Geoff Hazel - A typical day

Transcript

The typical day, I mean we even had full stand tos inside Nui Dat initially but that was only for the first couple of days and then it was just the perimeter you used to stand to. But think it was day four after the battalion arrived, we were out on our first battalion sized operation. It was a settling in operation that every battalion did. It was an area where they were known to be few people.

And so we had our first four days, and we were out there and into it and then back and from there there were a lot of company sized operations. Sometimes battalion headquarters went along sometimes it didn't. But basically, very rarely, were we, I think I could count on one hand, the number of times we're in base more than four days in a row. There was once later on in the year we were the only battalion I think that did not get the six, the individuals didn't get the six days rest in country breaks.

You got your R&R. But there was also supposed to be a six-day rest and where you went down to Vung Tau to the rest centre there. We just never got that. Jim Shelton, who was the CEO, brilliant CEO, follow him anyway, at one stage, he told headquarters that he was keeping the battalion in base for eight days. And he would send all of his companies down for two days at a time to Vung Tau and split the support company guys up amongst them they weren't with the companies they were normally working with. So he was excellent but that was the only time the battalion actually took eight days and said, "We're not we're not going out shooting people".