In Good Company Read online

  One of the male ward nurses came into my room to tell me that Col James was coming to visit me. Apparently it was his policy to visit all wounded soldiers who were returned to Australia. Shortly after, a gaggle of people came through the ward and leading the way was a big tall officer who turned out to be the colonel. He strode through the ward and came up to my bed. He had an imposing presence and yet was quite open and friendly. He asked me how I was going; considering the fact that all I had was a stuffed shoulder and a couple of bullet holes in me, all I could think of to say was ‘Not too bad’. He sat down next to my bed and ushered all the sisters and doctors away and had a chat to me for about fifteen minutes. He had served in 1 Australian Field Hospital in Vung Tau and was keen to hear news of what was going on in the war zone. We had a really good chat about the war which put me right at ease and he gave me some idea of what would happen to me as far as body repair was concerned. I was most impressed by this gentleman, his approach and his caring attitude. This went a long way, as at that time nobody wanted to know Vietnam veterans. It was difficult to come to terms with the constant newspaper, TV and political statements which were accompanying the forthcoming general election; and to see how little anyone cared for what the individual soldier had been suffering in Vietnam or that we had done a good job cleaning up Phuoc Tuy Province. The student protests were at a peak and a little bit of understanding, as demonstrated by Digger James, was much appreciated.

  As soon as I was strong enough to travel again I was put on a plane to Townsville. This time I travelled on a civilian flight and had a nurse to accompany me. It was now late October and almost a month since I had been wounded. I was still about 11 stone (70 kilograms) in weight and quite thin. I had not fully regained my appetite and the polyester uniform I owned fitted me well when I was 14 and a half stone (90 kilograms) but now hung off me making me look even worse.

  We arrived at Townsville airport at about 7.00 pm and I was really looking forward to seeing Gay again. The flight seemed to take ages; I fidgeted the whole trip. Out on the tarmac the warm humid tropical night air of Townsville greeted me and it felt good to be back home. The nurse guided me across to where an ambulance was waiting—and we walked straight past Gay. She didn’t recognise me at first as I was sporting a rather large, bushy moustache and was so thin. We finally met after I asked the nurse to go and get Gay and bring her over to join me in the ambulance. She gave me a funny look and started crying as some females are wont to do when they are happy, and then we set off for the camp hospital on the foreshores of the ocean opposite Magnetic Island.

  Time is a magnificent healer of wounds both physical and psychological. Some fifteen years after the event we are starting to be made aware of the political malpractice and deceit that took place among many of the Free World Nations involved in the drama that was Vietnam. I have no axe to grind personally as I was a willing participant whose motives were probably just as distorted as any of the politicians’. I do, however, feel sorry for the mothers and wives and children on both sides of the conflict who lost loved ones. Someone once said that generals die in bed. So do most politicians and Vietnam was no different to any other war on that count; I make the point that the political interference in the conduct of the Vietnam war was sorely felt by the soldier fighting in the field. I don’t wish to go into the political side of this conflict as my aim in telling my story was to relate my experiences as a platoon commander. Suffice to say on several occasions we were told to avoid casualties as they were not politically acceptable to the government. That is like going into a street fight and asking everyone to fight cleanly and not stick the boot in. You cannot expect it and we should never ask our soldiers to fight under those conditions. I believe it must be all in or all out.

  The concept of national service was not particularly abhorrent to me at the time that I was drafted. My father had enjoyed his army service during the Second World War and I was a little curious to see what army life was all about. There is probably a similarity between the young men from the First Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) who went off to World War I seeking high adventure and those from my generation who were curious enough to want to go to Vietnam. I wanted to see how I would react in a war situation and if I had the mettle to do the job. The army had trained me for war and I wanted to put it to the test. I did not relish the killing aspect or really consider getting hurt myself. Perhaps not much has changed in over 50 years since Gallipoli.

  What did annoy many men was the ballot system that was used to select the men for national service. Despite the fact that we all knew the country couldn’t afford all males doing national service it still irked a lot of guys that they were in because their marble had dropped out. Most of the nashos whom I have spoken to since they served, tell me that they enjoyed their time in the army. Naturally some did not but I think that most men enjoyed and benefited from the experience. When Gough Whitlam’s Labor Government swept into power in December 1972, national service was abolished. Men then serving as national servicemen were given the option of leaving within a couple of weeks after standard processing, or they could finish off their time. Surprisingly, I had only a few out of my fifteen or so nashos who wanted to leave straight away. Mostly they were married men who took the immediate release option, but a lot of the single men said that they expected to serve for their two years and they would stay and see it out. I believe the strong bond that had been established through their service in Vietnam had created an esprit de corps that they cherished and didn’t want to lose.

  Many times I have been asked if there was animosity between the national serviceman and the regular soldier. There was the same bantering that one often hears when Australians debate the different codes of football we play. There was never any shortage of mud slinging but it never affected our work. One would often hear a regular soldier sling off at a ‘two year wonder’ or something similar and the retort would usually be along the line of ‘I’m here to do a job, not because I need one’ or refer to a regular as a ‘lifer’. Once the men were assimilated into their platoons it was difficult to tell the regular soldier from the nasho and vice versa. To an outsider it was practically impossible.

  Today a lot of people have either forgotten or didn’t realise that the infantry units that fought in the jungles of Vietnam were comprised mainly of quite young men. I was a 23-year-old platoon commander, my platoon sergeant was about 26 years of age and my section commanders varied from 19 years to 25 years. The private soldiers were somewhere between 19 and 21 years of age. The most startling effect that I saw our operational experience have on my men was the rapid maturing from adolescence to manhood. The soldiers all became more responsible and more tolerant of each other. The close environment necessitated by jungle patrolling created an atmosphere of respect and trust. We depended on each other to survive. A mateship developed and grew between the men that was incredibly strong. It was reflected in acts of personal bravery and commitment. We were a team that wanted to win and the platoon took pride in the fact that it wouldn’t lie down when it got tough.

  Everybody reacts differently to the stresses of combat and soldiers cannot be lumped together and classified as having a certain reaction to combat. One thing I know now is that the harder men train for combat the better they will fight when it eventually comes. The one thing our company could be thankful to Major Franz Kudnig for, was the hard training he imposed upon us and which stood us in good stead for when the proverbial hit the fan. There were and have been many men who were afraid in combat and have hidden that fear by bravado after the event and a long way from the field of battle. Some men declare their fear openly and others try to hide it. Anyone who says he was not afraid, is in my mind either a fool or a liar.

  It would be easy to string out a whole lot of clichés about how the returned soldier felt once he came back home. Most of the people back in Australia really didn’t know the sort of jobs that the Australians did. I would hazard a guess that most Australians didn’t know
where Phuoc Tuy Province was in relation to Saigon. I know for a fact that a lot of people didn’t know that South Vietnam was above the Equator. Many people who sat in their living room and watched the evening news often saw the United States’ television footage of their war. It was a different war for the Australians. We only had the occasional large scale battle in our twelve years of involvement. Yet what must not be forgotten is that the Australians in South Vietnam didn’t lose a major battle and never conceded ground. Mostly we were patrolling, searching and ambushing. Ours was a war more of nerves—one requiring a high degree of battlecraft, personal fieldcraft and teamwork.

  Much has been written about post stress disorder syndrome, and I have a few thoughts on that count. Our unit, our company and our platoon was a very tight unit. We trained together for a long time before we went to war and we knew each other intimately. We all knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We could tell when a man was experiencing difficulty with a personal problem. He wasn’t left to stew about it, he was given aid and support. He was part of a ‘family’ which was looking after him. In this way we all drew support from each other.

  The Americans suffered from an individual rotation system which weakened teamwork and created disorder. American platoons did not train together before they served in Vietnam and the constant replacement of their personnel did not allow teamwork or a cohesive spirit to develop. I spoke to several American soldiers and was amazed to learn that some of them had had four or more platoon commanders during their tour of duty. American officers did not spend a great deal of time in the one appointment and were sent to combat units to gain experience and little else. Little consideration seemed to have been given to the need of a platoon to know each other, much the same way a football team has to develop its strengths and train to overcome its weaknesses. This meant that the officer who was sent in to a platoon was regarded by the soldiers as a temporary member and not to be trusted or taken into their confidence. The ‘fragging’ of American officers by US servicemen is well known and demonstrated the problems the Americans faced.

  Australians, on the other hand, were part of highly trained and coordinated units and knew each other well. Most of my platoon had been together for almost a year before we sailed. When we came back we found that people on the whole imagined us to be like the Americans; but having seen the US Army in action, witnessed their lack of professionalism and the problems they had because of their draft and drugs, the Americans were the last people with whom we wanted to be compared.

  There was little, if any, ‘good’ press to come out of Vietnam. Most of the reporting was negative, especially toward the closing stages of the war—basically from 1970 onwards. There were very few newspaper accounts which said that village X is now free of Viet Cong and that it had been at least three months since a village chief had been murdered. It isn’t easy to go and fight on someone else’s soil, a long way from home and know that the majority of the people and half of the politicians don’t want you there. Men who fought in the Second World War didn’t have to worry about being spat upon on Anzac Day because they were returned soldiers. While I was recovering in 1 Military Hospital in Brisbane, I went to a game of football complete with plaster cast and nursing sister in attendance. A young man from the University of Queensland Rugby Club came up to me and asked how I had come to be in the condition I was in and I told him. He looked me right in the eyes and said, ‘Serves you bloody well right’. I could not believe that a fellow Australian would think like that. He didn’t know what it was like in Vietnam and probably didn’t appreciate that young men who were doing their national service obligation, as directed by their elected government, had also lost their lives.

  The one incident that affected me after I had returned to Australia happened when I was recovering from my final operation in I Military Hospital in mid-1972. There was a photo on the front page of the Brisbane Courier Mail. It showed Dr Jim Cairns shaking hands with a North Vietnamese trade union delegation. I thought the photo had been taken overseas and was taken aback when I discovered it was on the steps of the Sydney Town Hall. It seemed that all too quickly we had embraced our previous protagonists; lying in my hospital bed, I found the situation difficult to come to grips with. It seemed like a kick in the guts to the men who had gone to war for their country—now the ‘enemy’ were being treated as if nothing had happened. But I suppose that is the lot of the soldier; he really is just a pawn for the politicians.

  People often asked me, ‘Were you scared in combat?’ General Patton is reported to have stated that ‘No sane man is unafraid in battle’, and I whole heartedly agree. As a platoon commander I had a lot of things to do when contact broke out. I had to make sure my platoon was positioned securely on the ground and was ready to conduct a platoon battle drill if the situation warranted it. I had to know exactly where I was on the ground in order to call in artillery or air support. I was directly commanding and therefore responsible for the lives of about 35 other men. I had to listen to the sounds of the fire fight and try to anticipate what would happen next so that our actions would be aggressive and therefore successful. I was busy. I found that I got the shakes after the contact when I had time to sit down and think about what had happened. Most of our contacts were short, sharp, noisy and violent actions which lasted only a minute or so. It was often over before it started and in many cases not everyone in the platoon was in a position to fire a shot. When we became involved in larger actions such as bunker attacks and the like, fear crept up on you and the longer the fight went the closer it came until it was sitting right behind you. I found the best way to overcome fear in battle was to get involved and keep busy. I had to keep moving and not sit still. Once I was fully in the picture and knew what we were up against and could come up with a plan of action I was OK. Until then I would have the fast pulse, the outbreak of sweat and the other normal reactions to stress.

  Many times I have heard people say that as an army we learnt a lot of bad lessons in Vietnam. This was a catch-cry when the army was redirected to concentrate on training for the defence of continental Australia. On the contrary, as an army we gained some invaluable experience, especially in the treatment and evacuation of battlefield casualties. We gained an enormous experience in counter-revolutionary warfare and fighting in jungle. We didn’t learn any ‘bad’ lessons from our experience in Vietnam. It was when those lessons were incorrectly applied to conventional warfare out of the jungle and back in Australia that it was ‘bad’.

  My experience of being drafted to serve in Vietnam can only be described as bitter-sweet.

  The bitterness lies in the fact that as soldiers we lacked total support for a war to which we had been committed by politicians; there was misunderstanding and a lack of support from a divided civilian populace; and there was criticism and lack of government recognition for our efforts once our involvement was complete. I now firmly believe it is not fair or morally correct to commit soldiers to war and then not give the man who is putting his life on the line, the backing and support he deserves and needs.

  I learnt a lot about soldiering, combat, other men and most of all myself. I was lucky to be well trained, well led and well supported by my soldiers. I have a bond and comradeship with all of those men which can never be broken. All that is sweet. The whole experience is etched forever on my memory and on my soul.

  Afterword from the Publisher

  Lt Gary McKay returned to active duty in February 1972 but discovered that he could perform very little except clerical work. Nevertheless, in March he was posted to an assault pioneer platoon and was sent to the Infantry Centre at Ingleburn NSW to attend the course for pioneer officers and senior NCOs. This he passed, despite being unable to complete the more physically demanding sections of the curriculum. In April he returned to 4RAR in Townsville. At the request of Major Jerry Taylor, who was now the battalion’s operations and training officer, he conducted a basic pioneer course for his unit and for 2RAR.

 
By May, recurring pain had caused him to undergo exhaustive examination by specialists at I Military Hospital, Brisbane. He was offered a choice—either an artificial joint which would mean being unfit for duty in the infantry, or an arthrodesis (fixing the arm to the shoulder blade) with restricted movement as a result. He chose the latter because his medical record suggested that rejection of the artificial joint was a distinct possibility. Later that month, during a four hour operation at I Military Hospital, bone grafts from his hip were used to fix his arm to his shoulder blade. After six months in a plaster cast, he was discharged from hospital on 23 November 1972. In all, he had spent a total of nearly a year in hospital and had been operated on three times.

  He returned to Townsville. After a month, he was posted to the Jungle Training Centre at Canungra as an instructor. There he served with his colleague Lt Dan McDaniel and his ex-commanding officer from 4RAR, Colonel Jim Hughes, who was now the commandant. By the end of 1973 he had returned to his normal weight, been medically upgraded, and been allowed to remain in the infantry.

  Life was back to normal. Gary McKay was soldiering on.

  Index

  The ranks quoted are those appropriate to the time they occur in the narrative.

  Alwill, Ian, 1

  Amberley Air Base, 182

  American Forces Vietnam Network, television, 64; radio, 128

  A.M.P. Society, 3, 4, 41–2, 44

  Anderson, Tony, 4

  Ansett, 175

  Ap Ngai Giao, 72, 149

  Armoured Corps, 35

  Army Aviation Centre, 23

  Army Republic Vietnam, (ARVN), 67

  Artillery Battalion, 5th/42nd U.S., 136