Going Back Read online

  Today Paul and Wendy live in busy retirement in Canberra, where Paul fills in his time as a top-notch picture framer.

  Captain Ted Heffernan, RAAMC,

  Medical Officer, Nui Dat

  Ted Heffernan is a large, stocky man with an infectious sense of humour. He became a doctor in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps (RAAMC) after he had graduated from medical school via the Army’s undergraduate program in 1964.16 He served for five years in the Regular Army and in 1966 was posted to South Viet Nam as a regimental medical officer (RMO) in a field ambulance and in an artillery field regiment. He survived ambush and the other dangers of service in a war zone and returned to Australia after being decorated by the Government of South Viet Nam. Today, Dr Heffernan, FRACS, FRCS (England), FACS, is a general surgeon, and has a practice in Geelong, Victoria, where he lives with his wife Joy.

  Ted wanted to return to Viet Nam to renew acquaintances, visit places where he deployed on Medcaps (medical civil aid programs) and share memories with his fellow officers:

  It was probably the only chance I was going to get to get back to Viet Nam and see any of the spots I’ve served in with people of the same era, which is significant. And it probably wasn’t a bad time in life. As you get older you haven’t got much chance to do these things now.17

  Ted’s wife of 43 years wanted to return with him because ‘it was a good time to come back with Ted and experience a number of places he’s talked about for the last 40 years’. On reflection Joy added, ‘I wanted to support him, and also to see the areas that Ted actually visited while he was in the Army here in 1966. And for myself to have some peace of mind.’18

  Dr Heffernan treated Allies and enemy alike, and saw the physical and emotional damage that war can inflict on the human body and spirit. When he left South Viet Nam in 1967 he was ‘pleased to leave unharmed’. He was dismayed at the result of the conflict, which carried a terrible loss of life on all sides, and deplored the withdrawal of the Allies in 1972, saying ‘a core of loyal South Vietnamese were just left to their fate’.

  Ted was unsure what he would see on his return to Viet Nam. ‘I thought I would recognise nothing in our battlefields, and I didn’t know how I’d feel about going to them.’ But as he discovered later, ‘there are certain landmarks that are still there. I think the best times for me on this trip were finding places like the RMO’s tent in the field regiment and returning to Xuyen Moc and Hoa Long.’ Joy also wasn’t sure what to expect, remarking, ‘I didn’t expect it to be as pretty a country as it is. For some unknown reason I didn’t expect it to be as green, quite as beautiful as I found it.’19

  Ted is still practising surgery (to pay for Joy’s extravagances, he says), while Joy undertakes retail therapy with relish.

  Captain Peter Isaacs, Adjutant, 5 RAR

  I first met Peter Isaacs—a captain instructor at the Officer Training Unit, Scheyville—in mid-1968 when I was an officer cadet. Peter fell into the stereotypical mould of the British Army officer, who spoke correctly, dressed immaculately and was never fazed. He wore a ‘Herbie Johnson’ forage cap with a steep visor that meant that you could never see where he was looking and if he was watching you. He taught infantry minor tactics and several other subjects and was regarded by most cadets I served with as a ‘pretty good sort of bloke’. After serving as a platoon commander in the British Army in the United Kingdom, he joined the Australian Army on a five-year short-service commission and served with 5 RAR on its first tour of duty in 1966–67 as an intelligence officer and adjutant. For his service in South Viet Nam he was Mentioned in Despatches. After his time was up he returned to the United Kingdom and served with the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces between 1975 and 1978 as a company commander and then battalion second-in-command on counter-insurgency operations in Dhofar Province. It was during this tour of duty in Oman that Peter was nearly killed in a landmine incident that took his right leg off at the hip, and severely chewed into his right arm and left leg. He also lost the sight in his left eye and was extremely lucky to survive.

  Peter has been returning to Australia from the United Kingdom for decades to attend the five-year battalion reunions and events such as the Dedication of the Vietnam Memorial in Canberra in 1998. When asked why he travels halfway around the world to attend such events he simply replied, ‘It’s family. That’s why.’ Peter said he wanted to return to Viet Nam ‘as a sort of “pilgrimage” to remember those fine young men with whom it was my privilege to serve in 5 RAR, and who did not return’.20 His reservations were similar to those of many veterans who are contemplating a return visit:

  I had anticipated that much of the scenery would have changed—‘development’ in what used to be called the Third World usually means unplanned urban sprawl. I was not disappointed; travelling from Vung Tau to Ba Ria and Hoa Long is now a continual ribbon of buildings.21

  This was to be Peter’s first trip back to Viet Nam since the war. He expressed his expectations as being mainly:

  Comradeship—being among those men who I know better than any other group I have ever worked with—apart from another campaign I took part in, that is [Oman]. Thankfulness—to remember those fine fellows of our 5 RAR family who were killed in South Viet Nam.22

  Peter was always frustrated in South Viet Nam because he felt that the Australian effort should have ‘been more “belligerent” ’. He favoured a more aggressive operational approach. When the South finally fell in 1975, Peter was heavily involved in operations in Oman. He described how he felt when he heard the news:

  I was involved in another war in ’75; had little contact with the outside world and loving it. When I eventually saw a film clip of the tank rolling into the Presidential Palace, I was sad for the people we had tried to help, and angry that public opinion in the US had brought about the situation. Even more so when Henry Kissinger and his North Vietnamese counterpart got the Nobel Peace Prize!23

  Peter (married in 1964 but now divorced) was not in favour of wives or partners being included in the trip, but added ruefully: ‘I realised it was inevitable (some would not have been allowed to make the trip alone!).’ It is testament to his grit and determination that he made the trip because Viet Nam is not a country that caters well to disabled people. However, he remarked that in his current job with the United Nations managing landmine clearance operations in Tajikistan he wasn’t too worried about a lack of facilities, and so he was sure he would manage ‘just fine’.24

  Peter resides in England when not lifting mines in farflung outposts around the globe.

  Lieutenant Ben Morris, Platoon Commander,

  5 RAR, 2 RAR and 1 ATF Civil Affairs Detachment

  Ben Morris graduated from RMC Duntroon in 1965 and served initially with the 1st Battalion, Pacific Islands Regiment (1 PIR), before being sent to South Viet Nam as a reinforcement officer. He knew something of the war, having received lectures from the staff and from Colonel Ted Serong, who led the initial deployment of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV). Another visiting lecturer in 1964 was Captain Peter Young, who Ben recalled ‘giving us an extremely good briefing on Viet Nam’.25

  Deploying as a reinforcement—commonly, but not disparagingly, referred to as a ‘reo’—is probably the hardest and most demanding way to go to war. The reo often doesn’t know the people he is about to serve and fight with, and he hasn’t had the benefit of work-up training back in Australia where everyone becomes familiar with the standard operating procedures of the unit. Ben Morris described how he felt about his posting as a reinforcement officer:

  I wasn’t happy about going to the Reinforcement Wing because I wanted to go and join a battalion . . . We were asked whether or not we wanted to go to Canungra and because I had been in the tropics for the last twelve months they were prepared to give us an exemption, which both Paul Mench and myself took, and I ended up arriving in country about 17 January 1967.26

  Ben described the training and preparation at the Reinforcement Wing in Ingleburn, Sydney
, as ‘ad hoc’, adding, ‘There didn’t seem to be a real plan; there just seemed to be a lot of turmoil. So the training was fairly disjointed.’27 However, he thought that he was reasonably well prepared for active service:

  I was, due to the fact that I had just spent twelve months in Papua New Guinea, and I think there were also parts of the RMC syllabus that stood us in good stead. In Second Class we did a first aid course and I used that to save men in Viet Nam.28

  Ben’s first appointment after arriving in the 1st Australian Reinforcement Unit in Nui Dat was in the Civil Affairs Unit, which he discovered hadn’t had an administration officer since its inception. His duties revolved around providing assistance and liaison to the local ARVN posts where the Australian Task Force had regional advisers, and as Ben explained, ‘we helped them with their civil affairs’. Ben detailed some of the jobs he had:

  If a cordon and search was on, Civil Affairs turned up with the Psyops equipment and ready to set up to supplement the doctors or had their own doctors; it was very much an ad hoc thing and if problems were identified during the Medcaps and Dentcaps [dental civil aid projects], part of our job was to follow up and get the people into Ba Ria for medical and dental treatment.29

  His job took him all over the old Phuoc Tuy Province, and most of the time he travelled alone with just a sidearm and a 7.62 mm SLR (self-loading rifle) for company. By February 1967, Ben was posted to 5 RAR as a reinforcement officer. He recalled what it was like joining the battalion as a reo:

  Well the first thing is that you are going in alone and you feel that . . . They had been together in country for about seven or eight months. You are the new boy on the block. The other thing is because you are in Viet Nam on company-sized operations you don’t get to know the rest of the battalion officers. I met some of them Thursday week ago [February 2005] in Canberra! We were in the same battalion but we didn’t get to meet because they happened to be in C Company or D Company.30

  After another stint with the Civil Affairs unit, Ben found himself posted to 2 RAR, again as a reinforcement officer. This time the experience was far from pleasant:

  The OC there treated me like one of those people who hadn’t won the war. ‘We are here to win the war, you are one of those losers who hadn’t won it up till now’ type of thing, and that is a pretty hard attitude to overcome. And in some ways if I had been someone with not as much experience as I had, I would have just buckled under just from that attitude.31

  Ben described his time with 2 RAR as ‘tough’. He was involved in a bad mine incident when working with the unit in late November 1967, and the man who triggered the ‘Jumping Jack’ (M-16) mine was killed instantly. It is probably fair to say that Ben would not have undertaken a pilgrimage with people from 2 RAR because of the underlying emotions of his experience with that unit.

  Ben enjoyed his time with 5 RAR, which he described as ‘happy. I enjoyed that platoon and I think they enjoyed me.’ He believed the battalion was ‘very professional; they knew what they were on about; they didn’t take silly risks’. Ben added, ‘They were there to stay alive but they were also there to win a war. They had a respect for men’s lives.’32

  When the Australians withdrew from South Viet Nam in 1972, Ben felt that ‘we [as an Army] had been let down. We had been let down by the politicians who had tied our hands behind our fucking backs and not let us get on with the war.’ The pain of that conflict was still highly evident as he continued, ‘I am still sure in my own mind that if we had been left to run the war the way it should have been, we would have won it. ’When the South inevitably fell in 1975 he felt ‘sad, because a lot of good people were going to get hurt’.33

  It is a fair assumption that Ben has post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but he works hard at managing it. He has not let it stop him from returning to Viet Nam—when he joined the 5 RAR tour group it was his fourth visit back since the war. ‘I want to come to peace with the country and I can’t do that by just doing one visit,’ he explained.34 Ben’s other trips were privately organised tours in December 1997 and January 1998 with his partner, who is now his second wife. His reactions from the first trip were not easy to deal with, and he believed he needed to return a third time in July 1999 to where he served, ‘just to stand and reflect’.35

  Ben’s wife Jenny accompanied him on the trip in October 2005. He wanted to show her ‘the Army side of Viet Nam’ by being on a trip with Army colleagues, as Jenny has never been ‘an Army wife’, as Ben put it, and ‘didn’t understand a lot of Army things’.36

  Ben’s expectations on the October 2005 5 RAR tour were ‘not all that great . . . just to go back and come to some sort of peace with the whole place’.37 I asked Ben if he had any apprehensions, and he said he thought that the group would experience ‘reactions’, based upon his own experiences on previous tours. As it happened, I don’t think this was the case, and veterans should be aware that everyone reacts differently to what they see, smell, hear and feel when they are back in Viet Nam. One cannot throw a blanket over a group and say that they will feel a certain way: we are too complex and have had too many life experiences to simplify an emotive reaction.

  Today, Ben lives in Wollongong and is still serving with the Army Reserve in the RAAMC.

  Captain Fred Pfitzner, Company Second-in-

  Command, 5 RAR; Operations Officer, 1 ATF

  Headquarters

  Square-framed and muscular, Fred Pfitzner is a big bloke who stands a tad over 183 cm (6 feet). He was born in Adelaide into a large family of nine kids and moved to Canberra in 1959 to attend RMC Duntroon, where he graduated in 1962. He saw active service in Malaya and Borneo as a rifle platoon commander with 3 RAR, returning to Australia skilled in jungle warfare in 1965. While serving with the 28th Commonwealth Brigade in Singapore, along with many officers Fred did a two-week reconnaissance to South Viet Nam and was made familiar with the operational scenario in country. After posting to the 6 Task Force at Enoggera Barracks in Brisbane, he was initially told he was going as a reinforcement officer to serve as a captain in operations in the Task Force headquarters, but that was changed to a company second-in-command in 5 RAR once the ‘powers that be’ realised that the blokes working in the command post should have some idea of what was going on out ‘in the weeds’.

  Arriving in the unit was not as daunting for him as it was for most other officer reinforcements because, as Fred recalled, he knew the man who met him at Nui Dat: ‘[Major] Blue Hodgkinson and I had spent nine of my first thirteen years in the Army together; he was my company commander in Malaya.’ His flight over was interesting: ‘I was the DCO [draft conducting officer] on a Qantas flight via Manila with a whole bunch of people I didn’t know, and only another one or two officers. Maintaining decorum in Manila was not easy.’ The 24-year-old Captain Pfitzner admitted to being ‘excited’ about entering another war zone—it was a feeling of ‘once more into the breach; that was what I was being paid for’.38

  Fred’s company commander was Major Bruce McQualter, who tragically died of wounds sustained in a mine incident in the Long Hai Hills on 22 February 1967, about seven months into the tour. Fred added, ‘We lost two officers in that one and about nine Diggers and 22 wounded, from memory.’ The loss of two officers from 5 RAR plus the forward observer gutted the rifle company: ‘Well, they were rooted; they were pulled back straight after it . . . They were literally a rump of a company and they were employed on minefield security while it was being built until they went home.’39

  Fred then saw out the remainder of his tour from May to December 1967 as an operations officer in the Task Force headquarters working on shift in the command post, and as the Task Force patrol master coordinating TAOR (tactical area of responsibility) patrols. Fred recalls wryly:

  It wasn’t hard; it was 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There were periods of intense activity and every now and then you could relax a bit, like in any bloody war. There were a few peaks like the first time we started operating east of Dat Do
and things like that, which represented a significant change in the capability of the Task Force, being able to operate away from its own close protection.40

  The pilgrimage with 5 RAR was to be Fred’s first return to Viet Nam. He assumed ‘that the countryside will be as lovely as it ever was, the girls will look much the same’. Fred knew that 70 per cent of the population was born after the war, ‘so they aren’t going to be too interested in a fat-arsed bunch of old farts running around’. He was also hoping to see, even though the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam is a Communist country, ‘that entrepreneurial streak—especially in the South—that was always there’. He added with a smile, ‘They are like the Chinese; they are all basically capitalists.’41

  Fred had few qualms about returning, but also knew much had changed in areas where he had served (his greatest apprehension was leaving his farm outside Canberra, with his Murray Grey breeders about to start calving). Fred was one of many who were disappointed about the withdrawal of Australians from the war in 1972, especially as he was then commanding a ready reaction force—called Fred Force (Alpha Company 9 RAR)—to deploy to South Viet Nam if things ‘got untidy’ with the remnants of the Australian force left in Saigon. On the fall of Saigon and the collapse of resistance to the National Liberation Front offensive in 1975, Fred stated he was ‘disappointed in the sense that we lost, and resigned in the sense that it was probably ever going to be so’.

  Like many warriors who served in Phuoc Tuy Province and other areas in South Viet Nam, Fred is proud of his service. He didn’t think the war was a lost cause:

  Not when we were there, no. In fact I think that the Australian Army can still to this day hold its head up about its conduct of operations in Phuoc Tuy, especially in the early days because they got on top of the problem and provided the firm base from which operations were able to be launched out of the province, and we didn’t ever have our hands on the back door, which could have happened.42