Going Back

by Gary McKay

  It wasn’t just the fighting gear that was in short supply, but also the very basics of life, such as food and shelter. As Ron explained:

  There was plenty of wire and pickets, that wasn’t a problem. Tentage was the biggest problem because the pundits in Sydney said we would be able to take over the tents from 1 RAR, and of course when we got up there they had already had twelve months of good use. Anyway when we said the 1 RAR tents had rotted, they finished up coming up without the tent poles because they said the tent poles wouldn’t have rotted, they wouldn’t need them, and of course we never got the tent poles from 1 RAR. So there were lots of dramas in that respect. The food was interesting as well; at one stage there we were on frankfurters and corn for about two weeks. Lots and lots of fresh food was arriving, but we couldn’t keep it in anything— we had no refrigerators.7

  The 5 RAR group went back to Nui Dat in October 2005. To their surprise, it looked almost the same as it did in 1966, as it is now a fully-grown rubber plantation once more. As Peter Isaacs remarked, ‘Apart from Luscombe Field, it did look almost as it did on the day that we got there.’ On Operation Hardihood Captain Isaacs had ‘flown in with the battalion of the 173rd Airborne and walked over Nui Dat hill before the Task Force [Headquarters] arrived’. Apart from ‘fewer trees’, he said, ‘it didn’t look that different’. Peter looked around at a few decaying remains of the old base and observed:

  The stone pillars that used to mark the entrance to 1 ATF base on the Hoa Long side are still there. The remains of a command post bunker in the artillery regiment are still there too. Nui Dat hill has been partially excavated, but is certainly recognisable. Not quite so many trees as it had when I walked up it with the BHQ [Battalion Headquarters] party of the 1/503rd [a US infantry battalion from 173rd Airborne Brigade], but the surrounding area is much the same as it probably was when a French Groupe Mobile was ambushed just to the west of the hill, by the Viet Minh in the early 1950s.8

  The battalion’s helicopter landing zone, known as ‘Tiger Pad’, is also still intact and became the obvious choice for holding a small, low-key and unobtrusive memorial service in which the 5 RAR group read out the names of those who had fallen on the battalion’s first and second tours. They had a picnic lunch—and true to form it rained, turning the red lateritic soil to sticky red mud. They stood on the side of Nui Dat hill, which has been mined to a small extent in the search for high-grade pumice stone, and they took in the verdant green rice paddies, the multitudinous shades of green from crops like tapioca, rice, sweet potatoes, corn or maize and a host of vegetables. Cattle were being prodded along from one grazing spot to another by a young village boy, and the villagers were dotted among the green fields like punctuation marks, either harvesting or sowing fresh crops, wearing traditional black work clothes and bamboo hats.

  The Warbies

  When you are standing on the airstrip, or what is left of the crumbling tarmac of Luscombe Field, and look south-west you can see the distinctive line of hills known as the Nui Thi Vais. To the servicemen they were more commonly known as ‘The Warbies’. Paul Greenhalgh gave the group the background to the naming of the hills:

  That all started back in Holsworthy. We built a mud map outside Delta Company headquarters about 10 feet by 10 feet and of course the biggest feature was the Nui Thi Vais. There was a popular tune at the time that included the lyrics, ‘They say don’t go on Warburton Mountain’. And there was a Private Warburton in Delta Company, and somebody put a sign up on the mud map that said, ‘Don’t go there Warby.’ So when we as a company went to Viet Nam, we up on Nui Dat hill looked out onto the Nui Thi Vais so clearly. We called it the Warburtons—the Warbies—and that was used for the whole decade of Australian troops in Viet Nam. Sadly Private Warburton was killed; he was one of the four soldiers killed in the company.9

  Ben Morris appreciated spending time at Nui Dat. ‘Having the lunchbreak on the site was a lot better than being rushed in and out, which happened the first time I went there.’ Although the authorities are not keen on visitors having memorial services, which is understandable, Ben felt that their simple service at Tiger Pad was important— as was ‘just being there. Just standing and feeling the place.’10

  Fred Pfitzner enjoyed being back in his old lines. After the lunchbreak, he wandered down to the area where he thought his lines would have been. He found it was:

  Pretty much as I remembered it. The rubber is back to about the same standard as it was when we were there, even though it is the second planting. There’s no way I could have said precisely that’s where my hoochie was or anything like that. But that wasn’t important to me. Just to go back, look at the view, and say, ‘Yep. I remember certain things that went on in there.’ And move on.11

  Peter Rogers was working with 161 Recce Squadron when he lived at Nui Dat. On his first trip back with his wife he recalled: ‘I walked around Nui Dat and I showed Suzie where my hoochie was. I managed to find the area, even though new rubber had been planted in the area where it [once] was.’ Peter took great delight in being able to share that memory with his wife. Being a pilot, he added: ‘What I really wanted to do was hire a Cessna and fly around because that is the way I remember it, and to be able to see everything again.’ However, there are no light fixed-wing aircraft for hire. Peter said ruefully, ‘I could have hired a helicopter, but at $US1500 an hour, I thought that was a bit beyond our budget.’12

  Today a large rubber factory sits beside the airstrip not far from where the refuelling farm was situated; across the other side of the strip is a kindergarten built by the Australian Veterans Vietnam Reconstruction Group.13

  The Nui Dat medical fraternity

  John Taske, Tony White and Ted Heffernan were all doctors serving in Nui Dat at the same time in 1966–67. They had all been at the School of Army Health together receiving their orientation training before they deployed to South Viet Nam. The men were attached to various elements within the Task Force such as 5 RAR, 1 Field Regiment and 6 RAR. While in country they had almost no opportunity to see each other owing to operational commitments, but towards the end of their tour they managed to gather together near John Taske’s tent for a drink—or three—as John recalled:

  Ted thought of it. He stood up in his very expansive attitude . . . and he said, ‘Gentlemen, I call to order the first, last and only meeting of the Nui Dat Medical Association and in honour I will buy the first round.’ And the gunners had some French pink champagne and so his first round was a bottle for each of us. So then we all had to buy a bottle in the round, so we ended up between the four of us drinking sixteen bottles of champagne.14

  On the site of their serious imbibing almost 40 years earlier, the trio of medicos gathered again in October 2005 and cracked a bottle of champagne. They knew they were close to where they’d held their one and only meeting of the ‘Nui Dat Medical Association’. As John explained, ‘I was very close to the gates at Nui Dat—and to be able to find that spot and be within a few, oh, probably tens of metres of where I actually was, was a great thrill.’

  Tony White was also happy with the re-enactment and being able to see his old lines again: ‘It was a great, pleasant surprise . . . That was a great experience.’15

  His son Rupert reported that Dr White had also experienced a sense of physical relief at the site: he ‘had a leak where he reckoned the old pissaphone was’.16 Tony later admitted to committing what he called a ‘commemorative act’ next to the former 5 RAR regimental aid post, where the latrine facility had been.

  Restrictions at Nui Dat

  When returning to Nui Dat, many veterans want to go back to where their old lines were located. Unfortunately this is not always possible: Nui Dat is now a military zone with the Australians’ old nemesis—D 445 Provincial Mobile Force Battalion—billeted in the area where the ‘Anzac lines’ (2, 4 and 6 RAR) used to be on the eastern flank of the base. Consequently, veterans will not be allowed to enter the military restricted zone, but they can still go up onto Nui
Dat hill and walk along the airstrip and drive around most of the old base area, which is now farmed extensively. A permit is required to enter the area, and unauthorised visitors will be escorted out, if not at gun point, then with some force.

  Before the trip, Roger Wainwright was keen to ‘go back and see my old platoon position’ on the northern side of the airstrip. After his visit to Nui Dat Roger was elated. Grinning broadly, he said, ‘I found it, and I didn’t need a GPS to do it either.’ He added:

  I knew pretty well exactly where my tent was. I wandered around my platoon position; I knew how it was laid out and particularly the .50 cal bunker position that was down the front. And I went down there and had a look at that. And I knew from the fall of ground where it was.17

  Reinforcing the need for veterans to have time to reflect during a battlefield visit, Roger remarked: ‘I would have liked a little bit longer there. Just to have a little bit of time, you know, just to reflect about my mates.’ Roger was responsible for drawing together the small ceremony at ‘Tiger Pad’ and shared his thoughts on what that meant to him:

  That was special. And we did that purposely because when we came back from various operations and we’d lost people we’d have commemorative services with the whole battalion lined up around that square pad. So that’s why we chose that position to do it. And at the same time to remember our comrades from the second tour of 5 RAR. We had 25 lost on each tour. So . . . as an association we weren’t going to forget them.18

  Veterans will find that returning to where they lived for a year will evoke a lot of memories. As Ron Shambrook said so succinctly, ‘It was nostalgic.’ Little things will shake the dust of time off the memory banks and images and thoughts will come flooding back. I found myself inwardly smiling at various things that started to return to the front of the brain, and often they were just trivial things—like the rubbish truck doing its rounds, and men playing volleyball between the rubber trees, and going in forlorn hope down to the Post Exchange to see if there were any reel-to-reel tape recorders left after the base wallahs and pogos had cleaned out the store. The latrines—rows of thunderboxes whose lids would lift when the 155 and 8-inch self-propelled American artillery let loose—pissaphones, sandbagging and gun pickets, mud, dust and duckboards.

  Home, sweet home.

  Chapter 5

  OUTSIDE THE WIRE: PHUOC TUY

  Travelling outside the wire throughout Phuoc Tuy is relatively simple. The arterials are all well marked and guides very rarely get geographically misplaced. I have even used a war-era map and been able to get from one side of the province to the other with little trouble. Most groups base themselves down at Vung Tau while they spend a couple of days touring the province. The areas they will normally visit are Nui Dat, The Horseshoe, the Memorial Cross site at Long Tan; they will also do a circuit around the mountains at the southern end of the province including the Long Hai Hills, and the Nui Thi Vai and Nui Dinh Mountains. If they have time, groups can also venture further afield to Xuyen Moc and do a circuit up to Binh Ba north of Nui Dat, and then motor west across the Hat Dich area and turn south back down past Long Son Island to Vung Tau.

  Ba Ria–Vung Tau (Phuoc Tuy) Province

  Situated about 40 kilometres south-east of the former Saigon, Phuoc Tuy Province—now known as Ba Ria–Vung Tau Province—was the area the Australian Task Force were responsible for as part of the Allied effort against the Viet Cong. The province covered approximately 2500 square kilometres, consisting of coastal plains with sand dunes to the south, the Mekong River Delta with mangroves and swamps in the south-west, and three isolated jungle-covered mountain groups to the south-east, with Ba Ria as its capital. The province was chosen for a number of reasons. It was strategically important as it contained the port facility of Vung Tau where Australian logistics could be brought ashore, and the vital Route 15 arterial road between the port and Saigon. Although heavily controlled by the Viet Cong, the province could also be contained using Australian counter-revolutionary warfare techniques, and the terrain—mostly flat and covered in jungle—suited the Australian forces and their military structure for operations.

  Phuoc Tuy Province was an operational backwater compared to the northern provinces of South Viet Nam near the demilitarised zone (DMZ) on the 17th Parallel border. However, it harboured fewer suspected enemy than the regions to the north, and was an area where the Task Force could manage its own military affairs to a certain degree and work in accordance with Australian Army doctrine and tactical procedures.

  The province has changed dramatically since the war ended. Returning veterans will notice the changes to the village structures, the widened and bitumened roads—some of which are now toll roads—and the overall increase in village and population density. They will also have to buy new maps as many of the road and street designations have changed—and in many cases throughout Viet Nam, towns have also been renamed, usually to honour a local war hero or represent a Communist victory.

  Once the veteran enters the old province, whether by road down from Ho Chi Minh City, or by the much-preferred hydrofoil ferry down the Song Sai Gon (Saigon River), things will begin to look familiar, and memories will start flooding back. The major geographical features have not changed, although since 1993 the vegetation on top of the Nui Thi Vais has started to regrow after decades of being barren as a result of defoliant spraying.

  Vung Tau

  The first place many veterans saw in the province if they came by sea aboard HMAS Sydney—the converted aircraft carrier that operated as a troopship and stores carrier—was the port and resort city of Vung Tau, about 130 kilometres south-east of Ho Chi Minh City. The wreck of a ship was prominent at Cap St Jacques, but it has long since gone to the scrap-metal yards. The city is once again a seaside resort town, and attracts flocks of residents from Ho Chi Minh City on weekends, especially young courting couples on motorcycles.

  During the war, when the Sydney arrived in the port the soldiers were most often ferried ashore by American Army Chinook helicopters. For most Australians it was the first time they had ever seen one of these huge machines—which one American compatriot once described most colourfully as ‘two palm trees fuckin’ in a bucket’—let alone fly in one. Once on board, the American crewmen would ensure that the soldiers’ rifles were pointed down towards the floor so that an accidental discharge didn’t take out the vital hydraulics that kept those two ‘palm trees’ operating. Bill Kromwyk recalled his maiden flight in one of the huge noisy machines:

  I just remember looking around at everybody’s faces and—with the exception of Bob [Bettany]—how green and bewildered they looked. It was a whole new experience; here we are in Viet Nam. And then I looked at the American gunners on the doors and the pilots—there were about five crew—and they were sort of hardened and had a laid-back sort of look. And I thought, ‘My God, we certainly are green compared to these guys. Just look at them.’ I felt like a really green soldier.1

  Vung Tau was a relatively secure area; there was little direct threat from the Viet Cong by day, and only occasionally by night. Any enemy activity was usually in the form of sporadic rocket attacks or small-scale ground attacks on Regional Force or Popular Force outposts in the local area.2

  Mortarman Private Garry Heskett was flown ashore in a Chinook and said he experienced feelings of dread, admitting he had ‘a feeling of slight nervousness, anticipation and being super-alert, believing that the enemy were hiding behind every bush and tree’.3

  Bill Kromwyk was doing his National Service with 6 RAR on their second tour of duty in 1969–70, and came ashore from the HMAS Sydney by other means:

  We were anchored off Vung Tau and then the landing craft came and got us. We went from there in the landing craft to land on Vung Tau. We climbed down into the landing craft and we couldn’t see anything, all we knew was that we were heading towards Vung Tau and didn’t know what to expect. We were told that probably nothing will happen but, just in case, be careful. I don’t know
if we even had any ammunition! Of course nothing happened. I always remember the big ramp coming down and there were all these officers standing there waiting for us. There was no enemy. So we piled off and we had to march to the airstrip, and the [RAAF] Caribous took us to Nui Dat.4

  When 5 RAR first arrived in country in 1966 they were to be part of the 1 ATF. The battalion main body (about 700 men) was sent down to the sand dunes of Back Beach to acclimatise and prepare for Operation Hardihood, which was to be conducted in close coordination with American units to secure the Task Force base area.5 The sand dunes were hot, windswept and not at all inviting. There was a total lack of facilities and the equipment the soldiers needed to prepare for their immediate task.

  Captain Peter Isaacs stood on what is now a Viet Cong martyrs’ monument—where once the 1st Australian Logistic Support Group (1 ALSG) Officers’ Mess stood—and looked down at the four-lane toll road leading to Ba Ria, and several hotel resorts under construction near the beach. He commented, ‘I think it looks ghastly.’6 Not everyone has that same opinion and many are glad to see the area forging ahead, fuelled in part by massive off-shore oil and gas exploration projects that are now bringing energy resources and wealth into the area. Peter reflected:

  I’ve wandered around the world since those days and the development that’s gone on is typical of development that goes on which is unplanned, haphazard. Some of the buildings are very good, and I certainly applaud the Vietnamese [for] the gardens that they have developed and so on. But Back Beach? Well, it was a stretch of sand, and it was as I expected it would be.7

  Paul Greenhalgh recalled his most vivid memory of Vung Tau as:

  Standing on the sand at the ALSG at Vung Tau . . . talking to the soldiers before Operation Hardihood. We flew in by choppers from Vung Tau and I remember going on a bit like a football coach, geeing them up and saying, ‘Here we go, here we go.’ And then there was a short [chopper] flight up to what was the Nui Dat area and landing. It was on; we were away.8