Chapter 13:
Are There Seeds of Redemption in the Garden of Madness?
Age: 21 – 22
WARNING!!! This chapter contains some material that may be extremely disturbing to some readers. It certainly is to me.
In the garden of my madness
I tended the red flowers of my shame,
And the dark black borders of my guilt.
The flowers grew tall,
But brought no comfort to my soul.
Without my knowing,
The winds of fate brought seeds of my redemption
To a corner of the garden;
There they grew, unnoticed and untended;
Awaiting my uncertain future.
**********
PART I – A Few Basic Statistics
6 RAR arrived in South Vietnam on 7 June 1966, and moved to Nui Dat on 14 June 1966. The Battalion boarded the aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney at the end of May 1967, for the return to Australia, and arrived in Brisbane on 14 June 1967. Of a total of 357 days in Vietnam, 350 were spent in the combat zone, around our base at Nui Dat.
Of those 350 days, C Company was away from base camp for approximately 186 days, on Battalion operations, or Company patrols. Of the 800 (approximate) men in the battalion, 30 were killed in action, and 118 wounded in action, in Vietnam. Many more went back to Australia due to serious illness or injury.
To give a clearer understanding of the tolls of war: C company, with a full strength of 123, lost 123 men through death, wounds, illness or injury[1] during our tour of duty. Most of our soldiers were young (the majority of the regular army soldiers were as young as or younger than the national servicemen, and they were ALL 21 in Vietnam). It was not just the young who succumbed to illness – my 7 platoon boss, Lieutenant Mike Gillespie and Sergeant Phil Crossingham both returned to Australia with major health problems – (malaria, health breakdown, etc.) One regular army corporal contracted encephalitis from a mosquito bite.
PATROLS AND OPERATIONS: SOLDIERS AT WORK.
These were the operations that C Company completed, either as a single company, or with one or more other companies of the battalion:
MAJOR BATTALION OPERATIONS:
ENOGGERA: 21 June – 5 July 1966
This was the destruction of the village of Long Phuoc.
Losses: Enemy - 4 killed
Own - 1 wounded
HOBART: 24 – 29 July
The mission was to search and destroy the enemy in an area to the east and north-east of Long Tan, and to search Long Tan for installations and caches.
Losses: Enemy - 13 killed
19 wounded
Own - 3 killed
19 wounded
SMITHFIELD: 18 – 21 August
The mission was to search and destroy the enemy in an area to the east and north-east of Long Tan, and to search Long Tan for installations and caches. This is known as the Battle of Long Tan.
Losses: Enemy - 245 killed
500 wounded
3 captured
Own - 17 killed
21 wounded
I member of first APC[2] Squadron killed
VAUCLUSE: 8 – 24 September
The mission was climb the Nui Dinh Hills, and to search for traces of the enemy
Losses: Enemy - 8 killed
4 wounded
15 civilians detained
Own - 1 wounded
INGHAM: 18 November – 3 December 1966
The mission was to search and destroy enemy in the area to the east of the Task Force Base.
Losses: Enemy - 10 killed
10 wounded
1 Prisoner of War (wounded)
19 Detainees
Own - 2 killed
22 wounded
DUCK I: 14 – 23 December
The mission was to secure and protect National Highway Route 1, from Baria to the village of Phu My, to allow convoys of United States reinforcements and supplies to travel unimpeded from Vung Tau to their new base just north of Phu My.
DUCK II: 26 December 1966 – 5 January 1967
The mission was the same as for Duck I.
TAMBORINE: 1 – 8 February 1967
The mission was to set up and maintain an ambush on Route 23
Losses: Enemy - 1 killed by aircraft
6 killed in action
1 wounded
Own - 4 killed by accident
13 wounded by accident
1 wounded in action
BRIBIE: 17 – 18 February 1967
The mission was to block an enemy force from withdrawing from an unsuccessful ambush on Route 44
Losses: Enemy - 8 killed
50 – 70 wounded (estimated)
Own - 7 wounded by accident
26 wounded in action
1 killed from A Squadron 1st Cavalry Regiment
1 wounded from A Squadron 1st Cavalry Regiment
PORTSEA: 21 March – 16 April 1967
The first part of this mission was to carry out a search and destroy operation in the area between Nui Dat and Xuyen Moc (21 – 30 March). The second phase was to protect United States and Australians Engineers who repairing and re-opening part of Route 23 from Dat Do to Xuyen Moc.
Losses: Enemy - 2 killed
1 Detainee
1 Returnee
Own - 4 killed
6 wounded
MINOR 6 RAR OPERATIONS:
BRISBANE: 16 -18 July 1966
The operation was to sweep and destroy enemy in the valley between Nui Dinh and Nui Thi Vai.
CASULA: 25 September 1966 – end 1966
This was to construct and improve defensive works in the base area.
BATHURST: 20 – 27 October 1966
Conducting saturated patrolling of the Tactical Area of Responsibility around the Task Force.
BUNDABERG: 30 – 31 October 1966
This was a cordon and search operation of Hoa Long village.
630 people were detained in the operation, of which:
Viet Cong – 38
Suspected Viet Cong - 41
Draft dodgers - 18 (from South Vietnamese army)
WOLLONGONG: 8 January – 21 March 1967
This was the code name given to all close patrolling in the Battalion’s Tactical Area of Responsibility. It included Platoon, Company and Battalion patrols.
CAMDEN: 16 – 17 January 1967
A cordon and search of the village of Hoa Long, which still had covert Viet Cong members active.
Losses: Enemy – 1 Viet Cong member captured
2 Detainees held for questioning
Own - 1 wounded by aggressive water buffalo
SEYMOUR: 28 January – 1 February 1967
This was a company patrol that developed into a search and destroy mission that didn’t really find anyone to destroy.
BEECHMONT: 8 – 12 February 1967
This name was given to all patrolling in the immediate vicinity of the Task Force Base during TET (Vietnamese holiday period). Five Viet Cong were captured without a shot being fired (they were washing their clothes in a stream).
DALBY: 16 February 1967
This was a one-day, heli-borne assault, which resulted in:
Losses: Enemy - 1 wounded
4 captured
KIRRIBILLI: 23 – 27 February 1967
A Company and C Company patrolled the area to the north and north-east of the Task Force area. No contact was made with the enemy.
AYR: 7 March 1967
Another heli-borne assault into a specific area, without any significant results.
5 RAR OPERATIONS IN WHICH C COMPANY PARTICIPATED:
HOLSWORTHY: 5 – 18 August 1966
This operation was a cordon and search of two villages, Duc Trung and Xa Binh Ba, 5000 metres to the north of the Task Force. 168 males of military age were detained, of which 47 were confirmed as Viet Cong.
HAYMAN: 6 – 12 November 1966
A cordon and search of Long Phuoc Hoa, followed by a search and destroy on Long Son Island.
Losses: Enemy - 2 wounded
ADDING UP THE NUMBERS:
Here are the combined totals of those killed or wounded during the battalion’s tour of duty:
| 6 RAR DEATHS | 6 RAR WOUNDED | ENEMY DEATHS | ENEMY WOUNDED |
| 30 | 118 | 287 | 586 - 607 |
Just this week, I received the latest status report on men who were attached to C Company during our year in Vietnam:
| Total C Company Strength | C Company DEATHS (KIA)[3] | C Company DEATHS | Total Support Team Strength | Support Team DEATHS (KIA) | Support Team DEATHS |
| 211 | 4[4] | 39 | 15 | 1 | 2 |
For C Company, approximately 20% have either died or been killed since we arrived in Vietnam, and this percentage holds true for the Company Support Team members. Most of those deaths happened more than ten years ago, when our average age would have been in the early to mid-fifties. I don’t know how this compares to overall statistics for men of that age, but it means that 20% of these people I knew are gone.
Enough of this pretending to be a statistician! Let me move on to something simpler, less complex, less objective.
Revisiting the scars – My Journey through Vietnam, continued:
A few days after we returned to our Nui Dat home from destroying Long Phuoc, I received an invitation that I couldn’t refuse, probably because it was more an order than a request. Captain Peter John Stuart Harris, C Company’s Second in Command, had always enjoyed bantering with me in occasional idle moments, and he decided I would make a wonderful orderly, or batman. I had no desire to move from my role as 7 Platoon Signaller, but my Platoon Commander, Lieutenant Mick Gillespie, told me I had no choice in the matter.
So I reluctantly swapped my Browning pistol for an Armalite rifle, and my duties as communication link between the platoon and the Company, for my chores as an orderly/batman.[5] As a batman, my tasks were to wash and iron my captain’s clothing, make him tea and stuff, dig his weapon pit when we were out on operations or patrols, (as well as my own), act as a runner/messenger between him and the company commander, and to protect him at all times in the heat of battle.
I did the job for nearly five months, then asked to be transferred back to a rifle platoon. Nine platoon at that time had a vacancy for a signaller, so I moved there for the last few months of my tour of duty. It meant that I spent time in every part of the Company except eight platoon in my Vietnam experience.
I spent ten and a half months in Vietnam, months that brought massive changes to every part of my life, my learning, my world view, and my self-understanding. Some of the changes proved immensely beneficial later in my life but, for many years, I could only see the damage done to me.
An officer in C Company quoted in a book many years later that “the aim of the infantry is to kill the enemy”, something that was drummed into us during our infantry corps training at Enoggera and on many exercises in training areas.
Before we left Australia, it all seemed (to me, with my naïve view of life) like a big boys’ game of Cowboys and Indians, where no one got hurt. In my world, killing didn’t happen in real life.
At Vung Tau, the treatment of prisoners of war by the Koreans jolted me into an awareness that reality was different to the dreams of would-be heroes. The destruction of Long Phuoc took me right out of my comfort zone, and from there, it just got worse.
I changed, over the weeks, from a passive, non-thinking person who always followed orders without question to a stranger troubled with huge doubts and uncomfortable questions:
What are we doing here, intruders in another land, killing the people who have the right to be here?
What authority does my country’s law hold in another land, with different laws?
How can I fulfil my duty of care to my mates when I have such doubts about our mission?
What right have I to survive, if we are the bad guys in this war, when others die?
The only absolute answer I came up with was that I had a duty to my fellow soldiers that I could not, would not let any harm befall them if I could prevent it. I had to follow orders, care for my mates, and struggle alone with my doubts. And I was, and am, loyal to my country, and must obey its bidding, no matter what my personal fears and doubts.
The weight on my shoulders became heavier with every passing day, every new incident. By early 1967, I came to believe that not only did I have any right to survive, but I didn’t really want to. This is the first time I have set these thoughts in writing.
I will share with you some events that I witnessed that even now haunt my days in sudden flashbacks and my nights in cold sweat nightmares. Some readers (most? all?) may find them disturbing. I have struggled to write this chapter, because of how these memories affect me, but it is important for me to set them down – they are essential factors in forming the person I have become, and am becoming.
June 1966: When I heard the screams of the Vietnamese prisoners of war as they lay, untended, at the Korean ‘Convalescent’ Centre, I learned that it is impossible to argue against Army authority, which is backed up by weapons. And that those who give the orders for atrocities never see their orders in action; they do not have to listen to the anguished cries of the dying, as I still listen to them in my troubled nights.
June - July 1966: The destruction of the school/Buddhist shrine in the village of Long Phuoc affected me deeply, because I identified with a community which had ‘owned’ this area of their homeland for a long time, suddenly had no homes, no school, no spiritual base, and no community.
On this operation I saw my first ever dead body, which shocked me immensely, because it was several days old, with blowflies feasting on dried blood and other exposed areas of the inner body. This was real life, not cowboys and Indians.
On July 9, 1966, Gordon Knight, a National Service Private in 8 platoon, became the first soldier killed in action from our battalion. Less than a week earlier I had taken a photo of him doing some maintenance work around our company lines. His platoon had been sent out on a night patrol/ambush which had been discovered and attacked by the Viet Cong. He was shot in the head, and died soon after. It is cold comfort to know that he was the only member of C Company to die in our time in Vietnam.
Not long after our arrival at Nui Dat, a regular army corporal was bitten by a mosquito and contracted encephalitis. His condition was bad enough for him to be sent home, and, as I found out soon after my return to Australia, he suffered long-term effects.
He slipped and somersaulted backwards,
I remember;
tumbled down the slope a little way –
we were climbing through the steep, wet mud
to Lever’s Plateau.
When we set him back upon his feet, he smiled.
Smiled completely:
mouth, eyes, all his face
as we knew he would.
He never died in Vietnam;
though he was one of our first casualties.
Only stayed a month,
until a mosquito (insignificant, it seemed)
sent him home. Encephalitis
sounds much nicer than it is.
I saw him, shortly after I returned.
I was walking up the drive to One Camp Hospital
for physio. “Hallo, Rob!”
He paused, turned, took my hand;
the smile seemed the same, but he didn’t know me -
the empty eyes were already back
trimming the edges
Operation Hobart commenced on 24 July but C Company was without the leadership of the intrepid Major McFarlane, due to his falling into a newly dug weapons pit the night before, while en route to Captain Harris’ tent with cans of beer.
This left my fearless leader, Captain Harris, in charge of the Company during the operation. On 25 July, C Company found a large store of rice, which suggested that there were enemy soldiers in the area. Lieutenant Stewart Penny’s 9 Platoon was left to guard the rice, while the rest of the company moved on.
Just after 1:00 p.m., men from 7 Platoon saw a couple of enemy soldiers, and engaged them with rifle fire. This resulted in heavy fire directed at 7 Platoon from a heap of troops in dug-in positions – not nice. It was the first time we heard the bugles which the Viet Cong used to send messages. That was definitely scary!
Captain Harris and Captain Mike Dakin ,the Forward Observation Officer (FOO) from the New Zealand Artillery Battery, decided to call for artillery support a mile from our position. When the first rounds landed, it was decided to adjust the target to 800 metres from our position.
Unfortunately, one incoming round hit a treetop above 7 Platoon, and a shard of shrapnel almost tore Bill Winterford’s arm off as he was preparing to fire some more rounds from his M60 machine gun.
Captain Harris the brave (or foolhardy) man he was, promptly moved forward to assess the situation and I, in my role of his protector, went with him (without a lot of enthusiasm). I was comforted (but not much) by the fact that Captain Harris was significantly taller than me.
When I saw Bill, lying, bleeding, in the grey dust, with his arm hanging by a thread, I no longer worried about my own safety. Although he was in unbelievable pain, he was cracking jokes about having to fire the machine gun one-handed, and worrying about how he would change gears in his car when he got home. And he looked at me, grinned, and said, “I’ll be right, mate.” (We had cleared the air of his misunderstanding about his girlfriend). I grinned back, but I seriously doubted if he would survive his wounds.
Captain Harris got his priorities right – he ordered a CasEvac chopper; [6] he kept the artillery barrage coming in; and he raced around all parts of our position, checking the wounded, encouraging the men to keep firing at ‘the bastards’. We had two seriously wounded men – Bill Winterford, and Sapper Les Prowse, who was attached to 7 Platoon. Bill survived, and nowadays has an artificial arm that usually sits in a bowl on top of the television set. Les Prowse died, unfortunately. Seven of the enemy died in the fighting.
After the battle was over, Captain Harris told me that he was going to recommend me for a Mentioned in Despatches, given that I followed him round like a faithful dog, when I would much rather have been stretched out in the dust. But other people did a lot more than me.
Our company medic, Corporal Geoff Jones, a 19 year old regular soldier, had run out into the thick of the fire to assist Les Prowse and Bill Winterford; and Mal Scrivener, and a man named ‘Jacko’ (I forget his real name) who were both regular army soldiers, and John Winstone, a National Serviceman, did some foolhardy heroics.
John, a burly machine-gunner and a fairly large target, said “F**k this, I can’t see a thing!” and stood up to find out where to aim his weapon, and the other two raced ahead of our position to ‘get a better shot at them bloody b*****ds!’
After the afternoon’s hostilities ended, the company moved on again. We continued with our task for another four days. Some time after we returned to Nui Dat that we heard that Les Prowse had died and Bill had survived. Bill was later awarded the Military Medal for his bravery and the inspiration he gave to his mates when severely wounded and in so much pain.
“He had a mate. After their return,
They would travel Australia together,
Living in RSL Clubs, on free beer and sandwiches.
They believed it was their right.
The dream disintegrated when Billy lost his arm
In a contact, and lay bleeding in the fine grey dust.
It was the loss of the myth of mateship.
He held his grief within until
The night the Company returned to base.
Then, the kid spent three hours, crying,
in the Other Ranks latrine,
pouring out his heart into
the unconsoling, unresponsive night.”
From ‘Soldier Coming Home’ (unfinished) Norm Wotherspoon
Imagine, if you can, being on a bus tour with a group of friends. The bus crashes, and two or three of your close friends are taken off to hospital with serious injuries. The rest of you continue on your outing, and, when you get home, you don’t know how to find out whether your friends are okay – you don’t even know what hospital they were taken to. Okay, that’s a totally different scenario – you can’t stop a war to check how your mates are doing, but the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness that I felt would probably be similar, and incredibly difficult to accept. What seems worse, in retrospect, is that, to mask your grief and enable yourself to continue to function in your role, you make and take little jokes about it all, to maintain the thin veneer of your sanity, a sanity nurtured in a peaceful civilian life.
So we continued with the war. The battalion was recalled to the Task Force Base at Nui Dat on 29 July, earlier than had been planned. This was because the Task Force Commander, Brigadier Jackson, was worried about the security of the Nui Dat Base. There were two battalions, 5 RAR and 6 RAR, plus supporting elements, such as artillery, (the BIG guns) Command Signals and various Intelligence and liaison people. All in all, probably 2000 men, with about 900 infantry soldiers. The spotter aircraft (including the large Chinook helicopters) had spotted different groups of enemy forces of 1000 plus, and 3000 plus troops.
Brigadier Jackson had sent an intelligence officer to his superiors, in II Field Force Vietnam (Americans), at Bien Hoa, to ask for reinforcements. The Americans denied the request, because they were using the Task Force as bait to lure the enemy in the area, which consisted of a North Vietnamese Regiment and Viet Cong troops, out into the open. Then the powers that be could send in the 173rd Airborne Brigade to wipe them out[7].
On 18 August, D Company was sent out to patrol the area of Long Tan, in the search for signs of build-ups of enemy forces. At Nui Dat, we went to a concert, with Col Joye and the Joye Boys, Little Patti, and others. At approximately 3:30 that afternoon, near the end of the concert, D Company ran into what they thought at first was a small group of enemy soldiers. The afternoon monsoonal rains arrived, as they did every day, at about the same time.
Unfortunately, the 100 men of D Company had met with an enemy force of more than 2,500 troops, including North Vietnamese soldiers as well as several battalions of Viet Cong. During the next four hours, in the driving rain, D Company, assisted by the full force of the Task Force artillery, fought valiantly but, it seemed, vainly, against a far superior force armed with machine guns, rocket launchers, mortars and other heavy weaponry as well as their cursed buglers. The rain was too heavy for aircraft to provide support by way of bombs or heavy machine gun fire, but they did successfully drop additional ammunition to the beleaguered company.
A and B Companies were directed to head for the battle in a rag-tag set of APCs (Armoured Personnel Carriers), but C Company stayed behind, because the Task Force was very vulnerable to attack by other enemy forces, with few ground troops left to guard a large perimeter. I listened all night to the battle on the Company radio (several of us took shifts each night on the company radio, but this night I think we all stayed on when our shifts ended.
At first light, C Company moved out to the battlefield on APCs, to find that the fighting had finished just after 7:00 p.m. the night before. The enemy had moved out, but this time, they had not been able to carry away all of their dead soldiers.
In the four hours of the battle, 17 men of D Company were killed, and another 21 wounded.
The Vietnamese had carried away many of their dead and wounded, but it was estimated that approximately 500 were wounded. No estimate was made of the dead who were taken away, but there were 245 bodies left behind, and three live soldiers (presumably wounded, but I never saw them).
C Company had the task of burying the enemy dead. Even though the rain bucketed down every day, this red soil was damned hard to shift, and all we had were our entrenching tools, a collapsible shovel less than half the size of a normal shovel. It took the whole day, and we had to twist the stiff dead limbs to get the bodies to fit into the shallow graves. I was deeply distressed to see that most of the bodies had been young men and women even younger than we were. Such small bodies, such short and wasted lives.
Walking Long Tan Blues
I’m walking through my Long Tan Blues,
Trying to get away;
But all I hear is the sound of fear –
It’s the fear that makes me stay.
As I walked around that battleground,
The morning after they died,
There’s bodies, bodies, everywhere,
And no place for me to hide;
No, there is no place that I can hide.
And as I lay their souls to rest,
And set their spirits free,
I said a little prayer for them,
And a bigger prayer for me;
I said a little prayer for them,
And a bigger prayer for me.
Norm Wotherspoon
By this time I was having a hard struggle with my feelings. I knew most of the D Company dead and wounded – two of their platoon signallers had been taken out at Long Tan, and one of them would have been me, if I had stayed with that company. These were my MATES! I hated the enemy for killing our mates. I hated seeing all those young, dead bodies of the enemy. I hated the world, the Australian Government, the army, and mostly, myself.
But one certainty held true for me – I would not shirk my duty, ever, as a soldier, as a mate. I would do whatever might be asked of me, to be as good a soldier as I could be. Ah, but it was so hard; I could feel the contradictions tearing away at my mind, at my emotions. Here’s another look at Long Tan and beyond:
The Company arrived at Long Tan
early on the morning after;
to fight if needed,
but there was no fighting.
Their role was not to fight, but
to bury the enemy dead,
amid the thick, green peace - incongruous - of the rubber trees.
The ground proved hard, too hard to dig deeply;
bodies were crammed, five or six
into each shallow grave.
It was necessary to twist the stiffened limbs
into grotesque shapes, to make them fit.
He felt indignant, though,
his indignation held no comfort for the dead.
As he packed the clods of earth over each filled grave,
pausing at times to force down rigid, outflung arms and legs,
he murmured silent words, fragmented prayers;
curiously ashamed because the words seemed so inadequate.
At that time, he harboured no hatred for the enemy;
but realised, with a sense of shock, and shame,
that the victims were human beings, Vietnamese flesh and blood.
He wondered, momentarily,
why Australia
in another country’s civil war.
Some weeks later,
he attended the memorial service for the Australian dead.
Many of them he had known; had liked.
They had not deserved to die, so far from home,
in a war not of their choosing.
Yet,
amid the glowing tributes and the raw emotion,
during the poignant rendering of the Last Post,
his memory drew him to the shallow graves,
in the red earth of the Long Tan rubber trees.
No service for them.
From that day on, he sought to exorcise imagination, inner feelings;
to brush away vague thoughts of justice, love;
He fought down a growing but unvoiced belief,
that Australia
He clothed himself within a brittle shield of callousness,
numbing his sensitivities with the myth of mateship;
Tried to believe that he was a soldier, and a patriot,
fighting for the freedom of his country.
In this, he partially succeeded :
he forced himself to follow orders, blindly;
became a model soldier (never a great one).
In every contact, he was afraid, although his discipline
prevented him from showing fear.
It was then he learned to laugh
at incidents which should have made him cry.
He laughed at the good fortune of a corporal,
laid low by an insignificant mosquito,
sent home with encephalitis.
He laughed at death,
of mates, of enemies;
and so he staved off thoughts of death.
Occasionally, he found something which evoked in him
The laughter of genuine humour:
At times, his banished sensitivities returned, unbidden.
Excerpt from ‘Soldier Coming Home’: Norm Wotherspoon
Five days after Long Tan, C Company ventured out on another patrol with our mission being to ‘detect and destroy any enemy moving into the area of operations from the north-east’. This meant moving through the Long Tan rubber trees, still thick with the stench of death, and on into a dry and dusty area with lots of bamboo. Because it was only a three and a half day patrol, we had to survive without any resupplies, which made water our most valuable possession. Unfortunately, our company commander was a stickler for military orderliness, and he insisted that we shave each day.
We had with us at that time two Vietnamese interpreters, Loc and Nguyen (pronounced ‘Hien’), who told us the sap from a particular vine was suitable for drinking. It wasn’t, but the sap made a rough, but good, moisturiser for shaving.
Loc and Nguyen once honoured me by sharing a traditional Vietnamese meal with me. I ate it with due gratitude for their kindliness, but I tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid the plentiful fish heads swishing around in my bowl, with the dead eyes staring at me with seeming condemnation. Unfortunately, Nguyen was uncovered as an enemy spy a few weeks later.
I wonder why it is that OUR spies are top of the range heroes, doing the most dangerous job in any conflict, and expecting no mercy whatsoever should they be found out, but enemy spies are the lowest form of pond scum?
Anyhow, we proceeded along a track, (very carefully, because a sign at the start of the track warned us, in Vietnamese, that there were land mines ahead), because we suspected (not me personally, but people higher up the food chain) that we were near an enemy encampment. This proved to be true:
Another time, in a dry and dusty season,
the Company was clearing a track,
searching for a large Viet Cong camp which
was known to be somewhere in the area.
At a sharp twist in the track,
two of the enemy sat in a shallow trench,
behind a Claymore mine they had set up
to blow away the forward scout as he turned the corner.
The strategy was fine -
in the noise and confusion, those back at the camp
(a mile or so behind them on the track)
would have the time to melt away before we got there.
There was also a strong chance that
the two men in the early warning post
would have time to make good their retreat.
Unfortunately, hampered by their lack of English,
they had misread the instructions, and
had faced the mine towards themselves,
at a distance of approximately two feet.
They died, of shock or shrapnel,
but our forward scout, shaken by
an all-too-vivid imagination,
had to be replaced soon afterwards.
Excerpt from ‘Soldier Coming Home’: Norm Wotherspoon
I think we all laughed (except, perhaps, for our forward scout) at the stupidity of the two dead enemy, but inside, I was far from laughing.
Time now for a little respite from the dark side of the war. We had a few rest breaks, and a few light-hearted moments, to refresh our bodies, minds and spirits.
I had three little holidays – two two day passes for Rest and Convalescence in Vung Tau, and five days Rest and Recuperation leave in Singapore, staying with my brother Les and his wife. (Les was in the Regular Army Signal Corps). I don’t remember much about the Singapore trip. I have a photo of me looking incredibly thin, outside Les and Vicki’s house, and I visited Tiger Balm Gardens, where I saw hundreds of lifelike (and some unlife-like) sculptures of animals, and many small boys and girls who all wanted money, or wanted me to take their pictures (and then ask for money when I did so). The most important event was that I bought a battery-operated record player, and a dozen long-playing records, mainly because I liked the covers. One of them, Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Sounds of Silence’, proved immensely helpful in trying to keep the fraying threads of my sanity together.
The visits to Vung Tau were mainly spent drinking, and trying to stay alive. Several diggers had been stabbed in bars by unseen attackers, and a few bars had twelve foot high chain wire or chicken wire fences outside to prevent bombs being thrown in at the patrons. Viet Cong looked exactly the same as non-Viet Cong, given that they were all South Vietnamese. There was also a nine o’clock (I thought it was eleven o’clock, but one of my mates wrote that it was nine o’clock) curfew. Anyone on the streets after the curfew was deemed to be an enemy, and the Vietnamese Military Police had orders to shoot anyone on the streets after curfew.
We stayed at an Australian Army villa on what was called the Back Beach, which could be reached by walking along the shoreline from the main beach, but it was preferable to follow the roads. This was because: a) between the main beach and the Back Beach there were rocks at one place, which could be slippery when wet; and b) there was a lack of public toilets in Vung Tau (we were fine, most bars had toilets, but locals couldn’t use them), and, when residents were caught short away from home, they completed their bodily functions in quiet places, of which the beach was a favourite.
One afternoon, in the imposing Grand Hotel, I was drinking with an American. The American soldiers were quite taken by Australian soldiers, because there were so few of us, and would usually to buy all the beers. The local beer was pronounced ‘Barmy Bar’, and was said to contain formaldehyde as a preservative, which was also used to preserve bodies when embalming them. There was always an inch of sediment at the bottom of the bottle, which we never drank, for fear of what might be hiding in there.
The American was very impressed with my slouch hat, and also with my brand new silver cigarette case, which had a built-in lighter. I was quite the fashion statement to him. We drank on until the evening, and he then asked me if I had ever been to the Neptune Bar, which was owned and operated by a couple of Frenchwomen. I semi-sobered up, and said that I hadn’t, but would be VERY interested to visit that bar. So he took me there.
The Neptune Bar took up the entire top floor of a large building on a complete block, three streets back from the main beach. It was surrounded by a very high chain wire fence, and we entered through a pedestrian only gate. The ground floor was used as a boarding house, and the middle floor was a brothel. There was an internal staircase connecting the brothel to the ground floor. The Neptune Bar was reached by climbing an external staircase, with no internal access.
We went into the private bar, and my friend introduced me to our two hostesses, who were indeed Frenchwomen. One was in her late 70s, and the other was about 85. We bought drinks all round, and my semi-sobriety soon wore off, and I become what is known as ‘tired and emotional’.
At times like this, I had always found it best to retire from company, and seek rest in the most appropriate place. In a bar, this was the toilets. I excused myself, went to the toilet, sat in a cubicle, and fell asleep.
When I awoke, I went back to the bar to rejoin the others. Alas! They were not there, and the bar was in semi-darkness. More importantly, my slouch hat AND my new cigarette case were gone! I went to the entrance, at the top of the external staircase; I found a floor to ceiling locked gate that barred my access to the stairs.
Although my head was sort of fuzzy (on the inside) I knew I had to think my predicament through. I returned to the bar, sat on a stool, and pondered for a while. Firstly, it was well past curfew, so getting back to the villa was out of the question. Secondly, I was stuck on the top floor, with no way down. Thirdly, they had stolen my slouch hat and cigarette case.
I realised that I didn’t really need to do anything; I could sleep here, and leave when the bar opened. Then I noticed a bottle of Napoleon brandy behind the bar. It seemed a good idea to partially make up for my missing valuables, so I sat on the bar stool and sipped a beautiful brandy, even though I didn’t really like brandy.
Although it could have been a tad sweeter, the brandy left me feeling warm and mellow, so I decided I would take the opportunity to check out the rest of the Neptune Bar, since I was relatively sober. I wandered from the private bar into the next room and saw, to my absolute dismay, 8 Vietnamese people, men and women, sleeping on the floor. I suppose they were bar staff, but I quietly made my way back to the Napoleon brandy – I needed to think this through.
At first, I thought, no worries, they’ll let me out in the morning, after the curfew’s over. Then my mind recalled a briefing from our company commander, shortly after we arrived in Vietnam. “Remember, men, be very careful when you go out in Vung Tau. Make sure you go with others, and stay away from dark places. Up to half the people in Vung Tau are Viet Cong.”
Four or more of the people in the other room could be the enemy! I finished my second brandy, feeling more sober than at any other time in my life since I first tasted alcohol. I crept back to the other room, and saw an open door leading to a veranda. Aha! A possible escape route.
I made my way to the veranda, and walked its length, looking out for any way down to the next level. The only possibility was a rusty, narrow water pipe, which swayed ominously when I moved it. I retreated to the Napoleon brandy bottle, and had a glass to boost my jellied courage. When I felt strong enough to try the water pipe, I looked for something to take to further make up for my lost valuables. I saw a leather cup, with a gold Johnny Walker slogan etched on the outside, and six poker dice inside.
Armed with my ill-gotten poker dice, and fortified by four glasses of Napoleon brandy, I made my way to the water pipe, and cautiously climbed down to the next floor, the brothel. In swinging my legs over the veranda after climbing down, I almost kicked another man sleeping there. Didn’t people have homes to go to?
I made my way to the internal staircase. As I might have expected (but didn’t) there was another man sprawled across the entrance to the steps. That didn’t worry me too much; I had formed a view that the Vietnamese slept deeply. What did concern me was the hungry-looking Alsatian staring at me from the top step.
Fortunately, the dog didn’t bark, it just stared. I stretched a trembling hand above the sleeper’s body, and ventured a tentative pat. The tail wagged. I stepped across the dreaming man, and the dog and I descended together, with me patting him, and him wagging. There were only two obstacles left for me – to climb that ridiculously high fence, and to get back to the villa without being shot by the Military Police.
I managed the fence okay, but the dog whined at losing his playmate, and then hugged the shadows down the two long blocks to the main beach, and made it back to the Back Beach without incident, and without anything clinging to my shoes
The next morning I wandered back into the Grand Hotel for a drink or two before my afternoon flight back to Nui Dat. “Hey, Aussie!” called a voice, and there was my American friend, with my slouch hat and my cigarette case.
I still have to work out how to get the poker dice and leather cup back to the Neptune Bar.
In company headquarters, the officers’ latrine was something to behold. It was a three seater, with corrugated iron roof and walls, and a finely screened mesh in the doorway, and along the top half of the front of the structure. This enabled officers to make sure no one was slacking off while they were busy with natural functions.
Even with the fine mesh, and the well-sealed joins in the walls and roof, pesky little mossies managed to get in, perhaps when the door was opened at night time. One morning, a particular officer adjourned to the latrine for his daily ritual, and was bitten on his officerial[8] bum. Being an impatient and short-tempered man at times, he immediately re-dressed, and strode to the munitions tent, and reappeared shortly after with a smoke grenade.
A small crowd had gathered, but at a discreet distance, to watch the de-infestatin of the officers’ latrine.
The officer calmly pulled the pin, and threw the grenade down the middle hole, then retreated a short distance away outside, to watch the outcome of his handiwork.
Alas! In his haste he had grabbed a white phosphorous grenade, and, when it detonated, the entire latrine went skywards in several different directions. Unfortunately, some of the contents of the latrine splattered out too, and the officer was a tad soiled. Soldiers disappeared in all directions, trying to stifle their laughter until they were out of hearing range. As one wit said to his mates, “Well, they can’t tell us anymore that officers’ s**t doesn’t stink.”
I had one other time away from Nui Dat. From time to time we had to send soldiers to Saigon to guard an important building where really important people stayed. It was, in the main, a boring job, standing guard in a narrow little street, but we did have time off every day. I met a Vietnamese family, and we got on very well together, and I shared a meal with them one night. They also gave me an ivory chess set, which I still have.
A large American soldier sold me a paper-wrapped parcel of marijuana for US$10. (Aha! I hear you cry! Here is where we find out about Norm’s hopeless addiction to drugs.) Well, I tried one smoke, and threw the rest away. To me, it looked like cut grass, and, in retrospect, it probably was.
Much of our free time was spent in the air-conditioned Capitol Hotel, where I developed a taste for whisky sours and slot machines (what we call poker machines).
And then, one afternoon, this:
Once, he spent a week in Saigon ;
an easy time, much of it drifting away
in the air-conditioned haven of the
Capitol Hotel;
in a haze of smoke and ten-cent whisky sours;
amid the jingle of the slot machines.
One afternoon, emerging from
that soothing shelter into
the harsh, hot glare of Saigon summer,
he saw a funeral procession,
precariously plodding through the constant stream
of trucks and cars and cursing vespa drivers.
Just a wooden wagon, drawn by
an ancient water buffalo,
driven by a slumped, old, withered man.
Trudging behind, tear-blind in her grief,
a black-pyjama-clad woman sobbed,
oblivious to the jeers of gutter urchins;
fixed upon the passing of her husband/soldier/son.
In that land, death was an accepted part of living;
the kid had gazed unwillingly upon all too many corpses
torn violently from life. At first, he viewed that
small, forlorn cortege in some amusement -
his shield against reality.
Yet, as he watched a child, and then another,
flinging stones and scorn at the makeshift hearse,
at the awkward, cloth-clad bundle in the back,
he felt ashamed.
Without conscious thought, he stiffened to attention,
bared his head, and stayed there, still, until
that slow procession dwindled slowly round
a distant corner.
He knew it was an empty gesture,
but, in his heart he saw, with clarity,
not for the first time,
the degradation and futility of war.
He was a pawn in a game played by
governments and tycoons,
safe in their seats of power in other lands;
He was a common automation, used to swell
the body counts by which the game was scored.
He returned to Nui Dat without the laughter which
had kept at bay the unformed seeds of madness;
his thoughts turned inwards, homewards,
looking forward to the world beyond Vietnam
In camp, he played, over and over and again,
a record he had bought - Simon and Garfunkel :
I am a Rock.
And, in his mind,
he played a hundred versions of his going home -
of picking up the threads of life where he had left it.
It was a technicolour movie,
running in a theatre in his mind.
Excerpt from ‘Soldier Coming Home’: Norm Wotherspoon
By early August we had already lost 13 members of C Company through death, injury or illness, and the attrition rate increased continually after that. I think from about September we were down to a strength of about 90 instead of the 123 we should have had, and reinforcements sometimes took a while to reach us. In one of our contacts with the enemy I received some slight wounds from shrapnel, but I didn’t need any time off for that.
Lieutenant Mike Gillespie went home with malaria, only to die in a car crash. Ken Wallace had suffered shrapnel injuries when he was too close to an enemy mine that detonated just behind him. Unfortunately his eardrums were severely damaged in the blast and he was sent home. Sergeant Crossingham went home, completely worn out, and he and his wife and children died when their car crashed into a bridge over a creek just north of Brisbane, and the list of casualties grew, almost every day.
I think the final straw that broke me was this:
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The sergeant came to me again last night
And seized my dreams.
I woke, yes, yet again I woke,
At 12 past 3;
Recalling murder in a land I cannot leave.
The Armalite came down within an inch
Of the wounded head of the Viet Cong
Who lay moaning, quietly, on the ground.
‘They killed three of our mates last night’
(The sergeant said)
And wreaked his vengeance with a single shot.
I had not seen anything like this before,
In peace, or war.
The skull split like an eggshell.
I know his name – I know the sergeant’s name.
I do not know his name – I do not want
To know the sergeant’s name.
You lay beside me,
Keeper of my flame of fragile sanity,
Soft and silent in your dreaming.
I wanted, so desperately wanted
To reach out, to touch you, wake you,
To have you hold me while I cried.
As you have done for me
Whilst I wept,
In silence, or aloud.
But I would not, could not wake you,
And I don’t know why.
Perhaps,
Because I want to stand alone, and tall, and handle this alone.
Or perhaps,
Because I need you as a last resort.
And so, I lay awake
Beside you in the darkness;
And lived again that jumbled past
Of pain and death and fear and loneliness and longing.
Among the vivid images and memories
Were these, which come back nightly with the sergeant,
To destroy my sleeping,
And to haunt my waking hours ahead.
I walk the high wire in the high winds,
Knowing well that I have fallen down before.
But all those other times, the ground was never
Very far away.
And sometimes, I was guarded by a safety net.
Not here. Not now.
There is no net; I cannot see the ground.
The pit below seems bottomless,
And I have no pole for balance anymore.
After this, I became something of a robot soldier, doing what I was told, as best as I could, but, within, wanting only to stop the dreadful pain in my mind and in my heart. I had returned to a rifle platoon, early in 1967, and was back to being a platoon signaller. This was good for me because it kept me busy, keeping the platoon in touch with the Company headquarters, and also because I had returned to the Browning pistol, which I don’t think I ever drew in anger. Time passed, but brought no relief to my mind.
The Battalion set off for its last operation on 21 March 1967. The first part was a regular search and destroy mission, but the second phase, from 31 March to 16 April, was a non-combat role, protecting Australian and United States engineers who were repairing Route 23. I turned 22 on 3 April, by which stage I had no wish to live anymore.
I thought I might make it through to the end of our tour, but I couldn’t see any joy in going home – my mother and step-father still did not want contact, and I had deliberately cut myself off from the closest friends I had, those in the theatre, because I did not think they would like me much after being a soldier. I had a couple of luke-warm mates from the Machinery Department; an invitation to dinner with one of the girls in the bank who wrote to me, Peggy and Lesley from my social tennis group (although I had not heard from them since that first letter of support) and a job to go back to that I didn’t want to do any more.
The engineers went off to work each day protected by huge American tanks, and our main bodyguarding work was done at night. When they came back to the base each night, the place became a wall of sound, with Vietnam radio blaring out country and western music, people talking, shouting, fires blazing to cook meals. It seemed ludicrous, but we held to our stand to routine from dusk until full dark, although we would have great difficulty seeing or hearing any enemy approaches, with all the light and noise behind us.
And then, early one morning, I was cleaning my Browning pistol. I rested the gun against my leg to do the test firing without a bullet in the chamber. But I had put a bullet in the chamber, apparently. I fell into the weapon pit in excruciating pain, and was immediately surrounded by the company medics. Corporal Jones put an inflatable plastic splint on my leg (probably a tourniquet too), and gave me a shot of morphine. We were in a difficult position for the normal CasEvac helicopter to land, so a little Bell landed just outside our perimeter.
There was no room inside the helicopter for me, so I was strapped to the outside rack. The pilot told me I had to look down to breathe, because the helicopter rotors would cut off the air supply if I looked up. Then we took off.
The inflatable splint deflated just after take-off, and the leg waved madly around all through the flight. The morphine did not kick in until after I was given another shot at the hospital. To make matters worse, I had to look down at the ground (about three million miles below me) throughout the entire trip, and I am terrified of heights.
A psychiatrist suggested that I was trying to kill myself, because a fraction of an inch either way and I would have hit the major artery or bones. What other reason would I have for doing that after all the fighting was done, and we were due to go back home on a great big aircraft carrier? He said that I was so traumatised by the whole experience that I wanted to escape my memories, and the only way out was to leave my life.
I will leave that to you to determine whether it was an accident or a failed suicide bid.
And so, on 28 April, 1966, I left Vietnam, and came home.
[1] When soldiers are killed or return home, a reinforcement is allocated to the company or platoon. Some of our reinforcements were in turn wounded or injured, and were themselves replaced.
[2] Armoured Personnel Carrier
[3] KIA = Killed in Action.
[4] Only 1 of these 4, Gordon Knight, was killed in Vietnam in 1966-67.
[5] Not that anyone who knows me could EVER confuse me with an orderly, neat, tidy person.
[6] Casualty Evacuation Helicopter
[7] None of this was shared with our infantry battalions – I only learned of it from an ABC documentary 20 years later, and through several books I have read since then.
[8] Yes, I invented the word.
