Well Done, Those Men

by Barry Heard

  The Ginger Beers appeared very thorough. As a new area was mapped out, they used coloured tape to indicate where it was safe to walk. It looked intense work, and everyone knew it was dangerous. They worked with their heads down, concentrating on the task; it looked difficult. As they were so preoccupied, it was our job to guard them and fence in the area mined.

  Most of us were looking forward to this operation, as it would be a slack time. I didn’t have to move — just monitor the radio. No bloody jungle!

  We dug a mini command post near the construction area, and put a hoochie over the top to provide some shade. We were just settling down to prepare the evening’s meal after the blokes had knocked off from their day of fencing when we were suddenly inundated with a foul air that stung our lips, eyelids, and underarms. It caused a lot of distress. Anywhere sweaty or soft was irritated and became inflamed. It was a mystery and a major concern. Then I received a radio message. I deciphered the code that vaguely suggested the RAAF had dropped some tear gas near our area. The canisters had detonated too early, and the wind was blowing the wrong way. Well done, those men.

  A pause, then advice came over the radio suggesting that we cover the tender or burning parts of our bodies with cream or ointment. Great, I thought. I’ll just reach into my overnight bag and grab some; I think it’s near the aftershave. So, there we were, smeared in jam, margarine, anything in our ration pack that was creamy. It was messy, but it worked.

  The mine laying was a dangerous occupation, but that was the Ginger Beers’ job. We did the fencing and guarding of the wire. It was boring, but a change from our normal routine. I sat with my head just over the trench and watched them for ages. Then a disaster happened. There was a sickening roar — the thud of a mine exploding within the minefield. Something had gone horribly wrong.

  My radio was the closest to the incident. I used it to chopper in the dust-off. As the killed or wounded had to be winched up, the pilot asked me to move into the minefield and direct him when he approached. As mentioned, coloured tapes had been laid out into the minefield, indicating where it was safe to walk. Very cautiously, I walked out into the field. The safe path seemed too narrow, and I was terrified I might overbalance due to the weight on my back. I spotted the chopper and directed him towards our spot. As usual, the chopper and crew worked with total efficiency, and had the injured blokes on their way to hospital in no time. The scene was a bloody mess. Sadly, there was a death, and several blokes were badly lacerated and messed up. I recall one unfortunate, injured sapper (an engineer) who seemed to be in bits and pieces. His legs went every which way.

  Then the chopper was gone. Silence. After numerous mines had been laid, a tiny mistake had happened. It left us grunts in a state of quiet numbness. We would never admit it to their faces, but we admired the Ginger Beers and Pioneers. They were the ones who defused booby traps, who went into tunnels that were possibly booby-trapped, and who we called on when suspected enemy minefields had to be probed. I was petrified after being on the minefield for thirty minutes; they worked on it all day. This particular minefield took a long time to lay, and cost many more lives. It caused some terrible injuries.

  The following day, we continued work on guarding the wire and fencing. About mid-morning, our spirits were lifted. Three dogs from the village came sniffing around a few blokes and were told to piss off. They did, straight into the minefield. They seemed to wander for ages before one of them triggered the first mine. The click or flick of the trigger mechanism allowed one of them to jump back and duck.

  Boom!

  Two of the dogs were killed, and the one poor mangy bastard that was left took off at a great rate of knots.

  Boom!

  Even faster, our canine intruder dropped into overdrive and zigzagged further into the minefield.

  Boom, Boom!

  The dog’s afterburners fired up, and it reached the other side of the minefield with blistering speed. It received no injuries, followed by spontaneous applause for being the fastest dog in Asia.

  Several uneventful days passed, and by now the temporary command post and the fencing were getting boring. Although I was well rested, I would sooner be back in base. Then, suddenly, over my radio came a very confusing message.

  ‘One, this is Zero Alpha. Expect a loud noise. Over.’

  ‘One — roger, out.’

  What do you do with this sort of information? Run around telling everyone, tell the boss, or tell someone to pass the word around? I half-guessed that, no matter what I did, it would be treated as a joke — and, yes, most thought I was having them on. We had heard all the loud noises we were ever going to hear. Then …

  Jesus H Christ!

  Boom, boom, boom, boom!

  My hoochie was ripped into the air. What the hell was going on? The noise was so powerful it knocked us off our feet. It was like being shelled with no shrapnel. Other tents were torn and ripped, and belongings were scattered about. Many of us had frightened, staring faces.

  It was a B52 bomber air strike, and it went on for ages. Because the B52s dropped their bombs from something like 30,000 feet, you couldn’t hear the aircraft. In this strike they had dropped groups of cluster bombs that penetrated and blew up an entire valley not too far from us. Why hadn’t we got a coded message? Why drop the bombs so close to us? Why didn’t the aircraft come briefly onto my network and let us know minutes before? Even plain English would have helped minutes before they let the bombs go. Thanks, army.

  Our period of fencing and guarding the Ginger Beers was over. We were to be taken back to base by Chinook helicopters, which were like a school bus with two big rotor blades on top. It was my first ride in one of these monsters, and my first experience of trying to get into the huge chopper while the rotors were still going at near to full speed. The power that the wind created was like a resisting hand on my forehead. It made it difficult to force myself into the body of the craft. Once I reached the rear tailgate, the power of the downdraft pushed me up into the Chinook at such a rate of knots I had to be restrained. As we slowly rose above the village of Phuoc Hai, I spotted something I hadn’t seen before: a small but magnificent church, probably Catholic and built by the French.

  The exercise of putting up the fence and laying the mines had been, as mentioned, a blocking deterrent. It was to stop VC from moving, of an evening in particular, into villages, along the foreshore, and other tactical areas. The wire was not a success, however. After it was completed, there was a breakdown in suitable armed protection of the wire, and it became a lucrative source of mines for the VC to set booby traps — against us.

  Base camp was a welcome sight. Mail was strewn out on my bed waiting for my return. Depending how long we had been out, I would normally have dozens of letters. Sadly, some blokes didn’t get much mail. Nashos seemed to get a lot more mail than Regulars. I usually read Tom Cooks’ letter first, then handed it around to the blokes.

  There was now an interest in woolsheds, roustabouting, and the many other things that had once bored the fellas way back in Singleton. Tom’s letters were still like a newspaper, starting with news and ending with sport. Some were at least ten pages long. He wrote letters regularly, and we all loved them. The mail was so welcoming, so important. There were many letters; and this time there was a reel-to-reel tape of the amateur concert held at the Swifts Creek Hall, which was an annual event back home. A lot of blokes gathered in my tent when I played it for the first time. Sleepy Swifts Creek was the centre of the earth that night. There was Mrs Higgs, singing in her beautiful nightingale-like voice. The men in the tent fell silent as they listened.

  ‘She taught me to waltz,’ I told them with a grin when her song finished. ‘When I was about fifteen, I think. It was during rehearsals for a debutante ball in the local hall. I was a real runt and she was pretty huge, and I was never game to look her in the eye. She would reach under my armpits, pull me between her sizeable boobs, and away we would go! During the waltz, on some turns, there was me, bein
g so light and the lovely lady being so strong, my bloody feet would literally come off the floor. I would blush. Mrs Higgs would wink and say, “There’ll come a time when you’ll relish being jammed up against some boobs, young fella.”’

  The blokes laughed and kept on listening. Next was Mrs O’Brien playing her violin, and then there was the pleasant baritone voice of the local bank manager. And how could I forget Kanga Miles? He recited ‘The Man from Snowy River’. It was great. Finally, there were cheerios from people back home. ‘Hi, how are ya going, mate?’

  … ‘Look after yourself, Baz.’ A schoolmate, Terry Lawrence, who’d organised the tape, asked people to show their appreciation. There was spontaneous applause in the old weatherboard hall. In the tent, no one looked up. Maybe their eyes were misted up like mine.

  In June 1967 we were back in the jungle. By now there was a routine that was not only normal; we accepted it. There were the usual contacts with the enemy, and the rain got heavier — although that was hard to imagine. In my diary I wrote: ‘B52 air strikes lasted all day on June 9th. We dug in to full bunker depth and, on June 10th, shells landed around us the entire night.’ That was a typical entry.

  Our radios appeared to short out or malfunction, and for the first time we had difficulty maintaining good communications. My theory was that the insulated rubber connection between the radio body and antenna was broken by heavy rain. At times the handsets refused to operate. It was like talking into a phone under a shower turned on so hard that the water hurt your skin. Initially, I covered the handset with a plastic bag and sealed the end with a rubber band; but, somehow, the moisture crept in. I tried two plastic bags and I taped the ends as well. Now I couldn’t hear the bloody thing unless it was jammed against my ear.

  Finally, something happened that I have never seen widely reported. The VC continually tried to jam our radios by trying to transmit at the same time as us on the same frequency. A shrill whistle in the handset indicated we were being jammed. Generally, they would leave us alone, as they were probably more interested in monitoring what we had to say, but the moment we had a contact they would start jamming. They were only partially successful in this; perhaps our radios were too powerful, or maybe they were attempting to jam us from some distance away. During my tour this jamming got worse, and reduced communications to the point where we had to switch to other frequencies a couple of times.

  Early into this operation, we found VC bunkers, campsites, and installations. Some bunker systems were quite extensive, like an underground village. D Company found a battalion-sized camp. I didn’t appreciate until many years later the VC’s ingenuity in living underground. Babies were born in underground hospitals next to wounded VC receiving treatment, and children attended school in these bunkers, as well as sleeping and eating there. Over time, in our own province, more and more such systems were located.

  I witnessed for the first time during this operation the thankless task of digging up enemy graves. Any fresh mound presumed to be a grave was dug up, and checked for weapons or food caches. It was hard on the poor buggers given the job. Whatever the outcome, the bodies had to be buried again. This time, most graves simply contained a body or bodies.

  In fact, I was pleased I was at the bottom end of the rank scale. Officers had a shit of a job. Some decisions they had to make were tough. There were never any volunteers when it came to disgusting jobs like this, so the leaders designated the task. It had to be done, as the VC had endlessly clever ways of maintaining supplies to their troops.

  Then, on our fifth day out, an eerie radio message crackled on the company network radio that was behind me.

  ‘Get down. No more movement.’

  A booby trap had been located, and all of us, CHQ and 2 Platoon, had already walked over the bloody thing. I looked back. Apparently, it was about twenty-five yards behind me. I shuddered as though someone had walked over my grave. It was a Chicom claymore mine, made in China, a deadly mine designed to explode and fire dozens of ball bearings, lumps of concrete, steel, and other projectiles at waist height. It would not kill many, but would wound anyone within thirty to fifty feet.

  It was always the intention of the VC to wound rather than kill. This was a calculated plan to cause maximum stress, disorder, burden, and confusion, rather than a moral decision. Valuable resources such as dust-off helicopters and medics would have to be called in to tend the injured, and in the process would also give away our position. The booby-trapped claymore was attached to a large, used radio battery, the kind used by the entire allied troop force in Vietnam. It was a very cunning use of the battery. The two claymore terminals were wired: one joined to a lid off a ration tin; the other, to a nail. The moment a connection was made: boom!

  The lid and nail were separated by a piece of split bamboo held apart by another thin bamboo slip. Just treading on the bamboo was enough to make the connection and trigger the device. But would you believe, this one was lodged sideways in the mud, because someone had kicked the bamboo over. The Vietnamese were clever at inventing booby traps. But we’d been very lucky. I heard that repeated many times afterwards. The claymore was carefully dismantled. When we got the OK to move on, I had visions of my training and the messages they had pumped into us. Someone somewhere didn’t receive that training, or had been just plain slack.

  Let me explain. Whilst in the jungle, every day, radio operators changed the radio battery. It would still contain a good charge, but we couldn’t risk it going flat at a vital time during prolonged communications. This battery was about the size of an egg carton, and carrying a heavy spare was a pain in the arse. Operators constantly asked mates to help carry the spare batteries, as they did with claymore mines and smoke bombs, all heavy as a brick and not part of our personal weaponry. Earlier in Australia, thorough instructors had warned us the likely outcome if a used battery wasn’t disposed of correctly.

  ‘Destroy the bloody battery after a day’s use, OK?’ It had been hammered into us. Every day, without fail, I would remove the radio battery and replace it with a new one, then grab my machete and hack it into an unusable heap to be buried along with any empty cans and rubbish from the evening meal. It was the only reason I carried the machete. I never once saw any rubbish left behind from where our company had harboured overnight. This time, obviously, the VC had found a battery that had been left intact and chucked to one side somewhere, along with a piece of empty tin left over from someone’s ration pack.

  We also carried claymore mines. They were about the size of a book, and we used them mainly in an ambush or of an evening, placing them out from our position and facing away. They were held in an upright position with prongs. A long wire was attached to the terminals, and it ran from the mine back to the soldier on piquet. They would normally be fired first in event of any contact. An electrical discharge generated by a handheld, scissor-like device fired the deadly claymore. They provided an added safety zone, hidden like a silent sentinel and just waiting to be set off with devastating effect.

  Like grenades and other powerful weapons we used in Vietnam, we treated claymore mines with care and respect. There were accidents, however, particularly with grenades. They were difficult to throw and, when they detonated, they sprayed shrapnel in every direction.

  The operation involving the booby trap was almost over. The last push was up a heavily vegetated hill housing suspected VC. Several companies from 7RAR were involved. There was a lot of supporting fire. Then, as a helicopter gunship hovered overhead, there was a bizarre incident. The gunship was at treetop level, firing its machine guns and small rockets ahead of us, and the almost red-hot shells from the expended rounds or bullets fell all over us. I, along with most of the others, had experienced this before; but one of our blokes, the medic, was directly below the chopper and didn’t know what was happening. As the rounds fell on him, he dropped to the ground clutching his body, curling up in a foetal position, and shaking all over. Later, he told us that he was waiting to die — he’d thoug
ht the hot, empty shells were live rounds and that he was being riddled with bullets.

  Back in base camp at last, exhausted and, would you believe, thirsty, there was a rush for the boozer. The first beer tasted like liquid gold. There was nothing better. New souvenirs hung on the boozer wall — a big VC flag and some American equipment carried by the enemy. The enemy-weapon rifle rack was looking impressive. Although there was never a lot of talk about what happened in the jungle, several men from one of our platoons recalled an incident. It was told quietly … they were probably still in mild shock. It was a scary story.

  Apparently, their ambush had just settled in, with dense jungle and a clearing out in front … perfect. With the claymores in place and piquets at the ready, they had a cold tea and got ready for a nap. A new bloke had one of the first shifts. Like any of us on our first time out, he would have been taken under someone’s wing and cut a fair bit of slack. It was raining heavily. Not long into his piquet, in total darkness, the new reinforcement heard noises out from the ambush position. Caution, always the master of common sense, prevailed, and he waited. Above the pouring rain and thrashing wind, he was fairly sure he’d heard something there — maybe VC voices. At the end of his piquet, he briefly reported what he had heard and then hit the sack. His concern wasn’t ignored, just acknowledged. The next morning, as the ambush was about to wind down, one of the grunts crawled out to retrieve the claymores. They had all been turned around, facing inwards — towards the ambush. The VC must have moved in just after dark …

  I vaguely recall looking at those blokes as the yarn was told over beer, wondering who could have been killed. Or sent home, wounded. I guess we all did that. Then I quietly shook inside. We never showed our vulnerability or thoughts; just socked down a few more cans. It turned into a subdued drinking session.

  Fortunately we had a distraction. Everyone in the boozer that afternoon was talking about the first negative press seen in the Australian papers regarding our involvement in Vietnam. Most of the papers we got were weeks old. Usually, all we had to read were Smiths Weekly, our battalion paper, and the American Stars and Stripes. But now it seemed the Australian newspapers were reporting the beginnings of some anti-war stirrings. There had been some protest at universities, and several opposition politicians were becoming active. A few flippant comments were tossed about.