by Barry Heard
Some, I noticed, had welling eyes, but no tears. Poor buggers. I could only guess, but there must have been so much to comprehend, to try and forget, along with the excitement of going home. I couldn’t even imagine what a powerful mixture of extreme emotions they must have felt. Yet where were the signs of them? They would be sailing back on the Sydney together, but tonight was different. Earlier in the evening I welcomed the invitation to join them in their all-night drinking party. As an observer, like so many times before, I was in awe of the closeness of their friendship and the almost total understanding they had of one another. I was witnessing the unique characteristic that is called mateship. It was hard to explain, but it was there, everywhere. It was very powerful, and it was a privilege to get the first beers. Then it started.
A bloke called Clagg came over, totally drunk and slurring his words. He shook my hand and introduced himself.
‘Clagg, mate. How ya going? Ya poor prick. Know the fuck’n worst, mate? When ya lose some poor prick, and some new fuck’n bastard moves into ya tent … It’s wrong, mate, fuck’n wrong, I tell ya … Fuck’n Jocka, how could they let some other bugger sleep in his bed? Fuck, I’m drunk, mate … what’s ya name again?’
He was crying, with no tears. There were strange groaning noises coming out of his mouth. His pained expression left me speechless. Others started to mention names of blokes I guessed had been killed or wounded. There were promises being made to visit blokes and their families and, when they got home, to meet a mate’s parents … to offer some explanations. I couldn’t quite follow it all but, sadly, I believed what I was seeing was that, at the very end of their tour, this was the first time they had allowed powerful emotions to surface. They seemed lost, shattered, and unable to acknowledge their loss and their love. I was bewildered by the wild fluctuations between their jolted laughter and struggling grief. There was awkward, drunken frivolity and affection, with blokes slapping backs, ruffling hair, and throwing soft punches.
The 5RAR blokes left quietly the next day. An observer might assume this was mainly due to their enormous hangovers, but I sensed a deeper resolve. Maybe it had to do with mates they’d lost. Perhaps their last days had been spent coming to terms with this and many other very private matters. Some would soon be out of the army. For others, there would be home, questions, and opinions … and then back into the army, a different army with many new faces.
For me, during those few weeks with 5RAR, I learned one very powerful thing. My isolation and feeling very alone whilst with seasoned veterans showed me something that has affected soldiers from this conflict and many earlier wars: the lot of the reinforcement soldier. To this very day I still hear stories of soldiers who went to war and weren’t able to fit in. Sadly, one of the unintended consequences of being together with mates in the army is that the group becomes like a family. Then there are some soldiers who go to war — in this case, Vietnam — by themselves. Often, they go to replace someone who has been killed or wounded. Other times, a soldier’s tour of duty may be finished and he’s sent home; but the rest of the group stay, in a depleted state. For National Servicemen, only obliged to serve for two years, a continual rotation matched intakes. Most did a tour of approximately twelve months. My own intake, the third, was sent home as a group and then relieved with new soldiers.
I went to Vietnam as a new bloke not completely on my own, as there were others from my company in the advance party. Stretch was the only one I saw a bit of, but he was always busy. I was there without my mates, and certainly was left to my own resources when I got there. I never felt comfortable or able to fit into 5RAR. They were close. Why? Maybe because they had lost good mates and, with courage, back in base camp, they had cleared that mate’s bed and belongings, packed photos and letters, and sent them to a home, to an address somewhere in Australia, to a family they had probably never met. Some would have attempted the terrible task of answering a letter from this unknown family wanting to know how their son had died. Yes, there were good people called padres who did these things, but the padre wasn’t there when their son was killed and, like any parent, they wanted to know exactly what happened.
The bond in 5RAR was very powerful, unbending, and unquestioned. The more I observed this over my stay, the more I realised just how hard it would be to enter that inner circle. I was lucky; my own mates had arrived, and my feeling of being isolated would soon disappear. As well, I had started a friendship with Stretch. Many reinforcements arriving during the Vietnam conflict had no such luck. It must have been like starting in a new school, hoping that maybe, over time, they would start to fit in.
The other thing I recall was the deep respect I had for the 5RAR grunts and what I vaguely knew they had been through together. I looked at them with a feeling of admiration and envy, as they had been ‘Diggers’ in the true sense of the word — our country’s highest accolade. But they were also old men. They were emotionless, the crack-hardy type, and I never found one young, happy-go-lucky man amongst them. I didn’t make the connection then that this was what might happen to our company, ‘A’ Company 7RAR. We were younger, and more full of life and energy. I couldn’t comprehend that we would end up the same way: we were different.
No sooner had 5RAR vacated their lines than the 7RAR grunts arrived. I spent ages shaking hands and patting shoulders. The blokes wanted to unpack and settle in. I wanted to talk.
‘You look shithouse, Turd. You got worms or something?’
Thanks, Knackers.
‘You bloody well pong, ya know that, Turd? Go and have a wash.’
And hello to you, Booster ...
‘You look like a mangy greyhound, Turd! What’s wrong with ya?’
It was great to hear their voices. It was hard to get the smile off my face. It was the first time I’d exercised those muscles in over a month. I went from tent to tent saying ‘G’day’ and slinging muck. That night at the boozer, it was such a relief and pleasure to see familiar faces. The laughter that had been missing for most of my time with the 5RAR blokes burst around the room. There was cheek, bravado, and humour. The ‘skinny’ insults continued, and it was nice to get called Turd again. They were full of stories about the boat trip, and pumped me to learn the ropes about base camp.
‘What’s the hell’s a goffer, Turd?’
A soft drink, I said.
‘What’s a durry?’
A smoke.
‘What are those frig’n little lizards?’
They’re called geckos, and that strange noise comes from puffing up a sack in their throat.
‘Tell us about these little bloody snakes, Turd!’
They’re called crates or ‘two-steps’ because, local lore says, take two steps and you’d be dead!
A pause.
‘Have you been out yet?’
‘Yep.’
Silence …
I decided to tell them about the leeches.
‘They’re as big as ya little frig’n finger, and grow to the size of a coffee mug once they suck ya out. That’s why I’m so skinny.’
‘Pigs fuck’n arse?’ came the hesitant reply. Another pause.
‘Have ya dipped ya wick yet?’
‘Nope.’
The beer flowed freely. Knackers, Snoggons, Snoz, Grunter, Booster, Lopps, Bog, Barch, Crotty, Stacka, and Pud, with a slight limp — they were all there. Just having their company was enough for my confidence to come rushing back.
Boom!
Those bloody guns. I was sick and tired of them. In fact, I hardly noticed them any more. Thump. The entire boozer floor was suddenly covered in very low-lying bodies, with hands jammed over their ears. What a wonderful sight. The building shuddered, and the souvenir AK47s, communist flags, and enemy memorabilia hanging on the boozer walls shook. Between the horrific blasts of sound, a few hesitantly got up. All of them looked pale, and stared at me for some explanation. I bided my time, still sitting on my stool, cool, smoking a Camel, and composed like a seasoned digger. Finally I gave th
em an answer.
‘Don’t worry, they’re only enemy mortars, not real close,’ I announced to the low-lying bodies during a break in the shelling. ‘I’ll tell you when to duck!’
I enjoyed that moment.
At last, I had my own bed and mattress, and my mates in my tent. The bed had a crude side-table made from a tea chest that folded down into a writing bench. My new second-hand bed lamp was attached, and Armed Forces Radio blared through Holdy’s old wireless. The tents were old Second World War canvas types with a wooden floor. Outside, each tent had been sandbagged to just above head height when you lay down. There was an electric light in the centre, and mosquito nets over each bed. There were four beds per tent.
Out the front of the tent, a duck walk ended at a road. The path of pallets was needed once the six-month wet season started. The mud, I’d been told, was like red porridge. The back of my tent faced 3 Platoon and, to the front, company headquarters and the command post. Just outside the back entrance of the tent was a deep weapon pit that allowed us to fire standing up, and a small bunker to crawl into if base camp was ever shelled or attacked.
We were well fortified and relatively safe. Although there were only a few assaults on the camp over the years, they were major engagements. The camp had been mortared on more than one occasion.
7RAR, VIETNAM
HISTORY HAS TOLD US that there was no doubt the Vietcong would have enjoyed the removal of the Australians from the province. We were different from other troops that fought in Vietnam. Australians operated in relatively small numbers, right down to a handful of troops we would use in an ambush. Americans depended on very large numbers. It is not that one or the other was superior; we simply did it differently. Because grunts carried their food and supplies for periods of up to five days on their backs, troop movement in the jungle without the need for re-supply was a distinct advantage. Ambushes, harassment, and guerrilla tactics by the Australians were the norm. It has been well documented that the Viet Cong had a deep respect for the Australian soldier: we were highly trained and extremely fit.
Perhaps one of the unique characteristics of the Australian base camp was that it contained no Vietnamese. In other allied bases, Vietnamese were employed as kitchen hands, cleaners, and gardeners and for other menial tasks, which posed many security problems. In Nui Dat, we did our own duties.
The army took many measures to ensure our safety within the Task Force area. A wire surrounded the entire Australian base camp. TAOR (tactical area of responsibility) patrols were sent daily around this wire. It was a fence, a ‘strategically placed perimeter defence system to enemy mortar distance’. Then, on top of SAS hill, the highest point of Nui Dat, there was a lookout post, which maintained constant, day-and-night vigilance.
Within our company lines, there was Q Store in the middle, located in company headquarters right next to the Sig’s tent. There was a cookhouse with a canteen attached that fed about one hundred men. We ate cooked meals the entire time in base camp. The boozer, always a popular spot, was close by. The first-aid tent, clerks’ tent, artillery tent, the senior officers, and the CSM were located in this area also. My company, ‘A’ Company, was located at the far end of the airstrip, and it was a short walk through the rubber to Porky 7, the battalion helicopter-landing zone. The three platoons were scattered around the CHQ. They had designated posts for guarding the perimeter. Behind 3 Platoon were two deep trenches for expending leftover rounds from weapons after you came in from the jungle or simply for testing your weapon. The CHQ area was just like a small country town. Mail, supplies, the Sallyman, and ordinance vehicles were daily visitors. We had an open shower block with a canvas bucket that had to be filled.
Our company boasted the cutest dunny you would ever clap eyes on. It was covered in squares of coloured paint, and looked like a piece of modern art or maybe a sideshow tent. On the inside was a long flat board with four large holes side by side. Reading magazines were provided whilst one went about one’s business. Underneath was a long drop. Upon entering this unique latrine, I was often reminded of a bunch of blokes reading, sitting at a station waiting for a train, only with their trousers around their ankles. It was with great disappointment that we came back from the jungle one time to find that a tree had fallen over and destroyed our latrine during a violent storm. Luckily, no one had been inside at the time. The new engineer-built one was OK, but boring. Bloody Ginger Beers (engineers). Were they good for anything?
Modesty was a word foreign to the army. As mentioned, the showers were an open-air communal affair. The best shower, however, once the wet had started, was to stand outside your own tent naked, and to lather up in the warm monsoon rain. Then there were the crowning glories in camp, the ‘pissaphones’. Dotted around the lines, these were simply earthenware pipes protruding out of the ground at various locations. You simply stopped, unbuttoned your fly, pointed the pepperoni at the pipe, and piddled.
Because our stays in base camp were usually brief, we mostly stayed within our company lines, although at odd times we would venture out to see mates in other companies further up into the rubber plantation. Occasionally, we went to the movies in an open-air theatre to see movies not yet released in Australia. The theatre was just next to our company boundary. A couple of times, I went to the top end of the airstrip where the stage had been built to allow entertainers to perform for the troops. I admired the guts of these entertainers, who gave their time to the troops. They, too, had to put up with the horrendous noises, the humidity, and the language of diggers who hadn’t seen an Aussie girl in months.
But, without a doubt, the bar or boozer was the hub of the company. It was a large tin shed, like a converted hayshed, with a bar, chairs, tables, and walls with lots of memorabilia. Russian AK47s and other weaponry confiscated from the enemy, flags, helmets, and Vietcong trinkets, as well as the obligatory pin-up girls, covered the walls.
But the famous quote, ‘One can per man per day perhaps’, was never a problem for us. It was strange how one of the highest priorities of the army was to keep us supplied with beer. During our tour, we heard countless complaints from others permanently based within base camp about the lack of beer, or its poor quality.
Gambling was the only other form of entertainment in the boozer. My mates Blue and Hutch ran Crown and Anchor (the most common gambling game in the army). Sometimes, blue movies were shown in the canteen after tea, much to the company commander’s disgust.
Captain Matthews was the ‘Sallyman,’ the Salvation Army officer attached to our battalion. Every day while we were in Nui Dat, without fail, he would turn up in his long-wheel-based Land Rover with a coffee and a tea urn sitting on the tailgate. Blokes would come from everywhere clutching mugs, running to get a good spot in the queue. The Sallyman is one of my fondest memories of base camp.
But enough of base camp. We were grunts. We didn’t have demanding jobs in Nui Dat, like many soldiers from other corps. We hadn’t been sent to Vietnam to live in base camp enjoying movies, whatever their colour; and endless beer, no matter what the brand. It was simply a base for us in which we could have a much-needed shower; clean and test our weapons; re-supply ourselves with rations, ammunition, batteries, and new codes; read our mail; and get drunk, and sleep it off.
The dry season was ending. The clouds building up in the afternoons were becoming darker and denser. The wet was about to set in for the next six months. The arduous task of carrying numerous water bottles would soon be made unnecessary by rain so torrential that the water bottle became a token; it was filled every night by downpours. With the wet came the added enemies: mosquitoes and leeches, and numerous other creeping, biting little bastards of things.
THE BATTALION’S FIRST OPERATION
WE HAD a couple of days patrolling, and it was great to be able to pass on things that I’d learned earlier about setting up your gear and lightening your load. Then it was down to the strip, from where the helicopters choppered us out. What a shock for the new blokes. The
deal was: get on, fly out at treetop level, and then get off as quickly as you bloody well can.
It was the first time that our blokes had encountered Iroquois helicopters and Yank pilots, and it was scary. They found out that these green machines were only on the tarmac at Nui Dat for seconds, then for even less time in the jungle. Gone were the training drills learned on the Pommy Wessex helicopters in Queensland. There was no hands-up signal when ready; no thumbs-up by the pilot to indicate lift-off. The Yank pilots were so quick that the last bloke would at times be hauled into the chopper by his webbing, especially when being lifted out of the jungle.
On this first operation, water seemed as precious as gold; the wet still hadn’t broken. The rain was only days away, and the humidity was appalling. Walrus, the battalion Sig, drank four water bottles the first day. I noticed in the other radio operators the familiar jitters and vigilance that had plagued me, and still did to some extent. It was strange, as several looked to me for support, and I wondered what they’d have said if they had seen me a month before.
We were back in base camp after three days. We’d had no enemy contact, and the men were stressed out of their brains. Alcohol consumption was way above average.
But at least there was mail waiting for me: my first letters from home, and there were 23 of them. I had a wonderful time reading about that other world, Australia. There were family letters, love letters, letters from locals. And there were the letters from a dear friend, Tom Cook, who was from Ensay just down the road from where I had worked on the farm. Tom would list the footy scores, the wool prices, the gossip, the news, and the weather. His letter was like a newspaper made just for me.
