodies of their fallen comrades from the scene. 9 Platoon suffered three WIA. Mal Peck’s D Company was the 1ATF ready reaction force. That night, it was rushed by APC to Isa to support C Company. The next day O’Neill deployed battalion headquarters and B Company to the Long Hais. A Company remained at Nui Dat for the moment. With most of the battalion in the Long Hais, O’Neill began operations to search for the remainder of the enemy who had escaped from the 9 Platoon ambush. Over the next few days the battalion had many small contacts, located numerous empty bunker systems, found caches of food and weapons and had many mine incidents. The area was obviously being used intensively by the enemy. On 18 February, C Company captured a 16-year-old enemy soldier. He and two others had been sent out to attack C Company and its supporting tanks. Under interrogation he was compliant, even helpfully pointing out nearby bunker positions which, he said, held 30 to 40 enemy. C Company immediately attacked, mounted in APCs and supported by tanks. The company had not progressed far when it met intense small arms and RPG fire. An APC was hit and began to burn. After withdrawing to regroup, evacuate wounded and restock the tanks with ammunition, C Company launched a second assault. During the day’s fighting the C Company group sustained two KIA and 13 wounded, mainly due to RPG fire.


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Operation Hammersley. 8RAR soldiers load a wounded VC onto the front of an M113 mortar carrier near the Long Hai hills for transport to an LZ for evacuation, February 1970. The threat from mines was very high during this operation and the men are equipped with steel helmets and flak jackets, neither of which were usually worn on operations. (Photo courtesy of Tony Flaherty)

In the meantime, O’Neill redeployed B and D companies into blocking positions on each flank of the C Company axis of assault. In the process 11 Platoon, under the command of Lieutenant Adrian Lombardo, was fired upon by B Company and APCs who mistook them for the enemy. Ten men were wounded, including Lombardo (the episode is discussed more fully in Chapter 8). Despite this accident, the noose was tightening on the enemy bunker position. It was located in a wide-mouthed valley which was backed by steep cliffs. Artillery and airstrikes were directed against likely exit routes. C Company controlled the entrance. With B and D company blocking positions now in place, O’Neill and Rankine planned to continue the assault. As the day drew to a close and with D445 bloodied and cornered, both O’Neill and Rankine expected to maintain the cordon around D445 during the night and renew the assault in the morning. But the




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Searching for prints. Corporal Maurie Beasley leads his section across a fire trail near the Long Hai hills. The soldiers are searching for footprints or other signs of enemy movement following a successful ambush the previous night. Behind Beasley are Privates Ron Webb and Gary Young. Note Beasley’s M16 has been daubed with green paint to aid camouflage. Beasley carries a belt of ammunition for his section’s M60 machine gun over his right shoulder (in a black plastic tube cut from the Army-issue blow-up mattress) and an M72 anti-tank rocket over his left. (Photo courtesy of Denis Gibbons)

planned assault was scrapped. Instead, 8RAR was ordered to withdraw 3000 metres in preparation for a B52 strike. Unbeknown to 8RAR, HQ 1ATF had been aware of intensifying enemy activity in the Long Hai hills for some time and had proposed B52 strikes there for 12 January and 13 February. The proposed target boxes for these strikes were exactly where 8RAR was to locate the D445 bunker system on 18 February. Surprisingly, the intelligence assessments that supported the proposed B52 strikes were quite different from the general assessment given to 8RAR for the initial deployment of C Company to the Long Hai hills. To support the bid for a B52 strike on 12 January, HQ II FFV was told that various intelligence sources had placed the HQ and three companies of D445 Battalion along with the C25 Long Dat District Unit, the Long Hai guerillas, the Phuoc


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Map 2

Operation Hammersley: the situation on the night of 18/19 February 1970

Source:

XÃ VUNG TÃU, Vietnam 1:50,000, Edition 2-AAS, Sheet 6429 IV, Series L 7014 and DÂT DÒ, Vietnam 1:50,000, Edition 1=AMS, Sheet 6429 I, Series L 7014.




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Tinh guerillas and the Vung Tau City Special Unit, in the Long Hai hills. According to the strike bid, enemy units in the hills were making nightly incursions into Long Dien, Dat Do and other villages, to collect taxes and food, to propagandise and to harass the RF, PF, PSDF and village officials.14 The second bid, for a B52 strike on 13 February, said that the same enemy units were still present in the Long Hais. Visual reconnaissance had located very heavy track activity on the north east slopes of the southern Long Hai hill complex, as well as the building of base camps. Armed enemy had been sighted and aircraft had taken ground fire from the area.15 In contrast, the intelligence summary for the deployment of C Company to the Long Hai hills on 10 February had been vague and suggested light enemy activity there. The intelligence summary for the 8RAR after-action report on Operation Hammersley stated: The intelligence on enemy locations, identities and intentions was sketchy as no units had operated in the area for quite some time. It was believed, however, that the LONG DAT district HQ, LONG DAT Concentrated Unit (C25) and a reported one company of D445 Local Force Battalion was operating in the area.16

HQ 1ATF had failed to pass on to 8RAR all it knew of enemy activity in the Long Hai hills. This could have led to disaster. Certainly, had he known of the intelligence reports that were being used to support the 1ATF bids for B52 strikes, David Rankine, the OC of C Company, would have deployed his company differently during its protection of the quarry. B52 strikes were major investments of effort. There were frequently more requests for them than could be met from the available resources. MACV filtered the requests for strikes and allocated the resources to those that seemed most deserving. Target requests, which were supported with high quality intelligence information and for which there was to be a thorough follow-up bomb damage assessment, were favoured. In competition with other requests, both 1ATF bids were rejected.17 Senior headquarters—whether HQ 1ATF or II FFV is unclear— were guilty of other bungles during the operation. C Company located the D445 Battalion base camp on 18 February and began its ground assaults that day. On the following day HQ 1ATF ordered 8RAR to withdraw immediately in preparation for a B52 strike but, while the battalion had pulled back 3000 metres by last light that day, HQ II FFV had not passed the B52 strike request to US MACV till after 2100 hrs


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that evening.18 Even then the request was for a strike at 0600 hrs—first light—on 21 February.19 The B52 strike was scheduled for 24 hours too late and D445 was given two nights and all day on 20 February to organise and execute its escape. There can be little doubt that the enemy knew in advance that the strike was coming. Because the target was only seven kilometres from Dat Do village, the strike required province and district level approval. The VC had penetrated both levels of local administration.20 Had C Company continued to press home its ground assaults on the D445 position, casualties might have been high on both sides. C Company was well supported with tanks and APCs as well as 105 mm, 155 mm and 8 inch artillery, naval gunfire support and air attacks including FGA using bombs and cannon, Shadow and helicopter gunships. Despite the weight of this fire support, the VC/NVA could be relied upon to inflict casualties from the shelter of their carefully sited and constructed bunkers, trenches and tunnels and through their use of mines. However, there were some factors which suggested that the battle might have gone more favourably for the Australians. First, the D445 position lacked easy escape routes; it backed into a valley rising to steep cliffs and the vegetation cover in the Long Hais, particularly on the ridges, was not dense. Escape would have been difficult. Second, 8RAR was more than usually well positioned for the attack. C Company was mounted in APCs and had tanks in support when it found the bunker system. B and D companies were quickly moved into blocking positions by APC. Third, the enemy position was inside the range of artillery from Nui Dat and the Horseshoe feature and from ships at sea. 8RAR had an unusually large array of fire support available to it to support the assault. Fourth, C Company had already assaulted the position twice, knew its layout and extent and had already damaged some of its defences. For these reasons the battle, had it continued, may have been more successful than more typical bunker attacks resulting from dismounted infantry assaults on previously unknown enemy positions. Graham Walker, the battalion’s Adjutant during Operation Hammersley, believes that the decision to substitute a B52 strike for further C Company ground assaults was taken at Saigon; that COMAFV exercised his veto to avoid a peak in the casualty figures that might flow from a renewed ground assault.21 This was possible, but the records suggest that the decision was made at HQ 1ATF. Horner notes that ‘General Hay . . . was under no political direction to reduce casualties, but rather there was a general understanding among Australian




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commanders that the loss of lives needed to be balanced carefully against military gains’.22 A further complication is that the Commander 1ATF, Brigadier S. P. Weir, was absent on R&R during this crisis in the operation and the Task Force was under the command of the Deputy Commander 1ATF, Colonel Peter Falkland. Falkland may have been particularly sensitive to the possibility of high Australian casualties on his watch. Whatever the reason for the decision, 8RAR was ordered to withdraw three kilometres so that the B52 strike could target the bunker system. The 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report drily related the outcome: ‘8RAR withdrew to enable the B52 strike to take place. D445 [Battalion] took advantage of this withdrawal and escaped to the east along the routes which were blocked by B Coy before the withdrawal.’23 When the strike eventually went in, the bunker system was largely abandoned except for a small stay-behind party. D445, though bloodied, had escaped again. O’Neill, Rankine and Jeffery were disappointed. O’Neill had already issued orders for a further attack supported by tanks. When he learned of the order to withdraw he told his company commanders: ‘We’ve got to do what we’re told.’ However, when the B52 strike proved unsuccessful disappointment turned to anger. O’Neill remembered: When we went back [to Nui Dat], that was the first and only time [since the battle began that] I saw the company commanders. Mike Jeffery [OC B Company] . . . was absolutely ropable. David Rankine [OC C Company] had a bit more control—but Mike! I think he threw his map down.24

Despite the possibility that they might have suffered more casualties had the assault gone ahead, the soldiers were equally angry that the showdown with D445 had been called off. The casualties suffered, the effort invested, the risks taken, had all been directed towards bringing D445 to battle and would be justified by what they were confident would be a substantial defeat of the enemy, especially since HQ 1ATF had made more tanks available. Now it had ended lamely and, it seemed to many, their efforts had been wasted. ‘The worst thing we ever did was to withdraw to Nui Dat so that the B52 strike could take place; this was totally pointless’, wrote a C Company soldier. Barry Canton in D Company thought that ‘we should never [have] withdrawn on Operation Hammersley as we had them’. Rod Lamb, a rifleman of 5 Platoon, B Company, agreed. He felt a sense of


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frustration at being so close to the enemy and yet being unable to ‘get stuck into them’. ‘We had them bottled up’, he said, and he felt ‘pissed off due to being pulled out for [the] B52 strike . . . Our company as a whole felt the same way as we could have really hurt them.’ Ron West recorded his feelings in his diary: ‘We are told we will pull out while a B52 strike is carried out . . . so we get into our APCs and pull out. One doesn’t have to be an expert to know what Charlie will do when he sees us leave.’ The next day he wrote: ‘Our fears are realised. While we sit on our bums a couple of miles away, for some reason the B52 strike is cancelled [sic]. We move back to the Dat in disgust. Should have gone back in.’25 Major Adrian Clunies-Ross was at NDP Isa when the B52 strike hit the bunker system on the opposite side of the Long Hai hills. We were waiting for it early in the morning. Just as it was getting light, without hearing or seeing anything, the early morning light turned to darkness as a great cloud rose up over the back of the hill and there was an almighty thump. The B52s came over at 30 000 feet and dropped this great tonnage of bombs on the target, absolutely accurately. It was most impressive from our point of view.26

After the B52 strike, O’Neill deployed three rifle companies with armour in support back to the Long Hais for a bomb damage assessment and to resume the search for the remainder of D445. As part of the search of the bunker system Clunies-Ross flew into the target area to join other 8RAR troops there. He was amazed at what he saw. The interesting thing was that this large tonnage of bombs had been dropped on a very tight target, but none of the bunkers had been affected in any way as far as I could see. They were very well constructed. We went down into the bunkers and this confirmed the view. There were large underground rooms in some cases, signs that females had been living there—soap, scent and propaganda material. Some bombs had dropped alongside bunkers, but none had caved in. It was obvious that the battalion had been occupying this position in the Long Hais for a considerable time.27

Over the next few days the companies of 8RAR combed the Long Hai hills, frequently locating bunker systems, caches and fresh graves. Over 200 bunkers were found and destroyed. Large quantities of food, ammunition and other stores and equipment were seized. There were




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Arms cache. 8RAR soldiers examine weapons and ammunition captured following a B52 strike on an enemy bunker system during Operation Hammersley. Among the captured weapons are light mortars, rocket propelled grenades, shotguns, submachine guns and M16 rifles. Operation Hammersley was a major success for 8RAR and resulted in the enemy’s D445 Battalion withdrawing from its base in the Long Hai hills. In addition to the enemy’s material losses (some of which are evident in this photograph) and casualties, the enemy suffered a significant political blow. Its link with its supporters within nearby villages was temporarily severed. (AWM negative number FAI/70/0124/VN. Photograph by Sergeant John Fairley)

many light contacts and mine incidents and occasional sightings of enemy at a distance too great to effectively engage them with small arms. Artillery and air support were called to attack such targets. To this point, casualties during this phase of the operation were light and all resulted from armoured vehicles triggering mines. The battalion and its supporting units suffered one KIA and six WIA.


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Vin Murphy’s A Company had joined the battalion’s reconnaissancein-force and ambush operations in the Long Hai hills following the B52 strike. It was during this phase of the operation that 1 Platoon, A Company, under the command of Sergeant Bill Hoban, triggered two M16 mines after moving into an ambush position (this incident is described more fully in Chapter 7). The blasts virtually eliminated 1 Platoon. Eight men were killed and 16 wounded.28 It was a severe blow to the battalion. Operation Hammersley ended on 3 March. Total losses for the battalion for the whole operation were nine KIA and 40 wounded. Supporting units had lost a further two KIA and 19 wounded. The enemy suffered 40 KIA by body count, but reliable sources indicated that the enemy dead had exceeded 100. Later, Lieutenant-General Do Cao Tri, Commander of III Corps and Military Region III (of which Phuoc Tuy Province was a part) presented 8RAR with the Meritorious Unit Commendation of the Vietnamese Armed Forces for its actions in the Long Hai hills. After Operation Hammersley the battalion was redeployed on Operation Hamilton, which aimed to locate the remainder of D445 and continue to attack it.29 Operation Hammersley was influential in determining the style of 8RAR operations for the remainder of its tour in Vietnam. Hammersley inflicted heavy casualties on D445 Battalion and it temporarily forced the enemy battalion out of Phuoc Tuy Province while it reinforced, retrained, re-equipped and prepared itself to rejoin operations. This eased the pressure on 1ATF and gave battalions the opportunity to turn to pacification operations. O’Neill was quick to seize the chance. Operation Hammersley demonstrated to O’Neill that D445 Battalion had been operating from a base area within seven kilometres of the villages of Dat Do and Long Dien for at least seven months. Groups of up to 100 enemy had been able to make regular visits to the towns for resupply and for political and even social activity. Yet GVN and 1ATF intelligence had been unaware of this, testimony to the high level of popular support for the VC in Dat Do and Long Dien villages and to the weaknesses of allied intelligence. To O’Neill, the revelations that emerged out of Operation Hammersley were a practical example of all that Robert Thompson had been saying in his book No Exit From Vietnam, which O’Neill had studied. Thompson argued that the war was essentially political and could be won by providing security around the villages, not by pursuing enemy main force units deep in the jungle as the Americans favoured. Thompson




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proposed that the first priority target of security forces should be the link between the villages and the major units in the jungle, while the second priority should be the VCI. Only after effectively engaging those two targets should security forces turn to their third priority: engaging major units in the jungle.30 The US strategy relied on GVN forces, particularly the RF, PF and PSDF, to provide security around villages while the better allied forces attempted to bring enemy units to battle in the jungle. To the United States, pacification was a second order task fit for second order troops. Operation Hammersley revealed the illogicality of this approach. 1ATF was the most potent allied military force in Phuoc Tuy Province. It had by far the best training, equipment, leadership and fire support. Yet it was frequently tied up with reconnaissancein-force operations, like 8RARs Operation Atherton, where it scoured the jungle for the enemy and except for occasional occupied bunker systems found them infrequently and in very small numbers. On the other hand, the poorest of the allied military forces in Phuoc Tuy Province—the poorly equipped, trained and led RF, PF and PSDF, which suffered the additional burden of being frequently infiltrated by the VC and with many of its members having divided loyalties—were regularly facing combat with groups of up to 100 enemy coming into the villages. It was not surprising that they were not performing well. The problem did not escape O’Neill: ‘There you are, running around the boondocks, and they’re getting into the villages by the hundred. I mean, how we could possibly think we were winning the war I don’t know.’31 Australian soldiers often despised the RF and PF for their poor discipline, high desertion rates, ineffectiveness in the face of the enemy, and scruffy camps. Indeed, Brigadier Weir held such a view. He reported: Some of these RF companies were so idle, so corrupt, so poor. There were cases where they tried to kill our advisers—where they were infiltrated by VC—[where] our fellows were ambushed . . . It was terrifying . . . in some cases—not in all cases but in sufficient to make it a worry.32

From the perspective of the highly trained and professional Australians this view was justified, yet the RF and PF were in fact carrying an important part of the war. The VC tended to attack the RF and PF camps more often than ‘harder’ ARVN or allied bases and, except for 1968, RF and PF units consistently suffered casualties at a higher


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rate than did the ARVN, the South Vietnamese Army. Krepinevich has noted: Except in 1968, it was more dangerous to serve in the RF and PF units than in the ARVN. Furthermore, as time went on, the disparity in casualty rates between the forces actually grew wider. Thus, the paramilitary forces, manned by the dregs of the manpower pool and shabbily equipped compared with their counterparts in the ARVN, bore the brunt of the war.33

Although their quality varied from province to province, in 1971 the RF and PF represented 51 per cent of GVN military strength but received less than 20 per cent of the military budget—and contributed nearly 40 per cent of enemy KIA throughout the country.34 Therefore the RF and PF were contributing disproportionately to the war. These figures also reveal that pacification operations were far from being the ‘soft’ option that Ewell claimed them to be. If Thompson was right, and O’Neill’s judgement held true, by taking on pacification operations and ambushing around the villages, 8RAR would be joining the real battle. 8RAR might also help relieve the pressure on the RF, PF and PSDF and give them the injection of support and training that might stiffen them and make them a more effective force against the VC. Operation Hammersley also showed that massive firepower was not the answer to operations in Vietnam. In Operation Hammersley the decision to apply a B52 strike to the enemy bunker system ended what was shaping as a decisive infantry and armoured assault that might have effectively destroyed or seriously damaged D445, with all of the political ramifications of such an achievement. Compared with Rankine’s assaults with C Company supported by tanks and APCs, or even with Lauder’s 9 Platoon ambush, the B52 strike produced remarkably little killing or destructive effect despite its massive weight of firepower and its huge cost. This was due to the intrinsic limitations of heavy firepower; the need for clearance at province and district level and hence the loss of security; the need, in the case of a B52 strike, for 24 hours to prepare the clearances and arrange the strike; and the need for friendly forces to withdraw to a safe distance. The 8RAR Combat After Action Report recognised this problem, noting: The Viet Cong are quick to take advantage of any easing of pressure. There is no doubt that many enemy escaped from the LONG HAI MOUNTAINS when 8RAR was withdrawn for a B52 strike. Had the




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Battalion remained, D445 [Battalion] would have been vulnerable to destruction by a combination of assault and attrition.35

The surviving D445 soldiers would live to fight another day, perhaps causing many more Australian casualties than might have occurred had HQ 1ATF given 8RAR a free hand to press home further ground assaults. The final lesson of Operation Hammersley was that the politics of operations could intervene to upset militarily sound plans. From the COMAFV, through the Commander 1ATF, to battalion commanders and possibly even below, one eye had always to be kept on the political implications of operations, particularly the likely level of casualties.

PACIFICATION OPERATIONS Operation Hammersley revealed to O’Neill some of the limitations and frustrations of Australian operations in the war. He had managed to get D445 Battalion trapped in a position where it could not avoid battle, only to be ordered to withdraw so that a B52 strike could be called in. The mishandling of the opportunity disillusioned him and he continued to search for other methods of operation that would be more productive. O’Neill recalled: ‘That’s why I swung over to [Thompson’s approach] to ambushing around villages. And of course we had damn all casualties, a better [kill] ratio and more success.’36 O’Neill’s decision to begin ambushing around the villages— a typical pacification role—was also taken at about the time Julian Ewell handed over command of II FFV to his replacement, Lieutenant General Michael S. Davison. Davison brought a far more thoughtful approach to operations and, unlike Ewell, was not at all hostile to 1ATF pacification operations. Weir continued in command of 1ATF for another month before he too was replaced, by Brigadier W. G. Henderson. O’Neill found Henderson more receptive to the idea of pacification than Weir was. And Henderson took command of the Task Force at a time ripe for pacification operations. Ewell was gone, pacification was gaining favour with the Americans (though they never fully embraced the concept), the effects of the invasion of Cambodia were still being felt by the enemy, and D445 Battalion had been battered in Operation Hammersley and had temporarily withdrawn from the province. Two months after Henderson’s arrival, the enemy’s Ba Long Province Headquarters ordered the withdrawal of D440 Battalion to Long Khanh Province, leaving only Chau Duc, Baria City and several


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Commanders. Lieutenant Colonel Keith O’Neill, CO of 8RAR (left), talks with Major General C.A.E. Fraser, COMAFV designate, during the General’s visit to 8RAR at Nui Dat as part of his familiarisation prior to taking command. O’Neill initiated a return to pacification operations with his experimental Operation Phoi Hop, in April 1970. He had been influenced towards making this decision by reading Robert Thompson’s book No Exit From Vietnam, which argued that in counter revolutionary war, the prime aim was to provide security to the population rather than to attack the enemy in its jungle hides. (AWM negative number BEL/70/0034/VN. Photograph by Sergeant Chris Bellis)

other guerilla units to worry the Task Force. Most importantly, in the two months before his arrival 8RAR had conducted an experimental pacification operation—Operation Phoi Hop—with considerable success and had applied its lessons in Operation Nudgee, which was drawing to a successful close as Henderson arrived to take command of the Task Force. Not surprisingly, pacification efforts developed as the major thrust of Task Force operations under Henderson’s command.37




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Operation Phoi Hop (7 to 19 April) was aimed at denying the enemy entry into the villages of Hoa Long, Soui Nghe, Duc My and Binh Ba (see Map 3). Emphasis was placed on ambushes around the villages, but Ap Bac within Hoa Long village was cordoned and searched on the last day of the operation. The operation was planned with the aid of intelligence gathered from the Long Le District Chief and 1ATF. Using this intelligence, O’Neill was able to pinpoint the enemy’s likely entry and exit points on the village perimeters. D440 local force battalion had been conducting frequent resupply missions into Suoi Nghe and Duc My and had been combining these with propaganda meetings. The Chau Duc Company had been infiltrating Hoa Long regularly over a period of at least two months with the aim of gathering food and taxes. In March, while 8RAR had been deployed in eastern Phuoc Tuy Province on Operation Hamilton and had just five fleeting contacts with small groups of enemy,38 D440 Battalion and the Chau Duc Company had made ten known infiltrations into the villages in groups of up to 30. Unlike reconnaissance-in-force operations, which were generally conducted deep in the jungle and therefore away from the centres of population, pacification operations, particularly when they involved the ‘close ambushing’ of villages, required intensive liaison with GVN forces and province and district administrations. Indeed, Operation Phoi Hop (meaning ‘cooperation’ in Vietnamese) was so named to emphasise the need for a cooperative approach to these operations in civilian access areas. For Operation Phoi Hop, a joint headquarters was set up in the Hoa Long District compound with the 8RAR command post and fire control centre located next to Major Tri’s district headquarters. Major Hoang Viet Tri, the District Chief of Long Le District, was particularly supportive of 8RAR providing security to Hoa Long. O’Neill remembers: Tri called me in and he said: ‘Look, I want your help, because Hoa Long is hopeless. Other battalions have done a good job . . . Australian battalions . . . [were] very good soldiers they tried to ambush around the place.’ He said: ‘I want you to come into the village’.39

For the first three nights of the operation C and D companies ambushed inside the barbed wire perimeter of Hoa Long village in full view of the villagers. Those particular ambushes were never sprung, but later reports indicated that the enemy was confused by the tactic and there were no enemy penetrations of Hoa Long during those three


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Map 3

Source

Operation Phoi Hop: 8RAR ambushes, 7–19 April 1970

XÃ BÌNH BA, Vietnam 1:50,000, Edition 2-AAS, Sheet 6430 III, Series L 7014.

days. The ambushes were sited to fire outwards, away from the village, but fields of fire were very restricted and there was danger that in a fire fight civilians might be hurt.




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Hoping to be overheard, and that the information would find its way to the VC, O’Neill and his operations officer, Major Noel Williams, publicly discussed the lack of contacts during the first three nights of the operation. They talked about moving the ambushes away from Hoa Long, which was proving to be a dry hole. For the remainder of the operation, C and D companies ambushed outside the Hoa Long perimeter fence. The change produced quick results. That night a half platoon ambush set up by 9 Platoon, C Company, under the command of Sergeant Brum Matthews, killed three enemy and wounded another. Over the next few nights contacts were frequent. The results of the operation were promising. Enemy resupply and proselytising missions into the villages had been severely reduced if not stopped altogether and the enemy was confused about the presence of the Australians around the villages. The VC began to stop villagers working in the fields to ask them what the Australians were doing. Villagers also began to offer information to the Australians. Material results were just as good. Eleven enemy had been KIA, eight WIA and six had switched sides and rallied to the government. Eighteen suspects had been detained in the cordon and search of Ap Bac hamlet, of whom twelve were released, five held in custody for interrogation and one identified as a draft dodger. Ten weapons had been captured. Among the enemy killed were two important members of the VCI. They were the leader of the Binh Ba Guerillas, who was also the leader of the finance and economy section, and the Assistant Secretary of the Chau Duc District Party Committee, who was also the chairman of the Chau Duc Forward Supply Council and a member of the Coordination and Operations Committee. As members of the VCI these men were important for their role in organising the resupply and operations of enemy units.40 Operation Phoi Hop also demonstrated how intensive ambushing around the villages could significantly raise the stakes for the enemy. The operation ran for just thirteen days but during that time 8RAR patrols intercepted and prevented ten attempts by the enemy to gain entry to the villages which were their sources of resupply and political support. The enemy was forced to fight for access to the villages and to do so on ground chosen by the Australians. Sergeant Brum Matthews’ half platoon ambush on the night of 11/12 April had been the first major contact of the operation but it was soon followed by other successful ambushes. One group of fourteen VC attempting to enter Hoa Long was ambushed by Matthews’ men on the night of 13/14 April. Two were killed. Ten minutes later the survivors ran into a second


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8RAR ambush and a further three were killed. Fifty minutes later the survivors of the second ambush were ambushed again and one was wounded. This ‘billiard ball’ effect resulted from the large number of ambushes 8RAR deployed around the villages. For the enemy it had become a terrifying ordeal to enter the villages. Operation Nudgee, which was structured in two phases, followed Operation Phoi Hop. In the first phase 8RAR would participate in a Task Force operation, involving 6RAR, 7RAR and other 1ATF units, intended to locate and destroy the headquarters of D445 Battalion. This phase was called Operation Concrete and 8RAR’s portion of it was conducted to the south of Xuyen Moc. It represented a brief return to reconnaissance-in-force operations. This phase was relatively fruitless. 8RAR had only two contacts, which resulted in some drag marks and the capture of some bullet-riddled packs. 6RAR had no contacts and was withdrawn after three days. 7RAR had some contacts but was also unable to achieve significant results. The 8RAR Commander’s Diary recorded that ‘the enemy once again showed their skill and elusiveness and avoided the hoped for confrontation’.41 In phase two of Operation Nudgee, 8RAR was permitted to develop further its village ambushing concept. A Company ambushed around the villages of Hoa Long and Dat Do, while B, C and D companies took part in a combined operation with the US 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, to the west of Binh Ba. B, C and D companies were to ambush while the Americans attacked a concentration of D440 Battalion. The 8RAR ambushes happened to be ideally located to interdict enemy moving into Binh Ba and Ap Suoi Nghe. Success followed quickly. Peter Lauder’s 9 Platoon, C Company, was again involved in a large contact with an estimated eighteen to twenty enemy but a sweep the following day failed to produce any bodies, although drag marks were found. The next day, 1 May, an ambush by Lieutenant Tony Jucha’s 5 Platoon contacted fifteen enemy and engaged them with artillery fire and small arms, killing four. One of the enemy killed was later identified as the Party Chapter Secretary of the Binh Ba Guerillas. Later, ralliers reported that the ambush had killed ten of a party of sixteen, and that only four of the Binh Ba Guerillas remained alive. Meanwhile, A Company was having dramatic success with its ambushes around Hoa Long and Dat Do. On the night of 1/2 May Lieutenant Barry Darr’s 3 Platoon had a contact with 30 to 40 VC as it was setting up its ambush position a few hundred metres outside the south western perimeter of Dat Do. The following morning one body




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was found, but later reports indicated that six more enemy were killed in the contact. That same night, other A Company ambushes in the same area contacted seven to ten enemy, killing three and finding two blood trails. On the night of 3/4 May Barry Darr’s men were again in the thick of the action when they contacted 60 enemy outside Dat Do. The fire fight lasted an hour and a half. The following morning three bodies were found, but unsubstantiated reports from villagers were that Darr’s men had killed or wounded about 50 enemy. Sporadic contacts continued for the remainder of the operation, with some major contacts. Darr’s 3 Platoon contacted fifteen VC on 14 May, killing seven. Jucha’s 5 Platoon contacted eleven VC the next day and, although two enemy were seen to be hit in the opening fire, a later sweep of the killing ground revealed only two blood trails, an M26 grenade, two packs and a pair of Ho Chi Minh sandals. Finally, on the night of 29/30 May an Assault Pioneer Platoon ambush with just fifteen men, commanded by Sergeant Monty White, contacted about 60 VC as they withdrew from an attack on the RF post at Ap Lo Voi. Fortuitously, White had sited his ambush covering what turned out to be a rendezvous for three groups of enemy involved in the attack. As two groups of enemy met in his killing ground and a third group was approaching, White triggered the ambush. The fight lasted for well over an hour. The next morning his men found abandoned weapons, webbing, medical supplies, eight heavy blood trails and fourteen drag marks. They also found two bodies.42 Operation Nudgee had been a marked success. It provided greater security to the villages and confirmed that by ambushing around them the enemy could be forced into battle on ground chosen by the Australians. Twenty-six enemy had been confirmed killed with a further 35 wounded. Reliable intelligence reports indicated that the number killed was as high as 70. The ambushes by Darr’s 3 Platoon had been particularly damaging to the enemy. Intelligence reports indicated that over 50 enemy had been killed in those contacts alone and D445 Battalion, now returned to operations, had not attempted a major entry into Dat Do. The village ambushes also occasionally caught members of the VCI in their net and, by eliminating them, helped to reduce the political influence of the VC in the villages. The After Action Report for the operation noted: It has been confirmed by intelligence sources that in a series of contacts on 1 May the Binh Ba Guerilla Unit was almost eliminated and the Binh Ba Party Chapter Secretary killed. The resulting reduction in VC


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influence around Binh Ba and Duc My was apparent from the increased friendliness of the people and from their increased willingness to provide information to Free World Forces.43

Despite the success of Operation Nudgee, O’Neill and the senior officers of 8RAR remained realistic about what they had achieved. To be fully effective, the security that the ambushes provided to the villages had to be maintained over the long term and there was still a long way to go. The 8RAR Commander’s Diary recorded: The success achieved, though considerable, could by no means be considered permanent; rather was it a breathing space for the Vietnamese Government military forces and other agencies to increase their influence at the expense of the Viet Cong.44

With the success of Operations Phoi Hop and Nudgee and the evidence they were providing that the enemy could be found in large numbers near the villages, Henderson, the Commander 1ATF, was becoming convinced of the benefits of ambushing around the villages. By June, in Operation Cung Chung 1, the bulk of the Task Force was concentrated in the south of Phuoc Tuy Province, providing security to the villages and interdicting enemy movement into them. In the west, 2RAR was operating in the Nui Dinh hills. In the centre, 8RAR operated astride Route 2 and around the villages of Hoa Long and Long Dien as well as the villages to the north of Nui Dat: Binh Ba, Ap Suoi Nghe, Duc My and Duc Trung. In the east, 7RAR operated around Dat Do and the eastern edge of the Long Hai hills. Operation Cung Chung aimed to reduce to a minimum the infiltration of enemy units into the villages. During Operation Cung Chung 1 the battalion was very widely dispersed. While Mal Peck’s D Company was operating in the northern Long Hai hills, the Anti-tank Platoon and the Pioneer Platoon were operating 30 kilometres to the north on the province border with Long Khanh. However, the most significant feature of Operation Cung Chung 1 was that: All AO’s [areas off operations] were for the first time jointly owned by the Battalion and the local district headquarters. In order to determine deployments of companies in relation to local Regional and Popular Forces, conferences were required to be held daily between the company commanders concerned and the District Chief. In addition road checkpoints were to be set up at locations agreed between Task Force and Sector. They were to be jointly staffed by Vietnamese Police and Australian




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soldiers, although the police were responsible for the physical halting and searching of vehicles.45

The checkpoints provided a small degree of population control and aimed to prevent VCI from entering or leaving villages and to limit the ‘smuggling’ of food, supplies or money to the VC in the jungle. Other pacification operations conducted by 8RAR were Operation Decade (23 July to 2 August 1970), involving ambushes around Hoa Long, Long Dien, Dat Do and Lang Phuoc Hai; and Operations Cung Chung 2 and 3 (3 August to 25 October 1970), involving ambushes around Long Dien, the western approaches to Dat Do, Hoa Long, and Binh Ba. In Operation Decade, O’Neill planned to increase the pressure on the enemy: I now felt that the Viet Cong Local Force and guerilla units had been excluded from the villages and weakened to such a degree that some of our effort should be redirected from ambushing outside the villages to operations designed to weed out the Viet Cong infrastructure operating inside the villages. It was planned that one company be stood by, ready to conduct cordon and search operations on groups of houses [or] specific areas indicated by intelligence as containing visiting or resident Viet Cong. By this method and developments of it, pressure for Viet Cong infrastructure to leave the village and take refuge with the guerilla units, would build up. Once they had left the village, they could only return by running the gauntlet of our night ambushes.46

But this experiment with Robert Thompson’s second priority for an effective counter-revolutionary war—the attack on the VCI—was not to be. Headquarters Military Region 3, the ARVN headquarters responsible for III CTZ, decreed as part of the ‘Vietnamisation’ program that only Vietnamese forces would operate within villages. Nevertheless, the operation provided security to the villages through ambushes located outside their perimeters and relieved 7RAR for operations elsewhere. Operations Cung Chung 2 and Cung Chung 3 continued the techniques and arrangements used during Cung Chung 1. Rifle companies were responsible for each of the districts within which 8RAR was to operate and the company commanders held daily liaison conferences with the District Chief. Each night a company officer or warrant officer was located in the District Headquarters as a liaison


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officer. In this way, close cooperation and a personal, continuing relationship was achieved between the Vietnamese and the Australian commanders. Intelligence was actively pursued to provide information about likely enemy routes into villages. It revealed that Hoa Long would be the most likely source of resupply for enemy units and O’Neill therefore ambushed intensively around that village. During Operation Cung Chung 3, 8RAR assisted with the training of RF platoon and squad leaders, taking them on ambushes to demonstrate the Australian ambushing techniques. A large group of Vietnamese officers and NCOs accompanied by their Australian and US advisers attended an 8RAR demonstration of ambushing skills in the Baria Stadium. They were shown the use of the claymore mine and the preparation and execution of the half platoon ambush. Patient ambushing during Operations Cung Chung 2 and Cung Chung 3 was rewarded with sporadic contacts. However, on the night of 11/12 August 8 Platoon, C Company, under the command of Sergeant Chad Sherrin, met with spectacular success. Ambushing a site which had earlier produced contacts, Sherrin and his men contacted approximately 50 Chau Duc guerillas, killing nineteen and capturing six wounded. Vietnamese forces later detained four enemy who had escaped the ambush. The remaining enemy withdrew into Hoa Long village. Despite attempts by GVN forces and police, they remained there undetected for two days, then left the village without further contact with GVN or Australian forces. The Chau Duc guerillas were severely mauled by the incident. Among others, they lost a member of the Chau Duc Liberation Front, a member of the Chau Duc Security Section and the officer commanding the Chau Duc Ordnance Section. (Sherrin’s ambush is described more fully in Chapter 9.)

IMPACT ON THE ENEMY Despite this blow, VC were still able to enter Hoa Long in large numbers. On the night of 23/24 August, a mere twelve days after Sherrin’s ambush, 100 VC entered the village. On the night of 4/5 September another group, numbering 27, entered. In Australia’s War in Vietnam, Frank Frost places emphasis on the limited ability of 1ATF to prevent the VC from entering the villages despite the ‘close ambushing’ tactic.47 He cites the escape of the survivors of Sherrin’s ambush and the later VC penetration of the Australian ambushes as evidence. But it is difficult to imagine the survivors of Sherrin’s ambush, some of




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whom were probably terrified or wounded and hiding from GVN security sweeps, as conveying to the citizens of Hoa Long anything but the appearance of a beaten force. Citizens may also have detected less confidence, more caution, in the groups which entered Hoa Long in the weeks following Sherrin’s ambush. In any case, ‘close ambushing’ could never completely seal off the villages from the guerillas in the jungle. However, maintained over the long term, the technique could substantially reduce VC and NLF influence in the villages. Throughout 1970, and particularly after the concerted effort to deny the enemy easy access to the villages, evidence shows that Australian operations in Phuoc Tuy Province were having an important impact on the enemy’s ability to penetrate the villages. In turn, this had an impact on the enemy’s ability to resupply and to conduct political activity. It also made the VCI more vulnerable. As early as February 1970 there was already mounting evidence that the VC were having difficulty locating sufficient food. A report prepared by 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) battalion said that captured documents, prisoners and Hoi Chanh were consistent in saying that rice, flour and tinned food were almost non-existent in some major enemy units. The enemy was being forced to forage for food in the jungle and manpower was being diverted away from operations and training, towards foraging. Two examples vividly illustrated the shortage of food facing some VC units. An Australian patrol killed a VC whose pack was found to contain ration tins retrieved from an Australian rubbish pit. The tins had been punctured and burnt in accordance with Australian standing operating procedures but they still contained some food. The VC soldier had retrieved these meagre morsels even though they were fly-blown. A second VC killed by another Australian patrol was found to be carrying nearly two kilograms of ‘rice’ of which three-quarters was earth. He had scraped the food together from a cache which had been found by the Australians and destroyed by scattering the rice on the ground.48 The return to pacification operations in Phuoc Tuy Province led by 8RAR in April 1970 fortuitously fitted in with broader strategic developments to accentuate the impact on the enemy. In April and May of 1970, US and ARVN forces invaded Cambodia and attacked VC and NVA headquarters, supply dumps and other major enemy facilities. In Phuoc Tuy Province, while local tactical operations began to focus on the enemy’s supply chain at the village level, the enemy’s supply of military equipment and infiltrated personnel was also under attack, putting extra pressure on the enemy.


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From June 1970, evidence accumulated that the enemy’s supply of food was being constricted and his morale affected. In early July a rallier who had been a member of the An Ngai village guerilla unit said that his group had been on a resupply mission on the night of 27 June when they had been ambushed by 8RAR. Four were killed. He escaped from the VC a few days later and rallied. Among those killed in the ambush had been the unit secretary. Only one 16-year-old member of the unit remained.49 The VCI within An Ngai had collapsed. In late July a Hoi Chanh said that his unit normally collected food from Long Dien, Dat Do, Phuoc Hai and Hoi My villages but that getting food was now very hard because Australian troops had ambushed the VC infiltration routes. His unit usually stored 300 litres of rice in caches which was enough to maintain the unit for ten days, but they were running short of food due to the area being saturated with Australian patrols.50 Other interrogation reports revealed similar evidence. In late August a Hoi Chanh said that his unit of company strength had only 20 litres of rice left in their camp and that food was very short because of the ambushing of the villages by ARVN and allied forces.51 Another Hoi Chanh testified that food shortages caused by the Australian ambushes, combined with other issues, were adversely affecting morale in his unit. The morale of company officers and cadres remained high but, he said, it was very poor at platoon level and below. This was due to three factors: numbers were dwindling and the unit had not received any reinforcements; the unit lacked adequate food supplies; and it had lost many weapons and had not been able to replace them.52 The invasion of Cambodia had choked off the supply of North Vietnamese men and military equipment, but 1ATF pacification operations were restricting the supply of food, reducing morale (and hence making it more difficult for the enemy to recruit locally) and interrupting the distribution of that equipment which could be purchased from the villages. Whereas Westmoreland’s—and Ewell’s—attrition strategy depended entirely on bringing the enemy to battle and killing him in numbers he could not replace, pacification operations providing security around the villages could have a telling effect upon the enemy without actually engaging him in combat. Hoi Chanh interrogation reports and captured documents revealed a number of cases where the fear of Australian ambushes was sufficient to dissuade the enemy from going ahead with a resupply mission. One Hoi Chanh said that his unit usually resupplied




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from the village of Go Cat every two or three days, but they had not visited since April—when 8RAR started its pacification operations— because they were afraid of ambush. The unit now had no rice and was foraging in the jungle.53 Another told of his resupply team being tasked to enter Dat Do in early July 1970. Using binoculars, they saw Australians setting up an ambush and decided not to attempt the entry.54 In October 1970, a rallier from the Chau Duc guerillas said that his unit had decided that entry to Hoa Long would only be made by small groups in future. Due to Australian ambushes it was too dangerous to enter in large groups. Later the same month two Hoi Chanh from the Chau Duc guerillas told their interrogators that their unit would switch its resupply missions from Hoa Long to Thai Thien because it was too dangerous to enter Hoa Long.55 As the availability of food declined, so too did the enemy’s capacity to keep troops available for offensive operations.56 The enemy was forced to switch much of its effort to foraging and other alternatives to resupplying from the villages. By October 1970, 8RAR had significantly reduced the number of ambushes it had around Hoa Long while it prepared for return to Australia. Just one rifle company was allocated the task, leaving many gaps through which enemy patrols could penetrate. However, ralliers continued to claim that the VC were wary of the Australian ambushes there. ‘Are the local people telling the VC that we are still around HOA LONG in strength, hoping to have peace and quiet?’ asked an 8RAR intelligence summary. ‘If they are’, it argued, ‘this is an indication of the plain bold fact of Security vis a vis ideology.’57 But this development also revealed another reality: that once dominance of the approaches to the villages had been achieved, a continuing barrier to enemy patrols could be maintained with relatively few troops. A sustained pacification campaign need not have meant the abandonment of operations in depth.

THE ENEMY REACTION There are few Vietnamese histories of the war in Phuoc Tuy Province, but those that exist cite the Australians and their ‘puppet’ allies using three strategies. The first of these was the ‘minefield strategy’, which refers to the construction in 1966 of the barrier minefield between Dat Do and the sea near Lang Phuoc Hai. The second was the ‘underground redoubt’ strategy. This was the construction during the short burst of pacification operations in mid-1969 of defensive


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bunkers around the villages of Dat Do and Hoa Long. The third strategy is described by Vietnamese histories as the ‘human shield barrier’.58 This term refers to the ambushes placed around the villages, starting in April 1970, as part of the pacification operations begun by 8RAR. It is noteworthy that the Vietnamese histories make almost no mention of Australian reconnaissance-in-force operations. This strongly suggests that these operations were of little concern to the VC. It is equally noteworthy that the ‘strategies’ that are mentioned in the Vietnamese histories each relate to Australian attempts to isolate the villages from the VC. Unlike Australian reconnaissance-in-force operations, each of the three strategies attempted to wrest the initiative from the VC/NVA. Each caused the VC/NVA to consider a tactical response. Their approach to defeating the ‘minefield strategy’ was to lift the mines and redeploy them against the Australians and their GVN allies. The ‘underground redoubt’ strategy provoked assaults against the redoubts in late 1969. Dealing with the ‘human shield barrier’ strategy was more difficult and the VC were unable to produce a fully effective response. The Vietnamese saw 8RAR’s Operation Hammersley as part of this last strategy rather than as a reconnaissance-in-force operation. Their history of the events of 1970—which makes reference to the beginning of Operation Hammersley on 10 February, to the 9 Platoon ambush of 15/16 February and to Sergeant Ron West’s 4 Platoon, B Company, contact on the morning of 28 February—gives prominence to the notion of a ‘human shield’: From 10 February 1970 a mixed US–Australian battalion with New Zealand artillery and 40 tanks mounted a series of attacks on Minh Dam base [the Long Hai hills] . . . Minh Dam base became the target of regular attacks by Australian and puppet troops . . . Australian forces scoured our base areas and communication corridors. In the daytime, they searched ‘brushes and copses’ while at night tanks and special force troops formed a ‘shield’ outside Dat Do . . . Clearly the Australians aimed to strengthen pacification, remove the people from the revolution and isolate the revolution economically.

The history also makes it clear that the Australian approach was both effective and troubling: The Australian ‘human shield barrier’ caused many difficulties and losses to the Long Dat revolutionary movement. Their special forces laid in




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ambush everywhere. On 15 January 1970, a group of cadres going to Long Dien were intercepted by an Australian special force unit; 7 comrades were killed and 3 district committee members missing. On 16 February, our cadres who went to Long Dien to obtain food supplies met with the ‘Australian shield’; 12 comrades were killed. On 27 February, 8 comrades were killed in an ambush. Throughout the year 1970, the Australian tactics of the ‘human shield barrier’ created an extremely tense situation for us. 245 of our cadres and soldiers were killed. In the villages, 188 of our agents were arrested and put in gaol and 162 young men were forced to join the army. We suffered a very serious lack of food; our cadres and soldiers had to eat leaves gathered in the jungle; only the wounded were allowed a thin rice gruel.59

The enemy’s tactical response was varied. There is evidence, cited earlier, that the enemy endeavoured to shift its resupply missions away from villages under the umbrella of Australian ‘close ambushing’ to those where the risks of entry were lower. Enemy troops were also encouraged to observe the Australian ambushes closely and to mount counter-ambushes and use mines to cause such losses to the Australians that the cost would be unacceptable.60 Another offensive response was the use of ‘suicide’ troops.61 These were squads of seven men well armed with AK47s, RPGs and grenades. They patrolled in two groups about 50 metres apart. The first group were to sacrifice themselves by springing the Australian ambushes. The second, clear of the initial burst of fire, were then to aggressively attack the Australians with the aim of inflicting maximum casualties on them.62 It seems that the aim of this tactic was to so increase casualties among the Australians that domestic political pressure, or the Australian high command’s fear of it, would force the abandonment of ‘close ambushing’. High Australian casualties resulting from VC mines had been a factor in ending the pacification operations of mid-1969 and the VC/NVA hoped that the same tactic would work again. Captured documents support this analysis. An instruction from the Ba Long Province Current Affairs Committee to subordinate commands, dated 9 June 1970, directed VC units to ‘eliminate shortcomings and be determined to defeat enemy small scale attack tactics and counter enemy ambushes’. To do this, small and light counter-attack elements using reconnaissance and sapper tactics were to be employed. Mines were to be planted anywhere the enemy was expected to set ambushes.


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In the event that a unit was ambushed or became entangled in a surprise enemy encounter, it was to strive to take offensive action and completely destroy the enemy force.63 The adoption of this tactic accounts for the unusually aggressive response some of the later 8RAR ambushes experienced. The enemy also adopted a number of passive responses aimed at finding a way through the ‘human shield barrier’. As well as avoiding known paths into the villages, the enemy adopted extremely cautious tactics for their resupply missions. A Hoi Chanh revealed that on resupply missions the VC moved very slowly and carefully. Small groups were sent well ahead to scout and then return to the main group to confirm that the route was safe. These tactics, he said, were due to the VC being very afraid of Australian ambushes. He said that if the group was ambushed it would disperse and return to its base where it would assess the unit’s losses. Survivors would then quickly move to a new base.64 Each successful Australian ambush therefore added to the level of fear the VC experienced, encouraged them to be more cautious and further disrupted their organisation by forcing the suvivors to relocate to new camps. In some villages, VC agents were tasked with the specific role of warning the VC if there were ambushes in the vicinity. In Hoi My village one agent used a kerosene lamp to signal whether it was safe to enter.65 But the deception techniques and tactics adopted by 8RAR and the other Australian battalions were difficult to counter. Despite the help of agents, the enemy did not know where the Australians had placed the ambushes.66

CONCLUSION While 8RAR conducted a number of successful operations and suffered relatively few casualties, possibly its greatest achievement was the influence it had on the return of 1ATF to pacification operations and village security. This had been aided by the success of Operation Hammersley, the fortuitous departure of Ewell and his replacement by Davison, the departure of Weir and his replacement by Henderson (though, under Davison, Weir too may have embraced pacification operations) and especially the success of the experimental Operation Phoi Hop. Phoi Hop formed the model which was applied (albeit with refinements) with great success in many of the battalion’s remaining pacification operations. The Phoi Hop experiment became quickly




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accepted and more broadly applied within the Task Force and culminated in the Cung Chung series of operations which involved all three of the 1ATF infantry battalions. While these operations lasted, immense pressure was applied to the VC/NVA in Phuoc Tuy Province. Sadly, though pacification operations had returned to vogue, they were not sustained. Following 8RAR’s departure from Vietnam in November 1970 the battalion was not replaced.67 1ATF again became a two-battalion Task Force and lacked the infantry resources to mount both pacification operations around the villages and reconnaissancein-force operations into the deep jungle. By February 1971 the style of 1ATF operations changed and the focus again returned to reconnaissancein-force. It is possible that, given what we now know about the impact of the pacification operations of 1970 on the enemy, had 1ATF dedicated part of its infantry resources to pacification much earlier and sustained the pacification effort for longer, Phuoc Tuy Province may have been more secure than it was by the late stages of Australia’s involvement there. This would not have altered the outcome of the war, which was lost for reasons well beyond the responsibility of any Australian. But it may have given the citizens of Phuoc Tuy Province greater security, reduced Australian casualties and, by limiting the size and offensive capability of their forces, reduced VC/NVA casualties as well.


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4

The life of the infantryman The life of the infantryman

Although the infantry exists for combat, the process of fighting actually occupies little of the infantryman’s time. In Vietnam, infantry battalions found that most of their time was taken up with ‘seeking out’ the enemy, rather than ‘closing with and killing him’. The process of combat is dealt with in detail in following chapters, but this chapter looks at the life of the 8RAR infantryman in that greater portion of his time—when he was not engaged in combat. Although it occupied a small amount of the 8RAR soldier’s time, the prospect of combat was a pervasive influence on his life. Beyond the wire of the Nui Dat base there was always the chance of imminent combat and the risk of being killed or wounded, and so, much of what the soldier did, and how he did it, was dictated by the possibility of combat if not its actuality.

SUPPORT FROM NUI DAT On each operation, support for the deployed components of the battalion was provided from those left behind at the Nui Dat base. The work at Nui Dat was essential but routine. It involved carrying out the A/Q functions of the battalion, maintaining the battalion area and ensuring the security of the base. At the battalion headquarters 77




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and in each company, a small staff remained behind during each operation to ensure that these tasks were performed. Battalion headquarters was sometimes split into forward and rear headquarters, in which the ‘forward’ elements were deployed to a fire support patrol base (FSPB) and the ‘rear’ elements remained within the battalion lines at Nui Dat. The ‘forward’ headquarters included the command element—the CO, his operations officer, the command post staff including duty personnel, signallers, intelligence dutymen, and the staff of the fire support control centre. This latter group included the artillery commander and the OC of the Mortar Platoon located adjacent to the battalion command post, where the CO could coordinate fire support with the movements of his rifle companies. The ‘forward’ headquarters would also include the battalion intelligence Officer, an A/Q cell to coordinate administrative and quartermaster requirements, the regimental aid post, and protection elements usually provided by the Assault Pioneer Platoon and the Anti-tank Platoon of Support Company. Located within the FSPB would often be the guns of 161 Field Battery, RNZA, and their crews. Other elements that might be found within the FSPB from time to time included the APCs of 3 Cavalry Regiment, the tanks of 1 Armoured Regiment and, sometimes, US medium artillery batteries. The fire support patrol base was usually commanded by the battalion second in command, Major Adrian Clunies-Ross. For the battalion command group and for the artillerymen the life at an FSPB could be busy and exacting. The battalion command post demanded meticulous attention to detail and the careful following of procedures as the locations and movements of companies, platoons and half platoons were recorded on the situation map and messages were received and recorded. Artillerymen and mortarmen were often kept busy firing in support of contacts or, more commonly, at harassing and interdiction (H&I) targets. For the infantrymen providing perimeter security, though, life at a typical FSPB could be tedious. FSPBs were usually treeless in order to give good all-round clearance for the artillery, to eliminate covered approaches the enemy might use to harass the base, and to allow helicopters to land. In the dry season they were hot and dusty places. Artillery fire and the movement of trucks and helicopters stirred the dust until it covered everything. In the wet the heavy traffic churned the dust to mud, and large pools of water were often trapped inside the encircling earth bund which was pushed up by bulldozers as a protection against snipers. The platoons providing security had also to contend with what


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Fire mission. 8RAR mortarmen Privates Keith Boog (left) and Brian Hales duck below the muzzle blast of their mortar as they work to complete a fire mission. The mortar platoon, seen here at Fire Support Base Peggy, provided heavy weapons support for the rifle companies. Because Fire Support Bases were often occupied for relatively long periods more elaborate defences could be built. Note the corrugated iron revetments to this mortar pit and the large bulldozed clearing. (AWM negative number WAR/70/0023/VN. Photograph by Sergeant Peter Ward)

sometimes seemed like an endless cycle of patrols and sentry duty rarely enlivened by contacts with the enemy. Despite the greater security and comforts they offered, none of the rifle company soldiers envied those in an FSPB. Further to the rear, in the Nui Dat base, other 8RAR soldiers provided security at the battalion’s lines, maintained the area and prepared the resupplies of rations, water, ammunition, mail and other items that would be sent forward from time to time to the rifle company




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Lookout. Private Nick Williamson surveys the approaches to the Nui Dat perimeter from the B Company observation tower. He has equipped his SLR with a 30-round magazine. Soldiers spent many tedious hours on sentry duty both at Nui Dat and on operations. Though boring, sentry duty provided vital security to the battalion base. (Photo courtesy of Nick Williamson)

soldiers on operations. Preparing the resupplies was the duty of the company quartermaster sergeants. Depending upon the requirements stipulated by the company commander, a CQMS would pack five, six or seven days rations into sandbags for the helicopter journey to a jungle clearing where they would be distributed to the waiting soldiers. Some companies had their own special arrangements. In D Company, Major Mal Peck insisted that his CQMS break open the individual one-day ration packs and discard what Peck deemed unnecessary items. This practice reduced the bulk and weight of rations and enabled D company to routinely take resupply every seven days (instead of the more usual five), which in turn meant fewer visits to the company from resupply


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helicopters and, supposedly, greater security and an increased probability of meeting unsuspecting enemy. However, these perceived tactical advantages were achieved at the cost of hungry and sometimes angry soldiers. D Company soldiers were particularly angry when hexamine— the solid fuel tablets soldiers used to heat meals and boil water for a hot drink—was not issued to them. Hot meals and, particularly, hot ‘brews’ played an important part in sustaining the morale of the soldier on operations. Others in the battalion sympathised with the plight of the D Company men. Once, when D Company soldiers were filing past his position, Captain Peter Sibree, the Mortar Platoon commander, handed out packets of hexamine to them as they walked past.

OUT BUSH It was an irony of the era that the Vietnam War demanded of soldiers the self-discipline to endure the hardships of soldiering whereas for civilians, the 1960s and early 1970s were characterised as an age of youthful rebellion in which self-discipline became unfashionable and was replaced by self-expression. As Gerster and Bassett note: ‘It was an age which prized, above all else, the free, unfettered expression of individuality.’1 Long hair, drug taking, rock’n’roll swept through youth culture to mark their rebellion against the conformist attitudes of earlier generations. For civilian youth, the Vietnam War and conscription both played a central role in promoting the dominant youth culture of the time, by providing a focus to unify young people in opposition to the war.2 Self-expression, hedonism and rebellion against conformism were the distinctive features of youth culture. Soldiering could not have been more out of step with the mores of 1960s youth culture. The life of the infantry revolved around a stern self-discipline; around acceptance of the risks of combat rather than the pursuit of pleasures; around conformity to battalion standing operating procedures and the Manual of Infantry Minor Tactics rather than rebellion against the norms of earlier generations. The Army in Vietnam was a society unto itself, largely cut off from civilian society in Australia and Vietnam. Soldiers marked their membership of this Army society with uniforms, short hair and a jargon often incomprehensible to outsiders. The need for self-discipline and the pressure to conform arose from the requirement for infantrymen to function as a team in which each man depended on the others for his survival in combat. The men of




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the four rifle companies of the battalion were constantly on operations. According to Army doctrine a platoon had one officer and 33 men, but textbook strength was never attained on operations. Men were left back at Nui Dat because they were on courses, going on R&R, recovering from wounds or illness or simply required to make up the numbers to defend the Nui Dat perimeter. A section of ten men (of which there were three in each rifle platoon) commonly went on operations with only six or seven men. But there were pluses too. Platoon strength was often bolstered by an artillery forward observer party, a mortar fire controller from the battalion’s Mortar Platoon, an Engineer ‘splinter team’ of two men to deal with mines and booby traps, and a ‘bushman scout’—a former Viet Cong soldier who had taken advantage of the Chieu Hoi or ‘open arms’ program to change sides.3 Some bushmen scouts performed valuable service. Major Mal Peck used two and would frequently question them about the thought processes and intentions of the enemy commander.4 But some would have been reluctant soldiers in any army. They gave little useful advice, were very reluctant to be exposed to danger and sometimes had poor standards of soldiering. Some Australians remained highly suspicious of them.5 The life of the infantry on operations was one of hard physical work, of being hungry, tired, filthy, soaked with either sweat or rain, and often fearful. Typically, operations lasted from four to six weeks. With resupplies of rations only every five to seven days, for that time the infantryman carried everything he needed on his back—rations, shaving kit, half tent (or hutchie), bedding, water and ammunition. Patrolling through the jungle, platoons moved in single file, each man observing his assigned arc of responsibility for signs of the enemy. A system of hand signals, drilled into each man during training, silently communicated basic commands: ‘gun group move to the left’, ‘stop and listen’, ‘enemy approaching’. Talking, if it occurred at all, was in whispers. Each man maintained a proper tactical distance from the next. To bunch up was to present a target to a waiting enemy and, in moments of excitement or fear, platoon and section commanders worked to overcome the soldiers’ tendency to gather together. Finding tracks used by the enemy, patrols might stop and ambush. Depending on their tasks, platoons might remain in ambush for an hour or for several days. Whether on the move or in ambush, platoons, using their radio, would call in their location every hour so that company and battalion headquarters could monitor the situation and coordinate the operation.


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Reading the signs. Former Viet Cong served with 8RAR as Bushman Scouts to provide advice about VC tactics and signs. Here a Bushman Scout shows Lance Corporal B. Kirby, armed with an M79 grenade launcher, a VC marker consisting of sticks arranged on the ground, indicating that the area is booby-trapped. Another unidentified soldier, armed with an M60 machine gun, provides cover. (AWM negative number BLA/70/0743/VN. Photograph by Captain Kenneth Ray Blanch)

As each day ended, platoons would be either in ‘harbour’—a standardised defensive layout used when contact with the enemy was not expected—or in ambush. After preparation of the night position and a meal, platoons would move from day to night routine. The twice-daily ritual of ‘stand-to’ marked this transition. During stand-to, each man lay silently in his allocated position, weapon at the ready, observing the jungle and listening for the sounds of enemy movement in the gathering dark. Although its purpose was to ensure the platoon’s security,




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stand-to was often the only time soldiers had for quiet contemplation of the day’s events. After dark platoons would stand down and mount sentries on each section’s machine gun and on the radio at platoon headquarters. With only six or seven men per section, most soldiers did a two-hour sentry duty during the night. However, if contact with the enemy was expected, double sentries might be ordered and each man might do two of the two-hour stints. Men were constantly tired from a combination of maintaining intense concentration during the day and the requirements of the sentry roster at night. On sentry, soldiers peered into the blackness watching and listening for the enemy. Staring too long at the dark shapes in the jungle could induce a type of hallucination in which the shapes appeared to move. The noise of deadfalls and small animals frequently kept the sentry on edge. The sentry was responsible for the security of the rest of his section. It was a point of honour not to fall asleep. Being on sentry alone in the jungle, and particularly in areas where there were heavy sightings of the enemy, could be terrifying for some soldiers. Peter Ball remembered: I would be sitting there, eyes bulging, hanging on to the [claymore] clacker. Because I was there alone with everyone else asleep it was terrible. The worst thing about it was that when I went to sleep after I was relieved I then felt terribly safe.

Jeff Sculley, the platoon medic for 5 Platoon, B Company, recalled a terrifying incident on sentry: One night I was on picquet in a rubber plantation, half asleep. All of a sudden I could hear something coming through the rubber behind our position. I couldn’t make out what was going on as there seemed to be a big group and they were fairly well spread out. So I picked up the starlight scope, but I was shaking that much I couldn’t see out of it and I nearly gave myself a black eye trying to look out of it. All it turned out to be was a mob of pigs.

Still, tiredness could be overwhelming. Some men used their bayonets, point up, under their chin, to wake them if they began to nod off. Private Neil Roberts of 5 Platoon, B Company, commented: I never slept much out bush, as I could never get comfortable enough. I averaged about three hours a night, at a guess. Then, during the day, when we would stop for a break, all I wanted to do was nod off. I was always getting a kick from one of the boys telling me to stay awake.6


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Each morning the process was reversed. The platoon stood-to before dawn and lay, listening and watching the jungle, as the day broke. Another cause of exhaustion was the physical effort of carrying the typical infantryman’s load. Waiting for helicopters at the battalion LZ one day, Lieutenant Trevor Taylor, commanding 10 Platoon, weighed his soldiers’ packs on a set of scales. Bruno Jaudzemis was carrying around 100 pounds [45 kilograms] of gear . . . I was carrying the lightest weight in the platoon and I was carrying about 80 pounds [36 kilograms]. Bruno had about 93 to 100 pounds of ammunition, pack and machine gun. He was so overloaded that if he leant forward and you pushed him, he couldn’t stop moving for 10 or 12 paces. I mean, it was a bit ridiculous really, but those were the weights we were carrying. Lots of ammunition, machine guns, claymores.7

Graeme Binks, one of Taylor’s soldiers, was sure that his section carried the heaviest loads of anyone in 8RAR. He recalled that personal loads averaged 120 pounds (54 kilograms), mostly made up of ammunition and water.8 ‘I learned early that you could never have enough ammo,’ recalled Joe McGillion, machine gun number two in A company, ‘so there were no complaints if you had to carry extra.’ Sometimes rations would be sacrificed rather than ammunition. Paul Simson, a Support Section rifleman in D Company remembered: On occasions we were expected to carry up to seven days’ rations. We just couldn’t do it. We would bury, say, two days’ and just make do with five days’ for the week . . . I remember being hungry and thirsty many times, but I always carried all the magazines and gun ammo that I could.

Not surprisingly, men took what might seem extreme measures to lighten their load. They carried only half a cake of soap, cut most of the handle off their toothbrush, carried their spoon but left their knife and fork at Nui Dat, used their steel ‘cups canteen’ as their only cooking implement rather than the heavier and bulkier ‘dixies’. They took only the lightest of their bedding and never used the blow-up mattress the Army had thoughtfully provided them; it was too noisy and too heavy. Instead they cut it up to make something the Army hadn’t thought to provide—a cover to protect machine gun ammunition. Usually all but one man per section left their mosquito nets at Nui Dat. Mosquito nets were an important part of the soldier’s




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Dressed to kill. Private Nicholas Andropof carries the typical soldiers’ load as he patrols on Operation Petrie. Armed with an SLR he carries an M72 anti-tank rocket (in its cylindrical launcher), numerous water bottles, bedding and rations in his back pack, a claymore mine (atop back pack) and basic pouches containing his rifle ammunition and grenades. (AWM negative number WAR/70/0596/VN. Photograph by Sergeant Peter Ward)


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armoury against malaria, and those who had the disease could be charged with an offence if they had not been using their net. But mosquito nets were impractical on operations, so each section carried a net to be given to any soldier who was evacuated with suspected malaria. It was a protection against the charge, not the mosquitoes. As described in the previous chapter, midway through the 8RAR tour the operations changed from reconnaissance-in-force to pacification operations involving nightly ambushing around villages in the populated parts of the province. With this, the soldiers’ load changed, but its weight remained about the same. Peter Ball, number two on the machine gun in 6 Platoon, B Company, recalled the difference in his load. Gone were most of the rations, the half tent and the bedding required for a lengthy stay in the jungle, to be replaced by ‘just a great load of ammunition and maybe a flak jacket. There wasn’t a great deal of difference in the weight . . . We weighed our gunner once— 105 pounds [47 kilograms] he was carrying’. In both types of operations, ammunition was the major component of the load. Corporal John Norris listed in his diary the weapons and ammunition he carried. Equipped with the lightweight M16 rifle, Norris carried twelve filled magazines in his basic ammunition pouches, as well as two bandoliers of extra ammunition for the weapon. He also carried 200 rounds for his section’s M60 machine gun, six M26 hand grenades, four smoke grenades, six rounds of high explosive ammunition for the M79 40 mm grenade launcher, an M72 anti-tank rocket for bunker busting, a claymore mine, a slab of plastic explosive for destroying dud bombs and shells, a tin of detonators, nine metres of safety fuse, ten metres of detonating cord and a box of matches.9 Most men were walking bombs. It was common practice to carry coils of detonating cord with detonators already crimped to both ends. These pre-assembled sets enabled the quick setting up of chains of claymore mines, but of all the explosives that soldiers carried they were probably the most dangerous. After ammunition the heaviest items were rations and water. Each man might carry five or six water bottles and a soft plastic water bladder. But consumption was high in the 40°C heat, particularly if the soldiers were on the move rather than waiting in ambush. Water was replenished whenever the opportunity allowed. It could be got from streams or collected using the half tent, during rain storms. Rations had the benefit that as they were consumed the pack became lighter. Soldiers often discarded items out of their ration packs to lighten their load, but sometimes that meant they went hungry. In




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D Company, where the discarding of ‘unnecessary’ rations was done by the CQMS under the company commander’s orders, morale became a casualty. Many soldiers resented and complained about the practice. ‘The shortage of food was the thing that really knocked the morale about’, recalled Corporal John Norris of his time in D Company. He went on: You could see the morale was falling apart. They weren’t concentrating on what they were doing. I felt it was absolutely wrong that we lived on three cans of food a day, especially with the work that we had to do and the heat that we had to work in and the amount of equipment we had to carry. We were living on a pound of food a day, which was ridiculous. You just couldn’t do it. 10

Australian field rations came in five varieties, not enough to break the monotony of eating the same food on long operations. Sometimes the 8RAR soldiers received a mixture of Australian and US rations to add more variety.11 US rations were much bulkier and heavier than Australian rations and included items that 8RAR soldiers thought were surprisingly genteel in a combat ration pack: pound cake, cheese and crackers and a chocolate fudge biscuit. Much of their content was discarded and only the essentials kept. Occasionally soldiers had the opportunity to trade rations with their platoon bushman scout. The Vietnamese rations were similar in size and weight to the Australian ration, but included more rice and were a delightful change to the standard Australian pack. Whatever the rations, the infantryman on operations generally ate his meal out of his steel canteen cup—the same vessel he drank his tea or coffee from and washed and shaved with. His one eating utensil was his spoon. In the dry season, when water was scarce, it was not unknown for soldiers to shave in the dregs of their tea. The men were theoretically required to shave daily when on operations. Shaving was believed by senior officers to have positive effects on morale. In practice, once operating away from company headquarters, it was common for platoon commanders to allow their soldiers to suit themselves. Allowing the growth of stubble saved time and water, avoided cuts and scratches which often turned septic, and helped camouflage cream stick to sweaty faces. It also avoided lathering the face and the use of a mirror. A white lather created an excellent aiming mark for enemy riflemen and light flashing off a mirror could be seen for some distance even in heavy jungle. Finally, despite the beliefs of senior officers, platoon commanders often found that allowing their men not to shave raised morale.


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Infantrymen were very envious of the armoured corps men they often worked with. The ‘tankies’, as they were called, seemed to want for nothing, at least in terms of food and water. But sometimes they were reluctant to share with the less fortunate infantrymen. Tony Flaherty was one of many 8RAR soldiers who resented the tankies’ attitude: Fuckin’ tankies. They had everything, we had nothin’ . . . I said to a tanky: ‘You know, you tankies are the biggest mob of bastards that God ever put breath into.’ We’d walk for six fuckin’ weeks, you’d be rationing your water and you’d be runnin’ out of tucker and your arse would be hanging out and you’d be sweatin’ and all this shit and everything, and these pricks would get up and they’d walk out in the nick with their fuckin’ jerry can [to have a shower]. Or you’d get in the back of the APC and it would be full of . . . rations and goffers [soft drinks] and God knows what else, and the crew commander would say: ‘Leave the fuckin’ things alone. Don’t touch ’em’ . . . You’d go up [to the tankies] and say: ‘Listen mate, any chance of getting a jerry can for the boys?’ ‘Fuck off and get your own!’ You’d stand there and you’d think to yourself: ‘You . . .’12

But the APC crews were not all as heartless as Flaherty makes out. Many were generous with their water and spare rations. Corporal Norris noted in his diary: ‘We put in a platoon ambush . . . with APCs. [The crew of] 13A gave 7 Section a full ration pack which was broken up amongst the eight of us and for once we went to sleep without hunger pains. God bless the crew of 13A.’13 Men came back from operations gaunt and hungry. The company cooks would normally do their best to feed them up. They knew what it was like on operations—some had gone out with their company for short stints—so they understood what the soldiers had been through and did their best to give them a good feed of fresh rations whenever resupplies allowed or the companies came back to Nui Dat. Corporal Norris wrote home about the meal put on by the D Company cooks after his first operation: ‘Tea tonight was a bar-b-q and I had 4 pieces of steak, 3 sausages, 2 big helpings of salad and 4 bread rolls. Also, everyone received two cans of beer free. Since I arrived back I haven’t stopped eating.’14 But some cooks left the soldiers unimpressed. Private Merv Ryan, ‘tail-end charlie’ and M79 gunner in 3 Platoon, A company, wrote to his parents:




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Remember back in ARU, I used to tell you that the food was good? Oh boy, I haven’t seen a decent meal since then. We come back from the ambushing each morning, hungry, but breakfast consists of cold fried egg and a small slice of greasy bacon with maybe a spoonful of last night’s leftovers. No milk, no cereals, no bread, and more often than not, there are either flies or cockroaches in the food.

Others too, complained about the food in camp at Nui Dat. Corporal Norris confided to his diary: ‘Went down to the Pearson club for a meal. Just can’t eat in the mess.’ A few days later he added: ‘A Company now has a new cook. The meal tonight was good and I had seconds; the first time since I’ve been in country.’15 Recognising the importance of good catering to the health and morale of the battalion, the CO and the battalion second in command insisted that all aspects of the battalion’s administration including kitchens and messes were regularly inspected. Sometimes inspections were carried out by officers from outside the unit. One report, in June, by the Deputy Commander 1ATF and the DAQMG, rated the battalion’s kitchens and messes ‘exceptionally good’ and menu preparation ‘good’. The report concluded: ‘This is by far one of the better units with regard to catering.’16 If food could affect morale, so too could mail. Letters from loved ones were a connection between the soldier and his home or, often, an imagined, idealised version of home he had constructed for himself. Reading and re-reading letters was a means of temporary escape from the pressures of operations. With the help of family and loved ones, some soldiers received a steady stream of mail, although single soldiers might only receive a few infrequent letters. Sergeant Alan Ahearn, platoon sergeant of 12 Platoon, D Company, had been in Vietnam for 179 days when he died of wounds received when a hand grenade was thrown into the platoon position, but in that time he had received 213 letters.17 Private Victor Wagstaff, killed in a friendly fire exchange after 74 days in Vietnam, had received 49 letters.18 Letters from home were often treasured, read and re-read. Sergeant Ron West, platoon sergeant, 4 Platoon, B Company, kept his precious stock of letters in an empty ammunition tin where, sealed from the humidity, they survived his frequent re-reading of them.19 In almost every letter to his wife, John Norris enquired about letters received and sent and pondered the vagaries of the postal system when particular letters could not be accounted for. Resupply days, when fresh rations and the mail were delivered, were the highlights of operations. ‘Received three letters from you yesterday, dated 24th, 26th and 29th December’,


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wrote Norris, ‘and believe me it was great to receive them after going 7 days without any mail.’20

FUNGUS, LEECHES AND OTHER WORRIES Most men wore the one set of clothing for the entire operation and never took it off during that time. After the first week they stank but since everyone smelt the same no-one complained. Men went without underpants and sometimes socks because, saturated with sweat or soaked from river crossings or rain, they tended to encourage fungal infection and chafing. Without underwear the fly could be undone as the soldier patrolled and the breeze allowed to circulate. But, particularly in the wet season, men got fungal infections anyway. Private Neil Roberts of 5 Platoon, B Company, remembered a rash he couldn’t shake off: I was in a hell of a mess with this bloody rash . . . it was all over my groin and it was red raw. Every time I stopped for a rest, my testicles would stick onto my leg; then when I had to move, they would pull away, removing more skin. I didn’t know what to do, for by now it was getting very painful. As this was the last morning out [on the operation] I decided to wrap my handkerchief around them somehow to stop them sticking to my leg.21

Fungal infection was only one of the issues the infantryman had to deal with. The jungle seemed to hide a seemingly inexhaustible array of threats. Vietnam possessed a particularly impressive array of ants, all of which seemed ready to inflict painful bites. Sometimes at night swarms of ants could be heard moving in thick columns across the jungle floor. They would attack anything in their path. Private Julian Shaw, the 5 Platoon, B Company signaller, was bitten on the face by a swarm of ants and was barely capable of staying in the field.22 Bees were just as bad. Corporal Roy McCabe of A Company wrote to his parents describing a patrol: We ran into a bee’s nest. Boy, you should have seen the fellows scatter . . . Four blokes were badly stung and had to be choppered out. A couple couldn’t even walk. One bloke, you could see the stings hanging all over him. These bush bees are real bad. They’re about [3.5 cm] long and black. Saw one of the blokes covered in them.23

Other wildlife had also to be coped with. Snakes could usually be avoided on patrol, but if they were found inside a night harbour or an ambush position where the soldiers were to stay the night they




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Patch up. Private Gordon Pollard, the platoon medic of 10 platoon, D company, attends to a minor injury to Private Ian Wise, a machine-gunner. Men often suffered minor injuries, bites and scratches which, unless treated quickly, could easily turn septic in the dirt, sweat and filth of operations. (AWM negative number WAR/70/0598/VN. Photograph by Sergeant Peter Ward)

could be unsettling. Leeches were a greater problem. In some areas it was not uncommon for soldiers to find ten or twenty leeches on themselves. They were attracted to blood-rich places on the body and occasionally, particularly in the morning, would be found in the groin, on the penis, up the nose or attached to the eyelids. They could be got off with salt, a lighted cigarette or with a squirt of insect repellent. Despite their unpleasantness, leeches were harmless. Rashes, septic cuts and scratches, malaria and other illnesses were much more likely to cause soldiers to be left out of battle. More than 212 8RAR soldiers were hospitalised during the battalion’s tour.24 Most were hospitalised for short periods but some remained in hospital for two to three months. Serious cases, whether battle casualties or illness, were usually evacuated to Australia.

RECORDING THEIR PLACE IN HISTORY Despite the weight and bulk of their equipment, one item many soldiers still found room for was their camera. The Vietnam War must


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surely have been one of the most photographed. Almost every soldier had at least one camera—some had several—and despite being urged by their commanders to leave them at Nui Dat lest they fall into enemy hands and the developed photographs provide useful intelligence, many took them on operations. During the battalion’s first operation, Lieutenant Neil Smith wrote to his parents that he had his ‘faithful little camera tucked away in his pack’. 25 Lance Corporal Phil Goody, a Nasho of D Company later killed in an exchange of friendly fire, was the owner of two Kodak Instamatic cameras and a Fujica Compact 35.26 Private Daryl Poulson of A Company, also a Nasho, who was killed in a contact in a bunker system, had his Kodak Instamatic model 304 with him when he died27 and Private Laurie Evans of 5 Platoon, B company, carried ‘one of those little Kodak jobs’ in a basic pouch.28 Trevor Seivers carried a Kodak Instamatic in his basic pouch where it fitted neatly on top of five magazines of ammunition for his SLR.29 A few men also took movie cameras. Corporal Rod Atkinson of Support Company filmed operations, fire support patrol bases and the battalion lines at Nui Dat. The Kodak Instamatic was favoured because it was cheap, robust, light, simple to operate and perfectly proportioned to fit the basic ammunition pouch, where it was easy to reach and use. And use them they did. Poulson, who was KIA only four months into the battalion’s tour of duty, had already amassed a collection of 120 35 mm slides. Private Peter Ball, a Nasho of B Company, had a collection of about 500 when he returned to Australia. Others such as Lieutenant John Brien of B Company, Private Peter Cousins of Support Company and Private Kym Growden of C Company reported that they had ‘heaps’ of photographs they had taken in Vietnam. The Army’s public relations photographers were, of course, taking official photographs of operations in Vietnam. But their photography, particularly after July 1969, was carefully monitored to ensure that it presented the Army’s desired image. In July 1969 the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Major General Graham, had received a PR photograph from Vietnam showing the body of a dead VC being towed behind an Australian APC. Graham wrote to Major General Hay, COMAFV, complaining that the photo and the caption were in ‘extremely bad taste and if they got into the wrong hands would do us immeasurable harm’. Press photographers would like to take shots like the PR photograph, he said, but ‘for the life of me I cannot see why PR photographers who are there to help our effort should do so’.30 In September, Graham instructed Hay:




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The CGS wants a proper vetting done on PR photographs. I realise we cannot control the private sector of the fourth estate to any great degree but it is intolerable that our own PR, who are there to help us, from time to time do the opposite.31

Following Graham’s complaint, Hay ensured that PR photographs were vetted. He reassured Graham: ‘I hope . . . we now have this matter in hand and that no unfavourable photographs will reach the press.’32 For the most part, the Army succeeded in preventing unfavourable images reaching the media. Official photographs and other published photographs of the war are almost devoid of images of the bodies of the dead or wounded, whether Australian or VC. There seemed to be no similar constraints during World War II, when official photographs often showed the bodies of the dead and wounded. Images of badly wounded Australians being helped along jungle paths seemed to capture a sense of the cost of the national struggle. In Vietnam, the political sensitivities were different. Mindful of domestic political opposition to the war, the Army sought to downplay graphic evidence of the nasty reality of combat. The war, as it appeared in official photographs, was to be bloodless. To 8RAR soldiers, however, combat and their part in it were very real. Many soldiers understood that they were participating in a great historical event and they used their cameras and diaries, both banned on operations by official Army policy, to record their part. Their thoughts and photographs were uncensored. They recorded the banality of life in Nui Dat, the sights of Vung Tau, the villages and towns they sometimes travelled through on the way to operations. They also recorded the operations themselves, including images of the bodies of dead VC—‘sleeping beauties’, as they sometimes called them. Soldiers often mailed their exposed film to family members or direct to processing labs in Australia, where these images of death and the violence of contacts could shock the technicians and might possibly fall into the hands of opponents of the war, leading to embarrassment for the Army. The Army tried to stop soldiers mailing their film direct to processing labs.

FEAR In addition to the physical discomforts that wear him down, fear is a common thread running through the life of the infantryman. Perhaps surprisingly, many men reported that their greatest fear was not being


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killed but being maimed. ‘I hated the thought of being maimed and the pain of being wounded’, recalled Bob D’Arcy, second in command of 1 Section, 1 Platoon, A Company, who survived unscathed two massive mine blasts which killed and wounded many of his mates leaving him feeling guilty that he hadn’t been wounded too. ‘I had a dread of losing a limb and being permanently disfigured or maimed’, recalled Doug Hazell, a rifleman of 6 Platoon, B Company, who was to lose both legs to an M16 mine. But ‘once it happens you tend to forget about cosmetics and just want to live’, he said. Other men feared death, not for themselves but for what their death might do to their families. Private Rod Cleggett, a rifleman in 1 Section, 10 Platoon, D Company, commented: I was worried about being badly wounded or captured and often hoped that if I was hit it would be all over in seconds. I did not wish to return home with legs or arms missing and spend the rest of my life like that. I also believed that if captured, I would be killed by the enemy as they did not seem to take prisoners as much as we did.

Many men reported a generalised fear of the unknown. For example, Bob Lubke, a rifleman in B Company felt that being in a platoon harbour at night ‘created a lot of anxiety, not knowing what was around the perimeter, seeing shadows move, etc’. However, some soldiers reported that they were unafraid except in a few particular circumstances. John Grasby, a machine-gunner in A Company, didn’t give the prospect of death or wounding much thought: ‘I thought I was bullet proof.’ Peter Crump, number two on the machine gun in 12 Platoon, D Company, recalled: We were young, ‘unblooded’, well trained and never seemed to be worried by the enemy. My main concerns were for the serious consequences a careless action by one of my own section could cause. I think, later on, as the body count of dead mates added up, more caution was exercised.

As well as such generalised fears, infantrymen had also to deal with the more intense fear they encountered in contact with the enemy. Keith Carl, a rifleman and machine-gunner in C Company, remembered: I wasn’t really afraid until the first time somebody deliberately fired at me and me alone. I had experienced incoming fire several times but nothing aimed at me alone. This bloke was trying to kill me! He could see me and I couldn’t see him and I really had the wind up. However,




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I saw some vines shaking and soon he stopped shooting. From that episode on I realised how easy it can be to be killed or to kill. That was December 1969. I was frightened until I landed on the [HMAS] Sydney in November 1970.

Fear sometimes produced intense physiological phenomena. Shaking and sweating, loss of control of bladder and bowels, the seeming inability to move, were experienced by 8RAR soldiers. ‘I’ve seen blokes, and been one of them, walking around with wet pants after a contact’, Andrew Roberts, rifleman in C Company, remarked. Tom Elliott, a section commander in 5 Platoon, B Company, said: I remember coming across a large, well-used track and being so afraid someone would come down the track that I just started to shake. The fear wore off after a while when our platoon took up ambush positions there. Being section commander kept me busy laying claymores and making sure all was okay—kept my mind off the fear aspect. The rest of the tour was okay. I was never fearful to such an extent again.

There were some antidotes to fear. Michael Wykes, a section second in command and later commander, was afraid of death particularly when enemy fire was being sent directly at him. He coped by communicating with his section mates with ‘all sorts of yelling and screaming’. Like Wykes, others felt that contact with one’s mates and maintaining the realisation that one was not alone was a powerful antidote to fear. Major Vin Murphy remarked that ‘fear is controlled by knowledge [and] confidence in those around you. If you trust those who are being threatened with you, fear can be overcome’. Carey Johnson, section commander and later platoon sergeant in B Company felt that fear of falling in the estimation of his soldiers was greater than the fear of death or injury and helped him cope. I was frightened most of the time but made an effort to keep that fear to myself. The obligation and duty to complete a task most times made me put the fear to the back of my mind. I think I learnt early in Vietnam to care more what other persons thought how I conducted myself and that overrode the initial fear at the time . . . I have always respected fear and not been foolish but the fear of losing face always made me conquer the major aspects of the fright.

Sergeant Dieter Juckel of 3 Platoon, A Company, agreed: ‘You are more scared of being known as a coward and it helps you get over your fear.’ Indeed, NCOs and officers tended to report that they


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were to some extent insulated from fear thanks to their need to perform as leaders. Their leadership role required them to show their soldiers a good example. For them, the moments of greatest fear coincided with periods of intense activity—when they were required to manoeuvre their sections, call for artillery or air support, or organise a dustoff (the extraction of wounded troops by helicopter). These duties distracted them from their fear. Most soldiers were fatalists, but some carried amulets which they hoped would ensure their survival. Some, like Laurie Evans who had a small wooden crucifix and a St Christopher medal sewn into his bush hat, hoped their faith would offer some protection.33 Sometimes, non-Catholics also wore St Christopher medals. Private Phil Earle, a victim of a friendly fire incident, was wearing a St Christopher medal when he died.34 He was a Methodist. Others seemed to choose amulets with personal significance. John McQuat, who was killed in a friendly fire incident, carried a small wooden Buddha.35 Ken Irons, a forward scout in 12 Platoon, D Company, carried a symbol of his creation to ward off his destruction: ‘I had my mother’s wedding ring tied to my dog tags and I knew I had to give it back to her.’

LEAVE At the end of an operation the infantrymen were occasionally rewarded with two or three days R&C at the Peter Badcoe Club, a rest and leave centre at 1ALSG near Vung Tau. It was an opportunity to indulge other forms of relief from the stress of combat—sex and alcohol. During operations, sex virtually vanished from the infantryman’s consciousness. As many men remarked, there were other more important things to think about. Even among the brothels and bar-girls of Vung Tau, some soldiers continued to abstain. Many were young and sexually inexperienced. Some were married or engaged, and preferred to abstain for that reason. Others were put off by the possibility of venereal disease or for other reasons. ‘After being sent over to fight them, never was I interested in having sex with them’, remarked one soldier. But many soldiers found sex an important release from the tensions of operations. One soldier recalled: When we [got] R&C, a mate and I would firstly go to a brothel, have a steam bath, a massage and then a suck fuck; then, feeling on top of the world, we would hit the booze for a while, then back to the brothel, the booze, the brothel, the beach, the brothel, etc.




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Back to the Dat. Soldiers of C Company return to their company lines following an operation. Back at Nui Dat, soldiers enjoyed better food, beer, rest, and the possibility of two days on ‘rest in country’ at Vung Tau. However, these breaks from the stress of operations were usually quite short, perhaps only five to seven days, before the next operation began. (Photo courtesy of David Rankine)

I think sex on R&R and R&C is necessary for about 95 per cent of the guys . . . It is always good and necessary to be with a member of the opposite sex and have good, fulfilling, plentiful sex when one can whilst on military duty. It relieves tension . . .

R&R gave soldiers the opportunity to return to their wives or families for a brief respite during their tour or, if they preferred, to visit the other R&R centres such as Hong Kong, Taipei or Bangkok. Ron O’Connor’s R&R was mainly one of sightseeing: ‘My R&R to Hong Kong, was an ambition to do and see as much as I could at Army expense.’ But many soldiers sought female companionship and sex. One man remembered: ‘I planned to get a girl for the duration of [my R&R], which I did first night, and it was the best $150 I had spent in my life to that time. Never thought of VD or any conse-


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quences, as it was out of the jungle and it was time for fun, beer and sex.’ Other men sought the comfort of mateship and free access to alcohol on their visits to Vung Tau. Free from the Army-imposed limit of ‘two cans per man, per day, perhaps’ at Nui Dat, they could drink as they liked. ‘Drank my fears down the drain when we went to Vung Tau’, remarked Barry Smith, a forward scout and, later, section second in command in C Company. Others did the same. Corporal John Norris described in his diary the routine followed by many soldiers: Arrived at the Badcoe club at 3:30 p.m., handed in rifle . . . changed clothes and went into town. Got into town at 5:30 p.m. and headed for a bar. Did a pub-crawl and got drunk. Back into camp at 10:00 p.m. When I got into bed the room started to spin. I made it to the toilet and was as sick as a dog.36

By 1000 hrs next day he and a mate, Bob D’Arcy, had returned to Vung Tau to pub-crawl again. The next day was the same. By the time the R&C was over and Norris was heading back to Nui Dat with his company, he could write in his diary: ‘The three days at Vung Tau were the best 3 days I’ve had since I arrived over here.’

CONCLUSION The life of the 8RAR infantryman was one of hard work, fear, discomfort and intense concentration on operations, relieved periodically by short visits to the Rest and Convalescence Centre at Vung Tau. The contrast between these two environments was stark. Operations demanded a stoic endurance of privations: acceptance of hard physical effort, hunger, loss of sleep and the periodic presence of fear. They also demanded sustained self-discipline. By contrast, return to the Nui Dat base was an opportunity for relaxation, food and beer. The short visits to Nui Dat that punctuated operations sometimes culminated in two or three days of reckless hedonism at the Rest and Convalescence Centre at Vung Tau where the infantrymen satiated their various appetites before the serious work of operations was resumed. Despite the distraction of the pleasures of Vung Tau the prospect of combat hung like a shadow over the life of the infantryman, whether on operations or at rest.




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5

Patterns in combat Patterns in combat

One way to understand combat is to consider the patterns which emerge from it. After each of 8RAR’s 134 contacts, a report was created describing the basic facts of the incident. Collectively, these reports reveal useful insights into the nature of combat in Vietnam during 8RAR’s tour.

PRESSURE COOKER OPERATIONS In comparison with the first or second world wars, combat in Vietnam has sometimes been thought of as second rate. However, few realise that the pace of operations for Australian infantry battalions in Vietnam was more intense than for infantry battalions in those earlier wars. This was quickly recognised by Brigadier O. D. Jackson, Commander, Australian Army Force Vietnam, who in 1966 wrote that he held a firm belief that there are essential differences between this conflict and any previous ones in which Australians have fought. The operational activity rate has been very high indeed, close range fighting has been very frequent. For example, 1RAR has been employed on major offensive operations in enemy contact for 50% of its time in the theatre. Of the remaining 50% of time, except for R&R leave there [are] only rare occasions when a soldier can say that he is not in contact with the enemy or when immediate contact is not probable. I doubt that one can find 100


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Ever alert. Sergeant Bruce Mison, mortar fire controller for D company, takes a break from patrolling but keeps his ear to his radio handset. Mortar fire controllers could direct the fire of mortars or artillery in support of platoons or companies in contact with the enemy. (AWM negative number FAI/70/0350/VN. Photograph by Sergeant John Fairley)

any effective comparison over a six month or longer period in World War 2, Korea or Malaysia.1

The intensity and characteristics of operations to which Jackson pointed remained largely unchanged throughout the course of the Australian involvement in the war. 8RAR’s operations were typical. From 10 December 1969 when it began Operation Atherton to 25 October 1970 when it ceased operations in preparation for return to Australia, 8RAR was continuously on operations except for 38 days when the battalion was able to rest and to carry out housekeeping and training. However, even in the rare breaks between operations the battalion continued to mount security patrols from the Nui Dat base. In its year in Vietnam, 8RAR spent 281 days on operations. As one operation ceased another would start. In one period of 97 days straight the battalion, or at least part of it, was continuously on operations. Operation Phoi Hop slid without break into Operation Nudgee, then to Operation Cung Chung 1, then to Operation Petrie. Four operations, Atherton, Nudgee, Cung Chung 2 and Cung Chung 3, were each over a month long.




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Having completed slightly more than 40 weeks of operations during its 52-week tour, 8RAR surpassed the total number of weeks of operations for many World War II battalions. Mark Johnston notes that in World War II some battalions, like the 2/33rd, ‘campaigned’ for only 40 weeks during the entire war. Australian infantry battalions often faced short periods of operations followed by lengthy periods of rest and retraining. For example, ‘the 6th Division’s infantry battalions each campaigned for between three and five months in 1941, then rested, trained and refitted for at least 16 months before their next operations’.2 In Vietnam, combat casualties may not have been as high as for operations in World War II, but men faced combat over a longer period. Neither were there depth or reserve positions in Vietnam. Once beyond the barbed wire perimeter fence of the Nui Dat base, soldiers had to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice. 8RAR ambush patrols a few hundred metres outside the Nui Dat wire were as likely to have a major contact with the enemy as those in the remote jungle many kilometres to the north. Furthermore, by 1969–70, the VC/NVA were using a range of small arms which individually were much more lethal than those of World War II vintage. The AK47 fully automatic assault rifle and the RPD light machine gun could each produce a hail of fire while the enemy’s RPG rockets produced shrapnel which, if frequently not lethal, could result in numerous casualties with one shot. The need for personal vigilance and increased personal response to threats was paramount and constant.

SEEING THE ENEMY FIRST Studies show that, for the US Army, ‘88 per cent of all engagements [in Vietnam] were initiated by the enemy’.3 This implies that in a high proportion of these engagements the enemy perceived an advantage in opening fire rather than avoiding contact. Generally speaking, therefore, in contacts with US forces the enemy generally held the initiative, could control its own losses and to some extent could control the losses taken by the Americans. In the Vietnam War, perhaps to a larger extent than any other war to that point in US military history, the United States strove to avoid casualties to its own personnel. To do this it sought to apply massive firepower to do the killing. However, since the enemy mainly held the initiative, this was difficult to achieve. Sometimes the desire


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to use massive firepower got in the way of saving the lives of soldiers. Indeed, unable to take the initiative, the US Army occasionally resorted to so-called ‘tethered goat’ tactics—the deliberate deployment of a unit into a vulnerable position as a ‘bait’ to encourage the enemy to concentrate for an attack.4 The ‘tethered goat’ tactic would risk the lives of some US soldiers to create an opportunity to use the weight of US firepower against the enemy. Another way to conserve the lives of soldiers, one preferred by the Australian Army, is to train them thoroughly in the basic infantry skills such as minor tactics, patrolling, ambushing, tracking, scouting and security, weapon skills and personal concealment, and to adopt tactics which emphasise these skills. This approach has emerged from the Australian tradition of war-fighting in which important factors have included a relatively limited national capacity to produce the supplies of war, and the small size of the Australian population base. These factors, along with Australia’s Western democratic tradition, produce pressures to preserve the lives of its soldiers—but in the absence of the rich supply of military hardware that the US Army has enjoyed. The Australian way of warfare has therefore sought to achieve the conservation of life through intensive training aimed at raising individual and small group skills to very high levels in order to give the soldier the best chance to survive on the battlefield while achieving the mission. Equipped with these high levels of individual combat skills, Australian infantrymen almost always saw the enemy first and were the first to open fire. An analysis of Australian combat data made by Andrew Ross shows that ‘enemy units were rarely able to get the first shot during a contact with Australian forces’.5 In fact, in a reversal of the figures for the US Army, Australians saw and engaged the enemy first in about 90 per cent of contacts. Ross’s analysis also shows that being first to fire confers an important advantage and, as might be expected, usually results in higher casualties to the other side. Ross notes: This analysis confirms that there is a significant advantage in getting in the first shot in low level warfare. It substantially increases an opponent’s casualties. The Australians in Vietnam seem to have shown a consistent ability to keep their casualties well below those of the enemy even when the enemy got in the first shots.6

Analysis of 8RAR contacts reveals a similar pattern to that revealed in Ross’s study. Of 134 8RAR contacts, the enemy was able to fire




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Jungle patrol. Private Colin Oliver of D Company (closest to camera) on patrol in thick jungle during Operation Atherton. Behind Oliver is Sapper Colin Healy, a member of an Engineer splinter team attached to Oliver’s company. In thick undergrowth such as this, it was possible to encounter the enemy at very close range and without warning. Soldiers were required to remain alert and to be ready to fire immediately. (AWM negative number WAR/70/0028/VN. Photograph by Sergeant Peter Ward)


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the first shot in only nine, or 6.7 per cent of cases.7 The maintenance of security on operations was an important factor. Of the 125 contacts in which 8RAR saw the enemy and fired first, 71 resulted from security measures taken by 8RAR soldiers. These included sentries, observation posts, machine gun picquets and clearing patrols. In encounter battles, when the 8RAR sub-unit was moving, forward scouts figured prominently in seeing and engaging the enemy first. Keith O’Neill’s concept of operations, which emphasised the ambush rather than patrolling or bunker attack, also had an impact. Ninety-one of the contacts in which 8RAR fired first were ambushes. There were no 8RAR ambushes in which the enemy fired first. In terms of inflicting casualties, the enemy had generally done best when they had opened fire first but only in two contacts had they been able to inflict casualties on 8RAR without apparently receiving any in return. More commonly, when the enemy opened fire first the casualty exchange was either even or slightly in favour of 8RAR.8 It was the achievement of high standards of basic infantry skills, not the use of massive firepower, that helped to keep 8RAR casualties low. Only two 8RAR soldiers lost their lives to aimed enemy small arms fire.9 By contrast, 8RAR soldiers killed over 173 enemy and wounded more than 80.10

FLEETING FIGHTS Although combat could be terrifying and exhilarating it was also mostly very fleeting and occurred at very short range. Most 8RAR contacts were completed in ten minutes or less and at ranges less than 20 metres (see Figure 2).11 Combat also tended to occur at short or no notice. In conventional wars, preparations for setpiece attacks or defences might take several days during which the soldier could be mentally prepared for combat and be fortified with alcohol or drugs.12 For the soldiers of 8RAR and other Australian battalions in Vietnam, there was often no chance to mentally prepare and the role of alcohol (and perhaps to a small extent other drugs) was to help the soldier cope with the stresses of combat after it had occurred rather than prepare him beforehand. In the short, sharp clashes that characterised most 8RAR contacts, each side sought to assert itself over the other through achieving dominant fire effect. Like the war in microcosm, the platoon, the section or even the individual in contact sought to dominate his opponent and so exert his will. The process of winning the fire fight




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Figure 2

8RAR contacts: ranges of engagement

20 18

Number of contacts

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

5

10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95

Range (in metres)

was as much psychological as real. Certainly, small arms fire which found its mark and killed or wounded an enemy would help to achieve dominance. But in many contacts the enemy were either not seen at all or seen so fleetingly that soldiers had insufficient time to take deliberate aim and to squeeze the trigger as they had been taught in training. Dense jungle or the dark of night often hid the enemy from observation. Instead soldiers fired at noise, at movement in the foliage, at the muzzle flashes of enemy weapons, even at those places at which their reading of the ground and the tactical situation told them the enemy might be.

CARTRIDGES TO CASUALTIES One measure of the effectiveness of small arms fire in combat is the ratio of cartridges fired to casualties inflicted. US studies during the Vietnam War revealed that for the US Army the ratio was 50 000 cartridges fired for each casualty inflicted.13 This alarmingly high ratio


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possibly owed something to US battlefield techniques such as ‘clearing by fire’ and the use of ‘Gatling’-style mini-guns which produced very high volumes of fire for the purpose of saturating areas. ‘Clearing by fire’ involved every soldier within a defensive perimeter firing his personal weapon at the surrounding countryside, usually at dawn or dusk, for a ‘mad minute’. It disposed of old ammunition and would, it was hoped, pre-empt possible attack.14 Australian infantry despised the practice and considered it a useless waste of ammunition producing a false sense of security. They occasionally heard the roar of distant gunfire at dusk or dawn as they lay silently in their ambushes and harbours in the jungle. The ratio of cartridges to casualties for Australian infantry was significantly lower than the US Army figure. Analysis of After Action Reports for 8RAR and (for comparison) 7RAR (1970–71 tour) show that much lower ratios were achieved, as shown in Table 3.15 In some individual clashes, the ratio dropped to negligible levels. In one case, a soldier using the latrine outside the platoon perimeter saw an enemy approaching and, at fifteen metres range, shot and wounded him. A sweep found the wounded enemy and killed him with a further four shots.16 In another case, Support Section of C Company were conducting a clearing patrol when they were engaged by a wounded VC, a victim of an earlier contact in the same area. They returned just 16 shots and killed the VC.17 In a third event, during Operation Hamilton, 5 Platoon were clearing an unoccupied bunker system when two enemy approached. The machine-gunner fired five rounds, killing one of the VC at 20 metres range. The second enemy escaped when a follow-up sweep was halted because more bunkers were found.18

WAS SHOOTING GOOD ENOUGH? Despite the apparently high standard of shooting skills shown by Australian infantrymen, shooting standards within the Australian Army were strongly criticised both during and immediately after the Vietnam War. ‘It’s a tragic fact’, wrote Major C. F. Thomson, a 7RAR company commander recently returned from Vietnam, ‘and one that we should not conceal; that on average we couldn’t hit the side of a barn at ten metres with a shotgun. The only sure result comes from placing the muzzle against the enemy navel and firing.’ 19 In more measured




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Table 3

Ratio of cartridges to casualties: two Australian battalions

Battalion

Cartridges expended

Casualties inflicted

Ratio

75 738 74 653

192 238

395:1 314:1

7RAR (1970–71) 8RAR

tones, Lieutenant Colonel John Church, CO of 2RAR (ANZAC), noted that there had been a high expenditure of small arms’ ammunition for a relatively small return of enemy casualties . . . In the heat of battle, many soldiers pointed their weapon in the general direction of the enemy, without having identified a specific target, and pulled the trigger, often over and over again. I believed that there were two reasons for this. The first . . . was the practice adopted in training . . . of requiring the soldier to point his weapon away from the ‘enemy’ when firing blank ammunition . . . Secondly, I believed that there was a tendency in training not to emphasise the need to make every shot count. This may have been because of the reluctance of instructors to instil the desire to shoot to kill when such a desire was at odds with the public perception of the war in Vietnam. Aggressiveness and determination to kill were essential if every contact with the enemy was to produce the maximum results with the least risk to our own men.20

Church went on to suggest new methods of training in shooting skills. Another critic asked in 1975: ‘Do you know how many bullets we used to inflict just one casualty in Vietnam?’ Without answering his own question he continued: ‘The basic and unpalatable truth is that the marksmanship of the Australian Army is at a low ebb.’21 He suggested that a new system of Army-wide shooting competitions might fix the problem. The perception that shooting standards were poor led to the publication in 1974 of an Australian Army Training Information Bulletin on rifle shooting. In its introduction it quoted ‘Infantry Lessons from Vietnam’ as stating that ‘the foundation of the strength of an Army lies in the weapon training and shooting ability of its infantry . . . comments on poor shooting appeared regularly in past operation reports . . . regardless of any new theories we must get back to fundamentals’.22 These criticisms and others suggested that the problem was that the soldiers had not been sufficiently trained, or that training should be somehow different. Few critics considered why it was that in all


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Honing skills. After operations, old ammunition was often used on the range to refresh shooting skills. Here machine-gunners go through their paces with the M60 machine gun. The M60 was the backbone of the infantry section’s firepower. In contact with the enemy, it tended to be fired more often than any other platoon weapon and, on average, it also fired more ammunition. Its dominance of fire output was even greater at night. (Photo courtesy of Peter Wilson)

other respects the infantryman’s training appeared appropriate and effective. And more importantly, few considered the context in which the shooting took place. Most small arms shooting in Vietnam was not aimed at specific enemy soldiers. Instead it was intended to provide suppressive or exploratory fire, to establish psychological dominance over the enemy, to pin the enemy and prevent his movement, and to provide covering fire to support friendly movement. All of these tasks were legitimate functions of infantry firepower yet did not necessarily produce enemy casualties. Some astute observers realised this fact early in the war. One of the most prolific producers of ‘Lessons Learnt in Vietnam’ had been Lieutenant Colonel Eric Smith, CO of 7RAR during its first tour in 1967–68.23 Meticulously recording lessons ranging through tactics to administration, Smith’s work was widely circulated throughout other battalions. 8RAR received the ‘Lessons’ and had copied and distributed them widely within the battalion by August 1969. In these documents Smith had written:




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In many contacts . . . the concept of one shot one kill has not been applicable as there has been no visible and identifiable target for the rifleman to fire at. In the majority of contacts it has been noted that area shooting rather than pinpoint shooting has been required. This necessitates a heavy volume of fire preferably from automatic weapons. In night ambushes it is rare for anyone to have a definite target although all members of the ambush must fire into the area of the killing ground. A rule of thumb for night ambushes is 200 rounds per MG and 4 mag[azine]s from every other weapon—regardless of whether a target is identified.24

Smith might have said the same about some jungle contacts, where visibility was limited due to heavy vegetation. In those cases too, a high volume of fire produced by fully automatic weapons might have led to the production of more enemy casualties, but at the cost of a higher ratio of cartridges to casualties. The critics of the infantryman’s shooting were wrong. They had failed a basic step in their analysis. They had not asked the soldiers.

THE ARSENALS Early in the war the VC/NVA were armed with a mix of weapons of World War II vintage including a variety of bolt action rifles and automatics, mainly of US manufacture.25 However, by 1969, when 8RAR arrived in Phuoc Tuy Province, these older weapons had generally been cached and replaced with new SKS semi-automatics, fully automatic AK47s and RPD light machine guns, although some village guerillas and food-gathering parties still used the older weapons. With some exceptions, in most contacts the enemy was well armed with AK47 assault rifles, RPD light machine guns and RPG2 and RPG7 rocket launchers.26 Weapons discovered in caches were generally the enemy’s second-string weapons. Despite its ubiquity, 8RAR soldiers did not hold the AK47 in particular dread. Instead, the most feared enemy weapons were not small arms at all but mines, including captured M16 mines. Like other Australian battalions, 8RAR suffered some horrific encounters with enemy mines and these made an indelible impression on the soldiers’ minds. The most feared small arm was the RPG, probably because of its capacity to produce large numbers of shrapnel wounds. The AK47 was held in about the same dread as panji pits which, by 1969–70,


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Table 4

Enemy weapons feared most by 8RAR soldiers

Enemy weapon

Number nominating particular weapons

Mines, including M16 mines RPG Booby traps Command-detonated mines including Chicom ‘claymores’ AK47 Panji pits

62 58 19 5 4 4

were rarely found in Phuoc Tuy Province and produced relatively minor wounds if they produced any at all. Table 4 shows the enemy weapons feared most by 8RAR soldiers.27 As one would expect, the extent to which particular enemy weapons were feared reflects closely the casualty-causing capabilities of each weapon (see Table 5). Mines, particularly M16 mines retrieved from the Australian minefield built from Dat Do to the coast, were the enemy’s most effective weapon. Of the eighteen 8RAR men killed during the battalion’s tour, eleven were killed by mines. Mines made a powerful psychological impact on the minds of the soldiers. In terms of combat experience, mines are a special case since they cause casualties without a contact taking place. Their use by the enemy and the reaction of 8RAR soldiers to them is discussed in Chapter 7. By contrast with the figures for mines, only two 8RAR soldiers were killed and seven wounded by enemy AK47 or other small arms fire.28 Fragmentation weapons, including RPG2 and RPG7, caused one KIA but also inflicted the bulk of the contact casualties, causing 61 WIA. Mostly these were minor shrapnel wounds sufficient to cause the evacuation of the soldier from the point of contact but often requiring only a short stay out of the field. Friendly fire incidents—a form of industrial accident—produced more casualties than did enemy small arms fire. Friendly fire incidents are discussed in Chapter 8. Table 5

Weapons causing casualties: 8RAR

Weapon Mines including M16 mines AK47 and other enemy small arms Fragmentation weapons including RPG, grenades and M79, but not including mines Friendly fire incidents (involving friendly small arms fire) Total




8RAR KIA

8RAR WIA

11 2

25 7

1

61

4 18

14 107

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In response to the enemy’s AK47 and RPG fire, Australian infantrymen would bring their M60 machine gun into action. The M60 fired a heavy calibre bullet at such velocity that it could easily pass through a 20 cm tree and kill an enemy on the other side. It was a fearsome weapon. Its ammunition came in disintegratable link belts of 100 rounds. These were heavy but had the advantage of being able to be linked together to form a continuous belt. Problems were encountered when links were twisted or strained and when the belt of ammunition drew dirt and foliage into the working mechanism of the weapon. On operations, belts of ammunition had to be cleaned twice daily. The M60 was also prone to cracking around the receiver. 29 But despite these problems it could produce massive, sustained firepower when needed. It was a weapon very capable of dominating a fire fight and for this reason it was highly regarded by the Australian infantrymen who used it and relied on it for their security. Another weapon, the M16, fired a smaller 5.56 mm bullet from a less powerful cartridge but it had the benefit of being capable of firing bursts of fully automatic fire. It was light and short and its ammunition was light; soldiers could carry lots of it. In the US Army the M16 had replaced the M14, a semi-automatic rifle firing a standard NATO 7.62 mm cartridge, in 1965. But the transition to the new weapon had been poorly handled. Training was inadequate, cleaning kits were not provided and some technical teething problems remained unfixed.30 Although these problems were eliminated, the M16 suffered from a reputation for poor reliability. By 1969, however, it was a very effective weapon. It was ideal for use in jungle where targets appeared fleetingly and at short range. The SLR fired the same 7.62 mm cartridge as the M60. It was heavier and larger than the M16 and tended to catch on things more easily in the jungle. Highly reliable, robust and powerful, it compensated for its clumsiness by possessing exceptional penetrative power. Its bullet would pass through whatever jungle lay between it and its target without deflection, unlike the lighter, higher velocity and less stable M16 bullet which was often deflected from its course by twigs or leaves.31 The major drawback of the SLR was that it was normally incapable of firing fully automatic. Supplementing these mainstays of the infantry section’s firepower were a variety of fragmentation weapons. The M72 was designed as a light anti-armour weapon but worked equally well in the antipersonnel role. It fired a rocket with a 66 mm shaped charge warhead from a collapsible launcher which also doubled as its carrying case. It


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Daily ritual. Private Ray Armstrong cleans the barrel of his M60 machine gun in preparation for an ambush in the Binh Ba rubber plantation. The machine gun was the mainstay of the rifle section’s firepower. If it jammed in a firefight the platoon lost the use of a dominating weapon, so it and its ammunition were kept carefully maintained and cleaned. Usually only one machine gun at a time was stripped for cleaning. (AWM negative number FAI/70/0348/VN. Photograph by Sergeant John Fairley)




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needed to be prepared for firing, which took some time. Worse, if not fired, it took even longer to collapse the launcher and return it to carrying condition. Yet the M72 was a powerful and useful response to the enemy’s RPGs. Major Mal Peck urged his D Company soldiers to fire two M72s for every RPG they received. The M79 was a 40 mm grenade launcher. It provided the infantry section with the ability to launch grenades with accuracy out to ranges well beyond that of thrown grenades. It had a number of drawbacks. Its ammunition was heavy and bulky. The 40 mm grenade had a small fragmentation range: only five metres. Worst of all, it was a single shot weapon, and left the firer poorly protected. Early in its tour, 8RAR had adopted the practice of issuing the M79 to a rifleman already armed with an SLR. The M79 was usually slung over the shoulder for use in an emergency. However, this practice resulted in several accidental discharges when jungle vegetation deactivated the safety catch and caused the trigger to be pulled. The solution was to issue the M79 to a soldier as his personal weapon. Despite efforts to prevent them doing so, such as making it an offence to carry unauthorised weapons, some M79 gunners felt vulnerable armed with this single shot weapon and acquired pistols for added personal protection. This problem was overcome when the M203 was introduced during 8RAR’s tour. The M203 was a 40 mm grenade launcher fitted under the barrel of an M16 rifle. The combination provided good protection to the gunner. The M26 hand grenade was a staple of the infantryman’s kit. It was reasonably small and light and could be thrown about 40 metres, yet produced a good fragmentation effect. It was a useful weapon for bringing the infantry section’s own indirect fire into dead ground or to the reverse side of trees or fallen logs which might be used as fire positions by the enemy. Throwing grenades in the jungle was always risky—they would sometimes hit a tree and bounce back. Some sense of the relative contribution of various weapons used in fire fights can be obtained from Table 6.32 The table shows the extent to which the M60 machine gun provided the dominating fire base for Australian infantry sections. On average, it fired over three times more ammunition in a contact than any other small arm did. Weapons such as the M79, M72, hand grenade and claymore mine were specialist weapons. Hence they tended to be used in fewer contacts. Nevertheless, their contribution in those contacts could be significant. Table 6 reveals a particularly interesting fact: that fully automatic M16s, though there were fewer of them in the rifle section, fired more ammunition in combat than did the usually more numerous semi-


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Table 6

Use of weapons in fire fights: 8RAR

Weapon M60 M16 SLR M79 M72 Grenades Claymore mines

Fired in (number of contacts)

Average cartridges fired per contact

84 91 90 60 21 21 29

562 171 132 24 5 6 6.6

Highest use in Lowest use in a single a single contact contact 7500 2000 2000 112 20 20 15

20 2 1 1 nil nil nil

automatic SLRs. Despite its ‘stopping power’—the ability to kill or disable the enemy with a single shot—the fact that the SLR was semi-automatic was a limitation. We have already noted that most small arms fire in contacts was not intended to kill. Instead, fire was intended to perform other roles such as establishing psychological dominance in the fire fight, preventing the enemy from moving, and speculative shooting. These functions were often better performed by a fully automatic weapon. Even during the war there was recognition that the semi-automatic SLR was a limitation for the Australians in combat. ‘The SLR has performed well but its replacement should be capable of automatic fire’, Brigadier S. C. Graham, former Commander 1ATF, commented in December 1968. He went on: The single shot is virtually useless at night and the average soldier, despite what training we may give him, will never be a really good shot under stress. It is better to accept this fact and issue him with [a fully] automatic weapon, particularly as ammunition re-supply is not now the major consideration. Fleeting targets are best engaged with aimed automatic fire and group targets are inappropriate for single shots.33

Following their first tour in 1967–68, the officers of 7RAR argued that the SLR ‘should have an automatic capability for use in ambushes and a 30 round magazine’.34 Some 8RAR soldiers could not wait for these changes. Using either Automatic Rifle change levers ‘liberated’ from logistics troops, or adopting the simple expedient of placing a matchstick under the sear, some converted their semi-automatic SLRs into fully automatic weapons.35 Those in the rifle sections who daily faced the prospect of a fire fight understood the need to quickly establish psychological dominance




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over the enemy once combat had been joined. They knew, because they experienced it, that noise was a critical factor, particularly in fights where the enemy was rarely seen. Corporal Joe Danyluk had his forward scout carry an illegally modified fully automatic SLR. He explained why: My scout . . . had a cut-down SLR with the dust cover off . . . and a 30 round mag[azine]. Now, I don’t give a shit if we burned the barrel out. The more noise you make in initial contact [the better] . . . I mean, an Armalite was piss weak. But you get an SLR firing automatic with a match under the sear, and I’ll tell you what, that’s a bad gun! . . . because the more noise you can make [the better]. It’s not that you want to be the big hero; you just want to scare the shit out of them.36

STRENGTH FOR THE FIGHT Australian soldiers also knew that, while the enemy tended to be contacted in small numbers, it was always possible that their next contact would be with a larger force than themselves, or worse, with a larger force in a bunker system. Indeed, while the average enemy force strength encountered in 1ATF contacts during 1970 was less than five men,37 8RAR had nine contacts in which they were outnumbered by the enemy and several others in which the relative strengths were about even.38 Contacts where the weight of numbers favoured the enemy usually resulted in the enemy responding aggressively, resulting in heavy and sustained fighting which quickly consumed ammunition. Most infantrymen feared running out of ammunition and being overwhelmed by the enemy in these larger fights. The salient lessons of the battle of Long Tan were already well embedded in the minds of 8RAR soldiers. In that battle, on 18 August 1966, D Company, 6RAR, had contacted a much larger force of VC/NVA in the Long Tan rubber plantation to the east of Nui Dat. After intense fighting, the 6RAR soldiers were running out of ammunition and faced defeat when artillery fire, APCs and a resupply of ammunition by helicopter saved the day. Up to the battle of Long Tan, the standard allocation of ammunition to each rifleman armed with an SLR was 60 rounds. 39 The VC/NVA troops were much more liberally supplied with ammunition in anticipation of the major battle. Afterwards, Ian McNeill notes, ‘riflemen would in future be required to carry a minimum of seven fully charged magazines (a total of 140 rounds) when larger-scale contacts were possible’.40 In fact, within 8RAR, as in other battalions


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Table 7

Average enemy and friendly strength in contacts: 8RAR, November 1969 to November 1970

Type of operation Reconnaissance-in-force (b) Pacification All operations

(a)

Enemy

8RAR

7.1 9.6 8.4

23.0 18.2 20.6

(a) Atherton, Keperra, Hammersley, Hamilton, Petrie (b) Phoi Hop, Nudgee, Cung Chung 1, Decade, Cung Chung 2 and 3

after Long Tan, infantrymen usually carried even more ammunition than the specified 140 rounds. As Table 7 shows, while the average enemy and friendly strengths for reconnaissance-in-force operations ensured that 8RAR generally had a three to one advantage over the enemy, in pacification operations the ratio fell to two to one. The enemy were generally encountered in larger groups in pacification operations and 8RAR ambush patrols often operated as half platoons to double the number of ambushes available. This resulted in a more even balance of forces in some contacts. However, it was a mark of the benefit of pacification efforts that 8RAR actually suffered fewer casualties in these than in reconnaissancein-force operations where the numerical advantage for 8RAR was generally more pronounced.

CONCLUSION The patterns of combat reveal that the soldiers of 8RAR, like those of other Australian infantry battalions, often faced short, intense fights with aggressive, well-armed enemy at short range and with little warning. Their soldiering skills, which had painstakingly been built up over many months, saw them through these combats and helped to ensure their survival. They had performed their tasks with individual soldiering skills superior to those possessed by their US allies and, despite claims by some Australian officers that their shooting was poor, had also excelled in that basic task of the infantryman. Though they faced combat with high technical proficiency and skill, their emotional response to combat was also to be tested.




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6

Three fire fights: life on the two-way range Three fire fights: life on the two-way range

It would be boring if not impossible to relate each of 8RAR’s 134 contacts in Vietnam. Even to describe a sizeable number of them would be to pass so quickly over each that an understanding of the soldiers’ experience of combat would not emerge. Instead, I have chosen to describe three representative contacts in detail. 1 The first was typical of most contacts in Vietnam in that it was a fleeting contact with only three enemy, insignificant in the sweep of operations. Yet this contact was deeply involving to those who took part in it because it was their first experience of combat. The second was a major bunker system attack involving the coordination of armour, artillery and air power. It reveals the confusion and chaos of larger scale combats and the intrusion of political pressures into battalion-level operations that characterised the war in Vietnam. The third was a night ambush typical of 8RAR’s pacification operations. It shows the teamwork and determination of the infantryman and reveals the effectiveness of pacification operations. It was a shibboleth of the infantryman’s trade that the infantry bore the brunt of casualties in war. The prospect of their own death or wounding, and of the killing or wounding of the enemy, therefore raised a host of questions for men about to experience combat for the first time. What will combat be like? Will I be able to kill the enemy? How will I cope with the dead and wounded? Will I survive? Will I be wounded? Will I perform competently? Will my training see me 118


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119 Three fire fights: life on the two-way range

through? Will I live up to the expectations of my mates? As they neared their first encounter with the enemy, each soldier gripped these thoughts with the same white-knuckle intensity that he gripped his weapon.

FIRST CONTACT: COMBAT RITES OF PASSAGE Most soldiers find their first contact to be a cathartic experience. This was certainly the case in 8RAR. Though the battalion had a leavening of men on their second tours, or who had reinforced 8RAR from other battalions, many others faced combat for the first time. It was a moment rightly to be feared because, during combat, every rational thought told soldiers to protect themselves, to keep down, to hide, to run. Yet to do so would be to fail the test of courage and to risk losing face with one’s comrades. Combat can also spring surprises, cause soldiers to question the morality of their actions, reveal men’s strengths and weaknesses. Not surprisingly, though many subsequently fought in larger scale and more life-threatening combats, still they remembered their first combat most vividly. It was the one in which they proved their mettle to themselves. ‘I have vivid memories of most of the contacts I was in or near’, wrote Lance Corporal Brian Partridge, ‘but I suppose the strongest ones are of the first one, even though it was all over in about 30 seconds.’2 Others, particularly those whose first contact was small or inconclusive, remembered later contacts, particularly large ones, where the enemy had responded aggressively and the fighting had continued for some time. Luckily, 8RAR’s first operation—Operation Atherton—had resulted in many minor contacts so, by the end of December 1969, all 8RAR platoons except 4 Platoon and 6 Platoon had had their baptism of fire through small, fleeting, and largely successful contacts. Some, like 5, 9 and 12 Platoons, were already thoroughly initiated with four minor contacts apiece. This had provided an excellent grounding and had got the potentially troublesome first exposure to combat out of the way before the bigger combats the battalion was to fight from February 1970 onwards. Typical of 8RAR soldiers’ first contacts was that of Corporal John Norris and the other members of 7 Section, 12 Platoon, D Company. The setting was idyllic. A crystal clear creek flowed silently through towering jungle. The trees on each bank interlocked overhead to form a cool corridor with dappled sunlight and shade. The soldiers of




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12 Platoon saw the creek solely in military terms—as a potentially dangerous fire lane and therefore an obstacle. Norris deployed his section along the creek bank to provide cover while the other two sections of the platoon prepared to cross. Norris had just deployed his section when one of his soldiers attracted his attention. I turned around and they pointed up the creek and gave the ‘enemy’ sign and there were three nogs walking down the creek. By this stage they would have been . . . about 30 or 40 feet [ten or twelve metres] . . . from us. I couldn’t believe how close they were . . . We just flopped where we were and I said: ‘I’ll initiate the contact’ . . . I fell a little bit back in depth where I could see everyone. The three of them walked right in front of us. At this stage they were probably ten feet at the most from us. I remember thinking: ‘My God! That’s what . . . a VC looks like. Just like any other person.’3

The three enemy were unsuspecting. Their weapons were slung and they walked carelessly in a tight group, splashing noisily through the shallow water. Though his nine-man section was perfectly positioned to destroy the unsuspecting enemy and there was little chance of the enemy returning fire the moment of first combat provoked an intense emotional response in Norris, though he remained in control throughout the brief battle. Ferguson panicked and opened fire with an Armalite. He hit the first guy. That’s all I remember. I saw the blood come out of the guy and . . . [I blacked out]. That’s all I remember after that. I snapped out of it [quickly]. I’d say I was only out for about five seconds, maybe even less. I could see two of them running—the nogs—running. And we were firing and missing. And I yelled out: ‘Cease fire! More aimed shots!’ Clark . . . and Davis . . . they both got up and fired two shots. Tex Lyons was sitting up on a little slope against a bamboo tree with his M60 [machine gun] across his knees—his little baby—and he fired a couple of shots. And that was it. Finished. It was all over. Then we pulled back into depth for security and waited for . . . oh, I think it was an hour.

Norris’s momentary blackout was a typical response to the experience of combat. In an epidemiological study of the health of Vietnam veterans a team of researchers recorded the prevalence of various dissociative, autonomic and cognitive responses by Australian soldiers in experiencing distressing events in Vietnam.4 Of the 641 Vietnam veterans of all corps interviewed by the research team, 11.6 per cent


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reported ‘blanking or spacing out’ as Norris had done. Others recalled going on ‘automatic pilot’ (26.8 per cent), time either speeding up or slowing down (41.6 per cent), loss of bowel or bladder control (2.8 per cent), intense sweating, shaking or palpitations (47.6 per cent) and terror, anger or helplessness (over 34 per cent). As the stillness and silence returned to the jungle, 12 Platoon waited and listened in case more enemy were approaching. Norris estimated that the whole contact had lasted no more than one minute.5 Still, with the enemy only metres away, in broad daylight and with little intervening cover, the section had fired 70 rounds and scored just four hits. Peter Crump recalled that in the few moments before the enemy entered the killing ground he was ‘very excited, adrenalin pumping, anxious that myself and the [machine] gunner were 100 per cent ready for our first combat’. When the firing started he recalled being ‘calm and collected, remembering the months of training beforehand particularly [the need for] well-aimed shots and counting your shots’. Fear came after the contact was over. After the ‘enemy’ sign was given, ‘the adrenalin definitely started to rise’, Brian Partridge commented, ‘but I don’t recall any fear at that point . . . My actions, indeed the whole section’s actions, were under the control of all the training we had received’. During the shooting Partridge was excited but ‘trying to do what we were taught. I definitely remember taking aimed shots at the [enemy] closest to me’. Only later did fear arise. ‘It wasn’t until we had a chance to rest and have a smoke [and] I thought about the shot-up bodies that I felt fear—real fear—and it must have been obvious because, as I was trying to light a cigarette, “Dinger” Bell asked me why I was shaking.’ Norris’s diary records the aftermath of the incident: Everyone was scared stiff, including me. But our training paid off in the long run because everyone knew what to do . . . The Platoon Commander sent [Corporal Jerry Stanwix’s] 9 Section down to bring the bodies out of the creek . . . By this time morale was as high as it could be. [The Platoon Commander] would have been the happiest person in the world as we were the first platoon in the company to get a kill.6

Ordered to retrieve the bodies and arrange their burial, Norris and his men approached their task with trepidation. I led the way [to the bodies] and my heart was going 90 to the dozen. God I was scared. It was the first time I had seen anyone shot to death.




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As soon as I saw the bodies, I stopped dead in my tracks and just looked at [them] . . . I started giving orders for the grave to be dug. The section started to dig while I went out and searched the bodies again. The first one I came to was [a] woman . . . She had been shot once in the neck. The next one was [an] old bloke [of about 35 to 40 years]. He had been shot once, straight in the heart. The third one was [a young man]. He had been shot twice, once in the right lung and once in the right leg. The bank of the creek was covered in blood. Most of it came from the woman.7

Peter Crump went with Norris to retrieve the bodies. Though he knew the enemy had been killed, irrational fears still gripped him. ‘I knew I and the gunner had certainly killed the enemy [but] I wondered if it wasn’t a VC trick to play dead’, he remembered. ‘They could have had grenades under their bodies.’ Norris recalled the seesawing morale of his soldiers. They were elated at their first kill but disturbed by the results. He endeavoured to raise the men’s spirits and get their minds back on the job. I’d seen death before but I hadn’t seen anyone just shot to pieces like that. I cut the clothing off the guys and [one of my soldiers] came down and had a look and just walked away and stood quietly on the bank of the creek . . . I tried to haul a couple of the bodies up and the guys were very hesitant about coming down and helping me. They just didn’t want to go near the bodies . . . I had to tell [them] to come down and help me carry them up. One [of the dead VC], as we moved him—his leg had been shot, and broke his thighbone—you could hear the bone grating. Well, that turned a couple off. Some of them walked away. Morale by this stage was very low, although prior to going down and digging the grave, morale was very high because . . . it was their first kill. But once we got to the bodies then morale dropped. I was quite surprised. We buried them and the grave was only about eighteen inches deep and the guys were really upset. So I . . . buried the girl in the middle and just got her hands and put them on the penises of both the guys. Well, that broke the whole lot up . . . Their attitude changed immediately. What else could I do? I wanted to make the guys change, so I did it. I felt my responsibility was to the men [rather than the dead VC] and when I could see the morale was low then it was my responsibility to change that because if they kept their morale low then I was going to lose guys. They wouldn’t function correctly. We’d miss booby traps or we could walk into a contact ourselves. So the only thing was to get


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the morale back up, so I did—the best way I could. It wasn’t a nice way of doing it but at the time I saw no other way . . . I just had to get their morale back up.8

In helping his soldiers cope with the killing, Norris’s actions told them death was a joke. But one soldier, who had shot the woman, was unamused. Many soldiers remained uncomfortable about killing female VC even though they were armed, every bit as aggressive as their male comrades and often unrecognisable as women in the fleeting fire fights at night or in the jungle—until the bodies were searched for documents. Despite a forewarning that he might encounter women and youths among the enemy, Andrew Roberts was shocked when, on his first contact, his platoon killed two women. ‘I still subconsciously thought of warlike activities as a man to man thing,’ he wrote. ‘I suffered a rude awakening. Some of my psycho problems stem from this contact with women.’ Another soldier remarked: ‘I could not get used to the sight of dead women. Some of the VC females we killed were pregnant as well and this seemed to be a cruel waste of life.’ In one contact, Allan Holland’s platoon killed two VC women. The distress at killing the women was compounded when a letter was found on one of the bodies. It revealed a touching humanity: they were mother and daughter and the daughter was soon to be married. ‘I felt pretty bloody lousy’, wrote the taciturn Holland. One C Company soldier recalled the killing of a young woman during a night ambush. She had survived the initial burst of fire but was shot during a sweep of the killing ground as she attempted to surrender. Her body was dragged into the platoon perimeter. The soldier recalled: The daylight hours showed the effect . . . automatic fire had achieved. Half her head was missing and by this time ants had appeared—not a pleasant sight. What kept going through my head was seeing such a young and attractive girl involved in this affair. This also made me question my own morality, which I used to reflect on when times were quiet.

In the 7 Section contact, the soldier who had shot the woman had an unusually clear view into the killing ground and realised his target was a woman even while the contact was happening. He was immediately concerned and informed Norris before the bodies had been retrieved from the creek. ‘What kind of war is this that uses




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women?’, Norris lamented in his diary. The soldier told Norris that he didn’t want to shoot anyone again.9 As section commander, Norris found himself dealing with the psychological impact of this first combat experience long after the fire fight was over. In subsequent contacts the men of his section would be more prepared for their own emotional reactions to killing and the sight of mangled bodies. But this first encounter produced reactions that would tell each of them a great deal about themselves. The section commander’s job is as complex in its own way as any other command position. Not only must he control the firepower of his section but, as Norris and other 8RAR section commanders were to learn, he must be capable of reading the reactions of his men and encouraging or cajoling them through those reactions so that the section can continue to function effectively. It requires the power to lead and an understanding of men. Like other section commanders in the battalion, Norris was careful to note the responses of his men and to handle their reactions the best way he could under the circumstances. I knew with [the soldier who had shot the woman]—he was a very quiet guy—that I may have a bit more problem . . . because he kept away from most of us during the day while we were digging the graves and everything else. I was just watching him. That’s why I hutchied up with him that night . . . I usually hutchied up with [Kevin Sullivan] and I just thought that [this soldier] was, you know, [feeling] bad . . . so I pulled him back in to depth with me. He cried and carried on and I hit him to shut him up. He was really worried. He said he was going to pack up and walk out. He was going to leave his rifle and gear and everything else. He started crying. I said: ‘Shut up! You’re going to draw the crabs.’ And he wouldn’t, so I hit him . . . He stayed there all night. Never went to sleep. Every time I woke up he was just lying there, on his back, looking straight up. I felt rotten about the fact that I did it, but I felt I had no choice. [Kevin Sullivan] was a little bit upset [about the bodies], but not as much as [the man who shot the woman]. I think the ones that showed absolutely no emotion were Tex Lyons and Peter Crump. Those two seemed to have the whole thing together. Peter I know is suffering [now]—he remembers that contact very, very vividly and he still sees the face of the woman. But they were the two that seemed to have it all together.10

Even simple, quick and successful contacts such as Norris and his men had experienced in combat demanded, of all junior commanders,


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the careful assessment and management of their soldiers’ reactions. This came to be less of a concern as the soldiers acquired more combat experience. Second-tour men or others who had reinforced 8RAR direct from other battalions had already passed their combat rite of passage and needed less attention. As 8RAR’s tour continued and most platoons had their first exposure to combat, men acquired a familiarity with the experience of combat that inured them to its emotional impact. Yet junior commanders had to remain alert to the reactions of reinforcements—newcomers to the infantryman’s world of combat— and, to a lesser extent, to the reactions of those who had temporarily left the combat environment and were returning to it after R&R or a period of training or hospitalisation.

BUNKER ATTACK Most 8RAR soldiers feared attacks on bunker systems more than any other form of contact. Keith Carl, a rifleman of 9 Platoon, C Company expressed the fears of most when he commented: ‘I was very frightened of bunkers. Almost every contact I heard of with bunkers, there were casualties—always about one dead and three or four wounded.’ The second most feared form of contact, enemy ambushes, had much in common with bunker attacks. Both were usually initiated by the enemy on ground of their choosing, at very short range and usually resulted in Australian casualties. Compared with some Australian infantry battalions, 8RAR had relatively few bunker system contacts. This was partly due to the nature of the war during 8RAR’s tour and partly to Keith O’Neill’s decision to adopt tactics and operational plans which avoided bunker system clashes in favour of modes of contact that produced better results. Nevertheless, 8RAR did strike six occupied bunker systems, each time producing a significant battle. The largest was the series of clashes on 18 February 1970 when C and B companies attacked the enemy’s D445 Battalion in the Long Hai hills. The broader significance of these contacts—part of Operation Hammersley—has already been discussed in Chapter 3 but the battle reveals some interesting insights into the behaviour of men in combat. Under interrogation, a young VC soldier captured on the morning of 18 February 1970 had told O’Neill that 30 to 40 enemy were located nearby. The prisoner even accompanied O’Neill in the command and control helicopter to point out from the air the VC’s positions




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and the escape routes they would use if attacked. With this knowledge, Major David Rankine’s C Company with 2 Troop, A Squadron, 1 Armoured Regiment and 3 Troop, B Squadron, 3 Cavalry Regiment deployed covering the general area of the suspected enemy camp. An assault was then launched, striking enemy bunkers about 30 metres inside the tree line—as the VC prisoner had indicated. Used to depending on dispersion and stealth for their security, some infantrymen felt uncomfortable within the confines of the APCs even though their armour gave a measure of protection against shrapnel and small arms fire. One C Company infantryman recalled the assault: The APC in which I travelled went in and I can recall the flashes of RPG fire going overhead and wishing we were set free instead of being vulnerable inside the APC. To add to the anxiety, the driver of our APC ran into a stump and had to reverse a few times to find a clear path. There was also small arms fire . . . our automatic weapons were used. My poor friend who was the machine-gunner . . . had no option but to stay in the confines of the APC [firing his M60 from the open hatch]. His heart was strong but his legs gave way, so another friend and I popped our shoulders under his rump and lifted him up to give him a better field of fire. I always admired this chap.

Others remembered the difficulty of making sense of the confusing sights and sounds of the battle from within the APCs. One soldier said: There was so much going on it was incredible . . . You just couldn’t keep control of what was going on . . . You were yelling to guys who could see and they were too taken up with their jobs . . . You try and shoot—you know, you’ve got to shoot—but you’re so wound up it’s incredible.11

An APC from Headquarters Section was hit by two RPG rounds and began to burn. Heavy small arms and RPG fire prevented the recovery of the burning vehicle, but five infantrymen were rescued from it when Corporal Barry Coe from 8RAR and Corporal Macey of B Squadron, 3 Cavalry Regiment, jumped from a nearby APC, braved the hail of bullets and pulled the men out. One of the soldiers who witnessed this feat of courage mulled over what had enabled Coe and Macey to do it when others could not. Barry Coe . . . jumped off [our APC] and ran over . . . Your instinct was to help but your training was to stay put—you know. He jumped


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off and did what you wanted to do. But he was a corporal. That was the difference. He was a fellow who could do it, you know.12

One of the rescued men was Company Sergeant Major Peter Healy. He remembered the intense fighting and confusion of the battle. As a gap opened in the assault formation Healy’s APC, which, since it was carrying part of Headquarters Section, would normally remain in depth, lurched forward to fill the gap—putting Healy and the other infantrymen on board into the front line of the assault. We were in the forward pits of the bunkers. We opened up with what we had. They opened up with RPG 7s and it was a bit confusing from there on. There was an orange flash, that’s about it. The rest was very hazy. I can remember picking myself up from under bodies. The crew commander was on top of me—what was left of him. I got a fair bit of shrapnel in the face and up the left side of my body [and] . . . blast burns. I thought my arm was broken to start with, but it was only all the shrapnel. My eardrums were blown, or the right one was. I knew I was in pretty bad shape. I recall at one stage [the company commander] Dave Rankine came round the back of the APC and he was looking straight at me and he said: ‘Where’s the CSM?’ I knew I was in the shit then. But it was one of those things. You know, with an RPG [hit] it’s just like a king hit. You don’t recall a lot from it.13

A further attempt to rescue the two APC crewmen failed when the burning vehicle blew up. Rankine then broke off the contact and withdrew the force in order to regroup, evacuate casualties and restock the tanks with ammunition. At 1300 hrs Rankine attacked again with the tank troop leading, followed by C Company mounted in the APCs, and with the cover of artillery fire and a helicopter light fire team. The assault fought through the bunker position, meeting little opposition till progress was stopped by a deep creek. At this point Rankine was told that, as well as anti-personnel mines and booby traps in the area, the enemy had deployed an anti-tank minefield. He was considering whether he should dismount the infantry to continue the assault when he received orders to break contact and withdraw. While withdrawing, the force came under attack from more enemy who had reoccupied the bunkers. One tank was hit by eight RPGs but remained in action. A second APC was also hit. A third assault was made by the tanks and some APCs to recover the burnt-out APC




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along with its weapons. Later, twelve enemy bodies were found in the position as well as numerous blood trails indicating that many others had been wounded. C Company and its supporting armour had suffered two KIA and thirteen WIA, and during the day’s fighting had expended its entire first line ammunition holding.14 While Rankine’s men were assaulting the VC bunker system, O’Neill redeployed B and D companies by APC into blocking positions on routes likely to be used by the enemy escaping from the C Company attacks. It was to be a hectic and confusing afternoon. As well as C Company assaulting a major bunker system, each of the platoons of B Company was involved in separate contacts. 6 Platoon, B Company, had two contacts in the space of five minutes. In the midst of this activity, when contacts with the enemy seemed to be coming thick and fast, 11 Platoon, D Company, was fired upon by friendly APCs and elements of B Company, causing ten casualties (this friendly fire episode is described more fully in Chapter 8). Allan Grinter, a signaller in B Company headquarters remembers the hectic fighting that day: While moving into ambush near a fire trail we had contacts with approximately platoon-sized enemy. The fight was at a furious pace and things happened so fast that time flew. So did the ammo. 4 Platoon had to get a first line resupply to survive and the worst part was we were so on edge . . . that we ended up shooting up a platoon of D Company. That couple of weeks [sic] of ambushes, mines, contacts and being mortared left many memories, one being the organised confusion during fire fights.

As it had got tangled up with several contacts, Mike Jeffery, OC of B Company, ordered Duncan Warren’s 4 Platoon to proceed to its blocking position while the rest of the company disengaged itself from its fire fight. When they had moved past C Company and arrived at their blocking position, the APC commander told Warren that the APCs could not push into the thick timber; the APCs would harbour and 4 Platoon would have to dismount in the open. This they did, but as Warren met with his section commanders to give orders for their move into the scrub line the platoon came under RPG and small arms fire. Ron West, the platoon sergeant, later recorded the scene in his diary: We meet some thick scrub, so APCs stop and we dismount. While troops are preparing to move into a blocking position . . . and Mr Warren is


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briefing [Section Commanders] and me. Bang. The APC we are alongside is hit with an RPG. We hit the deck and return fire as more RPGs pass overhead. I look around and find some of my people have been wounded. Shaw looks bad, [the] APC driver is badly hurt . . . Blue Barclay shoulder and rear end, Holsworth in head and arm. I grab our medic Grimshaw and start to deal with the wounded. Meanwhile the firing continues.15

West started to organise the casualties for evacuation while Warren organised the remainder of the platoon for an assault in the direction of the RPG fire. But the assault quickly ran into evidence of a wellprepared VC defensive position—fire lanes and command-detonated Chicom claymore mines—and it was decided to withdraw to the safety of the APC harbour. Later it was found that 4 Platoon had bumped into an occupied enemy bunker position designed to protect the withdrawal route from the main position then being assaulted by C Company. During the brief 4 Platoon assault, Warren had been hit in the mouth; Ron West decided he needed to be evacuated too. With only eighteen fit men left, Warren’s force was too small to take on the enemy alone. Besides, with the C Company assault in full swing and with the friendly fire clash between D Company and B Company, the radio nets to battalion headquarters were jammed with traffic. Warren’s platoon initially found it impossible to break into the net for dustoff support, let alone for artillery or air support to assist an assault. West recalled: At that stage C Company were in contact, B Company were in contact with D Company and they were calling for dustoff. They were all calling for dustoffs, and I had the wounded and I’m calling for dustoff and the airwaves then were just a bloody mess.16

Eventually West got through the overcrowded communications and a dustoff helicopter was despatched to pick up his eight wounded. The drill was that the Yank [dustoff chopper] wouldn’t come in unless you were about 500 metres clear of the contact area. No way in the world was I goin’ to, or could’ve, moved eight wounded. So I just moved them over the rise, about 50 metres away, and called him up: ‘We’re ready for you.’ He asked me, in fact: ‘How far from the contact area?’ I said: ‘Six hundred metres.’ He came in and away they went.

With the casualty evacuation to take care of and a continuing fire fight with the VC, Ron West was too busy to think about being




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afraid. The soldiers of 4 Platoon performed coolly during the fight, West recalled. ‘The Diggers were good. They went to ground [and] luckily they had the APCs to get cover behind. No-one was screaming or yelling their heads off, except calling for ammo.’17 Bluey Johnson, one of the 4 Platoon section commanders, manned the .50 calibre machine gun atop an APC when the crew member was wounded by an RPG hit. He fired the gun till it ran out of ammunition, then switched to the .30 calibre gun. The remainder of the platoon, plus the other two APCs, returned fire as well. As the contact dragged on, 4 Platoon began to run low on ammunition. ‘We are still in contact and running out of bullets’, West later wrote in his diary, ‘so I call for a resup[ply] and an Aussie chopper comes right overhead and drops the ammo in. They don’t worry about being close to enemy and their RPGs. Good on 9 Squadron!’18 Eventually the fire fight began to subside and the rest of B Company joined Ron West’s depleted force. By now the day was drawing to a close. B Company pulled back and harboured in preparation for resuming the blocking operations the next day. West and the other members of 4 Platoon could begin to relax a little. West found that he had a small shrapnel wound to his arm which the company medic fixed, pulling a small piece of RPG casing from the wound. West confided to his diary: ‘Boy, what a day. There must be a lot of D445 in the Long Hais. I enjoy a nice hot brew to settle my nerves and a cigarette (nerve stick), too.’19 By the day’s end, 8RAR had had six contacts including a major battle with an estimated battalion-strength enemy in an elaborate bunker system. The Australian battalion had captured a prisoner of war, killed twelve enemy and found numerous blood trails. It had located and destroyed some caches and an M16 mine. It had made a major redeployment and in the process there had been a friendly fire clash. The full scale of the battalion’s success would only emerge days later.

NIGHT AMBUSH Following Operation Hammersley, O’Neill switched 8RAR to pacification operations involving the close ambushing of villages. For the remainder of the battalion’s tour, each night a network of platoon and half platoon ambushes was thrown around the villages. Ambush positions were surreptitiously reconnoitred during the day and at last light or just afterwards patrols would move into pre-selected positions. It


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was a race against time. The 8RAR ambushers knew that as they set up their positions VC patrols had already left their jungle bases, heading towards the paddi fields which they would cross after dark to enter the villages. As a response to the ambushing of the villages, the VC formed heavily armed ‘suicide squads’ which aimed to seek out and attack Australian ambushes producing, in the process, levels of casualties the Australian higher command and government would find unacceptable. One ambush which came under intense enemy counterattack during these ambush operations was that of Barry Darr’s 3 Platoon, south of Dat Do on the night of 3/4 May 1970. A section of six men had gone to the vicinity of the ambush in the late afternoon to observe the site and be ready to secure it for the remainder of the platoon as soon as the peasants left the paddi fields. But as night was falling the remainder of the platoon had still not joined them. Their transport had broken down. The section moved into position in a dry creek bed, posted Private Trevor Seivers forward as a sentry and waited. Allan Handley, the machine-gunner, recalled the confusion: We set the ambush up, basically, [and] waited for the rest of the guys to come. They got waylaid somewhere along the line. It was getting dark. It was quite scary. We just didn’t know whether our guys were going to turn up or not . . . and knowing that D445 was doing a lot of runs into Dat Do, we were a little bit scared, to say the least. Of course, we only had about nine or ten blokes, I think, in the section, if that. But just by sheer luck we heard [the sound of rifles on webbing] . . . It was our blokes. They said: ‘It’s us, it’s us!’ So we were all right. So we ushered them through to the areas that we’d already planned to set up . . . and it was a bit of a rush.20

Seivers, who was still on sentry duty, was unaware that the remainder of the platoon had joined his section and were being shown to their positions. He too heard the sound of approaching men and the soft clink of metal on metal. He let them come to within ten metres of him and hugged the ground, hoping to tell whether they were friend or foe by seeing them in silhouette against the night sky. He saw ‘a wall of people, a big gaggle’. Still, he was unsure. He later recalled: ‘There was a lot of pushing and pulling going on in my mind.’ Isolated in his forward sentry post and still thinking that there were only five men behind him, Seivers acted with great courage: ‘I kissed my arse goodbye and started firing into them.’21




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Allan Handley continued the story: We were in a creek line, so my machine gun was looking out of this creek over a paddi bund. As soon as we’d got [the rest of the platoon] in . . . Trevor Seivers opened up [with his rifle]. The enemy had walked straight into him and he . . . well, I heard [his] gun go off, so I just immediately got up and started firing, and the Viet Cong ran right in front of my machine gun. They were just running right across [my front] just fifty metres out. So I was trying to keep my bursts going as fast as I could. In the meantime, [the enemy] threw hand grenades [and fired] RPGs. It was chaos at that particular stage.

Each time Handley fired a burst from his M60 he received concentrated AK47 and RPG fire in reply. I could see groups of between ten [and] fifteen running and firing, approximately 30 metres from my position. I had a field day. As fast as I was knocking them down they were dragging them away. That was really bugging me, as I thought that if I’m going to get it I want some bodies to show for it.

Handley was worried about Seivers, who had not come back into the platoon position. He carried five or six 100-round belts of 100 per cent tracer ammunition for his machine gun and fired the lot in an attempt to give Seivers covering fire as well as a good indication of the direction he should take to get back inside the platoon perimeter. Meanwhile, Seivers was screaming for support in his isolated position, but no-one could hear him above the roar of gunfire. Eventually he heard his platoon sergeant, Dieter Juckel, yelling orders to his men. Juckel called Seivers back to the platoon position. Seivers crawled into the position just before the VC launched an assault on Juckel’s group. Handley continued: I think it was an RPG that went off. It wounded six of the blokes, in fact nearly everybody in that section. The whole section, including Sergeant Juckel, were pretty badly wounded. You know, eyes, face, chest, everywhere. And all I heard was Juckel screaming. I had nobody with me. I was on my own out there, and I was the next one down the creek line, so if they’d got through that section it would have been quite easy for them to have rolled up my section.

But instead of pressing their attack the enemy hooked round behind the platoon and attempted an assault on the rear protection


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group. This too was driven off. Seivers went back to platoon headquarters for more ammunition and spare weapons. Handley took the opportunity of the relaxation of pressure on his portion of the perimeter to move to Juckel’s group to give assistance. All I could hear was Sergeant Juckel screaming for someone to give him a hand. He needed someone up there. Everybody else [in Juckel’s group was wounded] and the enemy were coming through the creek line. So I picked up my machine gun and what was left of the ammunition— which was about three or four hundred rounds out of the 2500 rounds we took out with us—and ran across to try and give them a hand.

Juckel was a pillar of strength within 3 Platoon. At 39 he was a mature influence on the soldiers and, having served with 1RAR in Vietnam in 1965–66, he brought a level of experience that commanded the respect of the platoon. Yet, during this fierce fire fight his behaviour seemed inexplicable. Handley later described the scene when he reached what remained of Juckel’s group: Sergeant Juckel was . . . standing up when I got there and his Armalite had seized up on him. He tried to get his gun unlocked and I grabbed him and pulled him down to try and keep him out of the way behind the paddi bund. I’ll never forget what he said to me. He shouted: ‘I am a German! Private Handley, the fucking bastards have got me! They’ve got me!’ . . . And he picked up his rifle and he actually threw it at them. Just before I grabbed him, he threw his Armalite at them! Crazy! He was a crazy man! But a great soldier, and a great man!

Handley’s account suggests that Juckel was having a berserk attack. In Achilles in Vietnam Jonathan Shay describes such attacks as a loss of restraint and a manic obsession with revenge, produced by a lifethreatening crisis and the betrayal of what is right.22 Juckel, his five comrades wounded and unable to fight, wounded himself, his one means of defence—his Armalite rifle—useless, the enemy closing in, no-one to help him, reacted to his predicament not by cowering fearfully, as a rational response to the situation might dictate, but in an unsuppressed and liberating rage. Handley went on: I looked around and all the blokes were pretty well stuffed. The machine gun was ruined. All of its sights had been blown off it. Then I started opening up with my machine gun. Then that seized up on me. It was




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glowing red hot and I just couldn’t use it. I couldn’t do anything with it. So I threw that away and I used the [other] machine gun, even though it had copped it pretty well. It was still working, but by that stage I had just about run out of ammunition.

Allan Handley and the members of Juckel’s small group faced being overrun as their supply of ammunition dwindled. But at this point the machine-gunner in the platoon’s rear security position began firing directly overhead as Handley, Juckel and the wounded huddled in the dry creek bed. Seivers crawled up the creek bed with his Armalite and a spare SLR to rejoin Juckel and Handley at their precarious post. Gordon Pollard, the platoon medic, also arrived to look after the wounded. Tony Shrapnel slithered into the position along the creek line, bringing extra ammunition. Handley commented: If it wasn’t for Tony coming up we would have been in a bit of trouble. [The enemy] were coming through pretty badly then. I grabbed Tony by the ears and gave him a big kiss. The things you do when you’re under pressure! But that was very scary, a very scary moment.

Barry Darr, the nuggety and aggressive commander of 3 Platoon, had called for artillery and air support as soon as the contact began. The reassuring freight train rush of high explosive shells, followed by the ear-splitting crack as they exploded on impact with the earth, reassured the men of 3 Platoon as they fought out their battle outside Dat Do. Adding to the din of battle was the mournful whistle of the empty casings of artillery illumination rounds as they arced overhead and thudded into the paddi fields. Although 9 Squadron RAAF was located a short distance away at Vung Tau, there was no RAAF helicopter gunship support that night for Darr’s ambush. Instead, a Sioux light observation helicopter of the Army’s 161 (Independent) Reconnaissance Flight, with a jerry-rigged M60 machine gun, arrived over the scene to drop aerial flares and to fire morale-boosting bursts of M60 fire at the enemy only metres forward of the 3 Platoon position. The helicopter drew intense return fire and was soon hit and forced to crashland at the Horseshoe feature.23 The absence of RAAF helicopter support angered the 3 Platoon men. Juckel, evacuated with the other wounded by US dustoff helicopter, remembered the American door gunner asking incredulously: ‘Ain’t you guys got no choppers?’ Nevertheless, 3 Platoon was not without air support. At the height of the contact there were ten aircraft talking to one another on the company radio net.24


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Issuing orders. Lieutenant Barry Darr (right) uses his map to brief his section commanders, Lance Corporal Peter Derrick (left) and Corporals Lindsay Craig (kneeling) and Bob Venables, on an upcoming platoon ambush. Platoon commanders might brief their section commanders like this three or four times each day. The section commanders then conveyed the orders to the men of their section. (AWM negative number WAR/70/0605/VN. Photograph by Sergeant Peter Ward)

Eventually, as the contact drew to a close, 3 Platoon was reinforced with a platoon from 7RAR mounted in APCs and accompanied by two Centurion tanks.25 Seivers remembered the wave of euphoria which swept through the platoon when the armoured vehicles arrived and the men knew they had survived: ‘Everyone was so excited. We reloaded and fired hundreds of rounds in the direction of the retreating enemy.’ Night-time battles could be simultaneously terrifying and beautiful. The lack of visibility heightened the soldier’s sense of isolation and reduced his ability to see the enemy and to bring effective fire against him. Artillery and other forms of artificial illumination helped to overcome these problems but flares could also be disorienting. The source of light moved as the flare swung below its parachute, so shadows lurched across the landscape giving the sense that everything, even paddi bunds and bushes, was moving. Each form of fire had its own pyrotechnic signature. Small arms produced muzzle flashes and a horizontal network of green and red tracer. RPGs and M72s produced




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a slower rocket trail ending in a brilliant flash of light as the warhead exploded. Hand grenades and M79 HE rounds produced explosions at ground level and clouds of dust and smoke. Bob Venables recalled the 3 Platoon ambush outside Dat Do: ‘I looked across the paddi and saw charlies running around, flares in the sky, tracer flying, explosions, grass burning—the works—and thought: ‘‘God, it looks like something out of an American B grade war movie’’.’ Searchlights and streams of tracer from helicopters and Shadow (a US Air Force fixed wing aircraft equipped with up to six Gatling-style mini-guns), added to the spectacle. After a heavy night-time fight, none of these pyrotechnic wonders compared to the beauty of the first signs of dawn and the sense of relief it provided. In the jungle, the dawn was heralded with a rising chorus of birdsong as fragmented shafts of light pierced the darkened forest floor seemingly growing in power as the dawn developed into day. For those ambushing in the open paddi fields, the first stirrings in the villages, the crowing of cocks and the arrival of vehicles for the return journey to Nui Dat heralded the lightening of the eastern horizon. In either case, it was often a time of silent reflection on the night’s activities. Dawn brought with it better visibility and the opportunity to more accurately apply firepower, hence the growing light offered a greater sense of security. However, the opportunity for reflection was short. After making a secure transition from night to day routine, platoons bustled to rendezvous with vehicles or to move out of the paddi fields to their hides in the jungle before the day shift—the peasants—moved into the fields. It had been a hard night’s work for Darr’s men, with surprisingly little to show for it. The 24 men had fought off between 60 and 70 enemy. Although they had fired over 4200 rounds of small arms ammunition, 46 M79 grenades, 15 M72 anti-tank rockets and thrown 20 hand grenades, and had received artillery, mortar and air support including Shadow, their search of the surrounding paddi fields revealed only two enemy KIA. A third was later found over 1000 metres from the contact. There were many blood trails and drag marks. Major Phil Pritchard, the acting OC of A Company recalled that ‘the Task Force Commander was not impressed that we could only produce three bodies after over an hour’s fire fight. Subsequent intelligence indicated over 50 KIA which altered his mind and I was able to recommend several decorations instead of being sent for ‘‘retraining’’ as threatened!’ Darr, Juckel, Handley, Pollard and Shrapnel were each awarded the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry for their actions.26 More important than


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the body count figures, a large enemy force attempting to enter Dat Do had been prevented from doing so. In the process, the enemy had been reminded of the potency of the ambushes of 8RAR and other 1ATF units and of the hazards of attempting further entries.

RESISTANCE TO KILLING A US Army special forces officer and psychologist, David Grossman, argues in his book On Killing that, except for rare individuals who possess sociopathic tendencies, most humans have a deeply ingrained aversion to killing other humans.27 So powerful is this aversion that, despite months of training intended to bring infantrymen to the point where they will kill the enemy, many will be unable to do so. And those whose reluctance is overridden by their training may carry a lifelong sentence of self-imposed guilt for what they do. According to Grossman, when faced with interpersonal aggression on the battlefield the infantryman’s response options are to fight, posture, submit or flight. The option each man chooses is determined in part by his training and in part by the context in which the aggression takes place. Factors which mitigate against the soldier refusing his duty to kill include the proximity of authority and the soldier’s respect for it; the proximity of other members of the group and the soldier’s identification with the group; and lastly, the physical and emotional distance between the soldier and the enemy. For most 8RAR soldiers, authority at the point of combat was exercised by the most junior ranks within the battalion: corporals, sergeants and lieutenants—men whose age and, in some cases, experience was not far removed from their own.28 In many cases soldiers participated in combat without any close supervision from more senior authority. Poor visibility due to the night or the jungle, and the roar of gunfire which masked shouted orders, isolated them as they fought. Therefore the proximity of authority may not have played a major role in encouraging 8RAR soldiers to kill. However, many 8RAR soldiers held their NCOs and junior officers in high respect and most had established strong relationships with them during the lengthy training before deployment to Vietnam. Therefore it is difficult to assess what role authority figures might have played in encouraging soldiers to kill. However, unit cohesion—particularly at the section, platoon and company levels—was very high in 8RAR. Unlike US infantrymen in




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Vietnam, Australian infantrymen generally had lengthy periods of service with their battalions, prior to deployment to Vietnam, in which to form strong bonds with their mates. Once deployed to Vietnam they continued into operations in the sections, platoons and companies they had trained in. By the time they experienced combat, most felt they could rely on one another. This strong identification with the group may have reduced their reluctance to kill. The physical distance between the soldier and the enemy has a bearing upon the willingness to kill. Grossman notes that at close range, ‘the interpersonal nature of the killing has shifted. Instead of shooting at a uniform and killing a generalized enemy, now the killer must shoot at a person and kill a specific individual. Most simply cannot or will not do it’.29 Yet, as we saw in Chapter 5, most 8RAR contacts were at very close range. Under these conditions, if Grossman is right, we would expect to see high levels of reluctance to kill including some refusals to do so. Although there is some evidence of reluctance to kill among 8RAR soldiers, the evidence does not suggest it was widespread. ‘Emotional distance’ includes perceived social, cultural and moral distinctions between the soldier and the enemy, as well as mechanical interfaces such as the use of light intensification sights or the electrical ignition of claymore mines, which interpose some form of mechanical barrier between the soldier and his victim.30 8RAR soldiers, like others in Australian infantry battalions, did see social, cultural and moral distinctions between themselves and their enemy. But these can be overstated. 8RAR soldiers often held the VC/NVA in high regard for their fighting qualities, if not for their politics. They were frequently rated above Australia’s allies for their military skills and battlefield aggression. Some men even joked that the Australians should join with the VC and the NVA to ‘do over’ the rest. All armies possess strong sanctions against flight and submission and so soldiers rarely resort to these except in situations of extreme test. In Vietnam, where there was no relatively safe ‘rear area’, techniques of flight such as desertion or going absent without leave from operations, featured not at all.31 However, some forms of flight and submission were used by Australian infantrymen in Vietnam. One was the self-inflicted wound, where soldiers sought to wound themselves specifically to ensure their evacuation from the immediate fighting or the prospect of fighting. A very small number of soldiers took this option. Feigning injury or illness to avoid operational duty was also a form of flight. So was rendering oneself unfit for duty due


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to the over-consumption of alcohol prior to a patrol. Each of these methods was used. Least understood of Grossman’s four response options is posturing. Grossman argues that soldiers posture when they fire their weapons in the general direction of the enemy but without the intention of killing specific individuals. ‘With the advent of gunpowder’, comments Grossman, ‘the soldier has been provided with one of the finest possible means of posturing.’32 Reluctance to kill produces the phenomenon of the non-shooter— the soldier who simply refuses to participate in the battle. The US historian SLA Marshall, after studying US infantrymen in Europe in World War II, found that only 15–20 per cent of them actually fired their weapons in combat. The remainder refused to fire. In subsequent wars, Marshall found, firing rates improved due to changes in training methods, particularly the use of man-shaped targets for rifle shooting. In the Korean War the number of firers had risen to 55 per cent and in Vietnam the US Army achieved rates of 90–95 per cent. 33 According to Grossman, the higher rates achieved in Vietnam were due to a combination of desensitisation, conditioning and denial mechanisms. However, although new training techniques had produced a high participation in firing in the Vietnam War, many of those firing their weapons were not aiming to kill but were merely posturing. What evidence for this do we see in 8RAR in Vietnam? The personal accounts of 8RAR soldiers certainly reveal evidence of reluctance to kill, although this seems to have declined rapidly following the soldiers’ first experience of combat. The accounts also reveal the soldiers’ reactions to the killing and wounding of the enemy and to friendly casualties. Tito Digiovanni, a rifleman and later a machine-gunner of 6 Section, 8 Platoon, C Company recalled the moment he knowingly killed an enemy. Digiovanni was woken by the blast of claymores and was instantly in action with his rifle as his platoon commander screamed orders and the din of rifle and machine gun fire rose to a roar. In the light of flares he saw an enemy only fifteen metres forward of his position. Then it happened: my moment of truth. I know I had fired lots of shots in anger before but I didn’t see anyone before, only voices and noise coming from the enemy’s direction. But this time I could see him trying to crawl away. I didn’t want to pull the trigger but I couldn’t let him




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get away. It seemed a lifetime, and then I found out what I was made of. I pulled the trigger and he didn’t move anymore. I felt so sad I thought of my mum and dad. How would they feel if it was me at the other end. All that night I felt sad, scared, but glad I had done my job.

At dawn, Digiovanni was sent forward with others to sweep through the killing ground. He searched the area. ‘Then slowly I went over to the one I shot. I can still see the face with the top half of the head missing. His eyes were open and it seemed he was looking at me.’ Digiovanni’s memory of the event reveals the torment he must have felt. The enemy’s lifeless gaze seemed accusatory. Digiovanni carried the burden of his actions that night for many years. It wasn’t till the welcome home march [in 1987] that a group of us were talking about our experiences, that I finally stopped feeling guilty for what I had done, and if it wasn’t for my friends, or should I say brothers, I would still feel guilty now. That [night in Vietnam] was one night I will never forget. It made me appreciate life.

In Digiovanni’s statement we have many of the factors that Grossman raises. The soldier himself recognises the difference between most combat shooting—in which the enemy is rarely seen—and the killing of a visible individual. He debates with himself whether to kill or to let the enemy crawl away. He does what he is trained to do but is overcome with remorse. Finally, seventeen years later, it is the absolution of his peers (sadly, not his officers or NCOs—or his country) that finally removes the guilt from his shoulders. Digiovanni’s is not an isolated case. Allan Handley, the machinegunner we met earlier who had played a significant role in 3 Platoon’s night ambush outside Dat Do, recalled a similar situation. His platoon was involved in an ambush near Xuyen Moc in the east of Phuoc Tuy Province. An enemy patrol entered the killing ground without detecting the presence of the platoon. The ambush was initiated and seven enemy were killed. But the incident stayed in Handley’s mind because he killed someone he could see. Probably the worst thing I’ve had to do was shoot somebody who was mortally wounded and I really had to take a long time to think about doing that. But he was trying to crawl away and I thought: ‘Well, what am I going to do?’ I felt compassion for the poor bastard. I felt the fact that his arm was shot right off, just about. What do I do? Do I let him crawl away or do I . . .? I remember looking through the sights as if it


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was today . . . I felt like letting him go. But I didn’t. I ended up firing a few rounds at him and then I just [took] my mind off him and got on with it. But it seemed like I was making that decision forever . . . I made the decision and I’ve got to live with it now. I’ve got to live with that and see that bloke trying to crawl away.34

Non-firers were more rare in Vietnam but they were not unknown. Following the 3 Platoon ambush outside Dat Do a soldier confided to Handley that he had been unable to participate in the battle. Handley recalled the soldier telling him: ‘I had a .45 pistol and all I could do was wave it about, firing the pistol above the [paddi bund]. I was that scared. I’ve never been scared like it.’ Handley was shocked at the revelation. Platoons always went on operations under strength but if, on top of casualties, some men refrained from participating effectively in the shooting, then the combat power of the platoon would soon sink below the point where it could adequately defend itself. The refusal of a few to fire might risk the lives of all. Handley urged the non-shooter not to do it again, but both men were aware at some level of the psychological forces at work. ‘When he told me’, remembered Handley, ‘he had a bit of a cry and I shed a few tears with him. I said, ‘‘Look mate, it happens. It might be me tomorrow. I don’t know what I’m going to be like tomorrow. I can’t guarantee that I won’t crack under the strain’’.’ But Handley was unlikely to crack. He was a machine-gunner, responsible for firing the main fire-producing and killing weapon of the section. I felt like I was a vital link in the system, which you are. If you can’t be trusted with the machine gun then blokes will have a real go at you, and that puts real pressure on you as a machine-gunner to make sure that you set some sort of example.35

In addition to the weight of responsibility to ensure that the machine gun contributed to the fire fight, the organisation of the section added to the likelihood that the machine-gunner would fire his weapon. Machine guns were crew-served weapons, so Handley usually operated the weapon under the watchful eye of the section second in command, a lance corporal, who commanded the machine gun team. The ‘number 2’ on the gun, whose role was to keep ammunition up, change the barrel when necessary, observe the target area, and take over the gun if the ‘number 1’ was killed or wounded, was also there. Though these layers of supervision had been absent on the night of the ambush outside Dat Do—Handley had been alone—they normally




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acted to ensure that the machine gun was never a non-participant in the fight. Yet it is noteworthy that Handley identifies not the number 2 or the section second in command as ensuring that the machine gun was used, but the peer pressure of his section mates. There was no doubt, too, that some posturing—ineffective firing aimed more at generating noise than at killing—took place in contacts. How else could one explain the ineffective fire of Corporal John Norris’s 7 Section. They had fired 70 rounds at three enemy in broad daylight at ranges of between three and ten metres and managed only four hits. The section second in command recalled that some men had been berated for firing from the hip after the contact. Many soldiers observed that during a fire fight their training ‘took over’. They felt as though they were under the control of the drills they had learned and practised many times before. Their training prevented them from failing to function in the face of fear. It is probable that their training also encouraged them to fire their weapons—but at some unconscious level they avoided aiming in order to avoid killing. Hence they sometimes expended a lot of ammunition for each enemy casualty produced.

REACTIONS TO DEATH AND WOUNDING Reactions to the sights, sounds and smells of death and wounding varied. Most 8RAR soldiers had not seen a dead body before their tour of Vietnam. Even fewer had seen the wounds that modern weapons can inflict. Most reacted to their first sight of the dead and wounded much as the men of Norris’s 7 Section had. However, as their experience of combat grew, they quickly hardened to what they saw. Some claimed to be unmoved. ‘The sight of the enemy violently wounded or killed had no real effect [on me]’, remembered Ron West; ‘the smell was the worst’. Trevor Holtom, a machine-gunner, claimed to have had no reaction at all to the sight of the dead. Another said he felt indifference at the sight, just as one might look upon a dead rabbit or kangaroo. But others responded with shock, horror and revulsion. Kevin Montague ‘could never get rid of the sight or smell of violent death’ and still carries unwanted memories. Some sought to block the experiences from their minds. One soldier wrote: ‘I had decided that whenever I came in contact with the dead, I would try to blank out my mind and not think of what I was doing, not let it get to me, otherwise I would be of no use in a platoon.’ Another


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The awful results of combat. Dead VC following Lieutenant Peter Lauder’s 9 Platoon ambush of approximately 100 enemy in the Long Hai hills on the late afternoon of 15 February 1970. When ambushed, the enemy were on their way from a base camp in the Long Hai hills to the village of Dat Do which was their main source of materiel and political support. Fighting continued for over two hours when 9 Platoon was relieved by 8 Platoon and a troop of tanks. Many soldiers found the sight of the dead disturbing. (Photo courtesy of Tony Flaherty)

wrote: ‘I felt sick in the stomach although I never threw up. I blanked the sights and sounds (screaming) out of my mind.’ Others shared Ron West’s view—the smell was the worst. One soldier wrote: ‘I was not prepared for my encounter with a long dead VC in the jungle, on patrol. The sight of a decomposing body was bad enough but it was the smell that really turned my stomach.’ Another said: ‘I had been trained to kill the enemy and so felt nothing for them, although the sight of their flesh after being shot—with little or no blood coming from the wounds after dying—and the smell coming out of their stomachs did make me a bit queasy.’ Some men were conscious of the deadening of the emotional response they had towards the dead and wounded, and they feared what the killing and the sight of the dead was doing to them. ‘I didn’t




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think I could have become blasé about a person’s life being taken so bloodily—but I did’, wrote Derek Walsh, ‘and this still sends chills of fear through me when I recall this. I didn’t think this was in me!’ Merv Ryan, who stalked and shot a VC youth, felt rising excitement and exhilaration during his contact but afterwards recalled: ‘I couldn’t believe what I’d become’. He detected later a lack of normal feeling towards the dead and wounded, both enemy and Australian. Men in positions of command felt that they could not reveal their feelings at the sight of the dead. Adrian Lombardo, OC of 11 Platoon, D Company, found the sight very depressing but felt he could not show his upset. He expressed his thoughts in letters to his wife and found that that helped him cope. Ron West, who served both as a platoon sergeant and as acting platoon commander, ‘shed a lot of tears . . . and just wanted to get even [but] a lot of my own feelings were kept hidden at the time because soldiers under my command could not be allowed to drop their bundle. The sight of your commander crying doesn’t do much for morale.’ Brian Partridge, a section second in command, felt the same way and kept his emotions under control. He felt that he had been able to do this because of his training and ‘the fact that I was an NCO and had to be seen to be in control and going about my duties in spite of events’. Modern, high velocity infantry weapons produce massive kinetic energy in the bullets they fire. When the human body is hit, much of this energy is transferred to the body. Shock waves radiate from the point of impact. If hit, hard objects like bone or pieces of the soldier’s equipment shatter and, invested with the energy of the bullet, become secondary projectiles. Fluid-filled cavities rupture. Wounds are rarely the neat holes one sees in movies. The location of a wound also seems to be important in terms of the revulsion it causes. The sight of head wounds seems to have been particularly repellent, perhaps because the head and face contain the essence of the victim’s humanity. When hit with a killing shot the body simply collapses, sprawling to the ground in a contorted heap. It often lacks any sense of having been arranged by functioning musculature under conscious control. Many men observed this phenomenon and commented on it. Together with the small stature of many VC, the contorted, collapsed state of dead VC often reminded them of dolls. Keith Carl of 9 Platoon, C Company, remembered: The sight of my first body surprised me. He just looked like a large, inanimate china doll. It just didn’t look real until I noticed the blood


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and mess around him. He had been shot through the body and head by bursts from our scout’s M16.

Another soldier commented that ‘the dead enemy seemed to be nothing more than large dolls. They did not appear to be human.’ Chris Sinclair, the commander of 8 Platoon, C Company, remembered that ‘the sight of enemy dead was perplexing. They seemed so small and innocent (doll like). I couldn’t get emotional yet the memory is still vivid.’ Some soldiers found the wounds produced by small arms fire or fragmentation weapons shocking. ‘Nothing can prepare you for what a high powered rifle [or] machine gun does to a human body’, wrote Paul Simson. ‘Whatever part of the body is hit is mutilated, ripped open or ripped off. I think the results of a person being shot or blown up by a mine were things I just didn’t [want to] think about. Perhaps I preferred not to.’ But Simson was unable to totally block the memory from his mind. The images were just too powerful. He continued: ‘I recall seeing a VC body that had been shot in the head with a 7.62 [mm] SLR. The whole side of his head had been torn off, leaving his inside skull hollow. When I see a coconut half I think of it.’ Sergeant Chad Sherrin commanded 8 Platoon in a highly successful ambush outside the village of Hoa Long on the night of 11/12 August 1970. Nineteen enemy, members of a resupply column, had been killed in the first few seconds of fire from multiple claymore mines and M60 machine guns. Some of the enemy had been so close to the claymore mines that only the top half of their torsos remained. The rest had disintegrated in the blast. Others had been hit by the machine guns. ‘It’s just something that sort of sticks in your mind’, recalled Sherrin. ‘They were carrying rice and this fellow’s head . . . was just a cavern and the rice had spilled into that . . . They would have been hit with an awful lot of firepower from those machine guns. That’s why I thought—you know, the machine guns and claymores really hit me as to the awesome power they were capable of generating.’36 Colin James, a machine-gunner in Support Section, D Company, remembers being surprised rather than horrified by the destructive effect of 7.62 mm bullets on the human body, especially the multiple wounds caused by the M60 machine gun. After one contact he made a report, then picked up his machine gun and his half-finished meal, secured ground in front of a dead VC, and calmly finished his meal. As a slaughterman in civil life, and having helped out occasionally as an ambulanceman, he had had more exposure than most to blood and




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gore. For Brian Partridge, the sight of the dead brought him face to face with the effects of modern small arms fire: ‘My reaction to these sights was some fear . . . [and] some slight shock.’

FRIENDLY CASUALTIES Although many soldiers were able to deaden their emotional response to enemy casualties, they found this impossible to do for Australian casualties. This was particularly so when the victims were members of the soldier’s own platoon or section, and especially if the victim was a particular mate—a man with whom the soldier had shared food and a hutchie, visited Vung Tau for sex and alcohol, and perhaps shared hardships, doubts and fears as well as the few joys of the infantryman’s life. The loss of such a person could be deeply disturbing. Alan Grinter, a battalion signaller attached to B Company, said: ‘The sight of enemy dead did not worry me. I always thought, better him than me. But with our own it always seemed to make me angry and I hoped that next time we could knock over a few more to try and make up for those that were hurt [or] lost.’ Carey Johnson was similarly unmoved by dead and wounded enemy. He had served in 1RAR and saw large numbers of Viet Cong killed by the Americans and buried in bomb craters. ‘I looked on in disbelief at first, with no personal reactions’, he remembered. They seemed ‘just meat’. Our own injured affected me more. However, I recall not showing that feeling to them and I can definitely remember acting very detached and businesslike, and bandaging etc. without problems, but feeling terribly sick inside. I can remember one occasion bandaging up a fellow and not being able to look him in the eyes when I spoke to him. I have a very strong recollection of the screaming of our wounded affecting me strongly, but the screaming of the wounded enemy having no effect at all.

For some, the sight of dead or wounded Australians tended to rouse thoughts of revenge. Kevin Sullivan said: ‘It did not worry me seeing an enemy KIA, but the first Australian killed . . . was carried out past our section and that did make you want to seek revenge.’ But mostly, men reported experiencing a feeling of deep loss— sometimes one which could not be expressed fully at the time. ‘I found it very hard to accept the sight of our own casualties’, said Rod


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Cleggett. ‘We seemed to be too busy to think about it at the time, but I have reflected on it in recent years and regard [the] time spent burying dead enemy [and] treating ours and their wounded as the worst part of my time in Vietnam.’ Keith Carl commented: ‘I had one very good mate in 9 Platoon killed. It was one of the worst nights I ever spent in Vietnam. I had seen quite a few dead enemy but never a friend, and it worried and upset me for a long time.’ Bob O’Callaghan of Support Company remembered only slight stirrings of emotion in relation to dead enemy and also the need to put any concern for them out of mind quickly. ‘It boiled down to them or us’, he said. But he felt sympathy for both enemy and Australian wounded. ‘I didn’t like to see anyone in that predicament’, he remembered. ‘As for our own dead, I felt a sense of loss and hopelessness, and maybe also of anger.’ Michael Wykes of A Company recalled: Enemy dead and casualties did not concern me at all. However the death of my close mate sickened me . . . [His] face, as he lay on his back, eyes staring into the sky, with his guts ripped open, will always be etched on my mind . . . Other friendly casualties I accepted as part of the job.

Wykes was embittered by the useless loss of his mate. He believed it was due to a poor tactical decision by his section commander and was filled with a sense of anger and betrayal following the incident. Others were able to rationalise dealing with the dead and wounded as part of the job. ‘It didn’t worry me that much’, reported Peter McBain. ‘It was part of being there and you had to wear it.’

CONCLUSION Many 8RAR soldiers referred to operations as the ‘two-way range’— a rifle range where the targets fired back. Their training had seemed to progress through ever more complex range practices, culminating in their deployment on operations. Training, such as range practices, had prepared them well for much of the mechanics of what they would find in combat, but they were sometimes unprepared for their emotional responses. Most men had imagined their reactions to the more predictable emotional turbulence of combat such as fear and the sight of the enemy dead. But despite these imaginary rehearsals, few were prepared for the powerful reactions they experienced when confronted with the reality. Their responses to the sight of dead and




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wounded comrades were particularly powerful. Perhaps surprisingly, contacts with the enemy produced relatively few 8RAR casualties, particularly after the battalion had begun its pacification operations. Instead, most casualties to members of 8RAR were to occur in mine incidents.


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7

The waiting killers The waiting killers

One of the awful ironies of the Vietnam War for those Australians who fought in it was that the mines that killed or wounded so many of them were Australian ones lifted from a barrier minefield constructed by 1ATF from Dat Do to the coast. The Australian Task Force in Phuoc Tuy Province always found itself torn between the requirement to conduct conventional operations against main force enemy units and the need for pacification operations aimed at providing protection to the villages. Particularly before late 1967, when 1ATF had only two infantry battalions, its resources were insufficient to conduct both types of operation simultaneously. Brigadier S. C. Graham, Commander 1ATF from January to October 1967, ordered the construction of the 15-kilometre barrier minefield and fence to limit enemy movement into the populated centre of the province. In Australian mine warfare doctrine, the laying of a minefield like the Dat Do barrier minefield was a specialised Engineer task. It required careful siting, design, laying to a set pattern, recording and marking. Doctrine required that a barbed wire fence hung with suitable warning signs surround any barrier minefield. Details of the minefield were carefully recorded to facilitate later removal when the tactical situation had changed. Most importantly, minefields were to be covered by observation and fire. This made the enemy’s task of crossing them or lifting the mines extremely difficult as it had to be done while under aimed fire. Minefields covered by observation and fire are 149




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formidable military obstacles. Graham had intended that local Vietnamese forces, including RF and PF platoons, would patrol the Dat Do minefield fence to perform this role. But the task was beyond them. The minefield was inadequately patrolled and the enemy penetrated it and lifted many mines. The Viet Cong regarded Graham’s barrier minefield as one of three ‘strategies’ the Australians used during the course of the war.1 The barrier minefield had at first posed a difficult problem for the VC. Many lives were lost as they attempted to find a way to break through the barrier. Eventually, volunteers found a practical way to lift the mines. Engineers were trained in the techniques and then instructed others including cadres, soldiers and villagers. Using more and more trained people, the VC were able to lift large numbers of mines. A Vietnamese history of the war in Phuoc Tuy Province notes that the guerilla cell in Hoi My village was able, in some nights, to lift as many as 160 mines.2 It recounts the VC triumph over the barrier minefield: At the end of 1967 the fence that the enemy [the Australians] had proudly and bombastically described as ‘one through which a dog could not slip’ had become useless. Communications from the District down to the villages had been reestablished. The Phuoc Tho cell had the initiative of digging secret trenches in the middle of the minefield at Phuoc Tho hamlet about 200 metres from the Horseshoe. They were able to hide provisions and cadres there. It was a secure hideout. Apart from that the Australian minefield supplied the revolutionary forces of Long Dat with innumerable weapons to establish and protect their own base areas. The Australian mines were able to be used on the infantry and tanks of the Australians, Americans and puppet armies.3

The stolen mines turned out to be one of the enemy’s most effective weapons. Not only did the barrier fail but, as David Horner has noted, even one of the Australian Task Force commanders estimated that from September 1968 to May 1970 some 50 per cent of 1ATF casualties ‘were from our own mines’.4 The barrier minefield put into the enemy’s hands large numbers of weapons which greatly enhanced his ability to inflict casualties on the Australians without requiring the VC to expose itself to combat. Still, there were those who, during the war, defended the decision to build the minefield. Major General R. A. Hay, COMAFV during the period of perhaps the heaviest Australian mine casualties, said:


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151 The waiting killers

I do not believe there should be any recriminations over the laying of the minefield. It was a sound concept which could not be followed through due to our [in]ability and the SVN ability to protect it . . . In the populated area of Phuoc Tuy Province, the VC is losing the political battle and is using the anti-personnel mine as his major counter-attack and terrorist weapon. More SVN regular and local forces, civilians and cattle have been killed and wounded by his indiscriminate laying of mines than Australians and New Zealanders.5

For its mine warfare campaign the VC mainly used weapons provided to it by US and Australian forces. For larger mines, particularly anti-tank mines, the VC often used explosives extracted from unexploded bombs and artillery shells or simply rigged the dud munitions with a homemade switch, converting them with little effort into massive mines. Roughly 2 per cent of all artillery shells fired by the FWMAF (the allied forces), and about 5 per cent of bombs, were duds.6 The effect of this on US forces was noted by Andrew Krepinevich who claims that in 1966 alone some 27 000 tons of dud bombs were available for use in VC mines and booby traps. Over 1000 US soldiers died that year as a result of wounds inflicted from such devices. During the first six months of 1967, 17 per cent of all US casualties were caused by mines and booby traps—539 killed and 5532 wounded.7

The figures were lower for the Australians, reflecting the smaller scale of the Australian commitment, but the fact remains that many Australian casualties were caused by explosive devices delivered into the hands of the VC either through the Australian minefield or through artillery fire or aerial bombardment. Most 8RAR soldiers feared land mines more than any other enemy weapon. Carey Johnson, a section commander and later platoon sergeant in B Company recalled: I personally feared the land mines that had earlier been laid by our troops and then later dug up and reused by the nogs. Anything that had to be personally hand-held did not worry me to the extent that I feared it . . . I knew that they were probably as frightened as me during a fight and that the one that stuck it out the longest would win. However, when they started to use command-detonated and anti-personnel mines, which seemed to just lay there and wait for someone to step on them, it was more frightening.




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The land mine seemed to incur a much more serious injury to those around it when detonated. I recall seeing a bloke with his lower legs cut off and everyone around him with blood coming from small fragment wounds to their faces and upper bodies. The blokes themselves feared them the most. They used to talk of them when in base or on leave. They used to abuse the ARVN for the manner in which they allowed the nogs to sneak in at night and take them. I can recall them also abusing the Engineers who laid them. I suppose in hindsight we should have been abusing the leaders who . . . thought the idea up in the first place.

VC MINE DOCTRINE Viet Cong mine doctrine was the antithesis of Australian practice. In VC doctrine, mines were often laid around base camps and caches as a defensive measure. But more commonly the enemy used mines offensively, laying them along tracks and in clearings to inflict casualties or delay the Australians and to deny them areas.8 Sometimes, seeing allied troops in their area, the VC would lay mines in their path in a scattered pattern in an attempt to cause casualties. In the defensive role mines were sometimes laid in carefully ordered patterns. But scatter pattern was more typical around base camps, caches and ambush sites. Mines were sometimes laid at the base of large trees, rocks or anthills so that when the VC opened fire the Australians would trip the mines when they took cover.9 Although small groups of mines were often lifted and redeployed when the tactical situation changed, the location of scattered mines was seldom recorded. The commander of 1 Field Squadron RAE, Major Rex Rowe, commented on VC mine warfare tactics: The enemy dislikes laying large minefields as a purely defensive measure, considering this to be wasteful of materials and effort; they prefer to use mines offensively as weapons of fear and terror. Our own experiences in Phuoc Tuy Province confirm how effectively the Viet Cong have used mines as an offensive, attacking measure.10

Rowe went on to argue: The enemy must not be allowed to gain the initiative simply by his use of mines. Whilst the political connotations perhaps preclude acceptance of large casualty lists in maintaining an aggressive spirit, our operations must not grind to a virtual halt through ‘mine neurosis’. We must get


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on top of the mine problem from the outset and let the enemy know that mines and booby traps do not restrict our activities to any great degree.

BLACK DAY IN THE LONG HAIS 1ATF was never able to completely ‘get on top of the mine problem’. Although units of the Task Force operated freely in most parts of the province, the Long Hai hills were noted for the mine threat they posed. Units operating there sometimes incurred high casualties due to mines and these in turn caused political repercussions which ultimately limited the ability of the Task Force to operate there. 8RAR’s Operation Hammersley was one such operation. On the morning of 28 February 1970, in the closing days of Operation Hammersley, A Company was deployed on the eastern edge of the Long Hai hills to ambush routes that might be used by the remnants of D445 Battalion to escape 8RAR pressure elsewhere. The 8RAR After Action Report for the operation noted: Due to the threat of M16 mines, wherever practicable infantry moved in closed down APCs with tanks in front of the APCs to prove the way. This tactic was successful. There were no mine casualties from M16 mines when troops moved in this manner.11

During the operation, when moving dismounted, infantrymen wore flak jackets and sometimes steel helmets to give added personal protection against mine fragments. The battalion was well supported with Engineer splinter teams supplied by 1 Field Squadron.12 Movement by foot in areas of high mine threat was usually very slow, deliberate and cautious. Major Vin Murphy, OC of A Company, conforming with the CO’s orders, sent his 1 Platoon, under the command of Sergeant Bill Hoban, into an ambush position covering a likely enemy withdrawal route. The platoon was equipped with flak jackets in case of a mine blast and had an attached two-man Engineer splinter team with a mine detector to clear the route as they moved. They set off in the relative cool of the morning, in single file, following the path cleared by the Engineers and stopping every 80 to 100 paces to allow the Engineers time to rest. Operating the mine detector was demanding and the Engineers needed regular breaks to maintain concentration. Progress




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was very slow and cautious. The platoon moved only 100 metres in an hour.13 When Hoban reached the ambush position he called Murphy on the radio saying that the area appeared clear of mines, was a suitable ambush site and had a good source of drinking water nearby. But he also alerted Murphy that an M26 grenade booby trap had been found and that the Engineers were going to destroy it. Murphy advised caution. Where there was one booby trap, he told Hoban, there were bound to be others. With the heat of the day, the steep climb and the heavy, stifling flak jackets, most of Hoban’s men had consumed their water and required a resupply. The platoon was occupying a small depression in the ground and was not properly dispersed; to make matters worse a water party returning from the watering point, and another yet to leave, added to the overcrowding around the platoon headquarters. Lance Corporal Bob D’Arcy later described what happened next: Sergeant Hoban told no one to move as ‘where there is one booby trap, there is more’. The [Engineers] continued to move about. Sergeant Hoban turned to Corporal Jackson to discuss how we would move away. One of the [Engineer] mini-team moved over to their weapons. He detonated the mine. I heard the explosion and went to ground. I think I was shaky and a little groggy. Sergeant Hoban looked at me and fell to the ground [dead]. I then moved to the [signals] set by prodding my way. I shouted to the others to stay still and prod an area and lay down. I reported the incident to [company headquarters]. I looked around and there was only myself and Private Casey and Private Child still standing. Private Casey and myself were only 5 feet from the blast. Private Child was on high ground 30 feet from the mine.14

The M16 mine was of the ‘jumping jack’ variety. Once triggered, a small propellant charge lifts the mine into the air, usually about a metre and a half, before the main charge fires and sends fragments over a wide area. Mines were often a lottery of death. Like Bob D’Arcy, soldiers only a few metres from the blast might escape injury while those some distance away might be killed or wounded. There were cases where M16 mines killed soldiers over 70 metres from the point of blast and wounded at 200 metres.15 D’Arcy and a few others had miraculously survived the blast unscathed. They were faced with a scene of slaughter: seven dead and thirteen wounded, some very seriously, writhing and screaming in


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agony. Nor could the survivors help the wounded, lest in doing so they triggered other mines. Using their bayonets, they carefully prodded the ground to detect other mines as they moved towards their wounded mates. Bringing help was agonisingly slow. Gordon Hewett was one of the wounded. He had been posted into A Company from the Reinforcement Unit only five days earlier and, with other reinforcements, had asked the CQMS, John Hawkes, to allow them to join their platoons on Operation Hammersley. Hawkes normally kept reinforcements at Nui Dat for a few days to allow them to settle in, but Corporal Jackson had just returned from R&R and wanted to rejoin the platoon. The reinforcements pestered Hawkes to let them go too. Hawkes relented. A few days later Jackson and some of the reinforcements were dead and Hewett and others were wounded. It was a hard introduction to operations. Hawkes cannot forgive himself for letting them go.16 Hewett was thrown through the air by the force of the blast. He looked back towards platoon headquarters to see a scene of utter carnage. He remembered: ‘One lad near me was groaning loudly. Suddenly a jet of blood came out of his ear and he passed away.’ Hewett recalled little panic within the platoon. Corporal Bob D’Arcy seemed to have everything under control and the platoon medic was working on the wounded. In Hewett’s recollection there was more panic on the radio than from D’Arcy, and D’Arcy was getting angry with the inane chatter and the ridiculous demands being made of him. To his surprise it was some time before Hewett found that he had wounds to his hand, back and leg. Initially there had been no pain. D’Arcy commented: There were a lot of people shouting. We shouted at them and prodded towards the wounded. I told Private Child to prod down to us to assist. The wounded calmed down and none of them moved. The personnel who were able prodded a space and [attended to their own wounds].

While D’Arcy, Casey and Child helped the wounded as best they could, three other survivors, Corporal Jim Barrett, Lance Corporal Peter Salkowski and Private Tony Kingdom, set out to clear a route to an LZ to evacuate the wounded. Barrett used the mine detector to clear a path and Salkowski followed behind marking the clear route with Kingdom providing security. By now helicopters had begun to ferry assistance into the stricken platoon. First to arrive were an Engineer and Corporal Torrens, the A Company medic. Salkowski led




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them along the cleared path to the platoon where Torrens started working on the wounded. Meanwhile, another Engineer was being winched from a RAAF Iroquois helicopter into the small LZ cleared by Barrett and Kingdom. Barrett marshalled the helicopter. Looking up and signalling instructions to the hovering helicopter he stepped out of the cleared area, detonating a second mine. Salkowski recalled: ‘Jim was looking up. The next thing [he moved backwards] and a mine climbed up his back. Later on you could see where the line [marking the safe lane] was and you could see his footprint where the mine came out.’17 Barrett had stepped out of the cleared lane by a matter of a few centimetres. ‘[Jim] just died in front of us. He was bloody . . . picked himself up a couple of times, shook his head. I was about two metres away. Tony Kingdom was between us. He got shrapnel all through his legs.’ Miraculously, Salkowski didn’t receive a scratch: Nothing. I felt the blast, I felt the heat, I felt the whistling. Nothing. There were people getting hit one hundred metres away. It wasn’t my turn. I got to Jim. His back was gone, one foot was gone—you know, the leg was blown off. Just massive . . . massive trauma. Tony [Kingdom] was yelling. While he was making some noise I was happy, you know. The more he yelled the better it was.

Salkowski turned his efforts to helping Kingdom, who was losing an enormous amount of blood. But, adding to the horror of that day, neither Salkowski nor Torrens could find the source of the blood. It seemed to keep coming from nowhere. Eventually Salkowski got Kingdom strapped onto a jungle penetrator and winched into a dustoff helicopter. A single piece of shrapnel had severed an artery near Kingdom’s anus but he had survived. As well as killing Barrett and wounding Kingdom, the second mine had also damaged the helicopter and wounded the Engineer suspended under it on the winch. For the remainder of the day the survivors, and a few Engineers and medical personnel brought in to assist, assembled the bodies of the dead and wounded for helicopter evacuation, cleaned up the area and prepared to depart. The emotional response to the incident was as sharp as the incident had been horrifying. Bob D’Arcy, Peter Salkowski and other survivors had responded with cool efficiency to the crisis, immediately organising dustoff, tending to the wounded and clearing safe lanes. But beneath their outer calm and busy efficiency the incident had deeply scarred


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them. D’Arcy later described himself as ‘terrified, scared witless, and angry because there was no enemy to shoot’ during the incident. He recalled feeling ‘totally dead inside, thankful to be alive and guilty that I wasn’t wounded’. Gordon Hewett said: ‘I hated the enemy then, and God knows what would have happened should I have had some at my mercy.’ Colin Fletcher recalled the 19-year-old platoon radio operator with the back of his head blown out; Fletcher tried using an ineffectual shell dressing on the wound. He felt the incident changed him. He could no longer allow himself to get close to anyone. D’Arcy and Salkowski, the junior NCOs who had seemingly coped so well with the situation, each came out of the incident with an undeserved sense of guilt. Salkowski remarked: ‘Well, guilt, responsibility . . . You go through the tactics every day of your life. Of course you feel that. You feel the guilt, you feel the remorse, you feel . . . and it all becomes overwhelming in the end.’18 The survivors of the mine incident were extracted to nearby NDP Isa. Brigadier Weir arrived with several of his aides to talk to the survivors. Salkowski was angry. He and the other survivors were exhausted, distraught and still in their filthy uniforms—gore-covered from handling the dead and wounded. Weir attempted to comfort them by telling them how much worse it had been for him in World War II. Salkowski, always a hothead, became abusive, was asked to apologise to the brigadier, but just walked away. We were still covered in blood and shit, no rations, no nothing, you know. And every time they fired a mortar mission we all went through the ground. We were like little bloody . . . a little pack of animals, you know. We were all huddled together. And it was like that. You know, that’s all you had. So I had a go at him. I had to apologise, which I didn’t . . . wouldn’t.19

The next day the survivors of 1 Platoon were taken back to Nui Dat while the remainder of the company stayed on operations. Salkowski arranged a few bottles of Bacardi from friends in the SAS and the survivors set about getting drunk. A Company had been tightly knit. Of all the battalion’s company commanders, Major Vin Murphy, the OC of A Company, had been with the battalion the longest. He had previously served in the AATTV, so was an experienced Vietnam hand. Captain John Dwyer, his second in command, had also joined the battalion in Malaysia and had served in 1RAR during its first tour of Vietnam, as a platoon commander. The company sergeant major, Dusty Miller, had had




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previous service in Vietnam too. The three men forged A Company into a highly cohesive and well-drilled company and, perhaps because of the Vietnam experience they possessed, chafed a little at the commanding officer’s style, both in training in Australia and later during the battalion’s early operations in Vietnam. John Dwyer said: Now, the other companies didn’t have that depth of experience and so I think, probably, we clashed at times with battalion headquarters and others because we, I think, had a better understanding of what our company was in for . . . And so our training was driven . . . on knowing what to do and we were given tasks in training in Australia which were unrealistic in Vietnam. We established this tremendous rapport within the company itself [which] understood where their three bosses were coming from.20

But in Vietnam, A Company had got off to an unsteady start. In what was only the battalion’s second contact and A Company’s first, 1 Platoon suffered six WIA when two enemy, engaged at fifteen metres range, responded with a single RPG round, sending a shower of shrapnel into the platoon. They were the battalion’s first battle casualties. A short time later John Dwyer was posted out of the company to become Task Force liaison officer at Long Dien. The team that had built A Company had begun to break up. Then came the mine incident on 28 February 1970. It was to send ripples of repercussions through the life of the battalion. 1 Platoon lost 21 men killed or wounded. The company Vin Murphy had spent so much effort training was shattered. Commanders may sometimes be caught in a paradox of combat that is peculiar to their position; they train and prepare their men for combat and in doing so come to love them, but combat may destroy the creation they love. When it happens, commanders may be entwined in complex emotions as they attempt to resolve their role in this paradox. Remorse, guilt, anger might be felt equally by the company commander and the commanding officer in such a situation. Murphy recalled: I think the CO was disenchanted with me to the extent that I think, honestly—and I hope I’m not maligning the man by saying this—I think he held me responsible for the mine incident in the Long Hais. I really do. He never said so. I can see his face now. The day he flew in in the chopper . . . late that afternoon and . . . just the way he looked at me


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and approached me. He was certainly distressed, as we all were, but not only that, he was angry . . . But that was a very distressing day, not only for me but for the company as a whole and so I guess it was a stressful day for the CO, and perhaps he had some explaining to do which I never heard about. Perhaps he did. I don’t know. And if he did, I don’t know how he would have explained it, because it was one of those things. It should have been accepted for what it was—an incident of war, an act of God if you like, but an incident of war [where] guys were killed and wounded.’21

But the commanding officer was equally upset. O’Neill remarked: ‘It was shocking. I remember at the time I was a light smoker [but] I smoked twenty Camel cigarettes straight away.’22 O’Neill still agonises over his decision to send 1 Platoon into its ambush position. The ambush was to be a key one. He had received information from Major No, District Chief of Duc Thanh, that elements of D445 hidden in caves would try to infiltrate Long Hai village. He had thought that with slow and methodical movement, extreme caution and well-trained troops supported with Field Engineers, it would be possible to insert the platoon without taking too high a risk. Before committing the ambush, O’Neill asked Murphy if A Company could pull it off. Murphy had said they could providing there was no time constraint. O’Neill had assured Murphy that the platoon could take all the time it needed to make the deployment safely. Later he said: ‘But obviously it didn’t work and if I had my time over again I wouldn’t do it. That’s all I can say. It certainly cut me to the quick and I’ll never forget it.’23 Adrian Clunies-Ross, the battalion second in command, remembered O’Neill’s reaction: For days he was quite depressed, which was understandable. But it was an accident of war and he had no reason to blame himself. Up to that time we had got away with very light casualties and he wanted to go through with as few as possible. I suppose all COs do. He obviously did worry about casualties and showed great concern.24

Graham Walker, who was Adjutant at the time, was in the battalion command post when news of the incident came over the radio. ‘I was sitting on the steps going down into the bunker and ‘‘Peggy’’ [O’Neill] was sitting at the end of the table as the reports were coming in. He was just ashen. He was just grey.’




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O’Neill continued to function as commanding officer, calling for reports and issuing orders, but Walker could see that he had been devastated by the news. Walker surmised that O’Neill’s reaction was the result of two factors: I think the major one with ‘Peggy’ was that he genuinely didn’t want to get his blokes killed. I think that was the major one. Another one is that it’s a failure. It’s a failure of command . . . But I think with ‘Peggy’ there was a genuine humanitarian desire, a feeling of responsibility for his troops. I think he had that kind of stuff in him.25

Unjust as it was, Murphy and O’Neill both felt responsible for this incident, which had been beyond their control. Both men would feel that their competence to command was under a cloud. Both would carry an undeserved sense of guilt over the deaths and wounds that resulted. Both, in their own way, were victims of the mines.

POLITICAL FALLOUT Meanwhile, the political repercussions of the mine blasts had begun to emerge. On the afternoon of the incident, Major General Hay, COMAFV, urgently relayed the news to Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Daly, the CGS, and General Sir John Wilton, CCOSC. He wrote: ‘I regret to report that in the Long Hais . . . there were 8 KIA plus one died of wounds in Hosp[ital] and 12 WIA in two incidents in which mines appear to be the main cause.’26 To make matters worse, 6RAR had also had two contacts resulting in twelve Australian wounded, although some were only lightly wounded and would soon return to duty. In Australia, newspapers would report that the Task Force had suffered 33 casualties in a single day. COMAFV stressed that up to the moment of its mine incident 8RAR had been operating with caution and success. The 8RAR operations in the Long Hais had killed 39 enemy and destroyed 201 bunkers. But, he added: Despite importance of eliminating enemy from Long Hais . . . these Aust losses are hard to justify . . . I shall discuss future of Aust operations in the Long Hais . . . other than in foothills . . . later this afternoon with Comd 1ATF. Enemy losses and our operations are having their impact on enemy operations against the local civilian population. Local civilians report up to 100 VC KIA.27


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Later that evening Daly replied: Most distressed and concerned at casualties being suffered by 8RAR in Long Hai area. In view of our experience I am at a loss to understand 1ATF undertaking operations in an area in which they have always been costly and of doubtful value. Please let me have a report urgently including the aims of the operation and the responsibility for its initiation. At the same time please examine its scope in the light of current situation and the role of 1ATF.28

By ‘our experience’, Daly was probably referring to a number of earlier mine incidents in the Long Hai hills which had led to high casualties. For example, one which bore uncanny resemblance to the 8RAR mine incident occurred during Operation Renmark when, on 21 February 1967, 5RAR, while engaged in the destruction of large enemy base camps and caches in the Long Hais, triggered two mines which killed seven and wounded 26.29 HQ AFV replied to the CGS with two lengthy signals. The first merely described the details of the operation. It indicated that 8RAR would continue ambushing operations in the Long Hai hills but, within a few days, would redeploy on an operation in the north east of the province against the headquarters of the enemy’s Ba Long Province. One company would remain at NDP Isa to provide security for the quarry operations there. The signal described how, in keeping with his intention of limiting Australian operations in the Long Hais to the foothills, COMAFV had used his veto to alter planned 8RAR operations. The signal stated that the intention to combat assault B Coy [8RAR] to an LZ [in the centre of the southern mass of the Long Hai hills] after LZ preparation by three air strikes and gun ships has been cancelled. This operation was intended to seal western escape routes on well worn and used tracks leading to the west from caves . . . Bombardment of Long Hai hills will continue. 30

The next day, Hay signalled Daly and Wilton, giving a more thoughtful analysis of Operation Hammersley and assessing its value against the high casualties resulting from the mine incident of 28 February. Hay said that the operation had given 1ATF the opportunity to bring D445 Battalion to battle. Operating from its base in the Long Hai hills, D445 was ‘the prime cause of terror’ in the province, was supported by the people of Long Dien and Dat Do, and its continued presence in the Long Hai hills barred the way to successful pacification operations in the province. He went on:




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1ATF has been constantly searching for and harassing this Bn [D445] whenever the opportunity arose in the Province. . . . [Operation Hammersley] was initiated by 1ATF . . . the detailed execution was directed by 8RAR. Overall it was a 1ATF planned, methodical, cautious followup of the Task Force main antagonist in the Province. Each movement was carefully planned and executed. I was aware of the plan and the substantial fire support available . . . Until the incident on 28 Feb, I had considered the success of the operation justified it continuing and the use of my veto unwarranted. You will be aware of the action I took yesterday to prevent further offensive operations . . . Up to the time of yesterday’s [mine] incident, the operation had produced significant results for a minimum of casualties. The elimination of at least 39 KIA (possibly 100 . . .), the destruction of over 200 bunkers, some enemy caches and the significant impact on the centres of population had been achieved at a cost of Aust 3 KIA with most of the wounded being classified satisfactory or very satisfactory. Yesterday’s incident involving two scattered mines could have occurred anywhere. 31

Hay believed that, overall, the operation had been successful. He wrote: This operation is having a considerable effect on the enemy and his supporters throughout the populated areas of the Province. It is the first time for months that D445 Bn has been really shaken up. Regrettably total enemy casualties may never be known.

Hay expressed his belief that ‘the long term impact of operation Hammersley on pacification in the Province of Phuoc Tuy will be substantial’. In Australia, news of the high number of casualties suffered in the 8RAR mine incident was splashed across newspaper headlines. Unlike the 1967 episode, this time the news of the casualties came at a time of heightened political sensitivity to events in Vietnam: Vietnam moratorium committees had been created in each state and were building media coverage of anti-war activities towards the first moratorium march scheduled for 8 May. There were calls for National Servicemen to resist orders that troubled their consciences. Waterside workers refused to load the Jeparit with stores bound for Vietnam. Additionally, polls showing a swing towards Labor32 raised the political stakes of bad news from Vietnam. The revelations about the massacre of innocent Vietnamese citizens by American troops at My Lai had added to the political sensitivity of the war. The news of the My Lai


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massacre had caused such a moral shock to the Australian that it began to editorialise for the immediate withdrawal of Australian forces from Vietnam.33 Against the strident calls for withdrawal on moral grounds, and other signs of increasing opposition to the war, came the news of the casualties. On 2 March 1970 the Courier Mail thundered: ‘Cong mine kills 9 Diggers. 29 wounded in blast, action.’ The Australian proclaimed: ‘Heavy Australian casualties in Vietnam missions: 9 Diggers die, 29 wounded. Enemy mine blasts claim most lives.’34 The next day, the Australian editorialised about the 8RAR casualties in terms loaded with disillusionment, war weariness and a sense that Australia’s role in Vietnam was merely reactive: The Australian casualty lists from Vietnam on Sunday night had an especially tragic ring all too characteristic of the Vietnam conflict. All nine dead and more than half the wounded were victims of mines on the Long Hai hills, which have been the target of an intensive Australian operation for a fortnight . . . Australian losses in the Long Hai district began more than four years ago. The salient lesson of the latest incident is simply that they are still being incurred and are likely to continue for little demonstrable result, under present policies. The conflict is not dying away through lack of attention . . . Despite the futility of its hamstrung role, the army continues to do its duty while the Government waits for something to turn up.35

Dr Jim Cairns, Labor frontbencher and rising leader of the Australian moratorium movement, also pronounced on the uselessness of Australian forays into the Long Hai hills. On 2 March he called on the government to bring to a halt further 1ATF assaults into the hills. He argued that ‘in each of the expeditions into the Long Hai mountains, Australians have been getting killed without making the mountains secure in any way’.36 After each costly venture into the region, he said, the Viet Cong return to await the next Australian expedition ‘with mines taken up from minefields laid by our own troops’. The mine incident illustrates how Australian battalion operations were sometimes conducted against a background of complex political pressures. 1ATF had become reluctant to conduct operations in the Long Hais because of the risk of high casualties from mines. High casualties raised questions about the balance between achieving sought after operational goals, such as the destruction of major enemy units or the provision of security to the citizens of the province, and the




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political repercussions in Australia. Yet 1ATF often found itself under pressure from more senior US headquarters to conduct operations in the Long Hais. Hay noted to Daly: There has been constant pressure from both CG III Corps and CG II FFV over a long period to put Aust troops into the Long Hais. This has always been resisted by Comd 1ATF. The present 1ATF operations were the direct result of the substantial contact on 15 Feb which provided the opportunity for exploitation.37

Sensitivity to the domestic political implications of high casualties ensured that 1ATF operations were conducted cautiously, were carefully planned and supported and that concern for the safety of the soldiers was a major consideration. But to some extent Australian caution and concern about casualties strengthened the hand of the enemy. The enemy could use the threat of high casualties to deny 1ATF access to particular areas or encourage it to modify its ‘strategy’. For example, high casualties from mines was thought to be one factor that hastened the end of the mid-1969 pacification operations which threatened to bar the VC entry to their important base of political and material support at Dat Do. Like the enemy, Australia’s American allies were also alert for signs of Australian sensitivity to casualties. In March 1970, shortly after the high casualties of Operation Hammersley and following the arrival of the new COMAFV, Major General C. A. E. Fraser, to replace Hay, Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell asked Fraser whether he was under orders to limit Australian casualties. Fraser replied that he was not but, as Horner records, Fraser added that his own view was that in any projected operation casualties could only be justified if there was a sound military purpose offering prospects of substantial benefits from the operation. The type of operation which made no sense to him was to embark upon a short sortie into a defended objective, followed by a rapid return to the original deployment. Such operations had sometimes been undertaken when there were insufficient troops to seize and permanently hold the objective.38

Fraser’s response seems somewhat disingenuous. First, there were few ‘objectives’ in counter-revolutionary warfare that needed to be seized and held permanently. The Nui Dat base, the Horseshoe feature north of Dat Do and the 1ALSG base near Vung Tau were the only parts of the province held ‘permanently’ by the Australians. The type of operations that Fraser claimed made no sense to him—ones in which


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the objective, once seized, was abandoned—were the norm. Nor was this because there were insufficient troops to permanently hold them. Rather it was because in CRW there are no fronts and flanks as in conventional war; and political control of the population, not the seizure of ground of tactical importance, is the true objective. To see the objective in terms of physical features on the ground is to have missed the point of the war. This criticism notwithstanding, Horner notes that ‘the experience of earlier casualties [to 8RAR in the Long Hai hills] affected the attitude of COMAFV’ to later suggestions about subsequent operations there.39 In July 1970 the Deputy Commander MACV, General William B. Rosson, set out future tasks for 1ATF. These included proposals for operations in the Long Hai hills. Fraser concurred with the operations but cautioned: I am obliged to invite attention to the fact that the 1st Australian Task Force has mounted a series of operations against the Long Hais in the past, which have been costly in life and productive of limited military gains . . . The base area should not be subject to direct assault until such time as there are reasonable assurances of long-term denial.40

Fraser must have known that there was never a prospect of long-term denial of the Long Hais. Furthermore, his assertion that operations in the Long Hais ‘had been costly . . . and productive of limited . . . gains’ was at odds with Hay’s statement to Daly and Wilton of only six months earlier. Hay had said that, before the mine incident on 28 February, Operation Hammersley ‘had produced significant results for a minimum of casualties’ and Operation Hammersley was ‘having considerable effect on the enemy and his supporters throughout the populated areas of the Province’. He added that the long-term impact of the operation on pacification in the province was likely to be ‘substantial’. Why the difference between Hay’s and Fraser’s account of operations in the Long Hais? It could be that Fraser was referring to other, earlier operations in the Long Hais which had been costly and produced dubious results. But it seems more likely that Hay’s positive message about Operation Hammersley was for the CGS and domestic Australian consumption, while Fraser’s message to Rosson was for MACV and was aimed at avoiding more ventures into the Long Hais with their prospects of politically unpalatable casualties, especially from mines. But, as 8RAR was soon to discover, the threat from mines extended well beyond the Long Hais.




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THE CHASING GAME As flagged by Hay, two days after the 1 Platoon mine incident the battalion was withdrawn from the Long Hai hills and redeployed to the east of the province near the village of Xuyen Moc. Operation Hamilton had begun. The task of the Battalion was to pursue the remnants of D445 battalion and bring it to battle.41 Many soldiers regarded the prospect of chasing the enemy without enthusiasm. Like O’Neill, they knew that ambushes often gave a better return than following behind a withdrawing enemy who would scatter mines in their wake. As Corporal Joe Danyluk forcefully put it: You don’t have to be an Einstein to know that you never chase the VC. You never chase any enemy because all he is going to do is put out a lot of mines and a lot of stuff to keep you bloody occupied. So what do we do—we go and chase the enemy. So we go and chase them . . . and that’s when Phil Thompson got hit . . . They still don’t fuckin’ learn.42

Three days after Operation Hamilton began on 3 March 1970, the battalion had its next mine incident. Following Operation Hammersley, the Engineers of 1 Field Squadron who had been in support of 8RAR during the operation prepared an After Action Report which examined all the Engineer tasks of the operation. Significantly, it also examined VC mine tactics. It stated: Where there is one mine there will always be more . . . When a mine or booby trap is found we must learn to appreciate likely places where others may be and be careful in those areas. Sometimes a mine or booby trap may be very obvious. This may merely mean that the en[emy] is relying on relaxation which comes after such a find to inflict more casualties by other well hidden and cunningly sited mines or booby traps.43

Lieutenant Phil Thompson’s 5 Platoon, patrolling through dense jungle, came upon a rusty M16 mine with both safety pins intact, lying as if it had been dropped. While the platoon rested, Phil Thompson with his signaller, Snow O’Dal, moved forward to Corporal Brian Mills’s section to make a brief reconnaissance forward towards an abandoned bunker system that Mills had located. Jeff Sculley, the platoon medic, recalled what happened next: The platoon commander decided to go on a recce forward, just to see what was about, with a section of blokes. They’d only gone about three minutes when there was a bang and screaming.


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Being the platoon medic, I grabbed my bag and started to go. Everybody wanted to run forward, but the sergeant said there might be more mines, so we had to prod our way up with a bayonet. We could hear them moaning and screaming out for help. I don’t know how long it took us to prod our way up to them—it seemed to take us hours—but the first thing I saw when we got there was the platoon commander laying on the deck and he’s got the side of his face blown out. He put his thumb up, trying to give me, like, ‘She’s right, mate, just hang in there, don’t worry about me’. Like I say, he’s got this hole in the side of his face, all his cheek was gone, it was just a big hole, you could see right into his mouth cavity. He was a top platoon commander, a Duntroon graduate, a really top bloke. My mate Snow was lying there . . . with the top of his head lifted off. Brizzo [Lance Corporal John Bressington] was alongside him, all brassed up the leg, and young Graham [Harris], he’d only just turned twenty, he was lying on his back. One leg was completely off and the other leg held on by an inch of skin. The company medic had to cut it off with a pocket knife. He just picked up his boot, held the leg out, cut if off and just chucked it to the side. Another fellow [took] his bootlaces off and [tied] them around [Harris’s] stumps in a tourniquet to stop him bleeding to death. He got an MID for it. I went over to Brizzo, who was still alive at this time. He was laying down and he had no wounds from his knackers up, but every square inch of his legs was just hole. He kept on trying to sit up, but I had to keep him down because I didn’t want him to see his legs . . . Then he died.44

Harris himself recalled that ‘one minute I was looking at two scouts . . . and the next I was lying on the ground looking at the sun and the tops of the trees . . . I never felt a thing. I was numb. Both legs were blown off. They were still attached to me but not by much. The boots were still in good nick’. Brian Mills, the forward section commander, though wounded himself, did what he could to tend to those worse off than he. He comforted John Bressington. ‘I said: ‘‘You’ll be right Bresso, you’ll be having a cold beer shortly back down in Sydney.’’ He’s talking back to me. Next thing I know, he’s dead . . . I get plagued with memories.’45 Jeff Sculley, too, is haunted by the memory of the incident: That was the day I think all the blokes who were there could say they became men. I really do believe that. There’s not too many people who




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could point to a day and say that’s when they became a man, but by Christ, I never felt so old and so drained of everything.46

Tom Elliott, the commander of 4 Section, 5 Platoon, remembered that ‘after the initial shock I had to get on with helping get the wounded out and so I didn’t have much time to dwell on the incident . . . I didn’t think much about the wounded, as I remember, but I will never forget the screams of the men just after the mine exploded as long as I live’. Sergeant Ron West, commanding 4 Platoon, was ordered by Major Mike Jeffery to assist with the extraction of casualties. He recorded in his diary: We are confronted with a horrible sight. Soldiers lying around screaming and bleeding. Because of the danger of more mines we have to wait while the engineers clear a track with their mine detector. It is hard having to wait knowing speed in dealing with the wounded is essential. We follow in and start work. There are 7 casualties. Private Harris who stepped on the mine appears to have lost both legs at the knees. Private Bressington smashed from the hips down and internal. He looks bad. Mr Thompson, badly smashed face and arm wound. Private Steve O’Dal has a severe head wound and appears dead to me. Mills and two others, shrapnel wounds. Dustoff is inbound but it will have to be a winch job as there is no clearing. We start ferrying the soldiers out. Medics are busy. This would be a bad time for Charlie to hit us. It takes time and we must remain calm. I see hardened soldiers crying as the wounded pass through the company. Then the engineers tell me that they did not have the mine detector switched on, and we thought our path had been cleared. It is too late now, and I am too busy to get mad . . . Brian Mills, although wounded, was moving around his section assisting them. The dustoff arrived and we used their Stokes litter to carry out Harris, Bressington and O’Dal. The rest were able to walk with assistance. Lieutenant Thompson did not want to leave, thinking of his platoon. He was the last one winched out, and giving us the thumbs up, as they pulled him into the chopper. That’s when my tears came.47

Neither Bressington nor O’Dal survived. Harris and Thompson were evacuated to Australia and recovered from their wounds. Mills and the other more lightly wounded men continued to serve. But there was a legacy of emotional and psychological damage and suffer-


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ing. Harris felt betrayed by his commanders. He was bitterly angry and blamed his platoon commander, Phil Thompson, for the incident. Though the incident had been beyond his control, Thompson himself felt a deep sense of guilt over the deaths and injuries. Years later the two men talked the issue through and emerged great friends. As Laurie Evans remembered it, the incident changed people’s attitudes to the war. Back at Nui Dat we had a scoreboard up, believe it or not. In retrospect—I mean, it was very stupid. But we had a bloody scoreboard with ‘us’ and ‘them’. And of course after our first operation . . . we proudly put up one of them and none of us. And of course it was a different story [now]. When we got back to camp one of the blokes knocked the thing over. Yes, it really shook us up a bit, the fact that we lost a couple of blokes.48

Nine days after the 5 Platoon mine incident it was 6 Platoon’s turn. On 15 March 1970, 6 Platoon were patrolling, still in pursuit of D445, when they came upon an unexploded bomb. The platoon commander, John Brien, ordered Corporal Joe Danyluk and his section to do a reconnaissance. Danyluk briefed his men about their task. Doug Hazell, normally the section’s forward scout, had recently rejoined the section from a break on rear detail at Nui Dat. Hazell had been keen to resume his old role, but Danyluk wanted to use another soldier as forward scout till Hazell had settled back into the routine. Danyluk went forward to where Hazell was already beginning to move out as forward scout. As he reached Hazell, an M16 mine detonated. Danyluk later recalled: He hit the mine just as I put my hand out. But it went off on the ground . . . took his legs off. And then I had shrapnel, both legs, stomach, eye, everything else . . . I was unconscious. I’d thought we had walked into an ambush. No fuckin’ weapon, you know, for thirty seconds . . . [it] would have been a good thirty seconds I’m lying there, no fuckin’ weapon. No one’s talking to me . . . and you’re expecting someone to come out and bloody finish you off. So, I realised it was a mine and I let Johnny Brien know. I rang him on the radio and said we hit a mine. Doug was screaming . . . Dougie was engaged to this bird and . . . I remember him screaming, he was just screaming out for his girlfriend, nothing else. Rocky, the machine-gunner—that’s where I think he got the Cross of Gallantry with Gold Star—he come up, prodded his way up and I got him to see Doug.




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Smoko. The redoubtable Corporal Joe Danyluk (right) with Private Dick Bligh, takes a break before searching a VC bunker system in the Long Hai hills during Operation Hammersley. Danyluk is armed with an M16 rifle and carries a radio set. He holds a bandolier of M79 grenade launcher ammunition. He was later wounded in a mine incident. (AWM negative number WAR/70/0106/VN. Photograph by Sergeant Peter Ward)

I was starting to tourniquet myself, you know. I couldn’t see out of [one] eye. I’m sitting there saying: ‘Well, fuck, I’m still conscious. It can’t be that bad.’ I started tourniqueting my leg because I knew I couldn’t get up. I knew there was something wrong with my legs. I didn’t know that it had hit my guts [as well]. I started tourniqueting and the next minute . . . as I was tying it up I must have moved something, and this arm was just . . . all blood. I said: ‘Oh fuck, I’m in a bit of trouble.’ And Johnny Brien gradually got there and he started working on me.49

As he lay with both legs blown off, Doug Hazell hoped to lose consciousness, but couldn’t. The dustoff helicopter took about 30 minutes to arrive. Joe Danyluk was angry with himself over the incident. He remembers asking himself why he hadn’t seen any sign of the mine. Other platoons patrolling in the vicinity immediately became more cautious. Ron West, commanding 4 Platoon, decided with the agree-


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ment of Mike Jeffery, his company commander, not to continue following a track but to move back to an ambush position previously occupied. He recorded in his diary: ‘I don’t want to endanger my blokes. There could be more [mines] around . . . What a bloody mess. How do we handle this type of war with the mines. Plays hell with one’s nerves.’50 The CO, Keith O’Neill, was aware of the mine threat and in areas of high mine risk insisted on soldiers wearing heavy flak jackets and steel helmets, but it was difficult to wear this protective equipment everywhere. Doing so would probably have caused heat stress casualties. On longer moves in areas of high mine danger, O’Neill made maximum use of APCs. Closed down APCs were proof against M16 mines but were vulnerable to larger anti-tank mines. As much as possible, the APCs would follow in the tracks of tanks.

ANTI-TANK MINES On 20 April 1970, B Company was again involved in a mine incident when the unlucky Brian Mills and his section of 5 Platoon, mounted in an APC, hit an 18 kilogram anti-tank mine. Nine 8RAR soldiers and one Engineer were wounded and the APC driver was trapped in the wreckage.51 It was Mills’s third mine incident. Sergeant Ron West, commanding 4 Platoon, saw the incident and wrote in his diary: [There is] a loud explosion up front. I see an APC in front, blown up on an anti-tank mine. Bodies and debris fly into the air. Looks bad. The APC finishes balanced on its ramp . . . The APCs go into all round defence, in case of attack, [and] we dismount and go to ground. I have a look and there are wounded soldiers being pulled out and treated. Most are burnt. I have to clear an area for dustoffs, check for mines. The wounded are placed in my APC and they are suffering. I hurry as fast as I can . . . I finally clear it, and dustoff lands, two choppers take all out, except the APC driver. The mine went off under him and mangled his legs. It also caught fire. A lot of hot fuel sprayed out. This is what caused most of the burns.52

The driver had lost one foot in the mine blast and had been burnt as well. His other leg was trapped under the burning vehicle.53 Bill Josephson, the 8RAR Regimental Medical Officer, was flown in to amputate the soldier’s leg so that he could be got clear of the vehicle and evacuated. There was the possibility of other mines and, to make




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matters worse, there were occasional bullets, fired at extreme range, flying past the upturned APC. Josephson remembered: [There] was a raging fire coming out of the turret, so I just talked to [the trapped soldier] and eventually I got [his foot] off, but it took at least an hour, or I think it did. I’m not sure, but I think it took a long time, because I was trying to cut and tie off the vessels and stuff, and I was very stressed . . . for him, really, not for myself.54

Despite Josephson’s efforts, the driver did not survive. His burns and the trauma of two amputations killed him. To the remaining 5 Platoon men still at the scene, Josephson looked shocked, his face grey with the strain of his gruesome task.55 Tony Jucha, the commander of 5 Platoon, was amazed by his own apparent calm during the incident. Though one man had died and ten were wounded, he had been so busy organising the platoon’s defence and the evacuation of the wounded that he had been forced to put the horror of the incident out of his mind. By mid-March, after Operation Hamilton, the soldiers of 8RAR had heard the detonation of so many M16 mines that they could recognise the sound. Despite hopes that infantrymen would not succumb to ‘mine neurosis’, most 8RAR soldiers, and particularly those who ventured into the Long Hai hills, possessed an abiding fear of them. Moving in APCs gave protection against M16 anti-personnel mines but, as Brian Mills was to find in his third mine incident, not against anti-tank mines—though, to be sure, infantrymen encountered them less often. A particularly fearful moment for many infantrymen was the moment of debussing from an APC. Allan Handley recalled: We were sitting [in the APC] waiting for these bloody things to go off . . . We just looked at each other. We just couldn’t believe they were sending [us] in . . . And when the back [door of the APC] came down, I felt like I was flying. I didn’t want my feet to touch the ground. And when you’ve got full equipment on, you’re rather heavy. You just try to scan . . . I don’t know what you’re looking for . . . you’re looking for something, you’re waiting for something to blow up in your face.56

Major G. S. Spragg, AFV psychiatrist, found that although soldiers feared the unpredictability of mines and the deaths and wounds they caused, they were more disturbed by the loss of their mates for no military gain and by the impossibility of retaliation against the enemy.57 One regimental medical officer observed that mines turned the soldiers against Vietnamese civilians. But they also tended to turn


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soldiers against what they called ‘higher command’, an ill-defined group of staff officers and commanders outside the battalion whose decisions caused them to risk their lives. Hearing that 6RAR had lost men to an M16 mine only weeks before their tour was due to end, Sergeant Ron West confided to his diary with a note of exasperation: ‘Who would send them into an area known for its mine incidents, on their last days? Higher command of course.’58

CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF MINES While 8RAR soldiers feared mines, with very few exceptions they controlled their fear and went where they were ordered to go. The ultimate achievement of mine warfare is to so intimidate one’s opponent that as a result of ‘mine neurosis’ he chooses to avoid entering mined areas—ceding these areas to the enemy without a shot being fired. While the infantrymen of 8RAR and other battalions were prepared to enter mined areas if ordered, the Australian higher command lost the stomach for it. Fearful of the political consequences of high casualties, it virtually ceded control of the Long Hai hills to the VC. There were no further 1ATF operations there following 8RAR’s mine incident on 28 February. The VC continued to use the hills as a base from which to politically dominate the major villages of Phuoc Tuy Province. Mines were the enemy’s most effective weapons. More 8RAR soldiers were killed or wounded by mines than by aimed small arms fire and aimed fragmentation weapons combined. But of greater importance than the casualties caused was the psychological and political impact of these weapons. No other weapon in the enemy’s inventory was more feared. No other weapon was capable of creating such high casualties without exposing a single VC to combat. No other weapon was able to deny significant areas of the province to Australian patrols. No other weapon was so liberally supplied by the Australians themselves.




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8

Friendly fire Friendly fire

For me, an irony of the war in Vietnam was that I was shot at more often by my fellow soldiers than by the enemy. Mostly these incidents occurred when soldiers accidentally discharged their weapons, but on one occasion I was deliberately shot at by a patrol that had become disoriented, doubled back on itself, saw movement and thought I was the enemy. A short burst of M16 fire crackled over my head. On three occasions I nearly killed my own soldiers. Once, on a moonlit night, I woke to see a person crawling towards a group of sleeping soldiers. I was convinced he was a VC. I sighted my Armalite, flicked off the safety catch and with my heart pounding, prepared to fire. But the crawling man reached his bedding and settled to sleep. He was returning from sentry duty. There was a high risk of friendly fire incidents in Vietnam. On operations, men were invariably tired, heavily armed and expecting attack at short range and without warning. The temptation to respond immediately and violently to suspected enemy presence was very strong. Not surprisingly, the infantryman’s ‘industrial accident’ was most often a weapons-related accident, either an accidental discharge or a patrol clash or a ‘friendly fire’ incident.1 Accidental discharges sometimes occurred when soldiers followed incorrect procedures in loading or unloading their weapons, during cleaning of weapons, when soldiers tripped or when a weapon caught in vegetation. Friendly fire incidents occurred when soldiers deliberately fired their weapons or 174


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used their munitions with the intention of killing the enemy or destroying his equipment or defences, but in doing so caused unforeseen or unintentional death or injury to friendly personnel.2 By November 1969, when 8RAR arrived in Vietnam, HQ 1ATF recognised the dangers of these industrial accidents and insisted that all soldiers likely to be deployed beyond the perimeter wire of the Nui Dat base be required to participate in Exercise Lifesaver. This was a refresher course on rules of engagement and safety on operations in which fire discipline was given heavy emphasis. But like all exercises, the particular terrors and confusion of operations, which contributed to friendly fire incidents, could not be reproduced. In life-threatening combat situations soldiers give all their attention to what they perceive to be the greatest immediate danger to themselves. Yet combat is confusing and disorienting and although the soldier may receive evidence that contradicts his assumption that the target is the enemy, he may ignore this if he believes himself to be in a life-threatening situation and has high expectation that he is about to be attacked.3 These psychological forces acting on the soldier’s mind in combat can be remarkably powerful. In a study of the phenomenon of friendly fire, a US researcher cites an incident during World War II, which exemplifies what the conditions of combat, fear and uncertainty can do to judgement: Expecting tough Japanese resistance, 35 000 US and Canadian troops invaded Kiska, an Aleutian island, in August 1943. The daylight assault was complicated by dense fog, and fighting continued through the night. By the end of the fight a day later, 28 men were dead and 50 were wounded. There were no Japanese on the island.4

The point of Exercise Lifesaver was that these ‘industrial accidents’ including friendly fire incidents could be reduced, or avoided altogether, with more attention to control measures and additional training, particularly in rules of engagement and fire discipline. Unlike clashes with the enemy, which were beyond the complete control of the Australians, accidents and friendly fire incidents could, at least in theory, be analysed, failures of procedure or control identified and new systems adopted to prevent recurrence. A study of accidents in 1ATF between 1 July 1969 and 30 June 1970 detected a pattern in their occurrence. The number of accidents peaked during the first three months of a tour in Vietnam, dropped off, then peaked again, though at a lower level, in months eight and nine.5 The report noted:




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The suggestion here is that whilst soldiers are acclimatizing and adjusting to their new environment during the initial stages they are more accident-prone, and during the 8–9 month period in-theatre . . . they reach an emotional low which makes them more susceptible to accidents.6

The pattern of investigated accidents in 8RAR closely matched this model. Of 8RAR’s 16 major accidents for which an investigation was conducted, 13 occurred in the first four months in Vietnam and the remaining three occurred in months seven and nine.7 One of the primary consequences of accidents and injuries was their drain on manpower. Platoons always went on operations under strength because they were required to leave men behind for various reasons—to defend the Nui Dat base, to attend training courses, to take R&R, or because the men were recovering from illness or wounds. Accidental injuries of all sorts, whether ‘industrial’ (such as weaponsrelated accidents) or ‘non-industrial’ (such as sporting injuries or motor vehicle accidents), added to this drain. Of non-industrial accidents, sport was by far the largest cause of accidental injury to the men of 1ATF. However, sporting injuries tended to require little hospitalisation and therefore little loss of manpower. There was also no political embarrassment attached to them. Besides, sport allowed soldiers to let off steam. If soldiers were denied the opportunity for sport they might turn to other more damaging activities like brawling. In fact, brawls and fights were the next largest group of non-industrial accidents. Over-indulgence in alcohol and fights with Vietnamese ‘cowboys’ at Vung Tau were the source of most brawling injuries. Vehicle accidents were the next largest component of non-industrial accidents but these compared favourably with the rate of vehicle accidents in Australia.8 Surprisingly, driving in Vietnam was safer than in Australia. Though accidents involving weapons and friendly fire incidents also caused a drain on manpower, they had two more important effects. First, they tended to have a powerful negative effect on unit morale. Second, to a degree not found in other accidents, weapons-related accidents were more likely to cause multiple serious injuries or death and for this reason also carried the highest level of political sensitivity. That they happened at all reflected badly on the Army’s performance and professionalism at a time when its role in Vietnam was coming under close public scrutiny. Industrial accidents relating to weapons use were not insignificant, accounting for nearly 21 per cent of total accidents. Small arms caused


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the largest number of accidents, but accidents with artillery, mortars or other crew-served weapons, including air-delivered weapons, also occurred and usually resulted in multiple casualties.9 Not unexpectedly, the infantry had the largest share of weapons-related accidental casualties and, even taking into account their greater numbers, private soldiers carried a disproportionately high risk of injury—approximately double that of sergeants or warrant officers and three times that of officers. This was largely because private soldiers had the greatest exposure to the types of situations that might lead to accidents.10 One of the greatest causes of friendly fire incidents was the use of heavy fire support, particularly artillery and air power. Both required complex coordination with the supported infantry working often in dense jungle, without complete knowledge of the location of the enemy and under circumstances where their own location was sometimes inexactly known. To cope with these difficulties, it became standard procedure that the first ranging shot of supporting artillery fire was to be no closer than 1000 metres from the supported infantry. The artillery fire would then be ‘adjusted’ onto the target. Most artillery fire support was coordinated by an artillery forward observer experienced in the application of this type of fire. Yet accidents continued to happen.In July 1970 an ARU patrol outside the 8RAR perimeter wire at Nui Dat called in an artillery fire mission as a training exercise. There was confusion at the gun position about the fire corrections given by the inexperienced officer with the patrol. The result was that a round impacted on the patrol, killing two and wounding several others.11 Luckily, 8RAR had no serious friendly fire incidents resulting from artillery fire but one soldier, Private Robert Peckman, was wounded in the head by a fragment from a 155 mm artillery round fired by ARVN gunners from Dat Do in support of 8RAR operations. Coordination problems could be even trickier for air support. Pilots in fast-moving jet aircraft and helicopters found it difficult to identify targets properly from the air. Techniques for coordinating air support with ground forces had been developed during World War II and honed during the Korean War. By Vietnam they were highly advanced. Forward air controllers in slow, light aircraft, specially equipped with radios for communicating with the infantry and the pilots of attacking aircraft, and smoke rockets for marking targets, coordinated and controlled the attacking aircraft and directed them onto their targets.12 The infantry helped by marking their position with coloured smoke. But even so, Australian infantrymen could sometimes




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be mistaken for the enemy. Some RAAF aircrew and their commanders had little understanding of how the infantryman fought on the forest floor below them. After an incident in June 1969 when a RAAF Light Fire Team fired into a platoon of A Company 6RAR, the CO of 9 Squadron RAAF, Wing Commander Hibben, offered some suggestions about how infantry could avoid similar clashes in future. The troops on the ground should avoid giving the impression that they were trying to flee or hide, he said. They should, if possible, face the oncoming helicopter, remove and hold their headgear at arms length with the other arm also extended. Where it is necessary that they go to ground for fear of enemy fire a suitable posture to adopt could be to lie completely spreadeagled.13

Helicopter gunship support was usually called by infantry units in contact and, as we saw in Chapter 5, most contacts were at less than 20 metres range. For the infantry to have done as Wing Commander Hibben suggested would have been to invite disaster. Yet, ludicrous as Hibben’s suggestions were, they point to the difficulties of discriminating between friendlies and the enemy, often through a screen of jungle, sometimes through swirling smoke and dust, from a platform moving at high speed.

FRIENDLY FIRE Whatever preparations are made, friendly fire incidents continue to occur. They carry with them political and professional consequences which go beyond the incidents themselves. For this reason, there is sometimes a temptation on the part of commanders and governments to deny or obscure the causes of friendly fire episodes. On 25 February 1970, the front page of the Courier Mail carried news of an 8RAR friendly fire incident under the headline: ‘Diggers hit by own armour— ten wounded’.14 The report went on to explain how Australian APCs had fired an estimated 6000 rounds into a position occupied by Lieutenant Adrian Lombardo’s 11 Platoon, D Company. Ten men had been hit. Three, including Lombardo, who was hit in the shoulder by a .30 calibre machine gun bullet, were evacuated to Australia as a result of their injuries. The remainder had received light shrapnel wounds from bullet fragments and stone chips as machine gun bullets ricocheted through their rocky outpost. They returned to duty after a short stay in hospital.15 Lombardo was fatalistic about the incident,


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saying: ‘You’d think you’d be quite bitter about it but I haven’t felt bitter . . . I guess I took it as just bloody bad luck . . . I was in the wrong bloody spot . . . It was just one of those things.’16 The Courier Mail went on: The acting commander of the Task Force (Colonel Peter Falkland) said yesterday there would not be an investigation of the incident, which he described as one of the ‘fortunes of war’. Colonel Falkland said the shooting incident had not been reported to the Commander of the Australian Forces in Vietnam (Major-General R. A. Hay) . . . Colonel Falkland said the incident was reported by the battalion, ‘but I am not interested in following it up’. He added that there was insufficient evidence to start an enquiry.17

Falkland’s comments and apparent disregard for the victims of the incident, while understandable at one level, were naive. In one sense, however, Falkland was right. Widely dispersed operations, rapid movement of both enemy and friendly forces, difficult navigation, busy communications networks, use of heavy air and artillery support, limited visibility due to jungle cover and an enemy likely to be encountered anywhere, combined to produce operations in which friendly fire incidents were more likely than in previous wars. It is possible too that he was worried that, while a steady but low level of casualties could be tolerated, peaks in the casualty figures were likely to be seized upon by opponents of the war as further reason for the withdrawal of the forces. Peaks of casualties resulting from friendly fire were doubly worrying for the Army because they also raised questions about the Army’s professionalism and competence. Yet it proved to be politically naive of Falkland to dismiss the incident as a ‘fortune of war’ and to refuse an investigation. It was also incorrect to say that there was insufficient evidence to start an enquiry. Indeed, the political realities soon made themselves felt. Andrew Peacock, the Minister for the Army, stated that he was ‘concerned and distressed that Australian soldiers could have suffered casualties as a result of a battle accident’.18 He called for a report on the incident. Army Headquarters in Canberra urgently sought an explanation from HQ AFV so that the Minister could make a more authoritative statement to the media. It signalled COMAFV: ABC and press all featured accidental shooting involving 8RAR in recent action in Long Hais. Minister is under strong pressure to make detailed




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Map 4

Source

11 Platoon, D Company: friendly fire incident, 18 February 1970

XÃ VUNG TÃU, Vietnam 1:50,000, Edition 2-AAS, Sheet 6429 IV, Series L7014 and DÂT DÒ, Vietnam 1:50,000, Edition 1-AMS, Sheet 6429 I, Series L7014.

1

At 1045 hrs C Company locates an enemy bunker system and assaults with tanks and APCs.

2

D Company moves into blocking positions along north-east edge of southern Long Hai hills.

3

B Company is ordered by CO to take up blocking positions east of the enemy bunker system. 5 and 6 Platoons have contacts at 1315 hrs and 1318 hrs respectively. OC B Company orders 4 Platoon to proceed to the blocking positions while he extracts 5 and 6 Platoons and follows.

4

B Company follows this route to its blocking positions.

5

At 1557 hrs 5 and 6 Platoons mounted in APCs fire on 11 Platoon D Company wounding nine.

6

At 1615 hrs 4 Platoon B Company contacts an enemy bunker system. There are seven Australian casualties.

7

In a report prepared by HQ 1 ATF, the 4 Platoon contact is ‘shifted’ to this location and the suggestion made that the enemy was involved in the friendly fire incident involving 11 Platoon.

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statement. In interim statement he says he has arranged for an immediate enquiry into the details of the incident. Please investigate and advise appropriate details by sig[nal] soonest.19

Falkland’s rejection of an investigation was overturned and COMAFV and HQ 1ATF set about preparing a report on the incident. On the day of the incident, 18 February, operations had been fluid and confusing. From mid-morning, C Company was involved in a seven-hour battle with D445 Battalion in a bunker system. While that was going on, Keith O’Neill redeployed B and D companies aboard the APCs of B Squadron, 3 Cavalry Regiment, into cut-off positions around the D445 base (see Map 4). During its redeployment, B Company and its supporting APCs had no less than four separate contacts with the enemy, three of them in the space of ten minutes. The contacts resulted in four 3 Cavalry Regiment and four B Company wounded. Each was separated in both space and time from the friendly fire clash with 11 Platoon, D Company.20 Yet the report which emerged from HQ 1ATF placed the enemy at the scene of the friendly fire incident. It stated: 6 Pl B Coy was moving down the fire trail to their blocking positions with Coy HQ and 5 Pl following when they came under heavy AK47 fire from 150 metres to their west. 6 Pl dismounted from their APCs and engaged the AK47 location. At the same time, other elements were sighted about 150 metres from the location of the AK47 fire. They appeared to be dressed in black and wearing no headdress . . . sweat soaked greens give this appearance. The natural assumption was that they were part of the enemy location and they were engaged by fire. Simultaneously, 4 Pl B Coy made heavy contact with a bunker system and received seven casualties. B Coy HQ was thus faced with two simultaneous contacts and the responsibility of evacuating seven casualties . . . It is impossible to determine how many of the 11 Pl casualties resulted from firendly [sic] fire although it is probable that some did. The circumstances that existed at the time were brought about by [the following:] The fact that the enemy engaged 6 Pl B Coy from an area located close to the 11 Pl block. The overloaded state of the command [radio] net and the B Coy net due to simultaneous contacts involving platoons of B Coy and the requirement to evacuate casualties. The fluid nature of the battle and the large number of heavy contacts that had occurred that day.21




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The report concluded: If casualties were suffered from friendly fire it was a natural accident of war. There are no apparent weaknesses in the system evident at any stage during the time the incident occurred. At the time there was both friendly and enemy fire being directed at 11 Pl D Coy.

Major Mal Peck, the OC of D Company, was adamant that no enemy were involved in the incident. ‘Bullshit! . . . that is bullshit. There was no such thing’, he said. That is something dreamt up by someone trying to skedaddle out of something . . . There was no contact going on in my company other than the first moment I heard we’d been fired on [by B Company]. That was the first time there was any exchange of fire or any fire, or any anything.22

Nor do participants in the incident—from either 11 Platoon or B Company—recall any enemy involvement. 23 The available documentary evidence confirms their view. The sequence of events in the 8RAR After Action Report makes no mention of a contact with the enemy anywhere near 11 Platoon. Crucially, the 4 Platoon contact referred to in the 1ATF report began eighteen minutes after the friendly fire incident. While it may have overlapped with the incident, it was 2.5 kilometres away. Nevertheless, the operational situation which had led to the incident had been confusing, some days had elapsed since the incident, and now HQ 1ATF was faced with the need to produce a report to meet a deadline imposed by the Minister. It should not be surprising that the report contained errors. But it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that many of the errors were deliberate, and were intended to obscure the fact that the enemy had not been involved. The purpose of this deception is unclear but may have been to justify Falkland’s statement that the incident had been an accident of war unworthy of investigation. Peacock’s statement to the press followed the narrative set down by HQ 1ATF: some soldiers may have been wounded by friendly fire but it was impossible to estimate how many because the enemy were also firing on them at the same time.24 This statement considerably softened the political impact of the incident. Placing the enemy at the scene took much of the responsibility for it away from the Australian Army. The ‘facts’ of the incident had been made to fit the politics.


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But, largely due to Falkland’s statements, the government was not able to escape all the political damage. In a debate in the House of Representatives on 12 March, Gordon Bryant, member for Wills, said: . . . when month after month goes by and year after year passes and there are tragic episodes and incidents which lose young Australian lives; when the Army in Vietnam shoots up its own men and the Commander says: ‘No, there will not be any inquiry, it is just one of the fortunes of war’; what have we come to?25

Many in the anti-war movement and perhaps the parents of the men injured in the incident might well have asked the same question.

THE PERILS OF CHANGING SENTRY On operations in Vietnam it was possible that something as simple as changing sentry incorrectly could lead to death or wounding. ‘It was a war of control’, as Major Mal Peck, OC of D Company observed, and the need for control ranged from understanding the changing locations and intentions of a large number of sub-units dispersed throughout a large area of operations to the need to stick to approved methods of performing the most mundane of duties such as changing sentries. Control called for discipline, particularly sustained self-discipline. At 0200 hours on the morning of 1 May 1970 Private Phil Earle, a member of 4 Section, 11 Platoon, finished his sentry duty and prepared to wake his relief, Private Denis Brennan. His platoon was in ambush covering a track only four or five metres away through dense jungle. On the jungle floor the night was pitch black. Following standard practice in such situations, the six men in the section were sleeping in a single ‘pit’ within arms’ reach of one another. This minimised movement, which in thick jungle could create noise, when sentries were relieved. Instead, each man could reach out to shake the man next to him when the time came for reliefs to change. Earle was on the far left of the group. His relief, Brennan, was behind the machine gun on the far right. The drill called for Earle to wake the man next to him, who would wake the next, and so on, until Brennan was woken. On this night, probably with the intention of giving his mates an uninterrupted sleep, Earle decided not to follow the drill and instead to get up from his position and walk the ten or so paces to where he knew Brennan lay. But in the dark he became disoriented and moved in front of the sleeping men. As he passed




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Private Brian Boyle, who was awake, Boyle told him to watch out for the claymore leads. Brennan, sleeping behind the machine gun, must have been woken by this brief remark. Brennan reported: I raised my head and reached for the machine gun as I heard further movement of someone approaching. Then the figure of a man with no hat appeared about nine feet to my left front. He stopped and appeared to be looking at us. From this position we were all exposed to him and I assumed that he was definitely enemy about to fire on us. I swung the machine gun at him and opened fire.26

Firing a burst of twelve rounds, Brennan hit Earle and also Lance Corporal Goody who had woken with a start and had moved into the line of fire. Earle fell, shouting: ‘It’s me, it’s me!’ Ironically, Brennan had been wounded by friendly fire in the 11 Platoon clash with B Company and the APCs of 3 Cavalry Regiment on 18 February. Now he was faced with having fired on his own men. ‘I’ve shot Phil [Earle]’, he said. Within a few seconds the platoon medic, Lance Corporal Martin Timothy, and another soldier with some medical experience, Private George Mulready, were tending to Earle and Goody, who had both received very serious wounds. Brennan, shocked by the awful realisation of what he had done, moved away from the machine gun and sat distraught, hugging his knees to his chest, behind his section commander, Corporal Malcolm Edwards.27 Timothy could find no signs of life in Earle and declared him dead almost immediately. Goody seemed to have a better chance, but he too died. Brennan never fully recovered from the incident. He had done what any other infantryman might have done under similar circumstances, yet an undeserved sense of guilt weighed heavily on him. He was returned to Australia shortly after the incident. Lieutenant Matt Fawkner, OC of 11 Platoon since Lombardo’s evacuation to Australia, also found his career under a cloud. Although he had played no part in creating the incident, as the platoon commander he was responsible for the actions of his men. After an investigation, the Deputy Assistant Director of Legal Services considered whether any criminal responsibility should be apportioned. This was a standard procedure following such incidents. Reviewing the investigation report, he found that Brennan had no case to answer.


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Weighed against what would appear to amount to breaches of the rules of engagement and such other factors that Pte Brennan could have been reasonably expected to be aware of, one has to consider the situation as it arose and the time available to decide a course of action . . . Bearing in mind the urgency of the situation and the natural expectation that it was unlikely to be an Australian soldier because of the OC’s orders, I would doubt whether the law would take too technical a view of Brennan’s on-the-spur decision and action in firing at Pte Earle.28

Having received this legal advice, COMAFV, Major General C. A. E. Fraser, wrote to AHQ saying that ‘the deaths were contributed to largely by the disobedience of one of the deceased, Pte Earle . . . [Brennan’s] reaction to engaging an enemy so close to his ambush position is understandable’.29 After lengthy investigation and legal analysis, COMAFV had come to a conclusion probably arrived at in less formal ways by the men of 11 Platoon: that Brennan had done no more than they might have done themselves.

CLASH WITH CARRIERS Lack of control, this time at a higher level, featured in another friendly fire clash between an 8RAR company and the APCs of 3 Cavalry Regiment. This time, very early in 8RAR’s ninth month of operations, there was a failure by the battalion command post to properly control the movements of sub-units and to coordinate these with the positions of flanking units. It was a failure that was to result in three men being badly wounded and two careers placed under a cloud. On the night of 1/2 July 1970, at about 2000 hours, the commanding officer issued orders to his rifle companies. The next day, C Company was to move to the east, but was not to move further east than the 43 Easting (see Map 5). Major Noel Williams, the battalion’s meticulous operations officer, marked the command post map with the direction of C Company’s planned move. At about 0800 hours on the morning of 2 July, the acting OC of C Company, Major Phil Pritchard, radioed the CO, then airborne in his command helicopter, seeking permission to move to the east to set up an ambush at what he believed was the deserted FSB Peggy. Pritchard, normally OC Admin Company, was standing in for Major David Rankine who was on R&R. Pritchard had been in command of C Company for three days. Unbeknown to Pritchard, waiting at FSB Peggy was an ambush of 1 Troop, B Squadron, 3 Cavalry




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Map 5

Source:

C Company and elements of B Squadron, 3 Cavalry Regiment: friendly fire clash, 2 July 1970

XÃ BÌNH BA, Vietnam 1:50,000, Edition 2-AAS, Sheet 6430 III, Series L 7014.

Regiment. Aloft in his helicopter and unable to consult his maps, the CO agreed to Pritchard’s proposal, thinking that Pritchard would ensure that the battalion command post at FSB Le Loi was informed of his intention and that he would also inform B Squadron of his plans. Back at the battalion command post the duty signallers could hear only the CO’s side of the radio conversation. No one there knew that Pritchard was planning to move his company to FSB Peggy where 1 Troop waited in ambush.


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Warhorse. Major Phil Pritchard returning to C Company lines after leading the company in operations. Pritchard was highly respected throughout the battalion. He had first seen combat as a British Army commando in the D Day landings in 1944. Normally OC Admin Company, Pritchard had briefly replaced Major David Rankine as OC C Company during Rankine’s absence on R&R. (Photo courtesy of David Rankine)

A short while later, Pritchard informed the main 8RAR command post at FSPB Le Loi that he was taking down his radio aerial and moving to his new location, but he did not mention a destination or




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a direction of movement. A little over an hour later, the lead platoon of C Company pushed through bamboo and shoulder-high grass as they neared FSB Peggy. Corporal Barry Coe commanded the lead section. Less than six months earlier, in Operation Hammersley, Coe had braved VC small arms fire to rescue soldiers trapped in a burning B Squadron APC. He had won the Military Medal for his work that day. Now, in stifling mid-morning heat, saturated with sweat, his section pushed forward. By now the CO was returning to FSPB Le Loi aboard his helicopter. He had made a mental note to check the details of Pritchard’s move on his return to the command post. However, an A Company platoon close to a suspected enemy position asked the CO to fly over them to confirm their location. This caused the CO a minor delay. Back at FSB Le Loi, O’Neill found that the commander of a flanking US infantry battalion had arrived to discuss operational matters. This, too, took some time. When the visitor had gone, O’Neill reached for his intercom to speak to the command post about Pritchard’s move. Just then the duty officer informed him that there had been a friendly fire incident.30 Meanwhile, Coe and his scout, Barry Smith, continued towards FSPB Peggy. Coe reported: [Private] Smith and I simultaneously noticed barbed wire in the clearing and what appeared to be a ‘hootchie’ about 50 yards from him and about 60 yards from me. I gave a halt signal and the section went to ground without moving. I moved back through the grass about 50 yards to our [Platoon Commander] and reported the sighting . . . I waited while he radioed the Coy Comd. When he had finished he said to me: ‘We’ll have to go up and have a look. Push your blokes forward a bit’ . . . I moved back to within about 5 feet of my previous position when machine gun fire broke out. I ran forward toward my forward scout, went to ground and crawled, was hit in the foot and then in the thigh. Our Platoon Commander was calling out ‘Stop firing’ and after a while the firing stopped.31

Coe was hit in the left thigh, right groin and foot. Lance Corporal Cliff Bond was hit in the left upper arm but was relatively lightly wounded. Barry Smith, the forward scout, was hit in both arms and the back, left thigh and left side of his chest.32 On learning that there were signs of occupation at FSB Peggy, Pritchard had immediately ordered Lieutenant Brian Best, Coe’s platoon commander, to halt his platoon. As Pritchard was reaching for


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the handset of his battalion command net radio to enquire about the unit occupying the old FSB, heavy machine gun fire began. He immediately reported that he was under fire from ‘friendlies’.33 In the B Squadron ambush, Trooper Gamelin was on watch. Gamelin had been with the unit six weeks and had not previously seen an enemy soldier. Alert and watching the ambush killing ground, he saw two persons who appeared to him to be Vietnamese, wearing dark uniforms, carrying weapons and moving in a way that suggested a hostile military force. He immediately alerted the ambush commander, Captain W. J. Parker who was seated inside the vehicle. Without looking, Parker asked Gamelin if they were Vietnamese and armed. Gamelin answered yes. Parker then gave the order for the ambush to commence firing. For five minutes the .30 calibre machine guns of the armoured vehicles poured fire into the killing ground.34 When the firing started, 7 Platoon went to ground. The lead section machine-gunner returned fire in an attempt to neutralise what he thought was enemy fire. Best shouted to his men to take cover in a creek and to the lead machine-gunner to cease fire. In a lull in the firing, Best’s shouts carried to the Cavalrymen who recognised the Australian voice and ceased fire. Best established voice contact with the friendlies and moved forward where he found that three of his men had been hit.35 The cause of the incident was not a single catastrophic failure but a series of errors, some of which were minor, but which cumulatively caused the incident. The investigating officer, Colonel Max Simkin, Commander 1ALSG, found that some of the contributing factors were the responsibility of individuals while others were system failures.36 Simkin also found that some share of the causes of the incident had to be carried by all the participants. Major Phil Pritchard had assumed that his radio conversation with the CO had been monitored by the battalion command post and, standing in for Major David Rankine, was unfamiliar with the movement reporting procedures adopted within 8RAR. Simkin found that these procedures had not been fully documented in 8RAR’s SOP but had grown up over time. Pritchard, normally OC Admin Company, had little chance of being familiar with the movement reporting procedures that were the daily fare of rifle company commanders. The battalion command post should have recognised this and been extra vigilant, knowing that Pritchard was new to the job. Simkin found that 8RAR’s SOP needed to be revised to more specifically lay down the operational procedures and responsibilities




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relating to the recording of movements of sub-units. The battalion command post had failed to identify the potential problem in time and warn both Pritchard and the Cavalry ambush. The functioning of the command post was ultimately the commanding officer’s responsibility. Simkin concluded: There is no doubt in my mind that the troops involved were doing their best within the limits of their training and experience. Consequently I recommend that no disciplinary action be taken against any individual. That some fell short of the ideal is a reflection on our training and theatre indoctrination procedures rather than on the individuals concerned.37

Coe, Bond and Smith were the immediate victims of the incident. But there were others. Major Phil Pritchard felt himself under intense pressure following the incident, believing that his company and he himself were being held responsible for the incident, which, as Simkin had noted, had many causes. Command, even at the company level, can be very lonely and Pritchard bore the pressure without support. O’Neill too was under pressure. He recalled that the incident was ‘a hell of a blow’.38 He went on: I lose sleep over it. I mean, worse things are happening on the roads, but it just seems when you’ve got a marvellous battalion you don’t expect anything to go wrong. If you’ve got a mediocre battalion, maybe. But, oh, it was a very good battalion and that’s why any error, any problem, does stick out.39

Simkin’s criticism of the way in which procedures for the control of movements had simply grown within the battalion without being properly documented, and the failure of the command post to pay closer attention to controlling the movements of C Company with its new and less experienced company commander, reflected poorly on the battalion but were quickly rectified. Gamelin, the Cavalry trooper who opened fire, no doubt also endures the guilt that goes with accidentally wounding one’s fellow soldiers.

THE POLITICS OF FRIENDLY FIRE Worried about the unnecessary casualties, media attention and the political implications of friendly fire accidents, Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Daly, the Chief of the General Staff, signalled Major


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General Fraser, who had taken over from Hay as COMAFV in March, that stern measures were needed to stem these accidents. I am very concerned at incidence of casualties to own troops from own fire. Latest incident involving B Sqn 3 Cav Regt most disturbing and initial report indicates probable lack of control or co-ordination. This has been case in past and although I do not wish to prejudice your investigation, positive and, if need be, severe measures must be taken to tighten up co-ordination and fire control.40

Fraser shared Daly’s concern. His headquarters monitored the incidence of accidental injury and had noted that the trend, till June 1970, had been downwards. However, in June and July it had jumped. The problem was being analysed to see whether some important factor, previously overlooked, could account for the sudden rise in accidental injury.41 However, Daly was growing impatient. The Minister was facing media pressure about accidental deaths and injuries and a week had elapsed without any report from HQ AFV allocating responsibility for the B Company/3 Cavalry Regiment clash or proposing controls or processes that would prevent similar incidents in future. Adding to the pressure on Daly and the Minister, more 1ATF soldiers had been killed and wounded on 21 July when New Zealand artillery fire landed on an ARU training patrol outside the Nui Dat perimeter. So intense was the media pressure that Daly had begun to feel the Army was under media attack. He reminded Fraser about the political sensitivity of accidental injuries and urged him to hasten his report. I am concerned with the Army’s capacity to operate efficiently and professionally while Secretary is concerned to help Minister handle political attacks and answer press questions both of which are designed to desecrate the Army. It is essential therefore that he be given all available ammunition with which to reply. It is a week since APC accident and I would be grateful for an interim report on your investigation or if this is not possible, the reason why . . . Latest accidental wounding by artillery drop short has not helped matters and I would be glad if you would give this matter your personal attention.42

One of the reasons for delay was that the circumstances surrounding the incident were complex. Following his appointment as investigating officer, Simkin set about a thorough analysis of the incident. Simkin’s investigation stood in contrast to the HQ 1ATF investigation of the 11 Platoon incident on 18 February which Colonel Falkland had initially dismissed as an accident of war. Simkin took




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detailed statements from all those involved, had them reconstruct the events of the incident on the ground and took photographs as supporting evidence. He identified six contributing causes and made seven recommendations designed to avoid a repeat of the incident. Complex though the incident was, Fraser was able to reply to the CGS on 10 July, setting out the facts. One of Simkin’s recommendations was that the Army’s Field Operational Research Section (FORS) should carry out a project on accident prevention. Fraser immediately took up this recommendation. He saw two benefits in conducting such a project. He signalled Major General Graham, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff: I believe the time is ripe, bearing in mind the political climate in relation to accidents, for raising a Scientific Research Request to initiate a long term Operational Research Study into this problem. Quite apart from the benefits that could accrue as a result of a reduction of casualty-causing accidents, such a study would clearly demonstrate our determination to do what we can to reduce the wastage caused by accidents.43

The subsequent FORS study of accidental casualties in Vietnam did much to eliminate the issue as a political concern. It revealed that the ‘so-called ‘‘problem’’ of accidental casualties occurring in-theatre [was] a non-problem’.44 Though many of the ‘industrial accidents’ occurring in Vietnam seemed to reflect poor professionalism on the Army’s part, according to the FORS study the number of accidents was approximately one-third of those occurring among civilian workers in better working conditions in Australia. Though the FORS study made several recommendations to reduce accidental casualties further, the evidence produced by the study revealed that the Army was actually performing extremely well in limiting accidents of this kind. 45 Nevertheless, the study recommended that more could be done to further reduce the loss of manpower through accidents such as friendly fire incidents. Thus, from Falkland’s dismissive ‘fortunes of war’ approach to friendly fire casualties in February 1970, COMAFV and 1ATF had moved by July to intensive study of the causes of accidental casualties. Unnecessary wastage of personnel was a factor in bringing about this change. More intensive study of the causes of accidental injury could lead to better systems, reduced injuries and less wastage of manpower. But the politics of operations was a more potent factor. With growing domestic opposition to the war, the government and the Army became more acutely aware of the negative political implications of friendly


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fire episodes and other accidental deaths. The Army also began to take steps to thoroughly investigate the causes of such incidents so that it could be seen to be doing something about them. Although the Army became very interested in the operational implications of friendly fire it was less interested in the personal impact of these incidents. It provided no counselling or other support for those caught up in the incidents. While welcome, the FORS study had a serious but unavoidable limitation. It examined only those accidents or friendly fire incidents that resulted in formal investigations. As most infantrymen knew, for every such incident there were more in which, by sheer luck, no casualties resulted. There were also a small number of cases in which friendly fire casualties were attributed to enemy action. These cases, too, signalled that perhaps some shortcoming existed in standing operating procedures. But they were never to be investigated or analysed by FORS. Though the FORS study assured COMAFV that ‘industrial accidents’ in 1ATF were less common than in the Australian civilian work force, the scale of the friendly fire problem was much bigger than the study allowed.

THE HIDDEN HALF OF THE PROBLEM 8RAR, like other battalions, had numerous ‘near miss’ friendly fire incidents. For example, one 8RAR platoon had an RF company walk into its night ambush position. With heavily armed Vietnamese and Australian soldiers mixed together it took over an hour to disentangle the two forces. In another incident Lance Corporal Bob Holdsworth, who was setting up claymore mines in an ambush killing ground, was mistaken for a VC by a nervous M79 gunner who fired and hit him in the left hip. Luckily for Holdsworth the M79 HE round had not gone far enough to arm. It left him badly bruised from navel to groin. The nervous soldier was charged.46 Though there were numerous ‘near miss’ or potential friendly fire incidents of this sort, two 8RAR soldiers appear to have been killed by friendly fire when the incidents were officially attributed to enemy action.47 Near midnight on the night of 28/29 January 1970, the twelve men of B Company headquarters were in ambush when they saw what they thought were lights carried by approaching VC. The night was pitch black and the men stood-to and waited as the lights seemed to draw nearer. In this tense and potentially threatening situation Private




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Victor Wagstaff, an interpreter, stood up or moved outside the perimeter. He was hit and killed by a short burst of friendly fire. Accounts of Wagstaff’s death vary. Some say that as an interpreter, he had gone outside the perimeter in an attempt to listen for Vietnamese voices and thus determine whether the company headquarters faced imminent attack. Others say that he had gone outside the perimeter to use the latrine. Still others say that he simply stood up and was mistaken for an enemy. The contact report for the incident states that as the enemy were coming closer, ‘one soldier stood up to move to a new position and was killed by a single burst of fire from about 20 ft [six metres]’.48 The report omits to mention that the fire was from another Australian. The morale-depleting effects of friendly fire incidents could be intense. Bob Lubke had served with Wagstaff in Malaysia before coming to Vietnam. The two were mates. Wagstaff’s death and the way it happened deeply affected him. Others felt the same. Laurie Evans, a signaller in B Company headquarters, was also at the time deeply affected by Wagstaff’s death, but now the focus of his concern is the man who fired the fatal shots. Well, [Wagstaff’s] committed all the sins hasn’t he. He’s left the bloody perimeter . . . Anyway, unfortunately for him, as he’s coming back, he’s got caught in the bamboo, and at point blank he got shot by a fellow with an SLR. He thought he was Vietnamese and he’s opened up on him and he’s killed him . . . We’d just killed one of our own blokes. I often feel for that poor bugger [who fired the SLR] because it certainly wasn’t his fault. I mean, we would have all done it. I often think of him. I often think I should endeavour to try and contact him . . . I don’t know what he’s going through. I mean, you just don’t forget that—would you?49

In a strikingly similar incident a few months later, another 8RAR soldier was killed in a friendly fire exchange. At five minutes past midnight on the night of 30 April/1 May 9 Platoon, C Company, were ambushing a river crossing when about 20 enemy using torches and lanterns approached. The platoon opened fire. During the fire fight John McQuat, a relatively inexperienced reinforcement who had joined the platoon in mid-February, stood up into the line of fire of other members of his platoon. He was hit by five rounds in the lower abdomen and died.50 Like the Wagstaff incident, it was a sad blow to a proud company. Although the company had suffered many wounded during its tour, McQuat was the only C Company man to be killed,


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testimony to the discipline, leadership and skills of the company—and to not a little luck. Many of the conditions that contributed to friendly fire incidents were present in both events. In each case, the soldiers believed a lifethreatening contact was imminent, producing a state of hyper-vigilance and a readiness to respond immediately and violently to what they thought were approaching enemy. Both incidents occurred under conditions of poor visibility, on dark, disorienting nights. Visual clues that might otherwise have suggested that the targets were in fact friendly were probably obscured. The actions of both victims were unexpected by those around them and contributed to their deaths. No-one seemed to benefit from investigations into friendly fire incidents. Improvements in operating procedures might be made at the battalion level but, from the vantage point of company level or below, investigations seemed to produce little change. Following friendly fire incidents such as these, the response at the company or platoon level tended to focus on relationships—the experience of grief and guilt and the mending of morale and cohesion—rather than procedures. In an investigation, the victim would probably be found to have contributed to his own death. His parents would learn the awful truth that their son had died in an avoidable accident. Probably, as in the case of the killing of Goody and Earle, the culpability of those who fired the fatal shots would be raised and disciplinary action considered. The platoon or ambush commander might be criticised for a poorly sited ambush; the company commander for lack of control. Rather than expose individuals to such pressures, companies sometimes closed ranks and licked their wounds away from the unfriendly gaze of the Army bureaucracy.

CONCLUSION Most infantrymen who served in rifle platoons in Vietnam can recall, as I can, moments when they nearly killed one of their mates. Some didn’t have the luxury of time to evaluate the evidence of their senses; in the circumstances in which they found themselves, their instincts were to fire. Those who were there know how easily they could have done the same. For those who had accidentally killed or wounded their mates there was no after-action or trauma counselling either at the time or after discharge from the Army, and this has led to continuing psychological problems for some soldiers. In Vietnam the




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stresses on the individual didn’t just involve the emotional and moral impact of seeing their mates suffer and die through friendly fire or other causes; it extended to coping with the moral dilemmas they encountered on the battlefield.


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9

The enemy within The enemy within

As HMAS Sydney, carrying the main body of 8RAR, steamed towards South Vietnam in November 1969, news of the My Lai massacre began to emerge in Australian newspapers.1 The massacre had occurred nearly two years earlier. US troops under the command of Lieutenant William Calley had shot several hundred unarmed men, women and children in My Lai hamlet, part of Son My village. Many factors had contributed to the massacre. US troops, like many Australians, found it frustrating that people who were apparently innocent Vietnamese peasants by day might be ambushing them or laying mines by night. To some extent military training, which had emphasised the resourcefulness and tenacity of the Viet Cong, had left the impression with many soldiers that booby traps, panji pits or other threats to life might be found anywhere and everywhere. Vietnamese of any age or sex could be involved in setting these traps and could therefore be the enemy. Training and the nature of guerilla warfare generalised the threat. Soldiers in all wars tend to ‘dehumanise’ the enemy, partly to help them cope with the killing process. In Vietnam, US troops dehumanised not only the Viet Cong but all Vietnamese by referring to them as ‘gooks’ or ‘slopes’. It is likely that racism also played a part in the My Lai massacre by further dehumanising the Vietnamese. In World War II, operations against the Japanese in the Pacific had been conducted with a ferocity and brutality not seen in the European theatre. Studies conducted by the US Army showed that, of troops 197




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fighting the Japanese, 40 per cent said ‘they would really like to kill a Japanese soldier’ but in the European theatre only 10 per cent said ‘they would really like to kill a German soldier’.2 While the My Lai massacre began to reveal some of the psychological pressures on troops of the United States and its allies and the terrible results those pressures could produce, it also had a major political impact. Continued conduct of the war depended upon support, or at least acquiescence, from the voters at home. The massacre threatened this. The anti-war movement in both the United States and Australia moved towards the peak of its power in the moratoriums of 1970. In the closing days of 1969 news of the My Lai massacre helped to convince many who had thus far remained uncommitted to the anti-war movement that the war was immoral and should be opposed. Beginning on 21 November each day’s news seemed to bring more grisly detail about the massacre and its political impact in the United States until, on 4 December, the Australian editorialised that it was time for Australia to get out of Vietnam: There is no longer any political justification for the Vietnam war. Morality is now paramount and morality, which means the conscience of each of us, demands that the war stop . . . The horror of the massacre of My Lai has jolted our conscience back to reality . . . The choice we must make to save Vietnam is total withdrawal—as fast as all troops can be brought home. Morality demands it.3

In the United States, as in Australia, citizens were not prepared to tolerate such immoral acts. There were bounds within which the violence of war could be sanctioned by the nation, but the killing of innocents at My Lai was unquestionably beyond those bounds. The actions of a few misguided US soldiers cast a pall over all allied troops operating in Vietnam. Within months the Viet Cong delegation to the Paris peace talks had accused Australian and New Zealand ‘mercenaries’ of ‘massacring the population exactly like the other United States satellite troops’,4 an accusation for which no evidence was offered, but which to many opponents of Australia’s involvement in the war seemed to contain an element of truth amid the news of the My Lai massacre. As opposition to the war grew in Australia, protestors would increasingly throw the jibe ‘Baby killers!’ at returning Australian soldiers. But under closer examination, for those who wanted to understand what motivated soldiers in such events some positive signs were hidden among the blackness of the My Lai massacre. While some soldiers had participated freely in the savage attack on the Vietnamese civilians,


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some had refused to take part while others had intervened to save Vietnamese.5 There was evidence then that while some soldiers, stirred by the psychological pressures of combat, might participate in a massacre if given the opportunity, others who had endured the same pressures possessed sufficient moral direction to resist involvement even when ordered by superior officers and under intense peer pressure. The killing of innocents and other unsanctioned behaviours have a long history on the battlefield. Australian forces have not been exempt. In the Boer War some Australian soldiers shot their prisoners. Lieutenants Morant and Handcock were tried, found guilty and executed for that crime.6 Australian soldiers on the Western Front in World War I established a reputation for ferocity in attack at least partly earned through the killing of surrendering German prisoners. Likewise, in the Pacific in World War II, Australian soldiers killed Japanese prisoners. Under some circumstances the killing of innocents was permitted by the laws of armed conflict at the time. For example, RAAF aircrew participated in the saturation bombing of European cities in World War II, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians.7 War frequently places soldiers in a position where they must make moral decisions. Vietnam was no different. There, many of the pressures on the infantrymen of 8RAR were similar to those endured by the US troops, led by Calley, who had murdered innocent civilians at My Lai. It was difficult to tell friend from foe, combat was often fleeting and inconclusive, mines sometimes inflicted heavy casualties and denied immediate retaliation, building an intense desire for revenge. There was a tendency for soldiers to dehumanise the enemy—and to some extent the Vietnamese people— and thus to erode instinctive resistance to killing. But Australian lapses in moral behaviour seem rare. Perhaps that was because most Australian soldiers better understood their purpose in Vietnam. Most 8RAR soldiers reported that the Australian Army’s role in Vietnam was to provide security to the citizens of Phuoc Tuy Province; to most, killing was a means to an end, not an end in itself.8 Understanding the moral purpose of operations in Vietnam was an important barrier against inappropriate behaviour. In the absence of a well-understood moral framework for his actions the soldier is left to follow his own moral course and this can sometimes lead to disaster. But dehumanisation of the enemy was common. Some 8RAR platoons and companies had ‘them’ and ‘us’ scoreboards, underlining the emphasis placed on body count. At least one of these boards was topped, for a time, with a human skull. In place of the dehumanising




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Death’s scoreboard. Some platoons started their tour with scoreboards but these soon lost favour when casualties mounted and combat ceased to be a game. This photograph was taken early in the tour. The 5 Platoon scoreboard was ripped down following a mine incident which killed two and wounded several others. The skull was quickly removed and buried. Though Australian commanders attempted to avoid a ‘body count mentality’ the influence of body count was pervasive. (Photo courtesy of Nick Williamson)

‘gook’ or ‘slope’ favoured by US troops, Australians, who had freely embraced other words from the Americans’ Vietnam lexicon, preferred the uniquely Australian ‘nog’.9 The dehumanising of the Vietnamese, both enemy and allied, was exemplified in a joke which circulated through the Australian base at Nui Dat: Question: What is the solution to the Vietnam problem? Answer: Put all the good Vietnamese on a ship and send it out to sea while we bomb the crap out of every living thing in Vietnam. Then sink the ship.

Interestingly, Viet Cong atrocities also had a dehumanising effect. The Viet Cong sometimes mounted attacks on minor government officials and these included public executions, at times involving beheadings, disembowelings and other brutalities. These attacked the effectiveness of government agencies, terrorising the population and demonstrating the power of the Viet Cong. Some 8RAR soldiers heard about these events through intelligence briefings. Rod Lamb thought the VC were ‘animals’ for these killings. Tony Jucha, a platoon commander, felt that justice had been done when his platoon killed a VC woman who was believed to have murdered Vietnamese children in the village of Binh Ba in order to encourage the people there to pay their taxes to the VC. Joe Danyluk, a section commander, heard


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about VC atrocities and remarked: ‘That’s why it didn’t worry me to see them dead.’ These attitudes notwithstanding, there is no evidence that 8RAR soldiers committed any atrocities against unarmed civilians.10 Such incidents also seem to have been rare among the Australians generally, although accusations have been levelled from time to time. In May 1985, in an ABC documentary on the Vietnam War, a Vietnamese official claimed that in the battle of Binh Ba Australians had attacked civilians including women and children.11 Similarly, in 1976 Dr Jim Cairns returned from a visit to Vietnam claiming that Australian troops—in what turned out to be an 8RAR ambush—had massacred 27 civilians outside the village of Hoa Long in July 1970 (this claim is examined in more detail later). Both claims attracted controversy but the evidence shows that they were false. In his book Vietnam: The Australian Dilemma Terry Burstall refers to artillery fire being directed against Vietnamese civilians attempting to return to the gardens of the destroyed villages of Long Tan and Long Phuoc, declared a restricted area and out of bounds to civilians after the villagers had been resettled elsewhere.12

TO KILL OR CAPTURE There is evidence, however, that some Australian soldiers, including those from 8RAR, may have killed VC when in fact it was possible to capture them.13 These and other such events were very rare and few soldiers witnessed those that did occur.14 Asked in a questionnaire whether they had witnessed anything that could be considered an atrocity, the overwhelming majority of respondents said ‘no’ or ‘not applicable’. As if to underscore just how offensive the idea of the commission of atrocities was to most members of the battalion, some responded with an emphatic ‘No!’ while others were indignant that the question should even be asked.15 However, a small number believed that they had witnessed or participated in events which they thought could be described as atrocities. One soldier recalled an incident in which he shot a wounded enemy who had shown no sign of threatening him. This act had been driven by his desire for revenge. Earlier, on 6 March 1970, his platoon had lost two killed and several wounded including the platoon commander, Phil Thompson, on an M16 mine (see Chapter 7). He remembered:




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I was severely affected by the loss . . . of John Bressington and Snow O’Dal even though I wasn’t really close to them. It gave me more resolve to ‘get square’ [and] as a result I became callous . . . Snow died in my arms on the chopper pad we had cut from the [jungle] while he was [being] strapped in the litter. It still haunts me.

Now under the command of a new platoon commander, Tony Jucha, the soldier was psychologically primed for his next encounter with the VC. He did not have long to wait. Twelve days after the mine incident two VC walked into his section while it was ambushing an unoccupied bunker system. His machine-gunner opened fire, hitting both. One of the enemy dropped immediately, the other escaped, wounded, into the bushes when the machine-gunner’s sweat rag caught in the belt of ammunition and jammed the gun. The soldier quickly organised a sweep. When I came across the wounded nog I felt an intense hatred and feeling of getting even for the loss of mates killed and wounded in [the] previous mine incident. I opened up with my Armalite by deliberately aiming at his head as he looked at me, trying to crawl away. I forgot I was on auto [and] a whole mag[azine] was fired causing the top part of his head to peel off, resulting in his brains spilling out before me. I then had, and still have, mixed feelings about whether I murdered that man or not.

Others in Jucha’s platoon were also searching for revenge. On 8 April, in a contact, Jucha suspected that another of his soldiers had killed a wounded VC. He recalled: Shots were exchanged and the soldier ran out with the now dead enemy, dragging him by the leg, and he sort of dropped him in front of me like a dog would drop a bone in front of its master. He had a great grin on his face and I figured that he had satisfied his revenge.16

Revenge for the loss of mates was a powerful inducement to the callous disregard of moral behaviour. A number of 8RAR soldiers reported a strong desire to ‘get square’ after the killing of fellow Australian infantrymen. Joe Danyluk’s response to the loss of mates was typical. He lost three friends in contacts with the enemy. ‘I was angry’, he said, ‘I was hoping we could run across some VC.’ Kevin Sullivan of D Company recalled that the body of Eric Gould, who died in an attack on an enemy bunker system, was carried past him on the way to an LZ for evacuation. ‘That did make you want to seek revenge’, he said. Ken Irons was also upset at the sight of Gould’s


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body. ‘It made me feel hate for all Viet Cong. [After that] it didn’t worry me at all when I seen them shot up.’ Casualties taken in mine incidents provoked a particularly strong response. There was no enemy to immediately retaliate against and the lust for revenge brewed in the mind until the next opportunity arrived. Mines produced massive wounds and often resulted in multiple casualties. The torment and screaming of the wounded and the massive mutilation of the dead could leave deep and lasting scars on the memory. But once a soldier acts on his desire for revenge he may be left from that moment on with the difficult problem of reconciling that action with the human instinct to avoid killing. Having been put in this situation by powers beyond his control, the soldier now has to face the moral consequences of his actions for the rest of his life. In any war the transition from enemy to prisoner is fraught with the risk of death. But in Vietnam, enemy wounded who fell into the hands of Australian infantrymen recently mauled in a mine incident could be lucky to survive. However, though the passion for revenge may be understandable, killing wounded enemy remains illegal. There is no evidence that 8RAR soldiers participated in the killing of already secured prisoners. A more frequent occurrence was the killing of enemy wounded in the process of securing the battlefield after contact. After combat, infantrymen are usually hypersensitive to fear, particularly if the fight has been close and mates have been wounded or killed. The sweep of the killing ground will be done with extreme caution. As they move forward, the men in the sweep will be ready to respond aggressively to any movement or sound that suggests the enemy is still alive. Screaming, moaning or sobbing coming from the killing ground is likely to be answered with a burst of fire or a hand grenade because it may be a ruse to draw men into the open. An aggressive response will be more likely if it is dark or the jungle is thick and the men conducting the sweep cannot clearly see that an enemy is wounded beyond capacity to resist. Few infantrymen who have performed this risky task would begrudge their fellows the right to ensure their safety by firing first and considering the moral issues later. But despite these fears and motivations, wounded enemy were frequently captured rather than killed. One such case occurred on the night of 13/14 January 1970. Graeme Watts was a member of a fourteen-man patrol from 10 Platoon, D Company, that ambushed twelve VC as they crossed a bare paddi field on their way to Hoa Long. At the break of dawn a sweep




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of the killing ground was made. Watts was the first man to be ordered forward on the sweep. I was afraid I might have been killed when I had to go out first on the sweep . . . I knew from the noises during the night that they were not all dead, but I obeyed the order. During the sweep through [the killing ground] I spotted a wounded VC first. I nearly shot him but I saw his eyes and just knew he was not going to shoot at me. He didn’t have his rifle in his hands but just next to him. I then spotted a second wounded VC. I knew he was not going to shoot also. The two wounded VC were covered by other platoon members as I continued with the sweep, coming across the dead VC. Some of the bodies were badly mutilated by direct hits with RPGs [sic; Watts is probably referring to M79 hits here17]. Of the dead, two were women. This was when the realisation of war hit home to me, but I contained my emotions from my fellow platoon members. I returned to where the wounded VC were. I lit up a cigarette and offered it to the VC that I nearly shot. He accepted it. I then lit up another cigarette for the other wounded VC. He also accepted it. They were later choppered out. After the body count and photographs had been taken, the dead VC were thrown in a large grave that I helped dig and covered over. No marker, no words said. They had not existed. I felt saddened. It was their country.

Other sweeps were less successful. One such case involved a night sweep through an ambush killing ground. The platoon had been ambushing in a rice paddi near a village when three enemy were seen approaching by the light of a flash of lightning. Eventually the enemy came into the ambush and it was sprung with claymore mines and small arms fire. When the firing stopped a sweep was ordered to move forward, clear the killing ground and secure any bodies or wounded. One of the participants remembered: My job then as a rifleman was to go forward on the right flank as the machine-gunner moved forward. There appeared to be two VC dead and one female still alive. She yelled: ‘Don’t shoot, luptalooy!’ No sooner were the words spoken than she was cut down by machine gun fire. A couple of us retrieved the bodies and she lay there the rest of the night beside me—most offputting. In my own mind I think her life could have been spared, as I do not recall her carrying a weapon.


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In retrospect it is easy to wish for a different outcome, but at the time most soldiers followed the maxim that when in doubt the best policy was to fire. The killing of enemy under these circumstances may be sanctioned by other members of the section or platoon, who will often reassure the firer that he did the right thing. They survived the encounter with the enemy. Yet there may be others who did not fire, like this anonymous contributor, and for whom the event remains a moral paradox or worse. Where the situation was less potentially threatening—perhaps in broad daylight with an obviously seriously wounded enemy—unnecessary killing could anger some soldiers. One soldier, a forward scout, was disgusted at the uselessness of a killing he witnessed. His platoon was in ambush when two enemy came into the killing ground. The claymore mines and small arms were fired. One of the enemy got away but the other was wounded and ran. The scout and several others swept the killing ground to find the wounded man. ‘He was on his side, bleeding pretty bad, and [another soldier] came up to us and said: “Don’t shoot him”. We had no intention of doing it, but that bastard put five shots in him.’ The scout was filled with anger and years later is still haunted by the memory of the victim’s face just before he was shot. As the scout’s case demonstrates, such needless killing was often not sanctioned by the other members of a platoon. Nor would it be sanctioned by the battalion higher command had it known of it. But if the killings of some wounded VC were motivated by revenge, fear or just the desire to kill, others were motivated by a desire to end a wounded man’s suffering. Several 8RAR soldiers reported the mercy killing of wounded VC and saw it as a pact between soldiers. They expected their enemies to do the same for them if the situation were reversed. John Reed of B Company witnessed the killing of two badly wounded VC who had no hope of survival. He reflected the thoughts of most infantrymen when he wrote: ‘I don’t consider [it] an atrocity as I would wish the same end in their condition. But [the] press and civilians cannot understand that soldiers have a mutual respect for each other and [that] this was a service, not callousness.’ This mutual respect was also reflected in the fact that Viet Cong who managed to survive the transition from enemy to prisoner were generally treated well. Once secured and separated from their weapons, most Australian soldiers recognised the humanity of their former enemies and felt sympathy for them. It was time to share a cigarette, water or a cup of tea, to give medical attention if necessary and to




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arrange helicopter casualty evacuation if required, all the while keeping the prisoner under close guard. Tom Elliott of B Company remembers that the only wounded prisoner of war his platoon captured ‘was treated exactly as we would have liked to have been treated’; but he adds, ‘except we took all his possessions, i.e. cigarettes, lighters, money, wallet—he didn’t have much’.18 Paul Simson of D Company was surprised by the efforts made and the risks taken to get a Medevac helicopter into a difficult LZ to evacuate a wounded prisoner. He admired the American pilot’s efforts. It was right on last light and visibility was poor. It might have been tempting to leave the evacuation till morning, but Simson believed the prisoner would have died if he had not been evacuated immediately. All the same, many Australians had a grudging respect for the tenacity of their enemy and even badly wounded prisoners would be kept under close guard. Jeffrey Sculley, the platoon medic in 5 Platoon, B Company, recalls: ‘I was patching up a wound[ed] nog while one other member of the platoon held a rifle at his head in case he tried to make a move, and every now and then he would flick the safety catch on and off, which needless to say kept the nog wondering.’ But Carey Johnson observed that ‘once Australians came into close contact with the enemy prisoners they felt sympathy as opposed to loathing etc. for them. The firearm makes it easy to be detached when you can shoot at them from a distance but it’s a different matter when they are close’.

REST IN PEACE Once the scene of the fighting was secure, and prisoners under control, soldiers set about disposal of bodies. Dead and wounded Australians were evacuated from the scene, usually by helicopter. But it was Australian policy—vigorously enforced within 8RAR—to bury dead Viet Cong and record the burial site. While the commanding officer insisted that the enemy, including enemy dead, be treated with respect, some US units operating within Phuoc Tuy Province as well as South Vietnamese units saw the bodies of the enemy as an opportunity for some ‘psychological warfare’ of dubious value. Sometimes bodies were displayed in village marketplaces where the South Vietnamese authorities seemed to think that their presence would present a salutary lesson to citizens who might be thinking of supporting the Viet Cong.19 But the practice might equally have enraged some citizens and driven them into the Viet Cong’s ranks. US units sometimes left ‘calling cards’ such


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as unit identification patches on the unburied bodies of enemy dead as a ‘warning’ to other enemy. Sometimes inexplicable evidence of the mutilation of enemy dead would be found. Allan Handley recalled one such grisly encounter: ‘We were walking through the [jungle] when we came across 3 heads on 3 sticks. The bodies were about 300 metres away. Who did it was a mystery to us.’ Although policy on the burial of bodies was enforced within 8RAR, there were some lapses. Some bodies were mutilated in the process or were buried in a way that would have appalled the commanding officer—and did appal some witnesses. The soldier’s response to his own dead can be deeply emotional but his response to enemy dead may be detached indifference. The enemy who only moments before may have aroused great fear, after death may signify the triumph of the living. For some soldiers, the bodies of dead enemy seem to lose their humanity and become mere objects. Soldiers were encouraged in this dehumanisation of the dead by apocryphal tales that circulated around the battalion and throughout 1ATF. These tales, or rumours, were often attributed to ‘others’ and for some reason, perhaps to do with ongoing competitiveness between the two countries, very often to the New Zealanders. One rumour was that New Zealanders had buried a VC beside a track with the forearm sticking out of the ground holding a still smouldering cigarette between its fingers. This rumour was probably particularly appealing to combat infantryman because it portrayed death as a joke and it dramatically symbolised the transience of life. Many who heard it probably imagined themselves confronting the scene and thought about its meaning to them. A less confronting version of this rumour was that the hand pointed north and bore a sign saying ‘This way to Hanoi’, wishfully encouraging other VC to make the journey rather than stay and fight. Another rumour was that a New Zealand infantryman had been seen wearing a necklace of ears cut from enemy bodies. One tale related solely to engineers: the ‘engineer burial’. This was not a burial at all but the use of explosive charges—the stock in trade of engineers—to disintegrate enemy bodies, thus saving the effort of digging graves. There is no evidence to suggest that any of these rumours were true. Yet each signifies the soldiers’ concern and fascination with death. Some soldiers may have been hardened by hearing and retelling these stories. But, most bodies were buried with the degree of respect that time and the tactical situation permitted. However, several 8RAR soldiers reported the mutilation of enemy bodies. A small number of soldiers perhaps two or three, gathered gold




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rings and gold-filled teeth. Bob Lubcke remembered a soldier who robbed the graves he came across. He ‘used to look for enemy graves with a pointed stick. When he found one he used to dig up the grave and if the body had any gold teeth he would extract them with a pair of pliers. I thought it was pretty degrading’. Joe McGillion mentioned a soldier in his company who used his rifle butt to knock the gold-filled teeth out of enemy bodies. He had about six matchboxes full, according to McGillion. Many soldiers were disgusted with this sort of activity. To them it was simply unacceptable. Rod Scutter recalled coming across a soldier in the act of cutting a finger off the body of a dead VC to get a gold ring. Scutter threatened to shoot the man if he persisted. Scutter possessed strong and clearly defined moral principles. He believed that it was acceptable to remove items from the enemy’s packs and that items found in their pockets could be examined for intelligence purposes, but he could not tolerate any mutilation of a body such as cutting off fingers or pulling teeth. Neither could he tolerate the removal of highly personal items like gold rings even if they could be slipped off the finger. But Rod Scutter at least had the authority of his lance corporal’s stripe to enable him to intervene. Allan Handley, a rifleman in A Company, felt less able. One of the soldiers in his platoon used an entrenching tool to get at gold-filled teeth in a body. He had a shovel. He’d put the shovel in their jaw, and prize them open . . . I just couldn’t believe it . . . But that’s what he used to do. You’ve got no say in what a man does over there . . . We’ve got rules but there didn’t seem to be any rules over there. You basically did what you liked. And that was just one incident that I wasn’t very impressed with.20

While a few soldiers risked the disgust of their mates to gain personally from the mutilation of the dead, others mutilated the dead seemingly without motivation. Merv Ryan was shocked by the intrusion of another member of his platoon into an already gruesome task he had to perform. His platoon had had a contact and three enemy had been killed. It was nearly dark and the scout, gunner and I were told to each bury his own kill. The bodies were checked. Mine was very young, about 15 or 16 years, unarmed. The three had only one rusted pistol of [World War II] vintage between them. My SLR round had hit him in the arse and exited from the front, mutilating his genitals and exposing his lower abdomen. His raw meat gave off a rich sweet smell. While I dug a


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shallow grave . . . one of our platoon members shot up the skull of my kill with his Armalite on full automatic at point blank range. He was laughing and making derogatory remarks about Cong. The skull was cracked open like an egg-shell and brain material was exposed and spilling out. I [also] saw this platoon member mutilating bodies after other contacts during the tour.21

Trevor Pond recalled a similar incident. His platoon had killed a Viet Cong soldier by small arms fire and, after checking that the enemy was dead, Pond rolled the body on to its back so that he could check the pockets for documents. After he had done this another solder said that he was going to make sure that the Viet Cong was dead. This soldier then fired twenty rounds from his M16 into the body’s head. Pond still has nightmares about the incident. Seemingly more common than these unmotivated mutilations were the rushed burials some soldiers performed. Although 8RAR policy was that all enemy dead would be buried at the scene of the contact, the tactical situation, the time available, the hardness of ground and inadequacy of tools were factors that sometimes prevented the task from being completed properly. Buried in shallow graves with a thin covering of earth, rigor mortis may have caused arms or legs to break through the soil—giving rise to the myths mentioned earlier. But some soldiers seemed to deliberately ignore battalion standing operating procedures. Dieter Juckel, an aggressive and highly effective platoon sergeant, said that ‘3 Platoon, A Company, had 19 kills—not one got a burial. They were just thrown in the nearest hole’. At least once, others had to go to the scene of a 3 Platoon contact to finish their burials for them. John Hawkes, the company quartermaster sergeant of A Company remembers Lance Corporal ‘Rick’ Forno and himself being called out to ‘rebury’ a body resulting from a 3 Platoon ambush the night before. It was thought that local children had dug the body up, but in light of Juckel’s admission it probably wasn’t sufficiently buried in the first place. Hawkes recalled: When we got there the kids aged between about four years and 15 years were running around the body laughing and yelling. The soldier’s brains had been sucked out of the top of his head, perhaps by the blast of the claymore mines . . . it sort of looked like he had been scalped. The platoon had buried him in the dark. They hadn’t dug the hole big enough because the trucks were on their way to pick them up. The tendon at the back of the legs had been forced back in order to squash the body




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into a small hole. Lance Corporal Forno and I dug the hole bigger, reburied the body and shovelled his brains into the hole.

Yet Ron West, platoon sergeant in 4 Platoon, B Company, and later CQMS of D Company, remarked that ‘all the enemy killed by my platoon were buried underground. Owing to the [tactical] situation at the time some were not buried very deep. Tactics [often] dictated we move away quickly’. Particularly when the battalion was operating in ambushes around the villages towards the second half of the tour, most burials were performed at night and often without illumination, so the results were often barely acceptable. Rather than dig the hole to suit the body, often the body was mangled to fit the hole. Merv Ryan recalled the burial of his kill described earlier. As well as the unnecessary shooting in the head, the brutality of the burial left a lasting impact on him. Because of approaching nightfall—and we hadn’t yet eaten—we had to bury the bodies quickly. I dug a shallow grave, only about 30 cm deep. One of the section members helped me at this point to save time. He remarked it wasn’t necessary to bury bodies deep because Cong usually returned and dug them up for reburial anyway. He helped me drag the body. I took the head end. Brain material spilled from the skull and fell onto my GP boot. The grave I’d dug was too short, so we jumped on the body’s knees and bent the legs up to make it fit. The body was barely buried under a thin layer of dirt . . . I had a nightmarish night with little or no sleep. I remember being half-awake and half-asleep in an exhausted delirium, seeing haunting hallucinations of Cong creeping at us through the bush. I cried to myself during that night.

Allan Handley recalled another gruesome ‘burial’ and the pressures that could be put on soldiers to participate in mutilation. I think it was around Xuyen Moc area . . . and we killed one and had to bury him real quick. We were in a civvy access area and they had drilled all these holes to plant new trees so [a senior soldier] said, ‘Just put him down the hole’, but he just wouldn’t fit . . . So next we jumped on him to sort of push him down the hole but one leg was shot through. That was OK, but the other one was sticking up. Rigor mortis had set in overnight and it was sticking up like the proverbial and was sticking out of the ground . . . And [the senior soldier] said: ‘Well, just cut it off. Just cut it off. We haven’t got time to mess about with it.’ And he told me to do it. I said: ‘No, I’m not doing it. I’m just not doing it. That’s it, end of story.’ He ordered me to do it. I said: ‘No! I’m not


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doing it.’ Anyway, the scene was getting dirty because I was just refusing point blank to do it, and one of the other guys said: ‘I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’ll do it!’ So we belted into the other leg to break it and then folded it down and pushed it in. But apparently, again, two or three weeks later the leg came up while some children were . . . walking past or something [and the news got back to] the battalion. From then on you had to bury your bodies a metre or something under the ground.22

Rod Cleggett noted that sometimes soldiers seemed to enjoy jumping on or kicking the dead to get them to fit into their graves, but added: ‘Most of the time, I believe, they were treated with appropriate respect.’ While a few burials may have been conducted with macabre brutality, most were conducted as the commanding officer and the battalion SOPs would have required. Indeed, some were conducted with touching concern for the dead. Noel Herbert’s platoon had shot a girl, aged about fourteen, when she and others walked into their ambush. Herbert was moved by the loss of this young life: ‘When we put her in her grave, for some unknown reason I covered her face with my hanky. I didn’t want to get dirt in her face. It didn’t seem right.’ In another case, following the killing of five or six enemy in an ambush, the 8RAR soldiers chose to bury the enemy looking towards the setting sun.23 In still other cases, makeshift crosses were erected over the graves. Proper respect for the dead could extend to other situations as well. Sometimes enemy dead were photographed so that they could be identified for intelligence purposes. Barry Canton came across an Intelligence Corps soldier using his boot to scrape mud off the faces of enemy bodies. Canton told him to wash the faces. But occasionally 8RAR soldiers photographed the bodies of dead VC for their own interests. Trevor Sperling, who saw this happening, thought it distasteful. In a bizarre humiliation of the dead, a few soldiers even arranged the bodies of dead VC in grotesque parodies of sexual acts before photographing them. Chris Treadaway, who saw such photographs, thought that it was probably ‘funny at the time but maybe not now’. Stan Hessey, the battalion padre, regretted that simple committal services were not conducted at field burials. They might have encouraged respect for the dead, reminded those present of the humanity of the victims and helped the soldiers who had been responsible for the killing to psychologically close off the unpleasant event.24 In fact, in




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1967 when he was Commander 1ATF, Brigadier Graham had considered setting up a burial plot for Viet Cong KIA.25 However, his proposal had not been directed at the psychology of killing but at improving the image of the Australians in the minds of the local people.

INVENTED CRIMES There were a few events that, long afterwards, attracted media attention because they were thought by some to involve the unlawful killing of innocent Vietnamese. One such event was the battle of Binh Ba.26 Another, directly affecting 8RAR, was the successful ambush of 50 to 60 enemy by 8 Platoon, C Company, led by Sergeant Chad Sherrin, on the night of 11/12 August 1970. On 1 August 1976, six years after the event, Dr Jim Cairns, former Deputy Prime Minister in the Whitlam government and a staunch opponent of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, was returning from a visit to Vietnam (where he had been making a documentary film) when he announced that an atrocity had been committed by Australian troops outside Hoa Long village one evening in July 1970. Cairns had been told by an elderly resident of Hoa Long that 27 unarmed civilians including a ten-year-old child had been shot by the Australians at dusk as the people were working in the rice fields or returning to the village. A few days later a bulldozer had arrived to bury the bodies.27 Cairns said: ‘I don’t condemn them [the soldiers] and I don’t want to make anyone guilty. It was the Australian Government that was guilty—Menzies, and the present Prime Minister [Malcolm Fraser], who put them there.’28 It was soon clear that the allegation referred to Sherrin’s ambush. There had been no heavy contacts with the enemy in July 1970 and Sherrin’s ambush met the other characteristics of the allegation: it was outside Hoa Long; the date was approximately right; there were 19 killed and six prisoners of war, not 27 killed; the dead were buried in a hole dug by a bulldozer. But the other elements of the allegation bore no resemblance to Sherrin’s ambush. The enemy were armed— eight small arms of various types and a hand grenade were captured at the ambush site—and they had returned fire (Sherrin was wounded in the contact). They were carrying packs filled with supplies and were coming out of Hoa Long, not going in. The ambush happened at a little after three in the morning—well outside the curfew—not at dusk, as was claimed. The killings had not been the result of a coldhearted


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Aftermath. 8 Platoon soldiers commanded by Sergeant Chad Sherrin search bodies in preparation for burial following their successful ambush of approximately 50 enemy outside Hoa Long on the night of 11/12 August 1970. The enemy had been on a resupply mission into the village—note the quantity of food and other supplies. One soldier holds a large sack while other items, possibly medical supplies or tinned goods, are parcelled in plastic sheets in the foreground. Note also that one soldier is taking a photograph and another has a camera around his neck. Sometimes cameras were used for recording the dead for intelligence purposes, but soldiers also sought to record their part in momentous events. (Photo courtesy of Tony Flaherty)

attack on peasants straggling back into Hoa Long a few minutes after curfew, as Cairns seemed to imply. The burial took place later that same morning, not ‘a few days later’. 29 There is no question that this was a legitimate ambush of a VC resupply party with its armed protection element as it left Hoa Long after gathering food and other supplies to take back to the unit base area in the jungle. While Sherrin chose not to make a statement to the media about the incident, both Major General W. G. Henderson, who at the time of Sherrin’s ambush had been Commander 1ATF, and Keith O’Neill rebuffed Cairns’s claims. After a brief flurry of interest it soon became obvious that Cairns and his Vietnamese informant were mistaken.




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High praise. Major General C.A.E. Fraser, COMAFV, talks to the members of 8 platoon following their highly successful ambush in which they killed nineteen members of a VC resupply party leaving Hoa Long on the night of 11/12 August 1970. Six prisoners were also taken. It was important psychologically that senior Australian commanders endorsed the soldiers’ role in killing, however in this case the ‘talk’ seems overly formal, with the men standing stiffly to attention. Sergeant Chad Sherrin who commanded the ambush is on the left of the front rank. (AWM negative number WAR/70/0674/VN. Photograph by Sergeant Peter Ward)

There had been no ‘massacre’. But for the men of 8RAR, and particularly those who had had some personal involvement in the incident, Cairns’s claims and the absence of any official denial of them tended to suggest that the Australian community did not sanction their actions. Cairns may have believed what he had been told by the Vietnamese peasants during his visit to Phuoc Tuy Province, but he seemed unaware of the psychological burden he was imposing on Sherrin and his twenty-five soldiers who simply did their duty that night outside Hoa Long.

CONCLUSION The Vietnam War placed young Australian soldiers in positions of impossible moral ambiguity and expected them to cope alone. Still,


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the number and extent of moral or ethical failures was probably no larger than in earlier wars. What was different in Vietnam was the context in which they occurred. Compared with other wars in which Australians had fought, in Vietnam there was a lack of wholehearted public support for the war effort, greater media exposure of operations and a lack of post-conflict support from the government and the Army for the soldiers who had participated. Other factors may have been important as well. There were racial overtones in the war which may have reduced inhibitions against immoral behaviour in some soldiers and there was a lack of trauma counselling. Finally, in Vietnam the specific setting of combat was isolating and alienating. Combat occurred primarily at the platoon level and it was in platoons that the moral standards for behaviour were set. Platoons were usually responsible for the whole process of killing and of cleaning up the killing ground afterwards. The personalities of the platoon commander, platoon sergeant and section commanders provided leadership in combat but were also instrumental in setting the moral tone of the platoon. Other sources of moral mediation such as the company commander, battalion commander or the battalion padre were usually many kilometres from the scene of the combat. Furthermore, platoons and sections were the foundations of unit cohesion and, as we will see, cohesion tended to reinforce both positive and negative behaviours.




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10

Forces of cohesion and disintegration Forces of cohesion and disintegration

In a passage which has become a shibboleth to many infantry officers, Jo Gullett, World War II infantryman and later author, politician and ambassador, described an infantry battalion of the Second AIF in these terms: An effective battalion in being, ready to fight, implies a state of mind— I am not sure it is not a state of grace. It implies a giving and a taking, a sharing of almost everything—possessions, comfort, affection, trust, confidence, interest. It implies a certain restriction, and at the same time a certain enriching and widening of the human spirit. It implies doing a hundred things together—marching to the band, marching all night long, being hungry, thirsty, exhausted, filthy; being near but never quite mutinous. It involves not the weakening but the deferment of other bonds and interests; the acceptance that life and home are now with the battalion. In the end it is possible to say ‘the battalion thinks’ or ‘the battalion feels’; and this is not an exaggeration.1

The tightly cohesive ‘family’ of the battalion suggested in this description is often claimed to be one of the main factors that sustains and motivates the soldier in combat. Soldiers of the Vietnam War could recognise in this statement some, perhaps many, of the features of their battalions but would question whether the battalion, rather than the company, platoon or section, was the most appropriate focus of their affection and sense of belonging. It is also arguable whether 216


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217 Forces of cohesion and disintegration

Gullett’s description was not an overly romanticised one even for the soldiers of World War II. Gullett himself goes on to say: ‘[A] rifle company usually fights at a strength of about a hundred all ranks . . . A company is probably the largest formation in which everyone knows everyone else. It is a family.’2 This suggests the existence of a hierarchy of loyalties in which loyalty to the family of the company is more important to most soldiers than their loyalty to the more amorphous battalion. Others have suggested that the basis of unit cohesion lies at a lower level still. For example, Richard Holmes has said: ‘Although the full flowering of group cohesion is to be seen in the regiment, whose corporate identity is often reinforced by distinctive uniforms and insignia, its roots lie deeply in the smallest of military groups.’3 In the smallest of military groups the foundation of cohesion is mateship: the bonds of loyalty, support and friendship which develop between soldiers. In her study of Australian soldiers in Vietnam, Jane Ross argued that the nature of mateship had changed over time and that it had lost the aura of sanctity in which it was held by the soldiers of the First AIF.4 Ross claimed that this was due to a number of factors including the relatively high standard of living of soldiers in Vietnam, the discontinuous nature of combat,5 the relatively low casualty rate and the better medical evacuation and treatment system provided in the Vietnam War. But there are several problems raised by Ross’s analysis. First, her study of the First AIF and Second AIF seems based entirely on secondary sources.6 It may be that she is comparing the reality of mateship in Vietnam to the myth of mateship in the first and second world wars. Second, as she acknowledges, in her field research in Vietnam some fighting arms—especially infantry and artillery—were underrepresented.7 Yet it could be argued that mateship reaches its apotheosis in infantry battalions. Third, the apparent sanctity of mateship in the First AIF may be as much an artefact of the fashions of language, then and now, as a measure of reality. Whatever the case, it is not my intention here to compare mateship in Vietnam with its earlier variants, but simply to examine the forces of mateship and unit cohesion in 8RAR. I will also examine the forces of disintegration.

BASIS OF COHESION AND MATESHIP The basis of cohesion and mateship in Australian infantry battalions in Vietnam, unlike their US counterparts, lay in their preparation and




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training. The basic training of Australian infantrymen was uniform; with few exceptions they were trained at a recruit training battalion, then at the Infantry Centre, then at the Land Warfare Centre, Canungra, before joining their battalion. They were all cross-trained in each other’s jobs. They had a common ‘language’ of drills, signals, terminology and jargon. Units were brought to full strength and began training for their year in Vietnam over nine or ten months before deployment. Training progressed through individual, section, platoon, company and finally battalion levels ensuring, as far as possible, that each soldier knew his role within the larger organisation. Officers and NCOs stayed with their unit throughout the lead-up training and until the unit’s return to Australia. This provided particular stability of command and personality.8

PATTERNS OF MATESHIP The lengthy period of training leading up to deployment to Vietnam provided an opportunity for the formation of close bonds between the men of the battalion, where the patterns of mateship—the basis of small group cohesion—varied according to rank and position. Asked in a questionnaire to list their four closest mates, private soldiers who served in rifle companies and who stayed with the battalion through the long months of training prior to deployment tended to nominate four other members of their own section, sometimes including their section commander. In their case the pattern of mateship was tightly confined to their own section or, if it extended beyond their section, then to other sections in the same platoon. Typical was Allan Handley, who joined 8RAR at the beginning of 1969 and served in A Company as a rifleman and machine-gunner till the battalion returned from Vietnam. He nominated three other members of his own section (8 section) and one member of 7 Section as his closest mates. ‘You wouldn’t survive without your mates’, he said. ‘They meant everything to me. They kept me high when I was very low, they encouraged me when I needed it. Them just being there helped me get through. I owe my life to some of them.’ Likewise, Noel Herbert, a volunteer National Serviceman who joined the battalion in April 1969, nominated three fellow members of Support Section, D Company, and one member of 10 Platoon, D Company, as his best mates. Mateship ‘bound small units into bigger ones’, he observed. ‘You knew you could rely on your mates. A mate


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Mates. Privates Bob Dicker and Steve Hart, both of 7 Platoon C Company, outside their tent at Nui Dat. As in earlier wars, mateship was a foundation of unit and sub-unit cohesion. However, other patterns of mateship existed within this structure and these were largely determined by rank and whether soldiers had joined the battalion before deployment to Vietnam or as reinforcements. (Photo courtesy of David Rankine)

was someone to talk to, joke with, laugh at, give you a helping hand when you needed it, back you in a fight, drink with and give you moral support. Mateship welded the unit together.’ Robert Long nominated three members of his own platoon as his closest mates. ‘You get a very close friendship with certain members of the platoon that is, I think, unique to the infantry, due to the conditions in which you live . . . Without this mateship I am sure you would not survive in the infantry in Vietnam.’ Bob D’Arcy felt that mateship had been an essential ingredient in 8RAR’s existence. He wrote: Without mateship there wouldn’t have been an 8RAR; we would have all gone home. None of the officers commanded enough respect to bind the unit together. We did what we did because we believed in our mates. We were in it together and did a good job because we supported each other.




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The theme of the small group representing a ‘family’ recurs frequently in the comments of these soldiers. ‘Your platoon or section is like a family’, wrote Graham Harris of B Company, adding: ‘There is nothing that you would not do for your mates.’ Rod Cleggett, a National Serviceman and rifleman and later machine gun number two of D Company, commented: Mateship was important because it involved trusting and being trusted on all occasions by your mates. It seemed to weld us all together—like a family—so it must have added to the effective cohesiveness of the entire unit. I don’t have any civilian mates today who are as close to me as the ones from the section and platoon in Vietnam.

Peter Cousins, a pioneer in Support Company, remembered that ‘there was a ‘‘family’’ feeling. We had a few brotherly fights occasionally but if any of us got into trouble of any description the rest would do almost anything to help’. Tito DiGiovanni wrote: ‘To me the company was like a big family where you knew everybody. But the platoon was the most important . . . to me.’ Speaking of the ongoing bonds of mateship that he formed while in 8RAR, DiGiovanni said: ‘I now have many brothers.’ Besides a sense of belonging to a particular section or platoon, some National Servicemen identified strongly with their particular National Service intake. This suggests that bonds of mateship formed in initial training are particularly important in establishing and building cohesion later when the soldier joins his unit. Paul Gallagher, a National Serviceman in B Company, recalled: 8RAR had a hard core of us 15th intake Nashos who were bloody good soldiers. We joined the battalion straight after recruit training and formed a cohesive unit during our Corps training at Greenbank and so, when we joined the companies, we were highly trained and rearing to go. Within B Company the mateship was very close and, without being a big-noter, myself and [two other soldiers] contributed to that in a big way by fooling around a lot with the others whenever we were back in the Dat or down at Vungers. We were all 15th intake . . . It was an absolute necessity that mateship be developed so that a good fighting unit could operate effectively. 8RAR was a happy battalion.

Some 8RAR ‘originals’ who held positions in Support Company or Admin Company reported a wider network of mates. The military trades of Support Company soldiers often required them to deliver services to the men of the rifle companies and also prevented them


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from forming strong bonds of mateship with small groups. In some cases they felt a responsibility to relate to a wider group. Chris Treadaway, a corporal cook in C Company, believed that rather than forming strong bonds of mateship with a small group, he had an obligation to the entire company. Mateship and camaraderie was to me the single most [important] function of me as a corporal cook. During the early years of 8RAR . . . I prided myself on knowing every soldier that ate in the kitchen by his name. In Vietnam the cooks always appeared to be good guys. We were there in the happy environment [of the Nui Dat camp]. Myself in particular looked to keep their (infanteers) minds off what they had just been through.

Kym Growden, another cook, agreed. ‘Being a cook, I never formed any close relationships with anyone’, he remembered, ‘but I was friends with all of them as being a cook they all knew you and you knew them.’ For NCOs, the pattern tended to be different. While some NCOs, like Corporal Brian Partridge, the commander of 9 Section, 12 Platoon, D Company, nominated four members of his section as his closest mates, other NCOs tended to nominate fellow NCOs as their mates. This was not surprising since many had soldiered together over many years. Mal Black, a sergeant mortar fire controller with A Company nominated as his closest mates four other NCOs from Mortar Platoon. Among Bob D’Arcy’s closest mates were two fellow section commanders in A Company. Officers, if they acknowledged that they had mates at all, tended to find them among fellow officers of the same rank and often from the same officer training institutions—Scheyville, Portsea or RMC— where the bonds of mateship had first been established. However, perhaps reflecting the loneliness of command, many officers denied that they had any mates at all. Asked to list mates, Major Phil Pritchard responded ‘not applicable’, adding ‘company commander’ as if that explained the absence of supporting relationships. Major David Rankine, OC of C Company, responded succinctly ‘none’9 and Major Graham Walker, OC of A Company, gave no response. This effect was less strong among more junior officers but it was there nevertheless. ‘I didn’t have any mates in the platoon or company’, wrote Peter Lauder, OC of 9 Platoon, C Company, but he did nominate three officers elsewhere in the battalion. Among other platoon commanders




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most nominated fellow platoon commanders, who they would rarely see on operations. This suggests that mateship performed a different function for officers than for soldiers and NCOs. While for soldiers and NCOs mateship seems to have provided the close bonds that welded the small group into a team for combat, sustaining their morale and ensuring that they conformed to group norms of behaviour, for junior officers mateship seems, at best, to have provided a theoretical bond within the larger group—the battalion. Among more senior officers it is doubtful whether mateship could be said to have existed at all. Officers tended to lack the immediate emotional and practical support of mates. Mateship was a phenomenon that essentially existed for soldiers but not for officers. To some extent this also tended to be true of reinforcements: those soldiers who joined 8RAR when the battalion was in Vietnam as replacements for men who had become casualties or had returned to Australia. Although some reinforcements reported the development of very strong bonds of mateship within their 8RAR section, others retained their strongest relationships with men they had served with before reaching 8RAR—particularly, for Nashos, the mates they had been through recruit training with. Peter Ball, a Nasho who reinforced 6 Platoon, B Company, in March 1970, quickly established a network of mates all of whom were in his own platoon. But Gordon Hewett, a regular, joined 1 Platoon, A Company, as a reinforcement in February 1970 and drew his closest mates from three different platoons in two companies. Nevertheless, he placed great store in establishing a network of mates. He wrote: Mateship is important to keep the section or platoon going as a whole. You rarely saw or had much to do with the others, and of course, you stuck together like shit to a blanket. You fought together, you drank together and more often than not you fornicated together (with women of course). But those times were rare.

Ray Walker, a reinforcement to 12 Platoon, D Company, commented: ‘I found little mateship apparent in D Company . . . Perhaps this was because I was a “reo”. But I could not detect the Australian traditional wartime mateship I had read about from Australia’s previous involvements in overseas theatres of war.’ John Rozentals was a reinforcement to 8RAR but had only four months remaining on his National Service obligation so, knowing that he would soon be returning to Australia, he decided to form no close bonds.


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Many reinforcements reported that they were forced to endure a ‘probationary’ period before they felt they were accepted and could establish bonds of mateship with the other men in their new sections. Shortly after joining his new section as a reinforcement, Peter Ball went on a TAOR patrol. He had not sterilised his water properly and got diarrhoea. On the walk back to Nui Dat he nearly collapsed. His platoon commander halted the platoon to give Ball a chance to rest. Ball remembered: After this I had horrible thoughts about what the other blokes thought of me and if I was possibly going to become a hindrance to them. I had this feeling that I was being put on probation and this feeling went on for nearly two months until we went on R&C and then, all of a sudden, I felt as if I had made the grade with the blokes.10

Some soldiers were reluctant to form close bonds of mateship lest their mates be killed or wounded. Ron O’Connor who worked as a clerk in battalion headquarters, said: ‘I didn’t want to form a strong personal bond in case something happened to them.’ Andrew Roberts, who served in 9 Platoon, C Company, as a rifleman, scout and machine gun number two, thought that it was important that every soldier in the section be able to contribute to the team but added, ‘It has been said ‘‘Don’t have mates, they could be killed’’ ’, and he followed his own advice. For those who did form strong bonds of mateship, there was often a deep sense of guilt when, through being wounded or completing their National Service obligation, or for other reasons, they could no longer be there to support their mates. Allan Holland, a Nasho who had joined 8RAR from 5RAR to become forward scout and, later, acting section commander in 12 Platoon, returned to Australia in October 1970. ‘In the last few weeks I began to dread the thought of leaving Vietnam and my mates’, he recalled. ‘It had become my life.’ Allan Handley had similar feelings. ‘I left after seven months’, he said, ‘but as [the time] was drawing near I had mixed feelings. One was ‘‘[I’ll be] glad to get home’’. But I felt guilty about not seeing it through to the end plus leaving my mates. I still feel guilty today. I felt I should have finished the tour with my mates. But I have to live with it now.’ Even those who were badly wounded and had no real choice about the time and circumstances of their leaving could feel a sense of guilt. ‘I was casevaced out after six months’, wrote Graham Harris, a rifleman in 5 Platoon, B Company, who was badly wounded by an M16 mine. M




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‘But you feel as if you are letting your mates down by not being there. It’s as if your gun could make a difference.’

INDUCTING REINFORCEMENTS Part of the problem for reinforcements was that they usually arrived in 8RAR to replace soldiers who had been killed, wounded or returned to Australia. Inevitably they joined a section at a time when its remaining members were grieving over the loss of one (or more) of their mates. Despite attempts to properly induct them into their sub-unit, many reinforcements reported that they felt isolated and excluded for some time after joining a new sub-unit. Peter Berger joined 1 Platoon, A Company, from ARU after the platoon lost eight killed and many more wounded in the double mine incident in the Long Hai hills in February 1970. There were very few of the original platoon members left when Berger and other reinforcements arrived. But Berger shared a tent with two men who were survivors of the incident. He recalled that ‘their attitude was one of—not hostility—but they were very cool, very reluctant to include ‘‘reos’’ into their group. You were there, you were tolerated, but you were never made to feel welcome, which resulted in us forming our own little clique among ourselves.’11 Berger felt that the coldness stemmed not from the NCOs, who were keen to rebuild their sections and the platoon, but from the soldiers. He said: ‘Those ‘‘originals’’ who were still there were a fairly close knit group and I think they regarded themselves as something a little bit special in that they copped it and survived it. So . . . latecomers really had no part of what [they’d] been through.’12 Corporal John Norris joined 1 Platoon, A Company, from 12 Platoon, D Company, following the mine incident. Even though he was already a well-established member of the battalion and was joining 1 Platoon as a section commander, he still felt that some of the ‘originals’ excluded him. [The soldiers] made you feel isolated . . . because they had just been through a disaster where they had walked into that minefield, and they thought they were special. And anyone who came in was an outsider. They didn’t want to know anybody who didn’t understand what they’d been through. To them, we could never fit in with them. It was very hard. It really made it hard. With some of them it would settle down and you could get along with them. [With] others . . . just forget about it. It was very, very


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difficult. They had their own little group and they would not mix with any of the ‘reos’ who came in to build up the platoon. It caused a lot of problems. And a lot of the guys themselves ended up in trouble— charges and God knows what.13

Norris attempted to break down the resistance by constantly talking to the soldiers and by leading through example. But this seemed to be having no effect on one of his senior soldiers, so Norris took him to the field hospital at 1ALSG, ostensibly to visit recovering A Company men but with the aim of ‘getting on the booze together’. Their collaboration in committing this minor offence helped to break down the soldier’s reserve. But Norris felt that the battalion hadn’t helped the senior soldiers cope with the situation. He felt that, rather than corporals like himself being moved into the platoon from elsewhere, the battalion should have demonstrated its faith in the lance corporals already there and promoted them to command the sections.14 In at least one case the isolation of new reinforcements took a worrying turn. After his section had taken two casualties, Corporal Brian Mills received two new reinforcements. They had been in the section about 48 hours when one of the reinforcements threatened another soldier with a loaded SLR, complaining that no-one would talk to him. Mills recalled: So I walked down and I spoke to him and talked him out of it. Grabbed his weapon . . . I just pushed it away from him, and I said: ‘Best we go and have a talk in the tent.’ I sat down [on a bench] in the tent . . . He slammed an M16 bayonet in between us and we spoke and I was trying to calm him down. Next thing I know he pulled it out and he was about to have a go at me. I just grabbed his wrist. I was quite prepared for it. It was just a personality thing. He thought that nobody was talking to him. But the main reason they weren’t [was that] they were just checking him out. He ended up a terrific Digger . . . I ended up putting him as forward scout and he ended up a real good Digger.15

It seems likely that the soldier’s actions had been precipitated by his sense of rejection by other members of his section.

THE SECTION OR THE BATTALION? Although Australia’s military canon gives the battalion predominance as the focus of its members’ loyalty, this did not seem to be the case




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in practice in 8RAR nor, I suspect, in other Australian battalions of the Vietnam War. The soldier’s identification with his battalion seems to be a legacy of World War I and may reflect the larger scale operations of that era. It may also be a part of Australia’s military myths. In any case, most of the soldiers of 8RAR found that their section, platoon or company, usually in that order, was more important to them than the battalion.16 While proud to have served in 8RAR, their view tended towards that of Bob D’Arcy, who said: My section was more important [than the battalion], along with my close friends from other sections. 8RAR consisted of the officer class, who were in many cases little more than tyrants, the senior NCOs who held the platoons and sections together, and the troopies who did the work.

This focus on the section or platoon was largely a result of the soldiers’ very limited exposure to other elements of the battalion. Many had little contact even with other platoons in their own company. This was partly the result of the type of widely dispersed, platoon-based operations that 8RAR was involved in. Keith Carl, a rifleman and machine-gunner in C Company, joined 8RAR as a reinforcement when the battalion arrived in Vietnam. He reflected on how the nature of operations and the tactical deployment, even at the section level, concealed from him any concept of the existence of a larger organisation: I think the section or platoon level is more important to me [than the battalion] because that is how we operated over there. It was months before I knew everybody in my own platoon. On the first operation— Atherton—it felt like there was only three or four of us in the bush. I couldn’t see anyone else either from my gun position or on patrol.

Colin James, who joined D Company’s support section as a ‘reo’ when the battalion arrived in Vietnam, felt the same. ‘Having joined the battalion only at the very start of the tour’, he recalled, ‘I never got to meet men of other companies or even some of those who made up D Company’s other platoons. So, to that length, Support Section became my entire family.’ John Onrust, a ‘reo’ to C Company, also felt that his chief loyalty lay with his section. ‘You rarely saw the battalion. You lived with your section, you worked with your platoon, sometimes you saw the company.’ To these men the battalion seemed a mere theoretical concept, while their section or platoon was very real. Private soldiers with longer service in 8RAR also seemed to see their section and platoon as their main focus of loyalty. Graeme Binks, scout and later machine-gunner in 10 Platoon, D Company, believed


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that the section and platoon were the only things that mattered. Peter Buxton, also of 10 Platoon, agreed: ‘Due to the type of conflict involved in Vietnam, I feel that the platoon and section formed the nucleus of the ‘‘second home’’. The battalion was simply too big and spread too wide.’ Tom Elliott, a section commander in 5 Platoon, B Company, who joined 8RAR in late 1968 and had trained for a year with the battalion before it deployed to Vietnam, nevertheless put his section first: My section, platoon and company were more important than the battalion in that order because I really didn’t have any contact with the others. Right from the start of training for Vietnam, all through Shoalwater Bay [and] Canungra, it was just the company. In Vietnam everything was done by company or more likely, just platoons, so I didn’t form any relationship with any other company or battalion headquarters. I knew a few people in A Company, but that was all.

Unlike private soldiers, the senior NCOs and officers were more likely to place the company or battalion first as the focus of their loyalty. Carey Johnson, a section commander and, later, platoon sergeant in C Company regarded the company as his home, rather than the battalion. This was because: Most of the operations, encounters, were company size. Our company beer hall and the singing etc. of a night once back in base made it feel even more so. I don’t remember ever really thinking in battalion terms. Competition between companies was so strong that I think the attitude of the company commanders also fostered the feeling of allegiance to the company.

INTERNAL MOVEMENTS The Australian Army rightly regarded its system of unit replacement as superior to the system adopted by the US Army. Training men in their units and then deploying those units to Vietnam for a year’s tour of duty produced better results in terms of unit cohesion than the American individual replacement system. However, the Australian system was not totally free from postings turbulence leading to loss of cohesion. In an analysis of 8RAR company roll books, John Norris found that there was significant circulation of men through 8RAR during the course of the year in Vietnam.17 With a battalion strength of over 800 men, 8RAR company roll books record over 400




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‘march-outs’ during the year. Many of these ‘march-outs’ were transfers of soldiers from one company to another within the battalion. Yet, as we have seen, most soldiers regarded their section, platoon or company as their home. Therefore transfer from one company to another, though necessary for other reasons, was probably as disorienting for many as transfer to another unit. Over 68 men were transferred out of A Company during the battalion’s tour, 48 from B Company and 77 from C Company. Each time a soldier marched out of a company he was replaced by another who marched in, so that company strengths remained stable despite the flow of men in and out of the companies. Each transfer of men into and out of companies tended to undermine unit cohesiveness and result in ‘reos’ being subjected to the ‘probationary period’ referred to earlier.

FORCES OF DISINTEGRATION Neither the Australian Army in Vietnam nor 8RAR came even close to disintegration during the Vietnam War. 8RAR in particular remained highly cohesive and continued to function effectively to the end of its tour. However, there were some nascent signs of discontent and disintegration. These were not confined to 8RAR. It is probable that all major units of the Australian Army operating in Vietnam experienced them. But they seldom appear in unit histories, or are glossed over quickly as the narrative moves on to the next success. Yet they were part of the reality of combat operations in Vietnam and deserve closer examination. Before 8RAR arrived in Vietnam two well-documented incidents occurred which illustrate how seemingly insignificant issues can lead to the early signs of disintegration. At about 2100 hrs on 23 August 1969 an unknown soldier of B Squadron, 3 Cavalry Regiment, blew up a newly installed water heater at the officers’ shower block. There had been no intention to injure any officers. It was common knowledge in the unit that all the officers with the exception of the unit second in command and the duty officer were absent from the unit. Although the records do not tell us, it is probable, given the time of night, that they were absent at an officers’ mess party. A warrant officer of the AFV Provost Unit SIB Detachment investigated the incident. In his report he noted that it soon became obvious that the object of the explosion was to draw the OC’s


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attention to grievances in the squadron brought about by internal policies on discipline and leave. The main grievances were a change in the order of dress for the evening meal, restrictions on the use of the unit canteen by duty personnel, and the replacement of the usual five-day R&C visit to Vung Tau with a 36-hour stay as the standard after-operation leave arrangement.18 Three days later a second incident occurred. This time, an unknown soldier of A Company, 6 RAR, exploded an M26 hand grenade in the company lines at Nui Dat at 0045 hrs on 26 August 1969. Again, no malice was intended to the company officers. They were absent attending the battalion officers’ mess where they were farewelling one of their colleagues.19 In a report to HQ AFV on the two incidents Brigadier Weir, Commander 1ATF, commented: On both occasions evidence indicates that soldiers were expressing their dissatisfaction over particular aspects of administration in each unit. As far as can be determined the grounds for complaint on each occasion were petty and could easily have been resolved in a routine manner. Perhaps inexperienced man-management at junior leader level has been a contributing factor to these incidents.20

The two incidents had much in common. It was probably significant that in both cases the unit officers were not only absent from the unit lines but were drinking at an officers’ mess at a time when the soldiers’ canteen was closed. There are two Army sayings that have relevance to this issue; ‘Never ask your soldiers to do something you are not prepared to do yourself ’; and ‘Rank has its privileges’. The two are contradictory. Officers frequently asked soldiers to do things they were not prepared to do themselves—not major or life-threatening things but minor differences in privileges, such as longer bar opening hours for officers, which officers expected their soldiers to endure without complaint. Soldiers had a keen eye for inconsistencies and injustices. Under the stress of operations these minor differences in privileges could ferment into points of considerable tension, leading to the sort of action taken by the men of B Squadron, 3 Cavalry Regiment, or A Company, 6RAR. In both cases the actions taken by the soldiers occurred anonymously and were directed against officers. In the 3 Cavalry Regiment incident the soldiers sent their message of discontent by destroying a privilege reserved for their officers and senior NCOs—the hot water system. In the A Company, 6RAR, incident the explosion of the hand grenade would have brought an abrupt end to the partying of the




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A Company officers and had them back in the company lines with their soldiers. It would probably also have caused them a good deal of embarrassment and paperwork. Both incidents were intended to alert officers to grievances the soldiers felt and both carried the implication of more drastic action if the situation did not improve to the soldiers’ satisfaction. While these ‘messages’ were harmless enough, grievances (whether felt by groups or individuals) that went unresolved could ferment into deeply felt betrayal and to soldiers taking much more extreme action. In rare instances this could include ‘fragging’—the murder of superior officers using the M26 fragmentation grenade.21 The fragging murder of Lieutenant Robert Convery of 9RAR, by Private Peter Allen on the night of 22/23 November 1969, signalled the possible consequences of a failure of cohesion. The murder occurred a few days after the arrival of the 8RAR advance guard which shared 9RAR accommodation.22 It was a major topic of discussion among 8RAR officers and soldiers alike. The incident repays close examination because it reveals several factors that illuminate failures of cohesion. At 1700 hrs on 22 November 1969, Private Peter Allen joined his mates in the B Company, 9RAR, boozer where he continued drinking till closing time at 2130 hrs He and some others then took cans of beer to the tent of Corporal Cunich where the smaller circle of mates resumed drinking. They talked about ‘ambushing a Sergeant’23 and the corporal recalled ‘someone mentioning how unpopular Sergeant Cross was and saying it was a wonder he was not zapped’.24 Shortly afterwards, Lieutenant Convery came to the tent and told the soldiers to put their lights out and go to bed as it was after ‘lights out’. Allen went to his tent, turned out the light and returned to Cunich’s tent. After a short time Allen returned to his tent, took a grenade and went to Convery’s tent where he waited till Convery went to sleep. Convery was sharing the tent with Lieutenant John Brien of 8RAR. They had discussed the events of that night, and Convery had told Brien that he would be charging Corporal Cunich in the morning and that Cunich would probably be reduced to the ranks. After Convery had gone to sleep, Allen placed the grenade on Convery’s matress and ducked below the blast wall to shelter himself from the blast and shrapnel. In his later statement, Allen said that he had killed Convery because Convery had been inconsistent in applying discipline. Sometimes he had openly participated in drinking sessions in the soldiers’ lines with


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groups which included Allen; at other times he had charged Allen when he found him drinking. Allen knew that Convery himself had held drinking parties in his own tent.25 The inconsistency deeply offended Allen’s sense of justice; it was a betrayal of what was right. ‘The thought to kill Mr. Convery has been with me for some time’, Allen stated, ‘and last night the talk of ambushing the Sergeant and the beers I’d had revived the thought and I carried it out.’26 Allen’s poor bonding with 9RAR and with his platoon probably made it easier for him to kill Convery. Although the Australian Army prided itself on the bonds of cohesion it encouraged between soldiers and their units, Allen’s service record shows that he could hardly have established such bonds. After recruit training and further Corps training at the RAR Reinforcement Wing at the Infantry Centre, Allen was posted as a reinforcement to 1ARU in Vietnam. From there he was posted briefly to 1RAR, then to 4RAR, then to HQ 1ATF, before finally arriving as a reinforcement in 9RAR. Allen had probably endured four times the ‘cold-shoulder’ treatment usually reserved for reinforcements. Emerging from this review of the facts of the case are the signs of a localised collapse of cohesion: antipathy towards officers or NCOs because of their privileges, their disciplinary powers (often perceived to be exercised arbitrarily) and their perceived incompetence; poor identification with the platoon, company or battalion; a sense of betrayal or moral outrage at a perceived wrong; and membership of a small group which establishes norms of behaviour that are inconsistent with those of the platoon, company or battalion. It is important that officers and senior NCOs, despite being somewhat outside the world of mateship, should connect personally to the soldiers they command. It is the role of officers and NCOs to ensure that the norms of the group remain aligned with the norms of the Army. If the blowing up of the officers’ water heater in B Squadron, 3 Cavalry Regiment, marks the lower end of the spectrum of ‘message sending’, then the fragging murder of Convery marks its apex. There were a number of incidents in 8RAR that fell between these two extremes. Each signalled the response of an individual soldier to discontent or his perception of betrayal. While each was a far cry from the coldly premeditated fragging murder of Convery, they were often the result of emotional responses to perceived injustice or persecution and were exacerbated by excessive alcohol, the pressures of operations, or family problems at home.27 Some incidents had the potential, if poorly handled, to lead to serious consequences.




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Several 8RAR officers and NCOs were the victims of grenade threats. Hand grenades were a particularly favoured way of sending messages. They were a powerful reminder of the fate of Robert Convery and they offered anonymity in the sense that they did not require the soldier to confront his victim. Lieutenant Barry Darr, commander of 3 Platoon, was the recipient of a hand grenade message early in 8RAR’s tour. His company commander, Vin Murphy, would describe Darr as ‘a rough-as-tacks kind of platoon commander, if you like. No frills. But an excellent commander, make no mistake about that . . . When the chips were down you couldn’t have had better’.28 Darr was aggressive, forceful and blunt. Not surprisingly, some soldiers chafed at his style. Allan Handley recalled: ‘Two hand grenades were placed by a member of my platoon on our platoon commander’s bed back at Nui Dat with a note saying: ‘‘Ease up. We are not in Australia now.’’ ’ According to Handley, Darr adjusted his style and the platoon had no further problems. No investigation was conducted. ‘There was nothing to do’, said Murphy. ‘There was no point in reporting it. There was no point in calling in the Military Police because you wouldn’t have found anything. You wouldn’t have found any prints . . . or the purpose why it was done.’29 Warrant Officer Class 2 Neville Krause, the CSM of Admin Company, was also the target of a hand grenade message. Entering his tent one night he felt the pressure of a trip wire across his knee and heard the sound of a hand grenade hitting the floorboards of his tent and its striker lever flying off. He threw himself to the ground expecting the crack of an explosion, but nothing came. It was later found that the grenade striker had been unscrewed, the detonator fired and the grenade, now rendered inoperable, reassembled.30 It was an elaborate arrangement requiring premeditation. Following the incident, enquiries conducted by the SIB of the AFV Provost Unit ‘established that several members of Admin Coy . . . could have had reason to dislike WO2 Krause by reason of his having reprimanded them for minor breaches of discipline’.31 Despite an investigation including interviews and fingerprinting, the perpetrators were never identified. Within Nui Dat it was difficult for soldiers to have access to hand grenades and other explosives. Each time a company returned from operations its explosive ammunition was carefully accounted for and stored under the control of the CSM. Perhaps because of the difficulties soldiers might face in getting the real thing, they sometimes used substitutes for grenades—grenade pins or rocks—to convey their messages. Major Mal Peck, whose bans on the use of hexamine—fuel


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tablets used for field cooking—and on other operational techniques were misunderstood and resented by many D Company soldiers, occasionally had hand grenade-size rocks thrown onto his tent. Others had grenade pins left on their beds. Perhaps more serious than these grenade messages were the occasional confrontations between highly emotional soldiers armed with rifles and those they believed to be their persecutors. Tony Flaherty, a sergeant in C Company, found a soldier hiding outside his company commander’s tent with a loaded M16. He was going to shoot Major David Rankine. Flaherty warned Rankine who fronted this Digger up. The Digger was in tears and highly emotional and [had his] finger on the trigger . . . Rankine stood there and eyeballed him and then just gave him an order: ‘Unload!’ It just snapped and this guy unloaded the weapon. Dave Rankine took the weapon and gave it to the CSM, and took [the soldier] inside his office and there was a hell of a lot of noise.32

Many of the men involved in these kinds of incidents had been overcome by the pressures of operations, as a D Company soldier makes clear: One of our mates cracked up and claimed he was going to get the company commander. He was restrained and disarmed while still in the platoon lines and later broke down crying, etc. He had been under a lot of strain as a lead scout and his section was involved in a mine incident. He was never the same after that and he took his own life in the 1980s.

As the tension on operations built, even the smallest incident could lead to an outburst. A C Company soldier said: ‘I was involved in a stand-up fight with a Digger while on an operation. I was to relieve him on picquet duty in the middle of the night. I was a bit slow in getting there and he said something and I took exception to it and then we were fighting.’ The soldier thought the incident had been caused by a combination of things—nerves on edge after a session on picquet, lack of food and cigarettes, and being too long on the operation. Some incidents were responses to the pressures of living closely together, while others involved soldiers seeking attention or hoping to achieve their withdrawal from the field or to Australia. One soldier, under the influence of alcohol and teased by his mates because he had VD, threatened to shoot one of his tormentors. In another case an




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argument in the company canteen over a stolen beer quickly escalated to threats to kill. A third, recalled by Sergeant Pieter Koster of Admin Company, was a soldier who threatened a corporal with a loaded SLR in order to gain sympathy or to be sent home. Koster took the rifle from him, slapped his face, kicked his backside and sent him back to work. Efforts were made to control these tensions and their consequences. The army provided an R&R program which gave soldiers a nine-day rest from operations. It also provided opportunities for rest and recuperation in the city of Vung Tau. The battalion provided canteens and, as in other wars, alcohol was frequently consumed as a means of relieving stress and of rebuilding the networks of mateship and unit cohesion—although excessive consumption sometimes had the opposite effect. Sport was another method of relieving tension. Peter Berger, a rifleman in A Company, remembered a game of rugby league at Nui Dat: We played football one afternoon—rugby league—instead of having a sleep, and it was pissing down rain . . . The game . . . didn’t turn into warfare but the antagonism was there. It turned out that teams would be platoon against platoon and they just wanted to hop into one another, rather than [having] a friendly game. They wanted to bloody try and hurt one another.33

But sport released tensions that may have found other, less acceptable, avenues of expression. After operations the CSM of B Company would set up a boxing ring for matches between men chosen at random. As well as providing entertainment, the matches gave soldiers the opportunity to thump officers and NCOs, whether personally or vicariously, and to get the tension of operations out of their system. One interesting aspect of these incidents is the way they were dealt with. As many of the above examples show, there was a tendency among 8RAR officers and NCOs to deal with such incidents informally rather than to invoke formal disciplinary procedures.

CONCLUSION The patterns of cohesion which existed in 8RAR show that the question of unit cohesion is more complex than has previously been allowed. In dispersed operations like those conducted by the Australian infantry battalions in Vietnam, the battalion is less likely to be the


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focus of unit cohesion and loyalty than smaller sub-units such as companies, platoons and sections. Often a hierarchy of loyalties exists, reversing the organisational hierarchy of the infantry battalion. The soldier sees himself as belonging first to his section, then to his platoon and so on up through the larger structural elements of the battalion. Officers, NCOs and the soldiers whose roles are to provide support to the batallion as a whole are much more likely to see the battalion as the focus of their loyalty and identity. Mateship remained an important part of the fabric of cohesion. But in mateship too, there are complex patterns. The soldier’s relationship with those around him may be formed according to his status within the small group, for example his staus as a commander or a reinforcement; his role, for example whether he is a member of a rifle section or a battalion cook; and his experience of combat. Combat experience could weld the members of rifle sections and other small groups tightly together through the bond of common and often traumatic experiences, but equally it could cause individuals to avoid building strong emotional bonds with other men who could become casualties. Nevertheless, mateship remained an important force in helping individuals cope with the pressures of combat and in assisting the survival of the small group. Often ignored or overlooked in studies of Australians at war are the forces of disintegration that exist in any large unit. The myth of cohesion and mateship encouraged by Gullet’s glowing description of a World War II infantry battalion mentioned at the beginning of this chapter seems at odds with these forces. How do the threats to kill, the ‘messages’ conveyed by grenade and the lesser ‘family’ squabbles of an infantry battalion fit with the myth of mateship? Forces of disintegration need to be understood in their own right but also for what they say about the formation and maintenance of unit cohesion. We now turn to the way in which formal and informal disciplinary procedures worked within 8RAR.




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11

Discipline Discipline

‘There are no bad soldiers, only bad officers’, goes the well-known military aphorism. Soldiers, it implies, can be led and disciplined towards good performance, and it is the officer’s role to lead and discipline them. According to the aphorism, failures of discipline are ultimately failures by officers to adequately lead and motivate those who serve under them. Like most aphorisms this one uncovers an important, though small, fraction of the truth. While the leadership and discipline provided by Australian officers in Vietnam played an important role in motivating soldiers to maintain and practise the battlefield skills they had been taught, and to resist the temptation to flight when in contact with the enemy, much of the Army’s disciplinary effort was directed at controlling soldiers when they were out of combat. It was usually then that soldiers sought distractions from the experience of combat, through alcohol, sex, drugs and sometimes gambling, all of which they found in abundance in Vung Tau at the Rest in Country Centre which they shared with the Americans, ARVN and (unknowingly) the VC. The Army, on the other hand, was concerned with limiting the loss of manpower and efficiency due to absence without leave, drunkenness and sexually transmitted disease. It also sought to maintain good relations with the Vietnamese civil authorities, on whom it depended for support. Finally, it hoped to avoid politically damaging disapproval in Australia of the worst of soldierly behaviour. Like armies every236


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where, the Australian Army also craved order and compliant soldiers. Its disciplinary code was set up to meet these requirements. Thus most military offences occurred in those periods between operations when soldiers were permitted to seek temporary relief from the stress of combat and the control of the army. Far from officers being a positive influence on them, at Vung Tau most soldiers hoped to be as far away from their officers as possible. The aphorism is also incorrect in another important way: motivation towards correct behaviour—in combat at least—very often arose from peer pressure rather than the intervention of officers. In the main, soldiers understood that their best chance of survival in combat lay in their ability to rely upon one another to act appropriately in any given situation. There were some isolated exceptions, but soldiers who disregarded correct behaviour on operations would usually be left in no doubt of the disapproval of their mates. It had to be this way. Officers, even platoon commanders, might see each of their soldiers for only two or three minutes of every day. On the widely dispersed operations that characterised the Australian way of war in Vietnam, more senior officers (company commanders, for example) might not see the men in their companies for many days. Junior NCOs (the corporals and lance corporals), however, were in constant touch with the soldiers they commanded. But if junior commanders and peer pressure encouraged private soldiers towards correct behaviour on operations, they seemed to have the reverse effect once soldiers came out of operations and went on leave. Then, many corporals and lance corporals and the pressure of their peers encouraged a boisterous disregard for ‘correct behaviour’ as the wider Army and the officers might see it. It was during periods of leave, particularly at the R&C Centre at Vung Tau, that most charges were laid for breaches of the disciplinary code. In The Myth of the Digger, Jane Ross argues that the soldiers of the First AIF maintained a persistently civilian outlook and that this was reflected in their ‘verve, dash and undampened initiative’, their perception that war was akin to a business or sport rather than an autonomous activity, their rejection of specifically ‘military’ standards, and their indiscipline when not fighting.1 Ross argues that these themes were still present in the Second AIF but in a more attenuated form. According to Ross the men of the Second AIF, in contrast to those of the First, were better soldiers because they were ‘efficiently trained and were highly motivated’2 rather than as a result of their ‘civilian’ values. In considering the Australian Army in Vietnam, Ross claims




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that ‘it seems that very little of the distinctively ‘‘Digger’’ elements remain in the Australian Regular Army and its sometimes conscripted supplement’.3 But it was not ineffective. Ross continues: It was admired for its fighting abilities and effective counter-guerilla tactics (and in this it was in the AIF tradition), but these were seen as reflecting its thorough training, firm discipline, and ‘regular’ approach. It was a cohesive force with few or no disciplinary problems (in contrast to the Americans), and the soldiers, though hardly motivated by patriotism, nevertheless seemed to be in broad agreement with their government’s aims . . . Soldiers appeared, too, to be somewhat deferential to their [college-trained] officers. They often resented their officers’ exercise of authority, particularly their resort to formal ‘charges’ to enforce discipline, but the resentment seldom rose above grumbling and ‘go-slow’ tactics.4

An examination of the discipline within 8RAR (and compared with other Australian battalions in Vietnam at about the same time) shows Ross was broadly correct but that patterns which emerge in the analysis of discipline are more complex than she allows. There were significant differences in the way battalions exercised discipline, subtle differences existed in the discipline of regular and National Service soldiers, and discipline on operations was markedly different from that on recreation. Particular disciplinary problems such as absence without leave and excessive consumption of alcohol are also examined.

THE FORMAL DISCIPLINARY PROCESS The Army’s formal code of military discipline was based on the British Army Act 1881 which had been adopted, as the code of penal law governing the Australian Army when on active service, with the passage of the Defence Act 1904.5 Although Britain had abandoned this legal system after World War II, the Australian Army ‘remained subject to the provision of the British Army Act . . . while on active service until 1985, 30 years after Britain repealed the Act’.6 The Act’s archaic and arcane terminology continued to remind of its nineteenth century British Imperial connections. It contained a range of offences from the very specific, such as ‘when a soldier acting as a sentinel, sleeping on his post’, to the very general, such as ‘conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline’. The latter gave officers and NCOs sweeping powers to charge soldiers with almost any breach of ‘correct’ behaviour.7


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Most charges were heard by company commanders, but more serious offences could be referred to the commanding officer who had the power to award greater punishment. Under some circumstances the offender had the option of putting his case before a court martial, but this was usually reserved for only the most serious offences. There were no such cases during 8RAR’s tour in Vietnam. The punishments available to the battalion commander when hearing a case were to reprimand, admonish or to impose a fine, to award a number of days of ‘confinement to barracks’, field punishment or detention in a military corrective establishment. Fines provide a useful measure of the patterns of punishment. They were frequently imposed and there was an attempt to make the fine fit the seriousness of the offence. Thus a comparison of fines shows us some of the differences between the ways in which different battalions approached discipline and the awarding of punishments. On the whole, 8RAR soldiers and those in other Australian units were well disciplined. In 8RAR, a little less than one in every four private soldiers were formally charged with an offence during the year of Vietnam duty. But most offences were trivial. Looking back on their brushes with military law, most soldiers reported that they had been treated fairly.8 Of the charges that were laid, most were made by officers and NCOs against private soldiers. In 8RAR, 237 private soldiers were charged with one or more offences, while corporals and lance corporals were charged with 44. Only one sergeant and one staff sergeant were charged. NCOs, usually with greater maturity and with the status and financial benefits of rank, had more to lose if charged than did private soldiers. In 8RAR no warrant officers or officers were charged. 9 Battalions differed in their approach to discipline. Although they comprised approximately the same number of men and operated under similar conditions and with the same disciplinary code, the discipline of the battalions, at least in so far as it is reflected in the charge reports, could vary considerably. 8RAR soldiers were charged 382 times during the battalion’s tour of duty. 5RAR and 7RAR had a similar number of charges to each other, with 456 and 450 respectively. But 9RAR soldiers were awarded 794 charges, over twice the number awarded to 8RAR soldiers.10 This difference can be attributed to a number of factors which help to explain the operation of discipline within an infantry battalion at war. 9RAR was raised for service in Vietnam and began its tour on 9 November 1968. The battalion had little time to settle down and to




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build a cohesive unit identity. What is more, once in Vietnam 9RAR found that its tour was marked by a series of heavy fights against enemy bunker systems and relatively high casualties. 9RAR lost 35 men killed in action compared with 8RAR’s 18. The strain of these operations on the young battalion tended to be reflected in a relatively poor disciplinary performance. By contrast, 8RAR had been deployed to Malaysia prior to going to Vietnam. There it had two years of hard training in jungle conditions under the watchful eye of an experienced Commonwealth Brigade Headquarters with few of the interruptions that usually upset Australian-based battalions, such as large exercises, visiting dignitaries and commitments to assist the training of other units. The stay in Malaysia gave the battalion the chance to build itself into a smoothly functioning and cohesive organisation.11 Another factor that determines the disciplinary style of a battalion is the attitude of its officers and NCOs towards discipline. In 9RAR, charges seemed to be imposed even for trivial offences such as failing to get a haircut, wearing mixed dress or throwing stones at Vietnamese children.12 Soldiers found guilty of these trivial offences received trivial penalties. Fines of $5, $4 or even $2 were not uncommon punishments. In 8RAR, formal disciplinary procedure tended to be used only for serious offences. Many minor offences were dealt with by officers or NCOs correcting the behaviour without resort to an official charge. While, for minor offences, 9RAR punishments included 73 fines of $5 or less, in 8RAR there were only 16, with no fines less than $5. By contrast, while 9RAR awarded only 47 fines of $40, 8RAR awarded 62.13 Thus, although 8RAR charged fewer soldiers, the punishments awarded tended to be more severe. The battalion second in command, Major Adrian Clunies-Ross, believed 8RAR was a well-disciplined battalion. He took the view that ‘if you cocked up you were going to get hit between the eyes and that was the end of it’.14 Correcting minor misdemeanours without resort to a formal charge had the effect of elevating a charge to the status of ‘serious offence’ in the minds of soldiers, and that discouraged them from committing offences. By contrast, in 9RAR the charge seemed to be devalued by its use for trivial offences.

REGS AND NASHOS In her research on conscripts in Vietnam conducted in 1969–70, Ross argued that they tended to adopt a strategy of ‘doing the least possible


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without actually overtly defying the authorities or actively negating the behavioural prescriptions of the role’ and that ‘the most striking feature was their almost complete lack of commitment to the army, to its effort in Vietnam, to being a soldier’. 15 Few 8RAR officers or soldiers would recognise the National Servicemen they knew in Vietnam from this description. If conscripts had pursued the strategy that Ross describes, one would expect to find them overrepresented in the commission of offences as they attempted to identify the line between over-commitment and under-commitment. Yet in 8RAR, at least, National Servicemen were underrepresented among those committing offences. Of the 1163 men who served in 8RAR during its tour of Vietnam, 55.4 per cent were National Servicemen. But National Servicemen made up only 46.8 per cent of those charged with military offences.16 In general, National Servicemen were more disciplined or conformed more closely to the Army’s myriad rules and regulations than did regular soldiers. However, among National Servicemen there were some individuals who were more fractious than their fellows. Sightly more National Servicemen than regular soldiers were repeat offenders; one was charged on four separate occasions for minor offences during his one-year tour with the battalion.17 Had National Servicemen been less committed to the Army or to service in Vietnam than regular soldiers, it might be expected that this would be revealed in the type of offences they committed. For example, they might be more likely to commit offences against military authority such as ‘disobeying a lawful command’, ‘insubordinate language’ or ‘failure to appear at a place of parade’. National Servicemen might also be overrepresented in offences relating to operations, such as ‘sleeping on picquet’ or failure to maintain their personal weapon in good order. But neither pattern is evident in the records.18 Furthermore, the patterns that are evident show that National Servicemen were less likely to offend in particular ways. For example, they were almost half as likely as regular soldiers to go AWL or to commit an offence in which alcohol was involved.19 It is possible that the greater maturity and better education of many conscripts explains this difference. However, another possible explanation is that, since they were approaching the end of their two-year commitment by the time they were in Vietnam, National Servicemen may have sought to avoid trouble till their time was up. By contrast, Regulars with an indefinite commitment and the possibility of multiple tours of Vietnam may have been more inclined to live for the moment. Whatever the case, National




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Servicemen generally distinguished themselves from the Regulars by displaying a greater respect for the Army’s petty rules and regulations. In some cases, though, it is possible to see in the records individual National Servicemen who had clearly become caught in a spiral of offences, each of which led to deeper exasperation and frustration with the Army. One such man was charged with a series of offences beginning with speeding, going AWL and not being in his billet after curfew, and culminating in ‘conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline’ when, while being reprimanded by a major, he ‘walked away, shouting out, kicking trees, and finally sitting down crying’.20 A few days later he had reached breaking point. He was charged with ‘striking his superior officer’ when he ‘struck with his hand on the face’ a lance corporal.

DISCIPLINE ON OPERATIONS AND OUT OF OPERATIONS The contrast between discipline on operations and out of operations was stark. First, on operations there was simply much less military indiscipline. In 8RAR as in other battalions, soldiers, whether conscript or regular, felt immense pride in performing to high professional standards. It was part of the infantryman’s code of mateship. Yet, as I described earlier, although peer pressure worked to maintain high standards on operations it tended to encourage disregard for ‘the rules’ when the soldier was on leave at Vung Tau or in the more relaxed atmosphere of Nui Dat. This was reflected in the number of charges awarded to 8RAR soldiers. In 8RAR, 339 charges were laid relating to military offences committed in Nui Dat, Vung Tau or Baria, but only 41 relating to offences committed on operations.21 Yet most 8RAR soldiers spent only short periods in Nui Dat or Vung Tau, perhaps no more than twenty or thirty days in their entire tour. Second, not only was there this significant numerical imbalance but, as might be expected, the nature of the crimes committed was quite different. Out of operations, offences were frequently related to leave in Vung Tau and included being absent without leave, failure to be in possession of a current leave pass, breaking curfew, and insubordination, particularly towards military policemen. Consumption of alcohol was often a factor in the offence if not the offence itself. On operations, offences tended to relate to accidental discharge of weap-


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ons, failure to maintain weapons in a clean state, failure to obey commands and sleeping while on sentry duty. Alcohol seldom played a part in these offences except as described shortly in pacification operations.

AWL AND OTHER OFFENCES AGAINST MANPOWER Table 8 shows the number of charges laid relating to the offences of absence without leave, violating curfew, being out of bounds and similar offences and compares them across four Australian infantry battalions.22 Most cases of absence without leave or breaking curfew occurred in Vung Tau, when soldiers enjoying a break from operations overstayed their leave passes. Soldiers on leave in Vung Tau were required to return to the leave centre at 1ALSG by 2200 hrs, but many men broke this curfew. Those who did were often quickly apprehended by Military Police patrols. However some ‘shacked up’ with bar girls for the night and returned to the Peter Badcoe club at 1ALSG the next day. Many of those who broke curfew were apprehended by Military Police patrols after only a few minutes. Though technically AWL, their periods of absence were so brief as to not warrant a severe penalty. Most were simply given reprimands and were told not to do it again. The penalties attaching to such brief periods of absence were so small that the administrative effort of hearing a formal charge was not worthwhile. Table 8

AWL and other offences against manpower; four infantry battalions

Offence

5RAR

AWL Conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline (breaking curfew) Miscellaneous (out of bounds, etc.) Total

7RAR

8RAR

9RAR

40

54

59

55

75 2 117

37 20 111

– 5 64

105 44 204

ALCOHOL AND DRUGS Alcohol was a major contributor to military offences in Vietnam. Compared with alcohol-related offences, drug-related offences were very rare. Yet the Army, concerned about public perceptions in Australia,




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The soldiers’ boozer. Privates Carl Ranson (left) and Ron Campbell, with two other soldiers, share some beers in the D Company boozer between operations. Consumption of alcohol was one of the few releases soldiers could find from the stress of operations. However, the consumption of alcohol was also a major contributing factor to military offences. (Photo courtesy of Bob McLeod)

imposed strict controls upon the reporting of drug-related offences. Table 9 compares alcohol and drug offences for four battalions.23 Alcohol was a major factor in providing soldiers with relief from the stress of operations. Its consumption also lowered inhibitions, resulting in soldiers committing other offences under the influence. Not surprisingly, it featured in many offences. The incidence of offences, but particularly alcohol-related offences, usually rose around celebrations such as Christmas Day, ANZAC Day and the battalion birthday. Despite sometimes extreme provocation, military policemen seem often to have displayed a remarkable leniency towards the behaviour of infantrymen on leave in Vung Tau. Tony Flaherty, then a sergeant, recalled a visit to Vung Tau in which he and Corporal Geoff Hassell Table 9

Alcohol and drug related offences: four infantry battalions

Offences Offences involving alcohol Offences involving drugs

5RAR

7RAR

8RAR

9RAR

68 1

53 4

51 –

160 4


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got drunk at the Long Hai bar. Looking for somewhere to relieve themselves, they decided to urinate into a large electric fan, showering some US soldiers in the process. A brawl erupted, and though conspicuous in women’s black lace shirts they had bought earlier in the day, Flaherty and Hassell escaped to the Tokyo bar to keep drinking while they hid from pursuing Americans. After curfew that night they decided to catch a Lambretta back to 1ALSG. They got onto the roof of the vehicle. Two military policemen arrived. Flaherty and Hassell kept them off by threatening to urinate on them. Finally Major David Rankine, their company commander, arrived and ordered them down. They immediately obeyed.24 Though they had apparently committed several offences including drunkenness, breaking curfew, conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline, and resisting arrest, Rankine was able to ensure that neither man was charged. Another case shown great leniency was that of Corporal Peter Salkowski and Privates Dennis Moss and Bill Babbs just two weeks before 8RAR was due to return to Australia. After drinking till closing time at the D Company canteen they decided to steal some beer from the neighbouring ARU canteen. They broke in and, working in the dark, found some cartons of beer. They were about to pass these through a window when the lights came on and they were confronted by an ARU sergeant armed with a 9 mm pistol. Babbs immediately leapt out the window. Moss later recalled: I looked at the height of the window and I thought, ‘Oh, bugger it’, and I just put my hands up. And this sergeant’s got this 9 mm [pistol]— must be about [30 centimetres] from my head . . . And Salkowski was around the back of the bar—which they didn’t realise—because he was getting the grog. He comes leaping out and stands between me and this 9 mm and says ‘Don’t shoot him: he’s one of my men!’25

For a while the pair feigned complete inebriation in the hope that their captors would think they were suffering from a reaction to Dapsone, an anti-malarial drug. But neither could maintain the charade. Eventually they were marched to the 8RAR gaol, an open air, barbed wire enclosure, and thrown inside. There they were reunited with Bill Babbs. Although he had escaped, he had taken himself off to gaol to be with his mates. Moss remembered: ‘Nothing came [of] it. We were not charged. The military people, for some reason, did nothing about it and I remember walking back down [to the company lines] and everyone standing up [and applauding].’26 But while there were farcical aspects to some offences, others were




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more serious. After 8RAR began pacification operations, the nature of operations changed. Soldiers no longer went into the jungle for months on end. Instead, most operated from the Nui Dat base, going forward into ambush positions each evening. During the day the soldiers would enjoy the comforts of Nui Dat, including access to canteens at midday. This pattern of operations opened up a new offence: rendering oneself unfit for operations due to the consumption of alcohol. Peter Berger recalled a particular incident. ‘[One] afternoon the fellows in my tent plus a couple of others had some bottles of green rice wine. It was foul stuff. I just refused to drink it . . . Anyway, [one of the soldiers] was pissed. He was pissed out of his brain.’ Berger warned his section commander not to let the drunken soldier carry the machine gun on the ambush that night. But the section commander ignored his advice. Berger’s account continued: So we got in the trucks and it was still daylight and we just went outside Nui Dat and there was a delay of a few minutes before we moved off . . . I was sitting opposite [the drunken soldier] and I was sprawled out a bit, and he cocked the machine gun and put three rounds through the floor and didn’t miss my foot by very much. [It] stirred up a bit of strife. We all got paraded back at company headquarters. [CSM] Dusty Miller was there and we all got sent to bed that night, the whole platoon, even though it was only a small minority that had been on the grog. And the punishment . . . the next day was that we weren’t allowed to go to the boozer at lunchtime. We had to cut grass for that hour. And not another word was said. And I always thought later: ‘Well, it was a fairly serious breach and I thought it would have attracted a little bit more discipline’.27

In pacification operations, sometimes road checkpoints were set up in which a small number of 8RAR soldiers supported an ARVN soldier or a national policeman while he checked that food, people or weapons were not being smuggled into or out of villages. Checkpoints were usually on the outskirts of villages. On 14 June 1970 one 8RAR soldier, bored with this duty, purchased some beer at a village shop and got drunk. Later, seeing a Lambretta pass through the checkpoint, he opened fire on it with his SLR. Fortunately his aim was poor. He was charged with drunkenness on duty and with discharging his SLR without just cause or excuse. These were serious offences and could have resulted in death or serious injury to innocent Vietnamese. He was given 21 days detention.28


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In another case the outcome seemed heartless. A few days before the end of 8RAR’s tour in Vietnam two corporals, both veterans of an earlier tour with 1RAR, sat quietly drinking rum and coke in their tent, with lights out, at about midnight. They were probably enjoying a quiet celebration of their survival, remembering the mates they had lost and thinking about their lives after Vietnam. A warrant officer doing the rounds smelt the rum and charged them both with drinking alcohol contrary to unit routine orders, which forbade the consumption of alcohol in the tent lines.29 One of the reasons for relatively low levels of alcohol-related offences in 8RAR compared with other battalions, but particularly with 9RAR, was the reaction within 8RAR to the murder of Lieutenant Robert Convery of 9RAR just a few days after the arrival in Vietnam of the 8RAR advance guard. As described in the previous chapter, one of the factors contributing to the murder was excessive alcohol consumption in the 9RAR lines. The incident shocked the 8RAR officers and NCOs in the battalion advance party. Although O’Neill and Clunies-Ross had already formed the view that alcohol, young men and weapons were a dangerous mix and that strict control would need to be exercised over drinking, the Convery murder underscored the need for that control. Within 8RAR there was to be nil tolerance of drinking outside the company canteen and outside the prescribed hours. As a result, penalties for consuming alcohol in the company lines or for rendering oneself unfit for duty due to alcohol consumption were usually severe. Typically, soldiers found guilty of drinking in their tent lines were fined $40 and were given 14 days confinement to barracks.30 Soldiers found guilty of rendering themselves unfit for duty due to alcohol consumption were awarded 21 days detention.31 By contrast, in 9RAR, drinking in the tent lines tended to attract less severe punishments. In many cases a fine of $10 and the award of seven days confinement to barracks was typical, although there were many cases of awards of only five days confinement to barracks. Soldiers who rendered themselves unfit for duty due to alcohol consumption seemed to face no fixed punishment but might receive anything from a $10 fine to 21 days field punishment.32 While alcohol contributed to offences, some of them very serious, it also had benefits. In earlier wars alcohol had been used to give soldiers courage before battle. That wasn’t possible in Vietnam. But alcohol provided soldiers with an avenue of escape, for a few hours at least, from the stress of operations after they had returned to Nui Dat or were




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enjoying leave in Vung Tau. Drinking was perhaps the major form of relaxation and entertainment of soldiers in Vietnam. And at least it was a social pastime, helping to build small group cohesion as drinkers swapped stories and shared experiences about past operations. Although excessive alcohol consumption contributed to many offences, the Australian Army reserved its greatest concern for an offence which hardly happened at all: the use of drugs. By 1970 the US armed forces in Vietnam had already begun to unravel, and one of the causes and symptoms of this general demoralisation was drug use. Estimates of drug use among members of the US military in Vietnam varied. Sensational reports in the US media claimed that as many as 75–80 per cent of US soldiers in Vietnam used drugs, but survey results pointed to much lower but still substantial use.33 Surveys conducted at 22 military establishments of all four US services across the continental United States revealed that 26.6 per cent of those surveyed had used marijuana or other illegal drugs. Of those, 65 per cent said that they had first used drugs before entering the military. Drug use among US servicemen in Vietnam appears to have been higher than it was among those based in the United States, although the levels of use while in the military are unclear. A survey of 584 US Army enlisted men in the two southern Corps areas of Vietnam who were being processed for return to the US revealed that 31.7 per cent at some time in their lives had smoked marijuana. Another survey, in March 1970, of 329 US military personnel returning to Vietnam from R&R in Japan showed that 27.9 per cent had some form of drug use either before or after entering the military. Of those who had used drugs, 69.5 per cent had first used drugs prior to joining the military.34 The evidence suggests that perhaps less than one-third of US military personnel used drugs and that, of these, about two-thirds had used drugs before entering the military. For Americans, service in Vietnam was less a cause of drug use than an opportunity for it. By contrast, drug use among Australian soldiers was very low; perhaps less than 5 per cent. Although there were no surveys of drug use among Australian soldiers similar to those conducted among US servicemen, Australian soldiers were rarely found guilty of drug-related offences, and post-war interviews and surveys support the argument that few Australians used drugs in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the Australian Army was concerned that widespread drug use should not take hold as it had in the US Army. In March 1970 the Australian revealed that three former 9RAR soldiers had smuggled marijuana into Australia from Vietnam, stashed


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in the back of a stereo speaker. The newspaper quoted Leon Eddy, one of the ex-soldiers, as saying that in Vietnam he had smoked two or three marijuana cigarettes out of bravado so that his mates would not think he was ‘chicken’.35 Eddy said that while smoking marijuana in the past he had had a bad trip, which recalled the experience of battle. He had not used marijuana since. The newspaper claimed that ‘Australian troops in Vietnam used marijuana because ‘‘if you don’t, you are chicken and not one of the boys’’ ’.36 This article, with its implication that there was strong peer pressure to use marijuana, raised public interest in the issue of drug taking among Australians in Vietnam. A few days after the article was published, AHQ Canberra requested that HQ 1ATF provide it with details of all drug offences during the preceding twelve months and that any future drug offences also be reported. As soon as incidents of drug use were detected, warned AHQ, units were to notify HQ AFV and the AFV Provost Unit. All incidents involving drugs were to be investigated by the Special Investigations Branch of the AFV Provost Unit and a written report sent to the unit, the immediate HQ and HQ AFV.37 These arrangements imposed an unwanted additional administrative burden upon HQ 1ATF. Major General C. A. E. Fraser, Commander AFV, was sympathetic but firm. He wrote to Brigadier Weir, Commander 1ATF: M

I regret the necessity for adding to your load. You will be aware that from time to time various issues assume a distorted significance engendered by temporary publicity in Australia. The alleged usage of drugs by Aust forces in Vietnam is one of these at the present time and is engaging the attention of the Minister and Adjutant General. I would appreciate your support in providing the information sought.38

The Army need not have worried. The use of drugs other than alcohol within the Australian Army in Vietnam was low. Only 28 cases of the use or possession of marijuana were detected between February 1969 and January 1973.39 There were no cases of the use or possession of harder drugs. Some use of drugs was undetected and there were some instances where soldiers apparently using or in possession of drugs were not charged with an offence but were dealt with administratively. For example, within days of COMAFV insisting that all drug cases be reported, an 8RAR soldier visited the RMO and told him that he was addicted to marijuana and that he feared the addiction would continue after he returned to Australia. There was no evidence that




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the soldier had possessed or used marijuana except his own admission. He was not charged with an offence, but was counselled about his drug use and his attitude to service. It is possible that he had not used marijuana at all but was seeking a means of bringing his tour in Vietnam to an end and being returned to Australia. Most 8RAR soldiers thought that drug use was confined to only a few men in the battalion and then mostly for experimentation. 40 Some soldiers reported that experimentation increased as the battalion’s tour drew to a close. Many 8RAR soldiers were aware of the irony that alcohol was a far more significant problem than drug use. Rod Atkinson remembered that three soldiers in his section had used marijuana. Tom Elliott, a section commander in B Company recalled: Some drugs were used. As far as I know, only marijuana was smoked in B Company and only then by a very small group—maybe six men. Alcohol was a much bigger problem even though it was rationed. A member of my section seemed to be able to get bottles of spirits at any time. I had to keep checking his water bottles before all operations and patrols.

Another soldier commented: ‘I don’t think [drug use] was rife but I witnessed the odd marijuana being smoked. I have also witnessed large quantities of spirits consumed by senior ranks.’ Captain Bill Josephson, the battalion’s regimental medical officer (RMO), tried marijuana himself. He had a professional interest in understanding its effects on the user.41 But other 8RAR soldiers used it for the relief it provided following the stresses of operations. One such man was a survivor of the 1 Platoon mine incident on 28 February 1970 and had seen nearly all of his platoon either killed or wounded in the incident. Not surprisingly, it left him shaken and he was moved to the medical platoon where he continued to provide invaluable though less aggressively combat-oriented service driving and protecting the RMO on his rounds. He frequently used marijuana to control his nerves. Marijuana was easily and cheaply available in Vung Tau.42 It could be purchased from American servicemen or from Vietnamese and came loose in plastic bags or as ‘ready made’ cigarettes packed in the cartons of all the major US cigarette brands. Australian Military Police found that a common pattern in drug use by Australian soldiers was that they purchased marijuana cigarettes when they were drunk, in the company of Americans or Vietnamese and in Vung Tau. But despite its ready


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availability, its use was confined to a very small number of 8RAR men, perhaps no more than fifteen or twenty.

SLEEPING ON PICQUET AND WEAPONS-RELATED OFFENCES While most offences were related to periods of leave, some, like sleeping on picquet or weapons-related offences, reflected on professional military standards. Table 10 shows the number of charge reports for these two types of offences in each of four infantry battalions. Sleeping on picquet was a common offence, particularly on operations when soldiers were always tired and usually had two or more hours of sentry duty each night. But, in addition to sleeping, soldiers sometimes committed other offences relating to picquets: leaving their post without proper relief or, in Nui Dat where sentries were maintained throughout the day, reading on picquet. Weapons-related offences included accidental discharges, failure to maintain weapons in clean and serviceable condition, possession of illegal weapons, ‘losing by neglect’ one’s weapon or ammunition, and other similar offences. Of these, accidental discharges were the most serious since they could cause death or injury to fellow soldiers. But, in 8RAR at least, many cases of accidental discharge went uncharged. Most soldiers, both National Service and Regular, aspired to high professional standards. The embarrassment of having an accidental discharge was punishment enough and NCOs and officers recognised this. Brian Mills, a section commander in 5 Platoon, B Company, remembered a typical case. His second scout carried an M79 as well as his rifle. Disregarding Mills’s instructions, the second scout had loaded and cocked the M79 which he carried slung over his shoulder. Pushing through the vegetation, the M79 trigger was pulled and the shot whistled past Mills’s head. ‘I wouldn’t dob him in,’ said Mills, ‘but it was so stupid.’ He managed to convince his platoon sergeant that the noise had come from the bamboo they were pushing their way through.43 Table 10

Sleeping on picquet and offences relating to weapons: four infantry battalions

Offences Sleeping on picquet Offences relating to weapons

5RAR

7RAR

8RAR

9RAR

19 46

53 44

26 27

31 87




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Both sleeping on picquet and accidental discharges were regarded as serious offences. When formal charges were laid they attracted heavy penalties. Soldiers found guilty of an accidental discharge were usually awarded a $40 fine and 14 days confinement to barracks. Sleeping on picquet was a serious offence because it threatened the security of other soldiers. Those found guilty were usually awarded 21 days detention.

UNOFFICIAL DISCIPLINE Running parallel to the official disciplinary process of charges, ‘orderly rooms’, and courts martial, was an unofficial disciplinary process. However, unlike the formal process there are no records with which to gauge its extent or effectiveness, or to detect other patterns in its application. It is possible that most ‘offences’ were handled through this second process. One aspect of this subterranean disciplinary process was the dismissal of charges that might otherwise have been properly processed. A platoon commander remarked: I know in my company, when I joined it, you had to exercise authority fairly strictly. Drinking was a problem in the lines when I joined the company. Drinking was not supposed to be happening in the lines, so . . . my sergeant put his foot down and charged a Digger [and] I put my foot down and brought [the offence] to the attention of the company commander. You then found that for reasons best known to the company commander himself, it was not passed on up the line . . . What you felt was the rightful exercise of authority—to charge people for what were prevalent and dangerous offences—[was] being brushed aside by the company commander. So you were made to look a bit of a dill in front of your platoon . . . It was a PR game played by a lot of company commanders to make sure that their company always looked particularly good in the eyes of the battalion commander. You know, ‘No real problems here’.44

While a desire to conceal some offences may have contributed to the weakening of the disciplinary structure of the battalion, other informal approaches to discipline strengthened it. Among some NCOs, personal authority rather than the Manual of Military Law and the charge sheet were the sources of discipline. Corporal Joe Danyluk greatly admired his CSM, Ron Coleman, who urged him to deal physically


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with recalcitrant soldiers. Coleman gave Danyluk the advice: ‘If the guys give mouth to you, just say ‘‘Well, I’ll take you out the back’’ ’.45 In the event, Danyluk rarely needed to use the threat or actuality of a bashing to keep his soldiers in line. He recalled: M

I only ever charged one Digger in my whole career in the Army and that was at the Infantry Centre because I couldn’t punch him in the head. No, I never charged, [but] I didn’t have a drama. You got more out of a Digger by working with him than against him. They need to know how far they can push you . . . If you’re a good section commander those Diggers will stick by you. If you get an arsehole section commander that’s when you’ll have problems. They’ll buck up.46

In many cases physical violence wasn’t necessary. One soldier recalled that his own embarrassment had been sufficient for him to accept an unlawful punishment given by his section commander. He had fallen asleep on sentry duty during an operation and had been deeply ashamed that he had let his mates down. His section commander didn’t charge him, but insisted that when the section returned to Nui Dat he would cut the grass around the section’s tents. This he did without complaint. Behind much of this informal discipline was small group cohesion—loyalty to the company, platoon or section. There was a strong desire among soldiers steeped in the ethos of loyalty to their small group to handle any problems like offences, which arose from time to time, within the group. Disclosing an offence to ‘outsiders’ such as those at company, or worse, battalion headquarters seemed to be a betrayal of loyalty and mateship. Tony Flaherty, a sergeant in C Company, recalled a typical incident. A soldier came late to the company kitchen asking for a meal. Flaherty told him: ‘Well, you missed out. Sorry, pal.’ But the soldier, seeing a hamburger set aside for another soldier who had ordered it, took it and walked out. Flaherty called after him: ‘I’m going to charge you. I’ll be down in a minute.’ When I got down there he had an SLR pointed at me. And so the brain was racing for a while, and I just walked around talking to him until I came past him . . . and I just grabbed hold of the barrel and pushed it away. And I put him in gaol. I think he got about 14 days gaol. But he only went for disobeying a lawful command. I didn’t say anything about the other [much more serious] incident. Most of us didn’t want to say anything anyway—to protect our company.47




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In terms that suggest his company saw itself as almost independent from battalion headquarters, Flaherty recalled his company commander’s approach to discipline: Dave Rankine handled virtually every single thing that happened in the company. He handled it in the company. His word was absolute law and that was the good thing about it. He expected us to do exactly what he said. And by the same token, he protected everybody else too.48

CONCLUSION Like almost every other aspect of the lives of combat soldiers, the formal and informal processes of discipline were refracted through the glass of cohesion. Companies, platoons and sections strove to keep disciplinary proceedings as far as possible within the confines of their own group. Offences were frequently dealt with informally as a means of keeping the issue from ‘outsiders’, including those at company or battalion level. When formal charges were laid they were most often dealt with at company rather than battalion level. Many offences, particularly those committed while men were on leave in Vung Tau, were at least partly the result of soldiers conforming to norms established by their sections or sub-section groups. Although most soldiers did not realise it at the time, the way in which a battalion managed its disciplinary processes also helped to differentiate that battalion from others. As we saw in earlier chapters, the forces of cohesion at company, platoon and section level were sufficiently strong to encourage the concealment of friendly fire incidents and failures of moral leadership. It is not surprising, then, that cohesion also had its effect on discipline. Most private soldiers in Vietnam were young men 20 to 21 years old, with very little experience of the world. For many, joining the Army was their first significant break from parental guidance. Those who served in infantry battalions, in particular, faced threats to their physical and moral survival, bore high responsibility for the lives of their mates and saw death and wounding at close hand. While dealing with these issues many also coped with their first experience with sex and alcohol. The wonder is that most did so well. Despite the pressures on these young men, discipline was never a significant problem.


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12

Tour’s end Tour’s end

Many 8RAR soldiers had returned to Australia during the battalion’s tour. Mostly these men were National Servicemen who had completed their two years obligation and were returning to Australia for discharge from the Army. A great many experienced the homecoming that has become part of the folklore of the Vietnam War: late night arrival, issue of leave passes and the soldier out on the streets of an Australian capital city within 24 hours of coming out of operations. One 8RAR soldier recalled his return. In his last few days of operations he had often imagined his first night in Sydney. It would be a memorable night of drinking, womanising and carousing at Kings Cross. But it turned out differently. He and two mates who had returned on the same flight got a taxi to Kings Cross but couldn’t face the lights and the crowds. They bought some beer and returned to their hotel room where they quietly drank, talked about Vietnam and waited for their morning flights to their home states. The attractions of Kings Cross had succumbed to the bonds of mateship. Most 8RAR soldiers returned to Australia aboard HMAS Sydney, arriving at Hamilton Wharf, Brisbane, on 12 November 1970. For them the more relaxed twelve-day journey home at least provided opportunities to make sense of the experience they had been through. Still, after the battalion’s ‘welcome home’ parade through the streets of Brisbane, the once cohesive companies dispersed on leave. Paul 255




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Going home. 8RAR soldiers board a US Army Chinook helicopter for the trip to the deck of HMAS Sydney and the start of their long journey back to Australia. The soldiers’ relief and excitement at leaving Vietnam would later be replaced by complex emotional responses to their combat service. (AWM negative number FAI/70/0769/VN. Photographer unknown)

Simson, a Nasho, recalled the particular problems faced by men from small country towns, where there were few other Vietnam veterans to provide a supporting and understanding community. When we returned from Vietnam on the ‘Sydney’, we marched through Brisbane back to Enoggera barracks . . . [and we were] given airline tickets home to Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth or wherever and that was it. Bye bye boys! All good and well for the Regulars who came back to the unit two months later to pick up where they left off. Myself and many of my National Service friends just went back to our little bush towns again to try to fit back in as best we could. Nobody to relate or talk about our problems to. That was it in a nutshell. Not being able to talk to anybody that could know how I felt or what it was like.


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Looking back on their year of combat, 8RAR men expressed both positive and negative feelings about the experience. For many it had been a defining moment in their lives. Brian Partridge felt that ‘Vietnam has been the event in my life. Not many days go by without me thinking of some event or person from that experience’. John Reed agreed: ‘Vietnam service was probably the most important achievement in my life.’ For Rod Lamb it was ‘a great part of my life that I’m glad to have been able to experience’. Some men felt that the test of Vietnam had better prepared them for later life. Carl Piazza wrote: ‘I believe this experience changed my views on many things. I always tell myself I have jumped the hardest obstacle in life. The rest are a piece of cake.’ And David Ireland remarked: ‘I believe overall that I have benefited from my service in Vietnam, not only from the experience itself but from [its] enabling me to become a more compassionate, understanding and stable person.’ For others any positive benefits of Vietnam service were balanced by a sense of loss—loss of innocence, youth, mates and opportunities. Michael Wykes said: ‘Looking back on the Vietnam War now, after all these years, it was a stupid war. Totally meaningless. I won’t say I enjoyed Vietnam, but the experience will always live in my life.’ Sergeant Ron West was more positive: Even though tinged with sadness at the loss of some good mates and soldiers, I would not have wanted to miss it. I feel as though I proved to myself, as a Regular infantryman, that I was capable of performing to the best of my ability the tasks that I had been trained to perform. [For] some results I would have preferred a better outcome. [Nevertheless] today I am proud to be a Vietnam veteran.

John Rozentals, a Nasho, commented: ‘In retrospect it was the best thing that ever happened in my life as a 20-year-old. I do not believe in wars as a solution to anything, but that seems the way life goes . . . Life is a bitch at times, but not always.’ On the other hand, Trevor Sperling, also a Nasho, felt that the war had been a thorough waste of effort: ‘I think the whole experience was a stupid waste of life on both sides and we certainly achieved nothing.’ Another Nasho, Carl Vassarelli, believed that despite beginning his tour as a reluctant soldier, his experience in Vietnam had been worthwhile: ‘Even though I wasn’t too happy about going to Vietnam, I’ve got to admit it was a pretty good experience.’ Whether or not it was ‘enjoyable’, to many men their service in Vietnam had helped to define and add meaning to their lives. Some




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men expressed a nostalgia for their time on operations. This should not be surprising. For the infantryman, operations narrowed the focus of life to the essentials of survival. Only when the competing issues of peacetime, such as politics, religion, sex, love and the pursuit of wealth or advancement, are excluded does the infantry section truly function as a team. When these factors intrude during peacetime the section functions more as a collection of individuals with their own paths through life. But during combat operations the infantry section is almost a spiritual entity, thanks to the singularity of its focus. Men sometimes look back with nostalgia to their lives in infantry sections when they were young and when the single focus of their lives made life seem clear and simple. Bob Lubcke echoed this sentiment when he remarked: ‘8RAR done well in Vietnam and all the guys who served with her can be very proud indeed. I know I am. If I had my life over again I would do exactly the same again. It was an honour to be a soldier in the Australian Army.’ And, like many, Noel Herbert grieved for the lost life of the infantryman: ‘I miss being out bush; the smell of a tin of food cooking on a small flame, the smell of a freshly cleaned and oiled rifle . . . Once you have been to war and seen combat, when you return to being a civilian, something is missing from your life forever after.’

LIFE AFTER DEATH It is not my intention to examine in any depth issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder or the effects of Agent Orange on the men of 8RAR. Those topics deserve a book in themselves, and indeed have one.1 Nevertheless, some 8RAR soldiers did report the effects of PTSD after their return to Australia. Some, like Corporal Brian King, reported a temporary disorientation lasting ‘a couple of years’ followed by a return to normal. Others reported loss of ‘nerves’ or nervous breakdowns, an inability to settle down, flashbacks, nighmares, alcoholism, rashes, ulcers, aggression and short temper. Many remain concerned about the high incidence of suicide among those they served with. Though as a team they had faced the enemy and defeated him in combat in Vietnam, many seemed to lose confidence in themselves once out of the Army. The reasons for this are complex and cannot be dealt with here, but rejection and guilt and the pressures of dealing with what they had experienced in Vietnam were important causes. A Nasho, Private Allan Handley, who had fought with such courage


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and determination in the night ambush outside Dat Do (described in Chapter 6) reflected on the impact of his Vietnam experience: There is not one day goes by that I don’t give a thought to Vietnam and the guys who got killed. I try to forget, but I can’t. First, I felt guilty about leaving early. I’ve never gotten over that. Second, not being accepted when we returned home. I felt guilty about killing people. It will last forever.

Two factors helped to reverse the lack of confidence felt by many 8RAR veterans: the 1987 Welcome Home parade, and the love and support of their wives. By 1987 the public attitude to Vietnam veterans had shifted. A majority of Australians had come to realise what Vietnam veterans had experienced and that many were still suffering the psychological effects of their military service. Guilt lingers where actions remain unvalidated. The Welcome Home parade showed veterans that Australians saw their efforts in Vietnam as valid. The outpouring of public support was beneficial to veterans still struggling with their memories. The second factor was more subtle but no less important. Not a few 8RAR veterans were ‘rescued’ by the women they loved. I was touched by the number who, without any prompting, made it clear in questionnaires and letters that the love of their wives had seen them through the worst years of psychological reaction to the war. Colin Fletcher temporarily lost control of his life after returning from Vietnam and, he reported, ‘gave my wife hell, but she stuck with me. She’s a beauty’. Corporal Barry Canton worried about the effect of his moodiness on his wife. ‘It upsets and hurts my wife’, he said, ‘a woman I love more than anything in the world.’ Alan Grinter felt emotionally deadened except for the love of his wife ‘who has stood by me through thick and thin’ and for his children. Wives seem to share with veterans the vicissitudes of life in the way mates once shared them in combat.2

MILITARY ACHIEVEMENT Good tactics cannot compensate for poor strategy. Although the Australian Army was better prepared for counter-revolutionary warfare than were its American allies, the Australian higher command had no influence with the US Army in shaping strategy. And the flawed US strategy would ensure that the war was lost.3 Nevertheless, the




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Australian Army demonstrated considerable tactical success in the context of operations in Phuoc Tuy Province. The men of 8RAR and their CO, Lieutenant Colonel Keith O’Neill, made two important contributions to the war in Phuoc Tuy during the battalion’s tour. First, they located the enemy’s D445 Battalion in its base area in the Long Hai hills during operation Hammersley and drove it out. This was a significant achievement in the Australian Army’s terms because it caused the enemy significant losses of men, materiel and base structure. But more importantly it was also a significant achievement in the enemy’s terms, because it cut D445 Battalion off from its source of political and logistic support in the villages of Long Dien and Dat Do. Unlike many other battles in which Australians had fought in Vietnam, the 8RAR attack on D445 Battalion was an unequivocal political defeat for the enemy. Second, but of equal importance, O’Neill’s switch of 8RAR to ‘close ambushing’ operations around the villages caused 1ATF to refocus Australian operations in the province on pacification rather than attempting to locate and bring to battle widely dispersed enemy units hidden deep in the jungle. These ‘operations in depth’, as they are sometimes called, were necessary to keep larger enemy units off balance. But until 8RAR began ‘close ambushing’ around the villages with Operation Phoi Hop in April 1970, 1ATF had invested too much effort in them and insufficient in providing security to the villages. The war was about the political control of the villages, yet their security had been left to the RF and PF, the poorest quality forces in the province. O’Neill and 8RAR helped to change this and in the process dealt significant military, logistic and political losses to the enemy. In combination, these two achievements contributed to a temporary improvement in the security of the citizens of Phuoc Tuy Province. Interestingly, most 8RAR soldiers reflecting on their service in Vietnam thought that improving the security of the villagers was the aim of Australian operations. Although the Army’s role in the province was never clearly defined, most 8RAR soldiers did not see it in terms of keeping the United States engaged in Asia or, even more narrowly, as simply killing the enemy. Private Bob Lubke, a Regular, thought the Australian involvement had been worthwhile and that the aim of the Australian Army had been ‘to keep [the province] clear of Vietcong and to help the locals live a normal life as much as possible’. Corporal John Norris felt the aim had been to secure peace for the inhabitants of the province along with freedom to live their lives as they chose.


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Lance Corporal Bob Holdsworth considered the aim was ‘to ensure a better life for those who didn’t want to live under communist rule’, although he added that some Vietnamese didn’t seem to know what they wanted. To Corporal Tom Elliott: The Australian Army was trying to keep the VC from harassing the villagers so they would be free to choose their own way of life. It was not worth it, as events have proved. I think politics sold the Vietnamese people [and] the United States and Australian soldiers out. I would have preferred it if we had been actually beaten by the North Vietnamese.

Many other 8RAR soldiers were critical of ‘politicians’ for their role in committing Australian forces to Vietnam in the first place, interfering with operations or lacking the will to do what was necessary to win the war. However, a common theme which runs through most 8RAR soldiers’ assessment of the role of the Army in Vietnam is that they saw the killing of the enemy as a means to an end, not an end in itself. Other soldiers felt that the Army had no idea of what it was attempting to achieve in Phuoc Tuy Province. Private Ken Irons, a Nasho, was contemptuous of the Army for its apparent lack of a role in Vietnam. He believed it was trying to achieve ‘bloody nothing’ and added that he thought it ‘a bloody waste of good men’. Asked what he thought the Army was trying to achieve, another Nasho, Private Desmond Lock, could only say wistfully: ‘I wish I knew.’ This probably reflected in part a failure of the Australian government and the Army to communicate their aims to the soldiers, and in part an understandable post-war disillusionment that overwhelmed many soldiers. The war was lost, therefore it had been a waste of effort. During their year in Vietnam, combat had been the dominant issue in the minds of the men of 8RAR. They had begun their year as neophytes and ended it as seasoned practitioners, confident in themselves and their mates. The Army had done what it could to assist their survival. It equipped them with the tools of combat, organised them into flexible and balanced units, developed appropriate theoretical constructs of combat, thoroughly trained them and familiarised them with the weapons and tactics of the enemy. It provided a structure of leadership to encourage the correct response—the urge to fight—and a structure of discipline to discourage the incorrect response—the urge to flight. It socialised its soldiers into habits of cohesion and mateship which provided the individual with the emotional support to confront combat. It built traditions and customs which developed esprit de corps




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and established a mythical, idealised model of combat behaviour—the Anzac legend—that soldiers were expected to follow. All of this vast array of activity and effort was focused on bringing the infantryman to combat properly equipped and physically, intellectually and emotionally prepared to fight rather than flee. No less important was what the soldier himself bought to combat: his faith in the Army, his leaders and his mates; initiative and determination, and a well of spiritual strength and courage. Infantrymen performed their awful duty and judged their performance in it, and that of those around them, against their sense of what was right. Since their lives were potentially at stake, they expected high standards of professional skill, dedication to duty and clear leadership from their mates and from those in ‘higher command’ or with responsibility for the political direction of the war. They sometimes felt betrayed when their expectations were not met. Like few other events in life, the infantryman’s year in Vietnam left a lifelong legacy. There remain the psychological and emotional scars which, for many, still demand attention. There is also the echo of that fierce cohesion that helped these men face and overcome the fears of combat. Every 28 February—‘Long Hai Day’, the anniversary of the mine incident in the hills bearing that name—8RAR men gather to remember their mates killed in Vietnam, their own lives as infantrymen, and the fear and excitement of combat. They have much to remember and to be proud of. Their greatest pride should be reserved for themselves. As Corporal Lindsay Craig said, ‘There were no better men.’


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Notes Notes

Numerous uncited quotes appear in this book. They are drawn from interviews and responses to questionnaires. The citations have been omitted to save space and because the origin of the quote is self evident. All documentary sources have been cited in full.

INTRODUCTION 1 Gary McKay, Vietnam Fragments: An Oral History of Australians at War, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992. 2 Gary McKay, Delta Four: Australian Riflemen in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1996. 3 Deborah Challinor, Grey Ghosts: New Zealand Vietnam Vets Talk About Their War, Hodder Moa Beckett, Auckland, 1998. 4 See for example Michael O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars: With the Seventh Battalion in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1995, p. xxi. However, O’Brien’s work is one of the better unit histories to emerge from the Vietnam War. 5 The Army very kindly allowed me access to ‘closed period’ records, held by the Australian War Memorial, for this study.

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1

GETTING READY: 8RAR’S GENESIS AND MAKEUP

1 Following the initial deployment of 30 advisers, the AATTV had gradually expanded to 80 members by the end of 1964. 2 Reserve service could be completed in the Australian Regular Army Reserve or the Citizen Military Forces (three years), or in the Australian Regular Army Emergency Reserve (four years). 3 Colonel J.O. Langtry, DCM, ‘8RAR—The early days of the Grey Eight’, in Duty First, April 1972, p. 27. 4 Interview, Colonel J.O. Langtry, DCM. 5 Correspondence, Adrian Clunies-Ross. 6 AWM98, R722–1–26; HQ AFV, change over 9RAR, relieved by 8RAR. Manning plan, 30 October 1968. The battalion received drafts of 74 men from each of the 13th and 14th intakes, and 148 men from the 15th intake. There were four National Service intakes each year. 7 Major A. Clunies-Ross (ed.), The Grey Eight in Vietnam: The History of Eighth Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment, November 1969—November 1970, Eighth Battalion, RAR, Brisbane, 1971, p. 13. 8 Interview, Keith O’Neill. 9 Interview, Graham Walker. 10 ibid. 11 Interview, Keith O’Neill. 12 Those with significant prior Vietnam service were Major Adrian CluniesRoss (3 August 1962 to 22 June 1963), Major Phil Pritchard (29 May 1965 to 5 June 1966), Major Vin Murphy (10 January 1966 to 1 November 1966) and Major Mal Peck (29 May 1965 to 1 June 1966). 13 A questionnaire comprising 84 questions was distributed to 600 men who had served in 8RAR during its tour of Vietnam. 138 completed questionnaires were returned: 18 from officers, 14 from senior NCOs, 24 from junior NCOs and 82 from private soldiers. 76 of the completed questionnaires were from National Servicemen and 23 were from men who had reinforced the battalion during its tour. Unless otherwise stated, wherever I have cited an opinion or quoted an individual I have drawn the opinion or quote from the relevant questionnaire response. 14 In a questionnaire, ex-members of 8RAR were asked: ‘If you had a preference for a political party before going to Vietnam, what was it?’ 76 answered Liberal/Country Party compared with 23 who answered ALP and 2 who answered DLP. 37 expressed no preference. 15 Asked to describe their level of religious commitment on the eve of going to Vietnam, 109 respondents used terms such as ‘non-existent’, ‘none’ or ‘not important’. 21 used terms such as ‘important or very important’, ‘vital’ or ‘strong’. 8 did not answer the question. 16 Michael van Gelder and Michael J. Eley, ‘Anzacs, Chockos, and Diggers:


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17

18 19

20

21

2

A Portrait of the Australian Enlisted Man’ in David R. Segal and H. Wallace Sinaiko (eds), Life in the Rank and File: Enlisted Men and Women in the Armed Forces of the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, Pergamon-Brasseys, Washington, 1986, p. 222. Analysis of questionnaires showed that of the 138 responses, 54 were Church of England, 32 Roman Catholic and 14 Presbyterian. The next largest group was 7 who claimed no religion. The remainder of the sample was distributed over a further eight Christian denominations. None held a faith other than Christianity. I have used the terms the questionnaire respondents used to describe their religious affiliation. Hence I have used ‘Church of England’ rather than ‘Anglican’. Interview, Joe Danyluk. It should be noted that in the upheaval following World War II in Europe there were many displaced persons and that therefore place of birth does not necessarily signify nationality. It is instructive to compare the nominal roll of 8RAR with the nominal roll of Australians who served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1956. Though it is a subjective assessment, there are far more German, Italian, Yugoslavian, French and Polish names among the 1163 men who served in 8RAR than among the 16 000 who served in Korea. See Lieutenant Colonel Neil C. Smith, Home by Christmas: The Australian Army in Korea 1950–56, Mostly Unsung, Melbourne, 1990. Letter from Soldier Career Management Agency to the author, dated 2 October 1997.

A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT . . .

1 D.M. Horner, Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, 1986, p. 20. 2 Ian McNeill, To Long Tan: The Australian Army and the Vietnam War 1950–1966, Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, 1993, p. 467. 3 Frank Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987, p. 62. 4 I am indebted to Graham Walker for this insight. Walker served in 8RAR as Adjutant and later OC, A Company. He is the author of numerous articles on the Vietnam War and has been a researcher for the VVAA. 5 Horner, Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, p. 20. 6 ibid. p. 38. 7 Alan Stretton, Soldier in a Storm: An Autobiography, Collins, Sydney, 1978, p. 208. See also Horner, Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, p. 40.




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8 Garth Pratten and Glyn Harper (eds), Still the Same: Reflections on Active Service from Bardia to Baidoa, Army Doctrine Centre, Sydney, 1996, p. 119. 9 ‘Fragging’ was the murdering of fellow soldiers. The term was coined by US soldiers. It derives from the use of the M26 fragmentation grenade as a favoured means of such killing, although the murder of a fellow soldier by means other than fragmentation grenade also came to be called fragging. 10 Excellent descriptions of the geography, history and social structure of Phuoc Tuy Province are to be found in Ian McNeill, To Long Tan, and in John Murphy, Harvest of Fear: A History of Australia’s Vietnam War, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993. 11 The people of the outlying centres of Long Tan and Long Phuoc had been relocated by Australian forces in collaboration with GVN forces shortly after the Australian Task Force base was established at Nui Dat in 1966. 12 Robert Thompson, No Exit From Vietnam, Chatto & Windus, London, 1969, p. 32. From 1957 to 1961 Thompson was Deputy Secretary and Secretary for Defence, Federation of Malaya, and from 1961 to 1965 he was the head of the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam. After 1965 he frequently visited South Vietnam as an advisor to the US government. He was the author of Defeating Communist Insurgency and was widely regarded as an expert in insurgency and counter-insurgency warfare. 13 ibid. p. 33. 14 See, for example, Thompson, No Exit From Vietnam, p. 59, in which Thompson argues that US estimates put the flow of supplies into the south at sometimes no more than fifteen or twenty tons per day. Andrew Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1986, p. 188, asserts that a CIA study showed that the flow of supplies to South Vietnam through Sihanoukville in 1966 amounted to a mere three tons per day for a force of 285 000 guerillas and that ‘the vast majority of VC/NVA supplies continued to be generated from within South Vietnam’. 15 L.P. Holliday and R.M. Gurfield, Viet Cong Logistics, RAND, Los Angeles, 1968, p. 19. 16 See Brigadier S.C. Graham, DSO, OBE, MC, ‘Observations on Operations in Vietnam, Australian Army Journal, no. 235, December 1968, pp. 5–32. Graham wrote the article in collaboration with 17 officers, many of them commanders of major units, who had served under his command in Vietnam. 17 Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam, Oxford University Press, New York, 1978, p. 41. 18 ibid. p. 84.


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19 The Division in Battle, Pamphlet No. 11, Counter Revolutionary Warfare, Military Board, 1965, p. 25. 20 ibid. p. 26. 21 ibid. p. 35. The pamphlet notes that ‘under the best conditions the national government would be in firm control, and a relatively secure area as a base for our operations would be available. Alternatively, the insurgent influence could predominate to such a degree that control by the national government would have been disrupted’. However, the situation in South Vietnam was considerably worse than either of these alternatives. In many places the government of the Republic of Vietnam was attempting to assert its authority for the first time and in competition with an already established NLF presence. 22 AWM unaccessioned archive document, draft papers on a summary of Australian operational experience in Vietnam presented to the 1971 CGS Exercise by Heads of Corps, Chapter 8, Task Force Operations, p. 1. (Copy of selected parts in the author’s possession.) 23 The Division in Battle, Pamphlet No. 11, Counter Revolutionary Warfare, p. 36. The pamphlet states that ‘the [CRW] campaign . . . must be seen as a joint political–military operation with the closest co-operation between the civil power, the police and the armed forces—both indigenous and external’. (Emphasis added.) 24 ibid. p. 27. 25 See indexes of the Australian Army Journal: A Periodical Review of Military Literature, 1953 to 1965. The index reflects a strong interest in Southeast Asia throughout the period. Initially, six or seven articles on that subject appeared each year, rising to about fourteen from 1959. Two to six articles on communism appeared each year. Revolutionary war (or counterrevolutionary warfare, people’s war or guerilla warfare) was addressed in two or three articles per year at the start of the period, rising to twelve or thirteen articles per year from 1962. In 1962 the journal published a condensed version of Che Guevara’s La Guerra de Guirrillas, reprinted from the US Army magazine. In 1963 and 1964 articles by members of the AATTV began to appear. Reprints of articles from US military journals on aspects of the Vietnam war also increased in number. 26 Lewy, America in Vietnam, pp. 12–13. Lewy cites these arguments being put by the then Senator John F. Kennedy in 1956. 27 Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, p. 6. 28 ibid. p. 5. 29 ibid. p. 166. 30 One US study showed that for every 100 enemy KIA there were 35 who died of their wounds or became permanently incapacitated. See Lewy, America in Vietnam, p. 79. 31 ibid. 32 Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, p. 188. See also Lewy, America in




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33 34 35 36

37

38

39 40 41 42 43

44

Vietnam, pp. 82–3. Lewy cites advice to Defense Secretary McNamara in 1967 that the VC initiated contact in 90 per cent of company-size fire fights and that over 80 per cent of these began with a well-organised enemy attack. Lewy, America in Vietnam, p. 84. For example, by the US State Department. See Lewy, America in Vietnam, p. 115. Lewy, America in Vietnam, pp. 136–7. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, p. 257, and Lewy, America in Vietnam, pp. 138–9. Krepinevich argues: ‘In the two years following the Tet Offensive, Army main force units continued to operate much as they always had. While there were cases of units breaking down into smaller elements and providing population security over an extended period of time, they were the exception.’ ibid. p. 257. According to Krepinevich, Robert Komer, who was Abrams’ deputy at the time, said that there had been no change in strategy whatsoever under Abrams. That the change of command had brought with it a change of strategy was a myth created by the media. Komer claimed that strategy did not change until the US withdrawal had begun in 1971. A copy of the directive, signed on 20 January 1969, is available in Ian McNeill, To Long Tan, pp. 467–8. The directive also appears in Horner, Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, Appendix A, p. 79. Horner notes that ‘the directive was altered only slightly as the war progressed and formed the chief guidance for respective Australian commanders’. Horner, Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, p. 28. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, p. 203. See Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, pp. 203–5, and Lewy, America in Vietnam, p. 81. ibid. p. 255. Lieutenant General Julian J. Ewell and Major General Ira A. Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge: The Use of Analysis to Reinforce Military Judgement, Vietnam Studies Series, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C., 1974, pp. 227–8. Ewell uses the term ‘soft’ in a pejorative or slighting sense to describe both the Malayan Emergency and the CRW technique of separating the enemy from the population. By contrast, he saw Vietnam as a ‘real war’. However, it can be argued that CRW doctrine as developed during the Malayan Emergency called for levels of military skill and subtlety far in advance of those required for waging conventional war. As well, note that Ewell provides no criteria for ‘success’. MACV, ‘One War: MACV Command Overview 1968–72’, quoted in Lewy, America in Vietnam, p. 137. Note also that the Combined Cam-


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269 Notes

45 46

47

48 49 50 51

52

53

paign Plan 1970 stated that ‘the mission of RVNAF and FWMAF is to assure the security of the Vietnamese people by defeating the VC/NVA forces and by participating in the government Pacification and Development Plan, especially in the program to neutralise the VCI, throughout the Republic of Vietnam’. However, in allocating forces to tasks the plan noted that the regular forces of the FWMAF and RVNAF were to conduct operations primarily to locate and neutralise the enemy main force, base areas and logistic systems, deter enemy incursions into the RVN and prevent enemy incursions into secure areas. The territorial forces consisting of the RF, PF, the National Police and the People’s Self Defence Forces were to conduct operations to ‘participate in the government Pacification and Development Program’ and to ‘prevent enemy infiltration, attacks, and harassment of villages, hamlets, cities [etc.]’. See AWM181, HQ 1ATF non-registry item, Combined Campaign Plan 1970, pp. 2–7. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, p. 222. AWM98, 69/M/7, HQ AFV DO correspondence, Major General R.A. Hay, MBE. From 1 March 69 to 7 April 70. Letter, Major General R.A. Hay, COMAFV, to Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Daly, CGS, 16 April 1969. This letter is also quoted in Horner, Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, p. 40. AWM98, R569/1/196, HQ AFV, Operations—General. II FFV Operational Directives. Memorandum, HQ II FFV, of 16 April 1969. BC, HC and PW are those killed by body count, rallied as Hoi Chanh or taken prisoner of war respectively. ibid. ibid. ibid. HQ II FFV memorandum, 6 May 1969. AWM98, R723/1/37, HQ AFV. Reports—General II FFV Moneval [Monthly Evaluation]. See signals HQ 1ATF to HQ II FFV dated 2 April 1969, 2 May 1969 and 4 June 1969 respectively. Ewell believed that the ‘exchange ratio’ was a good indicator of the professional skill of a unit. He developed a matrix of ‘exchange ratios’ where the higher the ratio the more nearly the unit approached perfection. The pinnacle was to achieve an exchange ratio of 50:1 or higher. This he equated with a ‘highly skilled US unit’. A ratio of 6:1 he equated with the historical South Vietnamese Army average. See Ewell and Hunt, Sharpening the Combat Edge, p. 212. AWM98, 69/M/7, HQ AFV DO correspondence. Major General R.A. Hay, MBE. From 1 March 69 to 7 April 70. Letter, Major General S.C. Graham, DCGS, to Major General R.A. Hay, COMAFV, 28 May 1969. Graham had been Commander 1ATF from January to October 1967. AWM98, 69/M/7, HQ AFV DO correspondence. Major General R.A. Hay, MBE. From 1 March 69 to 7 April 70. Letter, Major General R.A. Hay,




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54 55

56

57 58 59 60 61

3

COMAFV, to HE R.L. Harry, Australian Ambassador, Saigon, 4 October 1969. 9th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, Vietnam Tour of Duty 1968–1969, On Active Service, 9RAR Association, Brisbane, 1992, p. 67. Operation Neppabunna consisted of two phases of which phase one was the pacification phase. Phase one took place between 15 August and 6 September. 9RAR casualties to mines and booby traps on Operation Reynella were four KIA and 12 WIA. Operation Mundingburra cost 6RAR/NZ nine KIA or DOW and 42 WIA, and 1 Field Squadron, RAE, a further two KIA and 12 WIA. 6RAR/NZ recorded that during the operation 417 mines or booby traps of various sorts were activated or detected. On Operation Esso, 5RAR took seven KIA and 43 WIA. See 9th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, Vietnam Tour of Duty 1968–1969, On Active Service, 9RAR Association, Brisbane, 1992; Major L.D. Johnson (ed.), The History of 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, Volume 2, 1967 to 1970, 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, n.d.; and Captain M.R. Battle (ed.), The Year of the Tigers: The Second Tour of 5th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment in South Vietnam, 1969–70, Printcraft Press, Sydney, 1970. Battle (ed.), The Year of the Tigers, p. 59. Johnson (ed.), The History of 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, p. 69. Quoted in Johnson (ed.), The History of 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, p. 71. Horner, Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, p. 41. Frank Frost cites similar reasons. See Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, p. 122. In April 1970, shortly before the end of his term as Commanding General II FFV, Ewell visited Lieutenant Colonel Ron Grey, CO of 7RAR, at his headquarters at FSB Anne. Michael O’Brien, the historian of 7RAR’s tour in Vietnam noted that Ewell still ‘seemed very critical of Australian style operations . . . He emphasised the importance of statistics and body count. The atmosphere [of the meeting] was cold and one of overbearing disagreement’. See Michael O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars, pp. 166–7.

8RAR OPERATIONS: FINDING THE WAY TO PACIFICATION

1 Correspondence, Adrian Clunies-Ross. 2 Brigadier Weir quoted in Frank Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987, p. 131. It is noteworthy that in the last sentence Weir uses the rhetoric of pacification operations to support reconnaissance-in-force operations. 3 9th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, Vietnam Tour of Duty, 1968–1969, On Active Service, 9RAR Association, Brisbane, 1992, pp. 91–2.


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271 Notes

4 AWM98, HQ AFV unregistered file, correspondence CGS to COMAFV, from 1 March 1970. Signal, Army Canberra to Austforce Vietnam, CGS937 of 260750Z Feb 70 and signal, Austforce Vietnam to Army Canberra, Comd 03775 of 030225Z Mar 70. 5 O’Neill visited Vietnam from 9 to 24 April 1969. His visit included meetings with COMAFV and briefings by various members of the staff of HQ AFV but, not surprisingly, the bulk of his time was spent with the Task Force at Nui Dat. See AWM 98, R875–269–20, Visits, Particular, LTCOL K.J. O’Neill—CO (Designate) 8RAR. 6 Favoured VC mines were M16 mines (lifted from the Australian minefield), Chicom claymore (directional) mines and unexploded bombs and artillery shells rigged for command detonation. Booby traps were often rigged using grenades or unexploded ordnance. 7 Interview, Keith O’Neill. 8 Andrew Ross, ‘Analysis of Contacts Sustained by the Australian Task Force, Vietnam, 1967–1971’, unpublished manuscript. After each contact with the enemy, Australian sub-unit commanders were required to complete an after-action report. Ross used a Field Operational Research Section (FORS) data base of contact reports created during the war, purified the data and added many other reports not already on the FORS data base to create a new data base called the Army Training and Analysis (ADFA) Combat Data Base. Using this data base he was able to analyse the 3325 contacts involving Australian and enemy forces in South Vietnam between 1967 and the withdrawal of the Australian Task Force in 1971. Ross analysed the data according to the type of Australian unit (i.e. infantry, SAS or armour) and according to the task performed by the unit (i.e. ambush, bunker attack, patrolling [or encounter battle] and ‘security’). ‘Security’ encompasses such tasks as clearing patrols, TAOR patrols, defence of FSPBs and the like. Loss rate is the number of casualties divided by the number of contacts in which those casualties occurred. Contact reports were lodged by radio within minutes of the completion of contacts. Later, formal reports were typed up using the information contained in the radio report, and sketch maps were added. In some cases the quality of the data in the contact reports may be suspect, but the reports remain the best available documentary evidence of the particulars of contacts. Most commanders completed them honestly and to the best of their ability. In particular, results of contacts were, by and large, accurately recorded. They included only those casualties for which there was physical evidence on the battlefield (i.e. bodies and blood trails). In several 8RAR contacts subsequent intelligence revealed that a great many more enemy had been killed or wounded than had been found on the battlefield. Therefore, if anything, the contact reports tend to underestimate the enemy casualty figures.




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9 The figures for contacts, Australian casualties and VC/NVA casualties were derived from 8RAR Combat After Action Reports. The VC/NVA figures are those recorded on the contact report. ‘Casualties’ includes killed, wounded and prisoners of war. 10 The main body departed from Brisbane aboard HMAS Sydney on 17 November 1969. The advance party, consisting mainly of key appointments within the battalion, departed from Eagle Farm airport at Brisbane on 18 November. See Major A. Clunies-Ross (ed.), The Grey Eight in Vietnam: The History of Eighth Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment November 1969–November 1970, Eighth Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment, Brisbane, n.d., p. 19. 11 AWM 95, 8RAR, 7/8 December 1969. 8RAR Ops 2 dated 8 December 1969 (8RAR Nui Dat, Operation Order 1 dated 082300H December 1969). 12 For a complete description of 8RAR operations see Clunies-Ross (ed.), The Grey Eight in Vietnam. 13 AWM95, 7/8/March 70. Op Instruction 6/70 (Operation Hammersley), HQ 1ATF, 9 Feb 70. 14 AWM103, R890–5–8B, HQ 1ATF, Arclight strikes requested by 1ATF. Signal, 1 ATF to CG II FFV, Long Binh, Attention G2, dated 121915z January 1970. 15 ibid. Signal, 1ATF to CG IIFFV, Long Binh, Attention G2, dated 101400z February 1970. Two adjoining target boxes were nominated. Target box number 1 was almost identical to the target box selected for the B52 strike on the early morning of 21 February. 16 AWM103, R569–2–243; 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Hammersley, Annex B, Intelligence Summary. 17 ibid. The main reason for the rejection was that bomb damage assessment was to be made by an RF patrol and by observation from a helicopter. This was deemed insufficient. 18 ibid. Signal, CG IIFFV to US MACV Command Centre and 1ATF, 191308z February 1970. 19 First light strikes were favoured by MACV as they permitted immediate daylight bomb damage assessment. 20 Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, p. 200. Krepinevich claims that the VC developed an early warning system against B52 strikes. This is supported by an interview with a former VCI man, Trinh Duc, who operated in the Long Kanh and Phuoc Tuy provinces in 1969–70. Trinh Duc, himself a survivor of four B52 strikes, said that COSVN was able to give one hour’s notice of strikes. However, such a system was hardly needed in this case. For Trinh Duc’s comments, see David Chanoff and Doan Van Toai, Portrait of the Enemy, I.B. Tauris, London, 1986, p. 109. 21 Graham Walker, ‘Like a card house in the wind’, in Kenneth Maddock (ed.), Memories of Vietnam, Random House, Sydney, 1991, p. 183. 22 Horner, Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, p. 41. 23 AWM103, R569–2–243, HQ 1ATF, Particular Operations—Operation


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273 Notes

24 25 26 27 28

29

30 31 32 33 34

35

36 37

38 39 40

Hammersley. 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Hammersley 1, 11 April 1970. Interview, Keith O’Neill. Ron West, diary entries, 19 and 20 February 1970. The B52 strike was not cancelled but was delayed till first light on 21 February. Correspondence, Adrian Clunies-Ross. ibid. Some destroyed bunkers were located, but these may have been destroyed by tank fire during the C Company assault. AWM103, R569–2–243; 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Hammersley. Annex A, Sequence of Events. The first mine caused seven KIA and 13 WIA. The second mine caused a further one KIA and three WIA. AWM95, 7/8/March 70, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report—Operation Hamilton, 30 April 1970. 8RAR had in support one troop of A Squadron, 1 Armoured Regiment, one troop of B Squadron, 3 Cavalry Regiment, and elements of one troop of 1 Field Squadron. It had under operational control, for part of the operation, one company of 7RAR and one company of 6RAR/NZ. It worked in cooperation with an RF company from Xuyen Moc District. Robert Thompson, No Exit From Vietnam, Chatto & Windus, London, 1969, p. 172. Interview, Keith O’Neill. Brigadier S.P. Weir quoted by Frank Frost. See Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, p. 141. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, p. 220. Lewy, America in Vietnam, p. 182. See also Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, p. 221. Krepinevich notes that the ‘RFs and PFs accounted for 12–30 percent of all VC/NVA combat deaths (depending on the year), yet . . . consumed only 2–4 percent of the total annual cost of the war’. AWM103, R569–2–243, HQ 1ATF, Particular Operations—Operation Hammersley 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Hammersley 1, 11 April 1970. Interview, Keith O’Neill. Henderson describes the tactical settings which led him towards pacification operations in Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, p. 135, but note that 8RAR had conducted two pacification operations before Henderson’s arrival as Commander 1ATF. On Operation Hamilton, 8RAR contacted approximately 19 enemy during the 21-day operation. The largest single group numbered six. Interview, Keith O’Neill. AWM103, R569–2–252; HQ 1ATF, Particular Operations—Operation Phoi Hop. Annex B to 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Phoi Hop.




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41 AWM95, 7/8/June 1970. 8RAR Commander’s Diary 1 June 1970– 30 June 1970. 42 AWM OW84/5, n.n., 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report— Operation Nudgee dated 30 July 1970. See Sequence of Events and Contact After Action Reports. Despite the small number of bodies found, the abandoned weapons (and, to a lesser extent, the other abandoned equipment) indicate the effectiveness of the ambush. Like the Australians, the VC usually fought to recover the bodies of their casualties and their weapons. 43 ibid. 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Nudgee, dated 30 July 1970. 44 AWM95, 7/8/June 1970. 8RAR Commander’s Diary 1 June 1970– 30 June 1970. 45 Clunies-Ross, The Grey Eight in Vietnam, p. 84. (Emphasis added.) 46 AWM95, 7/8/August, September 1970. 8RAR Commander’s Diary, 1 August 1970–31 August 1970, 1 September 1970—30 September 1970. 47 Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, pp. 136–7. 48 AWM181, HQ 1ATF non-registry item, Enemy supplies/caches/locations. Report on VC/NVA food supplies, 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, February 1970. 49 AWM181, HQ 1ATF Commander’s Diary, July 1970. Appendix 2 to Annex A to 1ATF Intsum number 184/70 dated 3 July 1970. 50 ibid. Annex A to 1ATF Intsum number 203/70 dated 22 July 1970. 51 AWM181, HQ 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–31 August 1970. Appendix III to Annex A to 1ATF Intsum number 234/70 dated 22 August 1970. 52 ibid. Annex A to 1ATF Intsum number 239/70 dated 27 August 1970. 53 AWM 181, HQ 1ATF Commander’s Diary, July 1970. Appendix 2 to Annex A to 1ATF Intsum number 191/70 dated 10 July 1970. 54 ibid. Annex A to 1ATF Intsum number 205/70 dated 24 July 1970. 55 AWM, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Decade and Cung Chung 2 and 3. Annex B, Intelligence summary. 56 Frank Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, p. 138. Frost cites a 2RAR report of November 1970 as saying that VC/NVA units were ‘preoccupied with resupply rather than undertaking any offensive action’. 57 AWM, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Decade and Cung Chung 2 and 3. Annex B, Intelligence summary. 58 See Tran Quang Toai, ‘The Destiny of the Australian Army in Long Dat’, The Journal of Military History, Hanoi, June 1991, pp. 24–7, 43 (Translated by Dr Greg Lockhart); Phan Ngoc Danh and Tran Quang Toai, Dong Nai: 30 Years War of Liberation 1945–1975, Executive Committee of the Dong Nai Province Branch of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Dong Nai Publishing House, 1986. (Translated for the AWM Official History Unit by Dien Nguyen); Phan Ngoc Danh and Tran Quang Toai, History of the Long Dat Revolutionary Struggle, Executive


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275 Notes

59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67

4

Committee of the Long Dat District Branch of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Dong Nai Publishing House, 1986. (Translated for the AWM Official History Unit by Dien Nguyen.) ibid. ibid. Tran Quang Toai, ‘The Destiny of the Australian Army in Long Dat’, The Journal of Military History, Hanoi, 1991, pp. 24–7, 43. Translated by Dr Greg Lockhart. ibid. AWM181, HQ 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–31 August 1970. Annex B to 1ATF Intsum 220/70 dated 8 August 1970. ibid. Annex A to 1ATF Intsum 238/70 dated 26 August 1970. AWM181, HQ 1ATF Commander’s Diary, July 1970. Annex A to 1ATF Intsum 184/70 dated 3 July 1970. Tran Quang Toai, ‘The Destiny of the Australian Army in Long Dat’, The Journal of Military History, Hanoi, 1991, pp. 24–7, 43. Ironically, the decision not to replace 8RAR had been announced by Prime Minister John Gorton on 22 April 1970, just as 8RAR was assessing the success of Operation Phoi Hop which had ended on 19 April.

THE LIFE OF THE INFANTRYMAN

1 Robin Gerster and Jan Bassett, Seizures of Youth: The Sixties and Australia, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1991, p. 16. 2 ibid. p. 21. 3 The Chieu Hoi program was an amnesty program administered by the South Vietnamese government to encourage enemy soldiers to come over to the government side. It received wide publicity and was the subject of psychological warfare operations including leaflet drops over enemycontrolled areas. 4 Interview, Mal Peck. 5 See, for example, Neil Roberts, A Walk in the Jungle, The Sunnyland Press, Red Cliffs, n.d., pp. 23, 26. 6 ibid. p. 42. 7 Interview, Trevor Taylor. 8 Numerous questionnaire respondents attest to weighing their packs at the battalion LZ and finding that they averaged 50 to 54 kilos. 9 Diary, John Norris. 10 Interview, John Norris. 11 Two types of Australian rations were in use: the Combat Ration Pack, 1 Man which weighed 1.35 kilograms and provided three meals and the Australian Patrol Ration Pack which weighed 0.9 kilograms and also




275

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12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31

32 33 34 35 36

provided three meals. By contrast, US ‘C’ rations came packed as individual meals, each one weighing 2.7 kilograms. Interview, Tony Flaherty. John Norris, diary entry, 21 February 1970. Letter, John Norris to ‘Darling Thea and Pita’, dated 10 January 1970. John Norris, diary entries, 6 April and 8 April 1970. AWM103, R723–1–47K, HQ 1ATF Reports. Administrative inspection reports 8RAR. Inspection report of 27 June 70 conducted by D Comd on 27 June and submitted by DAQMG. AWM116, R637–3–2(286), HQ 1ALSG, personal effects—214287 Sergeant A.W. Ahearn, 8RAR. AWM116, R637–3–2(250), HQ 1ALSG, personal effects—312756 Private V.N. Wagstaff, 8RAR. Ron West, diary entry, 15 February 1970. Letter, John Norris to ‘Darling Thea and Pita’, 5 January 1970. Roberts, A Walk in the Jungle, p. 65. Ron West, diary entry, 21 December 1969. Letter, Roy McCabe to parents, 13 June 1970. This figure is derived from an analysis of company roll books. AWM Personal Records, PR 87/157, Papers of Lieutenant Colonel N.C. Smith, AM, OTU and 8RAR. Letter to parents, 22 December 1969. AWM116, R637–3–2(284), HQ 1ALSG, personal effects—1734847 Lance Corporal P.R. Goody, 8RAR. AWM116, R637–3–2(272), HQ 1ALSG, personal effects—3795605 Private D. Poulson, 8RAR. Interview, Laurie Evans. Interview, Trevor Seivers. AWM98, 69/M/7; HQ AFV DO correspondence. Major General R.A. Hay, MBE. From 1 March 1969 to 7 April 1970. Letter, Major General Graham, DCGS, to Major General R.A. Hay, COMAFV, 3 July 1969. ibid. Letter, Major General Graham, DCGS, to Major General Hay, COMAFV, 5 September 1969. Graham had earlier been briefed about the PR photographs problem with a minute which recommended ‘That DPR be instructed to expunge from the records all photographs and negatives which are likely to be detrimental to the service if released’. It is not known whether this recommendation was implemented. ibid. Letter, Hay to Graham, 17 October 1969. Interview, Laurie Evans. AWM116, R637–3–2(283), HQ 1ALSG, personal effects—45104 Private P. Earle, 8RAR. AWM116, R637–3–2(285), HQ 1ALSG, personal effects—5716533 Private J.L. McQuat, 8RAR. John Norris, diary entry, 21 March 1970.


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277 Notes

5

PATTERNS IN COMBAT

1 AWM98, R445–4–19, Honours and Awards—Commonwealth—Policy and General. Letter, Brigadier O.D. Jackson, Commander, Australian Army Force Vietnam, to Colonel T.W. Young, Military Board, Army Headquarters, Canberra, dated 2 April 1966. 2 Mark Johnston, At the Front Line: Experiences of Australian Soldiers in World War II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, p. 100. 3 Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, p. 188. See also Lewy, America in Vietnam, pp. 82–3, and James R. Ebert, A Life in a Year: The American Infantryman in Vietnam 1965–1972, Presidio Press, Novato, 1993, p. 186. Lewy notes that as early as 1967 US studies had revealed that the enemy, within limits, was able to control the number, size and intensity of combat engagements. 4 Robert H. Scales, Jr., Firepower in Limited War, revised edition, Presidio Press, Novato, 1995, pp. 121, 138–9. Scales describes the battle of Khe Sanh as one such deployment intended to lure the enemy into a firepower trap. 5 Andrew Ross, ‘Analysis of Contacts Sustained by the Australian Task Force, Vietnam, 1967–1971’, unpublished manuscript, n.d., p. 12. 6 ibid. 7 Details of 8RAR contacts were found in AWM 95, 7/8/January 1970, part 2, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Reports, Operations Atherton and Keperra; AWM 95, 7/8/February 1970, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operations Hammersley and Hamilton; AWM 95, 7/8/April—May 1970, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Phoi Hop; AWM 95, 7/8/June 1970, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Nudgee; AWM 95, 7/8/July 1970, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Decade, Cung Chung 2 and Cung Chung 3. 8 Of the nine contacts initiated by the enemy, five resulted in no casualties to either side. In the remaining four the 8RAR casualties were one KIA and 13 WIA, against the enemy’s eight KIA and one WIA. 9 Most were killed or wounded by enemy mines. Mine warfare is discussed in Chapter 7. 10 These figures have been derived from a study of Combat After Action Reports which include reference to ‘possible’ casualties. It also does not take into account intelligence assessments of the number of casualties resulting from several major 8RAR contacts. 11 An analysis of 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Reports shows that 8RAR had 134 recorded contacts. Of those, 79 record the duration of the fire fight—the time during which small arms fire was exchanged. Of the 79 contacts for which a time is recorded, 60 show that the fire fight lasted




277

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12 13

14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25

26

ten minutes or less and 49 show that it lasted five minutes or less. In 32 contacts the duration of the fire fight was two minutes or less. Richard Holmes, Firing Line, Penguin, London, 1987, pp. 244–54. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Anti- Personnel Weapons, London, 1978, p. 91. The figure was derived from the Office of Operations Research at Johns Hopkins University. However, it should be noted that this figure may include consumption of ammunition by all sources including destruction of ammunition stocks by enemy action. Therefore the figure may not truly reflect the quality of the US infantryman’s shooting. Ebert, A Life in a Year, p. 155. The data supporting Table 3 were derived from 7RAR and 8RAR Combat After Action Reports. The ‘cartridges expended’ figure does not include fragmentation weapons. The ‘casualties inflicted’ figure includes only those casualties reported in a Combat After Action Report. The VC, like the Australians, often fought to recover casualties and remove them from the scene of combat. AWM95, 7/8/Jan 70 Part 2, Combat After Action Report, Operation Atherton. AWM95, 7/8/Mar 70, Combat After Action Report, Operation Hammersley. AWM95, 7/8/Mar 70, Combat After Action Report, Operation Hamilton. Major C.F. Thomson, ‘A Company Commander’s Impressions’, Australian Infantry, vol. xvii, no. 2, May 1971, pp. 29–35. J.M. Church, DSO, Second to None: 2RAR as the ANZAC Battalion in Vietnam 1970–71, Army Doctrine Centre, Sydney, 1995, pp. 87–8. Lieutenant Colonel R.F. Stuart, ‘How to Hit the Barn Door’, Army Journal, no. 313, June 1975, p. 15. Australian Army Training Information Bulletin Number 25: Rifle Shooting in the Australian Army (interim), January 1974. O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars, p. 138. 8RAR R798–1–8 dated 14 August 1969; ‘Lessons Learnt in South Vietnam’ (precis prepared by 7RAR), Enclosure 4: Infantry weapons (in the possession of the author); emphasis added. AWM100, R981–52–4, HQ Australian Army Advisory Group Vietnam, Stores and equipment captured, captured enemy weapons 8RAR. Monthly summary and inventory of captured weapons for December 1969 and January and February 1970. In February 1970, 8RAR captured 42 weapons, mainly shotguns, bolt action rifles and some World War II vintage automatic weapons such as Thompson sub-machine guns and Browning automatic rifles which were recovered from a cache in the Long Hai hills. Interestingly, most were manufactured in the US. ibid. In a series of contacts in January 1970, 8RAR captured eight weapons. There were no cached weapons captured that month. All of the eight weapons were AK47s manufactured in China. However, M1


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278

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279 Notes

27

28 29

30

31

32 33 34

35

Garand semi-automatic rifles and M1 and M2 carbines, all of US manufacture, continued to be captured from clashes with local force guerillas. Asked in a questionnaire, ‘What was the enemy weapon you feared most?’, 127 ex-8RAR soldiers gave a reply. Respondents were not restricted to a single choice and some set out a hierarchy of feared weapons. Weapons not listed in the table, such as mortars or grenades, received negligible response. One respondent listed Jane Fonda, well known as an anti-war activist, as his most feared enemy weapon. Panji pits were small pits lined with sharpened bamboo or steel spikes intended to skewer the feet of unlucky soldiers. They could produce wounds requiring hospitalisation, but the wounds were rarely life threatening. Causes of casualties among 8RAR soldiers are derived from an analysis of Combat After Action Reports on 8RAR’s operations. The receiver was that part of the weapon in which other parts such as the barrel, operating rod, bolt, butt and pistol grip assembly were housed. AWM103, item R980–300–16; HQ 1ATF Stores and Equipment— 8RAR. Inspection reports, HQ 1ATF dated 30 May 1970, and 15 September 1970. In May 1970 after five months of operations, 75 of 8RAR’s total of 94 GPMG M60s were inspected and 45 were found to be unserviceable due to cracked receivers. See R. Blake Stevens and Edward C. Ezell, The Black Rifle: M16 Retrospective, Modern US Military Small Arms Series, vol. III, Collector Grade, Toronto, 1987. AWM103, item R980–300–16; HQ 1ATF Stores and Equipment— 8RAR. Inspection Reports, HQ 1ATF dated 30 May 1970 and 15 September 1970. As a comparison of the robustness of the M16 and the SLR, it is noteworthy that in two technical inspections of 8RAR weapons, 901 SLRs were inspected of which 29 were unfit for use, whereas 519 M16s were inspected with 80 being found unfit for use. The figures in Table 6 are derived from an analysis of 8RAR Combat After Action Reports. Brigadier S.C. Graham, DSO, OBE, MC, ‘Observations on Operations in Vietnam’, Army Journal, no. 235, December 1968, pp. 5–32. 8RAR R798–1–8 dated 14 August 1969; ‘Lessons Learnt in South Vietnam’ (precis prepared by 7RAR), Enclosure 4: Infantry weapons. The 7RAR document also called for the SLR to be shortened to make it easier to use in the jungle. AWM103, item R980–300–16; HQ 1ATF Stores and Equipment— 8RAR. Technical inspections of 8RAR weapons revealed that soldiers were making modifications to their SLRs, sometimes with the encouragement of their company commanders. The modifications included removal of sling swivels (which caught in the jungle), the camouflage painting of rifles and, in two cases, the conversion of rifles to fully




279

152 × 230


36 37 38 39 40

6

automatic fire. Seven rifles were found in which soldiers had ‘carved’ the woodwork. See also AWM103, item R271–1–35; HQ 1ATF Discipline—General. AAF A4’s, 8RAR. This file shows that two 8RAR soldiers were charged with having placed a matchstick under the sear of their SLR. The Automatic Rifle, or L2A1, was a heavy barrelled version of the SLR equipped with a change lever that permitted fully automatic fire. It was also equipped with 30 round magazines. The Automatic Rifle was issued to rear echelon troops instead of the M60 machine gun. Interview, Joe Danyluk. The dust cover was removed in the hope of reducing overheating during fully automatic fire. Ross, ‘Analysis of Contacts’, p. 17. 8RAR Combat After Action Reports. Ian McNeill, To Long Tan, p. 321. ibid. p. 354.

THREE FIRE FIGHTS: LIFE ON THE TWO-WAY RANGE

1 I have chosen a small encounter contact, a bunker system attack and a night ambush as representative of typical contacts. These contacts were also chosen because they are particularly well supported with evidence drawn from several participants. 2 Asked in a questionnaire to recall their most vividly remembered contact with the enemy, many respondents described their first contact even though they had participated in larger battles later in their tour. 3 Interview, John Norris. 4 Brian O’Toole, Richard Marshall, David Grayson, Ralph Schureck, Matthew Dobson, Margot French, Belinda Pulvertaft, Lenore Meldrum, James Bolton and Julienne Vennard, ‘The Australian Vietnam Veterans Health Study: I. Study Design and Response Bias; II. Self-Reported Health of Veterans Compared with the Australian Population; III. Psychological Health of Australian Vietnam Veterans, International Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 307–18, 319–30, 331–40. The research was based on interviews of 641 Vietnam veterans drawn from all corps. 5 Norris’s recollection is supported by AWM95, 7/8/Jan 70, part 2, Enclosure 21 to 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Atherton. According to the contact report the contact lasted 60 seconds. 6 John Norris, diary entry, 18 December 1969. 7 ibid. 8 Interview, John Norris. 9 John Norris, diary entry, 18 December 1969. 10 Interview, John Norris. One of the reasons for Norris’s concern about the soldier making noise was that just before nightfall the platoon had


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281 Notes

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26

27

28 29 30 31

32

33 34

had a second contact in which an enemy had escaped. The platoon was near an unoccupied bunker system and was ambushing a well-used track. Norris feared that the enemy who had earlier escaped might lead others in an attack on the platoon. Interview, Charlie Lockhart, Bruce Neil and Bill Watson. ibid. Interview, Peter Healy. Healy was later evacuated to Australia. He was hospitalised for about 12 months as a result of this incident. AWM95, 7/8/January 70, Part 2. Enclosure 35 to 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Atherton. Ron West, diary entry, 18 February 1970. ibid. Interview, Ron West. Ron West, diary entry, 18 February 1970. ibid. Interview, Allan Handley. Interview, Trevor Seivers. Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, Atheneum, New York, 1994, p. 79. The Horseshoe feature was a 1ATF defensive position to the north of Dat Do. The position was built on an extinct volcano which provided a horseshoe-shaped ridge of high ground dominating Dat Do and its surrounds. AWM95, 7/8/June 70, Enclosure 14 to 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Nudgee. ibid. Darr, Juckel and Handley each received the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Gold Star, Pollard received the Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star and Shrapnel received the Cross of Gallantry with Bronze Star. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 1996, p. 119. Of 8RAR’s 134 recorded contacts, all but 12 were commanded by lieutenants, sergeants or corporals. Grossman, On Killing, p. 119. ibid. pp. 187–9. There were no cases of desertion in 8RAR. Absence without leave was common following rest and recreation visits to Vung Tau, and is discussed in Chapter 11. David A. Grossman, ‘Defeating the Enemy’s Will: The Psychological Foundations of Maneuver Warfare’, in Maneuver Warfare: An Anthology, edited by Richard D. Hooker, Jr., Presidio Press, Novato, 1993, p. 155. Grossman, On Killing, p. 35. Interview, Allan Handley.




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35 ibid. 36 Interview, Chad Sherrin.

7

THE WAITING KILLERS

1 Tran Quang Toai, ‘The Destiny of the Australian Army in Long Dat’, The Journal of Military History, no. 6, Hanoi, 1991, pp. 24–7, p. 43. 2 ibid. p. 25. 3 ibid. p. 25. 4 Horner, Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, p. 29. 5 AWM98, item 69/M/7. HQ AFV DO correspondence. Major General R.A. Hay MBE. From 1 Mar 69 to 7 Apr 70. Letter Major General R.A. Hay, COMAFV, to Brig C.M.I Pearson, Comd 1ATF, 18 Jul 69. 6 Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, p. 201. 7 ibid. 8 AWM OW84/5, n.n., 8/9 RAR Intelligence file, Operation Cung Chung II and III. Annex C to 1Tp, 1 Fd Sqn, after operations report dated 16 Sep 70. Operation Nathan and Cung Chung II Engineer Intelligence Report. 9 ibid. This technique was confirmed by various interrogation reports. See, for example, AWM181, item HQ 1ATF Commanders Diary, July 1970. Annex A (interrogation report) to 1ATF Intsum no. 197/70 dated 16 Jul 70. 10 Major Rex Rowe, ‘Sapper Support’, Australian Infantry, May 1971, vol. xvii, no. 2, p. 9. 11 AWM103, 569–2–243, Ops 1ATF—Operation Hammersley. 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Hammersley 1, 11 April 1970. 12 An Engineer splinter team consisted of two engineers who performed specialist Engineer tasks for the infantry sub-unit they accompanied. On this operation those tasks included mine-sweeping and visual mine detection as well as the destruction of any mines located. 13 AWM103, item R569–2–243, HQ 1ATF, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Hammersley, 10 Feb–3 March 70. Statement by Major V.N. Murphy, OC A Company 8RAR, dated 2 March 1970. 14 ibid. Statement by 55668 Lance Corporal R.E. D’Arcy, 2 March 1970. 15 Rowe, ‘Sapper Support’, Australian Infantry, May 1971, vol. xvii, no. 2, p. 10. 16 Privates Pesonen and Munday, both killed in the mine blast, had reinforced A Company on 15 January and 12 February respectively. 17 Interview, Peter Salkowski. 18 ibid. 19 ibid. Salkowski recalls that Weir said something to the effect of: ‘Never mind, I had nine men left out of a company in the Second World War.’ 20 Interview, John Dwyer.


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283 Notes

21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29

30

31

32 33 34

35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43

44

Interview, Vin Murphy. Interview, Keith O’Neill. ibid. Interview, Adrian Clunies-Ross. Interview, Graham Walker. AWM98, R569–1–194, HQ AFV, Operations—General. Unusual Incident—Operation Hammersley, 8RAR—Long Hais. Signal HQAFV to Defence Canberra and Army Canberra, 28 Feb 70. ibid. ibid. Signal, Army Canberra to Austforce Vietnam, 28 Feb 70, from CGS exclusive for General Hay. The Australian, 23 February 1967. However, elsewhere it is stated that nine died and 20 were wounded. See David Horner, The Gunners: A History of Australian Artillery, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1995, p. 482. AWM98, R569–1–194, HQ AFV Operations—General Unusual Incident—Operation Hammersley—8RAR—Long Hais. Signal, Austforce Vietnam to Defence Canberra and Army Canberra, 281445z February 1970. AWM98, HQ AFV unregistered file, correspondence CGS to COMAFV from 1 March 1970. Signal Austforce Vietnam to Army Canberra, dated 010200z March 1970. Sydney Morning Herald, 16 February 1970. The Australian, editorial, 4 December 1969. Courier Mail and The Australian, 2 March 1970. See also the Sydney Morning Herald, which published the news of the casualties as its major front-page story. The Australian, editorial, 3 March 1970. The Australian, 3 March 1970. AWM98, HQ AFV unregistered file, correspondence CGS to COMAFV from 1 March 1970. Signal Austforce Vietnam to Army Canberra, dated 010200z March 1970. Horner, Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, p. 43. Horner paraphrases a letter he received from Fraser. ibid. Major General C.A.E. Fraser, COMAFV, quoted in D.M. Horner, Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, p. 43. AWM95, 7/8/Mar 70, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report—Operation Hamilton, 30 April 1970. Interview, Joe Danyluk. AWM95, 7/8/Mar 70, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report. 1 Field Squadron After Action Report, Annex E to 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report. Jeff Sculley quoted in Stuart Rintoul, Ashes of Vietnam: Australian Voices, Mandarin, Melbourne, 1989, pp. 133–4. The shell dressings each soldier




283

152 × 230


58

carried for this sort of emergency were of World War II design and while they might have performed adequately on a simple gunshot wound they were totally inadequate for the major wounds and multiple shrapnel wounds produced by M16 and other mines. Interview, Brian Mills. Jeff Sculley quoted in Rintoul, Ashes of Vietnam, pp. 133–4. Diary, Ron West, 5, 6 March. Interview, Laurie Evans. Interview, Joe Danyluk. Diary, Ron West, 15 March 1970. Major Adrian Clunies-Ross (ed.), The Grey Eight in Vietnam: The History of Eighth Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, November 1969— November 1970, p. 76. Diary, Ron West, 20 April 1970. Men of 5 Platoon searched at least four APCs before they found a working fire extinguisher. Interview, Bill Josephson. Diary, Ron West, 20 April 1970. Interview, Allan Handley. Brendan O’Keefe, Medicine at War: Medical Aspects of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asia 1950–1972, Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, Sydney, 1994, p. 199. Diary, Ron West.

8

FRIENDLY FIRE

45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57

1 ‘Friendly fire’ is now also known as fratricide (the killing of one’s brother) or amicicide (the killing of one’s friend). During the Vietnam War the term ‘friendly fire’ was commonly used. 2 Charles F. Hawkins, ‘Friendly Fire: Facts, Myths and Misperceptions’, Proceedings, United States Naval Institute, June 1994, p. 55. 3 Colonel Kenneth K. Steinweg, ‘Dealing Realistically with Fratricide’, Parameters, US Army War College Quarterly, vol. XXV, no. 1, Spring 1995, p. 18. 4 ibid. p. 11. 5 Australian Army Operational Research Group, Report 1/71: Accidental Casualty Study—South Vietnam, by Major J.H. Adams, February 1971, p. 21. 6 ibid. 7 This information is derived from an examination of various AWM accident investigation files involving 8RAR. US experience appears to be markedly different from this pattern. Whereas Australian accidents and friendly fire incidents tended to fall into these two periods, US studies of friendly fire incidents have found that, as the soldiers’ combat


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285 Notes

8

9 10 11

12

13

14 15

16 17 18 19

20

21

22

experience increased, fratricide rates also increased. See Charles F. Hawkins, ‘Friendly Fire’. Australian Army Operational Research Group, Report 1/71: Accidental Casualty Study—South Vietnam, by Major J.H. Adams, February 1971, pp. 22–4. The low level of motor vehicle accidents was probably due to the low speed limits applied to Australian Army vehicles. On sealed roads, vehicles were not to exceed 30 mph (50 km/h). ibid. p. 24. ibid. AWM103, R478–1–227; HQ 1ATF, Investigations—general. Unusual incident 1 ARU and 161 (NZ) Field Battery, 21 July 70. There was no forward observer with the patrol. Several of the ARU soldiers who experienced this incident later joined 8RAR as reinforcements. For a good description of the role of the forward air controller, see Chris Coulthard-Clark, Hit My Smoke!: Targeting the Enemy in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1997, and The RAAF in Vietnam: Australian Air Involvement in the Vietnam War 1962–1975, Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, Sydney, 1995. AWM103, R478–1–47; HQ 1ATF, Investigations—general. Incident A Company 6RAR (LFT). Statement by Wing Commander Hibben, CO 9 Squadron RAAF. Courier Mail, 25 February 1970. See also the Sydney Morning Herald, 25 February 1970, ‘Aust fire wounds ten of own soldiers’. AWM98, R723–1–219; HQ AFV, Reports, General Investigation into accidental shooting 8RAR, Long Hais, 18 Feb 70. A handwritten note to file lists each of the wounded soldiers and describes their injuries and whether they were evacuated to Australia or returned to duty. Interview, Adrian Lombardo. Courier Mail, 25 February 1970. Courier Mail, 26 February 1970. AWM98, R723–1–219; HQ AFV, Reports General. Investigation into Accidental Shooting 8RAR, Long Hais—18 February 70. Immediate confidential signal, Army Canberra to Austforce Vietnam, 242345z February 1970. AWM95, 7/8/MAR 70, Annex A to 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Hammersley, serial 36. Each of the contacts was over 1000 metres from the site of the contact with 11 Platoon. The friendly fire incident with 11 Platoon is recorded as occurring precisely at 1557 hours. The B Company contact that most closely approximates that time is one at 1615 hours; that is, 18 minutes later. AWM98, R723–1–219, HQ AFV, Reports General Investigation in Accidental Shooting 8RAR, Long Hais—18 Feb 70. Signal HQ 1ATF to Austforce Vietnam, 250845z February 1970. Interview, Mal Peck.




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23 Interviews, Adrian Lombardo and Joe Danyluk. Joe Danyluk of B Company participated in the firing. He attempted to fire an M72 rocket into the 11 Platoon position but luckily it misfired. Neither believed the enemy was involved in the incident. 24 Sydney Morning Herald, 27 February 1970. 25 Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 1970, vol. H of R 66, p. 414. 26 AWM103, R478–1–189: HQ 1ATF Investigations—General. Battle casualty killed in action, accident, 45104 Pte Earle, 8RAR. Statement by 1734820 Pte D.P. Brennan. 27 Both Timothy and Mulready had also been wounded in the 18 February friendly fire incident. 28 AWM98, R723–270–16: HQ 1ATF, Reports on Military Personnel 1970—Wounding Pte Goody, death Pte Earle—8RAR—1 May 70. Minute DADLS to DAAG, dated 10 June 70. 29 ibid. Letter, Major General C.A.E. Fraser, COMAFV, to AHQ, dated 15 June 1970. 30 AWM98, R723–270–46; HQ AFV, Reports on Military Personnel 1970—Accidental wounding CPL Coe, PTE Smith, LCPL Bond— 8RAR. Annex B, statement by 1122 LTCOL K.J. O’Neill, Commanding Officer, 8RAR. 31 ibid. Annex G, statement by 2789945 T/CPL B.K. Coe, MM. 32 AWM98, n.n. Deputy Assistant Director of Legal Services, AFV—unregistered items: Investigating Officers Report, Accidental Wounding 8RAR/B Sqn 3 Cav Regt, 2 July 1970. Investigating officers report dated 16 Jul 70. Each of the men survived their injuries. 33 AWM103, R478–1–219; HQ 1ATF Investigations—General. Accidental wounding in action, 218586 Pte B.G. Smith, 8RAR. Statement by 311106 Major P.H.B. Pritchard. 34 ibid. Investigating Officer’s Report, 10 July 1970. 35 ibid. Statement by Lieutenant B.E. Best. 36 AWM98, n.n. Deputy Assistant Director of Legal Services, AFV—unregistered items: Investigating Officers Report, Accidental Wounding 8RAR/B Sqn 3 Cav Regt, 2 July 1970. Investigating Officers Report dated 16 Jul 70. Colonel Simkin had been selected as the investigating officer because a number of senior officers, including Lieutenant Colonel O’Neill, were involved in the incident. 37 ibid. 38 Interview, Keith O’Neill. 39 ibid. 40 AWM98, HQ AFV unregistered file, correspondence CGS to COMAFV from 1 Mar 70. Signal, CGS to COMAFV, 080150z July 1970. 41 ibid. Signal COMAFV to CGS, 080900z July 1970. 42 ibid. Signal CGS to COMAFV, 091120z July 1970.


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43 Australian Army Operational Research Group, AAORG Report 1/71; Accidental casualty study, South Vietnam, dated February 1971. Annex A, edited signal, COMAFV to DCGS, 2 August 1970. 44 ibid. p. 30. 45 However, it should be noted that the study did not address accidental casualties emerging in the longer term as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder or of ‘Agent Orange’. These issues emerged later and did not fall within the operational focus of the FORS study. 46 The M79 high explosive round became armed, and would therefore explode, only after travelling ten metres. 47 By the nature of these cases, there is no official documentary evidence to support this claim. However, each case is well known within the community of 8RAR veterans and is referred to in numerous questionnaire responses, interviews and letters, including those by members of B Company headquarters. 48 This information is drawn from several sources including questionnaire responses, interviews, letters and official files. Some of those who contributed information about this incident preferred to remain anonymous. The details of the incident were checked against AWM95, 7/8/Feb 70, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Keperra, Enclosure 6. This document confirms the main details of the event. 49 Interview, Laurie Evans. 50 This information is drawn from several sources including the questionnaire response of Peter Lauder, other questionnaire responses from persons who wanted to remain anonymous and an anonymous letter. The details of the incident were checked against AWM95, 7/8/Jun 70, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Nudgee, Enclosure 8. This document confirmed the main details of the event but made no reference to the killing of one soldier by friendly fire.

9

THE ENEMY WITHIN

1 First descriptions of the My Lai massacre appeared in the Australian on 21 November 1969. 2 John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, Faber, London, 1986, pp. 33–5. 3 The Australian, 4 December 1969. The Australian had been the only major paper to unequivocally denounce the government’s decision to deploy Australian forces to Vietnam and throughout the war had published articles critical of Australia’s involvement. On 5 December 1969 the Australian reasserted its demand that Australian forces be withdrawn and




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7

8

9

10

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a few days later a number of letters to the editor were published which supported the Australian’s editorial line. The Australian, 24 January 1970. Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim, Four Hours in My Lai, Viking, New York, 1992, p. 117. Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1979, pp. 538–9. Morant, Handcock and four other officers were court-martialed for the murder of 12 Boer prisoners. Some 9000 RAAF airmen flew in RAF Bomber Command operations many of which involved saturation bombing attacks on German cities. See for example Don Charlwood, No Moon Tonight, Penguin Books, Ringwood, 1987, p. v. In a questionnaire, 8RAR soldiers were asked: ‘What do you think the Australian Army was trying to achieve in Vietnam?’ Overwhelmingly, respondents stated that the Army was trying to provide security to the people of Phuoc Tuy against VC aggression. However, a small number reflected a more cynical view. One man responded: ‘I wish I knew.’ Australians occasionally used ‘gook’ and ‘slope’, but the terms ‘nog’ and ‘noggies’ were in greater favour. ‘Nog’ is thought to derive from the Victorian English ‘nig nog’, meaning a simpleton or black person. Australian soldiers frequently used the shortened ‘nog’ but occasionally referred to Vietnamese as ‘Nigel nog’ and sometimes just as ‘Nigel’. The use of the prefix ‘Nigel’ is interesting not just because it reflects the lost ‘nig’ but also because it significantly softens the dehumanising effects of ‘nog’, seeming to give the enemy or other Vietnamese not only a name but a first name. Another term in use among Australians to describe the enemy, as distinct from Vietnamese generally, was ‘Charlie’. This was a contraction of ‘Victor Charlie’, the radio user’s rendering of VC, the abbreviation of Viet Cong. The term ‘Charlie’ also gave the enemy an informal first name. Despite extensive interviews, a widely distributed questionnaire and a thorough search of records including available diaries and letters, I was unable to find evidence of the deliberate targeting of civilians by any members of 8RAR. Frank Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987, p. 121. Terry Burstall, Vietnam: The Australian Dilemma, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1993, pp. 99–100. The evidence includes, for example, Terry Burstall, The Soldiers’ Story: The Battle of Xa Long Tan Vietnam, 18 August 1966, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1986, p. 134, which mentions the killing of enemy wounded at the battle of Long Tan. There is also an apparent reference to the killing of an escaping prisoner at p. 141. See also the Courier Mail, 17 June 1994, which describes an incident in 7RAR in 1970 in which a soldier was ordered to shoot a VC as his platoon


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14

15

16 17 18 19

20 21

22 23 24

25

advanced past the wounded enemy. The incident is also described in Federal Court Judgment no. 112/94, Sydney, 11 February 1994. See also the Herald Sun, the Australian and the Canberra Times of 17 March 1995, in which the killing of prisoners is discussed following publication of New Zealand veteran Rod Eder’s novel, Deep Jay. Finally, there is a discussion of the killing of wounded VC at the battle of Long Tan in Ian McNeill, To Long Tan, pp. 344–5. In a questionnaire, ex-members of 8RAR were asked: ‘. . . whether you witnessed anything you consider to have been an atrocity.’ Of 138 responses, 122 said they had not witnessed anything that could be described as an atrocity, one gave an equivocal answer, and only fifteen said they had witnessed incidents that they considered could be described as atrocities. However, of these fifteen, most of the incidents described were ‘mercy killings’, mutilation of bodies after death or inadequate burials. Some respondents, like Peter Buxton, answered the question with an emphatic ‘No!’ while others, like Tom Elliott, wrote assertively that ‘all actions of Australian troops that I had contact with were of the highest standard’. Only one wrote equivocally, ‘Yes, unsavoury things went on in this war, the same as other wars but nothing you could call ‘‘atrocity’’. See no evil, hear no evil.’ Interview, Tony Jucha. Twelve M79 rounds were fired during the contact, but no M72s, the Australian equivalent of the RPG. The enemy was a VC postman. Most of the money was sent to a rest centre for wounded Australians on the Gold Coast. Australians may also have occasionally participated in this practice, though it was not done as a matter of course. See Burstall, Vietnam: The Australian Dilemma, pp. 151–2. Interview, Allan Handley. Supporting evidence for this incident is to be found in AWM unregistered file, 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Decade and Cung Chung 2 and 3, Annex A, Sequence of Events, serial 28. Interview, Allan Handley. Questionnaire, Brian King. I am indebted to Graham Walker for this idea. Walker has worked as a researcher for the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia. His research on the long-term psychological effects of service in Vietnam suggests that a brief, tactically appropriate committal service would assist soldiers to come to terms with the killing they have just performed or witnessed and that this would lead to better long-term psychological outcomes for them. AWM98, 69/M/7; HQ AFV DO correspondence. Major General R.A. Hay, MBE. From 1 March 69 to 7 April 70. Letter, Major General Graham, DCGS, to Major General Hay, COMAFV, 3 July 1969.




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26 In a 1985 ABC television broadcast a Vietnamese official, Mrs Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lien, claimed that Australian troops in the battle of Binh Ba had deliberately killed innocent civilians including women and children. However, though some civilians had been killed in the battle, the available evidence supports the fact that it was waged with scrupulous observance of the necessary rules of engagement. For example, before the Australian assault on the village the GVN civil authorities used a public address system to announce the attack and to warn civilians to avoid the area. GVN authorities remained in close liaison with the Australian forces throughout the battle. See Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, p. 121. 27 The Australian, 3 August 1976. 28 ibid. Cairns quoted in The Australian. 29 AWM OW84/5, item n.n., 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report, Operation Decade and Cung Chung 2 and 3. Enclosure 10, Contact After Action Report Op Decade/Cung Chung 2. Terry Burstall, in Vietnam: The Australian Dilemma, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1993, attempts to reignite the debate over Sherrin’s ambush by claiming that an attempt was made to conceal information from the public about the number of weapons recovered in the ambush and the gender and age composition of the group of enemy (see p. 216–17). Burstall draws this conclusion from his examination of Clunies-Ross (ed.), The Grey Eight in Vietnam. Unfortunately, Burstall’s research is faulty. Although he claims that ‘the 8RAR history failed to include a statistical table of weapons and equipment captured’, implying a cover-up, the figures are in fact to be found on page 106.

10

FORCES OF COHESION AND DISINTEGRATION

1 Henry (Jo) Gullett, Not As a Duty Only: An Infantryman’s War, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1976, p. 1. Gullett’s description of an infantry battalion is frequently quoted. For example, it appears in Michael O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars: With the Seventh Battalion in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1995, and in Bob Breen, First to Fight: Australian Diggers, N.Z. Kiwis and U.S. Paratroopers in Vietnam, 1965–66, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988, p. 17. 2 ibid. p. 2. 3 Richard Holmes, Firing Line, Penguin, London, 1986, p. 293. 4 Jane Ross, ‘Australian Soldiers in Vietnam: Product and Performance’, in Peter King (ed.), Australia’s Vietnam: Australia in the Second Indo-China War, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1983, p. 98.


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5 In fact, it can be argued that combat was more discontinuous in the First World War than in Vietnam. 6 See Jane Ross, The Myth of the Digger: The Australian Soldier in Two World Wars, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1985. The bibliography, though extensive, contains no primary source material. 7 Jane Ross, ‘The Australian Army: Some Views From the Bottom’, in The Australian Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 3, September 1974, p. 36. Similarly, Ross acknowledges that corporals and lance corporals were overrepresented in her research. It may be that private soldiers, not NCOs for whom the loneliness of command may be a factor, are the wellspring of mateship. 8 By contrast, in US infantry battalions, individual soldiers were trained in their particular specialty at separate training camps, then shipped as individual replacements to their units already in Vietnam. Officers tended to have very high turnover, most remaining with their battalions for only six months before being reposted. 9 Despite claiming no mates, Rankine established exceptionally strong bonds of loyalty with the men of his company. So strong were these bonds that many years later they voted him ‘Queensland Father of the Year’ for his dedicated support of the ‘family’ that the men of his company had become. 10 In addition to getting diarrhoea, Ball had only carried a heavy field pack once in the previous six months, most of which had been spent at Reinforcement Wing, Ingleburn. 11 Interview, Peter Berger. 12 ibid. 13 Interview, John Norris. 14 ibid. 15 Interview, Brian Mills. 16 Asked in a questionnaire, ‘Were your company, platoon or section more important to you than the battalion, or less so?’, overwhelmingly the 138 respondents nominated, in order of importance to them, their section, platoon and company. The battalion frequently came last if it was mentioned at all. Of the respondents, 44 said their section was most important, 34 said their platoon and 27 nominated their company. Only 14 men said the battalion was most important to them and most of them were officers or members of Support or Admin companies. 17 Norris analysed the roll books for all of the companies within 8RAR. There were some gaps in the roll book coverage. A Company roll books covered the period January to October 1970, B Company roll books March to October 1970, C Company January to October 1970, D Company October to November 1970, Support Company December 1969 to November 1970, and Admin Company January to August 1970. Due




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18

19 20 21

22

23

24 25

26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33

11

to the gaps in roll book coverage, the figures which Norris was able to derive from his analysis represent an underestimate of total march-outs. AWM103, R478–1–77, HQ 1ATF Investigations—General. Unlawful Explosion, B Squadron, 3 Cavalry Regiment, 23 August 1969. Investigating officers report, unlawful explosion in ‘B’ Sqn 3 Cav Regt on 23 August 69, by WO2 R. Woodrow, SIB Det AFV Pro Unit, 1ATF, 2 Sep 69. ibid. Report on Unlawful Explosions, Brigadier S.P. Weir, Comd 1ATF to HQ AFV dated 10 Sep 69. ibid. Although the term ‘fragging’ stems from the use of the M26 fragmentation grenade, the murder of senior officers or NCOs involving any weapon came also to be known as ‘fragging’. The M26 grenade was favoured because of the anonymity it offered. The 8RAR advanced guard had arrived at Nui Dat on 19 November and shared 9RAR’s tent lines. The 8RAR main body arrived at Nui Dat on 28 November. The murder took place at approximately 0025 hrs. AWM98, item n.n., Deputy Assistant Director of Legal Services, Australian Forces Vietnam—unregistered file—Investigation report into the Death of 38627 Lt R.T. Convery B Coy 9RAR. Statement by 61905 Pte Peter Denzil Allen. Courier Mail, 10 January 1970, p. 1. AWM98, item n.n., Deputy Assistant Director of Legal Services, Australian Forces Vietnam—unregistered file—Investigation report into the Death of 38627 Lt R.T. Convery B Coy 9RAR. Statement by 61905 Pte Peter Denzil Allen. ibid. Questionnaire response, Don Woodland. Woodland was the battalion’s Salvation Army chaplain and played an important role as one of the few ‘neutral’ people in the battalion with whom soldiers could discuss the pressures they were under. Interview, Vin Murphy. ibid. AWM103, item R478–1–281; HQ 1ATF Investigations—General. Unlawful use of explosives 8RAR. ibid. Investigation report WO1 F.K. Blunden, 19 November 1970. Interview, Tohy Flaherty. Interview, Peter Berger.

DISCIPLINE

1 Jane Ross, The Myth of the Digger: The Australian Soldier in Two World Wars, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1985, p. 140.


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293 Notes

2 3 4 5

6 7

8

9

10

11 12 13

14 15

16

ibid. ibid. p. 203. ibid. pp. 203–4. John Mordike, An Army for a Nation: A History of Australian Military Developments 1880–1914, Allen & Unwin in association with the Directorate of Army Studies, Department of Defence, Sydney, 1992, p. 127. ibid. Charges were written in the quaint form: Private A.B. Bloggs, A Company, whilst on active service, conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline in that he, at Nui Dat, Republic of Vietnam, on 3 April 1970, did leave his place of duty, to wit, a weapon pit, without permission or other just cause or excuse. Asked in a questionnaire, ‘What are your thoughts about the fairness of military discipline in Vietnam?’, most soldiers who had been charged said that it was fair and that they had no complaints. These figures are derived from an examination of 8RAR charge reports contained in AWM103, R271–1–35; HQ 1ATF Discipline—General. AAF A4’s, 8RAR. These figures refer to 5RAR’s second tour from February 1969 to February 1970, 7RAR’s second tour from February 1970 to February 1971, and 9RAR’s tour of November 1968 to November 1969. Interview, J.O.L. Langtry. AWM103, R271–1–78, HQ 1ATF Discipline General, 9RAR. ‘Mixed dress’ was a combination of uniform and civilian clothes. A comparison of fines shows that the average fine for 9RAR was $14, while for 8RAR it was $20. This information was derived from an analsyis of punishments awarded as described in charge reports filed in AWM103, R271–1–78, HQ 1ATF Discipline General, 9RAR and AWM103, R271–1–35; HQ 1ATF Discipline General, AAF A4’s 8RAR. Interview, Adrian Clunies-Ross. Jane Ross, ‘The Conscript Experience in Vietnam’, in The Australian Outlook, vol. 29, no. 3, December 1975, p. 315. See also Jane Ross, ‘The Australian Army: Some Views From the Bottom’, in The Australian Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 3, September 1974, pp. 35–47, and ‘Australian Soldiers in Vietnam Product and Performance’, in Peter King (ed.), Australia’s Vietnam: Australia in the Second Indo-China War, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1983, pp. 72–99. Ross’s research had some limitations. For example, it focused almost exclusively on National Servicemen rather than ‘soldiers’ (i.e. both National Servicemen and Regulars) and in her analysis it is frequently difficult to know whether Ross is referring to conscripts or to all soldiers. AWM103, item R271–1–35; HQ 1ATF Discipline—General. AAF A4’s, 8RAR. Analysis of 8RAR charge reports shows that, of 284 soldiers charged, 133 were National Servicemen. Information provided by the




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18

19

20 21 22

23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Soldier Career Management Agency shows that, of the 1163 men who served in 8RAR during its tour in Vietnam, 645 were National Servicemen. ibid. Of the soldiers charged more than once, 19 were National Servicemen and 17 were Regular soldiers, but these numbers do not allow us to draw any firm conclusion. ibid. In fact, analysis of the relevant charge reports shows that National Servicemen committed fewer offences against authority than did Regular soldiers, but the raw numbers are so small that a firm conclusion cannot be drawn. ibid. Of the 63 8RAR soldiers found guilty of going AWL, only 23 were National Servicemen. Of 51 offences in which alcohol was involved, only 16 were committed by National Servicemen. ibid. (Note 16 above.) ibid. The figures shown in this table were derived from a study of AWM103, R271–1–67; HQ 1ATF Discipline—General, 5RAR, AWM103, R271– 1–34 (Parts 1 to 3); HQ 1ATF, Discipline—General. AAF A4’s, 7RAR, AWM103, R271–1–35; HQ 1ATF, Discipline—General, AAF A4’s, 8RAR and AWM103, R271–1–78; HQ 1ATF, Discipline—General, 9RAR. These figures were derived from a study of AWM103, R271–1–67; HQ 1ATF Discipline—General, 5RAR, AWM103, R271–1–34 (Parts 1 to 3); HQ 1ATF, Discipline—General. AAF A4’s, 7RAR, AWM103, R271–1–35; HQ 1ATF, Discipline—General, AAF A4’s, 8RAR and AWM103, R271–1–78; HQ 1ATF, Discipline—General, 9RAR. Offences involving alcohol are those in which the charge sheet makes specific reference to alcohol or where there is a strong inference that alcohol was involved; for example, in the case of a soldier being charged with disobeying a lawful command when he was ordered to leave the soldiers’ canteen (where alcohol was served) but refused. Interview, Tony Flaherty. Interviews, Dennis Moss and Peter Salkowski. ibid. Interview, Peter Berger. AWM103, R271–1–35; HQ 1ATF; Discipline—General. AAF A4’s, 8RAR. ibid. See typical cases in AWM103, R271–1–35; HQ 1ATF; Discipline— General. AAF A4’s, 8RAR. ibid. See typical cases in AWM103, R271–1–78; HQ 1ATF, Discipline— General, 9RAR. AWM103, R271–1–86; HQ 1ATF, Discipline—General. Illegal use of drugs. Statement by Frank A. Bartimo, Assistant General Counsel (Man-


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34 35 36 37 38 39

40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

12

power and Reserve Affairs), Department of Defense, before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 20 August 1970. ibid. The Australian, 3 March 1970. ibid. AWM103, R271–1–86; HQ 1ATF, Discipline—General. Illegal use of drugs. Signal HQ AFV to 1ATF and other units dated 090300z March 1970. ibid. Signal HQ AFV to 1ATF, personal for commander from COMAFV, dated 140020z March 1970. Jane Ross, ‘Australian Soldiers in Vietnam: Product and performance’, in Australia’s Vietnam: Australia in the Second Indo-China War, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1983, p. 90. Questionnaire responses. The questionnaire asked: ‘It has been said that many members of the US Army in Vietnam used drugs. Were drugs in use among members of 8RAR?’ Although it is impossible to quantify the responses because some respondents referred to drug use (and sometimes possible drug use) among others, nevertheless the great majority of responses stated that there was no drug use in 8RAR as far as the respondent was able to say. Interview, Bill Josephson. ibid. Josephson recalled marijuana cigarettes being available for $2 a carton—cheaper than tobacco cigarettes. Interview, Brian Mills. Interview, anonymous. Interview, Joe Danyluk. ibid. Interview, Barry, Ian, Geoff, Tony and Dennis. Tony Flaherty’s comments were made during this group interview. ibid.

TOUR’S END

1 Ambrose Crowe, The Battle After the War: The Story of Australia’s Vietnam Veterans, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999. 2 In a questionnaire, 8RAR veterans were asked their marital status. Of the 138 responses, 121 were married, five were divorced, four were single, three were separated, one was a widower, one was in a defacto relationship and three declined to answer the question. 3 Although it should be noted that, even with a flawed strategy, the war dragged on for ten years and was won by North Vietnam only after the withdrawal of US ground forces and the adoption by the North of a new strategy of its own.




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Sources and bibliography Sources and bibliography

OFFICIAL RECORDS The Australian Army gave the author access to ‘closed period’ files in the course of this project. Over 200 files drawn from the following series held at the Australian War Memorial were consulted. AWM 95 AWM 98 AWM 100 AWM 103 AWM 116 AWM 181 OW 84/5

Australian Army Commanders’ Diaries HQ AFV (Saigon) records HQ AFV (Saigon) records of units under command HQ 1ATF (Nui Dat) records HQ 1ALSG (Vung Tau) records Herbicide Series 8RAR Combat Operations After Action Reports and intelligence files.

AWM unaccessioned archive document, draft papers on a summary of Australian operational experience in Vietnam presented to the 1971 CGS Exercise by Heads of Corps, Chapter 8, Task Force Operations, p. 1 (copy of selected parts in the author’s possession). Australian Army Operational Research Group, Report 1/71: Accidental Casualty Study—South Vietnam, by Major J.H. Adams, February 1971. Australian Army Training Information Bulletin Number 25: Rifle Shooting in the Australian Army (interim), January 1974. 296


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297 Sources and bibliography

The Division in Battle, Pamphlet No. 11, Counter Revolutionary Warfare, Military Board, 1965. 8RAR company roll books. Collection in the possession of John Norris.

UNPUBLISHED Ross, Andrew ‘Analysis of Contacts Sustained by the Australian Task Force, Vietnam, 1967–1971’. 8RAR R798/1/8 dated 14 August 1969; ‘Lessons Learnt in South Vietnam’ (precis prepared by 7RAR), Enclosure 4: Infantry weapons (in the possession of the author).

NEWSPAPERS The Australian The Sydney Morning Herald The Courier Mail, Brisbane

INTERVIEWS, LETTERS, DIARIES AND QUESTIONNAIRES The author conducted interviews with the following: Peter Berger, Adrian Clunies-Ross, Ian Dales, Joe Danyluk, John Dwyer, Laurie Evans, Tony Flaherty, Geoff Halsey, Allan Handley, Peter Healy, Barry Heggie, Allan Holland, Bill Josephson, Tony Jucha, Don Juillerat, J.O.L. Langtry, Peter Lauder, Charlie Lockhart, Adrian Lombardo, Brian Mills, Dennis Moss, Vin Murphy, Bruce Neil, John Norris, Keith O’Neill, Mal Peck, Peter Salkowski, Rod Scutter, Trevor Seivers, Chad Sherrin, Chris Sinclair, Neil Smith, Trevor Taylor, Chris Treadaway, Carl Vassarelli, Graham Walker, Bill Watson, Ron West. Roy McCabe and John Norris provided collections of letters and John Norris and Ron West provided ‘field’ diaries. A questionnaire comprising 84 questions was distributed to 600 men who had served in 8RAR during its tour of Vietnam. 138 completed questionnaires were returned: 18 from officers, 14 from senior NCOs, 24 from junior NCOs and 82 from private soldiers. Completed questionnaires have been deposited with the AWM in accordance with instructions provided to me by those who completed them.




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BOOKS AND MONOGRAPHS Battle, Captain M.R. (ed.) The Year of the Tigers: The Second Tour of 5th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment in South Vietnam, 1969–70, Printcraft Press, Sydney, 1970. Bilton, Michael and Sim, Kevin Four Hours in My Lai, Viking, New York, 1992. Breen, Bob First to Fight: Australian Diggers, N.Z. Kiwis and U.S. Paratroopers in Vietnam, 1965–66, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988. Burstall, Terry The Soldiers’ Story: The Battle of Xa Long Tan Vietnam, 18 August 1966, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1986. ——Vietnam: The Australian Dilemma, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1993. Challinor, Deborah Grey Ghosts: New Zealand Vietnam Vets Talk About Their War, Hodder Moa Beckett, Auckland, 1998. Chanoff David and Toai, Doan Van Portrait of the Enemy, I.B. Tauris, London, 1986. Charlwood, Don No Moon Tonight, Penguin Books, Ringwood, 1987. Church, J.M. DSO Second to None: 2RAR as the ANZAC Battalion in Vietnam 1970–71, Army Doctrine Centre, Sydney, 1995. Clunies-Ross, Major A. (ed.) The Grey Eight in Vietnam: The History of Eighth Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, November 1969—November 1970, Eighth Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment, Brisbane, 1971. Coulthard-Clark, Chris Hit My smoke!: Targeting the Enemy in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1997. ——The RAAF in Vietnam: Australian Air Involvement in the Vietnam War 1962–1975, Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, Sydney, 1995. Crowe, Ambrose The Battle After the War: The Story of Australia’s Vietnam Veterans, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999. Danh, Phan Ngoc and Toai, Tran Quang Dong Nai: 30 Years War of Liberation 1945–1975, Executive Committee of the Dong Nai Province Branch of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Dong Nai Publishing House, 1986. Translated for the AWM Official History Unit by Dien Nguyen. ——History of the Long Dat Revolutionary Struggle, Executive Committee of the Long Dat District Branch of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Dong Nai Publishing House, 1986. Translated for the AWM Official History Unit by Dien Nguyen. Dower, Allan War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, Faber, London, 1986. Ebert, James R. A Life in a Year: The American Infantryman in Vietnam, 1965– 1972, Presidio Press, Novato, 1993. Ewell, Lieutenant General Julian J. and Hunt, Major General Ira A. Sharpening the Combat Edge: The Use of Analysis to Reinforce Military Judgement, Vietnam Studies Series, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C., 1974.


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Frost, Frank Australia’s War in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987. Gerster, Robin and Bassett, Jan Seizures of Youth: The Sixties and Australia, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1991. Grossman, Lieutenant Colonel Dave On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 1996. Gullett, Henry (Jo) Not As a Duty Only: An Infantryman’s War, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1976. Holliday, L.P. and Gurfield, R.M. Viet Cong Logistics, RAND, Los Angeles, 1968. Holmes, Richard Firing Line, Penguin, London, 1987. Horner, D.M. Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, 1986. ——The Gunners: A History of Australian Artillery, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1995. Johnson, Major L.D. (ed.) The History of 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, Volume 2, 1967 to 1970, 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, n.d. Johnston, Mark At the Front Line: Experiences of Australian Soldiers in World War II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996. Krepinevich, Andrew The Army and Vietnam, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1986. Lewy, Guenter America in Vietnam, Oxford University Press, New York, 1978. McAulay, Lex The Fighting First: Combat Operations in Vietnam 1968–69, The First Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1991. McKay, Gary Vietnam Fragments: An Oral History of Australians at War, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992. ——Delta Four: Australian Riflemen in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1996. McNeill, Ian To Long Tan: The Australian Army and the Vietnam War 1950–1966, Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, 1993. Mordike, John An Army for a Nation: A History of Australian Military Developments 1880–1914, Allen & Unwin in association with the Directorate of Army Studies, Department of Defence, Sydney, 1992. Murphy, John Harvest of Fear: A History of Australia’s Vietnam War, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993. 9th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, Vietnam Tour of Duty 1968–1969, On Active Service, 9RAR Association, Brisbane, 1992, p. 67. O’Brien, Michael Conscripts and Regulars: With the Seventh Battalion in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1995. O’Keefe, Brendan Medicine at War: Medical Aspects of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asia 1950–1972, Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, Sydney, 1994. Pakenham, Thomas The Boer War, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1979. Pratten, Garth and Harper, Glyn (eds), Still the Same: Reflections on Active Service from Bardia to Baidoa, Army Doctrine Centre, Sydney, 1996. Rintoul, Stuart Ashes of Vietnam: Australian Voices, Mandarin, Melbourne, 1989. Roberts, Neil A Walk in the Jungle, The Sunnyland Press, Red Cliffs, n.d.




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Ross, Jane ‘Australian Soldiers in Vietnam: Product and Performance’, in Peter King (ed.), Australia’s Vietnam: Australia in the Second Indo-China War, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1983. ——The Myth of the Digger: The Australian Soldier in Two World Wars, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1985. Scales, Robert H. Jr. Firepower in Limited War, revised edition, Presidio Press, Novato, 1995. Segal, David R. and Sinaiko, H. Wallace (eds) Life in the Rank and File: Enlisted Men and Women in the Armed Forces of the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, Pergamon-Brasseys, Washington, 1986. Shay, Jonathan MD, PhD Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, Atheneum, New York, 1994. Sheehan, Neil A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, Pimlico, London, 1998. Smith, Lieutenant Colonel Neil C. Home by Christmas: The Australian Army in Korea 1950–56, Mostly Unsung, Melbourne, 1990. Stretton, Alan Soldier in a Storm: An Autobiography, Collins, Sydney, 1978. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Anti Personnel Weapons, London, 1978. Stevens, R. Blake and Ezell, Edward C. The Black Rifle: M16 Retrospective, Modern US Military Small Arms Series, Vol. III, Collector Grade, Toronto, 1987. Thompson, Robert No Exit From Vietnam, Chatto & Windus, London, 1969.

ARTICLES Graham, Brigadier S.C. DSO, OBE, MC ‘Observations on Operations in Vietnam, Australian Army Journal: A Periodical Review of Military Literature, no. 235, December 1968. Hawkins, Charles F. ‘Friendly Fire: Facts, Myths and Misperceptions’, Proceedings, United States Naval Institute, June 1994. Langtry, Colonel J.O. DCM ‘8RAR—The Early Days of the Grey Eight’, Duty First, April 1972. O’Toole, Brian, Richard Marshall, David Grayson, Ralph Schureck, Matthew Dobson, Margot French, Belinda Pulvertaft, Lenore Meldrum, James Bolton and Julienne Vennard, ‘The Australian Vietnam Veterans Health Study: I. Study Design and Response Bias; II. Self-Reported Health of Veterans Compared with the Australian Population; and III. Psychological Health of Australian Vietnam Veterans, International Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 25, no. 2. Ross, Jane ‘The Australian Army: Some Views From the Bottom’, The Australian Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 3, September 1974.


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——‘The Conscript Experience in Vietnam’, The Australian Outlook, vol. 29, no. 3, December 1975. Rowe, Major Rex ‘Sapper Support’, Australian Infantry, May 1971, vol. xvii, no. 2. Steinweg, Colonel Kenneth K. ‘Dealing Realistically with Fratricide’, Parameters, US Army War College Quarterly, vol. XXV, no. 1, Spring 1995. Stuart, Lieutenant Colonel R.F. ‘How to Hit the Barn Door’, Army Journal, no. 313, June 1975. Thomson, Major C.F. ‘A Company Commander’s Impressions’, Australian Infantry, vol. xvii, no. 2, May 1971. Toai, Tran Quany ‘The Destiny of the Australian Army in Long Dat’, The Journal of Military History, Hanoi, June 1991. Translated by Dr Greg Lockhart. Walker, Graham ‘Like a Card House in the Wind’, in Kenneth Maddock (ed.), Memories of Vietnam, Random House, Sydney, 1991.




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Index

Index 1RAR 2, 6, 17, 100 2RAR 67 3RAR 4 5RAR 17, 161, 239, 251 6RAR 17, 38, 65, 116, 229 7RAR 4, 65, 67, 115, 239, 251 8RAR departure from Vietnam 76, 255–62 deployment to Vietnam 5, 6, 17, 19 genesis and makeup 3 military achievement 259–62 National Servicemen 5, 11, 241 personalities 6–10 strength 5 Welcome Home parade 259 9RAR 17, 42, 44, 230, 231, 239–40, 247, 251 Abrams, General Creighton W. 31, 34, 35, 37, 40 accidents see friendly fire Ahearn, Sergeant Alan 90 alcohol and drugs 176, 243–51 Allen, Private Peter 230–1 ambushing 105, 193, 201, 203–4, 246 around villages 60–70, 130–7, 141, 145, 212–14, 260 enemy reaction 72–5 impact on enemy 69–72, 260 night 130–7, 141 ammunition 85, 87, 116–17, 135–6, 142 An Ngai 23, 71 Andropof, Private Nicholas 86 anti-war movement 198 Ap Bac 62, 64 Ap Lo Voi 66 Ap Soui Nghe 62, 65, 67 armoured personnel carriers (APCs) 126–8, 171–3, 185–90 Armstrong, Private Ray 113 Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) 30 arsenals 110–16

Atkinson, Corporal Rod 93, 250 attrition 25, 28–39, 71 awards 57, 136 Ba Long Province 22, 23 Babbs, Private Bill 245 Ball, Private Peter 11, 84, 87, 93, 222, 223 Barcovich, Private Fabio 15 Baria 20, 60 Baria Special Zone 22 Barrett, Corporal Jim 155, 156 Beasley, Corporal Maurie 50 Bennett, Private David 15 Berger, Peter 224, 234, 246 Best, Lieutenant Brian 188 Bien Hoa Province 47 Binh Ba 20, 45, 46, 62, 65, 67, 201, 212 Binh Ba Guerillas 64, 65 Binh Gia 20 Binh Tuy Province 20 Binks, Graeme 85, 226 Black, Mal 221 Bligh, Private Dick 170 Bond, Corporal Cliff 15, 188, 190 Boog, Private Keith 79 Boyle, Private Brian 184 Brennan, Private Denis 183 Bressington, Lance Corporal John 167, 168, 202 Brien, Lieutenant John 93, 169, 170, 230 Buckney, Sergeant Peter 15 bunker attacks 27, 43–5, 125–30 systems 27, 43, 55 Burstall, Terry 201 bushman scouts 82, 83 Buxton, Peter 11, 227 Cairns, Jim 163, 201, 212–14 Cambodia 71 cameras 92–4 302

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303 Index

Campbell, Private Ron 244 Canton, Corporal Barry 211, 259 Canungra 6 Carl, Keith 11, 95, 125, 144, 226 Casey, Private 154, 155 casualties Australian 19, 27, 30–1, 38, 39, 44–5, 47, 48–9, 56, 57, 74, 102, 105, 106–7, 111, 125, 128–30, 133–4, 146–7, 149, 154–60, 161, 162–3, 164, 166–73, 174–96, 199–200, 203, 207, 223, 224, 225 cartridges fired to casualties inflicted 106–7, 142 enemy 25, 30–1, 33, 35–6, 37, 44–5, 57, 64–6, 76, 105, 106–7, 120–4, 128, 132, 142–7, 162, 199–200, 204–12 friendly fire 49, 90, 111, 128, 174–96 to friends from platoon or section 139, 147–7, 172, 194–6, 201–2, 203, 207, 223, 224, 225 mine 38, 95, 153–63, 166–71, 194–6, 201–2, 203 US 102 see also death; wounding Cau Su 22, 23 Cawsey, G.F. 38 Chau Duc guerillas 69, 72 Child, Private 154, 155 Church, Lieutenant Colonel John 108 Cleggett, Private Rod 95, 146, 211, 220 Clunies-Ross, Major Adrian 4, 8, 41–2, 55, 78, 159, 240 Coe, Corporal Barry 126, 188, 189 Coleman, Ron 252–3 combat bunker attacks 27, 43–5, 125–30 and fear 82, 94–7, 102, 121, 172, 173, 203 fleeting fights 105–6, 203 and friendly fire 174–96 and marksmanship 107–10, 142 patterns 100–17 range of 105–6 reactions to 102, 137–9 reactions to death and wounding 122–5, 142–6, 194, 203–4, 206–12, 223

resistance to killing 137–42, 203, 204–5 rites of passage 119–25 skills 103–5, 138 see also ambushing; casualties; enemy; killing, resistance to; morality and war; operations conscription 1–2, 81 Constantinides, Private Costas 15 Convery, Lieutenant Robert 230–1, 247 Cossardeaux, Private Alain 15 counter-revolutionary war (CRW) 25–8, 29, 31–4, 41 Cousins, Private Peter 11, 93, 220 Craig, Corporal Lindsay 135, 262 crimes, invented 212–14 Crump, Private Peter 11, 15, 95, 121–2, 124 Cunich, Corporal 230 Daly, Lieutenant General Sir Thomas 160, 161, 190 Danyluk, Corporal Joe 14, 16, 116, 166, 169, 170, 202, 252–3 D’Arcy, Lance Corporal Bob 95, 99, 154, 155, 156, 157, 219, 221, 226 Darr, Lieutenant Barry 65, 66, 131, 134, 135, 136, 232 Dat Do 20, 21, 22, 23, 37, 38, 42, 48, 57, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 131–5, 141, 149–50, 161, 164, 260 Davison, Lieutenant General Michael S. 60, 75 death, reactions to 95, 122–5, 142–6, 194–6, 203–4, 206–12, 223 dehumanising effect of war 197–203, 207–12 Derrick, Lance Corporal Peter 135 Dicker, Private Bob 219 DiGiovanni, Private Tito 15, 139, 220 Dimitrijevic, Private Alexander 15 discipline 230, 232, 236–54 alcohol and drugs 236, 243–51 AWL 236, 242, 243 formal process 238–40 and operations 183–5, 242–3, 246 regulars and National Servicemen 240–2 sleeping on picquet 251–2 unofficial 252–4 weapons-related offences 193, 233, 246, 251–2




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disintegration, forces of 228–34 Do Cao Tri, Lieutenant-General 57 Duc My 62, 67 Duc Trung 67 Dwyer, Captain John 5, 8, 157, 158 Earle, Private Phil 97, 183 Eddy, Leon 249 Edwards, Corporal Malcolm 184 Elliott, Corporal Tom 96, 168, 206, 227, 250, 261 enemy 22–5 advantage 102–3 burial of dead 206–12 hatred for 201–3 impact of ‘close ambushing’ 62–5, 69–72, 260 killed 25, 30–1, 33, 35–6, 37, 44–5, 57, 64–6, 76, 107, 142–3, 162, 199–200, 204–12 prisoners 201–6 reaction to ‘close ambushing’ 72–5 see also North Vietnamese Army (NVA); Viet Cong Enoggera 5 Evans, Private Laurie 93, 97, 169, 194 Ewell, Lieutenant General Julian J. 33–4, 35–7, 39, 40, 42, 59, 60, 75, 164 Falkland, Colonel Peter 54, 179, 181, 182, 192 Far East Strategic Reserve 3 Fawkner, Lieutenant Matt 184 fear 82, 94–7, 121, 172, 173, 203 Flaherty, Tony 89, 233, 244–5, 253 Fletcher, Colin 157, 259 food control methods against VC 24–5, 70–2 Forno, Lance Corporal ‘Rick’ 209 Fraser, Major General C.A.E. 61, 164, 165, 185, 190–1, 214, 249 Free World Military Assistance Forces (FWMAF) 23 friendly fire 49, 90, 111, 128, 174–96 friendship see mateship Frost, Frank 18, 42, 69 fungal infections 91 Gallagher, Paul 11, 220 Gamelin, Trooper 189, 190 Gommermann, Private Helmut 15 Goody, Lance Corporal 93, 184 Gould, Eric 202

Graham, Brigadier (later Major General) S.C. 25, 36, 93–4, 115, 149, 150, 192, 212 Grasby, John 95 grievances 228–34 Grinter, Allan 128, 146, 259 Growden, Private Kym 93, 221 Gullett, Jo 216–17 Hales, Private Brian 79 Handley, Private Allan 131–4, 136, 140, 141, 172, 207, 208, 210, 218, 223, 232, 258–9 Harris, Private Graham 167, 168, 169, 220, 223 Harry, Ralph 37 Hart, Private Steve 219 Hassell, Corporal Geoff 244–5 Hat Dich Secret Zone 23 Hatzel, Private Franz 15 Hawkes, John 155, 209 Hay, Major General R.A. 19, 35, 36, 37, 93–4, 150, 160, 161, 164, 179 Hazell, Private Douglas MacArthur 16, 95, 169, 170 Healy, Sapper Colin 104 Healy, Sergeant Major Peter 127 Henderson, Brigadier W.G. 60, 61, 67, 75, 213 Herbert, Noel 11, 211, 218, 258 Hessey, Stan 14, 211 Hewett, Gordon 11, 14, 155, 157, 222 Hibben, Wing Commander 178 Ho Chi Minh Trail 24 Hoa Long 20, 22, 23, 62–4, 65, 67, 68, 69–70, 72, 145, 201, 212 Hoban, Sergeant Bill 57, 153, 154 Hoi Chanh 47, 71, 72 Hoi My 71, 150 Holdsworth, Lance Corporal Bob 193, 261 Holland, Allan 123, 223 Holmes, Richard 217 Holtom, Trevor 142 Horner, D.M. 19, 32, 38, 150, 164–5 inducting reinforcements 224–5, 227 infantry life 77–99, 216–17, 228–34 see also mateship Ireland, David 257 Irons, Private Ken 97, 202, 261 Jackson, Brigadier O.D. 100–1 Jackson, Corporal 154, 155




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305 Index

James, Colin 145, 226 Jaudzemis, Corporal Bruno 15, 85 Jeffery, Major Mike 8, 54, 128, 168, 171 Johnson, Bluey 130 Johnson, Carey 96, 146, 151, 206, 227 Johnson, Lyndon 31 Johnston, Mark 102 Jones, David 12 Josephson, Captain Bill 171–2, 250 Jucha, Lieutenant Tony 65, 66, 172, 202 Juckel, Sergeant Dieter 96, 132–3, 136, 209 Katala, Private Hans 15 kill or capture 201–6 kill rates 30, 36–7, 44–5, 199–200 killing, resistance to 137–42, 203, 204–5 see also morality and war King, Corporal Brian 258 Kingdom, Private Tony 155, 156 Kirby, Lance Corporal B. 83 Koster, Sergeant Pieter 234 Krause, Neville 232 Krepinevich, Andrew 59, 151 Kurtz, Warrant Officer Alex Von 16 Lamb, Rod 54, 257 Lang Phuoc Hai 68 Langtry, Lieutenant Colonel J.O. 2, 4, 5 Lauder, Lieutenant Peter 48, 59, 65, 143, 221 leave 97–99 Lee, RSM Joe 5, 10 leeches 92 Lewy, Guenter 25 Liebich, Corporal Ulf 15 Lock, Private Desmond 261 Lombardo, Lieutenant Adrian 49, 144, 178 Long, Robert 219 Long Dat 22, 23 Long Dien 20, 21, 23, 37, 48, 57, 67, 68, 71, 161, 260 Long Hai hills 21, 23, 48, 49–57, 125–30, 143, 153–60, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, 172, 173, 260 Long Khanh Province 20, 22, 47, 60 Long Son 22 Long Tan 116–17 loyalty 225–7, 253

Lubke, Bob 95, 194, 208, 258, 260 Lynch, Trevor 13 Lyons, Tex 13 McBain, Peter 147 McCabe, Corporal Roy 91 MacDonald, Major General A.L. 19 McGillion, Joe 85, 208 Mackay, Major General K. 17, 19 McNeill, Ian 116 McQuat, John 97, 194 Macey, Corporal 126 mail 90 malaria 87, 92 marksmanship 107–10, 142 Maschette, Wayne 11 mateship 99, 138, 217–24, 235, 253, 255, 261–2 Matthews, Sergeant Brum 64 May Tao hills 20 Menzies, Robert 1 military achievement 259–62 Miller, Warrant Officer ‘Dusty’ 8, 157 Mills, Corporal Brian 166, 167, 171, 172, 225, 251 mine neurosis 172, 173 minefields 73, 149–73 Long Hai hills 153–60, 163, 224 political fallout 160–5 VC doctrine 152–3 mines anti-tank 171–3 captured 110–11 Operation Hamilton 166–71, 224 Operation Hammersley 154–7, 161, 162 Mison, Sergeant Bruce 101 Montague 142 morale 88–90, 144 morality and war 137–42, 197–9, 201–5, 206–15 see also killing, resistance to Moss, Private Dennis 245 Mules, Major Max 4 Mulready, Private George 184 Murphy, Major Vin 8, 57, 96, 153, 154, 157, 158, 232 My Lai 162–3, 197–9 Nally, Private Joe 11 National Liberation Front (NLF) 22, 23, 24 National Service 1–2




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National Servicemen 5, 11–12, 162, 255–7 and discipline 240–2 Neal, Bruce 12 Ngai Ba 46 Nixon, Richard 31 Norris, Corporal John 87, 88, 89, 90, 99, 119–24, 142, 224–5, 227, 260 North Vietnamese Army (NVA) 22–5, 27 see also enemy; Viet Cong Nui Dat 22, 39, 67, 77–81, 89–90, 246 Nui Dinh 21 Nui Dinh hills 23, 46, 67 Nui Nhon 46 Nui Thi 21 Nui Thi Vai 21, 22 O’Callaghan, Corporal Bob 14, 147 O’Connor, Ron 98, 223 O’Dal, Snow 166, 167, 168, 202 offences see discipline Oliver, Private Colin 104 O’Neill, Lieutenant Colonel Keith 5, 6–9, 19, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 67, 68, 105, 125, 159–60, 171, 181, 188, 190, 213, 260 Onrust, John 226 Operation Atherton 45, 58, 101, 119 Operation Cung Chung 1 67–8, 76, 101 Operation Cung Chung 2 68, 69, 76, 101 Operation Cung Chung 3 68, 69, 76, 101 Operation Concrete 65 Operation Decade 68 Operation Esso I, II, III 37 Operation Hamilton 46–7, 62, 166–71, 172 Operation Hammersley 47–60, 73, 75, 125–30, 153, 154–7, 161, 162, 164, 165, 260 Operation Keperra 46 Operation Mundingburra 37, 38 Operation Neppabunna 37 Operation Nudgee 61, 65–6, 67, 101 Operation Petrie 47, 101 Operation Phoi Hop 61, 62, 63, 67, 75, 101, 260 Operation Renmark 161 Operation Reynella 37

operations 41–76, 81–91, 100–6, 147–8, 260–1 accuracy of shooting 107–10, 142 bunker attacks 27, 43–5, 125–30 cartridges fired to casualties inflicted 106–7 and discipline 183–5, 242–3, 246 fleeting fights 105–6 physical strength of troops 85–7, 116–17 pressure cooker 100–2 ration resupply 80–1, 82, 88, 90 seeing the enemy first 102–5 sentry duty 84, 183–5 statistics 118, 105 weight of soldiers packs 85–7 see also ambushing; combat; mines; pacification operations; reconnaissance-in-force operations O’Shea, Neville 11 pacification operations 28–40, 41, 42, 58, 59, 60–9, 70, 75, 76, 87, 130–7, 161–2, 164, 260 Paltridge, Shane 1 Parker, Captain W.J. 189 Partridge, Corporal Brian 14, 119, 121, 144, 146, 221, 257 Peacock, Andrew 179, 182 Pearson, Brigadier C.M.I. 35, 39, 41, 42 Peck, Major Mal 9, 48, 67, 80, 82, 114, 182, 183, 232 Peckman, Private Robert 177 Pesonen, Private Timo 15 photographs 93–4 Phu My 22 Phuoc Hai 71 Phuoc Tuy Province 7, 20–2, 24, 26, 37, 41, 43, 47, 57, 67, 70, 72, 76, 150, 162, 173, 260, 261 physical strength of troops 85–7, 116–17 Piazza, Private Carl 15, 257 politics 12–13, 17, 18–20, 60, 94, 160–5, 173, 179, 182–3, 190–3, 261 Pollard, Private Gordon 92, 134, 136 Pond, Trevor 209 post-traumatic stress disorder 258 Poulson, Private Daryl 93 prisoners 201–6 Pritchard, Major Phil 8, 9, 15–16, 136, 185, 187, 188, 189–90, 221




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307 Index

Rankine, Major David 8–9, 48, 52, 54, 59, 126, 127, 185, 189, 221, 233, 245 Ranson, Private Carl 244 rations 80–1, 82, 87–9 reconnaissance-in-force operations 45–7, 58, 65, 73, 76, 87, 260 Reed, John 205, 257 reinforcements, inducting 224–5, 227, 231 religion 13–14 resupply missions for infantry 80–1, 82, 88, 90 for VC 70–2, 74 see also food control methods against VC; rations Ristic, Private Bozidar 15 Roberts, Andrew 12, 96, 123, 223 Roberts, Private Neil 11, 84, 91 Ross, Andrew 44, 103 Ross, Jane 217, 237–8, 240–1 Rosson, General William B. 165 Rowe, Major Rex 152 Rozentals, John 222, 257 Ryan, Private Merv 89, 144, 208, 210 Salkowski, Corporal Peter 155, 156, 157, 245 Salmon, Private Raymond 15 Sartori, Private Luciano 15 Scheuermann, Corporal Klaus ‘Tanky’ 15 Schwarschnik, Lance Corporal Rudi 15 Sculley, Jeffrey 12, 84, 166, 167–8, 206 Scutter, Rod 11, 12, 208 Seivers, Private Trevor 93, 131–3, 134, 135 sentry duty Nui Dat 80 offences 251–2 operations 84, 183–5, 251–2 Shannon, Sergeant ‘Bluey’ 46 Shaw, Private Julian 91 Sherrin, Sergeant Chad 69, 145 shooting, accuracy of 107–10 Shrapnel, Tony 134, 136 Sibree, Captain Peter 81 Simkin, Colonel Max 189, 190, 191–2 Simson, Paul 12, 85, 145, 206, 255–6 Sinclair, Chris 48, 145 Smigowski, Corporal John 15 Smith, Barry 99, 188, 190 Smith, Lieutenant Colonel Eric 109–10

Smith, Lieutenant Neil 93 Song Dinh 20 Soui Nghe 62, 65 South Vietnam (GVN) forces 20, 22, 23–4, 30, 32, 58–9 Sperling, Trevor 211, 257 Spragg, Major G.S. 172 Stephens, Barry 11 Stretton, Colonel A.B. 19 Sullivan, Kevin 146, 202 Suoi Chau Pha valley 23 Suoi Da Bang 20 Taylor, Lieutenant Trevor 85 Terendak Garrison 3 Tet Offensive 17, 19, 31 Thai Thien 22, 72 Thompson, Phil 166, 168, 169, 201 Thompson, Robert 23, 24, 27, 34, 57, 59, 61, 68 Thomson, Major C.F. 107 Timothy, Lance Corporal Martin 184 Treadaway, Chris 211, 221 US military and drug use 248 and My Lai massacre 197–9 strategy 28–39, 259 Van Haren, Lance Corporal Gerardus 15 Van Loon, Private Weren 15 Vassarelli, Private Carl 15, 257 Veldkamp, Private Wilhelm 15 Venables, Lance Corporal Bob 11, 135 Viet Cong 20–4, 27, 42, 46, 57, 66–7, 73, 102, 200, 201–3 and mines 149–53, 163 casualties 25, 30–1, 33, 35–6, 37, 44–5, 57, 64–6, 76, 203–6 D440 battalion 23, 60, 62, 65 D445 battalion 23, 47, 48, 49–57, 59–60, 65, 66, 130, 153, 161, 166, 181, 260 fighting qualities 27, 138 food supplies 24–5, 70–2 impact of pacification 69–72, 260 reaction to pacification 72–5 suicide squads 131 weapons 102, 110–16 women 122–4, 204 see also North Vietnamese Army (NVA)




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Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI) 23, 24, 26, 31, 38, 57, 64, 66, 68, 71 Viet Minh 21 Vietnamisation 17, 31, 68 village security 29, 42, 57–8, 62, 66–7, 69–75, 76, 130–7, 260 Vung Tau 20, 22, 97, 99, 236, 237 Vung Tau Special Zone 22 Wagstaff, Private Victor 90, 193–4 Walker, Major Graham 7, 8, 53, 159–60, 221 Walker, Ray 222 Walsh, Derek 12, 144 Warren, Duncan 128–9 Watts, Graeme 203 weapons 102, 110–16, 135–6, 142, 144, 145–6 see also ammunition; minefields; mines Webb, Private Ron 50 weight of soldiers’ packs 85–7 Weir, Brigadier S.P. 41–3, 54, 58, 75, 157, 229, 249 Wendt, ‘Lofty’ 2

West, Sergeant Ron 55, 73, 90, 128–30, 142, 144, 168, 170, 171, 173, 210, 257 Westmoreland, General William C. 28, 29, 31, 40 White, Sergeant Monty 66 Wiangaree 6 Wicks, Les 11 Williams, Major Noel 8, 64, 185 Williamson, Private Nick 80 Wilton, General Sir John 32, 160, 161 Wise, Private Ian 92 Woodland, Don 14 Woodrow, Captain Gerry 4, 5 wounding, reactions to 95, 142–6, 194–6, 205–6 wounds, self-inflicted 138 Wykes, Michael 96, 147, 257 Xuyen Moc 20, 22, 23, 46, 47, 65, 166 Young, Private Gary 50 Yow Yeh, Corporal Stewart 15 Zaat, Corporal Paul 15




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