John Sonneveld - A successful ambush

Running time
1 min 37 sec
Date made
Copyright
Department of Veterans' Affairs

Transcript

The next morning I had to go out fairly early with Colonel Gray. I was allocated to his direct support pilot for 7RAR. He got me to fly me to Xuyen Moc which was, I think it was about 23Ks to the east of Nui Dat or thereabouts and what I hadn't known or didn't know till then, was that Colonel Grey with his knowledge, intelligence, figured that there's a good chance these guys would run all the way back to Xuyen Moc or near there somewhere.

So he got the armoured personnel carriers to set up an ambush. It was only probably about 3Ks out of Xuyen Moc. These people came into the ambush and the APCs killed the lot of them. So this job I had early this morning was to fly Colonel Grey out. I don't think anyone had come out to check the bodies yet. I can't be sure of that. But we flew very, very low and, in a line, there were 21 dead Viet Cong. It wiped them out.

And now, the gruesome part of that was, the troopers of the armoured personnel carriers obviously had the job of digging a big pit and burying these guys which would've been traumatic for these young fellows and in the weeks following I'd fly by there and have a look and, obviously, things happen. The pigs dug them up and ate them. That's what happens in a war zone like that. Anyhow, that was Colonel Grey.

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