and in fact when it’s noisy is when it’s safe uh it’s when the jungle goes quiet that the hairs stand up but uh I didn’t have any concerns about them going off and I slept on one you know two water bottles and an M26 was my pillar I had my head on one every night and we’re thinking come on Choppers come on Choppers you know come and cuz they they’ll have a a light fire team with them two gunships with them and they can take these BLS out in the jungle and we can get out of here they were never coming um for r forc people Callum VC

were coming up the track and they were about to stumble on to to Mick and Fred um and I had no choice I had to shoot them couldn’t shout I mean that would have helped um them as much as as us didn’t happened to me but there are a number of stories of um of our blacks being pissed on by people who didn’t see them right there in front of them you know towards the end of a squadron’s tour the odd fight would break out in the Boozer which you wouldn’t have seen six months earlier so there was a cumulative weight of of

tension and stress and physical tiredness that built up um I was born in December 1946 I was the epitome of the war baby dad came home from the war and married mom and and and I duly appeared um we lived in regetta Road five do um in Sydney at the time but long and behold Along Came callup notice um and uh I duly reported um to the Addison Road marville Depot in July 1967 um and uh my father recalls he took me down and my father recalls me walking through the gates with the little you know Baker light suitcase in the hand

and and also walking through the gate at the same time was another fellow um slightly taller than me Fair hair and we said good day we walked through the gate called up yeah yeah yeah and and off we went and that fellow was Dave Fisher and we became um very good friends and very very good friends and did most of the rest of it together um off to kapuka um and the usual 1 rtb training I quite enjoyed that um but I I made the call uh when I knew that I was called up that I was going to give it a really good shot

um that it was a rather pointless exercise to um to be a dog and a Manger about it um and if I’m in I’m in and I’m going to be in 100% And so I threw myself into that and I enjoyed all of that not the cold mornings or or some of the um Junior NCA bastardy but uh you you’re rooll with that um at the end of that uh well close to the end of recruit training um the uh entire training plon was told it was going to artillery um I didn’t didn’t enjoy that Prospect i’ heard that um artillery at North head was uh um a lot about what’s

bad about the Army regimentation and a lot of marching and Blan goinging and and that sort of stuff um and so David and I had made a pack that were that the case that we would resist that and try and go to infantry because it seemed to me that infantry was the epitome of what the Army was really all about if you wanted to The Full Experience that’s where you needed to be uh and so when we were told that but David and I um objected and uh and uh so we wanted to go to infantry and the response was well if you’re that crazy we’re not going to

stop you um so we had to have another interview with the syes um and that soon to be our okay and and off here and I went to um uh battle wing at ingleburn for infantry core training um the towards the end of that period um uh it was clear that we would probably end up in reinforcement Wing um and be sent to Vietnam uh as a replacement for somebody who’d been killed or injured or metov back home uh and that wasn’t a as pleasant a prospect as perhaps joining a battalion and and going away as a unit and coincidentally reg Bley and Ross

Bishop um respectively the OC and to of three Squadron SAS came through uh inle bur recruiting um for SOS or inviting applications to uh contest The Carter course was called Carter course in those days now called selection um I didn’t really know very much about what SAS was about and noted dive but seemed better than going to reinforcement Wing so we stuck our hand up and and we had interviews and and no doubt they perused our records um and on the Proviso that we were prepared to sign on for a year and become um equivalent of a regular

Soldier um they uh allowed us to contest The Carter um so we had Christmas in um Sydney and uh traveled to Perth by train fantastic trips those um very fond memories of some of those uh and uh um Carter was I don’t know it was one of 68 car um there about 50 or 60 on it I suppose um we both got through that um the the C of course was designed to not test you physically um although some people did fail because of the physical stuff um but really it was designed to determine whether you had the the mental toughness

um and the commitment um and and also the tenacity um to keep going when things got a bit tough um and L and behold we we got through um and I think that was a pretty good Carter because I think about I don’t know 15 or 16 were accepted out of the 50 or 60 and that was a relatively High proportion um um and then came um working up with three Squadron for its deployment to Vietnam which would have been due in February uh 1969 uh and that was a series of courses um parac course Med course um patrol course Sig course uh and an awful lot of

bush time um typical week was uh uh Saturday and Sunday uh playing Larry dle around the town Ocean Beach Hotel of the abh and the swany and you know the nightclubs the zanzi bar in Perth and on the trucks on Monday morning and out in the bush until Friday lunchtime come back get your gear cleaned up and then go and do it all again um however uh two Squadron which was then deployed uh to Vietnam um was uh suffering a lot of um uh losses uh not the Kia the only Kia we had in in Vietnam were accidental and most of them we killed ourselves um uh

but there were a number of um medivacs and casac back to Australia and and they needed uh reinforcements to be able to continue to operate and so those of us that were short timers were warned out um to go to Vietnam and join two Squadron um as reinforcements um that duely happened um I arrived in country um late November um 1968 um uh and day followed mid December um 1968 um and then came uh the normal SAS operational uh activity in country um three Squadron which was my Squadron duly replaced two at the beginning of

March 1969 and uh I sold it on with uh three Squadron um until I came home later in the year after mature um coming home was um very difficult period um I had a number of events occurred which uh which made those first two weeks um quite um quite a difficult period um and uh to the stage where I put all that away um and uh um try to get on with a normal civilian type life uh went back um to work through a a strange um set of circumstances which I’ll tell you about if we get into the detail um uh I was very lonely at the time because um as

you can imagine you are extremely close the bond between s soldiers is um is very very close um and I just didn’t have that I was in Sydney you know my my Squadron was still in Vietnam finishing their tour and the rest of them were in Perth but all of the the Vietnam stuff I I put away for a very long time um until um Chris my wife in 19 87 when the welcome home parade was on got all the detail and and and created the circumstances in which I could go um and I I had that I’d had that stuff put away and a covered for a long time um and

with her encouragement um and perhaps even proding very perceptive women um I went um and uh that was athetic experience I you know got right out of the cupboard recreated those bonds um joined the SOS Association became a a an office holder in that in I was president of the association here for 10 years in canra um and and recreated those very close bonds uh that now um are a very important part of my life and um um I look back on my life so far and think um it’s been a pretty fortunate one so maybe you could take us back to to the

very um moment where you first heard about getting caught up and how that happened can tell us what happened um one had to register uh for national service um and that was a piece of paper you got from the post office and filled it out and and put it in um um and uh then lo and behold that piece of paper there arrived in the mile and it simply says you’ve been called up for national service you will report to Major HJ Moran at Addison Road marville Depot at such and such a Time on such and such a date um and uh that was it that’s it was

as simple as that number fell and uh and out you go what were your emotions on receiving that letter um uh they they were twofold um and let’s deal with the negative one first the negative one was Mom’s going to hate this um my my first thought was wow you know this is really going to knock my she going to really hate this um the positive one was I was looking forward to it um I didn’t have um you know strong career um Ambitions um I was I was working for a purpose and and and that was doing money was really as simple as that I I didn’t

derive any great pleasure from going into the office um it was simply a moans to an end and so I saw it as an adventure and and I was quite looking forward to it but at the same time being unable to let my mother know that so what was your parents reaction mom was devastated um Dad was a bit more sanguin um but um Mom she really hated it because um um it was it was clear that um well certainly to her that conscription was for the purposes of filling the ranks for Vietnam deployment and U she had already decided when the letter arrived

that that’s where I’d end up and and and as mothers do went through all the possible outcomes of that and some of which weren’t too good and we’re up to the point of being called up and you turned up at uh merville can you tell me what happened talk me through that that morning day um okay it’s it’s not I haven’t got very Vivid memories of it um we um dad drove me down mom wouldn’t come um and there was a tearful farewell at home um and Mom’s not one given to open displays of emotion so it was uh traumatic for her um and dad drove me

down and sort of parked opposite I I can remember seeing these two columns and iron gates between them and uh um had the little press cardboard suitcase uh thing um with some personal effects in it um and Dad um shook me by the hand and wished me luck and and off I walk between the gates and as I mentioned earlier um almost at the same time another fellow sort of walked in beside me and we started talking and um and his name was Dave Fisher he came from the northern suburbs of Sydney and called up in the same intake

um and uh we probably gravitated towards each other because um uh the unknown was something I’d prefer to face with somebody else and had no idea what was going to go on um then there was a process of administration um I think we got there midm morning um but I’m not certain about that yeah it would have been about midm morning that was a process of administration um a medical um then we got on a bus and went to um Central Station in Sydney um we got a feed in the railway refreshment rooms um uh and got on a train in the early

evening to go to wager and that train arrived in wager um Mid in the early hours of the morning 2:00 3:00 or something or other um another bus out to um kapuka W kapuka uh and there was I can’t remember whether we got asleep or not I just can’t remember um but the following day was you know more issuing blankets and finding barracks and um Administration sort of stuff and um I think that took the next day issued with uniforms then there was another day of uh putting all that together and and finding out where things were and

polishing boots and you know all of that kit type stuff and then the the um Young liutenant Who was a national service liutenant I can’t remember his name um who was the platoon Commander training Commander introduced himself and his staff and we got into recruit training which uh um as I say I quite enjoyed most of it anyway um it was uh some of it I could have done without there was a you know the weather was as you can imagine in July was wer it’s pretty cold and uh um and I didn’t enjoy some of the you know

the unnecessary by the junior ncos but I I took it as being part of the deal this initial training at kapuka what sort of things was the Army trying to to train you in I think that they were uh they were going through basic um um army type skill so that um you learned um some of the Weaponry that would be subsequently used um you test it on the Range to see whether you could hit what you’re actually aiming at um was an introduction to the M26 grenade didn’t see claymor there um to the um rifle um propelled grenade which is an

um anti- armor weapon um a little old F1 a little submachine gun useless thing it was um and the SLR um so there was that sort of Weaponry training and range training um there was a lot of physical stuff um to start to build up um so that because you had to pass a a physical fitness test uh at the completion of training uh I haven’t got a strong uh upper body and and the big one I had trouble with was climbing up the Rope I don’t know how high it would have been 20 ft or something or other um so I did a lot of

work on that to make sure I’d pass that okay um there was stuff um about being in the army military law um uh one I one I remember was the when we first started they took us to the movie theater and showed us the movie Zulu um and and the purpose of that was to show what what a small group of people who had discipline and who followed the the the rules could do um and it was quite interesting introduction great movie too um uh so yeah admin military law the structure of the army um how the ranks work um weaponry and fitness I suppose is the

three things that you would um you would say there was also some focus on learning to live within a military environment as well you know keeping the the lines in first class shape and you know getting the bed FS just right and you know all the crues on the clothes in the covered perfect um nonsense when you look back on it now but what it was about was to getting you ready so that you could live comfortably with closely with other people in a military type environment did did the Army also try and uh um set up a system of internal

discipline where you guys where they they disciplined the whole platoon rather than the actual individual um that was the norm um if if one person stuffed up the entire platoon paid the consequences um and and and therefore there was peer pressure on those that had stuffed up to get it right next time yeah that was the normal way that they disciplined people and um and as a result yeah there was quite strong peer pressure on to perform if one person in the room of four uh didn’t get the bed FS just right um that whole room of four

would be sent for five laps of the pray ground with uh with rifles uh above the head um and so you uh but that was a necessary thing to learn because um later on in in operations you you have to pull your weight and if anybody’s not pulling their weight and not doing the right thing then it will drag the rest of them down and so I can see why that was done although at the time I did think it was unfair but subsequently I can see why they did it that way great yeah initially with Chris you shared um or use the phrase NCO bastardization

yeah what sort of thing what did you mean by that um a doing nonsense type things because you told to um um Junior ncos um and and I’m sure it was designed deliberately um anyway but would have you do things um that were absolutely pointless absolutely pointless but only done because they wanted to demonstrate that they had the power to make you do that and and they much easier Way Forward was to to do it rather than to resist and and and that was all part of building the um the automatic reaction if you get

an order you follow it um and not think about too much about what the order was strangely enough that’s a totally different concept of the way that SAS operates but in the in the the rest of the Australian Army get the order you don’t question it you do it uh and and so I see what the bastardization from this perspective I see what it was attempting to do uh but at the time I just used to shake my head and say silly Pricks but go and do it anyway what what sort of things are we talking about um uh to um clean the uh bathroom floor um

by by the by least exper experient means you know clean the the Blu and block floor the best thing was a had a a brush on a long handle and some SS and and then mop it out but but um they would um take that away and require you to get out your hands and knees and do it with a scrubbing brush um dumb way to do it you know if you look at it it’s the most inefficient way to do it but um but it was about developing an automatic reaction to just follow the order it sounds like the the arm is trying to conform you obviously to to

discipline to be like one but did fellas show their individual characters in certain circumstances I think most people and certainly I did operated on two levels um when you’re in the uniform and and you’re doing the the Army thing yeah you conformed um that was um not only um the least painful um way um but also I think we could all see that that was what was necessary if we were actually going to be effective um but the other level was um when knockoff time came and and um after a while we’re allowed to go up to the diggers Boozer

then you could be yourself and and just relax and so we tended to operate on two planes you know okay we play the game when the game’s got to be played we can be ourselves when it doesn’t have to be played um leadership as far as the ncos and offices at Kuka what was that like ah um I I didn’t pay that any respect um I I I might have a different definitional leadership than you um um they were the bosses and and you you did what they said leadership to me is um is an inequality in a person that makes you want to follow them um um not because of

what they say or what they order but rather because of what they are and who they are and I didn’t see anybody in kapuka that I would call a leader you were doing basic training there but were they doing anything in particular to prepare the men for Vietnam uh Vietnam um was a subject that was often mentioned particularly in terms of weapons training um and uh um the platoon sergeant had done a tour of Vietnam with a battalion uh I I did play him some respect um but we didn’t get to see him very much I don’t quite know why

most of it was done by corporals um um but yes the the subject of Vietnam was a relative constant during weapons training yeah um along the lines of you better learn this CU won’t be long before you’re going to need it sort of stuff this initial training at kapuka was it infantry training or was it artillery training it was General training it it was it was designed to enable you to fit in into the army anywhere to give you enough knowledge to um to be able to go into any core um with a basic level of of knowledge and

skill um so it was it was the big overarching stuff of the whole of the whole Army um and certainly any any unit would still require some weapon skills and still need to know about all the admin stuff you know how you actually work within this environment um and would need to be fit or reasonably fit and so it was a generic if you like type training regime that equipped you um to move on to further training that was more of a specialist nature for the core that you were assigned to so the training had in kapuka was not focused

on any one core at all so in that you actually had done some artillery training at kapuka no no no I’ve never saw a gun yeah all of that training came after in core training you also used the phrase um the the side of the army what what is the side of the army um oh the the polishing um you know the spit polish boots um um and the the brass being absolutely perfect and the uh the crises in the in the uniform just so um the folding of the of the cover on the beds um so you can bounce the coin off it and at the end of the day what’s

it matter in terms of ability to fight doesn’t matter at all um those things were designed about um engendering Conformity um rather than and I can see that now but at the time I just thought oh you know this is this is  and artillery had a reputation second to none for it whether it was deserved or not I’m not absolutely sure but I I understand it was deserved you finally got to move on to ingleburn yeah what did you what did you find there uh I found a uh World War II Army base uh cold showers niss Huts um corrugated iron

Blan blocks bare concrete um it was archaic um uh quite amazing looked back on it it was 1967 so um i’ dare say it hadn’t changed in any way shape or form since 1945 um and that was infantry core training and they and and they become a much sharper focus on on war fighting skills from that moment on um and that was about learning how to operate as a Rifleman in an infantry section within an infantry Pon within an infantry battalion um and the tempo of training um and um and yeah the focus of that training become very much Vietnam

operations um and it was um yeah the tempo was fast they were Trucking plenty at us and and we were working quite hard at learning how to operate as an effective member of a rifle section if we could just look at that in part specifically what was their major aim I guess in respect to survival techniques that they were teaching you there um I don’t know survival is quite the right word um um rather they were um uh teaching you um How to Be an Effective member and that includes survival but it also includes being effective in terms

of getting the job done and so there was a lot of um of small unit tactics work um contact drills Ambush drills um harboring drills um working in larger formations in the section working as a platoon um a lot of weapons work lot of range work um and a lot less focus in fact I can’t remember much focus at all on the on the the way the Army operates and military law and Military admin and that sort of stuff um getting in and out of helicopters patrolling um it was just uh fullon infantry small unit tactics training well how did this opportunity

to to go to Perth and to um we were we were basically to excuse me told that uh the national serviceman amongst us or most of us would be going to reinforcement wing and reinforcement Wing was a a part of inle bur in which you sat and continued to keep your skills current until such time as you were sent to Vietnam to replace somebody who had had to come home for some reason um and uh that wasn’t appealing to either Dave or himself um because you would be moving into what what would be a group that had already trained

together and bonded together you’d be replacing somebody who was who was their mate um uh and you would probably have to go through that twice because you would go through it with one battalion and then sometime in the next 12 months as they’re already there they would have to come home and another one would arrive so you’d have to go and Slot into that that as well and while it wasn’t um um it wasn’t a big n i mean we didn’t say absolutely won’t do that I mean if that was the that was the deal that was the deal and would have done it

willingly enough um but it wasn’t ideal um and uh I can’t remember whether it was on a notice board or r out at a at a a morning prayers meeting it’s just a little group you you have you know before you start work for the day when you’re patrolled and the um NC will tell you what’s going on but there was um somehow or other we heard that um if somebody if you wanted to apply for to attend the sis Carter course and then you put your name down and um and I I knew pretty much nothing about me SOS I didn’t know what they did um as only

subsequently I found out they were based in Perth um um but it sounded okay and it sounded better than reinforcement Wing um and I had had a quite erroneous view that it was might be something like Commandos which is not um uh but it sounded better than R Wing so Dave and I talked about it and said we’d give it a shot um so we put our names down and and not all that put their names down were asked to the interview but we were um and I think that was because the regiment seeks people um of some intelligence as well

um you’ve got to have um the brain power if you like um to be able to rationalize some of the things you’ve got to do and are going to do and and and to be able to think outside the square about other ways of of doing things and so I think Dave and I got there on the basis of um of the academic results if you like and what we’ve done to date that is got to the interview stage um and the interviews were conducted by re Beasley who was the AC3 Squadron and Ross Bishop who was the 2ic um so we we had the interview and I

um in it went along um almost a predictable lines um you know what do you know about SAS why do you want to join what what do you think you do when you got there do you see the Army as a career you know and what they were trying to find out was you know what commitment we had to this um and while we had to sign on for the other year and do three years um the ideal circumstances would be you’d make it a career and become a a career Special Forces Soldier um but apparently we we got through with it um because we were um selected to

attempt The Carter um and Engle bur finished we marched out of there mid December something like that um we had Christmas at home yeah that’s right and then um after Christmas we’re off to Perth on the on the rattley old train and and won a 68 C of course just a few questions about that firstly do you remember what was said to you about the SAS which uh interested you and and many others to actually apply well to me it was an absence of information probably I didn’t know but but it but it sounded better than what

the alternative was um my um I knew it was um a relatively small or I came to find out that was relatively small that it undertook um um small small team um operations and that and that they were um uh of an adventurous nature um um knew they were par qualified um I didn’t know what their role was in Vietnam um in fact I don’t even know if well I must have known that they they had a squadron there but I must have assumed so um I I had very scanty information uh and in those days Michael the the regiment had hardly any profile

at all in the Australian Army I mean it was the other side of the country to start with um its uh its role was illd defined um in terms of where it sat in the order of battle um and it really wasn’t until you know Vietnam came to it the height of activity that the task force commanders started to figure out the best way to use the the the resource that the regiment represented um and so information about it was scant I mean there was no um no printed material at all but like today you go on web you know um so but what appealed was um it

sounded adventurous you know if you’re parachuting it had to be adventurous um and it was different um and uh it was a town I’d never burn in it Perth Perth um the signing on didn’t concern me at all because I was enjoying the life um um up to those that that stage it was um it was good um for the first time I think the work that I was doing doing I was enjoying where before the Army the work I was doing I wasn’t you know I was just a moans to an end and um um so um yeah it was a it was an appealing alternative and and when the

names went up and and Daves and mine were there I was very pleased boy excellent we’d like to go through your training just bit by bit but where did your training actually begin on the Monday um what were they taking you through it uh we went straight to rottnest Island um which was a small island off the coast of pth um and the Army at that time had a u an establishment there in in an all Barracks probably you know 100 years old but quite modernized and and quite efficient um and that was that was I think part of just getting us out of our

normal situation and putting us in in somewhere where there was no influence from the outside world about it and seeing how we all went we spent the first week there and a lot of that was physical toughening lots of runs um a lot of it was uh Theory and that was about I suppose capacity of our brains to take in new ideas a lot of it was about map reading for example um and how to interpret aerial photographs um necessary later on but certainly not necessary to do in the first week of the Carter so therefore what it was about I

presume was figuring out whether you could you had the brain capacity to take that sort of stuff in when everybody did um so a lot of physical stuff a lot of classroom stuff um a few exercises in small te tactics um and uh and very close examination that the training staff The Carter staff uh were large in number I don’t know what the ratio would be but there would probably be one car of staff for every five or six um attempting it and so no matter what you did you had a pair of eyes on you somewhere or other um

and they were looking at how you conducted yourself personally and and that sort of stuff so there the first week rot Nest um so just on that I mean the small group training exercises you did what what were I was U uh one I can particularly remember uh was we ambushed a vehicle Army land driver that deliberately drive along the road um and we were told how we were going to do it and and who was going to do what and and allowed to just run through the process um and uh yeah we did have actually blank rounds SAS obviously had a few more than

anyone else what was said to you from the very beginning about the selection process and being watched by some of the monitors um what was said to us um um is largely what what I said to you that it wasn’t the men that they were looking for were were not those that were physically strong um and who were not those that had um Capac it to endure um physically for a long time though they were rather looking for people who had the ability to um to control their um nervous and emotional responses um even under trying

circumstances um including when you’re dog tied and and wet and cold and hungry and and all those other things that you drive the spirit down they were work looking for a a level of physical fitness and that had to be a true but that wasn’t the Prime motivator they were looking for people who were self-sufficient um who had a personality development such um that they were comfortable with themselves but they were also looking for people that could work very well together in small terms um because uh that is one of the great

skills of of the regiment the ability to um to uh create a Synergy a sum greater than the individual Parts because of the way team works together um and that there was a strong focus on that your ability to get along to pull your weight to pull more than your weight to be prepared to help somebody who was falling behind a bit big emphasis on that so that and they told us straight up that’s what they were looking for so there was no secrets about it it wasn’t um you know they weren’t telling us one thing and looking at us for another

reason after rot nest what happened then um we went back to Swan swanborn and we spent two or three days no it was longer than that when we did some range work um we did some rope work um there were um facilities there for uh climbing and repelling and stuff um and again that wasn’t about teaching your skill so much as to see how you handle the effect of dangling 30t in the air off a little bit of rope you just tied around your waist um and from there and and that was also getting settled into where we’re going to live for the next

six weeks um this initial rope work and and and uh also with the gun sounds similar to what you already been doing at ingleburn is that right no we didn’t do any rope work um at ingleburn um and we were starting to um um use more advanced Weaponry you know the M60 you know I got one go at the M60 in inle Bur but um you know the they were often used on the Range during this period um introdu of the M16 um and uh and uh you know continuing familiarity with the SLR um introduction to the m79 um which is a 40 m grenade

launcher um pistols U Browning N9 mil pistol um so those starting to introduce a much greater range of of Weaponry um and that was fun you know boys own stuff fing around with all that did they actually say what each weapon was better four so yeah went through all of that yeah um and ultimately the choice was yours is to watch you carried subject to it fitting in with the Firepower of the rest of the patrol could you just explain sort of the difference of what each weapon is actually unique or better for um well I suppose the the

the the issued weapon in the Australian Army was the SLR um which is um a large caliber 7.62 or 30 cal um High Velocity um uh semi-automatic weapon and uh and it’s a heavy weapon and the ammunition is heavy and the um uh magazines are heavy um particularly the load of ammo we is to carry um but its Advantage um was it had real knock overpow um hit somebody with a 762 from an SLR the fight went out of them might not die straight away but the fight certainly went out of them um and subsequently when we got to Vietnam we quite highly

modified those weapons changed them to 30 round magazines had fire on full automatic cut holes in them everywhere and painted them green and you know didn’t look anything like a standard issue SLR um the M16 value I suppose was uh it was a much lighter weapon easier to handle in thick bush and jungle um because it was shorter um it fired a 5.

56 which is a 22 caliber um at High Velocity um and uh its ammunition was therefore much lighter mags were much lighter it’s it Downs um the reason I didn’t like that weapon was um didn’t have knock overpow you could shoot somebody with a 5.56 and unless you hit them in the right spot perhaps not all the fight would go out of them perhaps they’d still want to have a go and that happened a couple of times um and the other thing wrong with was it it was more prone to stoppage than the SLR um so I never trusted the weapon but the we did use them extensively in

Vietnam particularly with an m79 grenade launcher slung underneath the XM 203 so became an Under and Over 79 grenade launcher underneath and um M16 on top um the M60 is U gpmg general purpose machine gun it’s a belt fed fire a 762 same as the um SLR um and it’s a useful weapon for assaults um or defense against assaults but heavy ammo is heavy you got to carry a lot of it and not normally a weapon we used unless we were going out on a deliberate um offensive job what happened after the activities then we went Bush um and uh that’s

pretty well how we spent the rest of the Carter um um and uh that was generally to the southwest of um of Perth uh places like collie um names don’t come to mind right now um there’s some maps there from it uh did War Walk uh work along the Avon River um crossing rivers that sort of stuff a lot of Patrol work just Patrol Patrol Patrol Patrol um springing plenty of surprises um um so you’re you know you’re late at night you’re cold you’re wet going to someplace where you expected there’ be a m and no the M’s not there it’s another

10 miles up the road and start walking that’s that sort of stuff and and starting to push people to find out if they had a limit of endurance not so much physically but mentally um and uh and when incidents occurred those people would just disappear it just like you’d roll out of the you um sleeping so the next morning and they were gone and you just didn’t see them again they they were just Spirited Away sort of out of those that of us were left and sort of every morning you’d wake up and if you’re in the in the large group and

look around and say well who’s not here this morning um so there was a a lot of bush work and and a lot of of um uh pushing to see where the limits were um they were interspersed with periods back in swanborn when we uh we started to uh train for the final physical um tests which were uh 5 Mile Run 9 Mile Run um ropes um swimming that sort of stuff we did a lot of that then back out the bush a lot of bush work back into swano when you went over to SAS that was the fact that you were in a a point of some pride for you and Dave or did it

not matter at all um it was a matter of Pride for us in that we were um we were selected although we were National servicemen and we were amongst the first three subsequently the regiment found um that that experiment worked and and they took um um a larger proportion of national servic and who were prepared to sign on and indeed some of them made made the Army their career as a result um so for us it was a matter of Pride but um from our treatment from those within the regiment uh it made not one eye add a difference to them if you if you pass

the Carter and your parac course and you got buried you’re SAS and there were no scales within that you we telling Michael about how people disappeared you started with a group of 60 50 or 60 I don’t know the exact number and it went down I think at the end there were 14 15 16 something like that that’s a it’s a fairly big coal rate actually that was um a lower coal rate than normal there was a a larger number got through on that one than some others than many others how competitive was it within yourself individually it was individually

competitive but it wasn’t competitive between ourselves because if we all pass master we would all go go in um and uh as was explained to us and and as logic would tell you that the process is designed to ensure that the person who who um whose professionalism might mean the difference between you living and dying has been tested and found not wanting nevertheless it was not a perfect system um and I’m sure that’s some who would have been good uh were rued and there were some who did get through who were not perfect SAS

soldiers either no system is going to be perfect though but to the extent that it could be it was as good as as I can imagine it can you think of any examples of tasks like that that you had to pass um yeah um the uh the carrying of a heavy load in this case it was a great big log um and uh we had to carry it um point A to point B within a certain time somewhere along the way um there was a fake Ambush on us um uh which we had to fight and then pick the log up again and still make it to where we had to had to

be when we got to where we had to be um there they weren’t um but uh at the top of a next Hill on a track you could see between the trees there they were which was another two miles away so and uh and the you still had to be there where they were at the time so unless you know if you’re carrying I don’t know what the log would have weighed but a couple hundred pound and and plus all your kit and unless the five of you work together and work well together you just couldn’t do it somebody was slacking you wouldn’t

make the task how is that one of the main features that made the SAS different I mean once you were in there was it immediately obvious that this was a different sort of culture to the rest of the army I I didn’t have a comparison to make a judgment by Chris um um and there’s a lot of lot of stuff talked about sis but um I think that what we under underwent and the task we undertook um were not all that much different to what was being undertaken within infantry battalions um had a different focus and it was done a bit

further away um from support and it was done in smaller groups But ultimately I don’t think it was all that much different than than a rifle section and there’s a there’s a lot of talked about um the regiment um and and certainly it has um it does have um some amazing men um within it then and now um but I I think the tasks that we we undertook could have been undertaken by a great many of those people who were simply slogging away in a rifle section in a battalion um did that ever give you any cause for sort of thinking about what

you were being trained to do the fact that you were being trained as killers sense no I fully expected it I’d be disappointed and concerned if the training wasn’t aimed at killing the enemy if it was some softer form and end of the day that was what we were going to do during this time it was 1968 69 is that yeah this is the period this we’re talking January February 1968 um again we’ll come back to that when you went to two Squadron during this time with the patrol courses that followed this is where you were getting

information to so what were you being told about what you’d be doing um well we were practicing exactly what we were doing um that is patrolling in four and fan patrols silently um and um very tactically um not leaving no sign behind um either where we stopped or where we’d been uh practicing um what would happen in the event of um uh sightings and practicing what would happen in the event of contact and all the various sorts of contacts that there could be um practiced a lot with nine Squadron helicopters um practiced um

impling D planing practice hot extractions which is where the helicopter if it can’t get you out haven’t got a place to land just Chucks ropes over you hook onto the ropes through a carabin and it just lifts you up and and out um so we did a lot of practice with that um but all the time sucking in the information that these ncos that have been there done that were telling you what what the jungle was really like what the giveaways were stuff like um the Vietnamese like to smoke menthol cigarettes and that’s often the first um sign that you would

get that you were getting close to something um if there’s monkeys around you’re safe there’s a monkeys don’t like the Vietnamese I eat them so if you hear or see monkeys you can relax um what um typical um contract drills the VC and NVA used uh how they would respond to being bumped how they would respond to ambushes um there were a number of camps that were laid out that were typical um Vietnamese VC camps um how to do close wcky on those which was one of the jobs we had to do probably the worst job we had to do um so just just Gathering all

this data from these people that have been there done that um we’re also reading all the patrol reports that were coming back um from two Squadron who were there at the time and seeing what was happening um with them and noticing an escalation in the level of contacts um and also the distance from newat that we were starting to operate um and yeah it was just you were just a great big spun soaking it all up at that time was the SAS operating outside Province outside F or just um no most of the work was within F occasionally there you’d

cross a border for a particular purpose um uh but no generally but you might go into long KH or two Squadron did go into long KH it was three Squadron that really pushed the boundary there and pushed up into the mayos during the time I was there and that was well out of the province into what was real Bernie country was there a a period of leave before you went how did that progress we um after all of that and and at this stage we were still presuming we were going away with three Squadron in in February 69 but a group of us I suppose they were

about 15 or 16 over a period of 2 weeks went over to reinforce two Squadron um I think I Tony Luman was already there when in Vietnam when I got there um and I think John cousins and I two or three others went over next and then a group with da Fisher followed after that um and uh we were warned out for that we were SAS does its jungle training in New Guinea uh and we were warned wared out for that but then um those of us who didn’t have the real long time the six years and that sort of thing were warned out that we were going to um two

Squadron Rio so I had pre-embarkation l in Sydney in would have been early in November a week early in November yeah so I came back to Sydney um and uh saw the family and all that sort of stuff could you describe the trip over to Viet yep um we the last night in country I had to spend at Eastern command Personnel DEA at Watson’s Bay um and we boarded buses there at Sparrow um to go out to Richmond um where we were joined a C130 which flew to uh tonson via Darwin and Singapore um mom and dad and my sisters I don’t think

my my younger brother was there but my sisters um saw me at Richmond and said goodbye all that sort of stuff um and it was fine it wasn’t all that TI and it was um um and it wasn’t C celebratory either but it was it was it was relatively relaxed at least that’s my recollection my parents might have a different view um and then just you know walked through the raft base jumped on the C130 and off we went um and we wasn’t Singapore I’m sorry it was Butterworth we staged um landed at Darwin refuel kept going landed at um Butterworth uh we were

going away overnight there um and so uh the boys and I was Kazo can’t remember who the third wasse went into panang and and played up sort of last um night of Freedom so to speak um then back on the um hook the next morning flew into tonson hung around tons for an hour and then on a wabby flight a caribou into new and we were met by the Judy Drive SAS duty driver on lkan field and driven up SAS Hill to the camp what were your first impressions of firstly Vietnam slne D oh I think everybody will tell you that the the

moment they open the door and the external air comes in the Exotic smells of that country and Exotics putting too kind of word on it really some of them were pretty rotten uh and the heat uh the heat and humidity they were the the two things that struck me I didn’t get to see anything of Saigon because we stayed on tonson um but U the the amount of um uh Logistics that the Americans had coming in and taking off and I mean there was just a constant stream of military aircraft and Pan-American aircraft um busiest place I think I’ve

ever seen it was huge um and uh then no he much much as I expected um it was um you know we flew over and landed on lenfield and and I had a layout in my mind’s eye anyway because we’d been working with the layout there already and and what it was like um and uh our lines themselves um yeah they’re they’re in good shape um pretty comfortable in fact they’re more comfortable than um the Infantry Training Center at ingleburn um um mind you they had different nerds we lived in tents but they had floorboards and we had a stretcher and um um um sko

net and the ablution block was uh we had a um a petrol fired heater so you could get some hot water there a couple of um old light bur washing machines didn’t wash much in the way of clothing but certainly your cam gear when you came out of the Jil you had to had to wash and hope it didn’t fall the bits um no he was had a good Boozer the O mess was really good um and Cooks did some pretty good things with the Tucker that they could get so the actual um base camp side of it um we did very well could you just describe for the archive the actual

layout of neet so SAS Hill in respect to everything else well new that is the is the hill feature um and most of the task force was accommodated in the rubber plantations that surround the base of the Hill and Route two which runs due north um up through the province runs past the front gates in fact it was realigned to accommodate um the camp um our uh lines were on the almost on the shoulder of the hill right on top of the hill was an American comms unit but we’re on the shoulder of that um and the value I suppose of putting us there is

that we didn’t have to man a perimeter uh as the Battalion down in the rubber plantations did and that meant that uh when not on operation um there was there was not a constant requirement nevertheless for uh wake waking nights we did have one post that we manned um which was a op and had a it had a 50 Calon there when we first arrived but somebody decided that we should test fire it and in cocking it the cocking handle came off in in in the hand so that was promply replaced with an M60 um and when you if you’re in Camp

you might expect to get one night on that um in the work you might be in um but other than that we we had little in the way of Duties just in respect to where SAS Hill is we still in danger of being under mortar attack and those sorts of things yes we um we had um uh a couple of Rocket attacks while I was there one of which quite severely wounded Buffalo arm lump of shrapnel through the roof of his tent and he was lying on the bed um that was the only injury that I can recall but yeah they Chuck stuff at us from

time to time and being on the hill you were a relatively obvious Target um and by this time you know we’d been operating there for many years and I think the enemy well knew the layout um of the camp and who was where um perhaps the most dangerous incident like that was when the ammunition dump which was in an Old Quarry immediately below our place on the hill blew up and uh we had white phosphorous grenades and M26 grenades and Rockets zooting down between T and uh that was that was probably the most dangerous time I think we had in

Camp blew up because of a attack or no no it was accidental in some way I’d never heard the ultimately the reason why but it was about lunchtime and um I was just about to stand up from eating a meal in the in the in the mess and uh it was bangs and pops and whizzes and and uh I I spent the next 20 minutes caring under the trestle table occasionally sticking my head up over the wooden parapet to see stuff still flying around it was a interesting time terrible to be injured or killed by um an accidental ammunition dump

explosion just coming back now to the story you were greeted at at new he had yeah yeah and um and um driven up to the lines uh reported to the um to IC I think it was might have been Brian White I can’t remember um assigned a trip was Ron Den’s trp um and Ron’s still a very good friend of mine lives here in camber I had lunch with him last week um and started to climatize um you basically had you know four or five days to get your kit together um because you didn’t take basic webbing away uh so put draw your

weapons um modify them the way you wanted to put your basic webbing together the way you wanted to get a pack get that organized the way you wanted um and generally get used to the weather and and the Heat and the humidity modifying weapons what sort of things did you modify and how did you do it um we had um a tiger lines was the armor um and uh the SLR a very good infantry weapon but very heavy um uh and it was semi-automatic a very long barrel 20 round magazine um typical modifications were to shortened the barrel um removed The

flashh Eliminator um that had a two-fold effect made it shorter and easier to handle easier to swing but also it changed the sound so it sounded more like a 50 cal than a than a 30 cal um and so when Charlie heard two of these things going off plus three M16s in a contact he didn’t know what he bumped you know if the back if the other side’s got 50 Cals boy it must be something really big um and um an sas contact is like nothing you’ve ever heard before in your life it is a extremely noisy affair there with five automatic weapons and white Foss

and Claymores and M26 and and that was done deliberately to try and cick their heads down and make them wonder about what they’ bumped so we could slip away if we wanted to um so um shorten the barrel removed the flash Eliminator get more cooling holes into the woodwork uh change the sear which uh would allow fully automatic fire as opposed to semi-automatic fire uh fit a 30 round magazine um usually with um Tracer one or two Tracer rounds towards the bottom of the mag to let you know if you’re starting to run L well we stopped doing

that after a while because we figured out that Charlie might figure out that that’s what the Tracer meant too and you’d know that you were about to change magazines um um get some cam onto it some you know some green and brown paint um and uh some removed the rear sight I didn’t um I like the site that weon rather than shoot instinctively um yeah that’s a sort of modification um the armaly no they weren’t touched other than to fit grenade launchers underneath them just in respect to the the SLR The Flash eliminators to remove them was that a

good or bad thing to do well it made the um it made the weapon longer and and in um the conditions the jungle conditions we were working in a longer weapon was a distraction um but also it had this effect of changing the sound of the thing so that um it was not a distinctive SLR type Park and then the the cooling holes you put in the Woodwork what’s that oh we we’re just getting more air through because uh we were using a barrel designed for semi-automatic fire only using it in full automatic and uh uh wasn’t unusual to let all 30 rounds in

the magazine go within the first 5 Seconds of a contact so you needed to get as much air around that Barrel as you could so in respect to to Weaponry you were free to do what you wanted to it yeah yeah um just subject to it um continuing to be reliable and accurate yeah um the armors were um very willing to experiment as well um and and those weapons stayed in country they didn’t come back to Australia some of them were bought back for Museum purposes um and we also had quite a choice I mean there was the M16 but also there was the stone

or weapon system which we could use we also had a silent Sterling um which you’d use in an ambush situation if one or two walk down the track try and Bowl them over um with a silent Sterling so that you would not alert a larger group that that’s what you done and still keep the ambush in place um pistols of varying sorts um including old German World War II luggers um and also enemy Weaponry which we used to go on fire down on the Range so we had some idea of of what the other side would carry and what they were good at and what they

were bad at um and as’s a many an Australian life today that’s still being lived because the AK47 um which was the most common weapon used by NVA and and some of the VC um climbed on automatic fire you had to really hold it down and being a relatively slight people the Vietnamese had difficulty doing in that and so often in a contact the first couple of rounds will go around your ears and the rest of it to go over your head which is a good thing which what weapons from the mv’s point of view were actually quite good ones oh

the AK-47 was a very good weapon um so robust stoppages were rare it was a very simple weapon fought a 762 short so it still had a you know a sizable caliber um had good stopping power um it’s its only disadvantage was that it tended to climb on automatic fire and and and the Vietnam had trouble holding it down we you mentioned earlier when we were discussing uh inle bur just just the layout of a an actual platoon and the weaponry and stuff but it was it’s obviously different in respect to SAS what was the deal with with taking

guns you wanted so you chose the SLR say but you had to have a spread of weapons throughout the five did you did um and and there was a fairly typical mix um usually um the Scout carried um an M16 just a straight M16 um and that’s of course it was uh it was light ammo was light and aable quick movement and the Scout was usually the first one into and out of a contact um um the patrol Commander usually carried an M16 with a XM 203 Grenade Launcher underneath um uh the Sig would carry an SLR um medic an SLR um or automatic slrs

and the 2 I see one or the other so what you were looking for was a mix of Weaponry that would give um rapid rate of fire and the whole point of what we did was to concentrate immense amount of Firepower into a very small area um and that’s often saved us um uh but you would um if a patrol Commander saw every member of the patrol carrying uh M16s he would probably say hey boys come on we need something a bit heavier here let’s let’s think about the whole lot but other than that no um the stone a weapon system was was

interesting it was a sort of interchangeable system you could build a rifle or a pistol or almost anything out of it we also had all World War II grease guns um car fired a 45 caliber pistol bullet tremendous stopping power at short range um a very simple weapon uh and depending on what the job was and m6s too of course so depending on what the job was um you had a choice of what you could take out um but the most common Patrol is a wcky Ambush Patrol and normally that would be at least two slrs on full automatic and uh at least

two um M16s one of which would have a um grenade launcher with it and the fourth the fifth one would be one or the other excellent so you’ve arrived in the first 5 days or so or what just to settle in yeah getting your together and settling in and the first Patrol I did I we went out I don’t know early in December sometime it would have been um and uh it was compl completely uneventful Affair completely uneventful Affair um which was good actually let you practice a Bushcraft in the real world and um and learn about work

working with a new group of people and and it was pretty much as it was in Australia the training was very very good before we actually just discuss a bit about that first Patrol when we were actually discussing uh when time back at ingleburn you didn’t really want to be a sort of um a reinforcement this is what you are and ultimately that’s what I ended up being exactly right although um there’s a much closer bonding I think between so squadrons bit over 100 people um and where Battalion bit over 600 people bit of a different and so I was

accepted immediately so I mean how did you get to know the other fellows in those sort of four to five days breaking in what’ you do uh well I asked a lot of questions basically um you know how should I set up my kit you know what’s the what’s the water situation how much should I carry um how do we sleep at night um are you guys taking out ponches or you know just sleeping in a sheet or you know just asking a whole He of questions um and there was no shortage of willingness to help and and that’s how you sort of got to know people and I

was in Ron’s troop and there were two tents on either side and they were the people I sort of you know asked a heap of questions of and and got to know them that way I’m going to cheat a little now can I ask you those questions what did they say in respect to how did you set up your kid um oh just told it as it was um uh in those days we were carrying out we were carrying around about 160 rounds or 170 for 30 round mag involved um so um and so you set up ammunition pouches for that how much water to carry um rare to put up a

poncho at night time even in the wet season because they shine um so usually you just roll up in a in a thing called a poncho liner um Sops for um for lups lying up place you know where you stop at night time how all that worked and that was pretty much how in Australia how it worked in Australia I spent a bit of time up with the sigs cuz I was going to be a patrol Sig for two Squadron and I went up to Sig Center and uh talked to those guys up there and had a look at their setup and so I knew what it looked like and

how they worked for when I was sending back in um and uh the the information was you know everything I wanted to know was was willingly said so in respect to setting up where you’re going to stay at night was similar to Australia what was the actual setup um for night Harbor or night L um well we’d be moving along in normal Patrol sort of order and and pace which is very slow um It’s Not Unusual for an sas Patrol in it would not have been unusual for an sas Patrol in those days to cover as little as 300 meters in a day if it were dense

and and if we were close to enemy um longer further if um if we were starting to feel more secure um and so one would normally do a hook so you move along and you do a big 180 degree turn and come back on your own track but parallel to it um and that’s so if anybody’s tracking you they have to walk past you before they figure out you’ve double back um and then um You’ um settle down uh packs off settle down all fa all F facing outwards um P trol Commander would walk around and have a whisper in the ear of each member um how you going what do you

see during the day um you know just words of a few syllables um then we’d eat while it was still light um and that was the only meal we really cooked and we used um dehydrated rations that the lurs long range Patrol us developed so um they were very light to carry and very low in volume but they used a lot of water so it was a bit of a trade-off so that was a cooked meal and usually we only ate half one that’s all all we wanted um or needed um so you’d eat um and by then it’s starting to get to dusk so then you

just sit there very very quietly while dust settled um until it was fully dark um and if the patrol felt secure and we weren no follow up and couldn’t hear signal shots around the place we’d um just very gently move aside the debris on the jungle floor very quietly until you came to the base dirt um you we had these Poncho liners which were basically the size of a double sheet lay that down get off the you’ve already got your pack off take the basic webbing off but put one arm through one of the shoulder straps so the EV event you had to run

you didn’t have to find it it was already hooked over your shoulder um I used it as a pillow I had two um ordinary water bottles and an M26 grenade between them and if I folded my sweat rag up and put it on top that was a pillow and um and just lie down and and and drift off into what was usually a relatively Disturbed and uneasy sleep you didn’t sleep through the night or anything like that uh we didn’t post um centries um because somebody would a be awake during the night anyway and anybody approaching us would be making a

lot of noise because we always found a fairly dense Thicket in which to do this bamboo often um so you just be drifting and out of sleep um until just before first light was that sort of SAS policy that you wouldn’t post a century or yeah that was post yeah yeah um a because it was unnecessary and B because it would it would mean um a dimin in alertness the next day and in a fiveman patrol in in a Bad Country you can’t afford to have one person who’s not 100% switched on again uh well next thing is types of patrols that you could actually go on

what types of patrols were there they were developing by the time I got there um sas’s original role was pure reconnaissance um it was um said to be the eyes and ears of the task force um but in the early days the task force was two battalions so often the Task Force Commander had to operate his battalions with open flanks and often he he’ Place SAS patrols into those open flanks so he’d be warned if there was the approach of um um of large formation um but gradually our role changed to becoming one of pure reconnaissance to one becoming one of

offensive uh and the purpose of that was to deny um Charlie Safe Haven in in his backyard so that no matter where he was he could never feel safe from a sudden violent death at the hands of these five guys all dressed up and who then just sort of disappeared back into the jungle uh and that worked a treat because increasingly we found the targets harder to find um um in terms of the people we could take on they they took to sending two or three down a track before the main body um as decoys um they had very very welldeveloped counter Ambush drills

that they developed as a result of what we’ve been doing um but so the common most common Patrol became the wcky Ambush where you would get four grid squares um which can see there and around those all the other gridge squares all the way around those um we’re all free fire zone nobody else in there but us um so anything in there that mooved were bad guys um and we would look at that to decide where the most likely place would be that we would find enemy activity and that usually involved water um or the Confluence of

tracks um um that sort of thing and so we would design when we got a warning order to go out we’d have a look at all the past intelligence look at the maps um go out and have a look at it from the air do a wrecky from the air of the area we going to operate in um then the patrol Commander together with the rest of us would all sit around and say well this he say this is what I reckon we should do this then we go in here and we’ll move that way and um and there was the ability uh for anybody to descent um and that was encouraged not discouraged

if you had a different view you you should you put it Forward uh and so a rough plan of action was determined from the moment you hit the ground uh on on insertion and then we’d follow the plan we’ but modified on the ground as we found different things because often you come across a very well warn foot pad that nobody knew was there and obviously being used and it went somewhere so you’d follow that um and that usually led to um somewhere within if it was within the grid squares it would be a camp um and then we if it was unoccupied

that was relatively simp we’ you know locate it um and Recon it see what was in there whether well formed bunkers um how last time it been used that sort of thing and if it was occupied that was the more difficult task because we still had to wcky it called a close wcky on a camp and uh for that the patrol commander and the Scout would um the whole Patrol would move around the camp prop Patrol commander and Scout would push inside the camp inside its perimeter see what they could see see how many people were there what they

were doing switched on Switched Off NVA um Regional force or just VC then back out and move around again and back in again very nerve-racking time and could take two days to do it properly because you just had to move so slowly and stealthily um and particularly dangerous time because um you know walking around virtually in the living room um and the patrol split as well two there and three back here that was uh they were nerve-wracking those things and and the point on those particular things was to gather information it was um not only for the

task force purposes though but also so that we might use it offensively a little bit later for example and I I remember one particular um patrol where um it was Johnny Jules Patrol in three Squad I was Scout and um in the Huts we we found a camp just exactly like this in fact probably the most enduring memory I have of those days occurred um um on that particular episode but anyway we located the camp um and had to do it it was occupied you know we could smell the wood smoke we could hear the chitter chatter and we

had to do a close wcky on it we did um they looked like Regional Force so they weren’t NVA although there might have been an NVA Carter there I don’t know we we the reason we found the camp was we’d found a foot pad um and with all of that information and looking at the people that were within the camp we thought okay we at the last 2 or 3 days of the Patrol we’ll Ambush the track uh and we did um uh and we bowled over I don’t know half a dozen or something or other um and then got extracted so you could use the information you gathered During

the period of the patrol to do the Ambush part the Rick of the Ricky Ambush Patrol to do the Ambush part in the last three or four days and that had that that effect of making them feel unsafe in a place that they had always felt safe before in respect to this camp that you you you had a look at how many NVA would actually be there at any one time oh they varied in size um in in this particular case there was 20 or 30 but they were Regional Force they weren’t NBA um um one camp we bumped um which was partially unoccupied we bumped that

on New Year’s Day 69 um it could hold uh probably regiment size it would have covered um Acres very well made up bunker um you know big steel not steel Big Timber structural members plenty of overhead protection I it was a pretty serious camp this one and in respect to the camp that you saw I mean there was no thinking that you’d actually hit the camp rather than hit good good Heavens now there’s five of us just taking on 30 of them I don’t know one thing you learned in SAS was never take on a fight you couldn’t

win it didn’t always happen that way and sometimes you got into fights that um uh that by accidentally um by just bumping people as as we did on that New Year’s Day in in 1969 where um you know no way in the world You’ take it on if you could avoid it but having taken it on you just have to you know fight it as hard as you can um you’ve used several terms Regional Force NVA VC Charlie could you just explain for the archive the differences oh there was a there was a hierarchy um um there was um the local V which operated out of villages they were

mostly um um guides um or they gathered some transported stores that sort of thing they didn’t take um take part in um large scale attacks are rather a support Force but nevertheless um they could be quite aggressive if you bumped them they were combatants they were certainly armed and next was the regional Force which uh weren’t the gorilla type people they um uh they were full-time soldiers um but they were um not North Vietnamese they were things like d445 which was the the area of fuk was where they operated um and it was uh

it was about Battalion size uh we bumped the heavy weapons company one day um and they were pretty good soldiers not as committed as the NVA and probably not as broadly as well um equipped so they were a middle tier and they were the people that um we bumped most often early in my tour anyway and then you had NVA from North Vietnamese Army and they were very well trained they were well equipped and they were very committed soldiers very brave Soldiers too and they were a formidable enemy was there a difference in their

what they’d wear their uniform or outfit what was the difference yeah generally you could tell by looking at at what they were you know you’d move all the way from the hoochi Min sandals and and and black pajamas and the conical Straw Hat um through to the proper Car Care uniforms with the star and signor and forage hat um and various stages and proper webbing and various stages in between between also the Weaponry excuse me um the VC the lower level often armed with World War II relics or M1 carbines um um or all sks’s um the

regional Force the middle ranking um some spattering of early model weapons but a majority of AK-47 um and a lot of RPGs and rpds um RPGs are rocket panel grenade launcher you still see them on the TV in Iraq and an RPD was their equivalent machine gun to our M60 um and it was drum fed um and but when you bumped NV they were all armed with um well-maintained AK-47s they had um grenades on these wooden sticks um rpds RPGs as well they were just much better equipped and trained and and much more committed coming back now to your first

Patrol we were up to what is your feelings once you heard you’re going out in your your first Patrol I was looking forward to it yeah I was clean and filled with anticipation yeah um and and that dissipated over the rest of the tour so until eventually when by the time you got to the end you’d certainly had enough um but but I was Keen to do get into it and and as it was it was a pretty good introduction because it was walk in the park um but it was good to practice the field craft and practice with guys that have been there before

and practice signaling um in circumstances that were not um stressed by contact could you talk us through the first operation just from the point of receiving the orders and what the operation’s about what you did through to the end um uh yeah um you got a warning order two or 3 days beforehand started to prepare your kit to I of the patrol started to draw stores ammo Food Maps um patrol Commander would gather the intelligence we’d all do an aerial Ricky um of the area we were patrolling um we would uh have the

couple of Power hours uh with test fire weapons um and start to pull the kit together um usually we’re inserted in the afternoon so that um in the event we did have a contact and couldn’t be got back out again we had the night to hide so we go in you know half 3 half 4 in the afternoon that sort of thing so the day of insertion um we would usually leave um NE the our camp at new dat midday is 1:00 we go down to um the Tropic pad where nine Squadron uh flight would be waiting for us and took five helicopters to insert one SAS

Patrol um and uh we’d have a briefing uh with the rafis um Albatross Ludo would tell us what his intentions were um he would be Albatross lader would be in a helicopter on height and he would direct the inser insertion there’ be two gunships um in the event that we um got into contact on insertion um there’d be the Slick that contained the patrol and there’d be a spare slick now the flight would um depart and we’d climb up above shooting height which was above 500 ft basically up about 1,000 ft above the canopy and uh as we approach the O Zed

which we’ve already done a wrecky on from the air um the Slick would do well called go down the mine so she’d drop down to Treet top height and she’d Zoom along at about 80 knots right on the top of the canopy and the purpose of that was that um the enemy might hear the helicopter but they couldn’t see it and and therefore judge its direction and where it intended to go although later in the tour they when they heard the typical signature of an sas insertion they used to send little Toms to every L Zed in the area and see if they could

spring us but early in this particular Patrol that wasn’t happening um we would be um um ready to D plan the helicopter would come into the LZ do this great big massive flar stand itself on its tail and then hover just above the ground and usually lzs were covered in Grass you know meter high so we would hover about a meter meter and a half High we’d all just jump out um that wasn’t very pretty cuz when you’re carrying around 150 lbs of Kit you usually ended up sprawling face down in the grass um soon as we’re all de

planed sh up tail and get out of there and we would go for the um get into the jungle and get under the trees as quickly as we could and then we just go quiet and we listen to see if there was going to be any reaction to the insertion um that was a trying time particularly getting off the off the helicopter course you didn’t know what you were going to get off and into in the meantime the albatross flight would wait um to the extent of their fuel capacity and that could be as little as 5 minutes or or up to 20 minutes just in

case we got hit on the insertion um and at the end of that period uh we’ give him a call on an KK 10 which was a little UHF radio and so we’re clear and they’d bug out and we’d start the job and the job for this first actual pure Ricky um and uh can’t even remember the region it was in there can’t remember where but um we had our grid squares and we had a walk around in the jungle and saw buer and came out I think it was only about five or 6 days later it wasn’t a very long one um and extraction was you know find

an LZ same five helicopters come to get you out and there’s a whole process you go through about making sure that’s safe for them to actually come in and land um that involves you know chucking smoke and panel and getting them to identify that it’s actually you um that they’re coming to get um and in those uh early early days too the um uh gunships used to um shoot up the um uh extraction L zet as well just in case there was anybody there but we stopped doing that after a while our extraction was um it was just the process of getting back out

again um uh the day before we would send a signal that indicated that we’re ready to come out and where we were going to come out where the lzed was uh it would be an lzed that had already been wrei as part of the original wcky from the air that we’ done earlier um that would be um n Squadron rwf would be informed and we get an agreement to the extraction um we would position ourselves within the jungle canopy but close to the LZ when we heard uh the Hue is coming and that’s the most distinctive sound in the world as I’m

sure many other people have told you um uh we would U bring them up on the radio and identify ourselves you know Albert TR leer this is bra n era 24 and um and they would need to establish that it was us that they were actually coming into so we’d signal them with a panel a bright fluorescent panel and pinpoint them with a mirror we had a little mirror signaling device hole in the center and you could flash it at them uh they had asked us to throw smoke um we’d um throw a colored smoke um and they’d say I see green or I see red and we say

yeah Green throwing a red throwing just so Charlie wasn’t on the other side of the Ed throwing some smoke too and the and the Slicks ended up on the wrong spot um and then when the Slicker come in um usually it would try and put the skids down if it could for an extraction not for insertion but not always we clamber on board and away we go um you mentioned hot extractions before were you involved in one of those yeah I’ve had a couple of hot extractions yeah um that’s they are used um when there is no other way to get a

patrol out um there are no lzs available um there is one other way and that’s to winch um but you can only winch up two at a time so it takes you know upwards of 10 minutes to extract a patrol by winch in the meantime you’ve got this great big green Target sitting up there above the canopy drawing fire so it’s not not particularly um happy for either the rwf crews or for those matters those bles on the ropes um and the hot extraction technique was developed to avoid that winching situation where an L Zed wasn’t available um and so that

process was that um and it was usually in an emergency situation so you’ve sent some form of contact word we’re in trouble um and ALR Leo would come over we try and get comms if that was possible um and pinpoint where we were um and uh the Slick would uh hover overhead and toss out um five ropes that were hooked up to a quick connect quick connect device in the middle of the um Chopper floor we would put a Swiss seat on which is is just a bit of Manila rope just wrap it around double knot carabina rope would come down hook onto another

carabina thumbs up and uh the helicopter would rise and and take us away as a sling light um it’s not something you would do lightly um the um the thought of staying where you were um needs to be um only um sorry the thought of going out on the ropes needs to be only slightly better than staying where you are for you to consider it cuz it’s uh um bloody dangerous very uncomfortable um and uh the troper pilots didn’t like it either cuz Furies with a heavy sling lad underneath didn’t fly that well but it it’s no doubt it saved a number of

patrols and yeah I had a couple of hot extractions in fact my last Patrol was a hot extraction we’ll talk a bit more about that in particular Patrol as you were coming out though you were hanging above the canopy as targets yourself yeah but I couldn’t see us then cuz you know you’re tertiary jungle and uh and uh we’re flying along I don’t know 40 50 knots or something or rather if you got up through the canopy you were right getting through the canopy was the most difficult thing um no generally you could you could find a clearing of some

sort somewhere um and you would deliberately look for it if you’re in know running contact trying to break contact trying to find a place to get hot extracted out you would look for a place where there was a hole in the canopy and and Patrol Commander would say right prop this is it I want to go back over some of the things you’ve been already bringing up um and get it few more details about them because the more details we get the better for the archive um and that I guess is just about SAS patrolling in general and how

it worked I mean you’ve mentioned a few times that they went out in groups of five can four four four or five can you explain the different roles of the people in that group yep um uh the Scout led the patrol um and he had the patrol Commander immediately behind him Al they separated by some six or seven meters um and the Scout took his directions from the patrol Commander so when I was scouting the patrol Commander would go that’s the direction in which he wanted me to move I’d take a compass bearing on that with compass type with a

watch type Compass um and and I would head off uh in that direction as um as quietly as I could my um my role of the scouts role um was to not walk the patrol into something stupid so you had eyeballs on stalks you know you’re looking for sign of recent disturbance um of the environment that the floor of the Jungle or broken Twigs you were looking for smell mostly you’re looking for movement movement was the thing that gave away um your presence more than anything else in those conditions and so you were you had the Thousand yards

stair you were looking through things rather than at things um and and that was the Scout’s big job was to is to take the patrol and the the direction that the patrol Commander wanted it to take but not walk it into anything silly uh Patrol Commander came next because he was in a position to react quickly in the most common contact was contact front um and uh he as the name obviously suggests um command of the patrol it was his responsibility to achieve the mission whatever that might be and to look after his men um was he

always a ranking person or did that not matter um didn’t matter at all um the um they were mostly sergeants um but the troop commanders had their own patrols as well they were either second or first left tenants um and some patrols were taken out um by corporals uh it didn’t matter what rank They Carried really it’s whether or not they were afforded the right to lead a patrol not only by the patrol the squadron commander but by the patrol members and it was possible within SAS to say no I don’t want to go and there was no ranker or shame in

doing that if you had had a um a tough time or if you had a bad feeling or something like that you were entitled to say look leave me out of this one and there was no questions asked and no ranker about that and so if you if you were concerned about a patrol Commander you could you could pass my you um you know within two or three days you get another warning order and for some other Patrol and you’d be expected to take that one up but it was possible to say I want to pass on this one um and so their rank didn’t matter it’s whether or not

they were afforded the right to lead a patrol by the patrol members and by the AC once they had been afforded that right did they have sort of ultimate power on the ground would they be um ultimate power I suppose um but SAS patrols originally Collegiate um uh lot uh Patrol Commander would put forward his intention um and and then he would put it Forward he’d put it on the table for the rest of the patrol members to either Ascent or to say well listen boss what about we do this um or skip of maybe if we did this and this and and

Patrol commanders in my experience were quite willing to change their mind if they heard a better idea it’s quite a clergate experience but ultimately if when Once the patrol Commander says okay I’ve listened to all of that but this is what we’re going to do that’s what we did next came next came the Sig um and uh he was for Patrol member Patrol SE um he carried usually carried the heavier radio set the 25 set um the 64 set which was the main stay of Patrol Communications that’s the mor set was carried by the uh 2ic usually so the Sig

would carry the big radio set which we used for uh ground to air coms um and uh his role was to be close to patrol commander and to conduct the the signaling operation so he and you got I was a Sig in two Squadron so um patrol Sig in two Squadron so you got Adept at using the m key and running the aerial out and getting comm’s first go and encoding um a message pretty quickly uh and they were the skills that that that they developed that was a 25 set 25 set yeah that’s about the size of H how would you describe that

uh about 2/3 of a size and shape of of a slabber beer uh bloody heavy too um pain of a thing but we had to carry it to get ground to air coms um it it differed from the 64 you described before in what way well the it was a VHF set um which operated on voice mainly where the 64 set was a HF set operated on Mor so this 25 set the voice set was for short range stuff and the 64 set the mo set was for long range stuff know we could get coms back to swanborn with those things if he had the aerial out right did it have Aerials as well the 25 or

yeah it had a whip aerial you know one you sort of unfolded and stuck in but the dipole you had the little plastic covered wire dipole aial for the 64 set it’s a fair chunk of gear where did it where did it Fe on your on your body s’s got Adept at getting it into the pack you carried it in your pack and you um there were you carried a fighting belt um which carried your ammo water basic survival stuff um um basic medicinal stuff shell dressings that sort of stuff um knife um spare Compass stuff that um that you needed to

survive in the event you lost the big pack and also two of the patrol members carried UHF radios and they they were a little cigarettes pack size bit bigger than a cigarette pack size which would carried on the fighting belt and the purpose of that was if for some reason or other you had to ditch the pack as we had to on one occasion then you still had everything you needed to survive on on your belt but then on on the on your pack you carried any of the extra radios food extra water um extra Medical Kit those things that

you needed to make the patrol operate but you could do without in in an emergency situation um still on the Sig you mentioned having a helicopter home in on you how did you do that they um no no we gave we gave them the grid references to where we would be um it was Poss the little Earth 10s had a Beacon um they are an emergency Beacon rather like the ones you you you can still get today and it sent a a tone on 151 di 1 I think it was I can’t remember the frequency now it’s the international distress frequency um and if we’re in really deep

 um you could operate that frequency and every Allied aircraft should have been monitoring that frequency and could home on that signal but they had very short range Unfortunately they didn’t go out very far but we did use them on one Patrol how did you carry water um mostly in bottles um normal plastic army issue water bottles um H but also at the start of a patrol we had a a large um plastic bladder and we that carried two quarts two American quarts an American bit of Kit and would’ fill that up and and shove it down the front

of the shirt so most of the photographs of patrols you’ll see going out look like they’re obese and in fact it’s a two quarts of water stuff down the front of their shirt and use that up first and and then you’d start to use up the water bottles so just to flesh out that description you started with the survival belt the pack do you have anything else on your webbing or any other bits of gear hanging off you or anything no no it’s the the fighting belt which is the webbing is is the the absolute basic stuff for survival and

and then a pack um you maps in In Pockets code receip carry the code book in the pants pocket Maps um no that’s about it how much uh food could you take out with you oh we could take out heaps of food because it was all dehydrated the quantity of food wasn’t a problem it was the water to to rehydrate it was the problem in the dry season um and if a patrol was going to last more than six or seven days a water supply was really absolutely essential um but in the wet season we could get water anyway anywhere um you know always

running creeks and uh you just pop the Chlor the um the chlorine tablet into the water and and um it was right were there any uh hygiene products apart from chlorinating your water were you able to clean yourself at all no no the whole idea we stopped shaving and showering 3 days before we went out and the whole idea was to smell like the jungle now we didn’t clean ourselves at all we didn’t remove our boots we didn’t remove any article of clothing the only thing we took off was our pack and the fighting build only lasting at night and

even then still slung over the shoulder so um when you came back in it wasn’t a pretty sight and and nor did you smell all that well either there wasn’t a lot of hugging going on um moving back then from the Sig okay behind the Sig came um usually the medic um the who been whoever he been designated in that Patrol to carry the medical git and to look after the um the um health of the of the patrol members for the duration of the patrol and also to take care of any um casualties um and uh uh and behind that the 2ic um who um carried the 64

set usually he was a logistics guy he drew all the stuff prider was going out he made sure everybody was hot to trot and ready to go um and in the event that the patrol Commander was killed or injured he would take over the patrol um but all of those in describing those roles um really it was about having all the arcs covered all the arcs of fire covered and the purpose of the fiveman patrol was that if one got hurt you still had two to fight and two to carry um if one got hurt in a fourman patrol two to carry one to fight and that’s not

enough so the fight man Patrol was the more much more often used um and that was the it was about the right size in my view any larger and you started to get noisier and we did do larger patrols just straight fighting patrols with a special purpose um largest I went on was three Patrol so 15 um but they were rare and they were short duration um but five five worked very well you’ve just given me a pattern of movement in a line was that always how you moved uh yes uh we always moved in um in single file spread about six or

seven meters apart um and in that order yeah and how quickly would you move very slowly um and the speed of movement was set by the Scout and by how much the wind the Scout had up at the time fire the wind up for some reason or other if you know you start to do to develop a six sense and the hair stands up in the back of the neck my rate of progress slowed down considerably um but if I was feeling secure and wasn’t seeing any sign and if I could hear or see monkeys then you’d step this this space up a bit but basically we moved at a pace that

allowed us to examine the area to our front and sides thoroughly and not make any noise and that could be as slow as 2 or 300 M in a day and it could be as fast as 1,500 m in a day depending on the type of terrain we were moving through and the amount of enemy that we thought were likely to be there how did you maintain silence apart from not talking what other methods were there um movement was very deliberate um for example um you always had your eyes peared out doing the Thousand yards St thing looking through things and then

bringing the focus back in to see if there’s something you’d missed um and in the meantime your feet would be one foot would be slowly moving its way forward and then it would be pushing aside the debris on the jungle floor until you found THM Earth and then you would place your weight on that foot and you’d prop and if everything seemed okay then you would slowly bring the other foot forward while you’re still looking covering your Arc in my case to the front move the next foot forward move aside the jungle

the bre on the jungle floor till he found a firm footing put the weight on that one and prop and just so on and on it went it was very tedious um uh and necessarily slow um but there were in all of that there was only one occasion in which the bad guys knew we were there before we knew they were there and that was just bad luck it wasn’t a lack of fieldcraft um every other case we always knew the enemy was there long before before they knew we were there or indeed if they even knew we were there you mentioned everyone had an arc

y can you explain how that worked um yeah um uh basically you had an obligation to cover a particular area of the 360° surrounding the patrol uh in my case it was 180° to the front when I was Scout um the 2ic covered the 180° to the rear and then the three in between had overlapping arcs so the um medic would cover to the left um seat to the right and Patrol Commander probably both so you had these overlapping arcs that you were covering um so that if anything occurred within that Arc probably two sets of eyes would see

it you mentioned movement was the big thing you looked for what other signs were you looking for as you walk through disturbance on the jungle floor um uh broken Twigs um uh discarded um um flots them from a people moving through like a bits of rice um the other sensors came into play smell um I mentioned earlier that Vietnamese like to smoke menthol cigarettes and and we often smelt that before any other sign came smell of wood smoke um uh sound of you know particularly chopping was often a giveaway of that we’re getting close

to something um or the the sing song voices which were quite high and and therefore traveled well high frequency and travel well so and the hairs on the back of the neck too I must admit you you do sometimes and sometimes they let me down sometimes the hairs on the back of neck stood up and there was nothing there but I’d rather listen to those than that not and make a mistake um as far as sounds concerned I mean it’s it’s wrong to suggest the jungle is silent it’s surprisingly quiet um and in fact when it’s noisy is when it’s safe

uh it’s when the jungle goes quiet that the hair stand up um but yeah there’s a bit of bird noise there’s not much animal noise um and uh you don’t get much wind you know rustling leaves and that sort of thing so it’s a surprisingly particularly tertiary jungle and the lights dappled um it’s surprisingly quiet place when you say Disturbed twigs and that kind of thing with a particular sort of markings that the the VC or the NBA would use to to Mark the jungle for themselves they really moved in the jungle they mostly always moved on

tracks um in fact I can’t remember bumping any in the jungle at all but the trouble is if you’re in the jungle and then there’s a track 20 M to your front and you can’t see the track then what you’re looking for is movement as they moved along there um so no they uh but they did leave markers um they leave stones on the side of tracks in a certain pattern indicating um direction of their movement or how far ahead the next um staging post is they use signal shot shots a lot um to communicate to each other um so yeah they they use

messages of that sort um but in the areas in which we operated they felt reasonably secure particularly in the early part of my tour um and so they were pretty switched off and they were quite LAX about making noise and and being um less tactical than we were um how good were your Maps what did you know about where tracks were or what sort of features were noted on them the the maps were excellent um and uh I’ve shown you some um we had not only the survey Maps but we had Pio Maps which is basically an aerial photograph overlaid

with the topographical features and so you could almost identify individual trees on those Maps however um the overlay of the topographical features were from the old French days so uh the roads that were in existence then probably weren’t when we were there and the tracks that carved their way through the jungle that the VC used were not but we we um one of the things we did was to identify those tracks and and over a period of years you could see from various Patrol reports where one might finish and another might start and

you can marry the two up so from past intelligence we had some idea about where the major tracks were but what we were looking for were the new ones um the ones that nobody knew about and were unmarked because that’s where Charlie was likely to be um how just you’re moving very slowly how far would you say move in a day it would vary as I said between 300 M um in some cases um up to, 1500 MERS in others depends on the country depends on enemy activity and depends on um the particular courage level of the Scout at

the time when you wanted to stop yeah what would you do um I would just stop um and what would happen is the patrol Commander would move up to me or if I want need to come up I turn around and signaling forward um and uh but I wouldn’t stop unless I was uncertain of something um it was the patrol commander who called to stop for a break or something or other like that and what he’d usually do is just just a little flick of the fingers like that I’d hear that and I’d turn around and he’d go indicating time for smoko not that we

did smoke um in those circumstances so um we did smoke sometimes but only when we’re feeling you know nice and safe um um but if I stopped then i’ I’d have stopped for a reason I’ve seen something I’m unsure of something I’m not sure which direction in which case I can communicate with the patrol commander and go and he’ll give me a direction um or I could ask him to come forward so I could whisper in his ear um or I could point out something that I’ve seen and the most uh common sign would be that I’ve I’ve propped because I can see

through the jungle a track in which case I’d go back and go indicating to him a track and then I go down on one knee and he’d come forward and have a look himself after telling the people behind what what I’ve seen it do seem pretty conversent in this sign language can you can you give us any any more of it like how much of it can you still tell us a lot of it was made up um was pretty common within you know pretty common use within the regiment but it wasn’t strictly you know fuel craft fuel signs it was what we

figured out would work in the circumstances um uh actually well you know the other two big ones um um but yeah the most common one was you know come forward or which direction do I go or or there’s a track ahead um or I do that if I smell something um you know it’s just natural stuff what were the implications of a thumbs up or thumbs down uh thumbs down was that um I um had seen and identified enemy um that’s um certain uh thumbs up wise all clear it’s okay if I wasn’t certain that it was enemy but I’d seen something and I was

concerned about it I’d go you know give the maybe sign we’ll come back to what happened when you saw enemy in a moment but just when you did stop for a break what would you do then um we’d go around into all around protection we’d move off our line of March so we’d move um to the left or right 10 or 15 M uh remove the pack and usually sit on them or face outwards and if we were smoking we’d have a smoke if we were going to brew up we’d Brew up but always with all five sets of eyes outside um and the patrol Commander

would use that opportunity just to move around the other four of us and just say everything you know everything okay and um we’re going to continue in this direction we should hit a Creek in 100 meters you know just keep everybody up to speed with what’s happening would you be able to light a fire how did you brew up uh no only let fire at night time and then or for the evening meal but it was during daylight um um to cook meal but if we’re going to have a hot Brew which we did at at Park time at lunchtime used a hexamine stove

which is you know a little firelighter type thing and you had a metal cup sat around a water bottle and you brewed up in that could you take food with you to eat on patrol or was that against the rules oh you take anything you like if you could carry it you could take it um uh but generally speaking you tried to lighten the lad as much and normal Day meal for us would be um dry biscuits and a and a brew of coffee with condensed milk in the morning um you know you put lots of sweet and condensed milk into it lots of energy um lunchtime would be um

biscuits and cheese or something you didn’t have to cook but you might Brew up again just on the hexamine stove and the evening meal was usually a half do hydrated food pack spaghetti and meatballs or cream fish or um um um was the other one chili Conan and you they were quite they’re okay you mentioned that meal would happen in daylight was that part of the night harboring you mentioned before yes you would eat um so that there was no chance of the um hexamine stove being seen in in the Gathering Gloom what would you do with any scraps

or rubbish you had take out with us you had a part in your um in your pack where you would uh put it into what was usually a sort of plasticized um canvas bag that the lurt packs came into and you just jammed all your rubbish and then we didn’t take tins usually um maybe for the first meal of the day um of the first day just just too heavy um so everything you took was very lightweight what about toilet trees I mean going to the toilet um you uh each of the uh um Russian packs had a little fold of toilet paper um SS for that was

that um uh you would indicate to the rest of the patrol who would be in the in the Lup all facing outwards and you you’d hold up the toilet paper and your knife and they knew exactly what you’re doing you’re going out to dig a hole for a um and then two would sort of face inwards out towards where you were going so you under the cover of two guns um the whole time you out the front and you’d walk out in front of them 10 m dig a hole drop your deck in the hole um to the fast Amusement sometimes of those behind because the consistency was

um variable um um clean yourself up and come back in and having buried it all that’s a something that makes a noise smells all those things about before try to avoid that if it was all possible yeah what happened then on patrol when you saw something thing and and you gave that signal contact um well it wouldn’t be a contact if IID just seen something um and I gave an enemy sign I’d make sure trol Commander got the enemy sign and he’d send it straight back down um and everybody would go down on one knee and watch their Arc and

Patrol Commander would slowly come forward to me and he’d ask me what I’d seen and and I might say 3 VC walking along the track that direction um and then we make a decision about what we’re going to do were we going to go have a look at the track um where are we going to withdraw you know what we going to do then that’s different from a contact contacts when you actually start shooting at each other well if you identified that there was somebody there what would you aim to do then um make sure they didn’t know I was there rule

one until we decided what we were going to do and if we were going to initiate an attack um then we wanted it to be at our timing and in our place um so I’d make sure the rest of the patrol knew that there was enemy to the front um and I’d get the patrol commanded to sneak very slowly forward and I’d give him a briefing usually half whispered half sign signal about what I’d seen and what I thought was going down what was happening they were walking away describe them if I could you know if they’re Regional Force if they’re NVA if

they were switched on or if they were Switched Off they were carrying loads um if they had um women or children with them try and give him a sit rep of just what it was I’d asse because quite possibly he hasn’t I’m six or seven meters in front of him um and uh he would then make a call about what we’re going to do and in that typical situation if I’d seen people moving along a track we’d decided to put an AP in on on the track watch it for a while just see how many we could see through and what sort of people they were so

we’d moved to an area that was perhaps more dense than we were and we’d move an OP forward that could see the track and behind them maybe 10 met we’d have two up and three back um and we just watched the track for a few days see what we could see and what we could learn and from out of that might come a decision to to Ambush that track in the last few days of the patrol um or the decision might be no there’s too many for us to knock over let’s tell uh our headquarters and they might want to get a company in to do it or they might just

air strike a camp or make that call themselves all that crucial information is it has to be given pretty quickly but also pretty silently how how did you do that oh just exactly the way I said a combination of of hand signs and and Whispering um you know I might say me track that way not speaking and then I might say NVA um and instantly the patrol commanders got a picture of exactly what that was these were NVA they were well equipped um they were uniformed they would have been moving tactically um and they’ve just passed to the from the

right to the left on this track and moving away that’s at that stage that’s what he does tonight who were you most sort of fearful of coming across NVA they were um they were very formidable opponents um they had very good contract rules uh they were committed they were Brave um well equipped well trained um they were um they were good soldiers in the area you were operating at the time were they the most likely people to come across in the latter stage of mature yeah certainly in the last 6 months because we started to move into the mayos which

was a a real base camp um for two four regiment um and U yeah most often that that would be who we would bump um in the first part now when we’re operating more within f um down in the long green up along the Firestone Trail up in the northwest of the province Regional Force generally were there any sort of Civilian people using these tracks at the time women children or um well there are three fire zones and any women and children we saw were um were part of an enemy formation um and they didn’t make any distinction

in the combatants um indeed I I came to within um a hair pull um on that close wcky of a camp that I was talking to Michael about um when Johnny jul and I were were pushing into the camp a young fellow who wouldn’t have been very hard to tell with Vietnamese but I suspect 12 or 133 um with an M1 carbine slung over the shoulder so certainly a combatant but a kid absolute kid and he was hurting three or four water buffalo along across the front of us uh and I was about I don’t know maybe 3 m from him uh and and

I just propped um and uh we had very good camouflage we’re against the the background of the Jungle he had no idea where were there so I was reasonably confident I’d get away nevertheless I lined him up um and I was carrying the SLR automatic um and one of the water buffalo got about opposite where I was and and stopped and turned its head and looked at me and I took up the first pressure on the trigger to Bow this kit over um but he just flicked it on the bum and and kept it moving and I didn’t have to take up that second

pressure uh and that’s one of my most enduring memories of all the memories that come back to me that one is how close I came to boiling over a bloody 13-year-old does that give you pause to think about war in general that memory no no that was a particular the Vietnam or was a particular situation the combatants were of both genders and of all ages um it was the it was and I you know not boating myself up about the facts of the matter um it’s just that that image comes unbidden to me every now and again um and uh uh pretty

terrible thing really when you’re thinking about and he might not even been 13 you know he might have been 11 or something or rather and uh um three rounds of 762 2800 F a second does terrible things to the human body particularly one as frail as that terrible way to die um we we’ll come back to more concrete examples I’m not going to miss that but I want to go back to the general patroling questions you’re talking about obviously that as that example brings up you were very very well drilled about what to do in this situation was it more

important to keep silent or to if you had the chance to to knock off some enemy and we only wanted to pull the fight on where and when we wanted to pull it on um so in those circumstances we didn’t want them to know that we were Wrecking our camp so I didn’t want to shoot him um because immediately I’d done that we would have had a contact um we had the patrol split we would have have to pull it together and get out of there uh and probably um under some form of pursuit so no I didn’t want to pull that fight

on at all I was very glad he flicked the buffalo on the bum and kept going but it but as I explained earlier what we subsequently did was moved about 600 M down the track that led into this camp we put an ambish in on that and and that’s when we chose the fight and that’s when we bow them over if a contact was pulled for whatever reason were there drills about what to do then oh yeah absolutely and now we practice them constantly rehearsed them usually before every Patrol we’ go down onto the range and we’d Li fire um a full contact

front contact left contact right Ambush we go through a whole rehearsal a whole day’s rehearsal of just what exactly we would do so that the the uh reaction was automatic you didn’t have to think too much about it um and in in that circumstance uh if that was a contact front um I would let fly with bloody everything I had um and make it sound as noisy as I could Patrol Commander would get up beside me and let fly as well rest of the patrol members would group on us but staggered back behind continue pouring Firepower into

the front um and then when I my first 30 round mag was exhausted I change mags and then skidadle back through the the rest of the patrol move back 20 M behind them prop turn and cover and then the rest of the patrol would singly come back under the cover of the guns that had already come back behind them and we’d break contact or attempt to break contact in that way but continuing to pour all the Firepower we could muster in there and usually after the first movement we’d start chucking M26 or white Foss Charlie hated white fos white

phosphorus grenades um and that would certainly discouraged Pursuit and as soon as we could break contact and break visual contact and and the firefight we’d go absolutely silent and move away as quickly as we could on an opposite bearing try and break the contact all together so fighting Retreat basically correct yep okay but white phosphorus grov what happened when you set one of those off um it was a fragmentation grenade so it actually you know sprayed shrapnel everywhere but what it also sprayed was little bits of burning

phosphorus which you can’t extinguish water won’t put it out nothing won’t put it out and sticks to the skin and it’ll just burn straight through the skin and the only way to get it off is to flick it off with something or other it’s a shocking burn did you have to set those off in in combat very often well we chose to uh because of their deterrent effect um we’re talking about the drill when you made contact what was the drill if someone was down if someone had been shot or injured in some way um individual patrols had individual

views about about that um uh first of all the decision had to be made about whether or not uh you could move forward and retrieve them um uh and that when that did occur on the few occasions that did occur to us um never occurred to me um that’s what happened people went forward and and pulled them back um Sops thereafter were that that man should be left should be hidden um and the rest of the patrol should Escape break contact and then come back and get them if that was possible but most patrols had a an internal rule um that was you wouldn’t

leave a man um dead or wounded and that you would get them out um and that was certainly the rule within the patrols I operated in so if in that eventuality um that somebody did go down uh the rest of the patrol would do whatever it took um to get them out there’s a certain amount of improvising left open there there were there were Sops that we followed um but individual patrols modified them to suit themselves and to what um there were no hard and fast rules I mean nobody slapped you on the wrist if you didn’t do exactly as the

book said um you just you made it work in the best Australian Army tradition really find out something that works and and and use that whose call was that the commander of the patrol Patrol Commander yeah he knew what he was comfortable with and uh if you were doing something that he wasn’t comfortable with he’d let you know equally if the patrol Commander was doing something that I wasn’t comfortable with it was well within the realms for me to let him know um the other drills or Sops that you would have used often were ambushes

what was the standard Ambush procedure um generally we use Claymore ambushes um though a lot more effective than rifle ambushes although we did use one on one occasion um and that was because it was a bit of an improvised Affair but where we had the time to plan and Ambush we would use Claymore mines um we usually carried um five Claymores within the uh Patrol uh you put three in The Killing ground um and two one of the other end facing down the track that you’re ambushing um the uh killing party um was usually only um

two people then you had two on the flanks and one at the rear poor all 2 I see at the rear as usual um and using Claymores you didn’t need anymore in The Killing party you just hit the clacker and bang away it went then the two in the killing party would go forward um under cover of the other um two guns on the flanks um if it were safe to do so they would um uh dispatch um any about um there was any doubt of life left uh quick body search uh looking for documents um personal momentos because that could tell us where they came from

and how long they’ burn down here and Diaries particularly were useful um collect the weapons um and uh bug out were there different Ambush patterns for say a track or clearing or we only ever ambushed well I only ever ambushed to track um so it was pretty standard um because that’s mostly where was the only time he was in the jungle was if he was after us um there was a special a couple of special jobs at the regiment that the squadrons undertook um one was a a part of a cordin in search of an island U called longson Island uh one Patrol

found um a bridge um that had been recently built to carry wheeled vehicles and they went in and blew that up and then ambushed the track against anybody who might come to see what was going on um there was a tractor that was being used on the Firestone Trail and a patrol went in and and blew that up with a beehive charge and um so there were specially tasked offensive roles but they were the minority the majority was a standard Ricky Ambush going into an area find out where the bad guys are see how you can hurt them hurt them and then

get out um just for the archive aimore is a directional mine can you just describe that and how you carried them and stuff um yep um it is um U most people think mine’s ly in the Earth but a claymore is a um uh device hard to describe but it’s probably yay big I don’t know if that’ll come out in camera it’s slightly convex or concave depending on which side you’re looking at it it contains a whole bunch of ball bearings um uh embedded within an explosive uh which is triggered by um an electrical Detonator or de cord um and uh it’s designed to

cut a swaye through through um uh an area to its front in a 30° Arc so if you put three um side by side you could usually cover a killing ground um of around about 20 to 30 m um long depending on how far back you could get them they were a devastating weapon and um if um once they were fired um uh the the damage to the people on the other end was uh quite extreme um however they did have a drawback and that is they had a back Blaster um and you had to be careful not to be behind them when you fired them and often you’d tie them on the trees

with a um bit of wire Carri particularly for that purpose and and not a patrol I was on but I do remember one Patrol that did exactly that um sprung the Ambush the tree was a old rotten tree a limb fell off it and fell on one of the patrol members and broke his leg how were they detonated um electrically you had a little thing called a clacker which was um thing about the size of a cigarette packet with a handle on it and you hooked up the wires to it and into the debt in the uh in the Claymore and squeezed the tip

and that fired them and you hooked them up in in um parallel so that one squ would fire all of them simultaneously the ones on the flank you didn’t fire straight away just in case you needed them and they were fired by the flank protection on either side um but once the decision had made been made we’d done the body search grab the weapons were getting out then those climers would be fired as well and we just out of there were the clackers reliable did you have any problems with them no never had a misfire never would they be impervious to water

or any kind of oh you looked after them um carried them wrapped in plastic with some duct tape um sealing them and only broke them out when you um when you were setting up your Ambush there weren’t a weapon you could use in in in a running defense um but when you had the time to set them up yeah they’re a devastating weapon um you’ve mentioned phosphorous grenades what other non gun weapons where you M26 which is a normal fragmentation grenade um it’s a smooth skin thing it’s actually made up of stuff like bansa and uh on on detonation

that sprays these little lumps of Steel bands or um in an area um they made a big bang big Crump um and their lethal range was sort of 10 m radius sort of thing um their real value was their shock value um what we were really trying to do when we were trying to get out of a contact was to get the bad guys to get the heads down and uh when you got five automatic weapons going like f grenades M26 um they are inclined to put their heads down and that lets you break the contact what was the safety uh considerations with using

grenades um we used to carry them taped we weren’t um confident enough in just the pin mechanism um but you put a little tag on the tape and you could rip it off very quickly um so they were ready for firing um but uh I didn’t have any concerns about them going off and I slept on one you know two water bottles and an M26 was my pillar so I had my head on one every night when using them though did you need a certain amount of room to to to throw them uh well Chris under the circumstances um uh you you made made the best call

you C you could and and uh and it was a bit of fingers crossed as well I mean you obviously you wouldn’t throw one if you knew you had people to your front out people to the front but if you were the front and you were chucking one out yeah you hope it didn’t bounce off a low limb was there a certain U radius of the explosion you had to consider or yeah we we try and and keep you know 15 20 M back from and you could throw them that way easily um I mean like a little um cricket ball really you could you could chuck them rather than

bowling them um and yeah you could usually put them into the area that you wanted them to go how many seconds would the charge last one oh I think it was five and that was too long it should have been you know two or three really um course you didn’t like strictly speaking you should have let the handle go and hung on to them for one or two seconds before you bow them but uh that was a difficult thing to do under most of the circumstances so usually let the handle go Chuck them down there and it took far too long for the bloody things

to go off um the other thing I think you mentioned you’re finding a camp did you uncover bunkers in your patrols what was the do when you found one of those um well uh try and the first thing to do is to find out whether it was occupied or not and the first indication was usually that the Scout stepped into an area that was a fire lane um you know you’d be moving through um you know just jungle and you’d take one step forward and you’d stop and you’d look around and you’d say oh it’s a you know it’s a perfectly clear path and you just

stepped into a fire lane cited for a machine gun from a bunker that was usually the way you found out um and if the bunker was occupied it was followed fairly shortly thereafter by a burst of RPD fire um that never happened to me thankfully we never bumped um and um and occupied a bunker system um that we didn’t know about first uh but some people yeah did step into fire lanes and but I have stepped into a fire lane scouting in an unoccupied bunker system and had that sudden realization oh  um but unoccupied so was cool it’s

be incredibly difficult to resist the urge just to jump backwards or to run or um I I my my normal reaction is to kneel slowly when something like that happens and hope that movement won’t give it away our camouflage was very good um against the background conditions if you didn’t move people had a lot of trouble seeing you just a question out of order do those reactions stay with you today if you get a shock today do do you find your yourself uh falling back on on your SAS train um yeah I do um and in fact it

happened um only uh about 12 months after I got back from Vietnam um and yeah the the reaction of you know falling on the floor and all that sort of stuff’s not not what I did um what I did was to um to go back to old the old habit and that is to to freeze and then slowly see what was what was going on yeah yeah the idea of diving for the floor and covering your head didn’t enter the head um when you did find a bunker that well what how did you s that out um oh we talked to the patrol Commander about it in Sign Language um and he would

probably send me up on a on a um a bearing that would enable me to get close enough to see if there was anything going on in there um or to hear anything that might be going on the ones we did bump were unoccupied um and so we would move through the system through the bunker system map it out get the grid references you know draw a diagram of it see how many there were whether they were connected by fire Lanes um and communication pits see how many it could hold whether it been recently occupied gather all of that sort of data um and

the most common use of that was it’ll be targeted for a B52 strike at some time how complicated were these systems not very complicated they’re usually um circular um and um they had uh forward facing bunkers usually with Earth and overhead protection pretty well camouflaged fire Lanes cut um and behind those were um the second line of defense and control type bunkers uh usually pits dug between them so the enemy could move between the bunkers without exposing themselves and behind that some form of living area which is usually just shell

scrapes dug in the ground and some um some matted banana palms for uh water rainwater protection they were often booby trapped um I never come across any booby traps and we made no attempt to enter the bunkers themselves not our job um uh if um if somebody wanted to actually go and have a look at them they would take the engineers and the tunnel rats and and they could to go and do that we were not trained nor was it our job to go and have a look at them were there things you were on the lookout for outside the

bunkers terms of really just how many people it could contain uh and how recently have been occupied they’re the two big issues if you know you could tell from the sign if they’d been you know a company-sized group there 3 days ago you could tell that um and the Mosaic that you can build up from all those little bits of information from various sources including us enable the task force intelligence people to build up a picture of movement and who was going where and uh on the subject of booby traps when you set up a night Harbor

yourself would you set up claymor or any sort of perimeter defense no uh the only perimeter defense was we found the thickest bit of Bush we could find so anybody who tried to approach us would have to make noise and it’s Pitch Black in there too so also probably have to have some form of Light how did you get comfortable um you get used to um the sleeping conditions um uh the um and you never went into a deep you know rapid eye movement sleep anyway your always just a light sleep you’re only just a blink away from being awake and alert

and often during the night that’s exactly what happened you you know you oh what was that and you’d sit up and listen for 10 minutes um so Comfort wasn’t sort of high on the list of priorities really would you dig hip holes like they used do in the second La no no we just very very carefully move the the debris off the top of the earth and just move it to one side lie on that um and then in the morning just carefully move it all back again so by the time we left that L you couldn’t tell anyone to be there realistically on patrol how much sleep

would you get oh I don’t know four or five hours a night of space I’ve never counted it would tiredness pose problems yeah it did um uh but physical tiredness was the the biggest um burden and you’re carrying an immense load um and you had high degree of mental stress at the same time and the nervous energy was is pumping away um uh and I think probably the fact that you didn’t sleep deeply or all that much got pushed into the background of you know the high degree of mental alertness and and the sheer physical effort um of carrying that

load how does that constant mental alertness affect you after Patrol of any links it it didn’t affect me after individual patrols but the cumulative weight of doing that towards the end of the tour certainly added up um and I was a and everybody else was um in the last three months very very tired both mentally um and physically more prone to illness more prone to injury um and um also shorter tempered you know towards the end of a squadron tour the odd fight would break out in the Boozer which you wouldn’t have seen

six months ear so there was a cumulative weight of of tension and stress and physical tiredness that built up over that period so that the last three months um was U um the most difficult period and and that’s when the Squadron started to lose people for medical reasons or casually reasons at a far greater rate than they had in the first nine months 12 months was too long for SAS type operations should have been six months in my view you’ve um come to the end of your Patrol you’ve thrown smoke the chopp has arrived you’ve gotten onto it it starts

to rise up what’s that feeling like fantastic best feeling in the world well maybe not the best but it’s pretty good um yeah out of there and I particularly remember it on the last Patrol which was a hot extraction and when I got back into the chopper I yes your beauty it’s one of great Elation um big smiles all around all the patrol members are smiling at each other and uh we we usually carried because there was a lot of coughs we usually carried at least one water bottle of rum you’d pass that around and have a swig of rum and thumbs

up and all that sort of stuff particularly if it had been successful and you you done a good job um and then we would be flying direct to SAS Hill nadzab pad off there um going almost immediately have a debrief from the uh Squadron intelligence officer and and usually the to IAC as well um if there was a lot found that that information needed the patrol Commander go down to Task Force Headquarters and relay that directly with the AC um the rest of us uh would um start the process of getting cleaned up and getting ready for the next one um which

usually took until 4:30 when the booze are open and then you’d have a big drink was that a side effect of the mental stress you in the amount of sort of drinking you do while you’re in country um yeah I I suppose it was well at the time it was just relief and good fun um uh and camaraderie too because everybody else wanted to know how it went and and that sort of thing uh when you in Camp you had a thing called morning prayers which we’re talking about before which was basically a sitre on on what’s Happening you know what the

battalions are doing what the other patrols are doing who’s bumped somebody you know who’s been in contact um and and so there was always interest by the other members of the Squadron when you got back in after Patrol of how did it go you know what did you see what happened da da da uh and uh and yeah and and plenty of alcohol didn’t hurt either it very relaxing and but the the the big ones were usually only the night after we came in um at other occasions uh while we certainly like to drink it didn’t get to bin

stage um on the subject of camaraderie did you often take the same five people on a patrol more often than not and who for for you were those five people um I operated with three patrols uh MC Ruffin Johnny juel and Bluey parrington um I suppose uh mostly with um Johnny juel so as John was a patrol Commander I was a scout um Trevor Mckenzie was uh the Sig Teddy ruska was the medic and Ross mcallum was the 2ic uh still no all of them except for John who committed suicide about five six years ago now um was there a particular bond

between you because you’d been out on patrol together absolutely very very close Bond yeah and how how do you think that worked I mean what well you don’t get much closer to people um than sharing life and death experience um uh and that um um that’s a um you know it’s about as close as you can get to people really um and that’s a bond that um um is very rarely broken um you know I’m still U very good friends and very close to those people even though I might not see them sometimes years at a time um but it’s just a very

easy and and instant um feeling of rapping together it’s my my wife remarks on it all the time she says when she sees us um at SAS Association functions you know you just she stands back and watches and there’s just this easy melding of of of the groups of people um that has come from that that shared um and well life life changing lifethreatening experience um that was in three Squadron those bols You’ yes that was yep yeah two Squadron work with Mick Ruffin um I was Patrol um siging that um the uh Toc was oh dear name’s just gone right out

of my head um dear I dear I dear blue Kennedy was the medic um and B bad news Fred barlay alternated between Scout and 2ic um there was an episode with blue Kennedy where you both decided you’d go to church the next day was that in two Squadron yeah it was in two Squadron it was uh second patrol um tell us that story from the very beginning um what happened on your second patrol what was the objective and what were you set up out to do um it was a straight reconnaissance Patrol wasn’t Ricky Ambush just straight reconnaissance um

and uh um we went into the a place called long green which is sort of uh south east of NE down near the coast north of VTA and it’s this big long spit of primary jungle that sort of comes in uh from the sea um and there had been diesel engines heard up and down the cape um for quite a while and the thought was that um the bad guys were using the beaches there to land um uh supplies from the sea and they were being stored in the long green so there were there were two patrols tasked and we had our own separate AOS

area of operations um the two patrols went in together in two slicks and we Patrol for a little all together then split up and they went to theirs and we went to ours um uneventful um first day and second day third day which was New Year’s Day 1969 um I um uh I was Patrol Sig so I was well back in the patrol but um uh there was a an earn we went down in through a creek up the other side and on the other side there was an earn jar quite a large would probably hold six seven gallons with this black plastic droped over the top obviously a water

supply for something or other um and uh because we were moving obliquely the other guys didn’t see it and I went and pointed to Mick and we had a look at it and you know suddenly you know the the hackles go up and there’s there’s something around here so we became very cautious move forward found a bunker system but it was unoccupied moved through the camp um moved out the the other side um and into an area that was a bit clear and Fred barlay um saw a track called Mick Ruffin up to go and look at the track so I was now the

furthest forward of the three of us behind while they were looking at the track um four Regional force people call them VC uh were coming up the track and they were about to stumble on to to Mick and Fred um and I had no choice I had to shoot him couldn’t shout I mean that would have helped um them as much as as us um so blue Kennedy I bow them over um and uh Fred and Mick were going forward to um search the bodies and um up the track from the same direction come a whole bunch more I don’t know how many 15 20 or something or rather they were

very aggressive they they assaulted us um so we went into a you know break contract drill and we had to move back through the back through the camp to to do that to get away from them and they were very aggressive they actually charged us you know in assault formation we had to bowl a few more over there um and we moved back through the camp they were following us all the time and we were trying to get away from where we knew the camp was and get back into jungle but every the further sort of we moved away from where we knew the camp

was the more the camp there was it was huge um and it had some of it had these concrete the bunkers had concrete members for overhead protection it was a really big de um anyway we crossed the creek again and finally broke contact um um although we could hear him jabbering and moving to the east um I was a Sig so Mick told me to get our contact code word off and no encoding for that we just to contact code word which was Mel um Melville was mix wife name lovely lady um so I chucked an nfed antenna out and um punched in Mill about 15 times into the

m key closed the IO set up because they were starting to come up again um left the aerial we had a spare uh we bugged out of there again they followed up I suppose for about the next hour and uh but the message got through so Brian way the AC came over in a in a possum helicopter and uh and we Mick gave him a sit rep cuz I had the 25 set so I was standing right beside Mick when Mick gave him the sitre and um both Mick and I swear to this day that what Brian wde said was um uh Lup extraction tonight uh what Brian wde says he says

was um no extraction to night Lup there’s a huge difference between uh those two um anyway they closed the 25 setup um Mick identified an LZ that was to our north um because we thought we were getting out that night um and off we went um and we timed it uh now we couldn’t hear any more signs of followup so starting to feel okay about things you know baptism a fire fac it okay come through professionally um and uh probably chopp is already in the air to come and get us out um so we got to the l z that we’ Chosen and um we um moved um onto the

ear’s head because we believed that we’ hear Choppers believed they were for us in fact White had sent them to the other Patrol which was also in contact but because we’ broken our contact he sent them to the others that’s fair enough I’ve got no problem with that and that’s what he should have done um but we thought we were getting out um anyway moved out in the H said and there was this little dry sort of old Buffalo mud wallow which was maybe you know at its deepest a foot below the level of the rest of the ground but quite High

grass around it um and uh we piled into there an all round the fence and started to get ready with smoke and panel for the for the Choppers um and uh we um heard we’re there for I don’t know 20 minutes um starting to get later in the afternoon now and we heard stealthy movement through the grass towards us um and uh uh a uh one of the enemy stood up maybe 10 met away from us trying to orain himself look around see what was going on and that was sneaking up through the grass to come and get us anyway Fred ter

terrific shot Fred just shot him through the head with a single shot um and there were four or five behind and and they ran up and and blew Kennedy and Chuck M26 is at them um and that slowed some of them down um anyway they got back to the tree line and we’re thinking come on Choppers come on Choppers you know come and cuz they’ll have a a light fire te with them two gunships with them they can take these blacks out in the jungle and we can get out of here they were never coming um um then one of them climbed a tree

and started to so they could he could see down into our little depression and started to shoot down into us and MF fired some m79 at him and got a tree burst and bowled him over um then um the um they started a fire um into where we were but we were down behind the packs and you know it was mostly passing overhead frightening nevertheless you know there crack of passing arounds relatively close and that’s about when blue made the suggestion about going to church um and uh we kept up uh chucking M26 into the surrounding grass to

discourage another attempt at sneaking up on us and uh there was a big explosion just beyond the lip of this little dry mud wallow and mck Ruffin turned around and said Chuck those  M26 further out and we all looked at each other and we hadn’t chucked into any M26 and in fact what it was was incoming water so up to the north of the of this cleared area what looked like I don’t know 50 or 60 enemy had formed up um and they had a mortar plate and uh they had formed up in an assault line um and looked like intent

on assaulting us um and they were um firing small arms at us um so we shot back at them for a while and they didn’t get any closer and we were still hoping for the tropers to arrive and take these people out and and I was starting to get really worried cuz I was on the radio you know trying to call Albatross ler we had the Earth 10 beacons going uh course five against what looked like by then you know 60 odd plus with heavy weapons wasn’t real good odds particularly as we’re sitting out in the open um and uh this return of fire went on

for a little while and then they bought up um a tripod mounted um medium machine gun and started to get into us with real long pry accurate burst of that what what could you say of these these oh you see you see we have to stick your head up to make sure they weren’t getting any closer and you get off a few shots at them and and get the head back down again um but yeah you could see them lined up in the assault line they weren’t that far away maybe oh what would it have been a couple hundred met or less than that 150

M um and what did you have to take cover behind um well a little bit of low U dirt and our packs um and uh and by this stage ammunition starting to get to be a real concern too you know we’re down to second last or last magazines sort of stuff um and uh yeah it was uh it was not looking good so um but it was starting to get dark and we thought you know if it just gets light a little while get a little bit darker we can hold them off a little bit longer we can bug out of here under the under Dusk and we had to cover

probably 150 200 meters of open ground to to get to the nearest bit of jungle um anyway they must have had the same idea cuz they um sudden in inrease in in the lobbing of mortars and the firing of RPGs and long burst for this medium machine gun and the assault line started to to move forward and they sent a pins movement down either side you know five or 10 bles down either side to surround us and uh um we simply would not have survived had we stayed and in fact you know we’re lucky to have survived at that stage I should have

died that day um anyway uh Mick said right we’re out of here best of luck everybody drop the big packs just run um no attempt at fire and movement um but he told me to take my pack because it contained the 25 set and we were going to need that um if we got out so I lay back down onto the the pack was offs and it was so heavy that the only way I could get it on was to lay back down on it get the straps on and then roll myself forward um and uh while I was doing that the other stood up and a m around went off right on the lip of the um of the um

of that little depression bow Lemma um but they got up again we had two wi out of that motar round um but they got up again and we all set sail me bringing up the rear trying to carry the the radio um anyway M around went off behind me and bowled me off my feet um and and I stood up to keep running the the webbing on the pack failed and the pack fell off um the left weing pack fell off off my right shoulder and knocked my rifle out of my hand and and when I looked back the the back of the pack was was you know just shredded from the sh

from the motoran that went on behind me so very glad Mick Tom me to take that 25 set because I think it saved my life um anyway I grabbed the weapon and I um um fired um two rounds which was all was left in the rifle into the pack and kept running and and to this day I don’t know how five men covered 150 to 200 meters Under Fire from you know 50 plus enemy and not one gunshot wer you know it’s just just incredible um luck there was no skill about it we we just went for it anyway um the others reached um safely well

relatively safely bit of Shel warning um a fallen tree at the edge of the Jungle and they turned around and gave some supporting fire and and I joined them and and uh we got away with it got got into into the jungle and we moved very quickly and beneath the canopy it was pretty well dark by that stage so we broke contact and got away um just an Amazing Escape absolutely amazing Escape um we kept moving till pretty late um we shared around what ammo we had left and and that amounted to a couple of white fost grenades and half a

dozen 5.56 would G through hmer um and uh and we had no 25 set left the only radio coms we had were the little Earth T which you know had a voice range of about 100 met if that and the beacon um anyway uh very early in the morning um Brian way the AC came over and Poss him again Sue helicopter and uh um M um heard him and then saw him and got coms on the IR 10 and um although uh Mick could hear Brian Wade Brian Wade couldn’t hear Mick anyway Mick gave him instructions to make a right turn and directed it over

the top of us and Brian dropped us um Bandelier of 556 ammo with a little note that said move to an LZ um 400 meters to your North and we did that and slicks got us out and we got back um and we’re too late for breakfast buet yeah it was it was far from the standard sis um contact UM and far from the standard drill but patol worked pretty well together um work very well together um and it was only the you know we had that stash with them for 40 minutes you know just banging away at each other um and uh it was only you

know the patrols internal discipline and and firing discipline that um kept him at Bay really uh very close call that one when you look back at that entire experience You’ just um told us what was the most frightening moment I mean what what bit did you really think you might not make it um I didn’t think I’d i’ I’d survive the run to the Jungle I didn’t think I’d survive that I didn’t think any of us would really um but you know the odds were heavily stacked against five people making it I thought um I thought it would highly unlikely that

I’d make that particularly beinging the last one must have reminded you of your n mile runs [Laughter] at yeah I don’t think I moved um I would have liked to have moved as quickly then as I um did at swanborn but uh it was a very heavy load we were very tired um plenty of stress when you uh when that thought goes through your mind I might not make it is that is that a liberating thought in a way or is it frightening or you just don’t have time to think about it don’t have time to think about it it was actually afterwards that I thought about

it and thought thought that through at the time um things happen in sort of slow motion um so youve really got plenty of time to think about the actions um uh but it’s um it’s really only afterwards that you look back at it and think about it you you respond automatically you respond from your training you respond from desire to survive um it’s afterwards that you think back and think that one was close when you say things happen in slow motion what do you mean by that I seem to have a lot more time in terms of thinking time than I should

have had um thoughts were quite clear and and um and and the logic flow was um was good um and I was quite rational in in all of that and in the circumstances it seemed to me that I shouldn’t have had time to do all of that um so I had a lot of time in terms of if you measured it in brain time um but the actual event you know events were happening in seconds it was just a strange sensation so you came back after your first Patrol you’d seen nothing after your second patrol you you’d shot two men you’d been blown up

by mortars how did that change your experience of what you were doing in Vietnam um it made me more um aware of uh certainly made me more aware of of how dangerous it was what we were doing um and I suppose um therefore I became more alert than had been on the first Patrol um but that’s about the extent of it uh and we I never ever had another contact as bad as that um every other contact I had not that there was all that many I don’t know four or five or something or other um we were on the front foot we initiated um and we got

got away relatively clean only one other one where it was you know a little bit iffy but nowwhere near as iffy as that one um so getting the bad one over early in the piece was probably a good although you didn’t know it would be your last bad one you must have thought about what have I got myself in for no I knew that that was an unusual circumstance um I was able to rationalize that yeah I I didn’t think that those circumstances could arise again but yeah it made me more cautious made me more aware of that things could

turn horribly wrong really relatively quickly upon reflection of of this second patrol and what happened what should you have done as you reflect back on it uh I I think we um uh we carried it off um all correctly it was far from standard um and we did improvise a solution I I guess if there was one thing all of us would have changed it would have been that we would not have moved onto the lzed as soon as we did we would have waited until we had comms with um Albatross um however you know we believe they’re in the air already on the way so

um I really can’t you know take issue with the decision to move on to the LZ and any one of us could have said hey stop you know maybe we shouldn’t be doing this but in retrospect that’s probably the the only thing I would have changed about it everything else um um in terms of the patrols cohesiveness its discipline in terms of returning fire ITS Tactical um uh movements so that was all good those who got wounded what what were their wounds uh strael WS um remained on duty got stitched up down at the RP and and uh couple of days off and

fine and how did the events of uh this the second patrol affect the next Patrol you’d go on um it made me U more aware that that um that it was a bloody dangerous thing we were doing and that it could go wrong um and after the first Patrol I didn’t have that that feeling at all um you know rather one of this this is a cakewalk U certainly after the second one um it was a very strong realization that this was not a game for mugs and and you really had to be switched on 100% of the time and and that’s certainly how I played the game

thereafter but thereafter I never again had a situation anywhere near as dire as that if there though was tensions amongst relationships between people for the third Patrol in that respect was there only affect him there no not at all um no that that Patrol the members of that Patrol were and remain very close mck honer was the 2ic um and he’s the only one that I we don’t have contact with in your D brief what could you say or what did you share about the circumstances and what went on the decisions made um I uh I didn’t attend

the formal debrief but we talked about it in the Boozer afterwards um and uh uh we were comfortable with the decisions we made and the actions we took um other than as I say I think all of us uh would would would think that maybe the move onto the LZ was a bit premature uh in respect to nine Squadron that that obviously came to pick you up and was picking up the other Patrol that was out at the time what was the reason that they couldn’t come back immediately and get you um they uh we were um quite a long way out by the time they got that

Patrol back um uh and then refueled and then come back out again we’ have been after dark I’ve got nothing but good things to say about nin Squadron they were simply magnificent well just in respect to nine Squadron could you give us why why did you believe they were so good and magnificent Oh Well they um they operated under very tight Sops um that were imposed upon them um and yet would flout them if necessary to extract an sas Patrol um uh I aware of one occasion when a set of fuy rotor blades were destroyed um getting a patrol out

because the only way that they could get the chopper in was to chop up some trees and on the way down I mean not heavy big heavy stuff but light stuff um and for and if if you can imagine um a huey with four crewman on board two pilots and two Gunnies um sitting above the jungle canopy for five and six minutes at a time winching a patrol up under Fire I mean that takes incredible courage um and puts themselves and their helicopter at Great risk they did it and they were um they would go to um almost any extreme to get us out of the

mind you there pretty healthy rivalry between us too in what respect oh we um on the roof of um the O Boza we wrote nine Squadron sucks so that as the helicopters took off from nadzab they’d all see it when day after that went up they came back with flour bombs and bomb bombed the whole C with these bags of flour so was it’s all good fun and League pulling and that sort of stuff um you’ve spoken a couple times of how good your camouflage was could you talk us through the camouflage and what you um we used um uh American seal

camouflage gear um it was well suited better suited than the tiger suits that which were a stripy sort of um and uh all um uncovered skin uh was was covered with a thick camouflage cream in in blacks and greens and Browns that was uh face back of the neck throat throat was covered with a sweat rag um all of our kit uh was mled um and the shape was deliberately broken so it wasn’t a regular shape um we um wore head gear that tended to break up the shape of a head um and we leared to be absolutely still um for a long period of

time um should any pair of eyes be looking and trying to find us um didn’t happen to me but there are a number of stories of um of Al black being pissed on by people who didn’t see him right there in front of them in respect to Ambush once you’ve actually ambushed um you know a few fellas or Patrol or whatever it was what did you do upon withdrawal if you weren’t under attack did you return to a particular spot or what did you do yeah we we had an RV that was probably about 100 meters behind the Ambush site just

in case something went wrong in the Ambush and that’s where we’d all go back to and we already had normally in the Ambush the the um Sig would have the set broken out ready to send the contact word so once the Ambush was triggered he’d send the contact word we’d already arranged uh extraction once that contact word was received um and so and we’d have a LZ already designated um and we’d um move to the LZ and wait um the nin Squadron Choppers to come and get us if we weren’t staying in later in the tour sometimes we’d spring an ambush and then

we’d withdraw from that get a resupply of clim wars and then set another one and that happened more and more towards the end of the tour as helicopter ARS got shorter and shorter and there was um a desire to get the the most value out of the cost of inserting an sas Patrol and by doing two ambushes obviously you get um a lot more value out of it than one also just on patrols how long did they they go for depended um on the season and on the job and and on we started at five or six days uh but increasingly again because of the

shortage of helicopter hours and a desire to get value for the money that insertions cost we started to stay in longer and longer and the longest job I did was 14 days um and that required a resupply at about day I think from memory um and they were very innovating by the time you’d finished 14 days of that you were bugged in every every way you mentioned off camera which we’ll just put on but uh Underpants and socks what was the deal with that in respect of P chol well I didn’t wear any underwear at all it was pointless it

rotted off within a very short time um and uh um as we didn’t remove our boots um and we used American jungle boots which which which are ventilated so water can get in as well as get out um the when you remove the boots at the end of the patrol you usually half the socks came off with the boot and the other half you sort of peeled off in pieces um so yeah you didn’t have to worry about underwear out there and uh and you went through lots of socks animals in the jungle I mean what would give you problems ants or what’s the an

yeah yeah green ants um I suppose my most vivid memory was uh Patrol towards the end which with blue parrington yeah it was with blue I think u i was scouting um and uh lady snake stood up in front of me and uh king cobra fanned out the hood and I swear to this day it was looking me in the eye so I don’t know how long bloody thing must have been probably exaggerating it in my memory now but yeah scared me cuz nothing you could do you know it looked at me and I looked at it and wishing it to go away and the patrol commanders

behind going you know um but and uh but it slithered away and that was fine and we had bamboo snakes living in in the in the lines in in New D was a big deal um green green ants yeah they stung um I do recall one occasion when I no underwear and I had a rip in the can gear just in the groin and brush past a tree with green ants on it and rest of the patrol didn’t know what I was doing rolling around on the ground with the sweat rag stuffed in my mouth um monkeys uh they were a bit cheeky um bit aggressive too uh didn’t

like you being in their territory bit inquisitive you know come and have a look at you and occasionally throw things at you um and one other occasion um we were was Johnny juel we were earli peed near the banks of the S Rai um and uh about halfway through the night there’s this noise you know through the scrub and and a slow steady tread everybody’s awaken it full full alert and listening listening trying to figure out what this is and there was this terrible stench ah it was just foul it was death incarnate

the stench uh it was a crocodile that’s what it was crocodile was walking walked all the way around us and and then went off back down to the river again um didn’t sleep a lot after that did come near us but that’s what it was fasinating um the weather conditions the rain through the dry season what effects did that actually have on you as when patrolling uh it made a number of differences uh wet season was much easier uh because you could move much more quietly and you didn’t have to carry as much water uh dry season was

much harder you carried lots of water um movement stealthy movement was more difficult Twigs more likely to Break um there was perhaps a bit less foliage as well so you weren’t didn’t have quite the same amount of cover um and uh also any vehicle movement um was um followed by this sixmile long plume of dust so um if we’re being inserted by apcs which occasionally happened you know anybody sitting on a high op could follow the track of these things you know all the way although we had a technique for getting out of the apcs without anybody

actually seeing us what was that Technique we stayed covered up inside the APC the hallway um only Patrol Commander had his head out the top and he didn’t have his Camp paint on and he just had an ordinary green drill shirt on um and we usually went out in 3 apcs um and uh they would get into um a habit of pushing off into the jungle and coming back out again while the other two covered and this would go on for an hour and on um about halfway through all of that while it was off in the jungle it dro the back ramp

and we just pile out and they lift the back ramp and reappear again so to an outward Observer they would not be aware that we we got out excellent you’ve spoken a little bit of once you got back from patrols you know debrief going to the Boozer y time off though what did you do when your your time off um in between patrols uh got your kit ready um basically um practiced drills there wasn’t all that long between patrols perhaps a week if you’re lucky um so by the time you got yourself cleaned up from one um and um organized

for the next um the time went pretty quickly um recreationally um we had an arrangement with nine Squadron um where if the boss agreed we we could go down and spend a night in vau so we’ go down on the first light Chopper one morning and come back on the first light Chopper the next morning and and I got down to vtown I got to do that probably half a dozen times I suppose then I had um had a week at the RNC Center at VT and I had RNR in Hong Kong um so there were there were breaks in all of that where you could

you know it wasn’t um full on 100% of the time v tower was only 24 hours but you crammed a lot in into that 24 hours what sort of things would you do in that 24 hours uh you get a proper haircut um and uh um you drink a lot um get in the beach um not much of a beach and not much of surf but get into the beach um then you’d have a night out on the town um usually ending up um uh with some um purchased Baro what was the importance to you of getting the haircut and having the shave and being clean After all you’ve done

yeah it was a bit of a humanizing thing um uh it it was yeah a bit of a release I suppose from from the the stricture of um beinging on patrol or just beinging back or just getting ready to go or beinging again because there was nothing else that’s what you did um and so it was a real a real break from that from that process and and a real release too and yeah we let the hair down big time the relationship between when particularly in vau the SAS fellas and and the guys in the regular army what was that like oh it was fine we were not

identifiable as SAS because we we all wore civies in V the Americans wore uniform the Australians all wore civies um so there was no um overt identification um and we tended to hang around together anyway we’d go down in a group and we tended to stick to ourselves um not through any sense of elitism or or just we were mates and we’re only there for 24 hours and we’re about having a good time not making new friends were there any precautions that you wouldn’t come in contact with sort of any enemy spies around vtw oh well

the story was that the enemy used vau as an R RNC Center as well so they tended to try and keep any violence in the town to a minimum um there was a a bit of a you know as a the usual Flom and jets of human society in any frontier military town uh pick pockets and thieves and money changers of gyia and uh um but you soon learned to recognize them um but it was possible um to avoid all of that we had a favorite bar called the Mimi bar it was supposed to be the Miami bar but when they got the sign over from the

states the a didn’t work so it became the mie bar um that was a favorite bar for for us uh and uh generally we that’s where we’d gather um uh we didn’t you know do the big tour of the street of bars the pub crawl sort of thing we just sit quietly and chat and drink away and and flirt with the girls and um Pub brawls and those sorts of things did they occur while you were visiting VT I was only involved in one not our fault never is is it really um but I I was involved in one which involved a couple of American Sailors da

Fisher and Johnny cousins um and uh and then the white mice the the um Security Police the Vietnamese Security Police um who arrived um sort of at the end of the melee when the American Sailors were hadn’t done too well and and uh had grabbed the oday of a passing Vietnamese lady a proper lady and she screamed and the white mice came out of nowhere and they call the American MPS and um these two great big black Fells who carrying CT 45 pistols that looked like water pistols in their hands and they drew them and they cocked them and

cuz they saw their compatriots lying in the gutter and here’s these fles dressed in civies that have obviously just done them over so I can understand why they were bit concerned and they found out where Aussies and they call the Aussie MPS and the Meads drive us around the block tipped us out the back and to us to keep out of trouble uh that was about the extent of it um what what did you think and what did the sess think of the Americans we saw um we saw so little of them um and it’s so easy to make a generalization as a result um but I um

from what I saw um there were about three groups they had this huge logistic rump it was absolutely massive when you flew into V and the tropper I mean there were just square miles of warehouses filled the brim with the materials of making war and making War comfortable too um and thousands of people working in those compounds counting blankets and running pxs and whatever else they did so the the actual ratio of of the logistic rump to to the grunt walking the woods was um there was a huge amount of people behind so that was sort of one

group and if you go to the combat arms I think there were two groups in that there was a group that didn’t want to be there just didn’t want to be there and would do whatever they could avoid do to avoid situations where um they had to go and walk the weeds and if they did walk the weeds they would avoid situations where um they’ get into what they called a firefight however I thought they were the minority um I thought that the majority of the combat arms of the Americans um were uh quite professional um they were well trained certainly very

well equipped and they were prepared uh to fight um uh I thought generally up to um uh Battalion perhaps regiment level they were well-led uh their officers were well trained and they were aggressive um but they cared for their men beyond that once you got into staff positions I’ve got some doubts about the quality of their leadership but certainly at a field level I thought the leadership was good um I think the problem they had was that they were using entirely the wrong tactics or endured strategy for winning

that war even though they were never really militarily defeated anyway they went very close in t68 but but effectively if if the political will had been in place after t68 that war could have been won by the end of’ 68 but the political will dissipated with the images that were seen of tet on TV did you think that the the war could have been one I mean when you were there did you think you were going to win okay that they’re two different questions could it have been one yes absolutely could have been one by the end of ‘ 68

um with with determination um and and the will the political will um but uh it wasn’t um did I um did I think as I went through that it would be one I came to the realization probably about halfway through the tour that no it wouldn’t be one um and that what we were doing was pretty much a waste um uh except for the value that it gave to the US Australian Alliance um we were not going to be able to change the ultimate lot of the Vietnamese people and I came to that view perhaps 7even eight months in mature did that affect your morale or

the morale of others that may have come to that decision no I didn’t um because uh you professional you did the job professionally um Win Lose or Draw that was what you were going to do uh I was sad about the waste um uh but it certainly didn’t change the way I responded um um or soldiered no not at all what changed the way what changed um me about the way I soldiered was was um basically fatigue um the last three months um were very tough very tough it was hard to um to master um all that you needed um to do the job well I did but it was very

hard you shared with Chris about towards the end of the tour you know sickness would start to come on I mean what happened to you physically did you start to get sick and yep yeah um um I had respiratory trouble I had to be medac um off for patrol once winched out um and that’s an absolute noo you avoid do anything to avoid that because you put the other four in Jeopardy cuz you just put a big signature above where where they are but um Char Commander sent me out cuz it just couldn’t stop coughing and and that’s even worse you know

hacking your way through the jungle while you’re supposed to be being stealy one trivial question but in respect to when you are sleeping did anyone snore no no there was a few Snuffles and but if somebody snored there was a very quick hand that went out and went we all slip very closely together um usually with our feet facing inwards um so that if you rolled over you were then facing out which is where you wanted to be but also you could tap somebody on the foot so that was a normal normally stepped in a five star

pattern with all with the foot into the center and again just coming back to the sleeping was there sort of stand too at dawn what was the situation oh yeah somebody was always awake just before first light um and uh um they would gently wake the others so that um we would be um off the ground our packs packed um and the ground um recovered by the time um first light broke so we were we were ready to go at first light patrols any other patrols which stand out in your mind has been quite interesting or significant um well well other than that

one where I’ve got that um enduring image of the kid um suppose uh when was John JW’s Patrol we discovered a pretty new track south of Courtney rubber um and we put an op on it and we counted over 800 through in three days that sort of got the eyeballs popping a little bit um we subsequently went back in with a three Patrol um fighting Patrol and ambushed that track but the numbers were so great that even with 15 if we had um one Patrol each on flank protection and five in The Killing group and if we had I think can’t remember the number of

clim Wars we had but it would have been at least 15 one each we couldn’t cover the killing ground the the groups were too large um to cover the killing ground um so we couldn’t uh have a go at them on the in the mornings when they were all moving through but in the afternoons the guide groups were coming back and they were in groups of five or six so yeah we bow be bowled those over but what was um interesting or sticks in my mind about that was the numbers they were very large numbers um apparently it was 274

that had attacked some place near saon and was moving back to the May Taos for south of the Courtney Rubber and we just uh by happen stance uh found them um others um relatively routine um uh I can’t really think of me there were a number of other contacts not that many mostly ambushes um after that which we initiated and only when we wanted to and uh they went as um as expected we did do a job in the new T Vis once where we got chased around for two days but a shot wasn’t fired um despite the fact it was a frightening time but no shots

fired uh so it was pretty much you know it was pretty much normal SAS patrolling after that that second one so in particular particular this one being chased around for a couple of days what happened from the beginning there um we got inserted in apcs on that job um and the new TV are quite a steep and densely forested Mountain feature uh which you can see from newat so it’s quite close um but it’s cut by deep ravines and and it’s not um it’s not easy to move in the direction in which you want you’ve got to move with the country you can’t move

against it um and we were pushing up into there to see if it had been reoccupied after the last B52 strikes or the last sweep or something right I can’t remember what it was um and we stopped for lunch did our normal hook and we got followed our Trail was being followed through the jungle um by a group of about six enemy um and uh we got out of there and uh we spent another two days and two nights uh where they were continually following us we’d see them um they mustn’t have ever seen us because they never fired upon us

but they just followed us and followed us and followed us and sometimes got this close enough for us to hear this for us to hear them talking um that’s quite nerve-wracking particularly as our means of of Escape were very very limited I mean you just couldn’t go anywhere you had to follow the line of The Ridges once you got down into the Ravine you you were stuck you were boxed in um and so if they’ve been absolutely certain who we were and where we were they would have um they would have been able to put in a pretty good Ambush on

us but uh we got away with it um but it was 48 Hours of uh fairly high tension levels and and the reason you didn’t take them on is because you didn’t want to draw attention to or it was a it was a it was a wreck Patrol although they knew by now they figured out we were there uh but if we initiated a contact n we bow them all over anybody else on the new Tois would know we were there and and it was a difficult place to plan and escape from because of this linear nature of The Ridges and the and the Ravines um and so we just didn’t want to

have a fight in that place that’s that would have been a bad place to have a fight remember what I said you only pick the fights you can win earlier I I think you you talked about the M16 having jamming problems and those sorts of things it was less reliable yeah I’m not sure was there a story in respect to having a problem actually with your M16 out in the I never used an M16 in the field I always used an SLR um I do recall call an occasion um when uh we and it was on that Courtney rubber Plantation um when uh uh we blew

the Ambush and there were a number of survivors still alive would have died but still alive one of them had an RPD which is the the their equivalent of our M60 and despite the fact he was shredded from the waist down he he wanted to make a fight of it very bright man um and held us back from going onto the track to to search the other body um and I can’t remember who it was I can’t remember who it was now but the carrying M16 plugged this BL about three times in the chest still didn’t stop him and turned to me and said Mitch can you

B this BL over and I hit him three times with the SLR and he stopped so for that reason I always carried the SLR despite the fact it was much heavier and a bit more cumbersome in respect to all There are rules certain rules such as dum dum bullets and those sorts of things you’re not meant to to use did did you come across any infractions in respect to using those types of bullets or um no we used standard NATO issue ammunition which was Full Metal Jacket um and uh it was unnecessary to I’d heard some stories of people filing the point off

for the first round that was um chambered you couldn’t do it with the other rounds anyway because they wouldn’t feed properly unless they had that nice smooth um shape on them but you could you know knock the front off um the round that was chambered um but why would you I mean you know are you it’s its flight would then be suspect because it relies on that perfectly smooth shape to fly through um and the round did enough damage by itself I mean it turned human flesh to jelly it was a you see people hitting movies and and TV

by gunshot wind and and uh and even the more realistic later ones um do not show you the the trauma that’s delivered to a body by High Velocity High Caliber military bullet it literally breaks bones and jellies flesh towards the end of to it things started to change as far as tactics are concerned for the SAS not tactics so much but the uh the tasks became um much further out and they became longer and the enemy started to really twig to our um our Sops our methods of operation and and put in counters um that we hadn’t

seen them do before for example I mentioned that when they heard a typical SAS insertion signature they would send groups to every LZ in the area and try and spring us on them um and uh their counter airbush Jewels got very very good and they would send a decoy group down tracks first you know three or four hoping to we trigger the Ambush on them and then they could put in a a flank attack on us and did on one occasion but we got away with that um so they become a smarter I think also they were a different Soldier up in the mayos they

were NVA um and uh and all of this coincided with you know coming towards the end of my tour so it was it was not a change for taxic so much but certainly a much harder environment to do the job in St Al given that the MVA or the enemy’s tactics are starting to to change and counteract yours did the SAS sort of start to think up new ways to attack and approach the enemy’s tactics yep certainly um and some of those were to um to swap patrols um do an insertion and extraction at the same time so you didn’t give that typical signature the

other one was to use apcs for insertions more but we couldn’t do that at the May tires it was just too far away um we uh started to use repel insertions a bit more so you didn’t need an LZ uh just sto the troper ropes over fast rope down and and then off um and uh uh also there was a um a tendency to make the patrol slightly larger if it was going into a a really an area that was going known going to be hot um so take out six rather than five cuz the H we could still lift six Laden SAS solders um you mentioned quite you know

quite offhand way before that they were killed in actions but we basically killed ourselves what were you referring to when you said that we had a number of accidents um which were very distressing um the first one was Harris Bill Harris um who returned from an OP out on a track from the wrong direction um and uh um under the circumstances he was considered enemy because he was coming from entirely the wrong place and uh and his Patrol shot him um and uh he died before they no he died on the dust off Chopper I think um we had a couple of

other um accidents um grenade accident once and uh we had two other incidents after my time where um Patrol killed their own Patrol member because they made a mistake about how they re-entered an OP given that the Squadron in the SAS is as close as you’ve described how did a death like that affect oh was shattering um you know particularly for the the people who did the shooting um very difficult for them to be effective again um and in at least one occasion occasion that occurred when I was there Dy Harris um yeah that that U um effectively

rendered um the the patrol useless how did the Army officially deal with that oh it’s a accidental death um happens in war where plenty of other Australians and indeed Americans killed by Friendly Fire um um but it’s particularly personal when it’s you know you line them up and shoot them was there compassion for the people involved absolutely and uh and the Squadron gathered around and and and gave tremendous support not your fault you did the right thing all of that sort of stuff but um for the person who pulled the trigger that’s of little

Comfort when you say they were ineffective did they go back to Australia or did they stay no they stayed the um my recollection is that the patrol members went to other patrols um and it was towards the end of two squadrons tour um so they are in Australia at the end of February and and that was that were they the only um Kia as you call them um that uh we lost one other and that was my good friend Dave Fisher um he died shortly after I got home uh cuz he was there he arrived after me um and that was a hot extraction um in Joe Van

dr’s Patrol um and he hooked his Carabiner onto the um the standing end of the rope that had been taped back rather than the actual Loop itself um Chopper got up to about 80 ft and he came off and speared in come back to your reaction when you heard that news after we talk about when you came back um for the the deaths that happened when you were there was there any service or any kind of marking of their their death no the one that happened when I was there was darkkey Harris and I don’t recall that there was a service of any

sort it it um it was almost sort of like RT he just wasn’t there one day and not the next um certainly there was an immense amount of compassion and support for the other Patrol members but there was no nothing formal that I remember were there a was there a chap on attach to the SAS or any kind of no there wasn’t there was um somebody at the task force and and for those who wish to go to church they they could travel uh down to task force and attend the services down there were there any other types of counseling as you might see in

the Army these days ah good Heavens no no none whatsoever um uh it was a pretty bloky Place counseling was for wers um did any BLS need counseling in an informal way between BLS and um there were um there were perhaps um one or two incidents fueled by alcohol where there was a bit of finger finger in the chest stuff um certainly towards the end of the tour U but that was generally about um some form of behavior within the base camp not in the bush um today the the it’s got a name it’s called you know PT SD I mean did

you see that at the time in Vietnam or is that something that only sort of started to show itself later on um I certainly saw some some people coming to the end of their string um towards the end of two squadrons tour when I was still relatively fresh um and uh that was evidenced by a um pre predilection to violence to excessive drinking um and and to Short Fuse um uh yeah I I saw saw some of that and and I suppose whether that’s PTSD or whether that’s just the stress at the time every everybody’s got a length the

string and and and some people’s though are shorter than others and um sooner or later under those circumstances you’re going to come to the end of it um but there was generally a um an acceptance of that um look don’t worry about him he’s um he’s going to be okay he’s just having a bad time by the time you came to the end of your tour how much string did you have left um very little and I was pretty fried too and how is that beginning to show itself in your actions oh same sort of stuff excessive drinking um short fuse

um PR to injury and illness um uh a probably an excessive focus on getting home um unhealthily so I think um yeah it was it was starting to get unraveled towards the end what was the process of looking towards getting home what was this Focus uh well everybody had the calendar you know 365 and a wakey and you you counted down the days crossed off the days when you came back from the patrol there’s another six or seven down um the um letters to and from home became um talk more about you know what what you’re going to do when you got

home and um uh I was starting to think about uh Pat Fey and and what we might do about all of that um so yeah there was whereas you know up before that those sorts of thoughts weren’t entering in my head but they certainly were in the last 3 months is there there any Superstition or or trepidation attached to your last Patrol absolutely can you tell us about that uh the last one was with Luke parrington and uh and I recall Jim Phillips was the 2ic and uh last Patrol I was Scout and I had the wind up big time and I was

moving too slowly for Jim and he saw me L one night at the patrol and said get him move on will you he was being frustrated by the rate at which I was moving um but I did have the wind up um and uh as it turned out um uh it was relatively um benign Patrol um um not much happened at all um although the last extraction we did go out in the ropes but that was more for convenience um than for necessity um but even so dangling below the tropper wasn’t the best way to go out I’d rather much just m much step on it um so yeah and uh when

climbed into the chopper and kissed the floor and everybody gave me the high five and yeah um Home Free um and I got back that day and I was out of there not the next day but the next was must have been a cause for celebration on the Cho there was a big well on the chopper on the chopper but there was a big party on the night of the uh before I went yeah very big party in fact some of the photographs are there of that um and and uh a smile from ear to ear he couldn’t wipe it off me with a shovel do you remember the birthday you

spend in country yeah I do I wasen relatively soon after I got there I turned 22 in country um and it was uh not marked in any particular way other than I said uh well you BL buy me a drink it’s my birthday and they did and that was the extent of it when you left on this celebration smile from ear to ear was there any thought that that you leing blocks behind yeah not on the night um but certainly the next day and and all the way back in the C130 which is a very long trip um and because I was going back as you know not as part of the

Squadron again I had to just be a bit of baggage on on in the HK um but yeah um and uh totally honest a bit of guilt yeah leaving people there um when I was going home yeah do you remember saying goodbye to Dave yeah yeah um we had a plenty of drinks that night and you know um and chat about what we’ do when we got back um um and I went down to his hoie um about half an hour before I was due to be driven down to lenfield to go into tonson H um uh we just sat around and shot the breeze and um it was very lowkey it was just like a chat

really um uh wasn’t any big goodbye and hugs and uh at all it’s just put my hand out and said I’ll see you back in osmate and U and walked off on my way um other veterans I’ve spoken to have talked of that process of getting off of Patrol and coming back into your country as being traumatic in in some way of being a shock to the system how was it for you um the the shock came when I was back um it it came after um I arrived in Sydney got picked up by my parents and and you know waking up the next day um safe and

warm in in bedroom we were living in strathfield by this time um when you know 48 hours earlier i’ I’d been in country um um 54 or hours earlier I’d been in the bush um and I think that’s when it hit me um and particularly the thoughts of those I’d Left Behind as well um know sort of what am I doing here and I should be there yeah there’s a bit of that so what did you do how did how did that affect your behavior uh there were over the next um two or three weeks there are a number of events that um um meant that I just put all that behind

me um I don’t know if you want to go there yet or even if you do want to go there well we do want to go there but just just on the on this first shock of coming home I mean what was the strangest thing about being back um the normaly thing that nothing had changed you know that that it is it was as though it was a Time Warp and and the period I’d been away was actually only a day after I’d left if you like um that life was just going on and and you know I i’ done some things and and seen some things that you know

were um in some cases pretty horrific um but the entire Australian World seemed um completely oblivious to what was going on and to what people were undertaking in their name um and doing a bloody good job of it too it’s just as though oh yeah we got troops in Vietnam oh yeah so what and and that’s yeah that’s what struck me that Australia didn’t seem to know care recognize that uh at the height of the war we had what upward of 8,000 people in the place do it make you bitter at the or angry or upset in some way not not bit

um I suppose the the strongest emotion I felt was a degree of sadness about it um that here were this you know group of people um in many cases wonderful people uh doing a bloody hard job um and there was simply no recognition of it at all and yeah sadness I suppose is the the strongest emotion I felt about that was the opposite true did you see protests in the kind of that side of things when you got home when we got back yeah um we we flew into Darwin uh refueled in Darwin couldn’t get off the plane then to Richmond and we thought

we’re going to get off at Richmond but they said no no no no no no no the Stay Stay we’re going to fly you into uh Kingsford Smith but we want to go in after curfew cuz it’s quieter then um so we got into Kingsford Smith about4 to 11 at night having you know actually been in the country for almost 24 and still not put foot on Australian soil um and nevertheless the protest groups were there sa our sons were there again and and and I respected them but the um the ferals were there with the the nasty signs and um the shouted insults um I I

didn’t find that particularly distressing um I didn’t like it but uh you know it didn’t um uh didn’t change the way I was thinking about things and it didn’t get under my skin particularly um anything I felt a bit sorry for did you have any trouble getting through customs um a little bit um only because I was trying to bring in more than I was allowed um um and I fed ignorance of the rules and the Customs officers said I going better off there was no real I mean they didn’t search me for drugs or Contraband or anything because we’re a

very small group it wasn’t a we big 707 um full of a battalion returning um I suppose when we got off the her there might have been 20 or 30 of us that’s you know very small group or was it harder that you were such a small group do you think that you in some ways on your own yeah it was harder yeah it would have been much better to come back as a group and would have been much better to go back to Perth um uh because the that and I’ve talked about Bond before and this very very strong friendship so you know you’re just not

as close to anybody else in in a different way in your life uh and that just went bang stopped um you know the minute you put foot on the carrot Boo at Alaskan field uh that stopped and and you I found myself in a world in which um I really didn’t know anybody um other than Mom and Dad my brothers and sisters um other than that I didn’t know anyone what happened then in the next couple of weeks um um well you get rational about it so well I got to get on with the rest of my life now um and and I wasn’t sorry about

not deciding to stay on in the Army because it was clear to me that Whitland would win in 72 I was blind Freddy could see that coming and that um Defense Force Under Whitland would be starved to funds and um and as it all turned out that was right and sis struggled for a role for the next 10 years it wasn’t until the Hilton bombing in 78 that that really got a roll again and that was the CT and um then perhaps 3 or 4 days later um and I was going down to the north stfi RSL and drinking a bit too much um four or five days later I got home from

that and mom came in and uh and gave me a glass of warm milk laced with whiskey and I thought this is strange my mom’s never done this before what she what’s she doing here and and she gave me the news that Dave Fisher was missing presumed killed in Vietnam um and uh that was a hard time um so um uh I struggle with that for a few days and and I spoke with Dave’s parents um and I went to a memorial service for him um and uh um what is is is and um try to pick up with the rest of the life and I sort of realized I needed I needed um kindred

spirit I suppose Kindred Spirits um because there simply was nobody else so I I walked down we lived in homebush Road strathfield and down at the bottom of homebush roads homebush and was an RSL down there homebush RSL I went down there 3 or 4 days later and fronted up and said I’d like to join and and in those days the the the door fellow you know wore white shirt short sleeves and a little bow tie and and he handed me a form to fill out which was an associate membership form and I said no I think I’m entitled to full membership I’d like

to join as a full member and he took the form back and he said you’re back from Vietnam are you and I said yes I am um and he said oh look members here sort of aren’t all that happy about Vietnam members but if you go over to bankstown RSL I understand they’re accepting you blacks um and uh I’ve never joined the RSL since um and I don’t think they’ve learned a lot since either for that matter and so out of all of that um what I learned about all of that was that nobody really gave a  so um I bundled all of that

up um put it in a in a you know literally uniforms the packs the all of all of this paraphernalia and all of the other stuff with it all of the baggage all of the memories all of the um the um uh the experience and I shoved it into that green bag and I shoved it up in the roof and I didn’t go near it again um but I learned very quickly that you didn’t declare um you’re a Vietnam veteran um and uh course everybody had an opinion it was it was um a wrong one um and um so you I just put it away um just put it away and I didn’t go near it again and I

didn’t go near it again for 15 years um um I never denied if I was asked but I never volunteered that information and I never entered into a discussion um on the issue but even so still never went near it again and just left it completely compartmentalized never open the lid again just before we talk about how you came out of that a couple of questions about some of those things Dave’s death your emotions are obviously great sadness in losing a mate but did you feel guilty as well was there some sort of sense that yeah he should have been

there yeah he always um the left luxury in straford and you know he was still doing it tough and falling off a chopper yeah it it it was an overwhelming feeling of guilt but yeah I felt guilt about that I should have beenn there um interestingly my parents tweet that quite perceptive yeah they did tweet that when the RSL rejected you was that especially guing cuz they were the people who should have been taking you in ging was the it was yeah it was a real kick in the guts um particularly as I went there sort of looking for Kindred

Spirits you know um and hope to find some um that you could just you know just um American expression shoot the bruise with not get into anything you know deep and meaning for but just people that have been there before as I’m I’m sure you’ve often been told before it’s um it’s difficult for people who haven’t who didn’t go through that Vietnam experience and particularly the SAS experience to really know what it was like I mean you just the words don’t explain you know what all the feelings were and you can explain what happened

but you can’t explain um how it all felt so yeah I was um yeah I thought that was a real kick in the guts um and uh uh that was the one thing I did get bitter about was there a Temptation for you at that time to jump on a train and go back back to Perth yeah in fact U I did get on a train and I was on my way down to the Kent Street Recruiting Station to get back in yeah that’s perceptive of it you must have heard that before especially with SAS BS because of the bond you’ve told about yep um yeah and uh I was actually

on the train on my way um but um by the time I got to well wyard was where I had to get out um i’ Talk myself back out of it but for rational reasons for the reasons I I gave you Vietnam War I knew was lost whitlam Victory would mean U Parson’s Army for some time um and SAS without an operational role I didn’t think would be as as focused and as interesting um and indeed that turned out to be the case for M mates who did stay in over that period that period from 1971 through to 1978 um they were in the desert so what happened for you when you

put that stuff away and bundled it up and didn’t talk about it what happened to those mates I didn’t talk to any of them um Johnny cousins came home from Vietnam in uh about a week after Dave was killed and I had a night out with Johnny um he went back to Sea he was a merchant Sean he went back to Sea and I didn’t see him again for some 15 16 years later um I accidentally bumped Terry Nolan here in canra um who was a my trip commander in um three Squadron um and just to say get a to and sort of thing but uh that was it I didn’t talk to any

of them I didn’t visit them we had no correspondence um I made no effort to seek them out I didn’t go back to Perth um I just put it in the Box maybe moving on then how did you eventually find yourself resolving that um with a lot of help from my wife Chris um there was some publicity about the welcome home parade in 1987 in Sydney well firstly when did you meet her and um we were married in 1982 um um and my marriage to rosemy fell apart in 1978 but I’d met her um you know well before we got married um we were married in ‘ 82 Ron

came along in 83 and then Lauren in ‘ 87 um and uh she I told her about Vietnam but only it’s superficial stuff really I didn’t talk um I subsequently have but I certainly didn’t talk to her about the sorts of things that we’ve been talking about more lately um and perhaps she she recognized you know some unresolved issues and all of that um anyway she U she got all of the information um that was you know and where and where the um the regiment was going to get together and and she gathered all of that information up and

she gave it to me and said you got to go you got to go um not as an instruction but very very encouraging and I said no no no that’s over all of that um but she persisted in the best possible way um and to the stage where I said I would but the reason I was doing it I think was as much to please Chris’s to please me um anyway I did go was best thing I ever did know Bon was instantly reformed um I was able to um talk about um in a fun way you know all of that sort of stuff um able to deal with Dave’s death um talk to people that were

there at the time um and uh had a big drink afterwards and just talked to um literally hundreds of people um from regiment dies um and uh I just you know um um all of that stuff that I put in the green kit bag and and put in the ceiling all just came out and I felt good about it felt good about it um and I’m very grateful to Chris to this day as I often tell her um so I um I got back into it I um I joined the SAS Association ended up an office Bearer go to Perth often um reformed all those bonds with good mates from the era um

and all or from those two squadrons I sered with but also from the era the that particular period of mid 60s to sort of early 70s um and I count them now as my strongest and closest friends despite the fact that many of them are over in Perth but quite a few of them are here in CRA too yeah D’s family I’m very close to particularly um his sister um and uh um that’s a good strong relationship we see each other a few times a year um and uh so I’m I’ve got no Hang-Ups about that stuff anymore at all and thanks to

Chris in the 15 years or was that about 15 years in that period that you you were away from it all had those other BLS must have gone through similar experiences did you did you find that everyone had the same stories to tell or had they dealt with it better than you or they had dealt with it better than I because they stayed in um most of them did anyway um and so they went back um as a squadron to swanborn they remained a close group um they continued to work together the majority of them and so they um they and

pth was a a toally a different place from Sydney too we talked about that earlier and um and so they they had a support mechanism there that was already inbuilt um people started to slowly Drift Away uh from uh the regiment over the 70s because of the lack of a role lack of focus um but they had they had the benefit of coming home as a group and of um not having to deal with those sorts of issues by themselves and indeed some of the issues didn’t have to deal with that all um and so no I didn’t see those difficulties in any other people

from SAS but I certainly saw it in um in and I still see it in some soldiers who haven’t had the luck to reconcile all of that um by for me that um that Welcome Home Pride and subsequent events too have you had any other what you might call trauma associated with your Vietnam experiences no no I’m I’m not hung up about it um um uh I have a very good friend twice decorated for gallantry um so no questioning his his bravery he F A bits with PTSD um and uh but I look at I look at him and and I think thank goodness I’m I don’t have

that problem I know I’ve coped with all of that um fine I I sleep well at night I’m not unduly anxious I don’t um don’t have the sorts of difficulties that befell him so no not really I’m I have um I have a couple of of recurring Visions which I’ve described to you the wood cutters and and the little kid but they are matters for regret rather than than any um you know traumatic um episode how have your feelings towards the war changed in the in the intervening period between then and well it’s a it was a terrible waste

um uh the end result has been the same um and so it’s impossible not to feel that um Dave’s life and and the other 500 Australians and 50 odd th000 Americans and several million Vietnamese lives that were chucked into that cauldron was how all for nothing um it could have been different but for lack of political courage um political commitment um and so I think of it as a terrible waste um and that’s one thought but there is another thought and that is despite all of that despite the fact that it was a waste and it didn’t

achieve what it was intended to achieve um certainly what the Australian Army did and I think the vast bulk of the American Army and and a great many of the Vietnamese Army I’m not one of those that knock the Arin the army of the Republic of Vietnam I think they bore the brunt of much of the fighting um I think much of what they did they did very very well certainly the Australian Army and and in terms of um the practice of of the military Arts the Australian Army should be very very proud of itself as should the

regiment um they did a bloody good job um tough job did it well so yeah waste um but that doesn’t take away in any way from the value of um the the professionalism um and the compassion with which the Australians went about doing their business have you in some sense resolved those that feeling of of bitterness or anger towards the Australian population for for rejecting you when you came home I I I think I said I was more sad than bitter or angry um H and yes um I’m over it long since past it it doesn’t reoccur to

me anymore at all do you think that obviously 997 was a turning point for you do you think that the Australian population has woken up to the to the to the role oh I’m sure they have oh yeah it’s patently obvious I mean you can see it in the welcome home parade you can see it in the dawn service in the Anzac parades these days um yeah I think the Australian population has said ooo yeah we didn’t do that very well let’s make up for it um and that’s very welcome very welcome and everyone’s allowed a mistake or two

have you forgiven the RSL no this is the very last couple of minutes of the interview and I mean you’ve shared a lot with us today but is there anything that you’d like to add to perhaps for someone who’s watching this in 50 or 100 years time yeah um yeah I I suppose just one thing really and that is um I’d like to say if you are looking at this in 50 or 100 years time um um judge us by um by what we did not why we did it thank you very much for speaking to us it’s been a great pleas you’ve done a great job thanks Chris cheers thanks

Michael