Chapter 30 Land Clearing Teams

“When do we get a ride in the choppers like everyone else?”

“Sheesh, are the bastards trying to save money?”

Our next operation took us up to the village of Phu My which is on the road to Saigon.  From The Dat we head south to Baria along Route 2, then turned west and north along Route 15.  In essence we are driving around the Nui Dinhs and the Nui Thi Vai Mountains.  We debus from the trucks and patrol to NDP (Night Defensive Position) Sharon.  The NDP should not be confused with the FSB (Fire Support Base).  The Artillery guns are at FSB Gail which is located further south and we are in range.  The NDP is used as a base for the LCTs (Land Clearing Teams).  Some bright spark decided to knock down a few acres of jungle.  This would expose the movements of the enemy and in addition, the cleared areas could be accessed by the civilians to grow crops.

Big dozers are used to knock down the jungle.  Initially they used chains and dragged them behind two large dozers to pull down the scrub.  Apparently this wasn’t quite as successful as they had hoped for, so they decided to just bull doze the stuff down.  It was a bloody mess I can tell you.  Our job was to protect these guys by patrolling the surrounding jungle to make sure Nigel kept his distance.  The platoons were rotated between patrolling the jungle and then spending a couple of days defending the NDP where the dozers would park for the night.  Centurion tanks and APCs were also located at the NDP along with the poges at Company HQ – the Red Rat and his mates.

Almost immediately the other platoons (One platoon and Three platoon) had contact with the D67 NVA Engineers, but not us.  Maybe the NVA could smell us and took off before we saw them; but we soldiered on.  Where are these bastards?

One morning we had to move fairly quickly to check out a certain area.  The platoon commander decided to move along the edge of the cleared jungle.  Now this posed a risk as we could be ambushed.  Barry and his 4 section were in the lead, I could tell Browny was up front because of the rate at which we patrolled.  When he gets a bee in his bonnet he just takes off and we struggle to keep up with him.  He is the best scout we have, no risk.  So we are travelling at a fair clip when the enemy sign comes down the line.  I should explain.  The enemy sign is the ‘thumb down’ sign.  It means enemy or danger.  But what happens first is the scout, in this case Browny, props or hesitates a bit when he thinks he has detected something unusual.  As he is about to extend his arm backwards to give the ‘thumbs down’ sign, everyone anticipates this and merges into the scrub.  When Browny looks back to give the sign he can’t see us as we are all in cover!

The other platoons experienced a number of mine and booby traps incidences, the work of the D67 guys.  That’s what they do.  We are therefore on guard looking for anything unusual.  Nigel always marks his mines and booby traps so they know where they are.  It could be a blaze on a tree made by a machete, or some rocks near a track; or simply a broken branch.  The enemy know what sign they use but we don’t, so we have to be on the lookout for anything that is unusual.  The pressure is on the lead guy, the scout, to look for anything unusual and blokes like Browny develop a sixth sense.

Browny told me later that he heard something and that made him prop.  Barry, the section commander, came forward and together they could hear something coming from a log just in from the edge of the cleared area. They brought their machine gunner, Kucksy, forward to cover them and they crawled forward.  It seems a guy was calling out from behind a log.  They thought about giving him a burst of machine gun fire but then decided to see if he would show himself.  They called out to him and the enemy guy eased himself on to the top of the log.  Browny and Barry moved forward covering each other.  Browny said the guy was wounded in the leg and the wound was covered in maggots.

“He didn’t look too good” said Browny.

“That’s probably because he saw you Browny” I said, but he didn’t get the joke.

The platoon went into all round defence and the guy was patched up as best we could.  The guy was an officer and he had plenty of papers on him, so he was quite a good catch, alive.  A chopper came and took him back to The Dat.  It seems a person has to get wounded to get a chopper ride around here.

Our first contact with the enemy and not a shot fired.

How about that?

oooOOOooo

Soon it was our turn to defend the NDP.  We patrolled back to the NDP to relieve the other platoon.  The Red Rat was on hand to greet us.  He noticed that some of us needed a shave.  Well for me that wasn’t a problem.  Bum fluff doesn’t count.  The Red Rat wanted the blokes charged for not shaving.  Can you believe that?  Here we are in a war zone and the Red Rat is charging blokes for not shaving!  Digger was one of those he charged because his beard was so dark.  Maybe I should have confessed to the Red Rat that I hadn’t shaved either.  He would charge me and I could show the charge sheet to the blokes and about how grown up I was and needed to shave every day otherwise the Red Rat would charge me again.

We settled in to our position and the next day Digger came over to use my boot polish gear.  The Red Rat was hearing the charges out bush.  Where is the enemy attack when you need one?  Digger was pretty pissed off as were all of us guys in the platoon.  I think he was docked a couple of days pay.

There was a cleared area within the NDP for choppers to land.  I was heading across to the other side of the NDP and I decided to walk along the edge of the cleared area.  A chopper had just landed and I could see some of the trees being disturbed by the downwash.  Then it happened.  There was an almighty sound, a thud or a thump, just like a machete hitting a large cardboard box.  I saw some light coloured debris get flung through the air.  As I moved further forward I could see an APC which had backed up to the chopper.  Then the CSM came running past me without even noticing I was there.  The CSM was a good guy, his nickname was Mother.  I looked back to the chopper and I could see that the pilot was looking down at the ground beside him; there was something in the grass.

I wasn’t sure what had happened.  I found out later that the driver of the APC had been killed.  It seems he backed up to the chopper and crawled out onto the APC.  Instead of jumping down onto the ground and going around the side of the APC, for some reason he decided to move along the top of the APC.  This brought him very close to the chopper blades.  As he got to the end of the APC he jumped, as he did so he straightened up slightly and his head got walloped by the chopper blades.  He was dead when he hit the ground.

His name was David Doyle, a Trooper with B Squadron 3 Cav, the date was the 31^st July 1970.

David’s brother Dermot was a Lance Bombardier serving with 4^th Field Regiment in Vietnam at the same time.  He escorted his brother’s body back to Australia a couple of days later.

In another coincidence David Doyle trained at Canungra with Wooly, you know, our guy with the M79.

oooOOOooo

Over the next few days One platoon had a couple of contacts and came across a bunker system, luckily the caretakers had fled.  We were to relieve One platoon and to bring in one of our engineers to work out how to destroy the bunker system.  As we patrolled to One platoon’s location, the engineer was travelling directly behind me.  He hadn’t been in country long and he was rubbing his chest saying he had a bit of heartburn.

We married up with One platoon and the engineer went forward with the boss, Pat, to sort out what was happening.  Killer and I took up a firing position that protected our rear.  The machine gun was covering back along our route in, just in case Nigel was following us up.  It was pretty routine stuff.  Killer usually had about 100 rounds attached to the machine gun, when we stopped like this he would link up another 100 rounds.  Then we would sit and keep a lookout while all the other blokes got on with whatever else they had to do.

It was quiet for about 10 minutes and then something surreal happened.  There was an explosion over my right shoulder.  I instinctively turned and looked in that direction but I couldn’t see anything because of the thick jungle.  Then I heard some screams further to my right.  It was very strange.  The screams seemed to come from a different direction to the explosion which was not loud; and the screams came about a second later. 

Their screams were different; they were more of a chorused sigh, very high pitched, and not very loud.  At first I thought the guys were joking around, but the flurry of voices calling out told us that something bad had happened.

Killer and I looked at each other.  Our instincts told us to rush over and see if we could help.  Some blokes were obviously wounded but our training ensured that we stayed where we were and we focused on our job, protecting the platoon in case the enemy followed up our track.

Davo came over.  He was very distressed.  He told us that five blokes were down.  One of them was our platoon commander, Pat, who had a badly damaged leg and it looked like he may lose it. One platoon suffered greatly.  Their platoon commander, Bill, had very serious wounds to both his legs and two other members of his platoon were also wounded; one seriously.  He then mentioned that the engineer, Peter, was dead.  He hardly had a mark on him except a piece of metal that pierced his chest killing him instantly.

One dead and four others seriously wounded probably from a claymore mine which spews out hundreds of ball bearings.  The Dustoff request was sent.  The message came back that the Dustoff was unavailable.  I said to Killer that they are probably on another mission.  It turned out they were not.  The Dustoff helicopter was sitting on the pad at Nui Dat about 15 minutes away.  It would not come to our aid because there was no gun ship support to protect the Dustoff helicopter which was not armed.

Shit!

They’re kidding right?

What about that great brief they gave us when we first arrived in country?  The yanks had plenty of bravado then, but now in our time of need they weren’t coming.  I can understand the reluctance of the crew if we were in direct contact with the enemy, it would be foolish to turn up unarmed with no gun ship support; but we were not in contact.  Nobody was shooting at us. The enemy were only caretakers and they had pissed off!

The guys from 9 Sqn RAAF showed up in a normal Iroquois helicopter.  Back up was a Sioux helicopter, the ones that look like a bubble, and a guy had a rifle pointing out the side.  Some backup I thought, but they were here!

The chopper hovered for a long time and winched up all five guys.  Killer and I, not really knowing what had happened as we continued on our role of rear protection, could see the guys getting winched up, their blood soaked bandages flapping about in the downwash. Killer and I simply looked at each other and said nothing.

Thommo died on the chopper on the way to hospital.

The date was 2^nd August 1970

Killed were:

Private Don Thompson 1 Pl A Coy 2RAR

Sapper Peter Penneyston 1 Field Sqn RAE

Wounded were:

2Lt Pat Cameron 2 Pl A Coy 2RAR

Lt Bill Rolfe 1 Pl A Coy 2RAR

Private Kyle Secker 1 Pl A Coy 2RAR

It was soul destroying.