Paul Macmichael - Vietnam veteran

Early technical interest

The family lived at Bellerive, near Warrane before Warrane was Warrane and we had a rifle range there next to it, so we heard the pops of guns as kids. We used to play in the rifle range. From there, we went to school. We used to go down to the ferry, walk down the ferry and go across on the lovely old Cartela with a steam engine on a hot day, or a cold day, on a cold day getting the heat from the engine. Lovely. And we walked up to school. So that was the early days. During that time I was interested in all sorts of things, hunting, shooting. As kids, we could go and buy guns then. And, also, I played with electronics. So, we used to make crystal sets and more complicated things than crystal sets and that put me into the interest of going to the ABC as a techo.  I left school early at Year 10 and in those days, it was pretty good, you could get a job. In fact, before the ABC, I started an apprenticeship with two-way radio and then I ended up, after a short time, getting invited to the ABC and it was great. Had five years there. It was a great job. We did all sorts of work there as a technical assistant and then acting technician, camera work, video work, outside broadcast, and all that sort of stuff. So, it was interesting. It was great, good people, etc.

Family military connections

My grandfather was in the 52nd Battalion. He went across after Gallipoli from a mob called the Black 17, I think, from Bellerive, and I think they all came home. Anyway, 52nd Battalion, trying to get a bit of history together because he never left any, he never talked about it, never left any, but from what we can gather he would have been at Messines, probably Hamel certainly Villers Bretonneux. So, that was grandfather and they said he was a stretcher bearer, but I don't think he was. He was certainly in infantry. And then, I had some uncles in the Second World War, in the army, South Pacific, and I had an uncle also who was on a destroyer; sunk a couple of times, one of the el cheapo Australian destroyers, North Sea and all that. It wasn’t spoken about much. It was something I gleaned in later years.

Citizen Military Forces

Whilst I was at the ABC I was in the CMF, Civilian Military Forces in 406 Squadron in Hobart and  I joined that in order to learn a bit more about radio and stuff but during that time, of course, it was the Cold War, and communism was the thing and we learnt what we were about in the CMF as far as who the enemy might be and so there was a general awareness, but knew nothing about Vietnam.

National Service training

I was in the first intake and so, the population generally, was for it because they felt that maybe the domino theory was correct and there weren't many people against it before we went to Vietnam … However, they didn’t know anything about my CMF experience, that was brushed aside. So, we got off the aeroplane, bussed into Puckapunyal, put through a psychological test. Came out of that wondering, “What's going on?” Got all our clothes, you know, we had to polish our buttons that night and that sort of stuff …  we did all sorts of things, military stuff. Most of us didn't like getting the bayonet and putting it through a straw bag but we were used to guns and so on, so we just took it as par for the course. Mind you, I did get into trouble there in Puckapunyal. It's a long story, the long and short of it was, I was confined to barracks for 12 days, I think it was, that means you do all your duty during the day and then in the evening, after all the duties finished in the training, put all your heavy gear on and you go down to the football oval with a rifle above your head, an SLR, and you run around the oval, you know, with a rifle above your head, and we all took that sort of thing with a grain of salt, really, because we had our mates to back us up.

5 –  Joining Armoured Corps

In Puckapunyal area, there's Kapyong barracks and that's where the Armoured Corps was, some of the training for the armoured corps. So, we, during the end of our 2RTB training we were allowed to choose, which in many ways was good, where we'd like to go. They wanted me to go into the education corps because they thought I could operate teletype and camera work for education purposes and so I didn't want to do that. Then they wanted me to go in the infantry because I was keen on bushwalking and hunting and shooting in Tassie, but they took us on a tour over to Kapyong, where we saw the brand new M113 APCs and I looked at one of these and thought, “Wow, I want to drive one of these.” because I used to race motor cars to a certain extent in Tassie at Baskerville, Symmons Plains and so on and Dad had a garage and we used to do mechanical work fixing engines up and so on for cars and, yeah, so they let me join the armoured corops which was pretty good of them … At the time, there was an inkling we're going to Vietnam and it was a brand new unit, brand new vehicles was called the 1 First APC Squadron. There was already one troop in Vietnam, 1 Troop, but we were the first APC squadron later called A Squadron, Third Cavalry Regiment and it was busy. We had, they had to train us in lots of things. radio operation, navigation, vehicle maintenance, vehicle driving. Vehicle driving also included wet driver training because they were amphibious … Our 1 APC squadron leader, Major Hagerty, had been in Vietnam with the 1 AATTV, Army Training Team in Vietnam and he came back and, as well as trying to get us up to speed with all sorts of operational requirements, he tried to tell us about what was happening in Vietnam. In fact, we had a lecture one day and he suggested we should get a book called ‘Street Without Joy’. I think his name was Fall who wrote it. ‘Street Without Joy’. So, I bought that book and read it. I’ve still got it.

HMAS Sydney to Vietnam

Train from Pucka, up to Sydney to the docks, jumped aboard HMAS Sydney, a converted aircraft carrier and headed off through Indonesia to Vietnam with escort of destroyers and I think HMAS Melbourne was also on escort duty … It was pretty good. The food wasn't too bad. They gave us a goffer every night. They used to call it a goffer. I think it was a beer or soft drink. I'm not sure. We did a bit of physical training, bit of rifle shooting off the back of the deck vehicle maintenance, trying to get organized with vehicles and so on. Bit of radio installation, if I remember, and, yeah, we crossed the Neptune line. Had a ceremony, you know. Luckily I had a camera, so I could take photos while these poor buggers are being dunked in the water or in the slosh as well as that there were boxing tournaments and things, so yeah, they made it pretty good for us … We went ashore and casually walked off onto wherever it was, a beach or wherever it was and we just noticed the general environment and people. There's no panic, no worry. In fact, one of the things I do remember is being welcomed by some lovely people, some ladies with some flower thingos, and more importantly, there were young children there giving  us pineapple and the first time I saw a pineapple cut around, we had this beautiful pineapple so  that was a lovely welcome to Vietnam.

Early days in Nui Dat

The squadron went in line up through Vung Tau to past Ba Ria to Nui Dat. One of the things I do remember is going across some of these Bailey bridges, I'm thinking, “We're not going to fit through this Bailey bridge.” Anyway, we got across the Bailey bridge and thinking, “Oh, are they going to blow it up on us?” But they didn’t, we got through okay, and we were the first, one of the first mobs into Nui Dat. Nui Dat was originally recceed and prepared by one of our early units that went to Saigon and then came down. Some of the blokes from 3 Troop, actually, Bill Smith and so on, and they made the place relatively safe for us. With the Americans, actually, there were some big operations well before we got there. Anyway, when we got to Nui Dat it was all bare stuff. So, we, I think they had tents set up for us but there's no barbed wire. We had to dig trenches and that sort of thing. So, it was early days … We had no barbed wire. I think it was delayed getting that stuff from Australia. Some time, I think before we ended up getting the barbed wire to put up. So, our defence was our armoured vehicles and at night we used to sit on top of the armoured vehicles, brushing the mosquitoes away … We were lucky, armour could carry, APCs, we could carry plenty of water. The infantry were the ones, they went out on patrol and much of the weight, they had to carry water plus all the rest of the stuff. They were the ones who did it hard. We were lucky. We could carry as much hard rations as we liked, as much water as we liked … Overnight, you'd be on picket duty. Two hours on, two hours off. Not all the time. Sometimes you got a whole night break but that was pretty hard trying to stay awake for two hours. Then you got up, had breakfast. We had a mess set up. So, a tent mess, and they were pretty good. We had reasonably good food. They're always jobs to do, vehicle maintenance, in the early days digging trenches and mess duty, you'd have to go and do mess duty, as we were just mere mortals, privates and corporals, and so on. So, there was all the usual stuff. Oh, and we did try and set up the camp a bit. So, we ended up getting a water container, a large water container from somewhere and set up showers and then we set up some better toilets. We had long drops to start with. You dig a hole, you know, sit on a log ... After some months, somebody built a boozer for us and that was an open structure, a tent to start with and eventually it was a reasonably well constructed shed with louvre sides and so on and I think we were allowed two cans per person, per man, per day or something.

Patrolling and meeting the Vietnamese people

We were always out. We didn't spend much time at base in the year I was there. Often, we were taxis and we took infantry out to where they needed to be and to pick them up, SAS, where they need to be and pick them up, and so on. But often we were out by ourselves. Eventually we were cavalry. So, the name of 1APC squadron changed in 1967, early ‘67 to A squadron, Third Cavalry Regiment … We might have had a report of enemy somewhere, so, we went out and tried to set up an ambush. Often there might have been just a road patrol … We had a lot of contact with the people, a distant contact, sometimes a closer contact. The town north of Nui Dat for instance was, what was it called? Boral? Anyways, a town north. It'll come to, Ba Ria, no that was a town south. Anyway, a town north was a plantation town, very Catholic, a Catholic church there, still a Catholic priest, I think, and in fact, some of us went to church there and years later it was bombed, completely bombed out but we got on well there and played soccer with the local kids and took some good shots of the local kids and kids liked us. They used to call us, Úc đã li number one. America number 10 … We could take our clothing down to Ba Ria and they had a washing facility for us. That was good later on. We went down that way to fill up some sandbags for protection and they helped us fill up sandbags. Often, you can imagine that the villagers weren't real happy with us, especially at Hoa Long, which is just south of Nui Dat. These people, 50 per cent of them had relations who were Viet Cong and so you can understand not being happy, but I think the Task Force went to a lot of trouble to help them. They were doing medical services, dentistry and so on, so we tried to help them.

Long Tan

I guess there's plenty of history written about Long Tan, so looking at it, just from my perspective, we were at a Little Patti concert and we were called out and rushed back, headed off, to pick up 6RAR and I was in a 2 Troop and there was three vehicles in 2 Troop’s attached to 3 Troop and our vehicles were pretty new, just come across on the HMAS Sydney, whereas the vehicles were fairly old and worn out. So, we were given the lead role, sorry, not the lead role, the lead position because we had to get across … and so on. So, our pintle steering worked so we could easily manoeuvre across the river whereas some of the older vehicles they were worn out, so we waited at 6RAR location for a long time, waiting to go out and we could hear the battle, of course, over to the east and we finally got out through the wire, and we had a bit of trouble communicating. The vehicles that we were in 2 Troop vehicles, we weren't set up properly, we had no intercom between the driver and the troop commander, would you believe? So, he’d tap me on the shoulder and say where to go. Well, I was the lead vehicle. B 23 Alpha, and we crossed the river, got across there, had to wait for the others to come and then we headed off up towards the noise and it was very damp at that stage. Probably, can you have 110 per cent humidity? Anyway, and in addition, you could see the glow of the battle and we headed off up there, had to wait for a while, one vehicle had to go back and wait for somebody who’d decided to come across, one of the commanders and we went up and then turned around and faced the battle area and, yeah, what happened, then we headed off. I was on the left flank, and we got hit. The story goes that I crushed some VC but I don't think that's quite true. However, I was very worried about running over our own infantry, who was, thought I saw down there but it's all a bit hazy, a long time ago, I can't remember all the detail. And my section commander was, he was knocked unconscious. So, we had very poor communication and the other thing that was wrong with communication, we couldn't communicate very well between 2 Troop vehicles, and 3 Troop vehicles because the radios were different. The squelch was all mucked up, so I couldn't communicate what was going on. So, my crew commander was Peter Clements and he got hit. He was mortally wounded as it turned out and so we stopped the vehicle, not being able to communicate at that time and the infantry got out and went around in a defensive position around the vehicle until we sorted things out. I couldn't communicate with anybody but, anyway, the message got across and what happened then, our boss, our troop leader, sent a sergeant across to my vehicle and said, “Take Peter Clements back to base.” So, that has been a criticism of that situation, that we went back to base. So, one vehicle, we went back to base with our wounded people and unfortunately took some of the infantry, who were important back to base … We went back out the next day, on the 19th and we carried on with the operation and we saw the battle area, we saw the bodies and so on and we heard about, you know, all those killed and, but funnily enough, we just got on with the job, and we never spoke too much about it. We were busy.

Operation Bribie

Down in an area called Green Zone, called Green something, Long Green, it was called. There was an area down near the coast called Long Green, which is north of the Long Hais and the Viet Cong set up an ambush for us. They, the night before, attacked a village as a precursor to he tambush. So, we headed off down there. 2 Troop vehicles went down without infantry, I think 3 Troop went with Infantry. There were as an airborne assault. 2 Troop were outside the area of contact and there was a lot of activity by A Company, B Company and so on in this area in the bush and we went in, that is 2 Troop went in and had trouble in there because you couldn't see in front of your face. It was all scrub and, yeah, and what happened then, one of our vehicles got hit badly, Trooper Pomeroy was killed and Geoff Strachan was injured and the people aboard, infantry aboard were also injured and in the meantime we were out some distance from them. That is the section I was in and an RPG went close to us and sprayed my vehicle and didn't injure us too much and so we were lucky, these are RPGs and they missed us but they got ol’ Vic Pomeroy and Geoff Strachan and so, then we headed off back to where Geoff's vehicle was severely damaged and with my vehicle, I tried to pull it out of the way and I stuffed that up, I jammed it into a tree and so we couldn't recover the vehicle. So, the boss said, “Well, let's burn it.” So, we burned it to save it from the enemy and, yeah, then we went out and it was a longer story than that, of course, and it was another lucky, like Long Tan was lucky, let's face it, it was a lucky, lucky day and Bribie wasn't so lucky. But we certainly never won that battle … I wasn't involved with retrieving any wounded, although we did have to lift Vic's body into our vehicle and took it out. I was not involved directly with medical evacuation, but others were, of course.

Operation Renmark

Renmark was an operation that didn't go ahead because of a serious mine incident and what happened there, I wasn't there, I heard the explosion, maybe a kilometre away or whatever, and we gradually heard what was, what happened. But the Yanks dropped big bombs, 500-pound bombs, and one of these bombs was turned into a mine and they set this mine up on a track and 3 Troop and 2 Troop, we're heading off with 5RAR and the lead vehicle of 3 Troop hit this mine, apparently lifted the vehicle right up and killed both, the drivers and the troop commander, Mitch Mitchison. He was killed pretty instantly, I guess, and Ken Wilson, the driver, he was killed, and I think there were two infantry killed aboard as well. But what happened then, this is all hazy stuff by the way, I'm just going by what I've read, and not much has been written about it and then some medics and others raced to the scene but unfortunately, they didn't follow protocol and they hit jumping jack mines or whatever they’re called, and then another three were killed. And I think at that time, it amazes me that nobody got a medal out of that … in my day, there weren't any protocols that I know of, apart from on Operation Bribie where 2 Troop caused much concern to the locals by going across the paddy fields rather than up the road, because going up there we thought there would be an ambush, we might hit a mine, so there were those tactical protocols, I suppose. But, yeah, lots of mines. In the early days, it was just knocking a track off. I never hit a mine but mates of mine, of course, hit mines. In fact, we're coming down one track from up north and right in front of me the mortar carrier hit a mine and up it went. I was lucky to take three photos of that big crater in the ground and so on. So, mines were always a concern, of course, especially after Renmark when the mines got bigger and in latter years after my time, I don't know how many APCs got knocked in 10 years. It was a lot. In my day there were quite a few.

Return to Australia

I was pretty lucky really. I had a good family and I had things to do. I was keen on getting back into motor cars and so I worked with dad, he was a service manager at a Ford agent and they gave me a job as a motor mechanic and so did that for a while and I got a service station thinking I'm going to go car racing again. Ended up doing a bit of car rallying, but that was all, but of course, then I got married and had family and life went on. So, I never had too much trouble … I would say there was no outgoing resentment because bear in mind, it was a first, this was still 1967. I was aware of, in later years, what was going on, but Vietnam was not mentioned by my friends or anybody else. Really, it was just under the carpet, and we got on with life. It was in latter years I got a bit more interested in it all. I ended up being in Goulburn Legacy for 15 years because we moved to the mainland, the family, and when I worked with the Rural Fire Service over there, ended up joining Legacy and in Legacy there were a lot of lovely old Second World War blokes who were interesting to talk to … I didn’t find any real angst and we didn't talk about it too much, you know, we got on with life and had other things to do. But because Vietnam was still going on, I had a background interest, wondering what's going on. So, yeah, but I haven't thought about how to describe it really.

Anzac Day

In the early days, I didn't participate. Later on, I ended up going to Anzac Day and I still do. I'm interested in what the Vietnam veterans are doing, but I never joined them. I respect very much what they've done. I guess I've been too lazy, too busy with other things to get involved in that. I'm a dormant member of the RSL and I still pay my dues. But Anzac Day is one day, I think that we should all get together and recognize where we've come from, so that we can better understand where we need to go to.

Remembering lost friends

I'd like to name a few of our chaps who were there. When I was in Vietnam we lost, I think it was five, five killed and maybe I'll just go through those in memory of 1 APC Squadron, A Squadron Third Cavalry at the time. The first was Tony Holland. Tony was, had an accidental discharge. He was a nasho, first killed and there was Peter Clements, who was my driver at Long Tan, he was only 20. He was a regular. And then on Operation Bribie with Vic Pomroy, he was another nasho. He was a good footballer, Victorian. He was killed and then we had Operation Renmark. We had Ken Wilson and Mitch Mitchinson killed there and as well as that, of course, there were quite a few wounded. So, yeah, that's how I'd like to finish off.