In Good Company Page 15

  By now the company was right inside the bunker system and the fighting was pretty fierce. The tanks were the key to our going forward. The Viet Cong were fighting from behind the lids of their bunkers and occasionally from inside the stepped entrance. Most of the bunkers were about six feet square and had a raised roof which was very well camouflaged and which was only a foot or so above ground level. They were not the classic Second World War bunker everyone imagines, with a slit firing port and made out of concrete. In fact the roof was constructed of three or more layers of logs with hard packed clay between each layer of timber. They were primarily designed as protection against US B-52 air strikes and artillery fire. The camouflage on the bunkers was so good you could literally be sitting on top of one before you knew it. Fighting through the bunker system was hard because fire lanes had been prepared between each bunker in order to give mutual support to one another. Knowing where all the bunkers were was vital before we could push forward; otherwise men would be cut down in the fire lane.

  10 and 12 Platoon were finding the going tough and progress was slow. After an hour or so we had probably advanced no more than 100 metres into the system, yet the firing was still intense. I went forward with some of my men several times to resupply the forward platoons with gun ammunition and to try to see how the battle was going. At about this time an incident occurred as a result of the enemy firing a captured M60 machine gun. Often the only way we could tell where we had advanced to in the thick undergrowth was by the noise of our weapons. Weapon types have their own individual sound; and between D Company and C Company there was the constant fire of an M60. The sound of this weapon led our company headquarters, which was travelling centrally, to believe that 10 Platoon was going quite nicely. As I was forward I was tasked by Peter Schuman to take more linked ammo to 10 Platoon; but after I had failed to locate his flank in the bush, Jerry Taylor asked both platoons to throw a coloured smoke grenade. After a delay of a minute or so orange coloured smoke began drifting upward through the dense foliage. The only problem was that it was to company headquarters’ rear and they in fact were way out in front in the assault line. Peter Schuman made a suggestion that they get their backsides out of where they were and let the platoons do the attacking (not the headquarters). A hasty withdrawal was made and Major Taylor decided to push my platoon through 10 Platoon: they were just about out of ammunition and the bunker system now seemed to be narrowing in front.

  I dashed back to where my platoon was lined out and we moved forward in extended line to start our assault. By now radio voice procedure had been abbreviated; in fact Major Taylor was calling the platoons by the platoon commander’s first name. It saved time and saved confusion between the radio call signs 41, 42 and 43—company headquarters being 40. (These are pronounced ‘four one, four two’ and so on.) Besides, the noise from the small arms, the motors on the Centurions and firing of the 20 pounder main gun on the tank meant that it was bloody difficult to hear what was being said over the radio. I linked up with the tank which would be pushing forward with our platoon and we started assaulting.

  The soldiers were told to watch their ammunition usage as the company had run out of ammo several times already and the APCs only had so much left on board. Keeping my men moving forward was a difficult task. Every time I tried to yell a command, someone would either fire a rifle or a tank would let go with a canister round or enemy fire would force our heads down and no-one would be able, or care too much, to hear. The only way I could get my message across was to move across to the section commander I wanted to speak to and talk into his ear at close range. We made reasonable progress and ‘cater-pillared’ forward with the tank. When the tank fired its canister round the noise was unbelievable. It was a stunning sensation and had the effect of drowning out all the other noise for some time after. But the tank was keeping us going forward: it was devastating bunkers with high explosive shell or running over the roof of the bunker and then doing a track turn and collapsing the lid.

  As we fought our way through we came under fire from an M60 machine-gun. Instead of the high pitched ‘chat chat chat’ of the AK-47 assault rifles we were now hearing a slower ‘dug, dug, dug’. It was firing at the tank and ricochets were going everywhere. The tank wasn’t being damaged by this enemy gun but it was stopping my men from going forward as it ripped through the trees and logs we were using for cover. Finally we were able to get a reasonable fix on where this machine-gun was firing from. I jumped up onto the back of the tank and gave the crew commander a target indication. The tank then raked the area with its machine-gun and before long a Viet Cong gun crew broke from cover and withdrew along a footpad between the bunkers. I heard the tank crew commander on his radio yell ‘Traverse left, canister load, fire!’ and the gun crew were hit at a range of about 40 metres at most and that was the end of them.

  This was the first time we had been under heavy enemy fire. The sensation was incredible. Most of the enemy rounds were passing above our heads and the noise of the bullets going overhead was eerie. There was a high pitched cracking noise like a thin bull-whip as the round went overhead. After the ‘crack!’ came a ‘thump’ which was the sound of the weapon firing the bullet. As their rounds were going overhead pieces of tree and foliage would spit down on us. Every now and then there would be a big bang as the enemy fired their rocket propelled grenades. This was primarily an anti-tank weapon but was useful if fired into the trees above, raining shrapnel down upon us. Most of the rocket propelled grenade rounds were detonating behind us and luckily no-one was hit by these rockets.

  It was now around 4.30 pm and we had been fighting our way through the bunkers for two hours. The enemy’s resistance to our assault seemed to be weakening. We were now able to keep crawling forward with less fire being directed at us. To see what was going on in my forward sections, I had to position myself almost level with the assault line and right in the middle between the two sections. It was difficult to get a picture of the enemy and where he was fighting from. It wasn’t until we had been fighting for almost half an hour that I saw that the enemy was in fact firing from behind the bunkers and not from inside the stairwell. It was almost impossible to get an aimed shot away at the enemy as the vegetation kept obscuring the view. If you moved to a better fire position the target area looked completely different and one had to start searching the area all over again.

  The platoon was slowly moving forward, a routine had been established with our tank and we started to capture a few bunkers. We didn’t have any grenades to throw into the bunkers as they had all been withdrawn from issue because a batch of grenades with instantaneous fuses had been mixed up with the normal seven second delay fuses. Fortunately we hadn’t been issued any of the wrong grenades, but now we needed grenades badly. It was asking for trouble to stick your head into a bunker even if it looked empty as the enemy could quite easily be in a corner and kill you as you entered from above. The noise of the fire fight was starting to decrease as we neared what appeared to be the end of the bunker system.

  One of my sections was spread out around a bunker and they called me over to show me what they had found. Down the stairwell of the bunker I could see a leg and foot of a man. The section commander told me that they had heard voices and believed the enemy was still trapped inside and there was obviously no escape tunnel. I yelled out to the enemy in Vietnamese to surrender and received no response. My ‘splinter team’ sappers had come forward and one of them by the name of Smith decided that he would have a look with the aid of his torch. He had hardly stuck his foot down onto the first step when a burst of AK-47 fire ripped up out of the bunker letting all and sundry know that the occupants were not keen on visitors. I grabbed the M60 gun off Ralph Niblett and shot away the corner of the entrance hoping to splinter the logs and convince the Viet Cong that they were in a hopeless position. Once again I called on the enemy to surrender and again a burst of fire was the response. I was wondering how I was going to get the bunker cleared when Peter Schum
an came up with the idea of using a claymore mine. I grabbed a mine off the APC travelling with company headquarters and taped it together so the detonators wouldn’t pull out when I threw it in. Meanwhile, one of the sappers in the two-man splinter team attached to the platoon had obtained a grenade from somewhere and we decided to try it first. He lobbed it in and everyone hit the ground waiting for the big bang. It didn’t come. We waited a little while in case it was a dud or had a long or faulty fuse, but still no bang. After about two minutes there was no sound of the enemy moving or attempting to throw the grenade back out. I asked the sapper if he had remembered to take the electrical tape holding the detonating handle down against the body of the grenade off before he had pulled the pin. He said he wasn’t sure and in the excitement of it all I don’t think he had, and so there was the enemy huddling up in one corner of the bunker and a grenade lobs in and just sits there on the floor in the damp gloom.

  Now I was committed to using the claymore. I laid out the firing cable and prepared it for firing. I yelled out one more time and getting no response, hurled in the claymore and ran to the initiating device and fired the mine. There was a tremendous explosion as the claymore went off in the bunker. Thick grey and brown smoke drifted up out of the stairwell. It was impossible to see down in the bunker and so I told the section commander to secure his area and let me know if there were any more bunkers to be cleared.

  By now all the firing had ceased right across the company front. Major Taylor gave the command to secure our position and to very carefully clear all the bunkers. We had to move quickly as it was almost six o’clock; night would soon be upon us. I swept the platoon forward to where we were pretty sure the bunker system ended and searched for sign. It appeared that those enemy who hadn’t been caught in the bunker system had withdrawn west back along the river line. After positioning sentries on the footpads that led out of the system, we started a systematic search of the bunkers. We were now the left forward platoon and 12 Platoon was just to our north and 10 Platoon behind us to our east. Company headquarters was central and the Centurions were now grouped together and allocated a part of the company perimeter.

  My platoon sergeant had been forward with my other section. He came back to tell me that he didn’t think there were any more enemy left to our front. Just as he said that, firing broke out up front: one of my sections was letting all hell loose at a bunker. I came up behind the riflemen in the section: they said they could see the enemy. They pointed out where they had seen him and I searched for the bunker. No firing had been directed back at us, so I told the section commander to push forward and clear the area but to be bloody careful. He moved his men forward—they used ‘dry’ fire and movement to crawl their way onwards. After about ten minutes of careful movement, they halted and I was called forward and shown what all the action had been about. In the steps of the stairwell was a Viet Cong soldier who had been shot. But we hadn’t killed him. Sometime earlier in the fighting he must have stuck his head up out of the bunker at about the same time that one of the tanks had fired a canister round into the jungle. For there, right between this unfortunate soldier’s eyes was a piece of the steel out of the canister round. This soldier had been dead for over half an hour, judging by the dried blood on his forehead and mouth. He had dropped where he had been hit. My men had carried out a contact drill on a dead man.

  There were no more bunkers containing surprises. As it was almost dark we settled into our night routine. However it was far from a routine night as the wind came up during the evening and trees and branches which had been shattered by artillery and tank fire started to fall. There was so much deadfall coming down that I was seriously considering sleeping in an enemy bunker. One particular tree over 60 feet tall came down with a tremendous crash and I spent a long time staring at the roof of my hootchie before I fell asleep.

  It had been an incredible day. I hadn’t been scared as I thought I might have been, even when we actually led the assault. I think I was too busy to be worrying about my feelings at that time. I knew I was exhausted both physically and mentally. As a platoon commander I seemed to have spent most of my time keeping my sections pointed in the right direction. I hadn’t fired directly at an enemy soldier as they had been too hard to identify and get a clear shot at. When all the fighting had stopped and the noise from the artillery and tanks had finished, I sat down on my pack sketching the layout of the bunkers we had cleared; my hand started to shake so badly I couldn’t draw a straight line. Once all the danger was over my system must have finally let go and took the time out to remind me just how dangerous battle can be. The company had lost one man killed and four wounded. Those wounded were primarily hit by shrapnel from our own artillery, as the rounds hit the tall trees. We had been pretty fortunate considering the experience most people had when they attacked bunker systems. There was no doubt that the Centurions had made all the difference.

  Trying to count the enemy dead was not easy. My platoon had scored about six; but we couldn’t get into a lot of the bunkers as the Centurions had crushed the lids in, no doubt with the occupants inside. The total body count of enemy was placed at twelve as it was a little useless digging up bunkers to find another handful of enemy bodies. The haul of weapons was five AK-47 assault rifles, the GPMG M60 that had caused us so much trouble and confusion, and a couple of B40 rocket propelled grenade launchers. In addition there were hundreds of rounds of machine-gun ammunition, AK-47 magazines, shovels, 18 backpacks, and about 100 kilograms of rice.

  Once again, the bunker system was laid out in a pattern which resembled a large letter X on the ground. The cross point of the X was a command bunker to others which were sighted along the legs of the cross. Light blue signal wire was found connecting the bunkers, and small torch globes conveyed the signals to the bunker occupants. Some of the bunkers were situated a little further out—these were sentry bunkers. Once we were able to lie down behind the bunkers we could see the fire lanes which we had had to assault through. If we had been standing, the enemy would have seen us between our ankles and our knees. This impressed upon us the enemy’s intense preparation of his defences and our need to be on our stomachs when fighting through bunkers.

  At about midnight or one o’clock that night everything had settled down; most of the deadfall had finished crashing down as the wind abated. The tanks were mounting a picquet within their own organisation, operating what is called a ‘guard tank’ system. This entails soldiers changing sentry inside the tank. This is not an easy thing to do in the cramped confines of the tank turret, especially when you’re half asleep. The tank normally carries a canister round up the spout when they laager for the night in close country. Just as everything was quiet and peaceful one of the tankers accidentally hit the button on the main gun of the guard tank. The noise in the calm, deep dark of night was shattering. I felt as if someone had plugged me into an electric circuit and hit the switch. I was sleeping in a recently captured hammock and when the explosion of the accidentally fired canister round went off, I literally jumped in the air and fell out of my bed.

  It wasn’t the first time that night that I found myself on my bum on the ground. As we were settling in for the night my platoon sergeant had asked which men in the platoon would want a hammock out of all the packs we had captured. As some men already had hammocks I was able to get one. The only problem was it had a bullet hole through it; and, because the hammock had been rolled tightly up into a ball, the bullet hole was repeated a further four times across the opened hammock. I was a bit dubious about using it but didn’t relish the thought of sleeping on the damp ground in the bunker system next to the river line. The place was lousy with leeches and I really wanted to collapse for the night and not be bothered by creepy crawlies. I thought I was safe. After an hour or so the hammock was still holding, and I was contemplating how I could make it stronger and what I would have to sew it up with. So I moved to snuggle into the hammock—and suddenly without warning I was deposited onto the ground
, much to the great enjoyment of my platoon headquarters. I scrounged another hammock and reset my mosquito net and had been asleep for a couple of hours when the tank round went off. We stood to thinking the enemy were coming back to have a go at us. Everyone had eyes like saucers, searching the jungle to their front. After a quarter of an hour or so the word came across the radio explaining what had happened and we stood down.

  The next morning saw the company finishing off the battle procedure we had started the night before. We had to recover the dead enemy out of the bunker I had thrown the claymore into and search them for documents. There was still a bit of searching in the bunker system to be done for equipment and stray bodies. For a lot of my men this would be the first time they would have to search and strip a dead enemy; they were not exactly looking forward to the task. The dead were now a bit putrid as the heat and humidity had taken its toll. I had to call for volunteers. Phil Asprey from Five Section was one who was prepared to go down into the stench of the bunker, on the understanding that he was given a fair share of any decent souvenirs. He tied a handkerchief around his nose and down he went. The bodies were a real mess, which was to be expected with 500 steel ball bearings propelled by a pound and a half of high explosive in such a confined space, and Phil certainly earned his booty.