In Good Company Read online

  We finally found our way out of the swamps and lowlands after five days and were just starting to make some good ground when one of my men badly wrenched a knee and was unable to walk. I halted the platoon again short of a full day’s patrolling hoping the soldier’s leg would mend and he could continue. His knee was still up like a balloon the next day. So another casualty evacuation (casevac) chopper was called and out he went. No sooner had that little drama been settled when an hour later one of my signallers stirred up a nest of hornets in a tree with his radio antennae; he was stung about seven times on the face and received one bad sting on the upper eyelid. We weren’t having much luck with the animals.

  The heat was now even more oppressive as the constant rain and high humidity combined. The daily temperature was in the eighties and over and that, plus the heavy going and no sign of the enemy, was starting to wear a bit thin. Thankfully, the Australian soldier has the character and sense of humour to help him overcome these things and allow him to persevere and not drop his bundle. The platoon strength in the patrol was now down to around 24 men and sections were comprised of only six men. My headquarters numbered six—myself, the platoon sergeant, two signallers, the medic and the mortar fire controller. With only six men in a section it meant long gun picquets at night; so where possible I tried to harbour up against thorny bamboo and present a half moon shape to the front as the impenetrable bamboo protected our rear. When I couldn’t do that, I had the platoon headquarters help out on the early evening gun picquet to ease the burden on the sections.

  It was during one such occasion that we had one of the more memorable gun picquets manned by platoon headquarters. I was out on the perimeter manning one of the section guns with my platoon sergeant down next to me. It was still half an hour till dark and the sections were preparing their hootchie spots for the night. Darryl and I were quietly discussing what our plan of action should be for the next couple of days when he suddenly stopped talking and was looking at some dark red mud he had rolled into a small ball in his fingers. He said, ‘Gee, that looks just like a Malteser chocolate ball, doesn’t it?’ and before I could agree he stood up and went back to where his pack was. He returned quickly with an American ration can called a B-1A unit. This can contained four round salted crackers and two chocolate discs covered in silver foil paper. The discs were flavoured in chocolate fudge, in vanilla chocolate and a third flavour was coconut. Darryl quickly cut open the bottom of the can and removed one of the chocolate discs and ate it. He then made a flat mud disc the size of the one he had just eaten and covered it with the silver paper. He carefully replaced it into the bottom of the B-1A unit can and put the can down next to the gun.

  Frank Wessing, our ever-hungry medic, was due to come onto the gun to relieve me in a matter of minutes; and as my sergeant sat there chortling to himself I began to realise what he had in mind. Frank arrived and plonked himself down next to me and I quickly briefed him as to where the sentry was out to our front and so on. Frank’s eyes were soon rivetted onto the B-1A unit and he only had his attention focused on the ration can. Frank was an enormous eater. Despite the fact that he was as skinny as a rake, he would carry enough rations for two men. On a five day issue he would run out of food by day three and be spongeing off anyone who would let him. I always thought he was a conscientious medic the way he was always out around the sections looking at the diggers—but he was also out bludging rations.

  After a couple of minutes Darryl picked up the ration can and opened up the top and took out the biscuits and the top chocolate disc. He made a sandwich out of two of the crackers and slowly munched and crunched his way through the biscuit. As this was day four of our normal ration issue, Frank was starving. He was almost beside himself when Darryl licked his fingers and said ‘how good those chocolate discs were’. Then in the fading light he took out the look-alike disc and made another chocolate disc sandwich. He almost had it into his mouth when he stopped, looked at me and said I don’t really feel like another one, do you want it skipper?’ I hummed and aahed for a little while and made to reach out for it and then declined the offer. Darryl turned around to the now heavily salivating Frank and asked him if he wanted the disc. Frank nearly took his hand off as he grabbed the sandwich and wolfed about half the chocolate disc into his mouth.

  He had swallowed at least a mouthful before he realised what he was eating and started spitting out the mud disc. Frank swore at Darryl and I began to laugh and had to leave the machine-gun pit. I had to stick my sweat rag into my mouth so I wouldn’t make any noise. Eventually Darryl had to leave as well as he could hardly stop from crying with laughter and also had his mouth full of sweat rag. For about the next half an hour I kept picturing Frank jamming the disc into his mouth and then realising with a terrible look on his face that he was chomping into rich Phouc Tuy mud.

  Maintenance of morale was important to the operation of the platoon. Patrolling in the wet season where we got a wet backside every day and found little or no sign was pretty heartbreaking. Some would say that not everyone wanted to have a contact with the enemy but I disagree. Our platoon took great pride in the fact that no-one had ever got the drop on us and we patrolled quietly and efficiently. Even though maintaining our security was a constant burden which left us tired, we had not been caught with our pants down and more importantly we hadn’t lost anyone killed or wounded.

  When the big maintdem resupplies came in every ten days or so with clean greens, socks, fresh fruit and milk, we often had a birthday to celebrate. Because the draft age was 20, a lot of the birthdays were 21sts. A lot of the regular soldiers were also in the same age group. To celebrate a 21st birthday we would sit the lucky celebrant inside a small circle on the floor of the jungle and the remainder of the platoon would gather around. The platoon sergeant would then squirt instant shaving cream which came in on the resupply onto the celebrant’s head. Then a paper candle was fashioned and stuck into the mound of shaving cream on his head and lit. Then, not to breach our security, we would all sing in a stage whisper ‘Happy Birthday’ and later devour a large cake the cooks had prepared for the event. I think it was silly simple things like this which helped to keep morale up.

  My own morale problems at this time were the same as any other married officer or soldier in the unit. Rumours had been spreading for some time of an early return and I had just had to write and tell my wife the company was staying until February. Her letters in reply were quite miserable and dispirited. I had to keep my mind on the job and yet I felt for Gay as we both admitted we felt the separation keener than we both had anticipated.

  The patrolling on the western side of the province was proving pretty fruitless and we were all hoping we could move in closer to the villages to get nearer to where most of the action normally took place. My platoon had to do a stint of travelling with company headquarters at this time and as we didn’t move as often and fast as the platoons on their own, it was a bit easier for a couple of days. When Major Taylor asked me to look for a spot to stop for the night, I went through three unsuccessful choices of what I thought was nice close country to pack down for a quiet night’s sleep. Instead he chose a more open area. When I asked him why he wanted to be out where the trees were further apart the answer was he had a longer hammock and needed more room!

  We left company headquarters a few days later and continued to patrol independently. The very few tracks we found in the area yielded no joy for us; so when the word came over the radio that we were going to redeploy by chopper across to the other side of the province, east of Route 2, our spirits went up. By 9 September we were patrolling south and east of the Courtenay rubber and our artillery fire support base ‘Cherie’. After a day or so of patrolling in an area the company commander had given me to clear, we returned to the fire support base to help with a security problem in the area. We trekked through really lousy scrub on a very hot day and reached the fire support base by about midday. I left the platoon at the bottom of Courtenay Hill and trudged
up the steep track to where the fire support base headquarters and the battalion command post were established. It was stinking hot and as I reached the summit of what was known as ‘The Estate’ the Assistant QM, Paul Darby, handed me a cold can of soft drink.

  I could have kissed Paul right there and then. A cold can of drink was the one thing all of us dreamed about when out on operations—and here it was! After I slowly sank the can I was given a briefing by Capt John McAloney who was responsible for the security of the fire support base. It seemed as though the enemy were sending in men to reconnoitre the base. They were sitting out from the base some distance and using binoculars to check out the position. My job was to find the track they were using and knock them off. Back down the hill I went past the battery of American 155 mm guns from the 5th/42nd US Artillery. I sat down with my section commanders and platoon sergeant and nutted out a way to get into a position where we could ambush whoever was spying on the fire support base. I decided to use a long roundabout route into where I thought we could be most successful. I was hoping that if anyone saw us they might think we were heading away from the area.

  By the time we took up a position where there was a footpad which looked like it had been used recently, it was almost dark. We were situated about 800 metres north of the fire support base and facing east. The cover was good and we had our claymore banks set up and things were looking right for an easy hit. But about two hours after dark I had changed our state of alert from 100 per cent to about 50 per cent: no-one had come down the track, and the most likely time for the enemy to come along now was an hour before first light. Just after we had settled into our new routine an almighty amount of noise was heard coming from the vicinity of the fire support base. It wasn’t shooting but sounded more like a party. I was mystified as to what it was and the more I strained to hear the more perplexing it became. For over an hour the noise continued. I could see by the faint moonlight that my soldiers were just as puzzled as I was.

  After another hour of the noise continuing I concluded that it was coming from the bottom of the fire support base hill, where the American gun battery was located. The ambush remained unsprung. Then the revelry from the fire support base died, around nine o’clock or so. The next morning the platoon was retasked to continue to patrol in the area; but I wanted to check out what all the noise was from the night before. Back up the hill I went and I was told the noise emanated from the Americans at the bottom of the hill. I expressed my displeasure at trying to ambush enemy sneaking along a track with a distraction such as that of the previous night not doing anything for our chances or for the morale of my troops. It seemed as if the noise was a weekly occurrence and so back down the hill I went to get on with my job. The platoon were visiting the US 155’s as they hadn’t seen these huge guns before and so I took the opportunity to speak to the lieutenant in charge. He was a gunner by the name of Greg Scott who was a decent sort of a bloke but who had a real load on his plate.

  After we introduced ourselves, I told him what we had been doing in the area and asked him quite bluntly what all the noise was the night before. He looked at me and said ‘Oh yeah, last night was our beer ration night and everyone was letting off a little steam’. I commented that they must have had a truck load of beer from all the noise they were making; he said they only had a couple of cans per man. I rejoined with the obvious remark that they must all be ‘two pot screamers’ and Scott replied that ‘Hell no! Not everybody drinks beer and so some guys get more than a couple of cans’. I asked what the others drank thinking it would be spirits and he said, ‘Shit no man, they smoke dope’. I couldn’t believe my ears. Here was a direct support battery of 155 mm guns firing in support of us and the battery was full of pot heads! I questioned Greg further and asked how he controlled this sort of thing and he said that they had a weekly ‘shake down’ when they searched the soldiers’ tents, but when the soldiers ran past his bunker on the way to muster, they would throw the dope into his bed space to avoid detection. He was quite sincere when he said that he considered he was pretty lucky since ‘none of my guys are onto hard stuff’.

  I was stunned and had to thank God that we didn’t have a drug problem in our army like the Americans had. It still worried me a lot that these soldiers were likely to fire in support of us whilst we were patrolling in this area. While discussing the Americans later with my men, most of them seemed unimpressed by the slack manner in which the Americans conducted themselves and the general untidiness of their area. The US soldiers appeared almost insolent when talking to their superiors; indeed their tone could only be described as almost hostile in some quarters. I made a mental note that if and when we called for fire support in future I would try not to use that American battery.

  We crossed back over to the eastern side of Route 2 and continued patrolling in an area south of the Courtenay rubber. The area was being saturated with patrols as successful contacts by our Kiwi company had identified the area as being used for courier and resupply routes. Tracker Platoon with Mike Murphy at the helm was operating very close to us and he was on our radio net, so we didn’t clash. Both Mike and I found good fresh sign of a squad size movement coming out of the jungle and skirting around the edge of the rubber, heading toward the Phuoc Tuy and Long Khanh border. Murphy and I both decided to ‘track-squat’ that night on this likely enemy access route. At 0620 hours the next morning, four enemy—including one woman—walked into Murphy’s platoon right on stand to. You couldn’t have asked for a better time: everyone was fully alert and watching their front. The tracker platoon killed three enemy, wounded the fourth (whom I believe was later found) and captured one rifle, two pistols and a very sizeable quantity of cash. Murphy in fact had accounted for some very important members of the Chau Duc District Forces; from documents it was evident that a new and active force had commenced reconnoitring the area.

  After we took a resupply by APC on 12 September on the edge of the rubber, we moved off to start patrolling an area south and east of the plantation in fairly thick jungle. For two days we continued to clear the area systematically by searching in a square and hoping to pick up tracks leading into the area. There was plenty of sign but because of the rains it was difficult to tell how old it was. On 14 September we halted in a small harbour and I sent a section off for about 200 metres to reconnoitre an area. They were crossing a dry creek bed when they heard voices. Instead of waiting for the enemy to close up to them Mick Kennedy opted to get his machine-gun better placed to catch the enemy. This was not a good decision (unfortunately in hindsight) and the enemy obviously heard Kennedy moving, and despite lots of bullets chasing them they got away. They dropped some equipment but nothing of intelligence value. The lesson learned was that to try to manoeuvre in thick bush is not practical and that one dead enemy is better than none.

  The next day we followed up the sign left by the enemy but it petered out on a washed out footpad. The afternoon rains were so heavy one could fill a litre water-bottle off a hootchie in less than 30 seconds. This type of downpour made tracking often useless and so we needed to be off patrolling at first light. At about 1100 hours on 15 September we were moving south from our overnight harbour and checking out an old APC track one of my reconnaissance patrols had found the day before. One patrol member had dropped a Zippo lighter where they had halted and so I had agreed to go by where he thought he had dropped his lighter to try to find it. We found the lighter and were just about to move off in single file on our patrol, when my forward section spotted two enemy moving through the bush from the east. Four of the lead section all saw the enemy at the same time and fired at the scrub-bashing enemy soldiers 20 metres away. Both of the enemy returned fire which went ten feet over our heads. One of the enemy yelled out something and could be heard withdrawing away from our fire. Another enemy had dropped to the ground 15 or so metres in front and to the flank of the forward section. Quick, aggressive action was required; so the first section acted as a pivot and I swept the remainder of the pl
atoon past the forward section.

  Since we had so few soldiers in the platoon at the time, we were operating as two half-platoon groups, each with two M60 guns; and so while we fixed the enemy with one group the other swept to flush him out. The men in the forward section could hear the enemy cocking his AK-47 but couldn’t see him through the thick bush. My sergeant took the rear group on the sweep and I was trying to find out exactly how many enemy had been sighted. As the sweep came level with me I joined it, just in time to see the enemy move his head from behind a tree 15 metres in front of where we were crawling along in an extended line. As he moved his head back again Darryl Jenkin aimed his M16 rifle and killed him. We quickly swept past the dead soldier and found sign that we had hit his companion—but obviously not too badly.

  We quickly reorganised into a tight harbour and searched the dead soldier. He wasn’t dressed as a normal Viet Cong soldier and he carried no identifying documentation. He was wearing greens and webbing with sandals and socks. He had a pack on his back and had been using a compass. In his pack he carried a crude gas mask, a sheet of plastic, a hammock, 7 kilograms of flour, salt, rice, spare greens and a yellow silk scarf. He had been shot through the legs several times; one machine-gun bullet had completely shattered his knee joint, something which obviously accounted for his dropping in the initial contact. He had taken one M16 bullet through his wrist and another larger round possibly from the gun or SLR in the stomach. His AK-47 had been hit where the magazine fits into the body of the rifle and his weapon had been jammed. This accounted for the cocking noise we could hear while the sweep was going in. The soldier looked about 17 years of age and both he and his weapon before the contact had been in poor condition. His rifle had not been well maintained, in contrast with 274 VC Main Force Regiment soldiers. His body was covered in insect bites; he was undernourished and he sported a few tropical ulcers.