Daryl Bristowe - Vietnam War veteran

Call up

I was living in Kallista. Perrins Creek Road, Kallista. I was with a company called Smith and Nephew. I started there when I was probably about 17, a pharmaceutical company. They were very, very good to me. And of course, by law, they had to keep my job open when I came back from Vietnam and sure enough, they did, but because of mum's background, I remember when I got a phone call from work and I came home and my little card, call up card, was...not destroyed, but mum had a few words to say about it. Dad was pleased.

I'm sure the local police, 'cause us yahoos, the policeman in Olinda was probably happy in one of his, you know, hoons had gone off to do military service. You know, dad of course, as we spoke before, had served in New Guinea and his two brothers were there. The third brother, he was in the air force, never went past that line so he could never get the gold card. But, and my grandfather being a Gallipoli veteran, even though he only lasted 10 days at Gallipoli, he, of all things, Service Corps, carrying ammunition boxes to the front, he did a hernia. Not really good on your military record.

So he was whipped off to one of the Greek islands and then later went to England and he only joined the army because it was a chance of seeing his grandparents. Cause we, the Bristowes came to Australia in 1901. And this was his chance of going back to see his grandparents with the Australian government paying for it. He didn't know he'd end up in the Middle East and he didn't know he'd end up at Gallipoli but as I said, I just took it as the norm because those people before me volunteered, I didn't volunteer. I was called up because my birthday was on the 11th of July.

National service

When I was called up, I went in on the 8th of July 1970 and I couldn't work out why no one had the same birthday as me. You would expect it. And it wasn't til I joined this club in 2014 that I found out someone was in, not the same platoon, the same birthday, but the intake before me, I was in the third intake of 1970. He was in the second intake. And then after talking to mother and her activities, including a certain letter that she sent off to a certain person that had power in Canberra, threatening if anything happened to me it would happen to him. You can see why the army kept... I didn't know this.

And I kept getting these funny questions, asked all the time when I'm at Pucka. And I think because of that, it was still difficult because I'd never been away from home and Puckapunyal was really cold in July. But you know, they sort of ask questions and things were a little bit easier for me because I think they were worrying about a certain mother.

But anyway, everybody has an option. No, not the regular army, a volunteer to go to Vietnam. Everybody says you're called up when you're sent to Vietnam, you're not, you know, like I think it was 40. I'm doing a talk next week, the historical society in Sherbrooke. So I've had to research it, 40,000 national servicemen were called up. And I think 13,000 or something like that, went to Vietnam and all through my time, I was asked as you move through the system, do you wish to go to Vietnam? And if you said at any time, no, this is infantry, I can't talk for the others because we had nine battalions.

And in 1970 there was talk about raising the 10th battalion because as we all know, the first three battalions, one, two and three were basically raised after the Second World War with what people wanted to stay in the army, you know, they made, and those three battalions were involved in Korea. But of course, when Mr Menzies committed us, we had the Australian Vietnam Training Team and they'd been there since '62, but the Australian army, the infantry, I think the fifth and the sixth battalions in '66, '65, '66 were the first two, then they started to build up because of national service coming in every three months more troops were coming into the system.

Because I remember at the time when I had said, "I will go to Vietnam", they indicated, if I didn't want to go to Vietnam, it's all right, because the fifth and the sixth battalion were in Malaya, the third and the fourth were in Vietnam in 1970 or '70, '71. So if I didn't want to go to Vietnam and I wanted an overseas posting, I could have gone to Penang, or I don't think it's Butterworth. I think Butterworth is where the planes are, but I had the choice of going to those. And I said, "No, no, I'll, I'll go to Vietnam".

And you know, I did, but as soon as I left Puckapunyal after 10 weeks, because my first choice was armour and little did I know at the time, you needed seven out of 10 recruits to go into infantry. And I happened to say, "Look, I don't mind carrying the M60 machine gun". Silly me. So I said, "Look, gunner, second choice, rifleman, third choice". So automatically I got infantry. I did 10 weeks at Singleton, which is at Muswellbrook, up that way to do infantry training.

There, I met up with people next to Singleton where you do the infantry training. There was another recruit area and people from Queensland and Northern Territory, it was a much smaller one, not like Puckapunyal. Cause Kapooka, I think was where the regs went through as we called them. And I met people there that had come from the northern states and your sort of infantry blokes, your sort of... There's something about infantry, we're totally different, I don't know what it is, whether it's in our training, but we're like a band of brothers having spent time in engineers with the reserves after the war. They're terrific, but it's just different, you know ?

Ouija board

This is true, as I said, when I got called up, strange things were happening to me. People were talking to me at Puckapunyal. I didn't know why they were talking to me about certain things. Not knowing what Mum had been up to, especially the little bit about threatening the prime minister, tends to go down really bad. That is why I should have been called up in the second intake in 1970, not the third intake because when I met Trevor here and we were talking about things, "Hang on, how come your birthday and you went then?"

It's because of Mum's anti-war feelings and the people that she was with, that was funny and that's why people spoke to me and I said "No, I want to stay." And after I said, "I'm quite happy". If you can do 10 weeks at Pucka, that was all right. I went straight to Singleton. Straight after Singleton, I came back and did two weeks at Canungra. Now, when we came back from Canungra, because no one was sending us anywhere, all we did was play volleyball and play cards, the occult came into it.

Look, everybody's reading books on westerns and then we had our Ouija board, this is not good, is it? And during the sessions, and this is true, in the huts, the huts were very old, Second World War huts. I don't know if you've ever been to Ingleburn, where the draft platoon was, you had the old Hume Highway passing through it. Picton's down the road, Liverpool's up there, so in the morning you'd have to cross the road to have your lunch or your breakfast over there. But of a the night-time, during that time, I saw Where Eagles Dare 14 times at 20 cents a time, had to fill in time. But we'd have these sessions with the occult. Now this is true.

Some clown said, "Am I going to Vietnam?" Bloody board went "Yes". Someone else said "Am I going?" It went "No". This is 32 people in the draft platoon and it didn't make a mistake. Those who said they were going to Vietnam, the board was spot on. I had told my sister and I think it got a little bit out of hand at Kallista, the typewriter started moving by itself in the night-time so everybody stopped everything.

Preparation

I can only remember two people's names in the entire time. Corporal McClure. He was my Section commander, Section corporal and Acting Sergeant, corporal he was at the time, Sergeant Dundee. Isn't it amazing. They're the only two that I could ever remember in the whole 18 months, but he was made official sergeant during our time up there.

But each one of those representatives, whether it be my section leader or another section leader all came from different corps, you know, infantry, artillery, engineers, and each one of a night-time would point out the good points and the bad points of their corps and my two corporals, which then made sergeant, were both Vietnam veterans.

And you know, but this is like in early 1970 or you know, July 1970. It took me one year, one week and one day from the day I went into Puckapunyal that I landed in, in, I think it's Tan Son Nhat, let's say Saigon airport, but it was amazing. But I knew what it was all about. Dad had pointed out his experiences in New Guinea and after he came back from New Guinea, my grandfather being the first of his grandchildren to actually be called up into the armed forces, he had a lot of input.

This is my paternal grandparents. He had a lot to say, and my grandmother having had four sons involved in the Second World War, she put her dollar's worth in, but I think they were proud. But yeah, you're young. You're 21. You don't think of the consequences you're going to see, I'll be honest with you. I only ever saw one person get killed. Didn't know him from a bar of soap, but I often dream about it. But look, I didn't really think about it 'cause I was young, and I was extremely bitter when I came back from Vietnam.

Flying to Saigon

I went with Qantas. Seven... I had never flown in my life with airport planes cause I was a country boy, a real bumpkin, you know, quite naive and everything. And when I did my Singleton training, after five weeks, we had the opportunity to have been put in buses, taken to Sydney airport and they flew us to Melbourne. 'Cause I wasn't, I had an FB Holden and I'd taken that up to Singleton from Puckapunyal.

And you know, after, when you get to like 50 miles an hour... rattle. So I took the option of coming back by plane. We had to pay for the plane. It was TAA or Ansett, A and A and I always preferred TAA to see the parents, but I thought a 727, with the motors at the back and one in the tail area connected where the fin goes up. I thought, "Well, gee, that's big". But when I arrived at Saigon, I walked out, Pan Am 747, white with blue Pan Am on it. And I'm thinking, "How in the bloody hell would that fly?" It was huge, but we all looked at it.

When we were flying, we started off in Sydney with the 707 stopped in Townsville to pick up people. It stopped in Darwin to pick up people. And then it landed in Singapore to get us breakfast. Scrambled eggs, fancy me remembering that 50 years ago, scrambled eggs and something. And it was extremely hot. We then waited for the time to refuel the flight because it was definitely a Qantas flight because it had air hostesses onboard and we were talking to them. When it landed in Saigon, I'm going to call it Saigon because Tan Son Nhat, we had never seen Americans, you know, other than on TV.

Nui Dat

Then we got in the aircraft I didn't even know existed. It was called a Fairchild Provider. I didn't even know, 'cause I love aircraft, I didn't even know it existed. It was, we call them two turners and two burners. It had small jets. And what was novel about them, the intake, you couldn't see, it was a jet until it took off, a little door seemed to open and then you could see where the air goes through and burnt and everything.

That flew us to Nui Dat and Nui Dat, this is my, as a private, a mortarman, this is how I saw it. It was like two airfields, a large hospital complex that was surrounded by barbed wire. And I would like to think that was to keep the nurses in because they were a frisky lot, I'm told, I don't know. But it seemed to be like a big wagon wheel. I know it sounds stupid, but to take, probably the officers would disagree, but to me at the time looking down on it, the Vietnamese would have had to taken each, it's like dividing a cake up, a tart, you know, and each part seemed to be fortified.

So you had barbed wire between you and the next lot, as well as barbed wire facing out. And when I landed, I had no idea where everything were. And next thing I knew I was at the first reinforcement unit and that's where I spent three to four weeks acclimatizing. During that time, I think it was like a company strength, we would go out and do ambushes.

Carrying ammunition

When I first arrived there, I did three to four weeks with the first reinforcement unit to acclimatize. And you know, when you're acclimatized, when the humidity is in the nineties and you get up and say, "Gee, it's a cool day today". And during that time with the unit they take you out to do exercises in the jungle. Three and four and five days initially but then it got a little bit longer.

This volunteering bit, it's not good. One day they called me up. With certain weapons, some people have a knack and some people don't and there's a thing called an M79 grenade launcher. You don't think of the Russian bazooka one, they call a grenade launcher. It's a 14 millimetre, looks like a big shotgun. And I had a knack with that and they asked for someone to carry it. And they said, "You will also be carrying a nine-millimetre Browning pistol". And I thought, "Oh, less to clean, you can't lose it".

When I got to the end of the line, he said, "I'm terribly sorry, Bristowe, but we've run out of pistols. So you'll have to carry an M16 as well as the M79." And I said, "Alright then, I'll try it." And because of all the explosives that I was carrying on my chest, they said, "Right, you don't have to carry link for the machine gun..." You know what link is, don't you? It's the belt. They call it link. And most soldiers carried 100 rounds linked together, 'cause you can't expect the machine gunner or the two people with the machine gun to carry extra rounds. So every soldier carried at least 200 rounds.

Anyway, because I had this thing, like a fisherman's thing. And you had grenade ones... I think I carried 12 here and I had two... I hadn't seen a Bren gun in my life, but I had two Bren gun pouches, which carried, I think 24 illumination rounds. And at the very top, which I'd never seen in Australia, buckshot, which I'm told everybody pointed out, you do not point a grenade launcher at anybody less than 40 metres from you because it will not detonate.

It takes that time to arm itself and people had threatened... Well, if you do that, if you hit a person and it doesn't go off, they're not going to put him in the helicopter to bring him back. I didn't ask any more questions. So would imagine someone would have been at the end and helped him. I didn't ask. I have no idea what they would have done, but I'm sure if it had got to that, I would have thrown a weapon at him and ran that way.

On patrol

The first one that I ever went out on, I don't know if you want to know this, but the first time I ever went out, boy, was it gung ho. You look out and there's helicopters to the right, to the left, behind you, in front of you. And then darting between them was the, I had never seen them in the Australian armed forces, RAAF or army, were the gunships, Cobras, I think something like that, narrow, narrow, I think they were called Cobras and rockets and guns. And they were shooting up everything. 

We landed as the helicopters landed, everybody, some went to the side, no one ever went to the back cause the pilots couldn't see the back. So you went out and sort of formed almost a semicircle. Then he lifted off and your corporal then directed you to... And you made the perimeter bigger and bigger and bigger until the last landed. Then we formed an extremely long line. From what I remember, it was like 15 paces between you and the person in front. And it rained all the time and you're always wet, but it was humid. And my biggest worry was losing sight of the person in front of you. And when they stopped you'd get... How we communicated was hitting our butt of our weapon to get someone's attention in front of you or behind you. 

But when everybody stopped, you're frantic thinking, "Where is he?" cause everything's green, except when the sunlight comes through the trees, you sort of... Yellow beams of light coming down and it was really unreal to me. I didn't know how to take it all, but I didn't want to let the grandparents, grandfather and Dad down and I was always worried how would I react when I was fired on, as it turned out later, I wasn't too worried, you know? But at the time I'm thinking, oh, I hope I don't run. You know, that sounds really bad doesn't it? Freeze.

Ambush

We got lost. And for four days, we were using at the time American ration packs, which the Australian one is a one-day ration pack, the American ones were one meal. So you had to be resupplied because you can only carry so much because you're carrying ammunition. And in my case, because I had all this up here, I didn't have to carry, I think it was the M26 fragmentation grenades because they figured I had enough on me, but I had to carry two smoke grenades, which I had attached somewhere.

And because, as I said, I had the M16, I was carrying a bandolier of five magazines. I had no room in the webbing. So I carried the M16 rounds in my pockets because we had pockets on the side. And because I was superstitious, I only put 19 rounds in each magazine, but because I only carried 19 and it wasn't my weapon to worry about.

When I came back to Australia, I hand loaded my own magazines myself and I used tracer. Do you know what tracer is? Can you imagine eight magazines, 19 rounds. I created Star Wars before the movie came out and gee it looked good of a night-time. But I did that and every couple of days, you sort of... When we went out to do an ambush, you always had the straight line, about a hundred metres, 200 metres from the path, the track and the others were forming like a triangle.

And every time we go, we'd move around. You know, if you were on this flank, you'd be in the front next. And I never knew what was out there 'cause I never went out there and I didn't want to go out there. But my task was to fire illumination rounds in the air. There had to be seven rounds at any given time. And how the contact was initiated in front of us was.. You know what a Claymore mine is? Well , they had them all the way along like a hundred metres or whatever, and it could be command-detonated this end or this end. So, if the people were coming this way, that person when the first person came to him, he fired the Claymores.

Or if it came the other way, he fired the Claymores, so that way you get everybody. And as soon as the Claymores went off, I was asleep by the way, because I was tired. You didn't need to stay awake, but I was in the front row. And I started firing these flares, couldn't see it. My night vision was gone. Thank goodness I had tracer, and a couple of times, I got spoken to harshly.

Everybody's firing straight-forward. I'm doing this. Flare up, pick up the magazine, 19 rounds, weapon down. Another flare up, as the first one hit the ground, the eighth had to be up and so on until the whole 24 had gone. And all my ammunition was gone, but I always knew it was me, because everybody else was firing in a straight line. I always fired low, just seeing the rounds going off. So, if we ever find a squeaky American, a squeaky Vietnamese, you know it's me. I had something to do with it.

Being a mortarman

When you do your reinforcement wing, everybody is rifleman. Then the word got out, the fourth battalion needed pioneers. The third battalion, three RAR, which was based in Woodside, were desperate for mortarmen because a lot of their troops, at that stage they brought in 18 months, you drop back from two years to 18 months, and they were desperate for mortarmen. I was a qualified mortarman. There was three of us that I'd gone through Puckapunyal with, or two. I met the third one at, met him when I went to Singleton 'cause he came from northern New South Wales.

So then I automatically was a mortarman assigned to the third battalion and seriously, I never fired a rifle round again. I did all my shooting with the reinforcement unit and I must've fired hundreds of rounds. But when I got to the mortars, we were so short of personnel, each mortar tube was supposed to have three men. We were so understaffed. We had to do with two and trying to prepare the mortars, because next thing you hear with being a mortarman 90% of the time you do nothing, then you have 10% full on, you do the fire mission.

Someone gets on the radio and says, "We need a 99 rounds down range now". So you have to prepare 33 rounds like that. And I don't know if you've ever seen a mortar. You've got these increment bags, which explode. You've got the main primary charge that like a big shotgun with their pellets, there's little holes, and the force goes when it goes off, when it drops down the barrel, the explosive comes out the little holes, which detonates, the little increment bags, which are full of gunpowder or whatever and the increment bags control the range. So if you're going to shoot at five kilometres, you have the barrel as low as you can have 10 increment bags.

But if you're, we could actually fire at 40 metres away taking all the increment bags off, just the main charge. If we're about to be overrun, which I was never over run. And the barrel's almost vertical almost, but two of us are trying to prepare the rounds and the last three rounds from each tube, and there was three tubes with white phos. Oh, white phos was a nasty thing. It just burnt and burnt. I didn't like white phos. That's why I never carried a white phosphorus grenade at all. I thought they were not nice at all, but we fired this, we called them smoke. But anyway, so that was that.

Battle reaction

But when I was with mortars, you know how we're talking about you never know how you'll react? Well one day, waiting for fire missions, I was asleep on a stretcher on the outside of the perimeter of the vehicle. I should have been on the inside, but I was on the outside. And all of a sudden there was this one hell of an explosion. And it's amazing what your army training kicks in.

The stretcher was this far off the ground. By the time I rolled off the stretcher with my SLR, 'cause it was always next to me and having never fired it with the mortars, I had the weapon cocked instantly and by the time I hit the ground it was ready to fire and I'm looking out there. And from then on, I never worried that I would panic under fire.

Lost patrol

I was out for about...I think the longest was two weeks, or 10 days. But during that this strange event happened, we were lost, which I've mentioned before. We didn't know where we were, but we knew we were in Vietnam. Nui Dat must have known roughly we're in Phuoc Tuy province. It sounds rude. Doesn't it? But that was the name of it. So we all sat around and the young lieutenant was on the radio via his sig. He spoke to one of the batteries. I think it was the 14th, but don't quote me. They knew where they were going to put their shots and boy did us soldiers worry about it.

You know, whatever the distance is a long way away. You'd hear a tiny little boom. And then next minute, explosions over there. We almost wet our pants, but because of jungle, you can't see the explosion, you hear it. They, and we're always thinking "How in the hell did they know where to put the first round?" But they never, I wasn't privy to that information. I would like to think the lieutenant said, "We're not standing next to a Creek. Could you shoot it at a Creek?"

And that the NCO's and the platoon Sergeant and the officer were doing back bearings with the compass, cause the army back there would've said, we've landed in this grid square by doing a back bearing you just you get a bearing, we'll say of 200. You just reverse it. So a hundred degrees back on that line, this happened three times. And each time you hear this, but we weren't lost after that, after we got the triangulation.

A short trip and leave

I got on the helicopter, which was a Chinook, you know, the big two, got on and it was American and it was an African-American. I won't say Negro, African-American and he said, "Sit". And I know all the officer ranks, I do have problems with the senior sergeants, you know, cause they have stripes up this way. Then they have things underneath and they have emblems. And he said, "Sit". And he was, he didn't, he wasn't wearing a shirt. He was wearing a flak vest. We should have had flak vests.

And he had a revolver. Normally you see them with the 45 Colt, the Americans that I'd seen, he had the revolver, like a six-shooter like Wyatt Earp, tied down. And on this side it was a cross between a pocketknife and a machete on the other side. And if he'd said to me, "Jump", I would have jumped from the helicopter. He had me frightened. Hell. And I was just sitting there all by myself. They took me to the fire support base, that mortar platoon was commanded by a lieutenant. The armoured personnel carriers had the Sergeant. I never saw the Sergeant until the end of the war.

I was out there a day, and I spent the night in something that was made out of corrugated iron and a hole. And, and what do you call it? Sandbags around it, individual persons hole. And then he said, "Right, we're going, we're going back to Nui Dat". We just left Nui dat. So we went back or the armoured personnels came out and we swapped over. And this is the only, I don't know how it happened, but when I got there, he said, "Right, we're going in RNI". I think it's RNI leave in Vung Tau. Whatever.

And I've only, I'd only been in Vietnam less than a month. And the annoying thing is when I knew I was going out, I went and bought a 35-millimetre Yashica. Course I didn't take it out with me cause I had the little instamatic one, cause it took a lot of photos until it got wet, but oh, and I just spent the money $99 worth buying this camera. So of course, when I'm told I'm going down to the Peter Badcoe club at Vung Tau, everybody's lending me money because we all went to the different bars. I won't say what we got up to there.

But the one that I went to was the Peacock and it was a lovely young lady there. She decided to look after me. Her name was Maylei or something, I went out there, The Peter Badcoe Club was swimming pool, accommodation block, eating block. When I went back in 2001 on the 30th anniversary, the only thing left now, the Peter Badcoe Club is a swimming pool that is slimy and there is ducks living in it amongst hotels. Because when I went back, 9/11 had just taken place and all the Americans were concerned about going anywhere out of America.

So it was only Australians, New Zealanders and French went there and were we spoiled, you know. Like my mate, myself, who'd never been in the army. He, you know, two of us at the one table with about five waiters because they had to keep the waiters employed. But you know, but I was astounded that I went on leave and I'd only been in Viet... People were there six, seven months, never went down to Vung Tau, it's as if someone was guiding me, you know that funny little story later, but I, it was really good.

Recreation

We played cards. We hit the movies every night. You would take your rifle, your chair, and you'd go to the movies. And it's like going to a drive in without a car. The photographer or not, well, you know, the operator of the camera or whatever you like to call it, a projector, he was undercover, the rest of us were sitting in the rain. It was interesting. Mosquitoes were everywhere. The rain was everywhere.

Have you ever seen a drawing of what the huts look like? What the tents look like? Yes. With the blast wall and all that. But you had to take your chair with you so you could watch the movie. And of course we never noticed it when you go to the cinema, but 'cause there's always two projectors and they sort of stop one and start one. Well, we had to wait, wait for the reel to be wound back then a new reel put on. And we were talking while this was going on.

And the few times they were stand-tos when all the lights had to go out and was it frustrating, because we were in a rubber plantation. And if you hit one bloody tree, you're going to hit the other. Cause whichever way you look they're in lines. And when we had stand-tos, I never got into the foxhole because it had spiders in there and snakes. So I just sat down behind the rubber tree and waited for the lights to come back on. And then you went back to the movie, but I did that. But as I said, we, we once watched the third battalion play the reinforcement unit at football.

Now I'm a non-drinker, but that doesn't mean I would, you know, make it hard for my cobbers. I never took advantage of them. They would come up to me because you're allowed to have three cans of beer per day. And they're not the soft drink size can, not the aluminium ones they were the steel one that was bigger. And so you wouldn't carry beer into the bush with you. They sort of, you know, and, and the boys said to me, "Daryl, here's the 20 cents for each can, so I wouldn't be out of pocket". I said, "Yep". I went up and he said, "Who are you?" "Bristowe. Three cans" Tick, tick, tick. I said, "That's all right". And when you got back, three people were happy. That's what you do. And because I did this when I was out, I got first choice of the lollies.

Has anybody told you anything about this? Right after every 200 meal ration packs, you get a shipper full of cigarettes. I didn't go near those because in each individual ration pack, you had one little tiny, tiny little packet of cigarettes. I couldn't even give the damned things away. So I ended up leaving in my pack. Every time I'd come back to Nui Dat, I put them in the locker. When I was sending, I won't get into trouble with mine. When I was sending, I bought a slide projector and the packing for the slide projector around it was hundreds and hundreds of, customs are going to kill me, of little packets of American cigarettes and dad got them.

Vung Tau leave

Four days. You went down on the Thursday. Now this gets a bit personal. The Australian army decided when they send kids down, why they sent them down was I believe the girls were checked for certain diseases on a Thursday. And of course we were home again by Monday sometime. And of course, if the girls had something that they shouldn't have, they would then sort of had to, I think they had some sort of pass that they had to hand in that they weren't able to do their little bit of trade whilst they didn't have that card. But the Americans ignored that. And of course they suffered pretty badly, but penicillin seemed to sort the problem out for them.

Resupply and mail

Every time we had to be resupplied with water, sometimes they brought it in jerry cans. It didn't happen when I was with the first reinforcement unit, we took it from the river. We had four water bottles and 'cause I'm right-handed I always drank from here, this side. So this one was ready to drink. That's almost ready to drink. The two that are attached to the backpack. First stage of purification. Second stage of purification. The first one kills the bacteria. The second one makes it respectable to drink. The only thing I remember about the water, if it's raining, the water is red. If it's not raining, the water is black.

So when I got to, when I got to the Third Battalion working out of APCs, we had fresh water coming out. The helicopter landed every day at three o'clock. Now this is why I'm supportive of my 100, 101-year-old mum. She wants to come home and I said, "Look, come on. It's going to happen". But every Thursday, a cake arrived from Australia in a tin. As many people crowded around the tin as they could, Dad and Mum baked the cake on the Saturday, cooled it on the Sunday. Dad packed it late Sunday night, plastic hessian was the top one. In those days, you know, you have blue trailer covers now, Dad got that sort of material, but it was white and they sewed it all up. And when it arrived four days after it was made, it always had green fungus on it. Don't ask me how, but we didn't care.

So I just use my hat because you know, we haven't washed for two weeks. You'd wipe the fungus off the top. You would use your bayonet, trying to cut equal shares because you had everybody looking over your shoulder. "That piece is a bit bigger. Cut it." Mum and Dad and grandparents, not the brother, he only sent one letter, my sister sent two, my grandparents, maternal and paternal sent mail to me. Mum sent a letter every day. Dad sent, because you know, they were married, he sent every two days and I was the only person in the platoon to get on average, a letter and a half every day. Or was it, it was one letter every day and a half plus a cake.

But also because it was the football season I received Friday's Sun, Saturday's Sporting Globe, and that's... you don't need that now, with the pink pages, and Monday's Sun with the football results. But, you still listened to the football, even though there's a time difference, we always stopped to listen to the football if we weren't moving, and on the APCs changing positions. Now, this is a bit funny here. We required the army toilet paper to write home on, unused of course, 'cause mum would have yelled. After the paper was read it was recycled back into the bush.

But it's so funny because it was from home, everybody took a double page and you'd hear whispers, "Who's got page seven, who's got page eight?" Because you're reading an article and the damn thing goes on to the next page. So by the time everybody in a whole week read all the newspaper, doesn't matter whether it's a lieutenant or the corporal or the people that were driving the APCs, everybody read the paper to get any bit of information. The funniest thing I've ever saw was a bloke got a letter from Vic Roads. I don't know how he paid his registration from the jungle in Vietnam, but we all saw the funny side of it, but that's that. But no, Mum and Dad were behind me, well apart from Mum's activities, but I never was short of mail, never short of newspaper.

Ablutions and night vision

If I happened to need the newspaper at certain times of the day, I always went out through the gun position, the machine gun, because the gun people change... one changes every hour and the other changes on the two hour. So there's always one person just on, and one person been on an hour. And I would say, "I'm going out to that tree there."

If you see movement, because with the Vietcong, when your greens are wet they're black, they look black. And I was, this sounds stupid, I never went to the toilet on the top part of the hour, as in 12:00, 11:00. I always went on the bottom part of the hour because I knew you weren't having a new person coming on. And I never went to the toilet in the dark. I made sure I conditioned my body that if I had to do number twos, it was always in daylight and it was always...

Because people got killed through, not that I know, but you hear rumours. People get killed because they're going out to the toilet and I have been on the gun duty for night-time and even though some people had tiny, tiny torches, the fireflies in Vietnam of a night-time... It's like that, you know. "Oh, light", and then a few more paces, light again. And you're swinging the gun, the M60, or if you're on the 50 calibre, gee, I wish I'd fired the 50, but I never fired it because you don't want to give the position away, but they move. And the more you look at the trees, the trees start to move with your eyes, 'cause you never... Your best vision is what comes out the side. What comes out the front is not good over night-time.

A snake encounter

When I came back we had to pay for the airplane fare. We marched through Adelaide and we had been told things weren't good for the soldiers when they came back. You're not to be out in uniform because there was a lot of ill feeling. Little things, like people used to say, "You're a baby killer." Well, I never saw a baby. I saw a monkey if that counts, but I never saw a baby. Saw lots of snakes, humorous experiences with snakes. There's one. Can I tell you about one? It doesn't make us look good. Right. It doesn't make me look good.

Over night-time, we used to, you know like the wagon wheels in the old westerns, the three mortars always had to be aligned for a fire mission. You know, the bearings. And all around us were these eight armoured personnel carriers pointing out, with the communications one in the centre. So when we have to cook on our little hexamine stove, which is little stove and a little bit of paraffin sort of tablet. And I'm sitting there and out of the corner of me eye, it was a moonlight night, and there was something beside me that was moving and the moon was reflecting off it.

So I was all right, but it was my feet that were the problem. I have never seen so many cowardly actions from my feet. They took off the first foot hit the track. The second foot was on top of the vehicle and I followed it, screaming, "Snake, snake, snake." And every person that was on the ground was on the trucks and torches everywhere. And it was a snake, because they had a snake in Vietnam, it was green. I think green and yellow. Tiny little thing. Krait, or some name like that. They say, if it bites you, you normally take one step or two steps and then you die, it's so venomous. I never gave it the benefit of the doubt. It was a snake. So I took off, but I was a bit concerned about my legs. I'm not blaming me. I was all right, it was the feet that took off. They were the cowardly ones.

A fair swap

I always remember a warrant officer told me, I don't know whether it's true or not, an American Gunny Sergeant, with all this stuff here, he wanted a Land Rover, long wheel base, for the regimental collection way back in Fort such and such in America and he was prepared to give us a gunship.

And the warrant officer said "Look, someone signed for it." What are you going to say? "What happened to your Land Rover?" And what are you going to say, "Why have you now got a gunship?" The Americans, when they issue stuff, it was so strange.

RSL and a last mission

The RSL didn't want us. The Second World War veterans, not my father, nor my uncles. A lot of the RSLs, and that's why I never joined the RSL. Would you think about it? I came back late '71. I joined the RSL, Monbulk RSL, in '96. They didn't accept us. We weren't good enough. The army... the regular soldiers called us chocos, we called them regs. And when you look at the casualty lists in Vietnam, we lost troops, but we were always trying to prove to the regular troops. So our nasho blokes, probably went that extra yard to prove. And it was sad, but we did that.

But the thing that really turned me off Vietnam, and I can say this now, big time. In September, we were told the army was sending us out and we're thinking, "Well, hang on." 'Cause when I was in Vung Tau, the girls told me, "Did you know, you're leaving [for] Australia in October?", on the exact day. The army hadn't told us, but the bloody girls in the bars told us. So if they knew, the Vietcong knew.

Anyway, next thing we know we're going out one large exercise in September. And we're all thinking, "Well, hang on. We've all written home to say we're coming home. You know, the first or whatever, the first week in October. Why send us out the second last week going into the last week, looking for trouble?" I know we shouldn't say this, but that's what you think. "Why are you sending us out? We're going home." Anyway, they sent us out. With the Third Battalion, it was like rings, you know?

There's Nui Dat, the Third Battalion was there, the Fourth Battalion was further out. We couldn't get in contact with each other because people had been killed in the Third Battalion. If you want to meet up with somebody out there, you've got to ring up and say, "I'm coming out from the west." Anyway, but we didn't bump into them at that stage. But I witnessed a battle in the Fourth Battalion that went on for hours and hours. We were mortars, expecting... we thought they might've come back through our way so we were trying to fill up sandbags and fortify ourselves should they, the Vietcong, come back through us. And we wouldn't have lasted long if there'd been lots of them.

But all day, helicopter gunships. And you know, they had... the Americans had them. You could always tell... There were Hercules, there used to be C47s that had lots of guns out the side. But these were Hercules that had lots of guns out the side. And you could always tell because when they circled around, it was like a straight line of tracer, one in five was tracer so you can imagine how many rounds. This went on for ages. But when the helicopters went in, their's was a straight line.

But then the side gunners, with the twin M60s, and they zigzagged across the sky towards the target. And we watched this from probably lunchtime to maybe seven or eight o'clock at night. And I believe, don't quote me, but I believe four people were killed. And I'm thinking to myself, "Those four people probably wrote home and said we are coming home in November". And I was really critical of the government and especially the military. It wasn't until 1983, I bought the Australians at War history.

Here I am reading it, "The Australians went out looking for trouble. They were worrying about the Vietcong bringing mortars in within range of the field hospital at Nui Dat. Why in the hell didn't they tell us? When I was 10 years in the reserves, and it took a long time from 1971 to when I joined the reserves in 1989, and I spent two years as a volunteer photographer from '87 to '89. Why? And they always said, "We're doing this because of that, that, that," but they didn't think enough of us national servicemen to say, "We're going to go out because we're worrying about the Vietcong, now that they know that you're leaving, will bring their mortars in closer and take out the hospital." It was so easy.

And then from then on I thought, "You stupid buggers." If we had known that, and I'm sure the four people that had died, if they'd known that. It would have been... they would have felt better. Because in 1970, as Mum was concerned, we lost 1,034 on the roads in Victoria. And that's when they brought in safety belts, or just after, and we'd lost 520 or whatever. But I always remember one week in Vietnam, the Americans, because we used to listen to Radio America, they were that excited they only lost 129 in one week. It's their all-record low. And us soldiers are looking at each other thinking, "Bloody hell. They're bragging about losing 129. What were they losing the other weeks?"

Trip home on HMAS Sydney

And another thing that I remember, which is true, when we were told we were coming home, we got on Caribou aircraft at Nui Dat, they flew us down to Vung Tau, the battalion, 800, 900 men, on the airfield and they were shunted out in the shuttle service, out to the Sydney that was out there. Your baggage, so normally they would hold nine people. I think someone even sat next to the door, gunners on the side and five across a seat and some were sitting on the floor, closest to the pilot and the co-pilot but I sat there.

There was a raffle. Support company lost which meant they went on first, which meant they were down, down, down in the boat. I sat there for about two hours as they called the names out. It got down to two people and guess who the two people was, me, stupid. Then they called the other person's name and I thought "Oh my god, what's Mum going to say if I don't get on the boat." And he said, "Who are you?" I said "Bristowe, sir." He said, "Get on the bloody helicopter."

Someone was looking after me because when I got on, I got on last on the boat. Now, hang on, wasn't last, I ran like hell when he said get on. I passed the people the names had been called to make sure I was on the helicopter. I don't know if you've been on an aircraft carrier but you've got the flight deck, the hangar deck. Adjacent to the hangar deck but on the outside, but not over the ocean, there are little compartments, so I was in one of those little compartments in a hammock. It didn't matter which way the ship was going, I was always level. If the ship was doing this and believe me, the ship did that as well as that, I was always level. The disadvantages were I couldn't put the hammock up until eight o'clock at night.

To amuse ourselves for the 10 day voyage, I did one duty, I cleaned the petty officers showers. 10 soldiers, one mop, one bucket. So I think I touched the mop once, and then after that, I said "Done" and then after that we went back and watched the movies and there was a very suggestive movie. Marlon Brando, Last Tango in Paris or something. And of course, the Navy projectionist made sure that we saw everything we needed to see multiple times. Stop, reverse, stop, reverse, stop and play. And each time, he got the same result.

We were then told your kit will be inspected before you arrive in Port Adelaide. I had smuggled back because I had a friend who loved ammunition, I had smuggled back the complete set of 50 calibre bullets but no powder and just the projectiles and the cases. When I was carrying the M16 there was a detachable bipod, you squeeze it, over the barrel and then you put it down again. A lot of boys brought back magazines that weren't appropriate at the time in Australia. I also brought back two tiny smoke grenades. After the person got lost, there was a person that got lost for two days, he was so frightened, he didn't yell out when the helicopter kept looking for him.

You know the old 35-millimetre cartridges that the old film used to go into? The screw top little metal ones? Well they had these personal smoke grenades that it only goes for five seconds or 10 seconds. It's only the same size as the cartridge and when I came back with my camera around my neck, I could get into trouble smuggling in something now. In the two little pouches, I had these two little smoke grenades and everybody thought they were film. But I brought those back and I was able to give those to my mate. When he passed away, when they went through the house, it went to the Olinda or Sassafras RSL but I managed to bring that. But when we were told that everything was going to be checked, the 1200 soldiers went to the deck and I'm sure the ship was like no end, so in the middle of the ocean is a complete set of 50 calibre bullets, one detachable M16 bipod and numerous magazines floating on the water.

Return home

I landed at a place called Tullamarine and I'm thinking, "Am I on the moon?" When I left to go to Vietnam, to go back to Sydney, I flew out through Essendon. Tullamarine's... You go out there now it's nothing like it was 50 years ago. There's nothing there. An airfield, a big airfield. And I landed at Tullamarine, I thought, "My God, where am I?" Mum and Dad were waiting for me... at the airport. Mum wasn't going to take any chances with the army stuffing up transport to get me back to Melbourne.

Mum and Dad was there. Mum, she played in the dance band. She played the piano. So what they did is, it's just a coincidence, Mum was out at North Melbourne with her little band playing... She used to play old time, Second World War music and the dance music. Dad... I was immediately picked up, dropped off at my auntie at North Melbourne, knew nothing about what was going on. Didn't know who had babies or anything. I'm getting there, oh yeah. Then after the dance, Mum and Dad picked me up, brought me back to Kallista, because I was living at home.

Whilst I was away my sister got married, but there was nothing I could do about it. I knew it was happening. And the sad thing is when I got at the airport, the first thing I said to my Mum, "Grampy," her father. I said, "How's Grampy?" 'cause the last letter I had in Vietnam, my sister had got married in September. He was all right for the wedding. He died on the 10-day trip back to Melbourne from Vung Tau, Vung Tau to the boat. And then by the time it came back to Melbourne, he was dead and buried. So I didn't even get the chance to see him. When I left, he was well. When I came back, he was gone.