In Good Company Page 21
What we didn’t know, and what was revealed by intelligence later, was that when we withdrew from the previous bunker system we had headed off from a battalion position towards the headquarters for the NVA regiment. This explained why the enemy were so keen to stop us from withdrawing and why we were now in strife.
After a couple of minutes of crawling around under a lot of green tracer rounds in the rapidly fading light, I eventually linked up most of my platoon. My next task was to try to figure out how best we could defend ourselves and have a tight defence in the dark. I started to try to coordinate the fire of the sections knowing that once again we were low on ammunition. I was coming under fire where I was lying behind a small tree and every time I called out an order, rounds would start thumping into the tree above my head. I couldn’t see where the firing was coming from, and so I simply fired back in the direction of where I thought the enemy was. This went on for probably three or four minutes, but I couldn’t move as there was a lack of good cover that I could make out in the gloom around me. I asked my forward observer’s assistant to bring the defensive fire in really close and he told me it was now falling only 75 metres out to our front and we would be risking it to bring it in any closer.
I asked my radio operator Barry Garratt to bring his radio over to me so I could give the company commander a situation report. He handed me the handset but as I started to speak into it I noticed that the radio was dead. I crawled over to check out the radio on his back and noticed that there were wires and bits and pieces of radio hanging out everywhere. Sometime during the fire fight Barry had been hit in the radio in his back pack but he hadn’t felt it! I told him to get our other radio and come back to me.
I returned to trying to sort out the fire fight which had been going now for over thirty minutes and didn’t seem to be abating. I started to yell out to everyone to watch their ammunition supply when an incredibly loud explosion rocked me. I thought for a minute that a rocket propelled grenade round had detonated against the tree I was sheltering behind, until I felt a pain in my left shoulder. I had been pushed backwards along the ground a couple of inches when a burst of AK-47 fire caught my back and left shoulder which had been protruding from behind my cover. The impact felt like someone with a steel capped boot had given me a full-blooded kick right where my arm and shoulder joined. My arm felt like a dead weight; and when I tried to pick up my SLR I discovered it wouldn’t move. I wriggled my fingers and thought to myself that they were all functional so it couldn’t be too bad. I then poked around with my good hand to find out where I had been hit and found I could stick my finger in a hole right on the corner of my shoulder joint.
My radio operator had returned by this time and I told him to tell the company commander that I had been hit. At this time I still didn’t know I had been hit by bullets as I thought the bang that I had heard had been a rocket propelled grenade round going off. In fact the ‘bang’ was the shock and impact of the bullets hitting me. Barry Garratt passed on the news and while he was doing that I put my head down on the back of my hands and wondered what I was going to do next. I can remember saying to myself, ‘Well McKay, what the hell are you going to do now?’
My platoon sergeant had been evacuated earlier; I had lost four killed including two of my machine gunners; and now we were apparently flanked on three sides by a large number of NVA, and I was wounded. I was feeling low. I dragged my pack from where I had dropped it earlier to give me a bit more protection but it was a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Still it made me feel better. Frank Wessing arrived and asked how I was going and I told him I was going to need a hand but first I had to sort out the perimeter and hand the platoon over to someone. This took a little time to organise and while I was doing that we found out that the enemy who had been engaging me was up in a tree. He was about 25 metres away and I think it was Sims who exacted revenge for me and knocked the enemy soldier off his perch.
After I had sorted out what had to be done to keep the platoon intact I asked Frank to give me a hand to get back behind some better cover and he crawled forward to give me a hand. The bullets from the enemy were still passing only a metre or less over our heads and Frank found it hard to drag me across all the vines on the ground. Mick O’Sullivan arrived and between the two of them they were able to drag me by the shoulder harness of my webbing back to the centre of the position and company headquarters.
Mick took off my webbing and began to check out my shoulder wound. He treated that with little difficulty. I remarked to him that I must be sweating a lot because the waist band of my trousers felt really wet. He lifted up the back of my shirt and in a voice I’m sure I wasn’t meant to hear, he said ‘Oh fuck!’ The statement did very little for my morale at the time. Apparently the enemy soldier up the tree who had shot me also had an elevation advantage, and one of the bullets that hit me had dug a great hole along the line of my shoulder blade running down my back. It left a jagged tear about six inches long and about an inch and a half wide and it was bleeding quite badly. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel a great deal of pain although I wasn’t feeling too great either. Shock was taking care of the hurt element and I believe I was operating on nervous energy by this time. Mick was desperately trying to stem the flow of blood and we went through a whole series of positions from lying on my stomach to sitting up to stop the bleeding. Eventually the only way we could stop the flow of blood to an acceptable level was for me to sit leaning against a tree with Mick sitting behind me pressing shell dressings into the wound. This was not as easy as it sounds as the enemy were still shooting an awful lot of rounds into our perimeter and it was far from safe to be sitting up.
Jerry Taylor and Kevin Byrne were in the middle of the company position trying desperately to sort out the defence of our perimeter; they both stopped by as they were going past to cheer me up and reassure me. The company commander said, quite unnecessarily, that he wouldn’t be able to get me out by chopper until everything was back under control; all I had to do was hang on. From the amount of trouble we had been in, bouncing from one bunker system to another, I felt that it was going to be a long wait for a helicopter ride. Still, Jerry Taylor retained his cool. I overheard him give a situation report to the commanding officer on the radio in his typically English voice . . . ‘10 Platoon is in contact to the east, 11 Platoon is in contact to the west, 12 Platoon is in contact to the south. So, it would appear that the nasties are all around us!’ I could tell by the way Mick was going through shell dressings that he still wasn’t happy with the amount of blood I was losing—and at one stage during the night I heard the company commander talking on the radio to Paul Trevillian, the regimental medical officer back in Nui Dat, about the possibility of a blood transfusion. It was out of the question—but it demonstrated how desperate things were becoming.
About 9.00 pm the amount of enemy fire coming into the position eased and it seemed that things had settled down. For the remainder of the night, Mick and I passed a long weary time watching the clock slowly turn around until about 6.00 am when first light broke. I could tell Mick was exhausted from applying pressure on my back all night. When he stood up to relieve himself he looked awful. He had put a sleeping bag silk around my shoulders during the night as it had got a little cool. We had been awake now for over 24 hours and I hadn’t had a thing to eat for at least 18 of them. Someone gave me a can of pineapple bits out of a American ration pack and it tasted just terrific.
Jerry Taylor came over and checked on me. He said that a pink team would be coming out within an hour or so to reconnoitre the area to see what the picture was. He was pretty sure the enemy had withdrawn. Time was now beginning to drag slowly and moving was becoming painful. Mick said he had very little left in his medical kit that he could give me as he had used most of it the day before on all of our casualties. He didn’t want to give me any morphine as he reckoned that I would be in need of surgery fairly quickly once I got back to the field hospital.
Arou
nd 7.00 am the pink team arrived and flew around our position for what seemed like ages. They reported considerable sign that the enemy had withdrawn north and north-east and had stretchered out their casualties. Once the pink team gave the ‘all clear’, a Dustoff chopper from 9 Squadron RAAF was requested. I was soon to be on my way. Kev Byrne was sitting talking to me while we waited for the chopper and helped me through the last and worst of my 14 hour wait.
About 8.30 am the helicopter arrived and lowered a jungle penetrator. The winch point was too small to get a Stokes litter wire basket down through the heavy canopy. This was the last thing I needed as I could only use one hand; it meant I was going to be winched up through the sixty-feet high canopy, hanging on with one arm. Mick had put my arm in a sling as it hurt like hell when it just hung by my side, and he had pinned the silk around me as my shirt was in tatters. Kev Byrne helped me onto the jungle penetrator and did his best to make sure I wasn’t going to fall off. He was looking a bit upset: for Kevin this was out of character as he was generally regarded as a pretty cool sort of customer. I was slowly winched up from the jungle floor and everything was going well until I was slammed into a tree about forty feet up. No further damage was done apart from my eyes watering, and I then felt the hands of the Dustoff crew hauling me on board the chopper.
The flight sergeant crewman asked me how I felt. I gave him a thumbs up as he wouldn’t have heard my reply over the din of the rotor blades. He then asked if I felt strong enough to hang on while they made a quick detour to pick up some more wounded men from another company on our way back. I said I felt fine and we headed off. I hadn’t been aware that another company had got into a contact the day before and the news was a bit of a surprise, but considering what we had been up to anything could have happened. We hovered over a patch of jungle about three kilometres away from our location and the jungle penetrator was sent down. I couldn’t believe my eyes when a slightly balding head appeared over the skid of the chopper and a fellow platoon commander from B Company, Dan McDaniel, was dragged on board. I asked him in short shouts what had happened. He told me his platoon had had running contacts the day before with some enemy and eventually his platoon had been mortared with 60 mm mortars. Fifteen of his platoon had been wounded! The 21st of September had been a big day for 4 RAR.
Within half an hour the helicopter was landing at ‘Vampire’ pad at the 1st Australian Field Hospital at the Australian Logistic Support Group base in Vung Tau. As we landed, medics came out to the pad along a concrete footpath with stretchers. I was feeling OK and still hadn’t lost consciousness; and I even mistakenly thought that I would be fit enough to walk into the casualty reception area of the hospital. However, as I sat with my backside on the floor of the chopper and started to drape my legs over the side and onto the aircraft skids I felt a hand on my shoulder; the flight sergeant told me to wait until the stretcher arrived. As the medics came alongside I stood to show them that I was fine, but as my legs took my weight I felt quite light-headed and suddenly very tired. Strong arms lowered me onto the stretcher.
I was lowered onto the floor in the casualty reception; within seconds, medics and nursing sisters were surrounding me and cutting off my clothes and boots. With long, bent handled scissors I was rapidly divested of my trousers and boots and socks. A doctor took my vital signs and asked if I had been given any morphine or pain killers and how long it had been since I had eaten; and then he left. I was left lying on the floor stark naked except for my dog tags, resting on the other bottom half of my clothes. I must have been a pretty gruesome sight as I hadn’t washed for several weeks. I was too tired to feel embarrassed and was now beginning to feel cold and starting to shiver. Shock was finally arriving. Now that I was safe and sound in the security of the hospital my system was letting go.
X-rays were required; so I was lifted up off my stretcher on the floor by three male medics and put on a trolley and wheeled into the X-ray room. I was carefully moved around into various positions and then wheeled into the waiting room outside the operating theatre. After a minute or so the anaesthetist, Dr Kelly, arrived to prepare me for surgery. I had met Dr Kelly when I had last been in Vung Tau: his parting words to me then were ‘I hope I don’t see you again’, explaining that if I did see him again it was more likely to be exactly in the position in which I now found myself. Now he told me that I had lost a lot of blood and that before I went into surgery I would need at least two units of blood—probably some more later. He asked me how I felt and I replied with a more honest answer, something like ‘awful’; he said he would soon fix that situation. He returned with a big needle and after swabbing my arm gave me an injection of morphine. The effect of this drug on my system was sensational. Within minutes I was feeling no pain, I felt carefree and when the initial hit of the drug swept over me it was akin to an orgasm. I could see why people got addicted to the stuff. I now broke out into a session of jibbering like a drunk and a medic stayed with me during this time no doubt to keep me safe. Events at this time blurred into one another but I recall the surgeon coming up to me and showing me my X-ray and saying I had been shot with a bullet and a safety pin. The bullet was resting to the right of my left lung and on the third rib down, while Mick O’Sullivan’s safety pin that had been holding my sleeping bag silk around my shoulders had somehow come undone and had worked its way into the hole in my back. Sometime I was also given a wash down, then I was cleaned up ready for the operating theatre.
Dan McDaniel was wheeled past me into the operating theatre. He gave me a drunken looking grin, the effect of his pre-op injection, as he went past. Dan had 60 mm mortar shrapnel pieces in his back and wasn’t looking too bad. Before long I was wheeled into the chilly air of the operating theatre and as I came under the bright lights I looked across at the other table and saw surgeons dropping pieces of shrapnel into a stainless steel bowl. I asked if we were allowed to keep our shrapnel and bullets and was told most assuredly so. I was given the compulsory count-back from the number ten after a needle was inserted into my forearm; I made it all the way back to eight before darkness descended upon me.
9
Returned to Australia
I joined the living the next morning, 23 September, and was greeted by cries of ‘Welcome back’ and other apt but unprintable phrases. The scene in this ward, which until 21 September had been closed in preparation for the withdrawal of Australian forces, was incredible. There were men with bandages on their arms, legs, backs, chests and bums. It was far from the quiet, somewhat morbid atmosphere of the Repatriation Hospital that I had experienced at Concord. This ward, with something like 24 soldiers—and all from the same unit—was more like a digger’s canteen without the alcohol. There was a lot of chatter and banter but not too boisterous. Most of the men were recovering from shrapnel wounds and so weren’t too sore, with only flesh wounds. Quite a few were on crutches as they had shrapnel wounds to their legs and so had to refrain from walking.
Throughout this whole period I had a ringing noise in my head. I was quite deaf for almost two days and it wasn’t until about the third day that I finally regained my normal hearing. I asked about this hearing loss and it was attributed to the exposure to so much gun fire during our fighting on the 21st.
The nursing sisters were all female but the nurses were all male Royal Australian Army Medical Corps medics. These men were really helpful to say the least. They would do anything to help alleviate discomfort and if you looked a bit off, they would check that everything was alright and if you wanted a drink, ice or even a cold flannel to freshen you up they would get it without hesitation. After the morning routine of shaving and washing, the ward would almost empty as the wounded hobbled off to breakfast. I was left alone except for Pte Trevor Bennett, who had a piece of shrapnel in his chest. The men would return about 40 minutes later to be herded off to the Red Cross hut whilst the beds were all made up for the doctor’s rounds. Around 9.00 am the men would all be herded back into the ward and told to sit up on their beds
in readiness for the doctor. The doctor came through with the normal entourage of sisters and other nursing fraternity. Once this was out of the way, the men would be given the medication and/or treatment that the doctor had prescribed and then would again hobble off down to the Red Cross hut about 50 metres away from the ward to sit in the sun and read, play cards or write letters home. My first letter home after being shot was actually written by a Red Cross lady whom I dictated to as I lay in bed.
A friend of mine from my days in 9 RAR, 2Lt Rob Patterson, called in to see me. To my surprise he handed me my dog tags which were now on a chain. The AK-47 bullet that the surgeon had dug out of me had had a hole drilled through it and now it too hung on the chain. Apparently Rob had heard I had been hit and dropped in to visit me. I was asleep with the AK bullet in a plastic pill bottle on the table by my side. Rob took it away and had the engineer’s workshop drill a small hole through the round and now here it was. Rob and Dan McDaniel both wrote to my wife during this time to help reassure Gay that I was OK. I was grateful for this as she must have been wondering exactly what condition I was in, despite the official notification of casualty procedures.
The commanding officer, regimental sergeant major and my company commander were to visit the men in the afternoon; so everyone had to be back on their beds for the occasion. It was good to see the company commander again, looking a lot happier than the last time I saw him. We were all given a ‘well done’ and a background as to what had actually happened on the 21st. It appeared that 626 Regional Force outpost (south of the Courtenay rubber plantation) that had been attacked by the enemy on 19 September, and the ambush on the APCs on Route 2 the following day, were the ‘bait’ in an attempt to lure the 1st Australian Task Force into a prepared ambush east of Route 2. There were two battalions of NVA, including their regimental headquarters, lying in wait. Fortunately for us we had evaded their ambush and had contacted the 2nd Battalion and regimental headquarters of the 33rd NVA Regiment in their bunker systems. Our contacts prior to that day were probably against the 3rd Battalion 33rd NVA Regiment and this appears to have been the group Dan McDaniel’s platoon hit several times on the 21st. The indications from all the bunkers that had been located and the build-up and subsequent fighting were that the 33rd NVA Regiment intended to establish a semi-permanent base for future operations in that area of Phuoc Tuy Province. The efforts by the battalion including the APC reaction, the artillery and air strikes were responsible for forcing the 33rd NVA Regiment to abandon their efforts and withdraw to more secure surroundings north of the Phuoc Tuy Province boundary.