Going Back Page 9

  In 2005, the 5 RAR group returned to Long Son Island and after some good observation and deduction were able to determine which helicopter pad they had flown into halfway up the hillside—it was virtually unchanged. Having kept their operational maps, the veteran infantrymen were able to locate almost exactly where they had fought and where various incidents occurred. Ted Heffernan had conducted a Medcap in the local village on Long Son Island, and located a monastery close to where he had helped the villagers during the offensive operations being conducted about two kilometres away. Wandering around the small village, Ted was able to recognise buildings and the area where he had worked during Operation Hayman. When he returned to the group he was beaming from ear to ear and telling all and sundry what he had found. The tour bus filled with smiles.

  The Horseshoe

  The Horseshoe was an almost circular hill about eight kilometres south-east of Nui Dat—which was still within artillery range—and less than one kilometre north of a large village called Dat Do. It was a prominent feature that allowed observation over a large area of the flat countryside: with binoculars it was possible to see almost anything that moved to the east of Dat Do village, making it an excellent vantage point and information-gathering site.

  A permanent fire support base was established on The Horseshoe, normally comprising a rifle company, a section or more of 81-mm mortars and three armoured personnel carriers (APCs), providing a ready reaction force to rapidly assist any troops in trouble or to set up quick roadblocks to intercept suspicious traffic. It was also well defended with Claymore mines, barbed wire and fighting bays dug into the rocky soil.

  The Horseshoe was established in 1967 by a rifle company from 5 RAR and commanded by Paul Greenhalgh, whose previous company had been positioned on top of Nui Dat hill. Paul was a rare breed—an unmarried major—but had become engaged to future wife Wendy, who was a school teacher working at RMC Duntroon teaching dependants’ kids. He didn’t especially relish being sent to establish the fire support base at The Horseshoe—and it wasn’t always known by that name, as Paul explained:

  Well actually the Horseshoe feature wasn’t given a name when we were sent out there. It was just a volcanic crater—but I will say it now, being a student of military history, General Christian de Castries had named all of his outposts [at Dien Bien Phu] after his mistresses. I called it Fort Wendy.20

  But digging into the hard granite rock was not easy and before long expletives were being directed at the name of the outpost. Paul decided that he wouldn’t have his fiancée’s name slurred anymore and so it became known as The Horseshoe. In 2005, the woman after whom this rocky outcrop had once been named stood next to the feature and remarked modestly about how she felt upon finally seeing it:

  I’m glad actually it [the name] only lasted two days. It would have been quite weird to have a place in Viet Nam named after you . . . It was great that Paul had it for two days, but it was much better that it went on to be called The Horseshoe.21

  Fred Pfitzner, who bounced from one company to another filling in shortfalls as a company second-in-command (2IC)—at one stage he was in Charlie Company for only 24 hours before being reassigned—took up the story of The Horseshoe:

  I became known as ‘Fred the Wandering Jew’. I didn’t know where they were going to send me and the next thing they said was, ‘Well we are building The Horseshoe, the 2IC has gone off home on the advance party and you are it.’ So I went and did that with Paul Greenhalgh and we built The Horseshoe. That was good; I enjoyed my time in Delta Company.22

  On my last four trips, including the 2005 5 RAR pilgrimage, I have been unable to gain access to The Horseshoe owing to blasting at what is now a quarry site. The northern half of the feature has been dug out, and if quarrying continues at the present rate, within five years the hill will most probably be unrecognisable to veterans.

  An Nhut

  For the 5 RAR group one of the principal reasons for coming on the pilgrimage was to return to the scene of a dreadful mine incident that occurred during Operation Beaumauris between 12 and 14 February 1967. A cordon and search was being conducted of the hamlet of An Nhut, which is ten kilometres east of Ba Ria. Charlie Company had its headquarters decimated when the OC, Major Don Bourne, the company 2IC Captain Bob Milligan and the artillery forward observer Captain Peter Williams were all killed. Six other soldiers were wounded by the blast. The battalion had only nine weeks to go before they returned to Australia.

  The village of An Nhut has only grown a little since the war, and the rice-paddy area where the mine incident occurred is still basically as it was 40 years ago. Roger Wainwright had a photograph that was taken just before the explosion, and when his group went to the site in 2005 they were able to stand within five metres of where those men were killed. In a moving tribute, Roger laid a floral offering at the spot. Under a cloudless sky in searing heat everyone observed a few minutes’ silence to remember those who lost their lives or were wounded on that terrible day.

  Roger was a platoon commander in the ill-fated Charlie Company. Determined to get to An Nhut, he had ensured that the tour company could and would take his group there during their pilgrimage. He explained why it was so important to him and the others:

  It was a significant moment in our company as well as the battalion. To lose three people like that—and let’s not forget the six wounded, of which a couple had to come home. I got to know the family, the widow of Don Bourne and his four children. I’d phoned them just about a month ago [September 2005] and spoke to one of the sons and said I was coming over here, and asked would you like us to lay something on the spot if we could find it. And they said to me, ‘If you can just take a photograph of the position.’ We achieved that. And apart from the rice paddies being green as against dry and brown at the time, it’s exactly the same shot.23

  There are moments during pilgrimages when incidents like An Nhut will sweep over veterans and create a melancholy. It cannot be avoided, nor should it be. John Taske was a good friend of Charlie Company’s 2IC Bob Milligan, and sadly recalled:

  I went over to his tent [the night before] and he was telling me all about how he’d finally made up his mind—coming up on the ship he’d kept talking about this girl and whether he should get married and stuff like that. And then he’d told me that he was getting engaged and he was just so full of joy at going home. And then, to hear a couple of days later that he’d bought it, was pretty sad.24

  The Long Hai Hills

  The Long Hai Hills are a cluster of relatively high hills in the south-eastern corner of Ba Ria–Vung Tau Province, sitting about twenty kilometres to the south of the 1 ATF base at Nui Dat and running down to the coast. During the war, with its thick vegetation and steep slopes strewn with granite boulders, it was a formidable piece of terrain that was easy to defend and very difficult to attack. It was an ideal sanctuary as the approaches were open and flat, and any encroaching movement could be easily detected, especially in the dry season. The massive boulders and natural caves and crevices afforded excellent concealment and protection from direct and indirect fire.

  The Long Hai Hills were never a good place to get to, as Paul Greenhalgh recalled: ‘You were always buggered! You were looking at your toes as you were climbing hills. Fatigue when we got up to the top . . . It was extremely wearying and tiresome.’25

  The Long Hai Hills were also known as the Minh Dam Secret Zone, after a Viet Minh base there named after the local guerrilla leader, Minh, and his deputy, Dam. The Secret Zone had been a guerrilla stronghold since the First Indochina War and remained active against ARVN and Australian troops during the entire Viet Nam War. It was never conquered and was considered a notorious ‘badland’ as it was difficult to manoeuvre, and mines and booby traps were prolific. Whenever enemy troops needed a place to rest, refit or recover they would use the Minh Dam Secret Zone as their sanctuary.

  Derrill De Heer had to work down in the ‘badlands’ on occasion and sometimes flew over them when he
was working the Psyops Unit. When asked what made him apprehensive he responded emphatically, ‘Flying over the Long Hai broadcasting or dropping leaflets from a low height. I was shot at a number of times. The aircraft was not allowed to retaliate as we wanted them to surrender.’26

  Peter Isaacs didn’t relish working in the area either, adding: ‘The Long Hai Hills had bad memories for us at the end of our tour.’27 As they did for rifleman Bill Kromwyk: ‘6 RAR took a lot of casualties there actually. Yes that always worried me, I used to hate being in that area.’28

  Fred Pfitzner was intrigued by his visit to the Long Hais in 2005:

  Getting up into that area I found quite fascinating because every time we’d try to get up there we got bloodied. No matter whether it was a unit like 5 RAR on its first tour, or 4 RAR on its last. If you went up there you were going to get clobbered. So when you get up into it you can see what a fiendishly difficult area it would have been to get into and maintain any sort of presence.29

  Most tour groups visiting the province are offered the option of going up into the Long Hai Hills. A lookout right on the eastern tip of the range offers spectacular views up and down the coast, and near the lookout is a small monastery that is home to Cao Dai monks. There is also a small museum and cafe run by an ex-D 445 Battalion lieutenant, Hoang Ngan, which has been operating for approximately eight years.

  The area has allegedly been cleared of mines and booby traps, but one should nevertheless exercise caution and avoid moving off the well-defined tracks. The Long Hais had ordnance of all kinds dumped on it during both Indochina wars, and there are undoubtedly still many undiscovered and unexploded munitions in the hills. When the natural gas pipeline was being laid through supposedly cleared areas several years ago, in excess of 100 unexploded ordnance items were reportedly found.

  I have visited the area on three occasions and each time former Lieutenant Hoang welcomed me as a comrade in arms. It can be disconcerting at first to stand in front of a former foe and shake his hand knowing that at one stage you were both possibly trying to kill each other. However, the warmth and hospitality shown by former enemy soldiers is not uncommon, and Australian soldiers are met with open arms and with disarming frankness.

  The 5 RAR pilgrimage group had not encountered a former Viet Cong soldier before, and afterwards were individually asked how they felt about meeting Mr Hoang. Ben Morris replied simply, ‘That’s the time the hating stopped. Just meeting him; he’s a human being . . . He welcomed us.’ Of the hundreds of Viet Nam veterans that I’ve spoken to over the last three decades, very few hold or feel any ‘hatred’ towards their former foe. Fred Pfitzner put it thus:

  They were doing what they had to do, and we were doing what we had to do. I mean, there’s a universal brotherhood of infantry. You all suffer the same way. And how they got in there [to the Long Hais] with large bodies of troops and managed to secure them away from observation, the air strikes, and artillery. How they managed to feed and water them. How they managed to fix them up medically when they needed it. I’ve got nothing but admiration for them. And even at the time, I thought, you know, these blokes are no dills. They know what they’re doing.30

  Roger Wainwright was similarly philosophical. ‘I think we’ve got to respect what our foes were doing at the time,’ he remarked. After reflecting that both he and Mr Hoang had been of the same rank, he added: I think the fact is that war overall is a nasty thing, and the suffering occurs to both sides. And to meet them in more friendly circumstances all those years later is interesting. And, you can’t say there is any malice remaining in this day and age. It was great to meet him. I would have liked to have had a longer chat with him.31

  As a doctor, Tony White didn’t physically go up into the Long Hais during the war, but certainly had to deal with the result of Allied operations in the foothills. ‘My main link with the area was the Operation Renmark mine incident, and of course we couldn’t get within cooee of that.’32 Operation Renmark was conducted in the Long Hai Hills between 18 and 22 February 1967, and 22 February was another black day for the 5th Battalion. Three infantry soldiers and two cavalry crewmen were killed, and another nine men were wounded, when their armoured personnel carrier ran over a mine most probably constructed from a large unexploded aerial bomb. Four Platoon, commanded by Lieutenant John Carruthers, was leading a mounted advance and had struck the mine.

  During the immediate commotion and commencement of the casualty evacuation phase and reorganisation of the company, an M-16 ‘Jumping Jack’ mine was triggered—and within four minutes of the initial incident many more men were seriously wounded. Captain Tony White was the RMO of 5 RAR and was flown in by Sioux helicopter, to be greeted with an atmosphere of deep shock and fear. Captain Peter Isaacs notified Task Force Headquarters and within minutes an Iroquois Dustoff chopper was overhead, awaiting the preparation of a landing zone at the point of the explosions. The scene was horrendous, with a total of 31 wounded.

  Another excruciating problem for Tony was determining who would be treated first of the large group of casualties, several of whom were in danger of imminent death. Fortunately the 36th US Evacuation Hospital at Vung Tau was only five minutes away by Iroquois, and the more severely wounded cases were on operating tables within 25 minutes of being wounded. Major Bruce McQualter was still just conscious when Tony arrived, and urged him to treat the 4 Platoon casualties first. Shortly afterwards Bruce lost consciousness. Lieutenant Carruthers was also seriously wounded, and despite severe head and body injuries, each man held on to life with great tenacity. Lieutenant Carruthers died on 24 February, and Major McQualter at 5 a.m. on 5 March.33

  Even after having to deal with the incredible trauma and horrific injuries inflicted by the former enemy, Tony White expressed these feelings after meeting Mr Hoang:

  No ill feelings at all. No, I feel that was then. He was a 17-year-old who went in there and he was defending his country. We were on our side doing our duty, and it just highlighted the absurdity of the whole exercise. And many deaths and a lot of people knocked around mentally and physically.34

  Binh Ba

  Binh Ba, seven kilometres north of Nui Dat, was—and still is today—a rubber plantation workers’ village and very picturesque. The houses are built in orderly rows, and most have concrete walls, tiled roofs, and wooden doors and window shutters. While there are trees and shrubs between and at the rear of houses, the front is usually well mown. It has a properly laid out road system, and the eastern edge of the village is next to the former Route 2 roadway.

  This village was cordoned and searched by 5 RAR very early in their tour of duty, and many following battalions based their modus operandi on how 5 RAR went about their business. Roger Wainwright recalled that first cordon of the village and what he remembered most:

  I suppose the approach to it by night into the position as we did with all of those cordons. It was pretty much the very first one that we did, and of the absolute vital necessity of linking up at night time with other companies so that you don’t have clashes with other platoons. And walking at night with toggle ropes.35

  Today the village has grown somewhat, but is still essentially a community of local rubber plantation workers. Entry is restricted at times—on my last two visits I have been denied access to the village, but I have not been able to ascertain exactly why. The day the 5 RAR group arrived, entry was again restricted and it was bucketing rain. The group was not given a permit to enter the area from the Vietnamese government. Battle sites are declared ‘sensitive areas’ and permits must be obtained through the government tourist agencies or arrest and detention can result. People were allowed off the bus and looked across at the village. The veterans peered through the pelting tropical downpour at where they had once formed a perimeter around the village and flushed out dozens of Viet Cong soldiers and sympathisers. Adjutant and assistant operations officer Peter Isaacs commented ruefully, ‘Binh Ba was unrecognisable apart from the water tower, and the airstrip is invisible fro
m the road. There was no sign of the Regional Forces post we constructed.’36

  Roger Wainwright was also disappointed he couldn’t get into the village in 2005 because, ‘After we did the initial cordon and search of Binh Ba, our company lived there for almost two months, and that is probably why we never finished digging in at Nui Dat.’37

  Aviator Peter Rogers was also interested in visiting the village because he had been involved in the Battle at Binh Ba as part of Operation Hammer from 6 to 8 June 1969. ‘It was a colossal stoush while I was there,’ he reflected.38 The road heading north up from the old Task Force base at Nui Dat was once an arterial road between isolated villages, right up to the next province capital of Bien Hoa. But since the war, the growth of the populated areas has been staggering. As Peter observed, ‘I couldn’t recognise the place. It is all ribbon development now.’ Peter was saddened that he couldn’t identify where the former airstrip had been located, north-west of Binh Ba, because two aviator friends were shot down and killed near there just after he finished his tour of duty.39

  The tour group travelled from Binh Ba west across the area that was formerly known to Australians as the Hat Dich region. During the war it was a large tract of primary and secondary jungle; now a highway runs through it, supporting ribbon development, small towns, coffee and pepper plantations and market gardens. Fred Pfitzner said he couldn’t believe it: ‘I was gobsmacked at the development—it is bloody good to see it.’40

  Xuyen Moc

  Twenty kilometres due east of the Nui Dat base, but some 35 kilometres by gravel road, was the town of Xuyen Moc (pronounced ‘Swen Mok’). It was a settlement that swelled from a rapid influx of Catholics who left North Viet Nam once the country had been divided in 1954.41

  During the American War, the isolated town was subjected to constant harassment by the Viet Cong, who felt secure in attacking the local populace given the long reaction time required to deploy a large combat force to restore order and repel their forays. The road leading out to the town via the provincial capital of Ba Ria and the district capital of Long Dien was often mined, and subject to frequent motor vehicle ambushes. In 1966, 5 RAR was given the task of clearing the road and establishing a presence in Xuyen Moc. As Fred Pfitzner observed on the logistics of even getting there, ‘To actually have got out to Xuyen Moc required a special operation every time it was ever done.’42 After the war, the resettled North Vietnamese Catholics paid the price for not buckling to Viet Cong pressure: the town was the very last in the province to receive electricity.