Going Back (14 page)

In 1966 the 5 RAR officers took a group photo at Back Beach, and when the pilgrimage group regathered there in 2005 they did not let the moment pass unrecorded. Recreating situations such as group photos (and the Nui Dat medical fraternity champagne toast) can provide lasting memories that allow the veteran to assess the passing of time and place their past service in perspective.

The pièce de résistance, however, was saved for when the group assembled for dinner one night in Vung Tau, dressed resplendently in slacks, shirts and gold battalion cravats. Did they look out of place in Vung Tau? Absolutely. Did they care? Absolutely not. The party then had a group dinner at a local restaurant owned by expatriate Australian Alan Davis and his Vietnamese wife Anh, during which Tony White showed a compilation video from all his 8-mm film that he took during his tour of duty in Viet Nam. It created a terrific atmosphere—and the bar owner's wife, who came from near Binh Ba, recalled some of the incidents on the film footage and said it brought tears to her eyes when she recognised the Army doctors doing their Medcaps. It was a memorable evening all round.

Long Son Island

Not far north up the road from the port city of Vung Tau is Long Son Island. The island is about seven kilometres long from east to west, three kilometres wide from north to south, with a large hilly complex on the eastern end. During the war it was totally isolated, except by boat; today a causeway at the eastern end connects the island to the mainland. Near the causeway is a village, and a hamlet is located at the far western end. Apart from some industrial estate development near the causeway, the island has not changed very dramatically since 5 RAR conducted Operation Hayman between 8 and 12 November 1966, a search and clear operation designed to flush any lurking enemy out of the hilly, scrubby areas into the more open lowland areas where they could more easily be rounded up. During the operation, Australian SAS patrols stood by in inflatable boats to intercept enemy soldiers fleeing the sweep. The insertion was not without incident, as Ron Shambrook recalled:

We flew into the top of this hill and it was a marginal LZ because the gradient of this hill was very poor; too steep. And anyway the first four choppers landed and they indicated that they were getting some small arms fire. I came in in the second group of four, and so our attention to detail was good at that stage, because nothing rivets your attention more than a little bit of lead flying through the air, but there was none when we landed. Anyway the fourth lift came in and one of the pilots over-corrected and thrashed the plane to bits by running the rotors into the hill. I thought we were being mortared; it made an awful lot of noise and I didn't know what was happening there for a moment.
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In 2005, the 5 RAR group returned to Long Son Island and after some good observation and deduction were able to determine which helicopter pad they had flown into halfway up the hillside—it was virtually unchanged. Having kept their operational maps, the veteran infantrymen were able to locate almost exactly where they had fought and where various incidents occurred. Ted Heffernan had conducted a Medcap in the local village on Long Son Island, and located a monastery close to where he had helped the villagers during the offensive operations being conducted about two kilometres away. Wandering around the small village, Ted was able to recognise buildings and the area where he had worked during Operation Hayman. When he returned to the group he was beaming from ear to ear and telling all and sundry what he had found. The tour bus filled with smiles.

The Horseshoe

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

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

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

Well actually the Horseshoe feature wasn't given a name when we were sent out there. It was just a volcanic crater—but I will say it now, being a student of military history, General Christian de Castries had named all of his outposts [at Dien Bien Phu] after his mistresses. I called it Fort Wendy.
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But digging into the hard granite rock was not easy and before long expletives were being directed at the name of the outpost. Paul decided that he wouldn't have his fiancée's name slurred anymore and so it became known as The Horseshoe. In 2005, the woman after whom this rocky outcrop had once been named stood next to the feature and remarked modestly about how she felt upon finally seeing it:

I'm glad actually it [the name] only lasted two days. It would have been quite weird to have a place in Viet Nam named after you . . . It was great that Paul had it for two days, but it was much better that it went on to be called The Horseshoe.
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Fred Pfitzner, who bounced from one company to another filling in shortfalls as a company second-in-command (2IC)—at one stage he was in Charlie Company for only 24 hours before being reassigned—took up the story of The Horseshoe:

I became known as ‘Fred the Wandering Jew'. I didn't know where they were going to send me and the next thing they said was, ‘Well we are building The Horseshoe, the 2IC has gone off home on the advance party and you are it.' So I went and did that with Paul Greenhalgh and we built The Horseshoe. That was good; I enjoyed my time in Delta Company.
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On my last four trips, including the 2005 5 RAR pilgrimage, I have been unable to gain access to The Horseshoe owing to blasting at what is now a quarry site. The northern half of the feature has been dug out, and if quarrying continues at the present rate, within five years the hill will most probably be unrecognisable to veterans.

An Nhut

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

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

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

It was a significant moment in our company as well as the battalion. To lose three people like that—and let's not forget the six wounded, of which a couple had to come home. I got to know the family, the widow of Don Bourne and his four children. I'd phoned them just about a month ago [September 2005] and spoke to one of the sons and said I was coming over here, and asked would you like us to lay something on the spot if we could find it. And they said to me, ‘If you can just take a photograph of the position.' We achieved that. And apart from the rice paddies being green as against dry and brown at the time, it's exactly the same shot.
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There are moments during pilgrimages when incidents like An Nhut will sweep over veterans and create a melancholy. It cannot be avoided, nor should it be. John Taske was a good friend of Charlie Company's 2IC Bob Milligan, and sadly recalled:

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

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

The Long Hai Hills were never a good place to get to, as Paul Greenhalgh recalled: ‘You were always buggered! You were looking at your toes as you were climbing hills. Fatigue when we got up to the top . . . It was extremely wearying and tiresome.'
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The Long Hai Hills were also known as the Minh Dam Secret Zone, after a Viet Minh base there named after the local guerrilla leader, Minh, and his deputy, Dam. The Secret Zone had been a guerrilla stronghold since the First Indochina War and remained active against ARVN and Australian troops during the entire Viet Nam War. It was never conquered and was considered a notorious ‘badland' as it was difficult to manoeuvre, and mines and booby traps were prolific. Whenever enemy troops needed a place to rest, refit or recover they would use the Minh Dam Secret Zone as their sanctuary.

Derrill De Heer had to work down in the ‘badlands' on occasion and sometimes flew over them when he was working the Psyops Unit. When asked what made him apprehensive he responded emphatically, ‘Flying over the Long Hai broadcasting or dropping leaflets from a low height. I was shot at a number of times. The aircraft was not allowed to retaliate as we wanted them to surrender.'
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Peter Isaacs didn't relish working in the area either, adding: ‘The Long Hai Hills had bad memories for us at the end of our tour.'
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As they did for rifleman Bill Kromwyk: ‘6 RAR took a lot of casualties there actually. Yes that always worried me, I used to hate being in that area.'
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Fred Pfitzner was intrigued by his visit to the Long Hais in 2005:

Getting up into that area I found quite fascinating because every time we'd try to get up there we got bloodied. No matter whether it was a unit like 5 RAR on its first tour, or 4 RAR on its last. If you went up there you were going to get clobbered. So when you get up into it you can see what a fiendishly difficult area it would have been to get into and maintain any sort of presence.
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Most tour groups visiting the province are offered the option of going up into the Long Hai Hills. A lookout right on the eastern tip of the range offers spectacular views up and down the coast, and near the lookout is a small monastery that is home to Cao Dai monks. There is also a small museum and cafe run by an ex-
D 445 Battalion
lieutenant, Hoang Ngan, which has been operating for approximately eight years.

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

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

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

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