The Easy Day Was Yesterday (6 page)

A day or so later, we were just sitting around when Cleve decided to build a bunk to sleep on and started cutting down trees to use in its construction. Cleve was up on the high ground above the corporals’ campsite cutting down a tree. When it finally came down, it wiped out the campsite of our neighbours. Cleve ran around trying to fix up their camp as the rest of us were pissing ourselves laughing. Sure enough, about 10 seconds later, our neighbours returned to find their campsite demolished. Cleve could do nothing but apologise and call us a pack of pricks for not helping him.

Our hosts had some ranges set up in the jungle, one of which was a contact range. The patrol would contact the enemy and, after one bound of breaking contact, we’d put down a claymore mine on a seven-second fuse. Tony would pull the initiator and we’d patrol off. Seven seconds was a lot shorter than we’d used before, so I decided to rehearse with just a detonator. As we broke contact I told Tony to blow the detonator and we patrolled off. We got about three metres from the detonator and off it went. This gave us a good enough guide to the time we had to clear the mine, so we went for it. This time we blew the live claymore and, when I told Tony to pull the initiator, the patrol thought they were trying out for the fucking Olympic 100 metre sprint team. They bolted past me so fast I was lucky to catch them and — wouldn’t you know it — we had a blind; the claymore failed to fire. We patrolled around to the rear of the mine to wait the required safety time (30 minutes) before approaching the mine. As we sat and waited, I heard the Captain, who was acting as the safety officer, calling for me. I stood up and called him over. When he approached, he held out the claymore and tried to figure out why it hadn’t gone off. I glanced at the patrol who looked as though they’d seen a ghost. Good safety here.

One night we joined the rest of the blokes and practised our claymore ambushing. My patrol knew the drill from plenty of training, and the country was so close I knew I’d never lose sight of my men as they positioned the claymores, so all in all it was to be a very simple ambushing task. Just on dusk we patrolled to the site as a squadron. When we reached the site, patrols were being positioned along a track. We were last and were finally given our location. The Captain pointed to the track and told me where to position my patrol. The distance between the two was about four metres. The patrol gave me a look that said ‘sort this shit out’, so I told the Captain that we would be moving back a few more metres. Six claymores amount to 4.2 kilograms of plastic explosive, so I wanted to give us a few metres of stand-off behind the mines.

We had the ambush set up in about nine minutes. The six claymores were joined using detonation cord and could be fired from a central location using one firing device. We only had to wait about one hour when the first ambush went off, then another and so on until we blew ours. Even sitting eight metres back from the claymores and behind our packs we still had a fair load of shit thrown at us. We dusted ourselves off and headed back to our camp.

Over the next few days the rest of the blokes went on with some booby trap training. They asked me if my patrol knew anything about making booby traps. I said they did, so they gave me a heap of explosives to do my own training. We played around a bit with booby-trapping, but still had a heap of explosives left over, so John went fishing in our little creek. When our neighbours came back to the camp at the end of the day, John had about 50 little fish for them. They were rapt and hurriedly cooked them. They tasted all right, but had heaps of bones. Our neighbours had caught a big frog that day and also cooked that up. They boiled it with three rocks from the creek and a piece of fungus selected from a tree. It turned out to be beautiful and the soup was good, very similar to chicken soup.

On our last day in the camp we packed up and prepared for a 45-kilometre walk to an ambush position that was near a small town. That was 45 kilometres as the crow flies, but in this place, with some of the biggest mountains and thickest jungle in the world, it could become 80 kilometres or more. We had seven days to reach the ambush position, so it would mean a fairly quick pace.

On the night before we left the camp, one of the corporals was being tested on his night attack so we took part as well. It was all live fire, which concerned me a little, but what could we do? We moved to a point about 200 metres from the enemy camp and were told to leave our kit there, and that we would move along another 100 metres and sleep there the night. This meant lying on the ground without a sleeping bag or a hutchie. I knew it would piss down with rain all night, so I told the patrol to grab their bivvy bags and a couple of hutchies between us and to give them to John who had a small pack to carry them in. This we did and, as night fell, I told John to pass out our gear and we got into our bivvy bags. About an hour after dark, it pissed down — I mean literally bucketed down. Now a bivvy bag is water resistant to an extent and will keep the dew out, but we were nicely located in a gully and, as I lay down, I found myself in a foot of water. A couple of hutchies went up, but you couldn’t move under them because of the other blokes. Basically, it was a bloody miserable night, and in situations such as this you realise how long nights really are. The jungle is hotter than hell during the day, but at night, when you are soaked to the skin, it’s bloody cold.

We completed the attack and didn’t lose anyone to gunfire and commenced our walk out. We were given a local soldier to go with us to ensure we didn’t get into trouble and that we took the correct route. I had already prepared and given orders for the patrol to the ambush site, and told my local man that he would be positioned between Stuart and Cleve. After breakfast, and a final briefing from the Captain, we patrolled off in a rough north-westerly direction with John scouting. I doubled as patrol commander and the second scout about five metres behind him, while Stuart, as signaller, patrolled behind me, then my local man, then Cleve as medic and Tony as the 2IC. Tony also had responsibility for acting as the rear scout. He had to ensure that no-one was tracking us, to protect us from enemy surprise from the rear and to ensure we didn’t leave a huge trail behind us. We were patrolling well in primary jungle that followed a north-west ridgeline. The patrolling was easy and we made good time. While we knew there was no enemy, we still patrolled tactically — this was a great opportunity to refresh our jungle patrolling skills.

For a soldier, there is no greater challenge than patrolling, surviving and living effectively in the jungle. Everything wants to bite you, sting you, suck your blood, scratch or kill you. Everything is rotting and that includes you if you’re not careful. Contact with the enemy is at a distance of 10 metres, which means if they see you first, it is hard to miss from that range. This also means you can’t make a sound because noise travels and will give your position away. It is beyond hot, but worse still is the near 100% humidity. Your clothes are always wet and then they stick to you. Walking up a slight incline is difficult because your wet trousers stick to your leg making it difficult to lift. Night observation posts or ambushes mean lying on the jungle floor all night, usually in a torrential downpour.

After two hours we approached the end of the ridgeline which began to turn to the west, as I knew it would, so I was forced to search for a suitable spur that would take us in the general direction of the ambush site. I signalled John to stop and moved up behind him. John continued to look to his front and I whispered in his ear, ‘Stop here for 10; I need to do a nav check.’ John nodded in acknowledgment. The rest of the patrol could see we’d stopped and moved up behind. I indicated where I wanted them to be and then we sat. For five minutes we sat still and listened to the noise around us, adapting to our immediate environment. I pulled out my map and identified our position. We were making good time without rushing things, and were 1200 metres from our start point. According to my map, 100 metres up ahead was a spur extending from the ridgeline like a finger pointing towards the north. It seemed to extend for about 1000 metres and was quite high. The higher we stayed in the jungle, the better the patrolling. Down low in the re-entrants, the jungle was secondary and very thick. I got up and moved to Tony first to brief him on the plan. He had nothing to add, so I briefed the rest of the patrol and we moved off after a couple of good mouthfuls of water.

I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth and John looked around. I gave him a slight nod of my head and slowly John got to his feet. He inspected the floor of the jungle on which he’d been sitting, and moved some leaves to disguise the once-occupied area. He then moved off along the westerly spur. When he was about five metres away, I went through the same routine, as did the rest of the patrol, all spaced about the same. The whole patrol moved in a ‘pepper pot’ fashion. If John was moving, then I was stationary behind some cover giving John protection. If I was stationary, then Stuart was moving and so on. This style of patrolling was painfully slow, took a great deal of patience and discipline, but always ensured I had one foot on the ground if the shit hit the fan. No-one was getting the drop on us.

I’d counted out 180 paces, which for me was about 100 metres, but I checked with Stuart’s count to ensure I was about right because there was a substantial spur branching off to the north. I clicked with my tongue to John who immediately stopped and I moved up behind him. As scout, John would never take his eyes off the axis of advance. If I needed to talk to him, I had to move up behind him and whisper in his ear. ‘That’s the spur, let’s go.’ I indicated to the rest of the patrol with a sweeping hand to the right that we were going to change direction. It was necessary to inform the patrol of any change in direction because, in close jungle, those at the rear of the patrol might see the fleeting movement of the scout and shoot, thinking he’s the enemy.

As we reached the end of the spur we found ourselves back at ground level. The jungle was very thick. It was getting on for 1.00 pm and I could see the level of patrolling was slowly dropping off, so I caught Stuart’s eye to indicate a lengthy stop, and pointed to an area that I considered suitable for the stop and defendable in the event of enemy surprise. Stuart passed this down the line, I informed John, and we moved in and occupied the position.

One by one we removed the small packages of food from our trouser pockets and ate. We’d had a long morning, so I told the blokes to brew up if they wanted to. Everyone took turns at preparing their brews and a feed so, at any given time, all five heads were not looking down rather than towards the perimeter. We sat in this spot for about 40 minutes when I decided to give each member a quick brief as to what we would be doing for the afternoon and to update the rendezvous points. We were going to continue in a north-westerly direction to a position about 300 metres away on a bit of high ground. I hoped to be in this night lay-up position by 4.00 pm.

One at a time we stood, checked our personal space and moved off. The jungle was thick and the patrolling was slow. It becomes very tiring when you have to bend over to get your pack under overhanging branches and through thick jungle, and when soldiers become tired they tend to make more noise. But this was just one of those occasions that separates regular soldiers from the SAS. This sort of patrolling requires extra discipline, strength, vigilance and concentration on the area surrounding each member. An SAS soldier would never forgive himself if he made the noise that gave the patrol’s position away.

We continued on, but by now I knew we weren’t going to reach the desired night lay-up position so, at 3.45, I started to look for a suitable location to hide the patrol for the night. To my half-right, I spotted a thick piece of ground on a slight rise. The area was covered in thick secondary growth and measured about 25 x 25 metres. I indicated the area to the patrol and we moved in. The growth was very thick and we had to struggle to get on top of the rise which was a little clearer and suitable for occupation. As the patrol members occupied their various positions, I inspected the surrounds and confirmed that no-one could sneak up on us through this growth. Normally I would send the blokes out some distance to check a piece of ground that we hadn’t covered for dead ground and anything unusual, but in this area they would make more noise doing the check and that would defeat the purpose. We stood for five minutes and listened to the noises around us and had a good look at the surrounding area. I then sat down and the whole patrol followed. This action was standard operating procedure in the patrol. I figured it was better to make the noise of sitting down once, not five times. Again, we went through the eating process of one bloke preparing at a time, then each of the blokes cleared an area for sleeping. The sleeping area was wide enough to accommodate a sleeping mat which, when unfolded, was long enough to keep the hips and the shoulders off the ground, and a sleeping bag. The area was cleared only of twigs and anything that would make excess noise when compressed.

With the nightly routine almost complete, the patrol sat quietly and finished off the last of the brews while scanning the perimeter with their eyes. I moved around to each of them and asked how they were going, told them what I had in mind for the following day and what the rendezvous points were for the evening. When visibility diminished and the sun was all but gone, I told each bloke to lay out his bedding. Each patrol member had his pack rigged so that, while facing the perimeter, he could unbuckle, reach into a compartment and withdraw his bedding. So, at this stage, each man still had his webbing on, his weapon on his lap and only one compartment of his pack open. This meant that, in the event of a contact, he would, at worst, only lose his bedding, while everything else was still packed away. Some 20 minutes after dark we bedded down for the night.

At 5.15 am the next morning I woke and sat up. The sun would not be up for another 45 minutes, but I always seemed to wake early in the bush. It’s a good opportunity to have a bit of a listen and to adjust my eyes once again to the darkness. I’d done the same thing three times during the night and so had the other guys at different times. Slowly the remainder of the patrol began to stir and I could see them sitting up and slipping on their webbing. After a few minutes of sitting and listening, they slowly and methodically packed their bedding into their packs. Thirty minutes after first light I called the patrol closer in and said, ‘We’re never going to make it at this pace. So from here we step it out and move as quickly as we can to the ambush site.’