In Good Company Read online

  Around this time I went through a bout of depression. I could see out of the window from my bed across to where the morgue was located. It so happened that I was looking out the window when my three dead soldiers were being moved to the airport in their caskets for return to Australia. I let myself brood upon this and became quite depressed and felt very low. All platoon commanders, I think, hold themselves most responsible for what happens to their men no matter what. I know I did. It got to me. Luckily I had fellow platoon commanders such as Graham Spinkston and Dan McDaniel on hand to help snap me out of my depression.

  All the men who had been severely wounded, to the extent that they would have to return to Australia for either convalescence or further surgery, were sent a letter from a man named Ken Bromley. Bromley ran an organisation known as the Wounded Serviceman’s Convalescence Scheme. This was a nongovernment, privately run but publicly funded organisation which he had set up in the mid-sixties not long after the Australian committment to South Vietnam was rapidly expanded to a task force. If you were unlucky (or lucky?) enough to get a ‘homer’ then Ken would send you a letter outlining the benefits of the scheme. Principally, you were given a fortnight’s all expenses paid holiday on the Gold Coast with your family. Return air fares were paid for by Ansett, various hotels on the Gold Coast contributed accommodation and the Returned Serviceman’s League at Surfers’ Paradise hosted you daily for lunch.

  Ken Bromley was an ex-Royal Australian Navy Second World War veteran who had almost single-handedly raised the donations to keep this scheme afloat. He was a tireless and energetic workhorse who took great pride in the scheme, the people who were generous enough to donate to it and in the veterans he looked after. His memory for faces and names was immense. There is no doubt that if it hadn’t been for Ken Bromley the treatment of wounded servicemen on their return to Australia would have left a lot to be desired.

  I received the letter from Ken Bromley shortly after I had been told by the doctor I would have to return to Australia. There was another doctor, who I think was an orthopaedic surgeon, with him at the time; and together they hummed and aahed over my X-rays and pulled my useless left arm this way and that. When they told me that I would have to return home I was upset as it meant that my wounds were obviously a lot worse than I thought and that I would not see out the end of the tour. Just when I was feeling all sorry for myself, Dan McDaniel leant over toward my bed and told me to ‘stop being such a dickhead and thank my lucky stars I was still alive’. Of course he was right. If the burst that caught me had been another inch or two to the right, I would have had my head shot off my shoulders.

  By now, some four days after I had been first hospitalised, I was able to sit up in bed—but I was still extremely sore and weak. My arm and shoulder were blue from bruising from the impact of the rounds at such close quarters and I had not regained my appetite. I was still on a drip to combat any infection from lying around the dirty jungle floor with a couple of holes in me and from the bullets themselves. On the third day my ears finally returned to normal and I could hear properly again. I was losing weight rapidly and by the end of the first week I was down to about 11 stone (70 kg).

  Everyone was getting needles several times a day; and the person who administered the needles with the most flair was Sister Gillian Clayton. Sister Clayton, Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps, was a large lady who kept a firm grip on the running of her ward and didn’t take cheek from anyone. She did, however, keep a firm hold on our cheeks when she was jabbing needles into our bums. For those who could take the penicillin needles in their backsides, which was by far the preferred target area, the whole procedure was something to behold. Sister Clayton would come into the ward followed by a nurse wheeling a trolley full of syringes. On the order ‘roll over’, the patients to be jabbed would drop their pyjama bottoms and lie face down on their beds. Sister Clayton would advance down the row of hospital cots, looking like Captain Ahab harpooning whales. When she arrived at the bared and waiting posterior, it was swabbed and then she gave it an almighty smack with her hand and at the same time as the battered rump was rebounding, the needle was inserted and its contents injected before anything else could occur.

  After a week of hospital routine, everyone in the ward was scheduled to go back into theatre to be sewn up. All of the wounds had been left open according to a procedure called ‘delayed primary closure’. I don’t know the medical reason for this, but we were all very much aware of its consequences: the open wounds smelt to high heaven. Mine in particular ensured that I had a lot of long distance conversations in that first week. Every time my position in the bed was adjusted a foul odour would seep out from behind my pillows, nearly knocking me out. Then the big day arrived for being sewn up and we were all progressively prepared for the operating room. It was like a conveyor belt: the men were wheeled in, stitched up and wheeled back out again. It kept the doctors and most of the staff busy all day and kept the ward the quietest it had been all week.

  By the last day in September I was finally out of bed and gingerly walking around. I still hadn’t regained my appetite. I was eating an egg per day and drinking about a litre of orange juice. The savage pain I had experienced had subsided to what was now a dull ache and its severity depended upon how much I walked around during the day. My shoulder joint had been shattered and the left arm hung down by my side, not connected in any way to my shoulder, and so it was put in a sling. This allowed me great mobility and I explored the Red Cross hut and the other wards. On one of these sojourns, I happened into a ward with only one person in it. He was a Vietnamese and it wasn’t until I had been standing in the doorway looking at him for some time that I realised he didn’t have any legs. The sheet covering his lower body was flat almost immediately at his waist line. As I turned to walk away, one of the medics asked me if I had been interrogating the enemy. I stopped dead in my tracks. The man was a Viet Cong soldier! Curiosity dragged me back to stare at this unfortunate person. He wasn’t awake, so I took a long time looking at him, and probably feeling what many other soldiers have felt in the past when they finally come into close contact with their adversaries. My gaze kept returning to where his legs should have been. I wanted to feel sorry for the man. My emotions were torn between the loss of my own men and the natural sympathy that goes out to anyone so shockingly injured. I couldn’t come to grips with the problem and I couldn’t decide how I should feel. I left the ward and went for a walk in the sun.

  Before long most of the men were on the road to full recovery and feeling well again. To celebrate this return to good health someone in the ward made a request through the local radio station run by the services to play a current popular hit record at the time, called ‘The Resurrection Shuffle’. It was requested to coincide with the daily move of the walking wounded to breakfast—and this set the tone for the last couple of days in the ward for the majority of the men. Only a few of us were to be flown back to Australia on the ‘medevac’ C130 Hercules especially configured for the flight. The remainder would be returned to active duty after about fourteen days in the hospital.

  One of the men from Dan McDaniel’s platoon who started to return to good health with a flourish was a machine gunner named Gerry Olde. Gerry had taken many fragmentation wounds from 60 mm mortars in his back and there were even more in his backside. Consequently he was forced to lie on his stomach when he wasn’t hobbling around on his crutches. On the tenth day of his hospitalisation, Gerry was lying on his bed in his normal face down position in the morning just prior to the doctor’s rounds. As normal, the patients who could walk were herded off to the Red Cross hut. Gerry stayed on his bed and when a sister asked him to go down to the hut he said he wanted to stay in bed because he didn’t feel too well. The sister took his temperature and pulse and said that there was nothing wrong with him and he was to make his way down to the hut. Gerry remained on his bed and five minutes later the nurse returned to his bedside and said ‘Gerry Olde, you get out of that bed this in
stant or I will have Sister Clayton deal with you’. Olde replied he didn’t want to go down to the hut and wanted to stay in bed. After trying to order Gerry out of bed the sister stormed off in search of Sister Clayton. Before long the nurse returned with Sister Clayton in tow. Several threats were made to coerce Gerry out of bed until he was finally threatened with a charge report. He gave a loud sigh, reached for his crutches and slid off the bed. Finally he turned to face the angry duo of sisters and—to their horror and Gerry’s chagrin—he shouted, ‘Well I hope you’re bloody well satisfied now!’ Then, with a very proud erection poking out of the fly of his hospital pyjamas, he hobbled off to the Red Cross hut. It was one of the funniest things I had seen and it brought the house down in the Red Cross hut, judging by the sound of the laughter I could hear from my bed.

  Trevor Bennet would be going home with me; he had a piece of shrapnel in his chest close to his heart. He had to return to Australia to have a very delicate operation even though the shrapnel wasn’t very big. Getting a homer was usually related to a bad or complicated wound—and Trevor Bennett was a bit put out that he was being returned to Australia for something so small. To correct this ‘obvious’ mistake he therefore drew a bullet on his chest with a marker pen to show that he had a wound worthy of evacuation back home. For the next couple of days the size of the round grew until it progressed to a 40 mm grenade, then to a rocket propelled grenade round and finally to a 105 mm howitzer shell which filled his entire chest cavity. To give support to the poor chap we plotted to all wear protective gear when next the doctor examined Trevor. Rob Patterson was Ordnance Corps and worked at the stores depot in the 1st Australian Logistic Support Group base: he arranged for helmets to be smuggled into the ward during the night. The next morning as the doctor approached Trevor’s bed we all slipped our helmets on and dived under the sheets. Silly acts and stunts like this kept morale up and gave great support to fellows who could otherwise have felt out of things.

  Whilst we were recuperating in the ward the Vietnamese Field Force Police barracks, which weren’t too far away from the hospital, came under a Viet Cong rocket attack one night in early October. It was a lousy feeling lying in bed utterly helpless and defenceless and not knowing what was going on. Everyone sat up in bed listening to the rockets exploding and quietly wondering what would happen if we got hit. The attack lasted only fifteen minutes or so but it reminded us we were still in a war zone and that outside the hospital walls there was still fighting going on.

  On most nights after the evening meal there were movies shown in a hut across the road from the ward. This was a great opportunity to break the boredom of hospital routine and the ward was usually devoid of patients after tea. On one such night when I was able to walk around in relative comfort, an engineer mate from my Brisbane days, Lt John Toyne, dropped in to say hello. This visit turned into an invitation to have a beer up in his mess at 17 Construction Squadron on a hill inside the Logistic Support Group complex in Vung Tau. The departure from the ward precincts and the consumption of alcohol was strictly taboo: so off we went. Dan, Graham and I were driven up to John’s mess where we were welcomed in great style despite the fact that we were all wearing our hospital pyjamas. We only had until the end of the movie to enjoy ourselves so we made the most of the sappers’ hospitality. It might have been the fact that we hadn’t had a beer for such a long time or the mixing of alcohol and our medications, but we soon reached a stage where we had forgotten that we were wearing pyjamas. John returned us to the hospital and we snuck back into the ward on the end of the line moving back from the movies. The next morning all three of us had terrible hangovers, but it had been worth it.

  The relationship between the hospital staff and the men was nothing short of excellent. The proof came when those men who were to be returned to normal duty were allowed to move out of the ward to go on three days’ rest and convalescence leave at the Badcoe Club before returning to 4 RAR in Nui Dat. Everyone wanted to give the staff ‘thank you’ presents: so a committee was elected and it was decided to make a small presentation down at the Badcoe Club. Everyone was suitably impressed with the thoughtfulness of the men from 4 RAR until Sister Clayton was called forward by Dan McDaniel to receive the last gift. Suitable words were uttered and applause was generous. Sister Clayton tore open her well wrapped gift and was somewhat lost for words as her eyes fell upon a lacy pair of crotchless panties. I wasn’t allowed out to the festivities but Sister Clayton returned to relate her presentation with some pride. The next morning a few of the recently released wounded, including Graham Spinkston, hobbled back into the ward as, having been a bit too festive the night before they had split stitches and wounds open. They were sewn back up; Graham had to sit out another day before being released again.

  Just before Graham left the hospital to go on his rest and convalescence leave, he asked for his personal belongings which had been held in linen bags in the property room. Graham had been carrying a book in his basic pouch over his left hip when he had been hit by the shrapnel; now he wanted to finish reading it whilst on rest and convalescence leave. He took the book out of his bag and opened it up to find the place where he had last read. There, about half way through the book, which was only a couple of hundred pages thick, was an AK-47 round. Graham couldn’t believe his eyes and his luck. If he hadn’t had that book in his webbing he would have earned himself a nickname for the rest of his career, not to mention a bullet in the bum. Word spread about his lucky escape and the book and bullet now rest in the Australian War Memorial in the Vietnam display.

  The wards were virtually emptied by the beginning of October as most of the 24 wounded were returned to their companies for duty. I had plenty of farewells not only from the men in the ward, but my diggers from 11 Platoon, who had been given rest leave down in Vung Tau, also dropped in to say goodbye. It was fairly emotional on both sides and I had to fight back some tears later in the afternoon when I suddenly realised that the medevac aircraft was leaving the day after, and I probably wouldn’t see a lot of my men again.

  The day finally arrived for the flight home on 5 October. We said all our goodbyes and best wishes to the hospital staff and were wheeled out to an air-conditioned bus which would take us to the plane. The transition from bus to aircraft went smoothly and by about 9.00 am we were on our way. The flight home was in two stages. The first leg of the trip took around four hours and took us to Butterworth Air Base in West Malaysia, where we stayed for a day. The second leg was fourteen hours and went direct to Richmond Air Base in New South Wales.

  The next day everyone was despatched to their various destinations, some going as far as Perth. I was travelling with one other chap and we were headed for the 1st Military Hospital at Yeronga in Brisbane. Our flight wasn’t until the afternoon and was to be a normal Hercules with a couple of stretchers set up for us. We were taken out to the plane in the afternoon and lay inside a very hot cargo bay while the crew wound up the engines. Three engines went and one didn’t and so we were off-loaded back into a RAAF ambulance and taken to the hospital. A couple of hours later we were returned to the repaired Herc and finally around 6.00 pm we were on our way to Amberley Air Base outside Brisbane. By the time we landed in Brisbane it was after 8.00 pm and we were both knackered. An ambulance appeared to take us to 1 Military Hospital some 50 km away in the suburbs of Brisbane. It was a Friday night and I suspected the ambulance driver, who had been waiting for us all afternoon and evening, was on a promise somewhere in town. He wasted no time on the trip back and after 20 minutes of being thrown around in the back of the ambulance I was in a bad way. I yelled at the ambulance driver to stop and asked him to come into the back of the vehicle. He came in and when he bent over to ask what I wanted, I grabbed him by the shirt and told him to slow down or I would put him in the same amount of pain I was in. He was most apologetic and the rest of the trip was spent within the speed limits. By half-past nine I was bedded down in Ward One in 1 Military Hospital and back in the land of dreams
after a doctor had injected me.

  My stay in 1 Military Hospital was only supposed to be a brief one. It was planned to send me up to Townsville so that I would be closer to my wife. However, I spent fourteen days there because I suffered a recurrence of infection and had to undergo a series of antibiotics to put me back on my feet. I was X-rayed again, and an orthopaedic specialist had a yarn to me saying that any repair work would have to be done after the shoulder settled down.

  It was during this time that I met a man who was an inspiration to any soldier who came back wounded from Vietnam. He was at that time the chief of the medical services in the 1st Military District (the state of Queensland) and his name was ‘Digger James’. Colonel James was a regular soldier. He had been through Duntroon and after graduating he had gone to the Korean War. He had won a Military Cross whilst serving in this theatre of war, but unfortunately he had also lost his legs. After returning to Australia he had gone on to do a degree in medicine and after rejoining the army in the Medical Corps went on to a distinguished career. He eventually retired as a major general and Chief of the Defence Forces’ Medical Services.